4. Paris, M. Edmond Rostand, and “Chantecler”
Six years have elapsed since a Paris newspaper announced that M. Constant Coquelin—dear, wonderful Coquelin aîné—had suddenly taken train to the south-west of France in the following circumstances:—
“Yesterday morning the greatest of our comedians received a telegram urging him to proceed without delay to Cambo, the tranquil, beautiful country seat, in the Pyrenees, of M. Edmond Rostand. No sooner had he read the message than M. Coquelin bade Gillett, his devoted valet, pack a valise, hail a fiacre, and accompany him to the Gare d’Orléans. Excitement and delight were depicted on the face of the distinguished traveller, whom we found smoking a cigarette in front of a first-class compartment. ‘Yes,’ he joyously admitted. ‘Yes, I am off to the Pyrenees—but that is all I shall tell you.’ Never, indeed, such indomitable discretion! In reply to our adroit, persuasive questions regarding the object of his journey, M. Coquelin made such irrelevant observations as these: ‘The weather looks threatening,’ and ‘Gillett is the most admirable of valets,’ and ‘Ah, my friends, has it ever occurred to you what an extraordinary thing is a railway station?’ And then, as the train steamed slowly away: ‘You may state in your article that the cushions of this carriage are exceedingly restful and sympathetic.’ Still, in spite of M. Coquelin’s reticence, we are in a position to acquaint our readers with the reason of this sudden, this sensational visit to Cambo. M. Edmond Rostand is engaged upon a new play, and the leading part in it will be sustained by M. Coquelin. Down there in the golden calm of the Pyrenees—yes, even as we pen these words—the most exquisite of poets is reading to the most brilliant of actors... another chef-d’œuvre. It will surpass the triumphant, the glorious Cyrano de Bergerac! Parisians will certainly rejoice, Parisians will assuredly be thrilled to hear of the superb, artistic festival in store for them.”
Such, six years ago, was the very first—and very florid—potin to be published on Chantecler; and no sooner had it appeared than Paris, truly enough, “rejoiced” and was “thrilled”—but complained that it was maddening and heart-breaking to know so little about the new masterpiece. What was its theme? What, too, was the title? And when—oh, when—would the first performance take place? In order to satisfy the Parisian’s curiosity, newspaper editors despatched their Yellowest Reporters to Cambo with instructions to force a statement out of the comedian and the poet. With the Yellow Ones went alert, sharp photographers. And then, what strange, indelicate scenes in that once-tranquil and refined spot in the Pyrenees! Since M. Rostand and his guest refused to receive the invaders, the latter set about performing their vulgar mission from a distance. Outside the poet’s picturesque Basque villa, cameras and cameras; and again and again was the “golden calm” of Cambo disturbed by shouts of “There’s Madame Rostand at that window,” and “There’s her son, Maurice, picking a flower,” and “There’s Rostand talking hard to Coquelin on a bench.” Nobody, nothing in the far-spreading grounds, escaped the photographers. The gardener was “taken”; so were a housemaid, a peacock, a mowing-machine, a dog and a hammock. As for the reporters, they followed MM. Rostand and Coquelin when the latter took their afternoon walks, even hid themselves behind bushes and hedges in the hopes of overhearing a fragment of their conversation; and minutely they described in their newspapers the gait and the gestures of the comedian, and the smile, the eyeglass and the extreme elegance of the poet; and wildly they declared that insomuch as MM. Rostand and Coquelin discussed naught but the new masterpiece during those afternoon walks, every step they took left a glorious, an historic imprint in the dusty white lane. But the subject of the play, the date of its production?—“mystery, mystery!” admitted the reporters. Nor was it until many months later, and until after M. Coquelin had paid half-a-dozen visits to Cambo, that Paris heard with amazement that M. Rostand’s hero was a cock, his heroine a hen pheasant, his chief scene a farm-yard, in which all kinds of feathered creatures were to fly, strut and waddle about. As Paris was marvelling at the novelty and audacity of the idea, the poet fell ill. A severe operation kept him an invalid a whole year. The successive deaths of a relative and of three close friends so shocked him that he had not the heart to return to his work. But when in the autumn of 1908 M. Coquelin made yet another expedition to Cambo, the “glorious,” “historic” walks were resumed. In M. Rostand’s study, animated, all-night sittings. In the drawing-room, extraordinary rehearsals—M. Coquelin the cock, Madame Rostand the pheasant, M. Rostand a dog, young Maurice Rostand a blackbird. Then visits from wig-makers, costumiers, scene-painters, electricians. And at last the official, stirring announcement that M. Rostand and the play were leaving for Paris, that the name of the play was Chantecler, and that the first performance would be given at the Porte St-Martin Theatre in the spring of 1909.
It was in January of that year that M. Rostand took up his abode in an hotel facing the Tuileries Gardens. The corridor outside the poet’s suite of apartments was guarded by footmen—so many sentinels with instructions to let nobody pass; and thus M. Rostand was secure from cameras and Yellow scribbling pencils except when he left the hotel, entered a motor car and sped off to the pleasant little country town of Pont-aux-Dames, where Constant Coquelin had founded a home for aged and infirm actors. Of this establishment Coquelin aîné himself was then an inmate. Not that he was feeling old or infirm—“only a little fatigued and in need of calm and repose ere disguising myself as a proud, majestic cock.” Kindly Coquelin was never so happy as when playing the host to his score of superannuated actors and actresses. He called them his “guests,” and had provided them with easy-chairs, a library, a billiard-table, playing cards, backgammon boards and gramophones; and with summer-houses in the garden where the old ladies might gossip and gossip out of the glare of the sun, and with a lake, too, in which the old fellows might fish. Also, he invited them to relate their theatrical experiences—the rôles they had played, the successes they had achieved, the costumes they had worn long, long ago; and, oh, dear me, how the “guests” took their host at his word—yes, heavens, how garrulously and lavishly they responded! Withered old Joyeux (late—very late—of the Palais Royal) described how emperors and kings had been convulsed by his grins, winks and tricks; swollen, red-faced Hector Duchatel (slim, elegant, irresistible at the Vaudeville in the seventies) declared that beautiful mondaines had sighed, almost swooned, when he passionately made love on the stage; wrinkled, haggard Mademoiselle Giselle de Perle (once such a radiant blonde at the Bouffes) narrated how she could scarcely turn round in her dressing-room for the corbeilles of flowers, in which jewels and billets-doux from illustrious personages lay concealed. Then, after all these reminiscences, the “guests” produced faded, tattered newspaper cuttings, that proclaimed Joyeux “extraordinaire de fantaisie et de verve,” and Hector Duchatel “le roi de la mode,” and Mademoiselle de Perle “the most exquisite, the most incomparable of blondes”—“Cabotinville,” if you like; the tawdry, flashy talk of M. le Cabot and Madame la Cabotine. But I like, nevertheless, to call up the vision of Coquelin aîné, wrapped in a dressing-gown, a skull-cap pulled down over his ears, listening patiently and sympathetically to these confidences of the past, and reading through the faded newspaper cuttings, and saying to haggard Mademoiselle de Perle: “I myself, like everybody else, was once madly in love with you,” and to withered old Joyeux: “Those winks and grins of yours were excruciating,” and—— But an end to this digression. The scene between Coquelin aîné and his superannuated “guests” is cut short by the arrival, from the hotel in the rue de Rivoli, of the author of Chantecler.
Well, Constant Coquelin was wearing a dressing-gown and a skull-cap, because he felt a little “fatigued.” But the visits of M. Rostand, and of the wig-makers, scene-painters and costumiers, as well as the impatience of the Parisians to behold the new “masterpiece,” restored to the comedian all his former energy, enthusiasm. Final resolutions were made. The first rehearsal at the Porte St-Martin Theatre was fixed for the following week; the first performance would be given, irrevocably, in the middle of May. “What a triumph we shall have!” said Coquelin aîné to the few friends he received in the Home. “Ah, my admirable Gillett, what a work of genius is Chantecler!” he exclaimed, when the devoted valet lighted him to his bedroom. “Listen, I will recite to you Rostand’s Hymn to the Sun. And after that, my good Gillett, you shall hear me crow.” Replied faithful Gillett: “To-morrow—not to-night. It is wiser to go to sleep.” But Constant Coquelin refused to sleep until he had recited and crowed. Up and down the room, in the dressing-gown and skull-cap, he strutted. The superannuated actors and actresses were awakened by his cry: “Je t’adore, Soleil!” Five minutes later there resounded throughout the Home a clarion, peremptory—“Cocorico.” Said the old players: “The master is rehearsing.” Said Gillett: “Your old servant insists upon your going to bed.” Said Coquelin aîné: “When I have played Chantecler I shall retire from the stage, and you and I, my faithful Gillett, will pass the rest of our lives down here, tranquilly, happily, amidst our twenty old guests.” But next morning, after Gillett had helped his master into the dressing-gown, Constant Coquelin fell heavily to the floor. Cry after cry from admirable Gillett, cries from the superannuated players—then profound silence and gloom. Gloom, too, in Paris. The blinds darkly drawn in the windows of the first floor of the rue de Rivoli hotel. The Porte St-Martin—other theatres—closed. All kinds of soirées, banquets and fêtes postponed. “What a disaster, what a tragedy, mon ami; what a blow, what a calamity, ma chère.” Gloom—dear, wonderful Coquelin aîné was dead....
In the summer of 1909 M. Edmond Rostand, after spending four months in seclusion at Cambo, returned to Paris; a few days later the rehearsals of Chantecler at the Porte St-Martin Theatre began. “Should anything happen to me, you must ask Guitry to play my part,” had said Coquelin, to the poet. M. Guitry, therefore, was appointed “Chantecler,” Madame Simone, ex-Le Bargy, was made the Hen Pheasant. Gay, frisky M. Galipaux was created Blackbird, M. Jean Coquelin, the great comedian’s son, chose the rôle of the Dog. “Irrevocably in November,” stated the newspapers, “we shall hear ‘Chantecler’ sound his first cocorico.” And Paris rejoiced once again and was “thrilled.”
But, ah me, how that positive word, “irrevocable,” was misused! No Chantecler in November, no “Cocorico” in December—only multitudinous newspaper potins that constantly announced the postponement of the event, and described “life” at the Porte St-Martin and in M. Rostand’s hotel on the Champs Elysées. It was repeatedly stated that the poet, after hot words with M. Guitry, had taken “the 9.39 train back to Cambo.” It was asserted that Madame Simone had thrown her type-written rôle on to the stage, stamped hysterically on the rôle, and left the theatre in tears. It was furthermore reported that M. Guitry was about to undergo an operation for cancer; that lively Galipaux was suffering from acute melancholia; that M. Jean Coquelin, distracted, prematurely ancient and infirm, had taken refuge in the Home at Pont-aux-Dames. Then, the insinuation that Chantecler would never, never “cocorico.”... Nor, according to the same newspaper potins, was “life” in M. Rostand’s hotel more serene. He was as closely guarded as the Tsar of All the Russias. Nevertheless, a waiter who served him was, in reality, a Yellow Italian journalist; threatening letters and telegrams from lunatics arrived by the score; and wizened old cranks sent the poet baskets of feathers, with the solemn warning that unless these, and only these feathers, were worn by the Cock and the Hen Pheasant, well, M. Guitry and Madame Simone, and M. Rostand and Chantecler would be ridiculed, ruined, and done for.... In fine, what a November, what a December—and what a January of the present year! And when MM. Hertz and Jean Coquelin, the proprietors of the Porte St-Martin Theatre, themselves announced that the first performance of Chantecler would be given on 28th January “most irrevocably,” how delirious became the potins, and how agitated the Parisians! The great question was: Would Chantecler be a triumphant success, or only a moderate success, or a catastrophe? To determine this problem, clairvoyantes—positively—were consulted. And Madame Olga de Sonski, at present of the rue des Martyrs, and late—so her card asserted—of Persia, Budapest, Cairo and Bond Street—Madame de Sonski declared she already felt the Porte St-Martin, massive theatre that it was, trembling, almost tottering, from applause. But not so Madame Juliette de Magenta, of the rue des Ténèbres, from Morocco, St Petersburg, Constantinople and Broadway: “I hear [sic] the silence, the coldness, the gloom of disappointment and disapproval,” funereally she said. However, in spite of Madame de Magenta’s lugubrious prognostications, the news came that M. Rostand had disposed of the publishing rights of Chantecler for one million francs; that stalls and dress-circle seats (for the box-office was now open) for the first three performances were selling like wildfire at six pounds apiece; that critics and millionaires from America, and French Ambassadors and Ministers from divers parts of Europe, and even dark-skinned, dyspeptic merchants from Buenos Ayres, were all hastening to Paris to hear the “cocorico” of Chantecler. What excitement, what a whirl! For the twentieth time it was rumoured that M. Rostand had taken “the 9.39 train back to Cambo.” Now M. Guitry had appendicitis; and Madame Simone had injured herself by falling through a trap-door. Nevertheless, the first performance remained fixed “most irrevocably” for 28th January—on which day many a quarter of Paris and most of the banlieue were flooded.
So, another postponement. Successively, and always “positively irrevocably,” it was announced that the great event would take place on 31st January, 2nd February, 5th February and 6th February. And thus the critics and millionaires from America, the French Ambassadors and Ministers from divers European capitals, the merchants from Buenos Ayres (looking sallow and bloodshot from the voyage) were detained in Paris at much personal inconvenience and loss to themselves. Nothing would move them until they had heard the clarion cry of—“Cocorico.” And M. Pichon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, became uneasy at the prolonged sojourn of the Ministers and Ambassadors. “Diplomatic relations between France and many a foreign Power are interrupted,” he cried tragically, “and all because of a cock and a hen pheasant.” Social life, too, was interrupted. Le Tout Paris refrained from issuing dinner invitations lest they should clash with the first performance, and countermanded rooms engaged weeks beforehand in the Riviera hotels.
A final rumour to the effect that M. Rostand had returned to Cambo by the 9.39 train—a train which, by the way, does not figure in the time-table. Another canard stating that M. Guitry had contracted typhoid fever through drinking water contaminated by the floods. A third Yellow potin reporting Madame Simone to have “mysteriously,” “sensationally” disappeared. What chaos, what incoherency! And what a scene in the Porte St-Martin when at last, on Sunday night, 6th February, Chantecler, in the presence of the most brilliant audience yet assembled in a Paris theatre, came, crowed and conquered.
