FROM THE QUAI VOLTAIRE TO THE PANTHEON.
The Quai Voltaire--Its Changes of Name--Voltaire--His Life in Paris and
Elsewhere--His Remains laid in the Pantheon--Mirabeau--Rousseau--Vincennes.
What a number of names had the Quai Voltaire borne before receiving the
illustrious one by which it has now been known for about a century!
First Quai Malaquais; then Quai du Pont Rouge, when the red bridge had
just been constructed to replace the old ferry opposite the Rue de
Beaune; in 1648 Quai des Théatins, after the religious order of that
name established by Mazarin; finally on the 4th of May, 1791, by
decision of the Commune of Paris, Quai Voltaire. During forty years
Voltaire had almost uninterruptedly been absent from France, when, on
the 10th of February, 1778, he returned, and the mansion he had
purchased in the Rue Richelieu for himself and his niece Denise not
being ready for his reception, accepted the hospitality of the Marquis
de Villette, in whose house, on the quay now known as that of Voltaire,
he died May 30th, 1778. The fact is recorded in an inscription placed on
the façade of the former Hôtel de Villette.
Before conferring upon the quay the name borne by one of the most witty
and most powerful writers that France ever produced, the Commune
received a report and pronounced through one of its members a eulogium
in his honour. Until the time of the Revolution it was the custom in
France, as in other countries at a much later period, to name streets
and other thoroughfares after some aristocratic family. Since the
Revolution, however, it has become usual to substitute, in connection
with the thoroughfares and public places of Paris, the names of national
celebrities and national benefactors. In this latter character Voltaire
will not be universally accepted, though his aim was certainly to do
good; and that he had “done some good,” was, he once declared, the only
epitaph he aspired to. According to an observation attributed to M. de
Tocqueville, Voltaire possessed in greater abundance than anyone else
the wit that everyone possesses; and D. F. Strauss, in the six lectures
on Voltaire which he wrote for and dedicated to the Princess Louise of
Hesse, says much the same thing when he admiringly declares that every
quality of the French mind belonged to Voltaire in a more marked degree
than to any other Frenchman. Goethe seems to have thought still more
highly of him. “Voltaire,” he said, “will always be looked upon as the
greatest man in the literature of modern times, and perhaps even of all
times; as the most astonishing creation of Nature, a creation in which
it has pleased her to collect for once in a single frail organisation
every variety of talent, all the glories of genius, all the powers of
thought.”
[Illustration: THE LATE ALBERT WOLFF, OF THE _FIGARO_.
(_From a Photograph by G. Camus, Paris._)]
Very different, indeed, was the opinion entertained by the great
supporter of absolute monarchy and of the Roman Catholic Church.
“Paris,” wrote Count Joseph de Maistre, “crowned him; Sodom would have
banished him.... How am I to picture to you what he makes me feel? When
I think of what he might have done and what he did, his inimitable
talents inspire me with a sort of holy rage for which there is no name.
Midway between admiration and horror, I sometimes wish to see a statue
erected to him--by the hand of the executioner.”
It must be remembered, however, that in Voltaire’s time there was no
such thing in France as either political or religious liberty, and that
he took the part of the persecuted whenever he had an opportunity of
doing so. “His life,” says M. Arsène Houssaye, “is a comedy in five
acts, in which, through French genius, shines human reason. The first
act takes place in Paris, among distinguished noblemen and popular
actresses; beginning with the entertainments of the Prince de Conti and
ending with the death of Adrienne Lecouvreur, whose hurried secret
burial by torch-light inspired Voltaire with so much indignation. This
was the period of the Bastille and of banishment. The second act takes
place at the castle of Cirey and at the court of King Stanislas; this
second act might be called the love of science and the science of love.
The third act takes place at the court of Frederick II., at Berlin,
Potsdam, and Sans-Souci. The fourth act is that of Ferney, where he
builds a church (with ‘Deo erexit Voltaire’ inscribed over the portal),
gives a dowry to Corneille’s niece, defends the family of the persecuted
Calas, pleads for Admiral Byng, for Montbailly, for La Barre, for all
who are in need of an advocate. The fifth act takes place at Paris, like
the first; but the man who at the beginning of the drama was a prisoner
and a proscript has come back as a conqueror. All Paris rises to salute
him. The Academy believes that Homer, Socrates, and Aristophanes are to
be found again in Voltaire; the Théâtre Français crowns him with
immortal laurels. But the poet has reached the last point of greatness;
Paris smothers in its embraces this ruler of opinions, who with his last
breath proclaims the rights of man.”
Born in 1694, this powerful writer was so weak as a child that it was
not thought safe to baptise him until he was nine months old. His father
was treasurer in the Exchequer Chamber, and he had for godfather the
Abbé de Château-Neuf, one of those sceptical abbés who help to give a
character of its own to the eighteenth century. As a youth he was in the
good graces of Ninon de L’Enclos, the celebrated beauty, who, living to
a prodigious age, is said to have preserved her charms to the last. She
recognised Voltaire’s precocious talents as he, on his side, was
delighted by her personal fascinations. She left him by will 2,000
francs for the purchase of books. The Abbé de Château-Neuf introduced
him meanwhile into the most brilliant society of Paris. This did not
suit the views of his father, who wished his son to enter the
magistracy. He accordingly separated him from the Abbé de Château-Neuf
to attach him as page to the Marquis of the same name, who took the
young Voltaire or Arouet, to call him by his proper name, in his suite
to Holland. Returning to Paris, the youthful Arouet began to write, when
he adopted, for literary purposes, the name of Voltaire, which will be
recognised as an anagram of Arouet l. j. (_le jeune_). According to most
historians the name of Voltaire was borrowed by the youthful Arouet from
an estate belonging to his mother; but there seems to be no authority
for this supposition, and the anagrammatic or quasi-anagrammatic
explanation is probably the true one.
Voltaire had not long exercised his pen when he was thrown into the
Bastille as the author of a satire which he had not written. Here he
sketched out the plan of his “Henriade” and of his “Siècle de Louis
XIV.,” both suggested to him, it is said, by the Marquis de
Château-Neuf. The true author of the satire having been discovered,
Voltaire was set at liberty, and, according to the custom of the time,
received a money indemnity from the Regent, whom he thanked for
providing him with food, while expressing a hope that he would not in
future furnish him with a lodging. Besides making notes for his
historical work and for his epic poem, Voltaire had written in the
Bastille a tragedy on the subject of Œdipus, which in 1718, when the
author had just attained his twenty-fourth year, was produced at the
Théâtre Français with a success which no other tragedy had obtained
since the days of Corneille and Racine.
