Chapter I
An invasion of cholera--Aspect of Paris--Medicine and the scourge --Proclamation of the Prefect of Police--The supposed poisoners--Harel's newspaper paragraph--Mademoiselle Dupont--Eugène Durieu and Anicet Bourgeois--Catherine (not Howard) and the cholera--First performance of Mari de la veuve--A horoscope which did not come true
Meantime, France had been anxiously following the progress of cholera for some time past. Starting from India, it had taken the route of the great magnetic currents, had crossed Persia, reached St. Petersburg and stopped at London. The Channel alone separated it from us. But what is the distance between Dover and Calais to a giant who has just done three thousand leagues? So it crossed the Channel at a single stride. I remember the day when it struck its first blow: the sky was sapphire blue; the sun very powerful. All nature was being born again, with its beautiful green robe and the colours of youth and of health on its cheeks. The Tuileries was studded with women as a greensward is with flowers; revolutionary risings had died down for some time, leaving society a little peace and permitting spectators to venture out to the theatres. Suddenly, a terrible cry went forth, uttered in a voice like those mentioned in the Bible which thrill through the atmosphere, hurling maledictions on the earth from the skies: "The cholera is in Paris!" They added: "A man has just died in the rue Chauchat; he was literally struck down dead!" It was exactly as though a veil of crape was stretched between the blue sky and the bright sun and Paris. People rushed out into the streets and fled to their homes, shouting: "The cholera! the cholera!" as, seventeen years before, they had shouted: "The Cossacks!" But, no matter how well they closed their doors and windows, the terrible demon of Asia slipped in through the chinks of the shutters and through the keyholes of the doors. Then people attempted to fight it. Science came forward and tried to wrestle with it at close quarters. It touched it with its finger-tips, and science was floored. Science rose stunned but not vanquished; and began to study the disease. Sometimes, people died in three hours' time; at others, in even less time still. The sick man, or, rather, the condemned, suddenly felt a slight shivering: then came the first stage of cold, then cramp, then the terrible and ceaseless dysentery; next the circulation was stopped by the thickening of the blood; the capillaries were altered; the sick man became black and died. But none of these stages was positively fixed; they might follow or precede or intermingle with one another; each separate constitution brought its own variety of the malady. Further, these were but symptoms; people died with symptoms as of some unknown disease. The corpse was visible, but the assassin invisible! It struck and the blow was seen, but it was useless to search for the dagger. People were doctored by guesswork; as a man surprised by a thief in the night strikes out into the gloom by chance, hoping to hit the thief, so science wielded its sword in the darkness. In Russia, they treated cholera with ice. The attacks there presented the symptoms of typhoid. Opinion was divided on this point. Some administered tonics, that is to say, punch, warm wine, Bordeaux and Madeira. Others, thinking only of the abdominal pains, treated them with both the systems in vogue at that period, either by the physiological system of Broussais, which consisted in bleeding the sick and putting leeches on the stomach and abdomen--a treatment which attempted to attack the inflammatory part of the disease--or by opiates, calmatives and soothing medicines, like opium, belladonna and hellebore--this was to deal with the pain more than the disease. Others, again, tried warmth, hot-air baths, rubbing, burning iron. When the cold stage was attacked in time, and by energetic reaction they succeeded in overcoming the cold, the patient was generally saved. All the same, they only saved about one out of every ten! This was the reverse of the tithe.
The scourge struck the poorer classes by preference, but it did not spare the rich. The hospitals were crowded with terrible rapidity. A man would fall ill in his home; two neighbours put him on a stretcher and carried him to the nearest hospital. The sick man often died before he got there, and one, if not both, of the carriers would take his place upon the stretcher. A ring of frightened faces would form round the dead, and a cry would sound from the crowd. A man with one of his hands to his chest and the other to his body would writhe like an epileptic, fall to the ground, roll on the pavement, turn blue and expire. The crowd would disperse terrified, lifting hands to heaven, turning their heads behind them and flying for the sake of flight, for the danger was everywhere; it did not understand the distinctions the doctors made between the three words: epidemic, endemic and contagious.
The doctors were heroic! Never general on the bloodiest field of battle ran dangers equal to those to which the man of science exposed himself in the midst of the hospitals or as he went from bed to bed in the town. The Sisters of Charity were saints and often martyrs. The strangest rumours got abroad, springing from one knows not where, and repeated by the people with curses and menaces. They said that it was the fault of the Government, which, to get rid of the surplus population filling up Paris, caused poison to be thrown into the fountains and into the casks of the wine merchants. Paris seemed to be seized with madness; those even whose offices made it a duty to reassure others were afraid. On 2 April, the Prefect of Police, M. Gisquet, addressed the following circular to the Police Commissaries:--
"MONSIEUR LE COMMISSAIRE,--The appearance of the cholera-germ in the capital, the source of active anxiety and of real sorrow for all good citizens, has given the perpetual enemies of order a fresh opportunity for spreading infamous calumnies against the Government throughout the population; people have dared to say that the cholera is nothing short of poisoning effected by the agents of those in authority in order to decrease the population and to turn aside the general attention from political questions.
"I am informed that, to give credit to these atrocious conjectures, certain wretches have conceived the project of going through the public-houses and butchers' shops with bottles and packets of poison, either to throw into the fountains or wine casks or on to the meat, or simply to seem to do so and then get arrested in the very act by accomplices, who, after having made out that they were attached to the police, will countenance their escape, and, finally, set everything at work to demonstrate the reality of the odious accusation directed against authority.
"I need only point out such designs to you, monsieur, to make you feel the necessity of redoubling your vigilance over the establishment of dealers in liquids and butchers' shops, and to urge you to warn the inhabitants against attempts which they have a personal and powerful interest in preventing. If such audacious attempts are carried out, I need hardly tell you how important it will be to seize the culprits and to place them in the hands of justice. It is a task in which you will be seconded by all friends of order and by all respectable people.--Receive, etc.
"GISQUET"
An hour after the appearance of such a circular, the Prefect of Police ought to have been prosecuted. But nothing was done. M. Gisquet answered a blunder by a libel. It was no longer the agents of the Government who poisoned the fountains and wine casks to reduce the population and turn attention away from political affairs, it was the Republicans who threw bottles of poison over the butchers' stalls to depopulate the Government of Louis-Philippe! One could understand the first accusation, which sprang out of ignorance; but the second! which came from authority and from such a quarter! a quarter which ought to be the best informed on such affairs as these! The people only asked not to have to believe in the presence of the plague: that invisible enemy, which struck from the heart of the clouds, irritated the people by its invisibility. They refused to believe that one could die of an atmospheric poison, from so pure a sky and so radiant a sun. A material, visible, palpable cause would do its business much more effectually--at all events, revenge could be taken on a tangible cause. Placards containing nearly the same accusations were pasted up. The same day crowds collected round these placards and then they took themselves off to the barriers. Poor unfortunate wretches were knocked down by sticks, assassinated by knife-thrusts, torn by the nails of women and the teeth of dogs. A man would be pointed at with a finger--pursued, attacked and killed! I saw one of these terrible executions from a distance. The crowd moved towards the barrier: one could count the heads by the thousand, each one a wave of that angry ocean; a great number of butcher-boys with their aprons spotted with blood were mixed up in that frightful sea, each apron among all those waves like a crest of foam. Paris threatened to become worse than a great charnel-house: it threatened to become a vast slaughter-house. The prefect was obliged to retract and to recognise that an assassin, a murderer, a poisoner who escaped all capture, had broken loose, and was hiding himself in Paris. That assassin, murderer and poisoner was the cholera!
Oh! who ever saw Paris at that time would forget it, with its implacable blue sky, its mocking sun, its deserted walks, its solitary boulevards, its streets strewn with hearses and haunted by phantoms? Places of public entertainment looked like immense tombs. Harel put the following paragraph in the newspapers during the performances of Dix ans de la vie d'une femme:--
"It has been noticed with surprise that theatres are the only public places where, whatever the number of spectators, no case of cholera had yet appeared. We present this INCONTESTABLE fact for scientific investigation."
Poor Harel! He still had his wits about him, when nobody else had any left or even dreamt of such a thing! It was the Terror of 1793 on a grand scale. In 1793, the worst days counted their thirty or thirty-five victims. Now, the newspapers admitted to between seven and eight hundred deaths per day! It was a strange thing! But other diseases seemed to have disappeared; they were stayed from sheer stupefaction; death had no longer any but the one way of striking. One left a friend at night, shook his hand, saying, "Au revoir!" and, th next day, a voice would come from one knew not where, out of chaos, would whisper in one's ear--
"You knew such and such a person?"
"Yes ... Well?"
"He is dead!"
One had said au revoir; it was adieu one ought to have said instead.
Soon, there was a shortness of coffins: in that terrible steeplechase between death and the coffin-makers, the latter were outdistanced. They wrapped the bodies in tapestries; they rumbled along ten, fifteen, twenty, to the church at once. Relatives followed the common carts or not, as the case might be. Each knew the number of his own dead and mourned them. A mass was said for all collectively; then they wended their way to the cemetery, and tipped the contents of the tapestry into the common grave, and covered them all over with a shroud of lime.
The 18th of April was the crisis of the first outbreak--the numbers rose to nearly a thousand! At that time, I lived, as I have said, in the rue Saint-Lazare, in the square d'Orléans, and I saw from my windows every day fifty to sixty funerals pass on their way to the Montmartre cemetery. It was with this prospect before my eyes that I wrote one of my gayest comedies: Le Mari de la veuve. This is how the play came about. Mademoiselle Dupont, the excellent soubrette of the Comédie-Française, who laughed with such rosy lips and white teeth, she who was the most impudent Martine I have ever seen, had obtained a benefit performance. I had known her more at Firmin's house privately than at the theatre; she had never acted in any of my plays. One morning--it was, so far as I can recollect, the very day before 29 March, on which day the cholera was to burst forth--she came to see me. Everything was ready for her benefit. She came to ask me to write her a narrative scene. It was Saturday, I think: the performance was to take place on the following Tuesday or Wednesday. There was no time to lose. I am stupid at improvising anything appropriate to such an occasion as this; and yet how could I refuse the charming soubrette a demand of so little importance?
"Defer the performance until Saturday," I said to her, "and, instead of one scene, I will write you a one-act comedy."
"Will you promise to do this?"
"On my honour!"
"I will go and see if it be possible, and I will return in an hour's time."
Twenty minutes later I received a note from Mademoiselle Dupont telling me she had obtained a respite of twelve days, and asking me to make a part in it for Mademoiselle Mars. I had not been on very friendly terms with Mademoiselle Mars since Antony, and she had not taken the trouble to make it up with me.
Now I had one friend, a man of infinite cleverness, head or second in command at the Home Offices,--a friend who has since made his name in the Government. He was called, and happily still calls himself, Eugène Durieu. I had met him two or three times during the past year, and every time he had given me the subject for a play, either in one act, or two or in three. But I do not know why we had never yet settled anything. I wrote to him and he came to me.
"Let us look over your subjects," I said; "I want a play in one act for Mademoiselle Dupont's benefit"--
"Are you crazy? She is billed for next Tuesday!"
"It is put off for a week."
"And you think a play could be written, read, distributed, learned and played between now and then?"
"I will do my part."
"Really."
"A day to write the play, one to get it re-copied, one for reading it; there will still be seven days for the rehearsals; a luxurious allowance!"
Eugène Durieu recognised the correctness of the calculation and gave me the benefit of his ideas. We thought of the subject of Le Mari de la veuve; but the plan was a long way from completion.
"Listen!" I said to Durieu, "it is noon; I have business until five o'clock. Anicet Bourgeois wishes to have his turn at the Théâtre-Français; why, I don't know. Some whim of his! Go and find him for me; settle the outlines of the drama with him, return together at half-past four and we will dine together. In the evening we will arrange the numbering of the scenes; I can set to work on the play to-night or to-morrow morning, and, in any case, at whatever time I start upon it, it shall be finished twenty-four hours later."
Durieu left at a run. I returned at five, as I had said, and found my two collaborators at the task. The foundations were not yet laid; I came to the rescue. They left me at midnight, leaving me a number of scenes nearly completed. The next day, as I had promised, I set to work. I was at my third or fourth scene when the chambermaid entered, looking terrified and as pale as death.
"Ah! Monsieur! Monsieur! Monsieur!" she said.
"Well, what is the matter, Catherine?"
"Ah! Monsieur it is ... My God! My God!"
"What?"
"It is the cholera ... Ah! Monsieur, I have the cramp!"
"The cholera is in Paris?"
"Yes, monsieur, it is, the scoundrel!"
"Diable! Are you sure what you say is true?"
"A man has just died in the rue Chauchat, monsieur. He had only been dead a quarter of an hour, and he is already as black as a nigger!"
"How did they treat him?"
"By rubbing, monsieur; but it was no use ... Black, monsieur--quite black!"
"Perhaps they rubbed him with a blacking-brush."
"Oh, monsieur, you may joke!... Rue Chauchat, monsieur, in the rue Chauchat!"
Now, the rue Chauchat is next to the rue Saint-Lazare. What could prevent the cholera in leaving the rue Chauchat from passing along the rue Saint-Lazare and knocking at my own door?
"If the cholera rings, do not open to it, Catherine," I resumed. "I am going to see what is happening."
I took up my hat and went out. Then it was that I saw with my own eyes the spectacle of terror that I have tried to describe. I returned home, very much disinclined to write my comedy, I confess, and I wrote to Mademoiselle Dupont:--
"MA BELLE MARTINE,--I presume that when you settled the day for your performance you had reckoned without the cholera. It has just come from London and made its début two hours ago in the rue Chauchat. Its début is making such a commotion that it will, I am afraid, spoil your takings. What ought I to do about the one-act comedy?--Yours always, ALEX. DUMAS"
Mademoiselle Dupont was at home, and I received the following reply by the same messenger as had taken my letter:--
"MY DEAR DUMAS,--My benefit has been on the way for such a long time that I want it done with, one way or another. Finish your play, then, I beseech you; it must take its chance.--Always yours, DUPONT"
So I returned to Le Mari de la veuve. The play was finished in twenty-four hours, as I had promised. The principal part pleased Mademoiselle Mars, and she accepted it. Her presence in a play was a guarantee for speed. Indeed, we have already said how honest Mademoiselle Mars was in theatrical matters and with authors. She came punctually to the rehearsals, in spite of the cholera, and enraged me just as much over one act as she would have done over a five-act play. Each day she found some thing to correct; and I had to take the play home and make the correction there. This was how Le Mari de la veuve was created, with that funereal background of which I have just been telling you. The play was exquisitely mounted: the five parts it contained were filled by Mademoiselle Mars, Monrose, Anaïs, Menjaud and Mademoiselle Dupont.
The play was performed on the appointed day. The cholera had proved a troublesome competitor; there were not five hundred people in the theatre. The play had but a moderate success and obtained even a round of hissing. After Menjaud had been caught in a shower, he re-entered the castle shaking himself.
"What weather!" he said; "I am as drenched as College wine!"
A spectator hissed; no doubt some schoolmaster. The saying, though, was not mine; I had heard it said to Soulié a few days before, and had utilised it because I thought it so funny.
It was a fresh proof to me of the truth of the saying that what suits one person to perfection jars on another. I have hunted in all the newspapers for an account of the performance and cannot find any trace of it except in the Annuaire historique by Lesur and the Gazette de France. My readers will allow me to lay before them the twofold appreciation offered by criticism on the work: it is short and sincere. Here is Lesur's--
THÉÂTRE-FRANÇAIS
"Performance for the benefit of Mademoiselle Dupuis ..."
[In the first place, Lesur is wrong: he should have said Mademoiselle Dupont.]
"Le Mari de la veuve, a Comedy in one Act, in prose by M....
"No theatrical performance on a Benefit day ever offered a more melancholy aspect and a more scanty assembly. The cholera had invaded Paris; the town was given over to terror, riot ran rife through the street, drums beat at the hour for the opening of the box office. There were very few spectators that night bold enough to breathe the smell of camphor and lime in the solitudes of the Théâtre-Français in order to judge the merits of the new play. Under these circumstances, the absent hardly lost much.
"A few pleasant incidents and witty sayings, and the talent of Mademoiselle Mars, might be able to support this slight work for a dozen or so of performances.
"The author, who, doubtless, is not blind as to the unimportant nature of the play, maintains his anonymity."
That is one! Now let us pass on to the Gazette de France.
"A short Comedy has recently been performed: Le Mari de la veuve, by M. Alexandre Dumas, which, although the dialogue is written with plenty of go and naturalness, offers very little in the way of common sense as to plot and truth of characterisation; but the play is so agreeably acted by Monrose, Menjaud, Mademoiselle Mars and Mademoiselle Dupont, that it ought to cause great amusement and much laughter among those who are inclined to make fun of the quibblers and silent indifference of the smaller newspapers against the Théâtre-Français, and to go oftener to this theatre than to Atar-Gull or to Madame Gibou."
The play has now been performed over three hundred times since its first appearance.
Chapter II
My régime against the cholera--I am attacked by the epidemic--I invent etherisation--Harel comes to suggest to me La Tour de Nesle--Verteuil's manuscript--Janin and the tirade of the grandes dames--First idea of the prison scene--My terms with Harel--Advantages offered by me to M. Gaillardet--The spectator in the Odéon--Known and unknown authors--My first letter to M. Gaillardet
The cholera was running its course, but we had arrived at the stage of getting accustomed to it. In France, alas! we get used to everything! It was even said that the best way of fighting the cholera was not to think about it but to live as far as possible in one's ordinary way. This régime suited me excellently at the period in question. I wrote Gaule et France, a work which fatigued me very much in the way of study, to such an extent that I was not sorry to forget my day's work in the evening. Every night, accordingly, I had some friends with me: Fourcade, Collin, Boulanger, Liszt, Châtillon, Hugo at times, Delanoue nearly always. We talked and talked of art; sometimes we persuaded Hugo to read us poetry; Liszt, who never required much pressing, thumped on a bad piano with all his might, and he ended by breaking it to pieces; so the evening would fly by without any one thinking any more of the cholera than if it had been at St. Petersburg or Benares or Pekin. Besides, it had been calculated that five hundred deaths per day, out of a million of men, was not quite one death per thousand, and, taking everything into consideration, one had far more chance of being one of the thousand living souls than the one dead one. This calculation, it will be seen, was exceedingly reassuring. In the midst of all this, Harel, who was at loggerheads with Hugo, came to me from time to time to tease me to write him another play. He made out that it was a most favourable time, that nothing was being a success elsewhere, and that the first-comer to make a success under such circumstances would have a run of a hundred performances.
As for the cholera, he treated it as a myth, and put it on a level with the ghosts of Semiramis and of Hamlet; he put a bit of paper into his snuff-box to remind himself that he was in Paris. The object of his pursuing me with such determination was a drama entitled La Tour de Nesle, in which he said there was originality enough to set all Paris on fire with excitement. I rejected the tempter energetically, telling him that the same subject had been suggested to me twice before; once by Roger de Beauvoir, author of L'Écolier de Cluny; also by Fourcade, who, at that time, was anxious to produce literature.
Henri Fourcade was Fourcade's brother, my old friend, of whom I have already spoken with reference to my early love affairs at Villers-Cotterets; who, it will be recollected, danced so well, and had in his pocket a second pair of gloves to change, when he went to the ball--a luxury at which I had been struck dumb. One night, then, when we had been laughing, talking, spouting verses, playing music, and having supper, as I was about to see my friends out and was lighting them from the top of my landing, I felt suddenly overtaken with a slight trembling in my legs; I took no notice of it and lent against the bannisters, half to light those who were going downstairs and half to support myself, as I shouted a ringing, cheerful au revoir! to them. Then, when the sound of their footsteps was lost in the square, I turned round to go into my rooms.
"Oh, monsieur!" said Catherine to me, "how pale you are!"
"Nonsense; am I really, Catherine?" I said laughingly. "Go and look in the glass, sir, and see."
I followed her advice and looked in the glass. I was, indeed, exceedingly pale. At the same time, I was seized with a shaking which gradually turned to a violent shivering fit.
