MY MEMOIRS
BY
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
TRANSLATED BY
E. M. WALLER
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
ANDREW LANG
IN SIX VOLUMES
VOL. V
1831 TO 1832
WITH A FRONTISPIECE
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1908
[CONTENTS]
Organisation of the Parisian Artillery—Metamorphosis of my uniform of a Mounted National Guardsman—Bastide—Godefroy Cavaignac—Guinard—Thomas—Names of the batteries and of their principal servants—I am summoned to seize the Chamber—How many of us came to the rendez-vous [1]
Odilon Barrot, Préfet of the Seine—His soirées—His proclamation upon the subject of riots—Dupont (de l'Eure) and Louis-Philippe—Resignation of the ministry of Molé and Guizot—The affair of the forest of Breteuil—The Laffitte ministry—The prudent way in which registration was carried out [10]
Béranger as Patriot and Republican [20]
Béranger, as Republican [28]
Death of Benjamin Constant—Concerning his life—Funeral honours that were conferred upon him—His funeral—Law respecting national rewards—The trial of the ministers—Grouvelle and his sister—M. Mérilhou and the neophyte—Colonel Lavocat—The Court of Peers—Panic—Fieschi [38]
The artillerymen at the Louvre—Bonapartist plot to take our cannon from us—Distribution of cartridges by Godefroy Cavaignac—The concourse of people outside the Luxembourg when the ministers were sentenced—Departure of the condemned for Vincennes—Defeat of the judges—La Fayette and the riot—Bastide and Commandant Barré on guard with Prosper Mérimée [50]
We are surrounded in the Louvre courtyard—Our ammunition taken by surprise—Proclamation of the Écoles—Letter of Louis-Philippe to La Fayette—The Chamber vote of thanks to the Colleges—Protest of the École polytechnique—Discussion at the Chamber upon the General Commandership of the National Guard—Resignation of La Fayette—The king's reply—I am appointed second captain [59]
The Government member—Chodruc-Duclos—His portrait—His life at Bordeaux—His imprisonment at Vincennes—The Mayor of Orgon—Chodruc-Duclos converts himself into a Diogenes—M. Giraud-Savine—Why Nodier was growing old—Stibert—A lesson in shooting—Death of Chodruc-Duclos [68]
Alphonse Rabbe—Madame Cardinal—Rabbe and the Marseilles Academy—Les Massénaires—Rabbe in Spain—His return—The Old Dagger—The Journal Le Phocéen—Rabbe in prison—The writer of fables—Ma pipe [77]
Rabbe's friends—La Sœur grise—The historical résumés—M. Brézé's advice—An imaginative man—Berruyer's style—Rabbe with his hairdresser, his concierge and confectioner—La Sœur grise stolen—Le Centaure [88]
Adèle—Her devotion to Rabbe—Strong meat—Appel à Dieu—L'âme et la comédie humaine—La mort—Ultime lettere—Suicide—À Alphonse Rabbe, by Victor Hugo [99]
Chéron—His last compliments to Harel—Obituary of 1830—My official visit on New Year's Day—A striking costume—Read the Moniteur—Disbanding of the Artillery of the National Guard—First representation of Napoléon Bonaparte—Delaistre—Frédérick-Lemaître [109]
The Abbé Châtel—The programme of his church—The Curé of Lèves and M. Clausel de Montals—The Lévois embrace the religion of the primate of the Gauls—Mass in French—The Roman curé—A dead body to inter [117]
Fine example of religious toleration—The Abbé Dallier—The Circes of Lèves—Waterloo after Leipzig—The Abbé Dallier is kept as hostage—The barricades—The stones of Chartres—The outlook—Preparations for fighting [124]
Attack of the barricade—A sequel to Malplaquet—The Grenadier—The Chartrian philanthropists—Sack of the bishop's palace—A fancy dress—How order was restored—The culprits both small and great—Death of the Abbé Ledru—Scruples of conscience of the former schismatics—The Dies iræ of Kosciusko [130]
The Abbé de Lamennais—His prediction of the Revolution of 1830—Enters the Church—His views on the Empire—Casimir Delavigne, Royalist—His early days—Two pieces of poetry by M. de Lamennais—His literary vocation—Essay on Indifference in Religious Matters—Reception given to this book by the Church—The academy of the château de la Chesnaie [138]
The founding of l'Avenir—L'Abbé Lacordaire—M. Charles de Montalembert—His article on the sacking of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois—l'Avenir and the new literature—My first interview with M. de Lamennais—Lawsuit against l'Avenir—MM. de Montalembert and Lacordaire as schoolmasters—Their trial in the Cour des pairs—The capture of Warsaw—Answer of four poets to a word spoken by a statesman [148]
Suspension of l'Avenir—Its three principal editors present themselves at Rome—The Abbé de Lamennais as musician—The trouble it takes to obtain an audience of the Pope—The convent of Santo-Andrea della Valle—Interview of M. de Lamennais with Gregory XVI.—The statuette of Moses—The doctrines of l'Avenir are condemned by the Council of Cardinals—Ruin of M. de Lamennais—The Paroles d'un Croyant [160]
Who Gannot was—Mapah—His first miracle—The wedding at Cana—Gannot, phrenologist—Where his first ideas on phrenology came from—The unknown woman—The change wrought in Gannot's life—How he becomes Mapah [167]
The god and his sanctuary—He informs the Pope of his overthrow—His manifestoes—His portrait—-Doctrine of escape—Symbols of that religion—Chaudesaigues takes me to the Mapah—Iswara and Pracriti—Questions which are wanting in actuality—-War between the votaries of bidja and the followers of sakti—My last interview with the Mapah 176
Apocalypse of the being who was once called Caillaux[186]
The scapegoat of power—Legitimist hopes—The expiatory mass—The Abbé Olivier—The Curé of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois—Pachel—Where I begin to be wrong—General Jacqueminot—Pillage of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois—The sham Jesuit and the Préfet of Police—The Abbé Paravey's room [203]
The Préfet of Police at the Palais-Royal—The function of fire—Valérius, the truss-maker—Demolition of the archbishop's palace—The Chinese album—François Arago—The spectators of the riot—The erasure of the fleurs-de-lis—I give in my resignation a second time—MM. Chambolle and Casimir Périer [211]
My dramatic faith wavers—Bocage and Dorval reconcile me with myself—A political trial wherein I deserved to figure—Downfall of the Laffitte Ministry—Austria and the Duc de Modena—Maréchal Maison is Ambassador at Vienna—The story of one of his dispatches—Casimir Périer Prime Minister—His reception at the Palais-Royal—They make him the amende honorable [220]
Trial of the artillerymen—Procureur-général Miller—Pescheux d'Herbinville—Godefroy Cavaignac—Acquittal of the accused—The ovation they received—Commissioner Gourdin—The cross of July—The red and black ribbon—Final rehearsals of Antony [229]
The first representation of Antony—The play, the actors, the public—Antony at the Palais-Royal—Alterations of the dénoûment [238]
The inspiration under which I composed Antony—The Preface—Wherein lies the moral of the piece—Cuckoldom, Adultery and the Civil Code—Quem nuptiæ demonstrant—Why the Critics exclaimed that my Drama was immoral—Account given by the least malevolent among them—How prejudices against bastardy are overcome [249]
A word on criticism—Molière estimated by Bossuet, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and by Bourdaloue—An anonymous libel—Critics of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries—M. François de Salignac de la Motte de Fénelon—Origin of the word Tartuffe—M. Taschereau and M. Étienne [256]
Thermometer of Social Crises—Interview with M. Thiers—His intentions with regard to the Théâtre-Français—Our conventions—Antony comes back to the rue de Richelieu—The Constitutionnel—Its leader against Romanticism in general, and against my drama in particular—Morality of the ancient theatre—Parallel between the Théâtre-Français and that of the Porte-Saint-Martin—First suspension of Antony [265]
My discussion with M. Thiers—Why he had been compelled to suspend Antony—Letter of Madame Dorval to the Constitutionnel—M. Jay crowned with roses—My lawsuit with M. Jouslin de Lasalle—There are still judges in Berlin! [278]
Republican banquet at the Vendanges de Bourgogne—The toasts—To Louis-Philippe!—Gathering of those who were decorated in July—Formation of the board—Protests—Fifty yards of ribbon—A dissentient—Contradiction in the Moniteur—Trial of Évariste Gallois—His examination—His acquittal [289]
The incompatibility of literature with riotings—La Maréchale d'Ancre—My opinion concerning that piece—Farruck le Maure—The début of Henry Monnier at the Vaudeville—I leave Paris—Rouen—Havre—I meditate going to explore Trouville—What is Trouville?—The consumptive English lady—Honfleur—By land or by sea [299]
Appearance of Trouville—Mother Oseraie—How people are accommodated at Trouville when they are married—The price of painters and of the community of martyrs—Mother Oseraie's acquaintances—How she had saved the life of Huet, the landscape painter—My room and my neighbour's—A twenty-franc dinner for fifty sous—A walk by the sea-shore—Heroic resolution [308]
A reading at Nodier's—The hearers and the readers—Début—Les Marrons du feu—La Camargo and the Abbé Desiderio—Genealogy of a dramatic idea—Orestes and Hermione—Chimène and Don Sancho—Goetz von Berlichingen—Fragments—How I render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's [317]
Poetry is the Spirit of God—The Conservatoire and l'École of Rome—Letter of counsel to my Son—Employment of my time at Trouville—Madame de la Garenne—The Vendéan Bonnechose—M. Beudin—I am pursued by a fish—What came of it [336]
Why M. Beudin came to Trouville—How I knew him under another name—Prologue of a drama—What remained to be done—Division into three parts—I finish Charles VII.—Departing from Trouville—In what manner I learn of the first performance of Marion Delorme [345]
Marion Delorme [356]
Collaboration [364]
The feudal edifice and the industrial—The workmen of Lyons—M. Bouvier-Dumolard—General Roguet—Discussion and signing of the tariff regulating the price of the workmanship of fabrics—The makers refuse to submit to it—Artificial prices for silk-workers—Insurrection of Lyons—Eighteen millions on the civil list—Timon's calculations—An unlucky saying of M. de Montalivet [376]
Death of Mirabeau—The accessories of Charles VII.—A shooting party—Montereau—A temptation I cannot resist—Critical position in which my shooting companions and I find ourselves—We introduce ourselves into an empty house by breaking into it at night—Inspection of the premises—Improvised supper—As one makes one's bed, so one lies on it—I go to see the dawn rise—Fowl and duck shooting—Preparations for breakfast—Mother Galop [388]
Who Mother Galop was—Why M. Dupont-Delporte was absent— How I quarrelled with Viardot—Rabelais's quarter of an hour—Providence No. I—The punishment of Tantalus—A waiter who had not read Socrates—Providence No. 2—A breakfast for four—Return to Paris [397]
Le Masque de fer—Georges' suppers—The garden of the Luxembourg by moonlight—M. Scribe and the Clerc de la Basoche—M. d'Épagny and Le Clerc et le Théologien—Classical performances at the Théâtre-Français—Les Guelfes, by M. Arnault—Parenthesis—Dedicatory epistle to the prompter [406]
M. Arnault's Pertinax—Pizarre, by M. Fulchiron—M. Fulchiron as a politician—M. Fulchiron as magic poet—A word about M. Viennet—My opposite neighbour at the performance of Pertinax—Splendid failure of the play—Quarrel with my vis-à-vis—The newspapers take it up—My reply in the Journal de Paris—Advice of M. Pillet [419]
Chateaubriand ceases to be a peer of France—He leaves the country—Béranger's song thereupon—Chateaubriand as versifier—First night of Charles VII.—Delafosse's vizor—Yaqoub and Frédérick-Lemaître—La Reine d'Espagne—M. Henri de Latouche—His works, talent and character—Interlude of La Reine d'Espagne—Preface of the play—Reports of the pit collected by the author [432]
Victor Escousse and Auguste Lebras [440]
First performance of Robert le Diable—Véron, manager of the Opéra—His opinion concerning Meyerbeer's music—My opinion concerning Véron's intellect—My relations with him—His articles and Memoirs—Rossini's judgment of Robert le Diable—Nourrit, the preacher—Meyerbeer—First performance of the Fuite de Law, by M. Mennechet—First performance of Richard Darlington—Frédérick—Lemaître—Delafosse—Mademoiselle Noblet [446]
Horace Vernet [456]
Paul Delaroche [463]
Eugène Delacroix [472]
Three portraits in one frame [483]
Collaboration—A whim of Bocage—Anicet Bourgeois—Teresa—Drama at the Opéra-Comique—Laferrière and the eruption of Vesuvius—Mélingue—Fancy-dress ball at the Tuileries—The place de Grève and the barrière Saint-Jacques—The death penalty [491]
The peregrinations of Casimir Delavigne—Jeanne Vaubernier—Rougemont—His translation of Cambronne's mot—First representation of Teresa—Long and short pieces—Cordelier Delanoue and his Mathieu Luc—Closing of the Taitbout Hall and arrest of the leaders of the Saint-Simonian cult [500]
Mély-Janin's Louis XI. [506]
Casimir Delavigne's Louis XI. [514]
THE MEMOIRS OF ALEXANDRE DUMAS
[BOOK I]
[CHAPTER I]
Organisation of the Parisian Artillery—Metamorphosis of my uniform of a Mounted National Guardsman—Bastide—Godefroy Cavaignac—Guinard—Thomas—Names of the batteries and of their principal servants—I am summoned to seize the Chamber—How many of us came to the rendez-vous
I am obliged to retrace my steps, as the putting out to nurse of Antony at the Porte-Sainte-Martin has carried me further than I intended.
Bixio had given me a definite answer with regard to my joining the artillery, and I was incorporated in the fourth battery under Captain Olivier.
Just a word or two upon the constitution of this artillery.
The order creating the Garde Nationale provided for a legion of artillery comprised of four batteries.
General La Fayette appointed Joubert provisional colonel of the legion, which consisted of four batteries. It was the same Joubert at whose house, in the Passage Dauphine, a quantity of powder had been distributed and many bullets cast in the July Days. La Fayette had also appointed four captains to enlist men. When the men were enlisted, these captains were replaced by picked officers.
Arnoux was appointed head captain of the first battery. I have already mentioned that the Duc d'Orléans was entered in this battery. Guinard was appointed first captain, and Godefroy Cavaignac second captain, of the second battery. Bastide was appointed senior captain, and Thomas junior captain, of the third battery. Finally, Olivier was first captain, and Saint-Évre second captain, of the fourth battery.
The first and second battery formed a squadron; the third and fourth a second squadron.
The first squadron was commanded by Thierry, who has since become a municipal councillor, and is now Medical Superintendent of Prisons, I believe. The second squadron was commanded by a man named Barré, whom I lost sight of after 1830, and I have forgotten what has become of him. Finally, the whole were commanded by Comte Pernetti, whom the king had appointed our colonel.
I had, therefore, reached the crown of my wishes: I was an artilleryman!
There only remained for me to exchange my uniform as a mounted national guardsman for an artillery uniform, and to make myself known to my commanding officers. My exchange of uniform was not a long job. My jacket and trousers were of the same style and colour as those of the artillery, so I only had to have a stripe of red cloth sewed on the trousers instead of the silver one; then, to exchange my epaulettes and my silver cross-belt at a military outfitter's for epaulettes and a red woollen foraging rope. The same with regard to my schako, where the silver braid and aigrette of cock's feathers had to be replaced by woollen braiding and a horse-hair busby. We did not need to trouble ourselves about carbines, for the Government lent us these; "lent them" is the exact truth, for twice they took them away from us! I lighted upon a very honest military outfitter, who gave me woollen braid, kept all my silver trimmings, and only asked me for twenty francs in return; though, it is true, I paid for my sword separately. The day after I had received my complete costume, at eight o'clock in the morning, I made my appearance at the Louvre to take my part in the manœuvres. We had there twenty-four pieces of eight, and twenty thousand rounds for firing.
The Governor of the Louvre was named Carrel, but he had nothing in common with Armand Carrel, and I do not think he was any relation to him.
The artillery was generally Republican in tone; the second and third battery, in particular, affected these views. The first and fourth were more reactionary; there would be quite fifty men among them who, in the moment of danger, would unite with the others.
As my opinions coincided with those of Bastide, Guinard, Cavaignac and Thomas, it is with them that I shall principally deal; as for Captains Arnoux and Olivier, I knew them but little then and have never had occasion to see them again. May I, therefore, be allowed to say a few words of these men, whose names, since 1830, are to be found in every conspiracy that arose? Their names have become historic; it is, therefore, fitting that the men who bore them, or who, perhaps, bear them still, should be made known in their true light.
Let us begin with Bastide, as he played the most considerable part, having been Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1848. Bastide was already at this time a man of thirty, with an expression of countenance that was both gentle and yet firm; his face was long and pale, and his black hair was close cut; he had a thick black moustache, and blue eyes, with an expression of deep and habitual melancholy. He was tall and thin, extremely deft-handed, although he looked rather awkward on account of the unusual length of his neck; in conclusion, he was an adept in the use of sword and pistol, especially the latter, and in what is called in duelling terms, la main malheureuse.[1]
So much for his physical characteristics. Morally, Bastide was a thorough Parisian, a thorough native of the rue Montmartre, wedded to his gutter, and, like Madame de Staël, he preferred it to the lake of Geneva; unable to do without Paris no matter how dirty it was, physically, morally, or politically; preferring imprisonment in Paris to exile in the most beautiful country in the universe. He had been exiled for several years, and spent two or three years in London. I have heard him say since, that, rather than return there even for two or three months, he would let himself get shot. He has a delightful country house in the neighbourhood of Paris, to which he never goes. Beneath an extremely unsophisticated manner, Bastide concealed real knowledge; but you had to discover it for yourself; and, when he took the trouble to be amusing, his conversation was full of witty sallies but, as he always spoke very low, only his near neighbour benefited by it. It must be admitted that this quite satisfied him, for I never saw a less ambitious man than he in this respect. He was a bundle of contradictions: he seemed to be nearly always idle, but was, in reality, nearly always busy, often over trifles, as Horace in the Roman forum, and, like Horace, he was completely absorbed in his trifling for the time being; more often still he was occupied over difficult and serious problems in mathematics or mechanics. He was brave without being conscious of the fact, so simple and natural a quality did bravery seem to his temperament and character. I shall have occasion later to record the miraculous feats of courage he performed, and the deliciously cool sayings he uttered while actually under fire, between the years 1830 to 1852. During deliberations Bastide usually kept silent; if his opinion were asked and he gave it, it was always to advise that the question in hand be put into execution as promptly and as openly, and even as brutally, as possible. For example, let us refer to the interview between the Republicans and the king on 30 July 1830; Bastide was among them, awaiting the arrival of the king, just as were the rest. This interval of waiting was put to good use by the representatives of Republican opinion. Little accustomed to the presence of crowned heads or of those on the eve of coronation, they discussed among themselves as to what they ought to do when the lieutenant-general should appear. Each person gave his opinion, and Bastide was asked for his. "What must we do?" he said. "Why, open the window and chuck him into the street."
If this advice had been as honestly that of the others as it was his own, he would have put it into execution. He had a facile, and even a graceful, pen. In the National it was he who had to write impossible articles; he succeeded, as Méry did, in the matter of bouts-rimés with an almost miraculous cleverness. When Minister of Foreign Affairs, he took upon himself the business of everybody else, and he a minister, not only did his own work, but that, also, of his secretaries. We must look to diplomatic Europe to pronounce upon the value of his work.
Godefroy Cavaignac, as he had recalled to the memory of the Duc d'Orléans, was the son of the member of the convention, Jean Baptiste Cavaignac; and, we will add, brother to Eugène Cavaignac, then an officer in the Engineers at Metz, and, later, a general in Algeria, finally dictator in France from June to December 1848; a noble and disinterested character, who will remain in history as a glittering contrast to those that were to succeed him. Godefroy Cavaignac was then a man of thirty-five, with fair hair, and a long red moustache; although his bearing was military, he stooped somewhat; smoked unceasingly, flinging out sarcastic clever sayings between the clouds of smoke; was very clear in discussion, always saying what he thought, and expressing himself in the best words; he seemed to be better educated than Bastide, although, in reality, he was less so; he took to writing from fancy, and then wrote a species of short poems, or novelettes, or slight dramas (I do not know what to call them) of great originality, and very uncommon strength. I will mention two of these opuscules: one that is known to everybody—Une Guerre de Cosaques, and another, which everybody overlooks, which I read once, and could never come across again: it was called Est-ce vous! One of his chansons was sung everywhere in 1832, entitled À la chie-en-lit! which was the funniest thing in the world. Like Bastide he was extremely brave, but perhaps less determined; there always seemed to me to be great depths of indifference and of Epicurean philosophy in his character. After being very intimate, we were ten years without seeing one another; then, suddenly, one day, without knowing it, we found ourselves seated side by side at the same table, and the whole dinner-time was spent in one long happy gossip over mutual recollections. We separated with hearty handshakes and promises not to let it be such a long time before seeing one another again. A month or two after, when I was talking of him, some one said, "But Godefroy Cavaignac is dead!" I knew nothing of his illness, death or burial.
Our passage through this world is, indeed, a strange matter, if it be not merely a preliminary to another life!
Guinard was notable for his warm-hearted, loyal characteristics; he would weep like a child when he heard of a fine deed or great misery. A man of marvellous despatch, you could have said of him, as Kléber did of Scheswardin. "Go there and get killed and so save the army!" I am not even sure he would have considered it necessary to answer: "Yes, general"; he would have said nothing, but he would have gone and got killed. His life, moreover, was one long sacrifice to his convictions; he gave up to them all he held most dear—liberty, his fortune and health.
From the single sentence we have quoted of Thomas, when he was accosted by M. Thiers on 30 July, my readers can judge of his mind and character. Bastide and he were in partnership, and possessed a woodyard. He was stout-hearted and upright, and had a clever head for business. Unaided, alone, and simply by his wonderful and honest industry, he kept the National afloat when it was on the verge of shipwreck after the death of Carrel, from the year 1836 until 1848, when the long struggle bore successful fruit for everybody except himself.
But now let us pass on from the artillerymen to the composition of their batteries.
Each battery was dubbed by a name derived from a special characteristic.
Thus the first was called The Aristocrat. Its ranks contained, as we already know, M. le Duc d'Orléans, then MM. de Tracy, Jal, Paravey (who was afterwards a councillor of state), Étienne Arago, Schoelcher, Loëve-Weymars, Alexandre Basset and Duvert.
The second was called The Republican. We are acquainted with its two captains, Guinard and Cavaignac; the principal artillerymen were—Guiaud, Gervais, Blaize, Darcet fils and Ferdinand Flocon.
The third was called La Puritaine, and it was thus named after its captain, Bastide. Bastide, who was on the staff of the National, was the champion of the religious questions, which this newspaper had a tendency to attack after the manner of the Constitutionnel. Thence originated the report of his absolute submission to the practices of religion. The Puritaine counted amongst its gunners—Carral, Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire, Grégoire, Séchan.
The fourth was called La Meurtrière, on account of the large number of doctors it contained. We have mentioned its captains; these are the names of the chief "murderers"—Bixio, medical student; Doctors Trélat, Laussedat, Jules Guyot, Montègre, Jourdan, Houet and Raspail, who was half a doctor. The others were Prosper Mérimée, Lacave-Laplagne, who has since become Minister of Finance; Ravoisié, Baltard, the architect; Desvaux, student, afterwards a lieutenant in the July revolution, and, later still, one of the bravest and most brilliant officers in the whole army; lastly, Bocage and myself. Of course, there were many others in these batteries, for the artillery, I believe, numbered eight hundred men, but we are here only mentioning those whose names survived.
The discipline was very strict: three times a week there was drill from six to ten in the morning, in the quadrangle of the Louvre, and twice a month shooting practice at Vincennes.
I had given a specimen of my strength in lifting—with either five, three, or one other, when the other servants were supposed to be either killed, or hors de combat,-—pieces of eight weighing from three to four hundred kilogrammes, when, one day, I received an invitation to be at the Palais-Bourbon at four o'clock in the afternoon, fully armed. The business in hand was the taking of the Chamber. We had taken a sort of oath, after the manner of Freemasons and Carbonari, by which we had engaged to obey the commands of our chiefs without questioning. This one appeared rather high-handed, I must admit; but my oath was taken! So, at half-past three, I put on my artillery dress, placed six cartridges in my pouch and one in my carbine, and made my way towards the pont de la Concorde. I noticed with as much surprise as pride, that I was the first arrival. I only strutted about the more proudly, searching along the quays and bridges and streets for the arrival of my seven hundred and ninety-nine comrades who, four o'clock having struck, seemed to me to be late in coming, when I saw a blue and red uniform coming towards me. It was worn by Bixio. Two of us then here alone to capture four hundred and forty-nine deputies! It was hardly enough; but patriotism attempts ambitious things!
Half-past four, five, half-past five and six o'clock struck.
The deputies came out and filed past us, little suspecting that these two fierce-eyed artillerymen who watched them pass, as they leant against the parapet of the bridge, had come to capture them. Behind the deputies appeared Cavaignac in civilian dress. We went up to him.
"It will not take place to-day," he said to us; "it is put off until next week."
"Good!" I replied; "next week, then!"
He shook hands and disappeared. I turned to Bixio.
"I hope this postponement till next week will not prevent us from dining as usual?" I said.
"Quite the reverse. I am as hungry as a wolf! Nothing makes one so empty as conspiring."
So we went off and dined with that careless appetite which is the prerogative of conspirators of twenty-eight years of age.
I have always suspected my new chiefs of wishing to, what they call in regimental parlance, test me; in which case Cavaignac can only have come just to make sure of my faithfulness in answering to his summons.
Was or was not Bixio in his confidence? I never could make out.
[1] TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.—Applied to a duellist who always kills or wounds his opponent.
[CHAPTER II]
Odilon Barrot, Préfet of the Seine—His soirées—His proclamation upon the subject of riots—Dupont (de l'Eure) and Louis-Philippe—Resignation of the ministry of Molé and Guizot—The affair of the forest of Breteuil—The Laffitte ministry—The prudent way in which registration was carried out
Now, the session of the Chamber had been an animated one that day, and if we had burst into the parliament hall we should have found the deputies in heated discussion over a proclamation issued by Odilon Barrot.
It was a singular position for a man, outwardly so upright and unbending as was Odilon Barrot, which was created by, on the one hand, his duties as Préfet of the Seine about the person of the king and, on the other, the good terms of friendship existing between him and most of us. He held soirées at his house, to which we flocked in large numbers; at which his wife, then still quite young, who seemed a more ardent Republican than her husband, did the honours with the correctness of a Cornelia that was not without a charm of its own. We of course discussed nothing but politics at these gatherings; and especially did we urge Odilon Barrot, in his official capacity as Préfet of the Seine, to hunt for the famous programme of the Hôtel de Ville, which had disappeared on 2 August, and had become more invisible even than the famous provisional government which was represented by a round table, empty bottles and a clerk who never stopped writing except when the pen was snatched out of his hands. That programme had never been discovered from that day to this! Our suggestion worried him much, for our insistence placed him in the following dilemma:—
"My dear Odilon" (we would say), "all the strength of the Government is vested in La Fayette and Dupont (de l'Eure) and yourself; if you, for instance, were to withdraw, we are persuaded that La Fayette and Dupont, the two blind men whom you, good dog, lead by the string, will also retire.... So we are going to compel you to retire."
"But how?"
"Oh, it is simple enough! We are going to raise a disturbance to carry off the king from the Palais-Royal.... Either you fire upon us, in which case you make yourself unpopular; or you abstain from firing on us, in which case we carry off the king, take him to Ham and proclaim the Republic."
Odilon was well aware that this dilemma was only a joke; but he also knew that there was a feverish spirit in us which any unlooked for spark might kindle into a blaze and lead to the maddest enterprises being attempted.
One day we drove him into a corner, and he promised that, on the first opportunity, he would make his views known both to the court and to us. This opportunity was the procession which, as I have mentioned, marched through Paris, and proceeded to the Palais-Royal, and to the château de Vincennes, shouting, "Death to the ministers!" It will be recollected that the king and Odilon Barrot had appeared upon the terrace, and that the men who led the procession had thereupon shouted, "Vive Odilon Barrot!" forgetting to shout "Vive le roi!" Whereat Louis-Philippe, as we know, had replied: "These are the sons of the men whom, in 1792, I heard shouting: 'Vive Pétion!'"
The allusion had annoyed Odilon Barrot considerably, and he decided to issue a proclamation of his own. He promised to give us this explicit proclamation.
It is a mania with every man who wants to be looked upon as a statesman to produce a proclamation, in fact he does not consider himself entitled to the name of statesman until he has. His proclamation is issued and received by the people, who read it and see in it the sanction of some power or other, which they either obey or disobey according to their individual views of politics. Unfortunately, this proclamation, upon which Odilon was counting greatly, demonstrated the fact that the Préfet of the Seine took a middle course, which offended at the same time both the Court party and the Republicans. We will reproduce it here in its entirety. Be it understood that our readers are free to read only the sentences in italics, or to pass it over altogether unread—
"Citizens, your magistrates are deeply distressed at the disorders which have recently been disturbing the public peace, at a time when commerce and industry, which are in much need of protection, are beginning to rise above a long crisis of depression.
"It is not vengeance that this people of Paris, who are the bravest and most generous in the world, are demanding, but justice! Justice, in fact, is a right, a necessity, to strong men; vengeance is but the delight of the weak and cowardly. The proposition of the Chamber is an INOPPORTUNE STEP calculated to make the people imagine that there is a concerted design to interfere with the ordinary course of justice with respect to the ex-ministers. Delays have arisen, which are merely the carrying out of those forms which surround justice with greater solemnity of character; and these delays but sanction and strengthen the opinion of which our ungovernable enemies, ever lying in wait to disunite us, persistently take advantage. Hence has arisen that popular agitation, which men of rectitude and good citizens regard as an actual mistake. I swear to you in all good faith, fellow-citizens, that the course of justice has neither been suspended, nor interrupted, nor will it be. The preparation of the accusation brought against the ex-ministers still continues: they have come under the law and the law alone shall decide their fate.
"No good citizen could wish or demand anything else; and yet cries of "death" are uttered in the streets and public places; but what are such instigations, such placards, but violent measures against justice? We merely desire to do as we would ourselves be done by, namely, be judged dispassionately and impartially. Well, there are certain misguided or malevolent persons who threaten the judges before the trial has begun. People of Paris, you will not stand by such violent conduct; the accused should be sacred in your eyes; they are placed under the protection of the law; to insult them, to hinder their defence, to anticipate the decrees of justice, is to violate the laws of every civilised society; it is to be wanting in the first principles of liberty; it is worse than a crime; it is cowardly! There is not a single citizen among this great and glorious people who cannot but feel that it is his honoured duty to prevent an outrage that will be a blot upon our Revolution. Let justice be done! But violence is not justice. And this is the cry of all well-meaning people, and will be the principle guiding the conduct of our magistrates. Under these grave circumstances they will count upon the concurrence and the assistance of all true patriots to uphold the measures that are taken to bring about public order."
This proclamation is, perhaps, a little too lengthy and diffuse and tedious; but we should remember that Odilon Barrot was a barrister before he became Préfet of the Seine. However, in the midst of this ocean of words, a flood of language by which the préfet had, perhaps, hoped that the king would be mystified, His Majesty noted this sentence—"The proposal of the Chamber was an inopportune step leading people to suppose it was a concerted thing...." And the Republicans caught hold of this one—"Our ungovernable enemies, ever on the watch to disunite us," etc.
The step that the Préfet of the Seine blamed was the king's own secret wish, interpreted by the address of the Chamber; so that, by finding fault with the address of the Chamber, the Préfet of the Seine allowed himself to blame the secret wish of the king.
From that moment, the fall of the Préfet of the Seine was decided upon. How could Louis-Philippe, with his plans for reigning and governing at the same time, keep a man in his service who dared to find fault with his own secret wishes? It was useless for M. Odilon Barrot to try to deceive himself; from that hour dates the king's dislike to him: it was that proclamation of 1830, which postponed his three hours' ministry to 1848. Then, on the other hand, he broke with the Republican party because he spoke of them as his ungovernable enemies.
The same night, or the day after the appearance of this proclamation, Godefroy Cavaignac cast Odilon Barrot's horoscope in these pregnant words—
"My dear friend, you are played out!"
This is what really passed at the Palais-Royal. The king was furious with the audacity of the pettifogging little lawyer. The little lawyer, however, was to take his revenge for this epithet two years later, by annulling the sentence on the young artist Geoffroy, who had been illegally condemned to death by the court-martial that had been instituted on account of the state of siege at the time. It was a splendid and noble method of being revenged, which won back for Odilon ten years popularity! So his fall was decided at the Palais-Royal. But it was not a matter that was very painful to the ministry which was in power in November 1830; this was composed only of M. Molé, a deserter from the Napoléonic camp; of M. de Broglie, a deserter from the Royalist camp; of M. Guizot, the man of the Moniteur de Gand; M. Casimir Périer, the banker whose bank closed at four o'clock, and who, up to the last, had struggled against the Revolution; M. Sébastiani, who, on the 30th, had announced that the white flag was his standard; and finally, General Gérard, the last minister of Charles X., who, to keep in power, had only had to get the Ordinance, which the flight of the Elder Branch left blank, signed by the Younger Branch. It will be understood that none of these men had the least personal attachment to Odilon Barrot. So, when the king proposed the dismissal of the Préfet of the Seine, they all unanimously exclaimed, "Just as you wish, seigneur!" Only one voice cried, "Veto!" that of Dupont (de l'Eure). Now, Dupont had this one grand fault in the eyes of politicians (and the king was the foremost politician of his day), he persisted in sticking both to his own opinions and to his friends.
"If Odilon Barrot goes, I also depart!" said the honest old man flatly.
This was a more serious matter, for if the withdrawal of Odilon Barrot involved that of Dupont (de l'Eure), the withdrawal of Dupont would also mean that of La Fayette with him. Now, La Fayette's resignation might very well, in the end, involve that of the king himself. It would, moreover, cause ill-feeling between the king and Laffitte, who was another staunch friend of Odilon Barrot. True, the king was not disinclined for a rupture with Laffitte: there are certain services so great that they can only be repaid by ingratitude; but the king only wished to quarrel with Laffitte in his own time and at his own convenience, when such a course would be expedient and not prejudicial. The grave question was referred to a consensus of opinion for solution.
M. Sébastiani won the honours of the sitting by his suggestion of himself making a personal application to M. Odilon Barrot to obtain his voluntary resignation. Of course, Dupont (de l'Eure) was not present at this secret confabulation. They settled to hold another council that night. The king was late, contrary to his custom. As he entered the cabinet, he did not perceive Dupont (de l'Eure) talking in a corner of the room with M. Bignon.
"Victory, messieurs!" he exclaimed, in an exulting voice; "the resignation of the Préfet of the Seine is settled, and General La Fayette, realising the necessity for the resignation, himself consented to it."
"What did you say, sire?" said Dupont (de l'Eure) hastily, coming out of the darkness into the circle of light which revealed his presence to the king.
"Oh! you are there, are you, Monsieur Dupont," said the king, rather embarrassed. "Well, I was saying that General La Fayette has ceased to oppose the resignation of M. Barrot."
"Sire," replied Dupont, "the statement your Majesty has done me the honour to make is quite impossible of belief."
"I had it from the general's own lips, monsieur," replied the king.
"Your majesty must permit me to believe he is labouring under a mistake," insisted Dupont, with a bow; "for the general told me the very reverse, and I cannot believe him capable of contradicting himself in this matter."
A flash of anger crossed the king's face; yet he restrained himself.
"However," continued Dupont, "I will speak for myself alone ... If M. Odilon Barrot retires, I renew my request to the king to be good enough to accept my resignation."
"But, monsieur," said the king hastily, "you promised me this very morning, that whatever happened, you would remain until after the trial of the ministers."
"Yes, true, sire, but only on condition that M. Barrot remained too."
"Without any conditions, monsieur."
It was now Dupont's turn to flush red.
"I must this time, sire," he said, "with the strength of conviction, positively assert that the king is in error."
"What! monsieur," exclaimed the king, "you give me the lie to my face? Oh! this is really too much! And everybody shall hear how you have been lacking in respect to me."
"Take care, sire," replied the chancellor coldly; "when the king says yes and Dupont (de l'Eure) says no, I am not sure which of the two France will believe."
Then, bowing to the king, he proceeded to the door of exit.
But on the threshold the unbending old man met the Duc d'Orléans, who was young and smiling and friendly; he took him by both hands and would not let him go further.
"Father," said the duke to the king, "there has surely been some misunderstanding ... M. Dupont is so strictly honourable that he could not possibly take any other course."
The king was well aware of the mistake he had just made, and held out his hand to his minister; the Duc d'Orléans pushed him into the king's open arms, and the king and his minister embraced. Probably nothing was forgotten on either side, but the compact was sealed.
Odilon Barrot was to remain Préfet of the Seine, and, consequently, Dupont (de l'Eure) was to remain chancellor, and La Fayette, consequently, would remain generalissimo of the National Guard throughout the kingdom.
But we shall see how these three faithful friends were politely dismissed when the king had no further need of them. It will, however, readily be understood that all this was but a temporary patching up, without any real stability underneath. M. Dupont (de l'Eure) consented to remain with MM. de Broglie, Guizot, Molé and Casimir Périer, but these gentlemen had no intention whatever of remaining in office with him. Consequently, they sent in their resignation, which involved those of MM. Dupin and Bignon, ministers who held no offices of state.
The king was placed in a most embarrassing quandary, and had recourse to M. Laffitte. M. Laffitte urged the harm that it would do his banking house, and the daily work he would be obliged to give to public affairs, if he accepted a position in the Government, and he confided to the king the worry which the consequences of the July Revolution had already caused him in his business affairs. The king offered him every kind of inducement. But, with extreme delicacy of feeling, M. Laffitte would not hear of accepting anything from the king, unless the latter felt inclined to buy the forest of Breteuil at a valuation. The only condition M. Laffitte made to this sale was that it should be by private deed and not publicly registered, as registration would naturally reveal the fact of the sale and the seller's difficulties. They exchanged mutual promises, and the forest of Breteuil was valued at, and sold for, eight millions, I believe, and the private deeds of sale and purchase were executed and signed upon this basis.
M. Laffitte's credit thus made secure, he consented to accept both the office of Minister for Finance and the Presidency of the Cabinet Council.
The Moniteur published, on 2 November, the list of newly elected ministers. They were—MM. Laffitte, for Finance and President of the Council; Dupont (de l'Eure), Minister of Justice; Gérard, for War; Sébastiani, at the Admiralty; Maison, for Foreign Affairs; Montalivet, at the Home Office; Mérilhou, for Education.
The king, therefore, had attained his end; the doctrinaires (as they were nicknamed, probably because they had no real political principles) had done him great service by their resignation, and given him the opportunity of forming a ministry entirely devoted to him. In the new coalition, Louis-Philippe ranked Laffitte as his friend, Sébastiani and Montalivet, as his devoted servants; Gérard and Maison, his subservient followers; while Mérilhou fell an easy prey to his influence. There was only Dupont (de l'Eure) left, and he took his cue from La Fayette.
Now, do not let us lose sight of the fact that this ministry might be called the Trial Ministry (ministère du procès), and that La Fayette, who had been proscribed by M. de Polignac, wanted to take a noble revenge upon him by saving his life. His speech in the Chamber did not leave the slightest doubt of his intentions.
On 4 October, the Chamber of Peers constituted itself a Court of Justice, ordered the removal of the ex-ministers to the prison of the petit Luxembourg and fixed 15 December for the opening of the trial. But between 4 October and 15 December (that is to say, between the constitution of the Court of Peers and the opening of the trial) M. Laffitte received the following curt note from Louis-Philippe:—
"MY DEAR MONSIEUR LAFFITTE,—After what has been told me by a mutual friend, of whom I need not say anything further, you know quite well why I have availed myself, at M. Jamet's[1] urgent instigation, to whom the secret of the purchase was entrusted by yourself and not by me, of taking the opportunity of having the private deed of sale registered, as secretly as possible.—Yours affectionately,
LOUIS-PHILIPPE."
M. Laffitte was stunned by the blow; he did not place any belief in the secrecy of the registration; and he was right. The sale became known, and M. Laffitte's downfall dated from that moment. But the deed of sale bore a special date! M. Laffitte took up his pen to send in his resignation, and this involved that of Dupont (de l'Eure), La Fayette and Odilon Barrot. He reflected that Louis-Philippe would be disarmed in face of a future political upheaval. But the revenge appeared too cruel a one to the famous banker, who now acted the part of king, while the real king played that of financier. Nevertheless, the wound rankled none the less deeply in his heart.
[1] M. Jamet was the king's private book-keeper.
[CHAPTER III]
Béranger as Patriot and Republican
When Laffitte became minister, he wanted to bear with him up to the political heights he was himself compelled to ascend, a man who, as we have said, had perhaps contributed more to the accession of Louis-Philippe even than had the celebrated banker himself. That man was Béranger. But Béranger, with his clear-sighted common sense, realised that, for him as well as for Laffitte, apparent promotion really meant ultimate downfall. He therefore let all his friends venture on that bridge of Mahomet, as narrow as a thread of flax, called power; but shook his head and took farewell of them in the following verses:—
"Non, mes amis, non, je ne veux rien être;
Semez ailleurs places, titres et croix.
Non, pour les cours Dieu ne m'a point fait naître:
Oiseau craintif, je fuis la glu des rois!
Que me faut-il? Maîtresse à fine taille,
Que me faut-il? Maîtresse à fine taille,
Petit repas et joyeux entretien!
De mon berceau près de bénir la paille,
En me créant, Dieu m'a dit: 'Ne sois rien!'
Un sort brillant serait chose importune
Pour moi rimeur, qui vis de temps perdu.
N'est-il tombé, des miettes de fortune,
Tout has, j'ai dit: 'Ce pain ne m'est pas dû.
Quel artisan, pauvre, hélas! quoi qu'il fasse,
N'a plus que moi droit à ce peu de bien?
Sans trop rougir, fouillons dans ma besace.
En me créant, Dieu m'a dit: 'Ne sois rien!'
Sachez pourtant, pilotes du royaume,
Combien j'admire un homme de vertu
Qui, désertant son hôtel ou son chaume,
Monte au vaisseau par tous les vents battu,
De loin, ma vois lui crie: 'Heureux voyage!'
Priant de cœur pour tout grand citoyen;
Mais, au soleil, je m'endors sur la plage
En me créant, Dieu m'a dit: 'Ne sois rien!'
Votre tombeau sera pompeux sans doute;
J'aurai, sous l'herbe, une fosse à l'écart.
Un peuple en deuil vous fait cortège en route;
Du pauvre, moi, j'attends le corbillard.
En vain l'on court ou votre étoile tombe;
Qu'importe alors votre gîte ou le mien?
La différence est toujours une tombe.
En me créant, Dieu m'a dit: 'Ne sois rien!'
De ce palais souffrez donc que je sorte,
À vos grandeurs je devais un salut;
Amis, adieu! j'ai, derrière la porte,
Laissé tantôt mes sabots et mon luth.
Sous ces lambris, près de vous accourue,
La Liberté s'offre à vous pour soutien ...
Je vais chanter ses bienfaits dans la rue.
En me créant, Dieu m'a dit: 'Ne sois rien!'"
So Béranger retired, leaving his friends more deeply entangled in the web of power than was La Fontaine's raven in the sheep's wool. Even when he is sentimental, Béranger finds it difficult not to insert a touch of mischief in his poetry, and, perhaps, while he is singing in the street the blessings of liberty, he is laughing in his sleeve; exemplifying that disheartening maxim of La Rochefoucauld, that there is always something even in the very misfortunes of our best friends which gives us pleasure. Yet how many times did the philosophic singer acclaim in his heart the Government he had founded. We say in his heart, for whether distrustful of the stability of human institutions, or whether he deemed it a good thing to set up kings, but a bad one to sing their praises in poetry, Béranger never, thank goodness! consecrated by a single line of praise in verse the sovereignty of July which he had lauded in his speech.
Now let us take stock of the length of time his admiration of, and sympathy with, the royal cause lasted. It was not for long! In six months all was over; and the poet had taken the measure of the king: the king was only fit to be put away with Villon's old moons. If my reader disputes this assertion let him listen to Béranger's own words. The man who, on 31 July, had flung a plank across the stream, as the petits Savoyards do, is the first to try to push it off into the water: it is through no fault of his if it do not fall in and drag the king with it.
"Oui, chanson, muse, ma fille,
J'ai déclaré net
Qu'avec Charle et sa famille,
On le détrônait;
Mais chaque loi qu'on nous donne
Te rappelle ici:
Chanson, reprends ta couronne!
—Messieurs, grand merci!
Je croyais qu'on allait faire
Du grand et du neuf,
Même étendre un peu la sphère
De quatre-vingt-neuf;
Mais point: on rebadigeonne
Un troûe noirci!
Chanson, reprends ta couronne!
—Messieurs, grand merci!
Depuis les jours de décembre,[1]
Vois, pour se grandir,
La chambre vanter la chambre,
La chambre applaudir!
À se prouver qu'elle est bonne,
Elle a réussi ...
Chanson, reprends ta couronne!
—Messieurs, grand merci!
Basse-cour des ministères
Qu'en France on honnit,
Nos chapons héréditaires,
Sauveront leur nid;
Les petits que Dieu leur donne
Y pondront aussi ...
Chanson, reprends ta couronne!
—Messieurs, grand merci!
La planète doctrinaire
Qui sur Gand brillait
Vent servir la luminaire
Aux gens de juillet:
Fi d'un froid soleil d'automne
De brume obscurci!
Chanson, reprends ta couronne!
—Messieurs, grand merci!
Nos ministres, qu'on peut mettre
Tous au même point,[2]
Voudraient que la baromètre
Ne variât point:
Pour peu que là-bas il tonne,
On se signe ici ...
Chanson, reprends ta couronne!
—Messieurs, grand merci!
