1840-1841
I left Constantinople with a farewell glance, full of pleasant
memories, over its forest of minarets, over the Bosphorus and the
smiling Princes Islands, and at the snowy peak too of Mount Olympus,
which, with my taste for mountaineering, I had climbed but a short time
previously. An interesting ascent it had been, first of all through
that Eastern Switzerland around the pretty town of Broussa, and then
over the snow and rocky debris to the summit, whence a matchless
panorama is to be seen. The squadrons, one French and one English,
forming a strong force of ships, were at that time on guard at the
mouth of the Dardanelles. I went back to my duty in ours, which was
still as active and incessantly drilled as ever. The English squadron,
commanded by Sir Robert Stopford, a handsome white-haired old man, was
less restless. But the fleets dispersed before long. Ours sailed for
Smyrna, whence the Admiral sent the Belle-Poule under my command, and
the Triton, Captain Hamelin, back to France. We sailed in company, and
after a somewhat lengthy winter passage, we got to Toulon only to find
ourselves put into thirty-five days of quarantine. Five and thirty days
of prison and solitude and uselessness imposed on a crew without a
single sick man, which was daily inspected by its officers as to
cleanliness, whose health was looked after by three doctors, and which
had just gone through the best and safest of purifying operations--a
long sea voyage. Five and thirty days during which 400 men ate and
drank and lived at the expense of the National Budget without doing the
smallest work for the country--the whole thing inflicted by the
Sanitary Board--a purely local and irresponsible body, with its eternal
round of red tape. A good thing it is indeed that such a monstrous and
intolerable abuse should have been abolished! The only reason it lasted
so long is, that it brought in a revenue to the members of the board.
To begin with, they filled the inn they kept under the title of
"Lazaretto" by force, and then they sold the disinfectants.
"Gentlemen," the sanitary officer would say, with his provencal
accent--"Nous allons faire le parfum." The crew were shut up below, the
officer lighted a sort of pastille which made a great smoke, everybody
pretended to sneeze at once ... and we were disinfected! The farce was
over! There was a great dinner too, which the board gave itself at
Saint Roch, at the expense of the persons in quarantine, which put the
finishing touch to the scandal. Wherefore, during my own detention, I
always had the band on deck as soon as the boat belonging to the board
appeared in the port, and greeted it with the most horrible and
discordant of music. Further, I asked guilelessly for leave to carry on
my ship's firing drill in the Lazaretto Bay, and I took care to open
fire so close to the Lazaretto itself that I heard all the glass in the
windows fall out with a crash. As I expected, I was forbidden to do it
again, the board being furious, and having lodged a complaint, stating
that I used bad cartridges, but I had a delicious moment of vengeance
all the same.
The quarantine came to an end at last, I was given leave, and once
more, with joy, beheld my family, and Paris too. I had spent the
greater part of my existence for the past four years at sea, and I
confess I thirsted somewhat for Paris, dear unrivalled Paris! I got
there in the heart of the winter of 1839, and left it in the first days
of June of the same year. What recollections have I of those four
months of repose? In vain I tax my memory, I can find nothing, or
hardly anything at all. As far as exterior events go, none but the most
infinitesimally small--the eternal wearying struggle between ministers
in esse and in posse, which left the bulk of the public exceedingly
indifferent. If the situation from the external point of view had grown
more serious, at all events it did not inspire anxiety. The strength of
the monarchical principle still made itself felt, in spite of the hitch
in 1830. People reckoned on the King, on his wisdom and farsighted
patriotism, to ward off the dangers, present and future, with which the
ambition of the permanent and persevering governments around us
threaten us, but of which our short-sighted democracy takes so little
account. The King was indeed shortly to justify this confidence by
saving France from a war with a European coalition, about the Eastern
question--a war into which we were being led by the imprudence of M.
Thiers and the bragging of our press and which could have ended in
nothing but disaster.
