Chapter V
First moments after the arrest--Madame's 13,000 francs--What a gendarme can win by sleeping on a camp-bed and making philosophic reflections thereon--The duchess at the Château de Nantes--She is transferred to Blaye--Judas
Madame's first words were to ask for Dermoncourt. One of the gendarmes went downstairs to fetch the general. He quickly came up to the duchess, accompanied by M. Baudot, the deputy to the king's attorney at Nantes, as well as by several officers who were there.
When the general entered, the princess had left the hiding-place and was in the room where she had seen Deutz, which M. Joly had called the audience chamber. She was concealed behind a kind of cupboard to avoid being stared at by the inquisitive persons who came up on purpose to look at her. Hardly had Mlle. de Kersabiec uttered the words, "The General!" than Madame came out and rushed so quickly towards Dermoncourt as nearly to fall into his arms.
"General," she said earnestly, "I give myself up to you and trust myself to your sense of honour."
"Madame," he replied, "Your Highness is under the protection of the honour of France."
He conducted her to a chair; her face was pale, her head bare, her hair was as short on her forehead as a man's: she wore a Neapolitan dress, simply made and of a brown colour, with holes burned in it near the bottom; and her feet were shod in small list slippers. As she sat down, she remarked to Dermoncourt, pressing his arm vigorously--
"General, I have nothing to reproach myself with; I have fulfilled the duty of a mother to reconquer the heritage of her son."
Her voice was curt and emphatic. Hardly was she seated, before she looked round for the other prisoners and, not seeing M. Guibourg, she sent for him; then, turning to Dermoncourt, she said--
"General, I desire not to be separated from my companions in misfortune."
The general promised it in the name of Comte d'Erlon, hoping that the general-in-chief would respect his promise.
Madame seemed very much agitated and, although pale, was as excited as though she were in a fever. The general brought her a glass of water, with which she moistened her lips; its coolness calmed her a little. Dermoncourt suggested she should drink another glassful: she accepted his offer, but it was not an easy matter to obtain a second glass in that house, as everything was turned upside down. At last they brought one, but the duchess would have had to drink it without sugar if Dermoncourt had not caught sight of M. de Ménars in a corner. Luckily, he bethought him that he was a likely man to carry sugar about with him. He asked him, so sure he was that he would have some and, indeed, after feeling about in his pockets, M. de Ménars found two lumps, which he offered to the general. The duchess melted them in the water, stirring them with a paper-knife, for it would have taken too much time to find a spoon, and it was quite useless to think of trying to do so. When the princess had drunk, she made Dermoncourt sit down by her.
Meantime, Rusconi and the general's aide-de-camp had gone to Comte d'Erlon and M. Maurice Duval to tell them what had happened. M. Maurice Duval arrived first. He entered the room with his hat on his head as though there was not a woman prisoner there who, by her rank and misfortunes, deserved more respect than had ever been paid to himself. He went up to the duchess, looked at her, whilst he cavalierly put up his hand to his hat and scarcely raising it from his head, he said--
"Ah! Yes it is indeed she!"
Then out he went to give his orders.
"Who is that man?" the princess asked the general.
Her question was natural enough, for the préfet came on the scenes without any of the distinguishing marks of his high administrative position.
"Does Madame not guess?" replied Dermoncourt.
The princess looked at the general with a slight smile.
"Can it be the préfet," she said.
"Madame could not have guessed more correctly had she seen his licence."
"Did the man serve under the Restoration?"
"No, Madame."
"I am glad indeed to hear, it, for the sake of the Restoration."
At this moment, M. Maurice Duval re-entered and asked for the duchess's papers. Madame told him to look for them in the hiding-place; they were in a white portfolio which had been left there. The préfet fetched it and brought it to the duchess.
"Monsieur le préfet," she added with dignity, "the matters enclosed in this portfolio are of little importance; but I desire to give them to you myself, so that I can tell you their intended destination." Whereupon she opened it.
"See," she said, "this is my correspondence.... This," she added, drawing out a little painted figure, is a Saint-Clément, to which I am particularly devoted, and now so more than ever."
"Does Madame know how much money she has?"
"There ought to be in the hiding-place about 30,000 francs, monsieur, of which 12,000 belong to persons of my suite."
As the préfet wanted to verify the sum, one of the two gendarmes brought him a bag, in which were nearly 13,000 francs in gold, one-half in Spanish money, which, in the confusion, he had taken the precaution of putting on one side.
"How did the bag get into your hands?" the préfet asked the gendarme.
"Madame gave it to me, saying it was for me."
"What! Madame gave it you and said it was for you?"
"Yes."
"How did she come to make you such a present?"
"She asked which of the two gendarmes had slept on the camp-bed from midnight to four in the morning. I said it was I: then she turned to my companion and asked if it was so? and he replied that it was. Then she held out the bag to me and told me to take it."
"It was a joke," said the préfet.
"I think so too," said the poor gendarme, casting a last glance on the heap of gold; "so you see I brought it to you."
The préfet put the 13,000 francs to the other 17,000 and took it all away to the préfecture.
When, a year later, I wrote La Vendée et Madame, and the Duchesse de Berry heard that the 13,000 francs had been taken from her protégé, she wrote to the general to inform him that, by the same post, she was writing to the Government to call upon it to render up the 13,000 francs to its rightful owner. The gendarme was then at Limoges. They sent him the 13,000 francs, but they expelled him from the army.
Hardly was the visit about the money and the papers over before the Comte d'Erlon arrived, and he exercised towards Madame all that courteousness of a man of the world which the préfet had thought it unnecessary to employ. The duchess leant towards the general--
"You have promised not to leave me," she said to him in a whisper.
"I will keep my word to Your Highness," replied the general.
The duchess then rose quickly and went up to the Comte d'Erlon, saying--
"Monsieur le Comte, I have given myself up to General Dermoncourt; I pray you to allow him to remain with me. I have also asked him not to let me be separated from my unfortunate companions, and he also promised me that; will you respect his promises?"
"The general has promised nothing that I am not ready to grant, Madame; and you will ask nothing of me which it is in my power to grant that I will not concede with all possible haste."
The duchess was reassured by these words and, seeing that Comte d'Erlon was talking apart with the general in low tones, she drew aside from them and discreetly talked to M. de Ménars and to Mlle, de Kersabiec. Comte d'Erlon then observed to the general that M. de Ménars and Mlle, de Kersabiec might stay with the Duchesse de Berry; but that he was under the conviction that M. Guibourg would be claimed by the judicial authorities to be replaced in the position he occupied before his escape, as a criminal trial was started against him. He thought the duchess ought to be taken to the château as soon as possible; he had even given all the necessary orders for that removal before he came to the duchess. Dermoncourt then returned to Madame and asked her if she felt better.
"Better? Why do you ask me that?"
"Because, if Madame can walk or is not afraid of driving, it is urgent we should leave the house at once."
"Leave the house? Where are we to go?" she asked, looking sharply at the general: "Where are you going to take me?"
"To the château, Madame."
"Oh yes! and from there to Blaye, no doubt!"
Mlle. de Kersabiec went up to the general, and said--
"General, Her Royal Highness cannot go on foot, it is not suitable."
"Mademoiselle," replied Dermoncourt, "allow me to differ from you. If there are any insults to encounter, which I doubt, a carriage will not protect Madame from such insult; but I will answer for it that my arm will at least be a safe shield against anything of the sort."
Then, turning to the duchess--
"Believe me, Madame, let us walk. As the distance is short, you need only put a hat on your head and fling a cloak round your shoulders and all will be right."
Then Rusconi rushed downstairs and brought up three hats, which probably belonged to the ladies Duguigny. Amongst them was a black one. Dermoncourt suggested that the duchess should wear that.
"Yes," she said, "it would be more fitting under the circumstances."
She then took the general's arm and, addressing her companions, she said--
"Come, friends, let us go!"
As she passed through the attic, she threw a last look at it and at the door in the chimney-place which was still open.
"Oh! general," she said, laughingly, "if you had not made war against me after the fashion used against St. Laurence--which, by the way, is unworthy of military generosity--you would not have me upon your arm now."
When they left the house, M. Guibourg headed the procession with a legal magistrate and another public functionary; then came Mlle. de Kersabiec with the préfet and Comte d'Erlon; General Dermoncourt followed them immediately with the duchess and M. de Ménars, and behind them came several staff officers. When they reached the street the préfet suggested that the colonel of the National Guard should offer his arm to the duchess. She consented quite graciously. The troops of the line and National Guards formed a hedge from the house of the Demoiselles Duguigny as far as the château, and, behind them, as much as space permitted, in lines ten times thicker than that of the soldiers, the population crowded round. Among the men watching the duchess pass by were some with eyes blazing with hatred from old memories; so muffled murmurs rolled along the route and soon even shouts rent the air, but General Dermoncourt stopped and, flashing his dark eyes around, growled rather than spoke the words--
"Come now, where is the respect due to prisoners, specially when they are women?"
They were silent. All the same it was a good thing there was only sixty yards between the house of the ladies Duguigny and the château, and, indeed, that distance would have been too long without the respectful attentions with which the generals had surrounded the duchess. Their deference commanded the silence of the multitude that had been buffeted about by the civil war which for six months had been muttering round the vicinity of Nantes, ruining its trade and mowing down its inhabitants. Finally, the château was reached, the drawbridge crossed and the gate shut upon the procession. Madame had shown no sign of fear during the journey beyond pressing the general's arm more tightly. After crossing the court of the château, they went up the stairs, but the duchess was so weak from all the emotion she had just gone through that Dermoncourt felt her bend over and press his arm with all her weight. At last she reached the room intended for her, which the colonel of artillery, the governor of the castle, hastened to offer her. There, feeling better, she told the general she could eat something. As a matter of fact, having been disturbed just as she was going to sit down to the table, she had not eaten anything for nearly thirty hours. As no orders had been given for breakfast, and it would have kept her too long till it was prepared, the colonel suggested to Madame a glass of frontignan and some biscuits, which she accepted. But Madame ate very little then on account of a tertian fever which had attacked her regularly during the last two or three weeks. Breakfast was not ready for three-quarters of an hour; when it was announced, General Dermoncourt offered his arm to the duchess to take her to the dining-room. As she sat at the table, she turned smilingly to her cavalier.
"General," she said, "if I were not afraid it would be said that I was trying to beguile you I would suggest you should share my repast."
"And I, Madame," replied the general, "if I dared, would willingly accept, for I have not had anything since eleven yesterday morning."
"Oh, oh! general," said the duchess laughing, "then we are quits."
The préfet came in whilst they were at table. He, too, was as hungry as Madame and Dermoncourt, but the duchess took good care not to invite M. Maurice Duval to sit down with her. The préfet soon went away straight to a sideboard where they had just brought the partridges cleared away from the duchess's table, called for a knife and fork and began to eat, turning his back on the princess. Madame looked at him, then turned her eyes to the general--
"General," she said, "do you know what I regret most in my present situation?"
"No, Madame."
"Two sheriffs to call that gentleman to account."
When breakfast was finished, the duchess returned to the salon. There, General Dermoncourt asked her permission to leave her. General d'Erlon was holding a review of the National Guard and of the troops of the line in which he was obliged to take part.
"When shall I see you again?" asked the princess.
"As soon as the review is over, Madame," replied the general, "and I presume it will not be long."
Scarcely had Dermoncourt got thirty yards outside the bâteau, before a trumpeter of the gendarmerie caught him up, out of breath, saying that the duchess was asking for him instantly. He added that she seemed furious with the general. Interrogated as to the cause of this anger, the soldier replied that after some words addressed by Madame to Mlle. de Kersabiec, he attributed it to M. de Ménars having been sent to another building instead of being placed in her anteroom. Fearing, indeed, that they had not treated M. de Ménars with the respect he had ordered, the general returned at once and went to him, finding him so unwell that he had flung himself on his bed without the strength to undress himself. The general offered to be his valet, but as there were neither tables nor chairs in his room and he could not stand it was not an easy office to perform; the general therefore called a gendarme to his assistance and, between them, they managed to put M. de Ménars to bed. When he was in bed, the general told him that the duchess had had him called back and that he would, no doubt, have a scene with Madame over his separation from her. M. de Ménars then charged Dermoncourt to reassure Madame about his condition and to tell her that he only felt a passing faintness and that he was well satisfied with his quarters. The general immediately repaired to the duchess, who, when she saw him, leapt rather than walked to him.
"Ah! monsieur," she exclaimed, in a voice trembling with anger, "so this is how you have begun--this is how you keep your promises--it augurs well for the future. It is indeed horrible!"
"What is the matter, Madame?" asked the general.
"You promised me I should not be separated from any of my companions, and at the very outset you put Ménars in another part of the building from mine."
"Madame is mistaken," replied Dermoncourt. "M. de Ménars, it is true, is in another part of the castle, but the tower Madame occupies leads to his rooms."
"Yes, only one has to go downstairs and up again by another staircase."
"Madame is again mistaken," replied the general. "You can get to M. de Ménars by going down to the first floor and along by the apartments."
"If that is so, let us go, monsieur, and see poor Ménars at once," said the duchess.
Whereupon, she took the general's arm and drew him towards the door.
"Has Madame forgotten that she is a prisoner?" he asked her.
"Ah! true," murmured the duchess; "I thought I was still in a castle, and I am in a prison. At least, general, I hope it will not be forbidden me to send and inquire how he is?"
"I wished to bring you news myself," said the general, "I have come from him."
"Well, how is he?"
The general then told the duchess the care he had taken of M. de Ménars. Such marks of attention, she well understood, had been paid more to her than to M. de Ménars, and they touched her keenly.
"General," she said, in tones which showed that her anger had evaporated, "I thank you for all your kindness to Ménars; but he indeed thoroughly deserves it, for he is not an adherent of my train."
It was too late to go to the review, so the general remained with Madame, who expressed a desire to write to her brother, the King of Naples and to her sister, the Queen of Spain.
"I have only to acquaint them with my ill luck," she said. "I am afraid they will be uneasy concerning my health and false rumours may reach them because of the distance that separates us from one another. By the way," she added, "what do you think of the political conduct of my sister, the Queen of Spain?"
"Why, Madame," Dermoncourt replied, "I think she is following the right course."
"So much the better, general," she went on, sighing, "provided she attains to good in the end! Louis XVI. began as she began."
The duchess then noticed that Dermoncourt had a black scarf in which at times he put his arm.
"How is your arm going on, general?" she asked.
"Very well; but how did Madame know about it!"
"Ah! I heard at Nantes; they told me it was one of my horses which threw you. I said, 'Oh! it was a good act on the horse's part,' for I confess I was not sorry for the accident: you have done us much harm! I hope, however, it was not very serious."
"You see, Madame," replied Dermoncourt, "your wish was granted in advance. I am almost cured."
"Tell me, General," asked the duchess, "shall I be allowed to see the newspapers?"
"I do not see any objections. Will Madame tell me those she would like?"
"Well, l'Echo first, then La Quotidienne, and lastly, Le Constitutionnel."
"Le Constitutionnel for you, Madame?"
"Why not?"
"Will you be prepared to abjure your politics as Henri IV. did his religion and to say: 'Paris indeed deserves a charter?'"
"Do you think that reading the venerable Constitutionnel can convert me?"
"Certainly! It is a paper packed with arguments and eloquent with conviction!..."
"Never mind, I will venture: I should also like Le Courrier français."
"Le Courrier! but Madame forgets it has become ultra-Liberal."
"Listen, general: I like everything that is broad and loyal; I also want l'Ami de la Charte."
"Come now, that is Jacobin!"
"I want it from another motive, general," she said to Dermoncourt, in a melancholy tone; "it always calls me Caroline, curtly, and that was what I was called as a young girl; now I regret my girlhood's name, for that of my wifehood has not brought me happiness."
There was a moment's silence, then the duchess asked Dermoncourt if he knew her before the events of July.
"No, Madame," he replied.
"But did you, then, never come to Paris?"
"Pardon, Madame," replied Dermoncourt; "I was there twice during the Restoration."
"What! general, you came twice to Paris and never saw me?"
"For a good reason," Dernoncourt replied.
"Tell me what it was."
"When I saw Madame coming from one direction I took myself off in another as quickly as possible."
"It was not very gallant of you, monsieur; why did you act like that?"
"Why, Madame? I beg you to forgive my frankness, which is, I admit, somewhat blunt; but it was because I did not like the Restoration. It can be imagined after this, Madame, that if I have been fortunate enough to do something to give you pleasure, at all events, I have done so without any ulterior motive, and all the more as Your Highness is not in a position to be able to offer me any reward."
The duchess smiled; then, turning towards Mademoiselle de Kersabiec, she said--
"Isn't he a good fellow, Stylite?"
"Yes, Madame; it is a pity he is not on our side." Whereupon, Dermoncourt hastened to reply--
"All that Madame has the right to demand in the way of respect, attention, consideration and care in the overpowering position in which she finds herself placed, she will obtain from me; all the services she can ask and I can grant her, I will; but nothing in the world is capable of making me forget my duty."
Then, turning to Mlle. de Kersabiec--
"You have heard what I say, Mlle. Stylite," said he, "I hope that, whilst I have the honour of being with Madame, you will be so good as never to return to this subject."
"You hear him, Stylite," said Madame--"let us talk of something else."
Then, in a different intonation of voice, she said--
"Have you seen my son, general?"
"I have never had that honour."
"Ah! He is a good lad, very quick, very heedless, but French through and through, like myself."
"You love him greatly?"
"As much as a mother can love her son."
"Well, will Madame permit me to say that I do not understand how, since all is at an end in la Vendée--as, after the battles of Chêne and of la Pénissière, all hope was lost--she did not think of returning to the side of the son she loves so much: we have beaten her, however." "General, it was you who seized my correspondence, I think?"
"Yes, Madame."
"Have you read my letters?"
"I have committed that indiscretion."
"Well, then, you must have seen that, directly I put myself at the head of my brave Vendéens, I resolved to submit to all the consequences of insurrection.... Why! it was for me they rose up and risked their heads, and should I have deserted them?... No, general, their fate shall be mine and I have kept my promise to them. But I should have been your prisoner a long time before; I should have put an end to it all by giving myself up, if one fear had not pursued me."
"Which was?"
"I was well aware that, directly after I was made a prisoner, I should be claimed by Spain, Prussia and Russia. The French Government, on its side, would wish to try me, naturally enough; but, as the Holy Alliance would not permit me to appear before a Court of Assizes--for the dignity of all the crowned heads of Europe is concerned in it--there is but one step from this conflict of interests to a coolness, and from a coolness to war; and, as I have already told you, I do not wish to be the excuse for an invasive war. All for France and by France was the motto I adopted and from which I do not wish to depart. Besides, who could satisfy me that, were France invaded, it would not be divided? I desire it to remain whole!"
Dermoncourt smiled.
"Why do you laugh?" she said to him.
He bowed without replying.
"Come, I want to know why you are laughing?"
"I am laughing at Your Highness's fears of a foreign war...."
"And at my small fear of a civil war, also?"
"I beg Madame to remark that she completes my thought and not my sentence."
"Oh! that cannot wound me, general; for, since I came into France, I have been mistaken about the disposition of people's minds; I thought that France would rise; that the army would pass over to my side; the more so in that I was invited to return to France more by my enemies than by my friends. Then, too, I dreamed of a sort of return from the Isle of Elba. After the battles of Maisdon, of la Caraterie, of Chêne, of la Pénissière and of Riaillé, I gave positive orders to all my Vendéens to return home; for I am French before all other considerations, general, and, to prove this, at this present moment, when I find myself once again among these excellent French faces, I cannot believe myself to be in prison. All my fear is lest I am sent elsewhere; they are certain not to leave me here; I am too near the seat of insurrection. They have, indeed, talked of transferring me to Saumur; but that is still a riotous town. As a matter of fact, general, they are in a more embarrassing position than I am myself!"
As she spoke the last words, she rose and walked about with her hands behind her back like a man. After a second, she stopped short and went on--
"If I am in prison, I hope, at least, that I am not in solitary confinement and that M. Guibourg may dine with me?"
"I do not see any objection, Madame, the more so as I think it is the last time he will have that honour."
Whether she did not hear these words, or paid no heed to them, the duchess did not reply to Dermoncourt; and, as it was night, and the dinner-hour was approaching, he asked the princess's leave to withdraw, and obtained his orders for the next day at the same time. At ten o'clock next day, the artillery colonel in command of the château came to Dermoncourt's rooms; he came to announce a fresh burst of anger from the duchess. She had almost as much cause for it as on the previous day. M. Guibourg--as the Comte d'Erlon had warned the duchess--had been put back into prison during the night; so, when the duchess asked why he did not come to breakfast, they told her the news, for which a sentence dropped by Dermoncourt the previous day would have prepared her if she had listened to it. The duchess had cried out against the treachery and had called the general a Jesuit. That insult was so odd from Madame's lips that Dermoncourt was still laughing at it when he came to her. She received him with the same petulance as on the previous day and almost with the same words.
"Ah! So this is how things are going, monsieur? I should never have believed it; you have deceived me shamefully!"
