Usurped celebrity—M. Lemercier and his works—Racan's white hare-Le Fiesque by M. Ancelot—The Romantic artists—Scheffer—Delacroix —Sigalon—Schnetz—Coigniet—Boulanger—GÉricault—La MÉduse in the artist's studio—Lord Byron's funeral obsequies in England—Sheridan's body claimed for debt
While Lord Byron's body was being carried from Missolonghi to England, the literary movement in France was steadily progressing. M. LiadiÈre and M. Lemercier each did their best in grappling with Shakespeare and Rowe, each produced Jane Shore; M. LiadiÈre at the OdÉon on 2 April, and M. Lemercier at the ThÉÂtre-FranÇais on the 1st. M. LiadiÈre's production just managed to pay its way, while M. Lemercier's was a failure, in spite of Talma, who played two parts in it—those of Gloucester and a beggar. Talma was wonderful in this play, poor though it was. In it he attempted what was in those days looked upon as a very extraordinary thing. He, a man of fine presence, graceful in bearing, full of poetry, lofty in mind and eloquent, played the part of the hunchbacked cripple Richard. The way he managed to make his right shoulder look higher than his left and his arm appear paralysed was a miracle of skill, and the denunciatory scene was a miracle of talent. But nothing could save such a wretched piece. It is now high time some undeserved reputations, supported by fine coteries and associations of intrigue and shuffling, should be shown in their true light.
For instance, there is the author of Agamemnon and of Pinto,—he did not deserve a quarter of the reputation he received. Agamemnon is a dull, lifeless play, devoid of poetic feeling, sense, rhythm and style; what is it compared with the Orestes of Æschylus? Pinto is a drama of the school of Beaumarchais, the worst type of dramatic school I know; the play would have died a natural death at the end of eight or ten representations if the Imperial Censor had not been so stupid as to attempt to stifle it. The persecution accorded to Pinto gave it a species of celebrity, but, let it be played nowadays and one would soon see the worthlessness of the imitation of Æschylus and Seneca, the so-called original creation. And yet these two plays were the author's principal works.
Try, too, to read a number of other tragedies and dramas and poems that have fallen, buried beneath the cat-calls, laughter and hootings of the public! Try to read MÉlÉagre or Lovelace or le LÉvite d'ÉphraÏm; then, when you have thrown these first three works of the same author aside, and feel sufficiently recovered and can breathe freely once more, take up the task again and try to read Ophis, Plaute or la ComÉdie latine, Baudouin, Christophe Colomb, Charlemagne, Saint Louis, la DÉmence de Charles VI., FrÉdegonde and Brunehaut, which Mademoiselle Rachel for some unknown purpose drew from the tomb, and galvanised three or four times without being able to bring back to life. Then, what else? Stay...we should be lost on the battlefield, among the productions that did not even linger wounded, but fell stark dead—Camille and le Masque de poix, and Cahin-Caha and la Panhypocrisiade: folly succeeding mediocrity; sheer nonsense and balderdash.
And yet, although wounded by these rebuffs and completely maimed by his falls, M. Lemercier sat quietly on in his arm-chair in the Palais Mazarin—as did his colleagues, M. Droz, M. Briffaut, and M. Lebrun, one trying to make people forget that he had written a little volume on Bonheur, another that he had perpetrated a tragedy called Minus II., and the third, that he had missed fire in his le Cid d'Andalousie and mangled Schiller's Maria Stuart—he need not have troubled to say anything, the world would have let him sleep as quietly in his tomb as the spectators had fain have slept at the performance of his pieces, if hissing had never been invented. But nothing of the kind happened! When M. Lemercier perceived the literary movement of 1829 he cried out at the sacrilege, want of good taste and scandal of the thing; he signed petitions to the king to have the representation of Henri III. and of Marion Delorme stopped; he barred the entrance to the Academy when Lamartine and Victor Hugo endeavoured to gain an entrance; he set the Archbishop of Paris against the one and produced a M. Flourens to checkmate the other; he recovered the use of his legs sufficiently to run about collecting votes against them, and the use of his right hand to turn the lock against them. Thank Heaven I had very little to do with this wicked little cur, neither have I had any personal quarrel with him, as I have never had any dealings with the Academy; but since someone must rise up and speak for justice I claim the privilege of being the first to set the example.
When M. Flourens was nominated in place of Hugo, I was passing through the green-room of the ThÉÂtre-FranÇais. I forget what the new play was, but M. Lemercier was holding forth there against the author of Notre-Dame de Paris and of Marion Delorme and the Orientales, just as he had opposed him all day long, silently, in the Academy. I listened to his diatribe for a few minutes, then, shaking my head, I said to him—
"Monsieur Lemercier, you have refused your vote to Victor Hugo; but there is one thing you will some day be compelled to yield him, and that is your own place. Take care lest, instead of the ill-natured things you are saying against him here, he be not obliged to say a kind word for you some day to the Academy."
And it happened just as I had predicted. It was no easy matter to praise Lemercier, but Hugo accomplished the matter by describing the period instead of speaking of the man, by referring to the emperor rather than to the poet.
"Have you read my speech?" Hugo asked me the day after he had made it.
"Yes."
"Well, what do you think of it?"
"I think you read as though you had just succeeded Bonaparte as a member of the Institute, instead of M. Lemercier as a member of the Academy."
"The deuce! I would much rather have seen you there than myself. How would you have got out of it?"
"As Racan did, by saying my big white rabbit had eaten my speech."
Racan, it will be remembered, once presented himself before the Academy with the scraps of a speech he had meant to read.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I had prepared a splendid speech, which could not fail to have won your suffrages; but my big white rabbit gobbled it up this morning.... I have brought you the remains, and you must try to make the best you can of them!"
"Ah! indeed," replied Hugo; "I could have done that, but it never occurred to me."
M. LiadiÈre's Jane Shore did for Mademoiselle Georges what M. Lemercier's Jane Shore had done for Talma. It was, besides, the first attempt Mademoiselle Georges had made in Shakespearean drama: she led up to it in Christine and in LucrÈce Borgia.
It was the age of limitations; no one was strong enough to be original. They had to look for fresh things across the frontier; they sought admission to the theatres on the shoulders of Rowe or Schiller: if they were successful, they quietly put the German or English author outside; if they came a cropper, they fell on him, and it broke the shock of their fall.
After M. LiadiÈre's production of Jane Shore, the OdÉon presented M. Ancelot's Fiesque. But M. Ancelot was a purist: he never for one moment supposed that Schiller's Fiesque could be presented complete as in the German play; therefore he entirely and discreetly suppressed the character of the Moor.
Can you imagine Fiesque shorn of the Moor! without the Moor! the main peg on which the drama is hung! Without the Moor! the character for which Schiller constructed his play! When shall we have a law which, whilst permitting translation, will forbid mutilation? The Italians have no law affecting translators; but they have a proverb as short as it is expressive, as concise as it is true, "Traduttore, traditore."
Meanwhile, the Romantic school, although still shy in theatrical and literary circles, was boldly invading other branches of art.
M. Thiers, in history, had published his RÉvolution franÇaise, and Botta his Histoire d'Italie; M. de Barante was producing his excellent Chronique des ducs de Bourgogne, a work full of knowledge and brilliancy, which justly, this time, though accidentally, opened the Academy doors to its author. But the struggle was more noticeable in painting. David dead and Girodet just dead, their successors were such men as Scheffer, Delacroix, Sigalon, Schnetz, Coigniet, Boulanger and GÉricault. The works of this galaxy of bold young artists adorned the walls of the Salon of 1824. Scheffer hung his Mort de Gaston de Foix. It was one of his first pictures, and rather gaudy in colouring, but the face of the warrior kneeling at the head of Gaston stood out most remarkably; Scheffer was the painter-poet, the best translator of Goethe I know; he re-created a whole world of German characters, from Mignon to the King of Thule, from Faust to Marguerite.
It was Scheffer who transferred to canvas Dante's great and exquisite story of Francesca da Rimini, a conception which all dramatic poets have failed to reproduce; Scheffer found time to join in every conspiracy going, in Dermoncourt's, Caron's and la Fayette's, and yet managed to become one of the finest painters France has ever produced.
Then there was Delacroix, whose Massacre de Scio roused much discussion among all schools of painters. Delacroix was doomed to be pursued by fanatical ignoramuses and determined vilifiers, just as was Hugo in literature; he had already become known though his Dante traversant le Styx; and all his life he maintained the privilege—rare among artists—of being able to arouse a storm of hatred and of admiration upon the production of each fresh work. Delacroix is an intellectual man, full of knowledge as well as imagination, but he has one idiosyncrasy, he will persist in trying to become the colleague of M. Picot and of M. Abel de Pujol, who, let us hope, will happily have none of him.
Next comes Sigalon, with his rough, passionate Southern nature. His picture, Locuste faisant sur un esclave l'essai de ses poisons, had been recommended to the notice of M. Laffitte, and this banker patron of art bought it, probably before he had seen it; when it was hung in his salon, it terrified the bank clientÈle and all the jobbers of the money market. Everyone asked the future minister why he had bought such a horrible picture, rather than one of Madame Haudebourg-Lescaut's or Mademoiselle d'Hervilly's little gems. M. Laffitte was plagued to such an extent that he sent for Sigalon and begged him to take back his Locuste, which threatened to send the great ladies of the commercial world into hysterics, imploring him to paint him something else in its place.
Sigalon took back his Locuste, but I do not know what he gave in exchange. Alas! Sigalon was among the number of those destined to premature death. He was sent to Rome to copy Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, and he had but just time to bequeath that great piece of work to France, and to stretch out his arms towards his country, before he died.
Schnetz had three pictures in the Salon of 1824—two great canvases which might have been painted by anybody just as well as by himself, and one of those genre paintings in which he is inimitable. This genre painting was called un Sixte-Quint enfant, the subject being a gipsy woman predicting he would become pope. The reader will guess with what fidelity Schnetz succeeded in depicting in his canvas, six foot high by four feet wide, an old fortune-teller, a shepherd lad and a young Roman girl: the Sixte-Quint was a masterpiece.
Coigniet's le Massacre des Innocents was hung opposite the door, and riveted attention directly people entered. It showed a woman crouching down, disordered in appearance by a long journey, terror in her looks and very pale, hiding herself, or rather hiding her child, in the corner of a ruined wall, whilst the massacre was proceeding in the distance. It was a fine piece of work, every detail of which, well thought out, well executed, well painted, I can still recall, after twenty-five years.
Boulanger had taken the subject of his painting from the works of the famous poet who had just died. Mazeppa, captured, is being bound to a wild horse, which is going to bear him away, heart-broken, fainting and dying, to those new lands where a kingdom awaited him on his awaking. The contortions of the strong young limbs as they struggled, stiffening, against the villains who were lashing him to the back of the savage beast, offered a marvellous contrast, not only in the technical presentation of the flesh, which was quite excellent, but even more so in the physical and moral suffering of Mazeppa as compared with the callous strength of his executioners.
Finally, there was GÉricault, who, although he was not represented in that year's Salon, was talked about almost as much as those whose pictures hung on its walls. And this was because the new school, wanting a leader, felt that GÉricault was the man, even although so far he had only painted a few studies. He had just finished le Hussard and le Cuirassier,—which the MusÉe lately bought back, on the accession of King Louis-Philippe,—and he was finishing his MÉduse. Poor GÉricault! he too was to die, and to die miserably, after he had done his MÉduse. I saw him a week before his death. The reader wonders how I became acquainted with GÉricault? In the same way that I became acquainted with BÉranger and Manuel. At my weekly dinners at M. Arnault's house, I often met Colonel Bro, a brave, excellent soldier, to whom every thought of the army was dear, and who had been friendly to me solely because I was the son of a general who served in the Revolution. Of course Bro was opposed to the Bourbon Government. He had a house in the rue des Martyrs, No. 23, and in that house there lodged various people according to their varying fortunes—Manuel the deputy who had been expelled from the Chamber, BÉranger the poet and GÉricault. One day when we had been speaking of GÉricault, who was dying, Bro said to me—
"Come and see his picture la MÉduse, and the painter himself, before he dies, so that you can at least say you have seen one of the greatest painters who ever lived."
I took care not to refuse, as will readily be believed, and the meeting was arranged for the following day. You ask what GÉricault died of? Listen, and observe how, at every turn, fate seemed to put a cross against his name. He possessed some fortune, an income of about twelve thousand livres; he loved horses and painted them admirably. One day, as he was mounting a horse, he noticed that the buckle of his breeches belt had come off: he tied the two ends of the strap together and set off at a gallop. His horse threw him, and the knot of the strap bruised two vertebrae of the spinal cord as he fell. He was under treatment at the time for a disease which settled in this place; the wound never healed, and GÉricault, the hope of a whole century, died of one of the longest and most painful diseases there is—decay of the spine. When we called upon him, he was busy drawing his left hand with his right.
"What on earth are you after, GÉricault?" asked the colonel.
"You see, my dear fellow," said the dying man, "I am turning myself to account. My right hand will never find a better anatomical study than my left hand can offer it, and the egoist is taking advantage of the fact."
And, indeed, so thin was GÉricault that one could see the bones and the muscles of his hand through the skin, as they are seen in plaster casts used for models by art students.
"My dear friend," asked Bro, "how did you bear your operation yesterday?"
"Very well ... it was a very curious experience. Just imagine, those butchers were cutting me about for ten minutes."
"You must have suffered horribly."
"Not very much.... I thought of other things."
"What did you think about?"
"A picture."
"How was that?"
"It was very simple. I had the head of my bed turned to the glass, so that, while the doctors were working at my back, I could see what they were doing when I raised myself on my elbows. Ah! if I could but recover, I swear I would make a noble sequel to AndrÉ VÉsale's study in anatomy! Only, my anatomical study would be taken from a living man."
This was the very scene which, two years later, Talma rehearsed before Adolphe and me, when he was in his bath.
Bro asked permission of the sick man for me to go upstairs and see his MÉduse.
"Do what you like," said GÉricault; "you are in your own house." And he went on drawing his hand.
I stood a long time before the marvellous picture, although I was at that time ignorant about art and unable to estimate it at its true worth. As I left the studio, I stepped upon an overturned canvas. I picked it up, looked at the right side of it and saw a wonderful head of a fallen angel: I gave it to Bro.
"See," I said, "what I have found on the floor."
Bro went back to the sick man's room.
"Why, my dear fellow, you are mad, to leave such things as these lying about on the floor."
"Do you know whose head that is?" GÉricault asked laughingly.
"No."
"Well, my good friend, it is the head of your porter's son. He came into my studio the other day, and I was so struck with the possibilities of his face that I asked him to sit for me, and in ten minutes I had done that study from it. Would you like to have it? Take it."
"But if it is a study, you did it for an object."
"Yes, for the object of study itself. It will perhaps come in useful to you some day."
"Some day, my dear Bro, is a far cry, and in the meantime much water will have flowed under the bridges and many dead bodies will have been taken through the gates of the cemetery Montmartre."
"Well! well!" said Bro.
"Take it, my friend, and keep it," GÉricault replied; "if I ever want it, I shall be able to find it at your house."
Then he bowed us adieu, and we left him; Bro bringing away his angel's head. A week later, GÉricault died, and his intimate friend and executor, Dreux-d'Orcy, had the greatest difficulty in getting the authorities of the Beaux-Arts to purchase la MÉduse for six thousand francs—a canvas which is now considered one of the most valuable possessions of the MusÉe. Yet the Government wanted it merely for the purpose of cutting out five or six of the heads as studies for its pupils to copy. Happily, De Dreux-d'Orcy stopped this sacrilege before it got beyond its inception.
But I see I have forgotten to speak of Horace Vernet, of M. Ingres and of Delaroche, each of whom deserves special mention. They shall receive notice presently, but first one word more about Lord Byron.
On 5 July, the body of the noble lord reached London from Missolonghi. It lay in a perforated shell steeped in a cask of spirits of wine. When the body was taken ashore from the Florida, in which it had been conveyed, the captain was going to throw this liquid overboard; but now that Lord Byron was dead, even his own countrymen became his worshippers, and these admirers begged the captain for the spirits of wine in which Lord Byron's body had been preserved, offering a louis a pint for it. The captain accepted the offer, and the sum thus received was at the same rate per pint as, so it was said, the poet had received per line. Two days after the arrival of the body, a post-mortem examination was made, and the doctors, who really ought to be able to find out a few things, discovered that Lord Byron had died because he had refused to be bled. His body was laid in state, but only those who had special tickets given them by his executor were admitted; yet, in spite of this precaution, the crowd was so great it was necessary to call in the aid of an armed force to keep order. The spirits of wine had preserved the flesh well enough for the poet to be still recognisable: his hands, especially, had kept almost life-like in their beauty—those hands of which the eccentric nobleman had taken such good care that, even when swimming, he had worn gloves! His beautiful hair, of which he had been very proud, had become nearly grey, although he was but thirty-seven. Each white hair in the poet's head could tell a tale of sorrow. Such had been the public excitement over Byron, that the question at once arose of burying him in Westminster Abbey; but his friends were afraid the authorities might refuse the request, and the family declared that his body should be buried in the vault at Newstead Abbey, where his ancestors lay. Even his death raised the clamour of tongues that pursued him through life. On the 12th, an immense crowd collected from break of day along the route the cortÈge was to take. Colonel Leigh, Byron's brother-in-law, was chief mourner; and in the six coaches that followed were the most famous Opposition Members of Parliament—Hobhouse, Douglas Kinnaird, Sir Francis Burdett, and O'Meara, surgeon to the emperor. Then, in their own private carriages, followed the Duke of Sussex, brother of the king, the Marquis of Lansdowne, Earl Grey, Lord Holland, etc. Two Greek deputies closed the procession. When it reached Hampstead Road, the pace was quickened; it was planned to spend the night at Welwyn, and to set out early the next day, Tuesday, to reach Higham-Ferrers that evening; on Wednesday it was to reach Oakham; on Thursday, Nottingham; and Newstead Abbey on Friday. The arrangement was punctually carried out, and on Friday, 17 August, the body was laid in the burying-place of his ancestors. Byron, who had been exiled by his wife, hunted down by his own family and repulsed by his contemporaries, had at last earned the right to return triumphantly to his country and to his home. He was dead! And yet it might have happened to him as it happened to Sheridan's dead body; poor Sheridan, who drank so much rum, brandy and absinthe that Lord Byron once said to him during an orgie—
"Sheridan! Sheridan! you drink enough alcohol to set fire to the very flannel vest you wear next your skin."
