XXXII
“VIVE LA RÉPUBLIQUE!”
I RETURNED to school, in spite of the pain it gave me. Happily for me, Maribert had not come back. By degrees I regained my influence. Stirring political events were following each other in quick succession, and drew the attention of my young friends whom I had interested in the importance of what was going on.
Even in the provinces public opinion was irritated by the obstinacy of King Louis Philippe and of Monsieur Guizot, and by the insufficiency of a servile House, whose majority was bought. Everyone said—and we also, the young female politicians of the Mesdemoiselles André’s school, especially, declared—that “the hour for reforms had sounded!”
It was affirmed that King Louis Philippe pretended to fear nothing and to laugh at Odilon Barrot and Ledru-Rollin.
Much was said concerning a banquet about to take place in the First Arrondissement of Paris, and of seditious cries already heard. We called them “cries of deliverance.” When we shook hands with one another every morning we murmured, in low tones: “Long live Reform! Down with Guizot!”
We knew, and kept saying among ourselves, that the people, the great people, “were stirring in their deep masses.”
And, lo! one day we heard that many of these inoffensive people had been massacred for making a purely legal demonstration; that King Louis Philippe, after trying twice to form a ministry, and that the Duchess of Orléans, after a semblance of regency, were in flight; then we heard, in quick succession, that the people had erected barricades, that the National Guard had behaved like heroes, and that the Republic was proclaimed!
The Republic! and what a grand Republic! My father’s and mine, one that began by recognizing the people and their right to work!
The Republic had just ratified this privilege, and the people’s delegates had said, in words worthy of ancient Greece:
“The people have three months of misery to give to the service of the Republic.”
“The people,” said the Democratie Pacifique, “have behaved admirably and have shown themselves worthy of every liberty. They have proved their moral maturity. Not a single robbery, nor a single attack on private property has been committed.” The ragged poor who guarded the Palace of the Tuileries had put placards along the corridors, reading: “Death to all thieves!” They had also protected the bank treasure.
France once again was at the head of nations, and gave a new example of her national grandeur.
My father arrived on the 26th of February. He could not stay quiet at Blérancourt, and felt that he must share his joy with me.
Grandmother did not appear over-anxious about the revolution.
Grandfather raged. He had thought that the overthrowing of the Orléans dynasty could be but to the sole advantage of Louis Napoleon. He fell upon the first triumphant Republican,—his son-in-law,—who came under his hands, and also upon his stupidly democratic Republic, and none of us could force him to beat a retreat. My father laughed, grandmother smiled, and I said:
“Ah! poor grandfather, with our Republic I am afraid your Bonaparte is in a bad way, however socialistic he may have pretended to be.”
I can remember that at the end of dinner on that 26th of February, grandfather, who, to console himself for his disappointment, had added a few bottles of his old Mâcon wine to his usual allowance, said to us, with eyes rounder than ever:
“Well, I can see as clear as daylight into the future.”
“Grandfather, it is eight o’clock in the evening.”
“I see your Republic—do you hear, Lambert? do you hear, Juliette?—thrown to the ground by my Bonaparte. I repeat it, so that you may hear: revolutions always end in empires.”
Grandmother, Blondeau, and especially my father and I, laughed heartily at him.
At school, how excited and curious and frightened they all were! Half the pupils were missing and were shut up at home, as it was thought the revolution might spread in the provinces. The workmen of the glass manufactory were all for the Republic. They would doubtless proclaim it at Chauny, make a revolution on their own account, and perhaps commit pillage.
Mademoiselle André and her younger sister sent for me as soon as I arrived at school. They had long known of my father’s opinions and guessed at mine. They wished to put themselves under our protection.
“Well, Juliette, how pleased your father must be at the news, as he has always been a republican. Have you seen him?”
“Yes, Mademoiselle, he came yesterday, and he is overjoyed. He says that France is now, at last, worthy of her history; that she will govern herself; that all the European nations will admire us, and perhaps imitate us; that it is now the coming to power of the people, of the real people, not the corrupted middle class, and that——”
“That will do,” said the elder Mademoiselle André, sharply. “Please keep to yourself these beautiful opinions of your father. I forbid you to speak of them here.”
“In the class-room, Mademoiselle?”
“In the class-room or at recreation.”
I looked Mademoiselle André straight in the face. I was nearly as tall as she was. I answered:
“I cannot promise that, Mademoiselle, for we number a good many republicans in school. And no one can forbid us to speak of, and to love, the Republic.”
“But France has not accepted your Republic,” said Mademoiselle Sophie.
“She will accept it, Mademoiselle, for now the people can vote.”
The Mesdemoiselles André were torn by conflicting feelings—the imperative desire to hush me, which I perfectly understood from the tone in which Mademoiselle Sophie said: “Ah! Juliette, how sad it is to be divided between being obliged to be harsh to the daughter of a friend and the fear of irritating republican sentiments. When you next see your father, Juliette, you can tell him from us how sincerely we hope that his Republic will calm France instead of disturbing her.”
I made my curtsey and went into the class-room. Curious glances followed me. I answered by signs that an important affair had happened. All my schoolmates were aware of my having been called into the drawing-room by “Mesdemoiselles.”
I had a tri-coloured cockade pinned inside my bodice. I took it out and held it in the palm of my hand, under the half-raised cover of my desk. I showed it to my neighbour, and slipped it into her hand; she did the same to her neighbour. In an instant my cockade went the round of our long table, unperceived by our governess. My friends knew then that “Mesdemoiselles” had spoken to me about the Republic!
The class became highly excited; we were all restless and inattentive. Not one of us had learned her lessons or written her exercises, and there seemed to be but one answer:
“Mademoiselle, I have had no time for my lessons on account of the Republic.”
“Mademoiselle, I have had no time to study, on account of the Republic!”
