POLITICAL MEN OF THE TIME
I became very well acquainted with both M. Rouher and M. Emile Ollivier.
The latter inspired me with warm feelings of friendship. He was
essentially an honest man, and his mistakes were more the faults of
others than his own. He never had the opportunity really to show of what
stuff he was made. Though possessed of the best intentions in the world,
he was always misunderstood and suspected, even by the very people who
should have had confidence in him and in his sense of justice and
impartiality.
When he was called upon to form a Cabinet he was met by the antagonism
of the Empress, who did not approve of the new trend in politics, which
had replaced the one inaugurated at the _coup d’état_. She hated the
idea of the slightest diminution in the Imperial power and prestige. She
did not believe in the necessity of concessions to public opinion, and
she was deeply incensed to find that her ideas on the subject were not
shared by her husband, who was more or less under the influence of his
new Prime Minister. Eugénie, who was superstitious, declared to her
friends that she had the feeling when she spoke with Emile Ollivier that
he was going to be fatal to her.
The fact is that fate went against the new Prime Minister. M. Ollivier
had hardly been in power when occurred an event almost forgotten to-day,
but which was to sound the first knell of the Empire. Prince Pierre
Bonaparte shot Victor Noir.
Till that fatal day very few people knew anything about Prince Pierre.
He was a distant cousin of the Emperor, with whom his relations had
never been either affectionate or even friendly. He was the black sheep
of a family which at that time could ill afford a setback, and his
political opinions, coupled with an irregular connection with a person
belonging to an inferior class, and whom he was ultimately to make his
wife, had led to his disgrace by the head of his house. Napoleon III.
ignored the existence of this inconvenient kinsman, who lived in a
little house at Auteuil.
Prince Pierre was a true Corsican in character: violent, and given to
strong fits of passion. He professed, together with most Radical
political opinions and strong Republican sympathies, an immense worship
for the memory of his great ancestor, the first Napoleon, and a great
respect for the family traditions of the Bonapartes. And when one day,
in a small newspaper edited at Bastia, he chanced across a very vile
attack on the family, he got into a rage, and replied to it in the same
paper by an equally virulent attack directed against the author.
The matter did not end there, for very soon the Parisian press took
part, and the occasion was used by the enemies of the Imperial regime in
order to air their grievances against it. At last one of the editors of
an opposition paper called _La Revanche_, M. Paschal Grousset, who later
on was to acquire a sorry celebrity during the excesses of the Commune,
sent two of his friends to Prince Pierre, to request him either to
apologise in person or else to fight.
What happened during the interview no one will ever know. The versions
given by the Prince and that of M. Ulric de Fonville, who together with
Victor Noir had called at Auteuil at the request of Paschal Grousset,
differ entirely as to what passed. The result, however, was the murder
of Noir by the cousin of Napoleon III.
This event, occurring as it did at a moment when the Empire was being
attacked on all sides and already tottering, added considerably to the
difficulties under which the Emperor was labouring. Unfortunately,
neither he nor his responsible advisers calculated its consequences.
Instead of following the advice given by M. Rouher, who was of opinion
that Prince Pierre should have been imprisoned in a fortress until his
crime had been forgotten by the public, Napoleon III. decided to have
his cousin tried by a special court which assembled at Tours. The court
acquitted the accused, which only added to the general exasperation
against the government. M. Ollivier was reproached with having lent
himself to a travesty of justice, in order to shield a relative of the
Sovereign from a justly deserved punishment, and was accused by his
former friends and followers of allowing himself to fall under the
influence of the Court.
This was gall and wormwood to that sincere politician, and the
bitterness which resulted on both sides made the head of the Cabinet
lose that calmness which, more than anyone else, he required in the
difficult task that lay before him.
