I havementioned the Duc de Broglie and the Duc Decazes. They were the last two ministers of the old school of which the Third French Republic could boast. After them came mostly self-made men, who were perhaps cleverer than they had been but who did not possess the traditions of old France, and who brought along with them not only a change of policy but a change in political manners and customs. After the two great ministers of whom I am about to speak, the Republic became democratic, far removed from the aristocratic country it had been whilst they were ruling it.
The Duc de Broglie was the son of remarkable parents. His father, the old Duke Victor, had been a writer, a thinker, a politician and an orator of no mean talent; one, moreover, who, amidst the corruption which had prevailed at the time of the first restoration of the Bourbons, had succeeded in keeping his hands clean from every suspicion. He showed the great independence of his noble, straightforward character when almost alone among his colleagues in the House of Peers he refused to vote for the condemnation of Marshal Ney.
The old Duc’s wife was the lovely Duchesse de Broglie, Albertine de Stael, the daughter of the celebrated Madame de Stael, and the granddaughter of Necker. Madame de Broglie was one of those figures who leave their impress on posterity, and whose influence survives them for a long time. She had,allied to considerable beauty, a noble soul, a great intelligence, and strict Protestant principles, which had communicated a tinge of austerity to all that she said, did or wrote.
Her son Albert inherited much of this Calvinistic severity, which gave him sometimes a harsh appearance and harsh manners. He was one of those men who never will accept a compromise, or resort to diplomacy of whatever kind, to achieve anything they have made up their minds to do. He was unusually well read, a man of considerable erudition, who was more at his ease at his writing-table than in a drawing-room. He had never been frivolous, as one of his friends once said, and had but seldom shown himself amiable. This absence of human passions made him sometimes unjust towards those who had felt their influence, or allowed themselves to be carried away by them. One could not imagine a time when the Duc de Broglie had been young, nor a moment when he had not been absorbed by his duties or his studies. He was a living encyclopædia, and was continually improving his own mind by devoting his attention to some serious subject or other. When he was elected a member of the Academy no one was surprised at it, the contrary would have seemed wonderful because he appeared to have been born an Academician, and to be out of place anywhere else but among the ranks of that select company known as the Institut de France.
The Duc de Broglie possessed a high moral character. He had strong prejudices, no indulgence for others, perhaps because he had never had any for himself; he was narrow-minded in some things, but generous in everything that did not touch on the question of principles. He came from an Orleanist family, and never wavered in his allegiance to the younger branch of the house of France, and when he accepted office, under Marshal MacMahon, he certainly didso with the idea that he could in time bring back Philippe VII. to Paris as King.
In spite of his apparent coldness and austerity, he had strong political passions, the only ones that his soul had ever known. These passions made him sometimes lose sight of the obstacles in his way, and the natural hauteur of a grand seigneur made him despise adversaries that he ought either to have tried to conciliate or else to have reckoned with more carefully than he did. He was not sympathetic, and very few liked him, but this latter fact did not trouble him much. The only thing he cared for was to be respected, esteemed, honoured by his foes as well as by his friends. No man was ever more respectful of a given word than the Duc de Broglie, and he would rather have died than have broken a promise once made, no matter how rash that promise might have been. He was certainly not a politician of the modern school, and both for him and for his country it might have been better had he confined himself to the historical studies which have made for him such a great name in modern French literature of the graver sort.
An amusing anecdote is related of the Duc de Broglie. He was staying with one of his friends in the country, and one day took up a novel which, forgotten, had been left on the table. With the attention that he always gave to everything he did, he read it through—it was the “Histoire de Sybille,” of Octave Feuillet—and then gravely asked his host whether one of the heroes of it was still alive? When the latter, more than surprised, inquired what he meant, he found out that the Duke had thought the book treated of facts that had really occurred, and had not imagined that the tale was just a novel. “Why waste one’s time in writing about things that have never existed?” he remarked. “Life is too short to afford it!” And when Feuillet waselected to the Academy he would never consent to give him his vote, saying that through him he had lost a few hours he might have employed in reading something more useful than a mere romance. For he could not forgive the fact that it had interested him in spite of his abomination for that kind of literature.
One can imagine that a man with such strength of character could not well understand the weakness of Marshal MacMahon, and it is not to be wondered at that the two serious discussions during the few months that elapsed between the birth and the fall of that Cabinet were always known in the annals of Parliamentary France as “the Cabinet of the 16th of May.” The Duc de Broglie would have liked to carry through the elections under the flag of Orleanism, to which he was so very much attached, and for whose profit, he had imagined, the Marshal had decided upon hiscoup d’étatwhen he dismissed Jules Simon. When he perceived that the Duc de Magenta had simply given way to an attack of bad temper, the disillusion which he experienced was very great, but he did not think it right to desert the post which he had accepted under a misapprehension, and he and his colleagues only left office when the result of the elections made it but too apparent that their day had come to an end.
The Duc de Broglie never returned to political life after that effort. He spent the rest of his existence in retirement, absorbed in his studies, and seeking among his books an enjoyment that nothing else could give him. One did not meet him often in society, but sometimes he put in an appearance at the house parties given by his son, Prince Amédée de Broglie, at his splendid castle of Chaumont sur Loire, once the residence of Catherine de Medici.
Prince Amédée had married an heiress, Mademoiselle Say,the daughter of the great sugar refiner, who had brought him something like twenty million francs as her dowry. When her marriage took place one was not used yet in aristocratic France to these unions between the representatives of great names and daughters of the people, and one evening at a party given in honour of the young bride the Comte Horace de Choiseul, well known for his caustic tongue, approached her, and showing her a spot on her dress made by an ice that had fallen upon it, he said: “Vous avez une tâche de sucre sur votre robe, Princesse” (“You have a spot of sugar on your gown, Princess”). Madame de Broglie turned round, and instantly retorted: “Je préfère une tâche de sucre à une tâche de sang” (“I prefer a spot of sugar to a spot of blood”), thus alluding to the murder of the Comte de Choiseul’s mother, the Duchesse de Praslin, by her husband.
She is an amiable woman that Princesse de Broglie, in spite of her sharp tongue, and certainly she is one of the pleasantest in Paris society at present.
The Duc Decazes was a great contrast to the Duc de Broglie. Just as clever, though perhaps not so learned as the latter, he was, moreover, a most accomplished man of the world in the fullest sense of that expression. He made himself friends wherever he went, even among the ranks of his adversaries. During the seven years that he remained in charge of the Foreign Office, in several Cabinets, he succeeded in winning for France the respect of Europe, and in presenting the idea that though governments might change in that country, its foreign policy would not depart from the line it had taken. He was frank, loyal, a cultured, gentle, and an excellent, though not a brilliant, politician. Placed in office at a very difficult moment, just after the disasters of the Franco-German War had entirely destroyed the prestigeof his fatherland, he contrived to raise it in the opinion of foreign governments, and to give them a high idea of its moral resources and dignity.
