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ROUTLEDGE’S IEDITIONS
OF
VICTOR H U GO’S WORKS.
~~&83-
LES MISãRABLES, with nearly 400 Illustrations by DE
#: BAYARD, and others. Royal 8vo, cloth boards. 5 Volumes.
2s. 6d.
In crown 8vo, dark blue cloth, with Illustrations by LUKE FILDES and
other artists. 3s.6d. each.
BY ORDER OF THE KING (L'HOMME QUI RIT).
LES MISãRABLES.
THE TOILERS OF THE SEA.
NOTRE IDA.M.E.
NINETY-TEIREH.
TEIE EIISTORY OF A. CRIME}.
In crown 8vo, fancy boards, 2s. each.
LES MISãRABLES.
NOTEE IDAME,
THE EIISTORY OF A CRIMIE.
NINETY-TEIREE:
THE TOILERS OF TEIE SEA. -
BY ORDER OF THE KING (L'HOMME QUI RIT).
In demy 8vo, fancy covers, 6d. each.
NOTEE DAME}.
TEIH; TOILERS OF TEIE SEA.
THE LAUGHING MAN (L’HOMME QUI RIT).
NINETY-THREE.
LES MISãRABLES, VOL. I.
— VOL. II.
THINGS SEEN
(CHOSES VUES)
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T H IN G. S S E EN
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BY
VICTOR HUGO
VOL. I.
WITH A PORTRAIT
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS
BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL
GLASGOW AND NEW YORK
1887
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viii Contents.
1845.
WILLEMAIN .
1846.
ATTEMPT OF LECOMTE
ATTEMPT OF JOSEPH HENRI
VISIT TO THE CONCIERGERIE
COUNT MORTIER .
SOIREE AT M. GUIZOT’S.
PAGE
82
106
1847.
LORD NORMANBY
DINNER AT M. DE SALVANIDY'S
TUNERAL OF MLLE, MARS
F#TE AT THE DUKE DE MONTPENSIER'S
157
. 162
166
167
171
174
THINGS SE EN.
I 8 3 8.
TALLEYRAND.
May 19th.
IN the Rue Saint-Florentin, there are a palace and a
SeWeI’.
The palace, which is of a rich, handsome and gloomy
style of architecture, was long called : Hôtel de l’In-
fantado; now-a-days may be seen on the frontal of its
principal doorway : Hotel Talleyrand. During the forty
years that he resided in this street, the last tenant
of this palace never, perhaps, cast his eyes upon this
sewer.
He was a strange, redoubtable, and important personage;
his name was Charles Maurice de Périgord; he was of
noble descent like Machiavelli, a priest like Gondi, un-
frocked like Fouché, witty like Voltaire, and lame like
the devil. It might be averred that everything in him
was lame like himself; the nobility which he had placed
at the service of the Republic, the priesthood which he
had dragged through the parade-ground then cast into
the gutter, the marriage which he had broken off through
WOL. I. B
2 7%ings Seen.
a score of exposures and a voluntary separation, the
understanding which he disgraced by acts of baseness.
This man, nevertheless, had grandeur; the splendours
of the two régimes were united in him : he was Prince'
de Vaux in the kingdom of France, and a Prince of the
French Empire. During thirty years, from the interior
of his palace, from the interior of his thoughts, he had
almost controlled Europe. He had permitted himself to
be on terms of familiarity with the Revolution, and had
smiled upon it: ironically, it is true, but the Revolution
had not perceived this. He had come in contact with,
known, observed, penetrated, influenced, set in motion,
fathomed, bantered, inspired all the men of his time,
all the ideas of his time, and there had been moments
in his life when, holding in his hand the four or five
great threads which moved the civilized universe, he
had for his puppet Napoleon I., Emperor of the French,
Ring of Italy, Protector of the Confederation of the
Rhine, Mediator of the Swiss Confederation. That is
the game which was played by this man.
After the Revolution of July, the old race, of which he
was the high chamberlain, having fallen, he found himself
once more on his feet, and said to the people of 1830,
seated bare-armed upon a heap of paving-stones:—
Make me your ambassador
He received the confession of Mirabeau, and the first
confidence of Thiers. He said of himself that he was a
great poet, and that he had composed a trilogy in three
dynasties:—Act I., the Empire of Bonaparte; Act II.,
the House of Bourbon; Act III., the House of Orleans.
He did all this in his palace, and, in this palace, like a
Talleyrand. 3
spider in his web, he allured and caught in succession,
heroes, thinkers, great men, conquerors, Kings, Princes,
Emperors, Bonaparte, Sieyes, Madame de Staël, Chateau-
briand, Benjamin Constant, Alexander of Russia, William
of Prussia, Francis of Austria, Louis XVIII., Louis-
Philippe, all the gilded and glittering flies who buzz
through the history of the last forty years. All this
glistening throng, fascinated by the penetrating eye of
this man, passed in turn under that gloomy entrance
bearing upon the architrave the inscription:—HoTEL
TALLEYRAND.
Well, the day before yesterday, May 17th, 1838,
this man died. Doctors came and embalmed the body.
To do this, they, like the Egyptians, removed the
bowels from the stomach, and the brain from the skull.
The work done, after having transformed the Prince
de Talleyrand into a mummy, and nailed down this
mummy in a coffin lined with white satin, they retired,
leaving upon a table the brain—that brain which had
thought so many things, inspired so many men, erected
so many buildings, led two revolutions, duped twenty
kings, held the world. The doctors being gone, a servant
entered ; he saw what they had left: Hulloa they have
forgotten this. What was to be done with it 2 It
occurred to him that there was a sewer in the street; he
went there, and threw the brain into this sewer.
Finis rerum.
B 2
I 8 39.
DIARY OF A PASSER-BY
DURING THE RIOT OF THE 12TH OF MAY.
SUNDAY, May 12th.
M. DE TogoREs has just left my house. We have been
talking of Spain. To my mind, geographically since
the formation of the continents, historically since the
conquest of the Gauls, politically since the Duke
d’Anjou, Spain forms an integral part of France. Jose
primero is the same fact as Felipe quinto ; the idea of
Louis XIV. was continued by Napoleon. We cannot,
therefore, without grave imprudence neglect Spain. In
illness, she weighs upon us; well and strong, she supports
us. It is one of our members; we cannot amputate it,
it must be tended and cured. Civil war is a gangrene.
Woe betide us if we let it grow worse, it will spread upon
us. French blood is largely mixed with Spanish blood
through Rousillon, Navarre, and Bearn. The Pyrenees
are simply a ligature, efficacious only for a time.
M. de Togores was of my opinion. It was also, he
said, the opinion of his uncle, the Duke de Frias, when
he was President of the Council to Queen Christina.
Diary of a Passer-by. 5
We also spoke of Mdlle. Rachel, whom he con-
sidered mediocre as Eriphila, and whom I had not yet
See]l.
At three o’clock, I return to my study.
My little daughter, in a state of excitement, opens my
door and says: “Papa, do you know what is going on ?
There is fighting at the Pont Saint-Michel.” -
I do not believe a word of it. Fresh details. A cook
in our house and the neighbouring wine-shop keeper
have seen the occurrence. I ask the cook to come up. It
is true; while passing along the Quaides Orfèvres, he saw a
throng of young men firing musket-shots at the Prefecture
of Police. A bullet struck the parapet near him. From
there, the assailants ran to the Place du Châtelet and to
the Hôtel-de-Ville, still firing. They set out from the
Morgue, which the good fellow calls the Morne.
Poor young fools In less than twenty-four hours, a
large number of those who set out from there will have
returned there.
Firing is heard. The houses are in turmoil. Doors
and casements open and shut violently. The women-
servants chat and laugh at the windows. It is said that
the insurrection has spread to the Porte Saint-Martin. I
go out and follow the line of the boulevards. The
weather is fine. There are crowds of promenaders in
their Sunday dress. Drums beat to arms.
At the beginning of the Rue du Pont-aux-Choux are
some groups of people looking in the direction of the
Rue de l’Oseille. There are a great crowd and a
great uproar close to an old fountain which can be
seen from the boulevard, and which forms the angle
6 7%ings Seem.
of an open space in the old Rue du Temple. In the
midst of this hubbub, three or four little tricoloured
flags are seen to pass. Comments. It is perceived that
these flags are simply the ornamentation of a little barrow
in which some trifle or other is being hawked about.
At the beginning of the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire,
groups of people look in the same direction. Some work-
men in blouses pass near to me. I hear one of them
say: “What does that matter to me? I have neither
wife, child, nor mistress.”
Upon the Boulevard du Temple the cafés are closing.
The Cirque Olympique is also closing. The Gaîté holds
out, and will give a performance.
The crowd of promenaders becomes greater at each
step. Many women and children. Three drummers of
the National Guard—old soldiers, with solemn mien,
pass by, beating to arms. The fountain of the Château
d’Eau suddenly throws up its grand holiday streams. At
the back, in the low-lying street, the great railings and
doorway of the Town Hall of the 5th Arrondissement
are closed one inside the other. I notice in the door
jttle loopholes for muskets.
Nothing at the Porte Saint-Martin, but a large crowd
peacefully moving about across regiments of infantry and
cavalry stationed between the two gateways. The Porte
Saint-Martin Theatre closes its box-office. The bills
are being taken down on which I see the words Marie
Tudor. The Omnibuses are running.
Throughout this journey I have not heard any firing,
but the crowd and vehicles make a great noise.
I return to the Marais. In the old Rue du Temple,
Diary of a Passer-ày. 7
the women, in a state of excitement, gossip at the door-
ways. Here are the details. The riot spread throughout
the neighbourhood. Towards three o’clock, two or three
hundred young men, poorly armed, suddenly broke into
the Town Hall of the 7th Arrondissement, disarmed the
guard, and took the muskets. Thence, they ran to the
IHôtel-de-Ville and performed the same freak. As they
entered the guard-room they gaily embraced the officer.
When they had the Hôtel-de-Ville, what was to be done
with it? They went away and left it. If they had
France, would they be less embarrassed with it than
they were with the Hôtel-de-Ville 2 There are among
them many boys, fourteen or fifteen years old. Some do
not know how to load their muskets; others cannot carry
them. One of those who fired in the Rue de Paradis fell
upon his hind-quarters after the shot. Two drummers,
killed at the head of their columns, are placed in the Royal
Printing Establishment, of which the principal doorway is
shut. At this moment, barricades are being made in the
Rue des Quatre Fils, at the corner of all the little Rues
de Bretagne, de Poitou, de Touraine, and there are
groups of persons listening. A grenadier of the National
Guard passes by in uniform, his musket, upon his back,
looking about him with an uneasy look. It is seven
o'clock; from my balcony in the Place Royale platoon-
firing is heard.
Eight p.m.—I follow the boulevards as far as the
Madeleine. They are covered with troops. National
Guards march at the head of all the patrols. The
Sunday promenaders intermingle with all this infantry,
8 Things Seem.
all this cavalry. At intervals, a cordon of soldiers quietly
empty the crowd from one side of the boulevard to the
other. There is a performance at the Vaudeville.
One a.m.—The boulevards are deserted. There re-
main only the regiments, who bivouac at short distances
apart. Coming back, I'passed through the little streets
of the Marais. All is quiet and gloomy. The old Rue
du Temple is as black as a furnace. The lanterns there
have been Smashed.
The Place Royale is a camp. There are four great
fires before the Town Hall, round which the soldiers
chat and laugh, seated upon their knapsacks. The flames
carve a black silhouette of some and cast a glow upon
the faces of the others. The green, fresh leaves of the
spring trees rustle merrily above the braziers. -
I had a letter to post. I took some precautions in the
matter, for everything looks suspicious in the eyes of
these worthy National Guards. I recollect that at the
period of the riots of April, 1834, I passed by a guard-
house of the National Guard with a volume of the works
of the Duke de Saint-Simon. I was pointed out as a
Saint-Simonian, and narrowly escaped being murdered.
Just as I was going indoors again, a squadron of
hussars, held in reserve all day in the courtyard of the
Town Hall, suddenly issued forth and filed past me at a
gallop, going in the direction of the Rue Saint-Antoine.
As I went upstairs, I heard the horses’ footfalls retreating
in the distance. -
Ziary of a Passer-øy. 9.
MONDAY, May 13th, 8 A.M.
Several companies of the National Guard have come and
joined the line regiments encamped in the Place Royale.
A number of men in blouses walk about among the
National Guard, observed and observing with an anxious
look. An omnibus comes out upon the Rue du Pas-de-
la-Mule. It is made to go back. Just now, my floor-
polisher leaning upon his broom, said: “Whose side shall
I be on ?” He added a moment afterwards: “What a
filthy government this is I have thirty francs owing to
me, and cannot get anything out of the people !”
The drums beat to arms.
I breakfast as I read the papers. M. Duflot arrives.
He was yesterday at the Tuileries. It was at the Sunday
reception; the King appeared fatigued—the Queen was
low-spirited. Then he went for a walk about Paris. He
saw in the Rue du Grand-Hurleur a man who had been
killed—a workman, stretched upon the ground, in his
Sunday clothing, his forehead pierced by a bullet. It
was evening. By his side was a lighted candle. The
dead man had rings on his fingers, and his watch in his
fob-pocket, from which issued a great bunch of trinkets.
Yesterday at half-past three o’clock, at the first musket-
shots, the King sent for Marshal Soult, and said to him :
“Marshal, the waters become troubled. Some ministers
must be fished up.”
An hour afterwards, the Marshal came to the King
and said, as he rubbed his hands, in his Southern accent :
“This time, Sire, I think we shall manage the business.”
There is, in fact, a ministry this morning in the
Monitewr.
IO Things Seem.
Mid-day.—I go out. Firing can be heard in the Rue
Saint-Louis. The men in blouses have been turned out
of the Place Royale, and now only those persons who
live there are allowed to enter the street. The rioting is
in the Rue Saint-Louis. It is feared that the insurgents
will penetrate one by one to the Place Royale and fire
upon the troops from behind the pillars of the arcades.
Two hundred and twelve years, two months, and two
days ago to-day, Beuvron, Bussy d'Amboise, and Buquet
on the one hand, and Boutteville, Deschapelles, and
Laberthe on the other, fought to the death with Swords
and daggers in broad daylight, at this same time and in
this same Place Royale. Pierre Corneille was then
twenty-one years of age. I hear a National Guard ex-
press regret at the disappearance of the railing which has
just been foolishly pulled down, and of which the frag-
ments are still at this moment lying upon the pavement.
Another National Guard says: “I myself am a
Tepublican, as is natural, for I am a Swiss.”
The approaches to the Place Royale are deserted.
The firing continues, very sustained, and very close at
hand.
In the Rue Saint-Gilles, before the door of the house
occupied in 1784 by the famous Countess Lamothe-
Valois, of the Diamond Necklace affair, a Municipal
Guard bars my passage.
I reach the Rue Saint-Louis by the Rue des Douze-
Portes. The Rue Saint-Louis has a singular appear-
ance. At one of the ends can be seen a company of
soldiers, who block up the whole street and advance
slowly, pointing their muskets. I am hemmed in by
Diary of a Passer-by. II
people running away in every direction. A young man
has just been killed at the corner of the Rue des Douze-
Portes.
It is impossible to go any further. I return in the
direction of the boulevard.
At the corner of the Rue du Harlay, there is a cordon
of National Guards. One of them, who wears the blue
ribbon of July, stops me suddenly. “You cannot pass l’’
And then his voice suddenly became milder: “Really,
I do not advise you to go that way, Sir.” I raise my
eyes: it is my floor-polisher.
I proceed further.
I arrive in the Rue Saint-Claude. I have only gone
forward a few steps when I see all the foot-passengers
hurrying. A company of infantry has just appeared at
the end of the street, near the church. Two old women,
one of whom carries a mattress, utter exclamations
of terror. I continue to make my way towards the
soldiers, who bar the end of the street. Some young
scamps in blouses are bolting in every direction near
me. Suddenly the soldiers bring down their muskets
and present them. I have only just time to jump
behind a street post, which protects, at all events, my
legs. I am fired upon. No one falls in the streets. I
make towards the soldiers, waving my hat, that they
may not fire again. As I come close up to them, they
open their ranks for me, I pass, and not a word is
exchanged between us.
The Rue Saint-Louis is deserted. It has the appear-
ance which it presents at four o'clock in the morning in
summer: shops shut, windows shut, no one about, broad
I 2 Things Seen.
daylight. In the Rue du Roi-Doré, the neighbours chat
at their doorways. Two horses, unharnessed from some
cart, of which a barricade has been made, pass up the
Rue Saint-Jean-Saint-François, followed by a bewildered
carter. A large body of National Guards and troops of
the line appear to be in ambush at the end of the Rue
Saint-Anastase. I make inquiries. About half-an-hour
ago, seven or eight young workmen came there, dragging
muskets, which they hardly knew how to load. They
were youths of fourteen or fifteen years of age. They
silently prepared their arms in the midst of the people of
the neighbourhood and the passers-by, who looked on as
they did so, then they broke into a house where there
were only an old woman and a little child. There they
sustained a siege of a few moments. The firing in my
direction was aimed at some of them who were running
away up the Rue Saint-Claude.
All the shops are closed, except the wine-shop where
the insurgents drank, and where the National Guard are
drinking.
Three o’clock.-I have just explored the boulevards.
They are covered with people and soldiers. Platoon-
firing is heard in the Rue Saint-Martin. Before the
windows of Fieschi, I saw a lieutenant-general, in full
uniform, pass by, surrounded by officers and followed by
a squadron of very fine dragoons, Sabre in hand. There is
a sort of camp at the Château d'Eau ; the actresses of the
Ambigu are on the balcony of their green-room, looking
on. No theatre on the boulevards will give a perform-
ance this evening.
Diary of a Passer-ày. I 3
All signs of disorder have disappeared in the Rue
Saint-Louis. The rioting is concentrated in the great
central markets. A National Guard said to me just now :
“There are in the barricades over there more than four
thousand of them.” I said nothing in reply to the worthy
fellow. In moments like this, all eyes are overflowing
vessels.
In a house in course of erection in the Rue des
Coutures-Saint-Gervais, the builder's men have resumed
work. A man has just been killed in the Rue de la Perle.
In the Rue des Trois-Pavillons, I see some little girls
playing at battledore and shuttlecock. In the Rue de
l'Echarpe there is a laundryman in a fright, who says he
has seen cannon go by. He counted eight.
Eight p.m.—The Marais remains tolerably quiet. I
am informed that there are cannon in the Place de la
Bastille. I proceed there, but cannot make out any-
thing ; the twilight is too deep. Several regiments
stand in silent readiness, infantry and cavalry. A crowd
assembles at the sight of the waggons from which
supplies are distributed to the men. The soldiers make
ready to bivouac. The unloading of the wood for the
night-fires is heard.
Midnight.—Complete battalions go the rounds upon the
boulevards. The bivouacs are lighted up in all directions,
and throw reflections as of a conflagration on the fronts of
the houses. A man dressed as a woman has just passed
rapidly by me, with a white hat and a very thick black
veil, which completely hides his face. As the church
I4. 7%ings Seen.
clocks were striking twelve I distinctly heard, amidst the
silence of the city, two very long and sustained reports of
platoon-firing. -
I listen as a long file of carts, making a heavy iron
clatter, pass in the direction of the Rue du Temple.
Are these cannon ?
Nine a.m.—I return home. I notice from a distance
that the great bivouac fire lighted at the corner of the Rue
Saint-Louis and the Rue de l’Echarpe has disappeared.
As I approach, I see a man stooping before the fountain and
holding something under the water of the spout. I look.
The man looks uneasy. I see that he is extinguishing at
the fountain some half-burnt logs of wood; then he loads
them upon his shoulders and makes off. They are the
last brands which the soldiers have left on the pavement
on quitting their bivouacs. In fact, there is nothing left
now but a few heaps of red ashes. The soldiers have
returned to their barracks. The riot is at an end. It
will at least have served to give warmth to a poor wretch
in winter time.
I 84. O.
FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON.
NOTES TAKEN ON THE SPOT.
December 15th.
I HAVE heard the drums beat to arms in the streets
since half-past six o'clock in the morning. I go out at
eleven. The streets are deserted, the shops shut ; no
passer-by is to be seen save, perhaps, an old woman here
and there. It is evident that all Paris has poured forth
towards one side of the city like fluid in a slanting vessel.
It is very cold; a bright sun, slight mists overhead. The
gutters are frozen. As I reach the Louis-Philippe bridge
a cloud descends, and a few snowflakes, driven by the
northerly wind, lash me in the face. Passing near Notre-
Dame I notice that the great bell does not ring.
In the Rue Saint-André-des-Arts the fevered com-
motion of the fête begins to manifest itself. Aye, it is a
fête, the fête of an exiled coffin returning in triumph.
Three men of the lower classes, of those poor workmen
in rags who are cold and hungry the whole winter-time,
walk in front of me rejoicing. One of them jumps about,
dances and goes through a thousand absurd antics, crying:
“Wive l'Empereur !” Pretty grisettes, smartly dressed
I 6 7%ings Seen.
pass by, led by their student companions. Hired carri"
ages are making rapidly in the direction of the Invalides.
In the Rue du Four the snow thickens. The sky becomes
black. The snowflakes are interspersed with white tear-
drops. Heaven itself seems to wish to hang out signs of
mourning.
The storm, however, lasts but a short time. A pale
streak of light illumines the angle of the Rue de Grenelle
and the Rue du Bac, and there the Municipal Guards
stop the vehicles. I pass by. Two great empty waggons
conducted by artillerymen come from behind me, and
return to their quarters at the end of the Rue de Grenelle
just as I come out on the Place des Invalides. Here
I fear at first that all is over, and that the Emperor
has passed by, so many are the passers-by coming
towards me who appear to be returning. It is only the
crowd flowing back, driven by a cordon of Municipal
Guards on foot. I show my ticket for the first platform
on the left, and pass the barrier.
These platforms are immense wooden structures,
covering, from the quay to the dome-shaped building,
all the grass-plots of the Esplanade. There are three of
these on each side.
At the moment of my arrival, the side of the platforms
on the right as yet hides the square from my view. I
hear a formidable and dismal noise. It seems like innu-
merable hammers beating time upon the boarding. It is
the hundred thousand spectators crowded upon the
platforms, who, being frozen by the northerly wind, are
stamping to keep themselves warm until such time as the
procession shall arrive. I climb up on the platform.
Puneral of AWapoleon. I7
The spectacle is no less strange. The women, nearly all
of them wearing heavy boots, and veiled like the female
ballad-singers of the Pont-Neuf, are hidden beneath
great heaps of furs and cloaks; the men display necker-
chiefs of extraordinary size.
The decoration of the square, good and bad. Shab-
biness surmounting magnificence. On the two sides of
the avenue two rows of figures, heroic, colossal, pale in
this cold sunlight, producing rather a fine impression.
They appear to be of white marble ; but this marble is
of plaster. At the extremity, opposite the building, the
statue of the Emperor in bronze ; this bronze is also ol
plaster. In each gap between the statues a pillar of
painted cloth, and gilded in rather bad taste, surmounted
by a brazier, just now filled with snow. Behind the
statues, the platforms and the crowd; between the
statues, a straggling file of the National Guard ; above
the platforms, masts, on top of which grandly fluttered
sixty long tricoloured pennants.
It appears that there has been no time to finish the
decoration of the principal entrance to the building.
Above the railings has been roughly constructed a sort
of funeral triumphal arch of painted cloth and crape, with
which the wind plays as with old linen clothes hung out
from the garret of a hovel. A row of poles, plain and
bare, rise above the cannon, and, from a distance, look
like those small sticks which little children plant in the
sand. Cloths and rags, which are supposed to be black
drapery with silver spangles, flutter and flap together
feebly between these poles. At the end, the Dome, with
its flag and mourning drapery, sparkling with a metallic
VOL. I. - C.
I 8 Z%ings Seem.
lustre, subdued by the mist in a brilliant sky, has a
Sombre and splendid appearance.
It is mid-day. -
The cannon at the building is fired at quarter-hour
intervals. The crowd stamp their feet. Gendarmes,
disguised in plain clothes, but betraying themselves by
their spurs and the stocks of their uniforms, walk hither
and thither. In front of me a ray of light shows up
vividly a rather poor statue of Joan of Arc, who holds in
her hand a palm-branch, which she appears to use as a
shade, as though the sun affected her eyes.
At a few steps from the statue a fire, at which a number
of men of the National Guard warm their feet, is alight
in a heap of sand.
From time to time military bandsmen invade an
orchestra, raised between the two platforms on the
opposite side, perform a funeral flourish, then come
down again hastily and disappear in the crowd, only to
reappear the moment after. They leave the music for the
wine-shop.
A hawker passes along the platform, selling dirges at a
half-penny each, and accounts of the ceremony. I buy
two of these documents.
All eyes are fixed upon the corner of the Quai d'Orsay,
whence the procession is to come out. The cold adds to
the feeling of impatience. Black and white lines of
vapour ascend here and there through the thick mist of
the Champs-Élysées, and detonations are heard in the
distance. - • ‘
Of a sudden, the National Guards hasten to arms. An
orderly officer crosses the avenue at a gallop. A line is
Puneral of Napoleon. I9
formed. Workmen place ladders against the pillars and
begin to light the braziers. A salvo of heavy artillery
explodes loudly at the east corner of the Invalides; a
dense yellow smoke, mingled with golden flashes, fills this
whole corner. From the position in which I am placed,
the firing of the guns can be seen. They are two fine
old engraved cannon of the seventeenth century, which
one hears from the noise are of bronze. The procession
approaches.
It is half-past twelve.
At the far end of the esplanade, near the river, a
double row of mounted grenadiers, with yellow shoulder-
belts, solemnly debouch. This is the Gendarmerie of the
Seine. It is the head of the procession. At this moment
the sun does its duty, and appears in its glory. It is the
month of Austerlitz.
After the bearskins of the Gendarmerie of the Seine,
the brass helmets of the Paris Municipal Guard, then the
tricoloured pennants of the lancers, fluttering in the
air in charming fashion. Flourishes of trumpets and
beating of drums.
A man in a blue blouse climbs over the outside wood-
work, at the risk of breaking his neck on the platform in
front of me. No One assists him. A spectator in
white gloves looks at him as he does so, and does not
hold out a hand to him. The man, however, reaches
his destination.
The procession, including generals and marshals, has
an admirable effect. The Sun, striking the cuirasses of
the carabiniers, lights up the breast of each of them with
a dazzling star. The three military schools pass by with
C 2
2O 7%ings Seem.
erect and solemn bearing, then the artillery and infantry,
as though going into action. The ammunition waggons
have the spare wheel at the rear, the soldiers carry their
knapsacks upon their backs. A short distance off, a
great statue of Louis XIV., of ample dimensions and
tolerably good design, gilded by the sun, seems to view
with amazement all this splendour.
The mounted National Guard appear. Uproar in
the crowd. It is sufficiently well disciplined notwith-
standing, but it is an inglorious regiment, and this
detracts from the effect of a procession of this kind.
People laugh. I hear this conversation: “Just look at
that fat colonel ! How strangely he holds his sword l’’
“Who is that fellow 2 ” “That is Montalivet.”
Interminable legions of the infantry of the National
Guard now march past, with arms reversed, like the line
regiments, beneath the shadow of this grey sky. A
mounted National Guard, who lets fall his shako, and
so gallops bareheaded for some time, although successful
in catching it, causes much amusement to the gallery,
that is to say, to a hundred thousand people.
From time to time the procession halts, then con-
tinues on its way. The lighting of the braziers is
completed, and they smoke between the statues like
great bowls of punch. -
Expectation rises higher. Here is the black carriage
with silver ornamentation of the chaplain of the Belle-
Poule, in the inside of which is seen a priest in mourn-
ing; then the great black velvet coach with mirror panels
of the St. Helena Commission, four horses to each of
these two carriages.
Aruneral of AVapoleon. 2 I
Suddenly the cannon are discharged simultaneously
from three different points on the horizon. This triple
sound hems in the ear in a sort of triangle, formidable
and superb. Drums beat a salute in the distance. The
funeral carriage of the Emperor appears. The sun,
obscured until this moment, reappears at the same time.
The effect is prodigious.
In the distance is seen, in the mist and sunlight,
against the grey and russet background of the trees in
the Champs-Élysées, beyond the great white phantom-like
statues, a kind of golden mountain slowly moving. All
that can be distinguished of it as yet is a sort of lumi-
mous glistening, which makes now stars, now lightning,
sparkle over the whole surface of the car. A mighty
roar follows this apparition. It would seem as though
this car draws after it the acclamation of the whole city
as a torch draws after it its smoke.
