would end it in an emphatic manner impossible to describe, and with an
outburst of inimitable pride:
“And when Larrey needed me no longer, I fought on my own account,
joining the Grenadiers’ Guards, and I was always the _last_ to fight
and the _first_ to run.”
Then I would clap my hands and cry: “Bravo, grandfather!” and he would
understand by that that he had made a mistake.
IX
LEARNING TO BE BRAVE
If my grandmother, who was not a learned person, and who acquired much
knowledge in educating me, wished to make me learned, my grandfather,
who as a general rule was lacking in courage, wished me to become a
brave woman.
Early on Sunday mornings, before going to high mass with my
schoolmates, he would take me with him to the Hospital. I was a friend
of Sister Victoire, who used to aid my grandfather in his dressing of
wounds and his operations. Both of them were forming me to look on
human misery, they said.
I often assisted at small operations, and grandfather promised that
when, by my good behaviour, I was worthy of it, I should be present at
more important ones.
He showed me what he called “fine” wounds. Sister Victoire often taught
me, especially if she were dressing a child’s wound, how to roll
and place a bandage. When I was seven years old I knew a good many
things about surgery, and could be of some help to Sister Victoire and
grandfather. I could prepare an arm for bleeding; I learned how to
bleed, myself, and how to bandage an arm after the operation, and this
was most important, for, in those days, bleeding was an important part
of medical practice.
During the summer grandfather would often bleed people in the courtyard
of our house, near the garden, under a lilac tree of which I was very
fond, and whose perfume when in flower intoxicated me. It was not a
shrub but a real tree, affording shade.
People used to come and, without giving any explanation or asking for a
consultation, say simply: “I have come to be bled,” and they were bled
on the spot.
I was sent to fetch the lancet, basin, and bandages. I held the basin,
and, when the operation was over, I dug a hole at the foot of my lilac
tree, and poured in the blood. Perhaps that was the reason why it was
so beautiful, and why the flowers were so plentiful and sweet.
Grandmother could not look at a drop of blood. Had she been obliged to
witness a simple bleeding, she would have fainted.
Grandfather would keep saying all the while to her: “I am making a
brave woman of your grandchild. She, at least, is not afraid of a few
drops of blood. The only thing she needs now is to love war, renown,
and the Emperor.”
“And to be as brave as you are,” grandmother would add. “I am afraid
of the sight of blood,” she said, “but if France were again invaded, I
feel that I should fear neither Prussians nor English.”
Although grandmother would laugh at grandfather’s want of courage, she
was very pleased that I was not afraid at the sight of blood, and she
often thanked him for having kept me from this weakness. My schoolmates
thought more highly of me for my courage, and sugar-plums had, in this
instance, nothing to do with their estimation of me.
In the little school-world, and even in the town, some traits of my
courage were told; among others this rather ghastly one:
A notary of Chauny had some time before committed suicide, and his
body had been given to my grandfather, who had asked for it. He had a
very fine skeleton made from it, which was kept in the garret, and was
called “the notary.” Arthémise was dreadfully afraid of it. I knew the
“notary” very well, being always prowling about the garret to hunt for
the place where grandfather hid his money, which I always found. I was
passionately fond of this special kind of hunting. When I had found
the money, I changed the hiding-place, and would tease grandfather for
days by not letting him know where I had hidden it, and defying him to
find any hiding-place that would be secret from me.
When at last I told him where the money was, I deducted, according to
the sum, a small percentage for my sugar-plums.
I used then to tell grandmother (when grandfather did not tell her
himself, for there was never the slightest discussion about money
matters between them), I used to tell her the adventure, which would
greatly amuse her.
“Only,” she would say, “do not take any money from what you find. I do
not think it is nice. Whenever you want money for your sugar-plums, ask
me for it.”
“No,” I replied, “with grandfather I earn it.” And I really thought I
had earned the money by all the trouble I had taken.
