My father, to my great surprise, was not pleased with grandmother’s half conversion. I had thought he would rejoice in it.
“If the middle class, who yesterday were still royalists, become republicans, why, then, when we do have a republic they will spoil the country and turn it royalist. We shall do much better to go slowly and to form new generations according to our principles than to rally elements which will create a selfish and middle-class republic instead of a democratic-socialist—otherwise, generous—republic. I see already,” my father added, “all the harm that Odilon Barrot is doing.”
He expressed ideas entirely opposite to those of my aunts, who accused Ledru-Rollin of misleading the campaign of the reformists, while he accused Odilon Barrot of turning this campaign aside from its end.
My father became every day more fanatical in his ideas. His opinions became more and more intolerant. Was this the reason of the violence of his character? Whenever he spoke, either to friends or to myself, of the future, he always spoke of the rising tide which it would soon be impossible to stem.
“Our principles clash, all things are as yet in conflict; we ourselves are powerless to be logical, and our country is bringing forth monstrous things,” said my father. “Everything is abnormal, because too many things are being elaborated at the same time. There is such a thirst for reform that when the first one is made others will follow which will overstep all we have ever imagined. That is the reason why King Louis Philippe, very sensibly, for the sake of his own security, will have none. As to myself,” added my father, “would an electoral reform satisfy me, would the combination of other intellects satisfy me, either? What do I desire? To undermine everything, according to my master, Proudhon, in his ‘Economical Contradictions,’ or to renew everything, according to my other master, Victor Considérant, as he teaches in his ‘Principles of Socialism: A Manifesto of Democracy in the Twentieth Century’? What I do desire with all my heart, and that which is absolutely necessary, and without which we shall lose our heads, and exact from the revolution reforms on which no thought has been bestowed, and which are neither ripened nor likely to live—what I do desire is to make somewhere, anywhere, an experiment of socialism, of association, and of life in common, a phalanstery. Then, indeed, the possibilities of a social change might be proved.”
XXXII
“VIVE LA RÉPUBLIQUE!”
I RETURNED to school, in spite of the pain it gave me. Happily for me, Maribert had not come back. By degrees I regained my influence. Stirring political events were following each other in quick succession, and drew the attention of my young friends whom I had interested in the importance of what was going on.
Even in the provinces public opinion was irritated by the obstinacy of King Louis Philippe and of Monsieur Guizot, and by the insufficiency of a servile House, whose majority was bought. Everyone said—and we also, the young female politicians of the Mesdemoiselles André’s school, especially, declared—that “the hour for reforms had sounded!”
It was affirmed that King Louis Philippe pretended to fear nothing and to laugh at Odilon Barrot and Ledru-Rollin.