Chapter II
Great explanations about the bear-steak--Jacotot--An ill-sounding epithet--A seditious felt hat--The carabiniers who were too clever--I quarrel with King Charles-Albert over the Dent du Chat--Princes and men of intellect
I returned to Florence in 1842 for a very sad and distressing ceremony; I returned to attend the funeral of the Duc d'Orléans.
It is one of the singular features of my life to have known all the princes; and, with the most Republican ideas imaginable, to have been attached to them with the deepest affection of my heart. Now, who informed me at Florence of the death of the Duc d'Orléans? Prince Jérôme-Napoléon. I had just dined at Quarto--a charming country-house four miles from Florence--with the father of the ex-King of Westphalia, when, taking me aside, he said--"My dear Dumas, I am going to tell you news which will cause you much pain."
I looked at him with anxiety.
"Monseigneur," I said to him, "I have received news of my two children this morning; they are well; except for accidents which may have happened to them, I am prepared for anything."
"Well, the Duc d'Orléans is dead!"
I confess this came upon me like a thunderbolt. Uttering an exclamation and bursting into tears I threw myself into the prince's arms.
"Oh! monseigneur," I said to him, "I have cared for but two princes, for him and for you. For him more than for you, I frankly admit; now I have but you to care for."
Was it not a strange thing to see a man weeping for a duke of Orléans in the arms of a Bonaparte? I left for Livorno that same night, and next day I went on board the steamer at Genoa. The sea was rough, and landed me quite done up in the City of Palaces; I found at table d'hôte a friend who had arrived from Naples more tired even than myself: he offered to return with me by post-chaise, but on condition we crossed by the Simplon, which he had never seen. I accepted. We hired a sort of cariole and started. When we had crossed the Simplon and got clear of the Valais, we pulled up at the door of the Poste inn at Martigny. The host, hat in hand, politely came and invited us to take a meal in his house in passing. We thanked him and said we had dined at Sion, so he retired as politely as he had come. "What a delightful inn-keeper!" my friend said to me.
"You think so?"
"Why, yes."
"If I told him my name I think I should probably be obliged to give him a drubbing while we waited for our relay of horses."
"Why?"
"Because, instead of making capital out of a joke I played on him, he had the silliness to be vexed at it and to wish I was dead."
"You?"
"Oh yes, me!"
"Bah!"
"Just recall it to him and tell him that we will stay a little time if perchance he can give us a beef-steak of bear flesh."
"Hi! Monsieur!... Monsieur le maître de l'hôtel!" exclaimed my friend, before I had had time to stop him. The maître de l'hôtel turned round.
"My companion here says he will stop for dinner with you if you have by chance a steak of bear flesh."
I have seen many faces express agitation in my life; in consequence of terrible news, unexpected accidents, serious wounds ... but I never saw any face more concerned than that of the unfortunate maître de poste at Martigny.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, seizing his hair with both hands, "again! always the same cry!... Is no traveller to pass by without making the same joke?"
"Yes!" resumed my companion, "I read about it in M. Alexandre Dumas's Impressions de Voyage ..."
"The Impressions de Voyage by M. Alexandre Dumas!" shrieked the wretched inn-keeper; "are there still people who read it?"
"Why should they not read it?" I ventured to ask.
"Because it is an atrocious book, full of lies; people have been burned at the stake who did not deserve it as much as that man.... Oh! M. Alexandre Dumas!" went on the unlucky vendor of soup, passing from rage to exasperation, "if only I ever get hold of him in private one of these days! but I shall have to go to Paris to get even with him. He will not go through Switzerland again, he dare not! he knows I am waiting to strangle him: I have told him so. All right; if you see him, if you know him, tell him once more from me, tell him every time you meet him, tell it him over and over again."
He went into his house like a madman, like one furious and driven to despair.
"What is the matter with your master?" I asked the postilion....
"Ah! people say he has been infected with a sort of craze, which a gentleman from Paris caused him when he passed by here."
"And so he wishes to kill the gentleman from Paris?" "Yes, he wishes to kill him."
"Outright."
"Without mercy."
"Suppose the gentleman from Paris suddenly said to him, 'Here I am!' What would he do."
"Oh! he would fall down dead in a fit, without a doubt."
"All right, postilion. When you return, you tell your master that M. Alexandre Dumas has passed by, that he wishes him long life and all kinds of prosperity. Now start!"
"Ah! that's a good joke!" said the postilion, setting off at a galop. "Ah! Yes, I'll tell him, indeed! he shall know it, and how he will tear his hair at not having recognised you.... Come! Grise, come, gee up!"
My companion was very thoughtful.
"Well," I asked him, "a penny for your thoughts?"
"I am trying to discover the reason for that man's hatred against you."
"You do not understand it?"
"No."
"You remember the bear beef-steak in my Impressions de Voyage?"
"Of course! it is the first thing that I read in it."
"Well, it was at that good fellow's house that the incident of M. Alexandre Dumas eating a bear-steak in 1832 happened."
"Well?"
"Many others like you read of the bear-steak; so, one fine day, a traveller, more curious, or with less appetite, than others said, when he looked at the menu--
"'Have you any bear?'
"'Excuse me?' the host replied.
"'I asked if you had any bear.'
"'No, monsieur, none.'
"And, for the moment, the incident was closed. Then one, two days or a week later, a second traveller puts his alpenstock in the comer behind the door, flings his hat on a chair, shakes the dust from his shoes and says to the maître de l'hôtel--
"'Ah! I am at Martigny, surely?'
"'Yes, monsieur.'
"'At the Hôtel de la Poste?'
"'This is the Hôtel de la Poste.'
"'It is here one can get bear to eat then.'
"'I do not understand.'
"'I say that this is where one can taste bear.'
"The maître de l'hôtel looked at the traveller in amazement.
"'Why here more than anywhere else?' he asked.
"'Because it was here that M. Dumas had it.'
"'M. Dumas?'
'Yes, M. Alexandre Dumas.... Do you not know M. Alexandre Dumas?'
"'No.'
'The author of Henri III., of Antony and of La Tour de Nesle?'
"'I have not the pleasure of his acquaintance.'
'Ah! he says, in his Impressions de Voyage, that he ate bear at your inn ... but, as you have none in the house at the moment, we will not trouble about it: we will have it some other time. Come, what have you got?'
'Monsieur can choose for himself, here is the menu!'
'Oh! I cannot be bothered! Give me what you like: since you have no bear, I don't care what it is.'
"And, with a disgusted air, finding it all very poor, the second traveller ate the dinner they served him.
"Next day, or the day after, or the following week, a traveller came in who, without saying anything, put his knapsack down, seated himself at the first table he came to and knocked against a glass with a knife, shouting--"'Garçon!'
"The waiter came.
"'What can I do for you, monsieur?'
"'A bear-steak.'
"'Ah! ah!'
"'Be quick and let it be underdone!'
"The waiter never budged.
"'Well, don't you understand me, donkey?'
"'Only too well.'
"'All right then, order my steak.'
"'But monsieur seems to want a special sort of steak.'
"'A steak of bear's flesh.'
"'Yes ... We haven't it.'
"'What, you haven't any?'
"'No.'
"'Go and fetch your master.'
"'But, monsieur, my master ...'
"'Go and fetch your master!'
"'But, monsieur.'
"'I tell you to go and fetch your master!'
"The traveller rose with such imperiousness that the waiter saw there was only one thing for him to do--to obey. He disappeared saying--
"'I am going to fetch him. I am going.'
"'You asked to see me, monsieur,' said the maître de l'hôtel in five minutes' time.
"'Ah! that is all right!'
"'Had I only known monsieur specially wished to speak to me ...'
"'I wished to see you because your waiter is such a fool!'
"'That is possible, monsieur.'
"'An impertinent fellow.'
"'Has he had the impudence to neglect monsieur?'
"'He is an idiot, and he will ruin your establishment.'
"'Oh! oh! this is becoming serious.... If monsieur will tell me what he has to complain of.'
"'Well! I ask him for a bear-steak and he pretends not to understand.'
"'Ah! ah! it is ...'
"'Have you bear or have you not?'
"'Monsieur, allow me ...'
"'Have you bear?'
"'Really, monsieur ...'
"'Bear or death. Have you bear?'
"'Really, monsieur, no.'
"'You should have admitted it at once then,' said the traveller, reloading his knapsack.'
"'What is the matter, monsieur?'
"'I am going.'
"'Why are you going?'
"'Because I am going.'
"'But why?'
"'Because I only came to your cookshop to taste bear. As I find you haven't any, I am going to look for it elsewhere.'
"'Still, monsieur ...'
"'Come, furth! and out the traveller went, saying, 'It seems you show special favour to M. Alexandre Dumas; but it also seems to me that a traveller in Burgundy wines is worth much more attention than a man of letters.'
"The inn-keeper stands dumbfounded.
"Now, you know, my dear fellow, that blessed Impressions de Voyage has been widely read, printed and reprinted: not a day passed but some eccentric traveller would ask for a bear-steak. French and English appear to have gone to the Hôtel de la Poste to drive the unlucky inn-keeper to distraction. Never was Pipelet, when he refuses to give his hair to Cabrion, to Cabrion's friends and acquaintances, more unhappy, tormented or desperate than the unhappy, tormented and desperate maître de poste of Martigny. A French inn-keeper would have taken the bull by the horns and changed his signboard; instead of the words Hôtel de la Poste, he would have put, Hôtel du Bifteck d'Ours. He would have bought up all the bears in the surrounding mountains; and, when they fell short, he would have provided beef, wild boar, horse, anything, so long as it was flavoured with some unknown sauce or other. He would have made his fortune in three years' time and retired at the end of it, buying his stocks to the extent of 100,000 francs, and he would have blessed my name. The present man made his fortune all the same, but more slowly, and through such incessant fits of anger that he ruined his health--and cursed my name.
"What harm has that done you?"
"It is always disagreeable to be cursed, my friend."
"But, after all, what truth is there in your bear-steak story?"
"Some and none?"
"What do you mean by some and none?"
"Three days before I went by, a man had been on the hunt for a bear and had wounded it mortally; but, before it died, it had killed the man and devoured part of his head. In my capacity of dramatic poet, I put the thing into a scene, that is all. The same thing happened to me as did to Werner at the inn of Schwartzbach, to his drama of Vingt Quatre Février."
"What happened to Werner?"
"Ah! upon my word, my dear friend, you ought to buy my Impressions de Voyage and open the first volume and you will know."
Whereupon, we continued on our way.
That, dear readers, is the pure truth, revealed for the first time, concerning the bear-steak which made such a stir in the world twenty years ago. Ah, well! I have never been fortunate with my strokes of fame.
One of my creations, which had almost as European a celebrity as the bear-steak, was Jacotot; not the inventor of the famous method of orthography; but a Jacotot of my own; the Jacotot of my Impressions de Voyage.
"Ah! yes, yes, the waiter in the café at Aix." Precisely, dear readers; you see, indeed, how celebrated Jacotot is since you remember his name."
"Who doesn't remember the name of Jacotot!"
"I can, then, say openly, that I made Jacotot's fortune, for he is rich and has retired; Jacotot has a town-house in Aix and a country-house on the lake of Bourget. Yet, like the master of the posting-inn at Martigny, Jacotot holds me in execration, he loathes me and curses me! The reason for such ingratitude? I wounded his amour propre; again because of putting him in my book; the number of enemies my dramatic talent has made me is incalculable! Any man who is not, like myself, overcome with a passion for the picturesque, any writer who does not feel compelled to paint when he writes, who had occasion to bring Jacotot upon the scenes for the first time, would have said simply, 'Jacotot comes on.' He would not have thought it necessary to state whether Jacotot was beautiful or ugly, well dressed or ill, young or old. But to me 'Jacotot enters' seemed insufficient, and I had the misfortune to say, 'Jacotot entered; he was nothing but a coffee-house waiter.' This was the first wounding epithet for Jacotot who, it is true, was a coffee-house waiter, but who, no doubt, desired to be taken for a solicitor's clerk. I went on: 'He stopped in front of us, a stereotyped smile on his fat, stupid face, which must have been seen to have been appreciated.'"
That was what really embroiled me with Jacotot, the physical portrait I drew of him; all the good I was able to say of him, which has immortalised him, has not effaced from his memory the unhappy epithet I applied to his face.
In the year of grace 1854, nearly a quarter of a century after the publication of the unlucky Impressions de Voyage which fell foul of many susceptibilities, there was a traveller on the road to Aix who had a desire to know Jacotot: he went to the café and did as I had done. He called Jacotot: the maître du café came to him.
"Monsieur," he said, "the person for whom you are inquiring has made his fortune and retired."
"Ah! diable!" said the traveller. "I wanted to see him."
"Oh! you can see him."
"Where?"
"At his home."
"Oh! but to disturb him, solely and simply to say that I have a desire to see him is perhaps really a little too inquisitive."
"Eh! stay though, you can see him without disturbing him."
"How?"
"That is he, over there, against his door, with his hands in his pockets and his body in the sun."
"Thanks."
The traveller got up, went across to the other side of the square and passed two or three times in front of Jacotot. Jacotot perceived that it was he whom the traveller wanted; and, as he was a capital fellow, when his amour-propre is not over-excited, he smiled at the traveller. The traveller was emboldened by the smile.
"You are M. Jacotot, I believe?" he asked him.
"Yes, monsieur, at your service."
"So you have retired?"
"Two years since, as you see!... I am a citizen, a good citizen now," and he struck his stomach with the palms of his two hands.
"I offer you my congratulations, Monsieur Jacotot."
"You are indeed good."
"I know some one who has not been injured by your bit of good fortune."
"Who, monsieur?"
"Alexandre Dumas, the author of the Impressions de Voyage."
Jacotot's face became discomposed.
"Alexandre Dumas," he repeated.
"Yes."
"Is it because he said I had a stupid face?" exclaimed Jacotot, slamming the door violently as he went into his house.
The traveller had paid his farewell call on Jacotot, for, from that moment, if Jacotot caught sight of him on one side, he turned away in another direction.
In the same country I have a third enemy, very much more serious than the two others, and for a thing of almost as little importance, and he is His Majesty Charles-Albert, King of Sardinia. During my sojourn at Aix I made two excursions: one to Chambéry and the other to the Dent du Chat. Both were made noteworthy: one by an act of great imprudence, the other by a serious accident; imprudence and accident would probably have passed over unnoticed had I not pointed them out in those fatal Impressions de Voyage. The imprudence was to go into the capital of Savoy wearing grey hats, as my companions and I did. You will ask, dear readers, what imprudence there was in wearing grey hats instead of black felt ones. There would have been none in 1833, but it was very unwise in 1832; and here is an extract of a few lines from my Impressions de Voyage--
"At four p.m. of the same day we reached Chambéry. I will say nothing about the public monuments of the capital of Savoy; I was not able to enter into any of them because I wore a grey hat. It seems that a dispatch from the Tuileries had called forth the strictest measures against the seditious felt, and that the King of Sardinia did not wish to be exposed to a war against his beloved brother Louis-Philippe d'Orléans over such a futile matter. As I insisted, and declaimed energetically against the injustice of such a proceeding, the Royal Carabiniers, who were on guard at the palace gate, said facetiously to me that, if I absolutely persisted, there was at Chambéry a building inside which they were allowed to take me, namely, the prison. As the King of France, in his turn, would probably not wish to be exposed to a war against his dear brother Charles-Albert, over so unimportant a personage as his ex-librarian, I replied to my interlocutors that they were doubtless very charming for Savoyards and very witty for carabiniers, but I would insist no longer."
Savoy is a singular country: Jacotot was angry because I said an injurious thing about him; the carabiniers were angry because I paid them a compliment. So much for the imprudence. Let us now pass to the accident.
After supper, a dozen bathers, joyous companions, four of whom, alas! are now dead, proposed, in order not to leave one another, to go and see the sun rise from the top of the Dent du Chat. It is a sharp-pointed mountain peak which owes its name to its shape, and its bare, verdureless cone looks down upon Aix. The suggestion was acceded to; they put on their boots and dressed for the journey, then they set out. I did the same as the others, although I have not much taste for making ascents; I suffer from giddiness; and, to be high up, even if there is no danger, is more painful to me than actual danger which may present itself under quite another form. As in the case of Chambéry, let me be permitted to quote a few passages from my Impressions de Voyage; it will absolve the reader from turning back to it--
"We began to climb at half-past twelve midnight; it was a strange sight, that march by torchlight. At two, three-quarters of our way were done, but the remaining part was so dangerous and difficult that our guides made us halt to wait for the first rays of dawn. When this appeared we continued our way, which soon became so steep that our breasts nearly touched the slope on which we were walking in single file. Each one displayed his skill and strength, clinging, with his hands, to the heath and little shrubs and, with his feet, to the roughness of the rock and to the inequalities in the ground. We heard the stones which we loosened roll down the slope of the mountain, which was as steep as a roof; and then we followed them with our eyes till we saw them fall into the lake, with its blue sheet, which lay stretched out a quarter of a league below us. Our guides themselves could not help us, as they were busy trying to discover the best way; but, from time to time, they advised us not to look behind us for fear of turning faint or giddy: and their admonitions, made in short, concise tones, told us the danger was very real.
"Suddenly, one of our comrades who followed immediately after them uttered a cry which made our flesh creep. As a means of support he had tried to place his foot on a stone already shaken by the weight of those who had preceded him. The stone broke away and the branches to which he had also clung, not being strong enough to bear the weight of his body alone, broke between his hands.
"'Catch hold of him!' shouted the guides.
"But this was easier said than done. Each one of us had already great difficulty in holding himself up. So he passed by us without a single one of us being able to stop him; we thought he was lost and, with the perspiration of terror on our brows, we watched him breathlessly until he was close to Montaigu, the last of us all, and he stretched out a hand and seized him by the hair. For one moment it was doubtful if both would not fall; it was a short but awful moment, and I will answer for it that none of those who were there will forget the length of the second, while we watched the two men swaying over a precipice of two thousand feet depth, not knowing whether they were going to be precipitated over, or succeed in catching hold of the ground again.
"We reached at last a little fir wood which, without making the path less steep, made it more comfortable because of the facility the trees offered us of catching hold of their branches or leaning against their trunks. The opposite border of the little forest almost touched the base of bare rock, whose shape has given its name to the mountain; holes irregularly hollowed out in the stone afforded us a sort of staircase which led to the summit.
"Only two of us attempted this last climb; not that the journey was more difficult than that we have just accomplished, but it did not promise us a more extended view, and the one we had in front of us was far from compensating us for our fatigue and bruises. We therefore left them to climb up their steeple and we sat down to extract stones and thorns from ourselves. Meanwhile, the climbers reached the top of the mountain, and, as proof of having captured it, they lit a fire and smoked their cigars round it.
"They came down in a quarter of an hour, taking good care to put out the fire they had lit, curious though they were to know if the smoke had been noticed down below. We ate a small meal, then our guides asked us if we wanted to return by the same route, or to take another and a longer one, but much easier. We unanimously chose the latter. By three o'clock we were in Aix, and, in the centre of the square, the gentlemen had the proud pleasure of still seeing the smoke of their beacon fire. I asked them if, now that I had had so much enjoyment, I might be allowed to go to bed. As every one probably felt the need of doing the same, they told me there was no objection. I believe I should have slept for thirty-six hours on end if I had not been awakened by a great noise. I opened my eyes, it was dark; I went to the window, and I saw all the town of Aix in a commotion. The population, including children and old people, had come out on the public square, as in former times they did during riotings in Rome. Every one was talking at once, and snatching at glasses, and looking up into the air fit to break their spines; I thought there must be an eclipse of the moon. I dressed quickly to go and see my share of the phenomenon, and went down armed with my spy-glasses. The whole atmosphere was coloured with a red reflection, the sky seemed inflamed; the Dent du Chat was on fire! The fire lasted for three days. On the fourth, they brought our smokers in a bill of 37,500 francs odd. The smokers thought the sum a little too strong for a dozen arpents of wood, the situation of which made it impossible to get at. Consequently, they wrote to our ambassador at Turin to try to get something cut down in the bill. He must have managed it very well, because the bill returned to them in a week's time to be paid was reduced to 780 francs.
"Thanks to my grey hat, which had aroused the susceptibilities of the Chambéry Carabiniers, and to the part I had taken in the excursion and the firing of the Dent du Chat the states of King Charles-Albert were shut against me for six years."
I told in due place how, in 1835, I was shamefully driven out of Genoa and how triumphantly I returned there in 1838. May I be permitted a slight digression here on princes and ship captains?
I have noticed that, in general, neither of them like men of intellect. Indeed, if a man of cultivated mind find himself at a prince's table, at the end of ten minutes, without complete dumbness on his part, it is the man of mind who will be the true prince, to whom people will address their conversation, it is he who will be made to speak, it is he to whom they will listen. The prince by birth is completely annihilated--he no longer exists as such, and is only distinguishable from other guests in two ways: whilst other guests are talking he is silent; whilst they laugh he sulks. You will say, in such a case, if the cultured man is really clever he will keep silence in order to let the prince assert his princehood. But then the clever man will be no longer such--he will be a courtier. Numbers of clever men have been disgraced because of their abilities. Cite me one instance of a fool disgraced for his folly. It is the same with ship captains as with princes.