As it turns in the avenue of the esplanade, it remains
for a few moments at a standstill, through some con-
tingency, before a statue which stands at the corner of
the avenue and of the quay. I have since ascertained
that this statue was that of Marshal Ney.
At the moment when the funeral car appeared, it was
half-past one.
The procession resumes its progress. The car
advances slowly. The shape begins to display itself.
Here are the saddle-horses of the marshals and generals
who hold the cords of the Imperial pall. Here are the
eighty-six subaltern legionaries bearing the banners of
the eighty-six departments. Nothing prettier to be con-
ceived than this square, above which flutter a forest of
22 7%ings Seem.
flags. It might be supposed that a gigantic field of
dahlias is on the march.
Here comes a white horse covered from head to foot
with a violet pall, accompanied by a chamberlain in pale
blue, embroidered with silver, and led by two footmen,
dressed in green, with gold lace. It is the Emperor's
livery. A shudder goes through the crowd. It is Napo-
leon's charger The majority firmly believed it. Had
the horse been ridden only for two years by the Emperor,
he would be thirty years old, which is a good age for a
horse.
The fact is that this palfrey is a good old supernume-
rary horse, who has filled for some ten years the office of
charger in all the military burials over which the Funeral
Administration presides. This charger of straw carries
on his back the genuine saddle of Bonaparte at Marengo :
a crimson velvet saddle with a double row of gold lace,
tolerably well worn.
After the horse come, in close and regular formation,
the five hundred sailors of the Belle-Poule, youthful
faces for the most part, dressed for action, with round
jackets, round varnished hats, each with his pistol in his
belt, his boarding-axe in hand, and at his side a sword, a
cutlass with a large handle of polished iron.
The salvoes continue. At this moment the story goes
the round of the crowd that the first discharge of cannon
at the Invalides has cut off the legs of a Municipal Guard
at the thighs. By an oversight, the gun had not been
unloaded. It is added that a man has fallen down in the
Place Louis XV. under the wheels of the cars, and has
been crushed to death.
Aſuneral of AWapoleon. 2 J
3
The car is now very near. It is almost immediately
preceded by the officers of the Belle-Poule, under the
command of the Prince de Joinville, on horseback. The
Prince de Joinville's face is covered with a beard (fair),
which appears to me contrary to the rules of the naval
forces. He wears for the first time the grand ribbon of
the Legion of Honour. Hitherto, he figured upon the
roll of the Legion only as a plain knight.
Arriving immediately in front of me, a slight momentary
interruption, I know not from what cause, takes place ;
the car halts. It remains stationary for a few minutes
between the statue of Joan of Arc and the statue of
Charles V. -
I can survey it at leisure. The effect, as a whole,
is not wanting in grandeur. It is an enormous mass,
gilt all over, of which the tiers rise pyramid-like above
the four great gilt wheels which bear it. Under the
violet pall, studded with bees, which covers it from top to
bottom, some tolerably fine details may be observed: the
wild-looking eagles of the base, the fourteen Victories
of the top-piece bearing upon a golden support the repre-
sentation of a coffin. The real coffin is invisible. It has
been deposited inside the basement, which detracts from
the sensational effect. That is the grave defect of this
car. It conceals what one would wish to see, what
France has demanded, what the people expect, what
every eye seeks—the coffin of Napoleon.
Upon the sham sarcophagus have been deposited the
insignia of the Emperor, the crown, the sword, the
sceptre, and the robe. In the gilded orifice which divides
the Victories on the summit from the eagles at the base,
24 Things Seem.
can be distinctly seen, in spite of the gilding already
partly chipped off, the joins in the deal planks. Another
defect. This gold is merely imitation. Deal and paste-
board, that is the reality. I could have wished for
the Emperor's funeral car a splendour of a genuine
tharacter. -
Nevertheless, the greater part of this sculptural com-
position has some boldness and artistic merit, although
the conception of the design and the ornamentation
hesitate between the Renaissance and the Tococo.
Two immense bundles of flags, conquered from all the
nations of Europe, rise in glorious splendour from the
front and rear of the car.
The car, with all its load, weighs twenty-six thousand
pounds. The coffin alone weighs five thousand pounds.
Nothing more surprising and more superb could be
imagined than the set of sixteen horses who draw the
car. They are terrific creatures, adorned with white
plumes flowing down to the haunches, and covered from
head to foot with a splendid caparison of gold-cloth,
leaving only their eyes visible, which gives them an
indescribable air of phantom steeds.
Valets in the Imperial livery lead this imposing
cavalcade.
On the other hand, the worthy and venerable generals
who hold the cords of the pall have an appearance as far
removed from the fantastic as could well be conceived.
At the head, two marshals, the Duke de Reggio,” diminu-
* The Duke de Reggio is not really blind in one eye. A few
years ago, as the result of a cold, the marshal had an attack of local
paralysis which affected the right cheek and pupil. Since that time
Aſumeral of AVapoleon. 25
tive and blind in one eye, to the right; to the left, Count
Molitor; in the rear, on the right, an admiral, Baron
Duperre, a stout and jovial sailor; on the left, a lieu-
tenant-general, Count Bertrand—old, exhausted, broken-
down, a noble and illustrious figure. All four wear the
red ribbon.
The car, let it be said by the way, was not intended to
be drawn by more than eight horses. Eight horses is
a symbolical number which has a significance in the
ceremonial. Seven horses, nine horses, are a wag-
goner's team ; sixteen horses are for a stonemason's
dray; eight horses are for an Emperor.”
he cannot open the one eye. However, throughout this ceremony he
displayed wonderful courage. Covered with wounds and seventy-
five years of age, he remained in the open air, in a temperature of
fourteen degrees, from eight o'clock in the morning until two o'clock
in the afternoon, in full uniform and without a cloak, out of respect
for his general. He made the journey from Courbevoie to the
Invalides on foot, on his three broken legs, as the Duchess de Reggio
wittily said to me. The Marshal, in fact, having suffered two frac-
tures of the right leg and one of the left, has really had three legs
broken. -
After all, it is remarkable that, out of so many veterans exposed
for so great a length of time to this severe cold, no mishap should
have happened to any one of them. Strange to say, this funeral did
not bury anybody.
* 29th of December, 1840.-It has since been ascertained that the
magnificent saddle-cloths of gold brocade which caparisoned the
sixteen horses were of spun glass. An unworthy saving. An un-
seemly deception. This singular announcement now appears in the
newspapers —
“A large number of persons who came to the spun-glass warehouse
at No. 97, Rue de Charonne, to see the mantle which adorned the
sides of the funeral car of Napoleon, wished to keep a souvenir of
the great ceremony by buying a few eagles from this mantle. The
manager of the establishment, who, in obedience to the command of
26 Things Seem.
The spectators upon the platforms have continued
without intermission to stamp with the soles of their
boots, except at the moment when the catafalque passed
before them. Then only are the feet silent. One can
tell that a great thought flashes through the crowd.
The car has resumed its progress, the drums beat a
salute, the firing of the cannon is more rapid. Napoleon
is at the gates of the Invalides. It is ten minutes to
two. -
Behind the bier come in civilian dress all the survivors
of the Emperor's household, then all the survivors of the
soldiers of the Guard, clad in their glorious uniforms,
already unfamiliar to us.
The remainder of the procession, made up of regiments
of the regular army and the National Guard, occupies, it
is said, the Quai d'Orsay, the Louis XVI. bridge, the Place
de la Concorde and the Avenue des Champs-Élysées aS
far as the Arc de l'Etoile.
The car does not enter the courtyard of the Invalides;
the railings planted by Louis XIV. are too low. It
turns off to the right; sailors are seen to enter into
the basement and issue forth again with the coffin, then
disappear beneath the porch erected at the entrance to
the enclosure. They are in the courtyard.
All is over for the spectators outside. They descend
very noisily and hurriedly from the platforms. Knots of
the government, was obliged to refuse them, is now in a position
to accede to their request.”
So we have a bronze statue in plaster, solid gold Victories in
pasteboard, an Imperial mantle in spun glass, and—a fortnight after
the ceremony—eagles for sale.
Funeral of Napoleon. 27
people stop at short distances apart before some posters
stuck to the boards and running thus: Leroy, refresh-
ment contractor, Rue de la Serpe, near the Invalides.
Choice wines and hot pastry.
I can now examine the decoration of the avenue.
Nearly all these statues in plaster are bad. Some are
ridiculous. The Louis XIV. which, at a distance, had
solidity, is grotesque at near sight. Macdonald is a good
likeness. Mortier the same. Ney would be so if he
had not had so high a forehead given to him. In fact,
the sculptor has made it exaggerated and ridiculous in
the attempt to be melancholy. The head is too large.
In reference to this, it is said that in the hurry of
improvising the statues, the measurements have been
given incorrectly. On the day when they had to be
delivered, the statuary sent in a Marshal Ney a foot too
tall. What did the people of the Beaux-Arts department
do? They sawed out of the statue a slice of the stomach
twelve inches wide, and stuck the two pieces together
again as well as they were able. -
The bronze-coloured plaster of the statue of the
Emperor is stained and covered with spots, which make
the imperial robe look like a patchwork of old green
baize.
This reminds me, for the generation of ideas is a
strange mystery, that this summer, at the residence of
M. Thiers, I heard Marchand, the Emperor's valet-de-
chambre, say how Napoleon loved old coats and old hats.
I understand and share this taste. For a brain which
works, the pressure of a new hat is insupportable.
28 7%ings Seen.
The Emperor, said Marchand, took away with him
when he quitted France, three coats, two surtouts and
two hats; he got through his six years at St. Helena
with this wardrobe; he did not wear any uniform.
Marchand added other curious details. The Emperor,
at the Tuileries, often appeared to rapidly change his
attire. In reality this was not so. The Emperor usually
wore civilian dress, that is to say, breeches of white
kersey mere, white silk stockings, shoes with buckles.
But there was always in the Inext apartment a pair
of riding-boots, lined with white silk up to the knees.
When anything happened which made it necessary
for the Emperor to mount on horseback, he took off
his slippers, put on his boots, got into his uniform, and
was transformed into a soldier. Then he returned home,
took off his boots, put on his slippers again, and became
once more a civilian. The white breeches, the stockings
and the shoes were never worn more than one day. On
the morrow these Imperial cast-off clothes belonged to
the valet-de-chambre.
It is three o'clock. A salvo of artillery announces
that the ceremony at the Invalides is at an end. I meet
B. . . He has just come out. The sight of the coffin
has produced an ineffable impression.
The words which were spoken were simple and grand.
The Prince de Joinville said to the king: “Sire, I present
to you the body of the Emperor Napoleon.” The king re-
plied: “I receive it in the name of France.” Then he
said to Bertrand ; “General, place upon the coffin the
Aſumera/ of AWaffoleon. 29
9
glorious sword of the Emperor.” And to Gourgaud :
“General, place upon the coffin the hat of the Emperor.”
Mozart's Requiem had but little effect. Beautiful
music already faded with age. Music too, alas, becomes
faded with age 1
The catafalque was only finished one hour before the
arrival of the coffin. B. . . was in the church at eight
o'clock in the morning. It was as yet only half draped,
and ladders, tools and workmen encumbered it. The
crowd were coming in during this time. Large gilt palms
of five or six feet in height were tried on the four corners
of the catafalque. But after being put in position they
were seen to produce but a poor effect. They were
removed.*
The Prince de Joinville, who had not seen his family
for six months, went up and kissed the hand of the
Queen, and heartily shook hands with his brothers and
sisters. The Queen received him in stately fashion with-
out demonstration, as a Queen rather than as a mother.
During this time, the archbishops, curés and priests
sang the Requiescat in pace around the coffin of Napoleon.
The procession was fine, but too exclusively military,
sufficing for Bonaparte, not for Napoleon. All the
bodies in the State should have figured in it, at least
* 23rd of December.—Since the transfer of the coffin, the church
of the Invalides is open to the crowd who visit it. There pass
through it daily a hundred thousand persons, from ten o'clock in the
morning until four o'clock in the evening. The lighting of the
chapel costs the State 350 francs a day. M. Duchatel, Minister of
the Interior (who it may be stated by the way is said to be a son of
the Emperor), groans aloud at this expense.
3O 7%ings Seen.
by deputy. The fact is, the thoughtlessness of the
government has been extreme. It was in haste to be
done with the affair. Philippe de Ségur, who followed
the car as a former aide-de-camp of the Emperor, told
me how at Courbevoie, on the banks of the river, in an
atmosphere of fourteen degrees, this morning, there was
not even a waiting-room with a fire in it. These two
hundred veterans of the Emperor's household had to
wait for an hour and a half in a kind of Greek
temple exposed to the wind from all quarters of the
Compass.
The same neglect was shewn with respect to the steam-
boats which took the body from Havre to Paris, a journey
remarkable nevertheless for the earnest and solemn
demeanour of the riverside populations. None of these
boats was suitably fitted up. Victuals were wanting. No
beds. Orders given that no one should land. The
IPrince de Joinville was obliged to sleep, one of a party
of twenty, in a common room upon a table. Others slept
undermeath. The men slept on the ground, and the
more fortunate upon benches or chairs. It seemed as
though those in authority were in ill-humour. The
Trince complained openly of it, and said: In this affair
all that emanates from the people is great, all that
emanates from the government is paltry.
Wishing to reach the Champs-Élysées, I crossed the
suspension bridge where I paid my half-penny. A real
act of generosity, for the mob which crowds the bridge
neglects to pay.
The legions and regiments are in battle array in the
Funeral of Napoleon. J
* I
Avenue de Neuilly. The avenue is decorated, or, rather,
dishonoured along its entire length by fearful statues in
plaster representing figures of Fame and triumphal
columns crowned with golden eagles and placed in a
blank space upon grey marble pedestals. The street-
boys amuse themselves by making holes in this marble
which is made of cloth.
Upon each column are seen between two bundles of
tricoloured flags, the name and the date of one of the
victories of Bonaparte.
An inferior theatrical looking group occupies the top of
the Arc de Triomphe the Emperor erect upon a car sur-
rounded by figures of Fame, having on his right, Glory,
and on his left, Grandeur. What is the meaning of a
statue of grandeur 2 How can grandeur be expressed
by means of a statue 2 Is it in making it larger than
the others ? This is monumental nonsense.
This scenic effect, poorly gilt, is turned towards Paris.
By going to the other side of the Arc, one can see the
back of it. It is a regular theatrical set piece. On the
side looking towards Neuilly, the Emperor, the Glories,
and the Fames become simply pieces of framework
clumsily shaped.
With regard to this matter, the figures in the Avenue
des Invalides have been strangely chosen, be it said by
the way. The published list gives bold and singular
conjunctions of names.—Here is one : Lobau. Charle-
Imagme. Hugues Capet.
A few months ago, I was taking a walk in these same
Champs-Elysées with Thiers, then Prime Minister. He
32. 7%ings Seen.
would without doubt have managed the ceremony with
greater success. He would have put his heart into it.
He had ideas. He loves and appreciates Napoleon. He
told me some anecdotes of the Emperor. M. de Rémusat
allowed him to see the unpublished memoirs of his mother.
There are in them a hundred details. The Emperor
was good-natured and loved to tease people. To tease
is the malice of good men. Caroline, his sister, wanted
to be a Queen. He made her a Queen–Queen of Naples.
But the poor woman had many troubles from the moment
she had a throne, and became as she sat on it somewhat
careworn and faded. One day, Talma was breakfasting
with Napoleon—etiquette permitted Talma to come only
to breakfast. Hereupon, Queen Caroline, just arrived
from Naples, pale and fatigued, calls upon the Emperor.
He looks at her, then turns towards Talma, much em-
barrassed between these two majesties. “My dear Talma,”
he said, “they all want to be Queens, they lose their
beauty in consequence. Look at Caroline. She is a
Queen ; she is ugly.”
As I pass, the demolition is just being finished of the
innumerable stands, draped with black, and ornamented
with rout seats, which have been erected by speculators
at the entrance to the Avenue de Neuilly. Upon one of
them, facing the Beaujon garden, I read this inscription:
—Seats to let. Austerlitz grand Stand. Apply to M.
Berthellemot, confectioner.
On the other side of the Avenue, upon a showman's
booth adorned with frightful pictorial signs representing,
one of them the death of the Emperor, the other the
Funeral of AVapoleon. 33
encounter at Mazagran, I read another inscription:
Napoleon in his coffin. Three half-pence.
Men of the lower classes pass by and sing: Long live
my great Napoleon / Long live old Napoleon / Hawkers
make their way through the crowd, shouting: Tobacco
and cigars Others offer to the passers-by some kind of
hot and steaming liquor out of a copper tea-urn covered
with a black cloth. An old woman at a stall coolly puts
on an under-garment in the midst of the hurly-burly.
Towards five o'clock, the funeral car, now empty, returns
by way of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées to be put
up under the Arc de Triomphe. This is a capital idea.
But the magnificent spectre-horses are tired. They walk
with difficulty, and slowly, notwithstanding all the efforts
of the drivers. Nothing stranger can be imagined than
the shouts of hu-ho and dia-hu lavished upon this
Imperial, but at the same time fantastic, team.
I return home by the boulevards. The crowd there is
immense; suddenly it falls back and looks round with a
certain air of respect. A man passes proudly by in its
midst. He is an old huzzar of the Imperial Guard, a
veteran of great height and lusty appearance. He is in
full uniform, with tight-fitting red trousers, a white
waistcoat with gold braid, a sky-blue pelisse, a busby
with a grenade and plaited loop, his sword at his side, his
sabretache beating upon his thighs, an eagle upon his
satchel. All round him the little children cry: Vive
l'Empereur !
It is certain that all this ceremony has been curiously
like a juggle. The government appeared to fear the
phantom which it had raised. It seemed as though the
WOL. I. D
34 Things Seen.
object was both to show and to hide Napoleon. Every-
thing which would have been too grand or too touching
was left out of sight. The real and the grandiose were
concealed beneath more or less splendid coverings, the
Imperial procession was juggled into the military proces-
sion, the army was juggled into the National Guard, the
Chambers were juggled into the Invalides, the coffin was
juggled into the cenotaph.
What was wanted on the contrary was that Napoleon
should be taken up frankly, honoured, treated royally and
popularly as Emperor, and then strength would have
been found just where a failure almost took place.
To-day, the 8th of May, I returned to the Invalides
to see the St. Jérôme chapel, where the Emperor is
temporarily placed. All traces of the ceremony of the
15th of December have disappeared from the esplanade.
The quincunxes have been cut out afresh; the grass,
however, has not yet grown again. There was some sun-
shine, accompanied now and then by clouds and rain.
The trees were green and lusty. The poor old pensioners
were talking quietly to a group of youngsters, and walking
in their little gardens full of bouquets. It is that
delightful period of the year when the late lilacs have
shed their petals, when the early laburnums are in bloom.
The great shadows of the clouds pass rapidly across the
forecourt, where stands under an archivault on the first
floor, a plaster equestrian statue of Napoleon, a rather
pitiful counterpart to the equestrian Louis XIV. boldly
chiselled in stone over the great portal.
All round the court, below the eaves of the building,
Aſuneral of Wapoleon. 35
are still stuck up, as the last vestiges of the funeral, the
long narrow strips of black cloth upon which had been
painted in golden letters, three by three, the names of the
generals of the Revolution and the Empire. The wind
begins, however, to tear them down here and there. On
one of these strips, of which the torn end floated in mid-
air, I read these three names:
SAURET-CHAMBURE–HUG, . . .
The end of the third name had been torn and carried off
by the wind. Was it Hugo or Huguet 2
Some young soldiers were entering the church. I
followed these tourlourous, as the phrase goes now-a-days.
For in time of war the soldier calls the citizen a pékin, in
time of peace the citizen calls the soldier a tourlourou.
The church was bare and cold, almost deserted. At
the end, a large gray cloth covering, stretched from top to
bottom, hid the enormous archivault of the dome. Behind
this covering could be heard the muffled and almost
funereal sound of hammers.
I walked about for an instant or two reading upon the
pillars the names of all the warriors buried there.
All along the nave above our heads, the flags conquered
from the enemy, that accumulation of splendid tatters,
were gently wafted near the roof. In the intervals between
the blows of the hammers, I heard a muttering in a corner
of the church. It was an old woman at confession.
The soldiers went out and myself behind them. They
turned to the right along the Metz corridor, and we
mixed with a tolerably large and very well-dressed crowd
D 2
36 Things Seem.
going in that direction. The corridor leads to the inner
court in which the minor entrance to the Dome is situated.
There I found three more statues, of lead, taken I
know not where from, which I remember to have seen on
this same spot as a little child in 1815, at the time of the
mutilation of buildings, dynasties, and nations, which
took place at that period. These three statues, in the
worst style of the Empire, cold as allegory, gloomy as
mediocrity, stand alongside the wall there, on the grass,
amidst a mass of architectural capitals, with an indescrib-
able suggestion of tragedies which have been damned.
One of them leads a lion by a chain, and represents
Might. Nothing can appear so much out of place as a
statue standing upon the ground without a pedestal; it
looks like a horse without a rider, or a king without a
throne. There are but two alternatives for the soldier,
battle or death ; there are but two for the king,-empire
or the tomb ; there are but two for the statue, to stand
erect against the sky or to lie flat upon the ground. A
statue on foot puzzles the mind and bothers the eye.
One forgets that it is of plaster or bronze, and that
bronze does not walk any more than plaster, and one is
tempted to say to this poor creature with a human face
so awkward and wretched-looking in its ostentatious
attitude: ‘Now then, go on, be off with you, march,
keep going, move yourself! The ground is beneath your
feet. What stops you? Who hinders you?' The
pedestal at least explains the want of motion. For
statues as for men, a pedestal is a small space, narrow
and respectable, with four precipices around it.
After having passed by the statues, I turned to the
Funeral of Napoleon. 37
right and entered the church by the great door at the
rear, facing the boulevard. Several young women pass
through the doorway at the same time as myself, laughing
and calling to each other. The sentry allowed us to
pass. He was a bent and melancholy-looking old
soldier, sword in hand, perhaps an old grenadier of the
Imperial Guard, silent and motionless in the shadow,
and resting the end of his worn wooden leg upon a
marble fleur-de-lys, half chipped out of the stone.
To get to the chapel where Napoleon is, one has to
walk over a pavement tesselated with fleurs-de-lys. The
Crowd, women and soldiers, were in haste. I entered the
church with slow steps.
A light from above, wan and pale, the light of a work-
shop rather than of a church, illuminated the interior of
the dome. Immediately under the cupola, at the spot
where the altar was and the tomb will be, stood, covered
On the side of the aisle by the mass of black drapery, the
immense scaffolding used in pulling down the baldachin
erected under Louis XIV. No trace of this baldachin
remained save the shafts of six great wooden columns
Supporting the head. These columns, destitute of
capital or abacus, were still supported vertically by six
shaped logs which had been put in place of the pedestals.
The gold foliage, the spirals of which gave them a
certain appearance of twisted columns, had already dis-
appeared, leaving a black mark upon the six gilt shafts.
The workmen perched up here and there inside the
scaffolding looked like great birds in an enormous cage.
Others, below, were tearing up the stone floor. Others
38 Things Seem.
again passed up and down the church, carrying their
ladders, whistling and chatting.
On my right, the chapel of Saint-Augustin was full of
débris. Huge blocks, broken and in heaps, of that
splendid mosaic work in which Louis XIV. had set his
fleurs-de-lys and sunflowers, concealed the feet of Saint
Monica and Saint Alipa, looking wonder-stricken and
shocked in their niches. The statue of Religion by
Girardon, erect between the two windows, looked gravely
down upon this confusion.
IBeyond the chapel of Saint-Augustin, some large marble
slabs, which had formed the covering of the dome, placed
vertically against each other, half hid a white, war-like,
recumbent figure of a warrior beneath a rather high
pyramid of black marble fixed in the wall. Underneath
this figure, in a gap between the flagstones, could be read
the three letters—
U B A.
It was the tomb of WauBAm.
On the opposite side of the church, in front of the
tomb of Vauban, was the tomb of Turenne. The latter
had been treated with greater respect than the other.
No accumulation of ruins rested against that great
sculptural design, more pompous than funereal, made for
the stage rather than the church, in harmony with the
frigid and exalted etiquette which ruled the art of
Louis XIV. No palisade, no mound of rubbish pre-
vented the passer-by from seeing Turenne attired as a
Roman Emperor dying of an Austrian bullet above the
bronze bas-relief of the battle of Turckheim, or from
Aſuneral of A/apoleon. 39
deciphering this memorable date: 1675, the year in
which Turenne died, the Duke de Saint-Simon was born,
and Louis XIV. laid the foundation-stone of the Hôtel
des Invalides.
On the right, against the scaffolding of the dome and
the tomb of Turenne, between the silence of this
sepulchre and the noise of the workmen, in a little
barricaded and deserted chapel, I could discern behind a
railing, through the opening of a white arch, a group of
gilt statues, placed there pell-mell, and doubtless torn
from the baldachin, conversing apparently in whispers
on the subject of all this devastation. There were six
of them, six winged and luminous angels, six golden
phantoms, gloomily illuminated by a pale stream of
sunlight. One of these statues indicated to the others
with uplifted finger the chapel of Saint-Jérôme, gloomy,
and in mourning drapery, and seemed to utter with
consternation the word: Napoleon. Above these six
spectres, upon the cornice of the little roof of the chapel,
a great angel in gilt wood was playing upon a violoncello
with eyes upturned to heaven, almost in the attitude
which Veronese ascribes to Tintoretto in the Marriage at
Cana. - *
By this time, I had arrived at the threshold of the
chapel of Saint-Jérôme.
A great archivault, with a lofty door-curtain of rather
paltry violet cloth, stamped with a fret-work pattern, and
with golden palm-leaves; at the top of the door-curtain,
the Imperial escutcheon in painted wood; on the left,
two bundles of tricoloured flags, surmounted with eagles
4O Things Seem.
looking like cocks touched up for the occasion ; pen-
sioners wearing the Legion of Honour, carrying pikes ;
the crowd, silent and reverential, entering under the
archway; at the extremity, eight or ten paces distant, an
iron gateway, bronzed; upon the gateway, which is of a
heavy and feeble style of ornamentation, lions' heads, gilt
N.'s with a tinsel-like appearance, the arms of the
Empire, the main-de-justice " and sceptre, the latter
surmounted by a seated miniature of Charlemagne,
crowned and globe in hand; beyond the gateway, the
interior of the chapel, a something indescribably august,
formidable, and striking : a Swinging lamp alight, a
golden eagle with wide-spread wings, the stomach
glistening in the gloomy reflection of the lamplight, and
the wings in the reflection of the sunlight; under the
eagle, beneath a vast and dazzling bundle of enemies’
flags, the coffin, the ebony supports and brass-handles of
which were visible; upon the coffin, the great Imperial
crown like that of Charlemagne, the gold laurel diadem
like that of Caesar, the violet velvet pall studded with
bees; in front of the coffin, upon a credence-table, the
hat of St. Helena and the sword of Eylau; upon the
wall, to the right of the coffin, in the centre of a silver
shield, the word Wagram ; on the left, in the centre of
another shield, another word: Austerlitz; all round,
upon the wall, a hanging of violet velvet embroidered
with bees and eagles; at the top, on the spandrel of the
nave, above the lamp, the eagle, the crown, the sword, and
* The main-de-justice was the sceptre, surmounted by a hand,
which was used at the coronation of the kings of France.—Trans-
lator's note. s
Funeral of AWapoleon. 4 I
the coffin, a fresco, and in this fresco the angel of judg-
ment sounding the trumpet over Saint-Jérôme asleep–
that is what I saw at a glance, and that is what a minute
sufficed to engrave upon my memory for life. -
The hat, low-crowned, wide-brimmed, but little worn,
trimmed with a black ribbon, out of which appeared a
small tricoloured cockade, was placed upon the Sword, of
which the chased gold hilt was turned towards the
entrance to the chapel and the point towards the coffin.
There was some admixture of meanness amidst all this
grandeur. It was mean on account of the violet cloth,
which was stamped and not embroidered; of the paste-
board painted to look like stone; of the hollow iron made
to look like bronze; of that wooden escutcheon; of those
N.'s in tinsel; of that canvas Roman column, painted to
look like granite; of those eagles almost like cocks. The
grandeur was in the spot, in the man, in the reality, in
the sword, in the hat, in that eagle, in those soldiers, in
that assemblage of people, in that ebony coffin, in that
ray of sunlight.
The people were there as before an altar, in which the
Supreme Being should be visible. But in leaving the
chapel, after having gone a hundred steps, they entered
to see the kitchen and the great saucepan. Such is the
nature of the people.
It was with profound emotion that I contemplated
that coffin. I remembered that, less than a twelvemonth
previously, in the month of July, a M. — presented
himself at my house, and after having told me that he
was in business as a cabinet-maker in the Rue des
42 Things Seen.
Tourelles, and a neighbour of mine, begged me to give
him my advice respecting an important and precious
article which he was commissioned to make just then.
