Towards the beginning of the winter of 1848 the doctors ordered my wife, who was in very delicate health, to go and spend the cold months in a southern climate, and I started with her and my children for Algiers, where I joined my brother Aumale, who had become governor-general of the colony. I arrived, weighed down with gloomy forebodings, feeling convinced that by dint of trying to respect those so-called legal restraints which paralyse a government, but which do so little to hinder any revolutionary section in its action, we should end by being overwhelmed, and by hearing the fatal hour strike, the "too late" that comes with every revolution. Yet I did not believe that hour so close at hand as it was. For I had hardly settled down at Algiers, when one fine morning the announcement of the February revolution and the proclamation of the republic came upon us like the bursting of a shell. The news arrived in the shape of vague rumours, uncertain information, reports of various kinds, brought over from Marseilles. As to the amount of authenticity they possessed—whether the movement was a general one or confined to Paris only, whether a stand was being made against it anywhere—on all these points the earliest rumours were mute, and they were just as silent as to what had befallen the King and the rest of our family, in the confusion. We were reduced to the wildest conjectures, and were wondering whether we ought not to start for France at once, when a steam corvette from Toulon brought me the following despatch:—
The Minister for Naval Affairs to Monsieur le Prince de Joinville.
28th February, 1848, 8.30 p.m.
Prince,
The well-being of the country demands that you should make no attempt to dissuade the crews or soldiers of the navy from their obedience to the Provisional Government. It is important that you should not attempt to set foot on French soil, nor communicate with any vessel in the French fleet, till further orders.
Prince, your patriotic instinct will enable you to resign yourself to this sacrifice, and to perform it unflinchingly. Such is the confident hope of the Provisional Government. ARAGO.
The signatory of this despatch had taught me in my youth, and I had kept up affectionate intercourse with him since. But the coolness with which the man (a great savant, no doubt, but who up to this had never done anything but make calculations and handle telescopes) invested himself with supreme authority amazed me. Exasperated as I was by his summons "to make no attempt to dissuade the sailors and soldiers of the navy from their obedience" to his hour-old government, in other words, from the violation of their oath which he was about to ask of all the brave fellows, I forgot both my former relations with the man and the courteous form of his despatch; and I was in a transport of rage as I handed the missive to Changarnier, commanding the troops, and M. Vaisse, the civil secretary-general, who were both of them present, in my brother's study.
"That is a summons from the enemy," I said; "we must do the very contrary."
But M. Vai'sse was silent, and Changarnier shook his head. I bethought me then, alas! that in this day of progress of ours the religion of a man's oath is but an empty word—and I recovered my self-possession.
My aide-de-camp, Commander Touchard, had come from Paris by the same corvette that had brought me the despatch. He had seen the crash, had been present when the National Guard, upon whom my brother Nemours had called to resist the rioters, had overwhelmed him with abuse, had witnessed the abdication, the scenes in the Chamber, and the King's final departure. All the way across France, too, except at Toulon, where the strong hand of the navy made itself felt, Touchard had watched the eager speculations of the majority on the accomplished fact, and the struggle as to who should first offer his services to the Provisional Government, before the corpse of Constitutional Monarchy was cold—for dead it was, without having struck a blow in its own defence.