Talleyrand had more than one difference of opinion with Napoleon, and on a certain occasion the emperor, half familiarly, half contemptuously, pulled him by the ear. “What a pity,” exclaimed Talleyrand, “that so great a man should be so ill-bred!” More than once Talleyrand was dismissed from Napoleon’s service; but in moments of difficulty it was found necessary to recall him. Finally, however, on Napoleon’s fall, he got the Emperor of Russia to declare that he would treat neither with Napoleon nor with any member of his family. Talleyrand used all his influence, moreover, with the Senate to procure its acceptance of the Bourbons, sure by this means to secure the favour of Louis XVIII. “Il n’y a rien de changé: il n’y a qu’un Français de plus”—was the phrase which Talleyrand at this time put into the mouth of the king’s brother, Count d’Artois, who, after a time, believed that he had really uttered it. The restored monarchy, however, gave the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Duc de Richelieu, Talleyrand receiving an office he had before held under Napoleon, that of Grand Chamberlain, with a salary of 100,000 francs.
When the Revolution of 1830 broke out, the Duke of Orleans, afterwards Louis Philippe, consulted Talleyrand as to whether, should he accept the throne, the European powers would be likely to recognise him. Talleyrand wrote to the Duke of Wellington, at that time Prime Minister, and, finding that England would make no objection, took it for granted that there would be no trouble with Russia, while it was comparatively unimportant what views the other governments might take. A month afterwards{241} he started for London, where he had been appointed ambassador, and where he laid the foundation of that entente cordiale (the expression was Guizot’s) which has secured to both countries a long period of peace.
In 1834 Talleyrand, now in his eighty-first year, resigned his embassy and returned to Paris, where, no longer taking part in public affairs, he died four years afterwards. “Talleyrand spoke little,” says Capefigue, “but with exquisite delicacy said all that it was necessary to say with precision and politeness. He defined a situation by a word; terminated a discussion by a phrase. He had seen so many events, so many men, and so many passions, that no small thing could excite him. He could meet anger, bursts of temper, with the most impassible countenance. To a reproach he would reply by some charming mot. Thus, when Napoleon said to him abruptly one day: “They say you are very rich, M. de Talleyrand; you have made lucky speculations on the stock exchange.” “Yes,” was his answer, “I bought into the funds on the eve of the 18th Brumaire”—the day on which Napoleon made his celebrated coup d’état.
Many witticisms have of course been attributed to Talleyrand which he never uttered, and many more, which he did utter, but which were not absolutely original. According to M. Edouard Fournier he was a constant student of a collection of jests entitled, with curious irony, “L’Improvisateur Français.” All necessary deductions, however, having been made, the fact remains that this statesman was very witty, and with a wit characteristically his own. “Language was given to man in order to conceal his thoughts” is, perhaps, the most famous of his sallies. When someone said in his presence that M. Thiers was a “parvenu,” “not parvenu, but arrivé,” he remarked.
Besides being witty himself, he was according to M. Louis Blanc, the cause at least on one occasion of wit in another. When Talleyrand was dying, says the author of “The History of Ten Years,” King Louis Philippe went to see him. “Je souffre les tourments d’enfer,” complained Talleyrand. “Déjà?” the king is reported to have muttered. This story, however, was at the time of M. Louis Blanc’s writing at least two or three centuries old, and there is no reason for supposing that either{242} Talleyrand or the king uttered the words attributed to them by this always interesting but generally inaccurate historian.
As a rule Talleyrand’s witticisms were marked by politeness. But he could say severe things; and once when a lady, who suffered from defective vision, seemed by her mode of inquiry after his health to be hinting at his lameness, he replied to her “Comment allez vous?” “Comme vous voyez, Madame.” His “Surtout pas de zèle” is well known; also his amusing if cynical caution on the subject of spontaneity: “Beware of first impulses: they are nearly always generous.”
Diderot’s Early Life in Paris—His Love Affairs—Imprisonment in the Château de Vincennes—Diderot and Catherine II. of Russia—His Death.
AN interesting book has been published, under the title of “Paris Démoli,” on the churches, houses, and buildings of various kinds which were pulled down during the work of reconstruction pursued so vigorously during recent years, and especially under the Second Empire. To build the Rue de Rennés, which joins the Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés to the terminus of the Left-Bank Western Railway on the Boulevard Montparnasse, it was necessary to pull down the two first houses in the Rue Taranne, numbered 1 and 2. No. 2, whose side windows look out upon the Rue Saint-Benoit, afforded for many years an abode, on the fifth floor, just beneath the roof, to Diderot, who, however, died, not here, but in the Rue Richelieu immediately after his return from a visit to the Empress Catherine.
Fitted neither by birth nor breeding for the atmosphere of courts, Diderot received, nevertheless, from the Russian empress the greatest marks of favour. In Russia Catherine could scarcely govern otherwise than despotically, though she once summoned a parliament whose members were entrusted with legislative functions; and it was perhaps not altogether her fault that nothing came of their labours. Personally, however, she had not the despotic manners by which the intercourse of Frederick the Great with his inferiors was so often marked. Of a more accommodating disposition than Diderot, Voltaire was able for a considerable time to live peacefully with the Prussian king, though when at last the inevitable quarrel came, he did not scruple to criticise and satirise the sovereign whom, through a long course of years, he had persistently flattered.
