At the time I am writing the description, the Goncourts were talked about a great deal in French literary circles. I have attended receptions at their house, but I never could share the enthusiasm that some of their writings excited among the general public. They were both clever, Jules the more so of the two, but though they showed themselves very hard workers, one can well question the use their work has proved to the development of the intellectual capacities of their contemporaries. It is very much to be doubted whether their books will survive them for any considerable time. One thing is certain, they were the first to start the school of self-admiration that now reigns so completely over French modern literature.

Of quite a different type was the Comte de Falloux, a member of the Academy, and a writer of no mean talent. The Comte was just as well known for his political as for his literary activity, and he represented in the Chamber of Deputies, and afterwards in the Senate, the Legitimist party, of which he was one of the leaders, and where his opinion carried much weight. M. de Falloux was an Ultramontane of the purest water, who always looked towards Rome for his inspirations, and who saw nothing good outside the Pope and the Jesuits. He was a great favourite among a certain coterie of the Faubourg St. Germain, and though a great friend of Mgr. Dupanloup, the famous Bishop of Orleans, used always to quarrel with him, and thought him far too liberal and too leniently inclined towards compromise, his own stern, obstinate nature never accepting any. He was extremely well read, but he was not an amiable man, and certainly was not sympathetic. He was a man of letters belonging to that school of grand seigneurs of which the Duc de Broglie and the Duc d’Audiffret Pasquier were such brilliant examples.

Though I shall speak later on about M. Zola when discussing the Dreyfus case, which is so entirely associated with his name, yet I must also here say a few words concerning him. In the ’eighties—the period to which I am referring—he had already made a great name for himself as the father of the new Naturalistic school. Whether he had directed his attention that way because he really believed that fictional literature, such as it had been understood until he arrived to transform it, was based on false principles I cannot say. Perhaps he simply wanted to make more money in trying to offer to the public something that hitherto it had not seen, and which was bound to interest it by its unexpectedness if by nothing else. But what I can certify through personal knowledge of the man is that he had enough vanity to prefer being hissed than passed by in silence. That he had considerable talent no one can deny, but that he might have used it in a different direction is also not to be questioned. One effect of his style was to turn the heads of would-be authors, who, not having the necessary capabilities to write a good book, imagined that by imitating Zola, and scribbling plots of questionable taste, they would likewise rise to fame, and, what was still better, earn fortune, forgetting entirely that talent such as Zola possessed could allow itself a latitude which people with fewer capabilities were better advised not to attempt.

M. Zola married a very superior and most intelligent woman, who was gifted with most remarkable qualities of heart and mind. She showed extraordinary dignity, and most uncommon forbearance in regard to her husband, whose memory to this day she tries to defend against any possible attack. When he died she took to her heart two children of which he was the father, and brought them up, and established them in the world with a total abnegation of her own personal feelings. Indeed, Madame Zola’s conduct in life, even under the most trying circumstances, must always be admired. She certainly was far superior to her husband in regard to moral character, and she is liked and esteemed by all those who have had the privilege of meeting and knowing her.

In thus recounting the literary men I have met with in Paris I find I have forgotten to mention Alphonse Daudet, with his leonine countenance and his black locks. And yet I knew him better than I did Zola, was a frequent visitor at his house, and a great admirer of his amiable and clever wife, who has since also made a name for herself in the world of letters. Daudet was an extremely capricious man, and one whose temper was of the same character, but his abilities were incontestable, and some of his books will very probably outlive those of Zola. When he happened to be entirely in good health, which unfortunately was not often the case in the last years of his life, Daudet was a most pleasant companion, full of conversation, and possessing the French spirit of “le mot pour rire.” I remember he made us roar one afternoon by relating to us how once he had received an anonymous letter, in which he was asked, in case he was “tall, fair, with blue eyes, and wore a pink tie,” to come to a rendezvous in the garden of the Tuileries. The writer obligingly added that unless he fulfilled these conditions in his personal appearance, and consented to put on a pink tie, he had better not waste his time by coming, as the lady who wanted to make his acquaintance was determined to do so only if he fulfilled the ideal she had nursed for long years. It seemed that the ideal in question depended for a great part on the pink tie.

Alphonse Daudet left two sons and a daughter. Leon Daudet, his eldest boy, has also written psychological books, but they evince none of his father’s wit. He also has made himself conspicuous by his political vagaries, and his divorce from the granddaughter of Victor Hugo, which, owing to certain rather strange circumstances connected with it, caused considerable scandal. He is a fervent Catholic, but having, out of consideration to the feelings of the Hugo family, consented to be married only at the mairie, without the help of the Church, he had the bad taste to say publicly, when he married again, that his first marriage had not been legal, which, of course, was severely commented upon even by his best friends. His brother, Lucien Daudet, is a mild young man, who has also literary ambitions, and whose principal occupation consists in attendance on the Empress Eugénie, whom he has attempted to describe in a little volume that could not have been pleasant reading for the Empress, because nobody gifted with common sense likes to be turned into a perfection and a genius rolled into one, or whilst still alive to be subjected to such extravagant praise. The youngest brother of Alphonse Daudet, Ernest Daudet, is also a writer, who has given his attention principally to historic subjects. His books are all worth reading, if a little dull, and he is a great favourite in the salons of the Faubourg St. Germain, where his monarchical opinions have won him an entrance.

I wish I had more space at my disposal to mention otherwise than in passing Jules Claretie, the late Director of the Comédie Française, and the author of so many charming novels, which mostly can be put into everybody’s hands. Many people did not like him, but those who knew him well have always felt great sympathy for him. He wrote the French language as no one else perhaps, with a light, pleasant, vivid style that at once conveyed to the reader the author’s thoughts and his way of looking upon things. For years before his death in 1914 he wrote a delightful weekly chronicle for the Temps, called “La vie à Paris,” which will certainly be consulted later on by all who wish to learn the social history of Paris of the period.

CHAPTER XIX
The 16th of May and the Fall of Marshal MacMahon

When, after the fall of M. Thiers, the Duc de Magenta was elected second President of the Third Republic, it was generally understood, as I have mentioned already, that he would only be the representative of a transitional government, and that, accepting the tacit conditions under which he had been appointed, he would contribute all the weight of his authority to secure the return of France to the flag of the old Monarchy.

But Marshal MacMahon, when he became Head of the State, did not show the slightest disposition to enter into that scheme. Not only did he disappoint the party which had voted for him, because it had believed that he would be an instrument in its hands, but he showed strong sympathies for the Left side of that Assembly which had overthrown the previous President more out of pique than anything else. He took ministers holding opinions directly in contradiction to those which he himself had been supposed to profess, and when at last, in November, 1873, the Comte de Chambord arrived secretly at Versailles, as I have already related, and asked the Marshal to grant him a secret interview during which the political situation was to be discussed, the latter refused, with the hypocritical words that, though he was quite ready to sacrifice his life for the Prince, he could not do the dishonourable thing that was asked of him.