MONEY AND POLICE—THE EMPEROR JAMES ROTHSCHILD AND THE BANKER NICHOLAS
ROMANOV—POLICE AND MONEY
In the December of 1849 I learnt that the authorisation for the mortgage
of my estate sent from Paris and witnessed at the Embassy had been
destroyed, and that after that an injunction had been laid on my mother’s
fortune. There was no time to be lost, and, as I have mentioned in a
previous chapter, I at once left Geneva and went to my mother’s.
It would be hypocritical to affect to despise property in our time of
financial disorganisation. Money is independence, power, a weapon.
And no one flings away a weapon in time of war, though it may have come
from the enemy or be ever so rusty. The slavery of poverty is awful; I
have studied it in all its aspects, living for years with men who have
escaped from political shipwrecks in the clothes they stood up in. And so
I thought it right and necessary to take every measure to snatch what I
could from the bear’s claws of the Russian Government.
Even so, I was not far from losing everything. When I left Russia I had
no definite plan; I only wanted to remain abroad as long as possible.
The Revolution of 1848 arrived and drew me into its whirlpool before
I had done anything to secure my property. Worthy persons have blamed
me for throwing myself headlong into political movements and leaving
the future of my family to the will of the gods. Perhaps it was not
altogether prudent; but if, living in Rome in 1848, I had sat at home
considering ways and means of saving my property while revolting Italy
was surging before my windows, then I should probably not have remained
in foreign countries, but have returned to Petersburg, have entered the
service again, might have become a vice-governor, have sat at the head
prosecutor’s table, and should have addressed my secretary with insulting
familiarity and my minister as ‘Your High Excellency.’
I had no such self-restraint and good sense, and I am infinitely thankful
for it now. My heart and my memory would be the poorer if I had missed
those bright moments of faith and enthusiasm! What could have made up to
me for the loss of them? Indeed, why speak of me? What would have made up
for it to her whose broken life was nothing afterwards but suffering that
ended in the grave? How bitterly would my conscience have reproached me
if, from prudent caution, I had robbed her of almost the last minutes of
untroubled happiness! And after all I did succeed in saving almost all
our property except the Kostroma estate.
After the June days my position was becoming dangerous. I made the
acquaintance of Rothschild, and asked him to change for me two Moscow
Bank bonds. Business then was not flourishing, of course; the exchange
was in a very bad way; his terms were not good, but I at once accepted
them, and had the satisfaction of seeing a faint smile of compassion on
Rothschild’s lips—he took me for a reckless _prince russe_ who had run
into debt in Paris, and so fell to calling me _Monsieur le Comte_.
On the first bonds the money was promptly paid; but on the later ones
for a much larger sum, though the payment was made, Rothschild’s
representative informed him that an injunction had been laid on my
capital—luckily I had withdrawn it all.
And so I found myself in Paris with a large sum of money in the midst of
general upheaval, without experience or knowledge what to do with it.
Yet everything was fairly well arranged. As a rule, the less excitement,
uneasiness, and anxiety there is in financial matters, the better they
succeed. Greedy money-grubbers and financial cowards are as often ruined
as spendthrifts.
By the advice of Rothschild, I bought myself some American shares, a few
French ones, and a small house in the Rue Amsterdam, tenanted by the
Havre Hôtel.
One of my first revolutionary steps, which cut me off from Russia,
plunged me into the respectable class of conservative idlers, brought
me acquainted with bankers and notaries, taught me to look at the Stock
Exchange news—in fact, turned me into a West European _rentier_. The
disharmony between the modern man and the environment in which he lives
brings a dreadful confusion into private behaviour. We are in the very
middle of two currents in conflict with each other; we are flung and
shall continue to be flung first in one and then in the other direction,
until one or the other finally overpowers us, and the stream, still
restless and turbulent but flowing in one direction only, makes things
easier for the swimmer by carrying him along with it.
Happy the man who knows how to steer so that, yielding to the waves and
swaying with them, he still swims his own course!
