The philosophy was unassailable, and, to a certain extent, acted upon by its professor. Napoléon only admired dancers on the stage. He thought, with Balzac, that the extraordinary physical strain upon the lower extremities necessarily interfered with the intellectual development "at the other end." "L'esprit de la danseuse est dans ses jambes, et je n'aime pas les femmes bêtes," he remarked; for the Emperor, like most of the members of his family, did not scruple to apply the right word, when talking to his familiars.
Nevertheless, until he was assured of the stupidity of a woman by more intimate acquaintance, he was too much inclined to be attracted by the first handsome face he saw, or, to speak by the card, by the first handsome face he picked outfor himself. The moment he was seated by the side of the Empress in the Imperial box, during one of those performances I mentioned just now, he swept the house with his opera-glass, and unerringly the glass stopped at what was really the handsomest woman in the house, whether she was seated on the tier with him or in the upper one—of course, I mean "the handsomest woman" among the strangers, because on such occasions the Emperor paid but little attention to those who were generally around him. The Empress was fain to put up with these peccadilloes: she could not be always running away to Schwalbach or to Scotland; besides, she knew that she would have to come back again. Some months previous to the performance of "Le Diable à Quatre," she went to the former place to hide her mortification. William of Prussia was at Baden-Baden at the time, and he immediately left the delightful society and the magnificent roulades of Pauline Lucca to offer his sympathies to the Griselda who had fled from her home troubles, forgetting that there was another one at home, who would have even been more glad of his company.
On the day after the shooting-party and the theatrical performance, there was generally an excursion to Pierrefonds, and afterwards to the magnificent Roman remains at Champlieu. In the evening there were charades and carpet dances as usual.
The third day was always reserved for the most important part of the programme—the stag-hunt. Candidly speaking, I doubt whether Napoléon, though a very excellent horseman, cared much for this sport, as conducted on the grand traditional lines of the French "code of vénerie." His main object personally was a good stiff run with the hounds, such as he had been used to in England, troubling himself little whether the pack kept the scent or not. In fact, there were generally two packs out, one of purely English breed, which was followed by the Emperor and his guests; the other French, followed by the serious lovers of sport, who, as a rule, caught at every pretext to get away from the magnificently apparelled crowd, driving or riding in the wake of the sovereign. Among the former there was a considerable sprinkling of the landed gentry of the neighbourhood, monarchists and legitimists to a man, some of whom did not even condescend to honour the Emperor with a salute. Compiègne, Sénart, etc., were, after all, public property, and they could do as theyliked, though I have got an idea that this wilful slight was an instance of singular bad taste on the part of these gentlemen.
The spot fixed for the meet was invariably the large clearing known as the Carrefour du Puits-du-Roi, whence radiated eight immense avenues, stretching as far as the uttermost confines of the forest of Compiègne. The spot, apart from its associations with royalty, from the days of Clovis up to our own, was admirably chosen, the mise-en-scène worthy of the greatest stage-manager on record. The huge centre itself was kept clear by the gendarmes de chasse—a cross between a mounted constable and a ranger—from any but the officers of the garrison on horseback and other persons privileged to join the Emperor's suite. Six of the avenues were free to the pedestrians, who could watch every movement from their vantage point; the seventh was set apart for carriages of all sorts, from the humble shandrydan of the local notary and doctor to the magnificent break of the neighbouring landed proprietor, or the less correctly but more showily appointed barouches of the leaders of provincial society, who rarely missed an opportunity of attending these gatherings, where there were so many chances of coming in contact with the court. Relegated for at least ten months of the year—allowing for an annual visit to the capital—to the dull, humdrum, though often pretentious round of entertainments of her own circle, the Comtesse d'Esbargnas,[69]whether young or old, handsome or the reverse, matron or widow, of patrician or plebeian origin, sedulously watched the yearly recurring time and tide that might lead to a permanent footing at the Tuileries. What has happened once may happen again. Agnès Sorel, Diane de Poitiers, Gabrielle d'Estrées, Louise de la Vallière, let alone Jeanne Bécu and Jeanne Poisson,[70]had by no means exhausted the possibilities of sudden elevations to within a step of the throne. These new aspirants would be content with a less giddy position. And who could say what might happen? Had not Alfred de Musset, the daring poet of "les grandes passions," written a play entitled "Il ne faut jurer de rien"? Assuredly what had happened once might happen again. Meanwhile the pleasure of watching all this splendour was worth coming for.
The latter proposition hardly admitted of discussion. The sight was truly worth coming for. Though the Imperial suite never made its appearance before one, the main arteries of the forest became crowded as early as eleven. Half an hour later came La Trace and La Feuille with their équipage.[71]The kennelmen and huntsmen in full dress gathered round a roaring fire, their hounds lying at their feet. The stablemen and grooms, in undress livery of green and brown, walking the hunters of the Emperor and his suite to and fro, presented a picture full of colour and animation.
As a rule the Imperial cortége was punctual on those occasions, though it was often remiss in that respect at gatherings of a different nature. Among the familiars at the Tuileries the blame for this general unpunctuality was attributed in an equal measure to both the Emperor and the Empress. The latter dressed very slowly, and the former wanted to dress too quickly. The result of this difference of habit was always manifest to the most casual observer. The Empress, after the most fatiguing day or soirée, always looked as if she had just left her dressing-room, the Emperor at the beginning of the same as if he had scarcely been in it. But on "grand hunt-days" the Empress was never a minute late; and the reason, apart from the natural wish to exercise "la politesse des rois," exactitude, was a curious one, but for the truth of which I can vouch. It gets dark early in November, and the Empress dreaded to be overtaken by darkness in the forest, even amidst a crowd. It reminded her of a disagreeable episode during her first stay at Compiègne, when she was still Mdlle. Eugénie de Montijo. She and her future husband had got separated from the rest of the party. It was never accurately known what happened, but she was found sitting quietly but sorely distressed on her horse by M. de Saint-Paul, the sub-ranger, who escorted her back to the Château. She explained her lonely and uncomfortable position by the fact that her companion's horse had suddenly taken the bit between its teeth. The explanation was a lame one, seeing that the Prince-President, on his return, hours before, had looked perfectly composed and not as much as mentioned her name. The truth leaked out afterwards. Enraged at Mdlle. de Montijo's refusal to grant him a clandestineinterview for that night, her princely suitor had left her to find her way back as best she could.
Invariably, then, at the stroke of one, the Imperial procession was signalled, for it was nothing less than a procession. At its head rode the chief ranger of Compiègne, Baron de Wimpffen, in a magnificent hunting-coat of green and gold, the laced tricornered hat, surmounted by a bunch of black plumes, jackboots, and white doeskins. Then came the Imperial break, drawn by six horses, mounted by postilions in powdered wigs, the Imperial host and hostess on the front seat, the members of the family, or some illustrious guests, behind; the rest of the breaks were only four-horsed, and the procession was closed by the carriage of M. Hyrvoix, the chief of the secret police. In Paris this arrangement was reversed, and M. Hyrvoix, who had the rank of a prefect, and took his place as such at all public functions, preceded instead of following the Imperial carriage.
