CHAPTER I

Produced by Gary Rees and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was

produced from scanned images of public domain material

from the Google Print project.)

[Transcriber's Note: Words and phrases appearing in italics in the

original publication have been delimited with underscore characters in

this transcription. Additional notes appear at the end of this text.]

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

[Illustration: Alexis de Tocqueville]

THE RECOLLECTIONS OF ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

EDITED BY THE COMTE DE TOCQUEVILLE AND NOW FIRST TRANSLATED INTO

ENGLISH BY ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS

WITH A PORTRAIT IN HELIOGRAVURE

NEW YORK

THE MACMILLAN CO.

1896

PREFACE

"C'est tousiours plaisir de veoir les choses escriptes par ceulx

qui ont essaye comme il les faut conduire."

MONTAIGNE.

Alexis de Tocqueville made his entrance in political life in 1839.[1] At

the outbreak of the Revolution of February he was in the prime of his

age and in the maturity of his talent. He threw himself into the

struggle, resolving to devote himself to the interests of the country

and of society, and he was one of the first among those whole-hearted,

single-minded men who endeavoured to keep the Republic within a wise and

moderate course by steering clear of the two-fold perils of Caesarism on

the one hand and revolution on the other. A dangerous and thankless

enterprise, of which the difficulties were never hidden from a mind so

clear-sighted as his, and of which he soon foresaw the ephemeral

duration.

[1: At the age of 34. Alexis Clerel de Tocqueville was born in

1805 at Verneuil. His father was the Comte de Tocqueville, who was

made a peer of France and a prefect under the Restoration; his

mother, _nee_ Mlle. de Rosambo, was a grand-daughter of

Malesherbes. Alexis de Tocqueville was appointed an assistant

judge, and in 1831 was sent to America, in company with G. de

Beaumont to study the penal system in that continent. On his

return he published a treatise on this subject; and in 1835

appeared his great work on American Democracy, which secured his

election to the Academy of Moral Science in 1839 and to the French

Academy in 1841. Two years earlier he had been sent to the Chamber

as deputy for the arrondissement of Valognes in Normandy, in which

the paternal property of Tocqueville was situated; and this seat

he retained until his withdrawal from political life. He died in

1859.--A.T. de M.]

After the fall of his short-lived ministry, which had been filled with

so many cares and such violent agitation, thinking himself removed for a

time (it was to be for ever) from the conduct of public affairs, he went

first to Normandy and then to Sorrento, on the Bay of Naples, in search

of the peace and repose of which he stood in need. The intellect,

however, but rarely shows itself the docile slave of the will, and his,

to which idleness was a cause of real suffering, immediately set about

to seek an object worthy of its attention. This was soon found in the

great drama of the French Revolution, which attracted him irresistibly,

and which was destined to form the subject-matter of his most perfect

work.

It was at this time, while Alexis de Tocqueville was also preoccupied by

the daily increasing gravity of the political situation at home, that he

wrote the Recollections now first published. These consisted of mere

notes jotted down at intervals on odds and ends of paper; and it was not

until the close of his life that, yielding to the persuasions of his

intimates, he gave a reluctant consent to their publication. He took a

certain pleasure in thus retracing and, as it were, re-enacting the

events in which he had taken part, the character of which seemed the

more transient, and the more important to establish definitely, inasmuch

as other events came crowding on, precipitating the crisis and altering

the aspect of affairs. Thus those travellers who, steering their

adventurous course through a series of dangerous reefs, alight upon a

wild and rugged island, where they disembark and live for some days, and

when about to depart for ever from its shores, throw back upon it a long

and melancholy gaze before it sinks from their eyes in the immensity of

the waves. Already the Assembly had lost its independence; the reign of

constitutional liberty, under which France had lived for thirty-three

years, was giving way; and, in the words of the famous phrase, "The

Empire was a fact."

We are to-day well able to judge the period described in these

Recollections, a period which seems still further removed from us by the

revolutions, the wars, and even the misfortunes which the country has

since undergone, and which now only appears to us in that subdued light

which throws the principal outlines into especial relief, while

permitting the more observant and penetrating eye to discover also the

secondary features. Living close enough to those times to receive

evidence from the lips of survivors, and not so close but that all

passion has become appeased and all rancour extinguished, we should be

in a position to lack neither light nor impartiality. As witness, for

instance, the impression retained by us of the figure of Ledru-Rollin,

which nevertheless terrified our fathers. We live in a generation which

has beheld Raoul, Rigault and Delescluze at work. The theories of Louis

Blanc and Considerant arouse no feeling of astonishment in these days,

when their ideas have become current coin, and when the majority of

politicians feel called upon to adopt the badge of some socialism or

other, whether we call it Christian, State, or revolutionary socialism.

Cormenin, Marrast and Lamartine belong to history as much as do Sieyes,

Petion or Mirabeau; and we are able to judge as freely of the men and

the events of 1848 as of those of 1830 or 1789.

Alexis de Tocqueville had the rare merit of being able to forestall this

verdict of posterity; and if we endeavour to discover the secret of this

prescience, of the loftiness of sight with which he was so specially

gifted, we shall find that, belonging to no party, he remained above all

parties; that, depending upon no leader, he kept his hands free; and

that, possessed of no vulgar ambition, he reserved his energies for the

noble aim which he had in view--the triumph of liberty and of the

dignity of man.

Interest will doubtless be taken in the account contained in these

Recollections of the revolutionary period, written by one of the

best-informed of its witnesses, and in the ebbs and flows of the

short-lived ministry which was conducted with so much talent and

integrity. But what will be especially welcome is the broad views taken

by this great mind of our collective history; his profound reflections

upon the future of the country and of society; the firm and

conscientious opinions which he expresses upon his contemporaries; and

the portraits drawn by a master hand, always striking and always alive.

When reading this private record, which has been neither revised nor

corrected by its author, we seem to approach more closely to the

sentiments, the desires, the aspirations, I was almost saying the dreams

of this rare mind, this great heart so ardently pursuing the chimera of

absolute good that nothing in men or institutions could succeed in

satisfying it.

Years passed, and the Empire foundered amid terrible disaster. Alexis de

Tocqueville was no more; and we may say that this proved at that time an

irreparable loss to his country. Who knows what part he might have been

called upon to play, what influence he could have brought to bear to

unmask the guilty intrigues and baffle the mean ambitions under whose

load, after the lapse of more than twenty years, we are still

staggering? Enlightened by his harsh experience of 1848, would he have

once again tried the experiment, which can never be more than an eternal

stop-gap, of governing the Republic with the support of the Monarchists?

Or rather, persuaded as he was that "the republican form of government

is not the best suited to the needs of France," that this "government

without stability always promises more, but gives less, liberty than a

Constitutional Monarchy," would he not have appealed to the latter to

protect the liberty so dear to him? One thing is certain, that he would

never have "subordinated to the necessity of maintaining his position

that of remaining true to himself."

We have thought that the present generation, which so rarely has the

opportunity of beholding a man of character, would take pleasure in

becoming acquainted with this great and stately figure; in spending some

short moments in those lofty regions, in which it may learn a powerful

lesson and find an example of public life in its noblest form, ever

faithful to its early aspirations, ever filled with two great ideas: the

cult of honour and the passion of liberty.

COMTE DE TOCQUEVILLE.

CONTENTS

PART THE FIRST

CHAPTER I PAGE

Origin and Character of these Recollections--General aspect of

the period preceding the Revolution of 1848--Preliminary

symptoms of the Revolution 3

CHAPTER II

The Banquets--Sense of security entertained by the

Government--Anxiety of Leaders of the

Opposition--Arraignment of Ministers 19

CHAPTER III

Troubles of the 22nd of February--The Sitting of the 23rd--The

New Ministry--Opinions of M. Dufaure and M. de Beaumont 33

CHAPTER IV

The 24th of February--The Ministers' Plan of Resistance--The

National Guard--General Bedeau 44

CHAPTER V

The Sitting of the Chamber--Madame la Duchesse D'Orleans--The

Provisional Government 56

PART THE SECOND

CHAPTER I

My Explanation of the 24th of February, and my views as to its

effects upon the future 79

CHAPTER II

Paris on the morrow of the 24th of February and the next

days--The socialistic character of the New Revolution 90

CHAPTER III

Vacillation of the Members of the Old Parliament as to the

attitude they should adopt--My own reflections on my mode

of action, and my resolves 102

CHAPTER IV

My candidature of the department of la Manche--The aspect of

the country--The General Election 114

CHAPTER V

The First Sitting of the Constituent Assembly--The appearance

of this Assembly 129

CHAPTER VI

My relations with Lamartine--His Subterfuges 145

CHAPTER VII

The 15th of May 1848 156

CHAPTER VIII

The Feast of Concord and the preparations for the Days of June 174

CHAPTER IX

The Days of June 187

CHAPTER X

The Days of June--(_continued_) 215

CHAPTER XI

The Committee for the Constitution 233

PART THE THIRD

CHAPTER I

My return to France--Formation of the Cabinet 263

CHAPTER II

Aspect of the Cabinet--Its first Acts until after the

insurrectionary attempts of the 13th of June 278

CHAPTER III

Our domestic policy--Internal quarrels in the Cabinet--Its

difficulties in its relations with the Majority and the

President 301

CHAPTER IV

Foreign Affairs 325

APPENDIX

I

Gustave de Beaumont's version of the 24th of February 379

II

Barrot's version of the 24th of February (_10 October 1850_) 385

III

Some incidents of the 24th of February 1848 389

1

M. Dufaure's efforts to prevent the Revolution of

February--Responsibility of M. Thiers, which renders

them futile 389

2

Dufaure's conduct on the 24th of February 1848 392

IV

My conversation with Berryer, on the 21st of June, at an

appointment which I had given him at my house. We were

both Members of the Committee for the revision of the

Constitution 394

INDEX 399

PART THE FIRST

_Written in July 1850, at Tocqueville._

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

CHAPTER I

ORIGIN AND CHARACTER OF THESE RECOLLECTIONS--GENERAL ASPECT OF THE

PERIOD PRECEDING THE REVOLUTION OF 1848--PRELIMINARY SYMPTOMS OF

THE REVOLUTION.

Removed for a time from the scene of public life, I am constrained, in

the midst of my solitude, to turn my thoughts upon myself, or rather to

reflect upon contemporary events in which I have taken part or acted as

a witness. And it seems to me that the best use I can make of my leisure

is to retrace these events, to portray the men who took part in them

under my eyes, and thus to seize and engrave, if I can, upon my memory

the confused features which compose the disturbed physiognomy of my

time.

In taking this resolve I have taken another, to which I shall be no less

true: these recollections shall be a relaxation of the mind rather than

a contribution to literature. I write them for myself alone. They shall

be a mirror in which I will amuse myself in contemplating my

contemporaries and myself; not a picture painted for the public. My most

intimate friends shall not see them, for I wish to retain the liberty of

depicting them as I shall depict myself, without flattery. I wish to

arrive truly at the secret motives which have caused them, and me, and

others to act; and, when discovered, to reveal them here. In a word, I

wish this expression of my recollections to be a sincere one; and to

effect this, it is essential that it should remain absolutely secret.

I intend that my recollections shall not go farther back than the

Revolution of 1848, nor extend to a later date than the 30th of October

1849, the day upon which I resigned my office. It is only within these

limits that the events which I propose to relate have any importance, or

that my position has enabled me to observe them well.

My life was passed, although in a comparatively secluded fashion, in the

midst of the parliamentary world of the closing years of the Monarchy of

July. Nevertheless, it would be no easy task for me to recall distinctly

the events of a period so little removed from the present, and yet

leaving so confused a trace in my memory. The thread of my recollections

is lost amid the whirl of minor incidents, of paltry ideas, of petty

passions, of personal views and contradictory opinions in which the life

of public men was at that time spent. All that remains vivid in my mind

is the general aspect of the period; for I often regarded it with a

curiosity mingled with dread, and I clearly discerned the special

features by which it was characterized.

Our history from 1789 to 1830, if viewed from a distance and as a whole,

affords as it were the picture of a struggle to the death between the

Ancien Regime, its traditions, memories, hopes, and men, as represented

by the aristocracy, and New France under the leadership of the middle

class. The year 1830 closed the first period of our revolutions, or

rather of our revolution: for there is but one, which has remained

always the same in the face of varying fortunes, of which our fathers

witnessed the commencement, and of which we, in all probability, shall

not live to behold the end. In 1830 the triumph of the middle class had

been definite and so thorough that all political power, every franchise,

every prerogative, and the whole government was confined and, as it

were, heaped up within the narrow limits of this one class, to the

statutory exclusion of all beneath them and the actual exclusion of all

above. Not only did it thus alone rule society, but it may be said to

have formed it. It ensconced itself in every vacant place, prodigiously

augmented the number of places, and accustomed itself to live almost as

much upon the Treasury as upon its own industry.

