Chapter II
General Dermoncourt's papers--Protest of Charles X. against the usurpation of the Duc d'Orléans--The stoutest of political men--Attempt at restoration planned by Madame la duchesse de Berry--The Carlo-Alberto--How I write authentic notes--Landing of Madame near La Ciotat--Legitimist affray at Marseilles--Madame set out for La Vendée--M. de Bonnechose--M. de Villeneuve--M. de Lorges
Now that we have seen what was happening in the east of France, let us see what was happening in the west. In order properly to estimate the fire which was about to set Paris aflame, we must cast a glance on that which was devouring the provinces. Having followed the attempts of the Republican party in the départements of the Rhone and of Isère, let us follow those of the Legitimist party in the départements of La Loire-Inférieure Morbihan and la Vendée.
Further, we can guarantee the exact accuracy of the incidents we are about to give: they are taken from the papers of General Dermoncourt, my father's aide-de-camp, of whom I have often had occasion to speak; and amongst those papers were a large number of notes sent by the Duchesse de Berry herself, which had been used in the second edition of the book, La Vendée et Madame, published by General Dermoncourt in 1834.
It will not have been forgotten that, by a strange coincidence of circumstances, it was this General Dermoncourt and the same M. Maurice Duval with whom we have just been concerned in connection with the troubles at Grenoble, who, the one being commandant of the military force, the other representing the regal authority, took Madame la duchesse de Berry in her hiding-place at Nantes.
Let us say a few words about the way in which the insurrection of la Vendée had been set going, and as to the point it had reached at the period to which we have now come; a few words which will form a sequel to what we have just related of the events at Lyons and Grenoble. Twenty years ago everybody was acquainted with the smallest details of what we are about to describe; now, every one has forgotten them. History passes quickly in France! In another part of our Memoirs we followed Charles X. and the Royal Family to Cherbourg. On 24 August 1830 the old king protested at Lulworth against the usurpation of the rights of his family, and reserved to himself power over the regency until the majority of his grandson.
Here is the protest, which, I believe, has not been published in France--
"We, Charles, the tenth of that name, by the grace of God, King of France and of Navarre.[1] The misfortunes which have just burst over France, and the desire to guard against greater, decided us on the 2nd day of the current month, in our Château of Rambouillet, to abdicate the crown, and at the same time we induced our beloved son to renounce his rights in favour of our grandson, the Duc de Bordeaux. By a similar deposition, dated yesterday, at the same place, and repeated in the second Act, we named provisionally as lieutenant-general of the kingdom a prince of our blood who has since accepted from the hands of rebels the usurped title of King of the French. After an event of such a nature, we cannot hasten too soon to fulfil the duties which devolve upon us, as well in the interests of France, a sacred trust which has been handed on to us by our ancestors, and in our unswerving confidence in divine justice. For which reasons we protest, in our own name and in that of our successors, against all usurpation of the legitimate rights of our family to the crown of France. We revoke and declare the above-mentioned deposition null by which we entrusted the lieutenant-generalship of the kingdom to the Duc d'Orléans.
"We reserve to ourselves the prerogative of the regency so long as there is need for it, until the majority of our grandson Henri V., who was called to the throne in consequence of the Act issued at Rambouillet on the second day of this month; this majority, fixed by Crown Statutes and the tradition of the kingdom, will be reached at the beginning of his fourteenth year, on the 30th day of the ARLES" month of September 1833.
"In case it shall please providence to remove us before the majority of King Henri V., his mother, our beloved daughter, the Duchesse de Berry, shall be Regent of the kingdom. The present declaration shall be made public and communicated to those who are rightly concerned in the matter when circumstances shall ordain.
"Drawn up at Lulworth, the 24th day of the month of August of the year of grace 1830, the sixth of our reign. Signed: CHARLES
Nevertheless, six months later, Madame la duchesse de Berry having thought a third Vendée possible, and having communicated that belief to the old king, he gave her a letter, dated from Edinburgh, addressed to the Royalists in France, so that, in spite of his declaration of 24 August, they should recognise her at once as Regent. The declaration is as follows:--
"M ***, Head of the Civil Authority in the province of ***, shall combine with the principal authorities to draw up and publish a proclamation in favour of Henri V., in which they shall announce that Madame, Duchesse de Berry, shall be regent of the kingdom during the minority of the king, her son, and that she shall take the title upon her entry into France; for such is our will.
"Signed: CHARLES
"EDINBURGH, 27 January 1834"
Since her departure from France, Madame la duchesse de Berry, whose body was enfeebled, temper changeable and spirit vigorous and adventurous, had dreamed of playing the part of Maria Theresa. La Vendée was her Hungary, and the valiant woman, leaving Paris by way of Rambouillet, Dreux and Cherbourg, hoped to re-enter it viâ Nantes, Tours and Orléans. The whole of her little Court, whether through interest or from blindness, painted France to her as ready to rise up. Letters from la Vendée even left no doubt on the point. M. de Sesmaisons himself a statesman and consequently competent to judge in the matter, besides being a peer of France, at that time wrote to Madame--
"Let Her Royal Highness but come to Vendée and she will see that my stomach, although European in its stoutness, will not prevent me from leaping either the hedges or ditches! If Madame de Staël called M. de Lally-Tollendal the stoutest of sentient beings, M. de Sesmaisons might be styled the stoutest of political men."
The following anecdote is related of him:--
When M. de Sesmaisons came from Nantes to Paris by public conveyance, he was in the habit of taking two places in the carriage, less from selfishness than from courtesy; for, though living in the present century, he was a type of the courtesy of another epoch, as he was a type of loyalty for all ages. Having changed his valet, and being about to start for Paris, he sent his new servant to the mail coach-office to reserve his two places as usual. The man returned two minutes later.
"Well," M. de Sesmaisons asked him, "can I have my two places?"
"Yes, monsieur le Comte; only one will be in the coupé and the other inside."
Carried away by all these exhortations, and still more by her own wishes, Madame wrote on 14 December to M. de Coislin--
"I have long been aware, my dear comte, of the zeal and devotion which you and yours are ready to show for my son's cause. I would like to reiterate that, on such occasions, I will count on you, as you may rely on me for gratitude. MARIE CAROLINE
"14 December 1831"
It was therefore decided in the little Court of Massa--Madame had gone to Italy after she left England, and lived in a town in the duchy of Modena--that public spirit in France had arrived at a sufficient point of maturity to be acted upon. Consequently a letter in cipher, written in invisible ink, informed all the leaders in the south and west of France to make themselves ready. Here is the translation of that letter. The first undeciphered word which betrayed all the rest was Lyon--
"I shall make known to Nantes, Angers, Rennes and Lyons that I am in France; prepare to take up arms as soon as you receive notice to that effect, and calculate that you will probably receive it about the 2nd or 3rd of next May. If messengers cannot pass through, public report will inform you of my arrival, and you will take up arms without delay."
On 24 April 1832, Madame embarked on the steamer Carlo-Alberto, which she had chartered at her own expense. The princess put into port at Nice; on the evening of the 28th she reached the waters of Marseilles, in sight of the Planier lighthouse, in the neighbourhood of which she was to join forces with her followers. The period between the night of the 19th to the 30th was fixed for the movement which was to burst forth at Marseilles.
From this moment we can follow Madame la duchesse de Berry step by step, without fear of making mistakes for one instant, as to her itinerary, or as to the events which accompanied her entry into France, and her journey through the southern provinces. This is how we are sure of the facts which we are going to relate. My connection with General Dermoncourt is known; I do not know when it began; it went back to my infancy. Dermoncourt was one of those rare friends who remain faithful through ill fortune; and from the moment I came to Paris, like Lethières, another friend of my father, he held out an encouraging hand to me. He had commanded in la Vendée: it was he who had received Madame when she came out of the chimney-place where she was hidden. Being obliged to choose between the frank and open face of the general and the préfet's surly one, the princess placed herself in his hands and under the protection of his honour. He has often related to me during our long talks all the episodes in that war. Once I suggested he should jot down all his recollections on paper, and he agreed to do so. I looked over his work; I put it into a possible shape, whilst religiously retaining the substance, and the first edition of La Vendée et Madame appeared. The book made a great stir; three thousand copies were sold in less than a week. Everybody read it, even the princess herself.
Madame was much astonished to find in a book where Republican sentiments were openly avowed such complete impartiality and courtesy. She sent to thank General Dermoncourt; and, as a few details were erroneous, or lacking in complete accuracy, she offered notes to General Dermoncourt in case he should publish a second edition.
The ingratitude of the Government left General Dermoncourt almost in a state of destitution. A first edition brought him in 2000 francs, I believe; a second edition, producing the same amount, was to him like manna dropped from the skies. He accepted the comments of Madame la duchesse de Berry, and advertised a second edition, revised, corrected and increased to twice the thickness by authentic notes given to the author since the first publication. Unfortunately, I knew the source whence the notes came, and I was afraid that they would give a Legitimist tone to the book. I authorised Dermoncourt to take what suited him in the first edition, but I refused to lend a hand in the second. The second edition appeared, and had as great a success as the first.
I was not mistaken. Unconsciously to the general, probably, the tricolour flag had faded in his hands, and, as far as those were concerned who only gave superficial attention to the matter, it could be taken for a white flag, or, at any rate, a white-washed one.
Nowadays, when my opinions are sufficiently well known for me not to fear being accused of any other motive than sympathy with the misfortunes of the woman, I do not hesitate, now we have reached this period in our history, to make use of the notes which have remained at my disposition. The reader will therefore have an official itinerary and authentic facts put before him. Having concluded this digression, we will return to our narrative.
Landing was very laborious. A strong fishing-boat appeared for several nights at the Planier lighthouse, was signalled and recognised: the sign to come nearer was given, and it came alongside the Carlo-Alberto. But there was a heavy sea; the two boats, lifted one after the other without harmony in their movements by the furious waves, collided, fell apart, came nearer and knocked up against one another; the moment had to be seized, when the two sides were nearly on a level, to spring from one to the other at the risk of a dangerous descent upon the wet and consequently slippery seats of the boat. At last, the trans-shipment was accomplished. The princess crossed from the steamer into the ship's boat with six persons from her suite, and a pilot who had been in Madame's service for a long while, and who knew all the points of the coast, as well as the different rallying signals that might indicate that the shore was dangerous, or that they might land in safety.
The boat which had come to meet the princess was a fishing-boat: its sails were saturated with sea water, which never dries; the water stood stagnant in the bottom; the tar with which the boat was repaired exhaled a nauseous and disgusting odour; moreover, it was without a bridge, without shelter from the cold and piercing sea wind, and it allowed the crest of the waves which broke against its sides to pour over in-board, sometimes in wet spray, at times in a heavy rainfall. The princess and her companions were ill clad for such a condition of things; added to this, they were overtaken by that intolerable indisposition called sea sickness. Imagine a dark, cold, gloomy night, and you will have an idea of the hour which passed after leaving the steamer for the fishing-smack. At last they thought they had reached the landing-place, when, on approaching the land, they perceived a light on the shore. As they came nearer, it increased in size and became decipherable: what they had at first taken for the pre-concerted signal transformed itself into a blazing fire, and, by the aid of a night-glass, they could distinguish eight to ten coastguardsmen warming themselves by the fire. They had to take themselves off hastily to a distance; and yet it was imperative they should land before daybreak. Unluckily, the point whereat the coastguardsmen had established themselves was the only one where it was possible to land; almost everywhere else the coast was inaccessible. They risked themselves among the rocks, and succeeded in grounding by a miracle.
Madame had shown admirable courage during the three hours that had just elapsed. She was possessed of one of those delicate and nervous organisations which seem as though they could be crumpled up by a breath, but which, nevertheless, do not enjoy the full use of their powers until storms are in the air and in their hearts. As she landed, she uttered a cry of joy.
"Come," she said, "forget it all: we are in France!"
Yes, they were in France, and there their real danger began.
Happily, the pilot who had just brought the boat to land on an almost inaccessible shore was also as well acquainted with the inland country as with the seacoast; he took command of the little band, and respectfully but firmly pointed out to the princess and her companions that they must start at once to gain a hiding-place before day broke.
Madame was expected at a house three leagues from the shore, belonging to an old officer devoted to her cause; but when she reached the house its owner did not think the retreat safe enough, and she had to go three-quarters of a league farther to another dwelling-place. The route taken was among rocks and by almost impracticable ways. It was broad daylight when at last they arrived. The princess was horribly tired, as were also those who accompanied her; but as she did not complain, no one else dare do so. The house was an ideal hiding-place for conspirators; it was lonely, and surrounded by woods and rocks.
They insisted that Madame should go to bed; but she would not consent until she had seen two members of her suite set off for Marseilles. These persons were charged with the mission of informing M * * * of her arrival. M * * * was one of the people who had made himself responsible to the princess for an insurrection in her favour, not only at Marseilles, but also throughout the whole of the south.
We will indicate by asterisks, by initials, or by name, according as we shall judge it advisable to have more or less regard for their position, those persons who took part in the enterprise the course of which we are relating.
The same night, one of the messengers returned with a note; it was short, but significant. It enclosed this simple statement, "Marseilles will move to-morrow."
The other person had remained to take part in the movement. Madame was beside herself with delight. According to what she had been told, Marseilles and the South only wanted the opportunity to rise in her favour. Night came; but, in spite of the fatigues she had gone through, the princess slept little. The first arm of her party was engaged, and was in action at that very moment. This is what really took place.
Throughout the night the town was thronged with Legitimist gatherings, carrying the white standard, and shouting, "Vive Henri V.!" At three o'clock in the morning a dozen armed men appeared at the Church of St. Laurent, got possession of the keys of the tower, and, whilst some rang the tocsin, others set up the white standard; others, without the tocsin, had done the same at the Patache. The tricolour had been dragged in the gutter. At the same time, the esplanade de la Tourelle was crowded with people. It was said that the Duchesse de Berry and M. de Bourmont were expected on the Carlo-Alberto. This rumour was set about with the object of diverting the attention of the police towards the sea. Finally, a great crowd still resorted to the Palais de Justice with shouts of "Vive la ligne! vive Henri V.!"
Unhappily for Madame's fortunes, the sub-lieutenant who commanded that post was a patriot, almost a Republican, and, instead of sympathising with the cries and the movement, he came out of his guardhouse, commanded the gathering to disperse and, upon a refusal to do this by the person who appeared to be leader, he seized him by the collar and, after a pretty violent struggle, flung him into the guardhouse. The leader was hardly arrested before a panic of terror took hold of the conspirators: cries of "Save yourselves!" were heard, the soldiers fell upon the fugitives and three fresh arrests were made. At two o'clock in the afternoon a frigate left the harbour to give chase to the Carlo-Alberto, which could be discerned floating on the horizon, without sail or steam; but, at sight of the hostile disposition being taken against her, the Carlo-Alberto got up steam and set sail, shrouded herself in smoke and sail and disappeared towards the south-east.
It was fortunate for the Duchesse de Berry; they believed she was on board, and, the Carlo-Alberto having regained the high seas, they were convinced it carried her away with it. She, however, waited still in the little house. The persons who remained with her could form an idea of her impatience as one, two, three hours went by. At last, at four o'clock, two messengers arrived, scared and breathless. They shouted--
"The movement has failed! You must quit France instantly!"
The duchesse bore up against the blow, and had the courage to smile.
"Leave France?" she said, "I do not see that; the urgent thing is to go from here, in order not to compromise our hosts; people may have followed the messengers."
Besides, it was not an easy matter to leave France. The Carlo-Alberto had disappeared; they could only reach Piedmont again by following Hannibal's route. Would it not be worth while risking everything, to take a short cut across France, and to take advantage of the conviction of the police that the Duchesse de Berry had fled on the Carlo-Alberto, in order to attempt in la Vendée an insurrection which had just miscarried so pitifully at Marseilles?
Such was the opinion of the duchesse, and, with that rapidity of decision which is one of the potent elements in her adventurous character, she gave the order to prepare for departure. They had neither carriages, nor horses, nor mules; but the duchesse asserted that, having passed her apprenticeship in travelling on foot, she felt she had sufficient strength to travel in that way during the next night, and, if necessary, the following nights also.
There only remained, therefore, to find a guide. They sent for a reliable man and started about seven in the evening. Night came on fast; it was dark, they could scarcely see where to set their feet; in a few hours' time all trace of the footpath had disappeared. They stopped and tried to take their bearings. They found they were in the midst of rocks interspersed with stunted olive-trees; the guide was doubtful: he looked alternately at the earth and at the sky, both equally dark; finally, when urged by the impatience of the duchesse, he admitted that they were lost.
"Upon my word!" says the duchesse. "I am delighted! I am so tired that I was going to ask you to go no farther."
So, serving her apprenticeship to a bivouacking life, she wrapped herself in her cloak, and lay down on the ground and slept. The same thing happened to the Duchesse de Montpensier when she fled from France, with Colonel Thierry.
Madame awoke, frozen with cold and very ill; her indisposition seemed sufficiently serious to cause her travelling companions much anxiety. Happily, during her sleep they had hunted about and found a sort of hut which was used by shepherds as shelter during storms. They carried the duchesse there, where she waited all day by a fire of heather and dried branches. Meantime, one of Madame's companions, M. de B----l, who belonged to that part of the country, had gone in quest of a carriage. He returned at daylight with a cabriolet which would only hold three persons. They had, therefore, to separate, and arranged a meeting-place at M. de B----l's house, at G***.
Madame, M. de Ménars and M. de B----l got into the cabriolet, and were able to find an excellent road not four yards from the place where they had spent the night. Half-way on the first stage, they debated as to where they should sleep. The awkward situation was that Madame reckoned on stopping with a gentleman whose house, unluckily, was shut up. It is true his brother lived quite near, but he was a Republican.
"Is he a trustworthy man?" asked the duchesse.
"The most trustworthy man I know!" replied M. de B----l.
"That is well! Then take me to him."
They wanted to argue the point with Madame.
"It is useless," she said, "I have decided to stop there."
Two hours later, Madame rang at the door of the political enemy of whom she had come to ask for shelter. Madame and her two travelling companions were shown into the salon.
"Whom shall I announce to monsieur?" the servant asked.
"Just ask him to come down," said the duchesse; "I will tell him who I am myself."
A minute later, the master of the house came into the salon. Madame went up to him.
"Monsieur," she said, "I am aware that you are a Republican, but an outlaw is allowed no opinions: I am the Duchesse de Berry."
The Republican bowed, put his house entirely at the disposal of the princess, and, after having passed one of her quietest and best nights there, Madame set off again the next day for a little village where she had a rendezvous with several of her partisans, and with M. de Bonnechose in particular. He was the same good excellent young fellow whose acquaintance, it will be recollected, I had made at Trouville.
Another carriage had to be procured, for M. de Bonnechose was not to leave the princess again; therefore, a four-seated char-à-banc was bought and the cabriolet left behind.
M. de B----l was leader of the party; he was seated near the princess on the first seat, protected by a screen; MM. de Ménars and de Bonnechose sat on the back seat.
During a rapid descent, edged on one side by rocks and on the other by a precipice, the horse ran away. It was night; after a violent shock, M. de Ménars and M. de Bonnechose suddenly saw a voluminous object fall from the hood of the carriage. Both believed it was Madame la duchesse de Berry, who had been shot out of the carriage by the shaking: the object having human form lay motionless on the road; if it was the princess, she was either killed or grievously wounded. Unfortunately, there was no means of stopping the carriage; it continued its rapid descent for nearly a kilometre. At last the iron step, which had been forced out of place, came in contact with the roadway and made a kind of brake; M. de Bonnechose, young and light, jumped to the ground and sprang clear of the carriage; he found Madame very calm, with no other anxiety but that the wind had carried her mantle away. The carriage was badly damaged. They walked on foot to a blacksmith's forge, where the necessary repairs were made. The same day, the princess was received into the family of M. de B----l.