The general feigned astonishment as before, and asked her what was the matter.
"Guibourg has been carried off in the night and taken to prison in spite of the promise you made me that I should not be separated from my companions in misfortune."
"I should desire to fulfil all Madame's wishes, but it does not depend upon either me or Comte d'Erlon to prevent the law from claiming M. Guibourg. He had been summoned before his arrest: the Court of Assizes at Loir-et-Cher was served with the writ, and M. Guibourg was to be transferred to Blois to be tried there. No legal power could get him off. As regards Mlle. de Kersabiec and M. de Ménars, who are not under prosecution, they remain with Your Royal Highness; thus you see, Madame, that Comte d'Erlon and I have not failed to keep the promise we gave you."
"But, at any rate, why was I not warned?"
"Here again, Madame, I have nothing to reproach myself with, since, when allowing M. Guibourg to dine with you yesterday, I added the words--'All the more as it will probably be the last meal he will have the honour of taking with Madame.'"
"I never heard that."
"The general said it though, Madame," gently interrupted Mlle. de Kersabiec.
"But why not, explain more clearly?"
"Because," replied Dermoncourt, "Madame had gone through so many shocks during the day that I wished to let her have a good night at all events, and I knew she would not sleep if she had been informed that, during her sleep, they would transfer M. Guibourg to prison."
"Why did you not say something, Stylite, since you heard the general's words?"
"Because of the same reason as the general's, Madame." The duchess quietened down and seemed even to be pleased with the tactfulness Dermoncourt had exercised under the circumstances. Upon the observation he next made to her, that he had noticed she was still wearing the same dress as on the day before in which were the holes caused by the burns, and the same stockings, she replied--
"The few things I have are at the house of the Demoiselles Duguigny; besides, my dear general, during the life I have led for six months past I have scarcely troubled myself about my wardrobe, that is why I have nothing. Will you be so good as to go to the ladies and bring me back what is there?"
"I am at Madame's commands."
The duchess wrote a note and handed it to the general. One of the deputy-king's solicitors, who happened to be present, who had sealed up the room which the princess had occupied, as well as the room containing the hiding-place, was told by the general to go to the premises and bring back the articles mentioned in the note.
"We consequently betook ourselves," says Dermoncourt, "to the maison Duguigny, where we found very few things, as the duchess had told us. Among the articles mentioned in the note, there should have been a box full of bonbons; we found the box but it was empty. On returning from my errand to the duchess, I gave an account of it and pointed out that I had indeed found the box, but that the bonbons had disappeared."
"Oh!" said Madame, "the bonbons? That is not surprising, they were eaten."
"What sort does Madame prefer? I will have the privilege of obtaining them for her."
"If the bonbons have been eaten, I will accept the offer. I prefer sticks of chocolate with sweetmeats on top."
"Then Madame will allow me?"
"Certainly."
The general called his secretary, Rusconi, and transmitted the duchess's wishes to him. Half an hour later, Madame had a basketful of bonbons. Dinner was announced at half-past six, and Dermoncourt took leave of the duchess.
"Good-bye till to-morrow, general," she said with quite childish gaiety, "and be sure do not forget to bring more bonbons."
The general went away. At nine o'clock Comte d'Erlon took the trouble to go to Dermoncourt's house himself to tell him that it was believed for certain that M. de Bourmont was at la Chaslière.
"If that be so, general," replied Dermoncourt, "I will take fifty horse with me and, to-morrow morning, M. de Bourmont shall be here."
He set off at eleven o'clock. At midnight they waked the duchess, Mlle. Stylite de Kersabiec and M. de Ménars; they got into a carriage, which drove them to the fosse, where a steamer waited for them, containing MM. Polo, deputy-mayor of Nantes; Robineau de Bourgon, colonel of the National Guard; Rocher, artillery standard-bearer of the same corps; Chousserie, colonel of the gendarmerie; Ferdinand Petit-Pierre, adjutant of the fort of Nantes; and Joly, commissioner of the Paris police, who was to conduct the duchess to Blaye. Madame was accompanied on her way to the steamer by Comte d'Erlon, M. Ferdinand Favre, mayor of Nantes and by M. Maurice Duval, préfet. On stepping from the carriage, she looked round for Dermoncourt and, not seeing him, she asked where he was. They told her he was away on military business.
"Humph! See," she said, "one more pretty trick!"
The general in command of the division, the préfet and the mayor of Nantes were to accompany the duchess as far as Saint-Nazaire, and only to leave her after she had embarked on the brig La Capricieuse. As she stepped on board, Madame inquired if M. Guibourg was to follow her; the préfet replied that it was impossible. Then she asked him for pen and ink and wrote the following note:--
"I have entreated for my old prisoner and they are going to write about it. God helping us, we shall see each other again. Greetings to all our friends. God keep them! Have courage, and put your trust in Him. Saint-Anne is the patron saint of we Bretons."
This note was entrusted to M. Ferdinand Favre, who religiously sent it to its destination. The boat started at four o'clock and glided silently past the sleeping town; by eight they were on board La Capricieuse.
Madame remained at anchor in the roadstead for two days, the wind being contrary. At last, at seven a.m. on the 11th, La Capricieuse unfurled her sails and, towed by the steamer, which did not leave her until she was three leagues out at sea, she majestically vanished into the distance: four hours later, she had disappeared behind the headland of Pornic.
As for Dermoncourt, he returned to Nantes on the 9th at eight a.m., not having found any one at the château de la Chaslière, as may very well be supposed.
Meantime, M. de Bourmont was quietly in the country near Condé (Maine-et-Loire), where he had gone the very day of the duchess's departure for Blaye. He had left Nantes at six p.m., never suspecting that the superior police authorities would have the incivility of preventing him from visiting his estates and putting his affairs in order. From there, he returned to Lyons by Angers, where he was very warmly welcomed into a Legitimist household, which offered him so safe a retreat that he decided to prolong his stay there. The ladies of the house were very devoted and very inquisitive, having been told he was one of the leaders of the Legitimist party, but they did not know he was M. de Bourmont. They were very much puzzled to find out who this reserved and cautious personage might be, and exhausted themselves in conjectures. Finally, whether M. de Bourmont's dress gave them the notion or whether their imagination ran away with them, they ended by persuading themselves that he was an ecclesiastic; and, unknown to him, to do him a pretty kindness, they put up in one of the rooms of the house an altar adorned as best they could, and procured the necessary vessels and ornaments. Next morning they came and told him with a satisfaction which they expected he would share, that all was prepared for him to say mass in the house.
M. de Bourmont listened with great seriousness to this proposition, which he made up for afterwards; but, not wishing to destroy an error in the ladies' minds so favourable to the incognito he wished to keep, he excused himself to them by saying he was in the habit, when travelling, of taking a tablet of chocolate in the morning, and had already taken his daily portion; he could not, therefore, present himself before the altar. The good ladies were convinced, and their veneration was increased for a man who displayed such scrupulousness. However, M. de Bourmont reflected that the altar was prepared, that they would think it very strange if he did not use it, and that he would be exposed to fresh importunities; so he sent for the master of the house and announced he was going away immediately. His host was astounded at this quick resolution; but M. de Bourmont put his mind at rest by saying--
"Your ladies wished to make me say mass this morning; if I remain, they will, perhaps, make me sing vespers in the afternoon. That is why I am going."
He at once took the coach, not for the purpose of going abroad, but to stay a few days in Paris. Finally, he left for Geneva and, whilst he was safely travelling from Lyons to Paris and from Paris to Geneva, the superior police sought for him in la Vendée: whether from stupidity or intention, they looked everywhere but where he was. In the pamphlet Deutz published, he boasts that it was on the advice which he gave to M. Maurice Duval that M. de Bourmont was not disturbed. He had sold Madame but preserved M. de Bourmont!... But Deutz was terribly punished: Hugo inflicted the following verses on him: A l'homme qui a livré une femme!
"A L'HOMME QUI A LIVRÉ UNE FEMME
O honte! ce n'est pas seulement cette femme, Sacrée alors pour tous, faible cœur, mais grande âme, Mais c'est lui, c'est son nom dans l'avenir maudit, Ce sont les cheveux blancs de son père interdit; C'est la pudeur publique en face regardée, Tandis qu'il s'accouplait à son infâme idée; C'est l'honneur, c'est la foi, la pitié, le serment, Voilà ce que ce juif a vendu lâchement!
Juif! les impurs traitants à qui l'on vend son âme Attendront bien longtemps avant qu'un plus infâme Vienne réclamer d'eux, dans quelque jour d'effroi, Le fond du sac plein d'or qu'on fit vomir sur toi!
Ce n'est pas même un juif! c'est un païen immonde, Un renégat, l'opprobre et le rebut du monde, Un fétide apostat, un oblique étranger, Qui nous donne du moins le bonheur de songer Qu'après tant de revers et de guerres civiles, Il n'est pas un bandit écumé dans nos villes, Pas un forçat hideux, blanchi dans les prisons, Qui veuille mordre en France au pain des trahisons.
Rien ne te disait donc dans l'âme, ô misérable! Que la proscription est toujours vénérable; Qu'on ne bat pas le sein qui nous donna son lait; Qu'une fille des rois dont on fut le valet Ne se met point en vente au fond d'un autre infâme, Et que, n'étant plus reine, elle était encor femme?
Rentre dans l'ombre où sont tous les monstres flétris Qui, depuis quarante ans, bavent sur nos débris! Rentre dans ce cloaque! et que jamais ta tête, Dans un jour de malheur ou dans un jour de fête, Ne songe à reparaître au soleil des vivants! Qu'ainsi qu'une fumée abandonnée aux vents, Infecte et dont chacun se détourne au passage, Ta vie erre au hasard de rivage en rivage.
Eh! tais-toi, que veux-tu balbutier encor? Dis, n'as-tu pas vendu l'honneur, le vrai trésor? Garde tous les soufflets entassés sur ta joue ... Que fait l'excuse au crime et le fard sur la boue?
Sans qu'un ami t'abrite à l'ombre de son toit, Marche, autre juif errant, marche avec l'or qu'on voit Luire à travers les doigts de tes mains mal fermées! Tous les biens de ce monde en grappes parfumées Pendent sur ton chemin, car le riche ici-bas A tout, hormis l'honneur, qui ne s'achète pas!
Hâte-toi de jouir, maudit! et sans relâche Marche! et qu'en te voyant on dise: 'C'est ce lâche!...' Marche! et que le remords soit ton seul compagnon!... Marche sans rien pouvoir arracher de ton nom! Car le mépris public, ombre de la bassesse. Croit d'année en année et repousse sans cesse; Et va s'épaississant sur les traîtres pervers Comme la feuille au front des sapins toujours verts!
Et quand la tombe, un jour,--cette embûche profonde, Qui s'ouvre tout à coup sur les choses du monde,-- Te fera, d'épouvante et d'horreur agité, Passer de cette vie à la réalité, La réalité sombre, éternelle, immobile! Quand, d'instant en instant plus seul et plus débile, Tu te cramponneras en vain à ton trésor; Quand la mort, t'accostant, couché sur des tas d'or. Videra, brusquement ta main crispée et pleine, Comme une main d'enfant qu'un homme ouvre sans peine; Alors, dans cet abîme où tout traître descend, L'un roulé dans la fange, et l'autre teint de sang. Tu tomberas, perdu sur la fatale grève Que Dante Alighieri vit avec l'œil du rêve! Tu tomberas damné, désespéré, banni! Afin que ton forfait ne soil pas impuni, Et que ton âme, errante au milieu de ces âmes, Y soit la plus abjecte entre les plus infâmes! Et, lorsqu'ils te verront paraître au milieu d'eux. Ces fourbes dont l'histoire inscrit les noms hideux, Que l'or tenta jadis, mais à qui, d'âge en âge. Chaque peuple, en passant, vient cracher au visage, Tous ceux, les plus obscurs comme les plus fameux. Qui portent sur leur lèvre un baiser venimeux; Judas, qui vend son Dieu; Leclerc, qui vend sa ville. Groupe au louche regard, engeance ingrate et vile, Tous, en foule, accourront joyeux sur ton chemin. Et Louvel, indigné, repoussera ta main!"
The poet's malediction pursued the guilty man. Thanks to the enormous sum he had received, which he has always denied, saying he betrayed his benefactress to obey a patriotic feeling which urged him to rid his country from civil war; thanks, we say, to this enormous sum, he found a wife ... a woman who consented to couple herself to such a man! But this was not all; he must also find a mayoralty. Deutz put up successively for the twelve mayoralties of Paris; now, as he had not been resident for the six months which the law exacted, they were closed to him, and glad to have an excuse for forbidding him to put his foot on their threshold. Then he went outside its borders and presented himself to M. de Frémicourt, mayor of la Villette. By what subterfuge did he discover that magistrate's religion? By what forgery did Deutz fabricate a certificate of residence for over six months in the house of M. Pierre Delacour, No. 41 rue de Flandre? What portion of his shameful gold did he have to part with to get that certificate? We do not know. We only know he was married at la Villette by M. de Frémicourt. Now, see what happened. Two years later, M. de Frémicourt and M. Gisquet both put up as deputies for the arrondissement of Saint-Denis. M. Gisquet, the Government candidate, begged M. de Frémicourt to leave the Saint-Denis arrondissement to him, where he was sure of election, and to become the candidate for Cambrai, where M. de Frémicourt's election would be as certain as his would be at Saint-Denis. M. de Frémicourt gave way to the entreaties of the préfet de police and put up for Cambrai in opposition to M. Taillandier. He was about to overcome his opponent when M. Taillandier learnt that he was the M. de Frémicourt who had married Deutz. M. Taillandier left instantly for la Villette, brought away the civil act announcing the fact of the marriage of Deutz, presented himself before M. Pierre Delacour, obtained from him and from the tenants of house No. 41, in the rue de Flandre, a certificate stating that Deutz had never lived in that house, and, fortified by the act and the certificate, he overthrew his opponent, who, although he had been ignorant of the fraud, was hooted out upon the single accusation, "M. de Frémicourt is the mayor who married Deutz!" There was, we see, still some generous feelings left in France. Now what became of Deutz? Did he die in poverty, as some say? Did he go to the United States, as say others? We do not know what to say. All the biographers leave Deutz alone after his crime, as if such a Judas must be left to God to be dealt with! God preserve all honest men from coming in contact with him, if he be living! and if he be dead, from passing over his grave!
Chapter I
Le Roi s'amuse--Criticism and censorship
Whilst M. Thiers's police were arresting Madame la duchesse de Berry at Nantes, the censorship was stopping the drama of Le Roi s'amuse at Paris. The performance had taken place on 22 November. I cannot give an account of it, for I was not present; a slight coolness had crept into my relations with Hugo; friends in common had nearly set us at variance. The day after the performance the play was cruelly forbidden, and the author had to appeal from that decision before the Tribunal de Commerce. Under any other circumstances, the Opposition newspapers would have sided with Victor Hugo; they would have cried out against this oppression and tyranny. But not here! the hatred they bore towards the romantic school was so great, that they vied with one another, not so much to put the Government in the right, as to who should put the author most in the wrong.
Listen to what criticism said of the work of one of the most eminent poets who had ever lived. We will follow it in its own words and treat it fairly. We do not know who wrote the article we have in our hands: it is unsigned; only, it is a specimen of what was done then, has been done since and will probably always be perpetrated in criticism. A shameful specimen! But let us judge for ourselves.
"THÉÂTRE-FRANÇAIS
Le Roi s'amuse.'
A poetical drama in five acts by M. VICTOR HUGO.
"Criticism attempted after Hernani and specially after Marion Delorme, to make M. Victor Hugo listen to two pieces of wholesome truth politely expressed, as is due to a man of great and genuine talent; the first is that the efforts of M. Victor Hugo revealed absolute impotence and sterility of conception; the second, that M. Victor Hugo adopted a pernicious system which, instead of conducing to originality, drove him to the trivial and absurd. ..."
Certainly it is impossible to be more polite. The natural consequence of this advice ought to have been to make Hugo return to his odes and romances. Luckily, M. Hugo believed himself to be as strong as those who told him these wholesome truths, and he has continued in spite of criticism. To this disastrous pig-headedness of the poet we owe Lucrèce Borgia, Marie Tudor, Ruy Blas, Angelo and Les Burgraves.
"M. Hugo has taken no notice of these truths: he has persisted in writing dramas, and, far from modifying his system, he has exceeded it in a monstrous fashion. In his first dramas, he still preserved some principle of truth and of beauty, some feeling of morality and decency, even amidst his eccentricities. In Le Roi s'amuse, he rids himself of everything and tramples history, right, morality, the dignity of art, delicacy, under his feet. There is progress ..."
Still under cover of the same virtue of politeness, let us follow the critic--
"In the first place, the subject of the drama is not historic, although historical characters figure in it. We will pass that over, for, as time flies, it is a peccadillo. But at least a conscientious author in assigning a rôle to his historical personages in a fictitious case or rather action should so apply it as not to calumniate them; the realistic school is bolder and has few scruples. You shall see how M. Hugo treats King François I., the court of that prince, and the poet Clément Marot on the stage of the Comédie-Française...."
Ah! monsieur critic, it well becomes you to defend ill-treated poets! You who have treated M. Hugo so finely! It is true that, in your eyes, M. Hugo is not a poet of the same calibre as Clément Marot. Turn your glasses back, monsieur critic, and take the measure of the author of the Odes et Ballades Orientales, Feuilles d'automne, Notre-Dame de Paris, Hernani and Marion Delorme, even if you have to stand on tip-toe or, if necessary, climb on a chair to do so.
"In the first act, we are at the court of François i.: sounds of distant music are heard; there is a ball. A ball was a novelty some years ago! There is one in every play ..."
Where on earth do you find one in Henri III., monsieur critic? Or in Christine or Richard Darlington or in La Tour de Nesle?... Where can you discover a ball in Hernani or in Marion Delorme? There is, it is true, a kind of musical entertainment in Hernani, a sort of ball in Antony, but you see it has not been overdone.
"Soon they will be indispensable," continued the critic. "So François I. is in search of amusement and seeks everything he can to be entertained. The courtiers talk, laugh and seek to amuse him. There are a great number of them: M. de Cossé, M. de Simiane, M. de Montmorency, Clément Marot and a host of high-born people, and, in their centre, the king and Triboulet, the king's jester, in cloth of gold, a fool's bauble in his hand. Madame de Cossé lets her glove fall; the king picks it up. The gentlemen laugh and gossip about the wife of Cossé. The king is in love with her; Triboulet advises him to get rid of the husband: that is, to have him hung; the king is amused and so are the courtiers. After this, there is no more about the wife of Cossé, and we do not see her again. This is indeed a pity, for she is pretty.
"The action does not begin yet, but the conversations continue. Triboulet tells the king much evil about savants and poets, and we hear François I. say later that it is not weather fit to turn even a poet out of doors. The courtiers, for their part, discuss the mistress of Triboulet. One of them replies--
'Ma foi de gentilhomme, Je m'en soucie autant qu'un poisson d'une pomme!'"
Here the critic is mistaken and I wonder at it, his error benefits him nothing. It is not a nobleman who says the lines quoted by the critic, neither are they addressed to Cossé or about his wife. The man who utters them is the king, and the people, for whom he cares so little, are the savants.
"TRIBOULET. Les femmes, sire, ah! Dieu!... c'est le ciel, c'est la terre, C'est tout! mais vous avez les femmes, vous avez Les femmes! Laissez-moi tranquille, vous rêvez De vouloir des savants.
LE ROI. Ma foi de gentilhomme, Je m'en soucie autant qu'un poisson d'une pomme!"
"At this juncture, the Comte de Saint-Vallier appears on the scenes; he comes on to utter deadly reproaches against the king, who has granted him his life, for having conspired (it should be because he has and not for having, but critics do not look so closely into things as that) to seduce his daughter Diane de Poitiers. It is noticeable that M. Victor Hugo is singularly fond of old men and puts them in all his dramas. But the language he puts into the mouth of Saint-Vallier is noble and fine. So the lines were applauded unanimously but the tirade is lengthy...."
This was the opportunity, monsieur critic, since you have quoted the lines you thought ridiculous, to have quoted some at least that you thought beautiful. True, such quotation would have destroyed the harmony of the sarcastic tone of your criticism. But we will quote them instead of you. Listen attentively to the language of the man who writes these lines, he who is in all good faith advised not to write for the theatre any more because he is impotent, sterile, trivial and absurd.