No sooner had the Revolution of 1830 become an accomplished fact, than

there ensued a great lull in political passion, a sort of general

subsidence, accompanied by a rapid increase in the public wealth. The

particular spirit of the middle class became the general spirit of the

government; it ruled the latter's foreign policy as well as affairs at

home: an active, industrious spirit, often dishonourable, generally

sober, occasionally reckless through vanity or egoism, but timid by

temperament, moderate in all things, except in its love of ease and

comfort, and wholly undistinguished. It was a spirit which, mingled with

that of the people or of the aristocracy, can do wonders; but which, by

itself, will never produce more than a government shorn of both virtue

and greatness. Master of everything in a manner that no aristocracy had

ever been or may ever hope to be, the middle class, when called upon to

assume the government, took it up as a trade; it entrenched itself

behind its power, and before long, in their egoism, each of its members

thought much more of his private business than of public affairs, and of

his personal enjoyment than of the greatness of the nation.

Posterity, which sees none but the more dazzling crimes, and which loses

sight, in general, of mere vices, will never, perhaps, know to what

extent the government of that day, towards its close, assumed the ways

of a trading company, which conducts all its transactions with a view to

the profits accruing to the shareholders. These vices were due to the

natural instincts of the dominant class, to the absoluteness of its

power, and also to the character of the time. Possibly also King

Louis-Philippe had contributed to their growth.

This Prince was a singular medley of qualities, and one must have known

him longer and more nearly than I did to be able to portray him in

detail.

Nevertheless, although I was never one of his Council, I have frequently

had occasion to come into contact with him. The last time that I spoke

to him was shortly before the catastrophe of February. I was then

director of the Academie Francaise, and I had to bring to the King's

notice some matter or other which concerned that body. After treating

the question which had brought me, I was about to retire, when the King

detained me, took a chair, motioned me to another, and said, affably:

"Since you are here, Monsieur de Tocqueville, let us talk; I want to

hear you talk a little about America."

I knew him well enough to know that this meant: I shall talk about

America myself. And he did actually talk of it at great length and very

searchingly: it was not possible for me, nor did I desire, to get in a

word, for he really interested me. He described places as though he saw

them before him; he recalled the distinguished men whom he had met forty

years ago as though he had seen them the day before; he mentioned their

names in full, Christian name and surname, gave their ages at the time,

related their histories, their pedigrees, their posterity, with

marvellous exactness and with infinite, though in no way tedious,

detail. From America he returned, without taking breath, to Europe,

talked of all our foreign and domestic affairs with incredible

unconstraint (for I had no title to his confidence), spoke very badly of

the Emperor of Russia, whom he called "Monsieur Nicolas," casually

alluded to Lord Palmerston as a rogue, and ended by holding forth at

length on the Spanish marriages, which had just taken place, and the

annoyances to which they subjected him on the side of England.

"The Queen is very angry with me," he said, "and displays great

irritation; but, after all," he added, "all this outcry won't keep me

from _driving my own cart_."[2]

[2: "_Mener mon fiacre_": to drive my hackney-coach.--A.T. de M.]

Although this phrase dated back to the Old Order, I felt inclined to

doubt whether Louis XIV. ever made use of it on accepting the Spanish

Succession. I believe, moreover, that Louis-Philippe was mistaken, and,

to borrow his own language, that the Spanish marriage helped not a

little to upset his cart.

After three-quarters of an hour, the King rose, thanked me for the

pleasure my conversation had given him (I had not spoken four words),

and dismissed me, feeling evidently as delighted as one generally is

with a man before whom one thinks one has spoken well. This was my last

audience of the King.

Louis-Philippe improvised all the replies which he made, even upon the

most critical occasions, to the great State bodies; he was as fluent

then as in his private conversation, although not so happy or

epigrammatic. He would suddenly become obscure, for the reason that he

boldly plunged headlong into long sentences, of which he was not able to

estimate the extent nor perceive the end beforehand, and from which he

finally emerged struggling and by force, shattering the sense, and not

completing the thought.

In this political world thus constituted and conducted, what was most

wanting, particularly towards the end, was political life itself. It

could neither come into being nor be maintained within the legal circle

which the Constitution had traced for it: the old aristocracy was

vanquished, the people excluded. As all business was discussed among

members of one class, in the interest and in the spirit of that class,

there was no battle-field for contending parties to meet upon. This

singular homogeneity of position, of interests, and consequently of

views, reigning in what M. Guizot had once called the legal country,

deprived the parliamentary debates of all originality, of all reality,

and therefore of all genuine passion. I have spent ten years of my life

in the company of truly great minds, who were in a constant state of

agitation without succeeding in heating themselves, and who spent all

their perspicacity in vain endeavours to find subjects upon which they

could seriously disagree.

On the other hand, the preponderating influence which King

Louis-Philippe had acquired in public affairs, which never permitted the

politicians to stray very far from that Prince's ideas, lest they should

at the same time be removed from power, reduced the different colours of

parties to the merest shades, and debates to the splitting of straws. I

doubt whether any parliament (not excepting the Constituent Assembly, I

mean the true one, that of 1789) ever contained more varied and

brilliant talents than did ours during the closing years of the Monarchy

of July. Nevertheless, I am able to declare that these great orators

were tired to death of listening to one another, and, what was worse,

the whole country was tired of listening to them. It grew unconsciously

accustomed to look upon the debates in the Chambers as exercises of the

intellect rather than as serious discussions, and upon all the

differences between the various parliamentary parties--the majority, the

left centre, or the dynastic opposition--as domestic quarrels between

children of one family trying to trick one another. A few glaring

instances of corruption, discovered by accident, led it to presuppose a

number of hidden cases, and convinced it that the whole of the governing

class was corrupt; whence it conceived for the latter a silent contempt,

which was generally taken for confiding and contented submission.

The country was at that time divided into two unequal parts, or rather

zones: in the upper, which alone was intended to contain the whole of

the nation's political life, there reigned nothing but languor,

impotence, stagnation, and boredom; in the lower, on the contrary,

political life began to make itself manifest by means of feverish and

irregular signs, of which the attentive observer was easily able to

seize the meaning.

I was one of these observers; and although I was far from imagining that

the catastrophe was so near at hand and fated to be so terrible, I felt

a distrust springing up and insensibly growing in my mind, and the idea

taking root more and more that we were making strides towards a fresh

revolution. This denoted a great change in my thoughts; since the

general appeasement and flatness that followed the Revolution of July

had led me to believe for a long time that I was destined to spend my

life amid an enervated and peaceful society. Indeed, anyone who had only

examined the inside of the governmental fabric would have had the same

conviction. Everything there seemed combined to produce with the

machinery of liberty a preponderance of royal power which verged upon

despotism; and, in fact, this result was produced almost without effort

by the regular and tranquil movement of the machine. King Louis-Philippe

was persuaded that, so long as he did not himself lay hand upon that

fine instrument, and allowed it to work according to rule, he was safe

from all peril. His only occupation was to keep it in order, and to

make it work according to his own views, forgetful of society, upon

which this ingenious piece of mechanism rested; he resembled the man who

refused to believe that his house was on fire, because he had the key in

his pocket. I had neither the same interests nor the same cares, and

this permitted me to see through the mechanism of institutions and the

agglomeration of petty every-day facts, and to observe the state of

morals and opinions in the country. There I clearly beheld the

appearance of several of the portents that usually denote the approach

of revolutions, and I began to believe that in 1830 I had taken for the

end of the play what was nothing more than the end of an act.

A short unpublished document which I composed at the time, and a speech

which I delivered early in 1848, will bear witness to these

preoccupations of my mind.

A number of my friends in Parliament met together in October 1847, to

decide upon the policy to be adopted during the ensuing session. It was

agreed that we should issue a programme in the form of a manifesto, and

the task of drawing it up was deputed to me. Later, the idea of this

publication was abandoned, but I had already written the document. I

have discovered it among my papers, and I give the following extracts.

After commenting on the symptoms of languor in Parliament, I continued:

"... The time will come when the country will find itself once

again divided between two great parties. The French Revolution,

which abolished all privileges and destroyed all exclusive rights,

has allowed one to remain, that of landed property. Let not the

landlords deceive themselves as to the strength of their position,

nor think that the rights of property form an insurmountable

barrier because they have not as yet been surmounted; for our times

are unlike any others. When the rights of property were merely the

origin and commencement of a number of other rights, they were

easily defended, or rather, they were never attacked; they then

formed the surrounding wall of society, of which all other rights

were the outposts; no blows reached them; no serious attempt was

ever made to touch them. But to-day, when the rights of property

are nothing more than the last remnants of an overthrown

aristocratic world; when they alone are left intact, isolated

privileges amid the universal levelling of society; when they are

no longer protected behind a number of still more controversible

and odious rights, the case is altered, and they alone are left

daily to resist the direct and unceasing shock of democratic

opinion....

"... Before long, the political struggle will be restricted to

those who have and those who have not; property will form the great

field of battle; and the principal political questions will turn

upon the more or less important modifications to be introduced into

the rights of landlords. We shall then have once more among us

great public agitations and great political parties.

"How is it that these premonitory symptoms escape the general view?

Can anyone believe that it is by accident, through some passing

whim of the human brain, that we see appearing on every side these

curious doctrines, bearing different titles, but all characterized

in their essence by their denial of the rights of property, and all

tending, at least, to limit, diminish, and weaken the exercise of

these rights? Who can fail here to recognise the final symptom of

the old democratic disease of the time, whose crisis would seem to

be at hand?"

I was still more urgent and explicit in the speech which I delivered in

the Chamber of Deputies on the 29th of January 1848, and which appeared

in the _Moniteur_ of the 30th.

I quote the principal passages:

"... I am told that there is no danger because there are no riots;

I am told that, because there is no visible disorder on the surface

of society, there is no revolution at hand.

"Gentlemen, permit me to say that I believe you are deceived. True,

there is no actual disorder; but it has entered deeply into men's

minds. See what is passing in the breasts of the working classes,

who, I grant, are at present quiet. No doubt they are not disturbed

by political passion, properly so-called, to the same extent that

they have been; but can you not see that their passions, instead of

political, have become social? Do you not see that there are

gradually forming in their breasts opinions and ideas which are

destined not only to upset this or that law, ministry, or even form

of government, but society itself, until it totters upon the

foundations on which it rests to-day? Do you not listen to what

they say to themselves each day? Do you not hear them repeating

unceasingly that all that is above them is incapable and unworthy

of governing them; that the present distribution of goods

throughout the world is unjust; that property rests on a foundation

which is not an equitable foundation? And do you not realize that

when such opinions take root, when they spread in an almost

universal manner, when they sink deeply into the masses, they are

bound to bring with them sooner or later, I know not when nor how,

a most formidable revolution?

"This, gentlemen, is my profound conviction: I believe that we are

at this moment sleeping on a volcano. I am profoundly convinced of

it....

* * * * *

"... I was saying just now that this evil would, sooner or later, I

know not how nor whence it will come, bring with it a most serious

revolution: be assured that that is so.

"When I come to investigate what, at different times, in different

periods, among different peoples, has been the effective cause that

has brought about the downfall of the governing classes, I perceive

this or that event, man, or accidental or superficial cause; but,

believe me, the real reason, the effective reason which causes men

to lose their power is, that they have become unworthy to retain

it.

"Think, gentlemen, of the old Monarchy: it was stronger than you

are, stronger in its origin; it was able to lean more than you do

upon ancient customs, ancient habits, ancient beliefs; it was

stronger than you are, and yet it has fallen to dust. And why did

it fall? Do you think it was by some particular mischance? Do you

think it was by the act of some man, by the deficit, the oath in

the Tennis Court, La Fayette, Mirabeau? No, gentlemen; there was

another reason: the class that was then the governing class had

become, through its indifference, its selfishness and its vices,

incapable and unworthy of governing the country.

"That was the true reason.

"Well, gentlemen, if it is right to have this patriotic prejudice

at all times, how much more is it not right to have it in our own?

Do you not feel, by some intuitive instinct which is not capable of

analysis, but which is undeniable, that the earth is quaking once

again in Europe? Do you not feel ... what shall I say? ... as it

were a gale of revolution in the air? This gale, no one knows

whence it springs, whence it blows, nor, believe me, whom it will

carry with it; and it is in such times as these that you remain

calm before the degradation of public morality--for the expression

is not too strong.

"I speak without bitterness; I am even addressing you without any

party spirit; I am attacking men against whom I feel no

vindictiveness. But I am obliged to communicate to my country my

firm and decided conviction. Well then, my firm and decided

conviction is this: that public morality is being degraded, and

that the degradation of public morality will shortly, very shortly,

perhaps, bring down upon you a new revolution. Is the life of kings

held by stronger threads? Are these more difficult to snap than

those of other men? Can you say to-day that you are certain of

to-morrow? Do you know what may happen in France a year hence, or

even a month or a day hence? You do not know; but what you must

know is that the tempest is looming on the horizon, that it is

coming towards us. Will you allow it to take you by surprise?

"Gentlemen, I implore you not to do so. I do not ask you, I implore

you. I would gladly throw myself on my knees before you, so

strongly do I believe in the reality and the seriousness of the

danger, so convinced am I that my warnings are no empty rhetoric.

Yes, the danger is great. Allay it while there is yet time; correct

the evil by efficacious remedies, by attacking it not in its

symptoms but in itself.

