Bab Bab 29 · THE YEAR 1817

1817 is the year which Louis XVIII., with a certain royal assurance

which was not wanting in pride, entitled the twenty-second of his

reign. It is the year in which M. Bruguière de Sorsum was celebrated.

All the hairdressers’ shops, hoping for powder and the return of the

royal bird, were besmeared with azure and decked with fleurs-de-lys. It

was the candid time at which Count Lynch sat every Sunday as

church-warden in the church-warden’s pew of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in

his costume of a peer of France, with his red ribbon and his long nose

and the majesty of profile peculiar to a man who has performed a

brilliant action. The brilliant action performed by M. Lynch was this:

being mayor of Bordeaux, on the 12th of March, 1814, he had surrendered

the city a little too promptly to M. the Duke d’Angoulême. Hence his

peerage. In 1817 fashion swallowed up little boys of from four to six

years of age in vast caps of morocco leather with ear-tabs resembling

Esquimaux mitres. The French army was dressed in white, after the mode

of the Austrian; the regiments were called legions; instead of numbers

they bore the names of departments; Napoleon was at St. Helena; and

since England refused him green cloth, he was having his old coats

turned. In 1817 Pelligrini sang; Mademoiselle Bigottini danced; Potier

reigned; Odry did not yet exist. Madame Saqui had succeeded to Forioso.

There were still Prussians in France. M. Delalot was a personage.

Legitimacy had just asserted itself by cutting off the hand, then the

head, of Pleignier, of Carbonneau, and of Tolleron. The Prince de

Talleyrand, grand chamberlain, and the Abbé Louis, appointed minister

of finance, laughed as they looked at each other, with the laugh of the

two augurs; both of them had celebrated, on the 14th of July, 1790, the

mass of federation in the Champ de Mars; Talleyrand had said it as

bishop, Louis had served it in the capacity of deacon. In 1817, in the

side-alleys of this same Champ de Mars, two great cylinders of wood

might have been seen lying in the rain, rotting amid the grass, painted

blue, with traces of eagles and bees, from which the gilding was

falling. These were the columns which two years before had upheld the

Emperor’s platform in the Champ de Mai. They were blackened here and

there with the scorches of the bivouac of Austrians encamped near

Gros-Caillou. Two or three of these columns had disappeared in these

bivouac fires, and had warmed the large hands of the Imperial troops.

The Field of May had this remarkable point: that it had been held in

the month of June and in the Field of March (Mars). In this year, 1817,

two things were popular: the Voltaire-Touquet and the snuff-box _à la

Charter_. The most recent Parisian sensation was the crime of Dautun,

who had thrown his brother’s head into the fountain of the

Flower-Market.

They had begun to feel anxious at the Naval Department, on account of

the lack of news from that fatal frigate, _The Medusa_, which was

destined to cover Chaumareix with infamy and Géricault with glory.

Colonel Selves was going to Egypt to become Soliman-Pasha. The palace

of Thermes, in the Rue de La Harpe, served as a shop for a cooper. On

the platform of the octagonal tower of the Hotel de Cluny, the little

shed of boards, which had served as an observatory to Messier, the

naval astronomer under Louis XVI., was still to be seen. The Duchesse

de Duras read to three or four friends her unpublished _Ourika_, in her

boudoir furnished by X. in sky-blue satin. The N’s were scratched off

the Louvre. The bridge of Austerlitz had abdicated, and was entitled

the bridge of the King’s Garden [du Jardin du Roi], a double enigma,

which disguised the bridge of Austerlitz and the Jardin des Plantes at

one stroke. Louis XVIII., much preoccupied while annotating Horace with

the corner of his finger-nail, heroes who have become emperors, and

makers of wooden shoes who have become dauphins, had two

anxieties,—Napoleon and Mathurin Bruneau. The French Academy had given

for its prize subject, _The Happiness procured through Study_. M.