Pour être en état de grâce
Que de grands peureux
Ont soin de laisser en place
Les hommes véreux!
Si l'on ne touche à personne,
C'est afin que si ...
Chanson, reprends ta couronne!
—Messieurs, grand merci!
Te voilà donc restaurée,
Chanson mes amours!
Tricolore et sans livrée,
Montre-toi toujours!
Ne crains plus qu'on l'emprisonne,
Du moins à Poissy ...
Chanson, reprends ta couronne!
—Messieurs, grand merci!
Mais, pourtant, laisse en jachère
Mon sol fatigué;
Mes jeunes rivaux, ma chère,
Ont un ciel si gai!
Chez eux la rose foisonne,
Chez moi le souci.
Chanson, reprends ta couronne!
—Messieurs, grand merci!"
These verses were nothing short of a declaration of war, but they escaped unnoticed, and those poets who talked of them seemed to talk of them as of something fallen from the moon, or some aerolite that nobody had picked up.
A song of Béranger? What was it but a song by him? The public had not read this particular one, though it was aware of the existence of a poet of that name who had written Le Dieu des bonnes gens, L'Ange Gardien, Le Cinq mai, Les Deux Cousins, Le Ventru, all songs that more or less attacked Louis XVIII. and Charles X.; but they did not recognise a poet of the name of Béranger who allowed himself to go so far as to attack Louis-Philippe. Why this ignorance of the new Béranger? Why this deafness as to his new song? We will explain.
There comes a reactionary period after every political change, during which material interests prevail over national, and shameful appetites over noble passions; during such a period,—as Louis-Philippe's reign, for example—that government is in favour which fosters these selfish interests and surfeits ignoble passions. The acts of such a government, no matter how outrageously illegal and tyrannical and immoral, are looked upon as saving graces! They praise and approve them, and make as much noise at the footstool of power, as the priests of Cybele, who clashed their cymbals round Jupiter's cradle. Throughout such a period as this, the only thing the masses fear, who, living by such a reaction, have every interest in upholding it, is, lest daylight break on the scene of Pandemonium, and light shine into the sink where speculators and moneymakers and coiners of crowns and paper money jostle, and crowd and hustle one another amid that jingling of money which denotes the work they are engaged in. Whether such a state of things lasts long or only briefly, we repeat that, while it endures until an honest, pure and elevated national spirit gets the upper hand, nothing can be done or said or hoped for; everything else is cried up and approved and extolled beforehand! It is as though that fine popular spirit which inspires nations from time to time to attempt great deeds has vanished, has gone up to the skies, or one knows not where. Weaker spirits despair of ever seeing it come back, and nobler minds alone, who share its essence, know that it ever lives, as they possess a spark of that divine soul, believed to be extinct, and they wait with smiling lips and calm brow. Then, gradually, they witness this political phenomenon. Without apparent cause, or deviation from the road it had taken, perhaps for the very reason that it is still pursuing it, such a type of government, which cannot lose the reputation it has never had, loses the factitious popularity it once possessed; its very supporters, who have made their fortunes out of it, whose co-operation it has rewarded, gradually fall away from it, and, without disowning it altogether, already begin to question its stability. From this very moment, such a government is condemned; and, just as they used to approve of its evil deeds, they criticise its good actions. Corruption is the very marrow of its bones and runs through it from beginning to end and dries up the deadly sap which had made it spread over a whole nation, branches like those of the upas tree, and shade like that of the manchineel. Into this atmosphere, which, for five, ten, fifteen, twenty years, has been full of an impure element that has been inhaled together with other elements of the air, there comes something antagonistic to it, something not immediately recognised. This is the returning spirit of social probity, entering the political conscience; it is the soul of the nation, in a word, that was thought to have fainted, risen to the sky, gone, no one knew where, which comes back to reanimate the vast democratic masses, which it had abandoned to a lethargy that surrounding nations, jealous and inimical, had been all too eager to proclaim as the sleep of death! At such a crisis the government, by the mere returning of the masses to honesty, seems like a ship that has lost its direction, which staggers and wavers and knows not where it is going! It has withstood fifteen years of tempests and storms and now it founders in a squall. It had become stronger by 5 and 6 June, on 13 and 14 April and 15 May, but falls before 24 February.
Such a government or rather governments show signs of their decline when men of heart and understanding refuse to rally to their help, or when those who had done so by mistake quit it from disgust. It does not follow that these desertions bring about an immediate fall—it may not be for years after, but it is a certain sign that they will fall some day, alone, or by their own act, and the public conscience, at this stage of their decline, needs but to give it a slight push to complete the ruin!
Now Béranger, with his fine instinct of right and wrong, of good and evil, knew all this; not in the self-saving spirit of the rat which leaves the ship where it has fattened, when it is about to sail. As we have seen, he would receive nothing at the hands of the Government or from the friends who formed its crew; but, like the swift, white sea-bird, which skims the crests of the rising waves, he warned the sailors of coming storms. From this very moment, Béranger decides that royalty in France is condemned, since this same royalty, which he has kneaded with his own hands, with the democratic element of a Jacobin prince in 1791, a commandant of the National Guard, a Republican in 1789 and a popular Government in 1830, is turning to a middle-class aristocracy, the last of the aristocracies, because it is the most selfish and the most narrow-minded,—and he dreams of a Republic!
But how was he to attack this popular king, this king of the bourgeois classes and of material interests, the king who had saved society? (Every form of government in France as it arose has made that claim!) The king was invulnerable; the Revolution of '89, which was looked upon as his mother, but was only his nurse, had dipped him in the furnace of the Three Days, as Thetis dipped her son Achilles in the river Styx; but he, too, had his weak spot like Homer's hero.
Is it the head? Is it the heel? Is it the heart? The poet, who will not lose his time in manufacturing gunpowder, which might easily be blown away, before it was used, will look for this weak spot, and, never fear, he will find it.
[1] We shall talk about these directly, but, desiring to dedicate a chapter or two now to Béranger, who, as poet and politician, took a great part in the Revolution of July, we are obliged to take a step in advance.
[2] What would have become of Béranger if he had followed the power of the ministers who could be put all on the same level? For notice that the ministers he speaks of here are his friends, who did not send in their resignation till 13 March.
[CHAPTER IV]
Béranger, as Republican
This vulnerable spot was the Republican feeling, ever alert in France, whether it be disguised under the names of Liberalism, Progress or Democracy. Béranger discovered it, for, just when he was going to bid farewell to poetry, he once more took up his song; like the warrior who, in despair, had flung down his arms, he resumed them; but he has changed his aim and will slay with principles rather than bullets, he will no longer try to pierce the velvet of an ancient throne, but he will set up a new statue of marble upon a brazen altar! That statue shall be the figure of the Republic. He who was of the advanced school under the Elder Branch, hangs back under the Younger. But what matters it! He will accomplish his task and, though it stand alone, it will be none the less powerful. Listen to him: behold him at his moulding: like Benvenuto Cellini, he flings the lead of his old cartridges into the smelting-pot: he will throw in his bronze and even the two silver dinner-services which he brings out of an old walnut chest on grand occasions when he dines with Lisette, and which he has once or twice lent to Frétillon to put in pawn. While he works, he discovers that those whom he fought in 1830 were in the right, and that it was he himself who was wrong; he had looked upon them as madmen, now he makes his frank apologies to them in this song—
"Vieux soldats de plomb que nous sommes,
Au cordeau nous alignant tous,
Si des rangs sortant quelques hommes,
Tous, nous crions: 'À bas les fous!'
On les persécute, on les tue,
Sauf, après un lent examen,
À leur dresser une statue
Pour la gloire du genre humain!
Combien de tempo une pensée.
Vierge obscure, attend son époux!
Les sots la traitent d'insensée,
Le sage lui dit: 'Cachez-vous!'
Mais, la rencontrant loin du monde,
Un fou qui croit au lendemain
L'épouse; elle devient féconde,
Pour le bonheur du genre humain!
J'ai vu Saint-Simon, le prophète,
Riche d'abord, puis endetté,
Qui, des fondements jusqu'au faite,
Refaisait la société.
Plein de son œuvre commencée,
Vieux, pour elle il tendais la main,
Sur qu'il embrassait la pensée
Qui doit sauver le genre humain!
Fourier nous dit: 'Sors de la fange,
Peuple en proie aux déceptions!
Travaille, groupé par phalange,
Dans un cercle d'attractions.
La terre, après tant de désastres,
Forme avec le ciel un hymen,
Et la loi qui régit les astres
Donne la paix au genre humain!'
Enfantin affranchit la femme,
L'appelle à partager nos droits.
'Fi! dites-vous, sous l'épigramme
Ces fous rêveurs tombent tous trois!'
Messieurs, lorsqu'en vain notre sphère
Du bonheur cherche le chemin,
Honneur au fou qui ferait faire
Un rêve heureux au genre humain!
Qui découvrit un nouveau monde?
Un fou qu'on raillait en tout lieu!
Sur la croix, que son sang inonde,
Un fou qui meurt nous lègue un Dieu!
Si, demain, oubliant d'élcore,
Le jour manquait, eh bien! demain,
Quelque fou trouverait encore
Un flambeau pour le genre humain!"
You have read this song. What wonderful sense and rhythm of thought and poetry these lines contain! You say you didn't know it? Really? and yet you knew all those which, under Charles X., attacked the throne or the altar. Le Sacre de Charles le Simple, and L'Ange Gardien. How is it that you never knew this one? Because Béranger, instead of being a tin soldier drawn up to defend public order, as stock-jobbers and the bourgeois and grocers understand things, was looked upon as one of those fanatics who leave the ranks in pursuit of mad ideas, which they take unto themselves in marriage and perforce therefrom bring forth offspring! Only, Béranger was no longer in sympathy with public thought; the people do not pick up the arrows he shoots, in order to hurl them back at the throne; his poems, which were published in 1825, and again in 1829, and then sold to the extent of thirty thousand copies, are, in 1833, only sold to some fifteen hundred. But what matters it to him, the bird of the desert, who sings for the love of singing, because the good God, who loves to hear him, who prefers his poetry to that of missionaries, Jesuits and of those jet-black-dwarfs whom he nourishes, and who hates the smoke of their censers, has said to him, "Sing, poor little bird, sing!" So he goes on singing at every opportunity.
When Escousse and Lebras died, he sang a melancholy song steeped in doubt and disillusionment; he could not see his way in the chaos of society. He only felt that the earth was moving like an ocean; that the outlook was stormy; that the world was in darkness, and that the vessel called France was drifting further and further towards destruction. Listen. Was there ever a more melancholy song than this? It is like the wild seas that break upon coasts bristling with rocks and covered with heather, like the bays of Morlaix and the cliffs of Douarnenez.
"Quoi! morts tous deux dans cette chambre close
Où du charbon pèse encor la vapeur!
Leur vie, hélas! était à peine éclose;
Suicide affreux! triste objet de stupeur!
Ils auront dit: 'Le monde fait naufrage;
Voyez pâlir pilote et matelots!
Vieux bâtiment usé par tous les flots,
Il s'engloutit, sauvons-nous à la nage!'
Et, vers le ciel se frayant un chemin,
Ils sont partis en se donnant la main!
. . . . . . . . . .
Pauvres enfants! quelle douleur amère
N'apaisent pas de saints devoirs remplis?
Dans la patrie on retrouve une mère,
Et son drapeau vous couvre de ses plis!
Ils répondaient: 'Ce drapeau, qu'on escorte,
Au toit du chef le protège endormi;
Mais le soldat, teint du sang ennemi,
Veille, et de faim meurt en gardant la porte!'
Et, vers le ciel se frayant un chemin,
Ils sont partis en se donnant la main!
. . . . . . . . . .
Dieu créateur, pardonne à leur démence!
Ils s'étaient fait les échos de leurs sous,
Ne sachant pas qu'en une chaîne immense,
Non pour nous seuls, mais pour tous nous naissons.
L'humanité manque de saints apôtres
Qui leur aient dit: 'Enfants, suivez ma loi!
Aimer, aimer, c'est être utile à soi!
Se faire aimer, c'est être utile aux autres!'
Et, vers le ciel se frayant un chemin,
Ils sont partis en se donnant la main!"
At what a moment,—consider it!—did Béranger prophesy that the world would suffer shipwreck to the terror of pilots and sailors? When, in February 1832, the Tuileries was feasting its courtiers; when the newspapers, which supported the Government, were glutted with praise; when the citizen-soldiers of the rues Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin were enthusiastic in taking their turn on guard; when officers were clamouring for crosses for themselves and invitations to court for their wives; when, out of the thirty-six millions of the French people, thirty millions were bellowing at the top of their voices, "Vive Louis-Philippe, the upholder of order and saviour of society!" when the Journal des Débats was shouting its HOSANNAHS! and the Constitutionnel its AMENS!
By the powers! One would have been out of one's mind to die at such a time; and only a poet would talk of the world going to wrack and ruin!
But wait! When Béranger perceived that no one listened to his words, that, like Horace, he sang to deaf ears, he still went on singing, and now still louder than before—
"Société, vieux et sombre édifice,
Ta chute, hélas! Menace nos abris:
Tu vas crouler! point de flambeau qui puisse
Guider la foule à travers tes débris:
Où courons-nous! Quel sage en proie au doute
N'a sur son front vingt fois passé la main?
C'est aux soleils d'être sûrs de leur route;
Dieu leur a dit: 'Voilà votre chemin!'"
Then comes the moment when this chaos is unravelled, and the night is lifted, and the dawn of a new day rises; the poet bursts into a song of joy as he sees it! What did he see? Oh! be not afraid, he will be only too ready to tell you—
"Toujours prophète, en mon saint ministère,
Sur l'avenir j'ose interroger Dieu.
Pour châtier les princes de la terre,
Dans l'ancien monde un déluge aura lieu.
Déjà près d'eux, l'Océan, sur les grèves,
Mugit, se gonfle, il vient.... 'Maîtres, voyez,
Voyez!' leur dis-je. Ils répondent: 'Tu rêves!'
Ces pauvres rois, ils seront tous noyés!
. . . . . . . . . .
Que vous ont fait, mon Dieu, ces bons monarques?
Il en est tant dont on bénit les lois!
De jougs trop lourds si nous portons les marques,
C'est qu'en oubli le peuple a mis ses droits.
Pourtant, les flots précipitent leur marche
Contre ces chefs jadis si bien choyés.
Faute d'esprit pour se construire une arche,
Ces pauvres rois, ils seront tous noyés!
'Un océan! quel est-il, ô prophète?'
Peuples, c'est nous, affranchis de la faim,
Nous, plus instruits, consommant la défaite
De tant de rois, inutiles, enfin!...
Dieu fait passer sur ces fils indociles
Nos flots mouvants, si longtemps fourvoyés;
Puis le ciel brille, et les flots sont tranquilles.
Ces pauvres rois, ils seront tous noyés!"
It will be observed that it was not as in les Deux Cousins, a simple change of fortune or of dynasty, but the overturning of every dynasty that the poet is predicting; not as in Les Dieu des bonnes gens, the changing of destinies and tides, but the revolution of both towards ultimate tranquillity. The ocean becomes a vast lake, without swell or storms, reflecting the azure heavens and of such transparent clearness that at the bottom can be seen the corpses of dead monarchies and the débris of wrecked thrones.
Then, what happens on the banks of this lake, in the capital of the civilised world, in the city par excellence, as the Romans called Rome? The poet is going to tell you, and you will not have long to wait to know if he speaks the truth: a hundred and sixty-six years, dating from 1833, the date at which the song appeared. What is a hundred and sixty-six years in the life of a people? For, note carefully, the prophecy is for the year 2000, and the date may yet be disputed!
"Nostradamus, qui vit naître Henri-Quatre,
Grand astrologue, a prédit, dans ses vers,
Qu'en l'an deux mil, date qu'on peut débattre,
De la médaille on verrait le revers:
Alors, dit-il, Paris, dans l'allégresse,
Au pied du Louvre ouïra cette voix:
'Heureux Français, soulagez ma détresse;
Faites l'aumône au dernier de vos rois!'
Or, cette voix sera celle d'un homme
Pauvre, à scrofule, en haillons, sans souliers,
Qui, né proscrit, vieux, arrivant de Rome,
Fera spectacle aux petits écoliers.
Un sénateur crira: 'L'homme à besace,
Les mendiants sont bannis par nos lois!
—Hélas! monsieur, je suis seul de ma race;
Faites l'aumône au dernier de vos rois!'
'Es-tu vraiment de la race royale?'
—Oui, répondra cet homme, fier encor;
J'ai vu dans Rome, alors ville papale,
À mon aïeul couronne et sceptre d'or;
Il les vendit pour nourrir le courage
De faux agents, d'écrivains maladroits!
Moi, j'ai pour sceptre un bâton de voyage....
Faites l'aumône au dernier de vos rois!
'Mon père, âgé, mort en prison pour dettes,
D'un bon métier n'osa point me pouvoir;
Je tends la main ... Riches, partout vous êtes
Bien durs au pauvre, et Dieu me l'a fait voir!
Je foule enfin cette plage féconde
Qui repoussa mes aïeux tant de fois!
Ah! par pitié pour les grandeurs du monde,
Faites l'aumône au dernier de vos rois!'
Le sénateur dira: 'Viens! je t'emmène
Dans mon palais; vis heureux parmi nous.
Contre les rois nous n'avons plus de haine;
Ce qu'il en reste embrasse nos genoux!
En attendant que le sénat décide
À ses bienfaits si ton sort a des droits,
Moi, qui suis né d'un vieux sang régicide,
Je fais l'aumône au dernier de nos rois!'
Nostradamus ajoute en son vieux style:
'La République au prince accordera
Cent louis de rente, et, citoyen utile,
Pour maire, un jour, Saint-Cloud le choisira.
Sur l'an deux mil, on dira dans l'histoire,
Qu'assise au trône et des arts et des lois,
La France, en paix, reposant sous sa gloire,
A fait l'aumône au dernier de ses rois!'"
It is quite clear this time, and the word Republic is pronounced; the Republic in the year 2000 will give alms to the last of its kings! There is no ambiguity in the prophecy. Now, how long will this Republic, strong enough to give alms to the last of its kings, have been established? It is a simple algebraic calculation which the most insignificant mathematician can arrive at, by proceeding according to rule, from the known to the unknown.
It is in the year 2000 that Paris will hear, at the foot of the Louvre, the voice of a man in tatters shouting, "Give alms to the last of your kings!"
This voice will belong to a man born an outlaw, old, arriving from Rome, which leads one to suppose he would be about sixty or seventy years of age. Let us take a mean course and say sixty-five @ 65
This man, a born outlaw, saw in Rome, then a papal city, the crown and golden sceptre of his grandfather. How long ago can that have been? Let us say fifty years @ 50
For how long had this grandfather been exiled? It cannot have been long, because he had his sceptre and gold crown still, and sold them to feed the courage of false agents and luckless writers. Let us reckon it at fifteen years and say no more about it @ 15
Let us add to that the twenty years that have rolled by since 1833 @ 20
And we shall have to take away a total from 166 of 150
Now he who from 166 pays back 150 keeps 16 as remainder,—and yet, and yet the poet said the year 2000 is open to doubt. Do not let us dispute the question, but let us even allow more time.
We return thee thanks, Béranger, thou poet and prophet!
What happened upon the appearance of these prophecies which were calculated to wound many very different interests? That the people who knew the old poems of Béranger by heart, because their ambition, their hopes and desires, had made weapons of them wherewith to destroy the old throne, did not even read his new songs, whilst those who did read them said to each other, "Have you read Béranger's new songs? No. Well, don't read them. Poor fellow, he is going off!" So they did not read them, or, if they had read them, the word was passed round to say, that the song-writer was going off. No, on the contrary, the poet was growing greater, not deteriorating! But just as from song-writer he had become poet, so, from poet, he was becoming a prophet. I mean that, to the masses, he was becoming more and more unintelligible. Antiquity has preserved us the songs of Anacreon, but has forgotten the prophecies of Cassandra.
And why? Homer tells us: the Greeks refused to put faith in the prophetic utterances of the daughter of Priam and Hecuba.
Alas! Béranger followed her in this and held his peace; and a whole world of masterpieces on the eve of bursting forth was arrested on his silent lips. He smiled with that arch smile of his, and said—
"Ah! I am declining, am I? Well, then, ask for songs of those who are rising!"
Rossini had said the same thing after Guillaume Tell, and what was the result? We had no more operas by him, and no more songs from Béranger.
Now it may be asked how it happens that Béranger, a Republican, resides peacefully in the avenue de Chateaubriand (No. 5), at Paris, whilst Victor Hugo is living in Marine Terrace, in the island of Jersey. It is simply a question of age and of temperament. Hugo is a fighter, and scarcely fifty: while Béranger, take him all in all, is an Epicurean and, moreover, seventy years of age;[1] an age at which a man begins to prepare his bed for his eternal sleep, and Béranger (God grant he may live many years yet, would he but accept some years of our lives!) wishes to die peacefully upon the bed of flowers and bay leaves that he has made for himself. He has earned the right to do so—he has struggled hard enough in the past, and, rest assured, his work will continue in the future!
Let us just say, in conclusion, that those who were then spoken of as the young school (they are now men of forty to fifty) were not fair to Béranger. After Benjamin Constant had exalted him to the rank of a great epic poet, they tried to reduce him to the level of a writer of doggerel verses. By this action, criticism innocently made itself the accomplice of the ruling powers; it only intended to be severe, but was, really, both unjust and ungrateful! It needs to be an exile and a poet living in a strange land, far from that communion of thought which is the food of intellectual life, to know how essentially French, philosophical and consolatory, the muse of the poet of Passy really was. In the case of Béranger, there was no question of exile, and each exile can, while he sings his songs, look for the realisation of that prophecy which Nostradamus has fixed for the year 2000.
But we are a very long way from the artillery, which we were discussing, and we must return to it again and to the riot in which it was called upon to play its part.
Let us, then, return to the riot and to the artillery. But, dear Béranger, dear poet, dear father, we do not bid you adieu, only au revoir. After the storm, the halcyon!—the halcyon, white as snow, which has passed through all the storms, its swan-like plumage as spotless as before.
[1] See [Note A], at end of the volume.
[CHAPTER V]
Death of Benjamin Constant—Concerning his life—Funeral honours that were conferred upon him—His funeral—Law respecting national rewards—The trial of the ministers—Grouvelle and his sister—M. Mérilhou and the neophyte—Colonel Lavocat—The Court of Peers—Panic—Fieschi
The month of December 1830 teemed with events. One of the gravest was the death of Benjamin Constant. On the 10th we received orders to be ready equipped and armed by the 12th, to attend the funeral procession of the famous deputy. He had died at seven in the evening of 8 December. His death created a great sensation throughout Paris. Benjamin Constant's popularity was a strange one, and it would be hard to say upon what it was founded. He was a Swiss Protestant, and had been brought up in England and Germany. He could speak English, German and French with equal ease; but he composed and wrote in French. He was young, good-looking, strong in body, but weak in character. From the time he set foot in France, Constant did nothing unless under the influence of women: they were his rulers in literature and his guides in politics. He was taken up by three of the most celebrated women of his time; by Madame Tallien, Madame de Beauharnais and Madame de Staël, and he was completely under their influence; the latter, especially, had an immense influence over his life. Adolphe was he himself, and the heroine in it was Madame de Staël. Besides, the life of Benjamin was not by any means the life of a man, but that of a woman, that is to say, a mixture of inconsistencies and weaknesses. Raised to the Tribunal after the overturning of the Directory, he opposed Bonaparte when he was First Consul, not, as historians state, because he had no belief in the durability of Napoléon's good fortune, but because Madame de Staël, with whom he was then on most intimate terms, detested the First Consul. He was expelled from the Tribunal in 1801, and exiled from France in 1802, and went to live near his mistress (or rather master) at Coppet. About the year 1806 or 1807 this life of slavery grew insufferable to him, and, weak though he was, he broke his chains. Read his novel Adolphe, and you will see how heavily the chain galled him! He settled at Hanover, where he married a German lady of high birth, a relative of the Prince of Hardenberg, and behold him an aristocrat, moving in the very highest aristocratic circles in Germany, never leaving the princes of the north, but living in the heart of the coalition which threatened France, directing foreign proclamations, writing his brochure, De l'esprit de conquête et d'usurpation, upon the table of the Emperor Alexander; and, finally, re-entering France with Auguste de Staël, in the carriage of King Charles-John. How can one escape being a Royalist in such company!
He was also admitted to the Journal des Débats, and became one of the most active editors of that periodical. When Bonaparte landed at the gulf of Juan and marched on Paris, Benjamin Constant's first impulse was to take himself off. He began by hiding himself at the house of Mr. Crawford, ex-ambassador to the United States; then he went to Nantes with an American who undertook to get him out of France. But, on the journey, he learned of the insurrection in the West and retraced his steps and returned to Paris after a week's absence. In five more days' time, he went to the Tuileries at the invitation of M. Perregaux, where the emperor was awaiting an audience with him in his private room. Benjamin Constant was to be bought by any power that took the trouble to flatter him; he was in politics, literature and morality what we will call a courtezan, only Thomas, of the National, used a less polite word for it. Two days later, the newspaper announced the appointment of Benjamin Constant as a member of the State Council. Here it was that he drew up the famous Acte additionnel in conjunction with M. Molé, a minister whom we had just thrown out of Louis-Philippe's Government. At the Second Restoration, it was expedient for Benjamin Constant to get himself exiled; and it regained him his popularity, so great was the public hatred against the Bourbons! He went to England and published Adolphe. In 1816, the portals of France were re-opened to him and he started the Minerve, and wrote in the Courrier and Constitutionnel and in the Temps. I met him at this time at the houses of Châtelain and M. de Seuven. He was a tall, well-built man, excessively nervous, pale and with long hair, which gave his face a strangely Puritanical expression; he was as irritable as a woman and a gambler to the pitch of infatuation! He had been a deputy since 1819, and each day he was one of the first arrivals at the Chamber, punctiliously clad in uniform, with its silver fleurs-de-lis, and always, summer and winter, carrying a cloak over his arm; his other hand was always full of books and printer's proofs; he limped and leant upon a sort of crutch, stumbling along frequently till he reached his seat. When seated, he began upon his correspondence and the correcting of his proofs, employing every usher in the place to execute his innumerable commissions. Ambitious in all directions, without ever succeeding in anything, nor even getting into the Academy, where he failed in his first attempt against Cousin, and in the second against M. Viennet! by turns irresolute and courageous, servile and independent, he spent his ten years as deputy under every kind of vacillation. The Monday of the Ordinances he was away in the country, where he had been undergoing a serious operation; he received a letter from Vatout, short and significant—
"MY DEAR FRIEND,—A terrible game is being played here with heads as stakes. Be the clever gambler you always are and come and bring your own head to our assistance."
The summons was tempting and he went. On the Thursday, he reached Montrouge, where the barricades compelled him to leave his carriage and to cross Paris upon the arm of his wife, who was terrified when she saw what men were guarding the Hôtel de Ville, and frightened her husband as well as herself.
"Let us start for Switzerland instantly!" exclaimed Benjamin Constant; "and find a corner of the earth where not even the cover of a newspaper can reach us!"
He was actually on the point of doing so when he was recognised, and some one called out "Vive Benjamin Constant!" lifted him in his arms and carried him in triumph. His name was placed last on the list of the protest of the deputies, and is to be found at the end of Act 30, conferring the Lieutenant-generalship upon the Duc d'Orléans; these two signatures, supported by his immense reputation and increasing popularity, once more took him into the State Council. Meanwhile, he was struggling against poverty, and Vatout induced the king to allow him two hundred thousand francs, which Constant accepted on condition, so he said to him who gave him this payment, that he was allowed the right of free speech. That's exactly how I understand it, said the king. At the end of four months, the two hundred thousand francs were all gambled away, and Constant was poorer than ever. A fortnight before his death, a friend went to his house, one morning at ten o'clock, and found him eating dry bread, soaked in a glass of water. That crust of bread was all he had had since the day before, and the glass of water he owed to the Auvergnat who had filled his cistern that morning. His death was announced to the Chamber of Deputies on 9 December.
"What did he die of?" several members asked.
And a melancholy accusing voice that none dared contradict replied—
"Of hunger!"
This was not quite the truth, but there was quite enough foundation for the statement to be allowed to pass unchallenged.
Then they set to work to arrange all kinds of funeral celebrations; they brought in a bill respecting the honours that should be bestowed upon great citizens by a grateful country, and, as this Act could not be passed by the following day, they bought provisionally a vault in the Cemetery de l'Est.
Oh! what a fine thing is the gratitude of a nation! True, it does not always secure one against death by starvation; but, at all events, it guarantees your being buried in style when you are dead—unless you die either in prison or in exile.
We had the privilege of contributing to the pomp of this cortège formed of a hundred thousand men; shadowed by flags draped in crêpe; and marching to the roll of muffled drums, and the dull twangings of the tam-tams. At one time, the whole boulevard was flooded by a howling sea like the rising tide, and, soon, the storm burst. As the funeral procession came out of the church, the students tried to get possession of the coffin, shouting, "To the Panthéon!" But Odilon Barrot came forward; the Panthéon was not in the programme, and he opposed their enthusiasm and, as a struggle began, he appealed to the law.
"The law must be enforced!" he cried. And he called to his aid that strength which people in power generally apply less to the maintenance of law than to the execution of their own desires; which, unfortunately, is not always the same thing.
Eighteen months later, these very same words, "The law must be enforced!" were pronounced over another coffin, but, in that instance, the law was not enforced until after two days of frightful butchery.
At the edge of Benjamin Constant's grave, La Fayette nearly fainted from grief and fatigue, and was obliged to be held up and pulled backward or he would have lain beside the dead before his time.
We shall relate how the same thing nearly happened to him at the grave of Lamarque, but, that time, he did not get up again.
Every one returned home at seven that evening, imbued with some of the stormy electricity with which the air during the whole of that day had been charged.
Next day, the Chamber enacted a law, which, in its turn, led to serious disturbances. It was the law relative to national pensions.
On 7 October, M. Guizot had ascended the tribune and said—
"GENTLEMEN,—The king was as anxious as you were to sanction by a legislative act the great debt of national gratitude, which our country owes to the victims of the Revolution.
"I have the honour to put before you a bill to that effect. Our three great days cost more than five hundred orphans the loss of fathers, five hundred widows their husbands, and over three hundred old people have lost the affection and support of children. Three hundred and eleven citizens have been mutilated and made incapable of carrying on their livelihood, and three thousand five hundred and sixty-four wounded people have had to endure temporary disablement."
A Commission had been appointed to draw up this bill and, on 13 December, the bill called the Act of National Recompense was carried. It fixed the amounts to be granted to the widows, fathers, mothers and sisters of the victims; and decreed that France should adopt the orphans made during the Three Days fighting; among other dispositions it contained the following—
"ARTICLE 8.—Resolved that those who particularly distinguished themselves during the July Days shall be made non-commissioned officers and sub-lieutenants in the army, if they are thought deserving of this honour after the report of the Commission, provided that in each regiment the number of sub-lieutenants does not exceed the number of two and that of non-commissioned officers, four.
"ARTICLE 10.—A special decoration shall be granted to every citizen who distinguished himself during the July Days; the list of those who are permitted to wear it shall be drawn up by the Commission, and submitted to the King's approval; this decoration will rank in the same degree as the Légion d'honneur."
This law appeared in the Moniteur on the 17th.
Just as the bill had been introduced the day after M. de Tracy's proposition with respect to the death penalty, this bill was adopted the day before the trial of the ex-ministers. It was as good as saying—"You dead, what more can you lay claim to? We have given your widows, fathers, mothers and sisters pensions! You, who live, what more can you want? We have made you non-commissioned officers and sub-lieutenants and given you the Cross! You would not have enjoyed such privileges if the ministers of Charles X. had not passed the Ordinances; therefore praise them instead of vilifying them!"
But the public was in no mood to praise Polignac and his accomplices; instead, it applauded the Belgian revolution and the Polish insurrection. All eyes were fixed upon the Luxembourg. If the ministers were acquitted or condemned to any other sentence than that of death, the Revolution of July would be abjured before all Europe, and by the king who won his crown by means of the barricades.
Mauguin, one of the examining judges, when questioned concerning the punishment that ought to be served to the prisoners, replied unhesitatingly—"Death!"
Such events as the violation of our territory by the Spanish army; the death of Benjamin Constant and refusal to allow his body to be taken to the Panthéon; the Belgian revolution and Polish insurrection; were so many side winds to swell the storm which was gathering above the Luxembourg.
On 15 December, two days after the vote upon the National Pensions Bill, and two days before its promulgation in the Moniteur, the prosecutions began. The trial lasted from the 15th to the 21st; for six days we never changed our uniform. We did not know what we were kept in waiting for; we were rallied together several times, either at Cavaignac's or Grouvelle's, to come to some decision, but nothing definite was proposed, beyond that our common centre should be the Louvre, where our arms and ammunition were stored, and that we should be guided by circumstances and act as the impulse of the moment directed.
I have already had occasion to mention Grouvelle; but let us dwell for a moment upon him and his sister. Both were admirable people, with hearts as devoted to the cause of Republicanism as any Spartan or Roman citizens. We shall meet them everywhere and in everything connected with politics until Grouvelle disappears from the arena, at the same time that his sister dies insane in the hospice de Montpellier. They were the son and daughter of the Grouvelle who made the first complete edition of the Lettres de Madame de Sévigné, and the same who, as secretary of the Convention, had read to Louis XVI. the sentence of death brought him by Garat. At the time I knew him, Grouvelle was thirty-two or three, and his sister twenty-five, years of age. There was nothing remarkable in his external appearance; he was very simply dressed, with a gentle face and scanty fair hair, and upon his scalp he wore a black band, no doubt to hide traces of trepanning. She, too, was fair and had most lovely hair, with blue eyes below white eyelashes, which gave an extremely sweet expression to her face, an expression, however, which assumed much firmness if you followed the upper lines to where they met round her mouth and chin. A charming portrait of herself hung in her house, painted by Madame Mérimée, the wife of the artist who painted the beautiful picture, l'innocence et le Serpent; the mother of Prosper Mérimée, author of Le Vase Étrusque, Colomba, Vénus d'Ile and of a score of novels which are all of high merit. The mother of Laure Grouvelle was a Darcet, sister, I believe, of Darcet the chemist, who had invented the famous joke about gelatine; consequently, she was cousin to the poor Darcet who died a horrible death, being burnt by some new chemical that he was trying to substitute for lamp-oil; cousin also to the beautiful Madame Pradier, who was then simply Mademoiselle Darcet or at most called madame. They both had a small fortune, sufficient for their needs, for Laure Grouvelle had none of the usual feminine coquetry about her, but was something akin to Charlotte Corday.
It was a noticeable fact that all the men of 1830 and the Carbonari of 1821 and 1822 were either wealthy or of independent means, either from private fortunes or industry or talent. Bastide and Thomas were wealthy; Cavaignac and Guinard lived on their incomes; Arago and Grouvelle had posts; Loëve-Weymars possessed talent and Carrel, genius. I could name all and it would be seen that none of them acted from selfish ends, or needed to bring about revolutions to enrich himself; on the contrary, all lost by the revolutions they took part in, some losing their fortunes, others their liberty, some their lives.
Mademoiselle Grouvelle had never married, but it was said that Étienne Arago had proposed to her when she was a young girl; that was a long while back, in 1821 or 1822. Étienne Arago was then, in 1821, a student in chemistry at the École polytechnique, and was about twenty years of age; he made the acquaintance of Grouvelle at Thénard's house. He was a fiery-hearted son of the South; his friends were anxious to make him a propagandist, and through his instrumentality principally, to introduce the secret society of the Charbonnerie into the École; Grouvelle, Thénard, Mérilhou and Barthe being its chief supporters.
These germs of Republicanism, sown by the young chemical student, and, even more, by the influence of Eugène Cavaignac, also a student at the École at that time, produced in after life such men as Vanneau, Charras, Lothon, Millotte, Caylus, Latrade, Servient and all that noble race of young men who, from 1830 to 1848, were to be found at the head of every political movement.
A year later, La Charbonnerie was recruited by Guinard, Bastide, Chevalon, Thomas, Gauja and many more, who were always first in the field when fighting began.
The question of how to introduce the principles of La Charbonnerie into Spain in the teeth of the cordon sanitaire was being debated, in order to establish relations between the patriots of the army and those who were taking refuge in the peninsula. Étienne Arago was thought of, but as he was too poor to undertake the journey, they went to Mérilhou. Mérilhou, as I have said, was one of the ringleaders of Charbonarism. He was then living in the rue des Moulins. Cavaignac and Grouvelle introduced Étienne, and Mérilhou gazed at the neophyte, who did not look more than eighteen.
"You are very young, my friend," said the cautious lawyer to him.
"That may be, monsieur," Étienne responded, "but young though I am, I have been a Charbonist for two years."
"Do you realise to what dangers you would expose yourself if you undertook this propagandist mission?"
"Certainly, I do; I expose myself to death on the scaffold."
Whereupon the future minister of Louis-Philippe and peer of France, and presiding judge at the Barbés' trial, laid his hand upon Étienne's shoulder, and said, in the theatrical manner barristers are wont to assume—
"Made animo, generose puer!" And gave him the necessary money.
We shall come across M. Mérilhou again at Barbés' trial, and the made animo will not be thrown away upon us.
For the moment, however, we must go back to the trial of the ministers.
La Fayette had declared his views positively; he had offered himself as guarantee to the High Court; he had sworn to the king to save the heads of the ministers, if they were acquitted. Thereupon ensued a strange revival of popularity in favour of the old general; fear made his greatest enemies sing his praises on all sides; the king and Madame Adélaïde showered favours upon him; he was indispensable; the monarchy could not survive without his support.... If Atlas failed this new Olympus, it would be overthrown!
La Fayette saw through it all and laughed to himself and shrugged his shoulders significantly. None of these flatteries and favours had induced him to act as he did, but simply the dictates of his own conscience.
"General," I said to him on 15 December, "you know you are staking your popularity to save the heads of these ministers?"
"My boy," he replied, "no one knows better than I the price to be put upon popularity; it is the richest and most inestimable of treasure, and the only one I have ever coveted; but, like all other treasures, in life, when the moment comes, one must strip oneself to the uttermost farthing in the interest of public welfare and national honour."
General La Fayette certainly acted nobly, much too nobly, indeed, for the deserts of those for whom he made the sacrifice, for they only attributed it to weakness instead of to devotion to duty.
The streets in the vicinity of the Luxembourg were dreadfully congested by the crowds waiting during the trial, so that the troops of the National Guard could scarcely circulate through them. Troops of the line and National Guards were, at the command of La Fayette, placed at his disposition with plenary power; he had the police of the Palais-Royal, of the Luxembourg and of the Chamber of Peers. He had made Colonel Lavocat second in command at the Luxembourg, with orders to watch over the safety of the peers; those same peers who had once condemned Lavocat to death. If he could but have evoked the shade of Ney, he would have placed him as sentinel at the gates of the palace!
Colonel Feisthamel was first in command. Lavocat was one of the oldest members of the Carbonari. Every kind of political party was represented in the crowd that besieged the gates of the Luxembourg, except Orléanist; we all rubbed against one another. Republicans, Carlists, Napoléonists, awaiting events in the hope of being able to further each his own interests, opinions and principles. We had tickets for reserved seats. I was present on the last day but one, and heard the pleading of M. de Martignac and also that of M. de Peyronnet, and I witnessed M. Sauzet's triumph and saw M. Crémieux fall ill.
Just at that second the sound of the beating of drums penetrated right into the Chamber of Peers. They were beating the rappel in a wild sort of frenzy.
I rushed from the hall; the sitting was almost suspended, half on account of the accident that had happened to M. Crémieux, half because of the terrible noise that made the accused men shiver on their benches and the judges in their seats. My uniform as artilleryman made way for me through the crowds, and I gained the courtyard; it was packed. A coach belonging to the king's printers had come into the principal court and the multitude had angrily rushed in after it. It was the sound of their angry growls combined with the drumming which had reached the hall. A moment of inexpressible panic and confusion succeeded among the peers, and it was quite useless for Colonel Lavocat to shout from the door—
"Have no fear! I will be answerable for everything. The National Guard is and will remain in possession of all the exits."
M. Pasquier could not hear him, and his little thin shrill voice could be heard saying—
"Messieurs les pairs, the sitting is dissolved. M. le Commandant de la Garde Nationale warns me that it will be unwise to hold a night sitting."
It was exactly the opposite of what Colonel Lavocat had said, but, as most of the peers were just as frightened as their illustrious president, they rose and left the hall hurriedly, and the sitting was deferred until the morrow.
As I went out I pushed against a man who seemed to be one of the most furious of the rioters; he was shouting in a foreign accent and his mouth was hideous and his eyes were wild.
"Death to the ministers!" he was yelling.
"Oh! by Jove!" I said to the chief editor of The Moniteur, a little white-haired man called Sauvo, who, like myself, was also watching him. "I bet twenty-five louis that that man is a spy!"
I don't know whether I was right at the time; but I do know that I found the very same man again five years later in the dock of the Court of Peers. He was the Corsican Fieschi.
[CHAPTER VI]
The artillerymen at the Louvre—Bonapartist plot to take our cannon from us—Distribution of cartridges by Godefroy Cavaignac—The concourse of people outside the Luxembourg when the ministers were sentenced—Departure of the condemned for Vincennes—Defeat of the judges—La Fayette and the riot—Bastide and Commandant Barré on guard with Prosper Mérimée
I returned to the Louvre to learn news and to impart it. It is quite impossible to depict the excitement which reigned in this headquarters of the artillery. Our chief colonel, Joubert, had been taken away from us, and, as the choice of a colonel was not in our hands, he had been replaced by Comte Pernetti.
Comte Pernetti was devoted to the court, and the court, with just cause, mistrusted us, and looked for a chance to disband us.
But we, on our side, every minute kept meeting men whom we had seen upon the barricades, who stopped us to ask—
"Do you recognise us? We were there with you...."
"Yes, I recognise you. What then?"
"Well, if it came to marching against the Palais-Royal as we did against the Tuileries, would you desert us?"
And then we clasped hands and looked at one another with excited eyes and parted, the artillerymen exclaiming—
"The people are rising!" While the populace repeated to one another, "The artillery is with us!"
All these rumours were floating in the air, and seemed to stop like mists at the highest buildings.
The Palais-Royal was only a hundred and fifty yards from the Louvre, in which were twenty-four pieces of artillery, twenty thousand rounds of ammunition, and out of eight hundred artillerymen six hundred were Republicans.
No scheme of conspiracy had been arranged; but it was plainly evident that, if the people rose, the artillery would support them. M. de Montalivet, brother of the minister, warned his brother, about one o'clock that afternoon, that there was a plot arranged for carrying off our guns from us. General La Fayette immediately warned Godefroy Cavaignac of the information that had been given him.
Now, we were quite willing to go with the people to manage our own guns, and incur the risks of a second revolution, as we had run the risks of the first; but the guns were, in a measure, our own property, and we felt responsible for their safe keeping, so we did not incline to have them taken out of our hands.
This rumour of a sudden attack upon the Louvre gained the readier credence as, for two or three days past, there had been much talk of a Bonapartist plot; and, although we were all ready to fight for La Fayette and the Republic, we had no intentions of risking a hair of our heads for Napoléon II. Consequently, Godefroy Cavaignac, being warned, had brought in a bale of two or three hundred cartridges, which he flung on one of the card-tables in the guardroom. Every man then proceeded to fill his pouch and pockets. When I reached the Louvre, the division had been made, but it did not matter, as my pouch had been full since the day I had been summoned to seize the Chamber.
As would be expected, we had no end of spies among us, and I could mention two in particular who received the Cross of the Légion d'honneur for having filled that honourable office in our ranks.
An hour after this distribution of cartridges they were warned at the Palais-Royal. A quarter of an hour after they had been warned there, I received a letter from Oudard, begging me, if I was at the Louvre, to go instantly to his office. I showed the letter to our comrades and asked them what I was to do.
"Go, of course," answered Cavaignac.
"But if they question me—?"
"Tell the truth. If the Bonapartists want to seize our guns we will fire our last cartridges to defend them; but, if the people rise against the Luxembourg, or even against any other palace, we will march with them."
"That suits me down to the ground. I like plain speaking."
So I went to the Palais-Royal. The offices were crowded with people; one could feel the excitement running through from the centre to the outlying extremities, and, judging from the state of agitation of the extremities, the centre must have been very much excited. Oudard questioned me; that was the only reason why he had sent for me. I repeated what Cavaignac had told me, word for word. As far as I can recollect, this happened on the evening of the 20th. On the 21st I resumed my post in the rue de Tournon. The crowd was denser than ever: the rue de Tournon, the rues de Seine, des Fossés-Monsieur-le-Prince, Voltaire, the places de l'Odéon, Saint-Michel and l'École-de-Médecine, were filled to overflowing with National Guards and troops of the line. The National Guard had been made to believe that there was a plot for plundering the shops; that the people of the July Revolution, when pulled up by the appointment of the Duc d'Orléans to the Lieutenant-generalship, had vowed to be revenged; now, the bourgeois, ever ready to believe rumours of this kind, had rushed up in masses and uttered terrible threats against pillagers, who had never pillaged either on the 27th, the 28th, or the 29th, but who would have pillaged on the 30th, if the creation of the Lieutenant-generalship had not restored order just in time.
It is but fair to mention that all those excellent fellows, who were waiting there, with rifles at rest, would not have put themselves out to wait unless they had really believed that the trial would end in a sentence of capital punishment.
About two o'clock it was announced that the counsels' speeches were finished and the debates closed, and that sentence was going to be pronounced. There was an intense silence, as though each person was afraid that any sound might prevent him from hearing the great voice, that, no doubt, like that of the angel of the day of judgment, should pronounce the supreme sentence of that High Court of Justice.
Suddenly, some men rushed out of the Luxembourg and dashed down the rue de Tournon crying—
"To death! They are sentenced to death!"