I am inclined to think, notwithstanding the frequent outcries against the secret police during the second empire, that M. Hyrvoix was a thoroughly upright and conscientious servant. Unfortunately for himself and his Imperial masters, his position was a difficult one; for though professedly employed to gauge public opinion with regard to the dynasty, his reports to that effect were not always received with the consideration due to honest truth, at any rate by the Empress. Throughout these pages, I have endeavoured as far as possible to jot down my recollections in a kind of chronological order, rather than in the order they occurred to me; but in this, as in many other instances, I have been obliged to anticipate the course of events lest they should slip my memory, for I had no documents to go by, and also to avoid unnecessary repetitions. This particular part of my somewhat disjointed narrative was meant to deal with the festivities at Compiègne and the company there; on reading it over, I find that it has developed into a fragment of biography of the Emperor and his Consort. As such, the following stories will throw a valuable side light on their different dispositions.
When the news of Emperor Maximilian's death reached Paris, there was the rumbling of a storm which foreboded no good. For days before, there had been vague rumours of the catastrophe. It had been whispered at the annual distribution of prizes at the Collége de France, where one ofthe young Cavaignacs had refused to receive his reward at the hands of the Prince Imperial. In short, indignation was rife among all classes. The Empress, on hearing of the insult, had burst into hysterical tears, and been obliged to leave the reception-rooms. In short, a dark cloud hung over the Tuileries. I have spoken elsewhere of the Mexican expedition, so need not enlarge upon it here. We will take it that both Napoléon and his wife were altogether blameless in the affair—which was by no means the case,—but a moment's reflection ought to have shown them that appearances were against them, and that the discontent expressed was so far justified. I am under the impression that Napoléon himself looked at it in that way; he bowed to the storm; he regretted, but did not resent people speaking ill of him. Not so the Empress; the truth was only welcome to her when it flattered her; she really fancied herself an autocrat by the Grace of God, as the previous Bourbons interpreted the term. In spite of all that has been said about her amiability, about her charity, Eugénie was in reality cruel at heart. No woman, not cruel, could have taken the principal part in a scene which I will describe presently. But she was vindictive also, and, what was worse, blindly vindictive. Though firmly convinced that she reigned by right divine, she had felt more than once that private revenge on "the people" who abused her was beyond her power. She not only fretted accordingly, but often vented her wrath on the first victim that came to hand, albeit that the latter was generally the mere innocent conveyance through which the voice of "the people" reached her. M. Hyrvoix, in virtue of his functions, often found himself the echo of that voice. He was generally the first of all the officials to present his daily report. The Emperor gave him his cue by asking, "What do the people say?"
On that particular morning, after the death of Maximilian had become known, the answer came not as readily as usual; for the chief of the secret police was not in the habit of mincing matters. This time, however, M. Hyrvoix kept silent for a while, then replied, "The people do not say anything, sire."
Napoléon must have noticed the hesitating manner; for he said at once, "You are not telling me the truth. What do the people say?"
"Well, sire, if you wish to know, not only the people, butevery one is deeply indignant and disgusted with the consequences of this unfortunate war. It is commented upon everywhere in the selfsame spirit. They say it is the fault of ——"
"The fault of whom?" repeated Napoléon.
Whereupon M. Hyrvoix kept silent once more.
"The fault of whom?" insisted Napoléon.
"Sire," stammered M. Hyrvoix, "in the time of Louis XVI. people said, 'It is the fault of the Austrian woman.'"
"Yes, go on."
"Under Napoléon III. people say, 'It is the fault of the Spanish woman.'"
The words had scarcely left M. Hyrvoix' lips, when a door leading to the inner apartments opened, and the Empress appeared on the threshold. "She looked like a beautiful fury," said M. Hyrvoix to his friend, from whom I have got the story. "She wore a white dressing-gown, her hair was waving on her shoulders, and her eyes shot flames. She hissed, rather than spoke, as she bounded towards me; and, ridiculous as it may seem, I felt afraid for the moment. 'You will please repeat what you said just now, M. Hyrvoix,' she gasped in a voice hoarse with anger.
"'Certainly, madame,' I replied, 'seeing that I am here to speak the truth, and, as such, your Majesty will pardon me. I told the Emperor that the Parisians spoke of "the Spanish woman," as they spoke seventy-five and eighty years ago of the Austrian woman.'"
"'The Spanish woman! the Spanish woman!' she jerked out three or four times—and I could see that her hands were clenched;—'I have become French, but I will show my enemies that I can be Spanish when occasion demands it.'
"With this she left as suddenly as she had come, taking no notice of the Emperor's uplifted hand to detain her. When the door closed upon her, I said to the Emperor, 'I am more than grieved, sire, that I spoke.'
"'You did your duty,' he said, grasping my hand."
As a matter of course, the threat to show her enemies that she could be Spanish when occasion required was, in this instance, an empty one, because "the enemies" happened to be legion. A scapegoat was found, however, in the honest functionary who had, in the exercise of his duty, frankly warned the Emperor of the ugly things that were said about her. Next morning, M. Hyrvoix was appointedReceiver-General for one of the departments—that is, exiled to the provinces.
This system of ostracism was indiscriminately applied to all who happened to offend her. Unfortunately, the slightest divergence of opinion on the most trifling matter was construed into an offence; hence in a few years the so-called counsellors around the Emperor were simply so many automata, moving at her will, and at her will only. Men who ventured to think for themselves were removed, or else voluntarily retired from the precincts of the court sooner than submit to a tyranny, not based like that of Catherine II. or Elizabeth upon great intellectual gifts, but upon the wayward impulses of a woman in no way distinguished mentally from the meanest of her sex, except by an overweening ambition and an equally overweening conceit.
And as nothing is so apt to breed injustice as injustice, men, who might have proved the salvation of the Second Empire in its hour of direst need, were absolutely driven into opposition, and so blinded by resentment as to be unable to distinguish any longer between France and those who impelled her to her ruin.
Lest I should be taxed with exaggeration, a few instances among the many will suffice. One evening, in the course of those charades of which I have already spoken, some of the performers, both men and women, had thrown all decorum to the winds in their improvised dialogue. A young colonel, by no means strait-laced or a hypocrite, who was a great favourite with the Emperor and Empress, professed himself shocked, in the hearing of the latter, at so much licence in the presence of the sovereigns. In reality, it was an honest but indirect comment upon the Empress's blamable latitude in that respect. The Empress took up the cudgels for the offenders. "Vous n'êtes pas content, colonel; hé bien! je m'enfiche,reficheetcontrefiche." ("You don't like it, colonel; well, I don't care a snap, nor two snaps, nor a thousand snaps."[72]) The Emperor laughed, and applauded his Consort; the colonel took the hint, and was seen at court no more. Shortly afterward he went to Mexico, where all who saw him at work concurred in saying that he was not onlya most valuable soldier, but probably the only one in the French army, of those days, capable of handling large masses. Nevertheless, when the war of '70 broke out, he was still a colonel, and no attempt at offering him a command was made. The republicans, for once in a way, were wiser in their generation: at this hour he holds a high position in the army, and is destined to occupy a still higher. It was he who counselled Bazaine, in the beginning of the investment of Metz, to leave twenty or thirty thousand men behind to defend the fortress, and to break through with the rest. According to the best authorities of the German general staff, the advice, had it been followed, would have materially altered the state of affairs. It is not my intention to enlarge upon that soldier's career or capabilities; I have merely mentioned them to show that, when her resentment was roused, Eugénie threw all considerations for the welfare of France to the winds, and systematically ostracized men, whatever their merits; for I may add that the young colonel, at the time of the scene described above, was known to be one of the ablest of strategists.
