My Memoirs, Vol. V, 1831 to 1832

by Alexandre Dumas

The supposed Jesuit saved, the Church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois sacked, the room of the Abbé Paravey respected, the crowd passed away, Baude thought the anger of the lion was appeased and presented himself at the Palais-Royal without taking time to change his clothes. Just as these bore material traces of the struggle he had gone through, so his face kept the impression of the emotions he had experienced. To put it in common parlance—as the least academic of men sometimes allows himself to be captivated by the fascination of phrase-making—the préfet's clothes were torn and his face was very pale. But the king, on the other hand, was quite calm.

More fully informed, this time, of the events going on in the street, than he had been about those of the Chamber when they discharged La Fayette, he knew everything that had just happened. He saw, too, that it tended to his own advantage. The Carlists had lifted up their heads and, without the slightest interference on his part, they had been punished! There had been a riot, but it had not threatened the Palais-Royal, and by a little exercise of skill it could be made to do credit to the Republican party. What a chance! and just at the time when the leaders of that same party were in prison for another disturbance.

But the king clearly suspected that matters would not stop here; so, with his usual astuteness, and seeming courtesy, he kept Baude to dinner. Baude saw nothing in this invitation beyond an act of politeness, and a kind of reward for the dangers he had incurred. But there was more in it than that. The Préfet of Police being at the Palais-Royal meant that all the police reports would be sent there; now, Baude could not do otherwise than to communicate them to his illustrious host. So, in this way, without any trouble to himself, the king would become acquainted with everything, both what Baude's police knew and what his own police also knew. King Louis-Philippe was a subtle man, but his very cleverness detracted from his strength. We do not think it is possible to be both fox and lion at the same time. The reports were disquieting: one of them announced the pillage of the archbishop's palace for the morrow; another, an attempted attack upon the Palais-Royal.

"Sire," asked the Préfet of the Police, "what must we do?"

"Powder and shot," replied the king.

Baude understood. By three o'clock in the morning all the troops of the garrison were disposed round the Palais-Royal, but the avenues to the archbishop's palace were left perfectly free. This is what happened while the Préfet of Police was dining with His Majesty. General Jacqueminot had summoned the National Guard and, instead of dispersing the rioters, they clapped their hands at the riot. Cadet-Gassicourt, who was mayor of the fourth arrondissement, arrived next. Some people pointed out to him the three fleurs-de-lis which adorned the highest points of the cross that surmounted the church. A man out of the crowd heard the remark, and quickly the cry went up of "Down with the fleurs-de-lis; down with the cross!" They attached themselves to the cross with the fleurs-de-lis of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, just as seventeen years previously they had attached themselves to the statue of Napoléon on the Place Vendôme. The cross fell at the third pull. There was not much else left to do after that, either inside the church or on the top of it, and, unless they pulled it down altogether, it was only wasting time to stop there. At that instant a rumour circulated, either rightly or falsely, that a surgical instrument maker in the rue de Coq, named Valérius, had been one of the arrangers of the fête. They rushed to his shop, scattered his bandages and broke his shop-front. The National Guard came, and can you guess what it did? It made a guard-house of the wrecked shop. This affair of the cross and the fleurs-de-lis gave a political character to the riot, and had suggested, or was about to suggest, on the following day, a party of the popular insurgents towards the Palais-Royal. As a matter of fact, the fleurs-de-lis had remained upon the arms of the king up to this time. Soon after the election of 9 August, Casimir Périer had advised him to abandon them; but the king remembered that, on the male side, he was the grandson of Henry IV., and of Louis XIV. on the female line, and he had obstinately refused. Under the pretext, therefore, of demanding the abolition of the fleurs-de-lis, a gathering of Republicans was to march next day upon the Palais-Royal. When there, if they found themselves strong enough, they would, at the same stroke, demand the abolition of royalty. I knew nothing about this plot, and, if I had, I should have kept clear of everything that meant a direct attack against King Louis-Philippe. I had work to do the next day and kept my door fast shut against everybody, my own servant included, but the latter violated his orders and entered. It was evident that something extraordinary had happened for Joseph to take such a liberty with me. They had been firing off rifles half the night, they had disarmed two or three posts, they had sacked the archbishop's palace. The proposition of marching on the palace of M. de Quélen was received with enthusiasm. He was one of those worldly prelates who pass for being rather shepherds, than pastors. It was affirmed that on 28 July 1830 a woman's cap had been found at his house and they wanted to know if, by chance, there might not be a pair. The devil tempted me: I dressed hastily and I ran in the direction of the city. The bridges were crowded to breaking point, and there was a row of curious gazers on the parapets two deep. Only on the Pont Neuf could I manage to see daylight between two spectators. The river drifted with furniture, books, chasubles, cassocks and priests' robes. The latter objects were horrible as they looked like drowning people. All these things came from the archbishop's palace. When the crowd reached the palace, the door seemed too narrow, relatively speaking, for the number and impetuosity of the visitors: the crowd, therefore, seized hold of the iron grill, shook it and tore it down; then they spread over all the rooms and threw the furniture out of the windows. Several book-lovers who tried to save rare books and precious editions were nearly thrown into the Seine. One single album alone escaped the general destruction. The man who laid hands on it chanced to open it: it was a Chinese album painted on leaves of rice. The Chinese are very fanciful in their compositions, and this particular one so far transcended the limits of French fancy, that the crowd had not the courage to insist on the precious album being thrown into the water. I have never seen anything approaching this album except in the private museum at Naples; I ought, also, to say that the album of the Archbishop of Paris far excelled that of His Majesty the King of the Two Sicilies. The most indulgent people thought that this curious document had been given to the archbishop by some repentant Magdalene, in expiation of the sins she had committed, and to whom the merciful prelate had given absolution. It goes without saying that I was among the tolerant, and that, then as now, I did my utmost to get this view accepted.

