MY RELATIONS WITH LAMARTINE--HIS SUBTERFUGES
Lamartine was now at the climax of his fame: to all those whom the
Revolution had injured or alarmed, that is to say, to the great majority
of the nation, he appeared in the light of a saviour. He had been
elected to the Assembly by the city of Paris and no fewer than eleven
departments; I do not believe that ever anybody inspired such keen
transports as those to which he was then giving rise; one must have seen
love thus stimulated by fear to know with what excess of idolatry men
are capable of loving. The transcendental favour which was shown him at
this time was not to be compared with anything except, perhaps, the
excessive injustice which he shortly afterwards received. All the
deputies who came to Paris with the desire to put down the excesses of
the Revolution and to combat the demagogic party regarded him beforehand
as their only possible leader, and looked to him unhesitatingly to place
himself at their head to attack and overthrow the Socialists and
demagogues. They soon discovered that they were deceived, and that
Lamartine did not see the part he was called upon to play in so simple
a light. It must be confessed that his was a very complex and difficult
position. It was forgotten at the time, but he could not himself forget,
that he had contributed more than any other to the success of the
Revolution of February. Terror effaced this remembrance for the moment
from the public mind; but a general feeling of security could not fail
soon to restore it. It was easy to foresee that, so soon as the current
which had brought affairs to their present pitch was arrested, a
contrary current would set in, which would impel the nation in the
opposite direction, and drive it faster and further than Lamartine could
or would go. The success of the Montagnards would involve his immediate
ruin; but their complete defeat would render him useless and must,
sooner or later, remove the government from his hands. He saw,
therefore, that for him there was almost as much danger and loss in
triumph as in defeat.
As a matter of fact, I believe that, if Lamartine had resolutely, from
the first, placed himself at the head of the immense party which desired
to moderate and regulate the course of the Revolution, and had succeeded
in leading it to victory, he would before long have been buried beneath
his own triumph; he would not have been able to stop his army in time,
and it would have left him behind and chosen other leaders.
I doubt whether, whatever line of conduct he had adopted, he could have
retained his power for long. I believe his only remaining chance was to
be gloriously defeated while saving his country. But Lamartine was the
last man to sacrifice himself in this way. I do not know that I have
ever, in this world of selfishness and ambition in which I lived, met a
mind so void of any thought of the public welfare as his. I have seen a
crowd of men disturbing the country in order to raise themselves: that
is an everyday perversity; but he is the only one who seemed to me
always ready to turn the world upside down in order to divert himself.
Neither have I ever known a mind less sincere, nor one that had a more
thorough contempt for the truth. When I say he despised it, I am wrong:
he did not honour it enough to heed it in any way whatever. When
speaking or writing, he spoke the truth or lied, without caring which he
did, occupied only with the effect he wished to produce at the moment.
I had not seen Lamartine since the 24th of February. I saw him the first
time on the day before the opening of the Assembly in the new house,
where I had gone to choose my seat, but I did not speak to him; he was
surrounded by some of his new friends. The instant he saw me, he
pretended some business at the other end of the house, and hurried away
as fast as he could. He sent me word afterwards by Champeaux (who
belonged to him, half as a friend and half as a servant) that I must not
take it ill of him that he avoided me; that his position obliged him to
act in this way towards the members of the late parliament; that my
place was, of course, marked out among the future leaders of the
Republic; but that we must wait till the first temporary difficulties
were surmounted before coming to an agreement. Champeaux also declared
that he was instructed to ask my opinion on the state of business; I
gave it him very readily, but to very little purpose. This established
certain indirect relations between Lamartine and myself through the
intermediary of Champeaux. The latter often came to see me, to inform
me, on behalf of his patron, of the arrangements that were being
prepared; and I sometimes went to see him in a little room he had hired
on the top floor of a house in the Rue Saint-Honore, where he used to
receive suspicious visitors, although he had a complete set of rooms at
the Foreign Office.
I usually found him overwhelmed with place-hunters; for in France
political mendicancy exists under every form of government. It even
increases through the very revolutions that are directed against it,
because all revolutions ruin a certain number of men, and with us a
ruined man always looks to the State to repair his fortunes. They were
of all kinds, all attracted by the reflection of power which Lamartine's
friendship very transiently cast over Champeaux. I remember among others
a certain cook, not particularly distinguished in his calling, as far as
I could see, who insisted upon entering the service of Lamartine, who
had, he said, become President of the Republic.
"But he's not President yet!" cried Champeaux.
"If he's not so yet, as you say," said the man, "he's going to be, and
he must already be thinking of his kitchen."
In order to rid himself of this scullion's obstinate ambition, Champeaux
promised to bring his name before Lamartine so soon as the latter should
be President of the Republic. The poor man went away quite satisfied,
dreaming no doubt of the very imaginary splendours of his approaching
condition.
I frequented Champeaux pretty assiduously during that time, although he
was exceedingly vain, loquacious, and tedious, because, in talking with
him, I became better acquainted with Lamartine's thoughts and projects
than if I had been talking to the great man himself. Lamartine's
intelligence was seen through Champeaux' folly as you see the sun
through a smoked glass, which shows you the luminary deprived of its
heat-rays, but less dazzling to the eye. I easily gathered that in this
world every one was feeding on pretty well the same chimeras as the cook
of whom I have just spoken, and that Lamartine already tasted at the
bottom of his heart the sweets of that sovereign power which was
nevertheless at that very moment escaping from his hands. He was then
following the tortuous road that was so soon to lead him to his ruin,
struggling to dominate the Mountain without overthrowing it, and to
slacken the revolutionary fire without extinguishing it, so as to give
the country a feeling of security strong enough for it to bless him, not
strong enough to cause it to forget him. What he dreaded above all was
that the conduct of the Assembly should be allowed to fall into the
hands of the former parliamentary leaders. This was, I believe, at the
time his dominant passion. One could see this during the great
discussion on the constitution of the Executive Power; never did the
different parties display more visibly the pedantic hypocrisy which
induces them to conceal their interests beneath their ideas: an ordinary
spectacle enough, but more striking at this time than usual, because the
needs of the moment compelled each party to shelter itself behind
theories which were foreign or even opposed to it. The old royalist
party maintained that the Assembly itself should govern and choose its
ministers: a theory that was almost demagogic; and the demagogues
declared that the Executive Power should be entrusted to a permanent
commission, which should govern and select all the agents of the
government: a system that approached the monarchic idea. All this
verbiage only meant that one side wished to remove Ledru-Rollin from
power, and the other to keep him there.