We have heard a great deal of the Empress's charity. Truth to tell, that charity was often as indiscriminate as her anger; it was sporadic, largely admixed with the histrionic element, not unfrequently prompted by sentimentalism rather than by sentiment; and woe to him or to her who ventured to hint that it, the charity, was misplaced. In those days there was a prefect of police, M. Boitelle. He was a worthy man, endowed with a great deal of common sense, and, above all, honest to a degree. Belonging to the middle classes, he was free from the vulgar greed that so often distinguishes them in France; and, after leaving the army as a non-commissioned officer, had settled on a small farm left to him by his parents. Now, it so happened that M. de Persigny, whose real name was Fialin, had been a sergeant in the same regiment, and one day, after the advent of the Empire, being in the north, went to pay his former comrade a visit. I am perfectly certain that M. Boitelle, whom I knew, and with whose son I have continued the amicable relations subsisting between his father and myself, did not solicit any honours or appointment from the then powerful friend of the Emperor; nevertheless, Persigny appointed his fellow-messmate to the sub-prefectorship of St. Quentin. The emoluments, even in those days, were not large, but M. Boitelle was only a smallfarmer, and the promise of quick preferment may have induced him to leave his peaceful homestead; in short, M. Boitelle accepted, and, after several promotions, found himself at last at the Paris Prefecture of Police. In this instance the choice was really a good one. I have known a good many prefects of police, among others M. de Maupas, who officiated on the night of the Coup d'État, and who was also a personal friend; but I never knew one so thoroughly fitted for the arduous post as M. Boitelle. Though not a man of vast reading or brilliant education, he was essentially a man of the world in the best sense of the word. He was not a martinet, but a capable disciplinarian, and, what was better still, endowed with a feeling of great tolerance for the foibles of modern society. The soldier and the philosopher were so inextricably mixed up in him, that it would have been difficult to say where the one ended and the other began. M. de Maupas was at times too conscious of his own importance; there was too much of the French official in him. His successful co-operation in the Coup d'État had imbued him with an exaggerated notion of his own capabilities of "taking people by the scruff of the neck and running them in" (à empoigner les gens). An English friend of mine, to whom I introduced him, summed him up, perhaps, more fitly. "He is like the policeman who ran in a woman of sixty all by himself, and boasted that he could have done it if she had been eighty."
But M. Boitelle, though kind-hearted, had no sympathy whatsoever with mawkish philanthropy. The Empress, on the other hand, had absolute paroxysms of it. She was like the Spanish high-born dame who insisted upon a tombstone for the grave of a bull, the killing and torturing of which in the ring she had frantically applauded. One day she expressed her wish to M. Boitelle to pay a visit to Saint-Lazare. There is nothing analogous to that institution in England. The "unfortunate woman" who prowls about the streets before or after nightfall is—except in a few garrison towns—tacitly ignored by our legislators, and when she offends against the common law, treated by our magistrates like any other member of society. We have no establishments where the moral cancer eats deeper into the flesh and the mind by the very attempt to isolate those who suffer most from it; we have no system which virtually bars the way to a reformed life by having given official authority to sin, and by recordingfor evermore the names of those whom want alone compelled to have themselves inscribed as outcasts on those hellish registers. We have no Saint-Lazare, and Heaven be praised for it!
M. Boitelle knew the moral and mental state of most of the inmates of Saint-Lazare sufficiently well to foster no illusions with regard to the benefit to be derived by them from the solitary visit of so exalted a personage, while, on the other hand, he felt perfectly aware that it was morbid curiosity, however well disguised, that prompted the step. At the same time, the respect due to his sovereign made him reluctant to expose her, needlessly, to a possible, if not to a probable insult; in short, he considered the projected "tour of inspection" an ill-concerted one. He also knew that it would be idle to bring his fund of shrewd philosophy to bear upon the Empress, to make her relinquish her design, so he adopted instead the outspoken method of the soldier. "Whatever your charitable feelings may be for those who suffer, madame," he said, "your place is not among them." The words sound a shade more abrupt in French, but a moment's reflection would have shown the most fastidious lady that no offence on the speaker's part was intended. The Empress, however, drew herself up to her full height. "Charity can go any and everywhere, monsieur," she replied. "You will please take me to Saint-Lazare to-morrow."
I would fain say as little as possible about the occupants of that gloomy building at the top of the Faubourg St. Denis, but am compelled to state in common fairness that, when once they are incarcerated and behave themselves—of course, according totheirlights—they are not treated with unnecessary harshness. I will go further, and say that they are treated more leniently than female prisoners in other penal establishments. The milder method is due to the presence in greater numbers than elsewhere of that admirable angel of patience, the Sister of Charity, who has no private grievances to avenge upon her own sex, who does not look upon the fallen woman as an erstwhile and unsuccessful rival for the favours of men, who consequently does not apply thevæ victis, either by sign, deed, or word. During my long stay in Paris, I have been allowed to visit Saint-Lazare twice, and I can honestly say that, though the laws that relegate these women there are a disgrace to nineteenth-century civilization, their application inside Saint-Lazare is not at all brutal.This does not imply that they lie upon down beds, and that their food is of the most delicate description; but they are well cared for bodily. The Empress, however, in a gush of misplaced charity, thought fit to take objection to their daily meals not being concluded with dessert. Thereupon, M. Boitelle, whose sound common sense had already been severely tried during that morning, could not help smiling. "Really, madame," he said; "you allow your kindness to run away with your good sense. If they are to have a dessert, what are we to give to honest women?"
Next day, M. Boitelle was appointed a senator; that is, removed from his post as prefect of police, which he had so worthily filled, and where he had done a great deal of unostentatious good. The next time M. Boitelle came in contact with the Empress was at the last hour of the Empire, when he tried, but in vain, to overcome her resentment, caused by his unhappy speech of many years before.
Yet the woman who could indulge in sentiment about the absence of dessert in the Saint-Lazare refectory, would, at the end of the hunt, deliberately jump off her horse, plunge the gleaming knife in the throat of the panting stag, and revel in the sight of blood. Many who saw her do this argued that in the hour of danger she would as boldly face the enemies of herself and her dynasty. I need not say that they were utterly mistaken. She slunk away at the supreme hour; while the princess, whom she had presumed to teach the manners of a court, left like a princess in an open landau, preceded by an outrider. I am alluding to Princess Clotilde.
The story of a celebrated sculptor and his model — David d'Angers at the funeral of Cortot, the sculptor — How I became acquainted with him — The sculptor leaves the funeral procession to speak to a woman — He tells me the story — David d'Angers' sympathy with Greece in her struggle for independence — When Botzaris falls at Missolonghi, he makes up his mind to carve his monument — Wishes to do something original — He finds his idea in the cemetery of Père-la-Chaise — In search of a model — Comes unexpectedly upon her in the Rue du Montparnasse, while in company of Victor Hugo — The model and her mother — The bronze Christ on the studio wall — David gives it to his model — The latter dismissed — A plot against the sculptor's life — His model saves him — He tries to find her and fails — Only meets with her when walking behind the hearse of Cortot — She appears utterly destitute — Loses sight of her again — Meets her on the outer boulevards with a nondescript of the worst character — He endeavours to rescue her, but fails — Canler, of the Paris police, reveals the tactics pursued with regard to "unfortunates" — David's exile and death — The Botzaris Monument is brought back to Paris to be restored — The model at the door of the exhibition — Her death.