Voltaire’s literary life in Paris was cut short by a painful incident.
In an animated discussion he had taken the liberty of contradicting the
Chevalier de Rohan, who was cowardly enough to lay a trap for his
antagonist; and getting him to leave the room, subjected him to violent
maltreatment at the hands of his servants. Voltaire challenged the
Chevalier, who, however, not only refused him satisfaction, but had him
shut up in the Bastille for six months and then banished from France.
Taking refuge in England, he studied the language, literature, and
especially the philosophy of the country. After a residence of three
years he was able to make known to his countrymen, through a volume
entitled “Lettres sur les Anglais,” the philosophy of Bolingbroke and of
Locke, the scientific theories of Newton, the poetry of Shakespeare, and
the prose of Addison. It was during his residence in England that he
wrote the tragedies of _Brutus_, _The Death of Cæsar_, _Zaïre_, &c.,
which, however un-Shakespearian, were evidently the outcome of a study
of Shakespeare’s plays. Voltaire’s position in regard to Shakespeare has
been somewhat misunderstood. He did not fully appreciate Shakespeare, he
even undervalued the great dramatist. But he saw that genius was in him;
which is more than can be said of some of our own writers of the
eighteenth century, not excluding Addison, who, in _The Spectator_,
points to “Shakespeare and Lee” for examples of the “false sublime.”
During his stay in England Voltaire mixed freely in literary society,
and made the acquaintance of some of our best writers. Johnson, it will
be remembered, thinking only of his irreligion, would not shake hands
with him; though afterwards, when he heard that Voltaire had praised his
“Rasselas,” he said that there was “some good in the dog, after all.”
When Voltaire was introduced to Congreve, the brilliant dramatist
explained that he wished to be looked upon, not as a writer of comedies,
but as an English gentleman; to which Voltaire replied that if the
latter had been his only character, he should never have taken the
trouble to seek his acquaintance. Voltaire for long enjoyed the credit
of having acquired sufficient knowledge of the English language to be
able to express himself gracefully and correctly in English verse, but
it has been conclusively proved that the productions were corrected and
revised by an English friend.
Returning to Paris, he lived there tranquilly for some time; but on the
death of Adrienne Lecouvreur, to whom he was much attached, and to whose
remains Christian burial had been refused, he wrote some indignant
verses, which, after they had been put in circulation, filled him with
alarm as to the notice that would probably be taken of them by the
authorities. He now escaped to Rouen, where he printed his “History of
Charles X.” and “Philosophical Letters.” The latter work was burned by
the hangman, a fate reserved for more than one of Voltaire’s subsequent
works. His ingenious remark has elsewhere been cited, to the effect that
the public executioner, were he presented with a copy of every book he
had to burn, would soon possess one of the finest libraries in France.
Another production of his, the “Epistle to Urania,” which expressed
theological views of a most unorthodox kind, was soon to get him into
fresh trouble, though by a well-known artifice of those tyrannical days
he disavowed the work. He thought it prudent, all the same, to keep out
of the way for a time, and he now accepted the hospitality offered to
him by Mme. du Châtelet at Cirey. He here gave himself up for a time, in
common with his hostess, to mathematical and scientific studies. He
published one after the other, with astonishing rapidity, “Newtonian
Elements,” “Mahomet,” _Mérope_, “The Discourse on Man,” and other works,
besides going on with his “Century of Louis XIV.” and his essay on
morals.
Voltaire’s reputation was now European; and the Prince Royal of Prussia,
afterwards Frederick the Great, one of his most fervent admirers, wrote
to him begging him to undertake the publication of his “Anti-Machiavel,”
though as Miçkievicz the Polish poet says in reference to this work, it
was Machiavellism itself that Frederick II. both practised and
professed. In the midst of his success, Voltaire, as irritable as he was
kind-hearted, suffered much from the attacks of pamphleteers, whose
favourite accusation was that, writing on many different subjects, he
was not master of one. To these attacks he replied in the most impetuous
style, though he would have done better to preserve the silence of
profound disdain. Voltaire, however, reminds one, in this respect, of
that horseman who, riding through a forest, was so exasperated by the
chirping of myriads of grasshoppers, that he leaped at last from his
saddle, and, drawing his sword, set about the vain task of exterminating
the offensive insects, although nightfall was at hand and they would
shortly have grown silent of their own accord. The pamphleteer and
poetaster, Jean Fréron, was a favourite object of Voltaire’s
detestation; he it was for whom Voltaire took the trouble to make an
adaptation of a quatrain originally belonging to the Greek Anthology.
Here are Voltaire’s lines--
“Un jour loin du sacré vallon
Un serpent mordit Jean Fréron:
Songez ce qui en arriva:
Ce fut le serpent qui creva.”
It was surety these lines which inspired Goldsmith with the idea of his
“Elegy on a mad dog.”
“But soon a wonder came to light,
Which showed the rogues they lied;
The man recovered of the bite,
The dog it was that died.”
In 1743, after the successful production of _Mérope_ Voltaire regained
some favour at the court, and obtained, through the patronage of Mme. de
Pompadour, the title of historiographer of France, together with the
post of gentleman of the king’s bed-chamber. At the same time the French
Academy, after having twice rejected him, elected him as a member. His
writings of this period bear the stamp of his somewhat frivolous life;
among them are the operas, _Temple of Glory_, _Samson_, and _Budkah_,
the ballet _Princess of Navarre_, &c. Soon, however, the part of court
poet fatigued him, the more so as the king treated him coldly and Mme.
de Pompadour thought him inferior to Crébillon. His friendship for Mme.
du Châtelet still continued. But after her death he yielded to the
pressing invitations of Frederick the Great (1750) and went to the court
of Berlin, where a brilliant position, the post of chamberlain, and a
considerable money allowance awaited him. The result of the celebrated
intimacy between the philosopher and the king is well known; it lasted
two or three years, but the monarch could not control his domineering
habits nor the great writer the manifestation of his intellectual
superiority. The jealousy of the literary men of France, a quarrel with
Maupertius, whose part was taken by the king, some sharp utterances, and
various other causes precipitated the inevitable rupture. Voltaire left
Prussia in 1753, after undergoing more than one humiliation. The most
important work he published during his stay at Berlin was that “Century
of Louis XIV.” which remains his masterpiece in the historic line.
