"At four p.m. of the same day we reached Chambéry. I will say nothing about the public monuments of the capital of Savoy; I was not able to enter into any of them because I wore a grey hat. It seems that a dispatch from the Tuileries had called forth the strictest measures against the seditious felt, and that the King of Sardinia did not wish to be exposed to a war against his beloved brother Louis-Philippe d'Orléans over such a futile matter. As I insisted, and declaimed energetically against the injustice of such a proceeding, the Royal Carabiniers, who were on guard at the palace gate, said facetiously to me that, if I absolutely persisted, there was at Chambéry a building inside which they were allowed to take me, namely, the prison. As the King of France, in his turn, would probably not wish to be exposed to a war against his dear brother Charles-Albert, over so unimportant a personage as his ex-librarian, I replied to my interlocutors that they were doubtless very charming for Savoyards and very witty for carabiniers, but I would insist no longer."
Savoy is a singular country: Jacotot was angry because I said an injurious thing about him; the carabiniers were angry because I paid them a compliment. So much for the imprudence. Let us now pass to the accident.
After supper, a dozen bathers, joyous companions, four of whom, alas! are now dead, proposed, in order not to leave one another, to go and see the sun rise from the top of the Dent du Chat. It is a sharp-pointed mountain peak which owes its name to its shape, and its bare, verdureless cone looks down upon Aix. The suggestion was acceded to; they put on their boots and dressed for the journey, then they set out. I did the same as the others, although I have not much taste for making ascents; I suffer from giddiness; and, to be high up, even if there is no danger, is more painful to me than actual danger which may present itself under quite another form. As in the case of Chambéry, let me be permitted to quote a few passages from my Impressions de Voyage; it will absolve the reader from turning back to it—
"We began to climb at half-past twelve midnight; it was a strange sight, that march by torchlight. At two, three-quarters of our way were done, but the remaining part was so dangerous and difficult that our guides made us halt to wait for the first rays of dawn. When this appeared we continued our way, which soon became so steep that our breasts nearly touched the slope on which we were walking in single file. Each one displayed his skill and strength, clinging, with his hands, to the heath and little shrubs and, with his feet, to the roughness of the rock and to the inequalities in the ground. We heard the stones which we loosened roll down the slope of the mountain, which was as steep as a roof; and then we followed them with our eyes till we saw them fall into the lake, with its blue sheet, which lay stretched out a quarter of a league below us. Our guides themselves could not help us, as they were busy trying to discover the best way; but, from time to time, they advised us not to look behind us for fear of turning faint or giddy: and their admonitions, made in short, concise tones, told us the danger was very real.
"Suddenly, one of our comrades who followed immediately after them uttered a cry which made our flesh creep. As a means of support he had tried to place his foot on a stone already shaken by the weight of those who had preceded him. The stone broke away and the branches to which he had also clung, not being strong enough to bear the weight of his body alone, broke between his hands.
"'Catch hold of him!' shouted the guides.
"But this was easier said than done. Each one of us had already great difficulty in holding himself up. So he passed by us without a single one of us being able to stop him; we thought he was lost and, with the perspiration of terror on our brows, we watched him breathlessly until he was close to Montaigu, the last of us all, and he stretched out a hand and seized him by the hair. For one moment it was doubtful if both would not fall; it was a short but awful moment, and I will answer for it that none of those who were there will forget the length of the second, while we watched the two men swaying over a precipice of two thousand feet depth, not knowing whether they were going to be precipitated over, or succeed in catching hold of the ground again.
"We reached at last a little fir wood which, without making the path less steep, made it more comfortable because of the facility the trees offered us of catching hold of their branches or leaning against their trunks. The opposite border of the little forest almost touched the base of bare rock, whose shape has given its name to the mountain; holes irregularly hollowed out in the stone afforded us a sort of staircase which led to the summit.
"Only two of us attempted this last climb; not that the journey was more difficult than that we have just accomplished, but it did not promise us a more extended view, and the one we had in front of us was far from compensating us for our fatigue and bruises. We therefore left them to climb up their steeple and we sat down to extract stones and thorns from ourselves. Meanwhile, the climbers reached the top of the mountain, and, as proof of having captured it, they lit a fire and smoked their cigars round it.
"They came down in a quarter of an hour, taking good care to put out the fire they had lit, curious though they were to know if the smoke had been noticed down below. We ate a small meal, then our guides asked us if we wanted to return by the same route, or to take another and a longer one, but much easier. We unanimously chose the latter. By three o'clock we were in Aix, and, in the centre of the square, the gentlemen had the proud pleasure of still seeing the smoke of their beacon fire. I asked them if, now that I had had so much enjoyment, I might be allowed to go to bed. As every one probably felt the need of doing the same, they told me there was no objection. I believe I should have slept for thirty-six hours on end if I had not been awakened by a great noise. I opened my eyes, it was dark; I went to the window, and I saw all the town of Aix in a commotion. The population, including children and old people, had come out on the public square, as in former times they did during riotings in Rome. Every one was talking at once, and snatching at glasses, and looking up into the air fit to break their spines; I thought there must be an eclipse of the moon. I dressed quickly to go and see my share of the phenomenon, and went down armed with my spy-glasses. The whole atmosphere was coloured with a red reflection, the sky seemed inflamed; the Dent du Chat was on fire! The fire lasted for three days. On the fourth, they brought our smokers in a bill of 37,500 francs odd. The smokers thought the sum a little too strong for a dozen arpents of wood, the situation of which made it impossible to get at. Consequently, they wrote to our ambassador at Turin to try to get something cut down in the bill. He must have managed it very well, because the bill returned to them in a week's time to be paid was reduced to 780 francs.
"Thanks to my grey hat, which had aroused the susceptibilities of the Chambéry Carabiniers, and to the part I had taken in the excursion and the firing of the Dent du Chat the states of King Charles-Albert were shut against me for six years."
I told in due place how, in 1835, I was shamefully driven out of Genoa and how triumphantly I returned there in 1838. May I be permitted a slight digression here on princes and ship captains?
I have noticed that, in general, neither of them like men of intellect. Indeed, if a man of cultivated mind find himself at a prince's table, at the end of ten minutes, without complete dumbness on his part, it is the man of mind who will be the true prince, to whom people will address their conversation, it is he who will be made to speak, it is he to whom they will listen. The prince by birth is completely annihilated—he no longer exists as such, and is only distinguishable from other guests in two ways: whilst other guests are talking he is silent; whilst they laugh he sulks. You will say, in such a case, if the cultured man is really clever he will keep silence in order to let the prince assert his princehood. But then the clever man will be no longer such—he will be a courtier. Numbers of clever men have been disgraced because of their abilities. Cite me one instance of a fool disgraced for his folly. It is the same with ship captains as with princes.
Whenever a clever man is on board and the weather is fine, the captain is nowhere. People crowd round the man of intellect, whilst the captain paces alone on the poop. It is true, that, if there is a storm the captain becomes captain once more, but only so long as the storm lasts. You tell me there are princes who have intellect. Of course! I have known, and still know, some; but their estate compels them to hide it. It was impossible to have a more charming, delicate or graceful mind than that of M. le duc d'Orléans; and yet no one could hide it better than he could. One day, when he had made one of those delightful repartees with which his conversation abounded when he had to do with artists, I asked him—
"Mon Dieu, monseigneur, how is it that you, who are one of the wittiest men I know, have so little reputation for being a wit?"
He began to laugh.
"How delicious you are!" he said; "do you suppose I allow myself to show wit to everybody?"