Эжен Сю - The Blacksmith's Hammer; or, The Peasant Code - A Tale of the Grand Monarch

Bulwer Lytton observes of fiction that, when aspiring at something higher than mere romance, it does not pervert, but elucidates the facts of the times in which the scene is placed; hence, that fiction serves to illustrate those truths which history is too often compelled to leave to the tale-teller, the dramatist and the poet. In this story, The Blacksmith's Hammer; or, The Peasant Code – the seventeenth of the charming series of Eugene Sue's historic novels, The Mysteries of the People; or, History of a Proletarian Family Across the Ages – the author reaches a height in which are combined all the elements that Bulwer Lytton distributes among history, tale, drama and poetry.

The history is clean cut; the tale fascinates; its dramatic presentation is matchless; last, not least, the poetic note is lyric. As historian, as tale-teller, as dramatist and as a poet the author excels himself in this narrative, that serves at once as a sequel of the age described in the previous story, The Pocket Bible; or, Christian the Printer , and as prelude to the great epopee of the next story that deals with the French Revolution.

New York, March, 1910.

I, Salaun Lebrenn, the son of Stephan, who was the son of Antonicq, who finished the legend of The Pocket Bible, begun by his grandfather Christian the printer – I, Salaun Lebrenn, am the writer of the following narrative.

To you, my last-born, Alain Lebrenn, the child of my old age, I bequeath this legend, a continuation of our plebeian annals. I shall join to these pages the head of a blacksmith's hammer. It will increase the number of our family relics. You are to transmit it, jointly with our annals, to your own descendants.

My grandfather Antonicq Lebrenn died in his sixty-eighth year, on November 11, 1616. Stephan, Antonicq's son, was twenty-three years of age at the time of his father's decease. He continued to be a farmer on the Karnak farm, a dependency of the fief of Mezlean, held under the suzerainty of the seigniory of Plouernel. Obedient to the law of usage , after a certain number of years Stephan became a vassal of the seigniory. At the age of twenty-six, in 1619, he married, and had two sons – myself, Salaun, born in 1625, and my brother Gildas, born in 1628. Our father Stephan, a good man, but timid and resigned, submitted without a murmur to all the impositions, all the affronts, and all the sufferings of vassalage. He died in his fifty-ninth year on February 13, 1651. My brother Gildas, a man of as good, patient and submissive a disposition as my father, succeeded him in the holding of the Karnak farm, located on the coast of Armorican Brittany. Myself, being of a less submissive disposition than Gildas, and having chosen a sailor's life for my vocation, engaged as ship's boy on board one of the vessels in the port of Vannes. I was then fifteen years old. I made many voyages, and attained the office of supercargo, and later of captain of a merchant vessel. Thanks to my earnings, I was later enabled to purchase a ship, and sail it on my own account. In 1646 – during the reign of Louis XIV who succeeded his father Louis XIII – I married for the first time. My first wife was Janik Tankeru, the sister of a blacksmith of Vannes. My dear and lamented wife made my life as happy as circumstances allowed, and I returned to her the happiness I owed her. In 1651 she bore me a son whom I named Nominoë. Alas! I was to survive him. You will now read his history in this narrative that I leave to you, son of Joel – a lamentable narrative which I have written, often moistening it with my tears.

Early in the month of August of the year 1672, a violent tempest raged on the coast of Holland. Driven by the storm, and already deprived of one of its masts, the French brigantine St. Eloi "fled before the gale," as mariners put it. With only a little triangular bit of sail spread forward, she strove to run into the port of Delft, which lies not far from The Hague. The enormous waves, furiously dashing against the jetty of the port, completely hid it behind a mist of foam. Aware of his close proximity to land, the captain gave at frequent intervals the signal of distress with two pieces of artillery that were placed upon the forecastle. He sought thereby to attract some daring pilot of the port to take charge of the partly dismantled craft, the plight of which became all the more distressful when a dash of the sea carried away a portion of the rudder, and rendered control of the vessel almost impossible. The St. Eloi had left Calais that morning for Dover; the weather was beautiful, the wind favorable. In the middle of the Channel, however, the wind shifted suddenly to west-northwest, and blew with such fury that, compelled to flee before the tempest, and unable either to keep its course for Dover or return to Calais, the brigantine sought to reach a haven of refuge in one of the ports on the Dutch coast.

The distinguished passengers who chartered the St. Eloi for a passage across the Channel to England were three in number: the Marchioness of Tremblay; her niece, Mademoiselle Bertha of Plouernel; and Abbot Boujaron. They were accompanied by a lackey and a maid. The Marchioness of Tremblay was on the way to join in London her nephew, Bertha's brother, Baron Raoul of Plouernel, who was charged by Louis XIV with a special commission to Charles II, King of England. Although, since the beginning of the year, both the latter power and France were at war with the Dutch Republic, or rather the seven United Provinces, strangers occasionally received "letters of safeguard" from the admiralty at Amsterdam, thanks to which they could cross the Channel without fear of the cruisers of Admiral Ruyter's squadron. Equipped with one of these letters, the St. Eloi was under sail for Dover when the storm overtook her. In order not to stand in the way of the pumps, that were kept busy by as many of the men as the vessel's small crew could afford, bailing the water from a leak in the hold, the passengers were soon obliged to go upon the bridge. Their different attitudes at that critical moment presented striking contrasts. The Marchioness of Tremblay, a woman of ripe age, once reputed a belle but now of haughty demeanor, lay shuddering with fear upon a mattress, stretched out on the vessel's poop; she was supported by her maid, and, in order to prevent her being tossed about by the heavy roll of the ship, she was steadied by a scarf that passed under her arm and was fastened to the taffrail. Beside her, and no less pale than herself, Abbot Boujaron, a man of fifty, short, thick-set and puffy, held himself fast to a shroud with a convulsively clenched hand, while with the other he clung to the arm of his lackey, and emitted plaintive moans, interspersed with bits of expostulatory prayers. Mademoiselle Bertha of Plouernel on the contrary, seemed to take no thought of the danger of the hour, but gave herself over to the imposing poetry of the storm, after having vainly endeavored to reassure her aunt the Marchioness, and induce her to share the serenity that never leaves brave spirits in the lurch. The young girl, barely twenty years of age, was tall, supple, well rounded, with a brunette complexion of radiant beauty. It was emotion and not fear that animated her otherwise pale face, while the spark that shone in her large black eyes, surmounted with well-marked eyebrows, sufficiently denoted the feverish admiration that the sight of the elements in fury inspired her with. With dilating nostrils, a heaving bosom, her forehead lashed by the gale that raised and blew backward the floating ringlets of her hair, she steadied herself with a firm hand against the rigging of the ship, and yielded to the motion of the rolling and pitching craft with a suppleness that unveiled the elegance of her waist while enabling her to preserve her equilibrium. Mademoiselle Plouernel contemplated in wrapt enthusiasm the spectacle presented to her eyes, all the more indifferent to the danger that threatened her, seeing she did not believe in death. Yes, son of Joel, in keeping with the ancient faith of the Gauls, our fathers, the young girl was upheld by the conviction that, as a consequence of the phenomenon called "death," the soul freed itself of its material wrappage, the body, in order to assume a new form appropriate to its entrance upon other spheres. She firmly believed that, body and soul, spirit and matter, life was renewed, or rather continued, in the starry worlds that spangle the firmament.