"Ne balonçons done plus, levons-nous! et semblables
Au fleuve impétueux qui rejette les sables,
La fange et le limon qui fatiguaient sous cours,
De notre sol sacré rejetons pour toujours
Ces tyrans sans vertu, ces courtisans perfides,
Ces chevaliers sans gloire et ces prêtres avides,
Qui, jusqu'à nos exploits ne pouvant se hausser,
Jusques à leur néant voudraient nous abaisser!"
Twelve years later the Bourbons were hounded out of France. It is not only revolutionary bullets which overturn thrones; it is not only the guillotine that kills kings: bullets and the guillotine are but passive instruments in the hands of principles. It is the deadly hatred, it is the undercurrent of rebellion, which, so long as it is but the expression of the desires of the few, miscarries and spends its fury; but which, the moment it becomes the expression of general requirements, swallows up thrones and nations, kings and royal families.
It is easy to understand how the Messéniennes of Casimir Delavigne, which appeared in print the same time as these manuscript pamphlets, seemed pale and colourless. Casimir Delavigne was one of those men who celebrate in song revolutions that were accomplished facts, but who do not help revolutions in the making. The Maubreuil trial was the outcome of the piece of poetry from which I have just quoted these brief extracts—a most mysterious and ill-omened business, in which names, if not the most illustrious in Europe, yet at least the best known at that time, were mixed up with acts of thievery and premeditated assassination.
Probably I am the only person in France who now thinks of the "affaire Maubreuil." Perhaps also I am the only person who has kept a shorthand account of the sittings of that terrible trial, during which the horrors of the dungeon and secret torture were employed in the endeavour to drive a man mad whom they dare not kill outright, to whom they could not succeed in giving the lie. I made a copy at the time from a manuscript in a strange and unknown hand, which gave an account of the sittings. Later, I read the account the illustrious Princess of Wurtemberg took down in her own writing, first for her husband, Marshal Jérôme Bonaparte, and then intended to be included in her Memoirs, which are in the hands of her family, and are still unpublished.
[CHAPTER VII]
The events of 1814 again—Marmont, Duc de Raguse, Maubreuil and Roux-Laborie at M. de Talleyrand's—The Journal des Débats and the Journal de Paris—Lyrics of the Bonapartists and enthusiasm of the Bourbons—End of the Maubreuil affair—Plot against the life of the Emperor—The Queen of Westphalia is robbed of her money and jewels
Let us now try to clear away the litter left by the events of the year 1814. When the Almighty prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem, He said to Ezekiel, "I will make thee eat thy bread prepared with cow-dung" (Ezek. iv. 15). Oh! my God, my God! Thou hast served us more hardly than Thou didst the prophet, and hast made us eat far worse than that at times!