The History of a Crime Part 43

The familiars of the Elysee were of two kinds, the trustworthy confederates and the courtiers.

The first of the trustworthy confederates was Morny; the first--or the last--of the courtiers was Merimee.

This is what made the fortune of M. Merimee.

Crimes are only glorious during the first moment; they fade quickly. This kind of success lacks permanency; it is necessary promptly to supplement it with something else.

At the Elysee a literary ornament was wanted. A little savor of the Academy is not out of place in a brigand's cavern. M. Merimee was available. It was his destiny to sign himself "the Empress's Jester."

Madame de Montijo presented him to Louis Bonaparte, who accepted him, and who completed his Court with this insipid but plausible writer.

This Court was a heterogeneous collection; a dinner-wagon of basenesses, a menagerie of reptiles, a herbal of poisons.

Besides the trustworthy confederates who were for use, and the courtiers who were for ornament, there were the auxiliaries.

Certain circ.u.mstances called for reinforcements; sometimes these were women, _the Flying Squadron_.

Sometimes men: Saint-Arnaud, Espina.s.se, Saint-George, Maupas.

Sometimes neither men nor women: the Marquis de C.

The whole troop was noteworthy.

Let us say a few words of it.

There was Vieillard the preceptor, an atheist with a tinge of Catholicism, a good billiard player.

Vieillard was an anecdotist. He recounted smilingly the following:-- Towards the close of 1807 Queen Hortense, who of her own accord lived in Paris, wrote to the King Louis that she could not exist any longer without seeing him, that she could not do without him, and that she was about to come to the Hague. The King said, "She is with child." He sent for his minister Van Maanen, showed him the Queen's letter, and added, "She is coming. Very good. Our two chambers communicate by a door; the Queen will find it walled up." Louis took his royal mantle in earnest, for he exclaimed, "A King's mantle shall never serve as coverlet to a harlot." The minister Van Maanen, terrified, sent word of this to the Emperor. The Emperor fell into a rage, not against Hortense, but against Louis. Nevertheless Louis held firm; the door was not walled up, but his Majesty was; and when the Queen came he turned his back upon her. This did not prevent Napoleon III. from being born.

A suitable number of salvoes of cannon saluted this birth.

Such was the story which, in the summer of 1840, in the house called La Terra.s.se, before witnesses, among whom was Ferdinand B----, Marquis de la L----, a companion during boyhood of the author of this book, was told by M. Vieillard, an ironical Bonapartist, an arrant sceptic.

Besides Vieillard there was Vaudrey, whom Louis Bonaparte made a General at the same time as Espina.s.se. In case of need a Colonel of Conspiracies can become a General of Ambuscades.

There was Fialin,[14] the corporal who became a Duke.

There was Fleury, who was destined to the glory of travelling by the side of the Czar on his b.u.t.tocks.

There was Lacrosse, a Liberal turned Clerical, one of those Conservatives who push order as far as the embalming, and preservation as far as the mummy: later on a senator.

There was Larabit, a friend of Lacrosse, as much a domestic and not less a senator.

There was Canon Coquereau, the "Abbe of La Belle-Poule." The answer is known which he made to a princess who asked him, "What is the Elysee?" It appears that one can say to a princess what one cannot say to a woman.

There was Hippolyte Fortoul, of the climbing genus, of the worth of a Gustave Planche or of some Philarete Chasles, an ill-tempered writer who had become Minister of the Marine, which caused Beranger to say, "This Fortoul knows all the spars, including the 'greased pole.'"

There were some Auvergants there. Two. They hated each other. One had nicknamed the other "the melancholy tinker."

There was Sainte-Beuve, a distinguished but inferior man, having a pardonable fondness for ugliness. A great critic like Cousin is a great philosopher.

There was Troplong, who had had Dupin for Procurator, and whom Dupin had had for President. Dupin, Troplong; the two side faces of the mask placed upon the brow of the law.

