: THE GIFT OF MAY TREAT MORRISON IN MEMORY OF ALEXANDER F MORRISON J B.UAURIATCOJ d SouHT-Bosto^- MY LITERARY LIFE • • • • I • ,♦. • • • . • • • • • • • . • ' • • • • • • • • • ••• • » • I • « • • ••! •.. • • •.• • • • •;?••••• • • • 1 • • • < < Copyright, 1904, by D. APPLETON AND COMPANY PRINTED AT THE APPLETON PRESS NEW YORK, U. S. A. • •• • • • • • • » • • ■ •# * * • •• • . • • * * i •« * • • • • • • • • • • • • • ft t 4 l^t 3C CONTENTS I, II, III. IV, V. VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, uT XI, XII, XIII, o XIV.- XV, o XVI.- XVII, XVIII, XIX, -My early literary pursuits -I go to Paris -My further life in Paris -My contact with politics -I publish my book -i make a valuable friend -With the scientists . -More friends -Other drawing-rooms and Italian liberty -i make more friends — and enemies. -Literary acquaintances, and musical . -Wagner, Berlioz, and Edmond Adam -A crisis in my life . -Politics — art — music . -My health fails -I return to my old friends -The South and the sea again -i build a house by the sea -i tell of many things, and found my salon PARE 1 15 29 52 76 99 115 138 162 185 217 252 288 327 376 412 450 472 498 ,^9|( LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE MME. EdMOND ADAM . . Frontispiece From au etching by H. E. Lessore. George Sand 68 From an engraving by Nargeot. Daniel Stern (Mme. d'Agoult) . . . 100 From an engraving by Leopold Flameng. Edmond About 202 From a painting by Paul Baudry. Hector Berlioz 246 From an engraving by Guillermot, tils. Gustave Flaubert 318 From an etching by H. Toussaint. Jules Simon 378 From an engraving by L. Le Main. Prosper Merimee 412 From a lithograph by de Deveria. Charles Augustin Ste. Beuve . . . 468 From an etching by H. E. Lessore. MY LITERARY LIFE CHAPTER I MY EARLY LITERARY PURSUITS 1 HE house in which I was condemned to live through my unfortunate marriage was a most gloomy one. Its principal frontage looked as though it were pushed back to the end of a narrow court-yard by a building two stories higher. Behind the house was an immense and threatening wall that cast its shade over our very small garden. How often I thought, while living there, of my father's small house, so prettily framed in verdure, and of my grandmother's comfortable and spacious residence. I was to pass three years here, my husband having agreed to put in order the very litigious affairs of an aunt who had recently become a widow and who had left him some of her property. I knew no one in Soissons but this very small aunt, who had lost a very large husband. Everything [1] MY LITERARY LIFE he had left behind him was in accordance with his own size — horses, carriages, furniture, were all co- lossal — and Aunt Vatrin remained crushed even by the ghost of a disproportionate husband. Now, what could one do in such a house except to make dreams? I dreamed, I read, I tried to write. Fifteen months after my marriage I had the greatest joy of my life, when I became a mother. My father and husband became reconciled when my daughter was born. I nursed my little Alice, who was, alas! very delicate. I worked with her beside me or else I took her walks, in all kinds of weather, in little Aunt Vatrin's garden. The latter had rented a portion of her house and garden to Monsieur Riballier, the organist of the cathedral, and a composer of talent. Monsieur and Madame Riballier, who had no children, took a great fancy to my young daugh- ter and to me. He finished my musical education, and she amused my little Alice with toys that were constantly renewed. One day I took Monsieur Riballier some poetry I had written: Myosotis. He found it pretty, and composed a charming air to the words — tying, as it were, a ribbon of harmony around my little bou- quet of Forget-me-nots. [2] MY EARLY LITERARY PURSUITS He had it published by Hengel,* at Paris. Really at Paris! I was wild with delight. I can still see myself as I sang it, holding the published music and poetry of Myosotis in my hands and feasting my eyes on the published words, although I knew them by heart. Monsieur and Madame Riballier often enter- tained at their house during the summer the owners of the chateaux in the environs of Soissons. He was called " the marvellous organist," and he gave lessons to the young sons and daughters of the notable families round about. They had a recep- tion every week, at which five or six of his pupils would sing, and play on the organ and piano. One day the authoress of Myosotis sang the song, ac- companied by the composer. It was a great suc- cess, and they were encored twice. Among those present was Monsieur de Courval, who inquired about my " work," and said to me, " that a Comtesse de Courval had also been a wri- ter." Ah ! that " also," how much I was flattered by it. Monsieur de Courval invited me and Monsieur and Madame Riballier to spend a day at the Cha- teau de Courval, together with several of his * The principal musical publisher of Paris — Translator's note. [3] MY LITERARY LIFE friends who were present at the Riballiers' on that occasion. It was at Courval that I first heard the legend of Blanche de Coucy, about which I wrote my first work of length — about fifteen pages.. My father thought my Myosotis and my Blanche de Coucy rather good, but he advised me not to let them turn my head, " as they could not pass," he said, " as having been inspired by the age of Pericles." This jeering humiliated, but did not discourage me. On the contrary. I took up at that time some serious reading, which my father had reproached me for neglect- ing. For a year I had taken no interest in any- thing except poetry. I have said before * that my husband was a Posi- tivist. I was scarcely married before he began to fall upon me with his doctrines. I could not say a word without bringing upon myself some epithet, the sense of which I did not quite understand, through ignorance, but whose contempt I felt. It is difficult, now, to imagine the infatuation that Auguste Comte's partisans felt for him at that time. A Positivist held in his hands — and no one was allowed to question it — the past, the present, and * The Romance of my Childhood and Youth. [4] MY EARLY LITERARY PURSUITS the future. Science and philosophy, governed by the Positivist mind, bowed beneath the Master's ferule, the " one alone," who, amid all the great reformers of humanity, had understood " entire universality." All that the human mind thought it possessed, outside of positivism, must necessarily be dissolved in it: religion, knowledge, social prob- lems, etc. When Monsieur Lamessine pronounced the word humanity you felt crushed beneath it, because you were obliged to evoke at this word all that man had ever been since the first created one, all that he was at the present moment, all that he would be " world without end." To this he could not make me say " Amen." I listened, for a time, to these imposing affirmations, but finally they exasperated me to such a degree that I plunged headlong into the reading of Au- guste Comte's very ponderous and very numerous volumes. Oh, what wearisome length of phrases, how many oft-repeated adverbs weighed them down! How much easier to digest was Proudhon, whose works my father had made me read, and how much less overwhelming were the pamphleteer's demoli- tions than Auguste Comte's massive constructions. One can fancy what manner of distraction such daily reading was for a young woman. I was [5] MY LITERARY LIFE obliged to prove that I understood the " one Mas- ter." I was forced to discuss the double tendencies of egotism and self-interest, or those of altruists or unselfish persons, on the historical developments of these inclinations, the groundwork of humanity and the future basis of true justice, on the great classification of humanitarian periods, on the con- formation between Positivist philosophy and Re- publican ideas. Ah, no, no! Being a sincere Republican, I pro- tested strongly against this last theory, declaring with proofs in hand, that the political philosophy of Comtism was made up of authoritative ideas, and that it barred all the roads through which Democracy could pass. Positivism had already established this singular rule in the minds of its initiated: that they should not admit the discussion of any of its texts, but that by the example of their lives, guided by these texts, they might accommodate themselves, how- ever, to all manner of circumstances. On the one hand, my husband was enthusiastic in speaking of Clothilde de Vaux, and put on airs of mystical compunction, while on the other hand, he denied the power of love and of idealism. "The Master," converted by Clothilde, declared that life should be led by feeling, the disciple [6] MY EARLY LITERARY PURSUITS affirmed " that love was an emotion that tended to disappear." But it should not be adduced from this that the " Master " and disciple were not in perfect accord. I cannot describe with what disdain Monsieur Lamessine treated me, nor how many accusations of childishness he showered upon me when I spoke of my Homeric gods. "You are belated, in the metaphysical phase, in the search for the absolute — that is to say, in ab- surd ' primal and final causes,' " my husband said to me. I took Positivism in utter abhorrence at that time. " The Humanitarian doctrine," Monsieur Lamessine went on preaching, " is tangible. We know what it is, from whence it comes, and whither it is going. Immanent justice is a different thing from the partial, capricious justice of a Jehovah, a Jupiter, or an incomprehensible Threefold God; yes, quite a different thing from hypothetical eter- nal justice! To believe that the future will live from us, as we live from the past, to know that our bodies will go to fecundate Nature, as she has fecundated us, that is something certain, positive." "Phew ! all that is very illusive," I replied. " You drown yourself, your thoughts, your con- science, your morality, your responsibilities, in the [7] MY LITERARY LIFE ' universal ' because you are not upheld or bound by anything. You Positivists are fluctuating, you are infirm persons with weak eyelids, who only half raise them, and who only see what is beneath and around you, without ever looking upward. The humanity of your Auguste Comte is a half-blind humanity. It only conceives what it accepts. It legitimizes the law of the strongest, of the most audacious, even of the most contemptible. To arrest the search for the unknown, for what is in- comprehensible, and for all truths except those we can spell out ; to accept that everything ends, where interrogation becomes mysterious — ah! no; I will never accept that." " You intoxicate yourself with words whose sense you do not understand," Monsieur Lamessine said to me in a fit of anger. "All your ideas about research, the unknown, are very well known and already classed in their ancestral rank. The idea that morality is received from Heaven, that love of country comes from a circumscribed corner of the earth, ah ! that is thoroughly false. The fool- ish absurdities about religion and country have been discarded, and rejected into the past, and the clear minds of Positivists are forever delivered from them." I should have become idiotic had I continued to [8] MY EARLY LITERARY PURSUITS read Auguste Comte's works exclusively, and to discuss them. Happily, I had an adviser, a very intelligent man, the librarian of the town library, with whom I had become on friendly terms, and who guided my studies a little. Having found Auguste Comte's works in our library, I did not speak to him about them; but one day, being specially bored by my husband's oft-repeated conversation on this theme, I ques- tioned him about the " great Master " of Positiv- ism. " Oh ! as to that man," he said, " I have an espe- cial aversion to him. He ought to be shut up in a mad-house. To tell the truth, he was really crazy from 1826 to 1828. Saint-Simonism had already turned his brain, and he delivered popular lectures on astronomy that completely upset it. The calculation of probabilities has always been beyond his power. His religion of Humanity has but one object : to make himself a pope. His letters are written like pontifical briefs. In the Rue Mon- sieur-le-Prince, where he resides, he has an altar in his apartment, and he lives from it. He sup- ports himself by the religion he has invented. It is really amusing to see a man who has disowned all religions, ancient and modern, take one he has founded out of his pocket at the proper moment, [9] MY LITERARY LIFE for his own personal benefit. And then, besides, this materialist and positivist has become mystical, and is platonically in love with Clothilde de Vaux. He is simply a fraud." Some exceedingly bitter discussions between my husband and myself followed my librarian's revela- tions. When the house became no longer bearable, by reason of these disputes, I would go to pass a few days with my beloved aunts, Chivres being only a few leagues from Soissons. My daughter improved in health and took much pleasure there, on ac- count of the donkey, Rousset, the hens and rabbits. Aunt Sophie always felt the greatest interest in all that occupied my mind. I spoke to her of Auguste Comte, of my conjugal quarrels apropos of Positivism. She advised me not to reply by a single word to my husband on this subject. I fol- lowed her advice, and soon no more great discus- sions about Auguste Comte took place, except be- tween Monsieur Lamessine and my father when they met. Both being very violent, they waged veritable battles against each other. Every family, at this time, had some " system " to which it was devoted. My father, who was a phalansterian, desired the happiness of the major- ity. My husband, a Comtist, declared that a select [10] MY EARLY LITERARY PURSUITS few alone should govern the masses, with this prin- ciple : " Regulate the present by balancing the past against the future." On the theory, " No God, no King," they were both agreed ; but when my husband spoke of certain ideas of Auguste Comte's, which he had designated under the name of " revo- lutionary maladies," they had endless disputes. My father admired Littre, who refused to bow down to the " pontiff," and he made many jokes about Auguste Comte's love-affairs. Firstly, about his matrimonial misfortunes, and his choice of an extremely light woman as wife, and then on the passion of the old " Hindu priest " for the blond and langourous Clothilde de Vaux. My husband replied, "that what Auguste Comte felt for Clothilde was not passion, but the Positivist sympathy for a superior mind." And he related endless stories about the Master's chastity. " Involuntary chastity," replied my father, " idealism suffered with regret, a sorrowful conti- nency, with which he often bitterly reproached his lady-love, but which was imposed on him by this clever and romantic woman, who had had a legend invented about herself by an old corrupt man." My father discovered a book which he brought to me, and which, he said, would wash my mind clean of all the too positive insanities of Comtism. 