Having ascertained that the French Government would not be pleased to
see him at Paris, he travelled for several years in Germany, Switzerland
and France, establishing himself finally at Ferney in 1758, where he
built himself a magnificent house, in which he passed the last twenty
years of his life. Here he received flattering letters from the
sovereigns of Europe, and no less flattering visits from some of the
first literary men of the time. Princes and philosophers made
pilgrimages to Ferney, and “Patriarch of Ferney” became Voltaire’s
recognised name. The fact of Switzerland’s being a republic did not, of
course, prevent the Swiss landed proprietors from having serfs, and
Voltaire did his best to procure their personal liberation. This is
doubtless what he would have been glad to do in his own country, had it
been possible in the days before the Revolution to propose an
amelioration that would at once have been looked upon as revolutionary.
“He pleaded,” says one of his biographers, “for the emancipation of the
serfs of the canton of Jura; he endeavoured to remedy a number of
abuses, to reform a number of unjust laws.”
To give an idea of the kind of life led by Voltaire at Ferney, we may
reproduce in abridged form the account published by Moore, who,
travelling in France at the time, extended his journey in order to pay a
visit to Voltaire.
“The most piercing eyes I have ever seen in my life,” says Moore, “are
those of Voltaire, now eighty years of age. One recognises instantly in
his physiognomy genius, penetration, nobility of character.
“In the morning he seems restless and discontented, but this gradually
passes away, and after dinner he is lively and agreeable. But there is
always in his expression a tinge of irony, whether he smiles or frowns.
“When the weather is favourable he goes out in a carriage with his niece
or with some of his guests. Sometimes he takes a walk in his garden, and
if the weather does not allow him to go out he employs his time in
playing chess with Father Adam, or in receiving strangers, or in
dictating or reading his letters. But he passes the greater part of the
day in his study, and whether he is reading or being read to he has
always a pen in his hand to take notes or make observations; an author
writing for his bread could not work more assiduously, nor could a young
poet greedy of renown. He lives in the most hospitable manner, and his
table is excellent; he has always with him two or three persons from
Paris, who stay at his house a month or six weeks; when they go away
they are replaced by others, and there is thus a considerable change of
inmates. The visitors, together with the members of Voltaire’s family
circle, make up a party of twelve or fifteen persons, who dine daily at
his table whether he is present or not; for when he is occupied with the
preparation of some new work he does not dine in company, and contents
himself with appearing for a few minutes before or after dinner.
“The morning is not a favourable time for visiting Voltaire, who cannot
bear any interference with his hours of study; such a thing puts him at
once in a rage. He was often ready, moreover, to pick a quarrel, whether
by reason of the infirmities inseparable from old age, or from some
other cause. He is in any case less genial in the early part of the day
than afterwards.
[Illustration: VOLTAIRE.
(_From the statue by Houdon in the Comédie Française._)]
“Those who are invited to supper see him at his best. He takes an
evident pleasure in conversing with his guests, and makes a point of
being witty and agreeable. When, however, a vivacious remark or a good
jest is made by another person, he is the first to applaud; he is amused
and his gaiety increases. When he is surrounded by his friends, and
animated by the presence of women, he seems to enjoy his life with the
sensibility of a young man. His genius, disengaged from the burdens of
age, shines in the brightest manner, and delicate observations, happy
remarks, fall from his lips.
“His aversion for the clergy makes him often speak about them, to the
scandal of people not sufficiently witty to make their raillery
acceptable.
“He compares the English nation to a barrel of beer, of which the top is
froth, the bottom scum, while the middle part is excellent.
“With his inferiors Voltaire appears in a most favourable light. He is
affable, kind, and generous; he likes to see his tenants and all his
dependents thoroughly prosperous, and he occupies himself with their
individual interests in the spirit of a patriarch. He does his best,
moreover, to maintain around him industrial works and all kinds of
manufactures; through his care and patronage the miserable village of
Ferney, whose inhabitants were previously grovelling in idleness, has
become a prosperous and flourishing town.
“Voltaire had formerly in his house a little theatre at which pieces
were represented by his friends and himself; some important part was
generally assigned to him, but to judge by the accounts given of him he
was not a great actor. The amateur performances at Ferney suggested to a
company of regular players the idea of visiting the place. I have often
attended this theatre, and seen the performances of this company, which
were not first rate. The famous Lekain, who is now at Ferney, comes
there at times for special performances. On these occasions I am chiefly
attracted by the desire of seeing Voltaire, who is always present when
one of his pieces is played, or when, in no matter what piece, Lekain
appears.
“He takes his seat on the stage behind the scenery, but so as to be seen
by the greater part of the audience; and he takes as much interest in
the performance of the piece as if his reputation depended on it. If one
of the actors makes a mistake, he seems grieved and shocked; if on the
other hand the actor plays well, he gives him, by gestures and by word
of mouth, the liveliest marks of approbation. He enters into the spirit
of both situations with all the signs of genuine emotion, and even sheds
tears with the effusiveness of a young girl assisting for the first time
at the performance of a tragedy.”
Voltaire reconstructed at his own expense the church of Ferney, which he
thereupon dedicated to the Supreme Being: “Deo erexit Voltaire.” He had
often, however, sharp disputes with the curé of the parish, who more
than once complained to the bishop. He is said on one occasion to have
gone through the Easter ceremonies at the church of Ferney without
having previously confessed; desiring, he said, to fulfil his duties as
a Christian, an officer of the king’s household, and a village squire.
Encroaching another time on the prerogative of the curé, he appeared in
the pulpit and preached a sermon. Some of these stories, it must be
added, rest on no more authentic basis than hearsay and the well-known
changeableness of Voltaire’s disposition.
In 1778 Voltaire quitted Ferney to visit Paris, where he had not been
seen for twenty years. He was received in triumph: the Academy and the
Théâtre Français sent deputations to meet him, the most illustrious men
by talent or birth, women of the highest rank, waited upon him to
present their homage, and the people generally offered him ovations
whenever he appeared in public. A performance of his tragedy of _Irène_
was given at the Théâtre Français. His bust was crowned with laurels,
and after the representation he was conducted home with acclamations
from an enthusiastic crowd. “You are smothering me in roses!” cried the
old poet, intoxicated with his glory. Such emotions, such fatigue had,
indeed, the worst effect upon his health; he was nearly eighty-four
years of age--the age at which Goethe died--and the excitement was too
much for him. On his death-bed he was surrounded by priests who wished
to obtain from him something in the way of concession if not
retractation, but his only reply to the curé of Saint-Sulpice was, “Let
me die in peace.” A written report from the hand of this ecclesiastic is
said to exist in the archives of his church. Meanwhile that Voltaire did
not die reconciled to the Church is sufficiently proved by the fact that
Christian burial was denied him. His nephew, the Abbé Mignot, had the
corpse hastily carried to his abbey at Cellières, where it remained
until the days of the Revolution--when it was brought back in triumph to
Paris and placed in the Pantheon, the former church of Saint-Geneviève.
