pupils and to me as our theme for competition. I had followed and
observed every detail of the storm, and had even noted down my
observations at the time: the fright of the birds, the trembling of the
leaves, the moaning of the trees, shaken by the blast; the terror of
the people who passed by, the disturbed heavens, the near or distant
sonority of the claps of thunder, the jagged streaks of lightning, the
terrible noise of a thunderbolt which I thought had nearly killed me.
Thinking the storm over, and stifling with heat, I had sat down in a
current of air between two open windows, opposite to each other. The
deafening thunderbolt burst and traversed the two windows, throwing me
off my chair on to the floor. I described all this with much feeling.
Among the pupils at the school were a good many young men whom I knew,
brothers or relatives of my former schoolmates. They were all aware of
the cause of my having been sent away from the Mlles. André’s school,
and admired me as a “valiant” young girl, an expression frequently used
in my behalf in my family, and with which grandmother always endowed me.
I copied and recopied my composition. I devoted myself to it with such
intense interest that it gave me a fever, and I was proclaimed the
winner by my rivals themselves. One of them came to bring me the news
and to congratulate me. I was about to kiss him, when grandmother made
me an imperious sign, so I simply thanked him, with warm gratitude.
“What!” grandmother said to me afterward, “were you going to kiss that
boy? Why, look at yourself, you are a young girl; you are no longer a
child.”
“But, grandmother, I shall not be fourteen before six months.”
“Everyone takes you for sixteen,” she said.
Grandmother sent my father, my aunts, and my father’s family, copies
of my famous composition, which she wrote out herself, keeping the
original, which I found twenty years after.
From that moment I thought of nothing but literature, and my
imagination became intensely excited.
A chiromancer came to Chauny at that time, and my grandmother greatly
desired that he should read my hand. He declared that he distinctly saw
“the star of celebrity near Jupiter” in my hand, and he added: “I shall
see that hand again some day;” and he did, in fact, recognise it twenty
years afterward one day on the Riviera, when it was not possible for
him to suspect who I was. From that day my grandmother never doubted
about my future destiny.
At that time I made my family act the parts of Camoën’s _Lusiades_.
Each one of us had his or her rôle; and, for more than a year, my
grandparents, Blondeau, even my father, who had become “Mousshino
d’Albuquerque,” preserved the character of the heroic personages we had
chosen. We intermingled, to our great amusement, fiction with daily
life, and laughed heartily when commonplace events compromised the
dignity of “Vasco da Gama,” whom I represented.
My grandfather, the “giant Adamastor,” called his pigeons by reciting a
passage of the _Lusiades_ to them. We knew the admirable poem literally
by heart. And how amusing it was when a cart passing in the street
would shake our house, which had become our vessel! What sorrowful
reflections we had on the dangers we were running! My _dramatis
personæ_ revolted against my demands sometimes, especially at table,
where we were all gathered together. I would, on such occasions, quiet
my rebels by draping my napkin around my body to recall the flag scene.
The mixture of our admiration for the poem and the absurdities of our
interpretations was so amusing that it was difficult for us to lay
aside the _Lusiades_ to take up Walter Scott’s _Ivanhoe_, with which I
was delighted.
My father, just then, thought of leaving Blérancourt. Grandmother’s
entreaties and mine prevented him from accomplishing another folly
which would have caused him to lose the position he had acquired.
He wished to join the phalanstery at Condé-sur-Vesgres. The deputy,
Baudet Dulary, having given a large portion of his fortune to Victor
Considérant, to make an experiment of Fourier’s doctrines, my father
desired to take part in this trial, which later failed lamentably, but
to which one of his friends, of whom I have spoken, lent his active aid.
During the spring of 1850 a theatrical troupe came to Chauny. I had
never been to the theatre, except to hear the opera of _Charles VI._
at Amiens, at the time of my first railway journey. I had read a great
many plays of all kinds, for I devoured books like my grandmother, but
I had never seen a play acted in reality.
Blondeau decided that he would take me to see the drama, _Marie-Jeanne,
ou, La Fille du Peuple_. Grandmother disliked so much to go out that
grandfather accompanied Blondeau and me.