On the purchase of the house I had the opportunity of looking more
closely into the business and bourgeois world of France. The bureaucratic
pedantry over completing a purchase is not inferior to ours in Russia.
The old notary read me several documents, the statute concerning the
reading of them _main levée_, then the actual statute itself—all of this
making up a complete folio volume. In our final negotiation concerning
the price and the legal expenses, the owner of the house said that he
would make a concession and take upon himself the very considerable
expenses of the legal conveyance, if I would immediately pay the whole
sum to him personally. I did not understand him, since from the very
first I had openly stated that I was buying it for ready money. The
notary explained to me that the money must remain in his hands for at
least three months, during which its sale would be advertised and all
creditors who had any claims on the house would be called upon to state
their case. The house was mortgaged for seventy thousand, but there
might be further mortgages in other hands. In three months’ time, after
inquiries had been made, the _purge hypothécaire_ would be handed to the
purchaser and the former owner would receive the purchase money.
The owner declared that he had no other debts. The notary confirmed this.
‘Your honour and your hand on it,’ I said to him—‘you have no other debts
which could be secured by the house?’
‘I will readily give you my word of honour.’
‘In that case, I agree, and will come here to-morrow with Rothschild’s
cheque.’
When I went next day to Rothschild’s, his secretary flung up his hands in
horror: ‘They are cheating you! This is impossible; we will stop the sale
if you like. It’s something unheard of, to buy from a stranger on such
terms.’
‘Would you like me to send some one with you to look into the business?’
Baron James himself suggested.
I did not care to play the part of an ignorant boy, so said that I had
given my word, and took the cheque for the whole sum. When I reached
the notary’s I found there, besides the witnesses, the creditor who had
come to receive the seventy thousand francs. The deed of purchase was
read over, we signed it, the notary congratulated me on being a Parisian
house-owner—there was nothing left to do but to hand over the cheque....
‘How vexing!’ said the house-owner, taking it from my hands; ‘I forgot to
ask you to draw it in two cheques. How can I pay out the seventy thousand
now?’
‘Nothing is easier: go to Rothschild’s, they’ll give it you in two
cheques; or, simpler still, go to the bank.’
‘I’ll go if you like,’ said the creditor; the house-owner frowned and
answered that that was his business, that he would go.
The creditor frowned. The notary good-naturedly suggested that they
should go together.
Hardly able to refrain from laughter, I said to them: ‘Here’s your
receipt; give me back the cheque, I will go and change it.’
‘You will infinitely oblige us,’ they said with a sigh of relief; and I
went.
Four months later the _purge hypothécaire_ was sent me, and I gained ten
thousand francs by my rash trustfulness.
After the 13th of June 1849, the Prefect of Police, Rébillaud, made some
report against me; probably in consequence of his report, strange steps
were taken by the Petersburg Government in regard to my estate. It was
these steps, as I have said, that compelled me to go with my mother to
Paris.
We travelled through Neufchâtel and Besançon. Our journey began with my
forgetting my greatcoat in the posting-station yard at Berne; as I had a
warm overcoat and warm overshoes with me, I did not go back for it. All
went well till we reached the mountains, but in the mountains we were met
by knee-deep snow, eight degrees of frost, and the cursed Swiss _bise_.
The diligence could not go on, the passengers were transferred by twos
and threes into small sledges. I do not remember having ever suffered so
much from cold as on that night. My legs were simply in agony. I stuffed
them into the straw; then the post driver gave me a collar of some sort,
but that was not much help. At the third station I bought from a peasant
woman her shawl for fifteen francs, and wrapped myself in it; but by that
time we were already on the descent, and with every mile it grew warmer.
This road is magnificently fine on the French side; the vast amphitheatre
of immense mountains, so varied in outline, accompanies one up to
Besançon itself; here and there on the crags stand the ruins of fortified
feudal castles. In this landscape there is something mighty and austere,
resolute and morose; gazing at it, a peasant boy grew up and was formed,
the descendant of old country stock, Pierre Joseph Proudhon. And indeed
one may say of him, though in a different sense, what was said by the
poet of the Florentines:
‘E tiene ancor del monte e del macigno.’