As I am greatly interested in the improvement of that
small internal architecture which is called furniture, I
responded favourably to the request, and accompanied
M. to the Rue des Tourelles. There, after having
made me pass through several large, well-filled rooms,
and shown me an immense quantity of oak and mahogany
furniture, Gothic chairs, writing-tables with carved rails,
tables with twisted legs, among which I admired a genuine
old sideboard of the Renaissance, inlaid with mother-of-
pearl and marble, very dilapidated and very charming—
the cabinet-maker showed me into a great workshop full
of activity, bustle and noise, where some twenty workmen
were at work upon some kind or other of pieces of black
wood which they had in their hands. I saw, in a corner
of the workshop, a kind of large black ebony box, about
eight feet long and three feet wide, ornamented at each
end with big brass rings. I went towards it. “That is
precisely,” said the employer, “what I wanted to show
to you.” This black box was the coffin of the Emperor.
I saw it then, I saw it again to-day. I saw it empty,
hollow, wide open. I saw it once more full, tenanted by
a great souvenir, for ever closed.
I remember that I contemplated the inside for a long
time. I looked especially at a long pale streak in the
ebony which formed the left-hand side, and I said to
myself: “In a few months the lid will be closed upon
this coffin, and my eyes will perhaps have been closed
for three or four thousand years before it will be given to
(Funeral of Napoleon. 43
any other human eyes to see what I see at this moment—
the inside of the coffin of Napoleon.'
I then took all the pieces of the coffin which were not
yet fastened. I raised them and weighed them in my
hands. The ebony was very fine and very heavy. The
head of the establishment, in order to give me an idea of
the general effect, had the lid put on the coffin by six
men. I did not like the commonplace shape given to
the coffin, a shape given nowadays to all coffins, to all
altars, and to all wedding caskets. I should have pre-
ferred that Napoleon should have slept in an Egyptian
tomb like Sesostris, or in a Roman sarcophagus like
Merovée. That which is simple is also imposing.
Upon the lid shone in tolerably large characters the
name: Napoleon. “What metal are these letters made
of 2’” I asked the man. He replied: “In copper, but they
will be gilded.” “These letters,” I rejoined, “must be in
gold. In less than a hundred years, copper letters will
have become oxydised and will have eaten into the wood-
work of the coffin. How much would gold letters cost
the State 2 ” “About twenty thousand francs, sir.” The
same evening, I called on M. Thiers, who was then Pre-
sident of the Council, and I explained the matter to him.
“You are right,” said M. Thiers, “the letters shall be
of gold; I will go and give the necessary order for them.”
Three days afterwards, the treaty of the 15th of July
burst upon us; I do not know whether M. Thiers gave
the order, whether it was executed, or whether the letters
on the coffin are gold letters.
I left the chapel of Saint-Jérôme as four o'clock was
44 Things Seem.
striking, and I said to myself as I left: ‘To all appearance,
here is a tinsel N which smashes, eclipses, and supersedes
the marble L’s with their crowns and fleurs-de-lys of
Louis XIV. ; but, in reality, it is not so. If this dome
is narrow, history is wide. A day will come when
Louis XIV. will have his dome restored to him, and a
sepulchre will be given to Napoleon. The great King
and the great Emperor will each be at home, in peace
the one with the other, both venerated, both illustrious—
the one because he personifies royalty in the eyes of
Rurope, the other because he represents France in the
eyes of the world.’
To-day, the 11th of March, 1841, three months after-
wards, I saw once more the Esplanade of the Invalides.
I went to see an old officer who was ill. The weather
was the finest imaginable ; the Sun was warm and young;
it was a day for the end rather than the beginning of
spring.
The whole esplanade is in confusion. It is encumbered
with the ruins of the funeral. The scaffolding of the
platforms has been removed. The squares of grass
which they covered have reappeared, hideously cut up
by the deep ruts of the builder's waggons. Of the statues
which lined the triumphal avenue, two only remain stand-
ing—Marceau and Duguesclin. Here and there heaps of
stone, the remains of the pedestals. Soldiers, pensioners,
apple-women, wander about amidst this fallen poetry.
A merry crowd was passing rapidly in front of the
Invalides, going to see the artesian well. In a silent
corner of the Esplanade stood two omnibuses, painted a
Funeral of AVapoleon. 45
chocolate colour (Béarnaises), bearing this inscription in
large letters:— *
PUITS DE L’ABATTOIR, DE GRENELLE.
Three months ago they bore this one :—
FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON AT THE INVALIDES.
In the courtyard of the building, the sun cheered and
warmed a crowd of youngsters and old men, the most
charming sight imaginable. It was public visiting day.
The curious presented themselves in great numbers.
Gardeners were clipping the hedges. The lilacs were
bursting into bud in the little gardens of the pensioners.
A little boy of fourteen years of age was singing at the
top of his voice while sitting up on the carriage of the
last cannon on the right, the same one which killed a
gendarme in firing the first funeral salvo on the 15th of
December.
I may mention, by the way, that during the last three
months, these excellent sixteenth and seventeenth century
pieces have been perched upon hideous little cast-iron
carriages, producing a most mean and wretched effect.
The old wooden carriages, enormous, squat, massive,
worthily supported these gigantic and magnificent bronzes.
A bevy of children, languidly looked after by their nurses,
each of whom was leaning against her soldier, were play-
ing amongst the twenty-four great culverins brought
from Constantine and Algiers.
These gigantic engines, at least, have been spared the
affront of wriform carriages. They lie flat on the ground
46 Things Seen.
on the two sides of the gateway. Time has painted the
bronze a light and pretty green colour, and they are
covered with arabesques on large plates. Some of them,
the least handsome, it must be admitted, are of French
manufacture. Upon the breech is the inscription :-
François Durand, metal-founder to the King of France,
Algiers.
While I copied the inscription, a tiny little girl, pretty
and fresh-coloured, dressed all in white, amused herself
by filling with sand, with her ruddy little fingers, the
touch-hole of one of these great Turkish cannons. A
pensioner, with bare sword, standing upon two wooden
legs, and no doubt guarding this artillery, looked at her
as she did so, and Smiled. -
Just as I was leaving the Esplanade, towards three
o'clock, a little group walked slowly across it. It was
composed of a man dressed in black, with a band of
crape on his arm and hat, followed by three others, of
whom one, clad in a blue blouse, held a little boy by
the hand. The man with the crape had under his arm a
kind of box of a lightish colour, half hidden under a
black cloth, which he carried as a musician carries the
case in which his instrument is kept. I approached
them. The black man was an undertaker's mute ; the
box was a child’s coffin.
The course taken by the little procession, parallel with
the front of the Invalides, intersected at a right angle
that which three months ago had been followed by the
hearse of Napoleon.
I 84. 1.
ORIGIN OF EANTINE.
W. H. was elected to the Académie one Tuesday.
Two days afterwards, Madame de Girardin, who lived
at that time in the Rue Laffitte, invited him to dinner.
At this dinner was Bugeaud, as yet only a general,
who had just been appointed Governor-General of
Algeria, and who was just going out to his post.
Bugeaud was then a man of sixty-five years of age,
vigorous, with a very fresh complexion, and pitted with
small-pox. He had a certain abruptness of manner
which was never rudeness. He was a mixture of rustic
and man of the world, old-fashioned and easy mannered,
having nothing of the heaviness of the old martinet,
witty and gallant. - &
Madame de Girardin placed the general on her right
and V. H. on her left. A conversation sprang up
between the poet and the soldier, Madame de Girardin
acting as interpreter.
The general was in very bad humour with Algeria.
He maintained that this conquest precluded France
from speaking firmly to Europe; that nothing was easier
to conquer than Algeria, that the forces could easily be
48 Things Seem.
blockaded there, that they would be taken like rats, and
that they would make but one mouthful; moreover, that
it was very difficult to colonize Algeria, and that the soil
was unproductive; he had examined the land himself,
and he found that there was a distance of a foot and a
half between each stalk of wheat.
“So then,” said W. H., “that is what has become of
what was formerly called the granary of the Romans ! But
even supposing it were as you say, I think our new con-
quest is a fortunate and grand affair. It is civilization
trampling upon barbarism. It is an enlightened people
which goes out to a people in darkness. We are the
Greeks of the world; it is for us to illumine the world.
Our mission is being accomplished, I only sing Hosanna
You differ from me, it is clear. You speak as a soldier,
as a man of action. I speak as a philosopher and a
thinker.”*
W. H. left Madame de Girardin rather early. It was on
the 9th of January. It was snowing in large flakes. He
had on thin shoes, and when he was in the street he saw
that it was impossible to return home on foot. He went
* In 1846—five years afterwards—the opinion of Marshal Bugeaud
had completely changed. He came to see Victor Hugo, then a
Peer of France, to beg him to speak on the subject of the Budget.
Bugeaud said, experience had convinced him that the annexation of
Algeria to France had excellent points; that he had discovered a
suitable system of colonisation ; that he would people the Mitidja—a
great table-land in the interior of Africa—with civilian colonists;
that, side by side, he would establish a colony of soldiers. He took
a lance as a comparison: the handle would be the civilians, the
spear the troops; so that the two colonies would join without being
intermingled, &c., &c. To sum up, General Bugeaud, whom Africa
had made a Marshal and Duke d’Isly, had become very favourable
to Africa.
Origin of Famtime. 49
along the Rue Taitbout, knowing that there was a cab-
rank on the boulevard at the corner of that street.
There was no cab there. He waited for one to come.
He was thus waiting like an orderly on duty when he
saw a young man, well and stylishly dressed, stoop and
pick up a great handful of snow and put it down the
back of a woman of the streets who stood at the corner
of the boulevard, in a low-necked dress. The woman
uttered a piercing shriek, fell upon the dandy and struck
him. The young man returned the blow, the woman
responded, and the battle went on in a crescendo, so
vigorously and to such extremities that the police
hastened to the spot.
They seized hold of the woman and did not touch the
Iſla, Il.
Seeing the police laying hands upon her, the unfor-
tunate woman struggled with them. But, when she
was securely seized, she manifested the deepest grief.
While two policemen were pushing her along, each hold-
ing one of her arms, she shouted : “I have done no
harm, I assure you ! It is the gentleman who interfered
with me. I am not guilty; I implore you leave me
alone ! I have done no harm, really, really l’”
“Come, move on ; you will have six months for this
business.”
The poor woman, at these words: “You will have six
Tmonths for this business,” once more began to defend her
conduct, and redoubled her supplications and entreaties.
The policemen, not much moved by her tears, dragged
her to a police station in the Rue Chauchat, at the back
of the Opéra.
WOL. I. F.
50 Things Seem.
W. H., interested in spite of himself in the unhappy
woman, followed them, amidst that crowd of people
which is never wanting on such an occasion.
Arriving near the station, W. H. conceived the idea of
going in and taking up the cause of the woman. But he
said to himself that he was well known, that just then
the newspapers had been full of his name for two days
past, and that to mix himself up in such an affair was to
lay himself open to all kinds of disagreeable banter. In
short, he did not go in.
The office into which the girl had been taken was on
the ground-floor, overlooking the street. He looked
through the windows at what was going on. He saw the
poor woman lie down upon the floor in despair and tear
her hair; he was moved to pity, he began to reflect, and
the result of his reflections was that he decided to
go in.
When he set foot in the office, a man who was seated
before a table, lighted by a candle, writing, turned round
and said to him in a sharp, peremptory tone of voice :
“What do you want, sir?” “Sir, I was a witness of
what took place just now ; I come to make a deposition as
to what I saw, and to speak to you in this woman's
favour.” At these words, the woman looked at W. H.
in mute astonishment, and as though dazed. “Your
deposition, more or less interested, will be unavailing.
This woman has been guilty of an assault in a public
thoroughfare. She struck a gentleman. She will get six
months' imprisonment for it.”
The woman once more began to cry, scream, and roll
over and over. Other women, who had come and joined
Origin of Fantime. 5 I
her, said to her : “We will come and see you. Never
mind. We will bring you some linen things. Take that
for the present.” And at the same time they gave her
money and sweetmeats. - -
“When you know who I am,” said W. H., “you will,
perhaps, change your manner and tone, and will listen
to me.”
“Who are you, then 2 ”
W. H. saw no reason for not giving his name.
He gave his name. The Commissary of Police, for he
was a Commissary of Police, was prolific of excuses, and
became as polite and deferential as he had before been
arrogant; offered him a chair, and begged him to be good
enough to be seated.
W. H. told him that he had seen with his own eyes a
gentleman pick up a snowball and throw it down the back
of the woman; that the latter, who could not even see
the gentleman, had uttered a cry indicating sharp pain;
that indeed she had attacked the gentleman, but that
she was within her right; that apart from the rudeness
of the act, the violent and sudden cold occasioned by the
snow might, in certain circumstances, do the woman the
most serious injury; that so far from taking away from
this woman, who had possibly a mother or a child to
support, the bread so miserably earned, it should rather
be the man guilty of this assault upon her whom he
should condemn to pay a fine; in fact, that it was not the
woman who should have been arrested, but the man.
During this defence, the woman, more and more sur-
prised, beamed with joy and emotion. “How good the
gentleman is l’” she said, “how good he is I never
E 2
52 Things Seen.
knew so good a gentleman. But then I never saw him. .
I do not know him at all.” --
The Commissary of Police said to W. H. : “I believe
all that you allege; but the policemen have reported the
case, and there is a charge made out. Your deposition
will be entered in the charge-sheet, you may be sure.
But justice must take its course, and I cannot set the
woman at liberty.”
“What After what I have just told you, and what is
the truth—truth which you cannot and do not doubt—you
are going to detain this woman 2 Then this justice is a
horrible injustice "
“There is only one condition on which I could end
the matter, and that is that you would sign your deposi-
tion. Will you do so 2°
“If the liberty of this woman depends on my signature,
bere it is.”
And W. H. signed.
The woman continually repeated: “How good the
gentleman is How good he is l’” -
These unhappy women are astonished and grateful not
only when they are treated with sympathy; they are
none the less so when they are treated with justice.
I 84. 2.
FIES C HI.
April 14th.
IN the Boulevard du Temple just now the house of
Fieschi is being pulled down. The rafters of the roof
are destitute of tiles. The windows, without glass or
frames, lay bare the interior of the rooms. Inside,
through the windows at the corner of the yard, can be
seen the staircase which Fieschi, Pepin, and Morey went
up and down so many times with their hideous project in
their heads. The yard is crowded with ladders and
carpenter’s work, and the ground floor is surrounded by
a timber hoarding.
What can be seen of Fieschi’s room appears to have
been embellished and decorated by the different lodgers
who have inhabited it since. The walls and ceiling are
covered with a paper sprinkled with a small pattern of
greenish hue, and upon the ceiling an ornamental bead-
ing, also papered, makes the outline of a Y. This
ceiling is, however, already broken in and much cracked
by the builder's pick-axe.
Upon the subject of the Fieschi trial, I have from the
Chancellor himself, M. Pasquier, several details which
are not known. * -
54. Things Seen.
As long as Fieschi, after his arrest, thought that his
accomplices were in sympathy with him, he remained
silent. One day, he learnt through his mistress, Nini
Lassave, the one-eyed woman, that Morey said: “What a
pity the earplosion did not kill him l’” From that moment,
Fieschi was possessed with hatred ; he denounced Pepin
and Morey, and was as assiduous in ruining them as he
had previously been anxious to save them. Morey and
IPepin were arrested. Fieschi became the energetic sup-
porter of the prosecution. He entered into the most
minute details, revealed everything, threw light on,
traced, explained, unveiled, unmasked everything, and
failed in nothing, never telling any falsehood, and caring
little about putting his head under the knife, provided
the two other heads fell.
One day, he said to M. Pasquier: “Pepin is such a
fool that he entered in his account-book the money he
gave me for the machine, setting down what it was to be
used for. Make a search at his house. Take his account-
book for the six first months of 1835. You will find at
the head of a page an entry of this kind made with his
own hand.” His instructions are followed, the search is
ordered, the book is found. M. Pasquier examines the
book, the Procureur-Général examines the book; nothing
is discovered. This seems strange. For the first time,
Eieschi was at fault. He is told of it: “Look again.”
Useless researches, trouble wasted. The commissioners
of the Court are reinforced by an old examining magis-
trate, whom this affair makes a Councillor at the Royal
Court in Paris (M. Gaschon, whom the Chancellor Pas-
quier, in telling me all this, called Gâcon or Cachon).
Fieschi. * 55
This judge, an expert, takes the book, opens it, and,
in two minutes, finds at the top of a page, as stated, the
memorandum which formed the subject of Fieschi’s accu-
sation. Pepin had been content to strike it through
carelessly, but it remained perfectly legible. The Presi-
dent of the Court of Peers and the Procurator-General,
from a certain habit readily understood, had not read the
passages which were struck through, and this memoran-
dum had escaped them. - -
The thing being discovered, Fieschi is brought for-
ward, and Pepin is brought forward, and they are
confronted with each other before the book. Consterna-
tion of Pepin, joy of Fieschi. Pepin falters, grows
confused, weeps, talks of his wife and his three children.
Fieschi triumphs. The examination was decisive, and
Pepin was lost. The sitting had been long; M. Pasquier
dismisses Pepin, takes out his watch, and says to Fieschi:
“Five o’clock | Come, that will do for to-day. It is
time for you to go to dinner.” Fieschi leaped up :
“Dinner Oh I have dined to-day. I have cut off
Pepin’s head l’”
Fieschi was correct in the smallest particulars. He
said one day that at the moment of his arrest he had a
dagger upon him. No mention was to be found of this
dagger in any of the depositions. “Fieschi,” said M.
Pasquier, “what is the use of telling lies 2 You had
no dagger.” “Ah! President,” said Fieschi, “when I
arrived at the station-house, I took advantage of the
moment when the policemen had their backs turned to
throw the dagger under the camp-bed on which I had
to sleep. It must be there still. Have a search made.
56 Things Seem.
Those gendarmes are a filthy lot. They do not sweep
underneath their beds.” A visit was made to the station-
house; the camp-bed was removed, and the dagger was
found.
I was at the Peers’ Court the day before his condemna-
tion. Morey was pale and motionless. Pepin pretended
to be reading a newspaper. Fieschi gesticulated while
talking loudly and laughing. At one moment, he rose
and said: “My lords, in a few days my head will be
severed from my body; I shall be dead, and I shall rot in
the earth. I have committed a crime, and I render a
service. As for my crime, I am going to expiate it. As
for my service, you will gather the fruits of it. After
me, no more riots, no more assassinations, no more dis-
turbances. I shall have sought to kill the Ring; I
shall have succeeded in saving him.” These words, the
gesture, the tone of voice, the hour, the spot, struck me.
The man appeared to me courageous and resolute. I
said so to M. Pasquier, who answered me: “He did not
think he was to die.” -
He was a bravo, a mercenary, nothing else. He had
served in the ranks, and he mixed up his crime with some
sort of military ideas. “Your conduct is very dread-
ful,” M. Pasquier said to him ; “to blow up perfect
strangers, people who have done you no harm whatever—
Fieschi coldly replied: “It is what is done
3.
passers-by.”
by soldiers in an ambush.”
T 84. 2.
THE DEATH OF THE DUKE OF ORLEANS.
YESTERDAY, July 13th, the Duke of Orleans died of an
accident.
On this subject, when one reflects upon the history of
the last hundred and fifty years, an idea crosses the
mind. Louis XIV. reigned, his son did not reign;
Louis XV. reigned, his son did not reign; Louis XVI.
reigned, his son did not reign; Napoleon reigned, his
son did not reign ; Charles X. reigned, his son did not
reign; Louis-Philippe reigns, his son will not reign.
Extraordinary fact! Six times in succession human
foresight designates from amidst a whole people the head
which is to reign, and it is precisely that one which does
not reign. The fact is repeated with dreadful and
mysterious persistency. A revolution comes about, a
universal upheaval of ideas which engulfs in a few years a
past of six centuries, and the whole social life of a great
nation; this formidable commotion overturns everything
excepting the fact to which we have referred; this, on
the contrary, it causes to spring up amidst all that it
demolishes; a great Empire is established, a Charle-
magne appears, a new world arises, the fact continues to
58 7%ings Seen.
repeat itself; it appears to be of the new world as well as
of the old world. The Empire falls, the old blood returns;
Charlemagne has vanished, exile takes the conqueror,
and returns those who were proscribed; revolutions
gather again and burst, dynasties change three times,
event follows event, the tide ebbs and flows; still the fact
remains, perfect, uninterrupted, without modification,
without break. Since monarchies have existed, law says:
The eldest son of the King always reigns; and now for a
hundred and forty years, the event has answered: The
eldest son of the King mever reigns. Does it not seem as
though it is a law which is revealing itself, and revealing
itself, in the inexplicable order of human occurrences,
with a degree of persistency and exactitude which up to
the present had belonged only to material facts 2 Would
it not be startling if certain laws of history were to be
made manifest to men with the same preciseness, the
same inflexibility, and, so to speak, the same harshness,
as the great laws of nature ?,
For the Duke d’Orleans when dying, a few mattresses
were hurriedly thrown upon the ground, and the head of
the bed was made of an old arm-chair turned upside
down. -
A battered stove was at the back of the Prince's head.
IPots and pans and coarse earthenware vessels ornamented
a few boards along the wall. A large pair of shears, a
fowling-piece, one or two penny coloured pictures fastened
with four nails, represented Mazagram, the Wandering
Jew, and the Attempt of Fieschi. A portrait of Napoleon
and a portrait of the Duke of Orleans (Louis-Philippe) as:
The Death of the Duke of Orleans. 59.
a Colonel-in-chief of huzzars, completed the decoration
of the wall. The flooring was a square of plain red bricks.
Two old wardrobes propped up the Prince's death-bed on
the left-hand side. -
The Queen's chaplain, who assisted the vicar of
Neuilly at the moment of the Extreme Unction, is a
natural son of Napoleon, the Abbé . . . , who much
resembles the Emperor, minus the air of genius.
Marshal Gérard was present at the death, in uniform ;
Marshal Soult, in a black coat, with his face like
that of an old bishop ; M. Guizot, in a black coat;
the King, in black trousers and a brown coat. The
Queen had on a violet silk gown trimmed with black
lace.
July 20th.
God has vouchsafed two gifts to man : hope and
ignorance. Ignorance is the better of the two.
Every time the Duke d'Orleans, the Prince Royal, went
to Williers to his summer palace, he passed by a rather
squalid-looking house, with only two storeys and a single
window to each of its two storeys, and with a wretched
shop, painted green, upon the level of the street. This
shop, without any window on the roadway, had only one
door through which could be seen in the shadow a counter,
a pair of scales, a few common wares displayed upon the
floor, above which was painted in dirty yellow letters this
inscription: GROCERY STOREs. It is not quite certain.
6O - Things Seem.
that the Duke d’Orleans, young, light-hearted, merry,
happy, ever noticed this doorway; or if he occasionally
cast an eye upon it in passing quickly along the road on
pleasure intent, he probably looked upon it as the door of
some wretched shop, some rookery, some hovel. It was
the doorway of his tomb.
To-day, Wednesday, I visited the spot where the Prince
fell, now exactly a week ago. It is at that part of the
roadway which is comprised between the twenty-sixth
and twenty-seventh tree on the left, counting the trees
from the intersection of the road in the open circus at
the Porte Maillot. The roadway from side to side is
twenty-one paving-stones wide. The Prince smashed his
forehead upon the third and fourth paving-stones on the
left, near the edge. Had he been thrown eighteen
inches further, he would have fallen on the bare earth.
The King has had the two blood-stained paving-stones
removed, and to-day could still be distinguished in spite
of the mud of a rainy day the two new stones just put in.
Upon the wall opposite, between the two trees, a cross has
been cut in the plaster by passers-by, with the date: July
13th, 1842. At the side is written the word: Martir
(sic).
From the spot where the Prince fell can be seen, on the
right, through a vista formed by the houses and trees, the
Arc de l'Étoile. On the same side, and within pistol-
shot, rises a great white wall surrounded by sheds and
rubbish, bordered by a moat and surmounted by a con-
fused mass of cranes, windlasses and scaffoldings. These
are the fortifications of Paris.
The Death of the Duke of Orleans. 61
While I examined the two paving-stones and the cross
traced upon the wall, a gang of schoolboys, all in straw-
hats, suddenly surrounded me, and these young fresh-
looking and merry faces grouped themselves with heedless
curiosity around the fatal spot. A few steps further on a
young nurse kissed and caressed a little baby, at the same
time shouting with laughter.
The house in which the Prince expired is No.4, and is
situated between a soap manufactory and a low eating-
house and wine-shop keeper's. The shop on the ground-
floor is shut. Against the wall, on the right-hand side of
the door, was placed a rough wooden seat, upon which
two or three old women were basking in the sun. Over
their heads was stuck up, upon the green ground of the
coloured wall, a large bill, bearing these words: Esprit
Putot Mineral Water. A pair of white calico curtains at
the window of the first floor seem to indicate that the
house is still occupied. A number of men, sitting at
tables and drinking at the neighbouring wine-shop,
talked and laughed noisily. Two doors further on, upon
the house No. 6, nearly opposite the spot where the
Prince was killed, is painted up this sign in black letters:
Chanudet, stone-mason.
Singular fact; the Prince fell to the left, and the post-
mortem examination shewed that the body was contused
and the skull Smashed on the right-hand side.
M. Willemain (it was he himself who told me this the
day before yesterday) arrived at the Prince's side hardly
half-an-hour after the accident. All the royal family were
already there. -
On seeing M. Willemain enter, the King hastened
62 Things Seem.
towards him and said: “It is a terrible fall; he is still
unconscious, but there is no fracture, the limbs are all
supple and uninjured.” The King was right; the whole
body of the Prince was healthy and intact save the head,
which, without outward tear or cut, was broken under the
skin like a plate, Villemain told me.
In spite of what has been said on the subject, the
Prince neither wept nor spoke. The skull being shat-
tered and the brain torn, this would have been impossible.
There was but a particle of organic life. The dying
man did not see, feel, or suffer. M. Willemain only saw
him move his legs twice.
The left-hand side of the road is occupied by gardens
and summer-houses; on the right-hand side there is
nothing but hovels.
On the 13th of July, when the Prince quitted the
Tuileries for the last time, he passed, first of all, that
human monument which awakens most powerfully the
idea of endurance, the obelisk of Rameses; but he might
have called to mind that on this same spot had been raised
the scaffold of Louis XVI. He next passed the monu-
ment which awakens in most splendid fashion the idea of
glory, the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile; but he might have
called to mind that under this same arch had passed the
coffin of Napoleon. Five hundred steps further on, he
passed a road which owes its ominous name to the in-
surrection of the 6th of October, fomented by Philippe-
Egalité against Louis XVI. This road is called the
Boute de la Révolte. Just as they entered it, the horses
which conveyed the grandson of Égalité ran away, revolted,
The Death of the Duke of Orleans. 6 s
so to speak, and two-thirds of the distance down this fatal
road the Prince fell.
The Duke d’Orleans was named Ferdinand after his
grandfather of Naples, Philip after his father and his
grandfather of France, Louis after Louis XVI., Charles
after Charles X., and Henry after Henry V. In his
burial certificate was omitted (was it by design 2) his
Sicilian name of Rosolino. I confess I regretted the
omission of this pleasing name, which recalled Palermo
and Sainte-Rosalie. Some sort of ridicule was feared.
Rosolino sounds charming to poets and whimsical to
commonplace people. - -
As I came back towards six o'clock in the evening, I
noticed a bill printed in large letters, stuck here and
there upon the walls, with the words: “Féte at Neuilly,
July 3rd.” -
A DREAM.
November 14th.
HERE is a dream which I dreamt this night. I write
it solely on account of the date.
I was at home, but in a home which is not my own
and which I do not know. There were several large
reception-rooms, very handsome, and brilliantly lighted.
It was evening. A summer evening. I was in one of
these rooms near a table with some friends, who were my
friends in the dream, but not one of whom do I know.
A lively conversation was going on, accompanied by
shouts of laughter. The windows were all wide open.
Suddenly I hear a noise behind me. I turn round, and
I see coming towards me, amidst a group of persons
whom I do not know, the Duke d’Orleans.
I went up to the Prince with an expression of delight,
but otherwise without surprise. The Prince appeared
very lively and in good humour. I do not remember
what clothes he wore.
I held out my hand to him, thanking him for coming
thus cordially to my house without sending up his name.
I remember very distinctly having said to him : “Thank
you, Prince.” He answered me with a shake of the
hand.
