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Memoirs (Vieux Souvenirs) of the Prince de Joinville

by prince de François-Ferdinand-Philippe-Louis-Marie d'Orléans Joinville · English · Gutenberg #5716 · 663,143 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Memoirs (Vieux Souvenirs) of the Prince de Joinville

Author: prince de François-Ferdinand-Philippe-Louis-Marie d'Orléans Joinville

Translator: Lady Mary Loyd


        
Release date: May 1, 2004 [eBook #5716]
                Most recently updated: May 31, 2013

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5716

Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Rose Koven, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMOIRS (VIEUX SOUVENIRS) OF THE PRINCE DE JOINVILLE ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Rose Koven, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.









MEMOIRS (VIEUX SOUVENIRS) OF THE PRINCE DE JOINVILLE

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY LADY MARY LOYD



CHAPTER I

1818-1830


I was born at Neuilly-sur-Seine, on the outskirts of Paris, on the 14th
of August, 1818. Immediately after my birth, and as soon as the
Chancellor of France, M. Dambray, had declared me to be a boy, I was
made over to the care of a wet nurse and another attendant. Three years
later I passed out of female hands, earlier, somewhat, than is
generally the case, for a little accident befell my nurse, in which my
eldest brother's tutor, an unfrocked priest, as he was then discovered
to be, was also concerned. My earliest memory, and a very hazy one it
is, mixed up with some story or other about a parrot, is of having seen
my grandmother, the Duchesse d'Orleans-Penthievre, at Ivry. After that
I recollect being at the Chateau of Meudon with my great-aunt, the
Duchesse de Bourbon, a tiny little woman; and being taken to see the
Princesse Louise de Conde at the Temple, and then I remember seeing
Talma act in Charles the Bold, and the great impression his gilt
cuirass made upon me.

But the first event that really is exceedingly clear in my recollection
is a family dinner given by Louis XVIII. at the Tuileries on Twelfth
Night, 1824. Even now, sixty-six years after, I can see every detail of
that party, as if it had been yesterday. Our arrival in the courtyard
of the Tuileries, under the salute of the Swiss Guard at the Pavillon
Marsan and the King's Guard at the Pavillon de Flore. Our getting out
of the carriage under the porch of the stone staircase to the deafening
rattle of the drums of the Cent Suisses. Then my huge astonishment when
we had to stand aside halfway up the stairs, to let "La viande du Roi,"
in other words, his Majesty's dinner, pass by, as it was being carried
up from the kitchen to the first floor, escorted by his bodyguard.

At the head of the stairs we were received by a red-coated Steward of
the Household, who, as I was told, bore the name of de Cosse, and,
crossing the Salle des Gardes, we were ushered into the drawing-room,
where the whole family soon assembled: to wit, Monsieur, who afterwards
became Charles X., the Duc and Duchesse d'Angouleme, the Duchesse de
Berri, my father and mother, my aunt Adelaide, my two elder brothers,
Chartres and Nemours, my three sisters, Louise, Marie, and Clementine,
and last and youngest of all, myself. There was only one person present
who did not belong to the Royal House of France, and that was the
Prince de Carignan, afterwards known as Charles Albert, a tall, thin,
severe-looking person. He had just served in the ranks of the French
army, with all the proverbial valour of his race, through the Spanish
campaign of 1823, and he wore on his uniform that evening the worsted
epaulettes given him on the field of battle by the men of the 4th
Regiment of the Guard, with whom he had fought in the assault on the
Trocadero. Presently the door of the King's study opened, and Louis
XVIII. appeared, in his wheeled chair, with that handsome white head
and in the blue uniform with epaulettes which the pictures of him have
rendered so familiar. He kissed each of us in our turn, without
speaking to any of us except my brother Nemours, whom he questioned
about his Latin lessons. Nemours began to stammer, and was only saved
from disgrace by the opportune entrance of the Prince de Carignan.

At dinner the Twelfth Night customs were duly observed, and when I
broke my cake I found the bean within it. I must confess the fact had
not been altogether unforeseen, and my mother had consequently primed
me as to my behaviour. This did not prevent me from feeling heartily
shy when I saw every eye fixed on me. I got up from the table, and
carried the bean on a salver to the Duchesse d'Angouleme. I loved her
dearly even then, that good kind Duchess! for she had always been so
good to us, ever since we were babies, and never failed to give us the
most beautiful New Year's gifts. My respectful affection deepened as I
grew old enough to realize her sorrows and the nobility of her nature,
and I was always glad, after we were separated by the events of 1830,
to take every opportunity of letting her know how unalterable my
feelings for her were. She broke the ice by being the first to raise
her glass to her lips, when I had made her my queen, and Louis XVIII.
was the first to exclaim, "The Queen drinks." A few months later the
king was dead, and I watched his funeral procession from the windows of
the Fire Brigade Station in the Rue de la Paix, as it passed on its way
to Saint-Denis.

Then came the echo of the excitement caused by the coronation of
Charles X., that great ceremonial of which the Cathedral of Rheims was
the scene, and which, coming as it did after all the horrors of the
Revolution, gave rise to the sanguine hope that the ancient monarchy
would repair every disaster now, just as it had in the time of Charles
VII. But our childish ideas were not of so far-reaching a nature. It
was the splendour displayed that interested us--the dresses, the
carriages, and so on, of the princes and ambassadors who came from all
parts of the world to greet the opening of the new monarch's reign.
Numbers of artists solicited my father's permission to do his portrait,
in the gold and ermine robes of a prince of the blood which he wore at
the coronation, and our pet amusement at the time was to go and see
papa "sitting as Pharamond." I said Pharamond, like my elders, although
my own historical knowledge was of the most elementary description. To
be frank, I was exceedingly backward, and have always remained so. My
mother had taught me to read, but beyond that I had reached the age of
six knowing nothing or hardly anything. But I was a very good rider and
went out alone on a pony Lord Bristol had given my father, which I rode
boldly, and I might even say recklessly. The pony's name was Polynice.
He and I understood each other perfectly, and I was his friend to the
last. I took care he should end his days in the park at St. Cloud,
where he roamed in freedom, with a stable of his own to retire into if
the fancy took him. Often and often I have been to see him, in that
same stable, which he ended by never leaving except to come and greet
us, and warm himself in the sunshine. He died, there, fortunately for
himself, full of years, just before the pleasant revolutionary
occurrences of 1848, in which he would certainly have had his share.
But my father desired me to be something more than a mere horseman. He
got me a tutor, and from that day out, for several years, my
recollections are divided, to the exclusion of everything else, between
my education and my life with my family. My tutor was called M.
Trognon, and his name brought many a jest upon him, amongst others a
line of Victor Hugo's in Ruy Bias about that

 Affreuse compagnonne,
 Dont la barbe fleurit et dont le nez trognonne.

[Illustration: Looks a little like a courtroom unfortunately without a
caption.]

"Fleurit" was an allusion to Cuvillier-Fleury, my brother Aumale's
tutor, and Victor Hugo thought he owed both the gentlemen a grudge. M.
Trognon, a distinguished pupil of the Ecole Normale, had begun his
teaching career as professor of rhetoric at the college at Langres,
where, coming in one day to take his class, he found his desk occupied
by a donkey, which his pupils had established in his seat "Gentlemen,"
he said as he went out, "I leave you with a professor who is worthy of
you." Soon after, he was recalled to Paris, as assistant to M. Guizot
in his courses of historical lectures at the College of France.

He was not only an accomplished university man, but something else
besides, as we learnt from a copy of the Figaro, which our eldest
brother brought back from college. In this newspaper we read, in fact,
a set of verses by Baour-Lormian, beginning thus:--

 Que me veut ce Trognon, pedagogue en besicles,
 Dans la fosse du Globe enterrant ses articles!

There was no doubt about it. My tutor was a journalist, and these lines
a revengeful answer to an article of his in the Globe, a newspaper
which, as we soon learnt, he had founded in concert with Pierre Leroux,
Dubois, Jouffroy, Remusat, and some others. We discovered too that our
journalist was a freethinker as well, and author of a thick octavo book
which had been condemned by the Index at Rome, a fact which did not
prevent his dying in the most religious frame of mind possible, well
nigh in the odour of sanctity. My tutor was, in truth, of too lofty an
intelligence to persevere long in that religious nihilism, that denial
of the existence of a future state, which, spreading from religion to
family life, and from thence again to the affairs of the State, ends by
leaving nothing standing but animal man and his animal passions and
appetites. The long death-struggle of a passionately loved sister, who
was supported by the constant ministrations of the Bishop of Beauvais,
M. Feutrier, and her calm end, of which he was an eyewitness, began the
change within him. When, in later years, the Abbe Dupanloup, then Vicar
of the Church of the Assumption, was charged with the care of my
religious education, he and Trognon became very intimate, and death
alone interrupted the close communion then established between these
two great minds.

The first years of my education were very happy. Anything dry about it
was liberally compensated for by the constant intimacy of the family
circle. We were three sisters and six brothers (this last number soon
reduced to five by the death of my brother Penthievre), all living
together, eating together, often doing lessons together, together
always in all games and pleasure parties and excursions. What a joyous
band we were may easily be guessed. Each boy had his own tutor, and two
governesses were in charge of my sisters. So long as tutors and
governesses only had to deal with their own pupils, all went well, but
when the brothers and sisters were all together, and influenced by the
spirit of insubordination and love of playing pranks which the elder
ones brought back from school, we made life hard and sour to the
preceptorial body. But they got on, somehow. The GRANDSPARENTS, as we
called our parents, taken up as they were by their social engagements,
left all initiative to the tutors. Each of these was only expected to
enter daily in a book his report and opinion of the pupil committed to
his care. This book was seen by my father, and he added his own remarks
and orders, and then returned it.

Our day generally began at five o'clock in the morning. The elder ones
went to school to attend their classes, took their meals and played
with the boarders, and came home after evening school. The boys who
were not at school and the girls spent the day doing their lessons. In
the evening, pupils and teachers of both sexes all dined together, and
then went to the drawing-room, where there was always company, for my
parents received every evening. Thursdays and Sundays, which were
school holidays, were given up specially to lessons in what were known
as accomplishments: drawing, music, physical exercises, riding,
fencing, singlestick, dancing, &c. On Sundays, every one, great and
small, dined at "THE GREAT TABLE," and this life of ours was as regular
as clockwork summer and winter alike.

In winter time we lived in the Palais-Royal, which then was not at all
what it is nowadays. Where the Galerie d'Orleans is now to be seen,
there were hideous wooden passages, with muddy floors, exclusively
occupied by milliners' shops, and peopled, it was said, by thousands of
rats. To get rid of this collection of shanties, they were sawn through
below, and allowed to come down with a crash. Crowds of people came to
witness the collapse, in the hope of seeing the expected multitude of
rats rush out. There was not a single one! They had all cleared out in
good time. Such is the wisdom of the brute creation!

When I first lived at the Palais-Royal, I had a room in the Rue de
Valois, which overlooked the Boeuf a la Mode restaurant, and opposite
there dwelt an old lady, always dressed in black, who regularly every
day, at the very same hour, placed an indispensable article of domestic
use upon her window-sill, so that it was as good as a clock to us.
Later on, I changed my room for one looking over the courtyard, facing
the rooms occupied by an actor at the Comedie-Francaise named
Dumilatre, and his daughters; Dumilatre, whom I knew well, having seen
him play those small tragedy parts which consist in making a dignified
exit and saying, "Yes, my lord," had the same habits as my black lady,
and the same object used to appear upon his window-sill with equal
regularity. I had only changed my clock!

It was during the winter sojourn at the Palais-Royal, too, that our
masters and their lessons multiplied. And several of these masters were
oddities, amongst others our professor of German. Picture a little
bland-mannered old man, dressed all in black, with satin breeches,
woollen stockings, enormous shoes, and a broad-brimmed hat. He had been
tutor to Prince Metternich in his youth. I know not what chance had
later driven him into France--where, during the Terror, he became one
of the secretaries of the much-dreaded Committee of Public Safety at
Strasbourg. He lived alone with his daughter, whom he often sent to
Germany, not by the ordinary means of communication, but concealed in
the van which was sent periodically into Hungary to fetch supplies of
leeches for the hospitals, which circumstance made us conclude that the
simple name of "Herr Simon" by which he called himself probably
concealed some deep mystery. Nothing, alas! remains to me of his
German, nor of that of a valet of the same race, who had been put about
me, so ill adapted has my mental constitution always proved to any
foreign language.

Another oddity was our dancing master, an Opera dancer, named Seuriot.
What a fine presence that man had! His lesson, which we all took
together, like a little corps de ballet, was a great amusement to us,
especially because of the theatrical stories we used to make him tell
us. One day he arrived in a great state of excitement, and addressing
the governesses he said, "Ladies, you see before you a man who had a
remarkable escape yesterday. The ballet called Les Filets de Vulcain
was being danced, I was playing Jupiter, and I was just going to ascend
in my glory, with Mercury beside me, when I felt that same glory was
out of order, and I had only just time to jump off, and to shout to
Mercury, 'Jump, my friend, jump, don't lose an instant!' Well, well!"
During the pauses in the lesson, when his fiddle ceased, and while he
wiped the perspiration from his brow, we used to crowd round him and
ask him questions. The elder ones always tried to get him on the
subject of a danseuse named Mademoiselle Legallois, one on which he
would descant unendingly. This was the lady who on one occasion
appeared in a ballet as the allegorical representative of Religion,
which fact caused it to be said of a certain [Illustration: Man and
woman dancing.] Marshal of France "qu'il s'etait eteint dans les bras
de la religion" (that he had passed away peacefully in the arms of
religion). But the moment we were seen crowding round and whispering
with the old dancer, the governesses would charge down upon us with
their "What is it? What is it?" and we began our BATTEMENTS and our
steps again. Personally I owed one of the earliest successes in my life
to old Seuriot. I had profited so much by his lessons, that I appear to
have danced the minuet in a quite remarkable way, so much so that my
parents had a complete crimson velvet dress in the style of the last
century made for me, with the indispensable three-cornered hat and a
sword with knots of ribbon. Thus accoutred, with powdered head and
pigtail, I had to give several performances of my minuet, which I
danced with my sister Clementine, both of us displaying all the airs
and graces of bygone times. My marquis's dress, of which I was
excessively proud, served me also for a fancy dress ball given by the
Duchesse de Berri, at which, identifying myself too much with my
character, I had a quarrel with a Cossack of my own age, young de B--
about a partner. In my fury I drew my sword, he did likewise, and we
were just falling on each other, when the Duchesse rushed up crying,
"Stop, you naughty children! Take their swords away, M. de Brissac!" As
for my sister Clementine, who was at the ball too, wearing her minuet
gown, and looking utterly bewitching in her powder and her looped-up
dress, she attracted the notice of Charles X., to whom she doubtless
brought back memories of his own youth. He came to her and kissed her,
and gazed at her for a long time, holding her hand. Then, turning to my
father, he said, "Monsieur, if I were forty years younger, your
daughter should be Queen of France," whereupon he kissed her over again.

Our dancing lessons, which were looked upon as recreation, alternated
with walks about Paris. The girls went in one direction, and the boys
in another. When we went out thus, one tutor alone took the extra duty
of looking after us. When it was Trognon who came out, we always
expected to be taken to Sautelet's, a bookseller in the Rue de
Richelieu, whose establishment became, I recollect, in later days, the
head office of the NATIONAL. There Trognon would hold forth amongst the
journalists, while the clerks talked to us. I remember their showing me
the splendid manuscript of the Memoirs of Saint-Simon, which Sautelet
was then publishing. When, on the other hand, it was Cuvillier-Fleury
who marshalled us, the objects of our walks became more varied, and we
soon began to discover that there was not unfrequently a petticoat
somewhere about. Yet I owe to him the precious memory of a visit to the
studio of Eugene Delacroix; and also of one to M. de Lavalette,
Postmaster-General under the first Napoleon, a most interesting man,
well known for his celebrated escape on the eve of the day appointed
for his execution, after the Hundred Days, when his wife came and took
his place, and brought him garments to escape in. But oftenest of all
we used to go to a bookseller's in the Rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts, who
was a great friend of Fleury's, and we were always sure to find either
him or his charming wife at home.

Fleury's friendship for this bookseller was indeed the cause of a
comical adventure. In the confusion of the first few days of the
Revolution of 1830, the gentleman in question appeared before us with
white belt and a sword over his civilian's dress. "Look here, Fleury,"
said he, "what use can I be to you today?" Fleury considered for a
minute, and then he said he really didn't quite see, but that after all
he thought nobody had troubled their heads about the Prefecture of
Police. "I'll be off there," said my bookseller, and off he went,
appointed himself Prefect of Police, and performed all his functions
for several days. I have never heard of him since.

Turn about with these walks, too, we had lessons in gymnastics, of
which science a certain Colonel Amoros was the apostle. This worthy
colonel gave prizes to everybody, so as to make his classes popular.
These prizes took the form of collars, inscribed in large painted
letters with the particular merit of the pupil rewarded, such as
agility, courage, strength, &c. One pupil was given a prize for "hidden
virtue." After the gymnastic lessons came riding lessons, for which we
were taken to the Cirque Olympique, I and my two elder brothers being
always put in the charge of a single tutor. But as he invariably found
the riding school too cold, he used to go and shut himself up in the
manager's room, and leave us to the tender care of Laurent Franconi and
the rough riders, which amounted to leaving us to ourselves. This icy
cold arena, in the Place du Chateau-d'Eau consisted of one immense
hall, where the place of the pit was taken up by the circus or riding
school for all sorts of horsemanship, which circus was connected with
the stage by inclined planes, whenever a military piece with battles in
it was performed. In this circus Laurent Franconi made us practise "la
haute ecole," and his assistants. Bassin and Lagoutte, taught us to
vault on horseback, astride and sitting, and standing upright--after
every fashion, in fact. And to our great amusement, too, these lessons,
falling as they did on Sunday afternoons, generally coincided with the
rehearsals on the stage, in which we joyfully took our share during the
intervals we were allowed for rest, scaling the practicable scenery, or
taking part with the artists in certain interludes not mentioned on the
programme. This was not indeed our only initiation into theatrical art,
a career bearing so much analogy to that of every prince. Taking
advantage of the close proximity of the Palais-Royal to the
Comedie-Francaise, my father had added a regular course of dramatic
literature to the educational plan he had laid out for us. So very
often when the old stock plays were being given at the Francais, he
would take us by a door leading from his drawing-room into the passage
which separates the side scenes from the artists' green-room, and leave
us in his box--the three centre ones on the grand tier thrown
together--returning to fetch us at the end of the performance. Those
evenings at the Comedie-Francaise were our greatest joy, and taught us
many a useful lesson, filling our heads with classic literature far
more efficiently than all the reading and courses of lectures in the
world. But those unlucky classics were very much neglected. They were
not a bit the fashion. There would hardly be two hundred people in the
theatre, and all the boxes were empty. A wretched orchestra, conducted
by a stout man of the name of Chodron, squeaked a tune that set
everybody's teeth on edge. Up would go the curtain, without any
warning, in the very middle of some phrase in the music which would
break off with a sigh from the clarionet, and drearily the play would
begin. We were all eyes and ears in spite of that, and nothing in the
play of the tragic actresses--Madame Duchesnois, Madame Paradol, and
Madame Bourgoin--ever escaped us. I can see and hear yet all
Corneille's plays, and Racine's too, and Zaire, and Mahomet, and
L'Orphelin de la Chine, and many more. But what we longed for most
impatiently were Moliere's plays. They were our prime favourites, and
what actors too! Monrose, Cartigny, Samson, Firmin, Menjaud, and Faure,
whose appearances as Fleurant in Le Malade and Truffaldin in L'Etourdi
we always greeted with delight, on account of the properties he carried
in his hand. This same Faure, an old soldier of 1782, never failed to
say to my father, as he escorted him to the door, taper in hand, "Ha,
Sir! this is not the camp at la Lune!" referring to a bivouac just
before the battle of Valmy. It was always a great amusement to us to go
along the passages behind the scenes, especially when the classic Roman
processions were being formed up there for the tragedies, for among the
lictors and the other Romans we recognized many of the clerks and
workmen employed about the Palais-Royal, and we used to bid them good
day, and call them by their names, and be very proud indeed of speaking
to artists, and we went home to our own fold, imitating the call in the
theatre: "On va-a commmencer! On co-mmence!" (Going to begin, just
beginning).Sometimes too we were taken to see modern plays, but that
did not happen often. Yet even now I seem to hear the actor Armand,
just before 1830, talking thick behind his Directoire cravat, in TOM
JONES:--

 Point d'amis, point de grace,
 A la session prochaine il faudra qu'on y passe!

and the whole house rose at him! I remember also being taken to the
first night of Henri III., and being very much amused by the cups and
balls and the pea-shooters. I was much affected too by the death of
Arthur, a charming page in a violet dress, played by Mile. Despreaux,
who afterwards became Madame Allan. I had no eyes for anybody else. As
we were going away, my father leading me by the hand, we found the
Duchesse de Guise, Mademoiselle Mars, panting, and wrapped in a
rose-coloured satin cloak lined with swansdown, waiting for the
compliments which my father showered on her. She had not impressed me
nearly so much as the page in violet.

