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

and men to bear witness, then read, with a foreign accent which was displeasing, a speech that was interrupted at rare intervals by murmurs of approval. He eulogized Cavaignac, and the eulogy was noted and applauded.

After a few minutes he descended from the tribune, not like Cavaignac, amid the acclamations of the Chamber, but amid an immense shout of “Long live the Republic!” Somebody shouted “Hurrah for the Constitution!”

Before leaving Louis Bonaparte went over to his former tutor, M. Vieillard, who was seated in the eighth section on the left, and shook hands with him. Then the President of the Assembly invited the committee to accompany the President of the Republic to his palace and have rendered to him the honours due to his rank. The word caused the Mountain to murmur. I shouted from my bench: “To his functions!”

The President of the Assembly announced that the President of the Republic had charged M. Odilon Barrot with the formation of a Cabinet, and that the names of the new Ministers would be announced to the Assembly in a Message; that, in fact, a supplement to the Moniteur would be distributed to the Representatives that very evening.

It was remarked, for everything was remarked on that day which began a decisive phase in the history of the country, that President Marrast called Louis Bonaparte “citizen” and Odilon Barrot “monsieur.”

Meanwhile the ushers, their chief Deponceau at their head, the officers of the Chamber, the questors, and among them General Lebreton in full uniform, had grouped themselves below the tribune; several Representatives had joined them; there was a stir indicating that Louis Bonaparte was about to leave the enclosure. A few Deputies rose. There were shouts of “Sit down! Sit down!”

Louis Bonaparte went out. The malcontents, to manifest their indifference, wanted to continue the debate on the Printing Office Bill. But the Assembly was too agitated even to remain seated. It rose in a tumult and the Chamber was soon empty. It was half past 4. The proceedings had lasted half an hour.

As I left the Assembly, alone, and avoided as a man who had disdained the opportunity to be a Minister, I passed in the outer hall, at the foot of the stairs, a group in which I noticed Montalembert, and also Changarnier in the uniform of a lieutenant-general of the National Guard. Changarnier had just been escorting Louis Bonaparte to the Elysee. I heard him say: “All passed off well.”

When I found myself in the Place de la Revolution, there were no longer either troops or crowd; all had disappeared. A few passers-by came from the Champs-Elysees. The night was dark and cold. A bitter wind blew from the river, and at the same time a heavy storm-cloud breaking in the west covered the horizon with silent flashes of lightning. A December wind with August lightning—such were the omens of that day.

 

III. THE FIRST OFFICIAL DINNER.

 

December 24, 1848.

Louis Bonaparte gave his first dinner last evening, Saturday the 23rd, two days after his elevation to the Presidency of the Republic.

The Chamber had adjourned for the Christmas holidays. I was at home in my new lodging in the Rue de la Tour d’Auvergne, occupied with I know not what bagatelles, totus in illis, when a letter addressed to me and brought by a dragoon was handed to me. I opened the envelope, and this is what I read:

The orderly officer on duty has the honour to inform Monsieur the General Changarnier that he is invited to dinner at the Elysee-National on Saturday, at 7 o’clock.

I wrote below it: “Delivered by mistake to M. Victor Hugo,” and sent the letter back by the dragoon who had brought it. An hour later came another letter from M. de Persigny, Prince Louis’s former companion in plots, to-day his private secretary. This letter contained profuse apologies for the error committed and advised me that I was among those invited. My letter had been addressed by mistake to M. Conti, the Representative from Corsica.

At the head of M. de Persigny’s letter, written with a pen, were the words: “Household of the President.”

I remarked that the form of these invitations was exactly similar to the form employed by King Louis Philippe. As I did not wish to do anything that might resemble intentional coldness, I dressed; it was half past 6, and I set out immediately for the Elysee.

Half past 7 struck as I arrived there.

As I passed I glanced at the sinister portal of the Praslin mansion adjoining the Elysee. The large green carriage entrance, enframed between two Doric pillars of the time of the Empire, was closed, gloomy, and vaguely outlined by the light of a street lamp. One of the double doors of the entrance to the Elysee was closed; two soldiers of the line were on guard. The court-yard was scarcely lighted, and a mason in his working clothes with a ladder on his shoulder was crossing it; nearly all the windows of the outhouses on the right had been broken, and were mended with paper. I entered by the door on the perron. Three servants in black coats received me; one opened the door, another took my mantle, the third said: “Monsieur, on the first floor!” I ascended the grand staircase. There were a carpet and flowers on it, but that chilly and unsettled air about it peculiar to places into which one is moving.

On the first floor an usher asked:

“Monsieur has come to dinner?”

“Yes,” I said. “Are they at table?”

“Yes, Monsieur.”

“In that case, I am off.”

“But, Monsieur,” exclaimed the usher, “nearly everybody arrived after the dinner had begun; go in. Monsieur is expected.”

