Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

I once knew a lady who said she did not like mackerel. Now to me who was, and still am, a great lover of mackerel, this appeared extraordinary; and I asked her, 'Pray, madam, why do you not like mackerel ?' "Because I do not like mackerel," was her answer, and she would give me no other.

on his political interrogator in the follow- was a thorough man of the world. He had ing manner :- :lived in many countries and in very troublesome times; he had seen many religions at work, as well as in theory. He wes a good scholar, and not far removed from being a philosopher, and those who called him a Jesuit were rogues or dunces. He was a man with a great mind, much wit, and sound discretion, and he was no more a Jesuit than Charles James Fox or Robert The duke thought that both M. Mignet Southey. When, then, little M. Thiers and the lady, might have given better rea- pretended to believe that the restoration of sons than they did for their mutual dislike, the Bourbons was the revival of popery, he but he perceived that the distastes of both either evinced great ignorance, or he inwere at any rate inveterate. I think this sulted and perverted truth and facts. If I story will illustrate that which I wish to dwell a little longer on this point, it is beimpress on the readers of " Regina," that cause I feel its importance. The eldest little M. Thiers had a constitutional hatred branch of the house of Bourbon was shamefor the Bourbons, just as his other friend, fully misrepresented. Louis XVIII. had no Béranger, had, when he sung his treasona- more the desire of reigning in a spirit of ble but witty song, "And still the Bourbons priestcraft, than he had of living on "soupe held the Throne." The young men of maigre," or of dying in a cloister. But M. France knew nothing of the Bourbons. Thiers and the men of his age, opinions, How should they? The first revolution and calibre, knew that there was no better had banished them; and the empire with its way of running down the Bourbons in glory and its disgrace had been the period France than by adding to their royal titles during which the then youth of France had the epithet of "Jesuit:" and this plan was been nursed, cradled, and educated. Those eventually successful. who had not been carried off by the conscription, or mown down by the sabre or the grape-shot of the European alliance, were, in nine hundred out of every thousand cases, wholly ignorant of why they fought, or of who were the Bourbons, or where they resided. They had heard of the decapitation of Louis XVI. and of Marie Antoinette, but of Louis XVIII. and Count D'Artois, or the Duke d'Angoulême and his admirable and immortal duchess, and especially of the son of Egalité Orleans, they were as ignorant as they were of the Emperor of China or the Governor of the Moon. The old republicans who had not in 1814 expired, undoubtedly took great pains to convince the people that the Bourbons were Jesuits, enthusiastically at tached to all that was Romish, bigotted, and "saintly," and got up a sort of "charivari" against the priests and the altar. Now M. Thiers, living in a department far removed from civilization and good life, received his early impressions from those, who wholly mistook at any rate the character of Louis XVIII.; and being also opposed alike to the Protestant and to the Catholic churches, was prepared on his arrival at Paris to join in the cry of, "Down with the Jesuits!" This cry of "Down with the Jesuits!" was a senseless one, because Louis XVIII. was as free from popish, as he was from Protestant influences. He

At the time to which I am now, however, more especially alluding, Louis XVIII. was dead. Those liberal tricksters who had libelled him when living, then affected to believe that France had lost the most constitutional of monarchs; and when Charles X. ascended the throne, the liberal prints poured forth daily their regrets for the wise and enlightened prince, who had descended to the tomb of the Capets. It was then that M. Thiers first began to hope for the future; and then, also, it was that Laffitte declared that the house of Bourbon would be unable to stand against the power of the house of Laffitte. No man was more regular at the revolutionary, or quasi revolutionary soirées of the said M. Laffitte than Adolphe Thiers. There he spouted anarchy, and foamed sedition, and there it was that he often repeated the famous declaration, "That the king reigns, but does not govern." This was one of those French maxims which captivated the ignorant, and delighted the thoughtless.