And the prophecy was fulfilled: Sheridan drank so much that his flannel vest was scorched. Sheridan was dead; and he left both his pockets and his bottles empty. This did not prevent the highest people in the land from doing him honour, as he lay dead in his home, which had been stript bare of everything by his creditors. Those friends who had, perhaps, refused to lend him ten guineas the day before, gave him a royal burial. The coffin was just going to be borne to the hearse, when a gentleman clad in deep mourning from head to foot, and apparently overcome with grief, came into the room in which were assembled the most aristocratic gentlemen of the three kingdoms, and, advancing to the coffin, begged, as a particular favour, to be allowed to look for the last time on the features of his unfortunate friend. He was refused at first, but his entreaties were so vehement, his voice was so broken, he was so shaken with sobs, that they did not like to refuse such grief a hearing. The top of the coffin was unscrewed and the body of Sheridan uncovered. Then the expression on the face of the gentleman in mourning changed completely, and he drew out of his pocket an order for the seizure of the body and took possession of it. He was a bailiff. Mr. Canning and Lord Lydmouth took the man outside and settled the amount he claimed, namely, the sum of £480.
CHAPTER V
My mother comes to live with me—A Duc de Chartres born to me—Chateaubriand and M. de VillÈle—Epistolary brevity—Re-establishment of the Censorship—A King of France should never be ill—Bulletins of the health of Louis XVIII.—His last moments and death—Ode by Victor Hugo—M. Torbet and Napoleon's tomb—La Fayette's voyage to America—The ovations showered upon him
My mother had been quite as lonely without me as I had been without her, so, in response to my letter, she shut up the tobacco-shop, sold a portion of our shabby furniture, and wrote telling me she was coming to Paris, bringing with her her bedstead, a chest of drawers, a table, two arm-chairs, four chairs and a hundred louis in hard cash. A hundred louis! Why, it was exactly double my year's income and we should now have 2400 francs a year for the next two years, so for that time we should feel quite safe. It was all the more important to be settled since, on 29 July 1824, whilst the Duc de Montpensier came into the world at the Palais-Royal, a Duc de Chartres was born to me at No. 1 place des Italiens. This, together with the smallness of my little yellow chamber, where there was no room for my mother, was one of the reasons that obliged me to look out for fresh lodgings. To find a new home was a serious consideration; lodgings were very dear close to the Palais-Royal, and if I were too far away from the Palais-Royal my four journeys a day, to and fro, meant a serious wear and tear in shoe-leather. Any expense comes heavy on a man who only earns four francs five sous per day.
I had, indeed, two or three plays in hand with de Leuven, but I was compelled to admit to myself that probably de Leuven, who had not managed to succeed with SouliÉ—whom we acknowledged to be the best of us all—would not have more chance with me. His Bon Vieillard had been declined at the Gymnase; his Pauvre Fille had been rejected by the Vaudeville, and his ChÂteau de Kenilworth had not even been read—Mademoiselle LÉvÊque had politely sent word that she had not "time at the moment" to pay attention to a new part, and the Porte-Saint-Martin had received a melodrama upon the same subject.
So I had to find a lodging, as I have said, that should not be too far away and yet that was not too high a rent. I set to work, and discovered rooms at No. 53 Faubourg St. Denis, in a house adjoining the Lion d'Argent. We had two rooms on the second floor looking on the street, one serving for store-room, dining-room and kitchen. We soon found out that for these apartments we paid a great deal too much—they were 350 francs. Finally everything was settled; my mother sent her goods on by carrier, and arrived at the same time they did. We were delighted to be together again once more; my mother, however, was a trifle uneasy and unable to share and believe in all my hopes and plans; for she could look back upon a long and sad life, wherein she had experienced all kinds of disappointments and sorrows. I consoled her to the best of my power, and, in order to make the first four or five days of her life in Paris pleasant, I used all the influence I had with M. Oudard, M. Arnault and Adolphe de Leuven to get her tickets for the theatre. In a week's time we were settled in our little nest, and as accustomed to our new life as though we had never known any other. On the same landing with us, but on the opposite side, lodged a worthy fellow of forty years of age, named DesprÉs, who was employed in a ministerial department. He was one of the most regular attenders at the Caveau; he composed songs after the style of Brazier and Armand GouffÉ; and he had had one or two pieces played at second-rate theatres. He was dying of consumption. When, after the payment of two terms, we found our lodgings were dearer than we could afford, he said to us—
"Wait until after my death, which will not be long now; then you can take my rooms, which are very convenient, and only two hundred and thirty francs."
And, as a matter of fact, he died six weeks after this—died in that quiet, gentle, calm, philosophical mood that I have noticed in the case of nearly all who were born in the eighteenth century. And, as he had bidden us, we took his rooms when they were vacant, and found ourselves accommodated according to our means.
In the meantime, political changes were taking place. M. de VillÈle (whom my friend MÉry was to make so celebrated and who, in his turn, also returned the compliment) was sharing political power with M. de Chateaubriand; and for two years they presented the unusual spectacle of an alliance between a financier and a poet. It is easy to believe that such a connection was not likely to last long, and the two ministers quarrelled over two proposed laws. M. de Chateaubriand thought to cement the monarchy by the Act of septennial duration, M. de VillÈle thought to enrich the State by an Act concerning the conversion of consols (rentes). The law concerning the conversion of consols was rejected by the Chamber of Peers by a majority of 128 votes against 94. It was noticed that M. de Chateaubriand, who seemed opposed to the Act, did not get up to defend it at the Tribune. It was even said that he voted against it. Such opposition as this, directed against the president of the Council, was punished with the callous bluntness of feeling peculiar to men of money.
When M. de Chateaubriand went to mass on Whitsunday, he received information that a very urgent despatch awaited him at the ministry. He immediately went there, and found a letter from the president of the Council in the following terms:—
"M. LE VICOMTE,—I am obeying the King's command in handing you the enclosed mandate."
The mandate enclosed was a dismissal. Ten minutes later, M. de VillÈle, in his turn, had received M. de Chateaubriand's reply. The letter of the Minister for Foreign Affairs was just as laconic as the letter received from the Minister of Finance:—
"M. LE COMTE,—I have left the Foreign Office; the department is at your disposal."
There were exactly fifteen words in each letter: it was the fault of the words themselves, and not of M. de Chateaubriand, that the answer[1] contained four letters more.
This dismissal was a very bitter pill for the author of le GÉnie du Christianisme, and it was in connection with this event that he gave utterance to the words which we believe we have already quoted:—
"I hadn't even stolen a watch from the king's mantelpiece!" he had said on leaving the Foreign Office.
The order had been drawn up by M. de Renneville,—to whom we shall refer in due course,—the secretary described by MÉry and de BarthÉlemy as being sewed to M. de VillÈle's coat-tails.
"M. de Renneville," says Chateaubriand in his MÉmoires, "is still so good as to appear embarrassed in my presence! And, good God, who is this M. de Renneville, that I should ever think of him? I meet him often enough, ... does he happen to know that I am aware that the order striking my name off the list of ministers was in his handwriting?"
There were actually men, under the Empire, who were cowardly enough to cut off their first fingers to prevent their being made soldiers. It is a pity some men are not brave enough to cut off the whole hand before they write certain things.
But at the time when M. de Chateaubriand was being ejected from the ministry, Providence was signing an order, in terms I almost as brusque, for Louis XVIII. to quit this life. The king was ill at the time of the Feast of St. Louis, so ill that he was I advised not to entertain on account of the fatigue it would I entail on him; but, with his usual sententiousness, the king answered, "A King of France may die, but he ought never to be ill."
As though Louis XVIII. wished to leave the path easy for his successor, with regard to the rejection of the appeal of the public ministry in the affair of the Aristarque, he revived the law of 31 March 1820 and 26 July 1821—that is to say, he re-established the Censorship. It is an odd coincidence that, when this happens, kings are generally either about to fall or to die. The re-establishment of the Censorship produced a terrible commotion; to do justice to the literary men of that time, none of them dare accept or publicly exercise the function of Censor; a secret commission had to be organised and placed under the presidency of the conseiller d'État directeur general of the police. M. de Chateaubriand then threw himself openly into the Opposition against the measure, and published his Lettres sur la Censure. In a few days, both the Liberal Oppositionist and the Royalist papers offered nothing but blank columns to their subscribers.
Two days after Louis XVIII. had said that a King of France might die but he ought never to be ill—that is to say, on 27 and 28 August, during his last two walks at Choisy, he perceived that he must seriously face the question of death. But he continued to give audiences, to preside in the Council and to direct the work of the ministers with a courage one cannot help but admire, when one remembers that he was suffering from mortification of the legs, the cellular tissue, muscles and even bones of which were decayed; the right foot entirely and the lower part of the leg as high as the calf had become mortified, the bones of it were quite soft, and four toes had rotted away. It was not until after a consultation of doctors held the night of 12 September, that it was decided that the condition of the King of France could no longer be concealed from his subjects. Up to that time Louis XVIII. had been faithful to the principles enunciated by him, and had refused to admit that he was ill. "You do not know what it means to tell a people its king is ill. It means they must close the Stock Exchange and places of amusement; my sufferings will be protracted, and I do not want public interests to suffer for such a length of time."
On the morning of 13 September two bulletins appeared at the same time in the Moniteur, signed by the doctors and by the First Gentleman of the Chamber.
They announced the illness of the king, and made it very evident that his disease was incurable. At the end of the second bulletin came the command which Louis XVIII. had greatly dreaded, ordering the Bourse and theatres to be closed. These were the first bulletins France had read for half a century—that is to say, since the death of Louis XV.—and they were to be the last they were to read.
First Bulletin of the King's health
"THE TUILERIES, 12 September, 6 a.m.
"The King's chronic and long-seated infirmities have become sensibly worse for some time past, his health has been very considerably impaired and his condition necessitates more frequent consultations.
"His Majesty's constitution and the care he has taken of himself had caused hope to be felt for some time that he might be restored to his usual state of health; but the fact cannot now be disguised that his strength has declined considerably and that the hopes entertained are less likely to be realised.
(Signed) PORTAL, ALIBERT, MONTAIGU, DISTEL,
DUPUYTREU, THÉVENOT
First Gentleman of the King's Chamber
COMTE DE DAMAS"
Second Bulletin
"9 p.m.
"The fever has increased during the day. The lower limbs have become extremely cold: weakness and lethargy have also increased, and the pulse has been very weak and irregular.
(Signed) PORTAL, ALIBERT, MONTAIGU, DISTEL,
DUPUYTREU, THÉVENOT
First Gentleman of the King's Chamber
COMTE DE DAMAS"
"In consideration of the King's state of health, all theatres and places of public amusement, as well as the Bourse, will be closed until further orders, and public prayers will be offered in every parish."
On the 16th, at four o'clock in the morning, Louis XVIII. breathed his last breath. He had blessed the two royal children of France the previous, evening. Then, turning to his brother, the Comte d'Artois, who was about to change his title for that of Charles X., and pointing to the Duc de Bordeaux, he said, "Brother, look well after the crown for that child."
The dying king's fears for his nephew's future were almost prophetic. He had rallied all his remaining strength to utter these last words. His breathing soon became husky and his pulse intermittent, and a crisis was reached during which the king sank into an alarmingly quiet state. At two in the morning, the pulse hardly beat and his voice had completely failed him, although he signified, with his eyes, that he understood, and could still hear, the exhortations of his confessor. Finally, at four o'clock in the morning, when the last sign of life ceased and the body became still for ever, M. Alibert drew one of the king's hands outside the bed-covering and said, "The king is dead." At the words, the Comte d'Artois, who had not left his brother's side for two days, knelt down by the side of the bed and kissed his hand. Madame la Duchesse d'AngoulÊme and Mademoiselle followed his example; then both flung themselves in the arms of the Comte d'Artois and remained there for some time, weeping bitterly.
As the new king left the death-chamber to return to his apartments, a herald-at-arms exclaimed three times—
"The king is dead, gentlemen! Long live the king!"
And from that moment Charles X. was King of France. On 23 September we watched out of our windows the funeral procession of the last king that was to be taken to Saint-Denis.
Chateaubriand wrote a poem, le Roi est mort! vive le roi! about the death of the king, and it was one of the poorest productions that ever came from his pen.
The same occasion inspired Victor Hugo to publish his les FunÉrailles de Louis XVIII., and it was one of his finest odes. I need not ask the forbearance of my readers if I quote a few stanzas:—
Un autre avait dit: 'De ma race
Ce grand tombeau sera le port;
Je veux, aux rois que je remplace,
SuccÉder jusque dans la mort.
Ma dÉpouille ici doit descendre!
C'est pour faire place À ma cendre
Qu'on dÉpeupla ces noirs caveaux;
Il faut un nouveau maÎtre au monde;
A ce sÉpulcre que je fonde
Il faut des ossements nouveaux!
'Je promets ma poussiÈre À ces voÛtes funestes.
A cet insigne honneur ce temple a seul des droits;
Car je veux que le ver qui rongera mes restes
Ait dÉjÀ dÉvorÉ des rois.
Et, lorsque mes neveux, dans leur fortune altiÈre,
Domineront l'Europe entiÈre,
Du Kremlin À l'Escurial,
Ils viendront tour À tour dormir dans ces lieux sombres,
Afin que je sommeille, escortÉ de leurs ombres,
Dans mon linceul impÉrial!'
Celui qui disait ces paroles
Croyait, soldat audacieux,
Voir, en magnifiques symboles,
Sa destinÉe Écrite aux cieux.
Dans ses Étreintes foudroyantes,
Son aigle, aux serres flamboyantes,
EÛt ÉtouffÉ l'aigle romain;
La victoire Était sa compagne,
Et le globe de Charlemagne
Était trop lÉger pour sa main!
Eh bien, des potentats ce formidable maÎtre
Dans l'espoir de sa mort par le ciel fut trompÉ.
De ses ambitions, c'est la seule peut-Être
Dont le but lui soit ÉchappÉ.
En vain tout secondait sa marche meurtriÈre;
En vain sa gloire incendiaire
En tous lieux portait son flambeau;
Tout chargÉ de faisceaux, de sceptres, de couronnes,
Ce vaste ravisseur d'empires et de trÔnes
Ne put usurper un tombeau!
TombÉ sous la main qui chÂtie,
L'Europe le fit prisonnier.
Premier roi de sa dynastie,
Il en fut aussi le dernier.
Une Île oÙ grondent les tempÊtes
ReÇut ce gÉant des conquÊtes,
Tyran que nul n'osait juger,
Vieux guerrier qui, dans sa misÈre,
Dut l'obole de BÉlisaire
A la pitiÉ de l'Étranger.
Loin du sacrÉ tombeau qu'il s'arrangeait naguÈre,
C'est lÀ que, dÉpouillÉ du royal appareil,
Il dort enveloppÉ de son manteau de guerre,
Sans compagnon de son sommeil.
Et, tandis qu'il n'a plus, de l'empire du monde,
Qu'un noir rocher battu de l'onde,
Qu'un vieux saule battu du vent,
Un roi longtemps banni, qui fit nos jours prospÈres,
Descend au lit de mort oÙ reposaient ses pÈres,
Sous la garde du Dieu vivant!"
But the poet is too generous towards Napoleon in describing him as "ce vieux saule battu du vent" (old weather-beaten willow tree), for at that very moment the authorities in St. Helena having abolished the toll that had at first been exacted from, and submitted to by, visitors to Napoleon's tomb, M. Torbet, the owner of the ground in which the emperor was interred, when he found that he could not gain any more from the body, requested that it should be exhumed and removed elsewhere. There was a long controversy about it, and M. Torbet threatened that he himself would disinter the body of the man who had, notwithstanding what the poet had written, usurped everything, even his own grave, and that he would throw the remains out on the highway, until at last the Government decided that the India Company should purchase the land from Torbet for five hundred pounds sterling. It was decided that in future, in consequence of this douceur given to M. Torbet, people should visit the tomb of Napoleon free of charge. We have already mentioned M. Torbet's name three times: let us say it a fourth, in order that it may not be forgotten.
If anything could make up for such a disgrace to humanity, for such deeds as M. Torbet revelled in, it would be the reception accorded forty years afterwards to la Fayette in America, when that nation sent one of its finest ships, the Cadmus, to fetch him to America as the nation's guest. It was indeed a fine sight to see a whole nation rising up to do honour to one of the founders of its liberty.
Directly the two Chambers heard, on 12 January, that la Fayette was contemplating the paying of a visit to the United States, they drew up a resolution, upon the motion of Mr. Mitchell, to the following effect:—
"Seeing that the illustrious champion of our liberty and the hero of our Revolution, the friend and comrade of Washington, Marquis de la Fayette, who was a volunteer general officer during the War of our Independence, has expressed a strong desire to pay a visit to our country, to whose liberty his courage, his blood and his wealth contributed in a very large degree,
"It is resolved, that the President be asked to convey to the Marquis de la Fayette an expression of the feelings of respect, gratitude and affectionate attachment that the Government and the American people harbour towards him, and to assure him that the fulfilment of his desire and intention to visit their country will be received by both people and Government with deep pleasure and patriotic pride.
"It is besides, resolved, that the President shall inform himself as to the time that it would be most agreeable to the Marquis de la Fayette to pay his visit, so that one of the nation's vessels may be offered him as a means of transport."