In connection with the treatment of "fallen women" in Paris, I may give the following story, which becomes interesting in virtue of the personality of one of the actors. In 1843 the sculptor Cortot died, and I followed his funeral on foot, as was the custom in those days. I walked by the side of one of the greatest artists France, or, for that matter, the world, has ever produced—David d'Angers. The name of his native town was adopted to distinguish him from his celebrated namesake, the painter. I had become acquainted with the great sculptor a twelvemonth previously, in Delacroix's studio. All at once, as the procession went along the Quai Malaquais, I saw him start violently, and break through what, for want of a more appropriate term, I must call the ranks of mourners. For a moment only; the next, he was back by my side: but I noticed that he was frightfully agitated. He probably saw my concern for him in my face, for, though I asked him no questions, he said of his own accord, "It is all right. I just caught sight of a woman who saved my life, and, by the looks of her, she is in great straits, but, by the time I gotout of the crowd, she had disappeared. I have an idea of the errand she was bent upon, and will inquire to-morrow, but I am afraid it will be of very little use."
I kept silent for a moment or two, but my curiosity was aroused, for, I repeat, at that time, the artistic world was ringing with the name of David d'Angers.
"I did not know you had been in such great danger," I said at last.
"Very few people do know it," he replied sadly; "besides, it happened a good many years ago, when you were very young. The next time we meet I will tell you all about it."
A week or so afterwards, as I was leaving the Café de Paris one evening, and going to the tobacconist at the corner of the Rue Laffite, I ran against the celebrated sculptor. The weather was mild, and we sat outside Tortoni's, where he told me the story, part of which I give in his own words, as far as I can remember them after the lapse of more than forty years.
"If there were any need," he began, "to apologize to an Englishman for my sympathy with the Philhellenism which shortened the life of Byron, I might say that I sucked the principle of the independence of nations with the mother's milk, for I was born in 1789. Be that as it may, when Marcos Botzaris fell at Missolonghi I felt determined that he should have a monument worthy of his heroism and patriotism, as far as my talents could contribute to it. I was sufficiently young to be enthusiastic, and, at the same time, sufficiently presumptuous to imagine that I could do something which had never been done before. You have seen the engraving of the monument; you may judge for yourself how far I succeeded. But the idea of the composition, however out of the common, was, I am bound to admit, not the offspring of my own imagination. I was, perhaps, clever enough to see the poesy of it when presented to me, and to appropriate it; but the young, fragile girl lying on the tombstone and tracing the name of Marcos Botzaris was suggested to me by a scene I witnessed one day at Père-la-Chaise. I saw a child stooping over a gravestone, and trying to spell out the words carved on it. It was all I wanted. I own, from that moment, my composition took shape in my mind. I was, however, still at a loss where to find the ideal child. The little girl of whom I had caught a glimpse would nothave done at all for my purpose, even if her parents would have consented to let her sit, which was not at all likely—she was the prosperous-looking demoiselle of a probably prosperous bourgeoise family, well-fed, plump, and not above seven or eight. I, on the contrary, wanted a girl double that age just budding into womanhood, but with the travail of the transition expressed in every feature, in every limb. She was to represent to the most casual observer the sufferings engendered by the struggle against tutelage for freedom. She was to bend over the tomb of Botzaris to drag the secret of that freedom from him. Dawning life was to drag the secret from the dead.
"That was my idea, and for several days I cudgelled my brain to find among my models one that would, physically and morally, represent all this. In vain; the grisettes of the Rue Fleurus and the Quartier-Latin, in spite of all that has been said of them by the poets and novelists of that time, were not at all the visible incarnations of lofty sentiment; whatever pain and grief an unrequited romantic passion might entail, they left no appreciable traces on their complexions or in their outline; they were saucy madams, and looked it. I had communicated my wants to some of my friends, and one of them sent me what he thought would suit. The face was certainly a very beautiful one, as an absolutely perfect ensemble of classical features I have never seen the like; but there was about as much expression in it as in my hand, and, as for the body, it was simply bursting out of its dress. I told her she would not do, and the reason why. 'Monsieur can't expect me to go into a consumption for two francs fifty an hour,' she remarked, bouncing out of the room.
"I was fast becoming a nuisance to all my cronies, when, one day, going to dine with Victor Hugo at La Mère Saget's, which was at the Barrière du Maine, I came unexpectedly, in the Rue du Montparnasse, upon the very girl for which I had been looking out for months. Notwithstanding her rags, she was simply charming. She was not above fourteen or fifteen, and, although very tall for her age, she had scarcely any flesh on her bones. I only knew her Christian name—Clémentine: I doubt whether she had any other. Next morning she came with her mother, an old hag, dissipation and drunkenness written in every line of her face. But the child herself was perfectly innocent—at any rate, asinnocent as she could be with such a parent, and tractable to a degree. After a little while the old woman, tired of twirling her thumbs, disgusted, perhaps, at my want of hospitality in not offering her refreshments, left off accompanying her, Clémentine came henceforth alone.
"My studio was in the Rue de Fleurus in those days, and on the wall hung a very handsome bronze Christ on a velvet panel and in a dark satin frame. Curiously enough, I often caught the mother watching it; it seemed to have an irresistible fascination for her: and, one day, while the child was dressing, after two or three hours of hard work, she suddenly exclaimed, 'That's why my mother will not come here; she says she'd commit a robbery. She never leaves off talking about it. I wonder whether you'd like to part with it, M. David? A Christ like that would be beautiful in our attic. It would comfort and cheer me. If you like, I'll buy it of you. Of course, I have no money, but you can deduct it from my sittings. You can have as many as you like, not only for this statue, but for any other you may want later on.'
"We democrats, professed republicans, and more than suspected revolutionaries, are not credited by the majority with a great reverence for religious dogma; we are generally branded as absolute freethinkers, not to say atheists. This is frequently a mistake.[73]I have no occasion to recite mycredoto you, but a great many of the republicans of '89 and of to-day were and are believers. At any rate, I fondly imagined that the Christ for which the mother and child were longing might exercise some salutary influence on their lives, so I simply took down the frame and its contents and handed them to her. She staggered under the weight. 'You want that Christ,' I said; 'here it is: and when you are tempted to do evil look at it, and think of me, who gave it you as a present.'
"'As a present?' she shrieked for joy; and hurried away as fast as her legs would carry her.
"In about six months from that day the statue was finished. I had no further need of Clémentine's services, andgradually all thought of her slipped from my mind. You may have heard that some time after my work was despatched to Greece, I was assaulted one night in the Rue Childebert, on my way to Gérard de Nerval's. My skull was split open in two places, I was left for dead in the street, and but for a workman who stumbled over me, took me home, and sat up with me until morning, I might not have lived to tell the tale. From the very first I suspected the identity of my assailant, though I have never breathed his name to any one. I am glad to say I never had many enemies, nor have I now, as far as I am aware; but I had offended the man by withholding my vote in a prize competition. He was, however, not responsible for his actions; for even at that time he must have been mad. A few years afterwards, the suspicion both of his madness and his attempt upon my life became a certainty, for he repeated the latter. You are very young, and youth is either very credulous or very sceptical. We should be neither. If what I am going to tell you now were to be represented to you at the Ambigu or Porte Saint-Martin, you, as an educated man, would shrug your shoulders, and look with a kind of good-natured contempt upon the grisette or workman or bourgeois who would sit spellbound and take it all in as so much gospel. Providence, fate, call it what you will, concocts more striking dramatic situations and a greater number of them than M. Scribe and all his compeers have constructed in the course of their professional careers. Listen, and you shall judge for yourself.
