THE YEAR 1817.
1817 is the year which Louis XVIII., with a certain royal coolness which was not deficient in pride, entitled the twenty-second of his reign. It is the year in which M. Bruguière de Sorsum was celebrated. All the wig-makers' shops, hoping for powder and the return of the royal bird, were covered with azure and fleurs de lys. It was the candid time when Count Lynch sat every Sunday as churchwarden at St. Germain-des-Près in the coat of a peer of France, with his red ribbon, his long nose, and that majestic profile peculiar to a man who has done a brilliant deed. The brilliant deed done by M. Lynch was having, when Mayor of Bordeaux, surrendered the town rather prematurely on March 12, 1814, to the Duc d'Angoulême; hence his peerage. In 1817 fashion buried little boys of the age of six and seven beneath vast morocco leather caps with earflaps, much resembling Esquimaux fur-bonnets. The French army was dressed in white, like the Austrian; the regiments were called Legions, and bore the names of the departments instead of numbers. Napoleon was at St Helena, and as England refused him green cloth he had his old coats turned. In 1817 Pellegrini sang, and Mlle. Bigottini danced, Potier reigned, and Odry was not as yet. Madame Saqui succeeded Forioso. There were still Prussians in France. M. Delalot was a personage. Legitimacy had just strengthened itself by cutting off the hand and then the head of Pleignier, Carbonneau, and Tolleron. Prince de Talleyrand, Lord High Chamberlain, and the Abbé Louis, Minister Designate of Finance, looked at each other with the laugh of two augurs. Both had celebrated on July 14, 1790, the Mass of the confederation in the Champ de Mars. Talleyrand had read it as bishop, Louis had served it as deacon. In 1817, in the side walks of the same Champ de Mars, could be seen large wooden cylinders, lying in the wet and rotting in the grass, painted blue, with traces of eagles and bees which had lost their gilding. These were the columns which two years previously supported the Emperor's balcony at the Champ de Mai. They were partly blackened by the bivouac fires of the Austrians encamped near Gros Caillou, and two or three of the columns had disappeared in the bivouac fires, and warmed the coarse hands of the Kaiserlichs. The Champ de Mai had this remarkable thing about it, that it was held in the month of June, and on the Champ de Mars. In this year, 1817, two things were popular,—the Voltaire Touquet and the snuff-box à la charte. The latest Parisian sensation was the crime of Dautun, who threw his brother's head into the basin on the Flower Market. People were beginning to grow anxious at the Admiralty that no news arrived about that fatal frigate la Méduse, which was destined to cover Chaumareix with shame and Géricault with glory. Colonel Selves proceeded to Egypt to become Soliman Pacha there. The palace of the Thermes, in the Rue de la Harpe, served as a shop for a cooper. On the platform of the octagonal tower of the Hotel de Cluny, could still be seen the little wooden house, which had served as an observatory for Messier, astronomer to the Admiralty under Louis XVI. The Duchesse de Duras was reading to three or four friends in her boudoir furnished with sky-blue satin X's, her unpublished romance of Ourika. The N's were scratched off the Louvre. The Austerlitz bridge was forsworn, and called the Kings' Gardens' bridge,—a double enigma which at once disguised the Austerlitz bridge and the Jardin des Plantes. Louis XVIII., while annotating Horace with his nail, was troubled by heroes who make themselves emperors and cobblers who make themselves dauphins; he had two objects of anxiety,—Napoleon and Mathurin Bruneau. The French Academy offered as subject for the prize essay the happiness produced by study. M. Billart was officially eloquent; and in his shadow could be seen growing up that future Advocate-General de Broë, promised to the sarcasms of Paul Louis Courier. There was a false Châteaubriand called Marchangy, while waiting till there should be a false Marchangy, called d'Arlincourt. "Claire d'Albe" and "Malek-Adel" were master-pieces; and Madame Cottin was declared the first writer of the age. The Institute erased from its lists the Academician Napoleon Bonaparte. A royal decree constituted Angoulême a naval school, for, as the Duc d'Angoulême was Lord High Admiral, it was evident that the city from which he derived his title possessed de jure all the qualifications of a seaport; if not, the monarchical principle would be encroached on. In the cabinet-council the question was discussed whether the wood-cuts representing tumblers, which seasoned Franconi's bills and caused the street scamps to congregate, should be tolerated. M. Paër, author of l'Agnese, a square-faced man with a carbuncle on his chin, directed the private concerts of the Marchioness de Sassenaye in the Rue de la Ville'd'Evêque. All the young ladies were singing, "L'ermite de Saint Avelle," words by Edmond Géraud. The Yellow Dwarf was transformed into the Mirror. The Café Lemblin stood up for the Emperor against the Café Valois, which supported the Bourbons. The Duc de Berry, whom Louvel was already gazing at from the darkness, had just been married to a princess of Sicily. It was a year since Madame de Staël had died. The Life Guards hissed Mademoiselle Mars. The large papers were all small; their size was limited, but the liberty was great. The Constitutionnel was constitutional, and the Minerva called Châteaubriand, Châteaubriant; this t made the city laugh heartily, at the expense of the great writer. Prostituted journalists insulted in sold journals the proscripts of 1815. David had no longer talent, Arnault wit, Carnot probity. Soult never had won a battle. It is true that Napoleon no longer had genius. Everybody knows that it is rare for letters sent by post to reach an exile, for the police make it a religious duty to intercept them. The fact is not new, for Descartes when banished complained of it. David having displayed some temper in a Belgian paper at not receiving letters written to him, this appeared very amusing to the Royalist journals, which ridiculed the proscribed man. The use of the words regicides or voters, enemies