M. M. F. SADI-CARNOT(President 1887-1894)
M. M. F. SADI-CARNOT(President 1887-1894)
M. M. F. SADI-CARNOT
(President 1887-1894)
M. J. P. P. CASIMIR PÉRIER(President 1894-1895)
M. J. P. P. CASIMIR PÉRIER(President 1894-1895)
M. J. P. P. CASIMIR PÉRIER
(President 1894-1895)
M. F. F. FAURE(President 1895-1899)
M. F. F. FAURE(President 1895-1899)
M. F. F. FAURE
(President 1895-1899)
M. E. LOUBET(President 1899-1906)
M. E. LOUBET(President 1899-1906)
M. E. LOUBET
(President 1899-1906)
All photos, Petit, Paris.
were instituted which resulted in the resignation of certain parties.
It was partly Mme. d’Aunay who was responsible for the English sympathies of M. Clemenceau; she had lived in London for a long time, had made many good friends, and also won still more admirers. She was ambitious to have her husband appointed to the British capital as Ambassador for the French Republic, and she did her best to persuade M. Clemenceau to set his back against the Russian alliance.
The great Radical leader did not ask anything else, but he was very well aware that to go against the popular feeling was quite useless and hopeless, and might even cause his own patriotism to be suspected. But he knew also that French people are apt to lose their illusions as quickly as they come under their influence, and so he quietly waited for the course of events to justify the words of warning he had uttered to the few friends before whom he could talk quite openly.
When he favoured the candidature of M. Loubet to the Chief Magistracy of the Republic, he had his plan quite ready, together with a programme which included an alliance with England and a rupture with the Vatican. Papal influence he dreaded the more in that he knew that in Pope Leo XIII. he had an opponent just as shrewd as he was himself, one who would consent to the greatest sacrifices in order to keep upon good terms with the Republic. To this last the Radical party was not at all agreeable, and consequently it was indispensable that he should assure himself of the sympathies of the President, whoever he might be, in order not to be thwarted secretly in his designs as earlier he had been by M. Félix Faure, whose policy had been far more personal than the world was permitted to guess.
I happened to be at Versailles on the day of the election of M. Loubet. An hour before the result became known betswere still being taken concerning the chances he had to be elected. M. Rouvier was distinctly favoured, and probabilities pointed to M. Brisson making a close run. I was lunching at the Hotel des Réservoirs with some friends, of whom Henri Rochefort was one, when suddenly M. Clemenceau came by. He was instantly surrounded by a group of journalists eager to hear his opinion as to who would win. He laughingly parried their questions, saying that the only thing he was sure of was that Clemenceau would not be President of the Republic, to which Rochefort remarked in an undertone that he would not need to be, as it would be his candidate who would occupy that post.
M. Loubet was elected, and at once the Dreyfus affair took a new turn. After a struggle, in which the government yielded almost without fighting, the unfortunate captain was brought back to France, and his re-trial took place at Rennes, with the result known to everybody, and for which M. Clemenceau deserves the thanks of his compatriots as well as of posterity, because anything more iniquitous than this affair has never disgraced a country.
Most emphatically of all the politicians who were prominent in France at the time of the election of M. Loubet, M. Clemenceau was the shrewdest and also the most far-seeing. He had perceived that even had Captain Dreyfus been guilty, it would be to the advantage of France for him to be declared innocent, and also that so long as that bone of contention was left to the enemies of the Republic, they would expend all their efforts in using it as a weapon to discredit not only the form of government they disliked, but also to shame France herself.
One cannot say that the Elysée improved as regarded its inner life under the Presidency of M. Loubet. The pomp and grandeur introduced by M. Félix Faure were reduced to aminimum, and existence began to resemble the one led by M. and Mme. Jules Grévy, with perhaps a shade more elegance, but without any luxury, save what was absolutely necessary. Madame Loubet rarely went out in anything else but a modest brougham drawn by one horse, and she avoided everything that could be construed as love of ostentation or luxury. On the other hand, she was extremely charitable, and, with the exception of the Maréchale MacMahon, no wife of a President of the Republic did more for the welfare of the poor of Paris, and by them she was literally worshipped. She was totally devoid of affectation, and never tried to pose for what she was not, or to play at being the great lady by birth as well as by position. Everyone liked and respected her. Such was not the case with M. Loubet, in whom some people saw a nonentity and others merely a puppet in the hands of M. Clemenceau and his friends.
During his tenure of office the new President paid several visits abroad, among others to St. Petersburg, London, and Rome. With the exception of the one to London, it cannot be said that his journeys were successful. In Russia people were getting just a little tired of the perpetual ovations which had been allowed to take place in favour of France and the French alliance. The Japanese question was already engrossing the public mind, and it was vaguely felt in the country, whatever one may have thought at the Foreign Office, that somehow France had failed in her friendship for her ally of the other day in the Far East, and had not sufficiently upheld her pretensions in the many entangled questions which had sprung up in consequence of the fatal policy of Admiral Alexieff and his friends.
The entire misunderstanding which had prevailed at the demonstrative Franco-Russian alliance was becoming more apparent every day; essentially it had been based onthe desire of each of the signatories to get as much as possible out of the other. France had fully expected that she would be given the opportunity of recovering Alsace and Lorraine, and Russia had only seen the possibility of borrowing, under favourable conditions, the money she wanted. As time had gone by Russia had found out that French bankers were just as exacting as were German bankers, while France had discovered that her interests were dear to Russia only insomuch as they did not clash or interfere with her own. A certain coolness had sprung up between them, though in Paris as well as in St. Petersburg politicians and journalists were eagerly seizing every opportunity to declare that the alliance was stronger than ever.
Under those circumstances the journey of M. Loubet to St. Petersburg might have been pleasant, but could not have been very useful. In London it was different. He found there many sympathisers and well-wishers who were only too desirous of accentuating the good relations of France with Great Britain. To begin with King Edward and to end with the man in the street, they all vied with each other to show the greatest cordiality to the President and to make him welcome in the fullest sense of the word. When M. Loubet returned to Paris he could say with pride and satisfaction that the old rivalries which had divided the two countries had been buried under the flowers which had ornamented the dining-table in the Waterloo Hall of Windsor Castle.
The Roman trip of the President, though conducted on simpler lines than those of his English journey, was perhaps the most important event of M. Loubet’s septenary. It distinctly proclaimed the attitude which the French Government meant to adopt in regard to the religious question and to its relations with the Vatican. The guest of the Italian Kingat the Quirinal, M. Loubet did not think it necessary to follow the example set by all the other foreign monarchs who visited Rome by going from the house of the Ambassador to the Holy See, as a neutral place, to visit the Pope at the Vatican. The courtesy paid to the head of the Roman Catholic Church by the German Crown Prince, and later on by the German Emperor, was deemed to be beneath the dignity of the President of the French Republic; and when the government was asked in the Chamber what M. Loubet meant to do in regard to this question of a visit to the Pope, it replied that it had been decided that the President should refrain.
Soon after this relations were entirely suspended between the Holy See and the French Republic, and the separation between Church and State became an accomplished fact. M. Loubet had not failed in the confidence which M. Clemenceau and the Radical party had reposed in him.