I remarked this military and imperial punctuality, which used to be customary with Napoleon. With the Emperor 7 o’clock meant 7 o’clock.

I crossed the ante-chamber, then a salon, and entered the dining-room. It was a square room wainscotted in the Empire style with white wood. On the walls were engravings and pictures of very poor selection, among them “Mary Stuart listening to Rizzio,” by the painter Ducis. Around the room was a sideboard. In the middle was a long table with rounded ends at which about fifteen guests were seated. One end of the table, that furthest from the entrance, was raised, and here the President of the Republic was seated between two women, the Marquise de Hallays-Co�tquen, n�e Princess de Chimay (Tallien) being on his right, and Mme. Conti, mother of the Representative, on his left.

The President rose when I entered. I went up to him. We grasped each other’s hand.

“I have improvised this dinner,” he said. “I invited only a few dear friends, and I hoped that I could comprise you among them. I thank you for coming. You have come to me, as I went to you, simply. I thank you.”

He again grasped my hand. Prince de la Moskowa, who was next to General Changarnier, made room for me beside him, and I seated myself at the table. I ate quickly, for the President had interrupted the dinner to enable me to catch up with the company. The second course had been reached.

Opposite to me was General Rulhi�res, an ex-peer, the Representative Conti and Lucien Murat. The other guests were unknown to me. Among them was a young major of cavalry, decorated with the Legion of Honour. This major alone was in uniform; the others wore evening dress. The Prince had a rosette of the Legion of Honour in his buttonhole.

Everybody conversed with his neighbour. Louis Bonaparte appeared to prefer his neighbour on the right to his neighbour on the left. The Marquise de Hallays is thirty-six years old, and looks her age. Fine eyes, not much hair, an ugly mouth, white skin, a shapely neck, charming arms, the prettiest little hands in the world, admirable shoulders. At present she is separated from M. de Hallays. She has had eight children, the first seven by her husband. She was married fifteen years ago. During the early period of their marriage she used to fetch her husband from the drawing-room, even in the daytime, and take him off to bed. Sometimes a servant would enter and say: “Madame the Marquise is asking for Monsieur the Marquis.” The Marquis would obey the summons. This made the company who happened to be present laugh. To-day the Marquis and Marquise have fallen out.

“She was the mistress of Napoleon, son of Jerome, you know,” said Prince de la Moskowa to me, sotto voce, “now she is Louis’s mistress.”

“Well,” I answered, “changing a Napoleon for a Louis is an everyday occurrence.”

These bad puns did not prevent me from eating and observing.

The two women seated beside the President had square-topped chairs. The President’s chair was surmounted with a little round top. As I was about to draw some inference from this I looked at the other chairs and saw that four or five guests, myself among them, had chairs similar to that of the President. The chairs were covered with red velvet with gilt headed nails. A more serious thing I noticed was that everybody addressed the President of the Republic as “Monseigneur” and “your Highness.” I who had called him “Prince,” had the air of a demagogue.

When we rose from table the Prince asked after my wife, and then apologized profusely for the rusticity of the service.

“I am not yet installed,” he said. “The day before yesterday, when I arrived here, there was hardly a mattress for me to sleep upon.”

 

The dinner was a very ordinary one, and the Prince did well to excuse himself. The service was of common white china and the silverware bourgeois, worn, and gross. In the middle of the table was a rather fine vase of craquel�, ornamented with ormolu in the bad taste of the time of Louis XVI.

However, we heard music in an adjoining hall.

“It is a surprise,” said the President to us, “they are the musicians from the Opera.”

A minute afterwards programmes written with a pen were handed round. They indicated that the following five selections were being played:

1. Priere de la “Muette.” 2. Fantaisie sur des airs favoris de la “Reine Hortense.” 3. Final de “Robert Bruce”. 4. “Marche Republicaine.” 5. “La Victoire,” pas redoubl�.

In the rather uneasy state of mind I, like the whole of France, was in at that moment, I could not help remarking this “Victory” piece coming after the “Republican March.”

I rose from table still hungry.

We went into the grand salon, which was separated from the dining-room by the smaller salon that I had passed through on entering.

This grand salon was extremely ugly. It was white, with figures on panels, after the fashion of those of Pompeii, the whole of the furniture being in the Empire style with the exception of the armchairs, which were in tapestry and gold and in fairly good taste. There were three arched windows to which three large mirrors of the same shape at the other end of the salon formed pendants and one of which, the middle one, was a door. The window curtains were of fine white satin richly flowered.

While the Prince de la Moskowa and I were talking Socialism, the Mountain, Communism, etc., Louis Bonaparte came up and took me aside.

He asked me what I thought of the situation. I was reserved. I told him that a good beginning had been made; that the task was a difficult but a grand one; that what he had to do was to reassure the bourgeoisie and satisfy the people, to give tranquillity to the former, work to the latter, and life to all; that after the little governments, those of the elder Bourbons, Louis Philippe, and the Republic of February, a great one