THE COMMUNISTS.
At this moment the private door opened, and three men entered the
editorial sanctum.
Marrast quickly turned, and his friend was silent.
"Ha! Albert, Flocon, Rollin!" he cried. "Welcome, welcome! Our friend,
Louis Blanc, was just about wasting on me a sermon upon patience, but
now he'll have an audience worthy of the subject. Be seated and listen!"
"Patience!" exclaimed Flocon. "Well, I'm sure we need it."
"That we do, in our present low estate," echoed Rollin.
Albert said nothing, but smiled with sarcastic significance.
When the salutations were over and the party, all but Marrast, who
restlessly paced the room, were seated, Louis Blanc looked around on his
friends with a sad smile, and continued:
"Marrast is right, Messieurs. I was, indeed, preaching patience. I was
endeavoring to soothe his irritation and chide his depression with a
sermon; since we are all old friends and fellow-sufferers in the good
cause and have a common interest in knowing the reasons of failure and
the means of triumph, I will by your leave proceed."
"Aye, dear Louis, go on!" cried Marrast, kindly. "But you are the most
youthful sage I ever listened to."
"Yes, Louis, proceed; you look like a cure," said Rollin, laughing.
"I subscribe to Louis Blanc's creed, be it what it may," added Flocon,
briskly.
"And so do I," said Albert, gravely, in a deep tone.
Of the new visitors, Ledru Rollin was a man of medium stature, about
thirty-five years of age and dressed in the extreme of the mode. His
complexion and hair were light, his eyes large, blue and protruding, his
mouth prominent, and his full cheeks covered with whiskers, which like
those of Marrast, were closely trimmed and met beneath his chin. His
head and shoulders were thrown back, and his air was bold and
independent. He was a lawyer of talent, who had gained celebrity as
advocate of the accused on many occasions of State prosecutions.
Flocon was an older man than Rollin, and his countenance bore the wary,
vigilant and suspicious look which experience alone gives. He was low in
stature, thick-set and close-knit in figure; his eyes seemed always half
closed; his brow was broad and massive; his face was long; a moustache
was on his lip, and his hair was closely cut. The outline of his head
and the expression of his face seemed those rather of one born on the
banks of the Rhine than on the banks of the Seine, so calm and
passionless did they appear. His dress was plain but neat. Flocon was
the chief editor of "La Reforme," the name of which indicates its
character. It was this man who, in February, 1833, repressed the
violence of his partisans and saved the office of the "Gazette de
France," yet the very next day published his celebrated letter to the
Legitimists, which, for audacity, force and pungency was only equaled by
the paralyzing effect it produced. The fines, imprisonments and civil
incapacities to which this man had been subjected for assaults upon a
government he deemed corrupt, for the ten years preceding, had been
literally numberless.
Albert was a man of fifty or more, with a large head, square German face
and forehead, a large hazel eye, fixed and unexcitable, hair closely
cut, and beard upon his chin and lip. His dress was a long iron-gray
frock coat, buttoned closely to his chin. His face was rather thin, and
his complexion bronzed. His name had for years been identified with
reform; and though a manufacturer himself, of the class of workmen,
being proprietor and chief engineer of a large machine factory at Lyons,
he had established and sustained in that city a paper to advocate his
principles, named "La Glaneuse," the prosecution of which by the
Government for libel and the fining and imprisonment of its editor
formed an originating cause of the revolt in Lyons of April, 1834. For
the part played by this man in the revolt thus arising, he was sentenced
to transportation, a penalty afterwards commuted to fine and
imprisonment. He was a man of few words, remarkably few, but of deep
thought and prompt action, and, in moments of crisis and emergency, a
man of unshaken and inflexible nerve. To the casual observer, he seemed
only a silent man, or a sullen one, astute or stolid; in times of peril
he was a man of iron, but a man of action and passion, too, moving with
resistless might. To rouse his powers, mental or physical, demanded,
indeed, circumstances of unusual import, but once roused they were
irresistible.
Such were the personages now assembled in the office of "Le National;"
and, of those five men, all were connected with the press, directly, as
editor or proprietor, save only Ledru Rollin, and he was a writer for
"La Reforme," as well as an advocate.
The name of Louis Blanc's paper was, as has been said, "Le Bon Sens."
But to return to the narrative.
"And you really wish a sermon from me, old comrades, with patience as
the text?"
"Aye--aye--aye!" exclaimed all.
"Suppose I add to it this line I find on the paper before me on the
table, that our good Marrast had just written as the text for a
paragraph which would probably have cost him another fine and
imprisonment, had the paragraph been completed and published?"
"Read! read!" cried Rollin.
"With your permission, Armand?"
"Certainly," replied the editor, still continuing his promenade.
"'Again the House of Orleans triumphs!'" read Louis Blanc, aloud.
"And is it not true--the accursed tyrants?" vociferated Rollin.
"Aye, true!" was the mild answer; "alas, too true! That perfidious House
does triumph, and for that very reason the fact should never be
acknowledged by its opponents."
Rollin shook his head, and, throwing himself back in his capacious
chair, folded his arms, sunk his chin upon his breast and closed his
eyes.
Marrast continued his walk.
Flocon remained silent and thoughtful.
Albert gave a significant smile.
