IN THE SOMME.
AMIENS
By turns English, French, and Burgundian, Upper Picardy, of which Amiens
was the capital, became definitely French under the astute policy of
Louis XI. The Calaisis and the Boulonnais, with Ponthieu and Vimieu,
eventually constituted what was called Lower Picardy, and the whole
province, divided under the Bourbons into the two 'generalities' of
Amiens and Soissons, formed before 1789 one of the twelve great
departments of the monarchy, and was brought under the domain of the
Parliament of Paris.
The city of Amiens, associated now, I fear, chiefly, in the English and
American mind, with 'twenty minutes' stop' on the way between Calais and
Paris, and with a buffet which perhaps entitles it to be called the
Mugby Junction of France, is really one of the most interesting of
French cities. No student of Ruskin can need to be told that its
glorious cathedral makes it one of the most interesting, not of French
only, but of European cities; and two or three excellent small hotels
make it a most comfortable as well as a most instructive midway station,
not for 'twenty minutes,' but for a couple of days, between the capitals
of England and France. Arthur Young found it so a hundred years ago,
when he encountered there the illustrious Charles James Fox returning to
London from a visit to the Anglomaniac Due d' Orléans, in the company
of a charming 'Madame Fox,' of whom Arthur Young and London had no
previous cognisance.
Like Dijon, and Nancy, and Toulouse, and Rennes, and Rouen, Amiens still
wears that 'look of a capital' which is as unmistakeable, if also as
undefinable, as Hazlitt found the 'look of a gentleman' to be. York and
Exeter, for example, in England, have this look, while Liverpool and
Hull have it not. There are traces of the Spaniards in Amiens, as there
are wherever that most Roman of all the Latin peoples has ever passed,
and the curious _hortillonages_ of Amiens, which may be roughly
described as a kind of floating kitchen gardens, remind one so strongly
of the much more picturesque Chinampas of Mexico as to suggest the
impression that the idea of establishing them may have come hither by
way of Spain.
At the present time, Amiens is a point of no small political interest.
It is the bailiwick of one of the few really notable men of the actual
Republican party in France--- M. Goblet--and yet it is one of the
strongholds of Boulangism. There is an old song, the refrain of which,
as I heard it sung, more years ago than I care to recall, always haunts
me when I visit this ancient city:--
Vive un Picard, vive un Picard,
Quand il s'agit de tete!
The Picards have always shown, not only sense, but a kind of stubborn
independence of character. In the days of anarchy which came upon France
with the brief but ill-omened triumph of the Girondins, Amiens was the
first of the French provincial cities to resist and denounce the too
successful attempt of Danton and the commune of Paris to terrorise
France by a skilful abuse of the imbecility of Roland. The authorities
of Amiens were the first to protest against the outrageous pretensions
of the 'commissioners,' who came there with Roland's commissions in one
hand, and the secret instructions of Roland's colleague and master,
Danton, in the other, to pillage the property of the inhabitants under
the pretence of gathering supplies for the national defence, and to
establish an irresponsible local despotism under the pretence of
suppressing 'treason.' To them, in the first instance, belongs the
credit of compelling Roland to get up before the Assembly on September
17, 1792, and confess that he had 'signed in the council commissions
without knowing anything about the commissioners who were to use them;'
and to them, therefore, in the first instance, history is indebted for
the formal record which shows that the actual fall of the French
monarchy was followed, and its formal abolition preceded, by the letting
loose upon France of a swarm of scoundrels, who filled 'the prisons with
prisoners as to whom no one knew by whom they were arrested; who gave
over to pillage the treasures accumulated in the Tuileries, and in the
houses of the emigrant aristocracy; who conveyed away everything which
could tempt the cupidity of a subaltern, without any record whatever;
and who were delivering over Paris and France to the most absurd folly
and the most insatiable greed.' It was not the fault of Amiens if the
efforts of Mazuyer and Kersaint demanding a law to show 'whether the
French nation was sovereign, or the Commune of Paris,' and the sonorous
eloquence of Vergniaud denouncing the 'citizens of Paris' as the 'slaves
of the vilest scoundrels alive,' only led in the end to making France
herself for a time the slave of these same 'vilest scoundrels alive.'
