the parsonage. Grandfather had said that Monseigneur de Garsignies had
been a former cavalry officer, and grandmother had added that he had
had a very adventurous, romantic life. My grandparents’ remarks about
him at table took away all my fear of him.
I repeated my address, smiling and looking at him unembarrassed. He
smiled, too, and kissed me.
At the church, during the ceremony of confirmation, when I kissed the
paten and Monseigneur approached his fingers to my face, Maribert’s
influence suddenly took possession of me again, and I said, without
being conscious of the words I pronounced, words which froze with
horror my schoolmates, kneeling near me, and which made Maribert laugh:
“Lightly, Monseigneur, I beg of you!”
He tapped my cheek harder than he tapped those of my schoolmates.
Why did I say it? I do not know, but I felt that I had resisted a
diabolical desire to say something worse. The sacred gesture suddenly
seemed to me like a slap in my face. Maribert was kneeling at a short
distance from me. Was it her wicked spirit which had inspired me with
this act of revolt?
The dean called me to the sacristy after the confirmation, and scolded
me in a severe but fatherly manner, and gave me a penance to perform.
A few years afterwards, at an evening party given at Soissons, where I
had arrived as a young bride, Monseigneur de Garsignies, as I entered
the room and bowed to him, exclaimed:
“The little girl whom I confirmed!”
XXVII
WE DISCUSS FRENCH LITERATURE
The school-house in our old garden had been built during the summer
months. It was now being finished with all possible haste. The school
was to be reopened in October in the new building. One could see the
odious structure above the high wall, for which I felt a violent
hatred. In the evening large fires were lit in it, which I could see
from the hall leading to my room on the first story, and they looked to
me like the mouth of the infernal regions.
I continually declared that I would never, never, go to that school,
and it was in vain that grandmother and my mother, at the family dinner
given on the day of my first communion, endeavoured to make me promise
I would go to the new school in October. My father was not present
at the dinner, for he disapproved of, although he submitted to, what
he called the continuation of my baptism. I literally lost my head
when I thought that I might be obliged to repeat my lessons over the
destroyed ground of my garden, or play over the place where my “temple
of verdure” had been. Grandmother was distressed at my obstinacy,
and perhaps was even more irritated by it. Our affection suffered
from all this, and we hurt each other’s feelings often in spite of
the deep love we bore each other. I took no more interest in my dear
grandparents’ happiness; I stood between them no longer; I kept silence
when a discussion arose; the impersonal pronouns were frequently used
again. Blondeau was sad over my grief, and I was all the more unhappy
because Maribert excited ill-feeling against me at school, keeping up a
relentless fight. There were two hostile camps. The girls were either
on her side or on mine. Her party was full of activity, tormenting us,
playing us all manner of bad tricks; mine resisted indolently, because
I, their head, was discouraged, and worked no longer. I was constantly
scolded and punished. I became ill-tempered, I, whom my companions had
loved until then especially on account of my good-humour. I could no
longer, as formerly, bring them fruit from my garden. The sugar-plums
were a thing of the past; in a word, I was undone and did not care for
anything.
My visit to my aunts at Chivres, where I recovered a little serenity,
was shorter than usual that year. My vacation was to be no longer than
that given by the school, and my father claimed his share of it. I had
hardly finished the story of my journey, day by day, to my aunts, I had
scarcely told all about my first communion, when I should have been
obliged to leave, had I not obtained a prolongation of my stay for a
month more, by writing to my father imploring him to keep me when the
school opened in October, and to spare me the grief of going into the
new building at that time.
Aunt Sophie scolded me a great deal for my laziness and negligence
regarding the study of Latin. But she accepted my excuses, and I began
again to work with good will.
I found my aunts much excited over politics. They read _Le National_,
and all three, as well as my great-grandmother, were Liberals. They
talked continually of Odilon Barrot, and with the greatest respect for
him. They had their individual opinions about each member of the royal
family. They mourned the death of the Duke of Orléans; loved the Duke
d’Aumale and the Prince de Joinville; esteemed Queen Amélie, but judged
King Louis Philippe severely, and raised their arms to heaven when
speaking of the corruption of the times. If they had been less afraid
of the revolution, they would have dethroned the King, proclaimed the
Duchess of Orléans as the Regent, and prepared the reign of the little
Count of Paris, with Odilon Barrot as President of the Council.
