Opposite to the list of adherents should be placed the list of the proscribed. In this manner the two sides of the coup d'état can be seen at a glance.
There was besides a list of the "provisionally exiled," on which figured Edward Quinet, Victor Chauffour, General Laidet, Pascal Duprat, Versigny, Antony Thouret, Thiers, Girardin, and Rémusat. Four Representatives, Mathé, Greppo, Marc-Dufraisse, and Richardet, were added to the list of the "expelled." Representative Miot was reserved for the tortures of the casemates of Africa. Thus in addition to the massacres, the victory of the coup d'état was paid for by these figures: eighty-eight Representatives proscribed, one killed.
I usually dined at Brussels in a café, called the Café des Mille Colonnes, which was frequented by the exiles. On the 10th of January I had invited Michel de Bourges to lunch, and we were sitting at the same table. The waiter brought me the Moniteur Français; I glanced over it.
"Ah," said I, "here is the list of the proscribed." I ran my eye over it, and I said to Michel de Bourges, "I have a piece of bad news to tell you." Michel de Bourges turned pale. I added, "You are not on the list." His face brightened.
Michel de Bourges, so dauntless in the face of death, was faint-hearted in the face of exile.
Brutalities and ferocities were mingled together. The great sculptor, David d'Angers, was arrested in his own house, 16, Rue d'Assas; the Commissary of Police on entering, said to him,—
"Have you any arms in your house?"
"Yes," Said David, "for my defence."
And he added,—
"If I had to deal with civilized people."
"Where are these arms?" rejoined the Commissary. "Let us see them."
David showed him his studio full of masterpieces.
They placed him in a fiacre, and drove him to the station-house of the Prefecture of Police.
Although there was only space for 120 prisoners, there were 700 there. David was the twelfth in a dungeon intended for two. No light nor air. A narrow ventilation hole above their heads. A dreadful tub in a corner, common to all, covered but not closed by a wooden lid. At noon they brought them soup, a sort of warm and stinking water, David told me. They stood leaning against the wall, and trampled upon the mattresses which had been thrown on the floor, not having room to lie down on them. At length, however, they pressed so closely to each other, that they succeeded in lying down at full length. Their jailers had thrown them some blankets. Some of them slept. At day break the bolts creaked, the door was half-opened and the jailers cried out to them, "Get up!" They went into the adjoining corridor, the jailer took up the mattresses, threw a few buckets of water on the floor, wiped it up anyhow, replaced the mattresses on the damp stones, and said to them, "Go back again." They locked them up until the next morning. From time to time they brought in 100 new prisoners, and they fetched away 100 old ones (those who had been there for two or three days). What became of them?—At night the prisoners could hear from their dungeon the sound of explosions, and in the morning passers-by could see, as we have stated, pools of blood in the courtyard of the Prefecture.
The calling over of those who went out was conducted in alphabetical order.
One day they called David d'Angers. David took up his packet, and was getting ready to leave, when the governor of the jail, who seemed to be keeping watch over him, suddenly came up and said quickly, "Stay, M. David, stay."
One morning he saw Buchez, the ex-President of the Constituent Assembly, coming into his cell "Ah!" said David, "good! you have come to visit the prisoners?"—"I am a prisoner," said Buchez.
They wished to insist on David leaving for America. He refused. They contented themselves with Belgium. On the 19th December he reached Brussels. He came to see me, and said to me, "I am lodging at the Grand Monarque, 89, Rue des Fripiers."31
And he added laughing, "The Great Monarch—the King. The old clothesmen—the Royalists, '89. The Revolution." Chance occasionally furnishes some wit.
31 Anglice, "old clothes men."
On the 3d of December everything was coming in in our favor. On the 5th everything was receding from us. It was like a mighty sea which was going out. The tide had come in gloriously, it went out disastrously. Gloomy ebb and flow of the people.
And who was the power who said to this ocean, "Thou shalt go no farther?" Alas! a pigmy.
These hiding-places of the abyss are fathomless.
The abyss is afraid. Of what?
Of something deeper than itself. Of the Crime.
The people drew back. They drew back on the 5th; on the 6th they disappeared.
On the horizon there could be seen nothing but the beginning of a species of vast night.
This night has been the Empire.
We found ourselves on the 5th what we were on the 2d. Alone.
But we persevered. Our mental condition was this—desperate, yes; discouraged, no.
Items of bad news came to us as good news had come to us on the evening of the 3d, one after another. Aubry du Nord was at the Concièrgerie. Our dear and eloquent Crémieux was at Mazas. Louis Blanc, who, although banished, was coming to the assistance of France, and was bringing to us the great power of his name and of his mind, had been compelled, like Ledru Rollin, to halt before the catastrophe of the 4th. He had not been able to get beyond Tournay.
As for General Neumayer, he had not "marched upon Paris," but he had come there. For what purpose? To give in his submission.
We no longer possessed a refuge. No. 15, Rue Richelieu, was watched, No. 11, Rue Monthabor, had been denounced. We wandered about Paris, meeting each other here and there, and exchanging a few words in a whisper, not knowing where we should sleep, or whether we should get a meal; and amongst those heads which did not know what pillow they should have at night there was at least one upon which a price was set.
They accosted each other, and this is the sort of conversation they held:—
"What has became of So-and-So?"
"He is arrested."
"And So-and-So?"
"Dead."
"And So-and-So?"
"Disappeared."
