it will be because I want to.”
“Hear! hear! He is right,” murmured several voices.
And we passed on.
After many detours M. Froment-Meurice ushered us into a small room where he left us while he went to inform Lamartine that I wished to see him.
The glass door of the room gave on to a gallery, passing along which I saw my friend David d’Angers, the great statuary. I called to him. David, who was an old-time Republican, was beaming. “Ah! my friend, what a glorious day!” he exclaimed. He told me that the Provisional Government had appointed him Mayor of the Eleventh Arrondissement. “They have sent for you for something of the same kind, I suppose?” he said. “No,” I answered, “I have not been sent for. I came of my own accord just to shake Lamartine’s hand.”
M. Froment-Meurice returned and announced that Lamartine awaited me. I left Victor in the room, telling him to wait there till I came back, and once more followed my obliging guide through more corridors that led to a vestibule that was crowded with people. “They are all office seekers!” explained M. Froment-Meurice. The Provisional Government was holding a session in the adjoining room. The door was guarded by two armed grenadiers of the National Guard, who were impassible, and deaf alike to entreaties and menaces. I had to force my way through this crowd. One of the grenadiers, on the lookout for me, opened the door a little way to let me in. The crowd immediately made a rush and tried to push past the sentries, who, however, aided by M. Froment-Meurice, forced them back and closed the door behind me.
I was in a spacious hall that formed the angle of one of the pavilions of the Hotel de Ville, and was lighted on two sides by long windows. I would have preferred to find Lamartine alone, but there were with him, dispersed about the room and talking to friends or writing, three or four of his colleagues in the Provisional Government, Arago, Marie, and Armand Marrast. Lamartine rose as I entered. On his frock-coat, which was buttoned up as usual, he wore an ample tri-colour sash, slung across his shoulder. He advanced to meet me, and stretching out his hand, exclaimed: “Ah! you have come over to us! Victor Hugo is a strong recruit indeed for the Republic.”
“Not so fast, my friend,” said I with a laugh. “I have come simply to see my friend Lamartine. Perhaps you are not aware of the fact that yesterday while you were opposing the Regency in the Chamber, I was defending it in the Place de la Bastille.”
“Yesterday, that was all right; but to-day? There is now neither Regency nor Royalty. It is impossible that Victor Hugo is not at heart Republican.”
“In principle, yes, I am. The Republic is, in my opinion, the only rational form of government, the only one worthy of the nations. The universal Republic is inevitable in the natural course of progress. But has its hour struck in France? It is because I want the Republic that I want it to be durable and definitive. You are going to consult the nation, are you not?–the whole nation?”
“The whole nation, assuredly. We of the Provisional Government are all for universal suffrage.”
At this moment Arago came up to us with M. Armand Marrast, who held a folded paper in his hand.
“My dear friend,” said Lamartine, “know that this morning we selected you for Mayor of your arrondissement.”
“And here is the patent signed by us all,” said Armand Marrast.
“I thank you,” said I, “but I cannot accept it.”
“Why?” continued Arago. “These are non-political and purely gratuitous functions.”
“We were informed just now about the attempted revolt at La Force,” added Lamartine. “You did better than suppress it, you forestalled it. You are loved and respected in your arrondissement.”
“My authority is wholly moral,” I rejoined; “it could but lose weight in becoming official. Besides, on no account would I dispossess M. Ernest Moreau, who has borne himself loyally and valiantly throughout this trouble.”
Lamartine and Arago insisted: “Do not refuse our brevet.”
“Very well,” said I, “I will take it–for the sake of the autographs; but it is understood that I keep it in my pocket.”
“Yes, keep it,” said Armand Marrast laughingly, “so that you can say that one day you were ~pair~ and the next day ~maire~.”
Lamartine took me aside into the recess of a window.
“It is not a mairie I would like you to have, but a ministry. Victor Hugo, the Republic’s Minister of Instruction! Come now, since you say that you are Republican!”
“Republican–in principle. But in fact, I was yesterday peer of France, I was yesterday for the Regency, and, believing the Republic to be premature, I should be also for the Regency to-day.”
“Nations are above dynasties,” went on Lamartine. “I, too, have been a Royalist.”
“Yes, but you were a deputy, elected by the nation; I was a peer, appointed by the King.”
“The King in choosing you, under the terms of the Constitution, in one of the categories from which the Upper House was recruited, but honoured the peerage and also honoured himself.”
“I thank you,” said I, “but you look at things from the outside; I consider them in my conscience.”
We were interrupted by the noise of a prolonged fusillade which broke out suddenly on the square. A bullet smashed a window-pane above our heads.
“What is the matter now?” exclaimed Lamartine in sorrowful tones.
M. Armand Marrast and M. Marie went out to see what was going on.
“Ah! my friend,” continued Lamartine, “how heavy is this revolutionary power to bear! One has to assume such weighty and such sudden responsibilities before one’s conscience and in presence of history! I do not know how I have been living during the past ten days. Yesterday I had a few grey hairs; to-morrow they will be white.”
“Yes, but you are doing your duty as a man of genius grandly,” I commented.
In a few minutes M. Armand Marrast returned.
“It was not against us,” he said. “How the lamentable affray came about could not be explained to me. There was a collision, the rifles went off, why? Was it a misunderstanding, was it a quarrel between Socialists and Republicans? No one knows.”
“Are there any wounded?”
“Yes, and dead, too.”
A gloomy silence followed. I rose. “You have no doubt some measures to take?” I said.
“What measures?” answered Lamartine. “This morning we resolved to decree what you have already been able to do on a small scale in your quarter: the organization of the citizen’s National Guard–every Frenchman a soldier as well as a voter. But time is required, and meanwhile–” he pointed to the waves and eddies of heads surging on the square outside–“look, it is the sea!”
A boy wearing an apron entered and spoke to him in low tones.
“Ah! very good!” said Lamartine, “it is my luncheon. Will you share it with me, Hugo?”
“Thanks, I have already lunched.”
“I haven’t and I am dying of hunger. At least come and look on at the feast; I will let you go, afterwards.”
He showed me into a room that gave on to an interior court-yard. A gentle faced young man who was writing at a table rose and was about to withdraw. He was the young workman whom Louis Blanc had had attached to the Provisional Government.
“Stay where you are, Albert,” said Lamartine, “I have nothing of a private nature to say to Victor Hugo.”
We saluted each other, M. Albert and I.
The little waiter showed Lamartine a table upon which were some mutton cutlets in an earthenware dish, some bread, a bottle of wine and a glass. The whole came from a wine-shop in the neighbourhood.
“Well,” exclaimed Lamartine, “what about a knife and fork?”
“I thought you had knives and forks here,” returned the boy. “I had trouble enough to bring the luncheon, and if I have got to go and fetch knives and forks–“
“Pshaw!” said Lamartine, “one must take things as they come!”
He broke the bread, took a cutlet by the bone and tore the meat with his teeth. When he had finished he threw the bone into the fireplace. In this manner he disposed of three cutlets, and drank two glasses of wine.
“You will agree with me that this is a primitive repast!” he said. “But it is an improvement on our supper last night. We had only bread and cheese among us, and we all drank water from the same chipped sugar-bowl. Which didn’t, it appears, prevent a newspaper this morning from denouncing the great orgy of the Provisional Government!”
I did not find Victor in the room where he was to have waited for me. I supposed that, having become tired of waiting, he had returned home alone.
When I issued on to the Place de Grève the crowd was still excited and in a state of consternation at the inexplicable collision that had occurred an hour before. The body of a wounded man who had just expired was carried past me. They told me that it was the fifth. It was taken, as the other bodies had been taken, to the Salle Saint Jean, where the dead of the previous day to the number of over a hundred had been exposed.
Before returning to the Place Royale I made a tour for the purpose of visiting our guard-houses. Outside the Minimes Barracks a boy of about fifteen years, armed with the rifle of a soldier of the line, was proudly mounting guard. It seemed to me that I had seen him there in the morning or the day before.
“What!” I said, “are you doing sentry duty again?”
“No, not again; I haven’t yet been relieved.”
“You don’t say so. Why, how long have you been here?”
