XX
LOUIS NAPOLEON’S FLIGHT FROM PRISON
MY godmother Camille, of whom I was very fond, and whom I used to visit every Thursday at the glass manufactory at Saint-Gobain—not to amuse myself, but to talk with her, for she conversed with me on serious subjects—had left Chauny two years previously, but she came every two or three months to pass a week with us. She lived at Ham, where my godfather was the manager of a sugar-refinery. She was very intimate with Prince Louis Napoleon, and my grandfather joked with her frequently about the honour of having inspired a Napoleon—and, he doubted not, a future Emperor—with “a sentiment” for her, and he went, moreover, himself to assure the Pretender about his hope of seeing him an Emperor some day.
It annoyed my grandfather to hear that this Bonaparte was called a socialist. But he declared that it could not be—it was a calumny.
My godmother repeated to my grandfather something that the “Prince” had said to her before he wrote it, and which she thought admirable:
“With the name I bear, I must have either the gloom of a prison-cell, or the light of power.”
“We shall have him one day for Emperor,” said my grandfather. It was from his lips that I heard for the first time: “We shall have Napoleon,” which was so often repeated later.
“But the Republic is his ideal,” said my godmother, who knew by heart everything that Louis Napoleon wrote. “He does not know whether France is ‘republican or not, but he will aid the people, if he is called to power, to find a governmental form embodying the principles of the Revolution.’ Those are his exact words,” said my godmother. She added: “He formulates his ambition thus:
“‘I wish to group around my name the partisans of the People’s Sovereignty.’”
“You are crazy about your Prince, Camille,” answered my grandmother, “and you see him with the prestige of all you feel for his misfortunes—as a prisoner, coupled with the greatness of his name. But was there ever a more ridiculous pretender? Remember his rash attempt at Boulogne, with his three-cornered hat, the sword of Austerlitz, and the tamed eagle. He is grotesque.”
If my father came while Camille was with us he was much amused at my grandfather’s exasperation when he and Camille would declare that Louis Napoleon was more of a socialist than themselves, for had he not written:
“What I wish is to give to thirty-five millions of Frenchmen the education, the moral training, the competency which, until now, has been the appanage only of the minority.”
“The proof that he is a socialist,” added my father, “is that one of our party, Elie Sorin, swears by him; he is always saying to me: ‘Louis Napoleon is not a Pretender in our eyes, but a member of our party, a soldier under our flag. The Napoleon of to-day, a captive, personifies the grief of the people, in irons like himself.’”
Sometimes my grandfather, after having been angry, laughed at this kind of talk.
“He is a sly fellow,” he replied. “He is making fools of you all. A Bonaparte is made to be an Emperor, you will see, and we shall have Napoleon!”
My godmother adored my grandmother, and she should have been her daughter instead of my mother. They wrote to each other every week and sympathised on all subjects. My grandmother, apropos of Camille, put on mysterious airs even in my presence. They were constantly whispering secrets together, especially since my godmother lived at Ham.
One day I unintentionally surprised them with a boot placed on grandmother’s work-table, at which they were gazing with tender eyes. They looked so droll contemplating this boot that I could not help asking to what fairy prince this precious thing had belonged?
My godmother answered:
“To Prince Louis.”
“Did you steal it from him, godmother, to keep as a relic?”
“He gave it to me.”
“His boot?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“For a bouquet-holder.”
I burst out laughing.
“But look, dear scoffer, how small it is. Can you not understand that he is vain of it?”
“Ah! no, to send a bouquet in his boot is not good manners. Has he worn it, or is it new?”
“He has worn it, of course. If he had not, it would be a boot like any other boot. But he has worn it, Juliette, he has worn it!”
And my godmother reassumed the admiring air she had worn when I entered the drawing-room.
“Really, godmother, I must tell you that you seem to me to be a little crazy!”
One day our Camille arrived suddenly from Ham in a state of extraordinary agitation.
She threw herself on grandmother’s neck, where she remained a long while, sobbing. She whispered in her friend’s ear, who uttered many exclamations, many “Ohs!” and “Ahs!” intermingled with: “Camille, how happy you must be!” alternating with “Camille, how unhappy you are!”