Talking of Henri III., a play we took great interest in, because its
author, quite unknown at the time, belonged to our household, I will
recall here a recollection connected with the name of Alexandre Dumas.
Everybody knows he began life as a clerk in my father's library at the
Palais-Royal. The chief librarian was Vatout, whose works, and perhaps
too some well-known songs, have gained him a seat in the Academy. But
Vatout was never in the library by any chance. The real librarian, and
a very worthy fellow he was, was a man of the name of Tallencourt. He
was an old soldier, and this caused him to be elected captain of a
grenadier company in the Citizen Guard--a position to which, in the
first blush of his enthusiasm, he attached an exaggerated importance.
Well, some time after Dumas had resigned his position in the library,
in the midst of the riots which occurred so frequently about that
period, we saw Tallencourt come home one day in full warlike attire,
with his bearskin cap and his cloak, and a very gloomy countenance.
"What do you think has just happened to me? I was in command of a patrol
in my ward--as we had heard several shots, we were advancing with the
greatest caution, in double file, keeping close to the walls, with our
eyes and ears open. All at once I heard a shout--'Here's for you, de
Tallencourt!' and then a shot. Well, the shout--that voice--it was
Alexandre Dumas' voice!" "Oh, nonsense!" we all cried. But he stuck to
it--and we resisted the violent inclination to laugh that assailed us,
convinced as we were that if the worthy man really had recognized the
voice, he had been the victim of a prank of Alexandre Dumas, who had
doubtless enjoyed the fun of seeing the rout of his former chief and
his brave "guernadiers"!

When our father did not take us to the Theatre Francais, we spent our
evenings in those beautiful rooms in the Palais-Royal where he had
gathered together so many admirable pictures and works of art,
plundered and dispersed since by the revolutionists and their tribe,
together with the splendid furniture which was used to burn a
detachment of the 14th Regiment of the Line alive, on the 24th of
February, on which day it was on guard at the Palais-Royal. And to
think that a French Chamber actually voted national rewards to people
who had made an AUTO DA FE of French soldiers who were guilty of
defending till death the post which duty and honour at once made sacred
to them! But let that pass; worse things happen nowadays, but at the
happy time I speak of nobody thought of the possibility of such
shameful doings. This is what men call progress! As far as we ourselves
were concerned, we spent our evenings in all the carelessness of our
youth, playing together merrily and noisily in the family drawing-room,
a large gallery running from the courtyard to the Rue de Valois. The
games were liveliest on Sundays and Thursdays, because, those days
being school holidays, our merry band was reinforced by my brothers'
class-mates, MM. de Laborderie, Guillermy, d'Eckmul, Albert, &c., &c.,
and by Alfred de Mussetas well, whom I still seem to see, with his blue
coat and gilt buttons, his fair curly hair, and his melancholy and
somewhat affected ways. We generally played "prisoners' base"--a game
to which the great gallery was very well suited. Sometimes there was
dancing, and then my mother's eye was always on de Musset, who seemed
to scorn our games and to be inclined to pay assiduous court to my big
sisters.

Our games never interfered with the coming and going of visitors and
habitual guests and old friends of my father's, who had been his
friends before the Revolution. There was the Duc de la Rochefoucauld,
"the good Duke," as he was called, very much dreaded by us children
because he was always kissing us, and smelt so strongly of tobacco; and
M. de Lally-Tollendal; and then friends of more recent date, General
Gerard, Raoul de Montmorency, Madame de Boigne, the Princesse de Poix,
the Princesse de Vaudemont, besides many others, soldiers, artists,
diplomats, and ladies--every one, in fact, who was distinguished either
by their personal charm, by mental qualities, or by the brilliancy of
their career. Some amongst the number were more congenial to me than
others; such as Francois Arago, the astronomer, inexhaustible in wit
and humour, whether he was recounting his adventures when he was in
captivity in the Barbary States, or the way he plagued his colleague
Ampere, a soldier like himself in the regiment of the "Parrots in
mourning," as he dubbed the Institute, in his southern accent, because
of its green and black uniform. And then Macdonald, Marmont, Molitor,
and Mortier, the four Marshals whose name began with M, the heroes of a
hundred fights, the living embodiment of the renown our arms had won.
We used all of us to try and hear whatever they said, whatever stories
they told, and to gather up any information or anecdote touching the
military glory of our country.

The diplomats interested us less--I will not speak of M. de Talleyrand,
whose face and figure were striking enough, though they made but little
impression on our uninformed imaginations. Yet I remember the fits of
laughter we went into one day, when my father, in a fit of absence,
aped the great man's limp as he crossed the drawing-room to receive
him. We delighted in Pozzo di Borgo, the Russian Ambassador, because as
soon as his burly presence appeared his jokes and witty sallies and his
stories provoked loud and inexhaustible shouts of laughter. All
children love cheery people. There was another diplomat whose arrival
we always looked forward to, the Bailli de Ferrette, Minister of the
Grand Duke of Baden--and this for two reasons. First of all because of
that title of "Bailli," which seemed to belong to another world, or at
all events to a harlequinade, and then on account of the extraordinary
appearance of the man--he looked like a skeleton in powder. We were
quite ignorant in those days, it is needless to remark, of the fact
that this cool, proper-looking Bailli was a great musician, a
first-class performer of the STABAT MATER, whose inspiration however
depended on his having the shoulders, very DECOLLETEE ones too, of a
charming nightingale, over whom the Opera and Opera-Comique fought for
many a day, as the desk he laid his music on. Sometimes when the
evening was half over a bell was heard like the one in the fourth act
of the HUGUENOTS. "There's the big bell," we would cry. It was the
signal that Madame la Dauphine or Madame la Duchesse de Berri was
coming to pay us a visit, and my father would tear off, with all of us
after him, to receive the visitor on the staircase. But our season at
the Palais-Royal closed with the winter, and the first fine days saw us
migrate to Neuilly, to the general delight.

Neuilly! I can never write the word without feeling moved, for it is
bound up with all the happiest memories of my childhood, and I salute
that name with respect akin to that which I would show a dead man!
Those who never knew the Neuilly of which I would speak must imagine to
themselves a very large country house, of no architectural pretension,
consisting almost exclusively of sets of ground-floor rooms, tacked one
on to the other on much the same level, with delightful gardens, and
standing in the middle of a very large park which stretched from the
fortifications to the Seine, just where the Avenue Bineau now runs.
Within the park walls there were fields and woods and orchards, and
even islands, the chief of which was called the "Ile de la Grande
Jatte," and the whole of one reach of the Seine, the whole within a
quarter of an hour's journey from Paris. This beautiful demesne, the
favourite residence of my father and mother, who had made it, and were
always adding new beauties to it, and who lived there in those days,
far from political cares, and surrounded by their many children, who
were all devoted to them, was also the place that we loved best. We
were so near town that our education, our masters, our lessons at home
or in school, went on just as if we were in Paris, while we had the
advantage of fresh air and country life, with all its liberty and its
natural and spontaneous exercise. At five o'clock in the morning,
before lessons or school began, we were galloping about in the big
park. In play hours, and on the Thursday and Sunday holidays, the whole
troop of children roamed the fields, almost unaccompanied, the older
ones looking after the youngest. We used to make hay, and get on the
hay-cocks, and dig potatoes, and climb the fruit-trees, and beat the
walnut-trees. There were flowers everywhere, fields of roses, where we
gathered splendid bouquets every day, without their ever being missed
even. Then we used to go boating and swimming. Boys and girls, equally
good swimmers all, would plunge in turn into the little arm of the
Seine enclosed within the park, and nothing more delicious can be
imagined than to cast oneself into deep water near the bridge at
Neuilly, and to let oneself drift down almost as far as Asnieres, under
the great willows, returning afterwards on foot by the "Ile de la
Grande Jatte."

This island, laid waste now and turned into a slum, was covered then
with venerable trees, and intersected by those "shady paths" sung by
Gounod, in which we loved to lose ourselves in all the carelessness of
our childhood, and perhaps too in the first awakening instincts of our
youth. Nothing but a memory remains of that enchanting spot. It was
confiscated by Napoleon III. on some flimsy pretext or other, and
forthwith cut to pieces, so as to destroy every trace of those who had
owned and lived in it. It is as much as I can do, as I drive along the
Avenue Bineau, to find, among the villas which have been built all over
it, some well-known tree or other, behind which I used to lie in wait
to shoot the hares, which a big dog I had trained to the work used to
put up for me As for the house itself, after being the scene of a
terrible orgie, it was sacked and burnt down by the conquerors in the
glorious fight of February 1848. Not a stone of it remains. All the
works of art within it were destroyed But I know of one stray bit saved
from the wreck. The traveller who goes to see the museum at Neufchatel,
in Switzerland, may observe, alongside of the picture which represents
M. de Montmolin, an officer of the Swiss Guard, allowing himself to be
murdered on the 10th of August, sooner than give up the flag which was
intrusted to his loyal care, a very small canvas, carefully mended up.
That fragment is the principal figure in Leopold Robert's first
picture, and his masterpiece, L'IMPROVISATEUR, which used to hang in
the billiard-room at Neuilly. Either a salvage man, or a looter of
enlightened taste, cut it out with a penknife, in the midst of the
conflagration, and it is the only thing that was saved.

But let me come back to my story.

In my father's sitting-room at Neuilly, and the billiard-room more
especially, with the doors on the terrace open, the evenings used to be
spent, in a circle of neighbours, friends, and habitual visitors.

These evenings had such a decisive influence on my future destiny that
I cannot do otherwise than speak of them.

That billiard-room is before me now, with the pictures that adorned it,
all of them masterpieces--L'Improvisateur, by Leopold Robert; La Feeme
du Brigand, by Schnetz, Faust and Marguerite, by Ary Scheffer; Venice,
by Ziegler--hanging round.

I see the most frequent guests too. First two abbes, whose names--the
Abbe de Saint-Phar and the Abbe de Saint-Albin--were a significant
inheritance due to the frailty of their great-grandparents many years
before the Revolution And yet another abbe, with powdered side curls,
L'Abbe de Labordere, a former Grand Vicar of Frejus' who somehow or
other, I know not how, had become mayor of Neuilly. Then there was the
Marechal de Gouvion de Saint-Cyr, our near neighbour, who always had a
circle round him; and admirals too, the Comte de Sercey, with his
pigtail--an Indian veteran, Admiral Villaumetz; and generals and
officers besides, whose stories of their campaigns used to fill us with
enthusiasm. Amongst the generals who were friends of the family there
was General Drouot, who was very fond of me, and would take me on his
knee and tell me stories. I had seen Horace Vernet's picture, La
Bataille de Hanau, which represents Drouot on foot amongst his guns,
just as the Bavarian Cuirassiers are charging through them. That had
been quite enough to fire my ardour, and I wanted to be an artilleryman
too. Just about the same time, my father was presented with a
twelve-pounder howitzer by the Vincennes artillery, and Colonel de
Caraman came to try it with us. We fired shots in the park, at the
rising ground near Villiers, and my military enthusiasm was wrought up
to the highest pitch. I tormented my mother till she had an artillery
uniform made for me, and when I had it on my back I thought my fortune
was made. After having been taken to the fair at Neuilly, and seeing
the non-commissioned officers of the Regiment of the Guard quartered at
Courbevoie dancing with the pretty laundresses belonging to the
village, I tried hard to force my sisters to join me in imitating the
particular style of dance I had seen them perform. I have heard it said
that my choregraphic performance was fairly successful, but there my
fancy for the military career ended. General Drouot went back to Nancy;
I did not see him again, and I soon fell under other and more lasting
influences.

Among my father's aides-de-camp there was a young cavalry
lieutenant-colonel, the Comte d'Houdetot, who had begun life as a
midshipman. He was a very clever man, and one of the most delightful
story-tellers imaginable. By birth a creole, from the Mauritius, he and
his family had happened to come back to Europe on board the corvette La
Regeneree, commanded by that same Admiral Villaumetz, our neighbour and
constant visitor in the billiard-room. At the time of the voyage
D'Houdetot was a baby in arms, and in an action between the Regeneree
and the English, at the Loos Islands, his wet nurse was cut in two by a
round shot, which gave rise to a saying of his, "I have more right to
promotion than anybody. Lots of people have had horses killed under
them, but I'm the only man in the French army that ever had a woman
killed under him."

Mutually attracted by this common memory, the former middy and the old
admiral used to spend their evenings relating their adventures to each
other and their stories, which had begun by interesting, ended by
fascinating me. It was worth while to hear D'Houdetot tell about the
battle of Trafalgar, at which he had been present as a midshipman on
board the Algesiras, commanded by his uncle Admiral Magon, how, as he
lay on the poop, with both his legs broken by the bursting of a shell,
he saw his uncle the admiral receive his death-blow, at the very moment
when, wounded already, and his hat and wig carried away by a shot, he
had thrown himself on to the nettings, shouting to his crew, "The first
man who boards that ship with me shall have the Cross;" and how too,
the boarding party having been driven back, the mizzen-mast of the
Algesiras, cut through by a round shot, fell across the British ship,
throwing a comrade of D'Houdetot's, the midshipman of the maintop,
beyond it, into the sea, and how that middy swam back to the Algesiras.
And then came the story of the tempest after the battle, in which
victors and vanquished alike struggled together to escape shipwreck,
under the command of Lieutenant de la Bretonniere, in later days my own
commanding officer, who succeeded in bringing the ship into Cadiz.
There D'Houdetot was lying upon the mole, under a burning sun, feverish
and exhausted with pain, when the hand of a woman, whom his youth had
touched, spread a fan over "the poor little fellow's" head, to protect
him from the blaze. He drew the ministering hand to him, and kissed it,
and to that simple act he owed his escape from the horrors of an
overcrowded hospital, teeming with typhus. He recovered, re-embarked on
board the frigate Hermione, and was wrecked with her. "Trafalgar and a
shipwreck in the space of two years," he used to say, "gave me enough
of a seafaring life." He got leave to be transferred to the cavalry,
and covered himself with glory in the heroic charges at the battle of
the Moskowa; but his heart always remained with his old sailor
comrades, and he never tired of talking about them.

As for old Villaumetz, his whole life had been spent on board ship. He
had gone with M. d'Entrecasteaux to search for La Peyrouse; he had
commanded the squadron from which Prince Jerome Bonaparte deserted with
his ship the Veteran, and his stories of sea fights and adventures were
endless. Listening to them first inspired me with that longing to enter
the naval career which never left me again.

My first attempts at seafaring were made at Treport, during the short
holiday trips we used to take to the Chateau d'Eu. I was dreadfully
sea-sick every time, but that did not dismay me; and then the honest
sailors, with their simple, open, resolute faces, attracted me
irresistibly I used to envy them their risky life, as I watched their
boats from the jetty at Treport, running in before the gale. That
settled the matter; I was regularly fascinated, in short. And that love
of my life will last as long as I do. Besides the sailoring charm which
Treport had for me, many a pleasant memory of my life is bound up with
Eu and Randan. My parents were accustomed in holiday times to take us
for a little trip either to Eu or to Randan, a large property in the
Auvergne belonging to my aunt. During these journeys, lessons and
school hours and study of every kind were intermitted, and this alone
sufficed to give them a sovereign charm. It should be added that in
those days travelling was not what it is now, and that these trips gave
rise to many little adventures, for which we were always on the look
out. My father had had a big carriage built with room for twelve people
in it, which held the whole family, and which, with all due deference,
was very like a travelling menagerie-van. A courier used to ride on
ahead to order post horses; another rode just in front of the carriage.
When each stage was finished, the six horses that were to draw us for
the next were led up: wicked, cross-grained stallions they were, that
squealed and bit and kicked. They got harnessed somehow or other; and
then out came the dapper postilions, with their hats trimmed with gay
ribbons, cocked on one side, some of them still wearing powder and with
their hair tied in a club. They had waistcoats trimmed with dozens of
silver buttons, and close-fitting pantaloons covered their legs. Margot
would bring out the great iron-bound boots, into which they shoved
those same legs; they were hoisted laboriously on to their horses; the
postmaster shouted, "Now then, in with your spurs, and let them go!"
and off we went full tear, bells jingling and whips cracking, to the
admiration of the women and children of the village gathered round to
see the show. Once we were off, things calmed down; but the postboys
had no control whatever over their horses, who knew the road, and did
the stage, from force of habit, at their own pace. If we came across
other carriages or wagons on the road, it was just a question as to
whether our team would take us too much out of their way, or not
enough. Such meetings were proclaimed by yells from the postilions. If
the horses did not go far enough to one side, there would be a terrible
collision, and a volley of oaths, together with a clashing of lanterns
and a clatter of broken windows. If the horses got too far out of the
way, the carriage would first of all tilt towards the sideway, slope
more and more, and frequently end by turning over gently into the
ditch. Then a clamour would rise from the menagerie, everybody first
feeling themselves all over, and then laughing, while the great machine
was being lifted up, preparatory to a fresh start. A little farther on,
it might be, another accident would occur. We would be passing through
a village, and, to create a sensation, the postboys would begin
cracking their whips in concert. The horses would get excited, and the
pace would increase. It was all very well if the village street was a
straight one, but if there was an angle in it the horses would take it
too short, and there would be a violent collision with the kerbstone at
the corner. Then all the wheelwrights and all the innkeepers, ever on
the watch for such mishaps, would hurry up. The repairs would take four
hours perhaps, whereat the GRANDSPARENTS would storm, but we children
were jubilant. Confusion reigned supreme, and we could write to our
little friends, "We were upset at such and such a place; we broke down
at such another." We got lots of copy out of it.

There was no great interest about our visits to Randan. We used to
leave the high-road at Aigueperse. Six or eight pairs of oxen were
harnessed to the carriage, and Auvergnats in their costumes and
broad-brimmed hats (there were still costumes there, in those days),
with goads in their hands, drove the team, the carriage swinging
backwards and forwards on the muddy roads, up hill and down dale; it
was hard work getting there, but we did get there at last. The great
entertainment of the visit was to go and see Madame la Dauphine, who
went through a cure at Vichy every year.

It was far pleasanter to stay at Eu. The old castle of the Guises was a
mere tumbledown barrack at the time I speak of. The passages had waves
in them like the sea. When there was a storm the whole house shook, and
the smaller children used to feel quite frightened, when, after
listening to Anatole de Montesquiou's ghost stories, of an evening,
they had to go through the Guise Gallery, with all its dreadful
portraits which seemed to step out of their frames to the dreary
whistle of the sea-wind. But all the same we loved the old place. It
was quite out of the common run. Just as we used to go and see Madame
la Dauphine at Vichy from Randan, we used to go from Eu to see Madame
la Duchesse de Berri, at Dieppe, which she had made her summer
residence. We accompanied her once to the lighthouse at Ailly under the
escort of her guard of honour, a squadron of Cauchoise women on
horseback. In illo tempore--those days; all Norman women, and those of
the Caux district especially, did their errands and their marketing on
horseback. There were very few vehicles to be seen. The prettiest of
the peasant girls had been selected; and it was really a pleasure to
see them prancing, to the number of forty, round the Duchess's
carriage, with their captain and lieutenant riding at each door, all
dressed alike, in white, in the full Cauchoise costume, chignon and cap
with lace lappets, each on her pacing hack, which she managed to
perfection. When a halt was made, the squadron dismounted, each girl
holding her horse--a most charming effect it made in the Norman
landscape. I never heard where the guard was quartered, but I am quite
convinced there never can have been any difficulty about finding the
necessary billets. I M de Murat, Prefect of the Lower Seine, was the
originator of this idea. He was a charming fellow, but so absent, that
one morning, when the Duchesse de Berri sent for him, he hastily put
on his sword and his smartest uniform, and hurried in his
three-cornered hat to wait on Madame, without discovering, till he got
there, that he had forgotten his breeches!

[Illustration: Ladies and men on horseback.]