Son of a blacksmith and cutler at Langres, Diderot entered at an early age the college of Harcourt, directed by the Jesuits. But showing no aptitude for the theological career, he was placed with a lawyer, at whose office he occupied himself exclusively with the study of literature, philosophy, and mathematics. After a time the chief of the office remonstrated with him, and asked him how he expected to live. “I am fond of study,” he replied, “I can exist on very little, I am perfectly happy; why, then, should I trouble myself about a regular profession?” On being informed of these views Diderot’s father began by stopping his son’s allowance. Then Diderot gave lessons, but not, it would seem, on very remunerative principles; for if the pupil pleased him he was ready to go on teaching him all day, whereas, in the contrary case, he did not give a second lesson. He accepted payment in the form of books, clothes, or anything else which, in the absence of money, the pupil could offer. After a time he was engaged in a private family, where for three months he taught incessantly, walking out with his pupils, taking all his meals with them, and not leaving them for a moment. He disliked, however, living in another person’s house, and retired after three months to his own garret. He was now in the direst poverty. He was often without food, and one Shrove Tuesday, in 1741 (he was then twenty-eight years of age), he returned home in a fainting condition from having eaten nothing all day. His landlady, seeing his enfeebled state, gave him some toast steeped in wine; “and I then swore,” said Diderot afterwards to his daughter, “that, if{243} ever I possessed anything, I would not, so long as I lived, refuse help to a fellow creature who might find himself in a similar position.” On the whole, however, apart from occasional bad days, Diderot led a lively existence. He could write in any style, and was ready to execute any kind of literary work. He even composed sermons. He wrote six for a missionary, who paid him 300 crowns (about £36) for the half-dozen. This he afterwards declared to be one of the best strokes of business he had ever done. From time to time he wrote to his father, who did not answer him. His mother, however, sent him, from time to time, a portion of her savings by a faithful servant who, without saying anything about it, added to the amount some savings of her own. On these occasions the poor woman had to make a journey on foot of some 300 miles, 150 each way. In spite of this assistance Diderot was often in distress. It may be, as Heine somewhere suggests, that writers and artists, like medlars, ripen best on straw. It is certain, in any case, that the talent and courage of Diderot developed in spite, if not in consequence, of his poverty. His energy grew in proportion as he exercised his power of resistance.
Unable to be much poorer than he actually was, Diderot now resolved to get married. He heard one morning that two ladies had come to live in the same house as himself. One was Mme. Champion, widow of a man who had ruined himself and his family by his mania for speculation; the other her daughter, Mlle. Annette Champion, a tall, handsome, well-mannered girl. They had their own furniture, had saved a little money, and were trying to support themselves by needlework. Diderot wished to be introduced to them. “They will decline to make your acquaintance,” was his landlady’s reply. He determined to order some shirts; by one means or another he had resolved to make their acquaintance. On seeing the daughter he fell in love with her, and soon afterwards proposed to marry her. “You wish to get married?” said Mme. Champion; “and upon what? You have no profession, no property, nothing whatever except a tongue of gold, with which you have managed to turn my daughter’s head.” The girl’s mother, however, gave her consent, and Diderot had next to obtain the consent of his own father. Old Diderot, however, treated his son as a madman, and not only would not hear of the marriage, but threatened to curse him if he persisted in his intentions. Troubled on all sides, Diderot now fell ill, and the illness sealed his fate. He was waited upon and nursed by his two kind-hearted neighbours. On his recovery he was profuse in his expressions of gratitude towards the mother; nor did this prevent him from marrying the daughter in secret.
The young woman whom he now made his wife was more remarkable for good nature than for intelligence. The strangest stories are told about her want of brains. Thus, on one occasion, when a publisher had in her presence purchased a manuscript from Diderot for 100 crowns, she expressed her astonishment at his taking so much money for a few scraps of paper, and urged him to return the sum. About a year later Diderot, finding that injurious stories had been told to his family concerning his wife, sent her without invitation on a visit to his father, who received her with kindness, and kept her in his house for three months. Meanwhile Diderot made the acquaintance of a Mme. de Pinsieux, who, unlike the wife, was more remarkable for intellectual than for moral qualities. She was extravagant in her tastes, and to gratify them Diderot plied his pen with ceaseless activity.
To furnish her with money, literary spendthrift that he was, he wrote books of the most varied kinds, from “Pensées Philosophiques,” one of his most admirable works, to “Les Bijoux Indiscrets,” one of the most objectionable. No one complained of the licentious tale. But the philosophical work, a pamphlet of some sixty pages, full of profound truths, expressed with vivacity and originality, was first attributed to Voltaire, and next burnt by the common hangman. In his “Letter on the Blind,” Diderot gave further offence, and this time he was imprisoned in the castle of Vincennes. Everyone thought that the materialism professed by Diderot in his essay was the cause of his arrest; which, however, was due to something quite different. His “Lettre sur les Aveugles” had been written on the occasion of an operation for cataract performed by Réaumur on a patient who had been blind from birth. Diderot had wished to study the first sensations produced upon the blind man by the effect of light; but the famous operator would admit no one except a lady of fashion, Mme. Dupré de Saint-Maur; and at the beginning of his letter Diderot complained of the man of science who had preferred to have his experiment witnessed by two beautiful eyes rather than by men capable of appreciating it. Mme. Dupré de Saint-Maur is said to have had considerable influence with M. d’Argençon, the{244} Minister of Police; and without judgment or accusation Diderot was arrested on the 24th of July, 1749, and taken to the Château of Vincennes. Thus religion was avenged, and Mme. Dupré de Saint-Maur also.
That Diderot’s arrest was due in a great measure to the general contents of his book, and not merely to his by no means uncomplimentary mention of Mme. Dupré de Saint-Maur, seems proved by the fact that after imprisoning him the police visited Diderot’s house and made a search for his manuscripts. The unhappy author remained for twenty-eight days in secret confinement. At the end of that time he wrote to D’Argençon begging the minister to liberate him from a captivity “in which he might make him die but could not make him live.” He was now transferred from the castle-dungeon to the castle itself, where his wife and several of his friends were allowed to visit him, among others Jean Jacques Rousseau, with whom for some time past he had been on intimate terms.
