HER FIRST REVOLUTION
1848
(_From a Schoolgirl’s Point of View_)
“_Les hommes de 1848 étaient des apôtres, des saints._”—Mme. Adam,
_Souvenirs_.
Mme. Adam has lived through four Revolutions. The first, that of 1848,
occurred when she was eleven. In the previous year, when she paid her
usual summer visit to Chivres, she found her aunts perturbed by the
political situation. They were eagerly devouring the columns of the
_National_. They were talking of politics from morn till night. Much
to their mother’s disapproval, they brought their eleven-year-old
niece into their discussions. “You are tiring the poor little thing to
death!” remonstrated Juliette’s great-grandmother.
“No,” rejoined her daughters, “the child is quite old enough to listen
and to understand.”
“Besides,” continued Aunt Constance, who was the ironist of the three,
“it will not be unprofitable to you, mademoiselle, to learn, if not
with your ears, at least with your mouth as you yawn, the views on
public affairs held by such highly intelligent persons as your aunts.”
“But,” writes Juliette, “I did not yawn, for my mind was interested in
all matters political and literary.”[8]
From her aunts’ point of view the child saw those surging political
movements of the day at an angle quite different from that at which,
under her father’s direction, she had been accustomed to regard them.
At Chivres her father’s heroes, Louis Blanc, Ledru-Rollin, Proudhon,
were held in horror. As utterly subversive of all public order the
aunts regarded Ledru-Rollin’s famous speech, when, pleading before
the Court of Cassation, the republican barrister had challenged the
Procureur Général, crying: “Procureur Général, who appointed you?”
“The Ministry.” “I, being an elector, may dismiss ministries. In whose
name do you speak?” “In the king’s name.” “I, being an elector—history
proves it—can make and unmake kings. Procureur Général, on your knees,
on your knees before my sovereignty.” While as for Proudhon’s famous
maxim, “Property is theft,” the aunts exclaimed: “Why, it’s the end of
the world.” Social reform had no place in these good ladies’ political
programme. They were content with the existing order. They had no
sympathy with Dr. Lambert’s doctrine of the right to work, nor with
Ledru-Rollin when he declared: “The workers have been slaves; they
have been serfs; to-day they are wage-earners; we must strive to make
them partners.”[9] The reforms which the aunts advocated in their
talks with their niece were merely administrative. What they desired
above all was to see Paris dethroned from her seat as the one centre
of influence in the kingdom. They wanted decentralisation, the revival
of the old provincialism. “Remember,” said Aunt Sophie to Juliette,
“a time will come, I am sure of it, when, after various Jacobin and
Buonapartist experiments, after a series of revolutions, you will
remember how wise, how essentially French, how truly national, were
the opinions of your old aunts.”[10]
The last months of 1847 Juliette was permitted to spend with her
parents. Blérancourt in those days was becoming, under Dr. Lambert’s
influence, a centre of violent political agitation. The number of Dr.
Lambert’s disciples was increasing daily, and his socialistic ideas
were being promulgated in the neighbouring villages. Mme. Seron wrote
constantly demanding her granddaughter’s return. She feared that from
being a Republican, which was bad enough, Juliette would be made into
a socialist, converted from a pagan _naturiste_, as she called it,
into an atheist. Finally, such remonstrances passing unheeded, she
threatened that if her granddaughter were not immediately restored she
would disinherit her, and Juliette would be reduced to depend for her
dowry on such savings as her father might accumulate. This practically
meant that Juliette would have no dowry at all. For Dr. Lambert, far
from saving, could never keep any money in his pocket. In face of
poverty and distress he was a veritable St. Martin of Tours, and would
give away the very clothes from his back. But to one whose mind was
set so far above filthy lucre Mme. Seron’s threat was meaningless. And
to his mother-in-law’s letter he replied that Juliette would not need
a dowry as he had decided to marry her to a working-man. But such a
destiny did not suit Mlle. Juliette at all. She had often dreamed of
a cottage, of a farm, but always with a gentleman (_un monsieur_) for
husband. And when her father told her of this letter, she exclaimed:
“Of course you are joking.” “But no,” he replied; “that really is
my idea.” “Then it is not mine,”[11] retorted this eleven-year-old
socialist, to whom her father’s design seemed utterly preposterous and
cruel to the last degree.