As to Prince Pierre, the cause of all this perturbation, he left France
after his acquittal, settled in Brussels, and after the fall of the
Empire married the mother of his children, and spent his life in
comparative poverty until the marriage of his son Roland Bonaparte with
the youngest daughter of the celebrated Blanc, of Monaco fame, which
brought back financial prosperity to that branch of the family. He did
not enjoy it long, because he died a few months later, and was followed
very quickly to the grave by his young daughter-in-law. His widow, the
washerwoman whose introduction into his family Napoleon III. had deeply
resented, went on living with her son Roland, devoting herself to him
and to his baby daughter. She never could learn what manners were, but
she was kind-hearted in spite of her vulgarity, and did good in every
way she could. Prince Roland, on his side, had the tact never to be
ashamed of the humble origin of his mother, to surround her always with
the greatest respect, and to treat her with the most tender affection.
She did the honours of his house as well as she could, and unfortunately
for her, died before the marriage of her granddaughter, the Princess
Marie Bonaparte, with Prince George of Greece, an event which, had she
only lived long enough to witness it, would have proved the supreme
happiness of her life.
This digression has led me far away from M. Emile Ollivier. I had the
opportunity to see him on the day following the acquittal of Prince
Pierre Bonaparte, and was surprised to find him considerably irritated
against M. Rouher, whom he accused of trying to influence the Emperor in
a direction contrary to the resolutions which the Sovereign had taken in
conjunction with Ollivier himself. He seemed as if he wanted to find
someone on whom he might vent his anger at his own mistakes. A phrase
which he uttered on that day, but to which I did not pay any attention
at the moment, struck me later on as the expression of a desire to
regain a popularity he had lost:
“Il nous faut maintenant à tout prix regagner notre popularité” (“We
must now at all costs win back our popularity”).
It was immediately after these troubled days that the important question
of the Plebiscite was raised. It was violently opposed by M. Thiers and
his followers, and also by several of the Emperor’s personal friends,
who dreaded what it might mean to him. Even when its result ratified
the country’s confidence in the Empire and in the Emperor, they were not
inspired with any greater confidence in the future. I remember that at a
dinner which took place at the house of Marshal Canrobert and at which I
was present, M. Rouher, who was among the guests, remarked sadly that
there was nothing to be so very proud of in the results of the
Plebiscite, because Paris had proved by its vote that it was distinctly
hostile to the Government. “Et c’est Paris qui fait les révolutions et
renverse les gouvernements” (“And it is Paris which makes revolutions
and upsets governments”), he concluded with a sigh.
Without being on intimate terms with him, I liked M. Rouher exceedingly.
For one thing, he was really the Emperor’s friend, and for another, when
all is said and done, he was a statesman. It is not to be denied that he
was ambitious and liked power for power’s sake. He did not care so much
for the welfare of France as he did for that of the Bonaparte dynasty,
but he had a clear apprehension of all the political necessities of the
moment, and saw farther than those who were listened to with greater
attention than himself. He did not perhaps like the Empress very much,
but he remained faithful to her, and out of respect for the place which
she occupied and the crown which she wore, always tried to uphold her
prestige. He loved Napoleon III. truly and sincerely, and always gave
him disinterested advice. Like all strong men he had enemies, and like
all sincere people he was accused of dissimulation and intrigue by those
who did not understand that to tell the truth is sometimes the best way
not to be believed.
He has been accused of having gathered immense riches whilst he was in
power. I can testify that this has not been the case by far, and that
when the “Second Emperor,” as he was sometimes called, died, he was
comparatively a poor man.
Socially, M. Rouher was charming, and his conversation was most
enjoyable. He had what French people call “le mot pour rire,” as well as
a marvellous skill for parrying questions addressed to him, and replying
without answering anything. He had dignity, and gave constant proofs of
it in his presidency of the Senate, where he displayed the rarest
qualities of tact and skill.
Talking of tact, leads me to say a few words respecting a personage who,
to his own misfortune, as well as to that of other people, did not know
the significance of that word. It is of Prince Napoleon, Prince Plon
Plon, as the Prussians called him, that I am thinking.
