The next night Graham in vain looked round for Alain in M. Louvier's
salons, and missed his high-bred mien and melancholy countenance.
M. Louvier had been for some four years a childless widower, but his
receptions were not the less numerously attended, nor his establishment
less magnificently monde for the absence of a presiding lady: very much
the contrary; it was noticeable how much he had increased his status and
prestige as a social personage since the death of his unlamented spouse.
To say truth, she had been rather a heavy drag on his triumphal car. She
had been the heiress of a man who had amassed a great deal of money,--not
in the higher walks of commerce, but in a retail trade.
Louvier himself was the son of a rich money-lender; he had entered life
with an ample fortune and an intense desire to be admitted into those
more brilliant circles in which fortune can be dissipated with _eclat_.
He might not have attained this object but for the friendly countenance
of a young noble who was then--
"The glass of fashion and the mould of form;"
but this young noble, of whom later we shall hear more, came suddenly to
grief, and when the money-lender's son lost that potent protector, the
dandies, previously so civil, showed him a very cold shoulder.
Louvier then became an ardent democrat, and recruited the fortune he had
impaired by the aforesaid marriage, launched into colossal speculations,
and became enormously rich. His aspirations for social rank now revived,
but his wife sadly interfered with them. She was thrifty by nature;
sympathized little with her husband's genius for accumulation; always
said he would end in a hospital; hated Republicans; despised authors and
artists, and by the ladies of the _beau monde_ was pronounced common and
vulgar.
So long as she lived, it was impossible for Louvier to realize his
ambition of having one of the salons which at Paris establish celebrity
and position. He could not then command those advantages of wealth which
he especially coveted. He was eminently successful in doing this now.
As soon as she was safe in Pere la Chaise, he enlarged his hotel by the
purchase and annexation of an adjoining house; redecorated and
refurnished it, and in this task displayed, it must be said to his
credit, or to that of the administrators he selected for the purpose, a
nobleness of taste rarely exhibited nowadays. His collection of pictures
was not large, and consisted exclusively of the French school, ancient
and modern, for in all things Louvier affected the patriot. But each of
those pictures was a gem; such Watteaus, such Greuzes, such landscapes by
Patel, and, above all, such masterpieces by Ingres, Horace Vernet, and
Delaroche were worth all the doubtful originals of Flemish and Italian
art which make the ordinary boast of private collectors.
These pictures occupied two rooms of moderate size, built for their
reception, and lighted from above. The great salon to which they led
contained treasures scarcely less precious; the walls were covered with
the richest silks which the looms of Lyons could produce. Every piece of
furniture here was a work of art in its way: console-tables of Florentine
mosaic, inlaid with pearl and lapis-lazuli; cabinets in which the
exquisite designs of the Renaissance were carved in ebony; colossal vases
of Russian malachite, but wrought by French artists. The very knick-
knacks scattered carelessly about the room might have been admired in the
cabinets of the Palazzo Pitti. Beyond this room lay the _salle de
danse_, its ceiling painted by ------, supported by white marble columns,
the glazed balcony and the angles of the room filled with tiers of
exotics. In the dining-room, on the same floor, on the other side of the
landing-place, were stored in glazed buffets not only vessels and salvers
of plate, silver and gold, but, more costly still, matchless specimens of
Sevres and Limoges, and mediaeval varieties of Venetian glass. On the
ground-floor, which opened on the lawn of a large garden, Louvier had his
suite of private apartments, furnished, as he said, "simply, according to
English notions of comfort;"--Englishmen would have said, "according to
French notions of luxury." Enough of these details, which a writer
cannot give without feeling himself somewhat vulgarized in doing so, but
without a loose general idea of which a reader would not have an accurate
conception of something not vulgar,--of something grave, historical,
possibly tragical,--the existence of a Parisian millionaire at the date
of this narrative.
