What I Remember, Volume 1

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

But the Monarchists were more amusingly divided into “Parceque Bourbon,” supporters of the existing régime, and “Quoique Bourbon,” tolerators of it. The former, of course, would have preferred the white flag and Charles Dix; but failing the possibility of such a return to the old ways, were content to live under the rule of a sovereign, who, though not the legitimate monarch by right divine, was at least a scion of the old legitimate race. The “Quoique Bourbon” partisans were the men who, denying all right to the throne save that which emanated from the will of the people, were yet Monarchists from their well-rooted dread of the intolerable evils which Republicanism had brought, and, as they were convinced, would bring again upon France, and were therefore contented to support the bourgeois monarchy “although” the man on the throne was an undeniable Bourbon.

But what made the streets, the boulevards, the Champs Elysées, and especially the Tuileries garden peculiarly amusing to a stranger, was the circumstance that the Parisians all got themselves up with strict attention to the recognised costume proper to their political party. The Legitimist, the “Quoique Bourbon” bourgeois, (very probably in the uniform of the then immensely popular National Guard) and the Republican in his appropriate bandit-shaped hat and coat with exaggeratedly large lappels, or draped picturesquely in the folds of a cloak, after a fashion borrowed from the other side of the Alps, were all distinguishable at a glance. It was then that deliciously graphic line (I forget who wrote it) “Feignons à feindre à fin de mieux dissimuler” was applied to characterise the conspirator-like attitudes it pleased these gentlemen to assume.

The truth was that Paris was still very much afraid of them. I remember the infinite glee, and the outpouring of ridicule, which hailed the dispersion of a Republican “demonstration” (the reader will forgive the anachronism of the phrase), at the Porte St. Martin, by the judicious use of a powerful fire-engine. The heroes of the drapeau rouge had boasted they would stand their ground against any charge of soldiery. Perhaps they would have done so. But the helter-skelter that ensued on the first well-directed jet of cold water from the pipe of a fire-engine furnished Paris with laughter for days afterwards.

But, as I have said, Paris, not unreasonably, feared them. Secret conspiracy is always an ugly enemy to deal with. And no violence of mere speculative opinion would have sufficed, had fear been absent, to cause the very marked repulsion with which all the Parisians, who had anything to lose, in that day regarded their Republican fellow citizens.

Assuredly the Conservatives of the Parisian world of 1835 were not “the stupid party.” Both in their newspapers, and other ephemeral literature, and in the never-ending succession of current mots and jokes which circulated in the Parisian salons, they had the pull very decidedly. I remember some words of a parody on one of the Republican songs of the day, which had an immense vogue at that time. “On devrait planter le chêne,” it ran, “pour l’arbre de la liberté” (it will be remembered that planting “trees of liberty” was one of the common and more harmless “demonstrations” of the Republican party). “Ses glands nouriraient sans peine les cochons qui l’ont planté.” And the burthen of the original which ran, “Mourir pour la patrie, C’est le sort le plus beau le plus digne d’envie,” was sufficiently and very appositely caricatured by the slight change of “Mourir pour la patrie” into “Nourris par la patrie,” &c.

To a stranger seeing Paris as I saw it, and frequenting the houses which I frequented, it seemed strange that such a community should have considered itself in serious danger from men who seemed to me, looking from such a stand-point, a mere handful of skulking melodramatic enthusiasts, playing at conspiracy and rebellion rather than really meditating it. But I was not at that time fully aware how entirely the real danger was to be found in regions of Paris, and strata of its population which were as entirely hidden from my observation, as if they had been a thousand miles away. But though I could not see the danger, I saw unmistakably enough the fear it inspired in all classes of those who, as I said before, had anything to lose.

It was this fear that made the National Guard the heroes of the hour. It was impossible but that such a body of men—Parisian shopkeepers put into uniform (those of them who would condescend to wear it; for many used to be seen, who contented themselves with girding on a sabre and assuming a firelock, while others would go to the extent of surmounting the ordinary black coat with the regulation military shako)—should afford a target for many shafts of ridicule. The capon-lined paunches of a considerable contingent of these well-to-do warriors were an inexhaustible source of not very pungent jokes. But Paris would have been frightened out of its wits at the bare suggestion of suppressing these citizen saviours of society. Of course they were petted at the Tuileries. No reception or fête of any kind was complete without a large sprinkling of these shopkeeping guardsmen, and their presence on such occasions was the subject of an unfailing series of historiettes.

I remember an anecdote excellently illustrative of the time, which was current in the salons of the “Parceque Bourbon” society of the day. A certain elderly duchess of the vieille roche, a dainty little woman, very mignonne, whose exquisite parure and still more exquisite manners scented the air at a league’s distance, to use the common French phrase, with the odour of the most aristocratic salons of the Quartier St. Germain, was, at one of Louis Philippe’s Tuileries receptions, about to take from the tray handed round by a servant the last of the ices which it had contained, when a huge outstretched hand, with its five wide-spread fingers, was protruded from behind over her shoulder, and the refreshment of which she was about to avail herself was seized by a big National Guard with the exclamation, “Enfoncèe la petite mère!”

Nevertheless, it may be safely asserted that the little duchess, and all the world she moved in, would have been infinitely more dismayed had they gone to the Tuileries and seen no National Guards there.

Among the many persons of note with whom I became more or less well acquainted during that month, no one perhaps stands out more vividly in my recollection than Chateaubriand. He also, though standing much aloof from the noise and movement of the political passions of the time, was an aristocrat jusqu’au bout des ongles, in appearance, in manners, in opinions, and general tone of mind. The impression to this effect immediately produced on one’s first presentation was in no degree due to any personal advantages. He was not, when I knew him, nor do I think he ever could have been, a good looking man. He stooped a good deal, and his head and shoulders gave me the impression of being somewhat too large for the rest of his person. The lower part of his face too, was, I thought, rather heavy.