This first cousin of the Emperor was certainly a remarkable personage,
and undoubtedly a most clever man. But evidently, also, a bad fairy had
presided at his birth, and blighted with her magic wand all the great
qualities with which nature had endowed him. His was essentially a
restless nature, incapable of contentment, even when it had what it
wanted. Had he been Emperor he would have lived in opposition to
himself, _faute de mieux_. Of ambition he had a lot; of desires and
passions even more, but he lacked an evenly balanced mind, and that most
essential of all qualities, submission before accomplished facts and the
things that human will cannot change. His intelligence was sharp,
bright, and clear; he was capable of resolution, and had initiative in
his character. He was gifted with rare eloquence, and, possessing also
an easy pen, wrote pages that great writers would have felt proud to
sign. He was brilliant, too, in conversation, and to all these talents
he added qualities that, joined with the prestige of his name, and of
his position, might have called him to great destinies, could he but
have learned how to use them. His existence was essentially one aptly
described by the French expression “une vie manquée,” and he was his own
worst enemy. Always in opposition to his cousin he succeeded in rousing
in revolt against himself not only the advisers of the Crown, but also
the Emperor, and especially the Empress. Eugénie, with whom he had been
ardently in love when she was still Mademoiselle de Montijo, was the
object of his especial animosity later on, and he never lost an
opportunity of displaying it, forgetting even that she was a lady, and
that he should have shown himself a gentleman in his behaviour towards
her. Among the survivors of the time none will have forgotten the
scandal he caused at Compiègne when he refused to propose the health of
the Empress on the day of St. Eugénie, when the Emperor asked him to do
so. On that occasion as on many others, he quite lost sight of the
politeness which a Sovereign and a woman has the right to expect, even
from her worst enemies.
Prince Napoleon was all his life in opposition to somebody or something,
and by poetic justice before his death he was to experience the sorrow
of finding his own son oppose him and his principles. Deception dogged
his footsteps, disappointment seemed to pursue him, for which he himself
was partly responsible, and partly the victim of circumstances. He is
more to be pitied than anything else. His life seemed to be spent in
seeing withdrawn from his lips the cup that a wicked fairy kept
presenting to him in order to tempt him with its contents.
A good many of Prince Napoleon’s defects proceeded from a spirit of
bravado, such as that which distinguished the Italian condottieri of
old. He took a vicious pleasure in appearing to be what in reality he
was not, and in defying public opinion, as in the case of his famous
Good Friday dinners, when he asked his best friends to help him to eat
ham and roast beef on an occasion when the gayest of gay Parisians would
not have dreamt of touching anything else but fish. His unorthodoxy was
more affected than sincere, more frequently it was adopted because it
amused him to shock people.
His wife, the virtuous Princess Clotilde of Savoy, was a saint in her
life and habits. She had absolutely no bond of sympathy with him, and
made him always feel that duty alone kept her at his side. She had
great, noble, and even grand qualities, but her disposition was neither
amiable, nor sympathetic, and Prince Napoleon should have had a wife he
could love, rather than one whom he could only respect.
When he died alone in Rome, within a stone’s throw from the palace where
his distinguished relative, Madame Mère, had ended her sad existence,
and within sight of the chapel where rests the mortal remains of the
Princess Borghese, née Pauline Bonaparte, he was on terms of intimate
friendship with a lady well known in Paris society, the Marquise de
----, whose salon is to this day the rendezvous of a certain circle of
people, among whom may be seen some enjoying a great social position,
and about which I shall have something more to say later on. This lady
was passionately attached to Prince Napoleon, for whom she had
sacrificed a good deal. She had been a beautiful woman, gifted with a
splendid voice, admired by many, and loved by not a few. Her devotion to
the Prince was admirable, but her presence at his bedside robbed his
last hours of dignity.