There it was she had fixed the first rendezvous, and all whom she had called to it were present; they urged that Madame should not go too far, but, on the contrary, retrace her steps and leave France. The princess replied with decision--
"If I left France without going to la Vendée what would the brave people of the West say, who have given so many proofs of devotion to the royal cause? They would never forgive me, and I should deserve the reproaches they have many times made to my relatives, even more than they deserve it![2] As I promised them, four years ago, to come amongst them in case of misfortune, and as I am already in France, I will not go out of it without keeping my promise.... We will start to-night; prepare for my departure."
The duchesse's friends renewed their entreaties; they enumerated the dangers she had run; but an argument of that nature was more likely to incite than to hinder.
"God and St. Anne will help me!" she said; "I have had a good night, and I am rested; I wish to start to-night."
The order given, there was nothing else to be done but to obey it.
M. de B----l made preparations for this departure in the greatest secrecy. He procured a travelling carriage from the next village, which, on the following night, was to wait at a given hour and place; unluckily, it only had three seats in it. Madame chose to accompany M. de Ménars and M. de Villeneuve, a relative of the Marquis de B----l, and they set out the same evening.
M. de Villeneuve, known and respected throughout the South, was bearer of a passport for himself, his wife and one servant. M. de Lorge solicited the humble title of valet-de-chambre, and, at the hour for departure, came to offer his services to Madame in a suit of livery. It reminds one of Charles Edward at Culloden, and of Louis XVI. at Varennes. Madame held out her hand so that those who could not accompany her could salute it, assigned a rendezvous in the West, and left for la Vendée, where we shall follow her.
[Footnote 1: See Appendix.]
[Footnote 2: The reader knows Charette's letter to the Comte d' Artois after the defeat at Quiberon.]
Chapter III
Madame's itinerary--Panic--M. de Puylaroque--Domine salvum fac Philippum--The château de Dampierre--Madame de la Myre--The pretended cousin and the curé--M. Guibourg--M. de Bourmont--Letter of Madame to M. de Coislin--The noms de guerre--Proclamation of Madame--New kind of henna--M. Charette--Madame is nearly drowned in the Maine--The sexton in charge of the provisions--A night in the stable--The Legitimists of Paris--They dispatch M. Berryer into la Vendée
They had to reach the place where the carriage was by narrow footpaths which were difficult and full of brambles; Madame lost her shawl among them. This was during the night between Thursday and Friday, 4 May. The carriage, brought by MM. de B----l and de Villeneuve, was waiting at the appointed place. The night was calm, silent and clear; although the moon was only in its first quarter, they could see for some distance. Now they thought they could perceive a man on horseback standing on the road. One of the gentlemen slipped among the hillocks and returned to announce that the man on horseback was a gendarme. At the same time, they began to hear the steps of a troop of horses, and could see the sparks flying from the still distant hoofs of the cavalry.
Should they depart like fugitives or boldly expose themselves by remaining? Madame was for the bold course! if they fled, no matter how quickly, they would be sure to be overtaken; if they stayed, and suspicion was not aroused, they had a chance by not awaking it.
The troop advanced at a fast trot, and they were soon noticed. They were a dozen post-horses ridden by three postilions bringing back relays from some starting-place. Seeing Madame's carriage on the road, they offered their services. M. de B----l replied in Provençal patois thanking them, and they continued on their road. Behind them went the carriage, and the gendarme was behind that. M. de B----l, uneasy, followed, running on foot after the carriage. The gendarme gained upon the barouche, and was about to catch it up, when M. de B----l rushed to the door, saying--
"Here comes the gendarme; God protect you!"
Madame looked through the glass placed in the back of the carriage, and saw, indeed, that the gendarme was only" a few yards away, regulating his horse's pace to that of the princess's horses. What could they think, except that this man, having seen a carriage stopped and surrounded by several individuals--and that at eleven o'clock at night--had conceived suspicions and, not daring to attack so numerous a company alone, wished to give the alarm to the first brigade he should meet On the road? M. de B----l could not run on foot the whole stage; so he stopped and sat by the roadside, waiting for news when the coachman should return. When the duchesse reached the posting inn where she had to take fresh horses, she looked anxiously around her. The gendarme had disappeared. No doubt he had gone to warn the brigade. They hurried the livery-stable keeper as much as they could, and set off with only two horses, in order to allay suspicions; but they were scarcely out of the village before they found the gendarme again. He looked like a fairy knight sprung out of the ground. The general opinion was that there was no gendarmerie station in the village which they had just passed through, and that they would be arrested at the next village. A few yards from the posting inn, the gendarme took a side road, and they never saw him again. When they reached the other side of the village, where they expected to be arrested, and saw that the road was free, they breathed again.
"Well, what does Your Highness think about our gendarme?" asked M. de Villeneuve.
"Either he is a precious simpleton who does not know how to mind his own business," said the duchesse, "or he is a cunning blade who has recognised me; and who, if I succeed, has in his pocket already, in advance, his brevet as officer and some few hundred louis to equip himself with. In any case, he can brag of having put me in a great fright!"
M. de B----l learnt these details upon the return of the coachman, and went back home somewhat reassured. On 4 May, they continued on the way towards Toulouse, via Nîmes, Montpellier and Narbonne, travelling night and day, and only stopping early in the mornings for breakfast, to make her toilette and to give time for the stablemen to oil the carriage. They changed horses at Lunel.
"Where are we?" asked the princess.
"At Lunel, madame," replied M. de Villeneuve.
"Oh!" said she, "if that excellent D***, who sent me in Italy a cask of wine of his own growing, knew that I was stopping to change horses at this moment, how he would come running here! But we must not be imprudent."
They set off again without informing M. D***. On 5 May at 7.30 P.M., the Duchesse de Berry entered Toulouse in an open barouche, without any sort of disguise to prevent those who had seen her from recognising her. As usual, the carriage drew up before the posting inn; those who were out of work and the inquisitive soon came running up. Amongst these spectators was a young man of fashionable appearance, who gazed with an expression that was less that of idleness and more that of curiosity than other people's; Madame pretended to be asleep without, on her side, losing sight of him, and he fixed his gaze so persistently upon her.
"My dear Monsieur de Lorge," said Madame, whilst the horses were being changed, "go and bring me a hat which will shade my face more."
M. de Lorge leapt from his seat and made his way to a milliner's shop. The curious spectator followed him, entered the shop with him, came out with him and, touching him on the shoulder, he said--
"My dear de Lorge, Madame la duchesse de Berry is here."
"Well, yes, my dear Jules," replied the person whom he interrogated.
"Where is she going?"
"Into la Vendée."
"La Vendée is overrun with troops!"
"We know it."
"Then why go there? The provinces she is now travelling through afford more favourable chances; Madame can stay in Toulouse in all safety. In a moment's time I will have proved everything.... I absolutely must speak to her."
"Very well, so be it! Speak to her."
"Not at this moment; that would be imprudent. I will come in the carriage in your seat, and, when out of the town, we will confer together!"
M. de Lorge returned to the carriage, handed the new hat to the duchesse, climbed up nimbly to his seat, the person he had designated by the name of Jules took his place by him, to Madame's great astonishment, and the carriage set off again at a gallop. When outside the town, the newcomer leant towards Madame.
"Eh! Monsieur de Puylaroque," she exclaimed, "is it indeed you! Ah! now I know it is you, I am at peace. I am happy! How has it come about that we have met? It is Providence who has sent you, for I badly wanted to talk to you. I have lost half my skill; you will give it back to me."
"Whatever Your Highness wills; she knows that I am entirely devoted to her; but, above all, I entreat you, Madame, not to go into Vendée!..."
"Where would you have me go?"
"Remain in Toulouse; there you will find rest and safety."
"I do not want either the one or the other; I am seeking for conflict. As regards what you say of la Vendée, nothing annoying will happen to me there. La Vendée, you say, is overrun with soldiers? So much the better! I knew a good number of those who were in the barracks; they will also know me and will not fire upon me, I will answer for it! I have promised my faithful Vendéens to go and visit them. I will fulfil my word; if circumstances which I cannot foresee compel me to make myself scarce, come and look for me and I will return to the South with you. But, as I am here in France, do not let us talk of going out of it."
When Madame had made up her mind, it was a foregone conclusion that she would stick to it.
M. de Puylaroque was, therefore, obliged to give up his plan; he left the carriage and returned to Toulouse. A week later, he started to rejoin Madame in la Vendée. When she left Toulouse, Madame went by Moissac and Agen, then she left the Bordeaux road to follow that via Villeneuve d'Agen, Bergerac, Sainte-Foy, Libourne and Blaye--Blaye, which, when it watched her pass through, kept dumb as to the future! They made for the château of the Marquis de Dampierre, who had not been forewarned of the visit he was about to receive; but he was an intimate friend of M. de Lorge, who took upon him to answer for his devotion. From this château, situated half-way between Blaye and Saintes, the duchesse intended to give notice to her friends in Paris of her arrival, to confer with the leaders of the future insurrection, and to issue her proclamations throughout la Vendée. But, before reaching the Marquis de Dampierre's château, they had to pass that of a relative of his, which was only separated from the road by the river. There was a ferryboat to tempt the travellers. The adventurous spirit of Madame could not withstand the desire to pay a visit to the unknown friend; besides, M. de Villeneuve urged it. It was necessary to inquire there if M. le marquis de Dampierre was at home. They got down and crossed the ferry. M. de Villeneuve introduced himself, and presented the princess to the master of the château as his wife. They were just going to sit down to table, and proposed that M. and Madame de Villeneuve should share the breakfast; the proposal was acceded to. It was a Sunday; the master of the château, whilst waiting for breakfast, proposed to his guests to go to Mass. Dangerous as this was to Madame's incognito, it was impossible to refuse such a proposition. Madame went to church on foot, on her host's arm, passing through the crowd boldly, holding her head high. It is true that, when at church, the heat and fatigue overcame her, and the princess took advantage of the curé's sermon, which lasted an hour, to sleep for that hour.
The sound of chairs which follows the peroration of a sermon woke Madame, and she heard the "Domine salvum fac regem LUDOVICUM-PHILIPPUM" for the first time. After breakfast, they started on their journey again. In the evening of 7 May, the Duchesse de Berry arrived at the gate of the château de Dampierre. M. de Lorge got down and rang. In England, they know who is demanding entrance by the manner in which the visitor knocks. M. de Lorge rang in the aristocratic manner, as one who has no time to wait; M. de Dampierre himself appeared.
"Who is there?" he asked.
"I, de Lorge! open quickly! I have brought Madame la duchesse de Berry to you."
The master of the house took a jump backwards.
"The Duchesse de Berry!" he exclaimed. "What! Madame?"
"Yes, she herself.... Open!"
"But," M. de Dampierre continued, "you are unaware that I have a score of people staying with me, that they are in the salon and ..."
"Monsieur," said the Duchesse de Berry, putting her head out of the door, "I think I have heard it said somewhere that you have a cousin who lives fifty leagues from here?
"Madame de la Myre; yes, Madame."
"Then open your door, monsieur, and present me to the personages in your society under the name of Madame de la Myre."
"Madame, pray believe," exclaimed M. de Dampierre, "that I have only raised these objections in your own interest; but if you do me the honour of insisting ..."
"I do insist."
M. de Dampierre hastened to open the wicket. Madame jumped out of the carriage, put her arm within that of the master of the house, and made her way to the salon. It was empty. During the absence of M. de Dampierre, every one had retired to his own room.
When the Duchesse de Berry entered the salon, followed by M. de Ménars, M. de Villeneuve and M. de Lorge, who had divested himself of his suit of livery and resumed that of a gentleman once more, she found no one there but the mistress of the house, and two or three persons to whom the Duchesse and M. de Lorge were presented under the name of M. and Madame de la Myre.
Next evening, M. de Villeneuve, knowing Madame was in safety, again departed for Provence. The following day also, Madame underwent the second introduction at breakfast. No sort of doubt arose as to the identity of the counterfeit Madame de la Myre. On the following Sunday, the curé of the parish to which the château belonged, came, as usual, to dine with M. le Marquis de Dampierre, who presented Madame under his cousin's name, as he had done to his other guests. The curé came towards the duchesse with the intention of bowing; but, when half-way across the intervening interval, he fixed his eyes on her, stopped, and his face assumed so comic an air of stupefaction, that the duchesse could not refrain from bursting out laughing. When Madame had visited Rochefort, in 1828, the good man had been presented to her, and he recognised her.
"My dear curé," M. de Dampierre said to him, "excuse me, but I really cannot refrain from asking you what there is in my cousin's face which attracts your gaze to it."
"Because, Monsieur le Marquis," said the curé, "because Madame, your cousin ... Oh! but it is amazing! Yet it is impossible! for, in fact ..."
The rest of the good curé's sentence was lost in a confused and unintelligible murmur.
"Monsieur," Madame said in her turn, addressing the worthy curé, "allow me to associate myself with my cousin in asking what is the matter."
"It is like," replied the curé, "like a leaf out of a vaudeville of Scribe, or one of Alexandre Duval's comedies; your Royal Highness resembles the cousin of M. le Marquis like ... No, I am wrong; M. le Marquis's cousin resembles Your Royal Highness. That is not what I mean--Oh! but I could swear...."
The duchesse lapsed into fits of laughter. But, at this moment, the dinner bell rang. M. de Dampierre, who saw what delight the good curé's surprise caused the duchesse, placed him opposite to her. The result was that, instead of dining, the curé never ceased looking at Madame, and repeating--
"Oh! but it is incredible! in truth I could have sworn it ... but yet it is impossible!"
Rash and inconsequent as a child, Madame spent nine days at the château, and no one except the curé had any notion of questioning her identity as to name and cousinship. On the second day, a messenger set off for la Vendée with three notes. In the first, the duchesse asked a man who was in her confidence to find her an undiscoverable hiding-place. The second was addressed to one of the principal Vendéen leaders, and was couched in these terms:--
"In spite of the check which we have just met, I am far from looking upon my cause as lost: I have infinite confidence in its justice. My intention, therefore, is to go on pleading unceasingly, and I beg my advocates to hold themselves in readiness to plead ... on the first day."
The third note was addressed to M. Guibourg, and was specially remarkable for its laconicism. This is it.
"You will be told where I am; come, without a moment's loss of time. Not a word to a single soul!"
Thirty hours later, M. Guibourg was with the princess. Madame's first words were--
"Where is M. le maréchal de Bourmont?"
No one knew, M. Guibourg knew no more than the rest. The maréchal was not at Nantes, and they did not know either the route he had taken, or the retreat in which he was hidden. Nothing could be done without M. de Bourmont, who was the soul of the enterprise; he was the only person who, by the influence of his name, could make la Vendée rise, and, in virtue of his office of maréchal de France, exact the obedience of officers of all ranks. Madame had not heard a word of M. de Bourmont since the day she had parted from him.
"Come," she said cheerfully to M. Guibourg, "do not let us be cast down by small hindrances, we do not allow ourselves to be discouraged by reverses; nevertheless, what is to be done?"
"As Madame has persisted in burning her boats," replied M. Guibourg, "since she has made up her mind to come into la Vendée, where she is expected, I would counsel her to leave this château as quickly and secretly as possible. The principal leaders from the two banks of the Loire can be rallied round Madame within forty-eight hours' time; Madame can make her purposes known to them, and, assisted by their advice, she can come to a decision."
"Very good!" said the duchesse, "you shall start to-morrow, and I will start the day after. Upon my arrival there, I will take counsel with the leaders you have informed."
But, next day, Madame called M. Guibourg to her.
"I have changed my mind," she said, "and do not intend to consult any one; the majority will be for an adjournment, and all risings in la Vendée must take place, I am told, during the first fortnight in May, the time when country pursuits give a holiday in some measure to the farmers; we are, then, late. Besides, in their interests, upon whose faith I have come, all the chiefs told me they were ready to act; to ask them if they are, will be to doubt their word. I am going, therefore, to make my intentions known to the whole of France. Here is the letter addressed to M. de Coislin:--
"Let my friends be reassured: I am in France, and soon I shall be in la Vendée; from there, my definite orders will come to you: you will receive them before the 25th of this month. Prepare, therefore. That was only a blunder and a mistake in the South; I am satisfied with their intentions; they will keep their promises. My faithful province of the West will never fail in theirs.--In a short time, the whole of France will be called upon to resume its ancient dignity and happiness. M. C. R.
"15 May 1832"
Added to this letter was the note containing the noms de guerre under which the conspirators were to hide themselves, and to correspond: as follows:--
"Guibourg--Pascal, the Maréchal--Laurent, Madame-Mathurine, Maquille--Bertrand, Terrien--Cœur de Lion, Clouët--Saint-Amand, Charles--Antoine, Cadoudal--Bras-de-Fer, Cathelineau--Le Jeune or Achille, Charette-Gaspard, Hébert--Doineville, d'Autichamp--Marchand, de Coislin--Louis Renaud."
The same day, Madame la duchesse de Berry had a few hundred copies of the following proclamation distributed, printed by a portable hand-press.
"_Proclamation of Madame la duchesse de Berry, régente de France_
"Vendéens, Bretons, and all inhabitants of the faithful provinces of the West! Having landed in the South, I have no fear of travelling in the midst of dangers through France to fulfil a sacred promise to come among my brave friends, and to share their perils and their labours. I am at last among this nation of heroes! Make an opening for the fortune of France! I place myself at your head, sure of victory when with such men as you. Henri V. appeals to you; his mother, regent of France, dedicates herself to your happiness. Some day, Henri V. will be your brother-at-arms if the enemy threaten our faithful country. Let us re-echo our old and our new cry: 'Vive le roi! Vive Henri V.!' MARIE-CAROLINE
"ROYAL PRINTING-HOUSE OF HENRI V."
Preceded by this proclamation, Madame again started on her journey, 16 May 1832. She was accompanied by M. and Madame de Dampierre, by M. de Ménars and M. de Lorge, who had resumed his disguise of a servant's livery. M. de Dampierre's horses drove Madame as far as the first posting stage, where she took fresh ones and continued her journey by Saintes, Saint-Jean-d'Angely, Niort, Fontenay, Luçon, Bourbon and Montaigu.'
The Duchesse de Berry travelled in broad day and in an open carriage, through the country over which, four years before, she had passed on horseback, going from château to château, and surrounded by the people who collected during her progress. It was a miracle that M. de Ménars, landowner in the country, accustomed to all the electors both as elector and candidate, past-president of the great college of Bourbon, was not recognised at every step. No doubt, both were protected by their very imprudence. It is true Madame wore a brown wig; but she had kept her own blond eyelashes with the brown wig. All at once her travelling companions noticed this, and pointed it out to her: such a discrepancy must be remedied as soon as possible. Madame moistened a corner of her handkerchief with saliva, rubbed it on M. de Ménars' boot, and, thanks to the boot blacking, obtained a suitable black wherewith to harmonise the colour of her eyebrows with that of her wig. At Montaigu, where they relayed horses, M. de Lorge, dressed as a servant, was obliged, in order not to belie his costume, to eat with the servants, and to help to harness the horses.
