Виктор Мари Гюго
The Memoirs of Victor Hugo
IV. KING JEROME
There entered my drawing-room in the Place Royale one morning in March, 1848, a man of medium height, about sixty-five or sixty-six years of age, dressed in black, a red and blue ribbon in his buttonhole, and wearing patent-leather boots and white gloves. He was Jerome Napoleon, King of Westphalia.
He had a very gentle voice, a charming though somewhat timid smile, straight hair turning grey, and something of the profile of the Emperor.
He came to thank me for the permission that had been accorded to him to return to France, which he attributed to me, and begged me to get him appointed Governor of the Invalides. He told me that M. Crémieux, one of the members of the Provisional Government, had said to him the previous day:
“If Victor Hugo asks Lamartine to do it, it will be done. Formerly everything depended upon an interview between two emperors; now everything depends upon an interview between two poets.”
“Tell M. Crémieux that it is he who is the poet,” I replied to King Jerome with a smile.
In November, 1848, the King of Westphalia lived on the first floor above the entresol at No. 3, Rue d’Alger. It was a small apartment with mahogany furniture and woollen velvet upholstering.
The wall paper of the drawing-room was grey. The room was lighted by two lamps and ornamented by a heavy clock in the Empire style and two not very authentic pictures, although the frame of one bore the name: “Titiens,” and the frame of the other the name: “Rembrandt.” On the mantelpiece was a bronze bust of Napoleon, one of those familiar and inevitable busts that the Empire bequeathed us.
The only vestiges of his royal existence that remained to the prince were his silverware and dinner service, which were ornamented with royal crowns richly engraved and gilded.
Jerome at that time was only sixty-four years old, and did not look his age. His eyes were bright, his smile benevolent and charming, and his hands small and still shapely. He was habitually attired in black with a gold chain in his buttonhole from which hung three crosses, the Legion of Honour, the Iron Crown, and his Order of Westphalia created by him in imitation of the Iron Crown.
Jerome talked well, with grace always and often with wit. He was full of reminiscences and spoke of the Emperor with a mingled respect and affection that was touching. A little vanity was perceptible; I would have preferred pride.
Moreover he received with bonhomie all the varied qualifications which were brought upon him by his strange position of a man who was no longer king, no longer proscribed, and yet was not a citizen. Everybody addressed him as he pleased. Louis Philippe called him “Highness,” M. Boulay de la Meurthe “Sire” or “Your Majesty,” Alexandre Dumas “Monseigneur,” I addressed him as “Prince,” and my wife called him “Monsieur.” On his card he wrote “General Bonaparte.” In his place I would have understood his position. King or nothing.
RELATED BY KING JEROME
In the evening of the day following that on which Jerome, recalled from exile, returned to Paris, he had vainly waited for his secretary, and feeling bored and lonely, went out. It was at the end of summer (1847). He was staying at the house of his daughter, Princess Demidoff, which was off the Champs-Elysées.
He crossed the Place de la Concorde, looking about him at the statues, obelisk and fountains, which were new to the exile who had not seen Paris for thirty-two years. He continued along the Quai des Tuileries. I know not what reverie took possession of his soul. Arrived at the Pavillon de Flore, he entered the gate, turned to the left, and began to walk up a flight of stairs under the arch. He had gone up two or three steps when he felt himself seized by the arm. It was the gatekeeper who had run after him.
“Hi! Monsieur, monsieur, where are you going?”
Jerome gazed at him in astonishment and replied:
“Why, to my apartments, of course!”
Hardly had he uttered the words, however, when he awoke from his dream. The past had bewitched him for a moment. In recounting the incident to me he said:
“I went away shamefacedly, and apologizing to the porter.”
V. THE DAYS OF JUNE
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES
The insurrection of June presented peculiar features from the outset.11 It suddenly manifested itself to terrified society in monstrous and unknown forms.