In the eighth book of his “Confessions” Rousseau relates how a visit he made to the prisoner of Vincennes marked an epoch in his life. The Academy of Dijon had just proposed the following subject for a prize essay:—“Has the revival of Arts and Letters contributed to the purification of manners?” It was during his visits to Diderot in the Château that Rousseau claims not only to have conceived the idea of treating the question proposed, but also to have written the greatest part of the essay which was to cause such a sensation in the world. Diderot, however, gave a very different account of the matter to his friend Marmontel. “I was prisoner at Vincennes,” he said, “where Rousseau came to see me. He had made me his Aristarchus, as he himself declared. One day, when we were walking together, he told me that the Academy of Dijon had just proposed an interesting question, and that he wished to treat it. The question was ‘Has the revival of arts and letters contributed to the perfection of morals?’ ‘Which side shall you take?’ I said to him. ‘The affirmative,’ he replied. ‘That is the pons asinorum,’ I said. ‘All the mediocre people will take that view, and you can only support it by commonplace ideas; whereas the contrary side offers to philosophy and eloquence a new and fertile field.’ ‘You are right,’ he answered, after a moment’s reflection. ‘I will follow your advice.’” Diderot himself wrote on this very subject: “When the programme of the Academy of Dijon appeared he came to consult me as to which side he should take. ‘Take the side,’ I said to him, ‘that no one else will take.’”
It was, in any case, Rousseau who wrote the essay, author though Diderot may have been of its paradoxical character. As an example of the laxity, as well as the severity of the period, it may be mentioned that when Diderot had once been set free from the dungeon, he was allowed, in his more commodious place of residence, to receive not only his wife and friends, but also Mme. de Pinsieux, to whom he was still attached. One day, when she was{245} visiting him, he was struck by the brilliancy of her attire. She accounted for the elaborateness of her toilette by saying that she was going to an entertainment at Champigny. “Was she going alone?” he asked. “Quite alone.” “Your word of honour?” “I give it you.” Diderot did not quite believe in the lady’s assurances, and soon after her departure he climbed over the wall of the park, hurried to Champigny, and there saw Mme. de Pinsieux with some admirer. He went back, scaled the wall a second time, and became once more a captive, but with a heart set free. “He broke for ever,” says an indignant moralist, “with his unworthy mistress.”
Diderot remained three years at Vincennes. He quitted his prison in 1734, and now conceived the plan of the “Encyclopædia,” a magnificent literary and scientific monument, which alone would justify the reputation he enjoys. It occupied him, without absorbing the whole of his time, for more than thirty years; and there was certainly no other man who could have brought to the work such wide knowledge, such energy of style, and such prodigious application. He had undertaken the articles on historical, philosophical, and scientific subjects, while he was, at the same time, in association with D’Alembert, to go over the work of all the contributors. As regards many of the subjects Diderot had to study them as he went on; which his marvellous intuition enabled him to do with the best effect. “Diderot,” said Grimm, “has naturally the most encyclopædic head that ever existed.” “His genius, in its sphere of activity, includes everything,” said Voltaire. “He passes from the heights of metaphysics to the frame of a weaver, and thence to the drama.” “Centuries after the time of his existence,” wrote Rousseau, in his “Confessions,” when he had quarrelled with him, “this universal head will be looked upon as we now look upon the head of Plato or Aristotle.”
Apart from his legitimate work Diderot had to cope with opposition and persecution of all kinds. The Jesuits had proposed their co-operation for the theological articles of the “Encyclopædia,” and Diderot had refused their offer equally with a similar one made by the Jansenists. The work was forthwith denounced as irreligious; and with such contributors as{246} Diderot and Voltaire it could scarcely, indeed, have been otherwise, though it was not the direct object of the writers to make war upon Faith. Among the many celebrated authors who furnished articles to the “Encyclopædia” Rousseau may in particular be mentioned. But like most of the contributors he wrote only for a time, and chiefly on musical subjects. D’Alembert, Voltaire, Rousseau, all fell off; Rousseau because something had offended him, Voltaire to write his own philosophical dictionary, D’Alembert because he had grown tired of the work. “I am worn out with the vexations of all kinds brought upon us by this work,” wrote D’Alembert to Voltaire in 1758. At one time its publication was forbidden, when Catherine II. offered to continue it in Russia. The volumes were, curiously enough, thrown into the Bastille; which, since they could be taken out again, was at least better than burning them at the hands of the common hangman.
Catherine II. granted Diderot a handsome pension, and she at the same time purchased his library for a large sum. The empress went so far, indeed, as to send him the sum of 50,000 francs, being the annual pension paid in advance for fifty years. Touched by the bounty of Catherine, Diderot wished to thank the empress in person, and in the year 1773 he started for Russia. At the Hague he was met by the High Chamberlain, Narischkin, who, accompanying him to St. Petersburg, put him up at his own house. Diderot’s friend Grimm was already at St. Petersburg. He presented Diderot to the Empress Catherine, who received him in the most cordial manner. She would be glad to see him, she said, in her own apartments every day from three to five or six, and she took the greatest pleasure in his conversation. “I see him very often,” she wrote to Voltaire. “Our conversations are incessant. What an extraordinary head he has! As for his heart, would that all other men had one like it. I do not know whether they (Grimm and Diderot) are getting tired of St. Petersburg, but I know that I could talk to them all my life without fatigue.”
Catherine did her best to keep Diderot at St. Petersburg; but he wished to return to Paris, and though he had been invited to stay at Berlin by Frederick the Great, he passed through Prussia without visiting the capital. It has been before said that he had no sympathy for Frederick.