I always fancied that the “notary,” whose horrid history I learned
only long afterwards, helped me to find grandfather’s money, and
consequently I considered the skeleton my friend. So it did not strike
me as unusual when, one summer evening, while some neighbours were
enjoying the cool air with us in our moonlit garden, my grandfather
should have told me to go and fetch the “notary” from the garret,
which, by the way, he would not have done himself.
Grandmother nodded approvingly, delighted at the idea that I was about
to do something extraordinary, which would the next day electrify the
town. She looked at me with her bright eyes and her red-gold hair
shining in the moonlight. She was dressed in white, her favourite
colour for herself and for me, and wore a large bunch of lilacs I had
pinned on her bosom.
“Shall I go?” I asked her in a low tone. “They will be frightened--they
do not know what the ‘notary’ is.”
“Yes, go,” she said, laughing.
I went up to the garret to fetch the “notary.”
He was very large, and I was very small. I put his head under my left
arm, and with my right hand took hold of the banister. The moon was
shining through the window. I can still hear the noise his bones made
as they rattled on the stairs behind me.
I entered the garden, and threw the “notary” on grandfather’s knees.
There was a general scream. The children shrieked, and hid their heads
in their mothers’ laps. The mothers cried: “Oh! what a horrible thing!
It is frightful! Monsieur Seron, take it away!”
Grandfather enjoyed the joke, and laughed with all his might. One woman
fainted, and, while grandmother was throwing water on her face, he took
the “notary” and placed it at the foot of the stairs. He did not dare
to take it up himself.
We found this out afterwards, because Arthémise, coming into the room
which I shared with grandmother, when we had gone to bed, cried out:
“Madame, Mam’zelle, the ‘notary’ has got downstairs alone. He is at the
foot of the staircase!”
Grandfather was obliged to get up and put it back in the garret, but he
made Arthémise go with him carrying a light.
My grandfather--who would believe it?--had very poetical tastes and
was fond of pigeons. We had hundreds of them, and he had made me share
his passion for these pets, and every day after breakfast he and I
would feed them. They flew all about us, just as later in life I have
seen them do on the Piazza di San Marco at Venice. We slipped on large
linen blouses with hoods, and the pigeons would cover us entirely, head
and shoulders, arms and hands. They clung to us and picked at us. The
flutter of their wings and their cooing delighted me, and seemed like
music. When we moved, they followed us with their pretty, mincing steps.
Grandfather and I were very fond of our pigeons, but grandmother,
finding that they multiplied too fast, had the young ones taken from
their nests, while we were absent, by a man who sold them, which
grieved us very much. I heard of it through a little schoolmate, whose
mother had bought some, and who told me one day that she had eaten some
of my pigeons.
I scolded grandmother, who asked me if I would rather have eaten them
myself.
“Most certainly not!”
Grandfather calmed me by saying that we could not possibly keep all
that were born, and that grandmother did quite right, provided she
would only take the young ones, and leave us the fathers and mothers.
She promised this, and kept her word, and the old ones became more and
more tame.
X
A THREE WEEKS’ VISIT
On October 4th, when I was eight years old, my father obtained
grandmother’s approval to take me to Blérancourt for a three weeks’
visit, until All Saints’ Day, for she felt sure of having directed
my ideas according to her way of thinking by that time. We had never
before been separated for so long, and were much grieved--I less than I
thought I should be, and she more than I feared.
My father loved me so tenderly, so passionately, he took so much
trouble with a few words, spoken here and there, to make his ideas
interesting to me; he treated me so like a woman, desiring, I could
feel, to overcome the repugnance with which my grandmother had inspired
me concerning his democratic, Jacobite, free-masonic, anti-religious
opinions--“without God, oh, heavens!”--which, like a spoiled child, I
had often expressed to him, that this journey with him seemed to me a
most serious thing. I fancied that his companionship during the next
three weeks would do more toward drawing me to him, and taking me from
grandmother, than absence itself.
“Jean Louis,” said my grandmother to him, after kissing him warmly, as
he got into the carriage where I was already seated, “bring her back to
me the same as I give her to you. You owe it to me!”
We were starting. My father answered, laughing:
“I do not promise any such thing.”
I heard grandmother cry out:
“Juliette, stay!”