The first barricade was erected in the morning of Friday, the 23rd, at the Porte Saint Denis. It was attacked the same day. The National Guard marched resolutely against it. The attacking force was made up of battalions of the First and Second Legions, which arrived by way of the boulevards. When the assailants got within range a formidable volley was fired from the barricade, and littered the ground with National Guards. The National Guard, more irritated than intimidated, charged the barricade.
At this juncture a woman appeared upon its crest, a woman young, handsome, dishevelled, terrible. This woman, who was a prostitute, pulled up her clothes to her waist and screamed to the guards in that frightful language of the lupanar that one is always compelled to translate:
“Cowards! fire, if you dare, at the belly of a woman!” Here the affair became appalling. The National Guard did not hesitate. A volley brought the wretched creature down, and with a piercing shriek she toppled off the barricade. A silence of horror fell alike upon besiegers and besieged.
Suddenly another woman appeared. This one was even younger and more beautiful; she was almost a child, being barely seventeen years of age. Oh! the pity of it! She, too, was a street-walker. Like the other she lifted her skirt, disclosed her abdomen, and screamed: “Fire, brigands!” They fired, and riddled with bullets she fell upon the body of her sister in vice.
It was thus that the war commenced.
Nothing could be more chilling and more sombre. It is a hideous thing this heroism of abjection in which bursts forth all that weakness has of strength; this civilization attacked by cynicism and defending itself by barbarity. On one side the despair of the people, on the other the despair of society.
On Saturday the 24th, at 4 o’clock in the morning, I, as a Representative of the people, was at the barricade in the Place Baudoyer that was defended by the troops.
The barricade was a low one. Another, narrow and high, protected it in the street. The sun shone upon and brightened the chimney-tops. The tortuous Rue Saint Antoine wound before us in sinister solitude.
The soldiers were lying upon the barricade, which was little more than three feet high. Their rifles were stacked between the projecting paving-stones as though in a rack. Now and then bullets whistled overhead and struck the walls of the houses around us, bringing down a shower of stone and plaster. Occasionally a blouse, sometimes a cap-covered head, appeared at the corner of a street. The soldiers promptly fired at it. When they hit their mark they applauded “Good! Well aimed! Capital!”
They laughed and chatted gaily. At intervals there was a rattle and roar, and a hail of bullets rained upon the barricade from roofs and windows. A very tall captain with a grey moustache stood erect at the centre of the barrier, above which half his body towered. The bullets pattered about him as about a target. He was impassible and serene and spoke to his men in this wise:
“There, children, they are firing. Lie down. Look out, Laripaud, you are showing your head. Reload!”
All at once a woman turned the corner of a street. She came leisurely towards the barricade. The soldiers swore and shouted to her to get out of the way:
“Ah! the strumpet! Will you get out of that you w – ! Shake a leg, damn you! She’s coming to reconnoitre. She’s a spy! Bring her down. Down with the moucharde!”
The captain restrained them:
“Don’t shoot, it’s a woman!”
After advancing about twenty paces the woman, who really did seem to be observing us, entered a low door which closed behind her.
This one was saved.
At 11 o’clock I returned from the barrier in the Place Baudoyer and took my usual place in the Assembly. A Representative whom I did not know, but who I have since learned was M. Belley, engineer, residing in the Rue des Tournelles, came and sat beside me and said:
“Monsieur Victor Hugo, the Place Royale has been burned. They set fire to your house. The insurgents entered by the little door in the Cul-de-sac Guéménée.”
“And my family?” I inquired.
“They are safe.”
“How do you know?”
“I have just come from there. Not being known I was able to get over the barricades and make my way here. Your family first took refuge in the Mairie. I was there, too. Seeing that the danger was over I advised Mme. Victor Hugo to seek some other asylum. She found shelter with her children in the home of a chimney-sweep named Martignon who lives near your house, under the arcades.”
I knew that worthy Martignon family. This reassured me.
“And how about the riot?” I asked.
“It is a revolution,” replied M. Belley. “The insurgents are in control of Paris at this moment.”