A stupendous uproar went up in response from every ray of that vast constellation of streets that centres in the Luxembourg.
Everybody struggled to make a way out to his own quarter and house to be the first to carry the bitter news. But they soon stayed their progress and the multitude seemed to be driven back again and to press towards the Luxembourg like a stream flowing backwards. Another rumour had got abroad; that the ministers, instead of being condemned to death, had only been sentenced to imprisonment for life; and that the report of the penalty of death had been purposely spread to give them a chance to escape.
The expression of people's faces changed and menacing shouts began to resound; the National Guards struck the pavements with the butt-end of their rifles. They had come to defend the peers but seemed quite ready when they heard the news of the acquittal (and any punishment short of death was acquittal) to attack the peers.
Meanwhile, this is what was happening inside. It was known beforehand, in the Palais-Royal, that the sentence was to be one of imprisonment for life. M. de Montalivet, Minister of the Interior, had received orders from the king to have the ex-ministers conducted safe and sound to Vincennes. The firing of a cannon when they had crossed the drawbridge of the château was to tell the king of their safety. M. de Montalivet had chosen General Falvier and Colonel Lavocat to share this dangerous honour with him. When he saw the four ministers appearing, who had been removed from the hall in order that, according to custom, sentence should be pronounced in their absence—
"Messieurs," said General Falvier to Colonel Lavocat, "take heed! we are going to make history; let us see to it that it redounds to the glory of France!"
A light carriage awaited the prisoners outside the wicket-gate of the petit Luxembourg. It was at this juncture that some men, set there by M. de Montalivet, rushed through the main gateway, shouting, as we have mentioned—
"Death.... They are sentenced to death!"
The prisoners could hear the tremendous shout of triumph that went up at that false report. But the carriage, surrounded by two hundred horsemen, had already set off, and was driving towards the outlying boulevards with the speed and noise of a hurricane.
MM. de Montalivet and Lavocat galloped at each side of the doors.
The judges assembled in the Rubens gallery to deliberate. From there, they could see, as far as eye could reach, the bristling of cannons and bayonets and the seething agitation of the crowds. Night was fast approaching, but the inmates of every house had put lamps in their windows and a bright illumination succeeded the waning daylight, adding a still more lurid character to the scene.
Suddenly, the peers heard an uproar; they saw, one might almost say they felt, the terrible agitation going on outside: each wave of that sea, that had broken or was just ready to break, rose higher than the last; and the tide that one thought was at the ebb, returned with greater and more threatening force than ever, beating against the powerfully built walls of the Médicis palace: but the judges were fully aware that no walls or barriers or ramparts could stand against the strength of the ocean; they each tried to find some pretext or other for slipping away: some did not even attempt any excuse for so doing. M. Pasquier, by comparison, was the bravest, and felt ashamed of their retreat.
"It is unseemly!" he exclaimed; "shut the doors!"
But La Layette was informed, at the same time, that the people were rushing upon the palace.
"Messieurs," he said, turning to the three or four persons who awaited his commands, "will you come with me to see what is going on?"
Thus, whilst M. Pasquier was returning to the audience chamber, which was nearly deserted, to pronounce, by the dismal light of a half-lighted chandelier, the sentence condemning the accused to imprisonment for life and punishing the Prince de Polignac to civil death, the man of 1789 and of 1830 was making his appearance in the streets, as calm on that 21 December, as he announced to the people the quasi-absolution of the ex-ministers, as he had been forty years before, when he announced, to the fathers of those who were listening to him then, the flight of the king to Varennes.
For a single instant it seemed as though the noble old man had presumed too much on the magnanimity of the crowd and on his popularity: for the waves of that ocean which, at first, made way respectfully before him, now gathered round him angrily. A threatening growl ran through the multitude, which knew its power and had but to make a move to grind everything to powder or smash everything like glass.
Cries of "Death to the ministers! Put them to death! Put them to death!" were uttered on all sides.
La Fayette tried to speak but loud imprecations drowned his voice.
At last he succeeded in being heard, and, "Citizens, I do not recognise among you the heroes of July!" he said to the people.
"No wonder!" replied a voice; "how could you, seeing you were not on their side!"
It was a critical moment; there were only four or five of us artillerymen all together. M. Sarrans, who accompanied the general, signed to us to come up to him, and thanks to our uniform, which the people held in respect as a sign of the opposition party, we managed to make our way to the general, who, recognising me, took me by the arm; other patriots joined us, and La Fayette found himself surrounded by a party of friends, amongst whom he could breathe freely.
But, on all sides, the National Guards were furious, and were deserting their posts, some loading their rifles, others flinging them down and all crying out treason.
At this moment, the sound of a cannon pierced the air like the explosion of a thunderbolt. It was M. de Montalivet's signal announcing to the king that the ministers were in safety; but we in our ignorance, thought it was a signal sent us by our comrades in the Louvre; we left the general and, drawing our poinards, we rushed across the Pont Neuf, crying: "To arms!" At our shouts and the sight of our uniform and the naked swords, the people opened way for us at once and soon began running in all directions, yelling: "To arms!" We reached the Louvre just as the porters were closing the gates and, pushing back both keepers and gates, we entered by storm. Let them shut the gates behind us, once inside what would it matter? There were about six hundred artillerymen inside the Louvre. I flew into the guardroom on the left of the entrance by the gateway in the place Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois.
The news of the discharge of the ministers was already known and had produced its effect. Every one looked as though he were walking upon a volcano. I saw Adjutant Richy go up to Bastide and whisper something into his ear.
"Impossible!" exclaimed Bastide.
"See for yourself, then," Richy added.
Bastide went out hurriedly and, almost immediately after, we heard him shout: "Help, men of the Third Artillery!"
But before he had time to cross the threshold of the guardroom he had climbed over the park chains and was making straight for a group of men, who, in spite of the sentry's orders, had got into the enclosure reserved for the guns.
"Out of the park!" shrieked Bastide; "out of the park instantly or I will put my sword through the bodies of every one of you!"
"Captain Bastide," said one of the men to whom he had addressed his threat, "I am Commandant Barré ..."
"If you are the very devil himself it makes no difference! Our orders are that no one shall enter the park, so out you go!"
"Excuse me," said Barré, "but I should much like to know who is in command here, you or I?"
"Whoever is the stronger commands here at present.... I do not recognise you.... Help, artillerymen!"
Fifty of us surrounded Bastide with poinards in hand. Several had found time to take their loaded muskets from their racks. Barré gave in to us.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"To take any gun that comes handiest and make it ready for firing!" exclaimed Bastide.
We flung ourselves on the first that came; but, at the third revolution of the wheels, the washer broke and the wheel came off.
"I want you to fetch me the linch-pins of the guns you have just carried off."
"Really ..."
"Those linch-pins, or, I repeat, I will pass my sword through your body!"
Barré emptied a sack in which some ten linch-pins had been already put. We rushed at them and put our guns in order again.
"Good," said Bastide. "Now, out of the park!"
Every one of them went out and Barré went straight off to offer his command to Comte Pernetti, who declined to take it.
Bastide left me to keep guard over the park with Mérimée: our orders were to fire on anybody who came near it, and who, at our second qui vive, did not come up at command.
From that hour on sentry-duty (they had reduced the length of sentry hours to one, on account of the gravity of events) dated my acquaintance with Mérimée; we conversed part of the time, and strange to say, under those circumstances, of art and literature and architecture.
Ten years later, Mérimée, who, no doubt, recollecting what he had wished to tell me that night, namely, that I had the most dramatic imagination he had ever come across, thought fit to suggest to M. de Rémusat, then Minister of the Interior, that I should be asked to write a comedy for the Théâtre-Français.
M. de Rémusat wrote to ask me for a play, enclosing an order for an advance of five thousand francs. A month afterwards, Un Marriage sous Louis XV. was composed, read and rejected by the Théâtre-Français. In due order, I will relate the story of Un Manage sous Louis XV. (the younger brother of Antony) at greater length; it proved as difficult to launch as Antony. But, meanwhile, let us return to that night at the Louvre.
[CHAPTER VII]
We are surrounded in the Louvre courtyard—Our ammunition taken by surprise—Proclamation of the Écoles—Letter of Louis-Philippe to La Fayette—The Chamber vote of thanks to the Colleges—Protest of the École polytechnique—Discussion at the Chamber upon the General Commandership of the National Guard—Resignation of La Fayette—The king's reply—I am appointed second captain
During my hour on sentry-go, a great number of artillerymen had come in; we were almost our full complement. Some, cloaked in mantles, had gained entrance by the gate on the Carrousel side, although we had been told it had been closed by order of the Governor of the Louvre. We were afterwards assured that the Duc d'Orléans was among the number of the cloaked artillerymen; doubtless, with his usual courage, he wanted to judge for himself of the temper of the corps to which he was attached. Just as I re-entered the guardroom, everything was in a frightful state of commotion; it looked as though the battle was going to break out in the midst of the very artillery itself, and as though the first shots would be exchanged between brothers-in-arms. One artilleryman, whose name I have forgotten, jumped up on a table and began to read a proclamation that he had just drawn up: it was an appeal to arms. Scarcely had he read a line before Grille de Beuzelin, who belonged to the reactionary party, snatched it from his hands and tore it up. The artilleryman drew his dagger and the affair would probably have ended tragically, when one of our number rushed into the guardroom, shouting—
"We are surrounded by the National Guard and troops of the line!"
There was a simultaneous cry of "To our guns!"
To make a way through the cordon that surrounded us did not disconcert us at all, for we had more than once vied in skill and quickness with the artillerymen of Vincennes. Moreover, at the first gunshot in Paris, as we knew very well, the people would rally to our side. They had come to see what terms we could offer. The artillerymen who were not of our opinion had withdrawn to that portion of the Louvre nearest the Tuileries: there were about a hundred and fifty of them. Unfortunately, or, rather, fortunately, we learned all at once that the cellars where we kept our ammunition were empty. The Governor of the Louvre, foreseeing the events that I have just related, had had it all taken away during the day. We had therefore no means of attack or defence beyond our muskets and six or eight cartridges per man. But these means of defence would seem to have been formidable enough to make them do nothing more than surround us. We spent the night in expectation of being attacked at any moment. Those of us who slept did so with their muskets between their legs. The day broke and found us still ready for action. The situation gradually turned from tragedy to comedy: the bakers, wine-sellers and pork—butchers instantly made their little speculation out of the position of things and assured us we should not have to surrender from famine. We might be compared to a menagerie of wild beasts shut up for the public safety. The resemblance was the more striking when the people began to gaze at us through the barred windows. Amongst those who came were friends who brought us the latest news. Drums were beating in every quarter—though that was not news to us, for we could hear them perfectly well for ourselves—but the drummers did not grow tired.
Up to noon, the situation of the king, politically, was serious; at that hour no decision had been arrived at either for or against him. General La Fayette had, however, published this proclamation—
"Order of the Day, 21 December
"The Commander-in-Chief is unable to find words to express the feelings of his heart in order to show to his brethren in arms of the National Guard and of the line his admiration and his gratitude for the zeal, the steadiness and the devotion they displayed during the painful events of yesterday. He was quite aware that his confidence in their patriotism would be justified on every occasion; but he regrets exceedingly the toils and discomforts to which they are exposed; he would gladly forestall them hut he can only share them. We all of us feel equally the need of protecting the capital against its enemies and against anarchy, of assuring the safety of families and property, of preventing our revolution from being stained by crimes and our honour impugned. We are all as one man jointly and severally answerable for the carrying out of these sacred duties; and, amidst the sorrow which yesterday's disorders and those promised for to-day cause him, the Commander-in-Chief finds great consolation and perfect security in the kindly feelings he bears towards his brave and dear comrades of liberty and public order.
"LA FAYETTE"
At one o'clock we learnt that students, with cards in their hats, and students from the École in uniform were going all over the town together with the National Guards of the 12th legion, urging all to moderation. At the same time, placards, signed by four students (one from each College), were stuck up on all the walls. Here is the literal rendering of one of them—
"Those patriots who have devoted their lives and labours throughout crises of all kinds to the cause of our independence are still in our midst standing steadfast in the path of liberty; they, in common with others, want large concessions on behalf of liberty; but it is not necessary to use force to obtain them. Let us do things lawfully and then—a more Republican basis will be sought for in all our institutions and we shall obtain it; we shall be all the more powerful if we act openly. But if these concessions be not granted, then all patriots and students who side with democratic Principles will call upon the people to insist on gaining their demands. Remember, though, that foreign nations look with admiration upon our Revolution because we have exercised generosity and moderation; let them not say that we are not yet fit to have liberty in our hands, and by no means let them profit by our domestic quarrels, of which they, perhaps, are the authors."
(Then followed the four signatures.)
The parade in the streets of Paris and these placards on every wall about the city had the effect of soothing the public mind. The absence, too, of the artillery, the reason for which they did not know, also contributed to re-establish tranquillity. The king received a deputation from the Colleges with great demonstration of affection, which sent the deputies home delighted, with full assurance that the liberties they longed for were as good as granted. That night the National Guard and troops of the line, who had been surrounding us, fell into rank and took themselves off; and the gates of the Louvre opened behind them. We left the ordinary guard by the cannon and all dispersed to our various homes. Things were settled, at all events, for the time being.
Next day, came an "order of the day" from La Fayette containing a letter from the king. We will put aside the "order of the day" and quote the letter only. We beg our readers to notice the words that are italicised:—
"TUESDAY MORNING,
"22 December"It is to you I address myself, my dear general, to transmit to our brave and indefatigable National Guard the expression of my admiration for the zeal and energy with which it has maintained public order and prevented all trouble. But it is you, especially, that I ought to thank, my dear general, you who have just given a fresh example of courage, patriotism and respect for law, in these days of trial, as you have done many times besides throughout your long and noble career. Express in my name how much I rejoice at having seen the revival of that splendid institution, the National Guard, which had been almost entirely taken away from us, and which has risen up again brilliantly powerful and patriotic, finer and more numerous than it has ever been, as soon as the glorious Days of July broke the trammels by which its enemies flattered themselves they had crushed it. It is this great institution to which we certainly owe the triumph amongst us of the sacred cause of liberty, which both causes our national independence to be respected abroad, whilst preserving the action of laws from all attack at home. Do not let us forget that there is no liberty without law, and that there can be no laws where any power of whatever kind succeeds in paralysing its action and exalting itself beyond the reach of laws.
"These, my dear general, are the sentiments I beg you to express to the National Guard on my behalf. I count on the continuation of its efforts AND ON YOURS, so that nothing may disturb that public peace which Paris and France need greatly, and which it is essential to preserve. Receive, at the same time, my dear general, the assurance of the sincere friendship you know I hold towards you,
LOUIS-PHILIPPE"
As can be seen, on 22 December, the thermometer indicated gratitude.
On the 23rd, upon the suggestion of M. Laffitte, the Chamber of Deputies passed a vote of thanks to the young students, couched in these terms—
"A vote of thanks is given to the students of the College for the loyalty and noble conduct shown by them the day before in maintaining public order and tranquillity."
Unluckily, there was a sentence in M. Laffitte's speech requesting the Chamber to pass this vote of thanks which offended the feelings of the École polytechnique. The phrase was still further emphasised by the remarks he made—
"The three Colleges," the minister said, "which sent deputations to the king displayed very noble sentiments and great courage and entire subjection to law and order, and have given proof of their intentions to make every effort to ensure the maintenance of order."
"On what conditions?" then inquired the deputies, who bore in mind the sentences that we have underlined in the proclamation issued by the Colleges.
"NONE ... NO CONDITIONS WERE MADE AT ALL," M. Laffitte replied. "If there were a few individuals who had proposals to make or conditions to offer, such never came to the knowledge of the Government."
The next day a protest, signed by eighty-nine students of the Polytechnique, replied to the thanks of the Chamber and to M. Laffitte's denial in the following terms:—
"A portion of the Chamber of Deputies has condescended to pass a vote of thanks to the École polytechnique with reference to certain facts that were very accurately reported.
"We, students of the Polytechnique, the undersigned, deny in part these facts and we decline to receive the thanks of the Chamber.
"The students have been traduced, said the protest issued by the School of Law; we have been accused of wishing to place ourselves at the head of malcontent artizans, and of obtaining by brute force the consequences of principles for which we have sacrificed our very blood.
"We have solemnly protested, we who paid cash for the liberty they are now haggling over; we preached public order, without which liberty is impossible; but we did not do so in order to procure the thanks and applause of the Chamber of Deputies. No, indeed! we only fulfilled our duty. Doubtless, we ought to be proud and elated at the gratitude of France, but we look in vain for France in the Chamber of Deputies, and we repudiate the praises offered us, the condition of which is the assumed disavowal of a proclamation, the terms and meaning whereof we unhesitatingly declare that we adopt in the most formal manner."
Of course, the Minister for War at once arrested these eighty-nine students, but their protest had been issued, and the conditions under which they had consented to support the Government were kept to themselves. It will, therefore, be seen that the harmony between His Majesty Louis-Philippe and the students of the three Colleges was not of long duration. It was not to last much longer either between His Majesty and poor General La Fayette, for whom he now had no further use. He had staked his popularity during the troubles in December and had lost. From that time, he was of no more use to the king, and what was the good of being kind to a useless person? Two days after that on which La Fayette received the letter from the king, thanking him for his past services and expressing the hope for the continuance of those services, the Chamber proposed this amendment to Article 64 of the law concerning the National Guard, which the deputies had under discussion—
"As the office of commander-general of the National Guard of the kingdom will cease with the circumstances that rendered the office necessary, that office can never be renewed without the passing of a fresh law, and no one shall be appointed to hold the position without such a special law."
This simply meant the deposition of General La Fayette. The blow was the more perfidious as he was not present at the sitting. His absence is recorded by this passage from the speech which M. Dupin made in support of the amendment—
"I regret that our illustrious colleague is not present at the sitting; he would himself have investigated this question; he would, I have no doubt, have declared, as he did at the Constituent Assembly, that the general command of the regiments of the National Guard throughout the kingdom is an impossible function which he would describe as dangerous."
M. Dupin forgot that the Constituent Assembly, at any rate, had had the modesty to wait until the general sent in his resignation. Now, perhaps it will be said that it was the Chamber which took the initiative, and that the Government had nothing to do with this untoward blow given on the cheek of the living programme going on at the Hôtel de Ville. This would be a mistake. Here is an article of the bill which virtually implied the resignation of La Fayette—
"ARTICLE 50.—In the communes or cantons where the National Guard will form several legions, the king may appoint a superior commander; but a superior commander of the National Guards of a whole department, or even of an arrondissement of a sous-préfecture, cannot be appointed."
The next day after that scandalous debate in the Chamber, General La Fayette wrote this letter to the king, in his own handwriting this time, for I have seen the rough draft—
"SIRE,—The resolution passed yesterday by the Chamber of Deputies with the consent of the king's ministers, for the suppression of the general commandantship of the National Guards at the very same moment that the law is going to be voted upon, expresses exactly the feeling of the two branches of the legislative power, and in particular that of the one of which I have the honour of being a member. I am of opinion that it would be disrespectful if I awaited any formal information before sending in my resignation of the prerogatives entrusted to me by royal command. Your Majesty is aware, and the staff correspondence bill proves the fact, if needful, that the exercise of the office down to the present time has not been such a sinecure as was stated in the Chamber. The king's patriotic solicitude will provide for it, and it will be important, for instance, to set at rest, by Ordinances which the law puts at the king's disposal, the uneasiness that the sub-dividing of the provincial battalions and the fear of seeing the highly valuable institution of the artillery throughout the kingdom confined to garrison or coast towns.
"The President of the Council was so good as to offer to give me the honorary commandership; but he himself and your Majesty will judge that such nominal honours are not becoming to either the institutions of a free country or to myself.
"In respectfully and gratefully handing back to the king the only mandate that gives me any authority over the National Guards, I have taken precautions that the service shall not suffer. General Dumas[1] will take his orders from the Minister of the Interior; General Carbonnel will control the service in the capital until your Majesty has been able to find a substitute, as he, too, wishes to resign.
"I beg your Majesty to receive my cordial and respectful regards,
LA FAYETTE"
Louis Blanc, who is usually well informed, said of General La Fayette that he was a gentleman even in his scorn, and took care not to let the monarch detect in his letter his profound feelings of personal injury.
He would not have said so if he had seen the letter to which he refers, the one, namely, that we have just laid before our readers. But Louis Blanc may be permitted not to know the contents of this letter, which were kept secret, and only communicated to a few of the General's intimate friends. Louis Philippe sent this reply on the same day—
"MY DEAR GENERAL,—I have just received your letter. The decision you have taken has surprised me as much as it has pained me. I HAVE NOT YET HAD TIME TO READ THE PAPERS. The cabinet meets at one o'clock; I shall, therefore, be free between four and five, and I shall hope to see you and to be able to induce you to withdraw your decision. Yours, my dear general, etc.,
LOUIS-PHILIPPE"
We give this letter as a sequel to that of M. Laffitte, and we give them without commentary of our own; but we cannot, however, resist the desire to point out to our readers that King Louis-Philippe must have read the papers in order to know what was going on in the Chamber, and that at noon on 25 December he had not yet done so! How can anyone think after this proof of the king's ignorance of his ministers' doings that he was anything more than constitutional monarch, reigning but not ruling! But let us note one fact, as M. de Talleyrand remarks on the end of the reign of the Bourbon dynasty, that on 25 December 1830 the political career of General La Fayette was over. Another resignation there was at this time which made less stir, but which, as we shall see on 1 January 1831, had somewhat odd consequences for me; it was given in the same day as General La Fayette's and it was that of one of our two captains of the fourth battery.
As soon as this resignation was known, the artillerymen held a special meeting to appoint another captain and, as the majority of the votes were in favour of me, I was elected second captain. Within twenty-four hours my lace, epaulettes and worsted cordings were exchanged for the same in gold. On the 27th, I took command on parade, clad in the insignia of my new office. We shall soon see how long I was to wear them.
[1] Mathieu Dumas.
[CHAPTER VIII]
The Government member—Chodruc-Duclos—His portrait—His life at Bordeaux—His imprisonment at Vincennes—The Mayor of Orgon—Chodruc-Duclos converts himself into a Diogenes—M. Giraud-Savine—Why Nodier was growing old—Stibert—A lesson in shooting—Death of Chodruc-Duclos
Let us bid a truce to politics of which, I daresay, I am quite as tired as is my reader. Let us put on one side those brave deputies of whom Barthélemy makes such a delightful portrait, and return to matters more amusing and creditable. Still, these Memoirs would fail of their end, if, in passing through a period, they did not reveal themselves to the public tinged with the colour of that particular period. So much the worse when that period be dirty; the mud that I have had beneath my feet has never bespattered either my hands or my face. One quickly forgets, and I can hear my reader wondering what that charming portrait is that Barthélemy drew of the deputy. Alas! it is the misfortune of political works; they rarely survive the time of their birth; flowers of stormy seasons, they need, in order to live, the muttering of thunder, the lightning of tempests: they fade when calm is restored; they die when the sun re-appears.
Ah, well! I will take from the middle of La Némésis one of those flowers which seem to be dead; and, as all poetry is immortal, I hold that it was but sleeping and that, by breathing upon it, it will come to life again. Therefore, I shall appeal to the poets of 1830 and 1831 more than once.
LE DÉPUTÉ MINISTÉRIEL
"C'était un citoyen aux manières ouvertes,
Ayant un œil serein sous des lunettes vertes;
Il lisait les journaux à l'heure du courrier;
Et, tous les soirs, au cercle, en jouant cœur ou pique,
Il suspendait le whist avec sa philippique
Contre le système Perrier.
Il avait de beaux plans dont il donnait copie;
C'était, de son aveu, quelque belle utopie,
Pièce de désespoir pour tous nos écrivains;
Baume qui guérirait les blessures des villes,
En nous sauvant la guerre et la liste civiles,
Et l'impôt direct sur les vins.
Il disait: 'En prenant mon heureux antidote,
Notre pays sera comme une table d'hôte
Où l'on ne verra plus, après de longs repas,
Quand les repus du centre ont quitté leurs serviettes,
Les affamés venir pour récolter les miettes,
Que souvent ils ne trouvent pas!'
Les crédules bourgeois, que ce langage tente,
Les rentiers du jury, les hommes à patente,
L'écoutaient en disant: 'Que ce langage est beau!
Voilà bien les discours que prononce un digne homme!
Si pour son député notre ville le nomme,
Il fera pâlir Mirabeau!'
Il fut nommé! Bientôt, de sa ville natale,
Il ne fit qu'un seul bond jusqu'à la capitale,
S'installant en garni dans le quartier du Bac.
On le vit à la chambre assis au côté gauche,
Muet ou ne parlant qu'à son mouchoir de poche,
Constellé de grains de tabac.
Grave comme un tribun de notre République,
Parfois il regardait evec un œil oblique
Ce centre où s'endormaient tant d'hommes accroupis.
Quel déchirant tableau pour son cœur patriote!
En longs trépignements les talons de sa botte
Fanaient les roses du tapis.
Lorsque Girod (de l'Ain), qui si mal les préside,
Disait: 'Ceux qui voudront refuser le subside
Se lèveront debout': le tribun impoli,
Foudroyant du regard le ministre vorace,
Bondissait tout d'un bloc sur le banc de sa place
Comme une bombe à Tivoli.
Quand il était assis, c'était Caton en buste;
Le peuple s'appuyait sur ce torse robuste;
De tous les rangs du cintre on aimait à le voir ...
Qui donc a ramolli ce marbre de Carrare?
Quel acide a dissous cette perle si rare
Dans la patère du pouvoir?
Peut-être avez-vous vu, dans le cirque hippodrome,
Martin, l'imitateur de l'Androclès de Rome,
Entre ses deux lions s'avancer triomphant;
Son œil fascinateur domptait les bêtes fauves;
Il entrait, sans pâlir, dans leurs sombres alcôves,
Comme dans un berceau d'enfant.
Aujourd'hui, nous avons la clef de ces mystères.
Il se glissait, la nuit, au chevet des panthères;
Sous le linceul du tigre il étendait la main;
Il trompait leur instinct dans la nocturne scène,
Et l'animal, sans force, à ce jongleur obscène
Obéissait le lendemain!
Voilà par quels moyens l'Onan du ministère
Énerve de sa main l'homme le plus austère,
Du tribun le plus chaste assouplit la vertu;
Il vient à lui, les mains pleines de dons infâmes;
'Que veux-tu? lui dit-il; j'ai de l'or, j'ai des femmes,
Des croix, des honneurs! que veux-tu?'
Eh! qui résisterait à ces dons magnifiques?
Hélas! les députés sont des gens prolifiques;
Ils ont des fils nombreux, tous visant aux emplois,
Tous rêvant, jour et nuit, un avenir prospère,
Tous, par chaque courrier, répétant: 'O mon père!
Placez-nous en faisant des lois!'
Et le bon père, ému par ces chaudes missives,
Dépose sur son banc les armes offensives,
Se rapproche du centre, et renonce au combat.
Oh! pour faire au budget une constante guerre,
Il faudrait n'avoir point de parents sur la terre,
Et vivre dans le célibat!
Ou bien, pour résister à ce coupable leurre,
Il faut aller, le soir, où va Dupont (de l'Eure),
Près de lui retremper sa vertu de tribun;
Là veille encor pour nous une pure phalange,
Cénacle politique où personne ne mange
Au budget des deux cent vingt-un!"
This cénacle referred to our evenings at La Fayette's. Since his resignation, the general was to be found amidst his young, warm, and true friends the Republicans, and, more than once, as said Barthélemy, our callow wrath invigorated the patriotism of the two old men.
Another man received his dismissal at the same time as La Fayette: this was Chodruc-Duclos, the Diogenes of the Palais-Royal, the long-bearded man of whom we have promised to say a few words.
One morning, the frequenters of those stone galleries were amazed to see Chodruc-Duclos go by, clad in shoes and stockings, in a coat only a very little worn and an almost new hat! We will borrow the portrait of Chodruc-Duclos from Barthélemy; and complete it by a few anecdotes, gleaned from personal experience, and by others which we believe are new. When the poet has described all those starving people who swarm round the cellars of Véfour and of the Frères-Provençaux, he proceeds to the king of the beggars—Chodruc-Duclos. These are Barthélemy's lines; they depict the man with that happy touch and that faithfulness of description which are such characteristic features of the talented author of La Némésis—
"Mais, autant qu'un ormeau s'élève sur l'arbuste,
Autant que Cornuet domine l'homme-buste,[1]
Sur cette obscure plèbe errante dans l'enclos,
Autant plane et surgit l'héroïque Duclos.
Dans cet étroit royaume où le destin les parque,
Les terrestres damnés l'ont élu pour monarque:
C'est l'archange déchu, le Satan bordelais,
Le Juif-Errant chrétien, le Melmoth du palais.
Jamais l'ermite Paul, le virginal Macaire,
Marabout, talapoin, faquir, santon du Caire,
Brahme, Guèbre, Parsis adorateur du feu,
N'accomplit sur la terre un plus terrible vœu!
Depuis sept ans entiers, de colonne en colonne,
Comme un soleil éteint ce spectre tourbillonne;
Depuis le dernier soir que l'acier le rasa,
Il a vu trois Véfour et quatre Corazza;
Sous ses orteils, chaussés d'eternelles sandales,
Il a du long portique usé toutes les dalles;
Être mystérieux qui, d'un coup d'œil glaçant,
Déconcerte le rire aux lèvres du passant,
Sur tant d'infortunés, in fortune célèbre!
Des calculs du malheur c'est la vivante algèbre.
De l'angle de Terris jusqu'à Berthellemot,
Il fait tourner sans fin son énigme sans mot.
Est-il un point d'arrêt à cette ellipse immense?
Est-ce dédain sublime, ou sagesse, ou démence?
Qui sait? Il vent peut-être, au bout de son chemin,
Par un enseignement frapper le genre humain;
Peut-être, pour fournir un dernier épisode,
Il attend que Rothschild, son terrestre antipode,
Un jour, dans le palais, l'aborde sans effroi,
En lui disant: 'Je suis plus malheureux que toi!'"
We will endeavour to be the Œdipus to that Sphinx, and guess the riddle, the mystery whereof was hidden for a long time.
Chodruc-Duclos was born at Sainte-Foy, near Bordeaux. He would be about forty-eight when the Revolution of July took place; he was tall and strong and splendidly built; his beard hid features that must have been of singular beauty; but he used ostentatiously to display his hands, which were always very clean. By right of courage, if not of skill, he was looked upon as the principal star of that Pleiades of duellists which flourished at Bordeaux, during the Empire, under the title of les Crânes (Skulls). They were all Royalists. MM. Lercaro, Latapie and de Peyronnet were said to be Duclos' most intimate friends. These men were also possessed of another notable characteristic: they never fought amongst themselves. Duclos was suspected of carrying on relations with Louis XVIII. in the very zenith of the Empire, and was arrested one morning in his bed by the Chief of the Police, Pierre-Pierre. He was taken to Vincennes, where he was kept a prisoner until 1814. Set free by the Restoration, he entered Bordeaux in triumph, and as, during his captivity, he had come into a small fortune, he resumed his old habits and interlarded them with fresh diversions. The Royalist government, which recompensed all its devoted adherents (a virtue that was attributed to it as a crime), would, no doubt, have been pleased to reward Duclos for his loyalty, but it was very difficult to find a suitable way of doing so, for he had the incurable habits of a peripatetic: he was only accustomed to a nomadic life of fencing, political intrigue, theatre-going, women and literature. King Louis XVIII., therefore, could not entrust him with any other public function than that of an everlasting walker, or, as Barthélemy dubbed it, "Chrétien errant."
Unfortunately, money, however considerable its quantity, comes to an end some time. When Duclos had exhausted his patrimony, he recollected his past services for the Bourbon cause and came to Paris to remind them. But he had remembered too late and had given the Bourbons time to forget. The business of soliciting for favours, at all events, exercised his locomotive faculties to the best possible advantage. So, every morning, two melancholy looking pleaders could be seen to cross the Pont Royal, like two shades crossing the river Styx, on their way to beg a good place in the Elysian fields from the minister of Pluto. One was Duclos, the other the Mayor of Orgon. What had the latter done? He had thrown the first stone into the emperor's carriage in 1814, and had come to Paris, stone in hand, to demand his reward. After years of soliciting, these two faithful applicants, seeing that nothing was to be obtained, each arrived at a different conclusion. The Mayor of Orgon, completely ruined, tied his stone round his own neck and threw himself into the Seine. Duclos, much more philosophically inclined, decided upon living, and, in order to humiliate the Government to which he had sacrificed three years of his liberty, and M. de Peyronnet, with whom he had had many bouts by the banks of the Garonne, bought old clothes, as he had not the patience to wait till his new ones grew old, bashed in the top of his hat, gave up shaving himself, tied sandals over his old shoes, and began that everlasting promenade up and down the arcades of the Palais-Royal which exercised the wisdom of all the Œdipuses of his time. Duclos never left the Palais-Royal until one in the morning, when he went to the rue du Pélican, where he lodged, to sleep, not exactly in furnished apartments, but, more correctly speaking, in unfurnished ones. In the course of his promenading, which lasted probably a dozen years, Duclos (with only three exceptions, which we are about to quote, one of them being made in our own favour) never went up to anyone to speak to him, no matter who he was. Like Socrates, he communed alone with his own familiar spirit; no tragic hero ever attempted such a complete monologue!—One day, however, he departed from his habits, and walked straight towards one of his old friends, M. Giraud-Savine, a witty and learned man, as we shall find out later, who afterwards became deputy to the Mayor of Batignolles. M. Giraud's heart stood still with fright for an instant, for he thought he was going to be robbed of his purse; but he was wrong: for Duclos never borrowed anything.
"Giraud," he asked in a deep bass voice, "which is the best translation of Tacitus?"
"There isn't one!" replied M. Giraud.
Duclos shook his treasured rags in sad dejection, then returned, like Diogenes, to his tub. Only, his tub happened to be the Palais-Royal.
On another occasion, whilst I was chatting with Nodier, opposite the door of the café de Foy, Duclos passed and stared attentively at Nodier. Nodier, who knew him, thought he must want to speak to him, and took a step towards him. But Duclos shook his head and went on his way without saying anything. Nodier then gave me various details of the life of this odd being; after which we separated. During our talk, Duclos had had time to make the round of the Palais-Royal; so, going back by the Théâtre-Français, I met him very nearly opposite the café Corazza. He stopped right in front of me.
"Monsieur Dumas," he said to me, "Do you know Nodier?"
"Very well."
"Do you like him?"
"With all my heart I do."
"Do you not think he grows old very fast?"
"I must confess I agree with you that he does."
"Do you know why?"
"No."
"Well, I will tell you: Because he does not take care of himself! Nothing ages a man more quickly than neglecting his health!"
He continued his walk and left me quite stunned; not by his observation, sagacious as it was; but by the thought that it was Chodruc-Duclos who had made it.
The Revolution of July 1830 had, for the moment, interrupted the inveterate habits of two men—Stibert and Chodruc-Duclos.
Stibert was as confirmed a gambler as Duclos was an indefatigable walker. Frascati's, where Stibert spent his days and nights, was closed; the Ordinances had suspended the game of trente-et-un, until the monarchy of July should suppress it altogether. Stibert had not patience to wait till the Tuileries was taken: on 28 July, at three in the afternoon, he compelled the concierge at Frascati's to open its doors to him and to play picquet with him. Duclos, for his part, coming from his rooms to go to his beloved Palais-Royal, found the Swiss defending the approaches to it. Some youths had begun a struggle with them, and one of them, armed with a regulation rifle, was firing on the red-coats with more courage than skill. Duclos watched him and then, growing impatient that anyone should risk his life thus wantonly, he said to the youth—
"Hand me your rifle. I will show you how to use it."
The young fellow lent it him and Duclos took aim.
"Look!" he said; and down dropped a Swiss.
Duclos returned the youth his rifle.
"Oh," said the latter, "upon my word! if you can use it to such good purpose as that, stick to it!"
"Thanks!" replied Duclos, "I am not of that opinion," and, putting the rifle into the youth's hands, he crossed right through the very centre of the firing and re-entered the Palais-Royal, where he resumed his accustomed walk past the bronze Apollo and marble Ulysses, the only society he had the chance of meeting during the 27, 28 and 29 July. This was the third and last time upon which he opened his mouth. Duclos, engrossed as he was with his everlasting walk, would, doubtless, never have found a moment in which to die; only one morning he forgot to wake up. The inhabitants of the Palais-Royal, astonished at having been a whole day without meeting the man with the long beard, learnt, on the following day, from the Cornuet papers, that Chodruc-Duclos had fallen into the sleep that knows no waking, upon his pallet bed in the rue du Pélican.
For three or four years, Duclos, as we have said, had clad himself in garments more like those of ordinary people. The Revolution of July, which exiled the Bourbons, and the trial of the ex-ministers, which ostracised M. de Peyronnet to Ham, removed every reason for his ragged condition, and set a limit to his revenge. In spite of, perhaps even on account of, this change of his outward appearance, Duclos, like Epaminondas, left nothing wherewith to pay for his funeral. The Palais-Royal buried him by public subscription.
General La Fayette resigned his position, and Chodruc-Duclos his revenge. A third notability resigned his life; namely, Alphonse Rabbe, whom we have already briefly mentioned, and who deserves that we should dedicate a special chapter to him.
[1] Cornuet occupied one of those literary pavilions which were erected at each end of the garden of the Palais-Royal; the other was occupied by a dwarf who was all body and seemed to crawl on almost invisible legs.
[CHAPTER IX]
Alphonse Rabbe—Madame Cardinal—Rabbe and the Marseilles Academy—Les Massénaires—Rabbe in Spain—His return—The Old Dagger—The Journal Le Phocéen—Rabbe in prison—The writer of fables—Ma pipe
Alphonse Rabbe was born at Riez, in the Basses-Alpes. As is the case with all deep and tender-hearted people, he was greatly attached to his own country; he talked of it on every opportunity, and, to believe him, its ancient Roman remains were as remarkable as those of Arles or Nîmes. Rabbe was one of the most extraordinary men of our time; and, had he lived, he would, assuredly, have become one of the most remarkable. Alas! who remembers anything about him now, except Méry, Hugo and myself? As a matter of fact, poor Rabbe gave so many fragments of his life to others that he had not time, during his thirty-nine years, to write one of those books which survive their authors; he whose words, had they been taken down in shorthand, would have made a complete library; he who brought into the literary and political world, Thiers, Mignet, Armaud Carrel, Méry and many others, who are unaware of it, has disappeared from this double world, without leaving any trace beyond two volumes of fragments, which were published by subscription after his death, with an admirable preface in verse by Victor Hugo. Furthermore, in order to quote some portions of these fragments that I had heard read by poor Rabbe himself, compared with whom I was quite an unknown boy (I had only written Henri III. when he died), I wanted to procure those two volumes: I might as well have set to work to find Solomon's ring! But I found them at last, where one finds everything, in the rue des Cannettes, in Madame Cardinal's second-hand bookshop. The two volumes had lain there since 1835; they were on her shelves, in her catalogue, had been on show in the window! but they were not even cut! and I was the first to insert an ivory paper-knife between their virgin pages, after eighteen years waiting! Unfortunate Rabbe; this was the last touch to your customary ill-luck! Fate seemed ever against him; all his life long he was looking for a revolution. He would have been as great as Catiline or Danton at such a crisis. When 1830 dawned, he had been dead for twenty-four hours! When Rabbe was eighteen, he competed for an academic prize. The subject was a eulogy of Puget. A noble speech, full of new ideas, a glowing style of southern eloquence, were quite sufficient reasons to prevent Rabbe being successful, or from even receiving honourable mention; but, in this failure, his friends could discern the elements of Rabbe's future brilliancy, should Fortune's wheel turn in his favour. Alas! fortune was academic in Rabbe's case, and Rabbe had Orestes for his patron.
Gifted with a temperament that was carried away by the passion of the moment, Rabbe took it into his head to become the enemy of Masséna in 1815. Why? No one ever really knew, not even Rabbe! He then published his Massénaires, written in a kind of prose iambics, in red-hot zeal. This brochure set him in the ranks of the Royalist party. A fortnight later, he became reconciled with the conqueror of Zurich, and he set out on a mission to Spain. From thence dated all poor Rabbe's misfortunes; it was in Spain that he was attacked by a disease which had the sad defect of not being fatal. What was this scourge, this plague, this contagious disease? He shall tell us in his own words; we will not deprive him of his right to give the particulars himself—
"Alas! O my mother, thou couldst not make me invulnerable when thou didst bear me, by dipping me in the icy waters of the Styx! Carried away by a fiery imagination and imperious desires, I wasted the treasures and incense of my youth upon the altars of criminal voluptuousness; pleasure, which should be the parent of and not the destroyer of human beings, devoured the first springs of my youth. When I look at myself, I shudder! Is that image really myself? What hand has seared my face with those hideous signs?... What has become of that forehead which displayed the candour of my once pure spirit? of those bleared eyes, which terrify, which once expressed the desires of a heart that was full of hope and without a single regret, and whose voluptuous yet serious thoughts were still free from shameful trammels? A kindly tolerant smile ever lighted them up when they fell on one of my fellows; but, now, my bold and sadly savage looks say to all: 'I have lived and suffered; I have known your ways and long for death!' What has become of those almost charming features which once graced my face with their harmonious lines? That expression of happy good nature, which once gave pleasure and won me love and kindly hearts, is now no longer visible! All has perished in degradation! God and nature are avenged! When, hereafter, I shall experience an affectionate impulse, the expression of my features will betray my soul; and when I go near beauty and innocence, they will fly from me! What inexpressible tortures! What frightful punishment! Henceforth, I must find all my virtues in the remorse that consumes my life; I must purify myself in the unquenchable fires of never-dying sorrow; and ascend to the dignity of my being by means of profound and poignant regret for having sullied my soul. When I shall have earned rest by my sufferings, my youth will have gone.... But there is another life and, when I cross its threshold, I shall be re-clothed in the robe of immortal youth!"
Take notice, reader, that, before that unfortunate journey to Spain, Alphonse Rabbe was never spoken of otherwise than as the Antinous of Aix. An incurable melancholy took possession of him from this period.
"I have outlived myself!" he said, shaking his head sadly. Only his beautiful hair remained of his former self. Accursed be the invention of looking-glasses! By thirty, he had already stopped short of two attempts at suicide. But his hands were not steady enough and the dagger missed his heart. We have all seen that dagger to which Rabbe offered a kind of worship, as the last friend to whom he looked for the supreme service. He has immortalised this dagger. Read this and tell me if ever a more virile style sprung from a human pen—
THE OLD DAGGER
"Thou earnest out of the tomb of a warrior, whose fate is unknown to us; thou wast alone, and without companion of thy kind, hung on the walls of the wretched haunt of a dealer in pictures, when thy shape and appearance struck my attention. I felt the formidable temper of thy blade; I guessed the fierceness of thy point through the sheath of thick rust which covered thee completely. I hastened to bargain so as to have thee in my power; the low-born dealer, who only saw in thee a worthless bit of iron, will give thee up, almost for nothing, to my jealous eagerness. I will carry thee off secretly, pressed against my heart; an extraordinary emotion, mingled with joy, rage and confidence, shook my whole being. I feel the same shuddering every time I seize hold of thee.... Ancient dagger! We will never leave one another more!
"I have rid thee of that injurious rust, which, even after that long interval of time, has not altered thy form. Here, thou art restored to the glories of the light; thou flashest as thou comest forth from that deep darkness. I did not imprudently entrust thee to a mercenary workman to repair the injustice of those years: I myself, for two days, carefully worked to repolish thee; it is I who preserved thee from the injurious danger of being at the first moment confused with worthless old iron, from the disgrace, perhaps, of going to an obscure forge, to be transformed into a nail to shoe the mule of an iniquitous Jesuit.
"What is the reason that thy aspect quickens the flow of my blood, in spite of myself?... Shall I not succeed in understanding thy story? To what century dost thou belong? What is the name of the warrior whom thou followedst to his last resting-place? What is the terrible blow which bent thee slightly?...
"I have left thee that mark of thy good services: to efface that imperceptible curve which made thy edge uneven, thou wouldst have had to be submitted to the action of fire; but who knows but that thou mightst have lost thy virtue? Who, then, would have given me back the secret of that blade, strong and obedient to that which the breastplate did not always withstand, when the blow was dealt with a valiant arm?
"Was it in the blood of a newly killed bull that thy point was buried on first coming out of the fire? Was it in the cold air of a narrow gorge of mountains? Was it in the syrup prepared from certain herbs or, perhaps, in holy oil? None of our best craftsmen, not Bromstein himself, could tell.
"Tell me whom thou hast comforted and whom punished? Hast thou avenged the outlaw for the judicial murder of his father? Hast thou, during the night, engraved on some granite columns the sentence of those who passed sentence? Thou canst only have obeyed powerful and just passions; the intrepid man who wanted to carry thee away with him to his last resting-place had baptized thee in the blood of a feudal oppressor.
"Thou art pure steel; thy shape is bold, but without studied grace; thou wast not, indeed, frivolously wrought to adorn the girdle of a foppish carpet-knight of the court of Francis I., or of Charles-Quint; thou art not of sufficient beauty to have been thus commonplace; the filigree-work which ornaments thy hilt is only of red copper, that brilliant shade of red which colours the summit of the Mont de la Victoire on long May evenings.
"What does this broad furrow mean which, a quarter of the length down thy blade to the hilt, is pierced with a score of tiny holes like so many loop-holes? Doubtless they were made so that the blood could drip through, which shoots and gushes along the blade in smoking bubbles when the blow has gone home. Oh! if I shed some evil blood I too should wish it to drain off and not to soil my hands.... If it were the blood of a powerful enemy to one's country, little would it matter if it was left all blood smeared; I should have settled my accounts with this wretched world beforehand, and then thou wouldst not fail me at need; thou wouldst do me the same service as thou renderest formerly to him whose bones the tomb received along with thee.
