An Englishman In Paris Part 19

"After the Spanish marriages, Queen Isabella wished to convey to me a signal mark of her grat.i.tude--for what, Heaven alone knows, because it is the only political transaction I would willingly efface from my career. So she conferred upon me the dukedom of San Antonio, and sent me the patent with a most affectionate letter. Honestly speaking, I was more than upset by this proof of royal kindness, seeing that I had not the least wish to accept the t.i.tle. I felt equally reluctant to offend her by declining the high distinction offered, I felt sure, from a most generous feeling. I went to see the King, and explained my awkward position, adding that the name of Guizot was all sufficient for me. 'You are right,' said the King. 'Leave the matter to me; I'll arrange it.'

And he did, much to the disgust of M. de Salvandy, who had received a t.i.tle at the same time, but who could not accept his while the Prime Minister declined.

"Then she sent me this picture. Some witty journalist said, at the time, that it was symbolical of her own married state; for let me tell you that the unfitness of Don Francis d'a.s.sis was 'le secret de polichinelle,' however much your countrymen may have insisted that it only leaked out after the union. Personally I was entirely opposed to it, and, in fact, it was not a ministerial question at all, but one of court intrigue. Lord Palmerston chose to make it the former, and he, and your countrymen through him, are not only morally but virtually responsible for the subsequent errors of Isabella. Do you know what his ultimatum was when the marriage had been contracted, when there was no possibility of going back? You do not. Well, then, I will tell you. 'If Isabella has not a child within a twelvemonth, then there will be war between England and France.' I leave you to ponder the consequences for yourself, though I a.s.sure you that I washed my hands of the affair from that moment. But the French as well as the English would never believe me, and history will record that 'the austere M. Guizot,' for that is what they choose to call me, 'lent his aid to proceedings which would make the most debased pander blush with shame.'

"It is not the only time that my intentions have been purposely misconceived and misconstrued; nay, I have been taxed with things of which I was as innocent as a child. In 1846, almost at the same period that the Spanish imbroglio took place, Count de Montalembert got up in the Upper House one day and declared it a disgrace that France should have begged the tomb of Napoleon I. from Russia. Now, the fact was that France had not begged anything at all. The princ.i.p.al part of the monument at the Invalides is the sarcophagus. The architect Visconti was anxious that it should consist of red porphyry; M. Duchatel and myself were of the same opinion. Unfortunately, we had not the remotest notion where such red porphyry was to be found. The Egyptian quarries, whence the Romans took it, were exhausted. Inquiries were made in the Vosges, in the Pyrenees, but without result, and we were going to abandon the porphyry, when news arrived at the Ministry of the Interior that the kind of stone we wanted existed in Russia.

"Just then my colleague, M. de Salvandy, was sending M. Leouzon le Duc to the north on a special mission, and I instructed him to go as far as St. Petersburg and consult Count de Rayneval, our amba.s.sador, as to the best means of getting the porphyry. A few months later, M. le Duc sent me specimens of a stone from a quarry on the banks of the Onega Lake, which, if not absolutely porphyry, was the nearest to it to be had. M.

Visconti having approved of it, I forwarded further instructions for the quant.i.ty required, and so forth.

"The quarry, it appears, belonged to the Crown, and had never been worked, could not be worked, without due permission and the payment of a certain tax. After a great many formalities, mainly raised by speculators who had got wind of the affair, and had bribed various officials to oppose, or, at any rate, intercept the pet.i.tion sent by M.

le Duc for the necessary authorization, Prince Wolkonsky, the Minister of State, acquainted the Czar himself with the affair, and Nicholas, without a moment's hesitation, granted the request, remitting the tax which M. le Duc had estimated at about six thousand francs. This took place at a cabinet council, and, unfortunately for me, the Czar thought fit to make a little speech. 'What a strange destiny!' he said, rising from his seat and a.s.suming a solemn tone--'what a strange destiny this man's'--alluding to Napoleon--'even in death! It is we who struck him the first fatal blow, by the burning of our holy and venerable capital, and it is from us that France asks his tomb. Let the French envoy have everything he requires, and, above all, let no tax be taken.'