A great change came into my life in 1828. I was ten years old; my turn
had come; I was sent to school, and entered the College Henri IV. Ay di
me! as the Spanish lament has it. When I pass by Saint-Etienne du Mont,
and look at the Tower of Clovis, and the great walls of that learned
prison in which I spent three years, the memories that come back to me
are not pleasant--far from it. My life there was mortally tedious, and
I did no good whatsoever. My whole education has been gained by reading
(I was and I have always remained passionately fond of reading), by
observation, and by listening to those people who know how to hold my
attention. I listened with all my ears and all my heart to the Abbe
Dupanloup, when he gave me religious instruction; to Pouillet, when he
taught us physical science; to the great Arago, when he put a sextant
into my hands for the first time in my life. Later on, to Michelet,
when I attended the course of historical lectures he gave to my sister
Clementine; and later yet, to the lessons on law which were given us by
M. Rossi, the minister of Pius IX. But Greek and Latin, and hours spent
over an exercise or a translation with a fat dictionary to keep me
company! Oh, mercy on me! From the scholastic point of view I was
simply a DUNCE, nothing but a dunce. Yet I managed to scramble one
prize--the shabbiest of them all--the second for Latin versions in the
seventh class! I was presented with my reward at the prize
distribution, to the tune of "Vive Henri IV." Vive ce roi vaillant, ce
diable a quatre . . .! "At the same moment I received, from a stout
red-faced gentleman, a wet kiss--much too wet a kiss--which gave me no
pleasure whatsoever. I recollect the porter at the college was
nicknamed "Boit-sans-soif"; that my greatest joy was to go out by his
door, after evening school, and go down the Rue de la Montagne or the
Rue des Sept-Voies playing a thousand pranks as I went, and that my
grief used be keen indeed when I had to go back the next morning. Yet
some good comrades I had whom I dearly loved, and amongst whom I
improved in playing various games, and learned the art of both giving
and receiving kicks and cuffs. But, take it all in all, my schooldays
are, as they say in mathematics, "a minus quantity" to me.




CHAPTER II

1830-1833


[Illustration: Boy waving flag and shooting a gun.]

The Revolution of 1830 broke out during my schooldays. I was twelve
years old--too young therefore, by far, to estimate its character,
political or social, correctly. I only remember that it filled me with
the deepest astonishment. Never having witnessed any kind of
disturbance, I had not the faintest notion what a revolution might be
like. I had always seen the King and the Royal Family treated with a
respect which, indeed, they have never forfeited, and I was a hundred
miles from the thought that they could possibly be banished. It is a
fact, nevertheless, that the beginning of 1830 differed from other
years, and that something seemed to be brewing. Strange remarks were
made at school, over and over again, even among us little ones; our
tutors, all of them connected with the press, were what was called in
those days "dans le mouvement"--abreast of the times, and they never
stopped talking politics. Where were they not talked, indeed? It was a
downright disease. The speech of M. de Salvandy, on the occasion of the
fete given by my father at the Palais-Royal in May, that year, in
honour of the King of Naples, my uncle and godfather, may be called to
mind. "A real Neapolitan fete indeed, Sire!--for we are dancing on a
volcano."

And a truly Neapolitan fete it was, not only on account of the presence
of the sovereigns of the two Sicilies, and of the ideal beauty of the
night, but also by reason of the tarantella, a sort of ballet, which
was danced in the middle of the evening, by Madame la Duchesse de Berri
and thirty of the most beautiful young ladies of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain, in Neapolitan costume, among whom I think _I_ still see,
compact of grace and elegance, the lovely Denise du Roure, soon to
become Comtesse d'Hulst. The tarantella was followed by a polonaise,
led by Comte Rodolphe Appony and the Duchesse de Rauzan, resplendent in
blue and gold. A more sedate dance, this, performed by noble lords and
ladies, all in Hungarian costume, and escorted by pages, bearing their
respective banners. It would have been hard to say which of the ladies
taking part in these two dances bore off the palm for aristocratic
beauty. They were worthy representatives of their race.

The Royal Family, headed by Charles X., was present at this fete,
whereat pre-eminence of every kind was gathered together and every
class represented, and where cordiality seemed universal. After the
entrance of the two sets of dancers in costume, the King went out to
walk on the terrace which runs along the top of the Galerie d'Orleans.
The night was so warm and lovely that the ladies were walking about in
their low gowns, and the dazzling illuminations made it as bright as
day. The courtyard of the Palais-Royal was closed, but an immense crowd
filled the gardens, trying to see as much as possible of the gay
doings. I was running in front of Charles X. as he walked along, and I
saw his tall form advance to the parapet of the terrace on the garden
side, with that truly royal air he had about him. He waved his hand
several times in greeting to the crowd, which at that short distance,
and under that brilliant light, must have recognized him perfectly, not
by his features only, but by his full uniform of Colonel-General of the
Guard, and also by the retinue that followed him. But there was no
shout of "Vive le Roi!" nor any hostile one either. The surging crowd
only seemed to be rather more stirred, and the same uproar rose from it
as one may hear on a firework night, when some fine set-piece is set
alight. One last wave of the hand, with a "Bonjour, mon peuple!" which
the King spoke half in jest and half in earnest, and Charles X.
departed. I was never to see him again. Immediately afterwards, or
nearly so, the crowd laid hands on the chairs in the garden, piled them
up on the grass plots where the midday gun stood, and set them on fire.
The troops had to be called out to clear the garden, and that first
scene of public not, so new to me, filled me with astonishment and rage
as well.

Shortly after this fete came the taking of Algiers--a Proof of the
national strength, of political courage and foresight--a brilliant
military exploit, performed under the "drapeau blanc," which might well
have roused the enthusiasm of the nation, tightened the bond between
France and her king, and reconciled the people to their ancient flag.
It did nothing of the kind. The taking of Algiers was received like an
ordinary piece of news, and the tricolour flag was regretted as deeply
as ever. For the platform and the press--but especially the press, the
mightiest instrument of destruction of modern times--had done their
work. The days of the Government of the Restoration were numbered. Not
that it had been blameworthy. Both at home and abroad it had certainly
been the best of all the administrations that had succeeded each other
since 1789. But it had endeavoured to govern like a patriarch, for the
present good and the future greatness of France, and to withstand the
assaults of those unprincipled individuals who looked on their country
simply as a farm to make money out of. So bit by bit it had been
demolished, just as everything has been demolished these past hundred
years, in the name of laws and principles which dissolve every kind of
government, and which will soon make it absolutely impossible for
society to exist. The hour when the words, "Get out of that, and let me
take your place," the real and only object of our successive
revolutions, should resound, was on the very stroke.

On the 25th of July we had all been dining at Saint-Leu with M. le Duc
de Bourbon, an old cousin of ours, who never meddled with politics, and
led a leisured and delightful life between Chantilly and Saint-Leu,
never coming to Paris except to pass through it, although the beautiful
palace there which bears his name, the Palais Bourbon, belonged to him.
His great passion was for sport, in which he excelled; and my father
had made a friend of him by giving him the hunting in all his forests.
There was another reason too, and perhaps after all it was the chief
one, for this cordiality, that my parents had consented to receive the
Baronne de Feucheres, who held great sway over the Duke, but who had
never been admitted to Court. I can see the handsome old man yet,
laconic in speech, his profile of the most strongly marked Bourbon
type, his hair and pigtail white, with his tightly buttoned blue coat,
from which a lace frill escaped, and his trousers, which were always
much too short, showing his white stockings underneath. On the evening
I speak of there had been a great gathering at Saint-Leu--a big dinner,
then a drawing-room play, acted by Madame de Feucheres and the Duke's
gentlemen. In the audience were many officers of the Royal Guard, and
numerous other persons, whose names were known to me from having heard
them quoted as being amongst those ardent Conservatives called at that
time the "Ultras." One of them, a M. de Vitrolles, attracted my
attention by holding a long conversation with my father in one of the
intervals between the acts. He has since related this conversation in
his Memoirs, and also the conviction it gave him of the horror with
which the idea of a fresh revolution filled my father. Their only
disagreement was as to the means to avert it. Which of the two was in
the right?

That evening we went back to Neuilly, and the next morning, 26th of
July, as we were just getting ready, Nemours and I, to start for
school, somebody opened the door and launched the remark to our tutors:
"The coup d'Etat is in the Moniteur!" "What!" "Yes! The Decrees."
Whereupon the tutors rushed to the family drawing-room, whither we
followed them. There sat my father, thunderstruck, the Moniteur in his
hand. When he saw the tutors come in, he threw up his arms in despair,
and let them fall again. After a silence on his Part, during which my
mother rapidly acquainted the gentlemen with the state of affairs, my
father said: "They are mad!" That was all, and after another silence, a
long one--"They will get themselves banished again. Oh! for my part, I
have been exiled twice already. I will not bear it again: I stay in
France!"

I heard no more, for it was schooltime, and we had to get into the
carriage; but those words and that first impression remain graven on my
memory.

That day at school was just like any other, but the next, the 27th, as
we came back from the College Henri IV, it was easy to see that there
was a great stir in Paris Deligny's swimming school, at the corner of
the Quai d'Orsay, where we went after school, according to custom, to
take our bath, was full of young men discussing and holding forth, and
relating incidents, true or not, which had occurred during the day. The
Place Louis XV., now the Place de la Concorde, was occupied by the
troops. There was a regiment of Foot Guards, a battalion of the Swiss
Guard, the Lancers of the Guard, the Artillery of the Military
School--magnificent troops all of them, the finest I have seen in any
country, and of which the English Foot Guards alone in these days give
any idea. Officers inspired in the highest possible degree with esprit
de corps and chivalrous devotion, old non-commissioned officers, many
of whom had seen the wars of the Empire, commanding seasoned soldiers,
young in years but old in discipline and instruction, and all proud of
the splendid uniform they wore--such was the Royal Guard. And what
shall I say of the superb Swiss battalions, acknowledged by ancient
tradition to be the finest infantry in the world? These splendid
troops, which might have rendered such great service to France on the
battlefield were to disappear within two days. Upon them too I had
looked my last. Close to the Porte Maillot we met the Duchesse de
Berri, riding amongst a numerous group of equerries. We exchanged
friendly greetings. No doubt her instinct as a woman and a mother led
her to try to keep in touch with passing events.

The next morning, the 28th, we knew Paris to be in open revolt. Cannon
boomed, the great bell of Notre-Dame sounded the tocsin, and naturally
we did not go to school. But the masters who gave my sisters lessons
came out to Neuilly, and from them, in turn, we learnt what was going
on within the capital--barricades in all the streets--the troops on the
defensive--the tricolour hoisted everywhere.

On the 29th, the struggle grew closer to us. A bullet fell whistling in
the park. According to the fugitives from Paris, the insurrection had
triumphed, the troops of the line were fraternizing with the rebels,
and the Guard was retiring on Saint-Cloud to gather round the King. I
pass over all the rumours and false reports accompanying this news,
which was all too true. And what were we doing during these anxious
hours? We obeyed various impulses. The first, a fervent sympathy with
our soldiers, who were engaged in the struggle--ces pauvres soldats,
the real France, the real PEOPLE, obeying the noblest
motives--honour--duty opposing the POPULACE, whose envy and evil
instincts had been let loose by a handful of ambitious men. And we knew
no rest till the whole staff of the household had repaired to the
various gates of the park, to open them to the soldiers, separated,
dispersed, threatened with massacre as they were. They were brought in
and fed, and given caps and blouses instead of their uniforms, and put
across to the other side of the Seine in boats. And with all that, so
full is the heart of man, and yet more that of the child, of
contradiction, that we followed the current and made tricolour
cockades, my sisters and I, and all of us! There is no doubt the
fascination of the tricolour flag had a good deal to do with the
rapidity with which the Revolutionary powder-train took fire.

As there must always be a laughable side, even to the grimmest events,
the comic element was supplied in this case by our professors of
languages, drawing, and so forth, who had not dared to go back into
Paris after leaving it on the 28th, on account of the fighting. When
they had made up their minds to return on the 29th, we persuaded those
of them who wore moustaches that they would run very great risks, and
even be taken for soldiers in disguise. Whereupon the schoolroom was at
once turned into a barber's shop, where a general shaving was
performed, with the inevitable change of appearance resulting
there-from, which increased the alarm of the individuals operated upon
tenfold.

While our professors were shaving off their moustaches, our father was
disappearing from Neuilly. His movements were rigorously concealed from
us, and I never learnt what they really were even in later days. So I
will not attempt to speak of them. We were soon aware of the bare fact
that he was in Paris, exercising public functions which were somewhat
ill-defined as yet; and on the evening of the 31st my mother informed
us that we were going to join him at the Palais-Royal. [Footnote: It is
not for me to pass judgment on my father's conduct in accepting the
crown in 1830. There is no doubt the July Revolution was a great
misfortune. It gave a fresh blow to the monarchical principle, and it
unfortunately encouraged those who speculate in insurrection. But I
know as a fact that my father never desired it, and indeed watched its
approach with the deepest sorrow. When the throne of Charles X.
collapsed without his being able to defend it in any way, he certainly
felt the most passionate desire to escape the common exile and to
continue living a life which was to him the happiest of lives in
France. The struggle one over, and the country in revolt from end to
end, he realized that the only way in which he could escape exile was
to associate himself with the movement, and at the outset he certainly
did it solely in the hope of bringing back Henri V. to the throne. When
this hope failed him, he yielded to the entreaties of those persons who
implored him as the only person in a position to do it, to check France
on that fateful descent which must bring her from the Republic to a
Dictatorship, and so on to invasion, and to mutilation. He delayed that
disastrous succession of events for eighteen years, at the risk of his
own life, which was incessantly threatened, and history will do him
honour for it in spite of the injustice of human nature.]

We started about eight o'clock at night, my mother, my aunt Adelaide,
and we children, in an omnibus, so as not to attract notice. We began
to come to barricades at the Barriere de l'Etoile, but openings had
been made in them already, large enough for carriages to pass through,
all which openings were watched by guards of armed people--I beg their
pardons, I was mistaken--armed CITIZENS, playing at soldiers and
police, who stopped and cross-questioned everybody in the most childish
fashion. The omnibus could not get beyond the Place Louis XV., so many
obstacles did we find in the way. We got out, and my mother divided us
into twos, and told us to scatter and meet again at the Palais-Royal.

Paris was a curious sight that night, lighted up everywhere with lamps,
and tricolour flags at every window. How people found time to make up
so many emblems in those two days is a mystery! The streets were all
torn up, and the paving-stones piled into the barricades, mixed up with
overturned carriages, casks, and rubbish of all kinds. Behind these
barriers were extemporized guardians, passers-by, people walking about
with guns and firing them off every minute, and everybody, man, woman,
and child, wore huge tricolour cockades in hats and caps or bonnets, or
in their hair.

In the centre of a great crowd on the Place du Palais-Royal there was
one of the Laffitte et Caillard diligences, which had been used as a
barricade, and set up again. It was full of people inside, and they
clustered on the roof like bees, all of them singing in chorus. Between
the choruses, sharp volleys of musketry rang out, and the vehicle,
drawn by three or four hundred people holding on to ropes, tore round
the square, amid a concert of varied yells. Though it was very late
when we reached the palace, it was all lighted up, and every door stood
open. Anybody who chose could go in, and when we went up the stairs we
found many people already settled on the steps, prepared to spend the
night there. We saw my father in his study, and then we were sent to
bed, or rather to camp out in the rooms we usually slept in. The next
day the firing slackened, but the general idleness continued; everybody
was walking about. Soon the question of food began to press, for all
supplies and trade were stopped by the universal barricades. Everybody
asked everybody else what was going on, a subject upon which every one
except the leaders was profoundly ignorant. The multitude was just like
an immense flock of sheep, whose shepherds had been driven away, and
who seemed to wonder why the new dogs who were to herd them did not
make their appearance. There was no bad feeling; now and then there
would be a panic, everybody taking to their heels, nobody knew why, and
then stopping again and bursting out laughing. Sometimes a noise arose,
and swelled as it drew nearer. It was some popular leader going to the
Hotel de Ville or the Palais-Royal, with two or three claqueurs before
him, to stir up an enthusiasm in which everybody shared, without having
a notion of the name of the hero they were acclaiming, yet glad to be
able thus to show off their civic rights. Then there would be a fit of
general tenderness. Everybody kissed everybody else vehemently. In some
cases a transport of patriotism thus calmed itself; in others perhaps
it was the effect of the extreme heat, and the consequent thirst, which
had not gone unquenched, and in others, again, it was merely the
relaxation of morals an era of universal brotherhood brought with it.
The hero of this general and infectious kissing match was Lafayette.
Everybody wanted to kiss him. A great rattle of drums having announced
his arrival at the Palais-Royal one day, he had to take his stand in
one of the drawing-rooms, in front of me, and be kissed by thousands of
persons of all ages. I did it, like all the others, but I saw people I
knew come up again many times over to be kissed by the illustrious
veteran, and each time their agitation seemed to increase.

Every one went in and out of the Palais-Royal as they chose. It was a
strange march past, of people of all sorts, who came to take notes, see
how the wind blew, and give in an adhesion which might be more or less
disinterested. Some of them, inspired by real devotion, came to try if
they might even yet serve a cause that was so dear to them. Thus I saw
M. de Chateaubriand led into my mother's drawing-room by Anatole de
Montesquiou. And, on the other hand, I saw Savary, Duc de Rovigo,
notorious in connection with the Duc d'Enghien, in full uniform, booted
and spurred, leave the study, whither he had gone to offer my father
his services.

One evening, as we were all gathered together, we heard a great noise
coming from the staircase. We hurried towards it. A crowd of armed men,
with lighted torches, were coming up, shouting loudly and waving flags.
At their head came five or six pupils of the Ecole Polytechnique, with
their three-cornered hats cocked and swords drawn. Behind them a woman
in man's attire, red belt and close-fitting pantaloons, was being borne
in triumph. She was a heroine of the barricades, whom the yelling crowd
desired to introduce to my father, and he had to receive her. This
scene filled me with disgust, and it was soon followed by another, no
less painful. The leaders of the Revolution had sent an army of
volunteers to dislodge the old King and his Guard from Rambouillet.
They did not turn him out, first of all because the King himself had
decided to disband his guard and retire to Cherbourg with no escort but
four companies of his bodyguard; and, secondly, because these same
volunteers, numerous as they were on leaving Paris, melted away rapidly
on the road, and above all things took good care not to venture within
range of the Guard's fire. Nevertheless, they returned in triumph from
Rambouillet, bringing back the royal horses and carriages, which they
had seized without striking a blow. I was horrified to see the great
carriages, with six or eight horses, still driven by the wretched
coachmen and postilions, in their state liveries, enter the Place du
Palais-Royal--believing as I did that they were bringing back the King
and his family as prisoners, into the very jaws of the Revolution. But,
happily, this was not the case. The only people in the carriages were
some young blackguards, dressed up in extraordinary garments,
dressing-gowns and cotton caps, and I know not what other masquerading
trash, intended to call forth the ribald jokes of the multitude. It was
a disgusting scene. The days passed on, and by degrees Paris returned
to its ordinary life. The streets were repaired, vehicles began to
circulate again. Soldiers, gendarmes, policemen, were to be seen once
more, and a certain sense of security revived. At all events the
eternal struggle of order against disorder began afresh. Those who
formed the most turbulent element of the Revolutionary party were
induced, by degrees, to engage in the army, and were drafted off to
Algiers, under the title of "Regiments de la Charte." It was less easy
to get rid of a Guard of Honour, numbering some two or three hundred
men, which had formed itself on its own responsibility, nominally for
the protection of my father and of the Palais-Royal. This guard was
always in the vestibule and on the staircase, night and day alike. It
was an omnium gatherum of vagabonds, prowling ruffians of the vilest
kind, ragged scamps, all carrying arms, stolen from every sort of
place, among others from the Musee d'Artillerie, whence some had gone
so far as to borrow cuirasses and helmets that had belonged to the
warriors of the League. Of course they all had to be fed and paid. The
chief of the band was a midshipman in the navy, on leave in Paris at
the time the Revolution broke out, of the name of Damiguet de Vernon,
who died afterwards with the rank of general in the army. Whenever my
father went out, to go to the Chamber of Deputies or elsewhere, this
rabble turned out and saluted after a fashion of its own, with drums
beating and trumpets blowing. It was a scene quite worthy of Callot's
pencil. To get rid of this worthy set, the midshipman was at once given
a lieutenant's commission in the mounted Municipal Guard, under pretext
of a reward from the nation, and clothes were bestowed on his band,
wherewith they hastened to decamp on the first sign of the introduction
of anything like discipline into their ranks.