2 [11] MY LITERARY LIFE It was Leconte de Lisle's Poemes Antiques. We could not praise the work enough, whose elevated inspiration was derived from pure Homeric sources. I wished Aunt Sophie to admire them also, but she had read somewhere that this " young author " had called Virgil " a Byzantine," and had written " that in their civilisation the Romans were not superior to the Dacians," and she refused to read a single page of it. " This gentleman," she said, " pretends that there has been no true poetry written since that of Sophocles, until his own. Lamartine, Victor Hugo, de Musset, not to speak of the present poets, count for nothing, it seems, according to this conceited young man. Don't speak of him to me, dear niece, don't speak of him ! " When, having returned to Soissons, I went to Aunt Vatrin's with my daughter and her nurse, I passed through a small street in which the Revenue Office was situated, the manager of which was Mon- sieur Ratisbonne, who was very intimate with the Under Prefect, Monsieur Papillon de la Ferte, the son of the author of a book on the Vie des Peintres, and who had been guillotined in 1794. The Under Prefect of Soissons said that one should make merry while one had the chance, as no one knew [12] MY EARLY LITERARY PURSUITS what might happen, in proof of which was his grandfather's unfortunate fate. These two men alarmed me very much by their haste to rush to the windows as I passed, and by their impressive bows. People did not flirt in the provinces in those days, and I would have been severely criticised had I merely smiled at these two gay bachelors, already past their prime. I became acquainted at that time with two of my best and most faithful friends — Monsieur de Mar- cere, then a very young barrister, who became later in life a minister of state, and with Lieutenant Guioth, who rose to the rank of a general and the commander of the 12th Army Corps. After the War of 1870 he became the aide-de-camp of the Duke d'Aumale, and was made officer of the Legion of Honour at Metz, for a brilliant feat of arms. He was born in Lorraine, and having always sus- pected Bazaine of treachery, he was able to en- lighten his commander-in-chief, the Duke d'Au- male, at the time of the dramatic court-martial. Guioth wrote out all the reports, we can imagine with what sorrow, for he had lost by the traitor's crime his province, his small country. Many years after, one day when the Duke d'Au- male was talking to me of the Bazaine court-mar- tial, and of Guioth, whom the Prince called " our [13] MY LITERARY LIFE friend," he repeated to me the words he had said at the time of the court-martial. " Guioth's conscience and mine are both full of indignation," and he added, " because the desper- ately ambitious man whom we were trying was per- fectly conscious of his acts, and of the harm that might result from them." " Do you believe, Prince, that this man realized that the fate of France was imperilled by what he was doing? " " Yes, and he preferred the most dastardly, dis- honourable personal intrigues to it." But we have wandered far from 1855. mi [14] mmffimm^ CHAPTER II I GO TO PARIS NE of my cousins, Madame Fischer, of Laon, came to see me as she was passing through Soissons, and as we were talking of literature, she spoke indignantly of a book, whose author was the son of the head editor of the Journal de l'Aisne. " This young fellow," she said, " has made our city, Laon, ridiculous forever. It is odious of him. In our own family we have had several of its mem- bers victimized by this Champflcury in his Bour- geois de Molinchard." As soon as my cousin had left, I ran to the library and found the dreadful book. As I knew the greater part of the persons caricatured in it, I was greatly amused. It is a chef-d'oeuvre of its kind. The greatest public event of that time, besides the Crimean War, which we of the opposition party continued to blame, and whose slow action we criti- cised, attributing it to the carelessness in the orders given, and to the insufficiency of the English army, the greatest event, as I have said, was the Uni- versal Exhibition. [15] MY LITERARY LIFE My husband advised me to wean my daughter, to leave her with my parents, and to go and join him in Paris, where he proposed at first to remain some months before taking up our final residence there. I was really to know Paris ! The thought alone terrified me. I felt my fate was to be decided there. My grandmother's spirit seemed to take possession of me as soon as Paris assumed a fateful place in my life. " Bah ! don't be afraid of it," my father said to me. " Step into it bravely. Look Paris in the face. One of two things will happen : either you will become somebody, as your unhappy grand- mother hoped and desired, and, in that case, the trials of your unfortunate marriage will not have been unnecessary, or you will break the chains of your moral servitude and will return to your father, with whom you will have, if not a happy life, at least one freed from your matrimonial responsibili- ties, which make me anxious for the future." My father only said anxious; but being aware of many things of which I was ignorant, he was already frightened. I knew this a long time after- ward by the zeal which Monsieur Lamessine evinced in putting into practice one of his favourite for- mulas : " We must aid social corruption, in order [16] I GO TO PARIS that a new vegetation may spring all the sooner from it." Paris ! " the height that you must climb," as my grandmother so often repeated to me. " Paris ! the Minotaur, that devours its victims without a cry escaping from the labyrinth," as grandfather said. Paris ! I was really in Paris, where the Univer- sal Exhibition was at its height. Twenty thou- sand exhibitors from thirty-six nations were gath- ered within a few hundred square feet at the Palais de l'Industrie, where they displayed the wonders of their productions, the riches of their countries, and their practical art under all its forms. I said over to myself the figures that were talked of, and the impressions that overcame me when, as a child, I first saw the sea, could alone compare with what I felt. It would be impossible to im- agine the bewilderment that a provincial woman experienced on coming to Paris for the first time at the sight of all the quantities of hitherto un- known things that rose before her eyes. One of our friends, who had been present at the opening of the Exhibition, had told me, on his return, of the overwhelming sensation he had felt; but, being a Republican, like my father, he saw many disadvantageous sides to it. It would de- [17] MY LITERARY LIFE liver up to ^strangers the secrets of our manufac- tures and would ruin trade in the provinces, for all those who were attracted by novelties would empty their woollen stockings to buy Parisian or foreign articles, and then the grotesque inauguration would make other nations laugh. " Had not Plon-Plon put on the uniform of a general of division brought back intact from the Crimea? " The smile with which the word intact was accentuated was sug- gestive. Those who lived at that time could alone understand the allusions to " bullets " and to " fright " which this word implied. " And then," added my friend, " the Emperor's famous speech to the said Prince, his cousin, which ended with these words: 'I rejoice to open this Temple of Peace, which invites all nations to concord.' ' Ah, no ! ' said sensible persons like ourselves, ' that is carrying things rather too far, to dare to speak thus during this interminable Crimean War, when they are killing Russians to please the Turks, and are getting killed themselves, for the sole benefit of English interests. To speak of peace at this time is a manner of challenge thrown out to public opinion. And the proof of this is, that Napoleon III is impatient at not being able to proclaim some brilliant feats of war, for Alma and Inkermann already date some time back. The splendid attack [18] I GO TO PARIS on the Mamelon Vert does not compensate in his eyes for the check the Franco-English forces have suffered. The Emperor,' they said, ' wished to re- lieve Pelissier of his command, but MacMahon, with his blunt frankness, prevented him.' " I repeated and wrote all the political gossip to my father, but I did not take part in the Parisians' jokes about the Palais de l'Industrie and its ugli- ness. " Paris is smothered since they have shut off her perspective view from the Champs-Elysees," was the current reproach ; " the provincials are encum- bering us ; the strangers are ruining us, putting up all the prices," they added, etc. What dominated my thoughts was wonderment. Two weeks had scarcely initiated me to the hun- dredth part of all I wished to know, and then there w.. ^e museums, a whole world in themselves! We lived at an hotel on the Place Louvois. As soon as I had a spare moment, I ran, alone, to the Museum of Antiquities. My gods were there, liv- ing, palpitating under the marble. I saw Grecian beauty, triumphant, made divine in the Venus of Milo. From that moment I was pursued by the desire to live in an apartment on the Rue de Rivoli, near the Court of the Louvre. What comfort I could [19] MY LITERARY LIFE find there, on the threshold of my temple! But my enthusiasm was dampened and crushed as soon as I crossed the Boulevards, or when I was hemmed in by the crowd, for I said to myself that never, never could I make the smallest place for myself in this multitude, in all this tumult, in the capital's immensity, where everything seemed to me full to overflowing and crowded to excess. I went to the Imperial Library. What urged me to go there when I knew I was of no account? Would a book conceived by the mind that my Aunt Sophie and my father had so strangely educated and formed ever find a special pigeon-hole amid so many chefs-dceuvres? The more I wandered about Paris, the more I became conscious of the impossi- bility for me to become somebody. The only thing which distinguished me from other people, and which I was obliged to recognise because it was so often said to me, was that my youthful presence was attractive. Madame Reca- mier's famous little chimney-sweeps became known to me. People looked at me and murmured a com- plimentary word ; but this manner of success would suddenly frighten me in this Paris, of whose dan- gers and allurements I was aware. I ask myself now, how we could have been pretty with our hair worn in flat bands and in knots at [20] I GO TO PARIS our necks, with ungraceful curls falling from them, and our frightful bonnets with strings and ruffles at the back? My husband took great pleasure in telling me of the daily scandals of Parisian life. I knew them all, perhaps exaggerated, and they terrified me, so that the smallest compliment seemed offensive to me. Those who addressed them to me certainly had their minds filled with the stories I knew my- self, and, at a first glance, thought me, no doubt, belonging to the class of " cocodettes." Brought up, as I had been, by my grandmother, mother and my aunts, all of whom were savagely punctilious where there was question of light conduct or of honour, I was fairly shamed when these compli- ments were made to me. The theatre was the one taste in common shared by my husband and myself; I laughed, I cried, I was enthusiastic when I went to one. I saw Fre- deric Lemaitre, of whom my father had spoken to me as the greatest actor of the century, at a bene- ficiary representation. He played an act of Les Trente ans, ou la vie d'un Jouer. The gambler came on the stage, his features drawn and deeply lined by suffering and by vice, a repulsive and heart- rending face at once; his clothes betrayed great poverty, although the arrangement of the rags he [21] MY LITERARY LIFE wore gave evidence that he tried to hide it. His hair was all dishevelled from sleeping in wretched hovels. His hand trembled and rested weakly on a stick, which from its form alone, and its worn- out appearance, revealed the aimless wanderings of a homeless man. All this was suggested, one felt it, and it inspired pity and disgust together. Frederic Lemaitre had no longer any teeth, he could hardly speak, but what expression in his face, what gestures ! All his acting showed such grief in degradation that it made you feel absolute an- guish to see him play this part. They said Fre- deric Lemaitre was finished. But such an artist never is. I saw Rachel at the Theatre Francais in all her tragic beauty, when she played Andromaque, at her last but one representation, on the 23d of July. She left a few days after for America. Eetion's daughter, Hector's wife, appeared be- fore me, as she is described by Homer, by Virgil, Euripides, Racine, and all those who have sung the praises of Astyanax's mother, the legitimized slave of Pyrrhus and Helenus. Never was virtue, sor- row, revolt, the latter dominated by the knowledge of fatality and felt by a modern heart, so vividly portrayed as by Rachel. Never was the woman of antiquity dressed in more noble folds, never was a [22] I GO TO PARIS Frenchwoman more elegantly draped. Rachel's charm and art were to personify Greece itself, and at the same time all the epochs in which Greece has been comprised. She is still present in my memory, as she has never ceased to be since I saw and heard her, whenever I have read of a daughter of Athens or of Troy. When Rachel had gone, the public rushed to see Ristori, who was splendidly supported by Rossi, then very young and unknown. He played Paolo to her Francesca da Rimini, and his success was almost equal to Ristori's. Those representations at the Salle Ventadour delighted me beyond words. Some persons with narrow minds, incapable of feeling a two-fold admiration, were determined to call Ristori a rival to Rachel. The two great tra- gediennes resembled each other in nothing. They could only be criticised by contrasting them. Madame Ristori in Myrrha, in Marie Stuart, in Alfieri's Antigone, was sublime, but everything was different in her and in Rachel: their acting, their comprehension of the character of a role, and their attitudes. Alfieri suppresses action; there are no confidants, no lovers, whom he deems useless. He creates situations by dialogues alone. Madame Ristori delineated the effects of passion externally, so to speak, by expressing its cruelties. Rachel [23] MY LITERARY LIFE graduated passion by increasing, restrained effects. Her idea of intensity was that it must be profound, and depicted half inwardly. Rachel personified tragedy, Ristori the tragic. Monsieur de Lamartine, Theophile Gautier, and Alexandre Dumas were loud in their admiration of Ristori. Legouve, Scribe, Jules Janin, all three, extolled her, a little the less for her talent, it was said, than to revenge themselves on Rachel. Monsieur Fould went to Ristori in the Emperor's name, begging her not to leave Paris, and endeav- ouring to persuade her that she would make a greater reputation for herself at the Theatre Fran- cais than anywhere else, above all, than in Italy. Madame Ristori quickly unravelled the various reasons which, outside of sincere admiration for her, influenced some of her friends to be exagger- atedly fanatical about her. Legouve and Scribe could not forgive Rachel, the first for the non- success of his Medee and both of them for her caprices about Adrienne Lecouvreur. Jules Janin still felt hurt about certain things she had said of him. Madame Ristori answered : " I am an Italian woman. I have the temperament of my race, its spontaneity, an accent that would be shocking in the house of Moliere. My education would need [24] I GO TO PARIS to be remade, for it is far from classical. I desire nothing more than what has been given to me in France. The kindness with which they have over- whelmed me, and which is expressed for my coun- try's art, for my nation's welfare, and for myself, makes me deeply grateful. How could I take a Frenchwoman's place, when it is as an Italian woman that I am specially happy at being ap- plauded?" Madame Ristori was one of the first to make oppressed Italy loved in France. Cavour wrote to her : " Brava ! in the name of Italy unified, which you serve by your success." The majority of the Imperialists were enthusiastic over Italy's struggles for liberty, and Victor Emmanuel won a