For my own private choice, I don’t know whether I should have preferred
to live at Larches or the Heronry. People who like aristocratic-looking
houses of imposing size and respectable age would have preferred the
latter. But there are others whose ambition does not soar so high—who
would feel encumbered by space which they could not occupy, and by
galleries and apartments to them superfluous; yet who have sometimes,
when dreaming in a verandah in the tropics, a snow-hut of some northern
region, or a narrow cabin at sea, figured to themselves a snug English
home, not too remote for the world’s affairs, nor too public for
seclusion—not so large as to be dull without visitors, nor so small as
to be unfit to accommodate them—not so grand as to invite inspection,
nor so unadorned as to disappoint it—standing, in fact, on the boundary
which divides comfort from ostentation; and such would have preferred
Larches.
Yet, ah! that air from Queen Anne’s time that breathed about the
Heronry—that library, where Samuel Johnson might have devoured books in
his boyhood—the trim gardens, where Pope might have sat in fine weather,
polishing his mellifluous lines—the gateway and porticoes that Vanbrugh
might have regarded with paternal complacency, as hooped dames and
bewigged cavaliers passed underneath—all these were pleasant to the eye
and mind that love the picturesque and antique.
Yet even these advantages would not weigh in the scale for a minute,
when Larches was inhabited as now. Place Lady Lee and Orelia in the
balance, and the Heronry kicks the beam. They would have made a hut in
Tipperary, or South Africa, or any other pagan and barbarous region,
more alluring than the palace of Aladdin.
However (to describe its intrinsic advantages), Larches was a onestoried
house, too spacious to be called a cottage, which, however, it resembled
in shape, and surrounded by a deep verandah open from the eaves to the
ground. To please a caprice of Orelia’s, the slated roof had been
covered with thatch—indeed, she exercised her fancy in so many
alterations, both of the house and grounds, that the place was like a
dissolving view, and never presented the same appearance for two
consecutive seasons. The house stood on a knoll which raised it above
the surrounding garden, except at the back, where the north winds were
repelled by a small grove rising from a high bank. In the front rank of
this grove rose three tall larches that gave the place its name. The
verandah kept the sun from the apartments, but the windows, opening to
the ground, admitted plenty of sober light. Looked at from without, the
open verandah and the large space occupied by windows and doors gave an
idea of extreme airiness; while the rich heavy curtains that lined the
windows, and the glimpses of luxurious furniture behind, conveyed ample
assurance of comfort.
Hither Orelia had brought her friend, and here she applied herself to
soothe her sorrow. Many offices would, perhaps, have suited Orelia
better than that of comforter—but her affection and warm sympathy for
Lady Lee made her discharge it with right good-will.
When Hester had entered the hall, at the conclusion of their journey,
Orelia came up and kissed her.
“We will forget now,” she said, “that you have ever been Lady Lee. We
will revive in substance, as well as in idea, the old times when you
were Hester Broome at the parsonage; and we will see if there is not yet
in store for you as bright a future as ever you dreamt of in your
imaginative days.”
A thin elderly person, holding a handkerchief to her face to keep off
the draught, was hovering about an inner door of the lobby as they
entered. This was Miss Priscilla Winter, the lady who did propriety in
Orelia’s establishment, and managed the minor details thereof. She had
lived with Orelia’s mother as a companion, when the young lady herself
was a child, and had subsequently accompanied the latter to Larches. She
was a good kind of ancient nonentity, without any very decided opinions
on any subject, resembling, indeed, rather a vague idea than an absolute
person. As she always had a smile ready, and agreed with everybody,
Priscilla was sufficiently popular and endurable. At present she smiled
a welcome on one side of her face only, because the other was swelled—a
frequent symptom of the perpetual toothach which afflicted her.
“Here’s Frisky,” said Orelia, on seeing her; “dear old Frisky!—good old
Frisk!” and she went up and greeted the old lady very cordially, as did
Lady Lee.
Orelia called her Frisky, not because of any particular fitness in the
appellation, but, having a way of her own of altering people’s names,
she used to call her first Priskilla, then, when she wanted to coax her,
Prisky, which suggested Frisky, and the total and glaring
inappropriateness of the epithet tickled the inventor so much that it
was permanently adopted by her. The old virgin preceded them into the
drawing-room, where a comfortable fire was blazing, and told them dinner
would be ready in a quarter of an hour.
“And how are the live stock, Frisk?”
“All well except Dick, who had a fit yesterday,” said Miss Winter, “but
he seems quite cheerful again to-day.” Dick was a bullfinch.
“I’ll see him presently,” said Orelia, “but first I must visit Moloch.”
“Take care, my dear Orelia,” said Priscilla; “Francis has got him
chained up—the cook says she thinks he’s going mad, for he hasn’t drank
his water to-day.”
“Stuff!” said Orelia, marching out of the room.
Moloch, a great yellow bloodhound, flecked with white, chained in the
yard, thundered a deep welcome as his mistress went towards him, and
upset his kennel in his eagerness to jump upon her. She unstrapped his
collar, and he preceded her backwards in a series of curvets to the
drawing-room, yelping joyfully, and nearly upsetting Priscilla, whom
Orelia found occupied in settling Lady Lee near the fire, that she might
be warm before taking off her things; for the old lady was a great hand
at coddling people, if permitted.
“Hester looks pale, poor dear,” said Priscilla, with a heart-rending
sadness of tone and aspect—“ah, well, she’s had her trials and”—
“Now, I’ll tell you what it is, Frisk,” interrupted Orelia, looking
sternly at the old lady, “I didn’t bring her here to be made dismal, and
if ever I hear you saying anything of a doleful character, I’ll leave a
chink of your bedroom window open at night, and give you a stiff neck.—I
will, as sure as your name’s Frisky.” And this speech at once produced
the desired effect; the venerable spinster caught her cue with alacrity,
and the unswelled side of her face at once assumed an expression of
great cheerfulness.
Dinner was presently announced. “I’m afraid the dining-room will be
chilly,” mumbled Priscilla, “and this terrible face of mine—would you
mind it, my dear, if I sat at dinner in my bonnet?”
“Not in the least, my tender Frisk,” quoth Orelia; “and pray bring your
umbrella and pattens also.”
A few days after their arrival, they went down to the parsonage where
Hester had formerly lived with her father. Orelia was curious to see
what effect the memories attached to the place would have upon her
ladyship. She saw her grow flushed and excited as they passed the
familiar cottages, and trees, and fields along the road. She saw her
excitement increase as they came in sight of the parsonage. A glimpse of
it was afforded from the road, as it stood at the end of a lane, and
looked down upon a lawn dotted with dwarf firs. That glimpse showed it
little changed; but as they entered the swinging gate, opening on the
gravel path that curved round to the front of the house, the place
seemed to Hester to have dwindled. Perhaps the spacious proportions of
the Heronry dwarfed the parsonage by contrast—perhaps her remembrance
had flattered the scene—perhaps it had lost its interest together with
its former inhabitants—for, her father having died soon after her
marriage, a new clergyman now lived there, and neither he nor his wife
were likely to renew much of the romantic atmosphere of the spot—at any
rate, Hester’s associations vanished rapidly. The furniture was all so
different: there was a new door opened in the sitting-room, which might
be a convenience, but was to her an impertinence—her bedroom, the
chamber of her maiden dreams (ah, sacrilege!) was now a nursery. The
walls where the echoes of Hester’s voice, as she read aloud, or sung, or
said her prayers, ought yet to have lingered, resounded to the squalls
of the latest baby published by the prolific clergyman’s wife, and the
clamour of its small seniors. A cradle had taken the place of her
bookcase; and her bed, whose white curtains had once enclosed the poetic
dreams and bright fancies of the virgin Hester—the very altar-piece, as
it were—was occupied by a rocking-horse with its head knocked off.
Scarcely worse the desecration, when the French stabled their chargers
in the cathedrals of Spain.
She descended to the porch, and paused there, trying to recall her
former self as she had sat in its shadow, reading, working, dreaming,
fancying that the world was paradise. She wondered what could have made
her fancy so; it had, indeed, been blissful ignorance, but very silly,
nevertheless: her eyes were open now, and she was quite sure—yes,
quite—she should never see things again surrounded by such delusive
splendour. The Hester of eighteen had been quite a different person from
the Hester of twenty-five. And so sad seemed to be the train of thoughts
thus aroused, and bringing with it so many silent tears, that Orelia was
sorry she had carried her well-intended visit to the parsonage into
execution. She mentioned it in a letter to Rosa; and here, in common
type, wherein it loses all the character it gained in the original, from
that bold yet feminine hand, with its long upstrokes and downstrokes,
and its audacious dashes, we will insert Orelia’s letter.
“Dearest Rosalinda,” (it said,) “what is there about you, do you
suppose, that you should be so constantly in my thoughts as you are, to
the utter exclusion, of course, of all kinds of rational contemplation?
For how can any serious or important idea be expected to remain in
company with that of a little laughing, redfaced thing? In vain I banish
the pert image; it comes back with all the annoying and saucy
pertinacity of the original, till I actually catch myself addressing it;
and my first impulse, on waking of a morning, always is to pull you out
of bed.
“People sometimes say of their deceased relations (especially if they
have left them any money), that it would be wrong to wish them back to
this scene of trial. And I grow somewhat resigned to your absence, when
I think that you are probably much happier where you are. For Hester and
I are very dismal, Rosey—not a bit better than we were during the last
sad weeks at the Heronry. She grows paler, Rosetta—paler and thinner
every day. And I don’t think ’tis owing to any failure of mine in
carrying out our plan for her benefit. I have, in every possible way,
closed up the avenues to sad recollections. I have avoided all allusions
to her married life, as if it had been wiped out of my memory with a
great wet sponge. I have nearly choked myself by arresting, on the brink
of utterance, observations that might have awakened in her mind some
train of thought ending in a sigh. I have endeavoured to interest her in
her old occupations here, and to get her to resume the subjects of
conversation and of fancy that used to delight her in the old times,
when she was the most enthusiastic and bright and hopeful of friends;
and I have had my labour for my pains. She wandered through my hothouses
with most annoying apathy—stood on the very spot where she and I first
saw one another, and which I expected would have had an electrical
effect on her, with an absence of recognition that quite exasperated me;
and when I wished her good night, in the very bedroom that was always
allotted to her when weather-bound at my cottage, she returned the
benediction without one allusion to the old days that have departed
apparently for ever.
“Well, Rosetta, I persevered, nevertheless—yes, I did—I struck my great
_coup_—I took her down to the parsonage, where she was born and bred.
Long after her father’s death it stood untenanted; but a new family now
live there. I watched the effect of each familiar object that we passed
on the road; her breath now and then came a little quicker, and, at the
first distant glimpse of the house, her colour rose, and she smiled more
naturally than she has done any time these three months. ‘Now,’ said I
to myself, ‘the old Hester is going to peep out of this melancholy
mask;’ so I said, by way of assisting the metamorphosis, ‘Do you
remember anything about that stone, Hester?’ pointing to a great white
one by the side of the road. Now, by this stone hangs a tale, Rosamunda.
You must know (if I never told you) that Hester and I had once a little
quarrel; and as it’s so long ago, I don’t mind saying ’twas all my
fault. Well, we did not meet for two or three days, for Hester was hurt,
and I was sullen; but then, by a simultaneous impulse, we started to
meet and be reconciled. Hester was near this stone when she caught sight
of me, and, forgetting all cause of offence, ran towards me. In her
haste (’twould take a deal to make her run now, Rosey) she tript on the
grass at the side of the road, and fell with her head against the corner
of the stone. There she lay for a moment, stunned, and I, who had just
reached the spot, sat down on the stone, and, taking her head on my lap,
vowed, after she had opened her eyes, and assured me she was but little
hurt, that I would never again offend her.
