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It was then that he painted a sign for this friend, Gersaint, a sign so wonderful that it is reckoned in the history of Watteau's paintings. Soon he grew so sensitive over his illness, that he did not wish to remain near his dearest friends, but one of them, the Abbe Haranger, insisted upon looking after his welfare, and got lodgings for him at Nogent, where he could have country air and peace.
Since that time, he had made unheard-of efforts to find traces of him and to reach him in that dark abyss of misery in which Thenardier had disappeared. Marius had beaten the whole country; he had gone to Chelles, to Bondy, to Gourney, to Nogent, to Lagny. He had persisted for three years, expending in these explorations the little money which he had laid by.
Thomas de Marle was put under the ban of the kingdom, and visited with excommunication "by a general assembly of the Church of the Gauls," says Guibert of Nogent, "assembled at Beauvais; "and this sentence was read every Sunday after mass in all the metropolitan and parochial churches.
Some minor engagements followed, all to the advantage of the Germans, who on the 22nd attacked and occupied the ancient and strategically important town of Nogent-le-Rotrou the lordship of which, just prior to the great Revolution, belonged to the family of the famous Count D'Orsay, the lover of Lady Blessington and the friend of Napoleon III. The occupation of Nogent brought the Germans to a favourable point on the direct railway-line between Paris and Le Mans, the capital of Maine.
Laigues, too, came from Court and told me that I was publicly laughed at, and charged with having fomented the insurrection instead of appeasing it; that I had been ridiculed two whole hours and exposed to the smart raillery of Beautru, to the buffoonery of Nogent, to the pleasantries of La Riviere, to the false compassion of the Cardinal, and to the loud laughter of the Queen.
Again at Nogent: "Twelve men have died of hunger, though we have used fire and sword to get food on our way here." And, now, into the space left undefended between the Marne and the Aube, Blücher began to thrust his triumphant columns, with no barrier to check him until he neared the environs of Paris.
I have never known what displeased Lauzun, but he left Pignerol the enemy of Fouquet, and did him afterwards all the harm he could, and after his death extended his animosity to his family. During the long imprisonment of Lauzun, Madame de Nogent, one of his sisters, took such care of his revenues that he left Pignerol extremely rich.
"The progress of the fire, kindled on two sides at once, was so rapid," says Guibert of Nogent, "and the winds drove the flames so furiously in the direction of the convent of St. Vincent, that the monks were afraid of seeing all they possessed become the fire's prey, and all the persons who had taken refuge in this monastery trembled as if they had seen swords hanging over their heads."
When one asks them where? They answer "everywhere." I can only answer myself for what occurred at Le Bourget. I hear that Vinoy has occupied Nogent, on the north of the Marne; the resistance he encountered could not, however, have been very great, as only seven wounded have been brought into this hotel, and only one to the American ambulance.
Famine and misery accompany him on his march to Nogent, and there, on the 7th, he hears tidings that strike despair to every heart but his. An Anglo-German force is besieging the staunch old Carnot in Antwerp; Bülow has entered Brussels; Belgium is lost: Macdonald's weak corps is falling back on Epernay, hard pressed by Yorck, while Blücher is heading for Paris.
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