"About seven years after the attack in the Rue Childebert, I received a letter one morning, inviting me to attend a meeting that same night between twelve and one, at a house in the Faubourg Saint-Jacques, near the hospital of the Val-de-Grace. The letter told me how to proceed. There being no concierge in the house, I was to provide myself with a 'dark lantern,' and to go up four flights of stairs, where I should find a door with a cross chalked upon it. It would be opened by my giving a particular knock. My previous danger notwithstanding, I had not the least suspicion of this being a trap. I did not for one moment connect the letter with the other event, the recollection of which, strange as it may seem to you, did not obtrude itself at all then. But there was another reason for the absence of caution on my part. In one of its corners the letter bore a sign, not exactly that of a secret society, but agreed upon among certain patriots.
"In short, a little before twelve o'clock that night, I went to the place appointed. I had no difficulty in finding the house, and reached the fourth story without meeting a soul. There was the door, with the cross chalked on it. I knocked once, twice, without receiving an answer. Still, the thought of evil never entered my head. I began to think that I had been the victim of a hoax of some youngsters of the École des Beaux-Arts, most of whom were aware of my political opinions. I was just turning round to go down again, when a door by the side of that indicated was slowly opened, and a young girl with a lighted candle appeared on the threshold. Though both the candle and my lantern did not shed much light, I perceived that, at the sight of me, she turned very pale, but, until she spoke, I failed to recognize her. Then I saw it was Clémentine, my model. She scarcely gave me time to speak. 'It is you, M. David,' she said, in a voice trembling with fear and emotion. 'You,' she repeated. 'For Heaven's sake, go!—go as quickly as you can! If you stay another moment, you will be a corpse; for God's sake, go! And let me beg of you not to breathe a word of this to any one; if you do, my mother and I will pay for this with our lives. For God's sake, go. I did not know that you were the person expected. Go—go!'
"I do not think I answered a single word. I felt instinctively that this was no hoax, as I had imagined, but terrible reality. I went downstairs as fast as I could, but it was not until I got into the street that a connection between the two events presented itself to me. Then I decided to wait and watch. I hid myself in the doorway of a house a few steps away. Scarcely ten minutes had elapsed when half a dozen individuals arrived, one by one, and disappeared into the house that sheltered Clémentine and her mother. One of them, I feel sure, was the man whom I suspected of having attempted my life before. A few years more went by, during which I often thought of my former model; and then, one day, I felt I would like to see her again. In plain daylight this time, I repaired to the house of the Faubourg Saint-Jacques, clambered up the stairs, and knocked at the door I had such good cause to remember. The door was opened by a workman, and a rapid glance at the inside of the room showed me that he was a lastmaker. 'Mademoiselle Clémentine?' I asked. The man stared at me, and said, 'No such person lives here.' I made inquiries on all the lower floors—nobodyhad ever heard of her. Clémentine had disappeared. I never saw her again until a few days ago, when I walked by your side behind the body of Cortot. I should not have recognized her but for the bronze Christ she carried under her arm, and which attracted my notice. If what I surmise be correct, she must have reached the last stage of misery; for I feel convinced that nothing but absolute want would make her part with it. I have, however, failed to trace it in any of the bric-à-brac shops on the quays, and I believe that I have pretty well inquired at every one; so I must fain be content until fate throws her again across my path."
So far the story as told by the great sculptor himself. During the next eight years, in fact up to the Coup d'État, I met him frequently, and, curiously enough, rarely failed to inquire whether in his many wanderings through Paris he had caught a glimpse of his former model. I felt unaccountably interested in the fate of that woman whom I had never seen, and, if we had been able to find her, would have endeavoured to find a decent home for her. But for about three years my inquiries always met with the same answer. Then, one evening in the latter end of '46 or beginning of '47, David told me that he had met her on the outer boulevards, arm in arm with one of those terrible nondescripts of which one is often compelled to speak again and again, and which, as far as I am aware, are nowhere to be found as a class except in the French metropolis and great provincial centres. Clémentine evidently wished to avoid David. A little while after, he met her again, and this time followed her, but, though by no means a coward, lacked the courage to enter the hovel into which she had disappeared with her companion. The last time he saw her was in the middle of '47, in the Rue des Boucheries. She seemed to have returned to her old quarters, and she was by herself. Until she spoke, David did not recognize her. Her face was positively seamed with horrible scars, "wounds inflicted by her lovers"—Heaven save the mark! She asked him to help her, and he did; but she had scarcely gone a few steps when she was arrested and taken to the prison of l'Abbaye de St. Germain, hard by, whither David followed to intercede for her. He was told to come back next morning, and that same evening communicated the affair to me. I decided there and then to accompany him, in order to carry out my plan of redeeming that human soul if possible. I failed, though through no fault ofmy own, but my attempt brought me in contact with a personage scarcely less interesting in his own way than David, namely, M. Canler, the future head of the Paris detective force. It was through him that I got an insight into some of the most revolting features of criminal life in Paris. But, before dealing with that subject, I wish to devote a few more lines to David, whom I had the honour of numbering among my friends till the day of his death, albeit that the last few years of his life were spent away from France, whither he returned, however, to die in '56. After the Coup d'État he was exiled by Louis-Napoléon—ostensibly, for his political opinions; in reality, because he had refused to finish the monument for Queen Hortense's tomb after her son's fiasco at Boulogne.
Writing about France and Frenchmen, I feel somewhat reluctant to make too lavish a use of the words "patriot" and "patriotism," especially with the patriots and the patriotism of the Third Republic around me. But I have no hesitation in saying that, to David d'Angers, these words meant something almost sacred. Sprung from exceedingly poor parents, he had amassed, by honest work, a fortune which, to men born in a higher sphere and with far more expensive tastes, might seem sufficient. Seeing that he was frugality and simplicity personified, that his income was mainly spent in alleviating distress, and that his daughter was even more simple-minded than her father, he had nothing to gain by the advent of a republic, nothing to lose by the establishment of a monarchy or empire, and his ardent championship of republican institutions—such as he conceived them—was prompted solely by his noble nature. That Louis-Napoléon should have exiled such a man was an error his warmest friends could scarcely forgive him. But David never complained, any more than he ever uttered a harsh word against the memory of Flaxman, who, in his youth, had shut his doors against him under the impression that he was a relation of Louis David who had voted for the death of Louis XVI. On the contrary, the memory of the great English sculptor was held in deep reverence.
And so David departed, a wanderer on the face of the earth with his daughter. He first endeavoured to settle in Brussels, but the irresistible desire to behold once more what he himself considered his greatest work, the monument to Marcos Botzaris, attracted him to Greece. A friend, to whomhe communicated his intention, wrote to him, "Do not go." He gave him no further reason; he even withheld from him the fact that he had been at Missolonghi a twelvemonth previously. The explanation of this reticence may be gathered from David's letter to him a few days after his, David's, return. I have been allowed to copy it, and give it verbatim.
"Long before our vessel anchored near the spot where Byron died, I caught a glimpse of the tumulus erected at the foot of the bastion, in honour of Botzaris and his fellow-heroes. It made a small dark spot on the horizon, and above it was a speck, much smaller and perfectly white. I knew instinctively that this was my statue of the 'young Greek girl,' and I watched and watched with bated breath, fancying as the ship sped along that the speck moved. Of course, it was only my imagination, the presumptuous thought that the marble effigy would start into life at the approach of its creator.
