1.F.3.1. THE YEAR 1817
1817 is the year which Louis XVIII., with a certain royal
assurance which was not wanting in pride, entitled the twenty-second
of his reign. It is the year in which M. Bruguiere de
Sorsum was celebrated. All the hairdressers' shops, hoping
for powder and the return of the royal bird, were besmeared
with azure and decked with fleurs-de-lys. It was the candid
time at which Count Lynch sat every Sunday as church-warden
in the church-warden's pew of Saint-Germain-des-Pres,
in his costume of a peer of France, with his red ribbon
and his long nose and the majesty of profile peculiar to a man
who has performed a brilliant action. The brilliant action
performed by M. Lynch was this: being mayor of Bordeaux,
on the 12th of March, 1814, he had surrendered the city a little
too promptly to M. the Duke d'Angouleme. Hence his peerage.
In 1817 fashion swallowed up little boys of from four
to six years of age in vast caps of morocco leather with ear-tabs
resembling Esquimaux mitres. The French army was
dressed in white, after the mode of the Austrian; the regiments
were called legions; instead of numbers they bore the names
of departments; Napoleon was at St. Helena; and since England
refused him green cloth, he was having his old coats
turned. In 1817 Pelligrini sang; Mademoiselle Bigottini
danced; Potier reigned; Odry did not yet exist. Madame
Saqui had succeeded to Forioso. There were still Prussians in
France. M. Delalot was a personage. Legitimacy had just
asserted itself by cutting off the hand, then the head, of Pleignier,
of Carbonneau, and of Tolleron. The Prince de Talleyrand,
grand chamberlain, and the Abbe Louis, appointed
minister of finance, laughed as they looked at each other, with
the laugh of the two augurs; both of them had celebrated, on
the 14th of July, 1790, the mass of federation in the Champ
de Mars; Talleyrand had said it as bishop, Louis had served
it in the capacity of deacon. In 1817, in the side-alleys of this
same Champ de Mars, two great cylinders of wood might have
been seen lying in the rain, rotting amid the grass, painted
blue, with traces of eagles and bees, from which the gilding
was falling. These were the columns which two years before
had upheld the Emperor's platform in the Champ de Mai.
They were blackened here and there with the scorches of the
bivouac of Austrians encamped near Gros-Caillou. Two or
three of these columns had disappeared in these bivouac fires,
and had warmed the large hands of the Imperial troops. The
Field of May had this remarkable point: that it had been held
in the month of June and in the Field of March (Mars). In
this year, 1817, two things were popular: the Voltaire-Touquet
and the snuff-box
a la Charter. The most recent Parisian
sensation was the crime of Dautun, who had thrown his
brother's head into the fountain of the Flower-Market.
They had begun to feel anxious at the Naval Department,
on account of the lack of news from that fatal frigate, The
Medusa, which was destined to cover Chaumareix with infamy
and Gericault with glory. Colonel Selves was going to Egypt
to become Soliman-Pasha. The palace of Thermes, in the
Rue de La Harpe, served as a shop for a cooper. On the
platform of the octagonal tower of the Hotel de Cluny, the
little shed of boards, which had served as an observatory to
Messier, the naval astronomer under Louis XVI., was still to
be seen. The Duchesse de Duras read to three or four friends
her unpublished Ourika, in her boudoir furnished by X. in
sky-blue satin. The N's were scratched off the Louvre. The
bridge of Austerlitz had abdicated, and was entitled the bridge
of the King's Garden [du Jardin du Roi], a double enigma,
which disguised the bridge of Austerlitz and the Jardin des
Plantes at one stroke. Louis XVIII., much preoccupied while
annotating Horace with the corner of his finger-nail, heroes
who have become emperors, and makers of wooden shoes who
have become dauphins, had two anxieties, — Napoleon and
Mathurin Bruneau. The French Academy had given for its
prize subject,
The Happiness procured through Study. M.
Bellart was officially eloquent. In his shadow could be seen
germinating that future advocate-general of Broe, dedicated
to the sarcasms of Paul-Louis Courier. There was a false
Chateaubriand, named Marchangy, in the interim, until there
should be a false Marchangy, named d'Arlincourt.
