The romance of my childhood and youth

I  ENDEAVOURED most seriously to put into practice what I had once told my grandfather, who had laughed at me, namely: to make my grandfather’s ideas concerning me agree with my grandmother’s. I fancied myself born to conciliate. I talked of grandmother to my father, and still oftener of my father to grandmother, having more opportunities for so doing. I sought in every way to make them more indulgent and loving towards one another, and I perceived how a word said at the proper time, and thrown into ground already prepared, could bring forth a good harvest.

I determinedly stood between them in their quarrels. I forbade any “talking at” each other and greeted such speeches with blame and derision. I forced any misunderstanding between my beloved grandparents to be explained away instantly, and I would not allow ill-humour. I proved on the spot what had caused either the misunderstanding or the rancour. I pleaded a double cause and won it.

“You surely could not mean that, grandmother? You have not understood, grandfather. It is very wrong of you to imagine such an unkind meaning! Say you are wrong. You know very well that....” With these few sentences, interrogative or affirmative, which I repeated one after the other, very quickly, and also through tenderness and entreaties, I managed to smooth over the quarrels, and by this means we all three kept sadness at bay for a few days.

Whenever I had cleared away all the black clouds, I fancied the sky would always remain serene.

You can imagine how important I felt myself, and how I persevered in my peace-makings. My reflections were certainly absurdly profound in the circumstances, but they taught me to study my grandparents’ characters with kindness, and by that means to turn my arguments to good account. I noted certain words spoken when one or the other was absent, and I noticed that whenever I could add to my wish of convincing them favourably: “She or he told me so the other day,” my triumph was complete. At times and according to circumstances, I ventured some slight embellishments, but I do not think any one could blame me, when the feeling which dictated my little exaggerations was so praiseworthy.

I learned that no matter how young we may be, we can be kind and useful to those we love. I was born with such a cheerful disposition, I was so naturally happy, that I might easily have become selfish, had I not, from my childhood, thought a great deal about the happiness and peace of those belonging to me, and especially because of their tendency to make themselves miserable, and to disturb their lives by scenes of violence. I formed in my heart an intense desire to care always for the peace and welfare of others.

At nine years of age my character was formed, and I have since then perceived no essential change in my intercourse with others. My first interest in life was centred in my relatives, later, in the people of mark with whom I lived; and I have developed my own personality only so far as it could serve my ardent wish to love, to admire, and to devote myself to others, or to be useful to any cause I espouse and uphold, so long as I deemed it worthy to be fought for and upheld.

My real vocation, in fact, would have been that of an apostle preaching the “good word” and reconciling men among themselves. I was much more ardent in play hours than in study, because I was busy amusing my schoolmates or settling their quarrels. I hated anything clannish, and I especially sought after those girls who stood apart from my group. I led in everything, but I was never captain. When it so happened that there were two camps, I called myself the chief staff officer of the two commanders, and I rode from one to the other giving advice to each.

I was much fonder of being guide than captain, and it was usually owing to me that there were never any defeats, and that neither side got the better of the other. What unmixed joy I used to feel when, after some particular play hours in which I had given myself a great deal of trouble, I was surrounded by a group of little girls saying to me: “What fun you have made for us!”

On rainy days we were obliged to content ourselves in a barn, in which no running about was possible, so I amused my young companions by talking politics to them. I demanded absolute sworn secrecy concerning the things I was going to tell them, and of which they had never heard in their own families. Their ears were wide open to hear my stories about King Louis Philippe. These were the stories my father never lost an opportunity of relating to grandmother in order to make her angry.

At the time of which I speak so very few newspapers found their way into the country, that politics and the government were topics rarely discussed at table by grown people, so I acted as a newspaper, and informed my little friends of what was going on in the world.

My father, whenever he saw me, gave me cuttings from the Democratie Pacifique, and kept me so well posted that events often justified my speeches, and I was asked for “the news.”

We all made up our minds that when we were grown up, we should have a hand in government, and would state our opinions frankly, and that our future husbands should be obliged to be interested in politics.

I read every book I could lay my hands on, and among them I found a volume on the Fronde which delighted me, because the women of those days played leading parts. I told my “disciples” about the book, and, to my delight, they soon came around to all my ideas. I easily persuaded them that we were all “Frondeuses.”

How proud we felt at having ideas of our own, and to belong to a “secret society,” for we bound ourselves not to reveal to any one the opinions we shared. And then, who knew? Things were going so badly that perhaps one day France might have need of our devotion and our capacities, and we loved France. We fancied ourselves to be “the staves of this dais which covered the sacred reliquary of our country.” One of the girls discovered this metaphor and was much applauded.

These childish things, at which one can but smile, made us very patriotic little persons, however—ready, as we thought, at least, to give our lives for France. We no longer learned history in our former way. Everything in it interested us. We spoke of our France, at such and such an epoch, and we discussed at length the consequences of a reign, a fact, a victory or a defeat.

If a professor had heard us, he would certainly have found in our conversations—often very silly, to be sure—elements of emulation to make young pupils love studies which usually bore them mortally.

However, after a time we grew tired of the Fronde; we should be obliged to find something new. I promised to do so. The Easter vacations were at hand, and I was to pass them at Blérancourt.