"That was enough; the German and French papers got hold of the last words with the rest; they confounded the tax with the cost of working, which amounted to more than two hundred thousand francs; and up to this day, notwithstanding the explanations I and my colleagues offered in reply to the interpellation of M. de Montalembert, the story remains that Russia made France a present of the tomb of Napoleon."

From that day forth I often called upon M. Guizot, especially in the daytime, when I knew that he had finished working; for when he found that his political career was irrevocably at an end, he turned very cheerfully--I might say gladly--to his original avocation, literature.

Without the slightest fatigue, without the slightest worry, he produced a volume of philosophical essays or history every year; and if, unlike Alexandre Dumas, he did not roar with laughter while composing, he was often heard to hum a tune. "En effet," said one of his daughters, the Countess Henriette de Witt (both his daughters bore the same name and t.i.tles when married), "notre pere ne chante presque jamais qu'en travaillant." This did not mean that work, and work only, had the effect of putting M. Guizot in good humour. He was, according to the same authority, uniformly sweet-tempered at home, whether sitting in his armchair, surrounded by his family, or gently strolling up and down his library. "C'est la politique qui le rendait mechant," said Madame de Witt, "heureus.e.m.e.nt il la laissait a la porte. Et tres souvent il l'oubliait de parti-pris au milieu du conseil et alors il nous ecrivait des lettres, mais des lettres, comme on n'en ecrit plus. En voila deux qu'il m'a ecrites lorsque j'etais tres jeune fille." Whereupon she showed me what were really two charming gossiping little essays on the art of punctuation. It appears that the little lady was either very indifferent to, or ignorant of the art; and the father wrote, "My dear Henriette, I am afraid I shall still have to take you to task with regard to your punctuation: there is little or none of it in your letters. All punctuation, commas or other signs, mark a period of repose for the mind--a stage more or less long--an idea which is done with or momentarily suspended, and which is being divided by such a sign from the next. You suppress those periods, those intervals; you write as the stream flows, as the arrow flies. That will not do at all, because the ideas one expresses, the things of which we speak, are not all intimately connected with one another like drops of water."

The second letter showed that Mdlle. Guizot must have taken her revenge, either very cleverly, or that she was past all redemption in the matter of punctuation; and as the latter theory is scarcely admissible, knowing what we do of her after-life, we must admit the former. The letter ran as follows:

"MY DEAR HENRIETTE,

"I dare say you will find me very provoking, but let me beg of you not to fling so many commas at my head. You are absolutely pelting me with them, as the Romans pelted that poor Tarpeia with their bucklers."

It reminds one of Marguerite Thuillier, who "created Mimi" in Murger and Barriere's "Vie de Boheme," when Murger fell in love with her. "I can't do with him," she said to his collaborateur, who pleaded for him,--"I can't do with him; he is too badly dressed, he looks like a scarecrow."

Barriere advised his friend to go to a good tailor and have himself rigged out in the latest fashion. The advice was acted upon; Barriere waited anxiously for the effect of the transformation upon the lady's heart. A fortnight elapsed, and poor Murger was snubbed as usual.

Barriere interceded once more. "I can do less with him than before," was the answer; "he is too well dressed, he looks like a tailor's dummy."

To return to M. Guizot, whom, in the course of the whole of our acquaintance, I have only seen once "put out." It was when the fiat went forth that his house was to come down to make room for the new Boulevard Malesherbes. The authorities had been as considerate as possible; they had made no attempt to treat the eminent historian as a simple owner of house-property fighting to get the utmost value; they offered him three hundred thousand francs, and M. Guizot himself acknowledged that the sum was a handsome one. "But I have got thirty thousand volumes to remove, besides my notes and ma.n.u.scripts," he wailed. Then his good temper got the better of him, and he had a "sly dig" at his former adversary, Adolphe Thiers. "Serves me right for having so many books; happy the historian who prefers to trust to his imagination."