True, she loved the people more and more every day. True, it seemed to
her in moments of exaltation that she was ready to sacrifice herself
in their service; but that she, whom generations had raised above
them, should become one of them, no. Father and daughter were equally
violent. This, their first disagreement, was, to say the least of it,
tempestuous. And it was well that Mme. Seron arrived the next day to
take her granddaughter back to the less exalted atmosphere of Chauny.
Though Dr. Lambert continued to cherish his dream of a working-class
marriage for Juliette, for the time being he ceased to urge its
fulfilment; and for the time being Juliette found it not impossible to
reconcile her socialism with filial devotion.
At Chauny she found that her grandmother’s political principles, like
those of the aunts at Chivres, had undergone a change. Mme. Seron
had lost her passion for the citizen king. She had come to realise
the necessity for reform. Juliette was delighted, and she expected
her father to be equally pleased by his mother-in-law’s partial
conversion. But she did not then know human nature. It was not until
much later that she understood how a partisan is far more distrustful
of opinions differing slightly from his own than of those which are
more remote. Dr. Lambert mistrusted a reform movement led by M.
Odillon Barot as strongly as the aunts at Chivres mistrusted any
reform advocated by that extreme liberal, M. Ledru-Rollin.
Juliette’s schooling had been interrupted by her three months at
Chauny, and also by a visit to Boulogne, to which we shall refer
later, paid in company with her father in the summer of 1847.
After Christmas she returned to the _pensionnat_. Many changes had
taken place in the school during the five years which had elapsed
since that eventful day when she made her _début_ as a scholar. The
ogress, Mme. Dufey, had been succeeded by two friends of Juliette’s
mother, the Mlles. André. The school had expanded, and a new building
had been erected on the site, alas! of Mme. Seron’s garden, in which
Juliette had spent some of her most entrancing hours. On the occasion
of the destruction of this her land of delight, her “temple of
verdure,” as she called it, there had been a long and violent battle
between this little devotee of nature and her grandmother. The excuse
that the garden had been sold in order to provide Juliette with a
dowry did not appeal to her in the least. Money had never loomed
large in the child’s imagination. She loathed the mention of it; for
it always seemed to her to lead to family quarrels. The only use she
had for it personally was for the purchase of sugar-drops, which she
distributed among her schoolfellows.
It was long before the little girl could be persuaded to enter the
building which seemed to her the grave of her brightest dreams and her
most cherished joys.
Now, in the early weeks of 1848, Juliette found her school seething
with a political excitement, which she, with her violent views, was
the last person to allay.
With an important air the young politicians of the Pensionnat André
went about announcing “_l’heure des réformes a sonné_.” The playground
echoed with cries of “Vive la Réforme!” “A bas Guizot!” The sympathies
of the youthful reformers were entirely with the people, _le grand
peuple_. They were transported into a veritable fury on the day when
they heard that “the people” had been massacred, the inoffensive
people, engaged in a manifestation strictly within the bounds of the
law! Upon the heels of these tidings, however, followed quickly the
news that “the people” were revenged. Louis Philippe, after having
twice failed to form a ministry, the Duchess of Orléans, after a
vain attempt to establish a regency, were in flight. “The people”
had raised barricades, “the people” had proclaimed the Republic.
“The people,” read Juliette and her schoolfellows in the columns of
_La Démocratie Pacifique_, had behaved magnificently, they had shown
themselves worthy of every kind of liberty. Not a theft, not a single
violation of property, had been committed. “The people,” in rags
(_loqueteux_) put up notices, “Death to Thieves,” in the corridors of
the Tuileries. “The people,” themselves penniless, had protected the
treasures in the Bank.
On the great day of the Revolution, the 26th of February, Dr. Lambert
came over to Chauny. He was in the seventh heaven of delight. Even
Mme. Seron did not seem alarmed at the monarchy’s collapse. Her
husband, however, was less pleased. He had thought that the Revolution
would be made on behalf of his hero, Louis Buonaparte. And this
soldier of _la grande armée_ vented his spleen on the first republican
who came to his hand. This unhappy republican[12] chanced to be his
son-in-law. “Your Republic,” he jeered, “your stupidly democratic
Republic!”
“But,” writes Juliette, “father only laughed, grandmother smiled, and
I said—
“‛Ah! my poor grandfather, your Buonaparte must be very sick at our
Republic, however socialist he has pretended to be.’”