So, in accordance with this offer, la Fayette embarked at Havre, on board the Cadmus, 13 July, and reached New York on 15 August, after a voyage of thirty-two days. No national fÊte ever did honour to a finer or a more saintly character. When he left North America it had scarcely a population of three millions; now seventeen millions welcomed him. Everything was changed: forests had become plains, plains had become towns, and millions of steam-boats, the first of which had been launched in 1808 by Fulton, after having been refused by France, now plied up and down rivers as big as lakes, and on lakes as big as oceans. Nor were the towns of the artificial kind that Potemkin built along the Catherine Road which crosses the Crimea; modern civilisation was striding across the Atlantic as though it were a stream, to plant its foot for the first time in the New World.
After four months of fÊtes given to and honours showered upon the friend of Washington, a special committee brought in a Bill on 20 December as under:—
"That the sum of 200,000 dollars be offered to Major-General la Fayette in recognition of his valuable services, and to indemnify him for his expenses in the American Revolution; also that a portion of land be set aside from the as yet unappropriated lands, for the establishment of a township for Major-General la Fayette, and that this Act be handed him by the President of the United States."
This Bill was carried with enthusiasm by the Chamber of Representatives on 22 December and by the Senate on the 23rd.
We must just mention before we take leave of the year 1824, that, on 2 December, M. Droz and M. de Lamartine were competitors for the Academy, and that M. Droz was elected and M. de Lamartine rejected.
CHAPTER VI
Tallancourt and Betz—The cafÉ Hollandais—My Quiroga cloak—First challenge—A lesson in shooting—The eve of my duel—Analysis of my sensations—My opponent fails to keep his appointment—The seconds hunt him out—The duel—Tallancourt and the mad dog
On 3 January 1825, one of our friends, by name Tallancourt, having, by Vatout's solicitations, been promoted from his office, to the Duc d'OrlÉans' library, he treated me and another of our friends called Betz to a dinner at the Palais-Royal. Both were old soldiers. Tallancourt had fought at Waterloo. After the defeat, he felt in his pockets and found that they were empty, he struck his stomach and felt that it was hollow, therefore, catching sight of a small dismounted cannon, and being endowed with herculean strength, he lifted it upon his shoulder and sold it, two leagues away, to an ironfounder, for ten francs. Thanks to these ten francs, he managed to effect quite a comfortable retreat, and he returned to his native country of Semur, where Vatout got him a berth first in the Duc d'OrlÉans' offices and finally in the library. After dinner, these gentlemen, who were inveterate smokers, as becomes old soldiers of thirty-two and thirty-five years of age, proposed to adjourn to the cafÉ Hollandais to smoke a cigar. I did not wish to desert them, in spite of my aversion to tobacco cafÉs, and for the first, and I hope I may say for the last time in my life, I crossed the threshold of that famous establishment which is decorated outside with the sign of a ship. I possessed a large cloak, romantically called in those days a Quiroga; I had coveted such a cloak as passionately as I had the famous top-boots, and I had ended by obtaining it with just as much difficulty. Apparently, my mode of dress annoyed one of the habituÉs who at that moment was playing billiards; he exchanged some words with his antagonist, accompanied by a glance in my direction, and a burst of laughter followed. This was quite sufficient to infuriate me, so I picked up a cue, and mixing up all the balls, I said—
"Who would like to play at billiards with me?"
"But," remonstrated Tallancourt, "the table belongs to those gentlemen."
"Well," said I, looking straight at the player I specially wished to have dealings with, "we will turn these men out, and I will tackle this gentleman"; and I advanced towards him.
The provocation was too gross and too pointed not to raise ire.
Betz and Tallancourt at once sprang to my assistance, for they knew me too well not to be aware that I should not insult anyone in this fashion without good occasion. The chief thing we cared about was that it should not be noised abroad that we had taken part in a miserable cafÉ quarrel, so my adversary and I exchanged cards and arranged a meeting for the next day but one, at nine o'clock in the morning, by the cafÉ which adjoins the threshold of the big lonely house which stood for a long while in the middle of the place du Carrousel, called the hÔtel de Nantes. Of course, Tallancourt and Betz were my seconds, although they were a little uneasy about their commission: first, because I was very young, and it was my first duel; then, because I had just come from the provinces and they did not know whether I knew how to handle the firearms I was about to use. They had arranged with the seconds of my adversary, M. Charles B——, our meeting for the following day at four o'clock in the afternoon, in the garden of the Palais-Royal, opposite the Rotonde, in order to give them more time to coach me.
On leaving the cafÉ they asked me to tell them the cause of my quarrel, which I hastened to do; then, as they were commissioned to deal with the question of arms, they asked me which weapon I preferred. I replied that the question of weapons was a matter of indifference to me, and that as I had confided my interests into their hands, it was their affair and not mine. My assurance somewhat eased their minds; but Tallancourt nevertheless insisted I should have some practice, next morning at nine, in Gosset's shooting gallery. I had not put foot in a shooting gallery since I had come to Paris; but my familiarity with M. de Leuven's Kukenreiter cannot have been forgotten, nor my broken slates, and the frogs I shot in two and the pieces of cardboard held in the hand as targets at Ponce's. Tallancourt asked for a dozen bullets.
"Does the gentleman want to shoot À la poupÉe or À la mouche?" the lad asked me.
As I did not quite understand Parisian shooting habits and terms, I turned to Tallancourt, who asked for a poupÉe. The boy placed a metal doll on the spike—without doubt the biggest the establishment could produce; for the boy (whose name was Philippe—one recalls the minutest details connected with events of this sort) noticing my utter ignorance of shooting-gallery methods, took me for a schoolboy. Tallancourt, too, it was quite evident, shared the lad's opinion concerning me. I must confess this unanimity piqued me.
"Tell me," I asked Tallancourt, "what that metal toy costs?"
"Four sous," he said.
"And how many bullets have you applied for?"
"A dozen."
"Well, then, as I am not rich enough to allow myself the luxury of smashing a dozen dolls, I will make this one a present of eleven of the bullets, and I will smash it with the twelfth."
"What do you mean?" asked Tallancourt.
"You shall see how we played this game at Villers-Cotterets, my dear Tallancourt."
I went up to the target, I drew a circle round the doll, and I began operations. Everything went off as I had anticipated. I did what I had done a score of times with de Leuven and de la Ponce, but as Tallancourt was witnessing my proceedings for the first time, he was perfectly astounded at what took place.
"Well, it will be all right with pistols, I see, and I shall feel easy enough if you get in the first shot," said he; "but suppose they choose swords?"
"Well, if they choose swords, we must fight with swords, my friend, that is all."
"Can you defend yourself with a sword?"
"I hope so."
"I ask this," added Tallancourt, "as I do not like pistols."
"I agree with you, they are fiendish weapons."
"I shall not accept unless I am compelled."
"You will be quite right."
"You agree with me, then?"
"Absolutely."
"Well, so much the better! Give the boy twenty-four sous and let us go to breakfast."
Fortunately, it was but the fourth day of the month, so I could afford the twenty-four sous. We breakfasted, and went to the office. Betz was already there, and he took Tallancourt aside, no doubt to inquire about my qualifications; but I had every ground for believing that Tallancourt reassured him. At five o'clock, Betz and Tallancourt came to tell me my adversary had chosen swords. The rendezvous was to be the same, at nine next day, by the hÔtel de Nantes. I returned home with a smiling face, although my heart beat fast enough. In matters of courage I had made the following observations with respect to myself. I was of a sanguine temperament, and readily threw myself in the way of danger; if the danger were imminent, and I could attack it instantly, my courage never failed me, for I was kept up by excitement. If, on the contrary, I had to wait some hours, my nerves gave way, and I relented having exposed myself to danger. But, by degrees, after reflection, moral courage overcame physical cowardice, and vigorously commanded it to conduct itself properly. When arrived on the spot, I shivered to the bottom of my back; but I never showed the slightest external signs of my feelings. I fought a duel in 1834, and Bixio was my second: he was a medical student at the time, and, feeling my pulse just after I had taken up my pistol, it only indicated sixty-nine pulsations to the minute, two beats faster than normal. The longer I wait, the calmer I become. For that matter, I believe every man, especially if endowed with sensitive organisations, naturally fears danger, and if left to his own instincts, would do his best to escape it; he is kept back simply and solely by moral strength and manly pride, and exposes himself to death and suffering with a smiling face. As a proof of this theory, I may mention that a man of this temperament, who is brave in his waking hours, is a coward in his dreams; for in sleep the soul is absent, and the animal part of him alone remains; and, in the absence of his strength, his will-power and his pride, the physical part of him is afraid.
Well, I returned home without saying a word of what had passed; but I stayed in with my mother the whole night.
It was mid-winter, so I had not to go and make up the portfolio. I rose at eight next morning, and making some sort of excuse to my mother, I kissed her, and went out with my father's sword under my cloak. Tallancourt had undertaken to provide a second sword. I reached the hÔtel de Nantes at ten minutes to nine, and we found there my adversary's two seconds. I had not had any breakfast, for Thibaut, who accompanied us, had advised me not to eat, in case I might have to be bled. We waited: half-past nine, ten, eleven struck. Betz and Tallancourt were dreadfully impatient, for my adversary's delay was making them late at their office. I must admit that, so far as I was concerned, I was enchanted; I had been in hopes that the affair would conclude with excuses, and I should have liked nothing better. At eleven o'clock my adversary's godparents gave up waiting, in disgust, and suggested to my seconds that they should all go and call upon their godson, who lived, I believe, in the rue CoquilliÈre. As for me, they sent me back to the office, and, in case we were grumbled at for our absence, I was to explain frankly to Oudard what had passed and tell him the cause of our absence. But there was no need to confess anything, as I found Oudard had been sent for by the Duchesse d'OrlÉans. Betz and Tallancourt returned half an hour later: they had found my adversary in bed! When they pointed out to him that he ought to have been elsewhere than in his bed, M. Charles B—— replied that, having been skating on the canal the whole of the previous day, at seven that morning he felt so utterly fatigued he had not sufficient strength to get up. His own two seconds considered this such a feeble excuse that they told him he need not count on their services again, if the quarrel were followed up. Upon which they withdrew. But Betz and Tallancourt, who were much angrier than I was myself in my heart of hearts, had remained, and they had insisted on M. Charles B—— informing them at what hour they might expect to see him take the field the next day. He promised to meet us, with two fresh seconds, at the Rochechouart barrier, the following day, at nine o'clock. The fight could take place in one of the Montmartre quarries. Thus the matter was only postponed. I thanked my two seconds very cordially, telling them they had done quite right and that I would wait. The day passed by quietly enough, and by becoming absorbed in my work and in conversation I even managed to forget I was to fight on the morrow. Nevertheless, a slight spasm would attack my heart from time to time, to be stifled in a yawn.
I returned home early, as on the previous day, and stayed in with my mother.
Next day was Twelfth Night, and someone had presented us with a bean-cake. My mother was the queen. I kissed her and wished I might be able to kiss her for thirty years longer at the same hour, day and occasion. I knew only too well what I was doing when I wished such a wish. I slept soundly for the first four or five hours of the night, badly enough for the remaining two or three. I left my mother at half-past eight, as on the previous morning, only I had no sword to carry this time, Tallancourt had taken charge of both. At ten minutes to nine we reached the barrier at Rochechouart; and, as nine struck, a cab brought our man and his two fresh seconds. They got out, bowed, silently crossed the outer boulevard and reached the ramparts of the mount. One of the seconds of my adversary, who has since become a friend of mine (in common with the majority of those who, not knowing me, began by being my enemies), came up to me and, evidently taking me for one of the witnesses, entered into conversation with me. We walked for nearly half an hour before a suitable spot could be found. It was very cold and had snowed all night; it was still snowing; so nearly all the quarries were occupied.
As it is not a usual sight for six people to be walking across fields at ten in the morning in such weather, the people in the quarries became inquisitive about our tramp and followed us. We had already quite a considerable following, and it was probable that the farther we thus went the more it would increase; so it was imperative we should stop at the first place that appeared, I will not say suitable, but possible, for our purpose. I confess the walk would have seemed very long had I not talked the whole way with my adversary's witness. At last they settled upon a sort of plateau, ten paces wide by twenty long, which was as much room as we needed. Here we stopped. Tallancourt drew forth the swords from under his cloak and handed them to the witnesses to be examined. The one he had brought was two inches longer than the other; Tallancourt had not made a choice, he had taken the first that came to his hand; so he proposed to draw lots as to which should have the longest sword. I ended the debate by declaring that I would take the shortest, which was my father's. I much preferred to lose the two extra inches of steel, rather than to have my father's sword turned against my breast. It was only at this juncture that my opponent's second discovered that the man he had been talking with the whole way was the other duellist. There was little time to spare by the time the ground was chosen and the swords distributed; it was horribly cold, and our audience was increasing every moment.
I flung off my coat and stood on guard. Then my opponent asked me to take off my waistcoat and my shirt as well as my coat. The demand seemed to me an exorbitant one; but, as he insisted, I stuck my sword in the snow and I threw down my waistcoat and my shirt on top of my coat. Then, as I did not want even to keep on my braces, and as, like poor GÉricault, I had lost the buckle from my trousers, I tied the two straps into a knot to gird up my loins. These elaborate preparations took a minute or two, during which my sword remained fixed in the snow. Then I picked it up, and stood on guard in a pretty bad temper. My opponent had delivered his commands with a great air of self-confidence, and as he had also selected swords as our weapons, I expected to find I had to deal with an experienced swordsman. So I set to work cautiously. But to my great astonishment, I found he put himself very carelessly on his guard and exposed himself to my sword. Of course, his carelessness might be just a ruse to put me off my guard, when he could take advantage of my imprudence. I took a step backwards and lowered my sword.
"Ready, monsieur," I said; "defend yourself!"
"But what if I do not choose to put myself into a position of defence?" replied my adversary.
"Well, that is your affair, ... but your taste is peculiar, I must say."
I fell back on guard, I attacked him en quarte, and without making a pass with my sword in order to feel my way with my man, I thrust out freely en tierce. He gave a leap backwards, stumbled over a vine-root and fell head over heels.
"Oh! oh!" exclaimed Tallancourt, "have you really killed him at the first blow?"
"No," I replied, "I think not; I had not even passed, I hardly touched him."
In the meantime, my opponent's seconds had run up to M. B——, who was getting up. The point of my sword had pierced his shoulder, and as its position in the snow had frozen the steel, the sensation it had given my opponent was so startling that, lightly though he was wounded, the shock had overturned him. Luckily I had not passed first, or I should certainly have run him right through. It turned out. that the poor lad had never handled a sword before!
When he made this confession, and in consideration of the wound he had received, it was decided the fight should stop there. I put up my sword in its shield; I donned my shirt, waistcoat and coat; I wrapped myself in my Quiroga, and I descended the ramparts of Montmartre with a much lighter heart than I had ascended them.
Such was the cause, such were the sensations, such was the issue of my first duel. What has become of the two men who were my seconds? I have lost sight of Betz: he obtained a post as receveur particulier in the provinces. A vague rumour has since reached me of his death. As for Tallancourt, poor fellow! I saw him die most miserably, unfortunate and unhappy. The Duc d'OrlÉans took a fancy to him; for he was of the type of tools the prince loved—active but not too clever. Moreover, Tallancourt possessed a further qualification: although he was sufficiently intelligent, he knew when to appear stupid. When the Duc d'OrlÉans became king, he sent for Tallancourt, for he could not do without him. If his fortune were not exactly made—fortunes are not often made through being associated with kings—his position was, at any rate, secure. As Tallancourt had not left the Duc d'OrlÉans during 27, 28 and 29 July, he knew a fair number of state secrets concerning the Revolution of 1830. When the king was at Neuilly, he would purposely send Tallancourt to Paris, and the Hercules of a fellow, ill at ease in his arm-chair, seated at his desk, in his office, would walk the distance on foot, in order to breathe the open air and distend his big lungs a bit.
One day, an enormous savage dog leapt out of the ditch by the side of the high road and sprang at him. Tallancourt instinctively put up his hands to save his face, and, by unheard of good luck, in so doing he seized the beast round its neck. It was useless for the dog to struggle against the powerful grip of two such fists as Tallancourt's, which throttled the dog tighter and tighter, and in about five minutes' time the brute was strangled and the giant had never even received a scratch. But during these five minutes of struggle and mortal danger Tallancourt's brain underwent a terrible strain, and five or six months later, softening of the brain set in. For a year poor Tallancourt grew visibly feebler, both morally and physically; his strength and intellect, his power of motion, and even his voice declined, and he died by inches, after eighteen months of suffering.
CHAPTER VII
The Duc d'OrlÉans is given the title of Royal Highness—The coronation of Charles X.—Account of the ceremony by Madame la Duchesse d'OrlÉans—Death of Ferdinand of Naples—De Laville de Miremont—Le Cid d'Andalousie—M. Pierre Lebrun—A reading at the camp at CompiÈgne—M. Taylor appointed a royal commissioner to the ThÉÂtre-FranÇais—The curÉ Bergeron—M. Viennet—Two of his letters—Pichat and his LÉonidas
My mother never knew anything of the story of my duel; she would have died of grief had she had the faintest suspicion of it. As we did not return to the office until nearly one o'clock, we had to tell Oudard everything; and he appeared quite content, after hearing Betz and Tallancourt's account, with the way his employÉ had conducted himself. Besides, the Palais-Royal had been in a constant state of fÊte since the accession of His Majesty Charles X. to the throne. The duc d'OrlÉans had just been granted the title of Royal Highness from the new king—a favour he had begged in vain from Louis XVIII. As we have already mentioned, Louis XVIII. persistently refused everybody who asked him to grant M. le Duc d'OrlÉans this privilege.
"He will always be sufficiently close to the throne," he would reply.
And in other ways, Charles X. made himself most popular.
