TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS Photo by Gersflttl, Paris. FJikUINAND DE LESSEPS. TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS BEING SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF A LITERARY LIFE BY ROBERT HARBOROUGH SHERARD WITH 8 ILLUSTRATIONS I'lIILADELPHIA GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO. PUBLISHERS PRINTUn IN OKF.AI HRITAIN TO MY GOOD FRIEND BEN WALMSLEY, OF BOWDON, THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED PREFATORY NOTE ALTHOUGH, in the writing of it, this book has grown to a bulk which much surpasses that which was proposed at the outset, and although at all times that precept was kept in mind by which the severe Boileau proclaims it the great art of authorship to leave certain things unsaid, I am yet conscious as I read lits pages over again that many people have been left unnamed who ought to have been named, and that many things have not been told which ought to have been told. I begin now to understand why it is that the writers of memoirs usually require several volumes for their nar- ratives, and I can appreciate the truth of those words of the poet Baudelaire which Alphonse Daudet used often to quote in my hearing, " J'ai plus de souvenirs que si j'avais mille ans." The purpose of this explanatory note is to pay a collective tribute to those still living and to the memory of those who are dead, whose names are not recorded in friendship in these pages. To have written about all the distinguished people who by the privilege of their com- panionship and the graciousness of their hospitality have embellished the twenty years of my life in Paris would indeed have necessitated a record of many volumes. viii PRFFA rc^RV NOTE For these Parisians are a great people who, in their carriage towards such strangers as know how to win their confidence, display an urbanity which indeed entitles them to claim for their city what Victor Hugo claimed, that it is the metropolis of the civilized world. ROBERT H. SHERARD. 22, Rue Grevarix, Vernon, (Eure), France. August 26, 1905. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE Victor Hugo — The Poet's Orchard — Senat and his Collars — Hauteville House — The Ghost's Chair — Victor Hugo en deshabille — His Last Years in Paris — Hero-Worship — The Poet and his Circle — Oscar Wilde and Victor Hugo — Victor Hugo and the Kings — His Last Autograph — His Public Testament i CHAPTER II Crime and Punishment in France — The Leniency Displayed — The Sentimentality of the French Jury — Women and the Law — The Last Execution of a Woman in France — Enghsh and French Judges Compared — Maitre Henri Robert and his Client — Joseph Aubert the Murderer — His Gascon Imagination — My Dealings with him— Aubert as a Postage-Stamp Collector— Aubert and the Insurance Clerk — The Stamp-Collector at Work . . .16 CHAPTER III A Murderer's Kindness to Animals— Aubert at the Bull-fight— The Killing of Delahaef — " The Ayenbite of Inwyt" — Aubert's Trial — A Letter from the lies du Salut — The Guiana Convict Settlement — The Devil's Island as an Earthly Paradise — French Presidents and the Death Penalty — Executions in Paris — The Court of Appeal and its Limitations — A Two-Edged Sword — The Case of Madame Groetzinger 35 CHAPTER IV Alexandre Dumas F//^— Below Stairs in the Avenue de Villiers — Jean Richepin — " La Dame aux Camelias " — Flaubert and " Madame Bovary" — Guy de Maupassant — His Contempt for Literature — His Adulation of " Society " — Pessimism and Pessimists — The Norman Peasants — The Doctor and his Patient — De Maupassant's Illness — Dr. Blanche — His Absent-mindedness — De Maupassant's End . 52 X CONTENTS CHAI'TKR V rAClE Dumas fih and Dumas p^rc — Dumas fils and Jules \'eine — His Curiosity about Modern Paris — The Little Old Woman on Two Sticks — Marguerite Licnard at Home — A Midnight Conversation — The Observations of a Professional Bcyyar — Her Long Career — The Two Communards, Father and Son — Those that Disappear — The Dead who walk again 66 CHAPTER VI The Modern "Cour des Miracles" — Bibi-la-Puree — A Survivor of the Middle Ages — His Mode of Life — His Friendship for Verlaine — His Last Impersonations— The Old Pole— A King Lear of the Gutter— The Adventures of Fenine — " La Revendication Indi- viduelle " — Our Last Tryst — An Englishman in Paris — A Har- boured Resentment — The Lady who called So CHAPTER VII Baron Haussmann — His Home, Rue Boissy d'Anglas — A Pen-Portrait — The Writing of his Memoirs — His Acknowledgment of Napoleon's Share in his W'ork — His Opposition to the Franco-Prussian War — Bismarck's Rude Reception at Biarritz — The Real Cause of the War — Haussmann's Political Opinions — The Story of his Career — His Last Words— Paul Deroul^de and " La Revanche "—Old Paris 102 CHAPTER VIII Ferdinand de Lesseps — On the Science of Antechambering — A Meeting of the Council — His Entire Confidence— Countess Kessler's Dinner Party — An Introduction to Magnard — De Lesseps to the Rescue — De Lesseps and the Poor Woman — The Report of his Death — A Stock-jobbing Manoeuvre — A Drive to the Institute , . .121 CHAPTER IX Ferdinand de Lesseps — Three Years Later — How he heard of the Prosecution — His Resignation — His Wife's Courage — Widespread Sympathy — An Emperor's Letter — The Family's Losses— His Faith in Panama — His Dislike of Speculation 137 CONTENTS xi CHAPTER X PACE After the Debdcle — A Visit to La Chesnaye — A House of Mourning — How De Lesseps and his Family were beloved — The Lesseps Children and their Stepbrother Charles — Ferdinand de Lesseps portrayed — Renan's Tribute — Friends in Adversity— The Family at Luncheon — De Lesseps' Hope in Queen Victoria — My Last View of the Great Frenchman 146 CHAPTER XI Monsieur Eiffel — Meetings with him in Elevated Spheres — His Visit to England — "A Magnificent Experience" — A Tribute to English Railways — The Firth of Forth Bridge — The Prince and the Engineer — The Eloquence of the Weather — "The Ascertained Average " — " Per ^^40,000 Life "— " The Most Remarkable Con- struction, bar none " — Edison and Eiffel — Eiffel's Modesty . . 165 CHAPTER XH Thomas Alva Edison — How I made his Acquaintance — A Characteristic Letter — The King's Envoye— Count and Countess Edison — Edison's Opinion on Paris — A Dejeuner on the Eiffel Tower — The Simplicity of a Great Man— Edison on Electrocution — "What is Electricity, after all?" — Edison and Mr. Gladstone — His Opinion on Eiffel, President Camot, and Prime Minister Tirard . . . .174 CHAPTER XHI On Electrocution — Edison's Disapproval prompts a Close Inquiry — Unanimous Condemnation by Leading Scientists — The Execu- tioner's View— Monsieur de Boer, Editor oiUEleciricite — Monsieur Joubert's Experiments — Monsieur Cornu — " Science has no Place in the Shambles" — The Greatest Physiologist — Doctor d'Arsonval ■ — A Scathing Denunciation — " Impracticable, Illogical, and Un- certain "—Death only Apparent — Electrical Asphyxia a Hideous Torture — Dr. Brown-Sequard's Opinion — Unanimous Accordance of German Scientists — American Indifference — How I missed Fame and Fortune . . . -193 CHAPTER XIV Ernest Renan — On Future Punishment — The Genesis of the Idea — Its Development — The Belief of the Romans — The Inferno of the Buddhists— Ernest Renan as a Man — His Home in the College de France — A Man of Many Books — His Opinion on the Naturalists — Renan and Daudet 204 xH CONTENTS PACE Louise Muhcl -My First Si^jht of Her -A Catherine,' of Anarchists— The Police Spies— Fcrr>' and Aubertin— A Stolen Interview — Louise Michel's Appearance — Her Noble Character — My last Meeting with Her -Why She Refusetl Her Hlcssinj^ A Socialist at the Elyst'c— The Dress-Coat and the Scent— Jules Jouy . . 218 CHAPTER XVI The Captains and the Kings — As Subjects for Journalism—" Carnot at the Elysce " — A Geographical Hotel — Dom Francis and his Dogs— " Envoyez Schneider" — Dom Pedro of Brazil — A Night Out with a King — Alexander of Servia— Leopold of Belgium — Oscar of Sweden — Macmahon in the Lock-up — Carnot and the Kangaroo — Adrien Marie — Queen Victoria's Kindness — Prince Dhuleep Singh — The Duchesse d'Uzes — General Boulanger 335 CHAPTER XVII President Carnot— A Garden Party at Fontainebleau — A Reception at the Elysee— A First Glimpse at Loubet — James G. Blaine — A Conversation at the Hotel Binda — Blaine on Various Subjects — The Statesman and his Shadow — American Politicians — A Presidential Shooting Party — Carnot's First Cabinet — Carnot's Assassination— A Card from Casimir-Perier — Henri d'Orleans and Esterhazy — The Marquis de Flers and Comte d'Herisson — On Paying Members of Parliament — General Boulanger . . . 256 CHAPTER XVIII General Boulanger — His Love of Legality — The Duel with Floquet — The Cause of his Flight — A Newspaper "Beat" — the Marquis de Mores — His Quarrel with Constans — His Duel with Camille Dreyfus — A Trio of Princes — Married yet Single — Prince Murat and the Heiress — The Tailor's Widow and her Second Husband — A Prince amongst Cooks — The Gastronomical Director — General Tcheng- Ki-Tong — How he was lured back to China — A Sinister Suggestion — How a Reputation was Made 284 CONTENTS xiii CHAPTER XIX PAGE The Foreign Correspondent — " News, not Soul-throb " — Yellow Jour- nalism—A Cable from Keats — The Fascination of the Work — The Precariousness of Position — On collecting " Personals " — Shadow- ing a Millionaire — Jules Verne and Nelly Ely — My Friendship with Jules Verne — The Paris Correspondent to English Papers — The Fight against Anonymity— The Jealousy of Colleagues— A Remon- strance with Zola — American and English Correspondence Con- trasted — Wanted, the Power of Prophecy — How I missed a High Honour 305 CHAPTER XX Coquelin Cadet — Auguste Maquet — The " Ghost " of Alexandre Dumas — Why Bonvin Starved — Coquelin's Mother — Behind the Scenes at the Comedie Francaise — Mademoiselle Reichemberg — Jules Claretie — Sardou— Sarah Bernhardt and the Cat — Jules Lemaitre and George Ohnet — Massenet — The Two Mounets — Coquelin the Elder — Parisian Painters— Melba's Debuts in Paris — Whistler . 324 CHAPTER XXI Journalism in France — Contrasted with Journalism in England — Black- mailers — How a Provincial Journal was Founded— A Fighting Editor — " Les Feuilles Soumises " — Editing Provincial Journals — Charles Baudelaire as an Editor — The French Newspaper-reader — Serial Stories — The Masters of the Art — Drawing Pay — The Editor oi Le Figaro — The Circulations Over a Million — And Under Five Hundred — How Dead Papers are kept Alive— Some Able Editors — Aurelien Scholl — Henri Rochefort 350 CHAPTER XXII The Quartier Latin— A Hopeless Mode of Existence — Victor Con- siderant — Jean Moreas — His Duel with Darzens — The Poet and the Washerwoman — The Fate of Maurice Rollinat — Rene Leclerc — Verlaine and Bibi-la-Puree— Laurent Tailhade— A Successful Phrase — Marcel Schwob and Hugues Rebell — Stephane Mallarme — A Matrimonial Proposal — W. T. Peters — Stuart Merrill— Raoul Ponchon — Those who have Resisted— Paul Adam — Henri de Regnier — Maurice Barres — Pierre Louys— The Writing of "Aphro- dite " — The Regret of an Ac^idemician ^yj xiv CONTENTS CHAl'TKK XXIII PAOB Emrst Dowson— And the Moralists— The Catastrophe of his Life— His Pursuit of Pain \V\\y he came to me in Paris— How I First met him— The Poet and the Guardsman— His Dehght in Sclf- Abascment~The Pathetic Promptings of Instinct— How I found him in London — He comes Home with me— The Distress of Two Poets — Ernest Dowson's Last Days — How Relief came to One Poet— The Coroner's Officer — "No Reasonable Cause'" — His Obsequies 397 CHAPTER XXIV Oscar Wilde — His Kindness to Ernest Dowson — My Friendship with him— The Story of my Book — Subjective or Objective? — What crawled between us — De Piofioidis — The Implacability of Wilde's Enemies — The Obvious Sincerity of his Prison Book — Outward Evidence of this Sincerity — His Kindness to his Fellow-Prisoners — A Pupil in French 412 CHAPTER XXV Oscar Wilde in Prison — Two Years' Hard Labour — Wandsworth Gaol — His Removal to Reading — His Illness — His Subsequent Treat- ment — How De Pro/undis was Written — In the Exercise Yard — His Sympathy with his Fellow-Sufiferers — His Fears for the Future — His Departure from Reading — Conversations in Prison — "Read Carlyle" 424 CHAPTER XXVI Why Oscar Wilde returned to Former Friends — His Last Years in Paris — " Deaths are Apt to be Tragic " — Ernest La Jeunesse — His Magnificent Essay on Oscar Wilde — A Picture of the Poet in his Last Days — His Death and Funeral — My First Visit to His Grave — His Landlord's Story — Bagneux revisited — The Traffic in his Name — Literary Forgeries 436 CHAPTER XXVII Emile Zola and Oscar Wilde — Zola's Extreme Reserve — A Few Facts of Literary History' — The Pro-Zola Campaign — Vizetelly's Naive Admission — Zola asks Advice about going to London — " Sic Vos non Vobis " — The Dreyfus Affair — The Story of an Interview — The Zola Trial — His Resentment against me — Our Final Meeting — My Collaboration with Daudet — " My First Voyage " — Two Strange Callers— How we Parted— At Daudet's Door— The End . . 