In more recent times, Amiens received and entertained Gambetta on his
way by balloon from Paris to Tours. I asked the veteran Count Léon de
Chassepot, who for years was regularly returned at every election at the
head of the municipal councillors of Amiens, how the people received
Gambetta on that memorable occasion. His answer was that there really
was no 'reception.' Gambetta came down in his balloon at a little place
some way off, between Amiens and Montdidier, and when he reached Amiens
he was too tired and hungry to think of 'receiving' people or making
speeches. Count Léon de Chassepot had nothing, I believe, to do with the
invention of the guns which bear his name. But he has a glance like a
rifle-shot, and at fourscore years 'Spring still makes spring in the
mind' of this vivacious veteran. I asked him how Amiens behaved when the
news came there of the capture of Paris by the revolutionists of
September 4, 1870. Was the new republic hailed with enthusiasm?
'Enthusiasm!' he said scornfully; 'why should it be? The people of
Amiens were thinking of fighting the Prussians, not of upsetting the
Government! They received the news with stupefaction, as a matter of
little consequence in comparison with the invasion. The disaster of
Sedan had afflicted them profoundly. The Empire was popular in Picardy.
At the municipal elections which took place in Amiens just after the
declaration of war--early in August 1870, that is--the Imperialist
candidates had all been elected by overwhelming majorities. M. Goblet,
now so prominent in the Republican counsels, made his appearance then as
an anti-governmental candidate, together with M. Petit, the present
Radical mayor of Amiens. M. Goblet got 530 votes, and M. Petit 423. They
were the leading persons on that side, and the leading persons on the
side of the Government received, respectively, 5,099 and 4,964 votes.
This being the temper of the good people of Amiens at that time, you
will understand that they were more astounded than pleased by the
so-called revolution of September in Paris. But they were more patriotic
than the people of Paris, and they acquiesced in the overthrow of the
Government to show a united front to the enemy. He was within striking
distance of Amiens, by the way, and the boulevardiers unfortunately
thought that Paris was out of his reach.'
The first act of the revolutionists of September, it appears, was to
disorganise as far as they could the public service by removing the
prefects, and putting their own people into place and power. They sent a
certain M. Lardière down post-haste to Amiens to take the place of the
then prefect of the Somme, M. de Guigné, and that was all they did to
defend Amiens!
In the course of a pleasant morning spent with M. Ansart, a gentleman of
high character and position in Amiens, and with several of his friends,
I heard much that was interesting as to this critical period. The
attitude of the leading men throughout Picardy seems to have been in
complete conformity with M. de Chassepot's account of the bearing of the
city of Amiens. The mayor of a commune not far from Amiens, a marquis
and a leading Imperialist, on getting the news of the political
somersault executed at Paris, read out the bulletin to the people from
the mairie, reminded them that the enemy were sure to come into Picardy,
and then exclaimed, 'Well, my friends, since it seems we are in a
republic, Long live the Republic!'
This was the general feeling of good men everywhere at that time in
France. Said one gentleman, a landed proprietor from Brittany, 'Nobody
out of Paris who had a head on his shoulders approved what had been
done in Paris. But by common consent a great blank credit was opened for
the Republic all over France. If the Republicans would do their duty to
France, not as party men but as patriots, France was ready to accept
them. It is their own fault, and their fault alone, that the men who
made this change at Paris went to pieces so fast in the public
estimation. It is the fault of the Republicans, and their fault alone,
that now, after nearly eighteen years, they are an offence to sensible
and liberal men from one end of France to the other.'
The new prefect sent down from Paris turned out to be a wind-bag. By the
middle of November it became clear that Amiens must fall into the power
of the enemy. The new prefect launched a ridiculous proclamation,
blazing with adjectives, at the advancing Teutons, and then one fine
night got out of the way as fast as possible, leaving the city and the
department of the Somme to face the wrath of the not very placable
conquerors.