M. de Lorge got through his part as though he had been playing in amateur theatricals.
On 17 May, at noon, Madame and M. de Ménars alighted at M. de N***'s château; the two travellers at once changed costumes with the master and mistress of the house, who immediately got into the carriage in their place, and continued the journey with M. and Madame de D***. The postilion, whom the servants had made tipsy in the kitchen whilst the masters were exchanging dresses above, noticing nothing, being half-drunk, bestrode his horse and took the road for Nantes, never suspecting that his passengers had been changed, or, rather, that they had exchanged themselves. The duchesse had arranged a meeting-place for her friends in a house, situated about a league from the château, belonging to M. G***. Towards five in the afternoon, she took the arm of M. O*** and reached this house with him on foot, where they were soon rejoined by MM. de Ménars and Charette. They were clad in blouses, and wore hobnailed shoes. Madame left that night to reach a hiding-place they had contrived for her in the commune of Montbert; she was accompanied by M.M. de Ménars, Charette, and by la R***e. Four or five peasants escorted the travellers; they asked of Madame whether she wished to make a détour, or to cross the Maine by the ford. As Madame wished to accustom herself to every kind of peril at one fell swoop, she chose dangers rather than slowness. They conferred together a moment as to where they should cross the river, and settled to cross it near Romainville, by a kind of bridge of piles, which afforded an indifferently good sort of ford. A peasant who knew the locality took the head of the column, sounding the path with a stick, which he held in his right hand, whilst, with his left, he drew the duchesse after him. When the peasant and Madame had got two-thirds across the river, they felt the pile crumble under their feet on which they had thought they might venture. They both tottered and fell into the water. Madame fell head over heels and disappeared, entirely submerged. M. Charette sprang in at once, caught her by the heel, and drew her from the river, but she had been under water for five or six seconds and had lost consciousness. Madame's companions would not let her go any farther; they took her back to the house she had left. She changed all her clothes from head to foot, and decided to take the longer road, and to ride behind a peasant. On account of this détour, she did not reach the village of Montbert until 18 May. She had supper, and slept in the house which had been prepared for her. But the house was poorly furnished. The princess's companions did not like her to undergo the privations which such penury inflicted upon her; they spoke to her of a celebrated provision dealer of Nantes, called Colin, who sold excellent conserves in tins for journeys of long distance. Madame agreed to give in to this sybaritism. They had to find an intelligent and discreet man to go and make their purchases, and suggested to Madame the parish sexton. Madame had a little chat with the man, who pleased her, and was charged with the commission. They had relied on his prudence: he was too prudent. His purchases achieved, he told the provision merchant, in order to allay suspicions, to send the boxes to Pont-Rousseau, where he would await them. Now, whilst he was loading his horse with the boxes, a patriot passed by. Patriots generally have their eyes wide open on all occasions; but, in this instance, he of Nantes had his particularly wide open. Our man saw the tin boxes, took them for powder boxes, and imagined they were meant for the Chouans. Whilst the sexton loaded his remaining boxes, the patriot got the start and warned the gendarmerie of Souniers. They arrested the churchman in his transit, and took him back to Nantes. The boxes were opened and, instead of munition, they found vegetables; but, although vegetables may appear very inoffensive, to suspicious minds they have a certain signification. When the sexton was interrogated as to the rank in life of those who had charged him with this gastronomic commission, he replied that they were persons unknown to him, and that they waited on the heath of Génusson. He had indicated a point opposite to where the Duchesse de Berry really was. Some gendarmes went to the heath of Génusson, which, we may be very sure, was deserted. The sexton was taken to the prison of Nantes. A peasant had seen him amidst the gendarmes, and had taken to his heels to warn the duchesse. For greater safety, Madame left her hiding-place, as she knew the sexton too little to judge the length to which his devotion would run, and she took refuge in a stable. She there spent the night and day of the 19th with the farmer's oxen. One of these animals took a fancy to her, and came several times to breathe in her face.
"I want," she said, laughing at her situation the next day, "to be painted as soon as I can manage it, tête-à-tête with the fat ox which came so pleasantly to puff in my face."
Another ox had directed his affections towards M. de Ménars, and had spent the night licking his face; but M. de Ménars was so tired that he had received the animal's caresses without waking.
In the midst of a terrible storm and beating rain, at 1 o'clock in the morning of 20 May, Madame left the farm to go to L----e, an occupied country house, belonging to the family of la R----e, situated in the commune of Saint-Philibert. The roads were fearful, and a deep bog intersected the way; they could only advance across the miry marsh by sounding the way step by step. M. Charette had committed Madame to the care of his young comrade, de la R----e, to whose home they were going; so, in order to cross the dangerous passage, the young man wished to trust to his own devices; he took Madame on his shoulders and, when risking his first step in the marsh, he said--
"Madame, it is possible that I may sink and disappear in some peat-bog; but, directly you see me about to disappear, throw yourself to one side with as quick and strong a movement as you can; the dangerous spots are not usually large; I shall be lost, but you will be saved!"
Twice this nearly happened, twice Madame felt M. de la R----e sink up to his waist; but each time, happily, he succeeded in extricating himself from the predicament. Madame arrived at daybreak and, tired out as she was, she set out in the evening, after having had lunch and some sleep, to receive some persons from the country side, and to have much joking over the two unprincely kinds of death to which she had nearly succumbed. This new stage took her to a sister of M. de la R----e. Her hostess did not in the least expect the visit, and was not overjoyed at receiving her.
On the night of the 21st, the duchesse set off again; she had to reach the M---- commune of Leyé. She stayed there until Monday the 31st, that is to say for ten days. The house was inconvenient, and it was not a safe retreat; moving columns were constantly passing by the door; and it was evident that suspicions were aroused. But still the rendezvous was given to M. de Bourmont, M. Berryer and M. R----. They were obliged to attend. The letter written by the duchesse to the Royalists had reached its destination; only, Madame had forgotten to give the key of the cipher note which accompanied it. M. Berryer set to work to discover it, and found it. It was the sentence Le gouvernement provisoire, substituted by the twenty-four letters of the alphabet.
Madame's letter had caused great trouble among the idle Royalists planted in the central rays of light in Paris; they knew public opinion more clearly than the Royalists of Maine and la Vendée and the Loire-Inférieure; though it was true that the government of King Louis-Philippe was becoming more and more unpopular, yet, that was a reason for waiting, and not for hurrying things on; as to hoping for anything from Madame's attempt, nobody was blind enough to flatter himself on that score.
Accordingly, the Parisian Royalists met together on the evening of the 19th, to consider the best means of making Madame acquainted with the true situation of matters in France. It was a serious and almost depressing meeting; they looked upon the danger as imminent, and consequently agreed that one of the principal leaders should go to la Vendée to the princess. MM. de Chateaubriand, Hyde de Neuville and Berryer were the three heads. MM. de Chateaubriand and Hyde de Neuville were the objects of a surveillance which it was difficult to baffle; it would be guessed where they were going before they could reach Orléans, and they would be arrested or followed. M. Berryer offered to execute the commission. A lawsuit called him to the assizes at Vannes early in June. A note drawn up by M. de Chateaubriand, giving an epitome of the opinion, if not of the majority, yet of the bulk, of the meeting, was put in his hands. The rest was left to his devotion and his eloquence. His business was to make Madame leave la Vendée. He left Paris on the morning of 20 May, and reached Nantes on the 22nd. Let us be permitted to follow the famous orator in his picturesque journey through bye lanes, in the heart of thickets and hedges; we will answer for the accuracy of the details, which were given to us in 1833 by M. Berryer himself.
Chapter IV
Interview between MM. Berryer and de Bourmont--The messenger's guides--The movable column--M. Charles--Madame's hiding-place--Madame refuses to leave la Vendée--She rallies her followers to arms--Death of General Lamarque--The deputies of the Opposition meet together at Laffitte's house--They decide to publish a statement to the nation--MM. Odilon Barrot and de Cormenin are commissioned to draw up this report--One hundred and thirty-three deputies sign it
Hardly had M. Berryer reached Nantes, before he learnt that M. de Bourmont had been there a couple of days. He went to see him immediately. M. de Bourmont had received the order of 15 May, relative to the taking up of arms, fixed for the 24th, but he agreed with M. Berryer, after what he had seen and heard during his short stay at Nantes, that there was no hope to be placed on that insurrection, which he regarded as a deplorable affray. It was so much his own opinion, that he had taken upon himself to send almost a counter-order to the Vendéen chiefs, hoping that when he saw Madame he should succeed in inducing her to give up her plans. The counter-order had been transmitted by M. Guibourg to M. de Coislin père, who, in his turn, was to tell those whom it concerned. This is the letter from M. Guibourg, and the copy of the order of M. de Bourmont--
"MONSIEUR LE MARQUIS,--I have the honour to send you a copy of the order that I am deputed to hand you on behalf of M. le Maréchal:--
'Delay the execution of the orders you have received for the 24th May for a few days, and do not let anything visible be seen until you have fresh news, but continue your preparations.
"'LE MARÉCHAL COMTE DE BOURMONT
"'22 May, noon'"
M. de Bourmont, therefore, approved of M. Berryer's reason for going to Madame, and all was prepared the same day for his departure. At two o'clock in the afternoon, M. Berryer got into a little hired trap, and, as he did so, he asked the confidential person whom the duchesse had at Nantes what route he should take, and where Madame was living, whereupon the man pointed with his finger to a peasant hanging about at the end of the street on a dapple-grey horse, and said merely, "You see that man? You only have to follow him."
Indeed, hardly had the man on the grey horse seen M. Berryer's carriage start before he put his mount to a trot, which allowed the former to follow him without losing sight of him. In this way they crossed the bridges and entered the country. The peasant did not even turn his head, and seemed to trouble so very little about the carriage to which he served as guide, that there were moments when M. Berryer thought himself the dupe of some mystification or other. As for the driver, who was not in his confidence, he could give no other directions when he asked: "Where are we going, master?" than, "Follow that man." The driver obeyed this injunction strictly, not busying himself henceforth any more over the guide, than the guide troubled himself over him.
After a journey of two and a half hours, which were not without disquiet for M. Berryer, they reached a little hamlet. The man on the grey horse stopped before the inn: M. Berryer did the same; one got down from his horse, the other from his carriage, to continue the road on foot. M. Berryer told his driver to wait until 6 o'clock in the evening of the next day, and then he followed his strange guide. After going a hundred yards, he entered a house, and as, during the journey, M. Berryer had gained upon him, the former entered it almost at the same time. The man opened the door of the kitchen, where the mistress of the house was alone, and pointing to M. Berryer, who walked behind him, he only said the words--
"Here is a gentleman who must be guided."
"He shall be guided," replied the mistress of the house.
Scarcely had she uttered these words before the guide opened the door and left, without giving M. Berryer time to thank him, or to exchange a word or to pay him. The mistress of the house signed to the traveller to be seated, and, without addressing a single word to him, continued to apply herself to her household affairs as though no stranger was present.
A silence of three-quarters of an hour went by after the strict politeness of M. Berryer's reception, and it was only broken by the arrival of the master of the house. He bowed to the stranger without displaying either surprise or curiosity; only, he looked at his wife, who repeated to him from where she stood, and without interrupting what she was doing, the same words that the guide had used, "Here is a gentleman who must be guided."
Whereupon, the master of the house threw at his guest one of those uneasy, sharp, quick glances, which are characteristic of the Vendéen peasantry; then his face resumed the expression of good nature and simplicity which was native to it. He advanced towards M. Berryer, hat in hand.
"Monsieur desires to travel in our country?" he said to him.
"Yes, I want to go further."
"Monsieur no doubt has his papers?"
"Yes."
"In order?"
"Perfectly."
"And in his own name, I presume?"
"In my own name."
"If monsieur will show them to me, I will tell him if he can travel quietly in our country."
"Here they are."
The peasant took them and ran his eye over them; he had no sooner caught the name of M. Berryer than he folded them up again, saying--
"Oh, that is all right! Monsieur can go anywhere with those papers."
'You will take upon you to provide me with a guide?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"I want one as soon as possible."
"I will go and saddle the horses."
At these words, the master of the house went out and, ten minutes later, re-entered.
"The horses are ready."
"And the guide?"
"He waits for monsieur."
And, as a matter of fact, M. Berryer found a farm lad at the door already mounted, and holding a horse by the hand; scarcely had he put his foot into the stirrups before his new conductor started as silently as his predecessor had done. After two hours' riding, during which no word was exchanged between M. Berryer and his guide, they arrived towards nightfall at the door of one of the farmsteads which are honoured with the name of a château. It was half-past eight in the evening; M. Berryer and his guide got down from their horses, and both went inside. The farm lad addressed a servant, and said to him--
"This gentleman wishes to speak to monsieur."
The master was asleep; he had spent the previous night at a rendezvous, and the day on horseback; he was too tired to get up: one of his relatives came down in his stead. He welcomed M. Berryer and, directly he had learnt his name and the object of his journey, he gave orders for departure. He himself undertook to serve as guide to the traveller, and, ten minutes later, both left on horseback: in a quarter of an hour's time, a cry sounded a hundred yards in front of them; M. Berryer trembled, and asked what it was.
"It is our scout," replied the Vendéen chief; "he is asking in his own fashion if the way is clear. Listen, and you will hear the reply." At these words, he stretched out his hand, and put it on M. Berryer's arm to make him pull his horse up. A second cry then went up, coming from a greater distance off; it seemed like the echo of the first, so like was it.
"We can go forward, the road is free," replied the chief, putting his horse to the spur.
"Then we are preceded by a scout?"
"Yes, we have one man two hundred yards ahead of us and another the same distance behind."
"But who are the people who answer?"
"The peasants whose cottages lie along the road. Pay attention when you pass by one of them, and you will see a little dormer-window open and a man's head slip out, stay motionless for an instant as if he were a stone, and only disappear when we are out of sight. If we were soldiers from some neighbouring cantonment, the man who will only look at us as we pass would immediately come out by a back door; then, if there were any gathering in the district, he would soon warn it of the approach of the column which believed it was about to take it by surprise."
At this moment, the Vendéen chief interrupted himself.
"Listen," he whispered, stopping his horse.
"What is it?" said M. Berryer. "I only heard the usual cry of our scout."
"Yes, but no other cry has replied to it; there are soldiers in the neighbourhood."
He put his horse into a trot upon these words, and M. Berryer did the same; almost at the same instant, the man who formed the rear-guard caught them up at a gallop. They found their guide motionless and undecided at the forking of the two roads. The path desected and, as no one had answered his cry from either side, he did not know which of the footpaths he must take; both would lead the travellers to their destination. After a minute's deliberation in low tones between the chief and the guide, the latter plunged out of sight into the dark alley to the right; five minutes afterwards, M. Berryer and the chief started at a walk along the same path, leaving their fourth companion motionless at the place they left, and five minutes later he also followed them. Three hundred yards further on, M. Berryer and the chief found that their scout had stopped; he signed to them to command silence, and said in a whisper--"A patrol!" They could, indeed, hear the regular step of a troop on the march; it was a moving column which was making its nightly round. The noise soon came nearer to them, and they saw against the sky the outline of the soldiers' bayonets, who, in order to avoid the water which collected in the deep paths, had followed neither of the two roads, the bifurcation of which had caused the guide a momentary hesitation, but had climbed the slope, and were walking between the two hedges, on the ground which overlooked the two sunk footpaths by which it was enclosed. Had a single one of the four horses neighed, the little troop would have been taken prisoners; but they seemed to understand the position of their masters, and kept silence like them, so the soldiers went on unsuspecting whom they had closely passed by. When the sound of their steps was lost in the distance, the travellers resumed their march. At half-past ten o'clock, they turned off the road and entered a wood. The little band got down and left the horses under the care of the two peasants, while M. Berryer and the chief went on their way alone. They were not very far distant from the farmhouse where Madame was; but, as they wanted to enter by a back door, they had to make a détour, and to cross through some marshes where they sank almost up to their knees; at last the dark little mass of buildings which formed the farmstead, surrounded with trees, appeared, and soon they reached the door. The chief knocked in a particular way. Steps approached, and a voice asked, "Who is there?" The chief replied with the agreed-upon word, and the door was opened. An old woman performed the office of concierge; but she was accompanied, for greater security, by a tall, robust fellow, armed with a stick, which, in such hands as his, would have proved as formidable as any other weapon.
"We want M. Charles," said the chief.
"He is asleep," replied the old woman; "but he told us to inform him if any one came. Go into the kitchen while I wake him."
"Tell him it is M. Berryer who has come from Paris," added the latter.
The old woman left them in the kitchen and went away. The travellers went close up to the huge fireplace, where a few embers left of the day's fire still remained. One end of a beam was fixed into the chimney place, whilst the other end was held tight in a kind of claw made by a crack--it was one of those pieces of inflammable firwood, used in Vendéen cottages instead of a lamp or candle. In ten minutes' time, the old woman came in and told M. Berryer that M. Charles was ready to receive him, and that she had come to lead him to him. He thereupon followed her, and ascended behind her a wretched staircase, which was outside the house, and seemed to be fixed along the wall, till he reached a small room on the first floor, the only one, indeed, which was at all habitable in the miserable farmhouse. This room was occupied by the Duchesse de Berry. The old woman opened the door, and, remaining outside, shut it after M. Berryer. His attention was at first entirely taken up by Madame. She was lying on a poor, coarsely carved, worm-eaten wooden bedstead, in very fine linen sheets, covered with a Scotch shawl of red and green plaid; she had on one of those muslin nightcaps worn by the women of the country, with lappets, falling on the shoulders. The walls were bare; a miserable white-washed fireplace warmed the room, which, in the way of furniture, only contained a table covered with papers, upon which rested two brace of pistols: in one corner of the apartment there was a chair on which had been flung the complete dress of a young peasant, and a black wig.
We have said that the object of the interview between M. Berryer and the duchesse was to persuade the latter to leave France; but, as we cannot report the details of that conversation concerning general interests without compromising private interests, we will pass it over in silence; as we have made our readers well acquainted with the men and things of this period, they will easily fill them in for themselves. Only by three o'clock in the morning did Madame give in to the arguments which M. Berryer had taken upon his own responsibility to convey to her. Although the duchesse could see for herself that there was but little chance of success attending an armed insurrection, it was not without crying and despair that she yielded.
"Very well, it is settled," she said, "I am to quit France; but I shall not come back to it again, take heed, for I do not wish to return with foreigners; they are but waiting for a chance, as you well know, and the moment will come: they will come and ask for my son--not that they will trouble themselves much more over him than they did over Louis XVIII. in 1813, but it will be a means for them to have a share in Paris. Very well, then, they shall not have my son! for nothing in this world shall they have him; I will rather carry him away into the mountains of Calabria! Look here, Monsieur Berryer, if it is necessary to buy the throne of France by the cession of a province, a town, a fortress or a cottage, like that in which I am, I give you my word, as regent and as mother, he shall never be king."
Finally, Madame made up her mind. M. Berryer took leave of her at four in the morning, taking with him her promise to rejoin him at noon in the second house he had put up at, which was situated four country leagues from the place where he had left his coachman. When the duchesse arrived there, she was to get into the little hired conveyance, and to return to Nantes in the company of M. Berryer, there to take coach with her fictitious passport, and, travelling right through France, to go out of it by the Mont Cenis route. M. Berryer stopped at the place agreed upon, and waited there for Madame from noon until six o'clock. Only then did he receive a message from her; the duchesse had changed her decision. She wrote to him that she had linked too many interests to hers, drawn too many lives to her own lot, to escape alone from the consequences of her descent into France, and to leave them pressing upon others; that, therefore, she had decided to share to the end the fate of those whom she had implicated; only, the taking up of arms, at first fixed for 24 May, was put off till the night of the 3rd to the 4th of June.
M. Berryer returned to Nantes in consternation. On the 25th, M. de Bourmont received a letter from the duchesse confirming what she had written to M. Berryer; as follows:--
"Having resolutely determined not to leave the Western provinces, and to entrust myself to fidelity of long standing, I count on you, my good friend, to take all the necessary measures for the taking up of arms, which will take place during the night of 3rd to 4th June. I call to my aid all courageous people; God will help us to save our country! No danger, no fatigue will dishearten me; I shall put in my appearance at the first rallying.
"MARIE-CAROLINE, Regent of France "VENDÉE, 25 May 1832"
Immediately upon receipt of this letter, M. de Bourmont wrote a note to M. de Coislin in the following terms:--
"As Madame has courageously resolved not to abandon the country, and is rallying round her all who wish to preserve France from the misfortunes which threaten her, make known to all that they are to hold themselves ready on Sunday, 3 June, and that they arrange throughout the following night to act together, according to the directions we have given. Make very certain your orders are conveyed to everybody and to all points.
"MARÉCHAL COMTE DE BOURMONT"
This, then, was how things were in la Vendée when the report of the death of General Lamarque ran through Paris. It followed that of Casimir Périer by only a few days: the two strong athletes were rudely strangled during their struggles in the Tribune, which seem to have killed them both. But the soldier survived the tribune by a few days. The impression produced by these two deaths was very different: nothing could be compared with the unpopularity of the one, and the popularity of the other. This death coincided with the famous affair of the compte rendu. We live so fast, and the gravest events pass over so quickly, that oblivion comes as rapidly as nightfall. Not one young man of thirty knows definitely to-day what the affair of the compte rendu was that we indicate was of so grave a nature.