Claire
d'Albe and
Malek-Adel were masterpieces; Madame Cottin
was proclaimed the chief writer of the epoch. The Institute
had the academician, Napoleon Bonaparte, stricken from its
list of members. A royal ordinance erected Angouleme into a
naval school; for the Duc d'Angouleme, being lord high
admiral, it was evident that the city of Angouleme had all the
qualities of a seaport; otherwise the monarchical principle
would have received a wound. In the Council of Ministers
the question was agitated whether vignettes representing
slack-rope performances, which adorned Franconi's advertising
posters, and which attracted throngs of street urchins,
should be tolerated. M. Paer, the author of
Agnese, a good
sort of fellow, with a square face and a wart on his cheek,
directed the little private concerts of the Marquise de Sasenaye
in the Rue Ville l'Eveque. All the young girls were
singing the
Hermit of Saint-Avelle, with words by Edmond
Geraud.
The Yellow Dwarf was transferred into
Mirror.
The Cafe Lemblin stood up for the Emperor, against the Cafe
Valois, which upheld the Bourbons. The Duc de Berri,
already surveyed from the shadow by Louvel, had just been
married to a princess of Sicily. Madame de Stael had died
a year previously. The bodyguard hissed Mademoiselle Mars.
The grand newspapers were all very small. Their form was
restricted, but their liberty was great. The
Constitutionnel
was constitutional.
La Minerve called Chateaubriand
Chateaubriant.
That
t made the good middle-class people laugh
heartily at the expense of the great writer. In journals which
sold themselves, prostituted journalists, insulted the exiles of
1815. David had no longer any talent, Arnault had no longer
any wit, Carnot was no longer honest, Soult had won no
battles; it is true that Napoleon had no longer any genius.
No one is ignorant of the fact that letters sent to an exile by
post very rarely reached him, as the police made it their religious
duty to intercept them. This is no new fact; Descartes
complained of it in his exile. Now David, having, in a Belgian
publication, shown some displeasure at not receiving letters
which had been written to him, it struck the royalist journals
as amusing; and they derided the prescribed man well on this
occasion. What separated two men more than an abyss was
to say, the
regicides, or to say the
voters; to say the
enemies,
or to say the
allies; to say
Napoleon, or to say
Buonaparte.
All sensible people were agreed that the era of revolution had
been closed forever by King Louis XVIII., surnamed "The
Immortal Author of the Charter." On the platform of the
Pont-Neuf, the word
Redivivus was carved on the pedestal
that awaited the statue of Henry IV. M. Piet, in the Rue
Therese, No. 4, was making the rough draft of his privy
assembly to consolidate the monarchy. The leaders of the
Right said at grave conjunctures, "We must write to Bacot."
MM. Canuel, O'Mahoney, and De Chappedelaine were preparing
the sketch, to some extent with Monsieur's approval,
of what was to become later on "The Conspiracy of the Bord
de l'Eau" — of the waterside. L'Epingle Noire was already
plotting in his own quarter. Delaverderie was conferring
with Trogoff. M. Decazes, who was liberal to a degree,
reigned. Chateaubriand stood every morning at his window
at No. 27 Rue Saint-Dominique, clad in footed trousers, and
slippers, with a madras kerchief knotted over his gray hair,
with his eyes fixed on a mirror, a complete set of dentist's
instruments spread out before him, cleaning his teeth, which
were charming, while he dictated
The Monarchy according
to the Charter to M. Pilorge, his secretary. Criticism, assuming
an authoritative tone, preferred Lafon to Talma. M. de
Feletez signed himself A.; M. Hoffmann signed himself Z.
Charles Nodier wrote
Therese Aubert. Divorce was abolished.
Lyceums called themselves colleges. The collegians, decorated
on the collar with a golden fleur-de-lys, fought each
other
apropos of the King of Rome. The counter-police of the
chateau had denounced to her Royal Highness Madame, the
portrait, everywhere exhibited, of M. the Duc d'Orleans, who
made a better appearance in his uniform of a colonel-general
of hussars than M. the Duc de Berri, in his uniform of colonel-general
of dragoons — a serious inconvenience. The city of
Paris was having the dome of the Invalides regilded at its own
expense. Serious men asked themselves what M. de Trinquelague
would do on such or such an occasion; M. Clausel de
Montals differed on divers points from M. Clausel de Coussergues;
M. de Salaberry was not satisfied. The comedian
Picard, who belonged to the Academy, which the comedian
Moliere had not been able to do, had
The Two Philiberts
played at the Odeon, upon whose pediment the removal of the
letters still allowed THEATRE OF THE EMPRESS to be plainly
read. People took part for or against Cugnet de Montarlot.
