No sooner had the Government suppressed the formidable insurrection, which was finally stamped out in its last retreat at the corner of the Rue Saint-Méry, than, as if to assert the authority it had gained, it commenced proceedings against the Saint-Simonians, a noble-minded, highly moral body of men, who were accused, nevertheless, of spreading immoral doctrines. In his defence, Le Père Enfantin admitted, while rejecting with indignation the charge of immoral teaching, that one of the main objects of Saint-Simonianism was the reorganisation of property. “The misery,” he said, “of the working classes and the wealth of idle men are the main causes of the evils we seek to remedy. But when we say that there ought to be an end to that hereditary misery and hereditary idleness which are the results of the existing constitution of property, founded, as it is, on the right of birth, our opponents charge us with an intention of overturning the State.
“It is of no use for us to urge that this transformation of property can only be effected progressively, pacifically, voluntarily: that it can be effected much better than was the destruction of feudal rights, with every imaginable system of indemnity, and with even greater deliberation than you apply to the expropriations which you now effect for purposes of public utility: we are not listened to; we are condemned off-hand as reckless disturbers of order. Unweariedly we seek to show you that this transformation is called for by all the present and future wants of society: that its actual progress is marked out in the most palpable manner by the creation of the code of commerce, by all the habits of industry which have sprung up on every side, encouraging the mobilisation of property, its transference from the idle and incapable to the laborious and capable hand; we show you all this, but still you cry out, shutting your eyes, ‘Your association is dangerous!’”
In the end Enfantin, Duveyrier, and Michel Chevalier were condemned to a year’s imprisonment and a fine of a hundred francs each, other less prominent members being let off with smaller degrees of punishment. Simonianism, as an organised thing, was now extinct, but its principles did not die with the organisation, and in the best forms of socialism and of democracy were soon to show themselves anew.
The Rue Marivaux, another of the most interesting outlets from this part of the Boulevards, commemorates the witty and agreeable comedy writer who invented the half bantering, half complimentary style of dialogue to which the name of “marivaudage” is given.
CHAPTER XII.
THE BOULEVARDS (continued).
La Maison Dorée—Librairie Nouvelle—Catherine II. and the Encyclopædia—The House of Madeleine Guimard.