MY MEMOIRS
BY
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
TRANSLATED BY
E. M. WALLER
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
ANDREW LANG
IN SIX VOLUMES
VOL. IV
1830 TO 1831
WITH A FRONTISPIECE
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1908
Thomas Alexandre Dumas
General in the army of the French Republic.
Born at Jérémie in America, March 25th 1762.
CONTENTS
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
Mademoiselle Georges' house—Harel and Jules Janin—Young Tom and Popol—The latter's prayer against cholera—Georges' Oriental style of living—Her cleanliness—Harel's fault to the contrary—Twenty-four thousand francs flung out of the window—Saint Anthony—Piaff-Piaff—His dissoluteness—His death—His funeral oration [1]
CHAPTER II
M. Briffaut, Censor and Academician—History of Ninus II.—M. de Lourdoueix—The idea of Antony—The piece received by the Français is stopped by the Censorship—The Duc de Chartres—Negotiations for his presence with that of his two brothers at the first representation of Christine—Louët—An autograph of the Prince Royal [9]
CHAPTER III
The first representation of Hernani—The old ace of spades—The old man has a quarrel—Parodies—Origin of the story of Cabrion and of Pipelet—Eugène Sue and Desmares—Soulié returns to me—He offers me fifty of his workmen in the capacity of applauders—First representation of Christine—A supper at my lodgings—Hugo and de Vigny correct the objectionable lines [23]
CHAPTER IV
A passing cab—Madame Dorval in the Incendiaire—Two actresses—The Duc d'Orléans asks for the Cross of the Legion of Honour on my behalf—His recommendation has no effect—M. Empis—Madame Lafond's Salon—My costume as Arnaute—Madame Malibran—Brothers and sisters in Art [34]
CHAPTER V
Why the Duc d'Orléans' recommendation on the subject of my croix d'honneur failed—The indemnity of a milliard—La Fayette's journey to Auvergne—His reception at Grenoble, Vizille and at Lyons—Charles X.'s journey to Alsace—Varennes and Nancy—Opening of the Chambers—The royal speech and the Address of the 221—Article 14—The conquest of Algiers and the recapture of our Rhine frontiers [44]
CHAPTER VI
The soirée on 31 May 1830 at the Palais-Royal—The King of Naples—A question of etiquette—How the King of France ought to be addressed—The real Charles X.—M. de Salvandy—The first flames of the volcano—The Duc de Chartres sends me to inquire into the commotion—Alphonse Signol—I tear him from the clutches of a soldier of the Garde royal—His irritation and threats—The volcano nothing but a fire of straw [54]
CHAPTER VII
A pressing affair—One witness lost, and two found—Rochefort—Signol at the Théâtre des Italiens—He insults Lieutenant Marulaz—The two swords—The duel—Signol is killed—Victorine and le Chiffonnier—Death steps in [61]
BOOK II
CHAPTER I
Alphonse Karr—The cuirassier—The medal for life saving and the Cross of the Légion d'honneur—Karr's home at Montmartre—Sous les tilleuls and the critics—The taking of Algiers—M. Dupin senior—Why he did not write his Memoirs—Signing of the Ordinances of July—Reasons that prevented my going to Algiers [67]
CHAPTER II
The third storey of No. 7 in the rue de l'Université—The first results of the Ordinances—The café du Roi—Étienne Arago—François Arago—The Academy—La Bourse—Le Palais-Royal—Madame de Leuven—Journey in search of her husband and son—Protest of the journalists—Names of the signatories [77]
CHAPTER III
The morning of July 27—Visit to my mother—Paul Foucher—Amy Robsart—Armand Carrel—The office of the Temps—Baude—The Commissary of Police—The three locksmiths—The office of the National—Cadet Gassicourt—Colonel Gourgaud—M. de Rémusat—Physiognomy of the passers-by [86]
CHAPTER IV
Doctor Thibaut—The Government of Gérard and Mortemart—Étienne Arago and Mazue, the Superintendent of Police—The café Gobillard—Fire at the guard-house in the place de la Bourse—The first barricades—The night [97]
CHAPTER V
The morning of the 27th—Joubert—Charles Teste—La Petite Jacobinière—Chemist Robinet—The arms used in Sergent Mathieu—Pillage of an armourer's stores—The three Royal Guards—A tall and fair young man—Oudard's fears 105
CHAPTER VI
The aspect of the rue de Richelieu—Charras—L'École polytechnique—The head with the wig—The café of the Porte Saint-Honoré—The tricoloured flag—I become head of a troop—My landlord gives me notice—A gentleman who distributes powder—The captain of the 15th Light Infantry [114]
CHAPTER VII
The attack on the Hôtel de Ville—Rout—I take refuge at M. Lethière's—The news—My landlord becomes generous—General La Fayette—Taschereau—Béranger—The list of the Provisional Government—Honest mistake of the Constitutionnel [125]
CHAPTER VIII
Invasion of the Artillery Museum—Armour of François I.—Charles IX.'s arquebuse—La place de l'Odéon—What Charras had been doing—The uniform of the École polytechnique—Millotte—The prison Montaigu—The barracks of l'Estrapade—D'Hostel—A Bonapartist—Riding-master Chopin—Lothon—The general in command [134]
CHAPTER IX
Aspect of the Louvre—Fight on the Pont des Arts—The dead and wounded—A cannon ball for myself—Madame Guyet-Desfontaines—Return from the Babylone barracks—Charras's cockade—The taking of the Tuileries—A copy of Christine—Quadrille danced in the Tuileries court—The men who made the Revolution of 1830 [149]
BOOK III
CHAPTER I
I go in search of Oudard—The house at the corner of the rue de Rohan—Oudard is with Laffitte—Degousée—General Pajol and M. Dupin—The officers of the 53rd Regiment—Interior of Laffitte's salon—Panic—A deputation comes to offer La Fayette the command of Paris—He accepts—Étienne Arago and the tricoloured cockade—History of the Hôtel de Ville from eight in the morning to half-past three in the afternoon [164]
CHAPTER II
General La Fayette at the Hôtel de Ville—Charras and his men—"The Prunes of Monsieur"—The Municipal Commission—Its first Act—Casimir Périer's bank—General Gérard—The Duc de Choiseul—What happened at Saint-Cloud—The three negotiators—It is too late—M. d'Argout with Laffitte [175]
CHAPTER III
Alexander de la Borde—Odilon Barrot—Colonel Dumoulin—Hippolyte Bonnelier—My study—A note in Oudard's handwriting—The Duc de Chartres is arrested at Montrouge—The danger he incurred and how he was saved—I propose to go to Soissons to fetch gunpowder—I procure my commission from General Gérard—La Fayette draws up a proclamation for me—The painter bard—M. Thiers to the fore once more [187]
CHAPTER IV
Gee up, Polignac!—André Marchais—Post-master at Bourget—I display the Tricolour on my carriage—Bard joins me—M. Cunin-Gridaine—Old Levasseur—Struggle with him—I blow out his brains!—Two old acquaintances—The terror of Jean-Louis—Our halt at Villers-Cotterets—Hutin—Supper with Paillet [203]
CHAPTER V
Arrival at Soissons—Strategic preparations—Reconnaissance round the magazine—Hutin and Bard plant the tricolour flag upon the cathedral—I climb the wall of the powder magazine—Captain Mollard—Sergeant Ragon—Lieutenant-Colonel d'Orcourt—Parleys with them—They promise me neutrality [217]
CHAPTER VI
How matters had proceeded with the sacristan—The four-inch gun—Bard as gunner—The commander of the fort—Lieutenant Tinga—M. de Lenferna—M. Bonvilliers—Madame de Linières—The revolt of the negroes—The conditions upon which the commander of the fort signed the order—M. Moreau—M. Quinette—The Mayor of Soissons—Bard and the green plums [224]
CHAPTER VII
The Mayor of Soissons—The excise-office powder—M. Jousselin— The hatchet belonging to the warehouse-keeper—M. Quinette—I break open the door of the powder magazine—Triumphant exit from Soissons—M. Mennesson attempts to have me arrested—The Guards of the Duc d'Orléans—M. Boyer—Return to Paris—"Those devils of Republicans!" [234]
CHAPTER VIII
First Orléanist proclamation—MM. Thiers and Scheffer go to Neuilly—The evening at Saint-Cloud—Charles X. revokes the Ordinances—Republican deputation at the Hôtel de Ville—M. de Sussy—Audry de Puyraveau—Republican proclamation—La Fayette's reply to the Duc de Mortemart—Charras and Mauguin [245]
CHAPTER IX
Philippe VII.—How Béranger justified himself for having helped to make a King—The Duc d'Orléans during the three days—His arrival in Paris on the evening of the 30th—He sends for M. de Mortemart—Unpublished letter by him to Charles X.—Benjamin Constant and Laffitte—Deputation of the Chamber to the Palais-Royal—M. Sébastiani—M. de Talleyrand—The Duc d'Orléans accepts the Lieutenant-Generalship of the Kingdom—Curious papers found at the Tuileries [239]
CHAPTER X
The Duc d'Orléans goes to the Hôtel de Ville—M. Laffitte in his sedan-chair—The king sans culotte—Tardy manifestation of the Provisional Government—Odilon Barrot sleeps on a milestone—Another Balthasar Gérard—The Duc d'Orléans is received by La Fayette—A superb voice—Fresh appearance of general Dubourg—The balcony of the Hôtel de Ville—The road to Joigny [276]
BOOK IV
CHAPTER I
M. Thiers' way of writing history—Republicans at the Palais-Royal—Louis-Philippe's first ministry—Casimir Périer's cunning—My finest drama—Lothon and Charras—A sword-thrust—The posting-master of Bourget once more—La Fère—Lieutenant-Colonel Duriveau—Lothon and General La Fayette [284]
CHAPTER II
Letter of Charles X. to the Duc d'Orléans—A conjuring trick—Return of the Duc de Chartres to the Palais-Royal—Bourbons and Valois—Abdication of Charles X.—Preparations for the expedition of Rambouillet—An idea of Harel—The scene-shifters of the Odéon—Nineteen persons in one fiacre—Distribution of arms at the Palais-Royal—Colonel Jacqueminot [309]
CHAPTER III
Mission of four commissioners to Charles X.—General Pajol—He is appointed commander of the Paris Volunteers—Charras offers to be his aide-de-camp—The map of Seine-et-Oise—The spies—The hirer of carriages—Rations of bread—D'Arpentigny—The taking of the artillery of Saint-Cyr—Halt at Cognières—M. Detours [320]
CHAPTER IV
Boyer the Cruel—The ten thousand rations of bread—General Exelmans and Charras—The concierge at the prefecture of Versailles—M. Aubernon—Colonel Poque—Interview of Charles X. with MM. de Schonen, Odilon Barrot and Marshal Maison—The Royal Family leave Rambouillet—Panic—The crown jewels—Return to Paris [332]
CHAPTER V
Harel's idea—It is suggested I should compose La Parisienne—Auguste Barbier—My state of morals after the Three Days—I turn solicitor—Breakfast with General La Fayette—My interview with him—An indiscreet question—The Marquis de Favras—A letter from Monsieur—My commission
CHAPTER VI
Léon Pillet—His uniform—Soissonnais susceptibility—Hard returns to the charge with his play—I set out for la Vendée—The quarry—I obtain pardon for a coiner condemned to the galleys—My stay at Meurs—Commandant Bourgeois—Disastrous effect of the tricolours in le Bocage—Fresh proofs that a kindness done is never lost [354]
CHAPTER VII
A warning to Parisian sportsmen—Clisson—The château of M. Lemot—My guide—The Vendean column—The battle of Torfou—Two omitted names—Piffanges—Tibulle and the Loire—Gilles de Laval—His edifying death—Means taken to engrave a remembrance on the minds of children [368]
CHAPTER VIII
Le Bocage—Its deep lanes and hedges—The Chouan tactics—Vendean horses and riders—Vendean politics—The Marquis de la Bretèche and his farmers—The means I suggested to prevent a fresh Chouannerie—The tottering stone—I leave la Jarrie—Adieux to my guide [376]
CHAPTER IX
The Nantes Revolution—Régnier—Paimbœuf—Landlords and travellers—Jacomety—The native of la Guadeloupe and his wife—Gull shooting—Axiom for sea-bird shooting—The captain of la Pauline—Woman and swallow—Lovers' superstition—Getting under sail [384]
CHAPTER X
Story of Bougainville and his friend the curé of Boulogne [392]
CHAPTER XI
Breakfast on deck—Saint-Nazaire—A thing husbands never think of—Noirmontiers —Belle-Ile—I leave the two Paulines—The rope-ladder—The ship's boat—A total immersion—The inn at Saint-Nazaire—I throw money through the window—A batch of clothes—Return to Paris [409]
BOOK V
CHAPTER I
Confidential letter from Louis-Philippe to the Emperor Nicholas—The Czar's reply—What France could do after the Revolution of July—Louis-Philippe and Ferdinand VII.—The Spanish refugees—Reaction in the Home department—Scraping of the public monuments—Protest [418]
CHAPTER II
The drama of Saint-Leu—The bravery of the Duc d'Aumale—The arrest of MM. Peyronnet, Chantelauze, Guernon-Ranville and Polignac—Madame de Saint-Fargeau's servant—Thomas and M. de Polignac—The ex-ministers at Vincennes—The abolition of the death penalty in the Chamber—La Fayette—M. de Kératry—Salverte—Death to the ministers—Vive Odilon Barrot and Pétion! [429]
CHAPTER III
Oudard tells me that Louis-Philippe wishes to see me—Visit to M. Deviolaine—Hutin, supernumerary horse-guardsman—My interview with the king about la Vendée and the policy of juste milieu—Bixio an artilleryman—He undertakes to get me enrolled in his battery—I send in my resignation to Louis-Philippe [443]
CHAPTER IV
First performance of la Mère et la Fille—I have supper with Harel after the performance—Harel imprisons me after supper—I am sentenced to eight days' enforced work at Napoléon—On the ninth day the piece is read to the actors and I am set at liberty—The rehearsals—The actor Charles—His story about Nodier [457]
CHAPTER V
I am officially received into the Artillery Corps of the National Guard—Antony is put under rehearsal at the Théâtre-Français—Ill-will of the actors—Treaty between Hugo and the manager of the Porte-Saint-Martin—Firmin's proposition and confidence—Mademoiselle Mars' dresses and the new gas lights—I withdraw Antony from the Théâtre-Français—I offer Dorval the part of Adèle [472]
CHAPTER VI
My agreements with Dorval—I read Antony—Her impressions— She makes me alter the last act there and then—Merle's room—Bocage as artist—Bocage as negotiator—Reading to M. Crosnier—He falls into a profound slumber—The play nevertheless is accepted
APPENDIX[493]
THE MEMOIRS OF ALEXANDRE DUMAS
[BOOK I]
[CHAPTER I]
Mademoiselle Georges' house—Harel and Jules Janin—Young Tom and Popol—The latter's prayer against cholera—Georges' Oriental style of living—Her cleanliness—Harel's fault to the contrary—Twenty-four thousand francs flung out of the window—Saint Anthony—Piaff-Piaff—His dissoluteness—His death—His funeral oration
My Christine rehearsals had opened Mademoiselle Georges' house to me, as those of Henri III. had given me the entrée to that of Mademoiselle Mars.
The house that my good and excellent Georges occupied, No. 12 rue Madame, was, if I remember rightly, made up of very original inhabitants. First of all, in the attics lived Jules Janin, the second tenant. Then came Harel, the principal tenant, who lived on the second floor. And on the first and ground floors were Georges, her sister and her two nephews. One of these two nephews, who is now a tall, fine, clever-looking young fellow who bears the name of Harel, had for a long time figured regularly on his aunt's playbills, both in the provinces and in Paris, for she could not do without him, either at the theatre or about town.
My readers will recollect the phrase which never varied for five or six years running—
"Young Tom, aged ten, will take the part of," etc.
The other names would vary from that of Joas to that of Thomas Diafoirus; but the age never varied: young Tom was always ten.
We ought to be fair to young Tom; he hated acting and, every time he had to go on the stage, he would mutter between his teeth—
"Curse the theatre! If only it could be burnt down!"
"What is that you are saying, Tom?" Mademoiselle Georges would ask.
"Nothing, aunt," Tom would reply; "I am only repeating my part."
His brother Paul, who was called "le petit Popol," was by far the funniest looking object that was ever seen: he had a charming head, with fine dark eyes and long chestnut hair, but his body was too small to carry the head. This disproportion gave the child a very grotesque appearance: he was immensely clever, a gourmand like Grimod de la Reynière, and the very opposite of Tom in that he would have stuck to the stage all his life, if he could only have managed to get plenty to eat thereby.
At the time when I first became acquainted with him, he was only a little monkey of six or seven years of age, and already he had devised a way of establishing a credit account at the café at the corner of the rue de Vaugirard and the rue de Molière, by means of all sorts of ingenious excuses. One fine day it was found out that little Popol's account amounted to a hundred crowns! In three months he had run through three hundred francs' worth of all kinds of confectionery and drinks, which he had asked for in his mother's name, or in that of his aunt, and which he had eaten or drunk on staircases, in corridors or behind doorways. He it was who, in Richard Darlington, was placed in such a manner as to make him appear the height of an ordinary man, representing the Speaker of the House of Commons. In this capacity he had a bell at his right hand and a glass of eau sucrée at his left; he rang the bell with the gravity of M. Dupin, and drank the glass of eau sucrée with the dignity of M. Barrot. The little beggar never would learn his prayers, and this gave the Voltairian Harel immense delight; however, all at once (it was during an epidemic of cholera), they found out that little Popol said a prayer, morning and evening, which he had, no doubt, improvised to suit the occasion.
They were curious to know what this prayer was and, hiding themselves to listen, overheard the following:—
"O Lord God! take my Aunt Georges; take my Uncle Harel; take my brother Tom; take mamma Bébelle; take my friend Provost, but leave little Popol and the cook!"
But the prayer did not bring the poor little fellow the luck he fervently wished: cholera took him, and carried him off, with fifteen hundred others in the same day.
We have said who his brother Tom was; we have all seen how "mamma Bébelle" acted under the name of Georges the younger: now let us say a few words about Aunt Georges, the most beautiful woman of her day, and about Uncle Harel, the wittiest man of his time.
Well, Georges' aunt was a splendid-looking creature of about forty-one. We have already given a sketch of her portrait by the clever pen of Théophile Gautier. Her hands and arms and shoulders, her neck, teeth and eyes, were of indescribable charm and beauty; but, like the lovely fairy Melusina, there was a certain weariness visible in her movements which was increased by the wearing of far too long dresses—why, I know not, for her feet were as lovely as her hands.
Mademoiselle Georges' idleness, except in matters connected with the theatre, wherein she was always alert, was incredible, Tall and majestic, aware of her beauty, with two emperors and three or four kings for admirers, Georges loved to lie on a big couch, in velvet robes, furred pelisses and Indian cashmere shawls, during winter; in summer, in teagowns of batiste or muslin. Thus extended, in a pose that was always careless and graceful, Georges received the visits of strangers, sometimes with the majesty of a Roman matron, at others with the smile of a Grecian courtesan; whilst from between the folds of her dress, the openings of her shawls and the skirts of her teagowns, there would peep out the heads of two or three hares of the very best breed, looking like as many snakes' heads. Georges' love of cleanliness was proverbial: she would perform a preliminary toilet before she entered her bath, so as not to soil the water in which she stayed for an hour; here she received her familiar friends, fastening up her hair with golden pins, from time to time, when it came down; her splendid arms uplifted entirely free of the water, her throat and bosom seeming as though sculptured in Parian marble. And it was a singular thing that these actions, which in another woman would have been provocative and lascivious, were simple and natural in Georges, like those of a Greek of the time of Homer or Phidias; as beautiful as a statue, she looked simply like a statue surprised at its own nudity, and she would, I am sure, have been much surprised if a jealous lover had forbidden her to show herself thus in her bath, where, like a sea-nymph, she made the water heave with the motion of her shoulders and her white breasts.
Georges made everybody round her clean in his habits except Harel. But Harel was another matter altogether. Cleanliness meant an immense sacrifice to him, and this sacrifice he would only make under strong pressure and constraint. So Georges, who adored him, and could not do without his delightfully witty chatter at her ears incessantly, declared to all comers that it was only his mind she loved, and that, as to the rest of his personality, she left him free to do what he liked with it.
At that period Georges still possessed magnificent diamonds and, among them, two buttons which had been given her by Napoleon and which were each worth nearly twelve thousand francs. She had had them set as earrings and wore them in preference to all others. These buttons were so large that Georges very frequently, on returning home in the evening, after acting, took them off, complaining that they pulled her ears down. One evening, we returned with her and sat down to supper. When supper was over, we ate almonds; Georges ate a great number and, whilst eating, complained of the weight of these earrings, took them out of her ears and laid them on the tablecloth. Five minutes later, the servant came, brush in hand, to brush the crumbs off the table, swept earrings and almond shells together into a basket, and both earrings and shells were thrown clean out of the window into the street. Georges went to bed without remembering her earrings, and slept peacefully; philosophic though she was, she would certainly not have done this if she had known that her servant had thrown twenty-four thousand francs' worth of diamonds out of the window.
Next day, Georges the younger came into the room to wake her sister.
"Well," she said, "you may well boast of being lucky indeed! Look what I have just found."
"What is it?"
"One of your earrings."
"Where did you pick that up?"
"In the street."
"In the street?"
"Yes, my dear ... in the street, at the door.... You must have lost it when you came back from the theatre."
"No, I had them on at supper."
"Are you sure of it?"
"So sure that, because they tired me, I took them out and laid them by my side. What can I have done with them afterwards?... Where can I have put them?"
"Why, good gracious!" exclaimed Georges the younger. "I remember now: we were eating almonds and the servant swept the table with the brush."
"Ah! my poor earrings!" cried Georges, in her turn. "Go downstairs quickly and look, Bébelle!"
Bébelle was already at the bottom of the staircase and, five minutes later, she returned with the second earring, which she had found in the gutter.
"My darling," she said to her sister, "we are very lucky. Have a mass said, or some great misfortune will overtake us."
We have referred to Harel's dislike of cleanliness: it was universally well known, and he himself took a kind of pride in it; he was a man who delighted in contradictions and it amused him to enlarge upon this odd superiority. When he saw Georges lying on her couch surrounded by her well washed and combed dogs with their morocco leather collars round their necks, he sighed with ambition. For his ambition—and it was one he had often expressed but never realised—was to keep a pig! He considered Saint Anthony was the happiest of saints and, like him, he was ready to retire into a desert if Providence would condescend to allow him the same companion. As Harel's birthday approached, Georges and I decided to crown his modest desires: we purchased for twenty-two livres tournois a pig three or four months old; we put a diamond crown upon its head, a bouquet of roses at its side, rings of precious stones round its feet and, conducting it in state like a bride, we entered the dining-room at what we believed to be the most suitable moment to favour Harel with this sweet surprise. At the cries the new arrival uttered, Harel at once abandoned his conversation with Lockroy and Janin, attractive though it was, and ran towards us. The pig held a complimentary letter in one of its feet which it presented to Harel. Harel leapt upon his pig—for he guessed instantly that the pig was for him—pressed it to his heart, rubbed his nose on its snout, made it sit next him in Popol's high chair, tied it in the chair with one of Georges' scarves and began to stuff it with all sorts of dainties. The pig was christened there and then, and received from Harel (who vowed to undertake the obligations of a godfather towards his godchild) the euphonious name of Piaff-Piaff. That very night, Harel retired to his second storey with Piaff-Piaff and, as nobody had thought of the animal's bed, Harel carried away with him one of Georges' velvet gowns and made a litter of it for the pig. This theft led next day to a tremendous altercation between Georges and Harel, in which we, who were called in to judge between the two, sentenced Harel to pay Georges two hundred francs' indemnity for the night's use. The dress was sent to a shop, and page-boys' costumes were made out of it. Harel's love for his pig became quite fanatical. One day he came up to me at a rehearsal and said—
"Do you know, my dear fellow, I am so fond of my pig that I sleep with him!"
"So I understand," I replied. "I have just met your pig, who told me exactly the same thing."
I believe this was the only quip to which Harel never found a retort.
In common with all over petted animals, Piaff-Piaff grew conscious of his power, abused it, and one day things ended by turning out very badly for him. Piaff-Piaff, well fed, well housed, constantly petted, sleeping with Harel, attained to the honourable weight of a hundred and fifty pounds; which—for we calculated it—was fifty pounds more than Janin weighed, thirty pounds more than Lockroy, ten pounds more than I, fifty-five pounds less than Eric Bernard; it was decreed in a council from which Harel was excluded, that when Piaff-Piaff reached the weight of two hundred pounds he should be made into black pudding and sausages. Unfortunately for himself, each day he committed some fresh depredation in the house, which led to a general threat to hasten the hour of his demise, and yet, in spite of all these ill deeds, Harel's worship of Piaff-Piaff was so well known that the strictest resolutions always ended by granting him pardon. But, one day, Piaff-Piaff was prowling round a kind of cage where a magnificent pheasant was kept that I had given to Tom; the pheasant had the imprudence to poke its neck through two bars to peck at a grain of corn, and Piaff-Piaff stretched out his snout and bit off the pheasant's head. Tom was only a few steps off, saw the deed accomplished, and set up loud shrieks. But the pheasant, when decapitated, was only fit to be roasted. Piaff-Piaff, in attacking everybody else, had had the sense to respect Tom's property; he had, as we have said, frequently benefited by the plea of extenuating circumstances, but this last clumsy outrage left him no sympathiser, however eloquent, who could save him from being killed. Georges emphatically declared that he deserved death and no one, not even Janin, dared contradict the sentence. Judgment declared, it was decided to take advantage of Harel's absence to put it into execution, and, whilst everybody was hot against the offender, the butcher was sent for and told to bring his knife. Five minutes later, Piaff-Piaff raised shrieks loud enough to rouse the whole neighbourhood. The street door was held fast to keep Harel out if he happened to come back at that moment; but we had forgotten that the garden possessed an exit to the Luxembourg and that Harel might come in that way. Suddenly, as Piaff-Piaff was uttering the doleful notes which signified that his death was drawing near at hand, the door opened and Harel appeared, crying out—
"What are you doing to my poor Piaff-Piaff? What is the matter with him?"
"Well," said Georges, "your horrid Piaff-Piaff had grown too unbearable."
"Ah! poor animal! poor beast!" cried Harel; "they are cutting his throat!" Then, after a moment's pause, he said in sorrowful tones, "At any rate, I hope you told the butcher to put plenty of onions in the black pudding—I adore onions!"
And that was Piaff-Piaff s funeral oration.
[CHAPTER II]
M. Briffaut, Censor and Academician—History of Ninus II.—M. de Lourdoueix—The idea of Antony—The piece received by the Français is stopped by the Censorship—The Duc de Chartres—Negotiations for his presence with that of his two brothers at the first representation of Christine—Louët—An autograph of the Prince Royal
It was into the midst of such society as this, differing greatly in its humour from that of the Comédie-Française, that the rehearsals of Christine carried me. Just as in the case of Henri III., all our artist friends offered their services to me: Boulanger had designed one half the costumes and Saint-Ève the other, when suddenly we received the official intimation—"The piece is stopped."
First Marion Delorme was stopped, then Christine! Truly the Censorship was getting its hand in.
I went to the Ministry and found that my play was in the hands of M. Briffaut, author of Ninus II. The history of Ninus II. might surely make M. Briffaut indulgent to others. But forgive me, perhaps you do not know the history of Ninus II. I will tell it you.
M. Briffaut had, in 1809 or 1810, written a play under some title or other, the scene of which was laid in Spain. But it was stopped by the Censorship. A friend of M. Briffaut appealed to Napoleon against the decision of the Censors. Napoleon read the play and found it contained some lines in praise of Spaniards.