"It is queer," I said; "I feel very cold."
"Ah! monsieur," cried Catherine; "that is how it begins."
"What, Catherine?"
"The cholera, monsieur."
"You think I have the cholera then, Catherine?"
"Oh! I am sure of it, monsieur."
"Oh! Then, Catherine, let us lose no time: get a lump of sugar, dip it in ether and fetch a doctor."
Catherine went away, tumbling against the furniture as she left, and exclaiming--
"Oh! mon Dieu! Master has the cholera!"
Meanwhile, as I felt my strength failing rapidly, I went up to my bed, undressed myself as fast as possible, and lay down. I shivered more and more. Catherine returned; the poor girl was nearly off her head: instead of bringing me a lump of sugar dipped in ether, she brought me a wineglassful of ether. When I say full, I should add that, by good fortune, her hand had trembled so much that the glass was no more than two-thirds full. She gave it to me. With more reason for my condition than she, I hardly knew what I was doing; I did not remember what it was I had asked her for, and was ignorant of the contents of the glass she held out to me, I carried it to my lips and swallowed a whole ounce of ether at a gulp. I felt as though I had swallowed the sword of the Avenging Angel! I heaved a sigh, closed my eyes, and my head fell back on the pillow. No chloroform ever produced a quicker result. From that moment and for two hours my unconsciousness lasted, I knew nothing at all; only, when I opened my eyes again, I was in a vapour bath which, by means of a pipe, my doctor was administering to me beneath my bedclothes, whilst a good neighbour was rubbing me on the top of the sheets with a warming-pan full of embers. I do not know what I shall feel like in hell, but I shall never even there be more nearly roasted than I was that night. I spent five or six days without being able to put a foot out of my bed; I was literally exhausted. Every day Harel's card was brought in; he was told, as was everybody else, that I could not see visitors. When I again opened my doors to people, the first thing I saw through the half-opened door was his smiling, clever face.
"What about the cholera?" I asked.
"It has departed!"
"Are you sure of it?"
"It did not pay its expenses.... Ah! my friend, what a capital time for launching a drama!"
"Do you think so?"
"There will be a reaction in favour of the theatres; besides, you saw what I put in the newspapers?"
"Yes, about the places of entertainment not having had a single case of cholera in them.... My dear Harel, you are the cleverest man of the nineteenth century!"
"Oh! not so!"
"Why not?"
"You can well see why not, since I cannot get you to write me a play."
"In all conscience, am I in a fit state for doing it?"
"You?..."
He shrugged his shoulders.
"I am possessed with all the devils of a fever."
"They will give you an inspiration."
"But, seriously, let me see what your play is about."
"Well, I am going to tell you the truth."
"Really?"
"On my honour."
"Harel! Harel! Harel!"
"How stupid you are!"
"You can see very well that I did not make you say it."
"But if you make me say it; it only proves your cleverness, because you make me stupid."
"Come, stop affectations! what were we saying?"
"That a young man from Tonnerre, named Frédérick Gaillardet, has brought me a MS. which has some ideas in it, but he has never had anything to do with the stage; it is not, dramatically speaking, any good as it is. But I have entered into treaty with him because I have my own plans."
"Let us hear what they are."
"For a long time Janin has wanted to write a drama."
"Good!"
"I said, 'Here is your excuse ready to hand!' I took my young author's MS. to him."
"Next?"
"He read it."
"And then?"
"He agreed with me that there was dramatic material in it.
"And that drama ...?"
"He has hunted for it for six weeks, and not found it."
"Then he has added nothing to the original manuscript." "Indeed, he has rewritten it."
"What then?"
"It is better written, but no more fit for acting."
"So that it has already two authors?"
"You need not trouble yourself about Janin."
"Why not?"
"Because, this morning, he took his own MS. and that of M. Gaillardet in his arms, and flung them on Georges's sofa, saying to me, 'You and your drama there can go to the devil! '"
"Then you came to me; thanks!"
"What does that matter to you, my friend? Read this."
"But I tell you I am very weak. I cannot even read."
"I will send Verteuil to you; he will read the piece to you: he reads very well."
"Shall I not get into trouble with your young man?"
"He is as meek as a lamb, my dear fellow!"
"I see, and you wish to shear him?"
"There is no talking seriously with you."
"Send Verteuil to me."
"When?"
"When you like."
"He shall be here in an hour."
"Very well, are you going?"
"I have no mind to stay."
"Why not?"
"You would only have some one to contradict you."
"Oh! I do not promise anything."
"That is needless, since you are pledged."
"To what?"
"To deliver me the play in a fortnight."
"Harel!"
"Take pains over Georges' part."
"Harel!"
"Good-bye!"
Harel was gone.
"Oh, the brute!" I muttered, falling back on to my pillow; "he will give me a relapse."
An hour later, as Harel had said, Verteuil was in the house. He expected to find me sitting up and convalescent; but he found me in bed, burning with fever, and reduced in weight by twenty-five pounds. I frightened him.
"Oh!" he said, "you are not going to work in that state?" "What the deuce do you expect else, my dear fellow, as Harel insists on it!"
"No, I will take the MS. away, and tell Mademoiselle Georges that it is impossible, short of killing you."
"Is there anything in that MS.?"
"Certainly, it has some ideas, but..."
"But what?"
"Ah! you shall see ... I dare not say."
"Then leave it to me; I will read it."
"When?"
"At my leisure. Is the writing clear, by the way?"
"I recopied it myself."
"Good!"
"I have only brought Janin's version of the MS., to save you as much time as possible."[1]
"Is there much difference between the two MSS.?"
"What do you mean?"
"Structurally?"
"It is the same thing, except for one or two tirades added by Janin."
"What about the form?"
"Oh well! it has style, you know; it is smart, brilliant, trenchant."
"I will take note of that."
"When do you wish me to return?"
"Return to-morrow."
"At what hour?"
"About noon."
"To-morrow at noon, then; rest as much as you can till then."
"I will try.... Adieu."
"Adieu!" He gave me his hand.
"Take care of yourself, you are frightfully feverish."
"That is just what I am reckoning upon. A thousand compliments to Georges; she need not be anxious; if there is a suitable rôle for her, it shall be created, or I will know the reason why."
"Have you nothing else for me to tell her?"
"Only that that I love her with all my heart."
Verteuil went away, leaving me alone with the fever and the copy of Janin's MS.
Once again I repeat it (and these lines are addressed to M. Frédérick Gaillardet), Heaven save me, after the lapse of twenty-one years, from seeming to have hostile intentions towards a man who did me the honour of risking his life against mine, in exchanging pistol shots with me; but I must, according to my accustomed frankness, relate things as they happened, very certain that, if it is still necessary at this date, the memories of Bocage, of Georges, of Janin and of Verteuil will agree with mine. Having made this assertion, I will continue my narrative. When left to myself, I began to read the manuscript. The play began at the second scene, that is to say, with Orsini's monologue. Finally, the second scene, which was then the first, remained pretty much as it was. There was, as Verteuil had told me, and as I myself recognised later, no other difference between M. Gaillardet's MS. and Janin's than the style. Janin, as is known, is, in this respect, a master before whom small fry bow and great ones salute. But a complete tirade, probably the most brilliant in the whole drama, belonged to Janin: it was the one of the grandes dames. Did he avenge himself here on some lady, some one he believed to be a great lady? I do not know at all; but although the tirade is well known, we will reproduce it here.
"BURIDAN. Vous ne savez donc pas où nous sommes?
PHILIPPE. Où sommes-nous?
BURIDAN. Vous ne savez donc pas quelles sont ces femmes?
PHILIPPE. Vous êtes tout ému, Buridan!
BURIDAN. Ces femmes, n'avez-vous pas quelque soupçon de leur rang?... N'avez-vous pas remarqué que ce doivent être de grandes dames?... Avez-vous vu, car je pense qu'il vient de vous arriver, à vous, ce qui vient de m'arriver, à moi,--avez-vous vu, dans vos amours de garnison, beaucoup de mains aussi blanches, beaucoup de sourires aussi froids?... Avez-vous remarqué ces riches habits, ces voix si douces, ces regards si faux? Ce sont de grandes dames voyez-vous!... Elles nous fait chercher dans la nuit par une femme vieille et voilée, qui avait des paroles mielleuses. Oh! ce sont de grandes dames!... A peine sommes nous entrés dans cet endroit éblouissant, parfumé et chaud à enivrer, qu'elles nous accueillis, avec mille tendresses, qu'elles se sont livrées à nous sans détour, sans retard, à nous tout de suite, à nous inconnus et tout mouillés de cet orage. Vous voyez bien que ce sont de grandes dames!... A table,--et c'est notre histoire à tous deux, n'est-ce pas?--à table, elles se sont abandonées à tout ce que l'amour et l'ivresse ont d'emportement et d'oubli; elles ont blasphémé; elles ont tenu d'étranges discours et d'odieuses paroles; elles ont oublié toute retenue, toute pudeur, oublié la terre, oublié le ciel. Ce sont de grandes dames, de très-grandes dames, je vous le répète!"
The first fault which struck me, a theatrical man, in the work, was that the play began really at the second scene, and, consequently, none of the parts were known or the characters properly revealed; so that while reading this tower scene, the tavern scene began to appear to me as in a cloud. But I did not stop short there, it was not a suitable moment. I began the second; but I protest that I did not go further than the eighth or tenth page. The drama completely deviated from the course which, in my opinion, it ought to have taken.
The essential crux of the drama to me was the struggle between Buridan and Margaret of Burgundy, between an adventurer and a queen, the one armed with all the resources of his genius, the other with the powerful allies of her rank. Of course, genius is naturally made to triumph over power. Then I had had an idea in my head for a long time which I thought highly dramatic; and I wanted to try to get that situation put before the public.
A man is arrested, sentenced, and laid in the depths of a dungeon, without resource or hope; a man who will be lost if his enemy has the courage not to come and mock at his abasement, but to have him poisoned, strangled, or stabbed in his corner; the man will be saved if his enemy yields to the desire to come and insult him for the last time; for, with speech, the sole weapon left him, he would frighten his enemy so that the latter would loosen the chains on his arms a little, and the iron collar round his neck, and open to him the door which he had hitherto so carefully closed upon him, and lead forth in triumph the man who expected that, if he ever left his living tomb at all, it would only be to mount the scaffold.
The struggle between Margaret of Burgundy and Buridan gave me the idea for this situation. It will be well understood that I did not let such a scene slip. It is the one that has since been named la scène de la prison. That settled, I did not trouble any further over the rest. I wrote to Harel that I was his man for La Tour de Nesle, and begged him to come and arrange the terms under which this new drama should be done.
I must explain to the public what I mean by settling the terms. I wished--since Janin loyally, more than loyally, generously, withdrew from the collaboration--that M. Gaillardet, who had temporarily given up his share to Janin, should take that share to himself again. At that period, unless under private treaty, author's rights at the theatre Porte-Saint-Martin, for which M. Gaillardet's drama was intended, were 48 francs for author's share and 24 francs' worth of tickets per night. Consequently, 24 francs for author's rights and 12 francs' worth of tickets were conceded to Janin. Janin, as we have said, gave up his share; I wanted this share to be returned to M. Gaillardet, and my rights to be settled independently, as if I had been a complete stranger to the work. I laid down also, as a condition, sine quâ non, that my name should be left. It was agreed in the contract with Janin that his name should be given. Harel raised no difficulties over granting me my separate treaty, which was the same as in Christine: 10 francs per hundred of the takings, and 36 to 40 francs' worth of tickets, I believe. Nothing could be objected to, as the rights were proportional--if it paid, I gained; if it did not, I only made a light demand on the receipts. Now, take careful notice, that, at this time of cholera, two or three hundred francs were quite large takings. The Odéon once played before one spectator who refused to have his money returned, and insisted that they should go through the performance for him and then hissed it. But, by hissing, the wretched man raised a weapon against himself; the manager sent for a police officer, who, with the excuse that the hisser disturbed the performance, put him outside the doors. Harel, I say, made no difficulty of any kind over my separate contract; but he did over my wishing to maintain my incognito: I had a hard struggle over this, and he poured upon me all the dazzling splendours of his wit and the thundering ammunition of his paradoxes. I held out and Harel retired conquered. It was settled and signed that I was to have my separate contract, that I should not be named, that M. Gaillardet should alone be mentioned by name on the night of the first performance and on the bills, and that he alone should take the whole of the rights granted by the Porte-Saint-Martin theatre at the time when he signed his treaty; but, I reserved to myself the right to put the drama under my own name among my complete works. From that moment, Verteuil never left me; he came every morning, and, as much dictated as written by his hand, every night he carried a scene away with him. After the prison scene, Harel rushed in. It was a chef d'œuvre, which would even put the success of Henri III. into the shade. I laughed. I really must let my name be given; it was impossible otherwise. I grew angry, and Harel took himself off in despair. Theatrical managers, in those days, had a singular idea to which, indeed, they have returned latterly: it was that they made more money, with equal merit, when the name of the author was known, than if it were unknown. I think they were mistaken. The better the name be known, the more it rouses jealous feelings on the part of criticism: the less it be known, the more kindly does criticism favour it. Criticism, which does not produce children of its own, only picks up and fondles orphans which it can adopt; but it turns, angry and growling, on those children who are supported by a vigorous parentage. Nowadays, managers have fallen into the opposite abuse. They have hunted out from the collections of proverbs all the pieces which were no good at all--comedies which were not comedies, dramas which were not dramas--and played them with more or less success. The object of this attempt was, I believe, meant at least to prove that dramatic art is an art by itself; a rare and difficult one, seeing that Greece has only bequeathed to us Æschylus, Euripides, Sophocles and Aristophanes; Rome, only Plautus, Terence and Seneca; England, only Shakespeare and Sheridan; Italy, only Machiavelli and Alfieri; Spain, only Lopes de Vega, Calderon, Alarcon and Tirso de Molina; Germany, only Goethe and Schiller; and France, only Corneille, Rotrou, Molière, Racine, Voltaire and Beaumarchais; that is to say, but twenty-three names floating on an ocean of twenty-three centuries! Actually, this is what happens in my opinion: more noise is made round the work of a known author; people wait for and receive the appearance of such work with greater curiosity; but the public also becomes more exacting in proportion as the reputation of the writer increases: they get tired of hearing a man called happy; as the Athenians grew tired of hearing Aristides called the Just; and reaction operates with a harshness all the stronger as the previous favouritism has been great. Finally, the man who falls, if unknown, only falls from the height of the play by which he has made his début; the known author who falls, on the contrary, falls from the height of all his past successes. I have experienced this in my own case; at three epochs in my life, reaction has disturbed me to the point that, in order to keep the footing I had arrived at, I had to exert greater efforts than those I had made in reaching that stage. We are not far from the first of these epochs, and I will relate this phase of my life with the same simplicity as I have related the rest. After nine days of work, which retarded my convalescence by more than a month, Verteuil carried away the last scenes of the drama, with the following letter addressed to Harel:--
"DEAR FRIEND,--Do not be distressed at these two last scenes. They are weak, I grant; when I got to the end, my strength failed me. Look upon them as null and void, as they will have to be rewritten. But give me two or three days' rest, and don't be uneasy. I begin to be of your opinion: there are the elements of a tremendous success in the work.--Yours always,
"ALEX. DUMAS"
After the fourth act, the poorest in the whole work, Harel had written to me--
"MY DEAR DUMAS,--I have received your fourth act. Hum! hum! Your King Louis, the headstrong, is a droll figure, indeed! But, he has abundance of wit, and wit makes anything go well. I await the fifth act.--Yours etc. HAREL"
The fifth act arrived; only, it was even worse than the fourth! Harel rushed to me with crape on his hat and his head covered with ashes. He was in mourning for his lost success. Nothing I could say reassured him; I must set to work again that very night. Two days later, the scenes were rewritten, and Harel's mind set at rest. The same day I wrote to M. Gaillardet, keeping as far as possible to my own side of the proceedings:--
"MONSIEUR,--M. Harel, with whom I have been in continual business relations, has come to ask me to give him some advice about a work by you which he wishes to put on the stage.
"I seized with pleasure the opportunity of bringing forward a young fellow-dramatist, whom I have not the honour of knowing, but to whom I most sincerely wish success. I have smoothed down all the difficulties which would present themselves to you in the putting into rehearsal of a first piece of work, and your play, as it now is, seems to me capable of succeeding.
"I do not need to tell you, sir, that you alone will be the author, and that my name will not even be mentioned; this is the condition under which I undertook the work to which I have been so fortunate as to be able to add. If you look upon what I have done for you in the light of a kindness, allow me to give it you rather than sell it you.
"ALEX. DUMAS"
Indeed, from my point of view, at any rate, it was really giving my services; although I had superseded Janin as collaborator, I did not take either the author's rights nor the rights to tickets belonging to the collaboration, which, in the contract, remained in Harel's hands, and by virtue of which Harel returned to Janin. Had Harel the right, from Janin's consent, and at his (Janin's) entreaty to substitute me for Janin? I think he had, as my substitution left M. Gaillardet's name alone on the bills, and gave him 48 francs for rights and 12 for tickets, instead of 24 francs for rights and 6 for tickets. M. Gaillardet gained, therefore, from the monetary point of view, as he received double; and he gained in reputation, because his name alone appeared. It remains to prove that the Contract Janin-Gaillardet and Harel had passed under the control of the former contract, according only 48 francs in rights and 12 in tickets. This will be easy for me to do with the two dates. The Contract of Janin-Gaillardet and Harel was signed on 29 March 1832, and the fresh treaty, which still holds good to-day at the Porte-Saint-Martin theatre, was not signed between M. Harel and the Commission of Authors, till the following 11 April. I repeat, I would rather have passed over this ridiculous quarrel as to the paternity of the play in silence; but I am compelled to lay details before my readers which will interest them but indifferently, but for which, however, they would have the right to ask if I passed them over in silence. I am writing the history of art during the first half of the nineteenth century; I speak of myself as of a stranger; I lay my plays open to the inspection of my natural arbitrator, the public; it shall judge my work, as they say at the palace. I will neither make out M. Gaillardet to be right or wrong; I will write merely a recitative, and not an argument--
Ad narrandum, non ad firobandum.
[Footnote 1: In the Paris edition of the Souvenirs, 1854, both M. Gaillardet's and M. Janin's MSS. are referred to as having been brought, both here and later.]
Chapter III
M. Gaillardet's answer and protest--Frédérick and Buridan's part --Transaction with M. Gaillardet--First performance of La Tour de Nesle--The play and its interpreters--The day following a success --M. ***--A profitable trial in prospect--Georges' caprice--The manager, author and collaborator
Great was my astonishment when I received an answer from M. Gaillardet, which, instead of being full of gratitude, was a protest. He wrote that the play was his own and belonged only to him; that he had not intended to have, and never would have, a collaborator. I confess I was astounded. The play, as everybody thought, was unactable as it was, and Janin had given it up, openly admitting that he did not know what to do to make it better. I flew off to Harel. I had not asked him to communicate the agreement to me, but had simply believed in his word. I accused him of having deceived me. He thereupon took the contract from his desk and made me read it.
This is what it was, verbally--
"Between MM. Gaillardet and Jules Janin on the one part:
"And M. Harel, manager of the Porte-Saint-Martin, on the other part;
"It is agreed as follows:
"MM. Gaillardet and Jules Janin remit and hand over to M. Harel, a five-act drama entitled La Tour de Nesle, to be played at the Porte-Saint-Martin theatre.
"M. Harel receives the work and will have it performed immediately.
"Copy made at Paris, 29 March 1832.