Rothschild agreed to take my mother’s bond, but would not cash it in
advance, on account of Gasser’s letter. The Board of Trustees did in
fact refuse the payment. Then Rothschild instructed Gasser to demand
an interview with Nesselrode and to inquire of him what was wrong.
Nesselrode replied that though there was no doubt about the bonds and
Rothschild’s claim was valid, the Tsar had commanded that the money
should be retained on secret political grounds.
I remember the amazement in Rothschild’s office on the reception of this
reply. The eye involuntarily glanced to the bottom of the statement
for the sign of Alaric or the seal of Genghis Khan. Rothschild had not
expected such a trick even from so celebrated a master of despotic action
as Nicholas. ‘It is little matter for wonder to me,’ I said to him, ‘that
Nicholas should try to carry off my mother’s money to punish me, or to
catch me with it as a bait; but I could not have imagined that your name
would have so little weight in Russia. The bonds are yours and not my
mother’s; when she signed them she gave them to bearer (_au porteur_),
but since you endorsed them that _porteur_[68] is you; and you are
insolently answered, “The money is yours, but the master has told me not
to pay it.”’
My words produced their effect. Rothschild began to lose his temper, and
walking about the room said: ‘No, I won’t allow myself to be treated
like that; I will bring an action against the bank; I will insist upon a
definite answer from the Minister of Finance!’
‘Well,’ thought I, ‘Vrontchenko won’t understand this gentleman. A
“confidential” reply would have been a favour, but a “definite” one is
too much!’
‘Here you have a sample of how familiarly and _sans gêne_ the autocracy,
upon which the reaction is building such hopes, disposes of property.
The communism of the Cossack is almost more dangerous than that of Louis
Blanc.’
‘I will think what to do,’ said Rothschild; ‘we can’t put up with this.’
Three days after this conversation, I met Rothschild on the boulevard.
‘By the way,’ he said, stopping me, ‘I was speaking of your business
yesterday to Kisselyov.[69] You must excuse me, but I ought to tell you
that he expressed a very unfavourable opinion of you, and does not seem
willing to do anything for you.’
‘Do you often see him?’
‘Sometimes at evening parties.’
‘Be so good as to tell him that you have seen me to-day, and that I have
the worst possible opinion of him, but that at the same time I don’t
think it would be fair to rob his mother on that account.’
Rothschild laughed; I think that from that time he began to surmise that
I was not a _prince russe_, and he took to addressing me as Baron; he
elevated me to this rank, I imagine, to make me worthy of conversing with
him.
Next day he sent for me; I went at once. He handed me an unsigned letter
to Gasser, and added: ‘Here is our proposed letter; sit down and read it
attentively, then tell me whether you are satisfied with it. If you want
to add or change anything, we will do so at once. Meanwhile, allow me to
go on with my work.’
First I looked about me. Every minute a small door opened and one
Bourse agent after another came in, uttering a number in a loud
voice; Rothschild, still reading, muttered without raising his eyes:
‘Yes,—no,—good,—perhaps,—enough,—’ and the number walked out. There were
various persons in the room, capitalists of the common sort, members of
the National Assembly, two or three exhausted tourists with youthful
moustaches and elderly cheeks, those everlasting figures that are seen
drinking wine at watering-places and presenting themselves at courts,
the feeble and lymphatic scions of effete aristocratic families, who
yet presume to pass from the gaming table to the Bourse. They were all
talking together in undertones. The Jewish autocrat sat calmly at his
table, looking through papers and noting something down on them, probably
millions, or at least hundreds of thousands.
‘Well,’ he said, turning to me, ‘are you satisfied?’
‘Perfectly,’ I answered.