A new handsome curtain, new carpets, new velvet fauteuils, programmes printed on vellum, and red ribbons (also supplied by the management) in the grisly hair of the middle-aged ouvreuses. “I have been an ouvreuse for twenty years, but never have I seen an audience so vast, so animated, so chic,” said one of these ladies to me as she bundled up my overcoat, pinned a ticket to it and dropped it on to the floor. “Not a peg left,” she continued. “Immediately beneath your overcoat lies the overcoat of Prince Murat. In the heap next to it is a Rothschild overcoat. And as for that other pile of overcoats in the corner, all fur-lined, all magnificent, well, they belong to ambassadors, dukes, American millionaires, English milords, famous writers, politicians, jockeys—all the great personages in the world. Thus, although it lies on the floor, your overcoat is in illustrious company.” After warning me that no one would be admitted into the theatre when the curtain had risen, the ouvreuse showed me to my seat, held out her hand, was rewarded, and left me free to admire the jewels, feathers, dresses and coiffures of le Tout Paris. All eyes—or rather opera-glasses—on the box occupied by Madame Rostand and her two sons. In another box, M. Briand, the Prime Minister. In the stalls, Academicians, generals, playwrights, critics, newspaper proprietors, aviators, financiers, leading actors and actresses. Everyone afoot, or rather on tip-toe, gossiping, laughing, singling out celebrities with their glasses. But at ten minutes to nine o’clock the three traditional thuds made by a mallet behind the curtain (the signal in French theatres that the play is about to begin) caused a hush. Everyone sat down. “Chantecler at last,” said, emotionally, a lady behind me. The curtain rose two or three inches. “Pas encore, pas encore,” cried a voice. Consternation, dismay of le Tout Paris; was the play again to be postponed, was it true that M. Rostand had taken that 9.39 train, and that Madame Simone had “sensationally” disappeared, and that M. Guitry—— “Pas encore, pas encore!” But it was—thank heaven—only the voice of M. Jean Coquelin who appeared in the front of the stalls in a dress-suit, mounted a footstool and recited the prologue to M. Rostand’s fantastic, symbolical chef-d’œuvre.
It was a delightfully humorous description of the feathered inhabitants of a farm-yard; and as M. Jean Coquelin continued to harangue the audience eloquently from his footstool, the animals were heard becoming impatient on the hidden stage.
A crowing of cocks. A cackling of geese. The stamping of a horse’s hoof. The creaking of an old cart. The bray of a donkey. The miaow of a cat. The hoot of an owl. The whistle of a blackbird. Then—distinctly—three taps from a woodpecker: “le bec d’un pivert a frappé les trois coups”; and with a cry of “The woodpecker says the play must commence,” M. Coquelin disappeared, down went the lights: and up amidst thunders of applause rose the curtain.
Before us, a farm-yard, not an inmate or an object of which is wanting. White, black, grey and brown hens strut hither and thither, sharply discussing the powers, vanities, infidelities of Chantecler, their lord and master. Ducks and drakes, ganders and geese take sides for or against the king of the yard. Now and again the lid of a vast wicker-work basket opens, to reveal the head of the Old Hen—a very old hen, the doyenne of the place, and Chantecler’s foster-mother. In her, of course, the cock finds an ardent defender; but whenever the withered old head protrudes from the basket the Blackbird, hopping about in his cage, holds forth mockingly, ironically. For the Blackbird, like every other feathered creature in the play, is symbolical. He represents the smart, shallow, cynical Parisian, who scoffs at principles, ridicules genius, laughs at love, denies the existence of disinterested friendship, and is enormously pleased with his empty, impudent self. So he makes fun of the Old Hen and of the white, black, grey and brown hens whilst they pay naïve tributes to the supreme genius of Chantecler—the Cock of Cocks, the superb creature whose clarion, peremptory call causes the sun to rise and makes the world radiant, beautiful and cheerful. Chantecler has betrayed the hens, but they nevertheless admire and love him. As the discussion continues, bees, butterflies, wasps fly across the stage. On a pillar, a cat dozes tranquilly in the sun. Two fluffy little chicks play at getting in and out of a gigantic sabot. To the right, a huge dog’s kennel; in the background a gigantic cart, with its shafts in the air. In a corner, a set of enormous harness. The birds and beasts being of Brobdingnagian sizes, the objects on the stage have been magnified in proportion. But all is natural; never, from first to last, a note of extravagance, grotesqueness. Well, on and on goes the discussion, and, as the Blackbird sneers and scoffs, it becomes heated and shrill. “Silence; here he comes, here he comes,” cries a pigeon. And not a sound is heard when Chantecler appears, solemn, majestic, arrogant, on the poultry-yard wall. The hens gather together, look up at him with submission, admiration. The two chicks stop their game. The cat wakes up. Even the Blackbird ceases hopping about in his cage. Magnificent, awe-inspiring, indeed, is Chantecler in his dark green and light brown feather dress—“the green of April and the ochre of October.” He is, as on the top of the wall he recites his Hymn to the Sun, Cyrano de Bergerac in feathers. He represents the artist, the creative genius, the dispenser of beauty and spiritual light. If he be the lord over the other denizens of the farm-yard, it is because they will have it so. They believe the sun rises because Chantecler summons it with his shrill, imperious “Cocorico.” And Chantecler, the Superb, believes it himself—believes it in spite of the sceptical Blackbird. Chantecler, in fact, might stand for a great many types besides the artistic; for example, the statesman who fancies he is the creator of the social reforms that are advancing with civilisation like a tide. “I adore thee, O sun,” begins Chantecler, his beak raised towards the skies.
Je t’adore, Soleil! ô toi dont la lumière,
Pour bénir chaque front et mûrir chaque miel,
Entrant dans chaque fleur et dans chaque chaumière
Se divise et demeure entière
Ainsi que l’amour maternel!
...
Je t’adore, Soleil! Tu mets dans l’air des roses,
Des flammes dans la source, un dieu dans le buisson!
Tu prends un arbre obscur, et tu l’apothéoses!
O Soleil! toi sans qui les choses
Ne seraient que ce qu’elles sont!
Night falls, and Chantecler sends his subjects to bed. Then he and Patou, the dog philosopher, discuss the situation in the farm-yard. Excellent Patou might be Anatole France’s M. Bergeret. He despises the pert, cynical Blackbird. He denounces the snobbishness, the vanity, the vulgarity of the age. He is for calm, for reflection, for—— A shot is heard, the Hen Pheasant flies in and implores Chantecler to protect her from the hunter. She nestles under the Cock’s wing; she looks up at him admiringly, tenderly—and proud, gallant, idealistic Chantecler there and then falls in love with the gorgeous black, gold and red Pheasant. Majestically Chantecler struts round and round her, his chest thrown outwards, his beak in the air. Curiously, somewhat disdainfully, the Hen Pheasant surveys the farm-yard. It strikes her as poor, sordid, such an obscure little corner of the world. How different from the beauty, the spaciousness, the grandeur of her forest!
La Faisane.
Mais tous ces objets sont pauvres et moroses!
Chantecler.
Moi, je n’en reviens pas du luxe de ces choses!
La Faisane.
Tout est toujours pareil, pourtant.
Chantecler.
Rien n’est pareil,
Jamais, sous le soleil, à cause du soleil!
Car Elle change tout!
La Faisane.
Elle... Qui?
Chantecler.
La lumière.
Ardently, enthusiastically, then, Chantecler tells the Hen Pheasant how daylight, as it changes, floods the objects in the farm-yard with ever-varying colours. That geranium is never twice the same red. Patou’s kennel, the sabot stuffed with straw, the rusty old pitchfork—not for two successive moments do they look the same. A rake in a corner, a flower in a vase, as they change colour in the rays of the sun, fill idealistic Chantecler with ecstasy.
Still, the Hen Pheasant is not very much impressed. She consents, nevertheless, to pass the night in Patou’s kennel, which the dog-philosopher obligingly gives up to her. Owls, with huge, luminous eyes, appear. Bats dash about in the air. A mole creeps forth. As they love darkness and detest light, they fancy if Chantecler dies the night will last for ever. “I hate him,” they say, one after another.—“Je commence à l’aimer,” says the Hen Pheasant, womanlike, when she thus hears that Chantecler is in danger.
Owls, bats, the Cat, the Blackbird and strange night creatures are assembled beneath the branches of a huge tree, when the curtain rises on the second act. The Big Owl chants an Ode to the Night. “Vive la Nuit,” cry his brethren, at intervals, in a hoarse chorus. It is determined that Chantecler must die. At five o’clock in the morning, when the Guinea-Fowl holds a reception, a terrific fighting-cock shall insult, attack and slay Chantecler. “Vive la Nuit,” cry the night-birds, their eyes shining luridly in the darkness. But when a “Cocorico” sounds in the distance the night creatures fly away, and Chantecler, followed by the Hen Pheasant, struts on to the dim stage. “Tell me,” pleads the Pheasant, “the secret of your power.” At first Chantecler refuses, then hesitates, then in a glorious outburst he declares that the sun cannot rise until he has sung his song. It is perhaps the noblest, the most exquisite passage in the play.
Here is the last verse:
Je pense à la lumière, et non pas à la gloire,
Chanter, c’est ma façon de me battre et de croire.
Et si de tous les chants mon chant est le plus fier,
C’est que je chante clair afin qu’il fasse clair.
“But if,” asks the Hen Pheasant, “the skies are clouded and grey?”
Chantecler.
Si le ciel est gris, c’est que j’ai mal chanté.
La Faisane.
Il est tellement beau, qu’il semble avoir raison.
Majestically, Chantecler struts to and fro beneath the branches of the trees. Humbly, admiringly, the Hen Pheasant watches his perambulations. Night has passed, daybreak is near; the skies above the hillock on which Chantecler is standing turn from black to purple, and next from purple to dark grey. “Look and listen,” says Chantecler. He digs his claws firmly into the turf; he throws his chest out; he raises his head heavenwards: “Cocorico... Cocorico... Cocorico.” And gradually, delicately, the skies light up; birds twitter, cottages stand out in the distance, the tramp of the peasant on his way to the fields tells that the day’s work has begun—shafts of golden light fall upon the majestic Chantecler and illuminate the plumage of the graceful, beautiful Hen Pheasant.
And now, in a kitchen garden, the Guinea-Fowl’s “five o’clock”—a worldly, fashionable reception—at five o’clock in the morning! It is a satire on elegant Paris salons; what tittle-tattle, what scandalmongering, what epigrams, paradoxes and puns! At a weather-stained old gate stands the Magpie. One of the first guests he ceremoniously announces is the Peacock—the grande dame, to whom her hostess, the snobbish Guinea-Fowl, makes a profound curtsy. (The Peacock’s tail is a miracle of ingenuity; the actress can spread it out fanwise, raise it, let it drop, at will.) Then, one after another, arrives an endless procession of cocks. “The Golden Cock; the Silver Cock; the Cock from Bagdad; the Cock from Cochin China; the Scotch Grey Cock; the Bantam Cock; the Cock without Claws; M. le Doyen of All the Cocks,” announces the Magpie. Bows from these multitudinous Cocks to the Guinea-Fowl, to the Peacock and to the Blackbird. In all, forty-three amazing Cocks, each of whom is jealous of Chantecler; who eventually appears at the gateway with the Hen Pheasant. “Announce me, simply, as the Cock,” proudly says Chantecler. “Le Coq,” cries the Magpie. And the trouble begins.
Coldness from the Guinea-Fowl, scorn from the Peacock, mockery from the Blackbird, and insults from the Prize Fighting Cock, who has been commissioned by the uncanny, unwholesome Night Birds to slay idealistic, sun-loving Chantecler. Then, the duel, which ends in the victory of the Cock, and the pain and humiliation of the prize-fighter. All the Cocks, from M. le Doyen down to the Cock without Claws, are dismayed. The Peacock is disgusted; the Guinea-Fowl is dejected at the wretched failure of her “five o’clock”—only the smart, irrepressible Blackbird keeps things going. But not for long. Contemptuously, Chantecler turns upon him; taunts him with his vain, miserable endeavour to imitate the true, delightful wit, gaiety and genius of the Sparrow—the gavroche—of Paris. The Parisian Sparrow is flippant, but warm-hearted. He laughs, he scoffs, he whistles, he swaggers, but he is faithful and brave. But you, wretched Blackbird, are a coward. You, shallow creature, are a sneak. And then the line that would have rejoiced the heart of Victor Hugo: “Il faut savoir mourir pour s’appeler Gavroche.”
A month passes. The last Act represents the Hen Pheasant’s forest, where she and Chantecler are spending their honeymoon. For the bird has enticed the Cock away from the farm-yard; and thus, distress of his old foster-mother, and much indignation amongst the white, grey, brown and black hens.
Night in the forest, and how beautifully depicted! Up in a tree sits a solemn woodpecker; below him, around a huge mushroom, a number of toads with glistening eyes are assembled. Then, a gigantic cobweb, and in the middle of it, a spider. Here and there, rabbits peep out of their holes. Everywhere, birds. “It is time,” says the solemn woodpecker to them, “for you to say your prayers.”
Une Voix [dans les arbres].
Dieu des oiseaux!...
Une Autre Voix.
Ou plutôt—car il sied avant tout de s’entendre
Et le vautour n’a pas le Dieu de la calandre!
Dieu des petits oiseaux!...
Mille Voix [dans les feuilles].
Dieu des petits oiseaux!...
Une Autre Voix.
Et vous, François, grand saint, bénisseur de nos ailes....
Toutes les Voix.
Priez pour nous!
Une Voix.
Obtenez-nous, François d’Assise,
Le grain d’orge...
La Seconde Voix.
Le grain de blé...
D’autres Voix.
Le grain de mil...
La Première Voix.
Ainsi soit-il!
Toutes les Voix.
Ainsi soit-il!
At length, when Chantecler appears, we perceive that there is something wrong with the Cock. “Does not my forest please you?” asks the Hen Pheasant tenderly. “Oh yes,” replies Chantecler half-heartedly. The fact is, he pines after the farm-yard. Every night in the forest he telephones to the Blackbird, through the flower of the bindweed, for news of his old foster-mother, the hens, the chicks, the dog Patou. Then the Hen Pheasant is jealous of his love for the sun. Cruelly, she has insisted that he is to crow only once every day.
But it is the Hen Pheasant’s design to make Chantecler forget the dawn. He, of the farm-yard, has never heard the song of the nightingale. So glorious are her notes that Chantecler, the poet, the idealist, will be enraptured by them—and lose count of time.
And the nightingale sings; and Chantecler, enthralled, listens attentively—and as he stands there, spellbound, beneath the nightingale’s tree,—the sun rises and lights up the forest.
A peal of mocking laughter betrays the presence of the Blackbird. So it is not the imperious “Cocorico” who summons the sun! So the day breaks without Chantecler’s shrill crow! At first the Cock refuses to admit it: “That is the sun I summoned yesterday.” But when his illusions are gone he returns, humbled but not despairing, to the farm-yard. If he has not the supreme power to create the day, at least he can herald it.
When Chantecler has vanished, the Hen Pheasant, out of love for the Cock, deliberately flies into a trap set by the owner of the poultry yard. She remembers Chantecler having described the farmer as an admirable man:
Car le propriétaire est un végétarien.
C’est un homme étonnant. Il adore les bêtes.
Il leur donne des noms qu’il prend dans les poètes.
So the farmer, after releasing the Hen Pheasant from the trap, will restore her to Chantecler.