The governmental machine worked meanwhile, as a whole, with tolerable
smoothness. The House of Peers, the members of which were permanent,
and therefore strangers to electoral compromise, discussed with weight
and authority laws which were really progressive, respecting as they
did the interests and liberties of all concerned; while the Chamber of
Deputies, consisting of unpaid members, voted with much more care for
the public weal than is possible in an assembly of men enslaved by
their election committees, and perpetually haunted by the nightmare of
re-election. An independent magistracy, according to President
Seguier's fine expression, gave sentences, not services, "rendait des
arrets, et non pas des services" while the administration, which was
almost as permanent as the magistracy, had time to do good work and did
it. In short, except for the criminal classes, and those incorrigible
revolutionists who ask perpetually for the impossible, everybody felt
that his security, his liberty, and his faith, were well protected,
and, as I heard said on all sides when I came back from my voyages,
people felt they were well governed. It is true that if I opened the
newspapers I generally read to the contrary in them--but if there were
some few serious organs of public opinion among these journals, edited
by courageous and talented men, who did their best to serve their
country by their writings, whatever their opinions might be, how many
more had editors who were mere slander-mongers, and columns all the
more eagerly read, the more calumnious they were, and the more they
pandered to every envious and subversive passion. Such men were the
spokesmen of that increasingly numerous class of speculators, who
relinquish any useful career to seek fortune in the chances of
politics. According to them, oppression and corruption had grown
intolerable, and would never cease until power passed into their own
immaculate hands. They alone possessed the secret for turning France
into a terrestrial Paradise, by applying in all SINCERITY the great and
high-sounding principles, liberty, equality and fraternity. This
SINCERITY of application, which has been so frequently announced,
dallies somewhat in its coming, especially as regards equality, which
to so many people merely means, "That which I have not nobody else
shall have." The word equality is seductive truly, and in every
self-respecting community equality before the law must be utterly
absolute for all men. But so long as science discovers no means for
making all men equally intelligent and all women equally beautiful, I
shall continue to look upon universal and blind equality as the most
absurd and the most dangerous of chimeras. These reflections did not
occur to me at the period I speak of. I was far too careless in the
year 1840 to bother my head about the conundrums set by our
office-seekers, "place-hunters" as the Americans call them. While they
were amusing themselves with the fancies, envious, irreligious,
unhealthy, and above all self-interested, which they posed as deducing
from the principles of 1789, a far more terrible revolution than the
French one--for it was to strike the poor as well as the rich--was
shortly to burst upon us; the revolution brought about by the use of
steam and electricity and rapidity of communication. Few people in
those days foresaw the complete subversion of all the conditions of
labour and food supply and life itself, which was to overtake all the
peoples gathered together in old-established communities on worn-out
soil, a subversion which is only in its beginning as yet, and the
remedy for which we cannot discover.
One of the first results of the use of steam was to make it essential
for all nations having war fleets to transform their arsenals and their
naval stores. It was absolutely necessary to be able to oppose an
enemy, whose means of attack could overcome wind and tide, with
defensive means of equal power. That was as clear as A B C. This
transformation interested me keenly--for the future of the arm of the
service to which I had fervently devoted my whole life, and which I
desired to see become once more a redoubtable weapon of our country's
power, was bound up with it. But, to carry it through, we had to war
with routine, with the obstinacy bred of old habit, and with the narrow
ideas which were taught in the naval schools. It was a continuous daily
struggle in which I bore an assiduous part.
Apart from this naval question, my time was spent between my home life,
my worship for the fine arts, and the theatre, and also in
boar-hunting, of which I grew passionately fond; and what makes this
curious is that before I tried it I scorned the idea to such an extent
that my brothers tied me up and took me by force the first time. Every
incident of the hunt, the attack, the pursuit, all the unforeseen
occurrences of the chase, leading you nobody knows whither, so that you
even lose yourself in the dark sometimes in strange places, has still
all the charm of struggle and action to me. And what a pleasant party
of sportsmen we used to be, during our visits to Compiegne, to
Chantilly, and above all to Fontainebleau! My brothers and I, the two
Greffuhles, Caumont, Morny, Valewski, Edgard Ney, La Rochette, Casimir
Perier, d'Albufera, Wagram, the de l'Aigles; foreigners too, Bedmar,
d'Ossuna--and officers--and some ladies,--amongst these the beautiful
Duchess of Somerset, who always hunted in a mask, and was invariably
escorted by the charming Prince Labanoff. There were painters too
amongst the most assiduous sportsmen--Jadin and Decamps. Decamps, of
whom I was a fanatical admirer, was just in his best period--so too
were Delacroix and M. Ingres; and all that pleiad of great artists,
young then and in the full flush of their powers--Leopold Robert,
Horace Vernet, Delaroche, my own master Ary Scheffer, Flandrin, and the
landscape painters Marilhat and Corot--this last, in his first manner,
dry and rectilinear, like that of Poussin. Nobody nowadays has any idea
of the eager discussions aroused by the opening of the Salon and the
superior merit of such a picture or statue. Nobody was indifferent:
everybody was either for or against; each man either attacked the
artist or lauded him to the skies. Works of art bring more money now,
according as they are produced by this man or that, but they are less
discussed. Which is the best inspiration for an artist, money or
passion?