"In storms of public misfortunes, or in crises of personal adversity, the tomb is often the only refuge for noble hearts; it, at any rate, is impregnable and quiet: there one can brave accusers and the instruments of despotism, who are as vile as the accusers themselves!
"Open the gates of eternity to me, I implore thee! Since it needs must be, we will go together, my old dagger, thou and I, as with a new friend. Do not fail me when my soul shall ask transit of thee; afford to my hand that virile self-reliance which a strong man has in himself; snatch me from the outrages of petty persecutors and from the slow torture of the unknown!"
Although this dagger was treasured by the unhappy Rabbe, as we have mentioned, it was not by its means that the accursed one, as he called himself, was to put an end to his miseries. Rabbe was only thirty and had strength enough in him yet to go on living.
So, in despair, he dragged out his posthumous existence and flung himself into the political arena, as a gladiator takes comfort to himself by showing himself off between two tigers.
1821 began; the death of the Duc de Berry served as an excuse for many reactionary laws; Alphonse Rabbe now found his golden hour; he came to Marseilles and started Le Phocéen, in a countryside that was a very volcano of Royalism. Would you hear how he addresses those in power? Then listen. Hear how he addressed men of influence—
"Oligarchies are fighting for the rays of liberty across the dead body of an unfortunate prince.... O Liberty! mark with thy powerful inspirations those hours of the night which William Tell and his friends used to spend in striking blows to redress wrongs!..."
When liberty is invoked in such terms she rarely answers to the call. One morning, someone knocked at Rabbe's door; he went to open it, and two policemen stood there who asked him to accompany them to the prison. When Rabbe was arrested, all Marseilles rose up in a violent Royalist explosion against him. An author who had written a couple of volumes of fables took upon himself to support the Bourbon cause in one of the papers. Rabbe read the article and replied—
"Monsieur, in one of your apologues you compare yourself to a sheep; well and good. Then, monsieur le mouton, go on, cropping your tender grass and stop biting other things!"
The writer of fables paid a polite call upon Rabbe; they shook hands and all was forgotten.
However, the Phocéen had been suspended the very day its chief editor was arrested. Rabbe was set free after a narrow escape of being assassinated by those terrible Marseillais Royalists who, during the early years of the Restoration, left behind them such wide traces of bloodshed. He went to Paris, where his two friends, Thiers and Mignet, had already won a high position in the hôtels of Laffite and of Talleyrand. If Rabbe had preserved the features of Apollo and the form of Antinous, he would have won all Parisian society by his charm of manner and his delightful winning mental attainments; but his mirror condemned him to seclusion more than ever. His sole, his only, friend was his pipe; Rabbe smoked incessantly. We have read the magnificent prose ode he addressed to his dagger; let us see how, in another style, he spoke to his pipe, or, rather, of his pipe.
MA PIPE
"Young man, light my pipe; light it and give it to me, so that I can chase away a little of the weariness of living, and give myself up to forgetfulness of everything, whilst this imbecile people, eager after gross emotions, hastens its steps towards the pompous ceremony of the Sacred-Heart in opulent and superstitious Marseilles.
"I myself hate the multitude and its stupid excitement; I hate these fairs either sacred or profane, these festivals with all their cheating games, at the cost of which an unlucky people consents readily to forget the ills which overwhelm it; I hate these signs of servile respect which the duped crowd lavishes on those who deceive and oppress it; I hate that worship of error which absolves crime, afflicts innocence and drives the fanatic to murder by its inhuman doctrines of exclusiveness!
"Let us forgive the dupes! All those who go to these festivals are promised pleasure. Unfortunate human beings! We pursue this alluring phantom along all kinds of roads. To be elsewhere than one is, to change place and affections, to leave the supportable for worse, to go after novelty upon novelty, to obtain one more sensation, to grow old, burdened with unsatisfied desires, to die finally without having lived, such is our destiny!
"What do I myself look for at the bottom of thy little bowl, O my pipe! Like an alchemist, I am searching how to transmute the woes of the present into fleeting delights; I inhale thy smoke with hurried draughts in order to carry happy confusion to my brain, a quick delirium, that is preferable to cold reflection; I seek for sweet oblivion from what is, for the dream of what is not, and even for that which cannot be.
"Thou makest me pay dear for thy easy consolations; the brain is possibly consumed and weakened by the daily repetition of these disordered emotions. Thought becomes idle, and the imagination runs riot from the habit of depicting such wandering agreeable fictions.
"The pipe is the touch-stone of the nerves, the true dynamometer of slender tissues. Young people who conceal a delicate and feminine organisation beneath a man's clothing do not smoke, for they dread cruel convulsions, and, what would be still more cruel, the loss of the favours of Venus. Smoke, on the contrary, unhappy lovers, ardent and restless spirits tormented with the weight of your thoughts.
"The savants of Germany keep a pipe on their desks; it is through the waves of tobacco smoke that they search after truths of the intellectual and the spiritual order. That is why their works, always a little nebulous, exceed the reach of our French philosophers, whom fashion, and the salons, compel to inhale more urbane and gracious perfumes.
"When Karl Sand, the delegate of the Muses of Erlangen, came to Kotzebue's house, the old man, before joining him, had him presented with coffee and a pipe. This token of touching hospitality did not in the least disarm the dauntless young man: a tear moistened his eyelid; but he persisted. Why? He sacrificed himself for liberty!
"The unhappy man works during the day; and, at night, his bread earned, with arms folded, before his tumble-down doorway, with the smoke of his pipe he drives away the few remaining thoughts that the repose of his limbs may leave him.
"O my pipe! what good things I owe to thee! If an importunate person, a foolish talker, a despicable fanatic, comes and addresses me, I quickly draw a cigar from my case and begin to smoke, and, henceforth, if I am condemned to the affliction of listening, I at least escape the penalty of replying to him. At intervals, a bitter smile compresses my lips, and the fool flatters himself that I approve him! He attributes to the effect of the rash cigar the equivocal heed I pay to his babble.... He redoubles his loquacity; but, stifled by his impertinence, I suddenly emit the clouds of thick smoke which I have collected in my mouth, like the scorn within my breast.
"I exhale both at once, burning vapour and repressed indignation. Oh! how nauseating is the idiocy of others to him who is already out of love with, and wearied of, his own burdens!... I smother him with smoke! If only I could asphyxiate the fool with the lava from my tiny volcano!
"But when a friend who is lovable alike in mind and heart comes to me, the pleasure of the pipe quickens the happiness of the meeting. After the first talk, which rapidly flows along, whilst the lighted punch scatters the spirituous particles which abound in the sparkling flame of the liqueur, the glasses clink together: Friend, from this day and for a year hence, let us drain the brotherly cup under the happiest auspices!
"Then we light two cigars, just alike; incited by my friend to talk on a thousand different topics, I often let mine go out, and he gives me a light again from his own.... I am like an old husband who relights a score of times from the lips of a young beauty the flame of his passion, as impotent as many times over. O my friend! when, then, will happier days shine forth?
"Tell me, my friend, in those parts from whence thou comest, are men filled with hope and courage? Do they keep constant and faithful to the worship of our great goddess, Liberty? ... Tell me, if thou knowest, how long we must still chafe at the humiliating bit which condemns us to silence?...
"How it hinders me from flinging down my part of servitude! How it delays me from seeing the vain titles of tyranny, which oppress us, reduced to powder; from seeing the ashes of a dishonoured diadem scattered at the breath of patriots as the ashes of my pipe are scattered by mine! My soul is weary of waiting, friend; I warn thee, and with horror I meditate upon the doings of such sad waywardness. See how this people, roused wholly by the infamous sect of Loyola, rushes to fling itself before their strange processions! Young and old, men and women, all hasten to receive their hypocritical and futile benedictions! The fools! if the plague passed under a canopy they would run to see it pass by and kneel before it! Tell me, friend, is such a people fit for liberty? Is it not rather condemned to grow old and still be kept in the infantine swaddling clothes of a two-fold bondage?
"Men are still but children. Nevertheless, the human race increases and goes on progressing continually, and meanwhile stretches its bonds till they break. The time draws near when it will no longer listen to the lame man who calls upon it to stop, when it will no longer ask its way of the blind. May the world become enlightened! God desires it!... And we, my friend, we will smoke whilst we watch for the coming dawn. Happily, friend, liberty has her secrets, her resources. This people, which seems to us for ever brutalised, is, however, educating itself and every day becomes more enlightened! Friend, we will forgive the slaves for running after distractions; we will bear with the immodest mother who prides herself that her daughters will pass for virgins when they have been blessed. We will not be surprised that old scoundrels hope to sweat out the seeds of their crimes, exhausting themselves to carry despicable images.
"O my pipe! every day do I owe thee that expressive emblem of humility which religion only places once a year on the brow of the adoring Christian: Man is but dust and ashes.... That, in fact, is all which remains at the last of the tenderest or most magnanimous heart, of hearts over-intoxicated with joy or pride, or those consumed with the bitterest pains.
"These small remnants of men, these ashes, the lightest zephyr scatter into the empty air.... Where, then, is the dust of Alexander, where the ashes of Gengis? They are nothing more than vain historic phantoms; those great subduers of nations, those terrible oppressors of men, what are they but fine-sounding names, objects of vain enthusiasm or of useless malediction!
"I, too, shall soon perish; all that makes up my being, my very name, will disappear like light smoke.... In a few days' time, perhaps at the very spot where I now write, it will not even be known that I have ever existed.... Now, does something imperishable breathe forth and rise up on high from this perishable body? Does there dwell in man one spark worthy to light the calumet of the angels upon the pavements of the heavens?... O my pipe! chase away, banish this ambitious and baneful desire after the unknown and the impenetrable!"
We may be mistaken, but it seems to us that one would search in vain for anything more melancholy in Werther or more bitter in Don Juan, than the pages we have just read.
[CHAPTER X]
Rabbe's friends—La Sœur grise—The historical résumés—M. Brézé's advice—An imaginative man—Berruyer's style—Rabbe with his hairdresser, his concierge and confectioner—La Sœur grise stolen—Le Centaure.
Alphonse Rabbe's most assiduous disciples were Thiers and Mignet;[1] they came to see him most days and treated him with the respect of pupils towards their master. But Rabbe was independent to the verge of intractability; and always ready to rear even under the hand that caressed him. Now, Rabbe discerned that these two writers were already on the way to become historians, had no desire to make a third in a trio with them and resolved to be more true to life than the historians and to write a novel. Walter Scott was then all the rage in London and Paris.
Rabbe seized paper and pen and wrote the title of his novel on the first leaf, La Sœur grise. Then he stopped, and I dare go so far even as to say that this first page was never turned over. True, what Rabbe did in imagination was much more real to him than what he actually did.
Félix Bodin had just begun to inaugurate the era of Résumés historiques; the publishers, Lecointe and Roret, went about asking for summaries from anyone at all approaching an author; résumés showered in like hail; the very humblest scholar felt himself bound to send in his résumé.
There was a regular scourge of them; even the most harmless of persons were attacked with the disease. Rabbe eclipses all those obscure writers at abound; he published, successively, résumés of the history of Spain, of Portugal and of Russia; all extending to several editions. These three volumes showed admirable talent for the writing of history, and their only defect was the commonplace title under which they were published.
"What are you working at?" Thiers often asked Alphonse Rabbe, as they saw the reams of paper he was using up.
"I am at work on my Sœur grise," he replied.
In the summer of 1824, Mignet made a journey to Marseilles where, before all his friends, he spread the praises of Rabbe's forthcoming novel, La Sœur grise, which Mignet believed to be nearly completed. Besides these fine books of history, Alphonse Rabbe wrote excellent articles in the Courrier-Français on the Fine Arts. On this subject, he was not only a great master but, in addition, a great critic. He was possibly slightly unfair to Vaudeville drama and a little severe on its exponents; he carried this injustice almost to the point of hatred. A droll adventure arose out of his dislike. A compatriot of Rabbe, a Marseillais named M. Brézé (you see we sometimes put Monsieur) was possessed by an ardent desire for giving Rabbe advice. (Let us here insert, parenthetically, the observation that the Marseillais are born advisers, specially when their advice is unsolicited.)
Well, M. Brézé had given endless advice to Rabbe while he was still at Marseilles, advice which we can easily guess he took good care not to follow. M. Brézé came to Paris and met Barthélemy, the poet, at the Palais-Royal. The two compatriots entered into conversation with one another—
"What is Rabbe doing?" asked M. Brézé.
"Résumés."
"Ah! so Rabbe is doing résumés?" repeated M. Brézé. "Hang it all!"
"Quite so."
"What are these résumés?"
"The quintessence of history compressed into small volumes instead of being spun out into large ones."
"How many such résumés does he do in the year?"
"Perhaps one and a half or two at the most."
"And how much does a résumé bring in?"
"I believe twelve hundred francs."
"So, if Rabbe works all the year and has only done one résumé and a half, he has earned eighteen hundred francs?"
"Eighteen hundred francs, yes! by Jove!"
"Hum!"
And M. Brézé began to reflect. Then, suddenly, he asked—"Do you think Rabbe is as clever as M. Scribe?"
The question was so unlooked for and, above all, so inappropriate, that Barthélemy began to laugh.
"Why, yes," he said; "only it is cleverness of a different order." "Oh! that does not matter!"
"Why does it not matter?"
"If he has as much talent as M. Scribe it is all that is necessary."
Again he fell into reflection; then, after a pause he said to Barthélemy—
"Is it true that M. Scribe earns a hundred thousand francs a year?"
"People say so," replied Barthélemy.
"Well, then," said M. Brézé, "in that case I must offer Rabbe some advice."
"You?"
"Yes, I."
"You are quite capable of doing so—what will it be?"
"I must tell him to leave off writing his résumés and take to writing vaudevilles."
The advice struck Barthélemy as a magnificent joke.
"Say that again," he said to M. Brézé.
"I must advise Rabbe to leave off writing his résumés and take to writing vaudevilles."
"My goodness!" exclaimed Barthélemy, "do offer him that advice, Monsieur Brézé."
"I will."
"When?"
"The first time I see him."
"You promise me you will?"
"On my word of honour."
"Whatever you do don't forget!"
"Make your mind quite easy."
Barthélemy and M. Brézé shook hands and separated. M. Brézé very much delighted with himself for having conceived such a splendid idea; Barthélemy with only one regret, that he could not be at hand when he put his idea into execution.
As a matter of fact, M. Brézé met Rabbe one day, upon the Pont des Arts. Rabbe was then deep in Russian history: he was as pre-occupied as Tacitus.
"Oh! I am pleased to see you, my dear Rabbe!" said M. Brézé, as he came up to him.
"And I to see you," said Rabbe.
"I have been looking for you for the past week."
"Indeed."
"Upon my word, I have!"
"What for?"
"My dear Rabbe, you know how attached I am to you?"
"Why, yes!"
"Well, then, in your own interest ... you understand? In your interest ..."
"Certainly, I understand."
"Well, I have a piece of advice to offer you."
"To offer me?"
"Yes, you."
"Give it me, then," said Rabbe, looking at Brézé over his spectacles, as he was in the habit of doing, when he felt great surprise or people began to bore him.
"Believe me, I speak as a friend."
"I do not doubt it; but what is the advice?"
"Rabbe, my friend, instead of making résumés, write vaudevilles!"
A deep growl sounded from the historian's breast. He seized the offerer of advice by the arm, and in an awful voice he said to him—
"Monsieur, one of my enemies must have sent you to insult me."
"One of your enemies?"
"It was Latouche!"
"Why, no ..."
"Then it was Santo-Domingo!"
"No."
"Or Loëve-Weymars!"
"I swear to you it was none of them."
"Tell me the name of the insulting fellow."
"Rabbe! my dear Rabbe!"
"Give me his name, monsieur, or I will take you by the heels and pitch you into the Seine, as Hercules threw Pirithous into the sea."
Then, perceiving that he had got mixed in his quotation—
"Pirithous or some other, it is all the same!"
"But I take my oath ..."
"Then it is you yourself?" exclaimed Rabbe, before Brézé had time to finish his sentence. "Well, monsieur, you shall account to me for this insult!"
At this proposition, Brézé gave such a jump that he tore himself from the pincer-like grip that held him and ran to put himself under the protection of the pensioner who took the toll at the bridge.
Rabbe took himself off after first making a gesture significant of future vengeance. Next day he had forgotten all about it. Brézé, however, remembered it ten years afterwards!
Two explanations must follow this anecdote which ought really to have preceded it. From much study of the Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Rabbe had imbibed something of the character of the susceptible Genevese; he thought there was a general conspiracy organised against him: that his Catiline and Manlius and Spartacus were Latouche, Santo-Domingo and Loëve-Weymars; he even went so far as to suspect his two Pylades, Thiers and Mignet.
"They are my d'Alembert and Diderot!" he said.
It was quite evident he believed Brézé's suggestion was the result of a conspiracy that was just breaking out.
Rabbe's life was a species of perpetual hallucination, an existence made up of dreams; and sleep, itself, the only reality. One day, he button-holed Méry; his manner was gloomy, his hand on his breast convulsively crumpled his shirt-front.
"Well," he exclaimed, shaking his head up and down, "I told you so!"
"What?"
"That he was an enemy of mine."
"Who?"
"Mignet."
"But, my dear Rabbe, he is nothing of the kind.... Mignet loves and admires you."
"Ah! he love me!"
"Yes."
"He admire me!"
"No doubt of it."
"Well, do you know what the man who professes to love and admire me said of me?"
"What did he say?"
"Why, he said that I was a man of IMAGINATION, yes, he did."
Méry assumed an air of consternation to oblige Rabbe. Rabbe, to revenge himself for Mignet's insult, wrote in the preface of a second edition of his résumés these crushing words—
"The pen of the historian ought not to be like a leaden pipe through which a stream of tepid water flows on to the paper."
From this moment, his wrath against historians,—modern historians, that is, of course: he worshipped Tacitus,—knew no bounds; and, when there were friends present at his house and all historians were absent, he would declaim in thunderous tones—
"Would you believe it, gentlemen, there are in France, at the present moment and of our generation and rank, historians who take it into their heads to copy the style of the veterans, Berruyer, Catrou and Rouille? Yes, in each line of their modern battles they will tell you that thirty thousand men were cut in pieces, or that they bit the dust, or that they were left lying strewn upon the scene. How behind the times these youngsters are! The other day, one of them, in describing the battle of Austerlitz, wrote this sentence: 'Twenty-five thousand Russians were drawn up in battle upon a vast frozen lake; Napoléon gave orders that firing should be directed against this lake. Bullets broke through the ice and the twenty-five thousand Russians BIT THE DUST!'"
It is curious to note that such a sentence was actually written in one of the résumés of that date. The second remark that we ought to have made will explain the comparison that Rabbe had hazarded when he spoke of himself as Hercules and of Brézé as Pirithous. He had so effectually contracted the habit of using grand oratorical metaphor and stilted language, that he could never descend to a more familiar style of speech in his relations with more ordinary people. Thus, he once addressed his hairdresser solemnly in the following terms:—
"Do not disarrange the economy of my hair too much; let the strokes of your comb fall lightly on my head, and take care, as Boileau says, that 'L'ivoire trop hâté ne se brise en vos mains!'"
He said to his porter—
"If some friend comes and knocks at my hospitable portal, deal kindly with him.... I shall soon return: I go to breathe the evening air upon the Pont des Arts."
He said to his pastry-cook, Grandjean, who lived close by him in the rue des Petits-Augustins—
"Monsieur Grandjean, the vol-au-vent that you did me the honour to send yesterday had a crust of Roman cement, obstinate to the teeth; give a more unctuous turn to your culinary art and people will be grateful to you."
While all these things were happening, Rabbe fully imagined that he was writing his novel, La Sœur grise.
One day, Thiers came in to see him, as was his custom.
"Well, Rabbe," he said, "what are you at work upon now?"
"Parbleu!" replied Rabbe, "the same as usual, you know! My Sœur grise."
"It ought to be nearly finished by now."
"It is finished."
"Oh, indeed!"
"Do you doubt me?"
"No."
"But you do doubt it?"
"Of course not."
"Stay," he said, picking up an exercise-book full of sheets of paper, "here it is."
Thiers took it from him.
"But what is this? You have given me blank sheets of paper, my dear fellow!"
Rabbe sprang like a tiger upon Thiers, and might, perhaps, in 1825, have demolished the Minister of the First of March, had not Thiers opened the book and showed him the pages as white as the dress worn by M. Planard's shepherdess. Rabbe tore his hair with both hands.
"Do you know what has happened to me?" he shouted.
"No."
"Someone has stolen the MS. of my Sœur grise!"
"Oh! my God!" exclaimed Thiers, who did not want to vex him; "do you know who is the thief?"
"No ... stay, yes, indeed, I think I do ... it is Loëve-Weymars! He shall perish by my own hand; I will send him my two seconds!"
Loëve-Weymars was not in Paris. For upwards of a fortnight Rabbe laboured under the delusion that he had written La Sœur grise from cover to cover, and that Loëve-Weymars was jealous of him and had robbed him of his manuscript.
When such petulant insults fell upon friends like Loëve-Weymars, Thiers, Mignet, Armaud Carrel and Méry, it did not matter; but, when they were directed at strangers less acquainted with Rabbe's follies, affairs sometimes assumed a more tragic aspect. Thus, about this period, he had two duels; one with Alexis Dumesnil, the other with Coste; he received a sword-cut from both of these gentlemen; but these wounds did not cure him of his passion for quarrelling. He used to say that, in his youth, he had been very clever at handling the javelin; unluckily, however, his adversaries always declined that weapon, which refusal Rabbe, with his enthusiasm for antiquity, never could understand.
But if Rabbe admired antiquity madly, it was because he felt it strongly; his piece, Le Centaure, is André Chénier in prose. Let us give the proof of what we have been stating—
THE CENTAUR
"Swift as the west wind, amorous, superb, a young centaur comes to carry off the beauteous Cymothoë from her old husband. The impotent cries of the old man are heard afar.... Proud of his prey, impotent with desire, the ravisher stops beneath the deep shade of the banks of the river. His flanks still palpitate from the swiftness of his course; his breath comes hard and fast. He stops; his strong legs bend under him; he stretches one forth and kneels with agility on the other. He lovingly raises his beautiful prey whom he holds trembling across his powerful thighs; he takes her and presses her against his manly breast, sighs a thousand sighs and covers her tear-dewed eyelids with kisses.
"'Fear not,' he says to her, 'O Cymothoë! Be not terrified of a lover who offers to thy charms the united quality of both man and war-horse. Believe me! my heart is worth more than that of a vile mortal who dwells in your towns. Tame my wild independence; I will bear thee to the freshest rivers, beneath the loveliest of shade; I will carry thee over the green prairies, which are bathed by the Pene or patriarchal Achelous. Seated on my broad back, with thy arms intertwined in the rings of my black hair, thou canst entrust thy charms to the gambols of the waves, without fear that a jealous god will venture to seize thee to take thee to the depths of his crystal grotto.... I love thee, O young Cymothoë! Drive away thy tears; thou canst try thy power: thou hast me in subjection!'
"'Splendid monster!' replies the weeping Cymothoë, 'I am struck with amazement. Thy accents are full of gentleness, and thou speakest words of love! Why, thou talkest like a man! Thy fearful caresses do not slay me! Tell me why! But dost thou not hear the cries of Dryas, my old husband? Centaur, fear for thy life! His kisses are like ice, but his vengeance is cruel; his hounds are flying in thy tracks; his slaves follow them; haste thee to fly and leave me!'
"'I leave thee!' replies the Centaur. And he stifles a plaintive murmur on the lips of his captive. 'I leave thee! Where is the Pirithous, the Alcides who dare come to dispute my conquest with me? Have I not my javelins? Have I not my heavy club? Have I not my swift speed? Has not Neptune given to the Centaur the impetuous strength of the storm?'
"Then suddenly he bounded away full of courage, confidence and happiness. Cymothoë balanced as if she was hung in a moving net under these green vaults, or like as though borne in a chariot of clouds by Zephyrus, henceforth rids herself of her useless terrors and abandons herself to the raptures of this strange lover.
"Again he stops and she admires the way nature has delighted to mate in him the lovely form of a horse with the majestic features of a man. Intelligent thought animates his glance, so proud and yet so gentle; beneath that broad breast dwells a heart touched by her charms.... What a splendid slave to Cymothoë and to love!
"She soon stops looking; a burning blush covers her cheeks and her eyelids droop; then, as her lover redoubles his caresses, and unfastens her girdle—
"'Stay!' she says to him, 'stay, beauteous Centaur! Dost thou not hear the fiery pack of hounds? Do not the arrows whistle in thy ears.... I do not indeed hate thee; but leave me! Leave me!'
"But neither Dryas nor his hounds nor slaves come that way, and those were not the reason of Cymothoë's fears. He, smiling—
"'Calm thy fright; come, let us cross the river, and do not dread the sacrifice we are about to offer to the powerful Venus on the other side!... Soon, alas! the forests will see no more such nuptials. Our fathers have succumbed, betrayed by the wedding of Thetis and Peleus; we are now few in number, solitary, fugitive, not from man, weaker and less noble than we, but before Death who pursues us. The laws of a mysterious nature have thus decreed it; the reign of our race is nearly over!
"'This globe, deprived of the love of the gods who made it, must grow old and the weak replace the strong; debased mortals will have nothing but vain memories of the early joys of the world. Thou art perhaps the last daughter of men destined to be allied with our race; but thou wilt at least have been the most beautiful and the happiest! Come!'
"Thus speaks the man-horse, and replacing his delightsome burden on his bare back, he runs to the river and rushes into the midst of the waves, which sparkle round him in diamond sheaves burning with the setting fire of a summer sun. His eyes fixed on those of the beauty which intoxicates him, he swims across the stream and is lost to sight in the green depths which stretch from the other side to the foot of the high mountains...."
Is this not a genuine bit of antiquity without a modern touch in it, like a bas-relief taken from the temple of Hercules at Thebes or of Theseus at Athens?
[1] Do not let it be thought for one moment that it is in order to make out any intimacy whatsoever with the two famous historians, whom I have several times mentioned, that I say Thiers and Mignet; theirs are names which have won the privilege of being presented to the public without the banal title of monsieur.
[CHAPTER XI]
Adèle—Her devotion to Rabbe—Strong meat—Appel à Dieu—L'âme et la comédie humaine—La mort—Ultime lettere—Suicide—À Alphonse Rabbe, by Victor Hugo
We have been forgetful, more than forgetful, even ungrateful, in saying that Rabbe's one and only consolation was his pipe; there was another.
A young girl, named Adèle, spent three years with him; but those three happy years only added fresh sorrows to Rabbe, for, soon, the beautiful fresh girl drooped like a flower at whose roots a worm is gnawing; she bowed her head, suffered for a year, then died.
History has made much stir about certain devoted attachments; no devotion could have been purer or more disinterested than the unnoticed devotion of this young girl, all the more complete that she crowned it with her death.
A subject of this nature is either stated in three brief lines of bald fact, or is extended over a couple of volumes as a psychological study. Poor Adèle! We have but four lines, and the memory of your devotion to offer you! Her death drove Rabbe to despair; from that time dates the most abandoned period of his life. Rabbe found out not only that the seeds of destruction were in him, but that they emanated from him. His wails of despair from that moment became bitter and frequent; and his thoughts turned incessantly towards suicide so that they might become accustomed to the idea. Certain memoranda hung always in his sight; he called them his pain des forts; they were, indeed, the spiritual bread he fed himself on.
We will give a few examples of his most remarkable thoughts from this lugubrious diary:—
"The whole life of man is but one journey towards death."
**
"Man, from whence comes thy pride? It was a mistake for thee to have been conceived; thy birth is a misfortune; thy life a labour; thy death inevitable."
**
"Thou living corpse! When wilt thou return to the dust? O solitude! O death! I have drunk deep of thy austere delights. You are my loves! the only ones that are faithful to me!"
**
"Every hour that passes by drives us towards the tomb and is hastened by the advance of those that precede it."
**
"Bitter and cruel is the absence of God's face from me. How much longer wilt Thou make me suffer?"
**
"Reflect in the morning that by night you may be no longer here; and at night, that by morning you may have died."
**
"Sometimes there is a melancholy remembrance of the glorious days of youth, of that happiness which never seems so great or so bitter as when remembered in the days of misfortune; at times, such collections confront the unfortunate wretch whose aspirations are towards death. Then, his despair turns to melancholy—almost even to hope."
**
"But these illusions of the beautiful days of youth pass and vanish away! Oh! what bitterness fills my soul! Inexorable nature, fate, destiny of providence give me back the cup of life and of happiness! My lips had scarcely touched it before you snatched it out of my trembling hands. Give me back the cup! Give it back! I am consumed by burning thirst; I have deceived myself; you have deceived me; I have never drunk, I have never satisfied my thirst, for the liquid evaporated like blue flame, which leaves behind it nothing but the smell of sulphur and volcanoes."
**
"Lightning from heaven! Why dost thou not rather strike the lofty tops of those oaks and fir trees whose robust old age has already braved a hundred winters? They, at least, have lived; and have satiated themselves with the sweets of the earth!"
**
"I have been struck down in my prime; for nine years I have been a prey, fighting against death.... Miserable wretch why has not the hand of God which smote me annihilated me altogether?"
Then, in consequence of his pains, the soul of the unhappy Rabbe rises to the level of prayer; he, the sceptic, loses faith in unbelief and returns to God—
"O my God!" he exclaims in the solitudes of night, which carries the plaint of his groans and tears to the ears of his neighbours. "O my God! If Thou art just, Thou must have a better world in store for us! O my God! Thou who knowest all the thoughts that I bare here before Thee and the remorse to which my scalding tears give expression; O my God! if the groanings of an unfortunate soul are heard by Thee, Thou must understand, O my God! the heart that Thou didst give me, thou knowest the wishes it formed, and the insatiable desires that still possess it. Oh! if afflictions have broken it, if the absence of all consolation and tenderness, if the most horrible solitude, have withered it, O my God! help Thy wretched creature; give me faith in a better world to come! Oh! may I find beyond the grave what my soul, unrecognised and bewildered, has unceasingly craved for on this earth...."
Then God took pity on him. He did not restore his health or hope, his youth, beauty and loves in this life; those three illusions vanished all too soon: but God granted him the gift of tears. And he thanked God for it. Towards the close of the year 1829, the disease made such progress that Rabbe resolved he would not live to see the opening of the year 1830. Thus, as he had addressed God, as he had addressed his soul, so he now addresses death—
DEATH
"Thou diest! Thou hast reached the limit to which all things comes at last; the end of thy miseries, the beginning of thy happiness. Behold, death stands face to face with thee! Thou wilt not longer be able to wish for, nor to dread it. Pains and weakness of body, sad heart-searchings, piercing spiritual anguish, devouring griefs, all are over! Thou wilt never suffer them again; thou goest in peace to brave the insolent pride of the successful evil-doer, the despising of fools and the abortive pity of those who dare to style themselves good.
"The deprivation of many evils will not be an evil in itself; I have seen thee chafing at thy bit, shaking the humiliating chains of an adverse fate in despair; I have often heard the distressing complaints which issued from the depths of thy oppressed heart.... Thou art satisfied at last. Haste thee to empty the cup of an unfortunate life, and perish the vase from which thou wast compelled to drink such bitter draughts.
"But thou dost stop and tremble! Thou dost curse the duration of thy suffering and yet dost dread and regret that the end has come! Thou apprisest without reason or justice, and dost lament equally both what things are and what they cease to be. Listen, and think for one moment.
"In dying, thou dost but follow the path thy forefathers have trodden; thousands of generations before thee have fallen into the abyss into which thou hast to descend; many thousands will fall into it after thee. The cruel vicissitude of life and death cannot be altered for thee alone. Onward then towards thy journey's end, follow where others have gone, and be not afraid of straying from it or losing thyself when thou hast so many other travelling companions. Let there be no signs of weakness, no tears! The man who weeps over his own death is the vilest and most despicable of all beings. Submit unmurmuringly to the inevitable; thou must die, as thou hast had to live, without will of thy own. Give back, therefore, without anxiety, thy life which thou receivest unconsciously. Neither birth nor death are in thy power. Rather rejoice, for thou art at the beginning of an immortal dawn. Those who surround thy deathbed, all those whom thou hast ever seen, of whom thou hast heard speak or read, the small number of those thou hast known especially well, the vast multitude of those who have lived formerly or been born or are to be born in ages to come throughout the world, all these have gone or will go the road thou art going. Look with wise eyes upon the long caravan of successive generations which have crossed the deserts of life, fighting as they travel across the burning sands for one drop of the water which inflames their thirst more than it appeases it! Thou art swallowed up in the crowd directly thou fallest: but look how many others are falling too at the same time with thee!
"Wouldst thou desire to live for ever? Wouldst thou only wish thy life to last for a thousand years? Remember the long hours of weariness in thy short career, thy frequent fainting under the burden. Thou wast aghast at the limited horizon of a short, uncertain and fugitive life: what wouldst thou have said if thou hadst seen an immeasurable, inevitably long future of weariness and sorrow stretch before thy eyes!
"O mortals! you weep over death, as though life were something great and precious! And yet the vilest insects that crawl share this rare treasure of life with you! All march towards death because all yearn towards rest and perfect peace.
"Behold! the approach of the day that thou fain wouldst have tried to bring nearer by thy prayers, if a jealous fate had not deferred it; for which thou didst often sigh; behold the moment which is to remove the capricious yoke of fortune from the trammels of human society, from the venomous attacks of thy fellow-creatures. Thou thinkest thou wilt cease to exist and that thought torments thee.... Well, but what proves to thee that thou wilt be annihilated? All the ages have retained a hope in immortality. The belief in a spiritual life was not merely a dogma of a few religious creeds; it was the need and the cry of all nations that have covered the face of the earth. The European, in the luxuries of his capital towns, the aboriginal American-Indian under his rude huts, both equally dream of an immortal state; all cry to the tribunal of nature against the incompleteness of this life.
"If thou sufferest, it is well to die; if thou art happy or thinkest thou art so, thou wilt gain by death since thy illusion would not have lasted long. Thou passest from a terrestrial habitation to a pure and celestial one. Why look back when thy foot is upon the threshold of its portals? The eternal distributor of good and evil, our Sovereign Master, calls thee to Himself; it is by His desire thy prison flies open; thy heavy chains are broken and thy exile is ended; therefore rejoice! Thou wilt soar to the throne of thy King and Saviour!
"Ah! if thou art not shackled with the weight of some unexpiated crime, thou wilt sing as thou diest; and, like the Roman emperor, thou wilt rise up in thy agony at the very thought, and thou wouldst die standing with eyes turned towards the promised land!
"O Saint Preux and Werther! O Jacob Ortis! how far were you from reaching such heights as that! Orators even to the death agony, your brains alone it is which lament; man in his death throes, this actually dying creature, it is his heart that groans, his flesh that cries out, his spirit which doubts. Oh! how well one feels that all that hollow philosophising does not reassure him as to the pain of the supreme moment, and especially against that terror of annihilation, which brought drops of sweat to the brow of Hamlet!
"One more cry—the last, then silence shall fall on him who suffered much."
Moreover, Alphonse Rabbe wished there to be no doubt of how he died; hear this, his will, which he signed; there was to his mind no dishonour in digging himself a grave with his own hands between those of Cato of Utica and of Brutus—
"31 December 1829
"Like Ugo Foscolo, I must write my ultime lettere. If every man who had thought and felt deeply could die before the decline of his faculties from age, and leave behind him his philosophical testament, that is to say, a profession of faith bold and sincere, written upon the planks of his coffin, there would be more truths recognised and saved from the regions of foolishness and the contemptible opinion of the vulgar.
"I have other motives for executing this project. There are in the world various interesting men who have been my friends; I wish them to know how I ended my life. I desire that even the indifferent, namely, the bulk of the general public (to whom I shall be a subject of conversation for about ten minutes—perhaps even that is an exaggerated supposition), should know, however poor an opinion I have of the majority of people, that I did not yield to cowardice, but that the cup of my weariness was already filled, when fresh wrongs came and overthrew it. I wish, in conclusion, that my friends, those indifferent to me, and even my enemies, should know that I have but exercised quietly and with dignity the privilege that every man acquires from nature—the right to dispose of himself as he likes. This is the last thing that has interest for me this side the grave. All my hopes lie beyond it ...if perchance there be anything beyond."
Thus, poor Rabbe, after all thy philosophy, sifted as fine as ripe grain; after all thy philosophising; after many prayers to God and dialogues with thy soul, and many conversations with death, these supreme interlocutors have taught thee nothing and thy last thought is a doubt!
Rabbe had said he would not see the year 1830: and he died during the night of the 31 December 1829.
Now, how did he die? That gloomy mystery was kept locked in the hearts of the last friends who were present with him. But one of his friends told me that, the evening before his death, his sufferings were so unendurable, that the doctor ordered an opium plaster to be put on the sick man's chest. Next day, they hunted in vain for the opium plaster but could not find it....
On 17 September 1835, Victor Hugo addresses these lines to him:—
À ALPHONSE RABBE
Mort le 31 décembre 1829
"Hélas! que fais tu donc, ô Rabbe, ô mon ami,
Sévère historien dans la tombe endormi?
Je l'ai pensé souvent dans les heures funèbres,
Seul, près de mon flambeau qui rayait les ténèbres,
O noble ami! pareil aux hommes d'autrefois,
Il manque parmi nous ta voix; ta forte voix,
Pleine de l'équité qui gonflait ta poitrine.
Il nous manque ta main, qui grave et qui burine,
Dans ce siècle où par l'or les sages sont distraits,
Où l'idée est servante auprès des intérêts;
Temps de fruits avortés et de tiges rompues,
D'instincts dénaturés, de raisons corrompues,
Où, dans l'esprit humain tout étant dispersé,
Le présent au hasard flotte sur le passé!
Si, parmi nous, ta tête était debout encore,
Cette cime où vibrait l'éloquence sonore,
Au milieu de nos flots tu serais calme et grand;
Tu serais comme un pont posé sur le courant.
Tu serais pour chacun la boix haute et sensée
Qui fait que, brouillard s'en va de la pensée,
Et que la vérité, qu'en vain nous repoussions,
Sort de l'amas confus des sombres visions!
Tu dirais aux partis qu'ils font trop be poussière
Autour de la raison pour qu'on la voie entière;
Au peuple, que la loi du travail est sur tous,
Et qu'il est assez fort pour n'être pas jaloux;
Au pouvoir, que jamais le pouvoir ne se venge,
Et que, pour le penseur, c'est un spectacle étrange.
Et triste, quand la loi, figure au bras d'airain,
Déesse qui ne doit avoir qu'un front serein,
Sort, à de certains jours, de l'urne consulaire,
L'œil hagard, écumante et folle de colère!
Et ces jeunes esprits, à qui tu souriais,
Et que leur âge livre aux rêves inquiets,
Tu leur dirais: Amis nés pour des temps prospères,
Oh! n'allez pas errer comme ont erré vos pères!
Laissez murir vos fronts! gardez-vous, jeunes gens,
Des systèmes dorés aux plumages changeants,
Qui, dans les carrefours, s'en vont faire la roue!
Et de ce qu'en vos cœurs l'Amérique secoue,
Peuple à peine essayé, nation de hasard,
Sans tige, sans passé, sans histoire et sans art!
Et de cette sagesse impie, envenimée,
Du cerveau de Voltaire éclose tout armée,
Fille de l'ignorance et de l'orgueil, posant
Les lois des anciens jours sur les mœurs d'à présent;
Qui refait un chaos partout où fut un monde;
Qui rudement enfoncé,—ô démence profonde!
Le casque étroit de Sparte au front du vieux Paris;
Qui, dans les temps passés, mal lus et mal compris,
Viole effrontément tout sage, pour lui faire
Un monstre qui serait la terreur de son père!
Si bien que les héros antiques tout tremblants
S'en sont voilé la face, et qu'après deux mille ans,
Par ses embrassements réveillé sous la pierre,
Lycurgue, qu'elle épouse, enfante Robespierre!"
Tu nous dirais à tous: 'Ne vous endormez pas!
Veillez et soyez prêts! Car déjà, pas à pas,
La main de l'oiseleur dans l'ombre s'est glissée
Partout où chante un nid couvé par la pensée!
Car les plus nobles fronts sont vaincus ou sont las!
Car la Pologne, aux fers, ne peut plus même, hêlas!
Mordre le pied tartare appuyé sur sa gorge!
Car on voit, chaque jour, s'allonger dans la forge
La chaîne que les rois, craignant la liberté,
Font pour cette géante, endormie à côté!
Ne vous endormez pas! travaillez sans relâche!
Car les grands ont leur œuvre et les petits leur tâche;
Chacun a son ouvrage à faire, chacun met
Sa pierre à l'édifice encor loin du sommet—
Qui croit avoir fini, pour un roi qu'on dépose,
Se trompe: un roi qui tombe est toujours peu de chose;
Il est plus difficile et c'est un plus grand poids
De relever les mœurs que d'abattre les rois.
Rien chez vous n'est complet: la ruine ou l'ébauche!
L'épi n'est pas formé que votre main le fauche!
Vous êtes encombrés de plans toujours rêvés
Et jamais accomplis ... Hommes, vous ne savez,
Tant vous connaissez peu ce qui convient aux âmes,
Que faire des enfants, ni que faire des femmes!
Où donc en êtes-vous? Vous vous applaudissez
Pour quelques blocs de lois au hasard entassés!
Ah! l'heure du repos pour aucun n'est venue;
Travaillez! vous cherchez une chose inconnue;
Vous n'avez pas de foi, vous n'avez pas d'amour;
Rien chez vous n'est encore éclairé du vrai jour!
Crépuscule et brouillards que vos plus clairs systèmes
Dans vos lois, dans vos mœurs et dans vos esprits
mêmes,
Partout l'aube blanchâtre ou le couchant vermeil!
Nulle part le midi! nulle part le soleil!'
Tu parlerais ainsi dans des livres austères,
Comme parlaient jadis les anciens solitaires,
Comme parlent tous ceux devant qui l'on se tait,
Et l'on t'écouterait comme on les écoutait;
Et l'on viendrait vers toi, dans ce siècle plein d'ombre,
Où, chacun se heurtant aux obstacles sans nombre
Que, faute de lumière, on tâte avec la main,
Le conseil manque à l'âme, et le guide au chemin!
Hélas! à chaque instant, des souffles de tempêtes
Amassent plus de brume et d'ombre sur nos têtes;
De moment en moment l'avenir s'assombrit.
Dans le calme du cœur, dans la paix de l'esprit,
Je l'adressais ces vers, où mon âme sereine
N'a laissé sur ta pierre écumer nulle haine,
À toi qui dors couché dans le tombeau profond,
À toi qui ne sais plus ce que les hommes font!
Je l'adressais ces vers, pleins de tristes présages;
Car c'est bien follement que nous nous croyons sages.
Le combat furieux recommence à gronder
Entre le droit de croître et le droit d'émonder;
La bataille où les lois attaquent les idées
Se mêle de nouveau sur des mers mal sondées;
Chacun se sent troublé comme l'eau sous le vent ...
Et moi-même, à cette heure, à mon foyer rêvant,
Voilà, depuis cinq ans qu'on oubliait Procuste,
Que j'entends aboyer, au seuil du drame auguste,
La censure à l'haleine immonde, aux ongles noirs,
Cette chienne au front has qui suit tous les pouvoirs,
Vile et mâchant toujours dans sa gueule souillée,
O muse! quelque pan de ta robe étoilée!
Hélas! que fais-tu donc, ô Rabbe, ô mon ami!
Sévère historien dans la tombe endormi?"
If anything of poor Rabbe still survives, he will surely tremble with joy in his tomb at this tribute. Indeed, few kings have had such an epitaph!
[CHAPTER XII]
Chéron—His last compliments to Harel—Obituary of 1830—My official visit on New Year's Day—A striking costume—Read the Moniteur—Disbanding of the Artillery of the National Guard—First representation of Napoléon Bonaparte—Delaistre—Frédérick Lemaître
Meantime, throughout the course of that glorious year of 1830, death had been gathering in a harvest of celebrated men.
It had begun with Chéron, the author of Tartufe de Mœurs. We learnt his death in a singular fashion. Harel thought of taking up the only comedy that the good fellow had written, and had begun its rehearsals the same time as Christine. They rehearsed Chéron's comedy at ten in the morning and Christine at noon. One morning, Chéron, who was punctuality itself, was late. Harel had waited a little while, then given orders to prepare the stage for Christine. Steinberg had not got further than his tenth line, when a little fellow of twelve years came from behind one of the wings and asked for M. Harel.
"Here I am," said Harel, "what is it?"
"M. Chéron presents his compliments to you," said the little man, "and sends word that he cannot come to his rehearsal this morning."
"Why not, my boy?" asked Harel.
"Because he died last night," replied the little fellow.
"Ah! diable!" exclaimed Harel; "in that case you must take back my best compliments and tell him that I will attend his funeral to-morrow."
That was the funeral oration the ex-government inspector to the Théâtre-Français pronounced over him.
I believe I have mentioned somewhere that Taylor succeeded Chéron.
At the beginning of the year, on 15 February, Comte Marie de Chamans de Lavalette had also died; he it was who, in 1815, was saved by the devotion of his wife and of two Englishmen; one of whom, Sir Robert Wilson, I met in 1846 when he was Governor of Gibraltar. Comte de Lavalette lived fifteen years after his condemnation to death; caring for his wife, in his turn, for she had gone insane from the terrible anxiety she suffered in helping her husband to escape.
On 11 March the obituary list was marked by the death of the Marquis de Lally-Tollendal, whom I knew well: he was the son of the Lally-Tollendal who was executed in the place de Grève as guilty of peculation, upon whom it will be recollected Gilbert wrote lines that were certainly some of his best. The poor Marquis de Lally-Tollendal was always in trouble, but this did not prevent him from becoming enormously stout. He weighed nearly three hundred pounds; Madame de Staël called him "the fattest of sentient beings."
Perhaps I have already said this somewhere. If so, I ask pardon for repeating it.
