| THE YEAR 1817
1817 is the year which Louis XVIII., with a certain royal assurance
which was not wanting in pride, entitled the twenty-second of
his reign.It is the year in which M. Bruguiere de Sorsum was celebrated.All
the hairdressers' shops, hoping for powder and the return of the
royal bird, were besmeared with azure and decked with fleurs-de-lys.
It was the candid time at which Count Lynch sat every Sunday as
church-warden in the church-warden's pew of Saint-Germain-des-Pres,
in his costume of a peer of France, with his red ribbon and his
long nose and the majesty of profile peculiar to a man who has
performed a brilliant action.
The brilliant action performed by M. Lynch was this:
being mayor of Bordeaux, on the 12th of March, 1814, he had
surrendered the city a little too promptly to M. the Duke d'Angouleme.
Hence his peerage.
In 1817 fashion swallowed up little boys of from four to six
years of age in vast caps of morocco leather with ear-tabs resembling
Esquimaux mitres.The French army was dressed in white, after the
mode of the Austrian; the regiments were called legions; instead
of numbers they bore the names of departments; Napoleon was at
St. Helena; and since England refused him green cloth, he was
having his old coats turned.In 1817 Pelligrini sang; Mademoiselle
Bigottini danced; Potier reigned; Odry did not yet exist.
Madame Saqui had succeeded to Forioso.There were still Prussians
in France.
M. Delalot was a personage.Legitimacy had just asserted itself
by cutting off the hand, then the head, of Pleignier, of Carbonneau,
and of Tolleron.The Prince de Talleyrand, grand chamberlain, and
the Abbe Louis, appointed minister of finance, laughed as they
looked at each other, with the laugh of the two augurs; both of
them had celebrated, on the 14th of July, 1790, the mass of federation
in the Champ de Mars; Talleyrand had said it as bishop, Louis
had served it in the capacity of deacon.
In 1817, in the side-alleys of this same Champ de Mars, two
great cylinders of wood might have been seen lying in the rain,
rotting amid the grass, painted blue, with traces of eagles and
bees, from which the gilding was falling.
These were the columns which two years before had upheld the
Emperor's platform in the Champ de Mai.They were blackened here
and there with the scorches of the bivouac of Austrians encamped
near Gros-Caillou. Two or three of these columns had disappeared
in these bivouac fires, and had warmed the large hands of the
Imperial troops.
The Field of May had this remarkable point:
that it had been held in the month of June and in the Field
of March (Mars). In this year, 1817, two things were popular:
the Voltaire-Touquet and the snuff-box a la Charter.The most
recent Parisian sensation was the crime of Dautun, who had thrown
his brother's head into the fountain of the Flower-Market.
They had begun to feel anxious at the Naval Department, on
account of the lack of news from that fatal frigate, The Medusa,
which was destined to cover Chaumareix with infamy and Gericault
with glory.Colonel Selves was going to Egypt to become Soliman-Pasha.
The palace of Thermes, in the Rue de La Harpe, served as a shop
for a cooper.On the platform of the octagonal tower of the Hotel
de Cluny, the little shed of boards, which had served as an observatory
to Messier, the naval astronomer under Louis XVI., was still to
be seen.The Duchesse de Duras read to three or four friends her
unpublished Ourika, in her boudoir furnished by X. in sky-blue
satin.
The N's were scratched off the Louvre.
The bridge of Austerlitz had abdicated, and was entitled the
bridge of the King's Garden [du Jardin du Roi], a double enigma,
which disguised the bridge of Austerlitz and the Jardin des Plantes
at one stroke.
Louis XVIII., much preoccupied while annotating Horace with
the corner of his finger-nail, heroes who have become emperors,
and makers of wooden shoes who have become dauphins, had two anxieties,--Napoleon
and Mathurin Bruneau.The French Academy had given for its prize
subject, The Happiness procured through Study.
M. Bellart was officially eloquent.In his shadow could be seen
germinating that future advocate-general of Broe, dedicated to
the sarcasms of Paul-Louis Courier.There was a false Chateaubriand,
named Marchangy, in the interim, until there should be a false
Marchangy, named d'Arlincourt. Claire d'Albe and Malek-Adel were
masterpieces; Madame Cottin was proclaimed the chief writer of
the epoch.
