The Préfet of Police at the Palais-Royal--The function
of fire--Valérius, the truss-maker--Demolition of the
archbishop's palace--The Chinese album--François Arago--The
spectators of the riot--The erasure of the fleurs-de-lis--I
give in my resignation a second time--MM. Chambolle and
Casimir Périer
The supposed Jesuit saved, the Church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois
sacked, the room of the Abbé Paravey respected, the crowd passed away,
Baude thought the anger of the lion was appeased and presented himself
at the Palais-Royal without taking time to change his clothes. Just as
these bore material traces of the struggle he had gone through, so his
face kept the impression of the emotions he had experienced. To put
it in common parlance--as the least academic of men sometimes allows
himself to be captivated by the fascination of phrase-making--the
préfet's clothes were torn and his face was very pale. But the king, on
the other hand, was quite calm.
More fully informed, this time, of the events going on in the street,
than he had been about those of the Chamber when they discharged La
Fayette, he knew everything that had just happened. He saw, too, that
it tended to his own advantage. The Carlists had lifted up their
heads and, without the slightest interference on his part, they had
been punished! There had been a riot, but it had not threatened the
Palais-Royal, and by a little exercise of skill it could be made to
do credit to the Republican party. What a chance! and just at the
time when the leaders of that same party were in prison for another
disturbance.
But the king clearly suspected that matters would not stop here;
so, with his usual astuteness, and seeming courtesy, he kept Baude
to dinner. Baude saw nothing in this invitation beyond an act of
politeness, and a kind of reward for the dangers he had incurred. But
there was more in it than that. The Préfet of Police being at the
Palais-Royal meant that all the police reports would be sent there;
now, Baude could not do otherwise than to communicate them to his
illustrious host. So, in this way, without any trouble to himself,
the king would become acquainted with everything, both what Baude's
police knew and what his own police also knew. King Louis-Philippe was
a subtle man, but his very cleverness detracted from his strength. We
do not think it is possible to be both fox and lion at the same time.
The reports were disquieting: one of them announced the pillage of the
archbishop's palace for the morrow; another, an attempted attack upon
the Palais-Royal.
"Sire," asked the Préfet of the Police, "what must we do?"
"Powder and shot," replied the king.
Baude understood. By three o'clock in the morning all the troops of the
garrison were disposed round the Palais-Royal, but the avenues to the
archbishop's palace were left perfectly free. This is what happened
while the Préfet of Police was dining with His Majesty. General
Jacqueminot had summoned the National Guard and, instead of dispersing
the rioters, they clapped their hands at the riot. Cadet-Gassicourt,
who was mayor of the fourth arrondissement, arrived next. Some people
pointed out to him the three fleurs-de-lis which adorned the highest
points of the cross that surmounted the church. A man out of the
crowd heard the remark, and quickly the cry went up of "Down with the
fleurs-de-lis; down with the cross!" They attached themselves to the
cross with the fleurs-de-lis of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, just as
seventeen years previously they had attached themselves to the statue
of Napoléon on the Place Vendôme. The cross fell at the third pull.
There was not much else left to do after that, either inside the church
or on the top of it, and, unless they pulled it down altogether, it was
only wasting time to stop there. At that instant a rumour circulated,
either rightly or falsely, that a surgical instrument maker in the
rue de Coq, named Valérius, had been one of the arrangers of the
fête. They rushed to his shop, scattered his bandages and broke his
shop-front. The National Guard came, and can you guess what it did?
It made a guard-house of the wrecked shop. This affair of the cross
and the fleurs-de-lis gave a political character to the riot, and had
suggested, or was about to suggest, on the following day, a party of
the popular insurgents towards the Palais-Royal. As a matter of fact,
the fleurs-de-lis had remained upon the arms of the king up to this
time. Soon after the election of 9 August, Casimir Périer had advised
him to abandon them; but the king remembered that, on the male side,
he was the grandson of Henry IV., and of Louis XIV. on the female
line, and he had obstinately refused. Under the pretext, therefore,
of demanding the abolition of the fleurs-de-lis, a gathering of
Republicans was to march next day upon the Palais-Royal. When there, if
they found themselves strong enough, they would, at the same stroke,
demand the abolition of royalty. I knew nothing about this plot, and,
if I had, I should have kept clear of everything that meant a direct
attack against King Louis-Philippe. I had work to do the next day and
kept my door fast shut against everybody, my own servant included,
but the latter violated his orders and entered. It was evident that
something extraordinary had happened for Joseph to take such a liberty
with me. They had been firing off rifles half the night, they had
disarmed two or three posts, they had sacked the archbishop's palace.