"SAINT-VALLIER
Une insulte de plus!--Vous, sire, écoutez-moi Comme vous le devez, puisque vous êtes roi! Vous m'avez fait, un jour, mener pieds nus en Grève; Là, vous m'avez fait grâce ainsi que dans un rêve, Et je vous ai béni, ne sachant, en effet, Ce qu'un roi cache au fond d'une grâce qu'il fait. Or, vous aviez caché ma honte dans la mienne. Oui, sire, sans respect pour une race ancienne, Pour le sang des Poitiers, noble depuis mille ans! Tandis que, revenant de la Grève à pas lents, Je priais dans mon cœur le Dieu de la victoire Qu'il vous donnât mes jours de vie en jours de gloire, Vous, François de Valois, le soir du même jour, Sans crainte, sans pitié, sans pudeur, sans amour, Dans votre lit, tombeau de la vertu des femmes, Vous avez froidement, sous vos baisers infâmes, Terni, flétri, souillé, déshonoré, brisé Diane de Poitiers, comtesse de Brézé!... Quoi! lorsque j'attendais l'arrêt qui me condamne, Tu courais donc au Louvre, ô ma chaste Diane! Et lui, ce roi sacré chevalier par Bayard, Jeune homme auquel il faut des plaisirs de vieillard, Pour quelques jours de plus, dont Dieu seul sait le compte, Ton père sous ses pieds, te marchandait ta honte; Et cet affreux tréteau, chose horrible à penser! Qu'un matin le bourreau vint en Grève dresser, Avant la fin du jour, devait être, ô misère! Ou le lit de la fille, ou l'échafaud du père! O Dieu qui nous jugez, qu'avez-vous dit là-haut, Quand vos regards ont vu, sur ce même échafaud, Se vautrer, triste et louche, et sanglante et souillée, La luxure royale en clémence habillée?... Sire! en faisant cela, vous avez mal agi. Que du sang d'un vieillard le pavé fût rougi, C'était bien: ce vieillard, peut-être respectable, Le méritait, étant de ceux du connétable; Mais que pour le vieillard vous ayez pris l'enfant; Que vous ayez broyé sous un pied triomphant La pauvre femme en pleurs, à s'effrayer trop prompte, C'est une chose impie et dont vous rendrez compte! Vous avez dépassé votre droit d'un grand pas: Le père était à vous, mais la fille, non pas. Ah! vous m'avez fait grâce! ah! vous nommez la chose Une grâce! et je suis un ingrat, je suppose! Sire, au lieu d'abuser ma fille, bien plutôt Que n'êtes-vous venu vous-même en mon cachot? Je vous aurais crié: 'Faites-moi mourir ... Grâce! Oh! grâce pour ma fille, et grâce pour ma race! Oh! faites-moi mourir! la tombe et non l'affront! Pas de tête plutôt qu'une souillure au front! Oh! monseigneur le roi, puisque ainsi l'on vous nomme, Croyez-vous qu'un chrétien, un comte, un gentilhomme Soit moins décapité, répondez, monseigneur, Quand, au lieu de la tête, il lui manque l'honneur?' J'aurais dit cela, sire, et, le soir, dans l'église, Dans mon cercueil sanglant, baisant ma barbe grise, Ma Diane au cœur pur, ma fille au front sacré, Honorée, eût prié pour son père honoré!... Sire, je ne viens point redemander ma fille: Quand on n'a plus d'honneur, on n'a plus de famille. Qu'elle vous aime ou non d'un amour insensé, Je n'ai rien à reprendre où la honte a passé. Gardez-la!--Seulement, je me suis mis en tête De venir vous troubler ainsi dans chaque fête; Et jusqu'à ce qu'un père, un frère ou quelque époux --La chose arrivera--nous ait vengé de vous. Pâle, à tous vos banquets je reviendrai vous dire: 'Vous avez mal agi, vous avez mal fait, sire!' Et vous m'écouterez, et votre front terni Ne se relèvera que quand j'aurai fini. Vous voudrez, pour forcer ma vengeance à se taire, Me rendre au bourreau; non! vous ne l'oserez faire. De peur que ce ne soit mon spectre qui, demain, (Montrant sa tête.) Ne vienne vous parler, cette tête à la main!"
One can conceive why the critic does not quote the lines we have just put before the reader: What would become of his prose by the side of such verse? After this splendid outburst of Saint-Vallier, the king, enraged, exclaims--
"On s'oublie à ce point d'audace et de délire!... (A. M. de Pienne.) Duc, arrêtez monsieur!
TRIBOULET. Le bonhomme est fou, sire.
SAINT-VALLIER, levant le bras. Soyez maudits tous deux! (Au roi.) Sire, ce n'est pas bien: Sur le lion mourant vous lâchez votre chien! (A Triboulet.) Qui que tu sois, valet à langue de vipère, Que fais risée ainsi de la douleur d'un père, Sois maudit! (Au roi.) J'avais droit d'être par vous traité Comme une majesté par une majesté. Vous êtes roi, moi père, et l'âge vaut le trône. Nous avons tous les deux au front une couronne Où nul ne doit lever de regards insolents, Vous de fleurs de lys d'or, et moi de cheveux blancs. Roi, quand un sacrilège ose insulter la vôtre, C'est vous qui la vengez;--c'est Dieu qui venge l'autre!"
The critic goes on--
"The Comte de Saint-Vallier finishes his harangue and goes out cursing the king and Triboulet. The king laughs, Triboulet seems thunderstruck. This riot of unedifying conversations, the hall and the character of Comte de Saint-Vallier are in no sort of way connected with the action of the play, and the whole of the first act is taken up in informing us that Triboulet has a mistress and that the gentlemen of the court wish to take her away from him...."
Say, monsieur critic, that you personally see no connection between the ball and M. de Saint-Vallier and the action, but forbear from saying they have no connection in any way whatever. You are blind and deaf, monsieur critic; but, luckily, we shall not stop our ears and put out our eyes for the sole satisfaction of being like you. Stay, you shall see why M. de Saint-Vallier is not connected with the action. The author takes the trouble to tell you himself--
"It appears that writers of criticism pretend that their morals are scandalised by Le Roi s'amuse. The play disgusted the modesty of the gendarmes; the Léotaud Brigade was there[1] and thought it obscene; officers of morality hid their faces and M. Vidocq blushed; accordingly, the word of command which the censorship gave the police was stammered out in our midst for some days in these terse words--
"'THE PLAY IS IMMORAL.'"
Halloa! my masters! Silence on this point. Let us explain ourselves, however; not to the police, with whom I, an honest man, decline to discuss such matters, but to the few respectable and conscientious persons who, upon hearsay, or after seeing the performance, allowed themselves to be led away into sharing that opinion, for which, perhaps, the name alone of the guilty poet should have been sufficient refutation. The drama is now printed and, if you were not at the performance, read it; if you were, still read it. Bear in mind that this representation is less a representation than a battle, a sort of battle of Montlhéry (excuse us for this rather ambitious comparison), which the Parisians and the Burgundians both claimed to have won according to Mathieu. The play is immoral. Do you think so? Is it so fundamentally? The groundwork of the play is as follows:--
"Triboulet is deformed, ill, the court buffoon, a threefold wretchedness which makes him evilly disposed. He hates the king because he is king, the lords because they are lords, and men because they have not all got humps on their backs; his only solace is unceasingly to pit the lords against the king, to break the weakest against the strongest. He depraves, corrupts and debases the king, drives him to tyranny, ignorance and vice. He sets him at loggerheads with all the noble families, unceasingly pointing out some wife to seduce, a sister to carry off, a daughter to dishonour.
"The king is like an omnipotent puppet in the hands of Triboulet, he cuts off lives whilst the buffoon plays his jokes: one day at a fête, just when Triboulet is urging the king to carry off M. de Cossé's wife, M. de Saint-Vallier finds his way to the king and openly upbraids him for the dishonour of Diane de Poitiers. The father whose daughter the king has taken is made game of and insulted by Triboulet. He lifts his arm and curses Triboulet. And from this the whole flay springs. The real subject of the drama is M. DE SAINT-VALLIER'S MALEDICTION."
Why did you say then, monsieur critic, that "the unedifying riot of conversations, the hall and the character of Saint-Vallier ARE IN NO WAY CONNECTED WITH THE ACTION." You do not seem to me to understand the author. But let us see what the author says; we will see what you have said afterwards. We will promise you not to compare his prose with yours. Listen to what Victor Hugo says himself. We are at the second act--
"Upon whom does this malediction fall? Upon Triboulet, the king's fool? No, upon Triboulet as man, as a father with a heart, who has a daughter. All lies in the fact of Triboulet possessing a daughter: she is all he has in the world. He conceals her from all eyes in a deserted quarter and a lonely house. The more he circulates the contagion of vice and of debauchery through the town, the more closely he keeps his daughter walled up and isolated. He brings up his child in innocence, faith and modesty. His greatest fear is lest she come to harm; for, wicked as he is, he knows how much suffering it brings. Well, the old man's curse strikes Triboulet through the only thing he loves in the world--his daughter. The very king whom Triboulet urges on to abduction seduces his daughter. The fool is struck by Providence exactly in the same way as M. de Saint-Vallier, and, when his daughter is seduced and lost, he lays a snare for the king to revenge her: but it is his daughter who falls into it. Thus, Triboulet has two pupils, the king and his daughter; the king whom he instructs in vice, his daughter whom he has brought up to virtue. The one destroys the other. He intends to abduct Madame de Cossé for the king, but it is his daughter whom he carries away. He means to assassinate the king to avenge his daughter, but instead assassinates her. The chastisement does not stop half-way; the malediction of Diane's father is fulfilled upon the father of Blanche. Doubtless it is not for us to decide if the conception is dramatic or not; but it is certainly a moral one."
Well, reader, what is your opinion?
"Why! the same as Victor Hugo. But why, then, does the critic look upon it and understand it so wrongly? Is he blind and deaf?"
Oh, dear reader, that would be too great a happiness for you and us! No, you know the proverb--"None so blind as those who wont see, or so deaf as those who do not wish to hear."
What the author says of the curse of Saint-Vallier is so true that the second act opens with these words of Triboulet--
"Ce vieillard m'a maudit!"
But, as we have said, the critic does not perceive this. He continues his analysis--
"At the second act Triboulet wanders through the night near a modest house next to the hôtel de Cossé. A man with a hideous expression comes and offers him his services. His trade is killing; his charges are not dear, and he works at home and in the town. Triboulet replies that he has no need of him at present. Saltabadil (the bandit's name) goes off and Triboulet enters the house. He then utters a long monologue expressing all the suffering his trade of king's jester causes him. Here, M. Hugo again breaks into an eloquent and brilliant tirade in beautiful lines ..."
Why not quote them, monsieur critic? Ah! yes, but the fine verses would scorch his lips.[2]
"Triboulet enters his daughter's house and expresses all his parental affection for her," continues the critic. "Here again," he adds, "are several beautiful verses ..."
And he passes them over; but are beautiful lines so common that you scorn them thus? Can you write them? or can your wife or your friends? Can M. Planche or M. Janin or M. Lireux compose in the same style as this?
"BLANCHE. ... Mon bone père, au moins, parlez-moi de ma mère!
TRIBOULET. Oh! ne réveille pas une pensée amère: Ne me rappelles pas qu'autrefois j'ai trouvé --Et, si tu n'étais là, je dirais: 'J'ai rêvé!'-- Une femme, contraire à la plupart des femmes, Qui, dans ce monde, où rien n'appareille les âmes, Me voyant seul, infirme, et pauvre, et détesté, M'aima pour ma misère et ma difformité! Elle est morte, emportant dans la tombe avec elle L'angélique secret de son amour fidèle, De son amour passé sur moi comme un éclair; Rayon du paradis tombé dans mon enfer! Que la terre, toujours à me recevoir prête, Soit légère à ce sein où reposa ma tête!
BLANCHE. Mon père ...
TRIBOULET, à sa fille. Est-il ailleurs un cœur qui me réponde? Oh! je t'aime pour tout ce que je hais au monde! --Assieds-toi près de moi. Viens, parlons de cela Dis, aimes-tu ton père? Et puisque nous voilà Ensemble, et que ta main entre mes mains repose, Qu'est-ce donc qui nous force à parler d'autre chose? Ma fille, ô seul bonheur que le ciel m'ait permis! D'autres ont des parents, des frères, des amis, Une femme, un mari, des vassaux, un cortège D'aïeux et d'alliés, plusieurs enfants, que sais-je? Moi, je n'ai que toi seule! Un autre est riche;--eh bien, Toi seule es mon trésor, et toi seule es mon bien! Un autre croit en Dieu; je ne crois qu'en ton âme! D'autres ont la jeunesse et l'amour d'une femme; Ils ont l'orgueil, l'éclat, la grâce et la santé; Ils sont beaux; moi, vois-tu, je n'ai que ta beauté! Chère enfant!--ma cité, mon pays, ma famille, Mon épouse, ma mère, et ma sœur, et ma fille. Mon bonheur, ma richesse, et mon culte, et ma loi, Mon univers, c'est toi, toujours toi, rien que toi! De tout autre côté, ma pauvre âme est froissée. --Oh! si je te perdais!... Non, c'est une pensée Que je ne pourrais pas supporter un moment! Souris-moi donc un peu.--Ton sourire est charmant! Oui, c'est toute ta mère!--Elle était aussi belle. Tu te passes souvent la main au front comme elle, Comme pour l'essuyer, car il faut au cœur pur Un front tout innocent et des yeux tout azur. Tu rayonnes pour moi d'une angélique flamme, A travers ton beau corps, mon âme voit ton âme. Même les yeux fermés, c'est égal, je te vois. Le jour me vient de toi! Je me voudrais parfois Aveugle, et l'œil voilé d'obscurité profonde, Afin de n'avoir pas d'autre soleil au monde!"
Well! monsieur critic, shall I tell you something? If a fairy, as in the pretty children's tales you have not read, for you were never a child, came with his golden wand in his hand and said to me: "What do you wish, desire and pine for? Ask, I serve youth, fortune and ambition; at one word, you can have twenty-five years added to your life or be a millionaire or a prince!" I should say to him, "Oh good, beauteous fairy, I would like to be able to compose such lines as the above."
But now let us follow the critic through the third act. It relates how Blanche is taken to the Louvre; how the king recognises in her whom he supposes to be Triboulet's mistress the Blanche with whom he is enamoured, and how Blanche recognises in the king the Gaucher Mahiet whom she loves; how Blanche, not knowing whither to fly, and seeing an open door, flies through it and finds herself in the king's private chamber; how the king then enters behind her and shuts the door; after which the lords troop in, laughing, followed by Triboulet in despair. But let us allow the critic to speak--
"Triboulet comes on and looks at them all. The queen wants the king and they have just sent for him. 'He is not yet up.--But he was here just a moment ago.--He is out hunting.--But his huntsman are not out.'
--'On vous dit, comprenez-vous ceci? Que le roi ne veut voir personne.
TRIBOULET. Elle est ici!'
"Triboulet wants to push his way into the king's room, but the courtiers fling him back; he implores them. They laugh at him and Triboulet pours out upon them insults and curses. 'You are no nobles,' he says to them,
'Au milieu des huées, Vos mères aux laquais se sont prostituées!'
"And the gentlemen put up with this!"
Yes they bear it, monsieur critic, and I will tell you why. All the lords who have lent themselves to abduction, and are quite prepared to put their hands to violation, think they have carried off Triboulet's mistress and learn suddenly they have carried away his daughter. You do not say that that has escaped your memory: it is told in beautiful lines, and Ligier's voice is not one anybody can pretend not to hear.
"M. DE PIENNE, riant. Triboulet a perdu sa maîtresse!--Gentille Ou laide, qu'il la cherche ailleurs.
TRIBOULET. Je veux ma fille ...
TOUS. Sa fille!
TRIBOULET, croisant les bras. C'est ma fille!--Oui, riez maintenant! Ah! pous restez muets! Vous trouvez surprenant Que ce bouffon soit père, et qu'il ait une fille? Les loups et les seigneurs n'ont-ils pas leur famille? Ne puis-je avoir aussi la mienne? Allons, assez! Que si vous plaisantiez, c'est charmant; finissez! . . . . . . . . . . Elle est là! (Les courtisans se placent devant la porte du roi.)
MAROT. Sa folie en furie est tournée.
TRIBOULET, reculant avec désespoir. Courtisans! courtisans! démons! race damnée! C'est donc vrai qu'ils m'out pris ma fille, ces bandits! Une femme, à leurs yeux, ce n'est rien, je vous dis! Quand le roi, par bonheur, est un roi de débauches, Les femmes des seigneurs, lorsqu'ils ne sont pas gauches, Les servent fort.--L'honneur d'une vierge, pour eux, C'est un luxe inutile, un trésor onéreux. Une femme est un champ qui rapporte, une ferme Dont le royal loyer se paye à chaque terme. N'est ce pas que c'est vrai, messeigneurs?--En effet, Vous lui vendriez tous, si ce n'est déjà fait. Pour un nom, pour un titre, ou toute autre chimère, (A M. de Brian.) Toi, ta femme, Brion! (A M. de Gardes.) Toi, ta sœur! (Au jeune page de Pardaillan.) Toi, ta mère?"
The critic is surprised that all the lords are silent. It does not surprise us, especially if they have children of their own.
Is not the despair of a father, at the destruction of his daughter, frightful and solemn and fateful enough to cause instant silence? The author of the work, a father, who wrote this magnificent line--
"Et les cœurs de lion sont les vrais cœurs de père,"
thought so. Is he wrong? So much to his credit. If you are right, the more is it to your discredit!
But if this be so, you say, he ought to have pointed us out a beauty instead of a defect. Oh! he warns you loudly enough. Listen again--
"UN PAGE se verse un verre de vin au buÿet, et se met à boire en fredonnant:
Quand Bourdon vit Marsaille, Il a dit à ses gens: 'Vrai-Dieu! quel capitaine ...'
TRIBOULET, se retournant. Je ne sais à quoi tient, vicomte d'Aubusson, Que je te brise aux dents ton verre et ta chanson!"
You see among the whole of those courtiers, only one sneers, and he a child of fifteen, who knows nothing about paternity. Oh! you say, that is true enough; but it is too involved, we missed the point. Such things, messieurs, are not visible to the outer eye, they are felt; the heart has eyes to see them.
Then, you add, you have no children. True, eunuchs and critics usually die without posterity.
We had got to the words, monsieur critic--
"And the gentlemen put up with that, and when Triboulet bade them they went away. TRIBOULET REMAINS ALONE, and soon his daughter rushes out dishevelled, beside herself, and flies into his arms."
Ah! you see more clearly than you say, monsieur critic, for here you lie! No, it does not happen like that at all.
"TRIBOULET. Ah! Dieu! vous ne savez que rire ou que vous taire! C'est donc un grand plaisir de voir un pauvre père Se meurtrir la poitrine, et s'arracher du front Des cheveux que deux nuits pareilles blanchiront!
(La porte de la chambre du roi s'ouvre; Blanche en sort éperdue, égarée, en désordre; elle vient tomber dans les bras de son père avec un cri terrible.)
BLANCHE. Mon père, ah!...
TRIBOULET, _la serrant dans ses bras. _ Mon enfant! ah! c'est elle! ah! ma fille! Ah! messieurs! (Suffoqué de sanglots, et riant au travers.) Voyez-vous, c'est toute ma famille, Mon ange!--Elle de moins, quel deuil dans ma maison! --Messeigneurs, n'est-ce pas que j'avais bien raison?... _(A Blanche.) _ Mais pourquoi pleures, tu?
BLANCHE. Malheureux que nous sommes! La honte ...
TRIBOULET. Que dis-tu?
BLANCHE. Pas devant tous ces hommes! Rougir devant vous seul!
TRIBOULET, _se tournant vers la porte du roi. _ Oh! l'infâme!--Elle aussi!
BLANCHE. Seule, seule avec vous!
TRIBOULET, _aux seigneurs. _ Allez-vous-en d'ici! Et, si le roi François par malheur se hasarde A passer près d'ici ... (A M. de Vermandois.) Vous êtes de sa garde, Dites-lui de ne pas entrer,--que je suis là! (Les seigneurs sortent.)"
You can see well enough, monsieur critic, that Triboulet is not alone when his daughter comes and flings herself into his arms, and that if the lords go out, it is not because the king's fool has ordered them out, but because they know how to conduct themselves before the father of Blanche. Instead of being false, as you make out, the scene, on the contrary, is so profoundly wrought that you did not dare to follow it in its deepest wounds; this was an unknown abyss to your comprehension. Oh! monsieur critic, to ply your trade, you must be almost as great as the writer you criticise. Can a Lilliputian analyse a Gulliver?
"At this moment," the critic continues, "the Comte de Saint-Vallier, who is being led to the Bastille, recommences his imprecations against François I., and says--
'Puisque, par votre roi d'outrages abreuvé, Ma malédiction n'a pas encor trouvé, Ici-bas ni là-haut, de voix qui me réponde. Pas une foudre au ciel, pas un bras d'homme au monde, Je n'espère plus rien.--Ce roi prospérera.
TRIBOULET, relevant la tête. Comte! vous vous trompez!--Quelqu'un vous vengerai!'"
You see, monsieur critic, you are wrong; M. de Saint-Vallier does serve an end.
"The third act is revoltingly immoral!" the critic pursues. "The same disgusting features await us in the fourth act. We see the house of the brigand Saltabadil; a sort of pothouse. The king comes there in the middle of the night; he sits down to table and calls for drink: they bring it him."
We will let the author reply to the accusation expressed in such beautiful language. If the work is moral in construction, can it be immoral in execution? The question thus put seems to us to answer itself. But let us see. Probably there is nothing immoral in the first or second act. Is it the situation in the third act which shocks you? Read the third act and tell us if the impression which, in all probability, it produces, is not of profound purity, virtue and rectitude?