As a pendant to his phrase, "Nothing is changed in France, there is simply one more Frenchman in it," he added another dictum, simpler still, and quite as much appreciated—
"My friends, let there be wider criticism!"
And in the midst of the general merrymaking the preparations for his coronation went on in sumptuous style.
The last few coronations had brought ill-fortune in their train. It will be remembered that, at Reims, Louis XVI. had quickly removed the crown from his head.
"What is the matter, sire?" asked the archbishop.
"That crown hurts me," replied Louis XVI. And, twenty years later, he died upon the scaffold.
Napoleon wished to be crowned by a higher official than an archbishop; he wished to have a pope, and had sent for Pius VII. to come from the Vatican at Rome to Notre-Dame at Paris.
"Il fallut presqu'un Dieu pour consacrer cet homme!
Le prÊtre, monarque de Rome,
Vint sacrer son front menaÇant,
Car sans doute, en secret effrayÉ de lui-mÊme,
Il voulut recevoir son sanglant diadÈme
Des mains d'oÙ le pardon descend!"
Fifteen years later, Napoleon died at St. Helena! And now it was the turn of Charles X.
Every sovereign in Christendom had been informed of the solemn celebration, and sent their ambassadors extraordinary. Austria was represented by Prince Esterhazy; Spain by the Duke of Villa-Hermosa; Great Britain by the Duke of Northumberland; Prussia by General de Zastrow; and Russia by Prince Volkonski.
The king and the dauphin left the Tuileries at half-past eleven on the morning of 24 May, and set out for CompiÈgne. All went well as far as Fismes; but an accident augured ill to the king, whose reign was only to last six years, and to end in his exile. As they descended at Fismes, the batteries of the Royal Guard, which were mounted in a dingle to the left of the road, fired a salute to greet the king. The detonation and its echo were terrible, and at the noise of the firing the horses attached to the carriage containing the Ducs d'Aumont and de Damas, and the Counts de CossÉ and Curial, ran away; the carriage was overturned and smashed to bits on the causeway. Two out of the four occupants of the carriage were seriously injured—MM. the Duc de Damas and Count Curial; the latter's case was worst, he had his collar-bone broken. Had it not been for the coachman's strength and presence of mind, the king himself would not have escaped a similar accident. His horses bolted; but the coachman had the sense not to try to stop them, and used all his efforts to keep them in the centre of the roadway; and after ten minutes' unrestrained career they calmed down.
At the village of Tinqueux the king found the Duc d'OrlÉans and the Duc de Bourbon awaiting him. The rain, which had never stopped pouring all morning, ceased, and the sun, which had not hitherto shown itself, now shone forth brilliantly. The king, M. le Dauphin, M. le Duc d'OrlÉans and M. le Duc de Bourbon entered the coronation coach, and in the language of the Report of the Coronation, "the whole of the way to Reims was one arc de triomphe."
After the coronation service, Charles X. signed the amnesty granted to men who had deserted from the navy and to political offenders. It was this amnesty that brought Carrel back to France. Thirteen years later, Charles X. died at Goritz.
Madame la Duchesse d'OrlÉans had been present at the coronation, and wrote an account of it in her private diary in Italian. On her return to Paris, she desired to have it translated into French, and commissioned Oudard to do it. Oudard was much embarrassed, and handed the album over to me, giving me a couple of days' holiday to translate it for him. This album was the book in which the Duchesse d'OrlÉans wrote her most secret thoughts and related her private deeds. I was not forbidden to read it, so of course I read it. However, there was not a single word throughout the book that could have put an angel to the blush, though it contained the actions and reflections of the Duchesse d'OrlÉans for the last ten years, though she never intended it to leave her own hands, not even to pass into those of the Duc d'OrlÉans, since it was for the Duc d'OrlÉans that the translation was being made. One thing above all struck me as I read, and that was the profound gratitude of Madame la Duchesse d'OrlÉans for the favours that the new king, Charles X., had lavished on the prince her husband, and for the kindness displayed every day towards her and her family by Madame la Duchesse de Berry.
Alas and alas! how many times the remembrance of that album came into my mind when I saw King Charles X. at Gratz, and Madame la Duchesse de Berry at Blaye, and it made me shudder as I thought of how deeply the religious-hearted Marie-AmÉlie must have suffered, when, because of what princes term "political necessities," the honour of the one, and the crown of the other, were broken in her husband's hands.
Another page also riveted my attention and kept me for a long time enthralled, wherein Madame la Duchesse d'OrlÉans related how lovingly and tactfully her husband broke to her the news of the death of her father, Ferdinand I. Now, Ferdinand I. was the very king who had kept my father a prisoner in the dungeons of Naples for eighteen months; the very same man who had allowed people to try and poison him three times, and once to attempt his assassination; he, the shepherd who had devoured his own flock during those terrible years of 1798-99, had just been called to render an account of his stewardship to the Lord. It was a strange coincidence that I, the son of one of the king's victims, should hold this album in my hands and read the sorrowful outpourings of the daughter's grief at the death of her father! What a strange juxtaposition of destiny and fortunes! However, he was dead, even as just men have to die; he who had watched those whom he called his friends hung before his very eyes, burnt beneath his very windows, disembowelled and torn to pieces in his very presence; the people whom a treacherous capitulation had yielded into his hands; those who, under another reign, might have been the honour of their king and the glory of the country!
On 3 January 1825 he was quietly sleeping, at two in the morning. His attendants heard him cough several times; then, at eight o'clock, as he had not summoned them to him according to his usual custom, the officers of his chamber, followed by the Court doctors, entered his room, and found him dead from a stroke of apoplexy. Ferdinand I. had just reigned sixty-five years, when he died at the age of seventy-four.
Oudard got his translation, which he re-copied in his own writing, and handed to the Duchesse d'OrlÉans as his own. True, he faithfully retailed to me the compliments he had received for it, adding that for which I was far more grateful—two tickets for the first representation of Roman at the ThÉÂtre-FranÇais; it was a capital five-act comedy in verse, by de Laville de Miremont, already known because of Folliculaire, a piece more commendable for its action than for any other quality. I knew de Laville very well: an accusation by Lemercier worried him greatly. Lemercier had accused de Laville, who had occupied the post of Censor, of having suppressed his Charles VI. and of having afterwards used his plot and ideas. But, in the first place, de Laville plainly proved both by Folliculaire and by Roman that he did not need to borrow ideas from other people's plays; besides, he was utterly incapable of doing such an action. There was a charming creation in Roman: a father who was friendly to and almost a companion in the escapades of a son born to him when he was only twenty. Nothing could have been more natural than this situation, which de Laville was the first to employ in a play.
Owing to the kindness of Talma, I had several times seen the Cid d'Andalousie. Casimir Delavigne's example was infectious: Talma having taken part in comedy, Mademoiselle Mars asked why she might not play in tragedy; hence the new reunion of the two actors in the Cid d'Andalousie. But M. Pierre Lebrun, author of an Ulysse which had not been played, or what is far worse, which had only run one or two nights, was not Casimir Delavigne. There was nothing at the time to support him as there had been in 1820 when, in Maria Stuart, he had had the sturdy framework of Schiller to fall back upon. Reduced to drawing from Spanish romanceros, which only suggested simple scenes, he was lacking in everything—power, originality and style, and in spite of the unusual support of both Talma and Mademoiselle Mars, who had doubled the power of a strong creator and who could not conceal the weakness of a feeble writer, the Cid d'Andalousie fell flat at the first representation, managed to survive the second, upheld by hired applause, dragged on miserably for five or six nights, and then finally was taken out of the bill. This failure was the beginning of the fortune of M. Pierre Lebrun—Academician, peer of France and Manager of the Royal Printing-house.
O thou venerable deity, Mediocrity! Surely thou hast the secret of the precious essence given to Phaon by Venus to assure successfulness in this world of ours! Thou who for long rejected Hugo, Lamartine and Charles Nodier! Thou who left SouliÉ and Balzac to die without doing for them a third of what thou didst for M. Pierre Lebrun! Thou who ignored Alfred de Musset,—wisely, for all light of originality, all nervous strength, makes thy owl's eyes to blink! Thou whose leaden-based statue ought to be a hundred feet high, so that its shadow should fall on the Pont des Arts and the respectable monument to which it leads! O Mediocrity! sole divinity for whom France has not a 21 January, a 29 July or a 24 February! Thou whom I despise above everything else in the world, and would fain hate if I could ever hate anything! Look ever askance on me and be benign to my enemies, that is the sole favour I ask thee. And, on this condition, may thou remain in undisturbed possession of the future, as thou hast been of the past!
Now let us note well that the failure of the Cid d'Andalousie took place in 1825. One might therefore reasonably have hoped that by 1838, thirteen years later, the unlucky Cid would have been forgotten by everybody, even by its author. Nothing of the kind. At CompiÈgne, in his country house, the Duc d'OrlÉans entertained his comrades with sport in the forest by day, and at night he opened his drawing-rooms to those who preferred card-playing, dancing and conversation. One evening a fatal idea came into the unfortunate prince's head. Turning towards several poets who stood round, he said to them—
"Gentlemen, let us see which of you has some poetry to read to us."
Everybody kept silence, as will be readily understood, and moved a step or two backwards; except M. Pierre Lebrun, who stepped forward.
"I will, monseigneur," he said; and he sat down and drew a manuscript out of his pocket—think of it! a whole manuscript!—and, in the midst of the general silence, he read the title—
"Gentlemen, the Cid d'Andalousie."
They all stared at him; but there was no way out of it, they were trapped, and M. le Duc d'OrlÉans most of all. Upon my word, it was a great success. When the reading was over and compliments had been paid, the Duc d'OrlÉans said to me—
"Dumas, can you tell me what was the reason of the noise I heard by the side of the window, which interrupted M. Lebrun, towards the beginning of the third act?"
"Monseigneur," I replied, "it was A—, who squatted behind the curtains, where he could sleep more comfortably; but it would seem he had a nightmare: he gave a cuff to a small stand, and has smashed a table full of SÈvres china, for which he is excessively sorry."
"He need not be unhappy about it," said the Duc d'OrlÉans; "tell him he did quite right, and I will bear the cost of the china."
The poor duke was as wise a prince as Solomon, and as good as St. Louis!
In other respects, too, the ThÉÂtre-FranÇais was not very fortunate at this time. After playing the Cid d'Andalousie of M. Lebrun, it put on M. de Comberousse's Judith and BÉlisaire, by M. de Jouy. An important change had taken place at the theatre in the rue de Richelieu. Baron Taylor had been appointed royal commissioner in place of M. Choron, upon the recommendation of MM. Lemercier, Viennet and Alexandre Duval.
When Charles X. returned to Paris after the coronation, and the Bishop of OrlÉans issued orders for prayers to be offered up in thanksgiving for the safe accomplishment of the ceremony just concluded, M. Bergeron, curÉ of the commune of Saint-Sulpice, canton of Blois, after delivering from his reading-desk the bishop's mandate, added these simple words:—
"My dearly beloved brethren, as Charles X. is not a Christian, as he desires to keep the Charter, which is an Act contrary to religion, we ought not to pray for him, any more than for Louis XVIII., who was the founder of that Charter; they are both damned. Those who agree with me, please rise."
And three hundred listeners out of four hundred rose, and by that act declared that they were entirely of the same opinion as their priest.
Alas! If the Academy could have known what kind of man Baron Taylor was, whom the order of Charles X. had introduced into the sanctuary of the ComÉdie-FranÇaise! If it could only have guessed that he was to open its doors to MM. Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo and de Vigny,[1] it would have followed the curÉ Bergeron's example and excommunicated King Charles x. But it knew nothing at all about it.
The first bad turn the new commissioner of the king did to his patrons was to have M. Viennet's Sigismond de Bourgogne played, and M. Lemercier's Camille. I need hardly mention that both these plays fell flat. This did not discourage M. Lemercier: he decided to change his style of play, and began a melodrama called the Masque de poix. This elated M. Viennet, who, instead of changing his method, like his honoured confrÈre, made up his mind, on the contrary, to force his method into acceptance, and began by reading his Achille in the salons, a play which had been written twenty years before, and which had been accepted ten years ago.
"Do you not think my Achille is very heroic?" he said to M. Arnault, after one of these readings.
"Yes," replied M. Arnault, "as fierce as a turkey-cock!"
But very few men could be more brilliant at repartee than M. Viennet. It was like watching a tilting bout in the lists to hear him, save that he never retorted when his adversary missed fire. He certainly offered a favourable target for such attacks, and people were not slow to avail themselves of their opportunities. Once, at Nodier's house, he went up to Michaud.
"Tell me, Michaud," he began, in a manner that was peculiarly his own,—"tell me what you think, I have just finished a poem of thirty thousand lines."
"It will need fifteen thousand men to read them," replied Michaud.
On another occasion, at a dinner party, M. Viennet made an attack upon Lamartine.
"He is a puppy," he said, "who thinks himself the greatest politician of his age, and who is not even the first poet!"
"At all events," Madame Sophie Gay retorted from the other end of the table, "he is not the last—that place is already occupied."
Besides everything M. Viennet wrote in verse—fables, comedies, tragedies, epistles and epic poems—he wrote a couple of letters in prose which are perfect models. We will quote them in toto and verbatim; extracts would not give a proper idea of their style. One was in reference to the nomination of Hugo as an officer of the LÉgion d'honneur; the other was in connection with his own nomination to the peerage. For M. Viennet was both a deputy and a peer of France, besides also being a Commander of the LÉgion d'honneur and a member of the Academy.
Here is M. Viennet's first letter:—
"MONSIEUR,—Je n'ai pas dit que je ne voulais plus porter la croix d'officier de la LÉgion d'honneur, depuis qu'on l'avait donnÉe au chef de l'École romantique.
"En Ôtant mon ruban de la boutonniÈre oÙ l'empereur l'avait placÉ, j'ai suivi seulement l'exemple de la plupart des gÉnÉraux de la vieille armÉe, qui trouvaient plus facile de se faire remarquer en paraissant dans les rues sans dÉcoration. Il ne s'agissait ici ni de romantiques ni de classiques.
"Il est tout naturel qu'un ministre romantique dÉcore ses amis; il serait cependant plus juste de donner la croix de chevalier À ceux qui auraient eu le courage de lire jusqu'au bout les vers ou la prose de ces messieurs, et la croix d'officier À ceux qui les auraient compris. Je dÉsire, en outre, qu'on n'en donne que douze par an aux Écrivains qui font des libelles contre les grands pouvoirs de l'État, les ministres et les dÉputÉs: il faut de la mesure dans les encouragements.—AgrÉez, etc., VIENNET"
And this is M. Viennet's letter about his nomination to the peerage of France:—
"MONSIEUR,—Sur la foi d'un journal judiciaire que je ne connais pas, vous publiez, que, des vendredi dernier, je me suis empressÉ d'Écrire À M. Vedel, pour mettre opposition À la reprÉsentation des Serments, et vous accompagnez cette annonce d'une fort jolie Épigramme contre cette comÉdie. L'Épigramme me touche fort peu, elle sort peut-Être de la mÊme plume qui avait louÉ l'ouvrage quand l'auteur avait cessÉ d'Être un homme politique. Je ne prÉtends pas l'empÊcher de continuer, mais le fait n'est pas vrai et je me rÉcrie. Il n'y a eu de ma part ni possibilitÉ ni volontÉ de faire ce qu'on m'impute. Je suis parti vendredi de la campagne, et je suis arrivÉ chez moi, À Paris, vers les sept heures, sans me douter de ce que le Moniteur avait publiÉ, le matin, d'honorable pour moi. C'est mon portier qui m'a saluÉ du titre de pair, attendu qu'il avait expÉdiÉ, le matin mÊme, pour mon village, une lettre officielle qui portait ce titre, et comme cette lettre ne m'est pas encore revenue, j'ignore À quel ministre je suis redevable de ce premier avis. Quant À ma volontÉ, elle n'existe point, elle n'existera jamais! c'est m'insulter que de me croire capable d'abjurer les travaux et les honneurs littÉraires, pour un honneur politique. La Charte n'a pas Établi d'incompatibilitÉ entre le poÈte dramatique et le pair de France; si elle l'eÛt fait, j'aurais refusÉ la pairie. Les lettres et les succÈs de thÉÂtre honorent ceux qui cultivent les unes et qui obtiennent les autres sans intrigue et sans bassesse. Au lieu d'y renoncer, je sollicite, au contraire, avec plus d'instance la reprÉsentation des Serments, la mise en scÈne d'une de mes tragÉdies et la lecture d'une comÉdie en cinq actes. Si vous avez quelque crÉdit auprÈs de M. le directeur du ThÉÂtre-FranÇais, veuillez l'employer en ma faveur. Les Épigrammes dont on m'a poursuivi comme dÉputÉ sont bien usÉes; vous devez dÉsirer qu'on en renouvelle la matiÈre, et une nouvelle comÉdie, une nouvelle tragÉdie de moi, seraient de merveilleux aliments pour la verve satirique de mes adversaires. Rendons-nous mutuellement ce service; je vous en serai trÈs-reconnaissant pour mon compte, et je vous prie d'agrÉer d'avance les remercÎments de votre trÈs-humble serviteur, VIENNET"
We will now return to Baron Taylor and the changes he brought about at the ThÉÂtre-FranÇais. At the Panorama-Dramatique he had produced IsmaËl et Maryam alone; Bertram in collaboration with Nodier; and Ali-Pacha with Pichat's assistance.
