At the Invalides four-and-twenty non-commissioned officers advanced to carry the coffin into the church; but in spite of the most desperate efforts the veterans could not succeed in lifting it, and I had to make my sailors carry it. The King received the body at the entrance to the nave, and there rather a comical scene took place. It appears that a little speech, which I was to have delivered when I met my father, and also the answer he was to give me, had been drawn up in Council, only the authorities had omitted to inform me concerning it. So when I arrived I simply saluted with my sword, and then stood aside. I saw indeed that this silent salute, followed by retreat, had thrown something out; but my father, after a moment's hesitation, improvised some appropriate sentence, and the matter was afterwards arranged in the Moniteur. The Church of the Invalides was full to overflowing, the Chamber of Peers and the Chamber of Deputies being seated in the choir. The success of the day fell to my brave sailors. Everybody was curious to see them. Their athletic forms, easy gait, and kindly sunburnt faces at once won over the general public, especially the feminine portion of it; and then they were something new to that sight-loving Parisian population, to whom so many have been given since then, that for want of a better the only thing offered them at the present moment is Dinah Salifou and the danse du ventre. What a fall here too, compared vith the past! During the triumphal passage of the Emperor's ashes down the Champs Elysees between two ranks of soldiers and National Guards, who kept back an immense multitude, I had constantly amid the various shouts caught one of "Down with traitors," which, at first, I did not understand. I had been so far away. But it was explained to me that this demonstration was aimed at my father and his ministers, guilty as they were of having refused to launch France into a general war about the Eastern question. I fancy my father troubled his head little about these would-be-wise demonstrators, worthy forerunners of the Boulevard braggarts who, at a later date, in 1870, so appositely shouted "a Berlin." He had other matters to preoccupy him. The ease with which all the Governments in Europe had leagued themselves together, to inflict a moral check on France, under cover of the Pasha of Egypt, betrayed the latent hostility of all those powers to our own country. Let us say it outright. In the eyes of the European monarchies, the Government of July, by virtue of its origin, and however wise and courageous the policy of the King, my father, might have been, had always remained a revolutionary, and therefore a hostile government Nothing else was possible; and so at bottom it always will be, as long as we continue to run in the rut along which we have been floundering for the last hundred years. Look at any country in Europe, no matter which, and see against whom the established Government carries on the domestic struggle. Against Nihilists in Russia, Socialists in Germany, anarchists and unquiet spirits of all kind everywhere, imitations of those of our own country, and by them encouraged to press on the same course of demand, and spoliation, and licence. And hence the necessary consequence, that sovereigns and organized societies, whose first desire is to exist, and neither to be overthrown nor despoiled, are always ready to make common cause against that hotbed of bad example, Revolutionary France. The events of 1840 showed this with the utmost clearness; and in face of that demonstration the path of duty lay clear. It was to lose no time in taking, without boastfulness, but also without weakness, all the necessary measures against the danger which was constantly threatening, although for the moment it was warded off. Among these measures was one my father passionately desired, and which he snatched from the Chambers by sheer tenacity—the fortification of Paris. This tenacity was necessary, for the struggle was long, bitter, and inexplicable While it lasted the heroes of the cafes greeted my father in the streets and at reviews with insulting shouts. The cry, "Down with the Bastille," had succeeded that of "Down with traitors," and all the fainthearted section would have knuckled down. All the energy of the King, of my brother the Due d'Orleans—as eager as himself on the question—and of the ministers, was needed to bring them back into fighting line. The aid too of those patriots of all shades—and thank God there still are some such!—who put national independence and honour above party questions, had to be invoked. And so Paris was fortified Who dares nowadays to say, that this was not a convincing proof of the King's foresight as a ruler? Who dares to say, that if hesitation, and desultoriness, and incapacity, and evil chance, had not clung to the command of our armies in 1870, the German invasion might not have been broken up upon those ramparts?