"Is it the fourth act? But since when has a king been forbidden to pay court to a public-house servant on the stage? It is no novelty in history, nor in the theatre: history permits us to show you François I. drunk in the kennels of the rue du Pelican. To take a king to a low place is nothing new either: the Greek theatre--the classical one--did it; Shakespeare, who is of the romantic theatre, did it. Very well then, the author of this drama has not done so. He knows all that has been written about the house of Saltabadil; but why make out that he has said what he has not said? Why force him to exceed a limit which is entirely beside the mark, which he has not exceeded? The gipsy Maguelonne so much maligned is surely not bolder than all the Lisettes and Martons of the old-school theatre. Saltabadil's pothouse is a hostelry, a tavern, the tavern de la Pomme de pin, a suspected inn and a cut-throat place may be! but not a brothel; it is a sombre, terrible, horrible, fearful place if you like, but it is not an obscene one. There remain details as to style. Read! the author accepts as judges of the strict severity of his style the same persons who are shocked by Juliet's nurse and Ophelia's father, by Beaumarchais and by Regnard, by the École des femmes and Amphitryon, by Dandin and Sganarelle, and by the great scene in Tartufe. Tartufe was also accused of immorality, in his time. Only, in this case, when it was necessary to be frank, the author had to do it at his own risk and peril, but always with gravity and restraint; he wished his art to be chaste, but not prudish."
Let us return to the criticism.[3]
"Saltabadil is to give up the body at midnight. The king, half drunk, is at his house, defenceless and laid down, and it is a quarter to twelve. Maguelonne begs her brother to spare so good looking a young fellow. The brigand refuses, for he is an honest brigand and conducts his trade conscientiously; only, he desires that some one else should appear so that he may kill him and deliver him up in place of the other. Blanche has returned and hears everything; she has been seduced by the king; she does not love him, for he consorts with the most degraded of women. But Blanche will die for him! This is a devotion on the part of a young girl which no one but M. Victor Hugo would have conceived possible. ..."
Why so? Do you mean to say that Victor Hugo is the only one who has a large enough heart to understand such devotion? Then it seems to me that the blame turns singularly into praise.
"Blanche knocks at the door, goes in ... and the curtain falls. Why does not M. Hugo show us the assassination? What is one horror more? In the fifth act, Triboulet comes in front of the pothouse. It is a stormy night; midnight strikes. The brigand then opens his door and drags a sack along the ground containing a dead body. He receives the remainder of the twenty crowns and shuts his door. Triboulet puts his foot on the body, saying--
'Ceci, c'est un buffon! et ceci, c'est un roi!'
Then he raves over the body and curses it, and struts about and prates of glory, of revolutions and of crowns, and returns to the body and addresses these extraordinary lines to it--
'M'entends tu? m'entends-tu? m'entends-tu? m'entends-tu ...'"
It would, indeed, be very extraordinary if it were thus, but, unfortunately, there is no such line. This is the real line, or, rather these are the lines--
"Je te hais, m'entends-tu? c'est moi, roi gentilhomme; Moi, ce fou, ce bouffon; moi, cette moitié d'homme, Cet animal douteux à qui tu disais: 'Chien!' C'est que, quand la vengeance est en nous, vois-tu bien, Dans le cœur le plus mort, il n'est plus rien qui dorme; Le plus chétif grandit, le plus vil se transforme, L'esclave tirs alors sa haine du fourreau, Et le chat devient tigre, et le bouffon bourreau!'"
Far enough, you will agree, from the line invented by the critic--
"M'entends-tu? m'entends-tu? m'entends-tu? m'entends-tu?"
"Finally," continues our Aristarchus, "after an interminable monologue" (certainly interminable if you have understood all the lines in the same fashion as the one you have quoted, but which, were you a poet, monsieur critic, would seem short to you!),[4] "Triboulet drags the body to him and is going to fling it into the Seine, when a cavalier comes out of the tavern and disappears along the quay. Triboulet has recognised the king; then he tears open the sack, and, by the light of a torch, he recognises his daughter! He calls for help, and torches are brought! Blanche still breathes; they fetch a doctor, but she dies immediately he arrives, and Triboulet falls dead the same instant.
"Such is this monstrous play, in which history is set at naught, the manners of the times misconstrued, the characters of François I. and of Clément Marot dishonoured and reviled, wherein hardly any beautiful lines shine to redeem the emptiness of the conception, the absence of clever conduct, the absolute want of interest: where, in short, the horrible and ignoble and immoral are all mixed up together in a chaotic confusion."
Well, monsieur critic, are you satisfied? Are you being well avenged at the expense of the man of genius? Have you trodden his dramas sufficiently under foot, as Triboulet trod on the corpse of the person he thought his enemy? No! You begin your monologue again. Ah! it seems short to you, does it not? because it is one of hatred.[5] Proceed then! the hatred of the petty for the great is not groundless, and at all times, as Triboulet shows us with regard to the king, and as you exhibit with regard to the drama, such hatred ever yearns to slay.
"At the first performance," adds the critic, "a scandal was caused by the crazy and tumultuous admirers who, at each hiss that was raised, shouted, 'Down with the idiots! Put the brutes out!' It was a large, well-drilled cohort of friends who were sent into the theatre before the proper hour, and they applauded to excess all that the public thought truly disgusting. Notwithstanding this, and in spite of this extraordinary claque, the hissing was strong enough for the name of M. Victor Hugo to be flung out amidst the tumult. In spite of this startling failure, a second performance was announced for Thursday. Compared with this, Hernani is a genuine masterpiece ..." (Ah! monsieur critic, if we had but the time how we would like to read what you said about Hernani!) "and Boileau's epigram against Corneille might be applied to M. Victor Hugo.
"'Après l'Agésilas, Hélas! Mais, après l'Attila, Holà!'"
Do you not think these four lines of Boileau against the author of the Cid, of Cinna and of Polyeucte were among the unworthy things he wrote? But Boileau at least confined himself to denouncing the plays of old Corneille as weak: he did not denounce them to the police as immoral. Then, with great satisfaction, the critic ends up his article in these words--
"We learn to-night that the ministre des travaux publics has given orders to stop the performance of the play."
Now let us follow the drama of our friend Victor Hugo before the Tribunal de Commerce, as we have followed it on the stage of the Théâtre-Richelieu, only let the author himself speak. M. Victor Hugo's prose is much better than mine, consequently my readers will have no ground for complaint.
"The appearance of this drama at the theatre gave rise to an unprecedented ministerial act. The day after the first performance, the author received from M. Jouslin de la Salle, stage manager of the Théâtre-Français, the following note, the original copy of which he preserves most preciously--
"'It is half-past ten and I have just received the order to suspend the performance of Le Roi s'amuse. M. Taylor has sent me the order on behalf of the Government.
"'23 November.'
"The first impulse of the author was to doubt it. The act was arbitrary to the point of incredibility. In fact, what is called the Charte-Vérité says, 'The French have the right of publishing...' Note that the text does not merely say the right of printing, but, large and clear, the right of publishing. Now, the theatre is only another means of publication, like the press, like sculpture or lithography. The liberty of the theatre is, therefore, implicitly indited in the Charter with every other form of liberty of thought. The law adds fundamentally, 'The censorship can never be re-established.' Now, the text does not say the censorship of newspapers or of books, it says censorship in general, all censure, that of the theatres as well as of writings. The theatre cannot, then, henceforth be legally censured.
"Besides, the Charter says, 'Confiscation is abolished.' Now, the suppression of a theatrical play after representation is not merely a monstrous act of censorship and arbitrariness, it is confiscation out and out, it is the violent robbery of a property belonging to the theatre and the author.
"Finally, to make all plain and clear, to preserve the four or five great special principles which the French Revolution has cast in bronze intact on their granite pedestals, in order that they cannot surreptitiously attack the common right of the French with forty thousand ancient damaged arms which rust and disuse have eaten away in the arsenal of our laws, the Charter, in a final article, expressly abolishes all that which in laws anterior to it would be contrary to its wording and its spirit. This is explicit. The ministerial suppression of a theatrical play attacks its liberty through the censorship, and its copyright through confiscation. Our whole sense of public right rises in revolt against such a method of procedure. The author, unable to believe in such insolence and folly, rushed to the theatre. There, the fact was confirmed, in every particular. The Government had, indeed, notified the order in question, by its divine right of governance. It had no reasons to offer. It had taken his play, deprived him of his right and seized his property. There was but one thing more to do to the poet--to put him into the Bastille.
"We repeat, at the time we are living, when such an act comes and bars your way and lays hands on you roughly, the first feeling is one of profound surprise. A thousand questions occur to your mind--Where is justice, where is right? Can such things really happen? Was there, indeed, such a thing as the July Revolution? It is evident we are no longer in Paris! In what pachalic do we live?
"The Comédie-Française, stupefied and struck with consternation, wished to try some advances towards the Government to obtain the revocation of this strange decision, but its labour was in vain. The divan, ... I mean the council of ministers, had met during the day. On the 23rd, it was an order from the Government--the same on the 24th. On the 23rd, the play was only suspended; on the 24th, it was definitely forbidden. The theatre was even enjoined to erase the four dreadful words 'Le Roi s'amuse.' The unlucky Théâtre-Français was, moreover, instructed that it was not to complain or to breathe a word. It may be fine, loyal and noble to resist such Asiatic despotism; but theatres dare not do it. The fear of the withdrawal of their privileges makes them serfs and slaves, liable to taxation and statute-labour at the mercy of eunuchs and the dumb.
"An author should be and remain a stranger to these theatrical proceedings. He, a poet, does not depend upon any Government. His duty as a free writer forbids him to make the entreaties and solicitation he might make if he meanly consulted his own interests. But to ask for grace from a power is to admit that power. Liberty and ownership are not matters for antechamber settlement. A right does not solicit like a favour. For a favour he must beseech the Government; but for a right he appeals to the country. He must, then, go to the country for redress. There are two ways of obtaining justice: public opinion and the law courts. He chose both. The case is already judged and won in the eyes of public opinion. Here the author must warmly thank all thoughtful and independent persons connected with literature and the arts, who showed him on that occasion many proofs of sympathy and cordiality. He reckoned upon their support in anticipation. He knows that, when it is a question of struggling for liberty of intellect and thought, he will not go singly to battle.
"Let us say, in passing, that the ruling power, with very mean-spirited calculation, prided itself it would have on that occasion, as its auxiliaries, the literary passions that have for a long period raged round the author. Literary hatreds the author supposed were even more tenacious than political animosities, seeing the former have their root in amour propre, and the latter simply in principles. The Government is mistaken. Its brutal act has disgusted right-thinking men in all camps. There rallied round the author to oppose arbitrariness and injustice those even who a little time before had attacked him the most violently. If, by chance, a few inveterate haters persisted, they have since regretted the momentary support they gave to the Government. Every honourable and loyal man amongst the author's enemies stretched out hands to him, even though ready to begin the literary battle again as soon as the political fight is at an end. In France, whoever he is who is persecuted, his sole enemy is the persecutor.
"So, now, having settled that the Government's act is detestable, unjustifiable, impossible in right, we will condescend for a moment to discuss it as a material fact, and try to find of what elements it would seem to have been composed. To this end, the first question which presents itself is one which everybody will put--What can be the motive for such a measure?
"Certainly, if we deign to condescend for one moment to accept the ridiculous fiction that, in this instance, it is the care of public morals which moves our rulers, and that, shocked by the condition of licence into which certain theatres have fallen during the last six years, they wished at last, urged to extreme measures, to make an example, in the teeth of all laws and rights, of one work and writer, the choice of the work would, it must be confessed, be a singular one, but the choice of the author would be no less strange. In fact, who is the man that this short-sighted power attacks so strangely? A writer so placed that, though his talent may be contested by everybody, his character is called in question by no one. He is a man of avowed, proved and established character, a rare and valuable thing in these days. A poet who was the first to be disgusted with the licence to which the theatres were yielding; who, eighteen months ago, upon the rumour that the inquisition of theatres was going to be illegally re-established, went himself personally, with several other dramatic authors to warn the Government that it ought to guard against such a measure; and who there openly urged for a repressive law to regulate the excesses off the stage, whilst yet protesting against the censorship in such severe words that the Government is very sure not to forget them. He is an artist devoted to art, who has never sought success by ignoble means, who has been accustomed all his life to look the public straight in the face; a sincere and temperate man who has already fought more than one battle for liberty and against despotism; who, in 1829, in the last year of the Restoration, rejected everything which the Government then offered him in compensation for the interdict laid on Marion Delorme, and who, more than a year later, in 1830, after the revolution of July, refused, in spite of the advantages to his material interests, to allow that same Marion Delorme to be played, because it might have been made the occasion of attack and insult against the fallen king, who had proscribed it; a very simple line of conduct, no doubt, that every man of honour would have followed under similar circumstances, but which, perhaps, might have rendered him henceforth inviolate from all censure, and about which he wrote himself in 1831 as follows: 'Successes gained by hunting out scandals and by making political allusions hardly pleased him.' He admits that 'such success is worth but little and is short-lived. It is precisely when there is no public censorship that authors should criticise one another, honestly and conscientiously. In this way, they will exalt the dignity of art: when people have entire liberty it is desirable to keep within due bounds.'
"Now, that the supposed immorality of the drama is reduced to nothing, now that all the display of evil and shameful arguments lies beneath our feet, now is the time to point out the true motive of the measure, the motive behind the scenes in the Court, and the motives they do not give because they dare not admit them among themselves, and therefore have carefully concealed them beneath a pretext. This motive has already transpired among the outside public and the public has guessed it correctly. We will say no more about it. It is probably of service to our cause that we should set our adversaries the example of courtesy and of moderation. It is good that the lesson of dignity and wisdom be set the Government by a private individual, by him who is persecuted to the body which is persecuting him. Though we are not of the number of those who think to cure their own wounds by poisoning the wounds of others, it is but too true that there is, in the third act of this play, a line where the untoward sagacity of some familiars of the palace discovered an allusion (I ask you myself where is this allusion?), of which neither the public nor the author had thought until then, but which, when proclaimed in this fashion, becomes the cruellest and most deadly of insults. It is all too true that this line was enough to cause the order to be given for the playbills of the Théâtre-Français to be taken down, in order that the curiosity of the public should not again be afforded the sight of that little seditious phrase, le Roi s'amuse. We will not quote the line which is such a red rag to a bull; furthermore, we will not point it out unless we are pushed to the last extremity, and people are imprudent enough to make us take our stand upon it in self-defence. We will not revive old historic scandals. We will spare as far as possible an exalted personage the consequences of the thoughtlessness of his courtiers. It is possible to be generous in warfare even to a king. We mean to be so. Only, let those in power consider the inconvenience of having as friend a bear, as it were, who crushes with the pavingstone of censorship the imperceptible allusions which happen to cross their minds. We are not even sure that we do not feel some sympathy for the ministry itself. To tell the truth, the whole thing inspires us with great pity. The Government of July is new-born, it is only thirty months old and still in its infancy, with the puerile passions of childhood. Is it, indeed, worthwhile to spend much virile anger against it? When it is full-grown, then we will see.
"Meantime, to look at the question for a moment from the individual point of view, the censorial confiscation under consideration perhaps causes more injury to the author of this drama than of any other. In fact, for the fourteen years he has been writing, not one of his works but has had the unfortunate distinction of being chosen as a battlefield upon its appearance, and disappeared after a more or less lengthy period in the dust and smoke and turmoil of a battle. Therefore, when he produces a play for the theatre, the most important thing to him of all, as he cannot expect a quiet audience after the first night, is a series of performances. If it happens on the first day that his voice is drowned in uproar, that his idea is not understood, the following days may correct the first one. Hernani had fifty-three performances, Marion Delorme had sixty-one; Le Roi s'amuse, thanks to ministerial violence, only had one. The injustice done the author is assuredly great. Who can give him back intact at the point he left off, the third experiment, so important to him? Who can tell him what might have occurred after the first performance? Who can give him back the public of the morrow, a public ordinarily impartial and without friends or enemies, the public which teaches the poet and which the poet instructs?
"We are at a curious period of political transition. One of those moments of general lassitude when all kinds of despotic acts are possible in society, even the most advanced ideas of emancipation and of liberty. France advanced rapidly in July 1830; she did three good days' work then; she made three great oases in the field of civilisation and of progress. Now, many are harassed, many are out of breath, many demand a halt. They want to keep back the energetic spirits who are not tired, but still press on; they wish to wait for the laggards who have stopped behind and give them time to catch up. Hence, a strange fear of everything that moves and talks and thinks. It is an odd situation, easily defined. They are all the elements which are afraid of ideas; the league of interests clashing with the movement of theories begins, and takes fright at systems: the merchant who wants to sell; the street which is frightened of the counting-house; the armed shop on the defensive.
"In our opinion, the Government takes unfair advantage of this disposition to repose, this fear of fresh revolutions. It has come to petty tyranny. It does wrong towards itself and towards us. If it thinks there is indifference now in people's minds towards liberty of ideas, it is mistaken; it is only lassitude. It will demand severe account some day of all the illegal actions that have been accumulating for some time past. What a dance it has led us! Two years ago, one feared for order; now, one trembles for liberty! Questions of free thought, of intellect and of art are imperiously mowed down by the viziers of the King of the Barricades. It is profoundly sad to see how the revolution of July has ended, mulier formosa supernè.
"No doubt, if one only considered the slight importance of the work of the author now in question, the ministerial measure which has smitten it down is not a great matter. It is but a malicious little literary coup d'état whose only merit is that of not spoiling the series of arbitrary acts of which it forms a part. But, if we look higher, we see that this affair is not merely one that affects a drama and a poet, but, as we said at first, both liberty and the rights of ownership are involved in the question. Great and serious interests are involved in it, and, although the author be compelled to deal with this important affair by a simple commercial lawsuit at the Théâtre-Français, not being able to attack the Government directly, barricaded behind the principles of non-receivers of State advice, he hopes that his cause will be regarded as a great one in the eyes of all when he takes it to the bar of the Consular tribunal, with liberty in his right hand and proprietorship in his left. He will himself speak of the need for the independence of his art. He will plead his right resolutely with gravity and simplicity, without personal animosity, and yet, at the same time, fearlessly. He counts upon the concurrence of all, upon the free and cordial support of the press, on the justice of opinion and on the equity of the courts. He has no doubt he will be successful. The state of siege will be raised in literary precincts as in political.
"When that is done, and he has secured his liberty as poet and as citizen intact, inviolable and sacred, he will peaceably return to his life's work, from which he has been violently torn away, which he would like never to have had to leave. He has his duty to do, he knows, and nothing will distract him from it. For the moment, the political rôle has come to him: he has not sought it out, but he accepts it. Surely the power which attacks us will not have gained much, in forcing us who are artists to quit our conscientious, tranquil, honest, serious task, our sacred task, a task which belongs to the past and to the future, in order to mix ourselves indignant and angry with the irreverent and scoffing audience which, for the last fifteen years, has watched the various poor devils of political bunglers as they pass by hooting and whistling, thinking they are building up a social edifice because they go daily, at great trouble to themselves, sweating and panting, to cart heaps of legal schemes from the Tuileries to the Palais-Bourbon and from the Palais-Bourbon to the Luxembourg!
30 November 1832."
On 19 December 1832, the matter came before the Tribunal de Commerce. All the artist world of Paris gathered together in the Salle de la Bourse, surprised to find itself in such good company. After his barrister had spoken, Victor Hugo rose and made the following speech:--
"Gentlemen, after the eloquent orator[6] who so generously lends me the powerful assistance of his speech, I should have nothing to say if I did not believe it my duty not to let pass the daring, culpable act which has violated our public rights through my person without a solemn and serious protest. This is not an ordinary cause, gentlemen. It seems to some persons, at the first glance, to be only a simple commercial action, a claim for indemnity for the non-execution of a private contract--in a word, simply the lawsuit of an author against a theatre. No, gentlemen, it is more than that, it is the lawsuit of a citizen against a government. The basis of this matter is a play forbidden by order; now, a play forbidden by order is censorship and the Charter abolished censorship; a play forbidden by order is confiscation. Your sentence, if favourable to me, and, it seems to me, I do you wrong to doubt it, will be to lay the blame manifestly, although indirectly, at the door of censorship and confiscation.
"You see, gentlemen, how the horizon of this cause lifts and widens. I plead here for something higher than my own interest, I plead for my rights in general, for my right to think, and to possess, that is to say, for the common right due to all. Mine is a general cause, as is absolute equity yours. The minor details of the case are lost sight of before the question thus put. I am not simply a writer, you are not merely consular judges. Your conscience confronts mine. At this tribunal, you represent a great idea, and I, at the bar, stand for another. Your seat is justice; mine, liberty. Now, justice and liberty are made to be heard. Liberty is right, and justice is free.