The wife of my grandfather’s barber, Lafosse, who came to shave him
every day, and who lived in the Chaussée quarter, was a milliner.
Grandmother commissioned Mme. Lafosse to make me a pretty blond lace
cap, trimmed with narrow pink ribbon. They wore bonnets when they went
to the theatre at Chauny, but a pretty cap was more elegant than a
bonnet.
People looked at me a great deal, and grandfather and Blondeau
kept whispering together, and I knew they were talking of me, but
_Marie-Jeanne_ interested me more than my own appearance.
I heard people say several times: “How old is she?”
The young men looked at me more boldly at the theatre than in the
street, and I saw they were talking together about me, and I soon knew
they were not making fun of my cap with narrow pink ribbons, which I
feared they might do before I went to the theatre.
I cried so much over _Marie-Jeanne_ that I returned home with my
eyelids swollen. Grandmother, who was waiting for me, said I was very
silly to have disfigured my eyes in that way. But grandfather and
Blondeau calmed her by whispering to her as they had whispered to each
other.
All grandmother’s friends, men and women, came to see her during the
week following the representation of _Marie-Jeanne_, and told her I had
made a “sensation.”
Grandmother could not contain her joy, and she committed the error of
writing about it to my father, who also came to see her, very angry.
The “family drama” assumed tragical proportions on this occasion. My
father spoke of his rights, and said it was his place to watch over me
and preserve me from my grandmother’s follies.
Was it possible that she had sent me to the theatre with a comparative
stranger and with grandfather, whose eccentric habits, to speak mildly
of them, forbade his assuming the rôle of chaperon? Was it not the most
ridiculous absurdity to dress up a child not yet fourteen in a young
woman’s cap? All the town must pity me and ridicule grandmother, he
said, and if she acted in this manner I should never find a husband!
“You are mistaken, my dear Jean Louis, in this as in everything else,”
grandmother replied angrily; “for not only has the demand of Juliette’s
hand in marriage, that was made to me a year ago, been renewed, but
just now, before you arrived, I received another.”
“You cannot say from whom?”
Grandmother showed my father a letter, and mentioned a person’s name.
“One and one make two,” she said.
My father was silent for an instant, and then replied in a vexed tone:
“So you wish to marry Juliette as you were married yourself, and as you
married your daughter?”
“No,” she answered, cruelly; “I do not wish to make my grandson-in-law’s
position for him. He must have one himself.”
“I shall take Juliette home with me; she belongs to me!” cried my
father, in anger.
“I shall keep the child you abandoned, and whom I rescued from the
poverty in which you had thrown her!”
“I will send policemen for her!”
“Try it! I will leave you all, and take Juliette off to a foreign
country.”
Then followed terribly sad days for me. Assailed by letters from my
father, who did not come to grandmother’s any more; by the visits of my
mother, who always found a way of irritating me against my father and
my grandmother, my life became insupportable.
I did not see my father for several months. All the family blamed him.
During the time I passed with my aunts, they, who never had written
to him, sent him a letter approving grandmother’s actions, and telling
him he had no right to influence my mind with his eccentric ideas; that
the majority of those who loved me possessed certain rights from the
affection they felt for me.
In one of my letters to grandmother I spoke of this letter my aunts had
written to my father, and she was deeply grateful to them for it.
Strangely, their intervention calmed her, and she began from that time
to speak less bitterly of my father.
By degrees the quarrel was again patched up. I wished to see my father
again. I suffered from my separation from him in my heart, and in the
development of my mind. Becoming more and more attached to my studies
on Greece, I needed a guide, and no one could replace my father. I told
my grandmother how much I missed him, how my progress in the study of
literature was arrested, and I laughingly added that she was hindering
my future career as a writer by her spite.
One day in the autumn grandmother told me that she would permit me to
pass Christmas and a part of January at Blérancourt.
My father’s sorrow was to be consoled, and mine also. I rejoiced at
it with all my heart, and it was with transports of joy that we met
again. My father evinced so much love for me, he was so tender, so
occupied with everything that could please, amuse, or instruct me, that
my mother, overcome by one of her outbursts of morbid jealousy, became
openly hostile to my father, and continually tortured me.