“Oh, about seventeen hours!”
“What! haven’t you slept? Haven’t you eaten?”
“Yes, I have had something to eat.”
“You went to get it, of course?”
“No, I didn’t, a sentry does not quit his post! This morning I shouted to the people in the shop across the way that I was hungry, and they brought me some bread.”
I hastened to have the brave child relieved from duty.
On arriving in the Place Royale I inquired for Victor. He had not returned. I was seized with a shudder of fear. I do not know why the vision of the dead who had been transported to the Salle Saint Jean should have come into my mind. What if my Victor had been caught in that bloody affray? I gave some pretext for going out again. Vacquerie was there; I told him of my anguish in a whisper, and he offered to accompany me.
First of all we called upon M. Froment-Meurice, whose establishment was in the Rue Lobau, next to the Hotel de Ville, and I asked him to have me admitted to the Salle Saint Jean. At first he sought to dissuade me from seeing the hideous sight; he had seen it the previous day and was still under the impression of the horror it inspired. I fancied his reluctance was a bad sign, that he was trying to keep something from me. This made me insist the more, and we went.
In the large Salle Saint Jean, transformed into a vast morgue, lay the long line of corpses upon camp bedsteads. For the most part they were unrecognisable. And I held the dreadful review, quaking in my shoes when one of the dead was young and slim with chestnut hair. Yes, the spectacle of the poor blood-stained dead was horrible indeed! But I could not describe it; all that I saw of each body was that it was not that of my child. At length I reached the last one, and breathed freely once more.
As I issued from the lugubrious place I saw Victor, very much alive, running towards me. When he heard the firing he had left the room where he was waiting for me, and not being able to find his way back, had been to see a friend.
II. EXPULSIONS AND ESCAPES.
May 3, 1848.
On February 24 the Duke and Duchess Decazes were literally driven from the Luxembourg. And by whom? By the very denizens of the palace, all employés of the Chamber of Peers, all appointed by the grand referendary. A rumour was circulated in the quarter that during the night the peers would commit some anti-revolutionary act, publish a proclamation, etc. The entire Faubourg Saint Jacques prepared to march against the Luxembourg. Hence, great terror. First the Duke and Duchess were begged, then pressed, then constrained to leave the palace.
“We will leave to-morrow. We do not know where to go. Let us pass the night here,” they said.
They were driven out.
They slept in a lodging-house. Next day they took up their abode at 9, Rue Verneuil.
M. Decazes was very ill. A week before he had undergone an operation. Mme. Decazes bore it all with cheerfulness and courage. This is a trait of character that women often display in trying situations brought about through the stupidity of men.
The ministers escaped, but not without difficulty. M. Duchâtel, in particular, had a great fright.
M. Guizot, three days previously, had quitted the Hotel des Capucines and installed himself at the Ministry of the Interior. He lived there ~en famille~ with M. Duchâtel.
On February 24, MM. Duchâtel and Guizot were about to sit down to luncheon when an usher rushed in with a frightened air. The head of the column of rioters was debouching from the Rue de Bourgogne. The two ministers left the table and managed to escape just in time by way of the garden. Their families followed them: M. Duchâtel’s young wife, M. Guizot’s aged mother, and the children.
A notable thing about this flight was that the luncheon of M. Guizot became the supper of M. Ledru-Rollin. It was not the first time that the Republic had eaten what had been served to the Monarchy.
Meanwhile the fugitives had taken the Rue Bellechasse. M. Guizot walked first, giving his arm to Mme. Duchâtel. His fur-lined overcoat was buttoned up and his hat as usual was stuck on the back of his head. He was easily recognisable. In the Rue Hillerin-Bertin, Mme. Duchâtel noticed that some men in blouses were gazing at M. Guizot in a singular manner, She led him into a doorway. It chanced that she knew the doorkeeper. They hid M. Guizot in an empty room on the fifth floor.
Here M. Guizot passed the day, but he could not stay there. One of his friends remembered a bookseller, a great admirer of M. Guizot, who in better days had often declared that he would devote himself to and give his life for him whom he called “a great man,” and that he only hoped the opportunity for doing so might present itself. This friend called upon him, reminded him of what he had said, and told him that the hour had come. The brave bookseller did not fail in what was expected of him. He placed his house at M. Guizot’s disposal and hid him there for ten whole days. At the end of that time the eight places in a compartment of a carriage on the Northern Railway were hired. M. Guizot made his way to the station at nightfall. The seven persons who were aiding in his escape entered the compartment with him. They reached Lille, then Ostend, whence M. Guizot crossed over to England.
M. Duchâtel’s escape was more complicated.
He managed to secure a passport as an agent of the Republic on a mission. He disguised himself, dyed his eye-brows, put on blue spectacles, and left Paris in a post-chaise. Twice he was stopped by National Guards in the towns through which he passed. With great audacity he declared that he would hold responsible before the Republic those who delayed him on his mission. The word “Republic” produced its effect. They allowed the Minister to pass. The Republic saved M. Duchâtel.
In this way he reached a seaport (Boulogne, I think), believing that he was being hotly pursued, and very nervous in consequence. A Channel steamer was going to England. He went on board at night. He was installing himself for the voyage when he was informed that the steamer would not leave that night. He thought that he had been discovered and that he was a lost man. The steamer had merely been detained by the English Consul, probably to facilitate, if necessary, the flight of Louis Philippe. M. Duchâtel landed again and spent the night and next day in the studio of a woman painter who was devoted to him.
Then he embarked on another steamer. He went below at once and concealed himself as best he could pending the departure of the vessel. He scarcely dared to breathe, fearing that at any moment he might be recognised and seized. At last the steamer got under way. Hardly had the paddle wheels begun to revolve, however, when shouts of “Stop her! Stop her!” were raised on the quay and on the boat, which stopped short. This time the poor devil of a Minister thought it was all up with him. The hubbub was caused by an officer of the National Guard, who, in taking leave of friends, had lingered too long on deck, and did not want to be taken to England against his will. When he found that the vessel had cast off he had shouted “Stop her! ” and his family on the quay had taken up the shout. The officer was put ashore and the steamer finally started.
This was how M. Duchâtel left France and reached England.
III. LOUIS PHILIPPE IN EXILE.
May 3, 1848.
The Orleans family in England are literally in poverty; they are twenty-two at table and drink water. There is not the slightest exaggeration in this. Absolutely all they have to live upon is an income of about 40,000 francs made up as follows: 24,000 francs a year from Naples, which came from Queen Marie Amélie, and the interest on a sum of 340,000 francs which Louis Philippe had forgotten under the following circumstances: During his last triumphal voyage made in October, 1844, with the Prince de Joinville, he had a credit of 500,000 francs opened for him with a London banker. Of this sum he spent only 160,000 francs. He was greatly amazed and very agreeably surprised on arriving in London to find that the balance of the 500,000 francs remained at his disposal.
M. Vatout is with the Royal Family. For the whole of them there are but three servants, of whom one, and one only, accompanied them from the Tuileries. In this state of destitution they demanded of Paris the restitution of what belongs to them in France; their property is under seizure, and has remained so notwithstanding their reclamations. For different reasons. One of the motives put forward by the Provisional Government is the debt of the civil list, which amounts to thirty millions. Queer ideas about Louis Philippe were entertained. He may have been covetous, but he certainly was not miserly; he was the most prodigal, the most extravagant and least careful of men: he had debts, accounts and arrears everywhere. He owed 700,000 francs to a cabinet-maker; to his market gardener he owed 70,000 francs *for butter*.
Consequently none of the seals placed on the property could be broken and everything is held to secure the creditors–everything, even to the personal property of the Prince and Princess de Joinville, rentes, diamonds, etc., even to a sum of 198,000 francs which belongs in her own right to the Duchess d’Orleans.
