Memoirs (Vieux Souvenirs) of the Prince de Joinville Part 1

Memoirs.

by Prince de Joinville.

CHAPTER I

1818-1830

I was born at Neuilly-sur-Seine, on the outskirts of Paris, on the 14th of August, 1818. Immediately after my birth, and as soon as the Chancellor of France, M. Dambray, had declared me to be a boy, I was made over to the care of a wet nurse and another attendant. Three years later I pa.s.sed out of female hands, earlier, somewhat, than is generally the case, for a little accident befell my nurse, in which my eldest brother's tutor, an unfrocked priest, as he was then discovered to be, was also concerned. My earliest memory, and a very hazy one it is, mixed up with some story or other about a parrot, is of having seen my grandmother, the d.u.c.h.esse d'Orleans-Penthievre, at Ivry. After that I recollect being at the Chateau of Meudon with my great-aunt, the d.u.c.h.esse de Bourbon, a tiny little woman; and being taken to see the Princesse Louise de Conde at the Temple, and then I remember seeing Talma act in Charles the Bold, and the great impression his gilt cuira.s.s made upon me.

But the first event that really is exceedingly clear in my recollection is a family dinner given by Louis XVIII. at the Tuileries on Twelfth Night, 1824. Even now, sixty-six years after, I can see every detail of that party, as if it had been yesterday. Our arrival in the courtyard of the Tuileries, under the salute of the Swiss Guard at the Pavillon Marsan and the King's Guard at the Pavillon de Flore. Our getting out of the carriage under the porch of the stone staircase to the deafening rattle of the drums of the Cent Suisses. Then my huge astonishment when we had to stand aside halfway up the stairs, to let "La viande du Roi,"

in other words, his Majesty's dinner, pa.s.s by, as it was being carried up from the kitchen to the first floor, escorted by his bodyguard.

At the head of the stairs we were received by a red-coated Steward of the Household, who, as I was told, bore the name of de Cosse, and, crossing the Salle des Gardes, we were ushered into the drawing-room, where the whole family soon a.s.sembled: to wit, Monsieur, who afterwards became Charles X., the Duc and d.u.c.h.esse d'Angouleme, the d.u.c.h.esse de Berri, my father and mother, my aunt Adelaide, my two elder brothers, Chartres and Nemours, my three sisters, Louise, Marie, and Clementine, and last and youngest of all, myself. There was only one person present who did not belong to the Royal House of France, and that was the Prince de Carignan, afterwards known as Charles Albert, a tall, thin, severe-looking person. He had just served in the ranks of the French army, with all the proverbial valour of his race, through the Spanish campaign of 1823, and he wore on his uniform that evening the worsted epaulettes given him on the field of battle by the men of the 4th Regiment of the Guard, with whom he had fought in the a.s.sault on the Trocadero. Presently the door of the King's study opened, and Louis XVIII. appeared, in his wheeled chair, with that handsome white head and in the blue uniform with epaulettes which the pictures of him have rendered so familiar. He kissed each of us in our turn, without speaking to any of us except my brother Nemours, whom he questioned about his Latin lessons. Nemours began to stammer, and was only saved from disgrace by the opportune entrance of the Prince de Carignan.

At dinner the Twelfth Night customs were duly observed, and when I broke my cake I found the bean within it. I must confess the fact had not been altogether unforeseen, and my mother had consequently primed me as to my behaviour. This did not prevent me from feeling heartily shy when I saw every eye fixed on me. I got up from the table, and carried the bean on a salver to the d.u.c.h.esse d'Angouleme. I loved her dearly even then, that good kind d.u.c.h.ess! for she had always been so good to us, ever since we were babies, and never failed to give us the most beautiful New Year's gifts. My respectful affection deepened as I grew old enough to realize her sorrows and the n.o.bility of her nature, and I was always glad, after we were separated by the events of 1830, to take every opportunity of letting her know how unalterable my feelings for her were. She broke the ice by being the first to raise her gla.s.s to her lips, when I had made her my queen, and Louis XVIII.

was the first to exclaim, "The Queen drinks." A few months later the king was dead, and I watched his funeral procession from the windows of the Fire Brigade Station in the Rue de la Paix, as it pa.s.sed on its way to Saint-Denis.

