Juliette, that in your present state of aberration of mind, the little
good sense remaining to you will be imperilled if you live with your
father. He will destroy it, and your marriage with a workman will be
an appropriate ending to your follies. Now, I must confide to you
that young X. has already expressed great admiration for you. He is
seventeen years old, and his father, half seriously, half laughingly,
on account of your youth, has made overtures to me regarding a possible
alliance, a few years hence, between our two families. Certainly, this
is not what I had hoped for you, for I should like you to be married in
Paris, where I would go and live part of the year with you, in order
to direct your steps in the path of that destiny which, until lately,
I had foreseen for you. But you have such insane notions that perhaps
a good middle-class marriage in the country would be better for you
than all I had desired for my only grandchild. Here is what I propose:
Will you go to school as a boarder? The school is so near that I shall
feel you still with me. You can lecture your schoolmates as much as you
please, and then your grandfather and I and Blondeau, having to bear
with you only once a week, will be better able to endure your outbursts
of passion. But if we must see you weep or be angry, either suffering
or in a rage every day because this good Republic does not suit you,
why, then, my darling grandchild, the situation will be untenable.”
I realised then, from this proposition, the amount of annoyance I had
caused my grandparents. Could it be possible that grandmother, who
until lately had found the hours I spent at school too long, and our
separation, while I was at Chivres or Blérancourt, unbearable--could
she wish that I should go to boarding-school? I was stunned; however,
my foolish pride prevented me from throwing myself on grandmother’s
neck and asking pardon for my folly, for I realised at that moment
how absurd I had been; and then, what she had told me of X., a
handsome young man, whom I found charming and witty, raised me in my
own estimation so much that I thought a young person like myself,
nearly twelve years old, could not ask pardon like a little girl, so I
replied, although with an aching heart:
“Very well, grandmother, it is agreed; I will go to boarding-school as
soon as you wish.”
“To-morrow,” she replied.
I nearly burst into tears, but it was class-hour, and I left for
school, saying to myself it would be the last day that I would have
my own room all to myself, where, from morning until night, I was
surrounded by evidences of my grandmother’s passionate tenderness and
my grandfather’s gay affection. I could see only from afar my pigeons
fly down, cooing and pecking in the courtyard. I should miss the
friendship of Blondeau, to whom I could no longer confide my sorrows,
or experiment upon with my father’s startling theories, which I had
fully adopted, but which he accepted only with certain modifications.
* * * * *
The next day I went as a boarder to the Mlles. André’s school. My
grandfather accompanied me there, and it needed all my courage, when I
bade him good-bye, not to beg him to allow me to return home at night.
I breakfasted and dined with my schoolmates. At class, at recreations,
and all the day long, I saw no one but them. The absolute silence
at table was a veritable torture. When I had gone to bed, I was so
unhappy and wept so much that I could not sleep, and this was the
first sleepless night I had ever passed in my life. I was frightened
to think of the next night, for this had seemed to me as terrible as
the infernal regions, and I imagined I could never sleep again; this
caused me great anxiety, but of course I did not confide it to any of
my friends, the most intimate of whom were boarders like myself.
One of my political enemies who knew me well, said to herself that
some disaster, some great quarrel between my grandmother and myself,
could alone have caused our separation, and she amused herself
maliciously by passing to and fro before me, sneering, as she spread
about a fantastic story concerning my coming as a boarder. My red eyes,
my discomposed face, gave credence to her tale, which was circulated
about during the mid-day recreation. They said that my grandmother
loved me no longer, that she did not wish to see me any more, that I
had done all manner of disobedient things; and, of course, I was at
once informed of all this gossip.
At the afternoon recreation several of my schoolmates suddenly ran to
me and said:
“Your grandmother is on the top of the wall in the back courtyard. She
wishes you to go and say good-night to her.”
Being aware of the stories spread about me by my political enemy, I
went to the foot of the wall, which I would not otherwise have done,
most certainly, for I was so angry with grandmother that I did not wish
to answer her summons.
“How are you, my grandchild?” she asked, perched on the top of a
ladder, her head alone appearing above the wall. “Have you slept well?”
“No, grandmother, I have not slept at all, and most surely I shall
never sleep again. But what does that matter to you? You are happy,
you sleep well; that is all that is necessary. Say good-night to
grandfather and to Blondeau for me. Good-night, grandmother, but let me
warn you that, if you call for me again to-morrow from the top of that
horrid wall, I won’t come!” and I ran away.