A strong cut of the whip started the horse.
I did not turn back my head, but burst into tears. My father did not
attempt to console me, as my grandmother would have done. She could
never bear to see me cry.
He kissed me violently, repeating: “My daughter, my child, my own--at
last, at last!”
* * * * *
My mother welcomed me in her usual cold manner. My father’s growing
passion for me, to which he now freely abandoned himself, grandmother’s
absence removing all restraint, seemed to her exaggerated.
“It would seem as if your child were a divinity on earth,” she said to
him one day before me.
“Better than that; she is my daughter!” answered my father, and added,
laughing: “I should not be far amiss in thinking her a daughter of
Olympus.”
My mother detested witty sayings, which she classed in the same
category with teasings, and this pun on her name did not please her.
Ever since my father’s sojourn at Brussels, she called him nothing but
Monsieur Lamber, although she still used the familiar _thou_.
“Oh! Monsieur Lamber, your speech is in very bad taste,” she answered.
On the contrary, it seemed to me very clear, and I often laughingly
repeated it to father when he was instructing me about Greece. He had
found my mind open to antique subjects, and I would say to him:
“Am I not the daughter of Olympus?”
My father would always take me with him on foot, on his visits round
about to his patients. He taught me to drive his rather spirited horse,
and we would drive in his two-seated carriage over good or bad roads to
see the rich and the poor, especially the latter.
I told him of my studies in history, and of grandmother’s opinions,
which I shared.
“See, child,” he said to me, “you and your grandmother have every
reason to admire Louis XI. and Louis XIII., because you both think
that under their reigns the nobles were cast down; whereas, they
only changed their own condition _vis-à-vis_ to royalty. They became
courtiers; they were domesticated by the kings, but they remained much
as they were towards the bourgeoisie and the people; they kept the same
distance between themselves and their inferiors as the sovereigns had
kept with them. Before the Revolution equality did not exist anywhere.
That alone began the great work. Let me tell you of Saint-Just, whom,
of all the makers of the Revolution, I understand the best. He is to
me a friend known and lost. I will take you to see his sister, and
you will see how sweet and charming she is. You will amuse her. She
speaks so affectionately of her brother that he, my Saint-Just, will
cease to be to you the beheader and monster that your grandparents have
represented.”
“Oh! papa, I shall never be, like you, the friend of that dreadful
Saint-Just, or that horrible Robespierre--never!”
“Don’t be too sure. You have as yet heard only one side of the
question. You hate all injustice, you love the poor and the humble
people; you will therefore absolve those who have emancipated them,
even at the cost of violence. You see, there is no moderation in
politics. They are like a swing,” he said with a smile. “You are thrown
twice up to the extreme heights, and you pass the middle line only once
out of three times.”
“Well, papa, I am for the middle place--the middle, above all. Like
grandmother, I hate extremes.”
“Juliette, you are not serious?”
“But, papa, you began while smiling in your talk about the swing.”
“Well, I am sorry, and I wish to tell you, once for all, that the great
Revolution itself has not done sufficient work.”
“Oh! papa, for shame!”
“No. Listen to me. The nobles had oppressed the people--you know in
what manner, you know all about it, for you speak as one well informed.
Your grandmother and you judge the ‘great ones,’ as they should be
judged. But that is not everything; you must not stop on the road.
Since the nobles have been cast down, other oppressors have sprung
up, just as hard, just as tyrannical, to the poor and humble ones as
the former were, and these are neither as valiant nor as fine as were
the feudal lords, the knights of chivalry. The ‘great ones’ of to-day
belong to the upper bourgeoise class. We require a second Louis XI.,
a second Richelieu, and another Revolution, to destroy this new feudal
system. We have found the new formula, my child, to open, at last, the
reign of absolute justice, and we shall achieve it by a Republic, and
by the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. There will be
no colossal fortunes on one side and complete misery on the other.
Suffering and justice will be equitably distributed.”
“That will be a magnificent time, papa, but will it ever come to pass?”