On the 30th of May, 1791, the National Assembly decreed that Voltaire
was worthy of the honour which should be paid to great men, and that
his ashes were to be transferred to the Pantheon. This translation was
the occasion of a national celebration, which, under the direction of
David the painter, took place on the 12th of July in the same year.
Joseph Chénier wrote for the festival a poem which Gossec set to music.
The three last lines of the last stanza are worth quoting:--
Chantez; de la raison célébrez le soutien;
Ah! de tous les mortels qui ne sont point esclaves
Voltaire est le concitoyen.[E]
[E] Literal Translation:--Sing; celebrate the upholder of Reason. Ah! of
all men who are not slaves Voltaire is the fellow-citizen.
Mirabeau, who next to Voltaire was declared worthy of the honours of the
Pantheon, was descended from an ancient and powerful family of
Florentine origin. Riquetti, originally Arrigheti, was the name of the
family, that of Mirabeau being derived from an estate which they
acquired when, after being banished from Florence in the thirteenth
century, they settled in Provence. The Mirabeaus were celebrated from
father to son for their energy, independence, and daring. One of their
boasts was that they were all of a piece, “without a joint.” Gabriel
Honoré Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau, the greatest orator that the
Revolution produced, was the son of the Marquis of Mirabeau, who is
reputed to have introduced the study of political economy into France.
Disfigured at the age of three by the small-pox, he preserved that
remarkable ugliness which produced such a strong impression upon his
contemporaries, together with that leonine countenance in which
intelligence and expression triumphed over superficial hideousness. It
was in allusion to his ugliness as well as to his violent passions and
his indomitable character, that Mirabeau’s father, who never loved him,
said of his son that he was a monster, physically and morally. Placed
under different masters, he learnt with surprising facility ancient and
modern languages. Lagrange taught him mathematics, and he also studied
drawing and music, besides occupying himself with gymnastics. Having
revealed at an early age his impetuous disposition, he was placed by his
father at the École Militaire, as if with a view to his correction. Here
he devoured all the works on the art of war, and at the age of seventeen
came out of the school as officer. At this point begins the romance of
his life. His debts and a love intrigue caused his father to shut him up
in the island of Ré, in virtue of a _lettre de cachet_ obtained for that
purpose. Nor was this the only one that the severe parent procured in
view of his son’s better behaviour. Sent to Corsica with his regiment,
Mirabeau distinguished himself in various ways, among others by writing
a history which his father destroyed because it contained philosophical
ideas which, according to the parent’s view, were unorthodox. The
youthful Mirabeau made a better impression on one of his uncles, who
wrote about him: “Either he will be the cleverest satirist in the
universe, or the greatest European general on land or sea, or minister,
or chancellor, or Pope, or anything else that may please him.”
In 1772 he married at Aix, in Provence, a rich heiress, Émilie de
Mirignane by name, whose dowry he was rapidly spending when the
ever-watchful father came forward and procured against him a legal
interdict, which cut him off from all credit and obliged him to reside
within the limits of a particular town. Here, inspired, no doubt, by the
situation, he composed in hot haste his “Essay on Despotism,” which
deals, however, not merely with the arbitrary exercise of power, but
with such concomitants of political despotism as immoderate taxation and
standing armies. An insult having been offered to one of his sisters,
Mirabeau broke through the rules imposed upon him, and, always at the
suggestion of his father, was captured, this time to be imprisoned in
the castle of If: familiar to the readers of Dumas’s “Monte Cristo.”
Here he paid so much attention to the wife of the steward that it was
found necessary to transfer him to another fortress. His new abode was
close to Pontarlier; and he obtained permission to quit the fortress and
take up his residence in this town. At Pontarlier he made the
acquaintance of Sophie de Ruffey, the young wife of the Marquis de
Monnier, to whom, under the name of “Sophie,” he was a few years
afterwards, as a prisoner in the Bastille, to address the passionate
letters generally known as “Lettres à Sophie.” His relations with
Sophie, whom he induced to leave her husband in order to accompany him
to Holland, brought upon him a criminal action and a tragic sentence. He
was condemned to death, and not being present at the time and place
fixed for his execution, was decapitated in effigy. He had fled with
Sophie to Amsterdam, where, under the name of St. Matthew, he wrote
largely for the booksellers who were accustomed to produce pamphlets and
books which either had been or, as a matter of course, would have been
forbidden in France. Besides original works, Mirabeau supplied the Dutch
booksellers with translations from the English and the German. But the
French Government would not leave him in peace, and in 1777, his
extradition having been applied for, he was arrested at Amsterdam,
carried back to France, and imprisoned at Vincennes. He was allowed to
write freely to his adored Sophie; and freely enough he did write to
her.
[Illustration: THE PONT DU CARROUSEL AND THE LOUVRE, FROM THE QUAI
MALAQUAIS.]
The passionate letters were all copied in the Secretary’s Office; and it
is only from these copies, as printed and published in 1792 by Manuel,
procureur of the Commune of Paris, that the epistles are now known. They
were obviously not written for general reading. Jotted down from day to
day, without thought of anything but the woman he loved and the passion
by which he was inspired, they contain passages which even persons
without prudery (a fault charged by Mirabeau against Sophie’s mother)
might have desired to see omitted; but they are eloquent, impassioned,
and, though affected by the senses, written from the heart. During his
captivity at Vincennes, which lasted forty-two months, Mirabeau composed
a number of works, many of which, as mentioned in the letters to Sophie,
seem to have been lost. He made for Sophie’s own private reading some
edifying translations from the tales of Boccaccio and from the _Basia_
of Johannes Secundus; and he wrote a novel that every one would not care
to read, called “Ma Conversion.” Liberated from prison in December,
1780, he went straight to Pontarlier, where he constituted himself a
prisoner. He wished to obtain a divorce for Sophie from her husband and
for himself from his wife; and it is related that in the former case the
husband was only too happy to pay the expenses of the suit. He also
wrote an eloquent, indignant attack against _lettres de cachet_, which,
not daring to publish it in France, he brought out in Switzerland. From
Switzerland he went to London. After a time he returned to France, and
in 1786, anxious as ever to play an active part in life, got himself
sent by the Government on a secret mission to Prussia; where he was to
study the effect that would probably be produced in Germany by the death
of Frederick the Great, then imminent, the character of the Prussian
prince who was to succeed him, and the possibility, moreover, of raising
in Prussia a loan for France. Such missions, of which the precise object
was never clearly defined, belonged to the system of the ancient régime.