Soon after his return to Paris he was taken ill, and after a short malady died. The curé of Saint-Roch had come to see him, and Diderot received him in a very friendly manner. They talked on various moral and religious subjects, and as they agreed on many theological points, especially as to the efficacy of charity and good works, the curé ventured to suggest that if he would authorise the publication of these opinions, together with a retractation of his works, the effect would be excellent. But Diderot would do nothing of the kind. Neither would he confess. Nevertheless there was but little difficulty in connection with his funeral, which took place at Saint-Roch, where he was buried (July, 1784) in the Chapel of the Virgin. There his remains still lie.
The Courtyard of the Dragon—The National Workshops—The Insurrection of June—Monseigneur Affre Shot at the Barricade of the Faubourg St.-Antoine.
CLOSE to the Rue de Turenne is the Courtyard of the Dragon, inhabited for the last two centuries, even until now, by dealers in every kind of ironwork. It was here, in July, 1830, that the first insurgents of this particular district armed themselves more or less effectively for the fray. The Courtyard of the Dragon owes its name to the dragon in bronze placed at the entrance, just opposite the Rue Sainte-Marguerite, in allusion to the monster on which painters and sculptors make Sainte Marguerite trample. Passing in front of the Courtyard of the Dragon the Rue de Rennes runs from north to south. The Rue du Four, the Rue du Vieux-Colombier, and the Rue d’Assas, are at the back of the Monastery of the Carmes Déchaussés—or Shoeless Carmelites—which occupies the interior of the angle formed by the Rue de Rennes and the Rue d’Assas. The Shoeless Carmelites, as formed or reformed under the auspices of St. Theresa, were authorised to establish themselves in France by letters patent, dated June, 1610; and they soon enriched themselves by the sale of two manufactured articles which they alone were able to make: a kind of stucco, known as Blanc des Carmes, which took the polish of marble, and treacle water; both of which became very popular in Paris. The Carmelite Monastery is now the seat of the Catholic University of Paris, founded by thirty French archbishops or bishops, and comprising three faculties: Law, Letters, and Sciences. In 1791 the priests, who had refused to swear fidelity to the Constitution, were imprisoned in the Carmelite Monastery, and the massacring band of Maillard, and the wretches under his orders, slaughtered them on the 2nd and 3rd of September, 1792, together with all the prisoners, irrespectively of age or sex, who were confined with them. Close to the altar of the left transept is a monument enclosing the heart of Monseigneur Affre, who fell during the terrible days of June, in 1848, at the formidable barricade of the Faubourg St.-Antoine, as he was making a last effort to stop the further effusion of blood. In the midst of his exhortations he was struck in the loins by a stray bullet, and fell into the arms of the insurgents, who were in despair at the terrible incident, which was not the result of a crime, as the direction of the shot, the evidence of the vicars in attendance upon him, and the grief of the revolutionists sufficiently testified. The venerable prelate expired on the 27th, two days after he had been struck. “May my blood be the last shed” were his dying words.
The successful insurrection of June, which, after much slaughter, was suppressed, was partly the consequence of the successful insurrection of February, after which, Louis Philippe having taken flight, the Second Republic was proclaimed. In February the provisional Government had guaranteed in a formal manner the “right to labour.” Accordingly, numbers of workmen being without employment, and capitalists being unwilling to embark in new enterprises, or even in many cases to continue those which were already on foot, national workshops were opened, in which upwards of 100,000 workmen found occupation and bread. Apart from the drain upon the exchequer caused by the employment of these hundred thousand men, the inevitable moment at which it would be necessary to close the workshops was regarded by everyone with alarm. Each workman was employed one day out of four in useless labour; and the more prudent hoped that the national workshops would be closed gradually, and the men induced gradually to seek service with private employers. Among other measures it was proposed to colonise Algeria with the men out of work; and it was calculated that two hundred millions of francs would be necessary for this purpose. According to the calculations of many wise economists and politicians, an expenditure of two hundred millions in order to get rid of a menacing army of 100,000 men was not excessive. Others, including, it may be, some secret enemies of the Republic, who did not object to a violent collision, in which the republican form of government might disappear, thought the workshops ought to be closed, and the men left to shift for themselves. The national workshops were at the same time declared to be nests of idlers, thieves, and incendiaries.
On the 17th of June, after long and passionate{248} debates in the Assembly, the immediate dissolution of the national workshops was proposed. The next day the workmen, by way of reply, exhibited on all the walls of Paris placards in these terms: “There is no unwillingness on our part to work; but useful and appropriate work according to our trades is just what we cannot obtain. We call for it, we ask for it with all our force. The immediate suppression of the national workshops is demanded; but what is to become of the 100,000 workmen who find in their modest pay the sole means of existence for themselves and their families? Are they to be delivered over to the evil counsels of famine, to the suggestions of despair? Are they to be placed at the mercy of factions?” A proclamation was at the same time issued to the workmen, calling upon them to be calm, and warning them against the emissaries of different political parties. “Nothing is any longer possible in France,” concluded the proclamation, “but the democratic and social republic. We will have neither emperor nor king; nothing except liberty, equality, and fraternity.”