The same month Radet died, the doyen of vaudevillists. During the latter years of his life he was afflicted with kleptomania, but his friends never minded; if, after his departure they missed anything they knew where to go and look for the missing article.
Then, on 15 April, Hippolyte Bendo died. He was behindhand, for death, who was out of breath with running after him, caught him up at the age of one hundred and twenty-two. He had married again at one hundred and one!
Then, on 23 April, died the Chevalier Sue, father of Eugène Sue; he had been honorary physician in chief to the household of King Charles X. He was a man of great originality of mind and, at times, of singular artlessness of expression; those who heard him give his course of lectures on conchology will bear me out in this I am very sure.
On 29 May that excellent man Jérôme Gohier passed away, of whom I have spoken as an old friend of mine; and who could not forgive Bonaparte for causing the events of 18 Brumaire, whilst he, Gohier, was breakfasting with Josephine.
On 29 June died good old M. Pieyre, former tutor and secretary to the duc d'Orléans; author of l'École des pères; and the same who, with old Bichet and M. de Parseval de Grandmaison, had shown such great friendship to me and supported me to the utmost at the beginning of my dramatic career.
Then, on 29 July, a lady named Rosaria Pangallo died; she was born on 3 August 1698, only four years after Voltaire, whom we thought belonged to a past age, as he had died in 1778! The good lady was 132, ten years older than her compatriot Hippolyte Bendo, of whom we spoke just now.
On 28 August Martainville died, hero of the Pont du Pecq, whom we saw fighting with M. Arnault over Germanicus.
On 18 October Adam Weishaupt died, that famous leader of the Illuminati whose ashes I was to revive eighteen years later in my romance Joseph Balsamo.
Then, on 30 November, Pius VIII. passed to his account; he was succeeded by Gregory XVI., of whom I shall have much to say.
On 17 December Marmontel's son died in New York, America, in hospital, just as a real poet might have done.
Then, on the 31st of the same month, the Comtesse de Genlis died, that bogie of my childhood, whose appearances at the Château de Villers-Hellon I related earlier in these Memoirs, and who, before she died, had the sorrow of seeing the accession to the throne of her pupil, badly treated by her, as a politician, in a letter which we printed in our Histoire de Louis-Philippe.
Finally, on the last night of the old year, the artillery came to its end, killed by royal decree; and, as I had not heard of this decree soon enough, it led me to make the absurd blunder I am about to describe, which was probably among all the grievances King Louis-Philippe believed he had against me the one that made him cherish the bitterest rancour towards me. The reader will recollect the resignation of one of our captains and my election to the rank thus left vacant; he will further remember that, owing to the enthusiasm which fired me at that period, I undertook the command of a manœuvre the day but one after my appointment. This made the third change I had had to make in my uniform in five months: first, mounted National Guard; then, from that, to a gunner in the artillery; then, from a private to a captain in the same arm of the service. In due course New Year's day was approaching, and there had been a meeting to decide whether we should pay a visit of etiquette to the king or not. In order to avoid being placed upon the index for no good reason, it was decided to go. Consequently, a rendez-vous was made for the next day, 1 January 1831, at nine in the morning, in the courtyard of the Palais-Royal. Whereupon we separated. I do not remember what caused me to lie in bed longer than usual that New Year's morning 1831; but, to cut a long story short, when I looked at my watch, I saw that I had only just time, if that, to dress and reach the Palais-Royal. I summoned Joseph and, with his help, as nine o'clock was striking, I flew down stairs four steps at a time from my third storey. I need hardly say that, being in such a tremendous hurry, of course there was no cab or carriage of any description to be had. Thus, I reached the courtyard of the Palais-Royal by a quarter past nine. It was crowded with officers waiting their turn to present their collective New Year's congratulations to the King of the French; but, in the midst of all the various uniforms, that of the artillery was conspicuous by its absence. I glanced at the clock, and seeing that I was a quarter of an hour late, I thought the artillery had already taken up its position and that I should be able to join it either on the staircases or in one of the apartments. I rushed quickly up the State stairway and reached the great audience chamber. Not a sign of any artillerymen! I thought that, like Victor Hugo's kettle-drummers, the artillerymen must have passed and I decided to go in alone.
Had I not been so pre-occupied with my unpunctuality, I should have remarked the strange looks people cast at me all round; but I saw nothing, thanks to my absent-mindedness, except that the group of officers, with whom I intermingled to enter the king's chamber, made a movement from centre to circumference, which left me as completely isolated as though I was suspected of bringing infection of cholera, which was beginning to be talked about in Paris. I attributed this act of repulsion to the part the artillery had played during the recent disturbances, and as I, for my part, was quite ready to answer for the responsibility of my own actions, I went in with my head held high. I should say, that out of the score of officers who formed the group I had honoured with my presence, I seemed to be the only one who attracted the attention of the king; he even gazed at me with such surprise that I looked around to find the cause of this incomprehensible stare. Among those present some put on a scornful smile, others seemed alarmed; and the expression of others, again, seemed to say: "Seigneur; pardon us for having come in with that man!" The whole thing was inexplicable to me. I went up to the king, who was so good as to speak to me.
"Ah! good day, Dumas!" he said to me; "that's just like you! I recognise you well enough! It is just like you to come!"
I looked at the king and, for the life of me, I could not tell what he was alluding to. Then, as he began laughing, and all the good courtiers round imitated his example, I smiled in company with everybody else, and went on my way. In the next room where my steps led me I found Vatout, Oudard, Appert, Tallencourt, Casimir Delavigne and a host of my old comrades. They had seen me through the half-open door and they, too, were all laughing. This universal hilarity began to confuse me.
"Ah!" said Vatout. "Well, you have a nerve, my friend!"
"What do you mean?"
"Why, you have just paid the king a New Year's visit in a dress of dissous."
By dissous understand dix sous (ten sous).
Vatout was an inveterate punster.
"I do not understand you," I said, very seriously.
"Come now," he said. "You aren't surely going to try to make us believe that you did not know the king's order!"
"What order?"
"The disbandment of the artillery, of course!"
"What! the artillery is disbanded?"
"Why, it is in black and white in the Moniteur!"
"You are joking. Do I ever read the Moniteur?"
"You are right to say that."
"But, by Jove! I say it because it is true!"
They all began laughing again.
I will acknowledge that, by this time, I was dreadfully angry; I had done a thing that, if considered in the light of an act of bravado, might indeed be regarded as a very grave impertinence, and one in which I, least of any person, had no right to indulge towards the king. I went down the staircase as quickly as I had gone up it, ran to the café du Roi, and asked for the Moniteur with a ferocity that astonished the frequenters of the café. They had to send out and borrow one from the café Minerve. The order was in a prominent position; it was short, but explicit, and in these simple words—
"LOUIS-PHILIPPE, KING OF THE FRENCH,—To all, now and hereafter, Greeting. Upon the report of our Minister, the Secretary of State for Home Affairs, we have ordained and do ordain as follows:—
"ARTICLE I.—The corps of artillery of the National Guard of Paris is disbanded.
"ARTICLE 2.—Proceedings for the reorganisation of that corps shall begin immediately.
"ARTICLE 3.—A commission shall be appointed to proceed with that reorganisation."
After seeing this official document I could have no further doubts upon the subject. I went home, stripped myself of my seditious clothing, put on the dress of ordinary folk, and went off to the Odéon for my rehearsal of Napoléon Bonaparte, which was announced for its first production the next day. As I came away after the rehearsal, I met three or four of my artillery comrades, who congratulated me warmly. My adventure had already spread all over Paris; some-thought it a joke in the worst possible taste, others thought my action heroic. But none of them would believe the truth that it was done through ignorance. To this act of mine I owed being made later a member of the committee to consider the national pensions lists, of the Polish committee and of that for deciding the distribution of honours to those who took conspicuous part in the July Revolution, and of being re-elected as lieutenant in the new artillery,—honours which naturally led to my taking part in the actions of 5 June 1832, and being obliged to spend three months' absence in Switzerland and two in Italy.
But, in the meantime, as I have said, Napoléon was to be acted on the following day, a literary event that was little calculated to restore me to the king's political good books. This time, the poor duc d'Orléans did not come and ask me to intercede with his father to be allowed to go to the Odéon. Napoléon was a success, but only from pure chance: its literary value was pretty nearly nil. The rôle of the spy was the only real original creation; all the rest was done with paste and scissors. There was some hissing amongst the applause, and (a rare thing with an author) I was almost of the opinion of those who hissed. But the expenses, with Frédérick playing the principal part, and Lockroy and Stockleit the secondary ones; with costumes and decorations and the burning of the Kremlin, and the retreat of Bérésina, and especially the passion of five years at Saint Helena, amounting to a hundred thousand francs; how could it, with all this, have been anything but a success? Delaistre acted the part of Hudson Lowe. I remember they were obliged to send the theatre attendants back with him each night to keep him from being stoned on his way home. The honours of the first night belonged by right to Frédérick far more than to me. Frédérick had just begun to make his fine and great reputation, a reputation conscientiously earned and well deserved. He had made his first appearances at the Cirque; then, as we have stated, he came to act at the Odéon, in the part of one of the brothers in Les Macchabées, by M. Guiraud; he next returned to the Ambigu, where he created the parts of Cartouche and of Cardillac, and, subsequently, he went to the Porte-Saint-Martin, where his name had become famous by his Méphistophélès, Marat and Le Joueur. He was a privileged actor, after the style of Kean, full of defects, but as full, also, of fine qualities; he was a genius in parts requiring violence, strength, anger, sarcasm, caprice or buffoonery. At the same time, in summing up the gifts of this eminent actor, it is useless to expect of him attributes that Bocage possessed in such characters as the man Antony, and in La Tour de Nesle. Bocage and Frédérick combined gave us the qualities that Talma, in his prime, gave us by himself. Frédérick finally returned to the Odéon, where he played le Duresnel in La Mère et la Fille most wonderfully; and where he next played Napoléon. But Frédérick's great dramatic talents do not stand out most conspicuously in the part of Napoléon. To speak of him adequately, we must dwell upon his Richard Darlington, Lucrèce Borgia, Kean and Buy Bias.
In this manner did I stride across the invisible abyss that divided one year from another, and passed from the year 1830 to that of 1831, which brought me insensibly to my twenty-ninth year.
[BOOK II]
[CHAPTER I]
The Abbé Châtel—The programme of his church—The Curé of Lèves and M. Clausel de Montais—The Lévois embrace the religion of the primate of the Gauls—Mass in French—The Roman curé—A dead body to inter
A triple movement of a very remarkable character arose at this time: political, literary and social. It seemed as though after the Revolution of 1793, which had shaken, overturned and destroyed things generally, society grew frightened and exerted all its strength upon a general reorganisation. This reconstruction, it is true, was more like that of the Tower of Babel than of Solomon's Temple. We have spoken about the literary builders and of the political too; now let us say something about the social and religious reconstructors.
The first to show signs of existence was the Abbé Châtel.
On 20 February 1831, the French Catholic Church, situated in the Boulevard Saint-Denis opened with this programme—
"The ecclesiastic authorities who constitute the French Catholic Church propose, among other reforms, to celebrate all its religious ceremonies, as soon as circumstances will allow, in the popular tongue. The ministers of this new church exercise the offices of their ministry without imposing any remuneration. The offertory is entirely voluntary; people need not even feel obliged to pay for their seats. No collection of any kind will disturb the meditation of the faithful during the holy offices.
"We do not recognise any other impediments to marriage than those which are set forth by the civil law. Consequently, we will bestow the nuptial benediction on all those who shall present themselves to us provided with a certificate, proving the marriage to have taken place at the mairie, even in the case of one of the contracting parties being of the reformed or other religious sect."
I need hardly say that the Abbé Châtel was excommunicated, put on the index and pronounced a heretic. But he continued saying mass in French all the same, and marrying after the civil code and not after the canons of the Church, and not charging anything for his seats. In spite of the advantages the new order of religious procedure offered, I do not know that it made great progress in Paris. As for its growth in the provinces, I presume it was restricted, or partially so, to one case that I witnessed towards the beginning of 1833.
I was at Levéville, staying at the château of my dear and excellent friend, Auguste Barthélemy, one of those inheritors of an income of thirty thousand francs, who would have created a revolution in society in 1852, if society had not in 1851 been miraculously saved by the coup d'état of 2 December 1851, when news was brought to us that the village of Lèves was in a state of open revolution. This village stands like an outpost on the road from Chartres to Paris and to Dreux; so much for its topography. Now, it had the reputation of being one of the most peaceful villages in the whole of the Chartrian countryside, so much for its morality. What unforeseen event could therefore have upset the village of Lèves? This was what had happened—
Lèves possessed that rare article, a curé it adored! He was a fine and estimable priest of about forty years of age, a bon vivant, giving men handshakes that made them yell with pain; chucking maidens under their chins till they blushed again; on Sundays being present at the dances with his cassock tucked up into his girdle; which permitted of the display, like Mademoiselle Duchesnois in Alzire, of a well-turned sturdy leg; urging his parishioners to shake off the cares of the week, to the sound of the violin and clarionet; pledging a health with the deepest of the drinkers, and playing piquet with great proficiency. He was called Abbé Ledru, a fine name which, like those of the first kings of France, seemed to be derived both from his physical and mental qualities. All these qualities (to which should be added the absence of the orthodox niece) were extremely congenial to the natives of Lèves, but were not so fortunate as to be properly appreciated by the Bishop of Chartres, M. Clausel de Montais. True, the absence of a niece, which the Abbé Ledru viewed in the light of an advantage, could prove absolutely nothing, or, rather, it proved this—that the Abbé Ledru had never regarded the tithes as seriously abolished, and, consequently, exacted toll with all the goodwill in the world from his parishioners, or, to speak more accurately, from his female parishioners. M. Clausel de Montais was then, as he is still, one of the strictest prelates among the French clergy; only, now he is twenty years older than he was then, which fact has not tended to soften his rigidness. When Monseigneur de Montais heard rumours, whether true or false, he immediately recalled the Abbé Ledru without asking the opinion of the inhabitants of Lèves, or warning a soul. If a thunderbolt had fallen upon the village of Lèves out of a cloudless sky it could not have produced a more unlooked-for sensation. The husbands cried at the top of their voices that they would keep their curé, the wives cried out even louder than their husbands and the daughters exclaimed loudest of all. The inhabitants of Lèves rose up together and gathered in front of their bereft church; they counted up their numbers, men, women and children; altogether there were between eleven and twelve hundred souls. They dispatched a deputation of four hundred to M. Clausel de Montais. It comprised all the men of between twenty and sixty in the village. The deputation set out; it looked like a small army, except that it was without drums or swords or rifles. Those who had sticks laid them against the town doors lest the sight of them should frighten Monseigneur, the bishop. The deputies presented themselves at the bishop's palace and were shown in. They laid the object of their visit before the prelate and insistently demanded the reinstatement of the Curé Ledru. M. Clausel de Montais replied after the fashion of Sylla—
"I can at times alter my plans—but my decrees are like those of fate, unalterable!"
They entreated and implored—it was useless!
What was the origin of M. de Montal's hatred towards the poor Abbé Ledru? We will explain it, since these Memoirs were written with the intention of searching to the bottom of things and of laying bare the trifling causes that bring about great results. The Abbé Ledru had subscribed towards those who were wounded during July; he had made a collection in favour of the Poles; he had dressed the drummer of the National Guards of his commune out of his own pocket; in brief, the Abbé Ledru was a patriot; whilst M. de Montals, on the contrary, was not merely an ardent partisan, but also a great friend, of Charles X., and, according to report, one of the instigators of the Ordinances of July. It will be imagined that, after this, the diocese was not large enough to hold both the bishop and the curé within its boundaries. The lesser one had to give in. M. de Montals planted his episcopal sandal upon the Abbé Ledru and crushed him mercilessly!
The deputies returned to those who had sent them. As the Curé Ledru was enjoined to leave the presbytery immediately, a rich farmer in the district offered him a lodging and the church was closed. But, although the church was shut up, the need was still felt for some sort of religion. Now, as the peasantry of Lèves were not very particular as to the sort of religion they had, provided they had something, they made inquiries of the Abbé Ledru if there existed among the many religions of the various peoples of the earth one which would allow them to dispense with M. Clausel de Montals. The Abbé Ledru replied that there was that form of religion practised by the Abbé Châtel, and asked his parishioners if that would suit them. They found it possessed one great advantage in that they could follow the liturgy, which hitherto they had never done, as it was said, in French instead of Latin. The inhabitants of Lèves pronounced with one common voice, that it was not so much the religion they clung to, as the priest, and that they would be delighted to understand what had hitherto been incomprehensible to them. The Abbé Ledru went to Paris to take a few lessons of the leader of the French church, and, when sufficiently initiated into the new form of religion, he returned to Lèves. His return was made the occasion of a triumphant fête! A splendid barn just opposite their old Roman church, which had been closed more out of the scorn of the Lévois than because of the bishop's anger, was placed at his service and transformed into a place of worship. Everyone, as for the temporary altars at the fête of Corpus Christi, brought his share of adornment; some the covering for the Holy Table, some altar candles, some the crucifix or the ciborium; the carpenter put up the benches; the glazier put glass into the windows; the river supplied the lustral water and all was ready by the following Sunday.
I have already mentioned that we were staying at the Château de Levéville. I did not know the Abbé Châtel and was ignorant of his religious theories; so I thought it a good opportunity for initiating myself into the doctrine of the primate of the Gauls. I therefore suggested to Barthélemy that we should go and hear the Châtellaisian mass; he agreed and we set off. It was somewhat more tedious than in Latin, as one was almost obliged to listen. But that was the only difference we could discover between the two forms. Of course we were not the only persons in the neighbourhood of Chartres who had been informed of the schism that had broken out between the Church of Lèves and the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church; M. de Montals was perfectly acquainted with what was going on, and had hoped there would be some scandal during the mass for him to carp at: but the mass was celebrated without scandal, and the village of Lèves, which had listened to the whole of the divine office, left the barn quite as much edified as though leaving a proper church.
But the result was fatal; the example might become infectious—people were strongly inclined towards Voltairism in 1830. The bishop was seized with great anger and, still more, with holy terror. What would happen if all the flock followed the footsteps of the erring sheep? The bishop would be left by himself alone, and his episcopal crook would become useless. A Roman priest must at once be supplied to the parish of Lèves, who could combat the French curé with whom it had provided itself. The news of this decision reached the Lévois, who again assembled together and vowed to hang the priest, no matter who he was, who should come forward to enter upon the reversion of the office of the Abbé Ledru. An event soon happened which afforded the bishop tip opportunity of putting his plan into execution, and for the Lievois to keep their vow. A Lèves peasant died. This peasant, in spite-of M. de Montal's declaration, had, before he died, asked for the presence of a Catholic priest, which consolation had been refused him; but, as he was not yet buried, the bishop decided that, as compensation, he should be interred with the full rites of the Latin Church. This happened on Monday, 13 March 1833. On the 14th, Monseigneur, the Bishop of Chartres, despatched to Lèves a curate of his cathedral named the Abbé Duval. The choice was a good one and suitable under the circumstances. The Abbé Duval was by no means one of that timid class of men who are soon made anxious and frightened by the least thing; he was, on the contrary, a man of energetic character with a fine carriage, whose tall figure was quite as well adapted to the wearing of the cuirass of a carabinier as of a priest's cassock. So the Abbé Duval started on his journey. He was not in entire ignorance of the dangers he was about to incur; but he was unconscious of the fact that no missionary entering any Chinese or Thibetan town had ever been so near to martyrdom. The report of the Roman priest's arrival soon spread through the village of Lèves. Everybody at once retired into his house and shut his doors and windows. The poor abbé might at first have imagined that he had been given the cure of a city of the dead like Herculaneum or Pompeii. But, when he reached the centre of the village, he saw that all the doors opened surreptitiously and the windows were slily raised a little; and in a minute he and the mayor, who accompanied him, were surrounded by about thirty peasants who called upon him to go back. We must do the mayor and abbé the justice to say that they tried to offer resistance; but, at the end of a quarter of an hour, the cries became so furious and the threats so terrible, that the mayor took the advantage of being within reach of his house to slink away and shut the door behind him, abandoning the Abbé Duval to his unhappy fate. It was extremely mean on the part of the mayor, but what can one expect! Every magistrate is not a Bailly, just as every president is not a Boissy-d'Anglais—consult, rather, M. Sauzet, M. Buchez and M. Dupin! Luckily for the poor abbé, at this critical moment a member of the council of the préfecture who was well known and much respected by the inhabitants of Lèves passed by in his carriage, inquired the cause of the uproar, pronounced in favour of the abbé, took possession of him and drove him back to Chartres.
Meanwhile the dead man waited on!
[CHAPTER II]
Fine example of religious toleration—The Abbé Dallier—The Circes of Lèves—Waterloo after Leipzig—The Abbé Dallier is kept as hostage—The barricades—The stones of Chartres—The outlook—Preparations for fighting
Although the Lévois had liberated their prisoner, they realised, none the less, that war was declared; threats and coarse words had been hurled at the bishop's head, but they knew his grace's character too well to expect that he would consider himself defeated. That did not matter, though! They had made up their minds to push their faith in the new religion to the extreme test of martyrdom, if need be! In the meantime, as there was nothing better to do, they proposed to get rid of the dead man, the innocent cause of all this rumpus. He had, it was said, abjured the Abbé Ledru with his last breath; but it was not an assured fact and the report might even have been set about by the bishop! moreover, new forms of religion are tolerant: the Abbé Ledru knew that he must lay the foundations of his on the side of leniency; he forgave the dead man his momentary defection, supposing he had one, said a French mass for him and buried him according to the rites of the Abbé Châtel! Alas! the poor dead man seemed quite indifferent to the tongue in which they intoned mass over him and the manner in which they buried him! They waited from 24 March until 29 April—nearly six weeks—before receiving any fresh attack from high quarters, and before the bishop showed any signs of his existence. The Abbé Ledru continued to say mass, and the Lévois thought they were fully authorised to follow the rite that suited them best for the good of their souls.
But Sunday, 29 April, came at last, the date which the bishop and préfet had fixed for the re-opening of the Roman Church and the installation of a new priest. In the morning, a squadron of the 4th regiment of rifles and a half section of the gendarmerie came and took up their position in front of the church. An hour later than the soldiers, the Préfet of Rigny arrived, also the commander-general of the department and the chief of the gendarmerie. They brought with them a new abbé, Abbé Dallier. This priest came supported by a respectable body of armed force to reinstate the true God in the church. Things began to wear the look of a parody from the Lutrin. Notwithstanding all this, the whole of the population of Lèves had gradually collected in the street that we will call La rue des Grands-Prés, although I am very much afraid that we are really its spouses. To prevent the re-opening of the Latin Church, the women, who were even more bitter than the men against the re-opening, had crowded themselves together under the porch. The préfet tried to break through their ranks, followed by a locksmith; for the Lévois threw the keys of the church into the river when the Abbé Duval arrived. As the locksmith possessed no claims of an administrative nature, it was to him they addressed their outcries and threats. These rose to such a swelling diapason that the poor devil took fright and fled. It will be seen that the protection of the préfet only half assured him. The example proved contagious: for, whether the préfet in his turn gave way to fright at these cries, whether, without the locksmith, any attempts to open the church doors were useless, he too beat a retreat. It is true, however, that they had just told him that the riflemen—seduced by the blandishments of the women of Lèves, as the King of Ithaca's companions were by the witchcraft of Circe—had forgotten themselves so far before the arrival of the authorities above mentioned, as to shout: "Vive l'Abbé Ledru!" "Vive l'Église française!" It was rather a seditious cry, at a period when the army neither voted nor deliberated! Whatever the cause, the préfet, as we have said, beat a retreat. Just at this moment the Abbé Ledru appeared at the door of his barn. Four women at once constituted themselves as alms-collectors, using their outstretched aprons as alms-boxes. The total of the four collections was employed in the purchase of eau-de-vie for the soldiers. Was it the Abbé Ledru who gave such corrupt advice? or was it, indeed, the alms-collectors' own idea? Woman is ever deceitful and the devil sly! The soldiers, after shouting "Vive l'Abbé Ledru!" drank to that abbé's health and to the supremacy of the French Church—this was, indeed, a serious thing! If he had known how to take advantage of the frame of mind the soldiers were in, the Abbé Ledru would have been equal to laying siege to Rome, as did the Constable of Bourbon. But his ambition, probably, fell short of this and he did not even make the suggestion.
Meanwhile, the préfet, the general-commander of the department and the chief of the gendarmerie were debating at the mairie as to the action they should take. The officers of the riflemen felt that their men were almost escaping from their control: the squadron threatened to appoint the primate of the Gauls as its chaplain, and to proclaim that, if the Roman Catholic religion was the ritual of the State the French form should be that of the Army. It was decided to send for the king's attorney, who was supposed to have a shrewd head. He arrived an hour later with two deputies and a judge. The squadron of riflemen continued drinking the health of the Abbé Ledru and to the supremacy of the French Church. Reinforced by four magistrates, the préfet, commander-general of the department and chief of the gendarmerie took their way to the rue des Grands-Prés. The street was now literally packed. They meant to make a second attempt upon the church. They had reckoned that this body of military dignitaries, civil and magisterial, would have an awe-inspiring effect on the crowd. Bah! the people only began shouting at the top of their voices—
"Down with the Carlists!" "Down with the Jesuits!"
"Down with the bishop!" ... "Long live the King and the French Church!"
The préfet tried to speak, the king's attorney tried to demand, the deputies tried threats, the judge to open the code, the general tried to draw his sword, the chief of the gendarmerie attempted to flourish his sabre; but every one of their efforts were frustrated and drowned in the singing of La Parisienne and La Marseillaise. These gentlemen had a good mind to make the call to arms, but the attitude of the troop was too doubtful for them to risk the chance. The préfet withdrew a second time, followed by the general, chief of gendarmerie, king's attorney, deputies and the judge. It was a case of Waterloo after Leipzig! A minute later, the troop received orders to quit the rue des Grands-Prés; and, as there was nothing hostile against the population in such an order, the troop obeyed. Soldiers and inhabitants embraced and fraternised and drank together for the third time, then separated. The Lévois believed that the préfet had definitely renounced the idea of opening the church; but their delusion was not of long duration. News came to them that an orderly had been sent off to Chartres, charged with the commission of bringing back another squadron of rifles and all the reinforcements they could possibly muster. Whereupon the cry of "To arms!" was set up. At this war cry, a man in a cassock attempted to fly—it was the Abbé Dallier, who had been completely forgotten by the préfet, general, chief of gendarmerie, king's attorney, the two deputies and the judge, in their precipitation to beat a retreat! The poor abbé was caught by his cassock and made prisoner and shut up in a cellar, while they announced to him, through the grating, that he was to be kept as hostage and that if the slightest injury happened to any inhabitant of the village commune, the penalty of retaliation would be applied to him in full force. They next began to construct barricades at each end of the rue des Grands-Prés, where stood, as we know, both the Latin and French churches. For the material wherewith to build these barricades, which rose up as quick as thought, a wooden shoemaker gave three or four beams, a carter brought two or three waggons, the schoolmaster took his desks and the inhabitants made an offering of their shutters. The street lads collected heaps of stones.
I do not know whether my readers are acquainted with the Chartres stones; they are pretty ones that vary from the size of a pigeon's egg to that of an ostrich, and when broken, either by art or nature, they show an edge as sharp as that of a razor. Chartres is partly paved with these stones, and the paviors are usually careful to place the sharp edges upwards so that the pedestrian's boots may come in contact with them; which makes one think with some justification that the worthy guild of shoemakers must give the paviors a consideration. One of my friends, Noël Parfait, a true Chartrian, and jealous, as are all true-hearted patriots, of the honour of his country, maintains that Chartres was once a seaport, and that these stones are clearly the shingle that the ocean swell threw up on the beach in former times. In an hour's time, there was enough ammunition behind each barricade to hold a siege for eight days. Projectiles, also, grew under the hands, or rather, the feet, of the providers. One individual climbed the church tower, to watch the Chartres road in order to sound the alarm as soon as the troop appeared in sight. The Abbé Ledru blessed the fighters, and invoked the God of armies in French; then they waited, ready for anything that might happen. All these preparations had been made in sight of the riflemen and gendarmes who, withdrawn to the Grand-Rue, looked on at all these preparations for fighting without protest. Truly, the wretched fellows were won over to heresy.
Ten minutes after the finishing of the barricades, the alarm bell sounded. It signified that troops had left Chartres. These troops were preceded by a locksmith, who was brought under the escort of two gendarmes; but the man was so railed at by the Abbé Ledru's fierce sectaries, as soon as the first houses in Lèves were reached, that he took advantage of a momentary hesitation on the part of the two gendarmes to slip between the legs of the one on his right, reach a garden and disappear into the fields! This was the second locksmith that melted away out of the clutch of authority. It reminds one of those rearguards of the army of Russia which slipped through Ney's hands! The new troops came on the scene full of alacrity. Care was taken that they did not come into contact with the disaffected squadron, and they decided to take the barricades by main force. But, at the same time, about thirty Chartrain patriots hurried up to the assistance of the insurgents—amateurs, desirous of taking their part in the dangers of their brothers of Lèves. They were greeted with shouts of joy; La Parisienne and La Marseillaise were thundered forth more loudly, and the tocsin rang more wildly than ever! The préfet and the general headed the riflemen, and the force marched up to the barricade.
[CHAPTER III]
Attack of the barricade—A sequel to Malplaquet—The Grenadier—The Chartrian philanthropists—Sack of the bishop's palace—A fancy dress—How order was restored—The culprits both small and great—Death of the Abbé Ledru—Scruples of conscience of the former schismatics—The Dies iræ of Kosciusko
At this period it was still usual to summon the insurgents to withdraw, and this the préfet did. They responded by a hailstorm of stones, one of them hitting the general. This time, he lost all patience and shouted—
"Forward!" and the men charged the barricade sword in hand. The Lévois made a splendid resistance, but a dozen or more riflemen managed to clear the obstacle; however, when they reached the other side of the barricade, they were overwhelmed with stones, thrown down and disarmed. Blood had flowed on both sides; and temper was roused to boiling point; it would have gone badly with the dozen prisoners if some men, who were either less heated or more prudent than the rest, had not carried them off and thus saved their lives. Let us confess, with no desire whatever of casting a slur on the army, which we would uphold at all times, and, nowadays, more than ever, that, from that moment, every attempt of the riflemen to take the barricade failed! But what else can be said? It is a matter of history; as are Poitiers, Agincourt and Malplaquet! A shower of stones fell, compared with which the one that annihilated the Amalekites was but an April shower.
The préfet and the general finally decided to give up the enterprise; they sounded the retreat and took their road back to Chartres. As the insurgents did not know what to do with their prisoners, and being afraid of a siege, and not having any desire to burden themselves with useless mouths, the riflemen were released on parole. They could not believe in the retreat of the troops; it was in vain the watchmen in the tower shouted, "Victory!" The conviction did not really take hold of the minds of the Lévois until their look-out declared that the last soldier had entered Chartres. Such being the case, it was but one step to turn from doubt to boldness: they began by giving aid to the wounded; then, as no signs of any uniforms reappeared upon the high road, by degrees they grew bolder, until they arrived at such a pitch of enthusiasm that one of the insurgents, having ventured the suggestion that they should march the Abbé Dallier round the walls of Chartres, as Achilles had led Hector round the walls of Pergamus, the proposition was received with acclamation. But, as the vanquished man was alive and not dead, they put a rope round his neck instead of round his ankles and the other end was placed in the hands of one of the Abbé Ledru's most excited penitents, who went by the name of the Grenadier. I need hardly add that the penitent's name was, like that of the Abbé Ledru, conspicuous for the physical and moral qualities of a virago. Every man filled his pockets with stones in readiness for attack or defence, and the folk set out for Chartres, escorting the condemned man, who marched towards martyrdom with visible distaste. It is half a league between Lèves and Chartres; and that half league was a real Via Dolorosa to the poor priest. The Lévois had calculated to perfection what they were doing when they gave the rope's end to the care of the Grenadier. When the savages of Florida wish to inflict extreme punishment on any of their prisoners they hand the criminals over to the women and children. When the victors reached Chartres, they did not find the opposition they had looked for; but they found something else equally unexpected: they saw neither préfet, nor general, nor chief of the gendarmerie, nor king's attorney, neither deputies nor judges; but several philanthropists approached them and made them listen to what was styled, at the end of last century, the language of reason—
It was not the poor priest's fault that he had been selected by the bishop to replace the Abbé Ledru; he did not know in what esteem his parishioners held him, he was neither more nor less blameworthy than his predecessor, the Abbé Duval; and when the one had come to a flock of sheep, why should another priest fall among a band of tigers? It was the fault of the bishop, who had instantly and brutally deposed the Abbé Ledru, and then had the audacity to appoint first one and then another successor!
Upon this very reasonable discourse, the scales fell from the eyes of the inhabitants of Lèves, as from Saint Paul's, and they began to see things in their true light. The effect of their enlightenment was to make them untie the rope and to let the Abbé Dallier go free with many apologies. But, at the same time, it was unanimously agreed that, since there was a rope all ready, the bishop should be hanged with it.
When people conceive such brilliant ideas, they lose no time in putting them into execution. So they directed their steps rapidly in the direction of M. Clausel de Montal's sumptuous dwelling-place. But although these avenging spirits had made all diligence, M. Clausel de Montais had made still greater; to such an extent that, when the hangmen arrived at the bishop's palace, they could nowhere find him whom they had come to hang: Monseigneur the bishop had departed, and with very good reason too! We know what happens under such circumstances; things pay for men, and the bishop's palace had to pay instead of the bishop. This was the era of sacrilege; the sacking of the palace of the Archbishop of Paris had set the fashion of the destruction of religious houses. They broke the window panes and the mirrors over the mantelpieces, they tore down the curtains, and transformed them into banners. Finally, they reached the billiard room, where they fenced with the cues, and threw the balls at each other's heads, whilst a sailor neatly cut off the cloth from the billiard table, which he rolled into a ball and tucked under his arm. Three or four days later, he had made a coat, waistcoat and trousers out of it, and promenaded the streets of Lèves, amidst the enthusiastic applause of his fellow-citizens, clad entirely in green cloth, like one of the Earl of Lincoln's archers! But the life the Lévois led in the palace was too delightful to last for long; authority bestirred itself; they brought the riflemen out of their barracks once more, and beat the rappel, and, a certain number of the National Guard having taken up arms, they directed their combined forces upon the palace. The attack was too completely unexpected for the spoilers to dream of offering resistance. They went further than that, and, instead of the wise retreat one would have expected from men who had vanquished the troops which one is accustomed to call the best in the world, they took to flight as rapidly as possible: leaping out of the windows into the garden and scaling the walls, they ran across the fields and regained Lèves in complete disorder. That same night every trace of barricading disappeared. Next day, each inhabitant of Lèves attended to his work or play or business. They were thinking nothing about the recent events, when, suddenly, they saw quite an army arriving at Chartres from Paris, Versailles and Orléans. This army was carrying twenty pieces of artillery with it. It was commanded by General Schramm, and was coming to restore order. Order had been re-established for the last fortnight, unassisted! That did not matter, however; seeing there had been disorder, they were marching on Lèves to carry out a razzia.
The threatened village quietly watched this left-handed justice approach: its eleven to twelve hundred inhabitants modestly stood at their doors and windows. Peace and innocence reigned throughout from east to west, from north to south; anyone entering might have thought it the valley of Tempe, when Apollo tended the flocks of King Admetus. The inhabitants of Lèves looked as though they were the actors in that play (I cannot recall which it is), where Odry had sent for the commissary at the wrong moment and, when the commissary arrived, everybody was in unity again; so that everybody asked in profound surprise—
"Who sent for a commissary? Did you? or you? or you?"
"No.... I asked for a commissionaire," replied Odry; "just an ordinary messenger, that is all!" and the agent took himself off abashed and with empty hands.
That happened in the piece, but not exactly in the same way at Lèves. A score of persons were arrested, and these were divided into two categories: the least guilty and the most guilty. The least guilty were handed over to the jurisdiction of the police; the guiltiest were sent before the Court of Assizes. A very curious thing resulted from this separation. At that time, the police correctionelle always sentenced, whilst the jury acquitted only too eagerly. The least guilty men who appeared before the police correctionnelle were found guilty, while the most culpable, who were tried before a jury, were acquitted. The sailor in the green cloth was one of the most guilty, and was produced before the jury as an indisputable piece of evidence. The jury declared that billiard tables had not a monopoly for clothing in green; that if a citizen liked to dress like a billiard table, why! political opinions were free, so a man surely might indulge his individual fancy in his style of dress. The religious question was decided in favour of the French Church, and this decision lasted as long as the Abbé Ledru himself, namely, four or five years; during which period of time the parish of Lèves was separated from the general religion of the kingdom, in France, without producing any great sensation. At the end of that time, the Abbé Ledru committed the stupidity of dying. I am unaware in what tongue and rites he was interred; but I do know that, the day after his death, the Lévois asked the bishop for another priest, and this bishop proved a kind father to his prodigal children and sent them one.
The third was received with as many honours as the two previously appointed had been received with insults on their arrival. The French Church was closed, the Roman Catholic religion re-established, and the new priest returned to the old presbytery; the Grenadier became the most fervent and humble of his penitents, and the tongue of Cicero and Tacitus again became the dominical one of the Lévois, returned to the bosom of Holy Church.
But Barthélemy wrote to me, a little time ago, that there were serious scruples in some weak minds. Were the infants baptised, the adults married, and the old people buried by the Abbé Ledru during his schism with Gregory XVI., really properly baptised and married and buried? It did not matter to the baptised souls, who could return and be baptised by an orthodox hand; nor again to the married ones, who had but to have a second mass said over them and to pass under the canopy once more, but it mattered terribly to the dead; for they could neither be sought for nor recognised one from another. Happily God will recognise those whom the blindness of human eyes prevents from seeing, and I am sure that He will forgive the Lévois their temporary heresy for the sake of their good intention.
This event, and the conversion of Casimir Delavigne to the observances of the French religion, were the culminating points in the fortunes of the Abbé Châtel, primate of the Gauls. Casimir Delavigne, who gave his sanction to all new phases of power; who sanctioned the authority of Louis XVIII. in his play entitled, Du besoin de s'unir après le depart des étrangers; who sanctioned the prerogative of Louis-Philippe in his immortal, or say rather everlasting, Parisienne; Casimir Delavigne sanctioned the authority of the primate of the Gauls by his translation of the Dies irœ, dies ilia, which was chanted by Abbé Châtel's choristers at the mass which the latter said in French at the funeral service of Kosciusko. The Abbé Châtel possessed this good quality, that he openly declared for the people as against kings.
Here is the poem; it is little known and deserves to be better known than it is. It is, therefore, in the hope of increasing its reputation that we bring it to the notice of our readers. It was sung at the French Church on 23 February 1831:—
"Jour de colère, jour de larmes,
Où le sort, qui trahit nos armes,
Arrêta son vol glorieux!
À tes côtés, ombre chérie,
Elle tomba, notre patrie,
Et ta main lui ferma les yeux!
Tu vis, de ses membres livides,
Les rois, comme des loups avides,
S'arracher les lambeaux épars:
Le fer, dégouttant de carnage,
Pour en grossir leur héritage,
De son cadavre fit trois parts.
La Pologne ainsi partagée,
Quel bras humain l'aurait vengée?
Dieu seul pouvait la secourir!
Toi-même tu la crus sans vie;
Mais, son cœur, c'était Varsovie;
Le feu sacré n'y put mourir!
Que ta grande ombre se relève;
Secoue, en reprenant ton glaive,
Le sommeil de l'éternité!
J'entends le signal des batailles,
Et le chant de tes funérailles
Est un hymne de liberté!
Tombez, tombez, boiles funèbres!
La Pologne sort des ténèbres,
Féconde en nouveaux défenseurs!
Par la liberté ranimée,
De sa chaîne elle s'est armée
Pour en frapper ses oppresseurs.
Cette main qu'elle te présente
Sera bientôt libre et sanglante;
Tends-lui la main du haut des deux.
Descends pour venger ses injures,
Ou pour entourer ses blessures
De ton linceul victorieux.
Si cette France qu'elle appelle,
Trop loin—ne pent vaincre avec elle,
Que Dieu, du moins, soit son appui.
Trop haut, si Dieu ne peut l'entendre,
Eh bien! mourons pour la défendre,
Et nous irons nous plaindre à lui!"
We do not believe to-day that the Abbé Châtel is dead; but, if we judge of his health by the cobwebs which adorn the hinges and bolts of the French Church, we shall not be afraid to assert that he is very ill indeed.
[CHAPTER IV]
The Abbé de Lamennais—His prediction of the Revolution of 1830—Enters the Church—His views on the Empire—Casimir Delavigne, Royalist—His early days—Two pieces of poetry by M. de Lamennais—His literary vocation—Essay on Indifference in Religious Matters—Reception given to this book by the Church—The academy of the château de la Chesnaie
We now ask permission to approach a more serious subject, and to dedicate this chapter (were it only for the purpose of forming a contrast with the preceding chapters) to one of the finest and greatest of modern geniuses, to the Abbé de Lamennais. We speak of a period two months after the Revolution of 1830.
Out of the wilds of Brittany, that is, from the château de la Chesnaie, there appeared a priest of forty, small of stature, nervous and pale, with stubbly hair, and high forehead, the head compressed at the sides as though it were enclosed by walls of bone; a sign, according to Gall, indicative of the absence in man of cupidity, cunning and acquisitiveness; the nose long, with dilated nostrils, denoting high intelligence, according to Lavater; and, last, a piercing glance and a determined chin. Everything connected with the man's external appearance revealed his Celtic origin. Such was the Abbé DE LA MENNAIS, whose name was written in three different ways, like that of M. DE LA MARTINE, each different way in which he wrote it indicating the different phases of the development of his mind and the progress of his opinion. We say of his opinion and not opinions, for these three phases, as in Raphael's three styles, mean, not a change of style, but a perfecting of style.
Into the thick of the agitation going on in silent thought or open speech, the austere Breton came to teach the world a word they had not expected; in fact at that time M. de la Mennais was looked upon as a supporter of both Throne and Church. The throne had just fallen, and the Church was shaking violently from the changes which the events of 1830 had wrought in social institutions. But the world was mistaken with regard to the views of the great writer, because it only saw in him the author of L'Essai sur l'indifférence en matière de religion, a strange book, in which that virile imagination strove against his century, struggling with the spirit of the times, as Jacob strove with the angel. People forgot that in 1828, during the Martignac Ministry, the same de Lamennais had hurled a book into the controversy which had predicted a certain degree of intellectual revival: I refer to Du progrès de la Revolution et de la guerre contre l'Église. In this book, the Revolution of 1830 was foretold as an inevitable event. Listen carefully to his words—
"And even to-day when there no longer really exists any government, since it has become the tool and the plaything of the boldest or of the most powerful; to-day, when democracy triumphs openly, is there any more calm in its own breast? Could one find, moreover, no matter what the nature of his opinions may be, one man, one single man, who desires what is, and who desires only that and nothing more? Never, on the other hand, has he more eagerly longed for a new order of things; everybody cries out for, the whole world is calling for, a revolution, whether they admit it or are conscious of it themselves. Yes, it will come, because it is imperative that nations shall be unitedly educated and chastised; because, according to the common laws of Providence, a revolution is indispensable for the preparation of a true social regeneration. France will not be the only scene of action: it will extend everywhere where Liberalism rules either in doctrine or in sentiment; and under this latter form it is universal."
In the preface to the same book, M. de Lamennais had already said—
"That France and Europe are marching towards fresh revolutions is now apparent to everybody. The most undaunted hopes which have fed themselves for long on interest or stupidity give way before the evidence of facts, in the face of which it is no longer possible for anyone to delude himself. Nothing can remain as it is, everything is unsettled, totters towards a change. Conturbatœ sunt gentes et inclinata sunt regna."
We underline nothing in this second paragraph because we should have to underline the whole. Let us pass on to the last words of the book—
"The time is coming when it will be said to those who are in darkness: 'Behold the light!' And they will arise, and, with gaze fixed on that divine radiance will, with repentance and surprise, yet filled with joy, worship that spirit which restores all disorder, reveals all truth, enlightens every intelligence: oriens ex alto."
The above expressions are those of a prophet as well as of a poet; they reveal what neither the Guizots, the Molés, the Broglies, nor even the Casimir Périers saw, nor, indeed, any of those we are accustomed to style statesmen foresaw.
In this work M. de Lamennais appealed solemnly "for the alliance of Catholics with all sincere Liberal spirits." This book is really in some measure the hinge on which turned the gate through which M. de Lamennais passed from his first political phase to the second.
M. de Lamennais was born at St. Malo, in the house next to that in which Chateaubriand was born, and a few yards only from that in which Broussais came into the world. So that the old peaceful town gave us, in less than fifteen years, Chateaubriand, Broussais and Lamennais, names representative of the better part of the poetry, science and philosophy of the first half of the nineteenth century. M. de Lamennais had, like Chateaubriand, passed his childhood by the sea, had listened to the roar of the ocean, watching the waves which are lost to sight on infinite horizons, eternally returning to break against the cliffs, as the human wave returns to break itself against invincible necessity. He preserved, I recollect (for one feature in my existence coincided with that of the author of Paroles d'un Croyant), he preserved, I repeat, from his earliest childhood, the vivid and clear recollections which he connected with the grand and rugged scenery of his beloved Brittany.
"I can still hear," he said to us, at a dinner where the principal guests were himself, the Abbé Lacordaire, M. de Montalembert, Listz and myself—"the cry of certain sea-birds which passed barking over my head. Some of those rocks, which have looked down pityingly for numberless centuries upon the angry impotent waves which perish at their feet, are stocked with ancient legends."
M. de Lamennais related one of these in his une Voix de prison. It is that of a maiden who, overtaken by the tide, on a reef of rocks, tied her hair to the stems of sea-weeds to keep herself from being washed off by the motion of the waves, far away from her native land.