"Legislative changes have been spoken of. I am greatly disposed to

think that these changes are not only very useful, but necessary;

thus, I believe in the need of electoral reform, in the urgency of

parliamentary reform; but I am not, gentlemen, so mad as not to

know that no laws can affect the destinies of nations. No, it is

not the mechanism of laws that produces great events, gentlemen,

but the inner spirit of the government. Keep the laws as they are,

if you wish. I think you would be very wrong to do so; but keep

them. Keep the men, too, if it gives you any pleasure. I raise no

objection so far as I am concerned. But, in God's name, change the

spirit of the government; for, I repeat, that spirit will lead you

to the abyss."[3]

[3: This speech was delivered in the Chamber of Deputies on the

27th of January 1848, in the debate on the Address in reply to the

Speech from the Throne.--Cte. de T.]

These gloomy predictions were received with ironical cheers from the

majority. The Opposition applauded loudly, but more from party feeling

than conviction. The truth is that no one as yet believed seriously in

the danger which I was prophesying, although we were so near the

catastrophe. The inveterate habit contracted by all the politicians,

during this long parliamentary farce, of over-colouring the expression

of their opinions and grossly exaggerating their thoughts had deprived

them of all power of appreciating what was real and true. For several

years the majority had every day been declaring that the Opposition was

imperilling society; and the Opposition repeated incessantly that the

Ministers were ruining the Monarchy. These statements had been made so

constantly on both sides, without either side greatly believing in them,

that they ended by not believing in them at all, at the very moment when

the event was about to justify both of them. Even my own friends

themselves thought that I had overshot the mark, and that my facts were

a little blurred by rhetoric.

I remember that, when I stepped from the tribune, Dufaure took me on one

side, and said, with that sort of parliamentary intuition which is his

only note of genius:

"You have succeeded, but you would have succeeded much more if you had

not gone so far beyond the feeling of the Assembly and tried to frighten

us."

And now that I am face to face with myself, searching in my memory to

discover whether I was actually myself so much alarmed as I seemed, the

answer is no, and I readily recognise that the event justified me more

promptly and more completely than I foresaw (a thing which may sometimes

have happened to other political prophets, better authorized to predict

than I was). No, I did not expect such a revolution as we were destined

to have; and who could have expected it? I did, I believe, perceive more

clearly than the others the general causes which were making for the

event; but I did not observe the accidents which were to precipitate it.

Meantime the days which still separated us from the catastrophe passed

rapidly by.

CHAPTER II

THE BANQUETS--SENSE OF SECURITY ENTERTAINED BY THE

GOVERNMENT--ANXIETY OF LEADERS OF THE OPPOSITION--ARRAIGNMENT OF

MINISTERS.

I refused to take part in the affair of the banquets. I had both serious

and petty reasons for abstaining. What I call my petty reasons I am

quite willing to describe as bad reasons, although they were consistent

with honour, and would have been unexceptionable in a private matter.

They were the irritation and disgust aroused in me by the character and

by the tactics of the leaders of this enterprise. Nevertheless, I

confess that the private prejudice which we entertain with regard to

individuals is a bad guide in politics.

A close alliance had at that time been effected between M. Thiers and M.

Barrot, and a real fusion formed between the two sections of the

Opposition, which, in our parliamentary jargon, we called the Left

Centre and the Left. Almost all the stubborn and intractable spirits

which were found in the latter party had successively been softened,

unbent, subjugated, made supple, by the promises of place spread

broadcast by M. Thiers. I believe that even M. Barrot had for the first

time allowed himself not exactly to be won over, but surprised, by

arguments of this kind. At any rate, the most complete intimacy reigned

between the two great leaders of the Opposition, whatever was the cause

of it, and M. Barrot, who likes to mingle a little simplicity with his

weaknesses as well as with his virtues, exerted himself to his utmost to

secure the triumph of his ally, even at his own expense. M. Thiers had

allowed him to involve himself in this matter of the banquets; I even

think that he had instigated Barrot in that direction without consenting

to involve himself. He was willing to accept the results, but not the

responsibilities, of that dangerous agitation. Wherefore, surrounded by

his personal friends, he stayed mute and motionless in Paris, while

Barrot travelled all over the country for three months, making long

speeches in every town he stopped at, and resembling, in my opinion,

those beaters who make a great noise in order to bring the game within

easy range of the sportsman's gun. Personally, I felt no inclination to

take part in the sport. But the principal and more serious reason which

restrained me was this: and I expounded it pretty often to those who

wanted to drag me to those political meetings:

"For the first time for eighteen years," I used to tell them, "you are

proposing to appeal to the people, and to seek support outside the

middle class. If you fail in rousing the people (and I think this will

be the most probable result), you will become still more odious than you

already are in the eyes of the Government and of the middle classes,

who for a great part support it. In this way you will strengthen the

administration which you desire to upset; while if, on the contrary, you

succeed in rousing the people, you are no more able than I am to foresee

whither an agitation of this kind will lead you."

In the measure that the campaign of the banquets was prolonged, the

latter hypothesis became, contrary to my expectation, the more probable.

A certain anxiety began to oppress the ringleaders themselves; an

indefinite anxiety, passing vaguely through their minds. I was told by

Beaumont, who was at that time one of the first among them, that the

excitement occasioned in the country by the banquets surpassed not only

the hopes, but the wishes, of those who had started it. The latter were

labouring to allay rather than increase it. Their intention was that

there should be no banquet in Paris, and that there should be none held

anywhere after the assembling of the Chambers. The fact is that they

were only seeking a way out of the mischievous road which they had

entered upon. And it was undoubtedly in spite of them that this final

banquet was resolved on; they were constrained to take part in it, drawn

into it; their vanity was compromised. The Government, by its defiance,

goaded the Opposition into adopting this dangerous measure, thinking

thus to drive it to destruction. The Opposition let itself be caught in

a spirit of bravado, and lest it should be suspected of retreating; and

thus irritating each other, spurring one another on, they dragged each

other towards the common abyss, which neither of them as yet perceived.

I remember that two days before the Revolution of February, at the

Turkish Ambassador's ball, I met Duvergier de Hauranne. I felt for him

both friendship and esteem; although he possessed very nearly all the

failings that arise from party spirit, he at least joined to them the

sort of disinterestedness and sincerity which one meets with in genuine

passions, two rare advantages in our day, when the only genuine passion

is that of self. I said to him, with the familiarity warranted by our

relations:

"Courage, my friend; you are playing a dangerous game."

He replied gravely, but with no sign of fear:

"Believe me, all will end well; besides, one must risk something. There

is no free government that has not had to go through a similar

experience."

This reply perfectly describes this determined but somewhat narrow

character; narrow, I say, although with plenty of brain, but with the

brain which, while seeing clearly and in detail all that is on the

horizon, is incapable of conceiving that the horizon may change;

scholarly, disinterested, ardent, vindictive, sprung from that learned

and sectarian race which guides itself in politics by imitation of

others and by historical recollection, and which restricts its thought

to one sole idea, at which it warms, in which it blinds itself.

For the rest, the Government were even less uneasy than the leaders of

the Opposition. A few days before the above conversation, I had had

another with Duchatel, the Minister of the Interior. I was on good terms

with this minister, although for the last eight years I had been very

boldly (even too boldly, I confess, in the case of its foreign policy)

attacking the Cabinet of which he was one of the principal members. I am

not sure that this fault did not even make me find favour in his eyes,

for I believe that at the bottom of his heart he had a sneaking fondness

for those who attacked his colleague at the Foreign Office, M. Guizot. A

battle which M. Duchatel and I had fought some years before in favour of

the penitentiary system had brought us together and given rise to a

certain intimacy between us. This man was very unlike the one I

mentioned above: he was as heavy in his person and his manners as the

other was meagre, angular, and sometimes trenchant and bitter. He was as

remarkable for his scepticism as the other for his ardent convictions,

for flabby indifference as the former for feverish activity; he

possessed a very supple, very quick, very subtle mind enclosed in a

massive body; he understood business admirably, while pretending to be

above it; he was thoroughly acquainted with the evil passions of

mankind, and especially with the evil passions of his party, and always

knew how to turn them to advantage. He was free from all rancour and

prejudice, cordial in his address, easy of approach, obliging, whenever

his own interests were not compromised, and bore a kindly contempt for

his fellow-creatures.

I was about to say that, some days before the catastrophe, I drew M.

Duchatel into a corner of the conference room, and observed to him that

the Government and the Opposition seemed to be striving in concert to

drive things to an extremity calculated to end by damaging everybody;

and I asked him if he saw no honest way of escape from a regrettable

position, some honourable transaction which would permit everyone to

draw back. I added that my friends and I would be happy to have such a

way pointed out to us, and that we would make every exertion to persuade

our colleagues in the Opposition to accept it. He listened attentively

to my remarks, and assured me that he understood my meaning, although I

saw clearly that he did not enter into it for a moment.

"Things had reached such a pitch," he said, "that the expedient which I

sought was no longer to be found. The Government was in the right, and

could not yield. If the Opposition persisted in its course, the result

might be a combat in the streets, but this combat had long been

foreseen, and if the Government was animated with the evil passions with

which it was credited, it would desire this fighting rather than dread

it, being sure to triumph in the end."

He went on in his complaisant fashion to tell me in detail of all the

military precautions that had been taken, the extent of the resources,

the number of the troops, and the quantity of ammunition.... I took my

leave, satisfied that the Government, without exactly striving to

promote an outbreak, was far from dreading one, and that the Ministry,

in its certainty of ultimate victory, saw in the threatening catastrophe

possibly its last means of rallying its scattered supporters and of

finally reducing its adversaries to powerlessness. I confess that I

thought as he did; his air of unfeigned assurance had proved contagious.

The only really uneasy people in Paris at that moment were the Radical

chiefs and the men who were sufficiently in touch with the people and

the revolutionary party to know what was taking place in that quarter. I

have reason to believe that most of these looked with dread upon the

events which were ready to burst forth, whether because they kept up the

tradition of their former passions rather than these passions

themselves, or because they had begun to grow accustomed to a state of

things in which they had taken up their position after so many times

cursing it; or again, because they were doubtful of success; or rather

because, being in a position to study and become well acquainted with

their allies, they were frightened at the last moment of the victory

which they expected to gain through their aid. On the very day before

the outbreak, Madame de Lamartine betrayed extraordinary anxiety when

calling upon Madame de Tocqueville, and gave such unmistakable signs of

a mind heated and almost deranged by ominous thoughts that the latter

became alarmed, and told me of it the same evening.

It is not one of the least curious characteristics of this singular

revolution that the incident which led to it was brought about and

almost longed for by the men whom it eventually precipitated from power,

and that it was only foreseen and feared by those who were to triumph by

its means.

Here let me for a moment resume the chain of history, so that I may the

more easily attach to it the thread of my personal recollections.

It will be remembered that, at the opening of the session of 1848, King

Louis-Philippe, in his Speech from the Throne, had described the authors

of the banquets as men excited by blind or hostile passions. This was

bringing Royalty into direct conflict with more than one hundred members

of the Chamber. This insult, which added anger to all the ambitious

passions which were already disturbing the hearts of the majority of

these men, ended by making them lose their reason. A violent debate was

expected, but did not take place at once. The earlier discussions on the

Address were calm: the majority and the Opposition both restrained

themselves at the commencement, like two men who feel that they have

lost their tempers, and who fear lest while in that condition they

should perpetrate some folly in word or deed.

But the storm of passion broke out at last, and continued with

unaccustomed violence. The extraordinary heat of these debates was

already redolent of civil war for those who knew how to scent

revolutions from afar.

The spokesmen of the moderate section of the Opposition were led, in the

heat of debate, to assert that the right of assembling at the banquets

was one of our most undeniable and essential rights;[4] that to question

it, was equivalent to trampling liberty itself underfoot and to

violating the Charter, and that those who did so unconsciously made an

appeal, not to discussion, but to arms. On his side M. Duchatel, who

ordinarily was very dexterous in debate, displayed in this circumstance

a consummate want of tact.[5] He absolutely denied the right of

assemblage, and yet would not say clearly that the Government had made

up its mind to prohibit thenceforth any manifestations of the kind. On

the contrary, he seemed to invite the Opposition to try the experiment

once more, so that the question might be brought before the Courts. His

colleague, M. Hebert, the Minister of Justice, was still more tactless,

but this was his habit. I have always observed that lawyers never make

statesmen; but I have never met anyone who was less of a statesman than

M. Hebert. He remained the Public-Prosecutor down to the marrow of his

bones; he had all the mental and physical characteristics of that

office. You must imagine a little wizened, sorry face, shrunk at the

temples, with a pointed forehead, nose and chin, cold, bright eyes, and

thin, in-drawn lips. Add to this a long quill generally held across the

mouth, and looking at a distance like a cat's bristling whiskers, and

you have a portrait of a man, than whom I have never seen anyone more

resembling a carnivorous animal. At the same time, he was neither stupid

nor even ill-natured; but he was by nature hot-headed and unyielding; he

always overshot his goal, for want of knowing when to turn aside or stop

still; and he fell into violence without intending it, and from sheer

want of discrimination. It showed how little importance M. Guizot

attached to conciliation, that under the circumstances he sent a speaker

of this stamp into the tribune;[6] his language while there was so

outrageous and so provoking that Barrot, quite beside himself and almost

without knowing what he was doing, exclaimed, in a voice half stifled

with rage, that the ministers of Charles X., that Polignac and

Peyronnet, had never dared to talk like that. I remember that I

shuddered involuntarily in my seat when I heard this naturally moderate

man exasperated into recalling, for the first time, the terrible

memories of the Revolution of 1830, holding it up in some sort as an

example, and unconsciously suggesting the idea of repeating it.