I left M. Belley and hurriedly traversed the few rooms that separated the hall in which we held our sessions and the office occupied by the Executive Committee.
It was a small salon belonging to the presidency, and was reached through two rooms that were smaller still. In these ante-chambers was a buzzing crowd of distracted officers and National Guards. They made no attempt to prevent any one from entering.
I opened the door of the Executive Committee’s office. Ledru-Rollin, very red, was half seated on the table. M. Gamier-Pages, very pale, and half reclining in an armchair, formed an antithesis to him. The contrast was complete: Garnier-Pagès thin and bushy-haired, Ledru-Rollin stout and close-cropped. Two or three colonels, among them Representative Charras, were conversing in a corner. I only recall Arago vaguely. I do not remember whether M. Marie was there. The sun was shining brightly.
Lamartine, standing in a window recess on the left, was talking to a general in full uniform, whom I saw for the first and last time, and who was Négrier. Négrier was killed that same evening in front of a barricade.
I hurried to Lamartine, who advanced to meet me. He was wan and agitated, his beard was long, his clothes were dusty.
He held out his hand: “Ah! good morning, Hugo!”
Here is the dialogue that we engaged in, every word of which is still fresh in my memory:
“What is the situation, Lamartine?”
“We are done for!”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that in a quarter of an hour from now the Assembly will be invaded.”
(Even at that moment a column of insurgents was coming down the Rue de Lille. A timely charge of cavalry dispersed it.)
“Nonsense! What about the troops?”
“There are no troops!”
“But you said on Wednesday, and yesterday repeated, that you had sixty thousand men at your disposal.”
“So I thought.”
“Well, but you musn’t give up like this. It is not only you who are at stake, but the Assembly, and not only the Assembly, but France, and not only France, but the whole of civilization. Why did you not issue orders yesterday to have the garrisons of the towns for forty leagues round brought to Paris? That would have given you thirty thousand men at once.”
“We gave the orders – ”
“Well?”
“The troops have not come!”
Lamartine took my hand and said;
“I am not Minister of War!”
At this moment a few representatives entered noisily. The Assembly had just voted a state of siege. They told Ledru-Rollin and Garnier-Pages so in a few words.
Lamartine half turned towards them and said in an undertone:
“A state of siege! A state of siege! Well, declare it if you think it is necessary. I have nothing to say!”
He dropped into a chair, repeating:
“I have nothing to say, neither yes nor no. Do what you like!”
General Négrier came up to me.
“Monsieur Victor Hugo,” he said, “I have come to reassure you; I have received news from the Place Royale.”
“Well, general?”
“Your family are safe.”
“Thanks! Yes, I have just been so informed.”
“But your house has been burnt down.”
“What does that matter?” said I.
Négrier warmly pressed my arm:
“I understand you. Let us think only of one thing. Let us save the country!”
As I was withdrawing Lamartine quitted a group and came to me.
“Adieu,” he said. “But do not forget this: do not judge me too hastily; I am not the Minister of War.”
The day before, as the riot was spreading, Cavaignac, after a few measures had been taken, said to Lamartine:
“That’s enough for to-day.”
It was 5 o’clock.
“What!” exclaimed Lamartine. “Why, we have still four hours of daylight before us! And the riot will profit by them while we are losing them!”
He could get nothing from Cavaignac except:
“That’s enough for to-day!”
On the 24th, about 3 o’clock, at the most critical moment, a Representative of the people, wearing his sail across his shoulder, arrived at the Mairie of the Second Arrondissement, in the Rue Chauchat, behind the Opera. He was recognised. He was Lagrange.
The National Guards surrounded him. In a twinkling the group became menacing:
“It is Lagrange! the man of the pistol shot!12 What are you doing here? You are a coward! Get behind the barricades. That is your place – your friends are there – and not with us! They will proclaim you their chief; go on! They at any rate are brave! They are giving their blood for your follies; and you, you are afraid! You have a dirty duty to do, but at least do it! Get out of here! Begone!”