More and more golden becomes the forest. A strident “Cocorico” from the distance announces Chantecler’s return to the yard. When footsteps are heard, the birds stop singing. And the curtain falls.
It falls on a chef-d’œuvre.
X
AFTER CHANTECLER
More than a fortnight has passed since I witnessed the dress rehearsal of Chantecler: and what an odd, what an exhausting fortnight it has been! First of all dreams—or rather nightmares. Strangely, preposterously, I am majestic, cock-crowing “Chantecler” himself. A few minutes later, with wild, delirious rapidity, I turn into the Blackbird. M. Rostand’s Blackbird can hop in and out of his cage, and mingle with the hens, the ducks, the fluffy little chicks, and the other feathered creatures in the farm-yard; but I—am a prisoner in my cage—no one heeds my cries, no one releases me, and to add to my panic huge owls with shining eyes gather around my cage and hoot lugubriously at me.
Nor is this all. I get hopelessly entangled in the gigantic cobweb, which is one of the most wonderful scenic effects of the Fourth Act (the “Hen Pheasant’s Forest”) of Chantecler. Also I stumble over the great toadstools, fall heavily to the ground; and the gorgeous Hen Pheasant herself appearing, I feel humiliated and ashamed that so elegant and beautiful a creature should find me sprawling thus awkwardly on the turf. “What a nuisance these toadstools are,” I observe. “What are you doing in my forest? Leave it immediately,” commands the Hen Pheasant. But I have sprained my ankle; impossible to rise, even to move. And I burst into tears, and I implore the beautiful Pheasant to pardon me, and then a great bat gets caught in my hair, and——
Enough. Although my sufferings in these nightmares have been acute, I have one thing to be thankful for. Up to now I have not been attacked, as “Chantecler” is in the Third Act, by a fierce, bloodthirsty Prize Fighting Cock.
Gracious goodness, this Chantecler! Rising unrefreshed from my troubled, restless sleep, I find, on the breakfast-table, letters from London, Birmingham, Manchester, which show that M. Edmond Rostand’s masterpiece has interested those cities as much as it has agitated and excited Paris.
“My Dear Boy” (writes a frail, silver-haired and very charming old lady who gave me half-crowns in my schooldays),—“I live very much out of the world, as old people should do; but I confess to my curiosity having been aroused by a very peculiar play now being acted in Paris. I mean Chantecler, by a M. Edmond Rostand. It seems that the characters in it—if one can call them characters?—are animals. How very remarkable! I wonder how it can be done! Such things are seen, of course, in pantomimes (do you remember my taking you to Drury Lane Theatre many, many years ago to see Puss-in-Boots?). But the newspapers here say that this play is wonderfully natural, and full of true poetry and feeling. When you can spare half-an-hour, pray satisfy an old lady’s curiosity by giving her an account of the piece.”
Then, with innumerable dashes, exclamation marks, and words underlined, the following appeal from fascinating, lovely, irresistible Miss Ethel Tempest:—
“Of course, lucky man, you have seen Chantecler, and if you don’t tell me all about it by return of post I shall never write to you, and never look at you, and never speak to you again. I don’t want to know anything about the plot of the play, as I have read all about that in the papers. You have got to be a dear, and tell me about the hat that Madame Simone wears as the Hen Pheasant. It’s made of straw and feathers, and it’s going to be the rage in London. Sybil Osborne tells me chic Parisiennes are wearing it already. No; on second thoughts, send me all the fashionable illustrated papers that give sketches of the hat. As you’re a man, you won’t understand it. Mind, all the papers: you can’t send enough. If you could get a special sketch done by one of your artist friends in the Latin Quarter, it would be lovely.”
Well, of course I write to the gentle, kindly silver-haired lady who once took me to a Drury Lane pantomime; and of course, too, I send illustrated papers—thirteen of them—to exquisite Miss Tempest, and ask Raoul Fauchois, a gay, sympathetic art student, to “do” me a sketch of the Hen Pheasant’s straw hat. He consents, and I fancy he will keep his promise. “Naturally, the sketch is not for you,” he says, at once wisely and poetically. “It is for one of those blonde English misses whose chevelure, so radiant, so golden, lights up the sombre streets of old London. You may rely upon me, mon pauvre ami. I understand; I know exactly how you feel—for I myself have had affairs of the heart.”
Again, always from London and the provinces, requests for picture post cards of the principal scenes in Chantecler; for gilt brooches (3 f. 50 c. in the tawdry shops of the rue de Rivoli) representing “Chantecler” crowing and crowing with his chest thrown outwards and his beak raised heavenwards; for the Porte St-Martin theatre programme of Chantecler; and for—“if you possibly can manage it”—the autograph of M. Edmond Rostand.
And then a telegram:
“Wife and self arrive Gare du Nord Wednesday 5.45. Please meet us. Not understanding French wish you accompany us see and interpret Chantecler.”
What worry, what exhaustion!
“Monsieur would be kind to explain this extraordinary ‘Chantecler’ to me. I am from the country, and have had much to do with poultry; but I have never seen a cock like Chantecler,” says my servant, a simple, naïve soul from Normandy.
Then my concierge, a practical lady: “But it’s ridiculous, but it’s mad! Cocks and hens cannot even speak, and yet this M. Rostand makes them recite poetry. What is France coming to? What will be the end of us all? Think, just think, what has been happening since the New Year. That sinister comet, the terrible floods, and now Chantecler.”
Very unwisely, I explain to my servant and to my concierge that M. Rostand’s glorious chef-d’œuvre is symbolical.
Chantecler is a symbolic play in verse.
The feathered creatures in the farm-yard represent human beings. “Chantecler” himself is the artist, the idealist. The Hen Pheasant is the coquettish, seductive, brilliant woman of the world. The Blackbird——
But here I stop, silenced by the startled expression of the concierge and the servant. It is plain they think I have become irresponsible, light-headed. “Monsieur is tired. Monsieur should lie down and rest. Monsieur is not quite himself,” says my servant.
“The comet—the floods—Chantecler, have been too much for Monsieur,” sighs the concierge.
XI
AU COURS D’ASSISES. PARIS AND MADAME STEINHEIL
It was not by reason of baccarat losses, duels, matrimonial disputes, nor because of the aches of indigestion nor of the indefinable miseries of neurasthenia, worries and ailments common enough in French Vanity Fair—it was not, I say, for any of these reasons that fashionable and financial Paris, sporting and theatrical Paris, certain worldly lights of literary and artistic Paris, and the extravagant, feverish demi-monde of Paris, woke up on the morning of the 3rd November[5] in an exceedingly bad temper. Nor yet was their displeasure occasioned by the weather—London weather—all fog, damp and gloom. The fact was, at noon was to begin the first sitting of the great Steinheil trial, to which the above-mentioned ornaments of le Tout Paris had been excitedly looking forward for many a month. All that time they had been worrying, agitating, intriguing to obtain the official yellow ticket that would entitle them to behold with their own eyes—O, dramatic, thrilling spectacle—the “Tragic Widow’s” entrance into the dock, and to hear with their own ears—O palpitating, overwhelming experience—the secret history of an essentially Parisian cause célèbre. The trial would be the event of the autumn season, a function no self-respecting mondain, mondaine or demi-mondaine could afford to miss. And so, as the accommodation in the Court of Assizes is limited, the campaign to secure cards of admission became ardent, fierce, and then (as the sensational day of the 3rd November approached) delirious. Off, by footmen, chauffeurs, special messengers, went scented little notes to judges and famous lawyers, and to deputies, senators and ministers, imploring those distinguished personages to “remember” the writer when the hour arrived for the precious yellow tickets to be distributed. “Mon cher ami,” wrote Madame la Comtesse de la Tour, “if you forget me I shall never, never forgive you.” Then, with a blot or two, and in a primitive, scrawling handwriting, Mademoiselle Giselle de Perle of the half-world: “Mon vieux gros, I count upon you for the trial. If you fail me, your little blonde Pauline will show her claws. And the claws of this blonde child can be terrible.” (It is shocking to think that blonde Giselle de Perle should be on such familiar terms with gentlemen in high places; but as a matter of fact she and her sisters play a very important rôle in the life of the Amazing City.) As for stout, diamond-covered Baronne Goldstein (wife of old bald-headed Goldstein of the Bourse), she invited judges and deputies to rich, elaborate dinners, at which the oldest, the mellowest, the most comforting wines from her cellars were produced; and when M. le Juge and M. le Député had been rendered genial and benevolent by those rare, warming vintages, she led them into a corner of Goldstein’s vast gilded salon, and there besought them, while breathing heavily under her breastplate of diamonds, to procure for her “just one little yellow ticket.” Naturally, all these State officials replied with a bow: “I will do my best. Need I say that it is my dearest desire to oblige you?” And our ornaments of le Tout Paris were satisfied; already regarded that ticket of tickets as being safe and sound in their possession. When October dawned, Madame la Comtesse, lively Pauline Boum and stout Baronne Goldstein ordered striking dresses and huge, complicated hats for the Steinheil cause célèbre. In their respective salons, over their “five o’clock’s” of pale tea, sugared cakes, and crystal glasses of port, malaga and madeira, they excitedly described how they had driven to the tranquil, ivy-covered villa in the Impasse Ronsin where Madame Steinheil’s husband and mother had been assassinated on the night of the 30th-31st May eighteen months ago. And how, after that expedition, they had proceeded to beautiful Bellevue, seven miles out of Paris, to stare at that other villa, the “Vert Logis,” where the “Tragic Widow” received her lovers. How they gossiped, too, over the intrigue between the accused woman and the late President Félix Faure; and what fun they made of certain high State dignitaries who were said to be in a state of “panic” because they had been habitués of the Steinheil villas! “I would not miss the trial for the largest and finest diamond in the world,” declared these ladies. “It will be extraordinary, overwhelming, supreme,” exclaimed the male guests at these tea-and-madeira afternoon parties. “We shall still be discussing it this time next year.”
Suddenly, however, consternation, indignation, fury, hysteria, in le Tout Paris. In an official decree, M. de Valles, the judge appointed to preside over the Steinheil “debates,” intimated that all those scented notes had been written, all those elaborate dinners had been given, all those striking dresses and complicated hats had been ordered, and tried on I don’t know how many times—in vain. “I have,” stated M. de Valles, “received over 25,000 applications for tickets of admission, and every one of them I have refused. Only the diplomatic corps, the Bar, and a certain number of French and foreign journalists will be admitted. Let it be clearly understood that this decision of mine is irrevocable.” Gracious powers, the commotion! Le Tout Paris protested, raged, until it wore itself out with anger and hysteria. “I have made thousands of enemies. Even my wife’s friends refuse to speak to me,” said M. de Valles to an interviewer. True to his word, the judge remained inexorable. Passionate letters to him remained unanswered; to all visitors he was invisible. Hence the exceedingly bad temper of le Tout Paris on that foggy, gloomy morning of the 3rd of November. And thus for the first time on record the heroine of an essentially Parisian cause célèbre entered the dock of the dim, oblong, oak-panelled Court of Assizes, secure from the laughter, the mockery, and the opera-glasses of French Vanity Fair.
An extraordinary woman, Madame Steinheil. Imagine Sarah Bernhardt in some supremely tragical rôle—pathetic, threatening; tender, violent; despairing, tearful; wrecked with indignation, suffering and exhaustion, and you will gain an idea of the “Tragic Widow’s” demeanour during the ten days’ dramatic trial. Her voice, like the incomparable Sarah’s, was now melodious and persuasive, then hoarse, bitter, frenzied; when she wept, it subsided into a moan or a broken whisper. Never even in Paris (where a widow’s weeds are perhaps excessively lugubrious) have I seen deeper mourning: heavy crape bands round the accused woman’s black dress, stiff crape bows in the widow’s cap, a deep crape border to the handkerchief which she clenched tightly, convulsively, in her black-gloved hand. Then, under her eyes, dark, dark shadows, which turned green as the trial tragically wore on. Her face, deadly pale, but for the hectic spot burning fiercely in each cheek. Her eyes, blue. Her hair, dark brown. Her ears, small and delicate; her mouth, sensitive, tremulous, eloquent. Her only coquetterie, the low, square-cut opening in the neck of her dress.
Wistfully, wretchedly, she glanced around the court, after M. de Valles, the presiding judge, had given her permission to sit down. Then her eyes fell upon a grim table placed immediately beneath the Bench: and she shuddered. It was grim because it contained the pièces à conviction—the alpenstock found near the late M. Steinheil’s body, the coil of rope with which he and his mother-in-law had been strangled, the famous bottle of brandy with the innumerable finger-prints, the wadding lying on the floor by the side of Madame Japy’s bed. Then, M. de Valles, in his rasping voice, asked the “Tragic Widow” the usual preliminary questions concerning her parentage, domicile and age. Almost inaudibly, Madame Steinheil replied. And the trial began.
Unfortunately, I have neither the space nor the time at my disposal to render even a tolerably satisfactory account of this overwhelming cause célèbre. “Impressions” are all I can offer, mixed up with brief descriptions of what the French journalist calls “incidents in court”; and even these “impressions” and “incidents” must necessarily be compressed and disconnected. For the slightness of my recital, I beg the indulgence of my readers.
“Messieurs les Jurés, I swear I am innocent. Messieurs les Jurés, I adored my mother. Messieurs les Jurés, do not believe the abominable things the President is saying about me,” was the “Tragic Widow’s” first passionate outburst. Then, turning round upon M. de Valles: “You are treating me atrociously.”
“I am treating you as you deserve,” was the reply.