M. Guizot made up his mind to have his library removed to Val-Richer and never to live in Paris again; but his children and friends prevailed upon him not to forsake society altogether, and to take a modest apartment near his old domicile, in the Faubourg St. Honore, opposite the English emba.s.sy, which, however, in those days had not the monumental aspect it has at present.

"It is doubtful," said M. Guizot afterwards to me, "whether the idea of living in the country would have ever entered my mind ten or fifteen years ago. At that time, I would not have gone a couple of miles to see the most magnificent bit of natural scenery: I should have gone a thousand to see a man of talent."

And, in fact, up till 1830, when he was nearly forty-four, he had never seen the sea, "And if it had not been for an electoral journey to Normandy, I might not have seen it then." I pointed out to him that M.

Thiers had never had a country house; that he did not seem to care for nature, for birds, or for flowers.

"Ah, that's different," he smiled. "I did not care much about the country, because I had never seen any of it. Thiers does not like it, because the birds, the flowers, the trees, live and grow without his interference, and he does not care that anything on earth should happen without his having a hand in it."

Thiers was the only man at whom M. Guizot tilted in that way. Though brought up in strict Protestant, one might almost say Calvinistic principles, he was an ardent admirer of Roman Catholicism, which he called "the most admirable school of respect in the world." No man had suffered more from the excesses of the first Revolution, seeing that his father perished on the scaffold, yet I should not like to say that he was not somewhat of a republican at heart, but not of a republic "which begins with Plato and necessarily ends with a gendarme." "The republic of '48," he used to say, "it had not even a Monk, let alone a Washington or a Cromwell; and Louis-Napoleon had to help himself to the throne. And depend upon it, if there had been a Cromwell, he would have crushed it as the English one crushed the monarchy. As for Washington, he would not have meddled with it at all."

"Yes," he said on another occasion, "I am proud of one thing--of the authorship of the law on elementary education; but, proud as I am of it, if I could have foreseen the uses to which it has been put, to which it is likely to be put when I am gone, I would sooner have seen half of the nation unable to distinguish an '_A_ from a bull's foot,' as your countrymen say."

With Guizot died almost the last French statesman, "who not only thought that he had the privilege to be poor, but who carried the privilege too far;" as some one remarked when he heard the news of his demise. Towards the latter years of his life, he occupied a modest apartment, on the fourth floor, in the Rue Billaut (now the Rue Washington). Well might M.

de Falloux exclaim, as he toiled up that staircase, "My respect for him increases with every step I take."

Since M. de Falloux uttered these words, and very long before, I have only known one French statesman whose staircase and whose poverty might perhaps inspire the same reflections and elicit similar praise. I am alluding to M. Rouher.

M. de Lamartine's poverty did not breed the same respect. There was no dignity about it. It was the poverty of Oliver Goldsmith sending to Dr.

Johnson and feasting with the guinea the latter had forwarded by the messenger pending his own arrival. Mery had summed up the situation with regard to Lamartine's difficulties on the evening of the 24th of February, '48, and there is no reason to suspect that his statement had been exaggerated. The dynasty of the younger branch of the Bourbons had been overthrown because Lamartine saw no other means of liquidating the 350,000 francs he still owed for his princely journey to the East. I had been to Lamartine's house once before that revolution, and, though his wife was an Englishwoman, I felt no inclination to return thither. The household gave me the impression of "Du Jellaby dore." The sight of it would have furnished d.i.c.kens with as good a picture as the one he sketched. The princ.i.p.al personage, however, was not quite so disinterested as the future mother-in-law of Prince Turveydrop. Of course, at that time, there was no question of a republic, but the politics advocated and discussed during the lunch were too superfine for humble mortals like myself, who instinctively felt that--

"Quelques billets de mille francs feraient bien mieux l'affaire"

of the host. And the instinct was not a deceptive one. Four months after February, 1848, M. de Lamartine had virtually ceased to exist, as far as French politics were concerned. From that time until the day of his death, the world only heard of him in connection with a new book or new poem, the avowed purpose of which was, not to make the world better or wiser, but to raise money. He kept singing like the benighted musician on the Russian steppes keeps playing his instrument, to keep away the wolves.

