The Memoirs of Victor Hugo - Victor Hugo (free reads .txt) 📗

attempted revolt at La Force,” added Lamartine. “You did better than suppress it, you forestalled it. You are loved and respected in your arrondissement.”

“My authority is wholly moral,” I rejoined; “it could but lose weight in becoming official. Besides, on no account would I dispossess M. Ernest Moreau, who has borne himself loyally and valiantly throughout this trouble.”

Lamartine and Arago insisted: “Do not refuse our brevet.”

“Very well,” said I, “I will take it—for the sake of the autographs; but it is understood that I keep it in my pocket.”

“Yes, keep it,” said Armand Marrast laughingly, “so that you can say that one day you were pair and the next day maire.”

Lamartine took me aside into the recess of a window.

“It is not a mairie I would like you to have, but a ministry. Victor Hugo, the Republic’s Minister of Instruction! Come now, since you say that you are Republican!”

“Republican—in principle. But in fact, I was yesterday peer of France, I was yesterday for the Regency, and, believing the Republic to be premature, I should be also for the Regency to-day.”

“Nations are above dynasties,” went on Lamartine. “I, too, have been a Royalist.”

“Yes, but you were a deputy, elected by the nation; I was a peer, appointed by the King.”

“The King in choosing you, under the terms of the Constitution, in one of the categories from which the Upper House was recruited, but honoured the peerage and also honoured himself.”

“I thank you,” said I, “but you look at things from the outside; I consider them in my conscience.”

We were interrupted by the noise of a prolonged fusillade which broke out suddenly on the square. A bullet smashed a window-pane above our heads.

“What is the matter now?” exclaimed Lamartine in sorrowful tones.

M. Armand Marrast and M. Marie went out to see what was going on.

“Ah! my friend,” continued Lamartine, “how heavy is this revolutionary power to bear! One has to assume such weighty and such sudden responsibilities before one’s conscience and in presence of history! I do not know how I have been living during the past ten days. Yesterday I had a few grey hairs; tomorrow they will be white.”

“Yes, but you are doing your duty as a man of genius grandly,” I commented.

In a few minutes M. Armand Marrast returned.

“It was not against us,” he said. “How the lamentable affray came about could not be explained to me. There was a collision, the rifles went off, why? Was it a misunderstanding, was it a quarrel between Socialists and Republicans? No one knows.”

“Are there any wounded?”

“Yes, and dead, too.”

A gloomy silence followed. I rose. “You have no doubt some measures to take?” I said.

“What measures?” answered Lamartine. “This morning we resolved to decree what you have already been able to do on a small scale in your quarter: the organization of the citizen’s National Guard—every Frenchman a soldier as well as a voter. But time is required, and meanwhile—” he pointed to the waves and eddies of heads surging on the square outside—“look, it is the sea!”

A boy wearing an apron entered and spoke to him in low tones.

“Ah! very good!” said Lamartine, “it is my luncheon. Will you share it with me, Hugo?”

“Thanks, I have already lunched.”

“I haven’t and I am dying of hunger. At least come and look on at the feast; I will let you go, afterwards.”

He showed me into a room that gave on to an interior court-yard. A gentle faced young man who was writing at a table rose and was about to withdraw. He was the young workman whom Louis Blanc had had attached to the Provisional Government.

“Stay where you are, Albert,” said Lamartine, “I have nothing of a private nature to say to Victor Hugo.”

We saluted each other, M. Albert and I.

The little waiter showed Lamartine a table upon which were some mutton cutlets in an earthenware dish, some bread, a bottle of wine and a glass. The whole came from a wineshop in the neighbourhood.

“Well,” exclaimed Lamartine, “what about a knife and fork?”

“I thought you had knives and forks here,” returned the boy. “I had trouble enough to bring the luncheon, and if I have got to go and fetch knives and forks—”

“Pshaw!” said Lamartine, “one must take things as they come!”

He broke the bread, took a cutlet by the bone and tore the meat with his teeth. When he had finished he threw the bone into the fireplace. In this manner he disposed of three cutlets, and drank two glasses of wine.

“You will agree with me that this is a primitive repast!” he said. “But it is an improvement on our supper last night. We had only bread and cheese among us, and we all drank water from the same chipped sugar-bowl. Which didn’t, it appears, prevent a newspaper this morning from denouncing the great orgy of the Provisional Government!”

 

I did not find Victor in the room where he was to have waited for me. I supposed that, having become tired of waiting, he had returned home alone.

When I issued on to the Place de Gr�ve the crowd was still excited and in a state of consternation at the inexplicable collision that had occurred an hour before. The body of a wounded man who had just expired was carried past me. They told me that it was the fifth. It was taken, as the other bodies had been taken, to the Salle Saint Jean, where the dead of the previous day to the number of over a hundred had been exposed.