463 ILLUSTRATIONS Ferdinand de Lesseps Guy de Maupassant . Alexandre Dumas fils Baron Haussmann Comtesse de Lesseps . M. Coquelin, cadet . Madame Adam Stephane Mallarme . .Frontispiece FACING PAGE 56 66 104 140 324 374 390 FACSIMILE LETTERS Joseph Aubert T. A. Edison PAGE 31 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS CHAPTER I Victor Hugo— The Poet's Orchard— Senat and his Collars— Hauteville House — The Ghost's Chair — Victor Hugo en deshabille— H'xs Last Years in Paris — Hero-Worship — The Poet and his Circle — Oscar Wilde and Victor Hugo— Victor Hugo and the Kings — His Last Autograph— His Public Testament. IT was my good fortune when, about twenty years ago, I went to Paris to reside there permanently, to have the entrde of Victor Hugo's house, and during the last period of his life I saw much of that great man. At that time this was to me a matter of self-felicitation. I still most fervently admired the pseudo-charities of Les Misdrables, and shared with the large majority of my contemporaries an exalted enthusiasm for the poetry of the great Romanticist. My introduction to the author of Les Mis^rables dated from many years previously, when, as a boy, I lived with my parents in the house adjoining Hauteville House in Guernsey. Our gardens, as our houses, were contiguous, and when I have added that the poet's orchard boasted a remarkably fine plum-tree, famed throughout the island for the size and flavour of its mirabelle plums, I need hardly expatiate ft.rther on the nature of my earliest relations with our illustrious neighbour. I shall always regret that, detected one I 3 TWKXTV VKARS IX PARIS day by \'iclor Ilui^o in the very act of larcenous trespass, I look to guilty and precipitate tlight, too preoccupied, indeed, for my immediate safety even to listen to the remarks which were addressed to me. It has often since occurred to me that had I allowed myself to be impounded by the benevolent old gentleman, I should have enjoyed an address resembling in eloquence and picturesqueness of imagery the one which on a some- what similar occasion was delivered by Jean \'aljean to the youthful tootpad. For the rest, the delinquency was never reported, and when a few days later I was allowed to shake the poet's hand, no reference to it was made. It was the greyhound Senat that procured for me the distinguished honour to which I refer. This was Victor Hugo's favourite pet. He had called it Senat in derision of the Upper Chamber under the Empire, and on its collar were inscribed some lines beginning : Mon nom, Senat, Mon maitre, Hugo. Such collars, as relics and souvenirs, were much prized by tourists, and the consequence was that the loafers of St. Peter's Port were always on the look-out for the dog's appearance on Hauteville. Madame Chenais, Victor Hugo's relative and housekeeper, spent much of her time charorinsr down the hill, with brandished umbrella, to the rescue of Senat and his collar. On one occasion, by cutting off the retreat of the enemy as I returned up hill from school, I was able to render her strategical service, and in reward for this she introduced me to the poet, who had come up while she was thanking me. He was carr)'ing a bunch of violets, which he presented to me with many kind words. What these words were I have forgotten, for with the guilt on my THE GHOST AND HIS CHAIR 3 conscience my embarrassment was such that I barely listened to words which I would now give much to recall. However, one thing that he said was that as I had saved Senat's collar, in recompense I should see where Senat and, " in parenthesis," his master lived ; and that same afternoon, under Madame Chenais's guidance, I was admitted to view the wonders of Hauteville House. The large sculptured oak chair which stood in the entrance-hall was what was most likely to appeal to a boy's imagination. From arm to arm a spiked chain was padlocked. "It is the master's belief," I was told, " that every night the spirit of one of his ancestors comes and seats himself in that chair. That chain is placed there to prevent people from a profane use of the seat." "But the spirit?" I began. " Oh, the padlocks are unfastened ever)' night. That is the master's orders, though it is our opinion that a ghost is not sufficiently ^^o^e to be hurt by the spikes." I fancy that I was further told that this ancestor was the one whose name was not inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe, and that it was this slight that prompted his nocturnal meanderings. Chairs seemed to play an important part in the curiosities of Hauteville House. In the dining-room one's attention was called to three chairs of graduated sizes, the Great Chair, the Little Chair, and the Middle Chair, on the backs of which the poet had picked out in copper-headed nails the words, " Pater," " Mater," " Filius." This room was decorated with many of the poet's wonderful pen-and-ink drawings. "If Hugo had never written a line," said Auguste V'acquerie once to me as 4 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS he was showinp^ nie some of the poet's fantastic sketches, " there was tame, if not immortahty, for him here." But perhaps the most interesting part of the liouse wiis the belvedere on the roof, where in tlie fine weather Victor Hui^o used to work. The view over the gardens, right out to the sea, was a splendid one. " But when the master is working," I was told, " he never sees that." I think that that was the first time that it was impressed upon me that artists do not draw inspiration from Nature. Victor Hugo's realism was self-engendered (the petits cahiers of Zola and of Daudet were not of his day) ; and whilst he was writing Noire Dame cie Paris, although at that time he was living within ten minutes' walk of the cathedral, he never stirred from his room during the six weeks that he spent over that book. The Hauteville House workroom was as barely furnished as all his cabinets de travail had been. It contained nothing but a high deal desk, painted black, at which he used to write standing. " As each sheet is finished it is thrown on to the ground, and we collect them afterwards." I was informed that he used rough hand-made paper and quills. " The roughness of the paper is the only check on the flow of his composition." The Philistines of Hauteville used to object that the poet often, as he warmed to his work, was wont, when writing under the hot sun in that conservatory, to divest himself of some of his clothing. They stated that it was his usual habit to show himself in that prominent place, where he was visible to every eye, in a state of almost complete nudity. This was not true ; and the fact that under the true conditions of his deshabille such a master- piece as Les Travailleurs de la Mer had been produced could by no means be taken into consideration. With my boy companions on the island, what made VICTOR HUGO AND THE PIEUVRE 5 for his unpopularity and provoked their criticism was that passage in Les Travailleurs de la Mer, where Hugo describes the fiorht between Gilliat and the devil-fish in the very waters in which we used to bathe. The child who has been deceived does not readily restore its confidence. Victor Hugo had fi-ightened us. The pleasure of long swims out to sea had been poisoned at its source ; sheer terror followed in the ripples made by every stroke of the arm ; the viscous and clinging contact of some submarine plant evoked a shout of terror. Yet we knew that there was no truth in the •description ; that such monsters as he had depicted never came into our peaceful waters, and that when he affirmed that he had with his own eyes seen a huge devil-fish pursuing a terror-stricken bather in a cave in Sark he was indulging in — in — well, poetic licence. There was much malicious talk about Victor Hugo in Guernsey, where, as in other small communities, prejudice is very rampant. There was a story told about his cruelty to one of his daughters which repre- sented him in a most unfavourable light. It was said that this daughter, having eloped with a British officer, who deceived her into a clandestine and illegal marriage, was refused admission to her father's house, when, some time later, having been cast off by her betrayer, she had returned to Guernsey. It was added that her father's cruelty, coming after her cruel betrayal, had affected her mind. I think that the fact that one of Victor Hugo's daughters was insane was the only foundation for a story which for years made people shrug their shoulders at the poet's professions of wide humanity. Slanderers are a very contemptible race. Indeed, their very practice and infamy are confessions of their own inferiority. The harm they do is incalculable. Few people there are who 6 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS have not cause to retard having listened to their evil talcs about their contemporaries. I remember that when I first came to Paris, and desired to make the acquaint- ance of Alphonse Daudet, I was told that he was a man of most unfriendly disposition, who harboured for English people a special dislike, and that to present myself at his house would be to expose myself to slight and affront. I believed this story for years, and for as many years was deprived of a friendship which later was the joy and pride of my life. At the age of seventy-nine, when I saw him again in Paris, Victor Hugo presented an appearance of extra- ordinary physical vitality. His face until almost the very end was full and coloured, and with his white hair brushed back over his monumental forehead, he looked like a sturdy and weather-beaten sea-captain on whose robust frame a hundred storms had broken. Time had not dimmed the wonderful lustre of the eyes which have been compared to the unforgettable eyes of the great Napoleon. His activity and hardihood seemed undiminished. It was his habit almost till his last illness to explore Paris, now on foot, now riding on the top of an omnibus. I have descried his noticeable form in the remotest parts of Paris. It was said that at that time every detective and every police officer carried in his pocket the photographs of two remarkable old men, of whom Victor Hugo was one, so that in case their tastes for exploring the bas-fonds of Paris might lead them into perilous adventures, the public scandal of an arrest might be avoided. It often struck me that perhaps the finest trait in Victor Hugo's character was, that in the midst of the great and universal adulation with which in his extreme old age he lived surrounded, his natural simplicity HERO-WORSHIP EXTRAORDINARY 7 and external modesty never deserted him. The head of even the strongest man might have been turned ; and in this respect also Hugo was undoubtedly, so it appeared to me, one of the strongest of men. It used to afford me amusement, not altogether untinged with regret, on the days of his public receptions, to listen to the terms in which the interpreters introduced to him parties of diverse nationalities. A group of English or American girls would, for instance, say to their guide, " Oh ! tell Mr. Hugo that we have read his works, and liked them so much, and that we are so pleased to see him." This, with appropriate gestures, would be rendered, " Illustrious master, these young daughters of the young Republic" (or "of an antique monarchy," as the case might be) " feel it impossible to leave Paris without laying at the feet of that genius which is the imperishable glory of France and the wonder and honour of the universe, the laurel wreath of their profoundest admiration and homage." " C'est gentil," the poet used to answer ; but I always felt that he saw the silliness of such phraseology. I have been told that, on the contrary, he considered such an address as no more than his due, that his conceit of himself amounted almost to megalomania, and that he was profoundly in earnest when he made his memorable threat that after death he would track the Almighty to the furthest recesses of the heavens and cry, " Maintenant, Seigneur, expliquons- nous." Such seemed to me to be the opinion, for instance, of Monsieur Hippolyte Taine. In one of the many con- versations I had with that eminent man we fell one day to talking about the French Academy and the various men who had failed as members of that " fashionable club." It was apropos of Zola's candidature. " There 8 TWRNTY YEARS IN PARIS arc several men." saitl Tainc to iiic, " who, having entered the Academy, wi-re never able to make themselves at home there. The atmosphere of the place never seemed to agree with them. Look at Victor Hugo, who, during the last of his life, came to the Academy once or twice only each year. He was not at home in a club where the greatest equality reigns. Accustomed to being treated as an idol at home and outside, he felt utterly out of place in such an assembly." But so he did not appear to me at the time, and I watched him closely. He seemed to me to be naturally gratified and touched by attention. After the hour-long procession past his house, on the occasion of his anniver- sar)', when delegates came from every part of the world to do honour to him by the march past, his remark was, " How good it is of these young people to have come, many from so far, just to give me pleasure!" He seemed to me to object to anything like subservience and self- abasement. One night, as I was taking leave of him and he had given me his hand, I bent my head over it, prompted to do a liege's obeisance to the hand that had done such royal work. But Hugo drew it back and said, " That is done to kings only." Then he gripped mine firmly and added, " Voila comment cela se fait entre hommes." The only sign there was that age had taken any hold upon him was that every night after dinner, almost as soon as he had taken his place in the reception-room, he used to go off into a doze. Auguste Vacquerie, who always sat on his left hand, used, as soon as this had occurred, to raise a warning finger ; the whisper, " The master sleeps," ran round the room, and conver- sation was hushed into undertones. This reception-room was curiously disposed. It was bare of furniture, except VICTOR HUGO AND HIS CIRCLE 9 a double row oi fauteuils, facing each other, which ran in parallel lines from the fireplace, halfway down the room. Opposite the fireplace was the door through which one entered the dining-room, and in the corners were statuettes, marble and bronze, on pedestals, votive offer- ings to the master of the house. Each of i\\Q.s& fauteuils had its titulary, who was as jealous of its possession as any lady at the Court of Versailles was of her tabouret. The one on the left hand nearest the fireplace was the master's seat. Madame Juliette Drouet used to sit opposite him in the fauteuil on the right of the fire- place. To this seat, every evening after dinner, he used to conduct her, leading her in courtier fashion by the tips of her fingers with uplifted arm. When she had seated herself he used to bow to her, kiss her hand, and then step back into his own seat. Vacquerie always sat next to Victor Hugo, and next to Madame Drouet was Paul Meurice's seat. The place next to Vacquerie was reserved {or visitors of distinction. It was accorded to Oscar Wilde on the night when I introduced him into the master's circle. Generally, however, it was occupied by a Polish princess, who was translating Swinburne into French verse, and who once expressed great indignation because Hugo's secretary asked me to what was to be attributed the English poet's exces- sive excitement. This was shortly after Swinburne's memorable visit. The rest of the chairs were assigned each to some member of the household or habitu^ of the receptions. Hoi polloi disposed themselves in standing groups about the room. No little malevolent gossip used to be whispered round. " You are now to be instructed in the art of being a grandfather," was said to me on the occasion of my first visit, as the clock struck a certain lo TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS hour. h appeared that at a fixed nionicnt in the evenintr Jeanne and Georges used to come in to bid their grandfather good-night. Tlie suggestion whispered to me was that the old man's show of dehght in his beautiful grandchildren, as well as their demonstrations of childish affection, were so much theatrical display in- tended to impress the visitors. But I felt very certain of the sincerity of Victor Hugo's joy in their caresses. I have no recollection of what passed between Victor Hugo and Oscar Wilde ; but I think that their exchange of courtesies cannot have been more than the briefest. I remember seeing Victor Hugo asleep very shortly after I had presented the young Irish poet to him. Vacquerie's warning finger had been held up, and Wilde's brilliant talk on English poets in general, and on Swinburne in particular, had had to be carried on in undertones. It must have been to him an exercise to be brilliant in a whisper; but I do not doubt that he acquitted himself well, for the habitues of the reception crowded round him, and both Vacquerie and the Polish princess seemed to hang on his lips. In this milieu the pleasing fiction that kings are tyrants was sedulously kept alive. I really believe that when Victor Hugo and Auguste