Our regular routine began again too. After over a week's holiday, I was
put back to school, where we immediately made a revolution of our own,
by insisting that the bell which rang for class and mealtimes should be
replaced by a drum. If, as I went into school with my folding desk
under my arm, I came across the column of big boys coming down from
their class-rooms, I used to get many a cuff to the tune of "Take that,
your young Majesty!" or the slang saying of the day, "Have you seen
Leontine?"--this last from the name of Leontine Fay, a favourite
actress with young people. But, apart from that, my life was as
monotonous as ever it had been. The riots and attempts at insurrection
which succeeded each other with something very like regularity seemed
to diversify it but very little. Yet I did feel a certain excitement
the first time I witnessed one of these attempts at sedition. Our
evening was just over at the Palais-Royal, and I had gone up to my
room, when loud shouts, and an ejaculation of "Oh, good gracious!" from
my valet, made me run to the window. The Court of the Palais-Royal was
closed, but all the galleries were filled with a surging, yelling
crowd, the more violent of whom were battering at the staircase door
facing Chevet's shop. "They are going to break it in and come upstairs:
they'll be here in another moment," we said to ourselves. "What is to
be done?"

Amidst the general shouting, yells of "Death to Louis Philippe!" were
to be heard. Then, all at once, in the gaslight, I saw the policemen's
swords twinkle, pinking people in all directions. Soon the troops came
hurrying up with fixed bayonets, and the rabble took to their heels at
the sight of them. This crowd had just come back from Vincennes,
whither it had gone to demand the heads of Charles X.'s ministers, who
were shut up in the fortress, from General Daumesnil, "the man with the
wooden leg," and having failed in that attempt it wanted to have my
father's instead.

So that affair ended; but fresh opportunities for creating disturbances
soon occurred, and were as eagerly seized upon. One was during a great
diplomatic dinner given by my father in the dining-room of the
Palais-Royal, which looks out on the Cour des Fontaines. I was sitting
by Lord Granville's daughter, and doing my best to make myself
pleasant, when the uproar of the riot burst upon us suddenly and
interrupted all the talk. Everybody looked at everybody else, and then
down at their own plate, and everybody looked very sorry to be where he
was at that moment. Then the noise of a great trampling of hoofs on the
pavement revealed the fact that the cavalry was charging, whereupon the
sky cleared, and conversation began again, though not without some
appearance of effort.

Another time, again, matters became more serious. The riot--I don't
remember which it was now, there were so many of them!--became very
threatening at one moment. I see my father still, taking Casimir Perier
by the arm, and shouting in his ear, "Tell them to serve out ball
cartridge, ball cartridge, do you hear?" Casimir Perier, as excited as
himself, was rushing away, when he was stopped by an officer, who said,
"There are three students of the Ecole Polytechnique, sent to parley,
waiting below."

"Parley for whom? For the rioters? For the insurrection? Lay hands on
them! Lock them up in prison."

"But, sir," said the officer, himself a former student at the Ecole
Polytechnique, "I can't: I've given them my word!" But Casimir Perier
was not there to listen even just then I observed a man of woebegone
appearance, sitting in a corner of the drawing-room in which the
foregoing scene had taken place. One of my eldest brother's
aides-de-camp, General Marbot, was walking up and down in front of him,
never taking his eyes off him. "What are you doing there?" I asked the
general.

"I'm keeping my eye on that gentleman you see there."

"Who is he?"

"The Prefect of Police."

"Really?"

"They say he is playing us false"

And there you see a specimen of the plight you find yourself in on the
morrow of a revolution, when order needs restoring not only in the open
streets but in the highest quarters in the State.

For my own part, I was always delighted to hear the drums call the
National Guard--and consequently all our masters, tutors, and
professors, who served in it--to arms, at each fresh outbreak of
disturbance.

It meant interrupted studies, and, above all, interrupted attendance at
school, where, however, luckily for me, I was not to stay much longer.
Seeing that I did no good there whatever, my father decided, in the
spring of 1831, to remove me altogether, and as my taste for a naval
career was growing stronger and stronger, he resolved to make a sailor
of me But before I seriously entered the profession he wished me to
make a sea-voyage. So I was sent to Toulon, to be shipped as volunteer
pilot's apprentice, on board the Arthemise frigate, commander Latreyte.
I was barely thirteen I could not have begun at a better age.

After bidding the tenderest farewell to my father and mother, my aunt,
and my brothers and sisters, from whom I had never been parted before,
I was packed into a post-chaise with Monsieur Trognon, and off we
started.

As far as Lyons our journey was uneventful, but when we got there M.
Paulze d'Ivoy, the prefet, and M. Vitet, author of Barricades des Etats
de Blois, took possession of me, nominally to show me the town--in
reality to make me the pretext for certain demonstrations in favour of
the new order of things. I was driven about, to Fourvieres, to La
Croix-Rousse, and so forth, and had the best of receptions from their
sturdy inhabitants. Thirteen-year-old lad as I was, I had to receive
the officers of the National Guard--very military indeed they were,
with their uniform with its white facings, copied from that of the
Imperial Guard. And these receptions and official entertainments, which
were not at all to my personal taste, were repeated all along the road
till we got to Toulon, marked by increasing animation and fervour as we
got farther south, and as the population through which we passed became
more and more divided by political passions. At Valence I found an
enormous crowd of people, and the garrison and National Guard both
under arms, while a tall lieutenant-colonel, of the 49th Regiment of
the Line, insisted on my inspecting the troops in person.

He took my hand with one of his, with the other he waved his sword, and
led the plaudits. His name was Magnan, and he was a Marshal of France
before he died. At Mornas, the native place of the famous Baron des
Adrets, the reception took a very original shape. As we drove up to the
posting-house, I saw a great crowd, and the National Guard drawn up in
two ranks, on the right and left of the postilions who were to take us
on. The carriage pulled up between the ranks, and I fancied I saw a
sort of suppressed smile on the countenances of the National Guard. It
did not last long, for the commandant in the wildest excitement rapidly
gave the words of command: "Present arms--Fire!" And they were followed
by the most abominable noise, every man having presented arms with his
finger on the trigger of his musket. The crowd cheered tremendously,
the horses plunged and reared, and there was a terrible disturbance,
which seemed to afford the keenest joy to the officer in command. There
was nothing very striking at Orange, nor at Avignon. Speeches by the
authorities, visits to the public buildings, very much the same routine
as that which official receptions have nowadays made so familiar to
everybody. But at Orgon, between Avignon and Aix, it was a very
different matter. An immense and excited crowd awaited our arrival,
shouting all manner of things. Then the carriage was seized upon by
people who looked drunk, but who were drunk with political passion
alone. It seems the town of Orgon was not reckoned to favour the regime
of 1830. So from every side I was greeted with shouts of "We are
Cavaillon's men! ... We've come down from the mountains so that you may
tell your papa there are no Carlists in Provence." And then they sang
the Marseillaise The horses were taken out of the carriage, the crowd
surrounded it, climbing on the steps, the wheels, the fore-carriage,
the roof. I was like a prisoner in a cage; all I could see out of the
window was the boots of the people who were sitting on the top. They
sang all the verses of the Marseillaise, and bawled between them. A
gentleman contrived to slip up to the carriage door, gave himself out
to be the mayor, and tried to rescue us, calling out: "Gentlemen, this
really is not decent behaviour." All he got for his pains was a shout
of "What the devil do we care about a mayor like you?" I don't know how
long it would have gone on, if a detachment of the battalion of
Government workmen quartered at Orgon, which had been sent for, had not
come to our rescue.

Between Orgon and Marseilles we met the "Regiment de la Charte"
marching from Paris on their way to Algiers, and their passage through
the country did not a little to excite the inhabitants. At Marseilles
the National Guard lined the Allees de Meillan, each man with a bouquet
stuck into the muzzle of his rifle, which he took out and threw into
the barouche in which I sat with General Gazan, so that I was soon
fairly buried, with nothing but my head sticking out, while the crowd
shouted at the top of its voice: "Vive le Prinnche!--Long live the
Prince!" and I heard women's voices adding, "Que sis poulid! Qui est si
joli!"

I had hardly reached Toulon, ere the frigate I had joined put to sea,
my apprenticeship began, and I soon made myself at home among our
sailors, who all of them, officers, petty officers, and seamen alike,
not only showed me an affection which won my heart from the very
outset, but took every pains to make my stay amongst them a pleasant
one, while each in his own special sphere initiated me into all the
details of my duty.

The Arthemise was a fine sailing frigate, of fifty-two guns, with huge
spars--one of the most elegant types of the old-fashioned ships, but an
old-fashioned ship she was indeed. We even had hempen cables instead of
chain ones! The crew, drawn almost exclusively from the lists of
registered seamen, was active and bold on the rigging, but somewhat
insubordinate. The words of command were given amidst volleys of oaths,
and carried out under a hail of blows dealt by the petty officers. The
superior officers, who had all belonged to the old Imperial Navy, clung
to that detestable habit, which has cost us so many reverses, of
completely neglecting the military side of the ship's drill. The only
thing they looked to was navigation. There was indeed a routine of
regulation practice carried out, but it was utterly ridiculous. The ne
plus ultra of perfection in artillery drill, for instance, was supposed
to be when at the word "Ram" all the thirteen rammers of the ship's
battery struck the bore of the guns with irreproachable simultaneity!
Now and then there was a rehearsal of the drill book, but it was always
done amidst universal sleepiness and inattention. There never was one
day's practice, nor even one shot fired, during the whole cruise.

The commander gave me boatswains and sailors to teach me the various
details of my duty, and I soon learnt to give things their right names,
to tie knots, and to climb about the rigging too, though I did not
manage that, the first time, without being horribly frightened. I
remember, when I got as far as the topgallant crosstrees, clinging on,
and not daring to come down till I was driven to it by the jeers of the
on-lookers. But I learnt most of all by observation, and from the
outset I had that indescribable thing that nobody can teach another,
the seafaring instinct. Our cruise was a pleasant one, and our stays in
port were interesting. At Ajaccio I came upon more public functions,
and was the hero of a Bonapartist demonstration. I was borne as though
in triumph to the house where Napoleon was born, where I was received
by a very old Signor Ramolino, brother to Madame Letitia. In common
with my sisters, who drew pictures of Napoleon all over the place, I
professed the greatest admiration for the great warrior. So I asked his
uncle for some souvenir of him, and he presented me with a red
armchair, out of the room in which he was born.

After a visit to the Dey of Algiers, the last representative of those
Barbary Moors who were the "Terror of the Seas," as the Muette de
Portici has it, I received at Leghorn an invitation from the Grand Duke
of Tuscany to come to Florence, and was taken thither by the French
Minister, M. de Ganay, a charming man. There was nothing that excellent
good Grand Duke and his family did not do for me while I staid at the
Pitti Palace, and the only acknowledgment I could make of it all was to
turn my schoolboy talents to constructing a jointed jumping jack, that
turned head over heels, for one of the young princesses whom we used to
call the Archduchess Mimi, and who afterwards married Prince Luitpold
of Bavaria. I returned on board the Arthemise full of gratitude for my
reception, and of admiration for the monuments and artistic marvels I
had seen at Florence and Pisa and Pistoja, and in which, in spite of my
youth, I had taken the deepest interest.

At Naples I found fresh delights in the midst of my mother's family and
my young cousins, of both sexes, one of whom, Antonietta, an admirably
beautiful girl, later became Grand Duchess of Tuscany in her turn.
Nothing indeed could have been more charming than the Naples of those
days. I do not speak of that wondrous setting which will last to all
eternity, but of the Naples of the Neapolitans, gay, noisy, and teeming
with wit, as it was before the plague of politics fell on it, bringing
divisions and gloom, and despoiling it of all its charm of originality;
Naples, with its lazzaroni and its macaroni, and its "corricoli"
tearing along with tinkling bells, crammed with monks and women in
their costumes--the Naples, in fine, of Pulcinella and of Leopold
Robert.

After Naples came Palermo, and then Malta, where we found the
magnificent British squadron, and received the most hospitable of
welcomes from General and Lady Emily Ponsonby, the governor and his
charming wife.

Our stay at Malta ended with a disagreeable incident, hardly
conceivable in these days, when naval discipline may be held up as a
model to every one. On the evening of the day before that on which we
were to weigh anchor, our whole crew deserted in a body. In spite of
the efforts of the officer of the watch, and some others of inferior
rank, who were present, over 300 men seized the boats and dories that
lay alongside of us, and took "French leave" on shore. The next day we
could not start, for we had no crew. We had to apply to the police and
the English garrison, who sent out pickets, collected our rovers, and
brought almost all of them back in the course of the evening, and we
started somewhat humiliated at having given the English such a sad
specimen of the insubordination which always follows on revolutions.
The English have had their revolution too, but they have taken good
care to have no more than the one, and above all not to make laws which
render a periodical recurrence of revolution inevitable. As we had over
300 delinquents, it was impossible to punish them. The men felt this,
and, with the evident intention of setting their officers at defiance,
they spent the next few evenings singing revolutionary songs, some
verses of which they came and yelled on their knees on the quarterdeck.
The firmness of the commanding officers got the better of these
saturnalia, by degrees.

Storms delayed us in the Maltese waters, and we only just missed being
on the spot on the very day when an eruption threw up an island and a
volcano from the depths of the sea, to which they have now returned.
After a long passage, the frigate anchored at Algiers, which in 1831
was still the city of the Deys. Not a street had been widened, nor a
European house built. It was still inhabited by a numerous native
population. The Rue de la Marine, which was like a narrow winding
staircase, was crowded with negro women street sellers, the cafes
filled with Moors wearing huge turbans. To increase the picturesqueness
of the situation, there was fighting going on at the city gates.
Berthezene, the Governor-General, had just been forced to beat a
retreat from Medeah. I could see the firing on the slopes of Kouba from
the frigate, and a column had to be sent out to revictual the
Maison-Carree! Under these circumstances, the Governor bethought
himself that it would be a good thing to show "the King's son" to the
troops, and settled to hold a review the next day. The troops were to
be withdrawn for the moment from the line of defense, and the review
was to be held at Mustapha. I had ventured to suggest that I might go
and see the soldiers in their own lines, hoping thus to get near the
firing, a natural desire enough, seeing I wore a volunteer uniform in
spite of my thirteen years, but nobody listened to me, and to Mustapha
I was taken, mounted on the ex-Dey's white mule, which an artilleryman
persisted in leading by the bridle, in spite of all my indignant
protests.

A real downright review that was! The men had been fighting all the
morning, and Zouaves and linesmen alike looked fierce indeed, with
tanned faces, eyes reddened by the smoke, and a black mark at the
corner of every mouth, from biting off the ends of the cartridges. The
Zouaves had only just been raised, and were not a bit like the Zouaves
of the present day. The ranks consisted mostly of Arabs, who wore
almost the same uniform as the present one, only with bare legs and
slippers on their feet, mingled with Parisian roughs, drafted out of
the "Regiments de la Charte," most of them wearing blouses and caps.
Many of the non-commissioned officers had come from the Royal Guard,
and still wore their blue cloaks. The excessively whimsical get-up of
the officers put the finishing touch to this motley show. Most of them
had adopted the Mameluke dress--white turbans, huge trousers, yellow
boots, a sun embroidered on their backs, and a scimitar. After the
Zouaves I saw the squadron of "Chasseurs Algeriens," the nucleus of the
future "Chasseurs d'Afrique," march past. They wore Turkish dress and
turbans too, all but their commanding officer, a big bearded artillery
captain, who wore a burnous and Arab pistols over his uniform. His name
was Marey-Monge, and he was a general of division when he died.

After the review I was taken back to my ship. The frigate sailed for
Port Mahon, where we underwent a long quarantine, and thence to Toulon,
where we arrived just as the squadron which had forced the mouth of the
Tagus, under the orders of Admiral Roussin, returned, I went over those
fine ships, and especially the Algesiras, with many a regret that the
Arthemise had had no share in the fray. The commander of the Algesiras,
M. Moulac, a tall, strongly built, grey-headed man, the bravest of the
brave, who had fought boldly in all our naval struggles with England,
told me a story which impressed me deeply, and which I here transcribe
just as it remains fixed in my memory:--

"It has been blowing great guns, as you know, all the last few days.
The ship was running under easy sail when I heard a shout of 'Man
overboard!' The lifebuoy was thrown, and, looking astern, I saw the man
had caught it. But it was a raging sea--I saw and felt that to try and
lower a boat to save the poor wretch must expose the men who manned it
to the greatest danger. The crew read in my face the fearful struggle
going on within me, and twenty, thirty, perhaps forty volunteers,
headed by officers and midshipmen, crowded round me, beseeching me
almost on their knees: 'Let us save our comrade, sir! we can't desert
him!' I was weak enough to yield. By unexpected good luck, we managed
to lower a boat without accident, and she started manned by a dozen
men. We saw her, by still greater good fortune, get to the poor fellow
and save him, and I was steering about so as to make it easier for her
to get back, when a huge wave broke over her. A shout of horror went up
from her, and then silence. In another minute I saw my boat capsized,
on the crest of a wave, with two or three men, one of them a
midshipman, clinging to the keel. To shorten their agony, I made as
though I was going ahead. The middy understood that I was forced to
abandon them, for he waved a farewell and let himself go. I had been
weak, but I was cruelly punished. Thirteen men drowned instead of one,
and by my fault!"

I shall never forget the severe expression that came over the
commander's face as he added, laying his hand on my shoulder, "Some
day, boy, you may be in command. May the thought of me remind you
always that duty is inexorable!"

After this final episode in my first cruise I went ashore, but I went
ashore a sailor to the core, and my one idea, when I got back to Paris,
was to acquire the technical information needed for my profession. To
this the years 1832 and 1833 were devoted. M. Guerard, a charming
fellow, universally liked and an incomparable instructor, was my
mathematical teacher. A lieutenant in the navy, M. Hernoux, put me
through the course of study of the Naval School. At the same time I set
assiduously to work to learn drawing. My first master in this line was
M. Barbier, the father of Jules Barbier, the poet and librettist, who,
with Emile Augier, was a class-mate of my young brothers. I did
watercolours too, under an Englishman, William Callow, and oils in
Gudin's studio. But my real master, who taught me to draw, and led and
guided me, and gave me my taste for things artistic, was Ary Scheffer,
with whom I remained on terms of the closest intimacy until his death.

It was somewhere about this time that a French army entered Belgium,
and besieged and took the citadel of Antwerp, and during this campaign
my elder brothers first had the honour of leading our soldiers under
fire. Antwerp once taken, the French Government, content with having
given a proof of activity to Europe, and shown everybody what our
legions could do, at once recalled the army, and my father went to
review it in the cantonments on the frontier where it lay. I made this
journey with him. The troops were splendid, full of zeal and
confidence. I was shown one infantry brigade, which at the time of
mobilization had done marches of sixty to seventy kilometres, so as to
reach the given point at the hour fixed upon. It was an interesting
journey, though a very trying one. Every day there was an entry into
some town, and a partial review, in Siberian cold. And every evening
there was a banquet, and every night a ball. The chief review was held
at Valenciennes. The troops looked magnificent, drawn up on the snow,
and, though it was so terribly cold, a brilliant sun lighted up the
splendid military scene. It was enlivened by a little incident. The
commandant of the fortress of Valenciennes was an old colonel, who had
re-engaged in 1830, after having dabbled somewhat in conspiracy, under
the Restoration. His name was M. de la Huberdiere, and he had had
himself a hat made exactly like Napoleon's, and wore it just after the
same fashion.

During the march past, either from sheer keenness or because he wanted
to attract attention to himself, he edged himself gradually in front of
the staff, on the side where the troops advanced, till at last he was
abreast of the King, so that the troops appeared to be marching past
him. This provoked one of my father's aides-de-camp, Heymes, who went
up to him, and said, saluting, "It seems to me, Colonel, you would be
better placed still if you were on the King's horse!" The shriek of
laughter which greeted this remark may be imagined.

This same Heymes, one of the few survivors of General Leclerc's
expedition to St. Domingo, had, on leaving that charnel-house, become
aide-de-camp to Marshal Ney. He it was who, during the famous retreat
from Russia, was sent to ask the general who was blowing up the
Beresina bridges to suspend the work of destruction, so as to allow of
the passage of the column with the wounded, who must otherwise be
doomed to death. It was worth seeing the expression of his face, severe
enough already, when he repeated the answer the general in question
gave him, with the most southern of accents, "What, my dear fellow! The
wounded! The Emperor has decided to sacrifice them!"

The worthy Heymes did my father a great service a short time after the
review which has led me to mention him. It was at the moment of the
insurrection in June 1832. We were at St. Cloud. It was well known that
the agitators of every description intended to make a demonstration on
the occasion of General Lamarque's funeral, but the demonstration was
not expected to be of any importance. However, at about five in the
evening, we beheld Heymes, in plain clothes, gallop into the courtyard,
on a dragoon's charger, covered with foam. He had just come from the
demonstration, and had witnessed that ordinary prologue to revolutions,
pillage and massacre--pillage of gunsmiths' shops, and massacre of the
officers of the 6th Dragoons, shot down with pistols, without any
provocation whatever, at the head of their squadrons in line.

