XXXIVI GO TO BOARDING-SCHOOL
I WAS a very aggressive malcontent moreover. My discussions with grandmother became so violent that grandfather several times was angry with me, and even Blondeau blamed me. My friend Charles, who would probably have upheld me—for he was a revolutionist, as well as my father and myself—had left Chauny to become the secretary of one of his boyhood friends, a high functionary of the Republic, at Paris.
My father soon became greatly excited. “They are lying to us, they are deceiving us, they are trying to put us to sleep,” he said, much grieved, feeling his Christian-heathen-socialist-scientific Republic escaping him.
My grandmother felt more and more secure. “Order is maintained, and therefore the form of government matters little, after all,” she said. Grandfather, when my father and I became more hopeless, said:
“Come, come, things are going very well for the Empire.”
But I made my grandparents very unhappy withmy sorrow, my recriminations, my imprecations. Life became insupportable, intolerable, to all of us. It must have been the same, at that time, in every family where there were idealists and sincere Republicans, those who believed they could bring down the moon for the people, worthy, as they thought them, of all miraculous gifts.
The national workshops, which had interested me so much, now made me despair. Alas! they were going wrong. What! that admirable conception—the State creating workshops to give employment to those who needed it, to feed those who were dying of hunger; that benevolent, protecting institution, a social safeguard against poverty, an admirable example held up to all nations—was it to be dissolved?
Émile Thomas, who was at the head of these workshops, did not follow Louis Blanc’s ideas, although he often said to the contrary. They were beginning to suspect him of being the agent of “the man of the Strasbourg and Boulogne riots.” Instead of organising the national workshops, he disorganised them.
“The reactionists,” said my father to me, “endeavour to make it believed that Émile Thomas is acting according to Louis Blanc’s ideas, when, on the contrary, he is the worst enemy of those ideas.They wish to render pure socialism guilty of the crimes they are committing in its name. Trélat, the Minister of Public Instruction, cannot suffer the national workshops; the Executive Committee abhors them, the middle class has a horror of them, because it is afraid of them. What will happen if, as the National Assembly, composed of reactionists, desires, they abolish the workshops? A hundred thousand men thrown suddenly out of work, on the streets of Paris, will cause terrible riots; there will be a bloody revolution, in which reforms will be drowned, and that is their aim.”
Ah! those hundred thousand men threatened with being turned into the streets! I saw them unhappy, wandering about, without work, despairing, while their wives and children were dying of hunger at home. I wept over them. My heart was full of an immense pity for them, and, day by day, I felt obliged to be kept informed of all that was taking place. My grandmother, who had recently subscribed to theNational, wished to prevent my reading it, but I insisted on seeing it, and, while I was revolted at the hatred of the “yellow gloves” formynational workshops, I kept myself informed about events until my father’s visits.
When I learned that Monsieur de Falloux was commissioned by the National Assembly to furnisha plan of dissolution of the national workshops, I knew that everything was falling to pieces.
My father said to me: “They are organising butchery; they wish to dissolve the national workshops from one day to another. Trélat himself sees the danger. He proposes to replace the workmen successively, little by little. He has destituted Émile Thomas, seeing at last the disorganising work he was accomplishing; he has given his son-in-law, Lalanne, the place, and Lalanne is reorganising the workmen, but it is too late, for the wolves of the National Assembly wish carnage.”
This nearly killed me. The people, the good people, so patient, so generous, who had behaved so admirably in the fateful days of February, were being urged to yield to the evil instincts of plunder from the poverty imposed upon them.
I was so unhappy at all I felt, and my suffering came so much into contradiction with my grandparents’ and Blondeau’s excessive hardness of heart, who said: “Let them finish at once with the beggars!” that I begged grandmother to allow me to return to Blérancourt with my father on his next visit.