The principal feature of this septenary of a gentle and yielding little bourgeois was the establishing of the regular and automatic change of Presidents—a rule which gave to the Republic a stability which hitherto it had been wanting. M. Thiers had been overturned; Marshal MacMahon and M. Grévy had been obliged to resign; M. Carnot had been murdered, and M. Faure had died suddenly, whilst M. Casimir Périer had grown impatient at the restraint to which he found his faculties subjected. It was only dating from M. Loubet that the transmission of the supreme power became an accomplished fact, and that at last the Republic, as well as a Monarchy, had its Sovereigns whose reign was followed by that of their duly elected successors.
During his Presidency, too, the components of Paris society changed considerably. New salons sprang up which aspired to replace the older ones, and in a certain sense they succeeded in doing so. The bourgeoisie which Loubet represented sowell came to the front, and the newspapers, which hitherto had carefully noted the sayings and doings of the Duchess of So-and-So and the Countess of So-and-So, began to chronicle those of Madame Ménard Dorian or of Madame Alphonse Daudet, or of the wives and daughters of members and supporters of the government. Thus a new society began to play its part in Parisian social life, and soon entirely pervaded it. Financial houses, too, opened wide their doors to all who cared to enter, and whilst formerly the Rothschilds had been almost the only bankers with whom the old French nobility had cared to associate, dozens of Jews now invaded Parisian society. The distinction which used to exist formerly between thenoblesseand what it had called disdainfully “les roturiers” had entirely disappeared under the glamour which millions always exert over the imagination of the crowds. It was felt that money was the principal thing required, and under this influence the Hebrew and the American element had a fine time of it.
It is impossible to write anything about Parisian society nowadays without saying something concerning M. de Castellane. For a few brief years he incarnated in his person the acme of French elegance, and was thefleur des poisof all the smart clubs of Paris. He was a terrible little fop who aspired only to one thing: to be the most talked-about man of his generation. When he married Miss Gould, he fondly imagined that this marriage gave him the right to do everything he liked, down to ill-treating his wife. He began buying right and left everything that caught his fancy, and built for himself a palace after the model of the Petit Trianon; he made Paris ring with his extravagances, and pretended to assume the part of the one supreme leader of society. Even the many millions which his wife had brought to him proved insufficient; and very soon his horses, his vagaries, his losses at cards,and his general behaviour brought about a financial catastrophe, which was the prelude to a conjugal one. Mme. de Castellane became tired of being outraged at every step, and sued for a divorce, which was easily awarded to her.
Anyone in de Castellane’s place would have resigned himself to the inevitable, but instead, he threatened to take the children from her. Madame de Castellane behaved nobly on this trying occasion. She might easily have retaliated, and she had got plenty of proofs which she could have produced that would have for ever compromised the Comte de Castellane and other people with him. She never made use of that power, and as her advocate, M. Albert Clemenceau—the brother of M. Georges Clemenceau—eloquently said: “My client has her hands full, but she disdains to open them in order to harm the man who, after all, is the father of her children!”
The Countess came out of this painful ordeal with flying colours. Her children were left in her charge, notwithstanding all the efforts of M. de Castellane. Soon after her divorce was pronounced she married a cousin of her former husband, the Duc de Talleyrand, the son of the famous Prince de Sagan. The couple lead a very quiet life in the palace erected by Count Boni, and at the Château de Marais, a splendid property which they possess not far from Paris. The Faubourg St. Germain, not approving of divorces, has turned the cold shoulder upon them, which fact does not trouble them much. They are happy in themselves, and the Duchess must often congratulate herself on her moral courage, of which she gave proof when she decided to seek her freedom from an ill-assorted union which had brought to her nothing but unhappiness and sorrow. As for M. de Castellane, he vegetates in an obscurity which must be doubly painful to him when he remembers the luxury in which he spent a few short years, and which he lost through his own vanity and stupidity.
WhenParis at first began talking about the high treason of Captain Dreyfus, people did not take much notice; it seemed to be but one of many such. The public was more or less used to events of the kind, and did not give them more than a passing thought. I happened, however, to know some friends of the Dreyfus family, and, calling on one of them, I was not very much surprised to hear him declare that the Captain was innocent—the victim of an intrigue. Such language was perfectly natural on the part of relatives of the accused man, but these denials were also accompanied by several details which gave them more importance than, under different conditions, would have been legitimate.
For the first time I heard the name of Colonel Esterhazy as one who could have said a lot concerning this intricate affair had he cared to do so, and the impression left upon my mind by the conversation which I had on that day was strong enough to inspire me with the desire to be present at the coming trial. Consequently, I requested and, after difficulty, obtained from the War Office permission to be present.
I had never seen Captain Dreyfus before the day when I beheld him sitting in the dock listening to the evidence on the strength of which he was to be sent to the Devil’s Island for five long years. I must say that his appearance did not draw out the sympathy of any onlooker who did not give himself the trouble to watch his countenance attentively. Indeed, had his appearance been more prepossessing, he would perhaps have met with more indulgence than was the case. But in the whole of my long life I have never seen a man with more strength of character and more power to keep his personal emotions under control. Not a muscle of his face moved during the time that witness after witness spoke of his presumed guilt; his eyes never fired up, even when he heard himself accused of a crime that he had never committed. The only words he spoke were uttered in a low tone, in which weariness more than anything else was apparent, and he never said anything else but the phrase, “Je suis innocent.”
And yet it was impossible to look at him and not to realise that this indifferent man, whom nothing seemed to move, who had not even the strength to protest indignantly against the accusation hurled at him, was enduring a perfect martyrdom; that his apparent calmness was the calmness of despair. He knew too well that he could not prove his innocence, that he had been made the victim of other people’s guilt, and that he was being crushed by the wheels of a Juggernaut, moved along by ah inexorable fate. Once he started, and that was when sentence was pronounced against him, and when the words, “dégradation militaire,” resounded in the room. A feeling of revolt appeared to shake him, and he made a gesture as if he wanted to rush forward; but it lasted only a second, and then he lapsed into his usual apathy, as if he had understood that his protest would only have added to the bitter feelings of revenge which the public manifested against him.
After judgment had been pronounced I had the opportunity of speaking to one of those who had given the verdict. I asked him whether he really believed in the Captain’s guilt. The officer shrugged his shoulders and replied: “It is difficultto say. Treason has taken place; and, after all, it is better to assert that a Jew has been guilty than to fix it on a Frenchman.”
It seemed to me that these words gave the key to the undercurrents ofl’affaire Dreyfus. Some people, whether sincerely or otherwise, believed that treason had been committed, and finding that it became incumbent to fix it on someone, preferred to take a Jew as a victim than one of their own brethren in race and faith.
At the time the affair began anti-Semitism was already very powerful in France.
Drumont had published his famous books, each rendered so stupid in one sense by the pertinacity with which he called a Jew every person whom he thought he had a reason for disliking; and so dangerous in another sense, by the way in which he appealed to all the evil instincts of the mob, and urged it to rise against people whose only guilt consisted in being rich.