It was decided in the first place to expel from the national workshops, and, with the consent of the expelled, enroll in the army all workmen of from seventeen to twenty-five years of age. Other detachments were to be sent to the marshes of Sologne in order to drain them, or to be employed on earthworks in distant departments. Others, again, could be sent to Algeria. The workmen, however, showed no disposition to adopt any of the courses recommended; and, according to the expression of one of them, they were called upon to choose between famine, expatriation, and military servitude. They were threatened, indeed, by famine, but more than one means of escape was offered to them. After a stormy day an immense meeting was held in the Place St.-Sulpice, at which, after many impassioned speeches, it was decided to meet the next morning at six o’clock in the Place du Panthéon. The executive commission appointed by the Government to watch over the peace of Paris, and prevent, if possible, its being broken, ordered General Cavaignac, Minister of War, to occupy the Place du Panthéon the next morning, June 23rd, at five. But at six not a soldier was to be seen, and the square was taken possession of by the people. The absence of troops at important points was observed elsewhere. Two plans had been discussed. The executive commissioners wished the troops to be disseminated in such a{249} manner that no barricade could be erected without being at once destroyed, so that the hostile popular movement would be crushed from the beginning. Cavaignac, however, wished to be allowed to mass the entire army beneath his orders, and then to send columns of attack wherever necessary. It was represented to him that by such a system Paris would be covered with barricades, and the final victory of the troops cause torrents of blood. The stern soldier cared nothing for that. “As for the National Guard, let it take care of its own shops,” he haughtily added; “I do not wish to run the risk of a single one of my companies being disarmed.” Cavaignac was afterwards accused of having purposely allowed the insurrection to grow, in order that he might play the part of a saviour. But the question being purely a military one, the executive commission found itself bound to give in.
The insurrection had neither chief nor settled plan. Enjoying full liberty of extension during the first few hours, it had spread rapidly over half the city, extending in a semicircle from the Clos St. Lazare on the right bank to the Pantheon on the left. Its centre seemed to be the Place de la Bastille, and its strategic object to converge upon the Hôtel de Ville. In spite of Cavaignac’s sarcasm about the shopkeepers and their shops, the National Guard played a very active part in the suppression of the insurrection. Cavaignac entrusted the command on the right bank and the boulevards to Lamoricière, on the left bank to Daumesuil, and around the Hôtel de Ville to Bedeau. He himself took charge of a few battalions in the Faubourg du Temple, not far from the Place de la Bastille.
It was on the evening of the first day that Monseigneur Affre, accompanied by his two Grand Vicars, went to the Place de la Bastille to address some conciliatory words to the insurgents, in the hope of prevailing upon them to abandon the contest; and it was here, as before set forth, that, received with every mark of sympathy by the insurgents, he fell while he was addressing them. It was not till nine on the day following that the formidable insurrection of June was, after terrible slaughter, brought to an end.{250}
The Boulevard Montparnasse—The Cemetery—Father Loriquet—Hégésippe Moreau—Sainte-Beuve.
TO return to the Carmelite Monastery and the Rue de Rennes, which continues its course until it reaches the Boulevard Montparnasse. This boulevard is a section of the road round Paris, formed under Louis XV., together with all the southern boulevards, in virtue of letters patent. Until recently the Boulevard Montparnasse was full of restaurants and dancing-places, among the latter the most celebrated being La Grande Chaumière, much patronised by students in the time of Louis Philippe and of Gavarni. Since the construction of the great terminus of the Western Railway the boulevard in question has become transformed. It has been invaded by industry and commerce. The hovels, booths, and public gardens of former days have been replaced by well-built houses, many of which, with the studios attached to them, are occupied by painters and sculptors.
The name of this boulevard has a genuine literary origin. The land was given in the sixteenth century, with the high ground in the immediate neighbourhood, to the scholars of the different Paris colleges, who assembled on its slopes and summit to read poems, and to discuss matters of literature and art. The height of the so-called “mount” is on a level with that of the roof of the railway station; but the railway line is itself considerably above the level of the boulevard. The region of Mount Parnassus has its theatre and its cemetery. At the former many a dramatic author, afterwards to become celebrated, has brought out his first piece; in the latter numbers of writers and painters who, without perhaps failing in their art, failed in life, have found repose, with the poet Hégésippe Moreau among them. Here, too, lie Henri Regnault, the young painter who was killed in the sortie towards Buzenval on the 19th of January, 1871; the surgeon Lisfranc, self-declared rival of the illustrious Dupuytren, whom, in his lectures, he used freely to describe as “This brigand from over the water” (Lisfranc was attached to the Charité on the left bank, Dupuytren to the Hôtel Dieu on the island); Father Loriquet, author of the celebrated “History of France,” in which Napoleon Bonaparte is represented as one of the generals of Louis XVIII., in whose name he gains important victories; Sainte-Beuve, the famous critic; Baron Gérard, the painter; Rude, the sculptor; Orfila, the great chemist, who discovered arsenic in the body of M. Lafarge—whereupon Raspail, the chemist retained for the defence, declared that he would find as much arsenic in a pair of old window curtains; the four sergeants of Rochelle, whose unhappy fate has been told in connection with Bicêtre, where for a time they were confined; the philosopher Jouffroy, and the famous writer on political and religious subjects, Montalembert.
Hégésippe Moreau, just mentioned as one of the most interesting tenants of the Montparnasse cemetery, was the author of a terrible poem, “To Hunger,”—with which he was only too intimately acquainted. But his reputation rests on a collection of poems gracefully entitled “Le Myosotis.”
Father Loriquet was one of the most remarkable historians of ancient or modern times. Holding individually, perhaps, the doctrine ascribed to Jesuits collectively by their enemies, that the end justifies the means, and resolved in his “History of France” to work according to the motto of his Order, “Ad majorem Dei gloriam,” he rearranged the historical facts so as to make them accord, not with what did happen, but with what in his opinion ought to have happened—a mode of writing history not indeed peculiar to himself. The work was published immediately after the Restoration, and, according to the titlepage, was expressly designed “for the instruction of youth.” It is said to be still used in certain ultra-religious boarding schools, where no words are looked upon as so odious as those of “Revolution” and “Republic.”