Pichat was a young man of twenty-eight at that time: a play of his, LÉonidas, had been received two or three years before at the ThÉÂtre-FranÇais. Taylor extracted LÉonidas from the pandemonium he found himself in, and had it put in rehearsal. Talma was cast for the rÔle of LÉonidas:—not that his supreme intellect was mistaken about the part, which, dramatically speaking, was nothing at all; but in the matter of "business" it contained something fresh to do, and poor Talma, to the day of his death, was ever seeking new worlds, and, less fortunate than Vasco de Gama, he never succeeded in finding them. Besides, it was a very appropriate moment for the playing of LÉonidas; all Europe was looking towards the successors of the three hundred Spartans. And the new piece, so it was announced in advance, was to be staged with unusual sumptuousness and unheard-of effects. I well remember the first performance of the tragedy of LÉonidas, wherein one felt the dawn of new ideas, wherein every historic saying which immortalised the famous defence of the ThermopÆlians was felicitously adapted, and admirably rendered by Talma. One hemistich of the young Agis was Substituted for the written line. Agis wounded, fell, exclaiming—
"Ils sont tous morts ... Je meurs!..."
The play met with a most enthusiastic reception, on account of the circumstances under which it was played. It was a splendid success for Talma: he looked like an antique statue descended from its column. After the performance, when the curtain had fallen, I saw a noisy group of rejoicing people rush along the corridor and the foyer, anxious to convey their friendly congratulation. A fine-looking young man, with a face as radiant as a conquering Apollo, formed the centre and was the hero of the group. He was the author of LÉonidas. Alas! he died only two years later—died before he had hardly lifted the intoxicating cup of success to his lips. But Taylor had at least the happiness of holding out to him the nectar which sweetened his last moments. Without Taylor, Pichat would have died in obscurity, and even though he were but an ephemeral meteor, many people, myself among the number, recollect the brilliant light he gave during his short career!
[1] It will, of course, be understood that I place my own name and those of my honoured confrÈres according to the chronological order of the representations of Henri III, Marion Delorme and Othello.
CHAPTER VIII
Death of General Foy—His funeral—The Royal Highness—Assassination of Paul-Louis Courier—Death of the Emperor Alexander—Comparison of England and Russia—The reason why these two powers have increased during the last century—How Napoleon meant to conquer India
Since we have just uttered the word death let us consecrate this chapter entirely to the pale daughter of Erebus and Night.
On 26 June, Princess Pauline BorghÈse died at Florence, and, with her, one of the most striking memories of my early youth passed into the regions of eternity.
Then, on 28 November, I learnt news which was a more personally disastrous shock to me. As I was coming out of the office, I saw people talking together and heard them say, "You have heard that General Foy is dead!"
They were inclined to doubt the information! But there is a kind of news about which one is never in doubt; for who, if it were false, dare spread the news which the brazen lips of Destiny alone has the right to announce? Yes, General Foy had died directly after returning from a journey among the Pyrenees, where he had been to take the waters; he died of an aneurism, and news of his death came before the news of his illness. They had concealed the fact of the disease, in hope that it might not prove fatal; but for a week past it had made terrible strides; attacks of suffocation, beginning at intervals of fifteen minutes, succeeded one another more rapidly, and sickness occurred constantly. The general's two nephews were with him, never leaving his bedside for a moment, lavishing every possible care on him, and as they were both men, he did not attempt to hide from them his serious condition.
"I can feel," he said, "some destroying power at work within me; I am fighting against it, but it is too strong for me, and will conquer my efforts."
When the final hour approached, he felt the need of more air, although it was November, and he longed for the comforting rays of the pale winter sunshine. His nephews placed him on a couch in front of the window, but he could not manage to sit up for more than a moment.
"My lads," he said to his nephews, "my dear lads, carry me back to my bed, and with God be the final issue."
He had scarcely spoken the words before God freed his pure and loyal spirit from the body in which it was confined. I went home to my mother utterly miserable. Obscure as I was, I felt that the great man who had just passed away had a right to have expected some return from the unknown youth whose career in life he had really started. So I wrote the piece of poetry of which I have already quoted a stanza. They were not my first lines,—God pardon me the others,—but they were the first in which, however old and defective the form, appeared something that resembled an idea. Of some two hundred and fifty to three hundred lines, only that one stanza, happily, has remained in my memory. I had this ode printed—at my own expense, of course. It cost my poor mother two or three hundred francs; still, neither of us regretted it. All the poems that were written on this occasion were collected under the title Couronne poÉtique du General Foy, and they made a volume in themselves.
The most remarkable verses in the whole volume were by a beautiful young girl of seventeen or eighteen, called Delphine Gay, who had just become known by a volume of Essais poÉtiques. This is the elegy which the death of General Foy inspired her to write; it was quoted in all the newspapers of the day and was immensely popular:—
"Pleurez, FranÇais, pleurez! la patrie est en deuil;
Pleurez le dÉfenseur que la mort vous enlÈve;
Et vous, nobles guerriers, sur son muet cercueil
Disputez-vous l'honneur de dÉposer son glaive!
Vous ne l'entendrez plus, l'orateur redoutÉ
Dont l'injure jamais ne souilla l'Éloquence;
Celui qui, de nos rois respectant la puissance,
En fidÈle sujet parla de libertÉ:
Le ciel, lui dÉcernant la sainte rÉcompense,
A commencÉ trop tÔt son immortalitÉ!
Son bras libÉrateur dans la tombe est esclave;
Son front pur s'est glacÉ sous le laurier vainqueur,
Et le signe sacrÉ, cette Étoile du brave,
Ne sent plus palpiter son coeur.
Hier, quand de ses jours la source fut tarie,
La France, en le voyant sur sa couche Étendu,
Implorait un accent de cette voix chÉrie ...
HÉlas! au cri plaintif jetÉ par la patrie
C'est la premiÈre fois qu'il n'a pas rÉpondu!"
General Foy's funeral took place on 30 November. The body was carried from his house to the church of Notre-Dame de Lorette; and thirty thousand persons followed it, in spite of a pouring rain which fell unceasingly from noon until four o'clock in the afternoon, and hundreds of thousands of spectators lined the roadway. The livery of the Duc d'OrlÉans could be distinguished among the mourning carriages which formed the procession. The day after the funeral the following song, directed against the prince who had just given a public expression of his appreciation of the talent and character of the noble general and illustrious patriot, could be heard in every street of Paris:—
AIR—Tous les bourgeois de ChÂtres
"Bon Dieu! quelle cohue!
Quel attroupement noir!
Il tient toute la rue
Aussi loin qu'on peut voir.
Est-ce pompe funÈbre ou pompe triomphale?
Est-il mort quelque gros richard?
Car j'aperÇois lÀ-bas le char
D'une Altesse Royale.
Est-ce un songe civique?
Est-ce un de ses hÉros
Qu'ainsi la rÉpublique
MÈne au champ du repos?
Un dÉluge nouveau fond sur la capitale;
On ferait rentrer un canard!
Dehors pourquoi voit-on le char
D'une Altesse Royale?
AppuyÉ sur sa canne,
Un vieil et bon bourgeois
Me regarde, ricane,
Et me dit À mi-voix:
Un carbonaro mort cause tout ce scandale;
Tout frÈre a son billet de part;
C'est pourquoi nous voyons le char
D'une Altesse Royale.
'Le dÉfunt qu'on rÉvÈre,
C'est Foy l'homme de bien,
C'est Foy l'homme de guerre,
C'est Foy le citoyen.
Jamais À sa vertu, vertu ne fut Égale!
Moi, je n'en crois rien pour ma part;
Mais, ici, j'aime À voir le char
D'une Altesse Royale.
'Ce Foy, d'aprÈs nature,
Ce dÉputÉ fameux,
Fut un soldat parjure,
Un FranÇais factieux.
Aux vertus de Berton, la sienne fut Égale;
Ce n'est pas l'effet du hasard,
Si nous voyons ici le char
D'une Altesse Royale.
'Sortis de leurs repaires,
Au tricolor signal,
Les amis et les frÈres
Suivent leur gÉnÉral.
De la France c'est lÀ l'Élite libÉrale;
Qu'ils sont bien prÈs du corbillard!
Qu'ils sont bien tous autour du char
D'une Altesse Royale!
'Philippe de ton pÈre
Ne te souvient-il pas?
Dans la mÊme carriÈre
Tu marches sur ses pas.
Tu crois mener, tu suis la horde libÉrale;
Elle rit sous ce corbillard,
En voyant derriÈre son char
Ton Altesse Royale.'"
Although this petty insult was anonymous, the quarter whence it came was guessed, especially as a hundred thousand copies were printed and distributed gratis. Only Government-endowed poets could produce such doggerel; only works that cannot be sold are printed by the hundred thousand. Let us drop this wretched side of the affair. There was a great and noble and magnificent side to it when it was noised abroad that General Foy had died without being able to bequeath his wife anything save his renowned name: a subscription was started which, in three months' time, produced a million [francs].
In the course of one year a Government and a people had each shown that rare article, a fine sense of gratitude: the American Government had voted a million to la Fayette, and the French people had raised a million for the widow and children of General Foy.
Towards the beginning of the year, the death had taken place of a man who had contributed as much to the emancipation of France by his pen, as General Foy had by his speeches. About ten o'clock on the morning of 11 April, Paul-Louis Courier de MÉrÉ was found, assassinated within three-quarters of a league of his country residence, in the wood of LarÇay. He had been killed by a gun or pistol shot, which had entered his right thigh low down; the weapon had been loaded with three small balls, one of which remained in the body, and the other two had gone through and out again. The wad was found by the side of the shot inside the body, showing that the victim had been killed at close quarters; his clothes, too, were singed round the wounded part. Three people were arrested, Symphorien and Pierre Dubois, carters, who both pleaded, and proved, an alibi and were discharged; and Louis FrÉmont, whom the jury acquitted. So Paul-Louis Courier, the famous savant, the precursor of M. de Cormenin, a pre-eminently intellectual man, was murdered without his assassinator being found out. The Liberal party lost in Courier one of their hardiest champions; he did for the pamphlet what BÉranger did for the chanson.
But the death that produced the profoundest and most stirring sensation was that of the Emperor Alexander, which was to influence not only the affairs of France, but the fate of the whole world. When I was a little child, I narrowly escaped being run over at Villers-Cotterets by a small kibitz, driven by a coachman who was bending over the three horses he was urging forward at a great pace, by the use of a short whip. This coachman wore a leather cap and a green uniform, he had a budding beard, gold rings in his ears, and his face was spotted with freckles. He was driving two officers dressed almost alike, wearing a star, two or three crosses and two enormous epaulettes. One of these two officers was a species of Kalmouk, hideous in countenance, rough in manner, noisy of voice; he swore in French at the top of his voice, and seemed to be particularly well acquainted with our language, so far as its coarse slang expressions were concerned. The other was a handsome man of thirty-three or thirty-four, who looked as gentle and as polished, as his companion seemed vulgar and ill-bred. His hair was golden blond, and although he looked strong and healthy, a sad sweet smile played about his lips whenever he corrected his foul-mouthed companion.
He was the Emperor Alexander: according to Napoleon, the most beautiful and the most treacherous of Greeks. His companion was the Grand-Duke Constantine, and their driver was the Grand-Duke Michel. A strange trio it was, an almost grotesque vision, that passed before my eyes and impressed itself so vividly on my memory that I can see it pass before me to-day, thirty-seven years after—the low carriage drawn by its three horses, the driver and his two companions. Well, the possessor of the gentle and melancholy face, who lived longest in my memory of those three men, was the first to die. Napoleon had done his utmost at ErfÜrt to make not merely an ally of this man, but a brother. They had called each other Charlemagne and Constantine, and Napoleon had offered Alexander the Empire of the East on condition he would leave him in peaceful possession of the Empire of the West. For the emperor had been impressed with one dominant idea during his reign—he had comprehended that our natural ally against our natural enemy England, was Russia. And of a truth, I beg my readers to ponder the question well, instead of accepting hackneyed political traditions that have been handed on ready-made: alliances between nations become firm on account of difference of interests and not because of similarity of principles. Now, of what consequence was it that England proclaimed similar principles to those of France, if she had the same interests throughout the world? What matters it that Russia has different principles so long as her interests are different from ours? Look back over a century, and see how England has increased in power; and you will find that she has robbed us, her neighbouring country and ally, of all she could lay her hands on. Look back over a century of Russian growth and you will see that she has not touched anything belonging to us. Reckon up the colonies of the one and consider the limits of the other. England, who a century ago possessed only five factories in India—Bombay, Singapore, Madras, Calcutta and Chandernagor; who possessed only Newfoundland, in North America, and that strip of coast-line which extends like a fringe from Arcadia to Florida; who possessed only the Lucaya Isles among the Bahamas, the Barbadoes among the Lesser Antilles and Jamaica in the Gulf of Mexico; whose only station in the equinoctial portion of the Atlantic Ocean was St. Helena, of unhappy memory; to-day, like a gigantic sea-spider, has stretched out her web over the five parts of the globe. In Europe she possesses Ireland, Malta, Heligoland and Gibraltar;—in Asia, the town of Aden, which commands the Red Sea, as Gibraltar the Mediterranean; Ceylon, that great peninsula of India, Nepal, Lahore, the Sind, Baluchistan and Kabul; the Singapore Isles, Poulo-Penang and Sumatra; that is to say, a total of 122,333 square leagues of territory, supporting 723,000,000 of men. Without counting, in Africa, Bathurst, the Isles of LÉon, Sierra-Leone, a portion of the coast of Guinea, Fernando-Po, Ascension Isle, and St. Helena, which has already been mentioned; Cape Colony, Natal, Mauritius, Rodriguez, the Seychelles, Socotra; in America, Canada, the whole of the northern continent from the Bank of Newfoundland to the mouth of the Mackenzie River; nearly the whole of the Antilles; Trinidad, part of Guiana, Falkland Isles, Belize, Tuathan and the Bermudas; in the Pacific, half of Australia, Van-Diemen's Land, New Zealand, Norfolk Island, Hawaii, and the general protectorate of the Polynesian Isles. She foresaw everything and is ready for everything. Perhaps one day the isthmus of Panama will be cut through; if so, she has Belize ready on the spot. Perhaps the isthmus of Suez will also be opened up; if so, she has Aden as sentry on guard. The passage from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean will belong to her, and the passage from the Gulf of Mexico to the immense Pacific Ocean. In her Admiralty safes she will hold the keys of India and of the Pacific, as she already does those of the Mediterranean. But this is not all. Through her title of protectress of the Ionian Isles, she holds the entrance to and exit from the Adriatic and the Ægean Seas; she has placed her foot on the territory of the ancient Epirotes and the modern Albanians. When Ireland refuses to lend her her peasantry and Scotland her Highlanders, when the slave-markets of men kept by German princes shall be closed to her, she will draw her recruits from warlike tribes, she will have her Arnautes, like the Viceroy of Egypt, or like the Pacha of Acre and of Tripoli. She will have a squadron at Corfu which will be able to reach the Dardanelles in a few days; she will have at Cephalonia an army which will be able to reach the summit of the Balkans in a week. Then, when she has destroyed our influence at Constantinople, she will do her utmost to supersede Russian influence in Greece, and she will only need a few warships to destroy the whole of Austria's commercial seaboard. That is what England has been doing; and you can see with what powerful allies she has increased her strength—Canada, India, the Antilles and Mauritius;—you can see how she has complete control of the Mediterranean, which Napoleon called a French lake and which was to have no other masters than ourselves; you can see how England has snatched from us piecemeal our protectorate over the Holy Land, Egypt and Tunis, envying us our possession of Algiers, which we bought with blood and treasure and which she managed to cheat us of twenty years ago.
Now let us pass on to Russia, and see what a foreign country it is compared with our own. A hundred years ago, Russia extended from Kiev to the island of St. Lawrence, from the great Ural Mountains to the Gulf of Yenisei, and possibly those are in the right who think that it was with a view to setting a bound to her extension that Behring discovered the Straits which bear his name.
Russia was not to be kept back and has not stopped there—she has broken her ancient limit of Kiev. The Scandinavian serpent which enfolded two-thirds of the globe has expanded: it has opened its jaws to devour Prussia;—in the West, its jaws touch the Vistula on the one side, and on the other the Gulf of Bothnia. In the East, in one of its worm-like expansions, it has leapt across the Behring Straits and has come to a full stop only upon meeting the domains of England. Divided from the other extremity of the world, at the foot of Mt. Saint-Elias and the Blackburn Mountains, as though a barrier mounted up behind it, it bears sway to-day over the whole of that indented coast-line which, by way of an ultimate limit to the surface of the globe, fringes the Arctic Ocean from the Piasina river to the Bear Isles; from Lake Piasina to Holy Cape. Thus, in a century, Russia has acquired Finland, Abo, Viborg, Esthonia, Livonia, Riga, Reval and a part of Lapland from Sweden;—Kurland and Samogitia from Germany;—Lithuania, Volhynia, a part of Galicia, Mohileff, Vitebsk, Polotsk, Minsk, Bialystok, Kamenetz, Tarnopol, Vilna, Grodno, Warsaw, from Poland;—part of Little Tartary, the Crimea, Bessarabia, the coast of the Black Sea, the protectorate of Servia, of Moldavia and of Wallachia, from Turkey;—Georgia, Tiflis, Erivan and a part of Circassia from Persia;—the Aleutian Isles and the north-west part of the northern continent from the St. Lawrence archipelago, from America. From the other side of the Black Sea, she watches Turkey, whom she is ever ready to invade, as soon as France and England permit her. Then if, as seems probable, she some day annexes Sweden, she can close the Straits of Sund on the west and the Dardanelles on the east, and no one can then enter without her leave the Black Sea or the Baltic, those two great mirrors in which are reflected already the towers of Odessa and of St. Petersburg. Her greatest length extends 3800 leagues, and her greatest width is 1400 leagues. In all that extent of territory she has not one inch of land once ours. She has 70,000,000 inhabitants and not one single soul ever belonged to us.
On 24 June 1807, LariboissiÈre, general of artillery, had a raft constructed on the Niemen and placed a pavilion upon it. On the 25th, at one in the afternoon, the Emperor Napoleon, with the Grand-Duke de Berg, Murat, Marshals Berthier and BessiÈres, General Duroc, and Caulaincourt the grand equerry, crossed from the left bank of the river to visit this pavilion, prepared for him. The Emperor Alexander set out at the same time from the right bank, accompanied by the Grand-Duke Constantine, Benigsen, General-in-chief Prince Labanof, General Ouvarov and Count de LiÉven, general aide-de-camp. The two boats both reached the raft at the same time, and thus two emperors stepped on the floating island, confronted one another, clasped hands with each other and embraced.