Whenever a clever man is on board and the weather is fine, the captain is nowhere. People crowd round the man of intellect, whilst the captain paces alone on the poop. It is true, that, if there is a storm the captain becomes captain once more, but only so long as the storm lasts. You tell me there are princes who have intellect. Of course! I have known, and still know, some; but their estate compels them to hide it. It was impossible to have a more charming, delicate or graceful mind than that of M. le duc d'Orléans; and yet no one could hide it better than he could. One day, when he had made one of those delightful repartees with which his conversation abounded when he had to do with artists, I asked him--
"Mon Dieu, monseigneur, how is it that you, who are one of the wittiest men I know, have so little reputation for being a wit?"
He began to laugh.
"How delicious you are!" he said; "do you suppose I allow myself to show wit to everybody?"
"But, monseigneur, you show it to me, and at your very best too."
"Parbleu! because I know you are equally witty, you are always as witty as, if not more than, I; but with imbeciles, my dear Monsieur Dumas!... I have enough to do to make them forgive me for being a prince, without giving them more to forgive by being a man of wit.... So it is agreed that, when you wish, not so much to give me pleasure as to do me a service, you must say that I am an imbecile!"
Poor dear prince!
Chapter III
22 July 1832
The day after the magnificent fire, one of our bathers, who had returned from Chambéry, entered the room where we met together, saying--
"Messieurs, have you heard the news?"
"No."
"The Duc de Reichstadt is dead."
The Duc de Reichstadt had, indeed, died on 22 July, at eight minutes past five in the morning, the anniversary day on which letters-patent from the emperor had appointed him Duc de Reichstadt, and on which he had learnt of the death of his father the Emperor Napoleon. His last words had been--
"Ich gehe unter! Mutter! Mutter!" (I am sinking--Mother! Mother!)
Thus it was that, in a foreign language, the child of 1811 bid adieu to the world!
The inquiries we made concerning the young prince, that pale historic figure which faded from day to day whilst the phantom figure of his father grew bigger and bigger, enable us to give a few details about his brief life and sad death that are perhaps not known.
Victor Hugo, the man to whom one must always turn when it is a question of measuring the giant Napoleon, wrote the poetic history of the young prince in a few strophes. Let us be permitted to quote them. To say we love the exiled poet, comforts our heart; to say that we admire him, assuages our regrets. The tomb is deaf, but, perhaps, exile is even still more dear. Our voice is one that our friends will hear in the grave and in exile. Yesterday, the Duc d'Orléans; to-day, Hugo.
"Mil huit cent onze!--ô temps où des peuples sans nombre Attendaient, prosternés sous un nuage sombre. Que le ciel eût dit oui! Sentaient trembler sous eux les États centenaires. Et regardaient le Louvre, entouré de tonnerres Comme un mont Sinaï!
Courbés comme un cheval qui sent venir son maître. Ils se disaient entre eux: 'Quelqu'un de grand va naître; L'immense empire attend un héritier demain. Qu'est-ce que le Seigneur va donner à cet homme Qui, plus grand que César, plus grand même que Rome, Absorbe dans son sort le sort du genre humain?'
Comme ils parlaient, la nue éclatante et profonde S'entr'ouvrit, et l'on vit se dresser sur le monde L'homme prédestiné! Et les peuples béants ne purent que se taire; Car ses deux bras levés présentaient à la terre Un enfant nouveau-né!"
The child was the King of Rome,--the one who had just died. When his father had shown him on the Tuileries balcony, as Louis XIV. had shown Louis XIV. from the balcony of Saint-Germain, he was the heir to the most powerful crown in existence; at that period, the emperor drew after him in his orbit one half of the Christian population; his orders extended and were obeyed over a space which included nineteen degrees of latitude; and eighty millions of men cried "Vive Napoleon!" in eight different tongues.
But let us return to the poet--
"O revers, ô leçons! Quand l'enfant de cet homme But reçu pour hochet la couronne de Rome; Lorsqu'on l'eut revêtu d'un nom qui retentit; Lorsqu'on eut bien montré son front royal qui tremble Au peuple, émerveillé qu'on puisse tout ensemble Être si grand et si petit!
Quand son père eut, pour lui, gagné bien des batailles; Lorsqu'il eut épaissi de vivantes murailles Autour du nouveau-né, riant sur son chevet; Quand ce grand ouvrier, qui savait comme on fonde. But, à coups de cognée, à peu près fait le monde Selon le songe qu'il rêvait;
Quand tout fut préparé par les mains paternelles, Pour doter l'humble enfant de splendeurs éternelles. Lorsqu'on eut de sa vie assuré les relais; Quand, pour loger un jour ce maître héréditaire, On eut enraciné, bien avant dans la terre. Le pied de marbre des palais;
Lorsqu'on eut, pour sa soif, posé devant la France Un vase tout rempli du vin de l'espérance ... Avant qu'il eût goûté de ce poison doré, Avant que de sa lèvre il eût touché la coupe, Un Cosaque survint, qui prit l'enfant en croupe, Et l'emporta tout effaré!"
The story of the poor child can only be made up out of contradictory evidence. Let us borrow from M. de Montbel a letter which tells of the impatience with which the announcement of his birth was waited for in the imperial city of Vienna--
'VIENNA, 26 March
"It would be difficult to do justice to the impatience with which they here expected the news of the delivery of Her Majesty the Empress of the French. On Sunday the 24th, at ten in the morning, uncertainty was at an end: the telegraphic dispatch which announced the happy news was transmitted to the Ambassador of France four days and one hour after that event, by Major Robelleau, first aide-de-camp to General Desbureaux, Commandant of the Fifth Military Division. The report of it soon spread abroad and caused general joy.
"M. de Tettenborn, aide-de-camp to Prince de Schwartzenberg, left Paris by day, and, arriving fourteen hours after Chevalier Robelleau, confirmed the happy news. Finally, a courier from the French Cabinet arrived on the morning of the 25th, bearing the official letter by which the Emperor Napoleon announced the birth to his august father-in-law. His Majesty's satisfaction was extremely great, and was shared by the whole Court. The Ambassador of France being at home indisposed, the first Secretary to the Embassy went to the palace, was taken to the emperor's cabinet and had the honour of handing to His Majesty his Master the Emperor's letter. On that same Sunday, the day chamberlain was sent by the emperor to the Ambassador of France to congratulate him. The ambassador received the congratulations equally of M. le comte de Metternich, and of the whole diplomatic corps.
"To-morrow, there will be a grand drawing-room at the Court on the occasion of the birth of the King of Rome. Every one says it will be a very brilliant gathering."
Perhaps it will be interesting to compare the congratulation of M. le comte de Metternich to the Ambassador to France--dated 25 March 1811--with the information given on 31 October 1815 by the same Comte de Metternich, to M. le baron de Sturmer, Commissary to His Imperial and Apostolic Majesty at the Isle of Saint-Helena--
"The allied powers having agreed to take the most particular measures to render any enterprise on the part of Napoleon Bonaparte impossible, it has been concluded and decided between them that he shall be taken to the Isle of Saint-Helena, that he shall there be entrusted to the care of the British Government; that the Courts of Austria, of Russia and of Prussia shall send their agents to reside there, to make sure of his presence but without being charged with the responsibility of guarding him; and that His Most Christian Majesty shall also be invited to send a French agent to the place of Napoleon Bonaparte's detention.
"In consequence of this decision, sanctioned by special agreement between the Courts of Austria and Russia, and Great Britain and Prussia, dated from Paris, 2 August 1815, His Majesty the Emperor, our august master, has condescended to appoint you to reside at Saint-Helena in the capacity of his representative.
"The guarding of Napoleon Bonaparte being specially entrusted to the British Government, you are not charged with any responsibility on that head; but you can make sure of his presence by what means and in what manner you like in concert with the governor. You must be careful to be convinced of his existence by the evidence of your own eyes, and you must draw up an official report, which must be signed by you and your colleagues and countersigned by the governor; each of the agents will be expected to submit a copy of this report every month to his Court, furnished with their signatures and a countersign from the governor.
"You will take the greatest care to avoid any sort of communication with Napoleon Bonaparte and the individuals of his suite. You will positively refuse any overtures they might seek to set up with you; and, in case they allow direct approaches, you will immediately report such to the governor.
"Although you will not be at all responsible for the guarding of Bonaparte, nor of the persons comprising his suite, if it comes to your knowledge that they are employing means to evade or to keep up communications outside, you will warn the governor without delay.
"Your functions will be confined to those indicated in the present instructions. You will abstain with most scrupulous punctiliousness from all solitary action, our positive intention being that you act in concert with your colleagues and always in accord with them and with the governor. You will make use of every opportunity that may present itself to convey your reports direct to us."
"METTERNICH"
"PARIS, 31 October 1815"
So much for the political view: now let us look at the poetic--
"Oui, l'aigle, un soir, planait aux voûtes éternelles, Lorqu'un grand coup de vent lui cassa les deux ailes; Sa chute fit dans l'air un foudroyant sillon; Tous alors sur son nid fondirent avec joie; Chacun selon ses dents se partagea la proie: L'Angleterre prit l'aigle, et l'Autriche l'aiglon.
Vous savez ce qu'on fit du géant historique. Pendant six ans, on vit, loin derrière l'Afrique, Sous les verrous des rois prudents, --Oh! n'exilons personne! oh! l'exil est impie!-- Cette grande figure en sa cage accroupie, Ployée et les genoux aux dents.
Encor, si ce banni n'eût rien aimé sur terre! Mais les cœurs de lion sont les vrais cœurs de père; Il aimait son fils, ce vainqueur! Deux choses lui restaient dans sa cage inféconde: Le portrait d'un enfant et la carte du monde, Tout son génie et tout son cœur!
Le soir, quand son regard se perdait dans l'alcôve, Ce qui se remuait dans cette tête chauve, Ce que son œil cherchait dans le passé profond, Tandis que ses geôliers, sentinelles placées Pour guetter nuit et jour le vol de ses pensées, En regardaient passer les ombres sur son front,
Ce n'était pas toujours, sire, cette épopée Que vous aviez naguère écrite avec l'épée, Arcole, Austerlitz, Montmirail; Ni l'apparition des vieilles pyramides, Ni le pacha du Caire et ses chevaux numides Qui mordaient le vôtre au poitrail;
Ce n'était pas ce bruit de bombe et de mitraille Que vingt ans sous ses pieds avait fait la bataille Déchaînée en noirs tourbillons, Quand son souffle poussait sur cette mer troublée Les drapeaux frissonnants penchés dans la mêlée, Comme les mâts des bataillons;
Ce n'était pas Madrid, le Kremlin et le Phare, La diane au matin fredonnant sa fanfare, Les bivacs sommeillant dans les feux étoilés, Les dragons chevelus, les grenadiers épiques, Et les rouges lanciers fourmillant dans les piques. Comme des fleurs de pourpre en l'épaisseur des blés;
Non, ce qui l'occupait, c'est l'ombre blonde et rose D'un bel enfant qui dort la bouche demi-close, Gracieux comme l'Orient; Tandis qu'avec amour sa nourrice enchantée, D'une goutte de lait au bout du sein restée, Agace sa lèvre en riant!
Le père, alors, posait les coudes sur sa chaise; Son cœur plein de sanglots se dégonflait à l'aise; Il pleurait d'amour éperdu ...
Sois béni, pauvre enfant, tête aujourd'hui glacée, Seul être qui pouvait distraire sa pensée Du trône du monde perdu!
***
Tous deux sont morts! Seigneur, votre droite est terrible! Vous avez commencé par le maître invincible, Par l'homme triomphant; Puis vous avez enfin complété l'ossuaire. Dix ans vous out suffi pour filer le suaire Du père et de l'enfant!
Gloire, jeunesse, orgueil, biens que la tombe emporte! L'homme voudrait laisser quelque chose à la porte; Mais la mort lui dit: 'Non!' Chaque élément retourne où tout doit redescendre! L'air reprend la fumée et la terre la cendre; L'oubli reprend le nom."
I decidedly prefer poetry to politics. Do you not agree with me, dear reader? Now, how did the poor exiled child live and die; the poor eaglet that fell out of its nest? That is what we are going to tell in the following chapters.
Chapter IV
Edict unbaptizing the King of Rome--Anecdotes of the childhood of the Duc de Reichstadt--Letter of Sir Hudson Lowe announcing the death of Napoleon
It was at Schönbrünn, in the same palace in which the emperor lived during 1805, after Austerlitz, and, in 1809, after Wagram, that Marie-Louis and her son were received by the Imperial family of Austria. As the first care of England had been to despoil Napoleon of his title of Emperor, so the first care of Francis II. was to take away the name of Napoleon from his grandson.
On 22 July 1818 the Emperor of Austria published the following edict:--
"We, Francis II., by the grace of God, Emperor of Austria; King of Jerusalem, Hungary, Bohemia, of Lombardy and of Venice, of Dalmatia, Croatia, Esclavonia, Gallicia, Lodomeria and Illyria; Archduke of Austria, Duke of Lorraine, of Saltzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, the high and low Silesia; Grand-Prince of Transylvania; Margrave of Moravia; Count-Prince of Hapsburg and of the Tyrol, etc. etc.; would have it known that--As we find that, in consequence of the act of the Vienna Congress and the negotiations which have since taken place in Paris with our principal allies, in putting into execution in the matter of determining the title, rank and personal relations of Prince François Joseph-Charles, son of our beloved daughter Marie-Louise, Archduchess of Austria, Duchess of Parma, of Plaisance and of Guastalla, we have accordingly decreed as follows:--
"1. We give to Prince François-Joseph-Charles, son of our beloved daughter the Archduchess Marie-Louise, the title of Duc de Reichstadt, and we at the same time command that in future all our authorities and every private person shall give him, when addressing him either by word of mouth or in writing, at the beginning of the speech, or heading of a letter, the title of Most Serene Duke, and in the text that of Most Serene Highness.
"2. We permit him to have and to make use of special armorial bearings: to wit, gules with fesse of gold, two lions passant with their backs turned to the right, one in chief the other in point; one oval placed on a ducal mantle and stamped with a ducal crown; for support two griffins, sable armed, picked out and crowned with gold, holding banners on which the ducal arms shall be repeated.
"3. Prince François Joseph-Charles, Duc de Reichstadt, will take rank in the Court and throughout the whole extent of our Empire, immediately after the princes of our family and the Archdukes of Austria.
"Two identical copies of the present declaration and ordinance, signed by us,'have been dispatched to inform every one whose business it is to conform to them. One copy has been deposited in our private family archives of Court and State. Issued in our capital and residence of Vienna, the 22nd of July of the year 1818, the twenty-seventh of our reign. FRANÇOIS"
It was, as one can see, impossible better to conceal this poor intruder, of which the family was ashamed. There was no more mention of his being a Frenchman, or his name of Napoleon, than if France had not existed or than if it had never had an Empire. He will no longer have any family name: he will have the name of a duchy; he will not have that of Majesty or Sire; he is to be Most Serene Highness. Of the French Eagle, the eagle which in 1804 flew from the Pyramids to Vienna, which in 1814 flew from steeple to steeple as far as the towers of Notre-Dame, there is no more question than of the name of the nationality; the Duke of Reichstadt will have two lions d'or passant upon gules, like a count of the Holy Empire--not even the Buonaparte star; not even the bees of the isle of Elba. He will take rank at Court after the princes of the Imperial family. Thus, he is not even a prince of the Imperial family in his own right through his mother!--Silence as to his father! He has no father and never had; moreover, the father he might have had calls himself simply, or is so called by Sir Hudson Lowe, General Bonaparte. True, there is a future for the poor disinherited one in the love of his grandfather, who worships him; if he behaves himself well, he will be a colonel in an Austrian or a Hungarian regiment! There was also the future of Marcellus and the one that Providence is keeping for him out of its profound pity! And yet the poor child remembered; and that was his martyrdom. One day--he was scarcely six years old--he came up to the emperor, leant against his knees, and said--
"Dear grandfather, is it not true that when I was in Paris I had pages?"
"Yes," replied the emperor, "I believe you had."
"Is it not true, too, that they called me the King of Rome?"
"Yes. You were called King of Rome."
"Well, then, grandpapa, what does being King of Rome mean?"
"It is useless to explain it to you, as you are no longer it."
"But why am I not?"
"My child," replied the emperor, "when you are grown up, it will be easy to instruct you on that point. For the moment, I will just tell you that, in addition to my title of Emperor of Austria, I join that of King of Jerusalem, without having any sort of power over the city. Very well, you are King of Rome as I am King of Jerusalem."
Another time the young prince was playing with lead soldiers, amongst which were a good number of irregular Cossacks. A painter, M. Hummel, who was painting his portrait, came to him.
"Have you ever seen Cossacks, monseigneur?" he asked.
"Yes, certainly, I have seen them," replied the child: "they were Cossacks who escorted us when we left France."
The painter asked M. Dietrichstein, his tutor, when the prince's portrait was finished, "With what order ought I to decorate His Highness, Monsieur le Comte?"
"With the Order of Saint-Stephen, which His Majesty the Emperor of Austria sent him in his infancy."
"But, Monsieur le Comte," said the child, "I have many others besides that!"
"Yes, monseigneur; but you do not wear them any longer."
"Why?"
"Because they have been abolished."
Poor child! it was not the orders that had been abolished; but his fortune which had fallen.
At that age, the Duc de Reichstadt was perfectly beautiful, with great blue eyes and rose-leaf complexion, and long, fair, curly hair falling on to his shoulders. All his movements were full of grace and prettiness; he spoke French with the accent peculiar to Parisians. He had to learn German, and it was a great business and a daily and hourly struggle and difficulty.
"If I speak German," he said, "I shall not be French any more."
However, the Duc de Reichstadt was obliged to resign himself to learn M. de Metternich's tongue, and it was the one he constantly spoke when he had learned it with the princes of the Imperial family.
One day, a courier from M. de Rothschild arrived in Vienna; he brought great news, news which, in former times, would have been announced by comets and earthquakes: Napoleon had died on May 1821! The news reached Vienna on 22 July--the day on which, three years previously, the Duc de Reichstadt had lost his name; the day on which, eleven years later, he was to lose his life.
The Comte de Dietrichstein was absent, and the emperor charged M. Foresti with the telling of the fatal news to the young duke, who had just reached his tenth birthday. M. Foresti adored the prince; he had been with him since 1815. He broke the news with all kinds of circumlocution, but, at the first words he uttered, the prince said--
"My father is dead, is he not?"
"Monseigneur ..."
"He is dead?"
"Indeed, yes!"
"How could one want him to live ... over there!" exclaimed the child, bursting into tears.
Contrary to the custom of Imperial etiquette, he wore mourning for a year; he insisted on it when they tried to make him give it up. They appealed to the emperor, who replied--
"Leave it to the child's own heart."
If you wish to know in what fashion the news was officially announced to the Court of Vienna, see the original letter of Sir Hudson Lowe to Baron Sturmer--
"SAINT-HELENA, 27 May 1821
"MONSIEUR LE BARON,--He is no more! A disease which, according to the opinion current in his family, was hereditary, carried him to the grave on the 5th of this month: tumour and cancer of the stomach near the pylorus. On opening the body, with the consent of the persons of his entourage, they discovered an ulcer close to the pylorus which caused adherence to the liver; and, on opening the stomach, they could trace the progress of the disease. The interior of the stomach was almost entirely a mass of cancerous disease, or of scirrhous portions advancing the cancer. His father died of the same disease at the age of thirty-six; it should have struck him down when he was on the throne of France at the hour fixed by fate, according to his own way of thinking on the subject. He was not confined to his room until 17 March; but a change had been noticeable in him since last November, an unusual pallor and a peculiar way of walking. He, however, took exercise twice a day, generally in a little carriage; but his paleness and weakness seemed always to persist.
"He was offered the advice of English doctors, but he would not receive any visit from them until 1 April, the month before his death. It was Professor Antomarchi who attended him before this period and continued to do so to his decease: it was he, too, who opened the body in the presence of nearly every doctor on the island. Dr. Arnott, of the 20th Regiment, a very clever and experienced man, was called in to see him on 1 April, and continued to attend him to the last. He has notified his gratitude to him by bequeathing him a gold snuff-box, the last he used, on which he engraved with his own hand the letter N. He has also left him a sum of money (five hundred pounds).
"Comte Montholon is the principal depositary of his last wishes; Comte Bertrand only came second.
"He had strongly urged Comte Bertrand to do his utmost to make peace with me, saving always his sense of honour: I was not even told of this. He made advances, and, as I have no rancour in my disposition (as far as a person can judge of himself), I did not repulse them.
"It was, however, all along more on account of the pretensions of the great marshal and his wounded pride, rather than those of the emperor, that caused matters to go wrong here from the very first; and from information received, it is evident that towards the end the emperor began to see this.
"There is a codicil to his will by which all the effects here are left to Comtes Bertrand and Montholon and to Marchand. Montholon is the principal executor. They knew nothing, or they said they knew nothing, of the will.
"In view of the time you spent here, I am induced to think that these few details will be specially interesting to you, and I will not make excuses for intruding them upon you. Give my compliments and those of Lady Lowe to Madame la baronne de Sturmer, and, believe me always, Your faithful and obedient Servant,
"H. LOWE, M.P."
"P.S.--Bonaparte had himself guessed the cause of his illness. Some time before his death, he desired that his body should be opened, in order, as he told Bertrand and Montholon, to discover if there were any means of saving his son from the malady.
"Excuse my scrawl.
"H. L."
Do you notice that, in no part of the letter is the name of the dead man used? It is only in the postscript that it falls from the pen of the herald of death.
Was it not because the gaoler was ashamed to pronounce the name of his captive; the executioner felt remorse in pronouncing the name of the sufferer? When Napoleon was dead the whole world turned its attention, which had been divided between Schönbrünn and Saint-Helena, solely towards Schönbrünn.