The letter was excellent, curt and emphatic as it should be when one
power is addressing another. He wrote to Gasser that the latter must at
once demand an audience with Nesselrode and the Minister of Finance; that
he must tell them that Rothschild is not interested to know to whom the
bonds did belong; that he has bought them and insists on payment, or a
clear legal statement of the reason why payment is deferred; that, in
case of refusal, he would put the matter before the legal authorities,
and he advised them to weigh carefully the consequences of a refusal,
which seemed particularly strange to him when the Russian Government was
negotiating through him for the conclusion of a new loan. Rothschild
wound up by saying that in case of further delay he would be impelled
to give the matter publicity through the newspapers to warn other
capitalists. He recommended Gasser to show this to Nesselrode.
* * * * *
We were interrupted.... Schomburg asked me to look in half an hour later.
When half an hour later I was mounting the staircase of the Winter Palace
of Finance in the Rue Laffitte, the rival of Nicholas was coming down it.
‘Schomburg has told me,’ said His Majesty, smiling graciously, and
holding out his own august hand, ‘the letter has been signed and sent
off. You will see how they will come round. I’ll teach them to play
tricks with me.’
I felt inclined to drop on my knees and to offer an oath of allegiance
together with my gratitude, but I confined myself to saying: ‘If you feel
perfectly certain of it, allow me to open an account, if only for half of
the sum.’
‘With pleasure,’ answered the gracious autocrat, and went his way into
the Rue Lafitte.
I made my obeisance to His Majesty, and, being so near, went into the
_Maison d’Or_.
Within a month or six weeks Nicholas Romanov, that Petersburg merchant of
the first guild, who had been so reluctant to pay up, terrified by the
prospect of a meeting of creditors and the publication in the newspapers,
did at the Imperial command of Rothschild pay up the illegally detained
money, together with the interest and the interest on the interest,
apologising for his ignorance of the law, which he certainly could not be
expected to know in his social position.
From that time forth I was on the best of terms with Rothschild. He
liked in me the field of battle on which he had beaten Nicholas; I was
for him something like Marengo or Austerlitz, and he several times
described the details of the business in my presence, smiling faintly,
but magnanimously sparing his vanquished opponent.
While this business was going on—and it occupied about six months—I was
staying at the Hôtel Mirabeau, Rue de la Paix. One morning in April I was
told that a gentleman was waiting for me in the hall and particularly
wished to see me. I went out. An abject old individual who looked like a
government clerk was standing in the hall.
‘The Commissaire of Police of the Tuileries Arrondissement So-and-so.’
‘Pleased to see you.’
‘Allow me to read you the decree of the Ministry of Home Affairs,
communicated to me by the Prefect of Police, and relating to you.’
‘Pray do so; here is a chair.’
‘We, the Prefect of Police:[70]—In accordance with paragraph seven of the
law of the 13th and 21st of November and 3rd of December of 1849, giving
the Ministry of Home Affairs the power to expel (_expulser_) from France
any foreigner whose presence in France may be subversive of order and
dangerous to public tranquillity, and in view of the ministerial circular
of the 3rd of January 1850,
‘Do command as follows:
‘The here-mentioned’ (_le N——é_, that is, _nommé_, but this does not
mean ‘aforesaid’ because nothing has been said about me before; it is
merely an ungrammatical attempt to designate a man as rudely as possible)
‘Herzen, Alexandre, age 40’ (they put me on two years), ‘a Russian
subject, living in such a place, is to leave Paris at once on receiving
this announcement, and to depart from the frontiers of France within the
shortest possible time.
‘It is forbidden for him to return in future under pain of the penalties
laid down by the eighth paragraph of the same law (imprisonment from one
to six months and a money fine).
‘All necessary measures will be taken to secure the execution of these
orders.
‘_Fait_ in Paris, April 16, 1850.
‘Prefect of Police,
‘A. CARLIER.
‘Confirmed by the general secretary of the Prefecture.
‘CLÉMENT REYRE.’
On the margin:
‘Read and approved April 19, 1850,
Minister of Home Affairs,
G. BAROCHE.
‘In the year eighteen hundred and fifty, April the twenty-fourth.