"Alas, would I had proceeded no further—that I had been satisfied with the mirage instead of pushing on in hot haste towards the reality! For the reality was heart-rending, so heart-rending that I wept like a child, and clenched my fists like a giant in despair. The right hand of the statue, the index finger of which pointed to the name, had been broken; the ears had disappeared, one of the feet was broken to atoms, and the face slashed with knives. It was like the face of the girl that had sat for me, when I last saw it, under the circumstances which, you may remember, I told you. The whole was riddled with bullets, and some tourists, British ones probably, had cut their names on the back of the child. And so ends the most glorious chapter of my artist's career—the model itself fallen beyond redemption, the work mutilated beyond repair, the author of it in exile.
"I felt powerless to repair the mischief. I did not stay long. Perhaps I ought not to complain. I knew that Byron had been buried near the fortifications at Missolonghi, but all my efforts to find the spot have proved useless.[74]The house where he breathed his last had been pulled down. Why should the Greeks have more reverence for Botzaris or Mavrocordato than they had for the poet? and if these three are so little to them, what must I be, whose name they probablynever heard? Still, as I stood at the stern of the departing vessel, I felt heart-broken. I have no illusions left."
I firmly believe that the injury done to the statue hastened David's death. His work has since been restored by M. Armand Toussaint, his favourite pupil, who gave his promise to that effect a few days before the great sculptor breathed his last. The monument was, however, not brought to Paris until 1861, and when M. Toussaint had finished his task, he invited the press and the friends of his famous master to judge of the results. It was at the door of his studio that I saw the woman, whose adventures I have told in the preceding notes, for the first time. A fortnight later, she died at the hospital of La Charité, at peace, I trust, with her Maker. "Fate, Providence, call it what you will," as David himself would have said, had brought me to the spot just in time to alleviate the last sufferings of one who, though not altogether irresponsible for her own errors, was to a still greater extent the victim of a system so iniquitous as to make the least serious-minded—provided he be endowed with the faintest spark of humanity—shudder. I allude to the system pursued by the Paris detective force in their hunt after criminals—a system not altogether abandoned yet, and the successful carrying out of which is paid for by the excruciating tortures inflicted upon defenceless though fallen women—but women still—by thesouteneur. I refrain from Anglicizing the word; it will suggest itself after the perusal of the following facts, albeit that, fortunately with us, the creature itself does not exist as a class, and, what is worse, as a class recognized by those whose first and foremost duty it should be to destroy him root and branch.
The morning after Clémentine's arrest, David and I repaired to the prison of l'Abbaye Saint-German. When the sculptor sent in his name, the governor himself came out to receive us. But the woman was gone; she had been transferred, the previous night, to the dépôt of the préfecture de police, "where," he said, "if you make haste, you will still find her." He gave us a letter of introduction for the official charged to deal with refractory "filles soumises," or offending insoumises, because, then as now, these unfortunates were not tried by an ordinary police magistrate in open court, but summarily punished by said official, the sentencesbeing subject, however, to revision or confirmation by his superior, the chief of the municipal police. Nay, the decisions were not even communicated to these women until they were safely lodged in Saint-Lazare, lest there should be a disturbance; for they were not examined one by one; and, as may be imagined, the contagion of revolt spread easily among those hysterical and benighted creatures.
When we reached the préfecture de police the judging was over, but, on our sending in our letter, we were admitted at once to the official's room. After David's description, he remembered the woman, and told us at once that she had not been sent to Saint-Lazare, but liberated. Some one had interceded for her—no less a personage than Canler, who, though at the time but a superintendent, was already fast springing into notice as a detective of no mean skill. "What had he done with her?" was David's question. "I could not tell you," was the courteous reply; "but I will give you his address, and he will no doubt give you all the information in his power and consistent with his duty." With this we were bowed out of the room.
We did not succeed in seeing Canler until two days afterwards, or, rather, on the evening of the second day; for, at that period, he was entrusted with the surveillance of the theatres on the Boulevard du Temple. I may have occasion to speak of him again, so I need not give his portrait here. He was about fifty, and, unlike one of his successors, M. Claude, the type of the old soldier. Of his honesty there never was, there could have never been, a doubt, nor was his intelligence ever questioned. And yet, this very honest, intelligent man, in his all-absorbing pursuit, the detection and chasing of criminals, was sufficiently dishonest and unintelligent to foster, if not to inaugurate, a system subversive of all morality.
David's name was a passport everywhere, and, no sooner had it been sent in, than Canler came out to him. The sculptor stated his business, and the police officer made a wry face. "I am afraid, M. David, I cannot help you in this instance. To speak plainly, I have restored her to her souteneur." We both opened our eyes very wide. "Yes," came the remark, "I know what you are going to say. I can sum up all your objections before you utter them. But I could not help myself; the fellow rendered me a service, and this was the price of it. Without his aid, one of the most desperateburglars in Paris would still be at large. As it is, I have got him safe under lock and key. Very shocking, no doubt; mais, à la guerre comme à la guerre." Then, seeing that we did not answer, he continued: "As a rule, I do not explain my tactics to everybody; but you, M. David, are not everybody, and, if you like to meet me when the theatre is over, I shall be pleased to have a chat with you."
At half-past twelve that night we were seated at a restaurant near the Porte Saint-Martin, and, after a few preliminary remarks, Canler explained.
However great an artist you may be, M. David, you could not produce a statue without the outlay for the marble, or for the casting of it in bronze. You, moreover, want to pay yourpraticien, who does the rough work for you. Ourpraticiensare the informers, and they want to be paid like the most honest workmen. The detection of crime means, no doubt, intelligence, but it means also money. Now, money is the very thing I have not got, and yet, when I accepted the functions I am at present fulfilling, I gave my promise to M. Delessert not to neglect the detective part of the business. I wish to keep my word, first of all, because I pledged it; secondly, because detection of crime is food and drink to me; thirdly, because I hope to be the head of the Paris detective force one day. The Government allows a ridiculously small sum every year for distribution among informers, and rewards among their own agents; it is something over thirty thousand francs, but not a sou of which ever reached my hands when I accepted my present appointment, and scarcely a sou of which reaches me now. I was, therefore, obliged to look out for auxiliaries, sufficiently disinterested to assist me gratuitously, but, knowing that absolute disinterestedness is very rare indeed, I looked for my collaborateurs among the very ones I was charged to watch, but who, in exchange for my protection in the event of their offending, were ready to peach upon their companions in crime and in vice. I need not trouble you by enumerating the various categories of my allies, but the souteneur, the most abject of them all, is, perhaps, the most valuable.
"He is too lazy to work, and, as a rule, has not got the pluck of a mouse, consequently he rarely resorts to crime, requiring the smallest amount of energy or daring. He furthermore loves his Paris, where, according to his own lights, he enjoys himself and lives upon the fat of the land; allthese reasons make him careful not to commit himself, albeit that at every minute of the day he comes in contact with everything that is vile. But he gets hold of their secrets, though the word is almost a misnomer, seeing that few of these desperadoes can hold their tongue about their own business, knowing all the while, as they must do, that their want of reticence virtually puts their heads into the halter. But if they have done 'a good stroke of business,' even if they do not brag about it in so many words, they must show their success by their sudden show of finery, by their treating of everybody all round, etc. The souteneur is, as it were, jealous of all this; for though he lives in comparative comfort from what his mistress gives him, he rarely makes a big haul. His mistress gone, the pot ceases to boil; in fact, he calls her hismarmite. In a few days he is on his beams' ends, unless he has one in every different quarter, which is not often the case, though it happens now and then. But, at any rate, the incarceration of one of them makes a difference, and, under the circumstance, he repairs, as far as he dares, to the préfecture, and obtains her liberation in exchange for the address of a burglar or even a murderer who is wanted. I have known one who had perfected his system of obtaining information to such a degree as to be able to sell his secrets to his fellow-souteneurs when they had none of their own wherewith to propitiate the detectives. He has had as much as three or four hundred francs for one revelation of that kind, which means twenty or thirty times the sum the police would have awarded him. Of course, three or four hundred francs is a big sum for the souteneur to shell out; but, when the marmite is a good one, he sooner does that than be deprived of his revenues for six months or so. I have diverted some of those secrets into my own channel, and Clémentine's souteneur is one of my clients; that is why I gave her up. Very shocking, gentlemen, but à la guerre comme à la guerre."