Chapter V
Prince Metternich is appointed to teach the history of Napoleon to the Duc de Reichstadt--The duke's plan of political conduct--The poet Barthélemy at Vienna--His interviews with Count Dietrichstein--Opinion of the Duc de Reichstadt on the poem Napoléon en Égypte
"Prince Metternich," says M. de Montbel, "was expressly charged to teach the Duc de Reichstadt the exact and complete history of Napoleon." What irony! To charge the man who signed the instructions of M. de Sturmer, the representative of Austria Saint-Helena, to teach the son the exact and complete story of the father whose name the son no longer bore, whose title and arms he no longer carried!
Poor prisoner! Could they but have added this torture to thy agony by saying to thee, "Thy son only knows thee through the appreciation and according to the narrative of M. de Metternich!"
"I desire," said the Emperor Francis to the Prime Minister, "that the duke should respect the memory of his father, take example from his great qualities and learn to know his faults in order to avoid them and be warned against their fatal influence. Speak to the prince about his father as you would like people to speak of you to your own son. Do not, because of that, hide the truth from him, but instruct him, I repeat, to honour his memory."
"'Henceforth," says M. de Montbel, with an artlessness which might very well be intended more for sarcasm than duplicity, "M. de Metternich directed the Duc de Reichstadt in his superior historical studies. By putting before him unexceptionable documents, he accustomed him to know the good faith of factions and the justice of party spirit; he tried to form his mind to habits of sane criticism, to enlighten his reason by teaching him to appraise actions and events from their causes as well as judge them from results. The Duc de Reichstadt received this advanced education with great enthusiasm: the justice and penetration of his mind made him fully appreciate its importance. In proportion as he read works relative to the history of our days he consulted the Prince Metternich in all his doubts, he loved to question his experience and his recognised cleverness in many great events in which he had taken an active part. From this time the young duke displayed habitual eagerness to be near M. de Metternich."
The poor child's whole life was henceforth to be contained in the few lines we have just quoted.
Once, when he met the emperor and the prince together, he went up to them and said--
"The chief object of my life ought to be that I should not be unworthy of my father's renown; I shall attain this noble end, as far as it is in my power. I shall some day succeed in making one of his high qualities my own by avoiding the rocks they made him encounter. I shall fail in the duties his memory lays upon me if I become the plaything of factions and the tool of intrigues. The son of Napoleon can never descend to the despicable rôle of an adventurer!"
From the moment the Duc de Reichstadt showed such reasonableness, M. de Metternich and the Emperor of Austria had henceforth nothing more to fear.
It was about this time, and when the political education of the young prince had been finished by M. de Metternich, that Méry and Barthélemy published, on 10 November 1828, their poem, Napoléon en Égypte. The tremendous success of the poem is well known. Henceforward one pious idea sprang up in their hearts and in their minds; one of them would go to Vienna and offer to the young duke the epic poem, the hero of which is his father. Barthélemy went. We will let him describe his pilgrimage, and will afterwards relate the effect his presence produced in Vienna.
"The object of my journey being to be presented to the Duc de Reichstadt and to offer our poem to him, you may imagine I neglected no possible means of attaining it. Among the numbers of people who testified some interest in the matter, some were entirely without influence, others, with some reason, feared to mix themselves up in an affair of this nature. So I found myself reduced to being my own adviser and protector. I thought that, instead of making use of roundabout ways, which would have drawn down serious suspicions as to my peaceful intentions, it would be better to approach the object of my journey at Vienna. Accordingly, I presented myself to the Comte de Czernin, who is the emperor's Oberhofmeister, an office which I believe answers to that of grand chamberlain. The venerable old man received me with a kindness and complaisancy which touched me much; and when I propounded to him the object of my visit, he did not seem at all surprised at it: only he told me to address myself to Comte Dietrichstein, who was specially responsible for the young prince's education, and he even wished me to introduce myself under his auspices. I did not lose a moment, on quitting Comte de Czernin, but presented myself immediately to M. Dietrichstein. It gave me genuine pleasure to be in the company of one of the most amiable and highly accomplished lords of the Court of Vienna. To the office of first tutor to the Duc de Reichstadt he added the office of director of the library, and, in view of this latter title, I could boldly put forward my condition as a man of letters. He indeed told me that our names and works were known to him; that he had even taken the trouble to send to France for all the brochures which we had published up to that time, and that he was impatiently awaiting our last poem. As I had armed myself with a copy ready for any opportunity, I hastened to offer him one, and even! to write and sign a dedication to him inside it, which appeared to please him much. Encouraged by this reception, I thought it a propitious moment to make a decisive overture.
"'Monsieur le Comte,' I said to him, 'as you have shown such great kindness to me, I will venture to pray you to help me in the business that has brought me to Vienna. I have come with the sole object of presenting this book to the Duc de Reichstadt; no one can second me better in my design than his head-tutor. I hope that you will indeed accede to my request.'
"At the first words of this humble, verbal request, the count's face assumed an expression not so much of displeasure as of uneasiness and constraint; he seemed to be amiable enough to have emboldened me to make the demand, and, no doubt, he would have preferred not to be under the necessity of answering me. After a few minutes' silence, he said to me--
"'Is it really true that you have come to Vienna to see the young prince?... Who can have encouraged you in such a proceeding? Is it possible that you have reckoned on your journey being successful? They must indeed have false, and even ridiculous, notions in France about what goes on here? Do you not know that the politics of France and those of Austria are equally opposed to it, and that no stranger whatever, especially not a Frenchman, can be presented to the prince? What you ask is, therefore, totally impossible. I am truly sorry that you have taken such a long and troublesome journey without any chance of success,' etc., etc.
"I replied that I had no commission from anybody to come to Austria; that it was my own action, and that I had decided on the journey without outside pressure; that in France it was generally thought not to be difficult to be presented to the Duc de Reichstadt, and that they had even been assured that he received the French with most particular kindliness; that, besides, the precautionary measures which kept foreigners away did not seem to me to apply to me, simply a man of letters, or to an inconspicuous citizen, who had never filled any political rôle or office.
"'I perceive,' I added, 'that my zeal may seem exaggerated to you; yet reflect that we have just published a poem on Napoleon. Is it, then, strange that we should wish to present it to his son? Do you think a literary man has a hidden object? You only have to convince yourself to the contrary. I do not ask an interview with the prince without witnesses: it shall be before you, before ten persons if you like, and if a single word escapes from me which can alarm the most suspicious political feeling, I consent to end my days in an Austrian prison.'
"The tutor replied that all the rumours spread abroad through France on the subject of persons presented to the Duc de Reichstadt were completely false: that he was persuaded that the object of my journey was purely literary, and detached from all political thought; but that, nevertheless, it was impossible for him to go beyond his orders; that the strictest guard prevented this kind of interview; that the measures taken were not the result of momentary caprice, but of a constant system adopted by both the Courts; that it was not applicable to me alone, but to all who attempted to approach the prince, and that I should be wrong to feel myself especially hurt on account of it.
"'In fact,' he added, 'these rigorous measures should be excused on the ground of fear of an attempt upon his person.'
"'But,' I said to him, 'an attempt of that nature is always to be apprehended on behalf of the Duc de Reichstadt, for the duke is not surrounded by guards. A resolute man could always gain access to him, and one second would suffice to commit a crime! Your watchfulness is, therefore, at fault in this respect. Now you, perhaps, fear that too free conversation with foreigners may reveal secrets to him or inspire him with dangerous hopes; but, with all your power, Monsieur le Comte, is it possible for you to prevent a letter, a petition, some warning, being transmitted to him, openly or clandestinely, whether during a walk, or at the theatre, or in any other place? For instance, if, instead of having frankly applied to you, I had posted myself in his way; if I had boldly gone up to him, and, in your very presence, had handed him a copy of Napoléon en Égypte ... you can very well see how I could have ruined all your precautions, and I could have fulfilled my object, though, I confess, it would have been by violent means; but then, it is none the less true that the prince would have received my copy, and would have read it, or, at least, would have known the title of it.'
"M. Dietrichstein made me a reply which froze me with astonishment--
"'Listen, monsieur; be very sure that the prince only hears or sees or reads what we wish him to read or see or hear. If he received a letter, an envelope, a book, which had evaded our vigilance, and it came to him without passing through our hands, believe me, his first care would be to hand it to us before opening it; he would not decide to look at it until we had pronounced he could do so safely.'
"'After that, Monsieur le Comte, it seems to me that the son of Napoleon is very far from being as free as in France he is supposed to be!'
"Answer--'The prince is not a prisoner ... but he is in a quite peculiar position. Please do not press me any further with your questions: I cannot satisfy you thoroughly: give up the plan which brought you here. I repeat, it is an absolute impossibility.'
"'Very well, you take away all hope from me! I can certainly not apply to any one else after your decision, and I feel it is useless to renew my entreaties; but, at all events, you cannot refuse to give him this copy in the name of the authors. He has no doubt a library, and the book is not dangerous enough to be placed on the Index.'
"M. Dietrichstein shook his head irresolutely. I saw it was painful to him to overwhelm me with two refusals on the same day; so, not wishing to compel him to be too explicit, I bade him good-bye, begging him to read the poem, to convince himself that it contained nothing seditious, and hoping that, being convinced, he would consent to favour my second request.
"About a fortnight later, I returned to the head-tutor and resumed my former importunities. He was amazed at my persistency.
"'I really do not understand you!' he said to me; 'you place too much importance on seeing the prince. Be satisfied to know that he is happy, that he is without ambition. His career is all mapped out: he will never go near France; he will not even think of doing it. Repeat all this to your compatriots; disabuse their minds, if it be possible. I do not ask you to keep what I have told you secret; quite the reverse: I beg you, on your return to France, to announce it, and even to write of it if you like. As for the placing of your copy, do not count on it. Your book is extremely beautiful as poetry; but it is dangerous for the son of Napoleon. Your style is full of imagination and vivacity of description; these qualities, and the colouring you give to history, all might excite enthusiasm in his young head and vivify the germs of ambition, and these, not being able to produce any result, would only serve to disgust him with his actual position. He knows all he ought to know about history,--that is to say, dates and names. You must see, after this, that your book cannot be suitable for him.'
"I still insisted for some time; but I soon saw that the head-tutor only listened to me out of civility. I did not wish to exhaust myself over useless prayers, and therefore, disabused of my innocent chimera, I looked upon the visit as a farewell audience and only thought of returning to France.
"Up to the moment of my departure I continued to visit the persons who had testified to so much interest in me. At one of these peaceful gatherings they repeated to me a suggestion of the Duc de Reichstadt which struck me particularly. I had it from a reliable source, and if I were not afraid of damaging the fortune of that person, I would mention her here; but we will content ourselves with the statement that she saw the prince in familiar intercourse every day. Latterly, the odd youth seemed absorbed by one rooted idea; he was entirely distracted during his lessons. Suddenly he struck his forehead impatiently, and let slip these words:--
"'But what do they wish to do with me then? Do they think I have a head like my father's?...'
"One must conclude, therefore, that the living rampart which surrounded him had been cleared; that a letter or an indiscreet envelope had been sprung upon him, and for once he had violated the orders which they prescribed him, of not reading anything without the consent of his teachers."
The poet not being able to see the Duc de Reichstadt privately, at least did not mean to leave Vienna without seeing him in public. He learnt, one day, that the prince was to go that night to the theatre; he took a stall and seated himself opposite the Court box.
His lines will tell better than my prose what effect that appearance made upon him:--
"Bientôt, dans une loge où nul flambeau ne brille, Arrivent gravement César et sa famille, De princes, d'archiducs, inépuisable cour, Comme l'aire d'un aigle ou le nid d'un vautour. On lisait sur leurs fronts, dans leur morne attitude, Les ennuis d'un plaisir usé par l'habitude. Un lustre aux feux mourants, descendu du plafond, Mêlait sa lueur triste au silence profond; Seulement, par secousse, à l'angle de la salle, Résonnait quelquefois la toux impériale. Alors, un léger bruit réveilla mon esprit; Dans la loge voisine, une porte s'ouvrit, Et, dans la profondeur de cette enceinte obscure, Apparut tout à coup une pâle figure ... Éteinte dans ce cadre au milieu d'un fond noir, Elle était immobile, et l'on aurait cru voir Un tableau de Rembrandt chargé de teintes sombres, Où la blancheur des chairs se détache des ombres. Je sentis dans mes os un étrange frisson; Dans ma tête siffla le tintement d'un son; L'œil fixe, le cou roide et la bouche entr'ouverte, Je ne vis plus qu'un point dans la salle déserte: Acteurs, peuple, empereur, tout semblait avoir fui; Et, croyant être seul, je m'écriai: 'C'est lui!' C'était lui! Tout à coup, la figure isolée D'un coup d'œil vif et prompt parcourut l'assemblée. Telle, en éclairs de feu, jette un reflet pareil Une lame d'acier qu'on agite au soleil. Puis, comme réprimant un geste involontaire, Il rendit à ses traits leur habitude austère, Et s'assit. Cependent, mes regards curieux Dessinaient à loisir l'être mystérieux: Voyant cet œil rapide où brille la pensée, Ce teint blanc de Louise et sa taille élancée. Ces vifs tressaillements, ces mouvements nerveux, Ce front saillant et large, orné de blonds cheveux; Oui, ce corps, cette tête où la tristesse est peinte, Du sang qui les forma portent la double empreinte! Je ne sais toutefois ... je ne puis sans douleur Contempler ce visage éclatant de pâleur; On dirait que la vie à la mort s'y mélange! Voyez-vous comme moi cette couleur étrange? Quel germe destructeur, sous l'écorce agissant, A sitôt défloré ce fruit adolescent? Assailli, malgré moi, d'un effroi salutaire, Je n'ose pour moi-même éclaircir ce mystère. Le noir conseil des cours, au peuple défendu, Est un profond abîme où nul n'est descendu: Invisible dépôt, il est, dans chaque empire, Une énigme, un secret qui jamais ne transpire; C'est ce secret d'État que, sur le crucifix, Les rois, en expirant, révèlent à leurs fils! Faut-il vous répéter un effroyable doute? Écoutez ... ou plutôt que personne n'écoute! S'il est vrai qu'à ta cour, malheureux nourrisson, La moderne Locuste ait transmis sa leçon, Cette horrible pâleur, sinistre caractère, Annonce de ton sang le mal héréditaire; Et peut-être aujourd'hui, méthodique assassin, Le cancer politique est déjà dans ton sein! Mais non! mon âme, en vain de terreurs obsédée, Repousse en frissonnant, une infernale idée; J'aime mieux accuser l'étude aux longues nuits, Des souvenirs amers ou de vagues ennuis. Comme une jeune plante à la tige légère. Que poussa l'ouragan sur la terre étrangère, Loin du sol paternel languit et ne produit Que des fleurs sans parfum et des boutons sans fruit, Sans doute, l'orphelin que la grande tempête Emporta vers le Nord dans son berceau de fête, Aujourd'hui, comprimant de cuisantes douleurs, Tourne vers l'Occident des yeux chargés de pleurs!..."
The poet had collected as much as he could during his voyage: he had seen the poor Imperial child from afar, at the back of a box! He went away predicting, as we see, a precocious and early death.
If we believe M. de Montbel, after the departure of Barthélemy Napoléon en Égypte was read by the Imperial family in the presence of the Duc de Reichstadt, who listened to the reading with the profoundest indifference: he merely contented himself with saying that they had done right not to let the author of such a work have access to him.
Was he really so indifferent, so deceitful and ungrateful?
Chapter VI
Journey of the Duc de Reichstadt--M. le Chevalier de Prokesch--Questions concerning the recollections left by Napoléon en Égypte--The ambition of the Duc de Reichstadt--The Comtesse Camerata--The prince is appointed lieutenant-colonel--He becomes hoarse when holding a review--He falls ill--Report upon his health by Dr. Malfatti
In the month of June 1830 the Emperor of Austria left Vienna, as was his custom every year, to visit some of his provinces; this year it was Styria's turn to be honoured with the emperor's tour. His Majesty took with him Marie-Louise and her son, and they arrived at Gratz. There they found Lieutenant-Colonel Prokesch of Osten, who had just been travelling in Greece, Asia Minor, the Holy Land, Egypt and Nubia. He was a distinguished man, both by birth and by personal qualities; he had published several military treatises; among others one on the campaign of 1812 and one on that of 1815. The emperor invited him to dinner, and he was placed at table next to the Duc de Reichstadt. The prince addressed him first.
"I have known you for a long while," he said to him, "and I am very much interested in you."
"How have I managed to deserve such interest on your part, monseigneur?" asked the Chevalier de Prokesch.
"I have read and studied your work on the battle of Waterloo, and I was so pleased with it that I have translated it into French and Italian."
After dinner, the prince addressed numerous questions about the East to the traveller, about its actual condition and the character of its inhabitants.
"What do they remember of my father in Egypt?" he asked.
"They remember him as a meteor which passed dazzlingly through their country."
"You are talking, monsieur," the duke replied, "of men of superior ideas like Mohamet-Ali, Ibrahim-Pacha; but I am speaking of the people, the Turks and Arabs and Fellahs; I ask you what all those folk think of General Bonaparte? Having had to bear the evil effects of the wax, do they not harbour a deep resentment?"
"Yes, doubtless. At first there was unfriendly feeling; but, later, it gave place to other sentiments, and there now only remains a great admiration for the memory of your illustrious father. The hatred which exists between the Turks and the Arabs is so great that, to-day, present evils have totally effaced the memory of the evils they had to endure at another period."
"I am aware of that explanation," said the duke; "but the multitude generally considers a great man after the manner in which it looks at a beautiful picture, without the power to account for what goes to constitute its merit: so the impression he leaves in their memories must be but ephemeral. Only superior minds can appreciate great men and preserve the memory of them."
"You are mistaken in this case, monseigneur: the people are faithful to their religion. Great men are gods who do not permit other divinities, or who discuss them before admitting them. The people judge by their feelings, and not by mental appreciation; and they worship the immortals from enthusiasm."
The Duc de Reichstadt often spoke of the captains of antiquity, preferring Cæsar to Alexander, and Hannibal to Cæsar. The following is the eulogium which, according to the Chevalier de Prokesch, he gave on the conqueror of the Trebia, Trasimena and of Cannes.
"He is the finest military genius of antiquity; the cleverest man in strategy of his age. He has been reproached--by whom? by academic pedants and library strategists,--for not knowing how to take advantage of the success he had obtained; but conceive the difference there existed between Hannibal, chief of an empire, freely disposing of his resources, and the simple general of a jealous republic? of a senate made up of those who envied him, and of narrow minds which, by shameful schemings, refused the means of assuring the triumph of his arms? Hannibal has the merit of having trained Scipio for his victories; and one of the greatest phenomena of ancient times is to see this general, by his genius, make a nation of shopkeepers successful for so long as a military people."
We will not criticise these ideas beyond saying that they are a little stilted, after the classical style. Did the son of the man whose incoherent style strode with giant steps or with lion-like leaps, bursting ever into images, talk thus? M. de Montbel and M. le Chevalier de Prokesch will reply. And then the style of the lines we have just read will explain what follows.
"You have a noble aim before you, monseigneur," said M. de Prokesch to the young duke. "Austria has become your adopted country.... (Poor child, he remembered the Cossacks because they had brought him out of France!). Austria has become your adopted country, and with your talents you can prepare yourself to do it immense services in the future!"
"I feel it as you do, monsieur," replied the Duc de Reichstadt. "My ideas must not demean themselves by disturbing France; I do not wish to be an adventurer, I do not particularly wish to serve as the instrument and laughing-stock of Liberal views. It will be a sufficiently noble ambition for me to try some day to walk in the footprints of Prince Eugène de Savoie. But how am I to prepare myself for so great a rôle? How am I to attain to such a height? I want to find round me men whose talents and experience will facilitate the means, if possible, of providing this honourable career."
Is this in the very least the style you would have supposed the son of the man of the proclamations of Marengo, of the Pyramids and of Austerlitz to have used! True, when we borrow from Reichstadt through M. de Montbel it is translated from Carlism, and when he borrows from M. de Prokesch it is translated from the Austrian.
The revolution of July came and made itself heard throughout the whole world. This time the eyes of a whole party turned towards Napoleon II., and, strange to say, it was M. de Talleyrand who took upon himself to be the organ of that party at Vienna! Needless to say, all proposals were rejected. Then a woman of sturdy courage, of the Napoleon family, both in spirit and in face, tried to arouse in the young prince's mind something of what Ulysses meant to demand from Achilles, lost amongst the daughters of Deidamia. This woman was the Comtesse Camerata, daughter of Elisa Bacciochi. She arrived in Vienna one day, and lodged at the Hôtel du Cygne in the rue de Carinthia.--It was about the beginning of November 1830. One night, when returning to the house of M. d'Obenaus, his tutor, the Duc de Reichstadt found a young woman, wrapped in a Scotch plaid, waiting for him on the staircase landing. When she caught sight of the duc, she moved quickly towards him, took his hand, pressed it and then carried it to her lips with an expression of the liveliest tenderness. The prince stopped, amazed.
"Madame," M. d'Obenaus asked, who accompanied the Duc de Reichstadt, "what are you doing, and what do you want?"
"Who shall prevent me from kissing the hand of the son of my sovereign?"
Then she vanished. A few days later, the duke found a letter in an unknown writing on his table, and opened it.