When I arrived there, it so happened that one of my father’s friends, a Fourierite, came to visit him. I had heard of Fourier, of whom I knew but little, while I had for a long time been familiar with Victor Considérant and the Democratie Pacifique.

My father’s friend explained to him a complete plan for a phalanstery, wishing to interest him in it, and I remembered what was necessary for my purpose, in order to make use of this new idea with my schoolmates during our future recreations, for we were always eager for new things.

After the departure of the Fourierite my father explained to me all that I wished to learn, and I soon understood what a phalanstery was. But my father said, and I agreed with him, that, being only nine and a half years old, I was still incapable of understanding the depth of Fourier’s theories, his social criticisms, and the elements of reform.

But he talked to me of Toussenel, and delighted me with stories taken from his L’Esprit des Bêtes, a book that had just appeared, and about which my father was enthusiastic. We had long conversations about my pigeons, whose habits I had studied a little, but I knew nothing of their intelligence and feelings. Ah! what interesting things my father, through Toussenel, revealed to me concerning bees and ants. In our walks, when we came upon an anthill, we would lie down flat, and I saw and learned many things about the tiny workers, those that laid eggs and the warriors. What my father objected to was that there should be a queen among the bees and the ants.

“You can’t get over it, papa,” I said, “and though you may talk for ages on ages, you cannot change the government of bees and ants.”

All these histories of animals were like fairy-tales, and I took the greatest pleasure in them, saying: “Tell me more, more!”

However, my father found in the study of these creatures, despite their royalism, proofs of the beauty of his own doctrines. Making everything revert to his desire to induce me to love nature and detest bourgeoise society, he tried to persuade me that the associations, the community of work and of fortune, as practised by the bees and the ants, would be the means of adding more generous perfection to human lives than mere selfish individualism.

“Besides,” he said, “at this epoch the chain which has enclosed man in a middle-class position during a century is expanding, and will soon break.”

My father was fond of their rather cabalistic formula. I used it on all occasions, and I also thought I heard the breaking of the chain of “middle-class positions,” and was glad.

When I returned to Chauny I spoke to grandmother of Fourier, of the phalanstery, and of L’Esprit des Bêtes, of the royalism of the ants and the bees, which was in sympathy with her ideas, but at the idea of the communism of work and of fortune, which we approved, she laughed merrily.

“Your father needed only that, poor fellow, to complete him! To receive inspiration from insects, to take lessons in social organisation from animals—it is really enough to make sensible people laugh,” said grandmother. And she related to my grandfather and to my friend Charles, with her mischievous wit, the news of Jean Louis Lambert’s new social theories, developing them and putting them into action in such a droll manner that, in spite of the effort I made to defend these theories, I could not help bursting out laughing with the others.

“You see, my darling,” said grandmother to me one day, “I like ‘middle-class positions,’ and find it very pleasant to occupy one, and do not wish at all that they should be broken, for I myself hold such a position. The best trick I could play your father would be to give him a ‘middle-class position’ as householder. The house in which he lives, and which he likes very much, belongs to me, and I’ll wager he would care for it a great deal more if I should give it to him. We should see, then, if he would ask his gardener to come and share it with him! I will make my son-in-law a householder before a week, and we shall soon know if through him I have tightened by a link in his chain the man of ‘middle-class position,’ the bourgeois.”

My grandmother did as she said, and my father declared that he was delighted with his mother-in-law’s gracious gift, but he did not change his ideas an iota on account of it.

My father, although a householder, proclaimed himself, as usual, and with even more authority, a Proudhonian. I knew who Proudhon was, because all French persons, even the youngest, had heard of his famous saying: “Property is theft.” My father said he shared Proudhon’s opinions concerning the principle of the rights of man and of government. The pamphlet addressed by Proudhon to Blanqui, Qu’est que la propriété, never left my father’s work-table. I had read it over, on the sly, without much understanding, but I pretended to have comprehended it, and I spoke of it, not in approval, but to say that, after all, there was some truth in it.

How my father decided between the conflicting ideas of Proudhon and Considérant—the latter having defended the right to possess property—I do not know.

There were great discussions in my family on all the questions raised apropos of the association of insects, and of their life in common; but my father, full of gratitude for my grandmother’s generous gift, would have found it difficult to speak of bourgeoise selfishness, therefore he let us joke about his “theories of animal socialism and his insects’ minds,” as grandmother said.

But my grandfather abhorred revolutionary ideas to such a degree that he scarcely tolerated the mention of Proudhon, even in a joking way.

“Revolutionary speeches are pure gangrene,” he said. “They propagate themselves in the social body and oblige us some fine day to cut off a member of it. Who will give me back my Emperor to silence all these agitating reformers? Oh! yes, to silence them, for they say even more than they do.”

“My dear father-in-law,” my father answered, “one is often obliged to say much more than he can do, for action follows words slowly. The elements of resistance to progress are always powerful enough to hold it back, at least half-way. It is like the two hundred thousand heads Marat asked for, adding: ‘They will always diminish the number enough.’”

One simultaneous cry escaped us all:

“Oh! the horrible man!”