"The soldiers are taking the mob at its rear," said Lebeau, calmly; "we have not a moment to lose—this way," and he plunged into a dismal court, then into a labyrinth of lanes, followed mechanically by Rameau. They issued at last on the Boulevards, in which the usual loungers were quietly sauntering, wholly unconscious of the riot elsewhere. "Now, take that fiacre and go home; write down your impressions of what you have seen, and take your MS. to M. de Mauleon." Lebeau here quitted him.
Meanwhile all happened as Lebeau had predicted. The sergens de ville showed themselves in front of the barricades, a small troop of mounted soldiers appeared in the rear. The mob greeted the first with yells and a shower of stones; at the sight of the last they fled in all directions; and the sergens de ville, calmly scaling the barricades, carried off in triumph, as prisoners of war, 4 gamins, 3 women, and 1 Irishman loudly protesting innocence, and shrieking "Murther!" So ended the first inglorious rise against the plebiscite and the Empire, on the 14th of May, 1870.
From Isaura Cicogna to Madame de Grantmesnil.
Saturday. May 21.
"I am still, dearest Eulalie, under the excitement of impressions wholly new to me. I have this day witnessed one of those scenes which take us out of our private life, not into the world of fiction, but of history, in which we live as in the life of a nation. You know how intimate I have become with Valerie Duplessis. She is in herself so charming in her combination of petulant wilfulness and guileless naivete, that she might sit as a model for one of your exquisite heroines. Her father, who is in great favour at Court, had tickets for the Salle des Etats of the Louvre today—when, as the journals will tell you, the results of the plebiscite were formally announced to the Emperor—and I accompanied him and Valerie. I felt, on entering the hall, as if I had been living for months in an atmosphere of false rumours, for those I chiefly meet in the circles of artists and men of letters, and the wits and flaneurs who haunt such circles, are nearly all hostile to the Emperor. They agree, at least, in asserting the decline of his popularity—the failure of his intellectual powers; in predicting his downfall—deriding the notion of a successor in his son. Well, I know not how to reconcile these statements with the spectacle I have beheld to-day.
"In the chorus of acclamation amidst which the Emperor entered the hall, it seemed as if one heard the voice of the France he had just appealed to. If the Fates are really weaving woe and shame in his woof, it is in hues which, to mortal eyes, seem brilliant with glory and joy.
"You will read the address of the President of the Corps Legislatif; I wonder how it will strike you! I own fairly that me it wholly carried away. At each sentiment I murmured to myself, 'Is not this true? and, if true, are France and human nature ungrateful?'
"'It is now,' said the President, 'eighteen years since France, wearied with confusion, and anxious for security, confiding in your genuis and the Napoleonic dynasty, placed in your hands, together with the Imperial Crown, the authority which the public necessity demanded.' Then the address proceeded to enumerate the blessings that ensued—social order speedily restored—the welfare of all classes of society promoted— advances in commerce and manufactures to an extent hitherto unknown. Is not this true? and, if so, are you, noble daughter of France, ungrateful?
"Then came words which touched me deeply—me, who, knowing nothing of politics, still feel the link that unites Art to Freedom: 'But from the first your Majesty has looked forward to the time when this concentration of power would no longer correspond to the aspirations of a tranquil and reassured country, and, foreseeing the progress of modern society, you proclaimed that 'Liberty must be the crowning of the edifice.'' Passing then over the previous gradual advances in popular government, the President came to the 'present self-abnegation, unprecedented in history,' and to the vindication of that plebiscite which I have heard so assailed—viz., Fidelity to the great principle upon which the throne was founded, required that so important a modification of a power bestowed by the people should not be made without the participation of the people themselves. Then, enumerating the millions who had welcomed the new form of government—the President paused a second or two, as if with suppressed emotion—and every one present held his breath, till, in a deeper voice, through which there ran a quiver that thrilled through the hall, he concluded with—'France is with you; France places the cause of liberty under the protection of your dynasty and the great bodies of the State.' Is France with him? I know not; but if the malcontents of France had been in the hall at that moment, I believe they would have felt the power of that wonderful sympathy which compels all the hearts in great audiences to beat in accord, and would have answered, 'It is true.'
"All eyes now fixed on the Emperor, and I noticed few eyes which were not moist with tears. You know that calm unrevealing face of his—a face which sometimes disappoints expectation. But there is that in it which I have seen in no other, but which I can imagine to have been common to the Romans of old, the dignity that arises from self-control—an expression which seems removed from the elation of joy, the depression of sorrow— not unbecoming to one who has known great vicissitudes of Fortune, and is prepared alike for her frowns or her smiles.
"I had looked at that face while M. Schneider was reading the address— it moved not a muscle, it might have been a face of marble. Even when at moments the words were drowned in applause and the Empress, striving at equal composure, still allowed us to see a movement of her eye lids, a tremble on her lips. The boy at his right, heir to his dynasty, had his looks fixed on the President, as if eagerly swallowing each word in the address, save once or twice, when he looked around the hall curiously, and with a smile as a mere child might look. He struck me as a mere child. Next to the Prince was one of those countenances which once seen are never to be forgotten—the true Napoleonic type, brooding, thoughtful, ominous, beautiful. But not with the serene energy that characterises the head of the first Napoleon when Emperor, and wholly without the restless eagerness for action which is stamped in the lean outline of Napoleon when First Consul: no—in Prince Napoleon there is a beauty to which, as woman, I could never give my heart—were I a man, the intellect that would not command my trust. But, nevertheless, in beauty, it is signal, and in that beauty the expression of intellect is predominant.