Vacquerie interceded with foreign potentates by means of rhetorical after- dinner telegrams on behalf of notorious criminals under sentence of death, they actually deceived themselves into the belief that the person whom they were addressing was directly responsible for the culprit's condemnation, and could at pleasure, without incurring any responsibility, accede to their requests. When the late Queen Victoria left unanswered a despatch from Hauteville House in which Victor Hugo recommended to her mercy a Jersey murderer, some very foolish remarks were made by the VICTOR HUGO AND THE KINGS ii poet about the Queen's want of humanity. Such talk was the common thing when these wild appeals were left unanswered. It flattered the middle-class Liberalism of the French, to which Victor Hugo as a novelist, and Vacquerie as a journalist, more specially appealed. One cannot forget the absurd article which the latter published in his paper, Le Rappel, on the occasion of the birth of King Alfonso of Spain. It was a diatribe against royalty in general and against the baby sovereign in particular. It was illustrative of the nonsense that used to be talked in Hugo's house, a remembrance of long after-dinner conversations between the dead poet and the writer of the article. " The mess that the baby makes in its cradle, that is royalty." One would hardly fancy that such things could be written, but the article is still to be found on the Rappel file. Vacquerie was a mild and benevolent man, and it must have been with extremest effort that he worked himself into the proper state of excitement under which to write this and similar articles. One might have attributed the delusion that breathed in every line to the fiery and disturbing influence of alcohol, had one not known that Vacquerie, who was a vale- tudinarian, used to write his articles in bed whilst sipping cold bouillon. It was customary at the house in the Avenue Victor Hugo to speak of kings as tyrants of rapacious and sanguinary instincts. Yet perhaps no man in Paris had for either Victor Hugo or Vacquerie a more cordial salute or a more courtly bow than a dethroned king of the very mildest disposition. This was Queen Isabella's husband, Dom Francis of Spain, who often took his many dogs for an airing in the Avenue Victor Hugo. It was known that he was always hugely delighted if, on returning to his little 12 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS house in the Rue Lcsucur, he could tell his equerry that durintj his walk he had met either the author of Lc Roi s .Iniusc or the editor of J^c Rappcl. I was present one evening at Hugo's house when there arrived a telecfram from the Russian Minister of the Interior, in answer to one addressed to Gatschina on the previous evening — a most absurd message it was — announcing that a number of Nihilists, who had been lying under sentence of death, had been reprieved. The exultation expressed was very great ; the excite- ment, almost childish. I wondered whether these manifestations of satisfaction — Vacquerie danced round the room waving his hands, whilst Victor Hugo hammered on the table with his knife and fork — were to be attributed as much to the joy that so many lives had been spared as to the evidence it gave that the influence of Hugo could make itself felt even at the remote Court of St. Petersburg. One of the very last times when Victor Hugo wrote his name — I believe that it really was the last time — was a week or two before his death. It was done to oblige me. It now figures in the famous birthday-book of Lady D N , amongst the most complete collection of royal and imperial autographs that probably exists anywhere in England outside of Buckingham Palace. I had taken the book to the house in the Avenue Victor Hugo, together with a letter to the poet in which I asked him to grant a lady this favour. The letter had been written for me by one of Hugo's mtimes, in the place of a courteous note which I had written. " That will not do at all," he had said, after reading my letter. " You evidently do not know how one addresses ihe master." He had then written for me a letter which I considered most absurd. VICTOR HUGO'S LAST AUTOGRAPH 13 One of his representations was that every religion needs an emblem. *' Or, sans embleme," so ran one of the servile phrases, " il n'y a pas de culte." I had fancied that no man could tolerate flattery so obvious and so high-flown. The book lay for many weeks in the house of the Avenue Victor Hugo. I have been told that before entering his name upon the pages he turned over the leaves and examined with interest many of the famous signatures which passed before his eyes. He saw there the sign-manual of Louis Napoleon, and no doubt that in that serenity which is the dawn of the better life, all the old feelings of enmity, if indeed remembered, were put aside. The autograph of the Iron Duke would recall to him the deeds of General Sigisbert Hugo, his father, and perhaps for the last time there would be remembered the old, ever-rankling grievance that Sigisbert Hugo's name was not inscribed amongst those of other heroes on the Arc de Triomphe. For which imperial slight the Republic was to make magnificent amends when the Arc de Triomphe became the canopy of Hugo's funeral bier. The publication of Victor Hugo's public testament produced a very bad impression in Paris. It had been written probably many years previously, and the phrases and professions on which the poet had counted for effect entirely failed to impress the public. His desire to be carried to his grave in the paupers' hearse was described as theatrical posturing ; but what excited the most malevolent comment was the legacy of two thousand pounds to the poor of Paris : " Je donne cinquante mille francs aux pauvres," The sum seemed ridiculously small ; the grandiloquent simplicity of the wording of the bequest, preposterous. The phrase rang out as an 14 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS anti-climax. People said that, having gained milHons by exploiting the sentimentality of the middle classes towards the sufferings of the poor and forlorn, Hugo might have shown himself more generous. I have no doubt, however, that the testament was written at an early period in his career ; at a time when two thousand pounds represented a large part of his fortune ; at a time when fifty thousand francs was considered a con- siderable sum in France. One has but to remember what was the idea of " fabulous wealth," as conceived by Alexandre Dumas when he endowed the Comte de Monte Christo, to appreciate Hugo's magnificence at something like its value. I was reading the other day a passage in one of Paul de Kock's novels, where one hundred thousand francs was spoken of as "an enormous sum of money." I can well remember the time when an income of a thousand a year was considered in Paris a situation of fortune to be remarked upon. It was De Maupassant who first as a novelist indicated the new and reduced value of money. In Bel-Ami, when George Duroy and his wife have inherited a million francs, they mournfully admit that their new income will not enable them to keep a carriage. And though people are now beginning in France to understand the huge amounts of wealth which can be acquired and held by one man, the old exaggerated notion of the value of money still persists. Only the other day the papers were writing of young Baron Adelsward, the hero of the Black Mass, as " a young man colossally rich." His income, it appeared, was sixteen hundred pounds a year. At the same time, Victor Hugo's income had been steadily decreasing for years before his death. After 1885 the sales of his works still further diminished. The publication of the " National Monumental Edition" A DECLINE IN POPULARITY 15 of his works ruined several people who were connected with that enterprise. Part of Jeanne Hugo's dowry, when she married Leon Daudet, was represented by her share in the annual royalties accruing from her grand- father's books, and the revenue so produced was a cause of great disappointment to the young couple. At the time of Victor Hugo's death, however, Paris believed that the poet was drawing really large sums from his publishers, and laughed malevolently at the meagreness of a donation announced with so loud a flourish of rhetorical trumpets. CHAPTER II Crime and Punishment in Fiance — The Leniency Displayed — The Senti- mentality of the French Jury — Women and the Law — The Last Execution of a Woman in France — English and French Judges Compared — Maitre Henri Robert and his Client — Joseph Aubert the Murderer — His Gascon Imagination — My Dealings with him— Aubert as a Postage-Stamp Collector — Aubert and the Insurance Clerk — The Stamp-CoUector at Work. THERE can be no doubt that Victor Hugo exercised considerable influence in France on the application of the penal code. It was understood that Monsieur Grevy's notorious objection to the death-penalty had been caused by reading Les Derniers Joui's dtm Condamnd. But I think that the extraordinary leniency of the French juries on the one hand, and of the Executive on the other, as they are witnessed to-day, are only another manifesta- tion of the spirit of anarchy which is disaggregating in France the public thing. A general desire to shirk re- sponsibility is the leading trait of modern French civicism. One would like to attribute to superior humanity the extraordinary difference that exists in France, as com- pared to England, in the measures adopted for the repression of crime. But though in some cases, as, for instance, in cases of infanticide, humanity may dictate leniency to French judges and juries, this leniency, in the great majority of sentences, is prompted rather by a number of less estimable motives. For one thing the spirit of the Fronde is ever alive in the hearts of French- l6 LENIENCY IN FRANCE 17 men. It delights the French juryman to put himself in opposition to the Government, as represented by the Procureur de la Republique, or prosecuting counsel. It pleases him also to use his power to nullify laws the amendment of which he may desire. Private interests and personal considerations direct juries in France more than they undoubtedly do in England. It is, for instance, practically useless for the authorities to prosecute for infanticide before a rural jury. The rural juryman in France reasons to himself as follows : "If the woman had allowed her child to live, it would have become a charge on the commune, and we have quite enough com- munal charges as it is. The child was better out of the way, and I cannot see that we should punish the woman for rendering us a service." I remember a case where a country jury not only acquitted a woman for murdering her illegitimate child, but subscribed a sum of money which they presented to her as she was leaving the dock amidst the acclaim of the populace. On the other hand, the same country juries show implacable severity in cases where their own interests are menaced. The vagabond, the pilferer, the poacher find small grace in their eyes. Many of the sentences passed in the provincial assize courts upon crimes against property are of Draconian harshness. It is in France, for instance, a capital offence to set fire to an inhabited house, even where no loss of life occurs. In many such cases within my recollection country juries have convicted without the admission of extenuating circumstances, and in one case that I remember the convict was duly guillotined. In the early part of this present year a man was sentenced to death on the verdict of a provincial jury for attempted murder, although his victim had entirely 2 i8 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS recovered from the attack iind was able to give evidence against liim. Monsieur Loubet did not see fit to revise the sentence ; the man had been for years a pest and a menace to the department in which he was convicted, and his execution followed as a matter of course. The French law considers the attempt at a crime, where there has been a commencement of execution, as culpable as the crime successfully carried out. The second clause of the penal code categorically lays dowm the law on this subject. Prado, the murderer, was sentenced to death twice over, once for shooting at a policeman. The sovereignty of the law, which in England is paramount, is not recognised by French jurymen. They are always ready to admit a man's right to take the law into his own hands. In many cases where a woman acts so, her right is even more readily admitted. Inasmuch as affiliation is distinctly forbidden by the Code Napoleon, the seduced woman who shoots her betrayer or disfigures and blinds him with vitriol is most invariably assured of a triumphant acquittal. The largest license is allowed to women in the defence of their honour. When Madame Clovis Hugues, the wife of the Socialist deputy and poet, slew Morin, the private detective, in the Salle des Pas Perdus of the Palais de Justice in Paris, acting with so much deliberation that after the wretched man had fallen to the ground from the effect of her first shot, she emptied her revolver into his body, her detention was no more in question than her acquittal was doubtful. It is justifiable homicide in France to kill a man who enters your enclosure at night, although he may have no more wicked motive than to steal a few vegetables or a little fruit. A burglar may be shot down or other- wise slain like a mad dog, and not even an hour's arrest would result to the slayer. WOMEN AND THE LAW 19 The plea of "legitimate defence" is so elastic that a man who in a short fight may shoot or stab an unarmed aggressor will not even be sent for trial. Indeed, the plea has often been admitted when a man, having been attacked, escapes, provides himself with a lethal weapon, returns to resume the fight, and kills the original aggressor. I have seen homicides acquitted in France in cases of this kind where the medley has been resumed after an interval of several days. The argument in favour of the prisoner was that he was acting within the limits of "legitimate defence" to destroy an adver- sary from whom he had reason to suspect aggression. On the other hand, the right of a husband to kill his wife and her accomplice in adultery, if he detect them in flagrante delicto, has never been recognised either by the French law or by the jury ; and in many cases that I remember, a conviction, though never a capital one, has been the sanction of an act which in England is considered excusable. Alexandre Dumas's Tue la of the appendix to U Afl^aire CUvienceatt has always been violently disputed in France. To-day, the precept thus laid down is generally considered little less than an incitement to a cowardly and most culpable murder. I think that the verdicts in the Fenayrou affair showed that the theory of the husband's power of life and death over his wife's paramour was not one that could always be pleaded with effect before a French jury. One has to remember, in considering the leniency with which the criminal law is applied in France, that in this country of recurrent revolutions antagonism to the law always exists