A /97 eam. 65
At that moment I turned my head and saw three or
four men placing upon the mantelpiece a bust of the
Duke d'Orleans in white marble. I then perceived that
there was already on the same mantelpiece another bust
of the Prince in bronze. The men placed the marble
bust in the place of the bronze bust and silently with-
drew. The Prince led me towards one of the windows,
which, as I have said, were open. It seems to me that
in doing so we went out of one room into another. My
mind is not clear as to this. The Prince and I sat down
near the window, which looked out upon a splendid
prospect. It was the interior of a city. In my dream I
perfectly recognised this city, but in reality it was a place
I had never seen.
Underneath the window stretched for a long distance
between two dark blocks of buildings a broad stream,
made resplendent in parts by the light of the moon.
At the far end, in the mist, towered the two pointed and
enormous steeples of a strange sort of cathedral; on the
left, very near to the window, the eye looked in vain
down a little dark alley. I do not remember that there
were in this city any lights in the windows or inhabitants
in the streets.
This place was known to me, I repeat, and I was
speaking of it to the Prince as of a city which I had
visited, and which I congratulated him in having come
to see in his turn.
The sky was of a tender blue and a lovely softness.
In one place some trees, barely visible, were wafted in
a genial wind. The stream rippled gently. The whole
scene had an indescribable air of calm. It seemed as
"VOL. I. F
66 Things Seen.
though in this spot one could penetrate into the very
soul of things. I called the attention of the Prince to
the fineness of the night, and I distinctly remember that
I said these words to him : “You are a Prince ; you will
be taught to admire human politics; learn also to admire
nature.”
As I was speaking to the Duke d'Orleans, I felt that
my nose began to bleed; I turned, and I recognised,
among some persons who were conversing at a little dis-
tance behind us in low tones, M. Mélesville and M.
Blanqui. The blood which I felt streaming down my
mouth and cheeks was very dark and thick. The Prince
looked at it as it streamed, and continued to speak to me
without betraying any surprise. I tried to stop this
bleeding with my handkerchief, but without success. At
length I turned to M. Blanqui, and said: “You are a
doctor; stop this bleeding, and tell me what it means.”
M. Blanqui, who was a doctor only in my dream, and
who in reality is a political economist, did not answer
me. I continued to converse with the Prince, and the
blood continued to flow.
I do not quite know how it was that I ceased to take
any notice of the blood which deluged my face. At
this point there is a brief interval of mist and confusion,
in which I no longer distinguish, except very imperfectly,
the figures of the dream. What I do know is, that
suddenly I heard in the apartment which we had just
left a fresh commotion, similar to that which had ushered
in the arrival of the Duke d’Orleans. One of my friends
came in and said to me : “It is General La Fayette who
has come to see you.” I hastily rose, and re-entere
A Dream. 67
the first apartment. General La Fayette was really there;
I recognised him perfectly, and I looked upon his visit
quite as a matter of course. He was leaning upon his
son George, who was broad-faced, ruddy, and jovial
looking, and who laid hold of my hands, shaking them
very heartily. The general was very pale. He was
Surrounded by many unknown persons.
It is impossible for me to recall what I said to the
general, and what he said to me in reply. At the end
of a few moments, he said to me: “I am in a hurry, I
must go; give me your arm to the door.” Then he
leant his left elbow upon my right shoulder, and his
right elbow upon the left shoulder of his son George, and
we made our way at a very slow pace towards the door.
Just as I arrived at the staircase, and was about to
descend with the general, I turned and cast a glance
behind me. My look evidently darted at this instant
through the thickness of all the walls, for I saw all over
several large apartments. There was no one in them
now ; there were lights everywhere still, but all was
deserted. But I saw, alone and still seated in the same
place in the recess of the same window, the Duke
d'Orleans looking sadly at me. At this moment I
awoke.
I had this dream on the night of the 13th to the 14th
of November, 1842, precisely four months after the death
of the Duke d'Orleans, who was killed on the 13th of
July, and on the very night of the day when the period of
mourning for the death of the Prince expired.
1843.
ROYER-COLLARD.
June 16th.
YESTERDAY, at the Académie, the sitting not yet having
begun, M. Royer-Collard and M. Ballanche came and
sat beside me. We entered into conversation. It was
rather a conversation between two than three. I listened
more than I spoke. -
“The hot weather has come at last,” said M. Royer-
Collard.
“Yes,” replied M. Ballanche, “but it is too hot. The
heat is already too much for me.”
“What l are you not a Southerner, then 2 ”
“No. This heat overpowers me. I submit to it. I
resign myself.” -
“We must resign ourselves to the seasons as to men,”
said M. Royer-Collard.
“Resignation is the basis of everything.”
“If we could not learn resignation,” continued M.
Royer-Collard, “we should die of rage.” Then, after a
moment's silence, and emphasizing his words in the
manner peculiar to him : “I do not say we should die in
a rage; I say we should die of rage.”
Royer-Collard. 69
“As for me, anger is no longer a part of my disposi-
tion. I have none left.”
“I no longer get angry,” rejoined M. Royer-Collard,
“ because I reflect that half-an-hour afterwards I shall no
longer be angry.”
“And I,” replied M. Ballanche, “no longer get angry,
because it upsets my mind.”
After a moment's silence he added with a smile : “The
last time I was angry was at the period of the Coalition.
The Coalition—yes, yes; the Coalition was my last fit of
anger.”
“Even so early as that ? I no longer got angry,” replied
M. Royer-Collard. “I looked on at what was being done.
I protested a great deal more inside than outside myself,
as a man protests who does not speak. After that time,
I remained three years longer in the Chamber. I regret
it. It was three years too long. I remained too long in
the Chamber ; I should have retired from it sooner.
Not, however, at the period of the Revolution of July;
not at the period of the refusal of the oath of allegiance ;
my motives would have been misunderstood.”
I said: “You are right; there was in the Revolution
of July a basis of justice which you cannot ignore; you
were not one of those who could protest against it.”
“Neither did I do so,” replied M. Royer-Collard,
smiling. “I do not blame those who acted otherwise
than as I did. Everyone has his conscience, and in
public affairs there are many ways of being honest. Men
are honest according to their lights.”
He remained silent for a moment, as though scraping
up his recollections; then he resumed:
7O Things Seen
“Well, after all, Charles X., too, was honest.” Then
he relapsed into silence.
I left him to ponder for a moment, and, wishing to
know his innermost thoughts, I resumed :
“Whatever may have been said of him, he was, as a
king, an honest man; and whatever may have been said
of him also, he only fell through his own fault. Histo-
rians may represent the matter as they please, but there
it is. It was Charles X. who overthrew Charles X.”
“Yes,” replied M. Royer-Collard, at the same time
nodding his head with a grave token of assent ; “it is
true he overthrew himself; he would have it. It is said
he had bad advisers. It is false—false. No one advised
him. It has been said that he consulted Cardinal de la
Earre, M. de Latil, M. de Polignac, his suite. Would to
Heaven he had done so | None of those who surrounded
him had lost their heads as completely as he did ; none
of them would have given him such bad advice as he gave
himself. All those who surrounded the King—those
who were called the courtiers—were wiser than himself.”
M. Royer-Collard remained silent for a moment, then
continued, with a sad Smile, which he often assumed
during the conversation :
“Wiser, that is to say, less insane.”
Another pause ; then he added:
“No, nobody advised him.”
And after another pause:
“And nothing advised him. He had always, from his
youth upwards, preserved his own identity. He was still
the Count d'Artois; he had not changed. Not to change,
if one should live to be eighty years of age, that was the
Aoyer-Collard. 71
only quality which he valued. He called that having a
personality. He said that, since the Revolution, there
had been in France and in the era only two men, M. de
La Fayette and himself. He esteemed M. de La Fayette.”
“As a matter of fact,” I said, “they were two brains
fashioned in very much the same way. But they har-
boured a different idea—that is all.”
“And they were both of them constructed,” continued
M. Royer-Collard, “to pursue their idea to the end.
Charles X. was destined to do what he did. It was fatal.
I knew it; I was acquainted with the King. I saw him
from time to time. As I was a Royalist, he used to
receive me with friendliness, and treat me kindly. I
readily foresaw the stroke which he was meditating. M.
de Chateaubriand, however, did not believe in it. He
came to see me on his return from his mission as Ambas-
sador at Rome, and asked me what I thought of it. I
told him how it was. Opinions were divided. The best
authorities doubted whether such madness was possible.
But I myself did not doubt. I may say, that on the
day when I took up to the King the Address of the two
hundred and twenty-one—it was towards the end of
February, 1830—I read the events of July in his looks.”
“How did he receive you ?” I asked.
“Very coldly. With solemnity. With gentleness. I
read the Address to him, simply but firmly, without
emphasizing any of the passages, but without slurring
any of them. The King listened to it as he would have
done to anything else. When I had finished ” Here
M. Royer-Collard stopped short, and then added, with
the same sad Smile : “What I am going to tell you is not
72 Things Seen.
very king-like. When I had finished speaking—the king
was seated on what was called the throne—he drew forth
from under his thigh a paper, which he unfolded and
read to us. It was his reply to our Address. He showed
no anger. He showed a good deal two years previously,
at the period of the other Address—you know, M. Bal-
lanche, that which was drawn up by M. Delalot. It
was the custom to communicate the Address to the
Chamber on the previous evening, so that the King
might prepare his reply. When the King received the
Delalot Address, in the presence of the Ministers, he burst
into such a fit of rage, that his shouts could be heard
from the Carrousel. He declared point-blank that he
would not receive the Address, and that he would dissolve
the Chamber. The King was in a state of fury, and this
was at its height. The moment was a perilous one. M.
de Portalis, who was then Keeper of the Seals, risked it.
You know M. de Portalis, Monsieur Victor Hugo ; I do
not tell you he is a hero, but see the influence of a
candid word upon an obstinate disposition. M. de Por-
talis, standing before Charles X., simply said to him :
“If such are the intentions of the King for to-morrow,
the King must give us now his orders for the day after
to-morrow.' Strange to say, these few words appeased
the anger of Charles X. : eacigui pulveris jactu. He
turned with an air of vexation towards M. de Martignac,
and said to him : ‘Well, Martignac, I will receive them ;
but sit down at the table, take a pen, and prepare me a
plain and uncompromising reply, worthy of a king of
France.’ M. de Martignac obeyed. As he wrote, the
anger of the King further subsided; and when M. de
Royer-Collard. 73
Martignac had finished, and he read to the King the
draft of the answer, already much softened by the con-
ciliatory disposition of Martignac, Charles X. seized the
pen to strike out half of it, and tone down the remainder.
That is how anger disappears—even the anger of a king;
even the anger of a stubborn man; even the anger of
Charles X.” w
At this moment, as the sitting had already begun a
few minutes ago, the Director of the Académie (M.
Flourens) rang his bell, and an usher cried: “To your
seats, gentlemen.”
M. Royer-Collard rose, and said to me: “But none
of these details will be gathered up, and they will never
appear in history.”
“Perhaps,” I replied.
1844.
RING LOUIS-PHILIPPE,
September.
RING Louis-Philippe said to me the other day:
“I was never in love but once in my life.”
“And who with, Sire?” “With Madame de Genlis.”
“Ah! but she was your tutor.”
The King laughed, and replied:
“As you say. And a strict tutor, I declare to you.
She brought up my sister and myself quite ferociously.
Getting up at six in the morning, summer and winter; fed
upon milk, roast meats and bread; never any luxuries,
never any sweetmeats; plenty of work and no play. It
was she who accustomed me to sleep upon boards. She
made me learn a great variety of manual work; thanks to
her I can work a little at every trade, including that of a
barber-surgeon. I bleed my man like Figaro. I am
a cabinet-maker, a groom, a mason, a blacksmith. She
was systematic and severe. From a very little boy I was
afraid of her; I was a weak, lazy, and cowardly boy; I
was afraid of mice She made me a tolerably bold man,
with some amount of spirit. As I grew up, I perceived
that she was very pretty. I knew not what possessed me
Aïng Zouis-Philippe. 75
when she was present. I was in love, and did not know
it. She, who was an adept in the matter, understood,
and guessed what it was at once. She used me very
badly. It was at the time when she was intimate with
Mirabeau. She constantly said to me : ‘Come, now,
Monsieur de Chartres, you great booby, why are you
always at my skirts?” She was thirty-six years of age, I
was seventeen.”
The King, who saw that I was interested, continued:
“Madame de Genlis has been much talked about and
little known. She has had children ascribed to her of
whom she was not the mother, Pamela and Casimir.
This is how it was : she loved anything beautiful
or pretty, she liked to have Smiling faces around her.
Pamela was an orphan whom she took up on account of
her beauty; Casimir was the son of her doorkeeper. She
thought the child charming; the father used to beat the
son: “Give him to me,’ she said, one day. The man
consented, and that is how she got Casimir. In a little
while Casimir became the master of the house. She was
old then. Pamela she had in her youth, in our own
time. Madame de Genlis adored Pamela. When it
became necessary to go abroad, Madame de Genlis set
out for London with my sister and a hundred louis in
money. She took Pamela to London. The ladies were
wretched, and lived meanly in furnished apartments. It
was winter time. Really, Monsieur Hugo, they did not
dine every day. The tit-bits were for Pamela. My poor
sister sighed and was the victim, the Cinderella. That
is just how it was. My sister and Pamela, in order to
economise the wretched hundred louis, slept in the same
76 Things Seem.
room. There were two beds, but only one blanket. My
sister had it at first; but one evening Madame de Genlis
said to her: “You are well and strong; Pamela is very
cold, I have put the blanket on her bed.’ My sister was
annoyed, but dared not rebel; she contented herself
with shivering every night. However, my sister and
myself loved Madame de Genlis.”
Madame de Genlis died three months after the
Revolution of July. She lived just long enough to see
her pupil King. Louis-Philippe was really in some
degree of her making; she had educated him as though
she had been a man, and not a woman. She positively
refused to crown her work with the supreme education of
love. A strange thing this in a woman of so few scruples,
that she should have first shaped the heart, and that she
should have disdained to complete the work.
When she saw the Duke d’Orleans King, she simply
said: “I am glad of it.” Her last years were poor, and
almost wretched. It is true she had no skill in manage-
ment, and scattered her money broadcast in the gutter.
The King often went to see her; he visited her up to the
last days of her life. His sister, Madame Adelaide, and
himself, never ceased to pay every kind of respect and
deference to Madame de Genlis. *
Madame de Genlis complained somewhat of what she
called the stinginess of the King. She said: “He was a
Prince, I made a man of him ; he was clumsy, I made a
ready man of him ; he was a bore, I made an entertain-
ing man of him ; he was a coward, I have made a brave
man of him ; he was stingy, I could not make a generous
man of him. Liberal if you like, generous, no.”
Aïng Zouis-Philippe. 77
September.
M. Guizot goes out every day after breakfast, at mid-
day, and spends an hour at the residence of the Princess
de Liéven, in the Rue Saint-Florentin. In the evening
he returns, and except on official days, he spends his
whole evenings there.
M. Guizot is fifty-seven years of age; the Princess is
fifty-eight. With regard to this, the King said one
evening to M. Duchâtel, Minister of the Interior : “Has
not Guizot a friend to advise him 2 Let him beware of
those North-country women. He does not understand
them. When a North-country woman is old, and gets
hold of a man younger than herself, she sucks him dry.”
Then the King bursts out laughing. M. Duchâtel, who
is fat and stout, who wears whiskers, and who is forty-
five years of age, turns very red.
October.
The King, when at home in the evening, does not
usually wear any decoration. He is attired in a brown
coat, black trousers, and a waistcoat of black satin or
white piqué. He has a white cravat, silk stockings, with
open-work in front, and polished shoes. He wears a
grey toupet only slightly concealed, and arranged in the
style of the Restoration. No gloves. He is lively,
good-natured, affable, and chatty.
His travels in England delighted him. He spoke to
78 7%ings Seen.
me about them for an hour and a half, with much gesti-
culation, accompanied by many imitations of English
pronunciation and ways.
“I was exceedingly well received,” he said. “Mobs
of people, acclamations, salvoes of artillery, banquets,
ceremonies, fêtes, visits from the Corporation, an address
from the City of London, nothing was wanting. In all
this, two things especially touched my feelings. Near
Windsor, at a posting stage, a man who had run after my
carriage, came and stood close to me at the window,
shouting: ‘Vive le roi / Vive le roi / Vive le roi l' in
French. Then he added, also in French : “Sire,
welcome to this old English nation; you are in a country
which knows how to appreciate you.’ That man had
never seen me before and will never see me again. He
expects nothing of me. It seemed to me as though it
was the voice of the people. This affected me more than
any other compliment. In France, at the next stage
beyond Eu, a drunken man Seeing me pass, shouted :
“There is the King come back; it is all right now :
the English are satisfied, and the French will be at peace.”
The contentment and peace of the two peoples, that
indeed was my aim. Yes, I was well received in Eng-
land. And, if the Emperor of Russia compared his
reception with mine, it must have been quite painful to
him, he is so vain. He went to England before me
to prevent me from making my journey. It was a
foolish proceeding. He would have done better to go
after me. They would then have been obliged to treat
him in the same way. In London, in particular, he is
not liked. I do not know whether they would have got
Aïng Zouis-Philippe. 79
the members of the Corporation to take the trouble to go
and see him. Those aldermen are very resolute.”
Louis-Philippe used to make great fun of the elder M.
Dupin, who, thinking to heighten the refinements of
Court language, calls Madame Adelaide, the sister of the
King, Ma belle demoiselle.
SAINT CLOUID.
- November.
The King yesterday looked fatigued and careworn.
When he perceived me, he led me into the apartment
behind the Queen's room and said to me, as he showed me
a large-sized tapestry couch, with parrots worked upon
it in medallions: “Let us sit down on these birds.”
Then he took my hand, and said, in a somewhat bitter
tone of complaint : “Monsieur Hugo, I am misunder-
stood. I am said to be proud, I am said to be clever.
That means that I am a traitor. It grieves me. I am
simply an honest man. I go the straight road. Those
who are acquainted with me know that I am not wanting
in frankness. Thiers, when he was acting with me, told
me one day that we were disagreed : “Sire, you are
proud, but I am prouder than you.’ ‘The proof that
that is not so,' I replied, ‘is that you tell me so.” M. de
Talleyrand said to me one day: ‘You will never make
anything of Thiers, who, for all that, would be an excellent
instrument. But he is one of those men who can only
8O Things Seen.
be used on condition of satisfying their requirements.
And he will never be satisfied. The misfortune for
himself as well as for you is that there is no longer any
possibility of his being a Cardinal.’ Thiers is clever,
but he has too much of the conceit of a self-made man.
Guizot is better. He is a man of weight, a fulcrum ; the
species is a rare one, and I appreciate it. He is superior
even to Casimir Périer, who had a narrow mind. His
was the soul of a banker, weighted to earth like an
iron-chest. Ah! How rare is a true minister | They
are all like schoolboys. The attendances at the Council
are irksome to them ; the most important affairs are
disposed of at a gallop. They are in a hurry to be off to
their departments, their commissions, their offices, their
gossippings. In the period which followed 1830, they
had a look of uneasiness and humiliation when I presided.
Moreover, no real appreciation of power, little grandeur at
heart, no sustained aim in policy, no persistency of will.
They leave the Council as a boy leaves his class-room.
On the day he left the Ministry, the Duke de Broglie
jumped for joy in the Council chamber. Marshal Soult
arrives. ‘What is the matter with you, my dear Duke 2'
‘Marshal, we are leaving the Ministry.’ ‘You entered it
like a wise man,’ said the Marshal, who had humour,
‘and you leave it like a madman.’ Count Molé now, had
a way of yielding to me and resisting at one and the
same time. “I am of the King's opinion as to the general
question, but not as to the expediency.’ Monsieur Hugo,
if you only knew how things go on sometimes at the
Council The Right of Search treaty, the famous
Right of Search, would you believe it, was not even read
Aïng Zouis-Philippe. 8 I
at the Council 7 Marshal Sebastiani, at that time
Minister, said: ‘Pray read the treaty, gentlemen.' I
said: ‘My dear Ministers, pray read the treaty.’ ‘Oh,
we have no time, we know what it is ; let the King sign
it,” they said. And I signed.”
WOL. I. G
184. 5.
WILLEMAIN.
December 7th.
DURING the first days of December, 1845, I called on
Villemain. I had not seen him since the 3rd of July,
exactly five months previously. Villemain had been
seized during the last days of December, 1844, with the
cruel complaint which marked the close of his political
career.
It was cold, the weather was melancholy, I was
melancholy myself: this was the time to go and console
somebody. Consequently I went to see Willemain.
He was then living in the rooms allotted to the life-
Secretary of the Académie Française, on the second
floor of the right-hand staircase, at the far end of the
second courtyard of the Institute. I ascended this stair-
case and rang at the door on the right ; no one came. I
rang a second time ; the door opened. It was Villemain
himself. He was pale, dejected, attired in a long black
frock-coat, buttoned at the top with one solitary button,
his gray hair unkempt. He looked at me with a melan-
choly look, and said without a smile : “Ah! it is you;
good morning.”
l/?//emazm. 83
Then he added: “I am alone; I do not know where
my servants are; come in.”
He led me through a long corridor into an apartment,
and thence into his bedroom. The whole abode is
depressing, and seems in some way like the attic of a
convent. In the bedroom, lighted by two windows open-
ing on the courtyard, the only furniture was a mahogany
bedstead, without curtains or counterpane ; a sheet of
white paper carelessly thrown upon the bed; one or two
horsehair chairs; a chest of drawers between the two
windows, and a writing-table covered with papers, books,
newspapers, and opened letters. Nearly all these letters
had printed headings, such as: House of Peers, Institute
of France, Council of State, Journal des Savants, &c.
Upon the mantelpiece, the Moniteur of the day, a few
letters and a few books, among them the History of the
Consulate and the Empire by M. de Lacretelle, which
has just appeared.
Near the bed was a child’s cot with mahogany rails,
covered with a green counterpane. Upon the wall,
opposite the bed, hang three frames containing the litho-
graphed portrait of Villemain and the portraits of the two
eldest of his little daughters, painted in oil and tolerably
like. Upon the Imantelpiece a clock, which is out of
order, and shews the wrong time ; in the fireplace, a fire
nearly out.
Villemain made me sit down and took hold of my
hands. He was rather disordered looking, but gentle
and earnest. He asked me what I had been doing this
summer, and said he had been on a journey, spoke of
one or two common friends,--some with affection, others
G 2
84 Things Seen.
with distrust. Then his appearance became calmer, and
he conversed for a quarter-of-an-hour on literary topics,
adopting a high tone, clear, simple, elegant, thoughtful,
although still gloomy and not laughing once.
Suddenly, he looked straight at me and said: “I have
a painful matter in my mind, I am in trouble, I have dis-
tressing anxieties. If you only knew what conspiracies
there are against me !”
“Villemain,” I said, “be calm.”
“No,” he rejoined, “it is really dreadful.” After
a pause, he added, as though speaking to himself:
“They began by separating me from my wife. I loved
her, and still love her. She had some mental failing;
that may have engendered delusions. But what is much
more certain is that they succeeded in arousing in her an
antipathy towards me, and then they separated me from
her, and afterwards separated my children from me.
Those poor little girls are charming. You saw them ;
they are my delight. Well, I do not dare to go and see
them, and when I see them. I simply assure myself that
they are well, that they are bright and gay and fresh-
looking, and I am afraid even to kiss them on the fore-
bead. Great Heavens, my very touch would be made an
excuse, perhaps, for harming them. How do I know
what devices they are capable of ? Therefore, I am
separated from my wife, separated from my children,
and now I am alone.”
After a pause, he continued:—“No, I am not alone.
I am not even alone. I have enemies, everywhere—here,
outside, around me, in my dwelling. The fact is, my
friend, that I made a mistake; I Ought not to have entered
Villemain. 85
upon political affairs. To succeed in them, to be firm
and strong, I should have had a support; an internal
support, happiness; an external support . . . . Some
one.” (He referred, doubtless, to the King.) “These
supports both failed me. I foolishly threw myself amidst
men's hatreds. I was naked and unarmed. They fell
violently upon me ; at present I have done with every-
thing.” *
Then suddenly looking at me with a certain look of
anguish : “My friend, whatever may be said to you,
whatever you may be told, whatever may be alleged about
me, my friend, promise me that you will not believe any
of the calumnies. They are so scandalous. My life is
very gloomy, but quite blameless. If you only knew
what things they concoct; they are inconceivable. Oh!
how infamous they are. It is enough to drive me mad.
If it were not for my little girls, I should kill myself.
Do you know what they say ? Oh! I will not repeat it
. . . They say that at night, workmen come in through
that window to sleep in my bed.”
I burst out laughing. “And that distresses you ?
Why, it is foolish and absurd.”
“Yes,” he said, “I am on the second floor, but they
are so cunning that they put great ladders at night
against the wall to make people believe it. And when I
think that these things, these villainies, are secretly told
and openly believed, and no one defends me. Some
look on me coldly, others with dissimulation. Victor
Hugo, swear to me that you will not believe any
calumny.”
86 Things Seem.
He stood up. I was profoundly touched; I said a few
kind and friendly words to quiet him. ?
He continued :
“Ah ! What abominable hatreds ! This is how it
began. When I went out of doors, they managed so that
everything I saw should have an ominous look. I met
Only men buttoned up to the chin, people dressed in red,
extraordinary costumes; women dressed half in black,
half in violet, who looked at me and shouted for joy; and
everywhere hearses of little children followed by other
little children, some in black, others in white. You will
tell me: “But those are mere omens, and a vigorous mind
is not disturbed by omens.’ Well, I know that. It is
not the Omens which alarm me, it is the thought that I
was so much hated that people took all this trouble to
bring round about me so many depressing sights. If a
man hates me sufficiently to surround me constantly with
a flight of crows, what appals me is not the crows, but
his hatred.”
Here I again interrupted him. “You have enemies,”
I said to him ; “but you also have friends, think of that.”
He abruptly withdrew his hands from mine. “Now,
just listen to what I am going to say to you, Victor
Hugo, and you will know what I have in my mind. You
will be able to tell how I suffer and how my enemies have
succeeded in destroying all confidence and excluding all
the light from within me. I no longer know what I am
doing, or what is wanted of me. Now, you, for instance,
are as noble a man as any that exists. You are of the
blood of La Vendée, of military blood; I will go further,
and say of warriors' blood; there is nothing in you that
Villemain. 87
is not pure and loyal; you are independent of everybody;
I have known you for twenty years, and I have never
seen you do any act which was not upright and honour-
able. Well, you may imagine my misery, for in my soul
and conscience, I am not sure you have not been sent
here by my enemies to spy upon me.”
He was in such anguish that I could not but pity him.
I took his hand once more. He looked at me with a
haggard look.
“Villemain,” I said, “doubt that the sky is blue, but
do not doubt that the friend who addresses you is
loyal.”
“Forgive me,” he rejoined, “forgive me. Ah! I
know the things I have been saying are absurd. You, at
least, have never failed me, although you may have had
sometimes to complain of me. But I have so many
enemies. If you only knew This house is full of them.
They are everywhere, concealed, invisible; they beset
me. I feel that their ears are listening to me, I feel that
their looks are fixed upon me. What an anxiety it is
to live like this 1"
At this moment, by one of those strange coincidences
which sometimes happen as though by design, a little
door hidden in the wainscoting near the fireplace sud-
denly opened. He turned round on hearing the noise.
“What is it?” He went to the door. It communi-
cated with a little corridor. He looked into the corridor.
“Is there any one there ?” he asked.
There was no one.
“It is the wind,” I said.
He came back to me, placed his finger on his lips,
88 Things Seen.
looked straight at me, and said in a low tone, and with
an indescribable tone of horror, “Oh no.”
Then he remained for some moments motionless and
silent, with his finger upon his lips like someone listening
for something, and with his eyes half turned towards the
door, which he had left open.
I felt that it was time to speak earnestly to him. I
made him sit down again, and took him by the hand.
“Listen, Villemain,” I said, “you have your enemies,
” He interrupted me,
numerous enemies, I admit
his face lighted up with a sad joy.
“Ah!” he said, “you, at all events, admit it. All
these fools tell me that I have no enemies, and that I am
dreaming.”
“Yes,” I replied, “you have your enemies; but who
has not ? Guizot has enemies, Thiers has enemies,
Lamartine has enemies. Have I not myself been fighting
for twenty years? Have I not been for twenty years
past hated, rended, sold, betrayed, reviled, hooted,
taunted, insulted, calumniated ? Have not my books
been parodied and my deeds travestied ? I also am beset
and spied upon, I also have traps set for me, and I have
even been made to fall in them. Who knows that I was
not followed this very day as I came from my house to
yours ? But what is all that to me? I disdain it. It is
one of the most difficult yet necessary things in life to
learn to disdain. Disdain protects and crushes. It is a
breastplate and a club. You have enemies? Why, it is
the story of every man who has done a great deed or
created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders
around everything which shines. Fame must have
V7//emaziz. 89
enemies, as light must have gnats. Do not bother your-
self about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you
keep your life clear. Do not give your enemies the
Satisfaction of thinking that they cause you grief or pain.