"You must come to Paris, Sire," he said, as he dismounted. My father
did not wait for him to say it twice, and an hour later he was at the
Tuileries, thence giving the impulse which nipped the revolutionary
attempt in the bud. The next morning he was on horseback amidst the
troops and the National Guard, which hemmed the rioters into the ward
of St. Merri. An incident occurred there which was highly
characteristic of that Parisian population, in whom a generous chord
will always thrill, even in its maddest moments. The King, with my
brother Nemours and his staff, had gone down the Rue des Arcis, at the
end of which lively firing was heard. The troops who were massed in the
street greeted the sovereign with cheers, and he, going forward,
reached a square in which the fighting was actually going on. The
cheering ran from one to another, the soldiers who were engaged ceasing
their fire to join in. This change in the music struck the insurgents
also at last. They stopped firing too, and were to be seen appearing at
the windows, rifle in hand, taking off their caps to the plucky King,
whom they would not have hesitated to shoot at a minute before.

I need not say that as soon as the King and his escort disappeared down
a side street the fight began again, merrier than ever, and the 42nd
Regiment of the line carried the monastery of St. Merri. An historic
regiment that 42nd! After having fought against the "White"
insurrection in the Vendee and the republican insurrection at the St.
Merri monastery, caused the breakdown of Prince Napoleon's Boulogne
adventure, occupied the Chamber of Deputies on the 2nd of December, and
heroically lost its whole strength twice over in the siege of Paris, it
has had the good fortune of being almost the only one of our regiments
to keep its arms and its colours amidst all our mishaps.

There was no further interruption to the course of my studies, except a
journey of the King's to Normandy, on which I accompanied him. The
official object of this journey was to hold a review, at Cherbourg, of
the squadron which had operated, in concert with an English one, in the
North Sea, during the arrangement of the Belgian question. But its
chief end was to go through the Departments in Normandy and enter into
relations with the honest folk who populated them.

The trip was fruitful in incident. The first happened at Bernay, the
native town of the virtuous Dupont de l'Eure, one of those virtuous
individuals who would virtuously have your head cut off sooner than
drop the smallest iota of their vulgar and utopian ideas. The prefect,
M. Passy, had warned the King that amongst the addresses that would be
read to him on his arrival there would be one which would give him a
lecture. Thus warned, we arrived, and having mounted a platform in the
open air, with a verdant dome above it, the reception and the addresses
began. There was nothing very particular at first; at last a "President
de Tribunal" advanced, and the way he made his bow with his prim look,
and the curiosity which stretched every neck, told me at once that the
King was to get the promised lecture. It came, indeed, very studied,
and very impertinent too. Everybody listened in silence. It was all
about courtiers, the danger of listening to flatterers, and so forth.
As it ended, the heads of the president and his friends all came up
with a "Take that, my fine fellow" look.

Then the King replied with the utmost politeness, thanking M. le
President for the advice he had been good enough to give him.
"Flatterers and courtiers," he said, "have indeed done much mischief,
and, sad to say, the race is not yet extinct, for nowadays there are
courtiers who are far more dangerous than the flatterers of princes and
of kings--those courtiers and flatterers of the people, who to buy a
vain and contemptible popularity suggest to them dreams which are
unrealizable and which bring them to misfortune," &c. On this head my
father bestowed a well-directed hiding on the president, which was
constantly interrupted by a running fire of applause, so that the
worthy gentleman ended by not knowing which way to look. Amongst other
eminently French qualities, my father possessed the gift of repartee to
the highest degree. He always knew how to use it, though with a
politeness and good nature which softened whatever might be too sharp
about its sting. This time the blow went home. Our journey, thus begun,
was continued amid constantly increasing cordiality and success. It was
a somewhat tiring manner of life. We went by short stages, from one
reception to another. Everywhere the National Guard and the troops were
under arms. When they were in considerable numbers, we mounted horses,
either lent or requisitioned beforehand. In the evening, wherever we
slept, there would be a great banquet, and generally a ball as well. It
was the duty of us young folk to lead the dancing--a pleasant task
enough, if we could have chosen our partners among the pretty women
whom I was beginning to notice, in spite of my being only fourteen, and
of whom there were many, especially at Grandville and St. Lo. But our
partners were given to us officially, and were chosen from the families
of the authorities. We exerted ourselves to be pleasant in spite of
that. I do not know whether I was succeeding too much or too little at
a ball one night, but I saw the husband's head suddenly appear between
my partner and myself, with the observation, "Well, my wife's not
bad-looking, is she?" and he smacked his lips like a man who has eaten
a good thing.

Falaise was the culminating point in our journey as far as incidents
went. We were to make a halt there, and, as fifteen battalions of the
National Guard were collected, the aide-de-camp, who did duty as
quartermaster too, had seen to getting suitable mounts for the King,
for us, and for Marshals Soult and Gerard, who accompanied us. The
famous fair at Guibray, near Falaise, was just over, and a circus which
had come to enliven it was still there. The circus horses were laid
hands on, and when we arrived we were agreeably surprised to find fine
white horses awaiting us instead of the ordinary nags and troop-horses
we generally had to ride. So we got into the saddle, and the review
began. Just as the King reached the right flank of the line, the band
began to play, and then an unforeseen event occurred Our proud
coursers, thinking that they were at a performance, set each of them to
do his own particular duty. The King, Marshal Soult, and two others of
our party were riding the horses who did that trick called the
"Grand-Ecart," in which all four horses draw together at the same
moment. When their riders pulled at their bridles, the four horses,
feeling themselves reined up, instantly fell into the usual circus
canter. Another horse kept wheeling round and round, and confusion
became general, nobody guessing what had happened until the
aide-de-camp smote his brow, and stopped the band.

The trouble did not end there. The National Guard was in proud
possession of one gun, which it had horsed somehow or other. A jolt
broke the axle-tree, just as it was going past. Then there was a
half-squadron of cavalry mounted on stallions or geldings. But the
trumpeter was on a mare, which fact brought difficulty on poor
Rosinante during the march past. In the evening there was a great ball
in a huge temporary shed, with tiers of seats all round it. All of a
sudden half the tiers collapsed, like cards, and all the ladies were to
be seen, though almost unhurt, on their backs with their legs in the
air, amidst a most awful dust! I must confess we ungallantly seized the
opportunity of the confusion to go off to our beds. The King, too, did
the same, thus escaping from the persecutions of the Polish refugees,
interned at Falaise, who had come to the ball in lancer uniforms worthy
of the merry-andrews at the opera balls, to pester him with their
petitions.




CHAPTER III

1834-1836


My technical education recommenced more vigorously than ever when this
journey was over. It had been decided that before being definitely
placed on the Navy List I must pass my public examination as a
first-class pupil at Brest. So I was prepared accordingly, and received
those successive doses of instruction which the English designate by
the characteristic word "cramming," for which the only French
equivalent I can find is "gaver." My mathematical teacher held a class
for a limited number of youths in a house in the Rue Git-le-Coeur, and
thither I went, to gain the habit of speaking the language of algebra
in public. In contrast to my memories of school lessons, I have the
pleasantest recollections of those I received in that den--for den it
was! This, perhaps, is on account of the good fellows I met there, and
who have been my friends ever since, and also owing to the charm our
kindly instructor wielded over us all. I do not believe there is a
single one of his pupils, from the illustrious Marshal Canrobert down
through my contemporaries, Excelmans, Bonie, Morny, Daumesnil, the
Greffulhe brothers, Friant, Baudin, Valbezen, and many more, to the
younger generation that came after me, who does not cherish the most
grateful and affectionate feelings for the worthy Guerard. When we were
close on the time for my examination, he had me questioned several
times over by the official examiners of the Ecole Polytechnique and
others, so as to accustom me to the surprises of public examinations. I
thus passed through the hands of Baron Reynaud, and of Messieurs
Bourdon, Delille, and Lefebure de Fourcy. This last inspired me with
downright terror, on account of his reputation for methodical
brutality. One of my class-mates had reported to me that well-known
colloquy between him and a candidate who got confused, at he stood
chalk in hand before the black board, and who heard M. Lefebure de
Fourcy's voice saying calmly, "Waiter, just bring a bundle of hay for
this pupil's breakfast." To which the indignant pupil promptly added,
"Waiter, bring two: the examiner will breakfast with me." At length,
crammed to the muzzle with nautical and astronomical calculations, and
all the other sciences the official programme demanded, I started for
Brest, kept up even as I drove along, in the highest state of
preparation. There were a few interludes during the journey. Certain
spots in Brittany were still, early in that year 1834, disturbed by the
consequences of the rising in 1831, and my passage was the signal in
several places for what we call, in parliamentary language, "mouvements
en sens divers," conflicting emotions. Sometimes I saw white
handkerchiefs waving or twisted round hats, doing duty for cockades. At
other points the tricolour demonstrations took a quaint form. I
remember at one place where we changed horses my carriage drew up
between two rows of National Guards, who were keeping back a
considerable crowd of people. At the carriage door appeared the Mayor
with his scarf round his waist, saluting me with this remark: "Sir,
this place is but a hole, but it is a hole in which hearts devoted to
your august family are throbbing;" while at the other the village
priest and his clergy, all in surplice and alb, struck up

 Soldats du drapeau tricolore
 D'Orieans toi qui la's Porte,

and so right through the Parisian to a brass accompaniment.

My examination was held in the great hall of the Prefecture of the Navy
at Brest, before a board of officers, engineers, and professors. It was
a public one; but what alarmed me most at its outset was the presence
of all the pupils of the Naval School, who riled the tiers of seats on
one side of the hall. Luckily the sight of some old chums amongst them
cheered me up, and as the examination went pretty well I soon saw on
their youthful faces, just as actors, they say, read their coming
success on their audience at the theatre, that my cause was won, and
that I was accepted, not only by the scientific big-wigs but by the
universal suffrages of my contemporaries. Yet I was rejoiced when the
sitting was over!

Some days later, at L'Orient, I joined the Sirene frigate, Commander
d'Oysonville, as midshipman, and started on an ocean voyage. This
cruise was uneventful, except for a few little incidents such as always
occur in a sailor's life.

Thus, being in the maintop one day, when topsails were being reefed in
a strong breeze, a rope chanced to break, twisted round my legs, and
carried me into mid air, head downwards. If the sinewy arms of the
captain of the maintop and one of the top men had not caught me as I
passed, I should have fallen into the sea or on the deck, and either
alternative would have been disagreeable. Later on, at the end of the
cruise, we re-entered Brest in a south-westerly squall, under
circumstances which made a very useful impression on me.

We had bad weather for some days, no reliable observations had been
taken, and we were very doubtful as to the frigate's position. Driving
as we were at a great rate, before the gale, we were reckoning on the
occasional partial lightening of the fog to catch sight of and
recognize some point of land or rock, according to which we might steer
our course amongst the reefs which swarm at the entrance of Brest
harbour. We had to be ready to change our course and go about at any
moment. Everybody was on deck, straining his eyes to try and see
something, cool, and steady in nerve, as a well-disciplined body of men
is in face of any danger. But one man was not present, our commanding
officer, whose prompt judgment and word of command alone could bring us
from perilous uncertainty into safety. Our commander was below, in his
cabin, and there he persisted in staying, in spite of the indirect
efforts made by the officer of the watch, the second in command, and
the navigating officer to get him out of it. It was incomprehensible,
and at the same time very alarming. Commander d'Oysonville, who was
churchwarden of St. Roch when he died, was a kind and very honourable
man, but nobody could possibly have been less of a sailor. He was a
first-class organizer, and he carried his theories to the extremist
possible limit. He had one, amongst others, that the captain of a ship
ought to command her from his cabin, so as never to appear before his
crew except on the most solemn occasions, and it was for the sake of
being true to this principle that he refused to show himself in the
circumstances I speak of. His obstinacy very nearly cost us dear, for
on the earnestly longed-for break in the fog suddenly taking place a
point of land was seen. We thought we recognized the Island of Molenes:
the commander was hurriedly informed, and he sent an order to change
our course. A lightening at another point in the horizon showed us some
rocks. "The Pierres Vertes ahead!" sang out a coasting pilot specially
shipped for the voyage, who was looking out from his perch on the
foreyards, and the navigating officer tore off again to warn the
commanding officer. During all these comings and goings the curtain of
fog came down again, and we went driving on towards the reefs at the
rate of twelve knots an hour. It could not be allowed to go on! With or
without leave the second officer took the command, and put an end to an
impossible situation. Our worthy commander only appeared just as we
were dropping anchor in the roadstead, when all uncertainty was over,
and I seem yet to see the looks that greeted his tardy appearance.
Everybody's anxiety had been increased by knowing how he had lost the
ship Le Superbe, seventy-four guns, off the Island of Paros, some years
before, and under very peculiar circumstances. For my own part, I
learnt on this occasion what everything has confirmed me in since--the
danger of uncertain and divided authority either at sea or elsewhere.

When I got back to Paris, having finished the technical portion of my
education, I went on with a course of history, with my sisters,
especially my sister Mary, I applied myself with the utmost fervour to
my drawing. I worked with her daily, under the direction of Ary
Scheffer, and I recollect our grief one morning on finding the Jeanne
d'Arc she was modelling in wax for Versailles, melted by an overheated
stove, had collapsed the whole length of its framework, to such an
extent as to become the merest cripple. By dint of lowering the
temperature, and the use of a screw-jack applied in a peculiar manner,
and vigorously turned by Ary Scheffer and myself, Jeanne d'Arc rose up
again upon her framework, and the damage was soon made good.

About that time too, influenced by the genius of Victor Hugo, my sister
Clementine and I were seized with a perfect passion for old Paris, that
delightful Paris of ancient story. We had Sauval's thick volumes, we
had searched all the old books for traces of the ancient legends, and
we used to spend our afternoons going to see the sites and hunt for the
remains of the places we had read about, There is not a church or a
monument of which we did not know every detail, nor an alley or a
corner in the quarters of the Halles, the Hotel de Ville, the Arsenal,
the Temple, and the Pantheon that we had not carefully explored with
the most fervent interest. What joy it was to us one day when we were
trying to trace the Hotel St. Paul, the old palace of our kings, to
come upon a course of masonry which had undoubtedly belonged to it!

Although I was on shore, I was still devoted to my profession. I used
to see almost all the naval officers who passed through Paris, and
tried to push forward those whom the general body of the profession
singled out as being likely commanding officers. These matters of
promotion, as well as any others that affected naval interests, brought
me into daily touch with the ministers, and my relations with M Theirs
date from that time. Yet, oddly enough, it was riding on horseback that
brought us together! During the King's stays at Camping and
Fontainebleau, and his country trips to Versailles, St. Cloud, and
Raunchy, when he used to invite foreign visitors and his ministers, and
great personages in general, to join in his excursions, M. Thiers was
as much bored as I was at having to go in the carriages and chars a
bancs which drove in a long line one behind the other. We much
preferred accompanying them on horseback, and nothing delighted the
little minister more than to let his mount tear along full gallop with
a loose rein. He had a very firm seat, and was very plucky, especially
on a horse of ours called "Le Vendome," which in his southern accent he
pronounced "Le Vanndomme." I remember one day, at Fontaineblean, as he
was galloping along beside me on that same "Vanndomme," we passed by a
young fagot-gatherer, bending under her load. She straightened herself
at the noise; it was very hot, her jacket had come unbuttoned, and
showed a bare white very well furnished bust. She smiled to M. Thiers,
who pulled his horse up short, turned back to thrust a handful of small
change into the young woman's palm, and started off again full tear, as
if he had had an electric shock, jumping the fallen trees with a
resolution and energy which I had never known him show before.

On another occasion he proved himself a less brilliant horseman. The
statue of Napoleon, that statue which is put up and taken down in every
Revolution, was to be ceremoniously replaced on the top of its column.
The troops and the National Guard were under arms, with their bands and
drums, headed by a splendid drum-major, massed at the foot of the
column. We arrived in state by the Rue Castiglione, so that the column
surmounted by the statue, covered by a veil that was to drop at a given
signal, faced us just as we came out upon the square M. Thiers, in full
uniform, with his minister's hat and feathers, and again riding
"Vanndomme," struck in his spurs, left the procession at full gallop,
and passed before my father, shouting at the very top of his falsetto
voice, "I take your Majesty's pleasure" the words being accompanied by
a wave of his hat which ill-natured people might have said was copied
from General Rapp's gesture in Gerard's picture of the Battle of
Austerlitz at the Louvre. On this signal the drums beat, the bands
played, the statue was unveiled--but M. Thiers had lost control of
"Vanndomme," who, wild with enthusiasm, bolted head down, overthrowing
drums and drum-major, while the little minister clung to his back like
a monkey in a circus. It was a comical sight! But far from laughable
under this same ministry of M. Thiers were the perpetual attempts upon
my father's life. The speculators in revolution, who had been
encouraged by their easy success in 1830, grew discouraged after
several like essays at risings had been severely put down. They then
fell back on assassination. The most serious attempt was Fieschi's, on
July 28, 1835. Together with my two eldest brothers I was to accompany
the King to a review of the National Guard and the regular army, drawn
up on the Boulevards. All of us who were to take part in the
procession, princes, marshals, generals, and aides-de-camp, were
assembled in the drawing-room at the Tuileries, next to the Throne
Room, when the Minister of the Interior, M. Thiers, burst in like a
whirlwind, and, beckoning to my two brothers and me, led us into the
embrasure of a window. "My dear princes," said he, looking at us over
his spectacles, "it is more than likely there will be an attempt on the
life of the King, your father, to-day. We have been warned from several
quarters. They say there will be an infernal machine somewhere near the
Ambigu Theatre. It is very vague, but there must be something at the
bottom of it all. We have had all the houses near the Ambigu searched
this morning to no purpose. Should the King be warned? Should the
review be put off?"

We answered unanimously that the King must be warned but that, brave as
he was well known to be, he would never consent to having the review
put off. So it turned out.

"Look well after your father," repeated M. Thiers, and we mounted our
horses. The review went on well enough, except that we all remarked the
presence of a large number of insolent-looking individuals, with red
carnations in their button-holes--the members, evidently, of the secret
societies, who had not been warned of what was going to happen, but to
be ready for anything that might happen We had not been able to take
any precautions, beyond dividing the care of watching over the King's
person between my brothers and myself and the aides-de-camp on duty One
of us with an aide-de-camp, was to take it in turn to keep just behind
his horse, with our eye on the troops and the crowd, so as to interpose
if we noticed any suspicious gesture. My turn had come to take the post
of watcher, with General Heymes, aide-de-camp in waiting, on my right.
On my left I had Lieutenant-Colonel Rieussec, commanding the legion of
the National Guard before which we were passing. Close to the Ambigu,
not the present theatre--the neighbourhood of which had been
searched--but a former Ambigu, which had been shut up, opposite the
Jardin Turc cafe, we heard a sort of platoon firing like the discharge
of a mitrailleuse, and raising my eyes at the noise I saw smoke coming
from a window which was half closed by an outside shutter.

I had no time to notice more, and at the moment I did not perceive that
my left-hand neighbour, Colonel Rieussec, was killed, that Heymes'
clothes were riddled with bullets and his nose carried away, nor that
my own horse was wounded. All I saw was my father holding his left arm,
and saying to me over his shoulder, "I'm hit!" And so he was: one
bullet had grazed his forehead, another spent one had given him the
blow of which he complained, and a third had passed through his horse's
neck. But that we only knew afterwards, and it was only afterwards too
that we learnt the instrument of the crime had been an infernal
machine. Our first thought was that the firing would go on, so I struck
spurs into my horse, and seizing my father's by the bridle, while my
two brothers struck it behind with their swords, we led him swiftly
through the scene of immense confusion that ensued--horses riderless,
or bearing wounded men, swaying in their seats, broken ranks, and
people in blouses, who rushed upon the King, to touch him or his
horse, with frantic shouts of "Long live the King!" As we retired, I
just saw the taking by assault of the house whence the discharge had
come. The young aides-de-camp had dismounted, leaving their horses
loose, and with the Municipal Guards and the police they scaled the
house and the one next door (the Cafe Barfetti), climbing on to the
verandah and smashing in the windows. Then the review began again. We
had ascertained the King was not wounded, nor we ourselves, but we were
not aware as yet either of the great number or of the names of the
victims. Hereupon M. Thiers appeared beside us, with his white
kerseymere trousers covered with blood. All he said to us was, "The
poor Marshal!"

"Whom do you mean?"

"Mortier! He fell dead across me, crying out, 'Oh, my God!'"

We reckoned ourselves up as we went along. Forty-two dead or wounded:
dead--Marshal Mortier, General Lachasse de Verigny, Colonels Raffet and
Rieussec, Captain Willatte, aide-de-camp to the Minister of War, seven
others, and two women; wounded--Generals Heymes, Comte de Colbert,
Pelet, Blin, and many more. The Due de Broglie was hit full in the
chest by a bullet that flattened out on his star of the Legion of
Honour.