M. Canler furthermore counselled us to leave Clémentine alone. He positively refused to give us any information as to her whereabouts; that is why I did not meet with her until five years after David's death, too late to be of any use to her in this world.
Queen Victoria in Paris — The beginning of the era of middle-class excursions — English visitors before that — The British tourist of 1855 — The real revenge of Waterloo — The Englishman's French and the Frenchman's English — The opening of the Exhibition — The lord mayor and aldermen in Paris — The King of Portugal — All these considered so much "small fry" — Napoléon III. goes to Boulogne to welcome the Queen — The royal yacht is delayed — The French hotel proprietor the greatest artist in fleecing — The Italian, the Swiss, the German, mere bunglers in comparison — Napoléon III. before the arrival of the Queen — Pondering the past — Arrival of the Queen — The Queen lands, followed by Prince Albert and the royal children — The Emperor rides by the side of her carriage — Comments of the population — An old salt on the situation — An old soldier's retort — The general feeling — Arrival in Paris — The Parisians' reception of the Queen — A description of the route — The apartments of the Queen at St. Cloud — How the Queen spent Sunday — Visits the art section of the Exhibition on Monday — Ingres and Horace Vernet presented to her — Frenchmen's ignorance of English art in those days — English and French art critics — The Queen takes a carriage drive through Paris — Not a single cry of "Vive l'Angleterre!" a great many of "Vive la Reine" — England making a cats-paw of France — Deception at the Élysée-Bourbon — "Les Demoiselles de Saint-Cyr" at St. Cloud — Alexandre Dumas would have liked to see the Queen — Visit to Versailles — State-performances at the Opéra — Ball at the Hôtel de Ville — The Queen's dancing — Canrobert on "the Queen's dancing and her soldiers' fighting" — Another visit to the Exhibition — Béranger misses seeing the Queen — "I am not going to see the Queen, but the woman" — A review in the Champ-de-Mars — A visit to Napoléon's tomb — Jérôme's absence on the plea of illness — Marshal Vaillant's reply to the Emperor when the latter invites him to take Jérôme's place — His comments on the receptions given by the Emperor to foreign sovereigns — Fêtes at Versailles — Homeward.
Magnificent as were the quasi-private entertainments at Compiègne, and the more public ones at the Tuileries, they were as nothing to the series of fêtes on the occasion of Queen Victoria's visit to Paris, in 1855. For nearly three months before, the capital had assumed the aspect of a fair. The Exposition Universelle of '55 virtually inaugurated the era of "middle-class excursions," which since then have assumed such colossal proportions, especially with regard to the English. Previous to this the development of railways had naturally brought many of our countrymen to Paris, but they were of a different class from those who now invadedthe French metropolis. They were either men of business bent on business, though not averse to enjoying themselves in the intervals, or else belonging or pretending to belong to "the upper ten," and travelling more or lessen grand seigneurs. They came singly, and left their cards at the Embassy, etc. The new visitors came in groups, though not necessarily acquainted or travelling with one another; they knew nothing of the Hôtel Meurice and the Hôtel Bristol or their traditions; they crowded the Palais-Royal and its cheap restaurants, and had, so to speak, no French at their command. Notwithstanding the exclamation of the Frenchman when he saw the statue of Wellington opposite Apsley House, it was then, and then only, that therevancheof Waterloo began. It has lasted ever since. It was '55 that marked the appearance in the shop-windows of small cards bearing the words, "English spoken here." Hitherto the English visitor to Paris was commonly supposed to have had a French tutor or governess, and though the French he or she did speak was somewhat trying to the ear, it was heavenly music compared to the English the Parisian shopkeeper now held it incumbent upon himself to "trot out" for the benefit of his customers, or that of the guide or valet de place, legions of whom infested the streets.
The Exhibition was opened on the 15th of May, but Queen Victoria was not expected until the middle of August. Meanwhile, the Parisians were treated to a sight of the Lord Mayor—Sir F. Moon, I believe—and the aldermen, who came in the beginning of June, and who were magnificently entertained by the Paris municipality, a deputation of which went as far as Boulogne to welcome them. Still, it was very evident that neither their visit nor that of the King of Portugal and his brother was to tax the ingenuity of upholsterers, carpenters, and caterers, or of the Parisians themselves in the matter of decoration; the watchword had apparently been given from the highest quarters to reserve their greatest efforts for what Napoléon up till then considered "the most glorious event of his reign." The Emperor, though he had gone to join the Empress, who was by this time known to be enceinte, at Eaux-Bonnes and Biarritz, returned to Paris at the end of July, and for more than a fortnight occupied himself personally and incessantly with the smallest details of the Queen's visit, the whole of the programme of which was settled by him.
I was one of the few privileged persons who travelled down to Boulogne with Louis-Napoléon, on Friday, the 17th of August, 1855. When we got to our destination, the yacht was not in sight, but we were already informed that, owing to its heavy tonnage, it would not be able to enter the harbour except at high tide, which would not be until 1 p.m., on Saturday. Shortly after that hour the vessel, accompanied by its flotilla, appeared in the offing; but the Queen remained on board, and we had to enjoy ourselves as best we could, which was not difficult, seeing that the whole of the town was absolutely in the streets, and that the latter were decidedly preferable to the stuffy attics at the hotels, for which we were charged the moderate sum of forty francs each. Uneventful as my life has been, it is only worth recording by reason of the celebrity of the persons with whom I have come in contact; nevertheless, I have travelled a good deal, and been present at a great many festive gatherings both in England and on the Continent. Commend me to the French hotel-proprietor for fleecing you in cold blood. The Swiss and the Italians, no mean masters of the art, are not in it with him; and as for the Germans, they are mere 'prentices compared with him. The Italian despoils you, like his countryman of operatic fame, Fra-Diavolo; the Swiss, like an English highwayman of the good old sort; the German, like a beggar who picks your pocket while you are looking in your purse for a coin to give him; the Frenchman, like the money-lender who is "not working for himself, but for a hard-hearted, relentless principal."
