CHAPTER XLI
.
FROM THE QUAI VOLTAIRE TO THE PANTHEON.
The Quai Voltaire--Its Changes of Name--Voltaire--His Life in Paris and Elsewhere--His Remains laid in the Pantheon--Mirabeau--Rousseau--Vincennes.
What a number of names had the Quai Voltaire borne before receiving the illustrious one by which it has now been known for about a century! First Quai Malaquais; then Quai du Pont Rouge, when the red bridge had just been constructed to replace the old ferry opposite the Rue de Beaune; in 1648 Quai des Théatins, after the religious order of that name established by Mazarin; finally on the 4th of May, 1791, by decision of the Commune of Paris, Quai Voltaire. During forty years Voltaire had almost uninterruptedly been absent from France, when, on the 10th of February, 1778, he returned, and the mansion he had purchased in the Rue Richelieu for himself and his niece Denise not being ready for his reception, accepted the hospitality of the Marquis de Villette, in whose house, on the quay now known as that of Voltaire, he died May 30th, 1778. The fact is recorded in an inscription placed on the façade of the former Hôtel de Villette.
Before conferring upon the quay the name borne by one of the most witty and most powerful writers that France ever produced, the Commune received a report and pronounced through one of its members a eulogium in his honour. Until the time of the Revolution it was the custom in France, as in other countries at a much later period, to name streets and other thoroughfares after some aristocratic family. Since the Revolution, however, it has become usual to substitute, in connection with the thoroughfares and public places of Paris, the names of national celebrities and national benefactors. In this latter character Voltaire will not be universally accepted, though his aim was certainly to do good; and that he had “done some good,” was, he once declared, the only epitaph he aspired to. According to an observation attributed to M. de Tocqueville, Voltaire possessed in greater abundance than anyone else the wit that everyone possesses; and D. F. Strauss, in the six lectures on Voltaire which he wrote for and dedicated to the Princess Louise of Hesse, says much the same thing when he admiringly declares that every quality of the French mind belonged to Voltaire in a more marked degree than to any other Frenchman. Goethe seems to have thought still more highly of him. “Voltaire,” he said, “will always be looked upon as the greatest man in the literature of modern times, and perhaps even of all times; as the most astonishing creation of Nature, a creation in which it has pleased her to collect for once in a single frail organisation every variety of talent, all the glories of genius, all the powers of thought.”
[Illustration: THE LATE ALBERT WOLFF, OF THE _FIGARO_.
(_From a Photograph by G. Camus, Paris._)]
Very different, indeed, was the opinion entertained by the great supporter of absolute monarchy and of the Roman Catholic Church. “Paris,” wrote Count Joseph de Maistre, “crowned him; Sodom would have banished him.... How am I to picture to you what he makes me feel? When I think of what he might have done and what he did, his inimitable talents inspire me with a sort of holy rage for which there is no name. Midway between admiration and horror, I sometimes wish to see a statue erected to him--by the hand of the executioner.”
It must be remembered, however, that in Voltaire’s time there was no such thing in France as either political or religious liberty, and that he took the part of the persecuted whenever he had an opportunity of doing so. “His life,” says M. Arsène Houssaye, “is a comedy in five acts, in which, through French genius, shines human reason. The first act takes place in Paris, among distinguished noblemen and popular actresses; beginning with the entertainments of the Prince de Conti and ending with the death of Adrienne Lecouvreur, whose hurried secret burial by torch-light inspired Voltaire with so much indignation. This was the period of the Bastille and of banishment. The second act takes place at the castle of Cirey and at the court of King Stanislas; this second act might be called the love of science and the science of love. The third act takes place at the court of Frederick II., at Berlin, Potsdam, and Sans-Souci. The fourth act is that of Ferney, where he builds a church (with ‘Deo erexit Voltaire’ inscribed over the portal), gives a dowry to Corneille’s niece, defends the family of the persecuted Calas, pleads for Admiral Byng, for Montbailly, for La Barre, for all who are in need of an advocate. The fifth act takes place at Paris, like the first; but the man who at the beginning of the drama was a prisoner and a proscript has come back as a conqueror. All Paris rises to salute him. The Academy believes that Homer, Socrates, and Aristophanes are to be found again in Voltaire; the Théâtre Français crowns him with immortal laurels. But the poet has reached the last point of greatness; Paris smothers in its embraces this ruler of opinions, who with his last breath proclaims the rights of man.”
Born in 1694, this powerful writer was so weak as a child that it was not thought safe to baptise him until he was nine months old. His father was treasurer in the Exchequer Chamber, and he had for godfather the Abbé de Château-Neuf, one of those sceptical abbés who help to give a character of its own to the eighteenth century. As a youth he was in the good graces of Ninon de L’Enclos, the celebrated beauty, who, living to a prodigious age, is said to have preserved her charms to the last. She recognised Voltaire’s precocious talents as he, on his side, was delighted by her personal fascinations. She left him by will 2,000 francs for the purchase of books. The Abbé de Château-Neuf introduced him meanwhile into the most brilliant society of Paris. This did not suit the views of his father, who wished his son to enter the magistracy. He accordingly separated him from the Abbé de Château-Neuf to attach him as page to the Marquis of the same name, who took the young Voltaire or Arouet, to call him by his proper name, in his suite to Holland. Returning to Paris, the youthful Arouet began to write, when he adopted, for literary purposes, the name of Voltaire, which will be recognised as an anagram of Arouet l. j. (_le jeune_). According to most historians the name of Voltaire was borrowed by the youthful Arouet from an estate belonging to his mother; but there seems to be no authority for this supposition, and the anagrammatic or quasi-anagrammatic explanation is probably the true one.
Voltaire had not long exercised his pen when he was thrown into the Bastille as the author of a satire which he had not written. Here he sketched out the plan of his “Henriade” and of his “Siècle de Louis XIV.,” both suggested to him, it is said, by the Marquis de Château-Neuf. The true author of the satire having been discovered, Voltaire was set at liberty, and, according to the custom of the time, received a money indemnity from the Regent, whom he thanked for providing him with food, while expressing a hope that he would not in future furnish him with a lodging. Besides making notes for his historical work and for his epic poem, Voltaire had written in the Bastille a tragedy on the subject of Œdipus, which in 1718, when the author had just attained his twenty-fourth year, was produced at the Théâtre Français with a success which no other tragedy had obtained since the days of Corneille and Racine.