Meantime, after seizing the furniture, library hangings, carpets, mirrors, missals, chasubles and cassocks, the crowd, not satisfied, seized upon the building itself. In an instant a hundred men were scattered over the roofs and had begun to tear off the tiles and slates of the archiépiscopal palace. It might have been supposed the rioters were all slaters. Has my reader happened, at any time, to shut up a mouse or rat or bird in a box pierced with holes, put it in the midst of an anthill and waited, given patience, for two or three hours? At the end of that time the ants have finished their work, and he can extract a beautiful skeleton from which all the flesh has completely disappeared. Thus, and in the same manner, under the work of the human ant-heap, at the end of an hour the coverings of the archbishop's palace had as completely disappeared. Next, it was the turn for the bones to go—where the ants stop discouraged, man destroys; by two o'clock in the afternoon the bones had disappeared like the flesh. Of the archbishop's palace not one stone remained on another! By good fortune the archbishop was at his country-house at Conflans; if not he would probably have been destroyed with his town-house.

All this time the drums had called the rappel, but not with that ferocious plying of drumsticks of which they gave us a sample in the month of December, as though to say, "Run, everyone, the town is on fire!" but with feebleness of execution as much as to say, "If you have nothing better to say, come, and you will not have a warm welcome!" So, as the National Guard began to understand the language of the drums, it did not put itself about much. However, a detachment of the 12th Legion, in command of François Arago,—the famous savant, the noble patriot who is now dying, and whom the Academy will probably not dare to praise, except as a savant,—came from the Panthéon towards the city. As ill-luck would have it, his adjutant, who marched on the flank, sabre in hand, gesticulating with it in a manner justified by the circumstances, stuck it into a poor fellow, who was merely peacefully standing watching them go by. The poor devil fell, wounded, and was picked up nearly dead. We know how such a thing as that operates: the dead or wounded is no longer his own private property; he belongs to the crowd, which makes a standard of him, as it were. The crowd took possession of the man, bleeding as he was, and began to shout, "To arms! Vengeance on the assassin! Vengeance!" The assassin, or, rather, the unintentional murderer, had disappeared. They carried the victim into the enclosure outside Notre-Dame, where everybody discussed loudly how to take revenge for him, and pitied him, but none thought of getting him help. It was François Arago, who made an appeal to humanity out of the midst of the threatening cries, and pointed to the Hôtel-Dieu, open to receive him, and, if possible, to cure the dying man. They placed him on a stretcher, and François Arago accompanied the unfortunate man to the bedside, where they had scarcely laid him before he died.

The report of that death spread with the fearful rapidity with which bad news always travels. When Arago re-appeared the crowd turned in earnest to wrath; it was in one of those moods when it sharpens its teeth and nails, and aches to tear to pieces and to devour.... What? In such a crisis it matters but little what, so long as it can tear and devour someone or something! It was frenzied to the extent of hurling itself upon Arago himself, mistaking the saviour for the murderer. In the twinkling of an eye our great astronomer was dragged towards the Seine, where he was going to be flung with the furniture, books and archiépiscopal vestments; when, happily, some of the spectators recognised him, called out his name, setting forth his reputation and his popularity in order to save him from death. When recognised, he was safe; but, robbed of a man, the excited crowd had to have something else, and, not being able to drown Arago, they demolished the archbishop's palace. With what rapidity they destroyed that building we have already spoken. And the remarkable thing was that many honourable witnesses watched the proceedings. M. Thiers was present, making his first practical study of the downfall of palaces and of monarchies. M. de Schonen was there, in colonel's uniform, but reduced to powerlessness because he had but few men at command. M. Talabot was there with his battalion; but he averred to M. Arago, who urged him to act, that he had been ordered to appear and then to return. The passive presence of all these notable persons at the riot of the archbishop's palace put a seal of sanction upon the proceedings, which I had never seen before, or have ever again seen at any other riot. This was no riot of the people, filled with enthusiasm, risking their lives in the midst of flashings of musketry fire and thunder of artillery; it was a riot in yellow kid-gloves, and overcoats and coats, it was a scoffing and impious, destructive and insolent crowd, without the excuse of previous insult or destruction offered it; in fact, it was a bourgeois riot, that most pitiless and contemptible of all riots.

I returned home heart-broken: I am wrong, I mean upset. I learnt that night that they had wished to demolish Notre-Dame, and only a very little more and the chef-d'oœuvre of four centuries, begun by Charlemagne and finished by Philippe-Auguste, would have disappeared in a few hours as the archbishop's palace had done. As I returned home, I had passed by the Palais-Royal. The king who had refused to make to Casimir Périer the sacrifice of the fleurs-de-lis, made that sacrifice to the rioters: they scratched it off the coats-of-arms on his carriages and mutilated the iron balconies of his palace.