rimod with a
contemptuous jerk; but sorry are we to say that Madame Lebrun joins in
no such dignified proceeding. She cuts the magnanimous Lebrun instead;
she stirs up against him the wrath and indignation of all his friends
and relations; she continues her intimacy with the Sieur Grimod; and, as
a finish to her connubial obedience, she goes one morning with three
hackney coaches, and carries off every article of furniture the unhappy
little man possesses. A pleasant specimen of a wife of the middle class
in the year 1774! A duchess could scarcely be more sublime. Now, who was
this Sieur Grimod, and what manner of rank was his considered? He had
nothing to do with the noblesse; he kept no shop; he had no private
fortune; but he was one of the true causers of the French Revolution,
the rascally collectors of taxes, the underlings of the atrocious
_fermiers generaux_, who wrung the last farthing from the already
oppressed peasant, and made the whole realm of France as sterile,
hopeless, and wretched, as a nation must inevitably become, if it is
allowed to be the prey of an O'Connell in every parish. His nominal
salary was under a hundred a-year; but we shall see the style he lives
in, as we get on in the account--his country-houses--his carriages, and
even his politenesses to Madame Lebrun; and we shall hear in every one
of these luxurious enjoyments the sharpening of the guillotine axe.
Madame Lebrun the wife, Madame Lebrun the mother, and Mademoiselle the
sister, are all in the same story. The old lady, whose virtuous
indignation towers above her sex, has no patience for the insufferable
tyrant who won't let his wife see her best friends, ("qui vouloit
l'empecher de voir ses bons amis.") They trump up all manner of stories
against him; and even maintain, in their first paper of accusation, that
he threshed and kicked his tender-hearted spouse, and put her in bodily
fear. But when the magistrate looked at our diminutive friend, and
compared his powers of threshing and kicking with the tall majestic
figure and full chest of the complainant, he dismissed the charge "avec
une sorte d'indignation," as the Sieur Lebrun triumphantly declares; and
we think the magistrate was quite justified in so doing. No, no--the
Sieur Lebrun was bad enough, as you shall hear in the sequel; but he
never had the cruelty, not to mention the courage, to attack so stately
a woman as his wife. But, alas! from the magistrate's decision there lay
a p