The cold was increasing every day, the ground was frozen hard, the streets very slippery, and going very difficult. All our horses were rough shod, but even with that we made very slow progress. Some of the omnibuses were on runners, and one or two of the young men of the ministry had taken off the wheels of their light carriages and put them on runners, but one didn't see many real sleighs or sledges, as they call them here. I fancy "sleigh" is entirely an American expression. The Seine was at last completely taken, and the public was allowed on the ice, which was very thick. It was a very pretty, animated sight, many booths like those one sees on the Boulevard during the Christmas holidays were installed on the ice close to the banks, and the river was black with people. They couldn't skate much, as the ice was rough and there were too many people, but they ran and slid and shouted and enjoyed themselves immensely. I wanted to cross one day with my boy, that he might say he had crossed the Seine on foot, but W. was rather unwilling. However, the préfet de la Seine, whom he consulted, told him there was absolutely no danger—the ice was several inches thick, so I started off one afternoon, one of the secretaries going with me. He was much astonished and rather nervous at seeing me in my ordinary boots. He had nails in his, and one of our friends whom we met on the ice had woollen socks over his boots. They were sure I would slip and perhaps get a bad fall. "But no one could slip on that ice; it is quite rough, might almost be a ploughed field,"—but they were uncomfortable, and were very pleased when I landed safely on the other side and got into the carriage. Just in the middle the boys had swept a path on the ice to make a glissade. They were racing up and down in bands, and the constant passing had made it quite level and very slippery. We saw three or four unwary pedestrians get a fall, but if one kept on the outside near the bank there was no danger of slipping.
The extreme cold lasting so long brought many discomforts. Many trains with wood and provisions couldn't get to Paris. The railroads were all blocked and the Parisians were getting uneasy, fearing they might run short of food and fuel. We were very comfortable in the big rooms of the ministry. There were roaring fires everywhere, and two or three calorifères. The view from the windows on the Quai was charming as long as the great cold lasted, particularly at night, when the river was alive with people, lights and coloured lanterns, and music. Every now and then there would be a ronde or a farandole,—the farandole forcing its way through the crowd, every one carrying a lantern and looking like a brilliant snake winding in and out.
We had some people dining one night, and they couldn't keep away from the windows. Some of the young ones (English) wanted to go down and have a lark on the ice, but it wasn't possible. The crowd, though thoroughly good-humoured, merely bent on enjoying themselves, had degenerated into a rabble. One would have been obliged to have a strong escort of police, and besides in evening dress, even with fur cloaks and the fur and woollen boots every one wore over their thin shoes, one would certainly have risked getting a bad attack of pneumonia. One of our great friends, Sir Henry Hoare, was dining that night, but he didn't want to go down, preferred smoking his cigar in a warm room and talking politics to W. He had been a great deal in Paris, knew everybody, and was a member of the Jockey Club. He was much interested in French politics and au fond was very liberal, quite sympathised with W. and his friends and shared their opinions on most subjects, though as he said, "I don't air those opinions at the Jockey Club." He came often to our big receptions, liked to see all the people. He too used to tell me all that was said in his club about the Republic and the Government, but he was a shrewd observer, had been a long time an M.P. in England, and had come to the conclusion that the talk at the clubs was chiefly a "pose,"—they didn't really have many illusions about the restoration of the monarchy, couldn't have, when even the Duc de Broglie with his intelligence and following (the Faubourg St. Germain followed him blindly) could do nothing but make a constitutional Republic with Marshal MacMahon at its head.
It was always said too that the women were more uncompromising than the men. I went one afternoon to a concert at the Austrian Embassy, given in aid of some inundations, which had been a catastrophe for that country, hundreds of houses, and people and cattle swept away! The French public had responded most generously, as they always do, to the urgent appeal made by the ambassador in the name of the Emperor, and the Government had contributed largely to the fund. Count Beust the Austrian ambassador was obliged of course to invite the Government and Madame Grévy to the entertainment, as well as his friends of the Faubourg St. Germain. Neither Madame nor Mademoiselle Grévy came, but some of the ministers' wives did, and it was funny to see the ladies of society looking at the Republican ladies, as if they were denizens of a different planet, strange figures they were not accustomed to see. It is curious to think of all that now, when relations are much less strained. I remember not very long ago at a party at one of the embassies, seeing many of the society women having themselves presented to the wife of the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, with whom they certainly had nothing in common, neither birth, breeding, nor mode of life. I was talking to Casimir Périer (late President of the Republic) and it amused us very much to see the various introductions and the great empressement of the ladies, all of whom were asking to be presented to Madame R. "What can all those women want?" I asked him. He replied promptly, "Embassies for their husbands." It would have been better, I think, in a worldly point of view, if more embassies had been given to the bearers of some of the great names of France—but there were so many candidates for every description of function in France just then, from an ambassador to a gendarme, that anybody who had anything to give found himself in a difficult position.