in a chronic if sub-acute state. The jurymen, I repeat, are inspired by the spirit of the Fronde. Until quite recently the magistracy and the judges were recruited almost exclusively from the 20 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS reactionary classes. The prisoner is considered by his judges more as an offender against the Government than as an offender against the law, and the political spirit is rarely absent even from the most commonplace criminal trial. At the same time the great impressionability of the averaqfe Frenchman must be taken into consideration. He can be moved by sentimental considerations which if propounded to an English jury by an English barrister in our country would excite nothing but ridicule. The criminal law barrister who in France is the most suc- cessful is the one like Monsieur Henri Robert, who can most readily move a jury to tears. Before the trial of a murderer, to whom I shall presently refer, Monsieur Robert, who had been briefed for the defence, wrote to me in London to ask me to write about his client, with whom I had been acquainted, such a letter relating any good that I knew of his character as he could read with effect to the jury. I complied with his request, and I had the mixed satisfaction of hearing that I had contributed in gaining for this man an admission of " extenuating circumstances." It must be remembered that in France the judge cannot counteract the most irrelevant arguments ad ho77iineni. It is years since the right of summing-up was taken away from the Court in France. The prisoner's counsel always has the last word, unless, indeed, the prisoner himself likes to address the jury on his own behalf; and, accordingly, the jury are often sent to their consulting-room with the tears streaming from their eyes. The result is, given the French character, that the chances of acquittal even where guilt is proved are great, and that often, at the worst, such a verdict is pronounced as entails only slight punish- SENTIMENTALITY OF FRENCH JURIES 21 ment. Monsieur Robert, by his eloquence, has restored to society in France many criminals who in England would have had but the shortest shrift. He has raised irrelevancy and a disregard of the law to a fine art, and has proved himself a worthy disciple of his master, the great Lachaud. Certain sentimental considerations appear in France to rank as unwritten amendments to certain definite laws. A woman, generally speaking, Is considered excusable for killing her illegitimate child, I have indicated what prompts this leniency in rural districts. In the towns her guiltlessness is not as readily recog- nised, but even before the severest juries the verdict rendered allows only of a short sentence of imprisonment. It has often occurred to me, when assisting at the Old Bailey in London at the trial for child-murder of some forlorn and terror-stricken female, that had the poor wretch had sufficient knowledge of the world to take a third-class ticket from London to France, at the cost of a few shillings, she could have ridded herself of the living witness to her shame with no greater risk than one of a short detention. Capital punishment, be It remarked, Is never inflicted on women in France. Public opinion has definitely decided against such a sanction of the laws. It is now close upon twenty years since the last woman's head fell under the knife of the guillotine. The execution took place on the public square in Romorantin, and I witnessed the sanguinary transaction from the first floor of the town-hall, where, as a drunken municipal councillor remarked to me, we were "in the first tier of boxes to enjoy the spectacle." The execution was a triple one, and the crime for which the three murderers suffered was one of a very deep dye of turpitude. 22 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS h scorns to have suggested to Zola the plot and the main incident of his novel La Terre. A peasant woman, assisted hy her husband and his brother, murdered her old mother, who, having dispossessed herself in her daughter's favour of all her property, had come, like so many old peasants in France, to be considered a useless burthen, a charge to be ridded of. Even Zola did not venture to transcribe in all its horror the shameful story, for though old Fouan is indeed burned to death, his children imagined him to be dead when they set his body alight. In the true story, however, these inhuman children literally roasted their mother alive. She was driven into the open hearth, and whilst the woman drenched her from a petroleum can, the two men prevented her from escaping by the use of their pitchforks. After the horrid deed had been consummated, and the old woman's body had been consigned to the village churchyard, the daughter, in the ordinary discharge of her religious duties, told the priest of the village in the confessional that her mother had not fallen into the fire by accident, and gave a true account of the way in which she had come by her death. The poor old priest was so horrified by what he had heard that, forgetting his oath of secrecy, he, almost unconsciously, blurted out to his aged housekeeper a story which he had not the strength to conceal in his bosom. In this way the authorities were put on the track of the abominable crime which had been committed, and the arrest and prosecution of the three peasants followed as a matter of course. The poor old priest was most violently attacked by the Freethinkers, who found here a splendid opportunity for calumniating the Church, and he was dismissed his cure with ignominy. AN EXECUTION AT ROMORANTIN 23 I arrived at my place at one of the windows on the first floor of the Romorantin town-hall just after the prisoners had been brought to the place of execution in one of the executioner's vans. I remember thinking what a small, ugly, and unimposing contrivance the guillotine appeared. It looked more like some clumsy, if ingenious, appliance of the book-binder or metal- stamper's craft than an engine which is the ztlHiJia ratio of human justice. There was no scaffold ; the thing squatted on the ground like some monstrous toad. Behind the blue and red lines of the rows of soldiers a sea of faces showed ghastly white in the penumbra of the breaking day. The only worthy figure that stood forth in all that mass of men was that of the priest, who, holding his crucifix between the eyes of the convicts and the knife of the guillotine so as to mask its horror from their sight, was endeavouring to give them the last consolations of his faith. " He may try to hide the guillotine from their eyes," said the councillor to whom I have referred ; " that does not alter the fact that it is one of his cloth who brouo-ht o them here." I knew that two men and one woman were to be executed, and yet I saw only the two male convicts. "The woman has been pardoned, then?" I said. " Oh, no," said the councillor. " That would have been du propre. No, there she is!" So saying, he pointed to a heap on the ground, close to the van, which I had taken for a bundle of rags. In those days it was customary in France that when two or more accomplices were executed together, the more guilty criminal should be present at the execution of the others, and suffer last. President Carnot ordered the abolition of this odious custom at the first double 24 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS execution \vhich took j)lacc under his presidency, the execution ot' Scllicr and Allorto, and it has never been resumed since. But here the woman was supposed to witness the execution first of her brother-in-law and then of her husband. Nature, however, had cloaked her eyes. She had fallen fainting to the ground on alighting from the executioner's van. When her turn came to suffer, Monsieur Deibler was forced to rouse her from her swoon. But she was too exhausted with terror to walk the few paces that separated her from the guillotine, and the executioner had to carry her thither. She was struggling all the way, and kept piteously screaming for her mother — " Maman ! Maman ! Maman ! " — as she may have done as a little child when she was in fear or danger. I need not say that this gave the drunken Freethinker an excellent opportunity to display his wit and irony. The prisoner was bare- footed, with a shirt drawn over her clothes and a black veil bound about her head. This is the costume in which, in France, all parricides go to the scaffold. The peculiar and unusual costume added to the horror of one of the most poignant spectacles which I have ever witnessed. It is certainly to the credit of the French that such displays have been abolished by force of public opinion. In contrasting the leniency with which juries and judges in France deal with female prisoners with the implacable severity which is meted out to women in our own country, one has been accustomed to attribute to the French much greater humanity than distinguishes the English. There can be no doubt that the French are more impressionable, and possibly more accessible, to the feelings of pity ; but one must not overlook the facts that in England the respect of the law is paramount, WOMEN AND THE LAW 25 and that, on the other hand, the laws afford in England protection and redress to injured women which are pitilessly refused to them by the code in France. The French girl who has been seduced has no claim on the father of her child, " La recherche de la paternite est interdite " is a formal dictum of the French law. No redress in the way of recovery of damages is open to the woman who has been jilted, no matter how cruel and perfidious may have been the conduct of the man. At the same time, it is certain that the French take a more humane view of the instinctive foibles of women, admitting that their recognised inferiority of strength extends also to their power of combating passions which in them, by a curious contrast, blaze more fiercely than in the male. It is very certain that in France, for instance, such a sentence as was passed in June of this year on Miss Doughty at the Old Bailey would have aroused a storm of public indignation. By their right of granting or of withholding an admission of " extenuating circumstances," the French juries have the means of circumscribing the judge's powers in the allotment of punishment. The French juryman is, what he is not in England, a judge as well as a juror. The convict's sentence is practically fixed in the jury's consulting-room, and this so fully coincides with what public opinion deems to be right that it has often been demanded that the juries should be precisely informed, before they retire to their deliberations, as to the exact penalties which each of the different verdicts which they are entitled to pronounce will entail on the prisoner. When in a capital case the jury finds that there are extenuating circumstances, the Court cannot pronounce the death penalty. In the same way the same ad- 26 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS mission nuist perforce reduce sentences in every other class of conviction. No such Hcense as in England is accorded to the judge in France. The personal element is entirely absent from the pronouncements of the pre- siding judge at a criminal trial. It is not within his province, as it must certainly is not within his desires, to display either the buffooneries of a Quasimodo or the savagery of a Torquemada. He contents himself with the part assigned to him by his office, and is the law made articulate. When he delivers sentence, he is constrained by the regulations of his order to read out each clause of the law which defines the crime of which the prisoner heis been found guilty, and which establishes the penalties which he has incurred. There is an air of transcendency about the whole transaction which adds immeasurably to the dignity of the proceedings. The French judge, speaking for doom, though he place no square of black cloth upon a masquerader's wig, impresses one, inasmuch as through his mouth one seems to hear the very voice and accents of the law, with all its awful majesty. It is because of the power that the jury possesses to reduce the sentences prescribed by the code that the efforts of counsel in France are so largely directed towards arousing pity for the prisoner in the hearts of the jurymen. Every conceivable motive for compassion is invoked, and I am not at all certain that the story of the barrister who claimed the pity of the jury for a parricide on the grounds that his client was orphaned is nothing but a jest. I have certainly heard arguments ad hornineni which were fully as absurd. Maitre Henri Robert's great argument in the defence of Joseph Aubert, the murderer, to whom I have referred above, was that his client's state of health was so THE CASE OF JOSEPH AUBERT 27 deplorable that it would be cruel to put a term to his existence. If ever there was a case of murder in which the death penalty was justifiable, this was undoubtedly the one. I first made the acquaintance of Joseph Aubert in a small hotel in the Latin Quarter, where I used to take my meals. Tragedy, though we did not know it, was a guest at that table d'hote in the Rue Champollion, Of the people who used to sit down to dinner in the gloomy room which looked out on the dark courtyard, one, Joseph Aubert, was convicted of murder ; another, a musician named Salmon, committed suicide ; and this was also the way in which a third guest, the poet Rene Leclerc, put an end to his days. Aubert was the typical Gascon — a man of exuberant verbosity, a boaster, with all the Meridional enthusiasm for what Daudet used to call the magnificent lie, loud in self-glorification, loud in dress, loud of voice. At the same time he was a man of very poor physique ; he was afflicted with a kind of St. Vitus' dance, and had a curious habit — a tic nerveux — of jerking his head to the right, as though looking over his shoulder. Lombroso might have found for this habit a psychological ex- planation. He was a man of no courage, and altogether the very last man that I should have suspected to be capable of the deed of cruel violence of which he was afterwards convicted. He appeared to me to be a silly, vain fellow, too weak to be dangerous or even offensive ; and though friends warned me against his acquaintance, I took pleasure in his boastful talk, and the extraordinary powers of imagination which he displayed. At that time, it appeared, he was drawing large sums of money from his mother, a poor old peasant proprietor of vineyards in the St. Julien district. He had imagined for the purpose 28 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS of deceiving her. an optician, whom he had christened Charles Daubincourt. and whom he had endowed with a prosperous business on the Boulevard St. Germain. It was in Monsieur Daubincourt's shop that the widow at the vinegrower's farm near St. Julien was, at the suggestion and through the agency of her younger son, investing her capital. One day Aubert announced to us at the table dlwte that he was taking a cafd in the Rue des Ecoles, that he had engaged to superintend the kitchen there an ex- chef to the Emperor