The evidence of wealth was everywhere manifest at M. Louvier's, but it
was everywhere refined by an equal evidence of taste. The apartments
devoted to hospitality ministered to the delighted study of artists, to
whom free access was given, and of whom two or three might be seen daily
in the "show-rooms," copying pictures or taking sketches of rare articles
of furniture or effects for palatian interiors.
Among the things which rich English visitors of Paris most coveted to see
was M. Louvier's hotel, and few among the richest left it without a sigh
of envy and despair. Only in such London houses as belong to a
Sutherland or a Holford could our metropolis exhibit a splendour as
opulent and a taste as refined.
M. Louvier had his set evenings for popular assemblies. At these were
entertained the Liberals of every shade, from tricolor to rouge, with the
artists and writers most in vogue, pele-mele with decorated diplomatists,
ex-ministers, Orleanists, and Republicans, distinguished foreigners,
plutocrats of the Bourse, and lions male and female from the arid nurse
of that race, the Chaussee d'Antin. Of his more select reunions
something will be said later.
"And how does this poor Paris metamorphosed please Monsieur Vane?" asked
a Frenchman with a handsome, intelligent countenance, very carefully
dressed though in a somewhat bygone fashion, and carrying off his tenth
lustrum with an air too sprightly to evince any sense of the weight.
This gentleman, the Vicomte de Breze, was of good birth, and had a
legitimate right to his title of Vicomte,--which is more than can be said
of many vicomtes one meets at Paris. He had no other property, however,
than a principal share in an influential journal, to which he was a
lively and sparkling contributor. In his youth, under the reign of Louis
Philippe, he had been a chief among literary exquisites; and Balzac was
said to have taken him more than once as his model for those brilliant
young _vauriens_ who figure in the great novelist's comedy of Human Life.
The Vicomte's fashion expired with the Orleanist dynasty.
"Is it possible, my dear Vicomte," answered Graham, "not to be pleased
with a capital so marvellously embellished?"
"Embellished it may be to foreign eyes," said the Vicomte, sighing, "but
not improved to the taste of a Parisian like me. I miss the dear Paris
of old,--the streets associated with my _beaux jours_ are no more. Is
there not something drearily monotonous in those interminable
perspectives? How frightfully the way lengthens before one's eyes! In
the twists and curves of the old Paris one was relieved from the pain of
seeing how far one had to go from one spot to another,--each tortuous
street had a separate idiosyncrasy; what picturesque diversities, what
interesting recollections,--all swept away! _Mon Dieu_! and what for,--
miles of florid _facades_ staring and glaring at one with goggle-eyed
pitiless windows; house-rents trebled, and the consciousness that if you
venture to grumble underground railways, like concealed volcanoes, can
burst forth on you at any moment with an eruption of bayonets and
muskets. This _maudit_ empire seeks to keep its hold on France much as a
_grand seigneur_ seeks to enchain a nymph of the ballet,--tricks her out
in finery and baubles, and insures her infidelity the moment he fails to
satisfy her whims."
"Vicomte," answered Graham, "I have had the honour to know you since I
was a small boy at a preparatory school home for the holidays, and you
were a guest at my father's country-house. You were then _fete_ as one
of the most promising writers among the young men of the day, especially
favoured by the princes of the reigning family. I shall never forget the
impression made on me by your brilliant appearance and your no less
brilliant talk."
"Ah! _ces beaux jours! ce bon Louis Philippe, ce cher petit Joinville_,"
sighed the Vicomte.
"But at that day you compared _le bon_ Louis Philippe to Robert Macaire.
You described all his sons, including, no doubt, _ce cher petit
Joinville_, in terms of resentful contempt, as so many plausible _gamins_
whom Robert Macaire was training to cheat the public in the interest of
the family firm. I remember my father saying to you in answer, 'No royal
house in Europe has more sought to develop the literature of an epoch and
to signalize its representatives by social respect and official honours
than that of the Orleans dynasty. You, Monsieur de Breze, do but imitate
your elders in seeking to destroy the dynasty under which you flourish;
should you succeed, you _hommes de plume_ will be the first sufferers and
the loudest complainers.'"
