Henri Mauperin's age, like that of so many present-day young men, could
not be reckoned by the years of his life; he was of the same age as the
times in which he lived. The coldness and absence of enthusiasm in the
younger generation, that distinguishing mark of the second half of the
nineteenth century, had set its seal on him entirely. He looked grave,
and one felt that he was icy cold. One recognised in him those elements,
so contrary to the French temperament, which constitute in French
history sects without ardour and political parties without enthusiasm,
such as the Jansenism of former days and the Doctrinarianism of to-day.
Henri Mauperin was a young Doctrinaire. He had belonged to that
generation of children whom nothing astonishes and nothing amuses; who
go, without the slightest excitement, to see anything to which they are
taken and who come back again perfectly unmoved. When quite young he had
always been well behaved and thoughtful. At college it had never
happened to him in the midst of his lessons to go off in a dream, his
face buried in his hands, his elbows on a dictionary and his eyes
looking into the future. He had never been assailed by temptations with
regard to the unknown and by those first visions of life which at the
age of sixteen fill the minds of young men with trouble and delight,
shut up as they are between the four walls of a courtyard with grated
windows, against which their balls bounce and over and beyond which
their thoughts soar. In his class there were two or three boys who were
sons of eminent political men and with them he made friends. While
studying classics he was thinking of the club he should join later on.
On leaving college Henri's conduct was not like that of a young man of
twenty. He was considered very steady, and was never seen in places
where drinking and gambling went on and where his reputation might have
suffered. He was to be met with in staid drawing-rooms, where he was
always extremely attentive and polite to ladies who were no longer
young. All that would have gone against him elsewhere served him there
in good stead. His reserve was considered an attraction, his seriousness
was thought fascinating.
There are fashions with regard to what finds favour in men. The reign of
Louis Philippe, with its great wealth of scholars, had just accustomed
the political and literary circles of Paris to value in a society man
that something which recalls the cap and gown, that a professor takes
about with him everywhere, even when he has become a minister.
With women of the upper middle class the taste for gay, lively,
frivolous qualities of mind had been succeeded by a taste for
conversation which savoured of the lecture-room, for science direct from
the professor's chair, for a sort of learned amiability. A pedant did
not alarm them, even though he might be old; when young he was made much
of, and it was rumoured that Henri Mauperin was a great favourite.
He had a practical mind. He set up for being a believer in all that was
useful, in mathematical truths, positive religions and the exact
sciences. He had a certain compassion for art, and maintained that Boule
furniture had never been made as well as at present. Political economy,
that science which leads on to all things, had appealed to him when he
went out into the world as a vocation and a career, consequently he had
decided to be an economist. He had brought to this dry study a
narrow-minded intelligence, but he had been patient and persevering, and
now, once a fortnight, he published in important reviews a long article
well padded with figures which the women skipped and the men said they
had read.
By the interest which it takes in the poorer classes, by its care for
their welfare and the algebraic account it keeps of all their misery and
needs, political economy had, of course, given to Henri Mauperin a
colouring of Liberalism. It was not that he belonged to a very decided
Opposition: his opinions were merely a little ahead of Government
principles, and his convictions induced him to make overtures to
whatever was likely to succeed. He limited his war against the powers
that were to the shooting of an arrow or to a veiled allusion, the key
and meaning of which he would by means of his friends convey to the
various _salons_. As a matter of fact, he was carrying on a flirtation,
rather than hostilities, with the Government in power. Drawing-room
acquaintances, people whom he met in society, brought him within reach
of Government influence and into touch with Government patronage. He
would prepare the works and correct the proofs of some high official who
was always busy and who had scarcely time to do more than sign his
books. He had managed to get on good terms with his Prefect, hoping
through him to get into the Council and afterward into the Chamber. He
excelled in playing double parts, and was clever at compromises and
arrangements which kept him in touch with everything without quarrelling
with anybody or anything. Though a liberal and political economist, he
had found a way of turning aside the distrust of the Catholics and their
enmity against himself and his doctrines. He had won the indulgence and
sympathy of some of them, and had managed to make himself agreeable to
the clergy and to flatter the church by linking together material
progress and spiritual progress, the religion of political economy and
that of Catholicism: Quesnay and Saint Augustin, Bastiat and the Gospel,
statistics and God. Then besides this programme of his, the alliance of
Religion and Political Economy, he had a reserve stock of piety, and he
observed most regularly certain religious practices, which won for him
the affectionate regard of the Abbé Blampoix and brought him into secret
communion with believers and with those who observed their religious
duties.
Henri Mauperin had taken his flat in the Rue Taitbout for the purpose of
entertaining his friends. These entertainments consisted of solemn
parties for young men, where the guests would gather round a table which
looked like a desk and talk about Natural Law, Public Charities,
Productive Forces, and the _Multiplicabilité_ of the Human Species.
Henri tried to turn these reunions into something approaching
conferences. He was selecting the men and looking for the elements he
would require for the famous _salon_ he hoped to have in Paris as soon
as he was married; he lured to his reunions the great authorities and
notabilities of economic science, and invited to a sort of honorary
presidency members of the Institute, whom he had pursued with his
politeness and his newspaper puffs and who, according to his plans,
would some day help him to take his seat among them in the moral and
political science section.
It was, however, in turning associations to account that Henri had shown
his talent and all his skill. He had from the very first clung to that
great means of getting on peculiar to ciphers--that means by which a man
is no longer one alone, but a unit joined to a number. He had gained a
footing for himself in associations of every kind. He had joined the
d'Aguesseau Debating Society and had glided in and taken his place among
all those young men who were practising speech-making, educating
themselves for the platform, doing their apprenticeship as orators and
their probation as statesmen for future parliamentary struggles. Clubs,
college reunions and banquets of old boys, barriers' lectures,
historical and geographical societies, scientific and benevolent
societies, he had neglected nothing. Everywhere, in all centres which
give to the individual an opportunity of shining and which bring him any
profit by the collective influence of a group, he appeared and was here,
there and everywhere, making fresh acquaintances, forming new
connections, cultivating friendships and interests which might lead him
on to something, thus driving in the landmarks of his various ambitions,
marching ahead, from the committee of one society to the committee of
another society, to an importance, a sort of veiled notoriety and to
one of those names which, thanks to political influence, are suddenly
brought to the front when the right time comes.
He certainly was well qualified for the part he was playing. Eloquent
and active, he could make all the noise and stir which lead a man on to
success in this century of ours. He was commonplace with plenty of show
about him. In society he rarely recited his own articles, but he usually
posed with one hand in his waistcoat, after the fashion of Guizot in
Delaroche's portrait.