For the first two days, M. de Valles assumed the office of public prosecutor, or rather of high inquisitor—and the “Tragic Widow” was on the rack. The judge in the black-and-red robes sneered, stormed, threatened, bullied; and turned constantly to the jury with a shrug of the shoulders as though to say: “She denies everything. She has never told anything but lies, and now she is lying again.” Over again and again he brutally accused Madame Steinheil of having assassinated her mother, but never did the accused woman fail to leap up from her chair with the cry: “I adored my mother. Messieurs les Jurés, I swear I adored her.” Another shrug of M. de Valles’ shoulders, and another cynical smile at the jury, when Madame Steinheil spoke of her devotion to her eighteen-year-old daughter. “I love her, and she loves me more fondly than ever—because she believes in my innocence. She has written me the tenderest letters and has visited me constantly in prison. She helped to make the black dress I am wearing.” And further gestures expressive of impatient incredulity on the part of M. de Valles when the “Tragic Widow” shrieked: “Yes; I have been a bad woman. Yes; I have been an immoral woman. Yes; I made false, wicked accusations against Remy Couillard and Alexandre Wolff. But I am not an assassin, a fiend. And only a fiend could murder her mother.” Here the shriek stopped. For some moments the “Tragic Widow” cried bitterly. Then, in Sarah Bernhardt’s melodious voice, she thus addressed the jury: “Gentlemen, I am deeply repentant for all the wrong I have done. Please realise that I was mad—that I was being tortured—when I made those false, atrocious accusations. I was being tortured by the examining magistrate and by the journalists who invaded my villa and refused to leave it until they had obtained sensational ‘copy’ for their papers. These journalists told me that nobody believed in my story, and that I had better tell a new one. They said my villa was surrounded by a hostile mob, come there to lynch me. It was they who suggested that I should accuse Alexandre Wolff and Remy Couillard. They tortured me until they made me say what they liked. It was no doubt splendid material for their papers: but the result was disastrous for me. Do you know, gentlemen of the jury, that it was actually in a motor car belonging to the Matin that I was driven to the St Lazare prison?” And the “Tragic Widow” collapsed in her chair, covered her face with her hand, sobbed convulsively. At this point the two or three hundred barristers in court murmured compassionately: and M. de Valles called them to order by rapping his paper-cutter on his massive silver inkstand. (M. de Valles, by the way, was for ever rapping his paper-cutter, for ever wiping his brow with a huge handkerchief, for ever sinking back in his handsome, comfortable fauteuil, and then suddenly darting forward to hurl some savage remark at the accused.) Irritated by the compassionate demonstration of the barristers, unmoved by the shaking and sobbing of the black-dressed woman in the dock, M. de Valles pointed to the grim table containing the pièces de conviction, and cried: “Look at that horrible table, and confess; and shed real, not crocodile, tears. You have stated that on the night of the crime you were bound down and gagged by three men in black robes and by a red-headed woman, who entered your room with a dark lantern and then—after they had bound and gagged you, and after you yourself had lost consciousness—assassinated poor M. Steinheil and the unfortunate Madame Japy. Nobody believes you; your story is a tissue of falsehoods. It was you who, with the help of accomplices, murdered your husband and your mother.”
But let us not be too hard upon M. de Valles for his savage treatment of Madame Steinheil. He had considerately protected her from the cruel curiosity and impertinence of le Tout Paris; and then it was his legitimate rôle to attempt by continuous ruthless bullying to extract a confession from his pale-faced, exhausted martyr. For in France the word “judge,” as we understand it, is a misnomer. The French judge is the real public prosecutor, the chief cross-examiner; save for the jury, he would be all-powerful. But as the twelve men “good and true” are chosen from the justice-loving French people at large, M. le Juge’s drastic, brutal insinuations and accusations cannot alone bring about a condemnation. It is for the jury to decide. It remains with the jury to condemn. And at one o’clock in the morning of the 14th November the jurors in the Steinheil cause célèbre—workmen, mechanics, petits commerçants—demonstrated their inherent love and sense of justice by——
But I am anticipating events. Let us return to the crowded, stifling Court of Assizes; and then take a stroll in the marble corridors of the Paris Law Courts, where, throughout the Steinheil trial, wooden barriers barred the way to all those not provided with the precious yellow ticket; and where groups of policemen, and of Municipal and Republican Guards were discussing—like every other soul in Paris—this incomprehensible, amazing cause célèbre.
A change in M. de Valles on the third day of the trial. Respecting her tears, refraining from shrugging his shoulders at her repeated protestations of innocence, the judge treated the “Tragic Widow” as a human being; even with courtesy and compassion. This metamorphosis was due, I believe, to a hint received from high quarters, where (so I have since been assured) the strong protests of the Paris correspondents of the English and American newspapers against the French judicial system, had made an impression. But in the opinion of Henri Rochefort, Madame Steinheil’s savage assailant in the columns of the Nationalist Patrie, the “judge had been bought.” With his gaunt, yellow face, tumbled white hair, angry grey eyes, the ruthless old journalist and agitator was the most conspicuous figure in the press-box. To his colleagues and to the barristers around him, he also accused Madame Steinheil of having murdered the late Félix Faure. “She was in the pay of the Dreyfusards,” he said, in his hoarse voice, “and the Dreyfusards knew that so long as Faure lived there would be no revision. So they commissioned the woman Steinheil, his mistress, to assassinate him.” After which he sucked lozenges (fierce old Rochefort is always and always sucking lozenges in order to ease the hoarseness in his throat), and next proceeded to begin his article for the Patrie, in which he referred to Madame Steinheil as the “Black Panther”! I fancy, too, that it was Rochefort’s bold design to magnetise—even to mesmerise—the jury! At all events, when not writing or accusing, he kept his angry grey eyes fixed hard on the foreman. A good thing the “Tragic Widow” could not see him from her seat in the dock. Henri Rochefort’s gaunt yellow face, when lit up luridly with hatred and vindictiveness, is enough to make anyone falter and quail.
But as M. de Valles was calm, Madame Steinheil felt more at ease; and, apart from occasional tears and comparatively few outbursts, the “Tragic Widow” remained composed during the six long, stifling afternoons occupied by the evidence of the eighty-seven witnesses. Of these, of course, I can take only the most important. Let us begin with Mr Burlingham, an American painter and journalist, aged twenty-eight.
Poor, poor Mr Burlingham! It will be remembered that Madame Steinheil described the assassins of her husband and mother as three men in black robes, and a red-headed woman. Well, just because Mr Burlingham had hired a black robe from a costumier’s for a fancy-dress ball a few nights before the murder, he was suspected, shadowed and worried by the detective police. One day the police stationed Madame Steinheil outside his door, and when he sauntered out and walked off, the “Tragic Widow” exclaimed: “Yes, that is one of the assassins. I recognise him by his red beard.” But as on the night of the murder Mr Burlingham was far away in Switzerland with two friends on a walking-tour, he had no difficulty in establishing a decisive alibi. Nevertheless, Mr Burlingham became notorious. His photographs appeared in the newspapers. He was followed here, there and everywhere by Yellow Reporters: who described him as the “enigmatic Burlingham,” and the “sinister Burlingham”—and yet Mr Burlingham, with his light red beard, gentle green eyes, low voice and kindly expression is, in reality, the simplest and mildest-looking mortal that ever breathed. What humiliations, what indignities, nevertheless, had Mr Burlingham to endure! His landlord gave him notice, his tradespeople ceased calling for orders; when out walking in the neighbourhood he inhabited, concierges exclaimed: “There goes the famous Burlingham,” while little boys cried: “Here comes the sinister Burlingham.” Once, after calling on a friend who was out, he left his name with the concierge—and the concierge, panic-stricken, fled her lodge, and, rushing into the next house, breathlessly told her neighbour that she had seen the “terrible Burlingham.” In fact, an intolerable time of it for mild, simple Mr Burlingham.
“I have narrowly escaped the guillotine,” were his first words to the judge; and the Court laughed. The American should have engaged an interpreter: his French and his accent were deplorable. “This Steinheil affair is not clear,” he continued, naïvely, and everyone shook with delight. “I am very sorry you have been so badly treated,” said M. de Valles, “but you fell under suspicion because you had eccentric habits, and mixed with eccentric people.” M. de Valles’ idea of “eccentric” habits and “eccentric” people was in itself eccentric. For Mr Burlingham’s friends and associates during his sojourn in Paris have been painters, sculptors, and journalists of talent and honourable standing. As for his habits, they have been those of a firm believer in the “simple life.” Sandals for Mr Burlingham; no hat; terrific walking-tours. Then a diet of rice, grapes and nuts. (In the buffet of the Law Courts Mr Burlingham, when invited to take a “drink,” ordered grapes: he consumed I don’t know how many bunches a day, to the stupefaction of the waiters and customers.) Well, after having received apologies from the judge, Mr Burlingham received those of counsel for the defence and the prosecution. “Excuses are scarcely enough,” replied the witness; “I should like to say something about the French judicial system.” At which, M. de Valles, rapping his paper-cutter, sternly requested simple, unfortunate Mr Burlingham to “retire.”
Murmurs, exclamations, excitement in court when M. Marcel Hutin, of the Echo de Paris, and MM. Labruyère and Barby, of the Matin—the three journalists who bullied and “tortured” Madame Steinheil in the Impasse Ronsin Villa on the night previous to her arrest—strode up to the short wooden bar that takes the place, in France, of a witness-box.
No confusion, no shame about them; and yet their conduct in the drawing-room of the Steinheil villa twelve months ago was despicable. Calmly they admitted having advised the “Tragic Widow” to “tell a new story,” as no one in Paris believed in her account of how the double crime had been committed. They also admitted having lied to the wretched woman, when they had told her that the villa was surrounded by a hostile mob, “come there to lynch her.” Madame Steinheil, they continued, was exhausted, out of her mind. She called for strychnine, with which to poison herself. Downstairs in the kitchen the cook, Mariette Wolff, was discovered on her knees, striving to cut open the tube of the gas-stove—to asphyxiate herself. The cook then produced a revolver, and cried: “Here is the only means of salvation.” Later on, tea was served in the drawing-room. M. Marcel Hutin and his two colleagues continued to browbeat Madame Steinheil. One of the Yellow Reporters cried: “I shall not leave this house until I know the truth.” Mariette Wolff entered the drawing-room and tried to soothe her mistress. And——
“So you tortured Madame Steinheil in her drawing-room. You drank her tea. You were her guests, she was your hostess,” interrupted M. de Valles, scathingly, indignantly. The “Tragic Widow,” leaning forward on the ledge of the dock, looked gratefully, thankfully, at the judge. The three Yellow Reporters strode out of court, each of them provoking angry exclamations from the barristers as they importantly passed by.
And then, the cook—Mariette Wolff, who had been in Madame Steinheil’s service for over twenty years; and who, according to the Yellow Press, “possessed all the secrets of the palpitating Steinheil Mystery.” Henri Rochefort, M. Arthur Meyer (director of the Gaulois, very Jewish in appearance, but a strong Anti-Semite and an ardent Catholic in politics), Madame Séverine (the famous woman journalist), four very charming lady barristers, all their male confrères—everyone, in fact, sprang up excitedly when Mariette made her long-expected appearance. She has since been described as a peasant out of one of Zola’s novels, and as “the double of Balzac’s fiendish Cousine Bette.” She has also been termed “a fury,” and “a rat” and “a monster.” For my part, when first I saw her through the open door of the witness-room, sipping a steaming grog and chatting and laughing with her son Alexandre, I summed her up as the French double of a typical English charwoman. She was wearing a battered black bonnet and a seedy black dress, and came to me more as a Dickensonian than a Zolaesque or a Balzacien character. But Mariette, happily drinking grog, and Mariette, facing a jury and judge, are two very different persons. In court, Madame Steinheil’s ex-cook was defiant, vindictive, violent. As she defended her former mistress, her beady, black eyes flashed, her chin and nose almost met—her yellow, knotted hand beat the air. Yes, she was a “fury”; yes—to use the French journalist’s pet epithet—she looked “sinister.” And, oh dear me, her abuse of the Yellow Reporters! Mariette’s crude language cannot be reproduced here. It became particularly strong when she related how she had ordered MM. Hutin, Barby and Labruyère out of the Impasse Ronsin Villa. It grew even stronger when she denied their allegations that she intended first of all to asphyxiate herself, and then to blow out her brains. She denied everything. “My mistress is innocent,” she cried. “She accused my son Alexandre of being a murderer, but it was those —— journalists who made her do that, and I forgive her: and so does Alexandre.” True, Alexandre Wolff, a horse-dealer’s assistant, with huge red hands and a neck like a bullock’s, told M. de Valles he bore Madame Steinheil “no grudge.” And the “Tragic Widow,” leaning forward, murmured melodiously: “Thank you, Alexandre.”
Full of incoherencies, contradictions, was the evidence of Remy Couillard, the late M. Steinheil’s valet, into whose pocket-book the “Tragic Widow” had placed the incriminating pearl. “I bear her no grudge,” blurted out the young man. “I beg your pardon, Remy,” said Madame Steinheil, always melodiously, when the valet (attired, since he was accomplishing his “military service,” in a cavalry uniform) withdrew. But, a moment later, she fell back in her chair, closed her eyes; and the black-gloved hands in her lap twitched convulsively, madly.
M. Borderel had stepped forward to give evidence: M. Borderel, the lover Madame Steinheil had declared twelve months ago to the examining magistrate to be the one and only man she had ever truly loved.
A hush in court as the middle-aged, red-eyed, broken-down widower from the beautiful country of the Ardennes, related the history of his intrigue with the “Tragic Widow.”
It will be remembered that the strongest point for the prosecution was that Madame Steinheil had murdered her husband in order to be free to marry “the rich châtelain, M. Borderel.” In a slow, solemn voice, M. Borderel stated: “Yes; Madame Steinheil did mention marriage to me, but I said it was impossible. I adored my late wife, I adore my children, and I felt I could not give them a step-mother; and Madame Steinheil fully understood that my decision was irrevocable. Therefore the assumption of the prosecution that Madame Steinheil murdered her husband in order to become my wife, is unwarrantable.” Here M. Borderel broke down. “I loved her. I was a widower. I was free. In becoming her lover, I behaved no more wrongly than thousands of my fellow-countrymen. It is a base lie that I ever suspected her of being guilty of that awful murder. On the morning after the crime, I was full of the deepest pity for her; and when she was accused in the newspapers I passionately told everyone she was innocent.” Up sprang Maître Aubin, counsel for the defence, with the cry: “Do you still believe her innocent?” And loudly, vigorously, whole-heartedly rang forth the answer: “With all my soul, with all my heart, upon my conscience.”
Even M. de Valles was moved by M. Borderel’s emotion, sorrow, chivalry. The disclosure of the “rich châtelain’s” liaison with the “Tragic Widow” caused such a scandal in the Ardennes that M. Borderel had to sell his estate; and he, too, has been persecuted continuously by Yellow photographers and journalists. Equally chivalrous was the evidence of Comte d’Arlon (to whose house Madame Steinheil was removed after the night of the murder), of M. Martin (a State official), and of other gentlemen who had been (platonic) friends of the “Tragic Widow.” Then, more chivalry from M. Pouce, an officer in the detective police. “I have been one of the detectives in charge of the Steinheil affair,” he cried. “But I have always believed in the innocence of Madame Steinheil. Had she told me she was guilty, I should not have believed her. She is innocent.” And finally, exuberant, fantastic chivalry on the part of a young man named René Collard: who, to the stupefaction of the Court, walked up to the Bench and cried: “Madame Steinheil is innocent. I myself am the red-headed woman who helped to commit the double murder.” M. de Valles then wiped his brow with his huge handkerchief, rapped on the silver inkstand with his paper-cutter, and cried: “Silence”—for the Court was buzzing with excitement. Hesitatingly René Collard (aged perhaps nineteen) related that he had disguised himself as a woman, bought a red wig, broken his way into the Steinheil villa (in the company of two friends), sacked the place, bound and gagged Madame Steinheil, strangled her husband, suffocated her mother. “Take this young man away,” said M. de Valles to a municipal guard, “and lock him up.” Two nights in prison brought young René Collard to his senses. He had seen Madame Steinheil’s photographs in the papers, had fallen in love with her: had resolved to save her at the risk of being guillotined by the awful M. Deibler! Said the examining magistrate: “Little idiot, I shall now send you home in the charge of a policeman, who will deliver you over to your parents.” And so, amorous, over-chivalrous young René Collard was conducted back to a dull, bourgeois flat in the Avenue Clichy, where his father and mother, after calling him a “villain,” a “criminal,” and a “monster,” took him into their arms, and hugged him, and called him “the best and most adorable of sons”; and then sent out Amélie, the only servant, to fetch a cream cake and a bottle of sweet champagne with which to celebrate the return home of the “wicked” but “adorable” Master René.