Be happy, be cheerful, be disdainful, be firm.”
He shook his head sadly. “That is easy for you to
say, Victor Hugo. As for me, I am weak. Oh ! I know
myself. I know my limitations. I have some talent in
Writing, but I do not know how far it goes; I have some
precision of thought, but I do not know how far it goes.
I am soon fatigued. I have no staying power. I am
weak, irresolute, hesitating. I have not done all that I
could have done. In the realms of thought, I do not
possess all that is needful for creating. In the sphere of
action, I do not possess all that is needful for struggling.
Strength is precisely what I am wanting in. And disdain
is a form of strength.”
He was lost in thought for a moment, then added, this
time with a smile : “Anyhow, you have done me good;
you have quieted me, I feel better. Equanimity is infec-
tious. Oh ! if I could only bring myself to treat my
enemies as you treat yours.”
At this moment the door opened, and two persons
entered, a M. Fortoul, I think, and a nephew of Ville-
main’s. I rose.
“Are you going already ?” he said to me.
He conducted me through the corridor as far as the
staircase. “There, my friend,” he said to me, “I
believe in you.”
“Well,” I said, “I have told you to despise your
enemies. Do so. But you have two whom you must
90 7%ings Seen.
take into account, and of whom you must rid yourself.
These two enemies are solitude and brooding. Solitude
brings sadness; brooding brings uneasiness. Do not
remain alone, and never brood. Move about, go out,
walk, mix your ideas with the surrounding air, breathe
freely and with long breaths, visit your friends, come and
see me.” -
“But will you be at home to me?” he said.
“I shall be delighted.”
“When 2 ”
“Every evening if you like.”
He hesitated, then said: “Well, I will come. I want
to see you often. You have done me good. Good-bye.
I shall see you before long.”
He hesitated again, then added:
“But supposing I do not come 2 ”
“Then,” I said, “I shall come to you.”
I shook hands with him and went down the stairs.
As I reached the bottom, and was about to step into
the courtyard, I heard his voice saying, “I shall see you
before long, eh?” I looked up. He had come down
one flight of stairs to bid me good-bye with a gentle
smile. -
T846.
ATTEMPT OF LECOMTE.
May 31st.
THE Court of Peers is summoned to try the case of
another attempt upon the person of the King.
On the 16th of April last the King went for a drive in
the forest of Fontainebleau, in a char a bancs. At his
side was M. de Montalivet, and behind him were the
Queen and several of their children. They were return-
ing home towards six o'clock, and were passing by the
walls of the Avon enclosure, when two gunshots were
fired from the left. No one was hit. Rangers, gen-
darmes, officers of hussars who escorted the King, all
sprang forward. A groom climbed over the wall and
seized a man whose face was half masked with a necker-
chief. He was an ex-Ranger-general of the forests of
the Crown, who had been dismissed from his post
eighteen months before for a grave dereliction of duty.
92 7.hings Seen.
June 1st, midday.
The orators’ tribune and the President's chair have
been removed.
The accused is seated on the spot where the tribune
usually stands, and is placed with his back to a green
baize curtain, placed there for the trial, between four
gendarmes with grenadiers’ hats, yellow shoulder-straps
and red plumes. In front of him are five barristers, with
white bands at their necks and black robes. The one in
the centre has the Cross of the Legion of Honour and
grey hair. It is Maitre Duvergier, the Bâtonnier.”
Dehind the prisoner, red benches, occupied by spec-
tators, cover the semicircle where the Chancellor usually
presides.
The prisoner is forty-eight years of age ; he does not
appear to be more than about thirty-six. He has nothing
in his appearance which would suggest the deed which he
has done. It is one of those calm and almost insig-
nificant countenances which impress rather favourably
than otherwise. General Voirol, who sits beside me,
says to me: “He looks a good-natured fellow.” However,
a dark look gradually overspreads the face, which is some-
what handsome, although of a vulgar type, and he looks
like an ill-natured fellow. From the seat which I
occupy, his hair and moustache appear black. He has
a long face with ruddy cheeks. He casts his eyes almost
* The Bâtonnier is the head of the Bar, and presides over the
Council which regulates the etiquette of the profession.—Translator's
quote.
Attempt of Zecomte. 93
continually downwards; when he raises them, every now
and then, he looks right up at the ceiling; if he were a
famatic, I should say up to Heaven. He has a black
cravat, a white shirt, and an old black frock-coat, with
a single row of buttons, and wears no ribbon although
belonging to the Legion of Honour.
General Berthuzène leans forward towards me, and
tells me that Lecomte yesterday remained quiet all day,
but that he became furious when he was refused a new
black frock-coat which he had asked for to appear in
before the High Court. This is a trait of character.
While the names of the Peers were being called over
his eyes wandered here and there. To the preliminary
questions of the Chancellor he replied in a low tone of
voice. Some of the Peers called out : “Speak up !”
The Chancellor told him to look towards the Court.
The witnesses were brought in, amongst whom were
one or two women, very stylishly dressed, and some
peasant women. They are on my right, in the lobby on
the left of the tribune. M. Decazes walks about among
the witnesses. M. de Montalivet, the first witness, is
called. He wears the red ribbon, together with two
stars, one of a foreign order. He comes in limping on
account of his gout. A footman, in a russet livery with
a red collar, assists him.
I have examined the articles brought forward in sup-
port of the indictment, which are in the right-hand pas-
sage. The gun is double-barrelled, with twisted barrels,
the breech ornamented with arabesques in the style of
the Renaissance; it is almost a fancy weapon. The
94. r Things Seem.
blouse worn by the assassin is blue, tolerably well worn.
The neckerchief with which he hid his face is a cotton
neckerchief, coffee coloured, with white stripes. On
these articles is hung a small card bearing the signatures
of the prosecuting officials and the signature of Pierre
Lecomte.
June 5th.
During an interval in the sitting I observed the man
from a short distance. He looks his age. He has the
tanned skin of a huntsman and the faded skin of a
prisoner. When he speaks, when he becomes animated,
when he stands upright, his appearance becomes strange.
His gesture is abrupt, his attitude fierce. His right eye-
brow rises towards the corner of his forehead and gives
him an indescribably wild and diabolical appearance.
He speaks in a muffled but firm tone.
At one point, explaining his crime, he said:
“I stopped on the 15th of April at the Place du
Carrousel. It was raining. I stood under a projecting
roof and looked mechanically at some engravings. There
was a conversation going on in the shop at the side, where
there were three men and a woman. I listened mechani-
cally also. I felt sad. Suddenly I heard the name of
the King; they were talking of the King. I looked at
these men. I recognized them as servants at the Castle.
They said that the King would go the next day to
Fontainebleau. At that instant my idea appeared. It
Attempt of Zecomte. 95
appeared to me plainly, dreadfully. It left off raining. I
stretched out my hand from beneath the projection of the
roof. I found that it no longer rained, and I went away.
I returned home to my room, to my little room, bare of
furniture and wretched. I remained there alone for three
hours. I mused, I pondered, I was very unhappy. My
project continually recurred. And then the rain began to
come down again. The weather was gloomy; a strong
wind was blowing; the sky was nearly black. I felt like
a madman. Suddenly I got up. It was settled. I had
made up my mind. That is how the idea came into my
head.”
At another moment, when the Chancellor said that the
crime was without a motive, he said:
“How so? I wrote to the King, once, twice, three
times. The King did not reply. Oh ! then . . .”
He did not finish what he had to say; but his fist
clutched the rail fiercely. At this moment he was terrific.
He was a veritable wild man. He sits down. He is now
composed. Calm and fierce.
While the Procurator-General spoke, he moved about
like a wolf, and appeared furious. When his counsel
(Duvergier) spoke, tears came into his eyes. They ran
down his cheeks, heavy and perceptible.
96 7%ings Seem.
June 6th.
This is how it takes place. On his name being called
in a loud voice by the clerk of the Court, each Peer rises
and pronounces sentence also in a loud voice. -
The thirty-two Peers who have voted before me have
all declared for the parricide's penalty. One or two have
mitigated this to capital punishment.
When my turn came, I rose and said:
“Considering the enormity of the crime and the small-
ness of the motive, it is impossible for me to believe that
the delinquent acted in the full possession of his moral
liberty, of his will. I do not think he is a human creature
having an exact perception of his ideas and a clear con-
sciousness of his actions. I cannot sentence this man to
any other punishment but imprisonment for life.”
I said these words in very loud tones. At the first
words all the Peers turned round and listened to me in
the midst of a silence which seemed to invite me to con-
tinue. I stopped short there, however, and sat down
again.
The calling of the names continued.
The Marquis de Boissy said:
“We have heard these solemn words. Viscount Victor
Hugo has given utterance to an opinion which deeply im-
presses me, and to which I give my adhesion. I think,
with him, that the delinquent is not in full possession of
his reason. I declare for imprisonment for life.”
The calling of the names continues with the lugu-
briously monotonous rejoinder : “Capital punishment,
parricide's penalty.”
Attempt of Zecomte. 97
Proceeding by seniority, according to the dates at which
the members of the House have taken their seats, the
list comes down to the names of the oldest Peers. Wiscount
Dubouchage being called in his turn, said:
“Being already uneasy in my mind during the trial,
Owing to the manner of the accused, but fully convinced
by the observations of M. Victor Hugo, I declare that, in
my opinion, the delinquent is not of sound mind. Wiscount
Hugo gave the reasons for this opinion in a few words, but
in a way which appears to me conclusive. I support him
in his vote, and I declare, like himself, for imprisonment
for life.”
The other Peers, of whom a very small number re-
mained, all voted for the parricide's penalty.
The Chancellor, being called on last, rose and said:
“I declare for the parricide's penalty. Now a second
vote will be taken. The first vote is only provisional,
the second alone is final. All are, therefore, at liberty to
retract or confirm their votes. An opinion worthy of
profound consideration in itself, not less worthy of con-
sideration owing to the quarter whence it emanates, has
been put forward with authority, although supported by a
very small minority, during the progress of the voting. I
think it right to declare here that during the continuance
of the long enquiry preceding the prosecution, during
seven weeks, I saw the accused every day, I examined
him, pressed him, questioned him, and, as old Parlia-
mentarians say, ‘turned him round' in every direction.
Never for a single moment was his clearness of perception
obscured. I always found that he reasoned correctly
according to the frightful logic of his deed, but without
mental derangement, as also without repentance. He is
WOL. I. H
98 Things Seen.
not a madman. He is a man who knows what he wanted
to do, and who admits what he has done. Let him suffer
the consequences.”
The second call has begun. The number of Peers
voting for the parricide's penalty has increased. On my
name being called, I rose. I said:
“The Court will appreciate the scruples of one in whose
conscience such formidable questions are suddenly agi-
tated for the first time. This moment, my lords, is a
solemn one for all, for no one more than for myself. For
eighteen years past I have had fixed and definite ideas
upon the subject of irreparable penalties. Those ideas
you are acquainted with. As a mere author, I have pub-
lished them; as a politician, with God’s help, I will
apply them. As a general rule, irreparable penalties are
repugnant to me ; in no particular instance do I approve
of them. I have listened attentively to the observations
of the Chancellor. They are weighty, coming from so
eminent a mind. I am struck by the imposing unanimity
of this imposing assembly. But, while the opinion of
the Chancellor and the unanimity of the Court are much,
from the point of view of discussion, they are nothing in
face of one's conscience. Before the speeches began, I
read, re-read, studied all the documents of the trial;
during the pleadings, I studied the attitude, the looks,
the gestures, I scrutinised the soul of the accused. Well,
I tell this Court, composed as it is of just men, and I tell
the Chancellor, whose opinion has so much weight, that
I persist in my vote. The accused has led a solitary life.
Solitude is good for great, and bad for little minds.
Solitude disorders those minds which it does not en-
Attempt of Zecomte. 99
lighten. Pierre Lecomte, a solitary man with a small
mind, was necessarily destined to become a savage man
with a disordered mind. The attempt upon the King,
the attempt on a father, at such a time, when he was
surrounded by his family; the attempt upon a small
crowd of women and children, death dealt out hap-
hazard, twenty possible crimes inextricably added to a
crime determined upon, there is the deed. It is mon-
strous. Now, let us examine the motive. Here it is:
A deduction of twenty francs out of an annual allowance,
a resignation accepted, three letters remaining un-
answered. How can one fail to be struck by such a
reconciliation and such an abyss 2 I repeat, in conclu-
'sion, in the presence of these two extremes, the most
monstrous crime, the most insignificant motive, it is
evident to me that the thing is absurd, that the mind
which has made such a reconciliation and crossed such
an abyss, is an illogical mind, and that this delinquent,
this assassin, this wild and solitary man, this fierce,
Savage being, is a madman. To a doctor, perhaps, he is
not a madman; to a moralist he certainly is. I will add
that policy is here in harmony with justice, and that it
is always well to deny human reason to a crime which
revolts against nature, and shakes society in its founda-
tions. I adhere to my vote.”
The Peers listened to me with profound and sympa-
thetic attention. M. de Boissy and M. Dubouchage
remained firm, as I did.
There were 232 voters. This is how the votes were
distributed:—
II 2
IOO 7%ings Seen.
196 for the parricide's penalty;
33 for capital punishment ;
3 for imprisonment for life.
The entire House of Peers may be said to have been
displeased at the execution of Lecomte. He had been
condemned in order that he might be pardoned. It was
an opportunity for mercy held out to the King. The
King eagerly seized such opportunities, and the House
knew this. When it learned that the execution had
actually taken place, it was surprised, almost hurt.
Immediately after the condemnation, the Chancellor
and Chief President Franck-Carré were summoned by
the King. M. Franck-Carré was the Peer who had been
delegated to draw up the case. They went to the King
in the Chancellor's carriage. M. Franck-Carré, although
he voted for the parricide's penalty, was openly in favour
of a pardon. The Chancellor also leant in this direction,
although he would not declare himself on the subject.
On the way he said to President Frank-Carré: “I
directed the enquiry, I directed the prosecution, I directed
the trial. I had some influence over the vote. I will
not give my opinion on the subject of a pardon. I have
enough responsibility as it is. They will dó what they
like.” *
In the cabinet of the King he respectfully adopted the
same tone. He declined to commit himself to a definite
opinion on the subject of a pardon. President Frank-
Attempt of Zecomte. IOI
Carré was explicit. The King saw what was the real
opinion of the Chancellor. -
Maitre Duvergier had conceived an affection for his
client, as a barrister always does for the client he has to
defend. It is a common result. The Public Prosecutor
ends by hating the accused, and the counsel for the
defence by loving him. Lecomte was sentenced oil a
Friday. On the Saturday, MI. Duvergier went to see the
Ring. The King received him in a friendly manner, but
said: “I will see about it ; I will consider it. The
matter is a grave one. My danger is the danger of all.
My life is of consequence to France, so that I must
defend it. However, I will think the matter over. You
know that I detest capital punishment. Every time I
have to sign the dismissal of an appeal for a pardon I am
the first to suffer. All my inclinations, all my instincts,
all my convictions are on the other side. However, I am a
Constitutional King; I have Ministers who decide. And
then naturally I must think a little of myself too.”
M. Duvergier was dreadfully grieved. He saw that the
King would not grant a pardon.
The Council of Ministers was unanimously in favour
of the execution of the sentence of the Court of Peers.
On the following day, Sunday, MI. Duvergier received
by express a letter from the Keeper of the Seals, Martin
du Nord, announcing to him that the King thought it
Tight to decide that the law should take its course. He was
still under the influence of the first shock of hope
definitively shattered, when a fresh express arrived.
Another letter. The Keeper of the Seals informed the
Bâtonnier that the King, wishing to accord to the con-
IC 2 . Things Seen.
demned man, Pierre Lecomte, a further token of his
goodwill, had decided that the yearly allowance of the
said Lecomte should revert to his sister for her lifetime,
and that His Majesty had placed an immediate sum of
three thousand francs at the disposal of the sister for her
assistance. “I thought, M. le Bâtonnier,” said the
Reeper of the Seals, in conclusion, “that it would be
agreeable to you to communicate yourself to the unhappy
woman this evidence of the royal favour.”
M. Duvergier thought he had made some mistake in
reading the first letter. “A further token,” he said to
one of his friends, who was present. “I was mistaken,
then. The King grants the pardon.” But he re-read
the letter, and saw that he had read it only too correctly.
A further token remained inexplicable to him. He refused
to accept the commission which the Keeper of the Seals
asked him to undertake.
As to the sister of Lecomte, she refused the three
thousand francs and the pension; she refused them, with
something of scorn and also of dignity. “Tell the
Ring,” she said, “that I thank him. I should have
thanked him better for something else. Tell him that
I do not forget my brother so quickly as to take his
spoils. This is not the boon that I expected of the
Ring. I want nothing. I am very unhappy and miser-
able, I am nearly starving of hunger, but it pleases me
to die like this, since my brother died like that. He
who causes the death of the brother, has no right to
support the sister.” -
M. Marilhac plays throughout this affair a lugubriously
active part. He was a member of the Commission of the
Attempt of Lecomte. IO3
Peers during the preliminaries to the trial. He wanted
to omit from the brief for the prosecution the letter of
Doctor Gallois, in which he spoke of Lecomte as a mad-
man. It was at one moment proposed to suppress the
letter.
Lecomte displayed some courage. At the last moment,
however, on the night preceding the execution, he asked,
towards two o'clock, to see the Procurator-General, M.
Hébert, and M. Hébert, on leaving him after an interview
of a quarter of an hour, said: “He has completely
collapsed; the mind is gone.”
June 12th.
I dined yesterday at the house of M. Decazes with
Lord Palmerston and Lord Lansdowne.
Lord Palmerston is a stout, short, fair man, who is
said to be a good talker. His face is full, round, broad,
red, merry and shrewd, slightly vulgar. He wore a red
ribbon and a star, which I think is that of the Bath.
The Marquis of Lansdowne affords a striking contrast
to Lord Palmerston. He is tall, dark, spare, grave and
courteous, with an air of breeding, a gentleman. He had
a star upon his coat, and round his neck a dark-blue
ribbon to which hung a gold-enamelled decoration, round-
shaped, and surmounted by the Irish harp. -
M. Decazes brought these two gentlemen to meet me.
We spoke for some minutes of Ireland, of bread-stuffs,
and of the potato disease. -
IO4 7%ings Seem.
“Ireland's disease is graver still,” I said to Lord
Palmerston.
“Yes,” he replied; “the Irish peasants are very
wretched. Now, your country folk are happy. Ah l
You are favoured by the skies. What a climate is that
of France l’”
“Yes, my Lord,” I rejoined, “but you are favoured
by the sea. What a citadel is England l’”
Lady Palmerston is graceful and talks well. She must
have been charming at one time. She is no longer young.
Lord Palmerston married her four years ago, after a
mutual passion which had lasted for thirty years. I con-
clude from this that Lord Palmerston belongs a little to
history and a great deal to romance.
At table, I was between M. de Montalivet and Alexandre
Dumas. M. de Montalivet wore the cross of the Legion
of Honour, and Alexandre Dumas the cross of an order,
which he told me was that of St. John, and which I
believe to be Piedmontese.
I led up in conversation with M. Montalivet to the
event of the 16th of April. He was, it is well known, in
the char a bancs by the King's side. .
“What were you conversing with the King about at
the moment of the report 2 " I said.
“I cannot remember,” he replied. “I took the
liberty of questioning the King upon this subject. He
could not recall it either. The bullet of Lecomte de-
stroyed something in our memory. All I know is that
while our conversation was not important, we were very
intent upon it. If it had not absorbed our attention, we
should certainly have perceived Lecomte when he stood
Attempt of Zecomte. IO5
up above us to fire; the King, at all events, would have
done so, for I myself was turning my back somewhat to
speak to the King. All that I remember is that I was
gesticulating very much at the moment. When the first
shot was fired, some one in the suite cried : ‘It is a
huntsman unloading his gun.' I said to the King : “A
strange kind of huntsman to fire the remains of his
powder at kings.” As I finished speaking, the second
shot went off. I cried: “It is an assassin l’ “Oh I'
said the King, “not so fast; do not let us judge too
hastily. Wait, we shall see what it means.’ You see in
that the character of the King, do you not ? Calm and
serene in the presence of the man who has just fired at
him, almost kindly. At this moment, the Queen touched
me gently on the shoulder; I turned round. She shewed
me, without uttering a word, the wadding of the gun
which had fallen upon her lap, and which she had just
picked up. There was a certain calmness in this silence
which was solemn and touching. The Queen, when the
carriage leans over a little, trembles for fear she will be
upset ; she makes the sign of the cross when it thunders;
she is afraid of a display of fireworks; she alights when a
bridge has to be crossed. When the King is fired upon
in her presence she is calm.”
ATTEMPT OF JOSEPH HENRI.
July 29th, Midnight.
SUZANNE, the chambermaid, has just returned home.
She has been to the fête to see the fireworks. On coming
in—she was radiant—she said: “Oh ! what a lucky
thing, madam. It was my cousin who arrested the man
who fired upon the King.” “What ' Has anyone fired
at the King 2 ” “Yes, and my cousin arrested the man.
What a lucky thing ! It was this evening, just now. The
King was on the balcony. The man fired two pistol-
shots together, and missed the King. Oh! how people
applauded ! The King was pleased. He pointed out
himself where the smoke came from. But my cousin,
who is a policeman in plain clothes, was there close to
the man. He only had to turn round. He took the man
into custody.” “What is his name 2 ” “Joseph Legros.”
“The assassin 2’’ ‘‘No, my cousin. He is a tall fellow.
The man is little. I do not know his name. I have for-
gotten it. He looked sad; he pretended to be crying.
When he was taken away, he said: “Oh ! dear, I must
die then.’ He is fifty years old. Some gold was found
on him. I should think he will have a bad time of it
to-night. My cousin is delighted, and the curé also is
delighted.” (This is a canon of Notre-Dame who resides
Attempt of Joseph Henri. Io'7
in the same building as the cousin in the police.) “What
luck, eh ! Madam, what luck!”
July 30th.
There is close to here, in the Rue de Limoges, a house
with a carriage-way of solemn and gloomy appearance,
some old court-house, with a little square yard. On the
left-hand side of the door is a great black board, in the
centre of which are the Arms of France. Upon this
board is an inscription in wooden letters, formerly gilt,
and running thus:
sernment,
SOUVENIRS & USEFUL 9 & OFFICE REQUISITES
ARTICLES 2 º
%. $ of every kind.
for Ladies. *F-gº

MANUFACTORY OF FANCY ARTICLES IN EMBOSSED STEEL
AND OTHER GOODS.
8 — JOSEPH HENRI — 8
Joseph Henri is the assassin. He has a wife and three
children.
IO8 Things Seem.
On the right-hand side in the courtyard there is a house-
door, above which is seen :
JOSEPH HIENRI.
THE WAREHOUSE IS ON THE FIRST FILOOR.
The whole house is of a fallen and dismal appearance.
August 1st.
The day before yesterday I went to inscribe my name
at the palace of the King, who has gone to Eu. This is
done upon a kind of register, with a green parchment,
back like a laundress's book. There are five registers,
one for each member of the Royal family. Every even-
ing the registers are forwarded to the King, and the Queen
carefully reads them.
I do not suppose people inscribed their names at the
residence of Louis XIV. or of Napoleon.
This reminds me of the first time I dined at the
Tuileries. A month afterwards I met M. de Rémusat,
who was among the guests, and who says: “Have you
paid your visit of digestion ?”
| Homely manners are charming and graceful, but they
go rather too far sometimes. I thoroughly understand
royalty living a homely life, but this granted, I profer the
patriarchal style to the homely style. Patriarchal life is
as simple as homely life, and as majestic as royal life.
Attempt of /oseph Henri. IO9
M. Lebrun, who came to leave his name at the same
time as I did, was telling me that a few years ago the
King of the Belgians was at the Tuileries. M. Lebrun
goes to see him. He speaks to the hall-porter. “Can I
see the King of the Belgians, please?” “The King of
the Belgians? Oh! yes, sir, in the second courtyard
through the little door. Go up to the third floor and
turn to the left along the corridor. The King of the
Belgians is No. 9.”
The Prince de Joinville lives in a little attic at the
Tuileries. The Duke of Saxe-Coburg is lodged in the
Louvre in a corridor. Iike the King of the Belgians, he
has his card nailed upon the door : Duke of Saxe-
Coburg.
August 25th.
The trial of Joseph Henri begins to-day in the Court
of Peers.
The prisoner is brought in after the Court is seated by
four gendarmes, of whom two hold him by the arms.
There were six to Lecomte. Joseph Henri is a little
man, who appears over fifty years of age. He is dressed
in a black frock-coat, he has a black silk waistcoat and
black cravat, whiskers, black hair, a long nose. He wears
eye-glasses.
He enters, bows three times to the Court, as an actor
bows to the pit, and sits down. During the calling of
the names he takes snuff with a profound look of ease.
I IO 7%ings Seen.
The Chancellor tells him to rise, and asks him his
surname and Christian names. He replies in a low tone
of voice, in a subdued and timid manner. “Speak
louder,” said the Chancellor. The prisoner repeats his
replies loudly and very distinctly. He looks like a worthy
citizen who is taking out a passport, and who is being
questioned by the government employé. He sits down
and whispers a few words to his counsel, M. Baroche,
Bâtonnier of the order of barristers. There are five
barristers at the bar. Among the crowd which throngs
the semi-circle behind the prisoner is a priest. Not far
from the priest is a Turk. ºr -
The prisoner is so short that when he stands up he
does not reach above the heads of the gendarmes seated
beside him. From time to time he blows his nose loudly
in a white handkerchief with blue squares. He has the
appearance of a country registrar. His person altogether
suggests something ineffably mild, sad and subdued.
Every now and then, however, he holds his head in his
two hands, and a look of despair penetrates through the
air of indifference. He is, in fact, despairing and in-
different at one and the same time. When the Procurator-
General and the Chancellor tell him that be is playing &l,
part, he looks at them without any appearance of resent-
ment, and like a man who does not understand.
He speaks a great deal, rather fast, sometimes in low,
at others in very loud, tones. He appears to see things
only through a veil, and to hear only through a screen.
One would imagine there was a wall, barely transparent,
between the real world and himself. He looks fixedly,
just as if he is seeking to make out things and dis-
Aftempt of /oseph Henri. I I I
tinguish faces from behind a barrier. He utters rambling
words in a subdued manner. They have a meaning,
however, for a thoughtful person. -
He concludes a long explanation thus: “My crime
is without a stain. At present my soul is as in a
labyrinth.” -
The Procurator-General said to him: “I am not to
be imposed on by you. You have an object, and that is
to escape the death penalty by appearing to invite it,
and in this way to secure some less grave penalty.”
“Pooh !” he exclaimed ; “how can you say so 2
Other penalties are a punishment, the penalty of death
is annihilation.”
He stood musing for a moment, and then added :
“For eighteen years my mind has suffered. I do not
know what state my mind is in ; I cannot say. But you
see I am not trying to play the madman.”
“You had,” the Chancellor said, “ferocious ideas.”
He replies: “I had no ferocious ideas; I had only
ideas” (here he indicates with a gesture an imaginary
flight of birds hovering round his head) “which I thought
came to me from God.”
Then he remains silent for a moment, and continues,
almost violently: “I have suffered a great deal, a great
deal” (folding his arms). “And do you think I suffer
no longer ?” - -
Objection is made to certain passages of what he has
written.
“Just as you please. All that I have written I have
written, written, written; but I have not read it.”
At another moment he breaks out unexpectedly
II.2 7%ings Seen.
amidst the examination with this: “I have beliefs. My
principal belief is that there are rewards and punishments
above.” -
The names of all the regicides, of Fieschi, of Alibaud,
of Lecomte, are mentioned to him. His face becomes
clouded, and he exclaims: “How is it you speak to me
of all those whose names you have just mentioned ?”
At this moment Viennet comes to the back of me and
says: “He is not a madman, he is a fool.”
For myself I should have said the precise contrary.
He is asked: “Why did you write to M. de Lamartine
and M. Raspail 2’
He replies: “Because I had read some of their
writings, and they appeared to me to be philanthropists;
and because I thought that philanthropy should not be
found only in a pen point.”
He frequently concludes his replies with this word
addressed to the Court, and uttered almost in a whisper:
“Appreciate /*
The Procurator-General recapitulates all the charges,
and concludes by asking him : “What have you to say
in reply 2” - -
“I have no reply to make.”
