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The Paris Sketch Book

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* In order to account for these trivial details, the reader must be
told that the story is, for the chief part, a fact; and that the
little sketch in this page was TAKEN FROM NATURE. The latter was
likewise a copy from one found in the manner described.


He was lying as I have drawn him,* one hand on his breast, the
other falling towards the ground. There was an expression of
perfect calm on the face, and no mark of blood to stain the side
towards the light. On the other side, however, there was a great
pool of black blood, and in it the pistol; it looked more like a
toy than a weapon to take away the life of this vigorous young man.
In his forehead, at the side, was a small black wound; Jack's life
had passed through it; it was little bigger than a mole.


* This refers to an illustrated edition of the work.


"Regardez un peu," said the landlady, "messieurs, il m'a gâté trois
matelas, et il me doit quarante quatre francs."

This was all his epitaph: he had spoiled three mattresses, and owed
the landlady four-and-forty francs. In the whole world there was
not a soul to love him or lament him. We, his friends, were
looking at his body more as an object of curiosity, watching it
with a kind of interest with which one follows the fifth act of a
tragedy, and leaving it with the same feeling with which one leaves
the theatre when the play is over and the curtain is down.

Beside Jack's bed, on his little "table de nuit," lay the remains
of his last meal, and an open letter, which we read. It was from
one of his suspicious acquaintances of former days, and ran thus:--


"Où es tu, cher Jack? why you not come and see me--tu me dois de
l'argent, entends tu?--un chapeau, une cachemire, a box of the
Play. Viens demain soir, je t'attendrai at eight o'clock, Passage
des Panoramas. My Sir is at his country.

"Adieu à demain.

"Fifine.

"Samedi."


I shuddered as I walked through this very Passage des Panoramas, in
the evening. The girl was there, pacing to and fro, and looking in
the countenance of every passer-by, to recognize Attwood. "ADIEU À
DEMAIN!"--there was a dreadful meaning in the words, which the
writer of them little knew. "Adieu à demain!"--the morrow was
come, and the soul of the poor suicide was now in the presence of
God. I dare not think of his fate; for, except in the fact of his
poverty and desperation, was he worse than any of us, his
companions, who had shared his debauches, and marched with him up
to the very brink of the grave?

There is but one more circumstance to relate regarding poor Jack--
his burial; it was of a piece with his death.

He was nailed into a paltry coffin and buried, at the expense of
the arrondissement, in a nook of the burial-place beyond the
Barrière de l'Etoile. They buried him at six o'clock, of a bitter
winter's morning, and it was with difficulty that an English
clergyman could be found to read a service over his grave. The
three men who have figured in this history acted as Jack's
mourners; and as the ceremony was to take place so early in the
morning, these men sat up the night through, AND WERE ALMOST DRUNK
as they followed his coffin to its resting-place.


MORAL.


"When we turned out in our great-coats," said one of them afterwards,
"reeking of cigars and brandy-and-water, d--e, sir, we quite
frightened the old buck of a parson; he did not much like our
company." After the ceremony was concluded, these gentlemen were
very happy to get home to a warm and comfortable breakfast, and
finished the day royally at Frascati's.




NAPOLEON AND HIS SYSTEM.

ON PRINCE LOUIS NAPOLEON'S WORK.


Any person who recollects the history of the absurd outbreak of
Strasburg, in which Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte figured, three
years ago, must remember that, however silly the revolt was,
however, foolish its pretext, however doubtful its aim, and
inexperienced its leader, there was, nevertheless, a party, and a
considerable one in France, that were not unwilling to lend the new
projectors their aid. The troops who declared against the Prince,
were, it was said, all but willing to declare for him; and it was
certain that, in many of the regiments of the army, there existed a
strong spirit of disaffection, and an eager wish for the return of
the imperial system and family.

As to the good that was to be derived from the change, that is
another question. Why the Emperor of the French should be better
than the King of the French, or the King of the French better than
the King of France and Navarre, it is not our business to inquire;
but all the three monarchs have no lack of supporters; republicanism
has no lack of supporters; St. Simoninnism was followed by a
respectable body of admirers; Robespierrism has a select party of
friends. If, in a country where so many quacks have had their day,
Prince Louis Napoleon thought he might renew the imperial quackery,
why should he not? It has recollections with it that must always be
dear to a gallant nation; it has certain claptraps in its vocabulary
that can never fail to inflame a vain, restless, grasping,
disappointed one.