The advent of the Republic had, of course, been received with every feeling of apprehension and distrust, and the old Monarchists, who had already considerably hesitated before they admitted the Bonapartes as their equals, could not but look with distrust at the political adventurers who had replaced them. The Duc Decazes contrived to win for the governments of M. Thiers and of Marshal MacMahon the respect of all those with whom they had to be in contact; he continued, also, the tradition of the grand manners which had distinguished the Duc de Morny, Count Walewski, the Marquis de Moustiers, and all the high-born gentlemen to whom had been entrusted, for nearly a quarter of a century, the task of speaking in the name of France abroad. He renewed old links, and succeeded in forming new friendships which were to be very useful to him as well as to his country in the future.
The name of the Duc Decazes will always remain associated with the so-called German aggression in 1875, when, it is still currently believed in some quarters, the Prussian Government wanted to declare war against France, a war that was only averted by the intervention of the Emperor Alexander II. of Russia, to whom the French Foreign Minister had appealed for help. The story has been related a thousand times, but what has not been said is that with all his intelligence, his tact and his political experience the Duc Decazes fell a victim to the intrigues of the French Ambassador in Berlin, the Vicomte de Gontaut Biron.
M. de Gontaut was one of those noblemen of the old school who have forgotten nothing, and learned but very little. He had intelligence, tact, knowledge of the world, but he wasdevoted to himself, and entertained the greatest respect for and opinion of his personal capacities.
He had several relations at the Court of Berlin among the members of the highest aristocracy, who, unfortunately for him, were among the enemies and adversaries of Prince Bismarck. He listened to them, appealed to them to carry to the ears of the Emperor William, and especially to those of the Empress Augusta, many things he would have done better to keep to himself, or else to communicate direct to the German Chancellor; he persisted in carrying a personal line of policy, by which he hoped to put spokes in the wheels of the great minister who held the destinies of Germany in his hands, and he allowed himself to be influenced by gossip which was purely founded on suppositions and old women’s love of slander.
The result of such conduct became but too soon apparent. Bismarck was not a man to allow himself to be treated as a negligible quantity, and he very soon began in his turn a campaign against the Vicomte de Gontaut, making him feel by slights on every possible occasion that it would be advisable for him to retire from the field of action, at least in Berlin. M. de Gontaut was fond of his position as an ambassador. Moreover, his was such an extraordinary vanity that he allowed himself very easily to be convinced that by remaining at his post he was rendering the greatest of services to his country, because no other man in his place could use the resources he had at his disposal so successfully in learning the secrets of the Berlin Court and of the Prussian Foreign Office.
It was M. de Gontaut who started the war scare, which existed only in his imagination and had sprung from the importance he attributed to himself. Bismarck replied in his memoirs to the insinuations that were made against him at that time, and he proved that neither he nor Von Moltkeand his staff had ever had the idea of attacking France in 1875. I do not think that any serious politician now believes that there was the slightest foundation for the alarm that the French Ambassador had raised. But at that time it was generally believed that European peace had been in peril for a few days until the Emperor of Russia had put in his word and, as it were, forbidden his Imperial uncle to fulfil intentions the latter had never had for one single moment.
To anyone who knew Prince Bismarck it would be needless to point out how these manœuvres of the Vicomte de Gontaut exasperated him. He judged them for what they were: Gontaut’s desire to make himself important, and to give himself the appearance of having been the saviour of France. In a conversation which he had many years later with Count Muravieff, at that time Councillor of Embassy in Berlin, and later on Minister for Foreign Affairs in Russia, the German Chancellor alluded to the incidents which had then taken place and expressed his astonishment that a shrewd politician like the Duc Decazes could have been taken in by the nonsense,les bêtises, as he termed them, that M. de Gontaut was continually writing to him. Count Muravieff, who had been in Paris at that particular moment, could have replied had he liked, that the Duc was not so guilty as it appeared, because he was surrounded by a group of partisans of the Orleans family, who all pretended to beau courantof what was going on in Berlin, through their cousins who were living there, and who did their best to corroborate all that he heard from the Vicomte de Gontaut concerning the plans of Prince Bismarck and his treacherous intentions in regard to France.
At that period Orleanism was flourishing, and succeeded even in influencing the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who found it difficult to disbelieve all that was told him on every side,and which he did not suspect as coming from the same source. It is certain that he fell into the snare, and that when he appealed to Alexander II., it was in the firm belief that a new invasion of his country was about to take place. He found an ally in the person of old Prince Gortschakov, whose vanity seized with alacrity the opportunity that was given to him to appear before the world in the capacity of the saviour of France. Newspapers were put into motion.The Times, through its Paris correspondent, the famous Blowitz, started the alarm, and soon it became an established fact that it was through the intervention of Russia alone that France had been snatched from the grip of Germany. The legend still subsists with some people; its chief result was that we incurred the enmity of Prince Bismarck, who might have acted differently in regard to Russia during the Berlin Congress had it not been for this unwholesome incident.
Before closing with this subject I must relate the following anecdote. When the German Foreign Office insisted on M. de Gontaut contradicting in his dispatches to his government the alarming news he had been giving to it, he repaired to the house of a lady to whom he was related, and who occupied an important position at the Berlin Court, to ask her advice as to what he was to do. A council of war, if such an expression can be employed, was assembled, in which the old Duc de Sagan and his wife, the clever and amiable Duchesse, took part, and discussed gravely whether or not the desires of Prince Bismarck should be fulfilled, and his denial telegraphed to Paris. After long discussions it was at last decided that M. de Gontaut would write about it later on, but that it would be wisest to allow a few days to elapse before communicating the news to the French public, and that, consequently, it was not necessary to telegraph anything for the present. They could not allow thelegend that the Vicomte de Gontaut had saved France from destruction to die so soon.
It would have been difficult for the Duc Decazes to have discerned right from wrong in such a mass of intrigue. It is to his honour that, notwithstanding the provocations he received, he succeeded in keeping calm, cool and dignified, and that he tried seriously to do his best for his country’s interest. He was a slow worker, and this, perhaps, was his bane, because the man whom he had put at the head of his private chancery, the Marquis de Beauvoir, who was his brother-in-law, having married the sister of the Duchesse Decazes, was careless in the extreme, and often allowed subordinates to do the work he ought to have kept entirely under his own control. All these circumstances produced a certain amount of confusion, but nevertheless in spite of these imperfections the administration of the Duc Decazes gave great dignity to the Foreign Office, and considerably raised the prestige of France abroad. He was not, perhaps, a genius, but he was a great minister on account of his honesty, his loyalty, the gentlemanly qualities that distinguished him and that kept him aloof from every dirty intrigue where his reputation might have foundered. When the ministry presided over by the Duc de Broglie had to retire, the Duc Decazes followed it in its retreat, though asked both by Marshal MacMahon and by the leaders of the Republican party whom the elections had brought to power, to keep his functions. He felt he had nothing in common with the men who were henceforward to rule his country, and he persisted in his determination to give up public life. He did not long survive the fall of his party, and when he died no one ever dared to raise one word against him nor to question his deep patriotism, and his devotion to the country he had loved so well and served so faithfully.