And now, half-past ten o’clock at night on Saturday, the 13th of November.—I have passed over the address to the jury of M. Trouard-Riolle, the Public Prosecutor—a mere repetition of the judge’s savage cross-examination of the “Tragic Widow” on the first two days of the trial; and I have also passed over Maître Aubin’s long, eloquent speech for the defence. And the last scenes I have now to describe rise up so vividly before me, that I adopt the present tense.
The jury have retired to an upstairs room to consider their verdict. Madame Steinheil, watched by municipal guards, is waiting—deadly pale, green shadows under her blue eyes, exhausted, a wreck—in the “Chambre des Accusés.” And in the stifling Court of Assizes, and in the cold marble corridors of the Palais de Justice, barristers, journalists and a few ornaments of le Tout Paris (who, somehow or other, have at last obtained admittance to the Law Courts) are frantically speculating upon the fate of Madame Steinheil. Most barristers say: “There are no proofs whatsoever. Therefore, acquittal.” The Tout Paris cries: “She should be imprisoned for life.” (And here, in yet another parenthesis, let us suggest that the Tout Paris’ mocking, vindictive attitude towards Madame Steinheil is provoked by malevolent jealousy. Madame la Comtesse, lively Pauline Boum, stout Baronne Goldstein cannot forgive the “Tragic Widow” for having been une femme ultra-chic—the favourite of the late President Félix Faure. Yet, as we all know in Paris, the life of these ladies is very far from exemplary. How terrifically would our great, kindly, satirical Thackeray have laid bare the true causes of the bitter hostility directed against the “Tragic Widow” by French Vanity Fair!)
Eleven o’clock; half-past eleven; midnight. Twice, so we hear, have M. de Valles and counsel for the prosecution and the defence been summoned to the jurors’ room, to explain certain “points.” The Tout Paris, and Henri Rochefort, are jubilant. “When the jury sends for the judge it usually means a conviction,” croaks Rochefort, rubbing his hands, and still sucking his impotent lozenges. We hear, too, that a crowd of thousands has assembled in front of the Palais de Justice; that the boulevards are wild with excitement, and——
“The judge has been summoned a third time to the jurors’ room,” we are told at twenty minutes past twelve.
“Five years’ imprisonment at least,” chuckle the ladies and fatuous gentlemen of le Tout Paris.
“Ten years—fifteen—twenty, I hope. She was in the pay of the Dreyfusards, and killed Félix Faure,” mutters Rochefort.
“The Court enters; the Court enters,” cry the ushers and the municipal guards, at half-past twelve.
As the jury files into the box, barristers and journalists mount their benches, and, upon those rickety supports, sway to and fro. “Silence,” shouts M. de Valles, rapping his paper-cutter for the last time. His question to the foreman of the jury is inaudible. But the reply rings out firmly, vigorously:
“Before God and man, upon my honour and conscience, the verdict on every count of the indictment is: Not Guilty.”
For a few seconds, silence. Then a shrill cry (from one of the brown-haired, blue-eyed, very charming lady barristers) of “Acquitted!” And after that, enthusiastic uproar. Rocking and swaying to and fro on their rickety benches, the barristers applaud, cheer, fling their black képis into the air. Up, too, go the caps of their fascinating, brown-haired colleagues, as they cry: “Bravo.” More shouts and bravoes from the journalists. (One of them—an Englishman—cheers so frantically that half-an-hour later his voice is as hoarse as Henri Rochefort’s.) And so the din continues, increases, until the demonstrators suddenly perceive the dock is empty. Again, for a second or two, silence, followed by exclamations of astonishment, alarm. M. de Valles, the two assistant judges, and the jurors lean forward. Maître Aubin looks anxious. Where is the “Tragic Widow”? Is she ill? Is she——? But at last the small door at the back of the dock opens, and Madame Steinheil, livid, held by either arm by a municipal guard, staggers forward. She has not yet heard the verdict, but the renewed wild cheering (which drowns the judge’s voice as he addresses her) tells her what it is. Dazed, half-fainting in the doorway, she looks around the Court. For the first time throughout the ten days’ trial she smiles—heavens, the relief, the gratitude, the softness of that smile! And then amidst shouts of “Vive Madame Steinheil,” and of “Vive la Justice,” the “Tragic Widow” falls unconscious into the arms of the Gardes Municipaux and is carried out backwards through the narrow doorway of the dock.
Paris, too, demonstrates excitedly. Cheers are given by the vast crowd assembled outside the Law Courts for Madame Steinheil, Maître Aubin and the jury. M. Trouard-Riolle, the public prosecutor, leaves the Palais de Justice by a side door, followed by Henri Rochefort, yellower than ever in the face, his eyes blazing with vindictive fury. Almost encircling the Palais are the 60 and 90 h.p. motors of the Yellow Reporters, still bent on pursuing and persecuting the “Tragic Widow.” But she evades them; passes what remains of the night in the Hotel Terminus; speeds off in an automobile to a doctor’s private nursing-home at Vésinet next morning.
Acquitted, yes; but by no means rehabilitated, far less left in peace. Outside the nursing-home at Vésinet, behold rows of motor cars, packs of Yellow Reporters and photographers. A din in this usually tranquil country place; a din, too, outside the Impasse Ronsin Villa, and in front of the Bellevue Villa, where inquisitive Parisians jest, and laugh, and point and stare at the shuttered windows. Over those “five o’clock’s” of pale tea, port and sugared cakes, le Tout Paris declares that Madame Steinheil was acquitted by order of the Government. In the Patrie, Henri Rochefort still calls her the “Black Panther,” and, alluding once again to the death of Félix Faure, bids President Fallières to beware of her. And on the boulevards, swarms of camelots thrust under one’s eyes “picture post cards” of Mariette Wolff; of huge, bloated Alexandre; of mild Mr Burlingham; of chivalrous Count d’Arlon; of M. Borderel; of Mademoiselle Marthe Steinheil; and of the “Tragic Widow.”
And the bourgeoisie?
“Acquitted, yes; but the Impasse Ronsin crime, committed eighteen months ago, remains a mystery,” says a Parisian angrily to me. “The trial has elucidated nothing: but it has cost enormous sums.” And then, as he is a thrifty, rather parsimonious little bourgeois, the speaker adds indignantly: “As Madame Steinheil has won, it is the Treasury, in other words the unfortunate taxpayer, myself, for instance, who will have to put his hand in his pocket, and settle the bill.”
[5] 1909.
XII
THE LATE JULES GUÉRIN AND THE DEFENCE OF FORT CHABROL
The month of May, 1899—how long ago it seems!
At that time, up at Montmartre, in a large house, overlooking a garden, resided M. Jules Guérin, most savage of Anti-Dreyfusards, and chief of the Anti-Semitic party.
A fine house, but an unlovely garden. A gaunt tree or two; four or five gritty, stony flower-beds; in a corner, a dried-up, dilapidated old well. But this waste of a garden suited M. Guérin’s purposes,—which were sinister.
“If my enemies attack me here, I shall shoot them dead and bury them beneath this very window—by that tree, in that flower-bed.”
“Oh!” I expostulated.
“Or I shall throw their infamous bodies into that well,” continued M. Guérin, again pointing out of the window. “I am prepared; I am ready. You see this gun? Then look at those revolvers. All are loaded.”
A long, highly polished gun rested in a corner at M. Guérin’s elbow. Curiously then I glanced at a collection of revolvers that bristled murderously on the wall, and next at Jules Guérin, a powerfully built man, with massive shoulders, a square chin, lurid green eyes, a fierce moustache, and a formidable block of a head on which a soft grey hat of enormous dimensions was tilted jauntily on one side. Thus, although he sat in his study before a vast, business-like writing-table, Jules Guérin wore his hat, or rather his sombrero, and also an overcoat; but then (as he explained) he might be called out at any moment to take part in a political brawl, or to chastise a journalist, or to arrange a duel—even to dig the grave of an enemy; and so was dressed ready to sally forth anywhere, and with ferocious designs upon anyone, at the shortest notice. Vehemently, he puffed at a cigarette. Now and again he pulled at his fierce moustache. As he spoke he gesticulated, thumped the writing-table savagely, and, when he thumped, the ink-bottles and penholders leapt and danced, and the gun in the corner trembled.
“Downstairs I have twenty clerks and assistants. All are armed with revolvers; all are devoted; and thus my enemies are their enemies. And so if the brigands attack us, into the earth with them, or into the well, or into——”
“But who are these enemies?” I interrupted. “These brigands?”
“The Government—Lépine, Chief of the Police—Loubet, President of the Republic—a hundred other traitors and assassins,” cried M. Guérin. “But the garden is waiting for them. I desire that this garden shall be their cemetery.”
Of course, an impossible ambition. But so incoherent, so chaotic was the state of mind of the Anti-Semites fourteen years ago, that I refrained from suggesting that it was highly improbable President Loubet or his Ministers would invade M. Guérin’s bit of waste ground up there in the rue Condorcet. Nor was my host a man to stand ridicule. A flippant word from me, and he would have shown me the door. So I listened patiently to his wild, savage denunciations of the Jews—of Captain Dreyfus in particular, who was lying (burnt up with fever, broken and battered in everything except determination) in his cell on the Devil’s Island; whilst here, in Paris, the Cour de Cassation was deliberating whether there was sufficient “new” evidence to justify the prisoner being brought back to France and given a new trial. Rumours were flying about to the effect that the Court had already made up its mind to order the revision. Thus, fury of the Anti-Dreyfusards; frenzy of the Anti-Semites, and, in their newspapers, the statements that the Cour de Cassation had been “bought” by the Jews; that the Jews, being the masters of France, had “sold” the country to Germany; and that, therefore, the only thing to do with the Jews was to hang them on the lamp-posts of Paris. Particularly bloodthirsty and barbarous was M. Guérin’s weekly journal, L’Anti-Juif, which stood on the floor, in three or four stacks, of this extraordinary study. In it were published the name and address of every Jewish tradesman in Paris. Each column was headed with exhortation: “Français, N’achetez Rien Aux Juifs.” Then, hideous cartoons depicting the flight of the Jews along the boulevards and their panic and agony—and their massacre.
“Now,” said M. Guérin, “you have seen the official organ of the Anti-Semitic League, and I could show you pamphlets and posters that are equally powerful. No League in Paris is so resolute, so strong, so efficiently organised. Such is our success that I am shortly removing to more spacious quarters. There we shall deliver Anti-Semitic lectures, and give Anti-Semitic plays—open to all, not a centime will be charged. Then, boxing and fencing classes, pistol practice, a library, a doctor and a solicitor on the premises—always, no charge. The Parisians, being thrifty, will flock to us. They will cry: ‘Here we get entertainment, medical and legal advice for nothing; it is admirable. Vive Guérin! Vive la France! À bas les Juifs!’ The Government will be furious. Loubet in the Élysée will shake in his shoes. And Lépine will shout: ‘We must arrest that canaille Guérin!’ But let him come. I shall be armed more strongly than ever in my new quarters in the rue de Chabrol.”
“A garden?” I ventured.
“There are no gardens in the rue de Chabrol: but there are cellars,” grimly replied M. Guérin. “Come and see me there. You will be astonished. Au revoir.”
Out in the passage, and on the staircase, I encountered four or five of Jules Guérin’s clerks and assistants; coarse, powerful young men, with bull-dog faces, who had been recruited by the chief of the Anti-Semites from the ghastly slaughter-house of Villette. In the garden I paused to inspect the stony flower-beds and the dilapidated well.
“The future cemetery of my enemies. Ah, the traitors, the brigands, the assassins! Let them come.”
At an open window, in his sombrero and smoking his eternal cigarette, stood fierce Jules Guérin.
“Lépine in that flower-bed,” he shouted, and then closed the window. But reopened it, when I reached the gateway, to cry:
“And Loubet, in the well.”
A month later, Paris in uproar. On the afternoon of the 3rd June the Cour de Cassation ordered the revision of the Dreyfus Affair; the same night official arrangements were made for the return to France of the shattered prisoner of the Devil’s Island; next day, during the race-meeting at Auteuil, President Loubet’s hat was smashed over his head by the stick of a certain Baron Christiani, a Royalist Anti-Dreyfusard. Then, the fall of the Dupuy Ministry, and M. Loubet in a dilemma. M. Poincaré, astutest of statesmen, was summoned to the Élysée; but, with characteristic shrewdness, declined the task of forming a Cabinet in such unfavourable circumstances. M. Léon Bourgeois (absent on a Peace mission at The Hague) was telegraphed for, but could not be persuaded to exercise a pacific influence in his own country. M. Waldeck-Rousseau was next requisitioned; and left the Élysée with the assurance: “Monsieur le Président, I will do my best to succeed.” Nothing could have been more admirable than his subsequent exertions, for, in making them, M. Waldeck-Rousseau, the most distinguished and most prosperous lawyer at the Paris Bar, had nothing to gain and everything to lose; and he must have been dismayed at the refusal, or the reluctance, of highly esteemed politicians to serve their country by fighting a just if an unpopular cause. Well, for a whole week the most painstaking, the most level-headed and truly patriotic Prime Minister who has yet worked for the Third Republic, visited prominent statesmen with the earnest desire to form a ministère d’apaisement, founded on the principles of disinterestedness and justice. Throughout that week, he was hooted in the streets, and ridiculed and insulted by MM. Rochefort, Millevoye, Drumont and Jules Guérin, who triumphantly predicted in their newspapers that “Panama Loubet”—like “Père Grévy” before him—would be compelled to resign for want of a ministry. And biting was the satire, and more savage became the contumely, when at last the Waldeck-Rousseau Ministry was completed, by the inclusion of such opposite, hostile personages as the “citizen Millerand” and fierce, aristocratic and despotic old General the Marquis de Galliffet. “After this,” wrote Henri Rochefort, “the deluge.” “At last,” declared M. Drumont, “Paris will rebel; and the next events will prove fatal to this unspeakable Republic.” The next important event was the landing in France, in the middle of the night, of a bent, prematurely aged figure: Captain Dreyfus. How the musty old carriage in which he sat, dazed, exhausted, shivering, rattled over the cobble-stones to the Rennes prison! How the prison gates clanged to when the shabby vehicle had entered the dark, grim courtyard! And how split and how cracked was the voice of the prisoner from the Devil’s Island when, at the court-martial a few days afterwards, he protested his innocence and refuted the new monstrous accusations of highly respected and brilliantly uniformed Generals Gonse, de Boisdeffre and Mercier! Solitary confinement had left him almost inarticulate. But he defended himself heroically: and, with an effort, straightened his bent back when questioned by his judges. Then how the trial dragged on; and what scenes took place in the streets, hotels and cafés of Rennes, which were crowded with le Tout Paris and echoed with Parisian exclamations and disputes! Brawls, duels, Henri Rochefort’s white “Imperial” pulled; Maître Labori, Captain Dreyfus’s brilliant counsel, shot between the shoulders; a famous demi-mondaine expelled the town; arrests, startling canards, alarms; hysteria, chaos, and delirium enough for Paris itself; and in Paris—whilst these exhibitions were occurring in the Rennes streets, and Captain Dreyfus (in the severe court-room) was stiffening his back and straining his split voice until it rose to an uncanny scream—what of Jules Guérin in Paris? and of his guns and revolvers, his well and his flower-bed? and of his assistants and clerks, the young men with the bull-dog faces, whom he had recruited from the ghastly slaughter-house of La Villette?