Signed: "F GAILLARDET. J. JANIN. HAREL"
As MM. Janin and Gaillardet remitted and handed over their drama conjointly, M. Gaillardet must have had a collaborator, and that collaborator was stated to be M. Janin. Now, he always had a collaborator; only, that collaborator did not take half his rights from him, and was not called Janin or anybody else, since he was never named at all. I can but believe that it was the person of Janin who was regretted by M. Gaillardet; for, as we saw, he himself wrote later that Janin had been surreptitiously imposed upon him. Harel had no difficulty in convincing me that it was within his rights to bring me M. Gaillardet's drama, as it had been remitted and handed over to him without embargo. The drama had not been done over again by me; had it been necessary to rewrite the play completely I should certainly never have undertaken the task; but what was done was done straightforwardly and in good faith. The welfare of the theatre, ruined by the riotings and cholera, rested entirely on this work. I was the first to advise that the arrival of M. Gaillardet should be awaited. After the delivery of the first scene, moreover, the play had been put in rehearsal. Now, at the first of these rehearsals, a very curious incident happened. The two principal parts had been given to Georges and Frédérick; but, as I have said, the cholera upset everything. Frédérick, who came to listen to the reading of the first act, and who had carried away the part, was afraid of the cholera; he kept away in the country and, in spite of the notices of the rehearsals, gave no sign of life. Five or six rehearsals took place before he turned up or sent news of himself. He was a man of capricious talent, violent and passionate, and, accordingly, very natural in passionate, violent and capricious characters. He was the French Kean. Harel could neither wait for the end of Frédérick's fear nor for that of the cholera. He decided to engage some one else since Frédérick persisted in staying away; and he looked about him. Bocage was out of an engagement: he entered into negotiations with him. Bocage took the part, promised to rehearse it in spite of all the choleras on the earth, returned home, and began to study it. Next day, he came to the theatre without his manuscript: he knew his first scene. The report of what had occurred reached Frédérick; he rushed up, and I never saw anybody in such a state of vexation as he was. Frédérick is a great actor, an artist of talent and feeling; he was hurt in both these directions. He offered as much as 5000 francs to Bocage if the latter would give up his part, but Bocage refused it, and the part remained his.
Your grief was a fine sight, Frédérick, and I shall never forget it!
The rehearsals continued with Bocage and Mademoiselle Georges. One day, Harel, who then lived in the rue Bergère, sent to fetch me. M. Gaillardet had just arrived, and the following extract represents his state of mind. I will borrow from him direct, so much do I desire to remain neutral in this discussion.
"... I started, and before going home I went dressed as I was in my travelling costume, to see M. Harel.
"'I am ruined!' he said to me. 'I have deceived you, that is the truth. Now what shall you do?'
"'Stop the play.'
"'You will not succeed in doing that; I shall change the title and play it; you can attack me for piracy, theft, plagiarism, anything you like. You will obtain 1200 francs indemnity. If you allow it to be played, on the contrary, you will gain 1200 francs, etc. etc.'
"He said the truth, for that is the protection our judges ordinarily allow to an author who has been defrauded."
If I remember rightly, it was in this interval that I arrived. The discussion was violent on both sides, and the explanations were equally violent. We had to leave Harel to hunt up seconds on both sides. Harel, however, intervened, calmed us down, and induced M. Gaillardet to sign a deed by which we acknowledged ourselves joint-authors of La Tour de Nesle. We each reserved to ourselves the right to put our names to the play in our complete works. The play was to be played and published under the name of M. Gaillardet alone; but Harel insisted that there should be asterisks after his name. When this deed was signed, the rehearsals went on uninterruptedly.
As the play developed, it assumed great proportions, and I began to believe, with Harel, that it would be a big success. The parts of Marguerite and of Buridan were just made for Georges and for Bocage, who were both splendid in them. Lockroy, who, out of friendship for me, played the part of Gaultier d'Aulnay, was deliciously youthful and loverlike and poetic in it; Provost (as Savoisy), Serres (as Landry) and Delafosse (as Philippe d'Aulnay) completed the characters.
The day of the first performance came: 29 May 1832; I had sent a box ticket to Odilon Barrot, telling him I would dine with him, and reserving a place for myself in his box. The dinner lasted longer than we expected; Madame Odilon Barrot, then young and charming, always a clever and original woman--a rare thing among women--was upon thorns. The great demagogue had no notion anybody could feel so much impatience to see a first performance of a play. We arrived in the middle of the second scene, just in time to hear the tirade of the grandes dames.
The theatre was in a state of boiling excitement: the audience felt the success of the play, it was in the air, they breathed it. The end of the second scene is terrible in its impressiveness: Buridan leaping from the window into the Seine, Marguerite revealing her bleeding cheek, and exclaiming--" 'Look at thy face and then die,' saidest thou? Let it be done as thou wishest.... Look, and die!" This was all startling and terrible! And, when, after the orgy, the flight, the assassination, the laughter extinguished in groans, the man flung into the river, the lover of a night pitilessly murdered by his royal mistress, the careless and monotonous voice of the night watchman is heard calling, "Three o'clock and a quiet night: Parisians sleep!" the audience burst forth into loud applause.
The third scene is poor, I must candidly admit; it was nearly all written by me, and it was a bit of gagging; still, it does not allow interest to languish; the second had sated the spectators for a time. It will be recollected that, except for an alteration in the staging, the second scene was almost entirely the same as in M. Gaillardet's manuscript. The end of the third scene, however, relieves the beginning; the last scene was entirely concerned with Gaultier d'Aulnay, who comes to demand vengeance for the murder of his brother from Marguerite of Bourgogne, without knowing that the murder had been committed by her. Lockroy's exhibition of grief was magnificent.
The fourth scene was scarcely better than the third; it was the one where Buridan and Marguerite meet in the Orsini tavern, where Marguerite tears from the diary entrusted to her lover the famous page which proves the murder. The principal scene was an improbable one; I had tried my hand at it three or four times before I succeeded. Let me add that I have never been satisfied with it; Georges, who, for her part too, felt it was false, did not play it so well as the others. But the audience was captivated, and in that frame of mind which accepts everything.
The fifth scene was short, spirited, sensitive and full of surprises. The arrest and exit of Buridan made the greatest sensation. Finally, came the famous prison act.
One day, my son asked me--he had not yet written plays at that time--
"What are the first principles of a drama?"
"That the first act be lucid, the last short and, above all, that there be no prison scene in the third!"
When I said that I was ungrateful: I have never seen such an effect as that prison act, and it was marvellously played, besides, by the two actors concerned with it, Who have the whole responsibility of it. Serres (Landry) was delightfully artless and whimsical in it. Bocage, with his great Sicilian eyes, his teeth as white as pearls, and his black beard, was of a physical beauty to which, perhaps, I have only seen one other man attain: Mélingue, one of the most beautiful actors I ever saw on the stage.
After the prison scene, the other might be indifferently either good or bad, for success was assured. This was not unfortunate!
The seventh scene, like the third, was the weakest in the work; it was saved by its wit, and because, all things considered, the spectators, like Harel, thought King Louis, the headstrong, was a droll figure.
Finally came the fifth act, which had so much frightened Harel. It was divided into two scenes: the eighth, of a diabolical humour; the ninth, which, for appalling dramatic character might be compared with the second. Something about it reminded one of the ancient fatalism of Sophocles, blended with the scenic terrors of Shakespeare. So its success was enormous, and the name of M. Frédérick Gaillardet was proclaimed amidst loud applause.
Madame Odilon Barrot was in ecstasy, and enjoyed herself like a schoolgirl. Odilon Barrot, little accustomed to melodramatic theatrical displays, was astounded that emotion could be carried so far. Of course, as in the case of Richard Darlington, Harel came and made me all sorts of offers if I would consent to have my name mentioned. I had refused in Richard, where nothing pledged me to it; I refused more firmly still in the case of La Tour de Nesle, where I was bound both by a promise of honour and a written one.
I returned home, I vow it, without a single feeling of regret. It was, however, the first performance of a play which was to hold the bills for nearly eight hundred times! Next day, several of my friends, who knew the part I had taken in La Tour de Nesle, came to pay me their compliments. Amongst these was one of my best friends, Pierre Collin.
"Do you know what Harel has done?" he said to me as he was coming in.
"What has he done?"
"What he has put on the bills?"
"No."
"Instead of proceeding as in mathematics, from the known to the unknown, he has proceeded from the unknown to the known."
"I do not understand."
"Instead of putting: 'MM. Gaillardet et ***,' he has put et 'MM. *** et Gaillardet.'"
"Oh, the rascal!" I exclaimed, "he will cause me a fresh quarrel with M. Gaillardet; and, what is worse, this time M. Gaillardet will be in the right." I took up my hat and walking-stick.
"Where are you going?"
"I am going to Harel. Will you come with me?"
"I must go to my office."
"Then, quick, call a carriage! I will drop you there in passing."
I was at Harel's five minutes later.
"Ah! there you are!" he said to me; "you have learnt the trick I have played off on Gaillardet?"
"It is because I have learnt of it that I have hurried here.... It is very wrong of you, my dear friend!"
"Really! Why? Was it not agreed that the asterisks should precede M. Gaillardet's name? It is your right: you are four years his senior in theatrical matters."
"But it is the custom for asterisks to follow a name."
"Custom is a fool, my dear; we will either change it or put some sense into it; we both have enough and to spare when the devil takes us!"
"Say you have quite enough by yourself."
"Ah! You would betray me? You would go against me?"
"Oh no, I remain neutral; only, if M. Gaillardet calls on me as a witness, I shall be obliged to tell the truth."
"My dear fellow, we have a great success already; with a touch of scandal we shall have a tremendous success.... If M. Gaillardet objects, our scandal is to hand. He will then have done something for the play at any rate."
"Harel!"
"Oh! you are really delightful! You think it is enough to make masterpieces and to say, 'I did not do them.' Very well, whether it suits you or not, all Paris shall know that you did."
"Go to the devil! I wish I had never touched your cursed play.... Listen, some one is ringing your bell; I bet it is M. Gaillardet."
Harel opened his door and listened a moment.
"Who is it?" he asked.
"I do not know, sir," the servant answered; "it is a man carrying a stamped paper."
"A stamped paper?... This is something of a novelty! Show him in."
The man was a sheriff's officer who came on behalf of M. Gaillardet, and who, like Haman for Mardocheus, served as a herald to his fame. The stamped document was a summons before the Tribunal of Commerce, seeking to force M. Harel to remove the unlucky asterisks.
"Good!" I cried, "this is a joint affair! I shall find the same when I get back home. You were an idiot to play this prank!"
Harel rubbed his hands together until all his joints cracked.
"A fine lawsuit," he said, "an excellent lawsuit! I only ask two such per year for six years and my fortune is made!"
"But you will lose the case!"
"I know that, very well."
"In that case it will be a bad lawsuit."
"First of all, I would have you to know that a lawsuit is not necessarily a bad one because one may lose it; and if I lose it I shall appeal."
"But you will lose it then, for I tell you I shall be against you."
"You will say that you have nothing to do with the play, I suppose?"
"I shall say that I must not be named."
"Meanwhile, you will be mentioned at the Tribunal of Commerce, at the Court of Appeal, by M. Gaillardet's solicitor and by your own; the newspapers will copy the law proceedings, the three asterisks will have made the public talk when placed before the name, and will do so if they are put after it; the MSS. will be put in, M. Gaillardet's, Janin's and yours.... My dear fellow, I only reckoned upon a hundred performances; now I will bet on two hundred."
"May the devil take you!"
"Will you not stay to dinner with us?"
"Thanks."
"Yes, indeed.... Does not Georges bless you?"
"Is she satisfied with her success?"
"Delighted! Although you have rather sacrificed her part to Bocage, you will admit."
"Good! is she also going to bring an action against me?"
"She has a good mind to do so, and it might, indeed, happen, unless you promise to write a play for her."
"Oh! I promise her that, if that is all she wants."
"She has an idea."
"It is not divorce?" Georges had been teasing me for a long time to write her a play upon the Emperor's divorce.
"No, don't be anxious!"
I went up and saw her. She was as beautiful as the conquering Semiramis. We greeted each other as cordially as we always do when we meet. I told her the whole story about M. Gaillardet, and I was grieved to see that she thought Harel entirely in the right.
"Well, all right," I said; "let us not talk any more about it.... By the bye, what is this he tells me?"
"Harel?"
"Yes."
"Some tomfoolery."
"Exactly.... He tells me that you had an idea in your mind."
"Insolent man!"
"An idea for a play, be it understood. Peste! You have something much better than ideas: you have your caprices."
"Not with you, in any case!"
"That is just what I complain of."
I went on my knees before her and kissed her lovely hands.
"Tell me then, Georges, shall we be held ridiculous in the eyes of posterity, for having come in contact with one another without the assistance of which Descartes talks."
"Be quiet, you big animal! and go and talk such nonsense to your dear Dorval."
"Oh! Dorval!... poor Dorval, I have not seen her for an age!"
"Good! when you have been living door to door with her."
"Precisely so! Formerly we had only one door between us! Now we have a wall."
"A partition only!"
"Bravo! Ah! but let us hear your idea."
"Well, my dear, I have played princesses and I have played queens ...
"And even empresses!"
"Stop, that is for you to do." She lifted up to me her beautiful hand, which I stopped to kiss in its passage.
"And even empresses!" I repeated.
"All right, I want to play a woman of the people."
"Yes! I know you! You would play that in a velvet dress and all your diamonds."
"No! I tell you, I mean a woman of the people, a beggar-woman!"
"Bah! Come forward as far as the footlights, stretch your hand out to the audience, and there would be no more play, or rather no more beggar-woman."
"What pasture have you been browsing on to-day?"
"On one which grew in your dressing-room one day when Harel shut me up to write Napoléon."
"Come, be quiet with you, and write me my play."
"A beggar-woman.... We have Jane Shore; will that do for you?"
"No; Jane Shore is a princess; I want a woman belonging to the people, I tell you."
"I do not know how to draw such women."
"You aristocrat!"
"Come, have you a subject?"
"I know some one who has one."
"Send me that some one."
"I will."
"Who is it?"
"Anicet."
"This happens most luckily, for I owe him a play."
"How is that?"
"We did Térésa together, and my name appeared; we will do your Mendiante together, and his name shall be on it."
"Oh! it is a regular craze with you not to give your own name? Richard! La Tour de Nesle! You will end by only putting your name to bad dramas."
"Do you mean that in connection with Catherine Howard?"
"No, I said it ... at a venture."
Some one knocked at the door.
"Good!" she continued, "here is Harel coming to worry us."
"Let us see. Come in; what do you want?"
"I bring news from M. Gaillardet."
"A second writ?"
"No, the copy of a letter which will be in all the newspapers to-morrow."
"Oh! leave us in peace!" said Georges.
"Wait then, till I have read it you."
"My dear Harel, I tell you you are disturbing us greatly."
"I do not think so!" he said.
Indeed, I was still on my knees in front of Georges.
"Listen."
He read--
"30 May
"To the Editor.
"DEAR SIR,--Yesterday I was alone named as the author of La Tour de Neste, to-day my name is on the playbills, preceded by two M's, and * * *. It is an error or a piece of malice of which I will neither be the victim nor the dupe. In any case, will you please announce that, in my contract as on the stage, and as, I trust, on to-morrow's bills, I am and intend to be the sole author of La Tour de Neste. F. GAILLARDET"
"There!" said I to Harel, "that is flat."
Harel unfolded a second letter.
"Here is my reply," he said.
"My dear man, the only answer you can make is to change the position of the stars."
"That does not enter into my planetary system.... Listen."
And he read--
"1 June
"To the Editor.
"This is my answer to the extraordinary letter from M. Gaillardet, who claims to be the sole author of La Tour de Neste. The play, entirely as far as style is concerned, and nineteen-twentieths, at least, as regards its composition, belongs to a celebrated collaborator who, for private reasons, did not wish to give his name after the immense success it received. Scarcely anything left is of the original work of M. Gaillardet. I assert this and will prove it, if need arises, by comparison of the MS. compared with that of M. Gaillardet.--Yours etc.
"HAREL"
On 2 June, the newspapers contained this reply from M. Gaillardet--
"To the Editor.
"By way of an answer to M. Harel, please be so good as to insert the enclosed letter, written to me by the celebrated collaborator of whom M. Harel speaks, which I received at Tonnerre, where I first learnt that I had a collaborator.
F. GAILLARDET"
My letter followed. I must confess the insertion of my letter surprised me. It was, to say the least, tactless on M. Gaillardet's part, for he thereby made an adversary of a man who wished to remain neutral. It was no longer possible for me to keep silent; the newspapers, always rather malevolent towards me, began to attack me, and I had had a quarrel the day before with M. Viennet of the Corsaire in the very office of that newspaper, which very nearly ended in a duel. Furthermore, I felt vaguely that, before this matter was ended, there would be swordplay or pistol practice to be given or received. After all the mortifications the work had cost me, I should much prefer that this should be with M. Gaillardet than with any other person. In addition to all this, since my attack of cholera, I was excessively weak. I could not eat, and I was attacked every night by feverishness, which put me into an abominable temper. So I seized my pen and, smarting under the disagreeable impression that I had just received from the publishing of my letter, I replied--
"To the Chief Editor of the Newspaper.
"SIR,--Allow me first of all to thank you for the insertion of the letter I wrote to M. Gaillardet, reproduced in your yesterday's issue. It will be a proof to the public mind of the delicacy which I desired to exercise in my dealings with this young man; but that delicacy has, it seems to me, been very ill appreciated: the only two conversations I had with him proved to me that he could not understand it.[1] But how could M. Gaillardet not be conscious that, at least, the insertion of this letter would necessitate a reply on my part, that it could only be one disadvantageous to himself, and that, hunting for ridicule with a lantern, he could not fail to be more fortunate than Diogenes? Very well, the answer which he compels me to make is as follows--
"'I have not read M. Gaillardet's MS.; it only left M. Harel's hands for a second and it was returned to him at once; for, in consenting to write a work under a title and about a known situation, I was afraid of being influenced by a work anterior to my own, and thus lose the freshness which is essential to me before I can do such a piece of work.'
"Now, since M. Gaillardet thinks the public is not sufficiently informed about this sorry business, let him convoke the arbitration of three men of letters, of his own choice, and come before them with his MS., while I will with mine; they shall then judge on which side is the delicacy of feeling and on which the ingratitude.
"In order that I may be faithful to the extreme limits of the conditions which I self-sacrificingly imposed upon myself in the letter I wrote to M. Gaillardet, allow me, sir, not to give my name here, any more than I have done on the bills.
"THE AUTHOR OF THE MANUSCRIPT OF La Tour de Nesle"
Henceforth, it will be understood, war was declared between M. Gaillardet and myself.
[Footnote 1: I am obliged, in order not to alter the text, to reproduce the letters in their entirety; only, I now disapprove of every wounding expression contained in mine.]
Chapter IV
The use of friends--Le Musée des Familles--An article by M. Gaillardet--My reply to it--Challenge from M. Gaillardet--I accept it with effusion--My adversary demands a first respite of a week--I summon him before the Commission of Dramatic Authors--He declines that arbitration--I send him my seconds--He asks a delay of two months--Janin's letter to the newspapers
Although great events were gathering like a dreadful storm on the horizon, and were about to take place in the midst of the miserable controversy about which we are writing, I think it is better, as we have begun it, to follow it to the end, rather than to return to it later.
M. Gaillardet persisted in his lawsuit and won it. I have mentioned that I had completely refused to second Harel in his defence. The ill-advised stars which had stolen a march upon M. Gaillardet's name were obliged to fall behind it; but, as Harel had wished, all Paris knew that I was the real author of La Tour de Nesle.
Did this do the drama much good? I have my doubts about it; I have already expressed my opinion upon the pleasure the public takes in making the reputation of an unknown young man at the expense of established reputations. Two years went by, during which La Tour de Nesle ran its two to three hundred performances. I thought no more about the old quarrel; I had only published Gaule et France during those two years--a very incomplete work, from the point of view of science, but singularly noteworthy from the point of view of the prediction with which it ends--and had Angèle performed, when, one morning, a friend of mine (friends are very useful sometimes, as we are about to see), came into my room when I was still in bed, and, after a few preliminary words, asked me if I had read Le Musée des Familles. I looked at him with an obviously astonished air.
"Le Musée des Familles?" I asked. "On what grounds should I have read that paper?"
"Because it contains an article by M. Gaillardet."