"The Censorship was right to forbid it," he said. "It does not at all suit me to have a people praised with whom I am at war!"
"But, sire, what is to become of the author?" the friend asked humbly and sympathetically. "He has composed but this one play and may never write another all his life long; he was counting upon this as an opening to many ambitions—sire, you will ruin his career!"
"Very well, then; if he puts his action, say, in Assyria, instead of in Spain, I will raise no objection; and, instead of calling his hero Pélage, he calls him Ninus I. or Ninus II, I will authorise it."
Now M. Briffaut was not going to be stopped by such conditions as these, so he called his play Ninus II.; then, wherever the word Spaniards came in, he altered it into Assyrians, and Burgos into Babylon: it made it awkward in altering the rhymes, but that was all;—and the play was authorised and played; it was, no doubt, on account of this herculean feat, that they made M. Briffaut a member of the Academy. He was, on the whole, a very good fellow, and not unduly proud of having done nothing—a superiority which renders many of my colleagues insolent.
We discussed at length, not the literary, but the political, defects of the unhappy Christine. It seemed she bristled with them; and the poor Censor, whose touch was very delicate, did not really know where to lay his hands on them. There was in particular this line which Christine recites in allusion to her crown—
"C'est un hochet royal trouvé dans mon berceau!"
which was looked upon as a crime. In that line, I was attacking the legitimacy, the divine right, the succession! I cannot tell you the number of things I was attacking in it! For the moment I fancy I must, without knowing it, have written my play in that fine Turkish tongue of which Molière gives us a specimen in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, which is capable of expressing a great deal in very few words. Then there was the sending of the crown to Cromwell—a very dangerous suggestion for the Monarchy! It was in vain I protested that the incident was true to history; that Christine had really sent the crown to the Protector, who had had it melted down. To recall to humanity, which seemed to have forgotten the episode, that it had really taken place, was looked upon as a revolutionary and inflammatory act. Indeed, from M. Briffaut's manner of dealing with history in Ninus II., it was obvious he did not trouble himself much about historical facts. But, in spite of my discussions with M. Briffaut, pleasant as they were rendered by his affability, no progress was made, and thus, as Harel was pressed for time, I was prevailed on to try and engage the good offices of M. de Lourdoueix, the head of the Censorial staff.
I had been advised to get an introduction to M. de Lourdoueix by a lady of high repute who was one of his friends; I do not know what her name was, but I was given to understand that this was the only channel by which he could be got at; like Raoul, however, in the Huguenots, I was full of confidence in the justness of my cause; so, without any introduction whatever, I made an expedition to the South Side, where M. de Lourdoueix was to be found. I do not know whether M. de Lourdoueix had composed a Ninus III. or Ninus IV., whether he belonged to the Academy, or simply to the Caveau Club; but he was far from being as courteous in his manner as M. Briffaut. Our interview was a brief one; after five minutes' conversation, decidedly bitter on both sides, he said—
"After all, monsieur, it is no use your saying anything further; for as long as the Elder Branch is on the throne and I act as its Censor your work will be suspended."
"Very well, monsieur," I replied, bowing; "I shall wait!"
"Monsieur," M. de Lourdoueix ironically remarked, "that decision had been already arrived at."
"Then I repeat it," I said, and left him.
But it was a sufficiently serious threat: I had no longer the support of M. de Martignac, that man of resource. The Polignac Ministry had succeeded his, and I had no means of approaching the new President of the Council. So I waited; the only weapon left me was patience and, while I was waiting, one day when I was walking on the boulevard I suddenly stopped and said to myself—
"A man who, when discovered by his mistress's husband, kills her,—vowing that she had offered resistance to his addresses, and dying on the scaffold for the murder,—saves the wife's honour and expiates his crime."
The idea of Antony was found; and, as I believe I have said elsewhere, the character of the hero was suggested to me by that of Didier in Marion Delorme. Six weeks later, Antony was finished. I read the piece to the Français, but the reading did not receive a very warm welcome. I distributed my two leading parts between Mademoiselle Mars and M. Firmin; but it was quite evident they would rather I had chosen other interpreters for those characters. I sent the play to the Censor, and it was stopped like Christine. This made a brace of them. But, whether at the time there was a certain feeling of modesty which has since been lost sight of, or whether I had some friend at the background who was working for me—and I have always suspected the excellent and highly cultivated Madame du Cayla of having been that friend—whether, indeed, Harel really had the influence with the Government he made out, the play of Christine was returned to me without any very great alteration, early in March. They had even left in the famous line about the hochet royal, inflammatory though it was said to be, and the sending of the crown to the Protector, in spite of any possible catastrophe that might result from this historical reminiscence! So the interrupted rehearsals were taken up again.
However, in the midst of all my worries, I still went constantly to the Palais-Royal library, where I had made a new acquaintance. My fresh acquaintance was the Duc de Chartres. He was at that time a charming boy and has since become a charming prince; a bad enough scholar, whatever his masters may say;—and for fear lest, for the honour of the scholastic profession, they should give me the lie, I will just give, as illustration, an anecdote thereon. The Duc de Chartres was then, as I say, a winning lad of seventeen and, as I was twenty-seven, the difference of age between us not being as great as that between him and Casimir Delavigne, or between him and Vatout, it was to me he generally turned. Moreover, at this time my name was being talked about a great deal; all sorts of adventures were attributed to me, as a host of sayings have since been put down to my account. I had the passions of the African, they said, and they pointed to my frizzy hair and dark complexion, which neither could nor would deny its tropical origin. It all added to the curious interest felt towards me by a boy on the verge of manhood, who had sympathy towards Art as expressed by us, or, rather, as expressed by me, since at that date Hugo had not yet published anything in the dramatic line. Hernani was not to be performed until 25 February 1830, and the intimacy of which I am speaking began about the end of 1829. So the Duc de Chartres looked upon me as a man, if not of his own age, at least not so very much older, and whenever he could get away, he would come and have a chat with me. I should mention that the conversation was soon diverted and passed from Art to artists, from the play to actors, and that we were as much interested in discussing the relative merits of Mademoiselle Louise Despréaux, of Mademoiselle Alexandrine Noblet and of Mademoiselle Léontine Fay, as of Henri III. and Christine. But our meetings never lasted long, for, at the end of a few minutes, we heard the Duc d'Orléans chanting his mass, or some gentleman or other shouting out the name of the Duc de Chartres, and the young prince who, as a grown man, still trembled before the king, would run off through some hidden door, stammering—
"Oh, Monsieur Dumas, do not tell them you have seen me!"
Some time before the performance of Christine, he had expressed his anxiety to be present, with his two young brothers, at the production of my second drama; but he was afraid permission would not be granted him. Why did the poor lad come to me to help him? He came to beg me to tell the Duc d'Orléans of my wish that his children should be present at the performance of my play. I was quite prepared, on my side, to make this request; and, the first time I saw His Highness, I ventured to do so. The prince "hummed and hawed" a little, to express his mistrust with regard to the morality of a play which had ever come under the ban of the Censorship; but I reassured him as best I could; and, after a little pressure, I obtained leave for the young princes to be present at the performance. I took good care to go to the library on the Thursday following, for I felt certain I should see the Duc de Chartres there, and he came, but he was accompanied by M. de Boismilon; however, he managed to pass by me and to say in a whisper—
"We are going! Thank you."
But I have promised to give an anecdote illustrative of the idleness of the Duc de Chartres—a fault they did their utmost to hide from his father; the prizes young princes are usually loaded with serving to divert his suspicions.
I will keep my promise.
In 1835 I took a journey to Italy with Jadin. Our intention was to travel as real tourists, on foot, on horses or mules, in carriages, corricolo or speronare or by boat; in short, just as we could. We decided to leave France by way of the Gulf of Genoa; consequently, at Hyères, we hired a sort of driver who, for a hundred francs, was to take us to Nice, skirting the shores of the Gulf of Jouan, which would enable us to stop for half a day. Jadin intended to make a drawing of the shore where Napoleon had landed in 1815, meaning to have it engraved later. The vetturino had stipulated, as his share of our bargain, to be allowed to add four persons to our number, on condition that they offered no opposition to a first halt of five or six hours at Cannes, and a second halt at Grasse. Among the travellers accompanying us was a young man of twenty-four or twenty-five, who was clad in a blue dress coat, nankeen trousers, coloured stockings and laced shoes. In my Impressions de voyage, I gave him the name of Chaix; in my Memoirs, I must give him his real name, which was Louët. For a day and a half, he never addressed a word to us; but our conversation appeared to interest him enormously; he smiled at our jokes and listened attentively to our much rarer serious remarks. At table, his place was always laid by ours and, at our first sleeping-place, he arranged not to be separated from us by anything more than a partition. When we reached the Gulf of Jouan, he stopped and, whilst Jadin made his drawing, I flung myself into the water for a bathe. Just as I was undressing, Louët came up to me and, speaking to me for the first time, asked permission to bathe with me. I did not at first detect the punctilious politeness with which the request was put, and laughingly replied that he was perfectly free to do whatever he liked. He thanked me for the permission and took the most rational and least eventful of baths I ever saw, in three and a half feet of water; then, when the drawing and bathing were finished, we climbed into our carriage and slept at Nice that same night. Three of our companions had already left us, one at the heights of Draguignan and the two others at Grasse. Louët alone remained faithful to us as far as Nice, which surprised me the more as I had heard him tell the others who had accompanied him to the carriage, just as he was parting from them, that he was on his way to Paris.
Now Louët must have given a very wide meaning to the proverb, "Every road leads to Rome," if he could persuade himself so far as to think that the road from Toulon to Nice would take him to Paris. This strange conduct on the part of our travelling-companion roused Jadin's curiosity and mine, but it was at length explained by a request the vetturino made on Louët's behalf, who dared not put it to us himself. Louët had really started from Toulon to go to Paris, but he had been so charmed with our fascinating conversation on the journey that, instead of travelling only as far as Luc and there leaving for Draguignan and Castellane, he had told the vetturino that, as he had never seen Nice, he would go on to that place. When he reached Nice, he asked through the vetturino whether, as a great favour, we would allow him to continue the journey with us; hastening to tell us that his society should cost us nothing, for he would pay a third of whatever our expenses amounted to; the vetturino added, by way of parenthesis, that Louët, whom he knew, had just come into a legacy of about thirty thousand francs and was returning to Paris with it when he fell in with us: after which he did not see how he could find a better way of spending a portion of his money than in our society. The request was proffered with such graceful entreaty and Louët seemed such a good sort of young fellow that we did not even think of discussing the question, but intimated that we should be delighted to have his company; that, as he proposed, the expenses should be divided into thirds, and the very next day we would tell him our plan of travel, so that he might then see if our itinerary suited him. He replied that we need not trouble to give him such a programme, that he had no settled aim—it was us and not the journey he wanted—that, since we had honoured him with leave to accompany us, he would go to China with us, or wherever we wished. Certainly no one could have been more accommodating and, indeed, Louët went the entire Italian journey with us and proved himself throughout an excellent travelling-companion. I related this story in my Impressions de voyage with the light gaiety of narrative that is natural to me, and in 1838 I had a visit from Jadin.
"You will never guess who is coming to see you to-morrow...?" he began.
"I cannot."
"Louët."
"Nonsense!"
I had not seen Louët since my return from Italy three years before.
"Yes," Jadin went on, "and I am sent to announce the visit to you."
"What! is he by any chance coming to ask satisfaction from me for bringing him into my Impressions de voyage?"
"No, quite the reverse; he is delighted to figure in the book and is coming to ask a favour from you."
"Ah! he will be very welcome. What is it?"
"He wishes to tell you what it is himself."
"Good! I will expect him."
Louët came the next day, and was exactly the same excellent, simple fellow, except that he seemed to have advanced considerably in the art of dressing himself.
"Well, Louët, here you are! Why, my friend, you look like a millionaire."
"Yes, because I am better dressed than formerly; but, otherwise, it is exactly the reverse. I haven't a halfpenny."
"What? You haven't a halfpenny?"
"No. I risked my little fortune and lost it."
"Absolutely?"
"The whole of it."
"Ah! poor fellow!"
"So I have come to ask ..."
"What? Not for advice how to make a new fortune, surely?"
"No: for your influence."
"With the Government?" I asked, with growing astonishment.
"No."
"The king?" I asked, more surprised still.
"No."
"With the Duc d'Orléans?"
"Yes."
My countenance fell. I desired to keep the revered and loyal friendship I had vowed to the duke pure from all motives of interest, so that he might be sure of the genuine nature of my attachment; accordingly, every time I was asked to obtain some favour from the prince royal it caused me real pain.
"The Duc d'Orléans!" I repeated. "What in the world do you want me to ask the Duc d'Orléans on your behalf, my dear Louët?"
"Some small post...."
"A small post!" I repeated, shrugging my shoulders.
"He surely will not refuse you it," Louët added.
"On the contrary, my friend, he will refuse it me, because I shall be the first to tell him to refuse my request."
"Why?"
"Because you have no sort of claim upon the Duc d'Orléans—you do not even know him."
"Indeed I have some excuse, I do really know him," said Louët to me. "I was a college chum of his."
"At Henri IV.?"
"Yes."
"You are certain?"
"Why, of course."
"Would he remember you?"
"I was in the same class with him; besides, if he has forgotten me, I possess a little note in his own writing that will revive his memory."
"A note from him?"
"Look here: you shall see it for yourself"; and he showed me three lines on a scrap of foolscap in small handwriting containing these words:—
"MY DEAR LOUËT,—Translate for me from Ασκρωνδη as far
as ὅλoς, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you.
"DE CHARTRES"
I seized the paper eagerly.
"Oh!" I said, "that being the state of things, my dear Louët, you are saved, and I will answer for everything."
"You will undertake the matter for me, then?"
"With the greatest of pleasure."
"When shall you see the duke?"
"To-morrow morning."
"When shall I come back?"
"To-morrow at noon."
"I shall have my post?"
"I hope so."
"Upon my word, my dear sir, you will have done me an immense service."
"I will do it for you. Go and sleep soundly, without a care. And the day after to-morrow you will wake up with a salary of twelve hundred francs."
Louët went away with this pleasant prospect before him, and I wrote to the prince royal to ask him for an interview next morning. A quarter of an hour later, I received his assent. I was then lodging at No. 22 rue de Rivoli. My windows were exactly opposite those of the Duc d'Orléans and he often used to answer by a sign requests such as I had just addressed to him. Such demands on my part were seldom asked; I always waited until the prince sent for me, for I knew that the king, and particularly the queen, looked askance at my visits to their son. So, next day, when I presented myself to the prince, he said—
"Ah, here you are! Why the deuce are you in such a hurry to see me?"
"Ah, monseigneur, to ask a favour which I am sure you will grant me with great pleasure."
"For whom, or of what is it about?"
"I do not know, monseigneur, why you are so categorical with me; you know I am no purist."
"Never mind, it is a good thing to prove that, although prince royal, I have had a college education."
"Exactly, and it is of one of your college companions, monseigneur, I have come to speak."
"Is there a single one left, by any chance, without a berth?" he asked.
"Yes, monseigneur; I have discovered him."
"Oh! you! You are capable of discovering any mortal thing."
"Well, monseigneur, since I am the discoverer of the Mediterranean...!"
"Well, what more have you discovered now?"
"I have told you, one of your Royal Highness's college companions."
"What is his name?"
I drew the slip of paper from my pocket, ready for use at the first opportunity.
"Louët, monseigneur."
The duke uttered a cry.
"Oh! that dunce!" he said.
I looked at him with a smile and made a show of putting the paper back in my pocket.
"Then, monseigneur," I said, "that alters matters."
"How so?"
"I have nothing further to ask your Highness."
"Why?"
I shrugged my shoulders.
"Well, what is that slip of paper which you are putting back into your pocket and which you are dying to show me?"
"I am still very anxious to show it you, it is true, monseigneur."
"Very well, then, show it me!"
"I dare not."
"Give it me!"
I held out my hand towards the prince and with the greatest submission, I handed him the paper.
"Good!" he said; "it is sure to be some infernal machine."
"Read it, monseigneur."
The prince cast a glance at the scrap of paper and blushed red to his eyes.
He blushed very easily, and granting this to be a weakness in him, it was one he shared in common with the Duc de Nemours and the Duc d'Aumale.
"Ah! ah!" he said, when he had read it.
Then, looking at me—
"Well, what does that prove?" he said. "That I was a bigger dunce even than he."
"Monseigneur, you will, in that case, surely, do something to help your superior?"
"What do you want me to do?"
And at this he went quietly up to the fireplace, rolling the scrap of paper between his fingers.
"Well, monseigneur, I sincerely hope you will find him a post."
"Where?"
"Near your own person."
"In what capacity?"
"Why, if it were only as a future tutor to your children, he would translate for them from the Greek for Aσκρωνδη right on to λoς."
"Not that," he said; "but I have an idea."
"Upon my word, it does not surprise me."
Whereat the prince began to laugh.
"Do you think he would learn German?"
"He would learn anything you wanted, monseigneur."
"Very well. I will make him a secretary attached to Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans; when he knows German, he will translate the letters she receives from Germany ... that is the only post I have to offer him."
"When will the salary begin?"
"From to-morrow; tell him to call at Asseline's house."
"I thank you, both on his behalf and on mine, monseigneur."
He came nearer and nearer to the fireplace, rolling all the time the little bit of paper between his fingers. Finally he stretched out his arm towards the fireplace, but, holding my hand between the paper and the flames, I said—
"Pardon, monseigneur."
"What do you want?"
"That bit of paper...."
"Why?"
"It is my brokerage."
"What will you do with it?"
"I will have it framed."
"Oh, I know you are quite capable of doing that. Let me burn it."
"Monseigneur, I will hide it in a pocket-book and only show it once a week."
"Do you promise?"
"On my word of honour!"
"In that case, you can take it, and as you are longing to leave me to go and tell the good news to your protégé, go along with you."
"Oh, monseigneur, you shall not have the trouble of telling me twice."
"Go, go."
He waved me off with his hand, and I left him.
Poor prince! I have many anecdotes to tell of him like this one; and I mean to tell them. It was because of his goodness of heart and the loyalty of his patriotism that he became popular. And, when he died, I wrote these prophetic words:—
"God has just taken away the only obstacle that exists between the Monarchy and a Republic."
That is why you died, monseigneur: you were an obstacle: the Republic was a necessity.
[CHAPTER III]
The first representation of Hernani—The old ace of spades—The old man has a quarrel—Parodies—Origin of the story of Cabrion and of Pipelet—Eugène Sue and Desmares—Soulié returns to me—He offers me fifty of his workmen in the capacity of applauders—First representation of Christine—A supper at my lodgings—Hugo and de Vigny correct the objectionable lines
Hernani had been returned to Hugo almost without being examined; and we had not given them time to re-read it, as Taylor wanted to stage the play before his departure for Egypt. We were asked to hear it read before the Committee when the actors were present, as the play had been accepted beforehand.
The reading of Hernani made a profound sensation; nevertheless, I preferred, and still continue to prefer, Marion Delorme.
We were in the theatre by two o'clock on the day of the performance. We knew well enough that the victory achieved by de Vigny was not far-reaching. It was not of Shakespeare or Goethe or Schiller that sensible people were doubtful, it was of ourselves. What we wanted was a theatre that should be national, original, French, and not Greek or English or German; and this it was our mission to create.
Henri III., whether good or bad, was, at least, an original piece of work, drawn from our own chronicles, wherein traces of the influence of other theatres could be discerned, but no slavish imitation. Marion Delorme, which could not be got back from the Censorship, and Hernani, which was soon to be played, were both pieces of the same type. But Henri III. was intrinsically a stronger piece of work, whereas Hernani and Marion Delorme were more remarkable for their style.
Unluckily, French comedians were rigid in certain of their traditionary habits: it was usually quite an impossibility to get them to pass from tragedy to comedy without their making some dreadful slip in expression or even intonation. We have recounted the anecdote of Michelet and the four lines with reference to the cupboard scene. We ought also to mention that, in Hugo's work, comedy and tragedy often intermingle without any intermediate stages, and that this renders the interpretation of his thought more difficult than if he had attempted to set up an ascending or descending scale to bridge over the gulf between familiarity and grandeur of situation.
The English language, when rhymed, scanned and divided into short or long syllables, has a great advantage over ours, of which advantage Shakespeare availed himself to the full: his plays were generally written in three styles—in prose, in blank verse and in rhymed verses. Now, the people, the lower classes, talk in prose; the middle classes in blank verse; and princes and kings in rhyme. Moreover, if the ideas of the plebeian become exalted as he speaks, Shakespeare puts at his disposition two ascending styles in which to express his thoughts; if baser thoughts spring to the lips of kings and princes, he allows himself the liberty of making use of the language of the common people, or even of the middle classes, rather than injure that particular expression of thought. But the public that listens to our work knows nothing at all of these matters and is quite indifferent to all these shades of distinction: they merely come to applaud or to hiss; they applaud or hiss, that is all.
The first performance of Hernani left a unique impression upon theatrical annals; the suspension of Marion Delorme, the talk there had been about Hernani, had excited public curiosity to the highest pitch, and they were right in looking forward to a stormy night. The people attacked before they had heard a word, and defended without understanding what they were defending. When Hernani learns from Ruy Gomez that he has entrusted his daughter to Charles V., he exclaims—
"... Vieillard stupide, il l'aime!"
M. Parseval de Grandmaison, who was a little deaf, mistook it for
"Vieil as de pique, il l'aime!"
("Old ace of spades, he loves her!")
and, in his unaffected indignation, he could not refrain from shouting out—
"Oh! but really that is going a little too far!"
"What is going too far, monsieur?" my friend Lassailly inquired, who was on his left and had heard M. Parseval de Grandmaison's remark, but had not caught what Firmin said.
"I say, monsieur," the Academician replied, "that it is going a little too far to call a respectable, worthy old man like Ruy Gomez de Silva, 'old ace of spades'!"
"What! It is too strong an expression?"
"Yes, say what you like, it is not good taste, especially coming from such a young man as Hernani."
"Monsieur," Lassailly replied, "he had a right to say so. Cards were invented—they were invented in the time of Charles VI.; Monsieur l'Académicien, if you are not aware of that fact, I acquaint you with it. Hurrah for the old ace of spades! Bravo, Firmin! Bravo, Hugo! Ah!"
You can understand how hopeless it was to attempt to reply to people who attacked and defended in this fashion.
Hernani met with great success, although it was more strongly contested than Henri III. It is simple enough to find the reason for this: beauties of form and style are least readily appreciated by the vulgar mind, and these were Hugo's particular charms. On the other hand, these beautiful touches, being purely artistic, made a great impression on us, and on me in particular.
Hernani received all the tributes customary to triumph: it was outrageously attacked, and defended with equal violence; it was parodied with a clever astuteness directed against the traditionary dramatic customs, under the title of Arnali, ou la Contrainte par Cor (Arnali, or Constraint by Acclamation), a French work translated from the Gothic. And with regard to parodies,—let us make note of a historical fact, the date of which might else be lost in the mists of time, if we did not jot it down here.
The story—for such it is—of Cabrion and of M. Pipelet goes back to the month of March 1829. This is what happened, and it caused so much uneasiness to the porters of Paris that they have remained a melancholy race ever since!
Henri III., foreordained to meet with a great success, or at any rate to make a sensation, had also to have its parody; to facilitate the execution of this important work, I had sent my manuscript in advance to de Leuven and Rousseau; then, at their request, I had worked with them at the piece to the best of my ability, and we called it Le Roi Dagobert et sa Cour. But the Censorship regarded this title as lacking in respect to the descendant of Dagobert. The descendant of Dagobert, that worthy company which bears, for arms, scissors sable upon a field argent, meant His Majesty Charles X. It confused descendant with successor, but gentlemen on committees of examination are known to be above the consideration of such a mere trifle as that. So we altered the title to that of La Cour du roi Pétaud, to which the Censorship raised no objection. Just as if nobody were descended from le roi Pétaud!
So the parody of Henri III. et sa Cour was played at the Vaudeville under this title. It parodied the play, scene for scene. Now, at the conclusion of the fourth act, the farewell scene between Saint-Mégrin and his servant was parodied by one between the hero of the parody (unfortunately I have forgotten his name) and his porter. In this extremely tender, touching and sentimental scene, the hero asks the porter for a lock of his hair to the tune of Dormez donc; mes chères amours! which was all the rage just then, and most appropriate to the situation. On the night of the performance everybody went away singing the refrain and the words of the song. Three or four days afterwards, a party of us were dining at Véfours, including de Leuven, Eugène Sue, Desforges, Desmares, Rousseau, several others and myself. At the end of the dinner, which had been exceedingly lively, we sang the famous refrain in chorus:—
"Portier, je veux
De tes cheveux!"
Eugène Sue and Desmares decided to carry into effect this flight of our imagination and, as they entered the house, No. 8 rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, where Eugène Sue knew the name of the concierge, they asked the good man if his name were not M. Pipelet. He answered in the affirmative. Then, in the name of a Polish princess who had seen him and fallen desperately in love with him, they asked, with many entreaties, for a lock of his hair, and, to get rid of them, the poor Pipelet ended by giving it them. He was a lost man, after he had committed such a weakness! That same evening three other requests were addressed to him on behalf of a Russian princess, a German baroness and an Italian marchioness; and, every time the request was put to him, an invisible choir sang under the great doorway—
"Portier, je veux
De tes cheveux!"
The joke was continued the next day; we sent everybody we knew to ask Master Pipelet for a lock of his hair, so that he eventually only answered the bell with horror, whilst to no purpose whatever did he remove from his door the traditional notice—
Address yourself to the Porter.
On the following Sunday, Eugène Sue and Desmares decided to give the poor devil a serenade on a grand scale: they entered the courtyard on horseback, with guitars in their hands, and began singing the persecuting air. But, as we said, it was Sunday, and, the householders being away in the country, the porter quite expected they would try to embitter his Sabbath as on other days, not allowing him the rest God had conceded to Himself. Having informed every servant throughout the house, he slipped behind the singers, shut the street door and made a pre-arranged signal, whereupon five or six servants ran to his assistance, and the troubadours were compelled to turn their musical instruments into weapons of defence: they came away with nothing but the necks of their guitars in their hands. Nobody ever knew the details of this fight, which must have been a terrible one; the combatants kept it to themselves; but it was known to have happened; and the porter of the rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin was voted a literary outlaw. From that moment the wretched man's life became a premature hell to him: even his night's rest was not respected; for every belated littérateur had to take an oath to return home by way of the rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, were he living even at the Barrière du Maine. The persecution endured for over three months; at the end of that time a new face appeared to answer the accustomed demand: Pipelet's wife came weeping to the grating to say that her husband had fallen a victim to this persecution and had been carried off to a hospital with an attack of brain fever. The unlucky man was in a delirium and, in his raving, repeated incessantly, over and over again, the refrain that had cost him his reason and his health. This, then, is the real truth about the celebrated persecution of the Pipelets, which made a great sensation during the years 1829 to 1830.
Now let us return to Christine. When the play was returned from the Censorship it was rehearsed with a will. Romanticism, which had taken possession of the Théâtre-Français, had just spread to the other side of the Seine and had turned aside from the Academy—as in the case of a fortress which a great general scorns to attack at a time of invasion—and threatened to carry the Odéon by assault.
It was creating quite a revolution in the Latin quarter. Further, in order to give more effect to the next performance, Harel constantly suspended the play—a means of advertisement and a way of publishing hitherto quite unknown.
On the morning of the general rehearsal I received a line from Soulié; it was, with the exception of the slight correspondence previously mentioned and the sending of places for Roméo et Juliette, the only sign of his existence he had given me for a year. He asked me for a pass for this rehearsal. I sent him at once a pass for himself and any of his friends who might wish to accompany him. The rehearsal took place the same night. Now, in those days, general rehearsals were actual performances of the play as it would be presented finally. Friends were not yet sick of it, success had not made them indifferent or jealous, and there really seemed to be a general interest taken in the outcome of some of them. The cause we were upholding was that of every obscure aspirant who hoped to become famous some day; and they would share a good deal of the influence acquired by us, in order to make their path more sure and brilliant. Egotism made them devotees. So the general rehearsal of Christine was an enthusiastic success.