My aunts considered Odilon Barrot “the model representative.” They were
enthusiastic about the reformist banquets, of which he was at once the
promoter and the hero.
But they were irritated over the “doings” of Ledru-Rollin, Louis
Blanc, and others, who altered the nature and changed the object
of the reformist banquets; they were anxious about Pierre Leroux’s
revolutionary ideas concerning work, and Proudhon’s insane theories
about property. Apropos of these two individuals and their opinions
they would exclaim:
“It is the end of the world!”
When my aunts were discussing these matters, they declared themselves
faithful to “immortal principles.” They were enemies of Napoleon I.,
less, however, than of Jacobites and Socialists, but they could not
forgive him for the entrance of the allies into France, nor for the
terrors of the invasion.
They taught me Auguste Barbier’s famous iambic: “_O Corse à cheveux
plats, que la France étoit belle_,” so that I might repeat it to
grandfather.
“Bonaparte,” my great-grandmother at Chivres said, as my father had
also said, “gave us back France smaller than he took it.”
They were not fond of Béranger, and when I sang his songs which
grandfather had taught me they listened, but made protestations against
the poet and the song. M. Thiers seemed dangerous to them, with his
worship of Napoleon, who Bonapartised the _bourgeoisie_, while Béranger
Bonapartised the people.
“And,” said aunt Sophie, “whatever may be the form of government we
shall have after this of Louis Philippe, authoritative ideas, I am
afraid, will triumph. Liberalism, which can alone save France, which
can give her her political existence, and make her benefit by the
intelligence of her race, seems to exist only in Odilon Barrot’s mind
and in de Lamartine’s writings.”
They read and re-read his _Les Girondins_, and the manner in which they
spoke of it remains ineffaceably in my memory.
“The old provincialism of France must be reawakened, the country must
be governed by a great number of administrative seats; there must be
decentralisation; France must return to the Girondist programme and
struggle against the exclusive influence of the capital, against the
autocracy of new ideas, more oppressing, more tyrannical than the
tyrants themselves”--this was my aunts’ and my great-grandmother’s
political programme, which they made me write out in order to
communicate it to my parents and grandparents.
“You will keep it, Juliette,” aunt Sophie said to me one day, “for
there will come a moment in your life, I am certain, when, after
Jacobite and Bonapartist experiences, after probable revolutions, you
will remember how wise and truly French and nationalist were your old
aunts’ ideas. France should act from her centres of action, and not
revolve like a top, in her capital.”
My aunts had never talked politics together before me so much as during
my vacation in 1847.
“You are wearying that child,” great-grandmother would say, to which
one or the other of her daughters would reply: “She is old enough to
listen and to understand.”
“It will not be useless to you should you have to listen--not with your
ears, but with your mouth yawning--to know what such persons of high
competency as your aunts think of public affairs,” said aunt Constance,
with her habitual mockery. “So listen, Juliette, listen!”
I listened without yawning, for my mind was open to all political
and literary things. My aunts were the personification of that
_bourgeoise_ class, of whom my father spoke, who admitted only
the medium way in social experiments, who cared only for average
impressions--“natures insupportably equibalanced,” he would say.
My aunts found Victor Hugo too sonorous, too resounding for their
calm minds. Aunt Sophie said he was “not sufficiently bucolic.” They
detested Quasimodo’s ugliness, criticised the _Ode à la Colonne
Napoleon II._, which seemed to make Victor Hugo a Bonapartist; they
found his plays too intense, too pompously improbable, too wordily
humanitarian. _Lucrèce Borgia_, _Marie Tudor_, _Les Burgraves_, _Ruy
Blas_, put them out of patience. Their classicalism was revolted. They
blamed his political conduct, too oscillating and too diverse. Aunt
Anastasie implored grace for his _Les Rayons et les Ombres_, in which
she delighted.