Juliette remembers that, towards the end of dinner on that fateful
26th of February, her grandfather, having, by way of consolation for
his disappointment, drunk an extra bottle or so of his _petit Macon_,
opening his eyes very wide, addressed his family, and said: “Well! I
see the future as clear as day!... I see your Republic, do you hear
me, Lambert? Do you hear me, Juliette? I see it trampled under foot by
my Buonaparte. I tell you, I scream it at you: revolutions, don’t you
know, always end in empires.”[13]
At school next day Juliette found all her friends in a state of great
agitation. Half of the scholars had stayed away. Their parents had
been afraid to let them leave home. The Revolution might spread into
the provinces. There was a glass factory in the town, and all the
workmen were in favour of the Republic. Might they not proclaim it at
Chauny, and revolt and perhaps plunder?
Hardly had Juliette arrived at school than she was summoned to the
study of the Mlles. André. There she was questioned as to what her
father thought of the situation.
“‛Well, Juliette, your father must be highly pleased, he who has
always been a republican. Have you seen him?’
“‛Yes, mesdemoiselles, he came yesterday, and he is delighted. He says
that at last France will show herself worthy of her history, that she
will govern herself, that all the European nations will admire us and
perhaps follow our example, that it is the coming of the people, the
real people, which is not corrupt like the middle-class, and which ...’
“‛That is enough,’ interrupted the eldest Mlle. André drily. ‛I hope,
Juliette, that you will keep your father’s fine notions to yourself. I
forbid you to speak of them here.’
“‛In the schoolroom, mademoiselle?’
“‛In the schoolroom and in the playground.’
“I looked Mlle. André in the face,” writes Juliette. I was almost as
tall as she; and I replied—
“‛That, mademoiselle, I can’t promise you; for there are a great many
of us republicans in the school, and no one can prevent our talking
about the Republic and loving it.’
“‛But France has not accepted your Republic,’ replied the youngest
Mlle. André, Mlle. Sophie.
“‛It will accept it, mademoiselle, because this time the people will
vote.’”
The Mlles. André were perplexed. They hesitated between their desire
to shut the mouth of their precocious and self-assertive pupil, and
their reluctance to be hard on their friend’s daughter, and also to
annoy the republican parents of the other scholars.
Finally they decided to bring the interview to a close by the
following judicious remark: “When you see your father, Juliette, you
may tell him from us that we hope his Republic will bring peace to
France and not agitate it further.”
On coming forth from the mistresses’ presence, Juliette was, of
course, the object of universal interest among the scholars. They
were burning to know what had passed in the principals’ sanctum. But
they could not satisfy their curiosity until school was over. The
lessons that morning were not well known, and the general excuse was
the Republic. “Mademoiselle, I have not had time to do my lessons
because of the Republic.”
“Mademoiselle, I couldn’t work because of the Republic.”
“I fail to understand,” was the icy retort, “how the Republic can be
any concern of yours.”
There was a deep silence, and then a voice—it was Juliette’s—made
answer.
“But, mademoiselle, it interests us passionately.”
The end of morning school was a regular riot. The pupils rushed out
into the playground, where they surrounded Juliette, in a crowd,
clamouring to receive a full account of her famous interview. She,
on her part, was only too eager to relate it in every detail, and to
follow it by an appeal to her comrades to bear themselves like true
and worthy republicans, not to be insolent towards their teachers, but
to make them realise that, although younger than they, the Republic
regarded them as their elders’ equals. Then followed a babel of
conversation. Each schoolgirl had her own idea of what the Republic
should do. But all were agreed that the first reform must be the
establishment of universal suffrage. No mere tax-payers’ franchise
would satisfy these ardent suffragettes. Every one must vote, men,
women, and, of course, schoolgirls. Only thus could the Mlles. André’s
pupils conceive of a really universal suffrage, and later they prided
themselves on having invented it.
Nothing in the Revolution pleased Juliette’s father better than the
opening of the National Workshops. An ardent believer in the right to
work, he, with his idol, Louis Blanc, had always advocated them. And
though Louis Blanc did not appear to be directly concerned with those
that the Government was establishing, Dr. Lambert, like most people,
believed that he was secretly connected with them. They had not been
running more than a few weeks, however, when he began to suspect that
he had been mistaken. As time went on he grew less and less satisfied
with the Republic. There were too many reactionaries in the National
Assembly. This Republic, from which he had hoped so much, was too
pleasing to comfortable middle-class people like his mother-in-law.