Speaking of the American War of Independence, this strange historian writes: “Louis XVI. did not think it just or politic to take the part of rebels, who claimed rights for subjects against kings. But sacrificing inopportunely his own intelligence to that which he thought he recognised among his councillors, he acknowledged the independence of the United States of America” (vol. ii., p. 129).
Here are some more extracts from this curious work:—{251}
“Louis XVI. committed the fault of tolerating an illegal meeting of factious persons in the Tennis Court. He should have known that a few drops of impure blood shed in time are the salvation of empires (page 130).
“In the midst of convulsive movements the assembly, after a splendid repast, held the midnight meeting so well known under the name of the sitting of the 4th of August. There, without discussion, without deliberation, inspired solely by the vapours of wine, it decreed a number of unjust things against landed proprietors and the owners of feudal rights (page 144).
“It was the evening of the 5th of October. The most alarming news was being circulated in Versailles. The days of the royal family, above all those of the queen, were seriously menaced. The aim of the conspirators was, by intimidating Louis XVI., to compel him to fly and quit the throne, which the Duke of Orleans proposed to seize. But the king having declared that he would not take flight, the duke and his accomplices resolved to get rid of him by assassination. It was in a church dedicated to St. Louis that the horrible plot was prepared. At daybreak the signal was given. Thirty thousand assassins, intoxicated with wine and debauchery, threw themselves into the palace, calling out, ‘Long live our Orleans King!’ (page 146).
“Bonaparte, having by his crimes reached the summit of power, was proclaimed emperor.” In his narrative of the retreat from Moscow Father Loriquet compares the French to Pharaoh’s Egyptians lost in the snow instead of being drowned in the Red Sea. At Fontainebleau, in 1814, when the allies were approaching Paris, Napoleon, according to the historian in question, was suddenly informed by his generals that he was no longer emperor, and that France had a king. “This information made him shed many tears, and he only seemed to be consoled when the allies ceded to him the little island of Elba with an income of 6,000,000 francs.”
The poet Hégésippe Moreau had but little in common with the Jesuit father whose last resting-place he shares. As a writer he is remembered solely by the volume of poems previously referred to, called “Le Myosotis.” As a man, little is known of him except that he was miserably poor—obliged, during one period of his life, to sleep in the trees of the Champs Élysées and of the Bois de Boulogne. In a touching letter of his, preserved by one of his biographers, he tells his correspondent how, being invited to a fashionable evening party, he found nothing there to eat but a little fruit jelly, when he had hoped to have the opportunity of dining. He was, in fact, in the position of that unfortunate young man in M. Ponsard’s Honneur et Argent who exclaims pathetically: “Je porte des gants blancs, et je n’ai pas dîné!”—“I have white gloves on and I’ve had no dinner!” One terrible incident is related of Hégésippe Moreau. During the cholera year of 1832 he was carried in a state of exhaustion, caused solely by hunger, to the hospital of La Charité, where, in the hope of catching the epidemic and dying of it, he rolled himself up in the sheets of a cholera patient who had but lately expired. Contagion, however, spared him, and wanting nothing but food and rest he was soon restored to health. On leaving the hospital he walked on foot to his native town of Provins, where, such was the unpractical character of his mind, he not only started a journal, but a journal in verse. Diogenes it was called, and his only reason for starting it in the little town of Provins, where it could not possibly find a sufficient number of readers, seems to have been that he had influence and credit at a local printing-office, where he had at one time been employed as proof-reader. Diogenes had doubtless been suggested by the Nemesis of Barthélémy, which, however, was published not in a little provincial town, but at Paris. Only a few numbers of Diogenes appeared; and in his rage at not being appreciated the satirist filled his dying number with the bitterest attacks on leading inhabitants of the town. This led to a duel, and obliged him once more to quit Provins for Paris.
It is related of Hégésippe Moreau that in the revolutionary days of 1830, fighting at the barricades, he wounded a Swiss soldier, and then, taking pity on the man, gave him his own coat, to enable him to get away in disguise.
Let us pass, however, to a writer enjoying far more celebrity than either the graceful poet Hégésippe Moreau or the grotesque historiographer, Father Loriquet. It was probably from his English mother that Sainte-Beuve derived that taste for certain English poets, with Cowper, Wordsworth, and Shelley among them, whom he attempted to imitate in his earliest flights. His mother, having been left a widow, sent him for preliminary study to the College of Boulogne, his native town; afterwards transferring him, for the completion of his general education, to Paris. At length he commenced the study of medicine, urged by his mother, who is said to have distrusted the literary{252} aspirations which her son had already manifested. But after waiting for a year as assistant-physician at the hospital of Saint-Louis, he felt that he had missed his true vocation, and, without completely abandoning medicine, wrote a series of historical, philosophical, and critical articles for the Globe, directed at that time by M. Dubois, formerly one of his professors. Sainte-Beuve was then living in the Rue de Vaugirard, a few doors from the house inhabited by Victor Hugo; and when the latter changed his abode and installed himself in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, accident once more threw Sainte-Beuve within easy distance of the poet. Community of literary taste produced an intimate acquaintance between the neighbours, and Sainte-Beuve took part in the new intellectual movement of which Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas were the originators and chiefs. The New School, breaking from classical traditions, turned back its attention to the sixteenth century, and to a group of writers greatly obscured by the literary lustre of the two centuries which followed. Sainte-Beuve set himself to study Ronsard and Du Bellay; and in due time he had an opportunity of showing that he had not studied them in vain. The Academy having, in 1827, proposed as the subject of its Prize for Eloquence a “Picture of French Poetry in the Sixteenth Century,” Daunou persuaded the critic of the Globe to compete, and placed at the young man’s disposition his own rich library. Sainte-Beuve’s essay did not gain the prize. But it was published by its author, who printed with it an edition of the “Selected Works” of Ronsard; and the work, which the Academy had rejected, took rank ultimately as the first authority on the period of French literature with which it deals.