I had been so often told that my father was an absurd and dangerous
dreamer that I was doubtful of the perspicacity of his judgment; and
still his words sank into my heart, because I found them generous and
tender towards the unhappy ones of the earth.
It is easy to explain the fascination such simple theories would have
for a child’s mind. Such conversation made a deep impression. My father
was of the type of those who were called later on “the old beards of
1848.” An idealist, without any notion of the probabilities of reality,
my father thought that his political conceptions were absolute truths.
As sentimental and as romantic as was my grandmother, he fostered
illusions about political life resembling those which she fostered
about individual life.
However, some of his conceptions seemed sublime to me in my childhood.
My father gave a place to nature in all that he said to me, for he
sermonised me continually. The doctrine of Christ, which had given the
formulas of liberty, equality, and fraternity, was mingled in his mind
with an exuberant, poetical paganism, and this amalgamation furnished
his discourses with pompous arguments on charity, on the laws of social
sacrifice, and on the divine attributes of human heroism. My childish
imagination, already initiated in researches for what grandmother
called “superior things,” was dazzled and fascinated by degrees.
My father’s professional ability served marvellously well in placing
all things of which he spoke within my mind’s reach. He simplified
questions to such a degree that he succeeded in leading me to converse
with him, and in making me feel that he took an extreme pleasure in our
conversations.
This made me very proud. He was prudent in all that he said to me:
“I do not say this to influence you; you are still too young for me
to enforce any ideas upon you; I will teach you later,” etc., etc. I
listened to admirable sonorous phrases, but could not judge of the
gaps in their practical demonstrations, or of the possibility of the
application of his ideas. I was touched by his devotedness to the
suffering classes, of whom he often spoke.
I had, however, an instinctive feeling that the violence of my father’s
character, of which he gave too frequent proofs, might make him, like
his friend Saint-Just, cruel towards the fortunate ones of this world,
as his good heart made him kind to the unhappy. And I wished to know
whether I had guessed rightly. It was a hidden place in his heart to
discover.
“I agree, after all, that your Saint-Just loved the humble and poor as
much as you do,” I said to my father one day, “but you cannot prove to
me that he was not cruel, that he did not kill.”
He answered:
“Action changes a man’s nature; you must judge Saint-Just from his
intentions.”
“Hell is paved with them, papa,” I said.
I had discovered what I wished to know.
“In spite of what your grandmother says,” he added, “I do not love
Robespierre, because he was born a Jacobin. One should not be born a
Jacobin. A person may become one, but it is necessary first of all
to have been a humanitarian. Ferocity is permissible only to defend
one’s principles, or one’s country when it is in danger. In order to
legitimatise it, there must be provocation.”
He had told me about the leaves of the sensitive plant, and, when he
said something which displeased me, I would reply:
“Enough, papa, I fold myself up!” Then he would call me sensitive, and
we would cease talking.
Sometimes it seemed to me that he actually probed in my brain as with a
red-hot poker, as grandmother, also, too often did. I felt great pain
in my temples, and would say:
“I can’t listen to you any longer. I feel ill.”
My father took a great journal, _La Democratie Pacifique_ of
Victor Considérant, to which he was one of the first subscribers.
My grandmother did not read newspapers. She heard the news from
grandfather, who read the _Gazettes_ at his club. I thought my father
admirable because he read four great pages every day, and knew at
Blérancourt everything that was taking place in the whole world.
Later, in recalling what I had suffered in my childhood and the first
years of my youth, I remembered that at that time it seemed to me that
the “walls” of my brain were too light to support the pressure of the
mass of ideas which my father and grandmother strove alternately to
force between them. I felt these “walls” tremble at times and threaten
to fall in.
I often played with the chemist’s daughter, Emilienne Decaisne,
great-niece of Saint-Just. I thought her kind and charming, but my
father said she was not sufficiently proud of her great-uncle. He
often made his friend Decaisne angry--“the too lukewarm nephew of
Saint-Just,” as he called him.