In the first place, and don't let us endeavor to disguise it, they
hate us. Not all the protestations of friendship, not all the
wisdom of Lord Palmerston, not all the diplomacy of our distinguished
plenipotentiary, Mr. Henry Lytton Bulwer--and let us add, not all
the benefit which both countries would derive from the alliance--can
make it, in our times at least, permanent and cordial. They hate
us. The Carlist organs revile us with a querulous fury that never
sleeps; the moderate party, if they admit the utility of our
alliance, are continually pointing out our treachery, our insolence,
and our monstrous infractions of it; and for the Republicans, as
sure as the morning comes, the columns of their journals thunder out
volleys of fierce denunciations against our unfortunate country.
They live by feeding the natural hatred against England, by keeping
old wounds open, by recurring ceaselessly to the history of old
quarrels, and as in these we, by God's help, by land and by sea, in
old times and late, have had the uppermost, they perpetuate the
shame and mortification of the losing party, the bitterness of past
defeats, and the eager desire to avenge them. A party which knows
how to exploiter this hatred will always be popular to a certain
extent; and the imperial scheme has this, at least, among its
conditions.

Then there is the favorite claptrap of the "natural frontier." The
Frenchman yearns to be bounded by the Rhine and the Alps; and next
follows the cry, "Let France take her place among nations, and
direct, as she ought to do, the affairs of Europe." These are the
two chief articles contained in the new imperial programme, if we
may credit the journal which has been established to advocate the
cause. A natural boundary--stand among the nations--popular
development--Russian alliance, and a reduction of la perfide Albion
to its proper insignificance. As yet we know little more of the
plan: and yet such foundations are sufficient to build a party
upon, and with such windy weapons a substantial Government is to be
overthrown!

In order to give these doctrines, such as they are, a chance of
finding favor with his countrymen, Prince Louis has the advantage
of being able to refer to a former great professor of them--his
uncle Napoleon. His attempt is at once pious and prudent; it
exalts the memory of the uncle, and furthers the interests of the
nephew, who attempts to show what Napoleon's ideas really were;
what good had already resulted from the practice of them; how
cruelly they had been thwarted by foreign wars and difficulties;
and what vast benefits WOULD have resulted from them; ay, and (it
is reasonable to conclude) might still, if the French nation would
be wise enough to pitch upon a governor that would continue the
interrupted scheme. It is, however, to be borne in mind that the
Emperor Napoleon had certain arguments in favor of his opinions for
the time being, which his nephew has not employed. On the 13th
Vendemiaire, when General Bonaparte believed in the excellence of a
Directory, it may be remembered that he aided his opinions by forty
pieces of artillery, and by Colonel Murat at the head of his
dragoons. There was no resisting such a philosopher; the Directory
was established forthwith, and the sacred cause of the minority
triumphed, in like manner, when the General was convinced of the
weakness of the Directory, and saw fully the necessity of
establishing a Consulate, what were his arguments? Moreau, Lannes,
Murat, Berthier, Leclerc, Lefebvre--gentle apostles of the truth!--
marched to St. Cloud, and there, with fixed bayonets, caused it to
prevail. Error vanished in an instant. At once five hundred of
its high-priests tumbled out of windows, and lo! three Consuls
appeared to guide the destinies of France! How much more
expeditious, reasonable, and clinching was this argument of the
18th Brumaire, than any one that can be found in any pamphlet! A
fig for your duodecimos and octavos! Talk about points, there are
none like those at the end of a bayonet; and the most powerful of
styles is a good rattling "article" from a nine-pounder.

At least this is our interpretation of the manner in which were
always propagated the Idées Napoléoniennes. Not such, however, is
Prince Louis's belief; and, if you wish to go along with him in
opinion, you will discover that a more liberal, peaceable, prudent
Prince never existed: you will read that "the mission of Napoleon"
was to be the "testamentary executor of the revolution;" and the
Prince should have added the legatee; or, more justly still, as
well as the EXECUTOR, he should be called the EXECUTIONER, and then
his title would be complete. In Vendemiaire, the military
Tartuffe, he threw aside the Revolution's natural heirs, and made
her, as it were, ALTER HER WILL; on the 18th of Brumaire he
strangled her, and on the 19th seized on her property, and kept it
until force deprived him of it. Illustrations, to be sure, are no
arguments, but the example is the Prince's, not ours.