The Clerical party especially did all that was in its power to fan the hatred against Jews, which had always existed in a greater or lesser degree. It accused them of inspiring all the anti-Clerical measures adopted by the various governments which had succeeded one another in the country. Also, it was foolish enough to seize the pretext of the Dreyfus affair to associate anti-Semitism with the question of the Captain’s guilt or innocence, and thereby to excite public opinion against the Jews in general, more even than against the Captain himself.
On the other hand, the Radical party, which was gaining adherents every day, was delighted to be able to secure the support of the Jews in its struggle against Clericalism. They, therefore, hastened to accuse the Clericals of trying to prove the Captain guilty in order to be able to trace some associationbetween his supposed guilt and the actions of the numerous rich Hebrews in France.
It has been said that at the beginning of the campaign which was started in favour of Dreyfus, when someone asked M. Clemenceau what he thought about the whole affair, the Radical leader replied that he did not know yet what there was in it, but that he saw it could become an admirable weapon in the hands of the different political parties which existed in France.
That weapon no one better understood how to use than he did. His great ambition had always been to become Prime Minister, if not President, of France, but so far he had not seen any possibility of realising his dream. The Dreyfus affair gave him the opportunity he sought, and he was not the man to allow it to slip.
He engineered the whole campaign begun by M. Scheurer Kestner, when he proclaimed aloud that he had obtained the proofs of the innocence of Captain Alfred Dreyfus; he encouraged M. Zola to write his famous letter, “I accuse”; he gave all the benefit of his experience to those whom he sent fighting for the cause which he considered to be more his than anyone else’s, and in the end he reaped the reward of his unremitting zeal. To the Dreyfus case he owed finally the Premiership of France, a post which he had coveted all his life, and on the wave of this affair he would have been elected President of the Republic had he not found an adversary of importance in M. Briand, whom he himself had helped to come to the front without suspecting that he could become his rival.
A curious feature in the Dreyfus campaign was the celerity with which it became a personal matter with those who took part in it. One and all sought in its intricacies their own advantage, more than anything else, and the Captain was very soon forgotten. Having been the pretext for furtheringinnumerable personal ambitions, he was scarcely remembered whilst the fight for his rehabilitation lasted.
As an instance of what I have just said, I will relate an amusing incident. After the trial at Rennes, and when it became known that President Loubet had pardoned Dreyfus, I was dining one evening with a lady, Madame de——, whose salon had been one of the strongholds of the Dreyfusards. Of course, the affair was discussed. Someone remarked that it was a pity that the accused man had not been acquitted, as it would have put an end to the whole sad and, in many points, sordid business, whereon our hostess exclaimed, “Oh, no, it is not a pity; fancy how sad it would be if we had not a pretext for carrying it farther!”
This hasty retort, which I am sure Madame de —— regretted later on, represented the opinion of most of the partisans of Dreyfus; they forgot entirely the personal feelings of the victim of this injustice of political passion, and only sought in the agitation the furtherance of their own schemes and intrigues.
This Dreyfus campaign completely hypnotised every person who was drawn into its intricacies. Towards its close, I do not think that even among the principal actors of the drama one could have found one man or woman who really understood it, or who could speak of it without allowing their personal interest to interfere with the opinions held.
As for the real circumstances attending this curious episode in the history of modern France, I do not think that they will ever be known. It is certain that among some of the adversaries of Dreyfus there were several sincere people who believed that he was guilty. There were also others, quite as earnest, who professed the erroneous conviction, that once a mistake had been made this mistake ought not, for the honour of the army and for that of its generals, to be admitted.Of course, this was a point of view which could never be accepted by anyone calling himself honest, but, in a certain sense, it can be understood though never excused.
Only the severest condemnation can be given to the means by which it was endeavoured to prove Dreyfus guilty, the hideous way in which each one among all those upon whom his fate depended not only refused to acknowledge error, but, on the contrary, tried everything that could be thought of in order to uphold the false theories as to his guilt.
During the time that the agitation for the new trial lasted, I had more than one opportunity of discussing the innocence of Dreyfus with several officers holding high commands, and I was horrified to observe the cynical way in which they tried to explain to me that it was indispensable that the decision of the Paris court-martial should be confirmed. When I asked them why, they always replied the same thing: “Les arrêts d’un conseil de guerre, ne peuvent être critiqués, cela leur enleverait toute autorité sur l’armée dans l’avenir.” (“The decisions of a court-martial can never be criticised; it would deprive them of all their authority over the army in the future.”)
I have never been able to make them understand that, however important the evidence, a court-martial can be mistaken just as well as other people.
Another remarkable side of the Dreyfus agitation is the rapid way in which it subsided and was forgotten, as soon as the Captain was rehabilitated, and granted the Cross of the Legion of Honour as a reward for his long sufferings. With the exception of a few people, such as Madame Zola and her immediate friends, all those who had taken a leading part in the struggle did everything that they could to induce the world to forget. M. Clemenceau himself was the prime mover in the general desire to consign to oblivion this episode in thepolitical life of the day. The latter, when he became Prime Minister, buried Zola in the Panthéon. The event was the occasion of a new misfortune for the ill-starred Captain Dreyfus, inasmuch as a Royalist and Clerical partisan seized this opportunity to fire at him a shot which slightly wounded him. The incident nearly gave rise to a panic among the assistants, who thought that a bomb had been thrown at President Fallières and the members of the government who were present at the ceremony.
Having paid this last homage to the writer who had lent the help of his powerful pen to the cause which he had so ardently championed, M. Clemenceau hastened to hide in the tomb of Zola every remembrance of the Dreyfus affair, although by it he had realised his every ambition. It had given him a popularity among French politicians of his generation which earlier he had been unable to obtain; it had posed him before the world as something more than a clever man (which reputation he bore)—as a real statesman, able to treat on a footing of equality the statesmen of Europe—and it had paved his way to the Presidency of the Republic, that goal of his ambitions. Now all his desire was to drive away from the mind of the public the memory of the political campaign in which he had taken such a prominent part.
After burying in the Panthéon the mortal remains of the great author whom he had succeeded in persuading that it was his duty to protest in the name of France against the iniquity that had sent Captain Dreyfus in exile to Devil’s Island, M. Clemenceau considered himself free from further obligations toward those who had been associated with him in the task of bringing Captain Dreyfus back to France, and restoring him to his family. He saw no reason to continue to meet them, and when Emile Zola’s daughter married one of his former secretaries, he refrained from assisting at theceremony under the plea of ill-health, an excuse which appeared to be the more out of place seeing that it was announced in the papers that on that very day he had gone into the country for the shooting. The Prime Minister did not care that the world should think he remained faithful to those associations which had had for their only excuse the political necessities of the moment.