The proposition of marching on the palace of M. de Quélen was received
with enthusiasm. He was one of those worldly prelates who pass for
being rather shepherds, than pastors. It was affirmed that on 28 July
1830 a woman's cap had been found at his house and they wanted to
know if, by chance, there might not be a pair. The devil tempted me:
I dressed hastily and I ran in the direction of the city. The bridges
were crowded to breaking point, and there was a row of curious gazers
on the parapets two deep. Only on the Pont Neuf could I manage to see
daylight between two spectators. The river drifted with furniture,
books, chasubles, cassocks and priests' robes. The latter objects
were horrible as they looked like drowning people. All these things
came from the archbishop's palace. When the crowd reached the palace,
the door seemed too narrow, relatively speaking, for the number and
impetuosity of the visitors: the crowd, therefore, seized hold of the
iron grill, shook it and tore it down; then they spread over all the
rooms and threw the furniture out of the windows. Several book-lovers
who tried to save rare books and precious editions were nearly thrown
into the Seine. One single album alone escaped the general destruction.
The man who laid hands on it chanced to open it: it was a Chinese album
painted on leaves of rice. The Chinese are very fanciful in their
compositions, and this particular one so far transcended the limits
of French fancy, that the crowd had not the courage to insist on the
precious album being thrown into the water. I have never seen anything
approaching this album except in the private museum at Naples; I ought,
also, to say that the album of the Archbishop of Paris far excelled
that of His Majesty the King of the Two Sicilies. The most indulgent
people thought that this curious document had been given to the
archbishop by some repentant Magdalene, in expiation of the sins she
had committed, and to whom the merciful prelate had given absolution.
It goes without saying that I was among the tolerant, and that, then as
now, I did my utmost to get this view accepted.
Meantime, after seizing the furniture, library hangings, carpets,
mirrors, missals, chasubles and cassocks, the crowd, not satisfied,
seized upon the building itself. In an instant a hundred men were
scattered over the roofs and had begun to tear off the tiles and slates
of the archiépiscopal palace. It might have been supposed the rioters
were all slaters. Has my reader happened, at any time, to shut up a
mouse or rat or bird in a box pierced with holes, put it in the midst
of an anthill and waited, given patience, for two or three hours? At
the end of that time the ants have finished their work, and he can
extract a beautiful skeleton from which all the flesh has completely
disappeared. Thus, and in the same manner, under the work of the human
ant-heap, at the end of an hour the coverings of the archbishop's
palace had as completely disappeared. Next, it was the turn for the
bones to go--where the ants stop discouraged, man destroys; by two
o'clock in the afternoon the bones had disappeared like the flesh. Of
the archbishop's palace not one stone remained on another! By good
fortune the archbishop was at his country-house at Conflans; if not he
would probably have been destroyed with his town-house.
All this time the drums had called the rappel, but not with that
ferocious plying of drumsticks of which they gave us a sample in the
month of December, as though to say, "Run, everyone, the town is on
fire!" but with feebleness of execution as much as to say, "If you have
nothing better to say, come, and you will not have a warm welcome!"
So, as the National Guard began to understand the language of the
drums, it did not put itself about much. However, a detachment of the
12th Legion, in command of François Arago,--the famous savant, the
noble patriot who is now dying, and whom the Academy will probably not
dare to praise, except as a savant,--came from the Panthéon towards
the city. As ill-luck would have it, his adjutant, who marched on the
flank, sabre in hand, gesticulating with it in a manner justified
by the circumstances, stuck it into a poor fellow, who was merely
peacefully standing watching them go by. The poor devil fell, wounded,
and was picked up nearly dead. We know how such a thing as that
operates: the dead or wounded is no longer his own private property;
he belongs to the crowd, which makes a standard of him, as it were.