This meeting was the prelude to the peace of Tilsit: and the peace of Tilsit was meant to destroy England. First of all, by the Berlin decree concerning the Continental blockade, England had been placed in the dock before a European tribunal. In the North Seas, Russia, Denmark and Holland, and in the Mediterranean, France and Spain, had closed their ports to her, and had solemnly engaged to hold no commerce with her.
There were therefore only Portugal on the Atlantic Ocean and Sweden on the Baltic open to her.
By a treaty dated 27 October 1807, Napoleon decided that the House of Braganza had ceased to reign, and on 27 September 1808, Alexander determined to go to war against Gustavus IV. But this was not all. Upon that raft, and in that pavilion, on the Niemen, a much more terrible scheme was arranged.
"It is through India that England must be struck down," Bonaparte had said when he was inducing the Directory to begin the Egyptian campaign. And, from Alexandria, he had despatched a messenger to Tippoo-Sahib, to encourage him to take up arms. But the messenger did not get beyond Aden: the throne of Mysore had fallen and Tippoo-Sahib was dead. From that moment, the conquest of India, which had been one of Bonaparte's dreams, became the rooted purpose of Napoleon.
Why had he made his peace with Alexander? Why had he embraced him on the Niemen? Why had he addressed him as Constantine? Why had he offered him the Empire of the East? In order to gain him as a sure ally, so that, supported on the alliance, he could conquer India. What was to hinder Napoleon from doing what Alexander had done, two thousand two hundred years before his time? It would be ridiculously easy, as you will perceive! Thirty-five thousand Russians could embark on the Volga, descend the river as far as Astrakan, sail down the Caspian Sea and land at Astrabad. Thirty-five thousand French could descend the Danube to the Black Sea; there, they could embark, and at the extreme end of the Sea of Azov land on the banks of the Don; they could ascend the river for nearly a hundred leagues, cross the twelve or fourteen leagues that separated the two rivers, the Don and the Volga, at the point of their nearest approach, then sail down the latter river as far as Astrakan, and at Astrakan embark to join the Russians at Astrabad. Seventy thousand men would meet in the heart of Persia before England was aware of their movements. At Astrabad, they would be exactly a hundred and fifty leagues off the kingdom of Kabul, and it would only take them twelve days to reach India; a dozen days would be sufficient to reach Herat from Astrabad by way of the fertile valley of Herio Rud.
From Herat to Kandahar there were a hundred leagues of splendid road; from Kandahar to Ghizni fifty leagues; from Ghizni to Attock, sixty; and the two armies would be on the Indus, a river with a flow of about a league an hour, with any number of fords, never more than ten to fifteen feet deep, between Attock and Dera-Ismail-Khan. Moreover, it was the route followed by all previous Indian invaders, from the year 1000 to 1729—from Mahmoud de Ghizni to Nadir-Shah. Mahmoud de Ghizni alone had invaded India seven times between the years 1000 and 1021. In his sixth expedition, in three months he had penetrated from his capital at Ghizni, to Chanaud, a town situated a hundred miles south-west of Delhi; in the seventh, he penetrated as far as the centre of Gujarat and razed the temple of Somnath. Then, in 1184, came Mahomet Gouri, who marched upon Delhi by the same route, vi Attock and Lahore, seized the town and substituted his dynasty for that of Mahmoud de Ghizni. Then, in 1396, came Timur the lame, known commonly as Tamerlane. He set forth from Samarcand, crossed the river Amou, leaving Balkh on his right, descended Kabul by the defile of Andesab, followed the river banks until he reached Attock, where he crossed it and invaded the Punjaub, seizing Delhi, which he put to fire and sword, and, the next year, after fourteen months' campaign, returned to Tartary. Then came Baber in 1505, who again crossed the Indus, established himself at Lahore, and from Lahore attacked Delhi, which he took, founding the Mongolian dynasty there. Finally, in 1739, Nadir-Shah descended from Persia upon Kabul, and, following the same route to Lahore, took possession of Delhi, which he pillaged for three days. It would probably be at Delhi that the two combined armies of Russia and France would meet the Anglo-Indian forces. When Napoleon and Alexander had demolished that army, they would march next upon Bombay, rather than on Calcutta, which is only a commercial centre; the destruction of Bombay would be far more damaging to England than that of Calcutta, since it is through Bombay that England communicates with the Red Sea and Europe. If Bombay were taken, the head of the serpent would be crushed; there would only be Madras left, with its poor fortification, and Calcutta with its fortress, which, without being able to support them, would need fifteen thousand men to defend it.
England's power in India would be annihilated, and Russia would succeed her: Alexander would take as his share, Turkey in Europe, Turkey in Asia, Persia and India; while we should take Holland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the whole of the African seaboard from Tunis to Cairo, the Red Sea with its Christian colonies and Syria as far as the Persian Gulf.
I need hardly add that Malta, the Ionian Isles and Greece, to the Dardanelles, would also be yielded up to us. And then the Mediterranean would be truly a French lake, by means of which we should share the commerce of India with our sister Russia.
Had Alexander but kept his promise, instead of betraying his ally, this dream would have become a reality.
So it will be seen that there was another reason for the war with Russia, besides the refusal of the hand of Princess Olga, which everyone persists in thinking the sole cause. Alexander conquered, he would be compelled by force to do what he had refused to do out of goodwill. But God saw otherwise.
CHAPTER IX
The Emperor Alexander—Letter from Czar Nicolas to Karamsine—History after the style of Suetonius and Saint-Simon—Catherine and Potemkin—Madame Braniska—The cost of the imperial cab-drive—A ball at M. de Caulaincourt's—The man with the pipe—The emperor's boatman and coachman
We will now devote a few words to the emperor who had failed Napoleon in his lofty mission of sharing the world, and to the Grand-Duke Constantine, whom the whole of Europe, in ignorance of the family secret we are about to relate, looked upon as his successor.
Russian history is less known than that of other countries, not because it is not worth being known, but because no one dare write it. One man only, Karamsine, received that mission, but he died before he had accomplished his task, on 3 June 1826, in the palace of the Taurida, where the emperor had lodged him.
Three weeks before his death, the Emperor Nicolas, who had been six months on the throne, wrote him the following letter, which might very well serve as an example to certain heads of Governments, who flatter themselves that their ideas are more liberal than, say they, are those of the Czar of All the Russias:—
CZARKOSJELO, 25 May 1826
"NICOLAI-MIKAÏLOVITCH,—As your failing health makes it necessary for you to leave your native country for a time to seek a warmer climate, it gives me much pleasure to express to you, on this occasion, the earnest hope that you will soon return among us with renewed strength, still to serve the interests and the honour of your country as you have hitherto done. I have much pleasure in bearing witness, on behalf of the late Emperor, who was aware of your noble and disinterested devotion to his person, on my own behalf and in the name of all Russia, to our grateful recognition of your services both as citizen and author. The Emperor Alexander said to you, 'The Russian people deserves to know its history'; and the history you have written is worthy of the Russian people.
"I now fulfil the intention which my brother had not time to carry out. The accompanying paper will assure you of my goodwill; it is but an act of justice, so far as I am concerned, but I also regard it in the light of a sacred legacy deputed me by the Emperor Alexander.
"I trust your travels will be beneficial to you, and give you ample strength to finish the principal work of your life."
This letter might have been signed by FranÇois I., Louis XIV. or Napoleon, but it was simply signed "Nicolas." With it was a ukase, informing the Minister of Finance that His Imperial Majesty had granted a pension of five thousand roubles to M. de Karamsine, to be continued to his wife and to his children; the sons were to enjoy the pension until they were old enough to enter the army, the daughters till they married.
Karamsine died before he could finish his history; but, had it been finished, it would only have informed us of the general facts and great events connected with the Russian Empire, and it would not have given us any details of the kind we are about to relate.
There are two ways of writing history: one, after the fashion of Tacitus, the other after that of Suetonius; one like Voltaire, the other like Saint-Simon. Tacitus is magnificent, but we find Suetonius more amusing. Voltaire is limpidly clear, but Saint-Simon is a far more picturesque writer.
We will now write a few pages of Russian history as Suetonius wrote Roman history and as Saint-Simon wrote French history. The reader, of course, knows Catherine II. by name?—she whom Voltaire called the Semiramis of the North; who gave pensions to our literary men when Louis XV. proscribed them or left them to die of hunger even when he had not proscribed them.
Catherine II. was thirty-three years of age; she was beautiful, benevolent and pious; up to that age she had been considered faithful to her husband, Peter III., when, all at once, she learnt that the emperor intended to repudiate her, in order to marry Countess Vorontsov, and as an excuse for this repudiation he proposed to declare that the birth of Paul-Petrovitch had been illegitimate. She quickly perceived that it was a matter of life and death for her, and of the throne for her son; there was a game to be played, and he who was first in the field would win. The tidings were announced to her at ten one night. By eleven, she had left the castle of Peterhof, where she lived, and, as she did not wish her departure to be known by ordering her carriage to be made ready, she stopped a peasant's cart and mounted beside him, the carter imagining he was merely taking up a country woman. She reached St. Petersburg just as day was beginning to dawn. Directly she arrived, she ordered out the regiments in the garrison there without revealing for what object, got together the few friends upon whom she believed she could rely, and went on parade with them before the assembled soldiers. She rode on horseback up and down the lines, addressed the officers, invoking their chivalry as men of honour and appealing to their loyalty as soldiers; then she seized hold of a sword, drew it from its scabbard, flung the scabbard far from her, and, fearing lest the sword might drop out of her unaccustomed hands, asked for a sword-knot to tie it to her wrist. A young officer of twenty-eight heard his sovereign's request through the din of the shouts of enthusiasm raised by the regiments, broke through the ranks, ran up to her side offering her his sword-knot; then, when Catherine had accepted his offer with the gracious smile of a woman bent on reigning as empress, a queen in quest of a throne, the young officer turned aside to fall back in his place; but his horse, which was one day to share in his master's good fortune, refused to turn aside; it reared and danced about, and, being used to cavalry manoeuvres, persisted in ranging itself by the side of the empress's horse. Catherine, who was as superstitious as all are who stake their fortunes upon the cast of a die, fancied she augured from the horse's persistency that its rider would become one of her most powerful defenders; and she promoted him. A week later, after Peter III., who had been made prisoner by the very person whom he thought to make captive, had resigned into Catherine's hands the crown which he had intended to snatch from her, the empress sent for the young officer from the place du SÉnat, made him one of her suite and appointed him groom of the chamber in her palace. This young man's name was Potemkin. From that day, without hindering in the least the reign of the twelve CÆsars, as the new rÉgime was dubbed, Potemkin became the favourite of the empress, and her partiality for him continued to increase.
Many, hoping to replace him, sought to undermine his position and ruined themselves. A young Servian, called Lovitz, himself a protÉgÉ of Potemkin, imagined he had succeeded. He had been placed near the empress by his patron, and resolved to take advantage of his protector's absence to ruin him. How did he bring it about? That must remain one of the secrets of the closet which the walls of the palace of the Hermitage has not revealed to us. It is only known that Potemkin was sent for to the palace; that, upon entering his apartments, he was told he was utterly disgraced, that he was exiled, and he was threatened with death if he did not obey. He went at once, travel-stained as he was after his journey, to the empress's rooms. A young orderly officer tried to bar his entrance, but Potemkin took him round the hips, lifted him up, flung him across the chamber, entered the empress's room and, in ten minutes' time, came out with a paper in his hand.
"Here, monsieur," he said to the young officer, who was still considerably knocked about by the treatment he had just received, "this is the brevet of a captaincy that Her Majesty has been graciously pleased to sign for you."
That same day, Lovitz was exiled to the town of Schaklov, which was made into a principality for him.
From time to time Potemkin dreamt of the duchy of Courland and the throne of Poland; but, upon further reflection, he saw that he did not want either, for whether the crown were ducal or regal, he knew he could not be more powerful nor more fortunate than he was in his present position. Did not there pass through his hands every hour, to play with as a cowboy plays with pebbles, more diamonds, rubies and emeralds than any one crown could contain? Had he not couriers at his beck and call to fetch him sturgeon from the Volga, water melons from Astrakan, grapes from the Crimea, and most beautiful flowers from whatever quarter they could be found? Did he not give his sovereign every New Year's Day a plate of cherries that cost him ten thousand roubles?
The Prince de Ligne (grandfather of the prince of that name, with whom we are acquainted), author of the charming memoirs which bear his name, and of the most intellectually refined letters that have probably ever been penned, knew Potemkin, and said of him—
"That man was a compound of colossal, romantic and barbaric ideas."
The Prince de Ligne was right. For thirty years, not a single action, good or bad, was done in Russia save through his instrumentality: angel or demon, he created or destroyed as the caprice took him; he set everything at sixes and sevens, but he inspired life into everything; nothing went on without him; when he reappeared everything else disappeared and, before his presence, vanished into Limbo.
One day he conceived the notion of building a palace for Catherine; she had just conquered Taurida, and this palace was to be a monument in memory of that conquest. In three months' time, the palace was raised in Catherine's capital, without Catherine knowing anything about it; then, one evening, Potemkin invited the empress to a night-fÊte which he desired to give in her honour, he said, in the palace that extended along the left bank of the Neva; and there, amidst fine trees, brilliantly lighted up, and shining with marble, she found the fairy palace that seemed to have sprung up at one wave of a wand, filled with statues, magnificently furnished, its lakes abounding in gold and silver and azure fishes.
Everything connected with this man was mysterious, his death as well as his life, his unexpected end just as his undreamt of beginning. He had passed a year in St. Petersburg in fÊtes and orgies of all kinds, had succeeded in advancing Russia's boundaries as far as the Caucasus, and was thinking that, this new frontier line now made, he had done enough for his and Catherine's glory. Suddenly, he learnt that old Repnin had taken advantage of his absence to defeat the Turks, and, forcing them to demand peace, had accomplished more in two months than he had in three years. So there was then no more rest for the favourite, but more glory ahead for the general. He was ill, but that did not matter! He would wrestle with his disease and slay it. He set out, crossed Jassy and reached Otchakoff, where he halted for a night's rest; next day, at dawn, he resumed his journey; but, after traversing several versts, the atmosphere inside his carriage stifled him, and he had it stopped: his cloak was spread on the bank of a ditch, and he lay down on it, panting for breath; he died in his niece's arms before a quarter of an hour had elapsed! I knew his niece; I have heard her relate the details of her uncle's death as though it had only just happened. She was seventy when I knew her. Her name was Madame Braniska, and she lived at Odessa. She was very wealthy, being worth between sixty and a hundred millions, possibly. She possessed some of the finest sapphires, pearls, rubies and diamonds in the world. How had she begun such a collection of precious gems? She would relate—for she dearly loved talking about anything that concerned her uncle—that Potemkin, as we have said, liked nothing better than playing with precious stones which he poured in cascades from hand to hand; those which, escaping from the main stream of the cataract, dropped to the ground, fell to the spoilt child, who made a collection of them. Often, when he composed himself to rest, on an ottoman, a divan or a couch, Potemkin would push his arms under the cushion, and then, when he fell asleep, his hands would relax and a handful of pearls dropped out, which he would forget to pick up when he awoke. His niece knew this, and, either during his sleep or after he awoke, she used to raise the cushion and carry off the treasures. What did it matter to Potemkin? His pockets were full of other precious stones! And, when his pockets were empty, had he not casks full, like the sovereigns of Samarcand, Bagdad and of Bassora, mentioned in the Thousand and One Nights?
This Madame Braniska was a singular character, with her sixty to a hundred millions. She often had fits of avarice, interspersed with bursts of generosity—very unusual traits to find combined in one person. For instance, she would send her son, who lived either at Moscow or St. Petersburg, 500,000 francs for a New Year's gift, and add a postscript to the letter in closing it, saying—
"I have a dreadful cold; send me some jujubes, but wait till you see a convenient opportunity; the carriage from Moscow and Odessa is ruinous!"
Catherine nearly died when she heard of Potemkin's death; those two great hearts and lives seemed to beat in perfect unison. She fainted away three times on receipt of the fatal news, mourned him for long and ever regretted him.
Paul-Petrovitch, for whom she had saved the crown when she took it away from Peter III., became the father of that rich posterity of which I had seen a specimen in the kibitz driven by the Grand Duke Michael, besides the emperor reigning to-day.
At that period no one for a moment thought he would ever reign. Ranging over her fine and numerous company of descendants, the eyes of Catherine were most constantly fixed on the two eldest, and by their very names—one was called Alexander and the other Constantine—she seemed to have divided the world in advance between them. This idea had, indeed, been so firmly rooted in her mind, that she had them painted, while they were both infants, one cutting the Gordian knot, the other carrying the Roman standard. She carried the idea even farther, and had them educated in conformity with the same two great ideas. Constantine, whom she destined for the Empire of the East, had only Greek nurses and tutors, whilst Alexander, destined to rule the Western Empire, was surrounded by English, Germans and French. Nothing could have been more diametrically different than the methods employed in the education of the august pupils. Whilst Alexander, aged twelve, said to Graft, his professor in experimental physics, who was telling him that light was a continual emanation from the sun, "That cannot be true, or the sun would grow smaller every day," Constantine said to his special tutor, Saken, who was endeavouring to get him to learn to read, "No, I do not want to learn to read; you are everlastingly reading, and it only makes you more and more stupid."
We shall see later how mistaken the empress's forecasts were with regard to Constantine; but first we will devote a little attention to the Emperor Alexander.