M. Clemenceau was one of many persons who had seen in the Dreyfus affair the possibility of becoming either famous or powerful through the energy with which they defended his cause. Many of the minor satellites had looked to it in order to emerge from the obscurity in which they would otherwise have remained to the end of their days. There was hardly a journalist in Paris who did not try to pose either as a Dreyfusard or the reverse; they became ferocious in their attacks according as their professed opinions differed. Everything which until that time had been considered sacred in France was dragged in the mire and became dirtier every day. Priests forgot their sacred character; soldiers did not remember the honour of their flag; politicians renounced the creeds in which they had believed; respect disappeared from the hearts of men and from the actions of the nation. One can say that France came out of this tragedy dishonoured before the world—diminished in her own eyes.
But Radicalism grew stronger during the struggle which waged between the friends and the adversaries of Dreyfus, and certainly it was owing to this struggle that anti-militarism became so prominent in France. It was this episode which taught the nation to despise the army and to rise against its discipline. From this point of view the campaign in favour of Captain Dreyfus did much harm to France, but from the moral viewpoint it is impossible not to admire the feeling of indignation which roused so many people against the injustice of a few. It is only a pity that this indignation was so often but the mask under which lurked ambitions that had nothing to do with the desire to see Captain Dreyfus righted.
Among all the people who were the actors in this drama, there are some whom it is impossible to pass by. One of them is Colonel Esterhazy, that dark figure who from accuser became the defender of his colleague, who certainly knew more about the hidden currents of the whole affair than anyone else, and who never spoke the truth about it, even when he turned upon his former superiors, perhaps because this truth would have been even more shameful for him than for those who had employed him.
I had occasion to meet Esterhazy before the disgrace which overwhelmed him after the Dreyfus trial. There was a time when he had been a dashing cavalry officer, much sought after in the most elegant of the many elegant salons of Paris. I had seen him at the Tuileries, dancingvis-à-viswith the fair Empress who reigned there, and later on I had the opportunity of watching him in several houses where we were both frequent visitors. He was an amiable man, full of wit, and exceedingly amusing in his conversation. As for his moral worth, no one troubled about it at that period, and though from time to time scandal of some sort became associated with his name, no one could have believed him capable of the dark deeds which later on stamped him with such a stigma of shame and unscrupulousness.
And yet, a man who certainly was one of the most observant of his generation; Jules Ferry, who was not destined to see all the episodes which have rendered the Dreyfus affair so memorable, meeting Esterhazy one evening, expressed to me, as we were going out together from the hospitable house where we had dined, the profound distrust with which the brilliantofficer inspired him. “C’est un homme capable de tout,” he told me, and when I asked him what reasons he had for proffering such a severe judgment on a man he did not know except superficially—“Look at his hands,” he said, “ce sont les mains d’un brigand.” Later, when I saw Esterhazy during the Zola trial, I remembered these words, and glanced at the hands of the Colonel as he was giving evidence at the bar; they were repulsive in their shape, and certainly gave one the impression of being the hands of a brigand.
Esterhazy was the saddest of all the sad heroes of the Dreyfus affair, because the other sad actor in the drama, Colonel Henry, had at least the courage to seek in death the expiation of his crime. There has been much talk about his suicide, and some people have expressed a doubt concerning it, suggesting that it had been simulated, and that the Colonel had simply been put out of the way, as he might have become rather an embarrassing witness. I hasten to say that I do not believe in this version. Colonel Henry was a soldier, more imbued with military discipline than Esterhazy; he would not have been able to face the shame of a public trial, and his soldier’s soul would not have found the courage to accuse those who had had the right to order him to do the deed for which he was to lose his life, and his honour after death.
When I say so, it is on the authority of another soldier who also had had to do with the question of the guilt or innocence of Captain Dreyfus, General de Pellieux. It was he who had read during the debates of the Zola trial, when the great writer had been sent before a jury to answer to the accusation of having published his famous letter, “I accuse,” the false document manufactured by Henry. It is impossible to deny that the General had done so in the full conviction that it was decisive and would make the whole world share his own persuasion as to the guilt of Dreyfus. When,later on, M. Cavaignac, who presided at the War Office, had the loyalty to declare publicly that this document was nothing but a forgery, made for the purpose of preventing the revision of the trial of the unfortunate prisoner on Devil’s Island, General de Pellieux was inconsolable. His grief was that anyone could believe he had wanted to crush Dreyfus with the weight of an accusation which he had known to be false, and it was whilst discussing with me later on all the details of this unfortunate episode in his life that he told me his opinion about Colonel Henry, adding that he had not the slightest doubt as to the suicide of the unfortunate officer.
Another rather strange feature of the Dreyfus affair was the advantages which it procured to all the enemies of the Clerical party. Unfortunately for the Catholics and Legitimists in France, they took up the most intransigent attitude in the question. They identified it with the Catholic Church, and with its interests, and they thought to find in it the pretext for a crusade against the Jews and the Republicans, declaring publicly that it was only under a Radical government, protecting the Israelites, that such an event as the so-called treason of Captain Dreyfus could have taken place. And among all the enemies of Dreyfus, none was more ardent than Père du Lac, the famous Jesuit, in whom the Republicans found their greatest and one of their most powerful adversaries. Another thing which must never be lost sight of when talking about the Dreyfus affair is that no one among all his defenders ever gave a thought to Dreyfus himself. The feelings and sufferings of the unfortunate man were always talked of, but those who continually harped upon them would have been extremely sorry had the government decided to treat him well, or to forgive him for his supposed crime. And one cannot understand how among all the ministers who were in power in France during the years which he spent indisgrace, not one tried to put an end to the agitation by inaugurating the re-trial which was to prove his innocence.
I make no excuse for again calling attention to this fact, for I perceive that I am doing exactly the same thing myself; that, by talking about the Dreyfus affair, I forget entirely its hero, who deserves certainly more than a passing mention. I learned to know the Captain well after his return to France, and I learned, also, to respect and esteem him. Any man in his place would have harboured feelings of the most bitter resentment against those to whom he had owed such terrible sufferings. Dreyfus never once allowed an expression of anger to escape his lips. He did not care to talk about the years of his trial, but when he was forced to do so it was always in most measured terms, and without the slightest shade of a revengeful spirit. He once told me that, as a soldier, he could understand the feelings of those other soldiers who had believed him capable of betraying his country, but he thought that had he been in the place of his accusers, he would have taken greater care to verify the accusation against a brother in arms than had been done in his case. But whilst eager to see justice done to himself, he never approved of the means that some people used in order to bring this about. Dreyfus aspired only to one thing, and that was to be left in peace. He accepted the rehabilitation which was granted to him, but in his innermost heart he regretted rather than otherwise that he had to occupy once more the attention of the world. Captain Dreyfus was always modest and retiring in his disposition and character; it was just as painful to him to be praised as to be blamed.
To tell the truth, he returned from his exile a man of broken physique with shattered nerve, and had he been able to do what he liked, he would have retired somewhere in the country, far from the madding crowd, which had in turns hissed andapplauded him. He felt deeply grateful to all those who had worked for his release, but it was painful to him to have to see them, to mingle once more among the world whose injustice he had never forgotten.
Captain Dreyfus had an admirable wife, whose devotion has not been sufficiently appreciated by the public. She behaved heroically towards him, the more so that she was not very happy with him before the catastrophe that separated them for a while.