"Oh, dear Eulalie, how I am digressing! The Emperor spoke—and believe me, Eulalie, whatever the journals or your compatriots may insinuate, there is in that man no sign of declining intellect or failing health. I care not what may be his years, but that man is in mind and in health as young as Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon.
"The old cling to the past—they do not go forward to the future. There was no going back in that speech of the Emperor. There was something grand and something young in the modesty with which he put aside all references to that which his Empire had done in the past, and said with a simple earnestness of manner which I cannot adequately describe—
"'We must more than ever look fearlessly forward to the future. Who can be opposed to the progressive march of a regime founded by a great people in the midst of political disturbance, and which now is fortified by liberty?'
"As he closed, the walls of that vast hall seemed to rock with an applause that must have been heard on the other side of the Seine.
"'Vive l'Empereur!'" "'Vive l'Imperatrice!'" "'Vive le Prince Imperial!'"—and the last cry was yet more prolonged than the others, as if to affirm the dynasty.
"Certainly I can imagine no Court in the old days of chivalry more splendid than the audience in that grand hall of the Louvre. To the right of the throne all the ambassadors of the civilised world in the blaze of their rich costumes and manifold orders. In the gallery at the left, yet more behind, the dresses and jewels of the dames d'honneur and of the great officers of State. And when the Empress rose to depart, certainly my fancy cannot picture a more queenlike image, or one that seemed more in unison with the representation of royal pomp and power. The very dress, of colour which would have been fatal to the beauty of most women equally fair—a deep golden colour—(Valerie profanely called it buff)—seemed so to suit the splendour of the ceremony and the day; it seemed as if that stately form stood in the midst of a sunlight reflected from itself. Day seemed darkened when that sunlight passed away.
"I fear you will think I have suddenly grown servile to the gauds and shows of mere royalty. I ask myself if that be so—I think not. Surely it is a higher sense of greatness which has been impressed on me by the pageant of to-day I feel as if there were brought vividly before me the majesty of France, through the representation of the ruler she has crowned.
"I feel also as if there, in that hall, I found a refuge from all the warring contests in which no two seem to me in agreement as to the sort of government to be established in place of the present. The 'Liberty' clamoured for by one would cut the throat of the 'Liberty' worshipped by another.
"I see a thousand phantom forms of LIBERTY—but only one living symbol of ORDER—that which spoke from a throne to-day."
Isaura left her letter uncompleted. On the following Monday she was present at a crowded soiree given by M. Louvier. Among the guests were some of the most eminent leaders of the Opposition, including that vivacious master of sharp sayings, M. P———-, whom Savarin entitled "the French Sheridan;" if laws could be framed in epigrams he would be also the French Solon.
There, too, was Victor de Mauleon, regarded by the Republican party with equal admiration and distrust. For the distrust, he himself pleasantly accounted in talk with Savarin.
"How can I expect to be trusted? I represent 'Common Sense;' every Parisian likes Common Sense in print, and cries 'Je suis trahi' when Common Sense is to be put into action."
A group of admiring listeners had collected round one (perhaps the most brilliant) of those oratorical lawyers by whom, in France, the respect for all laws has been so often talked away: he was speaking of the Saturday's ceremonial with eloquent indignation. It was a mockery to France to talk of her placing Liberty under the protection of the Empire.
There was a flagrant token of the military force under which civil freedom was held in the very dress of the Emperor and his insignificant son: the first in the uniform of a General of Division; the second, forsooth, in that of a sous-lieutenant. The other liberal chiefs chimed in: "The army," said one, "was an absurd expense; it must be put down:" "The world was grown too civilised for war," said another: "The Empress was priest-ridden," said a third: "Churches might be tolerated; Voltaire built a church, but a church simply to the God of Nature, not of priestcraft,"—and so on.
Isaura, whom any sneer at religion pained and revolted, here turned away from the orators to whom she bad before been listening with earnest attention, and her eyes fell on the countenance of De Mauleon, who was seated opposite.
The countenance startled her, its expression was so angrily scornful; that expression, however, vanished at once as De Mauleon's eyes met her own, and drawing his chair near to her, he said, smiling: "Your look tells me that I almost frightened you by the ill-bred frankness with which my face must have betrayed my anger, at hearing such imbecile twaddle from men who aspire to govern our turbulent France. You remember that after Lisbon was destroyed by an earthquake a quack advertised 'pills against earthquakes.' These messieurs are not so cunning as the quack; he did not name the ingredients of his pills."
"But, M. de Mauleon," said Isaura, "if you, being opposed to the Empire, think so ill of the wisdom of those who would destroy it, are you prepared with remedies for earthquakes more efficacious than their pills?"
"I reply as a famous English statesman, when in opposition, replied to a somewhat similar question,—'I don't prescribe till I'm called in.'"
"To judge by the seven millions and a half whose votes were announced on Saturday, and by the enthusiasm with which the Emperor was greeted, there is too little fear of an earthquake for a good trade of the pills of these messieurs, or for fair play to the remedies you will not disclose till called in."
"Ah, Mademoiselle! playful wit from lips not formed for politics makes me forget all about emperors and earthquakes. Pardon that commonplace compliment—remember I am a Frenchman, and cannot help being frivolous."
"You rebuke my presumption too gently. True, I ought not to intrude political subjects on one like you—I understand so little about them— but this is my excuse, I do so desire to know more."