D/IUDLT
 
 
 ONJVtRSITY OP 
 J™j'®'**"A I presented to the 
 
 5 »^ WB6Q ^ LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA • SAN DIEGO 
 
 by 
 
 FRIENDS OF 11 IE URRARY 
 
 M. JOHN C. ROSE 
 
 donor 
 
 r^-^^^ 
 
 
 %:■■ ■' ■' 
 
 J-* 
 
 ^i^ 
 
 p 
 
 
 Jv^ ii,. 
 
 / 
 
 \l>   
 
 
 '^B: 
 
 £*»., 
 
 >>' 
 
 "-■■^ 
 
 (^^d^r— o f 
 
 '^-
 
 Pa. 
 
 /?9^ 
 
 ALPHONSI-: DAUDET 
 
 From a Water-Colour by L. Rossi
 
 Recollections of a 
 Literary Man 
 
 With Illustrations by 
 Bieler, Montegut, Myrbacli, and Rossi
 
 A vthoriscd Editio7i 
 A 11 rights reserved
 
 Alphonsc T>audct 
 
 Recollections of a 
 Literary Man 
 
 Translated by 
 
 Laura Ensor 
 
 London 
 J. M. Dent and Co. 
 
 1896
 
 Printed by Ballantvne, Hanson i^ Co. 
 At the Ballantyne Press
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 t.MILE OLLIVILR 9 
 
 GAMliETTA 23 
 
 THE STORY OF MY BOOKS : NUMA ROUMESTAN 49 
 
 THE FRANCS-TIREURS 67 
 
 IHE GARDEN OF THE RUE DES ROSIERS . . ^^ 
 
 AN ESCAPE 85 
 
 THE SUMMER PALACES 97 
 
 THE WRECK lOQ 
 
 THE STORY OF MY BOOKS : LES ROIS EN EXIL II9 
 
 A READING AT EDMOND DE GONCOURT's . I45 
 THEATRICAL CHARACTERS : — 
 
 DEJAZET 165 
 
 LESUEUR 169 
 
 FiMX 173 
 
 MliF.. ARNOULD-PLESSY . . I77 
 
 ADOLPHE 1'UPUIS iXj 
 
 LAFONTAINE . . . . . 189
 
 VI 
 
 Contents. 
 
 NOTES ON PARIS : — 
 
 LES NOUNONS . , , . 
 
 RIDICULOUS SALONS . 
 IN THE PROVINCES : — 
 
 A MEMBER OF THE JOCKEY CLUB 
 
 THE GUERANDE RACES 
 
 THE ISLE OF HOUAT 
 
 •99 
 223 
 
 243
 
 
 ^ 
 
 #-'^'^' 
 
 "SUMMER PALACES.
 
 EMILE OLLIVIER. 
 
 Among all the Paris salons, haunted by 
 that first dress coat of mine, the salon 
 Ortolan, at the Ecole de Droit, has left one 
 of the pleasantest impressions. Old Ortolan, 
 a shrewd meridional and famous jurisconsult, 
 was also a poet in his leisure moments. He 
 had published Les Enfantines, and although 
 he swore he wrote only for children, he did 
 not disdain the approbation of grown-up peo- 
 ple for his verses. Thus his soirc^es, much 
 Ircqucnted by members of the learned fratcr-
 
 lo Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 nity, presented an agreeable and original 
 medley of pretty women, professors, lawyers, 
 learned men, and poets. It was in the 
 capacity of poet that I was invited. Amid 
 the young and antique celebrities who passed 
 before me, in the golden mist of my first 
 dazzled bewilderment, was Emile Ollivier. 
 He was with his wife, the first one, and the 
 great musician Liszt, his father-in-law. Of 
 the wife, I recall only a vision of fair hair 
 above a velvet bodice ; of Liszt, the Liszt of 
 those days, I remember still less. I had 
 neither eyes nor curiosity for any one but 
 Ollivier. At this time (it was in 1858), about 
 thirty-three years old, leader of the most 
 p>opular party among the youthful republicans 
 who were proud to have a chief of his age, he 
 was in the full glare of glory. The story of 
 his family passed from mouth to month ; the 
 old father for a long time banished, the 
 brother fallen in a duel, he himself pro-consul 
 at twenty, and governing Marseilles by sheer 
 eloquence. All this invested him from afar, 
 in the minds of m.en, with a certain air of 
 Roman or Greek tribune, and even with some 
 resemblance to the tragic young leaders of 
 the great Revolution, Saint-Just, Desmoulins.
 
 Eviile Ollivier. ii 
 
 or Danton. Taking myself but scant interest 
 in politics, I could not help comparing him 
 — in seeing him thus, poetic notwithstanding 
 his spectacles, eloquent, Lamartinian, always 
 quick to emotion and to speech — -to one of 
 the trees of his country — not that of which 
 he bore the name, and which is the emblem 
 of wisdom, but to one of those pines which 
 harmoniously crown the white hilltops, and 
 are reflected in the blue waters of Provencal 
 shores ; barren trees indeed, but enfolding 
 within ihcm a faint echo of the lyre of 
 antiquity, and always quivering, always filled 
 with the sound of their countless tiny needles, 
 intermingling and clashing at the lightest 
 breath of the tempest, at the faintest breeze 
 that crosses over from Italy. 
 
 Emile Ollivier was at that time " one of the 
 Five " : one of the five deputies who, alone, 
 dared to defy the Empire, and he lowered 
 among them, on the top benches of the 
 Assembly, isolateil in his opposition as upon 
 an impregnable Avenline. Opj)ositc to him, 
 lying back in the Presidential armchair, was 
 Morny, who, under a lazy, sleepy air, watching 
 him with the cold keen eye of a connoisseur 
 of human nature, adjudged him to be less 
 
 B 2
 
 1 2 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 Roman than Greek, more carried away by an 
 Athenian frivolity than weighted with the 
 cold logic and prudence of the Latin. He 
 knew the vulnerable spot; he saw that 
 beneath the toga of the tribune nestled the 
 innate and defenceless vanity of the virtuoso 
 and the poet, and by this he hoped one day 
 to gain him over. 
 
 Years later, when for the second time, and 
 under circumstances I am now about to 
 relate, I again met Emile Ollivier, he had been 
 won over to the Empire. Before dying, it 
 had become an absolute point of coquetry 
 with Morny, by dint of bantering advances 
 and haughty cajolery, to overcome the resist- 
 ance, made for form's sake and the lookers- 
 on only, of that melodious vanity. They had 
 cried in the streets : " the horrible treason of 
 Emile Ollivier," and because of that, Emile 
 Ollivier fancied himself a second Mirabeau. 
 It was Mirabeau's endeavour that the Revolu- 
 tion and the Monarchy should walk hand in 
 hand ; Ollivier, full of the very best inten- 
 tions, attempted, after twenty years, to unite 
 Liberty to the Empire, and his efforts recalled 
 Phrosine marrying the Adriatic to the Sultan. 
 In the meantime, failing the Sultan, and as
 
 EiniU Ollivier. 13 
 
 he had himself long: l^ccn a widower, he 
 re-married, a quite young girl, a native of 
 Provence like himself, who admired him. 
 He was said to be radiantly triumphant ; one 
 and the same honeymoon gilding wiili softest 
 rays at once his love and his political career. 
 Happy man ! 
 
 But a pistol shot resounded from the neigh- 
 bourhood of Auteuil. Pierre Bonaparte had 
 just killed Victor Noir ; and this Corsican 
 bullet, as it passed through the chest of .a 
 young man, struck to the heart the fiction of 
 a liberal Empire. Paris rose in a moment ; 
 there was loud talking in the caf^s, a gesti- 
 culating crowil on the pavements. From 
 minute to minute fresh news arrived, fresh 
 reports were circulated ; stories were handed 
 about of the extraordinary arrangements of 
 Prince Pierre's establishment, that house 
 at Auteuil, jealously closed to the bustle 
 of Paris life, like the fortress palace of 
 some Genoese or Florentine noble, smelling 
 of powder and fire-arms, and resounding all 
 day wiih the noise of pistol practice and the 
 click of crossed swords. The talk was of 
 Victor Koir, his gentleness, his youth, his 
 approaching marriage I Then the women
 
 14 Recollections cf a Luevary Man. 
 
 began to take a part ; they pitied the mother, 
 \k\^ fiancee ; and the sentimentahsm of a love 
 affair became mingled with the rancour of 
 politics. The Marseillaise, with a huge black 
 border, published an appeal to arms ; and 
 -people said that in the evening, Rochefort 
 would distribute four thousand revolvers at 
 his newspaper office. Two hundred thousand 
 men, women and children ; the bourgeois 
 quarter, all the faubourgs, were preparing for 
 the great manifestation of the morrow ; there 
 was a breath of coming barricades in the 
 air, and in the melancholy of the fading 
 day were heard those indistinct sounds, pre- 
 cursors of revolutions, which seem to be the 
 first low warning cracks of the foundations of 
 a throne. 
 
 At this moment, I met a friend on the 
 boulevard. " Things are going badly," I 
 said to him. " Very badly in truth, and the 
 most idiotic part of the business is, that in 
 ' high places ' there is not the faintest notion 
 of the gravity of the situation." Then, slip- 
 ping his arm within mine : " Emile Ollivier 
 knows you," he added ; " come with me to 
 the Place Vendome." 
 
 From the moment that Emile Ollivier
 
 Emile O^livier. i 5 
 
 entered its doors, the ministry of justice 
 had lost every characteristic of pomp and 
 administrative haughtiness. Putting into 
 actual practice, his dream of a democratic 
 and liberal Empire, in true American Senator 
 fashion Ollivier had been unwilling to in- 
 habit those vast apartments, those lofty 
 saloons, decorated with bees, stamped and 
 overladen, according to his views, with too 
 much autocratic gilding. He still occupied, 
 in the Rue Saini-Guillaume, his modest 
 barrister's chambers, and came every morn- 
 ing to the Place Vendome in his frock-coat 
 and spectacles, carrying a great portfolio 
 stuffed with papers under his arm, like any 
 other man of business on his way to the Law 
 Courts, or like an honest clerk who reaches 
 his office on foot. For this he was somewhat 
 looked down upon by the ushers and lacqueys. 
 The door was wide open, the staircase 
 deserted ! Ushers and lacqueys allowed us 
 to pass, not even deigning to ask where we 
 were going, or of whom we were in search ; 
 merely testifying, by an air of disdainful 
 resignation, and a certain insolent correctness 
 of attitude, how novel and familiar these 
 manners and customs appeared to them, and
 
 1 6 Recolleciions of a Literary Mav. 
 
 how contrary to the splendid and distant 
 traditions of an ideal administration. 
 
 In a large study, with lofty ceiling, lighted 
 by two vast French windows, the minister 
 stood alone, leaning against the chimney- 
 piece, at his post, in the attitude of an orator, 
 — it was one of those ofBces of gloom v and 
 melancholy aspect, wherein all is green, of 
 that bureaucratic green peculiar to leathern 
 chairs and green portfolios, which bears the 
 same relation to the beautiful green of the 
 forest, as a stamped law-paper to a sonnet 
 written on vellum, or as cider to champagne. 
 Night was closing in, and flunkeys brought 
 in great lighted lamps. 
 
 My friend had spoken truly, no one in 
 this region, suspected anything amiss ; the 
 noises of the streets are but indistinct by 
 the time they reach these heights. Emile 
 Ollivier, with natural infatuation, added to 
 the short-sighted vision which characterizes 
 the man in power, declared to us that all 
 was going on well, that he was perfecdy 
 well informed ; he even showed us the note 
 written by Pierre Bonaparte to M. Conti, 
 which had just been handed to him, a note 
 written in savage and feudal terms, quite in
 
 Emile OlUvicr. 
 
 n 
 
 the Italian traditions of the sixteenth century, 
 which began thus : " Two younj? fellows 
 came to challenge mc," and conchulcil with 
 
 these words: " 1 believe I have killed one of 
 them " 
 
 Then I spoke in my turn, and I related 
 what I believed to be the truth, speaking, 
 not as a politician^ but as a man, explaining
 
 r8 Recollection of a Literary Man. 
 
 the effervescence of all spirits, the exaspera- 
 tion of the street populace, the inevitable 
 alternative between recourse to arms and 
 a courageous act of justice. I added that 
 Fonvielle and Noir certainly seemed to me, 
 as to all others, incapable of any idea or 
 wish of killing, or even striking a blow, at 
 the Prince in his own house ; that I knew 
 them well, Noir in particular, and how warm 
 was my liking for this great harmless boy, 
 still almost a child, surprised himself at his 
 success in Paris, and proud of his precocious 
 fame ; seeking by hard work to gain all that 
 was yet lacking to him in elementary educa- 
 tion, and whose greatest joy had been to 
 learn from a friend some short Latin quota- 
 tion, with the manner in which it should 
 be neatly introduced, apropos of any thing, 
 into the conversation, — all in order to as- 
 tonish, in the course of an evening's con- 
 versation, J. -J, Weiss, then on the staff of 
 the Jourjial de Paris, who was teaching 
 him to spell. 
 
 Emile Ollivier listened to me attentively, 
 with a thoughtful and decided air ; then 
 when I had finished, he said, after a short 
 silence, and in a proud tone, this phrase,
 
 Emih Olivier. 19 
 
 which I reproduce word for word : " Well, 
 if Prince Pierre is an assassin, we will send 
 him to the galleys ! " 
 
 A Bonaparte to the galleys ! That was 
 indeed a phrase suited to the Keeper of the 
 Seals of a liberal Empire, of a minister still 
 hampered by the illusions of the orator, of 
 a minister who bore ihc title of minister 
 without possessing the spirit which should 
 animate him, of a minister, in short, whose 
 residence was in the Rue Saint-Guiliaume ! 
 
 On the morrow, it is true, Pierre Bonaparte 
 was a prisoner, but prisoner only in the 
 fashion in which princes arc imprisoned ; on 
 the first floor of the Tour d' Argent, with a 
 view over the Place du Chatelet and the 
 Seine ; and the Parisians who crossed the 
 bridges could point out to each other his 
 pretence of a dungeon, and the dainty muslin 
 curtains of his scarcely barred windows. 
 Some weeks later. Prince Pierre was solemnly 
 ac(juitted by the High Court at Bourgcs. 
 Emile OUivier alluded no further to the 
 galleys; but quitted once for all, the Rue 
 Saint-Guillaume for the Place Vendumc. 
 Henceforward, usheis and officials smiled 
 ceremoniously as he passed ; — he had become
 
 20 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 a perfect minister of an Empire, and the day 
 of a liberal Empire was over. 
 
 
 
 
 To sum up, he was but an indifferent 
 statesman, full of impulse and devoid of 
 reflexion ; but withal an honest man, a poet 
 full of ideals strayed into public business ;
 
 Emilt: OUivier. 21 
 
 thus may Emile Ollivier be defined. Morny 
 first of all, and then others after Morny, 
 made a catspaw of him. While posing as a 
 Republican, he attempted to consolidate the 
 dynasty, by splashing over it a rough-cast 
 of liberty ; later on, he wished for peace, 
 vet declared war, — not with an easy con- 
 science, as by an unfortunate inspiration he 
 declared, but in a hopelessly light and thought- 
 less spirit, dragging us with him into the 
 abyss, from which we have emerged, while 
 he remained lost in it ! 
 
 The other evening, — sooner or later one 
 always meets in Paris, — we dined opposite 
 to each other at a friend's table ; he was the 
 same as ever; from behind the glasses of 
 the spectacles, came the gaze of the dreamer, 
 questioning and undecided as of yore ; the 
 same physiognomy, that of a speaker, where 
 all lies confessed in the lines round the lips, 
 the curve of the mouth, full of audacity, but 
 without determination. Proud and upright 
 still, but quite white ; the thick hair, the short 
 whiskers, all white, — white as an abandoned 
 camp in a disastrous campaign lying under 
 a pall of snow. With all this he had still 
 the abrupt, nervous voice of those who hide
 
 2 7 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 more trouble in their hearts than they are 
 willing to allow the world to guess at. 
 
 And I called to memory the young tribune, 
 black as a raven, of whom I had causrht a 
 glimpse in the salon of old Ortolan. 
 
 :^i^. 
 
 .^5*^ 
 
 ?«».-- *4*|;
 
 GAMBETTA. 
 
 One day, years and years ago, at a sump- 
 tuous banquet at two francs a head, Gambetta 
 and Rochefort met at my table d'hote at the 
 Hotel du Senat, of which I have already 
 drawn you the picture — a tiny place at the 
 end of a narrow courtyard, with a chilly and 
 well-swept pavement, where oleanders and 
 spindlewood pined in their classic green tubs. 
 It sometimes happened that I thus invited a 
 literary friend, the day after an article in the 
 Figaro had brought me a smile from fortune ; 
 for it varied and freshened up our somewhat
 
 2 4 Recollections of a Literary ]\Ia>i. 
 
 provincial circle. Unhappily Gambetta and 
 Rochefort were not intended by nature to 
 harmonize, and I rather think that on this 
 evening they did not speak a word to each 
 other. I can see them now, one at each end, 
 separated by the whole length of the table- 
 cloth, and the same then as they ever re- 
 mained : the one close, reserved, with dry 
 laugh, between scarce opened lips, and rare 
 gestures ; the other laughing loudly, shouting, 
 gesticulating, as heady and overflowing as a 
 vat of Cahors wine. And what things, what 
 events lay brooding, though no one dreamt 
 of it, in the gulf between these two guests, 
 sitting among the jugs of tar-water and napkin 
 rings of a scanty student's dinner ! 
 
 The Gambetta of that date was sowing his 
 wild oats, and deafening all the cafes of the 
 Quartier Latin with his stentorian loquacity. 
 But, let there be no misunderstanding, the 
 cafes of the Quartier at this time were not 
 mere drinking - houses where thirst was 
 assuaged, and where smoking could be in- 
 dulged in. In the midst of a muzzled Paris 
 without newspapers, and without public life, 
 these meetings of studious and generous 
 tempered youth, real schools of opposition, or
 
 Gavibetta. 25 
 
 rather of legal resistance, had remained the 
 only places where the voice of freedom could 
 make itself heard. Every one of them had 
 its own regular orator, and a table which be- 
 came at certain moments almost a tribune, 
 and each orator had in the Quartier his own 
 admirers and partisans. 
 
 " At the Voltaire there is T.armina, who is 
 powerful. By Jove ! he is powerful, that 
 Larmina at the Voltaire!' 
 
 " I don't deny it ; but at the Procope, there 
 is Pesquidoux, who is even more powerful." 
 
 And then, banded together, a pilgrimage 
 would be made to the Voltaire, to hear 
 Larmina ; then to the Procope to listen to 
 Pesquidoux, with the simple, ardent faith 
 characteristic of the youth of that period. 
 In fact, the discussions around a glass of 
 beer, amid the smoke of the pipes, were a 
 preparation for this generation, and kept 
 France awake, securely chloroformed though 
 it was believed to be. More than one doc- 
 trinaire,* who, now provided for, or hoping 
 soon to be so, affects the contempt of good 
 taste for these bygone customs, and wishes 
 
 • Written for the St. I'ctciblnm; " Souveau Temps" 
 lu 1878. 
 
 C
 
 26 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 to look upon the new men as merely old 
 students, has lived long enough, and indeed 
 lives yet (I know some such), upon the 
 scraps of eloquence or close reasoning care- 
 lessly scattered around those tables by some 
 highly gifted prodigal. No doubt some of 
 our young tribunes delayed too long, took 
 root there, spoke for ever, and put nothing 
 into practice. Every army corps has its 
 laggards, eventually abandoned by the van ; 
 but Gambetta was not amongst these. If he 
 enjoyed a fencing bout at the cafe under the 
 gas-lights, it was only after a day of hard 
 work. 
 
 As the foundry, at night, lets off its steam 
 into the rivulet, so he came there to expend 
 in words his overflow of spirits and ideas. 
 This did not prevent him from being a 
 student in real earnest, from achieving 
 triumphant successes at the Mole confer- 
 ences, or from keeping his terms and taking 
 his diplomas and licences. One evening, 
 at Madame Ancelot's — what ages since then, 
 good heavens ! — in that salon of the Rue 
 Saint-Guillaume, full of sparkling senility, 
 and birds in cages, I remember hearing some 
 one say to the kind-hearted hostess : " My
 
 Gaml'tt'/ii. 
 
 27 
 
 son-in-law, Lachaud, has a new secretary, a 
 very eloquent younij man, it appears, with a 
 very odd name. Let me see — he is called 
 — yes 1 called M. Gambetta." Assuredly 
 
 llie dear old lady was far from foreseeing 
 the onward career of this young secretary, 
 who was said to be eloquent, and who had 
 such an odd name. And yet, putting on 
 one side the inevitable calming down, the 
 necessity of which is brought home by the 
 
 c 2
 
 2 8 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 experience of life to less subtle comprehen- 
 sions than his, putting aside a certain political 
 knowledge of causes and secret springs, 
 easily derived from the exercise of power 
 and the handling of affairs ; the licentiate 
 of that day, considering his character and 
 physiognomy as a whole, was even then much 
 what he has ever been. He was not fat yet, 
 but squarely built, round-shouldered, full of 
 familiar gestures, and already having the 
 habit of leaning on a friend's arm as he 
 walked and talked ; was undoubtedly a great 
 talker, on all subjects, in that hard and loud 
 meridional voice, which snaps out phrases 
 like the tick of a pendulum, and strikes its 
 best sayings as sharply and durably as 
 medals ; but he listened as well, questioned, 
 read, assimilated everything, and was laying 
 in that enormous stock of facts and ideas, 
 so necessary to one who aspires to direct a 
 country, and an epoch, as complicated as 
 ours. Gambetta is one of the rare politicians 
 who has any sympathy with Art, or who 
 suspects that Literature is not without a certain 
 hold upon a nation's life. This taste appears, 
 constantly in his conversation, and shows 
 itself even in his speeches ; but without
 
 Gaiiibett.1. 29 
 
 ostentation or pedantry, and coming as from 
 one who has Hved among artists, anil to 
 whom all relating to Art and Letters is a 
 daily familiar thing. In the days of the 
 Hotel du Senat, my friend the young lawyer 
 would sometimes sacrifice a lecture to spend 
 a few hours in the Museums, admiring the 
 works of the great men ; or to defend on 
 the opening day of the Salon that great 
 painter Fran9ois Millet, then little under- 
 stood, against the benighted opinions of 
 those who lagged behind the march of time. 
 His guide and mentor in the seven circles of 
 hell in painting, was a meridional like him- 
 self ; older, however, bristling and crabbed, 
 with terrible eyes gleaming beneath huge 
 overhanging eyebrows, like a brigand's fire 
 in the depths of a cave veiled by brushwood. 
 It was Theophile Silvestre, a splendid and 
 indefatigable talker, with the voice of a 
 mountaineer, having in it the unmistakeable 
 metallic Ariege ring ; a fine flavoured writer, 
 an incomparable Art critic, adoring painters, 
 and divining them with the comprehending 
 subtlety of a lover and a poet. Filled with 
 the presentiment of the great part Gambctta 
 would one day hold, he loved the man who
 
 30 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 was yet unknown to fame, and continued to 
 love him later on, notwithstanding terrible 
 differences in politics ; and one day died at 
 his table, of joy, one may say, in the delirious 
 excitement of a tardy reconciliation. These 
 wanderings through the Salon, the Louvre, 
 on Th^ophile Silvestre's arm, had caused a 
 reputation for idleness to be assigned to 
 Gambetla by some few embryo statesmen, 
 who had lived in cravats and tight frock coats 
 from childhood. It is these same men, only 
 grown a little, who, always full of themselves 
 and always hermetically sealed, speak of him 
 in private as a frivolous fellow, a politician 
 without seriousness, because he takes pleasure 
 in the company of a witty comrade who 
 happens to be a comedian. This only proved 
 that then as now, Gambetta was a judge of 
 mankind, and knew that the great secret of 
 being well served by men, is to make your- 
 self beloved by them. One more trait of 
 character will finish this portrait of the 
 Gambetta of that time : that speaking trumpet 
 of a voice, that terrible talker, that gascon- 
 ading Gascon, was not a Gascon. Was it 
 the influence of race } But on more than 
 one side, this outrageous child of Cahors
 
 GambflUi. 3 1 
 
 approached both the frontier and the neigh- 
 bouring Italian pruiicnce ; the mixture of 
 Genoese blood made of him almost a wary 
 Proven9al. Though speaking often, speaking 
 eternally, he never allowed himself to be 
 carried away in the whirlwind of his speech; 
 wildly enthusiastic, he knew beforehand the 
 exact point at which his enthusiasm should 
 stop ; and to sum up briefly, he is almost 
 the only great talker of my acquaintance, 
 who was not withal greater at promise than 
 performance. 
 
 One morning, according to the usual 
 ending, the noisy brood of nestlings which 
 had perched itself in the Hotel du Sdnat, 
 discovered its wings were grown, and took 
 flight. One flew northwards, another south ; 
 they all dispersed to the four quarters of the 
 globe. Gambetta and I lost sight of each 
 other. I did not forget him, however ; work- 
 ing hard on my own account, and living far 
 removed from the world of politics, I used 
 to ask myself sometimes: "What has become 
 of my friend from Cahors.?" and I should 
 have felt astonished if he had not been on 
 the high road to become some one. Some 
 years afterwards, I chanced to find myself
 
 32 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 at the Senate — not at the Hotel, but at the 
 Palace, on the evening of an official reception. 
 I had taken refuge far from the music and 
 the noise, on the corner of a divan in a 
 billiard room, arranged in one of the vast 
 
 apartments of Queen 
 Mary of Mddicis, 
 with ceilings lofty 
 enough to have ac- 
 commodated some six 
 storeys. It was the 
 epoch of crisis, and 
 of whimsical attempts 
 at amiability, when 
 the Empire tried to 
 make love to the 
 various parties, talked 
 of mutual conces- 
 sions, and under pretence of reforms and 
 milder measures, tried to allure at one and the 
 same time, the least deeply pledged Repub- 
 licans and the last survivors of the old liberal 
 bourgeoisie. Odilon Barrot, I remember, — 
 the venerable Odilon Barrot, — was playing 
 billiards. Quite a gallery of old men, or 
 men prematurely aged, surrounded him, less 
 attentive to his cannons than to the man
 
 Gnmbetta. 
 
 33 
 
 himself. They waited expectant for a phrase 
 or a saying to fall from those once eloquent 
 lips, to gather up phrase or saying, and 
 reverently and devoutly enclose it in crystal, 
 as did the angel with the tear of Eloa. But 
 
 Odilon Barrot remained obstinately silent ; 
 he chalked his cue, aimed at the balls with 
 well studied movements and an air of noble 
 solemnity, in which a whole past of bourgeois 
 and starched parliamentary pomposity seemed 
 to live again. Around him, scarcely a word 
 was spoken : these conscript fathers of a by- 
 gone day, these Epimcnides who had slept a
 
 34 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 charmed sleep since Louis Philippe and 
 1848, exchanged ideas only in low tones, as 
 if uncertain of being really awake. One 
 caught these words on the wing, such scraps 
 of phrases as : " Great scandal — Baudin's 
 trial ; scandal — Baudin." Scarcely ever read- 
 ing the papers, and not stirring out till 
 late in the day, I knew nothing about this 
 famous case. All at once, I heard the name 
 of Gambetta : " Who is this M, Gambetta 
 then ? " asked one of the old fellows, with 
 intentional or naive impertinence. All the 
 recollections of my student life came back 
 to me. I was sitting quietly in my corner, 
 independent as an honest knight of the pen 
 should be, who works hard for his daily 
 bread, and too completely detached from all 
 ties, and from all political ambition, for the 
 presence of this Areopagus, venerable as it 
 was, to impress me. " M. Gambetta .? " I 
 said rising, " why, he is decidedly a very 
 remarkable man. I knew him as quite a 
 young man, and we, one and all, predicted 
 for him a very magnificent future." If you 
 could have seen the general stupefaction at 
 this sally! the cannons half played, the 
 billiard cues in the air, the irritation of the
 
 Ganibetta. 35 
 
 whole assemblage, and the balls themselves 
 staring at me, from beneath the lamps with 
 their round eyes. Whence came this fellow, 
 this unknown, who had the audacity to 
 defend another, and that actually before 
 Odilon Barrot I A man of ready wit (there 
 are a few such to be met with every- 
 where), M. Oscar de ValMe, saved me. He 
 was a lawyer, Attorney-General maybe, what 
 do I know about it ? in the trade any way, 
 and his advocate's cap, left in the cloak-room, 
 giving him a decided right to speak, no mat- 
 ter where ; he spoke : " Monsieur is perfectly 
 right, M. Gambetta is by no means a nobody; 
 we all think a good deal of him in the Law 
 Courts on account of his eloquence ; " and 
 observing no doubt that the mention of elo- 
 quence did nor touch his hearers, he added 
 persuasively : " for his eloquence and his 
 judgment." 
 
 Then came the supreme assault against the 
 Empire ; the months seemed loaded with 
 powder, rammed with menace ; all Paris 
 quivered beneath an indefinable breath of 
 warning, as the forest before the storm. Ah ! 
 we were to see plenty, we of the generation 
 that complained of having seen nothing.
 
 36 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 Gambetta, at the conclusion of his pleadings 
 in the Baudin trial, was on the way to become 
 a great man. The veterans of the Republican 
 party, the combatants of '51, the exiles, the 
 greybeards, had a paternal affection for the 
 young lawyer, the faubourgs expected great 
 things from the ' ' one-eyed Counsel ," the youth 
 of the day swore only by him. I used to 
 meet him sometimes, and "he was just going 
 to be made a deputy; or he had just re- 
 turned from making a great speech at Lyons 
 or at Marseilles 1" Always in a state of ex- 
 ultation, always full of the excitement which 
 characterizes the day after the battle, always 
 with the atmosphere of combat about him, 
 talking loud, wringing one's hand hard, and 
 throwing back his flowing locks with a 
 gesture full of decision and energy. Charm- 
 ing too, and more familiarly confidential than 
 ever, delighted to be stopped on his road for 
 a talk, or a laugh : " Breakfast at Meudon } " 
 he replied to one of his friends, who invited 
 him, " with pleasure ! but not now ; one of 
 these days, when we shall have finished with 
 the Empire." 
 
