It would be difficult to say what the Duc d'Orléans would have done, had he lived to ascend the throne. One thing is certain, however, that on the day of his death, genuine tears stood in the eyes of all classes, except the Legitimists. As I have already said, they ascribed the fatal accident to God's vengeance for the usurpation of his father. "If this be the case," said an irreverent but witty journalist, "it argues but very little providence on the part of your Providence, for now He will have to keep the peace between the Duc de Berri, the Duc de Reichstadt, and the Duc d'Orléans."
CHAPTER X.
The Revolution of '48 — The beginning of it — The National Guards in all their glory — The Café Grégoire on the Place du Caire — The price of a good breakfast in '48 — The palmy days of the Cuisine Bourgeoise — The excitement on the Boulevards on Sunday, February 20th, '48 — The theatres — A ball at Poirson's, the erstwhile director of the Gymnase — A lull in the storm — Tuesday, February 22nd — Another visit to the Café Grégoire — On my way thither — The Comédie-Française closes its doors — What it means, according to my old tutor — We are waited upon by a sergeant and corporal — We are no longer "messieurs," but "citoyens" — An eye to the main chance — The patriots do a bit of business in tricolour cockades — The company marches away — Casualties — "Le patriotisme" means the difference between the louis d'or and the écu of three francs — The company bivouacs on the Boulevard Saint-Martin — A tyrant's victim "malgré lui" — Wednesday, February 23rd — The Café Grégoire once more — The National Guards en négligé — A novel mode of settling accounts — The National Guards fortify the inner man — A bivouac on the Boulevard du Temple — A camp scene from an opera — I leave — My companion's account — The National Guards protect the regulars — The author of these notes goes to the theatre — The Gymnase and the Variétés on the eve of the Revolution — Bouffé and Déjazet — Thursday, February 24th, '48 — The Boulevards at 9.30 a.m. — No milk — The Revolutionaries do without it — The Place du Carrousel — The sovereign people fire from the roofs on the troops — The troops do not dislodge them — The King reviews the troops — The apparent inactivity of Louis-Philippe's sons — A theory about the difference in bloodshed — One of the three ugliest men in France comes to see the King — Seditious cries — The King abdicates — Chaos — The sacking of the Tuileries — Receptions and feasting in the Galerie de Diane — "Du café pour nous, des cigarettes pour les dames" — The dresses of the princesses — The bourgeois feast the gamins who guard the barricades — The Republic proclaimed — The riff-raff insist upon illuminations — An actor promoted to the Governorship of the Hôtel de Ville — Some members of the "provisional Government" at work — Méry on Lamartine — Why the latter proclaimed the Republic.
I was returning home earlier than usual on Saturday night, the 19th of February, '48, when, at the corner of the Rue Lafitte, I happened to run against a young Englishman who had been established for some years in Paris as the representative of his father, a wealthy cotton-spinner in the north. We had frequently met before, and a cordial feeling had sprung up between us, based at first—I am bound to say—on our common contempt for the vanity of the French.
"Come and breakfast with me to-morrow morning," he said; "I fancy you will enjoy yourself. We will breakfast in my quarter, and you will see the National Guards in all their glory. They will muster very strong to-morrow, if it be fine."
"But why to-morrow?" I replied. "I was under the impression that the idea of the Reformist banquet in the Champs-Élysées had been abandoned, so there will be no occasion for them to parade? Besides, that would be on Tuesday only."
"It has been abandoned, but if you think that it will prevent them from turning out, you are very much mistaken; at any rate, come and listen to the preliminaries."
I promised him to come, but I had not the slightest idea that I was going to witness a kind of mild prologue to a revolution.
Next morning turned out very fine—balmy spring weather—and as I sauntered along the Boulevards Montmartre and Poissonnière to the place of appointment the streets were already crowded with people in their Sunday clothes. The place where I was to meet my English friend was situated in the midst of a busy quarter, scarcely anything but warehouses where they sold laces, and flowers, and silks; something like the neighbourhood at the back of Cheapside. The wealthy tradesmen of those days did not live in the outskirts of Paris, as they did later on; and when my friend and I reached the principal café and restaurant on the Place du Caire—I think it was called the Café Grégoire—there was scarcely a table vacant. The habitués were, almost to a man, National Guards, prosperous business men, considerably more anxious, as I found out in a short time, to play a political part than to maintain public tranquillity. If I remember rightly, one of them, a chemist and druggist, who was pointed out to me then, became a deputy after the fall of the Second Empire; and I may notice en passant that this same spot was the political hothouse which produced, afterwards, Monsieur Tirard, who started life as a small manufacturer of imitation jewellery, and who rose to be Minister of Finances under the Third Republic.
The breakfast was simply excellent, the wine genuine throughout, the coffee and cognac all that could be wished; and, when I asked my friend to let me look at the bill, out of simple curiosity, or, rather, for the sake of comparing prices with those of the Cafés de Paris and Riche, I found that he had spent something less than eleven francs. At the Café Riche it would have been twenty-five francs, and, at the present time, one would be charged double that sum. These were the palmy days of the Cuisine Française, or, to call it by another name, the Cuisine Bourgeoise, for which, a few years later, a stranger in Paris would have almost sought in vain. Luckily, however, for my enjoyment and digestive organs, I was no stranger to Paris and to the French; if I had been, both the former would have been spoilt, the excitement of those around me being such as to lead the alien to believe that there would be an instantaneous departure for the Tuileries, and a revival of the bloody scenes of the first revolution. It has been my lot, in after-years, to hear a great deal of political drivel in French and English, but it was sound philosophy compared to what I heard that morning. I have spoken before of the Hôtel des Haricots, where men like Hugo, Balzac, Béranger, and Alfred de Musset chose to be imprisoned rather than perform their duties as National Guards. After that, I could fully appreciate their reluctance to be confounded with such a set of pompous wind-bags.