"Oppose ceaselessly, but quietly, every act of despotism this Bourgeois
Government may attempt; but, be the result what it may, never admit
yourselves discouraged, depressed, dismayed, defeated. From every fall
rise like Antaeus, with renewed vigor. Nor is it wise or prudent in
those engaged in a great and glorious cause to provoke danger, to brave
penalty, when nothing of good to that cause can reasonably be expected.
Prudence, policy, patience and perseverance accomplish more than
rashness, yet are not inconsistent with intrepidity, boldness,
patriotism and philanthropy the most exalted. Comrades, what says the
past, the past ten years, in whose events we have all so intimately
mingled? Shall I tell you?"
"Aye! 'L'Histoire de Dix Ans,'" said Flocon.
"We are all sure of being immortal there, in that same book of yours!
Eh! Louis?" cried Rollin, opening his large blue eyes.
Louis Blanc smiled and continued:
"Shall I convince you, comrades, by the history of the past ten years,
the scenes we have all witnessed, the events we have all deplored, the
defeats we have all sustained, the insulting ovations we have all been
forced to behold and the unceasing triumphs and tyranny of the House of
Orleans that, had patience and prudence been our motto, these defeats
and triumphs would never have been witnessed, because these premature
revolts would never have been made?"
Albert bowed and gave his peculiar smile.
"Our friend Albert smiles, and well he may. He has had a sad experience
in this error of premature outbreaks. In April, 1834, he exerted every
energy to restrain the revolt in Lyons, as chief of the Societe des
Droits de l'Homme, and as the undoubted friend of the operatives. But
his efforts were futile. Exasperated, urged on by less experienced
leaders, they were in full tide of revolution, and could no more be
restrained in their unwise rising than could the mountain cataract in
mad career be dammed. The result was, of course, defeat--most disastrous
defeat. Hundreds of the people perished, and our friend was imprisoned
and fined for taking part in a movement, which he had in vain attempted
to quell, and then, with the certainty of defeat, had joined, rather
than desert the people who trusted and relied on him."
"A noble act!" cried Marrast, as he paced the room.
Albert quietly smiled, but otherwise his countenance remained unmoved.
"And was it not a most noble and a most wise act," continued the author
of "The Ten Years," "when our friend Flocon, by an energetic and
eloquent harangue, restrained the indignant people from razing to the
ground the office of the 'Gazette de France,' the organ of the Duchess
of Berri, and his bitter foe? Terribly would that rash act have recoiled
on us, and yet, at the same time, with this most patriotic and prudent
deed before us, a wilder measure than even that was adopted, and it was
quelled only by force. You all remember the events. In February, '33,
Eugene Brifault, in his 'Corsair,' alluded jestingly to the mysterious
pregnancy of the mother of Henry V., Duke of Bordeaux, as did every one,
she then being imprisoned at Baye because of her prior conspiracy to
place her son on the throne, and her secret marriage in Italy being
unrevealed. The Legitimists of 'Le Revenant' challenged; the allusion
was repeated, and a second trial and a death ensued. 'Le National' and
'La Tribune,' regarding these repeated challenges as a menace to the
Republicans, hurled defiance at the Legitimists, and demanded twelve
distinct rencontres in behalf of as many names of our friends posted at
their offices, among which those of Armand Carrel, Godefroi Cavaignac
and Armand Marrast were conspicuous. The challenge is accepted--the
names of twelve Legitimists are furnished--Armand Carrel selects Roux
Laborie--they fight, and Carrel is dangerously wounded--the police then
interfere--the affair ends with Flocon's terrific and audacious defiance
flung down at the whole Legitimist and Orleans parties in the columns of
'La Reforme.' Now, what to Republicans were the quarrels of Legitimists
and Orleanists? If we were to be ruled by a king, what cared we whether
that king were Henry V. or Louis Philippe? How would the sacrifice of
Carrel, Marrast, Cavaignac, or of any of those twelve brave men have
been repaid, or made up? And afterwards, alas! in July of '36, when
Armand Carrel, causelessly assuming a quarrel not his own, because of a
fancied attempt to degrade the press, by rendering its issues
accessible, by cheapness, to the masses, was slain in the Bois de
Vincennes by the vulgar bullet of Emile de Girardin, of 'La Presse.'
What reparation to our cause was it that our champion had died like a
hero, and Chateaubriand, Arago, Cormenin and Beranger wept around his
grave? Alas! that inestimable life belonged to his country and his race,
and not to himself, to fling away in an obscure quarrel."
"But we are not all of us Armand Carrels," said Rollin.
"And yet, to the great cause of human liberty, and the amelioration of
man's condition, to which each of us stands sworn, are pledged our
lives. To hazard that cause, by the sacrifice of those lives, or by
rashly and unwisely attempting its advancement, makes us violators of
our vows, quite as much in reality as if we had become traitors."
"But the instances you cite are those only of individual rashness,
Louis, and not of the people, or of their leaders acting in concert,"
remarked Marrast.
