seeing men who for long years had defended liberty, who had called
themselves its soldiers, condemn and persecute the people to whom
they had made public and solemn promises to act for their good, and
who had only asked them to keep those promises within the measure of
possibility, my aunts spoke of Pascal Duprat, a Democratic-Republican,
as a sublime man, who, while pretending to wish to save the Republic,
had been the first man to demand a Dictatorship.
The death of General Bréa, killed by two acknowledged Bonapartists, Luc
and Lhar; that of Archbishop Affre, due to an accident and not to an
assassination, were, to my aunts, premeditated crimes, whose expiation
demanded the death of thousands of men belonging to “the most ignoble
and abject populace.”
My aunt Constance still trembled as she told me of her emotion when
she had read the words of the President of the Chambers, mounting the
tribune to say: “All is finished!”
It would have been folly to endeavour to convert my aunts to a more
enlightened feeling of humanity. I gave up trying to do it. I read the
_National_ in secret, Marguerite giving it to me after my aunts and
great-grandmother had read it in turn, and I suffered every day with
renewed sorrow at the violence of the reaction, the sentences of the
Council of War, at the persecutions, the denunciations, the state of
the public mind, which my father wrote to me had become so Cæsarian
that it would throw us into the arms of Napoleon, who had been too
delicately brought up by England to subdue us.
The night session, when the prosecution of Louis Blanc and Caussidière
was voted, delighted my aunts. They would not even read Louis Blanc’s
justification, much changed though it was in the _National_, for I
compared it later with the text of the _Democratie Pacifique_, which my
father sent to me. In my aunts’ opinion, and in that of all the middle
class, Louis Blanc was “the founder, the responsible author of the
monstrous national workshops.”
Now, Louis Blanc proved in court, what his partisans had known for a
long time, that the national workshops had been established not only
without his participation, but against his will, and that he had not
visited them even once.
The obstinacy of holding to a preconceived opinion against absolute
proof, admitting no discussion, seemed to me at that time the most
extraordinary thing in the world. I endeavoured several times to read
Louis Blanc’s protestation to my aunts; they would not listen to it,
not wishing to hear it, or to be convinced by it, and they continued to
call him the “sinister man of the national workshops.”
I confess that this obstinacy irritated me, and that my affection for
my dear aunts suffered from it.
Louis Napoleon was elected in five departments at the supplementary
elections. The terms he used in thanking his electors, for different
reasons, provoked both my father and my grandmother, and my aunts as
well, whose disgust for “Badinguet” increased daily.
“The Democratic-Republic shall be my religion,” said Louis Napoleon,
“and I will be its priest.”
My grandfather would certainly have made a wry face at this speech,
had he not always had the habit of saying, concerning all the
manifestations of him whom he called his “beloved Pretender”:
“He is admirable, in the way he scoffs at the republican birds.”
They talked of nothing but “Badinguet” at my aunts’ all through
September and October--of his oath of gratitude and devotion to the
National Assembly, of the repeal of the law of 1832, which gave the
Bonapartes liberty to live in France. I heard my aunts continually
discussing the good faith of pretenders.
“Certain republicans are absurdly simple when they believe that an
oath cannot be violated,” said aunt Sophie. “One must know one’s Roman
history very little not to see that ‘Badinguet’ is playing the eternal
game of the Cæsars.”
“When once they have voted to have a President of the Republic, and
have chosen ‘a man of the Brumaire,’ when men of moderate opinions
uphold this proceeding, what can possibly enlighten them? How can de
Lamartine uphold such aberration of mind with his authority? Unless he
deceives himself to the extent of thinking he will be named President
of the Republic, his conduct is inexplicable,” said aunt Constance.
Politics still interested me a little in conversation, but when I did
not talk of them, I thought no more about them.
“Men are worth nothing, nothing at all,” said aunt Anastasie one day;
“I do not know a single man who has a just mind.”
“You know so many!” replied aunt Constance, with her habitual scoffing.
“I never knew you to have but three masculine friends: the miller, his
mill-keeper, and Roussot!”