"So much the better for Le Musée des Familles."
"An article on La Tour de Nesle."
"Ah! an article on the drama?"
"No, on the tower."
"Well, how does that affect me?"
"Because in M. Gaillardet's article on the tower he speaks of the play."
"Well, what does he say? Come to the point."
"He says it is his best drama."
"He ought to be ashamed of himself. It is one of my best, he means."
"You ought to read it."
"What is the good?"
"Because it may perhaps have to be replied to."
"M. Gaillardet's article?"
"Yes."
"Do you think so?..."
"Good heavens! Read it."
I called Louis. The servant I then had was called Louis; he was a droll fellow whom I found drunk from time to time, when I returned home at night, and who gave as an excuse that as he had to fight a duel the next morning he must drown his thoughts. I hurried him away to Henry Berthoud, the publisher of Le Musée des Familles, with a message asking him to send me the number which contained M. Gaillardet's article. Louis returned with the required number, and this is what I read
"LA TOUR DE NESLE
"One evening the setting sun lit up the sky with a purple red colour, and bordered the horizon that lay between Sèvres and Saint Cloud with a ribbon of fire; I was on the Pont des Arts, with M. de Jouy's L'Ermite in my hand. Guided by the Academician, I had come there as an observer to the centre of a bird's-eye view; for this particular place is a focus where a thousand rays meet and converge. Opposite to me, the city, the cradle of Paris, with its houses piled up in the shape of a triangle, and as close to one another as a battle corps; at the head of the city, the Pont Neuf, with its ancient arches and its nine adjoining streets. To the left, the Louvre, which is no longer the old Louvre, with its heavy tower and belfry; the Tuileries, that royal pied-à-terre, whose name is ennobled with the dignity of time and of the revolutions which have passed over its head; a monument of which can be said, as Milton said of Satan: 'Lightning has struck it and marked its face!' To the right, the Mint, the sole building in Paris which, together with the Timbre-Royal and the Morgue, possess a physiognomy of their own, and, so to speak, show the nature of their existence. Below, the Institut and the Bibliothèque Mazarine.
"I had reached thus far in my circumspection, when my cicerone (I still refer to M. de Jouy) informed me, in a footnote, that at this place formerly stood the tower of Nesle, from the top of which, according to the chroniclers, several queens or princes were forced to fling themselves into the Seine, to get rid the more surely and swiftly of the misfortune they had drawn down upon themselves. I was much struck by this anecdote. When still young and at college, I had read Brantôme and what it contained about the tower of Nesle; but the recollection of it had been effaced from my memory: it now returned to me vividly and suddenly. Assuming a twofold power from the hour and the place where I stood, it returned with redoubled force and impressiveness; it completely took possession of me.... For the first time, I detected the drama, and my first and best drama was conceived!
"There is something both attractive and terrible in this story of debauchery and of princely slaughters, consummated in the night, at midnight, between the thick walls of a tower, with no witnesses but the burning lamps, the attendant assassins, and God watching all! Something which takes possession of the soul, in the hutchery of these young men (they were all young and beautiful!) who had come there weaponless and without mistrust,... a truly royal quarry, which hyænas and tigers might envy! But I am letting myself run away in these poetical reflections, and I forget that I am, and only desire to be, a story-teller.
"Let us first speak of the building, then, afterwards, I will speak of its mysteries. At the time of King Philip, the Beautiful, and his sons, the boundaries of Paris were limited, on the left bank of the Seine going down, by an enclosure made by Philippe-Auguste, who gave his name to it. That enclosure, the walls of which correspond pretty nearly to the later towers of the Louvre, had, for their outer defence, a moat which communicated with the Seine, and took the water to the Gate of Bussy. Beyond the enclosure, were the great and little pré-aux-Clercs, so called because they were used on fête days as a promenade by the students of the university. They covered the space now occupied by the rues des Petits-Augustins, Marais-Saint-Germain, Colombier, Jacob, Verneuil, de l'Université and of Saints-Pères, etc. On this space, and adjoining the enclosure, was the hôtel de Nesle, which had a façade of eleven great arcades, with a close which was planted with trees, the end of which, on the quayside, was close to the Church of the Augustines. This mansion occupied the situation of the College Mazarin, the hôtel de la Monnaie and other contiguous sites: its spacious court, its buildings and its gardens were almost bounded by the rues Mazarine and Nevers and the quai Conti, formerly called quai de Nesle.
"Amaury de Nesle, the owner of the mansion, sold it, in 1308, to Philippe le Bel for the sum of 5000 livres; Philippe le Long gave it to Jeanne de Bourgogne, his wife, and she, in her will, ordered it to be sold, and the money applied to the foundation of a college which was called the Collège de Bourgogne. In 1381, Charles VI. sold it to his uncle, the due de Berry. Finding the gardens too small, the latter, in 1385, added seven acres of land to them, situated outside the town moats, and, in order to establish communication, he had a bridge built over the moat. This outer portion was called the petit séjour de Nesle. From the hands of the Duc de Berry, the mansion passed into those of several other princes and, finally, was sold outright by Henri II. and Charles IX. in 1552 and 1570. Upon its ground various constructions rose up, such as the hôtel de Nevers, the hôtel de Guénégaud, which has since taken the name of Conti; later again still, what remained of this mansion was pulled down to make room for the Collège Mazarin, now the Palais de l'Institut. At the western end of the mansion, in the angle made by the course of the Seine and the moat of the enclosure de Philippe-Auguste, were the gate and tower of Nesle, the only ones which were represented on the engraving placed at the head of this account. The gate was a kind of fortress comprised of a building flanked by two round towers, between which was the entrance from the town. This was reached by a stone bridge supported on four arches, and re-establishing the communication intercepted by the moat, which was very wide at this spot.
"It appears that, for a long time, this gate had been closed to the public; for I read letters patent of 13 April 1550, addressed to the provost and aldermen, authorising them to 'cause the gate of Nesle to be opened, for the convenience of the neighbourhood, and for foot passengers and horses only, not for the use of waggons or pack horses subject to the payment of toll.' I further read in these letters that 'the faubourg had been ruined by the wars, and reduced to arable land; and, having begun to be rebuilt under François I., who had allowed it to be done, it was one of the finest suburbs of any of the towns of France. Whereupon, request being made by the town, the opening of the said gate is allowed.'[1]
"It was by this gate of Nesle that Henri IV. entered Paris, after having besieged that side of the city, in 1589. It was still in existence under the reign of Louis XIV. Now as to the tower; it was situated some few feet to the north of the gate, on the point of land which was formed by the moat where it reunited itself to the Seine: the river bathing it at its foot. It was round in shape, was about a hundred and twenty feet in height, and overlooked the roof of the gallery of the Louvre. It was yoked to a second tower containing the spiral staircase, and was not so large in diameter, but still higher. At first sight, one would have said they were like two sisters, one of whom had the heritage of the strength and the maturity of age, and the other the lightness and graces of youth. More pointed and slender, this tower was the look-out one; more solid and staid, the former trusted to its strength and waited. Both were joined to the neighbouring gate by a wall, their ally, these three forming a complete whole, which faced south-west, and was continued by ramparts which, together with several other works, completed the defence.
"On the other bank, opposite these, rose the Louvre, and, in the angle between the Louvre and the Wall of Paris, was a tower similar to them, which they called the tour du Coin. In times of danger, an iron chain, one end of which was fixed to the tour de Nesle, stretched across the Seine, and, held up at various distances by boats, was fastened to the tour du Coin, and barred from that side of the river the entrance from the city of Paris.
"Originally, the door and gate of Nesle bore the name of Philippe Hamelin, their builder or their first owner, I do not know which. Later, they derived their name from the mansion, which had become important. The windows of the tower and one terrace of the mansion looked over the river.
"Brantôme (I now return to him), in the second paragraph, art. Ier of his Femmes Galantes, relates that a Queen of France, whom he does not name, ordinarily lived there, 'who was on the watch there for passers-by, calling out to them and making them come to her; and throwing them from the top of the tower, which still stands, to the water below to drown them.... I do not wish to say, he adds, that this was true; but the common people, the greater portion of Paris, at least, declare this; and no man so simple but who, if you showed him the tower alone, and questioned him concerning it, would say it was so.'
"Jean Second, a Dutch poet, who died in 1536, supported Brantôme's assertion in a piece of Latin verse which he composed about the tower of Nesle.[2]
"Mayeme mentions it in his History of Spain, vol. I, p. 560. Villon, who wrote his poems in the fifteenth century, at a still nearer date to the event, adds his testimony to it. Giving several new details, he informs us that the wretched victims were shut into sacks before being flung into the river. In the second strophe of his Ballade des Dames du temps jadis, he asks--
"... Où la royne Qui commanda que Buridan Fût jeté, en ung sac, en Seine?"
"This Buridan, of whom Villon speaks, escaped from the trap, we know not how. He retired to Vienna, in Austria, where he founded a university, and his name became famous in the schools of Paris in the fifteenth century.
"In 1471, a Master of Arts of the University of Leipzig wrote a small work entitled Commentaire historique sur les jeunes écoliers parisiens que Buridan, etc. It will be seen that the story of the tower of Nesle had become of European fame. The queen, of whom Brantôme, Jean Second, Mayeme and Villon, all speak, was taken to be, successively, Jeanne de Navarre, wife of Philippe le Bel; next, Marguerite de Bourgogne, first wife of Louis X., as well as his two sisters, Jeanne and Blanche, all three daughters-in-law of Philippe le Bel.
But Robert Gaguin, a historian of the fifteenth century, comes forward in defence of Jeanne de Navarre. After speaking of the conduct of the three princesses, wives of the three sons of Philippe le Bel and of their punishment, he adds: 'These disorders and their frightful consequences gave birth to a tradition injurious to the memory of Jeanne de Navarre, wife of Philippe le Bel. According to that tradition, she caused students whom she attracted to her to be thrown into the river from the window of her room. Only one single student, Jean Buridan, had the good luck to escape the penalty he had incurred; this is why he published this epigram (before his self-exilement): Ne craignez pas de tuer une royne; cela est quelquefois bon (Reginam interficere nolite timere; bonum est).'
"Thus, Gaguin does not contest the fact; on the contrary, he confirms it and develops it, only complaining--and not without reason--that it was attributed to Jeanne de Navarre, who did not live at the same time as Buridan. As regards Margaret of Burgundy and her sisters Jeanne and Blanche, they have not the safeguard or the protection of a date, nor of the verdict of history. All the world knows, on the other hand, that the three sisters were in other ways guilty of the most scandalous conduct; two of them had their two brothers, Philippe and Gaultier d'Aulnay as their lovers; the tower of Nesle then belonged to the Princess Jeanne, and was their meeting-place. But, one day, says Geoffrey of Paris--
"'Tout chant et baudor et leesce Tornés furent à grand destrèce, Du cas qui lors en France avint: Dont escorcher il eu convint, Deux chevaliers joli et gaie, Gaultier et Philippe d'Aulnay.'
"In fact, these two young men were suddenly arrested as well as the queen and her sisters, the princesses. Philippe confessed that he was the lover of Margaret, wife of Louis x., and Gaultier that of Blanche, Comtesse de la Marche. This confession made, says Geoffrey--
"'L'eure ne fut pas moult retraite Que donnée fut la sentence; Si furent jugiés sans doutance Les deux chevaliers de leur paire. D'une sentence si amère Por leur traison et péchié, Que ils furent escorchié, . . . . . Et puis entrainé et pendu!'
"Margaret and Blanche were taken to the Andelys, where they were flung, says Geoffrey, into a kind of underground dungeon.
"'Longuement en prison là furent, Et de confort moult petit urent. L'une ne l'autre ni ot aise; Mais toutes voies plus à mal aise Fut la royne de Navarre, En haut estoit; et à la terre La comtesse fut plus aval, Dont elle souffroit moins de mal, Car elle estoit plus chaudement. Ce fut justice voirement, Car la royne cause estoit, Du péché que elle avoit fait.'
"From this prison they were transferred to the Château-Gaillard, a Normandy fortress. There, by order of Louis x., Margaret was strangled with a towel, according to some, and with her own hair, according to others. Blanche was spared and divorced, and took the veil at the Abbey of Maubisson, where she ended her life. But Jeanne was even more fortunate; she had been arrested, like her sisters--
"'Et, quand la comtesse ce vit, Hautement s'écria et dit: Por Dieu, oiez moi, sire Roi; Qui est qui parle contre moi? Je dis que je suis preude fame, Sans nul crisme, sans nul diffame; Et sé nul ne veut contre dire, Gentil Roy, je vous réquier. Sire, Que vous m'oiez en deffendant Sé nul ou nulle demandant Me fait chose de mauvestie, Mon cuer sens si pur, si traitie, Que bonnement me détiendrai, Ou tel champion baillerai, Qui bien saura mon droit deffendre, S'il ovus pies à mon gage prendre.'
She succeeded, indeed, in justifying herself more or less, and her husband Philippe le Long took her back again.
"FRÉDÉRICK GAILLARDET"
There was nothing in all this particularly offensive to me; but I had been so greatly annoyed over the whole business, that I had promised myself, on the very first opportunity that presented itself, to be disagreeable to M. Gaillardet, and I did not intend to let this opportunity slip by. The occasion appeared and I seized it. I wrote, ab irato, the following letter, and I did wrong. I cannot do more than confess it, I hope.
"TO M. S.--HENRY BERTHOUD
"MONSIEUR LE DIRECTEUR,--In turning over one of your back numbers, I chanced upon an article in which M. Gaillardet relates how he wrote his drama of La Tour de Nesle. I should never have believed that such details were of sufficiently lively an interest to the public; but, as M. Gaillardet thinks otherwise, I will submit to his opinion, and I will relate, in my turn, how I wrote mine.
"I must first of all admit that its birth or, rather, its incarnation, its earliest idea, dawned on my mind in a less sudden and inspired and, consequently, less poetical, a manner than in his case. It did not strike me on the Pont des Arts, towards the evening of a beautiful summer day, at that hour when the ray of the western sun purples the horizon of the great city; it did not come to me, indeed, while I was gazing at the Mazarin Palace, vulgarly known as the Institut. That is why my Tour de Nesle is so unacademic. No; but you will, perhaps, recollect the disastrous time when the cholera leapt from St. Petersburg to London, and from London to Paris, and fell upon the Hôtel-Dieu, spreading its wings over the doomed city like a black pall. The rich man in his selfishness, first of all, hoped that the plague-laden breath of this demon would restrict itself to a mortality among the poor; that the aristocratic scourge would only decimate the dwellers in lodgings or garrets, and that it would think twice before it knocked with its trailing shroud at the doors of the mansions of the opulent Chaussée or the noble Faubourg. He thought it had gone mad I He shut the padded shutters of his windows so that no sound should reach him; he ordered his valets to fight fresh candles, to bring in more bottles of wine, to sing more songs. Then, at the close of the orgy, he heard the shout at his door:--It was the Asiatic angel come, like the Commander after Don Juan's feast, to seize him by the hair, saying: 'Repent thee and die!'
"Oh I then there was universal desolation, indeed I and it was curious to see how the rumour of the first cry of death from a rich household went resounding through the faubourg Saint-Honoré to the Luxembourg, and from the Luxembourg to la Nouvelle-Athènes; how, suddenly, all who lived encircled within that elegant triangle were stirred by a growing terror, and thought of nothing but flight, and shut themselves in their carriages emblazoned with the arms of Crécy, of Marengo or of the Bourse. More than one of these carriages, before it reached the end of the street, came into collision with a waggon covered with black on its way to the cemetery, and more than one fugitive met Death, the incorruptible Customs' officer, who forbade him to go beyond the frontier, recognising him as his, and having marked him for the tomb beforehand.
"Then, to the noise of these barouches, berlins and post-chaises, which increased in every direction, and tore along the roads, there succeeded a dull and continuous sound. A long file of hearses of all descriptions, from a simple black curtain converted into one (for these funeral equipages were soon insufficient for the number of guests invited), followed incessantly, at a walking pace, in a triple line, and before them yawned the jaws of a cemetery. Then, by another route, the carriages returned, empty and impatient to be refilled. All things disappear before the incessant fear of death: the Bourse was mute; the walks became solitary; the places of entertainment deserted; the theatre Porte-Saint-Martin, that king of money-makers, took 9000 francs only during the whole month of April.
"One of the bomb-shells which had burst over Paris struck me. I was still laid on my bed, feverish, but convalescent when M. Harel came and sat by my bedside. The disease from which his theatre was suffering was following the reverse course from mine. M. Harel is one of those gladiators who, if not the strongest, are, at least, the most agile I know: a man of calculated cool-headedness, clever by nature, eloquent from necessity. For five years, I believe, fortune and he wrestled with one another and struggled in the lists that go by the name of the pit of a theatre; certainly, more than once, he bit the dust, but, more than once, he also floored his adversary and, each time the thing happened, the goddess did not rise except with empty pockets. Nevertheless, this time, he himself confessed she had her dagger at his throat!
"With a man like M. Harel, circumstances may change from ill to good, and from good to ill ten times in one day; but, in either case, it is always a pleasure to see him because he is always amusing to listen to: Give him Mascarille and Figaro for valets de chambre and, if he does not get the better of them, I wish I may be a Georges Dandin. It was, then, with the usual pleasure which his presence gave me, no matter, as I have previously said, what the position I might be in with respect to him, that I saw M. Harel come in. This time, moreover, I thought we were on friendly terms, and his visit was a real bit of good luck to a convalescent. He recounted to me, in the wittiest manner imaginable, all the tribulations the theatre was undergoing, enough to drive an ordinary man mad, and ended by saying that if my brains were as empty at that moment as his theatre he was a ruined man.
"An author's head is rarely quite dried up; he has always, in one of the drawers of that marvellous piece of furniture which we call the brain, two or three ideas which are awaiting the period of incubation necessary for each of them before they can come forth alive. Unfortunately, or, perhaps, fortunately, none of these ideas was, at the moment, ready to be born from me, and they each needed several more months of gestation unless they were to come forth into the world still-born. M. Harel gave me a week.
"There are two ways of working at literary work as a whole and dramatic work in particular: one is conscientious, the other pecuniary; the first artistic, the second bourgeois. In the first method, one works thinking only of oneself; in the second, thinking only of the public, and the great evil of our profession is that it is very often the pecuniary work which prevails over the conscientious, and the bourgeois upholding itself over the artistic scheme. Which means that, when one works for oneself, one sacrifices all public requirements to personal, whilst, if one works for others, one sacrifices all personal demands to public; and this does not prevent, whatever their fate, an author having works to which he is indifferent and those for which he has a predilection. Now, it is useless to say that works of predilection are not created in a week. I stuck to it, then, not to give up any of the ideas I had in my head at that moment; and, M. Harel seeing this, he incontinently mentioned one of those which he had in his MSS. boxes at his theatre.
"'Pardieu!' he said to me, 'there is in one of the three or four hundred dramas received at the Porte-Saint-Martin a subject which would suit your style of work admirably, and in which Mademoiselle Georges would have a fine part.'
"'What is it?'
"'A Margaret of Burgundy.'
"'I cannot take it: I refused to deal with it the other day when some one suggested it to me.'[3]
"'But why?'
"'Because a friend of mine, who, I think, has much more cleverness than you, which is saying a good deal, is doing a drama on it.'
"'Who is he?'
"'Roger de Beauvoir?'
"'You are mistaken! It is a novel entitled, _L'Écolier de Cluny.'_
'Oh! then another difficulty is removed! I am all the more pleased to plunge into the stream of the fourteenth century at the time when cholera has come to pay me a call, for I know my Louis le Hutin to my finger-tips.'
"'So it is understood I send you the MS. to-morrow.'
"'But the author! Will it suit his ideas?'
"'The play belongs to me; mine by fair and square contract: I have the right to have it rewritten at my own pleasure, by whomsoever I think fit. And, believe me, I feel sure the author will prefer that you should touch it up rather than any one else.... Besides, let me tell you everything frankly.'
"'I warn you that, after that declaration, I shall be on my guard!'