“Jean Louis,” she would say, “I find that I agree very well with your
Republic.” “Wait a little,” her son-in-law would reply at first. By
and by he would answer: “You agree with it better than I do.” And
finally there came a day when he exclaimed: “No wonder you approve of
the Republic, for it is constituted for your advantage! The Orléans
may come back and they will not need to alter anything as far as their
_bourgeois_ supporters are concerned.”[14]
Seeing his dream of a Christian, classical, social, scientific
Republic vanish, Dr. Lambert resumed his old part of malcontent,
and, of course, Juliette followed suit. She filled the house with
her recriminations. She made herself excessively disagreeable to her
grandparents. Her grandfather infuriated her by chuckling with delight
and repeating: “All this augurs well for the Empire.”
That which most distressed Juliette and her father was the failure of
the National Workshops. It had become obvious that, far from being
organised by Louis Blanc, they had been initiated by his enemies.
Émile Thomas, who directed them, was suspected of being Louis
Napoléon’s agent. Far from constituting, as Dr. Lambert had fondly
dreamed, a national benefit and a model for the whole civilised
world, they proved useless and costly. They grew like an ulcer;
as many as 119,000 men were on the pay-roll. They were a club of
loafers, a reserve army of insurrection, a perpetual strike supported
out of public money. No wonder there was talk of suppressing them.
But Dr. Lambert, though bitterly disappointed with the way they
were conducted, was horrified at the idea of suddenly depriving of
occupation and turning adrift these thousands of workmen. It would
mean, he thought, nothing short of a sanguinary revolution. Juliette,
of course, shared her father’s horror. What had “the people,” “the
people” who had behaved so admirably on the 26th of February, done to
deserve such treacherous treatment? She could think of nothing else.
Her rage and disappointment were such that she became absolutely
insupportable. And when her grandmother remonstrated with her, she
implored to be allowed to go to Blérancourt to her father, who shared
her disappointment. But Mme. Seron was still living in dread of her
son-in-law’s threat of a working-class marriage for his daughter.
She had other ideas for Juliette. “Already,” she told her little
granddaughter, “you have pleased young X——, who is seventeen; and
his father, half in jest, half in earnest, because of your age, has
suggested that in a few years’ time there might be an alliance between
the families.” Moreover, Mme. Seron did not wish again to interrupt
her daughter’s studies. So she proposed a compromise. Instead of going
to Blérancourt, Juliette might become a boarder at the _pension_.[15]
This suggestion was a terrible blow to Juliette. That such a proposal
should come from her grandmother, that she, who generally complained
of the length of the school hours which deprived her of her idolised
granddaughter’s company, should now of her own free will suggest a
far longer separation, seemed incredible. The child was quick to see
that her own behaviour had brought her grandmother to such a pass. By
her ravings and recriminations she had made herself intolerable. Her
grandmother was glad to get rid of her.
“I was thunderstruck,” she writes. “Nothing but wicked pride kept me
from throwing myself on my grandmother’s neck and asking pardon for my
folly; for I realised how wild and extravagant I had been. But what
grandmother had told me about X——, a tall youth, whom I thought both
handsome and clever, had so puffed me up that I could not see a young
person like myself, close upon twelve, kneeling to ask forgiveness
like a little girl. So, though my heart was in my mouth all the while,
I merely said—
“‛Very well, grandmother, it is understood, I will be a boarder as
soon as you like.’
“‛To-morrow,’ she replied.”
It will be seen from these reflections that her father’s and
grandmother’s adoration had not, as it might well have done,
completely warped their idolised Juliette’s disposition. They had made
her absurdly vain, but they had not stifled a certain critical sense
which even at that early age the little girl was beginning to turn
upon herself. In this wholesome exercise she was encouraged by her
mother’s severity. Whenever her father praised, her mother scolded.
“When father,” she writes, “spoke of my intelligence and my good
looks, mother declared that I was as stupid as I was plain. It seemed
to me that both of them exaggerated. And I began to judge myself,
as I have done ever since, with a certain detachment. At heart I am
really grateful to my mother for having preserved me from complete
self-satisfaction.”[16]
Juliette’s career as a boarding-school miss, which resulted from her
enthusiasm for and her disappointment with the scheme of National
Workshops, was destined to be as short-lived as that great national
experiment.