Voltaire’s literary life in Paris was cut short by a painful incident. In an animated discussion he had taken the liberty of contradicting the Chevalier de Rohan, who was cowardly enough to lay a trap for his antagonist; and getting him to leave the room, subjected him to violent maltreatment at the hands of his servants. Voltaire challenged the Chevalier, who, however, not only refused him satisfaction, but had him shut up in the Bastille for six months and then banished from France. Taking refuge in England, he studied the language, literature, and especially the philosophy of the country. After a residence of three years he was able to make known to his countrymen, through a volume entitled “Lettres sur les Anglais,” the philosophy of Bolingbroke and of Locke, the scientific theories of Newton, the poetry of Shakespeare, and the prose of Addison. It was during his residence in England that he wrote the tragedies of _Brutus_, _The Death of Cæsar_, _Zaïre_, &c., which, however un-Shakespearian, were evidently the outcome of a study of Shakespeare’s plays. Voltaire’s position in regard to Shakespeare has been somewhat misunderstood. He did not fully appreciate Shakespeare, he even undervalued the great dramatist. But he saw that genius was in him; which is more than can be said of some of our own writers of the eighteenth century, not excluding Addison, who, in _The Spectator_, points to “Shakespeare and Lee” for examples of the “false sublime.”
During his stay in England Voltaire mixed freely in literary society, and made the acquaintance of some of our best writers. Johnson, it will be remembered, thinking only of his irreligion, would not shake hands with him; though afterwards, when he heard that Voltaire had praised his “Rasselas,” he said that there was “some good in the dog, after all.” When Voltaire was introduced to Congreve, the brilliant dramatist explained that he wished to be looked upon, not as a writer of comedies, but as an English gentleman; to which Voltaire replied that if the latter had been his only character, he should never have taken the trouble to seek his acquaintance. Voltaire for long enjoyed the credit of having acquired sufficient knowledge of the English language to be able to express himself gracefully and correctly in English verse, but it has been conclusively proved that the productions were corrected and revised by an English friend.
Returning to Paris, he lived there tranquilly for some time; but on the death of Adrienne Lecouvreur, to whom he was much attached, and to whose remains Christian burial had been refused, he wrote some indignant verses, which, after they had been put in circulation, filled him with alarm as to the notice that would probably be taken of them by the authorities. He now escaped to Rouen, where he printed his “History of Charles X.” and “Philosophical Letters.” The latter work was burned by the hangman, a fate reserved for more than one of Voltaire’s subsequent works. His ingenious remark has elsewhere been cited, to the effect that the public executioner, were he presented with a copy of every book he had to burn, would soon possess one of the finest libraries in France. Another production of his, the “Epistle to Urania,” which expressed theological views of a most unorthodox kind, was soon to get him into fresh trouble, though by a well-known artifice of those tyrannical days he disavowed the work. He thought it prudent, all the same, to keep out of the way for a time, and he now accepted the hospitality offered to him by Mme. du Châtelet at Cirey. He here gave himself up for a time, in common with his hostess, to mathematical and scientific studies. He published one after the other, with astonishing rapidity, “Newtonian Elements,” “Mahomet,” _Mérope_, “The Discourse on Man,” and other works, besides going on with his “Century of Louis XIV.” and his essay on morals.
Voltaire’s reputation was now European; and the Prince Royal of Prussia, afterwards Frederick the Great, one of his most fervent admirers, wrote to him begging him to undertake the publication of his “Anti-Machiavel,” though as Miçkievicz the Polish poet says in reference to this work, it was Machiavellism itself that Frederick II. both practised and professed. In the midst of his success, Voltaire, as irritable as he was kind-hearted, suffered much from the attacks of pamphleteers, whose favourite accusation was that, writing on many different subjects, he was not master of one. To these attacks he replied in the most impetuous style, though he would have done better to preserve the silence of profound disdain. Voltaire, however, reminds one, in this respect, of that horseman who, riding through a forest, was so exasperated by the chirping of myriads of grasshoppers, that he leaped at last from his saddle, and, drawing his sword, set about the vain task of exterminating the offensive insects, although nightfall was at hand and they would shortly have grown silent of their own accord. The pamphleteer and poetaster, Jean Fréron, was a favourite object of Voltaire’s detestation; he it was for whom Voltaire took the trouble to make an adaptation of a quatrain originally belonging to the Greek Anthology. Here are Voltaire’s lines--
“Un jour loin du sacré vallon Un serpent mordit Jean Fréron: Songez ce qui en arriva: Ce fut le serpent qui creva.”
It was surety these lines which inspired Goldsmith with the idea of his “Elegy on a mad dog.”
“But soon a wonder came to light, Which showed the rogues they lied; The man recovered of the bite, The dog it was that died.”
In 1743, after the successful production of _Mérope_ Voltaire regained some favour at the court, and obtained, through the patronage of Mme. de Pompadour, the title of historiographer of France, together with the post of gentleman of the king’s bed-chamber. At the same time the French Academy, after having twice rejected him, elected him as a member. His writings of this period bear the stamp of his somewhat frivolous life; among them are the operas, _Temple of Glory_, _Samson_, and _Budkah_, the ballet _Princess of Navarre_, &c. Soon, however, the part of court poet fatigued him, the more so as the king treated him coldly and Mme. de Pompadour thought him inferior to Crébillon. His friendship for Mme. du Châtelet still continued. But after her death he yielded to the pressing invitations of Frederick the Great (1750) and went to the court of Berlin, where a brilliant position, the post of chamberlain, and a considerable money allowance awaited him. The result of the celebrated intimacy between the philosopher and the king is well known; it lasted two or three years, but the monarch could not control his domineering habits nor the great writer the manifestation of his intellectual superiority. The jealousy of the literary men of France, a quarrel with Maupertius, whose part was taken by the king, some sharp utterances, and various other causes precipitated the inevitable rupture. Voltaire left Prussia in 1753, after undergoing more than one humiliation. The most important work he published during his stay at Berlin was that “Century of Louis XIV.” which remains his masterpiece in the historic line. Having ascertained that the French Government would not be pleased to see him at Paris, he travelled for several years in Germany, Switzerland and France, establishing himself finally at Ferney in 1758, where he built himself a magnificent house, in which he passed the last twenty years of his life. Here he received flattering letters from the sovereigns of Europe, and no less flattering visits from some of the first literary men of the time. Princes and philosophers made pilgrimages to Ferney, and “Patriarch of Ferney” became Voltaire’s recognised name. The fact of Switzerland’s being a republic did not, of course, prevent the Swiss landed proprietors from having serfs, and Voltaire did his best to procure their personal liberation. This is doubtless what he would have been glad to do in his own country, had it been possible in the days before the Revolution to propose an amelioration that would at once have been looked upon as revolutionary. “He pleaded,” says one of his biographers, “for the emancipation of the serfs of the canton of Jura; he endeavoured to remedy a number of abuses, to reform a number of unjust laws.”