“She remembered it well, she said, as I stopt and pointed to the spot;
then, pressing my hand, ‘Though I am not so demonstrative now as then,
you must not think my friendship colder, dear Orelia,’ she said. This
looked all very promising, and I walked on in great spirits, awaiting
the further effect of the coming scenes.
“The clergyman’s wife had called on us, so our visit had an excuse. The
porch looked just as it used—we entered; but there, in the identical
spot where Mr Broome used to sit and talk to us, when a pause in his
disorder let him brighten up for an hour or two, with the benignity of a
Socrates—his pale face glowing, his dim eye kindling, and his failing
voice hardly able to keep pace with his eloquent flow of thought—there
sat his successor—fat, contented, vulgar. The first words he spoke, in
tones that seemed to struggle through layers of beef and cabbage and
Yorkshire pudding, dissipated the romance that lingered for me and
Hester about the scene. And his wife! I don’t deny that the woman may
have good qualities, Rosa; but I never can forgive her that cap of
hers—nor her furniture—nor her younger sister, with her vulgar
affectation of well-bred ease—nor her mode of addressing her husband—she
called him by the initial letter of his horrible surname.
“In vain I struggled with these prosaic influences—in vain I tried to
recall the old memories of the place—they had absolutely deserted me. I
did not look at Hester, for I should only have looked disappointment. I
did not speak to her, for I had nothing to say. But I looked at the
clergyman and his wife and sister-in-law—daggers, Rosetta—and I was
glad, when we departed, to see them reduced to a state of terrified and
silent civility.
“So this part of the project signally failed. Hitherto we had lived
altogether by ourselves, for I did not wish to annoy her with the task
of making a parcel of new acquaintances, not likely to be particularly
interesting either to her or to me. But now I thought visitors might
rouse her from her melancholy, and I let them come.”
The time when Lady Lee and Orelia were most disposed to be communicative
to each other was the last hour before they went to bed. Both, after
flickering fitfully between dinner and tea, musing, looking into the
fire, sighing, &c., would brighten up into temporary effulgence, before
undergoing the extinction of sleep.
“You are cheerful to-night, Orelia,” said Lady Lee, one night after some
guests had departed. “I am happy to see it, my dear. Come closer,” said
her ladyship, passing her arm round her friend’s waist, and drawing her
on to the sofa beside her. “I want to whisper to you. May I venture to
hope” (this in Orelia’s ear, from which she had brushed back the volume
of black hair that hid it) “that you have forgotten that little romance
of yours?”
Orelia silently turned, and sat facing her with her black eyes, without
answering.
“You never confided in me in that matter,” said her ladyship, still
whispering, though there was nobody but those two in the room, and the
servants had gone to bed. “I shouldn’t speak of it now, only that I
observe some symptoms occasionally which make me still doubt the
direction of your thoughts. Can I help to guide them back to
tranquillity?”
“No, Hester,” said Orelia; “I don’t want any aid. I’ve come to a
resolution of my own accord.”
“Tell it me,” said Lady Lee.
“How can I tell you all?” said Orelia. “You didn’t know him. To you he
was merely what he appeared to the world—to me he was himself—the
manliest, the cleverest, the most independent, the—ah, you smile; but,
had you met him in his true position, you would have thought of him as I
do.”
Lady Lee squeezed the hand of the somewhat indignant enthusiast. “Who so
apt as I to believe,” she said, “that when Orelia Payne admires, the
object is an elevated one? Well, dearest?”
“Well,” said Orelia, “I dreamt at the Heronry a sort of dream—that he
would regain his position in the world, and be all you or any of my
friends could wish. He left me apparently with some such expectation;
but now I see it was fallacious.”
“But a man could scarcely make a very great stride in the world in a
couple of months,” observed Lady Lee.
“’Twill take years, perhaps,” said Orelia, “even if he ever succeeds;
and consider the chances against him. And, except as successful, I shall
never see him—he is prouder than a fallen angel.” Here she paused, and
pondered a little. “But,” she resumed, “I have resolved to think no more
on that subject. Yes, resolved!” (stamping with her foot, while her
colour heightened, and a tear came into her eye). “It can do no good—it
will be vain, weak, idle—it will be wasting life in unreality; therefore
it shall end”—(another little stamp).
Lady Lee looked at her with a kind of serious half smile. “So earnest,
Orelia!—then the cause cannot be slight.”
“It is not,” said Orelia petulantly. “I am ashamed to think how much it
has engrossed my thoughts. And yet—everything considered—so much merit
in so unfitting a position! Had he been placed where he deserves, I
should perhaps have withheld my admiration; but indignation at the way
in which fortune and the world have treated him lent it double force.
Now, Hester, I have been franker than you—for we both had our secrets;
had we not?”
It was Lady Lee’s turn to redden and be silent.
“Hester,” went on Orelia, “what do you think of the men who sometimes
come here? Is there one of them fit to be named with either of those to
whom we gave—I mean to whom we would have given—our hearts? Think for a
moment of the best of them—and then place their images, side by side,
with those I speak of. Don’t they dwindle?—don’t they show like wax-work
beside sculpture, with their fleeting hues of character, their feeble
melting outlines, their stupid conventionalities?”
“You are severe, my dear,” said Lady Lee, without, however, heeding much
her own reply—for Orelia had confused her.
“O, it scatters my patience!” said her impetuous friend. “I think less
of myself when one of them has hinted admiration. Yesterday, that worthy
noodle, Mr Straitlace—he who thinks it good to be wise, but not to be
merry, and whose expressive eyebrows proclaim all pursuits to be vanity
except his own—had the astonishing effrontery to give my hand a kind of
meaning squeeze, at taking leave, muttering something about ‘his
pleasure at recognising a congenial spirit.’ What have I done, Hester,
to deserve that?—the owl!”
“I don’t see the congeniality, certainly,” said Lady Lee, smiling, “more
than between an owl and a—peacock, or any other majestic bird.”
“Then there’s that baronet Sir Dudley (you seem to have an attraction
for baronets, Hester)—that well-dressed Mephistopheles, with crow’s feet
about his eyes and his heart at five and twenty, who has just cleverness
enough to find out the faulty side of everything—he had the impudence,
after looking at you as if he were judging a horse, to pronounce that
‘you had some good points,’ which from him is equivalent, I suppose, to
high praise.”
“I hope he specified the points that struck him,” said Lady Lee,
smiling.
“He hadn’t time,” returned Orelia. “I felt downright savage at the idea
of such a snail as that crawling on your petals. I asked him who had
told him of your merits? for that we all knew him to be slow at finding
them in anything.”
“And what did he say?”
“He turned to his next neighbour and merely said, ‘Shut up, by Jove!’
Why, compared with these people, Major Tindal grows respectable; for
though he has but one side to his character, ’tis a manly and decided
one.”
“Poor, misguided Major Tindal,” said Lady Lee; “to think that he should
have taken the trouble to come all the way here” (the Major hadn’t been
able to forbear singeing his wings again), “just to do hopeless homage
to a girl who talks of him in that way.”
“Certainly he had better have stayed at Doddington,” said Orelia. “But,
now, Hester, tell me—could you admire, or ever be induced to love, any
of our present acquaintances, after having seen others so much
worthier?”
“I will go farther than that,” said Lady Lee, resuming her habitual tone
of melancholy, which she had relinquished for one of assumed gaiety,
merely to cover the confusion that Orelia’s home-thrust had caused her;
“I will say that we never could have admired or loved them in any case.”
“And yet they are not below the average of those we shall meet in our
pilgrimage,” said this severe censor; “and that brings me to a subject I
have for some time thought of. You and I can never link our lives to
people of that sort.”
“Never,” said Lady Lee, fervently.
“Neither will we spend them in vain regrets,” said Orelia. “In men that
would be unmanly, and in us ’twould equally be unwomanly. We will drive
out thought—we will leave it no avenue to enter—we will place a quickset
round our hearts. Some do this by openly relinquishing the world, and
taking vows; our resolutions shall be none the weaker because we only
take our vows privately, and to one another.”
Lady Lee looked at her friend inquiringly.
“Why should we have done with life because we have been disappointed in
one of its objects?” said Orelia. “Why should we languish or let
ourselves rust because those we prefer are withheld from us? _We_ could
not be content to go lingering and dreaming all our lives.”
“Not content, certainly,” said Lady Lee. “But what are we to do?”
“Make business for ourselves in the world,” said Orelia. “Be of use—turn
our energies to account. How many women younger than we quit a life of
ease without our provocation, and devote themselves to one of active
usefulness! We might be the founders of an unprofessed sisterhood. What
do you say, Hester? When shall we begin?”
“When?” said Lady Lee. “My dear, such a thing requires thought.”
“Say a week,” said Orelia.
“A week!” cried Lady Lee—“a year you mean. Nuns have a noviciate.”
“And a contemptible thing it is,” said Orelia, “that hovering between
two worlds, as it were—that lingering on the bridge, shilly shally. No,
Hester; we won’t show any such want of confidence in ourselves—we will
begin after a week’s trial. We must commence by closing up all paths to
thoughts that might unsteady us—lay aside at once poetry, romance,
music, except anthems and oratorios. We will prescribe for ourselves a
simple dress and a uniform and disciplined life. Come, are you not
anxious to begin?”
“I _do_ almost catch a gleam of your enthusiasm,” said Hester. “To
relinquish my present life will be no privation” (with a sigh). “But we
must mature the idea before acting on it. We must not begin lightly.”
“Lightly!” said Orelia. “I’ve been thinking of it these four days. And,
for our plan—feeding the poor—educating the ignorant—comforting the
sick—there is a field! So much for our duty towards our neighbour—for
ourselves, we will improve and occupy our minds with study, and I was
going to say meditation; but I’m not so sure whether our meditations
would be always on profitable subjects, at least not just yet. When nuns
turn out not so good as they might be, who knows what share meditation
may have had in it? We’ll act now, Hester, and put off meditation till
we grow older.”
Now, there was something in Orelia’s proposal that was not unpleasing to
Lady Lee. To banish thought which she found so wearisome—to occupy time
that hung so heavy—to labour with an object and obtain a result—these
were what she had long desired in a dreamy sort of way, and, now that
the more energetic Orelia had struck out the path, she was ardent to
follow it. Thus the mind would be provided for; and, for the heart, why
shouldn’t she and Orelia, her chosen friend, be all in all to each
other? which last idea was, perhaps, even more brilliant than the other.
Accordingly the noviciate commenced forthwith. They had, in Hester’s
maiden days, studied together French and Italian; they now began a
spirited attack upon the German language. Mathematics was desirable, as
it required attention, exercised the mind, and did not excite the
imagination, and they plodded away at Euclid and algebra with a
perseverance praiseworthy in an ambitious freshman, but, in them,
lamentable to behold. The piano remained unopened, the harp untouched,
except on Sunday, when they performed a piece out of Handel. Lady Lee’s
copy of _Corinne_ was put in the fire by Orelia, who had never
particularly admired the work; and, indeed, a great part of their
library underwent such a weeding as Don Quixote’s suffered at the hands
of the barber and curate. Both were dressed in mourning before for
Julius, so no great change was needed in their attire. To crown all,
they discovered, in a couple of days, some babies in the smallpox and
croup, three distressed families with the fathers out of work, and a
pair of rheumatic old women, so that their charitable resolutions were
not likely to fail for want of objects.