The following days I worked only by fits and starts, when my pride was
at stake, or when I wished to surpass a political adversary. Being the
head of my party, I could not allow myself to be conquered.
My heart was saddened by the sorrow of living no longer under my
beloved grandmother’s wing, and I continued to feel grievous distress
of mind in connection with my fears concerning the workmen of the
national workshops.
To understand rightly the sum of love contained in the words, “The
poor people,” or to comprehend to what a degree those who were sincere
socialist-republicans believed themselves its friends, one must go back
to quite another epoch.
We socialist-republicans had no longer the courage to play at
recreations. The National Assembly was treating our workmen of the
memorable February days, those who had written on the walls of the
Tuileries, “Death to thieves!” as if they were bandits and plunderers!
How we suffered with the poor people! It was all over with them. We
knew it was only a question of days and hours before one hundred
thousand men would be given over to hunger and want. Not one of my
schoolmates had allowed herself for a long time to spend one cent
on delicacies or sweets. We counted up our resources constantly. By
combining them we should be able to feed one man of the national
workshops, but no more. I decided that we would write a touching
letter to the Minister Trélat, whom we detested, who, according to
our thinking, was the cause of all the trouble, proposing to him
that we should take charge of one workman of the national workshops.
Certainly, one was not much out of a hundred thousand, but if in every
boarding-school they would do as much, there would be, at all hazards,
a certain number saved.
The planning of this letter was most difficult, and took a great deal
of time. Each separate group, having made out its draught, communicated
it to the other groups. We numbered eleven groups, secretly bound
together, each one of which had its partisans, and all our partisans
wished to share in the drawing up of the letter. At last the final
result, compiled from all the other draughts, received the approbation
of the united groups, and the important letter was despatched. I
addressed it to my friend Charles, in Paris, for him to take and
deliver it from us to the Minister in person.
At that same moment the National Assembly cruelly decided that
the workmen from seventeen to twenty-five years of age should be
incorporated in different regiments, and also to send to the department
of Sologne--a country desolated by fever, and whose climate was
deadly--a certain number of workmen of the national workshops; and that
the remainder should be distributed in the provinces, to build roads
and do other work, which should be planned by the municipalities.
Thinking that our “national workman” would be sent to us some day, not
only did we stop eating cakes, and economise in every possible way, but
we begged and collected everything we could from our relatives under
all sorts of pretexts. One girl had obtained a suit of clothes from one
of her brothers, and had cleaned and mended it with care. No one was
to be allowed even to suspect our plot, for we knew that we should be
excommunicated by all our families if they should imagine that we were
thinking of protecting one of the “monsters” of the national workshops.
So we had specified in our letter to Minister Trélat that our national
workman was to present himself at the boarding-school of the Mlles.
André of Chauny as a pensioner of Juliette Lambert!
My father had written to me that things were worse than had been
reported; that the authorities occupied themselves no longer to find
any sort of place for the workmen; that the National Assembly was
odious, criminal; that it wished to dissolve the national workshops
immediately, without caring what became of the hundred thousand men
turned adrift. “There will be great misfortunes,” he added.
I went for a vacation the next day, a Sunday, to grandmother’s; and
Blondeau talked politics before me without my saying a word, for I had
determined, since my entrance at the boarding-school, not to speak of
anything but commonplaces when I went to visit my grandparents.
Blondeau related what seemed incredible--that Trélat, the Minister
of Public Instruction, had asked that some pity should be shown to
the bandits of the national workshops, and had begged the National
Assembly, with trembling voice, not to throw a hundred thousand men on
the streets, and to allow him to discover some way of finding places
for them; that he had proposed incorporation, sending them to the
department of Sologne, road-building, and other work to be decided upon
by the municipalities.
“Your news is a week old, Blondeau,” I could not help saying to him.
“And you can add that the National Assembly laughed at Trélat’s tardy
outbursts of feeling, and that it decided....”
I related the decision, and there was silence.
My grandfather, provoked, and scarcely able to control his anger, asked
me:
“Are you for the insurgents?”
“I am, grandfather, for the hundred thousand wretched men, to whom,
perhaps imprudently, they promised to give work, and whom, suddenly,
without pity, they wish to deprive of it.”