His widow, the Princess Clotilde, retired to the castle of Moncalieri,
where she, too, died a few years ago, after having seen her eldest son,
Prince Victor, married to the Princess Clementine of Belgium. Her
youngest boy, Prince Louis Napoleon, after serving for several years in
the ranks of the Russian army, lives now in comparative solitude, at the
castle of Prangins in Switzerland, having inherited the fortune of his
aunt, the Princess Mathilde. As for Princess Clotilde’s daughter, the
Princess Letitia Bonaparte, she married, under rather singular
circumstances, her uncle, the Duke of Aosta, the brother of King Humbert
of Italy. When I use the words “singular circumstances,” I am alluding
to the popular belief that the Duke had no particular intention of
marrying his niece. The Princess Letitia, however, had inherited the
ardent temperament of her father, Prince Napoleon. The Duke died shortly
after the marriage. At present the widowed Duchess of Aosta spends part
of her time in Turin, and part in Paris, where she has an apartment in
the Hotel de Castiglione, Rue de Rivoli, and enjoys herself as much as
she possibly can, being a general favourite everywhere.
After the Plebiscite, it was generally felt that some changes in the
Cabinet of M. Emile Ollivier had become imperative, especially as its
principal members, M. Buffet and M. Daru, were not entirely in accord
with M. Ollivier, being more or less under the influence of Thiers, who
had been a resolute adversary of the Plebiscite. The portfolio of
Foreign Affairs, becoming vacant owing to the retirement of Comte
Napoleon Daru, was offered to the Duc de Gramont, who accepted.
The Duc de Gramont, among all the people who had rallied to the Empire,
was the one whose adherence had caused the most pleasure at the
Tuileries. He had been the favourite of the Duchess d’Angoulême, the
daughter of Louis XVI. and of Marie Antoinette, and had inspired such a
deep affection in that severe Princess, that she had left him a large
fortune, from which he derived an income of about one million francs.
All his family traditions were connected with those of the House of
Bourbon, and one would have thought that nothing could have made him
swerve from his allegiance to the Comte de Chambord. When he forsook his
former masters, and enlisted among the followers of the Napoleonic
dynasty, there was great rejoicing at this unhoped-for and unexpected
defection, and great bitterness at Frohsdorf. The Empress Eugénie
lavished her best and most amiable smiles on the descendant of the
famous Corisande, and very soon the Duke found himself the cherished
guest at all the festivities that took place, either at Fontainebleau or
at Compiègne, or the Tuileries.
He was made an ambassador at Vienna, no one knew why, presumably for no
other reason than that it was necessary to make something out of him,
and to shower honours and dignities on his head. He did not make himself
liked in Austria, and the statesmen with whom he found himself thrown
into contact did not form a high opinion of his diplomatic talents. He
felt himself secretly despised, and being of an ambitious turn of mind,
he wanted to do something very striking in order to make himself
appreciated by others to the same degree as he appreciated himself.
It was with joy he accepted the portfolio of Foreign Affairs, and the
first time he presented himself before Eugénie after his appointment he
told her rather theatrically: “Les intérêts de la France ont été remis
en de bonnes mains par l’Empereur, Madame, soyez en sûre” (“The
interests of France have been confided by the Emperor into good hands,
rest assured of that, Madame”).
I did not know the Duc de Gramont well, and for that reason refrain from
judging him. He has been accused of being the most guilty among the many
guilty people to whom the responsibility of the unfortunate
Franco-German War may be attributed. Doctor Evans, in the very
interesting memoirs published after his death, relates that at the time
of the Duke’s appointment at the head of foreign affairs, a foreign
statesman whom he knew well used the following ominous words: “Believe
me, this nomination is the forewarning of a Franco-German war.”
It would not be fair to go as far as that, but I will say that the Duke
was attacked more than any of his colleagues with the _folie des
grandeurs_. Moreover, he was suffering acutely from the national vanity
which felt itself thoroughly convinced that nothing could resist the
courage of the French army. It did not strike him that this courage
would be of no avail in the presence of the perfect discipline of the
foe it would have to meet.
I must say, when I look back on this period which preceded the war, that
a general uneasiness had pervaded the public mind ever since the
constitution of the Ministry presided over by Emile Ollivier. No one
trusted it, even among the personal friends of its head, and as a very
clever woman, the Vicomtesse de Janzé, now Princesse de Lucinge, said at
the time: “Its enemies do not trust it, and its supporters do not like
it.” The words were cruel, but very true.
