XXXVIIIAN EXCITING INCIDENT
SOME months of 1849 passed, during which I acquired much serious elementary knowledge; but all my ardour was spent on the study of Grecian, Latin, foreign, and French literature. I identified myself with the characters of certain works, and acted their parts. My grandparents and Blondeau lived happily, occupied with me, interested in all that I did, amused by the superabundance of vitality which I put into everything, and lent themselves to taking part, as they had previously done, in my most fantastic caprices. When a book pleased me, they were obliged to assume the characters of the principal personages of the book, to speak their language, to discuss their acts, and to take part in imaginary conversations which these persons might have held among themselves. I began to write poetry again—perhaps rather better than my first attempts—and poems naturally were my chief delight, those of Homer above all. When I was at Blérancourt, my father would consent to be called Ulysses, and my mother Penelope,although she sometimes rebelled against the rôle I gave her.
I was Nausicaa. I had a passion for washing, and dabbled in water with delight. My father found me many times before a tub filled with soap-suds, and would address me as “Nausicaa with white arms.” He would recite to me the words of the seventh canto of the Odyssey:
“‘It seems to me best to implore you by caressing words, keeping afar from you, for fear of irritating your heart;’” and he would add:
“‘I compare you in height and in presence to Diana, daughter of great Jupiter; but if you are a mortal, inhabiting earth, thrice happy are your father and mother. I am seized with admiration on seeing you. So did I see one day at Delos near Apollo’s altar a young sprig of a growing palm-tree!’”
And he would continue, going from one verse to another, as it pleased him to select them, and I would answer him, for I knew he loved the poems, so many times repeated by heart.
During my visit to him that summer, my father had a great sorrow, in which I took part and from which he suffered so deeply that it touched even my mother’s heart. His last hopes were cruelly taken from him.
On the 15th of June, he informed me that Ledru-Rollin had, on the 13th, asked the new Assembly, which had just been elected, and whose majority was reactionary, for a bill of indictment against the Prince-President and his Ministers, who were found guilty of having violated the Constitution. Under the false pretext of saving Italian liberty, our intervention had culminated by the entrance of French troops into Rome, re-establishing the Pope.
What overwhelmed my father, and made him despair the most, was not so much the failure of their motion, as the hesitating, ridiculous part played by the last two champions of his opinions—Ledru-Rollin and Victor Considérant—in their attempted appeal to the people with what was called “the affair of the Arts and Trades,” and their rather pitiable flight through the back doors of the school. Were they also worth nothing as heads of the opposition party? Had they no courage?
In July all the trees of liberty were dug up, and my father, who had accepted the function of Mayor in order to plant one of these trees, resigned his office on the day the tree was thrown down.
He then began to condemn, in equal measure, the monarchists and the reactionary republicans.
He was destined to suffer blow after blow.
Since the insurrection of June, 1848, secret societies had been formed, some of which were to fight against reaction, others to prepare the Empire, as the insurrection of the 10th of December had done, and all these societies kept watch upon one another. The Bonapartists denounced, above all, those called “Marianne.”
Perquisitions took place, and were called “domiciliary visits.” The reactionists affirmed that the object of certain of these societies was to overthrow the Republic, which was only a pretext for hunting down Republicans.
The pleasure I had taken in searching for my grandfather’s hiding-places for his money had caused me to remark my father’s goings and comings to the garret, which I concluded must arise from his hiding something there. So I determined to find out what it was, and I discovered a hole between two rafters, which held a large package of papers, lists of names, proofs of the organisation of a society, the members of which had taken oath to fight against the tyrants, to answer the first call to insurrection, etc.
One day my mother said to my father: “You should burn the papers of the ‘Marianne,’ which are so compromising to many persons. Since you do not dare to meet any longer, it would be betterto rid yourself of the official reports and the lists, which seem to me dangerous to keep.”