‘We, Émile Boulay, Commissaire of Police of the City of Paris and in
particular of the Tuileries Arrondissement, in execution of the orders of
M. le Prefect of Police of April 23rd:
‘Have notified the Sieur Alexandre Herzen, telling him in words as
written herewith.’ Here follows the whole text over again. It is just as
children tell the story of the White Bull, prefacing every fresh incident
with the same phrase: ‘Shall I tell you the tale of the white bull?’
Then: ‘We have summoned _le dit Herzen_ to present himself in the course
of the next twenty-four hours at the Prefecture for the reception of a
passport and the assignment of a frontier through which he will leave
France.
‘And that _le dit Sieur Herzen n’en prétende cause d’ignorance_ (what a
jargon!) _nous lui avons laissé cette copie tant du dit arrêté en tête de
cette présente de notre procès-verbal de notification_.’
Oh, my Vyatka colleagues in the secretariat of Tyufyaev; oh, Ardashov,
who would write a dozen sheets at one sitting; Veprev, Shtin, and my
drunken head clerk! Would not their hearts rejoice to know that after the
days of Voltaire, of Beaumarchais, of George Sand, and of Hugo, documents
are written like this in Paris?
And, indeed, not only they would be delighted, but also my father’s
village foreman, Vassily Epifanov, who from the deepest sentiments
of politeness would write to his master: ‘Your commandment by this
present preceding post received, and by the same I have the honour to
announce....’ This stupid and vulgar temple _des us et coutumes_, only
fitting for a blind and doting old goddess like Themis, ought surely to
be razed to the ground.
The reading of this document did not produce the result expected; a
Parisian imagines that exile from Paris is as bad as the expulsion of
Adam from Paradise, and without Eve into the bargain. To me, on the
contrary, it was a matter of indifference, since I had already begun to
be sick of Parisian life.
‘When am I to present myself before the Prefecture?’ I asked, assuming a
polite air in spite of the wrath which was filling me.
‘I advise ten o’clock to-morrow morning.’
‘With pleasure.’
‘How early the spring is beginning this year!’ observed the _commissaire_
of the city of Paris and in particular of the Tuileries arrondissement.
‘Exceedingly.’
‘This is an old-fashioned hotel. Mirabeau used to dine here; that is why
it bears his name. You have no doubt been well satisfied with it?’
‘Very well satisfied. Only fancy what it must be to leave it so abruptly!’
‘It’s certainly unpleasant.... The hostess is an intelligent and
excellent woman—Mlle. Cousin; she was a great friend of the celebrated Le
Normand.’[71]
‘Imagine that! What a pity I did not know it! Perhaps she has inherited
her art of fortune-telling and might have predicted my _billet doux_ from
Carlier.’
‘Ha, ha!... It is my duty, you know. Allow me to wish you good-day.’
‘To be sure, anything may happen. I have the honour to wish you good-bye.’
Next day I presented myself in the Rue Jérusalem, more celebrated than
Le Normand herself. First, I was received by some sort of a youthful
spy, with a little beard, a little moustache, and all the manners of an
abortive journalist and an unsuccessful democrat. His face, the look in
his eyes, all wore the stamp of that refined corruption of soul, that
envious hunger for enjoyment, power, acquisition, which I have learned
to read so well on Western European faces, though it is completely
absent from that of the English. He had probably only recently received
his post; he still took pleasure in it, and therefore spoke a little
condescendingly. He informed me that I must leave within three days, and
except for particularly important reasons it was impossible to defer the
date. His impudent face, his accent and his gestures, were such that
without entering into further discussion with him I bowed and then asked,
first putting on my hat, when I could see the Prefect.
‘The Prefect only receives persons who have asked him for an audience in
writing.’
‘Allow me to write to him at once.’
He rang the bell; an old _huissier_ with a chain on his breast walked in;
saying to him with a dignified air, ‘Pen and paper for this gentleman,’
the youth nodded to me.