The last twelve months of the Empire’s existence saw vanish from the
political, and indeed from this earthly scene, three men who had once
played a considerable part in the world, and whose names are remembered
to this day: Montalembert, Berryer, and Lamartine. I never saw
Lamartine, but had the honour to know Montalembert well, and to have
been received often by Berryer, whose great figure considerably
impressed me. It was impossible to feel for him anything else but the
deepest, the most sincere respect. He was an admirable example of
fidelity to principles, of convictions that the vicissitudes of life
cannot change, and that even the errors of those who represent them
cannot weaken. He died as he had lived, a Legitimist, believing in the
divine right of kings, and determined to uphold his ideals to the end.
Throughout his career he retained a wide sympathy in his estimates of
men and of things, and an indulgence for the imperfections of those with
whom he came into contact. Though he would permit no compromise with his
own conscience, he realised very well that other people were different,
and that he must make allowances. Though very disdainful, he was not
vindictive in his old age, whatever he might have been in his youth, and
the admirable serenity which pervaded all his judgments and opinions
reminded me very often of the beautiful sunset of a beautiful day.
Montalembert, though broken by illness more than by old age, had,
nevertheless, kept some of that brilliant and caustic wit for which he
had been famous, and which had amused me so much when I first saw him in
the early ’sixties. He was of that school of French Catholics who had
never been able to shake off the influence of Lamennais, and to whom the
exuberance of men like Veuillot was simply insufferable. The question of
the Papal infallibility, which had been submitted by Pius IX. to the
Vatican Council just before his death, had been the last great
preoccupation of Montalembert, who could not reconcile himself to what,
in his eyes, was a disastrous measure. His religion was of the broadest,
and in his last years he looked at things with less partisan enthusiasm,
and more clearness of judgment. I believe that in his inmost heart he
regretted sometimes having violently separated himself from Lamennais,
with whom he had worked on the famous paper _L’Avenir_. He never owned
it, however; he always said that intentions were what must be considered
and thought of, and that it was by their intentions, more than by their
actions, that people ought to be judged. In his way Charles de
Montalembert was just as great a figure as Berryer, whom he only
survived by a few months.
As for Lamartine, his death brought back to the public mind all the
events which had preceded the proclamation of the Second Empire, and
that period during which he had been at the head of the Republic, whose
triumph he was not destined to see. Cruel material losses had reduced
him almost to penury, and his only means of existence was a pension
which, unknown to many, he received from the private purse of the
Emperor, who had had the delicacy to extend it to him in such a way that
the poor poet never knew to whom he owed the gift.
This reminds me of one of the nicest remarks that Napoleon III. ever
made in his life. When he was asked why he insisted so much on Lamartine
never learning who was his secret benefactor, the Emperor replied that
“France owed so much to M. de Lamartine, that it would be a great shame
if he was made to feel he had need to be grateful to its Sovereign.”
The year 1869 had come to an end under a cloud, which even the Empress’s
triumphs in Egypt and at Constantinople had not brightened. Napoleon
III. was worried, not only by the political situation, but also by the
state of his health. Notwithstanding the absence of his Consort he
invited people to Compiègne as usual, and there several persons besides
myself noticed that he looked ill and tired, and that his eyes had an
anxious expression which had never been observable before. He showed
himself even more affectionate than usual towards his son, and was heard
sometimes to sigh whilst watching him. Nevertheless, no one suspected
that anything was radically wrong, and not a single man or woman among
those who were gathered in the Castle thought that it was the last time
that they would be the guests of the Sovereign who welcomed them with
such kindness and affability. Among all those who passed their hours in
amusement in the Salle des Gardes, or in the long gallery where meals
were served, not one recognised that a hand was already writing on the
wall the same fatal words that appeared during the Babylonian monarch’s
last banquet.