VIII
“FAMILY DRAMAS”
THE terms Jacobite, Republican, Socialist, the names of Robespierre, of Saint-Just, of Louis Blanc, of Pierre Leroux, of Proudhon, and of Ledru-Rollin, pronounced over and over again with terror by my grandparents and with a manner of adoration by my father, engraved themselves upon my memory and still more in my thoughts. The “My son-in-law is a madman” began the anthem and the “without God, good heavens!” ended it; the middle part was varied according to circumstances, but the same terms, the same words were interwoven together.
My father, who was extremely eloquent, very well read, and full of knowledge, delighted and charmed my grandmother, provided he spoke neither of politics nor of religion. Being very fond of Greek, no one could relate the Hellenic legends better than himself. While still quite a small child, whenever I saw him I would make him repeat to me the stories of old Homer, and I got to know them as well as little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella.
My father was a poet, and his verses were always classical, at least those were which he read to my grandmother, but we knew, and I, like a parrot, would repeat indignantly that he also wrote red verses!
How was it that my relatives were mad enough to talk politics every time they met? My grandmother was a governmental Orléanist, my grandfather a most passionate Imperialist, and it was amusing to hear him say with his lisping accent: “The emperor!” My father declared himself a Jacobite.
No one can imagine the scenes which took place between them. I can well remember my fright at the first I witnessed; I screamed and sobbed, but none of them heard me. One day (I was about four or five years old) I climbed upon the table and put one foot in a dish and with the other I rattled the glasses and plates. The discussion, or rather the quarrel, ceased immediately as by a miracle, my grandfather, grandmother, and father being convulsed with laughter.
My mother alone, of whom I stood greatly in awe, snatched me off the table roughly and was going to whip me, but in an instant I was taken from her by three people, and from that day I concluded I was very foolish to be afraid of her, as the others would always protect me from her severity.
The years went by without bringing any great changes in our habits. I had become used to the “family dramas” all the more easily because, by common accord, I was not included in their sulks, and had no part in their quarrels.
I was about six years old when my grandfather, my grandmother, and my father each tried in turn to convert me to his or her own ideas. I am not exaggerating. It is true that when six and a half years old I was in the second division of the second class of my school, that I knew many things of the kind one can accumulate in the memory, which was in my case an exceptional gift. Added to this, my grandmother and my father crammed me with everything with which it is possible to fill an unhappy child’s mind.
I remember that often of an evening, after dinner, while my grandfather and grandmother were playing their game of “Imperiale,” which they always did before my grandfather went to his club, I would prepare my books and papers as grandmother desired, for since my flight to Caumenchon she had never given me an order. As soon as grandfather had gone I would work with her until I fell asleep over my books.
Seeing this preparation, grandfather would always say: “Now, phenomenon, walk to your execution, pile up your instruments of torture, and don’t forget a single one!” And, going away, he would add: “They will kill the child, they will kill her!”
When by chance grandfather blamed any act of grandmother’s he never addressed himself directly to her. The pronouns they or one allowed him to appear unattacked if she cut him with one of her words, sharp as a whip-lash, and to reply without answering her personally.
Whenever my grandparents were angry with each other these pronouns, they or one, were of the greatest use. They spoke at, not to, each other, and so avoided an open quarrel. They would say, for instance, during one of their sulks, which would sometimes last for several days:
Grandmother: “Will one be at home at such an hour?”
Grandfather: “One will do one’s best to accomplish it.”
At table: “Does any one wish for some beef?”
At play: One has this or that.
While I, much annoyed at all this, would say one to both of them.
Then, suddenly, without any one knowing why, or, perhaps because the quarrel had lasted long enough, the familiar names were spoken again: Pélagie, Pierre, Juliette; a general kissing followed, and all was over without a word of explanation.
Heavens! how dramatic, and, in turn, how funny were my dear grandparents.
As I have already said, each member of the family tried to convert me to his or her own ideas.
