Letter of Charles X. to the Duc d'Orléans--A
conjuring trick--Return of the Duc de Chartres to the
Palais-Royal--Bourbons and Valois--Abdication of Charles
X.--Preparations for the expedition of Rambouillet--An
idea of Harel--The scene-shifters of the Odéon--Nineteen
persons in one fiacre--Distribution of arms at the
Palais-Royal--Colonel Jacqueminot
Meanwhile the Duc d'Orléans hid his grave preoccupation of mind beneath
his affable manner that morning when he came up to me and told me I had
produced my best drama. He had just received the answer to the letter
which he had sent to Charles X. by the Duc de Mortemart.
My readers will recollect that letter, wherein he says to the old king,
that _he had been brought to Paris by force; that he did not know what
they wanted him to do, but that if he accepted power it would only be
in the best interests of_ THE HOUSE. Only he did not specify _what
House._ Did he mean in the interest of the _House of Orléans_ or of the
_House of Bourbon_? Re-read the sentence and you will see he reserves
his choice.
Charles X. replied to this letter by a declaration couched as follows:--
"The king, desirous of putting a stop to the troubles that
exist in the capital and in another part of France, _relying
especially on the sincere attachment of his cousin the Duc
d'Orléans_, appoints him Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom.
The king, having seen fit to withdraw the Ordinances of 25
July, approves the assembling of the Chambers on 3 August,
and he hopes they will be able to re-establish tranquillity
in France. The king will await at Rambouillet the return
of the person charged to bear this declaration to Paris.
If any attempt is made upon the lives of the king and his
family or upon his liberty, he will defend himself to the
last.
"Drawn up at Rambouillet, I August 1830.
"_(Signed)_ CHARLES"
The courier left Rambouillet at six in the morning, and reached Paris
at half-past eight. The Duc d'Orléans received the despatch at a
quarter to nine. M. Dupin was already with him. It is well known how
early M. Dupin could be the day, or day but one, after revolutions had
taken place; moreover, thanks to the _Caricature_, the impressions of
the shoes of this famous lawyer, printed along the route to Neuilly,
both going and returning, and _vice versâ_, acquired a celebrity
that afterwards became proverbial. M. Dupin, then, was with the Duc
d'Orléans when he received the letter from Charles X. The Duc d'Orléans
read it and passed it on to him. M. Dupin, remember, was head of the
prince's Privy Council. M. Dupin read the proclamation in his turn, and
advised that they should break openly and even brutally with the Older
Branch.
"Diable!" said the prince, "such a letter as you suggest my writing
will be anything but easy to draw up!"
"Shall I draw it up, your Highness?" asked M. Dupin.
"Yes, certainly. Try ... we will see."
M. Dupin wrote a letter as rough as himself. The Duc d'Orléans read it,
approved, re-copied, signed, put it in an envelope and was going to
seal it when, all at once, he said--
"Good gracious! I was going to send off a letter of such importance
as this without showing it to the duchess.... Wait a moment, Monsieur
Dupin, I will soon come back."
The letter must have been brutal indeed, for M. Dupin has himself
confessed that it was; he was by nature rough and the plane of
education had not effaced this roughness. He continued to argue with
King Louis-Philippe in just the same fashion as he had done when he
was Prince of Orléans. Once, during a political discussion, he forgot
himself so far as to say to the king--
"Look here, sir, we shall never agree!"
"I was thinking the same thing, Monsieur Dupin," replied
Louis-Philippe, "only I dared not tell you so."
I know few sayings more insolently aristocratic than this. King
Louis-Philippe was diabolically witty. In proof whereof, he returned
holding the same envelope and a letter that was to all appearances the
same.
"Poor duchess!" he said, "it made her very sad; but, by Jove, it can't
be helped!"
Then he slipped the letter into the envelope, held the wax to a candle,
sealed the despatch with his seal and gave it to a messenger. But the
letter he sent to Charles X. was not by any means the one M. Dupin had
drawn up: it was one of his own composing, in which he renewed his
assurances of devotion and respect towards the old king. This little
game of sleight-of-hand was hardly finished before the outcries of the
people gathered in the courtyard of the Palais-Royal summoned him out
on the balcony. Louis-Philippe was obliged to show himself on this
balcony twenty times a day for a week. Very soon this was not enough
to satisfy the crowd, for the moment he appeared, the crowd struck up
the _Marseillaise_; then, he himself must needs join in too, in a voice
which, as I have remarked, was as out of tune as that of King Louis
XV. Soon, this did not suffice them; when the lieutenant-general had
shown himself and joined in singing the _Marseillaise_, he had to go
down into the courtyard and shake hands with the rag-and-bone men and
porters and pat them on the back. I have seen him go down two or three
times in an hour and return with his wig awry, mopping his forehead,
washing his hands and cursing vigorously the part he was compelled to
play.