It was dated 17 November, and contained the following lines:--
"PRINCE,--I write to you for the third time. Tell me if you have received my letters, and whether you mean to act as an Austrian archduke or as a French prince. In the first case, deliver up my letters: by destroying me you will acquire a more lofty position, and this act of devotion will redound to your glory. But if, on the contrary, you take advantage of my advice, if you play the man, you shall see how obstacles will give way before a calm and strong will. You will find a thousand means of speaking to me, which I cannot compass alone. You can only have hope in yourself: do not let the thought of putting confidence in some one else even enter your mind! You know that if I asked to see you even before a hundred witnesses my request would be refused; you know that you are dead to all that is French and to your family. In the name of the horrible tortures to which the king of Europe has condemned your father; in thinking of that anguish of banishment by which they have made him expiate the crime of being too generous towards them, remember that you are his son, that his dying looks were settled on your face; steep yourself in these horrors, and impose upon them the punishment of seeing you seated on the throne of France! Take advantage of this chance, prince!... I have perhaps said too much: my fate is in your hands, and I can tell you that if you make use of my letters to destroy me the thought of your cowardice will give me more suffering than anything they may make me endure! The man who hands you this letter is commissioned also to bring back your reply. If you are honourable you will not refuse me one.
"NAPOLEONE CAMERATA"
This letter frightened the young prince dreadfully: it was an appeal straight, clear and positive. "Are you an Austrian archduke or a French prince?" That was the question. The duke opened his heart to the Chevalier de Prokesch concerning this incident and the uneasiness it caused him.
"You know very well," he said to him, "that I shall not take as guide of my conduct, and as guarantors of my future, persons of so exalted a character; but I find myself in a genuinely embarrassing position. It is due to my feelings towards the emperor (when the Duc de Reichstadt talks of the emperor he always means the Emperor Francis II.), as also to the dignity of my situation, that I should not hide either my troubles or my doings; it would seem acting wrongly to him to be silent about this circumstance. On the other hand, I do not wish to injure the countess; she is wanting in prudence, but she has a right to my consideration.... Besides, she is a woman. Yet my first duty is towards the emperor. Could you not go to the Comte de Dietrichstein for me, and confide to him what has happened, and ask him to settle matters so that the Comtesse Camerata shall not be put to any persecution or any unpleasantness and not be compelled to go away from Vienna?"
After looking carefully into the affair, the Chevalier de Prokesch approved of the prince's resolution, and willingly undertook the mission His Highness had confided to him. Next day he received a note as follows:--
"Since I saw you I have received a fresh letter from the Comtesse Camerata. It was d'Obenaus' valet de chambre who put the first one on my table, which I confided to your care--send it me back; it is expedient and necessary for me to speak of it to Obenaus. I will arrange things so as to avoid all mischief-making and scandal; but I will not reply. Let there be no further question about that. I hope to see you at six o'clock to resume our reading. FRANÇOIS DE REICHSTADT"
Although the Comtesse Camerata had received no reply, she did not look upon herself as beaten. At the risk of what might happen to her, she still remained for three weeks in Vienna, putting herself everywhere in the prince's path: at the theatre, at Prater and at Schönbrünn. But the Duc de Reichstadt showed no signs of knowing her! Tired of this silence, she finally went away to Prague. The prince's conduct met with its reward: that same month the emperor--the Emperor Francis II. of course--made him a lieutenant-colonel; but, as though fate wished to make him understand that he must be Cæsar or nothing--Aut Cæsar aut nihil--at the first words of command he tried to utter his voice became hoarse, and he was obliged to discontinue his duty. A frequent cough followed the hoarseness. The prince fell ill of the disease which was to cause his death.
Let us hear what his own doctor said about it--Dr. Malfatti:--
"I was called in by the Duc de Reichstadt as his regular doctor in the month of May 1830. I succeeded three men of high reputation: the celebrated Frank and Drs. Goëlis and Standenheimer. M. de Herbeck had filled the office of surgeon-in-ordinary to the prince. These doctors had not left any diary of the young duke's ?health. M. le Comte de Dietrichstein was good enough to supply this deficiency by informing me of many particulars which it was indispensable to know.
"The prince ate very little, and without appetite; his stomach seemed too weak to bear the nourishment which his singularly rapid and even alarming rate of growth required: at the age of seventeen he had attained the height of five feet three inches! He suffered from slight throat ailments from time to time; he was subject to a habitual cough and a daily discharge of mucus. Dr. Standenheimer had already manifested great anxiety about the prince's predisposition towards phthisis of the trachea. I made note of the prescriptions that had been used against these disquieting symptoms.
"I was guided in my early research by the personal knowledge that I possessed of a morbid hereditary disposition in the Napoleon family, and I ascertained the existence of a cutaneous affection (herpes farinaceum.) I could not approve the use of cold baths and swimming, which the surgeon, M. de Herbeck, had also fought against, probably solely because of the knowledge he had discovered of the weak constitution of the prince's chest. With the object of acting on the cutaneous system, I made use of muriatic baths and seltzer water mixed with milk. The prince was to go into the army the following autumn; there lay all his hopes and desires: he had obtained the much-solicited leave. I did not commend myself to his good graces, as you may imagine, when I positively opposed this change of living. I disclosed my reasons to his august parents in a memorandum, which I addressed to them on 15 July 1830. I stated that, in his excessive rate of growth, out of proportion to the development of the various organs and the general disposition to weakness, especially of the chest, any additional illness might be extremely dangerous, whether now or in the future, and that, consequently, it was imperative to protect the prince from every possible atmospheric influence, and any effort of voice, to which he would be continually exposed in military service.
"My memorandum was well received by the emperor, and the entrance upon military service was adjourned for six months. By means of assiduous care and artificial methods of diverting the disease, the alarming symptoms visibly subsided. The winter passed by happily, but he still continued to grow.
"In the spring of the year 1831 the prince entered upon his military career. From that moment he threw aside all my advice; I was merely a spectator of an uncontrolled enthusiasm and an unbridled excitement over his new duties. He would henceforth not listen to anything but his passion, which led his feeble body into privations and fatigues absolutely beyond his strength. He looked upon it as a shame and cowardly to complain when under arms. Besides, in his eyes I had committed the grave offence of delaying his military career: he seemed to fear my professional observations might yet stop it. So, although he treated me with extreme kindness in social relations, as a doctor he did not tell me a single word of the truth. It was impossible for me to make him continue the use of sea-water baths and mineral waters which had been very valuable to him during the previous year. He said he hadn't time. Several times I caught him by surprise at the barracks, in a state of extreme fatigue. One day, especially, I found him lying on a sofa, exhausted and worn out. Not able to deny, then, the painful condition to which I saw he was reduced, he said to me--
"'I am annoyed with my wretched body, which cannot keep up with my mental energies!'
"'It is, indeed, trying,' I replied, 'that your Highness has not the power of changing your body as you change your horses when they are tired. But I entreat you, monseigneur, to take heed that you have an iron spirit in a body of crystal, and that the abuse of your will can only be disastrous to you.'
"His life was then, indeed, like a consuming fire. He scarcely slept for four hours, although, naturally, he needed much sleep; he ate hardly anything; his life was wholly concentrated on tactical manœuvres and all kinds of military exercises. He took no rest, his growing tallness did not stop him; he gradually became thinner, and his complexion became livid in colour. To all my questions he always replied--
"'I am perfectly well!'
"In the month of August he was attacked by a violently feverish catarrh, and the only thing I could get him to do was to keep to his bed and room for one day. We conferred with General Comte Hartmann upon the necessity of putting a stop to a régime that was very dangerous for his frail existence. You will remember the dire period of the invasion of cholera in Vienna, the misfortunes which followed upon the first outbreak of that scourge, the generous conduct of the inhabitants of Vienna, the wise precautions of those in authority, the help and example the emperor and the members of the Imperial family gave, impervious to the fear to which the disease gave rise on its appearance. The Duc de Reichstadt would not be separated from his soldiers or leave their barracks; the emperor could not but appreciate this sentiment, which was but compatible with the duties of a prince; but we had a sacred and urgent duty on our side, to rescue this young man from a position which evidently tended to his destruction. I put to him the imminent dangers he could allay by a speedy change of his way of living and absolute rest; in a situation so critical as his the least attack of the prevailing disease would be fatal. Comte Hartmann undertook to present this report to the emperor, who sent orders I was to come and repeat it verbally in the presence of the Duc de Reichstadt, at the end of the military review he was to conduct next day at Schmolz, near Vienna. I went punctually at the appointed hour, to the field where the manœuvres were held, where the emperor, wishful to reassure people against their terror of contagion, was mingling with his troops and subjects. When the review was over, I went to His Majesty and repeated my report. The emperor then addressed the young prince--
"'You have heard what Dr. Malfatti says. You will immediately go to Schönbrünn.'
"The duke bowed respectfully in token of obedience, but, when he stood up again, he flung me an indignant glance.
"'It is you, then, who have had me put under arrest?' he said angrily, and he walked rapidly away."
But he was obliged to obey the emperor's commands all the same, and that was what Dr. Malfatti desired.
Chapter VII
The Duc de Reichstadt at Schönbrünn--Progress of his disease--The Archduchess Sophia--The prince's last moments--His death--Effect produced by the news at Paris--Article of the Constitutionnel upon this event
The Duc de Reichstadt's stay at Schönbrünn was favourable to his health. The prince went on horseback daily to the great manœuvres, but with the commander-general; this was the emperor's expedient for saving his grandson from using his voice and tiring his lungs. Once only, when the emperor was present at the review, the duke urged to be allowed to take the command of his battalion and obtained leave to do so.
The hunting season came, and the emperor expressed a desire that his grandson should not be exposed to the fatigue of long chases and to the inclemency of the chilly autumn days; but the Duc de Reichstadt insisted and followed the hounds. At the second he was obliged to return without being present at the "gone away," and the old symptoms again appeared. These were an irritating cough, principally from the trachea and bronchial tubes; weakness, which led to constant desire to sleep; and dyscrasia of the whole cutaneous system. Henceforward Dr. Malfatti advised the prince most carefully to avoid all efforts of any nature, and principally those of the vocal organs. This advice meant a complete breaking off of all the prince's military habits; so he hid his sufferings as much as possible, and had, at least, strength of will enough not to show it if he could not prevent being ill. Several times the duke urged the emperor to let him take up his military service again, but the emperor always opposed it. Three important men died at Vienna towards the end of the year: Comte de Giulay, Baron de Frémont and Baron de Siegenthal. The young prince, who for some days had pretended to be much better, begged the emperor's leave to follow Baron de Frémont's funeral cortège with the troops. The Emperor yielded, and a fresh indisposition was the result of this condescension. Finally, for the last time--it was at General de Siegenthal's funeral service--the prince appeared with his troops on the place Joseph. The temperature was very cold; in the middle of the commands he was giving to his battalion he lost his voice. When he returned home he felt ill enough to allow the doctor to be called in, and confessed that he had gone out that morning when he was in a high state of feverishness. It was found to be rheumatic, bilious and catarrhal fever, and soon took an acute form; it reached its crisis on the seventh day, after which it passed from the nature of sub-continuous fever to that of intermittent quotidian fever. Dr. Malfatti decreed that, as soon as the season allowed, the prince should go to the waters of Ischl. At last, once more, they succeeded in arresting the fever; but fresh imprudent actions revived the disease.
"It seemed," said the doctor, in despair, "as though this unfortunate young man was possessed of a fatal obsession, which compelled him towards suicide!"
The spring was still more disastrous to the invalid than the winter had been; it was impossible to stop him from going out. Overtaken two or three times by rain, he was taken with shivering fits, which led to fever and congestion of the liver.
In the month of April his pulse quickened, shiverings came on and he grew visibly thinner and thinner. Drs. Raiman and Vichrer, who were called in to take the place of Dr. Malfatti, who was ill with gout, were frightened: in concert with the prince's ordinary physician, they prescribed baths of soup: the wasting away on account of the failure of the digestive powers compelled them to this method, which was to feed the invalid by means of absorption. Again signs of improvement showed themselves, and after a while the duke was well enough for the emperor to allow him, on the advice of the doctors, to take the air on horseback and in a carriage, but only on condition these exercises should be indulged in most moderately. He submitted to these orders for some days; then, having persisted in going out in cold and damp weather, he was tempted by the invigorating air to put his horse to the gallop instead of returning home. That same night, when he should have gone to bed and kept warm, he drove to the Prater in an open carriage. The Prater is situated on an island in the Danube, and is extremely damp; but that did not prevent the prince from staying there until after sunset. This imprudence resulted in such weakness on his return that, when a wheel of his carriage broke and he sprang out on the road, he had not strength enough to hold himself up and fell on his knees. Next day inflammation of the lungs set in, and the prince became deaf with the left ear. The situation was so serious that Dr. Malfatti asked that Drs. Vivenot, Vichrer and Turcken might be called in for consultation. He was charged from the emperor to tell them that, without troubling themselves about political considerations, which until then had restricted the Duc de Reichstadt's journeying to Austria, they might order him a voyage to any country which they might deem suitable to restore his health, except France. They prescribed a journey to Italy and a stay at Naples. The invalid could not believe such a favour had been granted him, and sent Dr. Malfatti to M. de Metternich to make certain from the lips of the minister that no embargo would be put upon his travels.
"Tell the prince," replied M. de Metternich, "that with the exception of France, the gates of which it does not depend on me to open, he can go into whatever country he likes, the emperor putting the restoration of his grandson's health before all other considerations."
The invalid had cause for fear: soon he grew so weak that there could not even reasonably be any question of travelling for him. They informed the Archduchess Marie-Louise of the state of her son, and told him that the moment for receiving the viaticum had come.
The etiquette of the Court of Vienna decreed that the princes of the Imperial family should take part in this sad ceremony in the presence of the whole Court. No one dared speak of it to the duke, not even Michel Wagner, the palace chaplain, who had been his religious director in his youth, so strict a matter was it at the Court of Vienna. A woman it was who undertook both to warn the invalid, and also to put the news in a form which should hide part of the horrible truth from the prince. This woman was the Archduchess Sophia.
She told the prince that, as she was soon going to communicate, she wished to do so by his bedside, in hope that her prayers to heaven for his cure might be more efficacious when made during the mysterious act of the Eucharist; and she begged the sick man to take the sacrament at the same time as she did, so that their prayers might go up to heaven together.
The Duc de Reichstadt acceded.
It can be imagined how profound was the meditation and how sad the ceremony. The prince prayed for the safe delivery of the Archduchess Sophia, who was near her accouchement; she prayed for the cure of the Duc de Reichstadt, who was near his death! The invalid, who was then at Vienna, desired to be moved to Schönbrünn, and the return of spring having warmed the air the doctor supported the prince's wish. The removal took place without serious accident, and the prince even seemed a little better after it. Unfortunately, one day, in spite of all the entreaties that could be made to prevent him, he wanted to drive to Laxenbourg, two leagues from Schönbrünn, and in an open carriage. He stayed out an hour, and received the respectful greeting of the officers, talked much, and came back through a violent storm. During the night following this day of imprudent acts he was seized by a feverish attack, accompanied with a burning thirst; obstinate coughing brought on expectoration, almost a vomiting of blood, and, for the first time, the prince complained of sharp pain in his side.
A fresh consultation was held, and the doctors looked upon the invalid's condition as hopeless.
The Archduchess Marie-Louise arrived. She had passed through Trieste in order to see the emperor, who was there at the time; she there fell ill herself, and had been obliged to stay for fifteen long days. Still ill, her anxiety, however, overcame her weakness. She continued her journey, and arrived on the evening of 24 June. The prince wished to go to his mother, but at the first attempt at locomotion he realised his strength was inadequate. Nevertheless the joy of seeing his mother once more had a happy effect upon him; there had been a sensible improvement in the disease for the last three weeks, at any rate there was an arrest of the malady; the fever lessened, the nights passed over without very great perspirations, and the prince could lie on either side without pain. But the crafty and deceptive course of disease of the lungs is well known, usually fastening upon young and vigorous constitutions who do not want to die; the disease seems at times, like the invalid himself, to have need of rest and to stop fatigued; but nearly always this moment of stoppage is made use of by the direful miner to dig a fresh sap, and the subterranean work is revealed suddenly by fresh symptoms, which show that, during the feigned halt, the disease has made cruel progress. The heat had become very great and the fever redoubled its efforts; the cough became more obstinate than ever; a second hæmorrhage happened, and the prince threw up blood in quantity.
The population of Vienna took a very lively interest in the fate of this unhappy lad; they stopped any one in the streets whom they knew belonged to his household; from all parts letters arrived pointing out remedies. These innocent empirics at least showed anxious sympathy, though they were deficient in scientific knowledge.
A terrible storm broke out during the night of 27 June; one of those storms which the pride of kings believed to have been let loose by the hand of the Lord because of them; the lightning struck one of the eagles on the palace of Schönbrünn. From this time the people's opinion coincided with that of the doctors, and they gave up hope. As the lightning had struck an eagle, the son of Napoleon was going to die. The prince went out no more; only when the fighting for breath, which was almost continuous, made him think that he would find some relief in the outer air, did they carry him out on the balcony. Soon it was impossible for him to leave his bed; at the least movement of his body he fainted away. Then he began to talk of his approaching death, and to show the distaste he had always had for an existence which had opened out with a vast horizon, whilst fate had forced him to vegetate in a narrow circle. Was it actual disgust with life, or was it a desire to comfort those around him? Only on 21 July did he confess that he was suffering dreadfully, and murmured several times, "O my God! my God! when shall I die?"
His mother entered when one of these outcries was escaping him, and he at once repressed the expression of pain which had spread over his face, received her with a smile and, to her questions about his health, replied that he was doing well, and made plans with her for the journey to the north of Italy. That evening Dr. Malfatti announced that he feared a mortal crisis would take place during the night; Baron de Moll watched in a neighbouring room, unknown to the prince, who had never allowed any one to sit up with him. About one o'clock in the morning he seemed to be dozing; but at half-past three he sat up suddenly, and, after violent and vain efforts for breath, he exclaimed--
"Mutter! mutter! ich gehe unter!" ("Mother! mother! I am dying!")
At this cry the Baron de Moll and the valet de chambre entered and seized him in their arms, trying to quieten him; but he was battling with death.
"Mutter! mutter!" he repeated.
Then he fell back. He had not expired, but he was in that twilight state which separates life from death. They hastened to tell the Archduchess Marie-Louise and the Archduke François, in whose arms the Duc de Reichstadt had expressed a desire to die. All the princes came hurriedly; Marie-Louise had not strength to stand, nor even to reach him; she fell on her knees and crawled the few steps between herself and her son. The sick man could not speak any more; but his nearly-closed eyes could still settle on his mother, and he showed her by a look that he recognised her. Five o'clock in the morning struck; he seemed to hear the vibrations of the pendulum, and to count the strokes. Eternity had just sounded for him on the bronze! He soon made a sound of farewell; the priest who was present showed him heaven opening before him and, at eight minutes past five, without a convulsion or a struggle, without even any pain, he gave up his last sigh. He had lived for twenty-one years, four months and two days. His life had been obscure; his death made a less vivid sensation in France than might have been expected. To the French, and in the eyes of the French, the prince was an Austrian.
Our nation is a proud one; not even at the cost of its throne would it have let the Emperor Maximilian, even if he had been the Son of God, give it to his eldest son; it did not at all like such a prince to show no expression of regret, and preferred the man who, to reconquer it, made almost mad efforts, to the one who lay down quietly in resignation to the decrees of Providence.
By a singular freak of fate the Duc de Reichstadt, as we have already mentioned, died in the same bed that Napoleon, as conqueror, had slept in twice: the first time after Austerlitz, the second after Wagram! The father and son slept their last sleep in it with a space of eleven years between them, and now they slept on the bosom of their common mother--only, the ocean rolled between their two dead bodies.
Perhaps our readers will be curious to know how, after the lapse of twenty-two years, the French press appreciated this event, which contained something both fatal and providential in it, and happened at the moment when a new king was trying to found a new dynasty on the soil of France, a country ever rebellious against dynasties. The news was only known in Paris on 1 August. We will open a newspaper which we had sent for for another purpose, and we there read the article we are about to place before our readers. The paper is the Constitutionnel; we do not know by whom the article is written, but it seems a good one.
"PARIS, 1 August
"The son of Napoleon is dead. This news, which had been long expected, has produced in Paris a sorrowful but calm sensation. So obscure an end to a life which gave promise of a splendid destiny, a pale, last ray of vast glory, such as that which has just died out, affords a melancholy subject for meditation! The people will mourn deeply and seriously, for it is in the people especially that the memories of Imperial glory have left enduring traces.
"The details of the last moments of Napoleon's son are still wanting to us; his death has been surrounded by mystery, as was his life. We are, however, assured that he saw the approach of death with a fortitude worthy of his father. When he realised that the fatal hour had come, he disposed of the few remaining worldly goods which he had left, in conformity with the wishes previously expressed by the Emperor of the French, in favour of young Louis-Napoleon, son of the ex-King of Holland, who fought in the ranks of the last defenders of Italian liberty. We understand that a letter written by the illustrious dying man to inform his cousin of the bequest contains evidence of the troubles which poisoned and, no doubt, shortened his existence.