Well, first of all, came the dishevelled, dusty confusion of a déménagement in the rue Condorcet. The study walls were stripped of their revolvers; the basement was cleared of the printing-press that produced the murderous Anti-Juif; huge packing-cases were passed into a number of furniture vans; and so, farewell to the stony garden—in which not an “enemy” lay buried; and en route to No. 12 rue de Chabrol, a commodious, massive building with large windows and a solid oak door. The arrival of Jules Guérin and his assistants caused consternation amongst the peaceful, bourgeois inhabitants of the street. Lurid Anti-Semitic posters were stuck to the walls of No. 12; the din of the printing-machines disturbed the neighbours—and Guérin’s voice of thunder (execrating the Jews and demanding the lives of his enemies) was to be heard through the open windows, while his enormous sombrero was another disquieting element in the orderly, dull thoroughfare. The Anti-Semitic lectures and plays were announced; a solicitor and a doctor were engaged—and Paris was invited to visit No. 12 rue de Chabrol and partake of its pleasures and advantages. Then came the suggestion in the Anti-Juif that Paris should fix a day and an hour when the Jews should be hanged on the boulevard lamp-posts. And then followed the resolution of the Government—to have done with Jules Guérin! A warrant was issued for his arrest on the charge of “incitement to rebellion.” Somehow or other the news reached No. 12; and when the Commissary of Police (armed with his warrant) rang at the oak door, the massive form of Guérin appeared at a window. “Bandit,” he shouted. “There are twenty of us in here: and not one of us will be taken alive. Tell the Government of Traitors we shall fight to the death.” And he flourished a revolver, and his assistants, assembled behind him in the window, cheered wildly. Away went the Commissary of Police for further orders. Up came MM. Drumont, Millevoye and other leading Anti-Semites with exhortations to surrender. But Guérin, from his window, reiterated his determination to die heroically at his post: and again the young men with the bull-dog faces cheered enthusiastically. And there were cries of “Mon Dieu, quelle affaire!” and angry protests, lamentations and tears amongst the shopkeepers and peaceful old rentiers of the street. Many of them put up their shutters and fled, when policemen and Municipal Guards marched up and stationed themselves outside No. 12. Jules Guérin greeted them with cries of “Assassins!”; shook his great fist threateningly; rushed from window to window, shouting forth abuse. More cheering from his assistants, who pointed guns at the authorities.
“It is a revolution,” cried the householders. “Let us save ourselves quickly.”
Shutters were hurried up everywhere; cabs carried off distracted rentiers and their smaller belongings; policemen and Municipal Guards barred either end of the rue de Chabrol, and permitted only people who had business in the street to pass them; and with the cutting off of water and gas supplies, the siege of Fort Chabrol began in earnest.
The Holder of the Fort—though the Parisian, interested in “affaires,” studied him attentively—could only be observed from a distance. The curious, with the aid of opera-glasses, discovered him sitting at an open window with rifles resting on either side of him; or beheld him walking about the roof amidst the chimney-pots—an extraordinary figure in his sombrero. Now and again he discharged revolvers at the heavens: a proceeding that never failed to arouse the enthusiasm of his fellow-prisoners. Then leaning perilously over the parapet or out of a window, Guérin would apostrophise the soldiers and policemen below as “brigands” and “assassins”; and throw down pencilled messages (addressed to the “Ministry of Traitors” and the “Government of Forgers”) inviting all State officials to come to the rue de Chabrol and be shot through their “infamous heads” or their “abominable hearts.” When particularly indignant, Guérin would hurl forth a cup, a bottle, a saucepan—but the missiles invariably fell wide of the mark; and the Guards and police (whilst smoking cigarettes) snapped their fingers and laughed back mockingly and sardonically at the rebel. It was weary work for the besiegers; the air was stale and sickly with disinfectants; and often it rained.
Guérin blessed the downpours. He was short of water. When the skies were generous, he brought up buckets and basins and a great bath on to the roof—and shook his fist exultingly at the watchers beneath as the rain pattered into and filled those receptacles; and next, coming to the edge of the parapet with a glass in hand, drank to the death of the “Government of Assassins.” Indeed, quite an orgy of water-drinking on the roof of the Fort; for the ex-butchers, with the bull-dog faces, uproariously proposed the health of their chief, and then emptied their glasses into the street to show that they had no fear of suffering from thirst.
But what of provisions? The twenty-fifth night of the siege—a dark, wet night—the police fancied they discerned mysterious objects flying far over their heads on to the roof of Fort Chabrol. Much speculation, infinite straining of eyes and stretching of ears, and suddenly a paper parcel, falling from above, struck a Municipal Guard. Shock of the Guard. The cry: “It is a bomb!” But it was only a ham—a fine, excellent ham. And a few minutes later the Guards and police were searching the house from which it had been thrown and examining numbers of other paper parcels (carefully tied up) that contained joints of meat, “groceries,” sugared cakes, fruit and fresh salads; all of which luxuries were obviously intended for the rebels over the way. But where were Guérin’s friends and accomplices? Not a soul in the house; so said a policeman: “Try the roof.” And there, on the roof, more paper parcels ready to be thrown across to the Fort; and hiding behind the chimney-pots, four or five men.
“Arrest them,” cried an officer. And then, amidst the chimney-pots, much dodging and slipping and catching as in the games of “hide-and-seek” and “touch wood”; whilst over the way on his roof, Jules Guérin raced about amidst his chimney-pots, swinging a lantern and furiously shouting: “Assassins. Assassins.” Thus, no sleep for the few remaining householders that night. When his friends had been removed from the roof, and the police reappeared in the street with their captives and laden with parcels, Jules Guérin and his assistants discharged revolvers at the heavy, dark clouds; and, next morning, hurled fenders, fire-irons and a bedstead into the street. No one was struck: the prisoners were too excited to take aim.
Guérin’s harangues were still bloodthirsty, but it was noticed that he looked pale and drawn when he appeared at the windows, as though suffering from want of nourishment and exercise.... Now he was more subdued as he took air amidst the chimney-pots; and he would sit up on the roof in the moonlight, with a gun across his knees, for a whole hour without moving. How the air reeked with disinfectants, and how sombre was the Fort! Apparently oil and candles were scarce, for only a single candle was used at a time. One saw its dim light passing from room to room—now on the first floor, then on the second, the third; then there was darkness. Upon two occasions Guérin spent the entire night on the roof. A dishevelled shivering object he was at daybreak, with his coat-collar turned up and the sombrero dragged down over his ears. Nor did his young assistants with the bull-dog faces fare better. Their cheers became faint: and they themselves were to be discerned leaning moodily against the chimney-pots or yawning with all their mouths behind the windows. Moreover, it was suspected by the police that there was illness in the Fort. One night a candle burned steadily in the same room. Not a soul on the roof, silence in the citadel. At daybreak Jules Guérin hoisted a black flag; one of the young prisoners with the bull-dog face was dying. In answer to Jules Guérin’s call, an officer stepped forward, and parleying ensued. An ambulance was brought up. When the solid oak door of Fort Chabrol opened and Jules Guérin appeared with the dying man in his arms, the policemen and Guards stood gravely at salute. Away, slowly, went the ambulance. And no sooner had it vanished than Jules Guérin—livid and trembling—banged to and bolted the door: rushed back to his window, and there, pointing dramatically to the black flag, hoarsely shouted: “Assassins. Assassins. Assassins.”
On the 9th September, at five o’clock in the afternoon, Paris heard from Rennes that Captain Dreyfus had—O astounding judgment!—been found guilty of high treason, “with extenuating circumstances.” On the following Tuesday it was announced—O amazing clemency—that the “traitor” had been pardoned. And throughout France there arose a cry of “N’en Parlons Plus.”
Up and down the boulevards on that Tuesday rushed scores of hoarse, unshaven camelots with their latest song. “N’en Parlons Plus,” they shouted. Then (in some cases) the chorus was chanted:
“Le cauchemar est fini; car la France est vengée,
Qu’importe que l’on a gracié Dreyfus?
La nation entière, heureuse et soulagée,
N’a plus qu’un désir—c’est qu’on n’en parle plus.”
But there remained Fort Chabrol. Neither “sanity” nor “order” could prevail in Paris whilst Jules Guérin was defying the Government from his window, and hurling missiles at its public servants, and discharging revolvers at the heavens. As the camelots were selling their song on the boulevards, as Paris was rejoicing in cafés that the “Affaire” was now “buried,” Jules Guérin still walked his roof, and his assistants leant dejectedly against the chimney-pots: and M. Lépine, Chief of the Police, was on his side preparing an attack on the stronghold. A few journalists were let into the secret. At ten o’clock on the night of Tuesday, the 12th September—the thirty-seventh and last night of the siege—MM. les journalistes were permitted to penetrate through the lines of policemen and of Municipal and Republican Guards that guarded the dark, gloomy rue de Chabrol. Not a light in the citadel. But shadowy forms were to be distinguished on the roof. And at a window, smoking a cigarette, stood Jules Guérin, in his sombrero.
“Mon vieux Jules, it is for to-night. Be reasonable and come out,” shouted a journalist; and he was promptly pulled backwards and called to order by a policeman. But M. Millevoye, the Anti-Semite deputy and editor of La Patrie, was permitted to converse with the rebel on the condition that he urged him to surrender.
“He swears he will fight to the death,” stated M. Millevoye to an officer. Very pale and agitated was the deputy. Very excited were the journalists, who had provided themselves with sandwiches, flasks and strong oil of eucalyptus with which to ward off contamination. Calm was the Chief of the Police, when he appeared on the scene with various officials and announced that the pompiers and their engines were on the way.
It was a cold, disagreeable night. The clatter of horses’ hoofs—up came a detachment of the mounted Republican Guard. The hissing of fire-engines; here were the pompiers. A distant babel of voices, for now, at one o’clock in the morning, all kinds and conditions of Parisians had heard of the impending attack on the citadel, and had hastened to the barriers—only to find themselves refused admittance to the grim, besieged thoroughfare. From my side of the barrier I beheld—beyond it—stalwart market-people from the Halles, Apaches in caps and scarlet waistbands, ragged old loafers, revellers from Maxim’s and the stifling, frenzied night-restaurants of Montmartre.
“Impossible to pass,” declared the policeman. An officer of the Municipal Guards facetiously kept up the refrain: “Not President Loubet; not his Holiness the Pope; not even the bon Dieu, could I possibly allow to pass.” Songs from the Apaches. Naïve exclamations from the simple market-women.
“Please give this bouquet to Guérin. He is a real man; he is épatant—do please send him these flowers,” cried a brilliant demi-mondaine from Maxim’s, holding forth a bouquet of weird orchids. “Alas, madame,” replied the facetious officer; “alas, not even a bouquet from paradise could I possibly allow to pass.”
Ominous sounds in the rue de Chabrol. The thud and the clanking of the firemen’s hose as it was dragged towards No. 12; the increased hissing of the steam-engines; the impatient clatter of the horses’ hoofs; the bolting and barring of doors, and the putting up of shutters in those few houses where residents remained. Ominous, too, the consultations (carried on in a low voice) between M. Lépine and the various officials. Then the flash of lanterns, the smoke pouring forth from the funnels of the steam-engines, the stench of the disinfectants, those shadowy figures still on the roof of Fort Chabrol; and Jules Guérin still at his window in his sombrero, still smoking cigarettes unconcernedly, still calmly watching the preparations for the attack.
“It is sinister,” cried a journalist.
“So all is ready,” rang out the voice of the Chief of the Police. Briskly stepping forward, M. Lépine thus addressed Jules Guérin: “It is a quarter to four o’clock. If, at four o’clock, you do not surrender, we shall use force.”
Jules Guérin smoked on.
Still nearer to the Fort came the pompiers, dragging their hose. The plan was that they should deluge the massive building with water, while their colleagues with the shining hatchets should break down the door. A last consultation between M. Lépine and the officials. He held his watch in his hand. Five minutes to four o’clock. The neighing of a restive horse. Shouts and song from behind the barrier. Again, the clanking of the hose. Three... two... minutes to four. Jules Guérin, striking a match, lighted a new cigarette.
“He means to fight. It will be appalling,” exclaimed a journalist.
“Jules Guérin, it is four o’clock,” cried M. Lépine, again stepping forward. Without a word, the man in the sombrero banged down the window, and a few moments later the shadowy figures of his assistants disappeared from the roof.
“I thought so, but I wasn’t sure—no, I wasn’t sure,” said M. Lépine—when the heavy oak door swung open!
A third time he stepped forward—entered the doorway—vanished—reappeared to give an order—again vanished. Up with the hose, into the gutter with the fire-engines; way for half-a-dozen ordinary, shabby fiacres which came bumping and lurching down the street, pulled up before the oak door: and a few minutes later took Jules Guérin and the young men with the bull-dog faces ingloriously away to the Santé prison!
“N’en Parlons Plus,” said Paris, when the Senate, assembled as a High Court, sentenced Jules Guérin, Paul Déroulède, and other rebels and conspirators against the safety of the Republic to long terms of imprisonment and exile.
“N’en Parlons Plus,” reiterated Paris, when the Amnesty Bill permitted the exiles to return to their country.
Little more was heard of Jules Guérin. France, having been restored to order and sanity, and having made what reparation she could to Major Dreyfus, would have no more of Anti-Semitism; and on his return from exile, the rebel of Fort Chabrol retired into the obscurity of a damp, ugly little house in the valley of the Seine.
He still wore his sombrero; but his spirit was broken, and he pottered about in his garden and smoked cigarettes by the side of an evil-smelling stove. Then, a year ago, came the devastating floods. After saving his own scanty furniture, Jules Guérin went to the assistance of his neighbours. He was himself again, dashing hither and thither, issuing orders, directing operations. Many valiant feats he performed. He was rough, but he was kind. It was through standing waist-deep in the cold, murky water—whilst helping his neighbours—that he contracted pneumonia.
“The death, at the age of forty-nine, is announced of M. Jules Guérin: who had his hour of notoriety.”
So—and no more—said the Figaro.
