The Parisians, Book XII

The Parisians, Book XII by Edward Bulwer-lytton

The Parisians, Book XII, closes Bulwer-Lytton's novel amid the final weeks of the Siege of Paris, opening after the sortie failures of 30 November and 2 December and the crushing news of the Loire army's defeat, and closing on the eve of peace, tracing how privation exposes both the nobility and the cruelty latent in the city's people. Frederic Lemercier, ruined and starving despite a nominal fortune tied up with the absent Duplessis, wanders Paris with his dog Fox, exchanging gallows humor with Savarin and De Breze about horseflesh, rats, and the mounting bombardment. Victor de Mauleon, now a celebrated National Guard commander, rebukes Lemercier for jesting near the bread queues, and the two encounter Julie Caumartin, once a coryphee, now reciting verse in a café and still pining for her old lover Gustave Rameau. De Mauleon separately gives money to Madame Monnier, a starving mother whose husband Armand has been radicalized into drunken bitterness by an agitator called Jean Lebeau, blaming De Mauleon for his brother's death in the December fighting. Armand later confronts De Mauleon directly, unaware De Mauleon and Lebeau are the same man. The Abbé Vertpré relays word that a dying nun, Sister Ursula, wishes to see De Mauleon, her only kin. Raoul de Vandemar escorts him to the convent, where the Superieure — revealed as Victor's own lost love from decades before — informs him the nun died in the night, leaving a long confessional letter. It recounts Louise Duval's secret marriage and child (Julie), her abandonment of the girl to Madame Surville, her subsequent marriages to Ludovico Cicogna (Isaura's father) and then to the Englishman Selby, her retreat into false piety and the convent, and her bequest instructing Victor to find and provide for Julie without exposing her own name. Meanwhile Isaura Cicogna's household grows destitute; Gustave Rameau's parents discover he has become "Diderot le jeune," a Red Republican pamphleteer living extravagantly while neglecting them and his engagement. Isaura, relieved rather than wounded, seeks release from the betrothal. Gustave, drunk and self-justifying, reunites with Julie, who has been placed under De Mauleon's guardianship with a dowry from her mother's estate. De Mauleon confronts Gustave, offering him Julie's dowry and a path away from his radical associates if he marries her and abandons revolutionary agitation; Gustave, egged on by fellow radical Edgar Ferrier, agrees, marries Julie, and is later seen with her by a serene, now-liberated Isaura and Raoul. The narrative breaks off mid-scene at the fate of Fox the dog (eaten by the starving friends), with the author's son noting the manuscript ends unfinished here and at the Bourse rivalry of Duplessis and Louvier and the courtship of Graham Vane and Isaura. An appended note and "L'Envoi" — a letter from Lemercier to Vane written after the Commune's fall — report that Louvier and Duplessis reconciled over the Rochebriant mortgage once De Mauleon revealed the elder Marquis's innocence in an old wrong; that Alain de Rochebriant, wounded in the sortie, will marry Valérie; and that Victor de Mauleon, having served bravely with the Versailles army, was assassinated by Armand Monnier while saving an innocent man, his double identity as the revolutionary "Jean Lebeau" partially exposed after death, along with a political testament advocating a checked, American-style constitution for France. The book closes on Isaura, now married to Graham Vane, recovering at Sorrento.

By Edward Bulwer-lytton · First published 1837 · Genre: Historical Fiction, Social Commentary, Romance · 15 chapters · 37,929 words

First lines

The last book closed with the success of the Parisian sortie on the 30th of November, to be followed by the terrible engagements no less honourable to French valour, on the 2nd of December. There was the sanguine belief that deliverance was at hand; that Trochu would break through the circle of iron, and effect that junction with the army of Aurelles de Paladine which would compel the Germans to raise the investment; -- belief rudely shaken by Ducrot's proclamation of the 4th, to explain the recrossing of the Marne, and the abandonment of the positions conquered, but not altogether dispelled till von Moltke's letter to Trochu on the 5th announcing the defeat of the army of the Loire and the recapture of Orleans. Even then the Parisians did not lose hope of succour; and even after the desperate and fruitless sortie against Le Bourget on the 21st, it was not without witticisms on defeat and predictions of triumph, that Winter and Famine settled sullenly on the city.

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Historical Fiction · Romance · Drama · French Revolution · Napoleon Era · Parisian Society · Upper Class · Aristocracy · Politics · Intrigue · Scandal · Love Triangle

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