The soirées of M. Laffitte were very little more violent, however, than those at the Palais Royal Undoubtedly, the then Duke of Orleans (now Louis Philippe) kept up the appearance of respect to his king and relative, Charles X.; but Barthélemy and Méry, Benjamin Constant and Laffitte, Béranger, Lafayette, and all the uproarious and discontented spirits of the age, were

well received and applauded, by the then consequences. He had evidently also some first subject of the realm. It was at this confidence in his star of good luck; and period that M. Thiers first made the ac- though the police might have disturbed quaintance of his future sovereign, and it Monsieur Jacques Coste's orgies, and carwas then that he paved his way for his sub- ried off the conspirators to gaol, little sequent reception at the palace of the Tuil- Adolphe Thiers acted on the broad coneries. stitutional maxim, "that those who were born to be hung will never be drowned," or that those who are born to be prime ministers will never die sub or even chief editors of journals. At one of the various meetings of political partisans and leaguers held in those eventful times, General Sebastiani, afterwards ambassador of Louis Philippe to the court of St. James's was present,

It is a fact which has been too frequently forgotten, that the revolution of 1830 was by no means an "impromptu." It is not true that M. Thiers, for example, was not fully prepared for its accomplishment. He, and those who acted with him, planned the measures and the opposition which should, in the end, compel the monarchy to stand on the defensive.

"We will drive the old Jesuit to a coup d'etat," said M. Thiers, on one occasion, when speaking of his king, Charles X.: "they wish to govern legally, that is, accord, ing to the letter of the law; but we will make him rule according to its spirit!!"

"I am no conspirator," said the count; "I am not come here to arm against my king; but simply to counsel him."

When this was told to Thiers, he replied, "Poor man! his world is in his pocket! his sea is a puddle! his storm a wind of fans! and when he conspires, it will be unAt the period of which I am now speak-der the immediate protection of Madame ing little Thiers was a very poor man. His two-franc dinners, or one shilling and eight- On another occasion, when told that pence, wine included, were by no means Casimir Perier was known to be favorable rare; and none but himself would have to the popular movement, he exclaimed, dared to predict that he would afterwards "Yes, as favorable as a farmer is to locusts, become the associate of the rulers, and of as favorable as a miser is to spendthrifts, as the prime ministers of Europe. Not indeed, favorable as a merchant is to bankrupts.' that such men as Talleyrand ever forgot Thiers's origin but he who said that "language was given to enable men to conceal their thoughts," also said, "that Thiers was a fop without elegance, an aristocrat without real pretensions or family, and a political demagogue without courage or foresight." Still Talleyrand availed him self of his services, admired his dexterity in boxing the political compass, and used to declare "that Adolphe was the only man of merit who had sprung from the hotbed of the barricades." "Talleyrand sucked the orange, and rejected peel and pips," said Odillon Barrot in one of his happy moments; but when little Thiers heard of it, he vowed vengeance against both his patron and his competitor.

I shall never forget M. Thiers's aspect in the Rue Richelieu, as he hurried with a quick and eager step towards the bureau of the journal Le Temps, as soon, or immediately after the appearance of the ordinances of Charles X., to assist in preparing "the protest" of the journalists against the decrees of the sovereign. He evidently felt that all his future depended on that very present moment; and he knit his brow, clenched his fist, and stamped steadfastly the ground, as a man will do who resolves to play his very best card, and to run the risk of all

Thiers saw in the revolution of 1830 his only chances of future fame, wealth, and distinction; and never did any gamester more wholly cast his fortune on a die. It turned up "trumps," and he became rich and powerful. His visions became realities, and no one could desire more than he did, to render them all solid and durable. Still in spite of his "palaver"-and few men can talk as well as Adolphe Thiers-he had some difficulty in ingratiating himself with the then Duke of Orleans. If Talleyrand had not taken him by the hand to do as he told him, and had not so confided in his docility as to countenance what to other less discerning minds would have appeared to be temerity, all his manœuvring under the restoration, and during the last days of the old monarchy, would have been wholly useless. Indeed, the first offices held by M. Thiers under the elective monarchy of 1830 proved that his alliance was less desired, than his opposition was apprehended. He was "the" man, par excellence, of the barricades. Mauguim and Barrot, Cormenin and Arago, Constant and Perier, Laffitte and Lafayette, had long been known, and their value variously estimated. fact, the public mind had been made up about them; and such men as Salverte and Villemain, as Royer Collard and Guizot, or