XIII
DEATH OF HENRI ROCHEFORT[6]
It is with mixed emotions that I record my own personal recollections of the late Henri Rochefort. They go back fourteen years, to the lurid, delirious summer of 1899, when Jules Guérin, the leader of the Anti-Semites, evaded arrest by shutting himself up in Fort Chabrol; when Dreyfus, bent, shattered, almost voiceless, was enduring the anguish of a second court-martial; when the boulevards were being swept of tumultuous manifestants every night by the Republican Guard.
Rochefort was living in a little villa at the entrance to the Bois de Boulogne: a retreat for a sage, a poet, a dreamer; the very last abode, one would have thought, for the most thunderous figure in French public life. By rights, Rochefort the Ferocious should have been living in a vast boulevard apartment overlooking the nightly Anti-Dreyfusard uproar. But there he was (when first I met him) in that innocent maisonnette—in dressing-gown and slippers, amidst flowers, pictures and frail china—actually playing with a fluffy toy lamb, of the kind hawked about for two francs on the terraces of the Paris cafés. It was only his snowy white hair, brushed upwards, that made him picturesque. Pale, steely blue eyes, that lit up cruelly, evilly at times; a face seamed, sallow and horse-like in shape; a harsh, guttural voice; large, yellowish hands, with long, pointed finger-nails.
Upon the occasion of my first visit to the innocent maisonnette, there was no cause for agitation. The toy lamb was the attraction. A tube was attached to it, and at the end of the tube was a bulb which, when pressed, made the lamb leap. Again and again, Rochefort the Lurid set the lamb leaping. I too lost my heart to the lamb, and also made it frisk. Amidst all this irresponsibility, my host was pleased to pronounce me “sympathetic” and “charming,” not like the “traditional” Englishman with the bull-dog, the aggressive side-whiskers and long, glistening teeth. Rochefort saw me to the garden door; Rochefort actually plucked me a rose; Rochefort’s parting words were a cordial invitation to visit him and his lamb again soon. So was I amazed to find myself described in his very next article as “a sinister brigand, in the pay of the Jews; in fact, one of those diabolical bandits who are devastating our beloved France.”
... A week later I approached him, and mildly protested, as he was sitting on the terrace of the Café de la Paix, drinking milk and Vichy water, sucking his eternal lozenges—and still playing with the lamb.
“Bah, that was only print,” came the reply. “Let us resume our game with the lamb.” As he made it leap about deftly amongst the glasses on the marble-topped table, passers-by, recognising his Luridness, stopped, stared and smiled at the spectacle. “That’s the great Rochefort,” said the maître d’hôtel to an American tourist: and stupefaction of the States. Rising at last, and stuffing the lamb into his pocket, Rochefort remarked: “I must go off and do my article, but you sha’n’t be the brigand. I feel amiable to-night.”
Next morning appeared the notorious, atrocious article demanding that walnut shells—containing long, hairy spiders—should be strapped to the eyes of Captain Dreyfus.
What was the reason of Rochefort’s abominable campaign against the martyr from the Devil’s Island? Since he styled himself a democrat, the champion of liberty and justice, the enemy of tyranny, one would have expected to see the fierce old journalist fighting vigorously for Dreyfus. The fact is, Rochefort was a mass of contradictions: an imp of perversity: at once brutal and humane; gentle and bloodthirsty; simple and vain; the most chaotic Frenchman that ever died. Search his autobiography, in three portly volumes: not once do you find him resting, smiling or reflecting—he is all thunder and lightning, an everlasting storm. Exile, duels, fines and imprisonment—wild, delirious attacks upon the Government of the day. No one escaped; for fifty years, in the columns of the Figaro, the Lanterne, the Intransigeant, and finally, in the Patrie, Rochefort pursued presidents and politicians with his unique, extravagant vocabulary. M. Jaurès, the Socialist leader, was “a decayed turnip”; M. Georges Clemenceau, “a loathsome leper”; M. Briand, “a moulting vulture.” As for M. Combes, to the guillotine with him, and into the Seine with M. Delcassé, and a rope and a boulevard lamp-post for M. Pelletan. Then President Loubet was “the foulest of assassins”; President Fallières, “the fat old satyr of the Élysée”; and Madame Marguerite Steinheil, “the Black Panther.”
For the life of me I could trace nothing of the “panther” in Madame Steinheil during the ten terrible days that she sat in the dock of the dim, oak-panelled Paris Assize Court. As for her “blackness,” Rochefort was referring to her clothes.
“Heavy crape bands round the accused woman’s black dress, stiff crape bows in the widow’s cap, a deep sombre border to the handkerchief which she clenched tightly, convulsively, in her black-gloved hand... under her eyes, dark, dark shadows, which turned green as the trial tragically wore on.”[7] Impossible, one might have thought, not to sympathise with this prisoner who, with all her follies and faults, was certainly not the murderess of her husband and mother.
But what cared Rochefort for evidence and arguments? Leaning forward in his seat in the Press-box, his sallow face distorted with fury, he fixed the “Tragic Widow” with his steely, cruel eyes. (“I think he was trying to hypnotise me—certainly to terrify me,” relates Madame Steinheil in her Memoirs.) Again and again he cracked his lozenges, gesticulated angrily with his large yellow hands. During the adjournments, he held forth violently in the corridors of the Law Courts. Not only was Madame Steinheil the murderess of her mother and husband, but she was also the assassin of President Félix Faure. She poisoned him in the Élysée, at the instigation of the Jews, who knew that so long as Faure remained President there would be no revision of the Dreyfus affair. So, a triple murderess—and “crack, crack” went the lozenges. Later, when it became certain that Madame Steinheil would be acquitted, Rochefort declared that judge and jury had been “bought,” and that the Government had all along protected the “Black Panther.” His hands were trembling, the sallow face had turned livid, when at one o’clock in the morning the jury filed into the dim, stifling court and delivered their verdict: “Not Guilty” on all counts. How Rochefort scowled at the cries of “Vive Madame Steinheil!” and “Vive la Justice!” How he sneered when the barristers cheered, applauded and flung their black képis into the air! With what disgust he listened to the bravoes from the journalists and the public at the back of the court. When Madame Steinheil fainted, and was being carried out of the dock by the Municipal Guards, Rochefort’s ruthless hatred made the compassion of the public loathsome to him. Shaking, speechless with rage, he roughly pushed his way out of court, cracking his lozenges with such savagery that he must have very nearly broken his teeth.
But there were two Henri Rocheforts, and the virtues of the second almost made amends for the vices of the first.
The second Rochefort revealed himself at the age of twenty. He was a medical student. Shortly after the adoption of these studies young Rochefort harangued the surgeon and his fellow-students upon the “iniquities” of vivisection: and that ended his short medical career. Another outburst at the Hôtel de Ville, when Rochefort next accepted a petty clerkship at a pound a week. His colleagues were underpaid and overworked; a scarcity of light and utter lack of ventilation in the dusty, shabby office-rooms resulted in cases of acute anæmia and consumption. “We must have light—floods of it. We must have air—great, healthy draughts of it,” shouted youthful Rochefort to a high official. “I’m strong enough myself and don’t care; but look at your clerks. Martyrs, victims! De l’air, de la lumière, nom de Dieu!”
The high official, a pompous, apoplectic soul, was struck dumb by Rochefort’s invasion of his private sanctum. At last he gasped: “If you were not the son of a marquis——” But Rochefort interrupted: “My father died a fortnight ago. But I have no predilection for titles. My name is Henri Rochefort.”
Rochefort nevertheless was an aristocrat—“la race” remained, in spite of his assumption of democracy. He was, in fine, a democrat-aristocrat—most chaotic of combinations. Therein lay the secret of his turbulence and incoherency. Like all French aristocrats, he was a militarist at heart. He was the ally of Boulanger. He was the hottest champion of Paul Déroulède when that well-meaning but impossible “patriot” attempted his celebrated coup d’état, on the morning of President Félix Faure’s funeral, by establishing General Roget as a military dictator in the Élysée. He was, furthermore, an Anti-Semite. “Pale, white blood,” he cried disdainfully of the French noblesse. His own blood was vigorously red, but tinged indelibly with blue. Yes; “la race” remained, persisted—clashed inevitably with the true spirit of democracy. And hence the chaos, the thunder and lightning; from out of which there nevertheless shone tenderness, chivalry and a love of beautiful things. He loved music, sculpture, pictures: and whilst urging on France to declare war against England over the Fashoda Affair, announced in my hearing that he would rather annex a portrait by Reynolds than a province in the Sudan. He loved animals: and animals loved him. Wild fury of Rochefort when a bull-fight was advertised to take place at Enghien-les-Bains.
When the Government declined to forbid it, down to Enghien went Rochefort and a number of friends. Sallow-faced old Rochefort seized hold of the “impresario” who was organising the bull-fight and shook him. “I and my friends are going to wreck your arena,” he shouted. Nor did he release the “impresario” until the latter had promised that the bull-fight should not take place.
If Rochefort had been all vindictiveness and luridness, how did it come to pass that he was the guest of the great-hearted Victor Hugo, when both of them were exiles in Brussels? And if the hoarse-voiced, steely-eyed old journalist had been all venom, how did it come about that he was the devoted, admiring friend of that very noble, if disconcerting apostle of humanity, Louise Michel, “the Red Virgin.”
Londoners may remember the frail, thin, shabby little Woman who denounced social injustices in a dingy hall in a back street off Tottenham Court Road some ten years ago. In appearance she was nothing—until she spoke. And when Louise Michel spoke, ah dear me, how one realised the miseries grimly and heroically endured by the poor of this topsy-turvy world! The shabby, frail little figure, with the big, inspired eyes, became galvanised. From London to Paris, from Paris to every European capital, travelled the “Red Virgin”—incomparably eloquent—the woes and sufferings of her fellow-creatures at once crushing and supporting her. Herself, she cared nothing for. The same old threadbare black dress; eternal dim attics and meagre food; the same old self-sacrifice, the pity to the verge of despair, the same old breakdowns from weakness and exhaustion.
Rochefort—Victor Henri Marquis de Rochefort-Luçay—sought her out in her attic. When the “Red Virgin” was travelling and lecturing abroad, Rochefort instructed his foreign correspondents to look after her. He bought her a country house: which she promptly sold; he gave her an annuity: which she mortgaged; he arranged that his tradespeople should serve her in his name; but house, annuity, provisions—everything went to the poor.
“I can do nothing with her,” Rochefort once told me. “She is at once sublime and adorable and ridiculous! When I tell her she is killing herself, she replies: ‘Tant pis, mon petit Henri. But you yourself will die one of these days.’”
A week later Louise Michel expired suddenly, from exhaustion, at Marseilles.[8] Sallow-faced, white-headed, red-eyed old Rochefort was the chief mourner at the funeral. As he walked, bent, trembling, behind the hearse of the “Red Virgin”—crack, crack went the lozenges.
The month of June, 1912. Rochefort’s daily article in the Patrie missing; and again missing the next day, and the day after that—the first time octogenarian Rochefort had “missed” his daily lurid article for fifty-two years!
On the fourth day there appears in the Patrie the following intimation:—“I shall soon reach my eighty-second year, and it is now half-a-century since I have worked without a rest even in prison or in exile, at the hard trade of a journalist, which is the first and the most noble of all professions—when it is not the lowest. I think I have earned the right to a rest. But it will only be a short one. My old teeth can still bite.”
However, the “rest” in the country is prolonged: and the teeth don’t “bite” again. Eyesight becomes misty. Hearing next fails. Behold Rochefort in a dressing-gown, stretched on an invalid’s chair in a drowsy country garden, whence he is transported, as a last hope, to Aix-les-Bains,—where he dies.
The 30th June 1913. Day of Rochefort’s funeral. All Paris lining the boulevards and streets as the cortège, half-a-mile long, passes by. A crowd of all kinds and conditions of Parisians. Here is M. Jaurès, “the decayed turnip.” There is M. Clemenceau, “the loathsome leper.” Over there, M. Briand, “the moulting vulture.” And their heads are uncovered; there is not the faintest resentment in their minds as the remains of lurid, yet not always unkind, old Rochefort are borne away round the corner under a magnificent purple pall.
Round the corner and up the steep hill to the vast, rambling Montmartre Cemetery. Tombs, shadows, silence, mystery within the cemetery walls; but, beyond them, the hectic arms of the Moulin Rouge, and the lurid lights of night restaurants. In this mixed atmosphere Henri Rochefort has an appropriate resting-place.
[6] He died on 27th June 1913.
[8] 19th January 1905.
XIV
ROYAL VISITS TO PARIS
Whenever France is shaken by a scandal, convulsed by a crisis, the voice of the undiscerning prophet is to be heard proclaiming the doom of the Republic. The Affair of the Decorations in President Grévy’s time, the Panama Affair, the Dreyfus Affair, the Steinheil Affair, yesterday’s Rochette-Caillaux-Calmette Affair; each of these delirious dramas excited the assertion that the French people, disgusted and indignant at so much political corruption, were ready and eager for the restoration of the old régime. True, these five scandals—and many other smaller ones—shocked, saddened, humiliated the French nation. But at no time have they caused the average Frenchman—most intelligent and reasonable of beings—to lose faith in the Republic. Invariably he has maintained that it is not the Republic that is at fault, but the Republicans behind her; emphatically, he has insisted that the remedy lies, not in the overthrow, but in the reform, of the Republic—in the honest enforcement of the principles and doctrines of the Rights of Man. No Kings, no Emperors for Twentieth-Century France! Imagine, if you can do it, Philippe, Duke of Orleans, the handsomest, the most brilliant, the most irresistible of Pretenders. Suppose Prince Victor Napoleon endowed with some of the military and administrative genius of the Petit Caporal, instead of having married and settled down in comfortable, bourgeois little Belgium. Picture a modern General Boulanger on a new black charger—France would, nevertheless, remain true to the Republican régime. “Ah non, mon vieux, pas de ça,” one can hear the average Frenchman say to the would-be monarch. “We have had you before. We know better than to try you again. Bonsoir.”
Still, in spite of their confirmed Republicanism, the French people love Royalty—the Royalty of other nations. How often, outside national buildings that bear the democratic motto of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, have I heard shouts of: “Vive le Roi” and “Vive la Reine,” and admiring exclamations of: “Il est beau” and “Elle est gentille,” when a foreign monarch and his consort have visited Paris! How brilliantly has the city been adorned and illuminated; what a special shine on the helmets and breast-plates of the Republican Guard, and on the boots of the little, nervous boulevard policemen; what a constant playing of the august visitor’s own national anthem! In all countries a neighbouring sovereign is received cordially, elaborately. But it is in Republican France that a Royal visit is marked with the greatest pomp, circumstance and excitement. For the fact is that France, more than any other country, loves a fête—and the arrival in Paris of a King means flags, fairy lamps, festoons of paper flowers, fireworks. (The mere ascent of a rocket, the smallest shower of “golden rain” will throw the Parisian into ecstasies.) Also it delights the Frenchman to behold the uniforms, and the Stars and Orders of foreign nations—and he will stand about for hours to catch only a glimpse of the monarch.