"Cher Monsieur Vane," said the Vicomte, smiling complacently, "your
father did me great honour in classing me with Victor Hugo, Alexandre
Dumas, Emile de Girardin, and the other stars of the Orleanist galaxy,
including our friend here, M. Savarin. A very superior man was your
father."
"And," said Savarin, who, being an Orleanist, had listened to Graham's
speech with an approving smile,--"and if I remember right, my dear De
Breze, no one was more brilliantly severe than yourself on poor De
Lamartine and the Republic that succeeded Louis Philippe; no one more
emphatically expressed the yearning desire for another Napoleon to
restore order at home and renown abroad. Now you have got another
Napoleon."
"And I want change for my Napoleon," said De Breze, laughing.
"My dear Vicomte," said Graham, "one thing we may all grant,--that in
culture and intellect you are far superior to the mass of your fellow
Parisians; that you are therefore a favourable type of their political
character."
"_Ah, mon cher, vous etes trop aimable_."
"And therefore I venture to say this,--if the archangel Gabriel were
permitted to descend to Paris and form the best government for France
that the wisdom of seraph could devise, it would not be two years--I
doubt if it would be six months--before out of this Paris, which you call
the _Foyer des Idees_, would emerge a powerful party, adorned by yourself
and other _hommes de plume_, in favour of a revolution for the benefit of
_ce bon Satan_ and _ce cher petit Beelzebub_."
"What a pretty vein of satire you have, _mon cher_!" said the Vicomte,
good-humouredly; "there is a sting of truth in your witticism. Indeed,
I must send you some articles of mine in which I have said much the same
thing,--_les beaux, esprits se rencontrent_. The fault of us French is
impatience, desire of change; but then it is that desire which keeps the
world going and retains our place at the head of it. However, at this
time we are all living too fast for our money to keep up with it, and too
slow for our intellect not to flag. We vie with each other on the road
to ruin, for in literature all the old paths to fame are shut up."
Here a tall gentleman, with whom the Vicomte had been conversing before
he accosted Vane, and who had remained beside De Breze listening in
silent attention to this colloquy, interposed, speaking in the slow voice
of one accustomed to measure his words, and with a slight but
unmistakable German accent. "There is that, Monsieur de Breze, which
makes one think gravely of what you say so lightly. Viewing things with
the unprejudiced eyes of a foreigner, I recognize much for which France
should be grateful to the Emperor. Under his sway her material resources
have been marvellously augmented; her commerce has been placed by the
treaty with England on sounder foundations, and is daily exhibiting
richer life; her agriculture had made a prodigious advance wherever it
has allowed room for capitalists, and escaped from the curse of petty
allotments and peasant-proprietors, a curse which would have ruined any
country less blessed by Nature; turbulent factions have been quelled;
internal order maintained; the external prestige of France, up at least
to the date of the Mexican war, increased to an extent that might satisfy
even a Frenchman's amour propre; and her advance in civilization has been
manifested by the rapid creation of a naval power which should put even
England on her mettle. But, on the other hand--"
"Ay, on the other hand," said the Vicomte.