Mirabeau was present at the death of Frederick and at the inauguration
of his successor; when with marvellous confidence he gave the new
sovereign some advice as to the art and method of governing a great
country. Mirabeau, meanwhile, did his work conscientiously as agent of
the French court; addressing to the minister Calonne seventy letters,
which were published in 1789, the year of the Revolution, under the
title of “Secret History of the Court of Berlin, Letters a French
Traveller, from July, 1786, to January, 1787.” The book, full of
satirical portraits and still more satirical observations, caused
considerable scandal; and the parliament lost no time in ordering it to
be burnt by the public executioner.
[Illustration: THE SEINE, BETWEEN THE CITY AND THE QUAI DES AUGUSTINS.]
During his stay at Berlin Mirabeau collected materials for his “Prussian
Monarchy,” published in 1788 (four volumes in quarto or eight volumes in
octavo); a vast composition which at least bore witness to Mirabeau’s
capacity in matters of politics, legislation, administration, and
finance. In his address to the Batavians he set forth all the principles
which were afterwards to serve as basis to the declaration of the rights
of man. His “Observations on the Prison of Bicêtre,” and on the effects
of the severity of punishments, may be looked upon as the complement of
his “Lettres de Cachet.”
Writing in great haste, he astonished the reader by his energy and
intellectual fecundity, in the midst of the constant embarrasments of a
precarious and harassed life. “Mirabeau,” says M. Nisard, “learns as he
writes and writes as he learns. To conceive and to produce are with him
one and the same thing. The convocation of the States General opened to
him a theatre worthy of his genius and of his immense ambition. He
hurried to Provence and presented himself as a candidate before the
Assembly of the Nobility, which, in spite of his persistent demands, put
him aside as being neither owner nor occupier of land in Provence. He
then turned to the people and was promptly elected a representative of
the Tiers État.
His entry into political life was an event of the highest importance.
Two days before the opening of the Assembly he began the publication of
the Journal of the States General. At the first meeting of the Assembly
the master of the ceremonies made known the king’s wish that the three
orders should carry on their debates in three separate chambers. This
involved the departure of the representatives of the Tiers État from
their habitual rendezvous. “Tell your master,” exclaimed Mirabeau, in
words which were to become historical, “that we are hereby the will of
the people, and that nothing can move us but the force of bayonets.”
Meanwhile Mirabeau, who had begun his political life with so much
dignity, was actually ruining his position by his own personal
extravagance. He entered into relations with the court, and before
delivering his speeches submitted them to the king and queen. The king
asked for a list of his debts, which amounted to 200,000 francs, and
included a sum that had been owing seventeen years for his wedding suit.
Besides paying his debts, Louis XVI. promised to furnish his new
auxiliary with a pension of 6,000 francs per month. He placed, moreover,
in the hands of the Count de La Marck, who had acted as intermediary, a
sum of one million, which was to be given to Mirabeau at the end of the
session if, as he had promised to do, he served with fidelity the cause
of the king and queen.
After these facts, it has been gravely asked whether or not Mirabeau
sold himself to the court. Saint-Beuve has answered the question in his
own ingenious way, by saying that Mirabeau, without selling himself,
allowed himself to be paid. The distinction scarcely amounts to a
difference. Mirabeau now wrote frequently to the king and still more
frequently to the queen, till at last nothing would satisfy him but to
have an interview with Marie Antoinette, whose minister he would gladly
have become, the king leaving everything to the queen, the queen
everything to the would-be director of her policy. Before long the
double position held by Mirabeau produced its inevitable effects. To
maintain his influence with the Assembly and with his own constituents
he had to play the part of a tribune, while, to gain his subsidies from
the court, he was bound to show himself a firm supporter of the
monarchy.
Inordinately ambitious, dissipated in the extreme, an aristocrat by
taste and a democrat by conviction, he was perpetually in trouble of the
most exasperating kind. In February, 1791, he was elected to the
presidency of the Assembly, as candidate of the Moderate party, the
Right. His vigorous opposition to the law proposed against the _émigrés_
laid him open to grave suspicions. “Silence, those thirty voices!” he
called out when Barnave, Lameth, and their friends among the orators of
the Left tried to interrupt him. This debate was the last in which the
dramatic side of Mirabeau’s oratorical talent was fully shown. Labours,
excesses of every kind, had at last worn out his robust constitution. It
was said that poison had been administered to him; but he was the author
of his own destruction. The very day after his not-too-creditable
understanding with the court he rushed into expenditure of every sort,
so that one of his best friends could not help saying: “Mirabeau is
badly advised in making such a display of his opulence. He must be
afraid of passing for an honest man.” He knew that he was killing
himself, and though his doctor, Cabanis, begged him to lead a more
moderate life, the advice passed unheeded. He was taken ill on the 27th
of March at Argenteuil, near Paris; which did not prevent him from
participating next day in an important debate. He triumphed, but left
the Assembly exhausted, depressed, and with death written on his face.
On the morrow he was hopelessly ill, and at the end of April he expired.
The news of his death caused universal grief, and it was at once voted
that his remains should be deposited in the former church of St.
Geneviève, known since the Revolution as the Pantheon. Here the ashes of
the greatest writer the Revolution had produced were allowed to repose
until, in the Autumn of 1794, the Republicans of the Left having
meanwhile been enlightened as to the part Mirabeau had played in
connection with the court, they were removed to give place to the dust
of Marat, whom Charlotte Corday had just assassinated. What honest man,
asked someone at the time, could desire his remains to lie by the side
of Mirabeau? The great orator was now worse treated by the republic than
Molière, Voltaire, and Adrienne Lecouvreur had been by the clergy of the
ancient monarchy. His relics were disturbed from what should have been
their last resting-place, and conveyed at night without form or ceremony
to Clamart, the graveyard of those who died at the hands of the
executioner. There is nothing sadder in the modern history of France
than the story of the entries and exits of its reputed great men into
and out of the church or temple now once more known as the Pantheon.