[4: See the speech of M. Duvergier de Hauranne, 7 February

1848.--Cte. de T.]

[5: The minister replied to M. Leon de Mandeville. He quoted the

laws of 1790 and 1791, which empowered the authorities to oppose

any public meetings which seemed to threaten danger to the public

peace, and he declared that the Government would be failing in its

duty if it were to give way before manifestations of any

description. At the end of his speech he again brought in the

phrase "blind or hostile passions," and endeavoured to justify

it.--Cte. de T.]

[6: Replying to M. Odilon Barrot, M. Hebert maintained that, since

the right of public meeting was not laid down in the Charter, it

did not exist.--Cte. de T.]

The result of this heated discussion was a sort of challenge to mortal

combat exchanged between the Government and the Opposition, the scene of

the duel to be the law-courts. It was tacitly agreed that the challenged

party should meet at one final banquet; that the authorities, without

interfering to prevent the meeting, should prosecute its organizers, and

that the courts should pronounce judgment.

The debates on the Address were closed, if I remember rightly, on the

12th of February, and it is really from this moment that the

revolutionary movement burst out. The Constitutional Opposition, which

had for many months been constantly pushed on by the Radical party, was

from this time forward led and directed not so much by the members of

that party who occupied seats in the Chamber of Deputies (the greater

number of these had become lukewarm and, as it were, enervated in the

Parliamentary atmosphere), as by the younger, bolder, and more

irresponsible men who wrote for the democratic press. This change was

especially apparent in two principal facts which had an overwhelming

influence upon events--the programme of the banquet and the arraignment

of Ministers.

On the 20th of February, there appeared in almost all the Opposition

newspapers, by way of programme of the approaching banquet, what was

really a proclamation calling upon the entire population to join in an

immense political demonstration, convoking the schools and inviting the

National Guard itself to attend the ceremony in a body. It read like a

decree emanating from the Provisional Government which was to be set up

three days later. The Cabinet, which had already been blamed by many of

its followers for tacitly authorising the banquet, considered that it

was justified in retracing its steps. It officially announced that it

forbade the banquet, and that it would prevent it by force.

It was this declaration of the Government which provided the field for

the battle. I am in a position to state, although it sounds hardly

credible, that the programme which thus suddenly turned the banquet into

an insurrection was resolved upon, drawn up and published without the

participation or the knowledge of the members of Parliament who

considered themselves to be still leading the movement which they had

called into existence. The programme was the hurried work of a nocturnal

gathering of journalists and Radicals, and the leaders of the Dynastic

Opposition heard of it at the same time as the public, by reading it in

the papers in the morning.

And see how uncertain is the course of human affairs! M. Odilon Barrot,

who disapproved of the programme as much as anyone, dared not disclaim

it for fear of offending the men who, till then, had seemed to be moving

with him; and then, when the Government, alarmed by the publication of

this document, prohibited the banquet, M. Barrot, finding himself

brought face to face with civil war, drew back. He himself gave up this

dangerous demonstration; but at the same time that he was making this

concession to the men of moderation, he granted to the extremists the

impeachment of Ministers. He accused the latter of violating the

Constitution by prohibiting the banquet, and thus furnished an excuse to

those who were about to take up arms in the name of the violated

Constitution.

Thus the principal leaders of the Radical Party, who thought that a

revolution would be premature, and who did not yet desire it, had

considered themselves obliged, in order to differentiate themselves from

their allies in the Dynastic Opposition, to make very revolutionary

speeches and fan the flame of insurrectionary passion. On the other

hand, the Dynastic Opposition, which had had enough of the banquets, had

been forced to persevere in this bad course so as not to present an

appearance of retreating before the defiance of the Government. And

finally, the mass of the Conservatives, who believed in the necessity of

great concessions and were ready to make them, were driven by the

violence of their adversaries and the passions of some of their chiefs

to deny even the right of meeting in private banquets and to refuse the

country any hopes of reform.

One must have lived long amid political parties, and in the very

whirlwind in which they move, to understand to what extent men mutually

push each other away from their respective plans, and how the destinies

of this world proceed as the result, but often as the contrary result,

of the intentions that produce them, similarly to the kite which flies

by the antagonistic action of the wind and the cord.

CHAPTER III

TROUBLES OF THE 22ND OF FEBRUARY--THE SITTING OF THE 23RD--THE NEW

MINISTRY--OPINIONS OF M. DUFAURE AND M. DE BEAUMONT.

I did not perceive anything on the 22nd of February calculated to give

rise to serious apprehensions. There was a crowd in the streets, but it

seemed to be composed rather of sight-seers and fault-finders than of

the seditiously inclined: the soldier and the townsman chaffed each

other when they met, and I heard more jokes than cries uttered by the

crowd. I know that it is not safe to trust one's self to these

appearances. It is the street-boys of Paris who generally commence the

insurrections, and as a rule they do so light-heartedly, like schoolboys

breaking up for the holidays.

When I returned to the Chamber, I found a seeming listlessness reigning

there, beneath which one could perceive the inner seething of a thousand

restrained passions. It was the only place in Paris in which, since the

early morning, I had not heard discussed aloud what was then absorbing

all France. They were languidly discussing a bill for the creation of a

bank at Bordeaux; but in reality no one, except the man talking in the

tribune and the man who was to reply to him, showed any interest in the

matter. M. Duchatel told me that all was going well. He said this with

an air of combined confidence and nervousness which struck me as

suspicious. I noticed that he twisted his neck and shoulders (a common

trick with him) much more frequently and violently than usual; and I

remember that this little observation gave me more food for reflection

than all the rest.

I learnt that, as a matter of fact, there had been serious troubles in

many parts of the town which I had not visited; a certain number of men

had been killed or wounded. People were no longer accustomed to this

sort of incident, as they had been some years before and as they became

still more a few months later; and the excitement was great. I happened

to be invited to dine that evening at the house of one of my

fellow-members of Parliament and of the Opposition, M. Paulmier, the

deputy for Calvados. I had some difficulty in getting there through the

troops which guarded the surrounding streets. I found my host's house in

great disorder. Madame Paulmier, who was expecting her _accouchement_

and who had been frightened by a skirmish that had taken place beneath

her windows, had gone to bed. The dinner was magnificent, but the table

was deserted; out of twenty guests invited, only five presented

themselves; the others were kept back either by material impediments or

by the preoccupations of the day. We sat down with a very thoughtful air

amid all this abundance. Among the guests was M. Sallandrouze, the

inheritor of the great business house of that name, which had made a

large fortune by its manufacture of textile fabrics. He was one of those

young Conservatives, richer in money than in honours, who, from time to

time, made a show of opposition, or rather, of captious criticism,

mainly, I think, to give themselves a certain importance. In the course

of the last debate on the Address, M. Sallandrouze had moved an

amendment[7] which would have compromised the Cabinet, had it been

adopted. At the time when this incident was most occupying attention, M.

Sallandrouze one evening went to the reception at the Tuileries, hoping

that this time, at least, he would not remain unrecognized in the crowd.

And, in fact, no sooner had King Louis-Philippe seen him than he came up

to him with a very assiduous mien, and solemnly took him aside and began

to talk to him eagerly, and with a great display of interest, about the

branch of manufacture to which the young deputy owed his fortune. The

latter, at first, felt no astonishment, thinking that the King, who was

known to be clever at managing men's minds, had selected this little

private road in order to lead round to affairs of State. But he was

mistaken; for, after a quarter of an hour, the King changed not the

conversation but the person addressed, and left our friend standing very

confused amid his carpets and woollen stuffs. M. Sallandrouze had not

yet got over this trick played upon him, but he was beginning to feel

very much afraid that he would be revenged too well. He told us that M.

Emile Girardin had said to him the day before, "In two days, the

Monarchy of July will have ceased to exist." This seemed to all of us a

piece of journalistic hyperbole, and perhaps it was; but the events that

followed turned it into an oracle.

[7: M. Sallandrouze de Lamornaix' amendment proposed to modify the

expression "blind or hostile passions," by adding the words: "Amid

these various demonstrations, your Government will know how to

recognise the real and lawful desires of the country; it will, we

trust, take the initiative by introducing certain wise and moderate

reforms called for by public opinion, among which we must place

first parliamentary reform. In a Constitutional Monarchy, the union

of the great powers of the State removes all danger from a

progressive policy, and allows every moral and material interest of

the country to be satisfied."--Cte. de T.]

On the next day, the 23rd of February, I learnt, on waking, that the

excitement in Paris, so far from becoming calmer, was increasing. I went

early to the Chamber; silence reigned around the Assembly; battalions of

infantry occupied and closed the approaches, while troops of Cuirassiers

were drawn up along the walls of the Palace. Inside, men's feelings were

excited without their quite knowing the reason.

The sitting had been opened at the ordinary time; but the Assembly had

not had the courage to go through the same parliamentary comedy as on

the day before, and had suspended its labours; it sat receiving reports

from the different quarters of the town, awaiting events and counting

the hours, in a state of feverish idleness. At a certain moment, a loud

sound of trumpets was heard outside. It appeared that the Cuirassiers

guarding the Palace were amusing themselves, in order to pass the time,

by sounding flourishes on their instruments. The gay, triumphant tones

of the trumpets contrasted in so melancholy a fashion with the thoughts

by which all our minds were secretly disturbed, that a message was

hurriedly sent out to stop this offensive and indiscreet performance,

which caused such painful reflections to all of us.

At last, it was determined to speak aloud of what all had been

discussing in whispers for several hours. A Paris deputy, M. Vavin,

commenced to question the Cabinet upon the state of the city. At three

o'clock M. Guizot appeared at the door of the House. He entered with his

firmest step and his loftiest mien, silently crossed the gangway,

ascended the tribune, throwing his head almost back from his shoulders

for fear of seeming to lower it, and stated in two words that the King

had called upon M. Mole to form a new ministry. Never did I see such a

piece of clap-trap.

The Opposition kept their seats, most of them uttering cries of victory

and satisfied revenge; the leaders alone sat silent, busy in communing

with themselves upon the use they would make of their triumph, and

careful not to insult a majority of which they might soon be called upon

to make use. As to the majority, they seemed thunderstruck by this so

unexpected blow, moved to and fro like a mass that sways from side to

side, uncertain as to which side it shall fall on, and then descended

noisily into the semi-circle. A few surrounded the ministers to ask

them for explanations or to pay them their last respects, but the

greater number clamoured against them with noisy and insulting shouts.

"To throw up office, to abandon your political friends under such

circumstances," they said, "is a piece of gross cowardice;" while others

exclaimed that the members ought to repair to the Tuileries in a body,

and force the King to re-consider his fatal resolve.

This despair will arouse no astonishment when it is remembered that the

greater number of these men felt themselves attacked, not only in their

political opinions, but in the most sensitive part of their private

interest. The fall of the Government compromised the entire fortune of

one, the daughter's dowry of another, the son's career of a third. It

was by this that they were almost all held. Most of them had not only

bettered themselves by means of their votes, but one may say that they

had lived on them. They still lived on them, and hoped to continue to

live on them; for, the Ministry having lasted eight years, they had

accustomed themselves to think that it would last for ever; they had

grown attached to it with the honest, peaceful feeling of affection

which one entertains for one's fields. From my seat, I watched this

swaying crowd; I saw surprise, anger, fear and avarice mingle their

various expressions upon those bewildered countenances; and I drew an

involuntary comparison between all these legislators and a pack of

hounds which, with their jaws half filled, see the quarry withdrawn

from them.

I grant, however, that, so far as many of the Opposition were concerned,

it only wanted that they should be put to a similar test in order to

make the same display. If many of the Conservatives only defended the

Ministry with a view to keeping their places and emoluments, I am bound

to say that many of the Opposition seemed to me only to attack it in

order to reap the plunder in their turn. The truth--the deplorable

truth--is that a taste for holding office and a desire to live on the

public money are not with us a disease restricted to either party, but

the great, chronic ailment of the whole nation; the result of the

democratic constitution of our society and of the excessive

centralization of our Government; the secret malady which has undermined

all former powers, and which will undermine all powers to come.

At last the uproar ceased, as the nature of what had happened became

better known: we learnt that it had been brought about by the

insurrectionary inclinations of a battalion of the Fifth Legion and the

applications made direct to the King by several officers of that section

of the Guard.

So soon as he was informed of what was going on, King Louis-Philippe,

who was less prone to change his opinions, but more ready to change his

line of conduct, than any man I ever saw, had immediately made up his

mind; and after eight years of complacency, the Ministry was dismissed

by him in two minutes, and without ceremony.

The Chamber rose without delay, each member thinking only of the change

of government, and forgetting about the revolution.

I went out with M. Dufaure, and soon perceived that he was not only

preoccupied but constrained. I at once saw that he felt himself in the

critical and complicated position of a leader of the Opposition, who was

about to become a minister, and who, after experiencing the use his

friends could be to him, was beginning to think of the difficulties

which their pretentions might well cause him.

