I think one may safely accept that version, and that is why he refrained from claiming his brother's friendship and acquaintance until he felt almost certain that the latter was fingering the handle of the broom that was to make a clean sweep of the Second Republic. It is difficult to determine how much or how little he contributed to the success of that sweep, but I have an idea that it was very little. One thing is very certain, for I have it on very good—I may say, the best—authority. He did not contribute any money to the undertaking; he endeavoured to raise funds from others, but he himself did not loosen his purse-strings; when, curiously enough, he was the only one among the immediate entourage of Louis-Napoléon whose purse-strings were worth loosening.
Allowing for the difference of sex, better breeding and better education, De Morny often reminded one of Rachel. They possessed the same powers of fascination, and were, I am afraid, equally selfish at heart. To read the biographies of both—I do not mean those that pretend to be historical—one would think that there had never been a grande dame on the stage of the Comédie-Française before Rachel or contemporary with her, though Augustine Brohan was decidedly more grande dame than Rachel in every respect. It is the same with regard to De Morny. To the chroniqueur during the Second Empire he was the only grand seigneur—the rest were only seigneurs; but I am inclined to think that the chroniqueur of those days had seen very few real grand seigneurs. To use a popular locution, "they did not go thirteen to the dozen" at the court of Napoléon III.; and among the people with whom De Morny came habitually in contact, in the course of his financial and industrial schemes, a grand seigneur was even a greater rarity than at the Tuileries. If a kind of quiet impertinence to some of one's fellow-creatures, and a tacitly expressed contempt for nearly the whole of the rest, constitute the grand seigneur, then certainly De Morny could have claimed the title. I have elsewhere noted the meeting of Taglioni with her husband at De Morny's dinner-party. If it had been arranged by the host with the view of effecting a reconciliation between the couple, then nothing could have been more praiseworthy; but I am not at all sure of it. If it were not, then it became an unpardonable joke at the woman's expense, and in the worst taste; but the chroniqueur of those days would have applauded it all the same.
Here are two stories which, at different times, were told by De Morny's familiars and sycophants in order to stamp him the grand seigneur. Late in the fifties he was an assiduous frequenter of the salons of a banker, whose sisters-in-law happened to be very handsome. One evening, while talking to one of them, they came to ask him to take a hand at lansquenet. He had evidently no intention of leaving the society of the lady for that of the gaming-table, and said so. Of course, his host was in the wrong in pressing the thing, nevertheless one has yet to learn that "two wrongs make one right."
"What will you play?" they asked, when they had as good as badgered him away from his companion.
"The simple rouge and the noir. That's the quickest."
"How much for?"
"Ten thousand francs."
The stake seemed somewhat high, and no one cared to take it up. But the host himself felt bound to set the example, and the sum was made up. De Morny lost, and was about to rise from the table, when they said—
"Have your revenge."
"Very well; ten thousand on the black."