The winter of 1841 was also spent in raising our battalions of Chasseurs-a-pied, the personal work of my eldest brother. I used often to go and keep him company in the camp at St. Omer, while he was employing all his great powers in organizing this force. When it was done he gave a splendid fite, to which he invited the officers of the English garrisons on the opposite coast, deputing me to receive them. A few days later the population of Paris was surprised and delighted by the sight of these ten splendid battalions, in their simple but elegant uniform, pressing through the streets with swinging step, filling the courtyard of the Tuileries, and forming up in the space of a few minutes to be inspected by the King. These fine troops, with their strong esprit de corps, have since then earned glory by many exploits in all quarters of the globe. The number of battalions has been raised from ten to thirty. The organization, given them at the outset by a vigorous hand, has remained intact. Their uniform even is unchanged, having escaped the prevalent mania for bringing everything down to the same level of ugliness. The only thing gone is the original name, Chasseurs d'Orleans; but what matters the name when the service remains!
My memories of the winter of 1841 are full of recollections concerning our national defence. Mingled with them, however, are some others of a less austere nature Masked balls were the rage that year. They were given in all directions. I was only three-and-twenty, and thought them all delightful Just at that moment Chicard—the famous Chicard—shared the sceptre of the opera-balls with Musard, the chief of the orchestra. A quiet-living worthy tradesman on weekdays, on important occasions an officer in the National Guard, Monsieur L "le grand Chicard," dressed in the most eccentric of costumes, led indescribable farandoles to the sound of broken chairs and pistol shots, accompanied by Musard's orchestra, at these entertainments. There were balls in the Opera House, at the Renaissance, the Salle Ventadour, the Varietes—these last the prettiest and the most fashionable and amusing. Not an evening coat in the whole ball-room, everybody, men and women alike, in costume, and everybody acquainted with everybody else. And what gaiety and go there was about it all' You asked your partner in the upper-boxes to dance with you, from the floor of the house, and she, to lose no time, came down outside the balustrades, faithfully passed down by friendly hands. When the quadrille was over you met jolly comrades everywhere, with their partners astride on their shoulders, shaking hands as it were two stories at a time. But there is an end to all things. My two brothers—Nemours and Aumale—went off to fight in Africa under General Bugeaud; and, in the month of May, I myself was sent out to the Newfoundland station.
CHAPTER VIII
1841-1842
I left Cherbourg for Newfoundland on May 19th, 1841. It had been arranged that I was to go by the North Sea, to put into the Texel, and to go to the Hague to pay my respects in person to the King of the Netherlands. Almost as soon as I had disembarked at the Helder, I went on board the royal yacht, which was to take me to Alkmaar by the Noord Holland Canal. This yacht, commanded by a very pleasant fellow, a naval lieutenant, M. Dedel, was really charming. She had been built in the seventeenth century, and had been used by Admirals Van Ruyter and Van Tromp when they went to take up their commands. She was covered all over with gilt carvings, the deckhouse in the stern especially, and looked as if she had started freshly painted out of one of Backhuysen's pictures. Once on board her, a legion of horses towed her along, full trot, and I went to bed. When I awoke, I found the yacht moored beside the quay at Alkmaar, the city of cheeses, whence a carriage took me to Haarlem and Amsterdam, along the Haarlem Zee, which has been drained dry since then, and transformed into splendid meadow land, as the Zuider Zee will some day be. At Amsterdam I rushed to the museum, where I was received by M. Apostol, the director, who had known the Scheffers' father intimately at Rotterdam. Oh that museum! Oh those prints! But M. de Bois-le-Comte, the French Minister, was pitiless. He tore me away from all those masterpieces, and forced me to follow the millround of the programme he had laid out for me. He dragged me off to Zaandam (Saardam in French). This pretty Japanese-looking village, in the midst of a wide polder, surrounded by over five hundred windmills, looking like a row of gigantic sharpshooters, is a resort of pilgrims, and the holy spot is the hut of Peter the Great. The wretched wooden house, shut up in a sort of casemate, was the property of the Queen, sister of the Emperor Nicholas, and the shanty was never mentioned by her or to her but in the most feeling manner. Flectamus genua! Leva…ate! Amongst other inscriptions there, I found the names of two French actors, Dormeuil and Monval, which recall anything but pious memories to my mind.