Just before the Captain was arrested, his wife had applied for a divorce from him; but when she heard him accused, she immediately put an end to the proceedings and devoted herself entirely to the task of his rehabilitation, sparing neither her health, nor her efforts, nor her money in order to obtain it.
When he arrived at Rennes, she had only one thought, and that was to throw herself into his arms. Now the couple live a most happy life, but though Madame Dreyfus has entirely forgotten that in regard to her husband she performed more than her duty, he always remembers it, and nothing could be more touching than to witness the reverence with which he approaches her, or speaks about her. For once the absolute devotion and sacrifice of a noble woman met with gratitude, and was not in vain.
In general all the family of Captain Dreyfus has stood by him, with a loyalty beyond praise. Mathieu Dreyfus, his brother, did not allow the slightest opportunity to escape by which he could defend the accused man. He worked at it with a patience and an energy worthy of the highest commendation, and never allowed himself to be discouraged in his efforts. It was he, also, who uttered the best definition of his brother’s case. When asked once whether he did not feel happy in the knowledge that such a powerful party (towhich belonged the most distinguished men in France) had taken up the cause of Captain Dreyfus, he replied that, of course, he could not but feel flattered by it, but that perhaps his brother would have obtained the justice which was due to him sooner, if it had not been to the interest of so many people to drag his case out as long as possible, in order to reap personal advantages from it which they would never have obtained without the opportunity which he had given to them, at the cost of so much suffering and so much unnecessarily borne shame.
Madame de Caillavet’ssalon was certainly one of the most influential among political and literary men of the Third Republic. She was one of the leading women of that period, was moreover an excellent hostess, and, thanks to the continual presence of Anatole France in her house, she succeeded in attracting many notables to her salon. Journalists composed the majority of her visitors, and diplomats occasionally came to hear the last news of the day, especially whilst the Dreyfus agitation lasted. Dramatists were always to be found at her receptions, colleagues of her son Gaston de Caillavet, the author of so many amusing comedies, whose collaborator, the Marquis de Flers, the husband of Sardou’s daughter, was also among the number of people who seldom missed these friendly gatherings. But in spite of this, and notwithstanding the number of clever men and pretty and amiable women who clustered around her, to the eyes of a keen observer there was always something Bohemian about her receptions. It was not the salon of agrande dame, and it was no longer that of a bourgeoise of olden times: it was essentially modern, like the Republic itself.
Far different from it was the house of Madame Ménard Dorian, also one of the feminine stars of the Republic. Madame Dorian was a charming woman, who had received an excellent education, and who, coming as she did from an old bourgeois stock, never pretended to be aught else than whatshe was by birth. She was extremely intelligent, very broad in her opinions, and with many advanced ideas in regard to religion and politics; above everything else, she was a lady in her manners, her general behaviour, and her tastes. Very rich, she possessed a lovely house in the Rue de la Faisanderie, which she had furnished with extreme taste and where she used to give receptions as sumptuous as they were pleasant.
There one could meet, together with some of those who frequented the salon of Madame de Caillavet and other Republican hostesses of the same kind, persons belonging to other classes, and forming part of the aristocratic circle of Paris. Academicians frequented it, and diplomatists were generally eager to be introduced to Madame Ménard Dorian, where they ran no risk of meeting people they would not have cared to become acquainted with, and where they could, on the other hand, get an idea as to what was going on in Republican circles. Madame Dorian had been a Dreyfusard, but she had been so moderately and in a ladylike way. Her salon was something like the one of Madame Geoffrin in the eighteenth century, with the exception that no one would have dared to say about it what the Marquise du Deffand had told of the former, that it was “une omelette au lard.” One gossiped in it, in a mild way, and became interested in the literary movement of the day, perhaps even more than in the political one.
M. Ménard Dorian used to put in an appearance at his wife’s receptions now and then, when he was not too busy to do so. He was a quiet, pleasant little man, liked by everybody, and especially by ladies, who always found him most polite and amiable to them. An evening party or dinner given in the Hotel de la Rue de la Faisanderie was always sure to be a meeting place for intelligent and clever people, and no one who had once been asked ever regretted it, buton the contrary was always most eager for the invitation to be repeated.
M. Ménard Dorian is now dead, and his widow only sees her friends occasionally, and in a quiet fashion, having refrained from opening again the hospitable doors of her house so freely as in former years. But she has remained the same amiable woman she always was, and certainly among the Republican ladies of the present day she deserves to rank first. She would have graced the Court of any European monarch.
Madame Dorian had one daughter who had been married to Georges Hugo, the grandson of Victor Hugo. That marriage ended in a catastrophe and a divorce, after which the young Hugo married the first cousin of Mademoiselle Dorian, who had attracted his fancy one morning when he had met her at his mother-in-law’s, together with her husband, the sculptor Ajalbert.
The daughter of the charming Madame Dorian had a curious personality; she seemed to take a vicious pleasure in thwarting her parents, and making herself disagreeable to them whenever she found the opportunity. She occupied a flat in their house, the Hotel de la Rue de la Faisanderie, and on the evenings when her father and mother gave receptions at which the partisans of Captain Dreyfus, such as Colonel, later on General, Picquart, the Zolas, and their circle of friends were honoured guests, Madame Hugo used to invite people such as Drumont and the strongest anti-Semites of Paris, so that several times queer situations arose, and the staunchest Dreyfusards entered by mistake the apartment of one of their worst enemies, whilst one evening Henri Rochefort himself, who for the world would not be seen at Madame Ménard Dorian’s, was ushered into her drawing-room by a footman who did not know him by sight.
That sort of thing, however, could not go on for any length of time, and when Pauline Hugo left the house of her parents, her departure was a relief to them. But even after her marriage to Herman Paul, after her divorce and Paul’s, she did not become reconciled to her father and mother.
Georges Hugo’s sister, Jeanne, was also a strange kind of person. She married when quite young, Leon Daudet, the son of Alphonse Daudet, and very soon ran away from him with the explorer Charcot. It was said that Daudet was delighted when he divorced her, as they had scarcely been a single day without quarrelling since they married, and, although a fervent Catholic, he hastened to take to himself another wife.
The mother of Leon Daudet, Madame Alphonse Daudet, is also a celebrity in her way, and gives receptions at which the best society of Paris can be met. She has entirely renounced her bourgeois origin, and only talks of Dukes and Duchesses. She labels herself a Clerical by conviction and a Royalist by sympathy, and frequents the houses of great ladies, such as the Duchesse de Rohan or the Comtesse Mathieu de Noailles. Her second son, Lucien Daudet is a devoted admirer of the Empress Eugénie. Among Republican hostesses I haven’t yet mentioned Madame Psichari, the daughter of Ernest Renan. She has inherited the intelligence and the art of conversation of her father, and is one of the most distinguished women of modern France. At her house can be met most of the members of the French Academy, and nearly all the prominent literary men in Paris. Her receptions are perhaps a shade dull, and more or less solemn, but always instructive and always interesting. Her personality was always singularly attractive, and inspired great respect, because her errors of judgment when they occurred were always sincere.