M. Dufaure had a somewhat cunning mind, which readily admitted such

thoughts as these, and he also possessed a sort of natural rusticity

which, combined with great integrity, but rarely permitted him to

conceal them. He was, moreover, the sincerest and by far the most

respectable of all those who at that moment had a chance of becoming

ministers. He believed that power was at last within his grasp, and his

ambition betrayed a passion that was the more eager inasmuch as it was

discreet and suppressed. M. Mole in his place would have felt much

greater egoism and still more ingratitude, but he would have been only

all the more open-hearted and amiable.

I soon left him, and went to M. de Beaumont's. There I found every heart

rejoicing. I was far from sharing this joy, and finding myself among

people with whom I could talk freely, I gave my reasons.

"The National Guard of Paris," I said, "has upset a Cabinet; therefore

it is during its good pleasure only that the new Ministers will remain

at the head of affairs. You are glad because the Government is upset;

but do you not see that it is authority itself which is overthrown?"

This sombre view of the political situation was not much to Beaumont's

taste; he was carried away by rancour and ambition.

"You always take a gloomy view of everything," he said. "Let us first

rejoice at the victory: we can lament over the results later."

Madame de Beaumont, who was present at the interview, seemed herself to

share her husband's elation, and nothing ever so thoroughly proved to me

the irresistible power of party feeling. For, by nature, neither hatred

nor self-interest had a place in the heart of this distinguished and

attractive woman, one of the most truly and consistently virtuous that I

have met in my life, and one who best knew how to make virtue both

touching and lovable. To the nobility of heart of the La Fayettes she

added a mind that was witty, refined, kindly and just.

I, nevertheless, sustained my theory against both him and her, arguing

that upon the whole the incident was a regrettable one, or rather that

we should see more in it than a mere incident, a great event which was

destined to change the whole aspect of affairs. It was very easy for me

to philosophize thus, since I did not share the illusions of my friend

Dufaure. The impulse given to the political machine seemed to me to be

too violent to permit of the reins of government falling into the hands

of the moderate party to which I belonged, and I foresaw that they would

soon fall to those who were almost as obnoxious to me as the men from

whose hands they had slipped.

I was dining with another of my friends, M. Lanjuinais, of whom I shall

have to speak often in future. The company was fairly numerous, and

embraced many shades of political opinion. Many of the guests rejoiced

at the result of the day's work, while others expressed alarm; but all

thought that the insurrectionary movement would stop of its own accord,

to break out again later on another occasion and in another form. All

the rumours that reached us from the town seemed to confirm this belief;

cries of war were replaced by cries of joy. Portalis, who became

Attorney-General of Paris a few days later, was of our number: not the

son, but the nephew of the Chief President of the Court of Appeal. This

Portalis had neither his uncle's rare intelligence, nor his exemplary

character, nor his solemn dulness. His coarse, violent, perverse mind

had quite naturally entered into all the false ideas and extreme

opinions of our times. Although he was in relation with most of those

who are regarded as the authors and leaders of the Revolution of 1848, I

can conscientiously declare that he did not that night expect the

revolution any more than we did. I am convinced that, even at that

supreme moment, the same might have been said of the greater number of

his friends. It would be a waste of time to try to discover what secret

conspiracies brought about events of this kind. Revolutions accomplished

by means of popular risings are generally longed for beforehand rather

than premeditated. Those who boast of having contrived them have done no

more than turn them to account. They spring spontaneously into being

from a general malady of men's minds, brought suddenly to the critical

stage by some fortuitous and unforeseen circumstance. As to the

so-called originators or leaders of these revolutions, they originate

and lead nothing; their only merit is identical with that of the

adventurers who have discovered most of the unknown countries. They

simply have the courage to go straight before them as long as the wind

impels them.

I took my leave early, and went straight home to bed. Although I lived

close to the Foreign Office, I did not hear the firing which so greatly

influenced our destinies, and I fell asleep without realizing that I had

seen the last day of the Monarchy of July.

CHAPTER IV

THE 24TH OF FEBRUARY--THE MINISTERS' PLAN OF RESISTANCE--THE

NATIONAL GUARD--GENERAL BEDEAU.

The next morning was the 24th of February. On leaving my bed-room, I met

the cook, who had been out; the good woman was quite beside herself, and

poured out a sorrowing rigmarole, of which I failed to understand a

word, except that the Government was massacring the poor people. I went

downstairs at once, and had no sooner set foot in the street than I

breathed for the first time the atmosphere of revolution. The roadway

was empty; the shops were not open; there were no carriages nor

pedestrians to be seen; none of the ordinary hawkers' cries were heard;

neighbours stood talking in little groups at their doors, with subdued

voices, with a frightened air; every face seemed distorted with fear or

anger. I met a National Guard hurrying along, gun in hand, with a tragic

gait; I accosted him, but I could learn nothing from him, save that the

Government was massacring the people (to which he added that the

National Guard would know how to put that right). It was the same old

refrain: it is easily understood that this explanation explained

nothing. I was too well acquainted with the vices of the Government of

July not to know that cruelty was not one of them. I considered it one

of the most corrupt, but also one of the least bloodthirsty, that had

ever existed, and I only repeat this observation in order to show the

sort of report that assists the progress of revolutions.

I hastened to M. de Beaumont, who lived in the next street. There I

learnt that the King had sent for him during the night. The same reply

was given to my enquiry at M. de Remusat's, where I went next. M. de

Corcelles, whom I met in the street, gave me his account of what was

happening, but in a very confused manner; for, in a city in state of

revolution, as on a battle-field, each one readily regards the incidents

of which himself is a witness as the events of the day. He told me of

the firing on the Boulevard des Capucines, and of the rapid development

of the insurrection of which this act of unnecessary violence was the

cause or the pretext; of M. Mole's refusal to take office under these

circumstances; and lastly, of the summons to the Palace of Messrs.

Thiers, Barrot and their friends, who were definitely charged with the

formation of a cabinet, facts too well known to permit of my lingering

over them. I asked M. de Corcelles how the ministers proposed to set

about appeasing people's minds.

"M. de Remusat," said he, "is my authority for saying that the plan

adopted is to withdraw all the troops and to flood Paris with National

Guards." These were his own words.

I have always observed that in politics people were often ruined through

possessing too good a memory. The men who were now charged to put an end

to the Revolution of 1848 were exactly the same who had made the

Revolution of 1830. They remembered that at that time the resistance of

the army had failed to stop them, and that on the other hand the

presence of the National Guard, so imprudently dissolved by Charles X.,

might have embarrassed them greatly and prevented them from succeeding.

They took the opposite steps to those adopted by the Government of the

Elder Branch, and arrived at the same result. So true is it that, if

humanity be always the same, the course of history is always different,

that the past is not able to teach us much concerning the present, and

that those old pictures, when forced into new frames, never have a good

effect.

After chatting for a little while on the dangerous position of affairs,

M. de Corcelles and I went to fetch M. Lanjuinais, and all three of us

went together to M. Dufaure, who lived in the Rue Le Peletier. The

boulevard, which we followed to get there, presented a strange

spectacle. There was hardly a soul to be seen, although it was nearly

nine o'clock in the morning, and one heard not the slightest sound of a

human voice; but all the little sentry-boxes which stand along this

endless avenue seemed to move about and totter upon their base, and from

time to time one of them would fall with a crash, while the great trees

along the curb came tumbling down into the roadway as though of their

own accord. These acts of destruction were the work of isolated

individuals, who went about their business silently, regularly, and

hurriedly, preparing in this way the materials for the barricades which

others were to erect. Nothing ever seemed to me more to resemble the

carrying on of an industry, and, as a matter of fact, for the greater

number of these men it was nothing less. The instinct of disorder had

given them the taste for it, and their experience of so many former

insurrections the practice. I do not know that during the whole course

of the day I was so keenly struck as in passing through this solitude in

which one saw, so to speak, the worst passions of mankind at play,

without the good ones appearing. I would rather have met in the same

place a furious crowd; and I remember that, calling Lanjuinais'

attention to those tottering edifices and falling trees, I gave vent to

the phrase which had long been on my lips, and said:

"Believe me, this time it is no longer a riot: it is a revolution."

M. Dufaure told us all that concerned himself in the occurrences of the

preceding evening and of the night. M. Mole had at first applied to him

to assist him to form the new Cabinet; but the increasing gravity of the

situation had soon made them both understand that the moment for their

intervention had passed. M. Mole told the King so about midnight, and

the King sent him to fetch M. Thiers, who refused to accept office

unless he was given M. Barrot for a colleague. Beyond this point, M.

Dufaure knew no more than we did. We separated without having succeeded

in deciding upon our line of action, and without coming to any

resolution beyond that of proceeding to the Chamber so soon as it

opened.

M. Dufaure did not come, and I never precisely learnt why. It was

certainly not from fear, for I have since seen him very calm and very

firm under much more dangerous circumstances. I believe that he grew

alarmed for his family, and desired to take them to a place of safety

outside Paris. His private and his public virtues, both of which were

very great, did not keep step: the first were always ahead of the

second, and we shall see signs of this on more than one subsequent

occasion. Nor, for that matter, would I care to lay this to his account

as a serious charge. Virtues of any kind are too rare to entitle us to

vex those who possess them about their character or their degree.

The time which we had spent with M. Dufaure had sufficed to enable the

rioters to erect a large number of barricades along the road by which we

had come; they were putting the finishing touches to them as we passed

on our way back. These barricades were cunningly constructed by a small

number of men, who worked very diligently: not like guilty men hurried

by the dread of being taken in the act, but like good workmen anxious to

get their task done well and expeditiously. The public watched them

quietly, without expressing disapproval or offering assistance. I did

not discover any signs of that sort of general seething which I had

witnessed in 1830, and which made me at the time compare the whole city

to a huge boiling caldron. This time the public was not overthrowing the

Government; it was allowing it to fall.

We met on the boulevard a column of infantry falling back upon the

Madeleine. No one addressed a word to it, and yet its retreat resembled

a rout. The ranks were broken, the soldiers marched in disorder, with

hanging heads and an air that was both downcast and frightened. Whenever

one of them became separated for a mere instant from the main body, he

was at once surrounded, seized, embraced, disarmed and sent back: all

this was the work of a moment.

Crossing the Place du Havre, I met for the first time a battalion of

that National Guard with which Paris was to be flooded. These men

marched with a look of astonishment and an uncertain step, surrounded by

street boys shouting, "Reform for ever!" to whom they replied with the

same cry, but in a smothered and somewhat constrained voice. This

battalion belonged to my neighbourhood, and most of those who composed

it knew me by sight, although I knew hardly any of them. They

surrounded me and greedily pressed me for news; I told them that we had

obtained all we wanted, that the ministry was changed, that all the

abuses complained of were to be reformed, and that the only danger we

now ran was lest people should go too far, and that it was for them to

prevent it. I soon saw that this view did not appeal to them.

"That's all very well, sir," said they; "the Government has got itself

into this scrape through its own fault, let it get out of it as best it

can."

It was of small use my representing to them that it was much less a

question for the Government at present than for themselves:

"If Paris is delivered to anarchy," I said, "and all the Kingdom is in

confusion, do you think that none but the King will suffer?"

It was of no avail, and all I could obtain in reply was this astounding

absurdity: it was the Government's fault, let the Government run the

danger; we don't want to get killed for people who have managed their

business so badly. And yet this was that middle class which had been

pampered for eighteen years: the current of public opinion had ended by

dragging it along, and was driving it against those who had flattered it

until it had become corrupt.

This was the occasion of a reflection which has often since presented

itself to my mind; in France a government always does wrong to rely

solely for support upon the exclusive interests and selfish passions of

one class. This can only succeed with nations more self-interested and

less vain than ours: with us, when a government established upon this

basis becomes unpopular, it follows that the members of the very class

for whose sake it has lost its popularity prefer the pleasure of

traducing it with all the world to the privileges which it assures them.

The old French aristocracy, which was more enlightened than our modern

middle class and possessed much greater _esprit de corps_, had already

given the same example; it had ended by thinking it a mark of

distinction to run down its own privileges, and by thundering against

the abuses upon which it existed. That is why I think that, upon the

whole, the safest method of government for us to adopt, in order to

endure, is that of governing well, of governing in the interest of

everybody. I am bound to confess, however, that, even when one follows

this course, it is not very certain that one will endure for long.

I soon set out to go to the Chamber, although the time fixed for the

opening of the sitting had not yet come: it was, I believe, about eleven

o'clock. I found the Place Louis XV still clear of people, but occupied

by several regiments of cavalry. When I saw all these troops drawn up in

such good order, I began to think that they had only deserted the

streets in order to mass themselves around the Tuileries and defend

themselves there. At the foot of the obelisk were grouped the staff,

among whom, as I drew nearer, I recognized Bedeau, whose unlucky star

had quite recently brought him back from Africa, in time to bury the

Monarchy. I had spent a few days with him, the year before, at

Constantine, and there had sprung up between us a sort of intimacy which

has since continued. So soon as Bedeau caught sight of me, he sprang

from his horse, came up to me, and grasped my hand in a way that clearly

betrayed his excitement. His conversation gave yet stronger evidence of

this, and I was not surprised, for I have always observed that the men

who lose their heads most easily, and who generally show themselves

weakest on days of revolution, are soldiers; accustomed as they are to

have an organized force facing them and an obedient force in their

hands, they readily become confused before the uproarious shouts of a

mob and in presence of the hesitation and the occasional connivance of

their own men. Unquestionably, Bedeau was confused, and everybody knows

what were the results of this confusion: how the Chamber was invaded by

a handful of men within pistol-shot of the squadrons protecting it, and

how, in consequence, the fall of the Monarchy was proclaimed and the

Provisional Government elected. The part played by Bedeau on this fatal

day was, unfortunately for himself, of so preponderating a character

that I propose to stop a moment in order to analyze this man and his

motives for acting as he did. We have been sufficiently intimate both

before and after this event to enable me to speak with knowledge. It is

true that he received the order not to fight; but why did he obey so

extraordinary an order, which circumstances had rendered so

impracticable?

