XXXVIII
AN EXCITING INCIDENT
SOME months of 1849 passed, during which I acquired much serious elementary knowledge; but all my ardour was spent on the study of Grecian, Latin, foreign, and French literature. I identified myself with the characters of certain works, and acted their parts. My grandparents and Blondeau lived happily, occupied with me, interested in all that I did, amused by the superabundance of vitality which I put into everything, and lent themselves to taking part, as they had previously done, in my most fantastic caprices. When a book pleased me, they were obliged to assume the characters of the principal personages of the book, to speak their language, to discuss their acts, and to take part in imaginary conversations which these persons might have held among themselves. I began to write poetry again—perhaps rather better than my first attempts—and poems naturally were my chief delight, those of Homer above all. When I was at Blérancourt, my father would consent to be called Ulysses, and my mother Penelope, although she sometimes rebelled against the rôle I gave her.
I was Nausicaa. I had a passion for washing, and dabbled in water with delight. My father found me many times before a tub filled with soap-suds, and would address me as “Nausicaa with white arms.” He would recite to me the words of the seventh canto of the Odyssey:
“‘It seems to me best to implore you by caressing words, keeping afar from you, for fear of irritating your heart;’” and he would add:
“‘I compare you in height and in presence to Diana, daughter of great Jupiter; but if you are a mortal, inhabiting earth, thrice happy are your father and mother. I am seized with admiration on seeing you. So did I see one day at Delos near Apollo’s altar a young sprig of a growing palm-tree!’”
And he would continue, going from one verse to another, as it pleased him to select them, and I would answer him, for I knew he loved the poems, so many times repeated by heart.
During my visit to him that summer, my father had a great sorrow, in which I took part and from which he suffered so deeply that it touched even my mother’s heart. His last hopes were cruelly taken from him.
On the 15th of June, he informed me that Ledru-Rollin had, on the 13th, asked the new Assembly, which had just been elected, and whose majority was reactionary, for a bill of indictment against the Prince-President and his Ministers, who were found guilty of having violated the Constitution. Under the false pretext of saving Italian liberty, our intervention had culminated by the entrance of French troops into Rome, re-establishing the Pope.
What overwhelmed my father, and made him despair the most, was not so much the failure of their motion, as the hesitating, ridiculous part played by the last two champions of his opinions—Ledru-Rollin and Victor Considérant—in their attempted appeal to the people with what was called “the affair of the Arts and Trades,” and their rather pitiable flight through the back doors of the school. Were they also worth nothing as heads of the opposition party? Had they no courage?
In July all the trees of liberty were dug up, and my father, who had accepted the function of Mayor in order to plant one of these trees, resigned his office on the day the tree was thrown down.