The Institute had the academician, Napoleon Bonaparte, stricken
from its list of members.
A royal ordinance erected Angouleme into a naval school; for
the Duc d'Angouleme, being lord high admiral, it was evident that
the city of Angouleme had all the qualities of a seaport; otherwise
the monarchical principle would have received a wound.In the Council
of Ministers the question was agitated whether vignettes representing
slack-rope performances, which adorned Franconi's advertising
posters, and which attracted throngs of street urchins, should
be tolerated.
M. Paer, the author of Agnese, a good sort of fellow, with
a square face and a wart on his cheek, directed the little private
concerts of the Marquise de Sasenaye in the Rue Ville l'Eveque.
All the young girls were singing the Hermit of Saint-Avelle, with
words by Edmond Geraud.
The Yellow Dwarf was transferred into Mirror.
The Cafe Lemblin stood up for the Emperor, against the Cafe
Valois, which upheld the Bourbons.The Duc de Berri, already surveyed
from the shadow by Louvel, had just been married to a princess
of Sicily.
Madame de Stael had died a year previously.
The body-guard hissed Mademoiselle Mars.The grand newspapers
were all very small.
Their form was restricted, but their liberty was great.
The Constitutionnel was constitutional.La Minerve called Chateaubriand
Chateaubriant.
That t made the good middle-class people laugh heartily at
the expense of the great writer.In journals which sold themselves,
prostituted journalists, insulted the exiles of 1815.
David had no longer any talent, Arnault had no longer any wit,
Carnot was no longer honest, Soult had won no battles; it is true
that Napoleon had no longer any genius.No one is ignorant of the
fact that letters sent to an exile by post very rarely reached
him, as the police made it their religious duty to intercept them.
This is no new fact; Descartes complained of it in his exile.
Now David, having, in a Belgian publication, shown some displeasure
at not receiving letters which had been written to him, it struck
the royalist journals as amusing; and they derided the prescribed
man well on this occasion.What separated two men more than an
abyss was to say, the regicides, or to say the voters; to say
the enemies, or to say the allies; to say Napoleon, or to say
Buonaparte.
All sensible people were agreed that the era of revolution
had been closed forever by King Louis XVIII., surnamed "The
Immortal Author of the Charter."On the platform of the Pont-Neuf,
the word Redivivus was carved on the pedestal that awaited the
statue of Henry IV.
M. Piet, in the Rue Therese, No. 4, was making the rough draft
of his privy assembly to consolidate the monarchy.
The leaders of the Right said at grave conjunctures, "We
must write to Bacot."
MM.
Canuel, O'Mahoney, and De Chappedelaine were preparing the
sketch, to some extent with Monsieur's approval, of what was to
become later on "The Conspiracy of the Bord de l'Eau"--of
the waterside.L'Epingle Noire was already plotting in his own
quarter.Delaverderie was conferring with Trogoff.
M. Decazes, who was liberal to a degree, reigned.
Chateaubriand stood every morning at his window at No. 27 Rue
Saint-Dominique, clad in footed trousers, and slippers, with a
madras kerchief knotted over his gray hair, with his eyes fixed
on a mirror, a complete set of dentist's instruments spread out
before him, cleaning his teeth, which were charming, while he
dictated The Monarchy according to the Charter to M. Pilorge,
his secretary.
Criticism, assuming an authoritative tone, preferred Lafon
to Talma.
M. de Feletez signed himself A.; M. Hoffmann signed himself
Z. Charles Nodier wrote Therese Aubert.Divorce was abolished.
Lyceums called themselves colleges.The collegians, decorated
on the collar with a golden fleur-de-lys, fought each other apropos
of the King of Rome.
The counter-police of the chateau had denounced to her Royal
Highness Madame, the portrait, everywhere exhibited, of M. the
Duc d'Orleans, who made a better appearance in his uniform of
a colonel-general of hussars than M. the Duc de Berri, in his
uniform of colonel-general of dragoons-- a serious inconvenience.
The city of Paris was having the dome of the Invalides regilded
at its own expense.
Serious men asked themselves what M. de Trinquelague would
do on such or such an occasion; M. Clausel de Montals differed
on divers points from M. Clausel de Coussergues; M. de Salaberry
was not satisfied.