place, even in our Republican admiration. Madame Ristori became a great friend of Le- gouve during her first sojourn in Paris. She had played his Adrienne Lecouvreur in Italy, and the following year his Medee, translated by Monta- nelli, with immense success in France. A few days before our departure from Paris, in the early part of September, we heard the news of the attack on Malakoff, the Russians' defeat, and of the taking of Sebastopol. The joy at the success of our army was great in all parties, but we were grieved at the thought that our victories [25] MY LITERARY LIFE were shared by the English. At the table d'hote, where we had become acquainted with several per- sons, a retired officer exclaimed, to every one's de- light : " At last we can become again friends with the Cossack's and Albion's enemy." Towards the end of our stay in Paris, my hus- band wished to take me to see Auguste Comte. He spoke to me about an " initiation," a " Comtist marriage," " a blessing on our union," which he desired me to accept, or undergo. I was so carried away with indignation that he did not press the subject. After I returned to Soissons, I took no interest save in things concerning Paris. What was taking place in literature, new philosophical ideas, and politics alone occupied my mind. I wrote long letters to my father about the " events." I cannot describe what highly important con- versations I had with my friend Pauline Barbereux, my daughter's godmother, whose father, a bar- rister, was my husband's companion in pleasures and in hunting, and who gave his wife the same cares, sorrows, and anxieties as those I had myself. Madame Barbereux shut herself up and wept. I occupied my mind and exchanged ideas with her daughter, who adored my little girl, whom we brought up together. Pauline Barbereux and my- [26] I GO TO PARIS self were enormously interested in the Treaty of Peace with Russia. As soon as we could sum up forty years between us, we considered our " ma- turity " complete, and, in our conversations to- gether, we recognised that we each held surprising views on European affairs. My father, to whom I communicated our supe- rior appreciation of things in general, did not seem to think them of much account. He was absorbed in the movement of public opinion. He had long since forgiven his " dear exiles," Ledru-Rollin and Louis Blanc, and was impatiently awaiting their return. The failure of Edmond About's Guillery, at the Theatre Francais, had delighted him. " When the students hissed the joker who made sport of contemporaneous Greece they also hissed the so-called son of Voltaire and the prop of Plon- Plon's anteroom. The too trifling writer, and Vol- taire's plagiarist, had learned at his own expense that popularity is not solely acquired by courting power, or by disrespect shown to a people just freed from the bloody clutches of a conqueror. The non-success of Guillery is entirely political," my father added, " and is also a protestation di- rected against the author's personality, for the play itself, it seems, is good, and Got is marvellous in it." 3 [27] MY LITERARY LIFE The opposition journals cried out loudly against Guillery, its immorality, and against the influence of Imperial corruption, " which was filtering through everything more and more. There were such scandalous things in Edmond About's play," they wrote, " that they could not be repeated ex- cept with veiled faces." Every one wished to hear them, but proper-minded persons did not dare to smile at them. [28] CHAPTER III MY FURTHER LIFE IN PARIS 1 EBRUARY had come, and Pauline Barbe- reux and I continued to read and talk to- gether. My daughter, who was eighteen months old, would play with our journals, which we would give her, and would accompany our conversations with a sort of monotonous chant that delighted us. Alphonse Karr was publishing at this time week- ly papers in the Siecle which recalled his Guepes, under the title of Bourdonnements. He criticised crinoline with a great deal of wit and common sense at once. I had courageously resisted the " steel circle," the amplitude of starched petticoats seem- ing preferable to me, not because men loudly ap- plauded my resistance, for I was not bent on pleas- ing them, but because I found the fashion gro- tesque. In one of his articles, Alphonse Karr de- clared " that there was not a single young or pretty woman in France who did not wear crinoline," whose indiscreet inconveniences he set forth, as shown in stairways, in descending from or getting into a carriage, or when a woman sat down in a too narrow chair. [29] MY LITERARY LIFE Pauline Barbereux used to bring me the Siecle, her father being a subscriber to it. She envied me my starched petticoats and detested crinoline, which her mother made her wear as being " more proper." We read Alphonse Karr's article in turn, out loud. At the passage, " there is not a single young or pretty woman in France who does not wear crinoline," I said to my friend : " I sup- pose I should write to Alphonse Karr that there is myself?" "Yes, yes, do!" she cried, and I had soon finished my letter. Of course, I did not intend to sign it, so I expatiated complacently on my good looks in the note that accompanied my Reflections. " Yes, Monsieur, there is a pretty woman, twenty years old, who does not wear, and who has never worn, crinoline. There is one in France, in the provinces, and it is myself — Ju- liette." I took the liberty of writing a number of re- flections on woman's role in our epoch. I imitated Alphonse Karr's style as much as I possibly could, and I read my rough copy to Pauline. " Ah, ah, ah ! " cried my little Alice. Pauline declared the letter superb; she took it from me and dictated it to me solemnly, while I copied it on some gorgeous paper. Having read " the article," as Pauline baptized it, a second time, [30] MY FURTHER LIFE IN PARIS I placed it tenderly in a large envelope, sealed it with a beautiful seal bearing the name of Juliette, and we carried our missive to the post-office. How Pauline and I counted the very hours of the next eight days cannot be described. Would Alphonse Karr speak of my answer? All the week such discussions as we had on the possibilities of this or that! I had dreamed of Myosotis the night preceding the day on which the Bourdonnements would ap- pear. I thought it a good sign. Would Paris read, on awakening on the 20th of February, 1856, some prose by "Juliette"? But on that day, Pauline entered my room, pale, scarcely able to hold herself up. The Siecle trembled in her hand. " It is in it, Juliette ! The whole of it is in it! " The whole of it? We stood, looking at one another, each one hold- ing an end of the paper. We took two chairs, which we placed close together; we unfolded the Siecle. My entire letter was in it. I read it, Pau- line reread it. Not a word had been changed ! I burst into tears. Pauline wept. My little Alice, who was playing on the floor, cried at seeing our tears ; but her godmother sang to her and con- soled her, I thought of my beloved grandmother, [31] MY LITERARY LIFE who was dead, for it was in this very room that she had appeared to me, and I cried out: " Grandmother, I will be a writer ! " I sent the article to my father, and explained to him the reason for my writing it. " At last," he replied, " I see in this, for the first time, a promise of talent." The birth of the Prince Imperial, with the Pope as his godfather, made my father furious. " There was an heir to the Empire, and he was vowed to papacy from his birth! Was it not all abomi- nable?" The time for us to leave Soissons drew near. In a few months my fate would be decided ; we were going to live in Paris. I read with feverish haste all that I could lay my hands on, knowing that I should not have the same leisure at Paris. The year sped by rapidly. While my husband was looking about in Paris for an apartment, which he wished, like myself, near the Louvre, " astride the two banks," as he said, I went with my daughter to pass three months at Chauny. I heard there, with many unknown details, of the assassination of the Archbishop of Paris by Verger. This Verger was a protege of one of my father's [32] MY FURTHER LIFE IN PARIS companions at the Seminary of Beauvais, with whom he had remained friendly. This companion, who belonged to the " Missions," and who died later in China, frightfully martyrized, wrote a long letter to my father, in which he pleaded extenua- ting circumstances for Verger. My father had his own ideas about it, and indignantly condemned the act. When I left Chauny with my daughter, to join my husband in Paris, I travelled with Madame Ugalde in the same railway carriage. She talked to me of my daughter, of her own, then of her happy home, and of Fiammina, by Mario Uchard, which had just been played at the Theatre Fran- cais, and about which all Paris was wild. The celebrated Galatee and I, a bourgeoise, were both agreed on this point: that no matter how many passions an actress might feel, no matter what her love for celebrity might be, she was emi- nently culpable when she abandoned her child, as Fiammina did. It is well known that Mario Uchard wrote his own story in this play, and that Fiam- mina was Madeleine Brohan. At last I was living in Paris, Rue de Rivoli, opposite to the Louvre. If my grandmother had been still living, she would have inspired me with some of the confidence she felt in myself. [33] MY LITERARY LIFE During the first days, I had but two sensations: that of being isolated in this immense city, and of being oppressed by the noise made by others. I knew no one. Those of my husband's friends whom he presented to me I thought odious. They talked of nothing but business, of easy or difficult money- making. I ought, however, to have been satisfied. One of my dearest desires was realized: I was very near to the Museum of Antiquities, to the temple of my gods. We had a balcony, and as soon as I would re- turn from my visit to the Tuileries with my daugh- ter, I took up my abode on it, in order to grow accustomed to the noises of Paris, that resounded in my brain as though in a metal vase. I suffered from dreadful neuralgia, which a physician in the quarter finally cured. In talking with Doctor de Bonnard, I discovered that he was in correspond- ence with my father apropos of a pamphlet of the latter's concerning typhoid fever, of which he had made marvellous cures. This pamphlet he had sent to every doctor in France. Doctor de Bonnard became my friend. He ad- vised me, as I wrote poetry, to become a member of the Union des Poetes. He was very intimate with Emile Richebourg, a member, who introduced me to the society. Richebourg wrote poetry in a [34] MY FURTHER LIFE IN PARIS light vein and was, they said, a protege of old Beranger. He took me one day to see the author of the songs my grandfather sang, up to the very time of his death, and whom he called, lisping sol- emnly, " the Emperor's poet," and whom my fa- ther named " the poet of liberty and of the peo- ple." I never met a more charming, fatherly, or simple old man, or one kinder, although in a sar- castic way. I took him what I considered my " finest inspiration." After reading it, he clasped my hands and said : " My child, you will never be a poet, but you may be a writer." The future hope did not mitigate the criticism. But just as Richebourg had smiled at Beranger's severity to me, and at my unhappy air, so did I smile at him in return, when Beranger added : " It is just like my dear Richebourg, who sincerely thinks himself a poet, a charming poet of light verses! Now, I predict that he will be an ultra- dramatic novel writer, since I heard him relate the story of an assassination he had seen." Beranger was a prophet. Emile Richebourg wrote many dramatic plays and novels, and is spoken of as " the author of L'Enfant du Fau- bourg, which appeared in Le Petit Journal, where it had great success. The popular song-maker had divined the popular novel-writer. [35] MY LITERARY LIFE Beranger said to me, when I left him : " Good- bye, my child. You will not be offended with me long." I asked him, sadly, why " good-bye " and not " till we meet again "? Had I displeased him? Shrugging his shoulders, and looking out of the open window, he replied : " I think I shall go be- fore long to see ' the God of good people.' " He died soon after. I wrote no more poetry, and gradually gave up going to the Union des Poetes. Richebourg, also, withdrew from it, and soon after he told me, one day, that he had begun to write a novel — Lucienne. I became acquainted at this time, again through Doctor de Bonnard, with Charles Fauvety, the founder and editor of La Revue Philosophique. There was a gathering once a week at his house, in the Rue de la Michodiere, where they talked and discussed philosophy and social science. These questions had always interested me. Madame Jenny d'Hericourt, who had acquired deserved authority in this circle from her serious studies, could not bear that I should take part in debates in which " the most serious questions were proposed and which," she said, " demanded mature knowl- edge with which to answer them." Both Monsieur Renouvier and Monsieur Fauvety were much [36] MY FURTHER LIFE IN PARIS amused at this rivalry, that existed only in Ma- dame d'Hericourt's mind, whose superiority I frankly admitted, but as she became more and more bitter every week, sometimes I lost patience. There was a word in these discussions of which Madame d'Hericourt made too frequent use, which was the word antinomy. Monsieur Renouvier often spoke of " synthesis, of contrary things, of the different attributes that could be observed at one and the same time, in one human being." Madame d'Hericourt's " antino- mies," as can be supposed, easily found a place in these discussions. Monsieur Renouvier had contributed largely to the Encyclopedic Nouvelle, founded by Pierre Le- roux and Jean Reynaud. He had been writing for three years on his great work, Essais de Cri- tique Generale, which he did not finish until many years later, and he also wrote for Monsieur Fau- vety's Revue Philosophique, of which he was the most important collaborator. Renouvier was con- sidered the most erudite of all the philosophers of that epoch. He was pronounced superior to Victor Cousin, from whose theories he had separated him- self by attacking eclecticism as a doctrine which led to the abasement of man's character. Renouvier was the first to establish, in most admirable deduc- [37] atvi MY LITERARY LIFE tions, the connection of the philosophic doctrines of each epoch with the state of science of their times. His ambition was to reform Kantism, and to replace philosophy by criticism. Although admitting, with Kant, that our knowledge cannot go beyond phe- nomena, he was not a Kantist ; although recog- nising with Auguste Comte that the search for the absolute led to an abyss of error, he was not a Positivist. He condemned the materialism of posi- tivism severely. He affirmed the idea, of course, which Kant and Auguste Comte did not accept, and he separated from them both by a very haught- ily expressed opinion, " I establish," he said, " be- tween certitude and faith, between belief and will, an immense connection." I felt great admiration for Monsieur Renouvier. He had a noble, liberal mind, eager for truth; he possessed strong opinions, but without sectarian- ism of any kind, which was the besetting sin of the writers in the Revue Philosophique, and espe- cially of Madame Jenny d'Hericourt. One of her bugbears was Proudhon, of whom she could never speak without growing angry. She was the au- thor of a valuable work on the theories of the great dialectician, which