Maximilien, that his wines would be from his own vineyards in the Medoc district, and that he hoped that we would bestow our patronage on his establishment. He spent a considerable sum on having the f^y^ re-painted, decorated, and furnished, and obtained large supplies of liquor of every kind. The enterprise only lasted a fortnight. None of his Latin Quarter customers ever paid their scot ; the ex-chef to Emperor Maximilian was continuously intoxicated ; the general public avoided the house. One day the shutters of the Cafe de Bordeaux were not taken down ; an ironical notice to the effect that the house was " Fermee Pour Cause de Mariage " appeared on the door. It transpired afterwards that the funds which had been embarked in this disastrous speculation had been obtained from Madame Aubert on her son's representation that by investing a certain sum in Monsieur Daubincourt's business he would be taken into partnership, and he had added that as it was his intention to ask for the hand of the optician's only daughter, Mademoiselle Cecile Daubincourt, the day would not be far distant when, the optician having retired to the country, he would be sole proprietor of this flourishing business. I saw Aubert shortly after the failure of the Caf6 MY FRIEND, THE MURDERER 29 de Bordeaux. He was then engaged in avoiding his creditors, and, notably, the butcher who had suppHed the meat for the table d'hote. He told me that this butcher was very angry, and had been threatening all kinds of vengeance ; " but," he consoled himself, " he has never killed anybody." I think these words had a singular significance in the mouth of a man who was a potential murderer, and I can imagine the extension which the genius of a De Quincey could have given to the phrase. It was some years before I met Aubert again. He had been living, he told me, in the South of France. He expressed great repentance for the errors of his youth, and told me that he had made full reparation to his mother. He was Gaudissart still ; he still dressed in extravagant fashion, but his demeanour was quieter, and his wish to do well in a virtuous and orderly course of life so impressed me that I did not discourage his visits. He took advantage of my friendly feelings towards him to sell me a barrel of St. Julien wine, vintaged, as he told me, on his own vineyards. It was a wine, I was informed, which would vastly improve in bottle, and he persuaded me to leave it untouched for more than a year. I may add that when at last I opened one of these bottles, I discovered that a sour and abominable concoction had been foisted upon me, and I understood why he had tried, with all his Meridional arts of persuasion, to induce me to leave this claret until at least five years of maturing in bottle should have added greatly to its bouquet. Some time after we had met again he offered to pilot me in the South of France, and together we visited Dax, Bayonne, Biarritz, and the Landes. I remember walking with him late one night through the thick pine-forest which separates the little seaside village of Capbreton 30 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS from the Paris hioh-road. He was aware that I had that afternoon received at a bank at Bayonne a considerable sum of money, and that I was carrying it in my pocket. As it afterwards transpired, his affairs were at that time in a disastrous condition, and I had often wondered why it was that during that midnight walk through the silence and gloom of this forest, he kept insisting that I should walk ahead of him. I have to-day, no doubt, that he had formed some designs against me and my money, but that his courage failed him. I was carrying a makhila, one of those heavy, loaded Basque walking- sticks which contain a lance, and he may have concluded that an encounter with me might not be successful. On reaching Capbreton, we found that the one inn in the place was so full that we could only be accommodated with a double-bedded room. I passed that night in the same room as a man who was afterwards convicted of two murders, perpetrated under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, and in both cases with such a petty motive of robbery that the general opinion was that he must have had a long familiarity with crime. But, as I have said, I had never had the least suspicion of the things of which he was capable. He hung out no danger signals that were intelligible to me, though, if at that time I had been a student of Lombroso, I might have taken warning from one or two of his peculiarities. For one thing, in signing his name he made a most elaborate and complicated flourish to his signature, and this, Lombroso tells us, is a distinct sign of moral degeneracy. In the extraordinary letter which I annex to this chapter — extraordinary because of the quite unwarranted warmth of the feeling expressed — the student of graphology will find such a signature as is adverted to by the Italian criminologist. I was so charmed with the village of Capbreton that A MURDERER'S AUTOGRAPH : -i^^^ yi'v^ ■/-^^c^ 32 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS I remained there for uiiwards of one year, only leaving it to accompany Zola, at his request, on his first visit to England. Aubert returned to Paris, and I only saw him at rare intervals afterwards. He was then in business as wine merchant on the Boulevard des Filles de Calvaire, and used to drive about Paris in a gig, which was not the only point of resemblance between him and Probert, one of the murderers of Mr. William Weare. I next heard that he had been sold up, had abandoned the wine trade, and was frequently to be seen at the Halle aux Timbres, a place where collectors of and dealers in postage-stamps assemble for the purposes of their trade. It is a well-known fact that criminals, having selected some branch of their nefarious business, some speciality in crime, usually remain faithful to their selection. The man who has once been convicted for stealing boots will probably steal boots again, and during the course of his criminal career little else but boots. Poor Bibi-la-Pur^e had a weakness for stealing umbrellas. Lacenaire's invariable method was to issue bills of exchange, and to await the bank clerk for the purpose of assassination. Courvoisier and Thurtell before him had mapped out a career in which a succession of crimes were to be carried out in precisely the same manner. It is as though crime were, in a large degree, a monomania. The universal geniuses of criminality are the ex- ception. Even Jack-the-Ripper, of notorious memory, was uniform in his methods. One might parody the French saying, and declare that " Le crime naquit un jour de symmetrie." Aubert had decided to make a living for himself and his female associate, Marguerite Dubois, by stealing postage-stamp collections. He was totally ignorant of AUBERT AND THE INSURANCE CLERK v. v30 the different values of rare foreign stamps ; he was a philatelist only in this sense, that he knew that good prices could be obtained for certain specimens. He seems from the very first to have made up his mind to possess himself of these articles of commerce by any and every means in his power. Some time after his conviction I met in the Luxem- bourg Gardens a clerk in an insurance office, whose acquaintance I had made at the table d'hote in the Rue Champollion, where I also first had met Joseph Aubert. Some time before the murder of young Delahaef, Aubert had called on him one night, and had told him that he had recently become an ardent philatelist. The purpose of his visit, so he explained to Dames, the insurance clerk, was to examine his collection. After Dames, with some pride, had shown him the treasures he possessed, Aubert began to ask him about his financial position. Dames told him that he had some stock, and that he kept the bonds in his trunk, together with his stamp album. His visitor tried to impress on him that it was imprudent to do so, and warmly recommended him to hire a safe in one of the banking establishments. In this way the time passed away ; and suddenly Aubert, pulling out his watch, exclaimed with much annoyance: "It is past twelve. The last omnibus to the Avenue de Versailles has gone long ago. It will be quite impossible for me to limp all that way home, Dames ; you will have to put me up for the night." ** I do not know how it was," so Dames declared to me in relating this story; "but before Aubert had finished speaking, the feeling came over me that I must get rid of the man at any cost ; that for no consideration must I allow him to pass the night in my room. I had no reason whatever to suspect him of any evil designs. 3 34 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS I had always known him Hush ot money, and imat^incd him to be still in a very prosperous situation. But the feeling was there, and I could not shake it off nor reason myself out of the horrible premonition which had beset me. I at once told him that it was quite impossible for him to pass the night in my room. I invented a variety of excuses to explain my refusal ; and as he continued to claini my hospitality, on the ground that it was too far for him to walk, and that, having left his purse at home, he was unable to take a cab, I gave him three francs with which to pay his fare. I am quite certain that that premonition saved my life. He had come with no other purpose than to rob me of my stamp collection and my savings, and his subsequent conduct shows that he w-ould have recoiled before no means of effecting his purpose. " On reaching home the next evening from my office, my concierge expressed great surprise at seeing me. It appeared that that morning, shortly after I had left the house, she had received a telegram, purporting to be signed by me, in which I announced to her that I had been sent on a business journey, and directed her to hand my trunk to a cabman who would come to fetch it. The cabman had duly arrived ; my trunk had been handed over. It came out afterwards that the telecrram had been written by Aubert, who was in waiting at the Gare du Nord to receive my trunk. He took it into a private room in one of the cafds on the Boulevard Denain, where he broke it open. The bonds he sold immediately at an exchange office opposite to the caf^, and my precious postage stamps were disposed of after- wards at ridiculous prices at the Halle aux Timbres." CHAPTER III A Murderer's Kindness to Animals — Aubert at the Bull-fight — The Killing of Delahaef — "The Ayenbite of Inwyt" — Aubert's Trial— A Letter from the lies du Salut — The Guiana Convict Settlement — The Devil's Island as an Earthly Paradise — French Presidents and the Death Penalty — Executions in Paris — The Court of Appeal and its Limitations — A Two-Edged Sword — The Case of Madame Groetzinger. ONE of the traits of Aubert's character was a kindness to animals. This characteristic has been often noticed in those who have no kindness for their fellow-creatures. At the time of his arrest at Cherbourg he was travelling with two pet cats, to whose subsequent fate he seemed to attach more importance than to that of Marguerite Dubois. When we were in the South of France together I accompanied him to the first bull-fight which I have seen, and I was much pleased to find that he shared the indignation that I felt at the horrors which we there witnessed. This was all the more creditable in him that people in the South of France — and Aubert was by birth a Southerner — seem entirely unable to comprehend the humanitarian outcry which has been raised against the introduction of bull-fighting into France by the Frenchmen of the North. They set these objections down to hypocrisy, or to a wish to dictate to the South, or to a desire fi3r self-advertisement. At the time of the bull-fight which I attended in Aubert's company, Madame Severine, of Paris, had been 35 36 TWENTY YFARS IN PARIS writing in her most vigorous style aqainst these brutal and heathen displays. The indignation against her amongst the aficionados of Bayonne was very great, rmd after the corrida was over, the less noble parts of one of the slaughtered bulls were cut off, and were forwarded by postal packet to the humane lady in Paris. That a number of Frenchmen of the rank of gentlemen should have acted in such a way where a woman was concerned showed how intense was their feeling about the injustice of Madame Severine's comments on their conduct and sportsmanship, and gave evidence of the complete difference in the psychologies of South and North. I have always thought that Aubert, by setting his opinion against that of the people of his part of France, showed that he had some instincts of good in him — a circumstance which I did not forget when the time came. As far as the police were able to establish it, the first murder which Joseph Aubert committed was the assassination of a banker at Mons in Belgium, who had incurred his anger by suing him on a protested bill of exchange. During the carnival in Mons this banker was stabbed to death by a masked man who was disguised in a black domino. When he was taxed with this murder during his trial for the killing of young Delahaef, Aubert shrugged his shoulders and said, " The man was an arrant canaille ; what is the use of bothering me about him ? " It is quite certain that nobody who had not served some apprenticeship in the practice of murder could so cunningly have devised or so coldly carried out the crime of which he was convicted. The motive of this murder was the plunder of a collection of postage stamps. Aubert had made the acquaintance of Delahaef, a weak, THE MURDER OF DELAHAEF 37 crippled youth, at the Halle aux Timbres, and had learned that he possessed a valuable album of stamps. He set himself to obtain this album. He first fixed a rendezvous with Delahaef in a room in a hotel in the Rue du Mail, which he had hired for the purpose. The young collector, however, failed to keep the appointment, and thus prolonged his life by a few days. Unfortunately he was more exact on the second occasion, and duly betook himself with his collection to Aubert's small flat in the Avenue de Versailles. Exactly what occurred here will never be known ; but the theory of the prosecution was that Aubert attacked him from behind while he was bending over his collection, and with one terrible blow from a hatchet stretched him dead on the floor. Marguerite Dubois stated that on entering the flat some minutes after Delahaef's arrival she found the young man lying dead, and that Aubert, pointing to him with a gesture of triumph, exclaimed, " We quarrelled, we fought, and the victor's palms remained to the stronger." He then asked the girl to help him to pack the body up in a trunk which he had prepared for the purpose ; but Marguerite declined, and sat reading a pink edition of some Court lady's Lettres d' Amour, whilst Aubert carried out his sinister preparations for concealing the body. The sangfroid displayed by this weakly man showed him to be one of the most determined crimitials who ever lived. After the body had been corded up in the trunk he went for a porter, and had the box carried to a packing warehouse, where by