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<h2> BOOK THIRD.—IN THE YEAR 1817 </h2>
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<h2> CHAPTER I—THE YEAR 1817 </h2>
<p>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'Angoul�me. 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 Abb� 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.</p>
<p>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 Angoul�me into a naval school; for the Duc
d'Angoul�me, being lord high admiral, it was evident that the city of
Angoul�me 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:—</p>
<p>"Even when Loyson steals, one feels that he has paws."<br/></p>
<p>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 Abb� 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.</p>
<p>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 Abb�
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.</p>
<p>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."</p>
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