In fact, satisfaction at the profits which private people had derived from German occupation had quite taken the upper hand of the sorrow the nation felt at the misfortunes that had fallen upon her.
This statement of mine will probably be questioned far and wide, but I shall always maintain it, in spite of any denials it may meet with. Patriotism with Frenchmen is mostly a question of words; it rarely goes beyond phrases, full of enthusiasm but devoid of real meaning. The country is essentially egoistical, and it is perhaps for that very reason that it has not only survived its disasters, but has emerged from them far more prosperous, in the material sense of the word only, than before the Germans overran the fair land of France.
One of the painful sights, in the days which followed immediately upon the occupation of Paris by the troops of Versailles, was the ferocious way in which the members of the Commune were hunted and executed. Awful scenes, in which private vengeances played a part perhaps even more important than public reasons, were enacted. The work of repression was a terrible one in the worst sense of the word, and the wanton cruelty which accompanied it will ever remain a dark page in the career of M. Thiers and of the members of his government. It is to be questioned whether it was indispensable, or even necessary, to exercise such utterly ruthless cruelty. The only explanation that can be given for such ferocious tyranny is that people in authority grew frightened and thought that, in order to hide their fear from the public, extreme severity was best, as it would at least have the advantage of instilling dread into the hearts of those who otherwise might have felt tempted to follow the example of Rossel, Raoul Rigault, and others.
When all was over and order restored, M. Thiers, who was still residing at Versailles, came to Paris for a few hours, just to see for himself the damage which his house in the Rue St. Georges had suffered, and to pay a brief visit to the Elysée, which he had left with such alacrity on the 18th of March, as soon as he had heard of the incidents that had taken place at Montmartre. The reason for this hurried appearance at the palace was, so he said, to see whether some important papers he had locked up in a safe, in his study there, had not been seized by the members of the Commune. As luck would have it, no one had discovered them, and the First President of the Third Republic was able to regain possession of his property.
A friend of his, to whom he mentioned the incident, asked him of what nature were those papers about which he had been so anxious during the whole of the two months the Commune had lasted. M. Thiers smiled, and replied simply: “They were not of any particular importance, but that was just the reason why I was afraid that the Commune should get hold of them. I had told everybody that they were of a most compromising nature for some of the people actually in power, and for the pretenders to the crown of this country. Imagine how compromised I would have been had it been found out that they were merely tradesmen’s bills!”
CHAPTER IX
M. Thiers
I had had many opportunities of meeting M. Thiers during the last years of the Empire. I had known him even before I came to Paris in an official capacity, had often seen him at the houses of some mutual friends, and we came to know each other very well. He was one of the cleverest, nicest little men in the world, and even among the many interesting people who abounded in France at that time, he stood out conspicuously as one of the pleasantest. He had many enemies, which is not to be wondered at if one takes into consideration the vivacity which he always displayed in his likes and dislikes, and the bitterness, or rather the caustic tendencies, of his tongue. But friends and foes alike were loud in their praise of his intelligence, and especially of his wit. I am not talking of his moral character, which was discussed in many ways and which in part justified the attacks that were levelled against it. The Legitimists could not forgive him the part he had taken in the arrest of the Duchesse de Berry, nor the attitude of the ministry of which he was a member with regard to that unfortunate Princess whose frailties were so mercilessly displayed before the public before the end of her captivity in the fortress of Blaye. The Orleanists also did not care for him, in spite of the pledge which he had given to their party; but Louis Philippe personally was fond of him, perhaps because their tastes were very much alike, and because the sternness and austerity of Guizot, his great opponent, had never appealed to the heart of the King, who stood rather in awe of that imposing figure in modern French political life. The bonhomie of Thiers, his easygoing manners, were more in accordance with the homely attitude which at that time distinguished the Orleans family circle. As Montalembert once said very wittily: “Thiers, c’est le ministre bourgeois d’une dynastie bourgeoise.”
And the remark contained a great deal of truth, though it is much to be doubted whether the brilliant Catholic leader appreciated at their real worth the sterling qualities which M. Thiers was hiding under the sometimes frivolous manner in which he treated serious subjects.
As a writer he was one of the greatest of his epoch, and his work on the Consulate and the First Empire will always rank among the classics. Few people have understood so well as he did the gigantic figure of the first Napoleon, and certainly his knowledge of history, the wonderful way in which he remembered its lessons, and knew how to apply them where it became necessary, constituted a unique thing even in France, where at that time there was a superabundance of clever writers and great thinkers, of whom he was one of the foremost.
Some enemies of M. Thiers assured me that he would have done better to confine himself to his historical studies, and that it was a mistake on his part to throw himself into the struggles of a political career. I do not share this opinion personally, because the very nature of Thiers would have protested against a life spent only in thinking without the emulation of doing. He was essentially a great patriot, far greater than the general public supposed, and if he had personal ambitions, which cannot be denied, it must also be admitted that in the great moments of crisis through which his country passed during his lifetime, he never hesitated to put all his strength, all his experience, and all his knowledge of public affairs, as well as his influence at home and abroad, at her service, sparing neither time nor trouble, nor energy, in his endeavours to help her.