I went one day to see Saint-Just’s sister, Madame Decaisne, the
chemist’s mother, and Emilienne’s grandmother. She lived at the extreme
end of that beautiful quarter of Blérancourt called the Marais, where
the lines of plane-trees perfumed the place in the spring, and where
the ruins of the Louis XIV. château are so fine. Madame Decaisne
inhabited a well-preserved house of the eighteenth century, looking on
a garden, surrounded by high walls.
She was a very old lady of extreme elegance, tall and slight, dressed
in the antique fashion. She made pretty curtsies, and raised her gown
with her two hands very gracefully when she walked in the garden, and,
as my father said, seemed always about to dance the minuet.
In her large drawing-room, furnished with Louis XV. and Louis XVI.
furniture, which my grandmother had taught me to discern and to admire,
and which my father thought old-fashioned and horrible, as he cared
only for modern furniture--the furniture of “progress” made of mahogany
and ebony--Madame Decaisne seemed to me like an apparition.
There lived with her in her house (although her son did not like it,
my father told me before we went in) an old friend, the Chevalier de
Saint-Louis, dressed also in old-time fashion, who was called simply
“Monsieur le Chevalier.”
Madame Decaisne and the Chevalier had both remained thorough Royalists
and Legitimists, detesting the “Egalité branch,” but faithful to the
memory of Saint-Just, of whom the Chevalier had been the friend. “In
spite of the crimes they had made him commit,” said Madame Decaisne,
“she and the Chevalier had not ceased to love him.”
The Chevalier amused me very much because he glided and skipped over
the waxed floors, and kissed Madame Decaisne’s hand when he left her
only for an instant. He spoke of Saint-Just with affection.
“Monsieur le Chevalier,” my father said, “is it not true that
Saint-Just still strikes you as having been, above all, a humanitarian
and a poet?”
“Yes,” he replied, and added: “Besides, he, who was so intelligent, so
superior, so full of hope for the great future, expiated his errors by
his death. One should have seen him in the political storm to be able
to understand how so good and so noble, but too fanatical, a man could
at certain moments have thought that ‘blood was necessary.’”
The “necessary blood” remained in my mind after I heard the Chevalier
use the phrase.
I spoke to grandmother about it on my return to Chauny, and she was not
as indignant as I supposed she would be.
“When the kings protected the people from the nobles, they caused
necessary blood to be shed,” she said to me, “and the kings grew
greater in spite of their crimes. If the men of the Revolution had shed
only the enemy’s blood at the frontiers, and that of traitors--of which
there were a few like the Messieurs de Sainte-Aldegonde, who during the
invasion called the invaders of France, ‘Our friends, the enemies’--if,
I say, the men of the Revolution had not killed for the desire of so
doing, they would have been absolved, but they sacrificed innocent
persons to their ferocity, and they will never be forgiven. Your father
is one of those who, like Saint-Just, wishes to purify society more
and more, after having shed ‘necessary blood.’ He is one of those
humanitarian Jacobins, people more cruel than the wickedest, who think
they have the right to be implacable under the pretext that they have
been tender-hearted in their youth.”
But, to return to Saint-Just’s sister: She took a fancy to me. Living
with my grandparents, whom I still considered young, I adored old
people. Madame Decaisne one day read to me some of Saint-Just’s poetry.
It was about a little shepherd leading his flock to pasture, and the
unhappiness of roses because they had thorns. She threw so much feeling
into the reading that I shed tears, and thereby won her heart and that
of the Chevalier.
XI
A PAINFUL RETURN HOME
The three weeks passed so quickly that I had written very seldom to my
grandmother, not daring to speak to her about the conversations with my
father, or of the impression they had made upon me. I said to myself
it would be better to make my confession slowly. In like manner, as my
father had enlightened me with regard to his ideas, I would enlighten
my grandmother concerning mine. Moreover, I had not been converted.
Saint-Just’s ferocity was absolved, for reasons I could not quite
remember; my father, so good, so benevolent, was capable of becoming
cruel after “provocation”--I remembered that word--all this aroused a
great revolt in me, and overthrew my first enthusiasm.
There had been several “family dramas” on my account. I occupied too
large a place in my father’s life, and my mother could not overcome
that unfortunate jealousy which caused us all so much sorrow.