I left the orchestra after the fifth act, and went to pay my respects to Soulié. He was greatly moved and held out his arms to me. I embraced him with deep emotion; it had distressed me to be on cool terms with a man whom I loved and whose talent I admired more than others did, because, better than others, I appreciated that talent.
"Ah!" said he, "you were certainly well advised in writing your Christine alone. It is an admirable piece of work, but parts of it suffer as regards composition; that will come. Some day you will be our leading dramatist, and we your humble servants."
"Come now, my dear friend," I said, "you must be mad to say such things!"
"Not so; I mean what I say, upon my honour. To tell you that it gives me immense pleasure would be going too far; you would not believe me, but nevertheless it is so."
I thanked him.
"Look here," he said, "let us talk seriously: I know there is a plot organised against your play and that they are going to make it hot for you to-morrow night."
"Oh, I felt certain of it."
"Have you fifty places left in the pit?"
"Yes."
"Then let me have them and I will bring all my workmen from the sawmill, and we will back you up against them, never fear!"
I gave him a packet of tickets without counting them, and, as they were waiting for me on the stage, I again embraced him and we parted.
I think this man possessed certain brotherly and trusting qualities which one looks for in vain in theatrical circles: he who had been hissed three or four months previously in the same theatre, and under similar circumstances, now asked his rival for fifty places, in order to back up a play the success of which would but intensify the failure of his own, and from a rival who, with lavish generosity, gave him at once, without the slightest hesitation or misgivings, a pile of tickets quite sufficient in number to ruin the best play in the world if they fell into the wrong hands. We were, probably, rather absurd figures, but we were unquestionably well-meaning.
As no delay had been considered necessary, the play was performed the next day.
Frédéric had told me the truth. There had been organised by someone—by whom I had not the slightest idea, perhaps spontaneously and without any other incentive than the hatred borne towards us—the roughest sort of opposition I ever witnessed. As usual, I was present in a box at my first night, so I lost none of the incidents of that terrible battle which raged for seven hours; during which the play was knocked down a dozen times and always rose up again, ending at two in the morning by forcing the panting, horrified and scared public to go down on its knees.
Oh! I repeat it with an enthusiasm that has not diminished after twenty-five years of fighting, and in spite of my fifty or more triumphant successes, the contest between the genius of man and the ill-will of the crowd, the vulgarity of the audience, the hatred of enemies, is a grand and splendid spectacle. There is an immense satisfaction in dramatic quarters in feeling the opposition forced down on its knees and slowly made to bite the dust in utter defeat. Oh! what pride would victory produce, if it were not that, amongst honest men, it is a cure for vanity!
It is quite impossible to give any idea of the effect that the arrest of Monaldeschi produced on the audience, after the monologue of Sentinelli at the window, which had been hooted at. The whole theatre burst into roars of applause, and when, in the fifth act, Monaldeschi, saved by the love of Christine, sends the poisoned ring to Paula, there were furious outcries against the cowardly assassin, which were turned into frantic cheers when they saw him drag himself, wounded and bleeding, to the feet of the queen, who, in spite of his supplications and prayers, gives utterance to this line, which Picard had pronounced impossible—
"Eh bien, j'en ai pitié, mon père.—Qu'on l'achève!"
At last the whole audience was won over and the success of the play was assured. The epilogue, which was calm, and cold, and grandiose, a kind of vast cavern with damp floors and I dank vaults, where I buried the bodies of my characters, detracted from its successful acceptation. Those guilty souls with blanched heads and dead affections, meeting one another again after thirty years' separation, the one without hatred and the other without love, gazing in wonder at each other and asking forgiveness for the crime they had perpetrated, presented a succession of scenes that were more philosophic and religious in spirit than dramatic in art. Confronted with my own work, I recognised my mistake; but, having erred, I must atone; so I cut out the epilogue, which was really the best piece in the whole work, as regards style, although far from being perfect. Let us hasten to say that the rest was not very striking; it was written in imitation of a language in which I had then only just begun to stammer, in faltering accents.
I had not lost sight of Soulié during the performance: he and his fifty men were there. Even if I had put a mask over my face, I should not have dared to do what he had done for the success of my play!
Oh! dear and loyal-hearted friend! Known to and appreciated by few, I, who did know and appreciate you during your lifetime, and defended you after your death, I still extol your virtues!
But to conclude my story: the whole of the audience left the theatre without a single soul being able to tell whether Christine was a success or a failure.
I had a supper-party afterwards, for any of my friends who liked to come. If we were not fully triumphant at the victory, we were, at all events, excited by the fight. There were about twenty-five of us to supper—Hugo, de Vigny, Paul Lacroix, Boulanger, Achille Comte, Planche (Planche, who had not yet been bitten by the dog of hatred, and who only later showed an inclination to madness), Cordelier-Delanoue, Théodore Villenave—and I know not who besides, of the noisy youthful crew full of life and activity that surrounded us at that time; all the volunteers belonging to that great war of invasion, which was not in reality as terrible as it pronounced itself to be, and, after all, only threatened to capture Vienna in order to obtain possession of the Rhine frontiers.
Now listen to what happened: the event I am going to relate was almost a duplicate of the episode in connection with Soulié; and I will answer for it as being unique in the annals of literature.
There were some hundred lines in my play which had to be altered, and which, to make use of an expressive vulgarism, had been empoignés (seized upon) at the first night's performance; they were to be held up to hostile criticism, for they would not fail to be dropped on afresh at the next performance; besides some dozen cuts which had to be made and dressed by skilful and by fatherly hands; this needed doing immediately, that very night, so that the manuscript could be sent back the next morning for the alterations to be made at noon, and the piece acted that same night. Now it was out of the question that I, who had twenty-five guests to entertain, could do it. But Hugo and de Vigny took the manuscript, and, telling me to set my mind at rest, they shut themselves up in a small room, and, whilst the rest of us were eating and drinking and singing, they worked. They toiled for four consecutive hours with the same conscientious energy they would have employed upon their own work; and when they came out at daybreak, finding us all gone to bed and asleep, they left the manuscript, ready for the performance, on the mantelpiece, and, without waking anybody, these two rivals went off arm in arm, like two brothers!
Do you remember that, dear Hugo? Do you recollect that, de Vigny?
We were roused from our lethargic condition next morning by the bookseller Barba, who came to offer me twelve thousand francs for the manuscript of Christine—that is to say, double the sum for which I had sold Henri III. It was, then, unquestionably a success!
[CHAPTER IV]
A passing cab—Madame Dorval in the Incendiaire—Two actresses—The Duc d'Orléans asks for the Cross of the Legion of Honour on my behalf—His recommendation has no effect—M. Empis—Madame Lafond's Salon—My costume as Arnaute—Madame Malibran—Brothers and sisters in Art
The day after, or rather the evening of the second day after my first representation, I was crossing the place de l'Odéon at one o'clock in the morning, passing from the lighted theatre into the darkness of the street, and from the noise of the applause of a crowded house to the silence of an empty square, from intoxication to reflection, from reality to dreams, when a woman's head appeared at the door of a cab calling me by name. I turned round, the cab pulled up and I opened the door.
"Are you M. Dumas?" the person inside inquired.
"Yes, madame."
"Very well, come inside and kiss me. Ah! you possess marvellous talent, and you don't draw women badly either!"
It made me laugh, and I kissed the fair speaker. She who spoke thus to me was Dorval—Dorval to whom I could have retorted in the same words—
"You have marvellous talent, and you take off women rather well."
The fact is that since we had seen Dorval act Malvina in the Vampire she had improved immensely. In the Incendiaire, especially, she had been perfectly magnificent. Those who read these lines now will not know what the play was: I can only recollect a priest's part, which Bocage played excellently well, and a confession scene in which Dorval was sublime. Picture to yourselves a young girl who has had a torch put into her hands; how, or by what means, I no longer remember, but no matter; besides, that was twenty-two or twenty-three years ago, and I have forgotten the drama and, I repeat, I can only recollect the actress. She acted the confession scene, referred to above, on her knees: it lasted a whole quarter of an hour, during which space of time one held one's breath or only breathed in weeping. One night Madame Dorval was more beautiful, more tender and more pathetic than ever: and I will tell you why. You will have seen pictures by Ruysdael and Hobbema, and will recall how rays of sunlight stray across their landscapes, lighting up a corner of the grey sky, and illuminating the misty atmosphere, where the great oxen graze in the tall grass. Well, then, listen to this. When the player is fatigued, having played the same part over from ten to fifty times, inspiration gradually dies down and genius slumbers and emotion gets deadened; the actor's sky grows grey and his atmosphere clouded, and he searches for rays of sunshine like those that illumine the canvases of Hobbema or Ruysdael. The sight of a friend among the spectators, a talented fellow-artist leaning over the dress-circle, is, to him, as a ray of sunlight; a thoughtful face with eyes shining in the dim light of a box. Then communication is established between the house and the stage; the electric current is perceived and, thanks to it, the player returns to the days of the earliest performances; all the slumbering chords awake, and suddenly weep, mourn and sob more quiveringly than ever; the public applauds and shouts bravo, and thinks that it is for it the player works these wonders. Poor deluded public! It is towards some kindred soul, unsuspected by you, that all this effort, those cries and tears are directed! You simply get the benefit of it as from dew or light or flame. But, after all, what matters it to you who pours the dew down, who spreads this light, who lights this flame, since in this dew and light and flame you refresh and light and warm yourself? So, one night, Dorval had surpassed herself—for whom? She had not the slightest idea. It was for a woman in the audience—a woman who for three hours had kept her spellbound beneath her eagle glance; for three hours Dorval saw none of the other people in the house, she wept and talked and lived and, in a word, acted for that one woman alone: when she applauded and cried "Bravo!" the actress had been paid for her labour, rewarded for her pains and compensated for her talent! She had said to herself, "I am satisfied since she is." Then the curtain had fallen and, breathless, crushed, almost dead from exhaustion, like a pythoness when removed from her tripod, Dorval went to her room; from victress she became victim, and fell half fainting upon her couch. Suddenly the door of her dressing-room opened, and the unknown woman appeared on the threshold. Dorval sprang up trembling and took her by both hands as though she were a friend. For a few minutes the two women looked at one another in silence, smiling, with tears in their eyes.
"Forgive me, madame," the unknown said, with incredible sweetness of voice; "but I could not return home without telling you of the joy, the emotion, the happiness I owe to you. Oh! it was wonderful, sublime, exquisite!"
Dorval looked at her and thanked her with her eyes, and an inclination of her head and a motion of the shoulders peculiarly her own, all the while interrogating her, inquiring with every muscle of her countenance—
"But who in the world are you, madame? Who are you?"
The unknown guessed her thoughts, and replied—only those who had heard that wonderful siren speak can conceive the sweetness of her tones—
"I am Madame Malibran."
Dorval uttered a cry and pointed to the only picture which adorned her room. It was a portrait of Madame Malibran as Desdemona. Henceforth Madame Dorval possessed one of the two things she had hitherto lacked before she could become a woman of the highest merit: a friend who would be true to her but, at the same time, discriminating; and such a friendship Madame Malibran offered her. Now that she had her portion of friendship, it rested with Providence to bestow upon her that of love.
After Madame Dorval had played the parts of Adèle d'Hervey and Marion Delorme, she played Kitty Bell; by that time she had developed into a most accomplished woman and a consummate actress. Dorval's exclamation when she stopped me near the Odéon, and the artistic freemasonry she frankly sealed with a fraternal kiss, made me very happy! For pride to be satisfied, praise must come from a higher source or, at the very least, from as high a one as that of the recipient. For the praise that comes from above is ambrosial, that from below is but incense.
One day, Michelet wrote to me (I had never either seen or spoken with him previously).
"Monsieur," he said, "I like and admire you; you are one of the forces of nature."
This letter gave me keener and more real pleasure than if I had received the news that the grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur had been bestowed upon me. Mention of the Légion d'honneur suggests a few words relative to the sensation caused by the successes of both Henri III. and Christine.
Christine had been played on 20 February, and on 9 March, very probably at the request of the Duc de Chartres, who had been present, at his own desire, at the first representation, the Duc d'Orléans wrote as follows to M. Sosthène de la Rochefoucauld:—
"PALAIS-ROYAL, 9 March 1830
"I hear, monsieur, that you intend to submit to the King the suggestion of granting the Cross of the Légion d'honneur to M. Alexandre Dumas, when the season comes round at which he usually grants promotions to that order.
"M. Alexandre Dumas' success as a dramatist, indeed, seems to me to deserve such a mark of esteem, and I shall be the more pleased for him to get it, since he has been attached to my secretarial staff and in my forestry department for the past six years, during which time he has supported his family in a most praiseworthy way. I am told he intends to travel in the north of Europe, and that he sets great store by the nomination taking place before his departure. I do not know whether 12 April would be a suitable occasion on which to submit the proposition to the King; but I wish to suggest the idea to you, as a token of the interest I take in M. Dumas.
"Allow me to take advantage of this opportunity to offer you the assurance of my sincere regard for you.—Yours affectionately, LOUIS-PHILIPPE D'ORLÉANS"
One day, when I was in the library, M. le Duc de Orléans came in with a letter in his hand. I had risen at his entrance and remained standing as he advanced towards me.
"Look here, Monsieur Dumas," he said, "this is what has been asked on your behalf. Read it."
Intensely astonished, I read the letter I have just transcribed above. I knew that M. Sosthène de la Rochefoucauld, who was very friendly towards me, had been urged by Beauchesne to send my name in to M. de la Bouillerie's office; but it was far enough from my thoughts that the Duc d'Orléans would ever consent to recommend me himself. I blushed excessively, stammered out a few words of thanks and asked him to whom I owed the good fortune of being recommended by him.
"To a friend," he replied, and that was all I could extract from him.
Unfortunately, the duke's recommendation was of no avail. I have since been informed that it was M. Empis, head clerk of the king's household, who frustrated the kind intention of the prince and of M. de la Rochefoucauld. M. Empis belonged to an entirely opposite school of literature from mine; he had written a very remarkable play called La Mère et la Fille, the leading part in which was created by Frédérick Lemaître, upon his first appearance at the Odéon, and the piece was extraordinarily successful. I said above "Unfortunately the duke's recommendation was of no avail." Let us explain the word unfortunately. Unfortunate it was, indeed; for at that time the Cross of the Légion d'honneur had not been bestowed broadcast, and it would have been a rich prize had I obtained it. I was young and full of hope and vigour and enthusiasm; I was just on the threshold of my career; and therefore the fact of my nomination would have given me very great delight. But it is among the misfortunes of those who have the power of giving such honours that they never know how to give them in time; this cross, that the Duc d'Orléans asked for me in 1830, King Louis-Philippe only gave me in 1836, at the Fêtes of Versailles; even then it was not he himself but the prince royal who gave it me, upon the occasion of his marriage, when the orders at his disposal were one grand'croix and two croix d'Officier and one croix de Chevalier. The grand'croix was for François Arago; the two "croix d'Officier" were for Augustin Thierry and Victor Hugo; the croix de Chevalier was for me.
Having reached this period of my life, I will tell all the stories connected with this order, and how M. de Salvandy, so that he might be forgiven for presenting the croix d'Officier to Hugo and the croix de Chevalier to me, felt obliged to give one at the same time to an excellent fellow, whose name was so totally unknown as to preserve, by its very obscurity, the celebrity of our own. The result was that I put my cross inside my pocket, instead of pinning it in my buttonhole.
And this reminds me of the story of the father of one of my literary confrères, a wealthy cotton merchant, who, having received the cross, because he had lent Charles X. two million francs, only wore the ribbon in the buttonhole of his fob. Thus I had, for the time being, to deprive myself of the red ribbon. I was angry at first with M. Empis for having defeated my pretty dream, but far more angry with him later for having written Julie, ou la Réparation!
However, we managed to find endless diversions during that happy winter of 1830, severe though it was. It is a remarkable fact that revolutions almost always surprise people in the midst of dances, and kings in the midst of fireworks. There were, too, any number of masked balls. There was a Salon held in Paris in those days by Madame Lafond, which was entirely comprised of artistic society. Madame Lafond was, at that date, a woman of between thirty-six and thirty-eight years of age, in the zenith of her beauty, which was that of a brunette, and she was admirably preserved: she had dark speaking eyes and black wavy hair, add to these charms a most bewitching smile, the most graceful hands imaginable, and an intellect that was remarkable both for its power and its kindliness, and you will still only have a very imperfect impression of the mistress of that Salon. Her husband was the musician Lafond, who was a talented violin player: he was small and fair, and supported his wife to perfection at her soirées, playing the same part Prince Albert plays at the Court of Queen Victoria. I believe he was killed by a carriage accident. He had two sons a great deal younger than I, who still wore little round jackets and turned-down collars, and were sent to bed at eight o'clock. They have grown up into two delightful young fellows, whom I have since met at various Embassies.
In those days, neither the costume of pierrots nor that of dock labourers had become the fashionable rage; Chicard and Gavarni were still hidden in the dark depths of the future; and the Opera ballet had not emerged from the traditional domino in which it would have been a difficult matter to thread those mad galops, to the sound of that terrible music, which won Musard the nickname of "the Napoleon of the Cancan." The real cancan, which was a capital national dance, the only one which possessed the elements of spontaneity and of the picturesque, was consigned to the outskirts of civilisation, with other contraband goods proscribed by custom.
Now, the choice of a suitable costume was a very serious business to an author of twenty-six, who had already begun to possess the reputation, whether erroneously or not, of being quite an Othello. I had made the acquaintance at Firmin's balls—I do not know why I have never yet spoken of those delightful réunions of his, where one was sure to find, without powder or paint, the youngest and prettiest faces in Paris—of a clever young fellow, a pupil of M. Ingres, and who has since become the celebrated antiquary Amaury Duval. He had just returned from Greece, where he had taken part in an artistic expedition that had been sent to the land of Pericles, after the battle of Navarino. He appeared at one of Firmin's balls in the disguise of a Pallikar. The Pallikar was all the rage then; Byron had introduced, it, and all our pretty women had collected funds for that mother of lovely women, the land of Greece. From this time I became great friends with Amaury and, later, I gave his name to one of my romances, in remembrance of our youthful friendship; or, rather, let us say, of the friendship of our youth. He proclaimed himself a fanatical partisan of my works, and he it was, it will be recollected, son and nephew of an Academician, who was said to have demanded the heads of the members of the Academy, after the first representation of Henri III. So I went and hunted him up, for it was most important at a fancy dress ball to make the most of one's natural advantages. I have said that I never was good-looking, but I was tall and well built, although rather slight; my face was thin, and I had large brown eyes, with a dark complexion; in a word, if it was impossible to create beauty, it was easy enough to form character. So we decided that the dress of an Albanian would suit me exactly; and Amaury accordingly designed me a costume. Now, the turban was the most striking part of this costume, and, being rolled two or three times round the head, it passed round the neck and was tied at the point it started from. But the costume had to be made, and, as it was covered with embroidery and braid and lace, it took a fortnight to make.
At last, the evening arrived, and the dress was finished by eleven o'clock; by midnight I entered Madame Lafond's house. This costume of mine was then almost unknown in France: the jacket and leggings were of red velvet, embroidered with gold; the fustanelle, as white as snow, had not been robbed of a single inch of its proper width; the dazzling silver arms were marvellously wrought, and, above all, the originality of the head-dress drew all eyes upon me. I guessed I should make a triumphant sensation, but had no idea of the method in which it would be expressed. I had not taken ten steps into the room before a young woman, clad as a Roman priestess, crowned with verbena and cypress, made her apologies to her partner and left him to come to me. She then led me apart into a small boudoir and, making me sit down, remained standing in front of me and said—
"Now, Monsieur Dumas, you are going to teach me how to put on a turban like that; to-morrow I am acting Desdemona with Zucchelli and you know how those Italian devils array themselves; I should, at any rate, like him to have a head-dress like yours, it would work me up!"
The Roman priestess was Madame Malibran, of whom I shall soon have much more to say and of whom I have already spoken twice in connection with the first representation of Henri III., where she hung over the edge of her box on the third tier throughout the fifth act; and also in connection with Dorval, into whose arms she ran to fling herself after a representation of l'Incendiaire. Yes, it was Madame Malibran, the incomparable artist, who alone, perhaps, of all artists, wedded the drama to song, strength to grace, joy to sadness, to a degree no one has ever attained. Alas! she too died young, and is now but a shadow on our horizon! Shade of Desdemona and of Rosine, of la Somnambule and of Norma, a dazzling, harmonious, melancholy shadow! that those who saw the living reality can still revive by the aid of memory, but who is merely a phantom for those who saw her not! She died when still young, but thereby she, at any rate, carried away with her into the tomb all the advantages that are to be derived from premature death; she died beautiful, loving and beloved, at the zenith of her triumph, girt with glory, crowned with laurels and enshrouded in fame! But theatrical artists leave nothing that can be transmitted to posterity, no traces of the purity of their singing, the grace of their movements or the passion of their gestures—nothing but a reflection which remains in the memory of their contemporaries. It therefore remains for us, painters or poets, who do leave something behind us after we have gone; to us, privileged children of Art, who possess the faculty of reproducing the form or the spirit of material and perishable things through the medium of our brushes and pens; to whom God has given a mirror for a soul, which remembers instead of forgets; it rests with us to make you live again, O brothers and sisters! to depict you as you were, and, if possible, to reflect your images even greater and more beautiful than they were in life!
Did my readers think when I began these volumes that my aim was merely egotistic, for the purpose of talking everlastingly of myself? No, indeed; I meant it to serve for a huge frame in which to depict all my brethren in Art, fathers or children of my century, the great spirits and charming personalities, whose hands, cheeks and lips I have pressed; those who have loved me, and whom I have loved; those who have been, or who still are, the ornament of our times; including those I may never have known, and those even who have detested me! The Memoirs of Alexandre Dumas—why, it would be absurd! What could I have become alone, as an isolated individual, a lost atom, a speck of dust amidst so many whirlwinds Simply nothing. But by associating myself with you, by pressing with my left hand the right hand of an artist, with my right hand the left hand of a prince, I became a link in the golden chain which connects the past with the future. No, I am not writing my own Memoirs, but those of all I have known; and as I have come in contact with the greatest and most illustrious people in France, it is really Memoirs of France I am writing.
I spent the best part of the night teaching Madame Malibran how to put on an Albanian turban, and the next day Zucchelli played Othello in a head-dress similar to the one I had worn on the previous evening. Madame Malibran was quite right. Othello's coiffure had its effect, for she had never been greater or more sublimely beautiful!
Farewell, Marie! Her name too was Marie, in common with Marie Dorval and Marie Pleyel—au revoir! I shall meet you again at Naples!
[CHAPTER V]
Why the Duc d'Orléans' recommendation on the subject of my croix d'honneur failed—The indemnity of a milliard—La Fayette's journey to Auvergne—His reception at Grenoble, Vizille and at Lyons—Charles X.'s journey to Alsace—Varennes and Nancy—Opening of the Chambers—The royal speech and the Address of the 221—Article 14—The conquest of Algiers and the recapture of our Rhine frontiers
Let us turn from an artistic to an aristocratic evening party, one which made quite a different sensation! I refer to the famous soirée at the Palais-Royal given, on 31 May 1830, by the Duc d'Orléans to his brother-in-law, the King of Naples. But first let us return to matters a little farther back.
Why did the recommendation of the Duc d'Orléans in the matter of obtaining a croix d'honneur for me carry so little weight? It was because, as his popularity grew day by day, so, in proportion, did his credit wane at the Tuileries. Because, daily growing emboldened and weighing in his mind the question he meant to put, so he has since told me, to a council and not to a prince of the blood, he let slip expressions against the Court which showed too open an opposition to its methods. Because, since M. de Polignac had been made a minister, since the occasion of the famous audience given to Victor Hugo when he was received by the king at Saint-Cloud, everybody was expecting a fresh revolution to break out. A revolution must have been universally expected, since I, in my own small turn, had replied to M. de Lourdoueix in the famous phrase "I will wait" (j'attendrai), and, had I waited, the matter would only have been postponed for six months.
On 2 March the Chamber re-opened. The king was present at the sitting, his mind made up for a revolutionary measure. Now a thousand things determined Charles X. upon taking such a course: his own travels in Alsace, M. de La Fayette's in the Auvergne, and other events that we will record in their proper places. General La Fayette, having gained possession of his indemnity money as a Royalist émigré, had made up his mind to travel through Auvergne as a Republican. In fact, the milliard of indemnity had just been distributed; and, strange to say, it was found to enrich more Liberals than Royalists. The Duc d'Orléans, for instance, received 16,000,000 francs. The Duc de Liancourt received 1,400,000 francs as his share. The Duc de Choiseul, 1,100,000 francs. General La Fayette, 456,182 francs. M. Gaëtan de La Rochefoucauld, 428,206 francs. M. Thiers, 357,850 francs. And lastly, M. Charles de Lameth, 201,696 francs.
Well, General La Fayette set out for Auvergne. General La Fayette, whom I knew intimately, and who was quite friendly in his inclinations towards myself, whom I hope to describe in his proper turn in the course of these Memoirs, without allowing the respectful homage of a young man and the sympathy of the friend to injure the impartiality of the historian—General La Fayette, I say, was born in 1757, at Chavagnac, near Brioude, and, some day before the close of the session of 1829, he had set out to visit the ancient land of the Arvernese. He had yielded to the wish of seeing his native land once more, a desire which moves our souls with such profound memories that it draws us to it throughout our whole life, and it is a remarkable fact that this attraction grows stronger as we near death, as though nature had implanted an imperious wish in man's heart to seek his burial-place near the spot where he was born. Now, General La Fayette was welcomed throughout that tour with joy and affection and respect, but without fanaticism. Banquets had been given him at Issoire and Clermont and Brioude; but none of them had had any sort of political significance until then: they were simply meetings of fellow-citizens, celebrating the return of one of their members, and nothing more. Suddenly, the news of a change of government became known, and the accession of M. de Polignac to power.
From the very moment that the news of the change of government arrived, La Fayette's journey assumed a different complexion: it bore the aspect of an influential protest, and an almost religious hopefulness of tone. The general was at Puy—a remarkable coincidence—in the same town where the ancestors of M. de Polignac had formerly held sway, when, a couple of hours before the banquet took place that was being prepared in his honour, the people heard of the formation of the Ministry of 8 August; immediately they rallied excitedly round the famous traveller, pressing up to him with shouts of "Vive La Fayette!" and, at the repast, two hours later, the following pretty revolutionary toast was drunk:—
"The Chambre des députés, the one and only hope of France!"
The general intended to go to Vizille to see his granddaughter, wife of Augustin Périer, who lived in a château built in olden times by the Constable of Lesdiguières, an ancient feudal manor house, which was later turned into a factory and workshop. To go to Vizille—a historic town whose Government, with that of Bretagne, in 1788 was the first to offer opposition to the royal decrees—he had to pass through Grenoble. Moreover, pass through it he would; the general was just the man to go two or three leagues out of his way in order to cull the flower of popularity, which quickly fades and which, after forty years, was springing up as fresh the second time as the first.