"It must indeed have been a bitter one! Tom away from the cradle, from his country and his family, to be confined in a sumptuous prison; deprived of guidance at the age when his mind had much need of direction; submitted to tyrannical etiquette; a stranger in the midst of a Court, which beset him with doubtful loyalty, to whom could he confide if not in the watchful attendants commissioned to deceive him, perhaps to corrupt him? From whom could he obtain information of what he most wanted to know--of his fate, his future, his duties? His tutors, we are assured, left him for a long time in ignorance of his father's history! If the few friends he had been allowed to meet are to be believed, the young Napoleon had been endowed by nature with an upright mind and a generous heart; barren gifts, which only served to make his loneliness more crushing and death a welcome boon! His life has ended opportunely for the honour of the name he bore: he will not have dragged that great name through a long time of inaction; he will not have dishonoured it in the service of politics, of courts or of party intrigues; he will not have played the ridiculous and odious rôle of a pretender, and history will not have to reproach him with having been a scourge to his country.
"The young Napoleon has, in the hands of Austria, been both an object of terror to herself and a bugbear to the France of the Restoration. His name alone, uttered by M. de Metternich, would have made Louis XVIII. and Charles X. tremble, and been sufficient to repulse every attempt that was contrary to Austrian politics; and yet, prudence would never have let them realise the menace contained in such a name. Such menace would, perhaps, not have been without effect, even after the Revolution of 1830, on the statesmen who have controlled our politics, although it would not have been more serious now than at any other period.
"Austria, therefore, is delivered from her fears, and robbed of the instrument of trouble which she had at her disposal against us.
"Napoleon II. had, in France, at least, a number of partisans, if not exactly a party. It is a heritage factions will dispute over amongst themselves and with the government, a heritage which will remain to those who know best how to rally the popular masses to a sense of the true interests of the country."
The rest of the paper contained a manifesto from the English press, telegraphic despatches about Don Pedro's expedition and an analysis of Mademoiselle de Liron--a novel by M. E. J. Deléchuze.
Chapter I
Lucerne--The lion of August 10--M. de Chateaubriand's fowls--Reichenau --A picture by Conder--Letter to M. le duc d'Orléans--A walk in the park of Arenenberg
I have already said that I have no intention of beginning over again my account of my peregrinations through Switzerland. However, I will ask my reader's leave to place before him three small extracts from my Impressions de Voyage, which are indispensable to the course of these Memoirs. They were published in 1834, and concern M. de Chateaubriand, Monseigneur le due d'Orléans and Her Majesty Queen Hortense; they contain my own independent opinions; and some strange light will be shed now and then on the future of the poet. If a statesman had written what I am about to quote, he would have been looked upon as a prophet.
Let us follow the order of my visits to Lucerne, to Reichenau and to Arenenberg, and begin by M. de Chateaubriand.
A tout seigneur, tout honneur.
"M. DE CHATEAUBRIAND'S FOWLS
"The first news I learned on arriving at the Hôtel du Cheval blanc was that M. de Chateaubriand was living in Lucerne. It will be recollected that, after the revolution of July, our great poet, who had dedicated his pen to the defence of the fallen dynasty, voluntarily exiled himself, and did not return to Paris until he was recalled to it by the arrest of the Duchesse de Berry. He lived at the Hôtel de l'Aigle. I soon dressed myself with the intention of going to pay him a call. I did not know him personally: at Paris I had not dared to present myself, but, out of France, at Lucerne, isolated as he was, I thought it might be some pleasure to him to see a compatriot. I therefore boldly presented myself at the Hôtel de l'Aigle. I asked the hôtel waiter for M. de Chateaubriand. He replied that he had just gone out to feed his fowls. I made him repeat it, thinking I had heard wrongly; but he made me the same reply the second time. I left my name, at the same time asking the favour of being received the next day.
"Next morning a letter was handed to me from M. de Chateaubriand, sent the previous evening: it was an invitation to breakfast at ten o'clock; it was nine then, so I had no time to lose. I leapt out of bed and dressed. For a very long time I had wanted to see M. de Chateaubriand; my admiration for him was the religion of my childhood; he was the man whose genius had been the first to stray out of the beaten paths to mark out for our young literature the road it has since followed; he had alone excited more hatred than all the cenacula put together; he was the rock against which the jealous waves, still stirring against us, had beaten in vain for fifty years; he was the file on which the teeth were used which had tried to bite us.
"So, when I put foot on the first step of the staircase, my heart nearly failed me. Entirely unknown, I felt that I should be at least crushed under such immense superiority; for at that time the point of comparison was wanting by which to measure our respective heights, and I had not resource enough to say, as Stromboli might to Monte Rosa, 'I am only a hill, but I contain a volcano!' When I reached the landing I stopped.... I believe I should have hesitated less to knock at the door of a conclave. Perhaps at that moment M. de Chateaubriand thought I was keeping him waiting out of politeness, while I dared not go in from feelings of veneration. Finally, I heard the waiter coming up the stairs; I could not stay any longer outside the door, so I knocked. M. de Chateaubriand himself came and opened it; he must have formed a strange opinion of my manners if he did not attribute my embarrassment to its true cause. I stuttered like a country bumpkin; I did not know whether I ought to go in in front of him or behind. I think that, like M. Parseval before Napoleon, if he had asked me my name, I should not have known what to reply. But he did better than that: he held out his hand to me.
"During breakfast we talked. One after the other he reviewed all the political questions which were being discussed at that period, from the tribune to the club, with the lucidity of a man of genius who went to the bottom of things, and like a man who estimates principles and interests at their right value and has no illusions about anything. I was convinced that M. de Chateaubriand looked upon the party to which he belonged as henceforth lost, believing that the whole future rested in a socialistic Republicanism, and that he remained attached to his cause more because he saw it was unfortunate than because he thought it good. It is thus with all great souls: they must devote themselves to something; when it is not to women, it is to kings; when not to kings, then to God. I could not resist remarking to M. de Chateaubriand that his theories, though Royalist in form, were fundamentally Republican.
"'Does that surprise you?' he said, smiling. 'It surprises me still more! I have progressed without willing it, like a rock rolled along by the torrent; and now, behold! I find I am nearer to you than you are to me!... Have you seen the Lion of Lucerne?'
"'Not yet.'
"'Well, let us go and see it.... It is the most important monument in the town. You know upon what occasion it was erected?'
"'In memory of 10 August.'
"'That was it.'
"'Is it a beautiful thing?'
"'It is better than that: it is a beautiful idea!'
"'There is but one drawback: the blood shed for the monarchy was bought from a republic, and the dead Swiss Guards were but the strict payment of a bill of exchange.'
"'That is no less remarkable in a time when there were many people who let their bills be protested.'
"As will be seen, we differed in our ideas on that point; that is the misfortune of opinions which are divided into two opposite principles; every time necessity brings them together, they understand one another in theory but they separate over facts.
"We reached the monument, which is situated at some distance from the town, in General Pfyffer's garden. It is a rock cut perpendicularly, with its base bathed by a circular pool; a grotto forty-four feet long by forty-eight feet high has been hollowed out in the rock, and in this grotto a young sculptor from Constance, named Ahrorth, has carved a colossal lion after a plaster model by Thorwaldsen. Pierced through by a spear, with the broken fragment left in the wound, the lion is dying, covering with its body the fleur-de-lis emblazoned shield which it can no longer defend. Above the grotto are the words, 'Helvetiorum fidei ac virtuti,' and below this inscription the names of the officers and soldiers who perished on 10 August. The officers numbered twenty-six and the soldiers seven hundred and sixty. This monument, moreover, acquired a greater interest from the fresh revolution which had just taken place, and from the renewed fidelity displayed by the Swiss. Yet it was an odd thing! the disabled soldier who watches over the lion spoke much to us of 10 August but did not say a word of 29 July. The more recent of the two catastrophes was that which he had already forgotten. It is quite simple: 1830 had but driven a king away, 1792 had driven out royalty. I pointed out to M. de Chateaubriand the names of those men who had done honour to their signature, and I asked him which names would be inscribed on the gravestone of royalty to balance these popular names if a similar monument were raised in France.
"'Not one!' he replied.
"'Do you really mean that?'
"'Perfectly; the dead do not get themselves killed.'
"The history of the July Revolution lay entirely in those words: 'Nobility is loyalty's true buckler; so long as she has worn it on her arm, she has driven back foreign warfare and smothered civil war; but, from the day when, in anger, she imprudently breaks it, she is defenceless. Louis XI. had slain the great vassals; Louis XIII. the grand seigneurs and Louis XIV. the aristocrats, so that, when Charles X. called to his aid the d'Armagnacs, the Montmorencys and the Lauzuns, his voice only called up shades and phantoms.'
"'Now,' said M. de Chateaubriand, 'if you have seen all you want to see, we will go and feed my fowls.'
"'By the way, that reminds me of something; when I called yesterday at your hôtel the waiter told me you had gone out to fulfil that country occupation. Does your scheme of retirement go so far as make you a farmer?'
"'Why not? A man whose life has been like mine, driven by caprice, poetry, revolutions and exile over the four quarters of the globe, will be happy, I think, to possess--if not a châlet among the mountains (I do not like the Alps)--a meadow in Normandy or a farm in Brittany. I am decidedly of opinion that this is the vocation for my old age.'
"'Allow me to doubt it.... You remember Charles Quint at Saint-Just; you are not one of the emperors who abdicate or one of the kings whom people dethrone: you are one of those princes who die under a canopy and are interred like Charlemagne, with his feet on a shield, his sword by his side, a crown on his head and a sceptre in his hand.'
"'Take care! it is so long since I have been flattered, and I am quite capable of letting myself be carried away by it. Come, let us go and give the chickens their food.'
"Upon my honour, I could have fallen on my knees before this man, so simple and yet at the same time so great was he. We went by the bridge of la Cour, which crosses an arm of the lake; after Rapperssweil's bridge, it is the longest covered one in Switzerland. We stopped about two-thirds of the way across, at some distance from a spot covered with reeds. M. de Chateaubriand drew a piece of bread from his pocket which he had put there after breakfast, and began to crumble it in the lake. Soon a dozen water-fowls came out from a kind of isle formed by the reeds, and began hastily to fight over the repast prepared for them by the hand that had written the Génie du Christianisme, les Martyrs and Le dernier des Abencerrages. For a long while, without saying anything, I watched the singular spectacle of this man leaning over the bridge, his lips curved in smiles, but with sad, grave eyes. Gradually his occupation became mechanical, his face assumed an expression of deep melancholy, his thoughts passed across his broad brow as clouds across a sky; among them were memories of country, family and tender friendships, more gloomy than others. I guessed that this moment was reserved by him wherein to meditate on France, and I respected his meditation as long as it lasted. In the end, he made a movement and heaved a sigh. I went nearer, and he remembered I was there and held out his hand.
"'But if you regret Paris so much,' I said to him, 'why not go back to it? Nothing exiles you from it, and everything calls you back.'
"'What would you have me do?' he replied. 'I was at Cauterets when the July Revolution took place. I returned to Paris: I behold one throne in blood and another in the mud, lawyers drawing up a charter and a king shaking hands with rag-and-bone men.... It was sad unto death, especially when, as in my case, one is filled with great traditions of the monarchy. I went away from it all.'
"'From some words you let drop this morning, I believe you recognise popular sovereignty?'
"'Yes, there is no doubt it is good from time to time for royalty to be tempered again at its source, which is election; but, this time, they knocked off a bough of the tree, a link of the chain: it was Henri V. they should have elected and not Louis-Philippe.'
"'You are wishing but a sad wish for the poor child,' I replied. 'Kings of the name of Henri are unlucky in France: Henri I was poisoned, Henry II. killed in a tournament, Henris III. and IV. were assassinated.'
"'Very well, but, at all events, it is better to die by poison than in exile; it is sooner over and one suffers less!'
"'But shall you not return to France?'
"'If the Duchesse de Berry, after having committed the madness of returning to la Vendée, commits the foolishness of letting herself be captured there, I shall return to Paris to defend her before her judges, if my advice has not prevented her from appearing there.'
"'If not?'
"'If not,' pursued M. de Chateaubriand, crumbling up a second piece of bread, 'I shall continue to feed my birds.'"
Two hours after this conversation, I left Lucerne in a boat rowed by two rowers. Some time afterwards, I was at the Grisons, not far from the little town of Reichenau, whose name awakened in my memory a singular recollection.
During my term in the offices of the Duc d'Orléans I had been for a long time instructed to give tickets to persons desirous of visiting the apartments of the Palais-Royal or of walking in the park at Monceaux. They could see the rooms on Saturdays and walk in the park on Thursdays and Sundays. On the days when the apartments were visited, the duke and duchess and Madame Adélaïde and the rest of the princely family kept themselves to one or two rooms, where they lived in retirement from ten in the morning till four in the evening, and yet it often happened that some inquisitive visitor, whilst the footman was engaged in another direction, would turn a key, half open the door, stretch out his head and plunge into the ducal retreat. The first thing people went to see above everything else was the picture gallery--not that all the pictures were good, far from it, indeed! but there were several which were the cause of talk at the time; these were the battle-pictures by Horace Vernet, four masterpieces, marvellous productions, to which I have already referred--the battles of Montmirail, Hanau, Jemmapes and of Valmy. There was one point particularly in the Battle of Montmirail which attracted attention: in the background, under a grove of trees, hidden in the mist, was a horseman trotting on a white horse. Horse and rider between them were only four inches in breadth by two in height, and yet that little white-and-grey spot had been enough to exclude the picture from the Salon of 1821. The microscopic cavalier was, as we said when we were specially occupied with Horace Vernet, no other than the Emperor Napoleon.
When they had looked well at these four battle-pictures, for which they had come on purpose to the Palais-Royal, the footman said, "Messieurs et mesdames, will you come this way, please?" They followed him, and he took the inquisitive ones to a little genre painting, representing a handsome young man in a blue coat and leather breeches, with his eyes raised to heaven, pointing out, to a dozen children who surrounded him, the word France written on a terrestrial globe. This fine youth was the exiled Duc d'Orléans, giving geography and mathematical lessons at the Reichenau College.
I saw that small picture by Couder once again; I was, as I have said, a few miles from Reichenau, and I decided to go and see the room in which the actual King of France had spent one of the most honourable years of his life, earning 5 francs per day. I have often heard it said that, in spite of his sixteen millions from the Civil List, and his Château des Tuileries, perhaps even because of these, he at times would murmur, "O Reichenau! Reichenau!..."
I therefore did those few miles--two or three followed the banks of the Rhine, which is slate colour at this spot and yet blue in Germany--and I reached Reichenau. I wrote the following letter the same day to the Duc d'Orléans, which will be found produced in its entirety in my Impressions de Voyage:--
"MONSEIGNEUR,--The date of this letter and the place from whence it is sent will readily explain the sentiment to which I am yielding in addressing Your Highness. I am not speaking to the royal hereditary prince of the crown of France, of His Majesty King Louis-Philippe, now reigning, but to the Duc de Chartres, pupil of Henri IV., of the Duc d'Orléans, teacher at Reichenau. I write to Your Highness from the very room in which your exiled father taught arithmetic and geography; or, rather, from that same room, pressed by the post time, I send to Your Highness the page I have just torn from my album."
"REICHENAU
"The little Grisons village is in no way remarkable except for the strange story with which its name is associated. Towards the end of last century burgomaster Tscharner, from Coire, had set up a school at Reichenau. They were looking out in the canton for a teacher in French, when a young man presented himself to M. Boul, headmaster of the establishment, bearing a letter of recommendation signed by bailie Aloys Toost of Zizers. The young man was French, spoke his mother tongue, English and German, and, besides these three languages, could teach mathematics, physics and geography. The find was too marvellous and too rare for the headmaster of the college to let him escape; besides, the youth was modest in his claims. M. Boul settled with him to come at 1400 francs per annum, so the new professor was immediately installed and entered upon his duties. This young professor was Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, Duc de Chartres, to-day King of France.
"It was, I admit, with emotion intermingled with pride that, in this very place, in the room situated in the middle of the corridor, with its folding door, its flower-painted side doors, its corner chimney-places, its pictures of Louis XV. surrounded with gilt arabesques and its decorated ceiling; it was, I say with keen emotion, that, in this room, where the Duc de Chartres had taught, I gathered information concerning the strange vicissitudes of a royal personage who, not wishing to beg the bread of exile, worthily bought it with his work.
"One single teacher, a colleague of the Duc d'Orléans, and a single scholar, one of his pupils, still lived in 1832, the period at which I visited Reichenau. The teacher was, the novel-writer Zschokke, and the scholar was burgomaster Tscharner, son of the man who had founded the school. The worthy bailie Aloys Toost died in 1827, and was buried at Zizers, his native village. Now, there remains nothing more of the college where a future King of France had taught save the schoolroom we have described and the chapel adjoining the corridor with its reading-desk and altar surmounted by a crucifix painted in fresco. The rest of the buildings have been turned into a kind of villa belonging to Colonel Pastalluzzi, and this memorial, so honourable for every Frenchman that it deserves to rank among our national memorials, threatens to disappear with the generation of old men who are dying out, were there not living a man of artistic feeling, who is noble and great, who will not, we hope, let anything be forgotten which is honourable for himself and for France. That man is yourself, Monseigneur Ferdinand d'Orléans, who, having been our schoolfellow, will also be our king; you who, from the throne which you will one day ascend, will lay one hand on the old monarchy and the other on the young republic; will inherit the galleries which contain pictures of the battles of Taülebourg, Fleurus, Bouvines and of Aboukir, of Agincourt and of Marengo; you who are ignorant that the fleurs-de-lis of Louis XIV. are the lance-heads of Clovis; you who know so well that all the glories of a country are glorious no matter when they saw birth, or what sun made them flourish; you, in fact, who by your royal fillet can bind together a thousand years of memories, and assume the consular dignity of the lictors who will march in front of you!
"So it will be a delight to you, monseigneur, to recall the little lonely port, the voyager beaten by the sea of exile, the sailor driven by the wind of proscription, where your father found a noble shelter against the tempest; it will be worthy of you, monseigneur, to give orders that the hospitable roof shall be again raised for hospitality, and, on the very site where the old building fell in ruins shall be erected a new one, destined to receive every son of exile who shall come, staff of exile in hand, to knock at its doors as your father came, irrespective of his opinions and country; whether he be threatened by the anger of peoples or pursued by the hatred of kings; for, monseigneur, the future, though serene and blue for France, which has accomplished its revolutionary work, is big with storms for the rest of the world! We have sowed the seeds of liberty so broadcast in our excursions through Europe that, on all sides, they spring up like corn in May; so well that it only needs a ray of sunshine to ripen the most distant harvests.... Throw your glance back over the past, monseigneur, and then concentrate it upon the present. Have you ever felt more shaking of thrones, or encountered more discrowned travellers on the highways? You see, indeed, that it will be necessary, some day, to found an asylum, were it but for the sons of kings whose fathers cannot, like yours, be teachers at Reichenau!"
I wish to return from Reichenau by way of Arenenberg. The comparison of a teacher of mathematics King of France with an exiled Queen of Holland pleases the imagination of poets. Besides, indeed, when quite a child, I had heard much ill spoken of Napoleon and much good of Joséphine! Now what did I see in Queen Hortense but Joséphine's case over again? I persisted, therefore, in seeing Queen Hortense, and any détour, however long, was but nothing compared with that desire. But, since I do not wish these lines to be taken for tardy flattery--I insist on being thought incapable of flattering any one but exiles or dead people--I will write here what I wrote about Queen Hortense in 1832. I copy the following passage from my Impressions de Voyage:--
"As the château d'Arenenberg is only a league's distance from Constance, I was seized by a great desire to pay my homage at the feet of fallen majesty and to see what remained of a queen in a woman when fate has torn the crown from her head, the sceptre from her hand and the robes from her shoulders; from that queen, moreover, who was the gracious daughter of Joséphine Beauharnais, sister of Eugène, and the diamond in Napoleon's crown.
"I had heard so much of her in my youth as a beauteous and good fairy, most gracious and charitable, from the daughters to whom she had given a dowry, the mothers whose children she had redeemed, and the prisoners for whom she had obtained pardon, that I worshipped her. Add to this, the remembrance of the romances which my sister sang about the queen, which were so impressed on my heart by memory that even now, although it is twenty years since I heard these lines and music, I could repeat both without forgetting a word, and I could jot down the music without transposing a note. These romances about a queen are sung by a queen; a combination which can only be seen in the Thousand and One Nights, and which has remained in my mind like a glad surprise."[1]
I had no letter of introduction to the Comtesse de Saint-Leu; but I hoped that my name was not entirely unknown to her; I had already written at that time Henri III., Christine, Antony, Richard Darlington, Charles III. and La Tour de Nesle.
When I reached Arenenberg, it was too early in the morning to present myself to the queen. I left my card with Madame Parquin, reader to the Comtesse de Saint-Leu, and sister of the noted barrister of that name, and I took advantage of a fine storm which had just risen to go for a sail on the lake. On my return, I found an invitation to dinner awaiting me at the hôtel; then a letter from France had found me out there, an act of cleverness which was a great achievement on the part of the Swiss post: it contained the manuscript ode by Victor Hugo on the death of the King of Rome. I went on foot to the queen's residence and read the letter as I went.
All the details of that gracious hospitality which the queen made me accept for three days can be seen in my Impressions de Voyage. I merely wish to reproduce here a conversation which revealed an odd profession of faith in the present--if it be borne in mind that the present of that time corresponded with September 1832--and a singular forecast of the future.
"A WALK IN THE PARK AT ARENENBERG
"The queen and I took about a hundred steps in silence. I was the first to interrupt it.
"'I believe you have something to tell me, Madame la Comtesse?' I asked.