Then came the echo of the excitement caused by the coronation of Charles X., that great ceremonial of which the Cathedral of Rheims was the scene, and which, coming as it did after all the horrors of the Revolution, gave rise to the sanguine hope that the ancient monarchy would repair every disaster now, just as it had in the time of Charles VII. But our childish ideas were not of so far-reaching a nature. It was the splendour displayed that interested us--the dresses, the carriages, and so on, of the princes and amba.s.sadors who came from all parts of the world to greet the opening of the new monarch's reign.

Numbers of artists solicited my father's permission to do his portrait, in the gold and ermine robes of a prince of the blood which he wore at the coronation, and our pet amus.e.m.e.nt at the time was to go and see papa "sitting as Pharamond." I said Pharamond, like my elders, although my own historical knowledge was of the most elementary description. To be frank, I was exceedingly backward, and have always remained so. My mother had taught me to read, but beyond that I had reached the age of six knowing nothing or hardly anything. But I was a very good rider and went out alone on a pony Lord Bristol had given my father, which I rode boldly, and I might even say recklessly. The pony's name was Polynice.

He and I understood each other perfectly, and I was his friend to the last. I took care he should end his days in the park at St. Cloud, where he roamed in freedom, with a stable of his own to retire into if the fancy took him. Often and often I have been to see him, in that same stable, which he ended by never leaving except to come and greet us, and warm himself in the sunshine. He died, there, fortunately for himself, full of years, just before the pleasant revolutionary occurrences of 1848, in which he would certainly have had his share.

But my father desired me to be something more than a mere horseman. He got me a tutor, and from that day out, for several years, my recollections are divided, to the exclusion of everything else, between my education and my life with my family. My tutor was called M.

Trognon, and his name brought many a jest upon him, amongst others a line of Victor Hugo's in Ruy Bias about that

Affreuse compagnonne, Dont la barbe fleurit et dont le nez trognonne.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Looks a little like a courtroom unfortunately without a caption.]

"Fleurit" was an allusion to Cuvillier-Fleury, my brother Aumale's tutor, and Victor Hugo thought he owed both the gentlemen a grudge. M.

Trognon, a distinguished pupil of the Ecole Normale, had begun his teaching career as professor of rhetoric at the college at Langres, where, coming in one day to take his cla.s.s, he found his desk occupied by a donkey, which his pupils had established in his seat "Gentlemen,"

he said as he went out, "I leave you with a professor who is worthy of you." Soon after, he was recalled to Paris, as a.s.sistant to M. Guizot in his courses of historical lectures at the College of France.

He was not only an accomplished university man, but something else besides, as we learnt from a copy of the Figaro, which our eldest brother brought back from college. In this newspaper we read, in fact, a set of verses by Baour-Lormian, beginning thus:--

Que me veut ce Trognon, pedagogue en besicles, Dans la fosse du Globe enterrant ses articles!

There was no doubt about it. My tutor was a journalist, and these lines a revengeful answer to an article of his in the Globe, a newspaper which, as we soon learnt, he had founded in concert with Pierre Leroux, Dubois, Jouffroy, Remusat, and some others. We discovered too that our journalist was a freethinker as well, and author of a thick octavo book which had been condemned by the Index at Rome, a fact which did not prevent his dying in the most religious frame of mind possible, well nigh in the odour of sanct.i.ty. My tutor was, in truth, of too lofty an intelligence to persevere long in that religious nihilism, that denial of the existence of a future state, which, spreading from religion to family life, and from thence again to the affairs of the State, ends by leaving nothing standing but animal man and his animal pa.s.sions and appet.i.tes. The long death-struggle of a pa.s.sionately loved sister, who was supported by the constant ministrations of the Bishop of Beauvais, M. Feutrier, and her calm end, of which he was an eyewitness, began the change within him. When, in later years, the Abbe Dupanloup, then Vicar of the Church of the a.s.sumption, was charged with the care of my religious education, he and Trognon became very intimate, and death alone interrupted the close communion then established between these two great minds.