I had read, and she was inexpressibly irritated with me because I had had the audacity to speak to her of this book. All [38] MY FURTHER LIFE IN PARIS my early youth had been passed in battling with my father about Proudhon. I knew all the phases of his mind, but this Madame d'Hericourt would never admit. " Do you see that silly jade who pretends to explain Proudhon to me," she said to Monsieur Fauvety, who repeated the conversation to me. " She does not mean to explain him to you, she is only proving to you that she knows him and can pass judgment on your book," replied Monsieur Fauvety. " A woman of her age know Proudhon ! Oh, come now ; you have been prompting her ! " Madame Fauvety was an intelligent, intellectual woman. She had received a first prize for tragedy at the Conservatoire, and some persons had endeav- oured, a few years before, to rank her as a rival to Rachel. A success she had obtained, and which was brought about especially by a party of friends, induced her to believe that she was, in truth, if not superior to Rachel, at least equal to "Phedre." But Rachel soon put aside this so-called rival. Madame Fauvety thought it was the Empire and Monsieur de Morny, who had sacrificed her to Rachel, and was consequently one of the most ar- dent among us to take up arms against " the reign of pleasure." [39] MY LITERARY LIFE The Fauvetys had a country house at Asnieres, where they lived during the summer, and where they went in winter, when the weather permitted, to pass Sundays and to exercise their " children." The " children " were two handsome dogs, one very small, the other very large. One day I received the following note from Madame Fauvety : " Come to me as soon as you possibly can; we have lost one of our ' children.' " I went to the Rue de la Michodiere. " Zozo," Madame Fauvety said to me, " has disappeared since yesterday morning. You must help me to find him by going to a fortune-teller. I am afraid of sorcerers ; Fauvety is strong-minded, and laughs at me about this plan, but, nevertheless, he will be glad, I know, if some one will consult a clair- voyant for us. Go to Edmond, Rue Fontaine, about poor Zozo, I beseech you. Will you go? " " Very willingly," I replied. I said to myself, as I was walking to see Ed- mond, these persons are all shameful charlatans. They have accomplices in the anterooms. I will not answer a word, not even a yes or a no, if any one speaks to me. I arrived at Edmond's residence, and was ushered into a very dark room. I sat down. Three per- sons were to go in to consult him before me, and [40] MY FURTHER LIFE IN PARIS several others arrived after me. They all seemed much impressed and asked each other many ques- tions. At the end of a quarter of an hour I could have told them all their fortunes. At last my turn came. The drapery over the door was raised for the fourth time, and I went where the three other persons had gone, and whom I did not see again. I entered a rather large drawing-room, sombre in spite of its coloured-glass windows. Edmond was tall and very handsome in his black velvet tunic. His eyes had an earnest and enveloping gaze. After motioning me to sit down, he did likewise, and began playing with some cards, to show, I thought, his beautiful hands. An hour-glass, sev- eral stuffed owls, and the symbolical chain Edmond wore over his tunic attracted my attention. We looked attentively at each other. Silence still reigned between us. " Cut," he said, presenting me the cards. I cut them, and then, holding his cards in his hands: " You have come," he said at length, slowly, " about a dog." I started. " The dog is not lost," he continued. " He has gone back to the country, whither he went to see one of his friends. A lady met him, caught him by the collar, and wishes to keep him. He is now [41] MY LITERARY LIFE tied up, but after six weeks she will think he has grown accustomed to the place, and will let him loose. He will escape and go back to the gate of his master's garden. They must be warned, so that he can be let in." I rose and thanked him. " But, madame, I have not finished." Edmond added : " I must tell you your fortune." " My fortune will not be a good one to tell." " It will be good, as you will hear." " Ah, no ! " I replied, moving toward the door. Edmond did not move. " You are fond of formulas," he said. " This is one of yours : ' We are charlatans.' " " I have not said so to you." " Yes, charlatans, when we endeavour to disen- tangle the destiny of a star from out the mazes of the Milky Way." I approached him. " But when we have a star visible to the naked eye " "What! am I a visible star?" I sat down. " You see, I was right," said Edmond, smiling, and then he made me draw cards from out his pack, and told me that in a year I would suddenly become well known from a book I would write, in [42] MY FURTHER LIFE IN PARIS answer to one that was being written at that very moment, and then, almost year by year, he pre- dicted to me the life I have since led. Madame Fauvety was delighted at the news I took her, and even the sceptical Fauvety declared they would search no longer for the dog, but would wait for the six weeks to expire, in order to prove the truth of the sorcerer's predictions. We swore to each other to keep all this a secret. When I returned home I found my mother had arrived to see about a loan my husband had asked my father to make him. Edmond had spoken to me of this, and had said : " Never lend money except to those who can give you guarantees; on no account to any others." I told my mother, who believed strongly in pre- dictions, all that Edmond had said to me, and she wrote it down and took it to my father, who laughed at my credulity in such a quizzing way that I finally lost patience. I made a bet with him that the dog would be found, leaving each one of us free to choose what the forfeit would be, and my choice was that he should pay for the publica- tion of my famous first book, for I then supposed that I would be obliged to pay for the cost of publishing it. One fine day the dog went and barked at Ma- 4 [43] MY LITERARY LIFE dame Fauvety's garden gate. She had counted the days, and had gone there the day before the six weeks had expired. I was at once informed of Zozo's having been found, and I confess I felt some emotion on learning the news. Did it not make it possible that the other predictions might come true? When I went, the day after, to my friends' evening reception, Zozo recognised me. His large eyes seemed more expressive than ever, and some- what tinged with sorcery. That evening, Messrs. Fauvety and Renouvier talked of Taine, who had just published his Essais de Critique et d'Histoire. Only a year had elapsed between this volume, a veritable monument of knowledge, and the preceding sensational appear- ance of Les Philosophes Francais. In speaking of the Essais, Monsieur Renouvier again expressed his admiration for the Philosophes. " The young writers are admirable, most admirable," he said, and their precursors, such as myself, rarely have the happiness I feel in being able to count on their disciples. I had something to do with hatch- ing Taine, but as a hen hatches a duck. He was really too severe on Cousin." " Yes, almost cruel," added Monsieur Fauvety, " and you yourself were not too tender toward [44] MY FURTHER LIFE IN PARIS him ; but his definition of eclecticism, ' a system of philosophy which consists in having none,' is a stroke of wit, and a proof of French common sense, that will never be surpassed. These simple words became the ' Shut Sesame ' of the temple erected to Cousin by University adulation." " What I reproach Taine with," answered Mon- sieur Renouvier, " and which is apparent in every- thing he writes, is his hatred of the French Revo- lution, of democracy, and of the masses. He be- comes in this wise a champion of positivism. The theory that a government should be formed of a chosen few will enlist him among the disciples of Auguste Comte. It will be a pity, for see how much time Littre has lost in getting rid of Comt- ist ideas." " No, no," Monsieur Fauvety replied ; " Taine will never be enlisted in that party. The Essais de Critique are a fresh proof of it. What inde- pendence, what individuality of ideas in his criti- cisms and in his style! Taine will ever be a hope and a dread to all philosophical systems. He has taken a whip in hand and will make himself the executioner, and during the next half century he will flagellate all ideas that have deteriorated by usage. I, who am a philosopher, fear only him, and have confidence but in him alone." [45] MY LITERARY LIFE Madame Fauvety, naturally, liked to discuss the theatre. She knew every play that was produced, but, with a taste peculiar to herself, she always waited until the last performances were announced before she went to see them. After she had read all the reviews about them, " and felt," as she said, " that the actors, from having played their parts for a long time, had become thoroughly identified with their roles," she went to see the play, and then felt she could criticise its merits in a proper way. The first time she took me to the Theatre Francais we saw Fiammina, of which Madame Ugalde had spoken to me. The younger Dumas was her fa- vourite author. She talked of nothing else but of him during the entre actes and of Fiammina. She was enthusiastic over the Dame aux Camelias, Diane de Lys, and, above all, over the Question d' Argent, which had been played at the beginning of the year. " The younger Dumas's work," she said, " has a particular signification. It is social." Living among philosophers, and taking part in their discussions, she delighted in argument. " As Catholicism," she said, " grows more mate- rial, the spirit of Christianity will enlighten us the more. Pity felt for sins emanates from Jesus. The younger Dumas is a true Christian, for he is merciful to Magdalen." [46] MY FURTHER LIFE IN PARIS One of my friends belonging to the " Union des Poetes " presented a young artist to me, a pupil of Ary Scheffer's, who was sometimes given to writing poetry, who had thought of becoming a member of the " Union " and wished to know why I was about to leave it. His name was Claudius Popelin, and he had already painted several pic- tures that had been much remarked : a Dante read- ing his poems to Giotto, etc. Son of a rich manu- facturer, handsome, elegant, very artistic, he was destined to rise to a high Parisian reputation. He delighted to ridicule the dress we were then doomed to wear, and I made him read my letter to Al- phonse Karr, which greatly pleased him. I was a little less rotund than my contempora- ries, but Claudius Popelin thought I was not yet enough " like a true woman," as he said, and he declared I ought to put myself at the head of a league of " Gaulish " protestation against crino- line, as having Velleda's type, my mission was clearly indicated. " Certainly," he added, " you are less rotund than the others, but you still resemble a beetle, with a small head and an enormous paunch." I can still remember how delighted I was to re- ceive from Alexandre Weill an invitation to an " travestied ball," as they said in those days. [47] MY LITERARY LIFE Richebourg had procured it for me. I had never worn a costume. My husband consented to take me only on condition that he might go in ordinary evening dress. Monsieur Weill refused the per- mission to Richebourg, but he confided to him that there would be coloured silk blouses and belts pro- vided for the recalcitrant guests, and that he would array them in them when they arrived. I took good care not to mention this to Monsieur Lames- sine. I at first wished to go to the ball as Nausicaa, my father having so advised me; but Claudius Popelin, who was also invited, told me that he was going as Vercingetorix, as he resembled him, and that I must go as Velleda, and he drew me such a pretty and simple costume that I finally selected it. All artistic and literary Paris was to be present at Alexandre Weill's ball; the journals all spoke of it, and I was very proud at having been invited. Monsieur Alexandre Weill lived in the Faubourg St. Honore. He was an Alsatian, and, having been educated in Germany, he had at first remained in that country, whence he wrote for the jour- nals and Socialist reviews, of Leipsic, Cologne and Stuttgart, Francophiles at that time! Alexandre Dumas having met him in Frankfort, during one of his numerous travels, had persuaded him to live [48] MY FURTHER LIFE IN PARIS in Paris, where he soon made himself a position in Parisian journalism. He wrote for the Gazette de France, then very eclectic, and, being rich by his wife, one of the most fashionable milliners in Paris, he entertained a great deal and very hand- somely. I wore Velleda's long white robe, and, as my father had never allowed me to wear corsets, I was quite at my ease in a garment whose folds were simply held about the waist by a narrow gold belt, from which hung a gilded sickle. My hair, of dark chestnut colour, tinged with red, fell down un- bound, and I wore a crown of mistletoe. My arms, for the first time in my life, were bare up to the shoulder, for, at that time, even at balls, they wore small sleeves. My husband consented to wear a blouse, Monsieur Weill kindly dressing him in it. But I was very much confused when the master of the house, taking me by the hand, fairly dragged me into the middle of the drawing-room, crying out: " Velleda ! " Vercingetorix was already there, and he and a number of artists, whom he presented to me, gath- ered round me, and complimented me very warmly for having chosen a costume so well suited to my type. [49] MY LITERARY LIFE I looked for Madame Weill, to whom I had yet not been able to speak, and whom I only knew slightly from having once made her a short visit, and I was, besides, impatient to get free from the circle that surrounded me, and where I received too many compliments about my arms. Thanks to Vercingetorix, whose help I claimed, I escaped from the serried crowd of painters. I first found Alex- andre Weill, who pointed me out to a little old man, to whom he said, as I approached them, leav- ing Vercingetorix's arm: " Shall I introduce you? " " No, no," replied the old gentleman, " I am afraid of her ! " " Afraid of me, Monsieur," I said, laughing. "Why?" And then Monsieur Weill introduced . . . Mey- erbeer to me! I was an enthusiastic admirer of Meyerbeer, and I told him so. He was embarrassed by his accent, and was both timid and reserved, and he said to me, hesitatingly, that I should not say such things to him. They were too complimentary, coming from me. Alexandre Weill laughed and exclaimed : " Love at first sight ! Love at first sight ! " Mey- erbeer hurried away. " You see," Alexandre Weill said to me, " when [50] MY FURTHER LIFE IN PARIS you entered the room, he was thunderstruck, for he is even a greater poet than he is a great musi- cian, and he has thought for a long time of crea- ting the role of Velleda, and when he saw you, he came and said to me, as though frightened : " ' She will make me forget my Seleka ! I am too old to fall in love with a new face, even in Art. I never wish to see that woman again.' " " Let us find him," I said. " He must resusci- tate Velleda." Meyerbeer had disappeared. Every morning after the ball, I received, during many months, a little bouquet of violets, and with the first one these simple words : a A tender souvenir to Velleda. " Meyerbeer." Later he sent me a box for the first performance of the Pardon de Ploermel, but I never saw him again. [51] CHAPTER IV MY CONTACT WITH POLITICS HOLITICS were a burning question between those who took the oath