Blondeau and I were present at this scene, of which, of course, we understood absolutely nothing.
My grandfather arrived. There were the same whisperings in his ear, the same exclamations, the same embraces, and again: “Camille, how happy you must be! Camille, how unhappy you are!”
“May the Supreme Being be blessed!” suddenly exclaimed my grandfather, in a solemn tone, for he never invoked the Supreme Being except on stormy days, when the thunder recalled the noise of cannon.
Something phenomenal was certainly happening. Not being curious, I had great respect for secrets, especially as my family kept few from me. I did not try to discover this secret, therefore, but I could not help thinking that some important person had been saved after great peril, and, strangely, that my godmother was at once happy and unhappy about it.
After dinner I said to Blondeau:
“Does this mystery interest you? Are you trying to understand something about it?”
“I understand it perfectly,” he replied.
“What is it?”
“Parbleu! it is that the Prince, who is cracked about your crazy godmother” (Blondeau was an Orléanist, of my grandfather’s way of thinking), “has escaped from prison. I think she has helped him in his flight, and that, as she adores him and is now separated from him, she must feel, as your grandparents say, at once very happy and very unhappy; that is all the mystery.”
The next morning at breakfast they foolishly continued to keep up their mysterious airs before me; so I said to my godmother, Blondeau not being present:
“Why do you try to hide what everyone knows,—that Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte has escaped from his prison at Ham?”
“How can it be known already? When was it discovered?” exclaimed my godmother. “He had just escaped when I left yesterday afternoon, and they could not have known it before evening.”
“Tell me the beginning of the story, godmother,” said I, “since I know the end.”
She hesitated.
My grandmother, happy at having a chance to relate an adventure, asked Camille if she would allow her to tell it to me.
Godmother made a sign of assent.
“Well, imagine that Prince Louis pretended to be ill, and to have need of taking a purge, and shut himself up in his room.”
“Oh! grandmother, that is not poetical,” I interrupted.
“Be quiet! you must think of the end pursued and achieved. Well, then, as some workmen for several days had been going in and coming out of the citadel making repairs, he cut his beard and disguised himself as a carpenter, and passed out before the guard with a plank of wood on his shoulder.”
“Grandmother, don’t you think it rather commonplace for a prince to disguise himself as a carpenter?”
“I think it very clever of him to have got the better of his jailers, in spite of all their surveillance. Doctor Conneau, who had been set free several months previously, arranged and prepared it all, aided by Camille. Yesterday he drove out of the town in a tilbury with your godmother, who got out and hid herself at a certain point, and gave her place to the prince, who had doffed his workman’s clothes; and with well-prepared relays, Doctor Conneau and the Prince reached the frontier. Meanwhile your godmother came to us in a carriage she had hired at a village, after having walked a long way.”
Was the Prince saved? No one knew as yet, since no one except Blondeau, who knew nothing about it, had spoken of it. However, at dinner, Blondeau absolved me of my untruth, by announcing that he had heard that morning of the Prince’s successful escape.
“All the same,” he added, as I had previously said, “to disguise one’s self as a carpenter is not irreproachable good form.”
“A Napoleon elevates every one of his acts. A Bonaparte could not remain the prisoner of an Orléans,” replied my grandfather. “He has escaped. That is everything.”
“The romantic part of it,” added my grandmother, “lies in the fact that he has escaped from his jailers, that his prison doors, so strongly barred, have been opened by a stratagem that no one foresaw nor discovered. It is those who imprisoned him—I regret to say it—who have been tricked and made ridiculous. I love King Louis Philippe, as Camille knows, more than this Bonaparte, who seems to me in his character of pretender a plotter and an intriguer. But as a man, from all Camille has told me of him, I confess he is charming; and as he was her friend, I think she did right in aiding him in his flight. If I had been in her place I would not have hesitated either.”
My godmother remained with us for a fortnight, but was not consoled for the absence of her Prince, for I saw her weeping more than once.