It is very well known that heroines of respectability ought to be
naturally benevolent. They ought, moreover, to have a happy knack of
winning the hearts of all who experience their bounty. I would with
pleasure bestow on my heroines all the good attributes that belong to
them, but I have already said they were far from faultless, and, to say
the truth, the line they had chosen was not their forte. Lady Lee’s
fastidious taste was speedily revolted by misery, whose pathos was
impaired by selfishness or coarseness; and Orelia, after a visit to one
of the rheumatic patients, left a sovereign for the sufferer, and vowed
she would never go near that horrid old grumbler again. In fact, this
was one of the points in which they were both of them inferior to Rosa.
Their benevolence sprang from a sense of duty, and was artificial in
expression, like the conversation of one who has learnt a foreign tongue
grammatically; while Rosa’s was natural, and fluent in the happiest
idioms of goodness.
However, they persevered, and, though they were striving against nature,
their conduct was quite natural. Women are never so enthusiastic about
their duties as when they have just been disappointed in love. Your
pretty Puritans are sure to have had an attachment blighted, and
Devotion is called in, like a Beguine, to dress the wounds made by that
rascal Cupid.
But yet, reader, if Hester and Orelia should really persist in their
project, what a glimpse of the possible is here opened! Let imagination
hold up the curtain for a moment.
Methinks I see Orelia, aged say about thirty-five; severe of aspect, and
with what novelists call “the traces of former beauty,” though the arch
of the nose has strengthened to Roman firmness, the mouth is quite stern
in its decision, and the fire of the eyes has some fierceness in its
sparkle. Irreproachable, but not amicable—unsparing to the indiscretion
of others, and having none of her own—rigid in the performance of
duties, as well as in exacting them—I see her, in fact, become that
formidable being, an exemplary woman, and I should like to see anybody
make love to her now.
Lady Lee, too, now getting on for forty, has changed from what we knew
her. She is not called, like Orelia, an exemplary woman, but is
stigmatised by the equally opprobrious epithet, a superior person. Her
eyes, dimmed with long perusing of good wearisome books through a veil
of tears, are still beautiful in their melancholy, but the rest of her
charms have withered. She does not discharge her duties with the
unfailing spirit of the more energetic Orelia, but requires a new weary
effort for the performance of each; and when the old obstinate question
recurs of what her business in the world may be, she silences it by a
contemplation of the indurated virtues of her friend, which she nerves
herself to imitate. There are no more confidences or confessions of
weakness between herself and Orelia, but a friendship such as might have
subsisted between the Mother of the Gracchi and Mrs Fry. They are
punctual in ——, but, as Sterne says, when the idea of his captive
becomes too painful, “I cannot sustain the picture that my fancy has
drawn.” Fane—Onslow—to the rescue!
THE MARQUIS DE LAROCHEJAQUELEIN.[25]
FRANCE IN 1853.
The name of Larochejaquelein is not an obscure one. It was once familiar
to the world. It was known and venerated wherever stainless honour,
fidelity proof against all temptations and suffering, chivalrous valour,
and patient courage amid dangers that do not try the nerves less that
they want the excitement which sustains the soldier on the battle-field,
were held in reverence. The two brothers who covered that name with
glory of the purest kind were noble specimens of the old chivalry of
France, when chivalry had well-nigh passed away; and the chronicler of
their romantic gallantry and their heroic death was the gentle female
who bore their name, and who bore it high, and who shared in their
sufferings, their triumphs, and their defeats. We know of few
compositions more interesting than the narrative of the Marchioness de
Larochejaquelein, who, we are happy to find, still survives, her form
bowed by age, but her heart as true as when, in early youth and beauty,
she traversed on foot the ravines of the Bocage, or forded the canals of
the Marais, and witnessed the sanguinary wars waged by the insurgents of
La Vendée during the wildest period of the French Republic. It is
curious that the most attractive records of the great revolutions which
convulsed the two kingdoms of England and France, at periods so distant
from each other, should respectively be the production of a female pen.
The memoirs of Mrs Hutchinson and the narrative of Madame de
Larochejaquelein are companions fit to be placed side by side with each
other; and though the character of the two works is different, the
interest they excite is identical. They both possess all the fascination
of romance, but they are valuable in a degree which few romances can
pretend to. It has been remarked, that until their publication the world
was strangely in error on many of the important events to which they
relate, and that they have been singularly useful in diminishing a great
deal of the prejudice, and in dissipating the ignorance which had
existed, particularly with reference to some of the principal actors in
these terrible scenes. The character of the English heroine is shadowed
forth in her history; it is more unbending, more masculine, more stern,
perhaps, and commands admiration which the mind cannot refuse. But the
heart is led away by the tenderness of the Frenchwoman; and her pathetic
touches, while they add to the interest of her story, impart to it the
impress of truth.
The nobleman who has just published a defence of his own political
career during the eventful changes which France has again witnessed, is
the son of that lady by a second marriage. His lineage is an ancient and
honourable one. Sprung from the old house of Vergier de
Larochejaquelein, he counts among his ancestors a Crusader whose arms
form one of the many ornaments of the rich gallery of Versailles; two
warriors who fell on the hard-fought field of Pavia, when “all was lost
except honour;” a brother in arms and tent-companion of Henry IV., who
was left “with his back to the field and his feet to the foe” on the
plains of Arques; a _mestre-de-camp_, who met his death while in the act
of boarding a pirate off St Domingo. His uncle was the general-in-chief
in the Vendean army, and it was this gallant gentleman, on whose history
Froissart would have loved to linger, who spoke this last address to his
army, which is still remembered by the peasants of the Morbihan—“If I
advance, follow me; if I retreat, slay me; if I fall, avenge me!”
Another of this heroic family was a dashing officer of carabineers under
the Empire; and on the battle-field of the Moskowa he maintained the old
valour of the house of Larochejaquelein. Count Louis, the father of the
present Marquis, refused to serve under Napoleon. When the flight from
Elba roused Europe again from its brief tranquillity, the peasant
soldiers of La Vendée gathered once more round the white banner of their
chief. The insurrection was, however, soon put down, and
Larochejaquelein, while in the act of leading on his men against the
Imperial troops, fell with a bullet in his heart. This is an ancestry of
which any man may be proud.
The present Marquis is the son of the Royalist chief of the Hundred
Days, who had married the widow of his old companion in arms, the
Marquis de Lescure. He was born in 1804, and at the early age of eleven
was created a peer of France, under what is called the Second
Restoration. He entered the military service in 1821, joined the army
under the Duke d’Angoulême in 1823, and made the campaign of Spain. He
was captain in the horse grenadiers of the Royal Guard in 1828, and,
inheriting the military ardour which characterised his family,
petitioned the king to be allowed to serve in the Greek war of
independence, but was refused. He was permitted, however, to join the
Russian army as a simple volunteer in the campaign of the Balkan against
the Turks, “having nothing better to do,” as he himself said on one
occasion in the Chamber of Deputies. Though a peer of France, he had not
taken his seat in the Upper House when the revolution of 1830 broke out;
and refusing to accept place, favour, or honours at the hands of the
revolutionary government of July, he resigned his functions as peer of
France. Endowed with remarkable activity of mind, he devoted himself for
some time, and with much energy, to industrial pursuits, and gave up
politics till 1842, when he was named a member of the Chamber of
Deputies by the electoral college of Ploermel, in the Morbihan. During
his parliamentary career he did not remain idle. He took a prominent
part in most of the stormy discussions of the time: the various projects
of replies to the addresses from the throne, the conscription reform
law, prison reform, railroad bills, electoral reform, liberty of
instruction, all found in him a ready, fluent, and vigorous, if not an
eloquent debater. On all occasions he spoke out his mind frankly and
boldly; and though on many occasions in opposition to his own party, as
well as to the government, it is said that he never had a personal enemy
in the Chamber. His conduct, when the paltry attempt was made by the
servile adherents of the new régime to affix infamy on the Royalists who
paid their homage to the descendant of their former master, on the
occasion of the Count de Chambord’s visit to London in 1842, is beyond
all praise. He rejected, with scornful indignation, the stigma attempted
to be fixed on him by the Orleanists, who did not feel the sentiment of
honour, and were incapable of appreciating it in others. He at once
resigned his seat as deputy, and appealed from the outrage offered him
by the Philippists to the judgment of the electors. The electors
answered the appeal, and Ploermel sent him back to the Chamber, where he
persevered in the same independent course. When the base arts of
corruption employed by the government of July were to be dragged to the
light of day, Larochejaquelein was never silent. “A corrupting and
degrading selfishness pervades all parts of society,” he said, in the
discussion of the budget in 1845. “I have, in common with the rest of
the nation, given up all illusions about the constitutional forms of the
state, and I have no longer any faith in their independence. On all
sides, in all places, I behold the triumph of the base over the
generous, of evil over good; and each day that passes by brings us
nearer to a tremendous crisis—the future is indeed dark and
threatening!” These prophetic words were destined to be soon
realised—sooner, perhaps, than the speaker himself imagined.
We have said that M. de Larochejaquelein was a frequent and a forcible
speaker on important occasions. Without much claim to what is termed
oratory, his language is fluent and full of energy; and he has scarcely
uttered a few sentences, when you feel that he is a man of profound
convictions—and this we hold to be a great, as it is a rare, merit in
times like the present. His portly presence, open brow, and flowing
hair—his quick, earnest, and impassioned gesticulation, remind you of
the tribune of revolutionary days. The haughty movement of his head, and
the scornful expression of his eye, when repelling some unjust
accusation, give him an appearance of pride, which certainly is not
characteristic of him, for in private life no one can be gentler or more
unaffected. You see before you the gentleman of the old _souche_, not
the marquis of the _salon_, or that trifling race which the wit of
Molière has perpetuated. Had the Marquis de Larochejaquelein not been
born an aristocrat, he would have been a tribune of the people. Whatever
be his merits or demerits as a speaker or a politician, he possesses, at
all events, the courage, the audacity of his opinions. He was devoted to
the Bourbons of the elder branch (and they have not always paid his
devotedness with gratitude), not for interest, but for honour, from
family traditions; and were not the days of chivalry all but extinct in
what was once a nation of cavaliers, and were men again to combat for
dynasties in France, we are inclined to think that he would be among the
first to place his lance in rest, as his ancestors did before him; and
yet, if we are to judge from recent events, neither the hereditary
devotedness of his family to the cause which was so often sealed with
their blood, nor the sacrifices (and we are informed they are not few)
which he himself has made to it, have won him the favour of the court of
Frohsdorf. On the contrary, we believe that he has been exposed to all
the persecution that petty malignity can set at work; and we know that
attempts have, on many occasions, been made to ruin him among the
primitive peasantry of La Vendée and the Morbihan. His position with
reference to his own party became so intolerable, that he has considered
it necessary to publish, in a small volume, a review of the state of
parties in France in 1853, and which is, at the same time, a vindication
of his own conduct.