The first years of my education were very happy. Anything dry about it was liberally compensated for by the constant intimacy of the family circle. We were three sisters and six brothers (this last number soon reduced to five by the death of my brother Penthievre), all living together, eating together, often doing lessons together, together always in all games and pleasure parties and excursions. What a joyous band we were may easily be guessed. Each boy had his own tutor, and two governesses were in charge of my sisters. So long as tutors and governesses only had to deal with their own pupils, all went well, but when the brothers and sisters were all together, and influenced by the spirit of insubordination and love of playing pranks which the elder ones brought back from school, we made life hard and sour to the preceptorial body. But they got on, somehow. The GRANDSPARENTS, as we called our parents, taken up as they were by their social engagements, left all initiative to the tutors. Each of these was only expected to enter daily in a book his report and opinion of the pupil committed to his care. This book was seen by my father, and he added his own remarks and orders, and then returned it.

Our day generally began at five o'clock in the morning. The elder ones went to school to attend their cla.s.ses, took their meals and played with the boarders, and came home after evening school. The boys who were not at school and the girls spent the day doing their lessons. In the evening, pupils and teachers of both s.e.xes all dined together, and then went to the drawing-room, where there was always company, for my parents received every evening. Thursdays and Sundays, which were school holidays, were given up specially to lessons in what were known as accomplishments: drawing, music, physical exercises, riding, fencing, singlestick, dancing, &c. On Sundays, every one, great and small, dined at "THE GREAT TABLE," and this life of ours was as regular as clockwork summer and winter alike.

In winter time we lived in the Palais-Royal, which then was not at all what it is nowadays. Where the Galerie d'Orleans is now to be seen, there were hideous wooden pa.s.sages, with muddy floors, exclusively occupied by milliners' shops, and peopled, it was said, by thousands of rats. To get rid of this collection of shanties, they were sawn through below, and allowed to come down with a crash. Crowds of people came to witness the collapse, in the hope of seeing the expected mult.i.tude of rats rush out. There was not a single one! They had all cleared out in good time. Such is the wisdom of the brute creation!

When I first lived at the Palais-Royal, I had a room in the Rue de Valois, which overlooked the Boeuf a la Mode restaurant, and opposite there dwelt an old lady, always dressed in black, who regularly every day, at the very same hour, placed an indispensable article of domestic use upon her window-sill, so that it was as good as a clock to us.

Later on, I changed my room for one looking over the courtyard, facing the rooms occupied by an actor at the Comedie-Francaise named Dumilatre, and his daughters; Dumilatre, whom I knew well, having seen him play those small tragedy parts which consist in making a dignified exit and saying, "Yes, my lord," had the same habits as my black lady, and the same object used to appear upon his window-sill with equal regularity. I had only changed my clock!

It was during the winter sojourn at the Palais-Royal, too, that our masters and their lessons multiplied. And several of these masters were oddities, amongst others our professor of German. Picture a little bland-mannered old man, dressed all in black, with satin breeches, woollen stockings, enormous shoes, and a broad-brimmed hat. He had been tutor to Prince Metternich in his youth. I know not what chance had later driven him into France--where, during the Terror, he became one of the secretaries of the much-dreaded Committee of Public Safety at Strasbourg. He lived alone with his daughter, whom he often sent to Germany, not by the ordinary means of communication, but concealed in the van which was sent periodically into Hungary to fetch supplies of leeches for the hospitals, which circ.u.mstance made us conclude that the simple name of "Herr Simon" by which he called himself probably concealed some deep mystery. Nothing, alas! remains to me of his German, nor of that of a valet of the same race, who had been put about me, so ill adapted has my mental const.i.tution always proved to any foreign language.

Another oddity was our dancing master, an Opera dancer, named Seuriot.

What a fine presence that man had! His lesson, which we all took together, like a little corps de ballet, was a great amus.e.m.e.nt to us, especially because of the theatrical stories we used to make him tell us. One day he arrived in a great state of excitement, and addressing the governesses he said, "Ladies, you see before you a man who had a remarkable escape yesterday. The ballet called Les Filets de Vulcain was being danced, I was playing Jupiter, and I was just going to ascend in my glory, with Mercury beside me, when I felt that same glory was out of order, and I had only just time to jump off, and to shout to Mercury, 'Jump, my friend, jump, don't lose an instant!' Well, well!"