XI
LAST DAYS AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE
The end of December was detestable. We were en pleine crise for ten days. Every day W. went to the Chamber of Deputies expecting to be beaten, and every evening came home discouraged and disgusted. The Chamber was making the position of the ministers perfectly untenable—all sorts of violent and useless propositions were discussed, and there was an undercurrent of jealousy and intrigue everywhere. One day, just before Christmas, about the 20th, W. and his chef de cabinet, Comte de P., started for the house, after breakfast—W. expecting to be beaten by a coalition vote of the extreme Left, Bonapartists and Legitimists. It was an insane policy on the part of the two last, as they knew perfectly well they wouldn't gain anything by upsetting the actual cabinet. They would only get another one much more advanced and more masterful. I suppose their idea was to have a succession of radical inefficient ministers, which in the end would disgust the country and make a "saviour," a prince (which one?) or general, possible. How wise their reasoning was time has shown! I wanted to go to the Chamber to hear the debate, but W. didn't want me. He would be obliged to speak, and said it would worry him if I were in the gallery listening to all the attacks made upon him. (It is rather curious that I never heard him speak in public, either in the house or in the country, where he often made political speeches, in election times.) He was so sure that the ministry would fall that we had already begun cleaning and making fires in our own house, so on that afternoon, as I didn't want to sit at home waiting for telegrams, I went up to the house with Henrietta. The caretaker had already told us that the stock of wood and coal was giving out, and she couldn't get any more in the quarter, and if she couldn't make fires the pipes would burst, which was a pleasant prospect with the thermometer at I don't remember how many degrees below zero. We found a fine cleaning going on—doors and windows open all over the house—and women scrubbing stairs, floors, and windows, rather under difficulties, with little fire and little water. It looked perfectly dreary and comfortless—not at all tempting. All the furniture was piled up in the middle of the rooms, and W.'s library was a curiosity. Books and pamphlets accumulated rapidly with us, W. was a member of many literary societies of all kinds all over the world, and packages and boxes of unopened books quite choked up the room. H. and I tried to arrange things a little, but it was hopeless that day, and, besides, the house was bitterly cold. It didn't feel as if a fire could make any impression.
As we could do nothing there, we went back to the ministry. No telegrams had come, but Kruft, our faithful and efficient chef du matériel, was waiting for me for last instructions about a Christmas tree. Some days before I had decided to have a Christmas tree, about the end of the month. W. then thought the ministry would last over the holidays, the trêve des confiseurs, and was quite willing I should have a Christmas party as a last entertainment. He had been too occupied the last days to think about any such trifles, and Kruft, not having had any contrary instructions, had ordered the presents and decorations. He was rather depressed, because W. had told him that morning that we surely would not be at the Quai d'Orsay on the 29th, the day we had chosen for our party. However, I reassured him, and told him we would have the Christmas tree all the same, only at my house instead of at the ministry. We went to look at his presents, which were all spread out on a big table in one of the drawing-rooms. He really was a wonderful man, never forgot anything, and had remembered that at the last tree, the year before, one or two nurses had had no presents, and several who had were not pleased with what was given to them. He had made a very good selection for those ladies,—lace scarfs and rabats and little tours de cou of fur,—really very pretty. I believe they were satisfied this time. The young men of the Chancery sent me up two telegrams: "rien de nouveau,"—"ministère debout."
[Illustration: M. de Freyeinet. After a photograph by M. Nadaz, Paris]
W. came home late, very tired and much disgusted with politics in general and his party in particular. The cabinet still lived, but merely to give Grévy time to make another. W. had been to the Elysée and had a long conversation with Grévy. He found him very preoccupied, very unwilling to make a change, and he again urged W. very much to keep the Foreign Office, if Freycinet should succeed in making a ministry. That W. would not agree to—he was sick of the whole thing. He told Grévy he was quite right to send for Freycinet—if any man could save the situation he could. We had one or two friends, political men, to dinner, and they discussed the situation from every point of view, always ending with the same conclusion, that W. was right to go. His policy wasn't the policy of the Chamber (I don't say of the country, for I think the country knew little and cared less about what was going on in Parliament), hardly the policy of all his own colleagues. There was really no use to continue worrying himself to death and doing no good. W. said his conversation with Grévy was interesting, but he was much more concerned with home politics and the sweeping changes the Republicans wanted to make in all the administrations than with foreign policy. He said Europe was quiet and France's first duty was to establish herself firmly, which would only be done by peace and prosperity at home. I told W. I had spent a very cold and uncomfortable hour at the house, and I was worried about the cold, thought I might, perhaps, send the boy to mother, but he had taken his precautions and arranged with the Minister of War to have a certain amount of wood delivered at the house. They always had reserves of wood at the various ministries. We had ours directly from our own woods in the country, and it was en route, but a flotilla of boats was frozen up in the Canal de l'Ourcq, and it might be weeks before the wood could be delivered.