The work is curious and instructive. It notices the events which have
recently occurred in France; and though the causes which led to that
very decided act of vigour known as the _coup-d’état_ of December 1851,
have been long since known to the public, and appreciated by impartial
men, a narrative bearing the impress of truth, and penned by one of the
actors in the drama, cannot fail to be interesting. We do not concur in
all the views of M. de Larochejaquelein, nor do we agree in all his
deductions; but we readily admit the truth of his sketch of political
parties in France previous to the month of December, of the intrigues of
the Orleanist faction, their hypocrisy and selfishness, their utter
recklessness of consequences, provided but a chance was afforded them,
no matter at what cost to the country, of recovering the power for which
they had shown themselves unfit, and of which they were deprived almost
without an effort. In all this we agree; and we confess we are not a
little pleased at finding the opinions we have already had occasion to
express on these points fully borne out by one who has so intimate a
knowledge of affairs. We believe that the French press has, with one or
two exceptions, passed over in silence the work of M. de
Larochejaquelein; and we are not much surprised at that silence. It is
some time since all political intercourse has ended between him and the
persons who compose the court of Frohsdorf. These persons, we fear, too
truly represent the extravagant opinions and the intolerant conduct of
the men who contributed by their evil counsels to the overthrow of the
legitimate monarchy. They are the same of whom it has been said, and
said truly, that they returned from their long exile, having learned
nothing and forgotten nothing; and were the Count de Chambord to be
restored to the throne of his ancestors, their policy would again lead
to its overthrow. We desire to speak with respect of the present chief
of the house of Bourbon. We admire the dignity of his bearing; the
position he has assumed with respect to the Orleans family; the proud
refusal to make any sacrifice of what he considered to be a principle,
even though that sacrifice increased the number of his partisans; the
firmness with which he maintains his superiority over those who
despoiled him—the innocent victim of base intriguers, and a successful
insurrection—of his rights. But we fear that he allows himself to be too
much influenced in certain matters by a coterie composed of persons of
antiquated notions, and who do not appear to have any conception of the
progress made in the social and political world during the last
half-century. The errors of that coterie are exposed by M. de
Larochejaquelein; and that exposure will not narrow the distance which
separates him from his party, or rather from the court of Frohsdorf. The
unpalatable truth he tells will not easily be forgiven; and the
Legitimist organs of the press have considered it more prudent to pass
them over without notice or contradiction. The organs of what is called
the _Fusion_ have been equally discreet, and with one or two exceptions
the other journals have imitated their discretion, either because they
considered his sketch not sufficiently Buonapartist to merit unqualified
praise, or too much so for censure. The object of the Marquis de
Larochejaquelein, who still professes to be a Legitimist in principle,
is to show that he has been guilty of no inconsistency in giving in his
adhesion to the imperial government, and that he has not discarded the
opinions he always professed; that he has not denied the name he bears,
nor renounced the political faith in which he was brought up, by
accepting that régime, and taking, as a member of the Senate, the oaths
of allegiance to the Emperor and the constitution. It is principally in
this respect that the interest of the book consists, and we have noticed
briefly and impartially the conduct of the writer, and that of a certain
number of his fellow-Legitimists who have, equally with himself,
comprehended the imminent danger their common country was exposed to,
and availed themselves of the only means of safety left at their
disposal.
The offence committed by M. de Larochejaquelein, and which the more
intolerant of the Royalist party do not pardon, is not of recent date.
He was a Legitimist, it is true, but he was also attached to
constitutional government. He preferred a sovereign who inherited a
crown from his ancestors, but he was likewise the supporter of
representative institutions. But so many catastrophes—so many
revolutions had passed over France—so many governments had been
overthrown and institutions subverted, that all notions of right and
justice, as of government, were completely lost. The actors in the first
Republic denounced all monarchical forms, as not only incompatible with
human rights, but actually opposed to common sense itself—in fact,
something monstrous and unnatural. After convulsing all Europe, and
utterly changing the country where it first broke into mad violence,
that Revolution became exhausted from its very excesses; the Republic
fell into contempt; but the terror inspired by it was such, that then,
as in more recent days, people were glad to take shelter in any
government that promised security to life and property. The great object
of the Consulate, as of the Empire, was to obliterate the last traces of
a system which had cost France so dear. That régime was so great and so
dazzling that the loss of liberty was soon forgotten; and the yoke that
pressed on the nation was the less galling because it was concealed in
glory; and Frenchmen consoled themselves for not being free, because
their master was a hero.
That brilliant meteor, after blinding the world with its splendour,
and awing it by its power, fell into darkness. The ancient line was
restored; and the Restoration in turn began by proclaiming the
imperial rule as a usurpation; and Louis XVIII., in the charter of
1814, dated his reign, not from his return to France and the fall of
Napoleon, but from the death of his nephew, the son of Louis XVI.;—as
if the imperial epoch, with all its marvellous events, had never
existed, and as if the account popularly, but erroneously, attributed
to the famous Father Loriquet, was exact, that there had been no such
government as the Republic, and that the man who was generally
believed to have ruled the French nation despotically, but not
ingloriously, for fourteen years, was in reality only Monsieur le
Marquis de Buonaparte, lieutenant-general in the service of his most
Christian Majesty.
Next came the Revolution of July, which proclaimed that Charles X. had
forfeited his right to the crown, for himself and his heirs—who,
however, were admitted to have done nothing to merit that forfeiture—by
the manner in which he interpreted the 14th article of the charter,
which, nevertheless, authorised him “to make regulations and ordinances
necessary for the execution of the laws and the safety of the
state.”—(_Charte Constitutionnelle de 1814._) Republican writers
(_Dictionnaire Politique_, p. 216) admit that the aforesaid article left
to the king “the dangerous privilege of being the sole judge of the
necessity of the case;” though they refused to recognise that or any
other article of a charter which had been _octroyée_, or issued by royal
authority alone. The responsible advisers whom Charles X. consulted,
were of opinion that his conduct in issuing the famous ordinances was
legal. The Orleanist revolution denounced that act as a violation of the
charter, and declared that Charles X. had broken some imaginary compact
between him and his people, and had forfeited the crown. This was
admitting, to all intents and purposes, the right of armed insurrection.
The principle thus admitted by the new régime was often turned against
itself; and the right of overthrowing the government was many times
tried during the reign of Louis Philippe. Various insurrections broke
forth, which were successively put down; but had any of them succeeded,
Louis Philippe would long before 1848 have been accused, on equally just
grounds, of a violation of the new charter, and consequent forfeiture of
the crown, as his predecessor. At length _his_ turn came; and at the
very moment that most people believed the throne of July to be fixed on
the surest basis, the insurrection of February in a few hours overthrew
that which had already triumphed over so many previous dangers. Louis
Philippe rose to power on the barricades of July;—that power was laid
prostrate by the same means. He, in turn, was proclaimed a usurper of
the people’s rights, a violater of public liberty, and condemned to
execration. It is not strange, therefore, if the minds of men became
bewildered amid so many conflicting doctrines. There no longer appeared
any fixed standard by which to judge of authority. Monarchy in its
absolute form was decried by some; constitutional monarchy by others.
Monarchy under any denomination, or under any form whatever, was
denounced by many as an outrage on human reason. Some maintained that a
republican rule was hateful to the immense majority of the nation, and
that France only desired a fair opportunity to declare its will. Under
such circumstances what was to be done? The Royalists did not conceal
that they only _endured_ the Republic until an occasion offered for
re-establishing their own form of government. Each party maintained that
it, _and it alone_, represented the wants and wishes of the people;
while the unhappy people, in whose name, and on whose behalf, all this
had been done, stood by in silent dismay, and bent to the yoke which
each faction that got uppermost imposed upon it. All was confusion,
anarchy, chaos;—and the country, whose wellbeing was the pretext,
rapidly approached the brink of ruin.
Under such circumstances, we again ask, what was to be done? The Marquis
de Larochejaquelein thought that the only way of solving the problem was
by an appeal to the very people in whose name every outrage was
successively perpetrated; and calling upon it to declare, once for all,
frankly and freely, what form of government it preferred—whether
monarchy legitimate or constitutional, or a republic. From the day he
took his seat in the Chamber of Deputies until the 2d December, when the
National Assembly was dissolved by the _coup-d’état_, such was his
constant theme. He denied the legitimacy of the Orleans monarchy of
July, and refused to recognise the right of two hundred deputies, a
portion of only one branch of the legislature, to exceed the terms of
their mission, and to bestow sovereign power on any one. He expressed
his belief that France would, if an occasion offered, return to the
government of her legitimate sovereign, and he did not conceal that such
was the motive for his appeal; but at all events he demanded that France
should be consulted, and he pledged himself to abide by the issue. By
such conduct he incurred the hatred of Legitimists and Orleanists;—of
the former, because his doctrine was inconsistent with the principle of
divine right; and of the latter, because the admission of such an appeal
vitiated, _ab initio_, the right of the sovereign whom the two hundred
deputies had, of their own sole act, given to the nation. We offer no
opinion as to whether M. de Larochejaquelein would have attained his
object had his plan been carried into effect, nor on the abstract
fitness of such an appeal; but in so complete a dissolution of authority
of every kind, and amid such a confusion of all ideas of government, it
would be difficult to suggest any other experiment whereby the right of
those who founded their claim on the will of the nation could be tested.
The first great offence committed by M. de Larochejaquelein consisted,
as we have just seen, in his having so far deviated from the principle
of divine right, as to recommend an “appeal to the nation;”—but the
crime for which he can hope for no forgiveness from the court of
Frohsdorf, is his having recognised the imperial government, and
accepted the office of senator under it. M. de Larochejaquelein is of
opinion, that after so many revolutions there was no chance for monarchy
in France otherwise than by means of universal suffrage, by which the
present government has been elected. He thought that the Legitimists,
who had always maintained that they, and they alone, were acceptable to
the nation, would run no risk in abating something of their _amour
propre_, and in meeting the reaction half-way. If they were right, there
was no fear of the result of such an appeal. The Orleanists, who were
few in number and factious in conduct, would indeed be justified in
shrinking from such an ordeal as the ratification of the act of two
hundred deputies of the opposition; but in any case he despaired of a
monarchical government in any form that attempted to establish itself on
a narrower basis. “Let us now suppose,” he says (p. 190), “that monarchy
were proclaimed in France otherwise than by universal suffrage, which no
accredited leader of the old Royalist parties admitted. Of the three
monarchical parties, two would have been in open hostility with the
government, and would, as now, rely for aid on the Republicans—this time
in open hostility, and with much more reason. It is, perhaps, from a
feeling akin to paternal weakness that I invariably recur to this
article of my political faith—If the question of _Monarchy_ or
_Republic_ had been frankly put to the country under the Republican
government, under the Republican constitution, all dynastic pretensions
would vanish before traditional right, and the majority of the
Republicans themselves would have submitted to the declared will of the
nation. But no!—it was thought better to carry on intrigues up to the
very day when the _coup-d’état_ of the 2d December became a social and
political necessity; instead of cherishing carefully that liberty which
we claimed for the national will, the parties I refer to preferred
reserving themselves for chances which had only the effect of prolonging
our intestine divisions.”