All that the Royal Family was able to obtain was their clothing and personal effects, or rather what could be found of these. Three long tables were placed in the theatre of the Tuileries, and on these were laid out all that the revolutionists of February had turned over to the governor of the Tuileries, M. Durand Saint-Amand. It formed a queer medley–court costumes stained and torn, grand cordons of the Legion of Honour that had been trailed through the mud, stars of foreign orders, swords, diamond crowns, pearl necklaces, a collar of the Golden Fleece, etc. Each legal representative of the princes, an aide-de-camp or secretary, took what he recognised. It appears that on the whole little was recovered. The Duke de Nemours merely asked for some linen and in particular his heavy-soled shoes.
The Prince de Joinville, meeting the Duke de Montpensier, greeted him thus: “Ah! here you are, Monsieur; you were not killed, you have not had good luck!”
Gudin, the marine painter, who went to England, saw Louis Philippe. The King is greatly depressed. He said to Gudin: “I don’t understand it. What happened in Paris? What did the Parisians get into their heads? I haven’t any idea. One of these days they will recognise that I did not do one thing wrong.” He did not, indeed, do one thing wrong; he did all things wrong!
He had in fact reached an incredible degree of optimism; he believed himself to be more of a king than Louis XIV. and more of an emperor than Napoleon. On Tuesday the 22nd he was exuberantly gay, and was still occupied solely with his own affairs, and these of the pettiest character. At 2 o’clock when the first shots were being fired, he was conferring with his lawyers and business agents, MM. de Gérante, Scribe and Denormandie, as to what could best be done about Madame Adelaide’s will. On Wednesday, at 1 o’clock, when the National Guard was declaring against the government, which meant revolution, the King sent for M. Hersent to order of him a picture of some kind.
Charles X. was a lynx.
Louis Philippe in England, however, bears his misfortune worthily. The English aristocracy acted nobly; eight or ten of the wealthiest peers wrote to Louis Philippe to offer him their châteaux and their purses. The King replied: “I accept and keep only your letters.”
The Duchess d’Orleans is also in straitened circumstances. She is on bad terms with the d’Orleans family and the Mecklenburg family is on bad terms with her. On the one hand she will accept nothing, and on the other she can expect nothing.
At this time of writing (May, 1848) the Tuileries have already been repaired, and M. Empis remarked to me this morning: “They are going to clean up and nothing of the damage done will be apparent.” Neuilly and the Palais-Royal, however, have been devastated. The picture gallery of the Palais-Royal, a pretty poor one by the by, has practically been destroyed. Only a single picture remains perfectly intact, and that is the Portrait of Philippe Egalité. Was it purposely respected by the riot or is its preservation an irony of chance? The National Guards amused, and still amuse, themselves by cutting out of the canvases that were not entirely destroyed by fire faces to which they take a fancy.
IV. KING JEROME.
There entered my drawing-room in the Place Royale one morning in March, 1848, a man of medium height, about sixty-five or sixty-six years of age, dressed in black, a red and blue ribbon in his buttonhole, and wearing patent-leather boots and white gloves. He was Jerome Napoleon, King of Westphalia.
He had a very gentle voice, a charming though somewhat timid smile, straight hair turning grey, and something of the profile of the Emperor.
He came to thank me for the permission that had been accorded to him to return to France, which he attributed to me, and begged me to get him appointed Governor of the Invalides. He told me that M. Crémieux, one of the members of the Provisional Government, had said to him the previous day:
“If Victor Hugo asks Lamartine to do it, it will be done. Formerly everything depended upon an interview between two emperors; now everything depends upon an interview between two poets.”
“Tell M. Crémieux that it is he who is the poet,” I replied to King Jerome with a smile.
In November, 1848, the King of Westphalia lived on the first floor above the entresol at No. 3, Rue d’Alger. It was a small apartment with mahogany furniture and woollen velvet upholstering.
The wall paper of the drawing-room was grey. The room was lighted by two lamps and ornamented by a heavy clock in the Empire style and two not very authentic pictures, although the frame of one bore the name: “Titiens,” and the frame of the other the name: “Rembrandt.” On the mantelpiece was a bronze bust of Napoleon, one of those familiar and inevitable busts that the Empire bequeathed us.
The only vestiges of his royal existence that remained to the prince were his silverware and dinner service, which were ornamented with royal crowns richly engraved and gilded.
Jerome at that time was only sixty-four years old, and did not look his age. His eyes were bright, his smile benevolent and charming, and his hands small and still shapely. He was habitually attired in black with a gold chain in his buttonhole from which hung three crosses, the Legion of Honour, the Iron Crown, and his Order of Westphalia created by him in imitation of the Iron Crown.
Jerome talked well, with grace always and often with wit. He was full of reminiscences and spoke of the Emperor with a mingled respect and affection that was touching. A little vanity was perceptible; I would have preferred pride.
Moreover he received with bonhomie all the varied qualifications which were brought upon him by his strange position of a man who was no longer king, no longer proscribed, and yet was not a citizen. Everybody addressed him as he pleased. Louis Philippe called him “Highness,” M. Boulay de la Meurthe “Sire” or “Your Majesty,” Alexandre Dumas “Monseigneur,” I addressed him as “Prince,” and my wife called him “Monsieur.” On his card he wrote “General Bonaparte.” In his place I would have understood his position. King or nothing.
———-
RELATED BY KING JEROME.
In the evening of the day following that on which Jerome, recalled from exile, returned to Paris, he had vainly waited for his secretary, and feeling bored and lonely, went out. It was at the end of summer (1847). He was staying at the house of his daughter, Princess Demidoff, which was off the Champs-Elysées.
He crossed the Place de la Concorde, looking about him at the statues, obelisk and fountains, which were new to the exile who had not seen Paris for thirty-two years. He continued along the Quai des Tuileries. I know not what reverie took possession of his soul. Arrived at the Pavillon de Flore, he entered the gate, turned to the left, and began to walk up a flight of stairs under the arch. He had gone up two or three steps when he felt himself seized by the arm. It was the gatekeeper who had run after him.
“Hi! Monsieur, monsieur, where are you going?”
Jerome gazed at him in astonishment and replied:
“Why, to my apartments, of course!”
Hardly had he uttered the words, however, when he awoke from his dream. The past had bewitched him for a moment. In recounting the incident to me he said:
“I went away shamefacedly, and apologizing to the porter.”
V. THE DAYS OF JUNE.
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES.
The insurrection of June presented peculiar features from the outset.* It suddenly manifested itself to terrified society in monstrous and unknown forms.
* At the end of June, four months after the proclamation of the Republic, regular work had come to a standstill and the useless workshops known as the “national workshops” had been abolished by the National Assembly. Then the widespread distress prevailing caused the outbreak of one of the most formidable insurrections recorded in history. The power at that time was in the hands of an Executive Committee of five members, Lamartine, Arago, Ledru Rollin, Garnier-Pages and Marie. General Cavaignac was Minister of War.
The first barricade was erected in the morning of Friday, the 23rd, at the Porte Saint Denis. It was attacked the same day. The National Guard marched resolutely against it. The attacking force was made up of battalions of the First and Second Legions, which arrived by way of the boulevards. When the assailants got within range a formidable volley was fired from the barricade, and littered the ground with National Guards. The National Guard, more irritated than intimidated, charged the barricade.
At this juncture a woman appeared upon its crest, a woman young, handsome, dishevelled, terrible. This woman, who was a prostitute, pulled up her clothes to her waist and screamed to the guards in that frightful language of the lupanar that one is always compelled to translate:
“Cowards! fire, if you dare, at the belly of a woman!” Here the affair became appalling. The National Guard did not hesitate. A volley brought the wretched creature down, and with a piercing shriek she toppled off the barricade. A silence of horror fell alike upon besiegers and besieged.
Suddenly another woman appeared. This one was even younger and more beautiful; she was almost a child, being barely seventeen years of age. Oh! the pity of it! She, too, was a street-walker. Like the other she lifted her skirt, disclosed her abdomen, and screamed: “Fire, brigands!” They fired, and riddled with bullets she fell upon the body of her sister in vice.
It was thus that the war commenced.
Nothing could be more chilling and more sombre. It is a hideous thing this heroism of abjection in which bursts forth all that weakness has of strength; this civilization attacked by cynicism and defending itself by barbarity. On one side the despair of the people, on the other the despair of society.