After M. Laffitte gave up the seals of power, he returned to the Opposition; this was simple enough, since it was in order to bring about an easy reaction that Louis-Philippe had banished his prime minister and his old friend. M. Laffitte's Opposition was the most Conservative imaginable from the standpoint of enlightened politics. If anything could add to the duration of the reign, condemned in advance, it was the plan expounded by him to his co-religionists on the Left: this theory, of which M. Laffitte was the High Priest, and M. Odilon Barrot the Apostle, consisted in recovering possession of power by the help of a parliamentary majority, to make the infusion of political clemency triumphant, and to make the monarchy definitively--the word is Louis Blanc's--guardian over liberty; a narrow but honest dream, which, compelled to tread between reaction and insurrection, could never become a reality.
As for the Radical deputies, they were divided into two representative shades of opinion, the most advanced led by Garnier-Pagès, the other by M. Maugnin; their object was to renew a sort of league after the type of those of the Guises, with the object of leading the Bourbon monarchy unconsciously, in 1836 or 1837, to be what the Valois monarchy of 1585 or 1586 had been.
To sum up, with the exception of those who have since been called the centriers, the ventrus and the satisfaits, that is to say, that ruminant kind of being which looks in all times towards the trough of the Budget and the rack of the Civil List, everybody was dissatisfied. All the malcontents, desirous of a change, whether of system or of persons, but who only desired to reach such changes by constitutional means, gathered together during the month of May at M. Laffitte's to attempt a last supreme effort. Pure Republicans who, on the contrary, only admitted insurrectionist methods, and marched separately in their strength and liberty, sleeping on their arms, took no part whatever in this meeting, the leaders of which were MM. Laffitte, Odilon Barrot, Cormenin, Charles Comte, Mauguin, Lamarque, Garnier-Pagès and La Fayette. The last three sailed by the limits of Constitutional and Republican opposition, quite closely, not indeed so near as to belong to our camp, that of militant Republicanism, but near enough to let themselves be drawn along with it. The meeting at Laffitte's was composed of upwards of forty deputies. M. Laffitte spoke and summed up the situation with the threefold clearness of the orator, the financier and man of honour, and he suggested an address to the king. It was the old method, always repulsed, but always returning to the charge, under the name of parliamentary remonstrances in the time of absolute monarchy, and by the title of an address in the time of constitutional monarchy.
Garnier-Pagès, a just, incisive character, had but two words to say with which to fight the proposition victoriously. Could any one not mad conceive the illusion that royalty would consent to admit itself guilty, to recognise its errors and to make honourable amends to the nation? No, the monarchy and the nation were in a complete state of rupture. The nation must be appealed to concerning the errors of the monarchy. Garnier-Pagès would go so far as to term those errors treasons, and this sent a shudder down the spines of certain deputies of the Opposition. The upshot of the meeting was that the Opposition put its grievances before the nation under the form of a report. A commission was appointed, consisting of MM. La Fayette, Laffitte, Cormenin, Odilon Barrot, Charles Comte and Mauguin. MM. de Cormenin and Odilon Barrot were given the task of each drawing up the report separately; they would decide finally whether to choose either report or to destroy both reports. The work of each of the two editors bore signs of his own individual characteristics: M. de Cormenin too much recalled the bold pamphleteer who signed himself Timon le Misanthrope. M. Odilon Barrot, on the contrary, seemed too exclusively to bind up the future of France with the monarchical form of government. Neither of the two plans was adopted. It was decided to unite MM. de Cormenin and Barrot's two reports into one, or, rather, to draw up the manifesto in common, and it strongly resembled a declaration of war. Both left for Saint-Cloud in the morning and returned with the manifesto in the evening. It was in M. de Cormenin's handwriting; but it was easily seen that Odilon Barrot had had a great deal to do in the drawing up. However, whatever the share M. Barrot had in this work, the report assumed the character, if not exactly of a threat, at least of a severe and solemn warning. It appeared on 28 May 1832. One hundred and thirty-three deputies had signed it. It made a profound impression, and the death of General Lamarque, one of the principal signatories to the manifesto, threw a dark and almost mysterious shade upon the situation, such as the hand of death seems to cast over certain fatal days.
Chapter V
Last moments of General Lamarque--What his life had been--One of my interviews with him--I am appointed one of the stewards of the funeral cortège--The procession--Symptoms of popular agitation--The marching past across the place Vendôme--The Duke Fitz-James--Conflicts provoked by the town police--The students of the École Polytechnique join the cortège--Arrival of the funeral procession at the pont d'Austerlitz--Speeches--First shots--The man with the red flag--Allocution of Étienne Arago
On 1 June, at half-past eleven in the evening, General Lamarque had breathed his last. His death was a great event. At that period the Republican party used Napoleon's name as a weapon. Now, General Lamarque--a thing which would be much more difficult to define now than in those days, when people judged much more by instinct than by education--General Lamarque was, at that time, a supporter of the Empire and also of liberty, a soldier of Napoleon and a friend of La Fayette. Napoleon, it will be remembered, had made him Maréchal de France at Saint-Helena. Neither the Bourbons of the Elder Branch, nor those of the Younger, had had sufficient intelligence to ratify the appointment; but, in the eyes of France, it was, indeed, one of her maréchals who had just died. Then, too, there was really something grand about his death, by reason of the circumstances under which it happened and the particular incidents which had accompanied it. A multitude of sayings after the style of Cato and Leonidas were quoted that General Lamarque had said on his deathbed. He died heroically and yet regretting life. The thought which had dwelt in his heart as long as it beat was--"I have not done enough for France!"
The illness of which the general died seemed to deceive the doctors; sometimes the invalid appeared to be on the high way to convalescence and the bulletin of his health would announce the good news to his friends; sometimes a fatal crisis put the sick man further back than the improvement had carried him. He himself was never deceived by these passing improvements. His friends, Drs. Lisfranc and Broussais, attended him with the devotion both of science and of friendship.
"My friends," the general invariably said to them, "I am grateful for your care; I am touched by it, but you will not vanquish the disease! You have hope and you want me to hope; in vain, I feel I shall succumb."
Then, a minute later, he added with a sigh--
"Ah! I am sorry to die! I should have liked to serve France still longer.... And, too, I am specially disappointed not to be able to measure swords with Wellington, who made his reputation by the defeat he inflicted at Waterloo; I have made a study of him; I knew his tactics and I am quite sure I should have beaten him!"
Laffitte went to see him as often as his busy life allowed. At the last visit he paid him, France alone was the leading topic of conversation.
"Oh! my friend! my friend!" the invalid said, as he said good-bye to him, "reserve your strength for France; she alone is great! We are all small.... But," he added, weighed down by a never-ceasing idea, "I depart still full of regret that I have not been able to avenge my country for the infamous treaties of 1814 and 1815."
It was General Lamarque who uttered the sublime phrase that was flung at an orator who was boasting of the peace which had been brought about with the return of the Bourbons--
"The peace of 1815 is no peace; it is a halt in the mud!" General Exelmans, the other old war comrade who was to survive him by twenty years to die from a fall off his horse, came also to see him, and to try to restore hope, which, as we have said, had long before died in the heart of the invalid.
"What matter," he exclaimed, in a kind of impatience, "what matter that I die, provided my country lives?"
In a moment of discouragement, when he saw open before him the grave, which had swallowed up much patriotism, he had the sword of honour brought to him which had been given him by the officers of the Hundred Days, whose cause he had pleaded with much fervour and great success; then, sitting up in bed, he drew the sword from its scabbard, looked at it a long time, laid it across his knees, and finally carried it to his lips, saying--
"My dear officers of the Hundred Days! They gave it me to be used, and I have not used it!"
Once, overcome by grief, in the presence of Dr. Lisfranc, he made an onslaught against the impotent art which we call medicine. Suddenly, perceiving before whom he was speaking, he said--
"I curse medicine, but I bless doctors, who do a lot with the small amount of knowledge which science places in their hands. Embrace me, Lisfranc, and do not forget that I loved you very much!"
His last moments were, as we see, worthy of a soldier; he had struggled against death as Leonidas against Xerxes; his bed had been the battlefield. An hour before he died, in the agony which his sufferings betrayed by his starts and shudderings, he opened his eyes, which had been closed for thirty-six hours, and three times he uttered the two words: "Honour! Country!"--the two words engraved on the Cross of the Legion of Honour. He breathed his last an hour after he had uttered the cry which had been that of his whole lifetime.
It is said that a dying man achieves greatness; it is true, both morally as well as physically. General Lamarque increased enormously in greatness in everybody's eyes.
They remembered the boy volunteer of nineteen, the young captain of the famous infernal column, bringing to the Convention a strip of flag taken from the enemy, and winning from that great and terrible Assembly a vote pronouncing Captain Lamarque to have deserved well from his country. How splendid his military life had been through the thirty years that had passed since then!
They remembered Caprée, Calabria, the Tyrol and Wagram, where he broke the Austrian army three times; they recalled and extolled his struggles each day in Catalogne, against Wellington, who never conquered him and whom he hoped to conquer. Then, too, his political life, as a member of the Tribune, was none the less fine; his presence in all the struggles in the Chamber; his voice always raised on behalf of the honour and defence of France; his entreaties in favour of liberty when it was threatened; his cries of alarm each time he saw the Revolution compromise; ill and weak as he was up to the day he took to his bed, he never kept silence or yielded when any question of national honour arose.
When General Foy died, he at least left us Lamarque, as Miltiades left Themistocles. When General Lamarque died, he left behind him the heritage of a race of warriors which has given generals to the battlefield and tribunes to the Chamber. In spite of all the right he had to public recognition, the Government of Louis-Philippe, who only regarded General Lamarque as an enemy, and rejoiced at the fall of an enemy, only accorded to his obsequies the tribute of honour strictly due to the political and military position of a general; all the funeral arrangements were left to the pious care and to the responsibility of his friends and family.
I was made a steward by the family and had the charge of seeing that the artillery took its proper place behind the funeral car. This honour was, in a way, a souvenir which the dead bequeathed to the living. In common with General Foy and General La Fayette, General Lamarque had been very friendly to me, due, indeed, more to memory of my father than to my own personal valour. But still, when he knew, about the close of 1830, that I had returned from la Vendée, where I had been sent by General La Fayette, he begged me to go and see him. We talked for long of the Vendée as he had known it in 1815, when he was going on a mission from a fresh government; I told him all I thought about it, namely, that, some day or other, it threatened to rise in revolt. Every word of mine answered to some foresight of his own. I traced out my journey for him with blackheaded pins and indicated the probable places where there would be gatherings. He left for Nantes on the following day. But they did not let him reach his destination; at Angers he was stopped by an order recalling him.
We believe this measure was the result of those niggardly schemes which the ministry of Casimir Périer labelled with the title of wide political vision, and I believe I am not wrong in applying to him the same explanation that I did not hesitate to apply to Louis-Philippe, after the interview I had the honour to have with him upon our return from Vendée.
The revolution of 1830 had been so sudden that, for a moment, we Republicans thought it was complete; the report of its arms and its cries of liberty had reverberated throughout Belgium, Italy and Poland; three nations rose and cried, "France, come to our aid!" An appeal like this France always listens to, and General La Fayette replied in the name of France. The most lively and popular sympathy had, moreover, burst forth in our towns and countrysides in favour of revolutions carried out on our own lines; partial and distant eruptions of that great volcano whose crater is in Paris, and which seems at times extinct, like Etna, but, as deceptive as Etna, is always burning! Shouts of "Vivent l'Italie, la Belgique et la Pologne!" filled our streets and entered everywhere through the windows and doors of royal and ministerial palaces. It was scarcely three months after the Revolution; at that period all still glowed with the sun of the Three Days, the grand voice of the people was still listened to, and the Government only had to promise through General La Fayette, as we have said above, for the nations of Belgium, Italy and Poland to be kept from perishing. And we heard the cries of joy of these foreign patriots in less than four months change to cries of distress. But what other could we expect? Let them succour Italy by sending one of the old generals, who would have shown them the way to make a new army, and Poland by diverting the Czar's plans, by inciting--an easy task for us--Turkey on one side and Persia on the other. Thus caught in a triangle of fire, we should leave Russia to contend, and we should divide between our two neighbour nations the most effective aid of our presence and of our arms. The people, true and profound of instinct, would thus feel, without being able to account for the means, the three probable results, and they would receive with shouts of joy the proclamation of the ministerial system of nonintervention, and the royal promise that the Polish nationality should not perish.
Advanced as were the ministers of Louis-Philippe's kingdom, they must either go to war or forswear it: by making war, they would get into trouble with kings; by forswearing it, they would get into trouble with the people. One way only remained: to prove to the country that it had too much to do in respect of its own affairs to busy itself in meddling with those of others; it was like giving to France an internal fever, as we have already said; through being taken up with its own sufferings it would have more sympathy for those of others. A small civil war in la Vendée would help its outlook wonderfully. It was therefore necessary to send far out of that country, upon which they wished to experiment, all strong men who might compromise movements from their beginnings, and all shrewd men who might guess the real cause of those movements.
Now, Lamarque was both a strong man and a far-seeing one; so they did not give him time to arrive on the scene of civil war. It was to these circumstances I owed the honour of coming in contact with General Lamarque and of not being forgotten by the family at the time of rendering the last honours to the conqueror of Caprée. I went to tell my friends Bastide and Godefroy Cavaignac of my appointment, and asked them if they had arranged anything for the morrow. They had a meeting at Étienne Arago's for the same evening, who, as I have previously said, was lieutenant in the 12th Legion of Artillery, and who, in case of a triumphant insurrection, was designed by a secret organisation to be mayor of the first arrondissement; the son of the noted barrister Bernard (of Rennes), was his associate. Arago lived in Bernard's house, which was at the corner of the place and rue des Pyramides. Nothing was settled at this meeting; no sort of plan was drawn up or scheme fixed upon: each one was left to his own devices to act according to circumstances. Nevertheless, the detachment of artillery commanded for the funeral cortège appeared armed at the house of mourning and provided themselves with cartridges.
On 5 June, the day fixed for the funeral, I went at eight in the morning to the general's house, in the faubourg Saint-Honoré. In my capacity as steward I had no rifle, nor, consequently, any cartridges. There were already, by eight o'clock, over three thousand persons in front of the house. I saw a group of young people who were preparing a kind of ammunition-waggon with ropes. I went up to them and asked them what they were busy with. "They were arranging the ropes," they replied, "with which to draw the funeral car." At the same time, they informed me that General Lamarque's body was lying in state in his sleeping-room and that people were defiling past the bed of state. I went and put myself in the queue and filed past in my turn. The general in full uniform was laid on his bed, with his gloved-hand on his bare sword; he had a fine head, and his dignity was increased by the majesty of death. Those who passed by did so in silence and veneration, stooping as they reached the foot of the bed and sprinkling holy water on the corpse with a bough of laurel. I passed by as the rest did and went back into the street again. I was extremely weak from the effect of the cholera, I had lost all my appetite and scarcely ate an ounce of bread a day. The day promised to be a fatiguing one: so I went into my friend Hiraux's, whose café was, as we know, at the corner of the rues Royale and Saint-Honoré, and I waited until the time for departure, trying to take a cup of chocolate. At eleven, a rolling of drums called me to my post. They had just brought down the coffin under the great gate, shrouded with black. All the various elements which go to the formation of a funeral procession rolled along the rue and faubourg Saint Honoré--National Guards, workmen, artillerymen, students, old soldiers, refugees of all countries, citizens from every town; leaving, like a twin lake, their waves rolling across the place de la Madeleine and the place Louis XV. At the roll of the drums, all this crowd disentangled itself and every one rallied round his own leader, flag and banner. Many only had laurel or oak branches for banners and flags. All this passed before the eyes of the four squadrons of carabiniers who occupied the place Louis XV. The 12th Light Infantry waited at the other end of Paris on the very place de la Bastille. The Municipal Guard, on its side, was placed at intervals along the route which extended from the Préfecture de Police to the Panthéon. A detachment of the same guard protected the Jardin des Plantes. A squadron of dragoons covered the place de Grève with a battalion of the 3rd Light. Finally, a detachment of soldiers of the same troop stood ready to mount their horses at the Célestins barracks. The remaining troops were confined in their respective barracks, and orders were given that regiments from Rueil, Saint-Denis and Courbevoie should be sent if needed.
There were then in Paris, on the morning of that terrible day, nearly eighteen thousand men of the line and light infantry; four thousand four hundred cavalry; two thousand of the garde municipale infantry and cavalry. Nearly eighty thousand men in all. We had been told of this increase of troops--for we had friends even in the War Office--an increase due indisputably to the circumstances under which they found themselves; they had added that the Government only waited an excuse for showing its strength; this meant that, instead of fearing a riot, they desired one. But there was so much ardour in the young political head which constituted the Republican party, that directly the match touched the flint, the spark flashed forth which was to fire the powder-magazine, the very powder-magazine which was to blow us all up. We were congregated on the place Louis XV. with all the heads of the secret societies. Only one of these societies, the Société Gauloise, was in favour of fighting. The previous day, the Société des Amis du peuple had met in the boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle and had decided, as we had done on our part, that firing was not to be begun, but that it should be answered if it were begun by the soldiers. As will be seen it needed only a single shot to lead to a general slaughter.
In addition to this state of things, the heat was stifling, the atmosphere charged with electricity, and huge black clouds rolled over Paris, as though the sky were in mourning and wanted to take part in the funeral ceremony, by the rolling of its thunder. It is quite impossible to-day, at this distance of time, twenty-two years later, to give any idea of the degree of excitement to which the crowd had reached, when it received from its leaders the order to take the place assigned to each corps, corporation, society and nation, in the funeral procession. It was not a cortège; it was a federation round a funeral bier. At half-past eleven, under a driving rain, the state-carriage moved forward drawn by thirty young men. The corners of the pall were held by General La Fayette--who had a working man by his side wearing the July decoration, on whose arm the general leant from time to time when the paving became too slippery--by MM. Laffitte, Isay and Châtelain, of the Courrier français; by the Maréchal Clausel and by General Pelet; and, lastly, by M. Mauguin and a student from the École Polytechnique. Behind the bier walked M. de Laborde, questor to the Chamber, preceded by two ushers, accompanied by MM. Cabet and Laboissière, stewards of the cortège, and followed by a number of deputies and generals. The principal deputies were--
MM. le maréchal Gérard, Tardieu, Chevandier, Vatout, de Corcelles, Allier, Taillandier, de Las Cases fils, Nicod, Odilon Barrot, la Fayette (Georges), de Béranger, Larabit, de Cormenin, de Bryas, Degouve-Denuncques, Charles Comte, le général Subervie, le colonel Lamy, le Comte Lariboissière, Charles Dupin, Viennet, Sapey, Lherbette, Paturel, Bavoux, Baude, Marmier, Jouffroy, Duchaffaut, Pourrat, Pèdre-Lacaze, Bérard, François Arago, de Girardin, Gauthier d'Hauteserve, le général Tiburce Sébastiani, Garnier-Pagès, Leyraud, Cordier, Vigier.
The principal generals were--
MM. Mathieu Dumas, Emmanuel Rey, Lawoestine, Hulot, Berkem, Saldanha, Reminski, Seraski.
Of these three latter, the one was a Portuguese and the two others were Poles. With them were the maréchals de Camp Rewbell, Schmitz, Mayot and Sourd.