In

as Berryer and Chateaubriand, were known those days of regal sumptuousness he exand judged of all parties But little Thiers, claimed," Who can afford to be splendid, if sparkling Thiers, dashing, foaming, ranting, it be not the minister of a monarchy, where coaxing, wheedling Thiers, was a new man. the people pay for all with their eyes open ?” He had no antecedents. His past was obscu- Poor "people!" But what cared he for rerity; his present, agitation and uncertainty; proach or scorn? He was minister of state, his future was an enigma. But not so to him. and he triumphed over both friends and foes! He knew that he was prepared to sacrifice I remember one of Thiers's satellites at men, principles, people, the throne,-all- this period was a celebrated Parisian gourall for power; and he knew that power with mand! The baron liked Thiers, as an old him meant wealth, ease, luxury, enjoyment, lady likes a young coxcomb,-his friendinfluence, and-fame. But fame was sec- ship tickled his vanity. Every one talked ondary to wealth; and GOLD was his idol!! of the "little minister;" and as he said very When first I saw M. Thiers as under odd things in a very droll way, nothing desecretary of state, he appeared to have lighted this lover of the "delicacies of the grown twelve inches. His "J" this, and table" so much, as to tell all the good things his "I" that, was changed to the royal this said minister had uttered at his, the "we ;" and he looked at his master as one gourmand's table. The baron, myself, and who thought "the power behind the throne a few others met at the house of Dwould soon be greater than the throne it- where good wines were plentiful, and hos self." His spirit could not brook a supe- pitality was displayed with elegance and rior. To be prime minister, as he after- taste. The baron spoke of Thiers with wards was, would evidently not be a suffi- rapture. He had dined with him the previciently elevated position to satisfy him, if ous day. He had said so many capital the monarch, when he should counsel, things that the gourmand was in ecstasies; should dare to retain an independent opin- and amongst them were the following (Í ion. Hence his beloved maxim, "that the give them in English, for the benefit of the king reigns in constitutional monarchies, unlearned):-"Why was the revolution of but does not govern." But Louis Philippe has, fortunately for France and for Europe, despised it.

When next I saw M. Thiers, he was a minister of state! Heavens-what a splash! He put at defiance the aristocracy! The furniture was new and magnificent; the refreshments were sumptuous; the lights were regal! All Paris talked of his initiative fête as an affair belonging to the "Arabian Night's Entertainments;" and the little man looked six feet high even without his boots!

1830 a legitimate revolution?-Because it had been made by the sovereign people!' "What was the greatest miracle of modern times ?-The election of Louis Philippe to be king of the French: first, because he was elected because he was a Bourbon; and yet, second, although he was a Bourbon." M. Dupin, "the double of Lord Brougham," afterwards made a "parceque" and a "quoique" out of this joke; but it was originally the property of little Thiers. "Why is Prince Tallyrand the most able of diplomatists ?-Because his left hand is ignorant of the proceedings of his right;" or, in other words, because with him "words are made to conceal, and not to express convictions." Who is the keenest monarch in all Europe?-Louis Philippe." "Why ?-Because when he played for a crown he gained a kingdom, and kept his own fortune,"—alluding to the able arrangements of that prince before he accepted the throne, by which he secured his own large private revenues to his family, ere he entered into possession of the crown estates. There were several more of the same class, which really sounded very well over a bottle or two of the best hermitage I ever remember to have tippled.

When the old hereditary families of France occupied ministerial posts, they were reserved in their demeanor, modest in their carriage, diffident in their habits, and economical in their proceedings. When M. de Peyronnet expended upon his ministerial hotel a few extra hundred pounds sterling, the revolutionists of 1829 saddled him personally with the expenses in question; but when little Thiers, the nobody of 1829, the revolutionist of 1830, and the minister of 1832, threw napoleons to upholsterers by the basket-full, in order that Madame d'Appony, the Austrian ambassadress, might not laugh at his descent, and ridicule his plebeianism, the great little man sat on brocaded velvet, slept on eider down, compressed, There was another man named H—— however, into ministerial mattresses, and the man of business, the go-between, the drank iced Tokay because the world could pocket-handkerchief of Monsieur le ministre. not supply a more expensive beverage. In It was his duty to take a "cabriolet de re