The theatres too, the Vaudeville, Varietes, Francais, the Opera, were
delightful. At the Vaudeville, which had migrated after the fire in the
Rue de Chartres to the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, Arnal, the inimitable,
quaintest and cleverest of comic actors, was playing. At the Varietes
they were acting the Saltimbanques, a play every line of which has
passed into proverbs, which all my generation have been repeating for
the last forty years. A woman of genius, Mademoiselle Rachel, had
brought back its long forgotten glory to the Theatre Francais. For my
part I never saw anything so absolutely perfect on the stage. With
hardly any gesture, simply by the play of her countenance, her
expressive glance, and the intonation of her voice, she expressed all
the passions with an intensity that affected all her audience. She had
a genius for dress and drapery. In her peplum she might have been taken
for an antique statue, and she knew how to endue herself with the most
incomparable womanly charm in all her parts, even the most savage ones.
If she had committed murder you would have loved the murderess, and,
strangely enough, this extraordinary woman was never witty except with
her pen.
As for the Opera, the production of the great composers who had made
its glory some years before had ceased. Of that trio of wonderful
artists, Nourrit, Levasseur, and Mdlle. Falcon, only one, Levasseur,
remained. The art of music was taking a rest. To make amends for this,
the opera shone in ballet, fairy-like performances in which pantomime
and trap-doors played as important a part as the actual dancing.
Nothing could have been more enchanting than the Diable Boiteux with
its many and various tableaux and its dresses, and Fanny Elsler dancing
the "cachucha," or the Sylphide or the Revolte du Serail with Taglioni.
I saw my brother Nemours in great danger during a performance of this
last-named ballet. At a certain point the dancers, representing the
revoltees, armed themselves with bows and shot a cloud of arrows into
the wings. Now in the heat of action one of these arrows, launched with
extraordinary vigour but uncertain aim by a charming young lady, one of
the principal dancers, Mcllle. Duvernay, stuck in the column which
separated the Royal Box in the old Le Pelletier house from that of the
Marquis du Hallay, only a few inches from my brother's head. There was
an exclamation from all parts of the house, great confusion on the
stage and many comments made. But "all's well that ends well." That
happy time of youth and carelessness and hunting and theatre-going was
not to last long. Two of my brothers started for Africa--Chartres (as
we always called our eldest brother the Due d'Orleans) was to take over
the command of a division in the column which, under the orders of
Marshal Vallee, was to check the rising prestige of Abd el Kader for
ever at the Mouzaia Pass. My younger brother Aumale, was to have the
opportunity during this expedition of breaking his first lance right
brilliantly. I saw them depart with envy, and to add to my annoyance I
shortly fell ill of a violent attack of measles. One day, as I lay in
high fever, I saw my father appear followed by M. de Remusat, then
Minister of the Interior. This unusual visit filled me with
astonishment, and my surprise increased when my father said,
"Joinville, you are to go out to St. Helena and bring back Napoleon's
coffin." If I had not been in bed already I should have fallen down
flat, and at the first blush I felt nowise flattered when I compared
the warlike campaign my brothers were on with the undertaker's job I
was being sent to perform in the other hemisphere. But I served my
country and I had no right to discuss my orders. And there were two
sides to the question, besides. Above Napoleon, the enemy of my house,
the murderer of the Duc d'Enghien, who at his fall had left that
dangerous game of chance wherein the ignorant herd is so often the dupe
of the political croupier--universal suffrage--as his legacy to ruined
and dismembered France,--there was the matchless warrior whose genius,
even in defeat, had shed immortal glory on our arms. To fetch his ashes
from a foreign land was in a manner to wave the flag of vanquished
France aloft once more--that at least was what we hoped for--and this
view of the case reconciled me to my mission. As soon as I was on my
legs again I started for Toulon, provided with full orders and
instructions, both royal and ministerial, and re-took command of the
Belle-Poule, a command I was to hold in many seas, during three
consecutive years. I felt some regret at leaving Paris, but the delight
at being back amongst the faithful and worthy fellows who made up my
crew, my second family, soon made me forget what I had left behind me.
Presently a certain number of passengers came on board. They formed
what was called the St Helena Mission. Almost all of them had been
comrades of Napoleon in his greatness and in his misfortunes. There
were Generals Bertrand and Gourgaud, M. de las Cazes, &c., &c. During
the long passages of the voyage, the conversation of these gentlemen,
who had been present at so many events and followed the Emperor through
so many adventures, was most deeply interesting. Every day there was a
running fire of anecdote and traits of character, much closer to the
truth doubtless than many a leisurely prepared history. I have often
regretted we had no shorthand writer with us.