To give an idea of the kind of life led by Voltaire at Ferney, we may reproduce in abridged form the account published by Moore, who, travelling in France at the time, extended his journey in order to pay a visit to Voltaire.
“The most piercing eyes I have ever seen in my life,” says Moore, “are those of Voltaire, now eighty years of age. One recognises instantly in his physiognomy genius, penetration, nobility of character.
“In the morning he seems restless and discontented, but this gradually passes away, and after dinner he is lively and agreeable. But there is always in his expression a tinge of irony, whether he smiles or frowns.
“When the weather is favourable he goes out in a carriage with his niece or with some of his guests. Sometimes he takes a walk in his garden, and if the weather does not allow him to go out he employs his time in playing chess with Father Adam, or in receiving strangers, or in dictating or reading his letters. But he passes the greater part of the day in his study, and whether he is reading or being read to he has always a pen in his hand to take notes or make observations; an author writing for his bread could not work more assiduously, nor could a young poet greedy of renown. He lives in the most hospitable manner, and his table is excellent; he has always with him two or three persons from Paris, who stay at his house a month or six weeks; when they go away they are replaced by others, and there is thus a considerable change of inmates. The visitors, together with the members of Voltaire’s family circle, make up a party of twelve or fifteen persons, who dine daily at his table whether he is present or not; for when he is occupied with the preparation of some new work he does not dine in company, and contents himself with appearing for a few minutes before or after dinner.
“The morning is not a favourable time for visiting Voltaire, who cannot bear any interference with his hours of study; such a thing puts him at once in a rage. He was often ready, moreover, to pick a quarrel, whether by reason of the infirmities inseparable from old age, or from some other cause. He is in any case less genial in the early part of the day than afterwards.
[Illustration: VOLTAIRE.
(_From the statue by Houdon in the Comédie Française._)]
“Those who are invited to supper see him at his best. He takes an evident pleasure in conversing with his guests, and makes a point of being witty and agreeable. When, however, a vivacious remark or a good jest is made by another person, he is the first to applaud; he is amused and his gaiety increases. When he is surrounded by his friends, and animated by the presence of women, he seems to enjoy his life with the sensibility of a young man. His genius, disengaged from the burdens of age, shines in the brightest manner, and delicate observations, happy remarks, fall from his lips.
“His aversion for the clergy makes him often speak about them, to the scandal of people not sufficiently witty to make their raillery acceptable.
“He compares the English nation to a barrel of beer, of which the top is froth, the bottom scum, while the middle part is excellent.
“With his inferiors Voltaire appears in a most favourable light. He is affable, kind, and generous; he likes to see his tenants and all his dependents thoroughly prosperous, and he occupies himself with their individual interests in the spirit of a patriarch. He does his best, moreover, to maintain around him industrial works and all kinds of manufactures; through his care and patronage the miserable village of Ferney, whose inhabitants were previously grovelling in idleness, has become a prosperous and flourishing town.
“Voltaire had formerly in his house a little theatre at which pieces were represented by his friends and himself; some important part was generally assigned to him, but to judge by the accounts given of him he was not a great actor. The amateur performances at Ferney suggested to a company of regular players the idea of visiting the place. I have often attended this theatre, and seen the performances of this company, which were not first rate. The famous Lekain, who is now at Ferney, comes there at times for special performances. On these occasions I am chiefly attracted by the desire of seeing Voltaire, who is always present when one of his pieces is played, or when, in no matter what piece, Lekain appears.
“He takes his seat on the stage behind the scenery, but so as to be seen by the greater part of the audience; and he takes as much interest in the performance of the piece as if his reputation depended on it. If one of the actors makes a mistake, he seems grieved and shocked; if on the other hand the actor plays well, he gives him, by gestures and by word of mouth, the liveliest marks of approbation. He enters into the spirit of both situations with all the signs of genuine emotion, and even sheds tears with the effusiveness of a young girl assisting for the first time at the performance of a tragedy.”
Voltaire reconstructed at his own expense the church of Ferney, which he thereupon dedicated to the Supreme Being: “Deo erexit Voltaire.” He had often, however, sharp disputes with the curé of the parish, who more than once complained to the bishop. He is said on one occasion to have gone through the Easter ceremonies at the church of Ferney without having previously confessed; desiring, he said, to fulfil his duties as a Christian, an officer of the king’s household, and a village squire. Encroaching another time on the prerogative of the curé, he appeared in the pulpit and preached a sermon. Some of these stories, it must be added, rest on no more authentic basis than hearsay and the well-known changeableness of Voltaire’s disposition.