 Now behold us in the midst of that great 
 scrimmage, the war; the fourth of September,
 
 Gatnbettn. 57 
 
 and Gambetta member of the National 
 Defence, side by side with Rochefort. They 
 met again, face to face, at the grccn-covered 
 table, where proclamations and decrees were 
 signed ; just as twelve years before, across 
 the American cloth which covered my table 
 d'hote. The sutlden step to power of my 
 two companions of the Quartier Latin did not 
 astonish me. The air was full at that time of 
 much more surprising prodigies. The vast 
 crash of the downfalling Empire filled all 
 ears still, and deadened the sound of the 
 advancing footsteps of the Prussian army. 1 
 remember one of my first walks through the 
 streets. I was returning from the country — 
 a quiet nook in the forest of Senart — the fresh 
 odour of the leaves and of the river yet in my 
 nostrils. 1 felt myself stunned ; it was Paris 
 no longer, but an immense fair, something 
 like an enormous barrack holding revel. 
 Everyone wore a shako, and all the petty 
 trades of the streets, suddenly freed by the 
 disappearance of the police, filled the whole 
 town, as if New Year's Day were approaching, 
 with cries, and a many-coloured display of 
 wares. The crowd swarmed, the daylight 
 fell ; scraps of the Marseillaise floated n\ ilie
 
 38 Recollections of a Lifernry Man. 
 
 air. All at once, close to my ear, a coarse, 
 drawling, jeering voice, cried: "Buy the 
 history of the woman Bonaparte, her orgies, 
 her lovers, — one penny!" and they offered 
 me a square bit of paper, a hoax just fresh 
 from the printing office. What a dream ! 
 And all in the very heart of Paris, not two steps 
 from the Tuileries, where the sounds of the 
 last festivities seemed to linger yet upon those 
 self-same boulevards that I had seen only a 
 few months previously swept clear, pave- 
 ment and side walks, by blows from trunch- 
 eons, wielded by squads of police. The 
 antithesis made a profound impression upon 
 me, and for five minutes I experienced the 
 sharpest and clearest sensation of that 
 superb and frightful thing men call a Revo- 
 lution. 
 
 I saw Gambetta once, during this first 
 period of the siege, at the Ministry of the 
 Home Department, where he had just estab- 
 lished himself, without betraying any astonish- 
 ment, as one who attains a long contemplated 
 eminence. He was completely at home, and 
 was tranquilly receiving in a fatherly manner, 
 with somewhat mocking good humour, those 
 heads of departments who, but yesterday,
 
 Gambetla. 39 
 
 spoke slightingly of him as " that little 
 Gambetta ! "' and who, now deeply impressed 
 by him, bent themselves double, to sigh out, 
 "If Monsieur le IMinistre will graciously 
 permit me ! " 
 
 After this, I only saw Gambetta at rare 
 intervals, by glimpses, and as though through 
 some sudden rent, torn in the dark, cold, 
 forbidding cloud, which hung over Paris 
 during the siege. One of the meetings has 
 left an indelible impression upon me. It 
 was at Montmartre in the Place Saint-Pierre, 
 at the foot of that slope of plaster and ochre, 
 since covered with rolling rubbish from the 
 works at the Church of the Sacre Cociir ; but 
 where, at that time, notwithstanding the foot- 
 steps of the numerous Dominican idlers, and 
 the slides made by the street boys, a few 
 wretched blades of grass, gnawed and shaved as 
 they were, managed to make a show of green. 
 Above us, in the mist, was the city with its 
 thousand roofs, and its vast murmur of sound, 
 which sank now and again before the heavy 
 voice of the guns in the forts, heard from 
 afar. There, in the Square, was a little awn- 
 ing, and in the middle of a space marked 
 out by a cord, was a great yellow balloon,
 
 40 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 straining at its cable, as it balanced in the 
 air. Gambetta, it was said, was about to 
 start, to electrify the provinces, to stir them 
 up to the deliverance of Paris, to rouse all 
 
 hearts, to revive all courage, in short to renew 
 (and perhaps but for the treason of Bazaine 
 he might have succeeded) the miracles of 
 1792 ! At first, I noticed no one but friend 
 Nadar, with his aeronaut's helmet that mingled
 
 Gambetta. 
 
 4T 
 
 with all the events of the siege ; then in the 
 centre of the group, Spuller and Ganibcita, 
 both smothered in furs. Spuller was com- 
 posed and quiet, courageous without ostenta- 
 tion, but unable to keeji his eyes off the 
 
 
 [I 
 
 enormous machine in which he was to take 
 his place as head of the Cabinet, and mur- 
 muring in a dreamy voice, " It is really a 
 most extraordinary thing." Gambetta, as 
 usual, was talking and rolling his shoulders, 
 almost delighting in the adventure. He saw 
 me, pressed my hand : a grip which told of 
 many things. Then he and Spuller got into 
 the car. " T^t go ! '' cried Nadar's voice. A 
 
 n
 
 42 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 few hats waved, a cry of " Long live the 
 Republic," a balloon soaring aloft, and then — 
 nothing more. 
 
 Gambetta's balloon arrived whole and safe, 
 but how many others fell, pierced with 
 Prussian balls, or perished at sea by night, 
 without counting the incredible adventure of 
 that one which was driven for twenty hours 
 before the storm, and eventually came to 
 grief in Norway, close to the Fjords and the 
 Arctic sea. Certainly, whatever may have 
 been said, some heroism was shown in start- 
 ing upon these aerial journeys ; and it is not 
 without emotion that I think of that last hand- 
 clasp, and of that wicker car, which smaller 
 and yet more fragile than the historic bark of 
 Caesar, carried up into the winter sky all the 
 hopes of Paris. 
 
 I did not meet Gambetta again till a year 
 later, at the trial of Bazaine, in the summer 
 dining-room of Marie Antoinette at Trianon, 
 the graceful arcades of which stretch between 
 the verdure of the two gardens, and widened 
 and enlarged by means of partitions and 
 hangings, and transformed into a council of 
 war, still possessed in its panels, garlanded 
 with doves and cupids, a remembrance, a
 
 Gaiiibttta. 43 
 
 lingering perfume of past elegance. Tiic 
 Due ci'Aumale presided ; Bazaine stood at 
 the bar, haughty, headstrong, despotic, un- 
 disturbed by conscience, his chest barred 
 with red, by the wide ribbon of the Legion of 
 Honour. There was something great in this 
 spectacle of a soldier, who, traitor to his 
 country, was about to be judged under a 
 Republican government, by the descendant 
 of the ancient line of Kings. The witnesses 
 filed past, uniforms and smock frocks ; 
 marshals and soldiers, post-oflicc clerks, 
 former ministers, peasants, and their women; 
 foresters and custom-house men, whose feet, 
 accustomed to the damp elasticity of the 
 woods, or the rough surface of the high roads, 
 slipped upon the smooth flooring, and stum- 
 bled over the carpets ; and whose timid and 
 bewildered bows would have created laughter, 
 if the simple embarrassment of these humble 
 heroes had not rather drawn tears. It was 
 a faithful image of the sublime drama of 
 resistance for country's sake, in which we 
 moved, and in which all great or small 
 found it our duty to take |)art. Gambettawas 
 called. At this moment reactionary hatred 
 was clamouring against his name, and they 
 
 t> 7
 
 44 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 spoke of trying him also. He came in, 
 wearing a short overcoat, carrying his hat in 
 his hand, and made the Due d'Aumale a 
 slight bow as he passed, — a bow that I can 
 see even now — not too stiff, not too low, 
 less a bow than a free-mason's sign between 
 men who, although divided in opinion, are 
 sure of meeting and agreeing upon any 
 question of honour and patriotism. The Due 
 d'Aumale did not appear vexed, and I, in my 
 corner, was delighted with the correct and 
 dignified attitude of my old comrade ; but 1 
 could not congratulate him upon it, and this is 
 why. The blocade was scarcely raised, when, 
 still trembling with obsidional fever, I had 
 written an article upon Gambetta and the 
 defence of the Provinces, which though per- 
 fectly sincere, was also very unjust, and which, 
 when better informed, 1 had great pleasure in 
 cutting out of my books. Every Parisian was 
 a little mad at that time, myself among 
 the rest. We had been so often lied to, so 
 often deceived. We had read upon the 
 town-hall walls so many posters, full of 
 radiant hopes, so many enthusiastic procla- 
 mations followed next day by such lamentable 
 downfalls ; we had made so many senseless
 
 Gambetta. 
 
 45 
 
 and foolish marches, with a rifle over the 
 shoulder and knapsack on back ; we had so 
 
 often been kept laid flat on our stomachs in 
 the blood-stained mud, motionless, ubelcss.
 
 46 Recollections of a Literary Alan. 
 
 stupid, while shells rained over our backs ! 
 And then the spies, and the despatches ! 
 " Occupy the heights of Montretout, the 
 enemy is retiring ! " or again, " In the 
 engagement of the day before yesterday, we 
 captured two helmets and the sling of a 
 rifle." And all the while, four hundred 
 thousand national guards were tramping the 
 pavements of Paris, asking nothing better 
 than to get out and to fight 1 Then, when 
 the gates were open, a misunderstanding 
 arose, and while it was said in the Provinces, 
 " Paris has made no fight of it at all ! " it was 
 whispered in Paris, " We have been basely 
 abandoned by the Provinces." So that, 
 furious, ashamed, powerless to distinguish 
 anything in this fog of hatred and untruth, 
 suspecting treason everywhere, and cowardice, 
 and folly, one ended by classing all together, 
 both Paris and Province. A reconciliation 
 was made when we could see more clearly. 
 The Provinces learnt how much useless 
 heroism Paris displayed, during five months ; 
 and I, a besieged Parisian, recognized for 
 my humble part, how admirable was the action 
 of Gambetta in the departments, and the 
 great movement of the ' Defence," both of
 
 Gambeita. 
 
 which we had at first looked upon as a 
 series of boasts worlhy of Tarascon. 
 
 Once more I met Gambetta, about two 
 years ago. There was no exjilanation ; he 
 came towards me with outstretched hands ; 
 it was at Ville-d'Avray, under the roof of the 
 editor, Aiphonse Lemerrc, in the country 
 house so long inhabited by Corot, — a charm- 
 ing house, made for a painter, or a poet; all 
 the eighteenth century woodwork in fine 
 preservation, the painted panels above the 
 doors, and a little portico leading to the 
 garden. It was in this garden that we break- 
 fasted ; in the open air, amid the flowers and 
 the birds, beneath the great trees fit for 
 Virgil's praise, that the venerable Master 
 had loved to paint, their foliage tenderly 
 green from the damp of the neighbouring 
 ponds. We spent the afternoon in recalling 
 the past, and how we, that is, Gambetta, the 
 doctor, and myself, were the last survivors in 
 Paris of our table d'hdle. Then came the 
 turn of art and literature. I found with 
 much delight, that Gambetta read everything, 
 saw everything that was produced, remained, 
 in short, a connoisseur, an expert, a refined 
 scholar. Those were five delicious hours,
 
 48 Kecolhctions of a Literary Man. 
 
 passed in that green and flowery retreat, 
 lying between Paris and Versailles, and yet 
 so far from all political turmoil. Gambetta, 
 it would seem, fell under the charm of it; 
 a week after this breakfast under the trees, 
 he, also, bought for himself a country 
 house at Ville-d'Avray. 

 
 THE STORY OF MY BOOKS. 
 
 NUMA ROUMESTAN. 
 
 When 1 began the slory of m\ books, 
 inspired thereto, some will say, by the fatuous 
 vanity of an author, but which, it seemed to 
 me, was the real way, original and unusual, 
 of writing the memoirs of a literary man on 
 the margin of his works, I took in it, I 
 confess, a certain deliglit. To-day the 
 pleasure is lessened. In the first place, the 
 idea has been utilized by several of the 
 confraternity, and by those not among the
 
 50 /Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 least illustrious, and has necessarily lost 
 some of its freshness ; and then there is an 
 ever-rising flood of great and small inter- 
 viewers, and the noise and dust they raise 
 over a piece or a play, in the shape of anec- 
 dotal details, is such that a writer who is 
 neither a pontiff nor a curmudgeon can- 
 not easily refuse them. And so my auto- 
 historical task has become more difficult; 
 they have trodden down at heel the dainty 
 shoes that I had intended to wear only from 
 time to time. It is certain, for instance, that 
 what the newspapers wrote a few months ago 
 in connection with the play taken from 
 Numa Roiimestan, and acted at the Odeon, 
 all this curiosity and puffing have hardly left 
 me anything interesting to tell about the 
 story of my book, and may lead to a tiresome 
 repetition on my part. At all events, it has 
 helped me to destroy once and for all the 
 legend, propagated by people who them- 
 selves did not believe in it, that its name of 
 Roumestan hid the personality of Gambetta. 
 As if that were possible ! As though, had 
 I wished to model a Gambetta, any one 
 could have mistaken him, even under the 
 mask of a Numa !
 
 Nwiia Routnestan. 5 1 
 
 The fact is, that in a tiny green note-book 
 full of closcly-wriiien nicmoranciaand puz/.Iing 
 erasures now lying before me, I have, under 
 the generic title of The South, matie, during 
 years and years, a complete siuninary of the 
 country of my biitli, its climate, customs, 
 temperament ; its accent, gesture^, frenzies, 
 and ebullitions caused by our sun, and the 
 ingenuous temlency to lie, which proceeds 
 from an excess of imagination, from an 
 exuberant folly, gossiping and good-natured ; 
 so totally different from the cold, perverse, 
 calculating lie met with in the North. 1 
 have gathered these observations from all 
 sides, from myself as a standard of compari- 
 son, from my own folk, from my own family, 
 and from amongst the recollections of my 
 childhood, treasured up by a whimsical 
 memory, in which each sensation, as soon 
 as experienced, is marked down and stereo- 
 typed. 
 
 Everything is put down in that green book, 
 from the country songs, the proverbial 
 sayings and expressions wherein the instinct 
 of a people is revealed, to the street cries of 
 the hawkers of fresh water, the vendors of 
 sugar-plums and azeroles at the fairs, even
 
 52 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 to the moans over our illnesses, most of them 
 nervous and rheumatic, bred by the skies 
 full of wind and flame that consume the 
 very marrow, reducing the whole being to a 
 pulp, like sugar-cane, all of which are in- 
 creased and exaggerated by vivid imagina- 
 tion ; all are noted down ; even the crimes 
 of the South, the explosions of passion, of 
 drunken violence, drunkenness begotten 
 without drink, perplexing and scaring the 
 conscience of the judges, brought thither 
 from a different clime, who are bewildered 
 in the midst of these exaggerations, these 
 incredible testimonies they cannot classify. 
 It is from these memoranda, that I drew Tar- 
 tarin de Tarascon, Niima Roiimestn7i, and, 
 more recently. Tar tar in sur les Alpes. Other 
 Southern books lie there, in the rough; humor- 
 istic pieces, novels, physiological studies: 
 Mirabeau, the Marquis de Sade, Raousset- 
 Boulbon, and the Malade Lnaginaire, which 
 Moliere most assuredly brought back from 
 my Southern home. And even an historical 
 essay, if I am to believe an ambitious line 
 scribbled on a corner of the note-book : 
 Napoleon, man of the South, — synthetise in 
 his person the whole race.
 
 Ntniia Roumestan. 53 
 
 Yes, indeed, I hat! dreamt even that — that 
 the day might come, when ilie novel of the 
 period should disgust and fatigue me by the 
 narrowness and conventionaUty of its compass, 
 a day when I should feel a desire to extend my 
 thoughts further and higher. I had almost 
 dreamt even this : to give the predominating 
 note of the marvellous existence of Napoleon, 
 anil solve that extraordinary man, by the one 
 simple word : the South, which notwith- 
 standing all the science of Taine, has never 
 suggested itself to his mintl. The South, 
 pompous, classical, theatrical, loving display 
 and brilliant costumes, — careless of a few 
 stains, here and there, — the oratory of the 
 platform, fine plumes, flags, and military 
 music floating in the wind. The South, 
 homely and traditional, with somewhat of 
 the East in its clannish and tribal-like 
 fidelity ; a taste for sweet dishes and the 
 incurable contempt of woman, which docs 
 not however prevent passion and voluptuous- 
 ness, carried to frenzy. The South, fawning 
 and feline, with a dashing and flashing 
 eloquence, devoid of colour, for colour be- 
 longs to the North, — with its short and terrible 
 furies, showy and grimacing, always rather
 
 54 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 fictitious even when sincere, tragic, comic, — 
 storms of the Mediterranean, ten feet of foam 
 on perfectly calm waters. The South, 
 superstitious and idolatrous, willingly forget- 
 ful of the gods, in the agitation of its sala- 
 mander-like existence on a blazing pile ; but 
 
 ^..v, 
 
 remembering the prayers of its childhood at the 
 first threat of illness or misfortune. (Napoleon 
 on his knees, praying at sunset, on the deck 
 of the Nor thiunhcr land, hearing mass twice 
 a week in the dining-room at Saint Helena.) 
 And lastly and above all, the great charac- 
 teristic of the race, imagination, which no 
 man of action possessed in so vast and wild 
 a degree as he. (Witness his dreams of
 
 Nuiiia RoumesLiru 5 5 
 
 conquered Eg}^)!, Russia, India.) Such is 
 the Napoleon I shoukl wish to depict, in all 
 the principal acts of his public life, and all 
 the minute details of his private life, giving 
 him at the same time for walking gentleman, 
 a Bompard, imitating and exaggerating all 
 his gestures, ami his plumes, — another 
 Southerner ; JNIurat of Cahors, poor, brave 
 Murat, who was seized and shot with his back 
 against a wall, for having attempted also his 
 little return from Elba. 
 
 However, let us leave the historical work 
 that I have not done, that I may never have 
 time to write, and return to the novel of 
 Numa, already a few years old, and in whicli 
 so many of my country folk have pretended 
 to recognize themselves, although each per- 
 sonage has been constructed out of bits and 
 pieces. One only, and as might have been 
 expected, the most fanciful, the most unlikely 
 of all, was taken on the spot, strictly copied 
 from nature ; it is the chimerical and 
 rapturous Bompard, a silent and repressed 
 Southerner, who moves only by explo- 
 sive bursts, and whose inventions surpass all 
 reasonable bounds, because this visionary is 
 lacking in the prolixity of spoken or written
 
 56 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 words, which is our safety-valve. This type 
 of Bompard is frequent enough amongst us ; 
 but I have only thoroughly studied this one, 
 an amiable and gentle companion, whom I 
 sometimes meet on the boulevard, and to 
 whom the publication of Nuvia caused no ill 
 humour ; for with the mass of romance per- 
 petually seething in his brain, he has no time 
 to read those of others. 
 
 Of my drummer Valmajour, some traits 
 are real, for instance, his little phrase : " // 
 occurred to vie at night" was culled word 
 for word from his ingenuous lips. I have 
 told elsewhere the burlesque and lamentable 
 epic poem of this native of Draguignan, 
 whom my dear, noble. Mistral sent one day to 
 me, with these words : " I send you Buisson, 
 a performer on the drum ; pilot him," and 
 the innumerable series of failures we made, 
 Buisson and I, in the wake of his rustic fife, 
 through salons, theatres and concerts of 
 Paris. But here is the real truth, that I 
 could not tell during his lifetime, lest I 
 should do him harm ; now that death has 
 staved in his drum, pecaire ! and stopped up 
 with black earth the three holes of his flute, 
 1 may tell the true story.
 
 Numa Rountestan. 
 
 57 
 
 Buisson was but a false drummer, a little 
 citizen of the South, clarionetist or cornopeist 
 in a municipal brass band, who had, in order 
 to amuse himself, learnt and improved the 
 
 fingering of the life, and the inasselle ot llic 
 ancient peasant fetes of Provence. When 
 he arrived in Paris, the unlucky fellow knew 
 neither an air of his country, nor a serenade 
 for dawn, or for twilight, nor yet a farandoh. 
 
 8.
 
 5 8 Recollections of a Literary AT an. 
 
 His stock in trade consisted merely of the 
 Overture of the Cheval de Bronze, the Carna- 
 val de Venise, and the Panteins de Violetie, 
 the whole very brilliantly executed, 'tis true, 
 but rather deficient in local colouring for 
 a drummer guaranteed by Mistral, I 
 taught him a few of Saboly's Christmas 
 Carols : Sai7it-J ose said to me, Tiire-lure- 
 lure, the cock crows, and then the Fisher- 
 men of Cassis, the Girls of Avignon, and 
 the March of the Magi, that Bizet, a few 
 years later, arranged so marvellously for the 
 orchestra, in our Arlesienne. Buisson, who 
 was rather a clever musician, noted down the 
 airs as they followed, repeating them day and 
 night, in his lodging in the Rue Bergere, to 
 the great annoyance of his neighbours, who 
 were exasperated by this harsh droning 
 music. When trained, I launched him on 
 the town, where his queer French, his 
 Ethiopian complexion, his thick eyebrows, 
 close and bristling like his moustaches, and 
 moreover his exotic stock of music, took in 
 even the Southerners in Paris, who believed 
 him to be a real drummer, not however, that- 
 this added, alas, in any way to his success. 
 Although such was nature's product, the
 
 Numa Roumestixn. 
 
 59 
 
 type seemed to me somewhat complex, 
 especially for a character that was not to 
 occupy the foreground ; I therefore simplified 
 it for mv book. 
 As for the other 
 personages of the 
 novel, I repeat, 
 from Roumestan 
 down to the little 
 Audibertc, all are 
 made out of se- 
 veral models, and 
 as Montaigne 
 says, " a jumble 
 of many pieces.' 
 The same can be 
 said of Aps in 
 Provence, the 
 native town of 
 Numa, which I 
 have constructed 
 with bits of Aries, 
 Nimes, Saint- 
 R<$my, and Ca- 
 
 vaillon, borrowing from the one its arenas, 
 from another its old Italian by-strccts, narrow 
 and pebbled like the dry beds of torrents ; its 
 
 K 2 
 
 ■'   ./,
 
 6o Recollections of a Literary Man . 
 
 Monday markets held under the massive plane- 
 trees of the ramparts : taking hither and thither 
 those white Provencal roads, bordered by tall 
 reeds, snowy and crackling with hot dust, 
 over which I ran when I was twenty, possessor 
 of an old windmill, and ever wrapped up 
 in my great woollen cape. The house where 
 Numa is born, is that I inhabited when eight 
 years old, Rue Siguier, opposite the Academy 
 of Nimes ; the school kept by the Brothers 
 of the Christian Doctrine and terrorised over 
 by the famous Boute-a-Cuire, and his pickled 
 rod, is the school of my childhood ; all these 
 are the recollections in the furthest recesses 
 of my memory — " First birds of the season," 
 as the Provencal folk say. 
 
 These are the substratum and real facts, 
 very simple as can be seen, of Ntima 
 Roiwiestan, which appears to me the least 
 incomplete of all my books, the one in which 
 I have best revealed myself, into which I have 
 put the most invention, in the best sense of 
 the word. I wrote it in the spring and summer 
 of 1880, in the Avenue de I'Observatoire. 
 above the grand chestnut trees of the Luxem- 
 bourg, gigantic nosegays, all rounded with 
 white and pink clusters ; through which came
 
 Nttma RoHinestan, 
 
 6. 
 
 to iiie the laughter of children, the tinkhnj; 
 bells of the hawkers of liquorice water, and 
 the sounds of military brass bands. Its con- 
 struction gave ine no fatigue, like everything 
 that comes from the heart. It first appeared 
 in the Illustration, with drawings by Emile 
 
 ■C   
 
 Bayard, who lived near nic, on the other side 
 of the avenue. 
 
 Several days in the week, I went in the 
 morning, and settled myself in his studio, 
 gradually communicating my personage to 
 him, as he grew beneath my pen ; explaining, 
 commenting, upon the .South for the benefit 
 of this infatuated Parisian, who still believed 
 in the Gascon who was taken off to be 
 hanged, and in tlie comic songs of Levassor
 
 62 Recollections of a L.itC7-ary Man. 
 
 about the Canebiere. Is it not true, Bayard, 
 that I acted my beloved South for you, and 
 pantomimed it, sang it to you, brought home 
 to you the noise of the crowd at the bull- 
 fight, the wrestling for men and youths, and 
 the chaunting of the penitents in the pro- 
 cessions on the Fete-Dieu ? And it was 
 certainly either you, or one of your pupils 
 whom I carried off to drink carthagene and 
 eat barquettes at the " Produce of the South," 
 in the Rue Turbigo. 
 
 Published by Charpentier, with the tender 
 dedication that has always brought me luck, 
 and which ought always to be placed at the 
 beginning of my books, the novel was very 
 successful. Zola honoured it with a flattering 
 and cordial article, only finding to reprove 
 as too incredible, the love of Hortense Le 
 Quesnoy for the drummer ; since then several 
 others have made the same criticism. And 
 yet, if I had to write my book over again, I 
 would not give up that effect of mirage on 
 this intrepid and burning little spirit, a 
 victim, she also, to Imagination. But why 
 was she consumptive "i Why this sentimental 
 and romantic death, this easy bait held out to 
 the sensibility of the reader. Ah, because
 
 Numa Raufnesian, 63 
 
 one is not master of one's creation, because 
 during its gestation, while the ideas tempt and 
 haunt us, a thousand trifles become mixed 
 up, dragged up, and picked up, on the way- 
 side, in the haphazard of Hfe, like weeds in 
 the meshes of a net. While I was working 
 out IVuma, I had been sent to the waters at 
 Allevard ; and there, in the inhaling rooms, I 
 saw youthful faces, drawn, hollow, furrowed 
 as with a knife ; I heard poor undermined 
 voices without sound ; harsh coughs, followed 
 by the same furtive motion of the handker- 
 chief, watching for the rosy stain at the corner 
 of the mouth. And from out of these pale 
 impersonal apparitions, one took shape in 
 my book, almost in spite of myself, with the 
 melancholy life of the watering-place, its 
 exquisite pastoral surroundings, and all this 
 has remained in my book. 
 
 Numa Barag^on, my compatriot, formerly 
 a minister, or nearly one, deceived by a 
 similitude of Christian names, was the first to 
 recognise himself in Roumestan. He pro- 
 tested. His horses had never been un- 
 harnessed I But a legend, from Germany, 
 the awkward advertisement of a Dresden 
 editor, soon replaced Baragnon's name by
 
 54 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 that of Gambetta. I will not allude again to 
 this folly ; I can only affirm, that Gambetta 
 did not believe it, and that he was the first to 
 be amused by it. 
 
 Dining one evening side by side, at our 
 editor's, he asked me if the " when I do not 
 speak, I do not think " of Roumestan was a 
 phrase invented by myself, or whether I had 
 heard it. 
 
 " Pure invention, my dear Gambetta." 
 
 " Ah ! well," he said, " this morning at the 
 Council of Ministers, one of my colleagues, 
 a Southerner from Montpellier, declared that 
 * he only thought while speaking.' Decidedly 
 the phrase is of that country." 
 
 And for the last time, I heard his broad, 
 hearty laugh. 
 
 All Southerners did not show themselves so 
 intelligent, and Niuna Roumestan procured 
 me no end of furious anonymous letters, 
 almost all with the post-marks of the warmer 
 climes. The felibres themselves caught fire. 
 Verses were read at a meeting in which I was 
 called a renegade and evil-doer. " If one 
 wished to give him a reveille, the very drum- 
 sticks would fall from one's hands," says a 
 Provencal sonnet of old Borelly. And I, who
 
 Numa Roumestan. 
 
 65 
 
 reckoned on my countrymen to bear wit- 
 ness that I had neither caricatured nor Hed ! 
 But no, question them, even to-day, when 
 their anger has subsided ; and the most 
 excitable, the most exaggerated Southerner 
 amongst them will reply, with an assump- 
 tion of rational moderation : 
 
 "Oh. all that isverv exaggerated! " 
 
 0"-» ' ' 
 
 ."^ J
 
 
 
 »«,> 
 
 m>'m-^\^: ."^1
 
 THE FRANCS-TIREURS. 
 
 IVritUn during the Siege of I'aris. 
 
 We were drinking tea the other evening, 
 at the house of the tahellion of Nanterre. I 
 take a certain deHght in using the old word 
 tahellion, because it is in keeping witli tlie 
 Pompadour style of the pretty village, where 
 rosi'eres * flourish, and of the antiquated salon 
 where we were seated round a fire of logs, 
 
 • kosiirc, ihc most virtuous girl of tlie village, who 
 at llic aK<-' of twt'nty is crowned with roses anil given a 
 marriage portion.
 
 68 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 blazing up brightly in a large chimney, 
 decorated with fleurs de lis. . . The master 
 of the house was absent, but his good- 
 natured, shrewd face, hanging in a corner 
 of the room, presided over the festive scene, 
 and peacefully smiled down from the depths 
 of an oval frame, on the strange guests 
 occupying his drawing-room. 
 
 A curious medley indeed, for an evening 
 party at a notary's. Braided overcoats, 
 beards eight days old, forage caps, hooded 
 capes, and military boots ; and all around, 
 on the piano, on the little tables, pell-mell 
 with the lace-covered cushions, the boxes of 
 Spa wood, and the work-baskets, were lying 
 sabres and revolvers. All this made a 
 strange contrast with the patriarchal dwelling, 
 in which still seemed to linger an odour of 
 the famous Nanterre cakes, ofTered by some 
 handsome notaresse to the rosieres in muslin. 
 Alas ! there are no longer any rosieres 
 in Nanterre. They have been replaced by a 
 battalion of Francs-Tire iirs from Paris, and 
 it was the staff of this battalion — billeted in 
 the notary's house — that had invited us to 
 tea, that evening. 
 