We held, however, one other meeting. This was on the 6th, at the house of the Representative Raymond, in the Place de la Madeleine. Nearly all of us met there. I was enabled to shake the hands of Edgar Quinet, of Chauffour, of Clément Dulac, of Bancel, of Versigny, of Emile Péan, and I again met our energetic and honest host of the Rue Blanche, Coppens, and our courageous colleague, Pons Stande, whom we had lost sight of in the smoke of the battle. From the windows of the room where we were deliberating we could see the Place de la Madeleine and the Boulevards militarily occupied, and covered with a fierce and deep mass of soldiers drawn up in battle order, and which still seemed to face a possible combat. Charamaule came in.
He drew two pistols from his great cloak, placed them on the table, and said, "All is at an end. Nothing feasible and sensible remains, except a deed of rashness. I propose it. Are you of my opinion, Victor Hugo?"
"Yes," I answered.
I did not know what he was going to say, but I knew that he would only say that which was noble.
This was his proposition.
"We number," resumed he, "about fifty Representatives of the People, still standing and assembled together. We are all that remains of the National Assembly, of Universal Suffrage, of the Law, of Right. To-morrow, where shall we be? We do not know. Scattered or dead. The hour of to-day is ours; this hour gone and past, we have nothing left but the shadow. The opportunity is unique. Let us profit by it."
He stopped, looked at us fixedly with his steadfast gaze, and resumed,—
"Let us take the advantage of this chance of being alive and the good fortune of being together. The group which is here is the whole of the Republic. Well, then; let us offer in our persons all the Republic to the army, and let us make the army fall back before the Republic, and Might fall back before Right. In that supreme moment one of the two must tremble, Might or Right, and if Right does not tremble Might will tremble. If we do not tremble the soldiers will tremble. Let us march upon the Crime. If the Law advances, the Crime will draw back. In either case we shall have done our duty. Living, we shall be preservers, dead, we shall be heroes. This is what I propose."
A profound silence ensued.
"Let us put on our sashes, and let us all go down in a procession, two by two, into the Place de la Madeleine. You can see that Colonel before that large flight of steps, with his regiment in battle array; we will go to him, and there, before his soldiers, I will summon him to come over to the side of duty, and to restore his regiment to the Republic. If he refuses ..."
Charamaule took his two pistols in his hands.
"... I will blow out his brains."
"Charamaule," said I, "I will be by your side."
"I knew that well," Charamaule said to me.
He added,—
"This explosion will awaken the people."
"But," several cried out, "suppose it does not awaken them?"
"We shall die."
"I am on your side," said I to him.
We each pressed the other's hand. But objections burst forth.
No one trembled, but all criticised the proposal. Would it not be madness? And useless madness? Would it not be to play the last card of the Republic without any possible chance of success? What good fortune for Bonaparte! To crush with one blow all that remained of those who were resisting and of those who were combating! To finish with them once for all! We were beaten, granted, but was it necessary to add annihilation to defeat? No possible chance of success. The brains of an army cannot be blown out. To do what Charamaule advised would be to open the tomb, nothing more. It would be a magnificent suicide, but it would be a suicide. Under certain circumstances it is selfish to be merely a hero. A man accomplishes it at once, he becomes illustrious, he enters into history, all that is very easy. He leaves to others behind him the laborious work of a long protest, the immovable resistance of the exile, the bitter, hard life of the conquered who continues to combat the victory. Some degree of patience forms a part of politics. To know how to await revenge is sometimes more difficult than to hurry on its catastrophe. There are two kinds of courage—bravery and perseverance; the first belongs to the soldier, the second belongs to the citizen. A hap-hazard end, however dauntless, does not suffice. To extricate oneself from the difficulty by death, it is only too easily done: what is required, what is the reverse of easy, is to extricate one's country from the difficulty. No, said those high-minded men, who opposed Charamaule and myself, this to-day which you propose to us is the suppression of to-morrow; take care, there is a certain amount of desertion in suicide....
The word "desertion" grievously wounded Charamaule. "Very well," said he, "I abandon the idea."
This scene was exceedingly grand, and Quinet later on, when in exile, spoke to me of it with deep emotion.
We separated. We did not meet again.
I wandered about the streets. Where should I sleep? That was the question. I thought that No. 19, Rue Richelieu would probably be as much watched as No. 15. But the night was cold, and I decided at all hazards to re-enter this refuge, although perhaps a hazardous one. I was right to trust myself to it. I supped on a morsel of bread, and I passed a very good night. The next morning at daybreak on waking I thought of the duties which awaited me. I thought that I was abut to go out, and that I should probably not come back to the room; I took a little bread which remained, and I crumbled it on the window-sill for the birds.
Had it been in the power of the Left at any moment to prevent the coup d'état?
We do not think so.
Nevertheless here is a fact which we believe we ought not to pass by in silence. On the 16th November, 1851, I was in my study at home at 37, Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne; it was about midnight. I was working. My servant opened the door.
"Will you see M. ——, sir?"
And he mentioned a name.
"Yes," I said.
Some one came in.
I shall only speak reservedly of this eminent and distinguished man. Let it suffice to state that he had the right to say when mentioning the Bonapartes "my family."
It is known that the Bonaparte family is divided into two branches, the Imperial family and the private family. The Imperial family had the tradition of Napoleon, the private family had the tradition of Lucien: a shade of difference which, however, had no reality about it.
My midnight visitor took the other corner of the fireplace.