"True, concert of action has been chiefly needed, but I have only to
recall the dates and places of our repeated attempts and defeats, for
the past ten years, to convince you all that those attempts were
premature, and had they not been so, they might have been
successful--that they have frittered away energies which, properly
concentrated and directed, might have achieved a revolution; and that
while they have betrayed our designs and depressed our friends, have
enabled our foes insultingly to triumph and caused them to be on the
constant qui vive to anticipate our movements. What but premature and
undigested uprisings were the conspiracy of the bell-tower of Notre
Dame, in January of '32, when 'Le National' was seized--or the
disturbances in La Vendee--or those in Grenoble--or those in
Marseilles--or those in the Rue des Prouvaires--or those in April,
during the cholera, when Casimir Perier died--or those of the 5th and
6th of June, on the occasion of General Lamarque's funeral, on pretence
of avenging upon the Government the affront offered during the
obsequies of Casimir Perier, the victim-Premier of the cholera? For the
part taken by 'La Tribune,' then conducted by Marrast, in this revolt,
its press was seized and sealed. The same was the fate of 'La
Quotidienne,' and the same would have been the fate of 'Le National,'
but for its barricades. Well do I remember the meeting of our friends in
this very apartment on the night after General Lamarque's funeral. The
great shade of the venerable warrior seemed among us, repeating for our
counsel and imitation his last impressive words, 'I die but the cause
lives!' But, alas! we observed it not. Doubt, dissension, dismay and
despair were in our midst. All was dark--all was defiance and
denunciation, crimination and recrimination--brother's hand raised
against brother. Armand Carrel that night sat in this chair, but he was
not the man to command his own will or opinions; how could he then bring
to obedience and concert the conflicting impulses of others? Armand
Carrel was a wonderful man. His motto, like that of Danton, was this:
'Audacity, audacity, always audacity!' Yet with all the audacity of
Danton, he had little of his firmness. An officer under the Restoration,
a conspirator at Bifort, in arms in Spain against the white flag, three
times a prisoner before a council of war--in 1830 he was with Thiers,
the founder of this journal; but everywhere he carried the exactitude of
the camp; even in dress, manner and bearing he was a soldier--lofty,
haughty, seemingly overbearing, yet, at heart, noble and generous, and
to his friends accessible in the extreme. To his military notions,
nothing could be accomplished without soldiers, and for the people to
carry a revolution against soldiers seemed to him absurd."
"Armand Carrel would have been, nevertheless, a good revolutionist,
Louis," said Marrast; "but he was a bad conspirator. He had no faith in
the people, no confidence in the efforts of undisciplined and unarmed
masses."
"And therein," said Rollin, "he greatly erred."
"Although we can as yet boast of having accomplished but very little by
them, Ledru," added Flocon, with a meaning smile. "The masses are easily
roused, but they don't stay roused, and then they often get
unmanageable, even by those by whose summons they were stirred up. They
fight well, but, somehow or other, they always get beaten; they succumb
at last, and bow their necks to the yoke lower than ever."
"It is not the people," said Louis Blanc, "it is we the leaders, who are
to be blamed. We rouse them before we are ready for them--before we have
prepared them or anything else for a result; and then it is not strange
that they only rush bravely on to death and defeat. We seize on the
occasion of a funeral for an outbreak without organization, and the
cuirassiers of the military escort trample our ranks beneath their
horses' hoofs. But for unusual efforts, such would have been the case at
the funeral of Dulong, the Deputy who fell in a duel with General
Bugeaud, in January of '34."
"What were the circumstances?" asked Rollin.
"Armand recollects them better than I," replied Louis Blanc.
"The circumstances were these, as I remember them," said Marrast.
"General Bugeaud remarked in the course of a speech in the Chamber that
'obedience is always a soldier's duty.' 'What if the order be to become
a turnkey?' asked Dulong, in allusion to the General's position in
relation to the Duchess of Berri, during her pregnancy and confinement
at Baye. Armand Carrel endeavored to pacificate, but the effort failed.
They met in the Bois de Boulogne at ten o' clock in the morning; the
weapons were pistols; the distance forty paces. Bugeaud fired almost as
soon as he turned, advancing only a few steps; his ball entered above
Dulong's right eye, and at six o'clock that evening he was dead."
"There was a splendid ball at the Tuileries that night, was there not?"
asked Flocon.
"There was, and this, with other things, excited in the masses the idea
that their champion was the victim of a Royalist conspiracy, which all
the influence of Armand Carrel and Dulong's uncle, Dupont de l'Eure was
hardly sufficient to suppress. But Dupont immediately resigned his seat
in the Chamber. He would sit no longer in a body one man of which he
deemed the murderer of a beloved nephew. The obsequies were grand.
Armand Carrel pronounced the eulogy, and two hundred and thirty-four
deputies wet the grave with their tears. The people were greatly
excited, and, as has been said, were with great difficulty restrained
by Carrel and Dupont. Had they been suffered to revolt, the only result
which could have followed would have been a terrific outpouring of their
blood, furnishing another instance, I suppose, of the evil of
impatience; is it not so, Louis?"
"Undoubtedly," was the reply; "and only two months after that other
instance actually occurred, for our warning, in the revolt at Lyons,
with which we are all familiar, and in which we were all actors, most of
us to our sorrow. This was in April. Albert's journal, 'La Glaneuse,'
had been seized for libel on the Government, and the editor fined and
imprisoned. Next a reform banquet of the operatives was forbidden,
although but a year before Garnier Pages had been suffered to banquet
the Lyonnese to the number of two thousand, and although at no period
had so many gorgeous festivities and public balls been given by the rich
Royalists, as if in premeditated scorn of the banquet prohibited to the
poor Republicans. The result was so prompt as to seem inevitable; there
was a strike of the operatives, an insurrection of the people. Albert
was sent to Paris as an envoy, to find a man to lead the revolt. MM.