Lagrange endeavoured to speak. His voice was drowned by hooting.
This is how these madmen received the honest man who after fighting for the people wanted to risk his life for society.
June 25
The insurgents were firing throughout the whole length of the Boulevard Beaumarchais from the tops of the new houses. Several had ambushed themselves in the big house in course of construction opposite the Galiote. At the windows they had stuck dummies, – bundles of straw with blouses and caps on them.
I distinctly saw a man who had entrenched himself behind a barricade of bricks in a corner of the balcony on the fourth floor of the house which faces the Rue du Pont-aux-Choux. The man took careful aim and killed a good many persons.
It was 3 o’clock. The troops and mobiles fringed the roofs of the Boulevard du Temple and returned the fire of the insurgents. A cannon had just been drawn up in front of the Gaité to demolish the house of the Galiote and sweep the whole boulevard.
I thought I ought to make an effort to put a stop to the bloodshed, if possible, and advanced to the corner of the Rue d’Angoulême. When I reached the little turret near there I was greeted with a fusillade. The bullets pattered upon the turret behind me, and ploughed up the playbills with which it was covered. I detached a strip of paper as a memento. The bill to which it belonged announced for that very Sunday a fête at the Château des Flours, “with a thousand lanterns.”
For four months we have been living in a furnace. What consoles me is that the statue of the future will issue from it. It required such a brazier to melt such a bronze.
VI. CHATEAUBRIAND
July 5, 1848
Chateaubriand is dead. One of the splendours of this century has passed away.
He was seventy-nine years old according to his own reckoning; according to the calculation of his old friend M. Bertin, senior, he was eighty years of age. But he had a weakness, said M. Bertin, and that was that he insisted that he was born not in 1768, but in 1769, because that was the year of Napoleon’s birth.
He died yesterday, July 4, at 8 o’clock in the morning. For five or six months he had been suffering from paralysis which had almost destroyed his brain, and for five days from inflammation of the lungs, which abruptly snuffed out his life.
M. Ampere announced the news to the Academy, which thereupon decided to adjourn.
I quitted the National Assembly, where a questor to succeed General Négrier, who was killed in June, was being nominated, and went to M. de Chateaubriand’s house, No. 110, Rue du Bac.
I was received by M. de Preuille, son-in-law of his nephew. I entered Chateaubriand’s chamber.
He was lying upon his bed, a little iron bedstead with white curtains round it and surmounted by an iron curtain ring of somewhat doubtful taste. The face was uncovered; the brow, the nose, the closed eyes, bore that expression of nobleness which had marked him in life, and which was enhanced by the grave majesty of death. The mouth and chin were hidden by a cambric handkerchief. On his head was a white cotton nightcap which, however, allowed the grey hair on his temples to be seen. A white cravat rose to his ears. His tawny visage appeared more severe amid all this whiteness. Beneath the sheet his narrow, hollow chest and his thin legs could be discerned.
The shutters of the windows giving on to the garden were closed. A little daylight entered through the half-opened door of the salon. The chamber and the face were illumined by four tapers which burned at the corners of a table placed near the bed. On this table were a silver crucifix, a vase filled with holy water, and an aspergillum. Beside it a priest was praying.
Behind the priest a large brown-coloured screen hid the fireplace, above which the mantel-glass and a few engravings of churches and cathedrals were visible.
At Chateaubriand’s feet, in the angle formed by the bed and the wall of the room, were two wooden boxes, placed one upon the other. The largest I was told contained the complete manuscript of his Memoirs, in forty-eight copybooks. Towards the last there had been such disorder in the house that one of the copybooks had been found that very morning by M. de Preuille in a dark and dirty closet where the lamps were cleaned.
A few tables, a wardrobe, and a few blue and green armchairs in disorder encumbered more than they furnished the room.