“You can do as you please,” she said. “But I warn you, my poor Juliette, that in your present state of aberration of mind, the little good senseremaining to you will be imperilled if you live with your father. He will destroy it, and your marriage with a workman will be an appropriate ending to your follies. Now, I must confide to you that young X. has already expressed great admiration for you. He is seventeen years old, and his father, half seriously, half laughingly, on account of your youth, has made overtures to me regarding a possible alliance, a few years hence, between our two families. Certainly, this is not what I had hoped for you, for I should like you to be married in Paris, where I would go and live part of the year with you, in order to direct your steps in the path of that destiny which, until lately, I had foreseen for you. But you have such insane notions that perhaps a good middle-class marriage in the country would be better for you than all I had desired for my only grandchild. Here is what I propose: Will you go to school as a boarder? The school is so near that I shall feel you still with me. You can lecture your schoolmates as much as you please, and then your grandfather and I and Blondeau, having to bear with you only once a week, will be better able to endure your outbursts of passion. But if we must see you weep or be angry, either suffering or in a rage every day because this good Republic does not suit you, why,then, my darling grandchild, the situation will be untenable.”
I realised then, from this proposition, the amount of annoyance I had caused my grandparents. Could it be possible that grandmother, who until lately had found the hours I spent at school too long, and our separation, while I was at Chivres or Blérancourt, unbearable—could she wish that I should go to boarding-school? I was stunned; however, my foolish pride prevented me from throwing myself on grandmother’s neck and asking pardon for my folly, for I realised at that moment how absurd I had been; and then, what she had told me of X., a handsome young man, whom I found charming and witty, raised me in my own estimation so much that I thought a young person like myself, nearly twelve years old, could not ask pardon like a little girl, so I replied, although with an aching heart:
“Very well, grandmother, it is agreed; I will go to boarding-school as soon as you wish.”
“To-morrow,” she replied.
I nearly burst into tears, but it was class-hour, and I left for school, saying to myself it would be the last day that I would have my own room all to myself, where, from morning until night, I was surrounded by evidences of my grandmother’s passionatetenderness and my grandfather’s gay affection. I could see only from afar my pigeons fly down, cooing and pecking in the courtyard. I should miss the friendship of Blondeau, to whom I could no longer confide my sorrows, or experiment upon with my father’s startling theories, which I had fully adopted, but which he accepted only with certain modifications.
The next day I went as a boarder to the Mlles. André’s school. My grandfather accompanied me there, and it needed all my courage, when I bade him good-bye, not to beg him to allow me to return home at night. I breakfasted and dined with my schoolmates. At class, at recreations, and all the day long, I saw no one but them. The absolute silence at table was a veritable torture. When I had gone to bed, I was so unhappy and wept so much that I could not sleep, and this was the first sleepless night I had ever passed in my life. I was frightened to think of the next night, for this had seemed to me as terrible as the infernal regions, and I imagined I could never sleep again; this caused me great anxiety, but of course I did not confide it to any of my friends, the most intimate of whom were boarders like myself.
One of my political enemies who knew me well,said to herself that some disaster, some great quarrel between my grandmother and myself, could alone have caused our separation, and she amused herself maliciously by passing to and fro before me, sneering, as she spread about a fantastic story concerning my coming as a boarder. My red eyes, my discomposed face, gave credence to her tale, which was circulated about during the mid-day recreation. They said that my grandmother loved me no longer, that she did not wish to see me any more, that I had done all manner of disobedient things; and, of course, I was at once informed of all this gossip.
At the afternoon recreation several of my schoolmates suddenly ran to me and said:
“Your grandmother is on the top of the wall in the back courtyard. She wishes you to go and say good-night to her.”
Being aware of the stories spread about me by my political enemy, I went to the foot of the wall, which I would not otherwise have done, most certainly, for I was so angry with grandmother that I did not wish to answer her summons.
“How are you, my grandchild?” she asked, perched on the top of a ladder, her head alone appearing above the wall. “Have you slept well?”
“No, grandmother, I have not slept at all, andmost surely I shall never sleep again. But what does that matter to you? You are happy, you sleep well; that is all that is necessary. Say good-night to grandfather and to Blondeau for me. Good-night, grandmother, but let me warn you that, if you call for me again to-morrow from the top of that horrid wall, I won’t come!” and I ran away.
The following days I worked only by fits and starts, when my pride was at stake, or when I wished to surpass a political adversary. Being the head of my party, I could not allow myself to be conquered.
My heart was saddened by the sorrow of living no longer under my beloved grandmother’s wing, and I continued to feel grievous distress of mind in connection with my fears concerning the workmen of the national workshops.
To understand rightly the sum of love contained in the words, “The poor people,” or to comprehend to what a degree those who were sincere socialist-republicans believed themselves its friends, one must go back to quite another epoch.
