Can you not imagine the future James the First, barelegged, in a black-belted smock, halting with his nurse, or his priest, to gaze up in awestruck delight at the great, red-breeched Zouaves lounging on guard at the Tuileries?
“When I grow up,” said little James to himself, not knowing that he never would grow up, “I shall have Zouaves for my palace guard.”
And twenty years later, when he laid down the laws for his little kingdom, you find that the officers of his court must wear the mustache, “a la Louis Napoleon,” and that the Zouave uniform will be worn by the Palace Guards.
In 1883, while he still was at the War College, his father died, and when he graduated, which he did with honors, he found himself his own master. His assets were a small income, a perfect knowledge of the French language, and the reputation of being one of the most expert swordsman in Paris. He chose not to enter the army, and instead became a journalist, novelist, duellist, an habitue of the Latin Quarter and the boulevards.
As a novelist the titles of his books suggest their quality. Among them are: “Un Amour Vendeen,” “Lettres d’un Yankee,” “Un Amour dans le Monde,” “Memoires d’un Gommeux,” “Merveilleuses Aventures de Nabuchodonosor, Nosebreaker.”
Of the Catholic Church he wrote seriously, apparently with deep conviction, with high enthusiasm. In her service as a defender of the faith he issued essays, pamphlets, “broadsides.” The opponents of the Church in Paris he attacked relentlessly.
As a reward for his championship he received the title of baron.
In 1878, while only twenty-four, he married the Countess de Saint-Pery, by whom he had two children, a boy and a girl, and three years later he started Triboulet. It was this paper that made him famous to “all Paris.”
It was a Royalist sheet, subsidized by the Count de Chambord and published in the interest of the Bourbons. Until 1888 Harden-Hickey was its editor, and even by his enemies it must be said that he served his employers with zeal. During the seven years in which the paper amused Paris and annoyed the republican government, as its editor Harden-Hickey was involved in forty-two lawsuits, for different editorial indiscretions, fined three hundred thousand francs, and was a principal in countless duels.
To his brother editors his standing interrogation was: “Would you prefer to meet me upon the editorial page, or in the Bois de Boulogne?” Among those who met him in the Bois were Aurelien Scholl, H. Lavenbryon, M. Taine, M. de Cyon, Philippe Du Bois, Jean Moreas.