It was bad enough to be _un enfant gâté_ removed from her fond
relatives and subjected to all the rules of an institution. But her
personal sorrows were intensified by the thought of hundreds of
thousands of workpeople about to be threatened with starvation. By
this apprehension Juliette’s schoolfellows were likewise depressed. An
atmosphere of gloom pervaded the playground. Instead of playing games,
the girls gathered together to discuss the fate of their unfortunate
compatriots. “There was not one of us,” Juliette writes, “who did
not deny herself goodies in order to save a few pence with which to
help these poor people. We were always counting up our resources. We
thought we might just be able to feed one of them. I decided that we
would address an elegant epistle to the minister Trélat,[17] whom
we abhorred. For him we held responsible for everything. We would
propose to him to undertake the support of one of the workmen from
the National Workshops. Certainly one out of a hundred thousand
(_sic_)[18] was not much; but if every _pension_ did the same, some
would be saved in any case.”[19]
The composition of such a letter was not easy. In order to bring
to bear upon it as much intelligence as possible, the republican
scholars classified themselves in groups, eleven in all. Each group
drew up a draft of the letter. These drafts were compared, the best
passages selected from each, and finally the letter was dispatched to
a friend of Juliette in Paris, that same Professor Charles who had
embraced her on her fourth birthday. He was now a public functionary,
and he was requested to deliver to the minister the all-important
missive.
“Daily,” records Juliette, “we expected the arrival of our _protégée_,
our _atelier national_, as we called him.” He had been instructed by
the famous letter to present himself at the Pensionnat André, and to
announce himself as Juliette Lambert’s _protégée_. His benefactresses
meanwhile were busily preparing for his arrival. Cakes and sweetmeats
were tabooed. “_Nous économisions avec frénésie_,” writes Juliette.
They also, under every imaginable pretext, begged from their friends
and relatives.
One of them had been so fortunate as to obtain a suit of clothes
belonging to her brother. Having cleaned and mended it with the
greatest care, she kept it in readiness for the _atelier national_,
who would doubtless arrive in rags.
Meanwhile the plot was kept a dead secret; for the conspirators
were well aware that their sympathy for _ces monstres des ateliers
nationaux_ would meet with no encouragement at home.
While at Chauny the Mlles. André’s pupils were eagerly awaiting the
arrival of their expected _monstre_, at Paris affairs were moving
quickly. The men who had been paid forty cents a day for digging
trenches in the Champs de Mars and filling them up again were sticking
to their job in defiance of the Government’s orders to disband. The
Socialists sympathised with them and organised street manifestations
in their favour. Finally, on the 23rd of June, the capital broke
out into open insurrection. It was at this juncture that Juliette
received, not the eagerly expected _atelier national_, but a letter
from Professor Charles which dashed all her hopes to the ground. He,
to whom had been entrusted that elegant epistle to the minister, had
basely deserted the young friends who had confided in him. Professor
Charles had no sympathy with the State-employed workmen; he described
them in his letter to Juliette as _ces misérables qui t’intéressent_.
Charles was immediately banished from Juliette’s heart. Her _ex-ami
Charles_, she called him, severely, when she announced to her comrades
this terrible disappointment.
Then there followed much secret confabulation among the Republican
groups of the _pension_. The pupils agreed that while blood was
flowing in the streets of Paris, they at Chauny could not remain
inactive. Already the revolution in the capital was finding an echo in
the provincial town. Bands of rebels were marching down the streets.
Why should not _les demoiselles de la pension André_ join them?
Juliette counted among her treasures a large handkerchief given her
by her father and emblazoned with the words: _Vive la République,
Démocratique et Sociale_. Attaching this emblem to a pole abstracted
from the wood-shed, the girls, under Juliette’s leadership, organised
themselves into a procession and marched round the playground, crying:
“Long live the Democratic and Social Republic. Long live the rebels.
We will not disband. We will not disband.”
This manifestation, the tumultuous scenes to which it led, the defiant
words which she addressed to her governesses, resulted in Juliette’s
expulsion from school. For the Mlles. André rightly regarded her as
the leader of the revolution.
Mlle. Sophie conducted her back to her grandmother’s house. Mme.