I knew not one but a dozen men, all of whom visited M. de Lamartine. I have never been able to get a single story or anecdote about him, not bearing upon the money question. He is ten times worse in that respect than Balzac, with this additional point in the latter's favour--that he never whines to the outside world about his impecuniosity. M. Guizot produces a volume every twelvemonth, and asks nothing of any one; he leaves the advertising of it to his publisher: M. de Lamartine spends enormous sums in publicity, and subsidizes, besides, a crowd of journalists, who devour his creditors' substance while he keeps repeating to them that his books do not sell. "If, henceforth, I were to offer pearls dissolved in the cup of Cleopatra, people would use the decoction to wash their horses' feet." And, all the while, people bought his works, though no one cared to read the later ones. The golden lyre of yore was worse than dumb; it emitted false and weak sounds, the strings had become relaxed, the golden tongue alone remained.

When a national subscription is raised to pay his debts, the committee are so afraid of his wasting the money that they decide to have the proceeds deposited at the Comptoir d'Escompte, and that de Lamartine shall not be able to draw a farthing until all his affairs are settled.

One morning he deputes a friend to ask for forty thousand francs, in order to pay some bills that are due. They refuse to advance the money.

De Lamartine invites them to his own house, but they stand firm at first. Gradually they give way. "How much do you really want?" is the question asked at last. "Fifty thousand francs," is the answer; "but I fancy I shall be able to manage with thirty thousand francs."

"If we gave you fifty thousand francs," says M. emile Pereire, "would you give us some breathing-time?"

"Yes."

And Lamartine pockets the fifty thousand francs, thanks to his eloquence.

A better man, though not so great a poet, was Beranger, whom I knew for many years, though my intimacy with him did not commence until a few months after the February revolution, when I met him coming out of the Palais-Bourbon. "I shall feel obliged," he said, "if you will see me home, for I am not at all well; these violent scenes are not at all to my taste." Then, with a very wistful smile, he went on: "I have been accused of having held 'the plank across the brook over which Louis-Philippe went to the Tuileries.' I wish I could be the bridge across the channel on which he would return now. Certainly I would have liked a republic, but not such a one as we are having in there,"

pointing to the home of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly. A short while after, Beranger tendered his resignation as deputy.

He lived at Pa.s.sy then, in the Rue Ba.s.se; the number, if I mistake not, was twenty-three. He had lived in the same quarter fifteen years before, for I used to see him take his walks when I was a lad, but it was difficult for Beranger to live in the same spot for any length of time.

He was, first of all, of a very nomadic disposition; secondly, his quondam friends would leave him no peace. There was a constant inroad of shady individuals who, on the pretext that he was "the people's poet,"

drained his purse and his cellar. Previous to his return to Pa.s.sy, he had been boarding with a respectable widow in the neighbourhood of Vincennes. He had adopted the name of Bonnin, and his landlady took him to be a modest, retired tradesman, living upon a small annuity. When his birthday came round, she and her daughters found out that they had entertained an angel unawares, for carriage after carriage drove up, and in a few hours the small dwelling was filled with magnificent flowers, the visitors meanwhile surrounding Beranger, and offering him their congratulations. As a matter of course, the rumour spread, and Beranger fled to Pa.s.sy, where he invited Mdlle. Judith Frere to join him once more. The retreat had been discovered, and he resigned himself to be badgered more than usual for the sake of the neighbourhood--the Bois de Boulogne was hard by; but the munic.i.p.al council of Pa.s.sy, in consideration of the honour conferred upon the arrondiss.e.m.e.nt and Beranger's charity, took it into their heads to pa.s.s a resolution offering Beranger the most conspicuous place in the cemetery for a tomb.