The _huissier_ led me into another room. There I wrote to Carlier that
I wished to see him in order to explain to him why I had to defer my
departure.
On the evening of the same day I received from the Prefecture the laconic
answer: ‘M. le Préfet is ready to receive So-and-so to-morrow at two
o’clock.’
The same disgusting youth met me next day: he had his own room, from
which I concluded that he was something in the nature of a head clerk.
Beginning his career so early and with such success, he will go far, if
God grants him long life.
On this occasion he led me into a big office. There a stout, tall,
rosy-cheeked gentleman was sitting in a big easy-chair at an immense
table. He was one of those persons who are always hot, with sleek, white,
but flabby flesh, with fat but carefully groomed hands, with a necktie
reduced to a minimum, with colourless eyes, with that jovial expression
which is usually found in men who are completely drowned in love for
their comfort, and who can rise coldly and without great effort to the
utmost infamies.
‘You wish to see the Prefect,’ he said to me; ‘but he asks you to excuse
him; he has been obliged to go out on very important business. If I can
do anything for your benefit I ask nothing better. Here is an easy-chair:
will you sit down?’
All this he brought out smoothly, very politely, screwing up his eyes a
little and smiling with the little cushions of flesh which adorned his
cheek-bones. ‘Well, this fellow has been for years in the service,’ I
thought.
‘You probably know what I’ve come about.’ He made that gentle movement of
the head which every one makes on beginning to swim, and did not answer.
‘I have received an order to leave within three days. As I know that your
minister has the right of expulsion without giving reasons or making
investigations, I am not going to inquire why I am being expelled, nor to
defend myself; but I have, besides my own house....’
‘Where is your house?’
‘Fourteen, Rue Amsterdam ... very important business in Paris, and it is
difficult for me to leave at once.’
‘Allow me to ask, what is your business? Is it to do with the house
or...?’
‘My business is with Rothschild. I have to receive four hundred thousand
francs.’
‘What?’
‘A little over a hundred thousand silver roubles.’
‘That’s a very large sum!’
‘_C’est une somme ronde._’
‘How much time do you need for completing your business?’ he asked,
looking at me more tenderly, as people look at pheasants stuffed with
truffles in the shop windows.
‘From a month to six weeks.’
‘That is a terribly long time.’
‘My business is being settled in Russia. I should not wonder if it is on
that account I am leaving France, indeed.’
‘How so?’
‘A week ago Rothschild told me that Kisselyov spoke ill of me. Probably
the Petersburg Government wishes to hush up the business; I dare say the
ambassador has asked for my expulsion as a favour.’
‘_D’abord_,’ observed the offended patriot of the Prefecture, assuming
an air of dignity and profound conviction, ‘France permits no other
Government to interfere in her domestic affairs. I am surprised that
such an idea could enter your head. Moreover, what can be more natural
than that the Government, which is doing its utmost to restore order to
the suffering people, should exercise its right to expel from the country
in which there is so much inflammatory material, foreigners who abuse the
hospitality she has shown them?’
I determined to get at him by money. This was as sure a method of attack
as the use of texts from the Gospel in discussion with a Catholic, and so
I answered with a smile: ‘I have paid a hundred thousand francs for the
hospitality of Paris, and so consider I have almost settled my account.’
This was even more successful than my _somme ronde_. He was embarrassed,
and saying after a brief pause, ‘We cannot help it, we are obliged to
do our duty,’ he took from the table my _dossier_. This was the second
volume of the novel, the first part of which I had once seen in the hands
of Dubbelt. Stroking the pages, as though they were good horses, with his
plump hand: ‘You see,’ he observed, ‘your connections, your association
with seditious journals’ (almost word for word what Sahtynsky had said to
me in 1840), ‘and the considerable subventions which you have given to
the most pernicious enterprises, have compelled us to resort to a very
unpleasant but necessary step. That step can be no surprise to you. Even
in your own country you brought political punishment upon yourself. Like
causes lead to like results.’
‘I am certain,’ I said, ‘that the Emperor Nicholas himself does not
suspect this solidarity; you cannot really approve of his Government.’
‘_Un bon citoyen_ respects the laws of his country, whatever they may
be....’[72]
‘Probably on the celebrated principle that it is in any case better
there should be bad weather than no weather at all.’
‘To prove to you that the Russian Government has absolutely nothing to
do with it, I promise to obtain from the Prefect a postponement for one
month. You will certainly not think it strange if we make inquiries of
Rothschild concerning your business; it is not so much a question of
doubting....’
‘Do by all means make inquiries. We are at war, and if it had been of
any use for me to have resorted to stratagem in order to remain, do you
suppose I should not have employed it?’
But the worldly and amiable _alter ego_ of the Prefect would not be
outdone.
‘People who talk like that never say what is untrue,’ he replied.
A month later my business was still unfinished. We were visited by an old
doctor, Palmier, whose agreeable duty it is to make a weekly examination
of an interesting class of Parisian women at the Prefecture. Since he
gave such a number of certificates of health to the fair sex, I imagined
he would not refuse to give me a certificate of illness. Palmier was
acquainted, of course, with every one in the Prefecture: he promised
me to give X. personally the history of my indisposition. To my great
surprise Palmier came back without a satisfactory answer. This incident
is worth noting because it shows a brotherly resemblance between the
Russian and the French bureaucracies. X. had given no answer, but had
replied evasively, offended at my not having come in person to inform him
that I was ill, in bed, and could not get up. There was no help for it: I
went next day to the Prefecture, glowing with health.
X. asked me with the greatest sympathy about my illness. As I had not
had the curiosity to read what the doctor had written, I had to invent
an illness. Luckily I remembered Sazonov, who, with his bulky figure
and inexhaustible appetite, complained of aneurism—I told X. I had heart
disease and that travelling might be very bad for me.
X. was sorry for me, and advised me to be very careful; then he went
into the next room, and returned a minute later, saying: ‘You may remain
another month. The Prefect has commissioned me at the same time to tell
you that he hopes and desires that your health may be restored during
that period; if this were not the case, he would greatly regret it, for
he will not be able to postpone your departure a third time.’
I understood that, and made ready to leave Paris about the 20th of June.
I came across the name of X. once more a year later. This patriot and
_bon citoyen_ quietly withdrew from France, forgetting to account for
some thousands of francs belonging to people of the poor or lower-middle
class who had taken tickets in a Californian lottery run under the
patronage of the Prefecture!
When the worthy citizen saw that in spite of all his respect for the
laws of his country he might get into the galleys for swindling, then he
preferred to take a steamer to Genoa. He was a consistent person, who did
not lose his head with failure. He took advantage of the notoriety he
gained by the scandal of the Californian lottery to proffer his services
to a society of speculators which had been formed at that time at Turin
for building railways; the society hastened to accept the services of so
reliable a gentleman.
The last two months I spent in Paris were insufferable. I was literally
_gardé à vue_; my letters arrived a day late and insolently unsealed;
wherever I went I was followed in the distance by a loathsome individual,
who at the corners passed me on with a wink to another.
It must not be forgotten that this was the time of the most feverish
activity of the police. The stupid conservatives and revolutionists of
the Algiers-Lamartine persuasion helped the rogues and knaves surrounding
Napoleon himself to prepare a network of espionage and supervision, so
that, stretching them over the whole of France, they might at any given
minute catch by telegraph, by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the
Élysée, all the active forces of the country and strangle them. Napoleon
III. cleverly turned the weapon entrusted to him against these men
themselves. The 2nd of December meant the promotion of the police to the
position of the executive power.
There has never anywhere, even in Austria or in Russia, been such a
political police as existed in France from the time of the Convention.