Seron was already regretting having sent her granddaughter away.
She would, therefore, have been glad to see her back under almost
any circumstances. But to find her distinguishing herself as the
originator and ringleader of a rebellion gratified the pride and
ambition of her own rebellious heart. So, after listening to Mlle.
Sophie’s story, Mme. Seron said with dignity: “If you regard her
behaviour as a defiance of your authority, then you are quite right
to dismiss her.... But this episode shows me Juliette as I like to
see her, displaying a determination and a courage such as are not
given to every one. Since, without my seeking her, the child has been
brought back to me, neither she nor I will be distressed. I have
rather, mademoiselle, to thank you than to ask you to reconsider your
decision.”
Thus after a few weeks terminated Juliette’s career as a boarder, and,
indeed, her schooldays, for she never returned to the _pension_.
At Chivres, whither, on the 1st of July, Juliette went for a three
months’ visit, she found herself promptly deposed from the pedestal on
to which, as a reward for her defiance of authority, her grandmother
and her father, too, had elevated her. The aunts had never heard of
such nonsense; they scolded her roundly for her conduct. They had
no sympathy whatever with the _ateliers nationaux_. And, during the
violent suppression of the rising which followed, their sympathies
were entirely with the _bourgeoisie_. Juliette was condemned to keep
her opinions to herself, and even to read the newspaper by stealth.
Instead of arguing about things she did not understand, she worked
hard at her Latin. And in the serenity of her aunts’ presence,
contrasting with their educated minds her own empty little head, she
came to see herself as she really was: a pretentious young person,
very ignorant, and fond of airing opinions she had borrowed from other
people.
Consequently it was in a chastened frame of mind that Juliette
returned in the autumn to Chauny. And her grandmother found her quite
willing to fall in with the new scheme of life which she suggested.
The storms of the past had strengthened Mme. Seron’s conviction that
Juliette was a child to be led and not driven. In broaching the
subject of her future studies, therefore, Mme. Seron began with this
tactful observation—
“Now, my Juliette, you will do exactly as you like. You will learn
what you wish, or you will, if you prefer it, learn nothing at all.
But there is one thing in which I do ask you to take an interest:
that is housekeeping. I will give you complete charge of our house
for six months. You shall be its mistress to order and to spend.
I shall merely advise you. As you are fond of the appointing, the
arrangement, the decoration of a home, you will have full scope for
the development of your taste. If you would like lessons in cooking
and sewing, you have only to say so. I want to persuade you, too, that
an art, and above all arts, music, embellishes life. The new organist
is a remarkably good teacher. The piano bores you, but I wish you to
cultivate your voice. And then I have another wish: I want you to try
the violin. But, I repeat, you shall do as you like in everything.”[20]
To these diplomatic suggestions Juliette was graciously pleased to
reply—
“Grandmother, I shall be delighted to keep house; it will be very
interesting. I will certainly learn the violin. That will be quite out
of the common: and I will cultivate my voice.”
How the Seron household fared during the _régime_ of this young
lady of twelve Juliette has not told us. But that her grandmother’s
somewhat bold experiment was in the end eminently successful is
attested by the fact that throughout her long life Mme. Adam has
been renowned as a first-rate _maîtresse de maison_; and that this
reputation is fully justified is the experience of all those who, like
the present writer, have partaken of her lavish hospitality.
As for the rest of her studies, Mme. Seron had been well advised
to leave it to her granddaughter to decide as to whether she would
continue them. Juliette was far too ambitious to be content with her
very meagre knowledge. And it was at her own suggestion that her
father was asked to draw up a time-table for his daughter.
A professor from the boys’ school opposite was engaged to give
her lessons; and Dr. Lambert himself, when he came to Chauny,
superintended her studies. He read her Racine, and persuaded her to
copy daily five pages from the pen of that great French classic. The
doctor, as we have said, was himself a pure classicist. He used to say
to his daughter, “Be a Grecian, Juliette, if you desire initiation
into the worship of the eternally beautiful, into all that raises man
above the age in which he lives.”[21]
In order to accustom his daughter to what he called the admirable
sonority of _notre langue initiatrice_ he read her passages from Homer
in the Greek original. He dictated to her word by word translations
of whole chapters of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. In these lessons,
in his own reading and in his talks with Juliette, Dr. Lambert found
consolation for his bitter political disillusionment. “Books,” he
would say, “are our greatest solace, when everything else is taken
from us they remain.”[22]
He refused to talk of politics. The collapse of the June insurrection,
its brutal suppression by General Cavaignac, and, finally, the
election on the 10th of December, 1848, of his enemy, Louis Napoléon,
as President of the Republic had disappointed all his hopes.
