Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (54 page)

“Long live the Republic!”

From the chimneys of the chateau escaped enormous whirlwinds of black smoke which bore sparks along with them. The ringing of the bells sent out over the city a wild and startling alarm. Right and left, in every direction, the conquerors discharged their weapons.

Frédéric, though he was not a warrior, felt his Gallic blood leaping in his veins. The magnetism of the public enthusiasm had seized hold of him. He inhaled with delight the stormy atmosphere filled with the odour of gunpowder; and, in the meantime, he quivered with the consciousness of an immense love, a supreme and universal tenderness, as if the heart of all humanity were throbbing in his chest.

Hussonnet said with a yawn:

“It is time, perhaps, to go and educate the masses.”

Frédéric followed him to his correspondence-office on the Place de la Bourse; and he began to compose for the Troyes newspaper an account of the events in a lyrical style—a veritable masterpiece—to which he signed his name. Then they dined together at a tavern. Hussonnet was pensive; the eccentricities of the Revolution exceeded his own.

After leaving the café, when they went to the Hotel de Ville in search of news, the boyish impulses which were natural to him had gotten the upper hand once more. He scaled the barricades like a chamois, and answered the sentinels with patriotic jokes.

They heard the Provisional Government proclaimed by torchlight. At last, Frédéric got back to his house at midnight, overcome with fatigue.

“Well,” said he to his man-servant, while the latter was undressing him, “are you satisfied?”

“Yes, no doubt, Monsieur; but I don’t like to see the mob marching in step.”

Next morning, when he awoke, Frédéric thought of Deslauriers. He hastened to his friend’s lodgings. He ascertained that the lawyer had just left Paris, having been appointed as a provincial commissioner. The evening before, he had managed to see Ledru-Rollin, and by pestering him in the name of the Law Schools, had obtained from him a post, a mission.
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However, the concierge explained, he was going to write and give his address the following week.

After this, Frédéric went to see the Maréchale. She gave him a chilly reception. She resented his desertion of her. Her bitterness disappeared when he gave her repeated assurances that peace was restored.

All was quiet now. There was no reason to be afraid. He kissed her, and she declared herself in favour of the Republic, as his lordship the Archbishop of Paris had already done, and as the magistrature, the Council of State, the Institute, the marshals of France, Changarnier, M. de Falloux, all the Bonapartists, all the Legitimists, and a considerable number of Orléanists were about to do with a swiftness indicative of marvellous zeal.

The fall of the Monarchy had been so rapid that, as soon as the first moment of stupefaction had passed, there was amongst the middle class a feeling of astonishment at the fact that they were still alive. The summary execution of some thieves, who were shot without a trial, was regarded as an admirable act of justice. For a month Lamartine’s phrase was repeated with reference to the red flag, “which had only been carried round the Champ de Mars, whereas the tricoloured flag ...” etc.;
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and all placed themselves under its shade, each party seeing amongst the three colours only its own, and firmly determined, as soon as it would be the most powerful, to tear away the two others.

As business was suspended, anxiety and curiosity drove everyone into the street. The casual style of dress blurred differences of social position. Hatred masked itself; high hopes were expressed; the multitude seemed full of good-nature. The pride of having gained their rights shone in the people’s faces. They exhibited the gaiety of a carnival, a camp-fire mood. Nothing could have been more enchanting than Paris during the days that followed the Revolution.

Frédéric gave the Maréchale his arm, and they strolled along through the streets together. She was highly distracted by the display of rosettes in every buttonhole, by the banners hung from every window, and the bills of every colour that were posted upon the walls, and threw some money here and there into the collection-boxes for the wounded, which were placed on chairs in the middle of the sidewalk. Then she stopped before some caricatures representing Louis Philippe as a pastry-cook, as an acrobat, as a dog, or as a leech. But she was a little frightened at the sight of Caussidière’s men with their sabres and scarves.
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At other times it was a tree of Liberty that was being planted. The clergy vied with each other in blessing the Republic, escorted by servants in gold lace; and the masses thought this very fine. The most frequent spectacle was that of deputations of everything under the sun, going to demand something at the Hotel de Ville, for every trade, every industry, was looking to the Government to put a complete end to its problems. Some of them, it is true, went to offer advice or congratulations, or merely to pay a little visit, and to see the government machine performing its functions. One day, about the middle of the month of March, as they were passing the Pont d’Arcole, having to do some errand for Rosanette in the Latin Quarter, Frédéric saw approaching a column of individuals with oddly-shaped hats and long beards. At its head, beating a drum, walked a negro who had formerly been an artist’s model; and the man who bore the banner, on which this inscription floated in the wind, “Artist-Painters,” was no other than Pellerin.