"'True,' she said, looking at me; 'I wanted to talk to you of Paris. What news was there when you left it?'
"'Much bloodshed in the streets, many wounded in the hospitals, too few prisons and too many prisoners.'
"'You saw the 5th and 6th of June?'
"'Yes, madame.'
"'Pardon, I am perhaps going to be inquisitive; but, from some words which you said yesterday, I believe you are a Republican.'
"I smiled.
"'You are not mistaken, madame; and yet, thanks to the sense and to the colour which the papers representing the party to which I belong and am in sympathy with (though not with all its methods) have given to that word, before accepting the qualification which you give me, I will ask your permission to lay bare my principles before you. To any other woman such a profession would be absurd; but you, Madame la Comtesse, as queen, must have heard so many serious speeches, and, as woman, so many frivolous ones, that I shall not hesitate to tell you at what point I join myself to Republican Socialism and where I am at variance with revolutionary Republicanism.'
"'You are not, then, agreed among yourselves?'
"'We have the same hopes, madame, but the means by which each one of us wishes to act are different. Some talk of chopping off heads and dividing properties; these are ignorant and insane.... You are surprised that I do not employ a stronger term by which to designate them ... it is unnecessary: they are neither afraid nor to be feared; they think themselves strongly in advance and are totally behind the times; they date from 1793 and we are in 1832. Louis-Philippe's government makes a show of being in great fear of them, and would be much vexed if they did not exist; for their theories are the quiver from whence they derive their weapons. These are not Republicans, they are believers in a commonwealth. Others there are who forget that France is the oldest sister among the nations, who do not remember that her past is rich with traditions, and go searching about among the constitutions of Switzerland and England and America for that one which shall be most applicable to our country. They are dreamers and Utopians: wrapped up in their cabinet theories, they do not perceive in their imaginary applications that the constitution of a people can only last so long; that it is born but of its geographical situation, that it springs from its nationality and that it is in unison with its customs. The result is that as no two people under heaven have the same geographical position or have identical national characteristics and habits, the more perfect a constitution is, the more individual it is and the less, consequently, is it applicable to another locality than that which gave it birth. These people are not any longer Republicans but Republicists. Others there are who think that an opinion only means a light blue silk coat, a large lappelled waistcoat and a flowing tie and pointed hat: they are the parodists and the brayers. These excite riots, but take good care to keep out of them; they erect barricades and leave others to get killed behind them; they compromise their friends and hide themselves thoroughly as though they themselves were the compromised. These are not Republicans, they are Republiquets! But there are others, madame, to whom the honour of France is sacred, and not to be touched; to whom a promise is a sacred engagement which they will not suffer to be broken by either king or people; a noble and immense fraternity which extends to every country that is suffering, every nation that is waking up; these have shed their blood in Belgium, Italy and Poland, and returned to be killed or captured at the Cloître Saint-Merry: they, madame, are Puritans and martyrs. A day will come when not only will the captives be released from prisons but when the bodies of the dead will be looked for in order to raise tombstones above them. The only wrong they can be accused of is of having been in advance of their age, and been born thirty years too soon. These, madame, are the true Republicans.'
"'I have no need to ask you,' the queen said to me; 'you belong to that party.'
"'Alas! madame,' I replied, 'I cannot wholly boast of that honour.... Certainly, all my sympathies are with them; but, instead of letting myself be carried away by my feelings, I have appealed to my reason; I want to do for politics what Faust did for science: go down and touch the bottom. I was for a year plunged in the depths of the past; I entered it with instinctive opinion, I left it from reasoned-out conviction. I saw that the revolution of 1830 had brought us a step forward, it is true, but that it had simply led us from the aristocratic monarchy to the bourgeois monarchy, and this bourgeois monarchy was an era which must be exhausted before it could arrive at popular magistracy. Henceforth, madame, without doing anything to bring myself nearer to the government from which I had parted company, I have ceased to be an enemy to it; I watch it tranquilly running its period, and I shall probably see the end of it; I applaud what good it does, I protest against the evil; but, at the same time, without either enthusiasm or hatred. I neither accept nor reject it: I submit; I do not look on this as good fortune, but I believe it to be a necessity.'
"'But to hear you talk, there will be no chance for it to change.'
"'No, Madame ... not for long years at least.'
"'Suppose, however, the Duc de Reichstadt had not died, and that he had made an attempt.'
"'I believe he would have failed.'
"'True, I forgot that, with your Republican opinions, Napoleon must appear to you a tyrant.'
"'I beg your pardon, madame, I look at it from another point of view. In my opinion Napoleon was one of those men who were elected from the beginning of time, and have received a providential mission from God. One judges such men not according to their own will-power, which has made them act as they did, but according to the degree of divine wisdom which has inspired them; not according to the work they have done, but according to the result it has produced. When this mission is accomplished, God recalls them, and they believe they are dying, but they really go to render their account.'
"'And, according to you, what was the emperor's mission?'
"'One of liberty.'
"'Do you know that others quite different from me will ask you for proof of your statement?'
"'Even to you will I give it.'
"Proceed! you have no idea how deeply I am interested in all this!'
"'When Napoleon, or, rather, Bonaparte, appeared before our fathers, madame, France was emerging from a revolution, not from a Republic. In one of its fits of political fever it was flung so much in advance of other nations that it had disturbed the world's equilibrium. It needed an Alexander to deal with this Bucephalus, an Androcles with this lion! The 13 Vendémiaire brought them face to face: and the Revolution was beaten. The kings, who should have recognised a brother in the cannon of the rue Saint-Honoré, thought they had an enemy in the dictator of 18 Brumaire; they mistook the Consul of a Republic in him who was already the head of a monarchy, and, insane as they were, instead of keeping him prisoner in a general peace, they made European war upon him. Then Napoleon rallied round him all the youth, courage and intellect of France, and spread them abroad over the world. A reactionist, as far as we were concerned, wherever he passed among other nations he was in a state of advance, and flung the seeds of revolution broadcast: Italy, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Belgium, Russia herself, turn by turn, called their sons to the sacred harvest; and he, like a tired labourer after his day's work, folded his arms and watched them gathering it in, from the top of his rock at St. Helena. Then it was that he had a revelation of his divine mission, and there dropped from his lips a prophecy of a future Republican Europe.'
"'Do you believe, then, that, if the Duc de Reichstadt had not died, he would have continued his father's work?'
"'In my opinion, madame, men like Napoleon have neither fathers nor sons: they are born like meteors in the twilight of the dawn, and light up the sky from one horizon to the other as they cross it before they are lost in the twilight of the night.'
"'What you are saying is not consoling to those of his family who preserve some hope.'
"'It is as I say, madame; for we have only given him a place in our heavens on condition that he did not leave any heir on the earth.'
"'But he bequeathed his sword to his son.'
"'The gift was fatal, madame, and God broke the bequest.'
"'You terrify me, for his son, in turn, bequeathed it to mine.'
"'It will be heavy for a simple officer of the Swiss Confederation to bear!'
"'Yes, you are right, for the sword is a sceptre.'
"'Take care lest you go astray, madame! I am, indeed, afraid that you only live in the deceptive and intoxicating atmosphere which exiles carry away with them; the times which continue to march for the rest of the world seem to stand still to outlaws: they still see men and things as they left them. Yet men's faces change and so do the aspect of things; the generation which saw Napoleon pass as he returned from the isle of Elba is dying out daily, madame, and that miraculous march is already more than a memory: it is a historical fact.'
"'So you think it is hopeless for the Napoleon family to return to France?'
"'If I were king, I would recall it to-morrow.'
"'That is not what I meant.'
"'Otherwise, there is very little chance.'
"'What advice would you give to a member of that family who should dream of the resurrection of the glory and power of the Napoleons?'
"'I would counsel him to wake up.'
"'If he persisted in spite of that first advice (which in my opinion is the best), and asked you for a second piece of advice?"
"'Then, madame, I would tell him to obtain the cancelling of his exile, to buy a plot of ground in France and to make use of the immense popularity of his name to get himself elected a deputy, to try by his talent to win over the majority of the Chamber, and to use it to depose Louis-Philippe and become elected king in his stead.'
"'You think,' said the Comtesse de Saint-Leu, with a melancholy smile, 'that all other methods would fail?'
"'I am convinced of it.'
"The comtesse sighed. At that moment the breakfast bell rang and we took our way back to the château, pensive and silent. The comtesse did not address a single word to me as we returned, but, when we reached the door, she stopped, and, looking at me with an indefinable expression of anguish, said--
"'Oh! I wish my son were here and could have heard what you have been saying!'"
[Footnote 1: Do not let it be forgotten that these lines were written under Louis-Philippe, at the time when the Bonapartes were exiled.]
Chapter II
News of France--First performance of Le Fils de l'Émigré--What Le Constitutionnel thought of it--Effect produced by that play on the Parisian population in general and on M. Véron in particular--Death of Walter Scott--Périnet Leclerc--Sic vos non vobis
As I have said, I stayed three days at Arenenberg.[1] I had found French newspapers there, which I had missed since my departure from Aix, and I posted myself up in the news of France. M. Jay had replaced M. de Montesquieu at the Academy. Faithful to its traditions, the Academy, having a choice between M. Jay, a mediocre political writer, and M. Thiers, an eminent historian, had chosen M. Jay. The Institute had done pretty much the same thing: M. Lethière, that dear good friend of my father, author of Brutus condamnant ses fils, having died, MM. Paul Delaroche, Schnetz and Blondel were put on the lists to succeed him. You would have betted, would you not, dear readers, on Schnetz or on Delaroche? Well, you would have lost: MM. Schnetz and Delaroche each had three votes, and M. Blondel had eighteen.
Mademoiselle Falcon had come out in the rôle of Alice in Robert le Diable. A pupil of Nourrit, she had had a splendid success. Poor Cornélie! her success was to be as short as it had been great: two years after her début an accident took away her voice!
Then, political lawsuits had followed, one after another: the Seine Court of Assizes had delivered two death sentences, one against a man named Cuny, and the other against one called Lepage. These two sentences had moved the Parisian public profoundly: since the death of Louis XVIII., it had become unaccustomed to capital punishments for political offences. Next had come the less serious sentence against the Saint-Simonians; then, the affair of the man with the red flag. I have tried to paint the effect the appearance of this man produced at the funeral of General Lamarque. He was condemned to a month's imprisonment! Solicitor-General Delapalme, who had nearly given up the prosecution, to the great surprise of everybody, only extricated himself by arguing that the accused man was out of his mind. The Republicans interpreted the thing differently, the man with the red flag was looked upon by them as an agent to provoke an insurrection: hence the indulgence of the public government. The last news that I read was less interesting to others, but brought a feeling of remorse to my mind: the performance of Le Fils de l'Émigré was announced to come on next at the Porte-Saint-Martin. I did not fail, therefore, to ask at each inn where I stopped, "Have you a French paper?" On arriving at Kœnigsfelden, the place where the Emperor Albert was assassinated by Jean de Souabe, his nephew, I renewed the question. "Yes, monsieur," mine host replied; "I have Le Constitutionnel."
Le Constitutionnel, it will be recollected, was my old enemy. It had declared war upon me over Henri III. and I had replied to its cannonading by Antony; it was I who had invented the famous announcement of the discontinuing of subscriptions; so I could not have received news of my natural son through a more evil-inclined channel; but, as I had left it in the hands of Anicet without acknowledging it in any way, and it was a condition sine qua non, that I should not be named, I thought the news would be indirect.
I opened Le Constitutionnel, then, with quite a steady hand. Great was my surprise to read at the head of the article--
"THÉÂTRE DE LA PORTE-SAINT-MARTIN Le Fils de l'Émigré Drama by MM. ANICET BOURGEOIS and ALEXANDRE DUMAS ..."
I realised at once that, from the moment my name appeared, the play had been a failure. I was not mistaken. If, however, you wish to see how Le Constitutionnel deals with the performance, read the following lines, which will give an idea of the urbanity with which the cricitism was inserted in MM. Jay and Étienne's journal. It is true, the article was not signed. Moreover, as I register my successes with a naïveté which, at times, is looked upon as conceit, I am not sorry to register an out-and-out failure. I have had two such in my life: Le Fils de l'Émigré at the Porte-Saint-Martin and Le Laird de Dumbicky at the Odéon; but, as I was present at the latter, I will myself undertake to give an account of it when the suitable moment comes. I shall be more polite to myself than is the anonymous critic in the Constitutionnel; but I shall not take further trouble about it; my readers may rest perfectly easy on that point.
So I summoned to my aid all the philosophy I possessed, and I read--
"THÉÂTRE DE LA PORTE-SAINT-MARTIN Le Fils de l'Émigré Drama by MM. ANICET BOURGEOIS and ALEXANDRE DUMAS
"Le Comte Édouard de Bray, a French émigré, takes refuge in Switzerland; there he has taken service in the Austrian Army, which attempts to invade France from that quarter. The count has chosen his allies badly: beaten with them (since our brave armies do beat their enemies utterly), he takes to his legs and shelters in an armourer's shop at Brientz. The armourer, Grégoire Humbert, a man of honour and of humanity, takes in the fugitive, whom he desires to save from the pursuit of the Republicans. Humbert is the more zealous and devoted because he knew Comte Édouard: the comte is several months at Brientz, and even leaves Grégoire Humbert under the table after an orgy, Humbert's virtue and sobriety having gone somewhat astray on that day. The worthy armourer has not forgotten this memorable escapade of drunkenness; so he helps Comte Édouard to escape out of the window, whilst the French soldiers' rifles are beating at his door.
"Comte Édouard de Bray thus saved, you would imagine that he would feel the very liveliest gratitude for the brave man who saved him from being shot or hung. Oh! nothing of the kind! Our real, our great drama, it is said, is not so juvenile as to accustom us to such natural and middle-class sentiments; it must, of course, have something quite different--something detestable, ignoble and ridiculous forsooth!
"This is what the Comte de Bray does in conformity with the triple requirements of great drama. Scarcely out of danger, he writes to Grégoire Humbert: 'You think yourself a happy father and husband; you are deceived, Humbert. During the night of the orgy I spent with you, your wife was waiting for you in her bed: I slipped into your place; the son she is to present you with is not yours.'
"If you ask for an explanation of the Comte de Bray's infamy, you will learn that he has sworn implacable hatred to the people, and that he begins to put it into operation upon his benefactor. It is out of such subjects as these that writers have the presumption to make plays nowadays, and drama which is to move and interest people!
"The comte's letter throws Humbert into despair; he takes a dagger and wants to kill his wife.... At this moment, the back of the stage reveals the scene of an accouchement, which follows upon the dagger scene; 'I have the honour of announcing to you the birth of the émigré's son.' The priest blesses the newly born infant; mother and child are doing well. This spectacle disarms Humbert, who sheathes his dagger; but he must kill some one, so, instead of Madame Humbert and her dubious offspring, he means to kill Édouard. Unfortunately, he is too late, Édouard is far away. The armourer does not give up his revenge on that account; he will beget a second son by his wife, a son who shall be his to kill the father of the first son, with the responsibility of whom he is obliged to saddle himself, 'Is pater est quem nuptiæ demonstrant.' Humbert, certainly, understood revenge as well as anybody possibly could; to beget a child by Madame Humbert solely to avenge himself is the supremest kind of cleverness. These lovely things I have just laid before you form what is nowadays called a prologue; it was formerly simply called the first act.
"Twenty years pass over. Humbert died ruined, pursuing Édouard, whom he has never been able to meet with; for twenty years he had been unlucky in his search! Otherwise, his project of vengeance had succeeded to perfection: the second son was born, grew up and, in place of the dead Humbert, Pietro, his faithful servant, teaches the son to handle a sword, in readiness for the moment when Comte Édouard shall be encountered, and when he shall kill him. There is a family of armourers for you, and they could give points on matters of revenge to the ancient Greek families, whose fury our tragic authors have put before us for some time past. Humbert and his faithful Pietro had not found Édouard. I, who had nothing to do with him, found him in Paris, where he was exercising the noble profession of spy: as a count and secret agent of the Superior Police. The drama preserves and maintains to us something of interest and elevation. Besides his pleasures as a spy, Édouard continues to cultivate his hatred against the people: he has seduced a young girl, with whom he has been living for two years; item, he has carried away a young man called Georges Burns from his artisan work and made him his secretary; his object is to corrupt Georges, as he has corrupted Thérèse, out of hatred to the people. We could not have believed in such madness, if we had not seen and heard it. But we are not at the end, there is yet another story.
"This Georges Burns is none other than the son of Édouard and of Madame Humbert. Georges changed his name after his putative father had died bankrupt. Georges is proud and does not wish to resume the name of his supposed father until after he has paid all his debts. Édouard, who does not know the clue to this enigma, looks upon the youth as merely Georges Burns. From this juncture, we enter upon an incredible chaos of ignominy and absurdities; we are at first tempted to laugh at the crude combination of style, incoherence of scenes and pell-mell of persons and to take it for a parody. I frankly thought it was meant as a parody.
"These two clever people, I said, want to make fun of the monstrosities which degrade our theatres, and to avenge good feeling and taste and language by a good satire.... As caricature and satire exaggerate the absurdities or the vices of those at whom they want to strike, our satirists have piled up in their parody crudity upon crudity, mountain upon mountain, crime upon crime, filth upon filth, to bring the more shame upon our licentious dramatists. But I have been assured that Le Fils de l'Émigré was written seriously as a great drama.
"Then, no longer being able to laugh, I have no resource left but ennui and disgust--an ennui and disgust with which I do not desire to oppress my readers by dragging them step by step through that den of slavery, murder and prostitution: I might just as well invite them! to spend a day at Poissy, at the Madelonnettes, at la Conciergerie, the place de Grève or the private cabinet of M. Vidocq, with the executioner's minions; for there is nothing else in this ignoble play. Comte Édouard de Bray, whom you know to be a spy, blunders unpardonably and breaks burglariously into houses.
"Thérèse, the young girl he has carried off, becomes a prostitute very quickly and goes from man to man with wonderful facility. Georges Burns, or, rather, Georges Humbert, steals from his mother 30,000 francs meant for the payment of her husband's debts, and assassinates Thérèse, whom he had lived with after Comte Édouard had done with her.
"To crown these lovely performances, you have a condemnation to the galleys and a sentence of death. Édouard is sent to the galleys for forgery; Burns to the scaffold for murder. In the prison, between the branding and the guillotine, father and son recognise one another, and Georges learns the secret of his birth. You would think the authors would stop short there, and have some pity on us. Poor folk! who think that people will respect you more than the general opinion, and everything which has hitherto been respected in good and healthy literature! No, you have not had enough of this hideous spectacle: you must see the galley-slave bound to his chains, the condemned with his hands tied behind his back and head shaved, marching to ... Here the public rose in a body and would not see or hear any more; they turned sick with disgust; the women rose or turned their eyes away to hide the sight of the head about to be cut off; they hooted, they shouted down these shameful doings, and justice was done. Criticism of such plays as these is impossible; one leaves them as quickly as one can, as one kicks aside a repulsive object. What have we come to, when a talented man puts his name to this drama as to a sign-post? It is true that the author has, this time, found his punishment in the very offence itself; his talent seems to be completely dead."
So I was assassinated by Le Constitutionnel, exactly on the same spot where the Emperor Albert had been assassinated by his nephew. Unfortunately, I doubt whether that assassination was as valuable to the future as the fine scene one can read in the fifth act of Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, which takes place between the murderer of Gessler and the assassin of the emperor.
I returned to Paris towards the beginning of October. All the newspapers had copied the example of Le Constitutionnel; they had gone for me tooth and nail, the kill was complete; they did not leave a shred of flesh on my bones. I met Véron, who delivered me a lecture on my immorality which I shall never forget. He had asked me for something for La Revue de Paris, of which he was editor; but, after Le Fils de l'Émigré, he had no room for my name among the company of decent people. I also came across several theatrical managers who had become short-sighted during my absence and did not recognise me. I have had these falls two or three times during my life--not reckoning others still awaiting me--I have always risen above them, thank God! and I hope that, if it happens again, God will extend the same grace to me. My private motto is "J'ayme qui m'ayme," and I could perfectly well add, "Je ne hais pas qui me hait"; but our family motto is "Deus dédit, Deus dabit" ("God has given, God will give").
So I gave up the theatre for a time. Besides, I had begun my book on Gaule et France, and I wanted to finish it. The execution of this book was a singular thing. I sought learning myself in order to teach others; but I had a great advantage: in going thus by chance through history, it happened to me as it happens to a man who does not know his way and gets lost in a forest; he is lost, it is true, but discovers things unknown, abysses where no man has descended, heights none have scaled.
Gaule et France is a historical book full of mistakes; but it ends by the strangest prophecy which has ever been printed sixteen years beforehand. We will see what it was in due time and place.
Towards the end of September, we heard in France of the death of Walter Scott. That death made a certain impression on me; not that I had the honour of knowing the author of Ivanhoe and of Waverley, but the reading of Walter Scott, it will be recollected, had a great influence on my early literary life. Beginning by preferring Pigault-Lebrun to Walter Scott, and Voltaire to Shakespeare, a twofold heresy from which my well-loved Lassagne had redeemed me--Lassagne who, since I talked of him to you, has gone where half my friends have gone,--having, I say, preferred Pigault-Lebrun to Walter Scott, I had come to saner views, and, not only had I read all the Scottish author's romances, but I had tried to make two plays out of his works: the first, we know, with Frédéric Soulié; the second by myself. Neither was played, and neither was suited to the stage.