The poet fled once more, this time to the Quartier-Latin; but the students insisting on pointing him out to their female companions, who, in their enthusiasm, made it a point of embracing him on every possible occasion, especially in the "Closerie des Lilas"--for to the end Beranger remained fond of the society of young folk,--Beranger was compelled to flit once more. After a short stay in the Rue Vendome, in the neighbourhood of the Temple, he came to the Quartier-Beaujon, where I visited him.

There have been so many tales with regard to Beranger's companion, Mdlle. Judith Frere, and all equally erroneous, that I am glad to be able to rectify them. Mdlle. Frere was by no means the kind of upper servant she was generally supposed to be. A glance at her face and a few moments spent in her company could not fail to convince any one that she was of good birth. She had befriended Beranger when he was very young, they had parted for some time, and they ended their days together, for the poet only survived his friend three months. Beranger was a model of honesty and disinterestedness. Ambition he had little or none; he was somewhat fond of teasing children, not because he had no affection for them, but because he loved them too much. His portrait by Ary Scheffer is the most striking likeness I have ever seen; but a better one still, perhaps, is by an artist who had probably never set eyes on him. I am alluding to Hablot Browne, who unconsciously reproduced him to the life in the picture of Tom Pinch. As a companion, Beranger was charming to a degree. I have never heard him say a bitter word. The day I saw him home, I happened to say to him, "You ought to be pleased, Victor Hugo is in the same regiment with you." "Yes," he answered, "he is in the band."

He would never accept a pension from Louis-Napoleon, but he had no bitterness against him. Lamartine was very bitter, and yet consented to the Emperor's heading of the subscription-list in his behalf. That alone would show the difference between the two men.

CHAPTER XIII.

Some men of the Empire -- Fialin de Persigny -- The public prosecutor's opinion of him expressed at the trial for high treason in 1836 -- Superior in many respects to Louis-Napoleon -- The revival of the Empire his only and constant dream -- In order to realize it, he appeals first to Jerome, ex-King of Westphalia -- De Persigny's estimate of him -- Jerome's greed and Louis-Napoleon's generosity -- De Persigny's financial embarra.s.sments -- His charity -- What the Empire really meant to him -- De Persigny virtually the moving spirit in the Coup d'etat -- Louis-Napoleon might have been satisfied with the presidency of the republic for life -- Persigny seeks for aid in England -- Palmerston's share in the Coup d'etat -- The submarine cable -- Preparations for the Coup d'etat -- A warning of it sent to England -- Count Walewski issues invitations for a dinner-party on the 2nd of December -- Opinion in London that Louis-Napoleon will get the worst in the struggle with the Chamber -- The last funds from London -- General de Saint-Arnaud and Baron Lacrosse -- The elysee-Bourbon on the evening of the 1st of December -- I pa.s.s the elysee at midnight -- Nothing unusual -- London on the 2nd of December -- The dinner at Count Walewski's put off at the last moment -- Illuminations at the French Emba.s.sy a few hours later -- Palmerston at the Emba.s.sy -- Some traits of De Persigny's character -- His personal affection for Louis-Napoleon -- Madame de Persigny -- Her parsimony -- Her cooking of the household accounts -- Chevet and Madame de Persigny -- What the Empire might have been with a Von Moltke by the side of the Emperor instead of Vaillant, Niel, and Leboeuf -- Colonel (afterwards General) Fleury the only modest man among the Emperor's entourage -- De Persigny's pretensions as a Heaven-born statesman -- Mgr. de Merode -- De Morny -- His first meeting with his half-brother -- De Morny as a grand seigneur -- The origin of the Mexican campaign -- Walewski -- His fads -- Rouher -- My first sight of him in the Quartier-Latin -- The Emperor's opinion of him at the beginning of his career -- Rouher in his native home, Auvergne -- His marriage -- Madame Rouher -- His father-in-law.