From Zaandam I went to the palace, to Van Ruyter's tomb, to the pelicans in the Zoological Gardens, and then I escaped from the furious Bois-le-Comte, who would have liked me never to go about except in a glass case labelled "Ecce the Prince de Joinville." Very kind and very witty he was, all the same, one of those finished diplomatists of the old school—a disciple of M. de Talleyrand. He had been everywhere, seen everything, observed everything, and he kept me under the charm of his conversation all through my hasty trip in Holland. During the last preceding years he had represented France in Portugal and Spain successively, and had been with the two Queens—my future sister-in-law—Dona Maria in Portugal, and the Regent Christina in Spain, through all the most violent disturbances, struggles, and dangers of the military conspiracies in those countries. He never tired of talking about the courage of these two ladies, the nature of which was very different in each case. The courage of the Queen of Portugal, he said, was resolute, but mournful and gloomy. The example she set was good, but she cast a chill on officers and men alike. Queen Christina—passionate, a woman to her finger tips, careless of danger, but shedding tears of nervous excitement when the bullets smashed her windows and flew hither and thither about the apartments—magnetised her defenders. In the one case you cried "Welcome, Death!" in the other you shouted "Forward!" Very interesting indeed was the description Bois-le-Comte gave me of the La Granja conspiracy. How, having been warned in the middle of the night of the danger threatening Queen Christina and her daughters, he got up in haste to hurry to their assistance, but desired, first of all, to warn the British Minister and carry him along with him. How, when he reached the house of the minister, Mr. Villiers, afterwards Lord Clarendon, he rushed without meeting a soul into his bedroom, where the bed-curtains shook convulsively at the noise of his entrance, and the head alone of the minister appeared, saying, "I'll follow you," while a soft voice tried to detain him, with all the tenderest appeals in the Spanish language. "I took myself off double quick," said Bois-le-Comte to me; "but I had recognised the voice."
From Amsterdam we went to the Hague, and as soon as I got there I asked to see the King. "Let him come at once" was the reply.
King William, young-looking still, with a graceful figure and a kindly engaging face, framed with a fringe of grizzling beard, had a loud voice and a hearty laugh. He was witty in conversation. The Queen, whom I never saw laugh, nor even smile, talked cleverly too, but she picked her words too obviously. Her daughter, the young Princess Sophia, now Grand-Duchess of Saxe-Weimar, was clever too. I was watching her dance at a ball one night, wearing a pretty gown, the chief adornment of which was an eastern scarf, when her father, to whom I was talking, said, "Marmotte (her pet name in the family) looks like a Bayadere to-day." And indeed she had all the grace and charm of one.
My stay at the Hague was one succession of gatherings, dinners, balls, at which the cordiality of my reception never failed for one minute. It touched me much, and I have kept a grateful memory of it, for there was some merit, on the King's part, in its being so. Had we not largely contributed by our support of the Belgian revolution to lessening his kingdom by one half? And there had been yet another wound to his vanity. In his youth King William, then Prince of Orange, full of eager bravery, had gone to serve in Spain under the Duke of Wellington. He had been wounded in the ranks of the British army at Waterloo, and on the strength of these antecedents he had offered himself in 1815 as a candidate for the hand of Princess Charlotte, heir-presumptive to the Crown of England. He had been ousted. And by whom? By Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, whom we had just made King of the Belgians. In spite of these causes for coldness, at all events, the welcome I was given by the King, his family, and by every class of that honest and well-behaved Dutch race, was marked by a constantly increasing kindliness, which filled Bois-le-Comte and his very witty secretary, La Rosiere, with delight. Just at the moment of parting, the King made me a present of an admirable copy in reduced size of Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson, which hung in his study, saying, "You are going to Newfoundland; you shall bring me back a dog in exchange," which commission I faithfully executed.