Duclerc, shorthand reporter, became for a little while Minister of Finances.
Pagnerre, publisher of the National, and bookseller, became a mayor, a member of the Provisional Government, a member of the Executive Committee, and finally Director of the Comptoir d'Escompte.
Achille Grégoire, the printer of the National, became Prefect of the Department of the Upper-Saône.
Clément Thomas, called the Constable of the National, became the Commander-in-chief of the National Guard of the Seine.
There are a few score more, friends and allies, such as Lalanne, who was made director of the national workshops; Levrault, who was sent to Naples as minister plenipotentiary; Carette, who became Civil-Chief at Constantine; Carteron, who was appointed keeper of the national archives, etc.
As a matter of course, all these adventurers had revolving around them a number of satellites, as eager as the former to reap the fruits of the situation. Most of them, like the cat of Heine's epigram, had to devour their steak raw; they did not know how to cook it. Ministers, prefects, and high dignitaries of State as they were, they felt awkward in the society of those to whom no illusion was possible with regard to their origin and that of their political fortunes.
They haunted, therefore, by preference, the less well frequented restaurants and cafés, the wings of the minor theatres, on the pretext that they were the elect of the people, and that the people were their fittest companions. Their erstwhile leader and chief scorned to stoop to such tricks. He was an educated man, with a thick veneer of the gentleman about him, which, however, did not prevent him from being one of the two most arrant snobs I have met anywhere. I advisedly say anywhere, for France herself does not produce that objectionable genus to any appreciable extent. You may find a good many cads, you will find comparatively few snobs. Compared to Armand Marrast, Eugène Sue was nowhere as a snob. He was a thickset man with a rubicund face, with a mass of grey woolly hair and a kind of stubbly, small moustache. His manners were supposed to be modelled on those of the nobles of the old régime; said manners mainly consisting of swaggering impudence to those whom he considered his equals, and freezing insolence to those he deemed his inferiors. The latter, I need not say, were by far the most numerous. He who bellowed most loudly that birth should carry no privilege, never forgot to remind his hearers, by deeds, if not by words, that he was of noble descent. "Si sa famille était noble, sa mère s'est surement endormie dans l'antichambre un jour qu'un valet-de-chambre entreprenant était trop près," said the Marquis d'Arragon one evening.[50] He felt greatly flattered at the caricaturists of the day representing him in the court dress of Louis XVI.'s reign, though to most people he looked like a "marquis de quatre sous."[51]
He professed to be very fond of antique furniture and decorations, and this fondness was the main cause of his ousting his former subaltern, Buchez, from the presidential chair of the Assembly, for, shortly before the revolution of '48, the official residence of that functionary had been put in thorough repair, its magnificent furniture had been restored, etc.
The depression of business inspired M. Armand Marrast with the happy thought of giving some entertainments in the hope of reviving it. During the Third Republic, though I had ceased to live in France permanently, I have seen a good many motley gatherings at the Élysée-Bourbon, and at the Hôtel-de-Ville, especially in M. Grévy's time, though Mac-Mahon's presidency offered some diverting specimens also; but I have never seen anything like the social functions at the Palais-Bourbon during the months of September, October, and November, 1848. They were absolutely the festive scenes of Paul de Kock on a large scale, amidst Louis XIV. and Louis XV. furniture, instead of the bourgeois mahogany, and with an exquisitely artistic background, instead of the commonplace paperhangings of the lower middle-class dwellings. The corps diplomatique was virtually on the horns of a dilemma. After the February revolution, the shock of which was felt throughout the whole of Europe, and caused most of the sovereigns to shake on their thrones, it had stood by M. de Lamartine, and even by his successor at the French Foreign Office, M. Bastide, if not with enthusiasm, at least with a kind of complacency. The republic proclaimed by the former, might, after all, contain elements of vitality. The terrible disorders in June tended to shake this reluctant confidence; still, there was but little change in the ambassadors' outward attitude, until it became too evident that, unless a strong dictator should intervene, mob rule was dangerously nigh. Then the corps diplomatique began to hold aloof. Of course there were exceptions, such as, for instance, Mr. Richard Rush, the minister of the United States, who had been the first to congratulate the Provisional Government, and the various representatives of the South-American republics; but even the latter could scarcely refrain from expressing their astonishment at the strange company in which they found themselves. The women were perhaps the most remarkable, as women generally are when out of their element. The greater part had probably never been in a drawing-room before, and, notwithstanding M. Taine's subsequently expressed dictum about the facility with which a Parisien grisette, shopwoman, or lady's-maid may be transformed at a few moments into a semblance of a grande dame, these very petites bourgeoises and their demoiselles made a very indifferent show. Perhaps the grisette, shopwoman, or lady's-maid would have acquitted herself better. Her natural taste, sharpened by constant contact with her social superiors, might have made up for the slender resources of her wardrobe; and, as the French say, "one forgives much in the way of solecism to the prettily dressed woman." As it was, the female section of M. Marrast's guests could advance no valid plea for mercy on that score. The daughters looked limp with their choregraphic exertions: the emblem of innocence, "la sainte mousseline," as Ambroise Thomas called it afterwards, hung in vague, undefined folds on angular figures, perhaps because the starch necessary to it had been appropriated by the matrons. The latter were rigid to a degree, and looked daggers at their spouses and their friends at the slightest attempt to stir them to animation. "Fais donc danser ma vieille," was the consecrated formula with which a not very eager cavalier was dragged to the seat where said "vieille" was reposing in all the majesty of her unaccustomed finery, considerably impaired in the wearer's transit on foot from her domicile at Montrouge or Ménilmontant to the banks of the Seine; for the weather that year was almost tropical, even in the autumn, and consequently the cab had been dispensed with. It would appear, from a remark I overheard, that Jehu, in the way of business, preferred as fares the partisans of and adherents to the fallen régimes, even of the latest one. Said a portly dame to her neighbour, alluding to the cabman, "Il a absolument refusé de nous prendre. Il a dit qu'il était dans l'opposition, et qu'il ne voulait pas trahir ses principes à moins de dix francs. Dix francs, ma chère, nous aurions pu souper chez nous, et sans compter les frais de toilette et de blanchissage. Quant à l'honneur d'être ici, ça ne compte pas pour grand'chose, vu que tout le quartier y est; nous demeurons à Batignolles, et il a fallu descendre en ville ce matin pour avoir une paire de gants blancs. Chez nous, partout la même réponse: 'Des gants blancs, madame, nous n'en avons plus. Presque toutes les dames du quartier vont au Palais-Bourbon ce soir, et depuis hier il nous reste que des petites pointures (sizes), des sept et des sept et demies.'"
As for the "élu du peuple souverain," when he had failed to draw his "vieille" into the mazy dance, and been snubbed for his pains in the bargain, he returned to his fellow-deputies, many of whom might be easily recognized by the golden-fringed tricolour rosette in their buttonholes, though some had merely kept it in their pockets. The "élu du peuple" did not dance himself. Perhaps the most curious group was that of the young attachés and clerks of the Foreign Office who had come to enjoy themselves, who, even at that time, were nearly all of good birth, and who, to use a colloquial expression, looked not unlike brass knockers on a pigsty. This was the society Louis-Napoléon was to sweep away with the aid of men, some of whom I have endeavoured to sketch in subsequent notes. I would fain say a few words of a "shipwrecked one," of the preceding dynasty, whose acquaintance I did not make until the vessel he had steered so long had foundered, and of the self-constituted pilot of the interim régime. I am alluding to MM. Guizot and de Lamartine.