of allegiance to the Empire and those who refused to take it. In June, when the elections were to take place, a com- mittee of old Republicans decided to make an ap- peal to the Parisians with regard to the oath- taking, and drew up a list of nine candidates faith- ful to the principle of not taking the oath. Monsieur Nefftzer, editor of la Presse, and Mon- sieur Havin, manager of Le Siecle, offered a seat to Emile Ollivier, son of Demosthene Ollivier, the old Republican and exile of 1848. This excited us immensely. Emile Ollivier, through his father's influence, who enjoyed great popularity in the South, had been made commissary of the Govern- ment at Marseilles by Ledru-Rollin. Although, since those days, Emile Ollivier had endeavoured to make a high position for himself, he was, at that time, at very low mark. All parties com- plained of him, and he only escaped from the ef- fects of his conduct by the most precocious du- plicity. Held in disgrace as prefect, he did not [52] MY CONTACT WITH POLITICS leave his position until ruined by Louis Napoleon. The compromise he accepted in 1857, though in contradiction to his birth, was not so as regarded his character. Darinion, Proudhon's secretary, and a contributor to La Presse, was chosen by Nefftzer as twin candidate with Emile Ollivier. The great electoral committee, composed of vet- erans of 1848, advocated the non-taking of the oath, declaring that no one could condemn Louis Napoleon for the violation of his oath, except on condition of not admitting that his own could be violated. Cavaignac, Hippolyte Carnot, Garnier- Pages, Arnaud d'Ariege, Carbon, Charton, Goud- chaux, Laurent-Pichat, Eugene Pelletau, Jean Reynaud, Jules Simon, and Vacherot signed the manifestation to the Parisians. Darimon and, naturally, Emile Ollivier, used as their defence the volume Proudhon had published after the Second of December — La Revolution So- ciale demontree par le Coup-d'Etat — in which the great polemist declared " that the partisans of Le- gitimacy could refuse to take the oath, because, in their case, the Feudal Oath bound with a unilateral and personal bond the one who took the oath to the one who accepted it." In 1857, Proudhon continued his demoralizing campaign. " I confess," he said, " that I do not [53] MY LITERARY LIFE understand that a Republican should have so many scruples, and Messrs. Cavaignac's and Carnot's ar- guments have not convinced me. The oath, for a Republican, is merely the recognition of the peo- ple's sovereignty in the person of the Head of State, and consequently a synallagmatic contract." Proudhon decided that Republicans could perfect- ly well take the oath. However, no one, not even himself, dared to be the first to assume the shame of this oath. Mes- sieurs Emile Ollivier and Darimon, under Proud- hon's orders, did not have a moment's hesitation. Monsieur Emile Ollivier's father, who had been dragged from prison to prison at the time of the " Second of December," and designated to be de- ported, was still in exile at Florence, after having been expelled from Nice, before its annexation, at the demand of the French Government. But Emile Ollivier felt so little indignation at the Coup-d'Etat and its crimes, that he one day called it " an event of providential significance." The oath-taker surrounded himself with young men, ambitious like himself, and impatient to play a role. As soon as he was a Deputy he became their head; all of them had not his duplicity, but they all suffered from his dangerous influence. People commenced to talk of these young men, new up- [54]' MY CONTACT WITH POLITICS starts of political life, and to call them " the little Olliviers." By a second polling, Emile Ollivier became the first oath-taking Deputy of Paris. Messrs. Darimon and Henon, of Lyons, alone kept him company. General Cavaignac, Hippolyte Carnot, and Goudchaux, also elected, refused to take the oath. Monsieur Emile Ollivier, promised already, bear- ing " a light heart,"* to uphold the Empire in the discussions that would take place during the elections. Proudhon took it upon himself to do all the arguing in favour of the oath, and apropos of the indignation roused against those who took it. " He has made perjury pardonable," we said among our party. The small circle of philosophers, writers, and poets in which I lived were in despair at the state of moral decay into which we had fallen. Those in exile wrote to their friends : " What are you doing? Take care! It is criminal to absolve, by an identical act, lies and perjury." Monsieur Thiers said: * Referring to Emile Ollivier's famous speech in 1870, when he said he began the war with Germany " with a light heart." — Translator's note. [55] MY LITERARY LIFE " It is impossible to submit to the oath imposed upon us by the Empire. It is a vexatious measure thrust on the vanquished by the perjurer." My father wrote to me : " There is gangrene in the hearts of the Republicans, and it will destroy them. No one thinks of the Republic and its prin- ciples. Was George Sand right when she said, disillusioned, ' Will the Republic, after all, be only a party ? ' " One of the foremost among the corrupters of the Republic was Monsieur de Morny, who for a short time left the Presidency of the Corps Legis- latif, but who soon resumed the position. Scepti- cal, eclectic, a lettered Parisian, witty, elegant, and a fascinating man, feigning discontent and pre- tending to be a lover of liberty, he accused the " reactionary " party and the " clericals " of de- ceiving the Emperor, kl whose instincts were lib- eral." He hypnotized consciences and, when neces- sary, corrupted men's hearts. One evening, after Beranger's death, I went to a meeting of the " Union des Poetes," where Emile Richebourg was to eulogize the great song-writer. In spite of Beranger's severe criticism of my po- etry, I much regretted his death, for I thought that should I have, in the future, need of sincere advice, [56] MY CONTACT WITH POLITICS I could have gone to him to seek it, had he lived. Richebourg spoke of Beranger with such feel- ing, dwelling on his good nature in such touching terms that he made an indelible impression on our hearts; especially when he revealed to us his ex- traordinary kindness. The multiplicity of his charitable acts when compared with his meagre re- sources was almost miraculous. He deprived him- self even of food in order to give to others, and Richebourg inspired us with such an affection for the dear, old man that the memory of it still abides with me. There was a great difference in the tone of the meetings of the " Union des Poetes." Another, the last one to which I went, towards the end of the year, was curiously interesting. They discussed at length two volumes of poems that created great excitement, for very contrary reasons: Les Fleurs du Mai and Denise. Aurelien Scholl, generally so full of banter in his articles and in his books, had written in Denise the most simple, the most real work possible to imagine, although he pretended not to believe that it was a success. Denise was most warmly wel- comed by high-minded persons, glad to be re- freshed " by something healthy." [57] MY LITERARY LIFE How often, and at how many different periods, have I heard my contemporaries sum up their im- pressions, when some high-toned book appeared, in these words : "It is, indeed, quite time that intel- lectual morality should be aroused, when we look at what is taking place around us." Which has made me ask myself sometimes : " Does not about the same thing always take place? " Denise, it is true, was unfaithful to her husband, but she had been abandoned, and her unfaithfulness was told in such noble verse, so full of sentiment and of ideality ! As to Baudelaire, the poems quoted by his de- fenders, eminently beautiful though they were, could not, in our eyes, wash away the filth of cer- tain others. The six poems which, it will be re- membered, were forbidden to appear in the future editions inspired us with great disgust, for he braved our uprightness, indeed, too much in certain French words, and aroused strong and praisewor- thy indignation. What was taking place that year was curi- ous. Here were we, who talked so much about " Imperial corruption," approving the proceedings against Les Fleurs du Mai, and disapproving the prudery of Napoleon Ill's magistrates. It is true that it was on account of the accusations brought [58] MY CONTACT WITH POLITICS against Madame Bovary, and because Gustave Flaubert, belonging to the lineage of Rabelais and of Montaigne, should be called before the courts, like Baudelaire, for immorality! My father, who had read Madame Bovary in the Revue de Paris, wrote me the most amusing letters, after Monsieur Pinard's, the Imperial lawyer's, summing up, who grew grandiloquently indignant at the " lascivi- ous " passages in Madame Bovary. The " where- as " so often repeated in this celebrated verdict inspired my father with writing verses, where the words " lascifs " and " poncifs " were repeated in the most amusing fashion. I will recall one " whereas " : " Whereas it is not permitted to reproduce the facts, words, and gestures of people's misconduct, etc., " Because it would lead to a realism that would be a negation of all that is beautiful and good ; but, however, as the book of which Flaubert is the author is a work which appears to have been seri- ously compiled from a literary point of view, and, as the said Flaubert declares his respect for good conduct, and all that is connected with religious morality, etc. " We acquit him of the accusation brought against him." 5 [59] MY LITERARY LIFE My father was not the only one who thought this " whereas " most laughable, and he predicted the highest destiny to the mediocrity and preten- tion of Monsieur Pinard, Imperial lawyer. He be- come a Minister! The new Louvre, inaugurated that year, was a fairy palace to my little Alice. Going to and coming from the Tuileries, I always passed through the inside courts, and all the queens, all the fairies of my stories, inhabited their special pavilion, about which my little Alice never made a mistake. " Good-morning, pretty fairy ; good-morning, good queen; good-morning, Grecian lady." Each one received her daily salutation. I heard Bismarck's name for the first time at a dinner given by Alexandre Weill, who had known him in Frankfort. He spoke warmly of him, but described him as a manner of unlicked cub in ap- pearance, although possessing extraordinary polit- ical artfulness, and as using his grossness as a means and end to his cleverness. " He is a gentleman farmer in the most brutal sense of the word," said Weill, " born to live in forests." His father had destined him to a Gov- ernmental position, in order to add to the chance revenues of agriculture the certainty of a fixed [60] MY CONTACT WITH POLITICS salary. He is a clannish chief and he would never have been a good administrator, for he is " incapa- ble of obedience." Made Deputy in 1847, he strongly blamed the King for having yielded to the people's threats by granting them a Constitu- tion. He was, moreover, among the first to help him in taking it back. " I have seen Bismarck," added Weill, " mount the tribune as though it were a cavalry horse ready for a charge. He thun- dered out his rabid Conservator's insults with ex- traordinary violence, speaking of sabre-cutting politics, of absolute authority, of the gallows! When the dream of German unity was evoked be- fore him, he replied, ' that the whole of Germany was not worth Prussian nationality.' " When the Parliament of Frankfort," contin- ued Weill, " offered the Imperial Crown to Fred- erick William, Bismarck implored the King not to accept a proposal made by an assembly of mad rebels," in recognition of which Frederick William appointed him, in 1851, as his representative at the Diet of Frankfort, renovated and placed on a more solid basis. There he ostensibly defended Austria, the nation he hated the most intensely," Weill confided to us. " He wishes," continued our host, " an alliance with France." And he read a memoir to us, after dinner, that treated of politics [61] MY LITERARY LIFE in general, copied from an autograph manuscript of Monsieur de Bismarck, and in which there were several sentences, the exact words of which I can not guarantee, but I can certainly certify to the sense of what was therein expressed: " France should keep open for herself every pos- sibility of an alliance with Russia, and with that in view, should maintain amicable relations with Prussia. France has no interest to ally herself with Austria, old, even to decrepitude, nor with any of the small German states, which latter fact would make Prussia her bitterest enemy. A friendship with Prussia, a growing and strong state, would give France Continental support, would force Aus- tria to prudence, and would greatly facilitate an alliance with Russia." " I like Bismarck," said Weill, finally. " We have become quite intimate through a common friend, but I love France, and I always remember with pain something said by that terrible man, whom one must fear, and which was repeated to me by my friend : ' Before France, which is Revo- lution incarnate, destroys herself with her own revolutions, she will, perhaps, have to do with Ger- many.' Bismarck is such a selfish partisan that one cannot sufficiently beware of him in everything and always. He would betray any contract, any [62] MY CONTACT WITH POLITICS promise, any alliance, for Prussia, his sole passion! At present he desires German unity, being certain now that Prussia will absorb it." Books poured in at the office of La Revue Philo- sophique. Madame Fauvety and I took our share, and after reading them, wrote in return short criti- cisms about them for Monsieur Fauvety, the editor. One day, when I brought my short tribute on the Memoires de Sophie Arnould, by the de Goncourts, my enemy, Madame d'Hericourt, who was never disarmed in my favour, addressed me in these terms : " I will bet that you believe in the Memoires de Sophie Arnould. Well, I can tell you, simple child, that they are apocryphal from first to last." She had a wonderful story to relate on the sub- ject, which only made people smile, knowing the particular aversion in which she held Jules de Gon- court on account of a malicious speech he once made on the rather thick mustache that shaded her lip : " Her style has the strength of a bearded man's," he had said to a friend who was praising one of Madame Jenny d'Hericourt's articles, a really remarkable article on " antinomies." Theodore de Bouville's most amusing Odes Fu- nambulesques had delighted me. Madame Fau- [63] MY LITERARY LIFE vety, who gave me lessons in diction, made me read some of it to the " Philosophers," one evening, " to see if they knew how to laugh," as she said, and I had quite a triumph. The " Philosophers " did know how to laugh. What a discovery, to be sure! " A real antinomy ! " I exclaimed. From that time the whole tone of these little meetings changed. They were just as interesting as ever, but with occasional glimpses of gaiety, which Madame Fauvety cleverly brought about, aided by myself and others. Madame d'Hericourt grew more and more irritated, accusing me of the strange things that took place at La Revue Philo- sophique. " Auguste Comte has just died," my husband announced to me one evening. " He looks majestic in death. I have just seen him. Pierre Lafitte is his executor. He has left some debts, which we, his disciples, will pay, and his apartment in the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince is to be kept sacredly as our place of meeting." " Sacredly ? " I repeated. " Well, yes, sacredly