The adjoining salon, the furniture of which was hidden under unbleached covers, contained nothing more remarkable than a marble bust of Henry V. and a full-length statuette of Chateaubriand, which were on the mantelpiece, and on each side of a window plaster busts of Mme. de Berri and her infant child.
Towards the close of his life Chateaubriand was almost in his second childhood. His mind was only lucid for about two or three hours a day, at least so M. Pilorge, his former secretary, told me.
When in February he was apprised of the proclamation of the Republic he merely remarked: “Will you be any the happier for it?”
When his wife died he attended the funeral service and returned laughing heartily – which, said Pilorge, was a proof that he was of weak mind. “A proof that he was in his right mind!” affirmed Edouard Bertin.
Mme. de Chateaubriand’s benevolence was official, which did not prevent her from being a shrew at home. She founded a hospice – the Marie Thérèse Infirmary – visited the poor, succoured the sick, superintended crêches, gave alms and prayed; at the same time she was harsh towards her husband, her relatives, her friends, and her servants, and was sour-tempered, stern, prudish, and a backbiter. God on high will take these things into account.
She was ugly, pitted with small-pox, had an enormous mouth, little eyes, was insignificant in appearance, and acted the grande dame, although she was rather the wife of a great man than of a great lord. By birth she was only the daughter of a ship-owner of Saint Malo. M. de Chateaubriand feared, detested, and cajoled her.
She took advantage of this to make herself insupportable to mere human beings. I have never known anybody less approachable or whose reception of callers was more forbidding. I was a youth when I went to M. de Chateaubriand’s. She received me very badly, or rather she did not receive me at all. I entered and bowed, but Mme. de Chateaubriand did not see me. I was scared out of my wits. These terrors made my visits to M. de Chateaubriand veritable nightmares which oppressed me for fifteen days and fifteen nights in advance. Mme. de Chateaubriand hated whoever visited her husband except through the doors that she opened. She had not presented me to him, therefore she hated me. I was perfectly odious to her, and she showed it.
Only once in my life and in hers did Mme. de Chateaubriand receive me graciously. One day I entered, poor little devil, as usual most unhappy, with affrighted schoolboy air and twisting my hat about in my hands. M. de Chateaubriand at that time still lived at No. 27, Rue Saint Dominique.
I was frightened at everything there, even at the servant who opened the door. Well, I entered. Mme. de Chateaubriand was in the salon leading to her husband’s study. It was a summer morning. There was a ray of sunshine on the floor, and what dazzled and astonished me much more than the ray of sunshine was a smile on Mme. de Chateaubriand’s face. “Is that you, Monsieur Victor Hugo?” she said. I thought I was in the midst of a dream of the Arabian Nights. Mme. de Chateaubriand smiling! Mme. de Chateaubriand knowing my name, addressing me by name! It was the first time that she had deigned to notice my existence. I bowed so low that my head nearly touched the floor. She went on: “I am delighted to see you.” I could not believe my ears. “I was expecting you,” she continued. “It is a long time since you called.” I thought then that there certainly must be something the matter either with her or myself. However, she pointed to a rather large object of some kind on a little table, and added: “I reserved this for you. I felt sure you would like to have it. You know what it is?” It was a pile of packets of chocolate made by some religious institution. She had taken the stuff under her protection and the proceeds of its sale were to be devoted to charitable works. I took it and paid for it. At that time I had to live for fifteen months on 800 francs. The Catholic chocolate and Mme. de Chateaubriand’s smile cost me 15 francs; that is to say, a fortnight’s board. Fifteen francs meant as much to me then as 1,500 francs does now.
It was the most costly smile of a woman that ever was sold to me.
M. de Chateaubriand, at the beginning of 1847, was a paralytic; Mme. Récamier was blind. Every day at 3 o’clock M. de Chateaubriand was carried to Mme. Recamier’s bedside. It was touching and sad. The woman who could no longer see stretched forth her hands gropingly towards the man who could no longer feel; their hands met. God be praised! Life was dying, but love still lived.