I was flattered by everyone at grandmother’s; I was humiliated
unceasingly at my mother’s. If my father spoke of my intelligence, or
my beauty, my mother said I was as stupid as I was ugly.
It seemed to me at that time that I was overestimated in both ways by
them, and I began to criticise myself, as I have always since done--not
with extreme indulgence nor with determined malice. I am grateful
to my mother, after all, for having kept me from acquiring too much
self-complacency.
I began my study on Greece again, with delight. My father was not only
a professor, he was a poet.
“How can you be such a red republican, with such a love for Marmorean
Greece?” I asked him.
“With the Greeks, marble was only the skeleton of architecture
and sculpture,” my father replied, “and in Grecian colours red
predominates. Besides, there is no question of art in republican
conceptions, but only of politics. Art is eternal; politics is the
science of an impulse toward progress. I may be classical in my taste
in art, and worship what is antique. In politics I desire only new
things. When the people shall have heard the vivifying good word,
they will understand beauty and art as we understand it. They already
appreciate them better than the middle class.”
I cannot describe how my father spoke of the people; the very word was
pronounced by him with fervour, almost religiously.
“Papa,” I replied, “I want a white republic, an Athenian republic, with
an aristocracy which shall arise from out the masses and which shall be
the best portion of those masses. I wish a superior caste, which shall
govern, instruct, and enlighten.”
“And I wish only the people, nothing but the people, in which we
shall be mingled and melted as if in a powerful crucible,” said my
father. “The mass of the people has sap which is exhausted in us; it
has a vitality which we no longer possess. The humble class is not
responsible for any of its faults, which no one ever endeavoured to
correct usefully and intelligently during its youth. How admirable it
is in its natural qualities, which so many elements strive to mislead!
Why are the upper classes so vicious? Why have they not given the
people some elementary instruction before they tried to educate them?
They would not then have allowed themselves to be speculated with by
wicked and ambitious men.”
The President, Prince Louis Napoleon, passed reviews; made proselyting
journeys; the “Orléans,” as they then said, intrigued at Clermont,
the Legitimists at Wiesbaden; what remained of the republican form of
government suffered assault on all sides.
My father said: “We still have the people with us!” But his conviction
disagreed with the proof, constantly made more evident, that the
government was eliminating the people by all possible means from taking
part in national questions. The patriotic workmen were influenced by
those who said they had suffered from the diminished part played by
France in Europe under King Louis Philippe, and who did not cease to
recall the glorious epoch of Napoleon I.
When I was with my father I was obliged to hear politics spoken of,
willingly or not; as I no longer took any personal interest in them,
as I looked upon political events with indifference, I did not allow
myself to be carried away by them, nor did I enter into discussions,
and our life might have been peaceful, or nearly so, but for my
mother’s embittered nature, and my father’s frequent outbursts of anger.
The same interminable disputes took place, though differing in
character from those between my grandparents. I do not know whether
similar disputes occurred in all households at the time of my youth.
But I believe people were then more sensitive, more susceptible, more
dramatic than they are to-day.
Many years later my life was again mingled with my mother’s and
father’s, and it seemed to me that in the reconciliations following
these perpetual disputes there entered a sort of excitement of the
senses. To weep, to be angry, to accuse each other, even to hate for a
moment, and then to grow calm, to pardon, to be reconciled, to embrace
and love each other--this all seemed to be a need in their lives and to
animate their existence.
My father could not master his terrible paroxysms of anger; he would be
in despair every time after he had given way to them, and then would
yield to them again whenever he was irritated.
My mother would provoke these paroxysms by cold comments or
criticisms, ironical and stinging, such as these, for example:
“Monsieur Lambert’s temper is going to be stormy. We shall not be
spared the dancing of the plates and glass at breakfast or dinner.” Or:
“The republican gentleman sees things with a bad eye to-day; we shall
be in danger,” etc., etc.
As my character so much resembled my father’s, I often felt anger
rising within me; but the example of my father, who was naturally so
good and so tender, but who when blinded by passion became bad, even
cruel, taught me to hold myself in check, and I never, in my long life,
have allowed myself to give way to violent temper, except in moments
of indignation and strong hatred against wicked people, or against my
country’s enemies.
