A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

The Paris Sketch Book

W >> William Makepeace Thackeray >> The Paris Sketch Book




Unwilling, however, as he may be to grant that there are any spots
in the character of his hero's government, the Prince is,
nevertheless, obliged to allow that such existed; that the
Emperor's manner of rule was a little more abrupt and dictatorial
than might possibly be agreeable. For this the Prince has always
an answer ready--it is the same poor one that Napoleon uttered a
million of times to his companions in exile--the excuse of
necessity. He WOULD have been very liberal, but that the people
were not fit for it; or that the cursed war prevented him--or any
other reason why. His first duty, however, says his apologist, was
to form a general union of Frenchmen, and he set about his plan in
this wise:--

"Let us not forget, that all which Napoleon undertook, in order to
create a general fusion, he performed without renouncing the
principles of the revolution. He recalled the émigrés, without
touching upon the law by which their goods had been confiscated and
sold as public property. He reestablished the Catholic religion at
the same time that he proclaimed the liberty of conscience, and
endowed equally the ministers of all sects. He caused himself to
be consecrated by the Sovereign Pontiff, without conceding to the
Pope's demand any of the liberties of the Gallican church. He
married a daughter of the Emperor of Austria, without abandoning
any of the rights of France to the conquests she had made. He
reestablished noble titles, without attaching to them any
privileges or prerogatives, and these titles were conferred on all
ranks, on all services, on all professions. Under the empire all
idea of caste was destroyed; no man ever thought of vaunting his
pedigree--no man ever was asked how he was born, but what he had
done.

"The first quality of a people which aspires to liberal government,
is respect to the law. Now, a law has no other power than lies in
the interest which each citizen has to defend or to contravene it.
In order to make a people respect the law, it was necessary that it
should be executed in the interest of all, and should consecrate
the principle of equality in all its extension. It was necessary
to restore the prestige with which the Government had been formerly
invested, and to make the principles of the revolution take root in
the public manners. At the commencement of a new society, it is
the legislator who makes or corrects the manners; later, it is the
manners which make the law, or preserve it from age to age intact."

Some of these fusions are amusing. No man in the empire was asked
how he was born, but what he had done; and, accordingly, as a man's
actions were sufficient to illustrate him, the Emperor took care to
make a host of new title-bearers, princes, dukes, barons, and what
not, whose rank has descended to their children. He married a
princess of Austria; but, for all that, did not abandon his
conquests--perhaps not actually; but he abandoned his allies, and,
eventually, his whole kingdom. Who does not recollect his answer
to the Poles, at the commencement of the Russian campaign? But for
Napoleon's imperial father-in-law, Poland would have been a
kingdom, and his race, perhaps, imperial still. Why was he to
fetch this princess out of Austria to make heirs for his throne?
Why did not the man of the people marry a girl of the people? Why
must he have a Pope to crown him--half a dozen kings for brothers,
and a bevy of aides-de-camp dressed out like so many mountebanks
from Astley's, with dukes' coronets, and grand blue velvet
marshals' bâtons? We have repeatedly his words for it. He wanted
to create an aristocracy--another acknowledgment on his part of the
Republican dilemma--another apology for the revolutionary blunder.
To keep the republic within bounds, a despotism is necessary; to
rally round the despotism, an aristocracy must be created; and for
what have we been laboring all this while? for what have bastiles
been battered down, and king's heads hurled, as a gage of battle,
in the face of armed Europe? To have a Duke of Otranto instead of
a Duke de la Tremouille, and Emperor Stork in place of King Log. O
lame conclusion! Is the blessed revolution which is prophesied for
us in England only to end in establishing a Prince Fergus O'Connor,
or a Cardinal Wade, or a Duke Daniel Whittle Harvey? Great as
those patriots are, we love them better under their simple family
names, and scorn titles and coronets.

At present, in France, the delicate matter of titles seems to be
better arranged, any gentleman, since the Revolution, being free to
adopt any one he may fix upon; and it appears that the Crown no
longer confers any patents of nobility, but contents itself with
saying, as in the case of M. de Pontois, the other day, "Le Roi
trouve convenable that you take the title of," &c.

