The next day a decree appeared in the Moniteur, altering the three fleurs-de-lis of Charles V. this time to two tables of the law. If genealogy be established by coats-of-arms we should have to believe that the King of France was descended from Moses rather than from St. Louis! Only, these new tables of the law, the counterfeit of those of Sinai, had not even the excuse of being accepted out of the midst of thunders and lightnings.
It was upon this particular day, on Lamy's desk, who was Madame Adélaide's secretary, when I saw the grooms engaged in erasing the fleurs-de-lis from the king's carriages, thinking that it was not in this fashion that they should have been taken away from the arms of the house of France, that I sent in my resignation a second time, the only one which reached the king and which was accepted. It was couched in the following terms:—
"15 February 1831
"SIRE,—Three weeks ago I had the honour to ask for an audience of your Majesty; my object was to offer my resignation to your Majesty by word of mouth; for I wished to explain, personally, that I was neither ungrateful, nor capricious. Sire, a long time ago I wrote and made public my opinion that, in my case, the man of letters was but the prelude to the politician. I have arrived at the age when I can take a part in a reformed Chamber. I am pretty sure of being nominated a député when I am thirty years of age, and I am now twenty-eight, Sire. Unhappily, the People, who look at things from a mean and distant point of view, do not distinguish between the intentions of the king, and the acts of the ministers. Now the acts of the ministers are both arbitrary and destructive of liberty. Amongst the persons who live upon your Majesty, and tell him constantly that they admire and love him, there is not one probably, who loves your Majesty more than I do; only they talk about it and do not think it, and I do not talk about it but think it.
"But, Sire, devotion to principles comes before devotion to men. Devotion to principles makes men like La Fayette; devotion to men, like Rovigo.[1] I therefore pray your Majesty to accept my resignation.
"I have the honour to remain your Majesty's respectful servant,
"ALEX. DUMAS"
It was an odd thing! In the eyes of the Republican party, to which I belonged, I was regarded as a thorough Republican, because I took my share in all the risings, and wanted to see the flag of '92 float at the head of our armies; but, at the same time, I could not understand how, when they had taken a Bourbon as their king, whether he was of the Elder or Younger branch of the house, he could be at the same time a Valois, as they had tried to make the good people of Paris believe,—I could not, I say, understand, how the fleurs-de-lis could cease to be his coat-of-arms.
It was because I was both a poet and a Republican, and already comprehended and maintained, contrary to certain narrow-minded people of our party, that France, even though democratic, did not date from '89 only; that we nineteenth century men had received a vast inheritance of glory and must preserve it; that the fleurs-de-lis meant the lance heads of Clovis, and the javelins of Charlemagne; that they had floated successively at Tolbiac, at Tours, at Bouvines, at Taillebourg, at Rosbecque, at Patay, at Fornovo, Ravenna, Marignan, Renty, Arques, Rocroy, Steinkerque, Almanza, Fontenoy, upon the seas of India and the lakes of America; that, after the success of fifty victories, we suffered the glory of a score of defeats which would have been enough to annihilate another nation; that the Romans invaded us, and we drove them out, the Franks too, who were also expelled; the English invaded us, and we drove them out.
The opinion I am now putting forth with respect to the erasing of the fleurs-de-lis, which I upheld very conspicuously at that time by my resignation, was also the opinion of Casimir Périer. The next day after the fleurs-de-lis had disappeared from the king's carriages, from the balconies of the Palais-Royal and even from Bayard's shield, whilst the effigy of Henry IV. was preserved on the Cross of the Legion of Honours; M. Chambolle, who has since started the Orleanist paper, l'Ordre, called at M. Casimir Périer's house.
"Why," the latter asked him, "in the name of goodness, does the king give up his armorial bearings? Ah! He would not do it after the Revolution, when I advised him to sacrifice them; no, he would not hear of their being effaced then, and stuck to them more tenaciously than did his elders. Now, the riot has but to pass under his windows and behold his escutcheon lies in the gutter!"
Those who knew what an irascible character Casimir Périer was, will not be surprised at the flowers of rhetoric with which those words are adorned.
But now that there is no longer an archbishop's palace, nor any fleurs-de-lis, and the statue of the Duc de Berry about to be knocked down at Lille, the seminary of Perpignan pillaged and the busts of Louis XVIII. and of Charles X. of Nîmes destroyed, let us return to Antony, which was to cause a great disturbance in literature, besides which the riots we have just been discussing were but as the holiday games of school children.