They spoke of Mme. George Sand with reserve. I heard more exclamations
than approbation about her novel, _Lélia_, whose pretty name I
remembered, as I had seen the book in grandmother’s hands. But they
liked many of Mme. George Sand’s writings, especially those on peasant
life. _La Petite Fadette_ they considered a chef-d’œuvre.
“We are very _bourgeoise_,” said aunt Sophie, when speaking of Mme.
George Sand, “although our minds are emancipated by liberalism more
than by education, and from regarding public acts more than private
actions. Juliette, remember the name of this writer, George Sand,” she
added. “She will have a great influence on your generation, and you
will certainly be enthusiastic about her when you are of age. No matter
what is said of her, Mme. George Sand has remained very womanly, and
she will never really be understood except by women; but the greater
part of the things she has written, outside of her stories of peasant
life, are suited to younger minds than ours, which she must delight,
and which she certainly reflects. It is easier for us to understand
Mme. de Staël and her _Corinne_.” And my aunts initiated me in the
beauty, so dissimilar, of Mme. de Staël’s _Corinne_ and Mme. George
Sand’s _La Petite Fadette_. I found, to their delight, the two books
equally admirable, though in a different way. It is true they read them
aloud to me, pointing out what I should admire; but my aunts, in spite
of my affection for them, and the great confidence I felt in their
intelligence, would never have made me enthusiastic about them if I had
not myself felt their power.
My grandmother, who adored Balzac, used frequently to read to me long
extracts from his works, which I found tedious. She had finally
renounced trying to make me like her dear, her great, her unique
novel-writer. I sometimes vexed her by saying:
“He is neither Homeric nor Virgilian enough.”
My aunts detested Balzac.
“He is a creator of unwholesome characters,” said aunt Anastasie; “the
heroes of Monsieur de Balzac can easily enter into one’s life and lead
one to live in the same manner in which they live themselves. They
are so real that you think you have known them; they take possession
of me when I read one of his novels. I cannot free my mind of people
whom I do not like, whose acts I blame, and who impose themselves on
my judgment, as an ugly fashion is sometimes imposed on well-dressed
women. I am convinced that Balzac will form even more characters than
those he has painted. I fear that my sister Pélagie acts under his
influence oftener than she is aware. If you let yourself be captured by
that man’s power, he possesses you, and he is an ill-doer who leads you
to doubt, to be sceptical about people and things.”
“Take care, my niece, of Monsieur de Balzac, later in life,” added aunt
Constance, “he is the most dangerous of all writers of the present
day. He will create contemporaries for you, whom I do not envy you;
egoists, people athirst for position. Remember what your old aunt has
said to you--even write it down: Balzac will engender brains, but
never consciences nor hearts. To Balzac, virtue is an imbecility.
_Eugénie Grandet_ and _Le Père Gariot_ revolt me. I do not even make an
exception of the _Lys dans la Vallée_.”
Ah! if grandmother, who was a fanatic about him, had been there, what
passion she would have thrown into those discussions about Monsieur
de Balzac with her sisters. I told my aunts that when I left Chauny
grandmother was reading _Les deux Jeunes Mariées_ for the fifth time.
Aunt Sophie dictated to me a criticism of de Balzac’s works, which I
read to grandmother on my return. She became angry and made me reply
to her sister in her name. I had thus two contradictory lessons on de
Balzac and I remember them both.
De Balzac was a whole world to grandmother. Through him, and with
him, one could exclude the banality of social intercourse from one’s
existence. One lived with his heroes as if they were friends; they were
flesh and blood. One talked with them, saw them; they peopled one’s
existence, they came and visited one.
I wrote pages on pages to aunt Sophie about de Balzac. She replied to
grandmother, and then began a correspondence between the two sisters
on the literature of the day, which was communicated to me whenever it
could be, and which instructed me about many works of the time that
were vibrating with interest.
My aunt and grandmother agreed in disapproving of the writings of
Eugène Suë, who taught the people to hate priests by his portrayal of
the character of Rodin.
Grandmother sought distraction in her readings; aunt Sophie sought
reflection. The one was interested only in lovers’ adventures, the
other in the elegant forms in which thought was clad, in descriptions
of nature, in the philosophy of life. They never understood each other
nor agreed about any work whatever.