To execute the legacy of the revolution, then; to fulfil his
providential mission; to keep his place,--in other words, for the
simplest are always the best,--to keep his place, and to keep his
Government in decent order, the Emperor was obliged to establish a
military despotism, to re-establish honors and titles; it was
necessary, as the Prince confesses, to restore the old prestige of
the Government, in order to make the people respect it; and he
adds--a truth which one hardly would expect from him,--"At the
commencement of a new society, it is the legislator who makes and
corrects the manners; later, it is the manners which preserve
the laws." Of course, and here is the great risk that all
revolutionizing people run--they must tend to despotism; "they must
personify themselves in a man," is the Prince's phrase; and,
according as is his temperament or disposition--according as he is
a Cromwell, a Washington, or a Napoleon--the revolution becomes
tyranny or freedom, prospers or falls.

Somewhere in the St. Helena memorials, Napoleon reports a message
of his to the Pope. "Tell the Pope," he says to an archbishop, "to
remember that I have six hundred thousand armed Frenchmen, qui
marcheront avec moi, pour moi, et comme moi." And this is the
legacy of the revolution, the advancement of freedom! A hundred
volumes of imperial special pleading will not avail against such
a speech as this--one so insolent, and at the same time so
humiliating, which gives unwittingly the whole of the Emperor's
progress, strength, and weakness. The six hundred thousand armed
Frenchmen were used up, and the whole fabric falls; the six hundred
thousand are reduced to sixty thousand, and straightway all the
rest of the fine imperial scheme vanishes: the miserable senate, so
crawling and abject but now, becomes of a sudden endowed with a
wondrous independence; the miserable sham nobles, sham empress,
sham kings, dukes, princes, chamberlains, pack up their plumes and
embroideries, pounce upon what money and plate they can lay their
hands on, and when the allies appear before Paris, when for courage
and manliness there is yet hope, when with fierce marches hastening
to the relief of his capital, bursting through ranks upon ranks of
the enemy, and crushing or scattering them from the path of his
swift and victorious despair, the Emperor at last is at home,--
where are the great dignitaries and the lieutenant-generals of the
empire? Where is Maria Louisa, the Empress Eagle, with her little
callow king of Rome? Is she going to defend her nest and her
eaglet? Not she. Empress-queen, lieutenant-general, and court
dignitaries, are off on the wings of all the winds--profligati
sunt, they are away with the money-bags, and Louis Stanislas Xavier
rolls into the palace of his fathers.

With regard to Napoleon's excellences as an administrator, a
legislator, a constructor of public works, and a skilful financier,
his nephew speaks with much diffuse praise, and few persons, we
suppose, will be disposed to contradict him. Whether the Emperor
composed his famous code, or borrowed it, is of little importance;
but he established it, and made the law equal for every man in
France except one. His vast public works and vaster wars were
carried on without new loans or exorbitant taxes; it was only the
blood and liberty of the people that were taxed, and we shall want
a better advocate than Prince Louis to show us that these were not
most unnecessarily and lavishly thrown away. As for the former and
material improvements, it is not necessary to confess here that a
despotic energy can effect such far more readily than a Government
of which the strength is diffused in many conflicting parties. No
doubt, if we could create a despotical governing machine, a steam
autocrat,--passionless, untiring, and supreme,--we should advance
further, and live more at ease than under any other form of
government. Ministers might enjoy their pensions and follow their
own devices; Lord John might compose histories or tragedies at his
leisure, and Lord Palmerston, instead of racking his brains to
write leading articles for Cupid, might crown his locks with
flowers, and sing [Greek text omitted], his natural Anacreontics;
but alas! not so: if the despotic Government has its good side,
Prince Louis Napoleon must acknowledge that it has its bad, and it
is for this that the civilized world is compelled to substitute for
it something more orderly and less capricious. Good as the
Imperial Government might have been, it must be recollected, too,
that since its first fall, both the Emperor and his admirer and
would-be successor have had their chance of re-establishing it.
"Fly from steeple to steeple" the eagles of the former did
actually, and according to promise perch for a while on the towers
of Notre Dame. We know the event: if the fate of war declared
against the Emperor, the country declared against him too; and,
with old Lafayette for a mouthpiece, the representatives of the
nation did, in a neat speech, pronounce themselves in permanence,
but spoke no more of the Emperor than if he had never been.
Thereupon the Emperor proclaimed his son the Emperor Napoleon II.
"L'Empereur est mort, vive l'Empereur!" shouted Prince Lucien.
Psha! not a soul echoed the words: the play was played, and as for
old Lafayette and his "permanent" representatives, a corporal with
a hammer nailed up the door of their spouting-club, and once more
Louis Stanislas Xavier rolled back to the bosom of his people.