After the deputies and generals came the exiles of all countries, each group carrying its own national banner. Two battalions formed the escorting troop and marched in echelon on each side. Then--just as, in the midst of its quays, the flowing river overflows its banks after a storm--rolled by nearly six hundred artillerymen with loaded rifles and cartridges in their cartridge-boxes and pockets; then ten thousand of the National Guard without guns, but armed with sabres; then groups of working men intermingled with members of secret societies; then thirty, perhaps forty or fifty thousand citizens! All these moved past in the rain. The cortège turned at the Madeleine along the boulevard, crowded on both sides with women and men, forming a variegated carpet, which the citizens at their doors or windows, men, women and children, took part in as though on a tapestry pattern. Not one of the ordinary sounds men make at great gatherings issued from that crowd. Only, from time to time a signal was given and, with incredible cohesion, the cry was uttered by a hundred thousand voices whilst flags, banners, pennons, branches of laurel and of oak were waved--
"Honneur au général Lamarque!..."
Then all lips were silent; and the branches of oak and laurel, pennons, banners and flags expressed no more motion than as before a brief and hot squall during a tempest. All was as silent and nearly as still as death. But in the air there floated an invisible something, whispering low: "Misfortune!" All eyes were fastened on us, the artillerymen. They knew well that if anything burst forth it would be from among the ranks of the men in that severe uniform who marched side by side, with gloomy looks and clenched teeth, who, like impatient horses shaking their plumes, shook the red streamers on their shakos. I could the better judge of these arrangements, as, under instruction from the family, I did not walk in the ranks, but by the side of the artillery. From time to time, men of the people whom I did not know broke through the hedge, and shook me by the left hand--I held my sabre in my right--and said to me--
"The artillery need not be anxious, we are here!"
It took nearly three-quarters of an hour to get to the rue de la Paix. There, a movement was, all at once, set on foot which no one at first understood. It was not in the programme. The head of the cortège was drawn in the midst of unintelligible shoutings in the direction of the place Vendôme. I ran to make inquiries: thanks to my uniform and to a certain popularity which it had already acquired, and especially to the gold-fringed tri-coloured scarf which I wore on my left arm, everybody made way for me. I therefore gained with more ease than I should have expected the head of the column, which was already moving into the rue de la Paix. And this is what had happened.
At the top of the rue de la Paix, a man dressed as an operative, but who it was easy to recognise belonged to a higher class, had broken away from the boulevards and was exchanging a few words with the young people attached to the hearse. Soon, a cry went up--
"Yes, yes, the soldier of Napoleon, round the column!... To the column! To the column!"
And, without consulting either generals or deputies or police, whether in uniform or without, a unanimous impulse made the catafalque deviate from the straight line and it was hurried into the rue de la Paix. This was episode the first of that day's journey. I ran and resumed my place.
"What is the matter?" they asked me.
"The hearse is going to be taken round the column."
"Will the post present arms?" a voice asked.
"Pardieu!" said another voice, "if they do not present arms of their own accord they shall be made to do so by force."
"Honour to General Lamarque!" shouted a hundred thousand voices.
Then, as before, all returned to silence: the head of the cortège reached the place Vendôme. Suddenly, a great shudder went through the crowd: that serpent with its thousand coils trembled at the least shock from head to the tail. At the sight of the cortège coming out on the place Vendôme, the picket of the staff officers remained shut inside the guardhouse. The sentinel alone paced up and down before the door. A shout sounded--
"Honour to General Lamarque! Honour to General Lamarque!"
At the same time, a fiery crowd rushed upon the staff officer's guardhouse. The commandant did not even attempt to offer resistance; after a moment of parleying, he ordered his soldiers out, took the field and presented arms. This first episode prepared for the struggle by showing that the most lukewarm spirits were ready for an outburst. This successful issue was looked upon as a victory. It is, moreover, probable that the head of the guardhouse had had no orders of any kind.
The procession round the column had no connection whatever with the programme; the officer yielded, not from fear, but from the sympathy which, no doubt, his soldierly heart felt towards the remains of the great general and the famous member of the Tribune. He did wisely, for a terrible collision would else have taken place; and as it was so close to the Tuileries, who knows what would have happened? The cortège regained the rue de la Paix, and resumed its sombre and silent march along the boulevards. It reached the club in the rue de Choiseul, now the Cercle des Arts; the balcony was filled with members of the club. Only one had his hat on his head; he was Duke Fitz-James. I guessed what would happen and I confess I trembled. I knew Duke Fitz-James very well indeed, and he, on his side, returned my friendship heartily. I knew that, if forced, he would rather be torn to pieces than take off his hat. I was, therefore, most anxious that he should raise it of his own accord. Just at that moment, whether by chance or by pre-concerted provocation, the insistent phrase, "Honneur au général Lamarque!" was echoed, followed by the cry, "Take off your hat! Off with your hats!" At the same time, a hailstorm of stones broke the windows of the house. The duke was obliged to withdraw. Three days later, I asked him for an explanation of this show of bravado, as it was very much out of harmony with his courteous manners.
"I cannot answer you as to this," said the duke; "the explanation of the riddle will reach you from la Vendée."
Indeed, a letter from the noble duke was found among the papers of Madame la duchesse de Berry, giving the explanation of the keeping on of the hat: it was a signal to which no one responded, or, rather, to which only those replied who could not understand it. This incident stopped the procession for nearly ten minutes; the National Guards appeared upon the terrace and asserted that what had been taken for an insult from the ex-peer of France was only an aberration; and the catafalque resumed its route through the crowd, as a heavy-laden vessel, which has the wind against it, painfully cleaves through the waves of the sea. From that moment all doubt ceased in my mind, and I was convinced that the journey would not be done without resort to firearms. The six hundred artillerymen with their pale faces and frowning brows were also convinced of it. However, no other incident occurred during the course from the Choiseul Club to the Saint-Martin Gate. After passing the Gymnase, the rain had stopped falling; but thunder rumbled incessantly, intermingling with the rolling of the drums. The presence of the police placed at intervals along the sides of the procession put the finishing touch to the irritation in people's minds. Their aggressive air caused the feeling that they were there to get up a quarrel; or, much more likely, instead of being inclined to alienate quarrels, to stir them up with all their might. Opposite the theatre, a woman observed to a man of the people who carried a flag, that the Gaulois-cock was a bad emblem of democracy. The bearer of the standard, in all probability sharing this opinion, reversed the flag, broke the Gaulois-cock under foot and put in its place a branch of willow, the tree of mourning and friend of the tomb. A policeman saw this substitution and the conditions under which it was made; he sprang forward and snatched the standard from the hands of the man who carried it; the latter resisted, and the policeman drew his sword and struck him in the throat. At the sight of blood, a cry of rage went forth from every mouth; twenty swords, sabres and daggers came out of their scabbards. The policeman recognising that I was a steward, sprang to my side, crying, "Save me!" I pushed him in among the ranks of the artillerymen; some were of a mind to protect him, others to tear him to pieces; for five minutes he stood as pale as a corpse between life and death. The more generous feeling carried the day, and he was saved. At the same moment, all looks were attracted towards the same direction. An insult was offered by another policeman to a veteran captain, who drew his sword and attacked him. The policeman, on his side, drew his sword from its sheath and defended himself furiously. When he attained the pavement he buried himself out of sight in the density of the crowd, where his flight could be noted by the imprecations which rose as he passed through. The young man wounded by the first policeman had been able to continue on his way, leaning on the arms of two friends. Only, he had taken off his collar, and the blood from his gaping wound flowed on to his shirt and down his coat. His July decoration (I remember that it was a July ribbon) had become as red as the ribbon of the Legion of Honour. From this moment the conviction went through all minds that a bloody affray was approaching. Everything, in fact, seemed to suggest the use of arms; the rolling of drums, the noise of the tamtams, the fluttering of the flags of all countries, the constant struggle between liberty and slavery, the cries of "Honneur au général Lamarque!" becoming more and more frequent and every time assuming a more distinctly threatening character, the earth beneath and the skies above, and all that rent the air, combined to incite people's minds to a pitch of excitement filled with danger.
"Where are they leading us?" a terrified voice cried from the midst of a group of students.
"TO THE REPUBLIC!" replied a strong, sonorous voice, "and we invite you to suffer with us to-night in the Tuileries!"
A kind of groan of joy greeted this invitation, which, in a different sense, recalled that of Leonidas to those of Thermopylæ, and I saw men who had no arms tear up the stakes which were used as props for the young trees that had just been planted on the boulevard in place of the old ones knocked down on 28 July 1830. Others broke the trees themselves to make into clubs.
The 12th Light were, as I have said, drawn up in line on the place de la Bastille. For an instant, it was thought the conflict would begin there; but, all at once, an officer came out from the front line, and advancing towards Étienne Arago, with whom he talked for a moment, he said to him--
"I am a Republican, I have pistols in my pockets; you can rely upon us."
Several artillerymen, who, like myself, had heard these words, shouted: "Vive la ligne!" The cry uttered by us was taken up with enthusiasm: they knew we should not give such a cry without reason. The line replied by a shout nearly as unanimous of: "Honneur au général Lamarque!" These words, "The line is on our side," repeated from rank to rank, ran through the whole length of the cortège like lightning. At the same time, loud shouts were heard of "L'École Polytechnique!... vive l'École! vive la République!" These were inspired by the sight of some sixty students running with disordered raiment, bareheaded, some with swords in their hands. They had been consigned to their quarters and had broken out, overturning General Tholosé, who had tried to oppose their coming out; they had come to throw their popular name and their uniform, still blackened with the powder of July, into the insurrection. The artillery received them with open arms; they knew that, few though they were in number, they were a powerful support. Their arrival produced so much effect that, at sight of therm the band which preceded the hearse spontaneously played the Marseillaise. No idea can be formed of the enthusiasm with which the crowd greeted that electrifying air, forbidden for over a year. Fifty thousand voices repeated in chorus, "Citizens, to arms!" To this chant, the cortège crossed the place de la Bastille and traversed the boulevard Bourdon, advancing between the Saint-Martin canal and the public granaries. A platform was put up at the entrance to the bridge of Austerlitz; from it the farewell orations were to be given. After these were pronounced, the body of General Lamarque continued its route towards the département des Landes, where it was to be interred, whilst the procession returned to Paris.
It was after three o'clock in the afternoon; I had had nothing since the previous night, except the cup of chocolate from my friend Hiraux: I was literally dropping from exhaustion. The speeches bade fair to be long, and, naturally, tedious; so I proposed to two or three of the artillerymen to come and dine at the Gros Marronniers, and they accepted.
"Will anything happen?" I asked Bastide before I went off.
"I think not," he said, looking round him, "and yet, do not be deceived, the 29 July is in the air."
"In any case, I shall not go far away," I said, and I went.
"Are you going away?" Étienne Arago said to me.
"I will return in a quarter of an hour."
"Make haste, if you wish to take part!"
"How can I, I have neither rifle nor cartridges?"
"You must do as I have done, put pistols in your pockets."
He showed me the butt-end of a pistol sticking out of his pocket.
"Diable!" I exclaimed, "if I thought anything would happen I would dispense with dinner!"
"Oh! don't be anxious, if there is anything it will last long enough for you to come back before dessert."
That was probable, so we went off without scruples. I was so weak that I was obliged to lean on the arm of my two companions, and I very nearly fainted before entering the restaurant. They made me drink iced water and I revived. Everything was topsy-turvy, and we had great difficulty in getting waited on. We were engrossed in a huge fish-pie, the main dish always served in a dinner à la Râpée, when we heard a volley of firing, but so peculiar in sound that we never doubted but that it was the discharge over the hearse in honour of the illustrious dead.
"To the memory of General Lamarque!" I said, raising my glass.
My two companions pledged me. Then we heard four or five single shots.
"Oh! oh!" I exclaimed, "that is another tale altogether! Those shots sound like sport."
I ran on to the quay, where I climbed up on a railing. Nothing could be made out except that there was a great commotion about the pont d'Austerlitz.
"Pay quick and come and see what that music is," I said to my two companions.
We flung 10 francs on the table; but, as the firing increased, we did not ask for our change, we started running towards the barrier. The sound of firing had given me back my strength. When we reached the barrier, we found it guarded by men in blouses who, on perceiving us, shouted, "Vivent les artilleurs!" We ran up to them.
"What has been happening?" we asked.
"Only that they are firing on the people, and the artillery has returned the fire; père Louis-Philippe is at his last gasp and the Republic is proclaimed. Vive la République!"
We looked at one another. The triumph seemed to us too complete for the short time it had taken to happen in. But this is what had actually happened, and the stage things had reached. I said that, as we left, they were about to begin the orations. Banners of every nation had been taken up on to the platform--Polish, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese waved their standards of every colour above the catafalque, and amongst them was the flag of the German Union seen floating for the first time, black and red and gold.
General La Fayette had begun by saying a few lofty, calm and serene words, in keeping with the grand old man who uttered them; then came Mauguin, less restrained; Clausel, more military; then the Portuguese General Saldanha. Whilst the orators were speaking, the young men went from group to group disseminating news, such as: "They are fighting at the Hôtel de Ville!" or, "A general has just declared himself against Louis-Philippe Others, "The troops have revolted!" or, "They are marching upon the Tuileries!" No one believed such rumours seriously, and yet they warmed and stirred people's spirits and hearts. After our battery had passed through the boulevard, it took up its position near the platform. There were gathered Étienne Arago, Guinard, Savary, corresponding by means of signs with Bastide and Thomas, who were on the boulevard Bourdon. In the middle of General Saldanha's speech, attention seemed suddenly distracted; cries, commotion and rumours drew all eyes towards the boulevards. A man clad in black, tall, thin and as pale as a ghost, with dark moustaches, holding in his hand a red flag edged with black fringe, and mounted upon a horse which he had difficulty in steering through the crowd, waved his blood-coloured flag, on which was written in black letters--
"LIBERTY OR DEATH!"
Where did the man come from? Neither at the trial or sentence was this told. All that was known was that his name was Jean-Baptiste Peyron, and that he came from the Basses-Alpes. He was condemned to ONE MONTH'S imprisonment. We none of us knew him. Was he excited, as he said himself, by a feeling of enthusiasm bordering on madness? Was he a seditious agent? The mystery has never been elucidated. But, wherever he came from and whatever the motive by which he was animated, his appearance was greeted with unanimous disapproval. General Exelmans shouted in a voice which dominated every other--
"Not the red flag! the flag of terror; we only want the tricolour, which is that of glory and liberty."
Two men then sprang on General Exelmans, and tried to drag him towards the canal. It was never known who they were. He shook them off and came across to the Comte de Flahaut.
"What is to be done?" General Exelmans asked.
"Run to the Tuileries and warn the king of what is going on."
They both rushed off to the Tuileries. At that moment, two young men unharnessed General La Fayette's carriage and led it towards the Hôtel de Ville. Simultaneously, and as though the impulse had been associated with the appearance of the man with the red flag, a column of dragoons came out of the Célestins barracks. M. Gisquet had sent the order, which ought to have been given by General Pajol, Commander of the First Military Division. The appearance of the dragoons, which at first, however, meant nothing hostile, as their pistols were in their holsters and their rifles hung at their saddlebows, yet produced a certain amount of commotion along the boulevard Bourdon. Étienne Arago saw the effect and leant over towards Guinard's ear.
"I think it is time to begin," he said.
"Begin!" Guinard answered, laconically.
Arago did not wait to hear it twice; he rushed on to the platform. A student had followed after General Saldanha; Arago took his place and shouted--
"We have had enough of that kind of speech! Few words are needed and they are Vive la République! It was to that cry General Lamarque began his military career, it is to that cry we should follow his remains. Vive la République! Follow me, those who agree with me!"
Not one word of the allocution was lost; scarcely was it seen that a lieutenant of the artillery was going to speak before everybody kept silence. Besides, the name of Arago, which was very popular, had circulated in a whisper below the tremendous shout of "Vive la République!"
At the last words of his speech, Arago took possession of one of the flags from the platform, and, flag in hand, with Guinard and Savary by his side, he rushed to our battery. But, in the commotion which had followed the speech, the crowd had broken the ranks of the artillerymen in such a way that the three leaders, followed only by about thirty men, had disappeared from the sight of their other companions. At this moment, some shots were heard in the boulevard Bourdon.
Let us follow the fortunes of Arago, Guinard and Savary; we will return presently to the other portion of the struggle.
Chapter VI
The artillerymen--Carrel and le National--Barricades of the boulevard Bourdon and in the rue de Ménilmontant--The carriage of General La Fayette--A bad shot from my friends--Despair of Harel--The pistols in Richard--The women are against us--I distribute arms to the insurgents--Change of uniform--The meeting at Laffitte's--Progress of the insurrection--M. Thiers--Barricade Saint-Merry--Jeanne--Rossignol--Barricade of the passage du Saumon--Morning of 6 June
The group of artillerymen who guided the three leaders we have just mentioned went down at double quick pace, shouting, "Vive la République!" along the right bank of the canal. Some fled before them, others rallied round; there was a frightful tumult. At the place de la Bastille they rejoined the 12th Light; after what the officer had said they were sure of these. So the soldiers let the artillery go by. The major saluted them and nodded his approval. At the boulevard Saint-Antoine, a cuirassier, whose name I have forgotten, joined the artillerymen. There was a cuirassier on 5 June as there was a fireman on 15 May. When the cuirassier reached the guardhouse of the boulevard, at the corner of the rue de Ménilmontant, he rushed into the guardroom, sword in hand; the people followed him. In an instant, the guardhouse was taken and the soldiers disarmed. They continued along the boulevard to shouts of "Vive la République!" cries which were almost everywhere received with cheers. At the top of the rue de Lancry, they met Carrel on horseback. He came, like a general, to find out the state of things for himself.
"Have you a regiment with you?" he asked.
"We have them all with us!" he was told.
"That is too much; I only want one," he said, laughing, as he resumed at a gallop his way along the Bastille road. The artillerymen took the rue Bourbon-Villeneuve. At sight of them, the guard at the Bank ran for their rifles, but, to the great astonishment of the insurgents, they presented arms. They could not, however, go through the whole of Paris in this fashion; they were a few yards from the Vaudeville, where they deposited the flag; they rapidly ate a few bites of food and made for the National, in the rue du Croissant. The Republicans flocked there, and, in the midst of them, men who held intermediary opinions, like Hippolyte Royer-Collard, for example. Meanwhile Carrel arrived, and his opinion was awaited impatiently.
"I have not great faith in the barricade," he said; "we succeeded in 1830 by an accident. Those who are of different opinion from me may move the paving-stones. I shall not persuade them to do it, nor shall I disapprove; but, in saving le National and in preventing them from compromising it as a newspaper, I shall keep a bodyguard round until to-morrow. Believe me, it takes more courage to say to my friends what I am saying than to attempt with them that in which they are going to engage."
As Carrel uttered these words, Thomas arrived from the boulevard Bourdon.
"There is nothing for us to do here," said Thomas; "let us go away!"
At the same instant, the enthusiasts came out from the National offices and went to consult together at Ambert's, in the rue Godot-de-Mauroy.
We will now relate what had happened in the boulevard Bourdon, from whence Thomas had come. As we said before, the dragoons had issued from the Célestins barracks and, after advancing rapidly, had stopped two hundred yards from the bridge. The multitude confronted them in terror. At this moment, the carriage of General La Fayette came out of the crowd drawn by young men. Those who marched before it shouted, "Make room for La Fayette!" The dragoons opened their ranks to let the general and the youths and the carriage pass. Scarcely had the general gone by before several shots rang out. Who fired those shots? Impossible to state, we did not ourselves know. It is the eternal question which history puts over and over again, without truth ever being able to formulate a reply; it was the enigma of 10 August, of 5 June and of 24 February. Instantly, the dragoons were beaten down with stones; children slipped even underneath the horses' bodies and ripped up the animals under the men. The conduct of the dragoons and of their commandant, M. Dessolier, was admirable; they sustained everything without either charging or firing. The attack was to come from another side. A sub-officer was despatched at a gallop to tell the colonel, who remained in the Célestins. The sub-officer reported, and the colonel decided not only to extricate his men by making a diversion, but, better still, to catch the insurgents between two fires. He came at the head of a second detachment, which, with trumpeters at its head, issued forth from the place de l'Arsénal. But scarcely had it proceeded a hundred yards before a discharge of musketry burst forth and two dragoons fell. Then the dragoons broke into a gallop, and, to avenge themselves for the attempted fusillade, charged the crowd along the boulevard Bourdon. A second discharge went off and Commandant Cholet fell dead. Then resounded the cry, "To arms!" Bastide and Thomas were at the opposite end of the boulevard Bourdon. They had not begun the attack, but, on the contrary, were attacked. They resolved not to recede by a single yard. A barricade was put up in a few minutes. It was defended by three principal leaders, Bastide, Thomas and Séchan. A dozen of the students of the École Polytechnique, a score of artillerymen and as many more of the populace rallied round them.