On November 28, the Prussians occupied the city, one French officer,
Commandant Vogel, falling at his post, which he refused to surrender.
Count Lehndorff, appointed to be German Prefect of the Somme, came down
upon the people heavily for war contributions, which were raised under
the management of M. Dauphin, who had been the Imperialist mayor of the
city ever since 1868, and who has of late years been a conspicuous
Republican. As peace drew near, Amiens had to borrow five millions of
francs, for which M. Dauphin agreed the city should pay M. Oppenheim of
Brussels a commission of 10 per cent., and issued its obligations at
7-1/2 per cent. for fifty years.
Naturally the Germans are not much liked at Amiens. Count de Chassepot
thinks the Picards in general really want war with Germany. They turned
out very generally during the contest. He commanded a battalion of
National Guards who turned out in full force, not a man missing, though
they were armed with wretched old muskets, and perfectly understood what
that must lead to for them. On making his rounds very early in the
morning, he found, in an advanced post, at a point of great danger, a
picket, a _sentinelle perdue_, who proved to be one of the most
respectable men in Amiens, the first president of the Upper Court of the
city, nearly sixty years of age, doing his duty as a private soldier.
'In a hospital here,' said M. de Chassepot, 'I have six hundred
patients. Every man of them is eager for another turn with the Germans.'
I was anxious to learn when and how it was that M. Goblet, just now the
leading Republican personage of this part of France, began to appear
conspicuously on the horizon. 'Not till Gambetta's new social strata
began to appear,' I was told. This was in 1874. The finances of the
city, left in a sad condition by the war, had been put into order by the
municipal council which was elected during the German occupation in
1871; the public works had been restored, fine barracks built, and a
sufficient number of school-houses. In return for those services the
councillors who had rendered them were turned out in 1874, M. Dauphin
among them, by the newly-organised 'Union républicaine.' This put M.
Goblet at last into the council with his ally, M. Petit, the latter
being the editor of a Radical journal, the _Progrès de la Somme_, which
the military governor of Paris had ordered to be suppressed early in
1874, for its attacks on the then President, Marshal MacMahon. In 1876
M. Goblet became mayor of Amiens.
'The very next year, when the contest began between Gambetta as head of
the Union of the Left and the President of the Republic, M. Goblet threw
himself as ex-mayor of Amiens openly on the side of the ex-dictator,
and made such speeches that he was dismissed from his office by the
President in June 1877.'
'Did he like this?'
'No, he didn't like it at all. As Minister of the Interior, in more
recent times, M. Goblet has knocked off the heads of a great number of
mayors. But when his own head was knocked off in 1877, he loudly and
scornfully denounced all municipal officers who would stoop to accept
their positions from the national government.'
'In that you have the whole character of M. Goblet,' said another
gentleman. 'I have known him from childhood. He is not a bad man, and,
as you know, he is a man of ability, one of the very few able men to be
found acting with President Carnot. But he is very vain, very ambitious,
very excitable. As the associate of Petit, who is a rampant atheist, and
of the anti-clericals generally, he has to pose as an unbeliever; but he
is, in fact, nothing of the sort. His wife is a good woman, and he goes
in great awe of her, which I think to his credit. I think if he felt his
health suffering he would go to confession in a quiet way by night, just
as the Gambetta prefect ran away from the Prussians in 1871. When the
grand funeral of Admiral Courbet took place at Abbeville, and it was
announced that Monseigneur Freppel would come and deliver the funeral
service over that noble Christian sailor and patriot, the victim of
Ferry, M. Goblet was in a dreadful state of mind. He said to me, "I
think I shall not attend the funeral." "Pray why?" "Well, I wish to
attend it, but I am sure that Bishop Freppel will say things offensive
to me." "Pray accept my congratulations," I replied; "you really are in
great luck that the first orator in France should take the trouble to
come all the way to Picardy expressly to insult you on such an
occasion!" So he thought better of it and attended, and his sensible
wife afterwards thanked me for preventing her husband from behaving like
a donkey.'