The proverb: “An avaricious father, a prodigal son,” or the contrary,
is often used, and there is truth in it; for children, witnessing their
parents’ example, take note of their daily actions, which are engraved
and imprinted on their young minds, never to be forgotten, and forcing
them to criticise and to condemn those dearest to them.
From hearing my father and his numerous “friends and brothers” talk
violent, “advanced” politics, as they then expressed it, I had become
entirely moderate in my opinions. How many plans for “Republican
Defense” were formed in my presence! Some men wished to assassinate
the Prince-President; others to blow up the Chamber of Deputies; still
others to make the people rise up against the traitors.
There came one day to breakfast with my father a very “advanced”
republican, who was, moreover, a “Comtist,” a name that my father was
obliged to explain to me, for it was the first time I had ever heard of
Auguste Comte. Our guest was a lawyer of the Court of Appeals at Paris,
but lived at Soissons for the time being, taking charge of a series of
very important lawsuits of a relative. His name was Monsieur Lamessine,
and he had the reputation of being a man of talent. His brilliant
conversation pleased me, but his scepticism displeased me. He said
that right had no other interest than that of being the counterpart of
wrong; that morality appeared to him as only forming the counterpoise
to immorality. He endeavoured to persuade my father that society must
become more corrupted than it was in order that a new growth should
spring from it. He was of the type of an Italian of the South, with
very sombre eyes, a pallid complexion, lustrous blue-black, curling
hair. His grandfather, who came from Sicily, was named de la Messine;
he had naturalized himself as a Frenchman at the time of the great
Revolution and simplified his name.
As usual, I took part in the discussions, and grew excited over them.
Monsieur Lamessine did the same, and our joust was amusing. He believed
in nothing. I believed in everything. When I would hesitate, my father
furnished me with arguments, sometimes contrary to his own ideas; but
he wished to see me come off victorious against an unbeliever.
Monsieur Lamessine left us laughing, and said to me:
“Don’t bear me malice, Mademoiselle the fighter.”
I replied:
“My best wishes, Monsieur, that Heaven may shed upon you a little
knowledge of what is right and what is beautiful.”
XL
THE “FAMILY DRAMA” AGAIN
My great-grandmother at Chivres, who was very ill in March, thought her
end approaching, and wished to see me. Happily, it was only an alarm,
and our joy was soon complete at seeing her entirely recovered.
Under the pretext that he was called by business to Condé, Monsieur
Lamessine, who lived at Soissons, came to visit my aunts, as my
father’s friend, while I was staying with them. He was rather badly
received, and he saw me in my peasant’s costume, which I had improved
a little, however, as grandmother would not permit me to be badly
dressed, even when away from her.
Attired in gingham, with a printed cotton kerchief, and a Bordeaux cap,
I was not uglier in this than in other costumes. Monsieur Lamessine
complimented me on my picturesque peasant dress. But the coolness of
his reception prevented him from coming again.
Aunt Constance teased me about my suitor, but I grew angry, and told
her I had other suitors younger than he, and begged her to leave me
alone.
Two months later I saw Monsieur Lamessine again at my father’s. It
was in June, 1851. The republicans were plotting a great deal. The
President had just made a speech at Dijon, in which he had said that if
his government had not been able to realise all desired ameliorations,
it was the fault of the factions.
In Monsieur Lamessine’s mind and in my father’s this speech contained
the threat of a _coup d’état_.
They gathered together some friends in the evening to deliberate; I, of
course, was not present at these deliberations. My father only said to
me the next morning:
“The moment is serious; but we have a man with us who has the blood of
a ‘carbonaro’ in his veins. He will do something.” He meant Monsieur
Lamessine.
On the 1st of December M. Lamessine came to plead a cause at Chauny.
He brought a letter from my father to my grandmother, to whom he was
extremely courteous.
Asked to remain to dinner, he showed himself much less sceptical,
and pretended that my arguments and my wishes had produced a great
influence on his mind. I did not believe him. I thought this was simply
flattery, the motive for which I could not explain to myself, but it
seemed to me hypocritical. I felt a sort of uneasiness, an inexplicable
pain, that evening, and I left the drawing-room early.
