________________________________________________
_ 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. Bruguiere 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-Pres,
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'Angouleme. 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 Abbe 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 a 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 Gericault 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 Broe, 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 Angouleme into a naval school;
for the Duc d'Angouleme, being lord high admiral, it was evident
that the city of Angouleme 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. Paer, 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'Eveque. All the young girls were singing the
Hermit of Saint-Avelle, with words by Edmond Geraud. The Yellow
Dwarf was transferred into Mirror. The Cafe Lemblin stood up for
the Emperor, against the Cafe 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 Stael 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 Therese, 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'Epingle 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 Feletez signed himself A.;
M. Hoffmann signed himself Z. Charles Nodier wrote Therese 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 chateau had denounced to her Royal Highness Madame, the portrait,
everywhere exhibited, of M. the Duc d'Orleans, 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 Moliere had not been
able to do, had The Two Philiberts played at the Odeon, 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, Pelicier, 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 Abbe
Caron was speaking, in terms of praise, to a private gathering of
seminarists in the blind alley of Feuillantines, of an unknown priest,
named Felicite-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'etat, 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 Recamier 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. Francois de Neufchateau, the praiseworthy cultivator of the memory
of Parmentier, made a thousand efforts to have pomme de terre
[potato] pronounced parmentiere, and succeeded therein not at all.
The Abbe Gregoire, ex-bishop, ex-conventionary, ex-senator, had passed,
in the royalist polemics, to the state of "Infamous Gregoire."
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 Jena, the new stone with which, the two years previously,
the mining aperture made by Blucher 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." _
Read next: VOLUME I - FANTINE: BOOK THIRD - IN THE YEAR 1817: CHAPTER II. A Double Quartette
Read previous: VOLUME I - FANTINE: BOOK SECOND - THE FALL: CHAPTER XIII. Little Gervais
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