I worked happily with aunt Sophie, who found me very desirous to learn
Latin, and less occupied with explaining or contradicting everything.
I no longer sought for eccentricities in ideas or opinions. I studied
methodically, realising how much time I had lost.
I felt for the first time in my life, perhaps, that I had only a very
youthful mind; that I had for a long while really learned but little,
but, like a parrot, had remembered a good deal. I condemned myself as
pretentious, insupportable, and I resolved that I would begin to be
quite a different person, desirous solely to learn, and to be very
studious and proper.
XXXVII
I BEGIN TO STUDY HOUSEKEEPING
When I returned to Chauny my grandmother, whom I found more
affectionate, more lovable than ever, said to me:
“Now, my dear Juliette, you shall do what you choose; you shall learn
only what pleases you, or nothing at all, if you prefer it; but I ask
you to take an interest in housekeeping. You shall have entire charge
of ours for six months. You shall order, you shall spend as if you were
absolute mistress. I reserve for myself only the right of giving you
advice. As you love order, to arrange things, and to ornament a house,
it will be easy for you to do all this with taste. If you desire to
have lessons in cooking, you have only to tell me. I should like you to
realise how much an art embellishes life--that of music especially. The
new organist is a remarkably good professor. I know you do not care for
the piano, but I should like you to cultivate your voice, and I should
be glad if you would try the violin; but, I repeat, you shall do just
as you choose in everything.”
“I shall be delighted to keep house, grandmother, it will amuse me a
great deal; and I will try the violin, it is original; I will cultivate
my voice also, and, since you leave me absolutely free to do as I
please with regard to my ordinary studies, that will give me time,
grandmother, to reflect about the little I know of elementary things.”
I reflected so seriously that, after a few days, I told grandmother
that I would ask my father to draw me up a plan of study, so that while
becoming the prospective mistress of a house--which idea fascinated me
more and more--I could improve myself somewhat in spelling, arithmetic,
geography, and French literature, of which I knew but little.
I suggested to grandmother an idea that pleased her--to have M.
Tavernier, the master of the school where my father had been professor,
give me lessons, as he was particularly clever, it was said, in
inspiring his pupils with a love of study.
My father approved all my plans, especially that of having chosen for
my professor a man whose merits he had heard praised.
He began by telling me I must copy five pages of Racine every day, and
he read to me the first five pages, pointing out to me the beauty of
the phrases, the musical sonority of the words. It was curious that my
father, with his exaggerated, ardent political opinions, should be
purely classical in his literary tastes, having an admiration only for
the literature of the ancient Greeks and their imitators.
What admirable lessons I received from him during the few hours he
spent at Chauny! We both worked in my pretty, well-ordered room,
always full of flowers, whose old furniture he disliked, calling it
“trumpery,” but where he was happy, all the same.
“Literature is the great consolation,” my father said to me;
“everything else fails us, that alone remains. At Epidaurus the doctors
of ancient times declared that the last traces of an illness did not
disappear until the convalescent person had felt his mind enlarge with
admiration on listening to the verses of Sophocles and of Euripides.”
My father’s dearest dream was to travel in Greece. “No one would enjoy
it more than I,” he said, and added: “Be a Greek, Juliette, if you
wish to live a privileged life in the worship of what is eternally
beautiful, of that which elevates man above his epoch.”
Always deeply distressed about politics, execrating General Cavaignac,
who had, he said, more than any one else, opposed all attempts at
conciliation “in order to plant his banner in ground sodden with
blood,” my father, alarmed at the progress Bonapartism was making in
the country, and who until now had talked to me only of public events,
scarcely ever mentioned them any more.
One day, when I asked him the reason for this silence, he said to
me: “Since the love of politics is the most grievous of all passions
when one is sincere, the most deceptive when one is loyal, the most
despairing when one loves justice, leave politics alone. Perhaps better
days will be born from our present sufferings. Await them. We, the old,
enlisted combatants, cannot leave the field of battle, but why should
you enter it?”