During the pauses in the lesson, when his fiddle ceased, and while he wiped the perspiration from his brow, we used to crowd round him and ask him questions. The elder ones always tried to get him on the subject of a danseuse named Mademoiselle Legallois, one on which he would descant unendingly. This was the lady who on one occasion appeared in a ballet as the allegorical representative of Religion, which fact caused it to be said of a certain [Ill.u.s.tration: Man and woman dancing.] Marshal of France "qu'il s'etait eteint dans les bras de la religion" (that he had pa.s.sed away peacefully in the arms of religion). But the moment we were seen crowding round and whispering with the old dancer, the governesses would charge down upon us with their "What is it? What is it?" and we began our BATTEMENTS and our steps again. Personally I owed one of the earliest successes in my life to old Seuriot. I had profited so much by his lessons, that I appear to have danced the minuet in a quite remarkable way, so much so that my parents had a complete crimson velvet dress in the style of the last century made for me, with the indispensable three-cornered hat and a sword with knots of ribbon. Thus accoutred, with powdered head and pigtail, I had to give several performances of my minuet, which I danced with my sister Clementine, both of us displaying all the airs and graces of bygone times. My marquis's dress, of which I was excessively proud, served me also for a fancy dress ball given by the d.u.c.h.esse de Berri, at which, identifying myself too much with my character, I had a quarrel with a Cossack of my own age, young de B-- about a partner. In my fury I drew my sword, he did likewise, and we were just falling on each other, when the d.u.c.h.esse rushed up crying, "Stop, you naughty children! Take their swords away, M. de Brissac!" As for my sister Clementine, who was at the ball too, wearing her minuet gown, and looking utterly bewitching in her powder and her looped-up dress, she attracted the notice of Charles X., to whom she doubtless brought back memories of his own youth. He came to her and kissed her, and gazed at her for a long time, holding her hand. Then, turning to my father, he said, "Monsieur, if I were forty years younger, your daughter should be Queen of France," whereupon he kissed her over again.

Our dancing lessons, which were looked upon as recreation, alternated with walks about Paris. The girls went in one direction, and the boys in another. When we went out thus, one tutor alone took the extra duty of looking after us. When it was Trognon who came out, we always expected to be taken to Sautelet's, a bookseller in the Rue de Richelieu, whose establishment became, I recollect, in later days, the head office of the NATIONAL. There Trognon would hold forth amongst the journalists, while the clerks talked to us. I remember their showing me the splendid ma.n.u.script of the Memoirs of Saint-Simon, which Sautelet was then publishing. When, on the other hand, it was Cuvillier-Fleury who marshalled us, the objects of our walks became more varied, and we soon began to discover that there was not unfrequently a petticoat somewhere about. Yet I owe to him the precious memory of a visit to the studio of Eugene Delacroix; and also of one to M. de Lavalette, Postmaster-General under the first Napoleon, a most interesting man, well known for his celebrated escape on the eve of the day appointed for his execution, after the Hundred Days, when his wife came and took his place, and brought him garments to escape in. But oftenest of all we used to go to a bookseller's in the Rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts, who was a great friend of Fleury's, and we were always sure to find either him or his charming wife at home.

Fleury's friendship for this bookseller was indeed the cause of a comical adventure. In the confusion of the first few days of the Revolution of 1830, the gentleman in question appeared before us with white belt and a sword over his civilian's dress. "Look here, Fleury,"

said he, "what use can I be to you today?" Fleury considered for a minute, and then he said he really didn't quite see, but that after all he thought n.o.body had troubled their heads about the Prefecture of Police. "I'll be off there," said my bookseller, and off he went, appointed himself Prefect of Police, and performed all his functions for several days. I have never heard of him since.

Turn about with these walks, too, we had lessons in gymnastics, of which science a certain Colonel Amoros was the apostle. This worthy colonel gave prizes to everybody, so as to make his cla.s.ses popular.