In like manner Napoleon III. returned from exile, and made his
appearance on the frontier. His eagle appeared at Strasburg, and
from Strasburg advanced to the capital; but it arrived at Paris
with a keeper, and in a post-chaise; whence, by the orders of the
sovereign, it was removed to the American shores, and there
magnanimously let loose. Who knows, however, how soon it may be on
the wing again, and what a flight it will take?




THE STORY OF MARY ANCEL.


"Go, my nephew," said old Father Jacob to me, "and complete thy
studies at Strasburg: Heaven surely hath ordained thee for the
ministry in these times of trouble, and my excellent friend
Schneider will work out the divine intention."

Schneider was an old college friend of uncle Jacob's, was a
Benedictine monk, and a man famous for his learning; as for me,
I was at that time my uncle's chorister, clerk, and sacristan;
I swept the church, chanted the prayers with my shrill treble, and
swung the great copper incense-pot on Sundays and feasts; and I
toiled over the Fathers for the other days of the week.

The old gentleman said that my progress was prodigious, and,
without vanity, I believe he was right, for I then verily
considered that praying was my vocation, and not fighting, as
I have found since.

You would hardly conceive (said the Captain, swearing a great oath)
how devout and how learned I was in those days; I talked Latin
faster than my own beautiful patois of Alsacian French; I could
utterly overthrow in argument every Protestant (heretics we called
them) parson in the neighborhood, and there was a confounded
sprinkling of these unbelievers in our part of the country. I
prayed half a dozen times a day; I fasted thrice in a week; and, as
for penance, I used to scourge my little sides, till they had no
more feeling than a peg-top: such was the godly life I led at my
uncle Jacob's in the village of Steinbach.

Our family had long dwelt in this place, and a large farm and a
pleasant house were then in the possession of another uncle--uncle
Edward. He was the youngest of the three sons of my grandfather;
but Jacob, the elder, had shown a decided vocation for the church,
from, I believe, the age of three, and now was by no means tired of
it at sixty. My father, who was to have inherited the paternal
property, was, as I hear, a terrible scamp and scapegrace,
quarrelled with his family, and disappeared altogether, living and
dying at Paris; so far we knew through my mother, who came, poor
woman, with me, a child of six months, on her bosom, was refused
all shelter by my grandfather, but was housed and kindly cared for
by my good uncle Jacob.

Here she lived for about seven years, and the old gentleman, when
she died, wept over her grave a great deal more than I did, who was
then too young to mind anything but toys or sweetmeats.

During this time my grandfather was likewise carried off: he left,
as I said, the property to his son Edward, with a small proviso in
his will that something should be done for me, his grandson.

Edward was himself a widower, with one daughter, Mary, about three
years older than I, and certainly she was the dearest little
treasure with which Providence ever blessed a miserly father; by
the time she was fifteen, five farmers, three lawyers, twelve
Protestant parsons, and a lieutenant of Dragoons had made her
offers: it must not be denied that she was an heiress as well as a
beauty, which, perhaps, had something to do with the love of these
gentlemen. However, Mary declared that she intended to live
single, turned away her lovers one after another, and devoted
herself to the care of her father.

Uncle Jacob was as fond of her as he was of any saint or martyr.
As for me, at the mature age of twelve I had made a kind of
divinity of her, and when we sang "Ave Maria" on Sundays I could
not refrain from turning to her, where she knelt, blushing and
praying and looking like an angel, as she was. Besides her beauty,
Mary had a thousand good qualities; she could play better on the
harpsichord, she could dance more lightly, she could make better
pickles and puddings, than any girl in Alsace; there was not a want
or a fancy of the old hunks her father, or a wish of mine or my
uncle's, that she would not gratify if she could; as for herself,
the sweet soul had neither wants nor wishes except to see us happy.