“But they are assassins!”
“Whom have they assassinated?”
“They are thieves!”
“From whom have they stolen?”
“They terrify the country.”
“Oh! yes, they make them out bugbears. They say they are madmen, in
order to kill them; perhaps, finally, they will, indeed, make them
terrifying, grandfather.”
Blondeau and grandmother looked at each other bewildered. Neither the
one nor the other breathed a word.
“It is time that Prince Louis should occupy himself with it,” replied
grandfather, “or else such ideas as yours, Juliette, will drive us all
crazy.”
“Alas! your Prince Louis occupies himself too much with it. It is he,
through Émile Thomas, who has made the national workshops fail.”
“Prince Louis could never occupy himself too much with the affairs
of France, do you hear, little insurgent? He must save us by a good
Empire, securely founded, and which must last, at least, until my
death.”
XXXV
DARK DAYS FOR THE REPUBLIC
One of our schoolmates brought us the next day a clipping from a
newspaper containing an article applauding the measures taken by the
Government after the following facts had occurred.
Under the threat, voted by the National Assembly, of an immediate
disbanding, the workmen had sent delegates to the Luxembourg, who had
begged Monsieur Marie, a man high in the Government, to delay the
Assembly’s decision.
Monsieur Marie had answered, so said the newspaper, “as a Cæsar might
have done”:
“If the workmen will not leave, we will make them do so by force; do
you understand?”
That night armed bands had gone through the streets of Paris, singing:
“_On n’part pas! on n’part pas!_” to the tune of the _Lampions_. Groups
of workmen had been heard to say: “We have been betrayed, and we must
begin the revolution of February over again.” Other groups had cried
out: “We must have Napoleon!” and they had been the most clamorous of
all. The workmen were indignant with de Lamartine, Garnier-Pagès and
Arago, who had failed in all their promises.
The poor people were in revolt. There was danger of a massacre. The
anger of the wretched had burst forth.
It seemed to us that petitions might prevent all this. Was it possible
to understand, we said, that the members of the Government, or
others, had not placed themselves at the head of a manifestation for
conciliation? How could it be that they had driven a hundred thousand
men, all bearing the arms of the National Guards, to desperation? Did
they wish to bring about the end of the Republic?
We thought of nothing but these terrible things. At the least allusion
to similar events in our lessons of history, we exchanged sorrowful
notes with one another during class hours.
What was taking place? What was going to happen?
I received a letter from my friend Charles, addressed to Blondeau,
commissioning him to give it to me. I should not have received it
until a week later, when I was to leave school for my day at home, if
Blondeau had not come at the mid-day recreation and asked to see me in
the parlour. He said to me:
“Here is a letter from Charles, and I come to tell you at the same
time that since the day before yesterday, the 23d of June, the
insurrection has broken out in Paris; that they are killing one another
by thousands, and that blood is flowing like water. Are you contented,
dreadful little revolutionist?”
“Blondeau!” I said, crying, “that was what I feared. They have
exasperated those poor, wretched men beyond endurance at last.”
“Now you are beginning again! But open your letter from Charles. You
see I have not unsealed it; Charles has told me, doubtless, the same
thing that he has written to you.”
This was what I read:
“At last, my dear Juliette, the Government has seen that it must defend
society energetically against the miserable creatures in whom you are
interested. All the partisans of order, from the Monarchical party of
the Rue de Poitiers to my friend and patron, Flocon, have united to
crush those who have been brought over here and hired by foreigners.
“I kiss you good-bye, Juliette, until we meet again. Your friend,
Charles.”
I held out the dreadful missive to Blondeau.
“He is perfectly right. He says what is true!” exclaimed Blondeau,
giving the letter back to me after having read it.
I left him without even saying good-bye, and ran to my schoolmates and
partisans, who were gathered together, and anxious about the visit I
had received.
“The revolution has broken out again,” I said, and I read to them my
ex-friend Charles’s letter. I emphasised the _ex_, for I had already
torn him from my heart.
I was in such a state of excitement that I felt as if I were
intoxicated. My faithful friends, after a half-hour of unanimous
expressions of indignation, thought as I did.
“I am of the opinion,” I said to them, “that we should do something.