“Je l’ai vu, moi,” M. le Bourgeois declares proudly. Probably he has discerned no more than the nose, or the ear or the eyebrow of his Majesty. But he “salutes” the ear and the nose, he cheers the eyebrow: and the newspapers are full of the “distinction” and “graciousness” and “wit” of the visiting sovereign. Modern French novels and plays also call attention to the homage paid by Parisians to foreign Royalty. In that brilliant comedy, Le Roi, the mythical King of Cerdagne thus addresses a Parisienne: “Le séjour à Paris, c’est une chose qui nous délecte, nous autres pauvres rois, pauvres rois de province! On est si riant pour nous, ici! Pour aimer les rois, il n’y a vraiment plus que la France.” And the lady replies: “Mais elle est sincère, sire. Elle est amoureuse de vous. Elle flirte, elle fait la coquette—elle aime ça. La France est une Parisienne.” Most indisputably, France “flirts” with Foreign Royalty. Vast quantities of flowers, fresh and artificial, here, there and everywhere. All official buildings blazing and glittering with huge electrical devices. About ten o’clock at night—amidst what murmurs, exclamations, rapture!—fireworks on the ghost-haunted Ile de France. Then Republican and Municipal Guards massed on the Place de l’Opéra; and a dense crowd assembled to witness the arrival of his Majesty, M. le Président, MM. les Ambassadeurs, and hosts of distinguished personages, for the gala performance. All Paris turns out: stout M. le Bourgeois, students from the Latin Quarter, midinettes in their best hats (I prefer them at noon, when Mesdemoiselles Marie and Yvonne are bareheaded), workmen in their Sunday suits, small clerks in pink shirts, obscure, dim-eyed old Government officials, Apaches on their good behaviour, cabmen and chauffeurs (off their boxes), conscripts with permits, concierges hastened from their lodges in slippers, street gamins—Victor Hugo’s Gavroche—with his inimitable sarcasms and repartee—all turn out to behold the Royal guest of Republican France pay his State visit to the Opera. But what with the police and the troops and the closed carriage of the sovereign, all these kinds and conditions of Parisians do not behold even so much as the eyebrow of his Majesty. They remain there until the performance is over, but with no happier success. Away goes the Royal carriage, without affording the crowd the view of an ear-tip, a chin or the nape of the neck. Still, in spite of the crowd having seen nothing, what cheers! I have heard them raised for the Tsar; for the Kings of Greece, Belgium, Sweden, Norway and Italy; for the late ruler of Portugal; for the highly popular Alfonso of Spain; for the greatest favourite of all, the idol of the Parisians—King Edward the Seventh. King Edward’s State visit took place eleven years ago. The result of it, twelve months later, was the consummation of the Entente. Thus the present month of April will see Paris celebrating a “double” event: the visit of King George and Queen Mary, and the tenth anniversary of the Cordial Understanding. And it is safe to affirm that when the cheers break out afresh in honour of their Majesties, they will not fail to surpass in spontaneity and enthusiasm all the cheers of the past.
Royal visits to Paris never vary. They last four or five days, and during that brief period the foreign sovereign, the French President, the Cabinet Ministers, the array of high State officials, the troops, the police, the Press and the greater part of Paris public have so much to do and to see that at the end of the whirl they cannot but confess to a condition of exhaustion. Both the Royal visitor and the President hold brilliant State banquets. Most probably there is a third banquet at the Quai d’Orsay. The gala at the Opera (or sometimes at the Français), a Military Review, an expedition to Versailles, a reception at the Hôtel de Ville, a special race-meeting, presentations of Addresses: such are the traditional items in the strenuous “programme.” Then, speeches to make; and since they are eminently “official,” they must be carefully considered, and thoroughly mastered, beforehand. As, on the other score, the “official” toasts and speeches are invariably stereotyped in substance and sentiment, they cannot demand much inventiveness or exertion. They must be mutually polite and complimentary—a repetition of one another.
However, in spite of the polite and amusing banality of the “official” speeches, Royal visits to France can have far-reaching consequences. Eighteen years ago the arrival in Paris of the Tsar resulted in the Franco-Russian Alliance. After that, King Edward and the Entente; and since then the visits of the kings of Spain and Italy have undoubtedly promoted a mutual friendly feeling between those two countries and Republican France. Then there have also taken place, during the last five or six years, odd, amazing Royal visits: that have caused the punctilious French Protocol no end of ennuis and perplexities. Behold black-faced and burly old Sisowath, King of Cambodia, descending most indecorously upon Paris, in a battered top-hat and gorgeous silken robes: and with a party of bejewelled native dancing-girls! Impossible to separate Sisowath from his monstrous top-hat (which came from heaven knows where) and his dancers; impossible, therefore, to entertain his Cambodian Majesty ceremoniously. Nor would he have tolerated State banquets, the Hôtel de Ville, Versailles, the Opera. No pomp for black Sisowath. A great deal of his time he spent in going up and down lifts; and in listening to gay songs from the gramophone. When he drove through the streets he kissed his great ebony hands at the Parisiennes. He was, as a matter of fact, for kissing everybody: even capacious President Fallières, even sallow, petulant M. Clemenceau. As he did his embracing, he hugged his victims in his huge, massive arms. Still, he was a King—and so official France had to overlook his eccentricities. As for the Parisians, they revelled in Bohemian Sisowath. Ecstatic, gay cries of “Vive le roi!” and “Vivent les petites danseuses”:—to which his merry old Majesty responded by standing up in his carriage, and waving the disgraceful top-hat; and blowing forth more and more kisses; and shouting out messages in his own incomprehensible language.... Then, after Sisowath, Mulai Hafid, the ex-Sultan of Morocco, who before coming to Paris passed a few days at Vichy. Nobody, however, had reason to cheer or rejoice over this Royal visitor: for his behaviour was intolerable. Sisowath was expansive, affectionate, rigolo; Mulai Hafid was violent, insolent, offensive.
“Grotesque, horrible machines” was “Mulai’s” comment on the hats of the fashionable Frenchwomen. The military bands, “they drive me mad.” The actresses, “shameless and shocking”—they should be veiled like the ladies of Morocco. “Where is your sun?” demanded the ex-Sultan, looking up at the grey skies. “I am so bored that I am going to bed. What a people, what a country!” All this, and more, the Yellow journalists gleefully repeated in their newspapers. Then, photographs of “Mulai” scowling, of “Mulai” disdainful, of “Mulai” contemptuous. So that when “Mulai” came to Paris, still scowling, the Hippolyte Durands were indignant at his bad manners. In France, you mustn’t speak ill of anything French: especially when you are in receipt of a pension of 350,000 francs a year.
But “Mulai” didn’t care. He was for ever taking the Paris journalists into his confidence, and more and more unflattering became his comments on French life. As it rained every day, his temper was detestable; and he has been seen to shake his fist at the French skies. Then he omitted to salute the French flag: he described the French language as ridiculous; he yawned in the Louvre: and he retired to bed through sheer boredom a dozen times a day.
Also, “Mulai” was said to be furious because the Press had compared him unfavourably with Sisowath, the amazing ebony-black monarch of Cambodia. “Sisowath,” said the papers, was not only rigolo. When he came to Paris seven years ago he wore brilliant robes, a multitude of diamonds—as well as a battered old top-hat. And he laughed and laughed all day long. Not only did he kiss his great black hands at the Parisiennes, but he showered silver amongst the crowd. And he meant it kindly when he hugged bald, portly State officials. In a word, black, enormous Sisowath of Cambodia was an unsophisticated, affectionate, merry old soul. But, in “Mulai’s” estimation, Sisowath is a savage, and furious, as I have said, is the ex-Sultan that he should be mentioned in the same breath with him.
Socially, in fact, “Mulai’s” visit to France is anything but a success. He has been raging against French boots, because, after putting on a pair, they pinched him. He has been cursing French automobiles, because they travel so fast. And he has hurled a French suit of clothes (especially made for him) out of the window, because of the buttons.
“Ah non, c’est trop fort,” cries Hippolyte Durand, as he reads of “Mulai’s” outbursts in the papers. And still greater becomes his indignation, when he comes upon the following statement:—“The situation in Morocco continues serious. The Vled Bu Beker, of the Rehama tribe, is active. The attitude of the Vled Belghina and the Vled Amrane Fukania is threatening. The Hiania tribesmen are gathered at Safrata on the Wed Sebu. At Ben Guerie, Bab Aissa, Suk-el-Arba and——”
“I will read no more; I understand nothing, I am distracted!” cries M. Hippolyte Durand. “Ah, nom d’un nom, what a sinister country is this Morocco!”
Earlier in this paper, I observed that Royal visits to Paris never “vary,” but in one respect this statement requires correction. The most delicate, the most anxious duty of the French Government is to watch over the safety of her illustrious guests. Paris, rightly or wrongly, is alleged to abound with anarchists, fanatics and lunatics. Ask M. Guichard, one of the chiefs of the Criminal Investigation Department: and he will tell you that a Royal visit, if a delight to the public, is a misery and a nightmare to the detective police. The extent, the depth of the misery depends upon the nationality of the monarch. Of course, no fears as to old Sisowath’s safety; and peril for Mulai Hafid, who was nearly always in bed, caused even slighter apprehensions. The kings of Belgium, Sweden and Norway—well, the detective police, although watchful, “breathed” freely and slept of nights when their Majesties came to Paris. But the King of Italy, a hundred thousand precautions; the King of Spain—extraordinary vigilance: and even then a bomb fell within a few yards of the Royal carriage; the Tsar—a state of panic and siege that still haunts me after the interval of eighteen long years. Weeks before his Imperial Majesty’s arrival, Russian detectives descended upon Paris. Together with their French colleagues they searched for conspirators and bombs—even forcing their way into the rooms of the poor Russian girl students of the Latin Quarter, seizing their correspondence, subjecting them to offensive cross-examinations. Still rougher methods with the male students: with Russian plumbers, clerks and mechanics; many were arrested on no evidence as “revolutionaries” and imprisoned (without being allowed to communicate with their friends) until after the Imperial Visitor’s departure. Often, as a result of the raids of the detective police, the poorer Russian residents in Paris were given congé by terrified concierges, and had to take refuge in stifling, common lodging-houses, or seek for shelter on the outskirts of Paris. Meanwhile, Paris was decking herself out with flowers and flags, rehearsing coloured electrical “effects,” setting the supports for the panoramic fireworks, buying up the photographs of the Tsar of All the Russias. But it was a pale, uneasy, harassed-looking Emperor that drove through the splendidly decorated thoroughfares; it was a beautiful, but a sad-faced, Consort who accompanied him; it was cheers all the way; but it was also a detective in plain clothes at one’s elbow, more detectives in corners and doorways, still more detectives on roofs and—I dare say—up chimneys; it was festoons and illuminations and fireworks: but it was also bayonets and sabres; it was the democratic Marseillaise of France and the National Anthem of despotic Russia; it was “Long live the Emperor”; and “Long live the Republic”—but it was an ironical, a pitiable spectacle: this Imperial guest, come on a visit to a friendly country, protected and surrounded by an illimitable, armed bodyguard, as though he were entering—not Paris—but the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
Numbers of Russian decorations for the Paris detective police, when the Tsar had departed in safety! Out of prison came the perfectly innocent “revolutionaries”: the Russian girls were permitted to resume their studies in the Latin Quarter... not the silliest little bomb had spluttered, not a seditious cry had been raised... and a high police official of my acquaintance was granted by a grateful Government a prolonged holiday on increased pay. He deserved it. Dark shadows under his eyes, hectic spots in his cheeks, dyspepsia, insomnia, acute neurasthenia: such was his plight after the glorious visit to Paris of the Tsar of All the Russias. To-day, eighteen years later, my detective friend has risen to one of the highest positions at the Sûreté, and he can produce many a decoration or gift awarded him by foreign Royalty, and is particularly proud of a gold watch presented to him by King Edward the Seventh. The late King was so popular in Paris that he was known familiarly and affectionately as “Edouard.” Nevertheless, he was watched over by the private detective police. “Mais oui, we had even to attend to the safety of ‘Edouard,’ the most admirable of kings; he often gave me cigars, and you have already seen the gold watch,” my detective friend recently told me. “We were concerned about the Indians in Paris. Oh, nobody else would have assailed Edouard. As for the Indians, they were kept under observation day and night.” The detective was alluding to the notorious Krishnavarna, who “ran” a scurrilous little newspaper in a house off the Champs Élysées. Odd, sinister-looking Indians (I am still quoting my police friend) called frequently at the place. They remained there for hours and hours: what were they doing? But the police have their eye on them—especially closely and keenly fixed on them now that King George and Queen Mary are about to make their entrance into Paris. Also—so I am informed by the same high detective official—the police have been instructed to beware of the militant Suffragettes. Miss Christabel Pankhurst “under observation”; the comings and goings of her visitors watched and recorded; the lady passengers on the Havre, Dieppe and Calais steamers carefully scrutinised on their arrival; the police actually taught to shout “Votes for Women” in order that they may promptly distinguish that cry in the event of its being uttered! Dear Paris—dear, excitable, incoherent, wonderful, incomparable Paris—into what difficulties as well as delights, into what a whirl of pleasure and confusion, does a Royal visit plunge you!
But, never mind the difficulties, tant pis for the confusion; vivent the more than compensating thrills of emotion and delight. This evening, as I close this paper, Paris is once again shouting: “Vive le Roi” and “Vive la Reine”—shouting herself “hoarse,” so the French and English Press unanimously declare; and the decorations and illuminations of the past have been triumphantly eclipsed, and the State banquets, the reception at the Hôtel de Ville, the gala performance at the Opera, the race-meeting and the military review have surpassed in brilliancy and splendour even the golden ceremonies that solemnised the visit of the Tsar of All the Russias. Very remarkable, too, the State speeches delivered by the President of the Republic and the King of England in the banqueting-hall of the Élysée. Both speeches of unusual length: the old, banal, stilted phrases superseded by a note of eloquent and vigorous sincerity.
As a matter of fact, the reception of his son has excited even higher and livelier enthusiasm than did the official visit of King Edward the Seventh—because he is his son: because, since the year 1904, the entente cordiale has matured and strengthened. At all events, unprecedented things have happened. Until to-day, the French newspapers could scarcely contrive to publish an English word, or name, or sentence without misspelling, mangling or otherwise distorting it. Our Prime Minister used to be “Sir Askit,” whilst our ex-Home Secretary, Mr “Winsy Churkil,” was frequently and severally described as Chief of the Police and—Prefect of the Thames. Vanished, to-day, all those inexactitudes and incoherencies of recent times. Before me, almost surrounding me, spread and bulge a mass of French newspapers of all opinions. But every one of them has become “correct,” impeccable in its English, and right across the top of the front page of Gil Blas, in gigantic characters, the familiar, cordial invitation:
“Shake hands, King George.”