is what I meant to say, it seems to me." " Not fitted to your mouth and concerning Au- guste Comte." Madame d'Hericourt arrived one evening at the [64] MY CONTACT WITH POLITICS " Philosophers," very proud to be able to give us some unknown details on Blandine Liszt's mar- riage, about which all Paris had talked so much. Monsieur Jules Grevy, whom she knew, and who was a great friend of the Comtesse d'Agoult's (Daniel Stern), the " unknown " mother of Blan- dine, had told her all about it. " Their meeting," Madame d'Hericourt told us, " took place in the most original and romantic man- ner, during some travels of Madame d'Agoult and her daughter in Italy. Emile Ollivier, being made Deputy, went to explain to his father, exiled at Florence, why he had taken oath to the Empire, and Monsieur Grevy says that Demosthene Ollivier, the exile, the old Republican of the " Montagne " of 1848, had approved it. But to return to our romance," Madame d'Hericourt continued. " One day, in a museum, some common friends of Ollivier and of Madame d'Agoult introduced Ollivier to Blandine, accompanied there by a maid. As Ollivier had pleased the young girl at once," added the gossip, " by his fascinating conversation and by his practical ideas of life, a contrast that would naturally charm Liszt's and Madame d'Agoult's daughter, Blandine, under different pretexts, delayed his introduction to her mother, and met Emile Ollivier several times as though by [65] MY LITERARY LIFE chance. To be brief, Ollivier having heard that Madame d'Agoult would give her daughter a dowry of one hundred thousand francs, offered himself, and the two young people were betrothed before the new oath-taking Deputy had made Ma- dame d'Agoult's acquaintance. " Daniel Stern, the authoress of La Revolution de 1848, was only half pleased at the match. She was on very good terms with all the exiles and was the friend of many of those who had refused to take the oath, including Grevy and Hippolyte Carnot." This union greatly annoyed all the intimate friends of the salon of the Rue de Presbourg from every point of view. " Blandine Liszt, who is very handsome and very intelligent, will be a great ad- dition to the sudden fortune and self -infatuation of this ambitious man," Grevy had said to Madame d'Hericourt. Monsieur Jules Grevy, a Republican loyally attached to his principles, was distressed at seeing so many rising young political men ready to embrace all compromises with an easy-going con- science that revolted him. All the old stories about Liszt and the Comtesse d'Agoult, of George Sand, and the revelations con- tained in Horace and Nelida, were revived apropos of Blandine Liszt's and Emile Ollivier's marriage, MY CONTACT WITH POLITICS as were, at the time of de Musset's death, George Sand's adventures and the gossip anent the jour- ney to Venice. Madame d'Hericourt, naturally spiteful and fond of gossip, spared us none that evening. She embellished and amplified, knew all about things from a surer source than any one else. Fiercely virtuous, having suffered few temptations, the strong-minded Jenny grew retrospectively indig- nant. " Superior women should be virtuous," said Ma- dame d'Hericourt, " or else hide their weaknesses jealously, while on the contrary they display them, and force other superior women to defend them against their own convictions, for the honour of the sex, or else to condemn them, for the greater amusement of men." " I find the little that George Sand has written apropos of de Musset most admirable, and I hope that soon she will tell us the whole story," said Madame Fauvety. " Accused as she has been, and as she is, she has the right to plead her own cause. In her Venice adventure I can really only see the extreme goodness of a generous heart, devoting itself to saving a man from being ruined by vice. We Parisians all know with what contempt de Mus- set treated women, the great Rachel included! [67] MY LITERARY LIFE Madame Sand literally tried to wrest him from the very lowest haunts. She has an absolute right, nay, even a womanly duty, to prove she did not ' torture de Musset.' When one thinks of the cruelty shown to George Sand nowadays," Ma- dame Fauvety continued, " and of the indulgence with which Madame de Stael was treated, who was unfaithful to Benjamin-Constant with Camille Jordan, and to the latter with her son's tutor, it is enough to make one aghast. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the gallantries of women of nobility were easily pardoned. Is not Maurice de Saxe's granddaughter a woman of rank? She is doubly so by birth and by letters. Moreover, I think that women like Madame de Stael, George Sand, and the Comtesse d'Agoult, should be re- garded as belonging to a superior sex, which has the right to assume certain liberties of conduct that men so easily allow themselves," Madame Fau- vety added, putting Madame d'Hericourt quite be- side herself, which was, perhaps, her aim. Madame Fauvety first heard of Rachel's death from me. " May Jehovah receive her soul," she said, " and may all her jealousies and bitterness be forgiven! " We have taken Canton, with the English, as we took Sebastopol. [68] GEORGE SAND. From an engraving by Nargeot. MY CONTACT WITH POLITICS On the evening of the 14th of January we left home, after dinner, to make some purchases in the galleries of the Palais-Royal, with one of my hus- band's Sicilian friends, who called himself a rela- tion. We were crossing the square of the Palais- Royal a little before half past eight o'clock, when I was struck by the agitation that reigned at Prince Napoleon's residence. He was holding a reception, it was true; but men in full-dress uniforms drove up in cabs, others without their overcoats hailed the first passing vehi- cle. Mounted guards galloped into the court-yard. A crowd gathered on the Square. We caught the echo of some words : " An attempt against the Sov- ereigns' lives ! Bombs thrown at the Emperor and Empress at the opera." Everybody said they had heard the explosion of the bombs. Greater excitement arose when Prince Napoleon left his guests, got into a carriage, escorted by cav- alry, and went to the opera. The report soon spread that the Imperial car- riage was completely shattered to bits, but that neither the Emperor nor Empress were injured. The aide-de-camp, the coachman, and footman were wounded, and a horse killed. We were exchang- ing in a whisper some rather anti-Imperialist re- marks, when we felt ourselves looked at suspicious- [69] MY LITERARY LIFE ly, and suddenly two policemen seized our relation by his coat collar. " The attempt was made by Italians," they cried, " and here is one whose accent betrays him ; come along with us to the police station !" Monsieur Lamessine slipped quickly away through the crowd, leaving his friend and rela- tion unceremoniously, who called to him to help him by his name. Separated from them both, by a movement of the crowd, I decided to return home. The next morning the police searched our apart- ment, but my husband easily proved that his rela- tion, who had arrived that morning from Sicily, had come to be present at a wedding that was to take place the next day, and apropos of which we had gone to make some purchases at the Palais- Royal. They set our cousin at liberty and left us in peace. The four authors of the attempt — Orsini, Ru- dio, Pieri, and Gomez — were arrested; all Paris was wild for details. It was said that Felix Orsini, the instigator of the plot, was a former friend of Mazzini, and that he had escaped from the Aus- trian prisons in an extraordinary way. His one thought was to kill Napoleon III, whom he be- lieved responsible for all his country's misfortunes. [70] MY CONTACT WITH POLITICS Masscl, the great singer, was giving his last performance, for his own benefit, at the opera, that night. The Parisians, after the manner of Pari- sians, commented upon the aptness of the pro- gramme at the Palais-Royal Theatre, when Ma- dame Arnould-Plessis was to play de Musset's Quitte pour la Peur, just when the news of the attempt on the Emperor's life was heard, and Du- prey, who had not sung for a long time, except at his own house, was also to have sung Beranger's songs in praise of the Emperor that evening. Perquisitions and arrests were made everywhere. My husband kept quietly at home and advised his friend to leave for Sicily as soon as the wedding was over, which he did. La Revue de Paris was suppressed, other jour- nals were threatened and suspended. The opening of the Session, when the first oath- takers appeared, excited public opinion in a con- trary way. The entrance of Messrs. Emile Olli- vier, Darimon, and Henon to the Corps Legislatif gave birth to a new programme, and confirmed the scission of the Republican party. Monsieur de Girardin, with his habitual precision, formulated this programme in an article entitled The Consti- tutional Press. Our indignation on reading this article cannot [71] MY LITERARY LIFE be described. When people met, they accosted one another with angry gestures. " Have you read it? " And when they wrote to each other, they underlined and put enormous interrogation points after the question: "What do you think of it?" Monsieur de Girardin ended his article with these words : " Constitutional opposition forms the pro- gramme of a new political endeavour, which will discard all the old passions, together with all the old bitter feeling, in order to battle solely against new ideas and prejudices." " It is your terrible Proudhon," I wrote my father, " who has made such a monstrous thing possible. What do you think of this rallying motto of perjurers, the very words of which clash together : * The Empire with Liberty ' ? " A line of interrogation marks followed my question. My father was overwhelmed. " Were there really Republicans ready to accept and to defend the Imperial Constitution? It was the climax of things ! The finishing touch, that the man who has violated his own oath should exact that others must make oath to him. It is true that the butcher of the Second of December grants us, as a primal liberty, the right to butchery." Soon the half-sincere ones, who had taken the first steps towards the cowardly concessions to the [72] MY CONTACT WITH POLITICS Empire, were taught a bitter lesson. A Senatus- Consulta exacted a preliminary oath from all can- didates! To be dishonoured without the certainty of being elected, blackballed although an oath- taker, was the last stroke ! We thought the trick well played. Those who hesitated would, at least, hesitate a little more. The Emperor received an admirable letter from Orsini, condemned to death, that produced an enor- mous sensation. Orsini implored him, the ruler of France, to liberate his country. He explained to him the end pursued by himself, and which would be pursued by many Italians, who would try to kill him unless he freed Italy from her bondage, and he thereby exonerated French de- mocracy from any suspicion of having had part in the conspiracy or the attempt against the Em- peror's life. After Orsini's letter, after this cry for pity towards his country, uttered by a man going to the scaffold — a cry that Napoleon III had heard and which he answered the following year — the Emperor would have shown foresight had he re- pealed the law of Public Security, which Monsieur de Morny unwillingly proposed. This law, de- clared " pitiable " by those even who upheld it, and " baleful " by those who fought against it, was [73] MY LITERARY LIFE certainly one of the greatest errors of the Em- pire. Monsieur Baroche gave the true version of the situation, after the reading of Monsieur de Mor- ny's report : " We are well aware that the Repub- lican party is not conspiring, but it is growing in importance, and that is sufficient to make us feel obliged to attack it." One Senator alone, the Marechal de MacMahon, voted against the law of " Public Security " ; but, as the sittings of the Senate were held in secret, we only heard portions of his speech, and what some Senators repeated of it. MacMahon accused the Emperor's advisers of urging him to his ruin. Something he had said, and which could not be published in the papers, was much talked about: " It will be necessary to have many wars with for- eign countries to make this internal war forgotten." More than a thousand persons were arrested in February and March, after the law was voted. Partial elections took place on the 27th of April and 10th of May. Those who refused to take the oath could not stand as candidates on account of the obligatory preliminary oath of allegiance to the Empire. Ollivier made the campaign in favour of Jules Favre, who pleaded Orsini's case, and of Marie, ex-member of the Provisionary Govern- [74] MY CONTACT WITH POLITICS ment, but the workmen strongly protested against this last candidate, remembering how severe Marie had shown himself towards them in 1848, at the time of the closing of the National Workshops. Jules Favre, who consented to take the oath, was elected. After many names had been eliminated, Ernest Picard, Lionville's son-in-law, who had pleaded the firemen's cause, on the 15th of May, was elected after polling. The " Five " were thus in league. [75] CHAPTER V I PUBLISH MY BOOK m ADAME FAUVETY and myself were much interested, almost at the same time, in two plays that were being given at the theatres, and which we saw a few days apart, one at the end of its season, the other when it had just begun: Le Fils Naturel, by the younger Dumas, and Les Meres Repenties, by Felicien Mallefille. In spite of her love for the younger Dumas's plays, Madame Fauvety agreed with me, that Le Fils Naturel was too much influenced by personal feeling, and was also at once revolting and obscure. It had, more- over, but a partial success, while Mallefille's drama, which was very bold in conception, was pronounced, in spite of cabals roused against it, a powerful work and one of high-toned morality. A friend of Mallefille's whom we met at the theatre told us a curious fact about him. He said Mallefille would be one of the geniuses of the cen- tury were he not blind in one eye. That he de- scribed superbly all that he could see from the radius of one eye, but as soon as the circle was en- larged and he could not see beyond it he could [76] I PUBLISH MY BOOK write nothing. Mallefille was the author of one volume on Don Juan, a chef-d'oeuvre, but the pro- posed succeeding volumes were never written. On the 22d of April, 1858, three large volumes by Proudhon were published, which, it was said, would prove the grandest work he had written since 1854: La Justice dans la Revolution. My father wrote me to send them to him, one by one, as soon as I had finished reading them. It was fortunate I had procured these at once, for, on the very night of the day they appeared, orders were given to the police to seize the three volumes. Proudhon en- deavoured in vain, in all the courts, to have the prohibition raised, but he did not succeed, and all that he obtained was to be sentenced to three years' imprisonment, from which he escaped by taking refuge with our neighbours, the Belgians. I would have been the first to have acknowl- edged the master qualities of which Proudhon gave evidence in his La Justice dans la Revolution — his great power of argument, an incomparable style — had it not been for the brutal, the most vulgar in- sults he showered upon two women whom I ad- mired above all others : George Sand, the author of so many chefs-d'oeuvre, and the Comtesse d'Agoult (Daniel Stern), the universally admired writer of the Revolution of 1848. [77] MY LITERARY LIFE I dined at the Fauvetys one evening, after I had