On Saturday the 24th, at 4 o’clock in the morning, I, as a Representative of the people, was at the barricade in the Place Baudoyer that was defended by the troops.
The barricade was a low one. Another, narrow and high, protected it in the street. The sun shone upon and brightened the chimney-tops. The tortuous Rue Saint Antoine wound before us in sinister solitude.
The soldiers were lying upon the barricade, which was little more than three feet high. Their rifles were stacked between the projecting paving-stones as though in a rack. Now and then bullets whistled overhead and struck the walls of the houses around us, bringing down a shower of stone and plaster. Occasionally a blouse, sometimes a cap-covered head, appeared at the corner of a street. The soldiers promptly fired at it. When they hit their mark they applauded “Good! Well aimed! Capital!”
They laughed and chatted gaily. At intervals there was a rattle and roar, and a hail of bullets rained upon the barricade from roofs and windows. A very tall captain with a grey moustache stood erect at the centre of the barrier, above which half his body towered. The bullets pattered about him as about a target. He was impassible and serene and spoke to his men in this wise:
“There, children, they are firing. Lie down. Look out, Laripaud, you are showing your head. Reload!”
All at once a woman turned the corner of a street. She came leisurely towards the barricade. The soldiers swore and shouted to her to get out of the way:
“Ah! the strumpet! Will you get out of that you w–! Shake a leg, damn you! She’s coming to reconnoitre. She’s a spy! Bring her down. Down with the moucharde!”
The captain restrained them:
“Don’t shoot, it’s a woman!”
After advancing about twenty paces the woman, who really did seem to be observing us, entered a low door which closed behind her.
This one was saved.
At 11 o’clock I returned from the barrier in the Place Baudoyer and took my usual place in the Assembly. A Representative whom I did not know, but who I have since learned was M. Belley, engineer, residing in the Rue des Tournelles, came and sat beside me and said:
“Monsieur Victor Hugo, the Place Royale has been burned. They set fire to your house. The insurgents entered by the little door in the Cul-de-sac Guéménée.”
“And my family?” I inquired.
“They are safe.”
“How do you know?”
“I have just come from there. Not being known I was able to get over the barricades and make my way here. Your family first took refuge in the Mairie. I was there, too. Seeing that the danger was over I advised Mme. Victor Hugo to seek some other asylum. She found shelter with her children in the home of a chimney-sweep named Martignon who lives near your house, under the arcades.”
I knew that worthy Martignon family. This reassured me.
“And how about the riot?” I asked.
“It is a revolution,” replied M. Belley. “The insurgents are in control of Paris at this moment.”
I left M. Belley and hurriedly traversed the few rooms that separated the hall in which we held our sessions and the office occupied by the Executive Committee.
It was a small salon belonging to the presidency, and was reached through two rooms that were smaller still. In these ante-chambers was a buzzing crowd of distracted officers and National Guards. They made no attempt to prevent any one from entering.
I opened the door of the Executive Committee’s office. Ledru-Rollin, very red, was half seated on the table. M. Gamier-Pages, very pale, and half reclining in an armchair, formed an antithesis to him. The contrast was complete: Garnier-Pagès thin and bushy-haired, Ledru-Rollin stout and close-cropped. Two or three colonels, among them Representative Charras, were conversing in a corner. I only recall Arago vaguely. I do not remember whether M. Marie was there. The sun was shining brightly.
Lamartine, standing in a window recess on the left, was talking to a general in full uniform, whom I saw for the first and last time, and who was Négrier. Négrier was killed that same evening in front of a barricade.
I hurried to Lamartine, who advanced to meet me. He was wan and agitated, his beard was long, his clothes were dusty.
He held out his hand: “Ah! good morning, Hugo!”
Here is the dialogue that we engaged in, every word of which is still fresh in my memory:
“What is the situation, Lamartine?”
“We are done for!”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that in a quarter of an hour from now the Assembly will be invaded.”
(Even at that moment a column of insurgents was coming down the Rue de Lille. A timely charge of cavalry dispersed it.)
“Nonsense! What about the troops?”
“There are no troops!”
“But you said on Wednesday, and yesterday repeated, that you had sixty thousand men at your disposal.”
“So I thought.”
“Well, but you musn’t give up like this. It is not only you who are at stake, but the Assembly, and not only the Assembly, but France, and not only France, but the whole of civilization. Why did you not issue orders yesterday to have the garrisons of the towns for forty leagues round brought to Paris? That would have given you thirty thousand men at once.”
“We gave the orders–“
“Well?”
“The troops have not come!”
Lamartine took my hand and said;
“I am not Minister of War!”
At this moment a few representatives entered noisily. The Assembly had just voted a state of siege. They told Ledru-Rollin and Garnier-Pages so in a few words.
Lamartine half turned towards them and said in an undertone:
“A state of siege! A state of siege! Well, declare it if you think it is necessary. I have nothing to say!”
He dropped into a chair, repeating:
“I have nothing to say, neither yes nor no. Do what you like!”
General Négrier came up to me.
“Monsieur Victor Hugo,” he said, “I have come to reassure you; I have received news from the Place Royale.”
“Well, general?”
“Your family are safe.”
“Thanks! Yes, I have just been so informed.”
“But your house has been burnt down.”
“What does that matter?” said I.
Négrier warmly pressed my arm:
“I understand you. Let us think only of one thing. Let us save the country!”
As I was withdrawing Lamartine quitted a group and came to me.
“Adieu,” he said. “But do not forget this: do not judge me too hastily; I am not the Minister of War.”
The day before, as the riot was spreading, Cavaignac, after a few measures had been taken, said to Lamartine:
“That’s enough for to-day.”
It was 5 o’clock.
“What!” exclaimed Lamartine. “Why, we have still four hours of daylight before us! And the riot will profit by them while we are losing them!”
He could get nothing from Cavaignac except:
“That’s enough for to-day!”
On the 24th, about 3 o’clock, at the most critical moment, a Representative of the people, wearing his sail across his shoulder, arrived at the Mairie of the Second Arrondissement, in the Rue Chauchat, behind the Opera. He was recognised. He was Lagrange.
The National Guards surrounded him. In a twinkling the group became menacing:
“It is Lagrange! the man of the pistol shot!* What are you doing here? You are a coward! Get behind the barricades. That is your place–your friends are there–and not with us! They will proclaim you their chief; go on! They at any rate are brave! They are giving their blood for your follies; and you, you are afraid! You have a dirty duty to do, but at least do it! Get out of here! Begone!”
* It was popularly but erroneously believed that Lagrange fired the shot that led to the massacre in the Boulevard des Capucines on February 23.
Lagrange endeavoured to speak. His voice was drowned by hooting.
This is how these madmen received the honest man who after fighting for the people wanted to risk his life for society.
June 25.
The insurgents were firing throughout the whole length of the Boulevard Beaumarchais from the tops of the new houses. Several had ambushed themselves in the big house in course of construction opposite the Galiote. At the windows they had stuck dummies,–bundles of straw with blouses and caps on them.
I distinctly saw a man who had entrenched himself behind a barricade of bricks in a corner of the balcony on the fourth floor of the house which faces the Rue du Pont-aux-Choux. The man took careful aim and killed a good many persons.
It was 3 o’clock. The troops and mobiles fringed the roofs of the Boulevard du Temple and returned the fire of the insurgents. A cannon had just been drawn up in front of the Gaité to demolish the house of the Galiote and sweep the whole boulevard.
I thought I ought to make an effort to put a stop to the bloodshed, if possible, and advanced to the corner of the Rue d’Angoulême. When I reached the little turret near there I was greeted with a fusillade. The bullets pattered upon the turret behind me, and ploughed up the playbills with which it was covered. I detached a strip of paper as a memento. The bill to which it belonged announced for that very Sunday a fête at the Château des Flours, “with a thousand lanterns.”
* * * * *
For four months we have been living in a furnace. What consoles me is that the statue of the future will issue from it. It required such a brazier to melt such a bronze.
VI. CHATEAUBRIAND.
July 5, 1848.
Chateaubriand is dead. One of the splendours of this century has passed away.