He began by speaking to me of the memoirs of a very highminded and virtuous woman, the Princess ——, his mother, the manuscript of which he had confided to me, asking my advice as to the utility or the suitability of their publication; this manuscript, besides being full of interest, possessed for me a special charm, because the handwriting of the Princess resembled my mother's handwriting. My visitor, to whom I gave it back, turned over the leaves for a few moments, and then suddenly interrupting himself, he turned to me and said,—
"The Republic is lost."
I answered,—
"Almost."
He resumed,—
"Unless you save it."
"You."
"How so?"
"Listen to me."
Then he set forth with that clearness, complicated at times with paradoxes, which is one of the resources of his remarkable mind, the situation, at the same time desperate and strong, in which we were placed.
This situation, which moreover I realized as well as he himself, was this:—
The Right of the Assembly was composed of about 400 members, and the Left of about 180. The four hundred of the majority belonged by thirds to three parties, the Legitimist party, the Orleanist party, the Bonapartist party, and in a body to the Clerical party. The 180 of the minority belonged to the Republic. The Right mistrusted the Left, and had taken a precaution against the minority.
A Vigilance Committee, composed of sixteen members of the Right, charged with impressing unity upon this trinity of parties, and charged with the task of carefully watching the Left, such was this precaution. The Left at first had confined itself to irony, and borrowing from me a word to which people then attached, though wrongly, the idea of decrepitude, had called the sixteen Commissioners the "Burgraves." The irony subsequently turning into suspicion, the Left had on its side ended by creating a committee of sixteen members to direct the Left, and observe the Right; these the Right had hastened to name the "Red Burgraves." A harmless rejoinder. The result was that the Right watched the Left, and that the Left watched the Right, but that no one watched Bonaparte. They were two flocks of sheep so distrustful of one another that they forgot the wolf. During that time, in his den at the Elysée, Bonaparte was working. He was busily employing the time which the Assembly, the majority and the minority, was losing in mistrusting itself. As people feel the loosening of the avalanche, so they felt the catastrophe tottering in the gloom. They kept watch upon the enemy, but they did not turn their attention in the true direction. To know where to fix one's mistrust is the secret of a great politician. The Assembly of 1851 did not possess this shrewd certainty of eyesight, their perspective was bad, each saw the future after his own fashion, and a sort of political short-sightedness blinded the Left as well as the Right; they were afraid, but not where fear was advisable; they were in the presence of a mystery, they had an ambuscade before them, but they sought it where it did not exist, and they did not perceive where it really lay. Thus it was that these two flocks of sheep, the majority, and the minority faced each other affrightedly, and while the leaders on one side and the guides on the other, grave and attentive, asked themselves anxiously what could be the mewing of the grumbling, of the Left on the one side, of the bleatings of the Right on the other, they ran the risk of suddenly feeling the four claws of the coup d'état fastened in their shoulders.
My visitor said to me,-
"You are one of the Sixteen!"
"Yes," answered I, smiling; "a 'Red Burgrave.'"
"Like me, a 'Red Prince.'"
And his smile responded to mine.
He resumed,—
"You have full powers?"
"Yes. Like the others."
And I added,—
"Not more than the others. The Left has no leaders."
He continued,—
"Yon, the Commissary of Police, is a Republican?'
"Yes."
"He would obey an order signed by you?"
"Possibly."
"I say, without doubt."
He looked at me fixedly.
"Well, then, have the President arrested this night."
It was now my turn to look at him.
"What do you mean?"
"What I say."
I ought to state that his language was frank, resolute, and self-convinced, and that during the whole of this conversation, and now, and always, it has given me the impression of honesty.
"Arrest the President!" I cried.
Then he set forth that this extraordinary enterprise was an easy matter; that the Army was undecided; that in the Army the African Generals counterpoised the President; that the National Guard favored the Assembly, and in the Assembly the Left; that Colonel Forestier answered for the 8th Legion; Colonel Gressier for the 6th, and Colonel Howyne for the 5th; that at the order of the Sixteen of the Left there would be an immediate taking up of arms; that my signature would suffice; that, nevertheless, if I preferred to call together the Committee, in Secret Session, we could wait till the next day; that on the order from the Sixteen, a battalion would march upon the Elysée; that the Elysée apprehended nothing, thought only of offensive, and not of defensive measures, and accordingly would be taken by surprise; that the soldiers would not resist the National Guard; that the thing would be done without striking a blow; that Vincennes would open and close while Paris slept; that the President would finish his night there, and that France, on awakening, would learn the twofold good tidings: that Bonaparte was out of the fight, and France out of danger.
He added,—
"You can count on two Generals: Neumayer at Lyons, and Lawoëstyne at Paris."
He got up and leaned against the chimney-piece; I can still see him there, standing thoughtfully; and he continued:
"I do not feel myself strong enough to begin exile all over again, but I feel the wish to save my family and my country."
He probably thought he noticed a movement of surprise in me, for he accentuated and italicized these words.
"I will explain myself. Yes; I wish to save my family and my country. I bear the name of Napoleon; but as you know without fanaticism. I am a Bonaparte, but not a Bonapartist. I respect the name, but I judge it. It already has one stain. The Eighteenth Brumaire. Is it about to have another? The old stain disappeared beneath the glory; Austerlitz covered Brumaire. Napoleon was absolved by his genius. The people admired him so greatly that it forgave him. Napoleon is upon the column, there is an end of it, let them leave him there in peace. Let them not resuscitate him through his bad qualities. Let them not compel France to remember too much. This glory of Napoleon is vulnerable. It has a wound; closed, I admit. Do not let them reopen it. Whatever apologists may say and do, it is none the less true that by the Eighteenth of Brumaire Napoleon struck himself a first blow."