[ocr errors]

mise" every morning at nine o'clock, and Paris said to him, "Monsieur le Ministre, drive to the hotel of the minister of the there is a more formidable organization at barricades. He had the right of private the present moment in this city against the entry. He was charged to "confabulate" government of the king than you seem to and "conspirate" with the commissary be aware of. The conspiracy has reached at the exchange, who was yet charged to the ranks of the National Guards, and we protect (!!) the French public from the tricks cannot rely on them." and manœuvres of all men-except minis- "Enough!-Enough!" cried little Thiers, ters of state. They were of course too ex- jumping on his feet, and slapping the table alted, too honorable, too high-minded to re- with his right hand,-"they'll conspire, will quire any watchers over their proceedings; they? Against me too!-against the gov and for this reason it was that the tremen- ernment!-against the king! I know them dous fluctuations in the French and Spanish -I dare them-I'll crush_them! They funds at the Paris Bourse always were the shout for liberty, do they? Then they shall result of ministerial trickings. Poor H not have it! Liberty, indeed! the rascals had an unfortunate face of his own, for he -the scorpions! I'll try them before looked cold, cadaverous, and yet spiteful. courts-martial-I'll shoot them-I'll guilloHe never constructed one sentence in his tine them! What do they want? War life, beginning and ending naturally. He with the world, I suppose! Cowards! they never looked at another man's eyes, except would be the first to run away. Young · when the other man was blind. He never France,' and ' Young Germany,' and ' d'Young went straight to a street, lane, or house, but Poland,' are we to be governed then by walked and rode, like a crab, tortuously and beardless sucklings, and by a government unpleasantly. His voice was dull, heavy, of bibs and tuckers? I know them. They and funereal; but he played the part of are penniless hawkers of sedition; they "mysterious" à la merveille, and even rais- live in the puddles, and rake filth in the ed a silver cover of a dish of vegetables, ditches of society; they would fatten upon as if he expected the contents of a green blood and beauty, and dance to the sound of bag" would be let loose by his effort. He the axe, as it fell on the necks of all who never appeared to have made up his mind were wealthier than themselves! They are as to the answer he should give even to the simplest question, and looked embarrassed when you said, "How d'ye do ?" Now that man was my aversion. But he was a "handy man" for M. Thiers; for H would, if he could, have kept even from himself his own secrets, lest he himself should tell himself that which he knew M. Thiers ought But M. Thiers kept his word. He atnever to have confided to another. But tacked those very principles of the RevoluH-was the "dirty-work man" of Mon- tion, which he had been foremost to prosieur le ministre, and both found the ac- claim and to put into operation, with a vigor quaintance most desirable and engaging. which astonished even his coadjutors, and In plain terms, to H-a small commission on which caused his quondam associates to deall sales and purchases of stocks was an ob- nominate him "the Assassin of Liberty." ject; and to Thiers, his friend's devotedness Casimir Perier also indulged occasionally in was the means of enabling him to carry out violent outbreaks against the Revolution. all his patriotic (!!) and unselfish policy. H-On one occasion a townsman of his, a naknew well when to tell a "very great secret ;" to whom to tell it; that it might be spread the most rapidly; and how to profit by it, either for a rise or fall in the three per cents. But to return to the minister himself. Although he had assisted in getting up the drama of the revolution, he found that it was a much more difficult task than he had anticipated, to chain the rampant spirits he had aided in letting loose upon society. This annoyed him greatly. The émeutes and insurrections of 1832, 1833, and 1834, often put him into prodigious passions. On one occasion, the then prefect of police at

reptiles, they are regicides-parricidesany thing-every thing, to reach fat larders and well-stored cellars. They shall do neither. I will crush them!" and then he gave the table another such a slap as made the prefect stare, and must almost have alarmed the mahogany itself.

tive of Grenoble, called at an early hour upon that most extraordinary man. He found Casimir Perier just about taking his morning bath, but this was no impediment to the interview.

"They say, M. Perier, that you will not be able to maintain your ground, and that your system will be overthrown, for that France will have her natural frontiers, and 500,000 men will arm themselves, and march to the Rhine."