or allies, Napoleon or Buonaparte, separated two men more than an abyss. All persons of common sense were agreed that the era of revolutions was eternally closed by Louis XVIII., surnamed "the immortal author of the Charter." On the platform of the Pont Neuf the word "Redivivus" was carved on the pedestal which was awaiting the statue of Henri IV. M. Piet was excogitating at No. 4 Rue Thérèse his council to consolidate the monarchy. The leaders of the Right said in grave complications, "Bacot must be written to." Messieurs Canuel, O'Mahony, and de Chappedelaine, were sketching under the covert approval of Monsieur what was destined to be at a later date "the conspiracy du Bord de l'eau." The "Black Pin" was plotting on its side. Delaverderie was coming to an understanding with Trogoff. M. Decazes, a rather liberally-minded man, was in the ascendant. Châteaubriand, standing each morning at his No. 27 Rue Saint Dominique, in trousers and slippers, with his gray hair fastened by a handkerchief, with his eyes fixed on a mirror, and a case of dentist's instruments open before him,—was cleaning his teeth, which were splendid, while dictating "the Monarchy according to the Charter" to M. Pilorge, his secretary. Authoritative critics preferred Lafon to Talma. M. de Feletz signed A; M. Hoffman signed Z. Charles Nodier was writing "Thérèse Aubert." Divorce was abolished. The lyceums were called colleges. The collegians, with a gold fleur de lys on their collar, were fighting about the King of Rome. The counter-police of the Château denounced to her Royal Highness Madame, the universally exposed portrait of the Duc d'Orléans, who looked much handsomer in his uniform of Colonel General of Hussars than the Duc de Berry did in his uniform as Colonel General of Dragoons, which was a serious annoyance. The city of Paris was having the dome of the Invalides regilt at its own cost. Serious-minded men asked themselves what M. de Trinquelague would do in such and such a case. M. Clausel de Montais diverged on certain points from M. Clausel de Coussergues; M. de Salaberry was not satisfied. Picard the comedian, who belonged to the Academy of which Molière was not a member, was playing the two Philiberts at the Odéon, on the façade of which could still be distinctly read: THÉÂTRE DE L'IMPÉRATRICE, although the letters had been torn down. People were taking sides for or against Cugnet de Montarlot. Fabvier was factious; Bavoux was revolutionary; Pelicier the publisher brought out an edition of Voltaire with the title "The Works of Voltaire, of the Académie Française." "That catches purchasers," the simple publisher said. It was the general opinion that M. Charles Loyson would be the genius of the age; envy was beginning to snap at him, which is a sign of glory, and the following line was written about him.
"Même quand Loyson vole, on sent qu'il a des pattes."
As Cardinal Fesch refused to resign, M. de Pins, Archbishop of Amasia, was administering the diocese of Lyons. The quarrel about the Dappes valley began between Switzerland and France, through a memorial of Captain Dufour, who has since become a general. Saint Simon, utterly ignored, was building up his sublime dream. There were in the Academy of Sciences a celebrated Fourier whom posterity has forgotten, and in some obscure garret a Fourier whom the future will remember. Lord Byron was beginning to culminate; a note to a poem of Millevoye's announced him to France in these terms, "un certain Lord Baron." David d'Angers was trying to mould marble. The Abbé Caron spoke in terms of praise to a select audience in the Alley of the Feuillantines of an unknown priest called Félicité Robert, who was at a later date Lamennais. A thing that smoked and plashed on the Seine with the noise of a swimming dog, went under the Tuileries windows from the Pont Royal to the Pont Louis XV.; it was a mechanism not worth much, a sort of plaything, a reverie of a dreamy inventor, an Utopia: a steamboat. The Parisians looked at this useless thing with indifference. M. de Vaublanc, reformer of the Institute by coup d'état, and distinguished author of several academicians, after making them, could not succeed in becoming one himself. The Faubourg St Germain and the Pavilion Marson desired to have M. Delvau as Prefect of police on account of his devotion. Dupuytren and Récamier quarrelled in the theatre of the School of Medicine, and were going to fight about the divinity of the Saviour. Cuvier, with one eye on Genesis and the other on nature, was striving to please the bigoted reaction by placing forms in harmony with texts, and letting Moses be flattered by the Mastodons. M. François de Neufchâteau, the praiseworthy cultivator of the memory of Parmentier, was making a thousand efforts to have "pommes de terre" pronounced "parmentière," but did not succeed. The Abbé Grégoire, ex-bishop, ex-conventionalist, and ex-senator, had reached in the royal polemics the state of the "infamous Grégoire," which was denounced as a neologism by M. Royer-Collard. In the third arch of the Pont de Jéna, the new stone could still be distinguished through its whiteness, with which two years previously the mine formed by Blucher to blow up the bridge was stopped up. Justice summoned to her bar a man who, on seeing the Comte d'Artois enter Notre Dame, said aloud: "Sapristi! I regret the days when I saw Napoleon and Talma enter the Bal Sauvage arm in arm," seditious remarks punished with six months' imprisonment.
Traitors displayed themselves unblushingly; some, who had passed over to the enemy on the eve of a battle, did not conceal their reward, but walked immodestly in the sunshine with the cynicism of wealth and dignities; the deserters at Ligny and Quatre Bras, well rewarded for their turpitude, openly displayed their monarchical devotion.
Such are a few recollections of the year 1817, which is now forgotten. History neglects nearly all these details, and cannot do otherwise, as the infinity would crush it. Still these details, wrongly called little,—there are no little facts in humanity or little leaves in vegetation,—are useful, for the face of ages is composed of the physiognomy of years.
In this year 1817 four young Parisians played a capital joke.