It was not far from the scene of the crime to the farthest end of the
line of troops, so the procession soon retraced its steps. The roadway
where the blow had been struck was nothing but a pool of blood. The
wounded and almost all the dead had been carried away, and I only saw
one corpse, flat on its face in the mud, among the dead horses, but all
the blood about frightened our horses so that we had hard work to get
on.

On the square of the Chateau d'Eau a huge and furious crowd surging
round the station house, which was protected by numerous Municipal
Guards, showed us the assassin, or one of them, had been arrested. The
review was concluded, and my father's self-control was sorely tried by
the unanimity and fervour of the acclamations of which he was the
object from all sides, from soldiers and civilians alike. It is
unnecessary to add that we did not see any more red carnations.

The march past was to take place in the Place Vendome, and the
chancellor's offices were full of ladies of the official world,
gathered round my mother. We dismounted for a moment to go and speak to
them, and here again a moving scene took place. We had been able to
send on an aide-de-camp to assure my mother and aunt and my sisters
that we were safe and sound, but our messenger had not had time to
learn the names of all the victims. So when we mounted the stairs of
the chancellor's offices, some of us all bespattered with blood, all
these women, their brilliant dresses contrasting sadly with their
terrified eyes, rushed upon us to see whether those they loved were
amongst us. Some of them were never to see their dear ones again!

Shortly after this bloody episode in our national history I joined the
Didon frigate, Captain de Parseval, as enseigne de vaisseau. My new
commanding officer, who had joined the navy at a very early age, had
served as a midshipman on board Villeneuve's vessel, the Bucentaure, at
Trafalgar. He was in command of the mizzentop, and saw Nelson's ship,
the Victory, pass slowly astern of the Bucentaure--so close that her
yards caught the other's ensign--while the fifty guns of the British
ship poured their fire one after the other into the stern of the French
one, sweeping her gun-deck from end to end, and laying low four hundred
of her crew. After this commencement of his career, Commander de
Parseval had spent his whole life in fighting and adventure. He had
been in three shipwrecks, one specially terrible one on the Isle de
Sable, near the coast of Nova Scotia, in which (he was a lieutenant at
the time) he swam ashore to get help and save the crew of his frigate.
He died with the rank of admiral, after having had the chief command of
the Baltic Fleet during the Crimean War. He was a charming fellow,
slight and smart-looking, very carefully dressed, as resolute in
command as he was formal as to politeness, a consummate seaman,
managing his ship in first-rate style. I sailed a great deal with him,
and learned much from him, and from the very first I felt a personal
affection for him, which was never belied, and which he reciprocated.
An extra bond of sympathy existed between us--when I was just becoming
deaf, he was deaf already.

We made a cruise for drill, on the Didon, doing a deal of navigation in
all sorts of weathers, and I performed the duties of captain of the
watch--my first attempt at command, my first trial in a responsible
position.

The winter season of 1836 found me back in Paris, where I began my
classes again, and gave myself up in particular to my passion for the
fine arts. This taste of mine was the cause of a terrible blowing up I
got from my father. The jury of the Salon of 1836 refused a picture of
Marilhat's--I think it was his first. Some of the artists who had seen
the young painter's work thought this decision unjust. They grumbled,
and their grumbling got as far as the newspapers. I was curious enough
to go and see the picture at Durand-Ruel's. It was a view of Rome by
twilight, seen between great umbrella pines, I thought it a splendid
picture, and spurred somewhat, I confess, by a spirit of contradiction,
I was seized with an eager desire to acquire it. But I had not a
halfpenny of my own, there was my difficulty! To overcome it, I laid
siege to my aunt Adelaide, who doted on her brother's children as if
they had been her own, and who never (and well the rogues knew it!)
could resist their wheedling. I succeeded, as I had hoped, and
Marilhat's picture became my property. But certain of the jury went and
complained to the King, and I was greeted with, "Oho! so you are going
to set yourself up in opposition! I've trouble enough already with
those artists! It's the Civil List (that means it's me) that takes them
in at the Louvre. I can't be the only judge as to what is accepted and
what isn't. I have to have a jury, the Institute is good enough to
undertake the job--all its members are dying of fright, and I shield
them under my own responsibility, just as I do my ministers, although
it's contrary to the letter of the law--and it's you, one of my own
sons, who comes and sets an example of insubordination! Much obliged to
you, sir!"

My picture was inspected all the same I need hardly say the
grand-parents pronounced it frightful, a regular daub. I hung my head
under this double-barrelled censure, and drooped my ears like a whipped
spaniel, but I stuck to my opinion, and likewise to my Marilhat. I
think it was shortly after this little adventure that I added another
"daub" to my "gallery." One morning as I was busy modelling (for I
dabbled in sculpture too) in my sister Marie's studio, Ary Scheffer
came in, and began telling me about an unknown artist he had met, quite
young, a man of undoubted talent, who was in a terribly
poverty-stricken condition. Six hundred francs would take him out of
his difficulties, and he would give two small pictures, pendants, which
he had just finished, in exchange.

"What do they represent?" I inquired.

"They are both landscapes, connected with episodes in Walter Scott's
novels. One represents the charge of Claverhouse in the Covenanters,
and the other the Army of Charles the Bold crossing the Alps. Come!"
added Scheffer, turning to me. "Be good-natured. If you have six
hundred francs, give them to me!"

I chanced to have the money, and gave it him. "What's your protege's
name?" asked I.

"Theodore Rousseau." Fancy that great artist selling his pictures in
pairs, as furniture, in fact--for bread!

In 1836, too, on February 28, I was present at the first performance of
Les Huguenots, an opera which enchanted me. The action, the music, the
stage setting, the interpretation, made an ensemble that was unique, a
work of art that defied comparison. Nothing on the stage to my mind,
has ever surpassed the duet in the fourth act as created and sung by
Nourrit and Mlle. Falcon. Inspired by the musical and dramatic
situation, these two artists were completely carried away, and their
emotion was as infectious as it was apparent. Mlle. Falcon had a way of
interrupting her singing, to speak the words, "Raoul, ils te tueront!"
with an expression into which her whole soul was thrown, which was the
very embodiment of passion. Ah! Passion indeed! Passion it is that
thrills in every page of that admirable book of Merimee's, La Chronique
de Charles IX., which has given birth in succession to those two
masterpieces, Le Pre aux Clercs and Les Huguenots. And what indeed
would life be without passion? If Fieschi's crime marked the year 1835
with a crimson letter, 1836 was the year of Alibaud's attempt. The
history of my father's reign is nothing but an innumerable succession
of such attempts, some of which came to the birth, while others, again,
miscarried. Alibaud, as my readers are aware, fired point-blank at the
King with a walking-stick gun, which he steadied on the door of the
carriage, as it passed slowly through the Tuileries archway, and missed
him, except that his whiskers were singed by the wad. Neither my
father's courage nor that of my mother and aunt, who were with him,
failed them for a moment. I saw them get out of the carriage at
Neuilly, without for an instant suspecting the risk they had run.

But the time soon came for me to go to sea again, and I was ordered to
join the frigate Iphigenie, of which my old captain, M. de Parseval,
had taken command, as full lieutenant, and we started for the Levant
station. The recollection of a very extraordinary accident which
occurred during this cruise remains with me. We were in the
Archipelago, off the Island of Andros. I had just come off the first
night watch, at midnight, and had got into bed, when I heard somebody
say our consort, a twenty-gun brig, the Ducouedic, Commander Bruat, was
making signals of distress, I got back on deck without delay. The
brig's lights had disappeared. Nothing could be seen of her. It was
blowing great guns, with a heavy sea. We continued in a state of great
anxiety till morning. At last, by the first rays of daylight, we saw
our consort dismasted. She signalled to us for a tow, which was quite
impracticable in the state of the sea. All we could do was to stand by
her, while she tried to get to Syra with her foresail, the only one
left her. This she succeeded in doing. But the extraordinary thing is
that what dismasted her was the contrary action of a tremendous roll,
and a heavy squall, which came just at midnight, when the whole crew
was mustered on deck, to change the watch, and that the mainmast with
all its spars and gear and the maintopmast as well, fell on to the deck
without hurting anybody.

Except for this one accident, all the interest of this fresh cruise of
mine lay on the side of the picturesque. Greece with her mythological,
poetic, and historical memories, and the great severe outlines of her
landscapes, struck me with admiration. But this was quickly
overshadowed by the impression made upon me by my first glimpse of
Asia--the Mussulman East, which Lamartine's Voyage and Decamps'
pictures had made me long so eagerly to know. My joy, therefore, may be
conceived, when I saw, as I landed at Smyrna, the living image of
Decamps' masterpiece, La Patrouille de Smyrne, now at Rotterdam,
passing by me--the very same police officer trotting along on his
hunched-up Turcoman horse, surrounded by his policemen, regular
bandits, running beside him, covered with brilliant rags and glistening
weapons. This worthy police agent, whose name was Hadgy-Bey (which we
promptly turned into "Quat'Gibets"), very soon became our ally. I did
his likeness. He was all smiles whenever we met, and he winked at all
our young midshipmen's pranks One they played was rather too strong,
and roused the fury of the Turks. Smyrna was at that time the most
Eastern of Eastern towns, full of tortuous bazaars, and narrow alleys
winding in and out, in which circulation, difficult enough at all
times, sometimes became impossible for hours, when long strings of
camels, fastened together with ropes, were going along them. Nothing
could have been more vexatious than these blocks, which man and beast
alike seemed to take pleasure in prolonging, whenever the Giaours
seemed annoyed by them.

What, think you, did our middies do? A great many of them together (for
we had a very strong naval squadron at Smyrna just then) hired donkeys,
tied them together with long cords, mounted them, each rider with a
long pipe in his mouth and affecting a quiet Eastern gravity of
demeanour, and off they started.

This farandole, which was quite a kilometre long, went round and round
the bazaars all day, up and down and in and out, stopping all the
traffic, as if a real caravan was passing' through. At first the "true
believers" were puzzled, but when they realized they were being laughed
at they grew furious, and rushed off to get "Quat'Gibets," who held his
fat sides and roared with laughter when they told him what was amiss.
Our midshipmen gave him a regular ovation. We were avenged on camels
and camel men alike. The neighbourhood of Smyrna was delightful, and
brigandage quite unknown. Civilization had not yet taught that
refinement of the art, as practised nowadays, whereby people are
carried off and called upon to get themselves ransomed, on pain of
having their noses or ears, or finally their heads, cut off. It was
quite safe to go anywhere, to canter far along the road to Magnesia, or
to stop and take coffee beside some cool spring in the shadow of the
huge plane-trees, and watch the whole East pass by--caravans from
Diarbekir, half-wild Turcoman tribes, bashi-bazouks from the four
corners of Asia, all of them worthy subjects for an artist's pencil,
and I never stopped drawing them. Coming back to the town, which had
been cooled by the sea-breeze, the "Imbat," we used to spend our
evenings in the Levantine or Armenian society of the place, amongst
grandfathers who were still faithful to their old costume, wrapped in
kaftans, and charming young ladies, with Tacticos on their heads, and
their beautiful figures, which no stays had ever tortured, draped in
half-oriental costumes. Native music, soft and plaintive, sounded, as
we would watch Mademoiselles Peiser, Athanaso, Fonton, Tricon, &c.,
dance the Romaika. Nothing exists, nowadays, of what was so seductive
then. The Orient has kept its sunshine and its colouring, but that
horrible cosmopolitanism has invaded everything. Everywhere there are
stays! and stays steal charm away!

We were young and gay at the time I speak of, and passionate too! Two
of my brother lieutenants fought a duel, much more serious than those
pin-prick encounters which are now the fashion. They fought with
pistols, on the very marine promenade where they had been joking with
young ladies the evening before. Just as the seconds gave the signal to
fire, the sun rose on the horizon. Its first ray glinted on a breast
button on the uniform of one principal: the other man's bullet, as
though drawn by some fatal attraction, struck the button, and killed
our unhappy comrade dead. A midshipman carried off a charming Greek
lady, who was discovered in his cabin after his ship had got out to
sea. And many another strange incident occurred! On leaving Smyrna, the
Iphigenie cruised all about the Archipelago, and along the Anatolian,
Caramanian, and Syrian coasts. Whenever I was not on duty my pencil was
in my fingers, for I had the most enchanting and picturesque of models
under my hand. From Tripoli in Syria I climbed to the top of Mount
Lebanon, whence I saw an immense panorama, with the ruins of Baalbec
and the Desert. We picnicked with the patriarch of the Lebanon and his
monks, under the world-famed cedars, and Bruat had a perfect duel of
jokes there with a witty ship's surgeon named Camescasse, who was one
of our party. I remember a funny saying of this same Camescasse, about
a brother medico of his who retired into Brittany, where his practice
was specially among the local aristocracy. He always called him "The
Avenger of the People."

At Eden, the chief town of the Maronites, the old shiek Boutrouss-Karam
received me with the greatest honours, and I was half drowned with
sprinklings of rose-water, the smell of which I detest. Apart from my
presence, there was a great fete going on at Eden for the marriage of
Boutrouss-Karam's daughter, and the whole Maronitenation had hurried to
it in their best clothes. Such handsome types, such costumes, such
turbans! I was one of the bride's witnesses: she and I had each to keep
a bracelet balanced on our heads during the whole of the ceremony. The
bride shook, and her bracelet fell down. After the ceremony she
received me unveiled. She was a fine tall dark girl, but not a pretty
woman. From Jaffa I journeyed to Jerusalem, and travelled all through
the Holy Land, with a feeling of deep emotion, which was only disturbed
by one vexatious incident. On the day I was to go to the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre, a great crowd had got there before me, and a quarrel,
which degenerated into a general melee, forthwith arose between Greeks,
Jews, and Armenians. It was only by dint of hard knocks that the
Turkish police made way for me to enter the Holy Place, and to crown
the scandal, just as I knelt in deep devotion, before the altar, the
organ began to play the Marseillaise. There was yet another episode
during my stay at Jerusalem. The Governor of the Province waited upon
me to say he had Mehemet Ali's orders to place himself at the disposal
of the son of the King of France, and to do whatever he desired. I
caught the ball on the hop, and replied he was just in time, for I had
just been going to ask his leave to enter the Mosque of Omar, which
stands on the site of the ancient Temple of Solomon. It should be added
that this fine mosque, which is next in holiness in Mussulman eyes to
that at Mecca, and which is now open to all the world, had at that date
never been seen except by the famous traveller Ali Bey.

Governor Hassan Bey tugged his beard when he heard my request, and
seemed very much put out indeed. After a moment's silence he made up
his mind, and said, "Come to-morrow: I'll take you there myself." The
next day I kept my appointment, bringing Bruat and two or three
officers who were making the same trip with me. We entered the mosque,
which is really very beautiful, and went all over it. The Imaums and
Softas, the priests and students, had cast horrified glances upon us
from the moment of our entry. Suddenly one of them began to intone in a
falsetto voice a sort of Litany, to which the crowd replied in chorus.
Soon the Litany turned into angry shouts, and the crowd, led by an old
Negro Imaum, in a yellow robe, who seemed to have worked himself into a
perfect paroxysm of fury, rushed at us with threatening gestures. This
was by no means reassuring, but Hassan Bey was equal to the emergency.
Seizing me by the arm, he put me behind him, with Bruat and the other
gentlemen grouped round me. Then he ordered a dozen Kavasses he had
brought with him to charge, which they did, laying out heavily with
their sticks. Not content with that, he had the most turbulent of the
Softas seized, thrown down at his feet, and beaten without mercy. The
blows hailed down on the poor wretch as if they had been beating a
carpet. This determined attitude cowed the crowd, which fell back to
the far end of the mosque, grumbling. "We will go now," said the Bey.
Once we were outside, he shut us up in a neighbouring mosque, which was
empty, begging us to wait there for him. Soon we heard a great noise
and yelling outside. Presently Hassan Bey reappeared smiling, and let
us out. The crowd had disappeared, and a battalion of Egyptian infantry
had taken its place. Advised by the Bey, we left Jerusalem a day after
this scuffle, with much regret on my part. The sight of all the spots
which are glorified by the splendid stories of our religious history
had impressed me deeply. My imagination had conjured up the very
pictures in Royaumont's illustrated Bible, out of which I had learnt
both the Old and the New Testament. And just as I was about to start,
when I opened the window of the room I occupied in the Latin convent, I
saw just in front of me the picture in that same Bible which represents
David, with hands uplifted in admiration, as he gazes at Bathsheba, the
wife of Uriah the Hittite. I was the David, and Bathsheba was a woman,
looking really magnificent in her eastern robes, who was sitting on the
terrace facing me. Only she was not combing out her hair like the woman
in the Bible picture: she was hunting it for vermin!

I returned from Jerusalem by the Dead Sea, Nazareth, and Acre.

As we were riding along one night, to escape the heat, not far from
Nazareth, we met a troop of horsemen headed by an individual in
Egyptian dress, who announced himself as Ibrahim Aga, sent by Soliman
Pasha to meet me. Just as I was calling up the dragoman to translate
what I had to say to him, Ibrahim Aga said to me in a drawling voice,
"Don't give yourself that trouble, it isn't the least necessary. I am
the Marquis de Beaufort, captain on the staff." He was in fact one of
the very many French officers, who were detached to the Egyptian army
then lying in cantonments in Syria, after its victories over the Turks
at Homs and Konieh. I had seen and greatly admired these troops all
over Syria and at Acre. I was soon to see Soliman Pasha--in other
words, Colonel Selves, a Frenchman, who had organized them, and under
the energetic and iron-willed son of Mehemet Ali, Ibrahim Pasha, had
led them to victory. I beheld a little man, whom long residence in
Egypt had quite orientalized in appearance but who had preserved all
the vivacity of his Gallic wit. The Iphigenie returned to France by
Malta, where I made the acquaintance of Lord Brudenell, since
celebrated under the name of Lord Cardigan, for his famous Balaclava
charge and of Major Rose, a charming fellow, who later became the Sir
Hugh Rose of the Crimean War, and after that Field-Marshal Lord
Strathnairn of the Indian Mutiny. At that moment Major Rose commanded
the 42nd Highlanders, the famous "Black Watch," a splendid regiment,
especially so then, when it consisted of nothing but veterans of
Herculean build. It furnished the Guard of Honour that received me at
the Palace of the Grand Masters when I went to pay my respects to the
governor, and the salute of that splendid body of men in full-dress
uniform and feathered bonnets, with their colours lowered to the
ground, their band playing God save the Queen, and their bagpipes
shrieking under the arches of the palace, was a most striking sight.
That was the first time I heard the bagpipes of the Highland regiments.
I have often heard them since, and they always remind me of that
wonderfully dramatic incident in the great Indian Mutiny, the relief of
Lucknow. In Lucknow, the capital of the kingdom of Oude, a handful of
British soldiers, with the women and children who had escaped the
massacre, had taken refuge in a huge and strongly built place called
the Residency. Isolated in the heart of India, besieged for months on
end, without any outside news, starving, decimated by sickness and the
enemy's fire, women and soldiers alike, with true British pluck, and
having lost all hope of succour, had no thought but to sell their lives
as dearly as possible. All at once the noise of the daily cannonade and
the rifle fire seem to be doubled, and unaccustomed shouts are heard,
like the national "hurrah." The cheering seems to get nearer, but the
Sepoys have so often cheered derisively! Suddenly another sound strikes
on the ear of the besieged. The bagpipes! The bagpipes! And soon they
make out the famous Highland march, The Campbells are coming!
Reinforcements they were, collected from all quarters, English and
Scotch, soldiers and sailors too, commanded by old Lord Clyde of
Balaclava fame. By main force they carried the works the mutineers,
tenfold their strength, had thrown up round Lucknow, bringing
unhoped-for succour from the mother country, nay, bringing actual
salvation with them. A wonderful moment!

I got back to Paris to hear the news of the failure of the first
expedition against Constantine, and the brilliant part my brother
Nemours had played in that terrible business. I never doubted that
signal revenge would soon be taken for the check, and I was in despair
that my being a sailor stood in the way of my asking to be allowed to
have a share in it.

Meanwhile, I was present at a fresh attempt on my father's life. A man
of the name of Meunier fired a pistol at him the day the Chamber of
Deputies was opened. Some movement in the crowd shook the would-be
assassin's arm, but the bullet came into the carriage, smashing the
front window, and my brothers and I were all cut with the broken glass.
I remember a very characteristic remark by one of the Deputies on this
occasion. After the King had departed, as the Members of the Chamber
were talking over the attempt, one of them said, "Ought we to
congratulate the King?"

"Certainly," was the reply; "we always do it."