XXVIII
WE TALK ABOUT POLITICS
Having reached my eleventh year, I was quite convinced that I had
become a young lady. Many persons thought me older than I really was on
account of my height and my serious demeanour. My ideas at this time
were very pronounced, but not always matured; my imagination ran wild;
I was as simple as a child and I reasoned like a young woman. Nearly
all of those who heretofore had treated me like a child, now called
me “Mademoiselle,” and grandmother, desirous to justify the name,
lengthened my skirts considerably, and I wore them almost quite long.
I stayed with grandmother nearly a week between my return from Chivres
and my sojourn with my father, and my head was full of the literature
of the day, and I now had my own opinions on Mme. de Staël, Mme.
George Sand, Victor Hugo, de Balzac, and Eugène Suë. I had a book
full of interrogative notes for my father, who had talked to me only
of the ancient or “democratic and social authors,” as he called them.
While I was at Chauny I put all these notes in order, and they were
interesting from the fact that the greater part of them had been
gathered from my aunts’ conversation.
I wondered whether my father would consent to discuss the literature
of the day with me. My knowledge would assuredly surprise him, but did
he even know the authors about whom I wished to talk with him? But as
aunt Sophie, in spite of her love for Virgil and the Latin writers, was
still much interested in the celebrities of the day, I thought that my
father, too, might perhaps unite a taste for literature with his love
of politics.
As soon as I arrived at Blérancourt I bombarded him with questions.
What did he think of Mme. de Staël, of Mme. George Sand, of Victor
Hugo, of de Lamartine, of de Balzac? My mother thought it scandalous
that I should be allowed to read and criticise authors of whom she
knew scarcely anything. Really, our family was quite crazy; even my
aunts, whom she had always heard spoken of as sensible women, were more
old-fashioned than modernised. My mother used to say that if she had
brought me up she would have made a simple housewife of me, educated to
live in her circle and to think like other people, and not a pedantic,
unbearable child, already thrown out of her sphere by the training
of her mind, and with her intelligence overheated at an age when it
should have been set on calm foundations.
My father quite looked down on the literature of his own day. He
answered my questions with commonplaces. Lamartine alone excited him,
in the way of blame, not in his character of poet, but as a historian,
and he declared that _Les Girondins_ was the work of a “malefactor.”
His admiration of Eugène Suë was so exaggerated that it would have
made aunt Sophie repeat one of her favourite sayings: “There are some
opinions which are crimes.”
“Eugène Suë,” said my father, “is a genius; he will deliver France from
all the Rodins; a new epoch will begin from his influence, an epoch
when our country will at last be delivered from the church; Eugène Suë
has moulded the soft clay of which the people are still made; some
other man will obtain hard marble from this same people on which to
sculpture his ideas. Events in our day move rapidly forward. The great
renovators have prepared all which they intend to renovate, definite
freedom.” He added solemnly: “We are at last at liberty to speak of
things of which you are as yet ignorant, and which I can now disclose
to you. No one now can hinder me from forming your understanding on
the same pattern as my own. You have been instructed concerning the
religion of your grandmother and your mother; I can now talk to you
of mine without hindrance; teach you and show you from whence comes
light to the minds and hearts of men. It comes from nature; it is
real because we can see it; it is ideal from the vast expanse it
illuminates.”
The next day my father began to teach me what he called my new
catechism, and gave me in dictation the principal articles. Here are a
few of the pages which I have kept:
“The worship of nature, which we have received from the Greeks, the
only people who ever penetrated the depths of its mystery--a worship
transmitted to us through uninterrupted centuries, which Jean Jacques
Rousseau has taught us in his admirable language to understand, and of
which Bernardin de Saint-Pierre has given us the sentimentality--is the
only true worship.
“Nature, Science, Humanity, are the three terms of initiation. First
comes nature, which rules everything; then the revelations of nature,
revelations which mean science--that is to say, phenomena made clear
in themselves and observed by man; and lastly, the appropriation of
phenomena for useful social purposes.