"'Exactly so ... You know Janin is rather friendly towards me?'
"'Yes.'
"'Very well, I begged him to rewrite this play, as it is unactable as it is, and I only took it after he had consented to overhaul it ...'
"'Then you do not need me?'
"'On the contrary, for it was Janin himself who told me to come to you. He has toiled and moiled at it; he has put marvellous style into it; "I have Janin's MS. in my possession; it is, indeed, perhaps the work on which he best displayed the wealth and flamboyant versatility of his pen. This is so true, that when my drama was done I made use of his work as the gold dust with which to besprinkle my own," but, finally, he was the first to realise that there was no play in what he had done. This morning, he came into my room with an armful of papers, which he flung at me, telling me that you were the only one who could put it into shape, that I should kill him with worry, that he had the cholera and that he was going to apply a score of leeches.'
"'Very well, send me all these old papers to-morrow?'
"'Will you set at it immediately?'
"'I will try; but on one condition.'
"'What is it?'
"'That I shall not appear at the rehearsals, and that my name shall not figure on the bills; because I am doing this for you and not for myself. So give me your word of honour?'
"'My word of honour!'"
"I have already mentioned that, at the time M. Harel came to hunt me up, I was suffering from fever, a state of mind, as every one knows, extremely favourable to the concoction of works of the imagination. Therefore, the very same day, my character of Margaret of Burgundy was decided upon, my rôle of Buridan drawn out and part of the plot contrived. Next day M. Harel arrived with his manuscript.
"'Here the thing is,' he said.
"'What a pity! it comes too late.'
"'How is that?'
"'Your drama is finished.'
"'Bah!'
"'Send me your secretary to-night; he shall have the first scene.'
"'Ah! my dear friend! You are ...'
"' One moment! Let us concern ourselves with business matters now.'
"'But you know that, between us ...'
"'Ah! it is not of my own I wish to speak; it is of those of your young man.... You have made the young man sign a contract, you told me?'
"'Yes.'
"'On what conditions?'
"'Why, according to the usual Porte-Saint-Martin terms: 2 louis per performance, I for himself, I for Janin, and 12 francs' worth of tickets.[4]
"'As Janin renounced his part in the collaboration, does he give up his rights?'
"'There is no doubt on that head; he was the first to say so to me.' 'Then, your young man enjoys the benefit of Janin's withdrawal, and has the treaty entirely to himself?'
"'Nothing of the kind!'
"'Why?'
"'Because, with your rights, which are in addition to the ordinary arrangements, that would cost me a ruinous sum per night. Besides, he only claims one louis; he expects to have a collaborator: he will get his louis and his collaborator; only, the latter, instead of being named Janin, will be called Dumas, and, instead of being named, will not hear of it.'
"'Yes; but I would like this young man to be satisfied with me, all the same.'
"'There is a way; let him deduct his second louis from your rights.'
"'Yes, but then, you, on your side, will take the sum of 20 francs' worth of tickets; that will make even money for him.'
"'I am anxious it should.'
"'Do you agree to that?'
"'Perfectly.'
"'Let us draw it up.'
"I took up pen and paper and the treaty was drawn up and signed.
"'Is there anything besides to take over in what you have brought there?' I continued, pointing to the manuscript lying on my bed.
"'Why, yes, in the first act ... Understand clearly that this MS. is Janin's; I have not brought you the other, which is illegible.' 'I will see that after I have written mine.'
"'Then I shall have something to-night?'
"'Yes, the first scene.'
"'That is well; Verteuil shall be with you at ten o'clock.'[5]
"I spent the day scratching the nib of a pen on paper. Verteuil came that night at the appointed hour; I was dead tired, but the scene was done; it was the tavern scene.
"'At what time must I return?' said Verteuil to me.
"' To-morrow, at four.'
"'And shall I have the second scene?'
"'You shall have it.'
"'Wonderful!...'
"'Only, leave me in peace.'
"'I will take myself off at once.'
"'Verteuil took his leave. I then remembered what M. Harel had said to me of the beauties of style, which, according to him, existed in the beginning of the work. The first thing I caught sight of, on looking at the names of the characters, was that the principal hero was called Anatole, a name which seemed to me singularly modern for a fourteenth century drama; but I went on with my reading undiscouraged. There was a suggestion of plot, of which I took advantage, and, as I have said, admirable things in the way of style. However, I only took the tirade of the grandes dames. Thus, it is at Janin, and not at me, that the marquises of the faubourg Saint-Germain ought to throw stones. As far as the second, third, fourth and fifth acts were concerned, they diverged so greatly from ordinary theatrical rules, that it was impossible to extract anything from them; nevertheless, the magic of the style made me read them right to the end; but, when I had read the manuscript, I laid it down and did not open it again.
"Next day, Verteuil was prompt and I was punctual, and he carried off his second scene. When the first three acts were done, they were read to the actors without waiting for the last two. According to our compact, my name was not uttered, I never appeared at the reading, and M. Harel took the place of the presumed author, who was still absent from Paris.
"In a week's time, M. Harel had his drama completely finished. I then wrote to the young man to tell him that his first performance was going to take place. He never favoured me with an answer; but took carriage, came to Paris and found his rehearsal tickets at his rooms. He rushed to the Porte-Saint-Martin, came in as they began the second act, listened to it quite quietly, also to the third; but, at last, losing patience after the prison scene, he came up on to the stage and asked if they were soon going to begin the rehearsal of his play, or if they had made him come solely and simply to listen to somebody else's drama. The actors began to laugh. The resemblance in the names suddenly occurred to his mind, and he saw clearly that he had said a foolish thing.
"'What,' said Bocage to him, 'do you not recognise your child, or has it been changed at nurse?'
"The young man did not know what to reply.
"'Are you dissatisfied with the prison scene?' continued Bocage.
"'Not at all,' said the young man, who began to regain his self-possession; 'on the contrary, it seems to me very effective.'
"'Very well, but you shall see your second act,' resumed Bocage; 'that will please you indeed!'
"The young man saw his second act, and declared it to be exactly to his taste. Only, he seemed much to regret that the name of Anatole had been exchanged for that of Gaultier d'Aulnay.
"The young man followed the rehearsals of his drama most carefully, making objections at random to which nobody listened, and corrections which they took good care not to follow.
"The day of the representation arrived. Carefully though I had kept the secret on my side, the indiscreet interest of the manager, the jokes of the actors, even the complaints let slip as to the author, had denounced me to the public as the real culprit; a certain way of handling, in the construction of the play, and qualities of style impressed with an individual stamp of its own, at each moment rose up to accuse me more and more; in short, there was not one single person in the theatre but who expected to hear my name pronounced by the lips of Bocage, when he came to announce, according to custom, that the play they had had the honour of performing was by Monsieur * * * He named the young man.
"I had just fulfilled the last engagement that I had set myself, and, certainly, it was the most difficult. To hear a whole theatre stamping, applauding with hundreds of hands, demanding with the frenzy of triumph your name as the author, which is equivalent to your person, your life and your renown, and to give up instead of your own an unknown name to the halo of publicity; and all this when one might have done otherwise, since no sort of promise binds you, since no engagement whatever has been entered into, this is, believe me, the philosophy of delicacy pushed to the extremest limit.[6]
"When the performance was over, I caught sight of our young man as I was going downstairs with the audience. He modestly received the compliments of all his friends and was riding the high horse in the centre of a group of them. Janin was going down at the same time as I. We exchanged one of those looks which nobody could understand; then we went away arm in arm, laughing all along the boulevard, at the young man, at the public and, most of all, at ourselves. Next day, M. Harel, who made out that the absence of my name on the bills was prejudicial to him, invented one of those methods which were peculiar to himself, of telling the public, tacitly, what it was impossible to tell it outright, and he drew up his bill in these terms--
"LA TOUR DE NESLE "Drame en cinq actes, en prose "DE MM. *** ET GAILLARDET
"He had, as we see, reversed the rules of algebra, which lay down that one should proceed from the known to the unknown, and not from the unknown to the known. It was impossible to give proof, I think, of a more knowing ignorance and of a more ingenious blunder. Which seeing, the young man wrote the following letter to the editor of the Corsaire.....
We are acquainted with that letter as well as with Harel's answer: I have quoted them previously.
"That answer did not hinder the young man, who was a barrister, from bringing an action against M. Harel, but it was a singular action, as you shall see. He never dreamt of taking the asterisks from the bill altogether; it was a question, therefore, solely, of changing the position of them. A request was, consequently, presented by the young man to the Tribunal de Commerce, to have the things re-established in algebraical position; this request asked for a decree which should authorise the young man to put himself first. Until then all went well, and the young man had not completely forgotten the small service I had just done him, and the way in which I had done it; witness the following letter which he had written me when starting his lawsuit--
'MY DEAR MASTER,--I wish to renew my thanks for your good and loyal conduct in my affairs yesterday; but, since Harel is intractable, I will not yield him an inch of ground, and I am going to fight him. If, indeed, as he says, the honour of his management is imperilled, so is my word compromised; and I am too far pledged with the public and with my friends to remain quiet.
"'Do not let this business worry you, my dear master, and particularly do not let it prevent you from going away when you wish; only, in that case, I would ask you of your goodness to make one trivial declaration,[7] so that Harel may be brought to trial, and made to overcome his obstinacy by the certain prospect of a conviction against him. A thousand pardons for all the upset these miserable, wretched quarrels are causing you. A thousand cordial thanks.
"'4 June 1832'
"Owing to my declaration, the sentence was pronounced and the unlucky asterisks were condemned to be put last. Meanwhile, a singular idea had presented itself to the young man: namely, to sell the MS. without my knowledge. Consequently, he went in search of Duvernoy and told him that he was the author of La Tour de Nesle, and that he had come to do business with him.
"Duvernoy, who knew how things had been going, came in search of me, and warned me of the action of my collaborator. We settled there and then the conditions of the sale. It was fixed at 1400 francs, 700 of which were to be handed to the young man. Doubtless, this sum did not appear to the young man proportionate to the merit of his drama; for he threatened Duvernoy and me with a second lawsuit if we fixed the basis of terms on these conditions. At the end of a fortnight he signed a contract of sale for a sum total of 500 francs. The young man would have done better, you see, to go on letting me look after his business affairs. It is needless to say that only one single name appeared on the pamphlet, as was the case on the bills. You will, perhaps, think that in consideration of this last deed of division my young man held me discharged?
"At the time I was occupied with the publication of my complete works I received a letter from him. What do you think he told me in that letter? He told me that he had just learnt with the greatest surprise that I had the presumption to put his drama amongst mine. As one sees, the matter had degenerated into buffoonery. I replied to the young man that, if he continued to bother me with his nonsense, I should print his manuscript in the preface of my own. This intimation was a genuine thunderbolt to the poor devil. He did not know that M. Harel had made me a present, as a kind of premium, of the autograph MS. after the signing of my agreement for Angèle.
"Next day I received, by a sheriff's officer, an invitation to place my manuscript in its author's hands, because, he said, he had just negotiated its sale. The thing will at first appear odd, but it will be understood, when one reflects that, with the exception of one scene, the drama was entirely unrevised; the publisher, then, could not have been in his right senses, but the author was well within his rights.
"M. Philippe Dupin, to whom I sent both the MSS., and who still has them in his possession, replied to our adversary that we were ready to surrender the said autograph, but that we would only do so in exchange for a copy collated under the inspection of three dramatic authors and certified conformable to them. The young man reflected for a fortnight, then withdrew his demand. This was the third lawsuit he had begun against me, in order to gain for himself 12,000 francs. Since that time I have heard no further mention of the young man, and I do not at the present day know if he be dead or alive. That is how my Tour de Nesle was composed. As for M. Gaillardet's, I am not aware if it is, as he says, his best drama; I still only know it from reading it, and I shall wait until he has it played before deciding if it be better than George and Struensee.--Faithfully, etc.,
"ALEX. DUMAS"
The days rolled by, and I knew that my future adversary went shooting every morning, and I was kept informed of the progress which he made. Finally, appeared the famous answer. Let me be permitted to reproduce it in full, with the insults it contains. It is probable that M. Gaillardet to-day regrets his insults towards me, as I regret my violence towards him.[8]
"TO M. S.--HENRY BERTHOUD
"MONSIEUR LE DIRECTEUR,--I published an article in the twenty-first number of Le Musée des Families which you did me the honour to ask from me on the ancient tower of Nesle. In that article, I related cursorily, and under the form of a chat without any sort of pretension, how the idea had come to me to write a drama, the first conception of which no one has contested with me; a drama printed and published over two years ago, and performed to-day for the two hundredth time under my name, by the consent of M. Dumas himself. I did not say a word of M. Dumas; I did not make any allusion to the judicial and literary discussion which arose formerly between him and me. Anyone can be convinced of this by reading my article. I should have a scruple, indeed, against reviving a quarrel long since extinguished, and to which an amicable transaction put an end; a transaction proposed by M. Dumas himself, as I shall tell in due course, by which the public controversy that I had then desired and provoked was settled in its earliest stages. However that may be, to-day M. Dumas returns to the affair; he rekindles the cold and scattered ashes, piling them up with his hands and stirring them to life with his breath, and relights the fire, at the risk of burning his own fingers at it. Since he has thrown down the glove, I pick it up. He has incited me, I reply to him. So much the worse for him if he be wounded in this game, if his reputation chances to be compromised thereby: it does not rest with me to avoid the fight.... I am the offended, the insulted one I and, if ever retaliation be permissible, it is to him who has not sought the attack.... To such an one, vengeance is sacred and reprisals holy, he employs the right of natural and legitimate defence!
"I come, then, to the complete and true story of La Tour de Nesle. I will base my recital on proofs written and signed by the actual personages in this story, and, when proofs shall fail me, I will put before the readers' eyes the suppositions and probabilities of the case, and say to him: 'Consider and judge!' But, in a lawsuit like this, where honour is everything, where the written proof of many of the general facts cannot be set forth (for that, the future would need to have been foreseen and divined as to what would happen), where each of the litigants in certain circumstances must be believed, because he has always told the truth in others, where he who has once lied, on the contrary, is no more worthy of credence; in an affair, in fact, where good faith ought to prevail over lying, when both have nothing to show beyond their word,--I must, and I will, before all else, convince my adversary of inaccuracy (I will be polite in expression), and, that inaccuracy proved, I will bind it on his forehead like the inscription of a brand at the head of a standard, so that the stigma may survive and hover incessantly over the guilty one, before the eyes of the judges in this suit.
"M. Dumas declares (I begin with the first sentence of his article relative to La Tour de Nesle), that, having received a visit from M. Harel, the latter said to him, 'The play belongs to me; mine by fair and square contract; I have the right to have it rewritten at my own pleasure, by whomsoever I think fit....' And, further: 'You have made the young man sign a contract, you told me?' 'Yes.' 'On what conditions?' 'Why, according to the usual terms of the Porte-Saint-Martin: 2 louis per performance, 1 for himself, 1 for Janin and 12 francs' worth of tickets.' Then, in a note, M. Dumas adds: 'This treaty is still in the possession of M. Harel.' Very well, the more words the more inaccuracies. Here is the only treaty which ever existed between me and M. Harel; it is the one they made me sign, by what manœuvre I will tell later, when they made me accept the collaboration of M. Janin."
Then followed the text of that treaty, which the reader knows.
"'The drama was played,' says M. Dumas; 'they gave the name of the young man. (M. Dumas has throughout used that expression to designate me.) To hear a whole theatre clapping, demanding your name and, instead of one's own, an unknown name given up to the halo of publicity; and all this when one might have done otherwise, since no sort of promise binds you, since no engagement whatever has been entered into, this is the philosophy of delicacy pushed to the extremest limit.'
"Well, here is the letter I received from M. Dumas before the performance, and the conditions on which alone I consented to allow the play to be acted."
That letter, the first that I wrote to M. Gaillardet, will not have been forgotten.
"Now, reader, decide. In the case of M. Dumas, which holds its head highest, the philosophy of delicacy, or, indeed, that of assurance? 'Duvemoy came in search of me,' continues M. Dumas, 'and we settled there and then the conditions of the sale. It was fixed at 1400 francs, 700 of which were to be handed to the young man. Doubtless this sum did not appear to the young man proportionate to the merit of his drama.... In a fortnight's time, he signed a contract of sale for a sum total of 500 francs. The young man would have done better, you see, to go on letting me look after his business affairs.'
"Here is a declaration signed by M. Duvemoy.
"'By the same impartial spirit which made me give a declaration to M. Alexandre Dumas in which I acknowledged that M. Gaillardet had offered me the MS. of La Tour de Nesle (we shall see this later), I assert that there was never any question of 1400 francs for the price of the said MS., but of a sum which, I believe, was to be 1000 francs. DUVERNOY
"'PARIS, 8 Septembre 1834'
"I have much more to say and all the philosophies to quote! but they will find room in my narrative; for, now, yes,--now, I feel myself quite strong enough to undertake them!
"It was on 27 March that I read my drama La Tour de Nesle to M. Harel in the presence of M. Janin and of Mademoiselle Georges. The drama was received. 'Dumas could not have done better!' exclaimed the manager, enthusiastically. 'There is, however, something to touch up in the style, which is not at all dramatic; but do not worry yourself about that; begin another drama, and Janin will do us both the favour of revising some pages.' I did not quite comprehend how M. Janin, who had never written a play, could have a dramatic style, to use the manager's expression. 'But, if he has not written one,' I said to myself, 'he has heard a great many, which, perhaps, comes to the same thing.'
"I therefore professed that I should be extremely flattered and most grateful if M. Janin would indeed smooth down a few sentences. M. Janin consented with ready willingness, and I left M. Janin and Mademoiselle Georges joyfully. I was in the seventh heaven.... My rapture did not last long.
"Two days later, 29 March, I went to see what my Janinised drama had become. What was my surprise to see a whole act rewritten! 'It is a big piece of work,' I said aside to the manager. 'M. Janin did much more than I had desired; but I do not think my style so bad that he need ...' 'No, no, certainly,' replied M. Harel; 'but Janin has thrown himself thoroughly into it, he will at least want his share.' 'What! his share?' 'Yes, his half.' 'But it is a collaboration then?--there is some misunderstanding; I will go and tell M. Janin.' 'Ah! what are you going to do? You will offend Janin, Janin the most influential of the critics! You will make an enemy for life.' 'Bah!' 'I tell you it is so. You do not know what the theatre is! But ... besides they have set to work on it! It is not intact. You are bound on both sides! etc., etc.,' to such an extent that M. Harel, seeing me quite stunned, took a sheet of paper, scrawled upon it the agreement that I have transcribed above, and made me sign it.... And that is how I got my first collaborator.
"Then, I attributed that occurrence to a misunderstanding; now, I attribute it to a very good understanding: ideas change with time!
"Then the day came for M. Janin to read us his work. I said nothing, for, as far as I can, I exercise charity, even towards my enemies!... Let it be known only that, by common accord, the work was judged null and void. Janin withdrew and gave up the task (I will give the written proof), and M. Harel returned purely and simply to my drama. Now, since the day upon which I read my play, I had conceived new ideas and improvements, due as much to discussion and to the criticisms of the manager as to my own reflections. But, in order to enlighten the public as to the true mysteries of the birth of La Tour de Nesle, and, as it were, to initiate it into the phases and developments of the work by which this drama was conceived, abnormal in its success and by reason of the quarrels which it raised, I am about to establish succinctly what the drama was, as a whole, and in comparison with the drama performed, which I read to M. Harel, and which was returned to me at the epoch of which I am speaking. It will be easy to all to understand me at once (who has not seen La Tour de Nesle?), and to verify me afterwards, M. Dumas having the original MS. in his possession, and able to show it to whomsoever desires to see it; also, people may be confident that I shall say less rather than more. I quote from memory and my adversary has the book!"