Madame Psichari was one of the victims of the divorce mania that has lately taken hold of Parisian society, and, to the great astonishment of her numerous friends, after more than thirty years’ matrimony she applied for a decree. She had one son, who occupied for a few days the attention of Paris, when at twenty years old he married the daughter of Anatole France, nearly seventeen years his senior, to the chagrin of both their families.
Madame Zola, also, used to receive her friends on Saturdays in her little flat in the Rue de Rome. At her house could be met all the principal actors in the Dreyfus drama, including its hero. I must here mention one fact that is very little known, that Zola, far from making money out of the Dreyfus affair, as it was said everywhere that he had done, lost a great deal by his attitude in regard to it. His novels, instead of being read more than had been the case formerly, were on the contrary boycotted, and several important papers for which he wrote articles, and which published his works before they came out in volume form, closed their doors to him after the letter “J’accuse,” for which he was sent before a jury at first and to exile afterwards.
Emile Zola died, relatively, a poor man, and his widow found herself reduced to almost embarrassed circumstances after his death. She sold a great deal of the furniture which he had collected, gave up to the State in return for a modest remuneration the villa of Médan, where he had lived for so many years, and arranged her existence on quite a different scale from that which had been her custom before her widowhood. Zola, as well as Captain Dreyfus himself, were the only two people who did not profit by the clamour which arose around them and around their actions.
Talking about Dreyfus reminds me of an incident in his story which, so far, I believe, has never been told. Whenhe was languishing on the barren rock called the Devil’s Island, a Russian who had had occasion to approach the Tsar spoke to Mathieu Dreyfus, the Captain’s brother, and advised him to appeal to the Russian Sovereign to intercede in favour of the Captain. Mathieu Dreyfus said that he would consult his sister-in-law, and reply in a few days. When these days had elapsed, he came back and told the man who had made the proposition that neither Madame Dreyfus, nor himself, thought that they had the moral right to apply to a foreign Monarch, or to ask his intervention in a case that was too important for France not to allow her to dispose of it herself. In general the dignity displayed by the whole Dreyfus family cannot sufficiently be praised; they all unanimously showed themselves superior to the misfortunes which assailed them.
So far all the hostesses of whom I have spoken were long past middle age, but there was another lady, young and beautiful, with a shade of eccentricity in her manners, who also aspired to have a salon, and to be able to dictate to those who visited it, or at least to suggest to them the opinions they ought to have. It was the Comtesse Mathieu de Noailles, a Roumanian by birth, coming from the family of the Princes of Brancovan, whose mother had been very well known in London, where her father, Musurus Pasha, had occupied for long the post of Turkish Ambassador. The Princesse de Brancovan was one of the best musicians of her generation, and her wonderful talent for the piano was famous among her acquaintances. She had been handsome, and her daughters had inherited her loveliness as well as her intellectual gifts. The eldest one, whose large dowry secured her an entrance into the ancient aristocratic family of the Ducs de Noailles, has made for herself a name among the poets of modern France Her books have been widely read, and have had a great success, which they deserved, because there was some really genuinepoetic inspiration in them. Madame de Noailles has succumbed to the vogue of eccentricity; she wears long floating white garments which trail out behind and give her the appearance of a fairy from the children’s tales. She speaks languidly, as if sick of a world she would really be very sorry to leave, and looks disdainfully at humanity in general.
The Comtesse de Noailles used to give parties, during which she recited some of her own poetry, and allowed her great friend and admirer, the Comte Robert de Montesquieu, to read his. She did not trouble much about her guests, merely smiled on them when they arrived, and softly sighed when she saw them going away. She glided about her lovely rooms, as the ghost of something too beautiful to be real, and she seemed to be interested in nothing that did not concern her personally, or that had no association with her books or poems.
Her receptions were singularly eclectic. Apart from the family, friends and relations of the Noailles, one met people who belonged to an entirely different grade—journalists, artists, politicians, even those of an advanced shade; members of the Republican government, and diplomats or foreigners happening to be in Paris. She received them all with the utmost grace, and liked to see them surround her, like the satellites of her fame and of her high social position. In its way her vanity was as remarkable as it was charming.
Madame de Noailles composed poems, the Comtesse de Greffuhle wrote operas and sonatas with decided talent. Madame de Greffuhle has played, and is playing still, a very important part in Parisian society. She was by birth a Princess de Chimay, and had married, without dower, the Count Greffuhle, whose fortune was supposed to be one of the largest in France, and had at once begun to exercise a considerable influence in the circles in which she moved. She was beautiful,intelligent, had great tact, and a considerable knowledge of the world, liked to surround herself with artists and musicians, to organise exhibitions of works of art, and to help her neighbour as much as she could.
Her salon was not the meeting-place of the pure Faubourg St. Germain, neither was it, on the other hand, exclusively Republican. But it afforded a neutral ground to men belonging to both parties, and her receptions were never dull nor banal, but on the contrary always interesting and pleasant. She possessed a lovely country place near Paris, called Bois Boudran, where she entertained most sumptuously, and where she often welcomed foreign Sovereigns or members of Royal houses, when they happened to come to France. Madame de Greffuhle was a woman essentially made for society, who could never have lived outside it. She described herself better than anyone else could have done one day when she was asked to write her name on the visitors’ book of the Phare d’Ailly, near Dieppe, where some friends had taken her. She signed “Chimay Greffuhle, dame de qualité,” thus admitting that she had no pretensions to be considered agrande dame.
The Baron Henri de Rothschild was also “un écrivain amateur,” with more pretensions to literary talent than perhaps that talent deserved. He had married Mlle. Weiswiller, who is supposed to be one of the best-dressed women in Paris, and whose name appears prominently in all the chronicles of theFigaroor theGaulois. The couple entertain with the hospitality for which their family has always been famous, and the Baron has made for himself a name among the benefactors of the Paris poor, for whom he does a great deal. He has studied medicine and even practised it with all the zeal of a millionaire who believes himself to have a vocation for some kind of science.
Baron Henri is an exceedingly pleasant man, cultured,and well read, capable of most entertaining conversation on a variety of topics. The receptions which he gives, and of which his wife helps him to do the honours with an exquisite grace, are the meeting-place of almost all the distinguished men of scientific and literary Paris. Members of the government can be met at them, but though his salon is known to be Liberal in its opinions, it is yet one at which politics have never played a part or been discussed. The guests succeeded in avoiding them even at the time of the Dreyfus affair, during which the Rothschilds adopted an entirely passive and impartial attitude.
Talking of politics makes me think of a house where they were always very prominent, and almost the only subject of conversation. It was the house of M. Rouvier, one of the ablest politicians whom France has seen in recent times, who had occupied, more than once, important State positions, and who was always spoken of, among his friends, as a possible President of the Republic. M. Rouvier’s was a most complicated mind. He had considerable capacity, an intelligence far above the average, great ambition, and absolutely no vanity, perhaps because he had a full consciousness of his strength and of his worth, in presence of the lesser intelligences with which he was surrounded.