Fabvier was factious; Bavoux was revolutionary. The Liberal,
Pelicier, published an edition of Voltaire, with the following
title:
Works of Voltaire, of the French Academy.
"That will attract purchasers," said the ingenious editor.
The general opinion was that M. Charles Loyson would be
the genius of the century; envy was beginning to gnaw at
him — a sign of glory; and this verse was composed on him: —
"Even when Loyson steals, one feels that he has paws."
As Cardinal Fesch refused to resign, M. de Pins, Archbishop
of Amasie, administered the diocese of Lyons. The
quarrel over the valley of Dappes was begun between Switzerland
and France by a memoir from Captain, afterwards
General Dufour. Saint-Simon, ignored, was erecting his
sublime dream. There was a celebrated Fourier at the Academy
of Science, whom posterity has forgotten; and in some
garret an obscure Fourier, whom the future will recall. Lord
Byron was beginning to make his mark; a note to a poem by
Millevoye introduced him to France in these terms:
a certain
Lord Baron. David d'Angers was trying to work in marble.
The Abbe Caron was speaking, in terms of praise, to a private
gathering of seminarists in the blind alley of Feuillantines,
of an unknown priest, named Felicite-Robert, who, at a latter
date, became Lamennais. A thing which smoked and clattered
on the Seine with the noise of a swimming dog went and
came beneath the windows of the Tuileries, from the Pont
Royal to the Pont Louis XV.; it was a piece of mechanism
which was not good for much; a sort of plaything, the idle
dream of a dream-ridden inventor; an utopia — a steamboat.
The Parisians stared indifferently at this useless thing. M.
de Vaublanc, the reformer of the Institute by a coup d'etat,
the distinguished author of numerous academicians, ordinances,
and batches of members, after having created them,
could not succeed in becoming one himself. The Faubourg
Saint-Germain and the pavilion de Marsan wished to have M.
Delaveau for prefect of police, on account of his piety. Dupuytren
and Recamier entered into a quarrel in the amphitheatre
of the School of Medicine, and threatened each other
with their fists on the subject of the divinity of Jesus Christ.
Cuvier, with one eye on Genesis and the other on nature, tried
to please bigoted reaction by reconciling fossils with texts and
by making mastodons flatter Moses.
M. Francois de Neufchateau, the praiseworthy cultivator of
the memory of Parmentier, made a thousand efforts to have
pomme de terre [potato] pronounced parmentiere, and succeeded
therein not at all. The Abbe Gregoire, ex-bishop,
ex-conventionary, ex-senator, had passed, in the royalist
polemics, to the state of "Infamous Gregoire." The locution
of which we have made use — passed to the state of — has been
condemned as a neologism by M. Royer Collard. Under the
third arch of the Pont de Jena, the new stone with which, the
two years previously, the mining aperture made by Blucher
to blow up the bridge had been stopped up, was still recognizable
on account of its whiteness. Justice summoned to its
bar a man who, on seeing the Comte d'Artois enter Notre
Dame, had said aloud:
"Sapristi! I regret the time when I
saw Bonaparte and Talma enter the Bel Sauvage, arm in
arm." A seditious utterance. Six months in prison. Traitors
showed themselves unbuttoned; men who had gone over to the
enemy on the eve of battle made no secret of their recompense,
and strutted immodestly in the light of day, in the cynicism
of riches and dignities; deserters from Ligny and Quatre-Bras,
in the brazenness of their well-paid turpitude, exhibited
their devotion to the monarchy in the most barefaced manner.
This is what floats up confusedly, pell-mell, for the year
1817, and is now forgotten. History neglects nearly all these
particulars, and cannot do otherwise; the infinity would overwhelm
it. Nevertheless, these details, which are wrongly
called trivial, — there are no trivial facts in humanity, nor
little leaves in vegetation, — are useful. It is of the physiognomy
of the years that the physiognomy of the centuries is
composed. In this year of 1817 four young Parisians
arranged "a fine farce."