Bedeau was assuredly not timid by nature, nor even, properly speaking,

undecided; for, when he had once made up his mind, you saw him making

for his goal with great firmness, coolness and courage; but his mind was

the most methodical, the least self-reliant, the least adventurous, and

the least adapted for unpremeditated action that can well be imagined.

He was accustomed to consider the action which he was about to undertake

in all its aspects before setting to work, taking the worst aspects

first, and losing much precious time in diluting a single thought in a

multitude of words. For the rest, he was a just man, moderate,

liberal-minded, as humane as though he had not waged war in Africa for

eighteen years, modest, moral, even refined, and religious: the kind of

honest, virtuous man who is very rarely to be met with in military

circles, or, to speak plainly, elsewhere. It was assuredly not from want

of courage that he did certain acts which seemed to point to this

defect, for he was brave beyond measure; still less was treachery his

motive: although he may not have been attached to the Orleans Family, he

was as little capable of betraying those Princes as their best friends

could have been, and much less so than their creatures eventually were.

His misfortune was that he was drawn into events which were greater than

himself, and that he had only merit where genius was needed, and

especially the genius to grapple with revolutions, which consists

principally in regulating one's actions according to events, and in

knowing how to disobey at the right time. The remembrance of February

poisoned General Bedeau's life, and left a cruel wound deep down in his

soul, a wound whose agony betrayed itself unceasingly by endless

recitals and explanations of the events of that period.

While he was engaged in telling me of his perplexities, and in

endeavouring to prove that the duty of the Opposition was to come down

to the streets in a body and calm the popular excitement with their

speeches, a crowd of people glided in between the trees of the

Champs-Elysees and came down the main avenue towards the Place Louis XV.

Bedeau perceived these men, dragged me towards them on foot until he was

more than a hundred paces from his cavalry, and began to harangue them,

for he was more disposed to speech-making than any military man I have

ever known.

While he was holding forth in this way, I observed that the circle of

his listeners was gradually extending itself around us, and would soon

close us in; and through the first rank of sight-seers I clearly caught

sight of men of riotous aspect moving about, while I heard dull murmurs

in the depths of the crowd of these dangerous words, "It's Bugeaud." I

leant towards the general and whispered in his ear:

"I have more experience than you of the ways of the populace; take my

word, get back to your horse at once, for if you stay here, you will be

killed or taken prisoner before five minutes are over."

He took my word for it, and it was well he did. A few moments later,

these same men whom he had undertaken to convert murdered the occupants

of the guard-house in the Rue des Champs-Elysees; I myself had some

difficulty in forcing my way through them. One of them, a short,

thick-set man, who seemed to belong to the lower class of workmen, asked

me where I was going.

I replied, "To the Chamber," adding, to show that I was a member of the

Opposition, "Reform for ever! You know the Guizot Ministry has been

dismissed?"

"Yes, sir, I know," replied the man, jeeringly, and pointing to the

Tuileries, "but we want more than that."

CHAPTER V

THE SITTING OF THE CHAMBER--MADAME LA DUCHESSE D'ORLEANS--THE

PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT.

I entered the Chamber; the sitting had not yet commenced. The deputies

were wandering about the lobbies like men distraught, living on rumours,

and quite without information. It was not so much an assembly as a mob,

for nobody was leading it.

The leaders of both parties were absent: the ex-ministers had fled, the

new ones had not appeared. Members cried loudly for the sitting to open,

impelled rather by a vague desire for action than by any definite

intention; the President refused: he was accustomed to do nothing

without instructions, and since there was no one left to instruct him,

he was unable to make up his mind. I was begged to go and find him, and

persuade him to take the chair, and I did so. I found this excellent

man--for so he was, in spite of the fact that he often indulged in

well-meaning pieces of trickery, in little pious frauds, in petty

villainies, in all the venial sins which a faint heart and a wavering

mind are able to suggest to an honest nature--I found him, as I have

said, walking to and fro in his room, a prey to the greatest excitement.

M. Sauzet possessed good but not striking features; he had the dignity

of a parish beadle, a big fat body, with very short arms. At times when

he was restless and perplexed--and he almost always was so--he used to

wave his little arms convulsively, and move them about like a swimmer.

His demeanour during our conversation was of the strangest: he walked

about, stopped still, sat down with one foot underneath his clumsy

frame, as he used to do in moments of great excitement, stood up again,

sat down anew, and came to no decision. It was very unfortunate for the

House of Orleans that it had an honest man of this kind to preside over

the Chamber on a day like this: an audacious rogue would have served its

turn better.

M. Sauzet gave me many reasons for not opening the sitting, but one

which he did not give me convinced me that he was right. Seeing him so

helpless and so incapable of adopting any resolution, I considered that

he would only confuse men's minds the more he tried to regulate them. I

therefore left him, and thinking it more important to find protectors

for the Chamber than to open its deliberations, I went out, intending to

proceed to the Ministry of the Interior and ask for help.

As I crossed the Place du Palais-Bourbon with this object, I saw a very

mixed crowd accompanying two men, whom I soon recognized as Barrot and

Beaumont, with loud cheers. Both of them wore their hats crushed down

over their eyes; their clothes were covered with dust, their cheeks

looked hollow, their eyes weary: never were two men in triumph so

suggestive of men about to be hanged. I ran up to Beaumont, and asked

him what was happening. He whispered that the King had abdicated in his

presence, and had taken to flight; that Lamoriciere had apparently been

killed when he went out to announce the abdication to the rioters (in

fact, an aide-de-camp had come back to say that he had seen him at a

distance fall from his horse), that everything was going wrong, and

finally, that he and Barrot were now on their way to the Ministry of the

Interior in order to take possession of it, and to try and establish

somewhere a centre of authority and resistance.

"And the Chamber!" I said. "Have you taken any precautions for the

defence of the Chamber?"

Beaumont received this observation with ill-humour, as though I had been

speaking of my own house. "Who is thinking of the Chamber?" he replied

brusquely. "What good or what harm can it do at the present juncture?"

I thought, and rightly, that he was wrong to speak like this. The

Chamber, it is true, was at that moment in a curious state of

powerlessness, its majority despised, and its minority left behind by

public opinion. But M. de Beaumont forgot that it is just in times of

revolution that the very least instruments of the law, and much more its

outer symbols, which recall the idea of the law to the minds of the

people, assume the greatest importance; for it is especially in the

midst of this universal anarchy and turmoil that the need is felt of

some simulacrum of authority and tradition in order to save the remnants

of a half-destroyed constitution or to complete its overthrow. Had the

deputies been able to proclaim the Regency, the latter might have ended

by triumphing, in spite of the unpopularity of the deputies; and, on the

other hand, it is an undoubted fact that the Provisional Government owed

much to the chance which caused it to come into being between the four

walls which had so long sheltered the representatives of the nation.

I followed my friends to the Ministry of the Interior, where they were

going. The crowd which accompanied us entered, or rather swept in,

tumultuously, and even penetrated with us as far as the room which M.

Duchatel had just quitted. Barrot tried to free himself and dismiss the

mob, but was unable to succeed.

These people, who held two very different sets of opinions, as I was

then enabled to observe, some being Republicans and others

Constitutionalists, began vehemently to discuss with us and among

themselves the measures which were to be taken; and as we were all

squeezed together in a very small space, the heat, dust, confusion, and

uproar soon became unbearable. Barrot, who always launched out into

long, pompous phrases at the most critical moments, and who preserved an

air of dignity, and even of mystery, in the most ludicrous

circumstances, was holding forth at his best _in angustis_. His voice

occasionally rose above the tumult, but never succeeded in quelling it.

In despair and disgust at so violent and ludicrous a scene, I left this

place, where they were exchanging almost as many cuffs as arguments, and

returned to the Chamber.

I reached the entrance to the building without suspecting what was

happening inside, when I saw people come running up, crying that Madame

la Duchesse d'Orleans, the Comte de Paris and the Duc de Nemours had

just arrived. At this news, I flew up the stairs of the Palace, four at

a time, and rushed into the House.

I saw the three members of the Royal Family whom I have named, at the

foot of the tribune, facing the House. The Duchesse d'Orleans was

seated, dressed in mourning, calm and pale; I could see that she was

greatly excited, but her excitement seemed to be that of courageous

natures, more prone to turn to heroism than fright.

The Comte de Paris displayed the carelessness of his age and the

precocious impassiveness of princes. Standing by their side was the Duc

de Nemours, tightly clad in his uniform--cold, stiff, and erect. He was,

to my mind, the only man who ran any real danger that day; and during

the whole time that I saw him exposed to it, I constantly observed in

him the same firm and silent courage.

Around these unhappy Princes pressed the National Guards who had come

with them, some deputies, and a small number of the people. The

galleries were empty and closed, with the exception of the press

gallery, into which an unarmed but clamorous crowd had forced its way. I

was more struck by the cries that issued at intervals from there than by

all else that occurred during the sitting.

Fifty years had passed since the last scene of this kind. Since the time

of the Convention, the galleries had been silent, and the silence of the

galleries had become part of our parliamentary customs. However, if the

Chamber at this moment already felt embarrassed in its actions, it was

not as yet in any way constrained; the deputies were in considerable

numbers, though the party leaders were still absent. I heard enquiries

on every side for M. Thiers and M. Barrot; I did not know what had

become of M. Thiers, but I knew only too well what M. Barrot was doing.

I hurriedly sent one of our friends to tell him of what was happening,

and he came running up with all speed. I can answer for that man that

his soul never knew fear.

After for a moment watching this extraordinary sitting, I had hastened

to take my usual seat on the upper benches of the Left Centre: it has

always been my contention that at critical moments one should not only

be present in the assembly of which one is a member, but occupy the

place where one is generally to be found.

A sort of confused and turbulent discussion had been opened: I heard M.

Lacrosse, who since became my colleague in office, cry amid the uproar:

"M. Dupin wishes to speak!"

"No, no!"

"No," replied M. Dupin, "I made no such request."

"No matter," came from every side; "speak, speak!"

Thus urged, M. Dupin ascended the tribune, and proposed in two words

that they should return to the law of 1842, and proclaim the Duchesse

d'Orleans Regent. This was received with applause in the Assembly,

exclamations in the gallery, and murmurs in the lobbies. The lobbies,

which at first were pretty clear, began to grow crowded in an alarming

manner. The people did not yet come into the Chamber in streams, but

entered little by little, one by one; each moment there appeared a new

face; the Chamber grew flooded as it were by drops. Most of the

new-comers belonged to the lowest classes; many of them were armed.

I witnessed this growing invasion from a distance, and I felt the danger

momentarily increase with it. I cast my eyes round the Chamber in search

of the man best able to resist the torrent; I saw only Lamartine, who

had the necessary position and the requisite capacity to make the

attempt; I remembered that in 1842 he was the only one who proposed the

regency of the Duchesse d'Orleans. On the other hand, his recent

speeches, and especially his recent writings, had obtained for him the

favour of the people. His talent, moreover, was of a kind that appeals

to the popular taste. I was not aware that, half an hour before, he had

been extolling the Republic to an assemblage of journalists and deputies

in one of the offices of the Chamber. I saw him standing by his bench. I

elbowed my way to him, and, when I reached him:

"We shall be lost," I whispered, hurriedly: "you alone can make yourself

heard at this supreme moment; go to the tribune and speak."

I can see him still, as I write these lines, so struck was I with his

appearance. I see his long, straight, slender figure, his eye turned

towards the semi-circle, his fixed and vacant gaze absorbed in inward

contemplation rather than in observing what was passing around him. When

he heard me speak, he did not turn towards me, but only stretched out

his arm towards the place where the Princes stood, and, replying to his

own thought rather than to mine, said:

"I shall not speak so long as that woman and that child remain where

they are."

I said no more; I had heard enough. Returning to my bench, I passed by

the Right Centre, near where Lanjuinais and Billault were sitting, and

asked, "Can you suggest nothing that we could do?" They mournfully shook

their heads, and I continued on my way.

Meantime, the crowd had accumulated to such an extent in the

semi-circle, that the Princes ran the risk of being crushed or

suffocated at any moment.

The President made vain efforts to clear the House; failing in his

endeavours, he begged the Duchesse d'Orleans to withdraw. The courageous

Princess refused, whereupon her friends, with great difficulty,

extricated her from the throng, and made her climb to the top bench of

the Left Centre, where she sat down with her son and the Duc de Nemours.