Here, M. Gaillardet gave the résumé of his first MS.; then he continued thus--
"The reader has already gathered at what points the two dramas coincide. Are not these points, in the small portion I have quoted, and quoted faithfully (for if I were the man to make up an audacious lie, my adversary would hold in his hands the means of exposing me!)--are not those points already the fundamental basis of the acted drama? Are they not the bones and marrow, the substance and framework?... Indeed I I venture to say that had I done only that in the play, I should have done more than half the drama, consequently ten, twenty times more than M. Dumas allows me, since he allows me nothing. Very well! he has dared to write and to print it in all his letters! But, after what we know of him, of what can we and should we be surprised?
"M. Harel had expressed much regret to me; first, because the drama was not en tableaux; that style suited the ways of his theatre better, and the success of Richard supported the opinion; secondly, that I had not made Buridan the father of Gaultier and of Philippe, whose mother (Marguerite) was alone known. 'That would complicate the plot,' he said to me. Finally, he thought it improbable that Marguerite, a queen and all-powerful, would not have had Buridan arrested and got rid of, at the first words of his revelation. At the juxtaposition of these two latter objections a sudden ray of light sprang up in me. Let Buridan be the father indeed, by means of a pre-existing intrigue, and let him be arrested by Marguerite, who wanted to rid herself of him; then, at the moment of his greatest peril, let him make himself known, and there would be the opportunity for a magnificent scene--capital! The prison scene was hit upon.
"Two days after that on which Janin had given up the drama, like an athlete, exhausted by a task too heavy for him, I took to M. Harel, the manager of the Porte-Saint-Martin, a scenario which was pretty nearly that of La Tour de Nesle. I am, however, going to point out the differences.
"Orsini was not a tavern-keeper; that was Landry, although both were men belonging to the tower of Nesle. As for Orsini, he was one of those magicians extremely feared in his time under the name of envoûteurs. A confidant of Marguerite, he receives at his house the courtiers, a part very much like that of Ruggieri in Henri III.; it is on that account, I think, that M. Dumas has made him a tavern-keeper instead of Landry.
"Secondly, the prison scene was arranged like this so that Buridan might finish his part holding Marguerite's hands, and say to her, 'Délie ces cordes!' Marguerite, falling on her knees obediently, and freeing him with one single cut. M. Dumas has tripled that action by causing Buridan only to be unbound after three attempts.
"He is miles beyond me, as tried talent far exceeds feeble inexperienced effort, as attainment exceeds inexperience.
"As far as the truth of what I advance is concerned, it will be detected by all impartial readers, first, in the accuracy and faithfulness of its details, if I may so express it; I do not merely relate what is in the actual Tour de Nesle, but things that are not to be found in that, among others, one scene in the fourth act. Buridan comes as a gipsy, and not as a captain, to visit the wizard Orsini. The latter wants to overawe the gipsy, who revealed to him the murders of the tower of Nesle as he had revealed them to Marguerite; and soon the magician falls at the gipsy's feet, seized with the very superstitions he himself instils into the vulgar-minded, to enquire if, perhaps, there be true sorcerers! This scene was bound to disappear directly Orsini was made an inn-keeper.
"Finally, as to probability, I might say concerning the proof of my word, that I have the actual words of M. Dumas in the letter in which he says to me: 'Harel has come to ask my advice about a drama by you which he wishes to put on the stage. Your play ... that which I have been happy to have been able to add to it ... etc.' Nobody speaks like this of a work in which he has done everything.
"Next, a line from M. Harel, which I received before my departure (after Janin's withdrawal,) in which he says to me: 'Write to me; take care of your health and, above all, work! 'There were then, modifications, changes decided upon, a work to be done!... They deny it; I assert it and assert it with proof!... It is for the reader to decide the matter.[9]
"So, now, you will perceive that it will matter little to me whether M. Dumas either had or had not my first MS. in his possession. I have proved that he has had my second plan; from another source, he himself confesses to have possessed and partly copied Janin's MS. which was mine spoilt.... What more do I need?
"I will, therefore, resume my story from where I left off. Felonies were about to succeed one another like file-firing. It was on 8 April when I took my scenario to M. Harel. My father died on the 9th; he had come to Paris on purpose to fetch me away from the contagion which reigned over the city, and his joy in being present at my first play induced him to remain with me! This recollection breaks my heart!... On the 10th, as a messenger of death, I went to console my poor mother. This was the night of the same day on which M. Harel wrote me the note wherein he said, 'Take care of your health!' Wretched irony, flung at me between a misfortune which had come upon me and an act of robbery which was about to overtake me! 'Go,' he had said to me; 'I have a play before yours: you have three months before you. Take it easy and write to me!'
"I had scarcely been gone a month before I had to write to M. Janin to ask him about an announcement relative to La Tour de Nesle. A book had just appeared upon the same subject (L'Écolier de Cluny), and I did not wish it to be thought that my play was taken from the book. Janin replied--
"'I will willingly do what you ask me: but what is the good? I announce the approaching performance of your play. I say your and not our, because I count for absolutely nothing in it; you know the matter rests between you and M. Harel; that was agreed upon a long time ago, etc. JULES JANIN'
"'10 May 1832'
"After that, not a word further. I wrote to Paris, and I learnt that M. Dumas has been made and has constituted himself my collaborator. I leave the reader to imagine what my feelings were!...
"Beside myself, trembling with rage and indignation, I wrote to M. Harel to forbid him to act the play; to M. Dumas to beg him to prevent it. 'You have doubtless been misinformed,' I said to him; 'the play belongs to me and to me alone; I do not wish to have collaborators at all, certainly not clandestine ones, imposed upon me; I therefore appeal to you, for your own honour's sake, and I point out to you the necessity for stopping the rehearsals, etc.'
"No answer either from M. Harel or M. Dumas!... I set off, and, before going to my home, I went in travelling garb, as I was, straight to M. Harel. 'I am ruined!' he said to me; 'it is true I have deceived you.... Now, what are you going to do?... Stop the play!--You will not succeed in doing that; I shall change the title of it and play it. You can attack me for forgery, theft, plagiarism, what you like: you would obtain 1200 francs damages. Ask a lawyer! If, however, you let it be played you will gain 12,000 francs, etc.' He spoke the truth, for such is the protection ordinarily granted by our judges to the author who is robbed!... I returned home, pale with rage, and it was then I found the grandiloquent letter from M. Dumas, quoted by me at the beginning of this article. Such are the principal facts.
"Now, what do you say to those lines of M. Dumas? 'I wrote to the young man, and the young man never favoured me with an answer!' This time it is the philosophy of truthfulness, with a vengeance! Nobody would have believed it, if I had not held the evidence and the means of proving what I am stating! M. Dumas not having yielded to the request or to the summons that I sent him to stop the rehearsals of the play (which was the first, if not the second, of his mistakes, from which he will never clear himself, because it proves his complicity), and M. Harel threatening to play in spite of me--which, both morally and physically, he was capable of doing,--there was nothing else left for me to do but to let my drama be performed, and according to the conditions stipulated in M. Dumas's letter, in which he stated that his name would not be given, that I should be the sole author, that he wished to tender me a service and not to sell it me.
"Very well, then, the day following the first performance, asterisks appeared on the playbills before my name, and now, M. Dumas wants to replace my name by his: it will be seen what encroachments these were! This is not all. When it came to payment, they would not give me more than one share. Now, listen carefully: during the current April, the Commission of Authors had made an agreement with M. Harel, before the performance of my play, which stipulated for a fee of ten per cent, for the authors, in the performances to come on at the Porte-Saint-Martin. I had, then, the right to the benefit of this agreement. M. Dumas enjoyed it, and more beside; he also received two and three hundred francs per night. What did they leave me? Forty-eight francs, the price of an old agreement! and M. Dumas took half of it from me--that is the service he wished to tender me, and not to sell!!!
"There was nothing for it but to go to law to protest against such deeds, as there is nothing but the police station against theft and pickpocketting. I therefore had recourse to the law courts.
"If more proof still be needed, I have it at hand, drawn up and set forth in the legal deeds, properly attested, which began the examination of this trial. But it would seem that the trial a little alarmed M. Dumas's public conscience, for he suggested to me to stop it by a compromise.
"In that compromise--First, we both acknowledged each other as joint authors of La Tour de Nesle; second, it was specified that this play should always be published and acted under my name, followed by asterisks; third, M. Dumas guaranteed me a settled sum of 48 francs per performance, and half of his tickets. 'To what sum do they amount?' I asked him in all good faith. 'To 36 francs, upon my honour!' he replied, glancing at M. Harel; so I accepted 18 francs' worth of tickets. Next day, M. Harel would not fulfil the above-mentioned compromise, as far as it concerned himself, although he had been the instigator of, and witness to, it. It needed a trial to compel him to do it, and M. Dumas blamed him on that occasion.... I had that to thank him for ... it was the first and last time. He also quoted my letter.
"A little while later, I learnt that M. Dumas, who had declared to me upon his honour that there would only be 36 francs' worth of tickets, had over 50! But, while taking the oath, he had looked at M. Harel. The MS. was still for sale. Barba, who had offered 1000 francs for it, and never 1400, would give no more than 500 francs. Half that sum should have been paid down to each of us there and then, and the remainder in six months from that date. In a few days' time, when I went to M. Barba to get my 125 francs, I learnt that M. Dumas had come and taken my share of the cash payable down with his own, saying he was authorised to do so by me!
"There is something so incredible in such an act, so petty, so degrading to the man of letters, that I should not have dared to cite it, had I not possessed the proof, written by M. Dumas himself. Indeed, when Barba informed me of that, not venturing to believe it, I wrote to M. Dumas, who replied that he had, indeed, received 250 francs; but Barba had said he had special arrangements with me (did they not say that it was Barba who had wished to pay there and then?); that, moreover, he had enabled me to exact the same advantage for myself as for him ... that I could make use of his letter to get myself also paid at once, that he authorised me, etc. This was making use of a first fraud in order to commit a second, two indelicacies instead of one! I should have preferred to be settled by a six months' bill.[10] Now, Monsieur Dumas, what do you suppose I should reply to you--you who treated me in your letter as though I were a poor devil of a fellow?... I am too well-bred for you to guess. Now, in order to escape the sooner out of these unworthy details, which present so ill a picture, I will state that I should never oppose the insertion of La Tour de Nesle among M. Dumas's complete works (although that right resulted strictly as mine from the terms of our transaction together), if M. Dumas had consented to make a simple mention of my collaboration in that play. That is the method followed nowadays by M. Scribe. But, to a polite letter M. Dumas replied by one of those incivilities of which he claims the monopoly.[11]
"Finally, if I asked M. Dumas for my first MS. through a sheriff's officer, it was because it was, on his part, incredible disloyalty to put side by side with this sole and only MS. a play which had had at the least three!
"This is the truth about La Tour de Nesle and the whole truth. I should add to the documents which I have brought forward and to the proofs I have given, that, summoned before our peerage, the Commission of Authors, I cited and enumerated all these details and facts before M. Dumas in person! And there, as here, I more than once felt my cheeks flush with involuntary shame. Up to now, M. Dumas seemed great and sacred in my eyes, with the greatness of talent, the sacredness of art. So, if, after this controversy, which he provoked, another should follow it, my hand may indeed tremble ... for behind M. Dumas the man, there is the artist, and, beneath the shame, is his fame.
"P.S.--In support of his statements, M. Dumas has produced various certificates, to each of which I shall only concede what is necessary in order to the appreciation of their worth and weight.
"I will say nothing of M. Harel, who was the primary culprit in the whole affair, and whose accomplice M. Dumas is. M. Dumas ought to be ashamed to call upon such a witness.
"M. Verteuil, M. Harel's secretary, asserts to having gone to M. Dumas's house to fetch the five acts of La Tour de Nesle (excellent!) as he wrote them, to having re-copied his manuscript entirely (better and better!), which had no sort of resemblance with that (which?) of M. Gaillardet, a MS. which was in my possession about three months.... Ah! Monsieur Verteuil, I pull you up here!... La Tour de Nesle was performed on 31 May. It was on 29 March (look at the date at the top) when my MS. was received. I left on 10 April; M. Dumas was my collaborator on the 11th. He declares he did his work in a week, and you declare that my MS. had then been about three months in your possession?... Oh I Monsieur Verteuil, you are indeed secretary to M. Harel.
"M. Duvernoy certifies that I wished to sell the drama (I believe him there, indeed!). He asserted to me that M. Dumas had quoted a false price; this is rather more positive. There now only remains M. Janin's attestation. Ah! that, I confess, I scarcely expected. M. Janin writes that nothing can be more accurate than the details given by M. Dumas, which he thinks he remembers and that, on the whole, M. Dumas's reply is truthful! and M. Dumas declares that Janin, accepted by me as a collaborator, had given his rights to him and been sent by M. Harel! This is too much! M. Janin, then, forgets that he had no further rights, that he had waived his claim, that he had proclaimed this to me in a letter written and signed in his own hand?
"This is not all, and, since I must tell it you, reader, be informed that, after the first performance of La Tour de Nesle, it was M. Janin who bound me to protest; it was at his house that I wrote my protest; it was he himself who wanted to dictate it to me and did do so! He was furious with MM. Harel and Dumas. This is not all yet; in consequence of the lawsuit which arose between M. Harel and myself before the Tribunal de Commerce, M. Janin himself wrote to M. Darmaing, to support a protest that I made to the Gazette des Tribunaux: 'I beg M. Darmaing to insert the enclosed short note, I entreat it in my own name, and that of M. Gaillardet. I do not understand the stubbornness with which they seek to rob this young man of that which belongs to him, etc.' (See La Gazette des Tribunaux, 1 July 1832.) What do you say to it, reader? I had promised to relate the petty secrets of this apostasy, but I have not space; and, besides, I reflected that it was not worth the trouble, and so I sign myself--"F. GAILLARDET"
After this reply, it will be realised that M. Gaillardet had no right to delay our duel, as, not having spared me less than I had him, it was I who considered myself the injured party. So, after a fresh call on the part of my seconds, the meeting was fixed for 17 October 1834.
[Footnote 1: Histoire de Paris, by Félibien, vol. iii. of the proofs, p. 378, Collect, B.
[Footnote 2: "Epigramm, libro," p. 140. edit. Lugd. Batav.]
[Footnote 3: "In fact, Fourcade, one of my best friends, son of the Consul-General of that name, had come a few days previously to make me this offer. It will not be surprising, I think, in a letter of this kind, that I mention every one by name; for a name written out plainly saves me testimonials and certificates."]
[Footnote 4: This treaty is still in the possession of M. Harel.]
[Footnote 5: Verteuil is M. Haxel's secretary.]
[Footnote 6: "This had already happened to me in Richard; but, this time, it was not the voice of my amour propre which compelled me to restrain myself, but the entreaties of my collaborator. Ten times during the performance, Dinaux and M. Harel came into my box to beg me with growing solicitations as the drama increased in popularity to give out my name. They have not forgotten the firmness of my refusal, I believe; but neither shall I forget the friendly delicacy of their entreaties."]
[Footnote 7: "The object of that declaration was to make it known that I resigned being put first, and that I had never solicited that position."]
[Footnote 8: See Appendix.]
[Footnote 9: "'I, the undersigned, one of the managers of the newspaper, l'Avant-Scène, ex-inspector-general of the Porte-Saint-Martin theatre, under M. de Lhéry, M. Harel's predecessor, assert that, a short time before M. de Lhéry's retirement, M. F. Gaillardet communicated with me concerning a MS. of La Tour de Nesle, in five acts without scenes, of which he was the sole author; that, later, and before his departure for the provinces, M. Gaillardet showed me a new plan of the same drama in scenes, in which was pretty nearly the whole of the original Tour de Nesle; a plan that had just been settled, he said, between himself and M. Harel. In witness of which, etc., DUPERRET']
[Footnote 10: "Here is M. Barba's statement--
"I think I remember (it is more than two years ago) that half the purchase money of La Tour de Nesle was given, in cash, to M. Dumas on his saying that that was agreed upon with M. Gaillardet, which the latter denied. He was then obliged by the terms of our agreement to accept my note for his share.
BARBA '29 August 1834' ]
[Footnote 11: "'You have written Struensee!' he says to me. Does M. Dumas think to prove by that that I have done nothing in La Tour de Nesle? He forgets, then, that he, too, has written also La Chasse et l'Amour, La Noce et l'Enterrement? (who has heard these plays mentioned?) Then the wretched Napoléon, which has had two Waterloos, dragging with it in its second the downfall of the Odéon and of M. Harel! then, immediately after La Tour de Nesle, Le Fils de l'Émigré, which had three performances with M. Anicet; Angèle, which had thirty with M. Anicet; La Vénitienne, which had twenty with M. Anicet; Catherine Howard, which has had fifteen without M. Anicet? Are we really to suppose that M. Dumas is not therefore the author of the beauties of Antony, of Henri III., and of Christine? It has surely been said so here and there, and even partly proved! Perhaps it is to this that I owe M. Dumas's attack? But he need not be anxious: I shall never write a Gaule et France and certainly not a Madame et la Vendée.]
Chapter V
Sword and pistol--Whence arose my aversion to the latter weapon--Philippe's puppet--The statue of Corneille--An autograph in extremis--Le bois de Vincennes--A duelling toilet--Scientific question put by Bixio--The conditions of the duel--Official report of the seconds--How Bixio's problem found its solution
I had wished the duel to be one with swords; M. Gaillardet insisted it should be with pistols. I have a strong repugnance to that weapon; it seems to me brutal and more that of a highway robber, who attacks a traveller from the shelter of a wood, than that of the honourable combatant defending his life. The thing I dread most in pistol-duelling (but I have only fought twice with this weapon) is unskilfulness, much more than dexterity. Indeed, two or three years before the period in which the events I am relating took place--namely, before 1834--I had had a pistol-duel; I have not spoken of it, not being able to give the name of the man against whom I fought, nor to tell the reasons why I was fighting. In that duel, which took place at seven in the morning in the bois de Boulogne, in the neighbourhood of Madrid, my adversary and I were placed at twenty paces distance from one another. Lots were drawn as to who should fire first and the advantage fell to my adversary. I planted myself, with pistol loaded, at a distance of twenty paces and I waited for the firing with the muzzle of the barrel of my weapon in the air.
My adversary fired. I saw his hand tremble and the bullet strike the ground six lengths in front of me, and, at the same time, however, I felt what seemed like the sharp cut of a whip on my leg. It was the flattened bullet which struck the calf of my leg as it rebounded, making a wound two inches deep and forcing into my wound a piece of my trousers and boot. The pain was so great that I unconsciously pressed the trigger of my weapon and the charge went off into the air. The seconds then decided that the firing held good, and that any pistol discharged in a duel was discharged against the adversary.
I requested it to be continued, and the seconds began to re-load the weapons; but, during that operation, whether from shaken nerves, or loss of blood, I nearly fainted. It was, therefore, impossible to go on with the duel. Consequently, I got into my carriage, and, as I did not wish to return to my mother in the state I was in, I had myself driven to Deligny's Swimming School, where my friend père Jean gave me a bathing-closet and sent to the rue de l'Université for Roux, the clever surgeon. Roux was not at home, but they brought back one of his assistants. The young man examined the wound, and, as the ball had passed through almost from one side to the other where it had entered, he decided it was shorter to begin the search by the aid of a fresh wound than to fumble about in the other; the swelling, moreover, made that almost impracticable. It was done as he wished; the young man opened the calf of my leg and extracted first the bullet, next the piece of boot and, finally, the fragment of my trousers; then they neatly put pad of lint on both sides of my wound, and bound up my leg, and I returned home hopping on one foot, telling my poor mother that I had torn my leg with a splinter of wood while bathing. I had, therefore, good reason for not having a liking for pistols--well though I shot with them, and, at that time, I was a remarkable shot--but M. Gaillardet insisted and I accepted his weapon. All the same, I wished to prove to his seconds that if I insisted on swords, it was not, indeed, for want of skill to use the weapon preferred by my opponent. I consequently invited Soulié and Fontan to come to Gosset's. It was a singular thing! the seconds had drawn by lot their fighter, or, rather, M. Gaillardet and I had so drawn our seconds, and fate gave me Longpré and Maillan, who were simple acquaintances, and it gave Soulié and Fontan to M. Gaillardet, who were both my friends. Soulié, Fontan and I, then, went to Gosset's the night before the duel. A boy named Philippe usually loaded my pistols. He it was, therefore, who went to take down the puppet and to put up the bull's eye.