As though his tall figure did not run double the danger of the other, Thomas mounted on top of the barricade; Séchan took hold of him from behind, put his arms round him and made him come down. They kept their position unmoved. The firing came from the Arsenal, from the pavillon de Sully, and from the public granaries all at the same time. The colonel of dragoons had had his horse killed under him; the lieutenant was mortally wounded. A bullet had just hit Captain Briqueville. The order to retire was given to the dragoons who doubled back along the rues de la Cerisaie and Petit-Musc. The barricade was cleared; it was futile to continue the struggle on the outskirts of Paris; it was in the heart of it that fires must be lit. Thomas, Bastide and Séchan flew along the boulevard Contrescarpe and re-entered Paris, shouting: "To arms!" Thomas ran to confer with the National. Bastide, Séchan, Dussart, Pescheux d'Herbinville, erected a barricade across the entrance to the rue de Ménilmontant, where Bastide and Thomas lived, and had a shed full of wood for burning. Meanwhile, the students, the pupils of the École and the populace had taken possession of the hearse. Shouts of "To the Panthéon" were heard.
"Yes! yes! to the Panthéon," all voices repeated.
The hearse was drawn up before the Panthéon. The municipal cavalry barred the way. It was attacked and offered resistance, but was driven back towards the barrière d'Enfer. Two squadrons of carabiniers came to its aid, and, thanks to this reinforcement, it kept the mastery of the convoy. The insurgents dispersed down the faubourg Saint-Germain, shouting: "To arms!"
Paris was on fire from the barrière d'Enfer to the rue de Ménilmontant. Meanwhile, the young men who had taken out La Fayette's horses and were drawing his carriage heard the firing and cries of "Aux armes!" and the fusilade which increased on all sides. They were tired of remaining inactive. The person sitting on the back seat leant forward towards the person on the seat opposite.
"An idea!" he said.
"What is it?"
"Suppose we fling General La Fayette into the river and say that Louis-Philippe has drowned him?..."
The youths began to laugh--fortunately, it was merely a joke. That evening, at Laffitte's, the noble old man related the anecdote to me.
"Ah! ah!" he said, "after all it was not a bad idea, and I do not know whether I should have had the courage to oppose it, supposing they had tried to put it into execution."
To this state, then, had Paris reached when we appeared at the barrière de Bercy, and when the populace, on guard, informed us that Louis-Philippe was at his last gasp and that the Republic was proclaimed. We went along the boulevard Contrescarpe in hot haste. At the place de la Bastille we found the 12th Light, who let us pass. The boulevards were nearly deserted. When we got to the rue de Ménilmontant I saw a barricade; it was guarded by a single artillery-man. I went up to him and recognised Séchan, rifle on shoulder--the same rifle of which I have already spoken in connection with the famous night at the Louvre. I stopped; I knew nothing positively, so I asked him for news and begged him to explain why he was alone. The rest were famished with hunger and were eating a hasty meal in Bastide's woodshed. They must run at the first sound of firing. I learnt from Séchan what had passed in the boulevard Bourdon and I went on my way. My two companions of the route rushed down the rue de Bondy; I followed the boulevard. It was intersected at the top of the street and the faubourg Saint-Martin by a detachment of the line; the men were drawn up in three rows. I was asking myself how I could go through that triple line alone, in my hostile uniform, when I discovered among the ranks an old battery comrade. True, I nearly fought a duel with him at the time over a difference of opinion. He was dressed in a round jacket, a policeman's helmet and a pair of the buttoned knickerbockers called charivaris. He had a double-barrelled gun in his hand, and had joined the troops as an amateur. Having recognised him, I thought I might feel easy and continued to advance, making signs with my hand. He lowered his gun. I thought he had recognised me, and was joking or wanted to frighten me, so I still went forward. Suddenly, he disappeared in a cloud of fire and smoke and a bullet whistled in my ears. I saw things were serious. I was by the café de la Porte-Saint-Martin. I wanted to run into the theatre passage, but it was closed. I thrust the door of the theatre open with one kick. The fourth or fifth performance of La Tour de Nesle was put up on the bills. I ran to the property stores. I came across Harel on the stage. He tore his hair at seeing his successful run interrupted. As he perceived that I was turning away from him, he said, "Where are you going?"
"To the property stores."
"What do you want there?"
"Have you such a thing as a rifle?"
"Pardieu! I have a hundred. You know very well we have just been playing ... that is to say, unfortunately not I, but Crosmer ... Napoléon à Schönbrünn."
"All right, I want a rifle."
"What for?"
"To return one of my friends a bullet he has just sent at me. Only, I hope to be more adroit than he was."
"Oh! my friend!" exclaimed Harel, "you are going to get the theatre burnt down!" And he placed himself in front of the door leading to the property stores.
"Pardon, my friend," I said to him, "I will give up the rifles as they are yours; but give me the pistols that I presented for the second representation of Richard: not only are they valuable ones but, also, they were a present."
"Hide the pistols!" cried Harel to the man who had charge of the properties.
They hid them so well that I never saw them again. Furious, I went up to the second storey. Through the small windows of the theatre, forming a long square, I could see all that was happening on the boulevard. The soldiers were still at their post, and my friend--the man with the double-barrelled gun, policeman's helmet and charivari--was with them yet. I was mad that I had not even the smallest pea-shooter. Whilst I was looking through this aperture, so narrow that it permitted me to see without being seen, an act of great signification was taking place opposite the theatre. A dragoon rushed up at full speed, bringing an order. A child was hidden behind a tree on the boulevard with a stone in his hand. Just as the dragoon passed by, the child hurled the stone and it struck the soldier's helmet. The dragoon hesitated, but did not stop to pursue the child, and went his way at full gallop. But a woman--the child's mother, probably--came out stealthily behind him, seized him by the collar and gave him a good hiding. I lowered my head.
"The women are not with us this time," I said; "we are lost!"
At that moment, I heard Harel calling me in a pitiful voice. I went down. By the door which I had burst open in order to get into the theatre, a score of men had entered and were demanding arms. They, too, had bethought themselves of Napoleon à Schönbrünn. Harel already saw his theatre being pillaged from top to bottom, and called me to help him, relying on my name, already popular, and upon my uniform as an artillery-man. I went and faced the crowd, which stopped when it caught sight of me.
"Friends," I said to them, "you are honest men."
One of them recognised me.
"Stop," he said, "it is M. Dumas, the commissioner of the artillerymen."
"Precisely; so you see we can understand one another." "Why, yes! since you are on our side."
"Then listen to me, I beg."
"We will."
"You do not want to ruin a man who is of your own opinions, an exile of 1815, a prefect of the Empire?"
"We? we only want arms."
"Very well, then, M. Harel, the manager, was prefect during the Hundred Days and was exiled by the Bourbons in 1815."
"Then Vive M. Harel!... Let him give us his rifles and put himself at our head."
"A manager of a theatre is not master of his opinions; he is dependent on the Government."
"If he will let us take his rifles we will not ask anything further from him."
"Be patient and we shall have them! But I will give them to you."
"Bravo!"
"How many of you are there?"
"About a score."
"Harel, have twenty rifles brought out, my friend." Then, turning towards the good fellows, I said--
"You must understand clearly that it is I, M. Alexandre Dumas, who lend you these guns; those who get killed I will not bother, but those who survive shall bring back their arms. Is that agreed to?"
"On our word of honour!"
"Here are twenty rifles."
"Thanks!"
"That is not all; you must write upon the doors: No arms left!"
"Who has got any chalk?"
"I will call the head carpenter. Darnault, a piece of chalk!"
"Here it is."
"Go and write!" I said to my men.
And one of them, rifle in hand, in sight of the detachment of the Line, went and wrote on the three doors of the theatre, "No arms left," and signed it.
Then the twenty men shook hands with me, and went away, shouting, "Vive la République!" and flourishing their rifles.
"Now," I said to Darnault, "barricade the door."
"Upon my word," said Harel, "the theatre is your own from this moment, my dear friend, and you can do what you please in it. You have saved it!"
"Let us go and see Georges, and tell her she and the theatre are saved."
We went upstairs; Georges was nearly dead with fright. On seeing me enter, dressed as an artillery-man, she cried aloud, "Are you going out in that costume?"
"Of course!"
"But you will be killed before you reach the faubourg Poissonnière."
"Well, that is quite possible ... and if my friend G. de B. had not taken such bad aim it would already have happened."
"Harel, lend him some clothes."
"Ah! yes, why not, Tom?"
"Well, at any rate, send for some of your own; I will not let you go out in that wretched uniform."
"Well, we will see!"
Harel called Darnault.
"Darnault, have you any of your men here?"
"Yes, I think so," said Darnault; "there is Guérin."
"Send him to fetch some clothes from Dumas's."
"Give me a note," said Darnault to me.
"Lend me your pencil."
I wrote a few pencil lines on a scrap of paper, and he ran off. A quarter of an hour later, Guérin returned safely. For that matter, the road was perfectly cleared. I rapidly dressed myself in my ordinary clothes, and put my uniform under the care of Darnault--not wishing to entrust it to Georges, who would certainly have had it burnt--and I reached M. Laffitte's house by the faubourg Saint-Martin, the passage de l'Industrie, the rue d'Enghien and the rue Bergère. I did not get there till seven in the evening. La Fayette came to it by the boulevard. It was here he related to me the anecdote about the river. We went into Laffitte's house together, which I had not entered since the month of July 1830. The news that from all sides of Paris had reached this centre, of opposition, almost of insurrection, was as follows:--
On the right bank, they were masters of the Arsenal, of la Galiote guardhouse, of that of the Château-d'Eau and of the Mairie of the 8th Arrondissement; the Republicans had control of the Marais, the firearms factory at Popin court had been carried by assault, and twelve hundred rifles were given up to them; they had got to the place des Victories, and were preparing to attack the Bank and the Hôtel des Postes. But the rue Saint-Martin and its neighbouring streets was where the insurrection was concentrated, and the whole of that quarter was busy transforming itself into an impregnable fortress. The troop, still very disturbed by the events of 1830, did not know with whom it ought to side; should it stand by the Government, or should it turn to the People?--1830 pointed to the latter course.
With regard to the National Guard, the appearance of the man with the red flag had flung it into a state of consternation. It saw nothing in the insurrection of 5 June and the shouts of "Vive la République!" but a return to the Terror; it rallied rather for defence than for attack, and it was said that a whole battalion, massed on the pont Notre-Dame, had opened way to let eight insurgents pass through. So the Government, aware that the troops would do nothing except in concert with the Garde Nationale, had concentrated the control of all the military forces in the Capital in the hands of Maréchal Lobau. It was at this moment, when all this news was being bandied about, that we entered M. Laffitte's salon. The sight of General La Fayette produced an outcry, and people rose and went up to him.
"Well, general," they all called from all quarters, "what have you been doing?"
"Messieurs," he said, "brave young fellows came to my house and appealed to my patriotism."
"What did you say to them?"
"I replied, 'The more riddled with holes the flag is, the more glorious it is! Find a spot for me where a chair can be put and I will sit in it and get myself killed there.'"
The deputies gathered at Laffitte's looked at one another.
"Now, messieurs," said Laffitte to them, with that sweet smile which never left him, even in times of greatest danger, "what do you say to that?"
"What did Maréchal Clausel say?" asked a voice.
"I can tell you," replied Savary, who had just entered, and had heard the question; "I have just come from him."
"Ah!"
"I urged him to join us, and he replied, 'I will join you if you are sure of a regiment.' 'Eh, monsieur!' I said to him, 'if we had a regiment we should have no need of you!' Whereupon I left him."
"Messieurs," said Laffitte, "if we are going to throw ourselves into the insurrection, there is no time to lose; we must instantly proclaim the deposition of the king, and appoint a provisional government, so that Paris may wake up to-morrow to find a proclamation on all the walls."
"Will you sign it, general?" continued Laffitte, addressing himself to La Fayette.
"Yes," La Fayette replied simply.
"I will too," said Laffitte; "we must have a third." The general and the banker looked round; nobody offered.
"Ah! if only Arago were here!" said Laffitte.
"You know that you can count upon him," I hazarded; "he will not deny you: I have just left his brother, who is in the very thick of the insurrection."
"We can risk our own heads," said Laffitte, "but not those of our friends."
"Was it not done in 1830 for the Comte de Choiseul?"
"Yes; but the situation is more serious than in 1830."
"It is the same," I ventured to say.
"Excuse me! in 1830 we had the Duc d'Orléans with us."
"Behind us!"
"Still, he was there, and the proof of it is that to-day he is king."
"If he is the king, General La Fayette will recollect that it was no fault of ours."
Yes, wisdom lay in the young heads! I saw nothing was going to be done in this direction, and that the night would be spent in discussion. I went out: this was the easier to manage as I was a personage of but little importance, and probably no one noticed my absence. It was my intention to go either to the National, or to Ambert; but, when I regained the boulevard, I learnt that they were fighting in the rue du Croissant. I had no arms. Furthermore, I could scarcely stand, for I was consumed with fever. I took a cab and drove home. I fainted as I was going upstairs, and they found me unconscious half-way up between the first and second landing. Whilst I was being discovered on my staircase, and being undressed and put to bed, the insurrection pursued its course.
Let us follow it behind the scenes at the barricade of the rue Saint-Merry. We had left Séchan guarding the barricade in the rue de Ménilmontant by himself. As soon as his comrades had done their meal, they rejoined him. At nine o'clock in the evening they had not yet been disturbed. The more advanced positions of the troops did not exceed the rue de Cléry. There was a great perturbation at the headquarters, where a certain number of generals and ministers had collected. Maréchal Soult, by virtue of his age and experience, found himself the natural president of this gathering. But he was perhaps the most undecided amongst them all. He remembered 29 July 1830 and the anathemas attached to the name of the Duc de Raguse. One general proposed to give the troops the order to withdraw, to draw them up on the Champ de Mars and, from thence, to re-enter Paris sword in hand. This strange strategical idea might have been adopted, but the prefect of police, M. Gisquet, opposed it with all his might. The collision, it will be remembered, had started upon an order of his given to the dragoons, and, during the three days the struggle lasted, he was more earnest in the fight and bolder in making extreme proposals than the boldest of the generals. The discussion went on until they were obliged to act; the danger assumed formidable proportions: the insurgents had successively carried the positions at the Bastille, la Lingerier, Blancs-Manteaux and the marché Saint-Martin, and repulsed the Municipal Guard with great losses. At eight at night the news arrived at headquarters that a barricade had just been constructed by the little bridge of l'Hôtel-Dieu; that the Municipal Guard, forced to beat a retreat, had surrendered the quai aux Fleurs to them; that they had completely surrounded the préfecture of police. Next, they issued orders to recall the troops into the town; a battalion of the 12th Light left Saint-Denis at the same time as the 14th came up from Courbevoie. The battery of the École militaire had been summoned to the Carrousel. A battalion of the 3rd Light and a detachment of the 6th Legion cleared the boulevard de la Madeleine; at the Saint-Martin gate, two squadrons of carabiniers were stationed opposite the theatre, and General Schramm had taken up his position with four companies at the top of the Ambigu. At six o'clock P.M. only, and after repeated charges, the dragoons succeeded in making themselves masters of the place des Victoires, and it was in the presence of M. de Lemet, and passing through a double hedge of the National Guard, that the runners set off. About a quarter past nine P.M., Étienne Arago commanded, in the uniform of an artillery lieutenant, a night patrol of a score of men, completely armed, amongst whom were Bernard (de Rennes) fils, Thomas and Ambert; it joined forces with Bastide, Dussart, Pescheux d'Herbinville and Séchan. The barricade behind which I had seen Séchan alone with his rifle then numbered nearly forty defenders. They spent the night making fortifications. M. Thiers had arrived about the same hour at the headquarters. He had seen the fire near by; by chance, he dined that day at the Rocher de Cancale with Mignet and Haubersaert; they had been surrounded for a moment by the insurgents, who were concentrated in the environs of the Cloître Saint-Merry, and had not the faintest idea that three of the hottest partisans for Louis-Philippe were near to them. M. Thiers had recounted so many battles in his Histoire de la Révolution that he was something of a general himself. Arrived at the place du Carrousel, he made his staff out of MM. Béranger, Kératry, Madier de Montjau and Voisin de Gartempe, who were there, and distributed cartridges whilst telling the deputies who were so inclined to come and join him where he was. Only nine answered to the invitation.[1] They knew the king was to come, and waited for him with great impatience. They would know what he would do by the expression of his face. The king arrived, calm, and even smiling. As we have said, with reference to the manner in which he possessed himself of the throne, he was by no means audacious but he had great courage.
It was only then that the defence was organised. The insurrection was really situated at the heart of Paris. The rue Saint-Martin was occupied by two barricades, one to the north at the top of the rue Maubuée, the other to the south, powerfully fortified, almost impregnable, at the top of the rue Saint-Merry. In the space between these two barricades, a house had been selected by the insurgents for use both as fortress and general quarters and ambulance. It was Number 30. The position had been chosen by almost as clever a strategist as M. Thiers. It looked on the rue Aubry-le-Boucher, consequently if people came along by that street they fell under a fourfold fire; if they attacked in the rear, they had to deal with the men on the barricades. A man named Jeanne, wearing the July decoration, who had earned a twofold celebrity by his courage in the conflict and his steadfastness before the judges, commanded this dangerous post. Two or three old soldiers were making bullets with lead torn from the gutters; children went and tore down the advertisements from the walls and brought them to make wads. We will presently publish the narrative of one of the children in its simplicity.
Suddenly, some one came to tell the Republicans, half of whom were without arms, that in the courtyard of that very house, No. 30, an armourer's shop was to be found. This was marvellous news indeed. The shop was open, and, without disorder or confusion, all the rifles it contained were distributed, and all the powder was portioned out in equal measures. The distribution was just completed when several shots were heard and the cry "To arms!"
This is what had happened:--
A column of the National Guard, which was reconnoitring in the rue Saint-Martin, had come to give help to the barricade.
"Qui vive?" cried the sentinel.
"Friends!" the commander of the column hastened to reply.
"Are you Republicans?"
"Yes, and we have come to help you."
"Vive la République!" the defenders of the barricade shouted in chorus.
A friend of mine, called Rossignol, could not resist the pleasure of being the first to shake hands with his co-religionists; he leapt over the barricade, and went towards the National Guards shouting, "You are welcome!" But at the same instant a cry went forth from the ranks of the National Guard--
"Ah! brigands! We have got you at last."
"Fire, friends!" cried Rossignol, "they are Philippists." And a discharge was fired from inside the barricade, killing five men of the National Guard.
It was the counterpart of: "A moi d'Auvergne! c'est l'ennemi." Only, more luckily than the Chevalier d'Assas, Rossignol re-entered the barricade safe and sound through a hailstorm of bullets.[2]
After a terrible struggle, and after returning to the charge three times, the National Guard was repulsed, and old men who had left off making their bullet casts, children who had stopped making wads to take up arms, laid their guns down and resumed their task. A lad of twelve had been wounded in the head by the first discharge; Jeanne could not make him leave the barricade, either in his capacity as leader or as a friend.
The National Guard went away and left their dead and wounded; but, as soon as the field of battle was cleared, Jeanne and his men cleared the barricade and picked up the wounded, whom they carried to their ambulances. A medical student who was one of the insurgents dressed their wounds, aided by two women. About a hundred yards from the barricade of the rue Saint-Merry, one was erected in the passage du Saumon, which had its sentinels spread out all along the rue Montmartre. At eight at night, Maréchal Lobau gave orders to take it, no matter at what cost; he meant by daybreak the next day to clear the rue Montmartre. They fought all night long. Those who guarded the barricade made this oath over the bodies of the comrades who had fallen--
"We will either go out conquerors or be carried away dead!"