Grenoble is a great town for dissension: nowhere have the seeds of liberty produced more luxuriant crops than in this unsubmissive city, which, in 1815, out of reverence for Napoleon, burst the gates that would not open to him; which, in 1816, witnessed the guillotining of Didier, Drevet and Buisson, and the shooting down of twenty-two conspirators, including an old man of sixty-five and a child of fifteen! A couple of score of young men on horseback and several carriages came out to greet the general; they met him a league away from the town to form an escort; then at the gate of France the former mayor, deprived of his office, probably through the many political reactions of the times, awaited him, to present him with a crown of silver oak leaves. This wreath—a token of the love and gratitude of the people—was the outcome of a subscription at fifty centimes a head. At Vizille they outdid even this: they fired cannon. On 5 September it was the turn of Lyons to show the general sympathy by means of a reception that was quite an ovation in itself. A deputation was even appointed to receive him at the borders of the department of the Rhône; it was escorted by a troop of five hundred horsemen, by a thousand young folk on foot and by sixty carriages occupied by the leading merchants of the town. In the midst of these carriages came an empty barouche, drawn by four horses, which was intended for the general's use.
At the gate of the city the general was harangued by a former lawyer. We do not recollect the speech, except that it was ultra Liberal in tone, but we recall a few words of the reply from him to whom it was addressed. "To-day," the general replied, "after a long diversion of brilliant patriotism and of constitutional hopes, I once again find myself in your midst at what I should consider a critical moment, had I not observed everywhere during my journeyings, as also in this powerful city, the calm and even contemptuous steadfastness of a great people, which is aware of its rights, conscious of its strength and will remain faithful to its duties!"
This utterance, ten months beforehand, was prophetic of the Bretonne Association, the refusal of tax-paying and the Revolution of July.
The general's account of his travels was printed, and a hundred thousand copies of it were sold. "Those whom God would ruin He first deprives of reason." The Monarchy had, indeed, gone mad! A most influential paper, a monarchical one, published an article on this journey, of which the following few lines may serve as a specimen:—
"General La Fayette's journey is a revolutionary orgy, which is not so much the result of patriotic enthusiasm as of various combinations of party spirit. The Comité directeur and Masonic Lodges called them together, these parties being desirous of fêting the Revolution, in the person of the general, who, since 1789, has preached and defended similar principles in short, it is the actual Revolution elevated to high places."
It is now necessary for us to say a few words about the tour of Charles X. in Alsace; it will balance that of General La Fayette. Besides, any events that lead up to great catastrophes in history are of peculiar interest. Contrary to that of La Fayette, who, as we have seen, had excited the enthusiasm of the people wherever he went, the king's journey, following the usual custom of princely journeys, had only displayed an official and factitious loyalty, spread over the real hatred below, as the folds of a beautiful cloth cover up a worm-eaten table. It may be said to have done far more, it had brought to light some of those sinister omens which foretell great disasters. They had passed through Varennes (and one asks by what unlucky chance or forgetfulness had that town, fatal to the cause of monarchy, been chosen for the king's route?), and at Varennes they stopped to change horses, at the head of the bridge, at the entrance of the archway, exactly at the same spot where Louis XVI., the Queen, Madame Élisabeth, the Children of France and their governess, Madame de Tourzel, had been compelled to stop by Drouet's threats, to get down from the coach and to follow M. Sausse into his grocer's shop, which was to serve them as the antechamber to the Temple. Madame la Duchesse d'Angoulême, who had been one of the party on that first journey, was with the second. When she recognised the fatal spot, after a lapse of thirty-eight years, she shuddered, uttered a cry and would not allow the carriage time for a relay, but commanded the postillions to go on to the next posting-place. This time the postillions obeyed; they had refused on 21 June 1791. They did not, however, set off fast enough to prevent overhearing a few injudicious words which the duchess let fall; words that, borne on the winds of hatred, preceded her throughout the journey, to such effect that, when Charles X. and his family reached Nancy, the chief of Royalist towns, and showed themselves on the palace balcony to bow to the people, hissings were heard above the cheers, each time the king saluted: the people treated their princes just as one treats actors who have played their parts badly. The Duc d'Orléans lost sight of nothing; like a hunter on the watch for his prey, he lay in wait to take advantage of all the errors made by the royal quarry he was hunting down. Thus I, too, who was on a footing of intimacy in his household, could, so to speak, feel the pulse of his ambition beating, and had no doubt of the nature of his desires, which daily grew more and more hopeful in character.
I have mentioned that the Chamber opened on 2 March 1830. I was present at the opening session. Just as the king placed his foot on the first step of the throne, he caught it in the velvet pile carpet that covered the steps. He tripped and nearly fell. His cap rolled on the floor. The Duc d'Orléans sprang forward to pick it up, and returned it to the king. I nudged my neighbour—as far as I can recollect, it was Beauchesne.
"Before a year is out," I said to him, "the same thing will happen to the crown—only, instead of giving it back to Charles X., he will keep it for himself."
In the speech pronounced by Charles X., after he had set the cap on his head which the Duc d'Orléans had given him back, was the following noteworthy paragraph:—
"I have no doubt of your co-operation in the good deeds I wish to carry out. You will reject with scorn all treacherous insinuations which malevolent feeling endeavours to propagate. Should evil machinations raise up against my rule obstacles which I neither will nor ought to foresee, I should find strength to overcome them through my resolution to maintain the public peace, in the just confidence of the French people and in the love they ever bear towards their king."
The Address of the 221 was the reply to this speech; to the above paragraph, the following was the answer:—
"The Charter has laid it down as an indispensable condition of the regular working of public affairs, that there should be a permanent agreement of political views between your Government and the desires of the people. Sire, our loyalty and devotion compel us to tell you that such concurrence of opinion does not exist."
It was a declaration of war in perfect form.
Charles X. trembled in every limb whilst he listened to the reading of the Address. Then, when the deputation had quitted the Tuileries, he said—
"I will not suffer my crown to be dipped in the gutter!" And he dissolved the Chamber.
These were some of the events which thrilled through every heart, even in that of the Journal des Débats. It attacked the Government with most unusual violence.
"Polignac, La Bourdonnaye and Bourmont," it exclaimed, "that is equivalent to saying Coblence, Waterloo, 1815! Those are the three principles, the three chief characters of the Ministry. Press them hard, twist them and they will disgorge nothing but humiliations and misfortunes and danger!"
Charles X. read this article.
"Ah!" he said, "these people who invoke the Charter are not aware that it contains Article 14, which we can hold at their heads."
And, as a matter of fact, the Polignac Ministry had only been created in order to put into force that famous article, which Louis XVIII. had concealed in the Charter, as a sword of dissension, but of which he would never make use.
All the hopes of the king and M. de Polignac were vested in that very Article 14.
Thus, when M. de Peyronnet had been summoned to form a Ministry, M. de Polignac said to him—
"Remember, we want to put Article 14 in force."
"That is, indeed, my intention too!" M. de Peyronnet had said.
Everything was turning out for the best, since everybody was advising France to apply Article 14.
It only remained to be seen whether France would allow it to be put in force. They really hoped to turn the country's attention in another direction by two dazzling visions; then, whilst it was turned away, they meant to bandage its eyes and gag its lips. These two events were: the conquest of Algiers; and the restitution of our Rhine frontiers.
Our readers know all about the conquest of Algiers. Exasperated by our consul, the dey had struck him a blow across the face with his fan. This blow was followed by three years of siege; but, as the blockade really blockaded nothing, Hussein-dey, with Turkish logic, had concluded that, as in Turkey, insults were always revenged in proportion to the strength of the injured party, we could not be very strong since we did not take our revenge. Consequently, being blockaded as he was, he amused himself by shooting at a ship of truce, and also openly threatened to put our consul at Tripoli to death by empaling him; our consul not fancying a death of that kind, took refuge on board an English ship which deposited him one fine day at Marseilles. Now these insults were beyond toleration, and an African expedition was decided upon.
That good friend of ours, England, that precious ally, which I thinks it has a twofold right to meddle in all our affairs; which, every time that we put our foot on any shore, trembles for fear we mean to set up trade there; England, which, after having taken India from us, the West Indies, Antilles and the isle of France, would like to take away from us the two or three stations we have left, either in the Gulf of Mexico or in Oceania or in the Indian Ocean, was greatly disturbed at our projected expedition. Russia, on the contrary, rejoiced; it delighted at the thought of France encamped on the other side of the Mediterranean to keep an eye on Portugal and Gibraltar. Charles X. understood that Russia was his real ally, that we, the rulers of the West, had no disputed question to settle with her whose ambitions all looked Eastwards. Austria, on account of its Mediterranean coast-line, lent its aid to the expedition; Holland, whose consul had been put in chains by orders of the dey, approved; the King of Piedmont, who saw in it the safety of his commerce in respect of Genoa and Sardinia, rejoiced much; Greece, who saw in it the prospect of a fresh blow aimed at her old enemies, encouraged us to go ahead with our proceedings; Méhémet-Ali, who regarded it as a means of weakening the Porte, offered us his services; and, finally, all the powers of modern Italy, Tuscany, Rome, Naples and Sicily, applauded us! And it was a capital opportunity for once to send England about its business. M. d'Haussez, the Minister of Marine, took it upon himself to do this. One day, Lord Stuart, the English Ambassador in Paris, called upon him and, with that arrogant air peculiar to English ambassadors, demanded an explanation.
"If you wish a diplomatic explanation," M. d'Haussez replied, "M. le President du Conseil will give it you; if a personal explanation will satisfy you, I will give it you: and it is this—we don't care a snap of the fingers for you."
I was at the house of Madame du Cayla the evening when M. d'Haussez related this heroic piece of brutality, and I should add that everybody applauded it, even the ladies present. Lord Stuart transmitted the reply to his Government, which, no doubt, found it satisfactory, since they left us alone.
History has recorded the various attempts that have been made to conquer Algiers; it was impregnable, a fact that had been proved, so people said, by the Charles V. expedition in 1541, by Duquesne's in 1662 and by Lord Exmouth's in 1816; all three attempts having failed or having been only partially successful. Happily, François Arago held very different views, when summoned for consultation on the point. François Arago knew Algiers, for he had been taken prisoner by a Corsair and had spent several months on board his ship. He declared that there were two things to be found in the neighbourhood of Algiers, namely wood and water, though their existence had been denied by the engineers. He convinced M de Polignac, who was ready enough to be convinced, and he, in his turn, convinced General Bourmont, who accepted the command of the land army, and Admiral Duperré, who accepted the command of the fleet. Then, when all the preparations had been energetically pushed forward, one hundred and three battleships, three hundred and seventy-seven transport ships, and two hundred and twenty-five vessels, carrying thirty-six thousand troops for landing, and twenty-seven thousand sailors, all set sail on 16 May from the port of Toulon and majestically advanced towards Algiers. So much for the conquest of Algiers, which, at the end of the month of May, the time we have reached, was in full swing.
Now let us pass on to the restitution of our Rhine frontiers. No accident had led up to this event as in the case of Algiers. It was a political combination, of which all the honour is due to M. de Renneval, for it was he from whom the idea first emanated. France and Russia entered into an offensive and defensive alliance against England. And, trusting to this alliance, France would take back her Rhine frontiers, and would, on her side, shut her eyes to the seizing of Constantinople by Russia. Turkey would cry out, but no one would care. Prussia and Holland would cry out, but Hanover would be taken from England and divided into two parts, of which one would be given to Prussia, the other to Holland. As to Austria, she would keep quiet, thanks to a slice of Servia, with which a cake would be kneaded and thrown to her as to Cerberus, not only to prevent her biting, but also to keep her from barking.
These were two fine schemes for a king of France to accomplish—that one man should abolish a barbarian power, the terror of the Mediterranean, and give back to France her Rhine provinces, performing, that is, a feat which Charles-Quint had failed in, winning back by diplomacy what Napoleon had lost by arms; he would be, at once, both a great military warrior and a great politician. What was to be feared, and who could upset the Monarchy in this double scheme? Two elements: the Ocean and the People!
[CHAPTER VI]
The soirée on 31 May 1830 at the Palais-Royal—The King of Naples—A question of etiquette—How the King of France ought to be addressed—The real Charles X.—M. de Salvandy—The first flames of the volcano—The Duc de Chartres sends me to inquire into the commotion—Alphonse Signol—I tear him from the clutches of a soldier of the Garde royal—His irritation and threats—The volcano nothing but a fire of straw
It was in the midst of these events that the ball took place which I mentioned at the beginning of the last chapter. As we have said, it was given by the Duc d'Orléans to his brother-in-law, the King of Naples. The King of Naples was that contemptible François, son of Ferdinand and Caroline, who in 1820 was chosen by the patriots to represent them, and betrayed them; who, selected in order to be a support to the Revolution, suppressed it. He was the ruler of his citizens, decimated in 1798, and proscribed in 1820; but, sure of the allegiance of his lazzaroni (the real pillar of strength upon which the throne of the Two Sicilies rests), he came to visit France and to spend a short time with his family. The regal travellers—the queen accompanied him—met with a splendid reception at the Court, but so great was the aversion shown by Paris to this betrayer, that the prefect of the Seine, much as he desired to give a fête to him, dared not do it for fear the people would break his windows. The Duc d'Orléans, however, under cover of the relationship, and relying upon his ever growing popularity, ventured to do what the prefect of the Seine had not dared. But there was one great question to be settled, or, rather, a great favour to be obtained—and that was the presence at this fête of King Charles X. I remember the stir that took place over it at the time, at the Palais-Royal. The Duc d'Orléans, who knew Court etiquette as well as any man in the kingdom, was fully aware that a King of France gives fêtes himself, but does not accept invitations to any others. There was, indeed, a precedent to this derogation from the usual custom: a century before, Louis XV., on returning from a journey or fête, I forget which, spent three days with the Prince of Condé; but it was in the country, at Chantilly, so it was of no signification. It is also true, that in visiting the Duc d'Orléans you visited the duchess, who was the daughter of a king and a true Bourbon, as Madame la Duchesse d'Angoulême expressed it; which was not polite towards the Orléans, who were then looked upon as false Bourbons; but the duke thought it would be a fine thing to receive the king in his own house! So great an honour would reflect glory upon the family escutcheon; and the duke closed his eyes in order not to see the grimace that Madame la Dauphine made, shut his ears in order not to hear the remarks made by Madame la Duchesse d'Angoulême and persisted in his request so respectfully, that Charles X. let himself be persuaded, on condition that a company of his guards should occupy the Palais-Royal an hour before his arrival. These questions of etiquette were very paltry matters compared with those which were being debated at the same time between the people and the Monarchy. As soon as the royal promise was obtained, the household of the Duc d'Orléans thought of nothing else but the forthcoming ball. It was resolved to display before the King of Naples all the best literary and artistic exponents of the world of France. King Charles X., who knew little or nothing about them, would see them at the same time, and so he could kill two birds with one stone. Apparently, I was looked upon as a spurious specimen, just as the Orléans were spurious Bourbons; for I had been forgotten, or, at all events, left out of the list. But that excellent youth, the Duc de Chartres, asked for a ticket for me, and was delighted to send me one. I hesitated to accept, since the man should see was the son of the king and queen who had poisoned my father. But not to reply to the invitation would have been to grieve the Duc de Chartres, both on account of my absence and because of the reason for that absence. I therefore decided to accept. The invitations said "Half-past eight"; the king, Charles X., was to arrive at nine. When the due d'Orléans caught sight of me, he came up to me—a mark of attention that astonished me much.
It was not that he had a favour to confer on me, but a piece of advice he had to give me. His Royal Highness, supposing me to be little versed in etiquette, wished to give me some tips to avoid tripping on the slippery floors of the Palais-Royal.
"Monsieur Dumas," the duke said, "if, by chance, the king does you the honour of addressing you, you know that, in replying to him, you should neither address him as Sire or His Majesty, but simply the King."
"Yes, monseigneur, I am acquainted with that fact."
"Ah! how do you know that?"
"I know it, monseigneur, and even the reason for the mode of address. The words Sire and Majesty were profaned directly they were given to the usurper, and true-born courtiers very wisely consider that they could no longer be given to a legitimate monarch."
"Very good!" the duke said, turning on his heel, and plainly indicating by the tone of his voice that he would much have preferred me to be less well informed in Court matters.
Ten minutes later, the drums beat to arms. The Duc d'Orléans took the duchesse by the arm and signed to Madame Adélaïde and to the Duc de Chartres to follow him; he went at such a rate, to meet the royal visitor, that he lost his wife in the guard-chamber as Æneas had done three thousand years before on leaving Troy, and as, eighteen years later, the Duc de Montpensier was to do upon quitting the Tuileries. The duke reached the great entrance hall of the Palais-Royal just as Charles X. was stepping out of his carriage and putting his foot on the first step of the stairs that led up to it. We had rushed after our illustrious hosts, whom we saw reappear between a hedge of guards two deep, in the following order:—
King Charles X. walked first with Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans upon his arm. M. le Dauphin next, giving his arm to Madame Adélaïde. Then M. le Duc d'Orléans, with Madame la Dauphine; and, last, M. le Duc de Chartres, giving his arm to Madame la Duchesse de Berry. In front of them, ready to receive them at the door of the first salon, advanced the King and Queen of Naples.
It is quite twenty-two years since King Charles X. died in exile; the men of our generation saw him, but those of thirty, or young men of about twenty, did not see him and it is for their eyes we pen the following description. Charles X. was then an old man of seventy-six, tall and thin, with his head inclined a little on one side, adorned with beautiful white hair; his eyes were still vivacious and smiling; he had the Bourbon nose, and a mouth made ugly by the under lip drooping on his chin; he was most gracious and courteous, faithful and loyal, true to his friendships and to his vows; he possessed every kingly attribute except enthusiasm. In manner he possessed a regal air peculiar to his race. If Article 14 had not been in the Charter, he would certainly never have dreamt of making a coup d'état; for, to do so, meant breaking his oath, and had he forfeited his promise, he would, as he himself said, never again have dared to look at the portrait of François I. or the statue of King John. Furthermore, desiring absolutism from mere indolence, and tyranny from lack of activity, he used to say, apropos of tyranny and absolutism—
"You may pound all the princes of the house of Bourbon in the same mortar without extracting a single grain of despotism out of them!" And Louis Blanc has drawn him admirably in the lines: "As human as he was commonplace, if he desired to make his power absolute, it was in order to relieve himself of violent action; for there was nothing energetic about him, not even in his fanaticism; nothing really great, not even about his pride."
In conclusion, the precautions taken on my behalf by the Duc d'Orléans were unnecessary. The king never even looked at me; although I should add that I never took the least pains to put myself within range of his vision.
I felt a real antipathy towards the Bourbons of the Elder Branch of the family, and it was only when I thought of the dead, of the past and of those living in exile, that I could bring myself to do justice to them later.
When the king, the dauphin, the dauphiness and the Duchesse de Berry had arrived, the fête began.
M. de Salvandy has related, with regard to this fête, the whole of his conversation with the Duc d'Orléans. It began with these words, which made the political fortune of the author of Alonzo:—
"Monseigneur, this is a true Neapolitan fête, for we are dancing upon the edge of a volcano ..."
And, indeed, the volcano very soon began to show its fires. They proceeded from the Palais-Royal, the crater of 1789, which people thought had been extinguished thirty-five years before, but which was, in reality, only slumbering. I was there and saw it spring up, and can therefore give an account of the eruption that took place under my own eyes. I had gone out to cool myself on the terrace, and was meditating upon the strange coincidence of fate that made me, even in those days a Republican, almost an enforced witness of a fête given by the Bourbons of France, against whom my father had fought, to those Bourbons of Naples who had poisoned him, when all of a sudden loud cries were heard and bright lights were seen in the gardens of the Palais-Royal. A mass of flame, as though coming from a stack of wood, rose from one of the square lawns among the flower-beds which seemed to spring from the pedestal of the statue of Apollo. And this was what had happened. The numerous spectators of the princely fête that crowded in the Palais-Royal garden were anxious to have their share in the festivities, and, in contempt of the sentinels who guarded the lawns, a dozen young people had scaled the balustrades and, taking each other's hands, had begun a round dance, singing the old revolutionary Ça ira. During this time other young people had entertained themselves by piling up a pyramid of chairs and illuminating it by putting in the interstices of the chairs lamps taken from here and there. The leading builder of this tottering edifice and the principal actor in this revolutionary escapade was a young man whose death gave him a certain celebrity. He styled himself a literary man and his name was Alphonse Signol. Three days before, he had brought me a drama, entitled le Chiffonnier, and had asked me to read it. It certainly had some merit (we shall see later what became of it), but it was so far removed from my own style of writing of which, consequently, I was master, that it would have been impossible for me to render him any assistance, even in the way of advice. If only Signol had been content with putting the lamps on the chairs, all would have been well; but, instead, he took it into his head to place the chairs on top of the lamps, and all went wrong. The flame from a lamp reached the straw of one of the chairs and the whole pile flared up. Thence issued flames and cries, and women flying through the trees and under the arches of the stone galleries. This tumult quickly attracted the attention of the guests of the Duc d'Orléans. It was a serious matter to have shrieks and a fire in the garden of the Palais-Royal whilst Charles X. was within its precincts! I saw the Duc d'Orléans gesticulating wildly at a window; and whilst I was beginning to be far more taken up by what was passing inside than out of doors, I felt someone touch me gently on the shoulder. I turned round, and it was M. le Duc de Chartres, who had tried in vain to find out the meaning of all the disorder and smoke, and wanted to know if I had been more lucky in my inquiries than he. I replied in the negative, but offered at once to go and find out for him the cause and the upshot of the commotion; and as I could see he rejected my offer only from motives of discretion, in five seconds I was out in the hall and in another five in the garden. I arrived just in time to witness a struggle between a young man and a soldier, in which the youth was going to come off worst; when, thinking I recognised him, I sprang forward. I was so strong that I soon managed to separate the two combatants. I was right in my conjectures: the youth was Signol. The soldier was a corporal or sergeant belonging to the 3rd Regiment of the Guard. Signol had been pretty severely handled in the struggle; he was, consequently, furious, and although separated from the soldier, he still threatened to attack him again.
"Oh, you scamp!" he said, shaking his fist at him, "I don't want to have anything to do with you ... but the first officer of your regiment that I come across, I promise you, on my word of honour, I will box his ears for him."
I tried to quieten him down.
"No, no, no," he said; "when I promise I keep my word; and you shall be my second, will you not?"
I replied "Yes," to quieten him, and dragged him away into the rue de Valois. There, under pretext of inquiring the motive of his quarrel, I asked him what had taken place, and he told me what I have just related. In the midst of his recital he found a chance to ask me if I had read his drama. I replied in the affirmative.
"Very well, then," he said; "I will come and talk about it with you to-morrow."
And, as though he feared the tumult would calm down in his absence, he rushed back into the Palais-Royal garden. I did not restrain him, for I knew all I wanted to know—there had been no premeditated plot in this accident—it was nothing but a bit of tomfoolery. I went back into the palace and gave M. le Duc de Chartres an account of my expedition.
The narrative was so short and concise that, when it had been transmitted by the young prince to his father's illustrious guests, it immediately calmed the fears they appeared for a moment to have had. But, for greater safety, the crowd was made to leave the garden, and the fête continued, without further interruption, until daybreak.
At midnight the king and the royal family retired.
[CHAPTER VII]
A pressing affair—One witness lost, and two found—Rochefort—Signol at the Théâtre des Italiens—He insults Lieutenant Marulaz—The two swords—The duel—Signol is killed—Victorine and le Chiffonnier—Death steps in
Next day I was awakened by Signol. A minute after his return to the garden of the Palais-Royal, he had been compelled to leave it at the point of a bayonet. He seemed to me to be, if possible, still more exasperated in the morning than on the previous night. Now, he not merely thirsted to kill one officer of the 3rd Regiment, but, like Han d'Islande, he desired to annihilate the whole regiment. As I thought I detected incipient madness in this mania for slaughter, I started the subject of his melodrama. Then the man's mood changed: he had written the drama with the object of bringing some comfort to his aged mother, and a whole year's hopes and happiness rested on that work. If I did not keep it to re-read and did not offer to touch it up, or, at any rate, advise him where to do so, he was conscious that, in its present state of incompletion, it could not be acted and would be refused; then, good-bye to the sweet light of hope which had shone for a brief space in the hearts of both mother and son! I therefore promised to re-read le Chiffonnier and to do my best to promote its success. After which promise I invited the author to breakfast. We parted between noon and one o'clock. He went to the Théâtre-Italien to claim a stall which he received as editor of some paper or other.
La Gazza ladra was being played that night. I myself had an appointment with a very pretty woman, whom I had met at Firmin's house, a lady who played in les Mars in the provinces; and it was a rendezvous of such an interesting nature that I did not return home until the following noon. My servant told me that the young man who had breakfasted with me the day before had called to see me at seven in the morning and had seemed very vexed at not finding me at home. He had asked for a pen and paper and written this note—which Joseph (my servant) handed me:—
"Alphonse Signol, on very pressing business."
I thought it was about his drama, and, as I did not consider that business so pressing as Signol did, and as I was very tired, I went to bed and told my servant to tell any caller that I was not at home. Towards five o'clock I woke and rang. Signol had returned and written another note, which, when brought to me, contained these words:—
"DEAR DUMAS,—I fight a duel with swords to-morrow morning with M. Marulaz, lieutenant of the 3rd Guards Regiment. I told you I should ask you to be my second and I came this morning to beg you to render me that service. You were not at home, so I had to look for someone else. I have found a substitute. If I am killed, I bequeath le Chiffonnier to your charge; it will be the only source of income I have to leave to my mother.
"Vale et me ama "SIGNOL"
This letter filled me with sad thoughts for the rest of that day and night. I had no notion where Signol lived, or whether he had a home at all, so I could not send to him. I suddenly bethought me that I might possibly gain news of him at the café des Variétés, which he frequented most days; also, a month previous to this time, he had had a quarrel with Soulié, which had ended in the exchange of a couple of pistol shots. It was now nearly five o'clock in the afternoon. Rochefort (a friend of mine, a clever fellow who composed several original plays, one of them being Jocko, besides some delightful poems) was taking a glass of absinthe at one of the café tables. He rose when he caught sight of me.
"Ah!" he said, scratching his nose,'a habit he had, "you know poor Signol!..."
"Well?"
"He has just been killed!"
I heaved a sigh, although, really, it was no news to me, for my presentiments had already told me Rochefort's news. Here is an account of what had happened. When he left me two nights before, he had gone to get his stall ticket from the Théâtre-Italien. By ill-luck they gave him a stall in the orchestra. A second unfortunate coincidence decreed that an officer and soldiers of the 3rd Regiment of the Guard should be on duty that night at the Italiens. There was an empty seat in front of Signol, which an officer came and appropriated at the conclusion of the first act. He was the son of General Marulaz, now, I believe, himself a general. It was not really his turn on duty, but he had taken the place of one of his friends; his friend had a special engagement that night (notice the strange chain of circumstances!), he therefore begged Marulaz to be so good as to take his place. Marulaz consented, and had hardly sat down before he felt two hands leaning on the back of his stall. He did not think any rudeness was intended by the action, so he did not take any notice at first; but when the hands remained there for ten minutes, he turned round and saw that they belonged to Signol. Marulaz politely intimated that the back of his seat was not the right place for Signol's hands and, without replying, Signol withdrew them. The young officer thought the incident was accidental, and accordingly attached no significance to it. Five minutes later, on leaning back in his seat, he again felt the hands there. He did not wait this time, but turned round immediately.
"Monsieur," he said, "I have already intimated to you that your hands annoy me there; have the goodness to put them in your pockets if you have no other place for them, but please be so good as to take them off my seat!"
Signol withdrew them a second time. But, at the end of another two minutes, the young officer felt, not merely his irritating neighbour's hands but also his head upon his shoulder. This time he lost all patience, jumped up and turned round.
"Monsieur! monsieur!" he exclaimed, "if you are doing it on purpose to pick a quarrel with me, tell me so outright."
"Very well, then; it is done on purpose," Signol replied, rising too.
"Why?"
"On purpose to insult you, and if I have not done sufficient to that end already, take that!" And the angry madman gave Marulaz a blow across the face.