Ah! monseigneur, did you not know that in order to become king, after
being prince, you would have frequently to mop your forehead and wash
your hands?
The Duc de Chartres next arrived at the head of his regiment, and
entered the Palais-Royal just as his father was courting popularity
in the manner above described. I shall never forget the way he
straightened himself in his saddle, and the look he cast on the scene.
The arrival of her eldest son was a great delight to the poor duchess;
he was the only one of her children that had been missing. She was well
aware of the danger he had incurred and he was all the dearer to her
on that account. As he entered his father's apartments I was leaving
them, and I was only to return there once more at the summons of the
king himself. This spectacle of a prince begging for a crown stirred
me to the heart. The young duke held out his hand to me: I took it and
pressed it with tears in my eyes. It was to be four years before I
touched that loyal, open hand again, though, at that moment, I thought
I should be parted from him for ever, and was therefore touching it
for the last time. In due course I will relate the circumstances under
which I was again to meet him.
As I left the Palais-Royal I came across a placard which openly
asserted that the Orléans princes were not _Bourbons_, but of the house
of _Valois_. I could hardly believe my eyes and stood for a quarter of
an hour reading and re-reading it. Ten yards away I met Oudard, took
him by the arm and led him in front of the placard.
"Oh!" I said, "it seems it was not enough for Philippe-Égalité to
disown his father, but that the son must disown even his very race?"
I returned home, I must confess, completely cast down. I do not know
which day this was, but I think it must have been the 2nd of August.
The powder had arrived with Bard that morning; I had handed it over
to two students of the École polytechnique, who gave me a receipt
for it and took it to la Salpétrière. It must have been on the 2nd,
for I saw M. de Latour-Foissac, whom I knew by sight, driving to the
Palais-Royal; I had met him at the house of Madame de Sériane, sister
of General Coëtlosquet.
M. de Latour-Foissac was taking the answer to the lieu-tenant-general's
letter of the previous day, the letter substituted, as we know, for
the one written by M. Dupin. This answer was the abdication of Charles
X. and that of the Duc d'Angoulême; it gave permission to the Duc
d'Orléans to proclaim the Duc de Bordeaux under the title of Henri V.
The lieutenant-general declined to receive the messenger, but he took
the message.
Now, what was to be done? M. Sébastiani was consulted, and advised
a Regency. Béranger was for a Monarchy. The Duc d'Orléans cut the
difficult knot by saying--
"Be Regent? I would rather be nothing at all than Regent.... At the
very first stomach-ache Henri V. might have, it would be proclaimed
upon the housetops that I had poisoned him."
And from that moment there was no longer any doubt in anyone's mind
that Louis-Philippe would become king.
The abdication was dated from Rambouillet, as the letter had been.
Rambouillet was only thirty-six miles from Paris; Charles X. had still
fourteen thousand men round him, with thirty-eight pieces of cannon.
He had something even better than those--he had the two letters of the
Duc d'Orléans. Charles X. could not remain at Rambouillet; by some
combination or other he must be forced to leave Rambouillet, and,
more than that, France itself. It did not prove a difficult matter to
manage to bring this to pass--the means were probably already prepared.
Meantime, on 2 August, General Hulot was sent to Cherbourg to take
up the command of the four departments which separate Paris from the
Channel; the same day also M. Dumont-d'Urville received orders to start
for Havre with all haste, and there to freight two transport ships.
The day before, they risked inserting in the _Courrier français_ the
protest of the Duc d'Orléans against the birth of the Duc de Bordeaux.
The reader knows how this proclamation, which in 1820 had caused the
exile of the Duc d'Orléans, suggested a doubt as to the legitimacy
of the young prince. Well, on 1 August the _Courrier français_ was
asked to give it a place in one of its next issues. It did not keep
the future king waiting long in impatience! Next morning, 2 August,
the _Courrier_ contained the protest. Very likely it was set up by
the very same compositors who had printed the placard stating that the
Orléans princes were Valois by descent, and not Bourbons.