* * * * *
A longer period of hospitality than Mirabeau was allowed to enjoy fell
to the lot of Jean Jacques Rousseau, whose remains, disinterred from his
first place of burial in the middle of the Lake of Ermenonville, were
carried to the Pantheon that same autumn which saw the relics of
Mirabeau ejected from the grand national mausoleum. Rousseau was the
third of the great men to whom, in the language of the well-known
inscription, their native land was grateful. “Aux grands hommes: la
patrie reconnaissante.” Rousseau was, no more than Napoleon, a
Frenchman. His family, however, unlike that of Napoleon, is said to have
been of French origin. He was descended from a Protestant bookseller,
who was forced to quit France by the persecutions of the 16th century
and afterwards settled at Geneva.
Rousseau’s birth cost his mother her life. “My mother died when I was
born,” he says in the Confessions, “so that my birth was the first of my
misfortunes.” His father, a watchmaker by trade and a man of some
education, had the greatest affection for his son, but was unable to
forget at what cost he had been brought into the world. Thus Rousseau’s
first impressions were of the saddest kind.
The little boy was brought up by his father’s sister, and many were the
novels or rather romances that he read under her guidance. Soon,
however, he turned to more serious studies, his favourite authors being
now the Greek and Roman historians, and particularly Plutarch. When the
boy was old enough to adopt a trade he was apprenticed to an engraver.
But such was the severity of his master that his sole thought was how to
escape from the tyrant. One evening when he had gone out for a walk in
the neighbourhood of Geneva, he found on his return the city gates
closed. Fearing the anger of the engraver, he resolved not to go back to
him at all. Chance took him to the house of M. de Pontverre, curé of
Confignon, who, finding the boy was a Protestant, resolved to profit by
the opportunity of making a convert. M. de Pontverre, instead of sending
the little Rousseau back to his employer, conveyed him to a Madame de
Varennes, who had herself just been converted to the Catholic religion.
To Madame de Varennes young Rousseau became warmly attached, and he was
in despair when suddenly she went away. The strange idea now occurred to
him, possessing no musical knowledge or next to none, of passing as a
musician. He commenced, in fact, to give lessons in music. From
Lausanne, where he had begun his hazardous tuition, he took flight to
Neufchâteau, where once more he insisted on teaching music.
At last, by giving lessons in music he taught himself, and he had no
trouble in getting a certain number of pupils. After various adventures
he turned up in Paris, where he was engaged as tutor by a young officer,
who soon, however, discovered that the would-be preceptor had a great
deal to learn. Finding that Madame de Varennes was at Chambéry, he
determined to visit her, and, being well received, remained with her
some considerable time. He now gave himself up to studying sentiment,
until after the lapse of a few years Madame de Varennes became tired of
his society, and the young man left Chambéry for Montpellier, where he
proposed to get medical treatment for a fancied polypus of the heart. He
had read, during the latter part of his stay at Chambéry, so many
medical books that he ended by becoming an imaginary invalid. From
Montpellier, where the doctors professed their utter inability to
recognise the polypus complained of, he went to Lyons, where he got an
engagement as tutor in a family. A year afterwards, in 1841, he left
Lyons for Paris, now fired by literary ambition and excited by the news
that constantly reached him of the triumphs of Voltaire. He took with
him to the French capital a new system of musical notes, a five-act
comedy, and fifteen louis d’or. His musical innovations, submitted to
the Academy, were not understood; but perhaps for that reason they made
some noise and facilitated his introduction into many good houses. For
some little time he led a life of elegant leisure, during which he made
the acquaintance of several of the first literary men of the day. But it
was necessary for him to earn his living, and he was glad to accept an
engagement with Madame Dupin, daughter of the famous financier, Samuel,
who wanted a secretary; and soon afterwards Madame de Broglie got him
sent to Venice as secretary to the French Ambassador, Count de
Montaigne. Before long, however, Rousseau had a violent quarrel with his
chief, who seems to have been a man of unbearable disposition.
Returning to Paris, he resolved once more to adopt a literary career. He
wrote articles on musical subjects for the _Encyclopédie_, and made
sketches of operas, ballets, and divertissements, until one day, going
to see his friend Diderot, imprisoned at the time in the castle of
Vincennes, he happened to read as he walked along, in the _Mercure de
France_, an advertisement offering a prize to the author of the best
essay on this subject: “Has the progress of science and art tended to
corrupt or to purify manners?” According to Diderot and his friends, it
was he, the imprisoned philosopher critic, tale writer, and dramatist,
who suggested to Rousseau that, instead of taking the commonplace view
of the matter, he would do well to maintain, as paradoxically as he
pleased, that the development of art and science had exercised not a
healthy but a baneful effect. Rousseau, however, maintained that the
idea of treating the subject from the negative point of view originated
with himself alone. “If ever anything,” he wrote long afterwards,
“resembled a sudden inspiration, it was the movement that at once took
place in my mind on reading the advertisement. Suddenly my intelligence
was dazzled by a thousand lights. Crowds of ideas assailed me with a
force and a confusion which caused me inexpressible trouble; my head was
seized with a giddiness resembling intoxication.” Whoever suggested to
Rousseau the idea of his essay, it was to him that the Academy of Dijon
adjudged the prize. His paradoxes wounded many a writer, many a poet,
many a would-be philosopher. But meanwhile all the literary and
scientific society of Paris had been thrown by Rousseau’s arguments into
a state of commotion.
[Illustration: JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU.]
Rousseau, however, instead of profiting by the striking success he had
achieved, resolved in the first place to put in practice the principles
of simplicity and even asceticism which he had expounded in his
treatise. At the time of the essay’s being published he occupied the
lucrative post of cashier to M. de Franceuil, one of the Farmers
General. But he now refused to have anything to do with finance,
preferring to gain his bread by copying music. This resolution did but
increase his reputation and cause his writings to be in greater demand
than ever. Soon afterwards, in 1762, his opera, _The Village Seer_ (_Le
devin du village_), was represented at Fontainebleau with immense
success. The king wished the author of the graceful pastoral to be
presented to him, and a pension awaited him. But he turned his back on
the seductions of fortune and resumed his copying. There were not
wanting detractors, who saw in this fine spirit of independence simply
the pride of Antisthenes visible through the holes in his coat.