A greatchange came over Paris society after the fall of the Empire. Some of its most brilliant elements disappeared altogether, whilst the Faubourg St. Germain, about which nothing had been heard for such a long time, came suddenly to the front, partly through its associations with the Maréchale MacMahon, who, being née de Castries, was considered as one of the Faubourg, and partly through the certainty that prevailed in many circles as to the imminence of a monarchical restoration, for which everybody was prepared. It is true that the first two years which followed upon the conclusion of peace with Germany were dull ones, so far as public amusements were concerned, but little by little Parisian social life began again, though somewhat on a different plane than during the Empire. Whilst the latter had lasted, the families belonging to the highest aristocracy, which had ruled France in olden times, had kept aloof from the social movement that had been so very luxurious and so very gay when the lovely Empress Eugénie had presided over it. They had lived for the most in the country in their ancestral castles, where they had economised, and cultivated their cabbages and potatoes. The custom of marrying heiresses belonging to the bourgeoisie, or to financiers, had not yet become usual, and military service, not being compulsory as it is nowadays, had not mixed together young men belonging toall classes, and thus thrown down the barriers of social distinction. The noblesse had transformed itself into a set, into which no intruders were allowed to enter, and when the Duc de Mouchy married the Princess Anna Murat, the cousin of Napoleon III., he scandalised not only aristocratic circles in general but his own family, the de Noailles, who looked very much askance at the lovely bride in spite of the large dowry she brought with her.
After the fall of the Empire, the Faubourg St. Germain began to come out from its seclusion, to live a little more in Paris, and a little less in its country castles. It participated in the gaieties, such as they were, that went on, and even appeared at the receptions of the Elysée, timidly at first, whilst M. and Mme. Thiers presided over them, and then more boldly after they had been replaced by Marshal MacMahon and his wife. Then the different members of the Orleans family opened their doors to a few select guests, and the salons of the Rothschilds became a neutral meeting ground, where in time people belonging to different political opinions saw each other and commingled, at least as regards social relations. Sport, which had hitherto been absolutely unknown among the better classes, became fashionable, and did more than anything else to break down the barriers that had divided the different social sets and coteries that had lived in solitary grandeur until then. The Embassies, too, contributed to bring together representatives of the various sections of fashionable France, because the supremacy of Paris somehow began to be less absolute than it had been under Napoleon III. The fact, also, that the government of the Republic had appealed to the patriotism of some members of the old nobility of the country to help it in its task of restoring the prestige of France abroad—as, for instance, in sending the Duc de Bisaccia to London as Ambassador,and the Vicomte de Gontaut Biron to Berlin in the same capacity—had done much to bring it partisans, and to procure it more sympathy than the Empire had won for itself at its start. People were feeling that the present state of things was but transitory, and that the existence of that Republic, which no one had expected or foreseen a few days, even, before it became an accomplished fact, was bound to come to an end very quickly, especially under the Marshal, who, it was firmly believed, would use all his influence to bring about a return of the Bourbon dynasty to the throne of France.
The Legitimists were also in possession of large financial means, which they had contrived to accumulate during all the years of their voluntary seclusion. This gave them a distinct advantage over the Imperialists, whose exchequer, which had largely depended on the liberality of the Emperor, found itself in a very low state indeed after it had lost that resource. Ladies who had presided over salons that gave the tone to Paris society, and whose doors had been thrown widely open to all who had cared to enter—such social leaders as the Countess Valevoska, the Princess Pauline Metternich, or the Marquise de Chasseloup Laubat, and the Countess Tascher de la Pagerie—had either left Paris, or retired from the world, or lost the means to entertain with their former splendour. Of the hostesses of olden days there remained but very few, such as the Comtesse Edmond de Pourtalès, the Baronesses Alphonse and Gustave de Rothschild, and the Princess de Sagan, and it was at their houses that the first entertainments after the horrors of the war and the Commune took place. It was under their patronage that Paris found out it still could enjoy itself, though the wild chase after gaiety, which had preceded them, no longer existed. And then a few salons, hermetically closed before, suddenly started a series of entertainments, at which the Comteand the Comtesse de Paris made frequent appearances, especially after their eldest daughter, the Princesse Amélie d’Orléans, who was later on to become Queen of Portugal, had begun to go out into the world. Among them may be mentioned those of the Duchesse de Galliera and of the Duchesse de la Rochefoucauld Bisaccia, after the latter’s return from London, and the retirement of the Duc from public life.
The Duchesse de Bisaccia, born Princesse Marie de Ligne, was a most important person in Paris society, over which she exercised a real influence owing to her husband’s enormous fortune, her beautiful house in the Rue de Varennes, and the luxury, the pomp and the grandeur that were displayed at her numerous receptions. A factor which also contributed to her popularity was the fact of the alliances that united the La Rochefoucaulds to all the oldest nobility of France, and the most powerful members of the coterie “du Faubourg St. Germain.” The eldest daughter of the Duc by his first wife, Mademoiselle de Polignac, was the Duchesse de Luynes, the widow of the Duc de Luynes, who had fallen bravely during the battle of Patay in 1870, whilst his second and third daughters were in time to become the Princesse de Ligne and the Duchesse d’Harcourt; his eldest son was to marry the only daughter of the Duc de la Trémouille, one of the richest heiresses in France.
Personally, the Duc de la Rochefoucauld Bisaccia was a pompous individual, with the manners of a courtly gentleman, as, indeed, he was, and with just enough wit about him to allow him to hold his own among the people with whom he lived. He had an excellent opinion of his personal capacities, felt himself born to great things, and destined to greater still. He had a despotic temperament, and his way of greeting those who called upon him, or whom hemet at other people’s houses, was decidedly haughty. He believed himself to be as much above humanity as his worldly position and his fortune were above those of the generality of mankind. In a word, he carried his ducal coronet everywhere, and even when sleeping remembered that he had to take care of it, or rather that it had to take care of him. He did not admit that anybody could forget what was due to him, and when, long past middle age he took for his second wife the pretty and lively Marie de Ligne, he could not for one single instant think that he failed to represent for her an ideal husband in every way, or that her fancy might have led her to choose a younger and handsomer and merrier companion of her life.
The Duchesse, however, succeeded very soon in finding diversion in other directions than in the constant companionship of her pompous and solemn husband. She was one of those beings who always succeed in taking for themselves the good things of life. Secure in her position, and having very soon come to the conclusion that the Duc’s vanity would never allow him to think that his wife might look beyond him for the happiness to which every woman is entitled, she managed to arrange her existence in such a way that many roses helped her to bear its thorns. There was a time when almost every man of note in Paris society found himself one of the admirers of the Duchesse de Bisaccia, and also one of her friends. She was always pleasant, always kind, always good-tempered, always ready to make others happy. Pretty in her youth, she very quickly became stout, but this did not prevent her from going about or attending any of the entertainments at which it was deemed fashionable to be seen. She was fond of dress, but yet always appeared untidy, perhaps on account of her corpulence. She generally put on her tiara in such a way that five minutes after it hadbeen fastened on to her head it got crooked and hung on one side, but though this gave her whole person an original appearance it did not make her ridiculous, as it would have made another woman. The Duchesse could not be ridiculous, no matter what she wore, nor what she did. She was essentially a great lady, even when not ladylike, which often occurred, because her manners were distinctly unceremonious, and had a dash of Bohemianism about them such as is not often met with in the circles in which she generally moved. I use the word “generally” on purpose, as there were times when the Duchesse did not object to visiting, with one or other of her numerous friends, places and people more or less unconventional. But, somehow, whatever she did or said no one seemed to mind, and she remained until the last the favourite of a society over which she reigned for nearly forty years, and by which she is missed to this very day.