"This is not the first time that M. Odilon Barrot has told you before me, gentlemen, that the Tribunal of Commerce has been called upon to condemn, without departing from its jurisdiction, the arbitrary acts of those in authority. The first tribunal to declare the ordinances of 25 July 1830 illegal has been forgotten by no one, it was the Tribunal of Commerce. You, gentlemen, will follow that memorable precedent, and, although the question is much smaller, you will uphold right to-day as you upheld it then; you will, I hope, listen to what I have to say to you with sympathy; you will warn the Government by your sentence, that it is on a bad path, and is wrong to degrade art and thought; you will give me back my rights and property; you will brand the police and censorship on the brow, who came by night to steal my liberty and my property from me by breaking the Charter.
"What I say here I say without anger, the reparation I demand of you I ask with due gravity and moderation. God forbid I should spoil the beauty and rectitude of my cause by violent words! He who has right on his side has strength, and the strong scorn violence.
"Yes, gentlemen, right is on my side. M. Odilon Barrot's admirable argument has victoriously proved to you that the ministerial act which has forbidden Le Roi s'amuse, is arbitrary, illegal and unconstitutional. It is in vain for them to attempt to revive a law of the Reign of Terror by attributing the censorship to authority, a law which commands in clear terms the theatres to play the tragedies of Brutus and of Wilhelm Tell three times per week, only to give republican plays, and to stop representations of all work which tends, I quote word for word, 'to deprave the public mind and to awaken the shameful superstition of royalty.' Gentlemen, dare the actual supporters of the new royalty indeed invoke such a law, and invoke it against Le Roi s'amuse? Is it not evidently abrogated in its text as in its spirit? Made for the Terror, it died with the Terror. Is it not the same with all imperious decrees by which, forsooth, officials will have the right not merely to censure theatrical works, but the power of sending an author to prison according to its own good pleasure without trial? Do such things exist nowadays? Was not all this irregular and haphazard legislation solemnly done away with by the Charter of 1830? We appeal to the solemn oath of 9 August. The France of July did not reckon for either conventional or imperial despotism. The Charter of 1830 did not allow itself to be gagged either by 1807 or by '93.
"Liberty of thought in all its various methods of expression, at the theatre as in the press, in the pulpit as in the tribune, there, gentlemen, lies one of the fundamental principles of our public rights. No doubt each of these modes of expression needs an organic law in accord with the fundamental law, a law of good faith, repressive but not preventive, which, leaving each career at liberty, shall imprison licence under strict penal laws. The theatre in particular as a public place, we are anxious to declare, does not know how to protect itself from the legal surveillance of the municipal authority. Well, gentlemen, this law, easier to make, probably, than is commonly supposed, which each of us dramatic poets has probably constructed in his own mind more than once, is wanting, and is not created. Our ministers, who produce year in year out from seventy to eighty laws per session, have not deemed it fitting to make such a one as this. A law for theatres did not seem urgently needed. Not urgent, when it concerns the liberty of thought, the progress of civilisation, public morality, the reputation of families, the tranquillity of Paris, which means that of France, and, indeed, the tranquillity of Europe itself!
"A law affecting the liberty of theatres ought to have been proclaimed since 1830, in the spirit of the new Charter, but it is still wanting, I repeat, through the fault of the Government. Past legislation has evidently fallen away, and all the sophistries with which they plaster its ruins will not build it up again. So, between a law which no longer exists and one which is still needed, the authorities do not possess the right to stop a play at a theatre. I will not linger over what M. Odilon Barrot has demonstrated so supremely well.
"Here an objection of secondary importance arises which I am, however, going to discuss. True, such a law is needed, people will say, but in the absence of legislation, ought authority to be completely defenceless? Might there not appear suddenly on the stage one of those infamous pieces--evidently made on purpose to make money and scandal--where all that is sacred in religion and morality and in the heart of man is insolently scoffed at and ridiculed; where all that goes to make the peace of family life and of citizenship is held up to question; where even living personages are pilloried on the stage amidst the hootings of the multitude? Do not State reasons lay upon the Government the duty of closing the theatre to such monstrous work, in spite of the silence of law? I do not know, gentlemen, if such a type of work has even been produced, and I do not wish to know, or to believe it, and I will not accept here, in any degree whatever, the task of denouncing them; but, even in such a case, I declare, whilst deploring the scandal caused, and realising that others would advise the State to stop works of this kind immediately, and at once to demand the Chambers for a bill of indemnity, I would not relax the strictness of the principle. I would say to the Government: See the consequences of your negligence to create a law so pressingly needed as a law affecting theatrical liberty! You have done this wrong, repair it and hasten to ask the Chambers for penal legislation, and, meantime, pursue the guilty drama with the code of the press, which, until special laws be made will, in my opinion, rule all public fashions. I say, in my opinion, for this is but my own personal view. My illustrious defender would, I know, only allow liberty to theatres with greater restrictions than I should; I speak here not with the opinion of a lawyer, but with the simple common sense of the citizen; if I am wrong, do not let my words be laid to the account of my defender, but at my own door solely. I repeat it, gentlemen, I would not relax the strictness of the principle; I would not grant the ruling authorities the power to confiscate liberty even in a case, apparently, where it was legitimate, for fear a day would come when it would confiscate it in all cases; I think that to repress scandal by arbitration is to create two scandals in place of one, and I say with an eloquent and serious-minded man who must shudder to-day at the way in which his disciples apply his doctrines: 'Il n'y a pas de droit au-dessus du droit' ('There is no right over right').
"Now, gentlemen, if such an abuse of power, exercised even upon a licentious, impudent or defamatory work would have been inexcusable, how much more so when it fastens upon a work of pure art, when it picks out for proscription among all the plays which have been produced for the last two years, a serious composition, strict in its morality? And that is precisely what the left-handed power which governs us has done in stopping Le Roi s'amuse. M. Odilon Barrot has proved to you that it has acted without justice; I will prove that it has acted without reason.
"The motives that those who are in with the police have been whispering abroad for some days to explain the prohibition of this play are of three kinds: there is the moral reason, the political reason and--we must say the words though they be laughable--the literary reason. Vergil relates that several ingredients went to make up the thunder which Vulcan made for Jupiter. The petty ministerial thunder which has struck my play, which the censorship had forged for the police, is made up of three bad reasons rolled up, intermingled and united, très imbris torti radios.
"There is, first of all, or, rather, there was, the moral reason. Yes, gentlemen, I swear it, because it seems incredible, the police made out at first that Le Roi s'amuse was, I quote the actual expression, 'an immoral play.' I have already silenced the police on that point. In publishing Le Roi s'amuse, I declared openly, not for the benefit of the police, but for those honourable men who wished to read me, that the drama was profoundly and strictly moral. No one has disbelieved me and no one will, it is my profound conviction as an honest man. All the precautions the police for a time succeeded in raising against the morality of this work have disappeared at the time I am now speaking. Four thousand copies of the book issued to the public have pleaded this trial in their own way, and these four thousand advocates have won their cause. In such a matter, also, an affirmative is sufficient; I shall not, therefore, enter upon a superfluous discussion. Only, for the sake of the future as well as the past, I would have the police to know, once for all, that I do not write immoral works. Let this be taken as conclusive, for I shall not return to it again.
"After the moral argument there comes the political. Here, gentlemen, as I can only express the same ideas in other terms, allow me to quote you a page from the preface I put to the drama ..." (We have ourselves laid that page of preface before our readers.)[7]
"After moral and political reasons, come the literary. A Government stopping a play for literary reasons is a strange thing, but it is not, however, without foundation. You remember--if by chance it was worth your trouble to remember it--that, in 1829, at the period when the first works called romantic appeared upon the stage, about the time when the Comédie-Française received Marion Delorme, a petition signed by seven persons was presented to King Charles X. to demand that the Théâtre-Français be closed by the king, simply to the works of what was called the New School. Charles took it laughingly, and replied wittily that in literary questions he had only his place in the pit of the theatre like the rest of us. The petition collapsed beneath ridicule. Well, gentlemen, to-day many of the signers of this petition are deputies, influential deputies belonging to the majority, having a share in the governmental powers and voting for the budget. What they timidly petitioned for in 1829, they are able, all-powerful as they are, to carry out in 1832.
"Public rumour, in fact, says that it was they who, the day after the first performance, approached the minister at the Chamber of Deputies and obtained a promise from him under the most moral and politic excuses imaginable, that Le Roi s'amuse should be stopped. The minister, an ingenuous, innocent and candid man, bravely took up the challenge; he could not distinguish beneath all those wrappings the direct and personal animosity; he believed he was performing a political proscription. I am sorry for him, they made him execute a literary proscription. I will not say more on this point.... It inspires me with infinitely less anger than pity; it is odd, that is all. The Government lending assistance to the Academy in 1832! Aristotle become the law of the State once more! An imperceptible literary revolution being carried on at the brink of, and in the midst of, our great political revolutions! The deputies who deposed Charles X. working in a tiny corner to restore Boileau! How despicable!...
"Gentlemen, I will sum up. By stopping my play, the Government has not, on the one hand, an article of law to quote from; on the other, not a single valuable reason to give. This measure has two aspects, both equally bad: as law, it is arbitrary; as reasoning, it is absurd. What, then, can the power which has neither reason nor law on its side allege as its motives? Its caprice, fancy, desire --that is to say, nothing!
"You will do justice, gentlemen, to that desire, fancy, caprice. Your sentence, by giving me the case, will inform the country of this business--which is but small as compared with the greatness of the ordinance of July--what force majeure there is in France besides that of the law, and that at the basis of this trial there is an illegal order which the Government did wrong to issue, and the theatre was wrong to obey; your sentence will teach the powers that its very friends blame it candidly on this occasion; that the rights of every citizen are to be respected by all Governments, that, given the conditions of order and of general safety are fulfilled, the theatre ought to be respected like other means of expression of public thought, and that, whether it be the press, the tribune or the theatre, none of the loopholes for the escape of liberty of intellect can be closed without peril. I address myself to you with profound faith in the worthiness of my cause. I shall never be afraid under similar occasions of grappling with a ministry hand to hand; the law courts are the natural judges of honourable duels of pure right against arbitrary dealings, duels less unequal than people think; for if, on the one side, there is a whole Government, and, on the other, only a simple citizen, that simple citizen is, indeed, strong when he can bring an illegal act before your bar, ashamed of being thus exposed to public view and public scourging, and confronting it as I am doing with four articles from the Charter!
"I do not, however, disguise from myself that the present time is not like the latter years of the Restoration, when resistance to the encroachments of the Government was so much applauded and so popular. The ideas of stability and of authority are momentarily more in favour than those of progress and of freedom. It is a natural reaction after that rough revival of all our liberty at a rush styled the Revolution of 1830. But this reaction will not last long. Our ministers will some day be surprised by the implacable memory with which the men even who compose their majority then will recall all the grievances they seem to have forgotten so quickly to-day; moreover, let that day be late or soon in coming it will not matter: on that score I neither look for applause nor fear invective; I have but followed the strict monitions of my right and my duty.
"I ought to say here that I have strong reasons for believing that the Government will take advantage of this fleeting torpor of the public mind formally to reestablish the censorship, and my affair is but a prelude, a preparation, a step to a putting of all theatrical liberty outside general laws. By not making a repressive law, by purposely letting licence have free scope on the stage for the past two years, the Government imagines it has created, in the opinion of respectable men, who might be disgusted with that licence, a prejudice in favour of dramatic censorship. In my opinion it is mistaken, and the censorship will never be anything else in France than an unpopular and illegal proceeding. As far as I myself am concerned, whether the censorship of the theatres he re-established by an illegal decree or an unconstitutional law, I declare I will never submit to such an act of authority without protesting; and I make such a protest solemnly now and here both for the present and for the future.
"Further, observe how wanting in greatness, openness and courage the Government has been in the series of arbitrary acts which have succeeded one another for some time past. It has slowly, subterraneously, surreptitiously, indirectly, tortuously undermined the beautiful though incomplete edifice which the revolution of July had reared. It always took us treacherously from behind when we least expected. It dared not censure my play before the representation; it stopped it the following day. It attacks our most vital liberties; it cavils at our best attained efforts; it bases its despotism on a heap of ancient worm-eaten and repealed laws; it lies in wait to rob us of our rights in that Forest of Bondy of imperial decrees, through which liberty never passes without being stripped....
"I say it is for the probity of the law courts to stop its course, which is as dangerous to it as to us. I say that the ruling power is specially wanting in greatness and courage by the underhand manner in which it has performed this hazardous operation, which each Government in strange blindness attempts in its turn, and which consists in substituting, more or less rapidly, arbitrariness for the constitution, despotism for liberty.[8] ... If it only continues for some time longer in this way, if the proposed laws are adopted, the confiscation of all our rights will be complete. To-day, they take away my liberty as a poet by censure: to-morrow, they will take away my liberty as a citizen by a gendarme; to-day, they banish me from the theatre: to-morrow, they will banish me from the country; to-day, they stop my mouth: to-morrow, they will transport me; to-day, the state of siege is in literature: to-morrow, it will be in citizenship; in liberties, guarantees, charters, public rights, in a word, annihilation!
"If the Government be not better advised by its own interests to stop at the precipice while there is yet time, before long we shall have all the despotism of 1807 without its glory: we shall have the Empire without the Emperor. I have only a word more to say, gentlemen, and I desire it may be in your mind whilst you are deciding. There has been in this century but one great man, Napoleon, and but one great thing, liberty! The great man is no more with us, let us try to have the great thing. V. HUGO."
Of course it goes without saying that the tribunal pronounced itself incompetent to deal with the case, and no justice at all was done to the poet.
[Footnote 1: The agent Léotaud who arrested M. de Chateaubriand in 1832.]
[Footnote 2: See Appendix.]
[Footnote 3: See Appendix.]
[Footnote 4: See Appendix.]
[Footnote 5: Ibid.]
[Footnote 6: M. Odilon Barrot.]
[Footnote 7: See Appendix.]
[Footnote 8: See Appendix.]
Chapter II
Le Corsaire trial--The Duc d'Orléans as caricaturist--The Tribune trial--The right of association established by jury--Statistics of the political sentences under the Restoration_--Le Pré-aux-Clercs_
Let us return to the political trials which were a feature of the close of the year 1832. Of course, at this period, a political trial was thought more of than a literary one, and people were much more sure of being acquitted if they had conspired against the Government than if they had conspired against the Academy. The trial of the newspaper Le Corsaire followed that of Le Roi s'amuse, or even, I believe, preceded it. Le Corsaire was then republican; it had given an account of the 5th and 6th of June according to our point of view. It is an odd thing: every newspaper which supported the revolution in politics, supported the statu quo in literature. I will relate, shortly, my quarrel with Carrel. This is how the Corsaire had expressed itself. We quote only the passage which was impeached by the public prosecutor:--
"... The National Guard of the suburbs had arrived, and it was in the actual courtyard of the Tuileries itself that cartridges and brandy were distributed. All at once, the roar of firing was heard on the quai de la Mégisserie, in the rue Saint-Martin, by the Saint-Méry convent and in the rue Montmartre and Saint-Honoré. Soon, cannon intermingled with it, and, during this time, a considerable number of soldiers went to various quarters of the city; the drums beat the invitation to the citizens, but the greater mass of them listened unheeding and declined Civil War. One part of the city was barricaded. A royal parade had taken place. The King of the French and his son the Duc de Nemours, accompanied by M. de Montalivet, sword in hand, and by M. d'Argout, provided with the crutch he had not discarded since his last illness, as the ministerial newspapers grotesquely put it, had gone through the boulevards and returned by the quays. More than fifteen hundred cavalry escorted the king. Meantime, blood was shed in the quartier Saint-Martin. The National Guard of the district showed an excitement of which it was difficult thoroughly to understand the cause; the firing did not cease; more than forty thousand men were in action...."
This article was prosecuted for provoking to rebellion. As can be seen, it was not amiably disposed to the July Government, and the question ought, we think, to have been put in an entirely different way. Had the attacked Government the right of defending itself? Without a doubt it had. Had it the right to distribute brandy and cartridges in the Tuileries courtyard? Certainly! Had we not indeed seen M. de Rumigny distributing powder and shot and wine at the Palais-Royal on 31 July and 1 August, on the morning of the parade of Rambouillet? Yes; but then the action was sympathetic and approved, whilst, to-day, there was immense opposition organised against Louis-Philippe, and all his actions were blamed, even those of legitimate defence.... They attacked the king, they attacked the princes, they attacked the ministers: this had all been well done and well received.
Philippon, the witty editor of the Journal four rire, had conceived the idea of depicting Louis-Philippe in the shape of a fear: all the walls of Paris were covered with this grotesque likeness. He published the journal La Caricature, to which Decamps contributed some of his early drawings, and La Caricature was a tremendous success. Everyone, even the Duc d'Orléans, had a hand in it. We know that the prince could draw cleverly and with originality and that he also engraved. I still possess drawings and engravings by him. He was a pupil of Fielding, and drew animals with great skill. One day, an idea for a caricature came into his head, inspired by the daily quips which the Chamber made at his father: it was to draw the king as Gulliver and the deputies as Lilliputians. The king was laid full length asleep, bound and gagged, with all the Lilliputian population about him, taking advantage of his enforced immobility to feel him over and examine him. A host of episodes each funnier than the others sprang out of the first idea. M. Jacques Lefebvre, the banker, was rolling a 5-franc piece towards the effigy of King Louis-Philippe with the same amount of exertion as a wheelwright rolls a wheel. M. Humann, Minister of Finance--so far as I can recollect--at that time, and consequently, supervisor of the excise duties, was plunged up to the knees in the powder so strongly appreciated by Sganarelle, and sneezing fit to shake his head off. M. Ganneron, who had made his fortune in tallow, came forward candle in hand towards the bridge made by Gulliver's half-open breeches, less courageous than the Comte Max Edmond of the Burgraves, and uncertain whether he might venture into the darkness of the cavern. M. Thiers and M. Guizot, who already disputed power between them, had each stretched a rope from the fobs of the king's waistcoat, and advanced each with scales in hand towards the two royal fobs which bore the titles of Ministère de l'intérieur and Ministère des affaires Étrangères; M. Thiers's scales were labelled Libéralisme and M. Guizot's Réaction. M. Mold and M. Dupin were playing on a see-saw. All these Lilliputians were as lifelike as possible. We need not speak of the king, who was eight to ten inches in length and a perfect portrait. But this is the most curious part of the story.
The Duc d'Orléans had obtained his stones from the lithographic office of Motte, father-in-law of our dear friend Achille Devéria. They forgot to say that this piece of lithography, not being intended for the public, did not need to be deposited with the Ministère de l'intérieur: the head workman did the thing in all conscientiousness and sent in a proof to the Ministère de l'intérieur; it was signed F.O., the duke's usual signature, for Ferdinand d'Orléans. It need hardly be said that the print was not only forbidden publication, but taken to the king.
The king recognised his son's signature! We can comprehend the paternal dressing-down His Royal Highness received. Honourable amends were made: the lithographer scratched out the head, and, instead of that of the Chief of the State, put the first head that came into his mind.
In 1834, the Duc d'Orléans gave me two copies of this caricature, one before the head was scratched out and one after; I was stupid enough to let myself be robbed of both. If the Duc d'Orléans were still living, I had only to ask him for others, and I did not then realise the price they were worth. This digression is intended to convey an idea of the sort of opposition that was raised at that period.
Le Corsaire, then, was prosecuted for provoking to rebellion. The jury retired to deliberate for form's sake, but soon came out and pronounced the manager of the Corsaire not guilty. The trial of La Tribune succeeded that of the Corsaire. M. Bascans was acquitted as M. Viennot had been. Then came the affair of the right of association. Nineteen members of the Society of Friends of the People were summoned before the juries of the second court. They were accused of having been leaders and administrators of a political meeting of over twenty persons. This was quite a different matter from the two preceding acquittals! After three quarters of an hour's deliberation, M. Fenet, foreman of the jury, read this declaration--
"Re the first question.--'Has there been an association gathering on fixed days to discuss politics?'--'Yes,'
"Re the second question.--'Did those gatherings take place without authorisation from the Government?'-'Yes.'
[After these two affirmations everybody believed of course that the accused were certain to be found guilty.]
"Re the third question.--Are the accused guilty?'-'No.'"
The whole court broke into applause. Thus the right of association was established by jury. People were beginning to grow sick of political sentences. Statistics had just been published giving the list of those sentenced during the Restoration: the Bourbons of the Elder Branch had in fifteen years cut off a hundred and eighteen heads and sentenced fourteen contumacious persons; it had condemned seventeen to penal servitude with hard labour, nineteen to a term of penal servitude; seventy-two to transportation, eighteen to imprisonment, thirty-five to temporary banishment. In conclusion, the general total of sentences, whether heavy or light, from death penalty to supervision, mounted to two thousand four hundred and sixty-six I In the midst of all these events, on 12 December Hérold produced a masterpiece: Le Pré-aux-Clercs.
Art is a king which walks smilingly through revolutions, looking down with contempt on all the upheavals it survives.