"On the other hand there are in the imperial system two causes of decay
and of rot silently at work. They may not be the faults of the Emperor,
but they are such misfortunes as may cause the fall of the Empire. The
first is an absolute divorce between the political system and the
intellectual culture of the nation. The throne and the system rest on
universal suffrage,--on a suffrage which gives to classes the most
ignorant a power that preponderates over all the healthful elements of
knowledge. It is the tendency of all ignorant multitudes to personify
themselves, as it were, in one individual. They cannot comprehend you
when you argue for a principle; they do comprehend you when you talk of
a name. The Emperor Napoleon is to them a name, and the prefects and
officials who influence their votes are paid for incorporating all
principles in the shibboleth of that single name. You have thus sought
the well-spring of a political system in the deepest stratum of popular
ignorance. To rid popular ignorance of its normal revolutionary bias,
the rural peasants are indoctrinated with the conservatism that comes
from the fear which appertains to property. They have their roots of
land or their shares in a national loan. Thus you estrange the
crassitude of an ignorant democracy still more from the intelligence of
the educated classes by combining it with the most selfish and abject of
all the apprehensions that are ascribed to aristocracy and wealth. What
is thus embedded in the depths of your society makes itself shown on the
surface. Napoleon III. has been compared to Augustus; and there are
many startling similitudes between them in character and in fate. Each
succeeds to the heritage of a great name that had contrived to unite
autocracy with the popular cause; each subdued all rival competitors,
and inaugurated despotic rule in the name of freedom; each mingled
enough of sternness with ambitious will to stain with bloodshed the
commencement of his power,--but it would be an absurd injustice to fix
the same degree of condemnation on the _coup d'etat_ as humanity fixes
on the earlier cruelties of Augustus; each, once firm in his seat,
became mild and clement,--Augustus perhaps from policy, Napoleon III.
from a native kindliness of disposition which no fair critic of
character can fail to acknowledge. Enough of similitudes; now for one
salient difference. Observe how earnestly Augustus strove, and how
completely he succeeded in the task, to rally round him all the leading
intellects in every grade and of every party,--the followers of Antony,
the friends of Brutus; every great captain, every great statesman, every
great writer, every mail who could lend a ray of mind to his own Julian
constellation, and make the age of Augustus an era in the annals of
human intellect and genius. But this has not been the good fortune of
your Emperor. The result of his system has been the, suppression of
intellect in every department. He has rallied round him not one great
statesman; his praises are hymned by not one great poet. The celebrates
of a former day stand aloof; or, preferring exile to constrained
allegiance, assail him with unremitting missiles from their asylum in
foreign shores. His reign is sterile of new celebrites. The few that
arise enlist themselves against him. Whenever he shall venture to give
full freedom to the press and to the legislature, the intellect thus
suppressed or thus hostile will burst forth in collected volume. His
partisans have not been trained and disciplined to meet such assailants.
They will be as weak as no doubt they will be violent. And the worst
is, that the intellect thus rising in mass against him will be warped
and distorted, like captives who, being kept in chains, exercise their
limbs on escaping in vehement jumps without definite object. The
directors of emancipated opinion may thus be terrible enemies to the
Imperial Government, but they will be very unsafe councillors to France.
Concurrently with this divorce between the Imperial system and the
national intellect,--a divorce so complete that even your salons have
lost their wit, and even your caricatures their point,--a corruption of
manners which the Empire, I own, did not originate, but inherit, has
become so common that every one owns and nobody blames it. The gorgeous
ostentation of the Court has perverted the habits of the people. The
intelligence abstracted from other vents betakes itself to speculating
for a fortune; and the greed of gain and the passion for show are
sapping the noblest elements of the old French manhood. Public opinion
stamps with no opprobrium a minister or favourite who profits by a job;
and I fear you will find that jobbing pervades all your administrative
departments."
"All very true," said De Breze, with a shrug of the shoulders and in a
tone of levity that seemed to ridicule the assertion he volunteered;
"Virtue and Honour banished from courts and salons and the cabinet of
authors ascend to fairer heights in the attics of _ouvriers_."
"The _ouvriers_, _ouvriers_ of Paris!" cried this terrible German.
"Ay, Monsieur le Comte, what can you say against our _ouvriers_? A
German count cannot condescend to learn anything about _ces petites
gens_."
"Monsieur," replied the German, "in the eyes of a statesman there are no
_petites gens_, and in those of a philosopher no _petites choses_. We in
Germany have too many difficult problems affecting our working classes to
solve, not to have induced me to glean all the information I can as to
the _ouvriers_ of Paris. They have among them men of aspirations as
noble as can animate the souls of philosophers and poets, perhaps not the
less noble because common-sense and experience cannot follow their
flight; but as a body the _ouvriers_ of Paris have not been elevated in
political morality by the benevolent aim of the Emperor to find them
ample work and good wages independent of the natural laws that regulate
the markets of labour. Accustomed thus to consider the State bound to
maintain them, the moment the State fails in that impossible task, they
will accommodate their honesty to a rush upon property under the name of
social reform.