Grandmother would try to prove by French history that the greatness of France was due to our kings, who had suppressed the “great feudal lords.”
She detested every form of feudal and autocratic systems. She loved the “First Communes,” the “Tiers-Etat,” the “Bourgeoisie,” the moderate ones in everything—“the middle course,” as she would say. She made me, at a very early age, prefer Louis XI. to Louis XII., the “Father of his People,” and Louis XIII. to Henry IV., on account of Richelieu, who had overthrown the great vassals. What the kings had done for the people interested her as little as the people themselves, for whom she professed the greatest contempt. The people, the lower classes, were simply to her “those who worked at gross things, and could have no idea of anything refined.”
For these opinions, expressed at school, I was often severely remonstrated with by the teachers, and looked upon with indignation by my companions.
I professed my grandmother’s ideas as if they were my own, and I upheld them without saying whence they came. This came from a double feeling of pride—for I gloried in thinking differently from my little schoolmates—and also, I recall, in order not to compromise my grandmother, or, rather, to avoid having her opinions either discussed or blamed. I spoke of her with a passionate admiration, which, willingly or unwillingly, people were obliged to submit to, under penalty of blows. I strongly denied that any other little girl could have a mother or grandmother comparable to mine. They could do what they liked with me by saying that from Chauny to Paris there was not another mother or grandmother who loved their daughter and granddaughter as I was loved. Then my generosity knew no bounds, and would flow abundantly over the flatterers; usually this generosity consisted in the offering of certain sugar-plums made of apples and cherries, red and yellow, which were delicious, and of which I bought a daily supply from a grocer on my way to school, thereby obliging him to renew his stock at least twice a week.
These sugar-plums became later a source of reproach to me, for through them I established my dominion over the girls I liked best, probably the most greedy ones, and really corrupted them. But my domination, it is true, was also built on more honourable foundations; for, although I directed the games, and although my companions obeyed me at recreations, it was not solely on account of the sugar-plums, quickly eaten up, but because I was always inventing new games. Being both tall and strong also helped me to head the ranks. It was dangerous to measure forces with me.
My budget of political opinions was consequently thus made up: Worship of Louis XI., “the Father of the Communes,” as grandmother called him; worship of Louis XIII., who had cut all the feudal towers in two; worship of Louis Philippe, “the Liberal King.”
Grandfather seized every occasion to try to convince me that the Emperor had carried the glory of France on the wings of Fame to the uttermost ends of the earth, that the whirling of his sword (he would make the movement with his two large arms, one after the other, inversely, which delighted me) had terrified not only the beheaders of “Lambert’s Jacobite Revolution” (this a shaft at my father), but had conquered the sovereigns of Europe as far as Africa and Asia.
How often I heard this speech! But, unfortunately for grandfather, it used to convulse grandmother and me with laughter.
“I have had the honour in person of serving the Emperor, and neither of you can say as much,” he would add with superb dignity (rising if he happened to be seated), “and I will not allow a word, a single word, to be spoken which might impair a hair’s-breadth his immortal, his eternal memory.”
Grandfather knew all of Béranger’s songs, especially and exclusively those that exalted his Emperor; but he made an exception of the “Old Vagabond,” which saddened him, and brought back the memory of his own misery—“the misery of my youth,” he would say—and his philosophy during that time.
I have already said what a colossally big man grandfather was, and that he drank copiously. Towards evening, speaking of the Emperor and the campaigns he had followed at Lützen and elsewhere, he usually made a mistake in the final triumphant phrase. There I had him.
“Take care, grandfather, not to upset your fine phrase.”
He would begin it, and, invariably being troubled by my interruption, would end it in an emphatic manner impossible to describe, and with an outburst of inimitable pride:
“And when Larrey needed me no longer, I fought on my own account, joining the Grenadiers’ Guards, and I was always the last to fight and the first to run.”
Then I would clap my hands and cry: “Bravo, grandfather!” and he would understand by that that he had made a mistake.