"In truth," said I, "it is ever against ourselves that we commit a crime."
"Well, then," he continued, "his glory has survived a first blow, a second will kill it. I do not wish it. I hate the first Eighteenth Brumaire; I fear the second. I wish to prevent it."
He paused again, and continued,—
"That is why I have come to you to-night. I wish to succor this great wounded glory. By the advice which I am giving you, if you can carry it out, if the Left carries it out, I save the first Napoleon; for if a second crime is superposed upon his glory, this glory would disappear. Yes, this name would founder, and history would no longer own it. I will go farther and complete my idea. I also save the present Napoleon, for he who as yet has no glory will only have come. I save his memory from an eternal pillory. Therefore, arrest him."
He was truly and deeply moved. He resumed,—
"As to the Republic, the arrest of Louis Bonaparte is deliverance for her. I am right, therefore, in saying that by what I am proposing to you I am saving my family and my country."
"But," I said to him, "what you propose to me is a coup d'état."
"Do you think so?"
"Without doubt. We are the minority, and we should commit an act which belongs to the majority. We are a part of the Assembly. We should be acting as though we were the entire Assembly. We who condemn all usurpation should ourselves become usurpers. We should put our hands upon a functionary whom the Assembly alone has the right of arresting. We, the defenders of the Constitution, we should break the Constitution. We, the men of the Law, we should violate the Law. It is a coup d'état."
"Yes, but a coup d'état for a good purpose."
"Evil committed for a good purpose remains evil."
"Even when it succeeds?"
"Above all when it succeeds."
"Why?"
"Because it then becomes an example."
"You do not then approve of the Eighteenth Fructidor?"
"No."
"But Eighteenth Fructidors prevent Eighteenth Brumaires."
"No. They prepare the way for them."
"But reasons of State exist?"
"No. What exists is the Law."
"The Eighteenth Fructidor has been accepted by exceedingly honest minds."
"I know that."
"Blanqui is in its favor, with Michelet."
"I am against it, with Barbès."
From the moral aspect I passed to the practical aspect.
"This said," resumed I, "let us examine your plan."
This plan bristled with difficulties. I pointed them out to him.
"Count on the National Guard! Why, General Lawoëstyne had not yet got command of it. Count on the Army? Why, General Neumayer was at Lyons, and not at Paris. Would he march to the assistance of the Assembly? What did we know about this? As for Lawoëstyne, was he not double-faced? Were they sure of him? Call to arms the 8th Legion? Forestier was no longer Colonel. The 5th and 6th? But Gressier and Howyne were only lieutenant-colonels, would these legions follow them? Order the Commissary Yon? But would he obey the Left alone? He was the agent of the Assembly, and consequently of the majority, but not of the minority. These were so many questions. But these questions, supposing them answered, and answered in the sense of success, was success itself the question? The question is never Success, it is always Right. But here, even if we had obtained success, we should not have Right. In order to arrest the President an order of the Assembly was necessary; we should replace the order of the Assembly by an act of violence of the Left. A scaling and a burglary; an assault by scaling-ladders on the constituted authority, a burglary on the Law. Now let us suppose resistance; we should shed blood. The Law violated leads to the shedding of blood. What is all this? It is a crime."
"No, indeed," he exclaimed, "it is the salus populi."
And he added,—
"Suprema Lex."
"Not for me," I said.
I continued,—
"I would not kill a child to save a people."
"Cato did so."
"Jesus did not do so."
And I added,—
"You have on your side all ancient history, you are acting according to the uprightness of the Greeks, and according to the uprightness of the Romans; for me, I am acting according to the uprightness of Humanity. The new horizon is of wider range than the old."
There was a pause. He broke it.
"Then he will be the one to attack!"
"Let it be so."
"You are about to engage in a battle which is almost lost beforehand."
"I fear so."
"And this unequal combat can only end for you, Victor Hugo, in death or exile."
"I believe it."
"Death is the affair of a moment, but exile is long."
"It is a habit to be learned."
He continued,—
"You will not only be proscribed. You will be calumniated."
"It is a habit already learned."
He continued,—
"Do you know what they are saying already?"
"What?"
"They say that you are irritated against him because he has refused to make you a Minister."
"Why you know yourself that—"
"I know that it is just the reverse. It is he who has asked you, and it is you who have refused."
"Well, then—"
"They lie."
"What does it matter?"
He exclaimed,—
"Thus, you will have caused the Bonapartes to re-enter France, and you will be banished from France by a Bonaparte!"32
"Who knows," said I, "if I have not committed a fault? This injustice is perhaps a justice."
We were both silent. He resumed,—
"Could you bear exile?"
"I will try."
"Could you live without Paris?"
"I should have the ocean."
"You would then go to the seaside?"
"I think so."
"It is sad."
"It is grand."
There was another pause. He broke it.
"You do not know what exile is. I do know it. It is terrible. Assuredly, I would not begin it again. Death is a bourne whence no one comes back, exile is a place whither no one returns."
"If necessary," I said to him, "I will go, and I will return to it."
"Better die. To quit life is nothing, but to quit one's country—"
"Alas!" said I, "that is every thing."
"Well, then, why accept exile when it is in your power to avoid it? What do you place above your country?"
"Conscience."
This answer made him thoughtful. However, he resumed.
"But on reflection your conscience will approve of what you will have done."
"No."
"Why?"
"I have told you. Because my conscience is so constituted that it puts nothing above itself. I feel it upon me as the headland can feel the lighthouse which is upon it. All life is an abyss, and conscience illuminates it around me."