Whilst throwing himself into romanticism Sainte-Beuve was not blind to the defects of the New School, though he could not himself, as poet, avoid the very faults against which he had warned others. In reference to Victor Hugo’s “Odes and Ballads” he wrote as follows: “M. Hugo’s first inspiration is invariably true and profound; the whole mischief arises from extravagant similes, frequent digressions, and over-refinement of analysis.... There are forced metaphors, moreover, improprieties of language, ellipses in the series of ideas, and prosaic passages in the midst of the most dazzling poetry.” Victor Hugo was naturally not delighted with this criticism. But he encouraged the critic, and persuaded him to publish his “Poésiés de Joseph Delorme,” of which Sainte-Beuve had read him some specimens. Having once taken up with romanticism, Sainte-Beuve went at least as far as his master, and committed precisely those faults which he had censured; for eccentric lines, prosaic phrases, and outrageous metaphors abound in his collection, although these eccentricities, far from injuring the volume, seem to have caused its success. People who liked everything that was odd or audacious read the book, and praised it for faults at which scholars would knit their brows.
The Revolution of 1830 opened a new sphere of activity to Sainte-Beuve. Hitherto he had occupied himself little with politics; but now he plied his pen freely in the Globe as a supporter of those principles of humanitarianism so strongly championed by Pierre Leroux, who had become director of the journal in question. Subsequently he undertook a political campaign in the National with Armand Carrel. In his various writings, both in and out of the newspapers, he showed himself inconstant to any fixed principles. His whole life, in fact, was composed of intellectual changes and variations. These, however, were simply the outcome of a mind curious to fathom all kinds of ideas, to penetrate within them, in order to extract from them their sap or their honey. Approaching the teachers in order to appreciate them as well as their doctrines, he made himself their pupil, sat at their feet, and quitted them as soon as he had completed his analysis. He himself was quite conscious of this tendency, and confessed that even when he entered Victor Hugo’s school of romanticism he only assumed as much of that enthusiasm as might be expected to characterise a devotee. If, however, he was on this, and on other similar occasions, consciously insincere, his fault is largely redeemed by the genuine ardour with which he played the neophyte at each fresh initiation; by the respect which he always entertained for his masters, even after he had changed them; and by the universality of the knowledge which he derived from these studies, pursued, as they were, in a spirit of adventure or of intellectual speculation. He sketches his own character admirably in some advice which he gave to a young man in 1864; nor is it difficult to see that he was consciously proposing himself as an example: “Seek the most noble friendships,” he wrote, “and bring to them the benevolence and sincerity of an open soul, desirous, above all things, of admiring; pour into criticism—emulous sister of your poetry—your ardour, sympathy, and all that is purest in your nature; eulogise, lay your eloquence at the service of new talents, usually so{253} much contested and combated, and do not forsake them until the day when they withdraw themselves from the right path and falsify their promises: after that treat them with reserve. Incessantly vary your studies, cultivate your mind in every direction; do not narrow yourself to one party, one school, or one idea; let it see the dawn break on every horizon; maintain your independence and your dignity; lend yourself for a time, if necessary, but do not give yourself away. Remain judicious and clear-sighted even in your weaker moments; and even if you do not say the whole truth, never utter what is false. Never allow fatigue to lay a hold upon you; never feel that you have attained your goal. At the age when others are reposing or relaxing themselves, redouble your courage and ardour; recommence like a novice, run your career a second time, renew yourself.” Such was precisely the course which Sainte-Beuve himself followed. When he wrote the above lines he was reviewing his own life.
THE MONTPARNASSE STATION.
THE MONTPARNASSE STATION.
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Votary of romanticism as he had been, Sainte-Beuve adopted on one occasion a course which many would have considered the reverse of romantic. Challenged to a duel by M. Lecaze for words which he had uttered in the Senate, he replied that he would fight his adversary with no other weapon than that with which they were both familiar—the pen.
The death of Sainte-Beuve was preceded by cruel bodily tortures, and, as he saw his end approaching, he took precautions to keep the priests away from his bedside, and to divest his interment of all solemnity. By his testamentary wishes none of the associations to which he belonged, neither the Academy nor the Senate, was to be represented at his funeral; and no oration was to be pronounced over his tomb. “Finally,” he added, “I wish to be carried straight from my home to the cemetery of Montparnasse, and to be placed in the vault where my mother lies, without passing through the church, which I could not do without violating my sentiments.” His dying directions were obeyed to the letter.{254}
Le “Sport”—Longchamps—Versailles Races—Fontainebleau—The Seine—Swimming Baths—The Art of Book-collecting.
THE Seine at Paris is the scene not of much boating, but of a good deal of swimming. Baths on the Thames have never been successful: they abound on the Seine, and the Parisians, whatever they may be as boatmen—“canotiers,” to use their own word—excel as swimmers.
The French are not naturally a sporting nation. In the first place they have found it necessary to borrow our English word for their pastimes; and their spelling of sportsman as “sportman” is somewhat indicative of their generally unsuccessful imitation of English sports.
The French are themselves conscious of the failure of this imitation. “Sport,” says a French writer, “is an English word which signifies literally relaxation, distraction, and which the English employ, by extension, to designate the pleasures to which powerful aristocrats or opulent citizens abandon themselves as a relaxation from the serious labours of political life or the absorbing occupations of commerce. In “sport” they include large hunts and shooting expeditions such as can be practised on vast estates, together with betting, which involves millions of pounds sterling, riding and driving, fencing, boxing, swimming, skating; everything which calls into play the forces and energy of the body, to the too frequent neglect of mental activity.