"A man endowed with a strong will and energy, active and intelligent to a degree, with the faculty of turning up at every spot where his presence was necessary either to revive the lagging plot or to gain fresh adherents; a man better acquainted than all the rest with the secret springs upon which the conspiracy hung."

This description of M. de Persigny is borrowed from the indictment at the trial for high treason in 1836. Every particular of it is correct, yet it is a very one-sided diagnosis of the character of Napoleon's staunchest henchman. If I had had to paint him morally and mentally in one line, I should, without intending to be irreverent, have called him the John the Baptist of the revived Napoleonic legend. There could be no doubt about his energy, his activity, and his intelligence; in respect to the former two he was absolutely superior to Louis-Napoleon, but they, the activity and energy and intelligence, would only respond to the bidding of one voice, that of the first Napoleon from the grave, which, he felt sure, had appointed him the chief instrument for the restoration of the Empire. It was the dream that haunted his sleep, that pursued him when awake. Let it not be thought, though, that Louis-Napoleon appeared to him as the one selected by Providence to realize that dream. Loyal and faithful as he was to him from the day they met until his (Persigny's) death, he would have been equally loyal and faithful, though perhaps not so deeply attached, to Jerome, the ex-King of Westphalia, to whom he appealed first. But the youngest of the great Napoleon's brothers did not relish adventures, and he turned a deaf ear to Persigny's proposals, as he did later on to those of M.

Thiers, who wished him to become a candidate for the presidency of the Second Republic.

I was talking one day on the subject of the latter's refusal to De Persigny, several years after the advent of the Empire, and commending Jerome for his abnegation of self and his fealty to his nephew. There was a sneer on Persigny's face such as I had never seen there before; for though he was by no means good-tempered, and frequently very violent, he generally left the members of the Imperial family alone. He noticed my surprise, and explained at once. "It is very evident that you do not know Jerome, nor did I until a few years ago. There is not a single one of the great Napoleon's brothers who really had his glory at heart; it meant money and position to them, that is all. Do you know why Jerome did not fall in with my views and those of M. Thiers? Well, I will tell you. He was afraid that his nephew Louis and the rest of the family would be a burden on him; he preferred that others should take the chestnuts out of the fire and that he should have the eating of them. That is what his self-abnegation meant, nothing more."

I am afraid that De Persigny was not altogether wrong in his estimate of the ex-King of Westphalia. He was insatiable in his demands for money to his nephew. In fact, with the exception of Princesse Mathilde, the whole of the Emperor's family was a thorn in his side.

The Emperor himself was absolutely incapable of refusing a service. I have the following story on very good authority. De Persigny, who was as lavish as his Imperial master, was rarely ever out of difficulties, and in such emergencies naturally appealed to the latter. He had wasted on, or sunk enormous sums in, his country estate of Chamarande, where he entertained with boundless hospitality. As a matter of course, he was always being pursued by his creditors. One early morn--Persigny always went betimes when he wanted money--he made his appearance in the Emperor's private room, looking sad and dejected. Napoleon refrained for a while from questioning him as to the cause of his low spirits, but finally ventured to say that he looked ill.

"Ah, sire," was the answer, "I am simply bent down with sorrow. This Chamarande, which I have created out of nothing as it were"--it had cost nearly two millions of francs--"is ruining me. I shall be forced to give it up."

De Persigny felt sure that he would be told there and then not to worry himself; but the Emperor was in a jocular mood, and took delight in prolonging his anxiety. "Believe me, my dear duc," said Napoleon with an a.s.sumed air of indifference, "it is the best thing you can do. Get rid of Chamarande; it is too great a burden, and you'll breathe more freely when it's gone."