We cannot remain inert while they are massacring innocent people in
Paris. I have hidden at the bottom of a little bag, in my linen-closet,
a large handkerchief which my father gave me, in the centre of which is
printed: ‘Long live the Democratic and Socialistic Republic!’ Find me a
long stick in the wood-house, a ribbon or a string, and we will arrange
a flag out of it, and will make a manifestation. Will you follow me?”
“We will!” they cried.
“If we could add a few recruits, some partisans, to our united groups,
so that our manifestation would be more imposing, don’t you think it
would be better?”
“We will all try to get some,” said my comrades.
We then dispersed. I soon returned with my large blue, white, and red
handkerchief, and I fastened it to a long stick in such a manner that
the words, “Long live the Democratic and Socialist Republic” should be
plainly visible.
With my heart ready for battle, I placed myself at the head of my
battalion, crying: “Long live the Democratic-Socialist Republic! Long
live the insurgents! ‘_On n’part pas! on n’part pas!_’”
A certain number of my schoolmates followed us; the others looked
at us, terrified. The Mlles. André came running, and snatched my
handkerchief-flag out of my hands. I defended it heroically. Several
of my schoolmates supported me. But a troop commanded by my political
enemy came up, crying: “Down with the Democratic-Socialist Republic!”
and, lending aid to the Mlles. André and the under-governess, got the
better of us. I received some well-directed blows, and I suffered at
once from physical pain and from the humiliation of defeat. I was
dragged to the drawing-room, held by both arms, and much jostled about.
My valiant comrades followed me.
The Mlles. André sat down in their two largest arm-chairs to give me
trial. Mlle. Sophie, the younger, questioned my partisans and allies.
“It was Juliette Lambert, was it not, who incited you to this act of
scandalous folly?” she asked them.
Alas! out of twenty-two, seventeen answered:
“Yes, mademoiselle.”
The five others clung close to one another. Mlle. Sophie could drag
nothing from them but one and the same answer:
“Both she and ourselves wished to make a manifestation!”
“Oh! yes, you are brave and faithful friends,” Mlle. Sophie replied,
who did not really wish to punish any one but me. “It is a noble
sentiment, for which I give you praise. Was it one of you--now, don’t
lie--who furnished the handkerchief?”
“No, mademoiselle.”
“You see, the premeditation came alone from Juliette Lambert.”
I had not said a word, nor made a gesture, wishing to keep up my
dignity, though accused, and to force my judges, my faithful friends,
and even the traitors, to admire me.
“Do you deny what you have done?” Mlle. Sophie asked me.
“No, mademoiselle, I am an insurgent, but--”
At this moment the mother of one of my faithful friends entered,
exclaiming:
“My daughter--I wish my daughter--where is she? The insurgents are
marching on Chauny!”
There was a general panic. They allowed my friend and her mother to
depart, and they barricaded the front door.
“Don’t be frightened!” I cried, going from one to another of my
schoolmates, making no discrimination between friends and enemies, “I
will protect you. They are my friends, and we will go and mount guard.”
We picked up our unfortunate and much damaged flag, and my corporal, my
four “insurgents” and I, went and placed ourselves by the barricaded
front door. We heard a battalion of the National Guard passing by,
crying: “Down with the insurgents! Death to them!”
Frightened people in the streets talked together, saying:
“The Guards have gone to bar the way to the insurgents.”
The Mlles. André closed all the doors and shutters of the house, and
they left us where we were from half-past one o’clock in the afternoon
until nightfall. One of us tried to open a door at dinner-time. It was
impossible, and we were obliged to remain there very hungry.
We were boarders, all five of us, and could not think of returning to
our families. Besides, the padlocked door and the high walls prevented
any hope of flight. We said to one another:
“After all, those who are fighting suffer much more than we. They also
are hungry; they are wounded, they are dying for their cause, and what
are our sufferings compared with theirs?”
Finally, after what seemed interminable hours, they came to fetch us,
and sent us to bed without supper. We were too proud to ask for any;
but the traitors had kept a little of their bread for us, and, with
some chocolate they gave us, by slipping it under our sheets, we were
able to satisfy our hunger a little, which sleep finally pacified.
The next day, in the morning, I was again called to the drawing-room,
but this time alone. My faithful friends, cleverly influenced, had
agreed to beg pardon, and had made their submission.
