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.
During the days immediately following upon the 24th of February, I
neither went in search of nor fell in with any of the politicians from
whom the events of that day had separated me. I felt no necessity nor,
to tell the truth, any inclination to do so. I felt a sort of
instinctive repugnance to remembering this wretched parliamentary world,
in which I had spent six years of my life, and in whose midst I had seen
the Revolution sprouting up.
Moreover, at that time I saw the great vanity of any sort of political
conversation or combination. However feeble the reasons may have been
which first imparted the movement to the mob, that movement had now
become irresistible. I felt that we were all in the midst of one of
those great floods of democracy in which the embankments, intended to
resist individuals and even parties, only serve to drown those who build
them, and in which, for a time, there is nothing to be done but to study
the general character of the phenomenon. I therefore spent all my time
in the streets with the victors, as though I had been a worshipper of
fortune. True, I paid no homage to the new sovereign, and asked no
favours of it. I did not even address it, but contented myself with
listening to and observing it.
Nevertheless, after the lapse of some days, I resumed relations with the
vanquished: I once more met ex-deputies, ex-peers, men of letters, men
of business and finance, land-owners, all who in the language of the
moment were commencing to be known as the idle. I found that the aspect
of the Revolution was no less extraordinary when thus seen from above
than it had seemed to me when, at the commencement, I viewed it from
below. I encountered much fear, but as little genuine passion as I had
seen in other quarters; a curious feeling of resignation, no vestige of
hope, and I should almost say no idea of ever returning to the
Government which they had only just left. Although the Revolution of
February was the shortest and the least bloody of all our revolutions,
it had filled men's minds and hearts with the idea of its omnipotence to
a much greater extent than any of its predecessors. I believe this was,
to a great extent, due to the fact that these minds and hearts were void
of political faith and ardour, and that, after so many disappointments
and vain agitations, they retained nothing but a taste for comfort--a
very tenacious and very exclusive, but also a very agreeable feeling,
which easily accommodates itself to any form of government, provided it
be allowed to satisfy itself.
I beheld, therefore, an universal endeavour to make the best of the new
state of things and to win over the new master. The great landlords
were glad to remember that they had always been hostile to the middle
class and always favoured the people; the _bourgeois_ themselves
remembered with a certain pride that their fathers had been working men,
and when they were unable, owing to the inevitable obscurity of their
pedigrees, to trace back their descent to a labourer who had worked with
his hands, they at least strove to discover a plebeian ancestor who had
been the architect of his own fortune. They took as great pains to make
a display of the latter as, not long before, they would have taken to
conceal his existence: so true is it that human vanity, without changing
its nature, can show itself under the most diverse aspects. It has an
obverse and a reverse side, but it is always the same medal.
As there was no longer any genuine feeling left save that of fear, far
from breaking with those of his relations who had thrown themselves into
the Revolution, each strove to draw closer to them. The time had come to
try and turn to account any scapegrace whom one had in one's family. If
good luck would have it that one had a cousin, a brother, or a son who
had become ruined by his disorderly life, one could be sure that he was
in a fair way to succeed; and if he had become known by the promulgation
of some extravagant theory or other, he might hope to attain to any
height. Most of the commissaries and under-commissaries of the
Government were men of this type.
As to King Louis-Philippe, there was no more question of him than if he
had belonged to the Merovingian Dynasty. Nothing struck me more than the
absolute silence that had suddenly surrounded his name. I did not hear
it pronounced a single time, so to speak, either by the people or by the
upper class. Those of his former courtiers whom I saw did not speak of
him, and I honestly believe they did not think of him. The Revolution
had so completely turned their thoughts in another direction, that they
had forgotten their Sovereign. I may be told that this is the ordinary
fate of fallen kings; but what seems more worthy of remark, his enemies
even had forgotten him: they no longer feared him enough to slander him,
perhaps even to hate him, which is one of fortune's greatest, or at
least rarest, insults.
I do not wish to write the history of the Revolution of 1848, I only
wish to retrace my own actions, ideas, and impressions during the course
of this revolution; and I therefore pass over the events that took place
during the weeks immediately following the 24th of February, and come to
the period preceding the General Election.
The time had come to decide whether one cared merely to watch the
progress of this singular revolution or to take part in events. I found
the former party leaders divided among themselves; and each of them,
moreover, seemed divided also within himself, to judge by the
incoherence of the language used and the vacillation of opinion. These
politicians, who had almost all been trained to public business amid the
regulated, restrained movement of constitutional liberty, and upon whom
a great revolution had unexpectedly come, were like river oarsmen who
should suddenly find themselves called upon to navigate their boat in
mid-ocean. The knowledge they had acquired in their fresh water trips
would be of more trouble than assistance to them in this greater
adventure, and they would often display more confusion and uncertainty
than the passengers themselves.