Madame de Bisaccia was exceedingly fond of entertaining, and gave sumptuous receptions in her Hotel de la Rue de Varennes, which were considered landmarks in the horizon of fashionable Paris. These receptions were very stately; it would have been impossible for them to be otherwise in the presence of the Duc. During the septenary of Marshal MacMahon they were frequent, especially and always honoured by the presence of a royalty or two. The Duchesse had a grand way of receiving her guests, and when she stood on the top of her beautiful old staircase she appeared every inch of her to be one of those great ladies of the eighteenth century such as we see in the pictures of Latour or Largillière—a queen without a crown, but with courtiers, and surrounded by regal state.
It was rumoured that at these feasts, which took place in the Hotel de Bisaccia, many dark plots against the Republic were hatched. The Comte de Paris used to receive someof his adherents in a remote room there whilst his daughter was dancing in the ball-room, and the Comtesse gave audiences to ladies who craved to be presented to her, with the dignity she had learnt in the royal palace of Madrid, where she had been born. It was under the auspices of the Duc that the leaders of the Legitimist party persuaded the head of the House of Orleans that, in order to recover the throne which his grandfather had lost, a reconciliation had to be effected between him and the Comte de Chambord; it was also there that a plot was conceived to persuade Marshal MacMahon to lend himself to a restoration, which was not only desired but which had been in a certain sense already discounted among the majority of the people who were guests at the receptions of the Hotel de Bisaccia.
All this is now a thing of the past. Good-natured Duchesse Marie died a good many years since, and the pompous little Duc has followed her to the grave; their eldest son has also disappeared from this worldly scene, whilst his widow, Charlotte de la Trémouille, lives in retirement, and moves in quite a different set from the one which had frequented the salons of Madame de Bisaccia. The Hotel de la Rue de Varennes belongs to the second son of the Duchesse, who has inherited from an uncle the title of Duc de Doudeauville, and who has married the granddaughter of M. Blanc, of Monaco fame—a woman with more pride than charm, who knows the value of the millions which she brought as her dowry to her husband, and who will never play in Parisian society the part which her mother-in-law filled so well.
I have already said that the eldest daughter of the Duc de Bisaccia had been married to the Duc de Luynes. She became a widow at the age of twenty, and never married again, preferring to keep her great name and title, and understanding that this would not prevent her from living her ownlife in the way she liked best. She was a charming creature, this Duchesse de Luynes, gifted with great talents, and possessed of an engaging manner that was quite peculiar to her. People who knew her well used to say that she had an abominable temper, but of this last fact the general public was not made aware, and it is quite certain that she was greatly liked by nearly all those who knew her. She lived most of the year at her castle of Dampierre, which had been left to her for life by the Duc, and received in great state in that historical domain, made illustrious by the remembrance of all the famous people to whom it had previously belonged, or who had been visitors under its hospitable roof. Ill-natured gossips pretended that during her children’s minority she had managed to squander a good part of the fortune which they had inherited from their father, and which had been left under her personal control, and it is certain that her son, the present Duc, in spite of the large dowry which his wife, the daughter of the Duchesse d’Uzès, of Boulanger fame, had brought to him, had to exercise a rigorous economy in order to restore something of its past glories to the house of Luynes. But during the lifetime of the Duchesse Yolande no one dared to make any allusion to the carelessness with which she had attended to her children’s interests, and she exercised a despotic sway over them, and never allowed them to question anything she decided to do. Dark things were hinted about her, but we may be allowed to consider them as calumnies, and to remember her as one of the pleasantest women among the many who reigned over Paris society at the period of which I am writing.
The La Rochefoucauld was a very numerous family, divided into ever so many branches, and owing to the similarity of names a good deal of trouble ensued, until the identity of all of them was discovered, especiallyto persons not very well up in the mysteries of the Almanach de Gotha.
The Comte de la Rochefoucauld was an amusing personage, and anything more funny than his admiration of the family to which he belonged could scarcely be met. His whole universe consisted in the grandeur of the origin of the La Rochefoucaulds, and the sole reason of his existence, as well as the only object of his thoughts, was how to persuade others to view it in the same light that he did. According to him, God came first and the La Rochefoucaulds next, and I am not quite sure whether he did not consider in his inmost thoughts that even in Heaven they ought to be awarded precedence at the banquet of Eternity over the saints of humble origin.
It is related that one day when he was in England someone mentioned the old saying, in relation to one of the most noble of the many noble houses Great Britain can boast, which speaks of “all the blood of all the Howards,” Count Aimery smiled modestly. “Yes,” he replied, “the Howards are great people, but I have known greater ones” (“Je connais mieux qu’eux”).
One can imagine how this weakness of that amiable man, for he was amiable indeed, was laughed at, but nevertheless he contrived to create for himself a unique position in Paris society, and talked so much and so constantly over his right to occupy the seat of honour at every dining-table he was asked to honour with his presence, that he succeeded in getting it,—and no one would have dreamed of denying it to him. Even when he happened to be in the same room as a Duke whose supremacy he deigned to recognise and to admit, one was very careful to award him the next best seat.
Comte Aimery was married to a charming woman, Mademoiselle de Mailly Nesle, whose house in the Rue de l’Université was for many years considered one of the most hospitable among the many hospitable ones in Paris. She was most exclusive as to the people whom she invited to it, but when once she had allowed them to cross her threshold, she never dropped them later on, or showed any difference in the way in which she welcomed them, even when she did not find them quite congenial or entirely sympathetic. She was rather stiff and certainly dull, and the parties which she used to give regularly during the spring season were anything but lively, partly because the guests felt that they ought not to think about anything else but the greatness of the La Rochefoucaulds, and the honour which was conferred upon them by their admittance under the roof of a member of that illustrious family; partly because anything that would have borne even the most remote likeness to amusement or mirth would have seemed out of place in those large rooms furnished in the seventeenth century style, where on all the walls hung solemn pictures of dead and gone ancestors of the hosts. But to be invited to attend a social function, no matter of what kind, by Madame Aimery gave one at once a position in Paris society, putting one immediately on the level of the upper ten thousand who constituted its most exclusive set, and by reason of that circumstance any new arrival or foreigner aspiring to make a position for himself, thought it his or her duty never to miss any of the receptions given at the hotel in the Rue de l’Université.
Madame Aimery de La Rochefoucauld died a year or two ago, and the hospitable gates of her house have remained closed ever since. Her only son, Comte Gabriel, is married to Mademoiselle de Richelieu, the sister of the present Duke of that name and the daughter of the widowed Duchess, who later married the Prince of Monaco. The Princesse de Monaco is a Jewess by origin, the daughter of the bankerHeine, and it was a hard pill to swallow for Count Aimery when he had to consent to this union of his only son with a girl who, though charming in herself, still could not boast of the thirty-two quarterings which he considered as indispensable in such cases. He submitted, however, with better grace than he would have done had a few millions not helped him to do so, together with the consciousness that these millions would allow his heir to keep up the state which befitted his station in life. Now Count Aimery is an old man, far advanced in the sixties, if not in the seventies, and is but little seen in society, especially since the death of his wife. His greatest delight consists in being consulted in matters of etiquette, or being asked to arrange seats at a dinner table. His constant occupation is the study of the Almanach de Gotha and books of that kind. He is as happy as a man devoid of cares can be, and probably will live a good many years yet, being so forgetful of anything that does not concern the glories of the La Rochefoucauld family that he will surely even forget to die. Should he ever remember to do so, the Faubourg St. Germain will lose its greatest authority in matters of social etiquette and social precedence.