"Have you not noticed how largely increased within the last few years is
the number of those who cry out, 'La Propriete, cest le vol'? Have you
considered the rapid growth of the International Association? I do not
say that for all these evils--the Empire is exclusively responsible. To
a certain degree they are found in all rich communities, especially where
democracy is more or less in the ascendant. To a certain extent they
exist in the large towns of Germany; they are conspicuously increasing in
England; they are acknowledged to be dangerous in the United States of
America; they are, I am told on good authority, making themselves visible
with the spread of civilization in Russia. But under the French Empire
they have become glaringly rampant, and I venture to predict that the day
is not far off when the rot at work throughout all layers and strata of
French society will insure a fall of the fabric at the sound of which the
world will ring.
"There is many a fair and stately tree which continues to throw out its
leaves and rear its crest till suddenly the wind smites it, and then, and
not till then, the trunk which seems so solid is found to be but the rind
to a mass of crumbled powder."
"Monsieur le Comte," said the Vicomte, "you are a severe critic and a
lugubrious prophet; but a German is so safe from revolution that he takes
alarm at the stir of movement which is the normal state of the French
esprit."
"French esprit may soon evaporate into Parisian _betise_. As to Germany
being safe from revolution, allow me to repeat a saying of Goethe's_-but
has Monsieur le Vicomte ever heard of Goethe?"
"Goethe, of course,--_tres joli ecrivain_."
"Goethe said to some one who was making much the same remark as yourself,
'We Germans are in a state of revolution now, but we do things so slowly
that it will be a hundred years before we Germans shall find it out; but
when completed, it will be the greatest revolution society has yet seen,
and will last like the other revolutions that, beginning, scarce noticed,
in Germany, have transformed the world.'"
"Diable, Monsieur le Comte! Germans transformed the world! What
revolutions do you speak of?"
"The invention of gunpowder, the invention of printing, and the expansion
of a monk's quarrel with his Pope into the Lutheran revolution."
Here the German paused, and asked the Vicomte to introduce him to Vane,
which De Breze did by the title of Count von Rudesheim. On hearing
Vane's name, the Count inquired if he were related to the orator and
statesman, George Graham Vane, whose opinions, uttered in Parliament,
were still authoritative among German thinkers. This compliment to his
deceased father immensely gratified but at the same time considerably
surprised the Englishman. His father, no doubt, had been a man of much
influence in the British House of Commons,--a very weighty speaker, and,
while in office, a first-rate administrator; but Englishmen know what a
House of Commons reputation is,--how fugitive, how little cosmopolitan;
and that a German count should ever have heard of his father delighted
but amazed him. In stating himself to be the son of George Graham Vane,
he intimated not only the delight but the amaze, with the frank _savoir
vivre_ which was one of his salient characteristics.
"Sir," replied the German, speaking in very correct English, but still
with his national accent, "every German reared to political service
studies England as the school for practical thought distinct from
impracticable theories. Long may you allow us to do so! Only excuse me
one remark,--never let the selfish element of the practical supersede the
generous element. Your father never did so in his speeches, and
therefore we admired him. At the present day we don't so much care to
study English speeches; they may be insular,--they are not European. I
honour England; Heaven grant that you may not be making sad mistakes in
the belief that you can long remain England if you cease to be European."
Herewith the German bowed, not uncivilly,--on the contrary, somewhat
ceremoniously,--and disappeared with a Prussian Secretary of Embassy,
whose arm he linked in his own, into a room less frequented.
"Vicomte, who and what is your German count?" asked Vane.
"A solemn pedant," answered the lively Vicomte,--"a German count, _que
voulez-vous de plus?"