'An excellent woman, Madame Goblet!'
'Her husband owes her much, and he has some good friends. Comte de
Chassepot prevented him from playing the stupid farce of a Roman son by
sacrificing his father's funeral to a discussion on the laicisation of
the schools; for, seeing what he had in his mind, Comte de Chassepot
simply moved an adjournment of the council. His evil genius is M. Petit,
now a senator, the present mayor of Amiens. I have caught M. Goblet
offering the holy water with his hand behind my back to his wife; but M.
Petit is an outspoken unbeliever, and a very type of the anti-christian
demagogue.'
Upon this he told me a story which, as it is certainly typical of the
proceedings taken against religion all over France by functionaries of
M. Petit's way of thinking, I shall set down here.
In 1869 all the crosses and stones in the cemetery of the Madeleine at
Amiens set up on graves held by temporary concessions had to be removed
by reason of the lapse of these concessions. The then mayor and
municipal council had them sold, and ordered the proceeds to be spent in
erecting a large and beautiful cross with an image of the Saviour, and
an inscription stating that this crucifix was erected in memory of all
the dead buried in the cemetery whose crosses and tombs had been
removed. This crucifix, called the 'Calvary of the Poor,' was thus a
touching monument of the family affection of the poor among the people
of Amiens. Outraged by this symbol, the Radical mayor of Amiens caused
this Calvary to be dismantled, in the night of November 10, 1880, and
the crosses to be sawn in pieces and thrown away beyond the limits of
the cemetery. Surely this is an advance beyond Robespierre, and even
beyond the senseless Vandalism which solemnly ordered the destruction of
the tombs of the kings and heroes of France. Even Robespierre, when
Cambon made his proposal that the Convention should violate the public
faith pledged by the Constituent Assembly to the support of the French
clergy by the State in exchange for the seizure by the State of the
property of the Church, had sense enough to say, in a letter to his
constituents opposing the project, that 'to attack religion directly was
to strike a blow at the morals of the people.' I am not surprised to be
told that, notwithstanding the support given him by the central
government of the Republic at Paris, this worthy mayor has speedily lost
popularity even with his own Radical party, and that in the most recent
elections he barely escaped defeat. 'He is ensconced, though,
comfortably as senator,' said my shrewd informant, 'and I dare say he
will see his friend, M. Goblet, turned out of the Chamber! So--what does
he care? His zeal against the Calvary in Amiens may hurt him with the
poor people upon whose faith and whose affections he tramples; but, like
his brutal expulsion of the Sisters from their schools and hospitals,
and his truculence towards the religious processions in which the
Picards delight, it recommends him to the clique who have got our poor
France into their clutches at Paris, and who pose before all the gaping
world at the Universal Exposition as friends of Liberty and Progress!'
The laicisation of the schools has been pushed forward at Amiens, as
elsewhere. It began under M. Spuller, now Minister of Foreign Affairs,
who was made Prefect of the Somme in 1879. M. Goblet, who had then been
mayor for a year, resigned, to become under-secretary in the Ministry of
Justice, and the prefect put M. Delpech in his place. Everything, it
will be seen, was moved from the centre at Paris.
'This M. Delpech and his associates,' said one of my informants, 'began
the laicisation of the boys' schools. They were men who would not think
of picking a man's pocket, but see how they behaved in this business!
'There were six primary schools at Amiens conducted by the Christian
Brothers. Five of these had always been so conducted, and the sixth for
twenty years. The Christian Brothers agreed to give up this sixth
school, M. Petit promising them that, if they did this, they should not
be disturbed in the others. Very soon this promise was broken, and they
were turned out of the school of Notre-Dame. Then a charge was brought
against one of the brethren of the school of St.-Leu. It was serious and
went before the Assize Court, where the accused was promptly acquitted.
But this took time, and while the proceedings were pending, our
admirable M. Petit sent in a report to the Council recommending that the
Brethren be dismissed from their four remaining schools. On August 26,
1879, the Council adopted this report, and within a week M. Spuller, the
prefect, issued an order of expulsion, "in obedience," as he wrote, "to
the resolution of the Municipal Council of Amiens, and to the wishes of
the population."'