In 1753 Rousseau published his “Letters on French Music” and his
“Discourse on the Origin of Inequality.” Then he journeyed to Geneva,
where he returned to Protestantism in order to recover the title of
citizen, which in due time he lost once more, after the publication of
“Emile.” Tired of the world, he now accepted an asylum which was offered
to him by his friend, Madame d’Epinay, in the valley of Montmorency,
where he wrote nearly the whole of his famous “Nouvelle Héloïse.” The
work would doubtless have benefited by the omission of many a rhetorical
phrase; but the passion for nature, the exalted delirium of the heart
and the senses, the storms, the tears which it contained, were things so
new that the whole generation allowed itself to be carried away with the
transports of Rousseau. He had found inspiration for the book, it was
said, in his unfortunate love for Madame d’Houdelot--a love which almost
degenerated into a mental derangement and which commenced his series of
misfortunes. Madame d’Epinay, who was then in relationship with Grimm,
saw with no kindly eye the affection of Jean Jacques for another than
she. Rousseau soon found his position so disagreeable that, breaking
with Madame d’Epinay, he abruptly quitted her house although it was the
depth of winter. Hospitality was offered to him at Montlouis, near
Montmorency, and there he wrote his “Letter to d’Alembert on Stage
Plays,” a pamphlet which caused a considerable stir. Voltaire was then
the king of the theatre; and to attack one was to attack the other.
Voltaire was enraged, and could not keep within bounds. He insulted his
adversary, who, however, did not reply in the same tone. This quarrel,
which ended to the advantage of Rousseau, had the effect of diverting
his mind for a moment; but very soon he became once more a prey to that
morbid melancholy and suspicion which were to accompany him to his
grave, and which rendered the remainder of his life painful to
contemplate. He died in 1788 at Ermenonville, whither he had been
invited on a country visit by M. de Girardin, at a time when old age,
infirmities, and misery had already driven him to distraction.
[Illustration: MADAME D’EPINAY.]
The eccentricities and weakness of his character, however, vanish in
presence of his literary fame. Although his remains are not at
Ermenonville, the place is often visited by strangers interested in
Rousseau’s last days. M. Thiébaut de Berneaud, in his “Voyage à
Ermenonville,” 1826, declares that when, eleven years earlier, in 1815,
“the chief of one of the hostile armies arrived at Plessis-Belleville”
and, examining his topographical map, found himself close to
Ermenonville, he asked whether this was not the place where Jean Jacques
Rousseau had breathed his last, and receiving an affirmative reply,
declared that as long as there were Prussians in France Ermenonville
should be exempt from war contributions. The unnamed warrior marched,
says M. Thiébaut de Berneaud, towards the last abode of the sentimental
philosopher, and, uncovering himself as he drew near, ordered his troops
to treat Ermenonville, its inhabitants, and all that belonged to it,
with respect--a command which was religiously observed.
Rousseau was one of the few distinguished men of letters in France who
cared for country life, and he must be allowed to share with Bernardin
de St. Pierre the credit of having introduced not only sentiment but
landscape into the French novel. He could not have lived permanently in
Paris, though he was a resident in the capital when he declared that if
the officers of the crown insisted on his paying exorbitant taxes, he
would go on to the boulevards, sit under a tree, and die of hunger.
Even at that time he took constant rambles in the Bois de Vincennes,
through which he had to pass to visit his friend Diderot, confined in
the château.
Apart from the fine foliage and the exhilarating air which serve to
attract visitors to Vincennes, the place is celebrated for its fortress,
which neither centuries nor revolutions have swept away. The dungeon,
which is now the only remnant of the citadel commenced by Philippe de
Valois, and completed by Charles the Wise on the ruins of the castle to
which Philippe Augustus used to resort in view of the pleasures of the
chase, was formerly encircled by eight towers, grouped around its walls
like vassals around their lord. These, however, have been demolished by
revolutions and by time.
To-day the redoubtable citadel in which so many kings have sojourned is
a military establishment, which includes an artillery arsenal, barracks,
hospitals, a cannon foundry, a factory of arms, a château, a church, and
a great number of store-rooms. Its precincts are immense. Other
fortresses are hidden in the immediate vicinity, and guard the
approaches. Artillerymen incessantly go and come between the fortress
and the village and the village and the practice-ground.
Penetrating the sombre vault which leads from the door of entrance to
the interior court, the visitor finds before him the ancient royal
residence, whose façade preserves something of the majesty of antiquity.
To the left stands the chapel built by Charles V. in imitation of the
Sainte-Chapelle of Paris, and which he dedicated to the Trinity and the
Virgin, the fencing-room, and the tower of the reservoir; to the right
the formidable dungeon rears its head towards heaven.
In the space enclosed by these various constructions are stacked up, in
faultless order, parallelograms of cannons and pyramids of bullets. Long
rows of howitzers, their mouths directed skywards, are to be seen side
by side with masses of enormous bombs. In the large neighbouring
buildings are halls which contain, suspended from the walls, hooked up
round the pillars, and symmetrically arranged in corners, a prodigious
stock of guns, bayonets, and sabres. Everything shines and glitters:
there is not a particle of dust anywhere. An army could here find
sufficient weapons to invade a country. The church is close at hand. It
recalls a peaceful and merciful divinity in a place consecrated to war.
Prayers are uttered at a spot where men are incessantly trying to find
how to kill the greatest number of their fellows in the shortest
possible space of time.
The Gothic church, with its fine exterior masonry, is void of all
ornamentation within. It gives one the impression of having been sacked
at some stage in its history. In a lateral chapel there is a monument
raised to the memory of the Duc d’Enghien.
What the Parisians, however, come particularly to see, what they love,
what they visit with the greatest eagerness, is the dungeon. This old
monument in stone is to them an object of worship. They envelop it with
a fond curiosity, and, despite the horror they feel at the terrible
scenes it has witnessed during so many centuries, they will not see it
disappear without regret. In their imagination it is a legendary,
monument, and, in all probability, if the Bastille had not been torn up
from the soil by the Great Revolution, that prison-fortress would now
have been preserved with the utmost care for the gratification of public
curiosity.
No one finding himself at Vincennes after a country stroll fails to
ascend to the summit of the dungeon. The visitor pants a little,
perhaps, on reaching the platform which crowns it, but he is recompensed
for his fatigue by the immense panorama which opens around him. There
below, in that transparent vapour which the sun’s rays never more than
half penetrate, those myriads of roofs, those monstrous domes, those
belfries, that stubble of chimneys whence clouds of smoke are escaping,
that distant and ceaseless din which reminds one of the waves breaking
on some shore, proclaim the gayest city in the world. At the foot of the
edifice the forest stretches away, and behind the screen of trees lies a
limitless country, in which cultivated fields extend to the horizon.