Shortly afterwards an emulator of Fieschi invented a perfected machine
which should have mowed us all down at the earliest opportunity, but he
was discovered, and destroyed himself, just as he was going to be
arrested, carrying the secret of his accomplices with him.

Amidst political agitation and ministerial ambitions, with which I
troubled myself but very little, the marriage of my eldest brother, the
Duc d'Orleans, and its attendant festivities, took place. The wedding
was at Fontainebleau; there was a great fete at the Hotel de Ville in
Paris, and the formal inauguration of the Museum at Versailles.

The marriage was settled without my brother and Princess Helene ever
having seen each other. Impatient to know her, and anxious to be the
first to greet her on French soil, my brother went to meet her at
Nancy, where she was to arrive with her mother and a lady in waiting.
He rushed forward, saw three ladies, caught his fiancees hand and
carried it to his lips. Not at all! It was the lady-in-waiting's. This
momentary hitch was soon forgotten, and when the Princess entered the
Cour du Cheval-Blanc at Fontainebleau, in her state coach and eight,
amidst the roar of cannon and the beating of drums, we all went down
the great staircase to receive her, with the King at our head, just
like the great lords going down the staircase at Chenonceaux in the
second act of the Huguenots. It was Champs-Elysees, and through the
Gardens to the Tuileries, we on horseback and the Princesses in the
state carriages, with the Orleans state liveries, surrounded by an
immense multitude of people, all the women in brilliant spring
toilettes, and in the loveliest weather, was a splendid sight too. Then
there was a very fine ball at the Hotel de Ville--rather clouded,
though, by a prediction coming from all quarters, that it would be the
occasion of another attempt on my father.

Old Prince Talleyrand, who was almost dying, begged my eldest brother
to go and see him, so that he might add his warning to all the others.
Raising himself to a sitting posture, and with death in his face, he
said: "It won't be a knife or a pistol, it will be a hail of
paving-stones thrown from the roofs, which will crush you all!" We were
grateful for the warning, and we were glad it did not come to pass.
Nothing happened, either in the street or at the ball, where we were
surrounded by an army of chosen 'guests,' and from which we were driven
back at a great pace, escorted by squadrons of cuirassiers, who
glittered in the torchlight. But the crowning point of the fetes was
the inauguration of the Versailles Museum, that museum and dedicated by
my father "To all the Glories of France!" Others besides himself have
given the sadness of irony to that inscription! Every revolution must
be paid for with a price!

On the occasion of this inauguration the King gave a dinner to twelve
hundred people in the galleries of the Palace. Each of us had to
preside over a table, and I should have found mine a somewhat tiresome
task, if among my guests I had not met some very clever men, whose
conversation amused me much. Such were Alphonse Karr, Leon Gozlan,
Nestor Roqueplan, &c.

After dinner there was a theatrical performance--the Misanthrope, given
for the first time with Louis XIV. dresses, acted by Perrier, Provost,
Samson, Firmin, Menjaud, Monrose, and Regnier, with Mmes. Mars, Plessy,
and Mante; and then one act of Robert le Diable, with Duprez,
Levasseur, and Mile. Falcon--and the ballet.

After the performance there was a general promenade in the galleries,
which were lighted up brilliantly. I lay claim to two good ideas, which
came to me during the evening. The first was to plague the King and the
ministers to such an extent, after the act out of Robert le Diable,
that Meyerbeer, whom I fetched, was then and there nominated an officer
of the Legion of Honour, a commonplace distinction enough nowadays, but
which at that time was very exceptional. The second was to ask the
King, also, if he would graciously permit the artists who had taken
part in the performance to join the guests in the promenade in the
galleries. Of this permission I was myself the bearer, and I naturally
extended it to the corps de ballet. When all these young ladies in
their morning dress, and many of them bandbox in hand, appeared walking
about amongst the gaily bedizened folk, some of the fine ladies turned
up their noses. But the medley was a charming one, nevertheless.




CHAPTER IV

1837-1838


After the wedding festivities I went back to sea, a lieutenant still,
on board the Hercule, 100 guns--Captain Casy. Captain, petty officers,
crew, all hands in fact save a few officers, were Provencal. Before a
week was out I caught myself talking with their accent!

We were bound for South America Gibraltar was our first port, and our
reception by the governor, Sir Alexander Woodford, Lady Woodford, and
their charming children was of the kindest. I have a recollection of it
which I treasure all the more in that later in the day I had to do with
another governor with whom I had no cause at all to be satisfied. From
Gibraltar we went to Tangier, the Moorish town I was to bombard some
years afterwards, but where on this occasion I fought with wild boars
only under the guidance of that first-class sportsman, Mr. Drummond
Hay. The beauty of the eyes and colouring and the originality of the
costume of the Jewish girls at Tangier delighted me, but not to the
extent of chasing a certain melancholy from my heart, which had clung
about it ever since the beginning of my cruise, through the long night
watches, and even amidst the amusements of our stays in port. I was
thinking of HER! There always is a HER when one is only twenty! After
Tangier the ship stopped at Santa Cruz in Teneriffe, to take in water,
and during this operation I organized a scientific expedition to the
famous Peak of Teneriffe, which is nearly twelve thousand feet high,
and from which my professor M. Pouillet had asked me to take some
scientific observations. My brother officer, Rigaud de Genouilly, one
of the ship's lieutenants, accompanied me. After two days climbing and
bivouacking for one night at a great height, we were only about five or
six hundred feet or so from the summit, when we were caught up by a
messenger bringing us the captain's orders to get back as fast as we
could. A despatch boat had just anchored at Santa Cruz bringing news
that in consequence of some foreign complication a French squadron had
been ordered to Tunis, and would probably go on to the East. The
Hercule was to join it immediately. We tore down the mountain,
rejoicing in the thought that we were most likely going to do some
firing, and after a passage of twenty days, spent in all sorts of
fighting drill, we cast anchor in the Bay of Tunis, only to have a
bucket of cold water thrown over our heads. The complications on which
we had built a whole structure of danger and glory had passed away. The
squadron we were to have joined had departed, and orders awaited us to
resume our interrupted cruise, and bear away for South America. One
piece of news was we were told was that the expedition which was to go
and avenge our last year's defeat at Constantine was fitting out at
Bona, and that my brother Nemours commanded one of the brigades. Now my
big ship was to revictual at Algiers, and I besought the captain, who
had a free hand, to touch at Bona and give me a chance of seeing my
brother. The passage from Tunis to Bona was delayed by calms, and when
we got in, I found to my great regret that the expedition had started,
but that a small column was being formed which was to join it, starting
on the following morning. At this news I rushed to my captain, and
calling all the resources of persuasion and every wile of diplomacy to
my aid, I strove to convince him that there would be time for me,
during his revictualling, whereat I should be practically useless, to
make a rush to the expeditionary force and get back again, and that if
the King, my father, knew I had happened to be where I was, he would be
much displeased at my turning my back on an enterprise which was to
avenge our national honour. There were no telegraph wires in those
days, and I contrived to get the desired permission. Twenty-four hours
later I turned soldier for the nonce, and started off, mounted and
accoutred and full of fresh dreams of glory, destined once more to
disappointment--a disappointment shared by various engineer and
artillery officers and three Prussians, Messieurs von Willisen,
[Footnote: H. de Willisen, aide-de-camp to the Prince of Prussia, who
afterwards became the Emperor William, was in chief command of the
Holstein army.] von Noville, and Oelrichs, who had arrived too late to
start with the expeditionary force, and, like myself, were endeavouring
to rejoin it. What shall I say about the march of the column to which I
was attached upon Constantine? It lasted over twelve days of fearful
weather, during which no discomfort was spared us. Torrents of rain,
rivers in flood, snowfalls, men dying of cold, stragglers whose shouts
for help only brought us to them to find them lying headless on the
ground, and last of all, a terrible outbreak of cholera, which one of
the regiments in the column brought with it from France. And we had the
mental agony to boot of being kept ever so long at the foot of a
mountain, the Raz el Akbah, which was so sodden that no gun nor vehicle
could get up it, even with triple teams, and listening to the firing of
the attacking batteries before Constantine without being able to get
there.

One day, during this delay, the chief medical officer, by way of
consolation, greeted us with these words at breakfast: "Bad news,
gentlemen; we have just discovered that the cesspools of the hospital
(a miserable hut) have burst, and for the last twenty-four hours they
have been leaking into the spring where we get our drinking water."

"Hang it all, doctor, you really might have kept that to yourself," we
all cried in a breath!

Amid all this suffering and discomfort, physical and moral, the
courage, spirits, good humour and downright gaiety of the soldiers
never failed for a single moment. I had never seen them before under
such trying circumstances, and I thought them quite admirable, and
their officers too,--the very embodiment of devotion. One day, the rear
guard detachment had dropped some way behind the main column, and found
itself stopped by an impetuous torrent, which was swelling visibly
under a deluge of rain. The first men who tried to cross were carried
off their feet, thrown down, and only pulled out with great difficulty.
Without a moment's hesitation all the officers plunged into the water,
though it was up to their arm-pits, and holding on to each other's arms
they formed a sort of animated dam, above which they made their men
cross over, and it was all done in the simplest way. Frenchmen of all
classes, soldiers, sailors, what-not, a splendid race they are, when
the spirit of obedience and discipline inspires them with a sense of
duty! At last we came in sight of Constantine, and shortly after of a
body of cavalry, the Third Chasseurs d'Afrique, sent out to meet us.
From an officer detached in advance we learnt the place had been taken
by assault three days previously, and that the Comte de Damremont,
general in command, had been cut in two by a round shot, while he was
talking to my brother Nemours. Very soon, galloping up to the
Coudiat-Ati, I was in the arms of that good brother, who had behaved so
brilliantly during the whole campaign. He was in the act of inspecting
his brave little army, and we finished the inspection together. Then he
scanned me from top to toe, and the smart soldier spoke instead of the
brother "You can't go about like that, haven't you anything else to put
on?"

"I'm afraid I haven't," I sadly replied, with a humiliated glance at my
short jacket, my trousers turned up with a bit of gutta percha, and my
straw hat covered with waxed cloth, none of which had been improved by
camping out in the mud. The only soldier-like things about me were my
sword and my lieutenant's epaulettes. But they manufactured me a cap, a
naval lieutenant, Fabre Lamaurelle, who had come up with me, lent me
his coat, and so I became presentable.

The sight of the breach excited me greatly, and my first care was to
mount it. If my readers will call up the appearance of the buildings
pulled down when a new street is opened in Paris, they will get some
idea of the picture the top of the breach presented. It was a chaos of
ruins, caused by cannon shot and explosions, without any apparent way
out. The ground was like the moraine of a glacier, scattered over with
caps, epaulettes, and human remains. A soldier of the 2nd Light
Infantry was standing sentry beside a big stone.

"What are you doing there?"

"Do you see that bit of a blue cloak down that hole? The colonel is
underneath that stone, and the bayonets sticking out of the rubbish
belong to the men he was leading. The explosion buried them all alive!"

A terrible trial that explosion was for assaulting columns scattered
through a labyrinth of ruins, and barricaded lanes, and fired at from
all sides by an invisible foe.

But nothing dismayed our brave fellows for an instant. I was told that
at the moment of the catastrophe, when the staff, which was following
the progress of the fight with anxious ears, for there was no seeing
anything, saw the cloud caused by the explosion shrouding the
neighbourhood of the breach, and hundreds of wounded and burnt and
maimed men coming down it, they thought the assault had been repulsed
and that the game was up.

Lamoriciere, commanding the first attacking column, was carried back
blinded, and to everybody's astonishment the commanding officer of the
2nd column, Colonel Combes, was seen returning also. He advanced, sword
in hand, to the General commanding, over whose face an expression first
of wonder and then of anger spread, at the sight of a commanding
officer quitting his post. Nothing daunted, the colonel informed him,
in a few curt sentences, of the state of the fight, and of his own
confidence in its success, ending with these words: "It will be another
glorious day for France and for those who live to see the end of it."
He saluted, tottered--he was dead! No sign of his had betrayed that he
was mortally wounded.

As I listened to the tale I asked General Vallee,--"But what would you
have done, General, if the assault had been repulsed?"

"We should have begun again." As he said it he pressed his lips
together with that fearfully stern expression which, with his short
stature, had earned him the nickname in the army of "Little Louis XI.,"
and an officer behind me who wad heard my question and the answer,
added in an undertone, "And he had taken all his precautions."

"What do you mean?"

"When he was told, the night before the assault, that the ammunition
was giving out, he ordered one round to be kept in reserve for the
battery that played upon the breach--"

"Well?"

"Don't you understand? He meant to fire on the attacking column if it
gave any sign of wavering. He did it once in Spain at the siege of
Tarragona."

There was another scene of war at the opposite end of the town from the
breach at the Kasbah. During the assault all the non-combatant
Mussulman population had taken refuge there, crowding and cramming it
up to the very edge of the ramparts that crowned the precipices of the
Rummel, and either from sheer terror or by dint of the pressure of the
crowd, a cascade of human beings fell from the ramparts on to the rocks
and terraces of the precipice. Heaps of corpses, men, women and
children, but especially women, were caught here and there, and on one
of the heaps an old white-bearded Arab was turning over the dead, one
by one, seeking doubtless for some one who was dear to him.

Having no official position in the army, and as I could not well rest
on laurels I had not won, I spent my time sketching. I began, of
course, with the breach, and installed myself, for that purpose, beside
a human head severed from the trunk, which lay on the ground alongside
of a dead horse in the torn open belly of which a dog had made its
lair. While I was drawing, I heard a bugle sounding a march and soon I
saw the bugler coming out. Upon the breach; behind him marched a
sub-lieutenant, sword in hand, and then in place of men, a string of
donkeys, led by about a dozen Zouave irregulars. Puzzled, I went up to
the bugler and, stopping him, I asked what he was blowing for. "Why,"
he replied rocking from one foot to another with his bugle on his hip,
"this is the volunteer company from Bougie going back to headquarters."

"What?"

"Those are the rifles on the donkeys, there--everybody killed in the
assault; there is nobody left but us." He began blowing again. The
donkeys passed on and I bared my head to them.

Confident in the impregnability of his town, the Bey of Constantine had
left his harem there and the ladies of it were shut up in the palace,
which had been turned into head-quarters, and where I was living with
Nemours. As may be imagined, this harem gave me subjects for many
sketches, which disappeared, unluckily for me, in the sacking of the
Tuileries on February 24th, 1848. In one of the courtyards, planted
with orange-trees and roses, and surrounded by the elegant Moorish
balconies of the Bey's Palace, there was a little door, which had been
confided to the care of the vivandiere of the 47th Regiment and of a
sergeant major of spahis, of the name of Bel-Kassem. It was the door
into the harem and gave access to several courts, surrounded by
galleries, both on the ground floor and first story, on which opened
spacious rooms carpeted with divans and cushions and with shelves all
round piled with quantities of things, knick-knacks, and, above all,
stuffs, especially silken ones. The women--there were over two hundred
of them--spent their lives night and day alike, squatting or lying on
the cushions in these apartments. They were divided into two
categories. The negresses, who formed the great majority, occupied two
court-yards, and these courts exhaled a fetid odour which poisoned the
whole of the Bey's palace, whenever the wind blew from that quarter.
The white and sallow-complexioned women all lived together, they all
wore Arab dress, with more or fewer trinkets, and there were some
pretty women among them. Two were Greeks and there was one really
beautiful Moorish woman, called Ayescha. I did her likeness, and that
of the chief eunuch as well. He was a negro, growing grey, with a
deceitful hypocritical eye all muffled up in very fine haiks which
showed nothing but the tip of his nose, and legs which were entirely
guiltless of calf. That sitting would have been a good subject for a
picture--I drawing, the ladies of the harem hanging over me watching me
work, and the negro standing and swearing as he stood, while Ayescha
went to and fro lavishing the quaintest caresses on him, to keep him in
good temper.

One evening, General Vallee had an entertainment got up for him in the
harem. There were great illuminations, singing, music with tambourine
accompaniment and the danse du ventre. Amongst those present was
General de Caraman, who commanded the artillery. He was seized with
cholera just as he was going away, and was dead by six o'clock the next
morning. Such is life! Several adventures arose out of the fact of the
harem's presence. One fine night, when everybody was asleep, two of the
officers of infantry irregulars on guard took it into their heads to
knock at the door, and were filled with delighted surprise on hearing
the gentle voice of the good-natured cantiniere reply, "Is that you?
Well upon my word," and the door opened. But within less than two
minutes the frightful uproar caused by two hundred women shrieking at
once roused the whole of head-quarters, and our two officers tore full
pace back to the guardroom and got the men under arms. This scare, and
it may be some others too, added to the pestiferous smell from the
negresses' quarters, made the authorities resolve to get rid of all
this human cattle and distribute it amongst the most well-to-do of the
Mussulman population. I went to look on at their departure, which was
presided over by a major on the staff, assisted by a detachment of
irregulars. The women had been warned the evening before, and leave had
been given for each to take away as much as she herself could carry. So
they had spent the whole night rolling as many precious stuffs round
their waists as they could support the weight of, and we found
ourselves face to face with human balloons, like monstrous gourds. They
could hardly walk, even when held up by the soldiers, and getting
through the doorways was more difficult still. Some of them, hauled at
in front and pushed from behind, shot through like the cork of a
champagne bottle. Others, who could not squeeze through at all, were
made over to the soldiers to be reduced to the necessary size, the
whole thing accompanied by a chorus of shouts and objurgations of every
kind. But to pass from the harem to graver subjects. On October 18th, I
was present at the military funeral of the Comte Damremont. It was a
moving sight. Some few hundred yards from the spot where he had been
killed, just at the foot of the breach, a cenotaph had been built of
sand-bags, on which the coffin, with his General's cloak, and his sword
and white feathered hat laid on it, had been placed. The weather had
gone into mourning too, for the occasion. It was a very gloomy day. The
whole Arab population was looking on, squatting on the walls. On the
top of the breach were planted the colours of the 47th Regiment. Below
it the Zouaves' drums rolled a funeral march, while the officers did
obeisance for the last time to the remains of their former general. And
what officers they were too! How many future men of mark there were in
that assemblage, which, not to mention its chiefs, numbered Captains
Niel, Canrobert, MacMahon, St. Arnault, Le Boeuf, Ladmirault, Morris,
Leflo, and many another in its ranks!

The army left Constantine in two detachments. I returned with the
second, which escorted the general in command, who had fallen sick, and
an enormous convoy of fever patients and cripples of all sorts. It was
a dreary journey back, for the column was decimated by cholera, and the
road was strewed with corpses. Every minute soldiers were to be seen
dropping their muskets and writhing in the most awful convulsions. My
brother, who commanded the rear-guard, spent his whole time having the
poor wretches picked up and tied into mule litters. They were thence
drafted into the ambulance wagons, which were crowded already, and
there they died like flies. As soon as a man died, the other occupants
of the wagon united their efforts and heaved him overboard. When the
convoy started every morning a row of corpses marked the spot the
wagons had been on during the night. A detachment of engineers covered
them over with a little soil, but we had hardly moved off before the
Arabs swooped down from all directions and uncovered and stripped them.

I was ill myself by the time the columns got to Bona--fever had me in
its grip, but thanks to severe physicking I was almost my own man again
by the time I rejoined my ship at Algiers. She went to sea almost at
once. I had a relapse at Senegal, but the ocean passage completely
cured me, and I was quite in smooth water by the time we reached the
South American coast. Rio de Janeiro was our first port. I need not
enlarge on the magnificent view presented by the Bay of Rio, which has
been so frequently described by travellers. It was during this stay in
harbour that I first saw the young princess who was later to become the
Princess de Joinville, the devoted companion of my whole life. During
this stay, too, I made an expedition to Minas, the gold mine country, a
long journey on mule-back, through the magnificent monotony of the
virgin forest. One of the mines I went to see, called Gongo-Soco, was
worked by the labour of four hundred slaves, and owned by an English
company who made an enormous profit out of it. I went down it, and,
under the guidance of some Cornish miners, I had a try with a pick and
succeeded in getting out several nuggets as thick as my little finger.
As the vein was principally manganese, we were black all over when we
came out of the mine, but a body of negresses came at once to wash us.
Another expedition I made into the "camp" initiated me into a sort of
sport which was new to me--hunting wild horses with a lasso. After
having admired the extraordinary skill of the camperos in doing this, I
tried it myself, and that not altogether unsuccessfully--it is a
fascinating occupation.

To finish up our stay at Rio, we gave the emperor and his family, and
the whole of society both foreign and Brazilian, a ball on board our
ship. Towards the end of the evening, I turned a young lion I had been
given in Senegal loose in the ball-room, and his appearance somewhat
disturbed the figures of the cotillon.