M. Spuller appears to be a true disciple of Robespierre, who, in his
famous socialistic speech before the Convention, affirming that bread,
meat, and all provisions are not private, but common, property, laid
down the maxim that, 'even if the measures proposed as their desire by
the people are not necessary in the eyes of law-makers, they should be
adopted.' _Civium ardor prava jubentium_ is a moral law for legislators
of this admirable school.
I should note by the way that these Brethren, thus expelled summarily,
were refused payment of their already fixed salaries for the month of
September.
A debate ensuing, the question was finally remitted to M. Jules Ferry,
'Grand Master of the University of France,' who decided that the
salaries were indeed due and the property of the Brethren, but that, as
the work could not be done by reason of their expulsion, the salaries
need not be paid!
Furthermore, the municipality appraised the school furniture, which had
been bought and paid for by the Brethren, and having ascertained its
value, decided--that it belonged to the municipality!
Will my readers think the expression of M. Fleury, an accomplished
journalist of Amiens, to whom I am indebted for these details, at all
too vigorous, when he described these proceedings as 'exactly defined in
the French Dictionary, and in the 379th article of the Penal Code, under
the word "theft"'?
In August 1880, on the refusal of the Sisters in charge of the girls'
school to take their pupils to an 'obligatory festival' during the time
fixed on Sunday for divine service, M. Petit, the municipal Emperor
Julian of Amiens, moved for 'the immediate laicisation of all the girls'
schools in Amiens.' This was too much even for M. Goblet, who, to his
credit, not only protested but voted against the proposition. It was,
however, carried. M. Goblet and six other councillors withdrew,
including the mayor, M. Delpech; and M. Petit thus became, by seniority,
mayor of Amiens.
'When this happened,' said a citizen of Amiens to me, 'and M. Petit was
thus put in charge of the rights and the property of the Sisters, it had
been perfectly well known for ten years that, by the Parliamentary
Inquest of 1871 into the story of the Commune of Paris, M. Petit had
been proved to be the founder at Amiens of the secret society known as
the "International," and yet he was never prosecuted, and he is now a
senator of the Republic. How do you expect honest people, who respect
the ordinary laws of order and civilisation, to support a Republic which
accepts and promotes the members of such a society?
'On October 2, 1880, this remarkable mayor went in person with a
locksmith and some others to the communal girls' school of St.-Leu, then
managed by the Sisters. The Sisters had been already that day notified
to leave the school-buildings "the next day." M. Petit ordered them to
go out immediately. They showed the notification and declined to go till
the next day. The curate of St.-Leu, with his vicar and with a member of
the board of Churchwardens, came up and protested against this invasion
of the school. "Show me the documents proving this house to be the
property of the municipality," said the curate. M. Petit showed no
documents, but demanded the keys. The curate refused to give them up. M.
Petit ordered his locksmith to pick the locks, which was done, and then
turning to the curate shouted out, "As for you, if you are here when the
commissary comes, I will have you turned out by force." Upon this the
curate, a venerable old man, withdrew.
'From the school of St.-Leu our local Robespierrot drove to the girls'
school of St.-Jacques, sprang out of the municipal coach (paid for by
the public treasury), dashed into the house, and seated himself without
a word.
'One of the Sisters asked him civilly what he wished. "I wish you to get
out of this house," he replied, "We cannot possibly leave in this way,"
answered a Sister who has for years devoted herself to this work. "I
have nothing to say to you," he cried; "I want the Superior." The
Superior quietly came and informed the mayor that the church officers
had told her not to leave, excepting under force. "Very well, you shall
have force! If you are not all out of here by Tuesday, I will put you
all into the street!"
'Now observe the consequences to the taxpayer of Amiens! The Church of
St.-Leu, as it happens, owned the greater part of the school-buildings.