In 1778 Voltaire quitted Ferney to visit Paris, where he had not been seen for twenty years. He was received in triumph: the Academy and the Théâtre Français sent deputations to meet him, the most illustrious men by talent or birth, women of the highest rank, waited upon him to present their homage, and the people generally offered him ovations whenever he appeared in public. A performance of his tragedy of _Irène_ was given at the Théâtre Français. His bust was crowned with laurels, and after the representation he was conducted home with acclamations from an enthusiastic crowd. “You are smothering me in roses!” cried the old poet, intoxicated with his glory. Such emotions, such fatigue had, indeed, the worst effect upon his health; he was nearly eighty-four years of age--the age at which Goethe died--and the excitement was too much for him. On his death-bed he was surrounded by priests who wished to obtain from him something in the way of concession if not retractation, but his only reply to the curé of Saint-Sulpice was, “Let me die in peace.” A written report from the hand of this ecclesiastic is said to exist in the archives of his church. Meanwhile that Voltaire did not die reconciled to the Church is sufficiently proved by the fact that Christian burial was denied him. His nephew, the Abbé Mignot, had the corpse hastily carried to his abbey at Cellières, where it remained until the days of the Revolution--when it was brought back in triumph to Paris and placed in the Pantheon, the former church of Saint-Geneviève. On the 30th of May, 1791, the National Assembly decreed that Voltaire was worthy of the honour which should be paid to great men, and that his ashes were to be transferred to the Pantheon. This translation was the occasion of a national celebration, which, under the direction of David the painter, took place on the 12th of July in the same year. Joseph Chénier wrote for the festival a poem which Gossec set to music. The three last lines of the last stanza are worth quoting:--
Chantez; de la raison célébrez le soutien; Ah! de tous les mortels qui ne sont point esclaves Voltaire est le concitoyen.[E]
[E] Literal Translation:--Sing; celebrate the upholder of Reason. Ah! of all men who are not slaves Voltaire is the fellow-citizen.
Mirabeau, who next to Voltaire was declared worthy of the honours of the Pantheon, was descended from an ancient and powerful family of Florentine origin. Riquetti, originally Arrigheti, was the name of the family, that of Mirabeau being derived from an estate which they acquired when, after being banished from Florence in the thirteenth century, they settled in Provence. The Mirabeaus were celebrated from father to son for their energy, independence, and daring. One of their boasts was that they were all of a piece, “without a joint.” Gabriel Honoré Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau, the greatest orator that the Revolution produced, was the son of the Marquis of Mirabeau, who is reputed to have introduced the study of political economy into France. Disfigured at the age of three by the small-pox, he preserved that remarkable ugliness which produced such a strong impression upon his contemporaries, together with that leonine countenance in which intelligence and expression triumphed over superficial hideousness. It was in allusion to his ugliness as well as to his violent passions and his indomitable character, that Mirabeau’s father, who never loved him, said of his son that he was a monster, physically and morally. Placed under different masters, he learnt with surprising facility ancient and modern languages. Lagrange taught him mathematics, and he also studied drawing and music, besides occupying himself with gymnastics. Having revealed at an early age his impetuous disposition, he was placed by his father at the École Militaire, as if with a view to his correction. Here he devoured all the works on the art of war, and at the age of seventeen came out of the school as officer. At this point begins the romance of his life. His debts and a love intrigue caused his father to shut him up in the island of Ré, in virtue of a _lettre de cachet_ obtained for that purpose. Nor was this the only one that the severe parent procured in view of his son’s better behaviour. Sent to Corsica with his regiment, Mirabeau distinguished himself in various ways, among others by writing a history which his father destroyed because it contained philosophical ideas which, according to the parent’s view, were unorthodox. The youthful Mirabeau made a better impression on one of his uncles, who wrote about him: “Either he will be the cleverest satirist in the universe, or the greatest European general on land or sea, or minister, or chancellor, or Pope, or anything else that may please him.”
In 1772 he married at Aix, in Provence, a rich heiress, Émilie de Mirignane by name, whose dowry he was rapidly spending when the ever-watchful father came forward and procured against him a legal interdict, which cut him off from all credit and obliged him to reside within the limits of a particular town. Here, inspired, no doubt, by the situation, he composed in hot haste his “Essay on Despotism,” which deals, however, not merely with the arbitrary exercise of power, but with such concomitants of political despotism as immoderate taxation and standing armies. An insult having been offered to one of his sisters, Mirabeau broke through the rules imposed upon him, and, always at the suggestion of his father, was captured, this time to be imprisoned in the castle of If: familiar to the readers of Dumas’s “Monte Cristo.” Here he paid so much attention to the wife of the steward that it was found necessary to transfer him to another fortress. His new abode was close to Pontarlier; and he obtained permission to quit the fortress and take up his residence in this town. At Pontarlier he made the acquaintance of Sophie de Ruffey, the young wife of the Marquis de Monnier, to whom, under the name of “Sophie,” he was a few years afterwards, as a prisoner in the Bastille, to address the passionate letters generally known as “Lettres à Sophie.” His relations with Sophie, whom he induced to leave her husband in order to accompany him to Holland, brought upon him a criminal action and a tragic sentence. He was condemned to death, and not being present at the time and place fixed for his execution, was decapitated in effigy. He had fled with Sophie to Amsterdam, where, under the name of St. Matthew, he wrote largely for the booksellers who were accustomed to produce pamphlets and books which either had been or, as a matter of course, would have been forbidden in France. Besides original works, Mirabeau supplied the Dutch booksellers with translations from the English and the German. But the French Government would not leave him in peace, and in 1777, his extradition having been applied for, he was arrested at Amsterdam, carried back to France, and imprisoned at Vincennes. He was allowed to write freely to his adored Sophie; and freely enough he did write to her.
[Illustration: THE PONT DU CARROUSEL AND THE LOUVRE, FROM THE QUAI MALAQUAIS.]