During the first days of our voyage we touched at Cadiz to get our last
despatches before starting across the ocean. I was as glad as ever to
see the white walls of Cadiz again, and I made a pilgrimage to the
Cortadura, to the Trocadero (this in memory of the brilliant exploits
of the Royal Guard in 1823), and also to the battle-field of Chiclana,
which witnessed a terrible struggle between ourselves and the English
in February 1811, some of the actors in which I had known. Coming back
from Chiclana after a somewhat cheery luncheon, Arthur Bertrand, the
general's son, well known at that time in the gay world of Paris, gave
us a specimen of the maddest equestrian prowess. He galloped at full
speed across the Alameda at Chiclana, which was paved with slippery
flags, standing upright on his English saddle. There is a providence
that watches over madmen!
A characteristic incident occurred on leaving Cadiz. In case of
delicate negotiations with the English authorities at St. Helena, and
also in order to draw up the protocol for the surrender of the body, a
young diplomat, the Comte Philippe de Rohan Chabot,[Footnote: This
gentleman died in London as French Ambassador, under the title of Comte
de Jarna] had been associated with me.
We had hardly got out of the port of Cadiz, and cut our last
communications with France, when I saw him approach me, looking very
much embarrassed. He offered me a paper to read, saying it was only on
account of his orders he had not communicated it to me before. I cast
my eye over the signature at the foot of the paper and saw the name of
M. Thiers, President of the Council. By these secret instructions,
which were not to be imparted to me till we got to sea, M. Thiers
informed M. de Chabot that he, Chabot, was his direct agent and that he
invested him with superior authority to mine for as long as the mission
should last. Such was the strange missive, aimed not only at the
captain in command of the ship, but also, with an evident intention to
wound, at the King's son--an application in a very small way of that
maxim so dear to M. Thiers, "the King reigns but he does not govern."
Stranger still was the care he took to keep it secret until, being cut
off from France, I was no longer in a position to make any observation
on the contradiction between these fresh instructions and the precise
orders I had received previously. Friends from childhood as we were,
Philippe and I, no idea of conflict between us was admissible. I made
no complaint to any one and treated M. Thiers' behaviour to me with
contempt, but from that day the sympathetic and almost affectionate
relations I had previously lived in with that statesman came to an
end--they were replaced by a sense of deep distrust and a scanty esteem
for his character.
The Belle-Poule put in at Teneriffe to take in provisions and water,
and I took advantage of this stoppage to finish the ascent of the
famous Peak which I had had to break off in 1837. The last cone, all of
crumbly pumice stone, and at a very acute angle, is tolerably tiring.
On the summit is a small plateau, the soft soil of which is covered
with flowers of sulphur and creviced with smoke holes from which
scalding steam keeps escaping. Having got up in two days, we descended
rapidly to the smiling little town of Orotava, built amidst the most
lovely vegetation in a sort of ravine opening out on the sea. The
female population of Orotava has a well-deserved reputation for beauty,
and we were very kindly met by an invitation to make sure of the fact
by being present at an afternoon dance, a sort of "garden party" got up
in our honour--a great temptation truly, but a great perplexity as
well! People coming back off a mountain climb, including two waterless
bivouacs and a pull through the smoke and ashes of a volcano, are not
in ball trim, either as to costume or to cleanliness. After a hasty
council of war, it was decided that we should draw lots for the names
of three of our party, who were to wash themselves, and to whom each of
the non-chosen should furnish the least damaged articles of his own
clothing, so as to put them in proper condition to go to the ball and
keep up the honour of our flag before the belles of Orotava. We retired
into a wood to proceed to draw lots and embellish the elect Fate did
not favour me. I did not go to the ball, but my boots did, and our
comrades came back full of admiration of all they had seen.
From Teneriffe our passage was a slow one. We had calms, storms, even
gales, and then a fresh delay in port at Bahia in Brazil. I had been
advised on leaving Paris to arrange the progress of the mission so as
to make the return of the ashes of the Emperor to Europe coincide with
the opening of the Chambers in the end of December. Indeed I believe
the chief importance of the return of the ashes of Napoleon, in M.
Thiers' mind, lay in this coincidence. It was the tom-tom by beating
which he hoped to drown all those reports and inklings of ministerial
changes which always sprout at such moments in the parliamentary soil.