He had made his way with the help of a good deal of luck, and perhaps more determination than is generally met with. There was one moment in his life when he nearly became one of the victims of the Panama scandal, but he succeeded in emerging quite unharmed. As a financier, he very nearly approached genius, and when he left office almost all the large banks in France entreated him to join their board. He became director of a large financial establishment, which he managed with the intelligence and knowledge that he brought into everything which he attempted.But although he had many partisans and more friends than could have been expected in a man who had held the difficult posts which he had successfully occupied; though he was in a certain sense a sort of small king, feared by most of the politicians who ruled France or aspired to do so, he always regretted that he had been obliged to retire from the government of his country. When he died, he was about to put forward his candidature to the Presidency of the Republic, in opposition to that of M. Poincaré or any other of the probable successors of M. Fallières at the end of the latter’s septenary.
M. Rouvier had been twice married. His first wife was the famous sculptor known as Claude Vignon, whose first husband was l’Abbé Constant, an unfrocked priest, who was later on to be so well known by the name of Eliphas Lévy, and who was considered to be the greatest master in occult sciences that the world possessed. I met Eliphas Lévy more than once, and I was always extremely interested in him. He had a most venerable appearance, with his long white beard, and of all the indulgent men I have ever met he was the one who practised that virtue to the largest extent. He lived absorbed in his studies of high magic, but would always carefully avoid talking on the subject, save with his most intimate friends. He was called uncanny, I don’t know why, because he certainly had the most peaceful countenance possible, but a certain prejudice used to cling to him or rather existed against him at the time I knew him; probably because the fact of a priest having given up his profession appeared still to be something quite dreadful in France.
Madame Constant, or Claude Vignon as she was generally called, had greatly contributed to the unfrocking of her husband, but though he had loved her passionately, she had very soon tired of him, and the couple separated, neverto meet again so long as they lived. She married Rouvier, to whom she brought the very large fortune she possessed, but died not long after, leaving one son, with whom his father never could get along, and whom one never met at his house.
The second Madame Rouvier was a small, slight woman, with golden curls, a most pleasant manner, and a charming conversationalist. She aided her husband quite admirably, interested herself in his political career and successes, and was perhaps even more ambitious than he. The couple lived in a splendid establishment which they possessed at Neuilly, on the outskirts of the Bois de Boulogne, where they often entertained, and where generally the latest news of the day was to be heard. No political man would have dared to ignore M. Rouvier and his wife, and their salon has been more than once called the “succursale du Sénat,” of which he was a member. Diplomats also were to be met in their house; and it was, indeed, frequented by almost everybody of note in Paris.
I haveseen many changes take place in Paris during the twenty-five years of my sojourn in the gay city. I cannot say that all these changes have been congenial; the good manners for which Frenchmen were famous, certainly disappeared simultaneously with the crinoline. Alaisser allerhas replaced the stiffness which at one time made the select Parisian houses so difficult of access to the foreigner. At present the American and Jewish elements have entirely invaded French society, and imported into it not only their easy ways but also an independence of speech and action which would have horrified dowagers of olden times. Sport also, which was formerly unknown, has absorbed the thoughts of people who would not have dreamed of it a few years ago. Life in hotels has done away with the intimacy of the home, and whereas formerly one only invited to dine at a restaurant people one would not have cared to entertain in one’s own house, now it is the reverse, and those whom it is desired to honour are asked to lunch or to supper at the Ritz or the Meurice, or some other fashionable place of the same kind. The refinement that was so essentially a French characteristic has entirely disappeared. Women have grown loud, and men have become coarse, girls have lost their modesty, and boys are impertinent. An altogether new world has superseded that of the Second Empire.
The advent of American millionaires has aroused the desire to be able to emulate their luxury, and the introduction of Jews into the best French society, in spite of all the efforts of Drumont and other anti-Semites, has done away with the prejudice which existed against them. Indeed, Jewish heiresses are sought as wives by bearers of some of the oldest and most aristocratic names in France; Mlle. Ephrussi has become Princess de Lucinge; the Marquise de la Ferté Meun was Mlle. Porgès; the Princess Murat, the wife of the head of that house, is the granddaughter of old Madame Heine, herself the only child of the banker Furtado; and the present Princesse de Monaco, whose first husband was the Duc de Richelieu, is the daughter of another Heine, also a banker, whose many millions she inherited.
These new elements entering society have necessarily transformed it. Paris is now a vast hotel where are met all kinds of people, and no one feels the necessity to observe etiquette or restraint. It is a place where the man who pays can obtain everything he wants. Excepting in a few houses, as of old was that of Madame Aimery de la Rochefoucauld, one can meet everywhere the representatives of Hebrew banking houses, or great tradesmen, whom Parisian hostesses are but too eager to invite to their balls or receptions, feeling sure that it will bring them some profit in one shape or another. Money is the only thing that counts nowadays. It is so everywhere unfortunately, but in France it seems to be more potent than anywhere else.
In consequence, society is perhaps smarter than it has ever been, but it is a great question whether it is so distinguished, and it is certain that it is no longer so good-mannered.
If one examines things carefully, one cannot wonder at it. When the first heiresses to great fortunes, but to nothing else, were admitted into the Faubourg St. Germain dowagers looked at them askance, and even their husbands seemedhalf ashamed to have been obliged to marry them. It was but natural that, repulsed as it were by the people who ought to have opened their arms to them, they should have turned towards those who belonged to their own sphere. Thenouveauxwere invited to their parties, at which the old aristocratic representatives of monarchical France were at first rather shy about putting in an appearance. But very soon thenoblessebegan to feel at home, and there met other heiresses whom in their turn they were to take to their bosoms.
The leading hostesses in Paris at that time were the Duchesse de Grammont, née Rothschild; the Duchesse de Doudeauville, whose grandmother was Madame Blanc of Monaco fame; the Comtesse Bernard de Gontaut Biron, whose father, M. Cabibel, had not been one of Lyons’ best citizens, though he had lived in that town all his life and made all his money there; the Comtesse de Trédern, who had been Mademoiselle Say, and so on.
Money did away with all the differences which formerly existed between the various classes of society, and newspapers which began to make or to mar social reputations mentioned, as the most fashionable women in fashionable Paris, Madame Schneider of Creusot fame, Madame Pierre Lebaudy, Madame Deutsch de la Meurthe, and the wives and daughters of every banker or industrial whose millions had opened the doors of the social Eden into which a hundred years ago no one who was not an aristocrat could ever have hoped to enter. Society became a haunt of millionaires, even Monsieur Chauchard, the owner of the Grands Magasins du Louvre, would have been admitted into it easily had he only lived long enough.
Automobilism, which gave to so many representatives of the oldest names in France the opportunity to make money by fostering its popularity, and lending the support of their family connections to the numerous shareholders’ companieswhich sprang into existence at a minute’s notice, contributed considerably also to what I would call the demoralisation of good manners. Many people, in order to make money through this new kind of sport, associated with persons of a very low social and moral standard, or even simple mechanicians were admitted at first to the Automobile Club, and at last into the drawing-rooms of its members. Much had to be forgiven these parvenus of sport, many errors of etiquette overlooked, but very soon all were forgetting themselves, and instead of raising these people to its own level, society came down to theirs. Ladies, who could more easily dispose of the tickets of the many charitable lotteries, or theatre performances, which they patronised among thesenouveaux venusthan in their own circle of acquaintances, and who, in case of necessity, could also apply to them for a small loan or the settlement of an angry dressmaker’s bill, were but too glad to invite them to their receptions. So, little by little, the salons of the noble ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain became a kind of succursale of the “haute banque and haute finance” not only of Paris, but also of France and of New York.