 Never did chimney-corner seem to me
 
 The Francs-Tireurs. 69 
 
 more delightful. Outside, the wind blew 
 over the snow, ami brought us with the sound 
 of the shivering hours, the challenge call of 
 the sentinels, and from time to time the 
 dull report of a chassepot. In the dniwing- 
 room, we talked but little. Outpost duty is 
 rough work, and we were very tired by night- 
 fall. And then, the perfume of familiar 
 comfort, rising from the teapot in pale 
 clouds of steam, had taken possession of us 
 all, and as it were hypnotised us, in the 
 notary's large arm-chairs. 
 
 Suddenly, there was a sound of hurried 
 steps, and a breathless telegraph messenger 
 with flashing eyes made his appearance : 
 
 "To arms! to arms! The outpost at 
 Rueil is attacked." 
 
 It was an advanced guard, established by 
 the francs-tireurs at about ten minutes' 
 distance from Nanterre, in the railway station 
 at Rueil, one might almost say in Pomerania, 
 it seemed so far olT ! In the twinkling of 
 an eye, all the officers of the staff were on 
 their legs, armed and buckled, and were 
 scurrying into the streets to muster the 
 companies. There was no need of biigle- 
 call for that. The first was quartered at the
 
 yo Recollections of a Literary Ma?i. 
 
 parish priest's ; a couple of kicks at the door 
 quickly roused them. 
 
 " To arms 1 Get up ! " 
 
 And then they ran off to the registrar's 
 office, where the second was lodged. 
 
 Oh ! that little dark village, with its 
 pointed steeple covered with snow, its tiny 
 stiffly planted gardens, where the little gate 
 bells sounded like shop doors, as you opened 
 them ; those mysterious houses, those wooden 
 staircases up which I climbed, groping my 
 way behind the big sabre of the adjutant- 
 major ; the warm breath of the sleeping- 
 rooms, in which we shouted the alarm call, 
 the guns that resounded in the darkness, the 
 men heavy with sleep, stumbling as they re- 
 joined their post, while at the corner of a 
 street, five or six stupefied peasants with 
 lanterns in their hands, said in low tones : 
 "The attack has begun, the attack has begun; " 
 all this seemed to me at the time a mere 
 dream, but the impression it has left upon 
 me is distinct and ineffaceable. 
 
 Here is the square, with the town-hall all 
 black, the lighted-up windows of the tele- 
 graph office, the ante-room where the bearers 
 of despatches are waiting, lantern in hand ;
 
 Thf Francs-Tireurs. 
 
 7' 
 
 in a corner, the Irish surgeon of the battalion 
 phlegmatically preparing his case of surgical 
 
 
 ^ .' 
 
 instruments, and, charming silhouette amidst 
 all the confusion of a skirmishing party, a 
 little 7';z'fl;/^/;'(fr^ — dressed in blue, like the 
 children in an orphanage — sleeping before
 
 72 Recollectiotis of a Literary Man. 
 
 the fire, a gun between her legs ; and, quite 
 at the back of the room, the telegraphic 
 bureau, the camp beds, the large table, white 
 under a flood of light, the two clerks bent 
 over their instruments, and leaning over from 
 behind them, the major, following with 
 anxious gaze the long strips which unroll and 
 bring, minute by minute, fresh news from 
 the attacked post. Decidedly, it appears 
 that it is getting hot over there. Despatch 
 follows despatch. The telegraph wildly 
 shakes its electric bells, and hurries the tic- 
 tac of its sewing-machine sounds till you 
 suppose it will break. 
 
 " Come quick," says Rueil. 
 
 " We are coming," replies Nanterre. 
 
 And the companies start off in haste. 
 
 Certainly, I must admit that war is the 
 saddest and stupidest thing in the world. I 
 know nothing, for instance, so lugubrious as 
 a January night spent shivering like an old 
 soldier in the trench of an outpost ; nothing 
 more absurd than to receive on the head half 
 an iron pot from a distance of five miles ; 
 but to start off to battle on a fine frosty night 
 with a full stomach and a warm heart, to 
 dash at full speed into darkness and adven-
 
 The Francs-Tirntrs. 73 
 
 ture, shoulder to shoulder with a company 
 of good fellows, is a delightful pleasure, and 
 resembles a delicious intoxication, a peculiar 
 intoxication, however, which sobers any 
 drunkard, and sharpens the dullest sight. 
 
 For my part, my sight was excellent that 
 nisht. Nevertheless, there was litde moon- 
 li2:ht, and it was the earth white with snow 
 that lighted the sky, — a theatrical light, cold 
 and raw, spreading to the furthest end of the 
 plain, and on which the smallest details of 
 the landscape, a bit of wall, a sign-post, a 
 line of willows, stood out sharp and black, 
 as though divested of their shadows. In 
 the little road by the side of the railway the 
 /rancs-lireurs sped at double-quick time. 
 Nothing could be heard but the vibration of 
 the telegraph wires, the panting breath of the 
 men, the whistle-call thrown to the sentinels, 
 and, from time to time, a shell from Mont 
 Valerien passing over our heads, like a night 
 bird with a formidable flapping of wings. 
 As we advanced, we saw in front of us, on a 
 level with the ground, distant shots starring 
 the darkness. Then on the left, at the end 
 of the plain, the great flames of some con- 
 flagration rose silently upwards. 
 
 9
 
 74 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 "' In front of the manufactory, in skirmish- 
 ing order ! " commanded our Captain. 
 
 " Some one is going to pay for it to-night!" 
 said my left-hand neighbour, with an accent 
 of the faubourg. 
 
 In one bound the officer was upon us : 
 
 " Who spoke ? Was it you .' " 
 
 " Yes, Captain, I." 
 
 " All right ; go away ; return to Nan- 
 terre." 
 
 "But, Captain " 
 
 " No, no ; be off with you. I don't want 
 you. Ah ! you're afraid of having to pay 
 for it to-night. Come, make yourself scarce, 
 go away ! " 
 
 And the poor devil was obliged to leave the 
 ranks ; but in five minutes he had stealthily 
 returned to his place, and in future only 
 asked to be allowed to pay for it. 
 
 After all, fate willed that no one should 
 pay for it that night. When we reached the 
 barricade the fray had ended. The Prussians, 
 who had hoped to surprise our small post, 
 finding it on the alert and safe from a coup de 
 main, had prudently retired ; and we were 
 just in time to see them disappear at the end 
 of the plain, silent and black as cockroaches.
 
 The Francs-2'ireurs. 75 
 
 However, for fear of another attack, we had 
 orders to remain at Rueil station, and we 
 finished the night on the alert, with our arms 
 ready, some on the platform and others in 
 the waiting-room. 
 
 Poor Rueil station, I had known it so 
 cheerful and so bright ; aristocratic station 
 of the Bougival boating parties, where the 
 Parisian summer seemed to flaunt its muslin 
 flounces and its feathered bonnets ! It is 
 hard, indeed, to recognize it in this lugubrious 
 cellar, this iron-case, padded tomb, smelling 
 of powder, petroleum, and mouldy straw, 
 where we talk in low tones, closely pressed 
 against one another, and have for sole light 
 the spark of our pipes and the streak of light 
 from the ofl^ccrs' corner. From hour to 
 hour, to keep us alive, we are sent in 
 detachments to skirmish along the Seine, or 
 to patrol the village of Rueil, whose empty 
 streets and almost abandoned houses are 
 lighted up by the cold gleam of a confla- 
 gration, set alight by the Prussians at Bois- 
 Pr(:au. 
 
 The night was thus spent without accident, 
 anfl in the morning we were sent back. 
 
 When I reached Nanlerre it was still dark. 
 
 !• 2
 
 76 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 On the square of the town-hall the telegraphic 
 window shone like a light-house, and in the 
 drawing-room occupied by the staff, in front 
 of his hearth, where the smouldering embers 
 were dying out, M. the tabellion was still 
 smiling peacefully.
 
 THE GARDEN OF THE RUE DES 
 ROSIERS. 
 
 Written March 22nd, 1871. 
 
 Put not your trust in the names of streets, 
 nor in the peaceful appearance thereof ! 
 When, after having clambered over barricades 
 and mitrailleuses, I reached the top of Mont- 
 marlre, and from behind the windmills looked 
 down and saw the little Rue des Rosiers, with 
 its pebbled roadway, its gardens, and small
 
 78 RecoUedioHS of a Literary Man. 
 
 houses, I could have fancied myself far away 
 in the provinces, in one of those quiet suburbs 
 where the town as it becomes more scattered, 
 finally dwindles down and disappears in the 
 surrounding fields. In front of me, nothing 
 was to be seen but a flight of pigeons and 
 two sisters of mercy in their large caps, 
 timidly skirting the wall. In the distance, 
 rose the Solferino tower, a vulgar and heavy 
 fortress, Sunday resort of the neighbourhood 
 that the siege has almost rendered picturesque, 
 by reducing it to a ruin. 
 
 By degrees, as I advanced, the street 
 widened out, and wore a more animated 
 appearance. There were tents laid out in a 
 line, cannon and stacks of guns, and on the 
 left-hand side a large gateway, in front of 
 which national guards were smoking their 
 pipes. The house was at the back and could 
 not be seen from the street. After some 
 parley, the sentinel allowed me to enter. It 
 was a two-storied house, situated between a 
 court-yard and garden, and had nothing tragic 
 about it. It belongs to the heirs of M. Scribe. 
 
 The rooms on the ground floor, light, airy, 
 and hung with flowery papers, opened into
 
 Tin- Garden of the Rue des Rosiers 79 
 
 the passage leading from the little paved 
 court-yard to the garden. It was here that 
 the former Comili Central held its meetings. 
 It was hither, that on the afternoon of the 
 1 8th, the two generals were conveyed and 
 that they endured the anguish of their last 
 hour ; while the mob yelled in the garden 
 outside, and the deserters came and stuck 
 their hideous faces against the windows, 
 scenting blood like wolves ; here, at last, 
 that the two corpses were brought back, and 
 remained exposed for two days to the public 
 gaze. 
 
 With heavy heart, I went down the three 
 steps leading to the garden, a true surburban 
 garden, where each tenant has his corner of 
 currant bushes and clematis, separated by 
 green trellis-work with belled gates. The 
 fury of a mob had passed over all. The 
 enclosures were knocked down, the flower- 
 beds torn up. Nothing was left standing but 
 certain quincun.xes of limes, some twenty 
 trees, freshly trimmed, with their hard grey 
 branches uprising in the air, like a vulture's 
 talons. An iron railing went round the back 
 by way of wall, showing in the distance the
 
 8o Recollections of a Lilerary Man. 
 
 immense, melancholy valley, and the tall 
 smoking factory chimneys. 
 
 The calm brought by time, steals over 
 things as well as over human beings. Here 
 I am on the very scene of the drama, and yet 
 I experience a certain difficulty in recalling 
 an impression of it. The weather is mild, 
 the sky clear. These Montmartre soldiers 
 who surround me seem good-natured fellows. 
 They sing, and play at pitch and toss. The 
 officers laugh as they saunter to and fro ! 
 The great wall alone, riddled with bullets, 
 and with crumbled coping, stands up like a 
 witness and relates the crime. It was against 
 this wall they were shot. 
 
 It appears that at the last moment General 
 Lecomte, who till then had been firm and 
 resolute, felt his courage fail him. He 
 struggled and tried to escape, ran a few steps 
 in the garden, was seized again immediately, 
 shaken, dragged, jostled, fell on his knees 
 and spoke of his children. 
 
 " I have five," he said sobbing. 
 
 The heart of the father had burst the tunic 
 of the soldier. There were fathers also in 
 that mad crowd, and some pitying voices
 
 The Garden of the Rue des Rosters. 8 \ 
 
 answered his despairins: appeal ; but the 
 inexorable deserters would not listen. 
 
 " If we do not shoot him to-day, he will 
 have us shot to-morrow." 
 
 He was thrust against the wall. Imme- 
 
 
 
 diately after, the sergeant of an infantry 
 regiment approached him. 
 
 "General,"' he said, "you must promise 
 us " 
 
 Then suddenly changing his mind, he 
 took a couple of steps backwards, and dis- 
 charged his chassepot full in his chest. The 
 others had only to finish him off.
 
 8? Recollections of a Literary Alan. 
 
 Clement Thomas, however, did not give 
 way for one instant. 
 
 Placed against the same wall as Lecomte. 
 at two paces from his body, he faced death 
 to the end, and spoke in a dignified manner. 
 When the guns were lowered, he instinctively 
 raised his left arm before his face, and the 
 old Republican died in the attitude of Caesar. 
 At the spot where they fell, against the cold 
 wall, bare like the target of a shooting gallery, 
 a few branches of a peach-tree are still spread 
 out, and at the top blooms an early flower, 
 all white, spared by the bullets and unsullied 
 by the powder. 
 
 On quitting the Rue des Rosiers, through 
 the silent roads rising one above the other, 
 along the sides of the hill, full of gardens 
 and terraces, I came to the former cemetery 
 of Montmartre, that had been reopened a 
 few days before, to receive the bodies of the 
 two generals. It is a village cemetery, bare, 
 without trees, adorned by nothing but grave- 
 stones. Like those rapacious peasants, who 
 in ploughing their land encroach each day 
 on the pathway that crosses their fields, 
 making it finally disappear altogether ; so
 
 The Gardi-n of the Rue des Rosier s. 83 
 
 here, death has invaded everything, even the 
 alleys. The tombs crowd one above the 
 other. Every place is filled. One is at a 
 loss to know where to step. 
 
 I know nothing sadder than these old 
 cemeteries. One feels oneself to be in 
 presence of a vast assemblage, and yet no 
 one is visible. Those who lie there, seemed 
 indeed twice dead. 
 
 "What are you looking for.'" inquired 
 a kind of half gardener, half gravedigger, 
 in a national guard's forage cap, who was 
 mending a railing. 
 
 My answer astonished him. For a moment 
 he hesitated, looked around him, and lower- 
 ing his voice : 
 
 " Over there," he s-aid, " near the cowl." 
 
 What he called the cowl, was a sentry-box 
 in japanned sheet-iron, sheltering a few 
 tarnished glass-beaded wreaths, and old 
 filigree flowers. By its side was a wide slab, 
 which had been recently raised. Not a 
 railing, not an inscription. Nothing but two 
 bunches of violets, wrapped in while paper, 
 with a stone placed on their stalks that the 
 strong wind of the hill-side may not blow
 
 84 Recollections of a Litci-ary Man. 
 
 them away. It is here they sleep side by 
 side. It is in this transitory tomb, awaiting 
 restoration to their families, that a billet has 
 been given to these two soldiers.
 
 AN ESCAPE. 
 
 WritUn dttrinj^ the Commune. 
 
 On one of the last days of the month of 
 March five or six of us were seated at a 
 table, in front of the Caf6 Kiche, watching 
 the battalions of the Commune march past. 
 There had been as yet no fighting, but as- 
 sassinations had already taken place in the 
 Rue des Rosicrs, Place Vcndome, and at the 
 Pr(5fecture de Police. The farce was rapidly 
 turning into a tragedy, and the boulevard 
 laughed no longer.
 
 86 Eecollectlons of a Literary Man. 
 
 In serried ranks round the red flasr, with 
 their canvas bags slung across the shoulder, 
 the commiineux tramped along with resolute 
 step, covering the whole roadway ; and when 
 one looked at all these people under arms, so 
 far from their working districts, with cartridge- 
 pouches tightly buckled over their fustian 
 jackets, the workmen's hands clutching the 
 butt end of their guns, it was impossible not 
 to think of the empty workshops and the 
 abandoned factories. 
 
 This march past was in itself a menace. 
 We all understood it, and the same sad, un- 
 definable presentiment chilled our hearts. 
 
 At this moment, a tall, indolent and bloated 
 swell, known to all the boulevard, from Tor- 
 toni to the Madeleine, approached our table. 
 He was one of the most contemptible speci- 
 mens of the fast man of the late Empire, a 
 second-hand exquisite, who had never done 
 anything but pick up on the boulevard all 
 the eccentricities of the upper ten ; baring his 
 throat like Lutteroth, wearing ladies' dressing- 
 gowns like Mouchy, bracelets likti Narish- 
 kine, keeping for five years a card of 
 Grammont-Caderousse stuck in his lookinff- 
 glass ; and withal painted like any old actor,
 
 y^/i Escape. 87 
 
 dropping all his r's, in the affected style 
 of the Directoire, saying: " Pa'ole dhonneu . 
 Bon j oil Maame^ bringing the smell of Tat- 
 tersall's stables everywhere on his boots, and 
 with just enough education to be able to 
 scratch his name on the mirrors of the Cafe 
 Anglais, which, however, did not prevent him 
 from posing as a thorough theologian, and 
 from exhibiting from one restaurant to another 
 his disdainful, used-up, blase manner, which 
 at that time constituted the height of 
 " form." 
 
 During the siege, my fine fellow had had 
 himself attached to some kind of staff — 
 merely to save his riding horses — and from 
 time to time, his ungainly figure might be 
 seen, parading the neighbourhood of the 
 Place Vendome, amongst all the other grand 
 gold-laced gentlemen ; since then, I had lost 
 sight of him. Therefore, to find him again 
 suddenly in the midst of the insurrection, 
 ever the same, in this convulsed Paris, 
 produced on me the lugubrious and comical 
 impression of an oUl veteran of the first 
 empire, carrying out his pilgrimage of the 
 5th of May in the midst of the modern 
 boulevard. The race of wretchcil Dun-
 
 88 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 drearies was not ended then ? There were 
 still some left ! In reality, I think that had 
 I been given a choice, I would have pre- 
 ferred those infuriated communards who 
 gathered on the ramparts, with a dry crust at 
 the bottom of their rough canvas wallets. 
 These at least had something in their heads, 
 some vague, wild ideal which floated above 
 them, and took some fierce colouring from 
 the folds of that red rag, for which they were 
 going to die. But he, empty rattle, with his 
 vacant, breadcrumb brain ! 
 
 That day precisely, our friend was more 
 insipid, more indolent, more full of fine airs 
 than usual. He wore a little straw hat with 
 blue ribbons, his moustache was well waxed, 
 his hair cropped Russian fashion ; a short 
 coat displayed all his figure, and to be 
 thoroughly complete, at the end of a silken 
 cord, used as a leash, he led a lady's lap- 
 dog, a little Havanese dog the size of a 
 rat, which, buried in its long hair, looked as 
 bored and fatigued as his master. Thus got 
 up, he planted himself in a languid attitude 
 in front of our table, and watched the 
 commiineux defiling past, made some foolish 
 remark, then with a slouch and a swing that
 
 An Escape. 89 
 
 were positively inimit;^lile, declared to us 
 that these fellows were beginning to make 
 his blood boil, and that he was going ofT at 
 once to " place his sword at the service of 
 the Admiral ! '" The fiat had gone forth, the 
 declaration was launched ! Lasouche or 
 Priston have never found anything more 
 comic. Thereupon he turned away, and 
 strolled off languidly, followed by his little 
 sulky dog. 
 
 I know not whether in reality he ditl place 
 his sword at the Admiral's disposal ; but 
 in any case, M. Saisset did not make much 
 use of it, for eight days later, the flag of the 
 Commune floated over all the mayors' ofTices, 
 the drawbridges were raised, fighting had 
 begun everywhere, and from hour to hour 
 the side walks grew emptier and the streets 
 more deserted. Everyone tried to escape 
 as best he might — in the market-gardeners' 
 carts, in the luggage vans of the embassies. 
 Some disguised themselves as bargemen, 
 stokers, or navvies. The most romantic 
 crossed the ramparts at night with rope- 
 ladders. The boldest went thirty at a time, 
 and passed through a gate by storm ; others, 
 more practical, simply offered a bribe of five
 
 90 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 francs. Many followed hearses, and went 
 wandering about the fields of the surrounding 
 suburbs, with umbrellas and chimney-pot 
 hats, black from head to foot, like village 
 tipstaffs. Once outside, all these Parisians 
 looked at each other laughingly, breathed 
 freely, capered about, made fun of Paris ; 
 but soon the nostalgia of the asphalte 
 regained possession of them, and the emigra- 
 tion, begun as truant schoolboys, became sad 
 and burdensome as an exile. 
 
 My mind full of these ideas of escape, I 
 was one morning strolling down the Rue de 
 Rivoli, in pouring rain, when I was stopped 
 by seeing a familiar face. At that early 
 hour, there was scarcely anything in sight 
 but the sweeping-machines, gathering up 
 the mud in little gleaming heaps along the 
 side of the pavement, and the rows of 
 tumbrels filled one after the other by the 
 scavengers. Horror ! it was under the be- 
 spattered smock of one of these men, that I 
 recognized my masher, well disguised in- 
 deed ! — a battered felt hat, a neck-handker- 
 chief tied like a wisp round the throat, and 
 the wide trousers called by the Parisian work- 
 man (pardon me the word) a salopette ; all
 
 An Escape. 
 
 q' 
 
 this was wet, shabby, threadbare, covered 
 with a thick coating of mire, that the wretched 
 creature did not even then consider thick 
 enough, for I detectetl him trampHng in the 
 puddles, and kicking the mud up to the 
 
 -.^.■;^ 
 
 ^.f 
 
 
 .;--'♦• 
 
 very roots of his hair. It was this peculiar 
 niancEuvre that attracted my attention. 
 
 "Good morning, Vicomte, ' I said to him 
 in an undertone as I passed. The Vicomte 
 grew pale under his mud stains, threw a 
 terrified glance around him, then seeing 
 everyone busy, he regained a little assurance, 
 and told me that he had not chosen to 
 place his sword (always his sword) at the 
 
 G 2
 
 9? Kecolleclions of a Literary Man. 
 
 service of the Commune, and thai his butler's 
 brother, mud contractor at Montreuil, had 
 fortunately contrived for him this possibility 
 of leaving Paris. He could not add more. 
 The carts were full, and the procession was 
 beginning to move on. My fellow had but 
 time to run to his team, take up his position 
 in the file, crack his whip and, hoi ! go on ! 
 he was off. The adventure interested me. 
 In order to see the end of it, I followed the 
 tumbrels at a distance, as far as the Porte de 
 Vincennes. 
 
 Each man walked at the side Of his horses, 
 whip in hand, leading his team by a leathern 
 rein. To make his task easier they had put 
 the Vicomte the last, and it was pitiful to see 
 the poor devil striving to do like the others, 
 to imitate their voice, their gait, that heavy 
 bent, drowsy gait, swinging along with the 
 rolling of the wheels, regulated by the step 
 of the overladen animals. At times they 
 stopped to allow some battalion to pass on 
 its way to the ramparts. Then he would 
 assume a bustling air, swear, use his whip, 
 and make himself as much of a carter as 
 possible ; but, from time to time, the man of 
 fashion re-appeared. This scavenger looked
 
 An Escape. 93 
 
 ai women. In front of a cailridge manu- 
 factory, Rue de Charonne, he paused for 
 a moment to watch the factory girls enter- 
 ing. The aspect of the great faubourg, 
 all the swarms of people seemed to astonish 
 him very much, and the startled glances he 
 threw right and left showed his surprise, as 
 though he fancied himself in an unknown 
 country. 
 
 And yet V'^icomte, you have travelled over 
 these long streets leading to Vincennes often 
 enough, on fine spring and autumn Sundays, 
 when you were returning from the races, 
 with a green card stuck in your hat, and a 
 leather bag slung over your shoulder, cracking 
 your whip in delicate and masterly style. But 
 then you were perched up so high in your 
 phaeton, you were surrounded with such a 
 mass of flowers, ribbons, ringlets, and gnuze 
 veils, the wheels that almost touched your 
 own, enveloped you in such a luminous and 
 aristocratic dust, that you never saw the dark 
 windows opening at your approach, nor the 
 workmen's homes, where, at that very hour, 
 they were silting down to iliiuicr ; ami 
 when you had passed by, when all that long 
 train of luxurious existence, the bright silks
 
 94 Recolleciio7is of a Literary Mafi. 
 
 and startling golden locks of the women, all 
 had disappeared towards Paris, bearing away 
 with it its gilded atmosphere, you did not 
 know how much more gloomy the Faubourg 
 became, how much more bitter seemed the 
 bread, how much heavier the tool appeared, 
 nor what you left there of accumulated 
 hatred and anger. A volley of oaths and 
 cracks of the whip cut short my soliloquy. 
 We had reached the Porte de Vincennes. 
 The drawbridge had been lowered, and in 
 the twilight, in the downpour of rain, in the 
 midst of the obstruction caused by the 
 crowding carts, the national guards examin- 
 ing the permits, I perceived the poor Vicomte 
 struggling with his three large horses, which 
 he was trying to turn round. The unfortu- 
 nate fellow had lost his place. He swore, 
 tugged at the rein ; large drops of sweat 
 rolled down his face. I can assure you 
 his languid look had vanished. Already 
 the communeux were beginning to notice 
 him. A circle was formed round him, 
 laughing at him ; his position became dan- 
 gerous. Luckily the head carter came to his 
 assistance, tore the bridle from his hands 
 with a rough push, then, with a lash of his
 
 Afi Escape. 
 
 95 
 
 large whip, started the team, which rushed 
 over the bridge at a galop, with the Vicomte 
 running and splashing behind. The gate 
 passed, he resumed his place, and the long 
 
 file was lost in the waste land outside the 
 fortifications. 
 
 It was, indeed, a piteous egress. I watched 
 it from the top of an embankment, the fields 
 full of rubbish in which the wheels stuck ; 
 the scarce and muddy grass, the men bending 
 low under the downpour, the long line of 
 tumbrels rolling heavily, like hearses. It
 
 96 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 might have been some shameful burial, as 
 it were all the Paris of the Bas Empire 
 disappearing, drowned in the mud of its own 
 creation. 

 
 '^^^^^^(Mi 
 
 i'%r 
 
 TlIK SUMMER PALACES. 
 
 W'rillfn during the Communr. 
 
 Whkn, after the taking of Pckln and the 
 pillage of the Summer Palace by the French 
 troops, General Cousin-iMontauban came to 
 I'aris to be christened Comte de Palikao. he 
 distributed among Parisian society, by way 
 of the usual christening presents, the mar- 
 vellous treasures of jade and of red lacquer 
 with which his vans were loaded, and for 
 a whole season there was a grand cxhibi-
 
 98 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 tion of Chinese curiosities, both at the 
 Tuileries and in some privileged drawing- 
 rooms. 
 
 People went there, as they would go to the 
 sale of some cocotte s possessions, or to a 
 conference of the Abb^ Bauer. I can still 
 see, in the faint light of the half-farsaken 
 rooms in which all this magnificence was 
 displayed, the little Frou-Frous with their 
 massive coils of hair, crowding around, 
 bustling among the blue silk strips em- 
 broidered with silver flowers ; the gauze 
 lanterns decorated with enamelled tassels 
 and bells ; the transparent tortoiseshell fold- 
 ing screens ; the large canvas screens covered 
 with painted mottoes ; in fact, all the ac- 
 cumulation of precious knick-knacks, so 
 thoroughly suited to the motionless existence 
 of women with tiny feet. The visitors sat 
 down in porcelain armchairs, ransacked the 
 lacquer-boxes, the gold inlaid work-tables ; 
 tried on by way of amusement the while silk 
 China crapes and the Tartar pearl neck- 
 laces ; amid the sound of little screams of 
 delight and suppressed titters, the noise of 
 bamboo partitions knocked over by the 
 trains of dresses ; and from all lips the
 
 The Summer Palaces. 
 
 99 
 
 mas:ic words " Summer Palace" ran through 
 the rooms like the flutter of a fan, op)en- 
 ing to the imagination I know not what 
 fairy-like avenues of white ivory and flowery 
 jasper. 
 
 This year, society at Berlin, Munich, and 
 Stuttgard has also had its exhibitions in the 
 same style. For several months past, the 
 stout ladies beyond the Rhine have been 
 uttering " Mein Gott's," full of admiration at 
 the sight of the services of Sevres, the Louis 
 XVI. clocks, the white and gold drawing- 
 rooms, the Chantilly lace, the orange and 
 myrtle boxes, and chests of silver, that the 
 numberless Palikaos of King William's army 
 have culled round about Paris, in the pillage 
 of our summer palaces. 
 
 For they have not been satisfied with 
 pillaging one palace. Saint-Cloud, Meudon — 
 those gardens of the Celestial Empire — have 
 not sufficed them. Our conquerors have 
 penetrated everywhere ; they have swept off 
 everything, ransacked far and near, from the 
 great historical chateaux, which keep treasured 
 up in the freshness of their green lawns and 
 their ancestral trees, a tiny corner of France, 
 down to the most humble of our little white
 
 loo Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 houses ; and now, all alona: the Seine, from 
 one bank to ihe other, our summer palaces 
 stand wide open, roofless and windowless, 
 showing their bare walls and their denuded 
 terraces. 
 
 It is especially towards Montgeron, Draveil 
 and Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, that the devas- 
 tation has been most terrible. His Royal 
 Highness the Prince of Saxony toiled there 
 day and night with his crew, and it appears 
 thai his Highness does things thoroughly. 
 In the German army now, he is never called 
 anything but " the thief." On the whole, the 
 Prince of Saxony appears to me to be a mag- 
 nate devoid of illusions, — a practical mind 
 who, fully realizing that some day or another 
 the Berlin ogre would make but a mouthful 
 of all the little Tom Thumbs of Southern 
 Germany, took his precautions in con- 
 sequence. At present, happen what may, 
 my lord is secure from starvation. The 
 day his wages are stopped, he will be able, at 
 his choice, to open a French bookstall at the 
 Leipsic fair, or be a clock-seller at Nurem- 
 berg, or a pianoforte agent at Munich, or even 
 a dealer in second-hand goods at Ffankfort- 
 on-lhe-Main. Our summer palaces have
 
 The Suiiimer Palaces. loi 
 
 furnished him with all these facilities, and 
 that is no doubt why he conducted the 
 pillage with so much animation. I can, 
 however, less easily understand the fury with 
 which his Highness depopulated our pheasant 
 covers and warrens, and why he was so bent 
 upon leaving neither feather nor fur in our 
 woods. 
 