There was Abbatucci; a conscience which let everything pa.s.s by. To-day a street.

There was the Abbe M----, later on Bishop of Nancy, who emphasized with a smile the oaths of Louis Bonaparte.

There were the frequenters of a famous box at the Opera, Montg---- and Sept----, placing at the service of an unscrupulous prince the deep side of frivolous men.

There was Romieu--the outline of a drunkard behind a Red spectre.

There was Malitourne--not a bad friend, coa.r.s.e and sincere.

There was Cuch----, whose name caused hesitation amongst the ushers at the saloon doors.

There was Suin--a man able to furnish excellent counsel for bail actions.

There was Dr. Veron--who had on his cheek what the other men of the Elysee had in their hearts.

There was Mocquart--once a handsome member of the Dutch Court. Mocquart possessed romantic recollections. He might by age, and perhaps otherwise, have been the father of Louis Bonaparte. He was a lawyer. He had shown himself quick-witted about 1829, at the same time as Romieu. Later on he had published something, I no longer remember what, which was pompous and in quarto size, and which he sent to me. It was he who in May, 1847, had come with Prince de la Moskowa to bring me King Jerome's pet.i.tion to the Chamber of Peers. This pet.i.tion requested the readmittance of the banished Bonaparte family into France. I supported it; a good action, and a fault which I would again commit.

There was Billault, a semblance of an orator, rambling with facility, and making mistakes with authority, a reputed statesman. What const.i.tutes the statesman is a certain superior mediocrity.

There was Lavalette, completing Morny and Walewski.

There was Bacciochi.

And yet others.

It was at the inspiration of these intimate a.s.sociates that during his Presidency Louis Bonaparte, a species of Dutch Machiavelli, went hither and thither, to the Chamber and elsewhere, to Tours, to Ham, to Dijon, snuffling, with a sleepy air, speeches full of treason.

The Elysee, wretched as it was, holds a place in the age. The Elysee, has engendered catastrophes and ridicule.

One cannot pa.s.s it over in silence.

The Elysee was the disquieting and dark corner of Paris. In this bad spot, the denizens were little and formidable. They formed a family circle--of dwarfs. They had their maxim: to enjoy themselves. They lived on public death. There they inhaled shame, and they throve on that which kills others. It was there that was reared up with art, purpose, industry, and goodwill, the decadence of France. There worked the bought, fed, and obliging public men;--read prost.i.tuted. Even literature was compounded there as we have shown; Vieillard was a cla.s.sic of 1830, Morny created Choufleury, Louis Bonaparte was a candidate for the Academy.

Strange place. Rambouillet's hotel mingled itself with the house of Bancal. The Elysee has been the laboratory, the counting-house, the confessional, the alcove, the den of the reign. The Elysee a.s.sumed to govern everything, even the morals--above all the morals. It spread the paint on the bosom of women at the same time as the color on the faces of the men. It set the fashion for toilette and for music. It invented the crinoline and the operetta. At the Elysee a certain ugliness was considered as elegance; that which makes the countenance n.o.ble was there scoffed at, as was that which makes the soul great; the phrase, "human face divine" was ridiculed at the Elysee, and it was there that for twenty years every baseness was brought into fashion--effrontery included.

History, whatever may be its pride, is condemned to know that the Elysee existed. The grotesque side does not prevent the tragic side. There is at the Elysee a room which has seen the second abdication, the abdication after Waterloo. It is at the Elysee that Napoleon the First ended and that Napoleon the Third began. It is at the Elysee that Dupin appeared to the two Napoleons; in 1815 to depose the Great, in 1851 to worship the Little. At this last epoch this place was perfectly villainous. There no longer remained one virtue there. At the Court of Tiberius there was still Thraseas, but round Louis Bonaparte there was n.o.body. If one sought Conscience, one found Baroche; if one sought Religion, one found Montalembert.

[14] Better known afterwards as Persigny.

CHAPTER V.