And he places his hand on his forehead as if he had a
pain there. - -
In the midst of a long rambling statement, mingled
here and there with flashes of intelligence, and even of
thoughtfulness, he stops short to ask for a basin of soup,
and gives a number of directions to the attendant who
brings it to him. He has a fit of trembling which is
plainly perceptible. He drinks a glass of water several
Attempt of /osºft AZezzzz. II 3
times during the examination. He trembles so violently
that he cannot carry the glass to his lips without holding
it with both hands.
|He calls the Procurator-General Monsieur le Pro-
cureur. When he speaks of the King, he says His
Majesty. . . .
During the very violent speech for the prosecution of
the Procurator-General he makes signs of approval.
During the speech for the defence of his counsel he
makes signs of disagreement. However, he listens to
them with profound attention. At one point M. Hébert
said: “The prisoner has no political animus. He even
protests his respect and admiration for the King.” Joseph
Henri nods his head twice in token of assent. At
another moment the Procurator-General says that the
prisoner wants to secure a ludicrously inadequate punish-
ment. He says “No,” with a shake of his head, and
takes snuff.
During the temporary rising of the Court, Villemain
came to me in the reading-room and said: “What do
you think of all this ? It seems to me that no one here
is genuine : neither the prisoner, nor the Procurator-
General, nor the Chancellor. They all look to me as
though they are shamming, and as though not one of
them says what he thinks. There is something false,
equivocal, and confused in this affair.”
During the trial Villemain contemplated Joseph Henri
with fixed and melancholy interest.
VOL. I. I
II.4. Things Seen,
August 27th.
The deliberation began at twenty minutes past eight
o'clock. The Peers, without swords or hats, sit with
closed doors; only the clerks are present. On taking
their seats the Peers cried out on all sides : “Open the
ventilators; let us have some light; give us some air l’’
The heat that was in the hermetically sealed room
was overpowering.
Two questions were asked by the Chancellor :
“Is the prisoner Henri guilty of the attempt upon the
life of the King 2 Is he guilty of an attempt upon the
person of the King 2 ”
I should not omit to say that during the calling of the
names, Lagrenée said to me: “I shall be the only one
of the diplomatic body who will not vote for the sentence
of death.” I congratulated him, and he went and sat
down again behind the bench occupied by Bussière.
Another Peer, one of the new ones, whom I did not
know, left his seat, came towards me, and seated him-
self upon the empty chair at the side, saying to me: “You
do not know me?” “No.” “Well, I nursed you when
you were little, no higher than that, upon my knees. I
am a friend of your father's. I am General Rapatel.”
I remembered the name, which my father had often
mentioned. I shook hands with the general. We con-
versed affectionately. He spoke to me of my childhood,
I spoke to him of his great battles, and both of us
became younger again. Then silence took place. The
voting had begun.
The voting went on, on the question of an attempt on
Attempt of /oseph Henri. II 5
the life or an attempt on the person, without its being
ascertained beforehand whether the difference in the
crime involved any difference in the penalty. However,
it was soon evident that those peers who decided that it
was an attempt on the person did not desire the death
penalty, and the majority of this opinion became larger
and larger.
As the second vote was about to be taken, I said: “It
results from the deliberation on the whole, and from the
earnest views which have been put forward, that, in the
opinion of all the judges, the words ‘person of the King’
have a double sense, and that they signify the physical
person and the moral person. These two senses, how-
ever, are distinct to the conscience, although they are
confounded in the vote. The physical person has not
been injured, has not been seriously menaced, as nearly
all my noble colleagues are agreed. It is only the moral
person who has been not only menaced, but even injured.
Having given this explanation, and with this reserve,
that it is perfectly understood that it is the moral person
only that is injured, I associate myself with the immense
majority of my colleagues, who declare the prisoner,
Joseph Henri, guilty of an attempt upon the person
of the King.”
The clerk proclaimed the result:—
One hundred and twenty-two Peers decided for an
attempt on the person ; thirty-eight for an attempt on
the life ; four for an act of contempt.
The sitting was suspended for a quarter-of-an-hour.
The Peers left the Court, and became scattered in groups
in the lobby. I conversed with M. de la Redorte, and I
I 2
I I6 7%ings Seen.
told him, that if it came to the point, I admitted State
policy as well as justice, but on the condition that I
should consider State policy as the human voice, and
justice as the Divine voice. M. de Mornay came up to
me and said that the Anciens abandoned the death.
penalty; that they were sensible of the feeling of the
House, and gave way to it; but that, in agreement with
the majority, they would vote for penal servitude for life,
and I was asked to give my support to this vote. I said
that it was impossible for me to do so; that I congratu-
lated our Anciens on having abandoned the death penalty,
but that I should not vote for penal servitude ; that, in
my opinion, the punishment exceeded the offence ; that,
moreover, it was not in harmony with the dignity of the
Chamber or its precedents.
The sitting was resumed at half-past four.
When my turn came, I simply said: “Detention for
life.”
Several Peers gave the same vote. Thirteen in all.
Fourteen voted the death penalty; a hundred and thirty-
three penal servitude for life.
Several Peers said to me : “You ought to be satisfied;
there is no death sentence. The judgment is a good
one.” I replied : “It might have been better.”
The Procurator-General and the Advocate-General
were brought in, in scarlet robes; then the public rushed
in noisily. There were a number of men in blouses.
Two women who were among the crowd were turned out.
The names of the Peers were called; then the Chancellor
read the judgment amidst profound silence.
Attempt of /oseph Henri. I 17
P.S.–September 12th.
The punishment has not been commuted; the judg-
ment will be carried out.
Joseph Henri, who had been transferred from the
Luxembourg and from the Conciergerie to the prison of
La Roquette, started the day before yesterday for Toulon
in a prison van with cells, accompanied by eight felons.
While the irons were being placed upon him, he was
weak, and trembled convulsively; he excited the com-
passion of everybody. He could not believe that he was
really a convict. He muttered in an undertone: “Oh,
dear! if I had but known ”
WISIT TO THE CONCIERGERIE.
I REMEMBER that, on Thursday the 10th of September
1846, St. Patient's day, I decided to go to the Académie.
There was to be a public meeting for the award of the
Montyon prize, with a speech by M. Viennet. Arriving
at the Institute, I ascended the staircase rather irreso-
lutely. In front of me, ran up boldly and cheerfully,
with the nimbleness of a schoolboy, a member of the
Institute in full dress, with his coat buttoned up, tight-
fitting, and nipped in at the waist—a lean, Spare man,
with active step and youthful figure. He turned round.
It was Horace Wernet. He had an immense moustache,
and three crosses of different orders suspended from his
neck. In 1846, Horace Wernet was certainly more than
sixty years of age.
Arriving at the top of the staircase, he entered. I
felt neither so young nor so bold as he, and I did not
enter.
In the street outside the Institute, I met the Marquis
of B. “You have just come away from the Académie 2 ”
he asked. “No,” I replied ; “one cannot come away
without going in. And you, how is it you are in Paris ?”
“I have just come from Bourges.” The Marquis, a very
warm Legitimist, had been to see Don Carlos, son of
Visit to the Conciergerie. I IQ
him who took the title of Charles V. Don Carlos, whom
the faithful called Prince of the Asturias, and afterwards
King of Spain, and who was known to European diplo-
macy as the Count de Montemolin, looked with some
amount of annoyance upon the marriage of his cousin,
Dona Isabella, with the Infante Don Francisco d’Assiz,
Duke of Cadiz, which had just been concluded at this
very moment. He plainly showed the Marquis how sur-
prised he felt, and even let him see a letter addressed by
the Infante to him, the Count de Montemolin, in which
this phrase occurred, word for word: “I will abandon
all thought of my cousin as long as you remain between
her and me.”
We shook hands, and M. de B. left me.
As I was returning by the Quai des Morfondus, I
passed by the lofty old towers of Saint-Louis, and I felt
an inclination to visit the prison of the Conciergerie at
the Palais de Justice. It is impossible to say how the
idea came into my head to go in and see how man had
contrived to render hideous in the inside what is so
magnificent on the outside. I turned to the right, however,
into the little courtyard, and rang at the grating of the
doorway. The door was opened, I gave my name. I
had with me my Peer's medal. A doorkeeper was put at
my service to serve as a guide wherever I wished to go.
The first impression which strikes one on entering a
prison is a feeling of darkness and oppression, diminished
respiration and perception, something ineffably nauseous
and insipid, intermingled with the funereal and the lugu-
brious. A prison has its odour as it has its chiaroscuro.
Its air is not air, its daylight is not daylight. Iron bars
*I 2G) Things Seen.
have some power, it would seem, over those two free and
heavenly things, air and light.
The first room we came to was no other than
the old guard-room of Saint-Louis, an immense hall
cut up into a large number of compartments for the
requirements of the prison. Everywhere are elliptical-
pointed arches and pillars with capitals; the whole
scraped, pared, levelled, and marred by the hideous taste
of the architects of the Empire and the Restoration. I
make this remark once for all, the whole building having
been served in the same fashion. In this warders' room
could still be seen on the right-hand side the nook where
the pikes were stacked, marked out by a pointed moulding
at the angle of the two walls.
The outer office in which I stood was the spot where
the toilet of condemned criminals took place. The office
itself was on the left. There was in this office a very
civil old fellow, buried in a heap of cardboard cases, and
surrounded by nests of drawers, who rose as I entered,
took off his cap, lighted a candle, and said:
“You would like, no doubt, to see Héloïse and Abé-
lard, Sir 2" “By all means,” I said, “there is nothing
I should like better.” -
The old man took the candle, pushed on one side a
green case bearing this inscription : Discharges for the
month, and showed me in a dark corner behind a great
nest of drawers, a pillar and capital, with a representation
of a monk and a nun back to back, the nun holding in
her hand an enormous phallus. The whole was painted
yellow, and was called Héloïse and Abélard. -
My good man continued :
Visit to the Conciergerie. I 2 I
“Now that you have seen Héloïse and Abélard, you
would no doubt like to see the condemned cell ?”
“Certainly,” I said.
“Show the gentleman the way,” said the good man to
the turnkey.
Then he dived once more into his cases. This
peaceful creature keeps the register of the sentences and
terms of imprisonment.
I returned to the outer office, where I admired as I
passed by a very large and handsome shell-work table in
the brightest and prettiest Louis XV. taste, with a
marble border; but dirty, unsightly, daubed with colour
which had once been white, and relegated to a dark corner.
Then I passed through a gloomy room, encumbered with
wooden bedsteads, ladders, broken panes of glass, and
old window-frames. In this room, the turnkey opened a
door with a fearful noise, of heavy keys and drawn bolts,
and said: “That is it, Sir.”
I went into the condemned cell.
It was rather a large place, with a low arched ceiling,
and paved with the old stone flooring of St. Louis,
square blocks of lias stone alternating with slabs of slate.
Some of the paving-stones were missing here and there.
A tolerably large semi-circular vent-hole, protected by
its iron bars and projecting shaft, cast a pale and wan sort
of light inside. No furniture, save an old cast-iron stove
of the time of Louis XV., ornamented with panels in
relief, which it is impossible to distinguish owing to the
rust, and in front of the skylight a large arm-chair, in
oak, with an opening in the seat. The chair was of the
period of Louis XIV., and covered with leather, which
I 2.2 7%ings Seen.
was partly torn away so as to expose the horsehair.
The stove was on the right of the door. My guide
informed me that when the cell was occupied, a fold-
ing bedstead was placed in it. A gendarme and a
warder, relieved once every three hours, watched the
condemned man day and night, standing the whole time,
without a chair or bed, so that they might not fall
asleep.
We returned to the outer office, which led to two more
rooms, the reception-room of the privileged prisoners
who were able to receive their visitors without standing
bellind a double row of iron bars, and the saloon of the
barristers, who are entitled to communicate freely and in
private with their clients. This “ saloon,” for so it was
described in the inscription placed over the door, was a
long room, lighted by an opening in the wall, and
furnished with long wooden benches like the other one.
It appears that some young barristers had been guilty of
abusing the privilege of a legal tete-à-tête. Female
thieves and poisoners are occasionally very good-looking.
The abuse was discovered, and the “saloon ’’ was pro-
vided with a glazed doorway. In this way it was
possible to see, although not to hear.
At this juncture, the Governor of the Conciergerie,
whose name was Lebel, came up to us. He was a
venerable old man, with some shrewdness in his looks.
IIe wore a long frock-coat, and in his buttonhole the
ribbon of the Legion of Honour. He begged to be
excused for not having ascertained before that I was in the
place, and asked me to allow him to accompany me in
the tour of inspection which I wished to make.
Visit to the Conciergerie. I 23
The outer office led through an iron barrier into a
long, wide, and spacious vaulted passage.
“What is that ?” I asked M. Lebel.
“That,” he said, “was formerly connected with the
kitchens of Saint-Louis. It was very useful to us during
the riots. I did not know what to do with my prisoners.
The Prefect of Police sent and asked me: ‘Have you
plenty of room just now 2 How many prisoners can you
accommodate 2' I replied : ‘I can accommodate two
hundred.’ They sent me three hundred and fifty, and
then said to me : ‘How many more can you accommo-
date 2' I thought they were joking. However, I made
room by utilizing the Women's Infirmary. “You can, I
said, ‘send a hundred prisoners.’ They sent me three
hundred. This rather annoyed me; but they said: “How
many can you still find room for 2' ‘You can now
send as many as you like.’ Sir, they sent me six
hundred ! I placed them here; they slept upon the
ground on trusses of straw. They were very excitable.
One of them, Lagrange, the Republican from Lyons, said
to me: “Monsieur Lebel, if you will let me see my
sister, I promise you I will make all the men keep quiet.’
I allowed him to see his sister; he kept his word, and
the place, with all its six hundred devils, became a little
heaven. My Lyons men thus continued well behaved
and civil until the day when, the House of Peers
having begun to move in the matter, they were brought
in contact, during the official inquiry, with the Paris
rioters, who were of Sainte-Pélagie. The latter said to
them: ‘You must be mad to remain quiet like that. Why,
you should complain, you should shout, you should be
124 w 7%ings Seen.
furious.’ My Lyons men now became furious, thanks to
the Parisians. They became perfect Satans. Oh! what
trouble I had They said to me, ‘Monsieur Lebel, it is
not because of you, but of the government. We want to
show our teeth to the government.' And Reverchon then
undressed himself and stood stark naked.”
“He called that showing his teeth, did he?” I asked
M. Lebel. -
In the meantime, the turnkey had opened the great
railings at the far end of the corridor, then other railings
and heavy doors, and I found myself in the heart of the
prison.
I could see, through the railed arches, the men's exer-
cise-yard. It was a tolerably large oblong courtyard,
above which towered on every side the high walls of Saint-
Louis, now-a-days plastered and disfigured. A number of
men were walking up and down in groups of two or
three; others were seated in the corners, upon the stone
benches which surround the yard. Nearly all wore the
prison dress—large waistcoats with linen trousers; two
or three, however, wore black coats. One of the latter
was clean and sedate-looking, and had a certain in-
describable air of a town-bred man. It was the wreck of
a gentleman.
This yard had nothing repulsive-looking about it. It
is true that the sun was shining brightly, and that every-
thing looks smiling in the sun—even a prison. There
were two beds of flowers with trees, which were small but
of a bright green, and, between the two beds, in the
middle of the yard, an ornamental fountain with a stone
basin.
Visit to the Conciergerie. I 25
This yard was formerly the cloister of the Palace.
The Gothic architect surrounded the four sides with a
gallery ornamented with pointed arches. The modern
architects have covered these arches with masonry; they
have placed steps and partitions in them and made two.
stories. Each arcade made one cell on the ground
floor and one on the first floor. These cells, clean and
fitted with timber floorings, had nothing very repulsive
about them. Nine feet long by six feet wide, a door
opening on to the corridor, a window overlooking the
ground, iron bolts, a large lock and a railed opening in
the door, iron bars to the window, a chain, a bed in the
angle on the left of the door, covered with coarse linen
and coarse blanketing, but very carefully and neatly
made, that is what these cells were like. It was recrea-
tion time. Nearly all the cells were open, the men being
in the yard. Two or three, however, remained closed, and
some of the prisoners, young workmen—shoemakers and
hatters, for the most part—were working there, making
a great noise with their hammers. They were, I was
told, hard-working and well-conducted prisoners, who
preferred to do some work rather than go out for
exercise.
The quarters of the privileged prisoners were above.
The cells were rather larger, and, as a result of the
greater liberty enjoyed here at a cost of sirteen centimes a
day, rather less clean. As a general rule, in a prison,
the greater the cleanliness the less liberty there is.
These wretched beings are so constituted that their
cleanliness is the token of their servitude. They were
not alone in their cells; there were, in some cases, two
I 26 g Things Seem.
or three together; there was one large room in which
there were six. An old man with a kindly and honest-
looking face was engaged in reading. He lifted up his
eyes from his book when I entered, and looked at me like
a country curé reading his breviary and seated upon the
grass with the sky above his head. I made inquiries,
but I could not discover of what this goodman * was
accused. Upon the whitewashed wall, near the door,
these four lines were written in pencil:—
Dams la gendarmerie,
Quand wºn gendarme rit,
Tous les gendarmes rient
Dams la gendarmerie.i.
Beneath them, a parodist had added:—
Dams la Conciergerie,
Quand wºn concierge rit,
Tous les concierges rient
Dans la Conciergerie.
M. Lebel called my attention in the yard to the spot
where a prisoner had made his escape a few years before.
The right angle formed by the two walls of the yard at
the northernmost end had sufficed for the accomplish-
ment of the man's purpose. He planted his back in this
angle and drew himself up solely by the muscular force of
* Sic in the original.—Translator's note.
t An untranslatable pun upon the words une gendarmerie, or a
station of the mounted police, and un gendarme rit, in English, “a
policeman laughs.” In the parody which follows, the jest is
heightened, of course, by making all the concierges laugh in the
Conciergerie, as though it were a place full of concierges, or door-
keepers.-Translator’s mote. •
Visit to the Conciergerie. I 27
his shoulders, elbows, and heels, as far as the roof, where
he caught hold of a stove-pipe. Had this stove-pipe
given way under his weight, he would have been a dead
man. On reaching the roof, he climbed down again into
the outer enclosure and fled. All this in broad day-
light. He was captured again in the Palais de Justice.
His name was Bottemolle. “Such an escape was de-
serving of better luck,” said M. Lebel. “I was almost
sorry to see him brought back.”
At the beginning of the men's yard there was, on the
left, a little office reserved for the chief warder, with a
table placed at a right angle before the window, a leather-
covered chair, and all kinds of card-board cases and
papers upon the table. Bellind this table and chair was
an oblong space of about eight feet by four. It was the
site of the cell formerly occupied by Louvel. The wall
which divided it from the office had been demolished.
At a height of about seven feet the wall ended, and was
replaced by an iron grating reaching to the ceiling. The
cell was lighted only through this and through the window
in the door, the light coming from the corridor of the
office and not from the courtyard. Through this grating
and through the window of the door Louvel, whose bed
was in the corner at the far end, was watched night and
day. For all that, moreover, two turnkeys were placed
in the cell itself. When the wall was pulled down,
the architect preserved the door, a low-lying door,
armed with a great square lock and round bolt, and
had it built into the outer wall. It was there I
saw it.
I remember that in my early youth I saw Louvel cross
I 28 7%ings Seem.
the Pont-au-Change on the day on which he was taken to
the Place de Grève. It was, I think, in the month of
June. The sun shone brightly. Louvel was in a cart,
with his arms tied behind his back, a blue coat thrown
over his shoulders, and a round hat upon his head. He
was pale. I saw him in profile. His whole countenance
suggested a sort of earnest ferocity and violent determi-
nation. There was something harsh and frigid in his
appearance. •
Before we left the men's quarters, M. Lebel said :
“Here is a curious spot.” And he made me enter a
round, vaulted room, rather lofty, about fifteen feet in
diameter, without any window or opening in the wall, and
lighted only through the doorway. A circular stone bench
stretched all round the chamber.
“Do you know where you are now 2 ” asked M.
Lebel.
“Yes,” I replied.
I recognised the famous chamber of torture. This
chamber occupies the ground-floor of the crenellated
tower, the smallest of the three round towers on the
Quay.
In the centre was an ominous and singular-looking
object. It was a sort of long and narrow table of lias-
stone, joined with molten lead poured into the crevices,
very heavy, and supported on three stone legs. This
table was about two and a half feet high; eight feet
long, and twenty inches wide. On looking up I saw a
great rusty iron hook fastened in the round stone which
forms the key-stone of the arch.
This object is the rack. A leather covering used to be
Visit to the Conciergerie. I 29
put over it, upon which the victim was stretched. Ra-
Vaillac remained for six weeks upon this table, with his
feet and hands tied, bound at the waist by a strap at-
tached to a long chain hanging from the ceiling. The
last ring of this chain was slipped on to the hook which
I still saw fixed above my head. Six gentlemen guards
and six guards of the Provost's department watched him
night and day. Damiens was guarded like Ravaillac in
this chamber, and tied down upon this table during the
whole time occupied by the inquiry and the trial of his
case. Desrues, Cartouche, and Voisin were tortured
upon it. The Marchioness de Brinvilliers was stretched
upon it stark naked, fastened down, and, so to speak,
quartered by four chains attached to the four limbs, and
there suffered the frightful “extraordinary torture by
water,” which caused her to ask : “How are you going
to continue to put that great barrel of water in this little
body ?”
A whole dark history is there, having filtered, so to
speak, drop by drop into the pores of these stones, these
walls, this vault, this bench, this table, this pavement,
this door. There it all is ; it has never quitted the place.
It has been shut up there, it has been bolted up. Nothing
has escaped from it, nothing has evaporated; no one has
ever spoken, related, betrayed, revealed anything of it.
This crypt, which is like the mouth of a funnel turned
upside down, this case made by the hands of man, this
stone box, has kept the secret of all the blood it has
drunk, of all the shrieks it has stifled. The frightful
occurrences which have taken place in this judge's den
still palpitate and live, and exhale all sorts of horrible
WOL. I. IX
13O 7%ang's Seem.
miasms. What a strange abomination is this chamber,
what a strange abomination this tower placed in the very
middle of the quay, without any moat or wall to separate
it from the passer-by l Inside, the saws, the boots, the
Wooden horses, the wheels, the pincers, the hammers
which knock in the wedges, the hissing of flesh touched
with the red-hot iron, the spluttering of blood upon the
live embers, the cold interrogatories of the magistrates,
the despairing shrieks of the tortured man; outside,
within four paces, citizens coming and going, women
chattering, children playing, tradespeople selling their
wares, vehicles rolling along, boats upon the river, the
roar of the city, air, sky, sun, liberty
It is a gloomy reflection that this tower without win-
dows has always seemed silent to the passer-by ; it made
no more noise then than it does now. What must be
the thickness of these walls, for the sound of the street
not to have reached the tower, and for the sound of the
tower not to have reached the street !
I contemplated this table in particular with a curiosity
filled with awe. Some of the prisoners had carved their
names upon it. Towards the centre, eight or ten letters
beginning with an M and forming a word which was
illegible were rather deeply cut. At one end had been
written with a punch the name of Merel. (I quote from
memory and may be mistaken, but I think that is the
name.)
The wall was hideous in its nakedness. It seemed as
though one felt its fearful and pitiless solidity. The
paving was the same kind of paving as in the condemned
cell, that is to say, the old black and white stones of Saint-
Visit to the Conciergerie. I 3I
Louis in alternate squares. A large square brick stove
had taken the place of the old heating furnace for the
instruments of torture. This chamber is used in winter-
time as a place of warmth for the prisoners.
We then proceeded to the women's building. After
being in the prison for an hour, I was already so accus-
tomed to the bolts and bars that Ino longer noticed them,
any more than the air, peculiar to prisoners, which suffo-
cated me as I went in. It would be impossible, therefore,
for me to say what doors were opened to enable us to
walk from the men's to the women's quarters. I do not
remember. I only recollect that an old woman, with a
nose like a bird of prey, appeared at a railing and opened
the gate to us, asking us if we wished to look round the
yard. We accepted the offer. *
The women's exercise-yard was much smaller and
much more gloomy than that of the men. There was
only one bed of shrubs and flowers, a very narrow one,
and I do not think there were any trees. Instead of the
ornamental fountain theré was a wash-house in the corner.
A female prisoner, with bare arms, was inside, washing
her clothes. Eight or ten women were seated in the
yard in a group, talking, sewing and working. I raised
my hat. They rose, and looked at me with curiosity.
They were for the most part apparently of the lower
middle class, and presented the appearance of small
shopkeepers about forty years of age. That appeared
to be the average age. There were, however, two or three
young girls.
By the side of the yard there was a little chamber into
which we entered. There were two young girls there,
$ £:
I 32 Things Seem.
one seated, the other standing. The one who was seated
appeared ill; the other was tending her.
I asked: “What is the matter with that young girl?”
“Oh ! it is nothing,” said the other, a tall and rather
handsome dark girl with blue eyes; “she is subject to it.
She is not very well. She was often taken like it at
Saint-Lazare. We were there together. I look after
her.”
“What is she charged with ?” I continued.
“She is a servant. She stole six pairs of stockings of
her employers.”
Just then the invalid turned pale and fainted. She
was a poor girl of sixteen or seventeen years of age.
“Give her some air,” I said.
The big girl took her in her arms like a child, and
carried her into the yard. M. Tiebel sent for some ether.
“She took six pairs of stockings,” he said ; “but it is
her third offence.”
We returned to the yard. The girl lay upon the stones.
The women crowded round her, and gave her the ether to
smell. The old female warder took off her garters, while
the big dark girl unlaced her clothing. As she undid her
stays, she said: -
“This comes over her every time she puts on stays. I
will give you stays, you little fool!”
In those words, little fool, there was somehow or other
a tone which was tender and sympathising.
We left the place.
One of the peculiarities of the Conciergerie is that all
the cells occupied by regicides since 1830, are in the
women's quarters.
Visit to the Conciergerie. I 33
I entered, first of all, the cell which had been occupied
by Lecomte, and which had just been tenanted by Joseph
Henri. It was a tolerably large chamber, almost vast,
well lighted, and having nothing of the cell about it but
the stone floor, the door, armed with the biggest lock in
the Conciergerie, and the window, a large railed opening
opposite the door. This chamber was furnished as
follows: in the corner near the window a boat-shaped
mahogany bedstead, four and a half feet wide, in the
most imposing style of the Restoration; on the other
side of the window, a mahogany writing-table; near the
bed, a mahogany chest of drawers, with lacquered rings
and handles; upon the chest of drawers, a looking-glass,
and in front of the looking-glass a mahogany clock in the
form of a lyre, the face gilded and chased; a square
carpet mat at the foot of the bed; four mahogany chairs
covered with Utrecht velvet; between the bed and the
writing-table, a china stove. This furniture, with the
exception of the stove, which would shock the taste of
commonplace people, is the very ideal of a rich shop-
keeper. Joseph Henri was dazzled by it. I asked what
had become of this poor madman. After having been
transferred from the Conciergerie to the prison of La
Roquette, he had set out that very morning, in the
company of eight felons, for the convict-prison of
Toulon.
The window of this cell looked out on the women's
exercise-yard. It was ornamented with a rusty old pro-
jecting shaft full of holes. Through these holes could be
seen what was going on in the yard, an amusement for
the prisoner not altogether without drawbacks for the
134 7%ings Seen.
women, who thought themselves alone and secluded from
observation in the yard.
Near by was the cell formerly occupied by Fieschi and
Alibaud. Ouvrard, who was the first to occupy it, had a
marble chimney-piece placed in it (Saint Anne marble,
black, with white veins) and a large wooden partition,
forming a recess and dressing-room. The furniture was
of mahogany, and very similar to that of the apartment
of Joseph Henri. After Fieschi and Alibaud, this cell
had had for its occupants the Abbé de Lamennais and
the Marchioness de Larochejacquelein, then Prince Louis
Napoleon, and finally, that “stupid Prince de Berghes,”
as M. Lebel put it.
Opposite these two cells was the entrance to the
Women's Infirmary, a long and broad chamber, too low-
lying for its size. There were a score of beds there,
with no one in the beds. I expressed surprise at this.
“I hardly ever have any invalids,” said M. Lebel.
“In the first place, the prisoners only stay here a short
time. They come to await their trial, and go away
immediately afterwards; if acquitted, at liberty; if con-
victed, to their destination. As long as they are here,
the anticipation of their trial keeps them in a state of
excitement, which leaves room for nothing else. Yes,
they have no time to get ill in ; they have another sort
of feverishness than fever. At the period of the cholera,
which was also the great period of riots, I had seven
hundred prisoners here. They were everywhere, in the
doorways, in the offices, in the waiting-rooms, in the
yards, on the beds, on straw, on the paving-stones.” I
said : Good Heavens ! It is to be hoped the scholera
Visit to the Conciergerie. 1 35
will not come in addition to all this. Sir, I did not
have a single man invalided.”