 Alas, for the poor forest of Senart, so 
 peaceful, so well kept, so proud of its little 
 ponds full of gold-fish, and of its green- 
 coated keepers ! How thoroughly all those 
 deer, all those pheasants belonging to the 
 Crown, felt it was their home ! What an 
 excellent fat prelate's life they led ! How 
 safe they were ! Sometimes, in the silence 
 of a summer's afternoon, you heard a rustle 
 in the heather, and a whole battalion of 
 young pheasants ran out between your legs ; 
 while over there, at the end of a shady avenue, 
 two or three deer wandered peacefully to and 
 fro, like monks in a convent-garden. Was 
 it possible to fire off a gun at such innocent 
 creatures ! 
 
 Indeed, the poachers themselves felt some 
 scruples; and on the opening day, when M. 
 Rouher or the Marquis de la Valette arrived
 
 I02 Recollections of a Literary Man 
 
 with their guests, the head keeper — I was 
 going to say, the stage-manager — chose 
 beforehand a few hen pheasants too old to 
 breed, and a few chevroned old hares, who 
 were directed to await the arrival of the 
 gentlemen, at the cross roads of the Great- 
 Oak, and who fell gracefully to their guns, 
 crying out : " Long live the Emperor ! " 
 And that was all the game killed in the 
 year. 
 
 You may therefore imagine the stupefac- 
 tion of the unhappy animals, when two or 
 three hundred beaters in greasy caps, came 
 one morning, and threw themselves on their 
 pink heather coverts, disturbing the coveys, 
 tearing down the fences, calling out to each 
 other from one glade to another in a bar- 
 barous language, and when in the heart of 
 those mysterious coppices, where Madame 
 de Pompadour used to lie in wait for Louis 
 XV., the sabretaches and pointed helmets of 
 the Saxon staff were seen glistening ! In 
 vain did the deer try to escape ; in vain did 
 the bewildered rabbits raise their trembling 
 little paws, crying out : " Long live his Royal 
 Highness the Prince of Saxony ! " The hard- 
 hearted Saxon would not hearken to them,
 
 The Summer Pa/aces. 103 
 
 and for several successive days the massacre 
 continued. At the present time, all is finished, 
 the big and the little Si^nart are both empty. 
 The jays and the squirrels are all that are 
 left, the faithful vassals of King William not 
 daring to touch them ; for are not the jays 
 black and white like the Prussian colours, 
 and is not the squirrel's fur of that tawny 
 hue so dear to M. de Bismarck ? 
 
 I received these details from old La Lou6, 
 true type of the Seine-et-Oise keeper, with 
 his drawling accent, his knowing air, his 
 twinkling eves and earthv-coloured face. 
 The good man is so jealous of his functions 
 as a keeper, invokes so often and on every 
 occasion the five cabalistic letters glaring on 
 his brass badge, that the country folk have 
 nicknamed him old La Loi, or, as they pro- 
 nounce it in Seine-et-Oise, La Loud. When 
 in the month of September we came and 
 shut ourselves up in Paris, La Loue buried 
 his furniture and his clothes, sent his family 
 off to a distance, and remained to await the 
 arrival of the Prussians. 
 
 " I know my forest well," he said, flourish- 
 ing his carbine. " Let them, if they dare, 
 come and find me ! "
 
 I04 Recolledious of a Literary Alan. 
 
 Whereupon we separated. I was not with- 
 out some anxiety on his account. Often, 
 during that hard winter, had I pictured to 
 myself the poor man all alone in the forest, 
 obliged to feed upon roots, and having 
 nothing to keep out the cold but a linen 
 smock and his brass badge. The mere 
 thought made me shiver. 
 
 Yesterday morning, 1 saw him arrive 
 at my house, hale, hearty, and fat, with 
 a fine brand-new frock coat, and the famous 
 everlasting badge shining on his breast, 
 like a barber's basin. What had become 
 of him all that time } I dared not ques- 
 tion him ; but he did not seem to have 
 suffered. Excellent old La Loue ! He knew 
 his forest so thoroughly ! He may per- 
 haps have shown the Prince of Saxony 
 over it. 
 
 Maybe, this was an unjust thought of 
 mine ; but I know the peasants, and I know 
 what they are capable of. The courageous 
 painter Eugene Leroux — wounded in one of 
 our first sorties, and nursed for awhile by 
 some vine-growers in the Beauce country — 
 related to us the other day a phrase that 
 thoroughly depicts the whole race. The
 
 The Summer Palaces. 
 
 '05 
 
 people ai whose house ho lodged, could not 
 
 ^^' 
 
 V 
 
 understand why he lia<l fouujht, withoui being 
 
 obliged 10 do so. 
 
 H
 
 io6 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 " You are, then, an old soldier ? " they 
 constantly asked him. 
 
 " Nothing of the kind. I paint pictures, 
 and have never done anything else." 
 
 " Well, then ! When they came to make 
 you sign the paper to go and fight — ? " 
 
 "But they never made me sign anything 
 at all." 
 
 " Well but, when you went off to fight, it 
 was" — and here they would look at each 
 other and wink — " it was because you had 
 had a drop too much ! " 
 
 Such are the French peasants ; those 
 around Paris are even worse. There were 
 a few good fellows in the suburban dis- 
 tricts, who came behind the ramparts and 
 shared our dog-biscuits ; but as for the 
 others, I mistrust them. They remained at 
 home to show the Prussians our cellars, and 
 to complete the pillage of our poor Summer 
 Palaces. 
 
 My palace was so modest, so well hidden 
 away amongst acacia trees, that it may have 
 escaped disaster. But I shall only go and 
 assure myself of the fact when the Prussians, 
 are gone, and even then, not till long 
 afterwards. I want to leave the landscape
 
 The Summer Palaces. 107 
 
 time to clear. When I think of all our 
 pretty nooks, the little islets of reeds and 
 slender willows where we so often went in 
 the evenings and stretched ourselves out by 
 the water's side, to listen to the sound of the 
 tree frogs ; the pathways full of moss, where, 
 as we strolled, thought was scattered along 
 every hedge, and captured by every passing 
 branch ; the wide grass glades, where we 
 slept so comfortably at the foot of the 
 oak trees, with a buzzing of bees above, 
 making over us a dome of music ; when I 
 think that all this has been theirs, that 
 they have sat down everywhere ; then, this 
 beautiful country seems to me worse than 
 faded, worse than sad. This profanation 
 alarms me more than the pillage. I fear lest 
 I may no longer care for my nest. 
 
 Ah ! if the Parisians, at the moment of the 
 siege, had been able to carry back into the 
 city the lovely country around it ; if we could 
 have rolled the lawns, the green roads, all 
 purpled with setting suns, borne away the 
 ponds all glistening underneath the network 
 of the forest like hand-mirrors ; wound up 
 our little rivers on a bobbin like silver threads, 
 and shut the whole up in a cupboard ; what 
 
 II 2
 
 io8 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 a joy it would now have been for us, to put 
 back the lawns and coppices in their place, 
 to re-make an He - de - France, that the 
 Prussians should never have beheld 1
 
 -i^i^.-<^' 
 
 
 
 THE WRECK. 
 
 Champrosav, .l/rtyas, i^?'- 
 
 Et voici le jardin charmanl, 
 Parfumd de myrte et de rose. • 
 
 Alas ! this year the garden is still full of 
 roses, but the house is also full of Prussians. 
 I have carried my table to the further end of 
 the garden, and there I write, unrler the deli- 
 
 • And litTi- is till.- i)cauiiful i;nrilfn. 
 All sccnlrd with myrtle and roses.
 
 no Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 cate and scented shade of a large bush of 
 Spanish broom full of the buzzing of bees, 
 which prevents my seeing the Pomeranian 
 knitted jerseys hanging out to dry on my 
 poor grey shutters. 
 
 And yet I had sworn I would not return 
 here till long after they had left; it was, how- 
 ever, absolutely necessary in order to avoid 
 Cluseret's horrible conscription, and I had 
 no other asylum. And thus, I have not 
 been spared,- any more than so many other 
 Parisians, one of the miseries of these sad 
 times: the anguish of the siege, the civil war, 
 the emigration, and, to complete our wretched- 
 ness, the foreign occupation. However philo- 
 sophic, however much above and beyond 
 every-day affairs, the impression is singular, 
 when, after six hours trampling along the 
 magnificent roads of France, all white with 
 the dust of the Prussian battalions, you find 
 on reaching your door, a German sign-board 
 hanging under the falling clusters of laburnum 
 and acacia, with the following inscription in 
 Gothic letters : — 
 
 5TH COMPANY. 
 BOEHM, 
 
 Sergeant- Major, 
 and three men.
 
 The Wreck. m 
 
 This M. Boehm is a tall, queer, silent 
 fellow, who keeps the shutters of his room 
 always closed, and sleeps and eats without 
 light. Withal, rather too free and easy man- 
 ners, a cigar ever in his mouth, and most 
 exacting ! His lordship requires a room for 
 himself, a room for his secretary, and one 
 for his servant. You are forbidden to go 
 in by this door, to leave by that other. Did 
 he not want to prevent our going into the 
 garden? At last the mayor came, and 
 the Captain and we were once more at 
 home. It is not cheerful at home this year. 
 No matter how you look at it, this proximity 
 disturbs and galls. Their hideous jargon 
 heard all around you, and in your very 
 home, mingles with all you eat, withers 
 the trees, throws a mist over the leaves of 
 your book, dims your sight, and brings tears 
 to your eyes. Even the child, without un- 
 derstanding the wherefore, is under the in- 
 fluence of this strange oppression. He plays 
 quietly in a corner of the garden, checks his 
 childish laughter, hums in an undertone ; 
 and in the morning, instead of his joyous 
 awakenings, full of delight and life, he lies 
 quite still with his eyes wide open behind
 
 112 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 the curtains, and from time to time asks in a 
 low voice : 
 
 " May I awake now ? " 
 
 Would it were only the sadness of the 
 foreign occupation that spoilt our springtide ; 
 but the hardest and most cruel thing, is to 
 hear the constant roll of the cannon and 
 mitrailleuse, which reaches our ears, when the 
 wind blows from Paris, shaking the horizon, 
 pitilessly tearing the rosy haze of the morn- 
 ings, and filling with a sound of thunder those 
 lovely clear nights of the month of May, those 
 nights full of the song of the nightingales and 
 the chirp of the crickets. 
 
 Last night was terrible. Loud reports 
 followed one another rapidly, furiously, de- 
 sperately, accompanied by perpetual flashes 
 like lightning. I had opened my window 
 looking towards the Seine, and I listened — 
 with beating heart — to the dull sounds that 
 reached me, borne by the deserted waters 
 through the silence. At times, it seemed to 
 me as though over there, in the distant 
 horizon, some large vessel in distress were 
 wildly firing off its alarm guns, and I re- 
 membered how ten years ago, on a night 
 such as this, I was on the terrace of an hotel
 
 The Wreck. 
 
 '1,^ 
 
 at Bastia, listening to an ominous boom, sent 
 to us by the raging sea, like a despairing cry 
 of agony antl fury. It lasted all through the 
 night, and in the morning they found on the 
 beach, amid a confusion of broken masts and 
 
 torn sails, shoes with bright-coloured bows, a 
 harlequins wand, and a heap of tatters and 
 ribbons spangled with gold, drenched bysea- 
 waier.and daubed with blood and mud. This 
 was, as I heard later on, all that remained of the 
 wreck of the Louise, a large steamer coming 
 from Foghorn to Basiia with a company of 
 Italian mummers on board. 
 
 To anyone who can realise how dreadful
 
 1 1 4 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 is a night's battling with the sea, the groping 
 and sterile struggle against an irresistible force ; 
 
 to anyone who can picture to himself the last 
 moments of a ship, the rising abyss, the slow 
 and inglorious death, the watery grave ; to 
 anyone who knows the rage, the mad hope
 
 The Wreck 
 
 115 
 
 followed by a brutish prostration, the drunken 
 agony and delirium, blind hands beating the 
 air. clenched fingers clutching the empty 
 
 space , that harlequins wand lying in the 
 midst of bloodstained wreckage would have 
 presented a burlesque and terrifying object. 
 Imagination would conjure up a tempest
 
 1 1 6 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 falling like a clap of thunder during a repre- 
 sentation on board, the audience invaded by 
 the sea, the orchestra drowned, desks, violins, 
 violencellos, rolling pell-mell, the Columbine 
 wringing her bare arms, running from one 
 end of the scene to the other, half dead with 
 fright and still pink under her paint; the 
 Clown, even in his terror, not more ghastly 
 than before, climbing up side scenes, watch- 
 ing the rising waters, and already in his great 
 eyes, grotesquely circled for the farce, the 
 terrible horror of death ; Isabella, hampered 
 with her gala attire, crowned with flowers, 
 and dissolved in tears, ridiculous in her very 
 gracefulness, rolling about on the deck like a 
 bundle, clinging to each bench, and lisping 
 childish prayers ; Scaramouche. a barrel of 
 brandy between his legs, laughing with an 
 idiotic laugh, and singing at the top of his 
 voice ; while Harlequin, seized with madness, 
 solemnly continues the play, jumps about and 
 switches his white wand ; and old Pantaloon, 
 carried off by a wave, floats away on the 
 billows, with his brown velvet coat and his 
 toothless mouth wide open. 
 
 Well, this wreck of mountebanks, this 
 funereal masquerade, this farce in extremis.
 
 The Wreck. 
 
 I t 
 
 all these convulsions, all these grimaces, rose 
 up again before me at each shock of last 
 night's cannonade. I felt that the Commune, 
 on the eve of foundering, was firing off its 
 alarm guns. At each instant I saw the tide 
 
 -^ *-^i*r- 
 
 rising, the breach widening, and all the while 
 the men of the Hotel de X'ille clinging to 
 their stage, continuing to issue decree after 
 decree, amidst the turmoil of wind and 
 storm ; till at last, one big wave swept over 
 them, and the great vessel was swallowed up 
 With its red flags, its golden scarfs, its dele- 
 gates dressed up as judges or generals, its 
 battalions of gaitered and plumed amazons, 
 its circus-like soMicrs, decked out with
 
 T 1 8 Recollectmis of a Literary Man. 
 
 Spanish caps and Garibaldian hats ; its 
 Polish lancers, its fantastic Turcos, drunken 
 and furious, singing and whirling. All this 
 confused mass was vanishing helter skelter, 
 and of all the noise, folly, crime, pasquinade, 
 sometimes even heroism, nothing would be 
 left, but a red sash, a military cap with eight 
 galoons, and a braided frock-coat, found one 
 morning on the bank of the river, all be- 
 smeared with dirt and blood.
 
 THE STORY OF MY BOOKS. 
 
 LES ROIS EN EXIL. 
 (monarchs in exile.) 
 
 Of all my books this is undoubtedly the 
 one which cost me the greatest trouble to 
 put into living form ; the one that germin- 
 ated longest within me, nurseil in my brain, 
 a mere title-page and vague outline, as 
 when crossing the Place du Carrousel one 
 October evening, it first flashed uj)on me 
 like an apparition, in that tragic rent of the
 
 I 20 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 Parisian sky caused by the downfall of the 
 Tuileries. 
 
 Deposed princes taking refuge in Paris 
 after their fall, lodging in the Rue de Rivoli, 
 and in the morning sun with the shutters 
 thrown back upon the hotel balcony, dis- 
 covering these ruins, such was my first revela- 
 tion of the ^' Rois en Exil." Less a romance 
 than an historical study, since romance is the 
 history of men, and history the romance of 
 kings. Not the historical study as generally un- 
 derstood amongst us, a dull, dusty, twaddling 
 compilation, one of those ponderous volumes 
 so dear to the Institute, crowned by it, — 
 unopened, — each year, and on which might 
 well be written : ^'/or exter?ial use only" as 
 on the blue lotion bottles of the chemist ; 
 but a work of history in its most modern 
 sense, living, penetrating, full of the most 
 scorching and arduously won proofs, torn 
 from the very entrails of existence, instead 
 of being dug out from the dust of mouldy 
 archives. 
 
 In my eyes, herein lay the difficulty of the 
 work : in the hunt for models, for truthful 
 information, in the weariness of the inquiries, 
 necessitated by the novelty of a subject so
 
 Monarchs in Exile. i 2 1 
 
 far removed from my own existence, from 
 my surroundings, from my own habits of 
 life and of mind. As a young man, I had 
 often brushed against the ghastly black 
 peruke of the Duke of Brunswick, haunting 
 the narrow corridors of the night restaurants, 
 in the hot breath of the gas, of patchouli, 
 and of spices ; at Bignon's I had a vision 
 one evening, of Citron-the-Taciturn, on the 
 divan at the back, eating a slice of foie 
 gras, opposite to some woman of the streets ; 
 and again, one Sunday, at the doors of the 
 Conservatoire, of the proud and haughty 
 stature of the King of Hanover, as he emerged 
 blind and feeling his way among the columns 
 of the peristyle, on the arm of that touching 
 figure, the Princess Fredcrica, who warned 
 him when a salutation should be returned. 
 Nothing, in short, but what was vague and 
 shadowy : no precise notions, upon the home 
 life of these refugee princes, upon the manner 
 in which they bore their disgrace, upon the im- 
 pression produced on them l)y their exile, by 
 the atmosphere of Paris, or how much gilding 
 yet clung to their court robes, and how much 
 ceremonial remained in their chance lodgings. 
 To know all this, I needed a great deal of
 
 122 Recollections of a Lite?ary Man. 
 
 time and journeys without number ; 1 had to 
 make available all the relations of an old 
 Parisian, from the top to the bottom of the 
 social scale, from the upholsterer who fur- 
 nished the royal hotel in the Rue dePresbourg, 
 to the noble diplomatist, invited as witness to 
 the abdication of Queen Isabella, — seize on 
 the wing the confidences of society, turn over 
 the police reports, and the estimates of trades- 
 men ; then, when I had got to the bottom 
 of all these kingly existences, noted therein 
 proud poverty, heroic devotion, side by side 
 with unreasoning fancies, moral decrepitude, 
 honour and conscience alike giving way, I 
 put my inquiry aside, and only retained oi 
 it a few typical details taken here and there, 
 traits of manners, of the general setting and 
 atmosphere in which my drama ought to 
 move. 
 
 Nevertheless, prompted by a weakness 
 which I have already owned to, the need of 
 reality which oppresses me, and which always 
 obliges me to leave some stamp of actual life 
 upon even the most carefully idealized of my 
 productions, 1 transported my royal house- 
 hold from the Rue de la Pompe, where I 
 had first installed it in the little hotel of the
 
 Monarchs in Exile. 
 
 Due de Madrid (with whom Christian of 
 Illyria had more than one point of resem- 
 blance), to the Rue Herhillon, not two steps 
 from the great suburb and its fairs, where I 
 intended Mdraut to exhibit the people to 
 Frederica, and to teach her no longer to fear 
 them. As the King and Queen of Naples 
 lived for a long time in the Rue Herhillon, 
 it has been said that it was my intention to 
 depict them ; but 1 declare it was nothing of 
 the kind, and that I merely paraded a royal 
 couple of the purest invention, in an authentic 
 setting drawn from reality. 
 
 Mdraut, however, is taken from the life ; 
 he is real, at any rate half of him, anil the 
 manner in which I was led to put him in my 
 book, is worthy of being recorded. Quite 
 determined not to write a mere pamphlet, 
 in which one of my puppets should plead 
 the cause of legitimacy and divine right, I 
 was trying to get up an enthusiasm for it, to 
 recall to life the convictions of my extreme 
 youth, by a stuily of Bonald, Joseph de 
 Maistre, Blanc Saint-Bonnet, those, in short, 
 whom .\urevilly calls " the pro[)hets of the 
 past." One day, in an old copy of the 
 " Restanration fran^aise " bought upon the 
 
 I 2
 
 124 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 ■\ rt/-vrN>" 
 
 quays, at the foot of an author's presentation 
 letter, placed between two pages, I found this 
 postcript, which I copy word for word : " if 
 
 you have any occasion for the services of a 
 young man, eloquent and well informed, 
 apply, mentioning my name, to M. Th^rion, 
 1 8 Rue de Tournon, hotel du Luxembourg." 
 Immediately there recurred to my memory 
 this great fellow with flashing black eyes,
 
 Monarchs in Exile. 125 
 
 whom I had met soon after my arrival in 
 Paris, always a pile of books under his arm, 
 emerginjT from some reading-room, or study- 
 ing the old bookstalls in from of the Odeon, — 
 a long, lanky, shock headed devil, for ever 
 settling his spectacles, with a never-varying 
 gesture recurrent as a tick, upon a flat, open, 
 sensual nose, — a nose in love with life. 
 Eloquent and learned, indeed, and Bohemian 
 too 1 Every shop of brandy-cherries in the 
 Quartier must have heard him proclaim his 
 faith in monarchy, and with sweeping ges- 
 tures, a persuasive and sympathetic voice, 
 hold his audience spellbound beneath the veil 
 of smoke from their pipes. Ah ! if I had only 
 had him there, living, what a mainspring he 
 would have been for my book ! He would 
 have breathed into it his fire, his vigorous 
 loyalty; what information he could have given 
 me about his stay at the Austrian Court, 
 whither he went to educate the little princes, 
 and from whence he returned, disillusioned, 
 and his dreams for ever shaken ! But he 
 had disappeared years ago, poor Constant 
 Th<!irion, having died from want ; and un- 
 happily I had met him, rather than known 
 him ; a mist yet floated before my vision in those
 
 126 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 days ; I was too young, more occupied with 
 living than with observing. Then, to supply 
 the detail about him which was lacking, the 
 idea occurred to me, to make him of my own 
 country, of Nimes, of that industrious little 
 borough whence came all my father's work- 
 men; to put into his room that red seal, 
 Fides, Spes, which I used to see in my parents' 
 house, in the dining-room where " Long live 
 Henry IV ! " was the toast sung at dessert, 
 on all our family festivities ; to surround him 
 with those royalist traditions amid which I 
 grew up, and which I kept intact till I reached 
 the age when the mind opens and thought 
 frees itself. Thus mixing in it my beloved 
 South, and my childhood's recollections, I 
 seemed to bring the book nearer to myself. 
 Meraut once found, or Therion if you like it 
 better, what could bring him into a royal 
 household .? The education of a prince .? 
 hence Zara. And just at the same moment, 
 an accident which happened in a friend's 
 house, a child struck in the eye by the ball 
 from a toy carbine, gave me the idea of the 
 poor king-maker himself destroying his own 
 work. 
 
 The visions of sleep are modified by the
 
 Monarchy in Exile. i 2 7 
 
 realities of life. At a time when I dreamt -x 
 great deal, I had the habit of writing down 
 my dreams in the morning, accompanied 
 by explanatory notes: "Did so and so 
 yesterday ; said this ; met such a one." 
 Well ! I might write notes of a similar kind 
 on the margins of " Rois en Exil." At the 
 end of the chapter about the gingerbread 
 fair, where iMeraut carries the little frightened 
 King on his shoulders, I should write : 
 " Yesterday, visited Rue Herbillon. — Walked 
 in the Saint-Mand^ woods with one of my 
 children. — Easter Sunday. — Noises from the 
 fair. — We became entangled in the surging, 
 moving crowd. — The child was alarmed. — I 
 took him on my back to get away from the 
 fair." Elsewhere, at the end of the chapter 
 upon the heroic ball at the Hotel de Rosen, I 
 should note that one day in the exhibition of 
 '78, while I listened to the music of the 
 Zingari and drank Tokay, the vibrations of 
 the cymbals recalled to mind a Polish ball at 
 the Comtesse Chodsko's, a farewell dance 
 given in honour of those young fellows who 
 then and there bade goodbye, and departed, 
 some of them never to return again. Aiul 
 then, when a book is within one, when one
 
 128 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 thinks of nothing else, what pieces of luck, 
 what strange coincidences, what miraculous 
 encounters befall one ! I have mentioned 
 the little note of Blanc Saint-Bonnet. An- 
 other day it was the law-suit instituted by the 
 Due de Madrid against Boet, his aide-de- 
 camp, the pawned jewels, the order of the 
 Golden Fleece for sale ; then an auction at 
 Tattersall's, the gala carriages of the Duke of 
 Brunswick bought by the Hippodrome ; next 
 at the Salle Drouot, the sale of two jewelled 
 crowns belonging to Queen Isabella. And 
 it was on the day when I had gone to the 
 same Salle Drouot to attend this sale, that a 
 " masher," an idiot of the finest water, push- 
 ing his head between the shoulders of two 
 Auvergnats, called to me in the swaying 
 crowd : " Where is the lark to-night ? " — a 
 stupid catchword which I introduced to 
 notice, and which has had the success of all 
 such stupidities. Another time I saw, pass- 
 ing before \\\^ Librairie Nouvelle, the funeral 
 of the old King of Hanover, conducted by 
 the Prince of Wales. This funeral proces- 
 sion of a royal exile would have been a fine 
 page to write, but unfortunately I was 
 hampered by the burials in my preceding
 
 Mofiorchs in Exile. 
 
 I 29 
 
 books : Mora, D^sirde, and the little King 
 
 W-- 
 
 
 
 M^' 
 
 ^ \ 
 
 Madou-Ghezo. But all this helped to re- 
 assure me, and I felt that I was composing a
 
 130 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 book of my own times, and appearing at the 
 right moment. 
 
 1 wrote the '^ Rois' in the Place des 
 Vosges, in the depths of a great courtyard 
 where patches of green grass cut up into 
 squares the unequal pavement, in a little 
 pavilion invaded by the sheen of a virginian 
 creeper, a forgotten bit of the Hotel Riche- 
 lieu. Within were old Louis XIII. wood- 
 carvings, gilding faded almost beyond re- 
 cognition, a lofty ceiling some five yards 
 above one's head ; without, a balcony in 
 wrought ironwork eaten by rust at the base. 
 It was exactly the setting needed for this 
 melancholy story. In this vast study I 
 gathered afresh every morning the creatures 
 of my imagination, living as actual beings, in 
 groups around my table. The work was 
 absorbing and tyrannical. I had no other 
 outings than the daily walk, in the early 
 winter morning, to escort my boy to the 
 Lycee Charlemagne, through the muddy 
 back streets of that corner of the Marais, 
 Passage Eginhard, the Jews' quarter, in 
 which was the busy secondhand shop of old 
 Leemans, and where I was wont to encounter 
 the well-combed work-girls, hook-nosed de-
 
 Monarchs in Exile. i 3 1 
 
 scendanis of Sapphira, bustling and laughing 
 as they went Paris-wards. From time to time 
 there was a drive into town, in pursuit of 
 some information, in search of some house ; 
 Tom Lewis' den, or the convent of the 
 Franciscans, in the Rue des Fourneaux. 
 
 All at once, when in the ver}' heart of the 
 book, in the full effervescence of those cruel 
 hours which arc yet the best in life, there was 
 a sudden interruption, a failing of the over- 
 worked machine. This began while working, 
 by short dozes of a minute or so, the drowsi- 
 ness of a bird, a trembling of the writing, a 
 languor, invincible and troubling, interrupt- 
 ing the course of the page. It was necessary 
 to stop in the very middle of the task, to 
 allow the fatigue to pass off. I counted on 
 the kind care of the excellent Dr. Potain, 
 on the quiet of the country, to regain strength 
 and the elasticity of my over-strained nerves. 
 In fact, after a month of Chamjjrosay, of the 
 intoxication of scents and verdure in the 
 woods of S(^'nart, I was conscious of a well- 
 being and an expansion that were truly 
 extraordinary. Spring-time was awakening ; 
 and within me the sap of life was roused to 
 fermentation, and seething like that of sur-
 
 132 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 rounding nature, budding again with all the 
 tenderness of youth. Never can I forget 
 that avenue of the forest, where, under the 
 thick foliage of the nut-trees and of the ever- 
 green oaks, I wrote the balcony scene of my 
 book. Then suddenly, without pain, I was 
 seized by a violent spitting of blood. I was 
 alarmed, I thought it was the end, that I 
 must quit this life, leaving my task un- 
 finished ; and in a farewell, which seemed to 
 me the final one, I summoned up just suffi- 
 cient strength to say to my wife, the dear 
 companion of all my good and evil fortune : 
 " Finish my book." 
 
 Perfect immobility, a few days in bed, (cruel 
 indeed with all this confused murmur of my 
 book running ever in my head,) and the danger 
 was past. Everything has its uses. Tourgue- 
 neff, shortly before his death, having had to 
 undergo a painful operation, noted mentally 
 every shade of pain. He wished, he said, to 
 set it forth to us, at one of those dinners 
 which at that time we were wont to hold with 
 Goncourt and Zola, I, too, analysed my 
 sufferings, and made use of the sensations of 
 that moment of anguish for the death of 
 Elysee Meraut.
 
 Mojiarchs in Exile. 133 
 
 Gently, and little by little, I took up my 
 work again. I took it to the baths of AUe- 
 vard, whither I was sent. There, in one of 
 the inhalation-rooms, I used to meet a very 
 original old doctor, very learned, too, Dr. 
 Roberty, of Marseilles, who gave me the 
 idea of the type Bouchereau, and for the 
 episode which closes my book. For, sus- 
 tained by the brave woman who guided my 
 still hesitating pen, I arrived, notwithstanding 
 all drawbacks, at the end of my work. But 
 I felt that something was broken within me, 
 that henceforth I could not treat my body as 
 a mere rag, depriving it of movement and 
 fresh air, prolonging evening till morning, in 
 order to exalt it into the fever of glorious 
 literary finds. 
 