The nation saw in Ledru-Rollin the bloody image of the Terror; it beheld
in him the genius of evil as in Lamartine the genius of good, and it was
mistaken in both cases. Ledru-Rollin was nothing more than a very
sensual and sanguine heavy fellow, quite without principles and almost
without brains, possessing no real courage of mind or heart, and even
free from malice: for he naturally wished well to all the world, and was
incapable of cutting the throats of any one of his adversaries, except,
perhaps, for the sake of historical reminiscences, or to accommodate his
friends.
The result of the debate remained long doubtful: Barrot turned it
against us by making a very fine speech in our favour. I have witnessed
many of these unforeseen incidents in parliamentary life, and have seen
parties constantly deceived in the same way, because they always think
only of the pleasure they themselves derive from their great orator's
words, and never of the dangerous excitement he promotes in their
opponents.
When Lamartine, who till then had kept silent and remained, I believe,
in indecision, heard, for the first time since February, the voice of
the ex-leader of the Left resounding with brilliancy and success, he
suddenly made up his mind, and spoke. "You understand," said Champeaux
to me the next day, "that before all it was necessary to prevent the
Assembly from coming to a resolution upon Barrot's advice." So Lamartine
spoke, and, according to his custom, spoke in brilliant fashion.
The majority, who had already adopted the course that Barrot had urged
upon them, wheeled round as they listened to him (for this Assembly was
more credulous and more submissive than any that I had ever seen to the
wiles of eloquence: it was novice and innocent enough to seek for
reasons for their decisions in the speeches of the orators). Thus
Lamartine won his cause, but missed his fortune; for he that day gave
rise to the mistrust which soon arose and hurled him from his pinnacle
of popularity more quickly than he had mounted it. Suspicion took a
definite form the very next day, when he was seen to patronize
Ledru-Rollin and force the hand of his own friends in order to induce
them to appoint the latter as his colleague on the Executive Commission.
At this sight there arose in the Assembly and in the nation
inexpressible disappointment, terror and rage. For my part, I
experienced these two last emotions in the highest degree; I clearly
perceived that Lamartine was turning out of the high-road that led us
away from anarchy, and I could not guess into what abyss he might lead
us if we followed the byways which he was treading. How was it possible,
indeed, to foresee how far an always exuberant imagination might go,
unrestrained by reason or virtue? Lamartine's common-sense impressed me
no more than did his disinterestedness; and, in fact, I believed him
capable of everything except cowardly behaviour or vulgar oratory.
I confess that the events of June to a certain extent modified the
opinion I had formed of his manner of proceeding. They showed that our
adversaries were more numerous, better organized and, above all, more
determined than I had thought.
Lamartine, who had seen nothing but Paris during the last two months,
and who had there, so to speak, lived in the very heart of the
revolutionary party, exaggerated the power of the Capital and the
inactivity of the rest of France. He over-estimated both. But I am not
sure that I, on my side, did not strain a point on the other side. The
road we ought to follow seemed to me so clearly and visibly traced that
I would not admit the possibility of deviating from it by mistake; it
seemed obvious to me that we should hasten to profit by the moral force
possessed by the Assembly in order to escape from the hands of the
people, seize upon the government, and by a great effort establish it
upon a solid basis. Every delay seemed to me calculated to diminish our
power, and to strengthen the hand of our adversaries.
It was, in fact, during the six months that elapsed between the opening
of the Assembly and the events of June that the Paris workmen grew bold,
and took courage to resist, organized themselves, procured both arms and
ammunition, and made their final preparations for the struggle. In any
case, I am led to believe that it was Lamartine's tergiversations and
his semi-connivance with the enemy that saved us, while it ruined him.
Their effect was to amuse the leaders of the Mountain, and to divide
them. The Montagnards of the old school, who were retained in the
Government, separated themselves from the Socialists, who were excluded
from it. Had all been united by a common interest, and impelled by
common despair before our victory, as they became since, it is doubtful
whether that victory would have been won. When I consider that we were
almost effaced, although we were opposed only by the revolutionary party
without its leaders, I ask myself what the result of the contest would
have been if those leaders had come forward, and if the insurrection had
been supported by a third of the National Assembly.
Lamartine saw these dangers more closely and clearly than I, and I
believe to-day that the fear of arousing a mortal conflict influenced
his conduct as much as did his ambition. I might have formed this
opinion at the time had I listened to Madame de Lamartine, whose alarm
for the safety of her husband, and even of the Assembly, amounted to
extravagance. "Beware," she said to me, each time she met me, "beware of
pushing things to extremes; you do not know the strength of the
revolutionary party. If we enter into conflict with it, we shall
perish." I have often reproached myself for not cultivating Madame de
Lamartine's acquaintance, for I have always found her to possess real
virtue, although she added to it almost all the faults which can cling
to virtue, and which, without impairing it, render it less lovable: an
imperious temper, great personal pride, an upright but unyielding, and
sometimes bitter, spirit; so much so that it was impossible not to
respect her, and impossible to like her.