M. de Lamennais's youth was stormy and undisciplined. He loved physical exercises, hunting, fencing, racing and riding; strange tastes these, as preparation for an ecclesiastical career! But it was not from personal inclination or of his own impulse that he entered the priesthood, but by compulsion from the noble families in the district. On his part, the bishop of the diocese discerned in the young man a superior intellect, a lofty character, a tendency towards meditation and thoughtfulness, and drew him to himself by all kinds of seductions. They spared him the trials of an ecclesiastical seminary, at which his intractable disposition might have rebelled; but, priest though he was, M. de Lamennais did not discontinue to ride the most fiery horses of the town, or to practise shooting. It was the Empire, that régime of glory and of despotism, which wounded the sensitive nerves of the young priest of stern spirit and Royalist sympathies. Brittany remembered her exiled princes, and the family of M. de Lamennais was among those which faithfully preserved the worship of the past; not that their family was of ancient nobility: the head of the house was a shipowner who had made his wealth by distant voyages, and who was ennobled at the close of the last century for services rendered to the town of St. Malo. The Empire fell, and M. de Lamennais, casting a bird's-eye view over that stupendous ruin, wrote in 1815—
"Wars of extermination sprang up again; despotism counted her expenditure in men, as people reckon the revenue of an estate; generations were mowed down like grass; and men daily sold, bought, exchanged and given away like flocks of little value, often not even knowing whose property they were, to such an extent did a monstrous policy multiply these infamous transactions! Whole nations were put in circulation like pieces of money!"
To profess such principles was, of course, equivalent to looking towards the Restoration, that dawn without a sun. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that, in those days, all young men of letters were carried away with the same intoxication for monarchical memories. Poets are like women—I do not at all know who said that poets were women—they make much of a favourable misfortune. This enthusiasm for the person of the king was shared, in different degrees, even by men whose names, later, were connected with Liberalism. Heaven alone knows whether any king was ever less fitted than Louis XVIII. for calling forth tenderness and idolatry! But that did not hinder Casimir Delavigne from exclaiming—
"Henri, divin Henri, toi que fus grand et bon,
Qui chassas l'Espagnol, et finis nos misères,
Les partis sont d'accord en prononçant ton nom;
Henri, de les enfants fais un peuple de frères!
Ton image déjà semble nous protéger:
Tu renais! avec toi renaît l'indépendance!
Ô roi le plus Français dont s'honore la France,
Il est dans ton destin de voir fuir l'étranger!
Et toi, son digne fils, après vingt ans d'orage,
Règne sur des sujets par toi-même ennoblis;
Leurs droits sont consacrés dans ton plus bel ouvrage.
Oui, ce grand monument, affermi d'âge en âge,
Doit couvrir de son ombre et le peuple et les lys
Il est des opprimés l'asile impérissable,
La terreur du tyran, du ministre coupable,
Le temple de nos libertés!
Que la France prospère en tes mains magnanimes;
Que tes jours soient sereins, tes décrets respectés,
Toi qui proclames ces maximes:
'Ô rois, pour commander, obéissez aux lois!
Peuple, en obéissant, sois libre sous tes rois!'"
True, fifteen years later, the author of La Semaine de Paris sang, almost in the same lines of the accession to the throne of King Louis-Philippe. Rather read for yourself—
"Ô toi, roi citoyen, qu'il presse dans ses bras, Aux cris d'un peuple entier dont les transports sont justes. Tu fus mon bienfaiteur ... Je ne te loûrai pas: Les poètes des rois sont leurs actes augustes. Que ton règne te chante, et qu'on dise après nous: 'Monarque, il fut sacré par la raison publique; Sa force fut la loi; l'honneur, sa politique; Son droit divin, l'amour de tous!'"
Let us read again the lines we have just quoted—those which were addressed to Louis XVIII. we mean—and we shall see that Victor Hugo, Lamartine and Lamennais never expressed their delight at the return of the Bourbons in more endearing terms than did Casimir Delavigne. What, then, was the reason why the Liberals of that day and the Conservatives of to-day bitterly reproached the first three of the above-mentioned authors for these pledges of affection for the Elder Branch, whilst they always ignored or pretended to ignore the covert royalism of the author of Messéniennes? Ah! Heavens! It is because the former were sincere in their blind, young enthusiasm, whilst the latter—let us be allowed to say it—was not. The world forgives a political untruth, but it does not forgive a conscientious recantation of the foolish mistakes of a generously sympathetic heart. In the generous pity of these three authors for the Bourbon family there was room for the shedding of a tear for Marie-Antoinette and for Louis XVII.
M. de Lamennais hesitated, for a while, over his literary vocation, or at least, over the direction it should take. The solitude in which he had lived, by the sea, had filled his soul with floating dreams, like those beauteous clouds he had often watched with his outward eyes in the depths of the heavens. He was within an ace of writing novels and works of fiction; he did even get so far as to write some poetry, which, of course, he never published. Here are two lines, which entered, as far as I can remember, into a description of scholastic theology—
"Elle avait deux grands yeux stupidement ouverts,
Dont l'un ne voyait pas ou voyait de travers!"
M. de Lamennais then became a religious writer and a philosopher more from force of circumstances than from inclination. His taste, he assured us in his moments of expansion, upon which we look back with respect and pride, would have led him by preference towards that style of poetical prose-writing which Bernardin de Saint-Pierre had made fashionable in Paul et Virginie, and Chateaubriand in René. So he communed with himself and, with the unerring finger of the implacable genius of the born observer, he touched upon the wound of his century—indifference to religious matters. Surely the cry uttered by that gloomy storm-bird, "the gods are departing!" had good reason for startling the pious folk and statesmen of that period! Were not the churches filled with missions and the high roads crowded with missionaries? Was there not the cross of Migné, the miracles of the Prince of Hohenlohe, the apparitions and trances of Martin de Gallardon and others? What, then, could this man mean? M. de Lamennais took, as the motto for his book, these words from the Bible—
"Impius, cum in profundum venerit contemnit."
In his opinion, contempt was the sign by which he recognised the decline of religious feeling. The seventeenth century believed, the eighteenth denied, the nineteenth doubted.
The success of the book was immense. France, agitated by vast and conflicting problems, a Babel wherein many voices were speaking simultaneously, in every kind of tongue, the France of the Empire, of the Restoration, of Carbonarism, of Liberalism and of Republicanism, held its peace to listen to the weighty and inspired utterance of this unknown writer: "et siluit terra in conspectu ejus!" The voice came from the desert. Who had seen, who knew this man? He had dropped from the region where eagles dwell; his name was mentioned by all lips, in the same breath with that of Bossuet. L'Essai sur l'indifférence was little read but much admired; the poets—they are the only people who read—recognised in it a powerful imagination, at times almost an affrighted imagination, which, both by its excesses and its terrors, hugged, as it were, the dead body of religious belief, and shook it roughly, hoping against hope, to bring it back to life again. Of all prose-writers, Tacitus was the one whom the Abbé de Lamennais admired the most; of all poets, Dante was the one he read over and over again the most frequently; of all books, the one he knew by heart was the Bible.
Now, it might assuredly have been believed that this citadel, intended to protect the weak walls of Catholicism, L'Essai sur l'indifférence en matière de religion, was viewed with favourable eyes by the French clergy; no such thing! Quite the contrary; a cry went up from the heart of the Church, not of joy or admiration, but of terror. They were scared by the genius of the man; religion was no longer in the habit of having an Origen, a Tertullian, or a Bossuet to defend it; it was afraid of being supported by such a defender and, little by little, the shudder of fear reached even as far as Rome; and the book was very nearly placed on the Index. These suspicions were aroused by the nature of the arguments of which the author made use to repel the attacks of philosophers. The Abbé de Lamennais foresaw, through the gloom, the causes at work undermining the old edifice of orthodoxy, and tried to put it on a wider basis of toleration and to prop it up, as he himself expressed it, by the exercise of common sense. To this end he made incredible flights into metaphysical realms, to prove that Catholicism was, and always had been, the religion of Humanity.
The Abbé de Lamennais taught in the seminaries, but his teaching was looked upon with suspicion; and young people were forbidden the reading of a work, which the outside world regarded as that of a misguided god who wanted to deny man the right of freedom of thought. No suicide was ever more heroic, never did intellect bring so much courage and logic to the task of self-destruction. But, in reality, and from his point of view, the Abbé de Lamennais was right: if you believe in an infallible Church you must bravely destroy the eyes of your intellect and extinguish the light of your soul, and, having voluntarily made yourself blind, let yourself be led by the hand. But, however high a solitary intellect may be placed, it is very quickly reached by the influence of the times in which it lives.
Two or three years ago, an aeronautic friend of mine, Petin, seriously propounded to me viva voce, and to the world through the medium of the daily papers, that he had just solved the great problem of serial navigation. He reasoned thus—
"The earth turns—E pur si muove!—and in the motion of rotation on its own axis, it successively presents every part of its surface, both inhabited and uninhabited. Now, any person, who could raise himself up into the extreme strata of ambient air, and could find a means to keep himself there, would be able to descend in a balloon and alight upon whatever town on the globe he liked; he would only have to wait until that town passed beneath his feet; in that way he could go to the Antipodes in a dozen hours, and without any fatigue whatsoever, since he would not stir from his position, as it would be the earth which would move for him."
This calculation had but one flaw: it was false. The earth, in its vast motion, carries with it every atom of the molecules of its seething atmosphere. It is the same with great spirits which aim at stability; without perceiving that, at the very moment when they think they have cast anchor in the Infinite, they wake up to find they are being carried away in spite of themselves by the irresistible movement of their age. The spirit of Liberalism, with which the atmosphere of the time was charged, carried away the splendid, obstinate and lonely reason of the Abbé de Lamennais. It was about the year 1828. Whilst fighting against the Doctrinaire School, for which he showed a scarcely veiled contempt, M. de Lamennais sought to combine the needs of faith with the necessities of progress; with this end in view he had installed at his château at La Chesnaie a school of young people whom he inculcated with his religious ideas. La Chesnaie was an ancient château of Brittany, shaded by sturdy, centenarian oaks—those natural philosophers, which ponder while their leaves rustle in the breeze on the vicissitudes of man, of which changes they are impassive witnesses. There, this priest, who was already troubled by the new spirit abroad, educated and communed with disciples who held on from far or near to the Church; amongst them were the Abbé Gerbert, Cyprien Robert, now professor of Slavonic literature in the College of France, and a few others. Work—methodical and persevering—was carried on within those old walls, which the sea winds rocked and lashed against. This new academy of Pythagoras studied the science of the century in order to combat it; but, at each fresh ray of light, it recoiled enlightened, and its recoil put weapons to be used against itself into the hands of the enemy. That enemy was Human Thought.
[CHAPTER V]
The founding of l'Avenir—L'Abbé Lacordaire—M. Charles de Montalembert—His article on the sacking of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois—l'Avenir and the new literature—My first interview with M. de Lamennais—Lawsuit against l'Avenir—MM. de Montalembert and Lacordaire as schoolmasters—Their trial in the Cour des pairs—The capture of Warsaw—Answer of four poets to a word spoken by a statesman
The Revolution of 1830 came as a surprise to M. de Lamennais and his school in the midst of these vague and restless designs. His heart, ready to sympathise with everything that was great and generous, had already been alienated from Royalism; already the man, poet and philosopher, was kicking beneath the priestly robe. The century which had just venerated and extolled his genius, reproached him under its breath for resisting the way of progress. Intractable and headstrong by nature, with a rugged and reclusive intellect, the Abbé de Lamennais was by temperament a free lance. Then 1830 sounded. Sitting upon the ruins of that upheaval, which had just swallowed up one dynasty, and shaken the Church with the same storm and shipwreck in which that dynasty had foundered, the philosophers of La Chesnaie took counsel together; they said among themselves that the opposition against the clergy, with which Liberalism had been animated since 1815, was the result of the prominent protection which had been spread over the Catholic priests, in face of the instability of the Powers, in face of the roaring waves of the Revolution; and they began to question whether it would not be advantageous to the immutable Church to separate herself from all the tottering States. Stated thus, the question was quickly decided. The Abbé de Lamennais thought the time had come for him to throw himself directly and personally into the struggle. The principles of a journal were settled, and he went. Two men entered that career of publicity with him: the Abbé Lacordaire and Comte Charles de Montalembert.
The Abbé Lacordaire was, at the period when I had the honour of finding myself in communication with him on religious and political principles, a young priest who had passed from the Bar at Paris to the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice. After his term of probation, he had spent three harassing years in the study of theology; he left the seminary full of hazy ideas and turbulent instincts. His temper of mind was acrimonious, keen and subtle; he had dark fiery eyes, delicate and mobile features, he was pale with the pallor of the Cenobite and of a sickly complexion, with hard, gaunt, strongly marked outlines,—so much for his face. Attracted by the brilliancy of the Abbé de Lamennais, he fell in with all his political views; he, too, longed for the liberty of the spirit after due control of the flesh; the protection of the State, because of his priesthood, was burdensome to him. He put his hand in his master's and the covenant was sealed.
The Comte de Montalembert, on his side, was, at that time, quite a young man, fair, with a face like a girl's, and pink cheeks, shy and blushing; as he was short-sighted, he looked close at people through his eye-glasses. He appealed strongly to the Abbé de Lamennais, who felt drawn to him with a sort of paternal sympathy. Finally, Comte Charles de Montalembert belonged to a family whose devotion to the cause of the Elder Branch of the Bourbons was well known; but he openly declared that he placed France in his affections before a dynasty, and liberty before a crown.
Round these three men, one already famous and the others still unknown, rallied the ecclesiastics and young people of talent, who, in all simple faith, were desirous of combining the majesty of religious traditions with the nobility of revolutionary ideas. That such an alliance was impossible Time—that great tester of things and men—would prove; but the attempt was none the less noble for all that; it ministered, moreover, to a want which was then permeating the new generations. Already Camille Desmoulins, one of those poets who are specially inspired, had exclaimed to the Revolutionary Tribunal with somewhat penetrative melancholy: "I am the same age, thirty-three years, as the Sans-culotte Jesus!"
The title of the new journal was l'Avenir. The programme of its principles was drawn up equally by them all, and it called upon the government of July for absolute liberty for all creeds and all religious communities, for liberty of the press, liberty in education, the radical separation of the Church from the State and, finally, for the abolition of the ecclesiastical budget. It was 16 October 1830, and the moment was a favourable one. Belgium was about to start her revolution, and, in that revolution, the hand of the clergy was visible; Catholic Poland was sending up under the savage treatment of the Czar one long cry of distress and yet of hope; Ireland, by the voice of O'Connell, was moving all nationalities to whom religion was the motive power and a flag of independence; Ireland shook the air with the words CHRIST and LIBERTY! L'Avenir made itself the monitor of the religious movement, combined with the political movement, as may be judged by these few lines which proceeded from the association, and are taken from its first number—
"We have no hidden design whatsoever, we never had; we mean exactly what we say. Hoping, therefore, to be believed in all good faith, we say to those whose ideas differ upon several points of our creed: 'Do you sincerely want religious liberty, liberty in educational matters, in civil and political affairs and liberty of the press, which, do not let us forget, is the guarantee for all types of liberty? You belong to us as we belong to you. Every kind of liberty that the people in the gradual development of their life can uphold is their due, and their progress in civilisation is to be measured by the actual and not the fictitious, progress they make in liberty!'"
It was at this juncture that the transformation tool place of the Abbé DE LA MENNAIS to the Abbé de LAMENNAIS. His opinions and his talents and his name entered upon a new era; he was no more the stern and gloomy priest pronouncing deadly sentence on the human intellect over the tomb of Faith; but a prophet shaking the shrouds of dying nations in the name of liberty, and crying aloud to the dry bones to "Arise!"
Now, among the young editors of l'Avenir it is worth noticing that the most distinguished of them for talent and for the loftiness of his democratic views, was Comte Charles de Montalembert, whose imprudent impetuosity the stern old man was obliged, more than once, to check. Presently, we shall have to relate the story of the sacking of the church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois and the profanation of the sacred contents. The situation was an embarrassing one for l'Avenir: that journal had advised the young clergy to put faith in the Revolution, and here was that self-same Revolution, breaking loose in a moment of anger, throwing mud at the Catholic temples and uprooting the insignia of religion. It was Comte Charles de Montalembert who undertook to be the leader of the morrow. Instead of inveighing against the vandals, he inveighed against the clergy and priests, whose blind and dangerous devotion to the overturned throne had drawn down the anger of the people upon the Christian creed. He had no anathemas strong enough to hurl at "those incorrigible defenders of the ancient régime, and that bastard Catholicism which gave birth to the religion of kings!" The crosses that had been knocked down were those branded with the fleurs-de-lis; he took the opportunity to urge the separation of the Church from the civil authority. Without the fleurs-de-lis, no one—the Comte Charles de Montalembert insisted emphatically—had any quarrel with the Cross.
The objective of l'Avenir, then, was both political and literary; it was in sympathy with modern literature, and, in the person of the Abbé de Lamennais, it possessed, besides, one of the leading writers of the day; it was one of those rare papers (rari nantes) in which one could follow the human mind under its two aspects. Liber, in Latin, may be allowed to mean also libre (free) and livre (book). I have already told how we literary men of the new school had made implacable enemies of all the papers on the side of the political movement. It was all the more strange that the literary revolution had preceded, helped, prepared the way for and heralded the political revolution which was past, and the social revolution which was taking place. For example, we recollect an article upon Notre Dame de Paris, wherein, whilst regretting that the author was not more deeply Catholic, Comte Charles de Montalembert praised the style and poetry of Victor Hugo with the enthusiasm of an adept. It was about this time, and several days, I believe, after the representation of Antony, that M. de Lamennais expressed the desire that I should be introduced to him. This wish was a great honour for me, and I gratefully acquiesced. A mutual friend took me to the house of the famous founder of l'Avenir, who was then living in the rue Jacob—I remember the name of the street, but have forgotten the number of the house. Before that day, I had already joyfully acknowledged an admiration for him which sprang up in my heart and soul fresh, and strong, and unalloyed.
Meanwhile, l'Avenir was successful; this was soon apparent from the anger and hatred launched against its doctrines. Amongst the various advices it gave to the clergy, that of renouncing the emoluments administered by the State, and of simply following Christ in poverty, was not at all relished; and people grew indignant. It was in vain for the solemn voice of the Abbé de Lamennais to exclaim—
"Break these degrading chains! Put away these rags!"
The clergy replied under their breath: "Call them rags if you wish, but they are rags dear to our hearts."
Do my readers desire to know to what degree the journal l'Avenir had its roots buried in what is aristocratically styled Society? Then let us quote the first lines dedicated to the trial of l'Avenir in the l'Annuaire of Lesur—
"Never were the approaches to the Court of Assizes more largely filled with so affluent and influential a crowd, and never certainly were so large a number of ladies attracted to a political trial as in the case of this. Immediately the court opened proceedings, the jurymen, defendants, barristers and the magistrate himself were overwhelmed by a multitude of persons who could not manage to find seats. M. l'Abbé de Lamennais, M. Lacordaire, the editors of l'Avenir, and M. Waille, the responsible manager of the paper, were placed on chairs in the centre of the bar; the two first were clad in frockcoats over their cassocks; M. Waille wore the uniform of the National Guard."
It was one of the first press trials since July. The public prosecutor's speech was very timid, and he apologised for coming, after a revolution carried out in favour of the press, to demand legal penalties against this very press. But l'Avenir had exceeded all limits of propriety. We will quote the incriminating phrase—
"Let us prove that we are Frenchmen by faithfully defending that which no one can snatch from us without violating the law of the land. Let us say to our sovereigns: 'We will obey you in so far as you yourselves obey that law which has made you what you are, without which you are nothing!'"
That was written by M. de Lamennais. We forget the actual phrase, although not the cause, which brought the Abbé Lacordaire to the defendants' bench. M. de Lamennais was defended by Janvier, who has since played a part in politics. Lacordaire defended himself. His speech made a great sensation, and revealed the qualities both of a lawyer and of a preacher. The jury acquitted them.
Some time later, l'Avenir had to submit to the ordeal of another trial in a greater arena and under circumstances which we ought to recall.
MM. de Montalembert and Lacordaire had constituted themselves the champions of liberty in educational matters, as well as of all other liberties, both religious and civil. From words they passed to deeds; and they opened, conjointly, an elementary school which a few poor children attended. The police intervened. Ordered to withdraw, the professors offered resistance, so they were obliged to arrest the "substance of the offence"—namely, the street arabs who filled the school-room. There was hardly sufficient ground for a trial before the tribunal correctionnel; but, in the meantime, a few days before the promulgation of the law which suppressed the hereditary rights to the peerage, M. Charles de Montalembert's most excellent father died. The matter then assumed unexpected proportions: Charles de Montalembert, a peer of France by the grace of non-retroactivity, was not amenable to ordinary courts of justice, so the trial was carried before the Court of Peers, where it took the dimensions of a political debate upon the freedom of education. Lacordaire, whose cause could not be disconnected from that of his accomplice, was also transferred to the Supreme Court, and he delivered extempore his own counsel's speech. M. de Montalembert, on the contrary, read a speech in which he attacked the university and M. de Broglie in particular.
"At this point," says the Moniteur, in its report of the trial, "the honourable peer of France put up his eye-glass and looked critically at the young orator."
Less fortunate before the Court of Peers than before the jury, which would certainly have acquitted them, the two editors of l'Avenir lost their case; but they won it in the opinion of the country. The Comte de Montalembert owed it to this circumstance, that he sided with M. de Lamennais, whose Liberal doctrines he shared and professed at that time; he was also equally bound by the unexpected death of his father to find a career ready opened for him in the Upper Chamber. But when questioned by the Chamber as to his profession, he replied—"Schoolmaster."
All these trials seemed but to give a handle to M. de Lamennais's religious enemies. Rumours began from below. From the lower clergy, who condemned them, M. de Lamennais and the other editors of l'Avenir appealed to the bishops, who in their turn also condemned them. Then, driven back from one entrenchment after another, like the defenders of a town, who, having vainly defended their advanced positions, and their first and second enceintes, are forced to take refuge within the citadel itself, the accused men were obliged to look towards the Vatican, and to put their trust in Rome. The mainmast of this storm-beaten vessel, M. de Lamennais, was the first to be struck by the thunders of denunciation.
On 8 September 1831, a voice rang through the world similar to that of the angel in the Apocalypse, announcing the fall of towns and empires; that voice, as incoherent as a death-rattle or last expiring sigh, formulated itself in these terrible words on 16 September: "Poland has just fallen! Warsaw is taken!" We know how this news was announced to the Chamber of Deputies by General Sébastiani. "Letters I have received from Poland," he said, in the session of 16 September, "inform me that PEACE reigns in Warsaw." There was a slight variation given in the Moniteur, which spoke of ORDER, instead of peace, reigning in Warsaw. Under the circumstances neither word was better than the other: both were infamous! It is curious to come across again to-day the echo which that great downfall awakened in the soul of poets and believers, those living lyres which great national misfortunes cause to vibrate, and from whom the passing breeze of calamity draws exquisite sounds. Here we have four replies to the optimistic phraseology of the Minister for Foreign Affairs—
BARTHÉLEMY
"Destinée à périr! ... L'oracle avait raison!
Faut-il accuser Dieu, le sort, la trahison?
Non, tout était prévu, l'oracle était lucide!...
Qu'il tombe sur nos fronts, le sceau du fratricide!
Noble sœur! Varsovie! elle est morte pour nous;
Morte un fusil en main, sans fléchir les genoux;
Morte en nous maudissant à son heure dernière;
Morte en baignant de pleurs l'aigle de sa bannière,
Sans avoir entendu notre cri de pitié,
Sans un mot de la France, un adieu d'amitié!
Tout ce que l'univers, la planète des crimes,
Possédait de grandeur et de vertus sublimes;
Tout ce qui fut géant dans notre siècle étroit
A disparu! Tout dort dans le sépulcre froid!...
Cachons-nous! cachons-nous! nous sommes des infâmes!
Rasons nos poils, prenons la quenouille des femmes;
Jetons has nos fusils, nos guerriers oripeaux,
Nos plumets citadins, nos ceintures de peaux;
Le courage à nos cœurs ne vient que par saccades ...
Ne parlons plus de gloire et de nos barricades!
Que le teint de la honte embrase notre front!
Vous voulez voir venir les Russes: ils viendront!..."
BARBIER
"La Guerre
"Mère! il était une ville fameuse;
Avec le Hun j'ai franchi ses détours;
J'ai démoli son enceinte fumeuse;
Sous le boulet j'ai fait crouler ses tours!
J'ai promené mes chevaux par les rues,
Et, sous le fer de leurs rudes sabots,
J'ai labouré le corps des femmes nues,
Et des enfants couchés dans les ruisseaux!...
Hourra! hourra! j'ai courbé la rebelle!
J'ai largement lavé mon vieil affront:
J'ai vu des morts à hauteur de ma selle!
Hourra! j'ai mis les deux pieds sur son front!...
Tout est fini, maintenant, et ma lame
Pend inutile à côté de mon flanc.
Tout a passé par le fer et la flamme;
Toute muraille a sa tache de sang!
Les maigres chiens aux saillantes échines
Dans les ruisseaux n'ont plus rien à lécher;
Tout est désert; l'herbe pousse aux ruines....
Ô mort! ô mort! je n'ai rien à faucher!"
"Le Choléra-Morbus
"Mère! il était un peuple plein de vie,
Un peuple ardent et fou de liberté;
Eh bien, soudain, des champs de Moscovie,
Je l'ai frappé de mon souffle empesté!
Mieux que la balle et les larges mitrailles,
Mieux que la flamme et l'implacable faim,
J'ai déchiré les mortelles entrailles,
J'ai souillé l'air et corrompu le pain!...
J'ai tout noirci de mon haleine errante;
De mon contact j'ai tout empoisonné;
Sur le teton de sa mère expirante,
Tout endormi, j'ai pris le nouveau-né!
J'ai dévoré, même au sein de la guerre,
Des camps entiers de carnage filmants;
J'ai frappé l'homme au bruit de son tonnerre;
J'ai fait combattre entre eux des ossements!...
Partout, partout le noir corbeau becquète;
Partout les vers ont des corps à manger;
Pas un vivant, et partout un squelette ...
Ô mort! ô mort! je n'ai rien à ronger!"
"La Mort
"Le sang toujours ne peut rougir la terre;
Les chiens toujours ne peuvent pas lécher;
Il est un temps où la Peste et la Guerre
Ne trouvent plus de vivants à faucher!...
Enfants hideux! couchez-vous dans mon ombre,
Et sur la pierre étendez vos genoux;
Dormez! dormez! sur notre globe sombre,
Tristes fléaux! je veillerai pour vous.
Dormez! dormez! je prêterai l'oreille
Au moindre bruit par le vent apporté;
Et, quand, de loin, comme un vol de corneille,
S'élèveront des cris de liberté;
Quand j'entendrai de pâles multitudes,
Des peuples nus, des milliers de proscrits,
Jeter à has leurs vieilles servitudes
En maudissant leurs tyrans abrutis;
Enfants hideux! pour finir votre somme,
Comptez sur moi, car j'ai l'œil creux ... Jamais
Je ne m'endors, et ma bouche aime l'homme
Comme le czar aime les Polonais!"
VICTOR HUGO
"Je hais l'oppression d'une haine profonde;
Aussi, lorsque j'entends, dans quelque coin du monde,
Sous un ciel inclément, sous un roi meurtrier,
Un peuple qu'on égorge appeler et crier;
Quand, par les rois chrétiens aux bourreaux turcs livrée,
La Grèce, notre mère, agonise éventrée;
Quand l'Irlande saignante expire sur sa croix;
Quand l'Allemagne aux fers se débat sous dix rois;
Quand Lisbonne, jadis belle et toujours en fête,
Pend au gibet, les pieds de Miguel sur sa tête;
Quand Albani gouverne au pays de Caton;
Quand Naples mange et dort; quand, avec son bâton,
Sceptre honteux et lourd que la peur divinise,
L'Autriche casse l'aile au lion de Venise;
Quand Modène étranglé râle sous l'archiduc:
Quand Dresde lutte et pleure au lit d'un roi caduc;
Quand Madrid sa rendort d'un sommeil léthargique;
Quand Vienne tient Milan; quand le lion belgique,
Courbé comme le bœuf qui creuse un vil sillon,
N'a plus même de dents pour mordre son bâillon;
Quand un Cosaque affreux, que la rage transporte,
Viole Varsovie échevelée et morte,
Et, souillant son linceul, chaste et sacré lambeau
Se vautre sur la vierge étendue au tombeau;
Alors, oh! je maudis, dans leur cour, dans leur antre,
Ces rois dont les chevaux ont du sang jusqu'au ventre.
Je sens que le poète est leur juge; je sens
Que la muse indignée, avec ses poings puissants,
Peut, comme au pilori, les lier sur leur trône,
Et leur faire un carcan de leur lâche couronne,
Et renvoyer ces rois, qu'on aurait pu bénir,
Marqués au front d'un vers que lira l'avenir!
Oh! la muse se doit aux peuples sans défense!
J'oublie, alors, l'armour, la famille, l'enfance.
Et les molles chansons, et le loisir serein,
Et j'ajoute à ma lyre une corde d'airain!"
"LAMENNAIS
The Taking of Warsaw
"Warsaw has capitulated! The heroic nation of Poland, forsaken by France and repulsed by England, has fallen in the struggle she has gloriously maintained for eight months against the Tartar hordes allied with Prussia. The Muscovite yoke is again about to oppress the people of Jagellon and of Sobieski, and, to aggravate her misfortune, the furious rage of various monsters will, perhaps, detract from the horror which the crime of this fresh onslaught ought to inspire. Let every man protect his own property; leave to the cut-throat, murder and treachery! Let the true sons of Poland protect their glory untarnished, immortal! Leave to the Czar and his allies the curses of everyone who has a human heart, of every man who realises what constitutes a country. To our Ministers their names! There is nothing lower than this. Therefore, generous people, our brothers in faith, and at arms, whilst you were fighting for your lives, we could only aid you with our prayers; and now, when you are lying on the field of battle, all that we can give you is our tears! May they in some degree, at least, comfort you in your great sufferings! Liberty has passed over you like a fleeting shadow, a shadow that has terrified your ancient oppressors: to them it appears as a symbol of justice! After the dark days had passed, you looked heavenwards, and thought you saw more kindly signs there; you said to yourself: 'The time of deliverance approaches; this earth which covers the bones of our ancestors shall yet be our own; we will no longer heed the voice of the stranger dictating his insolent commands to us.... Our altars shall be as free as our fire-sides.' But you have been self-deceived; the time to live has not yet come; it was the time to die for all that was sweet and sacred to men's hearts.... Nation of heroes, people of our affection! rest in peace in the tombs that the crimes and cowardice of others have dug for you; but never forget that hope springs from those tombs; and a cross above them prophesies, 'Thou shalt rise again!'"
Let us admit that a nation is fortunate if it possesses poets; for were there only politicians, posterity would gather very odd notions about it.
In conclusion, the downfall of Poland included with it that of l'Avenir. We will explain how this was brought about in the next chapter.
[CHAPTER VIb]
Suspension of l'Avenir—Its three principal editors present themselves at Rome—The Abbé de Lamennais as musician—The trouble it takes to obtain an audience of the Pope—The convent of Santo-Andrea della Valle—Interview of M. de Lamennais with Gregory XVI.—The statuette of Moses—The doctrines of l'Avenir are condemned by the Council of Cardinals—Ruin of M. de Lamennais—The Paroles d'un Croyant
The position of affairs was no longer tenable for the editors of l'Avenir. If, on the one hand, the religious democracy, overwhelmed with sadness and bitterness, listened with affection to the words of the messengers; on the other hand, the opposition of the heads of the Catholic Church became formidable, and the accusation of heresy ran from lip to lip. The Abbé de Lamennais looked about him and, like the prophet Isaiah, could see nothing but desolation all around. Poland, wounded in her side, her hand out of her winding sheet, slept in the ever deceived expectation of help from the hand of France; and yet she had fallen full of despair and doubt, crying, "God is too high, and France too far off!" Ireland, sunk in misery and dying from starvation, ground down under the heel of England, in vain prostrated herself before its wooden crosses to implore succour from Heaven: none came to her! Liberty seemed to have turned away her face from a world utterly unworthy of her. Poland and Ireland, those two natural allies in all religious democracy, disappeared from the political scenes, dragging down with them in their fall the existence of l'Avenir. The wave of opposition, like an unebbing tide, still rose and ever rose. Some detested M. de Lamennais's opinions; others, his talent; the latter were as much incensed against him as any. He was obliged to yield. Like every paper which disappears into space, l'Avenir had to announce suspension of publication; this was his farewell from Fontainebleau—
"If we withdraw for a while," wrote M. de Lamennais, "it is not on account of weariness, still less from discouragement; it is to go, as the soldiers of Israel of old, to consult the Lord in Shiloh. They have put our faith and our very intentions to the doubt; for what is there that people do not attack in these days? We leave the field of battle for a short time to fulfil another duty equally pressing. Traveller's stick in hand, we pursue our way to the eternal throne to prostrate ourselves at the feet of the pontiff whom Jesus Christ has established as the guide and teacher to His disciples, and we will say to him, 'O Father! condescend to look down upon these, the latest of thy children to be accused of being in rebellion against thy infallibility and gracious authority! O Father! pronounce over us the words which will give life and light, and extend thy hand over us in blessing and in acknowledgment of our obedience and love.'"
It would be puerile to question the sincerity of the author of those lines at this point. For, like Luther, who also promised his submission to Rome, the Abbé de Lamennais meant to persevere in the Catholic faith. If, later, his orthodoxy wavered; if, upon closer view of Rome and her cardinals, his faith in the Vicar of Christ and the visible representation of the Church gave way, we should rather accuse the pagan form under which the religion of Christ was presented to him, as in the case of the monk of Eisleben, when he visited the Eternal City. When I reach that period in my life, I will relate my own feelings, and will give my long conversations on the subject with Pope Gregory XVI.
The three pilgrims of l'Avenir, the Abbé de Lamennais, the Abbé Lacordaire and the Comte Charles de Montalembert, started, then, for Italy, not quite, as one of their number expressed it, with travellers' staffs in their hands, but animated with sincere faith and with sorrow in their hearts. They did not leave behind them the dream of eleven months without feeling deep regret; l'Avenir had, in fact, lasted from 16 October 1830 to 17 September 1831. We will not relate the travelling impressions of the Abbé de Lamennais, for the author of the Essai sur l'indifférence was not at all the man to notice external impressions. He passed through Italy with unseeing eyes; all through that land of wonders he saw nothing beyond his own thoughts and the object of his journey. Ten years later, when prisoner at Sainte-Pélagie, and already grown quite old, Lamennais discovered a corner in his memory still warm with the Italian sunshine; by a process of photography, which explains the character of the man we are dealing with, the monuments of art and the country itself were transferred to a plate in his brain! It needed meditation, solitude and captivity, just as the silvered plate needs iodine, to bring out of his memory the image of the beautiful things he had forgotton to admire ten years previously. On this account, he writes to us in 1841, under the low ceiling of his cell—
"I begin to see Italy.... It is a wondrous country!"
A curious psychological study might be made of the Abbé de Lamennais, especially by comparing him with other poets of his day. The author of the Essai sur l'indifférence saw little and saw that but imperfectly; there was a cloud over his eyes and on his brain; the sole perception, the only sense he had of the outside world, which seemed to be always alert and awake, was that of hearing, a sense equivalent to the musical faculty: he played the piano and especially delighted in the compositions of Liszt. Hence arose, probably, his profound affection for that great artist. As regards all other outward senses of the objective world, his perceptions seem to have been within him, and when he wishes to see, it is in his own soul that he looks. To this peculiarity is owing the nature of his style, which is psychological in treatment. If he describes scenery, as in his Paroles d'un Croyant, or in the descriptions sent from his prison, it is always the outlines of the infinite that is drawn by his pen in vague horizons; with him it is his thoughts which visualise, not his eyes. M. de Lamennais belongs to the race of morbid thinkers, of whom Blaise Pascal is a sample. Let not the medical faculty even attempt to cure these sensitive natures: it will be but to deprive them of their genius.
The journey, with its enforced waits for relays of horses, often afforded the Abbé de Lamennais leisure for the study of our modern school of literature, with which he was but little acquainted. In an Italian monastery, where the pilgrims received hospitality, MM. de Lamennais and Lacordaire read Notre-Dame de Paris and Henri III. for the first time. When they reached Rome, the Abbé de Lamennais put up at the same hotel and suite of rooms that had been occupied a few months previously by the Comtesse Guiccioli. His one fixed idea was to see the Pope and to settle his affairs, those of religious democracy, with him direct. After long delays and a number of fruitless applications, after seven or eight requests for an audience still without result, the Abbé de Lamennais complained; then a Romish ecclesiastic, to whom he poured out his grievances, naively suggested that he had perhaps omitted to deposit the sum of ... in the hands of Cardinal.... The Abbé de Lamennais confessed that he would have been afraid of offending His Eminence by treating him like the doorkeeper of a common courtesan.
"You need no longer be surprised at not having been received by His Holiness," was the Italian abbé's reply.
The ignorant traveller had forgotten the essential formality. But, although instructed, he still persisted in trying to obtain an audience of the Pope gratis; by paying, he felt he should be truckling with simony. The editors of l'Avenir had remained for three months unrecognised in the Holy City, waiting until the Pope should condescend to consider a question which was keeping half Catholic Europe in suspense. The Abbé Lacordaire had decided to return to France; the Comte de Montalembert made preparations for setting out for Naples; M. de Lamennais alone remained knocking at the gates of the Vatican, which were more inexorably closed than those of Lydia in her bad days. Father Ventura, then general of the Theatine, received the illustrious French traveller at Santo-Andrea della Valle.
"I shall never forget," says M. de Lamennais in his Affaires de Rome, "those peaceful days I spent in that pious household, surrounded by the most exquisite care, amongst those instructively good and religious people devoted to their duty and aloof from all intrigue. The life of the cloister-regular, calm and, as it were, set apart and self-contained-holds a kind of via media between the purely worldly life and that of the future, which faith reveals to us in but shadowy outlines, and of which every human being possesses within himself a positive assurance."
Finally, after many solicitations, the Abbé de Lamennais was received in private audience by Gregory XVI. He went to the Vatican, climbed the huge staircase often ascended and descended by Raphael and by Michael Angelo, by Leo X. and Julian II.; he crossed the high and silent chambers with their double rows of superposed windows; at the end of that long, splendid and desolate palace he reached, under the escort of an usher, an ante-chamber, where two cardinals, as motionless as statues, sat upon wooden seats, solemnly reading their breviary. At the appointed moment the Abbé de Lamennais was introduced. In a small room, bare, upholstered in scarlet, where a single armchair denoted that only one man had the right to sit there, a tall old man stood upright, calm and smiling in his white garments. He received M. de Lamennais standing, a great honour! The greatest honour which that divine man could pay to another man without violating etiquette. Then the Pope conversed with the French traveller about the lovely sunshine and the beauties of nature in Italy, of the Roman monuments, the arts and ancient history; but of the object of his journey and his own special business in coming there, not a a single word. The Pope had no commission at all for that: the question was being considered somewhere in the dark by the cardinals appointed to inquire into it, whose names were not divulged. A petition had been addressed to the Court of Rome by the editors of l'Avenir; and this petition must necessarily lead to some decision, but all this was shrouded in the most impenetrable mystery. The Pope himself, however, showed affability to the French priest, whose genius was an honour to the Catholic Church.
"What work of art," he asked M. de Lamennais, "has impressed you most?"
"The Moses of Michael Angelo," replied the priest.
"Very well," replied Gregory XVI.; "then I will show you something which no one sees or which very few indeed, even of the specially favoured, see at Rome." Whilst saying this, the great white-haired old man entered a sort of recess enclosed by curtains, and returned holding in his arms a miniature replica in silver of the Moses done by Michael Angelo himself.
The Abbé de Lamennais admired it, bowed and withdrew, accompanied by the two cardinals who guarded the entrance to that chamber. He was compelled to acknowledge the gracious reception he had been accorded by the Holy Father; but, in all conscience, he had not come all the way from Paris to Rome just to see the statuette of Moses! It was a most complete disillusionment. He shook the dust of Rome off his feet, the dust of graves, and returned to Paris. After a long silence, when the affair of l'Avenir seemed buried in the excavations of the Holy See, Rome spoke: she condemned the doctrines of the men who had tried to reunite Christianity to Liberty.
The distress of the Abbé de Lamennais was profound. The shepherd being smitten, the sheep scattered, the news of censure had scarcely had time to reach La Chesnaie before the disciples were seized with terror and took to flight. M. de Lamennais remained alone in the old deserted château, in melancholy silence, broken only by the murmur of the great oak trees and the plaintive song of birds. Soon, even this retreat was taken from him, and he woke one day to find himself ruined by the failure of a bookseller to whom he had given his note of hand. Then the late editor of l'Avenir began his voyage through bitter waters; anguish of soul prevented his feeling his poverty, which was extreme; his furniture, books, all were sold. Twice he bowed his head submissively under the hand of the Head of the Church, and twice he raised it, each time sadder than before, each time more indomitable, more convinced that the human mind, progress, reason, the conscience could not be wrong. It was not without profound heart-rendings that he separated himself from the articles of belief of his youth, from his career of priesthood and of tranquil obedience and from great and powerful harmony; in a word, from everything that he had upheld previously; but the new spirit had, in Biblical language, gripped him by the hair commanding him to "go forward!" It was then, in silence, in the midst of persecutions which even his gentleness was unable to disarm, in a small room in Paris, furnished with only a folding-bed, a table and two chairs, that the Abbé de Lamennais wrote his Paroles d'un Croyant. The manuscript lay for a year in the author's portfolio; placed several times in the hands of the editor Renduel, withdrawn, then given back to him to be again withdrawn, this fine book was subjected to all sorts of vicissitudes before its publication and met with all sorts of obstructions; the chief difficulties came from the abbé's own family, especially from a brother, who viewed with terror the launching forth upon the sea of democracy tossed by the storms of 1833. At last, after many delays and grievous hesitations, the author's strength of will carried the day against the entreaties of friendship; and the book appeared. It marked the third transformation of its writer: the ABBÉ DE LA MENNAIS and M. de LAMENNAIS gave place to CITIZEN LAMENNAIS. We shall come across him again on the benches of the Constituent Assembly of 1848. In common with all men of great genius, who have had to pilot their own original course through the religious and political storms that raged for thirty years, M. de Lamennais has been the subject of the most opposite criticisms. We do not undertake here to be either his apologist or denouncer; simply to endeavour to render him that justice which every true-hearted man owes to any man whom he admires: we have tried to show him to others as he appeared to our own eyes.
[CHAPTER VII]
Who Gannot was—Mapah—His first miracle—The wedding at Cana—Gannot, phrenologist—Where his first ideas on phrenology came from—The unknown woman—The change wrought in Gannot's life—How he becomes Mapah
Let us frame M. de Lamennais, the great philosopher, poet and humanitarian, between a false priest and a false god. Christ was crucified after His bloody passion between two thieves. We are now going to relate the adventures and expose the doctrines of Mapah or of the being who was Gannot. He was one of the most eccentric of the gods produced during the years 1831 to 1845. The ancients divided their gods into dii majores and dii minores; Mapah was a minor god. He was not any the less entertaining on that account. The name of Mapah was the favourite title of the god, and the one under which he wished to be worshipped; but, not forgetting that he had been a man before he became a god, he humbly and modestly permitted himself to be called, and at times even called himself, by his own personal name as, he who was Gannot. He had indeed, or rather he had had, two very distinct existences; that of a man and that of a god. The man was born about 1800, or, at all events, he would seem to have been nearly my own age when I knew him. He gave his age out to be then as between twenty-eight and thirty. I was told that, when he became a god, he maintained he had been contemporaneous with all the ages and even to have preexisted, under a double symbolic form, Adam and Eve, in whom he became incarnate when the father and mother of the human race were yet one and the self-same flesh! The man had been an elegant dandy, a fop and frequenter of the boulevard de Gand, loving horses and adoring women, and an inveterate gambler; he was an adept at every kind of play, specially at billiards. He was as good a billiard player as was Pope Gregory XVI., and supposing the latter had staked his papacy on his skilful play against Gannot, I would assuredly have bet on Gannot. To say that Gannot played billiards better than other games does not mean that he preferred games of skill to those of chance; not at all: he had a passion for roulette, for la rouge et la blanche, for trente-et-un, for le biribi, and, in fact, for all kinds of games of chance. He was also possessed of all the happy superstitious optimism of the gambler: none knew better than he how to puff at a cigar and to creak about in varnished boots upon the asphalted pavements whilst he dreamt of marvellous fortunes, of coaches, tilburys, tandems harnessed to horses shod in silver; of mansions, hotels, palaces, with soft thick carpets like the grass in a meadow; of curtains, of imitation brocades, tapestries, figured silk, crystal lustres and Boule furniture. Unluckily, the gold he won flowed through his extravagant fingers like water. Unceasingly bandied about from misery to abundance, he passed from the goddess of hunger to that of satiety with regal airs that were a delight to witness. Debauchery was none the less pleasing to him, but it had to be debauchery on a huge scale: the feast of Trimalco or the nuptials of Gamacho. But, in other ways, he was a good friend, ever ready to lend a helping hand—throwing his money broadcast, and his heart among the women, giving his life to everybody not suspecting his future divinity, but already performing all kinds of miracles. Such was Gannot, the future Mapah, when I had the honour of making his acquaintance, about 1830 or 1831, at the café de Paris. Still less than he himself could I foretell his future divinity, and, if anybody had told me that, when I left him at two o'clock in the morning to return to my third storey in the rue de l'Université, I had just shaken the hand of a god, I should certainly have been very much surprised indeed.