I could talk to you for a year of all the pretty kindnesses that
she would do for me; how, when she found me of early mornings among
my books, her presence "would cast a light upon the day;" how she
used to smooth and fold my little surplice, and embroider me caps
and gowns for high feast-days; how she used to bring flowers for
the altar, and who could deck it so well as she? But sentiment
does not come glibly from under a grizzled moustache, so I will
drop it, if you please.

Amongst other favors she showed me, Mary used to be particularly
fond of kissing me: it was a thing I did not so much value in those
days, but I found that the more I grew alive to the extent of the
benefit, the less she would condescend to confer it on me; till at
last, when I was about fourteen, she discontinued it altogether, of
her own wish at least; only sometimes I used to be rude, and take
what she had now become so mighty unwilling to give.

I was engaged in a contest of this sort one day with Mary, when,
just as I was about to carry off a kiss from her cheek, I was
saluted with a staggering slap on my own, which was bestowed by
uncle Edward, and sent me reeling some yards down the garden.

The old gentleman, whose tongue was generally as close as his
purse, now poured forth a flood of eloquence which quite astonished
me. I did not think that so much was to be said on any subject as
he managed to utter on one, and that was abuse of me; he stamped,
he swore, he screamed; and then, from complimenting me, he turned
to Mary, and saluted her in a manner equally forcible and
significant; she, who was very much frightened at the commencement
of the scene, grew very angry at the coarse words he used, and the
wicked motives he imputed to her.

"The child is but fourteen," she said; "he is your own nephew, and
a candidate for holy orders:--father, it is a shame that you should
thus speak of me, your daughter, or of one of his holy profession."

I did not particularly admire this speech myself, but it had an
effect on my uncle, and was the cause of the words with which this
history commences. The old gentleman persuaded his brother that I
must be sent to Strasburg, and there kept until my studies for the
church were concluded. I was furnished with a letter to my uncle's
old college chum, Professor Schneider, who was to instruct me in
theology and Greek.

I was not sorry to see Strasburg, of the wonders of which I had
heard so much; but felt very loth as the time drew near when I must
quit my pretty cousin, and my good old uncle. Mary and I managed,
however, a parting walk, in which a number of tender things were
said on both sides. I am told that you Englishmen consider it
cowardly to cry; as for me, I wept and roared incessantly: when
Mary squeezed me, for the last time, the tears came out of me as if
I had been neither more nor less than a great wet sponge. My
cousin's eyes were stoically dry; her ladyship had a part to play,
and it would have been wrong for her to be in love with a young
chit of fourteen--so she carried herself with perfect coolness, as
if there was nothing the matter. I should not have known that she
cared for me, had it not been for a letter which she wrote me a
month afterwards--THEN, nobody was by, and the consequence was that
the letter was half washed away with her weeping; if she had used a
watering-pot the thing could not have been better done.

Well, I arrived at Strasburg--a dismal, old-fashioned, rickety town
in those days--and straightway presented myself and letter at
Schneider's door; over it was written--


COMITÉ DE SALUT PUBLIC.


Would you believe it? I was so ignorant a young fellow, that I had
no idea of the meaning of the words; however, I entered the
citizen's room without fear, and sat down in his ante-chamber until
I could be admitted to see him.

Here I found very few indications of his reverence's profession;
the walls were hung round with portraits of Robespierre, Marat, and
the like; a great bust of Mirabeau, mutilated, with the word
Traître underneath; lists and republican proclamations, tobacco-
pipes and fire-arms. At a deal-table, stained with grease and
wine, sat a gentleman, with a huge pigtail dangling down to that
part of his person which immediately succeeds his back, and a red
nightcap, containing a TRICOLOR cockade as large as a pancake. He
was smoking a short pipe, reading a little book, and sobbing as if
his heart would break. Every now and then he would make brief
remarks upon the personages or the incidents of his book, by which
I could judge that he was a man of the very keenest sensibilities--
"Ah, brigand!" "O malheureuse!" "O Charlotte, Charlotte!" The
work which this gentleman was perusing is called "The Sorrows of
Werter;" it was all the rage, in those days, and my friend was only
following the fashion. I asked him if I could see Father
Schneider? he turned towards me a hideous, pimpled face, which I
dream of now at forty years' distance.