The proclamation of Louis Napoleon: “If I am made President, I promise
to leave to my successor, at the end of four years, strengthened power,
liberty intact, and real progress accomplished”--this shameless lie
alone reawakened my political indignation. Grandfather, who read it to
us, burst out laughing. The five million votes which had elected Louis
Napoleon President of the Republic seemed to me an insane act of the
French people. From having heard grandfather say that all Bonapartists
made game of Republican riff-raff, I believed it, and was not surprised
when he said to us one day:
“My Pretender has sworn to be unfaithful to the democratic Republic,
and not to defend the Constitution. The fools believe he has pledged
his faith to the contrary! Well! I’ll wager my life that Louis Napoleon
Bonaparte, simple Prince Louis, a simple Bonaparte, will be, before the
expiration of his Presidency, the Emperor Napoleon III.”
“Alas! he is right,” said my father, who was listening to
grandfather, and when talking to me one day later of his sadness, his
heart-sickness, reproaching himself for having preached his beloved
doctrines so earnestly to me, for having initiated me too young in the
disillusions of life, he said: “I implore you, Juliette, banish from
your memory this lamentable year. Your youth must not be fed on doubt,
your faith in the future must not be shadowed by death. I have weighed
men, and I despise and hate them. As to the principles in which I
believed, they have received so many blows that I no longer know what
I wish or what I do not wish. The Liberals are no sooner in power than
they become cynically authoritative. The Republicans have scarcely left
the ranks of the governed, to become governors themselves, before a
touch of madness seems to enter their minds, and they become Cæsarian.
All my beautiful edifice has fallen down, stone by stone. I am crushed
beneath it. If, for a short moment, I knew the joy of building it, its
ruin has soon followed. I would not at any price impose upon your young
life the pain of living amid its destruction. I will not speak to you
again of politics, I will not write to you about them. You must take
note only of facts, and feel compassion that each one will be a fresh
torture to your father.”
My grandmother felt much pity for her son-in-law’s sorrows and
disillusions. “He exaggerates, but he is sincere,” she said, “and he
has a heart of gold.”
My father’s only consolation was to occupy himself a great deal with
me. He advised that, as I had not studied primary branches, I should
go back to the sources of our literature. He read me numerous passages
from Homer in the text, to familiarise me with the admirable sonorities
of our “initiative tongue,” as he called it. He dictated to me, word by
word, entire chapters from the Iliad and from the Odyssey, those which
he thought the most beautiful, saying to me that we had years before
us, and that he would take charge of my instruction in Greek.
“You shall learn with me the history of that nation in which nature
incarnated herself to such a degree that she made it supernatural.
Your aunt Sophie will teach you as much Latin as is necessary for a
cultivated woman to know. She loves and understands Roman literature,
and I do not fear that she will reap for Rome’s benefit the admiration
I shall have sown in your mind for Athens. At Chauny you will have an
exceptionally good professor of literature, who will teach you many
things you will never forget, and who will interest your grandmother
in your studies, which will take her somewhat away from her novels.
All this seems excellent to me, and I do not doubt that, if you desire
it, you will succeed in knowing more than all the schoolmates you left
behind in your monotonous boarding-school!”
XXXVIII
AN EXCITING INCIDENT
Some months of 1849 passed, during which I acquired much serious
elementary knowledge; but all my ardour was spent on the study of
Grecian, Latin, foreign, and French literature. I identified myself
with the characters of certain works, and acted their parts. My
grandparents and Blondeau lived happily, occupied with me, interested
in all that I did, amused by the superabundance of vitality which I
put into everything, and lent themselves to taking part, as they had
previously done, in my most fantastic caprices. When a book pleased me,
they were obliged to assume the characters of the principal personages
of the book, to speak their language, to discuss their acts, and to
take part in imaginary conversations which these persons might have
held among themselves. I began to write poetry again--perhaps rather
better than my first attempts--and poems naturally were my chief
delight, those of Homer above all. When I was at Blérancourt, my father
would consent to be called Ulysses, and my mother Penelope, although
she sometimes rebelled against the rôle I gave her.