There were some exceptions to this rule, but these were not frequent. I must mention as one of these exceptions the Comtesse Jean de Montebello, one of the loveliest, most charming, and most intelligent women that Paris could boast. She was the daughter-in-law of that amiable Comtesse Gustave de Montebello, who had been one of the favourite ladies in waiting of the Empress Eugénie. She lived in the private hotel, which the former had built for herself in the Rue Barbet de Jouiy, preserving all the old traditions that were associated with it, and maintaining the grave, serious tone for which it had been famous during the Second Empire.
Madame Jean de Montebello is a true type of the great lady; her affable manners, the perfect distinction which sheshows in conversation, the inimitable grace and ease that accompanies every one of her movements, makes her a delightful creature. Beautiful as a dream in her youth, in her old age she has kept the straight, classic features, the soft eyes, and the kind, joyous expression for which she has always been famous. Her wit is bright, without the least shade of ill-nature, and she is one of the very few Frenchwomen of the higher classes whose conversation and culture constitute an attraction strong enough to make one forget even her beauty and her other charms. She is learned without being a pedant, and no one meeting her for the first time would guess that under her pleasant way of greeting you is hidden a knowledge and a love of art and literature such as unfortunately is but seldom found among the many fair women who throng the drawing-rooms of brilliant Paris.
Madame Jean de Montebello had a cousin, the Marquise de Montebello, whose husband occupied for something like ten years the post of French Ambassador in St. Petersburg, and who was the subject of many discussions in the world in which she had literally been thrust, but to which she did not belong either by birth or by education. The Marquise de Montebello was the granddaughter of Madame Chevreux Aubertot, the proprietress of the big shop, called the Gagne-Petit, in the Avenue de l’Opéra, in Paris. She was a bright, intelligent, dashing, intriguing woman, full of ambition, and of desire to play a part in European politics. Amusing, and utterly regardless of what people might say or think about her, she was enormously rich, and knew how to spend her money.
When she arrived in St. Petersburg she threw wide open the doors of the Embassy, and entertained all who expressed the desire to enjoy her hospitality. She soon made friends with the Grand Dukes, the brothers of Alexander III., whoalways gave their affections and their preferences to the people who amused them, and, indeed, it was impossible not to be amused in the company of Madame de Montebello. She was essentially a person who liked to see the utmost liberty both of language and of manners reign around her, and who did not hesitate to put her feet on the table, or do anythingoutré, provided she could in that way attract to her house the company she sought. Under her rule the French Embassy became a sort of Liberty Hall, where one could do anything one liked. She gave to her friends and acquaintances the run of her house, of her kitchen and of her cellar, and she would have given them the run of her bedroom had they only dared to ask for it.
When she left Russia she was extremely regretted there, even by those who did not care for her, because with her disappeared a bright element that always brought along with it some gaiety, even in the dullest circles. Whilst she was Ambassadress, the French alliance was extremely popular, it became less so after she was gone.
The Marquis de Montebello was a diplomat of the old school, pompous, solemn, not esteemed clever, but with a ripened experience. He had traditions, knowledge of the world, and understood perfectly well that his enormous wealth would help his country to win for herself the friendship of Russia. He fulfilled all his duties with tact, and his manners were essentially those of a gentleman—quiet, reserved, and with a shade of self-sufficiency which became him. He made himself just as popular as his brilliant wife, and cared immensely for his position as an Ambassador. It broke his heart when he had to abandon it; he never could get reconciled to the fact, the more so that he was not the favourite in Paris he had been in St. Petersburg, and though the Marquise tried to give receptions and dinners to all those who cared to cometo them, she did not succeed in making either herself or her husband popular in Paris society, though they contrived to be admitted in several select houses, such as the one of the Comtesse Mélanie de Pourtalès.
Madame de Montebello had a great friend who tried hard to launch her into the society of the Faubourg St. Germain. It was the Comte Joseph de Gontaut Biron, the son of the former French Ambassador in Berlin, the Vicomte de Gontaut Biron, and one of the most popular men in the whole of Paris, who usually did the honours of the city when Russian Grand Dukes visited it. The Comte de Gontaut was the only handsome member of a very ugly family which had redeemed its want of beauty by unusual cleverness. He had been married to a Princesse de Polignac, whose heart he had very soon broken, and whose fortune he had quite as soon squandered. The Gontauts occupied a privileged position in the Faubourg St. Germain, thanks to their numerous alliances and to their many relatives. The elder members of the family, such as the Comtesse Armand, or the Princesse de Beauvau, tried to maintain the traditions of their race, and could be classified among thehautes et puissantes damesof their generation, but the younger members had mixed freely with the other elements of Paris society, and had assimilated their characteristics as well as those of their own circle.
I have spoken of the Comte Boni de Castellane, the former husband of Miss Anna Gould. His father, the Marquis de Castellane, had at one time played a part in French politics, when he had been a member of the first Assemblée Nationale, which had elected M. Thiers as President of the Republic, or rather the Executive power as it was called at that time. Unpleasant incidents of a private nature had obliged him to leave public life, and also to retire from several clubs of which he had been a member. But he had contrived to keep afloatin the Faubourg, and was rather feared there on account of the sharpness of his tongue and the ill-nature with which he repeated all the gossip which he spent his time in collecting. He was extremely intelligent, and had none of the foppery which made his son so thoroughly disagreeable; he would certainly have been a man who could have made his way in the world had he only tried to conform to the tenets of society.
His second son married the widow of Prince Furstenberg, who was a cousin of his, being the daughter of the old Duc de Sagan and of his second wife, Mademoiselle Pauline de Castellane, and considerably older than himself. The Comtesse Jean de Castellane is at the present moment one of the leading hostesses in Paris. She is clever, with excellent manners, with tendencies to pose as a woman of culture, and not disdaining to write now and then little articles in the daily papers, which are always accepted with pleasure on account of the signature which accompanies them. She could never be taken for anything else but a lady, but I doubt whether one would at once call her agrande damein the sense in which this word was understood formerly.
I think I have mentioned the name of the Comtesse de Trédern. That lady certainly deserves more than a passing mention. She was a Mlle. Say, the sister of the Princesse Amedée de Broglie, and she had married when quite young the Marquis de Brissac, the eldest son of the Duc de Brissac, who was killed during the Franco-German War. Left a widow with two children, she began first to restore the castle of Brissac in Anjou, which is considered one of the finest private residences in France, and which she bought from her father-in-law. Then she married the Comte de Trédern, from whom she parted after a few years of troublous union. Since then she has queened it at Brissac, or in her beautiful house of thePlace Vendôme, where she regularly gives sumptuous entertainments.