But it was somewhat difficult to time our arrival to a given moment,
with a sailing ship, and after such a long voyage. Originally I was to
have called at the Cape before going to St. Helena. I thought it better
to replace our stoppage at the Cape by one at Bahia, so as to shorten
the journey and save time. Very uninteresting our stay at Bahia was,
save for the following picturesque incident.
I had chartered a small steamer on which I used to go on sporting
expeditions with some of the officers. They were somewhat in the nature
of voyages of discovery up the rivers which fall into Bahia Bay. During
one of these excursions we had got some considerable distance up the
Cachoeira without seeing a sign of any inhabitants, and leaving our
boat at anchor, we had landed and spent our day in slaying toucans,
parrokeets of all colours, and all the strange birds and beasts
peopling the virgin forest, when at sunset we fell upon a cleared path,
which led us to a wide glade and then to a village, the existence of
which had been hitherto quite unsuspected by us. We entered it and
found it deserted, the doors of all the houses shut. We went towards a
very large square in the middle of the "Pueblo"--it was deserted too.
We entered a fine church, the door of which stood open--not a soul
within it, though the smell of the incense at some recently performed
religious ceremony still hung in the air. In the middle of the square
stood a kiosk, evidently intended for concerts; the instruments of an
orchestra were still there, lying on the chairs before the desks, as if
the music had only been broken off a few minutes previously. This
suddenly deserted village rather puzzled us. But in the hope of
bringing the population back to life, and with a certain spice too of
mischief, we laid down our guns, and seizing on the big drum, and the
abandoned trombones and clarionets, we raised a most alarming noise. It
was mere waste of time, nobody came. The evening was falling, it was
time to get back on board our steamer, and we quietly retook our way
towards her. Night--a moonlight night it was--had completely closed in,
when we got to the mangrove creek, where we had left the small boat
which was to bring us back on board. We were crowding into the little
craft, half aground on the mud, when a great clamour rose from the
forest, and we saw weapons glint through the foliage on all sides. In
the twinkling of an eye, before we had time to get over our surprise, a
crowd of people armed with guns, swords, and pikes, rushed up at top
speed, yelling loudly, and surrounded us, some remaining on shore and
others throwing themselves into the water. We were instantly carried
off, disarmed, separated, soundly thrashed, and dragged into the
forest. Anybody who has looked at the picture of the savages attacking
Captain Cook, in the history of his voyage, will have an exact idea of
the scene. It was not otherwise than picturesque in the moonlight, and
under that tropical vegetation; and it really was an attack by savages
too, most of them negroes, and the rest mulattoes. Very luckily for us,
our surprise and our unloaded guns, and the way we were crowded into
the boat, prevented our making any resistance, otherwise we should
certainly have been massacred, surrounded as we were by 200 armed men.
Each of us had his own little experience in the scuffle. I, for my
part, jumped into the water, knocking up the pikes of two negroes, who
looked as if they were going to spit me, with my gun, and hurriedly
caught a man--with a civilian's hat on his head, a sash over his
shoulder, and a big sword in his hand, who seemed to me to be the
leader of the band--round the waist. I gave him to understand, in a few
words, in bad Portuguese, that I commmanded the French warships
anchored at Bahia, and that if harm came to any of us, he and his
fellows would live to repent it. But before I could finish my speech
the angry crowd fell on me, carried me off, and dragged me to a mound,
against which, as I seemed to understand, they meant to back me and
shoot me. Indeed five or six negroes stationed in front of me hastily
loaded their guns. The situation was far from pleasant, for those who
know the negro race know what they are capable of when swayed by the
paroxysms of excitement into which they work themselves, whether from
drunkenness, or rage, or fear. Fouchard, whom two or three men were
holding a few steps off from me, seeing what was happening, threw off
his captors by a superhuman effort and sprang to my side. We clung fast
to each other, and this caused a fresh struggle and a respite of a
minute's duration, during which the man in the sash, who had quickly
understood this was becoming a bad business for himself, charged at the
head of the most reasonable of his mulattoes. We were captured and
recaptured several times, but victory at last rested with the man in
the scarf, and an explanation became possible. It appears there had
been an election, with considerable disturbances--blessed be elections
in all places and countries!--in the village, on the preceding day. The
inhabitants, in their over-excitement, had been struck first with
surprise, and afterwards with terror on hearing us firing at the
parrokeets. Their terror reached its height when seven or eight
white-skinned men, oddly armed and accoutred, were seen to enter the
village. The whole population fled into the woods. Then noting from
afar how small our number was, and more especially observing our
retreat, valour took the place of fright, and arming itself, it rushed
to the enemy's pursuit! We were set at liberty of course, and apologies
were duly made; but that did not mend the blows received, especially by
one of the lieutenants of the Belle-Poule, Penhoat, who had been half
murdered. We boarded our steamer, and found the English engineer in
charge of her completely drunk. When we told him our story he rushed
below to his engine-room, and fetched out a huge pistol that must have
dated from Cromwell's time; and we had all the trouble in the world to
prevent him from going on shore alone to take signal vengeance on
"those damned niggers."