Thoroughly astounded at this incomprehensible conduct, the young officer mechanically drew his sword half out of its sheath.
"Look!" shouted Signol, "he is going to murder me!"
Marulaz pushed his sword back again into its scabbard and replied—
"No, monsieur; I will not assassinate you, but I will kill you!"
And, to avenge the insult he had thus gratuitously received, Marulaz, who was very strong, lifted Signol as though he had been a child right across from the one row to his own, and then placed him under his feet.
The incident caused a great commotion in the theatre, especially as even those close by did not know what it was all about: they had heard an altercation, seen the blow, and heard the words "He is going to murder me!" They had seen the flash of the drawn sword and its speedy return to its sheath; finally, they saw one man standing over another with his foot upon him. Not knowing precisely which was in the right or wrong of the quarrel, they took the part of the weaker, surrounded Marulaz, and pulled him off Signol, who, staggering and half suffocated, made for the corridor and street, and thence to the theatre café. Marulaz followed him there, and it became then a question of reparation, no longer one that could be settled by an immediate fight. They exchanged cards and fixed a meeting for the next day but one, in the bois de Vincennes.
The next day was to be spent by each combatant in choosing his seconds, and by the seconds in arranging the conditions of the duel. At two o'clock the following day, the four seconds met, conferred together and agreed upon swords as the weapons to be employed. Lieutenant Marulaz chose as one of his seconds the friend whom he had replaced on duty; this friend had duelling swords, and Marulaz examined them, pronounced them suitable and told him to bring them on the occasion.
"Agreed," said his friend; "but I warn you one of the two is an unlucky weapon: it has already served a similar purpose three or four times, and the combatants who used it were either killed or hurt."
"Plague take it!" Marulaz replied laughingly; "don't tell me which it is, then, and if I draw it I would rather not know."
The following morning they met in the bois de Vincennes. All had brought swords with them. They drew lots for them, and those brought by Marulaz' seconds won. Then they drew which should have the choice of these two swords. Marulaz again won the toss. He took the first that came to hand haphazard.
"Bravo!" his friend whispered to him; "you have drawn the right one!"
They stood to attention. At the second round, Marulaz disarmed Signol.
"Monsieur," he exclaimed, taking a step backwards, "I am disarmed!"
"So I see, monsieur," Marulaz coolly replied; "but since you are not wounded, pick up your sword and let us continue."
Signol picked it up, drew some string from his pocket, made surer hold of his sword, and, with a rapid attack, against the customary rules of duelling, stood on guard, lunged and wounded his adversary severely in the arm. When Marulaz felt the cold steel and saw the flow of blood he felt goaded to frenzy, sprang at his enemy and forced him to retreat twenty paces, bringing him up against a hedge where he lunged and passed his sword clean through the body. Signol uttered a sharp cry, stretched out his arms and died before he had time to fall to the ground.
"Messieurs," Marulaz said, turning to the four seconds, "have I fought fairly?"
All bowed in acknowledgment that he had. Had there been any recriminations to make in that fatal encounter, they would have been directed against the dead man. But no one thinks of laying blame on a corpse....
It will be remembered that I had now inherited Signol's manuscript, of which the manager of the Porte-Saint-Martin possessed a duplicate. Three or four months later, I was present at the first production of Victorine, ou la Nuit porte conseil. It was the skeleton idea of Chiffonnier, it is true, but encased in a delightful setting that was none of Signol's creation. One of its authors was Dupeuty, the others were Dumersan and Gabriel. I sought out Dupeuty, placed the MS. of Chiffonnier in his hands and asked him if he thought it fair to deprive Signol's mother of what I considered to be her share of the production. Dupeuty and his collaborators had no notion of the existence of an original manuscript, as the idea of their vaudeville had been supplied them by the manager of the Porte-Saint-Martin, and they had worked upon it; but when they learnt the true parentage, they spontaneously, generously and loyally agreed to include the poor mother in their success.
And that is the story of Signol's death and of the composition and production of Victorine, ou la Nuit porte conseil.
[BOOK II]
[CHAPTER I]
Alphonse Karr—The cuirassier—The medal of life saving and the Cross of the Légion d'honneur—Karr's home at Montmartre—Sous les tilleuls and the critics—The taking of Algiers—M. Dupin senior—Why he did not write his Memoirs—Signing of the Ordinances of July—Reasons that prevented my going to Algiers
The events we have just recorded in our last chapter bring us up to the 2nd of June.
As Charles X. looked up at the starry heavens from the top of the Duc d'Orléans' terrace he said—
"What splendid weather for my Algerian fleet!"
But he was mistaken: almost immediately the fleet had left port it had been scattered by a storm, and, when Charles made his comment, it was having the utmost difficulty in rallying at Palma.
As regards other matters, the Opposition was going ahead and great and small newspapers kept hitting at the Government, some with clubs and some with staves. We have mentioned how the Journal des Débats treated the Polignac Ministry upon its accession to power. If we had these little papers under our notice we might, perhaps, be able to prove that the banter of dwarfs can work as much mischief as insults inflicted by giants.
Le Figaro was among the number of the small journals which, at that time, were carrying on a skirmishing engagement with the Government. It was under the management of Bohain, and, as is well known, Janin, Romieu, Nestor Roqueplan, Brucker, Vaulabelle, Michel Masson and Alphonse Karr were among its most prominent contributors. Karr was, at that time, perhaps, the least known of that Pleiades of fighting men. He has since become one of our most distinguished literary artists—observe, I say literary artists and not literati or men of letters—but at that time he was fighting his maiden battles. He had been present at the reading of Henri III., at Nestor Roqueplan's, where I became acquainted with him. According to our usual custom in the case of all the remarkable men of our day, let us select for particular comment, from his early efforts, that special faculty which has the power of giving to truth the charm of paradox. This truth, bare and undraped when treated by others, is always, on leaving the hands of Alphonse Karr, clad in a veil of gold. Without doubt Alphonse Karr has, since 1830, told the various Governments which have succeeded each other, as well as those who have flattered or attacked them, a greater number of truths than any other man. And, different from the supposed truths of others, those of Alphonse Karr are real and undeniable, the more they are probed the more they are proved to be true. Alphonse Karr was, in those days, a handsome young man of twenty-two or twenty-three, with regular features set in a frame of dark hair; he had adopted an eccentric form of dress, which he has always adhered to; he was extremely well made, strong physically, and an adept at all gymnastic exercises, especially at swimming and fencing. During the year 1829, when bathing in the Marne, he had rescued a cuirassier from drowning. The man was heavy and nearly as strong as Karr himself, so that it almost happened that, instead of Karr saving the cuirassier, the cuirassier drowned Karr. The act made sufficient of a stir for Karr to receive a medal from the Government, and I have occasionally seen him wear it. This medal was, in the hands of wags, the source of endless gibes, which Karr's reputation for bravery maintained, it is true, within the bounds of propriety, but which was never exhausted. There was no precedent for that famous medal, and I was reading something about it, only yesterday, in some newspaper rag or other. One day, at a great dinner at which I was present together with a host of people wearing decorations—not just ordinary medals but the Cross of the Légion d'honneur, which, at the present day, is distributed and conferred in a totally different manner from all the medals in the world—those jokes at Karr's expense, who was also one of the guests, broke out afresh. Karr, with his cool and habitual phlegm, called the waiter and asked for a pen, ink and paper. He cut the paper into as many round pieces as there were decorated guests at the table, wrote on each piece the reason for which the wearer had been decorated and passed each slip to its proper quarter. It completely silenced his scoffers.
Karr was born in Germany, in December 1808, and has only become a naturalised Frenchman since 1848. His father was one of the five or six German musicians who evolved the piano from the harpsichord. Three of his uncles died as captains in the French service. He was, besides, a nephew of Baron Heurteloup, and a cousin of Habeneck. In those days he wrote no political articles for the Figaro. He has more than once told me, in all seriousness, that he saw the Revolution of July, and even that of February, without knowing what they were about. But, later, he studied the subject of I revolutions very deeply; for, in 1848, he wrote on the subject—
"Plus cela change, plus c'est la même chose!" ("The more things change, the more do they remain the same!")
In 1829 he was an assistant professor in the Collège Bourbon and took to writing poetry, some of which he sent to the Figaro. Bohain opened all the letters received. Now Bohain was one of those plain-spoken men who openly professed a lofty scorn for poetry. His reply to Karr was—
"MY DEAR SIR,—Your lines are charming; but send me prose. I would rather be hanged than put a single line of poetry in my paper!"
Karr did not press the point: clever men are rare, and, as he did not wish Bohain to hang himself, he sent him prose instead. This was a great humiliation for the young poet to have to swallow. All the articles of a pastoral nature that were published by le Figaro at this period were by Alphonse Karr. Karr had made himself the oddest of dwelling-places. He had hired the old Tivoli at Montmartre, which had half tumbled in ruins into the quarries: there still remained a little wood and the cloakroom made of rushes. By night he slept in the cloakroom; by day he walked in the little wood. Here he began his first novel, Sous les tilleuls. He finished it in the rue de la Ferme-des-Mathurins, in the workshop of the two brothers Johannot, which he took after them. From Montmartre, Alphonse Karr only came into Paris about twice a month. He had a boat at Saint-Ouen, where he spent all the time he had left from his wood or the cloakroom.
Sous les tilleuls appeared in 1831, I believe. The book, worthy of notice, was accordingly noticed. That means it was attacked bitterly, as all things that show originality and power are attacked in France. They first accused the author of imitating a book of Nodier's that had appeared a fortnight after his; unfortunately, the date being on the title page, they had to withdraw that accusation. They next accused him of having translated it wholesale from the German, and even went so far as to give the title of the German original, Unter den Linden (Under the Limes), but it was soon seen that there was no book bearing such a title throughout the whole range of German literature, and that in nearly all the large towns was to be found a public promenade called thus—a fact Alphonse Karr did not deny. The author had placed as epigrams at the head of his chapters or letters verses of his own, no doubt those that Bohain had rejected, but which he had felt it his duty to adorn with the names of Schiller, Goethe and Uhland. The critics were taken in, and praised them at the expense of the prose. Prose and verse were both Karr's! Besides, a large number of the letters in the novel had been actually written to a young girl of whom Karr had been deeply enamoured. Karr did not receive his decoration until 1845 or 1846. One day he was told by Cavé that it was a question of giving the Cross to his father or himself. Marie-Louise had promised the Cross to his father, who, in 1840, was still waiting for it. Karr sought out M. Duchâtel, and, having satisfied himself that Cavé was quite correct in his statement, he said to the minister—
"Monsieur, when a father and son are both deserving of the Cross, the son does not accept it before his father."
And M. Duchâtel only gave the decoration to the father, whereas both father and son ought to have had it. When his father died, Karr received a decoration; he took the last ribbon his father had worn from his coat and put it on his own.
Early in June 1830, I met him in the street, arm in arm with Brucker. Brucker was a painter on china, and one of the most original workers in the journalism of 1830. I met them both at the very moment when the first of the hundred guns announcing the capture of Algiers were being fired.
"Listen!" Karr asked. "What is that? It sounds like the firing of guns."
"Doubtless Algiers has been taken," I replied.
"Bah! Have they been besieging it?" Karr replied.
Algiers was, indeed, taken; its surname of la Guerrière had not availed to save it. That nest of vultures which, as Hugo said, had been only half killed by Duquesne, was, at last, destroyed by M. de Bourmont. Directly the great news was received, the Minister for Marine, Baron d'Haussez, rushed off to the king. When he was announced, Charles X. sprang towards him with open arms; M. d'Haussez intended to kiss his hand, but Charles drew him to his breast.
"Come to my arms," he said; "to-day we all kiss one another."
And the king and his minister embraced.
However, amidst these apparent favours which Providence seemed to be piling on the head of the Elder Branch, clearsighted men could discern a yawning abyss.
"Take care!" M. Beugnot exclaimed, like a terrified pilot. "Unless you take care, the Monarchy will founder under canvas like a fully armed ship!"
"I should be much less uneasy were M. de Polignac a bit more so!" M. de Metternich remarked to our Ambassador at Vienna, M. de Renneval.
It must be confessed that even the Opposition, who were not so far-seeing as M. Beugnot and M. de Metternich, undertook to reassure the king, in the event of His Majesty feeling any anxiety. How, indeed, could they fear anything, when M. Dupin senior, one of the leaders of the Opposition, said, during the debate on the Address—
"The fundamental basis of the Address is a profound respect for
the person of the King; it expresses in the very highest degree
veneration for the ancient race of Bourbons; it represents
legitimacy, as a legal truths but, further, as a social necessity-a
necessity—now recognised by all thoughtful minds, the true
outcome of experience and of conviction."
O good Monsieur Dupin! of sound mind and integrity of judgment, a shining light of the Bar, a fearless and blameless legislator; you who, pondering over the trial of Jesus, wrote these sublime lines on Pontius Pilate—
"Pilate, seeing that he could not prevail over the spirit of the multitude, but that their excitement increased more and more, sent for water and washed his hands before the people, saying, 'I am innocent of the blood of this righteous man: see ye to it' (Matt, XXVII. 24); 'and he granted them their request' (Luke XXIII. 24), 'and delivered him into their hands to be crucified' (Matt, XXVII. 26). Wash thy hands, O Pilate! they are dyed with innocent blood. Thou hast given in through weakness, and art just as guilty as though thou hadst sacrificed him from wicked intention; generations have repeated it down to our times. 'The righteous man suffered under Pontius Pilate' (passus est sub Pontio Pilato). Thy name stands in history as a lesson to warn all public men, all pusillanimous judges, to show them the shame of yielding against their own convictions! The populace shrieked in fury at the foot of thy tribunal; perhaps thy own life was not safe, but what matter? Thy duty was plain, and in such a dilemma it is better to suffer death than to inflict it"—
O worthy Monsieur Dupin! advocate of Jesus Christ and of Béranger under the Restoration; President of the Chamber and Procurator-General under Louis-Philippe; President of the National Assembly, why do you not write your Memoirs, as I am writing mine? Why do you not, contrary to the cowardice and fear of Pontius Pilate, show yourself immovable in your convictions, unshaken in your duty, tenacious in your sympathies, immovable upon your bench as procurator-general, calm in your presidential chair, rigid on your curule chair of legislator? What instruction the world could have derived from the Memoirs of a man like yourself, who had such hosts of opportunities of showing proof of his faithful allegiance to the Elder Branch of the Bourbons on 29 July 1830, to the Younger Branch on 24 February 1848, and, finally, of his fidelity to the Republic on 2 December 1851! But you are too modest, good Monsieur Dupin! Modesty, combined with civil courage and a political conscience, is one of your greatest qualities, and it is only from modesty that you do not yourself dare to say what you think of yourself. But, never mind, for, every time that occasion presents, I shall do myself the honour of taking your place in the honourable task, my only regret being that I do not know more than I do, in order to speak out more fully and to treat you according to your deserts. What reason for fear had the legitimacy when the Society Aide-toi! le ciel aidera, at the Festival of the Gathering of the Grapes in Burgundy, declared that the king was the first power in the State, and drank toasts to the health of Charles X.? Why need they be afraid when M. Odilon Barrot, in another banquet given by six hundred electors, which was decorated with two hundred and twenty-one symbolic crowns, mingled the king and the law together in one single toast? O great statesmen, you who dig graves for kings and who bury monarchies, when, indeed, will the people, tired of your sham science, rub your faces, once for all, in the history which you are making, and which you do not see?
Thus, on 24 July, Charles X. called together a Council in absolute confidence. At this Council the fate of the Monarchy was again weighed in the balance, and it was decided to sign the Ordinances. But M. d'Haussez ventured to observe to the President of the Council that M. de Bourmont had extracted a promise from him to risk nothing during his absence.
"Bah!" the Prince de Polignac remarked, "what need have we of him? Am I not the War Minister during his absence?"
"But," M. d'Haussez asked, "how many men can you rely on in Paris? Have you, at the lowest computation, even as many as twenty-eight or thirty thousand?"
"Oh, more than that; I have forty-two thousand."
M. d'Haussez shook his head dubiously.
"Look, then, for yourself," the President of the Council said, and threw him a rolled document across the table.
M. d'Haussez unrolled it and added up the figures.
"But I can only find here thirteen thousand men, and that number on paper will mean scarcely seven to eight thousand men actually fit for war. Where do you get your missing twenty-nine thousand to complete your total of forty-two thousand?"
"Make yourself easy about the matter," M. de Polignac replied; "they are scattered round Paris and, in a few hours' time, if needed, could be all collected on the Place de la Concorde."
The Ordinances were signed the following day.
When signing, the king had the dauphin on his right hand and M. de Polignac on his left; the other ministers completed the circle round the green table. Each one signed in turn. M. d'Haussez again raised his objections.
"Monsieur," Charles X. said to him, "do you refuse to co-operate with your colleagues?"
"Sire," responded M. d'Haussez, "may I be allowed to put a question to the king?"
"What is it, monsieur?"
"Does the king intend to proceed, supposing one or more of his ministers should resign?"
"Yes," Charles replied with decision.
"Then, in that case," said the Naval Minister, "I will sign." And he did so.
Five minutes later, they all stood up and, as Charles X. passed by M. d'Haussez, he noticed that the minister's attentive gaze was fixed on the walls, and he asked—
"What are you looking at so attentively, Monsieur d'Haussez?"
"Sire, I was looking to see if by any chance I could find a picture of the Earl of Strafford."[1]
The king smiled and passed on.
These details became known afterwards; they were kept a profound secret at the time. Only two or three men were aware of what was happening. Casimir Périer, who was deeply attached to the Older Branch of the Bourbons, at that time, as were M. Dupin and M. Barrot and many others (we shall see presently how Périer did his utmost to quell the Revolution of July when it broke out) was dining at his country house in the bois de Boulogne, when he received a tiny triangular-shaped note. He opened, read it and grew pale, then livid, and his arms fell to his sides in despair. It announced that the Ordinances had been signed that very day. Who sent him the news never transpired. On the evening of the 25th or 26th, M. de Rothschild, who was speculating on a rise in stocks, received this simple statement from M. de Talleyrand:—
"I have just come from Saint-Cloud: speculate for a fall in prices."
But I, who was neither a M. Casimir Périer nor a M. de Rothschild nor yet a friend of M. de Talleyrand, I, who neither speculated upon rises or falls on the Stock Exchange, knew absolutely nothing of what was going on, and I was about to start for Algiers. Algiers would be a really fine sight during the early days of its conquest. I had taken my seat on the mail coach for Marseilles and packed my luggage; I had exchanged three thousand francs in silver for three thousand francs in gold, and I was to have set out at five in the evening of Monday the 26th, when, at eight on Monday morning, Achille Comte entered my room and said—
"Have you heard the great news?"
"No."
"The Ordinances are announced in the Moniteur. Shall you still go to Algiers?"
"I shall not be so foolish. We shall see stranger events here at home than out there!"
'Then I called my servant.
"Joseph," I said, "go to my gun-maker's and bring me back my double-barrelled gun and two hundred bullets of twenty calibre!"
[1] See the passage wherein Louis Blanc admirably describes this scene in his Histoire de dix ans.
[CHAPTER II]
The third storey of No. 7 in the rue de l'Université—The first results of the Ordinances—The café du Roi—Étienne Arago—François Arago—The Academy—La Bourse—Le Palais-Royal—Madame de Leuven—Journey in search of her husband and son—Protest of the journalists—Names of the signatories
My servant returned with the necessary articles a couple of hours later. I carefully locked up gun and ammunition and went out to take a breath of air in the streets. It was ten o'clock in the morning, and the face of Paris looked as quiet as though the Moniteur had announced the beginning of the shooting season, instead of having published the Ordinances. Comte laughed at my forebodings. I took him to breakfast on the third floor of No. 7 rue de l'Université. It was then occupied by a very pretty woman, who had taken such a warm interest in my intended departure for Algiers that she meant to accompany me as far as Marseilles. I went to tell her that, for the time being, at all events, I had given the journey up and that, consequently, if she had packed her trunks, she could unpack them. She had not been able to take in the fact that my real motive for my African trip was curiosity; she could not understand any more clearly my reasons for staying in France, which were entirely from curiosity. She considered I ought to have found more adequate reasons both for my going and for my staying.
My readers who have been good enough to follow the different phases of my life in these Memoirs must have noticed that I have been careful to avoid details of the kind just hinted at above; but I shall have occasion to refer more than once to this friendship, which was to be the means, by God's providence, of bringing me much happiness, in dark days turning sadness to joy and tears to smiles.
I owed the acquaintance to Firmin. He had been acting Saint-Mégrin in the provinces and, one day, he came to my rooms, bringing with him a magnificent "Duchesse de Guise," on whose behalf he solicited all the influence I could bring to bear in theatrical circles. I began by asking Firmin what amount of interest and what kind of interest he took in his protégée. I have ever been careful to respect the various protégées of my friends; and the question was of some importance with reference to this beautiful woman.
Firmin replied that his interest in her was entirely artistic, and that my own might assume what form I pleased.
I had then only gone so far as to notice the beautiful duchesse from the point of view of her stage qualifications. Her hair was jet black, and her eyes were a deep blue, her nose as straight as that of the Venus de Milo and her teeth like pearls. I need hardly say that I placed myself entirely at her disposal. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the time for entering into theatrical engagements was over; this takes place in April, and Madame Mélanie S—— was only presented to me in the month of May. I was therefore unsuccessful in my introduction on her behalf; but, as the beautiful duchesse saw that it was through no fault of mine, she did not take umbrage at my failure. I even persuaded her to remain on in Paris: she was young and could wait; opportunities were sure to come her way if she were on the spot and ready to seize them; moreover, if such occasion did not come unasked, I would arrange to bring them about. I had already at that time sufficient reputation to get the doors of a theatre opened wide for any man or woman to whom I handed a signed note addressed to the manager.
Meanwhile, following the example of the Abbé Vertot, I began my siege. I thought for the moment that I was to have nine years, as Achilles before Troy! But I was mistaken; it only lasted three weeks, as did the siege of the Duc d'Orléans before Anvers. If my readers be frank, they will admit that which our French engineers have admitted loudly in their praises of General Chassé's tactics: a resistance of three weeks is an honourable one; there are but few places, no matter how strongly fortified, that can hold out so long. Now, mine had held out as long and, as it had only been taken by surprise in the end, it had not therefore been stipulated among the articles of capitulation, that I should be forbidden to leave Paris merely on the grounds of curiosity. I have already stated how great my curiosity had been to see Algiers just after its capture, and how a still stronger feeling of curiosity induced me to alter my plans. Then, too, I ought to confess another thing, which I remember, far off though that day is from the time during which the events I am relating happened, namely, that my insatiable curiosity to see Algiers came over me in a moment of ill temper; that, directly the mood passed, I was equally pleased to find an excuse for staying in Paris, as I had been, at the time, for going.
Achille Comte and I came down at one o'clock and took a few turns together along the quays; then, as there seemed no appearance of any excitement, he left me, and we arranged to meet again next day. I went to the Palais-Royal, where I hoped to have gained intelligence; but nothing was known there: the Duc d'Orléans was at Neuilly and the Duc de Chartres at Joigny, at the head of his regiment; M. de Broval was at Villiers, and nobody had seen anything of Oudard. So I went to the café du Roi. Its principal frequenters were, it will be recollected, the editors of the Foudre, of the Drapeau blanc, and of the Quotidienne, all Royalist journals. They applauded the measure highly. Lassagne alone appeared anxious about it. I did not join much in the conversation, as all these men, Théaulon, Théodore Anne, Brissot, Rochefort and Merle held different views from my own, but were my personal friends. I have a perfect horror of disputing with my friends, and much prefer to fight a duel with any of them. For I always held the conviction that, before twenty-four hours had gone, such dispute would end in pistols.
Whilst I was in the café du Roi Étienne, Arago entered. Our friendship dated, as I have mentioned, from the time when he took notice of my Ode au général Foy and my Nouvelles contemporaines, in la Lorgnette and le Figaro. But on this particular day there was another reason for our seeking one another—our political opinions were the same. We went out together at half-past one and, at two o'clock, his brother François was to make a speech at the Academy. As Étienne had a spare ticket, he proposed I should accompany him. I had never seen more of the Institut than its exterior, and thought it might be a long while before I had such a good chance again of seeing the inside of it, so I accepted his invitation. At the beginning of the Pont des Arts we met a barrister friend of ours—Mermilliod, I think. At the first news of the Ordinances, five or six journalists and as many deputies had assembled at the house of Maître Dupin to ask the famous lawyer if there were any means of publishing newspapers without authority; but, instead of solving the problem, the lawyer contented himself with answering—
"Messieurs, the Chamber is dissolved—I am therefore no longer a deputy...."
And no matter how they tried, the journalists and deputies could not get any more out of him. The journalists had gone away in a furious rage; the editors of the Courrier français, Journal du Commerce and the Journal de Paris declared they would appeal, in the first instance, to M. de Belleyme, President of the Tribunal, for an order calling upon the printers to lend their presses for the printing of the unauthorised newspapers. But it seemed pretty hopeless to expect M. de Belleyme to issue any decree, when M. Dupin had refused to grant even a simple consultation touching the event of the moment! Nevertheless, all these proceedings clearly indicated the beginning of resistance. Étienne, for his part, asserted that his brother would not now give his lecture, urging the gravity of the political situation as the reason for his abstention.
The courage and patriotism of François Arago were too well known for this opinion (which was put forth by his brother) to be thought extraordinary. When we reached the Institut we found a great commotion and excitement among the usually calm and collected immortals, in their blue coats braided with green. Their meeting had not yet begun. A rumour had spread abroad that Arago would not speak, and some of the Academicians said that he would, because he was much too straightforward a man to compromise the Academy by his silence.
"Will he speak or will he not?" I inquired of Étienne.
"We will find out," he replied. "There he is, out there."
"Ah!" I said, "isn't he talking to the Duc de Raguse?"
"Yes; the Duc de Raguse is one of his oldest friends."
"Let us push forward, then.... I am very anxious to know what the subscriber to the capitulation of Paris has to say about the subscribers to the Ordinances."
"By Jove!" Étienne replied, "he will say that they have undone to-day, 26 July 1830, all he did on 30 March 1814!"
We continued our course, but it was no easy matter to thread our way through the midst of an illustrious crowd, to whom one had to offer at least one apology for each push of the elbow. By the time we reached François Arago, the duke was already some distance away from him.
"You have just left Marmot," Étienne asked; "what does he say?"
"He is furious! He says they are the type of people who fling themselves in the very teeth of ruin, and he only hopes he won't be obliged to draw swords on their behalf."
"Good!" I said; "he only needs to do that to make himself popular."
"And what have you to say about it?" Étienne asked his brother.
"I? Oh! I should not speak."
Cuvier was going by. He had just happened to catch these words in passing, and he stopped.
"What! you won't speak?" he exclaimed.
"No," Arago replied,
"Quite right, too!" interpolated Étienne.
"Look here, my dear fellow, come aside with me and let us talk reasonably," said Cuvier.
He drew François Arago away to a distance from us. We could judge, from the spot where we stood, of the animated discussion that ensued by the vivacity of their gestures. M. Villemain joined the two speakers and seemed to be taking Cuvier to task. Several other Academicians, whom I did not know by sight, and, perhaps, not even by name, surrounded Arago, and, contrary to M. Villemain, seemed to be insisting with Cuvier that Arago should speak. After a quarter of an hour's discussion, it was settled that Arago should speak. Now, this decision had been arrived at by a majority of votes, so to speak, and it would have been impossible for the famous astronomer to withstand the wishes of the majority of his confrères, who all loudly declared that they would regard his silence as contentious. He passed by us as he went to his place.
"Well, you are going to speak after all?" Étienne said to him.
"Yes, but set your mind at rest," he replied; "I assure you, by the end of my speech, they will think it would have been as well if I had not opened my mouth."
