Aunt Constance teased me about my suitor, but I grew angry, and told her I had other suitors younger than he, and begged her to leave me alone.
Two months later I saw Monsieur Lamessine again at my father’s. It was in June, 1851. The republicans were plotting a great deal. The President had just made a speech at Dijon, in which he had said that if his government had not been able to realise all desired ameliorations, it was the fault of the factions.
In Monsieur Lamessine’s mind and in my father’s this speech contained the threat of a coup d’état.
They gathered together some friends in the evening to deliberate; I, of course, was not present at these deliberations. My father only said to me the next morning:
“The moment is serious; but we have a man with us who has the blood of a ‘carbonaro’ in his veins. He will do something.” He meant Monsieur Lamessine.
On the 1st of December M. Lamessine came to plead a cause at Chauny. He brought a letter from my father to my grandmother, to whom he was extremely courteous.
Asked to remain to dinner, he showed himself much less sceptical, and pretended that my arguments and my wishes had produced a great influence on his mind. I did not believe him. I thought this was simply flattery, the motive for which I could not explain to myself, but it seemed to me hypocritical. I felt a sort of uneasiness, an inexplicable pain, that evening, and I left the drawing-room early.
The next day grandmother said to me triumphantly:
“Monsieur Lamessine has asked for your hand! He pledges his word to live in Paris in three years’ time. My dream is realised. His aunt has given him a certain sum of money to compensate him for having left the capital, and for protecting her fortune, of which he has already recovered a part; I, also, will give you a dowry; but I will not say how much it will be, on account of your mother and her jealousy. It is agreed that I shall spend every winter with you in Paris.”
I was stunned, bewildered, crazed.