These prizes took the form of collars, inscribed in large painted letters with the particular merit of the pupil rewarded, such as agility, courage, strength, &c. One pupil was given a prize for "hidden virtue." After the gymnastic lessons came riding lessons, for which we were taken to the Cirque Olympique, I and my two elder brothers being always put in the charge of a single tutor. But as he invariably found the riding school too cold, he used to go and shut himself up in the manager's room, and leave us to the tender care of Laurent Franconi and the rough riders, which amounted to leaving us to ourselves. This icy cold arena, in the Place du Chateau-d'Eau consisted of one immense hall, where the place of the pit was taken up by the circus or riding school for all sorts of horsemanship, which circus was connected with the stage by inclined planes, whenever a military piece with battles in it was performed. In this circus Laurent Franconi made us practise "la haute ecole," and his a.s.sistants. Ba.s.sin and Lagoutte, taught us to vault on horseback, astride and sitting, and standing upright--after every fashion, in fact. And to our great amus.e.m.e.nt, too, these lessons, falling as they did on Sunday afternoons, generally coincided with the rehearsals on the stage, in which we joyfully took our share during the intervals we were allowed for rest, scaling the practicable scenery, or taking part with the artists in certain interludes not mentioned on the programme. This was not indeed our only initiation into theatrical art, a career bearing so much a.n.a.logy to that of every prince. Taking advantage of the close proximity of the Palais-Royal to the Comedie-Francaise, my father had added a regular course of dramatic literature to the educational plan he had laid out for us. So very often when the old stock plays were being given at the Francais, he would take us by a door leading from his drawing-room into the pa.s.sage which separates the side scenes from the artists' green-room, and leave us in his box--the three centre ones on the grand tier thrown together--returning to fetch us at the end of the performance. Those evenings at the Comedie-Francaise were our greatest joy, and taught us many a useful lesson, filling our heads with cla.s.sic literature far more efficiently than all the reading and courses of lectures in the world. But those unlucky cla.s.sics were very much neglected. They were not a bit the fashion. There would hardly be two hundred people in the theatre, and all the boxes were empty. A wretched orchestra, conducted by a stout man of the name of Chodron, squeaked a tune that set everybody's teeth on edge. Up would go the curtain, without any warning, in the very middle of some phrase in the music which would break off with a sigh from the clarionet, and drearily the play would begin. We were all eyes and ears in spite of that, and nothing in the play of the tragic actresses--Madame d.u.c.h.esnois, Madame Paradol, and Madame Bourgoin--ever escaped us. I can see and hear yet all Corneille's plays, and Racine's too, and Zaire, and Mahomet, and L'Orphelin de la Chine, and many more. But what we longed for most impatiently were Moliere's plays. They were our prime favourites, and what actors too! Monrose, Cartigny, Samson, Firmin, Menjaud, and Faure, whose appearances as Fleurant in Le Malade and Truffaldin in L'Etourdi we always greeted with delight, on account of the properties he carried in his hand. This same Faure, an old soldier of 1782, never failed to say to my father, as he escorted him to the door, taper in hand, "Ha, Sir! this is not the camp at la Lune!" referring to a bivouac just before the battle of Valmy. It was always a great amus.e.m.e.nt to us to go along the pa.s.sages behind the scenes, especially when the cla.s.sic Roman processions were being formed up there for the tragedies, for among the lictors and the other Romans we recognized many of the clerks and workmen employed about the Palais-Royal, and we used to bid them good day, and call them by their names, and be very proud indeed of speaking to artists, and we went home to our own fold, imitating the call in the theatre: "On va-a commmencer! On co-mmence!" (Going to begin, just beginning).Sometimes too we were taken to see modern plays, but that did not happen often. Yet even now I seem to hear the actor Armand, just before 1830, talking thick behind his Directoire cravat, in TOM JONES:--

Point d'amis, point de grace, A la session prochaine il faudra qu'on y pa.s.se!

and the whole house rose at him! I remember also being taken to the first night of Henri III., and being very much amused by the cups and b.a.l.l.s and the pea-shooters. I was much affected too by the death of Arthur, a charming page in a violet dress, played by Mile. Despreaux, who afterwards became Madame Allan. I had no eyes for anybody else. As we were going away, my father leading me by the hand, we found the d.u.c.h.esse de Guise, Mademoiselle Mars, panting, and wrapped in a rose-coloured satin cloak lined with swansdown, waiting for the compliments which my father showered on her. She had not impressed me nearly so much as the page in violet.

Talking of Henri III., a play we took great interest in, because its author, quite unknown at the time, belonged to our household, I will recall here a recollection connected with the name of Alexandre Dumas.