Leaving Bahia, we had to go a long way down the Southern Atlantic
before we got a favourable wind. We reached St. Helena at last--a great
black rock, a jagged volcanic island resembling Martinique, minus its
splendid vegetation--a scrap of Scotland set in mid-ocean, and swept
incessantly by the Trade wind, which blows with wearisome continuance
and gathers a thick and permanent cloud-clap above the isle. It looked
gloomy from the sea, and the impression on arrival there was gloomy
too. James Town, the capital, is simply a wretched village, stretching
along a narrow valley, shut in by dreary-looking rocks crowned by
forts, to which you climb by staircases counting six hundred steps. The
country around Plantation House, the Governor's residence, the valley
of the Tomb, the Tomb itself with the legendary willows, and Longwood,
the prison house, all are equally gloomy, and equally calculated to
kill the great genius banished thither, by inches.
The business which had brought me was quickly settled between myself
and the Governor, General Middlemore. The orders of the British
Government were clear and precise, and the local authorities showed
great goodwill in carrying them out. They undertook the exclusive care
of the exhumation and transport of the remains over British territory,
and it was all done with the utmost propriety. The only request I made
and obtained was, that the coffin should be opened before it was handed
over to us, so as to be sure that we were taking neither a hotbed of
infection nor an imaginary corpse on board. The Governor himself being
ill I saw but little of him. He commissioned the officer in command of
the troops, Colonel Trelawny, of the Royal Artillery, to represent him.
He was a pleasant man, but decidedly eccentric. His great mania was the
study of genealogy, and he never failed to explain when we met that he
was my cousin, and that we were both related to the late Sultan Mahmoud
on the female side!
When all was ready the exhumation took place, and very imposing it was.
Everybody felt impressed when the coffin was seen coming slowly down
the mountain side, to the firing of cannon, escorted by British
infantry with arms reversed, the band playing, to the dull rolling
accompaniment of the drums, that splendid funeral march which English
people call The Dead March in Saul, but which is really no other than
the ancient Catholic chant of Adeste Fideles. General Middlemore,
dropping with fatigue, formally handed over the body to me; and the
coffin was lowered into the long-boat of the Belle-Poule, which then
started for the ship. The scene at that moment was very fine. It was a
striking moment A magnificent sunset had been succeeded by a twilight
of the deepest calm. The British authorities and the troops stood
motionless on the beach, while our ship's guns fired a royal salute. I
stood in the stern of my long-boat, over which floated a magnificent
Tricolour flag worked by the ladies of St Helena. Beside me were the
generals and superior officers, M. de Chabot and M de las Gazes. The
pick of my topmen, all in white, with crape on their arms, and
bareheaded like ourselves, rowed the boat in silence, and with the most
admirable precision We advanced with majestic slowness, escorted by the
boats bearing the staff. It was very touching, and a deep national
sentiment seemed to hover over the whole scene.
Two days later we set sail for France, which was reached after a
passage of forty-one days. During the passage, feeling anxious at
having had no news from Europe for four months, I spoke several ships,
and amongst others, south of the line, I spoke a Dutch man-o'-war on
her way to Java, which gave us details of the coalition apparently
directed against Mehemet Ali, the Egyptian Viceroy, but aimed, in
reality, at France. Not knowing what might result from the performances
of the allied naval forces on the Syrian coast, we on board the frigate
and her consort, the Favorite, determined to take all usual precautions
in case of war; and each of us made ready, after his own fashion, for
his eventual departure to another world. There was, in most cases, a
great destroying of souvenirs, papers, and compromising correspondence.
General Gourgaud attracted our attention by the trembling care with
which he re-read a perfect mountain of notes in a feminine hand, which
he burnt one by one in a basin, gathering up the ashes and preserving
them in a bottle--not a bad way of keeping tender memories quite safe
from any inquisitiveness But all these warlike preparations were thrown
away. When the Belle Poule cast anchor at Cherbourg on November 30th,
the storm had passed by. My mission closed at Cherbourg, but I found
orders there to tranship the coffin on to a steamboat, and then take it
round to Paris by the Seine, my crew and that of the corvette Favorite
to form the escort. I will not tell the story of this conveying of the
body. At St Helena things had on the whole been done by the British
army on the one part and our naval forces on the other, with all the
chivalrous seriousness and dignity which always attend international
relations when confided to those who wear the sword. In France the
conveyance of the remains of Napoleon took on quite another character.