"No," I said to Philippe, "leave the puppet."
"But monsieur is not in the habit of firing at the puppet."
"I will only fire ten bullets, Philippe; it is merely to show these gentlemen that I am not one of your poor shots."
Philippe left the doll.
I put my first bullet an inch above its head; the second an inch below its feet; the third an inch to its right side, and the fourth an inch to its left side. "Now that it cannot escape either above, below, to right or to left, I am going to break it with my fifth bullet." And I broke it with my fifth. I aimed the sixth bullet at the ground; it stopped short at ten paces, almost. I shot at it with the remains of the contents of my pistol. At that moment, a swallow came and alighted on a chimney and I killed it. Fontan and Soulié exchanged looks. One of my principles was never to draw sword or to shoot before others; this time I had made an exception in their favour. Soulié himself shot extremely well; I had been his second four or five years previously, in a duel he had had with Signol, and in an experiment similar to this which I had made I had seen him break the small and large hand of a cuckoo clock one after the other at a distance of fifteen yards.
"Philippe," I said, as I came out, "I have to fight a duel to-morrow; I wish things to go off fair and square. Take with you ammunition and pistols that I have never used, powder and shot, and be at Saint-Mandé by noon."
Philippe promised to do what he was bidden and we went away.
The affair assumed a seriousness I had never realised till then. I went to Bixio, begging him, as usual, to be present at the duel, not in the capacity of second, but in that of surgeon. The meeting was to be at twelve o'clock at Saint-Mandé! We were to go by the mail-coach. If I were not wounded or killed, we should immediately leave the field of battle for Rouen, where there was to be an inauguration of the statue of Corneille. Fontan, Dupeuty and I had been appointed by a majority of votes to represent dramatic authors. Bixio accepted, of course; he was to come and fetch me from the rue Bleue, where I lodged at the time. I returned home to take certain precautionary measures concerning my son and daughter, in case of my death. As regarded my mother, since the poor woman knew that I was going a journey of some length, I left a score of letters written from different towns in Italy; if I was killed, they could hide the truth from her by letting her believe I was still alive by the receipt of a letter at intervals, as though it had just arrived by post. These preparations took up the whole night. I only slept towards five in the morning. At ten o'clock, when my two seconds came in, they found me still asleep. The affair was still on. We were to have breakfast at the café des Variétés. There, my carriage came for us and we were to be taken and brought back by my horses; then, on the return (if return there were to be), we should take post-horses and start, as I have said, for Rouen. I sent Maillan and Longpré on in advance to order breakfast. I went downstairs ten minutes after them. I had, at all risks, taken duelling swords under my cloak; I still hoped the matter would end that way. I met Florestan Bonnaire on the staircase, whom I have already mentioned in connection with Madame Sand. He had an album in his hand.
"Stop," he said, "are you going out?"
"Yes."
"Are you in a hurry?"
"Why?"
"Because, if you are not in a hurry, I wish you would go upstairs and write a few lines of poetry in my album."
"All right! Take the album upstairs; and leave it. On my return I will put you a scene in it from Christine or from Charles VII."
"You cannot do it at once?"
"No, honestly I can't."
"Go along with you!"
"On my word of honour, I am in a hurry, and I would not be late for the whole world!"
"Where are you going?"
"I am off to fight a duel with Gaillardet."
"Bah!"
"Better late than never."
"Oh, then, my dear friend, write me my lines at once, I entreat."
"Why?"
"If you are going to be killed, see how interesting it would be for my wife to have the last lines you had written!"
"You are right, I had not thought of that. I would not like to deprive Madame Bonnaire of this chance; let us go up, my friend."
We went upstairs, I wrote ten lines in the album and Bonnaire left me delighted. I was, indeed, a little later than my seconds; but I had such a good excuse to offer them that they forgave me. Bixio came and joined us at the café. We were at Saint-Mandé by noon. We found Gosset's lad there, waiting for us with freshly cleaned pistols which no one had hitherto used. Looking behind the carriage, we saw a hackney carriage following us. We suspected it was our adversary and his seconds.
We got down at the appointed place. The hackney opened, but we only saw Soulié and Fontan get out of it. M. Gaillardet had said that he would come by himself. They ran to me. I had already noticed the strange fact that they scarcely knew M. Gaillardet, whilst we were old friends. So all their sympathies were for me. I asked them to make one final effort to make M. Gaillardet fight with swords, warning them that if, at the first shot, nothing happened, I should demand a reloading of pistols. They promised to do their best in the matter of the change of weapons. At that moment a carriage appeared and stopped a few yards from us. M. Gaillardet got out of it. He was in regular duelling toilet: coat, breeches and black waistcoat, without a single white spot anywhere on him, not even his shirt collar.
It was with the recollection of the effect he made on me thus clad, that, sixteen years later, I wrote the scene between Comte Hermann and Karl, a scene where, at the moment of letting his nephew go to fight a pistol duel, Comte Hermann buttons Karl's coat and tucks the ends of his collar under his cravat. It is well known how difficult it is to hit a man clad wholly in black. When Carrel was wounded by Giradin, a year or two later, it was on the few threads from the end of his yellow waistcoat which stuck out beyond his black coat.
I shared my observation with Bixio.
"Where will you aim?" he asked me.
"I do not know, upon my word," I replied.
Suddenly I squeezed him by the arm.
"Well?" he asked.
"He has cotton wool in his ears," I said; "I will try to break his head for him."
Meanwhile, M. Gaillardet was talking animatedly with the seconds, and it was easily seen that his gestures were negative ones. Indeed, he refused a third time to fight with swords. His two seconds came to announce that his resolution on this point was immovable; there was nothing more left to do but to choose a spot for the duel. We left the carriage where it was, instructing the driver to come when he heard the firing and we plunged into the wood. After walking for five minutes we found a suitable opening: straight and without the sun. There were but the final settlements to make--the business of the seconds--they met and entered into committee. Meanwhile, I placed the letters intended for my mother, in case of accident, in Bixio's charge. My final injunctions to him were delivered in so simple a manner and in such confident tones, that Bixio took my hand and pressed it, saying--
"Bravo! dear fellow! I should not have believed you would have been so cool under the circumstances."
"It is on such occasions that I am cool," I said to him; "I slept badly the night after M. Gaillardet's provocation; but, it is part of my very character--temperament, whatever you like to call it--from a doctor's point of view, to be far less moved by danger the nearer it approaches me."
"I should very much like to feel your pulse when you are actually standing up against one another."
"Just as you like; that is easily done!"
"We will see how many more beats it gives from excitement."
"I, too, would like to know; it is a matter of interest to me personally."
"Do you think you will hit him?"
"I am afraid not."
"Try, though."
"I will do my best ... You have a grudge against him then?"
"I, not the least in the world; I do not know him."
"Well, then?"
"Have you read Mérimée's Le Vase étrusque?"
"Yes."
"Well, he says that every man killed by a bullet turns round before he falls; I should like to know if this is true, from the point of view of science."
"I will do my best to gratify your desire."
The seconds separated from one another. Fontan and Soulié went towards M. Gaillardet and de Longpré, and Maillan came to me.
"Well," they said, "we have claimed that the choice of arms ought to be decided by lot; but M. Gaillardet's seconds maintain the contrary; we have come to consult you."
"You know very well what my opinion is; I will fight with what you will, but I should prefer swords."
"Fontan and Soulié are reporting to M. Gaillardet, as you see. Stop, they are coming to us."
And, indeed, Soulié and Fontan were doing so, and we met them half-way.
"M. Gaillardet," said Soulié, "has just declared to us that if he does not fight with pistols, he will not fight at all."
"Toss five francs in the air," I said to my seconds; "and draw up a written declaration of the refusal of these gentlemen to refer the matter to lot."
De Longpré flung up a 5-franc piece, but Soulié and Fontan stood silent.
"All right," I said; "I accept M. Gaillardet's weapons, but I demand a declaration of the facts of the case."
They tore a piece of paper from a note-book, and on the crown of a hat Maillan wrote a report of the facts I have just given.
This pertinacity on my part cut short the conference. Pistols were accepted by me, and there only remained the settling of the terms. I wished we might be allowed to advance upon one another, and only to fire at our own will.
"M. Gaillardet," I said, "has laid down the terms about the arms; it seems to me that, in exchange for the concession which I have made him in adopting them, I, in my turn, have the right of deciding the way we shall use them."
"My dear friend," said Soulié to me, "the combatants have no rights; it belongs to the seconds to choose all rights."
"Very well! I request, if not as a demand, at least by way of suggestion, that my wish be submitted to M. Gaillardet."
The seconds went aside, and I found myself again alone with Bixio.
"Sacredieu! my dear fellow," I said to him, "that lad over there irritates me so much that I am dying to get even with him."
"Ah, try! you will have cleared up a very curious point in science."
Five minutes later, Maillan and de Longpré returned to me.
"Well," they said, "all is arranged."
"Good!"
"You are to be placed fifty yards from one another ..."
"Why fifty yards?"
"Oh come, wait a bit. And you have the right to walk fifteen yards towards one another."
"Ah!"
"You are not satisfied?"
"It is not all that I wanted, but one must be satisfied with what one can get. Come, mark off the distances, my lads!"
"You see, Soulié and Fontan are doing it."
"Will you have the side where you now are?"
"As I am here, I may as well stay."
The gentlemen set to work to measure the distances, and I went on chatting with Bixio. Meantime, the shooting--boy loaded the pistols. The fifteen yards which we might walk over were marked by two sticks put across the pathway. They took M. Gaillardet his pistol and brought me mine. I took it in my right hand and held out my left for Bixio to feel my pulse. M. Gaillardet was ready at his post. I signed to him to wait till Bixio had made his observation.
"Tell him then not to take any notice of me, but to fire just the same," said Bixio.
Bixio's character runs entirely on those two lines.
My pulse beat sixty-eight to the minute.
"Now go along with you!" Bixio said to me, "and do not hurry yourself."
Then he went into the wood with the four witnesses. I went and took up my position. Soulié clapped his hands three times. At the third clap M. Gaillardet ran the distance which separated him from the limit and waited. I walked towards him deviating from the straight line a little so as not to give him the advantage of helping himself to take aim by the path. M. Gaillardet fired at my tenth yard. I did not even hear the whistle of the bullet. I turned towards our four friends. Soulié, as pale as death, was leaning against a tree. I bowed my head and waved my pistol at the witnesses to show them that nothing had happened. Then I wanted to take the few yards I still had left me; but my conscience glued my feet to the soil, telling me that I ought to fire from the spot where I had sustained fire. And, I lifted my pistol and looked for the famous white point which the cotton wool in his ears promised me. But, after M. Gaillardet had fired, he had stood back to receive my fire, and, as he protected his head with his pistol, his ear was hidden behind the weapon. I had therefore to find another spot; but I feared to be accused of having taken too long a time in aiming, not being able to give, as an excuse, that I had not found the spot I was looking for. So I fired at random. M. Gaillardet flung his head back. I thought at first that he was wounded, and I confess I then felt a vivid feeling of joy for a thing I should have regretted now with all my heart. Fortunately, he was not hit.
"Come, let us re-load our arms," I said, flinging my pistol at the boy's feet, "and let us stay in our places, which will be a saving of time."
Let me be allowed, in conclusion, to substitute the written statement of the proceedings for my own recital. My feet, as when I sustained M. Gaillardet's fire, still seemed glued where I stood.
"Bois DE VINCENNES, 17 October 1834, 2.45 P.M.
"After the drawing up of our first note, the adversaries were placed at fifty paces apart, with power to advance each to within fifteen paces of one another. M. Gaillardet reached the limit and fired the first; M. Dumas fired second; neither of the shots went home. M. Dumas then declared he did not wish matters to end there, and demanded that the combat should be continued until the death of one of the two. M. Gaillardet acceded; but the seconds refused to re-load the arms. Whereupon M. Dumas proposed to continue the duel with swords. M. Gaillardet's seconds refused. Then M. Dumas urged that pistols should be re-loaded; but the seconds, after a long deliberation, and having tried to overcome his obstinacy, did not feel they could lend their countenance to a contest which could not but end fatally. Consequently the seconds withdrew and carried off the arms, and this withdrawal put an end to the duel.
"FONTAN, SOULIÉ, MAILLAN, DE LONGPRÉ"
The seconds withdrew, and I found myself alone with M. Gaillardet, Bixio and the brother of M. Gaillardet, who had come through the wood just as the firing took place. I then proposed to M. Gaillardet, as we now had two seconds and two swords, to make use of both men and arms. He refused. Thereupon Bixio and I got into the carriage and returned by the road to Paris.[1]
We set out by mail-coach a couple of hours later for Rouen, with Fontan and Dupeuty.
Bixio was twice again my second; but one of the two duels was with swords, and the other not taking place at all, he had not the chance of assuring himself as to whether a man wounded or killed by a bullet turns round before he falls. He had to make the experiment on himself.
In the month of June 1848, as, in his capacity of representative of the people, Bixio was walking with his customary courage by the Panthéon barricade, a bullet, fired from the first floor of a house in the rue Soufflot, hit him above the collar-bone, ploughed into his right lung, and, after a course of fifteen to eighteen inches, lodged near the spine. Bixio turned round three times and fell.
"Without any doubt of it one turns round!" he said. The problem was solved.
(PUBLISHERS' NOTE.)
"My DEAR FOURNIER,--A decree passed by the Courts in 1832 ordered that La Tour de Nesle should be printed and billed with my name alone; and this was done, in fact up to 1851, the period when it was forbidden. Now that we are going to revive it, I allow you, and even beg you, to join my name with that of Alexandre Dumas my collaborator, to whom I wish to prove that I have forgotten our old quarrels, and only remember our good relations in the past, and the large part his incomparable talent had in the success of La Tour de Nesle.--Yours, etc., F. GAILLARDET
"PARIS, 25 April 1864"
[TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.--The above note appears in the current edition of the Memoirs. In the Appendix to the Paris edition of 1854 will be found a long letter by M. F. Gaillardet, dated 12 April 1854, which Dumas did not reproduce in the Brussels edition.]
[Footnote 1: In order to close the story of this quarrel, which made such a stir in the literary world, we think we had better reproduce here the letter which M. Gaillardet, with an impulse which does him honour, wrote spontaneously to M. Marc Fournier, manager of the Porte-Saint-Martin, since the revival of La Tour de Nesle at that theatre, in 1861.]
Chapter I
The masquerade of the budget at Grenoble--M. Maurice Duval--The serenaders--Escapade of the 35th of the line--The insurrection it excites--Arrest of General Saint-Clair--Taking of the préfecture and of the citadel by Bastide--Bastide at Lyons--Order reigns at Grenoble--Casimir Périer, Garnier-Pagès and M. Dupin--Report of the municipality of Grenoble--Acquittal of the rioters--Restoration of the 35th--Protest of a smoker
It was with great happiness that I abandoned the literary side of my life, which had just compelled me, very much against my will, to be disagreeable to a man against whom I have preserved no rancour, and who, besides, about the time we have reached, had given up the theatre and, having published a remarkable book, so I am assured, La Chevalière d'Éon, left for America, and rendered the immense service to French literature of spreading and popularising it in the country of Washington Irving and of Cooper; it was, I repeat, with great pleasure that I abandoned the literary side of my life to take up again the thread of political events which agitated the year 1832, even if they had not as yet stained Paris with blood and thrown a pall of mourning over France. Let us be permitted to take them up a little farther back than the month of June, which saw them burst forth; we will return all too soon to that terrible moment.
After the trial of the artillery, of which I have given an account, the old secret societies, endued with the Carbonist principles of 1821, were reorganised, and, at the same time, new societies were created. Our readers are acquainted with the name of the Society of the "Friends of the People," and that of the "Rights of Man": these, in a measure, were the parent societies; but two other societies had sprung up side by side with them: the Société Gauloise, which, at the time of the combat, proved itself one of the most ardent in flying to arms; and the organising Committee of the Municipalities, which connected itself by invisible but real bonds with the famous Society of the Philadelphians, which, under the Empire it had failed in overturning, had, for its principal leaders, Oudet, Pichegru and Moreau. Bastide was affiliated to the latter society, the principles of which were Babouvist; so, at the Lyons insurrection, which, caused by poverty, was of a socialistic tendency, Bastide was sent in to the insurgent town to see what the Republican party could gain from it. All was over by the time he arrived; but he thought he could discern the seeds of fresh insurrections in the dying one, and returned with the idea that something might be done in that direction. So he only stayed a short time in Paris, and soon set off again for the départements of Ardèche and Isère. There he found that fiery Dauphiné population which, in 1788, were the first to keep their States for Vizille; which, since 1816, had conspired against the Bourbons, and, since 1832, against Louis-Philippe. On 13 March he returned from a tour in the mountains with the two brothers Vasseur, both since dead, the eldest of whom was representative of the people in the Legislative Assembly; and, as they approached the gates of Grenoble, they learnt that the town, which they had left perfectly quiet, was in flames. This is what had happened.
On 11 March the young people had organised a masquerade which represented the Budget and the two supplementary Trusts, New regulations forbade this masquerade; but ancient custom had prevailed over new rules, and the masquerade procession had--left Grenoble by the gate of France and was making straight for the Esplanade, where General Saint-Clair was to hold a review of the garrison exactly at that hour. The general was aware of the interdiction against the masquerade; but, like a sensible man, he pretended not to see it. Unluckily, M. Maurice Duval, préfet of Isère, was less tolerant. It was the same M. Maurice Duval whom we shall meet again three or four months later, talking to Madame la duchesse de Berry with his hat on his head.
M. Maurice Duval, furious that the young folk of the town had transgressed the order, requested M. de Saint-Clair to make the soldiers take up arms. The result of this order was that when our masqueraders wanted to re-enter the town they found not only that the gate was shut, but also that behind each closed gate were a hundred or so of grenadiers waiting for them, armed to the teeth. The masqueraders, who were not above ten or twelve, could not believe in such an exhibition of force; consequently they marched resolutely upon the grenadiers, who fixed their bayonets. Unfortunately the crowd which followed them thought it was a joke, as they did, and determined to enter also; there were horsemen and carriages among them, but the grenadiers thought of nothing but their orders, and stood firm. The crowd, pushed upon the bayonets, began to complain that these were entering their bodies. The complaints were succeeded by cries of "Down with the grenadiers!" and showers of stones followed this cry. A collision seemed imminent. Colonel Bosonier l'Espinasse took upon himself to command that the gates be opened. The grenadiers withdrew; the crowd was swallowed up in the town, and, in the midst of this commotion, the masqueraders, the first cause of all the uproar, disappeared. Instead of being satisfied with this ending, which conciliated everybody, M. Maurice Duval protested against the weak giving in, and made out that the Government would fall into contempt if he did not take his revenge.
A masked ball was announced for the night; M. Maurice Duval forbade it. The mayor, a sensible man, rushed to the préfecture and pointed out to M. Maurice Duval that if they were deprived of a pleasure upon which they were counting, this interdict would produce the very worst effect on people whose heads were already excited.
"What of that?" returned M. Duval, so one was told.
"What of that? Why, there will be a riot!"
"Good! the rioters will fling stones at the soldiers; but, if they fling stones, the soldiers will put bullets into them, that is all."
This retort, the truth of which there is nothing to establish, spread throughout the town.
At night, in the theatre, there were outcries to hold the ball forbidden by the préfet; but matters went no further than that.
Next day the town seemed quiet; but a rumour spread abroad that they were going to give a charivari that night to M. le préfet. The Dauphiné charivaris are celebrated; some time previously they had given one at Vizille, which had made much stir. In the morning M. Maurice Duval was warned of the project. So he sent an order to the mayor to put a battalion of the National Guard under arms. Now this despatch,--by what cause or from what reason is still unknown,--sent from the préfecture at noon, never reached the Mairie until a quarter to five in the evening. This was too late: the summons could not take effect.