"What the dickens can he find to say about Fresnel?" I asked Étienne.
It was in praise of Fresnel that he was to speak.
"Oh!" replied Étienne, "I am not alarmed on that score. If it were about the Grand Turk, he would manage to squeeze in what he wanted to say."
And Arago, taking as his subject the clever engineer of bridges and embankments, the learned physician, the severe examiner of the École polytechnique, the famous inventor of lenticular lighthouses, actually found means of throwing fiery allusions upon the burning political situation, which were received by the assembly with frantic applause.
Cuvier and the other Academicians who had insisted that Arago should speak were right; only, they were right according to our point of view, not from their own.
Arago's lecture was a splendid triumph. Indeed, it is impossible for any speaker to be more picturesque, grander or more striking than François Arago in the tribune when carried away by genuine passion; he would throw up his head and shake back his locks—locks dark in colour in 1830, grey in 1848. Whether he were attacking the violators of the Royalist charter or defending the Republican constitution, he was ever the same eloquent orator, ever the inspired poet, the same convinced legislator. For Arago is not only science, he is conscience itself; he is not only genius, but the soul of honour. Let us state this in passing; though I know that plenty of others will say the same, yet I should like to be among their number.
When I left the Institut, I went upstairs to see Madame Chassériau, who lived at the Academy, owing to the position which her father, M. Amaury Duval, occupied there. Madame Chassériau, who, later, was called Madame Guyet-Desfontaines, was one of my oldest friends: I think I have already spoken of her and said that at her house, as well as at those of Nodier and Zimmermann, I always felt in the best intellectual form. Do not let me be misunderstood: I am not paying myself a compliment, I am only rendering justice to Madame Guyet-Desfontaines. She was so good and kind and affable, and laughed so prettily, had such lovely teeth, one would be a downright idiot not to show in her company a wit at least equal to her own. She, too, like everybody else, was full of the events taking place: she would soon receive news, as M. Guyet-Desfontaines had gone to consult that great testing thermometer of the Parisian mind, the Bourse. The Bourse was in a state of uproar, Three Per Cents, had fallen from seventy-eight francs to seventy-two. Was it not curious that, on the same day and at the same moment, the Academy and the Stock Exchange, knowledge and money, should both cry "Anathema" and be of the same opinion?
I went to dine at Véfour's. As I crossed the gardens of the Palais-Royal, I noticed some excitement going on among a group of youths who were mounted on chairs reading the Moniteur aloud; but their imitation of Camille Desmoulins did not meet with much success. After my dinner, I ran to Adolphe de Leuven, whose father was, as my readers know, one of the principal editors of the Courrier. Madame de Leuven was very uneasy about her husband, who had left home at two o'clock in the afternoon and had not returned by seven in the evening. She had sent Adolphe to find out about him, but, like the raven from the Ark, he too had not returned. So I, in my turn, went in pursuit of Adolphe. M. de Leuven had not come in because there had been a meeting at the office of the Courrier français, and Adolphe had not come back because he had been sent to Laffitte's. They were drawing up a protest in the name of the Charter, in the offices of the Courrier, which was to be signed by all the journalists. With regard to the form resistance was to take, they, at present, merely talked of refusing to pay the taxes. Suddenly Châtelain came in triumphant. M. de Belleyme had just issued a decree bidding the printers to print the suspended newspapers. Everyone in the political world was acquainted with Châtelain; he was one of the most honourable men on the press, and one of the rare number who held Republican views in 1830. He formally declared that the Courrier français would appear next morning, even if on his own responsibility alone. Adolphe de Leuven was the next to enter: he had found Laffitte's doors closed. I returned to give this news to Madame de Leuven; unfortunately, it was not such peaceful information as that of the dove, and I was bringing anything but an olive branch back with me; but I was able to reassure her about her husband and son: both were safe and sound and would return home as soon as the protest had been drawn up. We say drawn up, instead of signed, because the question whether the protest should be signed or not was debated for a long time. Some asserted that there was an unplumbed force in the press which was increased by a mystery. These urged that it should not be signed. Others, on the contrary, declared that it would be much better to make the act of opposition a public one, and to sign the protest with names in full. It was a singular thing that it was MM. Baude and Coste, two bold sportsmen, who wanted to preserve anonymity; and M. Thiers, the cautious politician, who wished it to be signed openly. The opinion of M. Thiers carried the day. By midnight the last page of the protest was covered with forty-five signatures. They were those of MM. Gauja, Thiers, Mignet, Carrel, Chambolle, Peysse, Albert Stapfer, Dubochet and Rolle, of the National; Leroux, Guizard, Dejean and de Rémusat, of the Globe; Senty, Haussman, Dussart, Busoni, Barbaroux, Chalas, Billard, Baude and Coste, of the Temps; Guyet, Moussette, Avenel, Alexis de Jussieu, Châtelain, Dupont and de la Pelouze, of the Courrier français; Année, Cauchois-Lemaire and Évariste Dumoulin, of the Constitutionnel; Sarrans junior, of the Courrier de Électeurs; August Fabre and Ader, of the Tribune des départements; Levasseur, Plagnol and Fazy, of the Révolution; Larreguy and Bert, of the Journal du Commerce; Léon Pillet, of the Journal de Paris; Bohain and Roqueplan, of the Figaro; Vaillant, of the Sylphe.
Lest my readers should be surprised at my giving here all the forty-five names, I would point out that they were the names of forty-five men all of whom risked their heads by signing. While I, who risked nothing at all, but would have asked nothing better than to run some such risk, simply returned to my rooms at eleven o'clock, after first taking care to go and give news of myself at No. 7 rue de l'Université. They thought I had left for Algiers!
[CHAPTER III]
The morning of July 27—Visit to my mother—Paul Foucher—Amy Robsart—Armand Carrel—The office of the Temps—Baude—The Commissary of Police—The three locksmiths—The office of the National—Cadet Gassicourt—Colonel Gourgaud—M. de Rémusat—Physiognomy of the passers-by
I returned home in order to keep my entire freedom of action for the morrow. I meant to visit my mother first thing in the morning: I had not seen her for two days and feared she would be uneasy, especially if she had heard what was happening outside. My poor mother, at that time, was living in the rue de l'Ouest. I think I have previously stated that we chose this new home for her so that she could be nearer to the Villenave family, who had left the rue de Vaugirard, and were living next door to her. But, unluckily, just when my mother had needed neighbourly help the most, Madame Villenave and Madame Waldor and Élisa (my mother's most faithful companion, with her cat, Mysouf) had gone to la Vendée, where they owned a little country place called la Jarrie, three leagues from Clisson. I found my mother in the most perfect state of tranquillity of mind and body; no rumour of passing events had yet penetrated into that Thébaïd called the quartier du Luxembourg. I breakfasted with her, kissed her and left her in her sweet, undisturbed quiet.
As I went away, I ran across Paul Foucher. He was returning from his brother-in-law, Victor Hugo's, who lived in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and to whom he had been to announce that he had to give a reading the following day, of what play or at what particular theatre, I know not. Paul Foucher was then the same short-sighted, absent-minded fellow that he still is, knocking indifferently into passers-by, posts and trees, on which he always seemed to be looking for the bills of the theatres where his pieces were being played; absorbed in the train of thought that preoccupied him at the moment you met him, and incapable of entering into yours, or of coming out of his own, into which he would lead you back again and again. His dominant thought when I met him that morning was the reading he was to give next day. Paul Foucher, young though he was, had made quite a sensational entry into the dramatic life. The year before, a piece of which he was said to be the author had been played at the Odéon, but its great beauty, a beauty of an eccentric character and ill adapted to the stage, had hastened its failure, and the failure, though great, was glorious, the kind of failure that brings to light a man's qualities, just as certain defeats reveal the character of a nation. Paul Foucher had had his Poitiers, his Agincourt and his Crécy, and could take his stand accordingly. The play was called Amy Robsart, and was taken from, or, rather, inspired by, Walter Scott's romance of Kenilworth. The day after its failure, Hugo proclaimed himself its author; but the honour of the only representation it had was none the less inseparably associated with Paul Foucher. The play was never printed. Hugo made me a present of the manuscript later; I daresay I have it still in my possession. I tried in vain to get any information out of Paul: he knew but one piece of news, and did not consider either the political or literary world needed to know any other. This news was that next day he was to read a play in five acts. I saw the moment coming when he was about to anticipate the right of the Committee and read me his play. But the reading of the finest drama the world ever saw would not have consoled me for losing the smallest detail of the play which Paris was at that moment putting on the stage. I leapt into a cab and escaped from the reading. I gave the driver Carrel's address.
Since the present crisis had arisen, Carrel was looked upon by the younger members of the Opposition as their leader, elected, if not publicly, at least by tacit consent. I had become acquainted with Armand Carrel at M. de Leuven's, who, since the return to France of the young political exile, after the coronation of Charles X., had placed him on the editorial staff of the Courrier; he lived, if I remember rightly, in the rue Monsigny or near by. As he died in 1836, he is already, to the young generation of between twenty and twenty-five years of age, but a historical figure. At the time of which we are now speaking, he was a man of twenty-eight, of medium height, with a calm and retreating forehead, dark hair, small, lively, flashing eyes, a long sharp nose, thin and rather pale lips, with white teeth and a bilious complexion. Although Carrel professed the most advanced of Liberal opinions, as is often the case with men of great intellect and of refined organisation, he had the most aristocratic habits imaginable, and this made the contrast between his words and his appearance very strange. He almost invariably wore patent leather boots, a black cravat tied tight round his neck, a black frock-coat buttoned up all but the last button, a waistcoat of white piqué or of chamois leather and grey trousers. His whole get-up revealed the military style of the former officer. This warlike quality had, to some extent, passed from Carrel's body into his mind. Charlemagne signed his treaties with the pommel of his sword and enforced them with its point; and so with Carrel: his articles always seemed to have been written with a steel point, similar to those used by the ancients, which left deep traces of sharpness on their tablets of wax. But Carrel's polemical style of writing was very fine, noble and frank; he boldly showed his front to his enemies: it was in some way similar both to Pascal's and Paul-Louis Courier's. He had received but little historical education, except about our neighbours across the Channel; he was secretary to Augustin Thierry while he wrote his fine book on the Conquest of England by the Normans (Conquête de l'Angleterre par les Normands). Carrel, with his usual earnestness, had picked up the crumbs that fell from that sumptuous table, and had compiled an abridged History of England. We were good enough friends, although, perhaps, we were not quite just to one another; he looked upon me as too much of a poet, and I looked upon him as too much of a soldier. I found him quietly engaged eating his breakfast. He had signed the protest as a duty; risking his head as coolly at the point of the pen as he had already done several times at the point of the sword, though believing in nothing but lawful methods of resistance. As for armed resistance, he would have nothing to do with it. He had meant to stay at home all day to work; but, upon my entreaties, and, owing to my telling him I thought I had seen some rising excitement in the streets, he decided to go out with me. He put a pair of small pistols in his pocket, of the kind called pocket pistols, took a little whalebone cane in his hand as flexible as a horsewhip, and we went down together towards the boulevards. Doubtless cooled by his action at Béfort and Bidassoa, he hesitated to put himself forward when so many people were seen to hang back. We tramped the boulevards from the rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin to the rue Neuve-Vivienne, and then we went along the Place de la Bourse. People were rushing in the direction of the rue de Richelieu. They reported that the offices of the Temps were invaded, and being sacked by a detachment of mounted police.
Of course, needless to relate, we, too, followed the crowd; there was, as usual, but a portion of truth in the rumour. A score of police were drawn up in line in front of the building where the printing was carried on, which stood at the bottom of a very large courtyard. The street door was closed and, before they could invade the workshops, they were waiting for the arrival of the Commissaire de Police. When he arrived, Baude, one of the editors of the Temps, and signers of the protest, gave orders to close the workshop door and to open the one on the street. The Commissaire, wearing his white scarf of office, knocked at the door exactly as it was being opened, and Baude and he stood face to face. The Commissaire stepped back before the formidable apparition. Baude was a magnificent figure of a man, not only in general appearance but in every detail of his person. He was a giant of five feet eight or ten inches, with thick black hair which floated round his head like a mane; his eyes were brown and deeply set beneath dark eyebrows: they seemed, at certain moments, to shoot out lightning; he had a rough, tremendous voice which, heard amid the noise of a revolution, sounded like thunder in a storm. Baude was followed by other editors and by employés and workmen, who formed up behind him in a body of thirty persons. When they saw the bare-headed, pale-faced leader and the set faces of the workmen, they guessed that, beneath the legal resistance which Baude had called to his aid, lay a very real and material resistance, namely, one that meant resistance with arms. I squeezed Carrel's arm; he was very pale and seemed greatly moved, but he kept quite mute and shook his head in sign of disapproval. There was such a dead silence throughout the street, filled with, perhaps, a couple of thousand people, that a child's breathing could have been heard. Baude was the first to speak and to question the Commissaire.
"What do you want, monsieur? and why have you presented yourselves before our printing house?"
"Monsieur," stammered the Superintendent of Police, "I have come in consequence of the Ordinances...."
"To break up our presses, I suppose?" Baude questioned. "Well, then, in the name of the Code, which is both anterior and superior to your Ordinance, I call upon you to respect them!"
And Baude stretched forth a copy of the Code opened at the article on Effraction (Housebreaking). This weapon was, certainly, of a more alarming and terrible nature than the presenting of pistols or swords, but the Superintendent's orders had been perfectly clear.
"Monsieur," he said, "I am obliged to do my duty"; and, turning to one of his men, he said, "Send somebody to find a locksmith."
"All right! I will wait till he comes," said Baude.
A murmur ran through the crowd. They began to understand that there, in the open street, before the eyes of the crowd, under the gaze of Providence, was going to take place one of the grandest spectacles that it is given to human sight to behold—the resistance of law to arbitrary force, of the individual to the crowd, of conscience to tyranny.
Not a man among the spectators had said to Baude, "You can count on my support"; but it was apparent that he felt he could reckon on all.
The locksmith arrived; and, at the order of the Superintendent, he was just going to cross the threshold of the street door, in order to go and open the doors of the printing house with his tools, when Baude, stopping him, by gently taking hold of his arm, said—
"My friend, you probably do not know what risks you are running by obeying the orders of the Superintendent of Police? You are running the risk of being sent to the galleys." And he read in a loud voice the following lines:—
"Any person will be punished with penal servitude who is guilty of, or accomplice in, theft committed by means of breaking into a house or room or lodging dwelt in or serving as a dwelling-house by means of breaking in from without by scaling or by using false keys, whether he assume the rank of a public functionary or of a civil or military officer, or after having put on the uniform or dress of a public functionary or officer, or alleging a false order of the civil or military authorities."
As Baude read on, the locksmith raised his hand to his cap and, by the end of the article, he was listening to the reader with bared head. At this token of respect shown to the law by a man of the people the crowd broke out into immense applause. The Commissaire insisted, and the locksmith, obeying his authoritative commands, made an attempt at entrance. Baude drew back and made way for him.
"Do it!" he said, "but you know that it will mean the galleys for you."
The locksmith again stopped and the cheering redoubled. The Superintendent renewed his orders to pick the locks of the doors.
"Messieurs," Baude cried in a loud voice, "I appeal against M. le Commissaire to a jury, and from the Ordinances to the Assizes.... Who will give me their names as witnesses of the outrage offered to me?"
Five hundred voices simultaneously responded. Pencils and papers were instantly circulated among the crowd with wonderful eagerness and unanimity; each took the pencil in turn and wrote down his name and address on the paper. Then all were handed in to Baude.
"You see for yourself, monsieur," he said to the Superintendent of Police, "I have plenty of witnesses."
"Upon my word, Monsieur le Commissaire," the locksmith finally said to that officer of the law, "get somebody else to do your job, I back out of it."
And, putting his cap on his head, he withdrew. He was accompanied by vivats and more applause.
"Force, however, still must rest with the law!" retorted the Superintendent.
"I am beginning to believe, indeed, that it will," Baude replied ironically.
"Oh, I know my business," the officer replied. "Call another locksmith."
An official in black appeared from the crowd as before, and returned with a locksmith carrying a bunch of picklocks at his waist. The applause that had accompanied the retreat of the other man changed quickly to groans as this fresh one appeared. The locksmith was frightened.
As he made his way through the crowd he slipped his bunch of picklocks into the hand of one of the spectators, who passed it on to the next man, and so on through the crowd. When he had reached the door, the order previously given to his colleague was renewed.
"Monsieur le Commissaire," he said, pointing to his empty girdle, "I cannot do it: my tools have been stolen from me."
"You lie!" exclaimed the Commissaire, "and I will have you arrested!"
The hand of one of his men was stretched out to seize him, but the crowd opened a way for him and then closed up after him, wrapped him in its folds and engulfed him completely in its stream. He disappeared literally as though he had been devoured!
They then summoned the blacksmith whose duty it was to rivet the convict's fetters. But, as the opposition of the crowd began to assume a grave character, and looked dark and threatening, the street was cleared with the help of the police.
The crowd withdrew by way of the place Louvois and the arcade Colbert, and by the rue de Ménars, shouting—
"Vive la Charte!"
Men climbed upon posts, waved their hats and cried out to Baude—
"You may rely on us—you have our addresses. We will be witnesses for you. Au revoir! au revoir!"
A reinforcement of police seen coming from the direction of the Palais-Royal completed the clearing of the street. But what did that matter? The moral victory remained with the Opposition, and Baude had played as great a part as any ghostly Revolutionist of 1789.
Carrel and I left the rue de Richelieu and went to the National offices. The National had scarcely been in existence a year then; it had been started by Thiers, Carrel and the Abbé Louis, at the château de Rochecottes, at the feet of Madame de Dino, under the eye of M. de Talleyrand. The Duc d'Orléans, who had lent the necessary funds, paid, as it were, for the nursing of this infant Hercules, which, eighteen years later, was to seize him round his waist and suffocate him. These offices were situated in the rue Neuve-Saint-Marc, at the corner of the place des Italiens. We found it a hotbed of news. The evening before one of the editors had come in, out of spirits and broken down: he had been scouring the poorest quarters, which are always the easiest to stir up, and, shaking his head, he had pronounced these discouraging words:—
"The people will not be moved!"
And when we entered the National offices at two o'clock the people were still quiet; but one could feel that kind of shiver of excitement in the air which made people hurry in their walk and grow paler, they knew not why; like the deep, instinctive terror felt by animals at the approach of an earthquake.
From whence arose this shuddering, which was but yet, as it were, upon the surface of society? It is easy to make a guess. The motion of M. Thiers, which had borne forty-five signatures at the foot of the journalists' protest (it had been published in the Globe, the National, and the Temps, and a hundred thousand copies had, perhaps, been printed and distributed in the streets), this motion, we say, had compromised forty-five persons. Now, these forty-five individuals made up a compact body working upon the masses, and each also was a separate force, working upon individual members of society. Each signature was the centre of a more or less wide circumference of friends, employés, clerks, workmen, compositors, journeymen and printers' devils. Each one stirred up his own particular circle, and each individual member of this circle, however humble, was himself an agent and used his influence on his subordinates; therefore, as soon as the impulse was given, it was communicated from great centres to small, the wheels began to turn, and one felt society tremble under the throbbing of an invisible machine, almost as one feels a windmill quiver from the revolution of its sails or a steamboat from the beating of its paddles. Carrel was invited to three different meetings, all for the purpose of organising opposition. One was purely of a Liberal character, bordering on Republicanism, and was held in the rue Saint-Honoré in the house of the chemist Cadet de Gassicourt; the principal members were Thiers, Charles Teste, Anfous, Chevalier, Bastide, Cauchois-Lemaire and Dupont; at this one they discussed a motion as to creating a committee of resistance in every arrondissement (ward), with power to put itself into direct communication with the deputies. The second was Bonapartist, and was held at the house of Colonel Gourgaud. It was chiefly composed, first and foremost, of the master of the house, then of Colonels Dumoulin, Dufays and Plavet-Gaubet, and of Commandant Bacheville. Their object was to try and promote the affairs of Napoleon II., but, as all these men were more men of action than of thought, nothing was settled, and they fixed another meeting for the next day at the place des Petits-Pères. The third meeting took place in the Globe offices and was composed of Pierre Leroux, Guizard, Dejean, Paulin and Rémusat, and of several persons who had nothing to do with the staff of the paper. Here, the most conflicting counsels were put forth: some wanted to appeal to arms on the morrow, others were horrified at the pace at which, as soon as any movement is started, it descends, in spite of everything, down the path that leads to revolution.
M. de Rémusat was one of the scared.
He exclaimed, in despairing tones, "Where are you going? Where are you urging us? It must on no account lead us to revolution—that is not what we desire: legal resistance, well and good—but nothing beyond."
Of course, this meeting did not decide on a course of action any more than the others, unless it drove M. de Rémusat to his bed with the fever which seized him afterwards.
Carrel did not attend any of these three meetings. He was in favour of lawful resistance stretched to its widest limits, but of lawful resistance only. He did not believe in any good arising out of any conflict between citizens and soldiers: he understood the meaning of pretorian revolutions and demanded of those who talked of resorting to arms—
"Have you any regiment you can safely count on?"
No one had regiments ready, seeing that no plot had been prepared. But there was, none the less, a great and formidable general conspiracy afoot, namely public opinion, which accused the Bourbons of being responsible for the defeat of 1815 and wanted to avenge Waterloo in the streets of Paris.
This conspiracy was visible in the eyes, gestures, words and even in the very silence of the people whom one passed, the groups one met, the solitary individuals who stopped, hesitating whether to go to the right or left, as though saying to themselves, "Where is anything going on? Where are they doing anything? I must go and do just what the rest are doing."
[CHAPTER IV]
Doctor Thibaut—The Government of Gérard and Mortemart—Étienne Arago and Mazue, the Superintendent of Police—The café Gobillard—Fire at the guard-house in the place de la Bourse—The first barricades—The night
We went back to the boulevards again from the office of the National. At the top of the rue Montmartre we heard what sounded like firing, in the direction of the Palais-Royal. It was nearly seven o'clock in the evening.
"Hah! What is that?" I asked Carrel.
"By Jove!" he answered, "it was a volley being fired."
"Well, will you come along and see?"
"Good gracious no!" he replied. "I shall turn in home."
"I mean to go," I said.
"Go, then; but don't be fool enough to get drawn into things!"
"No fear. Adieu!"
"Adieu!"
Carrel walked away with his calm and measured step, along the faubourg Montmartre, whilst I dashed off at a run for the place de la Bourse. I had not gone fifty yards before I met Dr. Thibaut. He looked very important.
"Ah! it is you, dear friend?" I said. "What is the news?"
Thibaut, who had adopted great gravity of expression, claiming that no doctor could make his way in the world without it, was, on this occasion, more than grave: he was gloomy.
"Bad news!" he replied; "things are getting horribly complicated."
"But are they fighting?" I said,
"Yes; one man has been killed in the rue du Lycée and three more in the rue Saint-Honoré.... The Lancers charged in the rue de Richelieu and upon the place du Palais-Royal.... A barricade was being run up in the rue de Richelieu, but it was taken before it was finished."
"Where are you bound for?"
"You will hear that to-morrow, if I am successful," he said.
"Upon my word, my dear fellow, you assume the airs of a diplomatist."
"Who knows?—I may be going to form a new Government!"
"In your calling as a doctor, my dear friend, I would invite you to give your whole attention to the old Ministry, for it seems to me deuced ill!"
Two young people passed us by rapidly at this moment.
"A tricoloured flag?" said one. "Surely it is not possible!"
"I tell you I saw it myself," the other replied.
"Where?"
"On the quai de l'École."
"When?"
"Half an hour ago."
"What did they do to the man who was bearing it?"
"Nothing ... they just let him pass."
"Let us go there, then."
"All right."
And they ran off down the rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires.
"You see, my dear fellow," I said to Thibaut, "things are getting warm! Go off to your Ministry, my friend."
"I am going."
He went away in the direction of the boulevard des Capucines.
Thibaut had not deceived me. He was actually engaged in forming a Ministry; only, his Ministry was not destined to die of longevity. It was the Ministry of Gérard and Mortemart, which had its counterpart in the Thiers and Odilon Barrot Ministry of the Revolution of 1848. But, it will be urged, how could Dr. Thibaut form a Ministry? As for that—well, I will tell you.
It will be remembered that, in 1827 or 1828, Madame de Celles, daughter of General Gérard, who was suffering from a chest complaint, had asked Madame de Leuven to tell her of a young medical man who could accompany her to Italy, and that Thibaut's name had been given her. He had made the journey with the beautiful invalid, and the combined results of travel and doctor worked wonders in her health. On their return, the general was so grateful for the care Thibaut had bestowed upon his daughter that he admitted him into personal intimacy in his household. Thibaut, when I met him, was on his way to call upon M. le Baron de Vitrolles, on behalf of General Gérard, to try and persuade him to urge conciliatory measures upon M. de Polignac and, if that failed, upon the king himself. Serious-minded people were evidently beginning to realise the gravity of the situation. This was the information which Thibaut could not tell me when we met, but which he divulged to me later.
Eight o'clock chimed out from the Bourse clock; I wanted to get back to my faubourg Saint Germain; but, as I entered one end of the rue Vivienne, I saw bayonets at the other. I could have gone by the rue des Filles-Saint-Thomas, but curiosity kept me back. I beat a retreat as far as the café of the théâtre des Nouveautés. As far as I can recollect, it was kept by a man named Gobillard, an excellent fellow, a favourite with us all. The troop advanced with regular step, taking up the whole width of the street, pushing men, women and children before them. The people, driven by the soldiers, gave way and walked backwards, shouting—
"Vive la ligne!"
Women waved their handkerchiefs from the open windows, crying—
"Do not fire on the people!"
There was a certain type among the men whom the soldiers were driving aside which is only to be seen at special hours of the day—the kind of men who start riots and revolutions, men whom one might style the pioneers of disorder. When the troops reached the place de la Bourse they deployed, but, as they could not cover the whole width of the square, a portion of those who were being pushed along by the soldiers overflowed on both sides and swept back after them. Now, there was near the Bourse a rickety old wooden shanty which was used as a guard-house. The regiment left about a dozen soldiers there as in a block-house and disappeared down the rue Neuve-Vivienne in the direction of the Bastille. The regiment was scarcely out of sight when some boys from the crowd came up to the soldiers who were left in the guard-house, shouting—
"Vive la Charte!"
Whilst these lads did no more than shout, the soldiers kept their patience, but stones soon followed the shoutings. A soldier, hit by a stone, fired, and a woman fell—a woman of about thirty. Cries of "Murder!" went up and, in a second, the square was emptied, lights were extinguished and shops closed. The théâtre des Nouveautés alone remained lighted and open,—they were playing la Chatte blanche,—and those inside the house had no idea what was going on outside. A small troop of about twelve men appeared, at that moment, from the rue des Filles-Saint-Thomas. It was headed by Étienne Arago and was shouting—
"Stop the play! Close the theatres! They are killing people in the streets of Paris!..."
It stumbled against the body of the woman who had been killed.
"Carry this corpse to the steps of the peristyle, so that everybody can see it," said Étienne; "I am going to have the theatre emptied."
And, as a matter of fact, the place was emptied an instant later, the stream of spectators, on coming out, spreading apart as a torrent does before a rock, so as to avoid trampling upon the body. I ran to Arago.
"What are they doing," I asked. "What has been decided?"
"Nothing yet.... Barricades are being erected ... and women killed and theatres closed, as you see."
"Where shall I find you again?"
"To-morrow morning at my house, No. 10 rue de Grammont."
Then, turning to the men who were with him—
"To the Variétés, my friends!" he said; "to close the theatres is to hoist the black flag over Paris!"
And the little crowd disappeared with him down the rue de Montmorency. It had passed before the sentinel and the barracks without producing any sign. And this was how the movement had begun and from whence the firing had come that Carrel and I had heard.