We socialist-republicans had no longer the courage to play at recreations. The National Assembly was treating our workmen of the memorable February days, those who had written on the wallsof the Tuileries, “Death to thieves!” as if they were bandits and plunderers!
How we suffered with the poor people! It was all over with them. We knew it was only a question of days and hours before one hundred thousand men would be given over to hunger and want. Not one of my schoolmates had allowed herself for a long time to spend one cent on delicacies or sweets. We counted up our resources constantly. By combining them we should be able to feed one man of the national workshops, but no more. I decided that we would write a touching letter to the Minister Trélat, whom we detested, who, according to our thinking, was the cause of all the trouble, proposing to him that we should take charge of one workman of the national workshops. Certainly, one was not much out of a hundred thousand, but if in every boarding-school they would do as much, there would be, at all hazards, a certain number saved.
The planning of this letter was most difficult, and took a great deal of time. Each separate group, having made out its draught, communicated it to the other groups. We numbered eleven groups, secretly bound together, each one of which had its partisans, and all our partisans wished to share in the drawing up of the letter. At last thefinal result, compiled from all the other draughts, received the approbation of the united groups, and the important letter was despatched. I addressed it to my friend Charles, in Paris, for him to take and deliver it from us to the Minister in person.
At that same moment the National Assembly cruelly decided that the workmen from seventeen to twenty-five years of age should be incorporated in different regiments, and also to send to the department of Sologne—a country desolated by fever, and whose climate was deadly—a certain number of workmen of the national workshops; and that the remainder should be distributed in the provinces, to build roads and do other work, which should be planned by the municipalities.
Thinking that our “national workman” would be sent to us some day, not only did we stop eating cakes, and economise in every possible way, but we begged and collected everything we could from our relatives under all sorts of pretexts. One girl had obtained a suit of clothes from one of her brothers, and had cleaned and mended it with care. No one was to be allowed even to suspect our plot, for we knew that we should be excommunicated by all our families if they should imagine that we were thinking of protecting one of the “monsters” of the national workshops.
So we had specified in our letter to Minister Trélat that our national workman was to present himself at the boarding-school of the Mlles. André of Chauny as a pensioner of Juliette Lambert!
My father had written to me that things were worse than had been reported; that the authorities occupied themselves no longer to find any sort of place for the workmen; that the National Assembly was odious, criminal; that it wished to dissolve the national workshops immediately, without caring what became of the hundred thousand men turned adrift. “There will be great misfortunes,” he added.
I went for a vacation the next day, a Sunday, to grandmother’s; and Blondeau talked politics before me without my saying a word, for I had determined, since my entrance at the boarding-school, not to speak of anything but commonplaces when I went to visit my grandparents.
Blondeau related what seemed incredible—that Trélat, the Minister of Public Instruction, had asked that some pity should be shown to the bandits of the national workshops, and had begged the National Assembly, with trembling voice, not to throw a hundred thousand men on the streets, and to allow him to discover some way of finding places for them; that he had proposed incorporation, sendingthem to the department of Sologne, road-building, and other work to be decided upon by the municipalities.
“Your news is a week old, Blondeau,” I could not help saying to him. “And you can add that the National Assembly laughed at Trélat’s tardy outbursts of feeling, and that it decided....”
I related the decision, and there was silence.
My grandfather, provoked, and scarcely able to control his anger, asked me:
“Are you for the insurgents?”
“I am, grandfather, for the hundred thousand wretched men, to whom, perhaps imprudently, they promised to give work, and whom, suddenly, without pity, they wish to deprive of it.”
“But they are assassins!”
“Whom have they assassinated?”
“They are thieves!”
“From whom have they stolen?”
“They terrify the country.”
“Oh! yes, they make them out bugbears. They say they are madmen, in order to kill them; perhaps, finally, they will, indeed, make them terrifying, grandfather.”
Blondeau and grandmother looked at each other bewildered. Neither the one nor the other breathed a word.
“It is time that Prince Louis should occupy himself with it,” replied grandfather, “or else such ideas as yours, Juliette, will drive us all crazy.”
“Alas! your Prince Louis occupies himself too much with it. It is he, through Émile Thomas, who has made the national workshops fail.”
“Prince Louis could never occupy himself too much with the affairs of France, do you hear, little insurgent? He must save us by a good Empire, securely founded, and which must last, at least, until my death.”