Walter Scott's qualities are not at all dramatic; admirable as a painter of manners, costumes and characters, Walter Scott is completely incapable of painting the passions. With manners and characters one can concoct comedies, but there must be passion to make dramas. Scott's only impassioned romance is Kenilworth Castle; so it is the sole one which provided a really successful drama, and yet three-quarters of the success was due to the dénoûment, which was put on the stage, and which brutally flung in the eyes of the public the terrible spectacle of Amy Robsart's fall over the precipice. But my work on Scott had not been useless, although it had remained fruitless; one only understands the structure of a man by dissecting dead bodies; so one only understands the genius of an author by analysing it. The analysis of Walter Scott had made me understand the novel from another point of view than that of our country. A similar fidelity to manners, costumes and characters, with more lively dialogue and more natural passions, seemed to me to be what we needed. Such was my conviction, but I was far enough yet from suspecting that I should attempt to do for France what Scott had done for Scotland. I had only then published my historic scenes, Le Chevalier de Bois-Bourdon, Isabel le Bavière and Périnet Leclerc, and, as we shall see, the thing had succeeded badly enough, or was but a very poor success. One has such luck at times.
I published my Scènes historiques in La Revue des Deux Mondes; so no one read them. In my absence, Anicet Bourgeois and Lockroy conceived the notion of putting these scenes together and composing a drama under the title of Périnet Leclerc. It was, indeed, an honour which they paid to these scraps of history, unostentatiously scattered through a review. The play was a great success. Although I had done at least as much of it as of Le Fils de l'Émigré, they were most careful not to utter my name. Le Constitutionnel, which had torn from my face, in the first work, the veil of incognito, obliterated it this time with all its strength, and praised the drama highly. Listen: M. Lesur, in his Annuaire had said, apropos of Le Fils de l'Émigré--
"This play recalls the drunken slave which the Lacedémonians used to point out to their children to disgust them with drunkenness, and it ought to lead the public, if such a thing be possible, to purer and more reasonable ideals in dramatic literature. The object of the authors was to compare the corruption of the nobility with the virtue of the people, and, starting with this view, which is of no value nowadays, there is no vice, immorality or infamy that they have not accumulated in the person of their émigré le Marquis de Bray and of his worthy son; it is a mass of turpitudes, a sequence of scenes as false as they are ignoble, which it would disgust us to enumerate. The public permitted M. Dumas's La Tour de Nesle, but, this time, it has not been so complaisant: it hooted, hooted outrageously a monstrous production which made all parts of the theatre, pit, boxes and galleries, turn sick with disgust and avert their eyes with horror. It is to be hoped that this severe and deserved lesson will impel the author of Henri III., of Christine and of Antony and Richard Darlington, not to prostitute his talent again by putting his hand to such works."
The article, it will be seen, does not mince words (and between ourselves, be it said, dear reader, without reaching Anicet's ears, it seemed to be an execrable thing!) But, take careful notice that it is to me M. Lesur addresses himself, I, who had not been named and whose name was not on the bills; he had taken good care to expose me after a failure, but took equal care to conceal me when it was a question of success.
Here is the proof:--
"THÉÂTRE DE LA PORTE-SAINT-MARTIN (3 Sep. 1832)
"First performance of Périnet Leclerc, a prose drama in five acts by MM. ANICET BOURGEOIS and LOCKROY.
"Fine scenes, noise, stir and magnificent decorations and, above all, a situation of the supremest interest in the fifth act, have made this drama a complete success. It bears witness to literary and historic studies very rare in modern dramatists, and has in general the great advantage over most of the plays of this theatre, particularly LE FILS DE L' ÉMIGRÉ, of not revolting the spectator constantly by a jumble of crimes and pictures of debauchery each more horrible than the last."
Caught, Monsieur Dumas! But there is something stronger still. Some time after I collected my Scènes historiques into two volumes a paper noticed it, and accused me of having literally copied the principal scenes of my fictitious historical book from the fine drama by MM. Anicet Bourgeois and Lockroy!
Ah! my dear good fellow, are you simply ignorant or do you write in bad faith? You would rather not reply? Then let us ask M. Lireux.
[Footnote 1: See Appendix.]
Chapter III
La Duchesse de Berry returns to Nantes disguised as a peasant woman--The basket of apples--The house Duguigny--Madame in her hiding-place--Simon Deutz--His antecedents--His mission--He enters into treaty with MM. Thiers and Montalivet--He starts for la Vendée
Meantime, they learnt in Paris of the arrest of the Duchesse de Berry, at Nantes. It would have needed less news than this to divert the public indignation raised against me on account of the unlucky Fils de l'Émigré. We left Madame la duchesse de Berry with M. Berryer in a poor Vendéen cottage, where she lived under the name of M. Charles; we saw her giving way to the entreaties of the famous barrister, and promising to quit France; she was to rejoin M. Berryer at noon the same day at a given spot, to return with him to Nantes, to cross through France by coach--thanks to the passport he brought for her--and to return to Italy by the Mont Cenis route. M. Berryer had waited for an hour at the arranged meeting-place, when he received a dispatch from Madame, who told him that too many interests were bound up with hers for her to abandon them. She therefore remained in la Vendée; only, the taking up of arms, fixed for 24 May, was deferred till the 3rd or 4th of June. We shall not be suspected of any intention of giving the history of the Civil War of 1832. The object of these Memoirs is not to relate official matters, but details which certain advantages of position or of friendship have put us in the way of knowing.
Now, who captured the Duchesse de Berry? General Dermoncourt, my old friend. Who was his secretary? The very same Rusconi who has been my secretary for twenty-one years, and who received from the hands of M. de Ménars the famous historical hat that was momentarily deflected from its habitual use by Madame la duchesse de Berry.
We will take up our narrative again at the moment when Madame, driven on all sides by events at Maisdon, at la Caraterie, Chêne, la Pénissière and at Riaillé, resolved to return to Nantes. This plan, which at first seemed foolhardy, was, however, the one which offered most security. When at Nantes, the Duchesse de Berry would find safe shelter; she therefore only had to find a means of getting there without discovery. She cut the knot herself by announcing that she would return to Nantes on foot clad as a peasant and followed only by Mademoiselle Eulalie de Kersabiec. They had scarcely three leagues to walk. M. de Ménars and M. de Bourmont left after them, and entered Nantes undisguised although they were very well known; they crossed the Loire in a boat opposite the meadow des Mauves.[1] At the end of a quarter of an hour's walk, the huge shoes and cotton stockings to which the duchess was unused hurt her feet. She tried, however, to walk on: but, deeming that if she kept to her footwear, she could not continue her journey, she sat down on the bank of a ditch, took off her shoes and stockings, stuffed them into her great pockets and began to walk barefoot. Soon, however, noticing from the peasant women who passed by that the fineness of her skin and the aristocratic whiteness of her legs might betray her, she went to one of the low hills by the roadside and, with some of the dark-coloured earth, she made her legs brown with it and pursued her journey. There were still two good leagues to go. It must, indeed, have been a wonderful subject for philosophic thought for those who accompanied her, this spectacle of the woman who, two years before, had her position as queen mother at the Tuileries and possessed Chambord and Bagatelle, drove out in her carriages with six horses, escorted by bodyguards brilliant in gold and silver; who went to spectacles she had commanded, preceded by runners shaking torches; who filled the hall with her presence alone, and, when she returned to the château and regained her splendid chambers, walked over doubly thick Persian and Turkey carpets for fear the parquetted floor should hurt her childish feet;--to-day, this same woman, still smirched with the powder of battlefields, surrounded by dangers, outlawed, having no escort or courtiers beside one young girl, went to seek a shelter which might, perhaps, close its doors to her, clothed in the dress of a peasant woman, walking barefooted on the sharp sand and angular pebbles of the road. It was a singular thing that, at this date, nearly every country had its kings running barefoot along its highways!
However, the journey was made, and as they came nearer to Nantes all fears disappeared. The duchess was clothed in her costume and the farmers she had passed had not noticed that the little peasant woman running slowly past them was anything but what her clothes indicated: it was much, indeed, to have deceived the inquisitive instincts of country people, who have no rivals, possibly no equals, in this respect, unless it be soldiers.
At last they arrived in sight of Nantes: and Madame put on her shoes and stockings again before entering the town. When crossing the bridge of Pyrmile, she fell into the midst of a detachment of soldiers which was coming off duty under the command of an officer whom she recognised perfectly well, having seen him in former days doing duty at the Château. She reminded MM. de Ménars and Bourmont of this coincidence when they arrived some hours after her.
"I think the officer in command of that detachment on the bridge has recognised me: he looked hard at me," she said; "if it be so, and happy days come to me, his lot will be fortunate, he will be rewarded!"
Opposite the Bouffai, the duchess felt her shoulder touched. She trembled and turned round. The person who had just taken that liberty was a worthy old woman, who, having put her basket of apples on the ground, could not replace it on her head by herself.
"My children," she said to the duchess and Mile, de Kersabiec, "help me to lift up my basket and I will give you each an apple."
Madame soon took hold of one handle and signed to her companion to take hold of the other, the basket was balanced on the good woman's head, and she went away without giving the promised reward; but the duchess stopped her by the arm--
"Well, mother, where is my apple?" she asked. The apple-seller gave her one, and Madame was eating it with an appetite sharpened by a three leagues' walk, when, lifting her head, her eyes fell on a placard bearing these three words in big letters:--
"ÉTAT DE SIÈGE"
It was the Government notice which put four of the départements of la Vendée outside the pale of common law. The duchess went up to the bill and calmly read it right through, in spite of the entreaties of Mlle. de Kersabiec, who pressed her to gain the house at which she was to be received; but Madame observed that it was too interesting a matter for her not to acquaint herself with it. At last she resumed her journey, and, a few minutes later, she reached the house where she was expected, and where she took off her muddy garments, which were preserved as a memento of the event. Soon, she left this first refuge to go to the ladies Duguigny, at No. 3 rue Haute-du-Château.
The position of the Duguigny's house was pleasant, it looked out over the château gardens and beyond to the Loire and the meadows which bordered it. They had prepared her a room with a secret hiding in it. The room was no more than a third storey attic, the secret place was a nook by the fireplace in a corner: it was reached by the back of the chimney and opened with a spring. It had been used since the first Vendéen Wars to save priests and other outlaws. M. de Ménars lived in this house with the duchess. One would have thought that, after many journeys and fatigues, on finding a quiet, safe retreat she could have taken some rest and returned to her favourite occupation of tapestry and flowerpainting, talents in which she excelled; but, after the plans she had meditated carrying out, which had, in some measure, given her more masculine tastes, those futile pursuits were no longer to her liking, and did not suffice for that active spirit.
She resumed a correspondence, which she had dropped for some time, with the Legitimists of France and abroad, the principal object of which correspondence was positively to inform them that in case of an invasive war against France, which then seemed threatening, her son should never put himself in the train of foreigners, and to ask them, if need arose, to unite their efforts to those of all other Frenchmen to repulse them. The papers found in the secret room testified to the aim and to the magnitude of the work she had set herself to do. Her letters amounted to over nine hundred in number; they were nearly all in her own handwriting, with the exception of a few by M. de Ménars. She had twenty-four different ciphers in which to correspond with the various parties in France; she wrote in cipher with remarkable ease.
One of the distractions with which she provided herself, with M. Ménars' assistance, was to paste up the whole of the grey paper which to-day forms the decoration of the attic. During the duchess's stay in Nantes, cholera made some ravages and daily she saw from her windows soldiers or inhabitants being carried to the cemetery. One night she was seized with colic and vomiting, causing the greatest anxiety to those around her. She herself was alarmed.
"How are my feet and hands?" she said. "When they become cold, rub them, put burning hot bricks to them and send for a doctor and priest." They assured her she should have the services of both, but she would not have them summoned until the more alarming symptoms set in. However, the sickness stopped and the invalid grew better.
Madame took her meals down on the second floor: to her table were admitted M. de Ménars and Mademoiselle Stylite de Kersabiec--who had joined her--the two ladies Duguigny and, lastly, M. Guibourg, who, after his escape from the prison of Nantes, had also found a refuge in the same house, but only three weeks before the duchess's arrest. Very often, the meals were interrupted by false alarms caused by some detachment of troops coming in or going out of the town; then a bell, which communicated with the room from the ground floor, would give the signal for a retreat.
The duchess passed five months in this way. But the activity with which the Chouans were hunted down left them no chance of rallying together; also, the soul and head of the war was no longer with them. The 56th Regiment, which arrived about the end of June, permitted the military authorities to organise a still more energetic chase and a still stricter look-out; the cantonments were reinforced, moving columns ploughed the country in all senses of the meaning; finally, all hope for the partisans of Henri V. of rekindling a serious war soon vanished.
Meantime, the rumour had gone abroad that the duchess was hidden in Nantes; General Dermoncourt was certain of its truth and had given the higher authorities almost material proofs of the presence of Madame in the town; but, as the fugitive's retreat was only known to a few persons, who were completely devoted to her, whatever credence the civil and military authorities gave to the general's warning, they had small chance of discovering her; besides, the duchess had become the object of extreme watchfulness on the part of her friends, who felt the necessity of isolating her completely in the centre of the town in order to prevent the police agents from getting at her. So she was inaccessible to every one except M. de Bourmont, who exercised his privilege with as much prudence as reserve. It was about this time that the Jew Deutz came to the town.
Hyacinthe-Simon Deutz, was born at Coblenz in January 1802. At the age of eighteen he went to M. Didot as a working printer. A short time later, his brother-in-law, M. Drack, becoming a Catholic, Deutz, being furious at the conversion, threatened him so savagely that Drack warned the police. However, two or three years later, his Judaistic fanaticism softened on this point; he himself showed a desire to embrace the Catholic religion, and, through his brother-in-law, solicited an audience with the Archbishop of Paris. That prelate, thinking his conversion would be quicker and more efficacious at Rome, advised him to go there. Deutz actually made that journey early in 1828; he was recommended in the most pressing manner by M. de Quélen to Cardinal Capellari (afterwards Gregory XIV.), then préfet to the propaganda. Pope Leo XIX. gave him into the care of Father Orioli, of the Collège des Cordeliers, for instruction in the Catholic religion. For some time, and on several occasions, Deutz seemed to have changed his resolution. He wrote in 1828, "I have experienced several days of storm; I was even on the point of returning unbaptized to Paris; it was Judaism dying in me; but, thanks to God, my eyes are entirely unsealed and, ere long, I shall have the happiness of becoming a Christian." Finally judged fit to receive baptism, his godfather was Baron Mortier, first secretary to the Embassy, and his godmother an Italian princess. Thus, by deceiving God, he learned how to betray men. A while after, he was presented to the Pope, who received him with the greatest kindness. A pension of 25 piastres (125 francs) per month had been allowed him since his arrival in Rome from the funds of the propaganda. His brother-in-law Drack, introduced by Baron Mortier to the Duchesse de Berry, had by her been appointed librarian to the Duc de Bordeaux. It was then that the Pope got Deutz entered as a boarder at the Convent des Saints-Apôtres, and he continued publicly to affect the same devotion to religion. Nevertheless, those who lived in intimacy with him had very quickly guessed with what interested motives he had made his abjuration. Most of his early patrons, seeing they were being fooled by him, gradually deserted him; soon, the only supporter he had left was Cardinal Capellari, who, only seeing him occasionally, still kept up the same interest in him.
In 1830, Deutz, under the pretext of not wishing to live on charity, obtained from Pius VIII., then Pope, 300 piastres with which he set out to start, so he said, a bookshop in New York. After he had lived upon the money made by his books he returned to Europe and reached London in the autumn of 1831. He was recommended to the Jesuits established in England, and introduced himself to Abbé Delaporte, almoner to the Chapel of the Émigrés and French Legitimists, who put him into communication with the Marquis Eugène de Montmorency, then resident in London. Deutz got himself noticed by his extraordinary assiduity in attending the chapel services, praying fervently and frequently communicating; he thus secured the kindly notice of M. de Montmorency, a very religious man, who invited him to his table and even to some sort of intimacy.
About this time Madame de Bourmont was preparing, with her daughters, to rejoin her husband in Italy. M. de Bourmont recommended Deutz to her as a wise and reliable man, who might be useful to her on her journey; he was, besides, devoted body and soul to the Legitimist cause and to religion. Deutz went the journey with Madame de Bourmont and behaved himself so well that, on her arrival, she in her turn recommended him warmly to the Duchesse de Berry. When the princess went to Rome, the Pope also spoke to her of Deutz as a man to be relied upon, capable of carrying out intelligently the most important and delicate missions. He notified that she could make use of him with entire confidence when occasion required. Such occasion was not long in offering itself. Just when the duchess was preparing to make her descent upon France, Deutz arrived at Massa and offered his services to Madame; he came from Rome and was going to Portugal to fulfil various missions which the Holy Father had entrusted to him, amongst others, that of taking, on his journey to Genoa, a dozen Jesuits to don Miguel, who had asked for them in order to found a college. Madame received him kindly and, knowing that he would cross Spain to reach Portugal, she accepted his offer with pleasure and willingness, telling him she would take advantage of his kindness and his devotion, and giving him her orders from time to time. So great was her idea of Deutz's delicate sensitiveness at the time, such interest had he roused in her, that she said one day to one of the French people round her--
"I believe poor Deutz is in want of money. I have none at the moment, and he is so sensitive I dare not give him this jewel to sell, which is, I believe, worth 6000 francs. Kindly sell it for me and give him the money without telling him what I am obliged to do to procure it."
So he set off on his mission, passing by way of Catalonia and Madrid. In that city, upon the letter of introduction of a minister plenipotentiary of the Italian States to whom the Pope had sent him, he obtained an introduction to one of the princes of the Royal Family of Spain, from whom he managed to extract money, although he was abundantly supplied with it by both the Holy Father and the Duchesse de Berry. That little act of fraud, of which he boasted when he returned to Madrid from Portugal, proves that Deutz was already treacherous, and that any means seemed good to him that satisfied his thirst after gold. As he travelled under the auspices of the Court of Rome, he mostly stayed in convents, where he was well received, and got himself noticed for his fervent zeal for the Catholic faith. Upon his arrival in Portugal, although well provided with letters from the Pope, he could not obtain an audience with don Miguel except after great difficulties and several months' stay. It was, I think, in connection with some loan don Miguel wanted to contract at the time in Paris that a banker of that capital, who knew of this project and desired to derive profit out of it for the duchess, wrote or caused to be written, in the current August, to Deutz, then in Portugal, that he would willingly undertake the loan on condition don Miguel would allow the deduction of ten per cent, in favour of the Duchesse de Berry, and, knowing him to be devoted to the cause and interests of the princess, he would let him negotiate the business, hoping he would employ every means his sagacity could think of to bring it about successfully. But it appears Deutz did not succeed in this enterprise. About the month of September 1832, he returned from Portugal to Madrid, and had several interviews with the French Legitimists, whose confidence in the scamp was countenanced by the duchess's example. He, however, committed various indiscretions of conduct in Portugal, which might have inspired them with doubts, but the certain knowledge that Madame had proved his fidelity allayed all uneasiness. Upon his departure for France, he was charged with important dispatches, the contents whereof would have seriously compromised those who had written them and those to whom they were addressed. One of the French Legitimists who was then in Madrid having declared his intention of accompanying him as courier, Deutz told him it would not be safe for the secretary to the Embassy at Madrid to travel with a Frenchman. This circumstance at first aroused no suspicion; but a part of the letters confided to Deutz, and principally those he had been advised to leave at Bordeaux, to be addressed from there with greater safety to the duchess and other persons, never reaching their destination, it has since been imagined that he gave them up to the Paris police upon his return to France, and that the supposed secretary to the Embassy was none other than an agent who accompanied him and who, no doubt, served him as intermediary to transmit to the police the information he got from the knave.
It appears that, just about this time, they had not put much energy into the discovery of Madame's hiding-place, because they hoped the adventurous princess, seeing the uselessness of her attempts and all her resources being exhausted, would decide to leave French soil and thus rid the Government of a great difficulty; but, when they saw that she persisted in remaining in a country still in a state of fermentation, where her presence was dangerous, they set themselves seriously to find means of seizing her person at no matter what price.
The police, fertile in strategies, thought they could make use of Deutz and of the correspondence he carried to make the duchess fall into a trap and so fall into the hands of the Government agents. Consequently, they made overtures to this traitor; he had been presented at Court; he had seen renegades become illustrious; he was conscious of his strength and the means and power at his disposal; he knew that it was in the salons of ministers that perfidy and State reasons met together; he wished, then, to treat with the Government alone. He therefore obtained an audience with M. de Montalivet, and it was in the cabinet of his Excellency that they settled the price of an infamous piece of treachery.
What passed during that interview, what promises were made, what offers accepted, remains a secret between the minister and Deutz; for I presume Providence does not interfere in these affairs seeing they succeed. Still, they hesitated to make use of the instrument when they had found it, and great was the embarrassment at the château. The Duchesse de Berry, arrested, would become answerable before a Court of Assizes which might very easily condemn her to death; the king, it is true, had his right of pardon; but there are moments when that right is as difficult to exercise as is the right of death. On the other side, to leave the duchess alone was not without its inconvenience; the Chamber was stupid enough to grow tired of civil war as of anything else, and to demand a stop to it; in short, M. de Montalivet was exceedingly embarrassed by his traitor, not knowing what to do and almost in despair at having been so clever.