M. de Larochejaquelein explains why he has given his adhesion to the
present government, elected, as it has been, by means of that very
appeal to the nation which he had, with certainly the hope of a
different result, always advocated. “If I am asked,” he says (p. 214),
“the reason of the humble support I give to the present government, my
answer is very simple: I see before me a strong government, which has
rendered real service to my country, and at this moment I do not see any
other that can possibly succeed to it. The faults that have been
committed are so numerous—revolutions have so exhausted our
strength—events have such complete power over us—that, I confess, my
reason forces me to accept the vote of eight millions of my
fellow-citizens. Nevertheless, I have never been more convinced than I
now am, of the excellence of the hereditary principle. Let us suppose
the Emperor to have issue—he has also relations. Let us suppose the
Count de Chambord to have issue—but the princes of the house of Orleans
are numerous. Under such circumstances, France would be exposed for
centuries to the danger resulting from the dissensions of the
monarchical parties disputing among each other the possession of the
crown. Hereditary right, respected by France for her own sake, saved her
from the evils which perhaps were the fate of future generations, and
spared us the repetition of those trials which we have already so
severely felt. I will be frank. The reason that many Legitimists support
the government is, that they do not wish on any account, or any terms,
either Orleanism or anarchy—the one being, in their opinion, the
consequence of the other. Were there no other motive than to destroy the
chance of either, the persons I speak of are of opinion that they ought
not to refuse taking part in the affairs of their country. Europe is
equally interested with us that the principle of the Revolution should
not be represented on the throne of France by a new family usurpation,
for there is no sovereign that such usurpation should not alarm.”
The reign of Louis Philippe was the reign of the _bourgeoisie_—of the
revolutionary shopkeepers of Paris. The scepticism of the eighteenth
century had extended to morals—the mockery that assailed religion
gradually undermined society—and all notions about virtue, honour,
independence, were destroyed by a blighting incredulity. We are no
believers in what is termed the perfectibility of human nature, but we
do not think that, even with the most mercantile people of the world, a
love of gain is incompatible with ideas of personal and national honour.
The all-powerful _bourgeoisie_ of the Orleanist régime was not a good
specimen of that class; it carried into political life the
characteristics of its social life. Insolent and overbearing in
prosperity, it was fawning and mean in adversity. A difference is always
observable between the bearing of a gentleman—and by the term we refer
as much to moral as to social superiority, as the gentleman of nature
may be found in all classes—and the mere upstart, and in France it was
perhaps more striking than elsewhere. Dignified humility, lofty
submission, obedience that implies no forgetfulness, no sacrifice of
self-respect, loyalty which cannot be degraded even in political
servitude, a sense of personal honour which despotism cannot wound, are
far different from the pertness of the _parvenu_, the nervous pedantry
of the _doctrinaire_, or the fawning of the sycophant. The one inclines
low, with a consciousness of just subordination to high station; but
after so inclining he stands up with erect face: the other falls to the
dust prostrate. The aristocratic courtier will offer the incense of his
adulation, but his censer is not rudely flung in the eyes of his royal
master, and his homage is not without grace and dignity. His words may
be soft and insinuating, but he will not change his nature. To use the
language of one who knew both classes well, he may stoop to pick up his
master’s hat or handkerchief, but it is the act of polite attention to
superior rank, and not the mercenary subserviency of a valet; and there
is an air of equality about it which shocks no one, and does not offend
the personage to whom it is paid. We rather think that, generally
speaking, a prince prefers selecting his ministers from the class of
plebeians, because he believes he shall be served by them as mere
mercenaries; while the others he must treat as servants of his crown,
and no otherwise. It is mentioned as one of the anecdotes of the Court
of Louis Philippe, whose fault was want of dignity, that, one day,
wishing to gain over to some project of family interest, on which he had
set his heart, one of his ministers, he offered him, in a familiar,
off-hand, and half-contemptuous manner, a portion of the fruit he was at
the moment eating. The minister appeared much flattered, bowed low, and
accepted the royal gift. We are not aware whether the bribe produced the
effect intended, but we much doubt if the citizen-king would have
treated with such disdainful familiarity a Montmorency, a Noailles, or a
Molé.
The effect produced by the exclusiveness of the July régime was such as
might have been expected. It was inculcated that the primary object of
man’s existence was the gratification of his meaner passion;—success in
the pursuit of wealth without any close examination as to the means by
which it was acquired, was regarded as the _summum bonum_; the
_enrichissez-vous_ so often repeated in the banquet and electioneering
speeches of even the most eminent of Louis Philippe’s ministers (though
we readily admit that no such incentive influenced the person who so
spoke) were the leading maxims of that system. Fidelity to principles,
faith in high and noble aspirations, were rather sneered at as the
ravings of the imagination, suited perhaps to the age of romance; and
strong attachment to traditions was referred to as a folly unworthy of
men of sense. The _bourgeois_ were often assured that they alone were
the sovereign; that they alone were eminent in eloquence and in thought;
that to them alone belonged the gifts of the earth; that they alone,
provided they were men of substance, were superior in the social as in
the moral scale; that to them belonged all distinctions as a matter of
right; that they only were fit to occupy eminent posts in every branch
of the administration, and in fact that in their hands were exclusively
placed the destinies of the state. They who thus extravagantly exalted
the pursuit of mere material interests, were destined to pay dearly for
the lessons they had taught. Faith and reverence for the past had been
held up to contempt by the new school of statesmen; but the doctrines
that had been inculcated for the overthrow of the former dynasty, were
equally applicable to the modern one, and the Revolution of February was
the consequence. Empty and dogmatic, the real _bourgeois_—the
_bourgeois_ whose stupidity or conceit makes him sure good material in
the hands of the revolutionists—has nevertheless pretensions to nothing
less than universal knowledge. Jealous of all superior to him in social
position, and insolent to those below him, he would drag down the former
to his own level, but would not permit the latter to rise to it. With
the examples yet before him, and the preceptors he had to guide him, he
could not be a _bourgeois_ such as July encouraged, without being
somewhat of an infidel. The reverence for religious forms that
characterised his fathers, was in his opinion fit for times of
ignorance, but not for the enlightened nineteenth century. He had dipped
here and there into the _Philosophical Dictionary_ of Voltaire; he could
sneer at the Mosaic chronology; be witty on the description of Noah’s
Ark; was incredulous about the Deluge; and laughed outright at the
Passage of the Red Sea. He had read the _Origine de tous les Cultes_ of
Dupuis, and could quote whole pages from Volney. He was therefore a
philosopher. With those severer studies he mingled the lighter graces of
wit and poetry, and for these accomplishments he was indebted to the
doggrel of the “philosopher of Ferney” in _Joan of Arc_; the _Guerre des
Dieux_ of Parny, and the looser songs of Beranger. To show that he
thoroughly appreciated these great masters, and that he was superior to
popular prejudice, he would not enter the doors of a church, as the
observances of religion were only fit for women and children. To prove
his independence, and to give “a lesson to the government,” he would not
pay the just respect, which degrades no man, to the accredited
representative of authority; but he would fall on his knees to worship
the merest political mountebank. He incessantly clamoured about
_equality_, and decried the aristocracy if he happened to see a
carriage, with a coronet or armorial bearings, roll by him; but his
pride was up if a struggling artist or poor man of letters addressed him
otherwise than with cap in hand. The noisy advocate of social and
political liberty, there was no greater despot in his domestic circle.
His house-porter crouched before him, and his servants grew dumb when
they heard the creak of his shoe. Railing against the “upper classes,”
his ambition was to scrape acquaintance with some decayed viscount, some
equivocal marquis; and if he had a visit from some one who bore a title,
the coroneted card lay for whole months in full view on the central
table of his drawing-room, or was stuck in the most conspicuous part of
the looking-glass frame. His personal pomposity was increased the more
he was disposed to corpulence, and his boldness was decisive proof of
the superiority of his intellect. Our worthy _bourgeois_ was rather hard
to be pleased. When the political world was tranquil, he passed his
leisure hours in running down the government; and though no one had more
experienced the mischief of agitation, he generally voted for its most
dangerous adversaries: not because he approved of their principles, or
that the ministerial candidates were not honourable men, but because he
was determined to let no opportunity pass of making the king and his
government feel that he, M. St Godibert, was not pleased with them, and
would “give them a lesson.” These lessons occasionally cost the teacher
very dear; and when agitation, warmed by himself into incipient
insurrection, grew dangerous, he was sure to be the first to accuse the
government of having excited it for its own special purposes. When
insurrection was defeated, he again blamed the government for excessive
lenity in the punishment of those who disturbed the public peace; and
when all peril was over, and a complete lull ensued, then he accused the
same government of excessive cruelty to those who a day or two before
were the _infame canaille_, but who now were his _frères egarés_—his
deluded brethren and fellow-citizens.
These were the men who served as the instruments to bring about the
Revolution of July, and these were they who were feasted and flattered
until they were led to believe themselves the only beings on earth
worthy of consideration. Such specimens were of course to be met with as
_employés_ in the various ministerial departments. Nothing could be more
insolent, or more griping, than the general run of those underlings. The
recommendation “_enrichissez-vous_,” coming, as it did, from the first
minister of the crown, was not forgotten;—he was one of the few who did
not carry out for himself his own theory; but we fear that the love of
power, which was in him a passion, induced him to tolerate, or at least
not to prevent, the scandalous jobbing which it was known was going
on—for it is not credible that such things could be done in secret. A
government where such men enjoy, in consequence of their position, a
great though underhand influence, is humiliating for an honourable man
to live under. There is something more respectable in the audacity with
which the insurgent flings out his crimson flag, and eyes, as he passes
through the richest quarters of Paris, the trembling _bourgeois_, whose
fine mansion he has already marked out, than in the system which admits
as its principal instruments the rapacious and insolent underlings, who
too often had the ministerial ear under the Orleans régime.
As for the representative system in France during the period of which we
speak, it was a farce. Two hundred thousand electors, for a population
of thirty-three or thirty-four millions, was not much better than an
oligarchy, and the worst of all oligarchies, for its corruption was its
bond of union, as was proved by the disclosures made to the world
towards the conclusion of Louis Philippe’s reign, when some of the
highest functionaries were dragged before the tribunals for
mal-practices; and we believe that there were other persons who did not
regret that the Revolution of February came to save them from public
disgrace. A minister who wishes to be regarded as a philosopher and a
statesman, should try to purify his age rather than corrupt it; and it
is as immoral as impolitic to encourage the baser passions of men in
order to keep yourself in power, however clean your own conscience, and
virtuous your purposes. Such things might be palliated in so loose a
politician as Walpole; but they would shock and disgust were they, by
the remotest chance, to be found in so austere a moralist as Guizot.
Some time previous to the _coup-d’état_ of 1851, a new scheme was formed
by the Orleanists, who were tired of the forced leisure to which the
successful imitation, in February 1848, of the example set by themselves
in 1830, condemned them. The object of this new project was the complete
reconciliation of the elder and younger branches of the Bourbon family,
and of the two important sections of the Royalist party, with a view to
a restoration, on the expiry of the presidential power in May 1852, by a
_coup-d’état_ on the part of the majority of the National Assembly, a
successful rising of the people or the army, or, in fact, any other
means that offered. None of those eventualities were, it is true,
expressed in the journals that acted as organs of the party, but they
were so understood by all the initiated. Each party looked forward to
the term fixed by the constitution for Louis Napoleon to lay down his
power, for the triumph of its cause. The Mountain took no pains to
conceal its designs; and not unfrequently, amid the stormy debates which
raged in the Assembly, the “second Sunday in May” 1852 was declared to
be the date when full vengeance was to be exacted from Legitimists,
Orleanists, Buonapartists, and “reactionists” of every kind and colour.