Cabet and Pages were deemed too moderate. Cavaignac would go only with
Cabet. Lafayette was too feeble, but gave his name and letters. Carrel
and Marrast were not members of the Societe des Droits de l'Homme, and
Albert had been cautioned that Carrel was too moderate. Thiers had
denounced 'La Tribune,' and Marrast's friends were hiding him from the
police. In despair concerning his mission, the envoy was about returning
home, when he was sent for to Armand Carrel's house, and Carrel offered
to go to Lyons and lead the revolt, provided Godefroi Cavaignac would
accompany him. Now these friends had long been at feud, but all private
grievances were forgotten in this crisis of the cause, and Albert is
just about preceding them in the post-chaise, to announce their coming,
when, lo! the telegraph says, 'Order reigns in Lyons!' Here, then, after
a terrific slaughter, was recorded another fruitless revolt, because a
premature one. Nay, it was infinitely worse than fruitless. Not only did
the Republicans utterly fail in their attempts, not only were they
cruelly crushed by the Royal mercenaries, but they were openly derided
in their defeat, and the cause was gloomier than ever. The slaughter of
women and children in the streets of Lyons, and on their own
hearthstones, in the course of this insurrection, was hideous, and is
graphically portrayed in the memorial of our friend Ledru Rollin, as
advocate in the matter. But, as if all this were not enough for our
persecuted cause, the decease of the great and good Lafayette, the idol
of freemen all the world over, took place in the following May. Alas!
his sun went down in clouds. His end was dark. Bitter maledictions
quivered on his dying lips. He had lived to mourn that July day, only
three years before, when, on the steps of the Hotel de Ville, he had,
with his own hands, been called to invest a cold-blooded, perfidious,
selfish, and most ungrateful tyrant with Royal robes. Alas! there was
order in Lyons--Lafayette was in his grave--peace reigned in Paris--the
House of Orleans triumphed!"
"Those were dark days," said Marrast, sadly.
"They were, dear Armand, dark, indeed, for you and your friends, for
your journal had been suppressed, and you were an inmate, with
Cavaignac, of Sainte-Pelagie."
"Whence you both, bravely and boldly effected your escape more than a
year afterwards and fled to England, to the most glorious discomfiture
of the knaves who put you there!" cried Rollin. "Vive la Republique!
yet, Messieurs! We've all seen dark days, and the present is none of the
brightest; and we've all come together at these old headquarters of
liberty just to be unhappy together, just to help each other be
miserable, which, in fact, is vastly happier unhappiness than being
miserable alone. At all events, that's what I want. But it can't always
be right. I predict a revolution before another ten years shall have
rolled round, which shall make immortals of us all--that revolution for
which we have been waiting, watching, toiling and writing, lo! now these
thirteen years and upward, for the which waiting, watching, toiling and
writing we have some of us been fined, who had money enough to pay a
fine, and others imprisoned and hunted about and persecuted. Why,
there's Albert and Flocon haven't been able to get a franc cleverly warm
in their pockets these ten years, before forth it was drawn in the form
of a fine; while as for Marrast, he has the perfect air and bearing of a
bandit, so often has he seen the inside of a dungeon; and our friend
Albert isn't much better looking. As for Louis and myself, why, we never
knew what it was to have a franc get warm in our pockets, so we escaped
having any drawn forth by Ministers, and they have never thought us
worth prosecuting or imprisoning. But they may change their minds when
Louis' book, that is to make us all immortal, comes out. Eh, Louis?"
Louis Blanc smiled, but made no answer.
"Well, it is only meet, I suppose, that I should receive my share of the
blows," said Marrast. "I'm sure I'm not very delicate or very
ceremonious in bestowing them. Besides, every one of my predecessors has
endured the same--Carrel, Thomas, Bastide; while poor Rouen, the
proprietor, would have been ruined, indeed, a dozen times with fines,
but for his enormous profits. Why, this old office has been a perfect
butt for Ministers to fire at--it has received a dozen fusillades, at
least; but it stands yet, and, strange as may have been the scenes it
has witnessed, it will witness yet other and stranger ones, and we shall
all be witnesses thereof, and actors in them, too, or greatly do I err."
"So be it, with all our hearts!" was the general shout.
"Apropos of State prosecutions against 'Le National,'" said Louis Blanc,
"that was a most exciting time when Rouen was brought by Thiers before
the Court of Peers, for a libel on that most august and erudite body."
"Aye! and a most, liberal, honest and honorable conclave--the
thrice-sodden and most solemn knaves and mules!" cried Rollin.
"Rouen at the bar demanded Armand Carrel for his defence," continued
Louis Blanc. "To refuse was impossible, but a bitter pill must it have
been to Thiers and Mignet to consent. They must have foreseen what came.
Both, now in the Ministry, only four years before both had been in 'Le
National'--Thiers as the colleague of Carrel, and Mignet as a
collaborateur. The files of the journal were produced, and, lo! there
stood paragraphs proven to have emanated from the pens of the
prosecutors far more libelous and venomous on the august peers than
anything Rouen had published. You all remember the scene that ensued and
won't forget it soon."
"No; nor shall we soon forget that noble passage in Armand Carrel's
defence," said Flocon, "in which he evoked the shade of Marshal Ney, and
from the wild excitement that followed, one would suppose that it had
really risen in the hall, bleeding and ghastly, and pointing to its
wounds, like the ghost of Banquo, to blast his hoary, jeweled and noble
assassin, who, seated on those very seats, had sentenced him to an
infamous doom. Carrel was instantly stopped, but General Excelmens rose
in his seat and pronounced the charge true. It was then reiterated with
tremendous applause from the galleries. How Carrel escaped punishment
for contempt is not known. Rouen was convicted of libel on the peers, of
course; his sentence was a fine of ten thousand francs and imprisonment
for two years."
"But of what words did this famous libel actually consist?" asked Ledru
Rollin.
"Louis can tell you better than I," said Flocon.
"Why, the words were severe enough, no doubt," replied Louis Blanc, "but
Thiers and Mignet had themselves expressed the same ideas a hundred
times, though in less powerful and pointed language. The passage which
seems particularly to have given offence was this, that in the eyes of
eternal justice and those of posterity, as well as in the testimony of
their own consciences, these renegades from the Revolution, these
returned emigrants, these men of Ghent, these military and civil
parvenus, these old Senators and spoiled Marshals of Bonaparte, these
Procureur Generals, these new-made nobles of the Restoration, these
three or four generations of Ministers sunk in public hatred and
contempt, and stained with blood--all these, seasoned with a few
notabilities, thrown in by the Royalty of the 7th of August, on
condition they should never open their lips save to approve their
master's commands--all this farrago of servilities was not competent to
pronounce on the culpability of men seeking to enforce the results of
the Revolution of July!"
"It was not until the commencement of 1835, I think," said Marrast,
"that Ministers opened a general onslaught upon the Parisian press. 'Le
Republicain' was interdicted that year. It was then, too, that the laws
against public criers and newspaper hawkers were instituted. As far back
as '33, however, Rodde had braved all such prohibitions by selling and
with impunity, too, his own paper in the streets. In May of '35 came on
the general prosecution of the press. Rollin was advocate in the
defence. There were warm words between Armand Carrel and his friend
Dupont, the lawyer, and there was at one time apprehension of a duel."
"The position of Armand Carrel with Thiers, his former colleague, was,
at that time, a singular one," remarked Rollin. "Each seemed to be on
the constant search for opportunities to exasperate the other. The
editor assailed the Minister in his columns, and the Minister retaliated
by an arrest. Carrel censured and ridiculed Thiers, though he respected
his abilities, and Thiers feared and hated Carrel, though he admired his
talents."
"It was about this time that Fieschi exploded his infernal machine at
the King, was it not?" asked Flocon. "Thiers arrested Carrel then, I
know."
"It was on the 28th of July of '35, at ten in the morning, on the
Boulevard du Temple. This was the second attempt on the King's life, the
first having been that of Bergeron, in November of '33. Carrel was
arrested as an accomplice, it was pretended, for every one of these
attempts has been attributed to the whole body of the Republicans,
while they were utterly ignorant of them until they took place, and then
bitterly denounced them. But the Government has made capital out of all
these insane attempts, and against the opposition, too."
"I've heard it asserted," said Rollin, "that the Government got up some
of those little exhibitions of fireworks for that very purpose. They are
quite harmless, so far as the old man is concerned--wonderfully so--and
Fieschi was made a perfect fool of, so ridiculously lionized was he by
King, Court and Ministers. Our friend Marie was advocate for that
wretched old man, Pepin, Fieschi's accomplice, more a ghost than a
living creature."
"You are entirely right, friend Rollin," said Louis Blanc, "in the idea
that every one of these attempts strengthens the Government and recoils
on the opposition. No one should so vigilantly and vigorously watch for
and suppress such attempts as we. Heaven defend the old despot from the
assassin's weapon, as it seems well inclined to do, or the deed will
surely be attributed to us. Every unsuccessful attempt at assassination
is viewed like an unsuccessful attempt at revolt on the part of the
opposition, and injures our cause accordingly. Better never to attempt
than never to succeed."
"Do you think it true, Louis, as was reported," asked Marrast, "that as
soon as the smoke of Fieschi's explosion swept off, and the old man
found himself standing unharmed amid a heap of slain and mangled,
Marshal Mortier and Colonel Rieussec being among the killed, his first
exclamation was this, with, ill-concealed gratification, 'Now I shall
get my appanages and the dotations for the boys.'"
"Nothing is more probable," said Louis Blanc. "That old man has but one
impulse--selfishness, and but one attachment--to his family--his family,
because it is his. His purse and family have for years been his sole
objects of love. To aggrandize his own has been for years his sole end
and aim. He parcels out the thrones and kingdoms of Europe among his
children as if it were but a family estate."
"What thoughtful selfishness!" exclaimed Flocon; "and at a moment, too,
when he had but just escaped an awful death, and all around him flowed
the blood and lay scattered the lacerated limbs of his faithful
servants, either dead or dying with groans and shrieks of most agonizing
torture, and all because of himself; how disgraceful that, at such a
terrible moment, his first thought should have been of the few more
francs his trembling hand was striving to tear from a people by whom he
had already been made the richest man in Europe, and which the
occurrence of this dreadful event might serve to win for him."
"Well," said Rollin, "whether this event aided to win the appanages and
dotations, and was so designed, or not, it is very sure the aforesaid
appanages and dotations were secured. No wonder that such attempts
succeed each other so rapidly--one every year, at the least! When was
the next, Louis--that of Alibaud, I think?"
"That took place about sunset on the 25th of June, '36," was the reply.
"Alibaud discharged a walking-stick-gun at the King, as he left the
Tuileries, on his way to Neuilly, at the corner of the Porte Royale.
That Alibaud was a mere boy, and a very interesting and intelligent boy,
too; but for some mysterious cause he did not find favor with the court,
as did Fieschi. He evidently attempted the assassination from
conviction, from a feeling of manifest destiny. After his failure, he
only wished to die, and to die at once. All who have succeeded Alibaud
have been but vulgar cut-throats."
"In what year was the insurrection of Armand Barbes and Martin Bernard?"
asked Flocon. "That proved most disastrous to our cause."
"That was in '39, May, I think," answered Rollin. "Barbes, Blanqui and
Bernard were arraigned as leaders. Marie and myself were advocates for
Barbes. Blanqui was sentenced to death and Barbes to the galleys for
life. But we obtained commutation of penalty for both."
"And where is to be the end of all these things?" asked Marrast,
gloomily, as he continued pacing the chamber with folded arms, his head
resting on his bosom. "Are the ten years on which we have now entered to
be characterized by the fruitless efforts of the past? Are the people of
France again, and again, and again to strike for freedom, only to be
stricken into the dust and trampled beneath the armed heel of a despot's
myrmidons? Are the streets of Lyons, Paris and Marseilles again to be
drenched with the life-blood of their dwellers, poured out as freely as
water and as fruitlessly? Are we all again, for full ten years, to toil,
strive, struggle and suffer; to be hunted down like the vilest
criminals, and, like criminals, plunged into the most pestilential
dungeons; to be stripped like slaves of our hard-won earnings, and to be
deprived of the most humble franchises of men claiming at all to be
free; to be treated with scorn and contumely, and to be debarred the
exercise of those common rights, which, like air and water, belong to
all; I say, brothers, are all these scenes to be repeated during the ten
years on which we have now entered, as they have been witnessed during
the ten years now past?"
"You speak sadly, Armand," observed Rollin.
"Not so sadly as I feel. I have listened with attention to the
recapitulation of the political events of the past ten years in France;
and most plainly, and as sadly as plainly, does the result prove that
every movement in our cause has been as premature as it has been
unsuccessful."
"May we not gather wisdom, which shall conduct us to success in the
future, from the very errors and disasters of the past?" remarked
Flocon.
"Alas!" despondingly replied Marrast, "what is there in our present to
promise a bright future more than was in our past to promise us a bright
present? Our great leaders of another generation have all left us, one
after another--all have dropped into their graves. The cold marble has
closed over their venerable brows, and they rest well. Yet they died
and made no sign of hope. On us, young, inexperienced and rash, has
devolved their task; but the mantle of their power and virtue has not,
alas! descended with that task to aid in its momentous accomplishment.
General Lamarque's sun went down in clouds. Midnight, deeper than
Egyptian darkness, brooded over the delirious deathbed of Lafayette.
Armand Carrel fell without hope; and are we wiser than they? How often,
oh! how often have I listened to the words of wisdom that fell from
those eloquent lips, even as a boy reverently listens to a parent--for
such was Armand Carrel to me. Upon this very spot have I stood, in that
very chair has he sat, that chair, which, with mingled shame and pride,
I reflect is now filled by me--shame, that it is filled in a manner so
unworthy of him--pride, that I should have been deemed fit, after him to
fill it at all--in that very chair, I say, has his noble form reclined,
when he for hours, even from night till the next day's dawn, dwelt with
sorrowful eloquence upon his country's present, and looked forward with
gloomy foreboding and prediction for the future. It almost seems to me
that this mighty shade is with us now!"
"And why was all this despondency, my dear Armand?" remarked Louis
Blanc, mildly. "Was it not because our noble and gifted friend was
essentially a soldier, not a civilian, not a statesman, not a
revolutionist? Had Armand Carrel gone to Algeria, he would have died--if
died he had not in an unknown duel, with an unknown bravo--he would
have died a Marshal of France--a Bugeaud, a Chaugarnier, a Bedeau, a
Cavaignac, a Clausel, a Lamoriciere. Carrel had no faith in the masses
to achieve a revolution. He never believed that they could even
withstand a single charge of regular troops, much less repel and
overcome it."
"Not even with barricades?" asked Rollin.
"Not even in defence of barricades," continued Louis Blanc.
"Regular troops have much to learn," added Rollin, with a significant
smile. "They will see the day--aye! and we all shall see it and rejoice
at its coming, despite all melancholy prognostications, when the people
of Paris will dictate abdication to the king of the barricades, from the
top of the barricades, the people's throne! Nor will that event tarry
long!"
"I doubt it not, I doubt it not, Ledru!" exclaimed Louis Blanc, rejoiced
that one of the youngest and least stable of their number appeared free
from the apprehensions of one of the most influential and seemingly most
reliable. "I accept the omen indicated by your enthusiasm. But I
accounted for the vacillation and distrust of our lamented friend,
Armand Carrel, by reverting to the fact that he relied entirely on
regular troops, military skill, scientific tactics and severe
subordination. Now, all of these belonged to our oppressors and none of
them to us; and, inasmuch as he could not perceive that enthusiasm,
passion for freedom, love of country and family, and the very wrath and
rage of desperation itself sometimes not only supply the place of
discipline, arms and the knowledge requisite to use them, but even
enable vast masses to break down and crush beneath their heel the
serried ranks of veteran troops, he could only despair at the prospects
apparently before him. Besides, Armand Carrel, like all military men,
was a man of action, not reflection--of execution, not contrivance--a
soldier, not a conspirator. At the head of ten thousand veteran troops,
he would have charged on thrice their number without discipline, with
the confident assurance of sweeping them from his path as the chaff of
the threshing floor is swept before the blast; but, with an
undisciplined mob, as he contemptuously called the masses, he would have
moved not a step. The larger the multitude, the less effective and the
more impossible to manage he would have deemed it. A revolution
accomplished by means of the three arms of the military
service--artillery, cavalry and infantry--horse, foot and dragoons, he
could readily conceive; but a revolution conducted to a successful issue
only by means of pikes, axes, muskets and barricades, never, to the hour
of his death, despite the victory of the Three Days, could Carrel
comprehend."
"Besides," said Flocon, "it must not be forgotten that Armand Carrel,
though a most devoted friend to Republicanism, was never a member of the
Societe des Droits de l'Homme--was never, as we all now are--a
Communist, a Socialist, a Fourierist, a friend to the laborer. No
wonder he hoped so little for the people, and trusted to accomplish so
little through them."
"There can be no doubt that the social principle which Republicanism is
now unconsciously assuming all over France," mildly remarked Louis
Blanc, "is lending to the cause incalculable strength. How terribly
impressed with a conviction of the justice of the cause in which they
perished must have been the unhappy insurgents of Lyons, when, with this
motto on their banner: 'To live toiling or die fighting,' they marched
firmly up to the cannon's mouth and fought, and, thus fighting, fell.
Yet this conviction is not peculiar to the workmen of Lyons. It pervades
all Paris, all France, and needs only to be roused to act with an energy
which no human power can resist. Social Republican will be the type of
the next revolution in France--it must be. The French people have been
dazzled by the mirage of liberty ever since '89,--but it has been only a
mirage. On the last three days of July, '30, the people of Paris drove
out one Bourbon to enthrone another. True, 'The State is myself,' was
not the despotic motto he assumed, as did one of his successors, but it
was 'Me and my family,' which has proved equally selfish, if not so
absolute, and far more dangerous to freedom. With Lafayette and Benjamin
Constant, the Citizen King they had made, quarreled as soon as on his
throne, and Lafitte and Dupont de l'Eure, his supporters, were banished
from the Court. Casimir Perier was called to crush the Liberals. Armand
Carrel assailed the act, and urged a republic. 'Le National' was
prosecuted, and insurrections followed. Thus was the Revolution of the
Three Days won by the people to be seized and enjoyed by the
Bourgeoisie. The next revolution will be won by the people, too, but the
people will enjoy it!"
"And how progresses our principles, Louis, among the people?" asked
Marrast, who had listened attentively to every word that had been
uttered.
"Never so gloriously as now, Armand, never! Never has there been such a
diffusion of information upon the subject of the rights of labor as now.
Pagnerre tells me every day that volumes, tracts and pamphlets on this
topic disappear like magic from his shelves."
"Has not the Minister a hand in this mysterious disappearance of
Communist literature?" asked Rollin. "We all know he is quite frantic on
the topic of popular education."
"Oh! yes, we all understand Guizot's love for the people! His system of
education promulgated in 1833 was so very beautiful that it was almost a
pity it was utterly impracticable. But Guizot has very little to do with
Pagnerre's book-shelves, or with Pagnerre in any way, except to
prosecute him from time to time for publishing Cormenin's withering
tracts designed for the Minister himself, and yet it would almost seem
there was a design to exhaust the market of the publications of our
friends; only the great mass of them go to the provinces and large
quantities abroad. My own little brochure, 'The Organization of Work,'
after having fallen stillborn from the press, died a natural death and
been laid out in state for a year or two on Pagnerre's shelves, all at
once is resurrected, runs through half a dozen large editions, and is
translated into half a dozen languages. The same is true of Lamartine's
'Vision of the Future,' and the same of Cormenin's tracts, and of the
ten thousand brochures on this same subject of Communism in all its
different shades and phrases, and in every variety of size, form and
style of writing and appearance. These publications are adapted to every
taste and comprehension. The workman is suited as well as the savant.
All this savors of magic. Even my most sanguine anticipations are
surpassed by reality. There will never long lack a supply for a demand,
be that demand what it may. A demand for Fourier literature has turned
all the pens in Paris hard at work upon it--novelists, essayists,
pamphleteers--while the Porte St. Antoine, the Porte St. Martin and all
the minor theatres, where are found the masses, swarm with melodramas,
farces and vaudevilles on the same subject, and none of you have
forgotten the powerful play, entitled 'The Laborer of Lyons,' attributed
to M. Dantes, recently produced with such success on the boards of the
Francais itself."
"And who is this M. Dantes," asked Ledru Rollin, "if you will suffer me
to interrupt?"
"Decidedly the most remarkable man in the French Chamber of Deputies,"
replied Marrast. "In powers of natural eloquence I never saw his rival."
"Nor is that all," added Louis Blanc. "Unlike most men noted as mere
orators, he is a sound logician, as well as a polished rhetorician. As a
political economist he has few equals. To that subject he seems to have
devoted much study, while his familiarity with the political history of
France and of the times generally all over Christendom seems boundless.