The passionate letters were all copied in the Secretary’s Office; and it is only from these copies, as printed and published in 1792 by Manuel, procureur of the Commune of Paris, that the epistles are now known. They were obviously not written for general reading. Jotted down from day to day, without thought of anything but the woman he loved and the passion by which he was inspired, they contain passages which even persons without prudery (a fault charged by Mirabeau against Sophie’s mother) might have desired to see omitted; but they are eloquent, impassioned, and, though affected by the senses, written from the heart. During his captivity at Vincennes, which lasted forty-two months, Mirabeau composed a number of works, many of which, as mentioned in the letters to Sophie, seem to have been lost. He made for Sophie’s own private reading some edifying translations from the tales of Boccaccio and from the _Basia_ of Johannes Secundus; and he wrote a novel that every one would not care to read, called “Ma Conversion.” Liberated from prison in December, 1780, he went straight to Pontarlier, where he constituted himself a prisoner. He wished to obtain a divorce for Sophie from her husband and for himself from his wife; and it is related that in the former case the husband was only too happy to pay the expenses of the suit. He also wrote an eloquent, indignant attack against _lettres de cachet_, which, not daring to publish it in France, he brought out in Switzerland. From Switzerland he went to London. After a time he returned to France, and in 1786, anxious as ever to play an active part in life, got himself sent by the Government on a secret mission to Prussia; where he was to study the effect that would probably be produced in Germany by the death of Frederick the Great, then imminent, the character of the Prussian prince who was to succeed him, and the possibility, moreover, of raising in Prussia a loan for France. Such missions, of which the precise object was never clearly defined, belonged to the system of the ancient régime. Mirabeau was present at the death of Frederick and at the inauguration of his successor; when with marvellous confidence he gave the new sovereign some advice as to the art and method of governing a great country. Mirabeau, meanwhile, did his work conscientiously as agent of the French court; addressing to the minister Calonne seventy letters, which were published in 1789, the year of the Revolution, under the title of “Secret History of the Court of Berlin, Letters a French Traveller, from July, 1786, to January, 1787.” The book, full of satirical portraits and still more satirical observations, caused considerable scandal; and the parliament lost no time in ordering it to be burnt by the public executioner.
[Illustration: THE SEINE, BETWEEN THE CITY AND THE QUAI DES AUGUSTINS.]
During his stay at Berlin Mirabeau collected materials for his “Prussian Monarchy,” published in 1788 (four volumes in quarto or eight volumes in octavo); a vast composition which at least bore witness to Mirabeau’s capacity in matters of politics, legislation, administration, and finance. In his address to the Batavians he set forth all the principles which were afterwards to serve as basis to the declaration of the rights of man. His “Observations on the Prison of Bicêtre,” and on the effects of the severity of punishments, may be looked upon as the complement of his “Lettres de Cachet.”
Writing in great haste, he astonished the reader by his energy and intellectual fecundity, in the midst of the constant embarrasments of a precarious and harassed life. “Mirabeau,” says M. Nisard, “learns as he writes and writes as he learns. To conceive and to produce are with him one and the same thing. The convocation of the States General opened to him a theatre worthy of his genius and of his immense ambition. He hurried to Provence and presented himself as a candidate before the Assembly of the Nobility, which, in spite of his persistent demands, put him aside as being neither owner nor occupier of land in Provence. He then turned to the people and was promptly elected a representative of the Tiers État.
His entry into political life was an event of the highest importance. Two days before the opening of the Assembly he began the publication of the Journal of the States General. At the first meeting of the Assembly the master of the ceremonies made known the king’s wish that the three orders should carry on their debates in three separate chambers. This involved the departure of the representatives of the Tiers État from their habitual rendezvous. “Tell your master,” exclaimed Mirabeau, in words which were to become historical, “that we are hereby the will of the people, and that nothing can move us but the force of bayonets.” Meanwhile Mirabeau, who had begun his political life with so much dignity, was actually ruining his position by his own personal extravagance. He entered into relations with the court, and before delivering his speeches submitted them to the king and queen. The king asked for a list of his debts, which amounted to 200,000 francs, and included a sum that had been owing seventeen years for his wedding suit. Besides paying his debts, Louis XVI. promised to furnish his new auxiliary with a pension of 6,000 francs per month. He placed, moreover, in the hands of the Count de La Marck, who had acted as intermediary, a sum of one million, which was to be given to Mirabeau at the end of the session if, as he had promised to do, he served with fidelity the cause of the king and queen.
After these facts, it has been gravely asked whether or not Mirabeau sold himself to the court. Saint-Beuve has answered the question in his own ingenious way, by saying that Mirabeau, without selling himself, allowed himself to be paid. The distinction scarcely amounts to a difference. Mirabeau now wrote frequently to the king and still more frequently to the queen, till at last nothing would satisfy him but to have an interview with Marie Antoinette, whose minister he would gladly have become, the king leaving everything to the queen, the queen everything to the would-be director of her policy. Before long the double position held by Mirabeau produced its inevitable effects. To maintain his influence with the Assembly and with his own constituents he had to play the part of a tribune, while, to gain his subsidies from the court, he was bound to show himself a firm supporter of the monarchy.
Inordinately ambitious, dissipated in the extreme, an aristocrat by taste and a democrat by conviction, he was perpetually in trouble of the most exasperating kind. In February, 1791, he was elected to the presidency of the Assembly, as candidate of the Moderate party, the Right. His vigorous opposition to the law proposed against the _émigrés_ laid him open to grave suspicions. “Silence, those thirty voices!” he called out when Barnave, Lameth, and their friends among the orators of the Left tried to interrupt him. This debate was the last in which the dramatic side of Mirabeau’s oratorical talent was fully shown. Labours, excesses of every kind, had at last worn out his robust constitution. It was said that poison had been administered to him; but he was the author of his own destruction. The very day after his not-too-creditable understanding with the court he rushed into expenditure of every sort, so that one of his best friends could not help saying: “Mirabeau is badly advised in making such a display of his opulence. He must be afraid of passing for an honest man.” He knew that he was killing himself, and though his doctor, Cabanis, begged him to lead a more moderate life, the advice passed unheeded. He was taken ill on the 27th of March at Argenteuil, near Paris; which did not prevent him from
## participating next day in an important debate. He triumphed, but left
the Assembly exhausted, depressed, and with death written on his face. On the morrow he was hopelessly ill, and at the end of April he expired.
The news of his death caused universal grief, and it was at once voted that his remains should be deposited in the former church of St. Geneviève, known since the Revolution as the Pantheon. Here the ashes of the greatest writer the Revolution had produced were allowed to repose until, in the Autumn of 1794, the Republicans of the Left having meanwhile been enlightened as to the part Mirabeau had played in connection with the court, they were removed to give place to the dust of Marat, whom Charlotte Corday had just assassinated. What honest man, asked someone at the time, could desire his remains to lie by the side of Mirabeau? The great orator was now worse treated by the republic than Molière, Voltaire, and Adrienne Lecouvreur had been by the clergy of the ancient monarchy. His relics were disturbed from what should have been their last resting-place, and conveyed at night without form or ceremony to Clamart, the graveyard of those who died at the hands of the executioner. There is nothing sadder in the modern history of France than the story of the entries and exits of its reputed great men into and out of the church or temple now once more known as the Pantheon.
