1.C.1.18. A RECRUDESCENCE OF DIVINE RIGHT
END of the dictatorship. A whole European system crumbled away.
The Empire sank into a gloom which resembled that of the
Roman world as it expired. Again we behold the abyss, as in
the days of the barbarians; only the barbarism of 1815, which
must be called by its pet name of the counter-revolution, was
not long breathed, soon fell to panting, and halted short. The
Empire was bewept,— let us acknowledge the fact,— and bewept
by heroic eyes. If glory lies in the sword converted into a
sceptre, the Empire had been glory in person. It had diffused
over the earth all the light which tyranny can give a sombre
light. We will say more; an obscure light. Compared to the
true daylight, it is night. This disappearance of night produces
the effect of an eclipse.
Louis XVIII. re-entered Paris. The circling dances of the
8th of July effaced the enthusiasms of the 20th of March. The
Corsican became the antithesis of the Bearnese. The flag on
the dome of the Tuileries was white. The exile reigned. Hartwell's
pine table took its place in front of the fleur-de-lys-strewn
throne of Louis XIV. Bouvines and Fontenoy were
mentioned as though they had taken place on the preceding
day, Austerlitz having become antiquated. The altar and the
throne fraternized majestically. One of the most undisputed
forms of the health of society in the nineteenth century was
established over France, and over the continent. Europe
adopted the white cockade. Trestaillon was celebrated. The
device non pluribus impar re-appeared on the stone rays representing
a sun upon the front of the barracks on the Quai d'Orsay.
Where there had been an Imperial Guard, there was now a
red house. The Arc du Carrousel, all laden with badly borne
victories, thrown out of its element among these novelties, a
little ashamed, it may be, of Marengo and Arcola, extricated
itself from its predicament with the statue of the Duc d'Angouleme.
The cemetery of the Madeleine, a terrible pauper's
grave in 1793, was covered with jasper and marble, since the
bones of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette lay in that
dust.
In the moat of Vincennes a sepulchral shaft sprang from
the earth, recalling the fact that the Duc d'Enghien had perished
in the very month when Napoleon was crowned. Pope
Pius VII., who had performed the coronation very near this
death, tranquilly bestowed his blessing on the fall as he had
bestowed it on the elevation. At Schoenbrunn there was a
little shadow, aged four, whom it was seditious to call the
King of Rome. And these things took place, and the kings
resumed their thrones, and the master of Europe was put in
a cage, and the old regime became the new regime, and all
the shadows and all the light of the earth changed place, because,
on the afternoon of a certain summer's day, a shepherd
said to a Prussian in the forest, "Go this way, and not that!"
This 1815 was a sort of lugubrious April. Ancient unhealthy
and poisonous realities were covered with new appearances.
A lie wedded 1789; the right divine was masked
under a charter; fictions became constitutional; prejudices,
superstitions and mental reservations, with Article 14 in the
heart, were varnished over with liberalism. It was the serpent's
change of skin.
Man had been rendered both greater and smaller by Napoleon.
Under this reign of splendid matter, the ideal had
received the strange name of ideology! It is a grave imprudence
in a great man to turn the future into derision. The
populace, however, that food for cannon which is so fond of
the cannoneer, sought him with its glance. Where is he?
What is he doing? "Napoleon is dead," said a passerby to
a veteran of Marengo and Waterloo. "He dead!" cried the
soldier; "you don't know him." Imagination distrusted this
man, even when overthrown. The depths of Europe were
full of darkness after Waterloo. Something enormous remained
long empty through Napoleon's disappearance.
The kings placed themselves in this void. Ancient Europe
profited by it to undertake reforms. There was a Holy Alliance;
Belle-Alliance, Beautiful Alliance, the fatal field of
Waterloo had said in advance.
In presence and in face of that antique Europe reconstructed,
the features of a new France were sketched out. The
future, which the Emperor had rallied, made its entry. On
its brow it bore the star, Liberty. The glowing eyes of all
young generations were turned on it. Singular fact! people
were, at one and the same time, in love with the future, Liberty,
and the past, Napoleon. Defeat had rendered the vanquished
greater. Bonaparte fallen seemed more lofty than
Napoleon erect. Those who had triumphed were alarmed.
England had him guarded by Hudson Lowe, and France had
him watched by Montchenu. His folded arms became a
source of uneasiness to thrones. Alexander called him "my
sleeplessness." This terror was the result of the quantity of
revolution which was contained in him. That is what explains
and excuses Bonapartist liberalism. This phantom
caused the old world to tremble. The kings reigned, but ill
at their ease, with the rock of Saint Helena on the
horizon.
While Napoleon was passing through the death struggle at
Longwood, the sixty thousand men who had fallen on the field
of Waterloo were quietly rotting, and something of their peace
was shed abroad over the world. The Congress of Vienna
made the treaties in 1815, and Europe called this the Restoration.
This
is what Waterloo was.
But what matters it to the Infinite? all that tempest, all that
cloud, that war, then that peace? All that darkness did not
trouble for a moment the light of that immense Eye before
which a grub skipping from one blade of grass to another
equals the eagle soaring from belfry to belfry on the towers of
Notre Dame.