his directions a strong wooden case was built round it. While this was going on, Aubert sat in the workshop, chatting with the men and smoking cigarettes. As soon as the case was ready 38 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS ho went for I\Iaro;^ucritc, and drove off widi her in a four-wheeler, with the huq^c case on the top of the cab. It was deposed by the cabman that at the Gare St. Lazare Aubert showed great reluctance to help him to lift the box to the ground. This gave the presiding judge the opportunity of making the sage remark to the prisoner, " You have heard of the danger of anatomical wounds, and were afraid of the danger of blood- poisoning if you pricked your finger with a splinter of the rough wood which enclosed the corpse of your victim." Aubert's prudence in this respect could hardly be considered an aggravating circumstance, although it certainly did show how completely he was master of himself His sinister luggage Aubert deposited at the cloak- room of a small station outside of Cherbourg, and then proceeded with Marguerite to look for a villa near the seaside. Here, again, premonition seems to have warred against his purposes, I heard that more than one person to whom the couple addressed themselves refused at the mere sight of them to accept them as tenants. It is true that Aubert expressed great anxiety to know if the sea in front of these houses was very deep. His purpose was, of course, to convey the box there across country, and either to sink it bodily into the water or to dispose of the corpse piecemeal. In the meanwhile (and here, again, the general observations on the conduct of guilty men exemplify themselves) he was frequently seen at the small station where he had left the trunk. He used to come there with a return ticket, and depart by the next train that went in the direction of Cherbourg. Soon, however, the inevitable happened, and the attention of the station-master was drawn to the big box "THE AYENBITE OF INWYT" 39 in the cloakroom. It was opened ; the gendarmes were sent for ; and, on his next conscience-impelled visit, Aubert was arrested. The Paris police were able at once to identify the victim, for some days past, at the request of Delahaef's greatly alarmed family, a search after the young man had been begun. Delahaef was a quiet youth, who lived with his parents, and what first aroused in their mind a terrible suspicion that some foul play had been dealt out to him was the receipt, the day of the tragedy in the Avenue de Versailles, of a telegram purporting to come from him couched in the following terms : " Adieu. I am leaving for Folkestone, where I intend to embark for Chicago." When I heard of this horrible affair, it seemed to me inconceivable that the Joseph Aubert whom I had known could have acted in such a manner, and I wrote at once to him in his prison at Mazas to tell him this. In his answer he neither denied nor admitted his guilt, but contented himself with saying "that his aftair was progressing very satisfactorily." Shortly after this letter I received another from Maitre Henri Robert, in compliance with whose request I wrote down all the good things that I knew of Aubert's character. I said, amongst other things, that here was a provincial whom Paris had devoured physically as well as morally. It was, by the way, on Aubert's physical degeneracy that his counsel more particularly based his most eloquent appeal to the mercy of the jury ; and, it must be said, Aubert very cleverly acted the part in the dock of a man who by the abuse of morphine had entirely destroyed his powers. He howled for morphine whenever the President put to him some probing and fatal question ; he flung himself about in the dock like a madman ; his screams echoed over all the Palais de 40 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS Justice. "Oh! what I am suti'ering ! " (" Oh ! ce que je souftrc ! ") wiis the burden of his cries. It was an abominable comedy, a piece of impudent Gascon dupery ; but it was skilfully carried out, and, I Hmcy. greatly contributed to the favourable result. At the same time, no doubt, the jury were influenced by the fact that only a week or two previously a woman had been released from prison, where she had been lying for years under a conviction for murder. A judicial error had been committed ; the woman was innocent. Monsieur Robert took full advantage of the incident to impress on the jurymen the danger of convicting capitally, and in the end, to the indignation of Paris and the outcry of the papers, Joseph Aubert, benefiting by an admission of extenuating circumstances, escaped with a sentence of penal servitude for life. I heard from him directly after his conviction. He wrote in a very cheerful spirit, and was evidently delighted at the success of the ruse by which he, the Gascon, had deceived the Parisians, who fancy them- selves so exceptionally clever. He asked me to send him some books, and enclosed a list of works of light literature which he desired to receive. Some months later I heard from his brother that he had been removed to the convict depot at the He de Re, and that it would now be impossible for him to write to me direct. His message to me was, that he would be much obliged if I would send him "three singlets of white flannel and two or three pairs of long stock- ings in laine p2ire d'Aicstralie, which could be obtained in London, and which were considered good for rheumatism." I was interested by the unconsciousness displayed by this communication, and there was also subject for A LETTER FROM THE BAGNIO 41 reflection in the care of himself shown by one who had had so Httle heed of the sufferings of others. Indeed, the whole story of Joseph Aubert, repulsive as it was, presented a rich field for psychological observation, and this must be my excuse for the extension which I have given to it in these pages. I was to hear from him again after his transportation. In 1899, at a time when the Dreyfus affair was at its height, and one was hearing much talk about the penal settlement at the lies du Salut, I received a letter from French Guiana bearing the postmark of St. Laurent du Maroni. This letter came from Joseph Aubert. It had been written, he told me, " by the vacillating light of a candle as I lie stretched on the floor of the sleeping- shed." He informed me that he had come to the con- clusion that it was impossible for a person of his physical weakness to escape from Guiana by the overland route, that is to say, through the French, Dutch, and British settlements into Venezuela, and that he had decided on taking ship for Europe and liberty. He asked me to send him by postal packet a further supply of singlets, " into the sleeves of which you will have taken the precaution to insert four banknotes for one hundred francs each, which will be preferable to a cheque. With this sum and one thousand francs which my brother has promised me I shall be able to accept the offer of a worthy citizen of this town, who undertakes for that payment to smuggle me on board a sailing vessel. I cannot get more than a thousand francs from my family, who, just now, are on somewhat cold terms with me." He added that in recognition of the service rendered to him by an Englishman, he would settle in England and devote himself to a literary career. As to France, his native land, he turned his back on her for ever. She 42 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS had acted too badly towards him. He concluded by urging me once more to assist him to escape from that earthly hell, French Guiana. The letter was not signed except with initials, and the fact that it had safely reached its destination gave one food for reflection. I half suspected a trap laid by the gardes-chiourme or warders ; but before I could make further inquiries, I heard that Joseph Aubert had died. The regime had killed one more convict, and to his body had been accorded the Cayenne funeral. Almost every evening from the lies du Salut a skiff emerges into the waves. One, two, or more stark, unshrouded corpses are thrown overboard ; the shimmering swarm of sharks does the rest. Marguerite Dubois, who was found guilty of receiving stolen property, knowing it to be stolen — Aubert had presented her with a bracelet out of the proceeds of poor Delahaef's collection of postage stamps — was sentenced to three years' imprisonment. Her conduct was good, and she benefited by a reduction of her sentence, so that only eighteen months after her conviction she was once again walking the streets of Paris. For all but the strongest convicts Guiana proves itself a " dry guillotine." If recent revelations can be believed, the treatment of the prisoners at the penal settlement of Cayenne is incredibly barbarous. The food is abomin- able. An anarchist who served a sentence of five years on the lies du Salut, stated in his account of his prison life, which was published some time ago in Le Journal, that during the whole time that he was a prisoner he ate nothing but bread. The other rations consist of mouldy beans and lentils, and all the tinned meats which have been rejected as unfit for food by the military and naval commissariats. The punishments are incredibly severe. THE DEVIL'S ISLAND 43 Botany Bay in its worst days compared favourably with Cayenne in the twentieth century. Aubert was right in speaking of his prison as a hell on earth. The morale of the bagne seems as bad as ever it was at Toulon or at Brest. The climate is described as deadly, and of course of the reputation of the islands in this respect much use was made at the time by the people who were invoking compassion for the fate of Captain Dreyfus. I am not certain that the lies du Salut merit so bad a name in this respect. Bernard Lazare once lent me a pamphlet about the Devil's Island which gave quite a different account of the place. Its name, so ominous in sound, did not proceed from the physical horrors of the island. It had been called so because at one time a refractory prisoner, who was known as " the devil " in the penal settlement on the He Royale was marooned there. The pamphlet to which I refer, placed in my hands by Captain Dreyfus's most ardent partisan, was written by one of the victims of the Coup d'Etat, one Henri Chabanne, known as " le Nivernais Noble CcEur," who spent some years onthe Devil's Island. He gives an idyllic description of its natural beauties, of the freshness of the sea breezes, of the warbling of the birds in the trees, and he concludes by saying : " J'y ^prouvai tant de douces emotions, que j'ai dit cent fois que c'etait le futur paradis du monde." ^ The regime, the enforced and excessive labour, the almost total absence of sanitary precautions, however, account for the terrible mortality amongst the convicts. " Marche ou creve" ("Work or rot") is the alternative given to the ^ " I experienced there so many sweet emotions, that I said a hundred times that this place" (the Devil's Island) "was the future earthly Paradise." 44 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS forfais in the labour gangs, and most of them succumb miserably lon^j before their sentences have been worked out. These wretched circumstances are unfortunately not known to the classes from which, in France, criminals are mainly recruited. The idea prevails that Guiana is a very pleasant place, and that the lot of the transported convict is only one degree inferior to that of the State-aided emigrant. Amongst the roughs of Paris one hears the expression of most extraordinary notions about the penal settlement. It is generally imagined that it is a place where all the trees are red, which is peopled by aboriginal women of the greatest charm and beauty, and where gold and precious stones may be picked up off the earth in the greatest profusion. The national, total ignorance of geography strips the remoteness of the place of exile of all the horrors that used to haunt the English criminal at the mere thought of Australia. The chances of being executed for murder, owing to the leniency of the jury and the reluctance of the President to refuse a reprieve, being known to be small, the alternative of transportation for life by no means terrifies the French criminal ; so little, indeed, that many murders have been committed in France with no other motive than to qualify for this form of emigration. " I have led a miserable life in Paris, often without food and without a shelter, and any change in my circumstances can only be an improve- ment. I want to be sent to the colonies, and I committed the crime with which I am charged so as to force the Government to provide for my future." Disillusionment commences for the poor wretches the moment after they have embarked at the He de Re, when they first come under the discipline of the colonial penitentiary warders. These enforce their orders with THE DRY GUILLOTINE 45 a bludgeon, and can oppose the slightest attempt at revolt with sabre or revolver. A sentence of five years in the bagnio of Cayenne is equivalent to a sentence of death, slow and lingering, but almost inevitable. Possibly this fact is taken into consideration by the juries when they pass verdicts which do not allow of a sentence of immediate death, and if this be so their apparent clemency is masked severity. I have no doubt that the President, when against the advice of the Committee of Pardons he reprieves a prisoner sentenced to death by the guillotine, feels that it is but a poor grace that he is extending to the wretched man. Many of the scores of murderers who were reprieved by President Grevy must have lived to regret his instinctive horror of the death penalty, a trait in his character which had won for him among the criminal classes the nickname of " Papa Gratias." President Carnot allowed himself to be guided by all the circumstances of the case. I was told at the Elysee on the occasion of one of my visits there that the President often spent the whole night over the dossier of a prisoner under sentence of death, reading over every paper in the case with the greatest attention. One fine afternoon in the summer, when I was visiting the President's private apartments in the left wing of Fontainebleau Palace, I was told by the military attache that he was forced to hurry me through the various rooms because, contrary to his usual custom when en vilUgiature, Monsieur Carnot intended to get back to work at an early hour that afternoon. " See there," said the general, pointing to a huge bundle of papers which was lying on the President's table — we were in his private study at the time — "that is a dossier which has just come in from the Ministry of Justice, the report of the 46 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS Committee of Pardons on X's petition for :i reprieve. The ' patron ' never keeps such things waiting, and he may be here at any minute to commence reading the papers. It means that he won't dine properly to-night; and very probably when I go to his bedroom to-morrow morning I shall find that he has not gone to bed nor slept a wink all night. He will still be plunged in the reading of these wretched papers." I know that