“We have adopted the word and attempted the thing. But independently of the fact that our French society lacks some of the fundamental conditions which, in this respect, English society possesses, we have done what imitators generally do: we have diminished, sometimes even travestied the model. Large aristocratic hunts have become impossible on our democratic and parcelled-out soil. Well-bred horses cost a great deal of money, and the instability of fortunes is an obstacle to fine stables. The most reckless of our millionaires only hazard a few thousand francs in the way of bets, and it is now generally understood that when a “louis” is spoken of on the turf, the ambitious word must be translated into the more modest expression, “twenty sous.” ... Even fencing is abandoned to fiction and the stage. Duellists who are at all serious must go beyond the frontier to find a ground which will place combatants and seconds beyond the reach of the French law. The police-court of the nineteenth century is perhaps more dreaded than was the scaffold of Richelieu.”
Parisian summers, this same writer goes on to observe, are on the whole too cold for bathing, and Parisian winters too hot for skating.
Unquestionably horse-racing has taken a certain hold on the French, though it is true that the crowds who frequent the most popular races do not confine their attention, or their conversation, to the horses or the stakes, but regard the event principally as a fête.
It is at the hippodrome of the Bois de Boulogne (or Longchamps, as it is also called) that the most largely attended races occur. A minimum charge of a franc is made for admission, to stand or walk about outside the ropes which mark off the course. For the reserved places higher prices are charged: five francs to the pavilions, twenty francs to the weighing enclosure, fifteen francs for a one-horse carriage, twenty francs for a carriage with more than one horse, and so on. The races of La Marche are in the form of steeple-chases. The Château de La Marche stands in a park at a short distance from Ville d’Avray and Saint-Cloud; and it is in the park that the races take place.
The races of the Bois de Vincennes are less fashionable than those of Longchamps and of La Marche, perhaps because the approach to Vincennes through crowded streets is less attractive than the drive through the Champs Élysées and the Bois de Boulogne.
The races of Chantilly, founded in 1834 under the patronage of the Dukes of Orleans and of Nemours, are run twice a year on the spacious meadows which extend right and left of the magnificent stables of the château of the Condés. The first races are fixed for the second fortnight of May. The later series, those of the autumn meeting, are held in September and October. The last race of the season is for the grand prize of the Jockey Club. The racecourse of Chantilly describes{255} an ellipsis measuring some 2,000 metres. Several stands have been erected opposite the stables: prices of admission to the various places as at Paris. At Chantilly are the principal training establishments.
The Versailles races are run on the plain of Satory, where Napoleon III. held some of his most brilliant reviews. They take place in May and June.
At Fontainebleau the races are run on a course cut through the part of the forest known as the Valley of the Solle. From various woody heights the spectator, well protected from the sun, can obtain an excellent view of the running. Shooting is practised at a club in the little town of Argenteuil, close to Paris, where the society of Parisian Riflemen is established. Candidates duly proposed and seconded are put up for election, and, if admitted, pay ten francs entrance money and an annual subscription of fifty francs. The organ of the society is the well-known sporting paper, the Journal des Chasseurs.
The canotiers and canotières of the Seine are counted by thousands. They all seem to row more for amusement than for exercise and pace. The principal ports of the Parisian navy are Charenton above bridge, and Asnières below. Charenton may be reached by the Lyons Railway: the charming Asnières (famous for its balls) by the Saint-Germain and Versailles line. The water-side restaurants are organised in view of the canotiers, and appeal specially to this floating population.
If the Seine is remarkable for its swimming baths and, at some little distance on each side of Paris, for its innumerable boats with rowers and rowed in gay fantastic costumes, one bank of the Seine, the left, is celebrated for its stalls of second-hand books. It was at a curiosity shop on one of the quays of the left bank that Balzac’s “Peau de Chagrin” or “Chagreen Skin” was offered for sale. It was at a neighbouring bookstall that the poor student in the “Vie de Bohème” sold his Greek books for little more than the price of waste paper in order to buy medicine for the dying mistress of his friend. It is not at the bookstalls of the Quai d’Orsay that one would look for the rarest editions, though rare editions may here be found. There are connoisseurs who seem to spend every day and all day long at the bookstalls of the quay; resembling the celebrated English bibliophile, Lord Spencer, who remained an entire year at Rome, visiting neither St. Peter’s, nor the Coliseum, nor the Vatican, but only the old bookshops. When he had once found the Martial of Sweynheym and Pannartz dated 1473 he went straight back to London. Such a passion looks like insanity; but it is at least a respectable, innocent kind of madness. To have a genuine passion for books is to care neither for cards, nor for good living, nor for useless luxury, nor for racehorses, nor for political intrigues, nor for ruinous love affairs. The bibliophile is never troubled by the storms of political life. Pixéricourt, the author of thirty amusing or terrible novels, would be forgotten in France but for the rare editions that he collected in his library, and which after his death did more for his reputation, at the sale of his books, than all his works of fiction had done. Few writers of the day grudged him his talent or his success; but many envied him his “Imitation of Jesus Christ,” given to the monk Laurence “by his very humble servant, Pierre Corneille.” His Elzevirs and Baskervilles, for which Holland and China had furnished their rarest paper, England and France their best engravers, Russia and Morocco their incomparable leather, filled amateurs with enthusiasm. A great French book-collector, Grolier, had adopted this motto, “For myself and my friends.” Charles Nodier wrote for Pixéricourt an epigraph to be inscribed inside his books which, if somewhat selfish, was at least true: