A thousand instances of this kindness of heart might be cited to show that M. de Lesseps ever remained a chivalrous gentleman in the best sense of the word. A trifling experience of my own may suffice. A few days after my first visit to him, at the office of the Suez Canal, I was dining at a house in the Cours-la-Reine. It was my first visit to that house, a fact which somewhat contributed to my embarrassment in what was one of my first experiences in Parisian society. Amongst the guests was the editor of one of the principal French papers, and being anxious to make his acquaintance, I asked our host to introduce me to my confrère. The editor in question had no courtesies to waste upon an insignificant foreigner, and acknowledged my bow with a reverence of exaggerated profundity, bowing almost to the earth, and then swinging round on his heel to continue a conversation with another journalist, which had been interrupted by the introduction. I was left standing in the middle of the room, with my eyes on the editor’s back, suffused with shame and mortification. M. de Lesseps saw the slight thus inflicted on a young man, and from kindness of heart immediately did what he could to efface it. From his place at the fire, where he had been standing surrounded by the usual crowd of courtiers, he had noticed the incident, and I saw him making his way across the drawing-room towards me, exclaiming to those around him: “Oh, there is a young man with whom I must have a few words!” He then took me by the hand, drew me aside, and remained conversing with me until dinner was announced.
COUNT DE LESSEPS IN 1880.
In view of the awful change that, within so short a time, has been made in this gentleman, I cannot but think that it must be attributed to the shock produced in a very old man by an experience which shows him that he has been mistaken all his life long. It is terrible to wake up at eighty-five and find that things are not what one has believed during his past life, and that the men whom one has loved and respected are unworthy. I believe that what has struck Ferdinand de Lesseps down in his chair, in full vitality, is an immense disappointment, not at the failure of his hopes, for he has always been indifferent to money, and has never had the wish to leave his children large fortunes, but at the falseness of a creed which was optimistic to the point of blindness. I believe that Ferdinand de Lesseps is dying of a broken heart, broken by the immense ingratitude of men. And if the loss of all the money that has been sunk in the Panama mud and the pockets of the intrigants of the Third Republic adds to his sorrow, it is certainly not for himself nor his family, but for all those who are suffering because they shared his belief in his star, and who blindly followed him to ruin. He knew that they were of the humble, and often told me so. “Panama will be carried out with the savings in woollen stockings of the peasant and of the workman,” he used to say. He has never been self-seeking. He presented France with a concession, that of the Suez Canal, estimated at one hundred millions of francs, and with lands worth another thirty millions, and fought heroically for years to render to his gift its greatest value. In the words of M. Renan, the courage, the energy, the resources of all sorts expended by M. de Lesseps in this struggle were nothing short of prodigious. In exchange he took for himself enough to enable him to lead the life of a gentleman and to do good around him. Each of his children he endowed with not more than seventy thousand francs, the revenues from which, together with his wife’s private fortune, are now all that remain to the family. I firmly believe that all his life he acted only from feelings of philanthropy and from patriotism of the most chivalrous type. He never had any desire to leave a large fortune, and I can remember his saying to me, very emphatically, that his children must do as he had done; and that they would do so if they were worthy of his name; and that he never wished to leave them large fortunes, but an honorable name, a love for their country equal to his, and an example which he hoped they would follow. “Let them work as I have done,” said this most tender of fathers.
It seems that not even this heritage of an honored name is, if the persecutors of the old man can have their way, to be left to his family. Since he has been down the number of his adversaries has of course increased tenfold. Even those who owe him all—many officials at the Suez Canal Company, for instance, who owe their positions and fortunes to his genius—seem glad to revenge themselves for their obligation. De Lesseps has done too much good to men not to be hated, and it is to be regretted that poor De Maupassant cannot wield his pen in analysis of the motives which are actuating his former dependents in their endeavors to renounce all solidarity with the dying octogenarian of La Chesnaye. I visited the offices of the Suez Canal Company a few days ago, and, prepared as one is for human ingratitude, it was distressing in the extreme to see how poor a thing to charm with was the name at the sound of which, as I can well remember, all the flunkeys of the 90 place in livery or black frock coat doubled up in the days that are past. The lion is down, and every ass of Paris has a heel to kick him with.
COUNT DE LESSEPS IN 1892.
On the other hand, the adversities of the De Lesseps family have revealed to them the immense number of friends which they possess in all parts of the world. Letters and telegrams keep pouring in from all sides to La Chesnaye, and all the available pens are kept busy most of the day and night in answering the kindest expressions of sympathy, many from utter strangers. “This is the only thing that gives me courage to bear it all,” said Madame de Lesseps. Helene told me, with some amusement, that a Spanish banker had the day before written to Madame de Lesseps to offer her a present of a million, and that there had been many similar offers of pecuniary assistance from people who believed the family to be totally ruined. When Charles was down at La Chesnaye, and was walking in the woods with his escort behind him, a serious offer was made to him by friends who had gathered around him, to effect his rescue if he would but give the word. As for tokens of sympathy from all the country around, they are unending. The farmer at the home-farm, which was built by M. de Lesseps, and which has been in the occupation of the present tenants from the beginning, was at dinner when the paper containing the news of Charles’s conviction and sentence reached him. “He turned quite white,” said his wife to me, “and rushed out of the house and went roaming about the woods like a demented man until late at night. And I have cried every time I have thought of M. Charles, whom I knew when he was a baby not higher than my knee.” But perhaps the most devoted friend that remains to the family is M. de Lesseps’s valet, who since his master’s fall has never left him for more than ten minutes together, sleeping on a mattress in his bedroom, and waiting on him patiently all day and all night. “Don’t let anyone, I don’t care who it may be,” he says, clenching his fist, “come near my master. I will be killed before any offence shall be put upon him.” And though one is rather sceptical as to such professions, I fully believe that in this case they are sincere. It was touching to note with what reverence, when lunch was served, this valet approached his master, and, mindful of old formalities of respect, bowed and said that Monsieur the Count was served; to note with what womanly gentleness this strong man lifted his feeble master up and guided his tottering steps into the adjoining dining-room.