President Faure did not take this duty in any degree as seriously as his unfortunate predecessor. He used generally to allow himself to be guided by the opinion of Paris, for he had his personal popularity at all times before his eyes. Monsieur Loubet seems generally to have deferred to the opinion expressed by the Committee of Pardons. Fortunately for his personal comfort, the circumstance that since the demolition of the Roquette prison there has been a difficulty in finding any place for the guillotine, and that in consequence executions have, de facto, been abolished in the French capital, has relieved him to some extent of a painful and responsible duty. It is highly probable that before the end of next year the Chamber of Deputies will have approved of a law which has already received the sanction of the Senate, and that public executions will be abolished in France. Unless something of the kind is done, capital punishment may be said to be abolished, at least as far as Paris is concerned. The inhabitants of the various quarters which have been suggested as suitable places for executions have expressed such decided objections to the proposal that for some years past they have been able to enforce their wishes. The landlords in these different quarters argue that it must greatly reduce the value of their property to have the guillotine in operation ON THE DEATH-PENALTY 47 in their neighbourhood, and under a Republican Govern- ment the wishes of influential electors are paramount. For the rest, the accounts of executions in Paris have always been greatly exaggerated with respect to the scenes of disorder which are alleged to have taken place. At the Roquette the most stringent police regula- tions, and the massing on the square of a large number of troops, both on foot and on horseback, prevented anything even approaching to a scandalous scene. It is true that after the guillotine had been removed, and the troops had in consequence been withdrawn, the square was invaded by a rush of rabble of a very objec- tionable type ; but where the law affords such disgusting spectacles as the slaughter of a human being, it can hardly be expected that the better and humaner classes will be represented amongst the spectators. My duties often took me to the Place de la Roquette, and I cannot recall any occasion on which anything in the conduct of the public called for censure. The people were some of them excited ; others, like myself, were profoundly disgusted and ashamed at the whole grotesque and sanguinary buffoonery ; but what fault there was to be found was rather with the ceremony itself than with the bearing of the spectators. The opponents of the death penalty will take advan- tage of the suggestion of a reform in the manner of carrying out executions to advocate their total abolition ; and here Victor Hugo, echoing in this respect Doctor Samuel Johnson, will afford them some striking argu- ments, which to my mind are irrefutable. If the thing is to be done at all, let it be done with the o-reatest publicity. If you are ashamed of the thing, as is every- body who has attended an execution, then abolish it. It is absurd to butcher a man in a prison yard for the 48 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS sake of example ; and if you deny that tlie death penalty is inflicted for the sake of example and warning, then you surrender your last justification for the brutal business. Let Society face its responsibility ; let it hang its murderers as high as Haman, so that all the world may see what it has done, or let it resign into wiser hands the powers of life and death, if it doubt its right to wield them. I have often heard much amusement expressed among French jurists at the idea which seems to be held by English people about the functions and powers of a Court of Criminal Appeal. The constant references which are made by ill-informed persons in London to the French Courts of Appeal and Cassation invest these tribunals with powers which they never possessed, and which it never entered the head of any French legislator to endow them with. There is only one Court of Criminal Appeal in France which can be addressed by a person who is dissatisfied with his sentence, and that is the Tribunal des Appels Correctionnels, a tribunal which is sufficiently well replaced in England by the appeal to Quarter Sessions, with this advantage in France, that the prisoner has always faculty of appealing, while in England the very magis- trate or magistrates with whose decision fault is found have to grant permission for the fresh proceedings to be taken. The reluctance frequently shown by country benches to state a case may proceed from the fact that in the event of a reversal of their decision the costs of the appeal will come out of their own pockets. In France, on the other hand, the Court of Correctional Appeals can increase the original sentence, and has done so. The prosecutor, represented by the Procureur de la CRIMINAL APPEAL IN FRANCE 49 Republique, has, of course, exactly the same right of appeal as the defendant, and for some years past it has been a fixed rule in Paris that where a Police Cor- rectionnelle prisoner appeals against a sentence, the Procureur-General appeals simultaneously against the leniency of the sentence : a minima, as it is called. People in England seem to forget that appeal must necessarily be open to both sides ; in other words, that it is a two-edged sword. The advocates of a Court of Criminal Appeal in England seem to desire the institu- tion of a tribunal to which any prisoner who is dis- satisfied with his sentence may go for a fresh trial and a fresh consideration of the penalties he has incurred. But these advocates do not provide for the case where the higher court shall confirm the verdict and the sentence of the lower one, nor do they explain at whose cost these proceedings are to be taken. Is the Treasury or is the prosecutor to pay not only the expenses of the fresh prosecution, but those of a destitute prisoner's appeal, or is the Court of Criminal Appeal in England only to be open to moneyed prisoners, so that the scandals to which we are familiar in the United States may be repeated at home ? But the great point which these advocates overlook in comparing our judicial system with that which exists in France is that the French Court of Cassation does not decide on questions of fact, does not interfere with la chose jttg^e. It can only be approached on questions of law ; and in this respect we are as amply provided in England by means of the Court of Crown Cases Reserved. It can direct a fresh trial on the "grounds of some breach of the strict regulations under which criminal trials are ordered ; where no such breach has occurred in the course of the proceedings, the only resource that a 4 50 TWENTY YKARS IN PARIS prisoner who is tlissatisiicd with his sentence can fall back upon is, exactly as in Eni^l^land, his constitutional right of appeal to the clemency of the head of the State. It should be remembered that even when a fresh tried is ordered in France the prisoner is by no means assured that he will fare better at the hands of his new udges, and there can be no reason to expect that in England under the new order of things a reduction of sentence could always be looked for. In France the second jury often takes a much more severe view of the prisoner's guilt than the first jury had taken. Appeal, it may be repeated, is a two-edged sword. I do not need any better example of that than the case of INIadame Groetzinger, who was tried for murder at the Paris Court of Assizes two or three years ago. The murder was a particularly brutal one ; she had shot her husband in a treacherous manner as she was handing him his coffee one morning in bed, and there were other circumstances which deepened her guilt. The Paris jury, however, took a lenient view of the case, and returned such a verdict as limited the sentence which the court was able to pass to one of five years' solitary confinement. Madame Groetzinger was very dissatisfied with this sentence (in England she would most certainly have been capitally convicted and as certainly hanged), and appealed on some technical grounds to the Court of Cassation. Some irregularities had been committed (amongst other things, one of the jurymen had uttered an exclamation of horror on hearing some particularly revolting detail), and the Higher Court quashed the verdict and sentence, and ordered a fresh trial. As usual in appeal cases from the Paris Assize Court, the fresh trial was held at the Assize Court of THE DANGERS OF APPEAL 51 Versailles. Here the jury took a severe view of Madame Groetzinger's crime, and found her guilty of murder without any extenuating circumstances. In consequence, the Versailles judges had no option but to sentence her to death. And it cannot be argued that the Versailles jury is always severe where Parisian murderers come before it, because one remembers many cases where sentences have been reduced at a fresh trial in the chef-lieu of Seine-et-Oise, as, for instance, the case of the Fenayrous. It seems to me that justice would have been treated with respect if Madame Groetzinger had been forced to abide by the results of her appeal, and I am quite certain that in England she would so have been forced to abide ; but President Loubet took the view she had been too harshly dealt with, and commuted her sentence back to the one originally passed upon her. But this instance shows that in France appeal is by no means always in favour of the panel, and this is a fact which the agitators for judicial reform in England would do well to remember. CHAPTER IV Alexandre Dumas Fils — Below Stairs in the Avenue de Villiers — Jean Richepin — "La Dame aux Camdlias" — Flaubert and "Madame Bovary" — Guy de Maupassant — His Contempt for Literature— His Adulation of "Society"— Pessimism and Pessimists — The Norman Peasants — The Doctor and his Patient — De Maupassant's Illness — Dr. Blanche — His Absent-mindedness— De Maupassant's End. IT was, thanks to Lady D N 's birthday-book that a month or two after I had got it back from Madame Lockroy, embellished with Victor Hugo's last signature, I made the personal acquaintance of Alexandre Dumas Jils. I had, however, been in frequent corre- spondence with him for some time previously on literary matters. He had been consultino" me on the Eno;lish laws on bastardy and the position in England of illegitimate children, and — which explains the frequency of our letters — did not seem able to believe that in any civilised country such laws could exit as in England regulate the position of natural offspring. It was at his invitation that I called one evening at his house in the Avenue de Villiers, to fetch the book which I had sent him for his signature with a note some days before. It was the first time that I had been to the house, and by accident rang at the porte de service, or tradesmen's entrance. I was duly ushered into the kitchen. The cook was busy dishing up the novelist's dinner, and the footman, who may have thought me a 52 BELOW STAIRS CHEZ DUMAS FILS 53 competitor for his office, evidently considered me beneath his notice. So I sat down in the kitchen and watched the proceedings, and could not help but overhear the con- versation of the servants. This mainly turned on the kindness of the "patron" and the acrimony of the " patronne," who, as I knew, was a confirmed invalid. It appeared that it was Dumas's custom to visit her every morning, and to spend two hours by her bedside, cheering her up with his brilliant conversation. From what the servants said, he was not always successful in winning her into a pleasant humour, and I will not repeat what alternative treatment was suggested in the servants' hall for dealing with this unpopular lady. At last such scabrous details were entered upon that I felt like an eavesdropper in remaining there any longer, and I bade the footman take my card up to his master. He refused to disturb the " patron" while he was at dinner; "and, young man," he said, " that is as much in your interest as in mine." When, some time later, I was ushered into Dumas's study, and he had heard where I had been waiting, he was vastly amused, and said, " You ought to find there the subject for a comedy. You remember where Sardou found his Pattes de Motccke ? In a tobacconist's shop." I told him that an English comedy existed which is called High Life Below Stairs, and I added that if I did venture to think of writing for the theatre, it would be my ambition to write a play in which Sarah Bernhardt could act the leading part. " And," said Dumas, "you do not see Sarah in the role of a cook?" " No," I said, " nor Jean Richepin as a valet de chambre." At that time Jean Richepin was in close attendance on Madame Bernhardt. He had abandoned his literary 54 T\Vi:X rV Yl'ARS IN PARIS work, and hatl apjxMred in her company on the stage of t)ni' of the boulevard theatres in the role of Nana Sahil), in wliich he had been able to ,2^ive full play to his hatred tor the luiglish. A day or two previously a friend had taken me to see Sarali Bernhardt in her looc at the Vaudeville Theatre, and in the little saloi adjoining the dressing-room we had met Richepin. He folded his arms and treated us, I think because w^e were English, to his most melodramatic scowl. I must make haste to add, however, that years have wrought a great change in him. His character has altogether softened down, and one night at Daudet's house, after a long conversation with the author of Le Flibiistier, I determined that Jean Richepin was one of the most delightful and sympathetic men I had ever met. In the course of my conversation with Dumas y?