"Father who?" said he. "Do you imagine that citizen Schneider has
not thrown off the absurd mummery of priesthood? If you were a
little older you would go to prison for calling him Father
Schneider--many a man has died for less;" and he pointed to a
picture of a guillotine, which was hanging in the room.

I was in amazement.

"What is he? Is he not a teacher of Greek, an abbé, a monk, until
monasteries were abolished, the learned editor of the songs of
'Anacreon?'"

"He WAS all this," replied my grim friend; "he is now a Member of
the Committee of Public Safety, and would think no more of ordering
your head off than of drinking this tumbler of beer."

He swallowed, himself, the frothy liquid, and then proceeded to
give me the history of the man to whom my uncle had sent me for
instruction.

Schneider was born in 1756: was a student at Würzburg, and
afterwards entered a convent, where he remained nine years. He
here became distinguished for his learning and his talents as a
preacher, and became chaplain to Duke Charles of Würtemberg. The
doctrines of the Illuminati began about this time to spread in
Germany, and Schneider speedily joined the sect. He had been a
professor of Greek at Cologne; and being compelled, on account of
his irregularity, to give up his chair, he came to Strasburg at the
commencement of the French Revolution, and acted for some time a
principal part as a revolutionary agent at Strasburg.

["Heaven knows what would have happened to me had I continued long
under his tuition!" said the Captain. "I owe the preservation of
my morals entirely to my entering the army. A man, sir, who is a
soldier, has very little time to be wicked; except in the case of a
siege and the sack of a town, when a little license can offend
nobody."]

By the time that my friend had concluded Schneider's biography, we
had grown tolerably intimate, and I imparted to him (with that
experience so remarkable in youth) my whole history--my course of
studies, my pleasant country life, the names and qualities of my
dear relations, and my occupations in the vestry before religion
was abolished by order of the Republic. In the course of my speech
I recurred so often to the name of my cousin Mary, that the
gentleman could not fail to perceive what a tender place she had in
my heart.

Then we reverted to "The Sorrows of Werter," and discussed the
merits of that sublime performance. Although I had before felt
some misgivings about my new acquaintance, my heart now quite
yearned towards him. He talked about love and sentiment in a
manner which made me recollect that I was in love myself; and you
know that when a man is in that condition, his taste is not very
refined, any maudlin trash of prose or verse appearing sublime to
him, provided it correspond, in some degree, with his own
situation.

"Candid youth!" cried my unknown, "I love to hear thy innocent
story and look on thy guileless face. There is, alas! so much of
the contrary in this world, so much terror and crime and blood,
that we who mingle with it are only too glad to forget it. Would
that we could shake off our cares as men, and be boys, as thou art,
again!"

Here my friend began to weep once more, and fondly shook my hand.
I blessed my stars that I had, at the very outset of my career, met
with one who was so likely to aid me. What a slanderous world it
is, thought I; the people in our village call these Republicans
wicked and bloody-minded; a lamb could not be more tender than this
sentimental bottle-nosed gentleman! The worthy man then gave me to
understand that he held a place under Government. I was busy in
endeavoring to discover what his situation might be, when the door
of the next apartment opened, and Schneider made his appearance.

At first he did not notice me, but he advanced to my new
acquaintance, and gave him, to my astonishment, something very like
a blow.

"You drunken, talking fool," he said, "you are always after your
time. Fourteen people are cooling their heels yonder, waiting
until you have finished your beer and your sentiment!"

My friend slunk muttering out of the room.

"That fellow," said Schneider, turning to me, "is our public
executioner: a capital hand too if he would but keep decent time;
but the brute is always drunk, and blubbering over 'The Sorrows of
Werter!'"


I know not whether it was his old friendship for my uncle, or my
proper merits, which won the heart of this the sternest ruffian of
Robespierre's crew; but certain it is, that he became strangely
attached to me, and kept me constantly about his person. As for
the priesthood and the Greek, they were of course very soon out of
the question. The Austrians were on our frontier; every day
brought us accounts of battles won; and the youth of Strasburg, and
of all France, indeed, were bursting with military ardor. As for
me, I shared the general mania, and speedily mounted a cockade as
large as that of my friend, the executioner.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.