He was given a sou after the ritornello. Such is the ground-work of the human society which bore Alexander and was then bearing Napoleon.
Changes in Paris.
I visited the places where I had taken the reveries of my early years. In my old-time convents, the club-men had been driven out after the monks. Wandering behind the Luxembourg, my footsteps led me to the Chartreuse: its demolition was being completed. The Place des Victoires and the Place Vendôme mourned the missing effigies of the Great King; the community-house of the Capuchins was sacked: the inner cloisters served as a retreat for Robertson's[379] dissolving views. At the Cordeliers, I inquired in vain for the Gothic nave where I had seen Marat and Danton in their prime. On the Quai des Théatins[380], the church of that Order[381] had been turned into a café and a rope-dancers' theatre. At the door was a coloured poster representing acrobats dancing on the tight-rope, with, in big letters, ADMISSION FREE. I elbowed my way among the crowd into that perfidious cave: I had no sooner taken my seat than waiters entered, napkin in hand, shouting like mad-men—
"Give your orders, gentlemen, give your orders!"
I did not wait to be told a second time, and I pitiably made my escape amid the jeering cries of the assembly, because I had no money wherewith to "give my orders."
*
The Revolution has become divided into three parts which have nothing in common between them: the Republic, the Empire, and the Restoration; those three different worlds, each as completely finished as the others, seem separated by centuries. Each of these three worlds has had its fixed principle: the principle of the Republic was equality, that of the Empire force, that of the Restoration liberty. The Republican era is the most original, and has made the deepest impression because it has been unique in history: never had there been seen, nor ever will be again, physical order produced by moral disorder, unity issuing from the government of the multitude, the scaffold substituted for the law and obeyed in the name of humanity.
In 1801, I assisted at the second social transformation. The jumble was a strange one: by an agreed travesty, a host of people became persons who they were not; each carried his assumed or borrowed name hung round his neck, as the Venetians at the carnival carry a little mask in their hand to show that they are masked. One was reputed an Italian or a Spaniard, another a Prussian or a Dutchman: I was a Swiss. The mother passed for her son's aunt, the father for his daughter's uncle; the owner of an estate was only its steward. This movement reminded me, in an opposite sense, of the movement of 1789, when the monks and religious issued from their cloisters and the old society was invaded by the new: the latter, after supplanting the former, was supplanted in its turn.
Nevertheless, the orderly world commenced to spring up again; people left the cafés and the streets to return to their houses; they gathered together the remains of their family; they readjusted their inheritance by collecting its remnants, as, after a battle, the troop is beaten and the losses counted. Such churches as remained whole were opened: I had the happiness to sound the trumpet at the gate of the Temple. One distinguished the old republican generations which were retiring, imperial generations which were coming to the front Generals of the Requisition[382], poor, rude of speech, stern of mien, who, from all their campaigns, had brought back nothing save wounds and ragged coats, passed officers glittering with the gold lace of the Consular Army. The returned Emigrant chatted quietly with the assassins of some of his kindred. The porters, all great partisans of the late M. de Robespierre, regretted the sights on the Place Louis XV., where they cut off the heads of "women who," my own concierge in the Rue de Lille told me, "had necks white as chicken's flesh."
The men of September, changing their names and their districts, sold baked potatoes at the street-corners; but they were often obliged to pack off, because the people, recognising them, upset their stalls and tried to kill them. The Revolutionaries who had waxed rich began to move into the great mansions of the Faubourg Saint-Germain that had been sold. On the road to become barons and counts, the Jacobins spoke only of the horrors of 1793, of the necessity for chastising the proletarians and putting down the excesses of the populace. Bonaparte, placing the Brutuses and Scævolas in his police, was preparing to bedizen them with ribands, to befoul them with titles, to force them to betray their opinions and dishonour their crimes. Amid all this, sprang up a vigorous generation sown in blood and growing up to shed none save that of the foreigner: from day to day, the metamorphosis was accomplished which turned Republicans into Imperialists and the tyranny of all into the despotism of one.