"Yes, but set your mind at rest," he replied; "I assure you, by the end of my speech, they will think it would have been as well if I had not opened my mouth."
"What the dickens can he find to say about Fresnel?" I asked Étienne.
It was in praise of Fresnel that he was to speak.
"Oh!" replied Étienne, "I am not alarmed on that score. If it were about the Grand Turk, he would manage to squeeze in what he wanted to say."
And Arago, taking as his subject the clever engineer of bridges and embankments, the learned physician, the severe examiner of the École polytechnique, the famous inventor of lenticular lighthouses, actually found means of throwing fiery allusions upon the burning political situation, which were received by the assembly with frantic applause.
Cuvier and the other Academicians who had insisted that Arago should speak were right; only, they were right according to our point of view, not from their own.
Arago's lecture was a splendid triumph. Indeed, it is impossible for any speaker to be more picturesque, grander or more striking than François Arago in the tribune when carried away by genuine passion; he would throw up his head and shake back his locks—locks dark in colour in 1830, grey in 1848. Whether he were attacking the violators of the Royalist charter or defending the Republican constitution, he was ever the same eloquent orator, ever the inspired poet, the same convinced legislator. For Arago is not only science, he is conscience itself; he is not only genius, but the soul of honour. Let us state this in passing; though I know that plenty of others will say the same, yet I should like to be among their number.
When I left the Institut, I went upstairs to see Madame Chassériau, who lived at the Academy, owing to the position which her father, M. Amaury Duval, occupied there. Madame Chassériau, who, later, was called Madame Guyet-Desfontaines, was one of my oldest friends: I think I have already spoken of her and said that at her house, as well as at those of Nodier and Zimmermann, I always felt in the best intellectual form. Do not let me be misunderstood: I am not paying myself a compliment, I am only rendering justice to Madame Guyet-Desfontaines. She was so good and kind and affable, and laughed so prettily, had such lovely teeth, one would be a downright idiot not to show in her company a wit at least equal to her own. She, too, like everybody else, was full of the events taking place: she would soon receive news, as M. Guyet-Desfontaines had gone to consult that great testing thermometer of the Parisian mind, the Bourse. The Bourse was in a state of uproar, Three Per Cents, had fallen from seventy-eight francs to seventy-two. Was it not curious that, on the same day and at the same moment, the Academy and the Stock Exchange, knowledge and money, should both cry "Anathema" and be of the same opinion?
I went to dine at Véfour's. As I crossed the gardens of the Palais-Royal, I noticed some excitement going on among a group of youths who were mounted on chairs reading the Moniteur aloud; but their imitation of Camille Desmoulins did not meet with much success. After my dinner, I ran to Adolphe de Leuven, whose father was, as my readers know, one of the principal editors of the Courrier. Madame de Leuven was very uneasy about her husband, who had left home at two o'clock in the afternoon and had not returned by seven in the evening. She had sent Adolphe to find out about him, but, like the raven from the Ark, he too had not returned. So I, in my turn, went in pursuit of Adolphe. M. de Leuven had not come in because there had been a meeting at the office of the Courrier français, and Adolphe had not come back because he had been sent to Laffitte's. They were drawing up a protest in the name of the Charter, in the offices of the Courrier, which was to be signed by all the journalists. With regard to the form resistance was to take, they, at present, merely talked of refusing to pay the taxes. Suddenly Châtelain came in triumphant. M. de Belleyme had just issued a decree bidding the printers to print the suspended newspapers. Everyone in the political world was acquainted with Châtelain; he was one of the most honourable men on the press, and one of the rare number who held Republican views in 1830. He formally declared that the Courrier français would appear next morning, even if on his own responsibility alone. Adolphe de Leuven was the next to enter: he had found Laffitte's doors closed. I returned to give this news to Madame de Leuven; unfortunately, it was not such peaceful information as that of the dove, and I was bringing anything but an olive branch back with me; but I was able to reassure her about her husband and son: both were safe and sound and would return home as soon as the protest had been drawn up. We say drawn up, instead of signed, because the question whether the protest should be signed or not was debated for a long time. Some asserted that there was an unplumbed force in the press which was increased by a mystery. These urged that it should not be signed. Others, on the contrary, declared that it would be much better to make the act of opposition a public one, and to sign the protest with names in full. It was a singular thing that it was MM. Baude and Coste, two bold sportsmen, who wanted to preserve anonymity; and M. Thiers, the cautious politician, who wished it to be signed openly. The opinion of M. Thiers carried the day. By midnight the last page of the protest was covered with forty-five signatures. They were those of MM. Gauja, Thiers, Mignet, Carrel, Chambolle, Peysse, Albert Stapfer, Dubochet and Rolle, of the National; Leroux, Guizard, Dejean and de Rémusat, of the Globe; Senty, Haussman, Dussart, Busoni, Barbaroux, Chalas, Billard, Baude and Coste, of the Temps; Guyet, Moussette, Avenel, Alexis de Jussieu, Châtelain, Dupont and de la Pelouze, of the Courrier français; Année, Cauchois-Lemaire and Évariste Dumoulin, of the Constitutionnel; Sarrans junior, of the Courrier de Électeurs; August Fabre and Ader, of the Tribune des départements; Levasseur, Plagnol and Fazy, of the Révolution; Larreguy and Bert, of the Journal du Commerce; Léon Pillet, of the Journal de Paris; Bohain and Roqueplan, of the Figaro; Vaillant, of the Sylphe.