Those, messieurs, were great times! The Empire, both in its government and in its administration, was undoubtedly an epoch of intolerable tyranny; but let us remember that the loss of our liberty was largely made up for by glory. The attitude of France then, like that of Rome under Cæsar, was, at the same time, both submissive and dignified. It was not France as we like it, a free France, the independent sovereign of herself, but France the slave of one man and mistress of the world.
Then, it is true, our liberty was taken from us; but we were presented with a sublime spectacle. We were told at such a day and hour "I will enter such or such a capital"; and we did enter it, the said day and hour. All sorts of kings elbowed against one another in his ante-chambers. A dynasty was dethroned with one decree of the Moniteur. If any one took a fancy for a column, the Emperor of Austria was made to provide the bronze.
The lot of French comedians was, I admit, ruled in rather an arbitrary fashion, but the regulation proceeded from Moscow. As I say, they took away all our liberty, created a bureau of censorship, tore up our books, stripped our play-bills off the walls; but, to all our complaints, they had ready the magnificent reply, Marengo! Jena! Austerlitz!
Those days, I repeat, were great; to-day we are petty. We obey an arbitrary will as then, but we are no longer giants. Our Government is not calculated to console a great nation for the loss of its liberty. In matters of art, we deface the Tuileries; in matters of glory, we let Poland perish. That does not prevent our puny statesmen from handling liberty, as though they were cut ont for despots; or from trampling on France as though their shoulders were strong enough to carry the world.
[See [p. 539]. In the Paris edition of the Souvenirs, vol. viii., 1835, Dumas ends thus:—]
"Now would you like to have an idea of French wit in the year 1825?"
"What do you mean? Does French wit, then, change?"
"Certainly! every ten or fifteen years; that is how it is eternal."