Étienne Arago (I hope I may be pardoned for always quoting the same name, but I will engage to prove, beyond exception, that Étienne Arago was the mainspring of the insurrectional movement), Étienne Arago, I say, had just been dining with Desvergers and Varin and had returned with them to the Vaudeville theatre, which was then in the rue de Chartres, when a mob barred their way in the rue Saint-Honoré, in front of the Delorme passage. They were saying that a man had been killed in the rue du Lycée. A cart, loaded with rubble, was waiting to pass, as soon as the mob had dispersed; four or five carriages, stopped by the same obstruction, were waiting too, in file.
"Excuse me, my friend," Étienne said to the driver, unharnessing the horse from the shafts; "we require your cart."
"What for?"
"To make a barricade with, to be sure!"
"Yes, yes, barricades—let us have barricades!" exclaimed several voices.
And, in the twinkling of an eye, the horses were detached, the cart thrown on its side and the contents piled up across the street.
"Good!" said Arago. "Now you won't need me any more; I am wanted elsewhere."
And, leaving the barricade to be guarded by those who had helped in its construction, he crossed the Delorme passage, went along the rue de Rivoli and reached the Vaudeville. People were just going in.
"There shall be no play while fighting is going on!" he said; "give the people back their money!"
Then, to those who persisted in going in—
"Pardon, messieurs," he said—"there shall be no laughing at the Vaudeville whilst Paris is in tears."
And he began trying to shut the gate.
"Monsieur," a voice asked, "why are you closing the Vaudeville?"
"Why?... Because I am the manager of the theatre and choose to close it."
"Yes, but the Government does not choose to do so: in the name of the Government I order you to leave it open!"
"Who are you?"
"Heavens! you know me well enough."
"Possibly, but I want those who are listening and taking part in this debate to know who you are too."
"I am M. Mazue, Superintendent of Police."
"Well, then, Monsieur Mazue, Police Superintendent, look out for yourself!" replied Arago, pushing against the grating; "those who do not go will soon be crushed."
"Monsieur Arago, to-morrow you will be no longer manager of the Vaudeville!"
"Monsieur Mazue, to-morrow you will no longer be the Superintendent of Police."
"We shall see about that, Monsieur Arago!"
"I hope so, Monsieur Mazue!"
With the help of two scene-shifters, Étienne closed the grille, in spite of the efforts of the police officers; then, leaving by the stage door, he began the work of closing the other theatres—an act that had an immense influence upon that evening's proceedings and upon those of the next day.
All these details were related to us behind the carefully closed doors of the café Gobillard. We were there to the number of three or four and, as we had been rushing about the whole day, we were dying with hunger. We ordered supper. The topic of our conversation can easily be guessed. Some said that the agitation of the hour was of not more significance than that of 1827, and that the riot had not strength to rise to the proportions of a revolution, but would fail in like manner. Others, and I among them, believed, on the contrary, that we were but at the prologue of the comedy and that the morrow would show a different state of things altogether. We were in the full flow of this discussion when the sound of firing startled us and made us shudder. It was fired in the square. Almost immediately there was a cry of "To arms!" followed by a noise like that of a hand-to-hand combat.
"You see," I said, "the drama begins!"
It was now twenty minutes to ten by the café clock. We ran upstairs to the first floor to look out of the windows. The guard-house had been surprised, surrounded and attacked by a score of men. A struggle was proceeding in the darkness, of which we could not make out any details—nothing beyond a confused mass. The soldiers were defeated and disarmed. Their guns, cartridge-pouches and swords had been taken from them and they were sent away by the rue Joquelet; then some fifteen were detached from the main body and picked up the corpse of the woman, which still lay on the theatre steps, placed it on a litter and went away down the rue des Filles-Saint-Thomas crying, "Vengeance!" Three or four who were provided with a torch remained behind the rest and, with this torch, lighted a bonfire of straw in the middle of the guard-house; then they kicked down and broke up the planks it was made of and let them fall into the bonfire. Of course, the planks ignited very rapidly, and instantly the barrack was one vast blazing mass; the three or four laggards left it to its fate and rejoined their companions. The fire threw a lurid illumination over the square and burned half the night without anyone attempting to extinguish it. We went down and finished our supper, our thoughts very full of what we had just witnessed. We separated towards midnight, and I took the rue Vivienne; the Perron passage being closed, I went along the rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs and the rue de Richelieu. In the rue de l'Échelle, moving about through the darkness, were shadows which, when I approached, cried, "Qui vive?" I replied, "A friend!" and walked straight on. It was a barricade that was being silently raised, as though built by some spirits of the night. I shook hands with several of these nocturnal workmen and gained the Carrousel. Behind the château gates I could see two or three hundred men camped in the court of the Tuileries. I thought it must have been almost the same as this on the night of the 9th to 10th of August 1790. I tried to peep through the gates, but a sentinel cried "Keep off!" and I went on my way. On the quays everything was resuming its normal appearance. I reached the rue de l'Université without having met a single person either upon the Pont Royal or in the rue du Bac. As soon as I reached my lodgings, I opened my window and listened: Paris seemed silent and deserted; but this tranquillity was but superficial, one felt that the solitude was peopled and the silence alive!
[CHAPTER V]
The morning of the 27th—Joubert—Charles Teste—La Petite-Jacobinière—Chemist Robinet—The arms used in Sergent Mathieu—Pillage of an armourer's stores—The three Royal Guards—A tall and fair young man—Oudard's fears
I was awakened, as on the 26th, by Achille Comte.
"Well?" I asked, rubbing my eyes.
"Oh, it is going ahead!" he said. "The Quartier des Écoles is in a state of open insurrection, but the students are furious."
"Against whom?"
"Against the principal leaders—Laffitte, Casimir Périer and La Fayette.... They called upon these persons yesterday: one told them to keep quiet, whilst others did not even see them.... But Barthélemy and Méry will give you full details; they were there, with their pockets full of gunpowder which they had bought of a grocer."
I dressed, took a carriage to go and call on my mother and found her as calm as if nothing extraordinary was happening in Paris. I had given orders that she should be kept in ignorance, and they had been carefully executed. When I left my mother, I drove to Godefroy Cavaignac, who lived in the rue de Sèvres. He had gone out, but I was told I should find him either at Joubert's the bookseller's, in the passage Dauphine, or at Charles Teste's, at la Petite-Jacobinière, in the place de la Bourse.
Joubert, who was afterwards aide-de-camp to La Fayette, I believe lieutenant-colonel, was a former Carbonaro and a friend of Carrel; condemned to death as the latter was, after the affair of Béfort, he had escaped from the prisons of Perpignan by the help of a nun and two of his friends, Fabre and Corbière.
Charles Teste, whom we all knew well, had built a bookshop in the place de la Bourse, which was dubbed with the expressive name of Petite-Jacobinière, because of the opinions of those who frequented it. Charles Teste was one of the worthiest and noblest characters it was possible to meet with. Being poor, he had quarrelled with his richer brothers. During the reign of Louis-Philippe he would not take up any profession, and goodness knows how he managed to live! When his brother was condemned by the Court of Peers, he placed himself entirely at his disposition, and became his support and comfort and strength. Then, after the Revolution of 1848, all his old friends came in to power, but he declined the posts that were offered to him, and the only favour he asked was that his brother might be removed from prison to a sanatorium. Charles Teste died, I think, eighteen months or two years ago; when he drew his last breath France lost one of her greatest citizens.
I drove first to the passage Dauphine, but Cavaignac had been there and had gone out with Bastide, and it was thought that both had gone to la Petite-Jacobinière. So I dismissed my cab, as I had a call to make at No. 7 rue de l'Université. Here I had drawn no preventive cordon, as in the case of my mother, and everything was known. I promised to regard things from a spectator's standpoint and not to mix myself up in the disturbance: on those conditions, I was allowed leave.
There was a large gathering in the rue de Beaune, at the house of a chemist whose name was Robinet; it was composed of electors and members of the National Guard of the 10th and 11th Arrondissement. All they wanted was to start out on the warpath, but no one possessed arms.
"No arms?" asked Étienne Arago, who entered at this juncture. "If you have no arms, there are plenty to be had at the armourers'!"
It was known at the National offices and at la Petite-Jacobinière that a meeting was going on in Robinet's house, and they had sent Arago as a deputy. He had not wasted his time since the morning.
"No arms!" was the general cry at the Petite-Jacobinière as elsewhere.
Le Sergent Mathieu was then being played at the Vaudeville theatre, and, consequently, there were about a score or so of rifles, swords and powder-wallets lying among the property stores. Gauja and Étienne ran off to the Vaudeville and put the weapons in wicker baskets which they covered with sheets; they recruited porters and scene-shifters, whilst they followed the procession, clad beneath their long coats in the uniform of officers of the Imperial Guard. The place du Palais-Royal was crowded with troops. A captain stepped out of the ranks and asked the commissionaires: "What are you carrying there?"
"A wedding breakfast from Parly, Captain," Arago replied.
The captain began to laugh: the points of the swords and bayonets were sticking through the basketwork. But he only turned his back on what he saw, and returned to the ranks. Guns, swords and powder-flasks arrived safely at la Petite-Jacobinière, where they were distributed. It was as a consequence of this distribution of arms that Étienne had been sent to Robinet's.
"At his words, "If you have no arms, there are plenty at the armourers'!" everybody went out. Étienne ran to the nearest armourer with Gauja and a man named Lallemand. The armourer lived in the rue de l'Université. When I had pointed out to Étienne his shop, which was on the left side of the rue de Beaune, I turned to the right, to fetch my own gun. Étienne and Lallemand rushed in to the armourer's shop, which was just being closed. Étienne was more lucky with the armourer than he had been the previous day with the Superintendent of Police, and he managed to enter the shop.
"My friend," he said, "do not be alarmed; we have not come to seize your arms, but to purchase them."
He took five or six rifles, and kept one for himself, one for Gauja and one for Lallemand, giving away the remainder. Then he emptied his pockets, which contained 320 francs and, for the surplus expenditure, he gave a draft on his brother François, of the Observatoire, who paid religiously. Lallemand endorsed the bill. This Lallemand was a well educated and highly cultivated young fellow whom we nicknamed le Docteur, because he always talked so much Latin. I make this explanation in order to avoid confusion with Professor Lallemand. They also took powder and bullets from the same armourer and, as we shall see, it was not long before they were required.
I had gone back home, called my servant Joseph and told him to put me out my complete shooting costume. It was the most suitable and convenient for the form of exercise to which we were going to apply our energies; also, more important still, it was the least conspicuous. I was half-way through my toilet when I heard a great uproar in the rue du Bac and rushed to my window: it came from Étienne Arago and Gauja, who were calling the people to arms. It will be remembered that I lived above the café Desmares; but I forgot to mention that three of my windows looked into the rue du Bac. At that moment, two mounted policemen appeared from the bridge side, at the entrance of the street. Why had they come there? What chance had brought them? We did not know at all. When the crowd which filled the street caught sight of them, loud cries were set up. Thereupon, the policemen seemed to confer together; but, if they hesitated, it was only for a moment: they took their bridles between their teeth, drew their sabres in one hand and held their pistols in the other. The crowd was unarmed and ran into side alleys or open shops or made off down the rue de Lille. Arago and Gauja hid in corners of the street: one of them (I do not know which) cried to the other—
"Come! it is time to begin!"
At the same moment, the two policemen pounced upon them at full gallop. Two reports and flashes of firing came simultaneously from Étienne and Gauja. Both had aimed at the same man and he fell pierced by both bullets. They rushed to the gendarme stretched on the ground. He was dying. The other policeman turned back. The riderless horse went its own way and disappeared down the rue du Bac. They took his sabre, pistol and powder-box from him and carried him to la Charité. When it was seen that a wounded policeman was being brought into the hospital and they learnt that he had been wounded because he charged at the people, the patients were for finishing him off.
The spirit of revolution had actually penetrated into the hospitals!
Meanwhile, I had put on my jacket, picked up my gun, game-bag and powder-horn, stuffed my pockets with shot and I gone downstairs. Arago and Gauja had both disappeared. I was known in the district and people collected round me.
"What must be done?" they inquired.
"Put up barricades!" I replied.
"Where?"
"One at each end of the rue de l'Université; the other across the rue du Bac."
They brought me a crowbar and I set to the task by beginning to unpave the street. Everybody clamoured for arms.
While this was going on drums were beating in the Tuileries garden. Three soldiers of the Garde Royale appeared at the ii top of the rue du Bac, from the direction of the rue Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin.
"Look here!" I said to those surrounding me, "you are asking for arms? Nothing could be more opportune. See! here are three rifles coming towards you; the only thing you have to do is to take them...."
"Oh, if that is all!" they said.
And they rushed towards the soldiers, who pulled up. I was the only man armed in the crowd.
"My friends," I shouted to the soldiers, "give up your guns and no harm shall be done you!"
They consulted for a moment, then gave up their guns. I kept the soldiers covered with mine, prepared to kill the first man who should make any hostile demonstration. The people took the guns, but these were actually not loaded: hence, of course, arose the poor devils' readiness to give them up. The people uttered loud shouts of triumph, the battle had begun with a victory: one gendarme killed and three soldiers of the Royal Guard made prisoners! True, we had to let our captives go, because we did not know what to do with them.
We now went on with our barricades. A little group of students arrived from the top of the rue de l'Université; a tall fair young man marched at its head, dressed in an apple-green frock-coat. He was the only one of the party who possessed a service gun. We fraternised and they joined with us to work at the barricades. The close vicinity of the barracks of the Gardes du Corps on the quai d'Orsay made us fearful of an attack. It was quite impossible for the sentinel not to have heard the two reports of a gun, not to have seen the police fly and not to have raised the alarm. I was tired of turning up paving-stones, so gave my pickaxe to the tall fair youth. He began to pick up the intermediate space, but the crowbar was heavy, fell out of his hands and struck me on the leg.
"Ah! monsieur," he cried, "I beg your pardon most profoundly, for I am sure I must have hurt you badly!"
It was true enough, but there are moments when one does not feel pain.
"Never mind," I said to him; "it is on the bone."
He raised his head. "Do you happen to possess a ready wit?"
"By Jove!" I replied, "that's a fine question:' it is my business to have one!"
"Would you favour me with your name?"
"Alexandre Dumas."
"Oh! monsieur!" (He held out his hand to me.) "My name is Bixio ... Profession—medical student. If I get killed, here is my card; have the goodness to see that I am carried home. If you are wounded, I will put my scientific knowledge at your disposal."
"Monsieur, I hope that neither your card nor your knowledge will be required; but, all the same, I will take the one and accept the other. Take care to remember my name, if you please, as I will remember yours!"
We shook hands, and our friendship dated from that meeting.
The barricades finished, we left them to be guarded by those who had helped to make them.
"Now, then," I said to Bixio, "where are you going?"
"I am going in the direction of Gros-Caillou."
"In that case, I will accompany you as far as the Chamber.... I want to go and see what is happening at the National."
"What!" Bixio exclaimed. "Are you going like that, with your gun, through the streets?"
"Certainly!" I replied; "you seem to me to be going to do just the same."
"Yes, but only on this side of the Seine."
"Bah! I am in a shooting costume and not a fighting one."
"But shooting hasn't begun yet."
"All right, then; I will open the season."
However, as will be seen, I did not venture to cross the Tuileries with my accoutrements: I went round by the place de la Révolution, I crossed it without hindrance and went down the whole length of the rue Saint-Honoré. The barricades in the rue de l'Échelle and the rue des Pyramides had been broken down. When I reached the rue de Richelieu and saw a regiment at the top of the place Louvois, from the other side of the Palais-Royal a dense line of troops was visible, and a squadron of Lancers was stationed in the place du Palais-Royal. There was no passage left me unless I went back the way I had come. I found I was nearly opposite my old offices, No. 216. So I went in and upstairs to the first floor. There I found Oudard. He looked at me, hesitating whether to recognise me.
"What! is that you?" he asked.
"No doubt about that."
"What are you doing here to-day?"
"I have come to see if I cannot meet the Duc d'Orléans."
"What do you want with him?"
I began to laugh.
"I want to address him as Your Majesty," I replied.
Oudard uttered a lamentable cry of distress.
"Unlucky fellow!" he said, "how can you utter such words? Suppose anybody heard you!"
"Yes, but nobody will hear me—the duke least of all." "Why so?"
"Because I presume he is at Neuilly."
"The Duc d'Orléans is in his right place!" Oudard replied magisterially.
"My dear Oudard, as I am much less well versed in matters of etiquette than yourself, allow me to inquire where the right place is?"
"Why, by the king's side, I suppose."
"Then," I said, "I present my compliments to His Highness."
At this moment drums began beating at the corner of the rue de Richelieu, turning by the rue Saint-Honoré, and advancing towards the Palais-Royal. Behind them came a general, surrounded by his staff of officers. I could see them plainly through the chinks of the outside blinds.
I felt a great desire to make Oudard sick with fear.
"Look here, Oudard," I said, "I am strongly of opinion that if I picked off the general who is just passing it would considerably advance the affairs of M. le Duc d'Orléans ... who is so near the king."
And I covered the general with my gun. Oudard became as pale as death and flung himself upon my gun, which was not even cocked. I laughingly showed him the hammer lowered on the nipple.
"Oh!" he said, "you will leave this place, will you not?"
"You must wait till the soldiers have filed past.... I cannot reasonably attack, singlehanded, two or three thousand men."
Oudard sat down, and I laid my gun in a corner and opened the window wide.
"What are you up to next?" he asked.
"I am going to amuse myself by watching the military pass by"; and I watched them from beginning to end.
They went to the Hôtel de Ville, where warm fighting had begun. The general in command, whom I had picked out to Oudard's extreme terror, was General Wall.
I went back by the rue de Richelieu, behind the last ranks, with my gun on my shoulder, as quietly as though I were going to the opening of the shooting season, on the plains of Saint-Denis.
[CHAPTER VI]
The aspect of the rue de Richelieu—Charras—L'École polytechnique—The head with the wig—The café of the Porte Saint-Honoré—The tricoloured flag—I become head of a troop—My landlord gives me notice—A gentleman who distributes powder—The captain of the 15th Light Infantry
The rue de Richelieu wore a very strange aspect. Hardly had the troops left the street before the insurgents audaciously entered it, or, rather, issuing from every door, reigned there supreme. In all directions the fleurs de lys were blotted out along with the royal monogram, whilst everywhere the mottoes were daubed with mud. To the cries of "Vive la Charte!" began to succeed those of "A has les Bourbons!" Armed men appeared at the street corners, looking as though in search of some centre of resistance or field of battle. From time to time a shop door would open and, through the half-opened space, a soldier of the Garde National in his uniform could be seen, still hesitating to come out, but only awaiting the right moment to join in the vast tumult. Women waved handkerchiefs out of the windows and cried bravo to every man who appeared with a gun in his hand. Nobody walked with his usual step, all ran. No one spoke as usual, they jerked out half-finished expressions. A universal fever seemed to have seized the population: it was a wonderful sight! The coldest and most unsympathetic being would have been compelled to join in the general excitement abroad.
I reached the National offices and, at the door, I met Carrel in conversation with Paulin.
"Ah!" I exclaimed, "there you are!... good. They told me you had left Paris and were in the country with Thiers and Mignet, they even said that you were in the valley of Montmorency."
"Who told you that?"
"As though I could remember!..." And, indeed, I could not have said who had told me this bit of news, which had been given me, moreover, by way of proving to me what little effect the leaders of the movement were themselves having upon the so-called Revolution which was going on.
"There is some truth in the rumour," he said. "I really did go into the country with Thiers, Mignet and another person whom I wished to place in safety."
"Élisa?" I said heedlessly.
"Yes, my wife Élisa," Carrel emphasised; "but directly she was in a place of safety I returned, and here I am."
Carrel was quite sincere in the few words he had just uttered. Those who lived in intimate intercourse with Carrel knew the person I had just called Élisa, whom, by way of reading me a lesson, he had called his wife. He adored this lady, who was indeed adorable and the best and most devoted of women! There existed between them one of those liaisons that society proscribes but the heart respects—a love which redeems the fault committed by such virtue that out of a sinner it creates a saint. What became of this poor noble creature after Carrel's death? I have no idea; but I know that when I heard of the terrible accident I thought far less of him who had died than of her who was condemned to live.
I ask the forbearance of my readers for so often digressing from my subject to speak of affairs of the heart such as this, but I am writing my Memoirs and not a history; my impressions, and not a compilation of dates: as my impressions recur to my memory, so do they cause a dark or a golden cloud to float between my eyes and my paper, according as they are sad or joyful.
We were now joined by a fine, handsome lad of between twenty and twenty-two. Carrel held out his hand to him.
"Oh! so it is you, Charras?" he said.
"Yes. I have been looking for you."
"For what purpose?"
"To ask you where they are fighting."
"Is there fighting anywhere?" Carrel questioned.
"My goodness! Of course there is!"
"Well! no matter; but I should never have thought it was so difficult a matter to get one's head broken.... Since yesterday night I have been running all over the place with that object in view and I haven't yet got my desire!"
Charras, one of the bravest officers in the African army and one of the staunchest characters of the Revolution of 1848, had been driven out of the École polytechnique, at the beginning of 1830, for having sung "La Marseillaise" and cried "Vive La Fayette!" at a dinner. One of these two offences would alone have been enough to have expelled him, but, as they could not turn him out twice, they had to be content with turning him out once for all. Since that time, he had lived at No. 38 rue des Fossés-du-Temple, at Fresnoy the actor's, who kept a furnished hotel, being also, at the same time, a manager of the Petit-Lazari theatre of marionnettes, which the protection and influence of his tenant changed into a theatre of living, speaking actors, a week after the Revolution of July. Since the 26th, Charras had been planning what part his old comrades the students of the École polytechnique could play in the insurrection; consequently, he at once put himself into communication with them, and, on the 27th, he had managed to distribute among them the Opposition journals that had appeared, the Globe, the Temps and the National. The printer of the Courrier français had declined his presses, and the Constitutionnel and the Débats had not dared to appear. At two o'clock, the graduate students, sergeants and sergeant-majors, who had the right to go out as they liked, had rushed into the streets, and had drawn all the quarters seething with revolt, returning to the École saying, after what they had seen, that a collision was imminent. At this piece of news the excitement became intense. About seven o'clock they heard musket shots in the rue du Lycée and volley firing in the rue Saint-Honoré. The students were soon collected in the billiard-room, and there they decided that four of their members should be sent to Laffitte, to La Fayette and to Casimir Périer to tell them the feeling of the École and that the students were ready to throw themselves into the insurrection. The École numbered between forty to fifty Republicans, as many, perhaps, as Paris contained among her twelve hundred thousand inhabitants. The four students chosen were MM. Berthelin, Pinsonnière, Tourneux and Lothon. The authorities tried to keep them in, but they broke out without leave and arrived at Charras's lodgings at nine o'clock in the evening. Charras was busy burning down the guard-house in the place de la Bourse, and did not return home until half-past eleven. But that did not matter, and it was decided they should go at once to Laffitte's house. They left the rue des Fossés-du-Temple at midnight and reached the door of his hotel at twenty minutes past. They rang and knocked at the same time, so great was their haste to gain an entrance. Moreover, in the innocence of their hearts, the five youths imagined that Laffitte was in as great a hurry to accept their lives as they themselves were to offer them. An ill-tempered concierge opened a wicket-gate.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"To speak to M. Laffitte."
"What about?"
"About the Revolution."
"Who are you?"
"Students from the École polytechnique."
"M. Laffitte has gone to bed."
And the porter shut the door in the faces of the five young fellows.
Charras had a great mind to force open the door and even went so far as to propose it, but, being dissuaded by his companions, he merely heaped abuse upon the concierge.
The manner of their reception at Laffitte's did not encourage them to pay the other calls they had planned to make: they agreed to call next day on La Fayette and Casimir Périer, but in the meanwhile they would return to the rue des Fossés-du-Temple. They therefore went back to the Hôtel Fresnoy and accommodated themselves as best they could on mattresses, on chairs, or on the floor. Next day, at dawn, they went to a professor of mathematics, named Martelet, who coached for the École examinations. M. Martelet lived at No. 16 rue des Fossés-du-Temple. They wanted to procure themselves civilian's dress—the king's highway not being safe in open daylight for the students who wore the École uniform. The five friends found all, they required at M. Martelet's house. Then, as they feared that if they called upon La Fayette too early, the same thing would happen as when they called too late at Laffitte's, they set to work to build a barricade in order to pass the time of waiting.
A wigmaker was busy in a house opposite that of M. Martelet, curling and powdering a wig: the young men invited him to join them; but, whether the wigmaker's political opinions differed from the makers of the barricade, or whether he was too much engrossed in his art and thought his time was better employed in powdering and curling wigs, he refused. By chance the barricade and the wig were both finished at the same moment. As there was nobody to guard the barricade, they took a model of a head with its pedestal from the wigmaker's shop, placed it behind the paving-stones, dressed it up in the freshly powdered and curled wig, rammed a three-cornered hat jauntily on the top and confided the protection of the barricade, to the mannikin, forbidding the wigmaker under pain of death to dare to make any change in the strategic arrangements. After which they directed their course to La Fayette's dwelling-place. La Fayette was not at home. The young people left their names with the concierge, and were about to resume their Odyssey by going to knock at the door of Casimir Périer. But Charras thought two fruitless attempts were enough, and left his comrades to fulfil their third attempt by themselves, which proved as barren as the first two. He sought out Carrel to inquire where fighting was taking place. But nobody seemed to know. There was a general idea that there was fighting going on near the Hôtel de Ville, and, at certain moments, the great bell of Notre-Dame could be heard ringing. As Charras had no arms he was able to take a direct course by the Palais-Royal and the Pont des Arts or by the Pont Neuf; whilst I, who had my gun, was obliged to retrace my steps the way I had come, by the faubourg Saint-Germain, the place de la Révolution and the rue de Lille. Charras went his way and I mine. We shall find Charras again later. Carrell went to the Petite-Jacobinière and I went back again into the streets.
The spirit of hatred was still spreading: people were no longer satisfied with effacing the fleurs de lys from the signboards, they now dragged them in the gutters.
I called at Hiraux's for a few minutes (the reader will recall the son of my old violin master, who kept and still keeps the café de la Porte Saint-Honoré). I went in there first of all to see him, and secondly, because there seemed a great agitation going on inside his house. It was caused by a piece of news which was being spread abroad and which exasperated people. It was said that the Duc de Raguse had offered his services to the king, to take command of the armed forces in Paris. If this news sounded odd to the world at large, it surprised me still more: only two days before, had I not heard the Duc de Raguse, at the Academy deploring the Ordinances and asking François Arago not to speak? And, as a matter of fact, he had had no thought of offering his services for the post until Marshal Marmont, who was in a state of despair, had received that very morning, from the Prince de Polignac, the order appointing him to the command of the first military division. He had been upon the point of refusing, but his evil genius had prevented him from doing so. There are men predestined to do fatal acts! This news probably threw five hundred more combatants into the streets.
When I reached the Pont de la Révolution, I stopped short in stupefaction to rub my eyes, for I thought they must have deceived me: the tricolour was floating from Notre-Dame! I must confess that I experienced a strange feeling of emotion at the sight of that flag, which I had not seen since 1815 and which recalled so many noble memories of those Revolutionary times and so many glorious recollections of the Imperial rule. I leant against the parapet with outstretched arms and my eyes filled with tears, rivetted upon the sight.
From la Grève side a lively fusillade burst forth, the smoke rising in dense clouds. The sight of my gun brought a dozen people round me. Two or three were armed with guns, others had pistols or swords.
"Will you lead us?" they said. "Will you be our chief?"
"Indeed I will!" I replied. "Come along."