As that fatal term approached, the Orleanists, who surpass all others in
intrigue, and such of the Legitimists as were credulous enough to trust
them, and simple enough to be led by them, did their utmost to rouse the
revolutionary demon in the Chamber, and on several occasions openly
coalesced with the Terrorists. The Republicans suspected, as every one
who knew him must have suspected, the sincerity of M. Thiers; and though
they were fully aware of his real motive for seeking admittance into
their ranks, their passions would not allow them to refuse the
co-operation of any ally, and they relied, besides, on their own courage
and energy against treachery when the important moment arrived. On the
other hand, the Royalists were full of confidence in their success, if
the preliminary and indispensable condition of reconciliation were
adopted, and they agreed that France would not again submit to the
brutal tyranny of some three hundred Socialists. Their ordinary language
was, that, even at the worst, the “promised land” would at length be
reached through the Red Sea—the “promised land” being, of course, the
Royalist restoration; and the “Red Sea” the massacre and pillage it
would be necessary for France to traverse before it was attained. The
leaders of the Royalists, superior in all the arts of intrigue to their
more brutal rivals, were vastly inferior to them in energy of action.
During a brief régime of terror they would disappear, if necessary, and
remain in some place of safety until France, exhausted and
panic-stricken, threw herself into their arms, when they would at once
establish a dictatorship. Louis Napoleon was, in their opinion, the
obstacle easiest to be got rid of; they would leave his account to be
settled by the Republicans, in case they themselves had not previously
got him out of the way. As for any difficulties on this latter point,
they considered that it was absurd to think of them. Louis Napoleon had,
according to them, fallen into such contempt with the army and the
nation, that not a finger would be raised to save him. M. Thiers, and
other great statesmen like him, had, not merely in the saloons of Paris,
and in his own particular circle, but openly in the _Salle des pas
Perdus_, and the corridors of the National Assembly, sneered at him as
“a poor creature;” and the redoubted General Changarnier himself—on
whom, by the way, the eyes of the whole world were fixed—had more than
once insulted him in the Chamber, and in his official quarters in the
Tuileries. Louis Napoleon, therefore, was so utterly scorned as to be
made the butt for continual sarcasm in the saloons of an old foreign
_intriguante_, long resident in Paris; and this was his last
degradation. The only doubt was, whether imprisonment at Vincennes would
not be investing such a miserable being with too much importance. The
ditch of Vincennes would be much better, and if a few ignorant persons
thought him of consequence, why, an ounce of lead would quiet their
fears. Some of the more judicious and far-seeing of the political
leaders of the day, very properly considered that the main object they
had in view would be materially advanced, if, as we have said, a
reconciliation could be effected between the partisans of the Count de
Chambord and the Orleanists. The idea originated with the latter. A
meeting was held of about a dozen persons at first, in order to explain
the plan which had been formed, and to organise what was termed a
“fusionist agitation.” Other meetings, more numerously attended, were
held at brief intervals; and it was resolved to send out agents to
influential persons in the departments to win them over to the cause of
the _fusion_—the _fusion_ having for object the restoration of the
Bourbons; and the parties who were engaged in it were precisely the same
men who, in the press and in the Assembly, expressed their preference
for the government as established in February, and who denounced the man
who was _suspected_ of an intention to attack the immaculate purity of
the young and as yet innocent Republic. The first step of the
_fusionists_ was directed to the chief of the house of Bourbon and the
princes of Orleans. But the Count de Chambord refused to sacrifice a
particle of what he considered to be his just rights. He was King of
France, and the only representative of legitimate royalty of his family,
and he would consent to no divided allegiance. The princes of Orleans
had been princes of the blood before their father had usurped the crown,
and they must remain so. Past wrongs and injuries he was not unwilling
to forgive; he would not be very exacting in matters of secondary
importance, but on the great principle that the sovereignty resided in
him since the abdication of the Duke d’Angoulême, which followed that of
Charles X., he would hear of no compromise. On the other hand, the
princes of Orleans would not admit of any act which had the effect of
making their father a usurper; they were the more induced to do so that
they were receiving from their agents in France, and particularly in
Paris, assurances that great popular sympathy existed for them; and in
fact, that to the house of Orleans alone the nation was looking for
salvation! At the same time it was known that the Prince de Joinville
was doing something on his own account with reference to the presidency
of the Republic. Relying on the popularity he enjoyed to a greater
degree than any of his family, he seems to have entertained some hopes
of success. With the prudence which characterised his father, he would
not, however, commit himself to any declaration; would neither deny nor
admit that he was a candidate for the presidency; would neither avow nor
disavow the acts of his friends; he might profit by their exertions, but
if they failed, he would leave them to all the consequences of their
defeat, and, in the latter case, would very probably disavow them. This,
it will be admitted, was not very frank, or straightforward, or
princely. It can scarcely be believed that the Prince de Joinville had
all at once become a Republican; and it is not unfair to conclude, that,
if successful, he would have employed his position as President to the
restoration of his family. The mistrust of the house of Orleans that had
characterised the elder Bourbons—and its history proves how their
mistrust was justified—was increased by that conduct; and the Count de
Chambord was disgusted with the policy which permitted, without
disavowal, the name of his cousin to be spoken of by his partisans in
Paris as the candidate for the future presidency of the Republic. M.
Thiers did not, after all, approve of the fusion. It was sufficient that
the suggestion of a reconciliation had proceeded from a rival of whom he
had been always jealous, for that clever and restless intriguer to set
his face against it. His utmost energies were devoted to secure the
establishment of a _regency_ in the person of the Duchess of Orleans,
mother of the Count de Paris, whose confidential adviser he was, and
whose minister he hoped to be. A restoration by means of the fusion
would seriously interfere with his private plans, and he gave it
therefore his most decided opposition. To secure at any cost the
services of the man who at that time commanded the army of Paris, and
whose influence over the vast military force of the Republic was long
believed to be unbounded, was a great object. That man had
unquestionably rendered services to order. But his head had been turned
by adulation arising from gratitude for past and hopes of future
services; and he at length came to believe that on him alone depended
the fate of France. He was flattered with the idea that the part of Monk
was reserved for him; and to enhance the value of his co-operation, he
coquetted with both parties, and affected an air of mysterious reserve,
which rendered him equally impenetrable to all. That reserve was carried
on so long that it began to be whispered that General Changarnier would,
when matters came to the point, declare neither for the one party nor
the other, but would offer himself as candidate for the Presidency. This
rumour was absurd; and the silence of the general, who was Legitimist by
tradition rather than from principle, and an Orleanist from interest and
habit, was nothing more than the usual coquetry in which he apparently
took much delight. In fact, he remained dreaming away till the
_coup-d’état_ rudely woke him and others from their slumber. Of the
possibility of a fusion of interests between these parties, or of a
sincere reconciliation between the elder and younger branches of the
royal family, we entertain very serious doubts.
The house of Orleans had been, from the time of the Regent, of infamous
memory, fatal to the elder Bourbons. It was the evil genius that haunted
them from the cradle to the grave. The government of Louis Philippe
repaid the benefits conferred on the house of Orleans with ingratitude.
One of its earliest acts was the introduction of a measure for the
perpetual banishment of the elder Bourbons, and for the compulsory sale
of the property they held in France. They who have been shocked, and, we
readily admit, _justly_ shocked, at the decree of the 22d January 1852,
confiscating to the state the appanages which, according to the usages
of the French monarchy, should have reverted to the state at the
accession of a prince of the royal family, and at the compulsory sale of
the Orleans property, may have forgotten that that decree was but an
imitation of the legislative enactment of the 10th April 1832. We
condemn, on principle, such acts of confiscation; they are replete with
injustice; but we cannot help feeling that the decree of the 22d January
1852, all bad as it was, was an act of retribution. Signal ingratitude
is seldom left unpunished; and while we reprobate the conduct of Louis
Napoleon, we cannot say that the house of Orleans was wholly undeserving
of the treatment it met with. The sentence of perpetual exile, and
confiscation of property, was passed by the Restoration on the
Buonaparte family. That family owed no gratitude to the Bourbons; but
the princes of Orleans were bound by the strongest ties of gratitude to
them. On the 10th April 1832, the law was promulgated relative to the
elder branch of the Bourbons and the family of Napoleon. The law bore,
of course, the signature Louis Philippe, and the counter-signature of M.
Barthe, Louis Philippe’s Minister of Justice. The 1st, 2d, 3d, and 6th
articles were as follows: “1st, The territory of France and of its
colonies is interdicted _for ever_ to Charles X., deposed as he is from
the royal dignity in virtue of the declaration of the 7th August 1830;
it is also interdicted to his descendants, and to the husbands and wives
of his descendants. 2d, The persons mentioned in the preceding article
shall not enjoy in France any civil rights; they shall not possess any
property real or personal; they shall not acquire any, gratuitous or
otherwise. 3d, The aforesaid persons are bound to sell, in a definitive
manner, the whole of the property, without exception, which they possess
in France. That sale shall be effected, for the unencumbered property,
within the year dating from the promulgation of the present law; and for
the property susceptible of liquidation, within the year dating from the
period at which the right of possession shall have been irrevocably
fixed. 6th, The provisions of the first and second articles of the
present law are applicable to the ascendants and descendants of
Napoleon, to his uncles and aunts, his nephews and nieces; to his
brothers, their wives and their descendants; to his sisters and their
husbands.” This law against the benefactors and the kinsmen of Louis
Philippe was not enacted in the first heat of animosity, and the first
impulse of revenge for real or fancied wrongs, which, immediately
following a great revolution, might have been alleged as a palliation.
It was enacted one year and nine months after the Revolution of July,
when the passions of political parties, so far as they affected the
unfortunate Charles X. and his family, had time to cool down. A
high-minded man would have preferred forfeiting even the crown of
France, glorious though it be, to putting his signature to such a
document. The public and private virtues of the Orleans family have been
enlarged upon even to satiety. State reasons may be alleged as an excuse
for things which morality condemns; but the vaunted qualities of that
family should have placed them above any such justification. State
reasons may be alleged for the perpetration of any enormity. We have no
doubt that Catherine II. could allege them for the partition of Poland;
and the Emperor Nicholas justifies his present conduct towards the
Ottoman Empire quite as satisfactorily. Pretensions to virtues far
superior to those of ordinary men should, however, place those who are
so gifted out of ordinary rules. We have said that we reprobate the
decree of the 22d January 1852, but we have no doubt that Louis Napoleon
justified that arbitrary act by the law of 1832. The house of Orleans
renewed the sentence of perpetual banishment against the family of
Napoleon, and of incapability to possess property in the French
territory. Louis Philippe owed a heavy debt of gratitude to Charles X.
and his family; we have seen how that debt was paid off; no such
obligation bound the Buonapartes to the house of Orleans.
But there existed another obstacle in the way of reconciliation between
the elder and younger branches of the Bourbons—another outrage which it
is scarcely in human nature to forget. The Orleanist party had protested
in 1820 against the legitimacy of the present Count de Chambord. In that
year a document appeared in London, entitled “Protest of the Duke of
Orleans.” It was headed as follows: “His Royal Highness declares that he
protests formally against the minutes of the 29th September last, which
pretend to establish that the child named Charles Ferdinand Dieu-Donné
is the legitimate son of the Duchess of Berri. The Duke of Orleans will
produce, in fitting time and place, witnesses who can prove the origin
of that child and its mother. He will produce all the papers necessary
to show that the Duchess of Berri has never been _enceinte_ since the
unfortunate death of her husband, and he will point out the authors of
the machination of which that very weak-minded princess has been the
instrument. Until such time as the favourable moment arrives for
disclosing the whole of that intrigue, the Duke of Orleans cannot do
otherwise than call attention to the fantastical scene which, according
to the above-mentioned minutes, has been played at the Pavilion Marsan
(the apartment of the Duchess of Berri at the Tuileries.)” The paper
then repeats the whole of the account of the _accouchement_ as it
appeared in the _Journal de Paris_, the confidential journal of the
government, and shows the alleged contradictions in it, with the view of
proving that the whole was an imposture. The Protest and the
accompanying details to which we have alluded, were republished in the
_Courrier Français_ of the 2d August 1830; and the _Courrier Français_
was devoted to the Orleanist dynasty.