The crowd took possession of the man, bleeding as he was, and began to
shout, "To arms! Vengeance on the assassin! Vengeance!" The assassin,
or, rather, the unintentional murderer, had disappeared. They carried
the victim into the enclosure outside Notre-Dame, where everybody
discussed loudly how to take revenge for him, and pitied him, but
none thought of getting him help. It was François Arago, who made an
appeal to humanity out of the midst of the threatening cries, and
pointed to the Hôtel-Dieu, open to receive him, and, if possible, to
cure the dying man. They placed him on a stretcher, and François Arago
accompanied the unfortunate man to the bedside, where they had scarcely
laid him before he died.
The report of that death spread with the fearful rapidity with which
bad news always travels. When Arago re-appeared the crowd turned
in earnest to wrath; it was in one of those moods when it sharpens
its teeth and nails, and aches to tear to pieces and to devour....
What? In such a crisis it matters but little what, so long as it can
tear and devour someone or something! It was frenzied to the extent
of hurling itself upon Arago himself, mistaking the saviour for
the murderer. In the twinkling of an eye our great astronomer was
dragged towards the Seine, where he was going to be flung with the
furniture, books and archiépiscopal vestments; when, happily, some
of the spectators recognised him, called out his name, setting forth
his reputation and his popularity in order to save him from death.
When recognised, he was safe; but, robbed of a man, the excited crowd
had to have something else, and, not being able to drown Arago, they
demolished the archbishop's palace. With what rapidity they destroyed
that building we have already spoken. And the remarkable thing was
that many honourable witnesses watched the proceedings. M. Thiers was
present, making his first practical study of the downfall of palaces
and of monarchies. M. de Schonen was there, in colonel's uniform,
but reduced to powerlessness because he had but few men at command.
M. Talabot was there with his battalion; but he averred to M. Arago,
who urged him to act, that he had been ordered to _appear and then to
return._ The passive presence of all these notable persons at the riot
of the archbishop's palace put a seal of sanction upon the proceedings,
which I had never seen before, or have ever again seen at any other
riot. This was no riot of the people, filled with enthusiasm, risking
their lives in the midst of flashings of musketry fire and thunder of
artillery; it was a riot in yellow kid-gloves, and overcoats and coats,
it was a scoffing and impious, destructive and insolent crowd, without
the excuse of previous insult or destruction offered it; in fact, it
was a bourgeois riot, that most pitiless and contemptible of all riots.
I returned home heart-broken: I am wrong, I mean upset. I learnt
that night that they had wished to demolish Notre-Dame, and only a
very little more and the chef-d'oœuvre of four centuries, begun by
Charlemagne and finished by Philippe-Auguste, would have disappeared
in a few hours as the archbishop's palace had done. As I returned
home, I had passed by the Palais-Royal. The king who had refused to
make to Casimir Périer the sacrifice of the fleurs-de-lis, made that
sacrifice to the rioters: they scratched it off the coats-of-arms on
his carriages and mutilated the iron balconies of his palace.
The next day a decree appeared in the _Moniteur_, altering the three
fleurs-de-lis of Charles V. this time to two tables of the law. If
genealogy be established by coats-of-arms we should have to believe
that the King of France was descended from Moses rather than from St.
Louis! Only, these new tables of the law, the counterfeit of those of
Sinai, had not even the excuse of being accepted out of the midst of
thunders and lightnings.