* * * * *
A longer period of hospitality than Mirabeau was allowed to enjoy fell to the lot of Jean Jacques Rousseau, whose remains, disinterred from his first place of burial in the middle of the Lake of Ermenonville, were carried to the Pantheon that same autumn which saw the relics of Mirabeau ejected from the grand national mausoleum. Rousseau was the third of the great men to whom, in the language of the well-known inscription, their native land was grateful. “Aux grands hommes: la patrie reconnaissante.” Rousseau was, no more than Napoleon, a Frenchman. His family, however, unlike that of Napoleon, is said to have been of French origin. He was descended from a Protestant bookseller, who was forced to quit France by the persecutions of the 16th century and afterwards settled at Geneva.
Rousseau’s birth cost his mother her life. “My mother died when I was born,” he says in the Confessions, “so that my birth was the first of my misfortunes.” His father, a watchmaker by trade and a man of some education, had the greatest affection for his son, but was unable to forget at what cost he had been brought into the world. Thus Rousseau’s first impressions were of the saddest kind.
The little boy was brought up by his father’s sister, and many were the novels or rather romances that he read under her guidance. Soon, however, he turned to more serious studies, his favourite authors being now the Greek and Roman historians, and particularly Plutarch. When the boy was old enough to adopt a trade he was apprenticed to an engraver. But such was the severity of his master that his sole thought was how to escape from the tyrant. One evening when he had gone out for a walk in the neighbourhood of Geneva, he found on his return the city gates closed. Fearing the anger of the engraver, he resolved not to go back to him at all. Chance took him to the house of M. de Pontverre, curé of Confignon, who, finding the boy was a Protestant, resolved to profit by the opportunity of making a convert. M. de Pontverre, instead of sending the little Rousseau back to his employer, conveyed him to a Madame de Varennes, who had herself just been converted to the Catholic religion. To Madame de Varennes young Rousseau became warmly attached, and he was in despair when suddenly she went away. The strange idea now occurred to him, possessing no musical knowledge or next to none, of passing as a musician. He commenced, in fact, to give lessons in music. From Lausanne, where he had begun his hazardous tuition, he took flight to Neufchâteau, where once more he insisted on teaching music.
At last, by giving lessons in music he taught himself, and he had no trouble in getting a certain number of pupils. After various adventures he turned up in Paris, where he was engaged as tutor by a young officer, who soon, however, discovered that the would-be preceptor had a great deal to learn. Finding that Madame de Varennes was at Chambéry, he determined to visit her, and, being well received, remained with her some considerable time. He now gave himself up to studying sentiment, until after the lapse of a few years Madame de Varennes became tired of his society, and the young man left Chambéry for Montpellier, where he proposed to get medical treatment for a fancied polypus of the heart. He had read, during the latter part of his stay at Chambéry, so many medical books that he ended by becoming an imaginary invalid. From Montpellier, where the doctors professed their utter inability to recognise the polypus complained of, he went to Lyons, where he got an engagement as tutor in a family. A year afterwards, in 1841, he left Lyons for Paris, now fired by literary ambition and excited by the news that constantly reached him of the triumphs of Voltaire. He took with him to the French capital a new system of musical notes, a five-act comedy, and fifteen louis d’or. His musical innovations, submitted to the Academy, were not understood; but perhaps for that reason they made some noise and facilitated his introduction into many good houses. For some little time he led a life of elegant leisure, during which he made the acquaintance of several of the first literary men of the day. But it was necessary for him to earn his living, and he was glad to accept an engagement with Madame Dupin, daughter of the famous financier, Samuel, who wanted a secretary; and soon afterwards Madame de Broglie got him sent to Venice as secretary to the French Ambassador, Count de Montaigne. Before long, however, Rousseau had a violent quarrel with his chief, who seems to have been a man of unbearable disposition.
Returning to Paris, he resolved once more to adopt a literary career. He wrote articles on musical subjects for the _Encyclopédie_, and made sketches of operas, ballets, and divertissements, until one day, going to see his friend Diderot, imprisoned at the time in the castle of Vincennes, he happened to read as he walked along, in the _Mercure de France_, an advertisement offering a prize to the author of the best essay on this subject: “Has the progress of science and art tended to corrupt or to purify manners?” According to Diderot and his friends, it was he, the imprisoned philosopher critic, tale writer, and dramatist, who suggested to Rousseau that, instead of taking the commonplace view of the matter, he would do well to maintain, as paradoxically as he pleased, that the development of art and science had exercised not a healthy but a baneful effect. Rousseau, however, maintained that the idea of treating the subject from the negative point of view originated with himself alone. “If ever anything,” he wrote long afterwards, “resembled a sudden inspiration, it was the movement that at once took place in my mind on reading the advertisement. Suddenly my intelligence was dazzled by a thousand lights. Crowds of ideas assailed me with a force and a confusion which caused me inexpressible trouble; my head was seized with a giddiness resembling intoxication.” Whoever suggested to Rousseau the idea of his essay, it was to him that the Academy of Dijon adjudged the prize. His paradoxes wounded many a writer, many a poet, many a would-be philosopher. But meanwhile all the literary and scientific society of Paris had been thrown by Rousseau’s arguments into a state of commotion.
[Illustration: JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU.]
Rousseau, however, instead of profiting by the striking success he had achieved, resolved in the first place to put in practice the principles of simplicity and even asceticism which he had expounded in his treatise. At the time of the essay’s being published he occupied the lucrative post of cashier to M. de Franceuil, one of the Farmers General. But he now refused to have anything to do with finance, preferring to gain his bread by copying music. This resolution did but increase his reputation and cause his writings to be in greater demand than ever. Soon afterwards, in 1762, his opera, _The Village Seer_ (_Le devin du village_), was represented at Fontainebleau with immense success. The king wished the author of the graceful pastoral to be presented to him, and a pension awaited him. But he turned his back on the seductions of fortune and resumed his copying. There were not wanting detractors, who saw in this fine spirit of independence simply the pride of Antisthenes visible through the holes in his coat.