III. Victor Jacquemont
As this blood-stained year 1832 drew to a close, in which cholera alone had deducted from the population of France a tithe of ninety-five thousand deaths, the authorities of Bombay were mourning the death of Victor Jacquemont, a young savant of the highest distinction. Being a scholar, Victor Jacquemont detested men of imagination; he particularly hated us dramatists. He had left France in 1828 before the great literary movement which ensued, and he only judged of it by the leading articles in the newspapers.
"It is all in bad taste!" he said, in one of his letters, which a friend of mine showed me with the usual eagerness one's friends have for thrusting such kinds of stuff under one's nose. "In laying aside the Greeks and Romans, and the nobility of our old theatres, we have not been happy in their successors."
He called us messieurs de l'horrible. Poor Jacquemont! I hardly knew him; I saw him once at General La Fayette's, who treated him like a son. The famous old man had a sure instinct for friendship: all who became great later were honoured by his friendship or protection.
The death of Jacquemont hardly made any impression in France; he was totally unknown by his compatriots; his reputation dated from the posthumous publication of his works, and especially of his private correspondence, which every cultured man "has read. I say cultured man, for there are no more inveterate hunters-out of talent than your man of culture. Now there is real wit at the bottom of Jacquemont's correspondence, although it is of a dry and sceptical type. As for belief, that is another matter altogether; he evidently doubted everything, even God. In his last letters to his family, he does not express a word of hope for another life; the immortality of the soul, with Jacquemont, is not even as much as a dream. The letter in which he bids farewell to his brother, and, through his brother, to the whole family, is full of despair. I will not say that there is no resignation in it, but it reads like the work of an unconcerned person. Jacquemont talks of himself in it as he would speak of a casual acquaintance. Put the letter into the third person; let the dying man substitute he for I, and you have the official announcement of the death of a stranger, made by an indifferent person. See if the letter is that of a man dying four thousand leagues from his country:
"BOMBAY, INVALID OFFICERS' QUARTERS,
"1 December 1832
"DEAR PORPHYRE,--I came here ill thirty-two days ago, and for thirty-one I have been in bed. In the poisonous forests of the isle of Salsette, exposed to the burning sun during the most unhealthy season, I caught the germs of the disease, attacks of which I have often felt since my journey to Adjmir, but I had disguised from myself their true nature. It is inflammation of the liver. The pestilential exhalations have done for me. As soon as my illness began, I made my will and put my affairs in order. My interests are entrusted to the honourable and friendly care of Mr. James Nicol, an English merchant here, and to M. Cordier at Calcutta. Mr. Nicol was my host on my arrival in Bombay. No old friend could have lavished more affectionate care upon me. Nevertheless, at the end of a few days, while I was still able to be transported, I left his house, which is in the fort, in order to occupy a convenient and spacious set of rooms in the quarter of the invalided officers, in a most airy and healthy situation by the seacoast, a hundred yards from my doctor, Dr. MacLennan, the cleverest in Bombay, whose admirable care long since made him my very dear friend.
"The cruellest thought, dear Porphyre, when we are dying in a far country, for those who love us, is the idea of the loneliness and desertion in which we may be passing the last hours of our existence. Well, my dear fellow, you can find comfort in the assurance I give you that, since my arrival here, I have not ceased to be overwhelmed with the most affectionate and touching attentions of a number of good and kindly men. They come and see me constantly, humour my sick whims and forestall my every fancy. Mr. Nicol more than any one; Mr. John Box, a member of the Government; an old engineering colonel, Mr. Goodfellow; a very kind young officer, Major Mountain, and others still, whom I have not mentioned. The excellent MacLennan nearly risked his own health for my sake; for several days during a crisis which seemed likely to end fatally, he came twice each night. I have absolute confidence in his skill. At first, I suffered greatly; but for a long time I have been reduced to a state of weakness which is almost exempt from pain. The worst is that for thirty-one days I have not slept more than one hour in all. But these sleepless nights are very quiet ones, and do not seem desperately long.
"Happily, the disease is drawing to its close; it may not be fatal, although most probably it will. The abscess or abscesses formed since the first inside the liver, which, until a recent period, promised to disperse by absorption, seem to have increased, and bid fair shortly to open externally. All I desire is to escape quickly out of the wretched state in which I have been lingering for a month past, no matter by what means it he. My mind is perfectly clear, as you can see; it has only been rarely and temporarily clouded during several violent paroxysms of pain at the beginning of my illness. I have generally calculated upon the worst, so have never been unusually depressed. My end, should it come, looks sweet and peaceful. If you were here seated on my bed, with our father and Frédéric, I should be brokenhearted, and should not regard death with such serenity and resignation. Be comforted, and console our father; console one another, my dear ones. But I am exhausted with this effort to write. I must bid you farewell! Farewell ... Oh! how your poor Victor loves you! Farewell for the last time! I can only write in pencil as I lie on my back. For fear the letters get rubbed out, the excellent Mr. Nicol will copy this letter in ink, so that I may be certain you will read my last thoughts.
"VICTOR JACQUEMONT
"I have been able to sign what the admirable Mr. Nicol has been so good as to copy. Farewell once more, my dear ones!"
Only one single sentence from the man's heart: "Farewell! Oh! how your poor Victor loves you!" It explains entirely why a literature full of sentiment must have been antipathetic to that cold, learned intellectual temperament.
Happily, two men undertook to send to the family, heart-broken by the unexpected loss far away from them, the melancholy consolations which the dying man had not thought of giving them. A dying man who knows he is beloved ought to console those whom he is going to leave as much as he can; he ought to have pity on those whom he causes to weep: hearts are cured by being softened, not by being turned to stone. The man who has wept much alone can appreciate the truth of what I say here.
This is Mr. James Nicol's letter to Jacquemont's brother. Mr. James Nicol is an Englishman, remember, and yet the letter is written in French, a tongue other than his own. But there is one universal language for the heart.
"BOMBAY, 17 December 1832
"MY DEAR SIR,--Although a stranger to you, fate has allotted it to me to communicate to you an event which you did not expect. It is with the deepest regret I am obliged to transmit to you your brother Victor's last letter, and to communicate to you the sole consolation which is left to you, that of telling you of the peaceful and painless end he made on 17 December.
"Your brother came to my house on 29 October from Tanna, being in a very weak state of health, in consequence of an illness he had recently had, which he thought would speedily be cured by the sea breezes of this island, and his strength quickly restored. The evening of his arrival he took a walk of half a league with me, and, next day, paid various calls; but he came back early, thoroughly exhausted. I advised him to see a doctor at once; Dr. MacLennan saw him the same evening. I enclose in this letter for your satisfaction the account the doctor wrote of his illness. As your brother has himself told you, he suffered terribly at the beginning of his illness, and, from the first, he was informed of the dangerous nature of the disease. On 4 November he made his will, a copy of which I enclose herewith. About 8 November the disease appeared to take a favourable turn; and he still entertained the hope of recovering his health, when the formation of an abscess appeared. He then became daily weaker, but preserved throughout his illness a calm and contentedness I have never seen equalled. I left him on 6 December nearly in the same condition as on the preceding days, but without any symptoms of near dissolution. However, on the 7th, about three in the morning, he was seized with violent pains, which lasted for two hours. Dr. MacLennan was with him at the time. At five A.M. your brother sent for me: he was not suffering when I arrived; but a great change had taken place in his looks since the previous night, and I could hardly restrain my tears. Then, taking my hand, he said to me: 'Do not grieve; the time draws close, and my wishes are about to be fulfilled. I have been praying to heaven for it for the last fortnight. It is a happy release. Were I to live now the disease would probably make the rest of my life miserable.... Write to my brother, and tell how peacefully and happily my last days passed....'
"He repeated to me that he wished me to send his manuscripts and collections to France, and went into the most elaborate details concerning his funeral arrangements, which he wished to be celebrated with Protestant rites. He asked me to put up a simple gravestone with this inscription upon it--
'VICTOR JACQUEMONT NÉ À PARIS LE 8 AOUT 1801 MORT À BOMBAY APRÈS AVOIR VOYAGÉ PENDANT TROIS ANS ET DEMI DANS L'INDE'
During the course of the day he had several attacks of vomiting, and his breathing was considerably affected; but he kept the use of his faculties as perfectly as when in good health. He was only disquieted about his death, adding: 'I am very comfortable here, but I should be much better in my grave!' About five P.M. he said to me: 'I am now going to take my last drink from your hand, and then die.' A violent fit of vomiting ensued, and he was laid back in his bed completely exhausted. He opened his eyes at times, and until within twenty minutes before his death he seemed to recognise me. At sixteen minutes past six, he rendered up his spirit into the arms of death in his sleep.
"He was buried the following evening with military honours, as a member of the Légion d'honneur, and was followed by members of the Government, and by many other people.
"I feel the sincerest sympathy with you and your father in this irreparable loss. I only knew your brother during his illness, and only had the melancholy satisfaction of contributing to the best of my ability to his needs during his illness. In conformity with your brother's wishes, I have sent off by steamer with all possible care the articles of natural history which remained in my possession; they are packed in eleven cases and barrels, for which I enclose the invoice and bill of lading, signed by the captain of the French vessel, La Nymphe of Bordeaux. I wrote to the Commissaire Général de la Marine at Bordeaux, asking him to smooth over any difficulties that might arise in connection with them. Be so good as to write to him about the things. I have also dispatched a box addressed to your father, containing all the writings your brother left with me.[1] I have put his Order of the Légion d'honneur, which your brother particularly instructed me to send you, in the case containing his papers. I also send you his watch and pistols. Be so good as to separate the catalogues belonging to the collections from the other writings, and send them to the Royal Museum. I have the honour to be, dear Sir, yours, etc. JAMES NICOL."
The epitaph drawn up by the dying man himself is terribly curt and dreary. The lost child called Antony would have found something more filial for his unknown mother than this philosopher for his. Besides the mother who bore us, is there not also the mother who receives us into her arms;--the everlasting grave as well as the temporary cradle? Ought not the arid and devouring climate of India to make the gentle land of his birth most precious to the sufferer?
Oh, violets and daisies which shall one day spring up on my grave, how I should regret you if I had to sleep my last sleep beneath the burning sands of Bombay! The soul may, perhaps, be but a dream; but the perfume of flowers is a reality.
To the letter of Mr. James Nicol was joined the account of Jacquemont's illness by Dr. MacLennan, the length of which we greatly regret prevents us from reproducing here;[2] it proves to what a point the excellent doctor had risked his own health, as the dying man had said. Nor were these the only tokens of sympathy which the family of their famous dead received. MM. Cordier, Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire and de Jussieu wrote the following letter to M. Jacquemont, the father:--
"PARIS, 21 May 1833
"SIR,--We have sympathised with the blow which has just struck you down too much not to feel a desire to associate ourselves with your grief, by bearing testimony to our own share in it. The administration of the Museum, which had entrusted your son with the mission he honourably fulfilled, and to which he has sacrificed his life, feels the cruel loss in a double capacity; it has lost in him a traveller in whom it placed complete reliance, and science has lost a naturalist of most brilliant promise.
"We are authorised to hope that, owing to the wise precautions he took during his last days, the fruits of the fatal journey will not be lost; that M. Victor Jacquemont's work will bear fruit and their results develop, though, doubtless, less brilliantly than as if under his own direction, yet in a sufficient manner to cause his efforts to be appreciated, both in actual accomplishment and as an example of what further work he would have done had he lived.
"You may rely upon it that nothing will be neglected on our part to attain to this end, and in order to give you the only real consolation which is left you.--We are, sir, etc.,
"Les professeurs administrateurs du Muséum
"CORDIER, Director GEOFFROY-SAINT-HILAIRE A. DE JUSSIEU"
As a matter of fact, all Victor Jacquemont's writings reached Paris safe and sound. I saw them in M. Guizot's hand once when I had been to ask his help in saving the life of a man under sentence of death, who was to be shot the next day. I wanted a word from M. Guizot to this end, and he wrote on a spare sheet from among Jacquemont's manuscripts. The man was saved; but I will tell the story in its proper place. That is how the name of Jacquemont perhaps occupies a more important place in my memory and in my Memoirs than it should.
[Footnote 1: The whole of Victor Jacquemont's writings, and the description of the principal objects of natural history which the collections comprised, that he sent to the Natural History Museum of Paris, have been published by MM. Firmin Didot frères, under the title of Voyage dans l'Inde, 6 vols, in 4to, four of printed matter and two containing 290 plates and 4 maps (1841-44).]
[Footnote 2: The letter will be found in the Paris edition of the Souvenirs of Dumas, 1855, vol. vii.]
IV. George Sand
Now let us say a few words about the literary productions of the year 1832. We have seen its important theatrical works: Térésa, Louis XI., Dix Ans de la vie d'une femme, Un duel sous Richelieu, La Tour de Nesle, Clotilde, Périnet Leclerc and Le Roi s'amuse.
M. Lesur's Annual List, which sums up the year's work, complains of the lack of productiveness of those twelve months, which only produced TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SEVEN works, among which are the eight dramas above mentioned.
See what the chronologist says about the novels; his usual kindly inclination towards contemporary literature will be detected therein:--
"Romances multiply as fast as ever; they swarm everywhere and jostle one another in order to put before us an energetic display of trivialities: novels of manners, historical novels, psychological, physiological, pathological novels; tales and comic and fantastic stories of every sort and colour!"
Yes, Monsieur Lesur; and, among those abounding novels, we have, in fact, two masterpieces by Madame Sand, Indiana and Valentine, and one of Eugène Sue's best works, La Salamandre.
But let us deal first with Madame Sand, that hermaphrodite genius who combined the strength of a man with the grace of a woman; who, like the ancient sphinx, the ever-mysterious enigma, crouched on the extreme borders of art with the face of a woman, the claws of a lion and the wings of an eagle. We will return afterwards to Eugène Sue.
Madame Sand came to Paris a short time before the Revolution of 1830. What did she come there to do? She will herself tell you with her accustomed frankness. Madame Sand wears a woman's clothes, but only as garments to cover her and not for purposes of concealment; of what use is hypocrisy when one possesses strength?
"A short time before the Revolution of 1830," says the authoress of Indiana, "I came to Paris with the object of finding occupation, not so much of a lucrative nature as a sufficiency. I had never worked except for pleasure; I knew in common with everybody else that un peu de tout meant rien en somme. I laid great stress on work which would permit me to remain in my own home. I did not know what to turn to. Drawing, music, botany, languages, history, I had nibbled at them all, and I regretted very much that I had not gone deeply into any of them; for, of all occupations, the one that attracted me least was to write for the public. It seemed to me that, apart from a rare talent for it, which I did not feel to possess, it was of less use than any other. I should, then, much have preferred a particular profession. I had often written for my own personal amusement. It appeared to me to be very impertinent to pretend to be able to amuse or interest other people, and nothing could have been less congenial to my reserved character, a dreamer, and eager for intimate friendships rather than for public exposure of one's most intimate thoughts. In addition to this, I knew my own language only very imperfectly. Educated on classical reading, I saw romanticism spreading everywhere. I had at first scoffed at it and rejected it from the solitudes of my own private corner, and from the depths of my inner conscience, but, when I acquired a taste for it, I became enthusiastic; my taste, which was then unformed, wavered between the past and the present, without knowing where to settle, liking both without knowledge and without seeking a means of reconciling them."
It is impossible better to describe the state of perplexity in which genius is placed during a certain period of life, drawn forward by faith and backward by doubt. Meanwhile, as the author of Indiana was then only twenty-five, and had to choose between the bread of independence and daily bread, she took up both painting on fans and painting portraits at 15 francs apiece and also wrote a novel. It was all very precarious work, the poorest transfer copies varnished over produced a greater effect than the young artist's water-colours; for 5 francs--and a better likeness than hers--the same portraits could be had which she sold for 15; finally, the novel seemed so poor to George Sand that she did not even attempt to turn it to account. However, she felt that her true vocation was literature, and she decided to consult some successful literary man.
There was at this period a littérateur in Paris of incontestable and almost uncontested genius, a writer of the first rank, at all events as regards originality. He had published various novels, and the most striking of them had obtained as strange a success as, at the present moment, Ourika and Édouard have had. He had tried the theatre and written a comedy for the Français; it had collapsed amidst thunderous noise! I have given an account of his first and only performance. His name was Henri de Latouche. He was a compatriot of George Sand and a friend of the family. George Sand decided to look him up.
De Latouche, as I have already said, I knew but slightly, and, about 1832, I quarrelled with him because I was not Republican enough to suit him, or, rather, because I belonged to a different style of Republicanism than his. He was at this time a man of forty-five, with a face that scintillated with intellect, with a rather corpulent frame and very courteous manners, although they covered an infinite fund of irony. His language was choice and his speech pure and well-modulated; he spoke as he wrote, or, rather, as he dictated. Was he a suitable guide for a beginner? I have my doubts. De Latouche was arbitrary in his opinions; he thought that all who were not devoted to him were hostile, all not for him against him. As timid as a chamois, he continually believed there was a hatched conspiracy on the way to calumniate and destroy him. He retired into his retreat at la Vallée-aux-Loups. His enemies accused him of cowardice and tried to pursue him there; but, if they ventured too far, they returned with their faces marked as with a tiger's claws. He began by teasing the poor novice cruelly, condemning, like Alcestis, all her literary attempts.
"Nevertheless," says George Sand, "beneath all the jeerings and criticism, the sportive, trenchant, amusing mockery he heaped upon me in our interviews, reason, taste, in a word, art, presented itself to me. No one excelled more than he in the destruction of the illusions of conceitedness; but no one had more kindly delicacy in preserving hope and courage. He had a sweet and touching voice, an aristocratic and clear pronunciation, and a manner that was both alluring and teasing. The eye that was put out when he was a child did not disfigure him in the least, the only trace of the accident left was a kind of red fire which shot from the pupil and gave him a strange look of brilliancy when he was excited."
No, the eye did not disfigure de Latouche's face, but it disfigured his character terribly! Perhaps, also, he owed some portion of his latent talent to this blind eye, as Byron did to his lame foot. We will go on quoting George Sand's own words, which complete the picture of de Latouche's character:--
"M. de Latouche loved to instruct, to reprove, to lay down the law; but he quickly lost patience with vain people, and turned his wit against them in derisive compliments, which were inexpressibly malicious. When he met a mind disposed to profit by his lessons, his satire was more kindly; his clutch became paternal and his fiery eye softened; and, after he had emptied the overflowings of his wit upon you, he let you see a tender, sensitive heart beneath, full of devoted and generous feeling."
Six months went by in this kind of work between pupil and master, the master pointing out what the scholar ought to read, himself reading them to her in his own fashion--namely, relating the book to her instead of reading it, adding to the author's narrative the brilliant embroideries of his imagination, letting fall from his lips at every word he uttered a pearl or diamond, as did the fairy in the Thousand and One Nights, of whom we all read in our childhood.
De Latouche was editor of Le Figaro at this period; a species of hussar of opposition, an officer of light cavalry which daily tilted against the Government. The ordinary editors of the paper were Félix Pyat and Jules Sandeau. George Sand was added to them. This addition was a sort of diploma of bachelor of letters. De Latouche's three pupils (I hope, since George Sand accepted the title, that the others will not disown it) had one common editorial office where they met daily at a given hour. It was in this office, seated at the little tables covered with green cloths, that they each wrote copy. Copy, be it understood, is in this case very improperly the synonym for manuscript. De Latouche gave out a subject; they enlarged upon it, and the paper appeared to be written by one single mind, since it had but a single spirit, and that spirit descended, like the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, in tongues of fire upon his disciples. But all these attentions did not serve to make the poor pupil able to dispense with her master. The future author of Indiana and of Valentine, and of so many other wonderful books, did not know how to write a newspaper article, nor how to be brief. De Latouche reserved for her all the sentimental anecdotes which admitted of some enlargement of treatment; but George Sand found she always had to confine herself to the narrow limits of half a column, a column, or a column and a half at most, and, when the article had begun to begin, it had to be ended off; there was no room left for more.
Out of the ten articles George Sand gave to her editor-in-chief, often not a single one was of any use, and often he lit his fire with the copy which, she declares, was no good for anything else. Yet every day he said to her--
"Do not be discouraged, my child. You cannot write an article in ten lines; but, some day, you will write novels in ten volumes. Try, first of all, to rid your mind of imitations; all beginners start by copying others. Don't be anxious, you will gradually find your own feet, and be the first to forget how it all came to you."
And, as a matter of fact, during six weeks of the spring of 1832, which she spent in the country, George Sand wrote a novel in two volumes. That novel was Indiana. She returned from the country, went to see Latouche and confessed, trembling, the fresh crime she had just committed.
"What good luck!" exclaimed de Latouche; "it will be said that I foresaw this; I have looked for and found you a publisher; give him your novel."
"Will you not have a look at it, then?" asked the author.
"No, you are hard to read, and I do not like reading manuscript. Take the two volumes to the publisher, claim your 1200 francs, and I will criticise the work in its printed form."
As George Sand knew of nothing better to do than to follow this advice, she did as she was told. Sometimes we say he and sometimes she; I hope George Sand will excuse us! Have we not said that her wonderful genius was as hermaphrodite as la Bragoletta of her master!
A month later, George Sand received from her publisher the twelve copies reserved for the author. Indiana had been published that very day. De Latouche entered.