The charivari was no empty threat. About eight at night a gathering began to collect: it had nothing hostile about it, for nearly a third of it was composed of women and children. This crowd, which had no arms, nor even at that moment, at least, any means necessary for the giving of a charivari, was contented with shouts of laughter, uttering of halloes, and occasionally cries of "Down with the préfet!"
This was all very disagreeable, but ranked, however, among the insults to which not merely public functionaries are exposed, but Conservative deputies even still more. A summons could put an end to the gathering of the crowd; but M. Duval was not content with merely re-establishing order; he wished to punish those who had annoyed him. He gave orders to MM. Vidal and Jourdan, police commissaries, to go to the barracks where the soldiers had been confined for four hours, each to take a company, and to surround, the agitators. Amongst these agitators, a tipsy youth was bringing notice upon himself by his droll gesticulations and frantic shouts. The police agents made way through the crowd to arrest the charivariseur from the midst of its numbers. The crowd let them do so, and the young man was taken away to the guardhouse. But the arrest was hardly accomplished before all those men who had kept silence, and given way to two policemen, reproached themselves with their cowardice, and excited one another, clamouring at the top of their voices for the prisoner. Then the charivari began to change its aspect: it turned to a riot. It was at this moment, and as the first deputy of the mayor was about to set the prisoner free--who, ignorant of the cause of all the uproar, had been asleep in the guardhouse--that the grenadiers and light infantry appeared: the grenadiers, led by M. Vidal, were advancing across the Place Saint-André; the infantry, led by M. Jourdan, by the rue du Quai. These were the only two ways of egress. The soldiers wore the gloomy expression which indicates determined purpose. They marched in file, advanced in silence, the drummers having their drums on their backs. Suddenly M. Vidal disappeared, and across the Place Saint-André this order was given from between the officer's clenched teeth--"Soldiers, forward!" The grenadiers lowered their rifles at this order--charged their bayonets and advanced at charging pace, taking up the whole width of the street. The crowd fled by the rue du Quai, the only outlet which seemed open to it; but in that street it met and dashed against another crowd which was flying before the infantry. Then on all sides a frightful tumult took place in the crowd thus threatened, and it was drowned in the voice of an officer who gave this laconic order--"Fix bayonets! charge!" Almost at the same moment cries of pain succeeded those of terror; one could distinguish this from the anguished tones which cried out--
"Pardon!... Help!... Murder!"
Luckily the windows of a study opened and some thirty persons rushed into the shelter thus afforded. M. Marion, councillor to the cour royale of Grenoble, flung himself into the entry of Bailly's shop, and there met a man covered with blood. A student named Huguet, wishing to protect a woman threatened with a grenadier's bayonet, threw himself in front of her and received on his arm the blow meant for her. A cabinetmaker named Guibert backed up against the wall, seeing the circle of bayonets come towards him, cried out, "Do not hit me! I am not making any disturbance!" He received three thrusts from the bayonets, one of which, in the groin, sent him spinning close to the statue of Bayard.
Imagine that statue, after three hundred years, looking on with the eyes of the chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, and judge of his amazement!
It was in the midst of this turmoil that Bastide and the two brothers Vasseur arrived. The opportunity for which the intrepid agent of the Société des Municipalités was looking had come to meet him. The two brothers Vasseur exchanged a few words with the associates, and, during the night, all the young men, enrolled in secret companies, rushed off to meet Bastide. All were of opinion that the moment had come to strike the blow. There was such enthusiasm in those young heads at this period, such courage in all young hearts, that they had scarcely realised their conviction before they were trying to imbue others with the idea that the time for action had come. Every one thought that the fiery atmosphere he breathed was the atmosphere of the whole of France. It was then decided that, next day, they should take advantage of all the circumstances and try to get up a more serious struggle. It was, indeed, a wonder they waited till the morrow.
Next day everything was just what the patriots could desire: public anger was at its height, and general indignation overflowed. The number of wounded was exaggerated, and they said the journeyman cabinetmaker, Guibert, was dead. On all sides an inquest was being demanded. The procureur-général, M. Moyne, said openly that he should prosecute the guilty parties, whoever they were.
The Cour royale took up the matter. All these rumours, all this budding news, spread and increased with fearful rapidity, like a storm roaring in the air. The curses of the city were concentrated on the préfet and the 35th regiment of the line--on those who had given the orders, and those who had carried them out.[1] About ten o'clock in the morning the rappel beat in every street of Grenoble: the National Guard was being called out by order of the municipal councillors. But at the same time that the National Guards were going to their posts, the young men who formed no part of the National Guard ran hither and thither, passing about among the armed men, exchanging a few brief words with them which proved that the whole population shared the same feeling, and, asking for rifles, spread the flames of the insurrection that was already visible.
Then two very separate and distinct and decided authorities revealed themselves: the municipal authority, which proceeded by means of gentleness and conciliation; and the regal authority, which exercised compulsion and terror.
Two proclamations both appeared simultaneously; one proceeding from the mayor's side, the other from that of the préfet; the préfet's proclamation was torn down with cursings; the mayor's was applauded enthusiastically. At this moment the roof of the Hôtel de Ville filled with infantry, whose rifles could be seen shining in the shade; the piqueurs of the previous day were recognisable, and from all parts shouts of "Down with the préfet! Down with the 35th of the line!" went up. The préfet, who thought he had taken all the coercive measures necessary, waited at the préfecture, having by him General Saint-Clair and all his staff.
At this instant M. Maurice Duval, MM. Ducruy, Buisson and Arribert were announced. These three well-known names, honourably known names, belonged to the municipal council of the town. They came to ask the préfet for the surrender to the National Guard of the positions occupied by the 35th of the line!
General Saint-Clair had realised the gravity of the situation; he guessed that something more serious than a quarrel supervening a charivari was exciting them down below; he discerned in it the counter-stroke of the Parisian risings; that there was Republican influence at work. Therefore, in spite of the opposition of the préfet, he announced that he was prepared to give up to the National Guard all the positions which contained under a dozen men.
"Does the guard which watches at the gate of your hôtel understand?" asked the préfet.
"That is the first I shall give up," replied the general.
In fact, the order was about to be given when a great noise was heard in the courtyard of the préfecture. The crowd had invaded it, and blows resounded on the gates.
"What does that signify?" General Saint-Clair asked.
"Parbleu!" replied M. Maurice Duval, laughing, "that means that with your fine measures of conciliation we, you and I, shall be flung out of the windows!"
The betting was a hundred to one that the prophecy would be fulfilled; so the general, his staff and the préfet left the defence of the préfecture to a detachment of firemen, and hastened into the hall of the Mairie. They found a large number of the National Guard collected there to defend the Hôtel de Ville and the municipal council, if these should be attacked, but they did not seem in the least degree disposed to extend that protection to the préfet and General Saint-Clair. The latter was not mistaken, for he felt there was something unknown and more portentous beneath all this than a provincial riot; it was Bastide and the brothers Vasseur--old campaigners, whose first stripes traced back to Carbonarism--who were leading the movement.
At the cry that went up in the town of "Guibert is dead!" Bastide had conceived an idea which he had communicated to his companions; it was to pick up the body and carry it about the streets, shouting--"To arms!" We know what a similar procession, leaving the Vaudeville Theatre in 1830, had produced, and we have since seen what the same manœuvre did after the famous discharge of the 14th of the line on the boulevard des Capucines. Consequently, Bastide sent men to Guibert's dwelling. The dead body was to be borne to the house occupied by the brothers Vasseur, and the cortège was, from there, to march through all the streets of the town. Whilst they were going to Guibert's house, the younger Vasseur reorganised the volunteer corps with which, in 1830, he had attempted to invade Savoy. A desperate chamois-hunter, he had then carried on a most curious warfare among the mountains, which deserved a historian all to itself. Later, he was exiled from France, and travelled over Mexico and Texas; and, on his return, he was seized with cholera, and died. He was a man of lofty purpose, adored at Grenoble, specially by the men with whom he had made the strange enterprise of stirring up and conquering Savoy.
As he ran to announce that his volunteer corps was ready, the messengers sent to Guibert's home to get the body came to tell in a whisper that Guibert was very ill, but not dead. This was a great disappointment; at the same time, with his usual cleverness, Bastide changed his plan: as people's spirits seemed prepared for bold undertakings, the voluntary corps of the younger Vasseur afforded him actual power; he ordered them to march upon the préfecture. It was the noise of the invasion led by Bastide which had echoed in the apartments, and had obliged General Saint-Clair and M. Maurice Duval to take refuge in the Mairie, in order not to be flung out of the windows, as the préfet said. At the same time, Vasseur the younger, with his volunteer corps, drew up in front of the Mairie windows. So, when General Saint-Clair made the suggestion of giving up to the National Guard all the posts with less than a dozen men at them, a voice rose up and shouted, "It is too late!"
What is it in those four words of eleven letters that is so fatal and cabalistic?
The insurgents now demanded the occupation of all the posts held by the National Guard with the exception of the three town gates, which were to be guarded by the National Guard, artillery and engineers unitedly. The conditions were severe. General Saint-Clair determined to face the insurgents instead of sending a parley; he went into the courtyard himself and wanted to harangue the crowd. But a young man came from out the crowd with his arm in a sling. It was Huguet, who had been wounded the previous day. He exchanged a few vivacious words with the general which were only heard by those around them, but which the latter repeated to others; and it was thus they learned that Huguet, with the vigour of a man who had risked his life the day before, protested against the return of the 35th of the line. Universal applause greeted Huguet's protest; whilst Vasseur, thinking it was time to learn why he and his volunteers were there, embraced him before everybody. The effect of this salutation was electrical. They shouted, "Vive Vasseur! Vive Huguet! Vive le Maire!... Down with the préfet! Down with the 35th of the line!"
A young man called Gauthier stretched out his arm, seized General Saint-Clair by the collar, and cried aloud--
"General, you are my prisoner!"
The general offered no resistance, although the soldiers were within call of his voice, and he knew he had only to say a word to bring about a more terrible struggle than that of the previous day; but he hesitated to give that word, and followed the man who arrested him. They took the general to his hôtel, and Vasseur placed sentinels from his volunteer company at every door. At the same time, Bastide, who was studying the whole situation, thought that the moment had come to assault the préfecture. The doors were forced in at the first attempt, and, in spite of the resistance of the firemen, the insurgents entered the vestibule and tried the doors of the apartments: they were all solidly barricaded on the inside. A street urchin--they are everywhere to be found, and always at the head of any uproar--succeeded in breaking and forcing open the lower panel of a door. Bastide slipped through the aperture and received a blow from a bayonet which tore his coat and scratched his breast; but he seized the bayonet with both hands, and the soldier, drawing his rifle towards himself at the same time drew in Bastide, who found himself inside, snatched the rifle from the soldier's hands, and opened the two sides of the swinging door to those who followed him. The préfecture was captured.
The rumour had gone abroad that the préfet was hidden in a cupboard. Bastide himself presided over the opening of all the cupboards; but they were empty--of préfets, at any rate. The next thing was to take the citadel. At Grenoble, as in ancient Arx, the citadel is situated on a hill, and commands the whole town. Bastide asked for some volunteer to take the citadel with him; an artillery-man named Gervais came forward. They both climbed the steep slope; when they reached within twenty yards of the sentry, the latter cried--
"Who goes there?"
"The Commandant of the fortress," replied Bastide.
The sentry presented arms and let Bastide and M. Gervais pass. The taking possession was as rapidly carried out as the entry. Bastide, who remembered his profession of artillery captain, had six pieces of cannon brought out and put in position in the square. When they had reached that place, their success had reached its height. Nothing, indeed, had been prepared that could give a serious check to such a sudden attack. Whilst Bastide was entering the préfecture and carrying the citadel, timid hearts were alarmed to see the direction in which the fiery spirits were going. Reaction began to set in.
When Bastide came down into the town again, after making sure of the citadel, he found that the National Guard had relieved the posts at General Saint-Clair's hôtel. It had taken all Vasseur's influence over his men to prevent a collision between them and the volunteer corps. From that time Bastide realised that, if Lyons did not rise, all was lost. General Saint-Clair, who desired to restore the peace which he had not been able to maintain, spoke of sending a deputation to General Hulot, charged with asking him for the return of the 35th. He mentioned the name of M. Julien Bertrand. Bastide offered and was accepted. M. Bress, aide-de-camp of General Saint-Clair, was added to them, and they all three set out for Lyons. It will be understood that the mission demanded by Bastide was only an excuse. He wanted to confer with the Republicans of Lyons, and to ascertain what could be done.
One single power was left at Grenoble after they left: the municipal. The préfet was sheltering in the barracks--the National Guard was distributing cartridges through the mayor.
The three deputies reached Lyons in the middle of the night. They were at once taken to General Hulot. Bastide was the spokesman.
"Grenoble is taken; General Saint-Clair is a prisoner; the préfet is in hiding, or has taken flight; thirty-five thousand insurgents occupy the town; and the peasants of the surrounding country are beginning to come down from the mountains."
This news, given with the air of perfect truth, which neither M. Bertrand nor M. Bress denied, frightened General Hulot, who acceded to the retreat of the 35th and the sending away of the préfet, gave a written order to M. Bress and despatched him straight to Paris.
Bastide left General Hulot's house with M. de Gasparin, Mayor of Lyons. M. de Gasparin held advanced Liberal opinions: he reminded Bastide that he was the son of the regicide, and that all his inclinations were towards Republicanism. Bastide left M. de Gasparin and immediately put himself into communication with the Republicans of Lyons, whom he had seen during his last tour. They assured him that, if Grenoble only held out forty-eight hours, they would begin a 24th of November more terrible than the first. And, indeed, that 24th of November burst out in 1834. Bastide set out for Grenoble. All had calmed down during his absence. The volunteer corps was disbanded, and constitutional order was re-established everywhere. They offered Bastide the choice of taking refuge for himself in Piedmont or Savoy; but he feared that, by following this advice, he would pass for an insurrectionary agent, and contented himself with taking a boat and going down the Rhone with the two brothers Vasseur, who lived in the département de l'Ardèche; when there, the three conspirators would be at home, and would have a thousand means of evading search. At Romans they were all three arrested and taken back to Grenoble. At the same time, M. Huguet was arrested, he who had harangued General Saint-Clair, also M. Gauthier, who had arrested the general. Meanwhile General Hulot's orders had been carried out, and on 16 March the 35th of the line had left the town.
Casimir Périer, bilious and irritable all over, still more irritable on account of the disease to which he was to succumb two months later, learnt this news with rage. Casimir Périer was a minister of strong aversions and petty views; to him France was divided into friends and enemies. His desire was not to govern France, but to destroy his personal enemies. A financier, he wanted peace before all else; he did all in his power to keep up the revenue, and made impossible efforts to increase it still more. The Bourse actually went into mourning at his death!
By his order le Moniteur published an article in praise of the 35th. This was nothing: from the point of view of the Government the 35 th had merely done its duty. But, simultaneously with these praises, which had been allowed to pass, the article added that the military had only resisted aggression: that many were already wounded when they charged, whilst, on the contrary, the injuries of the agitators had been exaggerated. These inaccuracies were common knowledge; but one knows that the Government of King Louis-Philippe did not shrink from that sort of thing. MM. Duboys-Aymé and Félix Réal, deputies of the arrondissement of Grenoble, wrote to le Moniteur to give the real facts of the case. Le Moniteur refused to put in their letters. In the sitting of 20 March, M. Duboys-Aymé asked leave to speak, mounted the rostrum and questioned the minister upon the subject of the occurrences at Grenoble. Garnier-Pagès, an advanced leader of the Republican party in the Chamber, supported him.
"How can the Government bestow blame or praise without previous inquiry? How can it be satisfied from the préfet's report that the préfet did right; from the report of the military commandant how decide that the armed-force acted rightly; from the report of the procureur-général how be satisfied to extol the procureur-général?"
"I," the orator said, "do not judge harshly like that. Although I may say that the correspondence and the two newspapers of Grenoble--papers of absolutely opposite opinions--relate the facts in the same way; although we have a thousand proofs to one that the rioters were not summoned to disperse by the town authorities, I should but speak hypothetically, and I say: If those orders were not carried out, still the citizens were killed!"
At these final words the Centres took up the dubious phrase and turned it into the affirmative; they shouted loudly, so that the speaker could not go on.
M. Dupin ascended the rostrum; the Centres quietened down. They knew that, under any circumstances, M. Dupin was the King's advocate, both in the law-courts and in the tribune.
Here is a specimen of the speech of the deputy for la Nièvre--
"How can you expect a government to progress," asked M. Dupin, "when at the very heart of the national representation itself--a microcosm of the population, among the trustees of its power--the first movement is not in favour of the authorities and the instruments of law, and the first impulse is to put authority in the wrong and reason to flight? It is said that the Riot Act was not read; but when should it be read? When public gatherings become disquieting by their outcries and by their presence, but not when a violent aggression displays itself by methods of action and open attacks."
At these words the president of the Council rose; though pale, he had a fiery and energetic soul in his sickly, debilitated body, and he exclaimed--
"That is the question; speak!"
M. Dupin, encouraged by the president of the Council and by the cries of the Centres, continued--
"When legal order is called upon, it must submit itself to the rules of legality. If I am attacked by a malefactor in the streets of the town, I invoke the help of the magistrates, the legal protection of authority; but if, single-handed, I am attacked on the high road, I become a magistrate in my own cause, and I defend myself from anything and everything.... Think of it, gentlemen, can a French army consent to quit its hearths, its family, to be at the disposal of the magistrates, to watch over the defence and protection of its citizens, and yet allow itself to be insulted, attacked, killed at a street corner and at the bottom of a passage? Messieurs, I am certain that the whole population of Grenoble is indignant.
"M. GARNIER-PAGÈS.--Yes, indignant, that is true.
"M. DUBOYS-AYMÉ.--Indignant, but against authority.
"M. DUPIN.--It is indignant against the authors of the disturbance. Who, then, brought about these troubles and misfortunes? Not the young men, who were simply amusing themselves with an inoffensive masquerade. IT IS AN ABOMINABLE CRIME, IT IS TO SIMULATE THE MURDER OF THE KING!"
Thus a great confession had just been made by M. Dupin, the king's man.
The king is the Budget and the two supplementary trusts. To make game of the two and the Budget by means of a masquerade is to simulate the murder of the king! An enemy would not have said anything better. O La Fontaine! good La Fontaine! what stones M. Dupin has flung at the head of his friend Louis-Philippe! This last one was one of the heaviest.
A few days later, a report arrived from the municipality of Grenoble. It stated--
"1. That the masquerade of 11 March in no way typified the assassination of the king.
"2. That the National Guard had been convoked too late to assemble.
"3. That no shouts in any way hostile to the Government or to the king had been uttered beneath the préfet's windows.
"4. That M. Duval had, indeed, given the order to the Commissaries of the Police to surround the gathering of people, but not to disperse it.
"5. That no legal summons had been made.
"6. That the place of gathering was destitute of stones that could be thrown at the soldiers.
"7. That amongst the wounds given to the citizens, fourteen had been received from behind.
"8. That one soldier only had entered the hospital four days after the events of the 12th, for some inflammatory attack consequent on a kick.
"9. Finally, that the events of the 13th were the inevitable result of the exasperation of mind caused by a flagrant violation of the law, and that the conduct of the National Guard of Grenoble had been not only irreproachable, but even deserved the gratitude of the citizens."
Better still, the tribunal of the Police Correctionnelle, before which the accused had been sent, for want of power to hand them over to the Court of Assizes, decided that their conduct had not been more than imprudent; in consequence of which decision Bastide was liberated, and returned to Paris.
Not one witness had desired to recognise him, not even the fireman who had dealt him a blow in the chest with his bayonet, and from whom Bastide had snatched his gun. But the Government could not be wrong, and the 35th returned to the town, drums beating, bands playing, slow matches ready. Only one protest was made, which will illustrate the French mind.
An approaching workman, who did not know for what deadly object this match was intended, remarked to the gunner--
"My friend, please let me have a light for my pipe."
[Footnote 1: See Appendix.]