The ground floor or entresol of a café which no longer exists was used as an ambulance, whilst, from the windows of the first and second storeys, from time to time, there rained into an extended sheet cartridges thrown by unknown hands. There were only twenty defenders of the barricade. When, after a fight lasting nine hours, the soldiers at last cleared the barricade, they found eight dead men lying on the pavement, seven wounded and disabled lying on beds on the ground floor of the café, and a pupil of the École Polytechnique dying on the billiard-table. The four other insurgents had succeeded in escaping.
On the morning of the 6th, the insurrection had receded and concentrated itself in two quarters: on the place de la Bastille and at the entrance to the faubourg Saint-Antoine and in the rues Saint-Martin, Saint-Merry, Aubry-le-Boucher, Planche-Mibray and Arcis. The Government united its whole efforts to carry these last positions. From the next day the place de la Concorde was crowded with Artillery; two battalions hurried from Saint-Cloud, and three regiments of cavalry entered Paris from Versailles, drawing their guns with them. As to the barricade in the rue de Ménilmontant, it held out until daybreak; but, as it was too exposed on all sides, it could not hold out longer; those who guarded it took refuge with Bastide and Thomas, and escaped by a little window that looked out on a small street.
At four o'clock in the morning it was rumoured that everything had quietened down. After a feverish night I got up to find out the news; but, not being able to walk, I took a carriage. I drove to the rue des Pyramides. I hoped to see Arago there and learn the news from him. But neither he nor Bernard, fils (of Rennes) had returned; M. Bernard (of Rennes) and his charming daughters (whom I have not seen again, I believe, since that day) were very anxious; but whilst I was there a vigorous ringing of the bell announced with certainty some news either good or bad. They ran to the door and uttered a cry of joy. The father had his son back again, and the sisters beheld their brother again. I left the excellent family fondling their prodigal child, and went upstairs to Arago's rooms. He had taken off his artillery uniform.
"What barricade have you been behind all night?" he asked me, when he saw I was as pale as death.
"In my bed, unluckily.... And you?"
He related the story of the barricade in the rue de Ménilmontant.
"Is that all you know?" I asked.
"What more do you think I know? I left my rifle,... but come to the National with me, where we shall find news."
We went down, and, on the stairs, we met Charles Teste, who was going to Bernard (de Rennes).
"Ah! there you are, deserter," he said to Arago.
"How a deserter?" exclaimed the latter. "I have just come from fighting."
"It is just that that I mean; but there are various ways of deserting: you were the maire, and your place was not behind a barricade, but at your own offices; when one is the head, one must not make oneself a branch.
... Parbleu! I too would have liked to take up my gun, it would not have been a very wicked thing to do, but I said to myself, 'Stay, Charles! You are the head, and you must not take the part of an arm too!'"
To those who knew Charles Teste, these words summed up the man himself in the one word--duty. We reached the National; it was very difficult to get into the offices, as they were very crowded. There we learned of the dispersion of the barricade au Saumon, but, at the same time, we also learned that the one in the rue Saint-Merry still held its ground. Latouche entered at this moment in great perturbation.
"It is all over!" he said.
"What, quite over?"
"Yes, quite."
"Have you come from it?"
"No, but I have just met some one who has."
"Good!" said Arago, "there is hope left yet.... Who will come with me?"
I yearned to go, but I could scarcely walk; a capital young fellow, a friend of ours, Howelt, wearing the July decoration, whom I still come across from time to time, came forward.
"Go to Laffitte's," Arago said to me, "and tell François, if he is there, that I have gone to find out the news."
I went to Laffitte's. The whole gathering was in a frightful state of confusion. They proposed to send a deputation to Louis-Philippe to protest against the revolt of the previous day. But let it be said that the proposition was rejected with horror and scorn. I recollect a saying of Bryas, which was superb in its indignation. His son, a pupil at the École Polytechnique, was among the insurgents. La Fayette also refused to take a step towards the king.
"Why this aversion," cried a voice; "is not the Duc d'Orléans the best of Republicans?"
"Ah! as the opportunity presents itself of denying the proposal erroneously attributed to me," exclaimed the noble old man, "I deny it."
Finally, they appointed three representatives, not to make apologies in the name of the insurrection, but to implore the clemency of the king in favour of those who were still held. These three representatives were François Arago, Maréchal Clausel and Laffitte. Clausel declined, and Odilon Barrot was substituted. We other young men had not been able to get into the Committee Room, but I had met Savary in the courtyard--Savary, a member of the Institut, the great geometrician and physicist and astronomer and scientist of means, of whom death has since deprived his country before he had lived half an ordinary life!
We were very harmonious in opinions and, as our republic was not one shared by everybody, we at once seized upon one another to thresh out our ideas of a Utopia. So we had met and thus were occupied whilst waiting there together. Arago came out first, and we ran to him. Louis Blanc, who, in his capital Histoire de Dix Ans, has not let a single detail of that great period escape unnoticed, mentions our interview in these terms:--
"As M. Arago came out, he met Savary and Alexandre Dumas in the courtyard, a savant and a poet, both very excited; they had no sooner learnt what had passed at M. Laffitte's, than they broke into passionate and bitter speech, saying that Paris had only waited for one signal to rise in revolt, and that the deputies who were so ready to disclaim the efforts of the people were grossly culpable towards their country.
"'But is not everything at an end now?' asked François Arago.
"'No,' said a man of the people who was present, listening to our conversation, 'they are waiting for the tocsin from the Church of Saint-Merry, for so long as a sick man's death rattle can be heard he is alive.'
"I was struck with the expression and, as will be seen, I did not forget it."
[Footnote 1: Louis Blanc, Histoire de Dix Ans.]
[Footnote 2: Noël Parfait, Episodes des 5 and 6 June 1832.]
Chapter VII
Inside the barricade Saint-Merry, according to a Parisian child's account--General Tiburce Sébastiani--Louis-Philippe during the insurrection--M. Guizot--MM. François Arago, Laffitte and Odilon Barrot at the Tuileries--The last argument of kings--Étienne Arago and Howelt--Denunciation against me--M. Binet's report
Whilst MM. Laffitte, François Arago and Odilon Barrot were on their way to see the king, let us see what was going on behind the Saint-Merry barricade.
One of those strokes of good luck which at times happens to us enables us to take the reader behind the scenes. A child of fourteen who was there, and who has since become a very distinguished man, sent me the following details three years after the cessation of the insurrection, written in his own hand, which I will reproduce in all its native simplicity. After a lapse of nineteen years I have discovered the paper creased and the ink turned yellow, but the story exact and faithful.
"THE BARRICADE SAINT-MERRY
"On the morning of 5 June 1832 my father sent me on an errand along the boulevard du Temple. It was the day of the funeral of the famous General Lamarque and there were large crowds in the place de la Bastille and along the boulevards. Like the true child of Paris that I am, eager to know everything, I stopped at each crowd: they were talking hotly about politics; several persons were so exasperated that they broke the little trees newly planted in place of those which had been sawed down in 1830, to make the barricades. We are well aware, they said, that they will not be of much use against rifles and cannons, but they are first-rate against spies and policemen. There was nothing for it but for me to play truant. Instead, then, of returning home promptly, urged on by my insatiable curiosity I soon reached the Porte Saint-Martin; then I caught sight of General Lamarque's procession in the distance. The hearse came on slowly and stopped from time to time. I was surprised to see so few troops at a general's funeral-cortège; there were at the most only enough soldiers to keep some order during the march. At my age one judges the magnificence of a funeral procession by the number of troops which accompany it, and as a few weeks before I had seen at Casimir Périer's splendid cortège long and wide columns of soldiers marching on both sides of the carriage, I was at first astonished that they did not pay the same military honours to a general as to a banker.
"There were no soldiers; but an immense crowd flooded the boulevards, pushing and squeezing to get near the hearse. People were attached to it and drew the catafalque, shouting from time to time: 'Honour to General Lamarque!' That cry went all through me each time I heard it. They were quarrelling to get hands on the ropes: every one wanted the honour of drawing the precious burden; it was then, for the first time, that I heard men call each other by the name of citizens. Every face was stamped with an indefinable electrical enthusiasm, which was communicated through the whole of the crowd; a strong emotional feeling which was neither of grief nor of reflection lit up every face. I was only fourteen then, and I felt the enthusiasm to the bottom of my heart, and an emotion which no language could possibly express.
"'Bah!' I said, 'my father will scold me, but never mind that! I must pull that rope; some day, if I have any children, I will tell them, "I too helped to draw General Lamarque's hearse!" Just as my grandfather is always telling us, "I too belonged to the federation!"'
"Hardly had I hold of the rope--and that was not in a hurry, I can tell you,--when they stood in file! and I realised that the number of soldiers more or less had nothing to do with the matter, but that it was worth more to be a general of one's country than a minister of Louis-Philippe. At the end of a hundred yards I had to give up my place to others: they would have killed me, I believe, to take the rope from me, so I let go and planted myself in front of one of the hedges which the people formed all along the boulevard; but I was violently pushed by the surging of the crowd against a dragoon's horse, and I had one of my big toes nearly broken. It was horribly painful, but, upon my word, it seemed as though enthusiasm could give me courage to bear the pain, if not actually make me forget it, for, hopping along, I followed the cortège as far as the place d'Austerlitz. The vast crowds which were gathering there became more and more menacing. A man with a long beard was haranguing the citizens; he held a red flag, and wore a Phrygian cap. They were discussing preparations for a fight. I listened to it all without understanding much of what it meant. Suddenly, a squadron of cavalry rushed full tilt at the people in a terrible charge: several shots were fired at the same time. Although wounded in the foot, as I have said, I did not stay to be the last on the square. As I was running away, I recognised a friend of mine called Auguste.
"'Where are you going?' I asked him.
"'With the Republicans, of course!' he replied.
"'What to do?'
"'To attack all the guardhouses at the barriers. Are you coming?'
"'Rather! Yes.' And I went. A few of the guardhouses made resistance, but nearly all surrendered without firing. I had no arms, to my disgust. Fortunately, during the attack on one of the positions, a young man, well dressed and with refined manners, fired a pistol; it was overloaded: the butt end went one way and the muzzle another, and the young man fell backwards. I leapt upon the muzzle, picked it up and put it in my pocket, intending to cock it on the sly.
"'Good! the Republicans have artillery,' said Auguste.
"Meanwhile the young man of the pistol picked himself up; he was hurt in the hand, and blood was flowing copiously.
"'Where is there a piece of rag?' he said; 'who has a bit of linen?'
"A boy in a blouse tore his shirt and gave strips of it to the injured man, who kissed him.
"'How funny it is!' I said to Auguste. 'I have never cried at a play and yet I am crying now.'
"In less than three hours, all the guardhouses were taken and disarmed on the place de la Bastille. At that moment, I thought seriously of going back to my father, but two artillerymen of the National Guard asked me if I would do them a kindness. I agreed, of course. They told me to go to the top of the faubourg Saint-Jacques to tell their mother, Madame Aumain, that her sons were all right; that they would probably return home a little later, but that, meantime, she must not be uneasy. I went with Auguste, looking upon it as a sacred duty to give a mother news of her children, and forgetting that my own mother might be just as uneasy as the mother to whom I was going. I should also add that, fearing my father's anger, I delayed as long as I could the moment for returning. We found Madame Aumain at the address given. The lady asked us eagerly how long it was since we had left her sons, and where we had left them; then she put a host of questions to us about the events of the day. She seemed to take the greatest interest in the success of the Republicans. A rather tall girl of exquisite beauty, probably the sister of the two artillerymen, was there, listening and questioning. Delighted with the importance bestowed on us by our errand, Auguste and I bragged like true children of Paris. When the ladies had learned all they wished to know--and they took over an hour in doing so--they urged us to return to our respective parents promptly. In spite of our fears of being severely scolded on our return, we decided to follow their advice, and left Madame Aumain, resolved not to stay on our way. Unfortunately, the traffic was stopped. When we reached the bridges, no use! it was impossible to go over. Then we retreated under a doorway with other individuals, similarly stopped short. But the concierge turned us out at eleven o'clock. Not being able to cross the river, and afraid of being taken up by the patrols, we returned to Madame Aumain, who received us as a mother would her own children, and we improvised a bed in the dining-room. Next day, at four in the morning, Madame Aumain woke us, and told us to go quickly home, so as not to leave our mothers in anxiety any longer. It was easy to say, "Go home!" but to return from the faubourg Saint-Jacques to the faubourg Saint-Antoine, you must pass the Hôtel de Ville. More than two thousand men were stationed on the place de Grève; there was no way of passing through, and we stopped for two or three hours to watch the soldiers going and coming. Every moment big detachments were arriving, and succeeding one another all along the quays. About seven, an officer ran up scared, and shouted 'To arms!'[2] Then, all inquisitive people rushed towards the rue des Arcis. We ran in common with everyone else to see what was going on in that district. A strong barricade was supported on one side against the corner of the rue Aubry-le-Boucher, and, on the other, against No. 30 rue Saint-Martin. They could see well enough that Auguste and I were not enemies, so the Republicans allowed us to pass the barricade. At some distance from the first, there was a second at the top of the rue Maubuée. In the intervening space were sixty armed men. Old men and children were making cartridges. Women were dealing out lint. Over each barricade a red flag floated. One citizen held it up in his left hand, whilst brandishing a sword in his right. One of two men shouted out to the soldiers--
"'Come on, you sluggards! We are waiting for you.'
"A detachment of soldiers appeared in the rue des Arcis at that moment. A young girl, whose lover was among the insurgents, and who stood watching from a window, saw them before anybody else did, and cried, 'To arms,' At the cry of 'To arms!' uttered by the girl, the Republicans took their places, and prepared to repulse the soldiers. The standard-bearers remained motionless on their barricades, ready to sustain the fire. It did not keep them waiting long, and a standard-bearer fell dead. The place was not long vacant; another sprang on the barricade, re-erected the flag and, ten minutes later, also fell. But it seemed they had agreed to see to it that the red flag should still stand, for a third Republican took the place of the second, and again the flag floated. The third was killed like the two others. A fourth took his place and fell near the three others. Then a fifth. The sixth was a working man, a house painter; he seemed to be protected by a charm; for more than an hour he waved the flag, shouting, 'Vive la République!' At last, at the end of an hour, he slowly got down and leant near the door of the house numbered 30, against which Auguste and I were standing. Then he fell heavily, heaving a sigh: he had said nothing, but he had been hit close to the heart. His brother, who saw him fall, dropped his gun for an instant to come and look after him; but, seeing he was nearly dead, and, sure that his efforts would be useless, he kissed him repeatedly, took up his rifle again, climbed up on the barricade, and slowly took aim, each time that he fired shouting, 'Vive la République!' Each time, the sixty men who defended the barricade repeated the same cry, and the cry of sixty men, surrounded by 20,000 soldiers, made the throne of Louis-Philippe totter. Finally, both the soldiers and the National Guard at the outskirts of the city were forced to beat a retreat, after three hours' struggle. Meanwhile, Auguste and I, who had not been able to fight, climbed on to the railings of the shop of a wine merchant, and shouted with all the strength of our lungs--'À bas Louis-Philippe!' The truce was not for long: in an hour's time, soldiers and National Guards returned to the charge. Then the fight began again. Meanwhile Auguste and I returned to our doorway, and at times we made lint while at others we cast bullets. I often put my head out of the alley to see what was going on when the firing was hottest: then Auguste dragged me back with all his might.
"'Come, look here, do you want to get killed?' he cried.
"Then he would look out in his turn, and it became my turn to grab hold of him. Once, when I had pulled him back more roughly than was permissible, he was angry, and, whilst the people outside were fighting with guns, we fought with our fists. We were both in the right: death was speedy, and the whistling of the bullets so continuous that it sounded like the noise of the wind through a badly-fitting door. No one had yet eaten anything from morning until three in the afternoon. At three, a distribution of brown bread was announced from the house opposite that where we were hiding. Then we ran across the street to fetch our rations in the thick of the bullets. We were just about to bite into our loaves as quickly as possible, when suddenly we heard the cry, 'We are lost!' Then we saw that, whilst the defenders of the barricade still kept possession of it, a dozen people, as curious as ourselves, rushed into the house to seek hiding-places. Auguste and I, who were there already, took the lead, and, climbing the stairs four at a time, soon reached the attic. There was a way out of the attic through a narrow dormer-window, and a man sat astride the roof, holding a strong arm to those who wished to cross to the other side and who were not afraid of attempting that aerial route. Auguste and I did not hesitate for one moment; from roof to roof we gained a window, and found ourselves inside the garrets of another house. The inhabitants of the attic helped us to enter, to the great anguish of the landlord, who shouted on the staircase, 'Be off with you, you scamps! You will burn my house down!' But, as you may well imagine, nobody took any notice of the landlord; all installed themselves as best they could. Things were much worse when he saw two or three combatants, black with powder, arrive in their turn, rifles in hand.
'At least fling away your weapons!' he cried, tearing his hair.
'Throw our rifles away?' replied the fighters.
'Never!'
'But what do you mean to do?'
'To defend ourselves unto death.'
"And as they had no more bullets, but some powder left, they tore the rods from the curtains and slipped them up the muzzles of their guns.
"As for us, who had no arms, and whom the struggle had not transported to such a degree of heroic exaltation as this, we went down to the cellars, which were full of packing cases and vegetables, and we hid ourselves as well as we could. A dozen people descended after us, and also hid themselves to the best of their ability. On the cellar stairs several Republicans planted themselves, standing ready to defend themselves to the last extremity. At that moment we heard the roar of cannon, which shook the house to its base. The paving stones of the barricade flew into splinters, and rebounded on the pavement. Then only was it that I realised the extent of the danger we were running. My first idea was that the house was going to fall, and that we should be buried under its ruins. Then I sank on my knees and, weeping, said all the prayers I could remember. I asked my father and mother's forgiveness for having disobeyed them and for having left them in trouble; I fervently called upon God, and beat my breast with all my might. Auguste showed less despair, and waited death with more courage than I. From time to time we pressed one another tightly in our arms. During one of these embraces he noticed that I still had the barrel of the pistol in my pocket, and he made me throw it to a corner of the yard. Several voices shouted, 'Shoot him if he will not speak!' It was the concierge that was being threatened thus, because he refused to tell where we were hidden. Five minutes later, the door of the cellar was violently broken in, and three or four soldiers sprang on the stairs. Some shots exploded, which lit up the cellar strangely and filled it with smoke. Then, whilst other voices shouted 'Lights!' thirty to forty soldiers rushed into the cellar. From that moment I saw no more; I only heard cries of pain, a clashing of steel, and I felt a hand take me by the neck and shake me violently. Then the hand lifted me two feet from the ground and flung me against the wall. I fell in a faint on the bottom of the cellar steps. Yet from the depths of my unconsciousness, whilst unable to shake myself free from it, I felt those who went up and down the cellar steps pass over my body. At last I succeeded in rousing myself by a violent effort of will. I first got up on one knee with my head bent as though it were so heavy that I could not hold it; then, at last, by the assistance of the wall, I got on to my feet. At that moment an officer caught sight of me and sprang at me, kicking and cuffing me: 'What!' he exclaimed, 'are there even street urchins here?' At the same time a soldier gave me a blow with the butt end of his gun. This flung me against the wall, and instinctively I put up my hands, otherwise my skull would have been broken. Auguste, who followed me, was more lucky; whilst they were mauling me he slipped rapidly up the stairs and escaped a portion of the ill-treatment that those met with who were found in the cellar. At last, with hard cuffs, they made me go up into the yard, and, like all the other prisoners, I was kept in sight under the carriage gateway of No. 5. Our guard was made up of a sergeant and two soldiers. I had been crying so long and been so badly handled that I could scarcely stand on my legs; so in a few minutes I felt I was going to faint again. I held out my arms and called for help. The sergeant sprang forward and caught me. Whilst I was fainting, I did not hear plainly what the good man was saying: I gathered, however, that he was sorry for me, and gave me into the soldier's care.
