My visit to my aunts at Chivres, where I recovered a little serenity, was shorter than usual that year. My vacation was to be no longer than that given by the school, and my father claimed his share of it. I had hardly finished the story of my journey, day by day, to my aunts, I had scarcely told all about my first communion, when I should have been obliged to leave, had I not obtained a prolongation of my stay for a month more, by writing to my father imploring him to keep me when the school opened in October, and to spare me the grief of going into the new building at that time.
Aunt Sophie scolded me a great deal for my laziness and negligence regarding the study of Latin. But she accepted my excuses, and I began again to work with good will.
I found my aunts much excited over politics. They read Le National, and all three, as well as my great-grandmother, were Liberals. They talked continually of Odilon Barrot, and with the greatest respect for him. They had their individual opinions about each member of the royal family. They mourned the death of the Duke of Orléans; loved the Duke d’Aumale and the Prince de Joinville; esteemed Queen Amélie, but judged King Louis Philippe severely, and raised their arms to heaven when speaking of the corruption of the times. If they had been less afraid of the revolution, they would have dethroned the King, proclaimed the Duchess of Orléans as the Regent, and prepared the reign of the little Count of Paris, with Odilon Barrot as President of the Council.
My aunts considered Odilon Barrot “the model representative.” They were enthusiastic about the reformist banquets, of which he was at once the promoter and the hero.
But they were irritated over the “doings” of Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc, and others, who altered the nature and changed the object of the reformist banquets; they were anxious about Pierre Leroux’s revolutionary ideas concerning work, and Proudhon’s insane theories about property. Apropos of these two individuals and their opinions they would exclaim:
“It is the end of the world!”
When my aunts were discussing these matters, they declared themselves faithful to “immortal principles.” They were enemies of Napoleon I., less, however, than of Jacobites and Socialists, but they could not forgive him for the entrance of the allies into France, nor for the terrors of the invasion.
They taught me Auguste Barbier’s famous iambic: “O Corse à cheveux plats, que la France étoit belle,” so that I might repeat it to grandfather.
“Bonaparte,” my great-grandmother at Chivres said, as my father had also said, “gave us back France smaller than he took it.”
They were not fond of Béranger, and when I sang his songs which grandfather had taught me they listened, but made protestations against the poet and the song. M. Thiers seemed dangerous to them, with his worship of Napoleon, who Bonapartised the bourgeoisie, while Béranger Bonapartised the people.