But those are not the only humiliations which the elder Bourbons have
suffered from the family of Orleans; and when we are told that the son
of the Duchess of Berri is about to take to his bosom the sons of the
man who laid bare to the world’s mockery the weakness of his mother, we
are called upon to believe that that son has become lost to every manly
sentiment. We doubt much if this be the case. There can be no sincerity
on the part of the Orleanists who first suggested the _fusion_. They
well know that, in the event of a Legitimist restoration, the men who
overthrew the throne of his grandfather and drove him into exile, who
resisted all attempts to restore them to their country, can never be his
advisers—if he be what we hope he is. Could the Duchess of Berri receive
at her levee the purchasers of the Jew Deutz, or those who signed and
gave to publication the medical report of Blaye? It is a vile intrigue,
got up for the sole benefit of the Orleanists. It was not out of love
for the house of Bourbon, but from hatred to Louis Napoleon, that the
fusion originated; and we agree with M. de Larochejaquelein when he says
that “the Orleanists and Legitimists, not being able to effect a fusion
of love, try to effect one of hatred, with the predetermined resolution
to tear each other to pieces hereafter, and with a violence all the
greater from the consciousness that one party was tricked by the other,
if indeed both were not tricked.”
The Legitimists are no match for their rivals in cunning—in the lower
arts of Machiavellism—in what is vulgarly but expressively termed _la
politique de cuisine_. In 1848 the former occupied a much better
position than the latter. The régime they had combated for eighteen long
years was at length overthrown, and the comparison between the fall of
_their_ sovereign and that of the “citizen” king was infinitely in
favour of the former.
Charles X. retired slowly before his enemies, and with all the dignity
of a defeat which is not dishonourable, nor dishonouring. In the most
critical moments, and when menaced with great danger, he never forgot
who and what he was. He assumed no disguise; he put on no menial livery;
and to the last moment of his embarkation for the land of his exile, his
friends had no cause to blush for him. He was throughout a king—“Ay,
every inch a king!” Whatever the faults he may have committed when on
the throne—and we are free to admit that his rule was far from
faultless—there was no loss of personal dignity in his descent from it.
If the revolution of February succeeded without the co-operation of the
Legitimists, it was not against them that it was directed, nor was it
the Legitimists who were to be conquered. And yet, in the course of a
very few months, the party became completely subordinate to their more
clever and more unscrupulous rivals. It is true that in the first
movement, when anarchy was wildest, the instinct of self-preservation
from the evils which menaced society itself, bound all men of order,
without reference to party, against the common enemy, Socialism. But it
is difficult to understand, when the impossibility of a Republican
system was recognised, when the necessity of substituting another form
of government was evident to all, how the Legitimists allowed themselves
to be seduced by their enemies. A snare in the form of the “fusion” was
laid for them, and they easily fell into it. It would be a waste of time
to detail all the manœuvres, the negotiations, the conferences, the
schemes for the realisation of that idea. There was nothing positive or
real at bottom. Everything was left to chance. It was soon evident that
neither of the parties was sincere; each tried to deceive the other.
Some of the more confident, or the more audacious, suggested that
propositions should be made to Louis Napoleon himself; and among the
Legitimists there were found persons silly enough to believe that he
would, notwithstanding all the chances in his favour, derived from the
spontaneous election of the 10th December 1848, gladly co-operate in the
restoration of a prince of the house of Bourbon. The name of General
Changarnier was proposed as the person to whom the dictatorship was to
be intrusted until such time as the Royalist restoration was
accomplished. A dictatorship was the great object with all parties: the
Socialists, in order that France should be regenerated according to
their peculiar ideas; the “moderate Republicans” would have selected
General Cavaignac, as they did after the insurrection of June, and would
have tried once more to force their system on a terrified population;
the Legitimists and Orleanists looked to a dictatorship as the surest
means toward a Royalist restoration, though it was not decided among
them who was to be the future sovereign. The Orleanists counted much on
their cleverness to beat their allies out of the field—allies in the
moment of uncertainty and danger, but foes to be got rid of at any cost
when the booty came to be divided. “In 1849,” says M. de
Larochejaquelein, “I was one of those who wished at least to maintain
the Republic, in order to insure the union of all that was reasonable
and patriotic in the country; to call on France to put an end, once for
all, to revolutions; and our object was to form the electoral committee,
known afterwards by the name of the Committee of the _Rue de Poitiers_.
I had been chosen by the Legitimists; but when we met, I requested to
have it explained to me for what reason the committee was only composed
of Orleanists and Legitimists. It appeared to me fitting and proper that
the more judicious and moderate Republicans should form at least a third
part of our committee, as we had at heart hopes of a different kind. I
was told that the committee did not wish for Republicans, simply because
it did not wish for the Republic. I demanded why, out of sixty members
of the committee, forty-five belonged to the Orleanists, and only
fifteen to the Legitimist party. An ex-minister replied that, though the
party of legitimacy was, no doubt, honourable, yet that it formed a very
small minority, while the other was in fact the nation. Not being of
that opinion, I withdrew, and I declined being made use of as an
instrument for the restoration to the throne of France of the
revolutionary monarchy of 1830.” The division and weakness of those
parties is further illustrated in this passage: “There remained another
means of which the intimate confidants of the Count de Chambord were
dupes—a plan which was never admitted except by them, and the
impossibility of which was evident—namely, to bring about a restoration
through the instrumentality of the Legislative Assembly itself. Without
understanding what they were doing, the parliamentary Legitimists of
1850 directed all their efforts to renew the act of 1830, when 219
deputies, without right of any kind, and with the most flagrant
disregard of their duty, presumed to change the form of Government. The
Assembly was divided into so many parties that it was in vain to hope
for a majority for that object. It is true that towards the close of the
Assembly all parties made a desperate attempt to combat Buonapartism;
but the moment that a serious proposition was made to substitute a
government for that of the President, it was found that concord did not
and could not exist between two of the great parties who composed that
Assembly.”
M. de Larochejaquelein gives some interesting details of the secret
intrigues of the Orleanists to win over the Legitimists to the “fusion;”
and it is amusing to find how both parties were deeply engaged in the
duty of allotting crowns and imposing conditions on pretenders, up to
the very eve of the _coup-d’état_. We had already become acquainted,
through the channel of the public press, with the intrigues which made
the presidency of Louis Napoleon one continued agitation, and we are not
sorry to have the testimony of one who was an eye and an ear witness of
the whole. “I appeal,” says M. de Larochejaquelein, “to the good faith
of all political men—Is it, or is it not, true, that the idea of the
most confidential advisers of the house of Orleans was to induce the
Count de Chambord to abdicate in favour of the Count de Paris? Is it, or
is it not true, that they urged the adoption of the Count de Paris by
the Count de Chambord, even to the prejudice of the issue of the latter,
supposing that he had any? Is it, or is it not true, that on the eve of
the 2d December, certain persons who were the most influential, who
stood highest in favour at Claremont, made that monstrous proposition in
the _Salle des Conferences_ of the National Assembly, and that it
produced a great effect on the Legitimist members of the Assembly? Is
it, or is it not true, that the _Sceptics_ of the party replied, with
surprising impertinence, Yes, no doubt we earnestly desire the fusion!
What then? But it is not our interest to oppose it. You (the
Legitimists) have for a long time kept yourselves apart from public
affairs. The country belongs to us. _Your_ principle is the best; we do
not dispute the fact; but, above all, it is certain that your principle
(legitimacy) is necessary for us to adopt. _Your_ prince (the Count de
Chambord) may return with _our_ royal family. _He_ is its chief; agreed.
But at the end of six months he will see what his position really is. He
will see that it is impossible for him to govern with _you_, and without
_us_. He has no children; he has too deep a sense of religion to be
ambitious; he loves France too much to wish her to be given up to
commotions which would expose her to new revolutions. He will prefer the
castle of Chambord as a residence to the Tuileries. You may be certain
that we shall treat him well, and we shall all be contented. The
principle itself will be respected, and _we_ shall govern France.” Such
were the propositions, and such the language of the partisans of the
Orleans family to the Legitimists. Not a word, of course, was said of
Louis Napoleon; and these profound statesmen were thus disposing in sure
confidence of the fruit of their schemes only a few hours before they
were scattered like chaff before the wind by the man on whom they
disdained even to pass a thought! The Orleanists were still tormented by
one fear; they trembled lest the proposition so often presented to the
Assembly by M. de Larochejaquelein should again be renewed at that
critical moment which preceded the expiration of the presidency of Louis
Napoleon. The President of the Assembly, M. Dupin, the principal agent
of the Orleans family, urged, and with more than usual energy, that body
to refuse its authorisation for the printing of M. Leo de Laborde’s
proposition, namely, that France should, at the important moment when
every faction was struggling for supremacy, be consulted as to whether
she desired, or not, the re-establishment of her traditional monarchy.
M. Dupin treated the question as if it were one of life or death to
himself. He threw off all restraint, and resisted with his utmost
efforts any measure resembling an appeal to the nation, or embodying the
principle of legitimacy. “And even at the present moment,” says M. de
Larochejaquelein, “the language of the Orleanists is this: ‘We find that
the _fusion_ is the best instrument of hostility against the government
of Louis Napoleon, and for that object we must effect it. But if the
Count de Chambord should ever become a widower, he must not think of
forming a new matrimonial engagement. Should he happen to have children,
he must no longer count on our support.’”
One of the hallucinations under which the Orleanists laboured was, that
Louis Napoleon was in his heart devoted to them exclusively; and that
when the _fusion_ was consummated, he would transfer his power to them.
That delusion survived even the _coup-d’état_. M. de Larochejaquelein
admits, in common with all rational men, that the _coup-d’état_ was the
salvation of society itself, and they who were loudest in their applause
of it were the Orleanists. “The most ardent in their approbation,” the
noble writer remarks, “were the Orleanists, because they were convinced
that the President was, perhaps without meaning it, working for them.
The decrees of the 22d January undeceived them. From that moment they
became divided into two camps, that of the extreme opponents, and that
of the men who accept the government, but who yet cherish a spirit of
hostility to it, more or less openly declared.”
We have often thought it extraordinary why those Legitimists who had
freely taken the oaths of allegiance to Louis Philippe refused them to
Louis Napoleon; and on what grounds those who yielded prompt obedience
to a revolutionary system, established by some two hundred deputies,
should, while demanding an appeal to the people, decline to recognise a
power which is the issue of the national will. M. de Larochejaquelein
professes to be unable to account for the fact. “It would be curious,”
he says, “to find out the reasons on which they found that refusal. I
confess that I cannot explain a proceeding of the kind, and which is so
advantageous to the revolution of July. It is true that the Legitimists
must be pained at seeing their hopes baffled once more; but were it only
in a social point of view, they ought to give their co-operation to the
government. By keeping apart, they leave the place open to the men whom
they had for so many years combated, and they commit the injustice of
placing on an equality the usurpation of 1830 with the election of the
Emperor successively by six, by seven, and by eight millions of
suffrages. Prince Louis Napoleon had overthrown nothing which was
endeared to us; it was not he who had persecuted the princes who were
the object of our reverence and of our devotedness; it was not he who
placed the revolution on a throne; but it was he who combated the
revolution. He had, in the opinion of the immense majority of the
people, rendered a signal service to France by effacing beforehand the
fatal term of May 1852. He made an appeal to all honest men, without
distinction of party, to aid him in saving the country. The majority of
Legitimists could not well disregard the will of the nation; they
submitted to the verdict without sacrificing their principles.” We need
not say that we approve of the policy which has preferred the good of
their country to the mere gratification of party feeling or personal
ambition; and we see no inconsistency in the accepting a government that
has fulfilled the conditions which, in the eyes of these persons, alone
justified their adhesion.