There is certainly a moral in these facts. They show
that strong mental excitement is a preservative against
all ailments. In times of pestilence, while sanitary and
hygienic measures should not be neglected, the people
should be entertained with grand fêtes, grand perform-
ances, noble impressions. If no one troubled about the
epidemic, it would disappear.
“When they had, in the cells on the opposite side, a
prisoner guilty of an attempt on the person of the King,
the Women's Infirmary was converted into a guard-room.
Here were installed fifteen or twenty warders, kept
secluded from the outer world like the prisoner himself,
seeing no one, not even their wives, and this for the
whole time of the preliminaries of the trial, sometimes
six weeks, at others two months. That is what is
done,” added M. Lebel, from whom I had these details,
“when I have regicides.”
This phrase fell from him in the most natural manner
possible; to him it was a sort of habit to have regicides.
“You spoke,” I said, “in a contemptuous manner of
the Prince de Berghes. What do you think of him 2 ”
He wiped his eye-glasses on his sleeve, and replied:
“Oh ! as for that, I do not think anything about him;
he was a wretched great simpleton, well bred, with ex-
cellent manners, and a gentle expression, but a fool.
When he arrived here, I put him at first in this chamber,
in this Infirmary, which is of a good size, so that he
might have space and air. He sent for me. ‘Is my
case a serious one, sir?’ he asked. I stammered a few
I 36 7%ings Seem.
hesitating words. “Do you think,’ he added, ‘that I
shall be able to get away this evening ?’ ‘Oh, no,' I
said. “Well, to-morrow, then 2° “Nor to-morrow,' I
replied. “What do you really think they will keep me
here for a week?’ ‘Perhaps longer.” “More than a
week More than a week My case really is a serious
one, then 2 Do you think my case is serious?' He
walked about in every direction, continuing to repeat this
question, to which I never replied. His family, however,
did not abandon him. The Duchess his mother, and the
Princess his wife, came to see him every day. The Prin-
cess, a very pretty little woman, asked if she might share
his prison cell. I gave her to understand that this was
impossible. As a matter of fact, what was his offence 2
Forgery, certainly ; but without any motive. It was an
act of stupidity, nothing more. The jury found him
guilty because he was a prince. If he had been some
rich tradesman’s son, he would have been acquitted.
After he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment, he
was left here for some time with me, and then he was
transferred to a sanatorium, of which a whole wing
was secured for his exclusive use. He has been there
nearly a year now, and he will be left there for six months
longer; then he will be pardoned. So that his being a
prince damaged him at his trial, but it benefits him in
his imprisonment. g
As we crossed the passage, my guide stopped me and
called my attention to a low door about four-and-a-half
feet in height, armed with an enormous square lock and a
great bolt, very similar to the door of Louvel's cell. It
was the door of the cell of Marie-Antoinette, the only
Wisit to the Conciergerie. I 37
thing which had been preserved just as it was, Louis
XVIII. having converted her cell into a chapel. It was
through this door that the Queen went forth to the
Revolutionary Court ; it was through it also that she
went to the scaffold. The door no longer turned on its
hinges. Since 1814, it had been fixed in the wall.
I have said that it had been preserved just as it was,
but I was mistaken. It was daubed over with a fearful
nankeen-coloured picture; but this is of no consequence.
What sanguinary souvenir is there which has not been
painted either a yellow or a rose colour 2
A moment afterwards I was in the chapel, which had
formerly been a cell. If one could have seen there the
bare stone floor, the bare walls, the iron bars at the open-
ing, the folding-bedstead of the Queen, and the camp-bed-
stead of the gendarme, together with the historic screen
which separated them, it would have created a profound
feeling of emotion and an unutterable impression. There
were to be seen a little wooden altar, which would have
been a disgrace to a village church, a coloured wall
(yellow, of course), small stained-glass windows, as in a
Turkish café, a raised wooden platform, and upon the
wall two or three abominable paintings, in which the bad
style of the Empire had a tussle with the bad taste of
the Restoration. The entrance to the cell had been re-
placed by an archivault cut in the wall. The vaulted
passage by which the Queen proceeded to the Court had
been walled up. There is a respectful vandalism that is
even more revolting than a vindictive vandalism, because
of its stupidity.
Nothing was to be seen there of what came under the
I 38 7%ings Seen.
eyes of the Queen, unless it was a small portion of the
paved flooring, which the boards fortunately did not
entirely cover. This floor was an old-fashioned, chev-
roned pavement of bricks, laid on horizontally, with the
narrow side uppermost.
A straw chair, placed upon the platform, marked the
spot where the bed of the Queen had rested.
On coming away from this venerable spot, profaned by
a foolish piety, I went into a large apartment at the side,
which had been the place of incarceration for the priests
during the Terror, and which had been converted into
the chapel of the Conciergerie. It was very mean-
looking, and very ugly, like the chapel-cell of the Queen.
The Revolutionary Court held its sittings above this
apartment.
While walking about in the depths of the old building,
I perceived here and there, through openings in the walls,
immense cellars, mysterious and deserted chambers, with
portcullises opening on to the river, fearful dungeons,
dark passages. In these crypts spiders' webs abounded,
as well as mossy stones, sickly gleams of light, vague and
distorted forms. I asked M. Lebel: “What is this
place 2’’ He replied: “This is no longer used.” What
had it been used for ?
We had to go back through the men's yard. As we
passed through it, M. Lebel pointed out to me a staircase
near the latrines. It was here that a murderer named
Savoye, who had been condemned to the galleys, had
hanged himself, not many days previously, to the railings
of the bannister. “The jury have made a mistake,” said
this man; “I ought to have been condemned to death.
Visit to the Conciergerie. I 39
I will settle the matter.” He settled it by hanging himself.
He was put under the special supervision of a prisoner
who had been raised to the functions of a warder, and
whom M. Lebel dismissed.
While the Governor of the Conciergerie furnished me
with these details, a decently-dressed prisoner came up
to us. He seemed to wish to be spoken to. I asked
him several questions. He was a young fellow who had
been a working embroiderer and lace-maker, afterwards
the assistant to the Paris executioner, what was formerly
called the “headsman’s valet,” and finally, he said, a
groom in the King's stables.
“Pray, sir, ask the Governor not to have me put in the
prison dress, and to leave me my fainéant.” This word,
which has to be pronounced faignant, means a cloth coat
in the latest slang. He had, in fact, a tolerably good
cloth coat. I obtained permission for him to keep it,
and I got him into conversation.
He spoke very highly of M. Sanson, the executioner,
his former master. M. Sanson lived in the Rue du
Marais-du-Temple, in an isolated house, of which the
jalousies were always closed. He received many visits.
Numbers of English people went to see him. When
visitors presented themselves at M. Sanson's, they were
introduced into an elegant reception-room on the ground
floor, furnished entirely with mahogany, in the midst of
which there was an excellent piano, always open, and
provided with pieces of music. Shortly afterwards,
M. Sanson arrived, and asked his visitors to be seated.
The conversation turned upon one topic and another.
Generally, the English people asked to see the guillotine.
I4O 7%ings Seen.
M. Sanson complied with this request, no doubt for some
consideration, and conducted the ladies and gentlemen to
the adjoining street (the Rue Albouy, I think), to the
house of the scaffold-manufacturer. There was a shed at
this place, where the guillotine was permanently erected.
The strangers grouped themselves around it, and it was
made to work. Trusses of hay were guillotined.
One day, an English family, consisting of the father,
the mother, and three pretty daughters, fair and with rosy
cheeks, presented themselves at Sanson's residence. It
was in Order to see the guillotine. Sanson took them to
the carpenter's and set the instrument at work. The
knife fell and rose again several times at the request of
the young ladies. One of them, however, the youngest,
was not satisfied with this. She made the executioner
explain to her, in the minutest details, what is called the
toilet of the condemned. Still she was not satisfied. At
length, she turned hesitatingly towards the executioner .
“Monsieur Sanson l’” she said.
“Mademoiselle,” said the executioner.
“What is done when the man is on the scaffold 2 How
is he tied down 2'' .
The executioner explained the dreadful matter to
her, and said: “We call that ‘ putting him in the
oven.’”
“Well, Monsieur Sanson,” said the young lady, “I
want you to put me in the oven.”
The executioner started. He made an exclamation of
surprise. The young lady insisted: “I fancy,” she
said, “ that I should like to be able to say I have been
tied down on it.”
Visit to the Conciergerie. I4 I
Sanson spoke to the father and mother. They replied:
“As she has taken a fancy to have it done, do it.”
The executioner had to give in. He made the young
‘miss sit down, tied her legs with a piece of string, and
her arms behind her back with a rope, fastened her to
the swinging plank, and strapped her on with the leather
strap. Here he wanted to stop. “No, no, that is not
yet all,” she said. Sanson then swung the plank down,
placed the head of the young lady in the dreadful neck-
piece, and closed it upon her neck. Then she declared
she was satisfied.
When he afterwards told the story, Sanson said: “I
quite thought she was going to say at last : “That is not
all ; make the knife fall.’”
Nearly all the English visitors ask to see the knife
which cut off the head of Louis XVI. This knife was
sold for old iron, in the same way as all the other guillo-
time-knives when they are worn out. English people will
not believe it, and offer to buy it of M. Sanson. If he
had cared to trade in them, there would have been as
many knives of Louis XIV. sold as walking-sticks of
Voltaire.
From his anecdotes of Sanson, the fellow, who said he
had formerly been a groom at the Tuileries, wanted to
proceed to anecdotes of the King. He had heard the
conferences of the King with the ambassadors, &c. . . .
I did not trouble him. I thought of his being a Gascon,”
and an embroiderer, and his political revelations appeared
to be only fancy articles of a superior description.
* The people of Gascony are proverbially supposed to be hatchet-
throwers.-Translator's note.
I42 7%ings Seem.
Up to 1826, the Conciergerie had no other entrance but
a grating opening into the courtyard of the Palais de
Justice. It was through this that criminals condemned
to death came out. In 1826 was made the doorway which
is to be seen upon the quay between the two great round
towers. These two towers had upon the ground floor, like
the tower of the torture-chamber, a room without a window.
The two grotesque Gothic arches, without any voussoir
or equilateral triangle for a base, which are still admired
here to this day, and which are masterpieces of ignorance,
were opened in these splendid walls by a sort of stone-
mason, named Peyre, who held the office of architect to the
Palais de Justice, and who mutilated, dishonoured, and
disfigured the building as may be seen. These two
rooms, thus lighted, make two fine circular apartments.
Their walls are ornamented with inlaid Gothic arches,
of admirable purity, resting upon exquisite brackets.
These charming triumphs of architecture and sculpture
were never intended to see the light of day, and were made,
strange to say, for horror and darkness.
The first of the two rooms, the nearest to the men's
yard, had been converted into a dormitory for the warders.
There were in it a dozen beds arranged like the rays of a
star round a stove placed in the centre. Above each bed,
a plank fixed in the wall through the delicate mullions of
the architecture, held the personal belongings of the
warders, generally represented by a brush, a trunk, and
an old pair of boots. Over one of the beds, however,
beside the pair of boots, which was not wanting in any
single instance, was a little heap of books. I noticed
this; it was explained to me. It was the library of a
Visit to the Conciergerie. I 4 3
warder named Peiset, to whom Lacenaire had imparted
literary tastes. This man, seeing Lacenaire constantly
reading and writing, first admired and then consulted
him. He was not without intelligence ; Lacenaire
advised him to study. Some of the books which were
there were those of Lacenaire. Lacenaire gave them to
him. Peiset had bought a few other old books upon the
quays; he took the advice of Lacenaire, who said:
“Itead this,” or “do not read that.” By degrees, the
jailor became a thinker, and it was thus that an intelli-
gence had been awakened and had expanded in this
repulsive atmosphere.
The other room could only be entered by a door which
bore this inscription : “Entrance reserved for the
Governor.” M. Lebel opened it for me very politely,
and we found ourselves in his sitting-room. This apart-
ment was in fact transformed into the Governor's sitting-
room. It was almost identical with the other, but
differently furnished. This sitting-room was made up
in extraordinary fashion. The architecture of Saint-
Louis, a chandelier which had belonged to Ouvrard,
hideous wall-paper in the Gothic arches, a mahogany
writing-desk, some articles of furniture with unbleached
calico coverings, an old legal portrait without any case or
frame and nailed askew upon the wall, some engravings,
some heaps of paper, a table looking like a counter;
altogether, the room thus furnished, had the charac-
teristics of a palace, a prison-cell, and a shop parlour.
It was patibulary, magnificent, ugly, ridiculous, sinister,
royal, and vulgar.
It was into this apartment that the visitors of the privi-
I44. Things Seen.
leged prisoners were shown. At the time of his detention,
of which many traces remained at the Conciergerie, M.
Ouvrard used to see his friends here. The Prince de
Berghes used to see his wife and mother here. “What
does it matter to me if they do receive their visitors
here ?” said M. Lebel. “They think themselves in a
drawing-room, and they are none the less in a prison.”
The worthy man looked profoundly convinced that the
Duchess and Princess de Berghes must have thought
they were in a drawing-room.
It was there also that the Chancellor Duke Pasquier
was in the habit of preparing the preliminaries of the
official inquiries confided to him in respect of the prose-
cutions before the House of Peers.
The Governor's room communicated with this apart-
ment. It was very mean and ugly looking. The species
of den which served as his bedroom was solely dependent
upon the doors for light and air, that is to say, so far as I
could see, for I passed rapidly through. It was clean,
although of a rather mouldy-smelling cleanliness, and
had all sorts of frames in the corners, and old-fashioned
nick-nacks, and all those minutiae which one sees in the
rooms of elderly people. The dining-room was larger,
and had windows. Two or three good-looking young
ladies were seated there upon straw-bottomed chairs, and
were at work under the eye of a lady of about fifty years
of age. They rose with a modest and pleasant look as I
passed, and their father, M. Lebel, kissed them on the
forehead. Nothing stranger could be imagined than this
Anglican Presbyterian's home, surrounded by the in-
famous interior of a prison, and walled round as it were
Visit to the Conciergerie. I45
and preserved in all its purity amidst every vice, every
crime, every disgrace, and every shame.
“But,” I said to M. Lebel, “what has become of the
hall of the chimney-pieces 2 Where is it 2 ”
He appeared to turn it over in his mind like a person
who fails to understand.
“The hall of the chimney-pieces 2 Did you say the
hall of the chimney-pieces 2 ”
“Yes,” I rejoined, “a great hall which was under the
salle des pas perdus,” and where there were in the four
corners four enormous chimney-pieces, constructed in the
thirteenth century. Why, I remember distinctly having
come to see it some twenty years ago in company with
Rossini, Meyerbeer, and David d'Angers.”
“Ah !” said M. Lebel, “I know what you mean.
That is what we call the Kitchens of Saint-Louis.”
“Well, the Kitchens of Saint-Louis then, if that is
what you call them. But what has become of this hall ?
Besides the four chimney-pieces, it had some handsome
pillars which supported the roof. I have not seen it even
now. Has your architect, M. Peyre, hidden it away ?”
“Oh ! no. Only he has made some alterations in it
for us.”
These words, quietly uttered, made me shudder. The
hall of the chimney-pieces was one of the most remark-
able monuments of the Royal and domestic architecture
of the Middle Ages. What might not a creature like the
architect Peyre have done with it 2 M. Lebel continued:
“We scarcely knew where to put our prisoners during
* The outer hall of a French Court of Justice, to which the public
are admitted.—Translator's note.
WOL. I. L
I46 Things Seen.
the time when they have to undergo their preliminary
examination. M. Peyre took the kitchens of Saint-Louis
and made a magnificent souricière * with three com-
partments, one for men, one for women and one for
juveniles. He contrived this in the best manner possible,
and he did not destroy the old hall to any great extent, I
assure you.” -
“Will you take me to it?” I said to M. Lebel.
“By all means.”
We passed through long, wide, low, and narrow corridors
and passages. Here and there we came across a stair-
case crowded with gendarmes, and we saw pass amidst a
hubbub of policemen and warders, some poor wretch
whom the ushers handed to each other, at the same time
saying to each other in a loud tone of voice, the word:
Disponible.f
“What does that word convey 2” I said to my
guide.
“It means that he has a man whom the examining
magistrate has done with, and who is at the disposal of
the gendarme.”
“To set him at liberty 2 ”
“No, to take him back to prison.”
At length the last door opened.
“Here you are,” said the Governor, “in the room
you are looking for.” -
I look round.
I was in darkness.
* A room in which prisoners are temporarily detained.—Trans-
lator's note.
f Available, or ready to be disposed of—Translator's note.
Wisit to the Conciergerie. I47
I had a wall in front of my eyes.
My eyeballs, however, gradually became accustomed
to the darkness, and after a few moments, I distinguished
On my right, in a recess, a lofty and magnificent chimney-
piece, in the shape of an inverted funnel, built of stone,
and resting, by means of an open buttress of the most
exquisite style, against a pillar which stood in face of it.
“Ah,” I said, “here is one of the chimney-pieces.
But where are the others ?” -
“This is the only one,” replied M. Lebel, “which
remains intact. Of the three others, two are completely
destroyed, and the third is mutilated; it was necessary
for a souricière. It is because we had to fill up the
intervals between the pillars with stone-work. We had
to put up partitions. The architect preserved this
chimney-piece as a specimen of the architectural style of
the period.”
“And,” I added, “ of the folly of the architects of our
time.” Thus, there was no hall, but a number of com-
partments, and out of four chimney-pieces three were
destroyed. This was effected under Charles X. This
is what the sons of Saint-Louis made of the souvenirs of
Saint-Louis. -
“It is true,” continued M. Lebel, “that this souricière
might very well have been placed elsewhere. But then
you know they did not think of that, and they had this
hall available. However, they arranged it very well. It
is divided by stone walls in longitudinal compartments,
lighted each by one of the windows of the old hall. The
first is that of the juveniles. Should you like to
go in 2”
L 2
148 7%ings Seem.
A turnkey opened a heavy door with a peep-hole
bored through it, by means of which the interior of
the souricière could be watched, and we went in.
The juveniles' souricière was an oblong room, a paral-
lelogram, provided with two stone benches on the two
principal sides. There were three boys there. The
eldest was rather a big boy. He appeared to be about
seventeen years of age, and was clad in frightful old
yellowish clothes.
I spoke to the youngest, who had a rather intelli-
gent, although an enervated and degraded face.
“What is your age, boy 2”
“I am twelve, sir.”
“What have you done to be in here 2 ”
“I took some peaches.”
“Where 2 °
“In a garden at Montreuil.”
“By yourself?”
“No, with my friend.”
“Where is your friend ?”
He pointed out the other one, who was clad like him-
self in the prison material, and was a little bigger than
himself, and said: “There he is.”
“You got over a wall, then 2°
“No, sir. The peaches were on the ground, in the
road.”
“You only stooped down 2"
“Yes, sir.”
“And picked them up 2"
“Yes, sir.”
Visit to the Conciergerie. I49
At this point, M. Lebel leaned towards me and said:
“He has already been taught his lesson.”
It was evident, in fact, that the child was telling a lie.
There was neither decision nor candour in his look. He
cast his eyes down obliquely, as he looked at me, as a
sharper examines his victim, and moreover with that
delighted expression of a child who makes a man his
dupe.
“You are not telling the truth, my lad,” I resumed.
“Yes, I am, sir.”
This “Yes, I am, sir,” was said with that kind of
impudence in which one feels that everything is wanting,
even assurance. He added, boldly:
“And for that I have been sentenced to three years'
imprisonment. But, j'en rappelle.”—“Have not your
relatives come to claim you?”—“No, sir.”—“And your
friend, was he sentenced ?”—“No, his relatives claimed
him.”—“He is a better boy than you, then 2 ”
The boy hung down his head.
M. Lebel Said to me : “He has been sentenced to be
detained for three years in a House of Correction, to be
brought up there—acquitted, that is to say, for not
having acted “with discretion.” The misfortune and the
grief of all the little vagabonds is to be under sixteen
years of age. They have a thousand ways of trying to
persuade the authorities that they are sixteen years of
age, and guilty with discretion. In fact, when they are
sixteen years and one day old they are punished with a few
* For J’em appelle, meaning that he has appealed against the sen-
tence.—Translator's note.
150 7%ings Seen.
months' imprisonment for their pranks. If they are a
day less than sixteen years old, they have three years'
detention at La Roquette.”
I gave a small sum of money to these poor little
wretches, who, perhaps, were only wanting in education.
All things considered, society is more guilty towards
them than they are guilty towards society. We may ask
them : What have you done with our peaches? Very
well. But they might reply: What have you done with
our intelligence 2
“Thank you, sir,” said the youngster, putting the
money in his pocket.
“I would have given you twice as much,” I told him,
“if you had not told a lie.”
“Sir,” said the boy, “I have been sentenced, but j'em
Tappelle.” -
“It was bad to take peaches, but it was worse to tell
a lie.”
The child did not appear to understand.
“J'en rappelle,” he said. -
We quitted the cell, and, as the door was closed, the
boy followed us with a look, while still repeating : “J'en
Tappelle.” The two others did not breathe a word. The
jailor bolted the door while muttering : “Reep quiet, my
little rats.”” This word reminded us that we were in a
“souricière.” + -
The second compartment was set apart for men, and
was exactly similar to the first. I did not go in, but con-
* Equivalent to “my little dears.”—Translator's note.
t In allusion to its other signification of a mouse-trap.–Trans-
lator’s note.
Visit to the Conciergerie. I5 I
tented myself with looking through the peep-hole. It
was full of prisoners, among whom the turnkey pointed
out to me a youth with a prepossessing countenance,
tolerably dressed, and wearing a thoughtful air. This
was an individual named Pichery, the ringleader of a
gang of thieves who were to be put on their trial in a few
days' time.
The third slice cut out of the Kitchens of Saint-Louis
was the women's jail. It was thrown open to us. I saw
only seven or eight inmates, all more than forty years of
age, with the exception of a youngish woman who still
retained some remains of good looks. This poor creature
hid herself behind the others. I understood this bashful-
ness, and I neither asked nor permitted any question.
All kinds of little articles of women's luggage, baskets,
flat baskets, work-bags, pieces of knitting just begun, en-
cumbered the stone benches. There were also great
pieces of brown bread. I took up a piece of this bread.
It was of the colour of road scrapings, smelt very nasty,
and stuck to the fingers like birdlime.
“What is that ?” I said to M. Lebel. “It is the
prison bread.”—“Why, it is detestable !”—“Do you
think so 2°–“Look at it yourself.”—“It is a contractor
who supplies it.”—“And who makes his fortune, does he
not 2 ”
“M. Chayet, Secretary at the Prefecture, has to
examine the bread; he considers it very good, so good
that he does not have any other on his own table.”
“M. Chayet,” I said, “is wrong to judge the bread
eaten by the prisoners by the bread he receives himself.
If the speculator does send him every day a delicacy,
I52 Things Seen.
that does not prove that he does not send filth to the
prisoners.”
“You are right; I will speak about it.”
I learnt afterwards that the quality of the bread had been
looked into and that an improvement had been effected.
On the whole, there was nothing remarkable in this
cell, unless it was that the walls were covered all over
with inscriptions in black marks. Here are the three
which stood out prominently in larger letters than the
others:—“Corset.”—“Je suis codamée à sia: mois pour
vacabonage.”—“Amour pour la vie.” +
The three doors of the compartments opened on the
same passage, a long dark corridor, at the two ex-
tremities of which, like two stone tiaras, were the
rounded forms of the two chimney-pieces which had been
preserved, and of which, as I had already said, there was
only one which was perfect. The second had lost its
principal ornament—its buttress. Of the others all that
remained visible was the sites on which they had stood
in the corners of the juvenile compartment and the
women's compartment.
It was upon the easternmost of these two latter
chimney-pieces that the curious figure of the demon
Mahidis was carved. The demon Mahidis was a Persian
demon which Saint-Louis brought back from the Cru-
sades. It was to be seen upon the chimney-piece with
* The first appears to be the name of a prisoner. The second is
an illiterate inscription by some woman, to the effect that she has
'been sentenced to six months' imprisonment as a vagabond. The
third expresses undying affection for some person unknown.—Trans-
lator's note.
Visit to the Conciergerie. I 53
its five heads, for he had five heads, and each of these
five heads had composed one of those songs which are
called ragas in India, and which are the oldest music
known. These ragas are still celebrated and dreaded
throughout Hindostan, on account of their magic powers.
There is no juggler who is bold enough to sing them.
One of these ragas sung at nuddar makes the night
fall instantly, and conjures up from the ground an
immense circle of darkness, which spreads as far as the
voice of the singer will carry. Another is called the
Ihupuck raga. Whoever sings it perishes by fire. A
tradition relates how the Emperor Akbar one day was
smitten with a desire to hear this raga sung. He sent
for a famous musician named Naik-Gopaul, and said to
him : “Sing me the Thupuck raga.” Thereupon the
poor tenor, trembling from head to foot, falls upon the
Emperor's knees. The Emperor had his whim and was
inflexible. The only concession the tenor could obtain
was to be allowed to go and see his family for the last
time. He sets out, returns to the town in which he lives,
makes his will, embraces his old father and mother, says
adieu to all that he loves in the world, and returns to
the Emperor. Six months elapsed. Eastern kings have
melancholy and tenacious whims. “Ah! there you are,
musician,” said Shah Akbar, in a sad but friendly tone,
“welcome. You are going to sing me the Ihupuck
raga.” Naik-Gopaul trembles and implores once more.
But the Emperor is inexorable. It was winter time.
The Jumna was frozen over; people were skating upon
it. Naik-Gopaul has the ice broken and gets into the
water up to his neck. He begins to sing. At the second
I 54. 7%ings Seen.
verse the water became warm ; at the second stanza the
ice melted; at the third stanza the river began to boil.
Naik-Gopaul was cooking; he was covered with blisters.
Instead of singing, he cried : “Mercy, Sire l’—“Go
on,” said Akbar, who was no mean lover of music.
The poor wretch went on singing; his face was crimson,
his eyes started out of his head, but he continued to sing,
the Emperor listening meanwhile with ecstasy. At length
a few sparks shot out of the hair of the tenor, which
stood on end.—“Mercy l’’ he cried, for the last time.
“Sing!” said the Emperor. He began the last stanza
amidst shrieks. Suddenly the flames burst forth from
his mouth, then from his entire body, and the fire con-
sumed him in the midst of the water. That is one of
the habitual effects of the music of this demon Mahidis,
who was represented upon the demolished chimney-piece.
He had a wife named Parbutta, who is the author of what
the Hindoos call the sixth raga. Thirty raginis, a music
of a feminine and inferior character, were dictated by
Boimba. It was to these three devils or gods that was
due the invention of the gamut, composed of twenty-one
notes, which forms the basis of the music of India.
As we withdrew, three gentlemen in black coats, con-
ducted by a turnkey, passed near us; they were visitors.
“Three new members of the Chamber of Deputies,”
M. Lebel informed me in a whisper. They had whiskers
and high cravats, and spoke like Provincial academicians.
They were lavish in expressions of admiration; they were
in ecstasies more particularly at the work which had been
done in the way of embellishing the prison and making it
suitable to the requirements of the police authorities.
Visit to the Conciergerie. I 55
One of them maintained that Paris was being prodigiously
embellished, thanks to the architects of taste who were
modernizing (sic) the ancient buildings; and he asserted
that the Académie Française ought to make these Paris
embellishments the subject of a prize competition in
poetry. This set me thinking that M. Peyre has done for
the Palais de Justice what M. Godde has done for Saint-
Germain-des-Près, and M. Debret for Saint-Denis; and
while M. Lebel was giving some instructions to the
warders, I wrote with a pencil upon a pillar of the hall
of the chimney-pieces these verses, which might be sent
in for the competition if ever the Académie should set up
the competition desired by these gentlemen, and which, I
hope, would secure the prize :
Un sizain vaut ume longue ode
Pour chanter Debret, Peyre et Godde;
L'oison glowssant, l'éne qui brait,
Fétent Godde, Peyre et Debret;
Et le dimdon, digme compère,
Admire Debret, Godde et Peyre.*
As M. Lebel turned round, I had finished. He con-
ducted me to the outer door again, and I issued forth.
As I went away, some one of a group of men in blouses
at the back of me, who appeared to be waiting on the
* This might be rendered:
Six lines are worth a lengthy ode
To sing of Debret, Peyre, and Godde ;
The gosling's hiss, the donkey’s bray,
Acclaim them all, Godde, Peyre, Debret;
The turkey, too, a worthy mate,
Must worship this triumvirate.—Translator’s note.
