World's Best Histories — Volume 7: France

by François Guizot; Madame de Witt

"As to the food, it cannot be too simple; soup, boiled beef, and a little entrée; there is no need for more.

"I do not dare, as at Fontainebleau, order the pupils to do their own cooking; I should have too many people against me; but they may be allowed to prepare their dessert, and what is given to them either for lunch or for holidays. I will dispense with their cooking, but not with their making their own bread. The advantage of all this is, that they will be exercised in all they may be called on to do, and find the natural employment of their time in practical and useful things.

"If I am told that the establishment will not be very fashionable, I reply that this is what I desire, because it is my opinion that of all educations the best is that of mothers; because my intention is principally to assist those young girls who have lost their mothers, and whose relations are poor. To sum up all, if the members of the Legion of Honor who are rich disdain to put their daughters at Écouen, if those who are poor desire that they shall be received, and if these young persona; returning to their provinces, enjoy there the reputation of good women, I shall have completely attained my end, and I am certain that the establishment will acquire a high and genuine reputation.

"In this matter we must go to the verge of ridicule. I do not bring up either dressmakers, or waiting-women, or housekeepers, but women for modest and poor households. The mother, in a poor household, is the housekeeper of the family."

The spirit of the age and the fascinations of luxury in an agitated epoch were too strong for the determined and reasoned will of the legislator. The houses of the Legion of Honor were not destined to become the best schools for the mothers of families "in modest and poor households." Napoleon had well judged the superior influence of daily example when he said, "My opinion is, that the best education is that of mothers." The wisest and most far-seeing rules know not how to replace it. Religion cannot be taught by order, like sewing or cooking. The great lesson of daily virtue and devotion will ever remain the lot of mothers.

The delicate question of female education carried the mark of the Emperor Napoleon's genius for organization. He had also sought to reduce to rules the encouragement that power owed to genius. Since the year 1805, he had instituted prizes every ten years, intended to recompense the authors of the best works on the physical sciences, mathematics, history, the author of the best theatrical piece, the best opera, the best poem, the best painters and sculptors; "so that," according to the preamble of the decree, "France may not only preserve the superiority she has acquired in science, literature, and the arts, but that the age which commences may surpass those which have preceded it."

It would be an arrogant pretension for the nineteenth century to assert its superiority over its illustrious predecessors, the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century, in all that concerns literature or art. However, we have had the good fortune and the honor to be witnesses of a wonderful display of creative genius in France in all branches of literature and art; we have seen orators, poets, artists who could take rank with the most illustrious chiefs of the ancient schools; all this splendor, all this national and peaceful glory, has only taken root in regular liberty and constitutional order. The troubles of the French Revolution, the violent and continual emotions of the war, above all the rule of an arbitrary will, which opened or shut at pleasure both lips and printing-presses, had not been propitious to the expansion of human thought under the reign of the Emperor Napoleon. Those who possessed a spark of the admirable gift of genius, preserved at the same time in their hearts that passion for liberty which necessarily ranked them among the enemies or suspected persons. At the height of his supreme power, Napoleon could never suffer independence either of thought or speech. He long persecuted Benjamin Constant after he had taken his place among the members of the Tribunate; and he manifested a persecuting aversion towards Madame de Staël, which betrayed that littleness of character often lying hid under a greatness of mind and views. When I turn over the table of contents of that immense correspondence of Napoleon which reveals the entire man in spite of the prudence of the editors, I find continually the name of Madame de Staël, joined to rigorous measures of spiteful epithets. "I write to the Minister of Police to finish with that mad Madame de Staël," he wrote on the 20th April, 1807, to the Count Regnault St. Jean d'Angely, who had apologized for his correspondence with the illustrious outlaw. "She is not to be suffered to leave Geneva, unless she wishes to go to a foreign country to write libels. Every day I obtain new proofs that no one can be worse than that women, enemy of the government and of France, without which she cannot live;" and several days previously he wrote to Fouché, "When I occupy myself with Madame de Staël, it is because I have the facts before me. That woman is a true bird of bad omen; she believes the tempest already arrived, and delights in intrigues and follies. Let her go to her Lake Leman. Have not the Genevans done us harm enough?"