M. Thiers frequently expressed the opinion that they should go to the
poll and get elected, and as frequently urged that it would be wiser to
stand aside. I do not know whether his hesitation arose from his dread
of the dangers that might follow upon the election, or his fear lest he
should not be elected. Remusat, who always sees so clearly what might,
and so dimly what should be done, set forth the good reasons that
existed for staying at home, and the no less good reasons for going to
the country. Duvergier was distracted. The Revolution had overthrown the
system of the balance of power in which his mind had sat motionless
during so many years, and he felt as though he were hung up in mid-air.
As for the Duc de Broglie, he had not put his head out of his shell
since the 24th of February, and in this attitude he awaited the end of
society, which in his opinion was close at hand. M. Mole alone,
although he was by far the oldest of all the former parliamentary
leaders, and possibly for that very reason, resolutely maintained the
opinion that they should take part in public affairs and try to lead the
Revolution; perhaps because his longer experience had taught him that in
troubled times it is dangerous to play the looker-on; perhaps because
the hope of again having something to lead cheered him and hid from him
the danger of the undertaking; or perhaps because, after being so often
bent in contrary directions, under so many different _regimes_, his mind
had become firmer as well as more supple and more indifferent as to the
kind of master it might serve. On my side, as may be imagined, I very
attentively considered which was the best resolution to adopt.
I should like here to inquire into the reasons which determined my
course of action, and having found them, to set them down without
evasion: but how difficult it is to speak well of one's self! I have
observed that the greater part of those who have written their Memoirs
have only well shown us their bad actions or their weaknesses when they
happened to have taken them for deeds of prowess or fine instincts, a
thing which often occurs. As in the case of the Cardinal de Retz, who,
in order to be credited with what he considers the glory of being a good
conspirator, confesses his schemes for assassinating Richelieu, and
tells us of his hypocritical devotions and charities lest he should fail
to be taken for a clever man. In such cases it is not the love of truth
that guides the pen, but the warped mind which involuntarily betrays the
vices of the heart.
And even when one wishes to be sincere, it is very rarely that one
succeeds in the endeavour. The fault lies, in the first place, with the
public, which likes to see one accuse, but will not suffer him to
praise, himself; even one's friends are wont to describe as amiable
candour all the harm, and as unbecoming vanity all the good, that he
says of himself: so that at this rate sincerity becomes a very thankless
trade, by which one has everything to lose and nothing to gain. But the
difficulty, above all, lies with the subject himself: he is too close to
himself to see well, and prone to lose himself amid the views,
interests, ideas, thoughts and inclinations that have guided his
actions. This net-work of little foot-paths, which are little known even
by those who use them, prevent one from clearly discerning the main
roads followed by the will before arriving at the most important
conclusions.
Nevertheless, I will try to discover myself amid this labyrinth, for it
is only right that I should take the same liberties with myself which I
have taken, and shall often continue to take, with others.
Let me say, then, that when I came to search carefully into the depths
of my own heart, I discovered, with some surprise, a certain sense of
relief, a sort of gladness mingled with all the griefs and fears to
which the Revolution had given rise. I suffered from this terrible
event for my country, but clearly not for myself; on the contrary, I
seemed to breathe more freely than before the catastrophe. I had always
felt myself stifled in the atmosphere of the parliamentary world which
had just been destroyed: I had found it full of disappointments, both
where others and where I myself was concerned; and to commence with the
latter, I was not long in discovering that I did not possess the
necessary qualifications to play the brilliant role that I had imagined:
both my qualities and my defects were impediments. I had not the virtues
necessary to command respect, and I was too upright to stoop to all the
petty practices which were at that time essential to a speedy success.
And observe that this uprightness was irremediable; for it forms so
integral a part both of my temperament and my principles, that without
it I am never able to turn myself to any account. Whenever I have, by
ill-luck, been obliged to speak in defence of a bad cause, or to assist
in bad measures, I have immediately found myself deprived of all talent
and all ardour; and I confess that nothing has consoled me more at the
want of success with which my uprightness has often met, than the
certainty I have always been in that I could never have made more than a
very clumsy and mediocre rogue. I also ended by perceiving that I was
absolutely lacking in the art of grouping and leading a large number of
men. I have always been incapable of dexterity, except in _tete-a-tete_,
and embarrassed and dumb in the presence of a crowd; I do not mean to
say that at a given moment I am unable to say and do what will please
it, but that is not enough: those great occasions are very rare in
parliamentary warfare. The trick of the trade, in a party leader, is to
be able to mix continually with his followers and even his adversaries,
to show himself, to move about daily, to play continually now to the
boxes, now to the gallery, so as to reach the level of every
intelligence, to discuss and argue without end, to say the same things a
thousand times in different ways, and to be impassioned eternally in the
face of the same objects. These are all things of which I am quite
incapable. I find it troublesome to discuss matters which interest me
little, and painful to discuss those in which I am keenly concerned.