It was upon this particular day, on Lamy's desk, who was Madame
Adélaide's secretary, when I saw the grooms engaged in erasing the
fleurs-de-lis from the king's carriages, thinking that it was not in
this fashion that they should have been taken away from the arms of the
house of France, that I sent in my resignation a second time, the only
one which reached the king and which was accepted. It was couched in
the following terms:--
"15 _February_ 1831
"SIRE,--Three weeks ago I had the honour to ask for an
audience of your Majesty; my object was to offer my
resignation to your Majesty by word of mouth; for I wished
to explain, personally, that I was neither ungrateful, nor
capricious. Sire, a long time ago I wrote and made public
my opinion that, in my case, the man of letters was but the
prelude to the politician. I have arrived at the age when
I can take a part in a reformed Chamber. I am pretty sure
of being nominated a député when I am thirty years of age,
and I am now twenty-eight, Sire. Unhappily, the People, who
look at things from a mean and distant point of view, do not
distinguish between the intentions of the king, and the acts
of the ministers. Now the acts of the ministers are both
arbitrary and destructive of liberty. Amongst the persons
who live upon your Majesty, and tell him constantly that
they admire and love him, there is not one probably, who
loves your Majesty more than I do; only they talk about it
and do not think it, and I do not talk about it but think it.
"But, Sire, devotion to principles comes before devotion
to men. Devotion to principles makes men like La Fayette;
devotion to men, like Rovigo.[1] I therefore pray your
Majesty to accept my resignation.
"I have the honour to remain your Majesty's respectful
servant, ALEX. DUMAS"
It was an odd thing! In the eyes of the Republican party, to which I
belonged, I was regarded as a thorough Republican, because I took my
share in all the risings, and wanted to see the flag of '92 float at
the head of our armies; but, at the same time, I could not understand
how, when they had taken a Bourbon as their king, whether he was of the
Elder or Younger branch of the house, he could be at the same time a
Valois, as they had tried to make the good people of Paris believe,--I
could not, I say, understand, how the fleurs-de-lis could cease to be
his coat-of-arms.
It was because I was both a poet and a Republican, and already
comprehended and maintained, contrary to certain narrow-minded people
of our party, that France, even though democratic, did not date
from '89 only; that we nineteenth century men had received a vast
inheritance of glory and must preserve it; that the fleurs-de-lis
meant the lance heads of Clovis, and the javelins of Charlemagne; that
they had floated successively at Tolbiac, at Tours, at Bouvines, at
Taillebourg, at Rosbecque, at Patay, at Fornovo, Ravenna, Marignan,
Renty, Arques, Rocroy, Steinkerque, Almanza, Fontenoy, upon the seas
of India and the lakes of America; that, after the success of fifty
victories, we suffered the glory of a score of defeats which would
have been enough to annihilate another nation; that the Romans invaded
us, and we drove them out, the Franks too, who were also expelled; the
English invaded us, and we drove them out.
The opinion I am now putting forth with respect to the erasing of the
fleurs-de-lis, which I upheld very conspicuously at that time by my
resignation, was also the opinion of Casimir Périer. The next day after
the fleurs-de-lis had disappeared from the king's carriages, from the
balconies of the Palais-Royal and even from Bayard's shield, whilst
the effigy of Henry IV. was preserved on the Cross of the Legion of
Honours; M. Chambolle, who has since started the Orleanist paper,
_l'Ordre_, called at M. Casimir Périer's house.
"Why," the latter asked him, "in the name of goodness, does the king
give up his armorial bearings? Ah! He would not do it after the
Revolution, when I advised him to sacrifice them; no, he would not hear
of their being effaced then, and stuck to them more tenaciously than
did his elders. Now, the riot has but to pass under his windows and
behold his escutcheon lies in the gutter!"
Those who knew what an irascible character Casimir Périer was, will
not be surprised at the flowers of rhetoric with which those words are
adorned.
But now that there is no longer an archbishop's palace, nor any
fleurs-de-lis, and the statue of the Duc de Berry about to be knocked
down at Lille, the seminary of Perpignan pillaged and the busts of
Louis XVIII. and of Charles X. of Nîmes destroyed, let us return to
_Antony_, which was to cause a great disturbance in literature, besides
which the riots we have just been discussing were but as the holiday
games of school children.
[1] We are compelled to admit that, in our opinion, the parallel
between La Fayette and the Duc de Rovigo is to the disadvantage of the
latter; but how far he is above them in comparing him with other men of
the empire! La Fayette's love for liberty is sublime; the devotion of
the Duc de Rovigo for Napoléon is worthy of respect, for all devotion
is a fine and rare thing, as times go.