In the solitary galleries of the “Archives” Michelet communes with the great spirits of that day, Desaix, Marceau, Kleber,—elder sons of the Republic, who whisper many secrets to their pupil as he turns over faded pages tied with tri-colored ribbons, where the cities of France have written their affection for liberty, love-letters from Jacques to his mistress. Michelet is happy. His long labor is drawing to an end. The great epic which he has followed as it developed through the centuries is complete. His hero stands hand in hand before the altar with the spouse of his choice, for whose smile he has toiled and struggled. The poet-historian sees again in the Fête de la Fédération the radiant face of his vision, the true face of France, La Dulce.
Through all the lyricism of this master’s work one feels that he has “lived” history as he wrote it, following his subject from its obscure genesis to a radiant apotheosis. The faithful companion of Michelet’s age has borne witness to this power which he possessed of projecting himself into another age and living with his subject. She repeats to those who know her how he trembled in passion and burned with patriotic emotion in transcribing the crucial pages of his country’s history, rejoicing in her successes and depressed by her faults, like the classic historian who refused with horror to tell the story of his compatriots’ defeat at Cannæ, saying, “I could not survive the recital.”
“Do you remember,” a friend once asked Madame Michelet, “how, when your husband was writing his chapters on the Reign of Terror, he ended by falling ill?”
“Ah, yes!” she replied. “That was the week he executed Danton. We were living in the country near Nantes. The ground was covered with snow. I can see him now, hurrying to and fro under the bare trees, gesticulating and crying as he walked, ‘How can I judge them, those great men? How can I judge them?’ It was in this way that he threw his ‘thousand souls’ into the past and lived in sympathy with all men, an apostle of universal love. After one of these fecund hours he would drop into his chair and murmur, ‘I am crushed by this work. I have been writing with my blood!’”
Alas, his aged eyes were destined to read sadder pages than he had ever written, to see years as tragic as the “Terror.” He lived to hear the recital of (having refused to witness) his country’s humiliation, and fell one April morning, in his retirement near Pisa, unconscious under the double shock of invasion and civil war. Though he recovered later, his horizon remained dark. The patriot suffered to see party spirit and warring factions rending the nation he had so often called the pilot of humanity’s bark, which seemed now to be going straight on the rocks. “Finis Galliæ,” murmured the historian, who to the end lived and died with his native land.
Thousands yearly mount the broad steps of the Panthéon to lay their wreaths upon his tomb, and thousands more in every Gallic schoolroom are daily learning, in the pages of his history, to love France la Dulce.
Footnotes:
[1] “Newport of the Past,” Worldly Ways and By-ways.