[THE STORY OF THIERS.]
In a densely populated street of the quaint sea-port of Marseilles there dwelt a poor locksmith and his family, who were so hard pressed by the dearness of provisions and the general hardness of the times, that the rent and taxes for the wretched tenement which they called a home had been allowed to fall many weeks into arrear. But the good people struggled on against their poverty; and the locksmith (who was the son of a ruined cloth-merchant), though fallen to the humble position of a dock-porter, still managed to wade through life as if he had been born to opulence. This poor labourer’s name was Thiers, and his wife was a descendant of the poet Chenier; the two being destined to become the parents of Louis Adolphe Thiers, one of the most remarkable men that ever lived.
The hero of our story was at his birth mentally consigned to oblivion by his parents, while the neighbours laughed at the ungainly child, and prognosticated for him all kinds of evil in the future. And it is more than probable that these evil auguries would have been fulfilled had it not been for the extraordinary care bestowed upon him by his grandmother. But for her, perhaps our story had never been written.
Under her fostering care the child survived all those diseases which were, according to the gossips, to prove fatal to him; but while his limbs remained almost stationary, his head and chest grew larger, until he became a veritable dwarf. By his mother’s influence with the family of André Chenier, the lad was enabled to enter the Marseilles Lyceum at the age of nine; and here the remarkable head and chest kept the promise they made in his infancy, and soon fulfilled Madame Thiers’ predictions.
Louis Adolphe Thiers was a brilliant though somewhat erratic pupil. He was noted for his practical jokes, his restlessness, and the ready and ingenious manner in which he always extricated himself from any scrapes into which his bold and restless disposition had led him. Thus the child in this case would appear to have been ‘father to the man,’ by the manner in which he afterwards released his beloved country from one of the greatest ‘scrapes’ she ever experienced.
On leaving school Thiers studied for the law, and was eventually called to the bar, though he never practised as a lawyer. He became instead a local politician; and so well did the rôle suit him, that he soon evinced a strong desire to try his fortune in Paris itself. He swayed his auditory, when speaking, in spite of his diminutive stature, Punch-like physiognomy, and shrill piping speech; and shout and yell as his adversaries might, they could not drown his voice, for it arose clear and distinct above all the hubbub around him. While the studious youth was thus making himself a name in his native town, he was ever on the watch for an opportunity to transfer his fortunes to the capital. His almost penniless condition, however, precluded him from carrying out his design without extraneous assistance of some kind or other; but when such a stupendous ambition as that of governing one of the greatest nations of the earth filled the breast of the Marseilles student, it was not likely that the opportunity he was seeking would be long in coming.
The Academy of Aix offered a prize of a few hundred francs for a eulogium on Vauvenargues, and here was the opportunity which Louis Adolphe Thiers required. He determined to compete for the prize, and wrote out two copies of his essay, one of which he sent to the Academy’s Secretary, and the other he submitted to the judgment of his friends. This latter indiscretion, however, would appear to have been the cause of his name being mentioned to the Academicians as a competitor; and as they had a spite against him, and disapproved of his opinions, they decided to reject any essay which he might submit to them.
On the day of the competition they were as good as their word, and Thiers received back his essay with only an ‘honourable mention’ attached to it. The votes, however, had been equally divided, and the principal prize could not be adjudged until the next session. The future statesman and brilliant journalist was not, however, to be cast aside in this contemptuous manner, and he accordingly adopted a ruse de guerre, which was perfectly justifiable under the circumstances. He sent back his first essay for the second competition with his own name attached thereto, and at the same time transmitted another essay, by means of a friend, through the Paris post-office. This paper was signed ‘Louis Duval;’ and as M. Thiers knew that they had resolved to reject his essay and accept the next best on the list, he made it as near as possible equal to the other in point of merit.
The Academicians were thoroughly out-generalled by this clever artifice, and the prize was awarded to the essay signed ‘Louis Duval;’ but the chagrin of the dons when the envelope was opened and the name of Louis Adolphe Thiers was read out, can be better imagined than described. The prize, which amounted to about twenty pounds, was added to another sum of forty pounds gained by his friend Mignet for essay-writing; and with this modest amount, the two friends set out on their journey to Paris. On their arrival there, both of them were at once engaged as writers on the Globe newspaper, and M. Thiers’ articles soon attracted such attention that the highest political destinies were predicted for their author.
Alluding to the small stature of our hero, Prince Talleyrand once said: ‘Il est petit, mais il grandira!’ (He is little, but he will be great!) Meanwhile, the young adventurer, as we may call him, was engaged on general literary work for the press, writing political leaders one day, art-criticisms the next, and so on, until a publisher asked him to write the History of the French Revolution. He accepted; and when published, the work met with so great a success that it placed him in the front rank of literature, and gained for him the proud title of ‘National Historian.’ After this the two friends published the National newspaper, an undertaking which we are told was conceived in Talleyrand’s house, and was largely subscribed to by the Duke of Orleans, afterwards King Louis-Philippe. M. Thiers disliked the Bourbons; and when, in 1829, Charles X. dissolved a liberal parliament, he took the lead in agitating for the reinstating of the people’s rights. The king having determined to reply to the re-election of the ‘221’ by a coup d’état, the nature of which was secretly communicated to M. Thiers, the latter hastened to the office of the National and drew up the celebrated Protest of the Journalists, which before noon was signed by every writer on the liberal side. As M. Thiers was leaving the office, a servant of Prince Talleyrand placed in his hand a note, which simply bore the words, ‘Go and gather cherries.’ This was a hint that danger was near the young patriot, and that he should repair to the house of one of the Prince’s friends at Montmorency—a place famous for its cherries—and there lie hidden until the storm had blown over.