Everybody knows he began life as a clerk in my father's library at the Palais-Royal. The chief librarian was Vatout, whose works, and perhaps too some well-known songs, have gained him a seat in the Academy. But Vatout was never in the library by any chance. The real librarian, and a very worthy fellow he was, was a man of the name of Tallencourt. He was an old soldier, and this caused him to be elected captain of a grenadier company in the Citizen Guard--a position to which, in the first blush of his enthusiasm, he attached an exaggerated importance.

Well, some time after Dumas had resigned his position in the library, in the midst of the riots which occurred so frequently about that period, we saw Tallencourt come home one day in full warlike attire, with his bearskin cap and his cloak, and a very gloomy countenance.

"What do you think has just happened to me? I was in command of a patrol in my ward--as we had heard several shots, we were advancing with the greatest caution, in double file, keeping close to the walls, with our eyes and ears open. All at once I heard a shout--'Here's for you, de Tallencourt!' and then a shot. Well, the shout--that voice--it was Alexandre Dumas' voice!" "Oh, nonsense!" we all cried. But he stuck to it--and we resisted the violent inclination to laugh that a.s.sailed us, convinced as we were that if the worthy man really had recognized the voice, he had been the victim of a prank of Alexandre Dumas, who had doubtless enjoyed the fun of seeing the rout of his former chief and his brave "guernadiers"!

When our father did not take us to the Theatre Francais, we spent our evenings in those beautiful rooms in the Palais-Royal where he had gathered together so many admirable pictures and works of art, plundered and dispersed since by the revolutionists and their tribe, together with the splendid furniture which was used to burn a detachment of the 14th Regiment of the Line alive, on the 24th of February, on which day it was on guard at the Palais-Royal. And to think that a French Chamber actually voted national rewards to people who had made an AUTO DA FE of French soldiers who were guilty of defending till death the post which duty and honour at once made sacred to them! But let that pa.s.s; worse things happen nowadays, but at the happy time I speak of n.o.body thought of the possibility of such shameful doings. This is what men call progress! As far as we ourselves were concerned, we spent our evenings in all the carelessness of our youth, playing together merrily and noisily in the family drawing-room, a large gallery running from the courtyard to the Rue de Valois. The games were liveliest on Sundays and Thursdays, because, those days being school holidays, our merry band was reinforced by my brothers'

cla.s.s-mates, MM. de Laborderie, Guillermy, d'Eckmul, Albert, &c., &c., and by Alfred de Mussetas well, whom I still seem to see, with his blue coat and gilt b.u.t.tons, his fair curly hair, and his melancholy and somewhat affected ways. We generally played "prisoners' base"--a game to which the great gallery was very well suited. Sometimes there was dancing, and then my mother's eye was always on de Musset, who seemed to scorn our games and to be inclined to pay a.s.siduous court to my big sisters.

Our games never interfered with the coming and going of visitors and habitual guests and old friends of my father's, who had been his friends before the Revolution. There was the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, "the good Duke," as he was called, very much dreaded by us children because he was always kissing us, and smelt so strongly of tobacco; and M. de Lally-Tollendal; and then friends of more recent date, General Gerard, Raoul de Montmorency, Madame de Boigne, the Princesse de Poix, the Princesse de Vaudemont, besides many others, soldiers, artists, diplomats, and ladies--every one, in fact, who was distinguished either by their personal charm, by mental qualities, or by the brilliancy of their career. Some amongst the number were more congenial to me than others; such as Francois Arago, the astronomer, inexhaustible in wit and humour, whether he was recounting his adventures when he was in captivity in the Barbary States, or the way he plagued his colleague Ampere, a soldier like himself in the regiment of the "Parrots in mourning," as he dubbed the Inst.i.tute, in his southern accent, because of its green and black uniform. And then Macdonald, Marmont, Molitor, and Mortier, the four Marshals whose name began with M, the heroes of a hundred fights, the living embodiment of the renown our arms had won.

We used all of us to try and hear whatever they said, whatever stories they told, and to gather up any information or anecdote touching the military glory of our country.