The next day grandmother said to me triumphantly:
“Monsieur Lamessine has asked for your hand! He pledges his word to
live in Paris in three years’ time. My dream is realised. His aunt has
given him a certain sum of money to compensate him for having left
the capital, and for protecting her fortune, of which he has already
recovered a part; I, also, will give you a dowry; but I will not say
how much it will be, on account of your mother and her jealousy. It is
agreed that I shall spend every winter with you in Paris.”
I was stunned, bewildered, crazed.
“What? What? You are going to marry me in that way! You have promised
my hand to that man, who is double my age? I won’t have him, I won’t
have him!”
“Juliette, you are absurd. We shall never find another such opportunity
at Chauny, far from all Parisian acquaintances. He is sent to us by
Providence. Besides, he is very good-looking. He resembles one of my
heroes in Balzac, feature by feature. You shall see.”
And she went to get one of her favourite novels, which she knew nearly
by heart, and read me several passages from it, which I have always
remembered.
I took grandfather and Blondeau to witness the folly of my
grandmother’s plan. It was useless. It was already too late. Early in
the morning she had persuaded them, if not of the happiness I should
find in this marriage, at least of the possibility of my living in
Paris and “conquering celebrity” there.
My father and mother, who had been sent for, arrived a few days later.
My father was in an extraordinary state of excitement. The _coup
d’état_ which he had foreseen had taken place.
My mother at once declared that she shared grandmother’s views
regarding my marriage. My father flew into one of his rages. He said,
in a loud voice, that he would never consent to the union of his only
daughter with “an old man”--that was to say, a husband double the age
of his wife. He raved, he overstepped all bounds in his objections, and
finally left the drawing-room, swearing at and insulting everybody.
He reappeared a few moments later, and, half-opening the door, called
me, took me in his arms, after having wrapped me up in a shawl of my
mother’s, bore me to his carriage, standing outside, and, whipping his
horse, carried me off, while my mother and grandmother, screaming in
the street, ordered him to leave me.
He was literally mad, and spoke in violent terms against Monsieur
Lamessine, telling me things of which I had never heard about the life
of “an old bachelor.”
However, the evening I passed alone with my father at Blérancourt
touched my heart more than I can describe. He depicted the despair of
a father who adored his daughter, who had scarcely ever had her to
himself, and who was urged to give her, still a child, to an unworthy
man. Tears ran down his face. He told me how unhappy he was, and
related his whole life to me.
“The more I have loved, the more have I been crushed by what I loved,”
he said. “At first, crushed in my faith, then in my affection for my
wife, my first, my only love, crushed by friendship, deceived by my
best friend, Doctor Bernhardt, for whom I abandoned everything, my
small means, my happiness, and my child; am I now to be crushed in my
affection for my idolised daughter, just at the moment when my love for
the Republic and liberty is betrayed?”
Terror had reigned for several days. All the heads of the party of
liberty were exiled. Twenty-six thousand were sent out of the country;
the republican leaders were despatched to Noukahiva; their soldiers
could not reassemble.
Scarcely had Louis Napoleon Bonaparte assured the country of the purity
of his intentions, in November, before he took possession of France by
fraud.
“France has understood,” he said at that time, “that I infringed the
law only to enter into my rights.”
“All is over with the Republic, and through the fault of republicans
themselves,” my father said, despairingly. “I hate in the same way
those who have let themselves be conquered through weakness, and
those who have conquered by brutality. And now they wish to sacrifice
my daughter to I know not what idiotic dream of future celebrity.
Juliette, Juliette, my child!” he cried, “I will protect you. You are
my last refuge, my last hope--I cling to you!”
And my father wept like a child. I consoled him almost maternally, and
said to him:
“Father, calm yourself; they cannot marry me against my will.”
The next morning my mother, who had been left behind, and who never
knew how to hide a grievance, arrived, very angry, and had a quarrel
with my father, during which never-to-be-forgotten words were said,
wicked words, which my parents should never have used to each other
before me, for they suggested to me for the first time the desire to
escape from so much violence, and from the sight of so many cruel
wounds opened under my eyes.
“Nothing more--they have left me nothing more! I have lost everything!”
cried my father. “I am a shipwrecked man, struggling amid wreckage. I
would like to die! Do not let them take my daughter from me, for pity’s
sake!”