In the Prince's eyes, then, his uncle is a god; of all monarchs,
the most wise, upright, and merciful. Thirty years ago the opinion
had millions of supporters; while millions again were ready to
avouch the exact contrary. It is curious to think of the former
difference of opinion concerning Napoleon; and, in reading his
nephew's rapturous encomiums of him, one goes back to the days when
we ourselves were as loud and mad in his dispraise. Who does not
remember his own personal hatred and horror, twenty-five years ago,
for the man whom we used to call the "bloody Corsican upstart and
assassin?" What stories did we not believe of him?--what murders,
rapes, robberies, not lay to his charge?--we who were living within
a few miles of his territory, and might, by books and newspapers,
be made as well acquainted with his merits or demerits as any of
his own countrymen.

Then was the age when the Idées Napoléoniennes might have passed
through many editions; for while we were thus outrageously bitter,
our neighbors were as extravagantly attached to him by a strange
infatuation--adored him like a god, whom we chose to consider as a
fiend; and vowed that, under his government, their nation had
attained its highest pitch of grandeur and glory. In revenge there
existed in England (as is proved by a thousand authentic documents)
a monster so hideous, a tyrant so ruthless and bloody, that the
world's history cannot show his parallel. This ruffian's name was,
during the early part of the French revolution, Pittetcobourg.
Pittetcobourg's emissaries were in every corner of France;
Pittetcobourg's gold chinked in the pockets of every traitor in
Europe; it menaced the life of the godlike Robespierre; it drove
into cellars and fits of delirium even the gentle philanthropist
Marat; it fourteen times caused the dagger to be lifted against the
bosom of the First Consul, Emperor, and King,--that first, great,
glorious, irresistible, cowardly, contemptible, bloody hero and
fiend, Bonaparte, before mentioned.

On our side of the Channel we have had leisure, long since, to re-
consider our verdict against Napoleon; though, to be sure, we have
not changed our opinion about Pittetcobourg. After five-and-thirty
years all parties bear witness to his honesty, and speak with
affectionate reverence of his patriotism, his genius, and his
private virtue. In France, however, or, at least among certain
parties in France, there has been no such modification of opinion.
With the Republicans, Pittetcobourg is Pittetcobourg still,--
crafty, bloody, seeking whom he may devour; and perfide Albion more
perfidious than ever. This hatred is the point of union between
the Republic and the Empire; it has been fostered ever since, and
must be continued by Prince Louis, if he would hope to conciliate
both parties.

With regard to the Emperor, then, Prince Louis erects to his memory
as fine a monument as his wits can raise. One need not say that
the imperial apologist's opinion should be received with the utmost
caution; for a man who has such a hero for an uncle may naturally
be proud of and partial to him; and when this nephew of the great
man would be his heir likewise, and, hearing his name, step also
into his imperial shoes, one may reasonably look for much
affectionate panegyric. "The empire was the best of empires,"
cries the Prince; and possibly it was; undoubtedly, the Prince
thinks it was; but he is the very last person who would convince a
man with the proper suspicious impartiality. One remembers a
certain consultation of politicians which is recorded in the
Spelling-book; and the opinion of that patriotic sage who avowed
that, for a real blameless constitution, an impenetrable shield for
liberty, and cheap defence of nations, there was nothing like
leather.

Let us examine some of the Prince's article. If we may be allowed
humbly to express an opinion, his leather is not only quite
insufficient for those vast public purposes for which he destines
it, but is, moreover, and in itself, very BAD LEATHER. The hides
are poor, small, unsound slips of skin; or, to drop this cobbling
metaphor, the style is not particularly brilliant, the facts not
very startling, and, as for the conclusions, one may differ with
almost every one of them. Here is an extract from his first
chapter, "on governments in general:"--

"I speak it with regret, I can see but two governments, at this
day, which fulfil the mission that Providence has confided to them;
they are the two colossi at the end of the world; one at the
extremity of the old world, the other at the extremity of the new.
Whilst our old European centre is as a volcano, consuming itself in
its crater, the two nations of the East and the West, march without
hesitation, towards perfection; the one under the will of a single
individual, the other under liberty.