The church began proceedings against the city, and in August 1881, the
tribunal ordered the city to give up the buildings seized by this
adventurous mayor, and to withdraw its lay teachers. The upshot was that
the performances of M. Petit, in one way or another--although M. Goblet,
then in the ministry at Paris, came to the rescue of his demagogic
ally--cost the taxpayers, in round numbers, some fifty thousand francs.
Now you see why the laicising Republicans are so anxious to shake the
whole system of the French magistracy. There may be judges at Berlin. It
is not convenient there should be judges in Republican France!'
This recalled to me what I heard the other day at Calais about the
functionary decorated at Bapaume by President Carnot, because the
tribunal had given a decision against him in a case raised by certain
Christian Brothers whom he had unlawfully put out of property which,
under the law, belonged to them.
'You think that a remarkable case!' said the Picard friend to whom I
mentioned it. 'It is an everyday affair. Wait a minute! Let me show you
the documents in regard to a performance of our worthy mayor and
senator, which throws President Carnot into the shade. They are as
amusing, too, as they are instructive, and I will give you copies of
them which you may use as you like. You tell me people in England and
America have no idea of what is going on in France? I assure you that
people in France who know what is going on around them, have no idea of
what it all means, or of what it must lead to in the end.
'Sometimes I think we were so stunned as a nation by the invasion and
the Commune that we are still staggering about like a man knocked on the
head in a dark road.
'But let me tell you the tale of M. Petit and Mademoiselle Colombel.
Mademoiselle Colombel was a lay teacher at the head of one of our
schools, the school of the Petit St.-Jean. I don't quite see, by the
way,' he observed, 'why M. Petit and his squad have not changed the
names of these schools. In Paris, you know, they had the courage to
change the name of one of the great lyceums into the Lyceum Lakanal. To
be sure it didn't stay changed very long, for even Paris--which suffers
one of its boulevards to commemorate that wretched creature Victor
Noir--wouldn't stand Lakanal. But to infect the minds of children with
the names of little Saints--surely this is a monstrous thing! Well,
Mademoiselle Colombel lost her temper one day, and tried to find it
about the person of one of her little pupils, with slaps, and pinches,
and other caresses of the kind. She was brought up before the police for
it, and sentenced to pay a small fine with costs. She appealed, but the
court confirmed the sentence of the police magistrate, who had acted
strictly within the law. What followed? This was in May 1885. Mdlle.
Colombel declared herself to be a persecuted martyr of "laicisation,"
and in that capacity called upon the mayor, M. Petit, for aid and
comfort. I believe they were old allies in the sacred cause. Be this as
it may, the mayor made himself her champion against the magistrate, and
wrote her, for public use, this letter. Pray print it. It is a great
thing for Amiens to possess a mayor, and for France to possess a
senator, who can write such a letter. It ought to have been sent to the
Exposition.
'"Amiens, May 1885.
'"Madame,--On the strength of calumnious imputations fomented by an
Ulysses who could not console himself for the departure of Calypso,
and complacently listened to, you have been prosecuted for cruelty
to your pupils.
'"After an inquiry as long and as voluminous as if the matter at
issue had been a case for the Assize Court, this intrigue came to a
miserable end before a simple police tribunal. From the moment,
when, through a singular sort of suspicion about your natural
judges, you were removed from the disciplinary action of your
superiors, without any preliminary inquiry made by them, and,
indeed, without apprising them of the matter, you should have been
taken before the Courts. Nobody seemed to understand this, so you
were condemned by default to pay a fine, trifling indeed, but so
imposed as to take from you the right of appeal. Be this as it may,
since some of the law officers of the Republic are ready to revive
against the lay instructors of our schools, the methods of the law
officers of the Empire, it is well your colleagues should know
that, whilst I am at the head of the municipal administration of
Amiens, they shall not be given over defenceless to the rancour of
the clerical world, its dupes, or its accomplices. I have therefore
the honour to inform you that I not only relieve you from all the
costs of your case, but that, in order to soothe the trouble it may
have caused you, I grant you an indemnity of one hundred francs!