Perier sat up erect, clenched his fist, and looked the veriest hurricane in the universe, and broke out as follows:

The Grenoble "Patriot" at length became as peevish, irritable, and untractable as the minister himself; and but for the arrival of a friend, the scene might have been by no means convenable for a premier. But who can refrain from admiring the grandeur of the man who, knowing he was right, would die, rather than abandon the cause of order, truth, and real patriotism? Alas! he did die the victim of his own manliness of purpose, and of his own sincerity of conviction.

"They say! who are they? Some ranting | not succeed. The very bowels of society maniacs at the Salpêtrière-some madmen in France shall be got into, the secrets of at Charenton! They say who are your every hearth and home shall be known, the they's, sir? not one man who has a hope of deepest depths of secrecy shall be explored, ever laying his fingers, by honest means, on and a man shall not have the privilege of another five-franc piece during his life. Not his own thoughts, or the sacredness of his one man who has a child to love, a wife to own hopes and desires, before France shall defend, or a mistress to caress. Not one be ruined by a band of secret conspirators. man who is removed even but one degree Tell them all so. I defy them!" from helpless idiotcy, or from frantic insanity. They say! Tell me who they are! Let me know their names,-where they breathe without living, and exist in fœtid atmospheres, and with vice, crime, and corrup. tion. Ah! ah! So I shall not be able to maintain my ground, eh? Then they must kill me, stab me, crush me by their brute force, and scatter my dust to the winds. France has no natural frontiers. They are asses, fools, beasts, who talk thus. There are no such things as 'natural' frontiers, except the sea which forms the boundary of the land. Tell these wretched dunces that France is too large already, because she contains them. 500,000 men who will clothe themselves, and march to the Rhine! Where were they at the capitulation of Paris? Where were they after the defeat at Waterloo? Where were they at the adieu at Fontainebleau? Where were they when their emperor sailed to St. Helena, his prison and his grave? Let them clothe themselves if they can, wretched, ragged, loathsome, cowardly conspirators! But the first man who marches towards the Rhine is dead. I will have no war. I will have no European coalition against France. I will not have the Prussians bivouac in our streets, and the English encamp in our Bois de Boulogne and our Champs Elysées. Tell your they's' so, from me, sir. I defy them. Let them do their worst. I will make no concessions. Peace, peace, peace, I will have; and of those who shall attempt to disturb it I will make signal examples."

When this indignant, but eloquent sentence was over, Perier rose from his bath, dressed in great agitation, continued during the whole period of his toilette his vehement philippics against the war and revolutionary parties; and kept his Grenoble friend for nearly an hour, under the influence of this sort of moral hailstorm. At length the statesman was physically exhausted, and he sunk upon a chair. Still, however, hist Grenoble opponent remained firm to his opinion; and, at length, Perier, no longer able to endure the opposition, seized him by the collar of his coat, and exclaimed :"Are you too, then, one of these 'they's' who will crush me, defeat me? You shall

When this scene was related to Thiers, he capered about the room in a sort of paroxysm of joy, and as one of his very favorite terms is canaille, he repeated it again and again, applying it, of course each time to those who opposed the "peaceable and legal" policy of M. Perier. And yet that admirable man had but little confidence in M. Thiers. He admired his talents, and who that has heard him at the tribune, when he was in a happy mood, could refrain trom doing so? But he had little confidence in his principles, and no respect for his opinion. M. Thiers knew this; but Perier was a mighty rock, a great deliverer, a giant amidst pigmies, and it suited the young demi-minister to fight for the time as an underling, rather than to be separated from the cause of peace and order. M. Guizot stood on far different grounds. Casimir Perier admired his virtue and integrity, as well as his talents, and confided at once in his judgment, and his heart. Guizot is certainly no admirer of M. Thiers. The latter acted with the former in hours alike perilous to the throne and to the country, but when the season of peril was past, they found that their views as to the best means of preventing the return of similar physical and moral disasters, were widely different. In fact, Thiers is the mountebank minister, Guizot the philosophic statesman.

The great use of M. Thiers, as a coadjutor in a Conservative ministry, was this, that he did essentially belong to the Revolution, and that, in that particular, he formed the contrast to the men of the empire and the men of the Restoration, who were members of the various French administrations from

« AnteriorContinuar »