Photo: Carjal, Paris.
LEON GAMBETTA
there was something else than the desire to remain himself at the head of the State. There was a tacit pledge which he had given to the Orleans dynasty to support its pretensions, and also the feeling that he did not enjoy sufficient popularity among the army to enforce a change of government, and to bring back a dynasty which had been driven out of the country by its own faults. MacMahon was not clever, not far-seeing, but he knew very well what the troops thought of him, and also that at that moment the disaster of Sedan was not sufficiently forgotten for him to risk being punished for it under another pretext, which his lending his hand to an attempt at a monarchical restoration would have furnished.
The Comte de Chambord returned to Frohsdorf a sadder though not a wiser man. He was not fortunate in his advisers; the leaders of the Legitimist party did not understand either the feelings of France nor the strength which they undoubtedly wielded at that particular moment. Instead of doing their best to effect a reconciliation between the different opinions that divided the country, they tried, on the contrary, to exasperate them, and prevented their own triumph by the insolence with which they proclaimed everywhere that its hour had struck. France, at that time, was like a man recovering from a severe illness, whose whole body is sore, and who wants to be handled with the greatest gentleness. The Legitimists ignored this condition, and loudly boasted that the time had come when all past grievances would be avenged, and when they should be allowed to rule according to their own prejudices, bringing back to power with them all the old traditions against which the saner elements in the land had risen in revolt eighty-five years before. They wanted to make a clean slate, and wash out the remembrance of everything that had taken place since Louis XVI. had been murdered on the scaffold. The feeling might have been a natural one; the utterance of it was stupid in the extreme.
Many have wondered at the want of initiative shown by Henri V., as he was called by his partisans. I, who have known him well, saw nothing extraordinary in this. As I have already hinted, he was quite willing to be carried to the throne, but he had no desire to occupy it, and still less to step upon it bound by promises and pledges, which would have interfered with his liberty of action, a thing of which he had always been extremely jealous. He had in him all the authority of the Kings his forefathers, and would no more have submitted to the advice of his courtiers than he would have sacrificed his principles to win back his lost inheritance. He wanted, above all things, to keep his libre arbitre, and this explains the apparent apathy with which he witnessed the overthrow of what had been the hopes of his followers rather than his own.
Two years later I called upon the Comte de Chambord at Frohsdorf, during an absence of the Comtesse, in whose presence it was always more or less difficult to discuss political questions, and we talked over those days. Every hope of a monarchical restoration had faded then, and the Republic was more or less an accomplished fact. He seemed to take it as a natural consequence of all the mistakes committed by the different governments that had ruled in France, and if the truth be told, I think he preferred its having overcome all opposition, to the possibility of its being superseded either by the Bonaparte, or the Orleans dynasty, which he recognised, but could not accept as the successor of his own rights. The grand seigneur that he was could not adjust himself to this hankering after a “popularité de bas aloi,” as he described it, which had ever distinguished the younger branch of the house of Bourbon since the days of Philippe Egalité. He refused to profess the theory that it did not matter with whom one shook hands, provided one washed one’s own afterwards. On the contrary, he was of opinion that certain contacts can never be got rid of, no matter how much soap and water one uses to efface them. It was partly on account of that feeling that he did not regret circumstances had interfered with the monarchical restoration, for which so many people had hoped, and he made me understand what he thought of it by saying, among other things, that: “A royalty that has once come down into the street is no longer royalty such as it was understood in the days of old, when the principle of the ‘droit Divin’ was the foremost among those one had been taught to respect and to worship. We Bourbons of the old stock cannot bow before the popularity of the mob, and try to make it accept our own. We can work for the people, act in unison with the nation in all grave questions where its welfare is in question; we cannot accept its sovereign right to dictate to us its laws. I know that my ideas are out of fashion, ‘que je suis démodé,’ but whom do I hurt by clinging to my old traditions, to the ancient glories of my house, which have also been those of France, it must not be forgotten? If I had had children, I might have acted differently; I might, or I might not; and perhaps God has done well in refusing them to me, as they would have been the source of much conflict in my mind. As it is I shall die solitary and alone, and with me shall die the Bourbons of Louis XIV., those who have learnt nothing, and forgotten nothing, as our enemies aver.”
He said the last words smilingly and jestingly, and I could not help smiling, too, though I well knew the latent sadness that was hiding under his apparent mirth. He was still a handsome man at that time, though far too stout, and his lameness, although not interfering with the dignity of his manners, still took away from what otherwise would have been an imposing figure. But the eyes had a wonderfully kind expression, the noble, intelligent forehead revealed a grand nature and a beautiful soul. One could not have passed him in the street without being struck by his appearance, and without noticing him, so completely “grand seigneur” was he, even in his most trivial gestures. Everyone who knew him liked him, respected him, bowed down before the purity of his life, and the earnest, simple manner in which he performed all his duties, even the most trifling ones. He was one of those characters one meets with but seldom, and which reconcile one with humanity.
I never saw him again alive after that conversation, and only looked upon him once more when he lay on his bier, having hurried to Frohsdorf to attend his funeral. The face had an expression of great calm, and bore but few traces of the sufferings he had endured in his last illness. Bunches of roses were scattered on the linen sheet, that covered him up to his chin, and over his feet was draped the white flag that his ancestors had carried to victory; that flag over which he had watched all his life, and which was to be buried with him in the little chapel of Goritz near the Adriatic Sea, far away from that France he had loved so well, from those vaults of St. Denis, whence his race had been excluded for ever.