"And I also," he exclaimed—and I affirm that nothing could be more sincere or more loyal than his tone—"and I also feel and see my conscience. It approves of what I am doing. I appear to be betraying Louis; but I am really doing him a service. To save him from a crime is to save him. I have tried every means. There only remains this one, to arrest him. In coming to you, in acting as I do, I conspire at the same time against him and for him, against his power, and for his honor. What I am doing is right."
"It is true," I said to him. "You have a generous and a lofty aim."
And I resumed,—
"But our two duties are different. I could not hinder Louis Bonaparte from committing a crime unless I committed one myself. I wish neither for an Eighteenth Brumaire for him, nor for an Eighteenth Fructidor for myself. I would rather be proscribed than be a proscriber. I have the choice between two crimes, my crime and the crime of Louis Bonaparte. I will not choose my crime."
"But then you will have to endure his."
"I would rather endure a crime than commit one."
He remained thoughtful, and said to me,—
"Let it be so."
And he added,—
"Perhaps we are both in the right."
"I think so," I said.
And I pressed his hand.
He took his mother's manuscript and went away. It was three o'clock in the morning. The conversation had lasted more than two hours. I did not go to bed until I had written it out.
32 14th of June, 1847. Chamber of Peers. See the work "Avant l'Exile."
On the afternoon of the 7th I determined to go back once more to 19, Rue Richelieu. Under the gateway some one seized my arm. It was Madame D. She was waiting for me.
"Do not go in," she said to me.
"Am I discovered?"
"Yes."
"And taken."
"No."
She added,—
"Come."
We crossed the courtyard, and we went out by a backdoor into the Rue Fontaine Molière; we reached the square of the Palais Royal. The fiacres were standing there as usual. We got into the first we came to.
"Where are we to go?" asked the driver.
She looked at me.
I answered,—
"I do not know."
"I know," she said.
Women always know where Providence lies.
An hour later I was in safety.
From the 4th, every day which passed by consolidated the coup d'état. Our defeat was complete, and we felt ourselves abandoned. Paris was like a forest in which Louis Bonaparte was making a battue of the Representatives; the wild beast was hunting down the sportsmen. We heard the indistinct baying of Maupas behind us. We were compelled to disperse. The pursuit was energetic. We entered into the second phase of duty—the catastrophe accepted and submitted to. The vanquished became the proscribed. Each one of us had his own concluding adventures. Mine was what it should have been—exile; death having missed me. I am not going to relate it here, this book is not my biography, and I ought not to divert to myself any of the attention which it may excite. Besides, what concerns me personally is told in a narrative which is one of the testaments of exile.33
Notwithstanding the relentless pursuit which was directed against us, I did not think it my duty to leave Paris as long as a glimmer of hope remained, and as long as an awakening of the people seemed possible. Malarmet sent me word in my refuge that a movement would take place at Belleville on Tuesday the 9th. I waited until the 12th. Nothing stirred. The people were indeed dead. Happily such deaths as these, like the deaths of the gods, are only for a time.
I had a last interview with Jules Favre and Michel de Bourges at Madame Didier's in the Rue de la Ville-Lévêque. It was at night. Bastide came there. This brave man said to me,—
"You are about to leave Paris; for myself, I remain here. Take me as your lieutenant. Direct me from the depths of your exile. Make use of me as an arm which you have in France."
"I will make use of you as of a heart," I said to him.
On the 14th, amidst the adventures which my son Charles relates in his book, I succeeded in reaching Brussels.
The vanquished are like cinders, Destiny blows upon them and disperses them. There was a gloomy vanishing of all the combatants for Right and for Law. A tragical disappearance.
33 "Les Hommes de l'Exile," by Charles Hugo.
The Crime having succeeded, all hastened to join it. To persist was possible, to resist was not possible. The situation became more and more desperate. One would have said that an enormous wall was rising upon the horizon ready to close in. The outlet: Exile.
The great souls, the glories of the people, emigrated. Thus there was seen this dismal sight—France driven out from France.
But what the Present appears to lose, the Future gains, the hand which scatters is also the hand which sows.
The Representatives of the Left, surrounded, tracked, pursued, hunted down, wandered for several days from refuge to refuge. Those who escaped found great difficulty in leaving Paris and France. Madier de Montjan had very black and thick eyebrows, he shaved off half of them, cut his hair, and let his beard grow. Yvan, Pelletier, Gindrier, and Doutre shaved off their moustaches and beards. Versigny reached Brussels on the 14th with a passport in the name of Morin. Schoelcher dressed himself up as a priest. This costume became him admirably, and suited his austere countenance and grave voice. A worthy priest helped him to disguise himself, and lent him his cassock and his band, made him shave off his whiskers a few days previously, so that he should not be betrayed by the white trace of his freshly-cut beard, gave him his own passport, and only left him at the railway station.34
De Flotte disguised himself as a servant, and in this manner succeeded in crossing the frontier at Mouscron. From there he reached Ghent, and thence Brussels.
On the night of December 26th, I had returned to the little room, without a fire, which I occupied (No. 9) on the second story of the Hôtel de la Porte-Verte; it was midnight; I had just gone to bed and was falling asleep, when a knock sounded at my door. I awoke. I always left the key outside. "Come in," I said. A chambermaid entered with a light, and brought two men whom I did not know. One was a lawyer, of Ghent, M. ——; the other was De Flotte. He took my two hands and pressed them tenderly. "What," I said to him, "is it you?"