 The novel appeared in the Temps news- 
 paper, and then at the Librairie Dentu. Both 
 press and public, and even the Legitimist 
 journals, greeted it warmly. Armand de 
 Pontmartin said in the Gazette de France: 
 "I am ignorant whether Alphonse Daudet 
 has written his book under a republican 
 inspiration. What I do feel, however, what
 
 134 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 in brief expresses my impressions after 
 reading the book, is that in ' Rois en Exil ' 
 there is much that is fine, touching, pathetic, 
 and consoUng, and that what compensates 
 for the cruelty of it, what redeems this 
 romance from the trivial ugliness of realism, 
 is precisely the royalist sentiment. We are 
 shown the energetic resistance made by some 
 proud and lofty spirits to the general break- 
 up, wherein balls at Mabille, the side scenes 
 of the theatre, the Grand Club, the Grand 
 Seize,* have swallowed up the vanquished 
 royalties." 
 
 Amidst reviews that praised, came a hard 
 rap from Valles, who took the interior of 
 Tom Lewis for an invention like those of 
 Ponson du Terrail. This proved to me, what 
 I knew already, that the author of the "Rue" 
 knew nothing of Paris but the street, the 
 street of the suburb, the pavement and its 
 changing, swaying circulation of humanity ; 
 he had never entered the houses. Among 
 other reproaches, he accused me of having 
 betrayed and disfigured Thdrion. I have 
 already said that M^raut was not actually 
 Th^rion. 
 
 * The number of the Salon at the Caf^ Anglais, where 
 all the famous suppers took place.
 
 Monarch s in Exile. 135 
 
 In further proof, here are a few lines of a 
 letter I received with a portrait, immediately 
 after the publication of my book : — 
 
 " You must have had a great affection for 
 our dear Elysde, to give him the place of 
 honour in ' Rois en Exil! All who knew 
 him will never forget him. Thanks to you, 
 Elysee Meraut will live as long as ' Rois en 
 Exil! Your book will henceforward be for 
 me and mine a family relic and a friend." 
 
 The letter was from Thdrion's brother. 
 
 Then the commotion ceased. Paris passed 
 on to the reading of other works ; as for me, 
 I was satisfied with having written a book 
 that my father, ardent royalist tliat he was, 
 could have read without vexation, with having 
 proved that I could still find words to clothe 
 my thoughts, and that I was not completely 
 played out, as my enemies had fondly hoped. 
 
 Several dramatic authors, however, wished 
 to found a comedy upon my work ; I was 
 hesitating to give leave, when an Italian 
 wrote a drama upon it for a Roman theatre, 
 without consulting me at all. This attempt 
 decided me. But to whom should I give the 
 piece ? Gondinet was tempted by it, but 
 frightened by the politics. Coquclin, to whom
 
 136 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 I spoke of it, told me he had some one ready ; if 
 I would confide the matter to him, he would 
 let me know the name of my collaborator 
 later on. I have a great affection for 
 Coquelin ; I have confidence in him, and I 
 gave him my perm.ission. He read the piece 
 to me, act by act, as they were built up ; I 
 thought the work eloquent, the wording full 
 of fire and breath, the dialogue well arranged. 
 In the middle of the first act two words put 
 in the mouth of Elys^e Meraut, who says 
 that Hezeta had " finished printing," put me 
 on the track of the author. " It is someone 
 from Lemerre's." It is well known, in fact, 
 that the bookseller in the Passage Choiseul 
 puts the names of the printers at the end 
 of the fine poems he publishes. Thus it 
 was that I discovered my collaborator, Paul 
 Delair, a writer of great talent, a little con- 
 fused occasionally, but v;ith flashes of great- 
 ness — a true poet. 
 
 The play was to my liking, all but the last 
 act, which appeared to me rather severe. It 
 took place in the lodging-house, Rue Mon- 
 sieur-le-Prince, at the death-bed of Elys^e 
 Mdraut. At the end, the King Christian half- 
 opens the door, saying, " Does Mademoiselle
 
 Monarch s in Exile. 137 
 
 Clemence live here ? " In my little drawing- 
 room, Avenue de TObservatoire, when Coque- 
 lin read us Dolair's work, all present shared 
 my feeling. Gambetta was there that 
 evening, as well as Edmond de Goncourt, 
 Zola, Banville, Dr. Charcot, Ernest Daudet, 
 Edouard Drumont, and Henry Ceard. They 
 were unanimous, and it was decided that 
 the last act was too dangerous and must 
 be altered. Delair listened, changed the 
 entling, attenuated the situation ; but it was 
 labour lost, the play was condemned even 
 before it was acted. I felt convinced of it at 
 the general rehearsal. The piece was cer- 
 tainly well got up, the best actors of the 
 Vaudeville were its interpreters, the manager 
 had spared no trouble ; nevertheless, I never 
 saw a more hostile and critical house than 
 that of the first representation. The next 
 day, and all the succeeding days, it was 
 hissed and hooted ; vide the Gaulois of that 
 date. Every evening the clubs sent delegates 
 to make a disturbance. Whole scenes, in 
 themselves fine and truly dramatic, were 
 drowned in the tumult, without a word being 
 heard. Passages like that in which a Bour- 
 bon is mentioned as running after an omni- 
 
 K
 
 138 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 bus, were marked down beforehand. Ah ! 
 if they had only known from whom I had 
 this detail ! And the splendid entry of 
 Dieudonne, the drunkard in dress-coat, while 
 the heroic chorus of Pugno's march was 
 going on ! It became the fashion to go and 
 make a row, just as at the Salle Taitbout. 
 And then, under the fictitious indignation of 
 the swells, there reigned in reality a great 
 indifference throughout the house. The 
 Parisian public, less monarchical than myself, 
 remained profoundly uninterested in all these 
 royal misfortunes ; it was too far from their 
 habitual conventionalities, as far removed 
 from their pity as the sufferers from the 
 Chicago fire, or the inundated inhabitants of 
 the banks of the Mississippi. 
 
 Apart from a few independent writers, 
 such as Geffroy and Durranc, the critics 
 followed the public ; such is now their role, 
 and the play enjoyed a pretty general cutting 
 up. Although Paul Delair's name alone 
 appeared on the posters, it was I who for 
 several weeks became the butt of calumnies 
 and abuse of all kinds. In these cases I 
 treat such insults as they deserve. By the 
 multiplicity of newspapers, and the clamour
 
 Monarchs in Exile. 
 
 '39 
 
 of reporters, the voice of Paris had become 
 like a deafening mountain echo, increasing 
 tenfold the sound of conversation, reverbera- 
 
 ting indefinitely, and smothering by extension, 
 the correct note of praise or blame. How- 
 ever, 1 noted down one of these calumnies 
 which I wish to correct. It was said that 
 my book was written to flatter the govcrn- 
 
 K 2
 
 140 Recollections of a Literary Alan. 
 
 ment; that, begun in favour of royalty during 
 the "Sixteenth of May" it had veered round 
 after the fall of the Marshal, and turned 
 towards the triumphant Republic. Those 
 who said this, those who fancied that the 
 broad lines of a work, once laid down, can 
 thus by mere caprice or even from interested 
 motives be diverted to the right or to the 
 left, have never written a book ; but they 
 should at least have reflected, and sought 
 what object I could have in view to do what 
 they accused me of. I want nothing, nor 
 do I require any one ; I live at home, I ask 
 neither for place nor rank, nor preferment of 
 any kind. Where then is the motive } 
 
 As for the reproach flung at me, of having 
 written a pamphlet with a foregone and set 
 purpose, that is not true either. The book 
 and the play do not come up to the reality. 
 I have given a fine part to royalty ; if the part 
 is not finer, whose fault is it ? Monarchy 
 sat for me ; according to my custom, I 
 copied from nature. Moreover, I was not 
 the first who had remarked the weakening 
 effect of exile on royal minds. In the ad- 
 mirable " M^moires d'Outre-tombe," which 
 lay on my table all the time I was working.
 
 Monarchi in Exile. 141 
 
 Chateaubriand relates infinitely more cruelly 
 than I do, the silliness and infatuation of 
 the court of Charles X. when in England. 
 
 " From her sofa, Madame watched through 
 the window all that went on outside, and 
 named the gentlemen and ladies walking 
 past. A pair of little horses with two jockeys 
 dressed Scotch fashion came by. Madame 
 put down her work, looked at them for some 
 moments, and said : 'It is madame (I 
 forget the name) going on the mountains 
 with her children.' Marie Thcrese, full of 
 curiosity, knowing the habits of the neighbour- 
 hood, the princess of thrones and scaffolds 
 falling from these heights to the level of 
 ordinary women, interested me greatly. I 
 observed her with a kind of philosophical 
 compassion.' 
 
 And a few pages further — 
 
 ■' I went to pay my respects to the Dauphin ; 
 our conversation was brief : 
 
 "'How does Monseigneur feel at But- 
 scherad } ' 
 
 '"Getting old.' 
 
 " 'That is like everyone else, Monscigneur.' 
 
 " ' How is your wife ? ' 
 
 " ' Monseignenr, she has a toothache.'
 
 142 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 " * Inflammation ? ' 
 
 " ' No, Monseigneur, weather.' 
 
 " * You dine with the King ? We shall meet 
 again.' 
 
 " And I left him." 
 
 And what a condemnation was M. Four- 
 neron's book : " Histoire des Emigres pendant 
 la Revolution francaise I " The attitude of 
 the Comted'Artois and the Comte de Provence 
 in their exile, while their brother, a prisoner 
 in the Temple, was sent to the scaffold ; the 
 rivalry of their mistresses, Madame de 
 Polastron and Madame de Balbi! 
 
 My representation of the landing at Gravosa 
 appeared incredible, monstrous, a fanciful 
 invention. But read the history of Quiberon, 
 the adventures of those unfortunate Vendean 
 soldiers, to whom it had been promised that 
 a Prince of royal blood should march at 
 their head, awaiting, expecting the Comte 
 d'Artois, who remained standing out to sea, 
 not daring to land, and who wrote to d'Har- 
 court: "I can see nothing but Republican 
 troops on the coasts." Those who made 
 him see in this fashion, Baron de Roll and 
 his friends, invented every day fresh pretexts 
 to avoid disembarking. In vain did the
 
 Monarchs in Exile. i J3 
 
 heroic Riviere, the Comies d'Autichamp, de 
 Vauban, and de la Bdraudiere insist : " I do 
 not choose to carry on a guerilla warfare," 
 replies the Prince. And then the story of 
 Frottt5 and his mission, arriving in the midst 
 of the whist-parties at Holyrood. He came 
 to submit his plan of invasion. He was 
 received in the presence of Couzi^, of the 
 Bishop of Arras, of Baron de Roll, of the 
 Comtes de Vaudreuil and de Puys^gur, and 
 the financier du Theil. 
 
 "Allow me," said Roll, with his German 
 accent ; " I am captain of the Guards, and 
 therefore responsible to the King for the safety 
 of Monsieur. Is there suflUcient guarantee 
 for Monsieur to run the risk .-' " " No, cer- 
 tainly not ! " " Therefore," interrupted the 
 Prince, " you yourself, M. de Frott^, recog- 
 nise that the plan is impracticable." 
 
 Frott^ went out, and returned alone to the 
 gentry in Normandy, bearing with him one 
 of those letters full of pompous phraseology, 
 of which the Comte d'Artois was so lavish : 
 " I charge Comte Louis de Frottc to express 
 to you all the sentiments with which my heart 
 is overflowing. Providence, do not doubt 
 it, will second your generous constancy.
 
 144 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 Awaiting that much-longed for moment, when 
 I shall be able to speak to you viva voce, 1 
 
 remain, gentlemen, " 
 
 This book is written by a royalist, who 
 cannot sufficiently express his hatred against 
 the Convention. Is there, in the whole of 
 the " Rois en Exil" a single page as severe 
 as this ?
 
 V ,^ , < 
 
 A READING 
 AT EDMOND DE GONCOURT'S.* 
 
 EnMOND DE GoNCOURT invited this morning 
 to Auteuil a few intimate friends, in order to 
 read to them before breakfast his new novel. 
 In the study, odorous with the enchanting 
 smell of old books, and lighted up from top 
 to bottom by the burnished gilding on the 
 bindings, I perceive on opening the door the 
 
 • Written for the St. I'eterstiurg ' ' Nouvciu Tenip<; " 
 1111877.
 
 146 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 robust figure of Emile Zola, Ivan Tour- 
 gueneff, colossal like a Scandinavian god, 
 and the delicate black moustache appearing 
 below the thrown-back hair of that excellent 
 editor, Charpentier. Flaubert is missing ; he 
 broke his leg the other day, and at the pre- 
 sent moment, confined to a couch, he makes 
 all Normandy resound with his formidable 
 Carthaginian oaths. 
 
 Edmond de Goncourt, the master of the 
 house, looks about fifty years of age. He is 
 a Parisian, but a native of Lorraine, — Lorrainer 
 by his good looks, Parisian by his wit. His 
 hair is grey, the grey that has been fair ; he 
 looks aristocratic and good-natured, with a 
 straight and tall figure, the pointer-like nose 
 of a country gentleman, and in the pale and 
 energetic face lurks a smile which is always a 
 little sad, a glance which at times lights up as 
 sharp as an engraver's needle. What power of 
 will in that glance, what sorrow in that smile ! 
 And while we laugh and talk, while Goncourt 
 opens his drawers and arranges his papers, 
 interrupting his task to show a curious pam- 
 phlet, a knick-knack brought from afar, while 
 each one of us sits down and settles himself, I 
 am seized with emotion at the sight of the
 
 /I Reading. 147 
 
 working-table, long and wide, the brotherly 
 table, made for two, where death also came 
 one day and seated himself as a third, 
 carrying off the younger of the brothers, and 
 brutally cutting short this unique collabora- 
 tion. 
 
 The survivor retains for his dead brother 
 a feeling of extraordinary tenderness. Not- 
 withstanding his natural reserve, which is 
 augmented by a proud and watchful guarded- 
 ness, he expresses the most exquisite shades 
 of feeling when speaking of him, it is almost 
 feminine. You feel under it all a boundless 
 grief, something more than a mere friend- 
 ship. " He was our mother's favourite ! " he 
 sometiijies says, and that without regret, 
 without bitterness, finding just and natural 
 that so good a brother should have been the 
 favourite. 
 
 It is indeed true, that such a complete 
 community of existence had never been 
 witnessed till then. In the whirlwind of 
 modern habits, a brother, even before he 
 reaches twenty years of age, parts from his 
 brother. The one travels, the other marries; 
 the one is an artist, the other a soldier ; and 
 when, from time to lime, some chance
 
 148 Recollections of a Literary A fan. 
 
 meeting around the family hearth takes 
 place, they have almost to make an effort not 
 
 
 ■■> '-J'lr; 
 
 {.v^ 
 
 to meet as strangers. Even in a lifetime 
 spent side by side, what gulfs are there not
 
 A Reading. 
 
 149 
 
 created between two intelligences and two 
 hearts, by the diversity of their ambitions and 
 their dreams ! In vain did Pierre Corncille 
 
 ->-^M^^f- 
 
 live under the same roof as Tiiomas Cor- 
 neille ; the first-named wrote the Cid and 
 Cinna, while the second laboriously versified 
 the Comte d' Essex and Ariane, and their 
 literary fraternity was never carried further 
 than to pass some paltry rhymes, from one
 
 150 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 storey to another, through a hole cut in the 
 ceiling. 
 
 With regard to the Goncourts, however, 
 there was something more in question than 
 mere borrowed rhymes and phrases. Before 
 death parted them, their thoughts had ever 
 been one, and it would be impossible to find 
 twenty lines of prose that does not bear their 
 twofold brand, that is not signed with their 
 two names, inseparably united. A small 
 fortune, — about five or six hundred pounds 
 a-year for the two, — assured them leisure 
 and independence. With that, they had 
 organised a quiet kind of existence, made up 
 of literary pleasure and work. From time to 
 time, they made a great journey, in Gerard 
 de Nerval's style, through Paris, through 
 books, ever through the little by-ways, for 
 these delicate and refined tourists had a 
 sincere horror of all that resembles the 
 regular beaten track, with its monotonous 
 sameness, its sign-posts indicating the way, 
 its telegraphic lines and its rows on each 
 side of broken pebbles piled up in pyramids. 
 Thus used they to start off, arm in arm, 
 ransacking books and life, noting a detail of 
 custom, an unknown nook, a scarce pam-
 
 A Reading. i 5 1 
 
 phlet, and culling every new blossom, with 
 the same curious joy, whether it grew among 
 the ruins of history, or between the greasy 
 paving-stones of Paris faubourgs. Then, 
 once more returned home to the little house 
 at Autueil, like herbalists or naturalists, tired 
 and happy at the same time, they poured out 
 the double harvest on the large table ; obser- 
 vations, fresh images, smelling of nature and 
 greenery, metaphors vivid as flowers, dazzling 
 like exotic butterflies, and there was neither 
 rest nor quiet till all had been arranged and 
 classified. 
 
 Of the two heaps they made but one ; 
 each brother wrote his page, then the two 
 pages were compared, so as to complete 
 one by the other and mould them into one. 
 And by a unique phenomenon of assimi- 
 lation in work, and parallelism in thought, 
 the touching and charming surprise often 
 presented itself, that with the exception of 
 some detail forgotten by the one, or noted 
 by the other, the two pages, written apart 
 but lived together, closely resembled each 
 other. 
 
 How came it that side by side with many 
 too easily won successes, such a love of art,
 
 152 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 such assiduous labour, such precious gifts of 
 observation and descriptive power, could only 
 obtain for the Goncourt brothers a tardy and 
 grudging reward ? Looking only at appear- 
 ances, it seemed incomprehensible. But 
 stop ! these two Lorrainers, so eloquent, so 
 enamoured of aristocracy, had been in art 
 regular revolutionists; and the French public, 
 always solemnly prudish on some point, only 
 admits of political revolutions. By a pas- 
 sionate research through contemporary docu- 
 ments, by a curiosity for autographs and en- 
 gravings, the Goncourt brothers have in his- 
 tory properly so called, and in the history of 
 art, inaugurated a new method. If only 
 they had adopted some speciality — in France 
 any speciality is forgiven in the long run, — if 
 they had remained historians, perhaps, not- 
 withstanding their originality, they would 
 eventually have been accepted, perhaps we 
 should even have beheld this outrageous 
 pair seating themselves under the dusty 
 cupola of the Institute, by the side of the 
 Champagnys and the Noailles. But no ! 
 devoting to the novel the same solicitude for 
 exact information, the same scrupulous reality, 
 are they not, since it is the fashion to be
 
 A Reaifinc^. 153 
 
 leader of a school, ihe leaders of a young 
 school of novelists ? 
 
 Historians who write novels! This might 
 have been admitted, if after all they had been 
 historical romances, but novels such as had 
 never been seen before, novels that were 
 neither moulded upon Balzac, nor diluted 
 from George Sand, but novels made up of 
 pictures, — here we recognize our amateurs of 
 engravings ! — with plot scarcely intlicated, 
 and great blanks between the chapters, real 
 break-neck ditches for the imagination of 
 the bourgeois reader. To this add an 
 entirely new style, full of surprises, — a style 
 from which all conventionality is banished, 
 and which, by a studied originality of phrase 
 and image, forbids any commonplace in the 
 thought, and then the bewildering boldness, 
 the perpetual uncoupling of words accus- 
 tomed to march together, like oxen dragging 
 a plough, the earnest care in selection, the 
 horror of saying all and anything ; consider- 
 ing all this, how can one be astonished, 
 that the Goncourts were not immediately 
 greeted by the applause of the common 
 herd! 
 
 The esteem of the learned, the admiration
 
 154 Recollections of a Literary Alan. 
 
 that gives a consecration, friendships that are 
 a glory, these were what MM. de Goncourt 
 met with from the very first. The great 
 Michelet wished to make these young men's 
 acquaintance ; and the homage with which 
 he honoured them as historians, Sainte-Beuve 
 in his turn rendered to them as novelists. 
 Little by little, sympathy was gathered around 
 them. During a whole year, all painters 
 swore by Majiette Salomon, that admirable 
 collection of written pictures. Germinie 
 Lacerteux created more stir, almost a scan- 
 dal indeed. And the delicate, fastidious- 
 minded Parisians remained astonished at 
 the terrible light thrown on the loath- 
 some back slums where the populace lived, 
 admired the ball at the " Boule-Noire," 
 with its irritating orchestra, and its mixed 
 odours of pomatum, gas-pipes, and wine- 
 bowls. 
 
 The descriptions of Parisian landscapes, 
 since then so servilely imitated, but which at 
 that time were in all the freshness of their 
 novelty,— the exterior boulevards, the Mont- 
 martre hills, the walks along the ramparts, 
 and through the chalky suburban districts 
 made up of potsherds and oyster-shells, — all
 
 /^ Ri'adinc. 
 
 V">" 
 
 '55 
 
 this delighted many. The picture of this 
 peculiar way of living, so near to us and yet 
 so far off, boldly viewed and fearlessly set 
 forth, gave a vivid impression of originality to 
 all who knew how to read. 
 
 All this nevertheless was not the general 
 public. 
 
 Theatrical authors pilfered from the Gon- 
 courts' books, which for a novelist is a sign of 
 success. But these ingenious adaptations 
 brought profit and fame to the adapters only. 
 Outside a circle in reality somewhat restricted, 
 after writing so many fine and excellent 
 works, the Goncourts' name remained almost 
 unknown. 
 
 An ojjportunity was lacking ; then it 
 offered itself. Fortune seemed at last to 
 smile on them. A scholarly director, M. 
 Edouard Thierry, received their HenrielU 
 Marechal. Three long acts at the Comedie- 
 Fran9aisc ! It was an important affair. At 
 last they were going to meet face to face 
 that indifferent and listless public, more 
 insensible even than Galatea, and when it 
 should be there, under their hand, it would 
 l)e obIige<l nolens voletis, to listen and 
 to judge. A book, were it even a niaster- 
 
 L 2
 
 156 Recollections oj a Literary Man. 
 
 piece, may not be read, but a play is always 
 listened to. 
 
 Well no, this time again the public did 
 not listen. It seemed a fatality, and a stupid 
 piece of bad luck. It was rumoured about that 
 the play had been imposed upon the director 
 by a Princess of the Imperial family, the 
 youth of the Quartier Latin became excited, 
 and political feeling, repressed everywhere, 
 and bursting forth whenever it can, exploded 
 this time about the ears of the two inoffensive 
 artists. Henriette Marechal was played five 
 times without anyone being able to hear a 
 single word. 
 
 I well recall the uproar in the theatre, and 
 especially the appearance of the green-room 
 on the first night. Not an habitue, not an 
 actor was there ! All had fled before the 
 disastrous blast. And in the shining and 
 well polished desert, under the high solemn 
 ceiling, and the gaze of the large portraits, 
 two young men, quite alone, stood near the 
 chimney, asking themselves, "■ Why this 
 hatred.? What is there against us?" — dignified 
 and proud, with their hearts wrung neverthe- 
 less by the brutality of the insult. The elder 
 quite pale comfortingandcheeringtheyounger,
 
 // /\^atiiit_i>. 
 
 '57 
 
 a fair youthful figure, bright and nervous, 
 whom I then saw for the first and only time. 
 
 I^- 
 
 
 £-^ 
 
 
 Their drama was throughout a line, bold, 
 and novel production. And a short time 
 after, the same people who had hooted it
 
 158 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 frantically applauded Heloise Paranquet and 
 the Supplice d'tine Fe»ime, plays of rapid 
 action, going straight to their issue, like a 
 train at full speed, and of which most pro- 
 bably Henriette IMarechal was the inspira- 
 tion. And was not the first act, taking place 
 in the Opera ball, with its crowd, its abusive 
 chaff, its masks joking and howling in pur- 
 suit of each other, that close approach to life 
 and reality, ironic and real as a Gavarni 
 sketch, — was it not " naturalism " on the 
 stage fifteen years before the word 
 " naturalism " was invented ? 
 
 Henriette Marechal had foundered ; well, 
 they would set to work again. And the two 
 brothers again settled down in front of the 
 large table, in their hermitage at Auteuil. 
 First they wrote a study on Art, a monograph 
 of the work and life of Gavarni, whom they 
 had known and loved, animated as any novel, 
 precise and full of facts as the catalogue of a 
 museum. After that they wrote the most 
 complete and undoubtedly the finest, but at 
 the same time the most disdainful and most 
 haughtily personal of their books : Madame 
 Gervaisais. 
 
 Devoid of plot, the simple story of a
 
 A Reading. 159 
 
 woman's soul, the wandering through a 
 series of admirable descriptions of an in- 
 telligence overcome by nerves straying away 
 from the free possession of self, to succumb 
 at Rome, untler the enervating inllucnce of 
 the climate, in the shadow of its ruins, amid 
 that indescribable mystic and benumbing 
 power that emanates from church walls, 
 amid the perfume of incense and Catholic 
 pomp. It was superb, — and an utter failure. 
 Not an article was written on it ; barely three 
 hundred copies were sold. 
 
 This was the last blow. A sensitive 
 nature, almost feminine in its delicacy, — the 
 younger brother, already some time past 
 affected by the beginning of a nervous 
 disease, and sustained only by the fever of 
 work and hope, could not bear the blow. 
 Just as a glass of delicate crystal placed on 
 the sounding board of a piano quivers and 
 breaks, so something was shattered within 
 him. He drooped for some time and died. 
 An artist is not a recluse. However much 
 he may keep aloof and above the crowd, it 
 is always, after all, for the crowd that he 
 writes. 
 
 And then one loves them, these books,
 
 1 6o Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 these novels, these struggling offsprings oi 
 one's very body, made with one's blood and 
 one's flesh ; how can one be indifferent 
 about them ? What strikes them, strikes 
 oneself, and the most hardened author 
 bleeds at a distance — as by a mysterious 
 magic charm — by the wounds inflicted on 
 his works. We affect to be of the refined, 
 but are in the power of the vulgar ; we dis- 
 dain success, and the want of it kills us. 
 
 Can you fancy the despair of the survivor, 
 of that brother left alone, dead you may say, 
 himself, and smitten in one half of his spirit.? 
 At any other moment, no doubt he would 
 have sunk beneath the blow. But the war 
 began, the siege followed, and then came the 
 Commune. 
 
 The noise of the cannon in this suburb, 
 fired at from all sides, the whistling of the 
 shells, the downfall of ail things, the foreign 
 occupation, the civil war, the massacre during 
 the conflagration, the tumultuous Niagara 
 which during six months rolled over Paris, 
 preventing one from hearing anything else, 
 drowning all thought, made him less sensible 
 of his grief. And when it was ended, when 
 the black fog was dispelled, and thought
 
 ^/ Reading. 
 
 161 
 
 again became possible, he found himself sad, 
 incomplete, with a great blank at heart, 
 astonished to find himself still livino:. but 
 accustomeil to life. 
 
 Edmond de Goncourt had not the courage 
 to leave the little brotherly roof, so full of the 
 memory of him he mourned. He remained 
 there, solitary and sad; living only by almost 
 instinctive toil, found in the care bestowed on 
 his collections, and on his garden, having 
 Kworn to hinibclf not to write any mure, his
 
 1 62 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 books and his table inspiring him with 
 horror. 
 
 One day, hardly realising what he did, he 
 found himself again seated at his accustomed 
 place pen in hand. At first the task was hard, 
 and more than once he turned round as in 
 former times, to ask his brother a word or a 
 phrase, but rose and left, affrighted at find- 
 ing the empty seat. However a new and for 
 him unforeseen thing, — success, — brought 
 him back to work, and seated him again 
 at his place. Since the days of Madame 
 Gervaisais time had progressed, and the 
 public also. 
 
 An advance had taken place in literature, 
 in the way of careful observation, expressed 
 in a strange and clear language. Little by 
 little readers became accustomed to this 
 novelty, which had at first startled them, and 
 the real initiators of this remodelling move- 
 ment, the Goncourts, became the fashion. 
 All their books were republished. " If only 
 my brother were here ! " said Edmond with a 
 feeling of painful joy. It was then that he 
 ventured to write that novel, La Fille Elisa, 
 the plan of which he had talked over with his 
 brother.
 
 A Reading. 163 
 
 It was not yet absolutely writing alone, it 
 was a prolongation of their twofold work, a 
 posthumous collaboration. The book was 
 successful and sold well. It was a new 
 triumph of sweet sadness in a renewal of 
 grief, and more than ever the eternal : "Ah, 
 if he were here ! " 
 
 Nevertheless from henceforth the charm 
 was broken, the literary man roused the dis- 
 consolate brother ; and as Art always clings 
 to life by some invisible thread, the first book 
 he wrote all alone was the history of that dual 
 existence, of that collaboration tragically torn 
 asunder, of the despair of the living dead, and 
 his painful resurrection. The book is called 
 Les Frires Zemganno. 
 
 Touched, charmed, we listened with 
 saddened hearts, looking outside through 
 the clear window-panes, at the creepers and 
 the sparse shrubs with their shiny lacquered 
 leaves, in the little garden still green in spite 
 of the season. A thaw had begun, starring 
 the pond, damping the rockery, while the 
 pale sun of closing winter smiled upon the 
 snow. This smile, this sun, increased at 
 last, invading the house. " Really? you like 
 it.' You are pleased?" said Edmond de
 
 1 64 RccoUectinns of a Literary Man. 
 
 Goncourt, brightening up at our enthusiasm, 
 and in front of the mirror, in his Httle gilded 
 oval frame, the dead brother's miniature 
 seemed to Hght up too, with a ray of tardy 
 glory.
 
 THEATRICAL CIIARACT1':RS. 
 
 DKJAZKT. 
 