'"Against the sentence which condemned you put this proof of esteem
and sympathy. Honest people and Republicans will think this
testimony at least as good as any other. Accept, Madame, the
assurances of my most distinguished consideration.
'"The Mayor of Amiens,
'"FRÉDÉRIC PETIT."'
'Ulysses bewailing the departure of Calypso is charming, is it not?'
said my friend. 'M. Petit is a cotton-velvet manufacturer, and his
classics are cotton classics. But what do you say to the applause of
"honest people" acclaiming a mayor who puts his hand into the public
treasury and makes a present out of it to soothe the injured feelings of
a schoolmistress fined by a public tribunal for ill-treating her pupils?
Can you ask for a more flagrant illustration of the state to which this
Republic is bringing our public services? And the mayor who wrote this
letter, and took this money out of the public treasury, and offered this
open insult to the tribunals of the city of Amiens, has since then been
made a senator of the Republic, with the help and concurrence of M.
Dauphin, then First President of our Courts, whose plain official duty
it was to revoke his commission as mayor as soon as this letter was
published! With such men as this in the French Senate do you wonder the
country laughs at senatorial courts of justice? I have no great opinion
of General Boulanger, though I have as good an opinion of him as of M.
Clémenceau, who invented him. But really is it not grotesque to see such
cotton-velvet senators as this mayor of Amiens going about to decide
questions of fidelity to public duty? Take my word for it' he continued,
'it is the direct personal knowledge which the people have of just such
personages as the mayor of Amiens all over France, which makes
two-thirds of the popular strength of General Boulanger. If the Senate
and the Government succeed in putting about the impression that General
Boulanger is no better than they are, they will no doubt weaken him with
the people, but they will not strengthen themselves. This Third Republic
is dying, not of any passion for the monarchy, not even of the
Imperialist legend, which is very strong in the country--more because
France was so prosperous under the third Napoleon than because France
dominated Europe under the first Napoleon: it is dying of popular
contempt. It is dying of the Goblets, the Petits, the Dauphins. They are
to be found all over France--under different names--yes--but always the
same: shallow, vain, vulgar sycophants of universal suffrage while they
are out of place, bullies and traders when they are in power. And then!'
he exclaimed after a pause, 'what most exasperates me is that they are
such a pack of wordmongers, for ever ranting about things which may have
intoxicated our grandfathers in 1792--they don't seem to me to have
invented gunpowder, our grandfathers!--but which simply make sensible
men sick to-day.
'Wait a moment! Let me complete the picture of our model Picard
Republican senator for you. The Comte de Chassepot told you the story,
did he not, of the Calvary in the cemetery of the Madeleine? Yes. But he
did not show you the correspondence about it between the bishop and this
charlatan of twopenny Atheism? No? Well it is a tit-bit, and I give it
to you! Petit sent his order to the keeper of the cemetery of the
Madeleine in November 1880, to raze the cross, saw off the arms, and
detach from it the image of Christ. He was then, observe, not really
mayor of Amiens, but only mayor by reason of the refusal of his senior
to serve in the office.
'The work was done at night. The cross was destroyed. The image of the
Saviour was thrown into a shed.
'Two days afterwards, the Bishop of Amiens wrote this letter to the
Prefect of the Somme, Spuller, the same person who is now--heaven save
the mark!--Minister of Foreign Affairs of the French Republic!
'"Amiens: Nov. 12, 1880.
'"Mr. Prefect,--A most deplorable incident--indeed a grave
scandal--has just taken place at the cemetery of the Madeleine, and
is exciting, with too much reason, the strongest and most painful
feelings among the people of Amiens.
'"The figure of our Saviour Christ, set up there in very special
circumstances, and with a solemn ceremony in which more than 30,000
spectators took part, was clandestinely thrown down and taken away
the night before last. It is impossible for me to imagine that the
authorities can have ordered such a thing to be done.
'"I must request you, Mr. Prefect, to order an inquiry to be made
into this inexplicable affair, and to cause the authors of the act
to be prosecuted according to law. Please accept the assurance of
my respectful regard.