“I have thought about it,” my father replied, “and I will begin to-morrow to convoke our brothers and friends, two by two, to ask their consent to destroy our archives.”
That same evening I made myself a large pocket attached to a string which I could tie around my waist, and which I put on the next morning.
It was time! My father had not gathered together ten of the associated members of the “Marianne” (were there traitors among “the brothers and friends” convoked separately?) before an agent of the Republic, at the head of a commission, came to our house one morning at breakfast-time, and, showing his papers of authority, he began to ransack in my father’s writing-desk, aided by two policemen. My father was overwhelmed; my heart seemed turned into stone. I watched our visitors doing their work, concocting the while a plan in my mind. I even helped them by pointing out things in an amiable way, and I went so far as to say, laughingly, to the agent of the Republic:
“What you are doing is not very nice, Monsieur; it might even be called indiscreet.”
The agent and his colleagues were amused at my conversation.
Then I said suddenly to my mother:
“Mamma, will you let me go and tell Blatier (the gardener, who was looking, frightened, through the window) to place some cider to cool, so that you can offer some to these gentlemen? It is so hot!”
My mother made a sign of assent. She had wished a moment before to go into another room, but one of the policemen had stopped her. They allowed me to go out, however. I told Blatier to draw some water from the well, and I went with him, feeling myself followed by the eyes of a policeman, who was looking out of the window. While the gardener drew the water, I went down into the cellar, and came up with some bottles, which I placed in the pail of cold water. Then I dallied over several things, went down in the cellar again, looked for another pail for more bottles, which I brought up, and I then pretended to enter the house slowly. Then I flew with a bound to the garret-door, and with another bound entered it, after having taken off my shoes, so as not to be heard, for the house had but one story. I put the papers in my pocket, slid down the staircase and entered my parents’ room tranquilly, where the police were rummaging into everything.
My mother, trembling, gave them the keys ofthe drawers. My father, seated, did not move. I prepared a tray myself, and went outside to have the water in the pails changed. I soon returned and offered some cold cider to our visitors, who were delighted.
They ransacked the stable, the carriage-house, the cellar, and the garret.
When my father heard them go upstairs, he rose, his face convulsed, and I saw from my mother’s expression that she was saying to herself: “The papers must be up there—we are lost!”
I took a glassful of cider and approached my father, always watched by the policeman. He pushed my glass away. I leaned over him as if urging him to drink, and whispered these words to him:
“Don’t let your face change. I have the papers!”
I kissed him, which seemed to touch the policeman’s heart, and my father clasped me in his arms.
Thanks to me, these men had discovered nothing of any importance.
The agent of the Republic said to me: “Mademoiselle, I am glad to announce to you that we have found nothing compromising to your father. It would have been serious for him if we had beenobliged to state certain facts which we had been informed existed, for your father’s name figures on the list for arrest, and he might have been imprisoned, even exiled. He has the reputation of being a dangerous revolutionist, and, besides, he is accused of making proselytes.”
“Thank you, Monsieur,” I replied. “You must have a daughter yourself, to act in such fatherly fashion to me.”
The agent smiled, but did not answer me. He bowed to my mother and father, and left.
I accompanied him to the door, and I watched “the domiciliary commission” for some minutes; then I bolted the door, locked it, and went into the dining-room, where I found my father prostrated.
“From the expression of your face,” said my mother to him, “it is lucky they did not find the papers, which must be in the garret.”
My father answered:
“Juliette has them!”
“How did she get them?”
I raised my skirt, and cried, victoriously:
“This is how one can fool those who make perquisitions!”
I told my parents that I had learned the importance of the papers from what my mother had said, and of my fondness for finding hiding-places.
My father recovered from his emotion, and felt great indignation.
“Such a republic,” he said one day, soon after the famous visit, “is more odious to me than the monarchy has ever been. May I see before long those who pretend to serve this Republic of lies, and who, really, only try to persecute Republicans, grovel before one and the same tyrant, and all be crushed together under his heel!”