 When I saw Dcjazct on the stage, a long 
 time ago, she was nearer seventy than sixty 
 years of age ; and notwithstanding all her 
 art and all her charm, the narrow satins fell 
 in wrinkled folds on her thin figure, the 
 powder on her hair seemed the actual frosty 
 hand of time, and the ribbons on her dress 
 fluttered sadly at each movement, which, in- 
 tended to be sprightly and gay, only betrayed 
 siill more the stiffening effect of years and
 
 1 66 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 the chilled blood. One evening, however, the 
 actress appeared to me to be quite charming. 
 It was not at the theatre, but at Villemessant's 
 house at Seine-Port. We were drinking our 
 
 coffee in the drawing- 
 room, with the win- 
 dows wide 
 open on a 
 magnificent 
 park, and a 
 splendid clear 
 summer's 
 night. Sud- 
 denly, in a ray 
 of moonshine, 
 a little white 
 figure stooil 
 out on the threshold, 
 and a thin voice in- 
 1 be welcome ? " It was 
 She came in a neighbourly 
 fashion, her country house being quite near, 
 to spend the evening with us. Greeted with 
 delight, she sat down in a reserved, almost 
 timid manner. She was asked to sing. 
 Faure, the great baritone, went to the piano 
 to accompany her, but the instrument was 
 
 quired : " Shall 
 Mdlle. D^jazet.
 
 /^l^nlegy-0
 
 1 68 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 only in her way. The softest notes, ming- 
 Hng with her voice, would have prevented 
 our hearing her. She therefore sang without 
 any accompaniment ; and, standing in the 
 middle of the drawing-room, the few lights 
 of which flickered in the summer breeze, 
 wrapped in a little white muslin dress that 
 seemed to endow her with the vague age of 
 a very young girl, or of a grandmother, she 
 began in a little thin and tremulous voice, 
 very distinct however, and ringing through 
 the silence of the park and the night, like 
 some mysterious violin : 
 
 " Enfants, c'est moi qui suis Lisette. " • 
 
 And it is always thus that I see her, that I 
 think of her. 
 
 * " Children, 'tis I that am called Lisette." A ballad 
 by B^ranger.
 
 LESUEUR. 
 
 Lesueur lacked too many qualities to 
 acquire at the first onset all the authority of 
 a great comedian. His voice was dull, veiled, 
 of a poor metallic ring, that became harsh 
 in his efforts at sonority. A faulty memory 
 likewise troubled him, bringing him at every 
 moment in front of the prompter's box. 
 Lastly, his figure, slender, lank, almost small, 
 
 M
 
 170 RecoUediojis of a Literary Man. 
 
 lacked that indefinable presence so necessary 
 in moments of pathos to sway and to domi- 
 nate the situation. Not only did Lesueur 
 triumph over all these defects, but he thereby 
 confirmed Regnier's theory, that to make a 
 good actor, a man ought to be obliged to 
 contend against some physical obstacles. 
 The witty inflexions his voice was powerless 
 to express, gleamed from his speaking eyes, 
 and were impressed upon the audience by 
 the details of his mimic art ; and if certain 
 sides of the character escaped him, there 
 were never any gaps in his play, for he was 
 always equal to the situation, and knew, what 
 so many actors ignore : the art of listening. 
 As for his figure, how did he manage to make 
 up for its deficiency ? However, undoubtedly 
 in certain plays, Do7i Qicichotte, for instance, 
 he looked quite tall, and filled the stage with 
 the breadth and amplitude of his gestures. 
 Due allowance being made, in him, Frederick 
 Lemattre seemed to live again. He donned 
 all the different costumes of the human 
 comedy with the same facility, from the 
 rough jacket of the art student, to the bur- 
 lesque purple of a fairy-tale king, or the dress 
 coat of a worldling, with the same perfect
 
 Theatrical Characters. i 7 i 
 
 i^« ^s^ • ^X'W^N -\j^ 
 
 ease and equal distinction. Both also had 
 in common a humour that lent to their 
 creations something very exceptional, stamp- 
 ing their parts with an indelible mark, and 
 making any revival after them very diffi- 
 cult. Ask Got, who is himself a perfect 
 artist, what trouble he had to make his own 
 the personage of the father Poirier created 
 some forty years ago by the comedian of 
 the Gymnase. When Lesueur played in a 
 piece, the author might feel sure that even 
 in case of a failure, all his efforts would not 
 be lost, and that one part would always 
 survive the wreck, — the part of T.esucur. 
 Who would remember now the Fans of 
 Edouard Plouvier, if he had not acted in it 
 his magnificent absinthe drinker? How grand 
 he was with his glass before him. his lips 
 damp and quivering ; holding up the decanter 
 in his shaking hand, and mixing drop by 
 drop the green poison, the effects of which 
 could be distinctly followed on his besotted 
 and pallid face. First, there was a wave of 
 heat, a convulsive movement in the frozen 
 skeleton dried up by alcohol, the cheeks 
 became flushed, the eyes sparkled ; but soon 
 the gaze became once more glassy and 
 
 M 7
 
 fj2 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 dulled, and the mouth relaxed and drooped 
 at the corners. Marvellous as a mimic, he 
 thoroughly knew all the business, all the 
 hidden wires of the poor human puppets, and 
 he worked them with such dexterity and 
 precision ! When he wept, every part of 
 him sobbed, his hands, his shoulders. Re- 
 member how he scampers away in the 
 Chapeau d'lin Horloger ; his legs darted 
 forward, multiplied themselves, as if he had 
 ten, twenty, thirty pairs of legs — a gyroscopic 
 vision. And what a poem in his glance, 
 when he awoke in the par tie de piquet! 
 Ah ! Lesucur ! Lesueur ! 

 
 
 KKLIX. 
 
 What a strange figure that Fdlix was ! 
 While 1 write his name, he rises before my 
 mind, foppish and tliick-headed, with his 
 round eyes, low square obstinate forehead, 
 always wrinkled up in the effort to under- 
 stand ; the best of men, but the foolishness 
 and vanity of a turkey-cock ! One must 
 have been associated with him in the work of
 
 174 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 producing a play, to be able to realize it. 
 First, directly after the reading in the green- 
 room, Fdlix would go up to the manager's 
 office, to give back the part that had just been 
 handed to him, and which did not suit him. 
 All the other parts in the play seemed to 
 him excellent, except that one ! He would, 
 however, have been very much embarrassed 
 to give a reason. No, it was a mania, an 
 absolute necessity he felt to be entreated, to 
 bring the authors to his little fourth storey in 
 the Rue Geoffroy-Marie, in that little pro- 
 vincial home, tidy, cosy and neatly kept, that 
 might have been taken for the apartment of 
 a prelate or archdeacon, were it not for the 
 innumerable quantity of portraits, medallions, 
 and photographs recalling to the artist each 
 of his creations. One had to sit down, to 
 accept a glass of sweet wine, and strive by 
 dint of eloquence, compliments, and fine 
 phrases to overcome his exasperating affecta- 
 tion. At the first visit, Felix would not give 
 any promise nor pledge himself. He would 
 see about it, he would reflect. Sometimes, 
 when he really longed for the part, he would 
 say with a light, indifferent manner : " Leave 
 me the play, I'll look it over again." And
 
 Theatrical Characters. 
 
 175 
 
 heaven knows what the poor man under- 
 stood about it. He would keep the manu- 
 script a week, a fortnight, without saying a 
 
 word on the subject ; at the theatre, lliey 
 whispered : " He will play ; he won't 
 play." Then, when tired out with wait- 
 ing, and seeing everything stopped by the 
 caprice of one man, you had almost decided
 
 \-^() Recollections of a Lilcrary Man 
 
 on sending the great comedian to the devil, 
 he would come to the rehearsal, cheerful, 
 smiling, already knowing his part by heart, 
 and lighting up the whole stage merely by 
 his presence. But his freaks were not 
 necessarily at an end, and until the day of the 
 first representation, one might expect terrible 
 rows. On that day, it is true, the incom- 
 parable inspiration of this singular artist, who 
 became transfigured in the glare of the foot- 
 lights, his unconscious effects, unerring and 
 full of intelligent comprehension, his irre- 
 sistible influence on the public, well repaid 
 one for all the past annoyance. 

 
 MADAISIE ARNOULD-PLESSY. 
 
 Did you see her act in Henriette Marechal r* 
 Do you remember lier, in from of her look- 
 ing-glass, throwing a long and despairing 
 gaze at that mute and pitiless confidant, and 
 saying, with a heart-rending intonation : 
 " Ah, I look every hour of my age to-day.' 
 Those who heard her will never be able to 
 forget it. 1 1 was so deep felt, so human ' By
 
 178 Recollections 0/ a Literary Man. 
 
 those few simple words, slowly accentuated, 
 falling one after the other like the notes of a 
 knell, the actress conveyed so much : the 
 regret at departed youth, the bitter anguish of 
 a woman who feels that her reign is over, and 
 that if she does not abdicate willingly, old 
 age will very soon come, and sign her re- 
 nunciation by a disfiguring scratch across her 
 whole face. 
 
 Terrible moment even for the strongest, 
 or the most upright ! It is like a sudden 
 exile, an abrupt change of climate, and 
 the surprise of an icy cold atmosphere suc- 
 ceeding the balmy and perfumed air, full 
 of flattering murmurs and passionate adula- 
 tions, which surround a woman's beauty in 
 the meridian of her age. For the actress, the 
 wrench is still more cruel. For in her, the 
 coquetry natural to woman grows and is 
 aggravated by a thirst for fame. And so 
 most actresses never will make an end, never 
 have the courage to place themselves once 
 for all before their mirror, and say : " I look 
 every hour of my age to-day." They are 
 truly much to be pitied. In vain they 
 struggle, cling despairing to the faded shreds
 
 Theatrical Characters. \ 79 
 
 ot the fallen crown, they see the public 
 abandoning them, admiration replaced by 
 indulgence, then by compassion ; and what 
 is more heart-rending than all, by indiffe- 
 rence. 
 
 Thanks to her intelligence, thanks to her 
 pride, the grand and valiant Arnould-Plessy 
 did not await this distressing hour. Although 
 she still had some years before her, she pre- 
 ferred disappearing at the height of her 
 zenith, like those fine October suns, that 
 plunge suddenly under the horizon, rather 
 than drag their luminous agony through a 
 dim and slow twilight. Her reputation has 
 gained thereby ; but we have lost many 
 delightful evenings she could still have given 
 us. With her, Marivaux disappeared, and 
 the charm of his marvellous talent, of thai 
 sparkling and airy phraseology which has the 
 capricious breadth of range of a fan unfolded 
 to the footlights. All these delightful 
 heroines with names like the princesses of 
 Shakespeare, and who have even something 
 of their ethereal elegance, have vanished and 
 drawn back within the covers of the book ; 
 in vain are they evoked, they no longer
 
 i8o Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 answer to the call. Gone, too, is all that 
 pretty jesting with language and wit, that 
 dainty talk, perhaps a little affected, a little 
 ovar-refined, but so French, such as Musset 
 has so often written ; charming triflers, who 
 lean arms, hidden under floating laces, on 
 the edge of a work-table, laden with all the 
 smiling caprices of an amorous idleness. All 
 that is at an end, no one knows how to talk, 
 how to flirt, now, in that sentimental style on 
 the stage. 
 
 The tradition is lost since Arnould-Plessy 
 is no longer there. And then not only 
 was the artist both studious and methodical, 
 a faithful interpreter of traditional French 
 art, but this excellent actress had also an 
 original and inquiring talent, whether she 
 grappled with the grand tragic creations, 
 such as Agrippina, which she played in a 
 remarkable manner, more after Suetonius 
 than Racine, or whether she created a part 
 full of modern life and realistic art, such as 
 Nany in Meilhac's drama — an ignorant 
 peasant and passionately devoted mother. I 
 remember particularly a scene in which to 
 express the thousand conflicting sentiments
 
 Thealrical Characters. 18 1 
 
 which clashed in her ambitious and jealous 
 spirit, Nany, uncultivated, stuttering, seek- 
 ing in vain for words, in a burst of mad rage 
 against herself, gasped out as she struck her 
 breast : " Ah I peasant, peasant ! ' The 
 
 actress said it in a way that made the whole 
 house shudder. And remember that such 
 cries, such truthful gestures, are not tradi- 
 tional, that no teaching can give them, but 
 only a profound study, sympathetic and 
 observant of life. Is it not a magnificent 
 triumph, the proof of an admirable power of 
 creation, that a drama that foundered like 
 Nany, and was played only about ten nights,
 
 i82 Recollections of a Lilei-aty Man. 
 
 should have remained for ever in the mind 
 and eyes of those who saw it, because Mme. 
 Arnould-Plessy had acted the principal part 
 in it.
 
 ADOLPHE DUPUIS. 
 
 AuoLPHE Dupuis is the son of Rose 
 Dupuis, associate of the Com^die-Fran9aise, 
 who left the stage in 1835, and died but a 
 few years since. Notwithstanding a real 
 talent, and dearly bought successes by the 
 side of Mdlle. Mars, the excellent woman 
 bore her former profession a grudge ; and 
 when, on leaving the Collbge Chaptal, where 
 side by side with Alexandre Dumas fils, he 
 had been a very indifferent pupil, Dupuis 
 expressed his wish to be an actor, the moiher
 
 184 RecoUeciio?is oj a Literary Man. 
 
 opposed him with all the strength of her 
 afTection. We know, however, the meaning 
 of " never " from the lips of a loving woman, 
 and this one passionately loved her big boy. 
 At the Conservatoire the pupil was not much 
 more successful than at Chaptal. Not that he 
 was deficient in intelligence ; he had, on the 
 contrary, rather too much, but unfortunately 
 not of the kind that schools acknowledge, a 
 sharp, personal intelligence, which reasons in 
 the ranks, and questions a command of 
 •'heads right" when one is to march off to 
 the left. In full class, the pupil discussed 
 his master Samson's ideas, and resented 
 the manner of preparing the work, by con- 
 stant repetition with the professor, instead of 
 leaving a little initiative to the pupil. Dupuis 
 demanded that the examination should con- 
 sist in a piece read out at sight and not 
 coached up, learnt by rote for ten months 
 beforehand, and in fact claimed that in the 
 general plan of study a larger sphere should 
 be given to natural talent, to the detriment of 
 all tradition. Imagine old Samson's indig- 
 nation at such subversive theories ; notwithr 
 standing all this, he felt a certain sympathy 
 for the son of his old comrade, for the cool-
 
 Jheatrical Characten. 185 
 
 blooiled but rebellious young spirit, with his 
 good-natured smile ; and he made him enter 
 the Comedie-Fran^aise, as fifth or sixth lover 
 in stock plays. Dupuis did not, however, 
 remain there long. One day Fcchter, who 
 held the same position as himself, and hardly 
 ever played, said to him in a low tone in 
 a corner of the green-room : " Suppose we 
 cut away from here .' It is absolute death.'" 
 "Let us be off,'" said Dupuis, and our two 
 young gentlemen started ofT for London and 
 Berlin, singing" I am Lindor"' in all the four 
 corners of Europe ; badly paid, little under- 
 stood, applauded at the wrong moments, but 
 acting, having parts, that which is most 
 precious to all young actors. Two years 
 later, in about 1850, we find our comedian at 
 the Gymnase, in the hands of IMoniigny, who 
 was the first to understand all that could be 
 made out of that fine, but somewhat slow and 
 indolent fellow, and who mellowed and 
 modified him by dint of hard work and con- 
 stant and varied creations, making him up, 
 either as an old man, or a woiking man, or a 
 disputant, or a noble father, bringing to bear 
 all his faculties of observation, shrewdness, 
 sensibility, and good-nature, and that admir- 
 
 N
 
 1 86 Recollertinns of a Literary Man. 
 
 able accent of natural life, which no one else 
 possesses in the same degree. After spending 
 ten years there, on the morrow of the great 
 success of the " Demi-Monde" in which he 
 had a large share, Dupuis allowed himself to 
 be tempted by an engagement in Russia ; he 
 stayed there a long time, too long in fact, for 
 when he returned to us, after an absence of 
 seventeen years, he had some difficulty in 
 reconquering his public. It is the history of 
 all those who return from the Michel theatre. 
 It seems probable that the pitch is not the 
 same at St. Petersburg as with us ; they must 
 speak more softly, play more discreetly, hint 
 merely and never emphasise, just as in a 
 drawing-room, among people who are ac- 
 quainted with one another, and are easily 
 pleased. In that manner both qualities and 
 defects are blurred and attenuated. 'Tis 
 true we recognise our artists, but the foot- 
 lights seem lowered, and we see them 
 dimly as through a gauze. On the evening 
 of the "iV<7(5a(5," however, the old Parisians 
 found their Dupuis again, with all his former 
 gifts, and even something more, a breadth, a 
 width, an impetuosity of southern blood, that 
 this peaceful father had not appeared capable
 
 Theatrical Characters. 
 
 187 
 
 of. The day after thai representation " Jan- 
 soulet" could have entered the Comddie- 
 Fran9aise by the grand stairs, through wide- 
 open portals, and no longer by the back door 
 of his first appearances ; but Samson's old 
 pupil had kept his love of independence, his 
 free spirit of early days, and the administra- 
 tion of the rue Richelieu thinking it deroga- 
 tory to accede to his demands, the Vaudeville 
 had the good fortune to kcwp its actor. 
 
 
 
 N
 
 «0* 
 
 or
 
 LAFONTAINE. 
 
 Henri Thomas, called Lafontaine, was 
 born at Bordeaux in the early days of the 
 Hegira of Romance. Bordeaux holds a place 
 of its own in the French South. Anchored 
 on the shores of the Atlantic, with bowsprit 
 ever turned to the Indies, it is a Creole South, 
 the impetuous South of the Southern Islands, 
 which to the ardent imagination and vivacity 
 of speech and impressions of the population 
 beyond the Loire, joins an immoderate long- 
 ing for adventure, journeying, scampering 
 about in short. And this Bordeaux played an 
 important pari in ihe life and genius of our
 
 I go Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 comedian. " We will make a priest of him," 
 said his mother, a true type of the mama of 
 that country. Catholic almost to delirium ; but 
 scarcely was he placed in the seminary than 
 the Bordelais scaled the walls, swapped his 
 cassock for a blouse, and began a Little Red 
 Riding Hood journey across the country, first 
 in one direction, then in another, as the fancy 
 seized him, until the wolf, — a wolf in a yellow 
 shoulder-belt and a gendarme's hat — arrested 
 him, and asked for his papers. Passed on 
 from brigade to brigade, he was brought 
 home, and his family wished him to return 
 to the seminary. " Never 1 " " Well then, 
 good-for-nothing, away you go to the 
 colonies." That was a typical fury of 
 Southern parents : " He won't be a priest. 
 Zounds ! we will make a cabin-boy of him 
 then." Three months of lentils and salt junk, 
 in the damp and the ocean gales, cured the 
 young runaway of his travelling proclivities, 
 without, however, giving him a taste for the 
 tonsure. On his return from the island of 
 Bourbon, he tried twenty different trades, and 
 was in turns joiner, locksmith, pedlar of many 
 goods, slept on the bare ground, suffered 
 hardships and privations, going forward
 
 Theatrical Characters. 191 
 
 through life at the prompting of his youth, 
 and his wild Bordelais instinct, without aim, 
 and yet always with his eyes open, and already 
 possessed of the memory peculiar to the artist. 
 Behold him now a bookseller's agent in Paris, 
 trudging the streets, climbing up many stairs, 
 a trader in literature and science, the mind 
 full of titles and prospectuses, pufTing books 
 he has not the time to read, but which, 
 nevertheless, leave a lingering smattering of 
 knowledge about him ; tenacious, insinuating, 
 eloquent, irresistible, such an agent as the 
 house of Lachatre has never had before. 
 Then, one evening he chanced to enter the 
 Porte-Saint-]\Iartin Theatre, saw Frederick 
 Lemaitre, and felt that heart seizure known 
 only to lovers and artists. He forthwith 
 abandoned his books and reviews, and went 
 to seek an interview with Sevestre, — fat old 
 Scvestre, the governor-general of all the 
 theatres of the suburbs. " What can you do .-' 
 Have you played before I " " Never, sir, but 
 only give me a part, and you shall see." In this 
 fine Bordelais presumption, in the eager eyes, 
 in the full gestures, the strong and metallic 
 voice, Sevestre understood at once that there 
 lay the temperament for the stage. This
 
 192 Recolleclions of a Literary Man. 
 
 temperament is common to the nature of the 
 South, expressed in gesticulations, verbosity, 
 putting everything in sight, expressing every- 
 thing, thinking aloud, speech always ahead 
 of thought. The man of Tarascon, and the 
 man of the Porte-Saint-Martin, resembled 
 each other. 
 
 In that little theatre of the Rue de la 
 Gait6, where, later on, Mounet-SuUy made 
 his d6but, Lafontaine served his apprentice- 
 ship. He played at Sceaux and at Crenelle, 
 and as he rolled along in the omnibus to 
 suburban theatres, declaimed Bouchardy, 
 play-book in hand, all along the roads. 
 He succeeded. The noise of his success 
 crossed the bridges, reached the boulevard, 
 and some time afterwards Henri Lafontaine 
 entered the Porte-Saint-Martin to play in 
 Kean, side by side with Frederick, who 
 from the very first took a fancy to him, 
 and made him work. " Come along, 
 youngster," the master would say, as he left 
 the theatre. And he took his pupil home 
 with him to the Boulevard du Temple, ex- 
 hausted by five hours on the boards, eyes full 
 of sleep, cheeks burnt by the gas and the 
 paint ; but it was not to sleep ! Supper was
 
 Theatrical Characters. 193 
 
 ready, all the candles in the room were 
 lighted. The meal was eaten in haste ; then 
 the master gave a subject for a scene, a 
 dramatic situation to be rendered ; and lying 
 back in his armchair, a decanter of wine close 
 at hand, said, " Now then, to work ! " 
 
 That excellent comedian Lafontainc has 
 often described to me one of these improvised 
 scenes : " ' Now then,' said Frederick, lolling 
 back on his divan, ' you are a poor little 
 clerk, you have been married three years. To- 
 night, it is your wife's birthday ; you adore 
 her. In her absence you have prepared her 
 a surprise, bought her a bouquet, arranged a 
 nice little supper like this. And all at once, 
 in laying the table, you discover a letter, from 
 which you learn that she is faithless. Try to 
 make me shed tears over this. Begin.' " 
 Without delay, Lafontaine set to work, laid the 
 table conscientiously, without any scamping — 
 for Frederick would stand no trifling on the 
 question of accessories — placed his bou(]uet 
 in the middle of the table with little laughs of 
 pleasure, eyes half dewy with emotion, then 
 trembling with joy and impatience, opened 
 the drawer where the surprise was hidden, 
 found a letter, read it mechanically, and
 
 194 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 uttered a terrible cry in which he tried to put 
 all the despair of his shipwrecked happiness ! 
 " Between ourselves, 1 was rather well pleased 
 with my cry," the worthy Lafontaine said to 
 me, making merry at the recollection of his 
 own misadventure; "it seemed to me truthful, 
 genuine, full of emotion, I almost shed tears 
 myself in uttering it. Well, instead of the 
 compliments I expected, I only got a formid- 
 able kick, somewhere about the end of my 
 spine. I did not put myself out much about 
 it, for I was acquainted with the manners of 
 my master ; but his criticism struck me very 
 forcibly. ' What ! you wretch ! You love 
 your wife better than anything else in the 
 world, you believe in her blindly, blind-ly, 
 and yet at the first reading, you see, you 
 understand, you believe all that this scrap of 
 paper reveals to you. Is it possible ? 
 
 " ' Now, go and sit down over there and 
 watch me distil my poison.' Thereupon he 
 himself recommenced the scene, opened the 
 drawer. ' Ah ! a letter.' He turned it over, 
 turned it again, glanced at it with careless 
 eyes, not understanding it, threw it back into 
 the drawer, and continued to lay the table. 
 ' All the same, it is odd about that letter I '
 
 Tkiairkai CharacterK. 
 
 '95 
 
 He came back to it, read it more attentively, 
 then, shrugging his shoulders, threw it on the 
 table. ' Nonsense, it is not true, it is impos- 
 sible. She will explain it all to me when she 
 comes in.' But how his hands trembled as 
 
 he finished setting the table ! And always, 
 his eyes upon the letter. At last he can bear 
 it no longer, he must read it again. This time 
 he understands it all, a sob rises to his throat, 
 and chokes him ; he falls gasping on a chair. 
 It was a wonderful spectacle, it would seem, 
 to see the features of the great actor become 
 a shade more discomposed at each reading.
 
 196 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 One could follow the effects of the poison, 
 in the course of its absorption by his eyes. 
 Then, once possessed by the fire of his own 
 emotion, Frederick could not stop, but con- 
 tinued the piece. A startled movement of 
 the whole body, a furious glance towards the 
 door. His wife had just come in. He 
 allowed her to come close to him without 
 moving, and then suddenly, erect, terrific, held 
 out the letter in his hand : ' Read that ! ' 
 Then before she could reply, divining from 
 the terror on this woman's face that it was 
 true, that the letter had not lied to him. he 
 turned helplessly round two or three times 
 like a drunken creature, tried to utter a cry, 
 could not, and never ceasing to love her, even 
 in his rage, in order to vent upon something 
 that should not be his wife the furious need 
 of massacre, with which his hands seemed to 
 tremble, he seized the table with both hands, 
 and sent it rolling to the other end of the 
 room with the lamp, the crockery, all in fact 
 that was upon it." 
 
 This kick consecrated Lafontaine a great 
 actor, and was for his faith, as a comedian, a 
 confirmation from below instead of from 
 above. Nevertheless, if he had had only the
 
 Theatrical Characters. 
 
 197 
 
 lessons of Frederick, the artist from Bordeaux 
 could never have learnt to regulate, to keep 
 within bounds his wild and inherent vaga- 
 bondage. His Southern nature bore him 
 
 aloft, but held him back at the same time. 
 He had the brilliant power of improvisation 
 with which it is endowed, but he had also the 
 violence, the lack of measure, the clashing 
 contrasts of sunshine and shadow. Thus 
 nobly gifted, he might have missed his 
 career, and have become a restless, crazy
 
 1 98 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 sublimity like poor Rouvibre ; almost de- 
 mented by his dual temperament of actor 
 and meridional. Fortunately Lafontaine 
 joined the Gymnase, and there had for ten 
 years an incomparable instructor. Those 
 only who have seen old Montigny in his 
 place before the curtain, with frowning brow 
 and surly mien, ordering the same passage 
 to be begun anew ten times, twenty times, 
 breaking the will of the hardest and most 
 rebellious, never satisfied, always thirsting for 
 the very best ; those only can boast of having 
 known a real stage-manager. Under him 
 the talent of the artist became more disci- 
 plined. Montigny put like a cangiie around 
 his exuberant spirit the military stock of the 
 Fits de Faviille, the very same Fits de 
 Famille that Lafontaine reproduced not long 
 ago at the Odeon, and made him button up 
 his meridional love of gesture within the 
 gentlemanly frock-coat of the husband of 
 Diane de Lys. The Bordelais was restive, 
 champed at the bit ; but he emerged subdued 
 and accomplished, and to-day, when he 
 speaks of his old master, his eyes are 
 always dimmed.
 
 r^ 
 
 NOTES ON PARIS. 
 
 LES NOUNOUS* 
 
 Nothing is prettier than the entry of the 
 nounous and their babies, between one and 
 two o'clock in the afternoon, in the gardens of 
 the Luxembourg or the Tuilcries, under the 
 rays of the joyous spring sun, and the first 
 quiver of the budding green. 
 
 • The wcl-nurses.
 
 2 DO Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 In the sheltered nooks, where they usually 
 meet, the nurses stroll about in groups of 
 floating ribbons, or sit on rows of chairs 
 protecting their babies under the large pink 
 
 or blue lined parasols, that throw so becom- 
 ing a shade ; and while the baby, fast asleep 
 under the transparent veil and lace frills of 
 its little cap, drinks in the spring air by every 
 pore of its delicate little body, Nounoii 
 radiant, fresh, with a smile of ever-renewed 
 maternity hovering on her lips, casts around
 
 Notes on Parts. 
 
 20I 
 
 a conquering 
 glance, tosses 
 her head, and 
 laughs and gos- 
 sips with her 
 companions. 
 
 There are some 
 fifty of them to- 
 gether, each one 
 wearing the cos- 
 tume of her province ; costumes, however, 
 so refined and transformed, that chey lend 
 
 o
 
 202 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 an air of old-fashioned and theatrical poetry 
 to the solemnity of the royal gardens. The 
 head-dresses are varied and superb : the 
 bright - coloured handkerchiefs of the Gas- 
 connes and the mulattoes, the nun-like 
 caps of the Bretonnes, the enormous black 
 bows of the Alsatians, the aristocratic coif 
 of the Arlesians, the tall head - dress 
 from Caux like the open-worked spire of 
 a cathedral, and the wild - looking coils of 
 the Bearnaises, stuck through with great 
 gilt-knobbed pins. 
 
 The air is balmy, the flower-beds are 
 fragrant, an odour of resin and honey falls 
 from the budding chestnut trees. Yonder, 
 near the pond, a military band strikes up 
 a waltz. Nounou becomes excited, baby 
 squalls, while the little soldier out for a walk, 
 turns as red as the tuft on his shako, as he 
 passes before this array of his country- 
 women, whom he finds considerably im- 
 proved in appearance. 
 
 This is the show nurse, as she turns out 
 after a stay of six months in Paris, dressed up 
 and metamorphosed by proud parents. But 
 to see the true Nounou, to understand her
 
 Notes on Paris. 203 
 
 ihoroughly, we must catch sight of her on 
 her arrival, in one of those strange establish- 
 ments called "bureaux de placement" 
 (registry offices) where for the delectation of 
 Parisian babies, thirsting for any kind of 
 milk, the trade in foster-mothers is carried 
 on. Near the Jardin des Plantes, at the end 
 of one of those quiet streets which have 
 retained a provincial air in the midst of Paris, 
 and are made up of boarding houses, tables 
 d'hdte, and tiny houses with little gardens in- 
 habited by old scholars, small annuitants 
 and hens, stands an antique building with a 
 wide porch, and a sign-board on which pink 
 letters display the simple word : "Nurses." 
 