As for the Orleanists, they began in intrigue, have continued in it, and
we have no reason to suppose that they will ever change. Place and power
are, with very few exceptions, their object. The Palais Royal was,
during the Restoration, the favourite resort, the headquarters of all
the malcontents of the day: all who stirred up opposition to the
government, all who intrigued against Louis XVIII. or Charles X., were
welcome to the palace of “our cousin of Orleans.” They were not true
even to the government of their own choice; they had overthrown one
dynasty, and because M. Thiers or M. Odillon Barrot wanted the place,
which M. Guizot preferred exposing the country to convulsion rather than
be torn from, another dynasty was flung down after it. The tactics of
the party have been always pretty much the same; revolution was evoked
by them to the hypocritical cry of _Vive la Charte_, or _Vive la
Constitution_. They were the men who organised, in 1829, the formidable
associations against the payment of the taxes. At that time, also, as
twenty years later, banquets were got up; and at one of those scenes of
feasting, 221 crowns, in honour of the 221 deputies of the opposition,
adorned the hall; and that nothing should be wanting to complete the
resemblance, it was M. Odillon Barrot who made the speech on the 4th
July 1830, which was the prelude to the fall of Charles X.—the same
great citizen whose banquettings and whose orations helped to destroy
the throne of Orleans in 1848—the same demagogue whose conceit led him
to suppose that _he_ alone could lay the fiend he had evoked. There was
nothing too low for them to stoop to, no instrument too mean for them to
reject. It was that faction that brought about the revolution of July,
it was the same that helped on that of February, and it was the
coalition of the _fusionists_ with the Mountain that provoked the
_coup-d’état_ of December 1851. Where were all those eminent statesmen,
those solemn orators, those sour pedants, those profound thinkers, those
philosophers, those great citizens, when the widowed Duchess of Orleans
faced the mob, who had been rendered infuriate by the men who were
afterwards unable or afraid to control them?
It has been made a matter of reproach to Louis Napoleon, that the
persons who enjoy his confidence, or preside at his councils, are
obscure adventurers, of no moral or social influence; and that no man of
eminence, worth, or standing, will accept either power or place in a
government so degraded. This, we rather think, is too sweeping an
assertion. We should like to know what was the social, moral, or
political eminence of M. Thiers, when the Revolution of July brought him
first into notice. If we cast our eye over the list of senators under
the imperial régime, we find names there that may stand a comparison
with many in the late Chamber of Peers; and as for corruption, we may
point to the events that immediately preceded the Revolution of
February, when some of the highest had to answer for acts which were
anything but moral. It is true that some of the leading men who directed
the policy of the country under Louis Philippe have taken no active part
in public affairs under the imperial government. But when we hear all
this talk about “eminent men” refusing office, and declining all
participation in the government of the day, we are tempted to ask how
had those “eminent men” managed the business of the country when they
had its sole direction and control? Their government, with immense
resources at its command, and after eighteen years of profound peace,
was upset in a few hours by a contemptible street row.
We are not aware that M. de Larochejaquelein has been answered by any of
the parties whose intrigues he has exposed. We think it would be
difficult to answer him; his sketch carries with it internal evidence of
its correctness. It is no answer, so far as the truth of his allegations
is concerned, that he has abandoned the party with which he had been
connected. We believe that he has had to undergo the petty persecutions
of the _coterie_ of Frohsdorf, who have resorted to every stratagem to
destroy whatever influence his name may still carry with it in La
Vendée; and, judging from his present production, he is of opinion that
that _coterie_ is not worth any man’s making any extraordinary
sacrifices for them. But whatever be the motives that have influenced
his conduct, or whatever the value of his “appeal to the people,” we are
bound to admit, that so far he has acted consistently with his theory.
_Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._
-----
Footnote 1:
_The Elements of Materia Medica and Therapeutics._ By JONATHAN
PEREIRA, M.D., F.R.S. Third Edition. London, 1849–50. Pp. 1538.
Footnote 2:
_The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater._ Fifth Edition. London.
Footnote 3:
_M‘Culloch’s Commercial Dictionary_, edit. 1847, p. 1314.
Footnote 4:
Madden, _Travels in Turkey_, vol. i. p. 16.
Footnote 5:
The effects, real or imaginary, of this “juice” are thus described:—
“Sleeping within mine orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of mine ears did pour
The leperous distilment: whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man,
That, swift as quicksilver, it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body;
And, with a sudden vigour, it doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine;
And a most instant tetter bark’d about,
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,
All my smooth body.”—_Hamlet_, Act i. scene v.
Footnote 6:
Pereira, p. 1427.
Footnote 7:
English edition, p. 278, quoted in M‘Culloch’s _Commercial
Dictionary_, p. 1314.
Footnote 8:
_Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry._ London edition of 1812, p.
167.
Footnote 9:
_Ale_ was the name given to unhopped malt liquor before the use of
hops was introduced. When hops were added, it was called _beer_, by
way of distinction, I suppose, because we imported the custom from the
Low Countries, where the word beer was, and is still, in common use.
Ground ivy (_Glechoma hederacea_), called also alehoof and tunhoof,
was generally employed for preserving ale before the use of hops was
known. “The manifold virtues in hops,” says Gerard in 1596, “do
manifestly argue the holesomeness of _beere_ above _ale_, for the hops
rather make it physicall drink to keep the body in health, than an
ordinary drink for the quenching of our thirst.”
Footnote 10:
_Voyage dans le Nord de la Bolivie, et dans les parties voisines du
Perou._ Par H. A. WEDDELL, M.D., &c. &c. Paris, Bertrand; London,
Baillière. 1853.
_Scènes et Récits des Pays d’Outre-Mer._ Par THÉODORE PAVIE. Paris,
Lévy. 1853.
Footnote 11:
_Blackwood’s Magazine_, No. CCCCXXX., for August 1851.
Footnote 12:
The occupants of the pit at a theatre are called in Spain the
_mosqueteria_.
Footnote 13:
“Be not so well pleased, Juana, to see how I suffer for thee; that
which is my fate to-day, to-morrow may chance to be thine.”
Footnote 14:
This arm, which the _gauchos_ throw to a distance of twenty paces,
consists of three balls fastened to the same number of cords. The one
held in the hand is longer than the two others.
Footnote 15:
_History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St Helena._ By JOHN FORSYTH,
M.A. 3 vols. London: Murray.
Footnote 16:
_Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare’s Plays, from Early
MS. Corrections in a Copy of the Folio, 1632, in the possession of J.
Payne Collier, Esq., F.S.A.; forming a Supplemental Volume to the
Works of Shakespeare, by the same Editor._
_The Text of Shakespeare vindicated from the Interpolations and
Corruptions advocated by J. P. Collier, Esq., in his Notes and
Emendations._ By SAMUEL WELLER SINGER. 1853.
_Old Lamps or New? A Plea for the Original Editions of the Text of
Shakespeare, forming an Introductory Notice to the Stratford
Shakespeare._ Edited by CHARLES KNIGHT. 1853.
_A Few Notes on Shakespeare, with Occasional Remarks on the
Emendations of the MS. Corrector in Mr Collier’s Copy of the Folio,
1632._ By the Rev. ALEXANDER DYCE. 1853.
_A Few Remarks on the Emendation “Who smothers her with Painting,” in
the Play of Cymbeline, discovered by Mr Collier in a Corrected Copy of
the Second Edition of Shakespeare._ 1852.
_New Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of Shakespeare,
supplementary to all Editions._ By JOSEPH HUNTER. In 2 vols. 1845.
Footnote 17:
_A Few Notes on Shakespeare_, &c., p. 22.
Footnote 18:
This expression, “to cry aim,” occurs, in a serious application, in
the following lines from “King John,” _Act II. Scene 1_:—
“_K. Philip._—Peace, lady; pause or be more temperate:
It ill beseems this presence, _to cry aim_
To these ill-tuned repetitions”—
that is, to give encouragement to these ill-tuned wranglings.
Footnote 19:
_A Few Notes_, &c., p. 50.
Footnote 20:
_The Text of Shakespeare Vindicated_, &c., p. 24.
Footnote 21:
Molesworth’s edition, vol. iv. p. 46.
Footnote 22:
See _New Illustrations_, &c., vol. i. p. 356.
Footnote 23:
_L’Insurrection en Chine, depuis son Origine jusqu’à la Prise de
Nankin._ Par MM. CALLERY et YVAN. Avec une Carte topographique, et le
Portrait du Prétendant. Paris: 1853.
Footnote 24:
Painted upon the bucklers of the Chinese soldiers are all manner of
ferocious animals;—the tiger is the one most frequently seen, hence
the surname. On behalf of his Celestial friend, and in extenuation of
this ridiculous custom, Dr Yvan maintains that, in many of our
European military equipments, the same intention of terrifying by a
fierce aspect is manifest—as, for instance, in the bear-skin caps of
grenadiers, hussars, &c. The Spaniards, who bear little love to any
foreigners, and who are particularly given to laughing at their
Portuguese neighbours, assert that there was formerly in use, in the
Portuguese army, the word of command, “_Rosto feroz a o
enimigo!_”—Ferocious face to the enemy!—upon receiving which, the
soldiers looked excessively savage, showed their teeth, and made a
threatening gesture. This must have been a base imitation of the
Chinese. To this day the _tigers_, who are often faint-hearted enough,
go into action making horrible grimaces. Dr Yvan gives a very curious
account of the Chinese army, in which sound of gong is used instead of
word of command, and the officers are stationed behind their men to
prevent their running away—an exercise to which they are extremely
addicted. Silence in the ranks is far from being enjoined; on the
contrary, when approaching an enemy, the tigers and other wild beasts
roar in character—their sweet voices, with a gong accompaniment,
combining in a discord that is truly infernal. There exists a Chinese
treatise on the art of war, in twenty-four volumes, entitled
Ou-Pi-Tche. Its perusal is not allowed to civil mandarins below the
third rank, or to military mandarins below the fourth, nor, of course,
to persons of inferior degree. It is not admitted in China that a
private person, a literary man, a merchant, an agriculturist, can have
any good motive in studying such a work. Booksellers are permitted to
keep but one copy at a time, and are compelled to register the names
of purchasers. “Before beginning the war with the Celestial Empire,”
Dr Yvan says, “the English procured several copies of this treatise.
One day, at Canton, an American merchant mentioned this fact to a
mandarin of very high rank. The mandarin struck the palm of his left
hand with his fan: ‘I no longer wonder,’ he cried, ‘that the
red-haired barbarians vanquished us!’”—_L’Insurrection en Chine_,
chap. ix. pp. 119–124.
Footnote 25:
_La France en 1853._ Par Le Marquis DE LAROCHEJAQUELEIN. Paris: 1853.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last
chapter.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.