He was much beloved both by the people and the nobles; loved on account of his own character, and perhaps even more so because of the fear with which Constantine was regarded. There are hosts of anecdotes told in his praise, doing honour to his kindliness, his courage and his ability. Once, when he was walking on foot, as was his custom, seeing threatenings of rain, he hailed a drovsky to take him to the imperial palace; on arrival, the emperor searched in his pockets and saw he had no money.
"Wait," he said to the driver; "I will have your fare sent out to you."
"Oh yes, I know that tale," growled the man.
"What are you saying?" demanded the emperor.
"I am saying that I can't rely on your promises."
"Why not?" asked Alexander.
"Oh, I know what I am talking about," said the driver.
"Well, let me hear all about it."
"I say that there are too many persons whom I take up to houses with double doors, who go inside without paying me their fares, too many debtors whom I never see again."
"What! even at the emperor's palace?"
"Oh, there are more there than anywhere else; you don't know what short memories great nobles have."
"But you should complain, and denounce the thieves, and have them taken up," said Alexander.
"I have a nobleman taken up! Your excellency surely knows that we poor devils have no power to do anything of the kind. If it were one of ourselves, it would be another matter and easy enough," added the driver, pointing to his long beard, "for they know how to get hold of us; but all you great nobles have your chins too smoothly shaven for that.... Good-night, there is nothing more to be said, unless your excellency will please search your pockets once more, in case there is a trifle with which to pay me."
"No," said the emperor, "it would be useless ... but I have an idea."
"What is it?"
"You see this cloak—it is worth more than your fare, is it not?"
"Certainly! And if you excellency wishes to give it me without expecting the change ...?"
"No! keep it as a pledge and do not give it up till I send someone for it with your fare."
"All right, well and good; you are something like a reasonable gentleman, you are," replied the driver.
Five minutes later, the driver received a note for a hundred roubles, in exchange for the pledged cloak. The emperor had paid off the debts of those who came to see him as well as his own; but the driver made out he was still out of pocket.
During the time in which Napoleon and Alexander were on friendly terms, when he inclined towards him and smiled at the line,
"L'amitiÉ d'un grand homme est un bienfait des dieux!"
the Emperor Alexander was one night at a ball, given by M. de Caulaincourt, the French Ambassador, and at midnight the host was informed that the house was on fire. The remembrance of the terrible accidents that had happened in a fire at the Prince of Schwartzenberg's ball was still in everybody's mind, so Caulaincourt's first fear when he received news of the fire was that there would be a panic and the same disastrous results would happen at his house. He therefore decided to make sure first himself how serious the danger was, so he placed an aide-de-camp at every door with directions that no one should be allowed to go out, and he made his way up to the emperor.
"Sire, the house is on fire," he said in a whisper. "I am going myself to see how things are; it is important that no one should be told of the danger until we can ascertain the amount and nature of the peril. My aides-de-camp have received orders to prevent any person from going out, except your Majesty and their Imperial Highnesses the Grand-Dukes and Grand-Duchesses. If your Majesty therefore desires to withdraw, the way is clear.... But I may, perhaps, be permitted to suggest that no one will be so ready to take fright at the fire if they see your Majesty among them."
"Very good," said the emperor; "go, I will stay here."
M. de Caulaincourt went out and discovered that, as he had anticipated, the danger was not so grave as he had at first been given to understand. He went back to the ballroom, and found the emperor dancing a polonaise. They exchanged significant glances, and the emperor danced to the finish. When the dance was at an end, he asked Caulaincourt how matters stood.
"It is all right, sire," the ambassador replied; "the fire has been extinguished." And that was all.
It was not until the next day that the guests who had attended that magnificent fÊte learnt that, for a quarter of an hour, they had, as M. de Salvandy expressed it, been "dancing upon a volcano."
We have mentioned that the Emperor Alexander liked walking alone about the streets of St. Petersburg; he also indulged in the same habit when he travelled about. He was once journeying through Little Russia, when he reached a large village, and whilst the grooms were changing horses he jumped out of his carriage and told the postillions that he meant to walk on on foot for a while, therefore they need not hurry after him. Then, alone, clad simply in a military cloak, and divested of all his insignia, he began his walk. When he got to the end of the village, he found there were two roads and did not know which he ought to take, so he went up to a man who was dressed in a military cloak very similar to his own. The man was sitting smoking a pipe at his front door.
"My friend," inquired the emperor, "which of those two roads ought I to take to get to——?"
At this question, the man with the pipe eyed the interrogator from head to foot and, astounded that such an ordinary looking traveller should dare to speak with that familiarity to a man of his importance (especially in Russia, where differences in rank place a great gulf between superiors and inferiors), he went on puffing at his pipe, and snapped out—
"The road to the right."
The emperor understood, and respected the reason for his haughty indignation.
"Forgive me, monsieur," he said, touching his cap, as he went up to the man with the pipe, "may I ask one more question ...?"
"What is it?"
"May I ask your rank in the army?"
"Guess it."
"Well ... perhaps Monsieur is a lieutenant?"
"Higher."
"A captain?"
"Higher still."
"Major?"
"Go on."
"Commandant of a battalion?"
"Yes, and I didn't gain it save by hard work!..."
The emperor bowed.
"And now," said the man with the pipe, persuaded that he was talking to an inferior, "who are you, my good man?"
"Guess," replied the emperor, in his turn.
"Lieutenant?"
"Higher."
"Captain?"
"Higher still."
"Major?"
"Go on."
"Commandant of a battalion?"
"Try again."
The questioner drew his pipe out of his mouth.
"Colonel?"
"You haven't got it yet."
The man stood up and assumed a more respectful attitude.
"Your excellency is a lieutenant-general, perhaps?"
"You are getting nearer."
"Then your Highness must be a field-marshal?"
"Have one more guess, Commandant."
"His Imperial Majesty!" exclaimed the stupefied questioner, letting his pipe fall and breaking it in pieces.
"Exactly so," Alexander replied, with a smile.
"Ah! sire," cried the officer, clasping his hands together, "I entreat your forgiveness!"
"Oh! what the deuce is there to forgive?" said Alexander. "I asked you to tell me the way and you told me. Thank you."
And the emperor, waving his hand to the poor stupefied commandant, took the road on his right and was soon caught up by his carriage.
On another occasion also, when he was travelling (for the life of Alexander the son of Paul was spent like that of Alexander the son of Philip, in perpetual journeyings), while crossing a lake in the department of Archangel, the emperor was overtaken by a violent gale. Alexander was of a melancholy temperament, and the melancholy grew upon him, so he would oftener than not travel quite alone. He was thus alone in a boat with only the boatman, and the waves of the lake, lashed by the tempest, rose high and threatened to swamp them.
"My friend," said the emperor to the boatman, who was fast losing his nerve under the weight of the responsibility that rested on him, "about eighteen hundred years ago CÆsar was placed in just such a position as we are, and he said with pride to his boatman, 'Do not be afraid, you are carrying CÆsar and his good luck!' I am not CÆsar; I believe more in God and have less faith in my luck than the conqueror of Pompey, but just listen to me: forget that I am the emperor, look upon me simply as a man like yourself, and try to save both of us."
At these words, which the Russian boatman no doubt understood much better than the pilot Opportunus understood CÆsar's injunctions, the brave fellow renewed his struggle, and by strenuous efforts managed to land the boat safely on the shore.
Unluckily, Alexander was not so fortunate in his coachman as he was with his boatman. When he was once travelling in the provinces bordering the Don, he was violently thrown out of his drovsky and his leg was injured. Being a slave to that discipline which he enforced on others, and which he made more efficacious by his own example, he insisted on continuing his journey in spite of his injuries, in order to arrive at his destination on the promised day. But fatigue and want of prompt attention caused blood-poisoning from the wound. Erysipelas set in in the leg, recurred again and again, confining the emperor to bed for weeks, and leaving him lame for months. He had a violent attack of the same complaint during the winter of 1824. He was living at Czarkosjelo, his favourite retreat, to which he became more and more attached, as it enabled him to give way to the deep melancholy which preyed upon his spirits. He had been out walking until late, forgetting the cold, so absorbed was he in his melancholy reflections, and when he reached home he was frozen; he ordered his meal to be sent up to his room, and that same night he was attacked by erysipelas, accompanied by a higher temperature than in any of his previous illnesses. The fever was so sharp that he became delirious in a few hours. They took the emperor in a closed sledge to St. Petersburg, and as soon as they got him there, they put him in the hands of the cleverest physicians. All these, except his own special surgeon, Dr. Wylie, were unanimously of opinion that his leg must be amputated. But Wylie took upon himself the sole responsibility of attending to the august patient, and once more managed to save his life. The emperor returned to Czarkosjelo almost before he had recovered from his illness; for all his other residences had become distasteful to him. There he was alone with the phantom of his solitary grandeur—a phantom that necessarily terrified him. He only gave audience at special hours to those ministers who did his business for him; his life was more like a Trappist mourning over his sins than that of a great emperor with countless lives in his care.
Alexander rose at six in winter and at five in summer, dressed himself, went into his study, where he would find a fine cambric handkerchief folded and laid at the left of his desk, and a packet of ten freshly-cut quill pens at the right side of it. There the emperor would set himself to work, never using the same pen twice over if he were interrupted in his labours, though his pens were only used to sign his name; then, when he had finished his morning's budget and signed everything, he would go out into the park, where, no matter what rumours of conspiracy were abroad (and for two years I there had been no lack of these), he would always walk unattended, with no other guard than the palace sentinels.
About five o'clock he would return to the palace, dine alone, and retire to bed in his private rooms to the melancholy strains of music selected by himself, lulled to sleep in the same sad frame of mind in which he had passed his waking hours.
The empress accepted this physical and mental separation with a philosophy that was characteristic of her. Her gentle influence could be felt surrounding the emperor, without ever being perceived, and she seemed to watch over her beloved husband like an angel from heaven.
The winter and spring of 1824 passed in this manner; but, when summer came, the physicians unanimously declared that a voyage was necessary for the restoration of the emperor's health, advising the Crimea as the best climate to hasten his convalescence. And, as though he had a prevision that he was reaching the end of his life, Alexander made no plans for the coming year. He consented with profound indifference to everything that was decided for him. The empress was more alarmed by this condition of morbid acquiescence, than if he had been in a constant state of irritability; she begged and obtained leave to accompany him; and, after a public service soliciting a blessing on his journey, attended by the whole of the imperial family, Alexander left St. Petersburg, driven by his faithful coachman Ivan, and followed by his surgeon Wylie, and by several orderly officers under the command of General Diebitch.
He left on 13 September at four in the morning, and the empress started on the 15th. Only his dead body was destined to return to the capital four months later.
CHAPTER X
Alexander leaves St. Petersburg—His presentiments of his death—The two stars seen at Taganrog—The emperor's illness—His last moments—How they learnt of his death in St. Petersburg—The Grand-Duke Constantine—His character and tastes—Why he renounced his right to the imperial throne—Jeannette Groudzenska
The departure of the emperor naturally meant an increase of work before he left, so that he was not able to write and bid his mother, the dowager-empress, adieu until four o'clock on the afternoon of 12 September. At four o'clock it suddenly became very dark, a great cloud overshadowing the light. The emperor called his valet.
"Foedor," he said, "bring me lights."
The valet brought four candles; but it grew light again before the emperor had done writing, and the valet immediately entered to put them out.
"Sire," he asked, "shall I take away the lights?"
"Why so?" asked the emperor.
"Because we look on it as an ill omen to write by artificial light when it is daylight."
"What conclusion do you draw from that?"
"I, sire?... I do not infer anything from it."
"But I do. I understand. You think that people passing by, seeing the light inside, will imagine there has been a death in in the house."
"Exactly so, sire."
"Ah, well, take away the candles."
The emperor did not seem to take any notice of his valet's observations, but the incident remained in his mind.
As we have already noted, he left the city of St. Petersburg at four in the morning of 13 September, just as the sun began to rise.
He stopped his carriage, and stood looking back at the city of the Czar Peter, plunged in deep sadness, as though warned by some inward voice that he was looking upon it for the last time. The emperor had spent the previous night in prayer, both in the convent of Saint-Alexandre Nevsky and in the cathedral of Kasan. In the monastery he had an interview, lasting nearly an hour, with the monks and the metropolitan Seraphin. The latter related a story to the emperor of a monk of his convent who had voluntarily submitted himself to a life of the most scrupulous austerity by shutting himself up in a hollow place, scooped out of the thick walls of the convent, where he meant to pass all his remaining days. In spite of the lateness of the hour, the emperor asked to be taken to this monk's cell, and talked with him for nearly twenty minutes.
Before leaving St. Petersburg, Alexander wished to see his beloved Czarkosjelo once more. He mounted on horseback at the palace door and rode over all his favourite haunts, as though to bid them farewell. When Foedor asked Alexander when he expected to return to the imperial palace, he pointed with his finger to an image of Christ and said—
"He alone knows!"
The emperor reached Taganrog towards the close of September. On 5 October the empress, who could only journey by short stages on account of her state of health, also arrived there. The emperor advanced a little ahead of the empress, and together they made a solemn entry into the town.
Why had the emperor taken a liking for Taganrog? It seemed inexplicable except on the grounds of that fatal destiny which compels men towards the place in which it is foreordained they are to die.
Taganrog is situated in the finest climate of the Crimea, in the midst of a fertile country and in a pleasant place at the entrance to the Sea of Azov, close to the mouths of the Don and the Volga; but the town itself contains nothing but a heap of tumbledown houses, of which about a sixth are built of brick or stone, whilst the remainder are really nothing but wooden huts smeared over with a mixture of clay and mud. The streets are certainly wide, but they are unpaved, and the soil is so powdery that, after the least shower of rain, one sinks in mud up to one's knees. Then, when the heat of the sun has dried up this damp marsh, the cattle and horses that pass by raise such clouds of dust that it is impossible in full daylight to distinguish a man from a beast of burden ten paces away. This dust penetrates everything; it gets through closed blinds, tightly fastened shutters and the most impenetrable curtains; it makes its way through clothing, no matter how thick it be, and fills the water with a kind of crust that can only be precipitated by boiling it with salts of tartar. The emperor alighted at the governor's house, but he went out first thing in the morning and did not return until dinner-time at two o'clock. At four, he took another long excursion, not returning until nightfall, neglecting all the precautions that the natives of those parts themselves take against the dangerous malarial fevers common along the entire coast-line; at night, he slept on a camp bedstead, his head resting on a leather pillow. Presentiments of his approaching end never left him. The very evening of his arrival at Taganrog, just as his valet was about to leave him for the night, he said to him—
"Foedor, the candles that I ordered you to take out of my study at St. Petersburg constantly recur to my mind; before very long they will be burning for me."
During one night in the month of October several of the inhabitants of Taganrog saw, at two in the morning, above the house where the emperor was living, two stars which at first were a wide distance apart from one another, then approached each other and then again separated. This phenomenon was repeated three times. Then one of the stars gradually grew into a luminous ball of considerable dimensions, obliterating the other, and soon afterwards disappeared below the horizon and was no longer seen. In its fall, the bigger star left the smaller one behind in its place; but it, too, paled by degrees, and soon also disappeared. The superstitious interpreted the larger and more brilliant star to be the Emperor Alexander, and the other the empress; they augured from the portent that the emperor was soon to die, and that the empress was only to survive her husband for a few months.
Besides his daily excursions, the emperor would make others that lasted for days together, either in the country round the Don, or at Tcherkask or at Donetz. He was prepared to start for Astrakan, when Count Voronzov, Governor of Odessa, arrived to tell the emperor that discontent was increasing throughout the whole of the Crimea and would cause considerable trouble, if the emperor did not quell the insubordination, and calm the disquiet by his personal presence.
There was a distance of some three hundred leagues to be traversed; but what are three hundred leagues in Russia? Alexander promised the empress he would return within a month, and gave orders for his departure. He was impatient and irritable throughout the journey—an attitude of mind so at variance with his usual gentle melancholy that it surprised all around him; he complained that the horses did not go fast enough; of the badness of the roads, of the cold in the morning, the heat at noonday, the frost at night. Dr. Wylie advised the traveller to take precautions against the changes of temperature which he seemed to feel so much, but here the emperor's wayward mood showed itself: he rejected both cloaks and capes, apparently courting the very dangers his friends advised him to guard against. Finally, one evening he caught cold, and a persistent cough developed into an intermittent fever, which, aggravated by the patient's obstinacy, had, by the time they reached Oridov, become a serious fever, which the doctor recognised as an attack of the same kind that had raged all autumn through from Taganrog to Sebastopol. They immediately turned back towards Taganrog, the emperor himself giving the order to retrace their journey. Whilst on the way back, the doctor urged upon his patient the necessity for taking prompt measures, for he knew the gravity of the nature of his illness. But the emperor objected.
"Leave me alone," he said. "Surely I know myself best what I need—I want rest, solitude and quiet.... Look after my nerves, doctor; it is they that are in such a deplorable state."
"Sire," replied Wylie, "kings are much more subject to nervous disorders than ordinary individuals."
"True," said Alexander in reply, "specially nowadays.... Ah! doctor, doctor," he continued, shaking his head, "I have ample reason for being unwell!"
In spite of the doctor's objections, Alexander would ride on horseback part of the way, until he felt compelled to return to his carriage, and he was so exhausted by the time he set foot in the governor's house at Taganrog that he fainted away.
Although the empress was herself dying of heart disease, she forgot her own sufferings, and rallied when she saw her husband's condition. When he was a little better, Alexander wrote to reassure his imperial mother, telling her that although he was ill, she need not be anxious; that he was able to take food and there was nothing serious to fear. This was on 18 November. On the 24th, the fever set in with increased vigour, and the erysipelas in the leg disappeared.
"See!" cried the emperor, when he saw what had occurred,—"this is the end ... I shall die as my sister died!"
But he still refused to take any medicines. As Dr. Wylie stood by his side that night, he exclaimed suddenly, as he turned towards the doctor—
"What a deed! What a deplorable act!"