 Before the door groups of women in 
 tatters, listlessly lounge about with their infants 
 in their arms. We enter ; a desk, a grating, 
 the brass-bound cover of a ledger, people 
 waiting seated on benches ; in a word, the 
 eternal office, ever the same, equally correct 
 and cheerless, whether at the Halles, or at 
 the Morgue, whether its business be to 
 forward a case of prunes, or to register 
 corpses. Here the traffic is that of human 
 flesh. 
 
 o 3
 
 204 Recollections of a Literary Ma?i. 
 
 As we are immediately recognised to be 
 " gentle folk," we are spared the waiting 
 bench, and are ushered into the parlour. 
 
 A flowery paper decorates the walls, the 
 red-tiled floor is polished like the parlour of 
 a convent, and on each side of the chimney- 
 piece, above two glass cylinders protecting 
 bouquets of paper roses, hang the gilt-framed 
 portraits in oil, of Monsieur le Directeur and 
 Madame la Directrice. 
 
 Monsieur might be anybody, a retired 
 private detective, or a chiropodist, who has 
 made his fortune ; Madame, plump and rosy, 
 smiles over her treble chins, with the fat 
 smile of an easy and profitable business, 
 while at the same time her face wears the 
 somewhat hard expression and glance, 
 common to those who manage a human 
 flock. Occasionally she is an ambitious 
 mid-wife ; more generally, however, a re- 
 tired nurse, endowed with a genius for 
 business. 
 
 One day, long ago, she also came to a 
 house like this, perhaps this very one, a poor 
 country girl, to sell a year of her youth, and 
 motherly nourishment. She also had prowled
 
 Notes on Paris. 205 
 
 about before the door, famished like the 
 others, with her child in her arms ; Hke the 
 others she had worn out her rough woollen 
 skirts on the stone bench. 
 
 Xow, times have changed, she is rich, 
 renowned. In her village, which she left in 
 rags, she is spoken of with respect. She is an 
 authority down there, almost a providence. 
 
 The crops have failed, the landlord has 
 become pressing. In the chimney-corner, 
 one evening, the peasant has said, spread- 
 ing the broad palms of his hands before 
 the fire : " Phrasie, listen a bit. Your 
 health is good, money is scarce, suppose 
 you go to Paris and hire yourself as a 
 nurse ? It won't kill you, and the mistress 
 at the office, who is of our village, and 
 knows us well, would find you a good place 
 at once." 
 
 So she goes off, and after her another. 
 Little by little, the custom is established, the 
 love of lucre continuing what poverty had 
 begun. Now as each child is born, its lot is 
 clear, its destiny is marked out in advance. 
 It will remain at home, and be fed by the 
 goat, while the mother's milk, sold at a good
 
 2o6 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 price, will buy a field, or enclose a bit more 
 meadow. 
 
 Each specialist in nurses, each manager of 
 a registry office, is in the habit of thus turn-
 
 Notes on Paris 
 
 207 
 
 ing to account her owti particular province. 
 The one has Auvergne,, the other Savoy, 
 
 another the waste lands of Brittany, or the 
 wooded hills of Morvan. It is noticeable
 
 2o8 Recollections of a Literary Aian. 
 
 that the fluctuations of the nurse-market in 
 Paris follow those of country life. Rare in 
 good harvest years, nurses abound in years of 
 scarcity ; however, whether the year be good 
 or bad, the supply fails completely during the 
 harvesting season or the grape-picking, at the 
 moment when all hands are necessary in the 
 fields. 
 
 To-day, the office seems well supplied. 
 Besides the nurses we saw at the entrance, 
 dragging along their wooden shoes, in front 
 of the door, there are twenty or thirty under 
 the window, in a little garden transformed 
 into a yard — a dismal-looking place, with its 
 boxwood borders trodden down, its obliterated 
 flower-beds, and the babies' linen hung up to 
 dry on a cord stretched across between a 
 sickly fig-tree and a dead lilac-bush. Around 
 this is a row of cabins, the sordid nakedness 
 of which reminds one of negro-slaves' huts 
 and convicts' cells. In these the nurses live 
 with their children until a situation is found 
 for them. 
 
 Here they encamp, sleeping on truckle- 
 beds, in a sour atmosphere of rustic dirt, in 
 the midst of the constant uproar of so many
 
 Notes on Paris. 209 
 
 babies kept in close quarters, who all awake 
 as soon as one cries, and set up a concert of 
 howls, with mouths outstretched for nourish- 
 ment. And so they prefer being in the open- 
 air of the tiny garden, where they dawdle 
 about all day long, from one end to the other, 
 with the listless air of half-witted creatures, 
 never sitting down but to sew a little, to add a 
 patch to some already many-coloured skirt, — 
 a rag of special hue, earthy and grey, or else 
 of the dull yellow or faded blue which 
 Parisian fashion, by a subtlety of refinement, 
 has borrowed from rustic poverty. 
 
 But here comes Madame, dressed to suit 
 her occupation, at once coquettish and 
 serious, with an avalanche of flame-coloured 
 bows on the convent-like black of her bodice, 
 her look severe, and her voice soft. 
 
 "You are in want of a nurse? Seventy 
 francs a month ? Yes. We have a good 
 choice at that price." 
 
 She gives an order, the door opens, the 
 nurses tramp in by batches of eight or ten, 
 stamping about with the awkwardness of 
 cattle, in their heavy shoes, nailed or wooden, 
 and stand submissively in a row, with their
 
 2IO Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 infants in their arms. These won't do ? 
 Quick, another batch, and in they come 
 with the same downcast eyes, the same pau- 
 perised timidity, all with the same parched 
 and tanned cheeks, the cheeks the colour 
 of bark or earth. Madame presents them, 
 and praises her wares. 
 
 " Sound as a bell ; a real treasure. Just 
 look at the baby ! " The baby is indeed a 
 fine child, it is always a fine child. Two or 
 three specimens are kept in the establish- 
 ment to take the place of those who might 
 seem too puny. 
 
 " How old is your child, nurse ? " 
 
 " Three months old, sir." 
 
 The baby is never more than three months 
 old! 
 
 And Madame displays her goods, exposing 
 to public inspection, with the authority of 
 possession and the impudence of long habit, 
 these poor scared creatures. 
 
 At last a choice is made, a nurse is en- 
 gaged, now is the time to pay. The directress 
 steps behind her grating and draws up her 
 account. And an alarming account it is. 
 First, the percentage exacted by the estab-
 
 Notes on Paris. 2 1 r 
 
 lishment, then the arrears due for the nurse's 
 board and lodging. What more? Travel- 
 hng expenses. Is that all ? No, there is still 
 the cost of the meneuse who is to take the 
 infant from its mother, and carry it back to 
 the village. 
 
 And what a sad journey that is ! The 
 meneuse waits until there are five or si.\ in- 
 fants, and then takes them away, tied up in 
 big baskets, with their heads sticking out 
 like a lot of chickens. More than one dies 
 on the way, exposed as they are to the icy 
 draughts of the waiting-room and the hard 
 benches of the third-class carriages, with 
 nothing but a little milk in a bottle and a bit 
 of moistened sugar tied up in an old rag to 
 suck. And the messages that are sent to the 
 aunt, and the grandmother! The infant, thus 
 brutally torn from its mother, throws itself 
 about and squalls ; the mother gives it a last 
 kiss and cries. But we know that her tears 
 are only half sincere, and that gold will soon 
 dry them, that terrible metal, so dear to 
 peasants' hearts. Nevertheless, the scene is 
 heartrending and reminds one painfully of 
 the family separation of slaves.
 
 2 1 2 Recollections of a Literary Man 
 
 The nurse takes up her bundle, a few rags 
 tied up in a handkerchief. 
 
 " What, is that all your outfit ? " 
 
 " Oh 1 my good gentleman, we're so poor 
 at home. I hav'n't really anything besides 
 what I wear on my back ! " 
 
 And in truth, that is little enough. The 
 first thing to be done, is to clothe her, and 
 fit her out. That was understood. It is a 
 sacred tradition among nurses, as among 
 freebooters, first to arrive empty handed, free 
 from any encumbrance of luggage, and 
 secondly to buy a large trunk, the trunk 
 which is to contain the plunder. For in vain 
 may you spoil her, and look after her, try to 
 white-wash her sunburnt face, teach her a 
 little French, a little cleanliness and coquetry; 
 the wild creature you have brought into your 
 family and whose coarse voice, incomprehen- 
 sible dialect, and strong odour of stable and 
 field, jar so strangely upon the elegances of 
 a Parisian household, will always re-appear ; 
 and under the dainty varnish you may have 
 succeeded in putting upon your nounoii, 
 notwithstanding every care, at every moment 
 and on every opportunity the Burgundy or
 
 Notts on Pans. 
 
 21 
 
 Morvan brute will break out. Under your 
 roof, at your hearth, she remains the peasant 
 woman, the enemy brought from her dreary 
 
 -"^^t 
 
 home and squalid poverty, into luxury and 
 fairy land. 
 
 She covets all she sees, and longs to carry 
 it all off to her den yonder, where her 
 cattle and good man await her. Indeed, 
 she has only come for that, her one idea is 
 plunder. I.ti denrie. as she calls it, is really
 
 214 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 a word full of surprises ; and in the nurse's 
 vocabulary, its elasticity approaches that of 
 the boa-constrictor's gullet. La denree is 
 composed of presents and wages, what is 
 given and what is paid ; all that can be 
 picked up or stolen, the odds and ends care- 
 fully hoarded which are to excite the envy of 
 neighbours at home. To augment and fatten 
 this sacred denree contributions will be levied 
 upon your kind heart, as well as upon your 
 purse. And you have not only your nurse to 
 deal with ; but her husband, grandmother, 
 and aunt are her accomplices, and from the 
 recesses of a remote village, the very name of 
 which is unknown to you, a whole tribe is busy 
 framing the most treacherous red-Indian like 
 designs against your property. Every week 
 a letter comes, addressed in a heavy and 
 cunning handwriting, with a seal of coarse 
 bread stamped with a thimble. 
 
 At first you think them artless and comic 
 letters, rather touching with their complicated 
 spelling, their dressed-up style, their twisted 
 and round-about phrases, that remind you of 
 the peasant's cap twirled in his hand to hide 
 his embarrassment; and the detailed addresses
 
 Notes on Paris. 215 
 
 like those Durandeau used to invent in his 
 fantastic miUtary portraits : 
 
 To MADASin, MADAME PHRA. 
 
 siE Darset, nurse at Mr. • • • 
 rue eUs Vos^es 18. 3^ arrondisse- 
 inent, Paris, Seine, France, Europe, etc. 
 
 But only have patience ! These flowers of 
 rustic artlessness will not affect vou Ion?. 
 All are aimed at your purse, all are redolent 
 with the same perfume of rural trickery and 
 intrigue. " This is to let you know, niy 
 dear and worthy spouse — but you need not 
 mention it to our respected masters and bene- 
 factors, for perhaps they might again zvish 
 to give you money, and it is never right 
 to abuse kindness." And then follows the 
 circumstantial account of some frightful 
 storm that has devastated the whole country. 
 All the harvest destroyed, the corn cut up, 
 the meadows submerged. The house is open 
 to the rain, for the tiles have been broken to 
 bits by the hailstones ; and the pig, — such a 
 fine animal, that was to have been killed at 
 Easter, is pining away from the fright it had 
 on hearing the thunder.
 
 2r6 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 Another time, it is the cow that is dead, or 
 the eldest of the little ones who has broken 
 his arm, or the poultry seized with epilepsy. 
 Under this single roof, on this small corner 
 of a field, it is a continuous and impossible 
 accumulation of catastrophes, equalled only 
 by the plagues of Egypt. The plot is stupid, 
 coarse, as transparent as daylight; no matter, 
 you must appear to be taken in, pay and go 
 on paying to the end or else beware of 
 Nounou I She will not complain, she will 
 ask for nothing, oh no ! certainly not ; but 
 she will sulk and whimper in corners, taking 
 good care to be seen. And when Nounou 
 cries, baby screams ; because worrying gives 
 a turn, and then the nurse is good for nothing. 
 Let us quickly send off a post-office order, 
 that Nounou may once more laugh. 
 
 These important weekly strokes of busi- 
 ness do not prevent the nurse from adding 
 daily to her own litde personal hoard. A 
 few shirts for the little one, the poor disin- 
 herited brat, left alone at home to the tender 
 mercies of the goat, a petticoat for herself, a 
 coat for her man, permission to pick up the 
 leavings, all the rubbish that would be swept
 
 Notes on Paris. 
 
 217 
 
 away. She does not even always ask for the 
 permission, for Notinou has brought from her 
 village very singular ideas concerning the 
 property of those good Parisians. The same 
 
 woman who, at home, would not pick up a 
 neighbour's apple through a hole in the 
 hedge, will quietly ransack your whole house, 
 without a qualm of conscience. For the 
 Zouave, plundering an Arab or a settler, is 
 not stealing. He calls it picking uj), feather-
 
 2i8 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 ing his nest, A vast difference ! So also for 
 Noiinou, robbing the masters is nothing 
 more than making a nest-egg. 
 
 Some years ago in my own home — for it is 
 through personal experience that I can thus 
 make such a dissertation about nurses — some 
 silver forks and spoons disappeared. Several 
 servants vi^ere liable to suspicion, and it be- 
 came necessary to open their trunks and make 
 a thorough search. As I had already made 
 up my mind about the denree, I began by 
 Nounou's trunk. No, never did the hiding- 
 place of a thieving magpie, never did the 
 hollow of a tree in which a pilfering crow 
 piles up its plunder, offer so incongruous an 
 assemblage of glittering and useless things : 
 stoppers of decanters, glass door handles, 
 hooks, broken bits of mirror, empty bobbins, 
 nails, scraps of silk, shreds of material, lead 
 paper, linen drapers' coloured advertisements, 
 and quite at the bottom, under all this denree, 
 the forks and spoons, now become denree 
 themselves. 
 
 Up to the very last, Nounou refused to 
 confess ; she vowed she was innocent, 
 declared she had only taken the forks and
 
 Notes on Paris. 219 
 
 spoons to use as shoe-horns, not thinking it 
 any harm. Nevertheless, she would not put 
 off her departure till the following day. She 
 was afraid lest we should change our minds 
 and send for the police. It was raining, and 
 night had set in. We saw her, silent and 
 suspicious, once more a true savage, dis- 
 appear with stealthy steps down the staircase, 
 refusing all help, and dragging with both 
 hands her precious trunk, loaded with its 
 plunder. 
 
 Can you imagine what it is, to confide your 
 child to the tender care of such brutes ^ 
 Indeed, the most minute and constant super- 
 vision is not superfluous. If you allowed her 
 to do as she liked, nurse would never take 
 the baby out to quaff the sun, and breathe 
 the fresh air of the squares. She loathes 
 Paris, and would far prefer to sit over the fire, 
 without a light, with the infant on her knees, 
 and sleep her heavy peasant's slumber, for 
 four hours at a time, her toes in the ashes, as 
 they do in the country. Again, it is almost 
 impossible to prevent her from keeping the 
 baby in her own bed. Why should it have a 
 cradle ? These town folk really have the 
 
 V 2
 
 2 20 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 most ridiculous ideas, such unreasonable 
 wants ! Would it not be better to have it 
 there, quite near her, and feed it when it 
 cries, without having to get up in the cold ? 
 It is true that occasionally it may be smothered 
 in turning over ; but then such accidents are 
 rare. 
 
 Then also, it is traditional in the country, 
 that a little baby can eat anything, and that it 
 can with impunity be stuffed with sour apples 
 and green plums. An inflammation sets in, 
 the doctor is sent for, but the child dies. 
 Another time it is a fall, or a blow which has 
 not been mentioned, and the consequences 
 are convulsions or meningitis. Ah ! how 
 much better would it be, if our Parisian 
 mothers would follow the advice of Jean- 
 Jacques Rousseau and nurse their babies 
 themselves. It is true that it is not always 
 easy or even feasible, in the debilitating 
 atmosphere of large cities, which makes 
 it a physical impossibility for so many 
 mothers. 
 
 But what excuse is there for the mothers in 
 the provinces, who, without necessity, from a 
 mere habit of carelessness and laziness, send
 
 Notes on Paris. 221 
 
 their children out to nurse for two or three 
 years, confiding them to the care of peasants 
 whom they have never seen ? Most of them 
 die. Those who survive, return home such 
 little monsters that their parents do not recog- 
 nize them, with their boorish ways, and their 
 coarse mannish little voices giving utterance 
 to all sorts of barbarous dialects. 
 
 I remember one day, in the country, in the 
 South, some friends proposed an excursion 
 to the Pont du Gard. We were to have a 
 pic-nic on the banks of the river, under the 
 shadow of the ruins. It happened that the 
 " little one's " nurse lived just in that direc- 
 tion, and we were to see it on the way. Quite 
 a large party was made up, the neighbours 
 invited, an omnibus hired, and off we went, 
 in the sun, in the wind, through the blinding 
 and burning dust. At the end of an hour, 
 we saw afar off, on the top of a hill, a brown 
 spot standing out on the snowy whiteness of 
 the road. The spot grew larger, came nearer. 
 It was the nurse, who, warned beforehand, 
 was looking out for us. The omnibus 
 stopped, and the puling infant was handed 
 in through the door.
 
 222 Recollections of a Literary Alan. 
 
 " What a fine child ! What a likeness to 
 you. And he is quite well, nurse, your 
 little one ? " The whole omnibus full kisses 
 it, fondles it, and then hands back the little 
 squalling bundle out of the door again, and 
 we dash off at a gallop, leaving nurse and 
 child standing in the blazing sun, in the 
 scorching, crackling ashes of the fiery 
 southern road. 
 
 This is the way to make strong lads, you 
 will say. 
 
 I should think so indeed ; those who 
 survive are proof against anything. 

 
 NOTES ON PARIS. 
 
 RIDICULOUS SALONS. 
 
 Amid all the follies of the day, there is not 
 one as amusing, as strange, and as fertile in 
 whimsical surprises as the mania for evening 
 parties, tea-parties, and dances which, from 
 October to April, rages throughout the differ- 
 ent grades of the Parisian bourgeoisie. Even 
 in the most humble household, in the most
 
 224 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 retired corner of the BatignoUes or Levallois- 
 Perret, they must receive, they must have a 
 reception-room, "a day." I know some 
 unkicky people who go off every Monday, to 
 take tea in the rue du Terrier-aux-Lapins.* 
 
 All this is well enough for those who have 
 something to gain by giving these little festivi- 
 ties. For instance, doctors who are setting up 
 and want to make themselves known in their 
 quarter ; parents without any fortune, who are 
 trying to marry their daughters ; professors of 
 elocution, music mistresses, who receive, once 
 a week, the families of their pupils. These 
 evening parties always have an odour of the 
 class-room, and the competitive examination. 
 The walls are bare, the seats hard, the floors 
 polished and carpetless, and a conventional 
 cheerfulness and attentive silence greets the 
 professor, when he announces : " Monsieur 
 Edmond will now recite a scene out of the 
 Misanthrope" or " Mademoiselle Eliza will 
 play a Polonaise of Weber." 
 
 But besides these, how many unfortunate 
 creatures receive without motive and without 
 profit, simply for the pleasure of receiving, of 
 
 * Street of the rabbit-burrows.
 
 Notes on Paris. 225 
 
 being thoroughly uncomfortable once a week, 
 bringing to their house some fifty individuals, 
 who will only go home making fun of them. 
 The drawing-rooms are too small, long but 
 not wide, and the guests sitting and talking 
 there, have the uncomfortable attitude of 
 people in an omnilms ; the apartments trans- 
 formed, turned topsy-turvy, are full of 
 passages, curtains and deceptive screens, and 
 the mistress of the house constantly screams 
 out in alarm : " Not that way ! " Sometimes 
 an indiscreet door half opens and allows one 
 to see in the depths of the kitchen the master 
 of the house, who has returned home, worn 
 out by doing commissions, soaked through 
 with the rain, wiping his hat with a hand- 
 kerchief, or hurriedly devouring a bit of cold 
 meat at a table overcrowded with trays. They 
 dance in the passages, in the bedrooms, from 
 which all the furniture has been cleared out, 
 and where, on looking around and seeing 
 nothing but lustres, brackets, hangings, and 
 a piano, one asks oneself with dismay : 
 " Where will they sleep to-night ? " 
 
 I knew a very curious house in this style, 
 where all the rooms, opening one into the
 
 2 26 Recollections of a Literary MaiK 
 
 other, and each separated by two or three 
 steps, looked like the landings of a staircase, 
 so much so indeed, that the guests at the 
 further end, appeared to be on a platform, 
 and from their height humiliated the last 
 comers, who were lessened and sunk up to 
 their chins in the lower depths of the first 
 room. Fancy how convenient for dancing! 
 No matter ! Once a month a large party was 
 given there. The divans from a little coffee- 
 house opposite were hired, and with the 
 divans, a waiter in pumps and white tie, the 
 only person among the guests who had a gold 
 watch and chain. It was a sight to behold 
 the distracted mistress of the house, dis- 
 hevelled, and red with all the fatigue of the 
 preparations, running after this man, follow- 
 ing him from room to room, and calling 
 him, " Monsieur le garden ! Monsieur le 
 gar^on ! " 
 
 And then the guests of those evening 
 parties ! Always the same set to be met 
 everywhere, well acquainted with one another, 
 ever seeking to meet, and ever clinging 
 together. A whole world of elderly ladies 
 and young girls with ambitious but faded
 
 Notes on Pijris. 
 
 dresses ; the velvet is cotton, glazed calico 
 does duty for silk, and one feels that all these 
 tawdry fringes, these crushed flowers, these 
 worn-out ribbons, have been put together. 
 
 matched any how, wiui ihe audacious phrase: 
 " Pooh ! in the evening it won't be noticed." 
 Thev cover themselves with powder, sham 
 jewelry, imitation lace. " Pooh ! in the 
 evening it won't be noticed." The curtains 
 have lost all colour, the furniture is frayed.
 
 2 28 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 the carpet is in holes. " Pooh ! in the even- 
 ing." And in this manner they can give 
 fetes, and have all the glory of seeing, at 
 three in the morning, some three or four 
 cabs, attracted by the lighted candles, stop 
 before the door; which, however, is not of 
 much use, as the company generally depart 
 on foot, following, at all sorts of impossible 
 hours, the long track of the absent omnibus, 
 the young girls hanging on the father's arm, 
 their satin shoes rammed into goloshes. 
 
 Ah, how many of these ridiculous drawing- 
 rooms have I seen ! Through what strange 
 evening parties did I not drag my first dress- 
 coat, when, ingenuous provincial that I was, 
 and knowing nothing of life but through 
 Balzac's works, I thought it my duty to go 
 into society! One must have roved about 
 two winters running as I did, from one end 
 of bourgeois Paris to the other, to know to 
 what an extent this folly of receiving, in spite 
 of all obstacles, may be carried. All this has 
 now become rather vague in my mind. I 
 recollect, however, a certain clerk's small 
 appartment, an oddly shaped drawing-room, 
 where they were obliged, in order to make
 
 Notes on Paris. 229 
 
 room, to put the piano in front of the kitchen 
 dour. The tumblers of syrup were placed on 
 the music books, and when they sang senti- 
 mental songs, the servant girl came and leant 
 against the piano to listen. 
 
 As the unfortunate servant was a prisoner 
 in her kitchen, Monsieur undertook the out- 
 side work. I can still see him, shivering in 
 his dress coat, bringing up from the cellar 
 enormous blocks of coal, wrapped uj) in a 
 newspaper. The paper would burst, the coal 
 roll out on the floor, and all the while they 
 continued singing at the piano : " / love to 
 hear at night, the sound 0/ the oars cleaving 
 the waters." 
 
 And that other house, that fantastic fourth 
 floor, where the landing was turned into a 
 cloak-room, and the banisters were loaded 
 with coats, where all the ill-assorted furniture 
 was crowded into one room, the only one that 
 could be lighted and warmed. Nothing, 
 however, could prevent its remaining dark and 
 icy cold, notwithstanding all attempts to the 
 contrary ; by reason of the desolation and 
 destitution one felt to be pervading the 
 solitude of the other emptied rooms. Poor
 
 230 Recollections of a Litei ary Man. 
 
 creatures ! At about eleven o'clock they 
 would artlessly inquire : " Are you warm ? 
 Would you like any refreshment ? " And 
 they would throw the windows wide open, 
 to let in the outside air, by way of refresh- 
 ment. After all, that was better than the 
 poisonous coloured syrups, and the dusty 
 little cakes so carefully put by from one week 
 to another. Have I not known the mistress 
 of a house, who, every Tuesday morning, 
 put out to dry on her window sill, little heaps 
 of damp tea, that she used on two or three 
 successive Mondays .-' Oh, when the middle 
 class attempts to meddle with fancies that are 
 beyond it, there is no knowing where it will 
 stop. Nowhere, not even in full Bohemia, 
 have I met any specimens so peculiar as in 
 these circles. 
 
 I remember a certain lady in white, whom 
 we used to call the lady of the gringuenotes, 
 because she was always sighing and com- 
 plaining that she had gringuenotes in her 
 stomach ! No one ever could find out what 
 she meant. 
 
 And that other one, a fat motherly creature, 
 wife of a " coach " for law examinations, who
 
 Notts on Paris. 231 
 
 always brought with her, to ensure herself 
 partners, her husband's pupils — all foreigners 
 — a Moldavian wrapped up in furs or a long 
 petticoated Persian I 
 
 And that gentleman, who put on his cards 
 " World tourist," to show that he had been 
 round the world ! 
 
 And in a parvenu's drawing-room that 
 old peasant woman, half deaf and inbecile, 
 rigged out in a silk dress, to whom her 
 daughter would mincingly say : " Mama, Mr. 
 So-and-so is going to recite something." The 
 poor old thing would move uneasily in her 
 chair, and understanding nothing, would 
 answer with a silly, scared smile : " Ah ! well, 
 well." It was in that same house, that they 
 had the speciality of the relatives of great 
 men. With an air of much mystery, they 
 would say : " We sh?.ll have Ambroise 
 Thomas' brother to-night," or else perhaps, 
 " a cousin of Gounod," or " an aunt of 
 Gambetta." But never either Gambctta or 
 Gounod. It was also there— but I must 
 stop, the series is inexhaustible.
 
 *^-'.
 
 IN THE PROVINCES. 
 
 A MEMBER OF THE JOCKEY-CLUB. 
 
 After dinner the worthy natives of the 
 Cevennes insisted upon showing me then 
 club. It was the usual club of a little country 
 town, four rooms in a line, on the first floor 
 of an old house which overlooked the parade, 
 with great tarnished mirrors, tiled floors with- 
 out carpets, and here and there, upon the 
 manteUpieces, — where the Paris papers, dated 
 
 Q
 
 2 34 Recollections of a Literary Ma?i. 
 
 
 the day before yesterday were strewn about, — 
 were bronze lamps, the only lamps in the 
 town which were not blown out as nine 
 o'clock struck. 
 
 When I arrived, there were as yet, very 
 few people present. Some old fogies were 
 snoring with their noses buried in their 
 papers, or playing whist in solemn silence; 
 and beneath the green-tinted light of the 
 lamp-shades, these bald heads nodding 
 towards each other and the counters heaped 
 in the little plush basket, all alike, had the 
 even, yellow, polished tone of old ivory. 
 Outside on the parade was heard the evening 
 bugle, and the footsteps of pedestrians turn- 
 ing homewards, dispersing along the sloping 
 streets and many steps connecting the different 
 inclines of this mountain town. After a few 
 last knocks inflicted upon the doors, and 
 re-echoing through the prefect silence, the 
 youth of the town, freed from the family 
 meals and evening walk, sprang noisily up 
 the stairs of the club. I beheld an invasion 
 of some twenty solidly built mountaineers, 
 in new gloves, vast shirt fronts, open collars 
 and some faint attempts at hair-curling a la' 
 Russe, which made them all look like great
 
 In the Prm'i rices. 235 
 
 over-coloured dolls. You could imagine 
 nothing more ludicrous. It seemed to me 
 that I was assisting at a purely Parisian 
 piece by IMeilhac, or Dumas fils, played by 
 amateurs from Tarascon, or from even some 
 still more remote spot. All the soft speech, 
 the ennui, the used-up, tired-out airs which 
 are the height of good form among the 
 Parisian mashers, I found before me, two 
 hundrctl miles away from Paris, and exag- 
 gerated still more by the awkwardness of the 
 actors. It was worth while to see these lusty 
 fellows greeting each other with a languid : 
 "How are you, old man?" sink down on 
 the divans in attitudes of the utmost dejection, 
 stretch themselves in front of the mirrors, 
 and say with the strong accent of the country: 
 " Life's a swindle I Everything's a bore." 
 It was touching to hear them call their club 
 the dob, which word, as good meridionals, 
 they pronounced dab. One heard nothing 
 else — " The dab waiter, the dab rules." 
 
 I was in the act of asking myself how all 
 these Parisian absurdities could have got 
 there, and have taken root in the keen and 
 healthy mountain air, when there appeared 
 before mc the pretty little pale and curled 
 
 Q 2
 
 236 Recollections of a Literary Alan. 
 
 head of the young Duke de M * * *, member 
 of the Jockey Club, the Rowing Club, the 
 Delamarre stable, and of several other learned 
 societies. This young gentleman, whose 
 extravagances have made him famous on the 
 boulevard, had just managed to get through 
 the last million but one of the paternal 
 fortune, and his guardians, seriously alarmed, 
 had sent him to rusticate in this forgotten 
 corner of the Cevennes. I understood at 
 once all the languishing airs of these pro- 
 vincial youths, the display of shirt fronts, 
 the pretentious pronunciation : the model 
 was before my eyes. 
 