In debate, you observe he is never at a loss for fact or argument, let
the discussion take what direction it may."
"And he has celebrity also as a writer, has he not?" asked Ledru Rollin.
"The author of 'The Laborer of Lyons' must be a man of distinguished
literary genius," was the reply.
"Better than all," said Flocon, "he is devoted heart and soul to the
good cause."
"Such devotedness to a cause I never witnessed," said Marrast. "He puts
us all to the blush. With him it appears a matter of direct individual
interest. He is perfectly untiring. He is like one impelled by his fate.
Love or vengeance could not force onward a man to the attainment of an
object more irresistibly than he seems forced, and that, too, without
the slightest apparent stain of personal interest or ambition. That man
appears to me a miracle--a pure philanthropist. He strives, struggles,
suffers, sacrifices, and all with the sole object of ameliorating the
condition of his race."
"It is, indeed, wonderful," said Rollin, thoughtfully. "Do you know,
Marrast, anything of his past history?"
"Little, if anything. Of himself he never speaks, and I can gather
nothing from others. Even his constituents had known nothing of him but
a few months before he became their representative in the Chamber. His
popularity with them he owes to his efforts to ameliorate their
condition. At his own expense he established among them a Phalanstrie,
which is now in most successful operation."
"He is rich, then?" asked Flocon.
"Seemingly not, to judge from his habits of life," replied Marrast. "Not
a man in the Chamber is more Republican in garb, manner, equipage or
residence than he, and yet he may be rich."
"Is he married?" asked Rollin.
"He has been, I am told," said Marrast. "But we interrupt you, Louis.
You were alluding to the unusual influences now at work for our cause."
"I was about speaking of the newspaper press," said Louis Blanc. "Never
has there been known such a revolution in favor of Reform and Communist
journals, and to none is this better known than to some of ourselves.
There's Flocon's new journal, 'La Reforme,' that has leaped at once into
a circulation never before achieved but by long years of toil and
enterprise. The old 'National,' we need but to look around us to be
sure, was never more prosperous than now, while I am free to confess
that my journal, 'Le Bon Sens,' which has been a sickly child ever since
its birth, has, within three months, tripled its number of readers, or,
at least, its payers. The same is in the main true of 'Le Monde,' by La
Croix, 'Le Journal du Peuple,' by Dubose, 'Le Courier Francais,' by
Chatelain, 'La Commerce,' by Bert, 'La Minerve,' by Lemaine, 'La
Presse,' by Girardin, and all the journals in Paris which diffuse true
ideas upon labor and the rights of the people, be they in other respects
what they may. Even the 'Charivari,' which views the old King and his
Ministers as fair butts of ridicule, perceives a marked increase in its
patronage since it commenced that course, which sudden popularity
naturally excites it to increase of zeal in the same path. Besides all
this, an army of new papers, aiming to aid the great cause, have not
only sprung up of late, like mushrooms, in Paris, but all over France,
and even all over Europe; and so far appear they from interfering with
each other's prospects that the more there are the better they seem
sustained and the more ably conducted. A swarm of new and unknown
writers for the press on this great subject seems all at once to have
appeared from unseen hiding-places."
"This is very strange, Louis," said Marrast, "and yet it is, doubtless,
very true. I had observed what you remark myself, although I have viewed
the movement less hopefully for the cause of the Republic than you."
"Depend upon it, Armand," said Louis Blanc, smiling, "that
Republicanism and Socialism are identical terms, as much so as Communism
and despotism are antagonistic terms."
"But how do you account for this wonderful change, this unprecedented
fever for Fourierism?" asked Flocon.
"I don't pretend to account for it at all. The merits of the cause have,
perhaps, begun to be properly appreciated. Unusual efforts have been
made by our friends of late. Whole nations and epochs are sometimes
seized with a contagious mania for peculiar species of literature, as
for everything else. But I will hint to you a suspicion which I have
recently entertained, namely, that, after all, the rapid sale and ready
market for every species of Fourier literature is not an unerring
indication of the amount of reading of such literature, or the demand
that actually exists of buyers as well as readers--individual ones at
least. As for the journalistic literature, that I have learned is,
without doubt, gratuitously distributed, to a great extent, among the
masses."
"But can the masses read the papers?" asked Marrast.
"Each family, house, neighborhood, cafe or cabaret, at any rate, has, at
least one reader," said Rollin; "and all the men, women and children
have ears to hear, if not power to comprehend. But some of these papers,
which I have seen, come down in style to the very humblest
comprehension."
"Can it be," asked Flocon, "that there is such a club as a society for
the diffusion of social knowledge in Paris, after the form of that in
London, instituted by Lord Henry Brougham and his Whig coadjutors, for
the diffusion of general information, and so opposed by the Tories."
"If there be such an association," said Louis Blanc, "it has managed to
elude all my vigilance thus far, and that of the Government, too, for
Guizot can perceive, if no one else can, the inevitable effect of all
this, and he has no idea that the dear people of France shall be
educated by any one save himself. But, actually, there seems to me to
exist too much unity of purpose and action in this enterprise for it to
be the work of an association. I should rather suppose one powerful and
philanthropic mind at the head of the movement, were there not two
things so plainly opposed to it as to forbid the idea--the first being
that there is no one man in Europe who is rich enough to expend such
immense sums upon such an enterprise, if he would, and the second that
there is no man who has the subject sufficiently at heart to do it, if
he could."