“The times are moving fast, the dawn is becoming light. Nature reveals
herself more and more to us; the future is bright. A general spirit of
fraternity prevails. Nature, which Christianity calls our enemy, gives
herself wholly to man to aid him in his efforts to traverse the world
by steam, to question the stars, and to discover intact the vestiges of
by-gone times, which she has preserved for him.
“If Christianity has endeavoured to break the bonds between man and
nature, Jesus, the immortal Christ, has drawn men together. He said to
them: ‘You are brethren; there is no caste, no race, no religion, no
history, no art, no morals, that are not the universal patrimony of
humanity.’
“It seems to me,” said my father, “when I think of the beauty of
things, of the harmony one can discover, where blinded persons see
only antagonism, that my enjoyment of life is increased five-fold. One
single epoch can alone be compared to our time,--that of the birth of
Christianity. Christ, who brought with Him the republican formulas of
equality and fraternity, preached the ‘good word’ to the people as
we preach it. Soon we too shall become apostles. Jesus freed what He
called souls; we shall free the social person by adding liberty to
equality and fraternity.
“A Ledru-Rollin, a Louis Blanc, are the continuators of Christianity.
The poor man who has won his rights by the great revolution, must be
the one to impose duty on the higher classes; the worker must have a
right to his work, and the rich man must be bound to furnish him with
work.
“The right to work is the most absolute of all rights, but by no means
the only one. The most miserable creature, because he is a man, has a
right to education and to his share of government. There is no error in
nature, no perversity in man; evil comes only from society, which piles
up errors and wicked sophisms. The renovating forces of the future will
therefore attack society and the middle class, which governs society
for its own exclusive benefit. Juliette! Juliette! I intend to make you
an ardent advocate for the general good and happiness of humanity. I
cannot tell why, but I fancy that your heart, like my own, will be able
to desire passionately the elevation of the masses; for even now you
speak to a workman, to a peasant, or to a poor man, as if he were your
equal.
“I, you see, love the humble, those who are on the lower steps of
life, more than I do myself; the sight of those who suffer, those who
struggle, and are overcome by everything, simply tortures my heart. We
must give all of ourselves to those who have nothing. If many people
felt in this way, there would be far fewer ills to comfort and less
misery to be helped. The poor have only the vice of their poverty, the
inferiority of their social standing.
“A rich and superior man who has defects is culpable, and those who are
vicious are monsters; whereas the destitute who are faulty and vicious,
have every excuse and every right to be absolved.
“Real piety consists in giving one’s indulgences, one’s help, and one’s
love to the wretched, not in limited charity, circumscribed to material
relief, but with a broad humanity.”
My heart melted at these words, and, as my father’s acts were always
in accordance with what he said, he moved every fibre of sensibility I
possessed.
“A republic alone can give to men the greatest of all precious things:
the liberty of their rights and their duties,” said my father,
“allowing them the free expansion of their faculties for human
benefaction. It alone can distribute instruction unreservedly and
impose education by example.
“Socialist-republican principles endow every man, every citizen,
with a dogma of pride which assures his moral value. If a man be a
socialist-republican, he finds within himself the exact level of
his scope of faculties, which in no wise oppress the scope of other
person’s faculties.”
And then came endless preaching. My father’s conviction, sincere
faith, and absolute certainty of the truth of his ideas, gave him such
persuasive eloquence that no child of eleven could resist, especially
one whom he treated as a beloved disciple.
One evening my father solemnly gave me a small guide entitled, “Twenty-one
short precepts on the duties of a sincere Socialist-republican,” which
Saint Paul would not have disavowed. He had composed it for me and for
his peasant and workingmen proselytes.
XXIX
TALKS ABOUT NATURE
I was very fond of play, but, as I took my rôle of socialist-republican
disciple so much in earnest, I seized every opportunity, like my
father, of preaching its doctrines.
In the evenings, after dinner, which we took rather early, the children
of the neighbourhood used to gather under the lime trees, in the large
square, which was situated near our house. Our elders sat and chatted
with one another, while the boys and girls, myself at the head, played
at revolution. The sons and daughters of the parents whom my father
had “converted” were all on my side, while the lukewarm, or ignorant,
usually received chastisement, or finally came over to our party.