Lucien was about thirty or thirty-two at this period. Until the downfall of Napoleon his career had been administrative: he had been made auditor to the State Council and a prefect at twenty-five. In spite of much physical suffering which saddened his life, he was indeed one of the best-hearted and most benevolent persons I ever knew. For five years I saw Lucien two or three times a week; I do not think that, during the long period of intimacy, I ever heard him jibe at his confrères, or complain or whine; he was one of those gentle, melancholy and tranquil spirits one sees in dreams. I do not know what became of him; after 1829 I lost sight of him completely. Twenty-two years of absence and of separation will certainly have driven me from his remembrance; those twenty-two years have engraved him the more deeply on mine.
M. Arnault was quite different. I never knew a more subtle, mordant, satirical nature than this brilliant person owned. In military parlance he would have been described as a damned good shot. Neither Bertrand nor Lozes ever returned a straight thrust more rapidly and more surely than did M. Arnault, on every occasion, by a word or an epigram or a flash of wit. He was but an indifferent dramatic author, but he excelled in fables and satire. Once, in a fit of despondency, he let fall what was probably the only tear he shed, like that of Aramis upon the death of Porthos: he dipped his pen in the salt drops, and wrote the following lines—a gem that André Chénier, or Millevoye, Lamartine or Victor Hugo might have wished to write:—
LA FEUILLE
"De ta tige détachée,
Pauvre feuille desséchée,
Où vas-tu?—Je n'en sais rien.
L'orage a brisé le chêne
Qui seul était mon soutien;
De son inconstante haleine
Le zéphir ou l'aquilon,
Depuis ce jour me promène
De la forêt à la plaine,
De la montagne au vallon.
Je vais où le vent me mène
Sans me plaindre ou m'effrayer;
Je vais où va toute chose,
Où vont la feuille de rose
Et la feuille de laurier!"
I do not know what the famous poets of my day would have given to have written those fifteen lines; I know I would have given any of my plays the fates might have chosen. M. Arnault's great ambition was, unluckily, to write for the stage. He had begun by Marius à Minturnes, at the time when he was with Monsieur. The tragedy was produced in 1790, and in spite of the prediction of the Comte de Provence, who had asserted that a tragedy without a woman must be a failure, it was a great success. Saint-Phal played young Marius, Vanhove Marius, and Saint-Prix le Cimbre. That was the happy period when men of the talent of Saint-Prix accepted parts in which they came on only in one scene, and in that single scene uttered a few lines, e.g.:—
"Quelle voix, quel regard, et quel aspect terrible!
Quel bras oppose au mien un obstacle invincible?...
L'effroi s'est emparè de mes sens éperdus ...
Je ne pourrais jamais égorger Marius!"
The play was dedicated to Monsieur. I have heard M. Arnault relate, in his extremely fascinating way, that success made him very vain, very peremptory and very scornful. One day, in 1792, he was in the balcony of the Théâtre-Français, talking loudly, in his customary fashion, making a great noise with his cane and hindering people from hearing; this went on from the raising of the curtain till the end of the first act, when a gentleman, who was behind M. Arnault and only separated from him by one row, bent forward, and touching his shoulder with the tips of his gloved hand, said, "Monsieur Arnault, pray allow us to listen, even though they are playing Marius à Minturnes."
This polite and, I might even add, witty gentleman was Danton. A month later, this same polite and witty gentleman had instituted the September massacres. M. Arnault was so alarmed by these massacres that he fled on foot. On reaching the barricade, he found it guarded by a sans-culotte in name and in reality; this sans-culotte was engaged in preventing a poor woman from passing, under the pretext that her passport for Bercy had not been vised at the section des Enfants-Trouvés. Now, while he noted the persistence of this honourable sentinel, an idea occurred to M. Arnault—that this terrible Cerberus could not read. Joking is a bad disease, of which one is rarely cured. M. Arnault, who suffered much from this malady, boldly walked up to the sans-culotte and presented his passport upside down to the man, saying—
"Viséd at the Enfants-Trouvés: there is the stamp."
M. Arnault guessed rightly.
"Pass," said the sans-culotte.