 Scarcely had he entered the room, than 
 the member of the Jockey Club was surroun- 
 ded and made much of. His witticisms were 
 repeated, his gestures and attitudes were 
 copied, so much so that this pale shadow of 
 a dandy, fagged, unhealthy, yet distinguished 
 looking in spite of all, seemed to be reflected 
 in every direction, in coarse countrified 
 mirrors which grossly exaggerated his features. 
 That evening, no doubt in my honour, the 
 Duke talked a great deal of literature, and 
 of the theatre. But, good heavens, with what 
 contempt ! what ignorance 1 It was enough
 
 In the Provmccs. 237 
 
 to hear him call Emile Augier " that gen- 
 tleman," and Dumas fils " little Dumas. " 
 The vaguest ideas about everything floated 
 amongst unfinished phrases, wherein ivhafs 
 his name, and ivhat (T you call 'em stood in 
 place of words he could not find, and held 
 the same position as those lines of dots so 
 much in favour with dramatic authors, who 
 do not know how to write. In short, this 
 young gentleman had never given himself 
 the trouble of thinking ; but he had mixed 
 much in the world, and from the wild circle 
 of his acciuaintance had carried away an 
 expression here, a judgment there, superficially 
 preserved and forming a part of himself, as 
 much as the curls that shaded his delicate 
 forehead. What, however, he did most 
 thoroughly understand, was heraldry, liveries, 
 light women and race-horses ; and on these 
 points, the young provincials whose education 
 he had undertaken, were becoming almost 
 as learned as himself. 
 
 The evening wore heavily away amid the 
 prattlings of this melancholy stable man. 
 Towards ten o'clock, the old men having 
 left, and the whist tables being deserted, 
 the younger men seated themselves for a
 
 238 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 little baccarat. It had become the correct 
 thing since the Duke had been among them. 
 I had taken up a position in the shade, on 
 a corner of the divan, and from thence I 
 had a good view of all the players, under 
 the shaded and concentrated light of the 
 lamps. The member of the Jockey Club 
 was enthroned in the centre of the group 
 around the table, superbly indifferent, hold- 
 ing his cards with perfect grace and caring 
 little whether he won or lost. This Parisian 
 with pockets cleared out was yet the wealthiest 
 of the party. But they, poor fledgelings, 
 what an effort of courage it cost them to 
 affect impassibility ! As the excitement of 
 the game increased, I followed with curiosity 
 the expressions of the various faces. I saw 
 lips tremble, eyes fill with tears, fingers close 
 with feverish agitation upon the cards. To 
 conceal their emotion, the losers uttered an 
 occasional ejaculation amid their bad luck, 
 " I've lost my head, I'm dreadfully bored ; " 
 but uttered in the terrible meridional accent, 
 always so emphatic and so hard, these 
 Parisian exclamations had no longer the air 
 of aristocratic indifference which they wore 
 on the lips of the little Duke.
 
 /// the Provinces. 
 
 239 
 
 Among the players was one in particular 
 who interested me. He was a tall youth, 
 very young, who had grown too quickly, the 
 big good-natured face of a bearded child, 
 simple, unpolished and primitive, notwith- 
 
 standing all his DemidoJ^ curls, and on whose 
 open countenance every passing impression 
 was easy to read. This lad lost continually. 
 Two or three times I had noticed him rise 
 from the table and leave the room quickly ; 
 then after a few minutes, he would return to 
 his place, red and perspiring, and I said to 
 myself : " You have been to your mother, or 
 sisters with some pitiful tale, to get money 
 from thcin." The fact is, that each time, 
 the poor devil returned with full pockets, and
 
 240 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 resumed play with redoubled fury. But luck 
 was persistently against him. He lost, he 
 lost incessantly. I felt him to be trembling, 
 every nerve tingling, no longer having even 
 the power to put a good face upon misfor- 
 tune. As each card fell, he dug his nails 
 into the woollen cloth : it was heart-rending. 
 
 Gradually hypnotised, however, by the 
 atmosphere of provincial ennui and idleness, 
 very tired too by my journey, I only beheld 
 the card -table as a very faint and vague 
 luminous vision, and I ended by falling 
 asleep, to the murmur of voices and shuffled 
 cards I was awakened suddenly by a noise 
 of angry words, sounding loud in the empty 
 rooms. Everyone was gone. There re- 
 mained only the member of the Jockey Club 
 and the great boy in whom I had been 
 interested, both seated at the table and play- 
 ing. The game was serious, ecarte at ten 
 louis (eight pounds), and it was enough to 
 see the despair depicted on the great good- 
 natured bull-dog face, to understand that the 
 mountaineer was still losing. 
 
 " My revenge," he cried with rage, from 
 time to time. The other held his own ; and 
 at each fresh stroke of luck, it seemed to me
 
 In the Provincei. 241 
 
 that an evil smile, disdainful and almost 
 imperceptible, curled his aristocratic lip. I 
 heard him announce " the conqueror ! " then 
 there was a violent blow of the fist upon the 
 table ; it was all over, the unfortunate wretch 
 had lost everything. 
 
 He remained for a moment stunned, look- 
 ing at his cards without a word, his frock- 
 coat hunched up, his shirt front rumpled and 
 damp as if he had been fighting. Then, all 
 at once, seeing the Duke picking up the gold 
 pieces scattered on the cloth, he rose with a 
 terrible cry : " My money ! Good God ! 
 Give me back my money ! " and then like the 
 child he still was, he began to sob : " Give 
 it back to me, give it back to me ! " Ah ! 
 I can assure you he lisped no longer, his 
 natural voice had returned to him ; affecting 
 as that of all strong beings to whom tears 
 come rarely and are a true suffering. Still 
 cold, still ironical, his adversary watched him 
 without moving a muscle. Then the poor 
 fellow went down upon his knees, and said 
 quite low, in a voice that trembled : " That 
 money was not mine. I stole it. My 
 father left it with me to meet a bill." 
 Suffocated by shame, he could say no more.
 
 2 42 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 At the first mention of stolen money, the 
 Duke had risen. A faint animation glowed 
 in his cheeks. The head assumed an expres- 
 sion of pride which became him well. He 
 emptied his pockets on the table, and him- 
 self dropping for a moment his dandy's 
 mask he said, in a kind and natural voice : 
 " Take it back, you idiot. Did you suppose 
 we were playing seriously ? " 
 
 I could have hugged that true gentleman .' 
 
 J 
 
 I
 
 THE GUERANDE RACES 
 
 First of all, let us tarry a while in the 
 charming and uncommon little town of 
 Guerande, so picturestiue with its ancient 
 ramparts flanked by big towers, and its moats 
 (illed with moss-green water. Between the 
 old stones, wild veronicas flower in great 
 nosegays ; everywhere ivy entwines itself, 
 westeria creeps its serpentine course, and 
 terraced gardens hang over the battlements 
 masses of roses and cascades of clematis.
 
 244 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 From the moment that you plunge beneath 
 the postern gate, with its round low arch, 
 where the bells of the post-horses tinkle 
 merrily, you enter upon a new country, into 
 an epoch of some five-hundred years ago. 
 The doors open from under Gothic archways, 
 the antique houses are of irregular frontage, 
 the higher stories overhanging the lower ; 
 with deep lines on the stonework and orna- 
 mentations defaced and worn by the hand of 
 time. In certain silent by-streets old manor- 
 houses stand out, with high windows lighted 
 by narrow panes. The seignorial gates are 
 closed now, but between their disjointed 
 timbers, one can see the steps invaded by 
 verdure, the clumps of hydrangeas at the 
 entrance, and the courtyard full of grass, 
 where some crumbling wall, some ruins of a 
 chapel, add still more to the accumulation of 
 stones and green efflorescence. For this 
 sets forth the whole character of Gudrande, 
 — a flowery and coquettish ruin. 
 
 Here and there, above a worn and venerable 
 knocker, is displayed the honest and vulgar 
 escutcheon of a notary or a sheriff's officer, 
 or the placard of a post-office ; but, for the 
 most part, these ancient dwellings have
 
 //; the Proinnces, 245 
 
 kept their aristocratic impress, and on due 
 search one may find some of the great 
 names of Brittany, buried in the silence of 
 this little corner, which in itself is the past 
 personified. There, indeed, a dreamy silence 
 has its home. It watches round the 
 fourteenth-century church, where the fruit- 
 sellers shelter their flat baskets and knit 
 mutely. It hovers over the deserted alleys, 
 the moat of stagnant water, the calm streets 
 traversed from time to time by a herds- woman 
 leading her cow, barefooted, a rope for girdle 
 round her waist, and a headgear of Joan of 
 Arc's time. 
 
 On the day of the races, needless to say, 
 the whole aspect of the town changes. There 
 is a continual coming and going of carriages, 
 bringing the bathers from Le Croisic or Le 
 Pouliguen, both men and women. There 
 are carts full of peasants, huge antique 
 coaches which look as if they had rolled out 
 of a fairy tale, hired vehicles in which may 
 be perched some old dowager of the neigh- 
 bourhood, between her bed-chamber woman 
 in the cap of the country, and her page in 
 wooden shoes. All these will have arrived in 
 the early morning in lime for high mass.
 
 246 Recollections oj a Litej-ary Man. 
 
 The sound of the bells is wafted through 
 the narrow streets mingled with the click of 
 the barber's scissors ; and the well-filled 
 church makes the town a desert for a couple 
 of hours. At midday, at the first stroke of 
 the Angelus, the doors open and the crowd 
 pours out into the tiny square, amidst the 
 importunate murmur of the beggars clustered 
 about the porch, whose voices all burst forth at 
 the same moment. It is a wild medley of all 
 sorts of church chants : Litanies, Credos, 
 Pater Nosters ; a display of sores, infirmities, 
 and leprosy worthy of the middle ages. The 
 crowd contributes to this archaic effect : the 
 women have white caps, terminating in a 
 point, with a pad of embroidery above 
 flattened locks, and flying lappets, or long 
 goffred caps for the fisher and salt-pit 
 women, petticoats pleated in wide folds and 
 wimples around the neck. The men have 
 two totally different costumes : the farming 
 people wear a short vest, a high collar, and a 
 coloured handkerchief arranged as a shirt 
 frill, which gives them the air of well-crested 
 village cocks. The ?alt workers are dressed 
 in the ancient Gu^randais costume, the long 
 white smock coming half-way down the leg; 
 
 I
 
 In thf Provinces 
 
 247 
 
 the breeches white too, finished off with 
 starters above the knee, and a three-cornered 
 black hat over all. adorned with steel buckles 
 and knots of coloured velvet twist. This hat 
 
 
 >, r> » 
 
 #- 
 
 is worn upon the head in several different 
 ways. The married men wear it " haitlc 
 fa.shion," across, like the gendarmes ; 
 ■widowers and bachelors turn ihc points in 
 other ways. All this assemblage spreads
 
 24^ Recollections of a Literary Man 
 
 itself about the venerable streets, and an hour 
 later comes together again on the race 
 course, about half a mile from the town, on 
 an immense plain bounded only by the 
 horizon. 
 
 From the stands, the view is marvellous. 
 In the background is the sea, green and 
 flecked with white foam : nearer are the 
 steeples of Le Croisic, of the town of Batz, 
 and the salt-pits sparkling and white under 
 the sunshine, in the gleaming trenches of the 
 marshes. The crowd arrives from all sides 
 across the fields. The high white caps 
 appear above the hedges ; the lads advance 
 in bands, arm in arm, and singing in their 
 hoarse voices. Song and movement are 
 alike simple, primitive, almost barbarous. 
 Without heeding the stares of the gentlemen 
 in tall hats, the women who pass before 
 us, a silk kerchief crossed over their wimples, 
 have a composed and dignified bearing, and 
 not the slightest affectation of coquetry. 
 They have come to look on, to be sure ; but 
 not to be looked at. While waiting for 
 the races to begin, all the people crowd 
 together behind the stands, around the great 
 sheds where waffles and sausages are fried in
 
 In the Provinces. 249 
 
 y \».^VA^ V* • - *   X • * 'X*V« V. 
 
 full sunshine. At last comes the Guerandais 
 band, surrounded by fresh groups of noisy 
 singers, and there is an interruption to the 
 drinking for a time. Every one rushes to 
 obtain a good place for the coming sight, and 
 in this overllow of people, scattering itself 
 around the course, upon the edge of the 
 ditches and the already harvested fields, the 
 long white smock of the marsh-men, which 
 appears to increase their size, makes them 
 look from afar like Dominicans or Premonlres. 
 Indeed all this part of Brittany rather gives 
 the impression of a vast convent. Even the 
 work is carried on in silence. To reach 
 Guerande, we had to pass through villages 
 that were dumb notwithstanding the bustle of 
 harvest, and everywhere upon the road, the 
 foils and the beaters worked in measured 
 time without the faintest excitement of word 
 or song. To-day, however, the waflles, the 
 cider, and the sausages have loosened the 
 tongues of the lads, and all along the course 
 there is a cheerful hubbub. 
 
 Gudrande races are of two sorts : first there 
 is the townspeople race ; one of those country 
 steeple-chases, such as we have all seen 
 dozens of limes. A few green race-cards
 
 250 Recollectiotis of a Literary Man. 
 
 stuck in the hats, some vehicles, few and far 
 between ranged in the enclosure, a display of 
 parasols and smart dresses, — the whole an 
 imitation of Paris ; all this cannot be interest- 
 ing for us ; but the mule races, and those of 
 the horses of the country, we found singularly 
 amusing. It is the very deuce to put into 
 line these little Breton mules, owning a 
 double share of obstinacy. The music, the 
 shouts, the motley of the stands, frighten 
 them. There is sure to be one that carries 
 his rider the wrong way of the course, and to 
 bring him back takes time. The young 
 fellows who mount them wear flat caps of the 
 brightest scarlet, a similar vest, great breeches, 
 wide and floating, legs and feet bare ; no 
 saddles, only bridles, which the mules pull 
 on one side with the most marked ill-will. At 
 length they are off. They can be distinguished 
 in the plain, dashing along at full gallop. 
 The red jackets are terribly shaken, and 
 the straightened and strained legs endea- 
 vour to keep the animals within the line 
 traced by the ropes. At the turn of the 
 course more than one rider is left rolling 
 upon the grass of the enclosure ; but the race 
 is not interrupted for this. The marsh-man. 
 
 1
 
 /// the Provinces. 
 
 = 5 
 
 owner of the animal, darts forth at once, 
 leaves his unfortunate jockey to pick himself 
 up as best he can, and, still arrayed in his 
 long smock, which he has not had time to 
 throw off, himself bestrides his beast. There 
 
 are disdainful smiles on the stands, but the 
 Breton crowd, perched up in the trees, ranged 
 along the edges of the ditches, stamps with 
 joy, and utters energetic cries of delight. 
 Each man naturally pins his faith on the 
 nags of his own parish. The people from 
 Batz, Saille, le Pouligucn, Escoublac, Piriac, 
 watch for their compatriots on the wav. cheer 
 
 K 2
 
 252 Rixollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 on the riders, and even leave the ranks, to 
 whack the mules with friendly blows from 
 hats and handkerchiefs. Even the white caps 
 all suddenly rise up, fluttering like butterflies 
 in the sea breeze, to watch Jean-Marie Mahe 
 or Jean-Marie Madec, or some other Jean- 
 Marie, go by. After the mules, come the 
 horses and mares of the country, a shade less 
 obstinate than the mules, a little less wild, 
 but brimful of ardour all the same, and 
 valiantly striving to win the race. 
 
 Their resounding hoofs tear up the ground 
 of the track; and while they race, one can 
 see far beyond them, upon a sea tossed by a 
 terrific wind, a fisher sail making with diffi- 
 culty for le Croisic. This neighbourhood 
 imparts to the sight before us a remarkable 
 grandeur ; the horses and the vehicles rolling 
 homewards along the road, the groups scat- 
 tered over the plain, all stand out against a 
 green and restless background, a horizon full 
 of life and immensity. 
 
 As we returned to Guerande, the evening 
 was beginning to close in. Illuminations 
 were in course of preparation, coloured 
 lanterns hung in the great trees of the pro- 
 menades, fireworks were arranged in the
 
 In the Prorinces. 253 
 
 church square, and there was a platform below 
 the ramparts for those who played the bag- 
 pipes. But beholil, a fine drizzling rain, 
 sharp and cold as sleci, came to spoil the 
 festivities. Every one took refuge in the 
 inns, in front of which stood carts and 
 vehicles, unharnessed and dripping, with their 
 shafts in the air. For an hour, the town is 
 silent ; then the same bands as before stream 
 down the dark streets singing. The tall caps 
 and the little green shawls venture out in 
 couples. There has been some talk of 
 dancing a branle, and dance it they will, 
 notwithstanding the rain. Yes ! indeed ! 
 they will ! Soon all this youthfulness 
 settles itself down right and left in the low 
 rooms of the taverns. Some dance to the 
 music of the bagpipes, some to an accom- 
 paniment of singing " son des touches," as 
 they say here. The boards tremble, the 
 lamps are coated with dust, and the same 
 slow and melancholy refrain is heard droning 
 ponderously over the whole place. During 
 this time, the carriages and carts are slipping 
 away through all the five gates of the town. 
 The old manor houses are shut once more, 
 and the flowering bushes which adorn the
 
 2 54 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 ramparts, seem in the night to increase, to 
 mingle, to become confounded in one vast 
 tangle, as the enchanted shrubs, at the 
 touch of the fairy's wand, surrounded the 
 castle where lay the Sleeping Beauty.
 
 A VISIT TO THE ISLE OF IIOUAT. 
 
 A LOVELY summer sunlight, equal and 
 limpid, had just risen over the bay of 
 Quiberon, as we set foot on the pilot boat 
 destined to convey us to the Island of Hnuat. 
 The breeze, always fresh from some point of
 
 256 Recollections of a Literary Alan. 
 
 the compass on this vast horizon of sea, 
 filled the sail, and drove us before it straight 
 to our destination, merely skimming the 
 waves and curling them with close following 
 shivers. 
 
 In the distance, coasts disclosed themselves, 
 some sandy beach, or some white house 
 suddenly catching the sunlight, gleaming 
 between the varied blue of the waves, and 
 the monotonous blue of the sky, over which 
 floated only those light, fringed, feathery 
 clouds, that the sailors here call " mare's- 
 tails," and which foretell a smart breeze 
 before nightfall. 
 
 The crossing seemed short. 
 
 Nothing is more uniform in appearance 
 than the sea in fine weather ; the waves 
 succeed each other in equal rhythm, break 
 against the boat in frothy murmurs, swell, 
 dip, moved by an unquiet heaviness in which 
 lurks the latent storm ; and yet, nothing is 
 really more varied. Everything assumes an 
 enormous importance upon this surface 
 endowed with life, and movement. Seawards 
 are vessels of all kinds, the mail-packet for 
 Belle-Isle, passing afar off, its smoke like
 
 In the Provinces. 25; 
 
 a plume; fishing boats with sails white or 
 tanned, shoals of porpoises rolling upon the 
 water and cleaving it with their sharp fins ; 
 then rocky islets, from whence rise tumul- 
 tuously flocks of sea-gulls, or some troop 
 of cormorants with their great wings, — strong 
 for hovering and for flight, — which mark them 
 as birds of prey. 
 
 In passing, we run close by the Teignouse 
 light-house, perched upon a rock ; and 
 although our pace is great, we have a very 
 clear vision of the reef, and the two human 
 lives upon it. At the moment when we pass 
 by, one of the men, his blouse all filled 
 by the wind, is descending the little per- 
 pendicular brass ladder, which serves as 
 an external staircase, on to the islet. His 
 companion, seated in a cleft of the rock, 
 is mournfully fishing; the sight of these 
 t\\'o figures, so small against the surround- 
 ing immensity, the white stone work of the 
 light -house, the lantern, at this hour pale 
 in the daylight, the weights of the great 
 steam bell which tolls on foggy nights, all 
 these quickly seen details, were enough to 
 give us a striking impression of this exile
 
 258 Recollections of a LiUrary Man. 
 
 in mid-ocean, and of the life of these 
 keepers, shut up for weeks together, in this 
 hollow and sonorous tower of sheet-iron, 
 where the voices of sea and wind reverberate 
 with such fury, that the men are obliged to 
 shout in each other's ears, to make themselves 
 heard. 
 
 Once the light-house rounded, the Isle of 
 Houat begins to appear, little by little, show- 
 ing above the swell of the sea its rocky soil, 
 on which the sun throws a mirage of vegeta- 
 tion, tints as of ripe harvest, and the velvet 
 bloom of grassy meadows. 
 
 As we get nearer, the aspect changes, the 
 real ground appears, wild and desolate, 
 burnt up by the sun and sea, bristling with 
 frowning heights ; on the right, a dis- 
 mantled and abandoned fortress, on the 
 left, a grey windmill which gauges for us 
 the speed of the land breezes, a few very 
 low roofs grouped around their clock tower ; 
 all far apart, gloomy, and silent. One 
 might suppose the place to be uninhabited, 
 if a few flocks scattered upon the slopes 
 of the rugged valleys of the island, were 
 not to be seen, wandering in the distance,
 
 /// the Provinces. 259 
 
 or lying down or grazing upon the wild and 
 scanty vegetation. 
 
 Here and there, creeks of sand describe 
 bright and soft-edged curves amid the desola- 
 
 tion of the rocks. It is in one of these creeks 
 that we disembark, not without difTiculty, for 
 at low tide, the shore is too shallow for the 
 approach of the boat, and we are forced to 
 land on wet slippery stones to which cling 
 the long green locks of the seaweed ; seaweed 
 dilated or uncurled by the water, but at this
 
 2 6o Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 moment massed together in heavy sticky 
 lumps on which the foot sHps at every step. 
 At length after many efforts, we gain the top 
 of the high cliffs which command the whole 
 near horizon. 
 
 In the clear atmosphere which seems to 
 bring the shores nearer, the view is admirable. 
 Here is the steeple of le Croisic, that of 
 Bourg-de-Batz, some ten or twelve sea- 
 leagues distant, and all the jagged coast 
 line of Morbihan, Saint-Gildas-de- Rhuiz, 
 the rivers of Vannes and Auray, Locmaria- 
 quer, Plouharmel, Carnac, the Bourg-de- 
 Quiberon, and the little hamlets belonging 
 to it, that are scattered along the whole 
 length of the peninsula. From the oppo- 
 site shore, the dark line of Belle-Isle steals 
 out towards the wild sea, and the houses 
 of Palais gleam in an opening. But if the 
 perspective is enlarged, the view of Houat 
 is for the time being entirely lost to us. 
 The belfry, the fort, the windmill, have all 
 disappeared in the inequalities of the undu- 
 lating ground, as wildly contorted as the 
 surrounding waves. We, however, directed 
 our steps toward the village by a tortuous
 
 Tn the Provinces. 261 
 
 pathway, protected by the treacherous little 
 Breton walls, made of flat stones, and full 
 of twists and turns. 
 
 As we walked along, we noticed the flora 
 of the island, wonderful for a mere rock 
 beaten by every wind of heaven ; the lilies of 
 Houat, double and sweet-scented like our 
 own, large mallows, trailing roses, sea-pinks, 
 the faint and delicate perfume of which 
 is in harmony with the thin note of the grey 
 lark, whereof the island is full. Fields of 
 potatoes and freshly cut corn lie around us, 
 but on every piece of fallow- land, the moor, 
 the dreary moor, hard and bristling, advances, 
 climbs, and sticks, yellow flowers peeping 
 out amid its thorns. At our approach the 
 cattle turned aside ; the cows accustomed 
 to the flat caps and hats of Morbihan, fol- 
 lowed us for a long time with their great 
 motionless eyes. Everywhere we came 
 upon cattle, scattered or grazing in groups, 
 and always free from shackles or super- 
 intendence. 
 
 At last, lying in a fold of the ground, 
 sheltered from the storms and the sea spray, 
 appeared the village, with its low and
 
 262 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 wretched roofs huddled together, as if to 
 make head against the wind, and separated 
 not by the usual narrow streets, the straight 
 lines of which might be a pathway for the 
 tempests, but by crossways, or little squares, 
 capriciously disposed, and at the present time 
 of year serving as threshing floors for the 
 harvest. 
 
 Half wild horses, of a breed somewhat 
 recalling that of the Camarguais, turn, two 
 or three yoked together, in the cramped 
 spaces of these unequal circles, treading the 
 grain, and sending the dust of it, flying up 
 in the sunshine. A woman guides them, 
 a wisp of straw in her hand ; other women, 
 armed with pitchforks, turn the corn over 
 towards the circle of the threshing ground. 
 There is nothing striking about their cos- 
 tumes : poor faded garments devoid of shape, 
 yellow kerchiefs sheltering tanned and 
 sallow faces ; but the scene itself is of the 
 most picturesque primitiveness. From thence 
 rise the neigh of the horses, the rustle of 
 the straw, and clear voices, in which ring 
 the harsh guttural syllables of the Breton 
 speech.
 
 /// I he Provinces. 
 
 263 
 
 Such as it is, this poor Morbihan village 
 makes vou think of some African encamp- 
 
 ment ; there is the same stifling air, vitiated 
 by the dungheaps accumulated at the very 
 thresholds, the same familiar companionship 
 between the inhabitants and their beasts, the
 
 264 Recollections oj a Literary Man. 
 
 same isolation of a little group of creatures in 
 the midst of a vast solitude ; moreover, the 
 doors are low, the windows narrow ; indeed, 
 on the walls facing the sea there are none. 
 One feels distinctly, that here is poverty com- 
 bating the unfriendly elements. 
 
 The women toil wearily to get in the har- 
 vests, and occupy themselves with the cattle ; 
 the men spend their lives in fishing, a work 
 of danger. At the present time, all are at 
 sea, except an old fellow, shaking with fever, 
 whom we find sitting at his rope-maker's 
 wheel, and the miller, who is not a native of the 
 island and is paid monthly by the community, 
 and lastly the M. le Cure, the highest per- 
 sonage in the Isle of Houat, and the very pith 
 of its originality. Here all power centres in 
 the priest, just as in the captain of a ship at 
 sea. To his sacerdotal authority, he adds 
 that of his administrative functions. He is 
 deputy mayor in the village, referee for the 
 fisher people; it is he who has the supervision 
 of the military works, forts or fortlets, which 
 have been built upon the island, and which in 
 time of peace are unprovided with even a 
 man in charge. Should a dispute arise
 
 In the Provinces. 265 
 
 among the maritime population, over a 
 lobster pot, or the division of a haul of fish, 
 behold M. U Cure acting as justice of the 
 peace. Should there be a little too much 
 convivial uproar at the tavern on Sunday 
 evening, quickly he winds a tri-coloured scarf 
 round his cassock, and on this occasion fulfils 
 the functions of village constable. 
 
 It is not very long since he was wont to 
 descend to even more petty employments. 
 He had the monopoly of all drinks, which 
 he caused to be served out by a Sister through 
 a wicket. He also kept the key of the 
 common oven, in which every household 
 bakes its bread. These were the precautions 
 of exile ; the necessary rules for ship pro- 
 visions, brought from outside to this sea-girt 
 island, left like a vessel to the mercy of the 
 waves. 
 
 For three or four years past, the ancient 
 customs have been slightly modified ; but 
 the principles of them are still in force, and 
 the actual Cure oi the island, a vigorous and 
 intelligent man, appeared to us quite capable 
 of enforcing respect for his multiple authority. 
 He lives near the church, in a modest par- 
 
 s
 
 2 66 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 sonage, which by the presence of two poplars, 
 a superb fig tree, a flower garden, and a few 
 wandering hens, seems to carry us back to 
 the heart of the mainland. 
 
 By the side of the Cures house, is the 
 mixed school for boys and girls, in charge 
 of Sisters, who also undertake to distribute 
 to all these poor folk, medicines, kindly care, 
 and advice. 
 
 In the Sisters' house, too, terminates the 
 submarine telegraph that unites Houat with 
 Belle-Isle, and the continent. It is a Sister 
 who receives and transmits the messages ; 
 and in passing she may be seen behind the 
 window-pane, her well-starched cap bent over 
 the electric needle. Further information, still 
 more curious, about the Isle of Houat and its 
 population, was given to us in the little white- 
 washed dining-room, with all its beams 
 visible, to which 31. le Cure brought us, 
 and where he made us sit down. There are 
 no poor at Houat. A communal fund 
 supplies all that is necessary. Fish abounds 
 upon the coast, the fishermen go to le Croisic 
 or Auray to sell it, and always sell it well ; 
 but the absence of a safe anchorage on this
 
 In the Provinces. 267 
 
 rock-bound coast prevents the people of 
 Houat from being perfectly happy. It is by 
 no means uncommon, in rough weather, for 
 the smacks to be obHged to put out to sea, 
 to seek a better sheher although at the risk 
 of greater dangers. Sometimes, in the har- 
 bour even, badly protected as it is by a short 
 jetty of the most primitive construction, 
 accidents take place. The sole ambition 
 therefore of the Cure of Houat, is to obtain a 
 safe anchorage for the seven smacks which 
 compose the fleet of the country ; and dwell- 
 ing upon this hope, we left him. 
 
 In quitting the village, we passed by the 
 church, where the sea reflects upon the 
 window panes a changing blue ; for a moment 
 we halt in the little cemetery, silent, uncared 
 for, the rare black crosses in the vast horizon 
 around us, seeming like so many masts in 
 harbour; and as we wonder at the small 
 number of inscriptions, or of enclosed graves 
 in a churchyard which must be of great age, we 
 are told that up to last year, — this is another 
 effect of the maritime customs of the Island 
 of Houat, — it was usual to turn up the ground 
 where chance might direct, and so to render
 
 2 68 Recollections of a Literary Man. 
 
 to the earth again, the anonymous dead ; just 
 as in long voyages, they are consigned to the 
 passing waves. 
 
 Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co. 
 Editibur^h and London
 
 40915
 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAl 1 IRRARv mp" .t 
 
 i.Ty 
 
 AA 000 331539 7