“I wonder what interest the Republic can have for you?” said our governess, in a most disdainful tone, and shrugging her shoulders.
A voice was heard to answer, amid general silence. It was mine:
“Why, Mademoiselle, the Republic is most exciting to us!”
An approving murmur upheld me. Mademoiselle was silent, and looked amazed at me, and I saw it struck her that if I had dared to answer her as I had, it was because I thought I had the right to do so.
The exit of the class was something like a small riot.
It was our Republic, and we, the Frondeuses, owned it! The King in exile, republicans and democrats in power, it was simply a triumph! Surrounded and questioned, I did not know which of my friends to answer first.
“What did Mesdemoiselles say to you?” was the general query.
I told them what had passed, and, if it had been possible, they would have crowned me with laurels. “That was right! That is what I call brave and firm; that was just the thing to say; your true republican answer was what it should have been!” was the approving comment on my action.
I repeated for my friends’ benefit every word my father had said: “The Republic was marvellous; we were to have complete liberty and no authority.” Doubtless, and especially now, in the beginning of things, we were not to be impertinent to our governesses, but we should very soon be able to make them feel that, although younger and less clever than they, the Republic considered us their equals!
What discussions, what plans, what different ways of understanding Government there were! “I would do this! I would act thus!” we said. We each of us wanted so many different things, that it was agreed at last that we, the initiated, the Frondeuses, should each make out a programme, which should be read in recess next day, and that which seemed to us the best form of government should be decided upon by vote. Our young minds were filled with the current words of the day.
The uniting of “abilities” was decidedly quite insufficient as a reform; on that point everyone agreed; everybody must vote, men, women, and especially schoolgirls. We had conceived in our minds a foreshadowing of true universal suffrage, and later we were firmly convinced that we had invented it.
The opening of national workshops pleased my father greatly. He wrote to me that at last the people were to be happy; that one hundred thousand citizens were fed by the State and worked for it. He thought at that time, with many others, that Louis Blanc was secretly at the head of the founding and organizing of the national workshops, and his confidence in them grew thereby.
“All other nations admire us, and all will later imitate us,” added my father at the end of his long letter. “The Republic is to arm every Frenchman, so that all shall be prepared to join in delivering other nations.”
My father came to see us again in March. Alas! he seemed already very uneasy. The national assembly was full of reactionists. The Montagne had no authority. True, the establishing of the Republic had taken everyone by surprise. Nothing was ready; certain reforms had been pushed through, certain measures had been too hurried, but the feelings of all the republicans were so noble, so proud, so disinterested, there was such a belief among them in right, in justice, in the divine voice of the people, that it was better not to be disquieted with their indecision, nor to be too hard on mistakes already committed.
In my father’s opinion, the worst of it was the fact that the whole world had its eyes upon us, and that the dream of a Republic and universal fraternity could be realised only by the Republic of France giving definitely, and at once, the example she owed to the world.
My father had just been elected Mayor of Blérancourt. His friends and disciples would never have allowed another to hold power there, however small that power might be, nor that he should not be able to possess the possibility of realising all that his enthusiasm and generosity promised for the Republic.
Grandmother and I went to Blérancourt to see them plant the tree of Liberty, but it displeased us to behold my father attending this ceremony dressed in a blue blouse. His tri-coloured scarf was tied so as to show the red only. Already my father declared: “Of the three colours, we like only the red.” White seemed to him too Legitimist, and blue too Orléanist.
“Juliette,” asked grandmother, in my ear, as we were starting for the ceremony, “do you like that blouse? does it not shock your taste?”
“It is partly blue, at any rate, grandmother,” I answered, laughing; “and, with papa’s ideas, it might have been all red!”
A young poplar tree was brought and planted in a large hole prepared for it in the market-place.
My father, since the Republic had been declared in the name of liberty, had become reconciled with the priest, who now blessed the tree of Liberty.
In his speech the priest declared that if the Republic realized the evangelical ideals of its programme, incarnated in the names of liberty, equality, and fraternity, it would be the finest form of government existing; but, in order to accomplish this, it was necessary that all republicans should be as sincere, as generous, and, he cleverly added, as Christian in heart, if not in form, and as devoted to the poor as the new Mayor.
In a speech full of ardour, which carried me away, and with a fiery eloquence which fascinated grandmother, my father answered the priest that no one could deny that the Republic, and its principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, was born from the Gospel; that Christ was the first of all socialists and republicans; that a true republican should possess all the Christian virtues, and that Christianity was the finest human formula ever conceived.
I was amazed. My father added: “All that has reference to the temporal power of the Church is admirable. It is more advanced than we socialists in the understanding and the practice of association. We have a great deal to learn from her, but it is time that she herself should learn from us the worship of nature, and allow herself to be penetrated by the truth of science!”
“My dear Mayor,” said the vicar to my father after the ceremony, “you would accept the Christian religion with your eyes shut under the condition that it should be heathenish.”
“In return,” said my father, laughingly, to the vicar, “accept my heathen religion, springing from the love of nature, under the condition that it inspires Christian virtues.”
“Never! never!” replied the vicar, smiling. “You have said that we are in advance of you in the conception of association and of life in common; we are also in advance of you from a religious point of view. Christianity represents the present and the future!” And he added, mockingly: “Paganism will continue to be more and more a thing of the past.”
“So be it!” the Mayor replied, gaily, leading off the vicar, who came to breakfast with us.
“I believe,” said my father, in the manner of one proposing a toast, at the end of the repast, “in an absolute, undeniable way, that the Republic is the consecration of liberty, of conscience, and of tolerance, and I, as Mayor, will prove to you, reverend vicar, with what largeness, what elevation of ideas, with what grandeur we democratic-socialist republicans understand liberty!”