There are many causes for this, apart from the peculiar _national_
propensity for police activity. Except in England, where the police have
nothing in common with Continental espionage, the police are everywhere
surrounded by hostile elements and consequently thrown on their own
resources. In France, on the contrary, the police is the most popular
institution. Whatever government seizes power, its police is _ready_;
a part of the people will help it with a zest and a fanaticism which
have to be restrained and not intensified, and will help, too, with
all those terrible means at the disposal of private persons which are
impossible for the police. Where can a man hide from his shopkeeper, his
house-porter, his tailor, his washerwoman, his butcher, his sister’s
husband, his brother’s wife, especially in Paris, where people do not
live in separate houses as they do in London, but in something like coral
reefs or hives with a common staircase, a common courtyard, and a common
porter.
Condorcet escapes from the Jacobin police and successfully makes his way
to some village near the frontier; tired and harassed, he goes into a
little inn, sits down before the fire, warms his hands, and asks for
a piece of chicken. The good-natured old woman who keeps the inn, and
who is a great patriot, reasons like this: ‘He is covered with dust, so
he must have come a _long way_; he asks for chicken, so he must have
_money_; his hands are white, so he must be an _aristocrat_.’ Leaving
the chicken on the stove, she goes to the next inn; there patriots are
sitting—a Mucius Scaevola, the innkeeper—some _citoyen_, a Brutus—a
Timoleon, the tailor. They ask for nothing better, and ten minutes later
one of the wisest leaders of the French Revolution is in prison and
handed over to one of the police of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality!
Napoleon, who had the police talent highly developed, turned his
generals into spies and informers. The butcher of Lyons, Fouché, founded
a complete theory, system, science of espionage—through the prefects,
behind the prefects, through prostitutes and virtuous shopkeepers,
through servants and coachmen, through doctors and barbers. Napoleon
fell, but his tool remained, and not only his tool but the man who
wielded it. Fouché passed over to the Bourbons; the strength of the spies
lost nothing—on the contrary, they were reinforced by monks and priests.
Under Louis-Philippe, in whose reign bribery and corruption became one
of the moral forces of government, half the petty-bourgeois became his
spies, his police chorus, a result to which service in the National
Guard—in itself a police duty—greatly contributed.
During the February republic three or four branches of genuinely secret
police and several of professedly secret ones were formed. There was
the police of Ledru-Rollin and the police of Caussidière, there was the
police of Marrast and the police of the provisional government, there was
the police of order and the police of disorder, the police of Napoleon
and the police of the Duc d’Orléans. All were on the look-out, all were
watching each other and reporting on each other; assuming that these
secret reports were made with conviction, with the best of motives, for
no money gain, yet they were still secret reports.... This fatal habit,
meeting on the one hand with mournful failures, and on the other morbid,
unbridled lust of gold or pleasure, corrupted a whole generation.
We must not forget, too, the moral indifference, the instability of
opinion, which was left like a sediment by successive revolutions and
restorations. Men had grown used to regarding as heroism and virtue
on one day what would on the morrow be a crime punished with penal
servitude; the laurel wreath and the brand of the convict alternated
several times on the same head. By the time they had become accustomed to
this a nation of spies was created.
All the latest discoveries of secret societies and plots, all the latest
denunciations of refugees were made by false members of societies, bribed
friends, men who had won confidence with the object of treachery.
There were examples on all hands of cowards who, through fear of prison
and exile, revealed secrets and ruined their friends—as a faint-hearted
comrade ruined Konarski. But neither among us nor in Austria was there a
legion of young men, cultured, speaking _our_ language, making inspired
speeches in clubs, writing revolutionary articles and serving as spies.
Moreover, the government of Napoleon was excellently placed for making
use of informers of all parties. It represents the revolution and the
reaction, war and peace, the year 1789 and Catholicism, the fall of the
Bourbons and the 4½ per cents. It is served both by Falloux the Jesuit,
and Billault the socialist, and La Rochejacquelein the legitimist, and
the mass of the people to whom Louis-Philippe had been a benefactor. The
refuse of all parties and shades of opinion naturally flows together and
ferments in the Palace of the Tuileries.