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It is certain that, on the morning of the 6th of June, the insurrection broke out afresh for an hour or two, to a certain extent. The obstinacy of the alarm peal of Saint-Merry reanimated some fancies. Barricades were begun in the Rue du Poirier and the Rue des Gravilliers. In front of the Porte Saint-Martin, a young man, armed with a rifle, attacked alone a squadron of cavalry.
It is not to be found in the collected works of that philosopher; but was first brought to light by a M. Poirier, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, who asserted that he had discovered it in MS. in the undoubted writing of Arnold. This unlucky sage was born at Apone, near Padua, in the year 1250.
Thus do I no more believe that Mr. Bartholomew Pinchin was cousin to Lady Betty Heeltap, or in any manner connected with the family of my Lord Poddle (and he was only one of the Revolution Peers, that got his coronet for Ratting at the right moment to King William III.), than that he was the Great Mogul's Grandmother. His gentlemanly extraction was with him all a Vain Pretence and silly outward show. It did no very great Harm, however. When the French adventurer Poirier asked King Augustus the Strong to make him a Count, what said his Majesty of Warsaw and Luneville? "That I cannot do," quoth he; "but there is nothing under the sun to prevent thee from calling thyself a Count, if the humour so please thee." And Count Poirier, by Self-Creation, he straightway became, and as Count Poirier was knouted to Death at Moscow for Forging of Rubles Assignats. Pinchin was palpably a Plebeian; but it suited him to be called and to call himself an Esquire; and who should gainsay him? At the Three Archduchesses at Ostend, indeed, they had an exceeding sensible Plan regarding Titles and Precedence for Strangers, which was found to answer admirably well. He who took the Grand Suite, looking upon the courtyard, was always held to be an English Lord. The tenant of the floor above him was duly esteemed by the Drawers and Chamberlains to be a Count of the Holy Roman Empire; a quiet gentleman, who would pay a Louis a day for his charges, but was content to dine at the Public Table, was put down as a Baron or a Chevalier; those who occupied the rooms running round the galleries were saluted Merchants, or if they chose it, Captains; but, in the gardens behind the Inn, there stood a separate Building, called a Pavilion, most sumptuously appointed, and the Great Room hung with the Story of Susannah and the Elders in Arras Tapestry; and he who would pay enough for this Pavilion might have been hailed as an Ambassador Plenipotentiary, as a Duke and Peer of France, or even as a Sovereign Prince travelling incognito, had he been so minded. For what will not Money do? Take our English Army, for instance, which is surely the Bravest and the Worst Managed in the whole World. My Lord buys a pair of colours for the Valet that has married his Leman, and forthwith Mr. Jackanapes struts forth an Ensign. But for his own Son and Heir my Lord will purchase a whole troop of Horse: and a Beardless Boy, that a month agone was Birched at Eton for flaws in his Grammar, will Vapour it about on the Mall with a Queue
It was a very tiny Battalion therefore that went to rest, reorganize, and train at Le Poirier a few days later! Gilbert Verity had expired shortly after his misfortune in Congreve Walk. Douglas Bernard Priestly was shot through the head and killed instantly almost as soon as he got over the top.
In this laborious annual diversion Fleeming's part was large. I never thought him an actor, but he was something of a mimic, which stood him in stead. Thus he had seen Got in Poirier; and his own Poirier, when he came to play it, breathed meritoriously of the model. The last part I saw him play was Triplet, and at first I thought it promised well.
To have had Pompey under his feet, or Cicero, must have then seemed to Cæsar to be impracticable, though the time came when he did, in different ways, have his feet on both. With Catiline the chance of success might be better. Crassus he had already compassed. Crassus was like M. Poirier in the play a man who, having become rich, then allowed himself the luxury of an ambition.
He has written a play upon the delicate and thorny subject on which Monsieur Jules Sandeau has written his admirable comedy, 'Le Gendre de Monsieur Poirier': with this difference, however: Monsieur Legouvé has taken, not a ruined and brilliant noble who marries the daughter of a plebeian, but a young man, the architect of his own fortunes, with a most vulgar name, who, on the score of talents, energy, delicacy of head and heart, is loved by a young lady of noble birth, is accepted by her family, and enters by right of conquest into that society from which his birth excluded him."
In this laborious annual diversion, Fleeming's part was large. I never thought him an actor, but he was something of a mimic, which stood him in stead. Thus he had seen Got in Poirier; and his own Poirier, when he came to play it, breathed meritoriously of the model. The last part I saw him play was Triplet, and at first I thought it promised well.
"These presses are certainly the best executed of any which have been exhibited. Their merit consisting in superior execution, cannot be too much encouraged, as the happiest ideas often fail in the realisation, therefore that the jury may not be deficient in recompensing M. Poirier they award him the bronze medal."
Yet, while they were delivering each his own message, they accepted the model of the "well-made play"; and it is to this that we may ascribe the artificiality we begin to discern even in such masterpieces of dramaturgic craftsmanship as the 'Gendre de M. Poirier' and the 'Demi-monde. Upon Ibsen also the influence of Scribe is as obvious as it is upon Augier and Dumas fils.
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