Amongthe great ladies who began to receive society in their ancestral houses during the presidency of Marshal MacMahon can be mentioned the Duchesse de Rohan, at that time still Princesse de Léon; the Duchesse de Galliera, of whom I have already spoken; and a crowd of hostesses of minor standing within the social horizon, who hastened with more or less alacrity to follow their example. The Comtesse Mélanie de Pourtalès opened once more the doors of her hotel in the Rue Tronchet, as did the Baroness Alphonse de Rothschild her magnificent palace in the Rue St. Florentin, whilst Madame Edouard André very soon contrived, thanks to her husband’s enormous fortune and her own great talent as a painter, to introduce herself into the most select circles of Paris society, and to have all its celebrities at her receptions given in her splendid dwelling on the Boulevard Haussmann.
Little by little social life began to re-establish itself, though on an entirely different scale than formerly, and, strange to say, society became ever so much less exclusive than when a distinct line of separation existed between the Monde des Tuileries, as it was called, and the other coteries which abounded in the capital.
Madame de Galliera was one of the last representatives of thegrandes damesof the time of Louis Philippe, when even great ladies got imbued with a certain tinge of middle-class leanings, which were the distinctive feature of thatmiddle-class Court over which Queen Marie Amélie presided, where it was not considered as against etiquette to appear before the Sovereigns with an umbrella, and where the King did not hesitate to peel a fruit with a penknife. Madame de Galliera was polite and amiable, very correct in everything she did, and very much convinced of the exceptional importance which her numerous millions gave her in the world where she moved with more ease than pleasure. She belonged to a coterie composed of widely differing elements, and where rigid dames could be found together with some who posed as such, though with the heavy burden of a well-filled past upon their shoulders. Such, for instance, as the Duchesse de Dino, who in her young days had been a friend of Madame de Galliera, though considerably older than the latter.
At the time I am talking about, that descendant of the Genoese Doges and daughter of the ancient house of Brignole-Sale was affecting the most considerable devotion to the Orleans family, and had put her sumptuous house at the disposal of the Comte de Paris, who inhabited it until the decree of expulsion was enforced against him. He held there the reception on the occasion of the wedding of his daughter, the Princess Amélie, with the heir to the throne of Portugal. This reception, brought him bad luck in general, because it was the cause of a quarrel between him and his capricious hostess, who, instead of leaving him her vast fortune as she had intended, willed a considerable portion of it to the Empress Frederick of Germany, with whom she had struck up a violent friendship at the time the Emperor was struggling with the horrors of his last illness at San Remo. She left her house in Paris to the Austrian Emperor, whose Embassy has been located in it ever since.
Madame de Galliera was a very considerable personalityin Paris society, but no one liked her, and not a few stood in fear of her because she could be terribly rude when she liked, and had a peculiar way of entirely crushing those she did not care for, or against whom she thought she had a grudge. Her relations with her only son were peculiar, and for reasons it is not for me to discuss he refused to accept the slightest portion of her enormous wealth, or to be known by any of the numerous titles that belonged to her, calling himself plain M. Ferrari, and preferring to earn his own living rather than enjoy millions to which he felt he had no moral right. His strong principles rebelled against compromises, about which no one else would have been troubled.
The present Duchesse de Rohan, at that time still Princesse de Léon, was a very different person from Madame de Galliera. Mademoiselle de Verteillac by birth, she brought an immense dowry to the Prince de Léon when she married him; it restored to the house of Rohan some of its past splendours. With her money she rebuilt the old castle of Josselin, and made it one of the landmarks of Brittany. The receptions she held in her house on the Boulevard des Invalides were exceedingly sumptuous and numerous; some of the fancy balls that took place there, indeed, are still talked of. She was hospitable, kind, clever in her way, but rather inclined to vulgarity, perhaps on account of her stoutness, and partly because her whole manner was too good-natured to be distinguished. Looking at her, one might have thought her to be anything but a Duchesse de Rohan, but she was and is still very much liked, because she has always shown herself generous, indulgent for others, and absolutely devoid of snobbishness. Madame de Rohan has pretensions to be considered a literary person, and has written a few books, which her title and position in society have helped to make popular. She isnow an old woman, who has known the sorrows of life, having lost a charming daughter, the Comtesse de Périgord, who was snatched away from her in the flower of her youth and beauty; but the Duchesse has kept her pleasant smile and kind welcome, and is decidedly a popular personage in Parisian society.
The years that have sat rather heavily on the Duchesse de Léon have spared the lovely Countess Mélanie de Pourtalès, who, although a great-grandmother at present, is just as lovely an old woman as she was a splendid young one. The smile, the eyes, the expression, have retained their former charm and the soft melodious voice its youthful ring. One cannot call Madame de Pourtalès a great lady, in the sense which the French attach to this expression ofgrande dame, which has no equal in any other language; but she was essentially thefemme charmanteof the time in which she was born, pleasant, simple, with no shred of affectation about her a thoughtful hostess, and a faithful friend to those to whom she had attached herself; moreover, of no mean intelligence, of perfect tact, and with a wonderful knowledge of the world. She saw at her feet all the men of her own generation, and went on gathering the admiration of those who belonged to a later one. Her receptions were select, in the sense that at them one only met social stars; they were not exclusive—bankers and financial magnates elbowed young beauties in their prime, or authors, whether of repute or simply fashionable for the moment. When she passes away she will not be forgotten, and her name will always remain associated with the fate of the Second Empire and with the Third Republic.
I have spoken of Madame Edouard André; before her marriage she had been known as Mademoiselle Nelly Jacquemard, a painter of wonderful talent, whose portraits of M.Thiers and M. Dufaure will rank among the most remarkable works of art of the end of the nineteenth century in France. She had fascinated M. André, the son of a banker, blessed with a considerable number of millions, who had been one of the most fashionable men of the Société des Tuileries towards the end of the reign of Napoleon III. M. André, already old and nearly paralysed, had fallen in love with the artist at the time she was painting his picture, and finding that their tastes in many things harmonised he had married her. Mlle. Jacquemard proved herself grateful, and made an excellent wife to the tired, weary man, who found in her what he had wished—a companion and a nurse. When he died he left her all his riches, together with his wonderful house and the numerous works of art that it contained, and to which she considerably added.
Madame André was an amusing little woman, absolutely vulgar in appearance and manners, but who moved in the best society, and whose entertainments, absolutely devoid of stiffness, were as amusing as large receptions can be. She was made very much of by the Orleans family, who flattered her in the secret hope that she would be induced to make a will in their favour, but that hope was to prove a barren one, because Madame André left all that she possessed to the Institut de France, with injunctions to transform her palace into a museum. She is supposed to have said, not without a certain malice, that in doing so she was following the example given to her by the Duc d’Aumale, and that consequently she believed the way she had disposed of her property would meet the approval of the latter’s numerous nephews and nieces.