I was Nausicaa. I had a passion for washing, and dabbled in water
with delight. My father found me many times before a tub filled with
soap-suds, and would address me as “Nausicaa with white arms.” He would
recite to me the words of the seventh canto of the Odyssey:
“‘It seems to me best to implore you by caressing words, keeping afar
from you, for fear of irritating your heart;’” and he would add:
“‘I compare you in height and in presence to Diana, daughter of great
Jupiter; but if you are a mortal, inhabiting earth, thrice happy are
your father and mother. I am seized with admiration on seeing you.
So did I see one day at Delos near Apollo’s altar a young sprig of a
growing palm-tree!’”
And he would continue, going from one verse to another, as it pleased
him to select them, and I would answer him, for I knew he loved the
poems, so many times repeated by heart.
During my visit to him that summer, my father had a great sorrow, in
which I took part and from which he suffered so deeply that it touched
even my mother’s heart. His last hopes were cruelly taken from him.
On the 15th of June, he informed me that Ledru-Rollin had, on the 13th,
asked the new Assembly, which had just been elected, and whose majority
was reactionary, for a bill of indictment against the Prince-President
and his Ministers, who were found guilty of having violated the
Constitution. Under the false pretext of saving Italian liberty, our
intervention had culminated by the entrance of French troops into Rome,
re-establishing the Pope.
What overwhelmed my father, and made him despair the most, was not
so much the failure of their motion, as the hesitating, ridiculous
part played by the last two champions of his opinions--Ledru-Rollin
and Victor Considérant--in their attempted appeal to the people with
what was called “the affair of the Arts and Trades,” and their rather
pitiable flight through the back doors of the school. Were they also
worth nothing as heads of the opposition party? Had they no courage?
In July all the trees of liberty were dug up, and my father, who had
accepted the function of Mayor in order to plant one of these trees,
resigned his office on the day the tree was thrown down.
He then began to condemn, in equal measure, the monarchists and the
reactionary republicans.
He was destined to suffer blow after blow.
Since the insurrection of June, 1848, secret societies had been formed,
some of which were to fight against reaction, others to prepare the
Empire, as the insurrection of the 10th of December had done, and
all these societies kept watch upon one another. The Bonapartists
denounced, above all, those called “Marianne.”
Perquisitions took place, and were called “domiciliary visits.” The
reactionists affirmed that the object of certain of these societies was
to overthrow the Republic, which was only a pretext for hunting down
Republicans.
The pleasure I had taken in searching for my grandfather’s
hiding-places for his money had caused me to remark my father’s goings
and comings to the garret, which I concluded must arise from his
hiding something there. So I determined to find out what it was, and I
discovered a hole between two rafters, which held a large package of
papers, lists of names, proofs of the organisation of a society, the
members of which had taken oath to fight against the tyrants, to answer
the first call to insurrection, etc.
One day my mother said to my father: “You should burn the papers of the
‘Marianne,’ which are so compromising to many persons. Since you do not
dare to meet any longer, it would be better to rid yourself of the
official reports and the lists, which seem to me dangerous to keep.”
“I have thought about it,” my father replied, “and I will begin
to-morrow to convoke our brothers and friends, two by two, to ask their
consent to destroy our archives.”
That same evening I made myself a large pocket attached to a string
which I could tie around my waist, and which I put on the next morning.
It was time! My father had not gathered together ten of the associated
members of the “Marianne” (were there traitors among “the brothers and
friends” convoked separately?) before an agent of the Republic, at the
head of a commission, came to our house one morning at breakfast-time,
and, showing his papers of authority, he began to ransack in my
father’s writing-desk, aided by two policemen. My father was
overwhelmed; my heart seemed turned into stone. I watched our visitors
doing their work, concocting the while a plan in my mind. I even helped
them by pointing out things in an amiable way, and I went so far as to
say, laughingly, to the agent of the Republic:
“What you are doing is not very nice, Monsieur; it might even be called
indiscreet.”
The agent and his colleagues were amused at my conversation.