So all these things happened on 2 August, for on the 3rd I was awakened
by the call to arms, which was being beaten furiously in the street,
and by Delanoue, who burst into my room, a double-barrelled gun in
his hand. A gun was such an unusual toilet accessory in the case of
Delanoue that I was more struck by it than by all the rest of the
commotion.
"What the dickens is happening?" I asked him.
"Charles X. is marching on Paris with twenty thousand men and fifty
pieces of cannon, my dear boy, and all Paris on its part has risen to
march against him. Will you come too?"
"By Jove! of course I will!" I cried, leaping out of bed. "I should
rather think I would!"
I called Joseph, whose terrified face I had not seen behind Delanoue.
"Here I am, monsieur!" he said, "here I am!"
"Give me my shooting clothes, and take my rifle to the nearest
gun-maker's to be cleaned."
"Don't let him take your gun to a shop," said Delanoue; "they will take
it from him on the way."
"What!" I said, "they would seize it?"
"Without a doubt.... Things are worse than during the Three Days!"
"Then, my dear Joseph, clean it yourself!"
"Good heavens! good heavens!" said Joseph, "is monsieur going to return
to Soissons?"
"No, Joseph; I am going, on the contrary, in exactly the opposite
direction."
"Thank goodness!"
Harel came in whilst I was dressing.
"Good--morning, Harel.... What is the news, my friend?"
"The news is," said Harel, drawing his snuff-box from his pocket
and plunging in his finger and thumb up to the first joint, "the
news is that I have a cunning idea in my head." He breathed up his
pinch of snuff with sensuous enjoyment, and, as is usual with great
connoisseurs, scattered three-quarters of his snuff over the floor and
into the air. "An excellent idea!" he went on.
"Well, my friend, you shall communicate it to me on my return."
"Where are you going?"
"To Rambouillet, of course!"
"Excellent! That's the finishing stroke! You ran the risk of being shot
three days ago at Soissons, and now you want to go and get some limb or
other broken at Rambouillet!"
"But don't you realise that Charles X. is marching on Paris with twenty
thousand men and fifty pieces of cannon?"
"I know that is the report; but let fools believe such news as that.
Poor Charles X.! I will wager, if he marches to any town whatsoever, it
will be towards Havre or Cherbourg."
"Never mind, my dear friend! Delanoue has come to fetch me, and if it
is nothing more than to hunt big game in the park at Rambouillet, I
do not wish to miss the opportunity... So once more you must put off
telling me your piece of news till my return, if I do return."
"Give me a part in your piece," Delanoue said in a whisper.
"Certainly, I promise."
I turned round to Harel.
"How did you come here?" I asked him.
"Why, in a cab, of course."
"Good! we will take it."
"What for?"
"To drive to Rambouillet."
"You must take me as far as the Odéon, then!"
"Agreed!"
"Besides," said Delanoue, "it is on the place de l'Odéon people are
collecting."
"Ah! you will lend us your tricolour flag, Harel, won't you?"
"What tricolour flag do you mean?"
"The one under which they have been singing the _Marseillaise_ at your
theatre for the last three days."
"What am I to do, then?"
"You will make an announcement to the public, telling them that I
carried it away to Rambouillet.... The public is good-natured enough,
and will do without the flag for a day or two."
"Come along and get it ... you know very well the whole theatre is at
your service."
Whenever Harel wanted to get a play out of me, he always made this
remark. My gun had been washed and rubbed and dried in the sun; I took
it, we got into the cab and set off for the Odéon. There were two or
three thousand persons in the square and its vicinity. I had scarcely
put my foot to the ground, leaving Delanoue inside the cab, before I
was surrounded by a score of men, calling me by my name and asking me
to put myself at their head. They were the scene-shifters belonging to
the Odéon, who still had in warm remembrance the tips I had given them
when _Christine_ was being performed. I told one of them to go and find
the flag, and whilst we left the cab under the protection of others
(to whom I sent out seven or eight bottles of wine to keep up their
patience) we went and had breakfast at Risbeck's. By the time we came
out of the restaurant our troop was further augmented by a drummer.
I have remarked before with what rapidity drummers multiply during
times of revolution. We got into our cab, naturally taking the seat of
honour; then everybody else crushed inside with us, or outside on the
box with the driver, some behind, some on the shafts, and some on the
imperial. The unlucky horses started, dragging nineteen people! Most of
my men were only armed with pikes. At the corner of the rue du Bac and
the quay, a man who seemed to be posted there on duty for this purpose
shouted after us--
"Have you any arms?"