In the glorious days of the Republic’s dawn Dr. Lambert had consented
to be Mayor of Blérancourt. His daughter describes how she and her
grandmother came over from Chauny to see the Mayor, attired in a
workman’s blue blouse and wearing the tricolour scarf tied with red,
plant the Tree of Liberty, a young poplar, in the village square.
In his delight at what seemed to promise the realisation of all his
dreams, this agnostic had become reconciled even to the curé. The
village priest was present to bless the Tree of Liberty. And in his
speech this broad-minded cleric declared that the Republic, if it
practised its doctrines of liberty, fraternity and equality, would
realise the gospel ideal, but that it could only rise to such a height
provided that all republicans in spirit, if not in form, were as
Christian as the new Mayor. Then, much to his daughter’s astonishment,
Dr. Lambert replied that the Republic, with its principles of liberty,
equality and fraternity, had without doubt originated in Christianity;
that Jesus Christ was the first Socialist and the first Republican;
that republicans had much to learn from the Church, but that the
Church on its side had to learn from republicans to adore nature
and to follow science. “My dear Mayor,” said M. le Curé after the
ceremony, “you would accept the Christian religion blindfold if only
it would consent to become pagan.” “Yes,” replied the Mayor, laughing,
“but I want you in return to accept my paganism, which is founded on a
love of nature, on condition that it is inspired by Christian virtues.”
Alas! only a few months later that roseate dawn of optimistic idealism
had faded into the night of grim reaction. One by one the socialistic
experiments of 1848 had failed. The socialist leader, Louis Blanc,
had been discredited and driven into exile. The more moderate
Ledru-Rollin, having, like most moderates, failed to please any party,
had been excluded from the Government. And by the end of the year,
after all her bright dreams of liberty, the one cry which went up from
France was for a strong government. The cry was answered by Louis
Napoléon’s election to the presidency. Old Dr. Seron’s prophecy had
come true. Encouraged by the success of his divinations, Juliette’s
grandfather continued to prognosticate. “Sure as my name is Seron,”
he declared, “Louis Napoléon Buonaparte, from simple Prince Louis,
from simple Buonaparte, will, before the expiration of his presidency,
become Emperor Napoléon III.”[23]
“Alas! he is right,” said Dr. Lambert[24].... “All my beautiful
fabric has fallen, stone by stone; and I am crushed beneath its
ruins.... Juliette, I shall never again talk or write to you of
politics.” But, though abstaining from political talk, Dr. Lambert
could not withdraw from interest in political affairs. Though he had
resigned his mayoralty, though he had severed all official connection
with this sad travesty of a Republic, though the Tree of Liberty
which he had planted had been dug up, he still clung to the vestige
of his political dreams. And he continued to try to carve out a
new destiny for France. If he could not work for her in the open,
he would plot and plan in secret. Dr. Lambert, like many another
disillusioned French republican, joined one of those secret societies
which were being formed all over France. Juliette, when she next
visited Blérancourt, found her parents’ home the centre of mysterious
meetings, her father the recipient of mysterious correspondence which
his wife urged him to destroy. One day, rummaging in the attic,
Juliette chanced upon a hoard of papers, lists of names and letters,
the import of which, enlightened by her parents’ conversation, she was
quick to guess; and instantly there flashed on her vivid imagination
the whole danger of the situation. With Juliette Adam action has
never failed to follow swiftly upon the heels of thought. An hour
or two after that discovery Juliette was busy making herself a big
pocket, which she tied round her waist and wore beneath her frock. In
a day or two that which she dreaded happened. Dr. Lambert’s house was
visited by the Procureur de la République, accompanied by an escort of
gendarmes. To the dismay of Juliette’s parents the Procureur produced
a document entitling him to search the house. He began with the
doctor’s desk in the room where the family was then sitting at lunch.
“What you are doing is not at all nice. It is even indiscreet,”
said Juliette, much to the functionary’s amusement. It was a sultry
midsummer day. Said Juliette to her terrified mother: “May I not go
and tell Blatier” (the gardener, who, with a scared look, was peeping
through the window) “to cool some cider for these gentlemen?” Mme.