By an extraordinary freak of her rather peculiar character Madame André, after her marriage, entirely neglected the art to which she had owed her former celebrity. She absolutely refused to take again a brush or a pencil in her hand, and was even angry when anyone made an allusion to her wonderful talent in that line. It seemed as if she was ashamed of Nelly Jacquemard, and yet it was to Nelly Jacquemard she had owed the conquest that she had made of M. Edouard André and his many millions.
The Rothschild family, who perhaps had been more powerful during the reign of Louis Philippe than later on, at least as regards the political influence and power which they wielded, had acquired a far greater social position during the Second Empire, and one which became even stronger after its fall, when for one brief moment they transferred their allegiance to the Comte de Paris and to the whole Orleans family. The Baron Alphonse was a very great personage indeed, and one of whom even kings and countries stood in awe. He had married one of his cousins, the daughter of the London Rothschild, and the grace, beauty, and intelligence of his wife won them many friends among Parisian society. The couple entertained on a large scale, and their balls, dinners, and shooting parties at their lovely castle of Férrières were celebrated for the luxury displayed at them and for the discriminating choice of the guests invited. It was at Férrières that the Princess Amélie, the daughter of the Comte de Paris, made her début in society, and later on, especially during the Exhibition of 1878, the Rothschilds opened their doors widely to the best French and foreign society. The death of their eldest daughter, Bettina, married to her cousin, Baron Albert Rothschild of Vienna, put an end to those brilliant festivities. The Baroness Alphonse hardly ever went out after that, and contented herself with seeing a few intimate friends at her own house. The only other great function at the hotel in the Rue St. Florentin was the reception given in honour of the marriage of Edouard, the only son of Baron and BaronessAlphonse de Rothschild, with the lovely Mademoiselle Halphen, an event which was very shortly followed by the death of the old Baron.
His widow only survived him for a short time. She had grown very eccentric towards the last, and suffered from the mania of thinking herself poor and obliged to economise. Madame Edmond de Pourtalès was about the only person whom she cared to see, and the latter remained with her constantly, never leaving her bedside during her last short illness. The hotel in the Rue St. Florentin still remains closed, as its present owners do not seem to care much for society, and it is very much to be doubted whether it will ever witness the sumptuous entertainments that had won for it such fame in past times.
Another house which has passed into other hands, being now occupied by M. Seligmann, a merchant of curiosities, is the Hotel de Sagan, Rue St. Dominique, where the Princesse de Sagan, the daughter of the banker Seillères, used so frequently to entertain from the days when her marriage brought her into the most exclusive set of Paris society. Madame de Sagan was a tall, slight, fair woman, with pleasant manners, who was very much liked by a good many men, but had never been able to get on with her own husband. He was the eldest son of the Duc de Valencay and the grandson of the famous Duchesse de Dino. He spent right and left, and as his father either could not, or would not, give him more, he had been obliged to seek among the daughters of financial houses a companion of his life. He did not care in the least for his wife, though he tried to launch her into society, and to help her in acquiring a great position. The Princess made the best of his advice, but very soon discovered that if she wanted to keep her prestige in the eyes of the world, she had better remove her fortune from the control of her husband.The couple separated after stormy quarrels, that formed the main topic of public conversation for a long time, and the Princess found many people willing to console her in her solitude. From time to time an ugly scandal arose in connection with either her doings or those of the Prince, who very often found need to have recourse to his wife’s purse. He obliged her to pay dearly for his silence concerning things that, if revealed, might have impaired that worldly position for which she cared above everything else.
It is related that once when the heir to one of the thrones of Europe had signified his intention to be present at an entertainment given by Madame de Sagan, some relatives had explained to her that it would be more suitable, especially in view of the fact that the Prince’s wife would also be present, to have a master of the house to play the host, and to receive them together with her. She then began negotiations with the Prince de Sagan, who first of all stipulated he should be given a handsome cheque of not less than four figures, to ensure his presence in his wife’s house, and who consented, after having received it, to make an appearance in his former home, to give a look at all the arrangements made in honour of the occasion, and after having received the royal couple at the bottom of the staircase of the hotel in the Rue St. Dominique, to play the host with the perfection that he always performed his social duties. When the last guest had left, he kissed his wife’s hand with courtly grace, and took leave of her in his turn with a playful remark of some kind or other, and for a long time the couple did not meet again.
The Prince de Sagan was considered the leader of everything that was fashionable in Paris. It was he who organised the racecourse of Auteuil, and who helped greatly topopularise Americans among Parisian society, where, for a handsome consideration, so at least it was rumoured, he introduced them into his particular set, where every word he uttered was law, which, like those of the Medes and Persians, altered not. One used to see him often at the Opera in the box belonging to the Jockey Club, with his inevitable eyeglass hanging on a broad black ribbon, a fashion he was the first to introduce. He occupied two small rooms at the club of the Union, not being possessed of enough means and having too many creditors to be able to indulge in the luxury of a private apartment, and it was there that he was stricken with paralysis, from which he never recovered, and which deprived him both of his speech and of his mental faculties. It was at this juncture that Madame de Sagan behaved with great generosity and a singular power of forgiveness for past injuries. As soon as she heard of the lamentable condition to which her husband had been reduced, she drove to the club, and had him removed to her own house, where she nursed him with the utmost devotion; thereafter the large receptions and garden parties which she regularly gave in spring and which constituted a feature of the Paris season, became a thing of the past, and the hospitable gates of the hotel in the Rue St. Dominique were closed for ever.
The Princesse de Sagan, who in the meanwhile, through the death of her father-in-law, had become the Duchesse de Talleyrand, was not rewarded for her self-sacrifice. She died quite suddenly, before the Duc, who was left alone and infirm to the mercies of his two sons and of hired servants. The old man dragged out an existence for something like ten years or so, and at last died in poverty and solitude, expiating his formerly brilliant life more cruelly and more bitterly than he perhaps deserved.
One of his sons, the present Duc de Talleyrand, to whom I shall refer again, is married to the American heiress, Miss Anna Gould, whose divorce from the Comte de Castellane made such a sensation a few years ago, but the hotel in the Rue St. Dominique has been sold, and already half the magnificent garden in which it stood has been built upon with huge houses, whilst the inside of the palace is turned into an antiquary’s shop; bric-à-brac of all kinds encumbers the lofty rooms where kings and queens moved with stately grace; it dishonours the famous staircase at the top of which the Princesse de Sagan, dressed in the costume of a Persian Empress covered with priceless jewels and with a little negro boy holding a sunshade over her head, received her guests at one of the most famous of her many famous fancy balls.