I have said that even before he became a god, Gannot worked miracles; I will recount one which I almost saw him do. It was somewhere about 1831—to give the precise date of the year is impossible—and a friend of Gannot, an innocent debtor who was as yet only negotiating his first bill of exchange, went to find Gannot to lay before him his distress in harrowing terms. Gannot was the type of man people always consulted in difficult crises,—his mind was quick in suggestions; he was clear-sighted and steady of hand. Unluckily, Gannot was going through one of his periods of poverty, days when he could have given points even to Job. He began, therefore, by confessing his personal inability to help, and when his friend despaired—
"Bah!" he said, "we have seen plenty of other people in as bad a plight!"
This was a favourite expression with Gannot, who had, indeed, seen all shades of life.
"All very well," said his friend; "but meantime, how am I to get out of this fix?"
"Have you anything of value you could raise money on, if it were but twenty, ten, or even five francs?"
"Alas!" said the young fellow, "there is only my watch ..."
"Silver or gold?"
"Gold."
"Gold! What did it cost?"
"Two hundred francs; but I shall hardly get sixty for it, and the bill of exchange is for five hundred francs."
"Go and take your watch to the Mont-de-Piété."
"And then?"
"Bring back the money they give you for it here."
"Well?"
"You must give me half of it."
"After that?"
"Then I will tell you what you must do.... Go, and be sure you do not divert a single son of the amount!"
"The deuce! I shall not think of doing that," said the friend. And off he ran and returned presently with seventy francs. This was a good beginning. Gannot took it and put it with a grand flourish into his pocket.
"What are you doing?" asked his friend.
"You will soon see."
"I thought you said we were to halve it ..."
"Later ... meanwhile it is six o'clock; let us go and have dinner."
"How are we to dine?"
"My dear fellow, decent folk must have their dinner and dine well in order to give themselves fresh ideas."
And Gannot took his way towards the Palais-Royal, accompanied by the young man. When there, he entered the Frères-Provençaux. The youth tried faintly to drag Gannot away by the arm, but the latter pinched his hand tight as in a vice and the young man was obliged to follow. Gannot chose the menu and dined valiantly, to the great uneasiness of his friend; the more dainty the dishes the more he left on his plate untasted. The future Mapah ate enough for both. The Rabelaisian quarter of an hour arrived, and the bill came to thirty-five francs. Gannot flung a couple of louis on the table. They were going to give him the change.
"Keep it—the five francs are for the waiter," he said.
The young man shook his head sadly.
"That is not the way," he muttered below his breath, "to pay my bill of exchange."
Gannot did not appear to notice either his murmurs or his headshakings. They went out, Gannot walking in front, with a toothpick in his mouth; the friend followed silently and gloomily, like some resigned victim. When they reached la Rolonde, Gannot sat down, drew a chair within his friend's reach, struck the marble table with the wood of the framework that held the daily paper, ordered two cups of coffee, an inn-full of assorted liqueurs and the best cigars they possessed. The total amounted to five francs. There were then but twenty-five francs left over from the seventy. Gannot put ten in his friend's hand and restored the remaining fifteen to his pocket.
"What now?" asked his friend.
"Take the ten francs," replied Gannot; "go upstairs to that house you see opposite, No. 113; be careful not to mistake the storey, whatever you do!"
"What is the house?"
"It is a gambling-house."
"I shall have to play, then?"
"Of course you must! And at midnight, whatever your gains or losses, bring them here. I shall be there."
The young man had by this time reached such a pitch of utter exhaustion that, if Gannot had told him to go and fling himself into the river, he would have gone. He carried out Gannot's instructions to the letter. He had never put foot in a gaming-house before; fortune, it is said, favours the innocent beginner: he played and won. At a quarter to twelve—for he had not forgotten the injunctions of the master for whom he began to feel a sort of superstitious reverence—he went away with his pockets full of gold and his heart bursting with joy. Gannot was walking up and down the passage which led to the Perron, quietly smoking his cigar. From the farthest distance when he first caught sight of him, the youth shouted—
"Oh! my friend, such good luck! I have won fifteen hundred francs; when my bill of exchange is paid I shall still have a thousand francs!... Let me embrace you; I owe you my very life."
Gannot gently checked him with his hand, and told him to moderate his transports of gratitude.
"Ah! now," he said, "we can indeed go and have a glass of punch, can we not?"
"A glass of punch? A bowl, my friend, two bowls! As much as ever you like, and havanas ad libitum! I am rich; when my bill of exchange is paid, my watch redeemed, I shall still have ..."
"You have told me all that before."
"Upon my word, I am so pleased I cannot repeat it often enough, dear friend!" And the young man gave himself up to shouts of immoderate joy, whilst Gannot regally climbed the stairs which led to the Hollandais, the only one left open after midnight. It was full. Gannot called for the waiters. One waiter appeared. "I asked for the waiters," said Gannot. He fetched three who were in the ice-house and they roused up two who had already gone to bed—fifteen came in all. Gannot counted them.
"Good!" he said. "Now, waiters, go from table to table and ask the gentlemen and ladies at them what they would like to take."
"Then, monsieur ..."
"I will pay for it!" Gannot replied, in lordly tones.
The joke was acceded to and was, indeed, thought to be in very good taste; only the friend laughed at the wrong side of his mouth as he watched the consumption of liqueurs, coffee and glorias. Every table was like a liquid volcano, with lava of punch flowing out of the middle of its flames. The tables filled up again and the new arrivals were invited by the amphitryon to choose whatever they liked from the carte; ices, liqueurs, syphons of lemonade, everything, even to soda-water. Finally, at three o'clock, when there was not a single glass of brandy left in the establishment, Gannot called for the bill. It came to eighteen hundred francs. What about the bill of exchange now?... The young man, feeling more dead than alive, mechanically put his hand into his pocket, although he knew very well that it did not contain more than fifteen hundred francs; but Gannot opened his pocket-book and pulled out two notes of a thousand francs, and blowing them apart—
"Here, waiters," he said, "the change is for your attendance."
And, turning to his pupil, who was quite faint by this time, and who had been nudging his arm the whole night or treading on his toes—
"Young man," he said to him, "I wanted to give you a little lesson.... To teach you that a true gambler ought not to be astonished at his winnings, and, above all, he should make bold use of them." With the fifteen francs he had kept of his friend's money, he, too, had played, and had won two thousand francs. We have seen how they were spent. This was his miracle of the marriage of Cana.
But, as may well be understood, this hazardous fortune-making had its cruel reverses; Gannot's life was full of crises; he always lived at extremes of excitement. More than once during this stormy existence the darkest thoughts crossed his mind. To become another Karl Moor or Jean Sbogar or Jaromir, he formed all kinds of dreadful plans. To attack travellers by the highway and to fling on to the green baize tables gold pieces stained with blood, was, during more than one fit of despair, the dream of feverish nights and the terrible hope of his morrows!
"I went stumbling," he said, after his divinity had freed him from all such gloomy human chimeras, "along the road of crime, knocking my head here and there against the guillotine's edge; I had to go through all these experiences; for from the lowest blackguard was to emerge the first of reformers!"
To the career of gambling he added another, less risky. Upon the boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, where he then lived, the passers-by might observe a head as signpost. Upon its bald head some artist had painted in blue and red the cerebral topography of the talents, feelings and instincts; this cabalistic head indicated that consultations on phrenology were given within. Now, it is worth while to tell how Gannot attained the zenith of the science of Gall and of Spurzheim. He was the son of a hatter, and, when a child, had noticed in his father's shop the many different shapes of the hands corresponding to the diverse shapes of people's heads. He had thereupon originated a system of phrenology of his own, which, later, he developed by a superficial study of anatomy. Gannot was a doctor, or, more correctly speaking, a sanitary inspector; what he had learnt occupied little room in his memory, but, gifted as he was with fine and discerning tact, he analysed, by means of a species of clairvoyance, the characters and heads with which he had to deal. One day, when overwhelmed by a loss of money at the gaming-table and seeing only destitution and despair ahead of him, he had given way to dark resolutions, a fashionable and beautiful young woman of wealth got down from her carriage, ascended his stairs and knocked at his door. She came to ask the soothsayer to tell her fortune by her head. Though a splendid creature, Gannot saw neither her, nor her beauty, nor her troubles and wavering blushes; she sat down, took off her hat, uncovered her lovely golden hair, and let her head be examined by the phrenologist. The mysterious doctor passed his hands carelessly through the golden waves. His mind was elsewhere. There was nothing, however, more promising than the surfaces and contours which his skilful hand discovered as he touched them. But, when he came to the spot at the base of the skull which is commonly called the nape, which savants call the organ of amativity, whether she had seen Gannot previously or whether from instantaneous and magnetic sympathy, the lady burst into tears and flung her arms round the future Mapah's neck, exclaiming—
"Oh! I love you!"
This was quite a new light in the life of this man. Until that time Gannot had known women; he had not known woman. His life of mad debauchery, of gambling, violent emotions, spent on the pavements of the boulevards, and in the bars of houses of ill-fame, and among the walks of the bois, was followed by one of retirement and love; for he loved this beautiful unknown woman to distraction and almost to madness. She was married. Often, after their hours of delirious ecstacy, when the moment of parting had to come, when tears filled their eyes and sobs their breasts, they plotted together the death of the man who was the obstacle to their intoxicating passion; but they got no further to the completion of crime than thinking of it. She wished at least to fly with him; but, on the very day they had arranged to take flight, she arrived at Gannot's house with a pocket-book full of bank notes stolen from her husband. Gannot was horrified with the theft and declined the money. Next day she returned with no other fortune than the clothes she wore, not even a chain of gold round her neck or a ring on her finger. And then he took her away. Complicated by this fresh element in his life, he took his flight into more impossible regions than ever before; his was the type of nature which is carried away by all kinds of impulses. If the principle M. Guizot lays down be true: "Bodies always fall on the side towards which they incline," the Mapah was bound to fall some day or other, for he inclined to many sides! Gambling and love admirably suited the instincts of that eccentric life; but gambling—houses were closed! And the woman he loved died! Then was it that the god was born in him from inconsolable love and the suppressed passion for play. He was seized by illness, during which the spirit of this dead woman visited him every night, and revealed to him the doctrines of his new religion. Haunted by the hallucinations of love and fever, Gannot listened to himself in the voice which spoke within him. But he was no longer Gannot, he was transfigured.
[CHAPTER VIII]
The god and his sanctuary—He informs the Pope of his overthrow—His manifestoes—His portrait—Doctrine of escape—Symbols of that religion—Chaudesaigues takes me to the Mapah—Iswara and Pracriti—Questions which are wanting in actuality—War between the votaries of bidja and the followers of sakti—My last interview with the Mapah
In 1840, in the old Ile Saint Louis which is lashed by bitter and angry winds from the north and west, upon the coldest quay of that frigid Thule—terrarum ultima Thule—on a dark and dingy ground-floor, in a bare room, a man was moulding and casting in plaster. That man was the one-time Gannot. The room served both as studio and school; pupils came and took lessons in modelling there and to consult the Mapah. This was the name, as we have already said, under which Gannot went in his new existence. From this room was sent the first manifesto in which he who had been Gannot proclaimed his mission to the world. Who was surprised by it? Pope Gregory XVI. certainly was, when he received, on his sovereign throne, a letter dated from our apostolic pallet-bed, which announced that his time was over; that, from henceforth, he was to look upon himself as dethroned, and, in fact, that he was superseded by another. This polite duty fulfilled with regard to his predecessor, Gannot, in all simplicity, announced to his friends that they must look upon him as the god of the future. Gannot had been the leader of a certain school of thought for two or three years past; amongst his followers were Félix Pyat, Thoré, Chaudesaigues, etc. etc. His sudden transformation from Gannot to Mapah, his declaration to the Pope, and his presumption in posing as a revealer, alienated his former disciples; it was the durus his sermo. Nevertheless, he maintained unshaken belief in himself and continued his sermons; but as these oral sermons were insufficient and he thought it necessary to add to them a printed profession of faith, one day he sold his wearing apparel and converted the price of it into manifestoes of war against the religion of Christ, which he distributed among his new disciples.
After the sale of his wardrobe, the habits of the ci-devant lion entirely disappeared, as his garments had done. In his transition from Gannot to Mapah, everything that constituted the former man vanished: a blouse replaced, for both summer and winter, the elegant clothes which the past gambler used to wear; a grey felt hat covered his high and finely-shaped forehead. But, seen thus, he was really beautiful: his blue-grey eyes sparkled with mystic fire; his finely chiselled nose, with its delicately defined outlines, was straight and pure in form; his long flowing beard, bright gold coloured, fell to his chest; all his features, as is usual with thinkers and visionaries, were drawn up towards the top of his head by a sort of nervous tension; his hands were white and fine and distinguished-looking, and, with a remnant of his past vanity as a man of the world, he took particular care of them; his gestures were not by any means without commanding power; his language was eloquent, impassioned, picturesque and original. The prophet of poverty, he had adopted its symbols; he became a proletarian in order to reach the hearts of the lower classes; he donned the working-man's blouse to convert the wearers of blouses. The Mapah was not a simple god—he was a composite one; he was made up of Saint Simon, of Fourier and of Owen. His chief dogma was the extremely ancient one of Androgynism, i.e. the unity of the male and female principle throughout all nature, and the unity of the man and the woman in society. He called his religion EVADISME, i.e. (Eve and Adam); himself he called MAPAH, from mater and pater; and herein he excelled the Pope, who had never even in the palmiest days of the papacy, not even under Gregory VII., been anything more than the father of Christians, whilst he was both father and mother of humanity. In his system people had not to take simply the name of their father, but the first syllable of their mother's name combined with the first syllable of that of their father. Once the Mapah addressed himself thus to his friend Chaudesaigues—
"What is your name?"
"Chaudesaigues."
"What does that come from?"
"It is my father's name."
"Have you then killed your mother, wretched man?"
Chaudesaigues lowered his head: he had no answer to give to that.
In Socialism Mapah's doctrine was that of dissent. According to him assassins, thieves and smugglers were the living condemnation of the moral order against which they were rebelling. Schiller's Brigands he looked upon as the most complete development of his theory to be found in the world. Once he went to a home for lost women and collected them together, as he had once collected the waiters of the Hollandais in the days of his worldly folly; then, addressing the poor creatures who were waiting with curiosity, wondering who this sultan could be who wanted a dozen or more wives at a time—
"Mesdemoiselles," he said, "do you know what you are?"
"Why, we are prostitutes," the girls all replied together.
"You are wrong," said the Mapah; "you are Protestants." And in words which were not without elevation and vividness, he expounded to them the manner in which they, poor girls, protested against the privileges of respectable women. It need hardly be said that, as this doctrine spread, it led to some disquietude in the minds of magistrates, who had not attained the heights of the new religion, but were still plunged in the darkness of Christianity. Two or three times they brought the Mapah before the examining magistrates and threatened him with a trial; but the Mapah merely shook his blouse with his fine nervous hand, as the Roman ambassador used to shake his toga.
"Imprison me, try me, condemn me," he said; "I shall not appeal from the lower to a higher tribunal; I shall appeal from Pilate to the People!"
And, in fact, whether they stood in awe of his beard, his blouse or his speech, which was certainly captivating; whether they were unable to arrive at a decision as to what court the new religion should be judged at—police court or Court of Assizes—they left the Mapah in peace.
The most enthusiastic of the Evadian apostles was he who was once Caillaux, who published the Arche de la nouvelle alliance. He was the Mapah's Saint John; the Arche de la nouvelle alliance was the gospel which told the passion of Humanity to whose rescue the Christ of the Ile Saint Louis was come. We will devote a chapter to that gospel. The Mapah himself wrote nothing, except two or three manifestoes issued from his apostolic pallet, in which he announced his apostolate to the modern world; he did nothing but pictures and plaster-casts that looked like originals dug out of a temple of Isis. Taking his religion back to its source, he showed by his two-fold symbolism, how it had developed from age to age, fertilising the whole of nature, till, finally, it culminated in himself. The whole of the history was written in hieroglyphic signs, had the advantage of being able to be read and expounded by everybody and treated of Buddhism, Paganism and Christianity before leading up to Evadism. In the latter years of the reign of Louis-Philippe, the Mapah sent his allegorical pictures and symbols in plaster to the members of the Chamber of Deputies and to the Royal Family; it will be readily believed that the members of the Chamber and royal personages left these lithographs and symbols in the hands of their ushers and lackeys, with which to decorate their own attics. The Mapah trembled for their fate.
"They scoff," he said in prophecy: "MANÉ, THÉCEL, PHARÈS; evil fortune will befall them!"
What did happen to them we know.
One day Chaudesaigues—poor honest fellow, who died long before his time, which I shall speak of in its place—proposed to take me to the Mapah, and I accepted. He recognised me, as he had once dined or taken supper with me in the days when he was Gannot; and he had preserved a very clear memory of that meeting; he was very anxious at once to acquaint me with his symbolic figures, and to initiate me, like the Egyptian proselytes, into his most secret mysteries. Now, I had, by chance, just been studying in earnest the subjects of the early ages of the world and its great wars, which apparently devastated those primitive times without seeming reason; I was, therefore, in a measure, perfectly able not only to understand the most obscure traditions of the religion of the Mapah, but also to explain them to others, which I will now endeavour to do here.
At the period when the Celts had conquered India, that ancestor of Egyptian, Greek and Roman civilisations, they found a complete system of physical and metaphysical sciences already established; Atlantic cosmogony related to absolute unity, and, according to it, everything emanated from one single principle, called Iswara, which was purely spiritual. But soon the Indian savants perceived with fear, that this world, which they had looked upon for long as the product of absolute unity, was incontestably that of a combined duality. They might have looked upon these two principles, as did the first Zoroaster a long time after them, as principiés—i.e. as the son and daughter of Iswara, thus leaving the ancient Iswara his old position, by supporting him on a double column of creating beings, as we see a Roman general being carried raised up on two shields by his soldiers; but they wished to divide these two principles into principiant principles; they therefore satisfied themselves by joining a fresh principle to that of Iswara, by mating Iswara with Pracriti, or nature. This explained everything. Pracriti possessed the sakti—i.e. the conceptive power, and the old Iswara was the bidja or generative power.
I think, up to now, I have been as clear as possible, and I mean to try to continue my explanations with equal lucidity; which will not be an easy matter seeing that (and I am happy to give my reader due warning of it) we are dealing only with pure science, of which fact he might not be aware.
This early discovery of the Indian savants, which resulted in the marriage of Iswara with Pracriti, led to the consideration of the universe as the product of two principles, each possessing its own peculiar function of the male and female qualities. Iswara and Pracriti stood for Adam and Eve to the whole of the universe, not simply for humanity. This system, remarkable by its very simplicity, which attracted men by giving to all that surrounded him an origin similar to his own, is to be found amongst most races, which received it from the Hindus. Sanchoniathon calls his male principle Hypsistos, the Most High, and his female principle Berouth, nature; the Greeks call this male principle Saturn, and their female principle Rhea; both one and the other correspond to Iswara and Pracriti. All went well for several centuries; but the mania for controversy is innate in man, and it led to the following questions, which the Hindu savants propounded, and which provoked the struggle of half the human race against the other.
"Since," say the controversials, "the universe is the result of two principiant powers, one acting with male, the other with female qualities, must we then consider the relations that they bear to one another? Are they independent one of the other? are they pre-existent to matter and contemporaneous with eternity? Or ought we rather to look upon one of them as the procreative cause of its companion? If they are independent, how came they to be reunited? Was it by some coercive force? If so, what divinity of greater power than themselves exercised that pressure upon them? Was it by sympathy? Why, then, did it not act either earlier or later? If they are not independent of one another, which of the two is to be under subjection to the other? Which is first in order of antiquity or of power? Did Iswara produce Pracriti or Pracriti Iswara? Which of them acts with the greatest energy and is the most necessary to the procreation of inanimate things and animate beings? Which should be called first in the sacrifices made to them or in the hymns addressed to them? Ought the worship offered them to be combined or separated? Ought men and women to raise separate altars to them or one for both together?"[1]
These questions, which have divided the minds of millions of men, which have caused rivers of blood to flow, nowadays sound idle and even absurd to our readers, who hear Hindu religion spoken of as mere mythology, and India as some far-off planet; but, at the time of which we are now speaking, the Indian Empire was the centre of the civilised world and master of the known world. These questions, then, were of the highest importance. They circulated quietly in the empire at first, but soon each one collected quite a large enough number of partisans for the religious question to appear under a political aspect. The supreme priesthood, which at first had begun by holding itself aloof from all controversy, sacrificed equally to Iswara and to Pracriti—to the generative power and to the conceptive power: sacerdotalism, which had long remained neutral between the bidja and the sakti principles, was compelled to decide, and as it was composed of men—that is to say of the generative power, it decided in favour of males, and proclaimed the dominance of the masculine sex over the feminine. This decision was, of course, looked upon as tyrannical by the Pracritists, that is, the followers of the conceptive power theory; they revolted. Government rose to suppress the revolution and, hence, the declaration of civil war. Figure to yourselves upon an immense scale, in an empire of several hundreds of millions of men, a war similar to that of the Albigenses, the Vaudois or the Protestants. Meantime two princes of the reigning dynasty,[2] both sons of King Ongra, the oldest called Tarak'hya, the youngest Irshou, divided the Indian Empire between them, less from personal conviction than to make proselytes. One took bija for his standard, the other took sakti. The followers of each of these two symbols rallied at the same time under their leaders, and India had a political and civil and religious war; Irshou, the younger of the two brothers, having positively declared that he had broken with sacerdotalism and intended to worship the feminine or conceptive faculty, as the first cause in the universe, according priority to it and pre-eminence over the generative or masculine faculty. A political war can be ended by a division of territory; a religious war is never-ending. Sects exterminate one another and yet are not convinced. A deadly, bitter, relentless war, then, ravaged the empire. As Irshou represented popular opinion and the Socialism of the time, and his army was largely composed of herdsmen, they called his followers the pallis, that is to say, shepherds, from the Celtic word pal, which means shepherd's crook. Irshou was defeated by Tarak'hya, and driven back as far as Egypt. The Pallis there became the stock from which those primitive dynasties sprang which lasted for two hundred and sixty-one years, and are known as the dynasties of Shepherd Kings. The etymology this time is palpably evident; therefore, let us hope we shall not meet with any contradiction on this head. Now, we have stated that Irshou took as his standard the symbol which represented the divinity he had worshipped; that sign, in Sanscrit, was called yoni, from whence is derived yoneh—which means a dove—this explains, we may point out in passing, why the dove became the bird of Venus. The men who wore the badge of the yoni were called Yoniens, and, as they always wore it symbolically depicted on a red flag, red or purple became, at Tyre and Sidon and in Greece, the royal colour, and was adopted by the consuls and emperors and popes of Rome and, finally, by all reigning princes, no matter what race they were descended from or what religion they professed. My readers may assume that I am rather pleased to be able to teach kings the derivation of their purple robes.
Well, then, it was on account of his studying these great questions of dispute, which had lasted more than two thousand years and had cost a million of men's lives; it was from fear lest they should be revived in our days that the philanthropic Gannot endeavoured to found a religion, under the title of Evadism which was to reunite these two creeds into a single one. To that end were his strange figures moulded in plaster and the eccentric lithographs that he designed and executed upon coloured paper, with the earnestness of a Brahmin disciple of bidja or an Egyptian adherent of sakti.[3]
The joy of the Mapah can be imagined when he found I was acquainted with the primitive dogmas of his religion and with the disasters which the discussion of those doctrines had brought with them. He offered me the position of his chief disciple, on the spot, in place of him who had once been Caillaux; but I have ever been averse to usurpation, and had no intention of devoting myself to a principle, by my example, which, some day or other, I should be called upon to oppose. The Mapah next offered to abdicate in my favour and himself be my head disciple. The position did not seem to me sufficiently clearly defined, in the face of both spiritual and temporal powers, to accept that offer, fascinating though it was. I therefore contented myself with carrying away from the Mapah's studio one of the most beautiful specimens of the bidja and sakti, promising to exhibit them in the most conspicuous place in my sitting-room, which I took good care not to do, and then I departed. I did not see the Mapah again until after the Revolution of 24 February, when, by chance, I met him in the offices of the Commune de Paris, where I went to ask for the insertion of an article on exiles in general, and those of the family of Orléans in particular. The article had been declined by the chief editor of the Liberté, M. Lepoitevin-Saint-Alme. The revolution predicted by Gannot had come. I expected, therefore, to find him overwhelmed with delight; and, as a matter of fact, he did praise the three days of February, but with a faint voice and dulled feelings; he seemed to be singularly enfeebled by that strange and sensual mysticism, which presented every event to his mind in dogmatic form. The lines of the upper part of his face were more deeply drawn towards his prominent forehead, and his whole person bespoke the visionary in whom the hallucination of being a god had degenerated into a disease.
He defined the terror of the middle classes at the events of 24 February and Socialistic doctrines as, "the frantic terror of the pig which feels the cold edge of the knife at its throat." His latter years were sad and gloomy; he ended by doubting himself. Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani! rang in his aching and disillusioned heart like a death-knell. During the last year of his life his only pupil was an Auvergnat, a seller of chestnuts in a passage-way.... And to him the dying god bequeathed the charge of spreading his doctrines. This event took place towards the beginning of the year 1851.
[1] The Abbé d'Olivet, État social de l'homme.
[2] See the Scanda-Pousana and the Brahmanda for the details of this war.
[3] In Sanscrit linga and yoni; in Greek ϕαλλος and χοίρος.
[CHAPTER IX]
Apocalypse of the being who was once called Caillaux
We said a few words of the apostle of Mapah and promised to follow him to his isle of Patmos and to give some idea of his apocalypse. We will keep our word. It was no easy matter to find this apocalypse, my reader may judge; it had been published at the trouble and expense of Hetzel, under the title of Arche de la nouvelle Alliance. Not that Hetzel was in the very least a follower of the Evadian religion—he was simply the compatriot and friend of him who was Caillaux, to which twofold advantages he owed the honour of dining several times with the god Mapah and his disciple. It is more than likely that Hetzel paid for the dinners himself.
ARCHE DE LA NOUVELLE ALLIANCE
"I have not come to say to the people, 'Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's and to God the things that are God's,' but I have come to tell Cæsar to render to God the things that belong to God! 'What is God?—God, is the People!—The Mapah.' At the hour when shadows deepen I saw the vision of the last apostle of a decaying religion and I exclaimed—
I
"'Why dost thou grieve, O king! and why dost thou moan over thy ruined crown? Why rise up against those who dethroned thee? If thou fallest to-day, it is because thy hour has come: to attempt to prolong it for a day, is but to offer insult to the Majesty in the heavens.
II
"'Everything that exists here below has it not its phases of life and of death? Does the vegetation of the valleys always flourish? After the season of fine days does it not come to pass that some morning the autumn wind scatters the leaves of the beeches?
III
"'Cease, then, O King! thy lamentation and do not be perturbed in thy loneliness! Be not surprised if thy road is deserted and if the nations keep silence during thy passing as at the passing of a funeral cortège: thou hast not failed in thy mission; simply, thy mission is done. It is destiny!
IV
"'Dost thou not know that humanity only lives in the future? What does the present care about the oriflamme of Bouvines? Let us bury it with thy ancestors lying motionless beneath their monuments; another banner is needed for the men of to-day.
V
"'And when we have sealed with a triple seal the stone which covers up past majesty, let us do obeisance as did the people of Memphis before the silence of their pyramids, those mute giants of the desert; but like them do not let us remain with our foreheads in the dust, but from the ruins of ancient creeds let us spring upwards towards the Infinite! Thus did I sing during the dawn of my life. A poet, I have ever pitied noble misfortune; as son of the people, I have never abjured renown. At that time this world appeared to me to be free and powerful under heaven, and I believed that the last salute of the universe to the phantom of ancient days would be its first aspiration towards future splendours. But it was nothing of the kind. The past, whilst burying itself under the earth, had not drawn all its procession of dark shades with it. Now I went to those bare strands which the ocean bleaches with its foam. The seagulls hailed the rocks of the coast with their harsh cries, and the mighty voice of the sea sounded more sweetly to my ear than the language of men ...'"
Then follows the apostle's feelings under the influence of the great aspects of Nature; he stays a year far from Paris; then at last his vocation recalls him among men.
"Now, the very night of my return from my wanderings, I walked a dreamer in the midst of the roar of that great western city, my soul more than ever crushed beneath the weight of its ruin. I beheld myself as during my happiest years when I was full of confidence in God and the future; and then I turned my glance upon myself, the man of the present moment, for ever tossed between hope and fear, between desire and remorse, between calm and discouragement. When I had well contemplated myself thus, and had by thought stirred up the mud of the past and had considered the good and evil that had emanated from me, I raised in inexpressible anger my fist towards heaven, and I said to God: 'To whom, then, does this earth belong?' At the same moment, I felt myself hustled violently, and by an irresistible movement I lowered my arm to strike—in striking the cheek of him who was jostling me, I felt I was smiting the world. Oh! what a surprise! my hand, instead of beating his face, encountered his hand; a loving pressure drew us together, and in grave and solemn tones he said: 'The water, the air, the earth and fire belong to none—they are God's!' Then, uncovering the folds of the garment which covered my breast, he put a finger on my heart and a brilliant flame leapt out and I felt relief. Overcome with amazement, I exclaimed—
"'Who art thou, whose word strengthens and whose touch regenerates?'
'Thou shalt know, this very night!' he replied, and went on his way.
"I followed and examined him at leisure: he was a man of the people, with a crooked back and powerful limbs; an untrimmed beard fell over his breast, and his bare and nearly bald head bore witness to hard work and rude passions. He carried a sack of plaster on his back which bowed him down beneath its weight. Thus bent he passed through the crowd...."
The disciple then followed the god; for this man who had comforted him was the Mapah; he followed him to the threshold of his studio, into which he disappeared. It was the same studio to which Chaudesaigues had taken me, on the quai Bourbon, in the Ile Saint Louis. The door of the studio soon reopened and the apostle entered and was present at the revelation, which the Mapah had promised him. But, first of all, there was the discovery of the Mapah himself.
"Meanwhile, the owner of this dwelling had none of the bearing of a common working-man. He was, indeed, the man of the sack of plaster, and the uncut beard, and torn blouse, who had accosted me in such an unexpected fashion; he had exactly the same powerful glance, the same breadth of shoulders, the same vigorous loins, but on that furrowed brow, and in those granite features and that indescribable personality of the man there hovered a rude dignity before which I bowed my head.
"I advanced towards my host, who was laid on a half-broken bed, lighted up by a night lamp in a pot of earth. I said—
"'Master, you whose touch heals and whose words restore, who are you?'
"Lifting his eyes to me, he replied simply, 'There is no master now; we are all children of God: call me brother.'
"'Then,' I replied, 'Brother, who then are you?'
"'I am he who is. Like the shepherd on the tops of the cliffs I have heard the cry of the multitude; it is like the moan of the waves at the winter equinox; that cry has pierced my heart and I have come.'
"Motioning me to come nearer, he went on—
"'Son of doubt, who art sowing sorrow and reaping anguish, what seekest thou? The sun or darkness? Death or life? Hope or the grave?'
"'Brother, I seek after truth,' I replied. 'I have hailed the past, I have questioned its abysmal depths whence came the rumours that had reached me: the past was deaf to my cries.'
"'The past was not to hear you. Every age has had its own prophets, and each country its monuments; but prophets and monuments have vanished like shadows: what was life yesterday is to-day but death. Do not then evoke the past, let it fall asleep in the darkness of its tombs in the dust of its solitary places.'
"I went on—'I questioned the present amidst the flashes and deceptions of this century, but it did not hear me either.'
"'The present was not to hear you; its flashes do but precede the storm, and its law is not the law of the future.'
"'Brother, what then is this law? What are the showers that make it blossom, and what sun sheds light upon it?'
"'God will teach thee.'
"Pointing to me to be seated near to him, he added:
'Sit down and listen attentively, for I will declare the truth unto you. I am he who crieth to the people, "Watch at the threshold of your dwelling and sleep not: the hour of revelation is at hand ..."'
"At that moment the earth trembled, a hurricane beat against the window panes, belfries rang of themselves; the disciple would fain flee, but fear riveted him to the master's side. He continued—
"I foreboded that something strange would take place before me, and indeed as the knell of the belfry rang out on the empty air, a song which had no echo in mortal tongue, abrupt, quick and laden with indefinable mockery, answered him from under the earth, and rising from note to note, from the deepest to the shrillest tones, it resounded and rebounded like some wounded snake, and grated like a saw being sharpened; finally, ever decreasing, ever-growing feebler, until it was lost at last in space. And this is the burden of the song—
"'Behold the year '40, the famous year '40 has come! Ah! ah! ah! What will it bring forth? What will it produce? An ox or an egg? Perhaps one, perhaps the other! ah! ah! ah! Peasants turn up your sleeves! And you wealthy, sweep your hearthstones. Make way, make way for the year '40! The year '40 is cold and hungry and in need of food; and no wonder! Its teeth chatter, its limbs shiver, its children have no shoes, and its daughters possess not even a ribbon to adorn their locks on Sunday; they have not even a beggarly dime lying idle in their poverty-stricken pockets to buy drink wherewith to refresh themselves and their lovers! Ah! ah! what wretchedness! Were it not too dreadful it would seem ludicrous. Did you come here, gossip, to see this topsy-turvy world? Come quickly, there is room for all.... Stay, you raven looking in at the window, and that vulture beating its wings. Ah! ah! ah! The year '40 is cold, is an hungered, in need of food! What will it bring forth ...?'
"And the song died away in the distance, and mingled with the murmur of the wind which was wailing without....
"Then began the apparitions. There were twelve of them, all livid and weighted with chains and bleeding, each holding its dissevered head in its hand, each wrapped in a shroud, green with the moss of its sepulchre, each carrying in front of it the mark of the twelve great passions, the mystic link which unites man to the Creator. They advanced as some dark shadow of night falls upon the mountains. It was one of those terrifying groups, which one sees in the days of torment, in the midst of the cross-roads of the seething city; the citizens question one another by signs, and ask each other—
"'Do you see those awful faces down there? Who on earth are those men, and how come they to wander spectre-like among the excited crowd?'
"And on the head of the one who walked first, like that of an overthrown king, so splendid was its pallor and its regal lips scornful, a crown of fire was burning with this word written in letters of blood, 'Lacenairisme!' Dumb and led by the figure who seemed to be their king, the phantoms grouped themselves in a semi-circle at the foot of the dilapidated bed, as though at the foot of some seat of justice; and he who is, after fixing his earnest glance upon them for some moments questioned them in the following terms—
"'Who are you?'
"'Sorrow's elect, apostles of hunger.'
"'Your names?'
"'A mysterious letter.'
"'Whence come you?'
"'From the shades.'
"'What do you demand?'
"'Justice.'
"The echoes repeated, 'Justice!'
"And at a signal from their king, the phantoms intoned a ringing hymn in chorus ..."
It had a kind of awful majesty in it, a sort of grand terror, but we will reserve our space for other quotations which we prefer to that. The apostle resumed—
"The pale phantoms ceased, their lips became motionless and frozen, and round the accursed brows of these lost children of the grave, there seemed to hover indistinctly the bloody shadow of the past. Suddenly from the base to the top of this mysterious ladder issued a loud sound, and fresh faces appeared on the threshold.... A red shirt, a coarse woollen cap, a poor pair of linen trousers soiled with sweat and powder; at the feet was a brass cannon-ball, in its hands were clanking chains; these accoutrements stood for the symbols of all kinds of human misfortunes. As if they had been called up by their predecessors, they entered and bowed amicably to them. I noticed that each face bore a look of unconcern and of defiance, each carefully hid a rusty dagger beneath its vestments, and on their shoulders they bore triumphantly a large chopping-block still dyed with dark stains of blood. And on this block leant a man with a drunken face and tottering legs, grotesquely supporting himself on the worn-out handle of an axe. And this man, gambolling and gesticulating, mumbled in a nasal tone, a kind of lament with this refrain—
"'Voici l'autel et le bedeau!
À sa barbe faisons l'orgie;
Jusqu'à ce que sur notre vie,
Le diable tire le rideau,
Foin de l'autel et du bedeau!'"And his companions took up the refrain in chorus to the noise of their clashing chains. Which perceiving he who is spread his hands over the dreadful pageant. There took place a profound silence; then he said—
"'My heart, ocean of life, of grief and of love, is the great receptacle of the new alliance into which fall its tears and sweat and blood; and by the tears which have watered, by the sweat which has dropped, by the blood which has become fertile, be blessed, my brothers, executed persons, convicts and sufferers, and hope—the hour of revelation is at hand!'
'What!' I exclaimed in horror; 'hast thou come to preach the sword?'
'I do not come to preach it but to give the word for it.'
"And he who is replied—
"'Passions are like the twelve great tables of the law of laws, LOVE. They are when in unison the source of all good things; when subverted they are the source of all evils.'
"Silence again arose, and he added—
"'Each head that falls is one letter of a verb whose meaning is not yet understood, but whose first word stands for protestation; the last, signifies integral passional expansion. The axe is a steel; the head of the executed, a flint; the blood which spurts from it, the spark; and society a powder-horn!'
"Silence was renewed, and he went on a third time—
"'The prison is to modern society what the circus was to ancient Rome: the slave died for individual liberty; in our day, the convict dies for passional integral liberty.'
"And again silence reigned, but after a while a mild Voice from on high said to the sorry cortège which stood motionless at one corner of the pallet-bed—-
"'Have hope, ye poor martyrs! Hope! for the hour approaches!'"
"Then three noble figures came forward—those of the mechanic, the labourer and the soldier. The first was hungry: they fought with him for the bread he had earned. The second was both hungry and cold; they haggled for the corn he had sown and the wood he had cut down. The third had experienced every kind of human suffering; furthermore, he had hoped and his hope had withered away, and he was reproached for the blood that had been shed. All three bore the history of their lives on their countenances; all felt ill at ease in the present and were ready to question God concerning His doings; but as the hour approached and their cry was about to rise to the Eternal, a spectre rose up from the limbs of the past: his name was Duty. Before him they recoiled affrighted. A priest went before them, his form wrapped in burial clothes; he advanced slowly with lowered eyes. Strange contrast! He dreamed of the heavens and yet bent low towards the earth! On his breast was the inscription: Christianity! Beneath: Resignation.
"'Here they come! Behold them!' cried the apostle; they are advancing to him who is. What will be the nature of their speech and how will they express themselves in his presence? Will their complaint be as great as their sadness? Not so, their uncertainty is too great for them to dare to formulate their thoughts: besides, doubt is their real feeling. Perhaps, some day, they may speak out more freely. Let us listen respectfully to the hymn that falls from their lips; it is solemnly majestic, but less musical than the breeze and less infinite than the Ocean. Hear it—
HYMNE
"Du haut de l'horizon, du milieu des nuages
Où l'astre voyageur apparut aux trois rois,
Des profondeurs du temple où veillent tes images,
O Christ! entends-tu notre voix?
Si tu contemples la misère
De la foule muette au pied de tes autels,
Une larme de sang doit mouiller ta paupière.
Tu dois te demander, dans ta douleur austère,
S'il est des dogmes éternels!"
LE PRÊTRE
"O Christ! j'ai pris longtemps pour un port salutaire
Ta maison, dont le toit domine les hauts lieux;
Et j'ai voulu cacher au fond du sanctuaire,
Comme sous un bandeau, mon front tumultueux."
LE SOLDAT
"O Christ! j'ai pris longtemps pour une noble chaîne
L'abrutissant lien que je traîne aujourd'hui;
Et j'ai donné mon sang à la cause incertaine
De cette égalité dont l'aurore avait lui."
LE LABOUREUR
"O Christ! j'ai pris longtemps pour une tâche sainte
La rude mission confiée à mes bras,
Et j'ai, pendant vingt ans, sans repos et sans plainte,
Laissé sur les sillons la trace de mes pas."
L'OUVRIER
"O Christ! j'ai pris longtemps pour œuvre méritoire
Mes longs jours consumés dans un labeur sans fin;
Et, maintes fois, de peur d'outrager ta mémoire,
J'ai plié ma nature aux douleurs de la faim."
LE PRÊTRE
"La foi n'a pas rempli mon âme inassouvie!"
LE SOLDAT
"L'orage a balayé tout le sang répandu!"
LE LABOUREUR
"Où je semais le grain, j'ai récolté l'ortie!"
L'OUVRIER
"Hier, J'avais un lit mon maître l'a vendu!""Silence! Has the night wind borne away their prayer on its wings? or have their voices ceased to question the heavens? Are they perchance comforted? Who can tell? God keeps the enigma in His own mighty hands, the terrible enigma held aloft over the borders of two worlds—the present and the future. But they will not be forsaken on their way where doubt assails them, where resignation fells them. Children of God, they shall have their share of life and of sunshine. God loves those who seek after Him.... Then the priest and soldier and artizan and labourer gave place to others, and the apostle went on—
"And after two women, one of whom was dazzlingly and boldly adorned, and the other mute and veiled, there followed a procession in which the grotesque was mingled with the terrible, the fantastic with the real; all moved about the room together, which seemed suddenly to grow larger to make space for this multitude, whilst the retiring spectres, giving place to the newcomers, grouped themselves silently at a little distance from their formidable predecessors. And he who is, preparing to address a speech to the fresh arrivals, one of their number, whom I had not at first noticed, came forward to answer in the name of his acolytes. Upon the brow of this interpreter, square built, with shining and greedy lips and on his glistening hungry lips, I read in letters of gold the word Macairisme!
"And he who is said—
"'Who are you?'
"'The favourites of luxury, the apostles of joy.'
"'Whence come you?'
"'From wealth.'
"'Where do you go?'
"'To pleasure.'
"'What has made you so well favoured?'
"'Infamy.'
"'What makes you so happy?'
"'Impunity.'"
The strange procession which then unfolded itself before the apostle's eyes can be imagined: first the dazzling woman in the bold attire, the prostitute; the mute, veiled woman was the adulteress; then came stock-jobbers, sharpers, business men, bankers, usurers,—all that class of worms, reptiles and serpents which are spawned in the filth of society.
"One twirled a great gold snuff-box between his fingers, upon the lid of which were engraved these words: Powdered plebeian patience; and he rammed it into his nostrils with avidity. Another was wrapped in the folds of a great cloak which bore this inscription: Cloth cut from the backs of fools. A third, with a narrow forehead, yellow skin and hollow cheeks, was leaning lovingly upon his abdomen, which was nothing less than an iron safe, his two hands, the fingers of which were so many great leeches, twisting and opening their gaping tentacles, as though begging for food. Several of the figures had noses like the beaks of vultures, between their round and wild eyes: noses which cut up with disgusting voracity a quarter of carrion held at arm's length by a chain of massive gold, resembling those which shine on the breasts of the grand dignitaries of various orders of chivalry. In the middle of all was one who shone forth in brilliant pontifical robes, with a mitre on his head shaped like a globe, sparkling with emeralds and rubies. He held a crozier in one hand upon which he leant, and a sword in the other, which seemed at a distance to throw out flames; but on nearer approach the creaking of bones was heard beneath the vestments, and the figure turned out to be only a skeleton painted, and the sword and the crozier were but of fragile glass and rotten wood. Finally, above this seething, deformed indescribable assembly, there floated a sombre banner, a gigantic oriflamme, a fantastic labarum, the immense folds of which were being raised by a pestilential whistling wind; and on this banner, which slowly and silently unfurled like the wings of a vulture, could be read, Providential Pillories. And the whole company talked and sang, laughed and wept, gesticulated and danced and performed innumerable artifices. It was bewildering! It was fearful!"
Here followed the description of a kind of revel beside which Faust's was altogether lacking in imagination. But, when he thought they had all talked, sung, laughed, wept, gesticulated and danced long enough, he who is made a sign and all those voices melted into but two voices, and all the figures into but two, and all the heads into but two. And two human forms appeared side by side, looking down at their feet, which were of clay. Then, suddenly, out of the clay came forth a seven-headed hydra and each of its heads bore a name. The first was called Pride; the second, Avarice; the third, Luxury; the fourth, Envy; the fifth, Gluttony; the sixth, Anger; the seventh, Idleness. And, standing up to its full height, this frightful hydra, with its thousand folds, strangled the writhing limbs of the colossus, which struggled and howled and uttered curses and lamentations towards the heavens: each of the seven jaws of the monster impressed horrible bites in his flesh, one in his forehead, another in his heart, another in his belly, another in his mouth, another in his flanks and another in his arms.
"'Behold the past!' said he who is.
"'Brother,' I cried, 'and what shall then the future be like?'
"'Look,' he said. The hydra had disappeared and the two human forms were defined again, intertwined, full of strength and majesty and love against the light background of the hovel, and the feet of the colossus were changed into marble of the most dazzling whiteness. When I had well contemplated this celestial form, he who is again held out his hands and it vanished, and the studio became as it was a few moments previously. The three great orders of our visitors were still there, but calm now and in holy contemplation. Then he who is said—
"'Whoever you may be, from whatever region you come, from sadness or pleasure, from a splendid east or the dull west, you are welcome brothers, and to all I wish good days, good years! To the murdered and convicts, brothers! innocent protestors, gladiators of the circus, living thermometers of the falsity of social institutions, Hope! the hour of your restoration is at hand!... And you poor prostitutes, my sisters! beautiful diamonds, bespattered with mud and opprobrium, Hope! the hour of your transformation is approaching!... To you, adulteresses, my sisters, who weep and lament in your domestic prison, fair Christs of love with tarnished brows, Hope! the hour of liberty is near!... To you, poor artisans, my brothers, who sweat for the master who devours you, who eat the scraps of bread he allows you, when he does leave you any, in agony and torments for the morrow! What ought you to become? Everything! What are you now? Nothing! Hope and listen: Oppression is impious; resignation is blasphemy!... To you, poor labouring men and farmers, brothers, who toil for the landlord, sow and reap the corn for the landlord of which he leaves you only the bran, Hope! the time for bread whiter than snow is coming! ... To you, poor soldiers, my brothers, who fertilise the great furrow of humanity with your blood, Hope! the hour for eternal peace is at hand!... And you, poor priests, my brothers, who lament beneath your frieze robes and heat your foreheads at the sides of your altars! Hope! the hour of toleration is at hand!'