He made a sign to Frédéric to wait for him, and then reappeared five minutes later, having some time to spare; for the Government was, at that moment, receiving a deputation from the stone-cutters. He was going with his colleagues to ask for the creation of a Forum of Art, a kind of Exchange where the interests of Æsthetics would be discussed. Sublime masterpieces would be produced, inasmuch as the workers would amalgamate their talents. Ere long Paris would be covered with gigantic monuments. He would decorate them. He had even begun a figure of the Republic. One of his comrades had come to get him, for the deputation from the poulterers was hard on their heels.

“What stupidity!” growled a voice in the crowd. “Always some nonsense, nothing significant!”

It was Regimbart. He did not greet Frédéric, but took advantage of the occasion to vent his own bitterness.

The Citizen spent his days wandering about the streets, pulling his moustache, rolling his eyes about, accepting and propagating any dismal news that was communicated to him; and he had only two phrases: “Look out! we’re going to be out flanked!” or else, “Why, dammit! The Republic is being double-crossed!” He was dissatisfied with everything, and especially with the fact that we had not taken back our natural frontiers.

The very name of Lamartine made him shrug his shoulders. He did not consider Ledru-Rollin “sufficient for the problem,” referred to Dupont (of the Eure) as an old numbskull, Albert as an idiot, Louis Blanc as an Utopist, and Blanqui as an exceedingly dangerous man; and when Frédéric asked him what would be the best thing to do, he replied, gripping his arm till he nearly bruised it:

“To take the Rhine, I tell you! to take the Rhine, dammit!”

Then he blamed the Reactionaries. They were taking off their mask. The sack of the chateau of Neuilly and Suresne, the fire at Batignolles, the troubles at Lyons, all the excesses and all the grievances, were now being exaggerated by adding Ledru-Rollin’s circular, the forced currency of bank-notes, the fall of the government stock to sixty francs, and, to top it all off, as the supreme iniquity, a final blow, a culminating horror, the tax of forty-five centimes! And over and above all these things, there was Socialism too! Although these theories, as new as love and war, had been discussed sufficiently for forty years to fill a number of libraries, they terrified the wealthier citizens, as if they had been a hailstorm of meteorites; and they expressed indignation at them by virtue of that hatred which the advent of every idea provokes, simply because it is an idea—a hatred from which it derives subsequently its glory, and which causes its enemies to be always beneath it, however lowly it may be.

Now Property rose to the level of Religion, and was indistinguishable from God. The attacks made on it appeared to them a sacrilege; almost a species of cannibalism. In spite of the most humane legislation that ever existed, the spectre of ’93
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reappeared, and the sound of the guillotine vibrated in every syllable of the word “Republic,” which did not prevent them from despising it for its weakness. France, no longer having a master, was beginning to shriek with terror, like a blind man without his stick or an infant that had lost its nurse.

Of all Frenchmen, M. Dambreuse was the most alarmed. The new condition of things threatened his fortune, but, more than anything else, it contradicted his experience. A system so good! a king so wise! was it possible? The ground was giving way beneath their feet! Next morning he dismissed three of his servants, sold his horses, bought a soft hat to go out into the streets, thought even of letting his beard grow; and he remained at home, prostrated, reading over and over again newspapers most hostile to his own ideas, and plunged into such a gloomy mood that even the jokes about the pipe of Flocon
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failed to make him smile.