The comedian Picard, who belonged to the Academy, which the
comedian Moliere had not been able to do, had The Two Philiberts
played at the Odeon, upon whose pediment the removal of the letters
still allowed THEATRE OF THE EMPRESS to be plainly read.
People took part for or against Cugnet de Montarlot.
Fabvier was factious; Bavoux was revolutionary.The Liberal,
Pelicier, published an edition of Voltaire, with the following
title:
Works of Voltaire, of the French Academy."That will attract
purchasers," said the ingenious editor.
The general opinion was that M. Charles Loyson would be the
genius of the century; envy was beginning to gnaw at him--a sign
of glory; and this verse was composed on him:--
"Even when Loyson steals, one feels that he has paws."
As Cardinal Fesch refused to resign, M. de Pins, Archbishop
of Amasie, administered the diocese of Lyons.
The quarrel over the valley of Dappes was begun between Switzerland
and France by a memoir from Captain, afterwards General Dufour.
Saint-Simon, ignored, was erecting his sublime dream.
There was a celebrated Fourier at the Academy of Science, whom
posterity has forgotten; and in some garret an obscure Fourier,
whom the future will recall.Lord Byron was beginning to make his
mark; a note to a poem by Millevoye introduced him to France in
these terms:
a certain Lord Baron.
David d'Angers was trying to work in marble.
The Abbe Caron was speaking, in terms of praise, to a private
gathering of seminarists in the blind alley of Feuillantines,
of an unknown priest, named Felicite-Robert, who, at a latter
date, became Lamennais.A thing which smoked and clattered on the
Seine with the noise of a swimming dog went and came beneath the
windows of the Tuileries, from the Pont Royal to the Pont Louis
XV.; it was a piece of mechanism which was not good for much;
a sort of plaything, the idle dream of a dream-ridden inventor;
an utopia--a steamboat.
The Parisians stared indifferently at this useless thing.
M. de Vaublanc, the reformer of the Institute by a coup d'etat,
the distinguished author of numerous academicians, ordinances,
and batches of members, after having created them, could not succeed
in becoming one himself.The Faubourg Saint-Germain and the pavilion
de Marsan wished to have M. Delaveau for prefect of police, on
account of his piety.Dupuytren and Recamier entered into a quarrel
in the amphitheatre of the School of Medicine, and threatened
each other with their fists on the subject of the divinity of
Jesus Christ.
Cuvier, with one eye on Genesis and the other on nature, tried
to please bigoted reaction by reconciling fossils with texts and
by making mastodons flatter Moses.
M. Francois de Neufchateau, the praiseworthy cultivator of
the memory of Parmentier, made a thousand efforts to have pomme
de terre [potato] pronounced parmentiere, and succeeded therein
not at all.The Abbe Gregoire, ex-bishop, ex-conventionary, ex-senator,
had passed, in the royalist polemics, to the state of "Infamous
Gregoire."The locution of which we have made use--passed
to the state of--has been condemned as a neologism by M. Royer
Collard.
Under the third arch of the Pont de Jena, the new stone with
which, the two years previously, the mining aperture made by Blucher
to blow up the bridge had been stopped up, was still recognizable
on account of its whiteness.Justice summoned to its bar a man
who, on seeing the Comte d'Artois enter Notre Dame, had said aloud:
"Sapristi!
I regret the time when I saw Bonaparte and Talma enter the
Bel Sauvage, arm in arm."A seditious utterance.
Six months in prison.
Traitors showed themselves unbuttoned; men who had gone over
to the enemy on the eve of battle made no secret of their recompense,
and strutted immodestly in the light of day, in the cynicism of
riches and dignities; deserters from Ligny and Quatre-Bras, in
the brazenness of their well-paid turpitude, exhibited their devotion
to the monarchy in the most barefaced manner.
This is what floats up confusedly, pell-mell, for the year
1817, and is now forgotten.
History neglects nearly all these particulars, and cannot do
otherwise; the infinity would overwhelm it.Nevertheless, these
details, which are wrongly called trivial,-- there are no trivial
facts in humanity, nor little leaves in vegetation,--are useful.
It is of the physiognomy of the years that the physiognomy
of the centuries is composed.In this year of 1817 four young Parisians
arranged "a fine farce."
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