He was seventy-nine years old according to his own reckoning; according to the calculation of his old friend M. Bertin, senior, he was eighty years of age. But he had a weakness, said M. Bertin, and that was that he insisted that he was born not in 1768, but in 1769, because that was the year of Napoleon’s birth.
He died yesterday, July 4, at 8 o’clock in the morning. For five or six months he had been suffering from paralysis which had almost destroyed his brain, and for five days from inflammation of the lungs, which abruptly snuffed out his life.
M. Ampere announced the news to the Academy, which thereupon decided to adjourn.
I quitted the National Assembly, where a questor to succeed General Négrier, who was killed in June, was being nominated, and went to M. de Chateaubriand’s house, No. 110, Rue du Bac.
I was received by M. de Preuille, son-in-law of his nephew. I entered Chateaubriand’s chamber.
He was lying upon his bed, a little iron bedstead with white curtains round it and surmounted by an iron curtain ring of somewhat doubtful taste. The face was uncovered; the brow, the nose, the closed eyes, bore that expression of nobleness which had marked him in life, and which was enhanced by the grave majesty of death. The mouth and chin were hidden by a cambric handkerchief. On his head was a white cotton nightcap which, however, allowed the grey hair on his temples to be seen. A white cravat rose to his ears. His tawny visage appeared more severe amid all this whiteness. Beneath the sheet his narrow, hollow chest and his thin legs could be discerned.
The shutters of the windows giving on to the garden were closed. A little daylight entered through the half-opened door of the salon. The chamber and the face were illumined by four tapers which burned at the corners of a table placed near the bed. On this table were a silver crucifix, a vase filled with holy water, and an aspergillum. Beside it a priest was praying.
Behind the priest a large brown-coloured screen hid the fireplace, above which the mantel-glass and a few engravings of churches and cathedrals were visible.
At Chateaubriand’s feet, in the angle formed by the bed and the wall of the room, were two wooden boxes, placed one upon the other. The largest I was told contained the complete manuscript of his Memoirs, in forty-eight copybooks. Towards the last there had been such disorder in the house that one of the copybooks had been found that very morning by M. de Preuille in a dark and dirty closet where the lamps were cleaned.
A few tables, a wardrobe, and a few blue and green armchairs in disorder encumbered more than they furnished the room.
The adjoining salon, the furniture of which was hidden under unbleached covers, contained nothing more remarkable than a marble bust of Henry V. and a full-length statuette of Chateaubriand, which were on the mantelpiece, and on each side of a window plaster busts of Mme. de Berri and her infant child.
Towards the close of his life Chateaubriand was almost in his second childhood. His mind was only lucid for about two or three hours a day, at least so M. Pilorge, his former secretary, told me.
When in February he was apprised of the proclamation of the Republic he merely remarked: “Will you be any the happier for it?”
When his wife died he attended the funeral service and returned laughing heartily–which, said Pilorge, was a proof that he was of weak mind. “A proof that he was in his right mind!” affirmed Edouard Bertin.
Mme. de Chateaubriand’s benevolence was official, which did not prevent her from being a shrew at home. She founded a hospice–the Marie Thérèse Infirmary–visited the poor, succoured the sick, superintended crêches, gave alms and prayed; at the same time she was harsh towards her husband, her relatives, her friends, and her servants, and was sour-tempered, stern, prudish, and a backbiter. God on high will take these things into account.
She was ugly, pitted with small-pox, had an enormous mouth, little eyes, was insignificant in appearance, and acted the ~grande dame~, although she was rather the wife of a great man than of a great lord. By birth she was only the daughter of a ship-owner of Saint Malo. M. de Chateaubriand feared, detested, and cajoled her.
She took advantage of this to make herself insupportable to mere human beings. I have never known anybody less approachable or whose reception of callers was more forbidding. I was a youth when I went to M. de Chateaubriand’s. She received me very badly, or rather she did not receive me at all. I entered and bowed, but Mme. de Chateaubriand did not see me. I was scared out of my wits. These terrors made my visits to M. de Chateaubriand veritable nightmares which oppressed me for fifteen days and fifteen nights in advance. Mme. de Chateaubriand hated whoever visited her husband except through the doors that she opened. She had not presented me to him, therefore she hated me. I was perfectly odious to her, and she showed it.
Only once in my life and in hers did Mme. de Chateaubriand receive me graciously. One day I entered, poor little devil, as usual most unhappy, with affrighted schoolboy air and twisting my hat about in my hands. M. de Chateaubriand at that time still lived at No. 27, Rue Saint Dominique.
I was frightened at everything there, even at the servant who opened the door. Well, I entered. Mme. de Chateaubriand was in the salon leading to her husband’s study. It was a summer morning. There was a ray of sunshine on the floor, and what dazzled and astonished me much more than the ray of sunshine was a smile on Mme. de Chateaubriand’s face. “Is that you, Monsieur Victor Hugo?” she said. I thought I was in the midst of a dream of the _Arabian Nights_. Mme. de Chateaubriand smiling! Mme. de Chateaubriand knowing my name, addressing me by name! It was the first time that she
had deigned to notice my existence. I bowed so low that my head nearly touched the floor. She went on: “I am delighted to see you.” I could not believe my ears. “I was expecting you,” she continued. “It is a long time since you called.” I thought then that there certainly must be something the matter either with her or myself. However, she pointed to a rather large object of some kind on a little table, and added: “I reserved this for you. I felt sure you would like to have it. You know what it is?” It was a pile of packets of chocolate made by some religious institution. She had taken the stuff under her protection and the proceeds of its sale were to be devoted to charitable works. I took it and paid for it. At that time I had to live for fifteen months on 800 francs. The Catholic chocolate and Mme. de Chateaubriand’s smile cost me 15 francs; that is to say, a fortnight’s board. Fifteen francs meant as much to me then as 1,500 francs does now.
It was the most costly smile of a woman that ever was sold to me.
M. de Chateaubriand, at the beginning of 1847, was a paralytic; Mme. Récamier was blind. Every day at 3 o’clock M. de Chateaubriand was carried to Mme. Recamier’s bedside. It was touching and sad. The woman who could no longer see stretched forth her hands gropingly towards the man who could no longer feel; their hands met. God be praised! Life was dying, but love still lived.
VII. DEBATES IN THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY ON THE DAYS OF JUNE.
SESSION OF NOVEMBER 25, 1848.
What had to be determined before the Assembly and the country was upon whom devolved the heavy responsibility for the painful days of June. The Executive Committee was then in power; ought it not to have foreseen and provided against the insurrection? General Cavaignac, Minister of War, and, moreover, invested with dictatorial powers by the National Assembly, had alone issued orders.
Had he issued them in time? Could he not have crushed the riot at the outset instead of permitting it to gain strength, spread and develop into an insurrection? And, finally, had not the repression which followed victory been unnecessarily bloody, if not inhuman?
As the time for rendering an account approached Cavaignac became thoughtful and his ill-humour was manifest even in the Chamber.
One day Crémieux took his seat on the ministerial bench, whence he approved with an occasional “Hear! Hear!” the remarks of the orator who occupied the tribune. The speaker chanced to belong to the Opposition.
“Monsieur Crémieux,” said Cavaignac, “you are making a good deal of noise.”
“What does that matter to you?” replied Crémieux.
“It matters that you are on the ministerial bench.”
“Do you want me to leave it?”
“Well–“
Cremieux rose and quitted his bench, saying as he did so:
“General, you compel me to leave the Cabinet, and it was through me that you entered it.”
Crémieux, in point of fact, had, as a member of the Provisional Government, had Cavaignac appointed Minister of War.
During the three days that preceded the debate, which had been fixed for the 25th, the Chamber was very nervous and uneasy. Cavaignac’s friends secretly trembled and sought to make others tremble. They said: “You will see!” They affected assurance. Jules Favre having alluded in the tribune to the “great and solemn debate” which was to take place, they burst into a laugh. M. Coquerel, the Protestant pastor, happening to meet Cavaignac in the lobby, said to him: “Keep yourself in hand, General!” “In a quarter of an hour,” replied Cavaignac with flashing eyes, “I shall have swept these wretches away!” These wretches were Lamartine, Gamier-Pages, and Arago. There was some doubt about Arago, however. It was said that he was rallying to Cavaignac. Meanwhile Cavaignac had conferred the cross of the Legion of Honour upon the Bishop of Quimper, the Abbé Legraverand, who had accepted it.