As a supporter of the last reign, he was dreading the vengeance of the people so far as concerned his estates in Champagne when Frédéric’s journalistic effusion
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fell into his hands. Then it occurred to him that his young friend was a very useful person, and that he might be able, if not to serve him, at least to protect him, so that, one morning, M. Dambreuse presented himself at Frédéric’s residence, accompanied by Martinon.

This visit, he said, had no object save that of seeing him for a little while, and having a chat with him. In short, he rejoiced at the events that had happened, and with his whole heart adopted “our sublime motto,
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,”
having always been at heart a Republican. If he voted under the other
régime
with the Ministry, it was simply in order to accelerate an inevitable downfall. He even inveighed against M. Guizot, “who has gotten us into a fine mess, we must admit!” By way of retaliation, he spoke in an enthusiastic fashion about Lamartine, who had shown himself “magnificent, upon my word of honour, when, with reference to the red flag—”

“Yes, I know,” said Frédéric. After which he declared that his sympathies were on the side of the workingmen.

“For, in fact, more or less, we are all workingmen!” And he carried his impartiality so far as to acknowledge that Proudhon
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had a certain amount of logic in his views. “Oh, a great deal of logic, dammit!”

Then, with the detachment of a superior mind, he chatted about the exhibition of paintings, at which he had seen Pellerin’s work. He considered it original and well-painted.

Martinon backed up all he said with expressions of approval; and likewise was of his opinion that it was necessary to rally boldly to the side of the Republic. And he talked about labour, his father, and assumed the part of the peasant, the man of the people. They soon came to the question of the elections for the National Assembly, and the candidates in the arrondissement of La Fortelle.
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The Opposition candidate had no chance.

“You should take his place!” said M. Dambreuse. Frédéric protested.

“But why not?” For he would obtain the vote of the Ultras
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owing to his personal opinions, and that of the Conservatives on account of his family. “And perhaps also,” added the banker, with a smile, “thanks to my influence, in some measure.”

Frédéric protested that he did not know how to go about it.

There was nothing easier if he only got himself recommended to the patriots of the Aube by one of the Paris clubs. All he had to do was to read out, not a profession of faith such as might be seen every day, but a serious statement of principles.

“Bring it to me; I know what they like down there; and you can, I say again, render great services to the country—to us all—to myself.”

In such times people ought to aid each other, and, if Frédéric was in need of anything, he or his friends—

“Oh, a thousand thanks, my dear Monsieur!”

“You’ll do as much for me in return, mind!”

Decidedly, the banker was a decent man.

Frédéric could not refrain from pondering over his advice; and soon he was dazzled by a kind of dizziness.

The great figures of the Convention passed before his mental vision. It seemed to him that a splendid dawn was about to rise. Rome, Vienna, and Berlin were in a state of insurrection, and the Austrians had been driven out of Venice. All Europe was agitated. Now was the time to make a plunge into the movement, and perhaps to accelerate it; and then he was fascinated by the costume which it was said the members of the Assembly would wear. Already he saw himself in a waistcoat with lapels and a tricoloured sash; and this itching, this hallucination, became so violent that he opened his mind to Dambreuse.

The honest fellow’s enthusiasm had not abated.

“Certainly—sure enough! Offer yourself!”

Frédéric, nevertheless, consulted Deslauriers.

The idiotic opposition which trammelled the commissioner in his province had augmented his Liberalism. He at once replied, exhorting Frédéric with the utmost vehemence to come forward as a candidate. However, as Frédéric needed the approval of a greater number of people, he confided the thing to Rosanette one day, when Mademoiselle Vatnaz happened to be present.

She was one of those Parisian spinsters who, every evening when they have given their lessons or tried to sell little sketches, or to place their poor manuscripts, return to their own homes with mud on their petticoats, make their own dinner, which they eat by themselves, and then, with their soles resting on a foot-warmer, by the light of a filthy lamp, dream of a love, a family, a hearth, wealth—all that they lack. So it was that, like many others, she had hailed in the Revolution the advent of vengeance, and she delivered herself up to unbridled Socialistic propaganda.