Truth is for me so rare and precious a thing that, once found, I do not
like to risk it on the hazard of a debate; it is a light which I fear to
extinguish by waving it to and fro. And as to consorting with men, I
could not do so in any habitual and general fashion, because I never
recognize more than a very few. Unless a person strikes me by something
out of the common in his intellect or opinions, I, so to speak, do not
see him. I have always taken it for granted that mediocrities, as well
as men of merit, had a nose, a mouth, eyes; but I have never, in their
case, been able to fix the particular shape of these features in my
memory. I am constantly inquiring the name of strangers whom I see
every day, and as constantly forgetting them; and yet, I do not despise
them, only I consort but little with them, treating them as constant
quantities. I honour them, for the world is made up of them; but they
weary me profoundly.
What completed my disgust was the mediocrity and monotony of the
parliamentary events of that period, as well as the triviality of the
passions and the vulgar perversity of the men who pretended to cause or
to guide them.
I have sometimes thought that, though the habits of different societies
may differ, the morality of the politicians at the head of affairs is
everywhere the same. What is very certain is that, in France, all the
party leaders whom I have met in my time have, with few exceptions,
appeared to me to be equally unworthy of holding office, some because of
their lack of personal character or of real parts, most by their lack of
any sort of virtue. I thus experienced as great a difficulty in joining
with others as in being satisfied with myself, in obeying as in acting
on my own initiative.
But that which most tormented and depressed me during the nine years I
had spent in business, and which to this day remains my most hideous
memory of that time, is the incessant uncertainty in which I had to live
as to the best daily course to adopt. I am inclined to think that my
uncertainty of character arises rather from a want of clearness of idea
than from any weakness of heart, and that I never experienced either
hesitation or difficulty in following the most rugged road, when once I
clearly saw where it would lead me. But amid all these little dynastic
parties, differing so little in aim, and resembling one another so much
in the bad methods which they put into practice, which was the
thoroughfare that led visibly to honour, or even to utility? Where lay
truth? Where falsehood? On which side were the rogues? On which side the
honest men? I was never, at that time, fully able to distinguish it, and
I declare that even now I should not well be able to do so. Most party
men allow themselves to be neither distressed nor unnerved by doubts of
this kind; many even have never known them, or know them no longer. They
are often accused of acting without conviction; but my experience has
proved that this was much less frequently the case than one might think.
Only they possess the precious and sometimes, in politics, even
necessary faculty of creating transient convictions for themselves,
according to the passions and interests of the moment, and thus they
succeed in committing, honourably enough, actions which in themselves
are little to their credit. Unfortunately, I could never bring myself to
illuminate my intelligence with these special and artificial lights, nor
so readily to convince myself that my own advantage was one and the same
with the general good.
It was this parliamentary world, in which I had suffered all the
wretchedness that I have just described, which was broken up by the
Revolution; it had mingled and confounded the old parties in one common
ruin, deposed their leaders, and destroyed their traditions and
discipline. There had issued from this, it was true, a disordered and
confused state of society, but one in which ability became less
necessary and less highly rated than courage and disinterestedness; in
which personal character was more important than elocution or the art of
leadership; but, above all, in which there was no field left for
vacillation of mind: on this side lay the salvation of the country; on
that, its destruction. There was no longer any mistake possible as to
the road to follow; we were to walk in broad daylight, supported and
encouraged by the crowd. The road seemed dangerous, it is true, but my
mind is so constructed that it is less afraid of danger than of doubt. I
felt, moreover, that I was still in the prime of life, that I had few
needs, and, above all, that I was able to find at home the support, so
rare and precious in times of revolution, of a devoted wife, whom a firm
and penetrating mind and a naturally lofty soul would easily maintain at
the level of every situation and above every reverse.
I therefore determined to plunge boldly into the arena, and in defence,
not of any particular government, but of the laws which constitute
society itself, to risk my fortune, my person, and my peace of mind. The
first thing was to secure my election, and I left speedily for Normandy
in order to put myself before the electors.