“A cross for a vote,” was the remark made in the Chamber. And these reversed roles, a general giving a cross to a bishop, caused much amusement.
In reality we are in the midst of a quarrel over the presidency. The candidates are shaking their fists at each other. The Assembly hoots, growls, murmurs, stamps its feet, crushes one, applauds the other.
This poor Assembly is a veritable ~fille a soldats~, in love with a trooper. For the time being it is Cavaignac.
Who will it be to-morrow?
General Cavaignac proved himself to be clever, and occasionally even eloquent. His defence partook more of the character of an attack. Frequently he appeared to me to be sincere because he had for so long excited my suspicion. The Assembly listened to him for nearly three hours with rapt attention. Throughout it was evident that he possessed its confidence. Its sympathy was shown every moment, and sometimes it manifested a sort of love for him.
Cavaignac, tall and supple, with his short frock-coat, his military collar, his heavy moustache, his bent brow, his brusque language, broken up by parentheses, and his rough gestures, was at times at once as fierce as a soldier and as passionate as a tribune. Towards the middle of his discourse he became an advocate, which, as far as I was concerned, spoiled the man; the harangue became a speech for the defence. But at its conclusion he roused himself again with a sort of real indignation. He pounded on the desk with his fist and overturned the glass of water, much to the consternation of the ushers, and in terminating he said:
“I have been speaking for I know not how long; I will speak again all the evening, all night, all day to-morrow, if necessary, and it will no longer be as an advocate, but as a soldier, and you will listen to me!”
The whole Assembly applauded him enthusiastically.
M. Barthélemy Saint Hilaire, who attacked Cavaignac, was an orator cold, rigid, somewhat dry and by no means equal to the task, his anger being without fierceness and his hatred without passion. He began by reading a memoir, which always displeases assemblies. The Assembly, which was secretly ill-disposed and angry, was eager to crush him. It only wanted pretexts; he furnished it with motives. The grave defect in his memoir was that serious accusations were built upon petty acts, a surcharge that caused the whole system to bend. This little pallid man who continually raised one leg behind him and leaned forward with his two hands on the edge of the tribune as though he were gazing down into a well, made those who did not hiss laugh. Amid the uproar of the Assembly he affected to write at considerable length in a copybook, to dry the ink by sprinkling powder upon it, and with great deliberation to pour the powder back into the powder-box, thus finding means to increase the tumult with his calmness. When M. Barthélemy Saint Hilaire descended from the tribune, Cavaignac had only been attacked. He had not then replied, yet was already absolved.
M. Garnier-Pagès, tried Republican and honest man, but with a substratum of vanity and an emphatic manner, succeeded M. Barthélemy Saint Hilaire. The Assembly tried to crush him, too, but he rose again amid murmurs. He reminded his hearers of his past, invoked recollections of the Salle Voisin, compared the henchmen of Cavaignac to the henchmen of Guizot, bared his breast “which had braved the poignards of the Red Republic,” and ended by resolutely attacking the general, with too few facts and too many words, but fairly and squarely, taking him, so to speak, as the Bible urges that the bull be taken, by the horns.
Garnier-Pages propped up the accusation that had almost been laid low. He brought the personal pronoun much too frequently into the discussion; he acted ill-advisedly, for everybody’s personality ought to have been effaced in view of the seriousness of the debate and the anxiety of the country. He turned to all sides with a sort of disconsolate fury; he summoned Arago to intervene, Ledru-Rollin to speak, Lamartine to explain. All three remained silent, thus failing in their duty and destiny.
The Assembly, however, pursued Garnier-Pages with its hooting, and when he said to Cavaignac: “You wanted to throw us down,” it burst into a laugh, at the sentiment as well as at the expression. Garnier-Pages gazed at the laughing house with an air of despair.
From all sides came shouts of: “The closure!”
The Assembly had reached a state in which it would not listen and could no longer hear.
M. Ledru-Rollin appeared in the tribune.
From every bench the cry arose: “At last!”
Silence ensued.
Ledru-Rollin’s speech had a physical effect as it were; it was coarse, but powerful. Garnier-Pages had pointed out the General’s political shortcomings; Ledru-Rollin pointed out his military shortcomings. With the vehemence of the tribune he mingled all the skill of the advocate. He concluded with an appeal for mercy for the offender. He shook Cavaignac’s position.
When he resumed his seat between Pierre Leroux and de Lamennais, a man with long grey hair, and attired in a white frock-coat, crossed the Chamber and shook Ledru-Rollin’s hand. He was Lagrange.
Cavaignac for the fourth time ascended the tribune. It was half past 10 o’clock at night. The noise of the crowd and the evolutions of the cavalry on the Place de la Concorde could be heard. The aspect of the Assembly was becoming sinister.
Cavaignac, who was tired, had decided to assume a haughty attitude. He addressed the Mountain and defied it, declaring to the mountaineers, amid the cheers of the majority and of the reactionaries, that he at all times preferred “their abuse to their praise.” This appeared to be violent and was clever; Cavaignac lost the Rue Taitbout, which represented the Socialists, and won the Rue de Poitiers, which represented the Conservatives.
After this apostrophe he remained a few moments motionless, then passed his hand over his brow.
The Assembly shouted to him:
“Enough! Enough!”
He turned towards Ledru-Rollin and exclaimed:
“You said that you had done with me. It is I who have done with you. You said: ‘For some time.’ I say to you: ‘For ever!'”
It was all over. The Assembly wanted to close the debate.
Lagrange ascended the tribune and gesticulated amid hoots and hisses. Lagrange was at once a popular and chivalrous declaimer, who expressed true sentiments in a forced voice.
“Representatives,” said he, “all this amuses you; well, it doesn’t amuse me!”
The Assembly roared with laughter, and the roar of laughter continued throughout the remainder of his discourse. He called M. Landrin M. Flandrin, and the gaiety became delirious.
I was among those whom this gaiety made heavy at heart, for I seemed to hear the sobs of the people above these bursts of hilarity.
During this uproar a list which was being covered with signatures and which bore an order of the day proposed by M. Dupont de l’Eure, was passed round the benches.
Dupont de l’Eure, bent and tottering, read from the tribune, with the authority of his eighty years, his own order of the day, amid a deep silence that was broken at intervals by cheers.
The order of the day, which was purely and simply a reiteration of the declaration of June 28: “General Cavaignac has merited well of the fatherland,” was adopted by 503 votes to 34.
Mine was among the thirty-four. While the votes were being counted, Napoleon Bonaparte, son of Jerome, came up to me and said:
“I suppose you abstained?”
“From speaking, yes; from voting, no,” I replied.
“Ah!” he went on. “We ourselves abstained from voting. The Rue de Poitiers also abstained.”
I took his hand and said:
“You are free to do as you like. For my part I am not abstaining. I am judging Cavaignac, and the country is judging me. I want the fullest light thrown upon my actions, and my votes are my actions.”
1849.
I. THE JARDIN D’HIVER.
II. GENERAL BREA’S MURDERERS.
III. THE SUICIDE OF ANTONIN MOYNE.
IV. A VISIT TO THE OLD CHAMBER OF PEERS.
THE JARDIN D’HIVER.
FEBRUARY, 1849.
In February, 1849, in the midst of the prevailing sorrow and terror, fetes were given. People danced to help the poor. While the cannon with which the rioters were threatened on January 29, were, so to speak, still trained ready for firing, a charity ball attracted all Paris to the Jardin d’Hiver.
This is what the Jardin d’Hiver was like:
A poet had pictured it in a word: “They have put summer under a glass case!” It was an immense iron cage with two naves forming a cross, as large as four or five cathedrals and covered with glass. Entrance to it was through a gallery of wood decorated with carpets and tapestry.