It was first and foremost a show, in which, as always happens in our
country, many people desired to play a part which was inappropriate and
sometimes ridiculous. I had often to interfere to get things put to
rights again. At La Bouille, for instance, which we reached at
nightfall, to meet the river flotilla to which we were to be
transferred, I was shown, as the vessel which was to receive the coffin
and the staff of the escort, a frightful-looking boat on which a sort
of hideous dais had been built, with all the frippery and plumes of the
Pompes Funebres, an official catafalque worthy of Carpentras or of
Brives-la-Gaillarde. I immediately gave orders for this masterpiece of
bad taste to be destroyed, a coat of black paint given to the boat, and
everything cleared forward, so as to place the coffin there well in
sight, and covered with a violet velvet pall. My men at once fell to
work at this transformation, when a gentleman in evening dress
advanced, and in a tone of great authority, forbade my sailors to touch
anything. "I got my orders from M. Cave (the Director of the Beaux
Arts) and from the Minister. All the decoration was designed by me, and
carried out under my direction, I hold to it, and I forbid anybody to
touch it," he said. "But, my good sir," I replied, "my orders have been
given, and will be carried out." My gentleman became so violent that I
desired him to leave the vessel instantly. "But surely you are not
going to put me ashore at this hour (it was almost dark) in the open
fields? I don't know where I am; I don't see any houses." "That's
nothing to me, you have been insolent, so it is your own fault. Put
this gentleman ashore." Four sailors advanced, but he gave in, and
nobody ever heard of him again. By the following morning the
transformation was complete, and the coffin moving unsheltered up the
course of the river, as though to take possession of the stream, was
much more striking than all the tinsel and canopies imaginable. The
whole voyage up to Courbevoie, the point of arrival, was a mere classic
reproduction of the usual official journey--flags, authorities girt
with tricolour sashes, clergy pronouncing blessings, shaking with
terror all the time, horses, gendarmes, curious crowds of holiday
makers, the only thing lacking being the speeches. From Courbevoie the
body was taken in procession through the Champs Elysees to the
Invalides, with the usual ceremonial, which I had already witnessed in
the cases of Charles X. and the Duchesse d'Orleans, but with one extra
point, the cold, and it was terrible.
At the Invalides four-and-twenty non-commissioned officers advanced to
carry the coffin into the church; but in spite of the most desperate
efforts the veterans could not succeed in lifting it, and I had to make
my sailors carry it. The King received the body at the entrance to the
nave, and there rather a comical scene took place. It appears that a
little speech, which I was to have delivered when I met my father, and
also the answer he was to give me, had been drawn up in Council, only
the authorities had omitted to inform me concerning it. So when I
arrived I simply saluted with my sword, and then stood aside. I saw
indeed that this silent salute, followed by retreat, had thrown
something out; but my father, after a moment's hesitation, improvised
some appropriate sentence, and the matter was afterwards arranged in
the Moniteur. The Church of the Invalides was full to overflowing, the
Chamber of Peers and the Chamber of Deputies being seated in the choir.