"Providence has confided to the United States of North America the
task of peopling and civilizing that immense territory which
stretches from the Atlantic to the South Sea, and from the North
Pole to the Equator. The Government, which is only a simple
administration, has only hitherto been called upon to put in
practice the old adage, Laissez faire, laissez passer, in order to
favor that irresistible instinct which pushes the people of America
to the west.

In Russia it is to the imperial dynasty that is owing all the vast
progress which, in a century and a half, has rescued that empire
from barbarism. The imperial power must contend against all the
ancient prejudices of our old Europe: it must centralize, as far as
possible, all the powers of the state in the hands of one person,
in order to destroy the abuses which the feudal and communal
franchises have served to perpetuate. The last alone can hope to
receive from it the improvements which it expects.

"But thou, France of Henry IV., of Louis XIV., of Carnot, of
Napoleon--thou, who wert always for the west of Europe the source
of progress, who possessest in thyself the two great pillars of
empire, the genius for the arts of peace and the genius of war--
hast thou no further mission to fulfil? Wilt thou never cease to
waste thy force and energies in intestine struggles? No; such
cannot be thy destiny: the day will soon come, when, to govern
thee, it will be necessary to understand that thy part is to place
in all treaties thy sword of Brennus on the side of civilization."

These are the conclusions of the Prince's remarks upon governments
in general; and it must be supposed that the reader is very little
wiser at the end than at the beginning. But two governments in the
world fulfil their mission: the one government, which is no
government; the other, which is a despotism. The duty of France is
IN ALL TREATIES to place her sword of Brennus in the scale of
civilization. Without quarrelling with the somewhat confused
language of the latter proposition, may we ask what, in heaven's
name, is the meaning of all the three? What is this épée de
Brennus? and how is France to use it? Where is the great source of
political truth, from which, flowing pure, we trace American
republicanism in one stream, Russian despotism in another? Vastly
prosperous is the great republic, if you will: if dollars and cents
constitute happiness, there is plenty for all: but can any one, who
has read of the American doings in the late frontier troubles, and
the daily disputes on the slave question, praise the GOVERNMENT of
the States?--a Government which dares not punish homicide or arson
performed before its very eyes, and which the pirates of Texas and
the pirates of Canada can brave at their will? There is no
government, but a prosperous anarchy; as the Prince's other
favorite government is a prosperous slavery. What, then, is to be
the épée de Brennus government? Is it to be a mixture of the two?
"Society," writes the Prince, axiomatically, "contains in itself
two principles--the one of progress and immortality, the other of
disease and disorganization." No doubt; and as the one tends
towards liberty, so the other is only to be cured by order: and
then, with a singular felicity, Prince Louis picks us out a couple
of governments, in one of which the common regulating power is as
notoriously too weak, as it is in the other too strong, and talks
in rapturous terms of the manner in which they fulfil their
"providential mission!"

From these considerations on things in general, the Prince conducts
us to Napoleon in particular, and enters largely into a discussion
of the merits of the imperial system. Our author speaks of the
Emperor's advent in the following grandiose way:--

"Napoleon, on arriving at the public stage, saw that his part was
to be the TESTAMENTARY EXECUTOR of the Revolution. The destructive
fire of parties was extinct; and when the Revolution, dying, but
not vanquished, delegated to Napoleon the accomplishment of her
last will, she said to him, 'Establish upon solid bases the
principal result of my efforts. Unite divided Frenchmen. Defeat
feudal Europe that is leagued against me. Cicatrize my wounds.
Enlighten the nations. Execute that in width, which I have had to
perform in depth. Be for Europe what I have been for France. And,
even if you must water the tree of civilization with your blood--if
you must see your projects misunderstood, and your sons without a
country, wandering over the face of the earth, never abandon the
sacred cause of the French people. Insure its triumph by all the
means which genius can discover and humanity approve.'

"This grand mission Napoleon performed to the end. His task was
difficult. He had to place upon new principles a society still
boiling with hatred and revenge; and to use, for building up, the
same instruments which had been employed for pulling down.

"The common lot of every new truth that arises, is to wound rather
than to convince--rather than to gain proselytes, to awaken fear.
For, oppressed as it long has been, it rushes forward with
additional force; having to encounter obstacles, it is compelled to
combat them, and overthrow them; until, at length, comprehended and
adopted by the generality, it becomes the basis of new social
order.

