The Memoirs of Victor Hugo Part 29

For four months we have been living in a furnace. What consoles me is that the statue of the future will issue from it. It required such a brazier to melt such a bronze.

VI. CHATEAUBRIAND.

July 5, 1848.

Chateaubriand is dead. One of the splendours of this century has pa.s.sed away.

He was seventy-nine years old according to his own reckoning; according to the calculation of his old friend M. Bertin, senior, he was eighty years of age. But he had a weakness, said M. Bertin, and that was that he insisted that he was born not in 1768, but in 1769, because that was the year of Napoleon's birth.

He died yesterday, July 4, at 8 o'clock in the morning. For five or six months he had been suffering from paralysis which had almost destroyed his brain, and for five days from inflammation of the lungs, which abruptly snuffed out his life.

M. Ampere announced the news to the Academy, which thereupon decided to adjourn.

I quitted the National a.s.sembly, where a questor to succeed General Negrier, who was killed in June, was being nominated, and went to M. de Chateaubriand's house, No. 110, Rue du Bac.

I was received by M. de Preuille, son-in-law of his nephew. I entered Chateaubriand's chamber.

He was lying upon his bed, a little iron bedstead with white curtains round it and surmounted by an iron curtain ring of somewhat doubtful taste. The face was uncovered; the brow, the nose, the closed eyes, bore that expression of n.o.bleness which had marked him in life, and which was enhanced by the grave majesty of death. The mouth and chin were hidden by a cambric handkerchief. On his head was a white cotton nightcap which, however, allowed the grey hair on his temples to be seen. A white cravat rose to his ears. His tawny visage appeared more severe amid all this whiteness. Beneath the sheet his narrow, hollow chest and his thin legs could be discerned.

The shutters of the windows giving on to the garden were closed. A little daylight entered through the half-opened door of the salon. The chamber and the face were illumined by four tapers which burned at the corners of a table placed near the bed. On this table were a silver crucifix, a vase filled with holy water, and an aspergillum. Beside it a priest was praying.

Behind the priest a large brown-coloured screen hid the fireplace, above which the mantel-gla.s.s and a few engravings of churches and cathedrals were visible.

At Chateaubriand's feet, in the angle formed by the bed and the wall of the room, were two wooden boxes, placed one upon the other. The largest I was told contained the complete ma.n.u.script of his Memoirs, in forty-eight copybooks. Towards the last there had been such disorder in the house that one of the copybooks had been found that very morning by M. de Preuille in a dark and dirty closet where the lamps were cleaned.

A few tables, a wardrobe, and a few blue and green armchairs in disorder enc.u.mbered more than they furnished the room.

The adjoining salon, the furniture of which was hidden under unbleached covers, contained nothing more remarkable than a marble bust of Henry V. and a full-length statuette of Chateaubriand, which were on the mantelpiece, and on each side of a window plaster busts of Mme. de Berri and her infant child.

Towards the close of his life Chateaubriand was almost in his second childhood. His mind was only lucid for about two or three hours a day, at least so M. Pilorge, his former secretary, told me.

When in February he was apprised of the proclamation of the Republic he merely remarked: "Will you be any the happier for it?"

When his wife died he attended the funeral service and returned laughing heartily--which, said Pilorge, was a proof that he was of weak mind. "A proof that he was in his right mind!" affirmed Edouard Bertin.

Mme. de Chateaubriand's benevolence was official, which did not prevent her from being a shrew at home. She founded a hospice--the Marie Therese Infirmary--visited the poor, succoured the sick, superintended creches, gave alms and prayed; at the same time she was harsh towards her husband, her relatives, her friends, and her servants, and was sour-tempered, stern, prudish, and a backbiter. G.o.d on high will take these things into account.

She was ugly, pitted with small-pox, had an enormous mouth, little eyes, was insignificant in appearance, and acted the _grande dame_, although she was rather the wife of a great man than of a great lord. By birth she was only the daughter of a s.h.i.+p-owner of Saint Malo. M. de Chateaubriand feared, detested, and cajoled her.

She took advantage of this to make herself insupportable to mere human beings. I have never known anybody less approachable or whose reception of callers was more forbidding. I was a youth when I went to M. de Chateaubriand's. She received me very badly, or rather she did not receive me at all. I entered and bowed, but Mme. de Chateaubriand did not see me. I was scared out of my wits. These terrors made my visits to M. de Chateaubriand veritable nightmares which oppressed me for fifteen days and fifteen nights in advance. Mme. de Chateaubriand hated whoever visited her husband except through the doors that she opened. She had not presented me to him, therefore she hated me. I was perfectly odious to her, and she showed it.