'"[Illustration] AIME VICTOR-FRANCIS,
'"Bishop of Amiens."
'To this letter, written by the highest ecclesiastical authority of the
chief city of his préfecture--will you believe it?--M. Spuller, who is
after all not a perfectly illiterate person like Petit, actually made no
reply!
'But the cotton-velvet bagman of blasphemy three days afterwards,
reading in the papers the letter of Bishop Guilbert, burst into print
with this incredible but most instructive effusion, addressed to his
friend the Prefect:
'"Amiens: Nov. 15, 1880.
'"Mr. Prefect,--I find this morning in the journals of the
bishopric the text of a letter addressed to you by the Bishop of
Amiens in regard to the suppression of the Catholic emblem placed
at the entrance of the general cemetery of the Madeleine.
'"It was by my order, and my written order, that the Christ of the
Madeleine was removed. The only failure to comply with my orders
was that the operation was performed in the evening after the
cemetery was closed, instead of in the morning as I had directed.
In acting thus, I have shown great tolerance; for, in virtue of
Article 13 of the Law of the 7th Vendémiaire of the Year IV.,
circumscribed in its application, but not abrogated by the Law of
the 18th Germinal year X., as is shown by a ministerial decree of
the 7th Fructidor following: 'No sign special to any religion can
be raised, fixed, and attached in any place whatever, so as to
strike the eyes of citizens, except in an enclosure intended for
the exercises of this religion, or in the interior of private
houses, in the studios or warehouses of artists or merchants, or in
public edifices destined to contain monuments of the arts."'
'Then followed a dozen pages of similar twaddle, meant to show that the
mayor of Amiens was a most tolerant prince, in that he had not ordered
the destruction of every cross set up on a private grave!
'Of course all these laws of the First Republic were long ago shot into
space under the Consulate and the Empire, and of course, even if they
had not been shot into space, a consecrated cemetery is an "enclosure
intended for the exercises of religion." But what did that signify to M.
Petit, who, in a public speech the year after, boasted that he "had not
been married in church, and that his children had never been baptized."
'Did all this give the man any right to destroy and carry away a costly
piece of artistic work, the property of the city?'
Obviously, it is as absurd to expect peace and order in France under a
republic in which men like M. Petit, and M. Spuller, and M. Dauphin, and
M. Goblet are leading friends of the Government, as it would have been
to expect peace and order in the England of the seventeenth century,
when churchwardens--as at Banbury, for example--went about breaking at
night into the churches confided to their care, and smashing the statues
of the saints and defacing the glorious monuments of the past.
After considering all these humours and graces of the most recent French
Republic, as set forth by the senatorial mayor of Amiens, for the
edification of Picardy and France, it was interesting to walk with Mr.
Ruskin from the Place de Périgord up the 'Street of the Three Pebbles,'
past the theatre and the Palais de Justice, to the south transept of
that glorious cathedral which has not as yet been taken down by night,
under the senatorial mayor or his friends the ministers, M. Spuller and
M. Yves Guyot. Why should this 'Parthenon of Gothic architecture,' as M.
Viollet-le-Duc calls it, be left standing when the Calvary of the poor
at Amiens is cast down and sawn in pieces?
For surely Mr. Ruskin, who has written many true and eloquent things,
has written nothing truer than these words with which he brings to a
close his remarkable paper called the 'Bible of Amiens':--
'The life and gospel and power of Christianity are all written in
the mighty works of its true believers, in Normandy and Sicily, on
river-islets of France and in the river glens of England, on the
rocks of Orvieto and by the sands of Arno. But of all, the
simplest, completest, and most authoritative in its lessons to the
active mind of Northern Europe, is this on the foundation-stones of
Amiens. Believe it or not as you will--only understand how
thoroughly it was once believed--and that all beautiful things were
made and all brave deeds done in the strength of it--until what we
may call "this present time," in which it is gravely asked whether
religion has any effect on morals, by persons (senatorial and
other) who have essentially no idea whatever of the meaning of
either religion or morality.'