"Liberty will follow the same march as the Christian religion.
Armed with death from the ancient society of Rome, it for a long
while excited the hatred and fear of the people. At last, by force
of martyrdoms and persecutions, the religion of Christ penetrated
into the conscience and the soul; it soon had kings and armies at
its orders, and Constantine and Charlemagne bore it triumphant
throughout Europe. Religion then laid down her arms of war. It
laid open to all the principles of peace and order which it
contained; it became the prop of Government, as it was the
organizing element of society. Thus will it be with liberty. In
1793 it frightened people and sovereigns alike; then, having
clothed itself in a milder garb, IT INSINUATED ITSELF EVERYWHERE IN
THE TRAIN OF OUR BATTALIONS. In 1815 all parties adopted its flag,
and armed themselves with its moral force--covered themselves with
its colors. The adoption was not sincere, and liberty was soon
obliged to reassume its warlike accoutrements. With the contest
their fears returned. Let us hope that they will soon cease, and
that liberty will soon resume her peaceful standards, to quit them
no more.

"The Emperor Napoleon contributed more than any one else towards
accelerating the reign of liberty, by saving the moral influence
of the revolution, and diminishing the fears which it imposed.
Without the Consulate and the Empire, the revolution would have
been only a grand drama, leaving grand revolutions but no traces:
the revolution would have been drowned in the counter-revolution.
The contrary, however, was the case. Napoleon rooted the
revolution in France, and introduced, throughout Europe, the
principal benefits of the crisis of 1789. To use his own words,
'He purified the revolution, he confirmed kings, and ennobled
people.' He purified the revolution, in separating the truths
which it contained from the passions that, during its delirium,
disfigured it. He ennobled the people in giving them the
consciousness of their force, and those institutions which raise
men in their own eyes. The Emperor may be considered as the
Messiah of the new ideas; for--and we must confess it--in the
moments immediately succeeding a social revolution, it is not so
essential to put rigidly into practice all the propositions
resulting from the new theory, but to become master of the
regenerative genius, to identify one's self with the sentiments of
the people, and boldly to direct them towards the desired point.
To accomplish such a task YOUR FIBRE SHOULD RESPOND TO THAT OF THE
PEOPLE, as the Emperor said; you should feel like it, your
interests should be so intimately raised with its own, that you
should vanquish or fall together."

Let us take breath after these big phrases,--grand round figures of
speech,--which, when put together, amount like certain other
combinations of round figures to exactly 0. We shall not stop to
argue the merits and demerits of Prince Louis's notable comparison
between the Christian religion and the Imperial-revolutionary
system. There are many blunders in the above extract as we read
it; blundering metaphors, blundering arguments, and blundering
assertions; but this is surely the grandest blunder of all; and one
wonders at the blindness of the legislator and historian who can
advance such a parallel. And what are we to say of the legacy of
the dying revolution to Napoleon? Revolutions do not die, and, on
their death-beds, making fine speeches, hand over their property to
young officers of artillery. We have all read the history of his
rise. The constitution of the year III. was carried. Old men of
the Montagne, disguised royalists, Paris sections, PITTETCOBOURG,
above all, with his money-bags, thought that here was a fine
opportunity for a revolt, and opposed the new constitution in arms:
the new constitution had knowledge of a young officer who would not
hesitate to defend its cause, and who effectually beat the
majority. The tale may be found in every account of the
revolution, and the rest of his story need not be told. We know
every step that he took: we know how, by doses of cannon-balls
promptly administered, he cured the fever of the sections--that
fever which another camp-physician (Menou) declined to prescribe
for; we know how he abolished the Directory; and how the Consulship
came; and then the Empire; and then the disgrace, exile, and lonely
death. Has not all this been written by historians in all
tongues?--by memoir-writing pages, chamberlains, marshals, lackeys,
secretaries, contemporaries, and ladies of honor? Not a word of
miracle is there in all this narration; not a word of celestial
missions, or political Messiahs. From Napoleon's rise to his fall,
the bayonet marches alongside of him: now he points it at the tails
of the scampering "five hundred,"--now he charges with it across
the bloody planks of Arcola--now he flies before it over the fatal
plain of Waterloo.

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