From Rio the Hercule called in succession at Guiana, Martinique and
Guadaloupe. The low shores of Guiana are clothed with mangrove swamps,
the trees of which seemed scarlet, so covered were they with red
ibises! Nothing more gay-looking can be imagined than the Cayenne
River, and the pretty town standing on its banks--the wooden houses all
separated from each other by gardens in which the tropical vegetation
displays an unexampled luxuriance and variety. Flowers of every hue,
set among huge calabash trees, gigantic palms of every kind, such as
the traveller's palm with its immense fan-shaped leaves, bread-fruit
trees, and many more, charm the eye with a wealth of colour which must
be seen before it can be realized. Though the Cayenne River may be
charming, the other arms of the Guiana delta, great rivers, hedged in
by thick dark forest walls, are far gloomier to the sight. But those
magnificent forests, peopled with creatures of all sorts, and
especially with an infinite number of birds, of the most varied and
dazzling plumage, have the irresistible attraction that hangs about
life in the wilds.

I went up several of these rivers, such as the Aprouague and the Mana
River, and visited the carbets, or villages, of several Indian tribes,
the Norags, and the Galibis, which last were still quite savage at the
time of which I write, armed with bows and arrows, and obtaining a
light by rubbing two bits of stick together--a thing I actually saw
them do. Men and women alike were red-skinned, tartar-eyed, their
smooth hair dyed with "rocou," a sort of madder, and with a small strip
of cotton passed between the legs as their only garment. The women were
particularly frightful. Almost all of them had huge stomachs, which
they held up with their hands just like a monkey's pouch, and all wore
a kind of tight bracelet above and below their knees and ankles, which
caused the intervening parts to swell, and gave their legs the
appearance of skewers with Dutch cheeses on them. Apart from the
savages, the general impression of Guiana remaining with me is that of
a great hot-house, in which everything was as improbably huge as in one
of Gustave Dore's illustrations--where I came across apricots as big as
my head, and caimans ten yards long. As regards the inhabitants, I
recollect Creoles, enervated by the climate, who were as kindly as they
were intelligent; pale-faced women, languorous and seductive, with soft
low murmuring voices; and lastly, just as I passed through, a negro
drum-major of the National Guard, with a great big busby and a plume
that was a dream!

My recollection of Martinique and Guadaloupe bring them back to me as
lovely green islands of volcanic outline. The former especially struck
me as being exceedingly picturesque, its hills covered with
pleasant-looking habitations with the peaks of the Carbet veiled in the
dark clouds brought by the trade winds, for background. I had to review
the troops on the Savana, the promenade of Fort Royal, but I confess I
took more interest in the costume of the beautiful quadroons, or
quarterbred mulatto women, than in the review itself. This costume is
worth describing. A brilliant-coloured bandanna, knotted round the head
in the most fanciful manner, no stays of course, nothing but an
embroidered chemise, showing a magnificent outline, and a
bright-coloured skirt, yellow or rose-coloured, trained at the back,
but gathered up on one side, to show a beautiful bare leg. When I add
that these women often have a creamy white complexion which many a
European would envy, the proud exclamation of the old householder,
dragged I know not why before a court of justice, will be appreciated.
To the Judge's question "What is your profession?" he replied "My
profession! I keep up the supply of Mulattos!" "Je fais des mulatres!"
It was in the days of the greatest prosperity of our beautiful Antilles
that the old boaster spoke. When I arrived, this was already on the
wane, and it really was tiresome not to be allowed to talk about
anything but sugar and emancipation by the Creoles.

Nowadays what we call progress has done its work, and these colonies,
which used to be an element of national wealth, employing a whole navy
of merchantmen, and which served as nursery for the sailors of our
warships, are now no more than machines for electing Radical Deputies,
and thus increasing the number of agents of the national destruction.

At Martinique, we joined the flag of the admiral in command of the
station. I have served under many admirals, one more eccentric than the
other. One of the first, an excellent seaman, had one passion only,
music--and his instrument was the double bass. He spent his time
performing solos on this cumbrous instrument, which he would then put
away in a small apartment known in the old-fashioned navy as la
bouteille. Sometimes the sea-water came through the port, and flooded
everything. When the admiral fetched his double bass out, and began his
tunes, he would notice from the sound that the body was full of water,
and then every sort of dodge would be resorted to, to get the liquid
poured out by the sound holes. The poor admiral! There is a story that
his double bass was victim one day of the spite of certain seamen, who
marked their displeasure by pouring something less clean than sea-water
into the big fiddle. This same gallant admiral having gone ashore once
upon a time, at St. Louis in Senegal, and finding the bar there
continued so impassable that he could not rejoin his ship, sent her
round to Goree, and went there himself overland slung under a camel's
belly, and armed with an umbrella,--which proved his complete ignorance
of the miracles of the Prophet Mohammed.

My commanding officer at the time of which I write was another oddity.
Imagine a thin little man, as hot as pepper, adorned with a hooked nose
and chin, one as huge as the other. A real old-fashioned gentleman,
always tightly buttoned up in the most irreproachably correct of
garments, and with all the exquisite and formal politeness of the old
school. Everybody was fond of the good old fellow, who heightened the
oddity of his appearance on board his own ship by wearing a huge straw
hat like the bell-crowned hat Eugene Sue puts on the head of M. Pipelet
in the Mysteres de Paris, and a song had been composed about him, which
we used to sing together and the chorus of which began "Bon! bon! de la
Bretonniere! Bon Bon!"--la Bretonniere being his name. This same
officer saved Admiral Magon's ship after Trafalgar, and later on he
commanded the Breslaw at Navarino and showed the most consummate
bravery there. His flagship was the Didon, which ship, having run
aground several times, had earned the nickname of "Dido the touching"
(la touchante Didon). Poor old Didon! I had sailed with her before and
the sight of her gave me the same feeling of grateful recollection that
stirs within a man who meets an old love. After a short cruise with the
whole squadron the admiral led the way to the British island of Jamaica.

*******

We had hardly cast anchor before he sent to ask the British Governor
when he would receive him, and, the appointment duly made, he sent for
me to go with him. An aide-de-camp received us at the landing-stage,
silently pointed to the governor's carriage, which awaited us, and
disappeared. The carriage in question was a phaeton with room for two
people in it, and a little seat behind for the groom, who was standing
at the horses' heads with true British correctness. Says the admiral to
me, "Are we to go in that?"

"Yes, sir."

"But," and he took two steps to the rear, "there isn't any coachman."

"You are to drive yourself, sir."

With a half turn to the right he replied, "I! Impossible! I've never
been able to get a horse to go in my life. Do you know how to drive?"

"A little, sir."

"Then take the reins, sir!"

Into the carriage then we got, to the great satisfaction of the groom,
who had guessed rather than understood the misgivings of the French
admiral in the cocked hat. At first, things went pretty well. The groom
showed me the way to Spanish Town, saying "left" or "right" as the case
might be, when, presently we came to a great market crowded with
negresses with blue cotton stuffs twisted round their haunches, all
screaming at the top of their voices. The horses in our phaeton took
fright at the noise, their alarm communicated itself to the negresses,
who ran away, upsetting everything. I lost command of the horses, which
swerved to one side, knocking over the heaps of gourds and water melons
and bananas. There was a terrible scene of confusion. The admiral clung
on with both hands, never stopping shouting "Oh the devil! the devil!
the devil!" However we got through without any serious accident. On the
return journey, conscious of my own incapacity, I offered to give up my
place as whip to the admiral, but he refused with a most determined
"No, no, no; oh NO!"

At the time of my visit, Jamaica was still celebrated for its rum, and
my father had charged me not to forget to bring him a barrel, a
commission I did not fail to execute. But a lamentable accident
happened in connection with that same barrel. It was brought back to
France and duly placed in the cellars at Neuilly, and had been
forgotten for ever so long, when one fine day the King, recollecting
it, ordered some of the contents to be handed round at the end of
dinner. All the guests smacked their lips before-hand; but
disappointment awaited them, and the first taste was followed by a
general grimace of horror. It was simply beastly. Enquiries were set on
foot and here is their result! A distinguished mental specialist, who
had been ordered to take a sea voyage for the benefit of his health,
which had broken down, had got leave from the Minister for Naval
Affairs to sail on board the Hercule. Deeply interested as he was in
his own special subject, he had occupied himself during all our stays
in port in collecting brains, both human and animal, which he
immediately labelled and shut up in a barrel of alcohol, which was
exactly like my barrel of rum. The two barrels had got mixed and my
father and his guests had been drinking rum flavoured with brains!

Our squadron dispersed on leaving Jamaica. The admiral, I think, was to
go to San Domingo, we ourselves to Havana. One of our ships, a
beautiful despatch boat, the Fabert, bore us company the first day. In
the evening, the weather being calm, her commander, a lieutenant, M. de
Pardeillan, came on board us to dine. Little did we think, as we
accompanied him to the head of the companion, that we were bidding him
an eternal farewell. The ship, the crew, and their young captain all
disappeared, and have never been heard of again. The sea swallowed them
all up, and the sea has kept the secret.

As we entered Havana, I was struck by the sight of a whole fleet of
strange-looking ships which lay at anchor under the Morro citadel. They
were long boats, built for speed, with immense sloping spars, like
racing yachts. They were not warships, though they were heavily armed.
They were slavers, for the negro trade was still in full swing in Cuba.
The demand for black labour being constantly on the increase, the
slavers went to fetch it from Africa, and brought it back at all risks,
in spite of the British cruisers. But this importation of black cattle,
which had been humane and kindly enough while it was free, had grown
frightfully barbarous since the successful landing of each cargo had
been exposed to every chance imaginable. The trade, nevertheless, fed
the extraordinary prosperity of the fair Spanish colony, Queen of the
Antilles, and especially that of her capital town, the Havana. The stir
in the port itself was prodigious, and how shall I describe the
animated appearance of the streets, the splendid houses, and the
innumerable churches that met my gaze, and the evidence of luxury
betrayed everywhere, and by everything I saw?

In the days of his wandering exile, my father had sojourned at Havana,
and my first care was to seek out the friends he had left behind him
there. Thanks to them, I soon found myself at home, in the Montalvo,
Penalver, Arminteros, Arastegui, O'Reilly and de Arcos families, whose
charming companionship formed the chief delight of my own stay. My
cousinship with the Queen of Spain caused me to be received with great
honour, also, by the authorities, especially by the Captain General,
Espeieta. A review was arranged for me on the Paseo Tacon, and of that
same review I have an undying recollection. Let my readers imagine a
line formed by the Espana, Barcelona and Habana regiments, the
artillery, and a lancer regiment, splendid troops all of them, under
the command of General Count de Mirasol, with his baton slung at his
buttonhole. And, facing this line, another of the most exquisitely
charming aspect. All the volantes in Havana drawn up in battle array!
The said volantes, peculiar to the place, are gigs without hoods or
aprons, perched on two huge wheels, and each drawn by one horse in
silver-mounted trappings, ridden by a calassero or negro postilion in
flaming livery, laced on every seam. In each volante two ladies
lounged, in evening dress, low-necked, bare-headed, and armed with
fans. Every pretty woman in Havana was there, talking to the occupiers
of the next carriage, looking on and being looked at, and all under a
lovely tropical sunset, which lighted up the sea, whence a soft
refreshing breeze was blowing, on one side, and on the other a forest
of cocoa palms with the fortress of Principe rising above them. The
ensemble of the picture and its details were alike charming, and to us
sailors, just off the sea, it was heightened by contrast. These Havana
ladies add all the charm of Spaniards to a mingling of Creole
indifference with the confidence of well-born women. Their eyes and
complexions are magnificent, their wrists and ankles exquisitely
delicate, and their feet! I never saw anything like them--the feet of a
Chinese woman, only natural, not produced by torture, I brought away a
precious souvenir from Havana, in the shape of a shoe which I knew to
be genuine, but which never met with anything but incredulity till the
sacking of the Tuileries in 1884 bereft me of it altogether.

I remember yet a beautiful excursion in the interior of the island,
partly by rail, partly by volante, along splendid avenues of palmettos,
and thick shady mango trees, to the country house belonging to Dona
Matilda de Casa Calvo, Marquise de Arcos, where I spent two days in the
pleasantest of company, and where Lord Clarence Paget, who was of the
party, astonished us by his talent as a singer. Our delightful stay in
port was brought to a close by a ball given to me by the town of Havana
at the Societad Philarmonica. I had just been dancing that pretty
dance, a sort of slow valse, which is called the Habanera, and I was
walking with my partner, a beautiful Spanish Mexican, with tiny feet,
under the arcades which ran round the patio, when she pulled a
straw-covered cigarette out of her pocket and lighted it. "Don't you
smoke?" she enquired.

"No, Mademoiselle."

"Oh, but yes, I'm sure you will smoke," and she took her cigarette from
her pretty lips and gave it to me to smoke, which I did without
hesitation. That sudden conversion has been a durable one. But I have
often regretted that I could not begin it all over again!

Twenty-four hours later, at two o'clock in the morning, I was wakened
in my cabin by a violent shock. The Hercule had just run aground in the
dangerous waters of the Bahama Channel. Whatever the weather may be,
the running aground of a huge body like a hundred gun ship is a serious
matter. To crown our disgrace, the corvette La Favorite, which sailed
in company with us and had followed us blindly, ran aground at the same
instant. Luckily it was almost calm, and the great Hercule lay quietly
on the sand like a stranded whale. Whenever the least suspicion of a
swell came, she gave a shudder, a sort of wag of her tail, which was
very alarming. If the swell increased she would soon go to pieces, and
every boat we had to launch would never be enough to save the crew. It
was one of those anxious moments in a sailor's life when each man makes
it his business to conceal his own feelings. We set hard to work to get
down a big anchor on the deep-water side. Once it was down and the
cable taut, we began to lighten the ship, pouring all the water
overboard, and getting ready to put the guns over the side. Then
daylight came, and showed us our real position. A long way off we could
see a low island on the coast of Florida, called Looe-Key. The dawn
also showed us, in the offing, the British corvette Pearl, commanded by
our pleasant comrade of some days before, Lord Clarence Paget, who had
sailed from Havana at the same time as we ourselves. As soon as he
perceived our position he hurried to our assistance, and steering with
all the decision and seafaring good sense of the British sailor, he got
as close as possible to us, put down his two anchors at once, and came
to us, saying, "I bring you the only thing I can, a fixed point to work
on."

We thanked him cordially, but, just at that moment, thanks to our
having lightened the ship, and also to the tide, which fortunately
began to rise, the Hercule swayed for a few minutes on her sandy bed,
and then began to float. A sigh of relief broke from every breast,
especially from those of the captain and the unlucky officer of the
watch, whose carelessness had been the original cause of the accident.

A few hours more, and everything but a trifling leak had been put to
rights, and we were on our way to the United States--to a new country,
a young nation, which attracted me as by instinctive sympathy. On our
very arrival in the Chesapeake river, I came across a characteristic
trait. "Can you speak French?" I asked the pilot who hailed us.
Instantly he answered me, in English, "No, I only speak American!" The
claim to separate nationality extended even to the language.

Shortly afterwards I went ashore, and, armed with an itinerary, kindly
drawn up for me by Michel Chevalier, in which he had mentioned all he
advised my seeing, both as to men and things, during the short time at
my disposal, I started on a hasty tour through that splendid country.
That first glimpse of America fulfilled all my expectations, and
delighted me. A young country it was in very deed. Nature itself, to my
European eyes, had a pureness of atmosphere, a richness of vegetation,
a freshness, a general air of youth, unknown in our older countries.
Man too, in his gait, in his independence of mind, and his boldness of
enterprise, betrayed an exuberant vigour of which our populations,
enervated by disappointing experiences, and crushed by routine as they
are, have grown incapable.

As I desired to get from Norfolk in Virginia to Washington, I started
by the Roanoke Railway, on the first day of my trip, and thus crossed
an immense marsh, the "Dismal Swamp." The rails we ran on being laid
open-work fashion on huge piles fifteen feet above the marsh, the whole
road rocked under the weight of the engine, so much as to disturb the
waters of the swamp and startle the numberless snakes and turtles
inhabiting it. It was a most novel sensation. Further on, betwixt
Baltimore and Philadelphia, the train having to cross an arm of the
sea, steamed on full pace; the engine, uncoupling itself, ran ahead on
to a siding, while our train was carried by its own impetus on to the
upper deck of a steam ferry-boat, moored at the end of the line. It
stopped exactly at the right spot, and while the boat crossed the arm
of the sea, we went below and dined at a splendid buffet on the lower
deck, waited on by the prettiest of barmaids.

Further on yet, between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, in that rich
Allegheny country where the coal-beds lie on the surface, and coal
costs five francs a ton, and whence petroleum oil was soon to gush
forth, the travelling was done by canal in the flat country, and by
funicular railways in the mountains, by means of boats built in
sections which hooked together on the water, and were taken apart when
there was a question of climbing up inclined planes. All public works
and means of communication were full of daring things like these, while
in Europe (I speak of the year 1838) we were still at our first
timorous essays at railway travelling.

I travelled through Virginia, passing by all those spots where four and
twenty years later I was to watch the bloodiest battles of the War of
Secession, that first and awful convulsion of the great Republic's
manhood. Reaching Washington, I was most courteously received by
President Van Buren. How often since then I have been back at the White
House, under Presidents Tyler, Buchanan, and Lincoln! How many a
curious scene I have witnessed there, under the rule of the last-named
President, rich as it was in dramatic incident! During that first stay
of mine at Washington I made the acquaintance of three of the greatest
men in the United States--Calhoun, Webster, and Clay--Calhoun of
Carolina, the impassioned Southerner; Webster, the eloquent
representative of New England Puritanism; and Clay of Kentucky, with
his angular face and powerful frame, and a curious mixture of extreme
gentleness and energy in his manner and ways--the very type of the
Western population, the advance-guard of civilization. I was present at
several sittings of the Senate, and heard these gentlemen speak with an
authority which seemed to fascinate their auditors. Washington as a
city, did not interest me at all--bits of town, scattered about in an
ocean of dust, which later on I knew as an ocean of mud; hotels crowded
with canvassers, all devouring so hurriedly at table d'hote time, that the
first arrivals were rising from table when the last ones were sitting
down, and all this amidst a noise of jaws that reminded me of the dogs
being fed in a kennel; the whole population, whether politicians or
canvassers, chewing and spitting everywhere; little society or none at
all, save that formed by the foreign diplomats, most of them clever
men, but bored by their isolation, and consequently disposed to see
everything around them with unfavouring eyes. One of the chief members
of this society at the time of my sojourn was the British Minister, Mr.
Fox, a diplomatist of the old school, past master in forms, and
proprieties, and social refinements--everything that the English sum up
in the word "proper." I was told that one day as he was leaning against
the chimney-piece in a drawing-room where dancing was going on, in deep
conversation with I know not what other personage, an American couple
came and stood just in front of him in a country-dance. Soon the young
man began to show signs of anxiety; his voice grew thick, his cheeks
swelled alternately, and he cast anxious glances at the chimney-piece.
At last he could hold on no longer, and with the most admirable
precision, he shot all the juice of his quid into the fireplace just
between Mr. Fox and his interlocutor. "Fine shot, sir!" the old
diplomat contented himself with saying, with a bow. It may have been
that little incidents of this kind cast a chill on international
relations!

[Illustration with caption: southern scout]

Philadelphia delighted me. It is a cheerful town, with streets planted
with fine trees. The prison there, the first built on the solitary
system, occupied me for a whole day. I went over every corner of it, in
the company of the directors, and of any other officials who could
inform me on the subject. It will be known to my readers that the
system in this prison, at the time of which I write, was that of
absolute seclusion in cells--complete isolation in fact--during the
whole term of sentence. Soon afterwards I visited Auburn Prison, in New
York State, where the condemned person was subjected to a different
regime,--cells at night, but work in common, though in silence, during
the day. I have been over many prisons since, for I have always held
that the management of such places is a pretty reliable thermometer of
the moral condition of the country to which they belong. I know of some
foul ones in states which set up to be very civilized. In France we are
lamentably behindhand in the matter. Though we have some prisons which
are model, we have a great many more which are shamefully behind the
times. For my own part, I have come to the conclusion, from all I have
seen and heard, that seclusion in cells at night, with work in common
during the daytime in small easily managed workshops, or better still,
in the open air as at Portland Prison in England, is the penitentiary
system which offers the fewest drawbacks. I say drawbacks, for no such
system can offer advantages. All the holding forth of philanthropists
about the sad fate of criminals is empty noise. A prison must be a
place of punishment; it can never be an abode of reformation, nor of
reclamation.

Let us pass, from the prisons, to Mr. Norris's great steam engine, and
especially locomotive engine works, which Michel Chevalier had told me
to be su

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