"That brought me back to my senses in a few minutes, and I opened my eyes again. Then I told him how I came to be there, and the circumstances which had brought Auguste and me to this. My story bore the stamp of such truthfulness that he was touched, and promised he would do us no harm. We remained over half an hour under this doorway, and during that time I was present at all the atrocities which could be committed during a civil war. The victorious soldiers, irritated by their losses, wanted to shed blood in compensation for shed blood. They fired on everybody, without troubling whether they were Republicans or inoffensive citizens; from time to time a dull thud was heard: we did not even seek to ascertain the causes of the noise. It was the wounded being pitched out of the windows, and, as they fell, they slid down the roofs and fell on the pavement. They brought a Republican, taken with arms in his hand, opposite the door and crushed him with blows from the butt end of their guns, spitting him with bayonet thrusts.
"'Wretches!' he cried, 'respect the conquered and prisoners, or give me some sort of weapon and let me defend myself.'
"They loosed him, knocked him over with their rifle butts and shot him point blank.
"Oh! monsieur, I swear that, when a child of fourteen sees such things, he prays to God all his life he may not see them again.
"In No. 30, on the third floor, some soldiers seized a wounded man by his legs and arms and threatened to throw him out of the window. His body was already half in space and about to be flung on the pavement, when other soldiers below, who were firing on the roofs and through the windows, were horrified at this action, and threatened to fire on their comrades. The man was not thrown down. But was he saved, for all that? I have no idea. Soon the sergeant with whom I had made friends received orders to take us to the guardhouse des Innocents. We went through the rue Aubry-le-Boucher and by the front of the markets. As it rained at the time, a great number of soldiers stood under the arcades; as we passed they reviled us, shouting to their comrades--
"'Knock the ruffians down! Kill them!'
"I never took my eyes off the good and kind sergeant, and, whilst a crowd of curious spectators watched us pass and the crowd made a sort of block, he made me a sign. I slipped between the two soldiers, Auguste following me. The crowd made way for us and closed in after us; the soldiers let fly a big oath as though they were furious, though really at heart they were delighted. Our sergeant seemed to have endowed each of his men with some of his own kindliness of heart.
"I ran home without stopping, and fell like a bomb into the midst of my family. My mother fainted; my father stood speechless. They had been told that I had been flung over the pont d'Austerlitz into the Seine. They thought I had died the day before. I was very ill. My father sent me to bed and I nearly had brain fever. I am told, Monsieur Dumas, that this story will interest you, and I send it you.
"Ah! You whose voice is powerful say clearly and say often--
"'ANYTHING RATHER THAN CIVIL WAR!'"
What the poor child said is only too true: there were terrible acts of vengeance done on that fatal 6 June, by both the troops and the National Guard. It is a happiness to mention here the name of General Tiburce Sébastiani, whose unending kindness has made us forget (and even worse than forget), the welcome his eldest brother gave us on our arrival in Paris.
General Tiburce Sébastiani, better than any one, could raise the blood-stained veil which we throw over those atrocities; for he was a providence to the wounded whom they finished off slowly, and to the prisoners whom they meant to shoot. Not being able to stand, I had sat down in a chair in the Café de Paris, I think it was, and there I waited for news, when, all at once, cries resounded of "Vive le roi!" uttered by the National Guard, and the king appeared on horseback accompanied by the Minister of the Interior, for War and for Commerce. At the club in the rue de Choiseul, he stopped and held out his hand to a group of armed National Guards; even those who, sixteen years later, were to overthrow him, uttered cries of savage joy at the honour he was paying them. He then continued on his way. When I saw him pass, calm and smiling and unconcerned about the danger he was incurring, I felt a sort of moral vertigo, and I asked myself if the man who saluted to these many cheers was not verily a man elect, and if one had the right to strike a blow at a power with which God Himself, by declaring for him, seemed to side. And at each fresh attempt at assassination made against him, from which he escaped safe and sound, I put the same question to myself, and, each time, my conviction got the better of the doubt, and I said--"No, things cannot remain as they are!" The traces of this conviction will be discovered all through my works--in the Epilogue to Gaule et France, in my letter addressed from Reichenau to the Duc d'Orléans, in my visit to Arenenberg, in my articles on the death of the Duc d'Orléans.
This ride seemed to open the series of attempted assassinations of Louis-Philippe; for the attempt at M. Berthier de Sauvigny's cabriolet, on the place du Carrousel, cannot seriously be regarded as an attempt on the king. On the quay not far from the place de Grève, a young woman lay with her wounded husband's rifle to her cheek; but the weapon was too heavy, and her hand too weak: the weight of the gun lowered her hand and the shot was not sent. The king returned about two o'clock. M. Guizot awaited him in his cabinet. The statesman and the king remained together for an hour. No one knows what was decided during that tête-à-tête; but we may be sure that M. Guizot, according to the character we know of him, would not be for conciliatory measures. As M. Guizot left by one door, an open carriage brought MM. François Arago, Laffitte and Odilon Barrot. I take the following details from the lips of our famous savant himself. He reminded me of them as he leant on my arm during the walk of 26 or 27 February 1848, to the Bastille. He was then a member of the Provisional Government which reigned for a brief space over the kingdom of Louis-Philippe.
An open carriage, as we said, containing MM. Arago, Laffitte and Odilon Barrot entered the Tuileries courtyard. Scarcely had it turned the corner of the gateway, when a stranger stopped the horses, and ran excitedly to the window. "Do not enter," he said.
"Why not?" asked Odilon Barrot.
"Guizot is leaving."
"Very well, what then?"
"Guizot is your personal enemy, and, perhaps, is giving the order to arrest you at this very moment, as in the case of Cabet and Armand Carrel."
The three commissioners thanked the unknown person; but, not believing there was any danger--or at least, not any imminent--they went on their way, got out of the carriage, and had themselves announced to the king. The king soon gave orders for them to go in. At the moment when he was just passing through the door, M. Laffitte turned round to his two colleagues, and whispered to them--
"Let us be on our guard, gentlemen! he is going to try to make us laugh."
It was a strange moment to choose for fearing such a means of controversy. But M. Laffitte boasted he knew the king better than any body else. It was an assumption allowable to the man who had given him his popularity, and sold the forest of Breteuil.
The king, in fact, received the three deputies with a tranquil face, almost smiling. He told them to be seated, which indicated that the audience would be long, or, at all events, would be as long as the gentlemen wished it to be. Louis Blanc, who was informed by all three actors in that scene, has related it in full detail. I will not add anything, therefore, to it, but put it in dialogue form, which makes it perhaps more vivid.
The situation was a grave one: insurrection at Lyons, insurrection at Grenoble, insurrection in la Vendée, riots or revolution everywhere. But there remained the question as to what were the causes of these bloody troubles and terrible collisions. According to the opinion of the three deputies, it was the reaction brought about by getting farther day by day from the programme of July. The king said it was the spirit of Jacobinism, not properly extinguished under the Convention, the Directory and the Empire, which strove to revive the Days of the Terror. He instanced the appearance of the man with the red flag, whom the Republicans sent back to the rue de Jerusalem, whence he made out he had come.
A conversation based on such lines between a barrister and a king threatened to be of long duration. A sinister sound which was to be heard in the streets of Paris more than once under the reign of Louis-Philippe now made itself heard, and cut the conversation in half, as a blow from a scythe cuts a snake in two.
"Sire, do I hear wrongly?" asked Laffitte, trembling, "Is that cannon?"
"Yes;... they have pushed on," said the king, "to take the Monastery of Saint-Merry without too great loss of life."
"Sire," Laffitte continued, "you are less severe with respect to the Legitimists than towards the Republicans." "In what way?"
"Your Majesty employs strange dealings towards them!"
"Listen, Monsieur Laffitte," said the king, "I always remember the saying of Kersaint: 'Charles I. was beheaded, and his son ascended the throne; James II. was only exiled, and his race died out on the continent.'"
"Sire," said Arago, "we had hoped, however, that, when Casimir Périer died, this system of reaction and of persecution would stop."
"So," replied the king, laughing, "they attribute this system to a minister?"
"No, but at least we hoped it was his work."
"You are mistaken, monsieur," said the king, frowning; "the system is mine; M. Casimir Périer was but an instrument in my hands, strong, and yet pliant like steel; my will has always been, is now and ever shall be immovable. Once only it gave way, as you very well know," added the king. "As M. de Salvandy has said, 'At my fête du Palais-Royal we marched over a volcano--the Revolution, which has spread its principles through every nation in Europe--but every nation has not an Orléans on the throne to suppress them.'"
It was a very differently specified programme than that of the Hôtel-de-Ville. Then M. Arago rose--
"Sire," he said, "after hearing the expression of such opinions as that, do not ever count on my co-operation."
"What do you mean by that, Monsieur Arago?"
"That never, under any capacity, will I serve a king who binds the hands of progress; for, in my opinion, progress is only another name for a well-conducted Revolution."
"Neither more nor less, sire," said Odilon Barrot.
But the king, touching him on the knee, said--
"Monsieur Barrot, recollect that I have not accepted your resignation."
In fact, on 24 February 1848, at seven in the morning, M. Barrot was appointed Minister. True, at noon, he was so no longer! the revolution, which the king boasted to have suppressed, carried him away as a hurricane carries off a dead leaf.
The three deputies got up. As nothing could be done, there was nothing to be said. They were accompanied on their return to the Hôtel Laffitte by the report of cannon. We have related, or, rather, a child of fourteen, an eye-witness, has related the end of the terrible scene. One of our friends, Étienne Arago, was among the Republicans while his brother was with the king. We saw him setting off with Howelt; the same night, thinking I was ill, he wrote to me as follows:--
"MY DEAR DUMAS,--All is over, for to-day, at any rate. The men at the Cloître Saint-Merry fell, but as they should, like heroes. In a word, this is what we saw with our own eyes: We left, as you know, with Howelt; we went along the boulevards, and down the rue du Petit-Carreau. Having gone through the zone of fire which swept the adjacent streets, we saw at the end of the rue Aubry-le-Boucher, where No. 30 rue Saint-Martin is visible, that approach was possible. We had just arrived between two attacks. We took advantage of it to proceed as far as the barricade; it had just been deserted. All was concentrated at No. 30; both attack and defence. We went to a herbalist's and, behind the bunches of herbs hung in his window, we saw the taking of No. 30. The artillery arrived. Can you not imagine my state? I trembled lest my brother Victor, a captain at Vincennes, were among the artillerymen. When I meet you, I will tell you what we saw. Finally!... We only left the street at half-past six. I returned to the Vaudeville, where I came across Savary; he had met you, he told me, at Laffitte's, and there you had both spoken with my brother François.
"I received word from Germain Sarrut to warn me that a warrant had been issued against me.--Yours,
"ÉTIENNE ARAGO"
I was not too easy on my own account. I had been seen and recognised in artillery dress by everybody on the boulevard; I had distributed arms at the Porte-Saint-Martin; finally, I knew that, in the December of the preceding year, a denunciatory epistle against me had been addressed to the king. It was a strange document! it was discovered in 1848 among Louis-Philippe's papers, and fell into the hands of one of the unknown friends of whom I often speak and for whose friendship I am grateful. That friend sent it to me. It is a report dated 2 December 1831, bearing the number 1034. I will transcribe it exactly, although I truly hold a secondary and episodic place in it. It will prove that what I say of my opinions, which are always the same, is not exaggerated. Besides, I think the moment is not very opportunely chosen to brag of being a Republican. It is an authentic report, and bears M. Binet's signature. I need hardly say that I had not the honour of that gentleman's acquaintance. (See Appendix.)
Chapter I
Le Fils de l'Émigré--I learn the news of my premature death--I am advised to take a voyage for prudence and health's sake--I choose Switzerland--Gosselin's literary opinion on that country--First effect of change of air--From Châlon to Lyons by a low train--The ascent of Cerdon--Arrival at Geneva
On the morning of 7 June, Harel came to my house. "Come," he said, "dear friend, you must lose no time. Peace is re-established; as is the case after all great upheavals, there is going to be a reaction in favour of the theatres. People must forget the cholera and the riotings; the cholera has died a natural death; the insurrection is killed; which proves that Louis-Philippe is stronger than Broussais. Where have you got to in Le Fils de l'Émigré?"
"My dear friend, three acts are done."
"Done ... written out?"
"Done and written out! but I declare to you that, for the moment, I am unequal to set to it again. I am broken down with fatigue, consumed with fever and have lost all appetite!"
"Finish Le Fils de l'Émigré, and then go a journey.... You will make prodigious sums of money this summer; you can very well take a little rest!"
"Have you any money to give me?"
"How much do you want?"
"A thousand francs or so ... two perhaps ... and authority to draw upon you for as much."
"Give me my two last acts and I will give you the money and a draft."
"You know I think it execrable."
"What?"
"Le Fils de l'Émigré."
"Bah! You told us the same about La Tour de Nesle.... Georges is delighted with the prologue, and Provost also."
"All right, when you go, ask Anicet to come and see me.... I will try to do my best."
Anicet came to me in a quarter of an hour's time. He is a conscientious worker and an indefatigable hunter-up of things; no one could do his part more generously in a collaboration. I have already said that he brought me the plan of Térésa almost entirely done. I gave him the idea of Angèle; and, at the same time, it was he who discovered not Muller médecin but Muller malade de la poitrine, namely, the profoundly melancholy side of the work. The idea of Le Fils de l'Émigré was his; the execution--specially in the three first acts--was entirely mine. We did the two last acts together during 7 and 8 June.
On 9 June I read in a Legitimist newspaper that I had been taken with arms upon me in the affair at the Cloître Saint-Merry, judged by court-martial during the night and shot at three in the morning. They deplored the premature death of a young author of such hopeful promise! The news wore such a stamp of truth; the details of my execution, that I had, by the way, borne with the greatest courage, were so circumstantial; the information was derived from such a good source that, for the moment, I had my doubts and felt myself all over. For the first time the newspaper said something nice of me; but then the editor believed I was dead. I sent him my card and wrote on it, "Avec tous mes remercîments."
As my messenger went out, another came in, bringing a letter from Charles Nodier. It was couched in these terms:--
"MY DEAR ALEXANDRE,--I have at this moment read in a newspaper that you were shot on 6 June at three in the morning. Be so good as to tell me if it will prevent you from coming to dine to-morrow at the Arsenal, with Dauzats, Taylor, Bixio and in fact our usual friends.--Your very good friend, CHARLES NODIER
"who will be delighted at the opportunity to ask you for news of the other world."
I made answer to my beloved Charles that I had just read the same news in the same paper; that I was not sure myself whether I was alive; but that, body or shade, I would be with him next day at the hour named. However, as I had not eaten much for the last six weeks, I added that it would be more a question of my shadow than my body; I was not dead, but distinctly very ill! Moreover, I had been warned by an aide-de-camp of the king that the possibility of my arrest had been seriously discussed; I was advised to go and spend a month or two abroad, then to return to Paris, and on my return no more would be said. My doctor gave me the same advice in hygiene as His Majesty's aide-de-camp gave me in politics. I had always had a great desire to visit Switzerland. It is a magnificent country, the backbone of Europe, the source of three great rivers which flow to the north, east and south of our continent. Further it is a republic, and, small as it was, I was not at all sorry to see a republic. Moreover I had a notion I should be able to turn my travels to account.
I went in search of Gosselin, to whom I offered to write a couple of volumes on Switzerland. Gosselin shook his head: according to him, Switzerland was a played-out country about which there was no more to write; everybody had been there. It was in vain I told him that if everybody had been there everybody would go, and that, supposing those who had been there would not read my book, I should at all events be read by those who were going; but I could not succeed in convincing him. I, therefore, decided to regard the two or three months I was to spend in Switzerland as time wasted. I sent Harel the last two acts of the Fils de l'Émigré; he gave me the 3000 francs promised, and I received a draft to draw upon him for another 2000 francs. At last, provided with a proper passport, I started on the night of 21 July.[1]
As will be well understood, I have no intentions of beginning over again here my Impressions de Voyage: I will only tell in my Memoirs what has not found a place in my first narrative, it will not be much for frankness is one of my qualities: it has made me many enemies, but I do not thank God any the less for having given me this virtue. The reader may, then, make himself easy: I am going to take him as rapidly as possible over the route on which, in my Impressions de Voyage, I was obliged to stop at every step.
The day after my departure from Paris, I arrived at Auxerre. The change of air began to produce its effect upon my health; at Auxerre, seated at the table where the diligence dinner was served, I regained a little appetite. An enormous dish of cray-fish drove away all my doubts! I ate, so I should not be long before I was better. I slept at Auxerre, wishful to give the good fairy we call Sleep time to complete his work. The ancients called Sleep the brother of Death; but, exact as they were in their definitions, in my opinion, they are ungrateful to Sleep: it is the restorer of strength; the source whence youth derives its energy, and health conceals its treasury. Ah, good gentle sleep of youth! how well one feels that thou art life! Lose love, lose fortune, even hope, if only sleep comes: for the time being, it will return to you all that you have lost. For the moment, I say, indeed; but it is exactly by means of the sorrow you take up again directly you open your eyes that you understand how sweet and potent sleep is!
We stopped afresh at Châlon. A friend who was there suggested to me that, instead of the urban curiosities, the great cellars like catacombs, we should visit a freak of nature and a ruin made by time: the Reaux-Chignon and the château de la Roche-Pot. I have described the one and told about the other; it will all be found in my Impressions de Voyage. The drought had interrupted the service of steamboats for some time; however, on returning to Châlon, we learnt that a boat drawing eighteen inches of water only was going to attempt the voyage. We embarked next day about noon, and reached Mâcon, indeed, but it was impossible to go further: it was too much to expect eighteen inches of water of the Saône. Places in the carriages had been reserved for three days past. I was very simple-minded at that period. Alas! I must say I have kept that silly characteristic intact. Boatmen came seeing my predicament, and as the wind was favourable, proposed to row me to Lyons in six hours. I allowed them eight; they deemed there was no need for such an addition of time, and that I had been too generous. Consequently, we settled the fare, and they took me to a big boat in which a dozen innocents like myself were packed together. Among them were three or four who had a double right to this title--some poor babies of five or six months old, accompanied by their nurses. I made a grimace when I saw the company into which I was brought; but bah! six hours are soon passed! It was one o'clock in the afternoon, by seven we should be at Lyons. But, instead of starting at one, we did not leave till three. Our boatmen thought us too comfortable, seated on top of one another as we were, and they probably counted on putting a second row across us. Luckily, they did not succeed. After two hours of fruitless waiting, they at last unmoored. The wind kept the promise it had made us on starting pretty much for an hour, and during that hour we made a league or a league and a half. Then the wind fell. I had thought that, should occasion arise, our boatmen would apply themselves to the oars; but no! we descended the Saône at the same rate as a drowned dog which floated twenty paces from us! Next day, at three in the afternoon, just at the same time as our drowned dog, which kept us company faithfully, we recognised the île Barbe. We reached Lyons fifty minutes later. My health must have been already much stronger to withstand the night I had just passed on the Saône. We stayed three days in Lyons, and, on the third, at three in the afternoon, we took carriage for Geneva. At six in the morning the conductor opened the carriage door, saying, "If the gentlemen would like to do a bit of the way on foot they will have time." It was an invitation offered us by our horses who found that the carriage was quite heavy enough to pull up the incline of Cerdon without us. This climb begins the first slopes of the Alps; it leads to the fort de l'Écluse, posted astride the road, under the arch of which they scrutinise passports. After three hours' walk, on coming from Saint-Genis the conductor, whom I had begged to tell me the exact moment when I got into Switzerland, turned round towards me and said--
"Monsieur, you are no longer in France."
"How far are we from Geneva?"
"An hour and a half's walk."
"Then let me get out and I will walk the remainder of the way."
The conductor complied with my request and, at the end of an hour and a half's walk, I entered the birthplace of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and of Pradier.
[Footnote 1: See Appendix.]