There was one salon in Paris which was not by any means so brilliant as that of the Comtesse de Pourtalès, the Princesse de Sagan, and the Duchesse de Bisaccia, but which enjoyed a popularity that has never been equalled. I am thinking of that of the Duchesse de Maillé, that stately old lady with the many charming daughters who, without any affectation of pomp and without the least shade of stiffness, welcomed almost every evening her many friends with her bright smile and kind words. Madame de Maillé was one of those women that are but seldom met with, who combine the dignity of thegrande damewith the indulgence and the abandon, if one can use such a word, of the perfect woman of the world. She was clever, and she appreciated cleverness in others; she could talk well, and listen even better still; she knew how to bring into evidence all the perfections and qualities of her friends, and she always found reasons to excuse their faults or their imperfections. She was discreet, and never made use of the many confidences that were constantly pouredinto her ear; she had always ready some good advice to give to those who required it, and she liked to see people happy around her, to watch young people amuse themselves, and though excessively strict in everything that was connected with appearances, so very polite that somehow in her presence no one dreamed of breaking the code established by society in that respect. Madame de Maillé loved politics, and enjoyed exceedingly the conversation of literary people. Almost all the celebrities that Paris could boast of were the habitués of her salon. She used to receive them seated by her fireside, in her plain black gown, with a lace cap over her silvery hair and her everlasting knitting in her hands. She at once put them at their ease, and found out the most appropriate things to tell them. Her house was restful in our age of restlessness, and though there was not the least shade of hauteur about the old Duchesse, the last representative of the ancient family of the Marquis d’Osmond, yet one felt at once, on seeing her, that one stood in the presence of a really great lady.
Now this hospitable salon is also a thing of the past. The Duchesse de Maillé has been dead these last ten years or so, and all her children have settled in houses of their own. Her daughters, Madame de Nadaillac, the Marquise de Ganay, and Madame de Fleury, though all distinguished and amiable women, perhaps because they are still too young, have not acquired that inimitable charm, ease in their manners, and dignity in their bearing which belonged exclusively to their charming mother.
The Duchesse de Maillé was an exception among the old ladies of aristocratic Paris. There was no stiffness, such as, for instance, distinguished the old Princesse de Ligne and the Duchesse de Mirepoix, and some others whose names I have already forgotten. I do not think that anything moresolemn than the receptions of the Princess de Ligne have ever been invented. She was a Pole by birth, belonging to the old family of Lubomirski, a representative of which, Prince Joseph Lubomirski, was at one time a well-known boulevardier. Anything more formidable in the shape of a dowager could hardly be found in the whole world. One could not dream even of sitting in a chair in her august presence, and generally dropped down meekly on one of the numerous stools which adorned her drawing-room and which reminded one of a church without an altar. She was ill-natured, too, cruel when she liked—and she liked it often; severe in her judgments, and inexorable in her decisions. Her numerous grandchildren were all afraid of her, and when she decided that the head of the house of Ligne was to marry her own granddaughter, Mlle. de La Rochefoucauld Bisaccia, neither one nor the other, to their own future sorrow, dared to say a word in opposition, for never was there a union more ill-assorted. When it ended in a divorce no one felt surprised. At the time this last-mentioned fact took place the Princess Hedwige de Ligne had long been dead.
There were other houses in Paris which, perhaps, were less select, but certainly more amusing and agreeable than those in the high circles I have just mentioned. There existed salons which were truly Bohemian, but which also exercised a considerable influence on the sayings and doings of society. I have mentioned already old Madame Lacroix, whose house saw purely literary receptions, and at whose hospitable hearth all the distinguished foreigners who arrived in Paris used to meet. Then there was the salon of Madame Aubernon de Nerville, where Academicians were usually to be met, that of Madame de Luynes, and last, but not least, the salon of Madame Juliette Adam, who wielded a really regal power among a certain set, and who certainly succeeded in beingconsidered as a political power, especially after Gambetta began to seek her advice in matters pertaining to the affairs of the government. But this last house, as well as its amiable and clever mistress, deserve more than a passing mention; they require a chapter to themselves in order to be duly appreciated.
Itwill be hardly possible ever to write a history of the Third Republic without mentioning Madame Juliette Adam, the beautiful, clever and attractive woman whose influence at the end of the nineteenth century, not only on some of the most important personalities in France but also on many foreign notabilities, was so considerable. Her efforts and influence had much to do with the development of the events which ultimately led to the consolidation of the French Republic, and which, after having been the object of her most ardent worship, ended by finding her one of its enemies. Some people are born under a lucky star; upon them everything smiles, and they can do nothing that fails to turn out well. Such a being was the lovely Juliette la Messine, who, timid and still unaware of her own personal attractions, appeared on the horizon of Paris society at one of the parties given by the Comtesse d’Agoult. The Countess was “Daniel Stern” in the world of letters, the mother of Cosima Wagner and Madame Emile Ollivier, and the heroine of the most lasting romance in the life of the composer Liszt. Madame d’Agoult, about whom I cannot say much because I have never met her, was in the late ’fifties a very important personage in Parisian society, though her own circle had repudiated her since the scandal of her adventure with Liszt. But though very few women cared to be seen at her house, most men of note, whether in politics or in the world of letters, consideredit an honour to be asked to her house. She presided over a salon that dictated the tone in many things, and where she succeeded in grouping together many celebrities who, perhaps, but for her would never have had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with each other.
Juliette la Messine, then in the full bloom of her fair beauty, had just written a book of philosophy and criticism called “Les Idées anti-Proudhoniennes,” which was a reply to an attack made by Proudhon on Georges Sand and on Madame d’Agoult herself. She sent a copy of her book to Daniel Stern, who was very much struck by its virile, lucid composition, and thinking it was the work of a man who, in order to disguise his identity, had assumed a woman’s name, wrote in reply to the author, that she felt surprised at his having taken a feminine pseudonym, while women generally tried to pass off as men in their writings. When she saw Mlle. la Messine she was at once attracted by her peculiar and wonderful charm; a friendship that was only to come to an end with the life of the Comtesse d’Agoult was at once formed between the two women, who had a great deal in common, and who were both enthusiastic, eager to perform noble deeds and to work for the welfare of humanity. It was also at one of the receptions of Daniel Stern that Juliette la Messine met for the first time Edmond Adam, whom she was to marry later on and under whose name she was to reach celebrity.