"Oh! oh!" he said, scenting out the volumes fresh from the press, as the ogre in Tom Thumb smelt the fresh flesh; "what is this?"
"Alas!" replied the trembling pupil, "it is my book."
"Ah! yes, Indiana, I remember."
But we will let George Sand herself tell about this momentous occasion in her life.
"He seized a volume with avidity, cut the first pages with his fingers, and began to make fun as usual, exclaiming, 'Ah! imitation, imitation, the usual style! Here is Balzac, were that possible!' Coming out with me on the balcony which runs round the roof of my house, he said over again to me all the clever, excellent things he had already told me, upon the necessity of being oneself, and not imitating others. At first, I thought he was unjust, but, as he went on speaking, I agreed with him. He said I must return to my water-colours upon screens and snuff-boxes, which amused me, certainly, more than other pursuits, but for which, unfortunately, I found no sale. My position had become desperate; and yet, whether because I had not entertained any hope of success, or was provided with the light-heartedness of youth, I was not upset by my judge's sentence, and passed a very tranquil night. Upon awaking, I received this letter from him which I have always kept:--
"'Forget all my severe remarks of yesterday, forget all the hard things I have said to you the last six months; I have spent the night reading your book, etc....'
"There follow two lines of praise, which only friendship could have prompted, but which he had the bad taste to put down, and the note ends with the paternal words: 'Oh, my child, I am proud of you!'"
With Indiana, George Sand put one foot inside the literary world; with Valentine she put both. You know now how the masculine and virile genius who calls herself George Sand began her career.
Chapter V
Eugène Sue--His family, birth, godfather and godmother--His education--Dr. Sue's wine-cellar--Choir of botanists--Committee of chemistry--Dinner on the grass--Eugène Sue sets out for Spain--His return--Ferdinand Langlé's room--Captain Gauthier
Twenty kilometres from Grasse there lies a small seaport called La Calle; it is the cradle of the Sue family, celebrated both in science and letters.
La Calle is still peopled by members of this family, which, probably, composes half the population. It was from here that, towards the close of the reign of Louis XIV., a young, adventurous student set up as a doctor in Paris. Becoming successful, he sent for his nephew to come to the capital. Both became very distinguished: Pierre Sue, as Professor of Forensic and Librarian of the Medical School--he left behind him works of great scientific value--Jean Sue, as Head, surgeon to the Hospital de la Charité, Professor of the School of Medicine, Professor of Anatomy at the École des Beaux-Arts, and surgeon to King Louis XVI. This latter was succeeded by Jean-Joseph Sue, who, besides the post of Professor to the Beaux-Arts, which he inherited from his father, became principal doctor to the king's military household. It was Eugène Sue's father who had the famous discussion with Cabanis about the guillotine, the inventor making out that a person guillotined only felt a slight chill on the neck, while Jean-Joseph Sue, on the contrary, maintained that it was dreadfully painful, and defended his opinion by arguments which proved his profound knowledge of anatomy; and by experiments made by some German doctors and others. We read all the discussion in connection with our Mille et un Fantômes; and we admit to having taken a lively interest in it.
Eugène Sue was born on 1 January 1803. He was, consequently, five months younger than I, and a few days older than Victor Hugo. His godfather was Prince Eugène and his godmother the Empress Joséphine; hence, his Christian name Eugène. He was suckled by a goat, and, for a long while, preserved the queer, hopping gait of his foster-mother. He studied, or, rather, did not study, at the Collège Bourbon:--like all men who are destined to make for themselves an original and eminent position in literature, he was an execrable scholar. His father, a ladies' doctor, who gave a course of natural history lectures for the benefit of society people, was married three times. He was wealthy, possessing nearly two million francs, and he lived in the rue du Chemin-du-Rempart, a street which has disappeared, but which was then situated behind the Madeleine. The whole of this quarter was at that time occupied by timber-yards: the ground then not being worth half what it now is. M. Sue had a fine house there and a magnificent garden. In the same house as M. Sue, lived his sister, the mother of Ferdinand Langlé, who wrote upwards of fifty comic operas with Villeneuve between 1822 and 1830.
At the period at which we have arrived, 1817 to 1818, the two cousins went together to the Collège Bourbon, that is to say, Ferdinand Langlé went to the college, and Eugène Sue was supposed to go there. He had a private tutor at his residence, Father Delteil, a plucky Auvergnat five feet in height, who, in fulfilment of his tutorial duties, did not hesitate to have hand-to-hand tussles with his pupil, when he fled into the garden only to be pursued after the fashion of Virgil's Galatea. When in the garden, the rebellious pupil gained an arsenal containing arms defensive and offensive. The defensive arms were the borders of the botanical garden, amongst which he took refuge, where his tutor dared not follow him for fear of trampling under foot the rare plants which the fugitive scholar crushed pitilessly without remorse under foot; the offensive arms were the supporting stakes which bore labels with the scientific names of the plants thereon, stakes which Eugène Sue converted into javelins, and with which he overcame his master with a skill that would have done honour to a pupil of Castor and Pollux, the two cleverest javelin throwers of antiquity.
When it was demonstrated to Eugène's father that his son's vocation was to throw javelins and not to expound Horace and Vergil, he took him away from college, and made him enter as an assistant-surgeon at the hospital attached to the king's household, of which he himself was head-surgeon. It was situated in the rue Blanche. Eugène Sue there found his cousin, Ferdinand Langlé, and the future doctor, Louis Véron.
We have said that Eugène Sue had many of his foster-mother's characteristics: the scamp of the household, ever ready to play wicked tricks, especially on his father, who had just remarried, and who treated him very harshly. But he avenged himself well in respect of this harsh treatment! Dr. Sue employed his pupils in preparing his course of natural history lectures; the preparations were conducted in a splendid anatomical room that had been bequeathed to the Beaux-Arts. It contained, among other things, the brain of Mirabeau, preserved in a glass jar. The legitimate organisers were Eugène Sue and Ferdinand Langlé, and a friend of theirs called Delâtre, who afterwards became, and probably still is, a doctor of medicine; the amateur assistants were Achille Petit, and that old and clever friend James Rousseau, whom I have often mentioned. The preparations were quite dreary enough, but were rendered more so because close at hand were two cupboards full of wine, to which the nectar of the gods was but as the white wine of Limoux: these wines were presents which the Allied Sovereigns had given to Dr. Sue after 1814. There was Tokay, given by the Emperor of Austria; Rhenish wines, given by the King of Prussia; Johannisberg wines, given by M. de Metternich; and, finally, a hundred bottles of Alicante, given by Madame de Morville, which bore the most respectable and venerable date 1750. They had tried every possible means of opening the cupboards, which had virtuously resisted persuasion as well as force; they despaired of ever making the acquaintance of Madame de Morville's Alicante, M. de Metternich's Johannisberg, the King of Prussia's "Liebfraumilch," and the Emperor of Austria's Tokay, otherwise than by the samples which, at Dr. Sue's grand dinners, he poured out for his guests into glasses the size of a thimble, when, one day, while fumbling about in a skeleton, Eugène Sue found, by chance, a bunch of keys. They were the keys of the cupboards! First, they laid hands on a bottle of Tokay, sealed with the Imperial seal, and emptied every drop in it; then they hid the bottle. The next day it was the turn for the Johannisberg, and, the day after, for the "Liebfraumilch"; next followed the Alicante. They disposed of these three bottles in the same way as the first. But James Rousseau, who was the oldest and, consequently, possessed superior knowledge of the world to that of his young friends, who had only just ventured their first steps upon the slippery ground of society, judiciously pointed out that, at the rate they were going, they would quickly make a hole which Dr. Sue's eyes would perceive, and so find out the truth. He therefore made the astute suggestion of drinking but a third of the contents of each bottle, filling them up with some composition which should look as much like wine as possible, recorking them scientifically and putting them back in their places again. Ferdinand Langlé approved the suggestion, and added an amendment: namely, to proceed to the great and solemn occasion of opening the cupboard in old-fashioned style, to the accompaniment of the singing of choruses. Both propositions were carried unanimously. That same day they opened a cupboard to a chorus copied from La Leçon de botanique, by Dupaty. The Corypheus sang--
"Que l'amour et la botanique N'occupent pas tous les instants; Il faut aussi que l'on s'applique A boire le vin des parents!
CHŒUR. Buvons le vin des grands parents!"
Then precept was followed by example. When started, they composed a second chorus for the work. Their work consisted especially in stuffing the magnificent birds which they received from all four quarters of the globe.
This is the chorus of the workers--
"Goûtons le sort que le ciel nous destine; Reposons-nous sur le sein des oiseaux; Mêlons le camphre à la térébenthine. Et par le vin égayons nos travaux."
Whereupon, they took a second pull at the bottle, which was soon half-emptied. They next had to follow James Rousseau's counsel and fill it up. For this purpose they appointed a chemical committee, comprised of Ferdinand Langlé, Eugène Sue and Delâtre; later, Romieu was added to it. This chemical committee concocted a horrible mixture of treacle, liquorice and burnt sugar, replaced the wine with the improvised mixture, recorked the bottle as carefully as possible and put it back in its place. When it was a white wine, they clarified the preparation with beaten-up white of egg. But punishment occasionally falls upon the guilty.
M. Sue gave large and splendid dinner-parties: at dessert, they sometimes drank Madame de Morville's Alicante, sometimes His Majesty the Emperor of Austria's Tokay, at others, M. de Metternich's Johannisberg, or the King of Prussia's "Liebfraumilch." All went swimmingly if they happened to fall upon an unopened bottle; but, if they lit upon one examined and corrected by the committee of chemistry.... Well, they had to swallow the drink! Dr. Sue tasted his wine, made a slight grimace, and said, "It is good, but wants to be drunk!" This was so great a truth, and the wine did indeed cry out to be drunk, that next day they began drinking it again. Such a performance was bound to end in a catastrophe, and this one proved no exception. One day, when they believed Dr. Sue to be at his country place of Bouqueval, from whence they reckoned he could not well return in the day, they managed, by dint of various seductive overtures to the cook and the servants, to have an excellent dinner served them on the lawn in the garden. All the bird-stuffers, the chemical committee included, were present, lying about on the grass, crowned by roses like Sybarites, drinking Tokay and Johannisberg, or, rather, having drunk it, when, suddenly, the door of the house leading out into the garden opened, and the commander appeared--the commander being Dr. Sue. Every one of them fled and hid; Rousseau alone took up his empty glass, refilled a second glass, and, stumbling forward straight towards the doctor, he said--
"Ah! dear Doctor Sue, this is the famous Tokay! Let us drink the health of the Emperor of Austria!"
One can imagine the doctor's wrath when he found the empty Tokay bottle on the grass, together with two bottles of Johannisberg and three of Alicante. They had drunk the Alicante like common wine. Talk of thievery, of procureur du roi, of police correctionnelle, rolled in the air like thunder rolling in the clouds during a storm. Profound was the terror of the guilty parties. Delâtre knew of a dried-up well near Clermont and proposed to take refuge in it!
A week later, Eugène Sue set out as assistant to explore the country of Spain (in 1823). He did this and stayed a year at Cadiz, only returning to Paris at the beginning of 1825. The heat of the Trocadero had made his hair and moustache grow; he was as beardless as an apple when he left, and he returned as hairy as a king of the primitive races and as bearded as a moujik. This capillary growth doubtless flattered the doctor's vanity, but it did not serve to unloosen his purse-strings, which he kept tightly shut.
Desforges who had a small private fortune, and Ferdinand Langlé whose mother worshipped him, were the two Crœsuses of society; several times, as did Crœsus with Cæsar, they presented not 30,000,000 sesterces, but 20, 30, 40, 50 and even 100 francs to the most necessitous of the joyous band. Besides his purse, Ferdinand Langlé put at the disposition of the members of the society, who were never sure of a bed or supper, his own room in M. Sue's house, and the meal his mother always put ready for him every night.
Ferdinand Langlé, then a tall fellow of twenty-three, author of a dozen vaudevilles, lover of the charming girl called Fleurriet, who died before her time, an actress at the Gymnase,[1] rarely slept at home, but, as the servant told his mother that Ferdinand lived with the frugality of a monk, the good mother ordered a meal to be put upon his bedroom table every night. The servant put the supper on the table, and the key of the little street door in an agreed spot. When a belated one was homeless he turned his steps to the rue du Chemin-du-Rempart, put his hand into a hole in the wall, found the key there, opened the door, religiously put the key back in its place, drew the door to behind him, lit the candle and, if he were the first to come, ate, drank and slept in the bed. If a second followed the first, he found the key in the same place, entered in the same way, ate the remains of the fowl, drank the rest of the wine, lifted the bedclothes in his turn and dived underneath them. If a third followed, the same game was played with the key and door, only the visitor found no more fowl or wine and no room in the bed, but ate the rest of the bread and drank a glass of water and stretched himself upon the couch. And so ad infinitum. If the number increased immoderately, the last-comers drew a mattress from the bed and slept on the floor. One night, Rousseau arrived last and counted fourteen legs. It was in this room that Henry Monnier and Romieu met for the first time and made each other's acquaintance. Next day they thee'd and thou'd each other, and continued to do so until Romieu was appointed prefect and tutoya-ed people no more. Next morning, they were pretty often awakened by a visitor, a brigadier of the Gardes, who, in passing by, came to look at the state of Ferdinand Langlé's wine cellar. This brigadier, whom I knew well, deserves particular mention. His name was Gauthier de Villiers. He was not only one of the bravest soldiers in the army, but one of the most active boxers in France. The word boxer applies here to his whole body. What became of Captain Gauthier, I have no idea. I would gladly see him once more, even at the risk of his breaking my wrist in shaking hands. He had the courage and the good-heartedness of Porthos. Not for the whole world would he have given a fillip to a child; but he had more wit than M. de Pierrefonds. He had served in the Horse Grenadiers of the Empire; he had made a special name for himself as a sabreman; when he charged and stabbed an enemy on horseback, he would lift him from his horse by the strength of his wrist and throw him behind him, as though he were a truss of hay. Gauthier stopped with one hand a tilbury that was going at full trot. He would get off his horse, put it on his shoulders and carry it for ten, fifteen or twenty yards with almost as much ease as his horse carried him. He would pick up a china plate and put his finger through it with the same ease as a bullet passes through a cardboard target. One day at the barracks, they did him an injustice for which he wanted to have satisfaction. He waited on the bridge of the Tuileries for King Louis XVIII., who was to come out. Just as His Majesty's carriage passed out at a fast trot, as usual, Gauthier leaped to the horses' heads and stopped the coach dead. Louis XVIII. put his head out of the window and recognised his brigadier aux gardes.
"Ah! it is you," he said, in his little piping voice, "it is you, Gauthier. Well, what do you want, my friend?"
Gauthier then came up and laid bare his request.
"I will examine into it, I will examine into it," replied Louis XVIII.
A week later justice was done Gauthier.
He had a special gift for saving life. If a man fell into the water and was drowning, Gauthier jumped in and saved him; if any house caught fire and some tardy inmate was in risk of being burned, Gauthier would save the laggard. He saved old Vatteville from the Odéon conflagration, and thirty-seven or eight others besides. Gauthier went out in the African campaign as interpreter, and lived at Algiers. In the expeditions made round the town, he took a little cannon of four, instead of a rifle. When he came up to the enemy he put it in position for firing, and discharged it. At other times, he was contented with a rampart gun. While in the guards he had a magnificent horse which had the following history. It had the twofold fault of throwing its rider to the ground, and, when he was there, of bending to bite him: they decided to kill it. But, when proceeding to the execution, Gauthier came into the Hôtel du quai d'Orsay, and saw the whole company assembled together, deploring the loss of such a splendid horse. He inquired into the matter.
"Good!" he said, "I will tackle it; but on condition that, if I conquer it, it shall be mine."
The bargain was agreed to, and they handed him a bridle. The horse quietly allowed itself to be mounted; so Gauthier had not much trouble in leaping on its back. When he was there, the horse began its tricks and games, shying to right and to left, etc., but the rebellious animal did not know with whom it had to deal. Gauthier began to press his knees in; the horse, which was breathing hard, redoubled its leapings: Gauthier pressed more strongly. It was a splendid struggle to watch; the horse was vanquished, and ended by falling on its knees and lying down. Gauthier leapt off to free himself from the animal, then he waited. The horse was cured of his first fault, which consisted in throwing its rider; it must also be cured of its second habit of biting. As we have said, Gauthier remained standing ten yards from the horse. He had subjugated it like another Alexander; it remained to find out if he was to be devoured by it like another Diomede. In fact, as the horse regained its breath its eye went red, its nostrils smoked with anger; it raised itself on its fore legs, then on its hind, looked at its enemy, neighed and rushed upon him. Gauthier waited for it in the position of a boxer; he gave it a blow on the nose and broke two teeth, the horse reared with pain, turned round on its hind legs, and went into its stable. It was conquered. You, d'Arpentigny, will remember that, you too, Leroi and Ferdinand Langlé, my old friends in the Guards?
Well, Gauthier was one of the morning callers. He went straight to the cellar, applied his lips to the flask of rum or brandy, and swallowed as much as was in it. He began by feeling in his pockets; we must do him that justice, but they were as empty as the cellar. Then, seeing three or four waistcoats and as many trousers lying about haphazard, he began to pass them in review. The sleepers watched him do it, one eye half open and the other completely shut; they were quite easy, for it was neither their waistcoats nor their trousers that Gauthier wanted: he could hardly get into the largest--he wanted their contents, and they contained nothing. Romieu alone manifested some disquietude; he had 19 sous in his waistcoat pocket. Gauthier fell upon the treasure. Romieu wanted to get up and dispute possession of his 19 sous with Gauthier. Gauthier pinned him down on his sofa with one hand, and, with the other, rang for the servant. When he appeared, Gauthier said to him--
"Go and fetch 19 sous' worth of brandy."
The servant prepared to obey.
"But, sacre bleu!" said Romieu, "I live in the faubourg Saint-Germain: as least leave me a son to cross the pont des Arts."
"That is quite reasonable," said Gauthier, putting back one son into Romieu's waistcoat. "Go and fetch me 18 sous' worth of brandy," he said to the servant.
It was upon that day and occasion that the robbed one, whom Gauthier had deprived of his 18 sous, but not of his spirits and quick-wittedness, made the famous chanson--
"J'nai qu'un son, J'nai qu'un son, La richess' n'est pas l'Pérou! Je dîn'rai je ne sais pas où; Mais, pour sûr, je n'ai qu'un son!"
I forget the rest of it, so ask Henri Monnier to sing it you and he will recollect as vividly as I do the occasion upon which it was made.
[Footnote 1: I have already spoken of her in connection with my literary beginnings with de Leuven. Castaing was accused of having poisoned her, but she really died from the effects of a fit of anger against Poirson, manager of the Gymnase, concerning the engagement by that theatre of Madame Théodore. The fit of anger brought on brain fever, which carried her off in forty-eight hours.]
Chapter VI
Eugène Sue is ambitious enough to have a groom, horse and trap--He does business with the maison Ermingot, Godefroi et Cie which permits him to gratify that fancy--Triumph at the Champs-Élysées--A vexing encounter--Desforges and Eugène Sue separate--Desforges starts Le Kaléidoscope at Bordeaux--Ferdinand Langlé starts La Nouveauté at Paris--César and the negro Zoyo--Dossion and his dog
Time rolled on and Eugène Sue grew up, and Dr. Sue kept his purse-strings drawn tighter and tighter. Eugène wanted to have a groom, horse and trap; it was necessary to have recourse to expediency. He was put into communication with two worthy capitalists who sold wine
to young persons of good family who felt a vocation for trading; their names were MM. Ermingot and Godefroi. We do not know whether these gentlemen still pursue the trade; but we will risk quoting their names, hoping they will not take the following words for an advertisement.
MM. Ermingot and Godefroi made inquiries, and they found that Eugène Sue was to inherit 100,000 francs from his maternal grandfather, and about 300,000 or 400,000 from his father. They concluded that they might risk somewhat. Eugène Sue received an invitation to lunch at Bercy with one or two of his friends. He decided to take Desforges, who was regarded as a society man in whom Dr. Sue had the greatest confidence. They were expected at the Grands or Gros Marroniers, I forget which. It was a splendid lunch; they made the two young men taste the wines they had on hand, and Eugène Sue, to whom wine was particularly seductive, was so pleased with them, that he bought some there and then for a sum of 15,000 francs, which he settled for at once by bills of exchange. The wine was deposited at the house of a third party, with power to Eugène Sue to let them be tasted and to sell them, and so make what profit he could out of them. That profit, at the lowest estimate, must have been at least from 5000 to 6000 francs. A week later, Eugène Sue sold back to a confederate of Ermingot & Godefroi Company his lot of wine for the sum of 1500 francs ready money. He lost 13,500 francs upon the speculation; but, nevertheless, he had 1500 francs of money in hand at once with which to realise his wish to possess a groom, horse and trap, an ambition which, for over a year, had disturbed the sleep of the two friends.
"How could he get a groom and horse and trap," the reader asks, "for 1500 francs?"