At the Assembly De Flotte, with his prominent and thoughtful brow, his deep-set eyes, his close-shorn head, and his long beard, slightly turned back, looked like a creation of Sebastian del Piombo wandering out of his picture of the "Raising of Lazarus;" and I had before my eyes a short young man, thin and pallid, with spectacles. But what he had not been able to change, and what I recognized immediately, was the great heart, the lofty mind, the energetic character, the dauntless courage; and if I did not recognize him by his features, I recognized him by the grasp of his hand.
Edgar Quinet was brought away on the 10th by a noble-hearted Wallachian woman, Princess Cantacuzène, who undertook to conduct him to the frontier, and who kept her word. It was a troublesome task. Quinet had a foreign passport in the name of Grubesko, he was to personate a Wallachian, and it was arranged that he should not know how to speak French, he who writes it as a master. The journey was perilous. They ask for passports along all the line, beginning at the terminus. At Amiens they were particularly suspicious. But at Lille the danger was great. The gendarmes went from carriage to carriage; entered them lantern in hand, and compared the written descriptions of the travellers with their personal appearance. Several who appeared to be suspicious characters were arrested, and were immediately thrown into prison. Edgar Quinet, seated by the side of Madame Cantacuzène awaited the turn of his carriage. At length it came. Madame Cantacuzène leaned quickly forward towards the gendarmes, and hastened to present her passport, but the corporal waved back Madame Cantacuzène's passport saying, "It is useless, Madame. We have nothing to do with women's passports," and he asked Quinet abruptly, "Your papers?" Quinet held out his passport unfolded. The gendarmes said to him, "Come out of the carriage, so that we can compare your description." It happened, however, that the Wallachian passport contained no description. The corporal frowned, and said to his subordinates, "An irregular passport! Go and fetch the Commissary."
All seemed lost, but Madame Cantacuzène began to speak to Quinet in the most Wallachian words in the world, with incredible assurance and volubility, so much so that the gendarme, convinced that he had to deal with all Wallachia in person, and seeing the train ready to start, returned the passport to Quinet, saying to him, "There! be off with you!"—a few hours afterwards Edgar Quinet was in Belgium.
Arnauld de l'Ariège also had his adventures. He was a marked man, he had to hide himself. Arnauld being a Catholic, Madame Arnauld went to the priest; the Abbé Deguerry slipped out of the way, the Abbé Maret consented to conceal him; the Abbé Maret was honest and good. Arnauld d'Ariège remained hidden for a fortnight at the house of this worthy priest. He wrote from the Abbé Maret's a letter to the Archbishop of Paris, urging him to refuse the Pantheon, which a decree of Louis Bonaparte took away from France and gave to Rome. This letter angered the Archbishop. Arnauld, proscribed, reached Brussels, and there, at the age of eighteen months, died the "little Red," who on the 3d of December had carried the workman's letter to the Archbishop—an angel sent by God to the priest who had not understood the angel, and who no longer knew God.
In this medley of incidents and adventures each one had his drama. Cournet's drama was strange and terrible.
Cournet, it may be remembered, had been a naval officer. He was one of those men of a prompt, decisive character, who magnetized other men, and who on certain extraordinary occasions send an electric shock through a multitude. He possessed an imposing air, broad shoulders, brawny arms, powerful fists, a tall stature, all of which give confidence to the masses, and the intelligent expression which gives confidence to the thinkers. You saw him pass, and you recognized strength; you heard him speak, and you felt the will, which is more than strength. When quite a youth he had served in the navy. He combined in himself in a certain degree—and it is this which made this energetic man, when well directed and well employed, a means of enthusiasm and a support—he combined the popular fire and the military coolness. He was one of those natures created for the hurricane and for the crowd, who have begun their study of the people by their study of the ocean, and who are at their ease in revolutions as in tempests. As we have narrated, he took an important part in the combat. He had been dauntless and indefatigable, he was one of those who could yet rouse it to life. From Wednesday afternoon several police agents were charged to seek him everywhere, to arrest him wherever they might find him, and to take him to the Prefecture of the Police, where orders had been given to shoot him immediately.
Cournet, however, with his habitual daring, came and went freely in order to carry on the lawful resistance, even in the quarters occupied by the troops, shaving off his moustaches as his sole precaution.
On the Thursday afternoon he was on the boulevards at a few paces from a regiment of cavalry drawn up in order. He was quietly conversing with two of his comrades of the fight, Huy and Lorrain. Suddenly, he perceives himself and his companions surrounded by a company of sergents de ville; a man touches his arm and says to him, "You are Cournet; I arrest you."
"Bah!" answers Cournet; "My name is Lépine."
The man resumes,—
"You are Cournet. Do not you recognize me? Well, then, I recognize you; I have been, like you, a member of the Socialist Electoral Committee."
Cournet looks him in the face, and finds this countenance in his memory. The man was right. He had, in fact, formed part of the gathering in the Rue Saint Spire. The police spy resumed, laughing,—
"I nominated Eugène Sue with you."
It was useless to deny it, and the moment was not favorable for resistance. There were on the spot, as we have said, twenty sergents de ville and a regiment of Dragoons.
"I will follow you," said Cournet.
A fiacre was called up.
"While I am about it," said the police spy, "come in all three of you."
He made Huy and Lorrain get in with Cournet, placed them on the front seat, and seated himself on the back seat by Cournet, and then shouted to the driver,—
"To the Prefecture!"
The sergents de ville surrounded the fiacre. But whether by chance or through confidence, or in the haste to obtain the payment for his capture, the man who had arrested Cournet shouted to the coachman, "Look sharp, look sharp!" and the fiacre went off at a gallop.