The diplomats interested us less--I will not speak of M. de Talleyrand, whose face and figure were striking enough, though they made but little impression on our uninformed imaginations. Yet I remember the fits of laughter we went into one day, when my father, in a fit of absence, aped the great man's limp as he crossed the drawing-room to receive him. We delighted in Pozzo di Borgo, the Russian Amba.s.sador, because as soon as his burly presence appeared his jokes and witty sallies and his stories provoked loud and inexhaustible shouts of laughter. All children love cheery people. There was another diplomat whose arrival we always looked forward to, the Bailli de Ferrette, Minister of the Grand Duke of Baden--and this for two reasons. First of all because of that t.i.tle of "Bailli," which seemed to belong to another world, or at all events to a harlequinade, and then on account of the extraordinary appearance of the man--he looked like a skeleton in powder. We were quite ignorant in those days, it is needless to remark, of the fact that this cool, proper-looking Bailli was a great musician, a first-cla.s.s performer of the STABAT MATER, whose inspiration however depended on his having the shoulders, very DECOLLETEE ones too, of a charming nightingale, over whom the Opera and Opera-Comique fought for many a day, as the desk he laid his music on. Sometimes when the evening was half over a bell was heard like the one in the fourth act of the HUGUENOTS. "There's the big bell," we would cry. It was the signal that Madame la Dauphine or Madame la d.u.c.h.esse de Berri was coming to pay us a visit, and my father would tear off, with all of us after him, to receive the visitor on the staircase. But our season at the Palais-Royal closed with the winter, and the first fine days saw us migrate to Neuilly, to the general delight.

Neuilly! I can never write the word without feeling moved, for it is bound up with all the happiest memories of my childhood, and I salute that name with respect akin to that which I would show a dead man!

Those who never knew the Neuilly of which I would speak must imagine to themselves a very large country house, of no architectural pretension, consisting almost exclusively of sets of ground-floor rooms, tacked one on to the other on much the same level, with delightful gardens, and standing in the middle of a very large park which stretched from the fortifications to the Seine, just where the Avenue Bineau now runs.

Within the park walls there were fields and woods and orchards, and even islands, the chief of which was called the "Ile de la Grande Jatte," and the whole of one reach of the Seine, the whole within a quarter of an hour's journey from Paris. This beautiful demesne, the favourite residence of my father and mother, who had made it, and were always adding new beauties to it, and who lived there in those days, far from political cares, and surrounded by their many children, who were all devoted to them, was also the place that we loved best. We were so near town that our education, our masters, our lessons at home or in school, went on just as if we were in Paris, while we had the advantage of fresh air and country life, with all its liberty and its natural and spontaneous exercise. At five o'clock in the morning, before lessons or school began, we were galloping about in the big park. In play hours, and on the Thursday and Sunday holidays, the whole troop of children roamed the fields, almost unaccompanied, the older ones looking after the youngest. We used to make hay, and get on the hay-c.o.c.ks, and dig potatoes, and climb the fruit-trees, and beat the walnut-trees. There were flowers everywhere, fields of roses, where we gathered splendid bouquets every day, without their ever being missed even. Then we used to go boating and swimming. Boys and girls, equally good swimmers all, would plunge in turn into the little arm of the Seine enclosed within the park, and nothing more delicious can be imagined than to cast oneself into deep water near the bridge at Neuilly, and to let oneself drift down almost as far as Asnieres, under the great willows, returning afterwards on foot by the "Ile de la Grande Jatte."

This island, laid waste now and turned into a slum, was covered then with venerable trees, and intersected by those "shady paths" sung by Gounod, in which we loved to lose ourselves in all the carelessness of our childhood, and perhaps too in the first awakening instincts of our youth. Nothing but a memory remains of that enchanting spot. It was confiscated by Napoleon III. on some flimsy pretext or other, and forthwith cut to pieces, so as to destroy every trace of those who had owned and lived in it. It is as much as I can do, as I drive along the Avenue Bineau, to find, among the villas which have been built all over it, some well-known tree or other, behind which I used to lie in wait to shoot the hares, which a big dog I had trained to the work used to put up for me As for the house itself, after being the scene of a terrible orgie, it was sacked and burnt down by the conquerors in the glorious fight of February 1848. Not a stone of it remains. All the works of art within it were destroyed But I know of one stray bit saved from the wreck. The traveller who goes to see the museum at Neufchatel, in Switzerland, may observe, alongside of the picture which represents M. de Montmolin, an officer of the Swiss Guard, allowing himself to be murdered on the 10th of August, sooner than give up the flag which was intrusted to his loyal care, a very small canvas, carefully mended up.