One of the results of their marriage was the creation of a new salon in Paris, which very soon became a centre of political activity. It was at the time when the Republican party, vanquished by thecoup d’étatof Napoleon III., by which he had definitely imposed himself and his dynasty upon a more surprised than terrified France, was beginning to raise its head again. Thiers, who at that particular momentthought fit to join the ranks of the enemies of the Empire, was continually reproaching Edmond Adam for his hesitation to throw himself into the battle, and was inviting him to work with all his strength for the overthrow of the Bonapartes, adding, what in fact he did not believe but he thought it to his advantage to seem to profess, that no government was possible in France except a Republic. Adam then said to his wife the following memorable words which she repeats in her memoirs: “I am quite ready to work for the Republic, more and better than I have done hitherto, but what can abstentionists like ourselves do for her?” Husband and wife organised their salon as a meeting place where adherents of Republican ideas could gather together and exchange their ideas and opinions. The parties given by Thiers in his hotel in the Rue St. Georges were generally frequented by the older members of the party, whilst the younger ones assembled with Laurent Pichat; both young and old could be met in the house of Madame Adam, who, with all the charm of her lovely face and the elegance of her graceful manners, made a most delightful hostess. The first people who assembled around her were for the most part literary men like Henri Martin, Legouvé, Hetzel the editor, Gaston Paris, Bixio, Garnier-Pagès, Toussenel, Nefftzer, Texier, Challemel-Lacour, Jules Ferry, Pelletan—all men well worthy to be appreciated by her. Some are already forgotten, whilst others will never be consigned to oblivion by those who follow them on the road of life. But very soon she tried to draw towards her all the younger forces of the Republican party, concentrating her attention specially upon Gambetta. She did not, in the early days, know him, but Adam, who had met him at a dinner with Laurent Pichat, had spoken to her of him with an enthusiasm that surprised her the more because he was not generally addicted to such expansive feelings. In this connection she relates with humour that she spoke to Hetzel, and asked him to bring to one of her dinners the young advocate, who had made for himself such a name already and whose reputation at the Bar was fast becoming considerable, especially since he had defended Delescluze against the government. Hetzel screamed with surprise when she proposed it, declaring that she did not know the man whom she proposed to admit at her hospitable table. Gambetta, he told her, was a vulgar, common sort of individual, blind of one eye, dirty and unkempt, with black nails, and walking about in disreputable clothes which, to add to his uncouth appearance, were never properly put on or properly fastened. Madame Adam insisted nevertheless. Her womanly instinct had guessed that if the man in question was really in possession of the genius attributed to him, it would be easy for him when once admitted in the houses of civilised people to adopt their manners and to polish his own. On the other hand, if he failed to notice the inadequacies of his first education, he would not be the man of value she had been led to think he could become, and in that case it would be easy to drop him after this first attempt at drawing him from the society with which he had hitherto associated. But she wanted to judge for herself, she persisted with Hetzel, and at last persuaded him to take her invitation to Gambetta.
The young advocate was at first very much surprised. He knew Edmond Adam, had vaguely heard he had a wife, but had never troubled to think about her much, therefore he was rather astonished to find himself the object of her attention; still he decided to go, saying at the same time to one of his friends of the Café Procope, where he generally used to spend his afternoons: “I shall accept; it will be curious to see what kind of woman Adam’s bourgeoise may be.”
A large and distinguished company had been asked to meet the Republican orator. Laurent Pichat, Eugène Pelletan, Challemel-Lacour, Jules Ferry, Hetzel, of course, and, lastly, the Marquis Jules de Lasteyrie, an intimate friend of Thiers and an ardent Orleanist, who, moreover, was one of the most elegant men in Paris. The latter had begged hard to be included in that dinner, as he was excessively interested in Gambetta, and having arrived a little in advance of the other guests, he said to Madame Adam that he would repeat all the incidents of the dinner to Thiers, whom he knew to be very anxious to hear his opinion about “the young monster,” as he called him.
Gambetta had imagined that he was going to one of those houses where an utter absence of the conventionalities of life is the order of the day, and that consequently he would not be required, as it were, even to wash his hands before making his appearance at the hospitable board to which he had been bidden. He arrived in one of those indescribable costumes which are neither evening nor morning dress, with a waistcoat buttoned high up to the throat and a flannel shirt. He found the whole company in orthodox evening dress, and his hostess in a lovely velvet costume, out of which the most beautiful pair of shoulders were looming in their snowy whiteness. He tried to excuse himself, saying vaguely: “If I had only guessed.” “You probably would have refused my invitation,” replied his hostess. “It is not nice of you to say so.”
Everybody felt more or less embarrassed. Lasteyrie, who was always indulgent with the extravagances of mankind, could not help whispering into Adam’s ear: “If at least he had donned the blouse of the common workman, I could have forgiven him, but this kind of get up!” And he made a gesture of despair.
No woman alive had greater tact than Madame Adam. Seeing the embarrassment of Gambetta, as well as the look of disgust with which her other guests observed him, she went up to the Marquis de Lasteyrie, and in a low voice told him that in order to try and mend matters she was going to dispossess him from the seat of honour which belonged to him by right, and to give her arm to Gambetta. “You are quite right,” replied the Marquis. “If you did anything else, the servants might be tempted to forget to offer him some soup. And besides, this will allow us to see whether he understands great things and their meaning.”
Juliette Lambert, to give her her pseudonym in literature, to her husband’s amazement, walked up to Gambetta, and took his arm to go down to the dining-room. When they were seated, the Radical leader bent down towards her ear, and in very humble tones told her that he would never forget the lesson she had given to him in such a delicate manner. He understood the meaning of great things, and had emerged to his honour from a very trying experience.
It was, however, much later that Gambetta became a regular visitor at the house of Madame Adam. Years had passed since his first introduction to her, and poor Juliette Lambert had gone through bitter trials that had left their everlasting impress on her ardent and enthusiastic nature. The war with all its horrors, the Commune with all its terrors, had shaken her bright equanimity, and in that generous soul one feeling had taken the place of almost every other—a deep love for her poor humiliated country; a passionate desire to see her once more occupying the proud position from which fate and the mistakes of men had despoiled her. Later on, when the husband she loved so fondly was snatched away from her, and when, beside her daughter and the children of the latter, she found herself with no one to love in thewhole wide world, she attached herself to that one idea and ambition—to revenge the humiliations of 1870, to get back for that France, to whom all her energies were devoted, those provinces which she had lost, and to revenge herself on the conqueror to whom she had owed the shattering of so many of her brightest dreams.
She had always been the enemy of the Bonaparte dynasty; she could not, though she was on very good terms with several members of the Orleans family, reconcile herself to their stepping upon the throne left vacant by Napoleon III. She had always adored liberty, that of nations as well as that of individuals, and she imagined that that ideal Republic she had dreamt of could be brought into existence and would be able to give back to France her glory and prestige.
This one idea dominated all her actions and inspired all her writings. She used all the resources of her wonderful intelligence, all the activity of her remarkable mind, and all her knowledge and her experience of the world to realise it. She opened once more the doors of her salon, which had remained closed after the death of Edmond Adam, and though at the bottom of her heart an inconsolable widow, she forced herself to present to the glances of others the appearance of a woman without heartache. Everybody who approached her, even those who did not share her opinions either in politics or in intellectual and moral matters, fell under the influence of her charm, and were subjugated by her enthusiasm and her earnest, ardent words. One could see at a glance that she was sincere, true—a friend on whom one could always rely, and an enemy who would always fight loyally. Moreover, her clear mind had the faculty of looking into the future with an extraordinary perspicacity, and she seldom was mistaken in her judgments of men or facts. She it was who for the first time suggested to her friends thepossibility of an alliance with Russia, by which French prestige might be strengthened. She it was who began working for it at a time when even wise political men in both countries only smiled when such a thing was mentioned in their presence.
It has been said that she was an irreconcilable enemy of Germany. In a certain sense this was true, but there was no preconceived hatred in her feelings. She detested Germans because she had seen them trampling her unfortunate country under their feet, because she had owed to them some of the bitterest hours she had had to go through in her life. Yet she had no aversion to German culture, and could recognise the great qualities of the German race, qualities which, perhaps, gave her even more reasons to detest it. She was above everything else just. Her character had too much real greatness about it ever to give way to any mean or petty feeling, even where an enemy was concerned.