"After a moment's silence, he who is went on—
"'I not forget you, either, you the happy ones of the century, those elected for joy. You, too, have your mission to fulfil; it is a holy one, for from the glutted body of the old world will issue the transformed universe of the future.... Be welcome, then, brothers; good wishes to you all!'
"Then all those who were present, who had listened to him, departed from the garret in silence, filled with hope; and their footsteps echoed on the steps of the interminably long staircase. And the same cry which had already rung in my ears resounded a second time—'The year '40 is cold, it is hungry! The year '40 needs food! What will it bring forth? What will it produce? Ah! ah! ah!'
"I turned to him who is. The night had not run a third of its course, and the flame of the lamp still burnt in its yellow fount, and I exclaimed—
"'Brother! in whose name wilt thou relieve all these miseries?'
"'In the name of my mother, the great mother who was crucified!' replied he who is.
"He continued: 'At the beginning all was well and all women were like the one single woman, Eve, and all men like one single man, Adam, and the reign of Eve and Adam, or of primitive unity, flourished in Eden, and harmony and love were the sole laws of this world.'
"He went on: 'Fifty years ago appeared a woman who was more beautiful than all others—her name was Liberty, and she took flesh in a people—that people called itself France. On her brow, as in ancient Eden, spread a tree with green boughs which was called the tree of liberty. Henceforward France and Liberty stand for the same thing, one single identical idea!' And, giving me a harp which hung above his bed, he added. 'Sing, prophet!' and the Spirit of God inspired me with these words—
I
"Why dost thou rise with the Sun, O France! O Liberty! And why are thy vestments scented with incense? Why dost thou ascend the mountains in early morn?
II
"Is it to see reapers in the ripened cornfields, or the gleaner bending over the furrows like a shrub bowed down by the winds?
III
"Or is it to listen to the song of the lark or the murmur of the river, or to gaze at the dawn which is as beautiful as a blue-eyed maiden?
IV
"If you rise with the sun, O France! O Liberty! it is not to watch the reapers in the cornfields or the bowed gleaners among the furrows.
V
"Nor to listen to the song of the lark or murmur of the river, nor yet to gaze at the dawn, beauteous as a blue-eyed maiden.
VI
"Thou awaitest thy bridegroom to be: thy bridegroom of the strong hands, with lips more roseate than corals from the Spanish seas, and forehead more polished than Pharo's marble.
VII
"Come down from thy mountains, O France! O Liberty! Thou wilt not find thy bridegroom there. Thou wilt meet him in the holy city, in the midst of the multitude.
VIII
"Behold him as he comes to thee, with proud steps, his breast covered with a breastplate of brass; thou shalt slip the nuptial ring on his finger; at thy feet is a crown that has fallen in the mud; thou shalt place it on his brow and proclaim him emperor. Thus adorned thou shalt gaze on him proudly and address him thus—
IX
'My bridegroom thou art as beauteous as the first of men. Take off the Phrygian cap from my brow, and replace it by a helmet with waving plumes; gird my loins with a flaming sword and send me out among the nations until I shall have accomplished in sorrow the mystery of love, according as it has been written, that I am to crush the serpent's head!'
X
"And when thy bridegroom has listened to thee, he will reply: 'Thy will be done, O France! O Liberty!' And he will urge thee forth, well armed, among the nations, that God's word may be accomplished.
XI
"Why is thy brow so pale, O France! O Liberty! And why is thy white tunic soiled with sweat and blood? Why walkest thou painfully like a woman in travail?
XII
"Because thy bridegroom gives thee no relaxation from thy task, and thy travail is at hand.
XIII
"Dost thou hear the wind roaring in the distance, and the mighty voice of the flood as it groans in its granite prison? Dost thou hear the moaning of the waves and the cry of the night-birds? All announce that deliverance is at hand.
XIV
"As in the days of thy departure, O France, O Liberty! put on thy glorious raiment; sprinkle on thy locks the purest perfumes of Araby; empty with thy disciples the farewell goblet, and take thy way to thy Calvary, where the deliverance of the world must be sealed.
XV
"'What is the name of that hill thou climbest amidst the lightning flashes?'
"'The hill is Waterloo.'
"'What is that plain called all red with thy blood?'
"'It is the plain of the Belle-Alliance!'
"'Be thou for ever blessed among women, among all the nations, O France! O Liberty!'
"And when he who is had listened to these things, he replied—
"'Oh, my mother, thou who told me "Death was not the tomb; but the cradle of an ampler life, of more infinite Love!" thy cry has reached me. O mother! by the anguish of thy painful travail, by the sufferings of thy martyrdom in crushing the serpent's head and saving Humanity!'
"Then turning to me he added: 'Child of God, what art thou looking for? Light or darkness? Death or life? Hope or despair?'
"'Brother,' I replied, 'I am looking for Truth!'
"And he replied, 'In the name of primeval unity, reconstructed by the grand blood of France, I hail thee apostle of Eve-Adam!'
"And he who is called forth to the abyss which opened out at his voice—
"'Child of God,' he said, 'listen attentively, and look!'
"And I looked and saw a great vessel, with a huge mast which terminated in a mere hull, and one of the sides of the vessel looked west and the other east. And on the west it rested upon the cloudy tops of three mountains whose bases were plunged in a raging sea. Each of these mountains bore its name on its blood-red flank: the first was called Golgotha; the second, Mont-Saint-Jean; the third, Saint-Helena. In the middle of the great mast, on the western side, a five-armed cross was fixed, upon which a woman was stretched, dying. Over her head was this inscription—
"FRANCE
18 June 1815
Good Friday"Each of the five arms of the cross on which she was stretched represented one of the five parts of the world; her head rested over Europe and a cloud surrounded her. But on the side of the vessel which looked towards the east there were no shadows; and the keel stayed at the threshold of the city of God, on the summit of a triumphal arch which the sun lit up with its rays. And the same woman reappeared, but she was transfigured and radiant; she lifted up the stone of a grave on which was written—
"RESTORATION, DAYS OF THE TOMB
29 July 1830
Easter"And her bridegroom held out his arms, smiling, and together they sprang upwards to the skies. Then, from the depths of the arched heavens, a mighty voice spake—
"'The mystery of love is accomplished—all are called! all are chosen! all are re-instated!' Behold this is what I saw in the holy heavens and soon after the abyss was veiled, and he who is laid his hands upon me and said—
"'Go, my brother, take off thy festal garments and don the tunic of a working-man; hang the hammer of a worker at thy waist, for he who does not go with the people does not side with me, and he who does not take his share of labour is the enemy of God. Go, and be a faithful disciple of unity!'
"And I replied: 'It is the faith in which I desire to live, which I am ready to seal with my blood? When I was ready to set forth, the sun began to climb above the horizon.
"He who was CAILLAUX
"July 1840"
Such was the apocalypse of the chief, and we might almost say, the only apostle of the Mapah. I began with the intention of cutting out three-quarters of it, and I have given nearly the whole. I began, my pen inclined to scoff, but my courage has failed me; for there is beneath it all a true devotion and poetry and nobility of thought. What became of the man who wrote these lines? I do not know in the least; but I have no doubt he did not desert the faith in which he desired to live, and that he remained ready to seal it with his blood. ... Society must be in a bad state and sadly out of joint and disorganised for men of such intelligence to find no other method of employment than to become self-constituted gods—or apostles!
[BOOK III]
[CHAPTER I]
The scapegoat of power—Legitimist hopes—The expiatory mass—The Abbé Olivier—The Curé of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois—Pachel—Where I begin to be wrong—General Jacqueminot—Pillage of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois—The sham Jesuit and the Préfet of Police—The Abbé Paravey's room
Whilst we were upon the subject of great priests, of apostles and gods, of the Abbé Châtel, and of him who was Caillaux and the Mapah, we meant to approach cursorily the history of Saint-Simon and of his two disciples Enfantin and Bayard; but we begin to fear that our readers have had enough of this modern Olympus; we therefore hasten to return to politics, which were going from bad to worse, and to literature, which was growing better and better. Let us, however, assure our readers they have lost nothing by the delay: a little further on they will meet with the god again at his office of the Mont-de-Piété, and the apostles in their retreat of Mérilmontant.
But first let us return to our artillerymen; then, by way of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois and the archbishop's palace, we will reach Antony. As will be realised, our misdeeds of the months of November and December had roused the attention of those in authority; warrants had been issued, and nineteen citizens, mostly belonging to the artillery, had been arrested. These were Trélat, Godefroy Cavaignac, Guinard, Sambuc, Francfort, Audry, Penard, Rouhier, Chaparre, Guilley, Chauvin, Peschieux d'Herbinville, Lebastard, Alexandre Garnier, Charles Garnier, Danton, Lenoble, Pointis and Gourdin. They had been in all the riots of the reign of Louis-Philippe, as also in those of the end of the Consulate and the beginning of the Empire: no matter what party had stirred up the rising, it was always the Republicans who were dropped upon. And this because every reactionary government, in succession for the past seventy years, thoroughly understood that Republicans were its only serious, actual and unceasing enemies. The preference King Louis-Philippe showed us, at the risk of being accused of partiality, strongly encouraged the other parties and, notably, the Carlist party. Royalists from within and Royalist from without seemed to send one another this famous programme of 1792: "Make a stir and we will come in! Come in, and we will make a stir!" It was the Royalists inside who were the first to make a stir and upon the following occasion: The idea had stayed in the minds of various persons that King Louis-Philippe had only accepted his power to give it at some time to Henri V. Now, that which, in particular, lent colour to the idea that Louis-Philippe was inclined to play the part of monk, was the report that the only ambassador the Emperor Nicholas would accept was this very M. de Mortemart, to whom the Duc d'Orléans had handed, on 31 July, this famous letter of which I have given a copy; and, as M. de Mortemart had just started for St. Petersburg with the rank of ambassador, there was no further doubt, at least, in the eyes of the Royalists that the king of the barricades was ready to hand over the crown to Henri V. This rumour was less absurd, it must be granted, than that which was spread abroad from 1799 to 1803, namely, that Bonaparte had caused 18 Brumaire for the benefit of Louis XVIII. Each of the two sovereigns replied with arguments characteristic of themselves. Bonaparte had the Duc d'Enghien arrested, tried and shot. Louis-Philippe allowed the pillage of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois and of the archbishop's palace. An opportunity was to be given to the Carlists and priests, their natural allies, to test the situation which eight months of Philippist reign and three of Republican prosecutions had wrought among them. They were nearing 14 February, the anniversary of the assassination of the Duc de Berry. Already in the provinces there had been small Legitimist attempts. At Rodez, the tree of liberty was torn down during the night; at Collioure, they had hoisted the white flag; at Nîmes, les Verdets seemed to have come to life again, and, like the phantoms that return from the other world to smite their enemies, they had, it was reported, beaten the National Guard, who had been discovered, almost overwhelmed and unable to give any but a very vague description of their destroyers. That was the situation on 12 February. The triple emanation of the Republican, Carlist and Napoléonic phases went through the atmosphere like a sudden gust of storm, bearing on its wings the harsh cries of some unbridled, frenzied carnival, when, all at once, people learnt that, in a couple of days' time, an anniversary service was to be celebrated at Saint-Roch, in expiation of the assassination at the Place Louvois. A political assassination is such a detestable thing in the opinion of all factions, that it ought always to be allowable to offer expiatory masses for the assassinated; but there are times of feverish excitement when the most simple actions assume the huge proportions of a threat or contempt, and this particular mass, on account of the peculiar circumstances at the time, was both a threat and an act of defiance. But they were deceived as to the place where it was to be held. Saint-Roch, as far as I can recollect, was, at that period, served by the Abbé Olivier, a fine, spiritual-minded priest, adored by his flock, who are scarcely consoled at the present day by seeing him made Bishop of Évreux. I knew the Abbé Olivier; he was fond of me and I hope he still likes me; I reverenced him and shall always reverence him. I mention this, in passing, to give him news of one of his penitents, in the extremely improbable case of these Memoirs ever falling into his hands. Moreover, I shall have to refer to him later, more than once. He was deeply devoted to the queen; more than anyone else he could appreciate the benevolence, piety and even humility of that worthy princess: for he was her confessor. I do not know whether it was on account of the royal intimacy with which the Abbé Olivier was honoured, or because he understood the significance of the act that was expected of him, that the Church of Saint-Roch declined the honour. It was different with the curé of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. He accepted. This appealed to him as a twofold duty: the curé of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois was nearly eighty years of age, and he was the priest who had accompanied Marie-Antoinette to the scaffold. His curate, M. Paravey, by a strange coincidence, was the priest who had blessed the tombs of the Louvre.
In consequence of the change which had been made in the programme, men, placed on the steps of the Church of Saint-Roch, distributed, on the morning of the 14th, notices announcing that the funeral ceremony had been arranged to take place at Saint-Roch and not at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois.
I was at the Vaudeville, where I believe we were rehearsing La Famille improvisée by Henry Monnier—I have already spoken of, and shall often again refer to, this old friend of mine, an eminent artiste, witty comrade and good fellow! as the English say—when Pachel the head hired-applauder ran in terrified, crying out that emblazoned equipages were forming in line at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois; and people were saying in the crowd that the personages who were getting out from them had come to be present at a requiem service for the repose of the soul of the Duc de Berry. This news produced an absolutely contrary effect upon Arago and myself: it exasperated Arago, but put me very much at ease.
I have related how I was educated by a priest, and by an excellent one too; now that early education, the influence of those juvenile memories, gave—I will not say to all my actions—God forbid I should represent myself to my readers as a habitually religious-minded man!—but to all my beliefs and opinions—such a deep religious tinge that I cannot even now enter a church without taking holy water, or pass in front of a crucifix without making the sign of the cross. Therefore, in spite of the violence of my political opinions at that time, I thought that the poor assassinated Duc de Berry had a right to a requiem mass, that the Royalists had a right to be present at it and the curé the right to celebrate it. But this was not Étienne's way of looking at it. Perhaps he was right. Consequently, he wrote a few lines to the National and to the Temps and ran to the spot. I followed him in a much more tranquil manner. I could see that something serious would come of it; that the Royalist journals would exclaim against the sacrilege, and that the accusation would fall upon the Republican party. Arago, with his convinced opinions, his southern fieriness of temperament, entered the church just as a young man was hanging a portrait of the Duc de Bordeaux on the catafalque. Here was where Arago began to be in the right and I to be in the wrong. Behind the young man there came a lady, who placed a crown of immortelles upon it; behind the woman came soldiers, who hung their crosses to the effigy of Henri VI. by the aid of pins. Now, Arago was wholly in the right and I totally wrong. For the ceremony here ceased to be a religious demonstration and became a political act of provocation. The people and citizens rushed into the church. The citizens became incensed, and the people grumbled. But let us keep exactly to the events which followed. The riot at the archbishop's palace was middle class, not lower class. The men who raised it were the same as those who had caused the Raucourt and Philippe riots under the Restoration; the subscriptors of Voltaire-Touquet, the buyers of snuff-boxes à la Charte. Arago perceived the moment was the right one and that the irritation and grumbling could be turned to account. There was no organisation in the nature of conspiracy at that time; but the Republican party was on the watch and ready to turn any contingencies to account. We shall see the truth of this illustrated in connection with the burial of Lamarque. Arago sprang out of the church, climbed up on a horizontal bar of the railings and, stretching out his hands in the direction of the graves of July, which lay in front of the portal of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, shouted—"Citizens! They dare to celebrate a requiem service in honour of one of the members of the family whom we have just driven from power, only fifty yards from the victims of July! Shall we allow them to finish the service?"
Maddened cries went up. "No! no! no!" from every voice; and they rushed into the church. The assailants encountered General Jacqueminot in the doorway, who was then chief of the staff or second in command of the National Guard (I do not know further particulars, and the matter is not important enough for me to inquire into). He tried to stem the torrent, but it was too strong to be stopped by a single man. The general realised this, and tried to stay it by a word. Now, a word, if it is the right one, and courageous or sympathetic, is the safest wall that can be put across the path of that fifth element which we call "The People."
"My friends," cried the general, "listen to me and take in who I am—I was at Rambouillet: therefore, I belong to your party."
"You were at Rambouillet?" a voice questioned.
"Yes."
"Well, you would have done better to stay in Paris, and to leave the combatants of July where they were: their absence would not then have been taken advantage of to set up a king!"
The riposte was a deadly one, and General Jacqueminot looked upon himself as a dead man and made no further signs of life. The invasion of the church was rapid, irresistible and terrible; in a few minutes the catafalque was destroyed, the pall was torn to shreds and the altar knocked down; the golden-flowered hanging, sacred pictures, sacerdotal vestments were all trampled under foot! Scepticism revenged itself by impiety, sacrilege and blasphemy, for the fifteen years during which it had been made to hide its mocking face behind the mask of hypocrisy. They laughed, they howled, they danced round all the sacred things they had heaped up, overturned and torn in pieces. One of the rioters came out of the sacristy in the complete dress of a priest: he mounted on the top of a heap of débris and beat time to the infernal din. It looked like a figure of Satan, dressed up ironically in priestly robes, presiding over a revel.
I witnessed the whole scene from the entrance and went away, with bent head and a heavy heart and unquiet mind, sorry I had seen it. I could not hide from myself that the people had been incited to do what they had done. I was too much of a philosopher to expect the people to discriminate between the Church and the priesthood—religion from its ministers; but I was too religious at heart to stay there, and I attempted to get away from the place. I say I attempted, for it was no easy thing to get out: the square of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois was crowded; and the crowd, forced back into the narrow rue de Prêtres, overflowed on to the quays. At one spot this crowd was excited and turbulent; and a struggle was going on from whence issued cries. A tall, pale young man, with long black hair and good-looking countenance, was standing on a post, watching the tumult with some expression of scorn. One of the bystanders, who was probably irritated by this disdain, began to shout: "A Jesuit!" Such a cry at such a time was like putting a match to a bundle of tow. The crowd rushed for the poor fellow, crying—
"Throw the Jesuits into the Seine! Drown him! Give the Jesuits to the nets of Saint-Cloud!"
Baude was the Préfet of Police. I can see him now with his fine locks flying in the wind, his dark eyes darting out lightning flashes, and his herculean strength. It was the second time I had seen him thus. He had just arrived with the Municipal Guard, which he had drawn up before the church door; the men were trying to shut the gates. He flew to the rescue of the unlucky doomed man, who was being passed from hand to hand, and was in his aërial flight approaching the river with fearful rapidity. The desire to hinder a murder redoubled Baude's strength. He reached the edge of the river at the same time as the victim who was threatened with being flung over the parapet. He clutched hold of him and drew him back. I saw no more: for I was being suffocated against the boards which, at that time, enclosed the jardin de l'Infante and, dilapidated though they were, they offered a great deal more resistance than I liked, The necessity for labouring for my personal preservation compelled me to turn my eyes away from the direction of the quay and to struggle on my own account. My stalwart build and the combined efforts of many who recognised me enabled me to reach the quay and, from thence, the pont des Arts. They were still fighting by the parapet. Later, I learnt that Baude had succeeded in saving the poor devil at the expense of a good number of bruises and his coat torn to ribbons. But, whilst the Préfet of Police was playing the part of philanthropist, he was not fulfilling his duties as préfet, and the rioters profited by this lapse in his municipal functions. The people continued pillaging the church and the presbytery of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, and by the time that Baude had done his good action it was all over. Only the room of the Abbé Paravey, who had blessed the tombs of the July martyrs, had been respected. The mob always recognises, even in its moments of greatest anger and its worst sacrilege, the something that is greater than its wrath, before which it stops and bends the knee. On 24 February 1848 the mob served the Tuileries as they had served the Church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois on 14 February 1831, but it stopped short at the apartment of the Duchesse d'Orléans, as it had done before the Abbé Paravey's room.
[CHAPTER II]
The Préfet of Police at the Palais-Royal—The function of fire—Valérius, the truss-maker—Demolition of the archbishop's palace—The Chinese album—François Arago—The spectators of the riot—The erasure of the fleurs-de-lis—I give in my resignation a second time—MM. Chambolle and Casimir Périer
The supposed Jesuit saved, the Church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois sacked, the room of the Abbé Paravey respected, the crowd passed away, Baude thought the anger of the lion was appeased and presented himself at the Palais-Royal without taking time to change his clothes. Just as these bore material traces of the struggle he had gone through, so his face kept the impression of the emotions he had experienced. To put it in common parlance—as the least academic of men sometimes allows himself to be captivated by the fascination of phrase-making—the préfet's clothes were torn and his face was very pale. But the king, on the other hand, was quite calm.
More fully informed, this time, of the events going on in the street, than he had been about those of the Chamber when they discharged La Fayette, he knew everything that had just happened. He saw, too, that it tended to his own advantage. The Carlists had lifted up their heads and, without the slightest interference on his part, they had been punished! There had been a riot, but it had not threatened the Palais-Royal, and by a little exercise of skill it could be made to do credit to the Republican party. What a chance! and just at the time when the leaders of that same party were in prison for another disturbance.
But the king clearly suspected that matters would not stop here; so, with his usual astuteness, and seeming courtesy, he kept Baude to dinner. Baude saw nothing in this invitation beyond an act of politeness, and a kind of reward for the dangers he had incurred. But there was more in it than that. The Préfet of Police being at the Palais-Royal meant that all the police reports would be sent there; now, Baude could not do otherwise than to communicate them to his illustrious host. So, in this way, without any trouble to himself, the king would become acquainted with everything, both what Baude's police knew and what his own police also knew. King Louis-Philippe was a subtle man, but his very cleverness detracted from his strength. We do not think it is possible to be both fox and lion at the same time. The reports were disquieting: one of them announced the pillage of the archbishop's palace for the morrow; another, an attempted attack upon the Palais-Royal.
"Sire," asked the Préfet of the Police, "what must we do?"
"Powder and shot," replied the king.
Baude understood. By three o'clock in the morning all the troops of the garrison were disposed round the Palais-Royal, but the avenues to the archbishop's palace were left perfectly free. This is what happened while the Préfet of Police was dining with His Majesty. General Jacqueminot had summoned the National Guard and, instead of dispersing the rioters, they clapped their hands at the riot. Cadet-Gassicourt, who was mayor of the fourth arrondissement, arrived next. Some people pointed out to him the three fleurs-de-lis which adorned the highest points of the cross that surmounted the church. A man out of the crowd heard the remark, and quickly the cry went up of "Down with the fleurs-de-lis; down with the cross!" They attached themselves to the cross with the fleurs-de-lis of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, just as seventeen years previously they had attached themselves to the statue of Napoléon on the Place Vendôme. The cross fell at the third pull. There was not much else left to do after that, either inside the church or on the top of it, and, unless they pulled it down altogether, it was only wasting time to stop there. At that instant a rumour circulated, either rightly or falsely, that a surgical instrument maker in the rue de Coq, named Valérius, had been one of the arrangers of the fête. They rushed to his shop, scattered his bandages and broke his shop-front. The National Guard came, and can you guess what it did? It made a guard-house of the wrecked shop. This affair of the cross and the fleurs-de-lis gave a political character to the riot, and had suggested, or was about to suggest, on the following day, a party of the popular insurgents towards the Palais-Royal. As a matter of fact, the fleurs-de-lis had remained upon the arms of the king up to this time. Soon after the election of 9 August, Casimir Périer had advised him to abandon them; but the king remembered that, on the male side, he was the grandson of Henry IV., and of Louis XIV. on the female line, and he had obstinately refused. Under the pretext, therefore, of demanding the abolition of the fleurs-de-lis, a gathering of Republicans was to march next day upon the Palais-Royal. When there, if they found themselves strong enough, they would, at the same stroke, demand the abolition of royalty. I knew nothing about this plot, and, if I had, I should have kept clear of everything that meant a direct attack against King Louis-Philippe. I had work to do the next day and kept my door fast shut against everybody, my own servant included, but the latter violated his orders and entered. It was evident that something extraordinary had happened for Joseph to take such a liberty with me. They had been firing off rifles half the night, they had disarmed two or three posts, they had sacked the archbishop's palace. The proposition of marching on the palace of M. de Quélen was received with enthusiasm. He was one of those worldly prelates who pass for being rather shepherds, than pastors. It was affirmed that on 28 July 1830 a woman's cap had been found at his house and they wanted to know if, by chance, there might not be a pair. The devil tempted me: I dressed hastily and I ran in the direction of the city. The bridges were crowded to breaking point, and there was a row of curious gazers on the parapets two deep. Only on the Pont Neuf could I manage to see daylight between two spectators. The river drifted with furniture, books, chasubles, cassocks and priests' robes. The latter objects were horrible as they looked like drowning people. All these things came from the archbishop's palace. When the crowd reached the palace, the door seemed too narrow, relatively speaking, for the number and impetuosity of the visitors: the crowd, therefore, seized hold of the iron grill, shook it and tore it down; then they spread over all the rooms and threw the furniture out of the windows. Several book-lovers who tried to save rare books and precious editions were nearly thrown into the Seine. One single album alone escaped the general destruction. The man who laid hands on it chanced to open it: it was a Chinese album painted on leaves of rice. The Chinese are very fanciful in their compositions, and this particular one so far transcended the limits of French fancy, that the crowd had not the courage to insist on the precious album being thrown into the water. I have never seen anything approaching this album except in the private museum at Naples; I ought, also, to say that the album of the Archbishop of Paris far excelled that of His Majesty the King of the Two Sicilies. The most indulgent people thought that this curious document had been given to the archbishop by some repentant Magdalene, in expiation of the sins she had committed, and to whom the merciful prelate had given absolution. It goes without saying that I was among the tolerant, and that, then as now, I did my utmost to get this view accepted.
Meantime, after seizing the furniture, library hangings, carpets, mirrors, missals, chasubles and cassocks, the crowd, not satisfied, seized upon the building itself. In an instant a hundred men were scattered over the roofs and had begun to tear off the tiles and slates of the archiépiscopal palace. It might have been supposed the rioters were all slaters. Has my reader happened, at any time, to shut up a mouse or rat or bird in a box pierced with holes, put it in the midst of an anthill and waited, given patience, for two or three hours? At the end of that time the ants have finished their work, and he can extract a beautiful skeleton from which all the flesh has completely disappeared. Thus, and in the same manner, under the work of the human ant-heap, at the end of an hour the coverings of the archbishop's palace had as completely disappeared. Next, it was the turn for the bones to go—where the ants stop discouraged, man destroys; by two o'clock in the afternoon the bones had disappeared like the flesh. Of the archbishop's palace not one stone remained on another! By good fortune the archbishop was at his country-house at Conflans; if not he would probably have been destroyed with his town-house.
All this time the drums had called the rappel, but not with that ferocious plying of drumsticks of which they gave us a sample in the month of December, as though to say, "Run, everyone, the town is on fire!" but with feebleness of execution as much as to say, "If you have nothing better to say, come, and you will not have a warm welcome!" So, as the National Guard began to understand the language of the drums, it did not put itself about much. However, a detachment of the 12th Legion, in command of François Arago,—the famous savant, the noble patriot who is now dying, and whom the Academy will probably not dare to praise, except as a savant,—came from the Panthéon towards the city. As ill-luck would have it, his adjutant, who marched on the flank, sabre in hand, gesticulating with it in a manner justified by the circumstances, stuck it into a poor fellow, who was merely peacefully standing watching them go by. The poor devil fell, wounded, and was picked up nearly dead. We know how such a thing as that operates: the dead or wounded is no longer his own private property; he belongs to the crowd, which makes a standard of him, as it were. The crowd took possession of the man, bleeding as he was, and began to shout, "To arms! Vengeance on the assassin! Vengeance!" The assassin, or, rather, the unintentional murderer, had disappeared. They carried the victim into the enclosure outside Notre-Dame, where everybody discussed loudly how to take revenge for him, and pitied him, but none thought of getting him help. It was François Arago, who made an appeal to humanity out of the midst of the threatening cries, and pointed to the Hôtel-Dieu, open to receive him, and, if possible, to cure the dying man. They placed him on a stretcher, and François Arago accompanied the unfortunate man to the bedside, where they had scarcely laid him before he died.
The report of that death spread with the fearful rapidity with which bad news always travels. When Arago re-appeared the crowd turned in earnest to wrath; it was in one of those moods when it sharpens its teeth and nails, and aches to tear to pieces and to devour.... What? In such a crisis it matters but little what, so long as it can tear and devour someone or something! It was frenzied to the extent of hurling itself upon Arago himself, mistaking the saviour for the murderer. In the twinkling of an eye our great astronomer was dragged towards the Seine, where he was going to be flung with the furniture, books and archiépiscopal vestments; when, happily, some of the spectators recognised him, called out his name, setting forth his reputation and his popularity in order to save him from death. When recognised, he was safe; but, robbed of a man, the excited crowd had to have something else, and, not being able to drown Arago, they demolished the archbishop's palace. With what rapidity they destroyed that building we have already spoken. And the remarkable thing was that many honourable witnesses watched the proceedings. M. Thiers was present, making his first practical study of the downfall of palaces and of monarchies. M. de Schonen was there, in colonel's uniform, but reduced to powerlessness because he had but few men at command. M. Talabot was there with his battalion; but he averred to M. Arago, who urged him to act, that he had been ordered to appear and then to return. The passive presence of all these notable persons at the riot of the archbishop's palace put a seal of sanction upon the proceedings, which I had never seen before, or have ever again seen at any other riot. This was no riot of the people, filled with enthusiasm, risking their lives in the midst of flashings of musketry fire and thunder of artillery; it was a riot in yellow kid-gloves, and overcoats and coats, it was a scoffing and impious, destructive and insolent crowd, without the excuse of previous insult or destruction offered it; in fact, it was a bourgeois riot, that most pitiless and contemptible of all riots.
I returned home heart-broken: I am wrong, I mean upset. I learnt that night that they had wished to demolish Notre-Dame, and only a very little more and the chef-d'oœuvre of four centuries, begun by Charlemagne and finished by Philippe-Auguste, would have disappeared in a few hours as the archbishop's palace had done. As I returned home, I had passed by the Palais-Royal. The king who had refused to make to Casimir Périer the sacrifice of the fleurs-de-lis, made that sacrifice to the rioters: they scratched it off the coats-of-arms on his carriages and mutilated the iron balconies of his palace.
The next day a decree appeared in the Moniteur, altering the three fleurs-de-lis of Charles V. this time to two tables of the law. If genealogy be established by coats-of-arms we should have to believe that the King of France was descended from Moses rather than from St. Louis! Only, these new tables of the law, the counterfeit of those of Sinai, had not even the excuse of being accepted out of the midst of thunders and lightnings.
It was upon this particular day, on Lamy's desk, who was Madame Adélaide's secretary, when I saw the grooms engaged in erasing the fleurs-de-lis from the king's carriages, thinking that it was not in this fashion that they should have been taken away from the arms of the house of France, that I sent in my resignation a second time, the only one which reached the king and which was accepted. It was couched in the following terms:—
"15 February 1831
"SIRE,—Three weeks ago I had the honour to ask for an audience of your Majesty; my object was to offer my resignation to your Majesty by word of mouth; for I wished to explain, personally, that I was neither ungrateful, nor capricious. Sire, a long time ago I wrote and made public my opinion that, in my case, the man of letters was but the prelude to the politician. I have arrived at the age when I can take a part in a reformed Chamber. I am pretty sure of being nominated a député when I am thirty years of age, and I am now twenty-eight, Sire. Unhappily, the People, who look at things from a mean and distant point of view, do not distinguish between the intentions of the king, and the acts of the ministers. Now the acts of the ministers are both arbitrary and destructive of liberty. Amongst the persons who live upon your Majesty, and tell him constantly that they admire and love him, there is not one probably, who loves your Majesty more than I do; only they talk about it and do not think it, and I do not talk about it but think it.
"But, Sire, devotion to principles comes before devotion to men. Devotion to principles makes men like La Fayette; devotion to men, like Rovigo.[1] I therefore pray your Majesty to accept my resignation.
"I have the honour to remain your Majesty's respectful servant,
"ALEX. DUMAS"
It was an odd thing! In the eyes of the Republican party, to which I belonged, I was regarded as a thorough Republican, because I took my share in all the risings, and wanted to see the flag of '92 float at the head of our armies; but, at the same time, I could not understand how, when they had taken a Bourbon as their king, whether he was of the Elder or Younger branch of the house, he could be at the same time a Valois, as they had tried to make the good people of Paris believe,—I could not, I say, understand, how the fleurs-de-lis could cease to be his coat-of-arms.
It was because I was both a poet and a Republican, and already comprehended and maintained, contrary to certain narrow-minded people of our party, that France, even though democratic, did not date from '89 only; that we nineteenth century men had received a vast inheritance of glory and must preserve it; that the fleurs-de-lis meant the lance heads of Clovis, and the javelins of Charlemagne; that they had floated successively at Tolbiac, at Tours, at Bouvines, at Taillebourg, at Rosbecque, at Patay, at Fornovo, Ravenna, Marignan, Renty, Arques, Rocroy, Steinkerque, Almanza, Fontenoy, upon the seas of India and the lakes of America; that, after the success of fifty victories, we suffered the glory of a score of defeats which would have been enough to annihilate another nation; that the Romans invaded us, and we drove them out, the Franks too, who were also expelled; the English invaded us, and we drove them out.
The opinion I am now putting forth with respect to the erasing of the fleurs-de-lis, which I upheld very conspicuously at that time by my resignation, was also the opinion of Casimir Périer. The next day after the fleurs-de-lis had disappeared from the king's carriages, from the balconies of the Palais-Royal and even from Bayard's shield, whilst the effigy of Henry IV. was preserved on the Cross of the Legion of Honours; M. Chambolle, who has since started the Orleanist paper, l'Ordre, called at M. Casimir Périer's house.
"Why," the latter asked him, "in the name of goodness, does the king give up his armorial bearings? Ah! He would not do it after the Revolution, when I advised him to sacrifice them; no, he would not hear of their being effaced then, and stuck to them more tenaciously than did his elders. Now, the riot has but to pass under his windows and behold his escutcheon lies in the gutter!"
Those who knew what an irascible character Casimir Périer was, will not be surprised at the flowers of rhetoric with which those words are adorned.
But now that there is no longer an archbishop's palace, nor any fleurs-de-lis, and the statue of the Duc de Berry about to be knocked down at Lille, the seminary of Perpignan pillaged and the busts of Louis XVIII. and of Charles X. of Nîmes destroyed, let us return to Antony, which was to cause a great disturbance in literature, besides which the riots we have just been discussing were but as the holiday games of school children.
[1] We are compelled to admit that, in our opinion, the parallel between La Fayette and the Duc de Rovigo is to the disadvantage of the latter; but how far he is above them in comparing him with other men of the empire! La Fayette's love for liberty is sublime; the devotion of the Duc de Rovigo for Napoléon is worthy of respect, for all devotion is a fine and rare thing, as times go.
[CHAPTER III]
My dramatic faith wavers—Bocage and Dorval reconcile me with myself—A political trial wherein I deserved to figure—Downfall of the Laffitte Ministry—Austria and the Duc de Modena—Maréchal Maison is Ambassador at Vienna—The story of one of his dispatches—Casimir Périer Prime Minister—His reception at the Palais-Royal—They make him the amende honorable
We saw what small success Antony obtained at the reading before M. Crosnier. The consequence was that just as they had not scrupled to pass my play over for the drama of Don Carlos ou l'Inquisition, at the Théâtre-Français, they did not scruple, at the Porte-Saint-Martin, to put on all or any sort of piece that came to their hands before they looked at mine. Poor Antony! It had already been in existence for close upon two years; but this delay, it must be admitted, instead of injuring it in any way, was, on the contrary, to turn to very profitable account. During those two years, events had progressed and had brought about in France one of those feverish situations wherein the explosions of eccentric individuals cause immense noise. There was something sickly and degenerate in the times, which answered to the monomania of my hero. Meanwhile, as I have said, I had no settled opinion about my drama; my youthful faith in myself had only held out for Henri III. and Christine; but the horrible concert of hootings which had deafened me at the representation of the latter piece had shattered that faith to its very foundations. Then the Revolution had come, which had thrown me into quite another order of ideas, and had made me believe I was destined to become what in politics is called a man of action, a belief which had succumbed yet more rapidly than my literary belief.
Next had taken place the representation of my Napoléon Bonaparte, a work whose worthlessness I recognised with dread in spite of the fanatical enthusiasm it had excited at its reading. Then came Antony, which inspired no fanaticism nor enthusiasm, neither at its reading nor at its rehearsal; which, in my inmost conscience, I believed was destined to close my short series of successes with failure. Were, perchance, M. Fossier, M. Oudard, M. Picard and M. Deviolaine right? Would it have been better for me to go to my office, as the author of la Petite Ville and Deux Philibert had advised? It was rather late in the day to make such reflections as these, just after I had sent in my resignation definitely. I did not make them any the less for that, nor did they cheer me any the more on that account. My comfort was that Crosnier did not seem to set any higher value upon Marion Delorme than upon Antony, and I was a great admirer of Marion Delorme. I might be deceived in my own piece, but assuredly I was not mistaken about that of Hugo; while, on the other hand, Crosnier might be wrong about Hugo's piece, and therefore equally mistaken about mine. Meanwhile, the rehearsals continued their course.
That which I had foreseen happened: in proportion as the rehearsals advanced, the two principal parts taken by Madame Dorval and by Bocage assumed entirely different aspects than they did when represented by Mademoiselle Mars and Firmin. The absence of scholastic traditions, the manner of acting drama, a certain sympathy of the actors with their parts, a sympathy which did not exist at the Théâtre Français, all by degrees helped to reinstate poor Antony in my own opinion. It is but fair to say that, when the two great artistes, upon whom the success of the play depended, felt the day of representation drawing nearer, they developed, as if in emulation with one another, qualities they were themselves unconscious they possessed. Dorval brought out a dignity of feeling in the expression of the emotions, of which I should have thought her quite incapable; and Bocage, on whom I had only looked at first as capable of a kind of misanthropic barbarity, had moments of poetic sadness and of dreamy melancholy that I had only seen in Talma in his rôles of the English rendering of Hamlet, and in Soumet's Orestes. The representation was fixed for the first fortnight in April; but, at the same time, a drama was being played at the Palais de justice, which, even to my eyes, was far more interesting than my own.
My friends Guinard, Cavaignac and Trélat, with sixteen other fellow-prisoners, were brought up before the Court of Assizes. It will be recollected that it was on account of the Artillery conspiracy, wherein I had taken an active part; therefore, one thing alone surprised me, why they should be in prison and I free; why they should have to submit to the cross-questionings of the law court whilst I was rehearsing a piece at the Porte-Saint-Martin. Between the 6th and the 11th of April the audiences had been devoted to the interrogation of the prisoners and to the hearing of witnesses. On the 12th, the Solicitor-General took up the case. I need hardly say that from the 12th to the 15th, the day when sentence was passed, I never left the sittings. It was a difficult task for the Solicitor-General to accuse men like those seated on the prisoners' bench, who were the chief combatants of July, and pronounced the "heroes of the Three Days," those whom the Lieutenant-General had received, flattered and pampered ten months back; the men whom Dupont (de l'Eure) referred to as his friends, whom La Fayette had called his children and whom, when he was no longer in the Ministry, Laffitte had called his accomplices. As a matter of fact, the Laffitte Ministry had fallen on 9 March. The cause of that fall could not have been more creditable to the former friend of King Louis-Philippe; he had found that five months of political friction with the new monarch had been enough to turn him into one of his most irreconcilable enemies. It was the time when three nations rose up and demanded their independent national rights: Belgium, Poland and Italy. People's minds were nearly settled about Belgium's fate; but not so with regard to Poland and Italy; and all generous hearts felt sympathy with those two Sisters in Liberty who were groaning, the one beneath the sword blade of the Czar, the other under Austria's chastisement. Attention was riveted in particular upon Modena. The Duke of Modena had fled from his duchy when he heard the news of the insurrection of Bologna, on the night of 4 February. The Cabinet at the Palais-Royal received a communication upon the subject from the Cabinet of Vienna, informing it that the Austrian government was preparing to intervene to replace Francis IV. upon his ducal throne. It was curious news and an exorbitant claim to make. The French Government had proclaimed the principle of non-intervention; now, upon what grounds could Austria interfere in the Duchy of Modena? Austria had, indeed, a right of reversion over that duchy; but the right was entirely conditional, and, until the day when all the male heirs of the reigning house should be extinct, Modena could be a perfectly independent duchy. Such demands were bound to revolt so upright and fair a mind as M. Laffitte's, and he vowed in full council that, if Austria persisted in that insolent claim, France would go to war with her.
M. Sébastiani, Minister for Foreign Affairs, was asked by the President of the Council to reply to this effect, which he engaged to do. Maréchal Maison was then at the embassy of Vienna. He was one of those stiff and starched diplomatists who preserve the habit, from their military career, of addressing kings and emperors with their hand upon their sword hilts. I knew him very well, and in spite of our difference of age, with some degree of intimacy; a charming woman with a pacific name who was a mere friend to me, but who was a good deal more than a friend to him, served as the bond between the young poet and the old soldier. The Marshal was commissioned to present M. Laffitte's Ultimatum to Austria. It was succinct: "Non-intervention or War!" The system of peace at any price adopted by Louis-Philippe was not yet known at that period. Austria replied as though she knew the secret thoughts of the King of France. Her reply was both determined and insolent. This is it—
"Until now, Austria has allowed France to advance the principle of non-intervention; but it is time France knew that we do not intend to recognise it where Italy is concerned. We shall carry our arms wherever insurrection spreads. If that intervention leads to war—then war there must be! We prefer to incur the chances of war than to be exposed to perish in the midst of outbreaks of rebellion."
With the instruction the Marshal received, the note above quoted did not permit of any agreement being reached; consequently, at the same time that he sent M. de Metternich's reply to King Louis-Philippe, he wrote to General Guilleminot, our ambassador at Constantinople, that France was forced into war and that he must make an appeal to the ancient alliance between Turkey and France. Marshal Maison added in a postscript to M. de Metternich's note—
"Not a moment must be lost in which to avert the danger with which France is threatened; we must, consequently, take the initiative and pour a hundred thousand men into Piedmont."
This dispatch was addressed to M. Sébastiani, Minister for Foreign Affairs, with whom, in his capacity as ambassador, Marshal Maison corresponded direct; it reached the Hôtel des Capucines on 4 March. M. Sébastiani, a king's man, communicated it to the king, but, important though it was, never said one word about it to M. Laffitte. That is the fashion in which the king, following the first principle of constitutional government, reigned, but did not rule. How did the National obtain that dispatch? We should be very puzzled to say; but, on the 8th, it was reproduced word for word in the second column of that journal. M. Laffitte read it by chance, as La Fayette had read his dismissal from the commandantship of the National Guard by accident. M. Laffitte got into a carriage, paper in hand and drove to M. Sébastiani. He could not deny it: the Marshal alleged such poor reasons, that M. Laffitte saw he had been completely tricked. He went on to the Palais-Royal, where he hoped to gain explanations which the Minister for Foreign Affairs refused to give him; but the king knew nothing at all; the king was busy looking after the building at Neuilly and did not trouble his head about affairs of State, he took no initiative and approved of his ministry. M. Laffitte must settle the matter with his colleagues. There was so much apparent sincerity and naïve simplicity in the tone, attitude and appearance of the king that Laffitte thought he could not be an accomplice in the plot. Next day, therefore, he took the king's advice and had an explanation with his colleagues. That explanation led, there and then, to the resignation of the leader of the Cabinet, who returned to his home with his spirit less broken, perhaps, by the prospect of his ruined house and lost popularity than by his betrayed friendship. M. Laffitte was a noble-hearted man who had given himself wholly to the king, and behold, in the very face of the insult that had been put upon France, the king, in his new attitude of preserver of peace, threw him over just as he had thrown over La Fayette and Dupont (de l'Eure). Laffitte was flung remorselessly and without pity into the gulf wherein Louis-Philippe flung his popular favourites when he had done with them. The new ministry was made up all ready, in advance; the majority of its members were taken from the old one. The only new ministers were Casimir Périer, Baron Louis and M. de Rigny. The various offices of the members were as follows: Casimir Périer, Prime Minister; Sébastiani, Minister for Foreign Affairs; Baron Louis, Minister of Finance; Barthe, Minister of Justice; Montalivet, Minister of Education and Religious Instruction; Comte d'Argout, Minister of Commerce and Public Works; de Rigny, Minister for the Admiralty. The new ministry nearly lost its prime minister the very next day after he had been appointed, viz., on 13 March 1831. It was only with regret that Madame Adélaïde and the Duc d'Orléans saw Casimir Périer come into power. Was it from regret at the ingratitude shown to M. Laffitte? or was it fear on account of M. Casimir Périer's well-known character? Whatever may have been the case, on 14 March, when the new president of the Council appeared at the Palais-Royal to pay his respects at court that night, he found a singular expression upon all faces: the courtiers laughed, the aides-decamp whispered together, the servants asked whom they must announce. M. le duc d'Orléans turned his back upon him, Madame Adélaïde was as cold as ice, the queen was grave. The king alone waited for him, smiling, at the bottom of the salon. The minister had to pass through a double hedge of people who wished to repel him, malevolent to him, in order to reach the king. The rival and successor to Laffitte was angry, proud and impatient; he resolved to take his revenge at once. He knew the man who was indispensable to the situation; Thiers was not yet sufficiently popular, M. Guizot was already too little so. Casimir Périer went straight to the king..
"Sire," he said to him, "I have the honour to ask you for a private interview."
The king, amazed, walked before him and led him into his cabinet. The door was scarcely closed when, without circumlocution or ambiguity, the new prime minister burst out with—
"Sire, I have the honour to offer my resignation to Your Majesty."
"Eh! good Lord, Monsieur Périer," exclaimed the king, "and on what grounds?"
"Sire," replied the exasperated minister, "that I have enemies at the clubs, in the streets, in the Chamber matters nothing; but enemies at the very court to which I am bold enough unreservedly to offer my whole fortune is too much to endure! and I do not feel equal, I confess to Your Majesty, to face these many forms of hatred."