Before returning to the Place Royale I made a tour for the purpose of visiting our guard-houses. Outside the Minimes Barracks a boy of about fifteen years, armed with the rifle of a soldier of the line, was proudly mounting guard. It seemed to me that I had seen him there in the morning or the day before.

“What!” I said, “are you doing sentry duty again?”

“No, not again; I haven’t yet been relieved.”

“You don’t say so. Why, how long have you been here?”

“Oh, about seventeen hours!”

“What! haven’t you slept? Haven’t you eaten?”

“Yes, I have had something to eat.”

“You went to get it, of course?”

“No, I didn’t, a sentry does not quit his post! This morning I shouted to the people in the shop across the way that I was hungry, and they brought me some bread.”

I hastened to have the brave child relieved from duty.

On arriving in the Place Royale I inquired for Victor. He had not returned. I was seized with a shudder of fear. I do not know why the vision of the dead who had been transported to the Salle Saint Jean should have come into my mind. What if my Victor had been caught in that bloody affray? I gave some pretext for going out again. Vacquerie was there; I told him of my anguish in a whisper, and he offered to accompany me.

First of all we called upon M. Froment-Meurice, whose establishment was in the Rue Lobau, next to the Hotel de Ville, and I asked him to have me admitted to the Salle Saint Jean. At first he sought to dissuade me from seeing the hideous sight; he had seen it the previous day and was still under the impression of the horror it inspired. I fancied his reluctance was a bad sign, that he was trying to keep something from me. This made me insist the more, and we went.

In the large Salle Saint Jean, transformed into a vast morgue, lay the long line of corpses upon camp bedsteads. For the most part they were unrecognisable. And I held the dreadful review, quaking in my shoes when one of the dead was young and slim with chestnut hair. Yes, the spectacle of the poor blood-stained dead was horrible indeed! But I could not describe it; all that I saw of each body was that it was not that of my child. At length I reached the last one, and breathed freely once more.

As I issued from the lugubrious place I saw Victor, very much alive, running towards me. When he heard the firing he had left the room where he was waiting for me, and not being able to find his way back, had been to see a friend.

 

II. EXPULSIONS AND ESCAPES.

May 3, 1848.

 

On February 24 the Duke and Duchess Decazes were literally driven from the Luxembourg. And by whom? By the very denizens of the palace, all employ�s of the Chamber of Peers, all appointed by the grand referendary. A rumour was circulated in the quarter that during the night the peers would commit some anti-revolutionary act, publish a proclamation, etc. The entire Faubourg Saint Jacques prepared to march against the Luxembourg. Hence, great terror. First the Duke and Duchess were begged, then pressed, then constrained to leave the palace.

“We will leave tomorrow. We do not know where to go. Let us pass the night here,” they said.

They were driven out.

They slept in a lodging-house. Next day they took up their abode at 9, Rue Verneuil.

M. Decazes was very ill. A week before he had undergone an operation. Mme. Decazes bore it all with cheerfulness and courage. This is a trait of character that women often display in trying situations brought about through the stupidity of men.

 

The ministers escaped, but not without difficulty. M. Duch�tel, in particular, had a great fright.

M. Guizot, three days previously, had quitted the Hotel des Capucines and installed himself at the Ministry of the Interior. He lived there en famille with M. Duch�tel.

On February 24, MM. Duch�tel and Guizot were about to sit down to luncheon when an usher rushed in with a frightened air. The head of the column of rioters was debouching from the Rue de Bourgogne. The two ministers left the table and managed to escape just in time by way of the garden. Their families followed them: M. Duch�tel’s young wife, M. Guizot’s aged mother, and the children.

A notable thing about this flight was that the luncheon of M. Guizot became the supper of M. Ledru-Rollin. It was not the first time that the Republic had eaten what had been served to the Monarchy.

Meanwhile the fugitives had taken the Rue Bellechasse. M. Guizot walked first, giving his arm to Mme. Duch�tel. His fur-lined overcoat was buttoned up and his hat as usual was stuck on the back of his head. He was easily recognisable. In the Rue Hillerin-Bertin, Mme. Duch�tel noticed that some men in blouses were gazing at M. Guizot in a singular manner, She led him into a doorway. It chanced that she knew the doorkeeper. They hid M. Guizot in an empty room on the fifth floor.

Here M. Guizot passed the day, but he could not stay there. One of his friends remembered a bookseller, a great admirer of M. Guizot, who in better days had often declared that he would devote himself to and give his life for him whom he called “a great man,” and that he only hoped the opportunity for doing so might present itself. This friend called upon him, reminded him of what he had said, and told him that the hour had come. The brave bookseller did not fail in what was expected of him. He placed his house at M. Guizot’s disposal and hid him there for ten whole days. At the end of that time the eight places in a compartment of a carriage on the Northern Railway were hired. M. Guizot made his way to the station at nightfall. The seven persons who were aiding in his escape