About this time ministerial changes took place; M. de Montalivet passed on to the civil list, and M. Thiers to the Home Office. The young minister saw in this change of place a means of getting rid of his Judas by sending him elsewhere to ask for his thirty pieces of silver; but Deutz raised difficulties; he had begun the business with the count and wished to conclude it with him; he knew M. de Montalivet, and did not know M. Thiers. Finally, after much parleying, M. de Montalivet persuaded him to accompany him in his carriage to M. Thiers. M. Thiers had too much tact and finesse not to seize upon the occasion to make his appointment less unpopular, and he was too clever not to try by a grand coup to get himself forgiven. The capture of the Duchesse de Berry would draw the Chamber to him and the Chamber pretty well meant the nation. M. Thiers would thence become a national hero.
Deutz left for la Vendée, accompanied by Joly, the inspector of police, and arrived there under the name of Hyacinthe de Gonzaque.
[Footnote 1: See, for fuller details, La Vendée et Madame, an account written by me from Dermoncourt's notes.]
Chapter IV
M. Maurice Duval is made Préfet of the Loire-Inférieure--The Nantais give him a charivari--Deutz's persistent attempts to see Madame--He obtains a first and then a second audience--Besieging of the maison Duguigny--The hiding-place--The police searches--Discovery of the duchess
Some days after Deutz's arrival in Nantes, no doubt in order to combine measures with him, M. Maurice Duval was made préfet of the Loire-Inférieure. This unpopular appointment, the callous dismissal of M. de Saint-Aignan and the manner in which he received the news of his replacement, all elated the spirits of the Nantais; further, M. Maurice Duval's Grenoble reputation preceded him; one alone of these reasons would have been enough to cost him an ordinary charivari: all these reasons together were worth what, under governments by majorities, may be termed the King of Charivaris.
It was on 19 October that the news spread through Nantes of the dismissal of M. de Saint-Aignan and the appointment of M. Maurice Duval, who was to have arrived the same day but did not do so until the following day, the 20th. Soon the most hostile demonstrations began to be shown. Those who had instruments for making a hurly-burly, such as skillets, rattles, whistles, speaking-trumpets which could be heard a mile off, etc. etc., instinctively laid hands on them; those who had none ran to borrow them from their friends; those, finally, who had neither instruments nor friends, used the oddest means of taking part in the great popular concert which was being prepared; some went through the town in search of bells, unfastened them from the very cows which chance led in their way; others seized little bells from a founder's and, with a stick, carried at each end by two men, set up a walking tocsin. A general levy of cow-horns was made and more than six hundred persons were provided with this instrument, which, as every one knows, needs no preparatory study. A dealer in whistles, who, apart from this event, would never have got rid of his wares, established himself in the square and sold everything he had on his stall!
Between four and five o'clock, a party of musicians assembled; in order to do greater honour to the préfet, they decided to go in front of him; consequently, they threaded their way along the road by which the majesty must arrive. The authorities, who had seen the general enthusiasm and were afraid of stopping it in its first inception, satisfied themselves by sending a staff officer to M. Maurice Duval to warn him of the reception being prepared for him. M. Maurice Duval, profiting by the warning, sent his carriage alone and entered the town incognito. He thus momentarily paid his inconvenient visitors tit for tat. Nevertheless, the report soon spread abroad that the préfet had arrived at the Hôtel de France in the place de la Comédie. The charivariseurs burst into the square, but it was too small to hold them all: the body of musicians alone, like one of those huge tarentula spiders, crammed itself into the square and spread its legs out into all the adjacent streets; it was a racket fit to split the head of a deaf man! Persons whose word could be trusted, who lived two leagues from the town, have since declared upon their honour that they had heard the uproar; it is not surprising: there were probably ten thousand musicians, five thousand more than Nero had, who, as we know, made a great fuss of his music. When the concert was at its height, a man on foot forced himself through the popular flood and made vain efforts to enter the Hôtel de France, the doors of which were shut; he was compelled to mingle among the charivariseurs and to join in the chorus with them: it was M. Maurice Duval. Next day he took possession of the préfecture. The news of his installation at least assured the musicians that their pains had not been lost upon the object for whom they were intended. Consequently, about five o'clock, the orchestra banded itself together on the place de la Préfecture; it was larger and noisier than on the previous night! but, as our French character soon tires of everything, even of a charivari, on the third day a large portion of musicians were missing at the call. The powers then thought they could put an end to the serenade. Between six and seven in the evening, squadrons of gendarmerie and infantry of the line issued out on the square and took possession of the surrounding streets. The performers thought with reason it was time to finish, and retired before the troops, continuing to make a row during their retreat, which bore quite the colour of a victory. Next day, perfect calm was restored, and M. Duval made a speech in which he pleaded that he had been misjudged, saying, among other things, that his works bore witness to his patriotism. Now, as the work upon which he counted the most in order to convert people's minds was the capture of the duchess, he began to contrive measures to prevent her escaping. This leads us naturally to Deutz.
We have said what vigilance surrounded Madame; she herself had even decided it was necessary to become invisible to her friends when it was not indispensable to receive them: this circumstance nearly brought failure upon the treacherous schemes. Deutz knew very well that the duchess was in Nantes, but the whole city was equally well informed of that. The house she lived in was the important thing to know and this Deutz did not know. He succeeded in getting his arrival known to her; but the duchess, fearing at first that this was a snare of the police or that some other man than Deutz might present himself under his name, refused to receive him, at least until he had entrusted his dispatches to a third party. Deutz sent reply that he was going to spend a few days at Paimbeuf, and, on his return, he proposed to do himself the honour, with the hope of being more fortunate, of soliciting Madame afresh for the audience he had asked of her. He did really leave Nantes with his companion, M. Joly, attached to his person as a police constable or guard. Both went to Paimbeuf, one posing as a capitalist anxious to buy land, and the other as a surveyor. The journey lasted upwards of a week or ten days. On his return, Deutz renewed his instances, but without any greater success; he then determined to send to the duchess the important dispatches which he was entrusted to hand to her. On receiving the papers Madame was thoroughly convinced of his identity, and no longer hesitated to receive him. There, on Wednesday, 28 October, at seven in the evening, Deutz was conducted to the house of the ladies Duguigny, where he was introduced without knowing either the street or the place of interview. After an hour and a half's interview he took leave of the duchess, convinced that she left the house the same time as he did and that she had received him at the house of some devoted persons and not at her own. He could not, therefore, either give sufficiently accurate information as to locality, nor swear positively enough in what place they were certain to find the fugitive, for them to risk an attempted arrest which might have no other result than that of putting the duchess on her guard.
Deutz asked for a second interview, pretending that he had been so much agitated in the princess's presence that he had forgotten to communicate things of the highest importance. The duchess and those round her did not think she ought to receive him a second time; not out of distrust of him, but for fear that, being a stranger to Nantes, he might be observed and followed by the police. They therefore replied that they would send for the dispatches which he had for the duchess, but that she refused to receive him personally. So positively expressed a refusal threw all the agents of the superior and inferior police into a state of alarm. They discovered a nun who had, and deserved, Madame's complete confidence; Deutz, under his guise of piety, easily deceived the good sister and persuaded her that he had really most important matters to communicate to the duchess, which he had forgotten through emotion during his first interview with her. The sister, convinced that the demanded audience must be of great concern to Madame, hastened to entreat her to see him. Meanwhile, Deutz and his companions applauded themselves on their happy idea of making piety and trust the accomplices of their treachery. The good nun returned triumphant, bringing the promise for an audience on 6 November. That errand, made with the best intentions, is said to have since cost her many tears!
Deutz rushed to give notice to the police. Nothing could have been easier than for the duchess to leave Nantes: more than a hundred and fifty of her followers, well known and seriously compromised since the taking up of arms, had left France, and not a single one had been arrested. The duchess knew this very well. She often said, "I can leave when I like!" Her friends urged her to leave France, where her presence could be no longer of service to her cause; to persuade her to do so, they represented to her that the chiefs of her party, who were most deeply complicated on her account, were daily exposed, because, attached to her fortunes by their pledges and feelings of honour, they would not leave their country whilst she herself remained in France and incurred dangers. A safe means was proposed by M. Guibourg; a vessel was found and equipped; finally, the duchess consented to fly; she was to take with her M. de Ménars and Petit-Paul (Mademoiselle Eulalie de Kersabiec), This decision was taken on 4 November, and the day of departure was fixed for the 14th.
On 6 November, at four in the afternoon, Deutz was brought to the duchess, but clever agents watched all his proceedings and followed his track. Scarcely had he entered the maison Duguigny before he recognised the locality; it was therefore probable that the duchess lived here. When Deutz was admitted to the princess, he rehearsed to her with much skill and in moving tones a story he had concocted upon the important matters he had forgotten concerning her dear Henri and good Louise; he spoke with enthusiasm of his great admiration for Madame's courage and of his devotion to her noble cause. He was interrupted in the expression of his sentiments by the arrival of a letter which the duchess gave to M. de Ménars. It was written in white ink; M. de Ménars wet it with some prepared water which made the characters become readable, and then handed it to the duchess, who read it aloud before Deutz. The writer recommended Madame not to neglect any precaution; and said they knew she would be betrayed by a person in whom she had entire confidence. Turning towards Deutz, Madame then said--
"You hear, Deutz? they tell me I shall be betrayed by some one in whom I have entire confidence. Will that be you?"
"Oh! Madame," replied Deutz, with that aplomb peculiar to great traitors, "Your Royal Highness cannot imagine such infamy on my part! I, who have given many unmistakable proofs of my fidelity! But certainly too many precautions cannot be taken."
The duchess dismissed Deutz, after an hour's interview, showering tokens of confidence and kindness upon him. He soon flew off to the préfet's house. Whilst passing the dining-room, he had glanced through the half-opened door and counted seven places laid at the table; he knew that the Demoiselles Duguigny lived by themselves in the house: it was therefore evident that the duchess was going to dine there. Deutz told M. Maurice Duval what he had seen, and urged him to hurry so that they might arrive in the middle of dinner, as he was uncertain whether the duchess was stopping in the house.
The préfet, who, since morning, had been planning measures with the military authorities, to whom the state of siege gave ruling power, quickly repaired to Comte d'Erlon, after he had previously entrusted Deutz to the care of a policeman, who was not to leave him whilst they were making sure of the truth of his statement. General Dermoncourt was immediately informed by Comte d'Erlon, and, ten minutes later, all the military preparations were arranged and orders given to the commander of the town, Colonel Simon Lorrière.
Quite a large body of troops was necessary, for two reasons: first, because there might be a revolt among the population; secondly, because they had to surround quite a block of houses. Consequently, nearly twelve hundred men were on foot. They had had orders to be ready since the morning. The two battalions were divided into three columns, commanded by General Dermoncourt, who was accompanied by Comte d'Erlon and the préfet, who directed operations. The first column, headed by the commandant of the fort, went down le Cours, leaving sentinels one by one along the walls of the bishop's garden and the houses contiguous to it, passed along by the château fosses and reached the front of the maison Duguigny, where it deployed. The second and third columns, with General Dermoncourt at their head, crossed the place Saint-Pierre and there divided: one with the general remaining at its head went down the high street, made a turn by the rue des Ursulines and rejoined M. Simon Lorrière's column by the rue Basse-du-Château; the other, after the general left it, went straight down the rue Haute-du-Château and, under the leadership of Colonel Lafeuille of the 56th, and of Commandant Vairés, joined the two first and united with them opposite the maison Duguigny. Thus the investment was complete.
It was about six o'clock in the evening and a beautiful night. Through the windows of the apartment where the duchess was, she could look out on a calm sky and the rising moon and see, cut out clear against the light, like a dark silhouette, the massive, motionless and silent towers of the ancient château. There are moments when nature seems so gentle and friendly that it is impossible to believe a threatening danger lurks in the midst of such calm! The fears awakened by the letter the duchess had received from Paris vanished before this scene, when, suddenly, M. Guibourg, upon going nearer to the window, saw bayonets glitter as the column led by Colonel Simon Lorrière advanced towards the house. Instantly, he flung himself backwards, crying, "Save yourself, Madame, save yourself!" Madame rushed at once to the staircase and every one followed her. The hiding-place had been tried; it was known that it could only hold a certain number, and those of a certain size, and this order was adopted. It could, at a pinch, hold four persons, during the time of an ordinary visit. When they reached it and opened the door in the chimney, M. de Ménars entered, and was followed by M. Guibourg; there remained Mademoiselle Stylite de Kersabiec, who did not want to go in before Madame. The duchess laughingly said to her--
"By the rules of good strategy, Stylite, when a retreat is being made the commander should remain to the last."
Mademoiselle Stylite then went in and the duchess behind her.
The soldiers opened the street door as that of the hiding-place was shut; they invaded the rez-de-chaussée, preceded by inspectors of police from Paris and Nantes, who marched pistols in hand: one of them, in his inexperience of the use of that weapon, fired and wounded his hand. The band spread over the house. The general's duty was to surround it, and he had done it: the duty of the police was to search it, and he let them do it. M. Joly perfectly recognised the interior from the details Deutz had given him. He found the table, which had not yet been sat down to, with its seven covers laid, although the two Demoiselles Duguigny, Madame Charette and Mademoiselle Céleste de Kersabiec were, apparently, the only inhabitants of the room. He began by quietening the minds of these ladies and, going upstairs like a man accustomed to the house, he went straight to the attic, recognized it, and said in a voice loud enough for the duchess to hear--
"This is the audience chamber."
From that moment, Madame had no longer any doubt that the treachery of which the letter from Paris spoke came from Deutz.[1] That letter lay open upon the table; M. Joly took possession of it and thus gained the proof that Madame was in the house; he had but to find her. Sentinels were posted in every room, whilst soldiers closed all means of egress. The people collected in a crowd and formed a second circle round the soldiers. The whole town had come out into the squares and streets, but not a single royalist sign was shown, only grave curiosity; every person felt the importance of the event about to happen.
Search was begun inside the house, furniture was opened when the keys were discovered, broken into when they were missing. Sappers and masons sounded the floors and walls with great blows from axes and hammers. Architects, taken into every room, declared it was impossible, after comparing the internal construction with the external for them to enclose a hiding-place or, indeed, to discover it if they did; in one of the rooms they found various articles, such as prints, jewellery, silver, belonging to the ladies Duguigny, which, at that juncture, added to the certainty of the princess's residence in the house. When the architects reached the attic, whether from ignorance or from generosity on their part, they declared that here, less than any other place, there could not be a secret hiding-place. They then passed on to the neighbouring houses, where the search was continued; after an instant the duchess heard the blows of a hammer being struck at the wall of the room next to her hiding-place; they were hit with such force that pieces of plaster were loosened and fell on the captives and, for a moment, they were afraid that the whole wall would crash down upon them. Madame also heard the abuse and swearing of the tired soldiers enraged at the fruitlessness of their searchings.
"We shall be cut to pieces," she said, "that will be the end of us, my poor children!"
Then, addressing her companions, she said--
"It is for my sake you are in this terrible situation!"
Whilst these things were going on above, the ladies Duguigny had displayed great nerve and, although kept in sight by the soldiers, they had sat down to table, inviting Madame Charette and Mademoiselle Céleste de Kersabiec to do the same. Two other women were even more particularly the objects of surveillance on the part of the police: these were the lady's-maid, Charlotte Moreau, whom Deutz had pointed out as very devoted to the duchess's interests, and the cook, Marie Bossy. The latter was taken to the château and from there to the barracks of the gendarmerie, where, seeing she withstood all threats, they tried bribery: bigger and bigger sums were successively offered her, but she persisted that she did not know where the Duchesse de Berry was. As for Baroness Charette, she was first of all mistaken for one of the Kersabiec ladies, and taken after the dinner with her supposed sister to the latter's house, which is thirty or forty yards higher up the same street.
Well, after fruitless searchings through half the night, they began to slacken their efforts; they thought the duchess had escaped, and two or three other useless descents attempted in other localities seemed to point to the same conclusion. The préfet, therefore, gave the signal for a retreat, leaving a sufficient number of men to occupy every room in the house, out of precaution, whilst police agents established themselves on the ground floor; the surrounding of the house was continued and the National Guard came to relieve half the troops of the line whilst they took a little rest. This distribution of sentinels left two gendarmes in the attic which contained the hiding-place; the hiders were, therefore, obliged to keep motionless, fatiguing as was the position for four persons crowded into a space three and a half feet long by eighteen inches wide at one end and eight to ten inches at the other. The men experienced one more discomfort still, the place was narrower in the highest part, thus leaving them scarcely room to stand upright, even if they put their heads among the rafters; in addition to this, it was a damp night and the fog filtered in through the slates and on the prisoners; but no one dared complain, as the princess did not do so. The cold was so keen that the gendarmes who were in the room could not stand it; one of them went downstairs and came back with some blocks of peat and, ten minutes later, a magnificent fire was blazing in the fireplace against the door behind which the duchess was concealed. This fire, which was only lit for the benefit of two persons, was soon of advantage to six; and, frozen as they were, the prisoners at first congratulated themselves; but the comfort the fire brought soon changed to insufferable discomfort: the door and the wall of the chimney-place, becoming warm, communicated an ever increasing heat to the little retreat; soon the wall was so hot they could not bear to touch it, and the door became red-hot at the same time; furthermore, although it was not yet dawn, the work of the searchers began again; iron bars and planks of wood struck the wall of the hiding-place with redoubled blows till it shook; it seemed to the prisoners as though they were knocking down the maison Duguigny and the neighbouring houses. The duchess had then no other chance of hope; if she withstood the flames, she would be crushed beneath the ruins. Still, her courage and cheerfulness never left her through it all, and several times, as she has since told, she could not keep herself from laughing at the free soldierly conversation of the two guardian gendarmes; one of them made a hint that was more than slight upon the effect produced by camp--beds; the duchess made a mental note of this suggestion, and we shall see with what result. But the conversation soon dragged; one of the gendarmes was asleep, in spite of the fearful din they were making close to him in the next houses; for, for the twentieth time, the search was concentrated round their hiding-place. His companion, warmed for the moment, had ceased attending to the fire and the door and wall grew cold again. M. de Ménars had managed to loosen several slates from the roof and the outer air had freshened the internal atmosphere. All fears turned on the demolishers; they hammered on the wall next the prisoners with great blows and against a cupboard near the fireplace; at each blow the plaster was loosened and fell in dust inside; at last, they thought they were lost, but the workman left that part of the house which, from the instinct of destroyers, they had explored very minutely. The prisoners breathed again and the duchess thought she was saved. But that hope did not last long.
The gendarme who kept watch, seeing the noise had definitely stopped and wishing to take advantage of the moment of silence, shook his comrade so that he could have his turn of sleep. The other had grown cold during his sleep and woke up frozen. He had hardly opened his eyes before he set to work to get himself warm again: consequently, he relit the fire and, as the peat did not burn up fast enough, he used a huge bundle of Quotidienne newspapers which had been thrown under the table in the room to light up the fire, which again sparkled in the fireplace. The fire produced by the papers gave out a thick smoke and a more lively heat than the peat had done the first time. Hence arose now a very real danger to the prisoners. The smoke penetrated through the cracks in the chimney-wall, which had been shaken by the hammerings, and the door, which was not yet cold, was soon as red-hot as a forge. The air of the hiding-place became less and less fit to breathe; those inside were obliged to put their mouths to the cracks between the slates in order to breathe the fresh air in place of the fiery air inside. The duchess suffered the most, for, having been the last to enter, she had to lean against the door. Each of her companions offered repeatedly to change places with her, but she would not consent. Meanwhile, to the danger of being suffocated was added a new one, that of being burned alive. The door, as we have said, was red-hot and the bottom of the ladies' clothing threatened to catch fire. Already, two or three times the fire had caught the duchess's dress and she had put it out with her hands, burning them so that for a long time after she bore the marks of the bums. Every minute the air inside became rarer and the outer air which came through the holes in the roof was too small in quantity to refresh it. The prisoners grew more and more stifled. To remain ten minutes longer in that furnace would be to endanger the duchess's life. Each of them begged her to go out, but she alone did not wish to do so. Great tears of anger rolled down from her eyes and were dried on her eyelids by the hot air. The fire again burnt her dress and again she extinguished it. But the movement she made in getting up lifted the latch of the door and it opened a little way. Mlle. de Kersabiec at once put out her hand to draw it back into its place and burnt herself very severely. The movement of the door had rolled away the turfs leant against it, and had roused the attention of the gendarme, who was relieving his boredom by reading the Quotidienne, and who thought he had built up his pyrotechnic edifice with great firmness. The sound produced by Mlle. de Kersabiec's efforts caused a strange notion to spring into his head: he imagined there were rats in the chimney and, thinking the heat was going to compel them to come out, he awoke his comrade and both put themselves in readiness to give chase to them with their sabres. All this time the heat and smoke were increasing the tortures of the prisoners more and more. The door moved and one of the gendarmes said, "Who is there?" Mlle. Stylite replied--
"We will give ourselves up: we are going to open the door; take away the fire."
The two men sprang to the fire which they at once kicked aside. The duchess came out first; she was obliged to put her feet and hands on the burning hearth; her companions followed her. It has half-past nine in the morning, and for sixteen hours they had been shut up in the hiding-place without any food.
[Footnote 1: Amongst the men in Paris whom King Louis-Philippe believed to be most devoted to him, persons who kept him informed of all that went on at the Tuileries and in the Government, were friends pledged to the duchess; it would, indeed, be very interesting to mention the names of those who had sent this warning to Madame, if the naming of them were not on my part a denunciation.]