Everywhere orchards, hamlets, villages meet the eye. The Seine is not
far off, and at no great distance, like a band of silver, the Marne
meanders capriciously through an immense plain studded with clumps of
trees.
On one side a view is obtained of Montreuil, famed for its peaches; on
the other, by the river bank, a congregation of villas and cottages in
picturesque disorder shows the site of Port-Creuil, where Frederic
Soulié sought literary repose. At a little distance lies Saint-Maur,
where verdure-loving Parisian business-men like to spend Sunday with
their families. Some of them, indeed, reside there permanently; and year
by year bricks and mortar may be seen to encroach further and further
upon the surrounding country. Hard by is Saint-Mandé, where Armand
Carrel died of the wound received in his duel with Emile de Girardin.
His tomb is in the cemetery, where stands a statue in his honour.
If the gaze is now turned sharply towards Paris, it encounters, beyond
Alfort and its schools, Charenton, celebrated for that mansion of which
Sébastien Leblanc conceived the first idea in 1741, and, at the
confluence of the Seine and the Marne, the château of Conflans, so long
the residence of the Archbishop of Paris. In that immense space which
lies beneath the eye there is scarcely a stone or a tree which does not
recall some memory. All those roads, all those footpaths, have been
trodden by men who were destined to leave a deep mark on the history of
France. There is not a corner in this sylvan expanse where some civil or
religious combat has not taken place. The Normans, the English, even the
Cossacks have made incursions here. There is, according to the
expression of one French writer, not a tuft of grass which has not been
stained with human blood. Through the villages in sight princes and
kings have passed. Torch-lit cortèges, conducting prisoners to the
dungeon and to death, have alternated with triumphal processions,
escorting sovereigns to their capital to the flourish of trumpets. On
that hill yonder Charles VII. raised a castle--the Castle of
Beauty--which preserves the memory of Agnes Sorel. In another part of
the wood, near Créteil, a little house was once the residence of Odette,
who consoled Charles VI. Saint-Mandé once possessed a little park in
which Louis XIV., before he was the Louis XIV. of Versailles and of
Madame de Maintenon, felt the beat of his own heart; for it was there
that he met the fascinating de la Vallière. Under the shade of those old
oaks many other beautiful phantoms may by the imaginative mind be seen
gracefully gliding: Gabrielle d’Estrées, for instance, Marguerite de
Valois, Madame de Longueville, and Madame de Pompadour.
The wood of Vincennes is to-day, of course, very different from what it
was at the period when Philip Augustus, enamoured of the chase, had it
surrounded by solid walls, in order to preserve the fallow deer and
roebucks which he had imported from England. But if it has lost a great
deal of its ancient character, together with some of its noblest old
trees, it has gained in lakes, lawns, and avenues, where the laborious
population of Paris love to lounge or stroll in a clear and recreative
air.
Once arrived in the Bois de Boulogne, the visitor has not to travel far
in order to see the Marne, that most capricious of French rivers. There
is scarcely a Parisian who has not taken an exploring stroll along the
banks of this stream, which conducts the oarsman to the very point
whence he started. Artists and dreamers in search of leafy shade, of
trees overhanging a limpid stream, of mills beating the clear water with
their black wheels, know the Marne well. On summer days many a peal of
laughter may be heard to proceed from behind some shrubbery. Tourists
come to the place in quest of breakfast: they are not in want of
appetite, and they have for companions youth and gaiety. Frocks which
the wearers are not afraid of rumpling alternate with woollen blouses:
the visitors row and sing, seeking, later on, some rustic restaurant
where, beneath a green arbour, they can enjoy a bottle of white wine and
a snack of fish, with an omelette, or some other light accessory.
On hot Sundays, beneath a cloudless sky, numberless picnics are held in
the Bois de Vincennes--a thing unfashionable in the Bois de Boulogne,
where visitors would consider it beneath their dignity to eat from a
cloth spread on the green turf. At Vincennes excursionists do not stand
on ceremony, and if the weather is sultry men may be seen lounging in
their shirt sleeves, and taking, in other respects, an ease which the
inhabitants of the Boulevards, who resort to the Bois de Boulogne, would
contemplate with horror. If the families, however, who divert themselves
at Vincennes do not rent a box at the opera, their unpretentious music
probably affords them a pleasure none the less. It is a distinctly
popular place to which they resort. You do not see there on Sunday new
toilettes which evoke cries of astonishment: unpublished dresses dare
not show themselves there, eccentric fashions do not bewilder the
spectator’s eye. People walk about there without pretension, usually on
foot, in family groups, arriving by omnibus or rail.
Sometimes, however, at the time of the races you see those coaches and
calèches which four high-spirited horses draw at a gallop. Beautiful
ladies and fine gentlemen are hastening to share in the pleasures of the
course. This is the hour of lace and silk.
The Bois de Boulogne is associated with steeple-chasing, instead of the
flat-racing of the Bois de Vincennes. The public, says the
before-mentioned writer, “who are not conversant with the science of
the turf, and scarcely wish to be so, better understand the courage and
skill which the jockeys must display when they find themselves in
presence of a stream or hurdle. Curiosity and emotion are both excited
in connection with these exhibitions. People go as near as they can to
the obstacle and measure its height or width with their eye. Some take
up their stand at a fixed barrier; others wait at a bridge which
precedes a ditch. The horses having started, a universal gaze follows
them. Will they get over or not? All the spectators hold their breath,
their hearts beating rapidly. Meanwhile the jockeys are dressed in
purple, gold, and silver: they arrive like so many flying sparks. Their
horses clear the obstacles. Hurrah! they are on the flat again. But if
by accident both horse and rider get rolled on the grass, it must be
confessed that the pleasure of the curious is, in this event, no less.”
Vincennes is celebrated for its charitable as well as its military
establishments. Its Benevolent Institution, or “Bureau de Bienfaisance,”
and its Orphan Home are both admirably organised. The fortress itself
may, moreover, be regarded as in some measure an asylum. Its garrison
includes a good number of aged, wounded and crippled soldiers; and it
was commanded in the time of the first Napoleon by a daring old
pensioner who had lost one of his legs on some former battle-field, and,
in virtue of his wooden stump, was familiarly known as “Jambe de Bois.”
Called upon to capitulate in 1814, he threatened to blow up the fortress
unless the allied forces at once retired. They did so, and he ultimately
capitulated on his own terms.