On the Saturday, the Emperor was astir betimes, and went to the camp occupied by the troops under the command of Marshal Baraguey-d'Hilliers. Louis-Napoléon's countenance was at all times difficult to read; I repeat, his eyes, like those of others, may have been "the windows of his soul," but their blinds were down most of the time. It was only at rare intervals that the impenetrable features were lighted up by a gleam from within, that the head, which generally inclined to the right, became erect. On that morning, the face was even a greater blank than usual. And yet that day, even to the fatalist he was, must have seemed a wonderful one; for the blind goddess of fortune, the "lucky star" in which he trusted, had never rewarded a mortal as she had rewarded him. A few years previously, during one of his presidential journeys, he had been hailed with enthusiasmat Strasburg, the city in which the scene of one of his bitterest fiascos had been laid. The contrast between those two days was startling indeed: on the one, he was hurried into a post-chaise as a prisoner to be taken to Paris, with an almost certain terrible fate overhanging him; on the other, he was greeted as the saviour of France, the Imperial Crown was within his grasp. But, startling as was this contrast, it could but have been mild compared to that which must have presented itself to his mind that autumn morning at Boulogne, when, a few hours later, the legions—his legions—took up their positions from Wimereux on the right to Porsel on the left, to do homage to the sovereign of a country which had been the most irreconcilable foe of the founder of his house; on the very heights at the foot of which he himself had failed to rouse the French to enthusiasm; on the very spot where he had become the laughing-stock of the world by his performance with that unfortunate tame eagle.
And yet, I repeat, not a gleam of pride or joy lighted up the Sphinx-like mask. To see this man standing there unmoved amidst the highest honours the world had to bestow, one could not help thinking of Voltaire's condemnation of fatalism as the guiding principal of life: "If perchance fatalism be the true doctrine, I would sooner be without such a cruel truth."
A regiment of lancers and one of dragoons lined the route from the landing-stage to the railway station, for in those days the trains did not stop alongside the boats; while on the bridge crossing the Liane, three hundred sappers, bearded like the Pard, shouldering their axes, wearing their white leathern aprons, stood in serried ranks, three deep.
The Queen's yacht had been timed to enter the harbour at one, but it was within a minute or so of two before it was moored amidst the salutes from the forts. The Emperor, who had been on horseback the whole of the morning—who, in fact, preferred that means of locomotion on all important occasions, as it showed him off to greater advantage,—had been standing by the side of his charger. He crossed the gangway, beautifully upholstered in purple velvet and carpet to match, at once, and, after having kissed her hand, offered her his arm to assist her in landing, Prince Albert and the royal children coming immediately behind the Imperial host and his principal guest. A magnificent roomy barouche, capable of holding six persons and lined with white satin, but onlydrawn by two horses—such horses! for in that respect Napoléon had spent his time to advantage in England,—stood waiting to convey the Royal family. The Emperor himself, though, mounted his horse once more, and took his place by the right of the carriage, the left being taken by Marshal Baraguey-d'Hilliers. The head of the procession started amidst tremendous cheers from the crowd, but we who came on behind heard some curious comments upon this popular manifestation. Knowing that there would be a considerable delay in getting the train off, I walked instead of driving. I was accompanied by Lord ——, who was never averse to having his little joke. "Hé bien, mon ami," he said to an old weather-beaten sailor, who was short of his left leg—"hé bien, mon ami, nous voilà réconciliés."
"Oui, oui, je t'en fiche," was the answer; "mais puisqu'ils en sont à se faire des m'amours, ils devaient bien me rendre ma jambe que j'ai perdue dans leurs querelles."
"Imbécile," remarked an old soldier-looking man, who, though old, was evidently younger than the first speaker, and who was short of an arm, "ta jambe ne t'irait pas plus que mon bras; c'était ta jambe de garçon."
"C'est vrai," nodded the other philosophically; "tout de même, c'est drôle que nous nous soyons battus comme des chiens," pointing across the Channel in the direction of England, "pour en arriver à cela. Si le vieux (Napoléon I.) revenait, il serait rudement colère." And I may say at once that, notwithstanding the friendly attitude throughout of the rural as well as of the Parisian populations, that was the underlying sentiment. "Waterloo est arrangé, non pas vengé," said a Parisian; "il paraît qu'il y a des accommodements avec les rois, aussi bien qu'avec le ciel."
As a matter of course, we did not leave Boulogne much before three—the original arrangement had been for half-past one,—and when we reached Paris it was dark, too early for the illuminations which had been projected along the line of boulevards from the recently open Boulevard de Strasbourg to the Madeleine, not so much as a feature in the programme of reception, as in honour of the Queen generally. On the other hand, there was not sufficient daylight for the crowds to distinguish the sovereign's features, and a corresponding disappointment was the result. The lighted carriage lamps did not improve matters much. But the Parisians—to their credit be it said—knowing that Queen Victoria had expressedher wish to be conveyed to St. Cloud in an open carriage, instead of the closed State one used on such occasions, took note of the intention, and acknowledged it with ringing cheers. Victor Hugo has said that the Parisian loves to show his teeth—he must either be laughing or growling; and at the best of times it is an ungrateful task to analyse too thoroughly such manifestations of enthusiasm. There are always as many reasons why nations should hate as love each other. The sentiment, as expressed by the sailor and soldier alluded to just now, did exist—of that I feel sure; but amidst the truly fairy spectacle then presented to the masses that crowded the streets, it may have been forgotten for the moment.
For, in spite of the gathering darkness, the scene was almost unique. I have only seen another one like it, namely, when the troops returned from the Franco-Austrian War; and people much older than I declared that the next best one was that on the occasion of the return of the Bourbons in 1814.
Though the new northern station, erected on the site of the old, had been virtually finished for more than a twelvemonth, the approaches to it were, if not altogether magnificent projects, little more than magnificent mazes, stone and mortar Phœnixes, in the act of rising, not risen, from Brobdignagian dust-heaps, and altogether unfit for any kind of spectacular procession. Consequently, it had been decided to connect the northern with the eastern line immediately after entering the fortifications. The Strasbourg Station did not labour under the same disadvantages; the boulevard of that name stretched uninterruptedly as far as the Boulevard St. Denis, although, as yet, there were few houses on it. I have seen a good many displays of bunting in my time; I have seen Turin and Florence and Rome beflagged and decorated on the occasions of popular rejoicings; I have seen historical processions in the university towns of Utrecht and Leyden; I have seen triumphal entries in Brussels; I was in London on Thanksgiving day, but I have never beheld anything to compare with the wedged masses of people along the whole of the route, as far as the Bois de Boulogne, on that Saturday afternoon. The whole of the suburban population had, as it were, flocked into Paris. The regulars lined one side of the whole length of the Boulevards, the National Guards the other. And there was not a single house from the station tothe southernmost corner of the Rue Royale that had not its emblems, its trophies, its inscriptions of "welcome." With that inborn taste which distinguishes the Parisians, the decorator had ceased trying to gild the gold and to paint the lily at that point, and had left the magnificent perspective to produce its own effect—a few Venetian masts along the Avenue de Champs-Élysées and nothing more. Among the notable features of the decorations in the main artery of Paris was the magnificent triumphal arch, erected by the management of the Opéra between the Rue de Richelieu and what is now the Rue Drouot. It rose to the fourth stories of the adjacent houses, and looked, not a temporary structure, but a monument intended to stand the wear and tear of ages. No description could convey an idea of its grandeur. The inside was draped throughout with bee-bespangled purple, the top was decorated with immense eagles, seemingly in full flight, and holding between their talons proportionately large scutcheons, bearing the interlaced monograms of the Imperial hosts and the Royal guests. In front of the Passage de l'Opéra stood an allegorical statue, on a very beautiful pedestal draped with flags; and further on, at the back of the Opéra-Comique, which really should have been its front,[75]an obelisk, the base of which was a correct representation, in miniature, of the Palais de l'Industrie (the then Exhibition Building). By the Madeleine a battalion of the National Guards had erected, at their own cost, two more allegorical statues, France and England. A deputation from the National Guards had also presented her Majesty with a magnificent bouquet on alighting from the train.