It is incredible what credit 1500 francs ready money will give, especially when one is a son of good family, and when one can apply to one's father's tradespeople. They bought the trap from Sailer, the doctor's carriage-dealer, and gave him 500 francs on account; they bought the horse from Kunsmann, where they took riding lessons, and gave him about 500 francs. They remained in possession of 500 francs: they engaged a groom, whom they clothed completely from head to foot. That was not ruinous, for they had credit at the tailor's, the bootmaker's and the hatter's. They had attained this magnificent result at the beginning of the winter of 1824-25. The trap was kept through the winter. In the spring, they decided to ride on horseback, to greet the appearance of the first leaves. One morning they set out; Desforges and Eugène Sue were on horseback, followed by their groom, also on horseback. The groom made awful grimaces, which the passers-by were at a loss to account for. Desforges and Eugène Sue alone knew the cause of the working of poor John's facial muscles: they had bought him which morning boots which were too tight, and it had taken the combined efforts of both masters to get their servant into them. Half-way to the Champs-Élysées, as they were scattering greetings to men and smiles to ladies, a green conveyance drew up and a head appeared and examined the two elegants with stupefaction. The head belonged to Dr. Sue; the green vehicle was what the family called the three-lamped carriage: it was a low conveyance, invented by the doctor, from which one could descend without a step--the ancestor of all the small coupés in vogue nowadays. The head struck the two young people as did the head of Medusa; only, instead of turning them to stone, it gave them wings. They flew at a gallop, but, unluckily, they had to return. They did not do so until the day but one after, but they did return. Justice lay in wait at the gate in the person of Dr. Sue. They saw they must confess everything, and it was even a great relief, to them; for the house of Ermingot & Godefroi was beginning to show its teeth and to send stamped papers, as the six months' bills drew near their end.
Dr. Sue's business agent was charged to settle matters with Ermingot & Godefroi; the firm had just had a little dispute at the police correctionnelle, which made them entirely accommodating: they returned the bills of exchange, less 2000 francs, and gave a receipt in full settlement. Whereupon Eugène Sue engaged to go back to his post at the military hospital at Toulon. Desforges completely lost the doctor's confidence; it was found out that he had been involved up to the hilt in the Ermingot & Godefroi affair, and he was placed on the index; and this, as he had independent means of his own, decided him to follow Eugène Sue to Toulon. Damon never gave greater proof of his devotion to Pythias. They left after spending the night together; but, at the moment of departure, enthusiasm ran so high that Romieu and Mira (son of the celebrated Brunei), decided to escort them to the diligence. Eugène Sue and Desforges were in the coupé; Romieu and Mira galloped by the side of each door. Romieu galloped as far as Fontainebleau; there he was obliged to dismount. Mira was carried away three leagues farther, then he too was obliged to stop. The diligence continued imperially on its way, leaving the wounded on the road. They reached Toulon on the third day--now, one can go in twenty-four hours. The first care of the exiles was to write for news of their friends; Romieu had been taken back to the capital on a stretcher. Mira had preferred to await his convalescence where he was, and, a fortnight later, returned in a carriage to Paris. The exiles settled themselves at Toulon, and began to play ducks and drakes with the remains of their Parisian grandeur, which, somewhat faded in Paris, was looked upon as luxury in Toulon. The Toulonnais began to to look upon the new-comers with an evil eye. They called Eugène Sue le beau Sue. It was much worse when they saw the dandies come nightly to the theatre, and when they perceived that they came especially to ogle Mademoiselle Florival, la première amoureuse! It was almost like attacking the authorities; the Sous-préfet had her specially under his care. Tho two Parisians were subscribers, and demanded entrance into the wings. Desforges made capital of his quality as author; he had already had two or three pieces played. Eugène Sue was innocent of all literature, and gave no signs of a vocation for the career of a man of letters--he was more of an artist; as a youngster he had gone through the studios, drawing, sketching, painting. Scarcely three or four years ago, I saw in an old street near the Madeleine, now vanished, a horse which he had drawn on the wall with black varnish and a shoe brush. The horse crumbled away with the street! The door of the wings remained pitilessly closed, which gave the Toulonnais the incontestable right of jeering at the Parisians. Luckily Louis XVIII. died on 16 September 1824, and Charles X. conceived the idea of getting himself crowned. The ceremony was to have taken place in the Cathedral of Rheims on 26 May 1825. Now, how could the death of Louis XVIII. in Paris and the coronation of King Charles X. at Rheims open the doors of the Toulon theatre to Desforges and Eugène Sue? In this way.
Desforges suggested to Eugène Sue to write what was called at that period an à-propos upon the coronation. Eugène Sue agreed. The à-propos was written and played in the midst of universal enthusiasm. I still have the trifle, written entirely by the hand of Eugène Sue. The same evening the two authors gained entrance behind the wings in unassailable fashion. Mademoiselle Florival did not prove more strict than the administration, and gave the two authors the run of her house. They both took advantage of it without any jealous feeling. The friendship of Desforges and Eugène Sue was akin to that of Damon and Pythias. About June 1825 Pythias and Damon parted; Eugène Sue remained alone in possession of the entry to the theatre and to Mademoiselle Florival's. Desforges departed to Bordeaux. Why did he go to Bordeaux? He thought he was simply going to see a friend: he went to start a newspaper. Mysterious and deep are the ways of Providence! Desforges thought of spending one or two days with his friend. Tessier took him to a bookseller, where they not merely sold books but also produced literature. It was in his shop, situated, I believe, in the rue Esprit-des-Lois, that the Hôtel Rambouillet of Bordeaux was held. The traveller there found eight or ten young people eager to catch a whiff of the Parisian breezes which carry literary pollen all over the world.
"Ah! if we only had a newspaper," they said; "if only we had some one to start one!"
"Very well, here am I!" replied Desforges, and as the upshot of this meeting, thanks to Desforges, Le Kaléidoscope was founded. Thus were scattered abroad the missionaries of the new faith, who prepared the great literary movement of 1827, 1828 and 1829.
Desforges, who only knew me by name at this period, not by my literary works--which were non-existent at that time--and by my childish name, which he had heard at M. Collard's, the good worthy tutor of whom I have had occasion to speak in these Memoirs, put some verses of mine in Le Kaléidoscope, a portion of my elegy on the death of General Foy, so far as I can recollect. Later, this formed the touchstone for our acquaintance in Paris.
One day, I went into the Café des Variétés, and Desforges was chatting with Théaulon, who nodded good-day to me. A minute later, Desforges came to me.
"Do you know," he said, "what Théaulon has just been saying about you?"
"Théaulon is very fond of me: you must not believe blindly all he says or even what he thinks of me."
"'Well,' he said, 'do you see that tall thin fellow, he will out-distance us all in literature.'"
I sent a dubious smile across to Théaulon and a sign of gratitude. From that day dated our acquaintance, or rather, let us say, our friendship with Desforges. Whilst Desforges was at Bordeaux starting Le Kaléidoscope, Ferdinand Langlé was starting La Nouveauté newspaper in Paris; yet another open tribute to the new school, another finger-post marking a step forward.
Langlé had conceived a financial idea which was not so bad for an assistant-surgeon in the Guards, especially when one considers that the idea preceded by seven years the appearance of Émile de Girardin, the man who had the most ideas about printing concerns: the first thousand subscribers to La Nouveauté at an outlay of 60 francs were to become proprietors of half the shares of the paper; the other half naturally belonged to the founder, Ferdinand Langlé. A fortnight after the prospectus had been sent out, they had 60,000 francs in the bank. I say in the bank, but, unluckily, there wasn't a bank: it was the want of a fixed place for depositing the money which led to there being only one cashier in a short time. Heaven knows that it was not the cashier who had eaten up the money, we can give unexceptionable proof of this. The banker of La Nouveauté had a horse and carriage and a negro servant; he gave Zoyo (that was the servant's name) 7 francs per week for his board, and for that of his horse 28 francs per month! It was for him to make what profit he could out of it. He managed to feed himself out of the 7 francs, and to feed his horse with the outside rinds of melons, the leaves of salad and cabbage stalks which he found on rubbish heaps--he called it putting César out to grass. When that was insufficient, Zoyo begged from the passers-by.
"Why are you begging, you odd fish?" one of them asked him.
"Monsieur," replied Zoyo, "it is not for myself but for my poor César, who is dying of hunger."
Then he would point to the horse, whose noble and dignified bearing inspired sympathy. When the melon rinds, salad leaves and cabbage stalks were insufficient, and the appeals to public charity had yielded badly, Zoyo arrived at a great decision. He went to the boot-blacks who had an establishment at the entrance of the passage Feydeau, and blacked boots at half-price for the manager of the business. When he had earned 10 sous by cleaning ten pairs of boots, he converted his gain into a small quantity of oats or half a truss of hay, and César dined as well as possible. When the bank closed at five o'clock, César was harnessed and put into the trap; Zoyo clad himself in white breeches with top-boots, a yellow waistcoat, green coat and a broad-laced hat, decorated with a black cockade, and brought the trap round to the office door, No. 67 rue de Richelieu, opposite the bibliothèque Nationale. The banker jumped up into his trap, Zoyo flung back the hood and mounted up behind; they went to the boulevard, and drove as far as the place Louis XV., then along the Champs-Élysées and took a turn or two under the trees.
If people asked--
"Who is the gentleman with the chestnut horse, green trap and negro groom?"
The reply was--
"He is the banker of la Nouveauté newspaper."
This did the newspaper good. But it was not enough to have a carriage only, it wanted a responsible editor too. It was much more difficult at that period to find a responsible editor, and yet they were compelled to have one: many lawsuits were brought against newspapers, many responsible editors were thrown into prison; responsible editors, therefore, were an absolute necessity.
Ferdinand Langlé cast his eye upon a kind of dwarf named Dossion. The police of the time did not demand that a responsible editor should have a special style of figure. This Dossion was a singular person, with a red nose and a curved back and he was always mounted on his high horse. I remember we called him the drum-major of the rats of the sewers of Montmartre. You may hunt up the origin of the name if you like! I have quite forgotten what it was; but, of course, it was connected with some legend of the time, now forgotten. He had been prompter at the Vaudeville, and had done so much for good Désaugiers that he had obtained a part for him in the Arlequins, where he was Laporte's understudy; but as he was short-sighted, on the day of his first appearance he conceived the ingenious notion of putting short-sighted spectacles to his mask: only he had not thought of one thing--the heat of the theatre dimmed the glasses, with the result that, as Dossion was running after Colombine, he did not see where he was putting his foot and dis appeared down the prompter's trapdoor. Unlike roses, which only live a morning, Dossion had but lived on night. We invented a practical joke by means of which we made Dossion come on livid with anger. He had a dog of the same colour as d'Artagnan's horse, fluctuating between the shade of a jonquil and that of a buttercup. As Dossion was mortally offended, we pretended that his dog had presented a petition to the Chamber to be authorised to leave his master; but M. de Villèle's three hundred looked upon the matter as a political affair, and one of them even uttered the famous sentence--
"Anarchy is beginning to raise its head!"
Castor's petition had passed into the order of the day. The unlucky animal, compelled to remain attached to Dossion, died of ennui. I do not know whether Dossion is dead or alive: if alive, the lines I have just written are a homage rendered him; if dead, a flower which I throw on his grave.[1]
[Footnote 1: See Appendix.]
Chapter VII
Eugène Sue's début in journalism--l'Homme-Mouche--The merino sheep--Eugène Sue in the Navy--He takes part in the battle of Navarino--He furnishes a house--The last foil of youth--Another Fils de l'Homme--Bossange and Desforges
Towards the end of 1825, Eugène Sue returned from Toulon. He found La Nouveauté in a most prosperous state. As his friend Ferdinand Langlé was the manager; as Sue had just had an à-propos played at Toulon of which he was the author, he naturally became editor of the paper. They asked him for articles, and he did four, a series entitled L'Homme-Mouche.
These were the first items by the author of Mathilde and of the Mystères de Paris, which had been printed; it seems strange we should give them here. Our Memoirs, as we have said, are the literary archives of the first half of the nineteenth century; besides, it is always interesting to artists to study the early start of men who have attained to the height of our illustrious confrère.
The four articles which he wrote appeared on Monday, 23 January 1826, Wednesday 25, Sunday 29, Tuesday 31.[1] We can see that the opposition of our friend Eugène Sue does not date from yesterday.
Meantime, La Nouveauté did not pay its contributors very well. On the other hand, Dr. Sue remained inflexible: he had taken to heart not only the wine drunk, but, still more, the wine they had spoiled! There remained one source, of which they only availed themselves on great occasions; this was a Louis XVI. enamel-backed watch, given by his good godmother, the Empress Joséphine. In extreme cases, they took it to the pawnshop and got 150 francs on it. This defrayed the expenses of the Shrove Tuesday of 1826; but then, after holding out as long as possible, he had to take the step of going away into the country. Bouqueval offered the young men rural and frugal hospitality, so they went there.
Easter arrived, and with it some guests; each had promised to bring his share of food: one a lobster, another a meat pie, etc.; but, as ill luck would have it, each counted on his neighbour, and, all of them probably being short of money, none of them brought anything. They went straight to the stables and killed a sheep: it was a magnificent merino, which Dr. Sue was keeping for show purposes! It was skinned, roasted and eaten up to the very last cutlet. When the doctor learnt this fresh misdeed he got into an abominable temper! Happily, Eugène Sue confronted these paternal outbreaks with admirable serenity. The good lad had a charming nature, he was ever gay, joyous and laughing. Is he still the same, now that he is a man? Care has lined his face, and exile weighs heavily on his heart! Orders were given for Eugène Sue to leave Paris. He went into the navy, and made two voyages to the Antilles--hence, his novel Atar Gull and his magnificent landscape passages, which read like fairyland, seen through the fissures of a stage curtain. Then he returned to France. A decisive battle was to be fought against the Turks: Eugène Sue embarked in his official capacity as adjutant on board the Breslau, Captain la Bretonnière; he was present at the battle of Navarino, and brought back as spolia opima a magnificent Turkish costume--which, on his return, was eaten up to the last bit of lace--a sabre and a Koran. Whilst living on the Turkish costume, Eugène Sue, who by degrees was picking up the taste for literature, had acted, with Desforges, Monsieur le Marquis. Finally, about the same time, Flick et Flock, his first departure in the way of a novel, appeared in La Mode.
Meanwhile, Eugène's maternal grandfather died, leaving him nearly 75,000 francs. Here was an inexhaustible fortune! So the young poet, who was then twenty-four, sent in his resignation to the ministre de la marine, and furnished his house. We say that he furnished his house, because Eugène Sue, artist by custom and instinct was the first to furnish a suite of rooms in the modern fashion; he was the first to have all those charming knick-knacks which no one then wanted, but which everybody snatches at nowadays: coloured glasses, china plates, Saxe china, renaissance chests, Turkish sabres Malayan daggers, etc. Then he went to Gudin's studio and began to paint. We have said that Eugène Sue drew or rather sketched, quite cleverly. He had, I remember, brought an album from Navarino of twofold curiosity, both from the illustrations, and from the artistic point of view. It was while with the famous sea painter that the last of Eugène Sue's escapades happened, and this closed the list of those youthful follies which had made the society of Rousseau, Romieu and Eugène Sue notorious. We have related in connection with the parody of Henry IV., the famous attack made on the porter in the rue du Mont-Blanc, known by the nickname of Portier je veux de tes cheveux, which found its way into Les Mystères de Paris.
Gudin, who was then thirty, was already in the full tide of his talent and the splendour of his renown; amateurs snatched at his works, women quarrelled over the man Gudin, like all artists of a certain standing, received letters from unknown women from time to time, desiring to make his acquaintance, and making appointments with him for that purpose. One day, he received two such both letters fixing the same hour. Gudin could not break himself in two, and he spoke of his difficulty to Eugène Sue. So Eugène Sue offered to take his place. It is but a step from pupil to master; besides, there was a great physical resemblance between the two men: they were the same height, both wore beards, had dark hair, fine eyes, and splendid teeth; one was twenty-seven, and the other thirty; the worst treated of the two unknown women could not have cried out against the thief. Furthermore, they put the two letters in a hat, and each took his out. From that moment, and during the rest of the day, there were two Gudins and no Eugène Sue. Each went to his appointed place that night; next day, both returned enchanted. The thing might have lasted for ever, but inquisitiveness always destroys women--witness Eve and Psyche. The lady who had obtained the false Gudin as her share had artistic tastes; when she had made the painter's acquaintance, she would insist upon visiting the studio to see Gudin work, palette and paint-brush in hand. Among the number of inquisitive women, we have forgotten Semele, who wanted to see her lover Jupiter in all his splendour, and who was burned alive by a flash of lightning. The false Gudin could not withstand the many pleadings, and consented to grant a rendezvous to the beauteous curieuse on the morrow. She was to come at two o'clock in the afternoon, the most favourable time of day for light on painting. At a quarter to two, Eugène Sue, clad in magnificent livery, waited in Gudin's antechamber; at a few minutes to two, the bell was tremulously rung by the happy visitor. Eugène Sue went to open the door. The lady, eager to see everything, began by casting her glances on the servant, who looked a smart, strapping youth, and who bowed humbly before her. Her examination was followed by a terrible cry. "Horrors! A lackey!..." The lady hid her face in her handkerchief and ran precipitately down the stairs. At a masked ball soon after, Eugène Sue met her again, and tried to renew acquaintance with her; but she persisted in believing that he was still disguised, and Eugène Sue could not get anything from her but the words he had heard before--"Horrors! a lackey!..."
The campaign of Algiers arrived, and Gudin went with the expedition; the two friends became separated. Eugène Sue took to literature. Atar Gull was begun at this period. Then came the July Revolution. Eugène Sue and Desforges together wrote a comedy entitled Le Fils de l'Homme. Barthélemy's poem will be recollected upon the same subject: the King of Rome, a poetic figure, lonely and imprisoned at Schönbrünn, as Napoleon had been at St. Helena. Youthful memories awoke in Eugène Sue; he remembered that Joséphine had been his godmother, and that he bore the name of Prince Eugène.
The comedy was written, but got no further. Not only had the Orleanist reaction been rapid, but Desforges, one of its authors, had become secretary to Maréchal Soult. But an author's conceit is a most venturesome passion, just as poor girls may be seen to betray their maternity through their maternal love. One day, when Desforges had been breakfasting with Volnys, he drew the incendiary play from his portfolio and read it to his host. Volnys is the son of a general of the Empire. Volny's heart was melted with the reading.
"Leave me the manuscript," he said; "I want to read it again."
So Desforges left it him. Six weeks went by. A rumour went abroad secretly in the literary world that a great excitement was being prepared at the Nouveautés. People questioned what that event could be.
Bossange was then the manager of the theatre; he collaborated with Frédéric Soulié in two or three dramas, and was one of the cleverest men in Paris. Bossange we say, was manager, and included our dear Déjazet among the number of his staff. The two of them together were known to be capable of doing anything. The rumour of this literary event, which was to turn Paris upside down, reached the ears of Desforges, buried away though he was in the recesses of his office. He trembled, and a revelation came to him. Suppose the dramatic sensation was to be the first performance of the Fils de l'Homme! He decided to go that very night to the Nouveautés, and to find out about it from Bossange. Accordingly, by eight o'clock, Desforges was behind the wings.
"Oh! do not discuss your business with me to-night, my dear Desforges!" said the manager to him. "I am in a state of despair! Such and such a man (I forget who) has failed us with his play, and we are obliged at the very last moment to give a play that was under rehearsal and not properly learnt. Come, stage manager, is Déjazet ready?"
"Yes, Monsieur Bossange."
"Well, give the three raps and announce what we have arranged."
They did so; shouts went up of "Take your places on the stage!" and Desforges was obliged to sit down like the others behind a wing.
The stage manager in a white collar and black coat went on the stage, and after the usual three bows he said--
"Gentlemen, one of our actors having fallen ill at the last moment, we are obliged to give you, instead of the second piece, a new comedy which was to have been put on in three or four days' time. We beg you to accept the exchange."
The audience to whom a new play was being offered instead of an old drowned the manager's words with applause. The curtain fell, and rose almost immediately afterwards. At this moment, Déjazet came down out of his dressing-room in the uniform of an Austrian colonel.
"Ah! good heavens!" exclaimed Desforges, stopping him, "what are you going to play?"
"To play? Why le Fils del'Homme ... Come, let me pass, monsieur author!"
Desforges' arms fell and Déjazet passed on.
The great event of the Théâtre des Nouveautés was in fact the representation of le Fils de l'Homme; only, Bossange, who feared some hindrance from the Government, had preserved the profoundest secrecy and, as we see, played the comedy suddenly.[2]
"But, you may say, was there a censorship in 1830?"
"D'Artagnan, my good friend, take your hat off to the person who has honoured us by putting that question to us, and salute profoundly, then reply:
"Ah! monsieur, worse luck, there is always a censorship."
[Footnote 1: See Appendix.]
[Footnote 2: See the complete biography of Eugène Sue, in Les Morts vont vite, tome II. p. 1.]