In those days, when M. Thiers happened to be in power, many members of the Opposition and their journalistic champions made it a point of organizing little gatherings to the table-d'hôte kept by Mdlle. Thiers, the sister of the Prime Minister of France. Her establishment was at the entrance of the present Rue Drouot, and a signboard informed the passer-by to that effect. There was invariably an account of these little gatherings in next day's papers—of course, with comments. Thiers was known to be the most wretched shot that ever worried a gamekeeper, and yet he was very fond of blazing away. "We asked Mdlle. Thiers," wrote the commentators, "whether those delicious pheasants she gave us were of her illustrious brother's bagging. The lady shook her head. 'Non, monsieur; le Président du Conseil n'a pas l'honneur de fournir mon établissement; à quoi bon, je peux les acheter à meilleur marché que lui et au même endroit. S'il m'en envoyait, il me ferait payer un bénéfice, parcequ'il ne fait jamais rien pour rien. C'est un peu le défaut de notre famille.'" I have got a notion that, mercurial as was M. Thiers up to the last hour of his life, and even more so at that period, and sedate as was M. Guizot, the French liked the latter better than the former.
M. Guizot had said, "Enrichissez vous," and was known to be poor; M. Thiers had scoffed at the advice, and was known to be hoarding while compelling his sister to earn her own living. It must be remembered that at the time the gangrene of greed had not entered the souls of all classes of Frenchmen so deeply as it has now, that the race for wealth had as yet comparatively few votaries, and that not every stockjobber and speculator aspired to emulate the vast financial transactions of the Rothschilds. The latter lived, in those days, in the Rue Lafitte, where they had three separate mansions, all of which since then have been thrown into one, and are at present exclusively devoted to business purposes. The Rue Lafitte was, however, a comparatively quiet street. The favourite lounges, in addition to the strip of Boulevards I have already mentioned, were the Rue Le Peletier and the galleries of the Passage de l'Opéra. Both owed the preference over the other thoroughfares to the immediate vicinity of the Opéra, which had its frontage in the last-named street, but was by no means striking or monumental. Its architect, Debret, had to run the gauntlet of every kind of satire for many a year after its erection; the bitterest and most scathing of all was that, perhaps, of a journalist, who wrote one day that, a provincial having asked him the way to the grand opéra, he had been obliged to answer, "Turn down the street, and it is the first large gateway on your right."
But if the building itself was unimposing, the company gathered around its entrance consisted generally of half a dozen men whose names were then already household words in the musical world—Auber, Halévy, Rossini and Meyerbeer, St. Georges, Adam. Now and then, though rarely together, all of these names will frequently reappear in these notes. The chief attractions, though, of the Rue Le Peletier were the famous Italian restaurant of Paolo Broggi, patronized by a great many singers, the favourite haunt of Mario, in the beginning of his career, and l'Estaminet du Divan, which from being a very simple café indeed, developed into a kind of politico-literary club under the auspices of a number of budding men of letters, journalists, and the like, whose modest purses were not equal to the charges of the Café Riche and Tortoni, and who had gradually driven all more prosaic customers away. I believe I was one of the few habitués who had no literary aspirations, who did not cast longing looks to the inner portals of the offices of the National, the bigwigs of which—Armand Marrast, Baron Dornés, Gérard de Nerval, and others—sometimes made their appearance there, though their restaurant in ordinary was the Café Hardi. The Estaminet du Divan, however, pretended to a much more literary atmosphere than the magnificent establishment on the boulevard itself. It is a positive fact that the waiters in the former would ask, in the most respectful way imaginable, "Does monsieur want Sue's or Dumas' feuilleton with his café?" Not once but a dozen times I have heard the proprietor draw attention to a remarkable article. Major Fraser, though he never dined there, spent an hour or two daily in the Estaminet du Divan to read the papers. He was a great favourite with every one, though none of us knew anything about his antecedents. In spite of his English name, he was decidedly not English, though he spoke the language. He was one of the best-dressed men of the period, and by a well-dressed man I do not mean one like Sue. He generally wore a tight-fitting, short-skirted, blue frock coat, grey trousers, of a shape which since then we have defined as "pegtops," but the fashion of which was borrowed from the Cossacks. They are still worn by some French officers in cavalry regiments, notably crack cavalry regiments.
Major Fraser might have fitly borrowed Piron's epitaph for himself: "Je ne suis rien, pas même Académicien." He was a bachelor. He never alluded to his parentage. He lived by himself, in an entresol at the corner of the Rue Lafitte and the Boulevard des Italiens. He was always flush of money, though the sources of his income were a mystery to every one. He certainly did not live by gambling, as has been suggested since; for those who knew him best did not remember having seen him touch a card.
I have always had an idea, though I can give no reason for it, that Major Fraser was the illegitimate son of some exalted personage, and that the solution of the mystery surrounding him might be found in the records of the scandals and intrigues at the courts of Charles IV. and Ferdinand VII. of Spain. The foreign "soldiers of fortune" who rose to high posts, though not to the highest like Richards and O'Reilly, were not all of Irish origin. But the man himself was so pleasant in his intercourse, so uniformly gentle and ready to oblige, that no one cared to lift a veil which he was so evidently anxious not to have disturbed. I only remember his getting out of temper once, namely, when Léon Gozlan, in a comedy of his, introduced a major who had three crosses. The first had been given to him because he had not one, the second because he had already one, and the third because all good things consist of three. Then Major Fraser sent his seconds to the playwright; the former effected a reconciliation, the more that Gozlan pledged his word that an allusion to the major was farthest from his thoughts. It afterwards leaked out that our irrepressible Alexandre Dumas had been the involuntary cause of all the mischief. One day, while he was talking to Gozlan, one of his secretaries came in and told him that a particular bugbear of his, and a great nonentity to boot, had got the Cross of the Legion of Honour.
"Grand Dieu," exclaimed Gozlan, "pourquoi lui a-t-on donné cette croix?"
"Vous ne savez pas?" said Alexandre, looking very wise, as if he had some important state secret to reveal.
"Assurément, je ne le sais pas," quoth Gozlan, "ni vous non plus."
"Ah, par exemple, moi, je le sais."
"Hé bien, dites alors."