M. de Gontaut was one of those noblemen of the old school who have forgotten nothing, and learned but very little. He had intelligence, tact, knowledge of the world, but he was devoted to himself, and entertained the greatest respect for and opinion of his personal capacities.
He had several relations at the Court of Berlin among the members of the highest aristocracy, who, unfortunately for him, were among the enemies and adversaries of Prince Bismarck. He listened to them, appealed to them to carry to the ears of the Emperor William, and especially to those of the Empress Augusta, many things he would have done better to keep to himself, or else to communicate direct to the German Chancellor; he persisted in carrying a personal line of policy, by which he hoped to put spokes in the wheels of the great minister who held the destinies of Germany in his hands, and he allowed himself to be influenced by gossip which was purely founded on suppositions and old women’s love of slander.
The result of such conduct became but too soon apparent. Bismarck was not a man to allow himself to be treated as a negligible quantity, and he very soon began in his turn a campaign against the Vicomte de Gontaut, making him feel by slights on every possible occasion that it would be advisable for him to retire from the field of action, at least in Berlin. M. de Gontaut was fond of his position as an ambassador. Moreover, his was such an extraordinary vanity that he allowed himself very easily to be convinced that by remaining at his post he was rendering the greatest of services to his country, because no other man in his place could use the resources he had at his disposal so successfully in learning the secrets of the Berlin Court and of the Prussian Foreign Office.
It was M. de Gontaut who started the war scare, which existed only in his imagination and had sprung from the importance he attributed to himself. Bismarck replied in his memoirs to the insinuations that were made against him at that time, and he proved that neither he nor Von Moltke and his staff had ever had the idea of attacking France in 1875. I do not think that any serious politician now believes that there was the slightest foundation for the alarm that the French Ambassador had raised. But at that time it was generally believed that European peace had been in peril for a few days until the Emperor of Russia had put in his word and, as it were, forbidden his Imperial uncle to fulfil intentions the latter had never had for one single moment.
To anyone who knew Prince Bismarck it would be needless to point out how these manœuvres of the Vicomte de Gontaut exasperated him. He judged them for what they were: Gontaut’s desire to make himself important, and to give himself the appearance of having been the saviour of France. In a conversation which he had many years later with Count Muravieff, at that time Councillor of Embassy in Berlin, and later on Minister for Foreign Affairs in Russia, the German Chancellor alluded to the incidents which had then taken place and expressed his astonishment that a shrewd politician like the Duc Decazes could have been taken in by the nonsense, les bêtises, as he termed them, that M. de Gontaut was continually writing to him. Count Muravieff, who had been in Paris at that particular moment, could have replied had he liked, that the Duc was not so guilty as it appeared, because he was surrounded by a group of partisans of the Orleans family, who all pretended to be au courant of what was going on in Berlin, through their cousins who were living there, and who did their best to corroborate all that he heard from the Vicomte de Gontaut concerning the plans of Prince Bismarck and his treacherous intentions in regard to France.
At that period Orleanism was flourishing, and succeeded even in influencing the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who found it difficult to disbelieve all that was told him on every side, and which he did not suspect as coming from the same source. It is certain that he fell into the snare, and that when he appealed to Alexander II., it was in the firm belief that a new invasion of his country was about to take place. He found an ally in the person of old Prince Gortschakov, whose vanity seized with alacrity the opportunity that was given to him to appear before the world in the capacity of the saviour of France. Newspapers were put into motion. The Times, through its Paris correspondent, the famous Blowitz, started the alarm, and soon it became an established fact that it was through the intervention of Russia alone that France had been snatched from the grip of Germany. The legend still subsists with some people; its chief result was that we incurred the enmity of Prince Bismarck, who might have acted differently in regard to Russia during the Berlin Congress had it not been for this unwholesome incident.
Before closing with this subject I must relate the following anecdote. When the German Foreign Office insisted on M. de Gontaut contradicting in his dispatches to his government the alarming news he had been giving to it, he repaired to the house of a lady to whom he was related, and who occupied an important position at the Berlin Court, to ask her advice as to what he was to do. A council of war, if such an expression can be employed, was assembled, in which the old Duc de Sagan and his wife, the clever and amiable Duchesse, took part, and discussed gravely whether or not the desires of Prince Bismarck should be fulfilled, and his denial telegraphed to Paris. After long discussions it was at last decided that M. de Gontaut would write about it later on, but that it would be wisest to allow a few days to elapse before communicating the news to the French public, and that, consequently, it was not necessary to telegraph anything for the present. They could not allow the legend that the Vicomte de Gontaut had saved France from destruction to die so soon.
It would have been difficult for the Duc Decazes to have discerned right from wrong in such a mass of intrigue. It is to his honour that, notwithstanding the provocations he received, he succeeded in keeping calm, cool and dignified, and that he tried seriously to do his best for his country’s interest. He was a slow worker, and this, perhaps, was his bane, because the man whom he had put at the head of his private chancery, the Marquis de Beauvoir, who was his brother-in-law, having married the sister of the Duchesse Decazes, was careless in the extreme, and often allowed subordinates to do the work he ought to have kept entirely under his own control. All these circumstances produced a certain amount of confusion, but nevertheless in spite of these imperfections the administration of the Duc Decazes gave great dignity to the Foreign Office, and considerably raised the prestige of France abroad. He was not, perhaps, a genius, but he was a great minister on account of his honesty, his loyalty, the gentlemanly qualities that distinguished him and that kept him aloof from every dirty intrigue where his reputation might have foundered. When the ministry presided over by the Duc de Broglie had to retire, the Duc Decazes followed it in its retreat, though asked both by Marshal MacMahon and by the leaders of the Republican party whom the elections had brought to power, to keep his functions. He felt he had nothing in common with the men who were henceforward to rule his country, and he persisted in his determination to give up public life. He did not long survive the fall of his party, and when he died no one ever dared to raise one word against him nor to question his deep patriotism, and his devotion to the country he had loved so well and served so faithfully.
CHAPTER XV
Paris Society under the Presidency of Marshal MacMahon
A great change came over Paris society after the fall of the Empire. Some of its most brilliant elements disappeared altogether, whilst the Faubourg St. Germain, about which nothing had been heard for such a long time, came suddenly to the front, partly through its associations with the Maréchale MacMahon, who, being née de Castries, was considered as one of the Faubourg, and partly through the certainty that prevailed in many circles as to the imminence of a monarchical restoration, for which everybody was prepared. It is true that the first two years which followed upon the conclusion of peace with Germany were dull ones, so far as public amusements were concerned, but little by little Parisian social life began again, though somewhat on a different plane than during the Empire. Whilst the latter had lasted, the families belonging to the highest aristocracy, which had ruled France in olden times, had kept aloof from the social movement that had been so very luxurious and so very gay when the lovely Empress Eugénie had presided over it. They had lived for the most in the country in their ancestral castles, where they had economised, and cultivated their cabbages and potatoes. The custom of marrying heiresses belonging to the bourgeoisie, or to financiers, had not yet become usual, and military service, not being compulsory as it is nowadays, had not mixed together young men belonging to all classes, and thus thrown down the barriers of social distinction. The noblesse had transformed itself into a set, into which no intruders were allowed to enter, and when the Duc de Mouchy married the Princess Anna Murat, the cousin of Napoleon III., he scandalised not only aristocratic circles in general but his own family, the de Noailles, who looked very much askance at the lovely bride in spite of the large dowry she brought with her.