We went across the Pont de la Révolution and we took our way through the rue de Lille, to avoid the Orsay barracks, which commanded the quay. The drums of the National Guard were beginning to beat the rappel and, our little company forming a nucleus, I had fifty men round me, with two drums and a banner, by the time I reached the rue du Bac. As I passed my rooms, I wished to go upstairs to fetch some money, as I had gone out in the morning without troubling to look to see what I had upon me, and I found I had only fifteen francs; but the landlord had come and had given the porter orders not to admit me. My conduct that morning had given rise to scandal: I had, myself, with nineteen others, disarmed three soldiers of the Royal Guard, and, with nine others, I had made three barricades; finally, as they evidently thought I was so rich that they could risk lending me something, they added to the charges against me the murder of the gendarme by Arago and Gauja. My troop made me the same offer that Charras had made to his comrades, the night before; they offered to break in the door, but I was fond of my lodgings, they were very comfortable and I had not any desire that my landlord should turn me out, so I restrained the enthusiastic zeal of my men.
We resumed our journey along the rue de l'Université. At that moment, I had nearly thirty men with me who were armed with rifles; when we got to the top of the rue Jacob it occurred to me to ask them if they had ammunition. They had not ten cartridges between them; but this fact had not prevented their marching to face fire with that naïve and sublime self-confidence which characterises the people of Paris during periods of insurrection.
We went into an armourer's shop whose arms had all been seized, to ask him if he could tell us where to find some cartridges. He told us that we should find a monsieur at the small gate of the Institut, in the rue Mazarine, who was distributing powder. Now, although it was highly improbable that such a monsieur existed, we went off to the address indicated.
The information was perfectly correct: we found the little door of the Institut, and the monsieur who was distributing powder. Who was the gentleman and where did he hail from? And on whose behalf did he distribute this powder? I know nothing about it and shall certainly not put myself out about the question now, as I did not allow it to trouble me at the time. I simply state the bare facts. A queue had been formed, as you may suppose. Each man armed with a gun received a dozen charges of powder; every man with a pistol received six. The monsieur did not keep bullets; and these I hoped to procure at Joubert's, in the Dauphine passage. I left my men in the street and went alone to Joubert's, for fear of alarming those who lived down the passage. Joubert had gone off with Godefroy Cavaignac and Guinard. Cavaignac and Guinard had quarrelled; but, when they met by chance at Joubert's, guns in hand, they fell into one another's arms and made it up. In spite of the absence of the master of the house, they gave me fifty bullets, which I took away to my men. This hardly allowed us two balls to each gun; but we pursued our way, putting our trust in Providence.
As we were going to the place de Grève, we went by the rue Guénégaud, the Pont Neuf and the quai de l'Horloge. It seemed there was to be no opposition to our march, which was hastened by the sound of musketry and cannon; until, on arriving at the quai aux Fleurs, we found ourselves face to face with a whole regiment. It was the 15th Light Infantry. Thirty rifles and fifty rounds of ammunition were scarcely enough with which to attack fifteen hundred men. We pulled up. However, as the troop did not assume an aggressive attitude towards us, I made my men halt, advanced to the regiment with my gun erect and indicated by signs that I wished to speak with an officer. A captain came out to meet me.
"What is your business, monsieur?" he asked.
"A passage for myself and men."
"Where are you going?"
"To the Hôtel de Ville."
"What to do?"
"Why, to fight," I replied.
The captain began to laugh.
"Really, Monsieur Dumas," he said to me, "I didn't think you were as mad as that."
"Ah! you know me?" I said.
"I was on guard one night at the Odéon when Christine was being played and I had the honour of seeing you."
"Then let us talk like two good friends."
"That is indeed what I am doing, it seems to me."
"Why am I a madman?"
"You are a madman, first of all, because you risk getting yourself killed, when it is not your calling to get killed; secondly, you are mad for asking us to allow you to pass through, because you know very well we shall not do so.... Besides, look what will happen to you if we grant your request—the same that has happened to these poor devils who are being brought in...."
And he showed me two or three wounded, returning leaning upon the shoulders of their comrades or laid on stretchers.
"Oh, ah! but you yourself? What are you doing here?" I asked him.
"A very sad thing, monsieur,—our duty. By good luck, the regiment has, so far, received no orders beyond the prevention of traffic. We are restricting ourselves, as you see, to the execution of that order. So long as no one fires on us, we shall fire on no one either. Go and tell that to your men and let them turn back quietly, and if, to go further still, you have enough influence over them to persuade them to return to their homes, you will be doing the very best deed possible!"
"I thank you for your advice, monsieur," I said, laughing in my turn; "but I doubt whether my companions will be disposed to follow the latter part of it."
"Then it will be so much the worse for them, monsieur!"
I bowed and turned to go away.
"By the bye," he said, "when will Antony appear? Is not that the title of the first play you mean to have performed?"
"Yes, Captain."
"When?"
"When we have accomplished the Revolution, seeing that the Censorship has suppressed my play, and that it needs nothing less than a Revolution to permit the performance of it—so they have told me at the Ministry of the Interior."
The officer shook his head.
"Then I am very much afraid, monsieur, that the play will never see daylight."
"You are afraid of that?"
"Yes."
"All right—here's to the first representation! And if you would like seats at it, come to No. 25 rue de l'Université and ask me for them."
We bowed. The captain returned to his company, and I rejoined my troop, to whom I related all that had passed. Our first care was to retire beyond gunshot, in case our advisers should change their views for less pacific ones. Then we held counsel together.
"Upon my word!" one of my men remarked, "the matter is easy enough. Do we or do we not wish to go where there is fighting?"
"We do."
"Well, then, let us go down the rue du Harlay, the quai des Orfèvres and return to the Pont Notre-Dame by the rue de la Draperie and the rue de la Cité."
This proposition was unanimously adopted: our two drums began to beat again, and we reascended the quai de l'Horloge to put our fresh strategic plan into execution.
[CHAPTER VII]
The attack on the Hôtel de Ville—Rout—I take refuge at M. Lethière's—The news—My landlord becomes generous—General La Fayette—Taschereau—Béranger—The list of the Provisional Government—Honest mistake of the Constitutionnel
We kept strictly to the route agreed on. A quarter of an hour after our departure from the quai de l'Horloge, we issued forth by the little street of Glatigny. We arrived in the nick of time: they were going to make a decisive charge upon the Hôtel de Ville by the suspension bridge. Only, if we wished to join in the attack, we must hurry on. Our two drums beat the charge and we advanced at quick pace. We could see about a hundred men in the distance (who composed pretty nearly the whole of the insurgent army) boldly marching towards the bridge, a tricolour standard at their head, when, suddenly, a piece of cannon was pointed and fired in such a way as to rake the whole length of the bridge.
The cannon was charged with grapeshot and the effect of the discharge was terrible. The standard disappeared; some eight or ten men fell and a dozen to fifteen took flight. But the fugitives rallied again at the outcries of those who remained unmoved on the bridge. From the point where we were sheltered by the parapet, we fired on the place de Grève and upon the gunners at the cannon, two of whom fell. They were instantly replaced, and with indescribable rapidity the cannon was reloaded and fired a second time. There was frightful confusion on the bridge; many of the assailants must have been killed or wounded, to judge by the gaps in their ranks. One of us shouted—
"To the bridge! To the bridge!"
We soon sprang forward; but we had not cleared a third of the distance when the cannon thundered forth a third time, and at the same moment the troop advanced upon the bridge with fixed bayonets. Hardly twenty combatants survived that third discharge; forty or so lay dead or wounded on the bridge. Not only was there no longer any means of attacking, but, further, we could not dream of defending ourselves—four to five hundred men were charging us with fixed bayonets! By good fortune we only had to cross the quay in order to reach the network of little streets which were buried in the heart of the city. A fourth discharge of the cannon killed three or four more of our men and hastened our retreat, which, from that moment, might be more accurately described as a rout. This was the first time I had ever heard the whistling of grapeshot, and I confess I shall not believe anyone who tells me he has heard this sound for the first time unmoved. We did not even attempt to rally, and, with the exception of one of the drummers whom I met upon the square in front of Notre-Dame, my whole troop had vanished like smoke. But, five minutes later, we met each other again, some fifteen of us, who all arrived by different streets from the bridge. The news they brought was disastrous: the standard-bearer, whom they asserted was called Arcole, had been killed; Charras, they said, was mortally wounded; finally, the bridge was literally strewn with dead. I thought I had done enough for one day, considering I was a novice in my military career; also, cries round us announced the approach of soldiers: they were coming to take down the tricoloured flag from the tower and to stop the ringing of the great bell of Notre-Dame, which boomed on with admirable persistence, dominating all other sounds, even that of the cannon. I regained the quai des Orfèvres and the same street, rue Guénégaud, by which I had passed triumphantly at the head of my fifty men only an hour before; I went down the rue Mazarine and, by the same door from which the monsieur had distributed powder, I entered the house of my friend, Lethière. I was received just as cordially as usual, even more so, perhaps: M. Lethière held strong Liberal views, Mademoiselle d'Hervilly was almost Republican. They gave me some of that famous rum-arrack which comes directly from la Guadeloupe, of which I was inordinately fond! Upon my word, it was good, after listening to the whistle of grapeshot and seeing fifty men mowed down, to find oneself among warm friends who embraced and shook hands with one and poured one out arrack!
It was almost three o'clock: M. Lethière declared that he had got me and did not mean to let me go again that day. I asked nothing better than to be kept back compulsorily, and remained to dinner. At five, Lethière's son came in, bringing news with him. Fighting was going on, or had gone on, in every quarter of Paris. The boulevards were on fire from the Madeleine to the Bastille; half the trees were cut down and had been used in the making of upwards of forty barricades. The Mairie of Petits-Pères had been taken by three patriots, whose names were already known—MM. Degousée, Higonnet and Laperche. In the faubourg and in the rue de Saint-Antoine the enthusiasm had been extraordinary: they had crushed the soldiers, who were coming from Vincennes, beneath furniture which was flung on them from the windows. Nothing had come amiss as arms: wood from bedsteads, cupboards, chests of drawers, marble, chairs, firedogs, screens, cisterns, bottles—even a piano had been thrown down! The troops were completely decimated. The attack in the Louvre district had advanced as far as the place Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. A column of twenty men had marched to battle headed by a violin which played Ran tan plan tire lire! And, more than this: the members of the Chamber were beginning to rouse themselves. They met at the house of Audry de Puyraveau, and talked much but did little. That was better than nothing! Finally, they decided that five deputies should wait upon the Duc de Raguse to lay certain propositions before him, and to treat with him if necessary.
"Four millions," Casimir Périer said, "would, according to my thinking, be well spent in this matter."
The five deputies repaired to the headquarters in the square, where the marshal was: they were MM. Laffitte, Casimir Périer, Mauguin, Lobau and Gérard. They had been shown in at Marmont's house, where they found François Arago, who had preceded them on the same errand; but neither the one nor the other had had the slightest success whatever. While they were waiting at the marshal's, a lancer, with his chest horribly lacerated by a gunshot, had been carried into the next room to the one in which the conference was being held. They could not at first tell what kind of projectile the wound could have been made with: the surgeon thought it must have been shot used for killing hares. But it was with printer's type! The men whose presses had been broken were taking their revenge. This is only a detail, but it was one which indicated how each person used whatever means he had at hand in default of proper arms.
The news, as will be seen, was not bad, but there was nothing decisive about it yet. The people, the bourgeoisie, young lads, had flung themselves passionately into the insurrection; it was the financial circles and those in high places in the army and the aristocracy who hung back. M. Dumoulin had been seen in his plumed hat, with his great sword by his side, haranguing in the rue Montmartre; and Colonel Dufys, dressed as one of the people, with a scarf round his head, had been seen urging on the insurgents; but M. de Rémusat was still suffering from a feverish attack at the Globe offices, and M. Thiers and M. Mignet were at Montmorency, at the house of Madame de Courchamp, whilst M. Cousin talked of the white flag as the only one that could save France; M. Charles Dupin, meeting Étienne Arago under one of the pavilions by the Institut, had exclaimed, with tears in his eyes, seeing him with a gun in his hand—
"Oh! monsieur, has it come to this, that soldiering is your work now?"
M. Dubois, chief editor of the Globe, had given up his editorship; M. Sebastiani was for keeping in orderly legal ways; M. Alexandre de Girardin protested that it suited France best to have the Bourbons without the Ultras; Carrel loudly condemned the folly of those citizens who attacked the military; then, finally, when the people and bourgeoisie and the youths from the colleges were shedding their blood freely and without stint, MM. Laffitte, Mauguin, Casimir Périer, Lobau and Gérard were satisfied with trying to draw up a measure of conciliation with the man who was firing grapeshot over Paris!
If, next day, things did not settle themselves more favourably, they would certainly become worse. There were not really more than from twelve to thirteen thousand men in Paris; but there were fifty thousand within a radius of twenty-five to thirty leagues, and the semaphores, which flourished their huge, mysterious arms in the eyes of all, showed that the Government had a thousand things to tell the provinces which it was particularly anxious that Paris should not know.
The upshot of all this was that it was quite possible that on the next day, the 29th, the heroes of the 27th and 28th would be obliged to clear out of the capital, if not out of France itself. With a view to this eventuality, M. Lethière inquired the state of my finances, and offered to help me in case of need (it was not the first time he had done me a similar service), but I was quite rich, for, when I was ready to start for Algiers, I had called in all my theatrical payments and was in possession of something like a thousand crowns. But M. Lethière, who knew my way of economising, declined to believe in this fortune and suspected me of boasting. It was true my fortune was under sequestration, on account of the orders my landlord had given forbidding me to enter my rooms. But this ban could not also include my friends. Therefore, as much to relieve the mind of the excellent man who offered to lend me money as to put myself in possession of my own fortune, I deputed M. Lethière's son to take a message to my servant; giving him the key of the place where I kept the purse containing my three thousand francs and my passport,—two things each equally necessary at that moment,—I begged my obliging commissionaire to effect an invasion of my premises, whether by fair means or foul, and to bring me back my purse. He was also to bring some forty bullets which he would find deposited in a cup on my bedroom mantelpiece, to replace those I had made use of during the day. He was also to be so obliging as to leave a letter at No. 7 rue de l'Université, as he passed: the letter told the person to whom it was addressed to be quite easy on my account; it also told her I was in safety, and I promised not to commit any follies. This pledged me to nothing, since it left me free to place my own limits as to what things were prudent and what were rash. Half an hour later, Lethière returned with all the commissions executed. He had not only not experienced any trouble at the hands of the concierge, but the landlord had relented—no doubt on account of the way he saw that things were turning out: he had given me permission to return on condition that I would give my word of honour not to fire from the windows of his rooms. The insurrection had wrought one great moral victory, at any rate.
I left my good, worthy friend Lethière at nine o'clock and returned home, first giving the concierge the requisite promise. He had run round the whole of the faubourg Saint-Germain, and the result of his exploration, ordered by the landlord himself, was that the whole quarter was in a state of insurrection. There was talk of a great meeting to be held next morning, in the place de l'Odéon, as a suitable centre from which they could set out to attack the various barracks or guard-houses, which usually play the same part in the midst of an insurrection that fortified places do during an invasion.
I returned, but not to go to bed, only to deposit my gun, powder and balls; I meant to spend a good part of the night in gleaning information. I felt it was urgently needful to implicate, by some means or other, those great leaders of the Opposition who had been waiting for fifteen years, and I desired to know if our friends were busy over this little piece of work. I dressed myself, therefore, for the occasion, and tried to cross the bridges. The sentries on duty at the gates of the Tuileries and the Carrousel were expressly forbidden to allow anyone whomsoever to enter without the password. Through the stone arcade could be seen the court of the Tuileries and the square of the Carrousel transformed into a vast, dark, dreary camp, silent and almost motionless. The soldiers looked more like phantoms than like men. I went along the quay, and by the place de la Révolution and the rue Saint-Honoré, as I had done in the morning. All the shops were shut, but there were lamps in most of the windows. Foot passengers were scarce and, as the noise of traffic had nearly ceased, on account of the obstruction caused by the barricades, the lugubrious, ceaseless ringing of the bell of Notre-Dame could be heard in the air, like the sound of a flight of bronze birds. As I went down the quay, I remembered Paul Fouché and his play, and I felt curious to know if he had read it to the Committee and if his drama had been received or rejected. I have already said that I knew General La Fayette. I attempted what Charras and the students of the École polytechnique had failed in—I went to call upon him. They told me he was out, which I doubted at first, and I went inside the porter's lodge and told him my name; but the honest man repeated there what he had already said to me through his little grating. I was going away very much disappointed when I saw three or four men walking in the darkness, and in the middle figure I thought I recognised that of the general. I went forward and it was he. He was leaning upon M. Carbonnel's arm; M. de Lasteyrie, I believe, came behind, talking to a servant.
"Ah! General," I exclaimed; "it is you!"
He recognised me.
"Good!" he said. "I am surprised that I have not seen you before now."
"It is not easy to gain access to you, General"; and I related all that Charras and his friends had gone through in their attempt.
"True," he said; "I found their names and ordered that they should be admitted if they returned."
"General, I cannot say whether the others will do so, but I doubt if Charras will."
"Why not?"
"Because I hear he was killed over in the direction of la Grève."
"Killed?" he exclaimed. "Ah! poor young fellow!"
"It is not surprising, General;... there was warm work there!"
"Were you there?"
"Yes, indeed! but only for a short time."
"What are you intending to do to-morrow?"
"I confess, General, that was the very question I was going to put to you."
The general leant on my arm and took a few steps forward, as though to get out of sight of his two companions.
"I mean to leave the députies," he said; "there is nothing to be done with them."
"Then why not move without them?"
"Let people drive me to it and I am ready to act."
"Shall I repeat that to my friends?"
"You may."
"Adieu, General!"
He kept hold of my arm.
"Don't get yourself killed...."
"I will try not."
"In any case, no matter how things turn out, manage to let me see you again."
"I can't promise you that, General, unless...."
"Come, come," the general said; "au revoir!"
And he went into his house.
I ran off to Étienne Arago, No. 10 rue de Grammont. All the Revolutionary leaders were gathered at his house. The day had been a hard one, but, thanks to Joubert's library, to Charles Teste's Petite-Jacobinière and to Coste, who had spent between three and four thousand francs in buying bread and wine to distribute among the fighters, the insurrection had spread to all parts of the town. I told Étienne I had seen the general and reported what he had said, word for word.
"Come, let us go to the National!" he said.
And to the National we went.
Taschereau was busy preparing to make a sublime forgery: he and Charles Teste and Béranger concocted a Provisional Government composed of La Fayette, Gérard and the Duc de Choiseul. He did still more: he issued a proclamation which he signed with their three names. He had first chosen Laffey de Pompières as the third member of their Government, but Béranger had had this name erased in order to substitute that of the Duc de Choiseul in its stead. Thus, besides preparing the Revolution by his chansons, Béranger took an active part in it personally. We shall soon see that he was the principal agent in its denouement.
Next day, the list of the Provisional Government was to be stuck up on all the walls of Paris, and the first proclamation of this Government was to appear in the Constitutionnel. I need hardly say that the honest Constitutionnel was sincere, and that it thought Taschereau's three calligraphic attempts were authentic and legal signatures. Thereupon, I entered my lodgings with an easier mind: as I was quite knocked up with my day's work, I slept as sound as a top through the tolling of Notre-Dame and the intermittent popping of belated stray shots.
[CHAPTER VIII]
Invasion of the Artillery Museum—Armour of François I.—Charles IX.'s arquebuse—La place de l'Odéon—What Charras had been doing—The uniform of the École polytechnique—Millotte—The prison Montaigu—The barracks of l'Estrapade—D'Hostel—A Bonapartist—Riding master Chopin—Lothon—The general in command
I was awakened next morning by my servant Joseph. He was standing by my bedside calling me with ever increasing loudness.
"Monsieur!... Monsieur!!... Monsieur!!!..."
At the third Monsieur, I groaned, rubbed my eyes and sat up. "Well," I asked, "what is the matter?"
"Oh, don't you hear, monsieur?" Joseph exclaimed, holding his head with his hands.
"How should I hear, you idiot? I was asleep."
"But fighting is going on all round us, monsieur!"
"Really?"
He opened the window.
"Listen! it sounds as if it were in the courtyard."
And, indeed, the firing seemed to me to come from no very distant point.
"The deuce!" I said, "where does it come from?"
"From Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin, monsieur."
"What! from the church itself?"
"No, from the Artillery Museum.... Monsieur knows that a post is stationed there."
"Ah! true," I exclaimed, "the Artillery Museum! I will go there."
"What! Monsieur will go there?"
"Certainly."
"Oh, good Heavens!"
"Quick, help me!... A glass of Madeira or Alicante wine!... Oh! the wretches! they will pillage everything!"
That, indeed, was the thought which preoccupied my mind, and that was what made me run to the place where I heard the firing going on. I remembered the archæological treasures that I had seen and handled, one after another, in the studies I had written on Henri III., Henri IV. and Louis XIII., and I saw them all being scattered among the hands of people who did not know their value: marvellous rich treasures of art being given to the first comer who would exchange them for a pound of tobacco or a packet of cartridges. I was ready in five minutes and darted off in the direction of Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin. For the third time, the assailants had been repulsed. This was easily explained: they were madly attacking the Museum by the two openings made by the rue du Bac and the rue Saint-Dominique. The firing of the soldiers raked the two streets and swept them clean with deplorable facility. I looked at the houses in the rue du Bac, which on both sides formed the corner of the rue Gribauval, and I judged that their backs must look upon the place Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin, and that from their upper storeys one could easily dominate the post of the Museum of Artillery. I confided to the combatants the plan suggested to me by the view of the position: it was instantly adopted by them. I knocked at the door of one of two houses, No. 35 rue du Bac, and it was opened after a long wait; still, it did open, in the end, and eight to ten armed men entered with me and we rushed upstairs to the higher storeys. I and three or four other fellows reached an attic, which was rounded off at the top to fit the shape of the roof above it, and here I established myself with as much safety as if I had been behind the parapet of a bastion.
Then firing began, but with quite different results. In ten minutes the post had lost five or six of its men. Suddenly, all the soldiers disappeared, the firing died down. This must, we thought, be some kind of ambuscade, so we hesitated before quitting our intrenchments. But the porter of the Museum soon appeared at the door making unmistakable signs of peace So we went down. The soldiers had scaled the walls and run away over the surrounding courts and gardens. A portion of the insurgents was already crowding up the corridors when I reached the Museum.
"For God's sake, friends," I cried, "respect the armour!"
"What! Why should we respect it?"
"I like that joke," replied one of the men to whom I addressed myself. "Why, to take the weapons is the very reason we are here!" he said.
It then occurred to me that, of course, this must have been the sole object of the attack, and that there would be no means of saving the magnificent collection from pillage. I considered: the only thing left to do was to take my share of the most valuable of the armour.
One of two things would happen: either they would keep the arms or bring them back to the Museum. In either case, it was better that I should take charge of the precious things, rather than anyone else. If I kept them, they would be in the hands of a man who knew how to appreciate them. If they were to be restored, they would be in the hands of one who would give them up. I ran to the best place, where there was an equestrian trophy of the Renaissance period. I seized a shield, a helmet and a sword which were known to have belonged to François I., also a magnificent arquebuse which had belonged, according to the same tradition, to Charles IX., and had been used by him to fire upon the Huguenots. This tradition has become almost historic, on account of the quatrain which the arquebuse carries, inlaid in silver letters, on its barrel, forming one single line from the breech to the sighting-point:—
"Pour mayntenir la foy,
Je suis belle et fidèle;
Aux ennemis du Roy
Je suis belle et cruelle!"
I put the helmet on my head, the shield on my arm; I hung the sword by my side, put the arquebuse on my shoulder, and so made my way, bending under their weight, to the rue de l'Université. I nearly fell when I reached the height of my fourth floor. If these were, indeed, the very shield and buckler that François I. had worn at Marignan, and if he remained fourteen hours in the saddle with these in addition to his other armour, I could believe in the prowess of Ogier the Dane and Roland and the four sons of Aymon.
"Oh! monsieur," Joseph exclaimed, when he caught sight of me, "where have you been, and whatever is all that old iron?"
I did not attempt to correct Joseph's ideas with respect to my booty; it would only have been waste of time. I simply told him to help me to take off the helmet, which nearly suffocated me. I laid them all down on my bed and rushed back for more of this splendid quarry. I brought back next the cuirass, axe and the bulk of the arms. I gave all my fine trophies back, later, to the Artillery Museum, and I still possess the letter of the former Director, thanking me for their restitution, and giving me free entry on days not open to the general public. It was a curious spectacle to see that huge removal of the Museum. Everyone took what suited him best, but it is only fair to say that these worthy fellows were much more careful to select arms they thought most suitable to fight with than sumptuously wrought ones. So nearly the whole of the collection of old muskets, flint and percussion caps, from the time of Louis XIV. to our own day, disappeared. One man took away a rampart gun that must have weighed at least a hundred and fifty pounds; four others dragged a piece of iron cannon with which they meant to attack the Louvre. I found the man who had taken the rampart gun, a couple of hours later, lying unconscious upon the quay. He had rammed his gun with two handfuls of powder and from twelve to fifteen balls; then, from one side of the Seine, leaning it up against the parapet, he had fired upon a regiment of cuirassiers which was marching along by the Louvre. He had made some cruel gaps in the regiment, but the recoil of the gun had flung him ten feet backwards, dislocating his shoulder and breaking his jaw. Before I found him, I had witnessed several scenes characteristic enough to be worth putting down here. Intoxication from wine, brandy or rum is nothing to that caused by the smell of powder, the noise of firing and the sight of blood. I can understand a man flying at the first shot of gun or cannon, but I cannot understand anyone who has once tasted fire leaving before it ceases. At all events, this was the effect it was beginning to have upon myself.
Delanoue, whom I met, who was hunting all over the place for a gun, told me there was going to be a rallying of forces on the place de l'Odéon. I had already heard of this gathering the day before. Unfortunately, I had only my gun with me and I did not wish to part with it; I therefore mentioned to Delanoue the Artillery Museum as a place where he might find what he was in search of, and then I set off at a run down the rue de Grenelle. The place de l'Odéon was blocked and there must have been something like five or six hundred men there. Two or three pupils from the École polytechnique were in command of some companies. In one of these uniforms, I recognised Charras, whom I had seen dressed the previous day as a civilian.
So he was neither killed nor wounded. This is the story of what happened, which had made people believe he was dead.
As will be seen, he had not wasted his time since the day before, and particularly since the morning. When he had parted from Carrel and me, he went through the faubourg Saint-Germain, where he had done his utmost to procure a gun; but, on 28 July 1830, a gun was as scarce as Juvenal's rara avis. He had heard of, the monsieur who was giving away gunpowder at the small door of the Institut and had gone to have an interview with the worthy citizen. The monsieur not only refused to give him a gun, but went still further and refused him any powder because he had no gun.
Charras next made this sapient observation—
"I will go where there is fighting, I will put myself in the midst of the fighters, I will constitute myself the legatee of the first man who falls dead and take possession of his gun."
In consequence of that resolution, he had gone along the quai des Orfèvres and met the 15th Light Infantry, with whom he held a conversation; perhaps they were the very same I had talked with; but, as he was alone, unarmed and had kept his hands in his pockets, they had let him pass through. When through, Charras gained the Pont Notre-Dame and, from thence, the suspension bridge. Now we know that the insurrection was raging furiously on the latter bridge. Charras arrived half an hour earlier than I did and waited. He did not have to wait long, for a man was soon struck in the eye by a bullet, and rolled at his feet. Charras seized the dead man's gun. A street urchin, who was probably watching for the same opportunity, also ran up, but was too late. Armed with his gun, Charras was still not much better off, for he had neither powder nor shot.
"I have some," the urchin said, and he drew a packet of fifteen cartridges from his pocket.
"Let me have them," said Charras.
"No.... We will divide them, if you like."
"All right, we will."