The success of the day fell to my brave sailors. Everybody was curious
to see them. Their athletic forms, easy gait, and kindly sunburnt faces
at once won over the general public, especially the feminine portion of
it; and then they were something new to that sight-loving Parisian
population, to whom so many have been given since then, that for want
of a better the only thing offered them at the present moment is Dinah
Salifou and the danse du ventre. What a fall here too, compared vith
the past! During the triumphal passage of the Emperor's ashes down the
Champs Elysees between two ranks of soldiers and National Guards, who
kept back an immense multitude, I had constantly amid the various
shouts caught one of "Down with traitors," which, at first, I did not
understand. I had been so far away. But it was explained to me that
this demonstration was aimed at my father and his ministers, guilty as
they were of having refused to launch France into a general war about
the Eastern question. I fancy my father troubled his head little about
these would-be-wise demonstrators, worthy forerunners of the Boulevard
braggarts who, at a later date, in 1870, so appositely shouted "a
Berlin." He had other matters to preoccupy him. The ease with which all
the Governments in Europe had leagued themselves together, to inflict a
moral check on France, under cover of the Pasha of Egypt, betrayed the
latent hostility of all those powers to our own country. Let us say it
outright. In the eyes of the European monarchies, the Government of
July, by virtue of its origin, and however wise and courageous the
policy of the King, my father, might have been, had always remained a
revolutionary, and therefore a hostile government Nothing else was
possible; and so at bottom it always will be, as long as we continue to
run in the rut along which we have been floundering for the last
hundred years. Look at any country in Europe, no matter which, and see
against whom the established Government carries on the domestic
struggle. Against Nihilists in Russia, Socialists in Germany,
anarchists and unquiet spirits of all kind everywhere, imitations of
those of our own country, and by them encouraged to press on the same
course of demand, and spoliation, and licence. And hence the necessary
consequence, that sovereigns and organized societies, whose first
desire is to exist, and neither to be overthrown nor despoiled, are
always ready to make common cause against that hotbed of bad example,
Revolutionary France. The events of 1840 showed this with the utmost
clearness; and in face of that demonstration the path of duty lay
clear. It was to lose no time in taking, without boastfulness, but also
without weakness, all the necessary measures against the danger which
was constantly threatening, although for the moment it was warded off.
Among these measures was one my father passionately desired, and which
he snatched from the Chambers by sheer tenacity--the fortification of
Paris. This tenacity was necessary, for the struggle was long, bitter,
and inexplicable While it lasted the heroes of the cafes greeted my
father in the streets and at reviews with insulting shouts. The cry,
"Down with the Bastille," had succeeded that of "Down with traitors,"
and all the fainthearted section would have knuckled down. All the
energy of the King, of my brother the Due d'Orleans--as eager as
himself on the question--and of the ministers, was needed to bring them
back into fighting line. The aid too of those patriots of all
shades--and thank God there still are some such!--who put national
independence and honour above party questions, had to be invoked. And
so Paris was fortified Who dares nowadays to say, that this was not a
convincing proof of the King's foresight as a ruler? Who dares to say,
that if hesitation, and desultoriness, and incapacity, and evil chance,
had not clung to the command of our armies in 1870, the German invasion
might not have been broken up upon those ramparts?
The winter of 1841 was also spent in raising our battalions of
Chasseurs-a-pied, the personal work of my eldest brother. I used often
to go and keep him company in the camp at St. Omer, while he was
employing all his great powers in organizing this force. When it was
done he gave a splendid fite, to which he invited the officers of the
English garrisons on the opposite coast, deputing me to receive them. A
few days later the population of Paris was surprised and delighted by
the sight of these ten splendid battalions, in their simple but elegant
uniform, pressing through the streets with swinging step, filling the
courtyard of the Tuileries, and forming up in the space of a few
minutes to be inspected by the King. These fine troops, with their
strong esprit de corps, have since then earned glory by many exploits
in all quarters of the globe. The number of battalions has been raised
from ten to thirty. The organization, given them at the outset by a
vigorous hand, has remained intact. Their uniform even is unchanged,
having escaped the prevalent mania for bringing everything down to the
same level of ugliness. The only thing gone is the original name,
Chasseurs d'Orleans; but what matters the name when the service remains!
My memories of the winter of 1841 are full of recollections concerning
our national defence. Mingled with them, however, are some others of a
less austere nature Masked balls were the rage that year. They were
given in all directions. I was only three-and-twenty, and thought them
all delightful Just at that moment Chicard--the famous Chicard--shared
the sceptre of the opera-balls with Musard, the chief of the orchestra.
A quiet-living worthy tradesman on weekdays, on important occasions an
officer in the National Guard, Monsieur L "le grand Chicard," dressed
in the most eccentric of costumes, led indescribable farandoles to the
sound of broken chairs and pistol shots, accompanied by Musard's
orchestra, at these entertainments. There were balls in the Opera
House, at the Renaissance, the Salle Ventadour, the Varietes--these
last the prettiest and the most fashionable and amusing. Not an evening
coat in the whole ball-room, everybody, men and women alike, in
costume, and everybody acquainted with everybody else. And what gaiety
and go there was about it all' You asked your partner in the
upper-boxes to dance with you, from the floor of the house, and she, to
lose no time, came down outside the balustrades, faithfully passed down
by friendly hands. When the quadrille was over you met jolly comrades
everywhere, with their partners astride on their shoulders, shaking
hands as it were two stories at a time. But there is an end to all
things. My two brothers--Nemours and Aumale--went off to fight in
Africa under General Bugeaud; and, in the month of May, I myself was
sent out to the Newfoundland station.