Only once in my life and in hers did Mme. de Chateaubriand receive me graciously. One day I entered, poor little devil, as usual most unhappy, with affrighted schoolboy air and twisting my hat about in my hands.

M. de Chateaubriand at that time still lived at No. 27, Rue Saint Dominique.

I was frightened at everything there, even at the servant who opened the door. Well, I entered. Mme. de Chateaubriand was in the salon leading to her husband's study. It was a summer morning. There was a ray of suns.h.i.+ne on the floor, and what dazzled and astonished me much more than the ray of suns.h.i.+ne was a smile on Mme. de Chateaubriand's face. "Is that you, Monsieur Victor Hugo?" she said. I thought I was in the midst of a dream of the _Arabian Nights_. Mme. de Chateaubriand smiling! Mme.

de Chateaubriand knowing my name, addressing me by name! It was the first time that she had deigned to notice my existence. I bowed so low that my head nearly touched the floor. She went on: "I am delighted to see you." I could not believe my ears. "I was expecting you," she continued. "It is a long time since you called." I thought then that there certainly must be something the matter either with her or myself.

However, she pointed to a rather large object of some kind on a little table, and added: "I reserved this for you. I felt sure you would like to have it. You know what it is?" It was a pile of packets of chocolate made by some religious inst.i.tution. She had taken the stuff under her protection and the proceeds of its sale were to be devoted to charitable works. I took it and paid for it. At that time I had to live for fifteen months on 800 francs. The Catholic chocolate and Mme. de Chateaubriand's smile cost me 15 francs; that is to say, a fortnight's board. Fifteen francs meant as much to me then as 1,500 francs does now.

It was the most costly smile of a woman that ever was sold to me.

M. de Chateaubriand, at the beginning of 1847, was a paralytic; Mme.

Recamier was blind. Every day at 3 o'clock M. de Chateaubriand was carried to Mme. Recamier's bedside. It was touching and sad. The woman who could no longer see stretched forth her hands gropingly towards the man who could no longer feel; their hands met. G.o.d be praised! Life was dying, but love still lived.

VII. DEBATES IN THE NATIONAL a.s.sEMBLY ON THE DAYS OF JUNE.

SESSION OF NOVEMBER 25, 1848.

What had to be determined before the a.s.sembly and the country was upon whom devolved the heavy responsibility for the painful days of June. The Executive Committee was then in power; ought it not to have foreseen and provided against the insurrection? General Cavaignac, Minister of War, and, moreover, invested with dictatorial powers by the National a.s.sembly, had alone issued orders.

Had he issued them in time? Could he not have crushed the riot at the outset instead of permitting it to gain strength, spread and develop into an insurrection? And, finally, had not the repression which followed victory been unnecessarily b.l.o.o.d.y, if not inhuman?

As the time for rendering an account approached Cavaignac became thoughtful and his ill-humour was manifest even in the Chamber.

One day Cremieux took his seat on the ministerial bench, whence he approved with an occasional "Hear! Hear!" the remarks of the orator who occupied the tribune. The speaker chanced to belong to the Opposition.

"Monsieur Cremieux," said Cavaignac, "you are making a good deal of noise."

"What does that matter to you?" replied Cremieux.

"It matters that you are on the ministerial bench."

"Do you want me to leave it?"

"Well--"

Cremieux rose and quitted his bench, saying as he did so:

"General, you compel me to leave the Cabinet, and it was through me that you entered it."

Cremieux, in point of fact, had, as a member of the Provisional Government, had Cavaignac appointed Minister of War.

During the three days that preceded the debate, which had been fixed for the 25th, the Chamber was very nervous and uneasy. Cavaignac's friends secretly trembled and sought to make others tremble. They said: "You will see!" They affected a.s.surance. Jules Favre having alluded in the tribune to the "great and solemn debate" which was to take place, they burst into a laugh. M. Coquerel, the Protestant pastor, happening to meet Cavaignac in the lobby, said to him: "Keep yourself in hand, General!" "In a quarter of an hour," replied Cavaignac with flas.h.i.+ng eyes, "I shall have swept these wretches away!" These wretches were Lamartine, Gamier-Pages, and Arago. There was some doubt about Arago, however. It was said that he was rallying to Cavaignac. Meanwhile Cavaignac had conferred the cross of the Legion of Honour upon the Bishop of Quimper, the Abbe Legraverand, who had accepted it.