Marie and Cremieux had just, amid the silence of the deputies and the

acclamations of the people, proposed the establishment of a provisional

government, when Barrot at last appeared. He was out of breath, but not

alarmed. Climbing the stairs of the tribune:

"Our duty lies before us," he said; "the Crown of July lies on the head

of a child and a woman."

The Chamber, recovering its courage, plucked up heart to burst into

acclamations, and the people in their turn were silent. The Duchesse

d'Orleans rose from her seat, seemed to wish to speak, hesitated,

listened to timid counsels, and sat down again: the last glimmer of her

fortune had gone out. Barrot finished his speech without renewing the

impression of his opening words; nevertheless, the Chamber had gathered

strength, and the people wavered.

At that moment, the crowd filling the semi-circle was driven back, by a

stream from outside, towards the centre benches, which were already

almost deserted; it burst and spread over the benches. Of the few

deputies who still occupied them, some slipped away and left the House,

while others retreated from bench to bench, like victims surprised by

the tide, who retreat from rock to rock always pursued by the rising

waters. All this commotion was produced by two troops of men, for the

most part armed, which marched through the two lobbies, each with

officers of the National Guards and flags at its head. The two officers

who carried the flags, of whom one, a swaggering individual, was, as I

heard later, a half-pay colonel called Dumoulin, ascended the tribune

with a theatrical air, waved their standards, and with much skipping

about and great melodramatic gestures, bawled out some revolutionary

balderdash or other. The President declared the sitting suspended, and

proceeded to put on his hat, as is customary; but, since he had the

knack of making himself ridiculous in the most tragic situations, in his

precipitation he seized the hat of a secretary instead of his own, and

pulled it down over his eyes and ears.

Sittings of this sort, as may be believed, are not easily suspended, and

the President's attempts only succeeded in adding to the disorder.

Thenceforth there was nothing but one continuous uproar, broken by

occasional moments of silence. The speakers appeared in the tribune in

groups: Cremieux, Ledru-Rollin, and Lamartine sprang into it at the same

time. Ledru-Rollin drove Cremieux out, and himself held on with his two

great hands, while Lamartine, without leaving or struggling, waited for

his colleague to finish speaking. Ledru-Rollin began incoherently,

interrupted every instant by the impatience of his own friends. "Finish!

finish!" cried Berryer, more experienced than he, and warier in his

dynastic ill-will than was the other in his republican passion.

Ledru-Rollin ended by demanding the appointment of a provisional

government and descended the stair.

Then Lamartine stepped forward and obtained silence. He commenced with a

splendid eulogium on the courage of the Duchesse d'Orleans, and the

people themselves, sensible, as always, to generous sentiments wrapped

up in fine phrases, applauded. The deputies breathed again. "Wait," said

I to my neighbours, "this is only the exordium." And in fact, before

long, Lamartine tacked round and proceeded straight in the same

direction as Ledru-Rollin.

Until then, as I said, all the galleries except the one reserved for the

press had remained empty and closed; but while Lamartine was speaking,

loud blows were heard at the door of one of them, and yielding to the

strain, the door burst into atoms. In a moment the gallery was invaded

by an armed mob of men, who noisily filled it and soon afterwards all

the others. A man of the lower orders, placing one foot on the cornice,

pointed his gun at the President and the speaker; others seemed to

level theirs at the assembly. The Duchesse d'Orleans and her son were

hurried out of the Chamber by some devoted friends and into the corridor

behind the Chair. The President muttered a few words to the effect that

the sitting was adjourned, and stepped, or rather slid, off the platform

on which the chair was placed. I saw him passing before my eyes like a

shapeless mass: never would I have believed that fear could have

inspired with such activity, or rather, suddenly reduced to a sort of

fluidity, so huge a body. All who had remained of the Conservative

members then dispersed, and the populace sprawled over the centre

benches, crying, "Let us take the place of the corrupt crew!"

During all the turbulent scenes which I have just described, I remained

motionless in my seat, very attentive, but not greatly excited; and now,

when I ask myself why I felt no keener emotion in presence of an event

bound to exercise so great an influence upon the destinies of France and

upon my own, I find that the form assumed by this great occurrence did

much to diminish the impression it made upon me.

In the course of the Revolution of February, I was present at two or

three scenes which possessed the elements of grandeur (I shall have

occasion to describe them in their turn); but this scene lacked them

entirely, for the reason that there was nothing genuine in it. We

French, especially in Paris, are prone to introduce our literary or

theatrical reminiscences into our most serious demonstrations; this

often gives rise to the belief that the sentiments we express are not

genuine, whereas they are only clumsily adorned. In this case the

imitation was so evident that the terrible originality of the facts

remained concealed beneath it. It was a time when every imagination was

besmeared with the crude colours with which Lamartine had been daubing

his _Girondins_. The men of the first Revolution were living in every

mind, their deeds and words present to every memory. All that I saw that

day bore the visible impress of those recollections; it seemed to me

throughout as though they were engaged in acting the French Revolution,

rather than continuing it.

Despite the presence of drawn swords, bayonets and muskets, I was unable

to persuade myself for a single instant not only that I was in danger of

death, but that anybody was, and I honestly believe that no one really

was. Bloodthirsty hatreds only showed themselves later: they had not yet

had the time to spring up; the special spirit which was to characterize

the Revolution of February did not yet manifest itself. Meantime, men

were fruitlessly endeavouring to warm themselves at the fire of our

fathers' passions, imitating their gestures and attitudes as they had

seen them represented on the stage, but unable to imitate their

enthusiasm or to be inflamed with their fury. It was the tradition of

violent deeds that was being imitated by cold hearts, which understood

not the spirit of it. Although I clearly saw that the catastrophe of the

piece would be a terrible one, I was never able to take the actors very

seriously, and the whole seemed to me like a bad tragedy performed by

provincial actors.

I confess that what moved me most that day was the sight of that woman

and child, who were made to bear the whole weight of faults that they

had not committed. I frequently looked with compassion towards that

foreign Princess, thrown into the midst of our civil discords; and when

she had fled, the remembrance of the sweet, sad, firm glances which I

had seen her cast upon the Assembly during that long agony came back so

vividly to my memory, I felt so touched with pity when I thought of the

perils attending her flight that, suddenly springing from my seat, I

rushed in the direction which my knowledge of the building led me to

believe that she and her son would have taken to seek a place of safety.

In a moment I made my way through the crowd, crossed the floor, passed

out through the cloak-room, and reached the private staircase which

leads from the entrance in the Rue de Bourgogne to the upper floor of

the Palace. A messenger whom I questioned as I ran past him told me that

I was on the track of the Royal party; and, indeed, I heard several

persons hurriedly mounting the upper portion of the stairs. I therefore

continued my pursuit, and reached a landing; the steps which preceded

me had just ceased. Finding a closed door in front of me, I knocked at

it, but it was not opened. If princes were like God, who reads our

hearts and accepts the intention for the deed, assuredly these would be

pleased with me for what I wished to do that day; but they will never

know, for no one saw me and I told no one.

I returned to the House and resumed my seat. Almost all the members had

left; the benches were occupied by men of the populace. Lamartine was

still in the tribune between the two banners, continuing to address the

crowd, or rather conversing with them; for there seemed to be almost as

many orators as listeners. The confusion was at its height. In a moment

of semi-silence, Lamartine began to read out a list containing the names

of the different people proposed by I don't know whom to take share in

the Provisional Government that had just been decreed, nobody knows how.

Most of these names were accepted with acclamations, some rejected with

groans, others received with jests, for in scenes in which the people

take part, as in the plays of Shakspeare, burlesque often rubs shoulders

with tragedy, and wretched jokes sometimes come to the relief of the

ardour of revolution. When Garnier-Pages' name was proposed, I heard a

voice cry, "You've made a mistake, Lamartine; it's the dead one that's

the good one;" Garnier-Pages having had a celebrated brother, to whom he

bore no resemblance except in name.

M. de Lamartine, I think, was beginning to grow greatly embarrassed at

his position; for in a rebellion, as in a novel, the most difficult part

to invent is the end. When, therefore, someone took it into his head to

cry, "To the Hotel de Ville!" Lamartine echoed, "Yes, to the Hotel de

Ville," and went out forthwith, taking half the crowd with him; the

others remained with Ledru-Rollin, who, in order, I suppose, to retain a

leading part for himself, felt called upon in his turn to go through the

same mock election, after which he too set out for the Hotel de Ville.

There the same electoral display was gone through once more; in

connection with which I cannot refrain from repeating an anecdote which

I was told, a few months later, by M. Marrast. It interrupts the thread

of my story a little, but it gives a marvellous picture of two men who

were both at that moment playing a great part, and shows the difference,

if not in their opinions, at least in their education and habits of

thought.

"A list of candidates for the Provisional Government," said Marrast,

"had hurriedly been drawn up. It had to be read out to the people, and I

handed it to Lamartine, asking him to read it aloud from the top of the

steps. 'I can't,' replied Lamartine, after looking at it; 'my name is on

it.' I then passed it on to Cremieux, who, after reading it, said,

'You're making fun of me: you're asking me to read out to the people a

list which has not got my name on it!'"

When I saw Ledru-Rollin leave the House, where remained behind none but

the sheer dregs of the insurrection, I saw that there was nothing more

to be done there. I accordingly went away, but as I did not care to find

myself in the middle of the mob marching towards the Hotel de Ville, I

took the opposite direction, and began to go down those steep steps,

like cellar stairs, which lead to the inner yard of the Palace. I then

saw coming towards me a column of armed National Guards, ascending the

same staircase at a run, with set bayonets. In front of them were two

men in civilian dress, who seemed to be leading them, shouting at the

top of their voices, "Long live the Duchesse d'Orleans and the Regency!"

In one I recognized General Oudinot and in the other Andryane, who was

imprisoned in the Spielberg, and who wrote his Memoirs in imitation of

those of Silvio Pellico. I saw no one else, and nothing could prove more

clearly how difficult it is for the public ever to learn the truth of

events happening amid the tumult of a revolution. I know that a letter

exists, written by Marshal Bugeaud, in which he relates that he

succeeded in getting together a few companies of the Tenth Legion,

inspired them in favour of the Duchesse d'Orleans, and led them at the

double through the yard of the Palais Bourbon and to the door of the

Chamber, which he found empty. The story is true, but for the presence

of the marshal, whom I should most certainly have seen had he been

there; but there was no one, I repeat, except General Oudinot and M.

Andryane. The latter, seeing me standing still and saying nothing, took

me sharply by the arm, exclaiming:

"Monsieur, you must join us, to help to free Madame la Duchesse

d'Orleans and save the Monarchy."

"Monsieur," I replied, "your intention is good, but you are too late:

the Duchesse d'Orleans has disappeared, and the Chamber has risen."

Now, where was the spirited defender of the Monarchy that evening? The

incident is worthy of being told and noted among the many incidents of

versatility with which the history of revolutions abounds.

M. Andryane was in the office of M. Ledru-Rollin, officiating in the

name of the Republic as general secretary to the Ministry of the

Interior.

To return to the column which he was leading: I joined it, although I

had no longer any hope of success for its efforts. Mechanically obeying

the impulse communicated to it, it proceeded as far as the doors of the

Chamber. There the men who composed it learnt what had taken place; they

turned about for a moment, and then dispersed in every direction. Half

an hour earlier, this handful of National Guards might (as on the

ensuing 15th of May) have changed the fortunes of France. I allowed this

new crowd to pass by me, and then, alone and very pensive, I resumed my

road home, not without casting a last look on the Chamber, now silent

and deserted, in which, during nine years, I had listened to the sound

of so many eloquent and futile words.

M. Billault, who had left the Chamber a few minutes before me by the

entrance in the Rue de Bourgogne, told me that he met M. Barrot in this

street.

"He was walking," he said, "at a rapid rate, without perceiving that he

was hatless, and that his grey hair, which he generally carefully

brushed back along his temples, was falling on either side and

fluttering in disorder over his shoulders; he seemed beside himself."

This man had made heroic efforts all day long to maintain the Monarchy

on the declivity down which he himself had pushed it, and he remained as

though crushed beneath its fall. I learned from Beaumont, who had not

left him during any part of the day, that in the morning M. Barrot faced

and mounted twenty barricades, walking up to each unarmed, meeting

sometimes with insults, often with shots, and always ending by

overcoming with his words those who guarded them. His words, in fact,

were all-powerful with the multitude. He had all that was wanted to act

upon them at a given moment: a strong voice, an inflated eloquence, and

a fearless heart.