What reminiscence was it that drew such a sorrowful exclamation from him? It can hardly be doubted that he was referring to the death of Paul, who was smothered in a room above his head and whose last groans he heard, without daring to go to his rescue.
On the 27th, the emperor at last gave himself into his doctor's hands, who at once applied leeches; this application gave him a little relief, but the fever soon returned worse than ever. They tried sinapisms, but could not reduce the temperature, and the patient realised then that it was time he prepared for his end. A confessor was brought to him at five in the morning.
"Father," Alexander said to him, as he held out his hand, "deal with me as an ordinary being and not as an emperor."
The priest drew close to his bedside, received the imperial confession and administered the sacraments to the noble invalid. Towards two o'clock the emperor's pains increased terribly.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, overcome by his sufferings. "My God! must kings suffer more when they come to die than other men?..."
During the night he became unconscious, and remained in a state of complete lethargy the whole of the next day. On the 29th he recovered consciousness, and faint hopes were raised. The empress watched by his bed, and noticed that he slept a little before dawn. He did not wake until nine the next morning, just as the sun shone out from behind some clouds as brilliantly as on the finest summer day. As Alexander opened his eyes, he saw that he was flooded with sunlight.
"What beautiful weather!" he exclaimed, with that fervid joy at sight of the sun so often noticed in the dying.
Then, turning to the empress and kissing her hand, he said—
"Madam, you must be worn out with fatigue."
Then he relapsed into the same condition of torpor from which he had momentarily emerged. All hope of his recovery was given up on the 30th. Nevertheless, towards two o'clock in the morning, General DiÉbitch mentioned an old man, named Alexandrovitch, who had, he said, saved several Tartars from the same fever that had attacked the emperor. They sent for this old man at Dr. Wylie's instigation, and he came at eight. He looked at the emperor, shook his head and said—
"It is too late; besides, those I have cured did not suffer from that complaint."
And he left, taking with him the empress's last ray of hope. However, the emperor reopened his eyes towards half-past ten that morning, and all waited anxiously for him to speak. But he did not utter a word; he only took the empress's hand, kissed it and laid it on his heart. The empress remained bent over him in the position her husband's hand caused her to take, and at ten minutes to eleven the emperor died. The empress's face was so close to his that she felt him draw his last breath.
She uttered a terrible cry and fell on her knees in prayer; not even the doctor dared to approach the body, for she had made a sign to all around not to disturb her. Then, some minutes later, she rose in a calmer state of mind, closed the emperor's eyes, which had remained open, tied a handkerchief round his head to prevent his jaws from dropping, kissed his hands already as cold as ice, and, again falling on her knees, she remained in prayer by the bedside until the doctors were obliged to ask her to withdraw into another room, while they made a post-mortem examination.
Whilst this sad operation proceeded, the widowed empress wrote to the dowager-empress:—
"Our angel is in heaven, while I still linger on earth.... Alas! who would ever have thought that I, weak and ill as I am, should have survived him?... Mother, I entreat you not to desert me, for I am absolutely alone in this world of sorrow!
"The face of our beloved dead has resumed its expression of gentle kindliness; the smile upon it assures me that he is happy, and that his eyes see better things than here below.... My only comfort in this irreparable loss is that I shall not long survive him!..."
And, indeed, the empress died six months later.
The letter was sent off by courier to St. Petersburg, where the emperor's illness was already known. He had himself written, on 17 November, to say that he had had to return to Taganrog on account of illness. On the 24th, the Empress Elisabeth had written to the Grand-Duchess Helena asking her to inform the Empress Marie that the emperor was going on well. On the 27th, however, General Diebitch had sent news that the emperor was suffering from an attack of yellow fever; and on 29 November the Empress Elisabeth again wrote to the dowager-empress to tell her of a temporary improvement in the emperor's condition. Although this improvement was so slight, the dowager-empress and the Grand-Dukes Nicolas and Michel gave orders for a Te Deum to be sung on 9 December in the great metropolitan cathedral of Kasan. The people flocked there joyfully, for the good news had been exaggerated for their sake. Towards the close of the service the Grand-Duke Nicolas was advised that a messenger from Taganrog was waiting for him in the sacristy; he was the bearer of a despatch that had to be delivered only in person. The grand-duke rose and went into the sacristy, where he found the messenger, and received from his hands the letter we have already read. He did not even need to read the letter: its contents were revealed to him by the black seal.
The Grand-Duke Nicolas sent for the metropolitan and announced to him the melancholy tidings, charging him to break the news as gently as possible to the dowager-empress, as he felt he had not the courage to fulfil the cruel mission himself. He then returned and took his place by her who, in ignorance of the sad truth, was praying for the life of her dead son. The grand-duke had scarcely resumed his position by her side before the metropolitan re-entered the choir. He was a fine-looking old man, with a long white beard and hair that fell almost to his waist. At a sign from him, all the voices that were chanting hymns of thankful praise to Heaven ceased, and a death-like silence followed. Then, with the eyes of all upon him, he walked slowly and solemnly towards the altar, took down the massive silver crucifix and draped it with a black veil; then he advanced to the dowager-empress and gave her the black draped crucifix to kiss.
"My son is dead!" cried the empress; and she fell on her knees, even as, eighteen centuries before, at the foot of her Son's Cross, another Mother, the Queen of Heaven, whose name she bore, had fallen.
And in that way Russia learnt she had lost her emperor.
We promised we would relate the history of the strange self-sacrifice by which a man gave up an empire—a history all the more strange in that the empire was an absolute monarchy, and that he would then have succeeded to fifty-three millions of subjects, and to a territory which already covered a seventh part of the world, without reckoning future possibilities of expansion. This history is as follows:—
The reader knows what an Ukranian bear Constantine was, for ever growling, grumbling or roaring, whose countenance was no more like a human being's than the face of Kalmouk is like that of a man; he was as rough as his brother Alexander was courteous, as ugly as his brother Nicolas was handsome; a true son of Paul when he was in a bad temper. We have learnt his reply as a lad to his own tutor, who tried to make him learn to read—
"I do not want to learn to read; you are always reading, and you become more and more stupid every day."
It will be readily believed that a mind built in that fashion had no inclinations in the direction of learning. But in proportion as the young prince grew to detest his mental exercises, his love of military pursuits increased. Here he took after his father, Paul, who rose at five in the morning after his wedding-night, to control the manoeuvres of a platoon of soldiers on guard near by. His military predilection led Constantine to spend all his time in soldierly exercises, on horseback, perfecting himself in the use of the lance, manoeuvring his men, all of which accomplishments seemed to him far more useful than geometry, astronomy or botany. They only succeeded in making him learn French by means of telling him that the best books on military tactics were written in that language. Great was his delight when Paul had a rupture with France and when Souvarov was sent into Italy. The grand-duke was placed under command of an old marshal, a chief who exactly suited Constantine, since he was one of the old Russian stock, more savage, more brutal, more uncivilised, if that be possible, than his young pupil. Constantine took part in his victories on the Mincio, and in his defeats among the Alps; he watched him dig the grave in which he wished to be buried alive. The consequence of association with such an uncouth companion was to foster the young prince's own peculiarities to such an extent, that people more than once queried whether Paul, in being forced to leave the empire to Alexander, had made a special point of bequeathing his mad temperament to Constantine.
After the French campaign and the Treaty of Vienna, Constantine was made Viceroy of Poland. It was just the post for him. Here, placed at the head of a warlike nation, whose whole history is one long struggle, his military tastes grew with redoubled energy; unfortunately, he substituted lawless encounters for the bloody struggles in which he had just taken part. Summer or winter—whether living in the palace of Bruhl or residing in the palace of BelvÉdÈre—he was up and equipped in his general's uniform by three in the morning, without the assistance in his toilet of any valet. He would then seat himself before a table covered with regimental lists and military orders, in a room wherein every single panel on the walls was painted with different regimental costumes; he read the reports that had been drawn up the day before, either by Colonel Axamilovisky or by Suboividsky, the Prefect of Police, signifying his approval or disapproval of them in a side note. With the exception of letter-writing to some members of his family, these were the only occasions he handled a pen. This work generally took him until nine in the morning, when he partook of the hasty breakfast of a soldier. He then went down to the parade ground to inspect a couple of regiments of infantry or a squadron of cavalry. The band saluted him as he approached, and the review immediately began. The platoons marched past the viceroy, a little way off, with mathematical precision—a sight that always filled him with childish joy, and moved him as much as though the men were marching to a real battle. He would stand on foot watching them pass by, attired in the green uniform of the Light Infantry, his cap, which was decorated with cocks' feathers, posed on his head in such a manner that one of the corners touched his left epaulette, whilst the other pointed heavenwards at an alarming angle. Below shone, like two carbuncles, eyes that seemed more like a jackal's than those of a human being, set below a narrow forehead, which was furrowed with deep lines, indicating constant and anxious preoccupation; and his thick long eyebrows were crooked from habitual frowning. In his moments of extreme happiness, the strange vivaciousness of the czarovitch's expression, coupled with the snub nose that looked like a skeleton's, and his protruding lower lip, gave a very savage appearance to his head. His neck, which he could push out and withdraw at will, came in and out of his collar just like a tortoise's from below its shell. As he listened to the music and saw the men he had trained and heard the measured tramp of their feet, his whole being expanded with delight, until he looked feverish with excitement: the flush would come into his cheeks, his arms would stiffen against his body down to his elbows, his rigid, tightly clasped fists would nervously open and close, while his restless feet beat time, and his guttural voice every now and then, between his harshly uttered commands, would give vent to hoarse, raucous, inhuman cries, expressive, alternately, of satisfaction or anger, according as matters pleased him or he saw something that offended his sense of discipline. For, indeed, his anger was a terrible sight, and his good humour was that of a rough savage.
If he were pleased, he would double up in fits of laughter, rubbing his hands together noisily and hilariously, stamping on the ground first with one foot and then with the other: if he caught sight of a child at the moment, he would catch hold of it, turn it over and over like a monkey with a doll, make the child kiss him, pinch its cheeks, pull its nose, and then putting it down, he would send it away with the first piece of gold or silver in its hands that he could find in his pocket.
When he was angry, he roared aloud, striking the soldier who had failed in his work, himself pushing the man towards the prison, shouting or rather yelling imprecations after him till the man was out of sight. His severity indeed extended to all—to animals as well as to men. One day he had a monkey hung because it was too noisy: he lashed a horse again and again and again with his riding-stick because it stumbled while he had trustingly let the reins fall on its neck for a little while; and he had a dog shot one morning because it had kept him awake during the night with its howling. Between these fits of anger and moments of exultation he was subject to hours of depression. He fell into moods of deep melancholy which ended in complete prostration. Weak as a woman, he would lie on his couch or roll about on the floor, a prey to nervous attacks.
At these times, not even the most favoured person dared go near him. The last valet to leave the room would open wide the window and the door, and upon the threshold would appear a fair pale woman, clothed almost always in a white dress clasped with a blue girdle, her expression as sad as a ghost's, and, like a ghost, smiling through her melancholy. The vision had a magical influence upon Constantine; his spirits grew brighter, he first sighed and then sobbed, cried out, and, after bitter and abundant tears, he rested his head on the woman's lap and would fall asleep to wake up cured.
This woman was Poland's guardian angel, Jeannette Groudzenska. Once, when quite a child, she was praying in the Metropolitan Church of Warsaw, before an image of the Virgin, when a crown of immortelles that had been placed at the foot of the picture fell on her head, resting upon it, until she removed it and replaced it on its nail. On her return home, Jeannette related this incident to her father, who told it to an old Ukranian Cossack thought to be a seen The old Cossack replied that the falling of the holy crown on the maiden's head meant that God had intended an earthly crown for her, had she not herself renounced it by returning it to the Virgin, who would keep her a heavenly crown instead. Both father and daughter had forgotten all about this prediction, or, if not forgotten entirely, they only thought of it as a dream, when chance, or rather, shall we say, Providence, who was watching over the interests of fifty-three millions of men, brought Constantine and Jeannette face to face.
Then it came about that that hot-blooded savage, that roaring bear, became as timid as a young girl; he who broke down all opposition, who disposed of the lives of fathers and the honour of their children, came bashfully to the old father to ask for the hand of Jeannette, imploring him not to refuse him the being without whose presence he could never be happy again. The old man recollected the Cossack's prediction, and, seeing in the viceroy's request the fulfilment of Almighty designs, the viceroy obtained his consent and that of the daughter. Then the emperor's sanction had to be obtained. Alexander had a constant dread of what would become of the empire in Constantine's hands. More than anyone else did he feel the responsibility of having had the charge of souls committed to him from Heaven. He therefore tried to utilise this love affair for the benefit of the community at large, though without much hope that he would succeed. He granted his consent on condition that Constantine would abdicate his succession, and awaited the brother's answer as anxiously as his brother waited for his. Constantine received the imperial despatch, opened it, read it, gave a shout of delight and renounced his rights. Yes, that strange, inexplicable man renounced his right to the throne, he, an Olympian Jove, before whose frown a whole people trembled. He gave up his twofold right to both an Eastern and a Western sovereignty in exchange for the heart of a young girl—an empire containing two great capitals and territory that began at the shores of the Baltic and ended at the Rocky Mountains, an empire washed by seven seas.
Jeannette Groudzenska received from the Emperor Alexander in exchange, the title of Princess of Lovics.
Nevertheless, when the news of the death of the Emperor Alexander reached St. Petersburg, the Grand-Duke Nicolas ignored the fact of the renunciation, took oath of allegiance to the Grand-Duke Constantine and despatched a messenger to him to invite him to come and take possession of the throne. But at the same time that this letter was being carried from St. Petersburg to Warsaw, the Grand-Duke Michel was on his way from Warsaw to St. Petersburg with the following letter from Constantine to his brother:—
"MY VERY DEAR BROTHER,—It was with the most profound
grief that I learnt yesterday evening the news of the
death of our adored sovereign and my benefactor, the Emperor
Alexander. I hasten to express to you my feelings of sorrow
at this cruel misfortune, and at the same time I beg to
inform you that I am sending a letter by the same hands
to Her Imperial Majesty, our royal mother, in which I declare
that, in accordance with the edict I obtained dated February
1822, sanctioning my renunciation of the throne, it is still
my unalterable resolution to cede to you all my rights of
succession to the throne of the Emperor of All the Russias.
I therefore beg our beloved mother and those who are
concerned in this matter, to announce that my wishes in this
respect are still unchanged, in order that matters may be
settled as arranged.
"Having made this declaration, I look upon it as my sacred
duty very humbly to beseech your Imperial Majesty to let me
be the first to swear faithful allegiance and submission to you,
and to allow me to assert that I do not wish for any fresh
dignity or any new title; I wish simply and solely to maintain
my title of Czarovitch, which my revered father condescended
to confer upon me in recognition of my services. Henceforth
my only happiness will be to tender your Imperial Majesty
tokens of my profoundest respect and of my unbounded
devotion; I can offer in pledge thereof more than thirty years
of faithful service, and the unswerving zeal that I have displayed
towards my imperial father and brother. Animated by these
sentiments, I will not cease to serve your Imperial Majesty
and your successors as long as life shall be granted me, in my
present office and functions.—I am, with the most profound
respect,
CONSTANTINE"
The day after the Grand-Duke Nicolas had despatched his courier to the czarovitch, the Council of State had informed him that they had been commissioned to keep a document for him, that had been handed to their care on 15 October 1823, sealed with the seal of the Emperor Alexander and accompanied by an autograph letter from His Majesty, who had charged them to keep the document until further orders, and in case of death to open it at an extraordinary session.
Now, as the emperor had died, the Council of State had opened the package, and within a double wrapping they found the Grand-Duke Constantine's renunciation of the Empire of All the Russias. This renunciation was couched in the following terms:—
"SIRE,—I am emboldened by the many proofs of your Imperial Majesty's kindness towards me to venture to crave your further indulgence and to lay my humble petitions at your feet. As I do not think myself fitted by my mental endowments and qualifications, nor gifted with sufficient capability, should I ever be called upon to fulfil the high position my birth would entitle me to assume, I earnestly implore your Imperial Majesty to transfer my rights to my immediate successor, and thus to place the empire for ever upon a stable foundation. So far as I am concerned, my renunciation will give an additional guarantee and added strength to the solemn oath I took, at the time of my divorce from my first wife. The existing condition of things establishes me more firmly in the opinion, day by day, that I am right in taking this step, and it will prove the sincerity of my sentiments to the empire and to the whole world.
"May your Imperial Majesty be moved to listen favourably to my entreaties, to influence our noble mother to look upon matters in the same light and to sanction my wishes with your imperial consent!
"In the sphere of a private life I will ever strive to set a good example to your faithful subjects and to all who are animated by a feeling of affection towards our beloved country.—I remain, with the most profound respect,
CONSTANTINE"
To this letter the emperor had made the following reply:—
"MY VERY DEAR BROTHER,—I have just read your letter with all the attention it deserves. I am not surprised at its contents, since I have always understood and appreciated the lofty sentiments of your heart; it has afforded me one proof more of your sincere attachment to the State, and of your far-seeing care for the preservation of its best interests. I have communicated the contents of your letter to our beloved mother, as you desired me; she has read it with the same feelings as those I have expressed and gratefully recognises the noble motives that have prompted you. After consideration of the reasons you have laid before us, the only course we feel free to take is to leave you full liberty to follow your fixed determination and to ask Almighty God to bless your single-hearted zeal, and to cause it to produce a happy issue.—I am ever your very affectionate brother,
ALEXANDER"
Nicolas, however, waited for the czarovitch's reply, and not until 25 December did he issue a manifesto accepting the throne that had devolved upon him by his elder brother's renunciation. He then fixed the following day, the 26th, for the taking of the oath of allegiance to himself and to his eldest son, the Grand-Duke Alexander.
And that is the strange story of these two brothers and the refusal of one of the most splendid crowns the world has to offer, and how Constantine remained simply the Czarovitch and Nicolas became the Emperor of All the Russias.