In 1753 Rousseau published his “Letters on French Music” and his “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality.” Then he journeyed to Geneva, where he returned to Protestantism in order to recover the title of citizen, which in due time he lost once more, after the publication of “Emile.” Tired of the world, he now accepted an asylum which was offered to him by his friend, Madame d’Epinay, in the valley of Montmorency, where he wrote nearly the whole of his famous “Nouvelle Héloïse.” The work would doubtless have benefited by the omission of many a rhetorical phrase; but the passion for nature, the exalted delirium of the heart and the senses, the storms, the tears which it contained, were things so new that the whole generation allowed itself to be carried away with the transports of Rousseau. He had found inspiration for the book, it was said, in his unfortunate love for Madame d’Houdelot--a love which almost degenerated into a mental derangement and which commenced his series of misfortunes. Madame d’Epinay, who was then in relationship with Grimm, saw with no kindly eye the affection of Jean Jacques for another than she. Rousseau soon found his position so disagreeable that, breaking with Madame d’Epinay, he abruptly quitted her house although it was the depth of winter. Hospitality was offered to him at Montlouis, near Montmorency, and there he wrote his “Letter to d’Alembert on Stage Plays,” a pamphlet which caused a considerable stir. Voltaire was then the king of the theatre; and to attack one was to attack the other. Voltaire was enraged, and could not keep within bounds. He insulted his adversary, who, however, did not reply in the same tone. This quarrel, which ended to the advantage of Rousseau, had the effect of diverting his mind for a moment; but very soon he became once more a prey to that morbid melancholy and suspicion which were to accompany him to his grave, and which rendered the remainder of his life painful to contemplate. He died in 1788 at Ermenonville, whither he had been invited on a country visit by M. de Girardin, at a time when old age, infirmities, and misery had already driven him to distraction.
[Illustration: MADAME D’EPINAY.]
The eccentricities and weakness of his character, however, vanish in presence of his literary fame. Although his remains are not at Ermenonville, the place is often visited by strangers interested in Rousseau’s last days. M. Thiébaut de Berneaud, in his “Voyage à Ermenonville,” 1826, declares that when, eleven years earlier, in 1815, “the chief of one of the hostile armies arrived at Plessis-Belleville” and, examining his topographical map, found himself close to Ermenonville, he asked whether this was not the place where Jean Jacques Rousseau had breathed his last, and receiving an affirmative reply, declared that as long as there were Prussians in France Ermenonville should be exempt from war contributions. The unnamed warrior marched, says M. Thiébaut de Berneaud, towards the last abode of the sentimental philosopher, and, uncovering himself as he drew near, ordered his troops to treat Ermenonville, its inhabitants, and all that belonged to it, with respect--a command which was religiously observed.
Rousseau was one of the few distinguished men of letters in France who cared for country life, and he must be allowed to share with Bernardin de St. Pierre the credit of having introduced not only sentiment but landscape into the French novel. He could not have lived permanently in Paris, though he was a resident in the capital when he declared that if the officers of the crown insisted on his paying exorbitant taxes, he would go on to the boulevards, sit under a tree, and die of hunger. Even at that time he took constant rambles in the Bois de Vincennes, through which he had to pass to visit his friend Diderot, confined in the château.
Apart from the fine foliage and the exhilarating air which serve to attract visitors to Vincennes, the place is celebrated for its fortress, which neither centuries nor revolutions have swept away. The dungeon, which is now the only remnant of the citadel commenced by Philippe de Valois, and completed by Charles the Wise on the ruins of the castle to which Philippe Augustus used to resort in view of the pleasures of the chase, was formerly encircled by eight towers, grouped around its walls like vassals around their lord. These, however, have been demolished by revolutions and by time.
To-day the redoubtable citadel in which so many kings have sojourned is a military establishment, which includes an artillery arsenal, barracks, hospitals, a cannon foundry, a factory of arms, a château, a church, and a great number of store-rooms. Its precincts are immense. Other fortresses are hidden in the immediate vicinity, and guard the approaches. Artillerymen incessantly go and come between the fortress and the village and the village and the practice-ground.
Penetrating the sombre vault which leads from the door of entrance to the interior court, the visitor finds before him the ancient royal residence, whose façade preserves something of the majesty of antiquity. To the left stands the chapel built by Charles V. in imitation of the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris, and which he dedicated to the Trinity and the Virgin, the fencing-room, and the tower of the reservoir; to the right the formidable dungeon rears its head towards heaven.
In the space enclosed by these various constructions are stacked up, in faultless order, parallelograms of cannons and pyramids of bullets. Long rows of howitzers, their mouths directed skywards, are to be seen side by side with masses of enormous bombs. In the large neighbouring buildings are halls which contain, suspended from the walls, hooked up round the pillars, and symmetrically arranged in corners, a prodigious stock of guns, bayonets, and sabres. Everything shines and glitters: there is not a particle of dust anywhere. An army could here find sufficient weapons to invade a country. The church is close at hand. It recalls a peaceful and merciful divinity in a place consecrated to war. Prayers are uttered at a spot where men are incessantly trying to find how to kill the greatest number of their fellows in the shortest possible space of time.
The Gothic church, with its fine exterior masonry, is void of all ornamentation within. It gives one the impression of having been sacked at some stage in its history. In a lateral chapel there is a monument raised to the memory of the Duc d’Enghien.
What the Parisians, however, come particularly to see, what they love, what they visit with the greatest eagerness, is the dungeon. This old monument in stone is to them an object of worship. They envelop it with a fond curiosity, and, despite the horror they feel at the terrible scenes it has witnessed during so many centuries, they will not see it disappear without regret. In their imagination it is a legendary, monument, and, in all probability, if the Bastille had not been torn up from the soil by the Great Revolution, that prison-fortress would now have been preserved with the utmost care for the gratification of public curiosity.
No one finding himself at Vincennes after a country stroll fails to ascend to the summit of the dungeon. The visitor pants a little, perhaps, on reaching the platform which crowns it, but he is recompensed for his fatigue by the immense panorama which opens around him. There below, in that transparent vapour which the sun’s rays never more than half penetrate, those myriads of roofs, those monstrous domes, those belfries, that stubble of chimneys whence clouds of smoke are escaping, that distant and ceaseless din which reminds one of the waves breaking on some shore, proclaim the gayest city in the world. At the foot of the edifice the forest stretches away, and behind the screen of trees lies a limitless country, in which cultivated fields extend to the horizon. Everywhere orchards, hamlets, villages meet the eye. The Seine is not far off, and at no great distance, like a band of silver, the Marne meanders capriciously through an immense plain studded with clumps of trees.