In the meantime Cournet was well aware that on arriving he would be shot in the very courtyard of the Prefecture. He had resolved not to go there.
At a turning in the Rue St Antoine he glanced behind, and noticed that the sergents de ville only followed the fiacre at a considerable distance.
Not one of the four men which the fiacre was bearing away had as yet opened their lips.
Cournet threw a meaning look at his two companions seated in front of him, as much as to say, "We are three; let us take advantage of this to escape." Both answered by an imperceptible movement of the eyes, which pointed out the street full of passers-by, and which said, "No."
A few moments afterwards the fiacre emerged from the Rue St. Antoine, and entered the Rue de Fourcy. The Rue de Fourcy is usually deserted, no one was passing down it at that moment.
Cournet turned suddenly to the police spy, and asked him,—
"Have you a warrant for my arrest?"
"No; but I have my card."
And he drew his police agent's card out of his pocket, and showed it to Cournet. Then the following dialogue ensued between these two men,—
"This is not regular."
"What does that matter to me?"
"You have no right to arrest me."
"All the same, I arrest you."
"Look here; is it money that you want? Do you wish for any? I have some with me; let me escape."
"A gold nugget as big as your head would not tempt me. You are my finest capture, Citizen Cournet."
"Where are you taking me to?"
"To the Prefecture."
"They will shoot me there?"
"Possibly."
"And my two comrades?"
"I do not say 'No.'"
"I will not go."
"You will go, nevertheless."
"I tell you I will not go," exclaimed Cournet.
And with a movement, unexpected as a flash of lightning, he seized the police spy by the throat.
The police agent could not utter a cry, he struggled: a hand of bronze clutched him.
His tongue protruded from his mouth, his eyes became hideous, and started from their sockets. Suddenly his head sank down, and reddish froth rose from his throat to his lips. He was dead.
Huy and Lorrain, motionless, and as though themselves thunderstruck, gazed at this gloomy deed.
They did not utter a word. They did not move a limb. The fiacre was still driving on.
"Open the door!" Cournet cried to them.
They did not stir, they seemed to have become stone.
Cournet, whose thumb was closely pressed in the neck of the wretched police spy, tried to open the door with his left hand, but he did not succeed, he felt that he could only do it with his right hand, and he was obliged to loose his hold of the man. The man fell face forwards, and sank down on his knees.
Cournet opened the door.
"Off with you!" he said to them.
Huy and Lorrain jumped into the street and fled at the top of their speed.
The coachman had noticed nothing.
Cournet let them get away, and then, pulling the check string, stopped the fiacre, got down leisurely, reclosed the door, quietly took forty sous from his purse, gave them to the coachman, who had not left his seat, and said to him, "Drive on."
He plunged into Paris. In the Place des Victoires he met the ex-Constituent Isidore Buvignier, his friend, who about six weeks previously had come out of the Madelonnettes, where he had been confined for the matter of the Solidarité Républicaine. Buvignier was one of the noteworthy figures on the high benches of the Left; fair, close-shaven, with a stern glance, he made one think of the English Roundheads, and he had the bearing rather of a Cromwellian Puritan than of a Dantonist Man of the Mountain. Cournet told his adventure, the extremity had been terrible.
Buvignier shook his head.
"You have killed a man," he said.
In "Marie Tudor," I have made Fabiani answer under similar circumstances,—
"No, a Jew."
Cournet, who probably had not read "Marie Tudor," answered,—
"No, a police spy."
Then he resumed,—
"I have killed a police spy to save three men, one of whom was myself."
Cournet was right. They were in the midst of the combat, they were taking him to be shot; the spy who had arrested him was, properly speaking, an assassin, and assuredly it was a case of legitimate defence. I add that this wretch, a democrat for the people, a spy for the police, was a twofold traitor. Moreover, the police spy was the jackal of the coup d'état, while Cournet was the combatant for the Law.
"You must conceal yourself," said Buvignier; "come to Juvisy."
Buvignier had a little refuge at Juvisy, which is on the road to Corbeil. He was known and loved there; Cournet and he reached there that evening.
But they had hardly arrived when some peasants said to Buvignier, "The police have already been here to arrest you, and are coming again to-night."
It was necessary to go back.
Cournet, more in danger than ever, hunted, wandering, pursued, hid himself in Paris with considerable difficulty. He remained there till the 16th. He had no means of procuring himself a passport. At length, on the 16th, some friends of his on the Northern Railway obtained for him a special passport, worded as follows:—
"Allow M. ——, an Inspector on the service of the Company, to pass."
He decided to leave the next day, and take the day train, thinking, perhaps rightly, that the night train would be more closely watched.
On the 17th, at daybreak, favored by the dim dawn, he glided from street to street, to the Northern Railway Station. His tall stature was a special source of danger. He, however, reached the station in safety. The stokers placed him with them on the tender of the engine of the train, which was about to start. He only had the clothes which he had worn since the 2d; no clean linen, no trunk, a little money.
In December, the day breaks late and the night closes in early, which is favorable to proscribed persons.
He reached the frontier at night without hindrance. At Neuvéglise he was in Belgium; he believed himself in safety. When asked for his papers he caused himself to be taken before the Burgomaster, and said to him, "I am a political refugee."
The Burgomaster, a Belgian but a Bonapartist—this breed is to be found—had him at once reconducted to the frontier by the gendarmes, who were ordered to hand him over to the French authorities.
Cournet gave himself up for lost.