Bellart was officially eloquent. In his shadow could be seen

germinating that future advocate-general of Broë, dedicated to the

sarcasms of Paul-Louis Courier. There was a false Chateaubriand, named

Marchangy, in the interim, until there should be a false Marchangy,

named d’Arlincourt. _Claire d’Albe_ and _Malek-Adel_ were masterpieces;

Madame Cottin was proclaimed the chief writer of the epoch. The

Institute had the academician, Napoleon Bonaparte, stricken from its

list of members. A royal ordinance erected Angoulême into a naval

school; for the Duc d’Angoulême, being lord high admiral, it was

evident that the city of Angoulême had all the qualities of a seaport;

otherwise the monarchical principle would have received a wound. In the

Council of Ministers the question was agitated whether vignettes

representing slack-rope performances, which adorned Franconi’s

advertising posters, and which attracted throngs of street urchins,

should be tolerated. M. Paër, the author of _Agnese_, a good sort of

fellow, with a square face and a wart on his cheek, directed the little

private concerts of the Marquise de Sasenaye in the Rue Ville l’Évêque.

All the young girls were singing the _Hermit of Saint-Avelle_, with

words by Edmond Géraud. _The Yellow Dwarf_ was transferred into

_Mirror_. The Café Lemblin stood up for the Emperor, against the Café

Valois, which upheld the Bourbons. The Duc de Berri, already surveyed

from the shadow by Louvel, had just been married to a princess of

Sicily. Madame de Staël had died a year previously. The body-guard

hissed Mademoiselle Mars. The grand newspapers were all very small.

Their form was restricted, but their liberty was great. The

_Constitutionnel_ was constitutional. _La Minerve_ called Chateaubriand

_Chateaubriant_. That _t_ made the good middle-class people laugh

heartily at the expense of the great writer. In journals which sold

themselves, prostituted journalists, insulted the exiles of 1815. David

had no longer any talent, Arnault had no longer any wit, Carnot was no

longer honest, Soult had won no battles; it is true that Napoleon had

no longer any genius. No one is ignorant of the fact that letters sent

to an exile by post very rarely reached him, as the police made it

their religious duty to intercept them. This is no new fact; Descartes

complained of it in his exile. Now David, having, in a Belgian

publication, shown some displeasure at not receiving letters which had

been written to him, it struck the royalist journals as amusing; and

they derided the prescribed man well on this occasion. What separated

two men more than an abyss was to say, the _regicides_, or to say the

_voters_; to say the _enemies_, or to say the _allies_; to say

_Napoleon_, or to say _Buonaparte_. All sensible people were agreed

that the era of revolution had been closed forever by King Louis

XVIII., surnamed “The Immortal Author of the Charter.” On the platform

of the Pont-Neuf, the word _Redivivus_ was carved on the pedestal that

awaited the statue of Henry IV. M. Piet, in the Rue Thérèse, No. 4, was

making the rough draft of his privy assembly to consolidate the

monarchy. The leaders of the Right said at grave conjunctures, “We must

write to Bacot.” MM. Canuel, O’Mahoney, and De Chappedelaine were

preparing the sketch, to some extent with Monsieur’s approval, of what

was to become later on “The Conspiracy of the Bord de l’Eau”—of the

waterside. L’Épingle Noire was already plotting in his own quarter.

Delaverderie was conferring with Trogoff. M. Decazes, who was liberal

to a degree, reigned. Chateaubriand stood every morning at his window

at No. 27 Rue Saint-Dominique, clad in footed trousers, and slippers,

with a madras kerchief knotted over his gray hair, with his eyes fixed

on a mirror, a complete set of dentist’s instruments spread out before

him, cleaning his teeth, which were charming, while he dictated _The

Monarchy according to the Charter_ to M. Pilorge, his secretary.

Criticism, assuming an authoritative tone, preferred Lafon to Talma. M.

de Féletez signed himself A.; M. Hoffmann signed himself Z. Charles

Nodier wrote _Thérèse Aubert_. Divorce was abolished. Lyceums called

themselves colleges. The collegians, decorated on the collar with a

golden fleur-de-lys, fought each other _apropos_ of the King of Rome.

The counter-police of the château had denounced to her Royal Highness

Madame, the portrait, everywhere exhibited, of M. the Duc d’Orléans,

who made a better appearance in his uniform of a colonel-general of

hussars than M. the Duc de Berri, in his uniform of colonel-general of

dragoons—a serious inconvenience. The city of Paris was having the dome

of the Invalides regilded at its own expense. Serious men asked

themselves what M. de Trinquelague would do on such or such an

occasion; M. Clausel de Montals differed on divers points from M.