"No!" replied most of my men.
"Well! arms are being distributed at the Palais-Royal."
"To the Palais-Royal!" cried the men. "To the Palais-Royal."
The cab crossed the place du Carrousel and made its way towards the
Palais-Royal. Traffic was becoming possible once more, little by little
the barricades had disappeared and the paving stones had somehow or
other been laid down again. We reached the Palais-Royal.
"One moment," I said; "order, if you please! I am known here, and, if
there is any chance of obtaining anything, I shall have it."
We went into a low room, which was packed with people. As I went in, I
knocked against a student of the École who was going out.
"Is that you, Charles?"
"Yes.... Have you come to get arms?"
"Of course."
"In that case, you had better hurry up. I have only been able to get a
pistol."
He had a pistol stuck into his coat, the butt end projecting between
two buttons.
"You are going there too?"
"Why, of course!"
"Then we shall meet again?"
"Probably."
"Good-day!"
"Adieu!"
We managed with the greatest difficulty to push our way to the
distributor of arms. Fortunately, a valet in the livery of the Duc
d'Orléans recognised me, and made room for us.
"Monsieur de Rumigny," he said, "here is M. Dumas."
"Very well, let him come to me."
The distributor was M. de Rumigny himself: he was then about
thirty-five, and was a splendid figure in his uniform. He had a big
case full of swords and pistols in front of him; the rifles had all
gone. They had come from Lepage.
Swords and pistols were given to my men, and then, when all had been
equipped, M. de Rumigny asked--
"Are your men thirsty?"
"Rather," I said, "they are scene-shifters from the théâtre de l'Odéon!"
"Give them a glass of wine each, then."
They went to a table full of bottles and glasses, and were served by
His Royal Highness's own lackeys.
"Well?" I asked, when they had drunk.
"The livery is fine enough," they replied, "but the wine is poor."
"What do you mean?"
"It is not equal to that you sent us out on the place de l'Odéon.... We
bet this wine here is not worth twelve sous a bottle."
"If you have any more like it again to-night, upon my word I shall
think you very lucky."
"Messieurs," said a lackey, "please make room now for others."
"Quite right": so we went out.
Paris presented quite a new aspect--it seemed incredible after the
many different spectacles it had been exhibiting. Whether the cabs
were chartered by the Government, or whether their drivers shared the
general enthusiasm, they placed themselves at the disposal of the
combatants. At the corner of the rue Saint-Roch I caught sight of
Charles Ledru running at full speed. I called out to him--
"Hi! come with us."
"Have you room for me?"
"We are only nine inside, and if we squeeze up a little more we can get
you in."
"Thanks, I have a horse ready for me at Kausmann's."
"Stop," I said, "that reminds me I have one too.... I always forget
it." I had only had it a short time.
I pulled up before my friend Hiraux's café, porte Saint-Honoré, and
he regaled all my men with a _petit verre_ of eau-de-vie. The bottle
was emptied in the process. But, as the flag waved, my men sang
the _Marseillaise_ and the drum beat a roll. We had taken nearly
three-quarters of an hour in coming from the Palais-Royal to the porte
Saint-Honoré, the street was so crowded and the carriages walked in
files as at Longchamp.
We now made a fresh start, some taking the road by the water and others
the grand avenue of the Champs-Élysées. At the place Louis XV. "Make
way!" was being shouted by General Pajol, who had just received the
command of the Expeditionary Army, and who came along full gallop to
take the head of the column. He had with him Charras, Charles Ledru
and two or three others. We drew up, and he passed and went along by
the water's edge. We kept to the grand allée. At the circus of the
Champs-Élysées we turned to the left, to regain the quai de Billy by
the avenue Montaigne. In the middle of this avenue stood a group of
horsemen with Colonel Jacqueminot in the centre. He was in the dress
of a deputy and still wore the silver fleur-de-lis on his collar.
General Pajol had doubtless been sending to look for him, for he was
talking eagerly with Charras. Étienne Arago passed at that moment with
a band of about a hundred men. Every time we met they shouted "_Vive la
Charte!_" and we shouted back the same! This seemed to annoy Colonel
Jacqueminot, and with good cause, I think: it was not amusing at all to
live in the din of those everlasting shoutings.
"Yes! yes! shout _Vive la Charte!_ It will make you as fat as eating
bits of wafer!"
The phrase was so original that I have not forgotten a word of it in
all these twenty-two years. We only shouted the louder, then went on
our way in the direction of Versailles.