Lambert made a sign of assent. A minute before, when she had wished to
go into another room, a gendarme had prevented her. But no objection
was offered to her little girl’s departure. All the while, however,
that she was telling Blatier to draw water from the well she felt a
gendarme’s eyes fixed upon her through the window. While the gardener
was drawing the water, she went down into the cellar, brought up
some bottles, placed them in a pail. Intentionally prolonging the
operation, she went down to fetch another pail, then, turning round,
made as if she would return slowly to the room. But no sooner was
she out of the gendarme’s sight than with one bound, having taken
off her shoes, she flew upstairs to the attic, seized the papers,
slipped them into her pocket, and in a trice had put on her shoes
again, was back in the sitting-room, having apparently come straight
from her cider-cooling in the courtyard. M. le Procureur was still
busily searching. Having examined the living-rooms, he and his escort
searched the stable, the coach-house, the cellar. Then, leaving one
gendarme below, he went up into the attic.
“When father heard them go upstairs,” writes Juliette, “he rose, he
looked very agitated, and I saw mother, saying to herself: ‛The papers
must be there; we are lost.’
“Then, taking a glass of cider, I went up to father, whom the gendarme
was closely observing. He put away the glass I offered him, but I,
as if persuading him to drink, bent towards him and whispered: ‛Be
calm. I have the papers.’ Father drank the glass of cider at one gulp.
I embraced him. The gendarme was touched by our affection. Father
clasped[25] me in his arms so tight that I thought I should have been
stifled!...”
The Procureur de la République came downstairs. Before leaving he
said to Juliette: “Mademoiselle, I am glad to tell you that we have
found nothing to compromise your father. Had we discovered proofs of
the matters of which he stands accused it would have been serious.
For your father’s name figures on the list of those liable to
arrest, imprisonment, or even deportation. He is reputed a dangerous
revolutionary and propagandist to boot.”
“Thank you, sir,” replied Juliette. “As you are so fatherly to me,
you, too, must have a daughter.” The Procureur smiled, but did not
reply.
For the time, this child of thirteen had saved her father’s liberty,
perhaps his life. But she had not placed him out of danger, because
she had not cured him of plotting against the Government. Henceforth,
indeed, until Dr. Lambert’s death, his daughter was to live in
constant dread of her father’s so embroiling himself with the
authorities as to be clapped into prison or even deported. The episode
we have just related was only the first of many times when he narrowly
escaped arrest. When, years later, Juliette was living with her father
in Paris and he was late in returning to meals, she always expected to
hear that he was in prison.
Not long after this domiciliary visit, in the spring of 1850, Dr.
Lambert entertained the idea of giving up his practice at Blérancourt,
and joining one of the phalansteries or socialistic communities then
in vogue. However, he listened to the entreaties of his family and
renounced this project.
“Juliette,” said Mme. Seron to her granddaughter, “how can you wish a
country to be led by persons so wild as your father?” “And, for the
moment,” writes Juliette, “I agreed with her.”
FOOTNOTES:
[8] _Souvenirs_, I. 247.
[9] _Biographie Générale_ under “Ledru-Rollin.”
[10] See _post_, 243.
[11] _Souvenirs_, I. 272.
[12] _Souvenirs_, I. 280.
[13] _Ibid._, 281.
[14] _Souvenirs_, I. 295.
[15] _Souvenirs_, I. 300.
[16] _Souvenirs_, I. 348.
[17] Trélat, Minister of Education, so Dr. Lambert had told
Juliette, had been one of the bitterest opponents of the National
Workshops. But, seeing the danger of closing them suddenly, he had
proposed to dismiss the workmen gradually, and he had appointed his
son-in-law, Lalanne, to reorganise the whole movement. But it was too
late.—_Souvenirs_, I. 298-9.
[18] Nineteen hundred thousand is the number given by Professor
Guérard.—_French Civilisation in the Nineteenth Century_, 201.
[19] _Souvenirs_, I. 305.
[20] _Souvenirs_, I. 325.
[21] _Souvenirs_, I. 317.
[22] _Ibid._, 326.
[23] _Souvenirs_, I. 328.
[24] _Ibid._, 329.
[25] _Souvenirs_, I. 337.