I 56 Things Seen.
quay, said: “There is one of them who has been dis-
charged. He is a lucky fellow.” *
It appears that I looked like a thief. However, I had
spent two hours at the Conciergerie, the sitting of the
Académie must still be going on, and I reflected, with
much inward satisfaction, that if I had gone to it, I
should not have been “discharged ” thus early.
COUNT MORTIER.
November 11th.
YESTERDAY. Chancellor Pasquier comes to the house of
Mme. de Boignes, and finds her in great agitation, hold-
ing a letter in her hand. “What is the matter, madame 2 ”
—“This letter which I have received. Read it.” The
Chancellor took the letter; it was signed Mortier, and
said in effect: “Madame, when you read this letter my
two children and myself will no longer be alive.”
It was Count Mortier, a Peer of France, and formerly
an Ambassador, but where I cannot remember, who wrote.
M. Pasquier was much concerned. M. Mortier was
known as a confirmed hypochondriac. Four years ago,
at Bruges, he ran after his wife, with a razor in his hand,
with the intention of killing her. A month ago he made
a similar attempt, which led to a separation by the
terms of which M. Mortier retained the custody of the
children, a little boy of seven years of age, and a little
girl of five. His hypochondria was caused, it appears,
by jealousy, and developed into uncontrollable passion.
The Chancellor sends for his carriage, and does not take
a chair. “Where does M. Mortier live 2"-" In the Rue
Neuve Saint-Augustin, in the Hôtel Chatham,” said
Madame de Boignes.
I 58 7%ings Seen.
M. Pasquier arrives at the Hôtel Chatham, he finds
the staircase crowded, a Commissary of Police, a lock-
smith with his bunch of keys, the door barricaded. The
alarm had been given. They were going to break open
the door.
“I forbid you,” said the Chancellor. “You would
exasperate him; and if the mischief were not yet done,
he would do it.” -
For some time, however, M. Mortier had not answered.
There was nothing but a profound silence behind the
door; a terrible silence, for it seemed that if the children
were still living they should be crying. “It seemed,”
said the Chancellor, when he told me this to-day, “as if
it was the door of a tomb.”
The Chancellor called out his name :
“Count Mortier, it is I, M. Pasquier, the Chancellor,
your colleague. You know my voice, do you not ?”
To this a voice replied: “Yes.”
It was the voice of M. Mortier.
The onlookers breathed again.
“Well,” continued M. Pasquier, “you know me;
open the door.”
“No,” replied the same voice. Then it obstinately
refused to speak again. All was silence once more.
This happened several times. He replied, the dialogue
continued, he refused to open, then he remained silent.
Those outside trembled for fear that in these brief
intervals of silence he might do the dreadful deed.
In the meantime, the Prefect of Police had arrived.
“It is I, your colleague, Delessert, and your old
friend.” (They were schoolfellows, I think.)
Count Mortier. I 59
This parleying lasts for more than an hour. At
length, he consents to open the door, provided they give
him their word they will not enter. The word is given;
he half opens the door ; they go in.
He was in the anteroom, with an open razor in his
hand ; behind him was the inner door of his rooms,
locked, and with the key removed. He appeared
frenzied.
“If any one approaches me,” he said, “there will be
an end of him and me. I will remain alone with
Delessert and speak to him; I consent to that.”
A risky conversation this, with a furious man armed
with a razor. M. Delessert, who behaved bravely, asked
everyone else to withdraw, remained alone with M.
Mortier, and after a refusal, which lasted for a space of
twenty minutes, persuaded him to put down the razor.
Once disarmed, he was secured.
But were the children dead or living 2 It was terrible
to reflect upon. To all questions on the subject he
replied:
“It is nothing to do with you.”
The inner door is broken open, and what is found at
the further end of the rooms? The two children crouch-
ing under the furniture.
This is what had happened.
In the morning, M. Mortier said to his children: “I
am very unhappy. You love me and I love you. I am
going to die. Will you die with me?”
The little boy said resolutely :
“No, papa.”
I6O 7%ings Seem.
As for the little girl, she hesitated. In order to
persuade her, the father passed the back of the razor
gently round her neck, and said to her :
“There, my dear, it will not hurt you any more than
that.”
“Well, then, papa,” said the child, “I do not mind
dying.”
The father goes out, probably to fetch a second razor.
Directly he goes out, the little boy rushes to the key,
lays hold of it, shuts the door, and locks it twice on the
inside.
Then he takes his sister to the furthermost end of the
rooms and gets under the furniture with her.
The doctors declared that Count Mortier was a
melancholy and dangerous madman. He was taken to
a madhouse.
He had a mania, in fact, for razors. When he was
seized, he was searched; besides that which he had in
his hand, one was found in each of his pockets.
On the same day the news arrived in Paris that my
colleague, Count Bresson, had cut his throat at Naples,
where he had recently been appointed Ambassador.
This was a grief to us all, and a great surprise. From
a mere worldly point of view, Count Bresson wanted
nothing. He was a Peer of France, an Ambassador, a
Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour. His son had
lately been created a Duke in Spain. As an Ambas-
sador, he had a salary of two hundred thousand francs a
year. He was an earnest, kindly, gentle, intelligent,
sensible man, very rational in everything, of high
Count Mortier. I6 I
stature, with broad shoulders, a good square face, and at
fifty-five years of age looked only forty ; he had wealth,
greatness, dignity, intelligence, health, and was fortunate
in private as in public life. He killed himself.
Nourrit also went to Naples and killed himself.
Is it the elimate 2 Is it the marvellous sky 2
Spleen is engendered just as much under a blue sky as
under a gloomy sky. More so perhaps.
As the life of even the most prosperous man is always
in reality more sad than gay, a gloomy sky is in harmony
with ourselves. A brilliant and joyous sky mocks us.
Nature in its sad aspects resembles us and consoles us:
nature, when radiant, impassive, serene, magnificent,
transplendent, young while we grow old, smiling when
we are sighing, Superb, inaccessible, eternal, contented,
calm in its joyousness, has in it something oppressive.
By dint of contemplating the sky,_ruthless, unrelent-
ing, indifferent, and sublime, Lone takes a razor and makes
an end of it !
December 1st.
In the new hall for private meetings at the Académie,
the statue of Racine has been placed in a corner, and the
statue of Corneille in the centre, behind the President's
chair.
Formerly it was Racine who was in the centre and
Corneille in the corner. This is a step in the right
direction. Another demolition, another reconstruction,
WOL. I. M
I62 - Things Seem.
and it will be Molière who will be put in the place of
honour.
December 18th.
Reception at M. Guizot's.
M. Guizot's aged mother is eighty-four or eighty-five
years old. She attends the evening gatherings, seating
herself in the corner by the fire-place, and wearing a
chemisette and a black cap amidst all the laces and the
stars and ribbons. In this room of velvet and gold one
would think she must be an apparition from the Cevennes.
M. Guizot said to her one day: “Do you remember,
mother, the time when your grandmother spoke to us of
the dragoons who pursued her in the mountains and of
the bullets which pierced her clothes 2 ”
At the period of M. Guizot's birth, '89 had not yet
restored to Protestants their civil rights. They were
outlawed. M. Guizot was thus legally a bastard when
he was born. He was inscribed in no register when he
came into the world, and would be unable to prove his
French nationality.
M. Guizot came up during the evening to a group of
which I happened to make One, and said to me : .
M. GUIzoT : “Well, we are going to begin the struggles
once more.”
I: “You do not fear anything in our Chamber 2"
M. GUIzot : “No. The Opposition intimates to me
that it will not harass me much, excepting M. de
Boissy, who has not informed me beforehand of what he
Count Mortier. I 63
intends to do at all. M. de Montalembert will speak
about Cracow. But we shall have a paragraph in the
Speech from the Throne, which I hope will leave nothing
to be said.”
I: “And you will be quite right. As for myself, my
opinion is this. If the Chamber had been sitting at the
time of the Cracow affair, I should have spoken and I
should have said: I ask permission to congratulate
France. To get rid of Cracow is to restore to us the
Rhine. The treaties of 1815 no longer exist. Those
treaties were made against us, they are violated against
us, they will be violated again against us; the final
violation will be for us to make. I congratulate France,
and I glorify Poland.”
Viscount DE FLAVIGNY : “That may be. But is it
not a misfortune that some governments . . . .”
M. DE LAGRENíE : “Monarchical governments l’”
M. DE FLAVIGNY: “ . . . . set the example of the
infraction of treaties and the violation of international
Iaw ”
I: “It is nothing new. M. Guizot, who is a great
historian, knows better than we do that nothing is more
frequent in the history of Europe. All governments
have from time to time violated every law, beginning
with the law of nations. Cannon were called the ultima
oratio. Who has might has right; that was the maxim.
The little were devoured by the great; the fowls eaten
by the foxes; the foxes eaten by the wolves; the wolves
eaten by the lions: that was the practice. That which
is new is the respect for law. It is the glory of the
civilization of the nineteenth century to wish the weak to
M 2
I64 7%ings Seen.
be respected by the strong, and to rank eternal morality
higher than pikes and muskets. The three Powers which
have destroyed Cracow have committed a blunder, not
because they have violated the tradition of past cen-
turies, but because they have outraged the spirit of the
time.”
M. GUIZOT : “Just so.”
M. DE FLAVIGNY: “But the history of the Popes
then . . .”
I: “The history of the Popes is better than the his-
tory of Kings, but it has also its dark spots. Popes
themselves have also been false to their word and violated
their plighted faith.”
M. GUIZOT (laughing) : “Oh ! do not let us say any
harm of the Papacy just now. There is a Pope whom I
esteem, and for whom I have a warm regard.”
I: “Granted. But the preceding one, Gregory XVI.'
As for Pius IX., I am also among those who live in
hopes.”
M. GUIZOT : “I esteem him because he appreciates and
invites advice, because he asks for one's opinion, although
judging rationally for himself afterwards; because he
wishes to do what is right, seeks it, and often discovers
it. I esteem him because he concedes gracefully, and
with a goodwill, that which is just. I esteem him because
he knows also how to say: “I will never do that.' He
has gentleness and firmness.”
I: “If Pius IX. likes, he may become the most
powerful sovereign in Europe. No one realizes what a
Pope might become. A Pope who would follow the drift
of his times might govern and might move the world.
Count Mortier. I65
He has so enormous a lever—faith, the conscience, the
mind Every soul is a mine ready to be fired by the
spark which would flash from such a Pope. What a con-
flagration, if it pleased him ' What a coruscation, if he
So willed it !” º
T 84. 7.
January 6th.
THE Marquis of Normanby, the English Ambassador,
said to me yesterday: “When the secret history of the
Cracow affair is known, it will be known that Russia said
to Austria, ‘Take Cracow, will you?”—“No.”—“Well,
then, I will take it.’ Austria yielded.” “Then,” I said,
“her audacity is obedience, her violence cowardice, her
usurpation an abdication.” Lord Normanby is a man of
about fifty years of age, tall, fair, with a pronounced
Bnglish look, elegant, graceful, high bred, good-natured,
and dandyish. He has been Viceroy of Ireland and Home
Secretary in England. He is the author of two or three
novels of high-life. He wears a blue ribbon over his
white tie, and a diamond star upon his dress-coat. He
speaks French with difficulty but with humour.
Lord Normanby spoke to me of O'Connell, who, in
1847, is beginning to break up. His seventy-three years
weigh him down, notwithstanding his tall figure and wide
shoulders. This man, of such violent and bitter eloquence,
is in a drawing-room obsequious, full of compliments,
modest to humility, mild to affectation. Lord Normanby
said to me: “O’Connell is affected.”
O'Connell has in County Kerry an old ancestral hall,
Pinner at Sa/vandy's. 167
where he goes to shoot for two months in the year,
receiving guests and entertaining them like an old county
gentleman,” keeping up, Lord Normanby also told me, a
Savage hospitality.
His eloquence, adapted to the masses and to Ireland,
had little influence upon the Commons of England. How-
ever, he had during his life two or three great successes
in Parliament. But the platform suited him better than
the tribune. -
January 14th.
Yesterday, Thursday, I dined at the house of M. de
Salvandy, Minister of Public Instruction. There were
present, Lord Normanby, British Ambassador; the Duke
de Caraman, a young nobleman, intelligent and artless,
much occupied in philosophic studies; Dupin, the elder,
with his rough bourgeois air; M. de Rémusat, the eight
days old Academician, a keen and well-balanced mind;
M. Gay-Lussac, the chemist, whom fame has made a
Peer of France, and to whom nature has given the face of
a worthy peasant; the other chemist, M. Dumas, a man
of talent, his hair rather too elaborately curled, and dis-
playing very prominently the ribbon of a Commander of
the Legion of Honour; Sainte-Beuve, bald and little;
Alfred de Musset, with his youthful hair, his fair beard,
his equivocal opinions, and his intellectual countenance ;
M. Ponsard, a man of thirty-two years of age, with strange-
looking features, large dull eyes, rather narrow forehead,
* In the original “lord campagnard.”—Translator's note.
I68 7%ings Seem.
the whole in a framework of black beard and black hair,
a hero of the shop-girls, a great poet to the bourgeois;
M. Michel Chevalier, with his close-cropped head, his
receding forehead, his bird-like profile, and his spare
figure; Alfred de Vigny, another fair man with a bird-
like profile but with long hair; Viennet, with his grimace;
Scribe, with his peaceful air, rather anxious about a piece
of his which was being played the same evening at the
Gymnase, and which failed; Dupaty, sad after his fall of
the 7th at the sitting of the Académie ; Montalembert,
with his long hair and English appearance, mild and dis-
dainful; Philippe de Ségur, a light and lively talker, with
an aquiline nose, deep-sunk eyes, grey hair, combed in
imitation of the Emperor; Generals Fabvier and Rapatel,
in full uniform, -Rapatel with his round, homely face,
Fabvier with his flat-nosed lion's face ; Mignet, smiling
and cold ; Gustave de Beaumont, with dark, firm and
energetic face; Halévy, always timid ; the astronomer
Leverrier, rather red-faced ; Vitet, with his tall figure and
his smile, which is amiable, although it lays bare his teeth ;
M. Victor Leclerc, the candidate for the Académie, who
had that morning been rejected; Ingres, the table rising
to his chin, so that his white tie and his Commander's
ribbon seemed to come from under the table-cloth;
Pradier, with his long hair and his air of a man of forty
at sixty years of age; Auber, with his head on one
side, his polite manners, and his two crosses at his
button-hole.
I sat beside Lord Normanby, who is a very amiable
man, although the Ambassador of ill-humour; I called
his attention to the end of the table thus composed:
At the Zºu?/eries. I69
Ingres, Pradier, Auber; painting, sculpture, and
music. -
Mme. de Salvandy had Lord Normanby on her right,
and M. Gay-Lussac on her left; M. de Salvandy had on
his right M. Dupin, and on his left, M. de Rémusat.
February 5th.
Yesterday, I was at the Tuileries. There was a repre-
sentation there. After the opera, every one went into the
side-rooms in which the buffet was placed, and began to
COITVelº Sé.
M. Guizot had made during the day in the Chamber of
Deputies, a very noble, very fine, and very spirited speech
about our budding dispute with England. This speech
was much spoken of Some approved, others condemned.
Baron de Billing passed close to me, with a lady whom I
could not see on his arm.
“Good evening,” he said. “What do you think of the
speech 2” I replied: “I am pleased with it. I like
to see that we are at length holding up our heads again
in this country. It is said that this boldness is im-
prudent, but I do not think so. The best way not to have
a war is to show that one does not fear it. See how
IEngland gave in to the United States two years ago; she
will give in in the same way to France. Let us be firm,
others will be gentle ; if we are gentle, others will be
insolent.”
At this moment the lady to whom he was giving his
I 7o 7%ings Seem.
arm turned towards me, and I recognized the wife of
the English ambassador. She looked very displeased.
She said :
“Oh, Monsieur !”
I replied:
“Ah, Madame !”
And the war ended there. God send that that may
be the only interchange of words between the Queen of
ICngland and the King of France
Saturday, February 20th.
Opening of the Théâtre-Historique. I came out from
it at half-past three in the morning.
March 21st.
Mdlle. Mars was the only person represented in the
statuary of the porch of the Théâtre-Historique.
Mdme. d’A. . . . . hearing this, said:
“This places her in the list of the dead; she has not
long to live.”
Mdlle. Mars died on the 20th of March, a month to a
day after the opening of the Théâtre-Historique. She
was sixty-nine years of age; two years older than Mdlle.
Georges. Mdlle. Mars was fifty-two years old when she
first performed her original part of Dona Sol, a character
supposed to be seventeen.
She leaves a son, in the banking house of Edward.
No letters announcing the decease, owing to the difficulty
of putting : g
“Mademoiselle Mars is dead. Her son has the honour
to inform you of the fact.”
Funeral of M//e. Mars. 171
March, 26th.
I have been at the burial of Mdlle. Mars. I arrived at
twelve o'clock. The hearse was already at the Made-
leine. There was an immense crowd, and the most
brilliant sun imaginable. It was the day of the flower-
market in the square outside the church. I penetrated
with considerable difficulty as far as the steps, but there
it was impossible to go any further; the only door was
crowded: no one could get in. I saw in the dark interior
of the church, through the dazzling light of midday, the
ruddy stars of the wax-tapers stuck round a tall cata-
falque. The paintings on the ceiling formed a mystic
background.
I heard the funeral chant, the sound of which reached
as far as where I stood, and all round me the remarks
and shouts of the crowd. Nothing is so sad as a burial:
one sees only people who are laughing. Every one gaily
accosts his neighbour and talks of his concerns.
The church and the front gate are hung with black
drapery, with an escutcheon of silver lace, containing the
letter “M.” I approached the hearse, which was of
black velvet with silver-lace ornamentation, with the same
letter “M.” A few tufts of black feathers had been
‘thrown upon the place intended for the coffin.
The people of Paris are like the people of Athens—
frivolous but intelligent. There were men in blouses
there, with their sleeves tucked up, who said some true
and forcible things upon the stage, upon art, upon the
poets. They sought and distinguished in the crowd men
172 Things Seen.
whose names are famous. These people must have
glory. When there is no Marengo or Austerlitz, they
love and must have their Dumas and their Lamartines.
These are like a light towards which all eyes are eagerly
directed. * -
I remained under the peristyle, sheltered from the
sun by a column. One or two poets came and joined me
and stood round me, Joseph Autran, Adolphe Dumas,
Auguste Maquet. Alexandre Dumas came over to us
with his son. The crowd recognized him by his thick
head of hair, and called out his name.
Towards one o'clock the body came out of the church,
together with all the people. Remarks broke forth from
among those outside: -
“Ah, there is Bouffé !”
“But where is Arnal 2’’
“Here he is.”
“Hulloa, those men in black are the sociétaires of the
Théâtre-Français!
“The Théâtre-Français has come to its own burial.”
“Look at Frédéric-Lemaître; he is giving his arm
to Clarisse Miroy.” -
“Yes, and Rachel over there, gives her arm to Mdme.
Doche.” -
“There are some ladies — Mdme. Volnys, Mdme.
Guyon, Rose Chéri.”
“This one is Déjazet; she is no longer young; this
ought to make her reflect,” &c., &c. -
The hearse began to move off, and we all followed on
foot. In our rear came some ten mourning carriages
and a few open carriages with some actresses inside
Funeral of Mlle. Mars. I73
them. There were quite ten thousand persons on foot.
They formed a dark wave which appeared to push for-
ward the hearse, jolting its immense black plumes.
On both sides of the boulevard there was another mob,
forming a hedge. Women in red bonnets sat upon a
kind of step formed by the pavements, smiling; the bal-
conies were crowded with people. Towards the Porte
Saint-Martin I left the procession and went away
musing.
FETE AT THE D UKE DE
MONTPENSIER'S.
July 6th.
M. DE MONTPENSIER gave a fête this evening in the
Parc des Minimes, in the Forest of Vincennes.
It was splendid and delightful. The fête cost the
JPrince two hundred thousand francs. In the Forest
had been erected a multitude of tents, borrowed from the
government repository and the French Museum of Arms,
some of which were historical. This alone cost ten
thousand francs. There were the tent of the Emperor of
Morocco, taken at the Battle of Isly, and exhibited three
years previously at the Tuileries upon a wooden platform
constructed inside the big fountain; the tent of Abd-el-
Yader, taken with the Smala,” very handsome, with red
and yellow arabesques embroidered in satin; another
tent of the Bey of Constantine, of a wonderfully elegant
shape; and, finally, the tent given to Napoleon by the
Sultan Selim.
The latter eclipsed all the others. From the outside
it appeared like an ordinary tent, remarkable only for
* An assemblage of tents belonging to an Arab chief— Trans-
lator's note.
Aéte at the Duće de Montpensier's. I75
having in the canvas little windows, of which the frames
were of rope ; three windows on each side. The inside
was superb. The visitor found himself inside a great
chest of gold brocade; upon this brocade were flowers
and a thousand fancy devices. On looking closely into
the cords of the windows, one discovered that they were
of the most magnificent gold and silver lace; each win-
dow had its awning of gold brocade; the inner lining
of the tent was of silk, with large red-and-blue stripes.
If I had been Napoleon, I should have liked to place my
iron bed in this tent of gold and flowers, and to sleep in
it on the eve of Wagram, Jena, and Friedland.
These splendid tents were disfigured by fearful ma-
hogany furniture, rather sparingly placed in them.
M. de Montpensier received his guests with much
cheerfulness and grace.
Dancing took place in an immense marquee, where
the princesses remained. They were all there, with the
exception of the Duchess of Orleans. The Duke
d'Aumale came back from Brussels on purpose to take
part in the fête.
Queen Maria Christina was there with her daughter,
Madame de Montpensier. The Reyna gobernadora has
some remains of beauty, but she is too stout and her hair
is quite grey.
The tables were laid out under some other tents;
there were ample refreshments, and buffets everywhere.
The guests, while numbering more than four thousand,
were neither crowded nor few and far between. No-
where was there a crush. There were not enough ladies.
The fête had a splendid military character. Two
176 Things Seem.
enormous cannon of the time of Louis XIV. formed the
pillars of the entrance. The artillery soldiers of Vin-
cennes had constructed here and there columns of pikes
with pistols for chapters.
The principal avenue of the Park was illuminated with
coloured glass lamps; one might imagine that the emerald.’
and ruby necklaces of the wood-nymphs were to be seen
among the trees. Sap-matches burned in the hedges and
cast their glimmering over the Forest. There were three
tall poplar-trees illuminated against the dark sky in a
fantastic manner, which created much surprise. The
branches and leaves were wafted in the wind amidst a
brilliant scenic display of lights.
Along each side of the great avenue was a row of Gothic
panoplies from the Artillery Museum: some leaning
against the oaks and the lime-trees, others erect and with
the visor shut, seated upon dummy steeds, with caparisons
and coats-of-arms, with trappings and dazzling chamfrons.
These steel statues, masked and motionless in the midst
of the rejoicings, and covered with flashes and streams of
light, had something dazzling and sinister in their appear-
ance. Quadrilles were danced to vocal music. Nothing
more charming could be conceived than these youthful
voices singing melodies among the trees in soft, deep
tones; one might have fancied the guests to be enchanted
knights, tarrying for ever in this wood to listen to the
song of fairies.
Everywhere in the trees were suspended coloured
lanterns, presenting the appearance of luminous Oranges.
Nothing stranger could be imagined than this illuminated
fruit appearing suddenly upon the branches.
Fête at the Duće de Montpensier's. 177
From time to time trumpet-blasts drowned in trium-
phant tones the buzz of the festivities.
At the end of the avenue the artillerymen had sus-
pended a great star of the Legion of Honour, constructed
of ramrods. They had arranged in the hedges, in the
form of benches and chairs, mounds of bullets, Paixhan
mortars and howitzers. Two enormous siege-pieces
guarded the cross of honour. Beneath it were busts of
the King and Queen.
Amidst all this moved immense throngs of people,
amongst whom I saw Auber, Alfred de Vigny, Alexandre
Dumas with his son, Taylor, Théophile Gautier, Thiers,
Guizot, Rothschild, Count Daru, President Franck-
Carré, Generals Gourgaud, Lagrange, Saint-Yon, the
Duke De Fézensac, Hébert, Keeper of the Seals, the
Prince and Princess de Craon, Lord Normanby, Narvaez,
Duke de Valence, and a host of peers and ambassadors,
&c., &c. The dust was terrible.
Two Arabs in white burnooses were there, the Cadi of
Constantine and Bou-Maza. Bou-Maza has fine eyes but
an ugly look, a well-shaped mouth but a dreadful smile : it
is treacherous and ferocious; there is in this man some-
thing of the fox and the tiger. I thought, however, that
he had a tolerably fine expression in his face at a moment
when, thinking there was no one near him in the Forest,
he went up to the tent of Abd-el-Kader and stood look-
ing at it. He appeared to be saying to it:
“What are you doing here 2°
Bou-Maza is young: he appears about twenty-five
years of age.
Towards one o'clock in the morning some fireworks
WOL. I. N
178 Things Seen.
were let off, and the Forest was illuminated with Bengal
lights. Then supper was served at the table of the
Princesses; all the ladies sat down to supper, the gen-
tlemen remaining standing. Afterwards, dancing was
resumed. - - -
I regret not having been able to remain to the end. I
should have liked to see appear athwart the dark
branches, amidst this festivity about to be extinguished,
Some of those waning lights, those expiring illuminations,
those wearied dancers, those women covered with flowers,
diamonds, and dust, those pale faces, those drooping
eyelids, those rumpled dresses, that gleam of daylight, so
pale and dismal.
IIowever, I think, I know not why, that this fête will
be remembered; it has left a certain uneasy feeling in
my mind. For a fortnight previously it had been talked
about, and had formed an important subject of conversa-
tion to the people of Paris. Yesterday, from the
Tuileries to the Barrière du Trône, a triple hedge of
onlookers lined the quays, the streets, and the Fau-
bourg Saint-Antoine as the carriages of the guests
passed by. At frequent intervals this crowd hurled at
the gilded and bedizened passengers in their carriages
shouts of disgust and hate. It was like a mist of hatred
amidst this splendour.
Everyone on his return related what had befallen him.
Louis Boulanger and Achard had been hooted; the car-
riage of Tony Johannot had been spat into ; mud and
dirt had been thrown into the open carriage of General
Narvaez. Théophile Gautier, so calm and impassive, so
Fête at the Duke de Montpensier's. I79
Turk-like in his resignation, was rendered quite thought-
ful and gloomy by the occurrence.
It would not seem, however, that this grand display had
anything impolitic in it, or that it should have proved
unpopular. On the contrary, the Duke de Montpensier,
in spending two hundred thousand francs, must have
caused the expenditure of a million. That makes, in this
time of distress, a sum of twelve hundred thousand francs
put in circulation for the benefit of the people ; they
ought to be gratified. Well, it is not so. Luxury is
necessary to great States and to great civilizations, but
there are times when the people must not see it.
But what is luxury which is not seen 2 This is a pro-
blem. Magnificence in the background, profusion in
obscurity, a display which does not show itself, a splen-
dour which dazzles no one's eyes; is this possible 2
This must be taken into consideration, however. When
the people have luxury paraded before them in days of
dearth and distress, their mind, which is that of a child,
jumps to a number of conclusions at once ; they do not
say to themselves that this luxury enables them to get a
living, that this luxury is useful to them, that this luxury
is necessary to them; they say to themselves that they
are suffering and that these people rejoice; they ask why
all these things are not theirs, they examine these things
not at the light of their poverty which requires work and
consequently rich people, but by the light of their envy.
Do not suppose that they will conclude from that : Well,
this will give us so many weeks' wages and so many good
days' employment. No ; they, too, want not the work, not
the wages, but leisure, enjoyment, carriages, horses,
18O Things Seen.
lackeys, Duchesses It is not bread they require, but
luxury. They stretch out their trembling hands towards
these shining realities which would vanish into thin air
if they were to grasp them. The day on which the dis-
tress of the many seizes upon the riches of the few,
darkness reigns, there is nothing left, nothing for any-
body. This is full of perils. When the crowd looks
with these eyes upon the rich, it is not ideas which
occupy every mind, it is events.
That which specially irritates the people is the luxury
of Princes and young men; it is, in fact, only too evident
that the first have not experienced the necessity, and
that the others have not had the time, to earn it. This
seems unjust, and exasperates them ; they do not reflect
that the inequalities of this life prove the equality of the
next.
Equilibrium, equity, these are the two aspects of the
law of God. He shows us the first aspect in the world
of matter and of the body; He will show us the second
in the world of souls.
END OF WOL. I.
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