Clausel de Coussergues; M. de Salaberry was not satisfied. The comedian

Picard, who belonged to the Academy, which the comedian Molière had not

been able to do, had _The Two Philiberts_ played at the Odéon, upon

whose pediment the removal of the letters still allowed THEATRE OF THE

EMPRESS to be plainly read. People took part for or against Cugnet de

Montarlot. Fabvier was factious; Bavoux was revolutionary. The Liberal,

Pélicier, published an edition of Voltaire, with the following title:

_Works of Voltaire_, of the French Academy. “That will attract

purchasers,” said the ingenious editor. The general opinion was that M.

Charles Loyson would be the genius of the century; envy was beginning

to gnaw at him—a sign of glory; and this verse was composed on him:—

“Even when Loyson steals, one feels that he has paws.”

As Cardinal Fesch refused to resign, M. de Pins, Archbishop of Amasie,

administered the diocese of Lyons. The quarrel over the valley of

Dappes was begun between Switzerland and France by a memoir from

Captain, afterwards General Dufour. Saint-Simon, ignored, was erecting

his sublime dream. There was a celebrated Fourier at the Academy of

Science, whom posterity has forgotten; and in some garret an obscure

Fourier, whom the future will recall. Lord Byron was beginning to make

his mark; a note to a poem by Millevoye introduced him to France in

these terms: _a certain Lord Baron_. David d’Angers was trying to work

in marble. The Abbé Caron was speaking, in terms of praise, to a

private gathering of seminarists in the blind alley of Feuillantines,

of an unknown priest, named Félicité-Robert, who, at a latter date,

became Lamennais. A thing which smoked and clattered on the Seine with

the noise of a swimming dog went and came beneath the windows of the

Tuileries, from the Pont Royal to the Pont Louis XV.; it was a piece of

mechanism which was not good for much; a sort of plaything, the idle

dream of a dream-ridden inventor; an utopia—a steamboat. The Parisians

stared indifferently at this useless thing. M. de Vaublanc, the

reformer of the Institute by a coup d’état, the distinguished author of

numerous academicians, ordinances, and batches of members, after having

created them, could not succeed in becoming one himself. The Faubourg

Saint-Germain and the pavilion de Marsan wished to have M. Delaveau for

prefect of police, on account of his piety. Dupuytren and Récamier

entered into a quarrel in the amphitheatre of the School of Medicine,

and threatened each other with their fists on the subject of the

divinity of Jesus Christ. Cuvier, with one eye on Genesis and the other

on nature, tried to please bigoted reaction by reconciling fossils with

texts and by making mastodons flatter Moses.

M. François de Neufchâteau, the praiseworthy cultivator of the memory

of Parmentier, made a thousand efforts to have _pomme de terre_

[potato] pronounced _parmentière_, and succeeded therein not at all.

The Abbé Grégoire, ex-bishop, ex-conventionary, ex-senator, had passed,

in the royalist polemics, to the state of “Infamous Grégoire.” The

locution of which we have made use—_passed to the state of_—has been

condemned as a neologism by M. Royer Collard. Under the third arch of

the Pont de Jéna, the new stone with which, the two years previously,

the mining aperture made by Blücher to blow up the bridge had been

stopped up, was still recognizable on account of its whiteness. Justice

summoned to its bar a man who, on seeing the Comte d’Artois enter Notre

Dame, had said aloud: _“Sapristi! I regret the time when I saw

Bonaparte and Talma enter the Bel Sauvage, arm in arm.”_ A seditious

utterance. Six months in prison. Traitors showed themselves unbuttoned;

men who had gone over to the enemy on the eve of battle made no secret

of their recompense, and strutted immodestly in the light of day, in

the cynicism of riches and dignities; deserters from Ligny and

Quatre-Bras, in the brazenness of their well-paid turpitude, exhibited

their devotion to the monarchy in the most barefaced manner.

This is what floats up confusedly, pell-mell, for the year 1817, and is

now forgotten. History neglects nearly all these particulars, and

cannot do otherwise; the infinity would overwhelm it. Nevertheless,

these details, which are wrongly called trivial,—there are no trivial

facts in humanity, nor little leaves in vegetation,—are useful. It is

of the physiognomy of the years that the physiognomy of the centuries

is composed. In this year of 1817 four young Parisians arranged “a fine

farce.”