That fragment is the princ.i.p.al figure in Leopold Robert's first picture, and his masterpiece, L'IMPROVISATEUR, which used to hang in the billiard-room at Neuilly. Either a salvage man, or a looter of enlightened taste, cut it out with a penknife, in the midst of the conflagration, and it is the only thing that was saved.

But let me come back to my story.

In my father's sitting-room at Neuilly, and the billiard-room more especially, with the doors on the terrace open, the evenings used to be spent, in a circle of neighbours, friends, and habitual visitors.

These evenings had such a decisive influence on my future destiny that I cannot do otherwise than speak of them.

That billiard-room is before me now, with the pictures that adorned it, all of them masterpieces--L'Improvisateur, by Leopold Robert; La Feeme du Brigand, by Schnetz, Faust and Marguerite, by Ary Scheffer; Venice, by Ziegler--hanging round.

I see the most frequent guests too. First two abbes, whose names--the Abbe de Saint-Phar and the Abbe de Saint-Albin--were a significant inheritance due to the frailty of their great-grandparents many years before the Revolution And yet another abbe, with powdered side curls, L'Abbe de Labordere, a former Grand Vicar of Frejus' who somehow or other, I know not how, had become mayor of Neuilly. Then there was the Marechal de Gouvion de Saint-Cyr, our near neighbour, who always had a circle round him; and admirals too, the Comte de Sercey, with his pigtail--an Indian veteran, Admiral Villaumetz; and generals and officers besides, whose stories of their campaigns used to fill us with enthusiasm. Amongst the generals who were friends of the family there was General Drouot, who was very fond of me, and would take me on his knee and tell me stories. I had seen Horace Vernet's picture, La Bataille de Hanau, which represents Drouot on foot amongst his guns, just as the Bavarian Cuira.s.siers are charging through them. That had been quite enough to fire my ardour, and I wanted to be an artilleryman too. Just about the same time, my father was presented with a twelve-pounder howitzer by the Vincennes artillery, and Colonel de Caraman came to try it with us. We fired shots in the park, at the rising ground near Villiers, and my military enthusiasm was wrought up to the highest pitch. I tormented my mother till she had an artillery uniform made for me, and when I had it on my back I thought my fortune was made. After having been taken to the fair at Neuilly, and seeing the non-commissioned officers of the Regiment of the Guard quartered at Courbevoie dancing with the pretty laundresses belonging to the village, I tried hard to force my sisters to join me in imitating the particular style of dance I had seen them perform. I have heard it said that my ch.o.r.egraphic performance was fairly successful, but there my fancy for the military career ended. General Drouot went back to Nancy; I did not see him again, and I soon fell under other and more lasting influences.

Among my father's aides-de-camp there was a young cavalry lieutenant-colonel, the Comte d'Houdetot, who had begun life as a midshipman. He was a very clever man, and one of the most delightful story-tellers imaginable. By birth a creole, from the Mauritius, he and his family had happened to come back to Europe on board the corvette La Regeneree, commanded by that same Admiral Villaumetz, our neighbour and constant visitor in the billiard-room. At the time of the voyage D'Houdetot was a baby in arms, and in an action between the Regeneree and the English, at the Loos Islands, his wet nurse was cut in two by a round shot, which gave rise to a saying of his, "I have more right to promotion than anybody. Lots of people have had horses killed under them, but I'm the only man in the French army that ever had a woman killed under him."

Mutually attracted by this common memory, the former middy and the old admiral used to spend their evenings relating their adventures to each other and their stories, which had begun by interesting, ended by fascinating me. It was worth while to hear D'Houdetot tell about the battle of Trafalgar, at which he had been present as a midshipman on board the Algesiras, commanded by his uncle Admiral Magon, how, as he lay on the p.o.o.p, with both his legs broken by the bursting of a sh.e.l.l, he saw his uncle the admiral receive his death-blow, at the very moment when, wounded already, and his hat and wig carried away by a shot, he had thrown himself on to the nettings, shouting to his crew, "The first man who boards that ship with me shall have the Cross;" and how too, the boarding party having been driven back, the mizzen-mast of the Algesiras, cut through by a round shot, fell across the British ship, throwing a comrade of D'Houdetot's, the midshipman of the maintop, beyond it, into the sea, and how that middy swam back to the Algesiras.