It is hardly necessary to record that The Fall of an Angel was far from receiving, from the world of fashion, the applause of his earlier and more conventional productions.
Lamartine was still in the East (we refer to an earlier period), when news of his election to the Chambre des Deputés by a Legitimist constituency brought him back to Paris. Among the prominent political leaders of the day he figured “as a progressive Conservative, strongly blending reverence for the antique with a kind of philosophical democracy. He spoke frequently on social and philanthropic questions.” In 1838 he became deputy for Macon, his native town. During the Orleanist régime he refused to hold office, professing aversion for the “vulgar utility” of the government of Guizot and the Bourgeois King, and in 1845 he openly joined the Liberal opposition. His Histoire des Girondins (1847) probably contributed to the expulsion of the Orleanist dynasty in the next year.
In the scenes of the Revolution of February, 1848, he occupied a prominent position as mediator between the two opposite parties; and the retention of the tricolour, in place of the Red flag, is attributed to his intervention. Elected a member of the Provisional Government, Lamartine served as Foreign Minister of the Republic. In this capacity he published his well-known Manifesto à l’Europe. But, in spite of the fact that ten departments had elected him as representative in the Assemblée Constituante, and that he was also made one of the five members of the Executive Commission, his popularity was short-lived. With all his, apparently, sincere sympathy with the cause of the Oppressed, traditionary associations and strong family attachments (sufficiently manifest in his Mémoirs) impeded him in his political course; and his compromising attitude provoked the distrust of more advanced political reformers. In competition with Louis Napoléon and Cavaignac, he was nominated for the presidency; but he received the support of few votes. From this period he withdrew into private life and devoted himself entirely to literature. His Histoire de la Révolution (1849), Histoire de la Restauration, Histoire de la Russie, Histoire de la Turquie, Raphael (a narrative of his childhood and youth) Confidences (1849–1851), a further autobiography—one of the most interesting of all his prose productions—and various other writings, most of them appearing, in the first instance, in the periodicals of the day, attested the activity and versatility of his genius. He also for some time conducted a journal—Conseiller du Peuple. In 1860 he collected his entire writings into forty-one volumes. Of them his Histoire des Girondins is, probably, the most widely known. But, next to The Fall of an Angel, it is his own Memoirs which will always have most interest and instruction for those who know how to appreciate true refinement of soul, and, making due deductions from political or traditionary prejudice, can discern essential worth of mind. In Les Confidences he allows us to see the natural sensibility and superiority of his disposition in his deep repugnance to the orthodox table—none the less real because he seems, unhappily, to have deemed himself forced to comply with the universal or, rather, fashionable barbarism. Writing of his early education, he tells us:—
“Physically it was derived (découlait) in a large measure from Pythagoras and from the Emile. Thus it was based upon the greatest simplicity of dress and the most rigorous frugality with regard to food. My mother was convinced, as I myself am, that killing animals for the sake of nourishment from their flesh and blood, is one of the infirmities of our human condition; that it is one of those curses imposed upon man either by his fall, or by the obduracy of his own perversity. She believed, as I do still, that the habit of hardening the heart towards the most gentle animals, our companions, our helpmates, our brothers in toil, and even in affection, on this earth; that the slaughtering, the appetite for blood, the sight of quivering flesh are the very things to have the effect (sont faits pour) to brutalise and harden the instincts of the heart. She believed, as I do still, that such nourishment, although, apparently, much more succulent and active (énergique) contains within itself irritating and putrid principles which embitter the food and shorten the days of man.
“To support these ideas she would instance the numberless refined and pious people of India who abstain from everything that has had life, and the hardy, robust pastoral race, and even the labouring population of our fields, who work the hardest, live the longest and most simply, and who do not eat meat ten times in their lives. She never allowed me to eat it until I was thrown into the rough-and-tumble (pêle-mêle) life of the public schools. To wean me from the liking for it she used no arguments, but availed herself of that instinct in us which reasons better than logic. I had a lamb, which a peasant of Milly had given me, and which I had trained to follow me everywhere, like the most attached and faithful dog. We loved each other with that first love (première passion) which children and young animals naturally have for each other. One day the cook said to my mother in my presence “Madame, the lamb is fat, and the butcher has come for it; must I give it him?” I screamed and threw myself on the lamb, asking what the butcher would do with it, and what was a ‘butcher.’ The cook replied that he was a man who gained his living by killing lambs, sheep, calves and cows. I could not believe it. I besought my mother and readily obtained mercy for my favourite. A few days afterwards my mother took me with her to the town and led me, as by chance, through the shambles. There I saw men with bared and blood-stained arms felling a bullock. Others were killing calves and sheep, and cutting off their still palpitating limbs. Streams Of blood smoked here and there upon the pavement. I was seized with a profound pity, mingled with horror, and asked to be taken away. The idea of these horrible and repulsive scenes, the necessary preliminaries of the dishes I saw served at table, made me hold animal food in disgust, and butchers in horror.
“Although the necessity of conforming to the customs of society has since made me eat what others eat, I shall preserve a rational (raisonnée) dislike to flesh dishes, and I have always found it difficult not to consider the trade of a butcher almost on a par with that of the executioner. I lived, then, till I was twelve on bread, milk-products, vegetables and fruit. My health was not the less robust, nor my growth the less rapid; and perhaps it is to that regimen that I owed the beauty of feature, the exquisite sensibility, the serene sweetness of character and temper that I preserved till that date.”[254]
Some years before the publication of his Fall of an Angel, Lamartine, from the height of the National Tribune, had given significant expression to the feeling of all the more thoughtful minds, vague though it was, of the urgent need of some new and better principle to inspire and govern human actions than any hitherto tried:—
“I see [he exclaimed] men who, alarmed by the repeated shocks of our political commotions, await from providence a social revolution, and look around them for some man, a philosopher, to arise—a doctrine which shall come to take violent possession of the government of minds (une doctrine qui vienne s’emparer violemment du gouvernement des esprits), and reinvigorate the staggered (ébranlé) world. They hope, they invoke, they look for this power, which shall impose itself by inherent right (de son plein droit) as the Arbitrator and Supreme Ruler of the Future.”
But a few years earlier, in the same place, a still more positive protest—not the less noteworthy because futile—was heard upon the occasion of a discussion as to the introduction into France of foreign “Cattle,” when one of the Deputies, Alexandre de Laborde, maintained that flesh-meat is but an object of luxury; and was supported, at least, by one or two other thoughtful deputies who had the courage of their better convictions. It deserves to be noted that while the Left seemed not unfavourable to the humaner feeling, the Centre apathetic, and the Right derisively antagonistic, the minister of the King (Charles X.) threw all the weight of his position into the materialistic side of the scales. Thus this feeble and last public attempt in France to stop the torrent of Materialism proved abortive.[255]