The elder Mlle. André asked me whether I repented.
I tried to prove to her that I had not acted like a child; that I was
convinced of my right to have my own opinions, and that I had defended
ideas about which I had seriously reflected.
“Disturbing, dangerous, and wicked ideas!” replied the elder Mlle.
André.
“They are ideas of conciliation, of peace, and of justice,
mademoiselle, but they are not understood by those who find present
things excellent, or by those who are afraid of all reform.”
“This is my sentence,” said Mlle. André, curtly. “You will take
breakfast in the refectory, and I shall announce at the end of the meal
that I am going to send you home to your parents. Such scandals cannot
end without an example being made.”
I breakfasted with good appetite, and when I heard the sentence
delivered I was neither ashamed nor remorseful. My only fear was that I
might be severely blamed by my grandmother.
I said to myself that in any case I would have recourse to my father,
who could but uphold me for having defended our common cause, and for
having suffered for our opinions.
I rose proudly and replied, at least with apparent calmness, for in
reality my heart was almost strangling me, so fast did it beat:
“I am delighted to leave; I stifle under oppression, and I am going to
be free at last!”
I said good-bye to no one. I went and put on my hat and waited for
Mlle. Sophie, who was to take me back to grandmother.
My friends considered me an heroic victim to my cause, but were not
sorry, so one of them told me later, to be relieved from the excitement
I caused them.
My grandmother was at first disturbed on hearing the story of my
escapade; but, seeing my resolute attitude, she thought more of winning
me back than of scolding me, for, during her last days of fright,
fearing the insurgents would come, she was all the more unhappy at not
having me with her in the danger threatening the town. She had thought
continually of sending for me. Since I had returned, why should she be
angry? So, with quickly recovered calmness, she replied to Mlle. Sophie:
“As you consider Juliette’s action an act of insubordination toward
you, you are quite right to bring her back to me. But, permit me to
tell you that I think her conduct unusual. It shows me Juliette as
I love to see her--giving proof of a strong will and a courage that
everyone does not possess. Although the child returns to me without
my having sent for her, neither she nor I will suffer from it, and,
mademoiselle, I have a greater desire to thank you for having brought
her back to me than to ask pardon for her.”
I threw myself into grandmother’s arms, and all trace of ill-feeling
between us disappeared.
Panic was on the increase during the following days. They said that
the insurgents, driven out of Paris, were coming to sack the town; the
National Guard went to bar the way against the plunderers. Grandmother,
in spite of my reassuring words, was terrified. She hid at night, in
a large hole which grandfather dug in our courtyard, her silver, her
jewels, all the valuable things she possessed. Blondeau also buried his
money-box in the hole, which they covered with earth and gravel.
My father, to whom grandmother had written, sent me a letter of
congratulation at having left a school where they taught nothing but
inane middle-class ideas.
XXXVI
ANOTHER VISIT AT CHIVRES
I then had a long vacation, which began the 1st of July and did not
finish until the 1st of October.
I remained three months with my aunts at Chivres, to their great
delight.
I took intense pleasure in the study of Latin, and made real progress
in the reading and translating of the “bucolics.”
My aunts, however, sermonised me severely on the reason for my having
been sent away from school. The _National_ had inspired them with a
holy horror of the plunderers, of those who had been “bought up by the
foreigner,” and the twelve thousand men who had been killed in the June
riots. The twenty thousand prisoners and exiles did not soften their
hearts for a moment. My harangues interested them as ill-sustained
paradoxes, but did not convince them in any way.
The citizen Louis Blanc, with his project of a conciliatory
proclamation; the citizen Caussidière, with his extraordinary motion to
have the Deputies go into the streets, to send them to the barricades
and to the insurgents with a flag of truce, had exasperated them. They
were merciless. The stories of the cruelties of the National Guards
in the provinces, and of the Mobile Guard firing on the insurgent
prisoners through the vent-holes of cellars, did not revolt them. It
was necessary to kill as many as possible of those “mad dogs,” they
said. And it was gentle Frenchwomen, faithful Liberals--or believing
themselves such--who spoke thus! Marguerite knew nothing of the truth
concerning it. To her the insurgents were savages, devils, etc.; and I
could not make any feeling of clemency, any pity, enter into the minds
or hearts of Marguerite or my aunts. They had all been too frightened.