第 一百六十九 章 · AN ANCIENT SALON

When M. Gillenormand lived in the Rue Servandoni, he had frequented

many very good and very aristocratic salons. Although a bourgeois, M.

Gillenormand was received in society. As he had a double measure of

wit, in the first place, that which was born with him, and secondly,

that which was attributed to him, he was even sought out and made much

of. He never went anywhere except on condition of being the chief

person there. There are people who will have influence at any price,

and who will have other people busy themselves over them; when they

cannot be oracles, they turn wags. M. Gillenormand was not of this

nature; his domination in the Royalist salons which he frequented cost

his self-respect nothing. He was an oracle everywhere. It had happened

to him to hold his own against M. de Bonald, and even against M.

Bengy-Puy-Vallée.

About 1817, he invariably passed two afternoons a week in a house in

his own neighborhood, in the Rue Férou, with Madame la Baronne de T., a

worthy and respectable person, whose husband had been Ambassador of

France to Berlin under Louis XVI. Baron de T., who, during his

lifetime, had gone very passionately into ecstasies and magnetic

visions, had died bankrupt, during the emigration, leaving, as his

entire fortune, some very curious Memoirs about Mesmer and his tub, in

ten manuscript volumes, bound in red morocco and gilded on the edges.

Madame de T. had not published the memoirs, out of pride, and

maintained herself on a meagre income which had survived no one knew

how.

Madame de T. lived far from the Court; “a very mixed society,” as she

said, in a noble isolation, proud and poor. A few friends assembled

twice a week about her widowed hearth, and these constituted a purely

Royalist salon. They sipped tea there, and uttered groans or cries of

horror at the century, the charter, the Bonapartists, the prostitution

of the blue ribbon, or the Jacobinism of Louis XVIII., according as the

wind veered towards elegy or dithyrambs; and they spoke in low tones of

the hopes which were presented by Monsieur, afterwards Charles X.

The songs of the fishwomen, in which Napoleon was called _Nicolas_,

were received there with transports of joy. Duchesses, the most

delicate and charming women in the world, went into ecstasies over

couplets like the following, addressed to “the federates”:—

Refoncez dans vos culottes

Le bout d’ chemis’ qui vous pend.

Qu’on n’ dis’ pas qu’ les patriotes

Ont arboré l’ drapeau blanc?20

There they amused themselves with puns which were considered terrible,

with innocent plays upon words which they supposed to be venomous, with

quatrains, with distiches even; thus, upon the Dessolles ministry, a

moderate cabinet, of which MM. Decazes and Deserre were members:—

Pour raffermir le trône ébranlé sur sa base,

Il faut changer de sol, et de serre et de case.21

Or they drew up a list of the chamber of peers, “an abominably Jacobin

chamber,” and from this list they combined alliances of names, in such

a manner as to form, for example, phrases like the following: _Damas.

Sabran. Gouvion-Saint-Cyr_.—All this was done merrily. In that society,

they parodied the Revolution. They used I know not what desires to give

point to the same wrath in inverse sense. They sang their little _Ça

ira: _—

Ah! ça ira ça ira ça ira!

Les Bonapartistes à la lanterne!

Songs are like the guillotine; they chop away indifferently, to-day

this head, to-morrow that. It is only a variation.

In the Fualdès affair, which belongs to this epoch, 1816, they took

part for Bastide and Jausion, because Fualdès was “a Buonapartist.”

They designated the liberals as f_riends and brothers_; this

constituted the most deadly insult.

Like certain church towers, Madame de T.’s salon had two cocks. One of

them was M. Gillenormand, the other was Comte de Lamothe-Valois, of

whom it was whispered about, with a sort of respect: “Do you know? That

is the Lamothe of the affair of the necklace.” These singular amnesties

do occur in parties.

Let us add the following: in the bourgeoisie, honored situations decay

through too easy relations; one must beware whom one admits; in the

same way that there is a loss of caloric in the vicinity of those who

are cold, there is a diminution of consideration in the approach of

despised persons. The ancient society of the upper classes held

themselves above this law, as above every other. Marigny, the brother

of the Pompadour, had his entry with M. le Prince de Soubise. In spite

of? No, because. Du Barry, the god-father of the Vaubernier, was very

welcome at the house of M. le Maréchal de Richelieu. This society is

Olympus. Mercury and the Prince de Guémenée are at home there. A thief

is admitted there, provided he be a god.

The Comte de Lamothe, who, in 1815, was an old man seventy-five years

of age, had nothing remarkable about him except his silent and

sententious air, his cold and angular face, his perfectly polished

manners, his coat buttoned up to his cravat, and his long legs always

crossed in long, flabby trousers of the hue of burnt sienna. His face

was the same color as his trousers.

This M. de Lamothe was “held in consideration” in this salon on account

of his “celebrity” and, strange to say, though true, because of his

name of Valois.

As for M. Gillenormand, his consideration was of absolutely first-rate

quality. He had, in spite of his levity, and without its interfering in

any way with his dignity, a certain manner about him which was

imposing, dignified, honest, and lofty, in a bourgeois fashion; and his

great age added to it. One is not a century with impunity. The years

finally produce around a head a venerable dishevelment.

In addition to this, he said things which had the genuine sparkle of

the old rock. Thus, when the King of Prussia, after having restored

Louis XVIII., came to pay the latter a visit under the name of the

Count de Ruppin, he was received by the descendant of Louis XIV.

somewhat as though he had been the Marquis de Brandebourg, and with the

most delicate impertinence. M. Gillenormand approved: “All kings who

are not the King of France,” said he, “are provincial kings.” One day,

the following question was put and the following answer returned in his

presence: “To what was the editor of the _Courrier Français_

condemned?” “To be suspended.” “_Sus_ is superfluous,” observed M.

Gillenormand.22 Remarks of this nature found a situation.

At the Te Deum on the anniversary of the return of the Bourbons, he

said, on seeing M. de Talleyrand pass by: “There goes his Excellency

the Evil One.”

M. Gillenormand was always accompanied by his daughter, that tall

mademoiselle, who was over forty and looked fifty, and by a handsome

little boy of seven years, white, rosy, fresh, with happy and trusting

eyes, who never appeared in that salon without hearing voices murmur

around him: “How handsome he is! What a pity! Poor child!” This child

was the one of whom we dropped a word a while ago. He was called “poor

child,” because he had for a father “a brigand of the Loire.”

This brigand of the Loire was M. Gillenormand’s son-in-law, who has

already been mentioned, and whom M. Gillenormand called “the disgrace

of his family.”