On entering, the eyes were at first dazzled by a flood of light. In the light all sorts of magnificent flowers, and strange trees with the foliage and altitudes of the tropics, could be seen. Banana trees, palm trees, cedars, great leaves, enormous thorns, and queer branches twisted and mingled as in a virgin forest. The forest alone was virgin there, however. The prettiest women and the most beautiful girls of Paris whirled in this illumination ~a giorno~ like a swarm of bees in a ray of sunshine.
Above this gaily dressed throng was an immense resplendent chandelier of brass, or rather a great tree of gold and flame turned upside down which seemed to have its roots in the glass roof, and whose sparkling leaves hung over the crowd. A vast ring of candelabra, torch-holders and girandoles shone round the chandelier, like the constellations round the sun. A resounding orchestra perched high in a gallery made the glass panes rattle harmoniously.
But what made the Jardin d’Hiver unique was that beyond this vestibule of light and music and noise, through which one gazed as through a vague and dazzling veil, a sort of immense and tenebrous arch, a grotto of shadow and mystery, could be discerned. This grotto in which were big trees, a copse threaded with paths and clearings, and a fountain that showered its water-diamonds in sparkling spray, was simply the end of the garden. Red dots that resembled oranges of fire shone here and there amid the foliage. It was all like a dream. The lanterns in the copse, when one approached them, became great luminous tulips mingled with real camellias and roses.
One seated one’s self on a garden seat with one’s feet in the grass and moss, and one felt the warmth arising from a heat-grating beneath this grass and this moss; one happened upon an immense fireplace in which half the trunk of a tree was burning, in proximity to a clump of bushes shivering in the rain of a fountain. There were lamps amid the flowers and carpets in the alleys. Among the trees were satyrs, nude nymphs, hydras, all kinds of groups and statues which, like the place itself, had something impossible and living about them.
What were people doing at this ball? They danced a little, made love a little, and above all talked politics.
There were about fifty Representatives present that evening. The negro Representative Louisy Mathieu, in white gloves, was accompanied by the negrophile Representative Schoelcher in black gloves. People said: “O fraternity! they have exchanged hands!”
Politicians leaning against the mantels announced the approaching appearance of a sheet entitled the “Aristo,” a reactionary paper. The Brea affair,* which was being tried at that very moment, was discussed. What particularly struck these grave men in this sinister affair was that among the witnesses was an ironmonger named “Lenclume” and a locksmith named “Laclef.”
* General Bréa was assassinated on June 25, 1848, while parleying with the insurgents at the Barriêre de Fontainebleau.
Such are the trivial things men bring into the events of God.
II. GENERAL BREA’S MURDERERS.
March, 1849.
The men condemned to death in the Bréa affair are confined in the fort at Vanves. There are five of them: Nourry, a poor child of seventeen whose father and mother died insane, type of the gamin of Paris that revolutions make a hero and riots a murderer; Daix, blind of one eye, lame, and with only one arm, a ~bon pauvre~ of the Bicetre Hospital, who underwent the operation of trepanning three years ago, and who has a little daughter eight years old whom he adores; Lahr, nicknamed the Fireman, whose wife was confined the day after his condemnation, giving life at the moment she received death; Chopart, a bookseller’s assistant, who has been mixed up in some rather discreditable pranks of youth; and finally Vappreaux junior, who pleaded an alibi and who, if the four others are to be believed, was not at the Barrière de Fontainebleau at all during the three days of June.
These hapless wights are confined in a big casemate of the fort. Their condemnation has crushed them and turned them towards God. In the casemate are five camp beds and five rush-bottomed chairs; to this lugubrious furniture of the dungeon an altar has been added. It was erected at the end of the casemate opposite the door and below the venthole through which daylight penetrates. On the altar is only a plaster statue of the Virgin enveloped in lace. There are no tapers, it being feared that the prisoners might set fire to the door with the straw of their mattresses. They pray and work. As Nourry has not been confirmed and wishes to be before he dies, Chopart is teaching him the catechism.
Beside the altar is a board laid upon two trestles. This board, which is full of bullet holes, was the target of the fort. It has been turned into a dining-table, a cruel, thoughtless act, for it is a continual reminder to the prisoners of their approaching death.
A few days ago an anonymous letter reached them. This letter advised them to stamp upon the flagstone in the centre of the casemate, which, it was affirmed, covered the orifice of a well communicating with old subterranean passages of the Abbey of Vanves that extended to Châtillon. All they had to do was to raise the flagstone and they could escape that very night.
They did as the letter directed. The stone, it was found, did emit a hollow sound as though it covered an opening. But either because the police had been informed of the letter, or for some other reason, a stricter watch than ever has been kept upon them from that moment and they have been unable to profit by the advice.
The gaolers and priests do not leave them for a minute either by day or by night. Guardians of the body cheek by jowl with guardians of the soul. Sorry human justice!
The execution of the condemned men in the Bréa affair was a blunder. It was the reappearance of the scaffold. The people had kicked over the guillotine. The bourgeoisie raised it again. A fatal mistake.
President Louis Bonaparte was inclined to be merciful. The revision and cassation could easily have been delayed. The Archbishop of Paris, M. Sibour, successor of a victim, had begged for their lives. But the stereotyped phrases prevailed. The country must be reassured. Order must be reconstructed, legality rebuilt, confidence re-erected! And society at that time was still reduced to employing lopped heads as building material. The Council of State, such as it then was, consulted under the terms of the Constitution, rendered an opinion in favour of the execution. M. Cresson, counsel for Daix and Lahr, waited upon the President. He was an emotional and eloquent young man. He pleaded for these men, for the wives who were not yet widows, for the children who were not yet orphans, and while speaking he wept.
Louis Bonaparte listened to him in silence, then took his hands, but merely remarked: “I am most unhappy!”
In the evening of the same day–it was on the Thursday–the Council of Ministers met. The discussion was long and animated. Only one minister opposed recourse to the scaffold. He was supported by Louis Napoleon. The discussion lasted until 10 o’clock. But the majority prevailed, and before the Cabinet separated Odilon Barrot, the Minister of Justice, signed the order for the execution of three of the condemned men, Daix, Lahr and Chopart. The sentences of Nourry and Vappreaux, junior, were commuted to penal servitude for life.
The execution was fixed for the next morning, Friday.
The Chancellor’s office immediately transmitted the order to the Prefect of Police, who had to act in concert with the military authorities, the sentence having been imposed by a court-martial.
The prefect sent for the executioner. But the executioner could not be found. He had vacated his house in the Rue des Marais Saint Martin in February under the impression that, like the guillotine, he had been deposed, and no one knew what had become of him.
Considerable time was lost in tracing him to his new residence, and when they got there he was out. The executioner was at the Opera. He had gone to see “The Devil’s Violin.”
It was near midnight, and in the absence of the executioner the execution had to be postponed for one day.
During the interval Representative Larabit, whom Chopart had befriended at the barricade of the barriers, was notified and was able to see the President. The President signed Chopart’s pardon.
The day after the execution the Prefect of Police summoned the executioner and reproved him for his absence.
“Well,” said Samson, “I was passing along the street when I saw a big yellow poster announcing The Devil’s Violin. ‘Hello!’ said I to myself, ‘that must be a queer piece,’ and I went to see it.”
Thus a playbill saved a man’s head.
There were some horrible details.
On Friday night, while those who formerly were called ~les maitres des basses oeuvres~* were erecting the scaffold at the Barrière de Fontainebleau, the ~rapporteur~ of the court-martial, accompanied by the clerk of the court, repaired to the Fort of Vanves.
* The executioner in France is officially styled ~l’executeur des hautes-oeuvres~.
Daix and Lahr, who were to die, were sleeping. They were in casemate No. 13 with Nourry and Chopart. There was a delay. It was found that there were no ropes with which to bind the condemned men. The latter were allowed to sleep on. At 5 o’clock in the morning the executioner’s assistants arrived with everything that was necessary.
Then the casemate was entered. The four men awoke. To Nourry and Chopart the officials said: “Get out of here!” They understood, and, joyful and terror-stricken, fled into the adjoining casement. Daix and Lahr, however, did not understand. They sat up and gazed about them with wild, frightened eyes. The executioner and his assistants fell upon them and bound them. No one spoke a word. The condemned men began to realise what it all meant and uttered terrible cries. “If we had not bound them,” said the executioner, “they would have devoured us!”