While M. Barrot, in disorder, was leaving the Chamber, M. Thiers, still

more distraught, wandered round Paris, not daring to venture home. He

was seen for an instant at the Assembly before the arrival of the

Duchesse d'Orleans, but disappeared at once, giving the signal for the

retreat of many others. The next morning, I learnt the details of his

flight through M. Talabot, who had assisted in it. I was connected with

M. Talabot by fairly intimate party ties, and M. Thiers, I believe, by

former business relations. M. Talabot was a man full of mental vigour

and resolution, very fit for an emergency of that kind. He told me as

follows--I believe I have neither omitted nor added anything:

"It seems," he said, "that M. Thiers, when crossing the Place Louis XV,

had been insulted and threatened by some of the populace. He was greatly

excited and upset when I saw him enter the House; he came up to me, led

me aside, and told me that he would be murdered by the mob if I did not

assist him to escape. I took him by the arm and begged him to go with me

and fear nothing. M. Thiers wished to avoid the Pont Louis XVI, for fear

of meeting the crowd. We went to the Pont des Invalides, but when we got

there, he thought he saw a gathering on the other side of the river, and

again refused to cross. We then made for the Pont d'Iena, which was

free, and crossed it without any difficulty. When we reached the other

side, M. Thiers discovered some street-boys, shouting, on the

foundations of what was to have been the palace of the King of Rome, and

forthwith turned down the Rue d'Auteuil and made for the Bois de

Boulogne. There we had the good luck to find a cabman, who consented to

drive us along the outer boulevards to the neighbourhood of the

Barriere de Clichy, through which we were able to reach his house.

During the whole journey," added M. Talabot, "and especially at the

start, M. Thiers seemed almost out of his senses, gesticulating,

sobbing, uttering incoherent phrases. The catastrophe he had just

beheld, the future of his country, his own personal danger, all

contributed to form a chaos amid which his thoughts struggled and

strayed unceasingly."

PART THE SECOND

_Everything contained in this note-book (Chapters I. to XI.

inclusive) was written in stray moments at Sorrento, in November

and December 1850, and January, February, and March 1851._

CHAPTER I

MY EXPLANATION OF THE 24TH OF FEBRUARY, AND MY VIEWS AS TO ITS

EFFECTS UPON THE FUTURE.

And so the Monarchy of July was fallen, fallen without a struggle, and

before rather than beneath the blows of the victors, who were as

astonished at their triumph as were the vanquished at their defeat. I

have often, since the Revolution of February, heard M. Guizot and even

M. Mole and M. Thiers declare that this event should only be attributed

to a surprise and regarded as a mere accident, a bold and lucky stroke

and nothing more. I have always felt tempted to answer them in the words

which Moliere's Misanthrope uses to Oronte:

Pour en juger ainsi, vous avez vos raisons;

for these three men had conducted the affairs of France, under the

guidance of King Louis-Philippe, during eighteen years, and it was

difficult for them to admit that it was the King's bad government which

had prepared the catastrophe which hurled him from the Throne.

As for me, I have not the same motives for forming an opinion, and I

could hardly persuade myself to be of theirs. I am not prepared to say

that accidents played no part in the Revolution of February: on the

contrary, they played a great one; but they were not the only thing.

I have come across men of letters, who have written history without

taking part in public affairs, and politicians, who have only concerned

themselves with producing events without thinking of describing them. I

have observed that the first are always inclined to find general causes,

whereas the others, living in the midst of disconnected daily facts, are

prone to imagine that everything is attributable to particular

incidents, and that the wires which they pull are the same that move the

world. It is to be presumed that both are equally deceived.

For my part, I detest these absolute systems, which represent all the

events of history as depending upon great first causes linked by the

chain of fatality, and which, as it were, suppress men from the history

of the human race. They seem narrow, to my mind, under their pretence of

broadness, and false beneath their air of mathematical exactness. I

believe (_pace_ the writers who have invented these sublime theories in

order to feed their vanity and facilitate their work) that many

important historical facts can only be explained by accidental

circumstances, and that many others remain totally inexplicable.

Moreover, chance, or rather that tangle of secondary causes which we

call chance, for want of the knowledge how to unravel it, plays a great

part in all that happens on the world's stage; although I firmly believe

that chance does nothing that has not been prepared beforehand.

Antecedent facts, the nature of institutions, the cast of minds and the

state of morals are the materials of which are composed those impromptus

which astonish and alarm us.

The Revolution of February, in common with all other great events of

this class, sprang from general causes, impregnated, if I am permitted

the expression, by accidents; and it would be as superficial a judgment

to ascribe it necessarily to the former or exclusively to the latter.

The industrial revolution which, during the past thirty years, had

turned Paris into the principal manufacturing city of France and

attracted within its walls an entire new population of workmen (to whom

the works of the fortifications had added another population of

labourers at present deprived of work) tended more and more to inflame

this multitude. Add to this the democratic disease of envy, which was

silently permeating it; the economical and political theories which were

beginning to make their way and which strove to prove that human misery

was the work of laws and not of Providence, and that poverty could be

suppressed by changing the conditions of society; the contempt into

which the governing class, and especially the men who led it, had

fallen, a contempt so general and so profound that it paralyzed the

resistance even of those who were most interested in maintaining the

power that was being overthrown; the centralization which reduced the

whole revolutionary movement to the overmastering of Paris and the

seizing of the machinery of government; and lastly, the mobility of all

things, institutions, ideas, men and customs, in a fluctuating state of

society which had, in less than sixty years, undergone the shock of

seven great revolutions, without numbering a multitude of smaller,

secondary upheavals. These were the general causes without which the

Revolution of February would have been impossible. The principal

accidents which led to it were the passions of the dynastic Opposition,

which brought about a riot in proposing a reform; the suppression of

this riot, first over-violent, and then abandoned; the sudden

disappearance of the old Ministry, unexpectedly snapping the threads of

power, which the new ministers, in their confusion, were unable either

to seize upon or to reunite; the mistakes and disorder of mind of these

ministers, so powerless to re-establish that which they had been strong

enough to overthrow; the vacillation of the generals; the absence of the

only Princes who possessed either personal energy or popularity; and

above all, the senile imbecility of King Louis-Philippe, his weakness,

which no one could have foreseen, and which still remains almost

incredible, after the event has proved it.

I have sometimes asked myself what could have produced this sudden and

unprecedented depression in the King's mind. Louis-Philippe had spent

his life in the midst of revolutions, and certainly lacked neither

experience, courage, nor readiness of mind, although these qualities all

failed him so completely on that day. In my opinion, his weakness was

due to his excessive surprise; he was overwhelmed with consternation

before he had grasped the meaning of things. The Revolution of February

was _unforeseen_ by all, but by him more than any other; he had been

prepared for it by no warning from the outside, for since many years his

mind had withdrawn into that sort of haughty solitude into which in the

end the intellect almost always settles down of princes who have long

lived happily, and who, mistaking luck for genius, refuse to listen to

anything, because they think that there is nothing left for them to

learn from anybody. Besides, Louis-Philippe had been deceived, as I have

already said that his ministers were, by the misleading light cast by

antecedent facts upon present times. One might draw a strange picture of

all the errors which have thus been begotten, one by the other, without

resembling each other. We see Charles I. driven to tyranny and violence

at the sight of the progress which the spirit of opposition had made in

England during the gentle reign of his father; Louis XVI. determined to

suffer everything because Charles I. had perished by refusing to endure

anything; Charles X. provoking the Revolution, because he had with his

own eyes beheld the weakness of Louis XVI.; and lastly, Louis-Philippe,

who had more perspicacity than any of them, imagining that, in order to

remain on the Throne, all he had to do was to observe the letter of the

law while violating its spirit, and that, provided he himself kept

within the bounds of the Charter, the nation would never exceed them. To

warp the spirit of the Constitution without changing the letter; to set

the vices of the country in opposition to each other; gently to drown

revolutionary passion in the love of material enjoyment: such was the

idea of his whole life. Little by little, it had become, not his

leading, but his sole idea. He had wrapped himself in it, he had lived

in it; and when he suddenly saw that it was a false idea, he became like

a man who is awakened in the night by an earthquake, and who, feeling

his house crumbling in the darkness, and the very ground seeming to yawn

beneath his feet, remains distracted amid this unforeseen and universal

ruin.

I am arguing very much at my ease to-day concerning the causes that

brought about the events of the 24th of February; but on the afternoon

of that day I had many other things in my head: I was thinking of the

events themselves, and sought less for what had produced them than for

what was to follow.

I returned slowly home. I explained in a few words to Madame de

Tocqueville what I had seen, and sat down in a corner to think. I cannot

remember ever feeling my soul so full of sadness. It was the second

revolution I had seen accomplish itself, before my eyes, within

seventeen years!

On the 30th of July 1830, at daybreak, I had met the carriages of King

Charles X. on the outer boulevards of Versailles, with damaged

escutcheons, proceeding at a foot pace, in Indian file, like a funeral,

and I was unable to restrain my tears at the sight. This time my

impressions were of another kind, but even keener. Both revolutions had

afflicted me; but how much more bitter were the impressions caused by

the last! I had until the end felt a remnant of hereditary affection for

Charles X.; but that King fell for having violated rights that were dear

to me, and I had every hope that my country's freedom would be revived

rather than extinguished by his fall. But now this freedom seemed dead;

the Princes who were fleeing were nothing to me, but I felt that the

cause I had at heart was lost.

I had spent the best days of my youth amid a society which seemed to

increase in greatness and prosperity as it increased in liberty; I had

conceived the idea of a balanced, regulated liberty, held in check by

religion, custom and law; the attractions of this liberty had touched

me; it had become the passion of my life; I felt that I could never be

consoled for its loss, and that I must renounce all hope of its

recovery.

I had gained too much experience of mankind to be able to content myself

with empty words; I knew that, if one great revolution is able to

establish liberty in a country, a number of succeeding revolutions make

all regular liberty impossible for very many years.

I could not yet know what would issue from this last revolution, but I

was already convinced that it could give birth to nothing that would

satisfy me; and I foresaw that, whatever might be the lot reserved for

our posterity, our own fate was to drag on our lives miserably amid

alternate reactions of licence and oppression.

I began to pass in review the history of our last sixty years, and I

smiled bitterly when I thought of the illusions formed at the conclusion

of each period in this long revolution; the theories on which these

illusions had been fed; the sapient dreams of our historians, and all

the ingenious and deceptive systems by the aid of which it had been

endeavoured to explain a present which was still incorrectly seen, and a

future which was not seen at all.

The Constitutional Monarchy had succeeded the Ancien Regime; the

Republic, the Monarchy; the Empire, the Republic; the Restoration, the

Empire; and then came the Monarchy of July. After each of these

successive changes it was said that the French Revolution, having

accomplished what was presumptuously called its work, was finished; this

had been said and it had been believed. Alas! I myself had hoped it

under the Restoration, and again after the fall of the Government of the

Restoration; and here is the French Revolution beginning over again, for

it is still the same one. As we go on, its end seems farther off and

shrouded in greater darkness. Shall we ever--as we are assured by other

prophets, perhaps as delusive as their predecessors--shall we ever

attain a more complete and more far-reaching social transformation than

our fathers foresaw and desired, and than we ourselves are able to

foresee; or are we not destined simply to end in a condition of

intermittent anarchy, the well-known chronic and incurable complaint of

old races? As for me, I am unable to say; I do not know when this long

voyage will be ended; I am weary of seeing the shore in each successive

mirage, and I often ask myself whether the _terra firma_ we are seeking

does really exist, and whether we are not doomed to rove upon the seas

for ever.

I spent the rest of the day with Ampere, who was my colleague at the

Institute, and one of my best friends. He came to discover what had

become of me in the affray, and to ask himself to dinner. I wished at

first to relieve myself by making him share my vexation; but I soon

perceived that his impression was not the same as mine, and that he

looked differently upon the revolution which was in progress. Ampere was

a man of intelligence and, better still, a man full of heart, gentle in

manner, and reliable. His good-nature caused him to be liked; and he was

popular because of his versatile, witty, amusing, good-humoured

conversation, in which he made many remarks that were at once

entertaining and agreeable to hear, but too shallow to remember.

Unfortunately, he was inclined to carry the _esprit_ of the salons into

literature and the _esprit_ of literature into politics. What I call

literary _esprit_ in politics consists in seeking for what is novel and

ingenious rather than for what is true; in preferring the showy to the

useful; in showing one's self very sensible to the playing and elocution

of the actors, without regard to the results of the play; and, lastly,

in judging by impressions rather than reasons. I need not say that this

eccentricity exists among others besides Academicians. To tell the

truth, the whole nation is a little inclined that way, and the French

Public very often takes a man-of-letters' view of politics. Ampere held

the fallen Government in great contempt, and its last actions had

irritated him greatly. Moreover, he had witnessed many instances of

courage, disinterestedness, and even generosity among the insurgents;

and he had been bitten by the popular excitement.

I saw that he not only did not enter into my view, but that he was

disposed to take quite an opposite one. Seeing this, I was suddenly

impelled to turn against Ampere all the feelings of indignation, grief

and anger that had been accumulating in my heart since the morning; and

I spoke to him with a violence of language which I have often since

recalled with a certain shame, and which none but a friendship so

sincere as his could have excused. I remember saying to him, _inter

alia_:

"You understand nothing of what is happening; you are judging like a

poet or a Paris cockney. You call this the triumph of liberty, when it

is its final defeat. I tell you that the people which you so artlessly

admire has just succeeded in proving that it is unfit and unworthy to

live a life of freedom. Show me what experience has taught it! Where are

the new virtues it has gained, the old vices it has laid aside? No, I

tell you, it is always the same, as impatient, as thoughtless, as

contemptuous of law and order, as easily led and as cowardly in the

presence of danger as its fathers were before it. Time has altered it in

no way, and has left it as frivolous in serious matters as it used to be

in trifles."

After much vociferation we both ended by appealing to the future, that

enlightened and upright judge who always, alas! arrives too late.