Then I said suddenly to my mother:
“Mamma, will you let me go and tell Blatier (the gardener, who was
looking, frightened, through the window) to place some cider to cool,
so that you can offer some to these gentlemen? It is so hot!”
My mother made a sign of assent. She had wished a moment before to
go into another room, but one of the policemen had stopped her. They
allowed me to go out, however. I told Blatier to draw some water from
the well, and I went with him, feeling myself followed by the eyes of a
policeman, who was looking out of the window. While the gardener drew
the water, I went down into the cellar, and came up with some bottles,
which I placed in the pail of cold water. Then I dallied over several
things, went down in the cellar again, looked for another pail for more
bottles, which I brought up, and I then pretended to enter the house
slowly. Then I flew with a bound to the garret-door, and with another
bound entered it, after having taken off my shoes, so as not to be
heard, for the house had but one story. I put the papers in my pocket,
slid down the staircase and entered my parents’ room tranquilly, where
the police were rummaging into everything.
My mother, trembling, gave them the keys of the drawers. My father,
seated, did not move. I prepared a tray myself, and went outside to
have the water in the pails changed. I soon returned and offered some
cold cider to our visitors, who were delighted.
They ransacked the stable, the carriage-house, the cellar, and the
garret.
When my father heard them go upstairs, he rose, his face convulsed, and
I saw from my mother’s expression that she was saying to herself: “The
papers must be up there--we are lost!”
I took a glassful of cider and approached my father, always watched by
the policeman. He pushed my glass away. I leaned over him as if urging
him to drink, and whispered these words to him:
“Don’t let your face change. I have the papers!”
I kissed him, which seemed to touch the policeman’s heart, and my
father clasped me in his arms.
Thanks to me, these men had discovered nothing of any importance.
The agent of the Republic said to me: “Mademoiselle, I am glad to
announce to you that we have found nothing compromising to your father.
It would have been serious for him if we had been obliged to state
certain facts which we had been informed existed, for your father’s
name figures on the list for arrest, and he might have been imprisoned,
even exiled. He has the reputation of being a dangerous revolutionist,
and, besides, he is accused of making proselytes.”
“Thank you, Monsieur,” I replied. “You must have a daughter yourself,
to act in such fatherly fashion to me.”
The agent smiled, but did not answer me. He bowed to my mother and
father, and left.
I accompanied him to the door, and I watched “the domiciliary
commission” for some minutes; then I bolted the door, locked it, and
went into the dining-room, where I found my father prostrated.
“From the expression of your face,” said my mother to him, “it is lucky
they did not find the papers, which must be in the garret.”
My father answered:
“Juliette has them!”
“How did she get them?”
I raised my skirt, and cried, victoriously:
“This is how one can fool those who make perquisitions!”
I told my parents that I had learned the importance of the papers from
what my mother had said, and of my fondness for finding hiding-places.
My father recovered from his emotion, and felt great indignation.
“Such a republic,” he said one day, soon after the famous visit, “is
more odious to me than the monarchy has ever been. May I see before
long those who pretend to serve this Republic of lies, and who, really,
only try to persecute Republicans, grovel before one and the same
tyrant, and all be crushed together under his heel!”
XXXIX
AN OFFER OF MARRIAGE
I pitied my father for all he was suffering from the bottom of my
heart, but had not, in truth, his own Utopian ideas brought about what
he called “the lawless reaction”? Grandmother said to me: “Juliette,
how can you expect a country to consent to be guided politically by
good people as mad as your father? They make public opinion fly to the
extreme opposite of their quixotic ideas.” And I agreed with her at
last.
During all the latter part of that year and the beginning of the
next, I studied very hard, and I recall with pleasure one of my first
literary successes. My professor, Monsieur Tavernier, the master of
the boys’ school situated opposite to our house, in order to create a
double emulation among his pupils, proposed for me to compete with them
for a prize.
The entire town was talking at that time of a terrible storm that had
occurred in April, and had made several victims, and of which the quiet
people of Chauny could not yet speak without fright.