Inspired from other sources than Madame de Staël was, but as ardent in his opposition to the sovereign master of the destinies of France, Chateaubriand supported, like her, the flag of an independent spirit and of genius against the arbitrary will of one man. He manifested this in a brilliant manner. Already famous by the publication of his Genius of Christianity, he was then writing in the Mercure. "Eighteen months before the publication of the Martyrs," says M. Guizot, in his memoirs, "in August, 1807, I stopped several days in Switzerland, when going to visit my mother at Nîmes, and in the eager confidence of youth, as curious to see celebrated persons as I was unknown myself, I wrote to Madame de Staël to ask for the honor of an interview. She invited me to dinner at Ouchy, near Lausanne, where she then resided. I was seated by her side, and having come from Paris she questioned me on all passing there, what people were saying, what occupied the public and the salons. I spoke of an article by Chateaubriand in the Mercure, which attracted attention at the moment of my leaving. One sentence had particularly struck me, and I quoted it word for word, for it was fixed in my memory: 'When in the abject silence the only sound heard is the chain of the slave, and the voice of the informer, when all tremble before the tyrant, and it is as dangerous to incur his favor as to merit his displeasure, it seems to be the historian's duty to avenge the people. The prosperity of Nero is in vain, Tacitus is already born in the empire, he grows up unknown by the ashes of Germanicus, and already a just providence has delivered to an obscure child the glory of the master of the world.' My accent was doubtless impressive and full of emotion, for I was impressed and moved myself. Madame de Staël seized me quickly by the arm, saying, 'I am sure that you would act tragedy admirably; stop with us and take a part in Andromaque.' That was her hobby and amusement of the moment.

"I resisted her kindly suggestion, and the conversation came back to Chateaubriand and his article, which was much admired, and caused some anxiety. There was reason to admire it, for the passage was truly eloquent; and also cause for anxiety, for the Mercure was suppressed precisely because of that passage. Thus the Emperor Napoleon, conqueror of Europe, and absolute master of France, thought that he could not suffer it to be said that his future historian would perhaps be born under his reign, and felt himself obliged to take the honor of Nero under his protection. It was scarcely worth while to be such a great man to have such fears to show, or such clients to protect."

If the emperor pursued with anger the spirit of opposition in the salons, which he endeavored ceaselessly to rally around him, and if, above all, he feared their glorious representatives, Madame de Staël and Chateaubriand, he watched still more harshly the newspapers and the journalists. His revolutionary origin, and the early habits of his mind had rendered him hostile to that liberty of the press which flourished under the Constituent Assembly, withered away under the Legislative Assembly, and expired during the Terror in a sea of blood. When Daunou wished to insert the liberty of the press in the constitution of the year VIII., he encountered great opposition on the part of former Jacobins. They and their friends had secured the right of saying always what they chose, and knew the means of preserving what they had acquired at the price of many massacres; the liberty their adversaries demanded appeared to them dangerous and unjust. Such has always been in the main the revolutionary idea, and the Emperor Napoleon had not forgotten this theory and this arbitrary practice. However, he also knew what might be the influence of the periodical press, and he endeavored to submit to the discipline of his will the small number of newspapers which existed under his reign. "Stir yourself up a little more to sustain public opinion," he wrote to Fouché, on the 28th April, 1805. "Print several articles, cleverly written, to deny the march of the Russians, the interview of the Emperor of Russia with the Emperor of Austria, and those ridiculous reports, phantoms born of the English fog and spleen. Say to the editors, that if they continue in their present tone I will pay them off; tell them that I do not judge them hardly for the bad things they have said, but for the little good they have said. When they represent France vacillating on the point of being attacked, I judge that they are neither Frenchmen nor worthy to write under my reign. It is all very well to say that they only give their bulletins; they have been told what these bulletins are; and since they must give false news, why not give them in favor of the public credit and tranquillity?"