You will think that I have made a very circuitous ramble from the Marché des Innocens; but I have only given you the results of the family speculation we fell into after returning thence, which arose, I believe, from my narrating how I had passed from the tombeaux of the victimes de Juillet to the place where Henri Quatre received his death. This set us to meditate on the different political objects of the slain; and we all agreed that it was a much easier task to define those of the king than those of the subject. There is every reason in the world to believe that the royal Henri wished the happiness and prosperity of France; but the guessing with any appearance of correctness what might be the especial wish and desire of the Sieur Hapel du département de la Sarthe, is a matter infinitely more difficult to decide.
LETTER LXIX.
A Philosophical Spectator.—Collection of Baron Sylvestre.—Hôtel des Monnaies.—Musée d'Artillerie.
We have been indebted to M. J* * *, the same obliging and amiable friend of whom I have before spoken, for one or two more very delightful mornings. We saw many things, and we talked of many more.
M. J* * * is inexhaustible in piquant and original observation, and possesses such extensive knowledge on all those subjects which are the most intimately connected with the internal history of France during the last eventful forty years, as to make every word he utters not only interesting, but really precious. When I converse with him, I feel that I have opened a rich vein of information, which if I had but time and opportunity to derive from it all it could give, would positively leave me ignorant of nothing I wish to know respecting the country.
The Memoirs of such a man as M. J* * * would be a work of no common value. The military history of the period is as familiar to all the world as the marches of Alexander or the conquests of Cæsar; the political history of the country during the same interval is equally well known; its literary history speaks for itself: but such Memoirs as I am sure M. J* * * could write, would furnish a picture that is yet wanting.
We are not without full and minute details of all the great events which have made France the principal object for all Europe to stare at for the last half-century; but these details have uniformly proceeded from individuals who have either been personally engaged in or nearly connected with these stirring events; and they are accordingly all tinctured more or less with such strong party feeling, as to give no very impartial colouring to every circumstance they recount. The inevitable consequence of this is, that, with all our extensive reading on the subject, we are still far from having a correct impression of the internal and domestic state of the country throughout this period.
We know a great deal about old nobles who have laid down their titles and become men of the people, and about new nobles who have laid down their muskets to become men of the court,—of ministers, ambassadors, and princes who have dropped out of sight, and of parvenus of all sorts who have started into it; but, meanwhile, what do we know of the mass—not of the people—of them also we know quite enough,—but of the gentlemen, who, as each successive change came round, felt called upon by no especial duty to quit their honourable and peaceable professions in order to resist or advance them? Yet of these it is certain there must be hundreds who, on the old principle that "lookers-on see most of the game," are more capable of telling us what effect these momentous changes really produced than any of those who helped to cause them.
M. J* * * is one of these; and I could not but remark, while listening to him, how completely the tone in which he spoke of all the public events he had witnessed was that of a philosophical spectator. He seemed disposed, beyond any Frenchman I have yet conversed with, to give to each epoch its just character, and to each individual his just value: I never before had the good fortune to hear any citizen of the Great Nation converse freely, calmly, reasonably, without prejudice or partiality, of that most marvellous individual Napoleon.