read these books, and expressed my indigna- tion. Madame d'Hericourt was one of the guests. " You should," I said to her, " defend these women who are so grossly insulted, as you use your pen so admirably against the terrible Proudhon. To leave such attacks unanswered would really be abominable and odious." " George Sand and Daniel Stern have re- ceived just what they deserved," Madame d'Heri- court replied, with the hatred of those who think they possess as much, if not more merit, than persons who are superior to them. " I exact virtue. I practise it myself, and Proudhon has not, I am sure, dared to attack me on this score in these books, which I have not yet read." " Well," I replied, " I, who am but of small ac- count, but, however, quite as virtuous as yourself, will defend them. Being women they must be up- held by a woman ! " " Why, that is the book Edmund predicted you would write," cried Madame Fauvety. " Quick ! go to work ! " Zozo, who was on his mistress's knees, seeing her excitement, began to bark. " You see, Zozo approves," she continued. " That is certainly the book Edmund predicted [78] I PUBLISH MY BOOK would suddenly make you well known. You must shut yourself up now, to-night, and see no one until your answer to Proudhon is written." I returned home much excited, and also with the firm determination to write the book. Some scruples I at first felt about Proudhon's book hav- ing been seized, soon vanished, La Justice dans la Revolution not having been prohibited, nor Proud- hon condemned, for that part about which I in- tended to reply. I wrote for two months. I recopied, rear- ranged my little volume, working at night secretly, shut up in my room where I was alone with my child, my husband being more occupied with one of our servant maids than with myself. Both Monsieur Renouvier and Fauvety took great in- terest in my book and constantly asked me about it. One day Madame d'Hericourt said to me: " Well ! is your defence of your celebrated elders getting on? If you succeed in finishing it, Heaven grant that those ' great ladies ' will be grateful to you for all the trouble you seem to be taking." " Yes, Madame," I replied, " I am certainly taking a great deal of trouble. Remember, I am only a recruit, and, at my age, have not a veteran's experience." [79] MY LITERARY LIFE " Veteran ! veteran ! you mean me, doubtless," replied Madame d'Hericourt in a fury. " If you defend some of them, you are certainly very im- pertinent to others." Monsieur Renouvier, who had at that time ob- tained a great literary success, was very happy at the fact and wished me to succeed also. His pub- lisher had just brought out a revised edition of his Essais de Critique Generale, which was warmly received, notably in foreign countries, where a special public awaited and discussed his works with an ever-increasing interest. When one of Mon- sieur Renouvier's books was announced to appear, or when he was quoted, apropos of one of his arti- cles, his admirable prospect for the organization of the Republic — Le Gouvernment Direct, in which he had attacked Louis Napoleon's conduct after the Coup d'Etat with great logical power — was often cited. " The Empire is beginning to be visibly under- mined in the cities," Monsieur Renouvier said to us one evening, " and is no longer upheld except in the provinces which continue to grow rich by it." The violent animosity towards the Empire of Jules Favre, who used his great oratorical power to bring to light all the Government's faults, by al- [80] I PUBLISH MY BOOK lusions full of double meanings, made a great ef- fect on many minds, already weary of submission to it. Ernest Picard, with his free-and-easy man- ners and his outbursts of wit, amused the majority. " Please admire," the oath-takers said to us, " our summing up of ' The Three ' : Jules Favre completes Ollivier, Picard ranks with Darinion, and as to Henon, who does not obey Ollivier, he follows Jules Favre blindly." " * The Five ' are absolutely necessary to draw the country's attention to the foolish and danger- ous line of politics the Empire forces us to follow with foreign countries. Who else will enlighten it, with the press muzzled as it is? " the oath-takers added. Some persons quoted the words spoken by Mon- sieur Thiers, who, since the institution of the Parlia- mentary group of " The Five " found, perhaps, that there was a chance of his having a place in the Legislative Assembly, and was therefore less severe apropos of the oath-taking. " They do not wish for liberty yet," he said, " just as they did not wish it after the Great Revo- lution. When anarchy and social disorder have triumphed in a country people prefer servitude, but when servitude has kept their minds under a bushel too long, and has too entirely deprived them [81] MY LITERARY LIFE of light, then they feel the need of a liberal reac- tion, a new dawn, no matter from whence it may come, and I see the first glimpse of this new aurora now." At Paris even ail of us who refused to take the oath followed with the greatest interest everything that took place at the Legislative Assembly, and the five oath-takers, whose entrance into Parlia- ment we so much blamed, were attacked by us more violently than by others at any manifestation of weakness, which did not, however, prevent us from saying that one compromised one's self very use- lessly by taking the oath, considering the small benefit obtained thereby. Ah ! what a rare thing for political parties to be logical ! The " little Olliviers " called us " the prudes," the " home ex- iles," and laughed at Jules Simon's " bitterness," at Emmanuel Arago's " thundering opposition," at Jules Grevy's " long-silent hopes," and at Goud- chaux's " Orestes-like fury." Not all the young men, however, belonged to the society of the Rue Saint-Guillaume, " the general disparaging and mutual-pushing society," as we called them. If the " little Olliviers " worshipped their master in rather an aggravating fashion, if when he made a speech at the Legislative Assembly Jules Ferry, Floquet, Dreo, the son-in-law of Garnier-Pages, [82] I PUBLISH MY BOOK Herald, and Dclprat, who were always informed when it was to take place, and were all present, to manifest their approbation and escort him to the door, expressing between themselves and around him most enthusiastic praise, that deceived the curious listeners, on the other hand, Jules Valles, Arthur Arnoult, and their group made much fun of " the Mutual Aid line of politics." What passionate interest was taken in politics at that time! The smallest event was discussed, newspapers read between the lines. Every article was noted and criticised, and its allusions spread broadcast around. The feeling in political life was intense; the state was worth the fight. The Opposition party under its two forms of oath-tak- ers and those who refused to take it, gathered in its circle an equal number of old combatants who had given proof of their valour as of young, energetic men impatient to do the same. I finished my book — Idees Anti-Proudhoniennes — and read it to Monsieur Fauvety, who admired it, and who gave me some valuable advice concerning it. But Proudhon was such a fierce polemist, such a cruel, dreaded adversary, and so spiteful, that when Monsieur Fauvety had finished reading it, he said to me: [83] MY LITERARY LIFE " You will never find any one to publish it ! " I had not thought of that for a moment. "What! my poor book, that has devoured all my nights, will never see the light of day? " I ex- claimed, sadly. " Try to beguile some well-known publisher. Do not write to him. Take your manuscript to him yourself. Who knows what may happen? But I doubt whether you will succeed, after he has read it." Could it be possible that I could not have my book published at once? Was I not to become sud- denly well known, as Edmond had predicted? Much good had it done me to believe in his predic- tion, to have lived in a state of fever, in a dream, for two months, and to have said to myself every time I thought of a great artist, a great writer, a great savant: " Will he be my friend some day? " I hastened to Chauny ; told my father I had written a book, reminded him of his lost bet, and how he had promised to pay for its publication. "But what is this book?" I refused to tell him either the subject or the title. I was afraid of his love and admiration for Proudhon. However, in the course of conversation he spoke to me about Proudhon's work La Justice dans la Revolution," and said: [84] I PUBLISH MY BOOK " In spite of its admirable pages, written in such a superior manner, I found such gross, vulgar things said about George Sand, the great Repub- lican woman and the close friend of my friends Pierre Leroux and Ledru-Rollin, and also about Daniel Stern, the loyal and impartial author of La Revolution de 1848, that I was disgusted, and you must have been scandalized, I hope? " " Yes, scandalized ! outraged ! " My father thought I should require a thousand francs to have my book published and gave me a bank-bill for that amount, saying : " Above all, if you wish to keep these thousand francs don't speak to your husband about them." I went first to Michel Levy with my manu- script beautifully rolled up and a small pocketbook containing my thousand-franc bank-bill. I entered and asked to speak to Monsieur Michel Levy. "What about?" " About a book I wish published." The clerk eyed me from head to foot. At that moment, Monsieur Michel Levy came out of his office to give an order, and, as he was about to return to it, the employee said, with a de- riding tone of voice: " Here is a young lady who wishes to have a book she has written published by our house." [85] MY LITERARY LIFE Monsieur Michel Levy looked at me, smiling, and asked: " What is the subject of your book? " " It is a reply to Proudhon against his attack on George Sand and Daniel Stern." "And you have written this reply, Mademoi- selle? " " Madame, if you please, sir." " And you propose to have that published by the house of Michel Levy ? " " Yes, Monsieur ; but I understand, of course, that I must pay the expense of having my first book published, and if you will read it " " It would be useless, Madame." " What, do you decide in this way without knowing my book ? " " Oh! I can judge very well what your work will be by looking at you. What do you think of it, my dear Scholl ? " he added, speaking to a man who had just entered the room, and telling him about my request. " It would really be a pity that Madame should become a blue-stocking. You are right to dis- courage her, my dear Levy. She has something better to do." " Monsieur Aurelien Scholl," I said to him, haughtily, " at Monsieur EngePs, next door, a [86] I PUBLISH MY BOOK poem of mine has been published, which certainly is not worth three stanzas of Denisc, but my prose might equal your own." And I left Michel Levy's shop in a rage, my heart bursting and my literary hopes much cast down. Scholl has often since reminded me of the scene. It seems, after my reply to him, he advised Michel Levy to call me back. I went from publisher to publisher, to eight, among the most prominent ones, and was every- where refused. I even applied to Gamier, Proud- hon's editor, who was more polite to me than the others had been, but he said to me : " You must understand that I could not do it." I wrote to Hetzel, then in exile in Brussels, and he replied: " Either your book is very poor, or else you use checked handkerchiefs and probably take snuff. I do not think that a woman, doubtless ugly and very old, has any right to take up arms regarding George Sand's and Daniel Stern's youth or their present position against Proudhon, thereby expo- sing them to ridicule, at which they would be mor- tally offended, for Proudhon will certainly answer you." I was in despair, and Monsieur Fauvety, to [87] MY LITERARY LIFE whom I related my experiences, did not console me by saying : " We are living in an age of universal cowardice." " It is not from cowardice that they refuse me," I replied, " but from contempt of what they think me capable. They refuse even to read what I have written, some because they think me pretty, others because they suppose I am ugly ! " I have never forgotten those days when every- thing seemed hopeless to me. I had had the cour- rage to suffer my private life only through the hope of making a successful literary career for my- self, and now this hope fell from me, not through my own fault, but from ill-luck. I had left my little girl with my parents in order to be more free to attend to this undertaking, and I was thinking of returning to live with them. I spoke to my husband of the advisability of our separating amicably. " I will never consent to a separation," he re- plied. " You are the handsomest ornament of my house, and if I should be in financial trouble, your people would help me, I am sure. Let there be no further question of this absurd idea between us, not recognisable, moreover, by law. You know, I have already told you, that in all my acts, / keep within the pale of the Law." [88] I PUBLISH MY BOOK On the ground floor of our house, opposite to the Magasins du Louvre, there was a small book- shop, where I frequently bought books for my father. The owner's name was Tarride. Can it be the present well-known publisher of that name? I went to him and said : " Monsieur Tarride, I have written a book, which I think is clever, and I cannot find a pub- lisher. I will pay the expenses, will you publish it?" " Why not, Madame, we are both unknown, I, as publisher, you as a writer, we therefore can run the risk of a failure, as no one will hear of it." " I will go and get my manuscript and we will take it together to some small printing-house. We will settle the price and have it printed." I was promised five hundred volumes for seven hundred francs. Tarride advised me to spend an- other hundred francs to have the type kept, " For, if by chance," he said, " it should sell, we can have the other editions printed faster." No one, at that time, had ever thought of hav- ing a book published during the summer. Tarride advised me to wait until the autumn. I repeated his words to him : " What risk will we run ? " My Idees Anti-Proudhoniennes, ornamented [89] MY LITERARY LIFE with a band around the volumes, announcing, "Just appeared," stood out in Tarride's window, on the day before the Imperial festival of the 15th of August, which Napoleon III desired should be ex- tremely brilliant because he had granted an am- nesty for the occasion. There was not at that moment " a cat in Paris," as the Parisians said, and as they continue to say now. I settled myself in the back room of Tarride's shop on the 19th, where after having sought out, with " my editor," the names of the most important writers and journalists to whom I was to present them, I wrote flattering dedications in fifty volumes, and the next day I took a cab, and, with my list in my hand, went and distributed my books at news- paper officers, while Tarride's small clerk carried others to the " celebrities." Hoping it would bring me good luck, I began with Le Siecle, which had published my letter to Alphonse Karr. My friend Doctor de Bonnard was to present my Idees Anti-Proudhoniennes to Toussenel and to the persons who had formed the group of writers on Toussenel's former Democratie Pacifique: Daniel Stern, George Sand, Pere Enfantin, Neff- tzer, Littre, Emile de Girardin, Louis Jourdan, Peyrat, Gueroult, Monsieur de la Gueronniere, Cas- sagnac, Prosper Merimee, Edmond About, notwith- [90] I PUBLISH MY BOOK standing his Roi des Montagncs, Octave Feuillet, Hippolyte Carnot, Jules Grevy, among the polit- ical