________________________________________________
_ 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-Vallee.
About 1817, he invariably passed two afternoons a week in a house in his
own neighborhood, in the Rue Ferou, 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[20]
Le bout d' chemis' qui vous pend.
Qu'on n' dis' pas qu' les patriotes
Ont arbore l' drapeau blanc?
[20] Tuck into your trousers the shirt-tail that is hanging out.
Let it not be said that patriots have hoisted the white flag.
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 trone ebranle sur sa base,[21]
Il faut changer de sol, et de serre et de case.
[21] In order to re-establish the shaken throne firmly on its base,
soil (Des solles), greenhouse and house (Decazes) must be changed.
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 Ca ira:--
Ah! ca ira ca ira ca ira!
Les Bonapartistes a 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 Fualdes affair, which belongs to this epoch, 1816, they took
part for Bastide and Jausion, because Fualdes was "a Buonapartist."
They designated the liberals as friends 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 Marechal de Richelieu.
This society is Olympus. Mercury and the Prince de Guemenee 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
Francais condemned?" "To be suspended." "Sus is superfluous,"
observed M. Gillenormand.[22] Remarks of this nature found a situation.
[22] Suspendu, suspended; pendu, hung.
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." _
Read next: VOLUME III: BOOK THIRD - THE GRANDFATHER AND THE GRANDSON: CHAPTER II. One of the Red Spectres of that Epoch
Read previous: VOLUME III: BOOK SECOND - THE GREAT BOURGEOIS: CHAPTER VIII. Two do not make a Pair
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