Then Lahr collapsed and began to pray while the decree for their execution was read to them.
Daix continued to struggle, sobbing, and roaring with horror. These men who had killed so freely were afraid to die.
Daix shouted: “Help! Help!” appealed to the soldiers, adjured them, cursed them, pleaded to them in the name of General Bréa.
“Shut up! “growled a sergeant. “You are a coward!”
The execution was performed with much ceremony. Let this fact be noted: the first time the guillotine dared to show itself after February an army was furnished to guard it. Twenty-five thousand men, infantry and cavalry, surrounded the scaffold. Two generals were in command. Seven guns commanded the streets which converged to the circus of the Barrière de Fontainebleau.
Daix was executed first. When his head had fallen and his body was unstrapped, the trunk, from which a stream of blood was pouring, fell upon the scaffold between the swing-board and the basket.
The executioners were nervous and excited. A man of the people remarked: “Everybody is losing his head on that guillotine, including the executioner!”
In the faubourgs, which the last elections to the National Assembly had so excited, the names of popular candidates could still be seen chalked upon the walls. Louis Bonaparte was one of the candidates. His name appeared on these open-air bulletins, as they may be termed, in company with the names of Raspail and Barbès. The day after the execution Louis Napoleon’s name wherever it was to be seen had a red smear across it. A silent protest, a reproach and a menace. The finger of the people pending the finger of God.
III. THE SUICIDE OF ANTONIN MOYNE.
April, 1849.
Antonin Moyne, prior to February, 1848, was a maker of little figures and statuettes for the trade.
Little figures and statuettes! That is what we had come to. Trade had supplanted the State. How empty is history, how poor is art; inasmuch as there are no more big figures there are no more statues.
Antonin Moyne made rather a poor living out of his work. He had, however, been able to give his son Paul a good education and had got him into the Ecole Polytechnique. Towards 1847 the art-work business being already bad, he had added to his little figures portraits in pastel. With a statuette here, and a portrait there, he managed to get along.
After February the art-work business came to a complete standstill. The manufacturer who wanted a model for a candlestick or a clock, and the bourgeois who wanted a portrait, failed him. What was to be done? Antonin Moyne struggled on as best he could, used his old clothes, lived upon beans and potatoes, sold his knick-knacks to bric-à-brac dealers, pawned first his watch, then his silverware.
He lived in a little apartment in the Rue de Boursault, at No. 8, I think, at the corner of the Rue Labruyère.
The little apartment gradually became bare.
After June, Antonin Moyne solicited an order of the Government. The matter dragged along for six months. Three or four Cabinets succeeded each other and Louis Bonaparte had time to be nominated President. At length M. Leon Faucher gave Antonin Moyne an order for a bust, upon which the statuary would be able to make 600 francs. But he was informed that, the State funds being low, the bust would not be paid for until it was finished.
Distress came and hope went.
Antonin Moyne said one day to his wife, who was still young, having been married to him when she was only fifteen years old: “I will kill myself.”
The next day his wife found a loaded pistol under a piece of furniture. She took it and hid it. It appears that Antonin Moyne found it again.
His reason no doubt began to give way. He always carried a bludgeon and razor about with him. One day he said to his wife: “It is easy to kill one’s self with blows of a hammer.”
On one occasion he rose and opened the window with such violence that his wife rushed forward and threw her arms round him.
“What are you going to do?” she demanded.
“Just get a breath of air! And you, what do you want?”
“I am only embracing you,” she answered.
On March 18, 1849, a Sunday, I think it was, his wife said to him:
“I am going to church. Will you come with me?”
He was religious, and his wife, with loving watchfulness, remained with him as much as possible.
He replied: “Presently!” and went into the next room, which was his son’s bedroom.
A few minutes elapsed. Suddenly Mme. Antonin Moyne heard a noise similar to that made by the slamming of a front door. But she knew what it was. She started and cried: “It is that dreadful pistol!”
She rushed into the room her husband had entered, then recoiled in horror. She had seen a body stretched upon the floor.
She ran wildly about the house screaming for help. But no one came, either because everybody was out or because owing to the noise in the street she was not heard.
Then she returned, re-entered the room and knelt beside her husband. The shot had blown nearly all his head away. The blood streamed upon the floor, and the walls and furniture were spattered with brains.
Thus, marked by fatality, like Jean Goujon, his master, died Antonin Moyne, a name which henceforward will bring to mind two things–a horrible death and a charming talent.
IV. A VISIT TO THE OLD CHAMBER OF PEERS.
June, 1849.
The working men who sat in the Luxembourg during the months of March and April under the presidency of M. Louis Blanc, showed a sort of respect for the Chamber of Peers they replaced. The armchairs of the peers were occupied, but not soiled. There was no insult, no affront, no abuse. Not a piece of velvet was torn, not a piece of leather was dirtied. There is a good deal of the child about the people, it is given to chalking its anger, its joy and its irony on walls; these labouring men were serious and inoffensive. In the drawers of the desks they found the pens and knives of the peers, yet made neither a cut nor a spot of ink.
A keeper of the palace remarked to me: “They have behaved themselves very well.” They left their places as they had found them. One only left his mark, and he had written in the drawer of Louis Blanc on the ministerial bench:
Royalty is abolished.
Hurrah for Louis Blanc!
This inscription is still there.
The fauteuils of the peers were covered with green velvet embellished with gold stripes. Their desks were of mahogany, covered with morocco leather, and with drawers of oak containing writing material in plenty, but having no key. At the top of his desk each peer’s name was stamped in gilt letters on a piece of green leather let into the wood. On the princes’ bench, which was on the right, behind the ministerial bench, there was no name, but a gilt plate bearing the words: “The Princes’ Bench.” This plate and the names of the peers had been torn off, not by the working men, but by order of the Provisional Government.
A few changes were made in the rooms which served as ante-chambers to the Assembly. Puget’s admirable “Milo of Crotona,” which ornamented the vestibule at the top of the grand staircase, was taken to the old museum and a marble of some kind was substituted for it. The full length statue of the Duke d’Orleans, which was in the second vestibule, was taken I know not where and replaced by a statue of Pompey with gilt face, arms and legs, the statue at the foot of which, according to tradition, assassinated Caesar fell. The picture of founders of constitutions, in the third vestibule, a picture in which Napoleon, Louis XVIII. and Louis Philippe figured, was removed by order of Ledru-Rollin and replaced by a magnificent Gobelin tapestry borrowed from the Garde-Meuble.
Hard by this third vestibule is the old hall of the Chamber of Peers, which was built in 1805 for the Senate. This hall, which is small, narrow and obscure; supported by meagre Corinthian columns with mahogany-coloured bases and white capitals; furnished with flat desks and chairs in the Empire style with green velvet seats, the whole in mahogany; and paved with white marble relieved by lozenges of red Saint Anne marble,–this hall, so full of memories, had been religiously preserved, and after the new hall was built in 1840, had been used for the private conferences of the Court of Peers.
It was in this old hall of the Senate that Marshal Ney was tried. A bar had been put up to the left of the Chancellor who presided over the Chamber. The Marshal was behind this bar, with M. Berryer, senior, on his right, and M. Dupin, the elder, on his left. He stood upon one of the lozenges in the floor, in which, by a sinister hazard, the capricious tracing of the marble figured a death’s head. This lozenge has since been taken up and replaced by another.
After February, in view of the riots, soldiers had to be lodged in the palace. The old Senate-hall was turned into a guard-house. The desks of the senators of Napoleon and of the peers of the Restoration were stored in the lumber rooms, and the curule chairs served as beds for the troops.
Early in June, 1849, I visited the hall of the Chamber of Peers and found it just as I had left it seventeen months before, the last time that I sat there, on February 23, 1848.
Everything was in its place. Profound calmness reigned; the fauteuils were empty and in order. One might have thought that the Chamber had adjourned ten minutes previously.
SKETCHES
MADE IN THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY.
I. ODILON BARROT.
II. MONSIEUR THIERS.