men, etc. All received a volume the first day it appeared, with an appropriate address written therein, which I hoped would interest them. I sent a volume to Hetzel and Proudhon, and I wrote in Hetzel's copy : " A pretty woman to a coarse boar." The fifty volumes had all reached their destination on the second day after their pub- lication. My husband was passing a week with his family at Courville, and I took advantage of his absence to bring my book, of which he did not know a single word, before the public. Then I flew to Chauny to take my Idees Anti-Proudhoniennes to my father. What would take place between us? He took the little volume, gave a start as he read the title, turned it over and over in his hands, as much excited as myself. " If it is poor " he began. " But if it should prove good? " " Then, perhaps, your fortune-teller will have been right, for, at your age, even should it be only half successful, you will have stepped out of the ranks." After dinner, my father finding me feverish, 7 [91] MY LITERARY LIFE sang to me laughingly : " Go to bed, Basile," and said : " I will read your book to-night, and to-mor- row at breakfast I will give you my opinion about it." At three o'clock in the morning my father came into my room and awoke me, saying : " It is good, it is good, but you owe it to me ! I alone sowed the germ of these Idees Anti-Proudhoniennes in your mind. Oh, my beloved daughter, it means success, it means your freedom, it will make powerful and influential friends for you. It is your grand- mother's great hope realized ! Why is she not here? " My father sat down beside my bed, and the night was passed in prolonged conversation between us. " But, who knows, papa, whether others will think as you do, of this little book ? " " Yes, yes, they will. How can it be otherwise, written at once with such a feminine hand and with such strong argument? It will, at least, interest them, and will give you some well-known literary chaperon, George Sand or Daniel Stern, and then you will work, you will develop ; your foot is al- ready in the stirrup, I feel sure of it." How many hopes we cherished, how many plans for the future we laid out ! At breakfast even my mother was happy, although she said : " The agi- [92] I PUBLISH MY BOOK tated and laborious life you will lead makes me tremble for you ! " The next day my father came in waving Le Siecle, as Pauline Barbaroux had done ten months before, and read me the following paragraph : " ' A book destined to make a great sensation was sent to us yesterday. It is an answer to Proud- hon and to the insults contained in his last work about George Sand and Daniel Stern. They say it is written by a very young but very clever woman. It is signed Juliette Lamessine.' ' " You must return to Paris this very day," my father said to me, " to receive all the people who will doubtless wish to see and talk with you." I returned to Paris, and every day brought me fresh proofs of the interest taken in my book and in its author. Eugene Pelleton wrote a review about it in La Presse that made me very proud ; I think his article quite turned my head. I thanked him, and the next day he came to see me, and from that moment until his death he was one of my most devoted friends. Mario Proth spoke of my book in very flatter- ing terms. La Gazette de France gave me three long reviews, and La Revue des deux Mondes, at George Sand's request, I was told, highly approved my Idees Anti-Proudhoniennes." [93] MY LITERARY LIFE My father, my friends the Fauvetys, Renou- vier, and Doctor de Bonnard, were enchanted. Monsieur Lamessine agreed that, for a begin- ning, it was really quite good, and that he should take pleasure in signing his own name to the future editions. " Your joke is not a pleasant one," I re- plied. " Not for you, perhaps, but it is for me. The law authorizes me to appropriate to my own use all that is joint property. A wife's work belongs to her husband." And he signed with his name the second edition, published by Dentu, for there existed no clause in the French law to prevent him from so doing. It is even so to-day. Tarride was disgusted and gave up all interest in the book. Nothing was said about " this joke " in the press. A very handsome young woman, who was en- thusiastic over my book, came to see me, and claimed to be my cousin. She was a Belgian, and her family was allied to that of my great uncle, the Conventional Seron. Her name was Madame Vil- bort. Her husband was the correspondent of the Precurseur d'Anvers, the author of highly esteemed dramatic works, and foreign corre- spondent for Le Sieele. She invited me to dine with [94] I PUBLISH MY BOOK her the following week and I became acquainted at her house with Charles Edmond, a Pole, one of the Slavonic revolutionists of 1848, a distin- guished dramatic writer, and belonging to the staff of La Presse. His last book, Un Voyage dans les Mers du Nord, had been very successful. He had fought against Russia in the Crimean War. Through Charles Edmond's kindness, I made a friend of Dall' Ongaro, a Florentine exile, who had been much celebrated. He had read my Idees Anti-Proudhoniennes, and gallantly declared him- self their champion. The Union des Poetes celebrated my Idees Anti-Proudhoniennes, which they much praised in a poem written by Monsieur Balahu. The Comtesse d'Agoult (Daniel Stern) wrote to me after having read my book: " Monsieur, it is astonishing that you should have taken a woman's name, when we women choose a man's name as pseudonym." I answered her that I was really a woman. George Sand thanked me in a most charming letter, full of gratitude. She was leaving for a short journey, but would see me, she said, on her return to Paris. Madame d'Agoult answered my letter in which I announced myself a woman by another most flat- [95] MY LITERARY LIFE tering one, in which she expressed her desire to know me, and said that one of her best friends, Monsieur de Ronchaud, would bring me an invi- tation from her for one of her evenings, and would accompany me to the Rue de Presbourg, at what- ever hour I named. Louis de Ronchaud was as devoted an Athenian in his tastes as I was myself, and our first conver- sation was simply a hymn to Greece. He told me he wished me to know one of his friends, Louis Menard, the last of the Grecian heathens, and Paul de Saint Victor. " We four together," he added, " can certainly create a new Renaissance." He talked to me of Madame d'Agoult for a long while. He had been her confidant during the time when she lived with Liszt, and had remained their common friend after their rupture. " Passionate love between superior persons can- not be durable," Monsieur de Ronchaud said to me, " for there is a perpetual struggle for domina- tion between them." He spoke to me of Madame d'Agoult's daugh- ters, so exceptionally beautiful and intelligent, Cosima von Billow and Blandine Ollivier, and said their two husbands, Hans von Bulow and Emile Ollivier, were exceptional men. [96] I PUBLISH MY BOOK " But, I replied, " you must be rather anxious about the durability of their reciprocal affection, with your theory about the fragility of passion be- tween superior persons." " None of the four," he answered, " can ap- proach Liszt's and Madame d'Agoult's superiority. Their son, Daniel Liszt, will perhaps equal them ; he has prodigious capability for work. He is already irresistible, like his father." " Is Liszt, really as fascinating as he has been so often described? " I asked. " When you know the Comtesse d'Agoult," Monsieur de Ronchaud answered, " when you will have been able to judge of her serious, thoughtful, intelligent mind, so much given to analysis and criticism, you will understand the fascination Liszt must exercise over women, for her, holding the social position she owned, to have run away with him one night from a ball. Just think, she broke with her family, her society ; she sacrificed honour, her child, a respected husband, for a mad impulse of passion ! Have you never heard how a great, noble Russian lady always had the floor of her drawing-room strewn with flowers whenever she expected a visit from Liszt? I could tell you of a hundred wild passions he has inspired." A serious bronchial attack from which my [97] MY LITERARY LIFE daughter was suffering kept me at Chauny for three weeks. A few days after my return to Paris I recalled to Daniel Stern's memory the invitation she had given me. [98] CHAPTER VI. I MAKE A VALUABLE FRIEND. fflONSIEUR DE RONCHAUD came to take lkl\ me to Madame d'Agoult's, where I found, among others, Nefftzer, former head editor of La Presse, who had brought about Emile Ollivier's election and who was strongly opposed to those who would not take the oath. I heard foreign politics discussed clearly for the first time by him, and then and there began my great interest in them forever. An exciting discussion between us on Grecian politics made us fast friends in an amusing and durable manner. Madame d'Agoult saw a great deal of Monsieur de Girardin, with whom she was always on very friendly terms, Madame de Girardin having been the first person to receive her after her return to Paris and her rupture with Liszt, her escapade having, of course, shut her out from aristocratic drawing-rooms. Hippolyte Carnot, Littre and Jules Grevy cared but little for society, and were rarely met ex- cept in Madame d'Agoult's salon. They often formed a group together, into which I would steal, [99] MY LITERARY LIFE and listen with great respect and with much intel- lectual profit to the discussions that would take place between them, discussions that were always provoked by one of the most remarkable suggesters of ideas that I have ever know, Dupont-White, the father of the future Madame Sadi Carnot. The Comtesse d'Agoult had a particular affec- tion and esteem for those whom she called her " Jurassiens " — her men from the Jura — Jules Grevy, her lawyer, and Louis de Ronchaud, one of her most devoted friends, who lived, in summer, on his inherited estate, not far from Mont-sous- Vaudrey, at St. Lucipin-par-St. Claude, and who Madame d'Agoult always laughingly called " Lu- cipin-by-Claude." Madame d'Agoult spoke several languages, an unusual thing in those days. Her mind, which was high-toned, much matured and very individual, was extremely cultivated, and although she was most curious about other people, she was very reserved concerning herself. Firm and resolute, even to obstinacy, in her own opinions, no one was more tolerant to others. At first sight Madame d'Agoult struck one as somewhat virile and mascu- line, without losing the effect of womanliness, and was wont to say, " I have attained the age of man- hood." She was tall and extremely elegant in [100] .*■■■•' •C&A- ■ a ". DANIEL STERN (Mme. d'Agoult). From au engraving by Leopold Flaraeng. I MAKE A VALUABLE FRIEND appearance, and was the perfect type of a high- bred woman. She called herself a Democrat, and she was one in all sincerity, but the word in her mouth seemed such a contrast to herself, if not an anomaly, that one could not help smiling. Everything about Madame d'Agoult was high- bred; her appearance, her features, the manner in which she carried her head with its crown of snow- white hair, over which she wore a black chantilly lace veil, and all her gestures were aristocratic. Dignity was her prominent trait, even in her rare moments of effusion, and one was astonished that she never betrayed the passionate note in her character that had brought about the stormy event in her life, whose struggles she describes in Nelida's confession. Any breach of good- breeding, any want of education, so frequently found among Democrats, caused her real pain, but on the other hand, she, herself, had one defect: as a result of living outside of her own sphere, she had lost the exact notion and the proportionate measure of social positions acquired by talent. We were all greatly scandalized, for we also had our political and philosophical prejudices, when one day she invited Pasdeloup, the fashionable orches- tra leader, Littre, Carnot, and Grevy, to dine together. On another occasion she asked Paul de [101] MY LITERARY LIFE St. Victor, the refined man of letters, to luncheon with an operetta singer. She meant no disdain by such actions. Talent, without a title, for which she cared no longer, seemed to her, under no matter what form, to possess its own intrinsic value. In politics she was most liberal and well- balanced, and her opinion of the men of 1848 was definitely accepted for a long while. Daniel Stern's language was pure and free from pretension. A very clear perception of facts gave to her style an admirable imagery, the beauty of which marvel- lously concealed, as was desired, any possible redun- dancy of colouring in the phraseology. Madame d'Agoult was a serious writer, who desired to be taken more as a mind that one admires than as a heart that is beloved. Nevertheless, in her great work on the Revolu- tion of 1848, one finds certain pages where she, as it were, abandons herself to inspiration. Some of these pages devoted to Jules Grevy approach prophecy. She first describes him as the type of a Republican of high principles and then speaks enthusiastically of his foresight. " Monsieur Grevy's role," she says, " had the merit of being preponderate in the Constituent Assembly." His celebrated amendment was, ac- cording to Daniel Stern, " nothing less than pre- [102] I MAKE A VALUABLE FRIEND science. He desired," she wrote, " that the Presi- dent of the Republic, instead of being elected such, by universal suffrage, should be President of a Council, elected for an unlimited period, and always revocable." In October, 1848, Monsieur Grevy strongly protested against the idea of a President who, from the fact of being invested with popular sovereignty, " should be more for- midable than a King." Madame d'Agoult often said, as all her friends can remember : " Our next Republic will be presided over by Grevy." Les Esquisses Morales, one of the books which gives the best idea of Daniel Stern's great knowl- edge of philosophy, made such a sensation in the literary world that she subsequently became better known as the author of Les Esquisses Morales than of La Revolution de 1848. Having been brought up in Germany, Madame d'Agoult was not fond of light, jocular conver- sation, and would often throw cold water on it by feigning not to understand it. The general tone of her drawing-room was serious ; conversation ran principally on politics, art. especially on music, but touched seldom on novels and the theatre. Ed- mond Texier, one of the wittiest men in Paris, was a frequent visitor, but he kept his sallies for other places and was merely an observer of this circle, [ 103] MY LITERARY LIFE which became more interesting every day. He was on the staff of Le Siecle, and wrote for a great many journals under various pseudonyms, but signed his weekly articles in the Siecle with his own name. He was very caustic and his sayings were often quoted, and seemed all the more bitter when read apart from his articles, which were clear, elo- quent compositions, written in finished, elegant and noble style. Distinguished looking in his appear- ance, devoted to his friends, steadfast to his prin- ciples, he was loved and esteemed by many and feared by some. He had pubished several polit- ical portraits which had obtained very great success. Madame d'Agoult numbered among her best friends Edouard Grenier, a charming poet, a stanch Republican and Lamartine's most intimate friend. He was called " the living Gazette " ; he knew everything, he had seen and read everything, he could converse admirably, and would g