On one side a view is obtained of Montreuil, famed for its peaches; on the other, by the river bank, a congregation of villas and cottages in picturesque disorder shows the site of Port-Creuil, where Frederic Soulié sought literary repose. At a little distance lies Saint-Maur, where verdure-loving Parisian business-men like to spend Sunday with their families. Some of them, indeed, reside there permanently; and year by year bricks and mortar may be seen to encroach further and further upon the surrounding country. Hard by is Saint-Mandé, where Armand Carrel died of the wound received in his duel with Emile de Girardin. His tomb is in the cemetery, where stands a statue in his honour.
If the gaze is now turned sharply towards Paris, it encounters, beyond Alfort and its schools, Charenton, celebrated for that mansion of which Sébastien Leblanc conceived the first idea in 1741, and, at the confluence of the Seine and the Marne, the château of Conflans, so long the residence of the Archbishop of Paris. In that immense space which lies beneath the eye there is scarcely a stone or a tree which does not recall some memory. All those roads, all those footpaths, have been trodden by men who were destined to leave a deep mark on the history of France. There is not a corner in this sylvan expanse where some civil or religious combat has not taken place. The Normans, the English, even the Cossacks have made incursions here. There is, according to the expression of one French writer, not a tuft of grass which has not been stained with human blood. Through the villages in sight princes and kings have passed. Torch-lit cortèges, conducting prisoners to the dungeon and to death, have alternated with triumphal processions, escorting sovereigns to their capital to the flourish of trumpets. On that hill yonder Charles VII. raised a castle--the Castle of Beauty--which preserves the memory of Agnes Sorel. In another part of the wood, near Créteil, a little house was once the residence of Odette, who consoled Charles VI. Saint-Mandé once possessed a little park in which Louis XIV., before he was the Louis XIV. of Versailles and of Madame de Maintenon, felt the beat of his own heart; for it was there that he met the fascinating de la Vallière. Under the shade of those old oaks many other beautiful phantoms may by the imaginative mind be seen gracefully gliding: Gabrielle d’Estrées, for instance, Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Longueville, and Madame de Pompadour.
The wood of Vincennes is to-day, of course, very different from what it was at the period when Philip Augustus, enamoured of the chase, had it surrounded by solid walls, in order to preserve the fallow deer and roebucks which he had imported from England. But if it has lost a great deal of its ancient character, together with some of its noblest old trees, it has gained in lakes, lawns, and avenues, where the laborious population of Paris love to lounge or stroll in a clear and recreative air.
Once arrived in the Bois de Boulogne, the visitor has not to travel far in order to see the Marne, that most capricious of French rivers. There is scarcely a Parisian who has not taken an exploring stroll along the banks of this stream, which conducts the oarsman to the very point whence he started. Artists and dreamers in search of leafy shade, of trees overhanging a limpid stream, of mills beating the clear water with their black wheels, know the Marne well. On summer days many a peal of laughter may be heard to proceed from behind some shrubbery. Tourists come to the place in quest of breakfast: they are not in want of appetite, and they have for companions youth and gaiety. Frocks which the wearers are not afraid of rumpling alternate with woollen blouses: the visitors row and sing, seeking, later on, some rustic restaurant where, beneath a green arbour, they can enjoy a bottle of white wine and a snack of fish, with an omelette, or some other light accessory.
On hot Sundays, beneath a cloudless sky, numberless picnics are held in the Bois de Vincennes--a thing unfashionable in the Bois de Boulogne, where visitors would consider it beneath their dignity to eat from a cloth spread on the green turf. At Vincennes excursionists do not stand on ceremony, and if the weather is sultry men may be seen lounging in their shirt sleeves, and taking, in other respects, an ease which the inhabitants of the Boulevards, who resort to the Bois de Boulogne, would contemplate with horror. If the families, however, who divert themselves at Vincennes do not rent a box at the opera, their unpretentious music probably affords them a pleasure none the less. It is a distinctly popular place to which they resort. You do not see there on Sunday new toilettes which evoke cries of astonishment: unpublished dresses dare not show themselves there, eccentric fashions do not bewilder the spectator’s eye. People walk about there without pretension, usually on foot, in family groups, arriving by omnibus or rail.
Sometimes, however, at the time of the races you see those coaches and calèches which four high-spirited horses draw at a gallop. Beautiful ladies and fine gentlemen are hastening to share in the pleasures of the course. This is the hour of lace and silk.
The Bois de Boulogne is associated with steeple-chasing, instead of the flat-racing of the Bois de Vincennes. The public, says the before-mentioned writer, “who are not conversant with the science of the turf, and scarcely wish to be so, better understand the courage and skill which the jockeys must display when they find themselves in presence of a stream or hurdle. Curiosity and emotion are both excited in connection with these exhibitions. People go as near as they can to the obstacle and measure its height or width with their eye. Some take up their stand at a fixed barrier; others wait at a bridge which precedes a ditch. The horses having started, a universal gaze follows them. Will they get over or not? All the spectators hold their breath, their hearts beating rapidly. Meanwhile the jockeys are dressed in purple, gold, and silver: they arrive like so many flying sparks. Their horses clear the obstacles. Hurrah! they are on the flat again. But if by accident both horse and rider get rolled on the grass, it must be confessed that the pleasure of the curious is, in this event, no less.”
Vincennes is celebrated for its charitable as well as its military establishments. Its Benevolent Institution, or “Bureau de Bienfaisance,” and its Orphan Home are both admirably organised. The fortress itself may, moreover, be regarded as in some measure an asylum. Its garrison includes a good number of aged, wounded and crippled soldiers; and it was commanded in the time of the first Napoleon by a daring old pensioner who had lost one of his legs on some former battle-field, and, in virtue of his wooden stump, was familiarly known as “Jambe de Bois.” Called upon to capitulate in 1814, he threatened to blow up the fortress unless the allied forces at once retired. They did so, and he ultimately capitulated on his own terms.
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