The Belgian gendarmes took him to Armentières. If they had asked for the Mayor it would have been all at an end with Cournet, but they asked for the Inspector of Customs.
A glimmer of hope dawned upon Cournet.
He accosted the Inspector of Customs with his head erect, and shook hands with him.
The Belgian gendarmes had not yet released him.
"Now, sir," said Cournet to the Custom House officer, "you are an Inspector of Customs, I am an Inspector of Railways. Inspectors do not eat inspectors. The deuce take it! Some worthy Belgians have taken fright and sent me to you between four gendarmes. Why, I know not. I am sent by the Northern Company to relay the ballast of a bridge somewhere about here which is not firm. I come to ask you to allow me to continue my road. Here is my pass."
He presented the pass to the Custom House officer, the Custom House officer read it, found it according to due form, and said to Cournet,—
"Mr. Inspector, you are free."
Cournet, delivered from the Belgian gendarmes by French authority, hastened to the railway station. He had friends there.
"Quick," he said, "it is dark, but it does not matter, it is even all the better. Find me some one who has been a smuggler, and who will help me to pass the frontier."
They brought him a small lad of eighteen; fair-haired, ruddy, hardy, a Walloon35 and who spoke French.
"What is your name?" said Cournet.
"Henry."
"You look like a girl."
"Nevertheless I am a man."
"Is it you who undertake to guide me?"
"Yes."
"You have been a smuggler?"
"I am one still."
"Do you know the roads?"
"No. I have nothing to do with the roads."
"What do you know then?"
"I know the passes."
"There are two Custom House lines."
"I know that well."
"Will you pass me across them?"
"Without doubt."
"Then you are not afraid of the Custom House officers?"
"I'm afraid of the dogs."
"In that case," said Cournet, "we will take sticks."
They accordingly armed themselves with big sticks. Cournet gave fifty francs to Henry, and promised him fifty more when they should have crossed the second Custom House line.
"That is to say, at four o'clock in the morning," said Henry.
It was midnight.
They set out on their way.
What Henry called the "passes" another would have called the "hindrances." They were a succession of pitfalls and quagmires. It had been raining, and all the holes were pools of water.
An indescribable footpath wound through an inextricable labyrinth, sometimes as thorny as a heath, sometimes as miry as a marsh.
The night was very dark.
From time to time, far away in the darkness, they could hear a dog bark. The smuggler then made bends or zigzags, turned sharply to the right or to the left, and sometimes retraced his steps.
Cournet, jumping hedges, striding over ditches, stumbling at every moment, slipping into sloughs, laying hold of briers, with his clothes in rags, his hands bleeding, dying with hunger, battered about, wearied, worn out, almost exhausted, followed his guide gaily.
At every minute he made a false step; he fell into every bog, and got up covered with mud. At length he fell into a pond. It was several feet deep. This washed him.
"Bravo!" he said. "I am very clean, but I am very cold."
At four o'clock in the morning, as Henry had promised him, they reached Messine, a Belgian village. The two Custom House lines had been cleared. Cournet had nothing more to fear, either from the Custom House nor from the coup d'état, neither from men nor from dogs.
He gave Henry the second fifty francs, and continued his journey on foot, trusting somewhat to chance.
It was not until towards evening that he reached a railway station. He got into a train, and at nightfall he arrived at the Southern Railway Station at Brussels.
He had left Paris on the preceding morning, had not slept an hour, had been walking all night, and had eaten nothing. On searching in his pocket he missed his pocket book, but found a crust of bread. He was more delighted at the discovery of the crust than grieved at the loss of his pocket-book. He carried his money in a waistband; the pocket-book, which had probably disappeared in the pond, contained his letters, and amongst others an exceedingly useful letter of introduction from his friend M. Ernest Koechlin, to the Representatives Guilgot and Carlos Forel, who at that moment were refugees at Brussels, and lodged at the Hôtel de Brabant.
On leaving the railway station he threw himself into a cab, and said to the coachman,—
"Hôtel de Brabant."
He heard a voice repeat, "Hôtel de Brabant." He put out his head and saw a man writing something in a notebook with a pencil by the light of a street-lamp.
It was probably some police agent.
Without a passport, without letters, without papers, he was afraid of being arrested in the night, and he was longing for a good sleep. A good bed to-night, he thought, and to-morrow the Deluge! At the Hôtel de Brabant he paid the coachman, but did not go into the hotel. Moreover, he would have asked in vain for the Representatives Forel and Guilgot; both were there under false names.
He took to wandering about the streets. It was eleven o'clock at night, and for a long time he had begun to feel utterly worn out.
At length he saw a lighted lamp with the inscription "Hôtel de la Monnaie."
He walked in.
The landlord came up, and looked at him somewhat askance.
He then thought of looking at himself.
His unshaven beard, his disordered hair, his cap soiled with mud, his blood-stained hands, his clothes in rags, he looked horrible.
He took a double louis out of his waistband, and put it on the table of the parlor, which he had entered and said to the landlord,—
"In truth, sir, I am not a thief, I am a proscript; money is now my only passport. I have just come from Paris, I wish to eat first and sleep afterwards."
The landlord was touched, took the double louis, and gave him bed and supper.
Next day, while he was still sleeping, the landlord came into his room, woke him gently, and said to him,—
"Now, sir, if I were you, I should go and see Baron Hody."
"Who and what is Baron Hody?" asked Cournet, half asleep.
The landlord explained to him who Baron Hody was. When I had occasion to ask the same question as Cournet, I received from three inhabitants of Brussels the three answers as follows:—