/f I made some reference to ''La Dame anx Cam^lias!' He did not seem very pleased at the mention of this name, and exclaimed : " Toujours done la Dame aux Camelias!" I presumed that he meant that after-ex- perience had rendered him sceptical of the depth of disinterested affection, of which the Marguerite Gauthiers of this world are capable, and that his attitude on the subject of unchaste women might rather be gathered from what he had written in the appendix to his book V Affaire CUmenceati. His irritation at the mention of his famous novel I afterwards understood better when Guy de Maupassant had told me that the mere name of Madame Bovary used to exasperate Gustave Flaubert into the use of strong and even foul language, which in so refined a purist might be taken as a sign of very great anger indeed. I presume that it must indeed be galling for an author who has written many books to find that the public, disregarding all his later efforts, persists in FLAUBERT AND MADAME BOVARY 55 labelling him as the author of the book by which his reputation was first made. So strongly did Flaubert feel on this subject that in his later years he used systematically to decry what is his undoubted masterpiece. " Madame Bovary c'est de la cochonnerie. Madame Bovary c'est de la " he used to shout out when anybody con- gratulated him on this book. " To hear him talk of ' Madame Bovary^ " said de Maupassant, " one would really have thought that he was ashamed of the book." In poor de Maupassant's case, by the way, the process was reversed. He is spoken of, and indeed before his lamentable death was known as, the author of La Horla, which not only was one of his last works, but the work in which the dirge of his fine intellect began to toll. I was all the more impressed by Maupassant's remarks because it was very rare indeed to hear the young master make any pronouncements on literature. " There are so many things of so much greater interest to talk about," he used to say. If de Maupassant wrote at all it was with no sense of a vocation. It was, I suppose, because the man who has the caco-ethes must even take pen in hand, and it was because, for a life of pleasure and luxury, the large revenues produced by his pen were indispensable accessories of income. He despised litera- ture as a m-Mier, he loathed the professional homme de lettres as such, and avoided his literary confreres with as much diligence as he sought after those who float, idle butterflies, through life. I first made his acquaintance in 188 — , shortly after he had written Yvette, and was impressed with the utter contempt with which he spoke of the effort. At that time he seemed vastly to prefer to talk about the sea and about yachting, and he was rather proud of the fact that 56 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS some time previously he had rescued from the waves at Etretat the Enj^Hsh poet Swinburne, who, Byron-like, a magnificent swimnu-r, had on that occasion outswum his strength, De Maupassant asked me to come down to his villa " Les Mouettes." " You will be able to study the Norman peasants in the neighbourhood of Etretat better than in my books," he said. I asked him for the authorisation to translate Yvette into English, and he said, " Traduisez, traduisez " ; but he refused to listen to any business proposals on the subject. It was on a subsequent occasion that he spoke of Flaubert and Madame B ovary ; but I fancy that he was always ready to admit his indebtedness to Flaubert, and indeed anxious to proclaim it. It was under the tutorship of his kinsman that he learned that supremacy of style which he maintained throughout, and which was always his first preoccupation. On one of the rare occasions on which I ever heard him talk of literature and of his methods of work, he spoke in confirmation of what is told of the author of Madame Bovary, that he used to write up sentences on a blackboard, so as well to be able to discern their beauties or their defects. " There was much good in the practice," he said, and he told me how he polished and revised. For the rest, he was known to be a rapid writer, and by fits and starts of immense industry and productiveness. At the age of forty-three, when his fine career was brought to so lamentable a close, he had produced more than twice the gigantic output of Balzac, whom with Zola he held to be "the father of us all," and, even as Balzac did at his age, looked upon all that he had done till then as a mere preface to what was to follow. I had not met him for over a year when the blow fell, and on the last occasion on which I saw him, at a garden-party GUY DE MAUPASSANT THE PROPHECIES OF PROFESSOR BALL 57 in Sevres, it had struck me that there was something strange in his conversation. He kept talking of money and of fashionable folk whom he had met or whom he had hoped to meet, as though by birth and talents he was not very far superior, even from a social point of view, to all the silly people whose names he mentioned. I suppose that if I had been a pathologist I should then and there have recognised in this talk the prodromes of megalomania and general paralysis. I presume that Maupassant was one of the men referred to by Professor Ball, when lecturing at the Ecole de France on that form of insanity, as marked out as one of its victims. The Professor said : " There are at present living in Paris, and astonishing the world with the brilliancy of their intellects and the wonderful cleverness of their writings and conversation, several men whose very cleverness and brilliancy are recognised by the pathologists as certain signs of the approach of general paralysis." The prophecy came true in the case of de Maupassant and of others ; but the terrible irony of Fate which so appealed to the Greek tragedians manifested itself here also, and Professor Ball himself was the first to fall a victim to the insanity which he had analysed so well in his writings and in his lectures. If in those early days I had been asked to predict, having been assured that there were the germs of insanity in de Maupassant, to what form of the malady he would succumb, I should have answered that probably melancholia would eventually seize upon this man, who in his writings showed himself so confirmed a pessimist. At that time I had not acquainted myself with the biography of Schopenhauer ; I had not studied certain contemporaries in their daily life ; and Hartmann had not yet afforded a striking example. I still believed 5S TWENTY VICARS IN PARIS pessimism to be altruistic, whereas the fiict is that it is one of the most pronounced expressions of the most egotistical individualism. In the pessimism of a Maupassant, a Schopenhauer, or an Ibsen sorrow for the human weaknesses which they so pitilessly expose, compassion for the victims of these impulses and passions are entirely wanting. I believe that most pessimists despise humanity in the inverse ratio to their admiration for themselves, an admiration which in the end develops in many cases into megalomania and that form of insanity of which it is the harbinger, De Maupassant's pessimism, however, proceeded not entirely from this disdain of humanity. The despair of life was the text from which he constantly preached, and it seemed to me, when the blow fell, a strange fact and a striking one that the pessimism and the despair of life which he had taught ever since he took pen in hand should have received confirmation in a manner so inexpressibly sad. What indeed, one might ask, is the good of ambition, and of hope, and of effort, and of project, and all of the other impulses to which the human marionette moves, when the end was there, — there, in that discreet house in Passy, Doctor Blanche's asylum, to which so many waifs and strays have come? "A quoi bon?'' was the text from which he preached again and again, and ''A quoi bon?'' in- deed, might one ask when one thought of his genius distracted, of the bells, once so precise and clear, all jangled out of tune, of the hand relinquishing the master- pen to grope stealthily for an arm for self-destruction. From his writings, Guy de Maupassant appeared as a pessimist to the innermost fibre of his being. He appeared as a pessimist from reason and by observa- tion. From reason, for he argued, as in his V Inutile THE PESSIMISM OF DE MAUPASSANT 59 Beauts, that man, having no place in this world, must necessarily be unhappy, where provision for animal happiness has alone been made, and by observation, from his supreme contempt of human nature. Despising men and women, in rebellion against the circumstance that, a man himself, he had to live out a man's life, seeing no port to which it was worth his while to steer, he seemed, from his writings, to have abandoned the helm and to be allowing himself to drift rudderless into stormy seas. The psychological truth, in fact, was different ; I am speaking from what appeared from his writings. As a matter of fact, he seemed to enjoy life very much, and for Society he had none of that contempt which he expressed for humanity in general. One knows, similarly, that Schopenhauer exulted in the sensualities of the table, and as a boon-companion was the most exuberant of men. I have seen Maupassant radiantly happy. His summers were usually spent at Etretat, and it was there that I once met him cycling in a lane which was redolent with hawthorn blossoms. I do not think that I ever saw a man who looked happier. In his writings, again, he always showed himself happy when he got away from Man, and faced Nature. Where, for instance, could one find more exuberance of spirits, more Lebensfreude, more enthusiasm, and more colour than in his book Sur r Eaii, which gives a series of pictures sketched while yachting on summer seas. Every prospect seemed to please him : man he always found vile. If one met him in Paris, unless the society which surrounded him was of the very highest aristocracy, he showed himself irritable, reserved, capricious, and on his guard. He had all the restlessness that is one of the prodromes of the malady to which he 6o TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS succumbed ; he could not settle down anywhere in town, and dra2:£red his cnmti from one house to another. I have heard it said of him, " Qu'il ddmdnage pour le plaisir de demenager." He was not popular in the society which he so adulated, in spite of his recognised mastery. One can quite understand that he has never acquired fame in England, where the great artistic truth that the fable is no less true because the wolf is cruel, the fox cunning, and the monkey malignant, is not recognised, and where a book is certain to fail in popularity if the characters are not " sympathetic." De Maupassant, now, just excelled in portraits of characters which are not sympathetic. His fables are terribly true ; and because this is so, his men-wolves, men-foxes, and monkey men are terribly cruel and malignant and cunning. The book which first made his name, Boule de Suif, is an album of pictures of selfishness and hypocrisy. Selfishness and hypocrisy are the texts of nine out of ten of his numerous short stories. In Une Vie, which many consider his masterpiece, the ugliness and cruelty of life, as caused by man's selfishness, are mercilessly exposed. Bel-Ami shows how, by an unchecked exercise of these vices, a man may rise, as Society is at present constituted in France, from the lowest to the most high degree. Bel-Ami, it may be added, was not a creation, but a portrait from life. The original of George Duroy still looms large in Tout-Paris. Only a few days ago I saw him pass down the Champs-Elysees in a superb carriage. He decries motoring as the sport of the vulgar. If the truth were known, I believe that in his pictures of Norman peasants de Maupassant, who was a Norman himself and was passionately attached to a province, with the oldest families of which he was NORMAN CHARACTERISTICS 6i connected by blood, did not at all posture as a censor. I think that the cunning and greed, the piratical rapacity of his types appealed now to his sense of humour, now to his admiration for the qualities which made of the Normans the masters of the world. He very cynically admitted towards the end his own love of gain. In his madness his ravings were entirely about money. His portrayals of Norman peasants will not strike as overdrawn anyone who has lived in that province. Only the other day a doctor in the small country town in Normandy where I pass my summers told me an anecdote about one of his clients, a Norman peasant, which made me exclaim, " Oh ! that de Maupassant could hear that ! " This doctor, several years ago, performed upon a man who had been abandoned by the first physicians in Paris an operation of the most delicate nature. At the time, when he first saw the man, the physicians told him that an operation must kill him ; that it was best to leave him to his fate ; and that he had expressed the intention, to escape his horrible sufferings, to put an end to his existence. " I replied," said the doctor, " that if the man had to die, it would be better that he should die under our hands than by self-destruction, and I duly performed the operation. My colleagues seemed to think it very presumptuous of a young, inexperienced practitioner, as I then was, to dictate to them ; but as they had given the patient up, I felt justified in acting. The operation was entirely successful, and the man recovered. " Well, some days ago he called on me, and told me that now he was getting too old to work he had come to see what I was going to do for him. I asked him 62 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS what lie meant, and he said : ' Tliat operation which you performed on me fifteen years ago must have done you a lot of good in your profession. I know that it was much talked about, and that accounts of it appeared in the Paris papers. Now, it seems to me, that as I helped you along in your profession, and as you are doing so well, you ought to remember who gave you your first start, and provide for me, now that I can't earn my own living. I really think you ought to settle an annuity on me.' " The man was quite in earnest," the doctor added ; '• and he came several times to try to convince me of the justice of his claim." In his later works, such as Notre Ccetcr and Fori Comyne La Mort, not to mention others, which seem to have been written entirely for commercial purposes, de Maupassant, it is true, laid the lash aside. It is true, also, that success did not follow him in his new departure. Critics used to express their wonder that, knowing his attitude towards life and mankind, he should ever have essayed to explain a happiness which he had always denied. " It is one thing," they said, " to analyse vice, and another to show the psychology of love. Love is of so rare and delicate an essence that it cannot be touched with the scalpel." As a matter of fact, those who knew the intimacies of Guy de Maupassant's life, knew of a love story in which he had shown himself the most impassioned of wooers, and of lovers the most ardent and faithful. It was my privilege to have in my hands a collection of love-letters written by him, and I sometimes regret that I did not consent to make use of them for publication. They would have taken their place amongst the finest letters which have been given to the world. They were DE MAUPASSANT'S LOVE-LETTERS 63 models of the style, and I do not think that de Mau- passant ever surpassed in any of his works the beauty of this prose. ^ These letters were offered to me at a time when I was thinking of writing a biography of de Maupassant, in which I was to have had the advantage of Monsieur Hugues Rebell's collaboration. I decided, however, that it would be difficult to find any public in England for a book about a French novelist who was first intro- duced into England through the agency of the Holywell Street booksellers. As to the love-letters, undoubtedly they would have added many splendid pages to my book ; but I had not forgotten what many of us thought, and what one expressed in undying verse, when Keats's love-letters were brought to the hammer. These letters of de Maupassant, it may be hoped, will remain amongst the unknown writings of their author, as high in a degree of excellence as the work which he used to publish, for sheer love of gain, under the name of Mattfrigneuse, was low and unworthy. I remember that on one of the first occasions on which I met him, I showed him a London Society paper which contained, signed by a well-known lady novelist, as an original story from her pen, an adaptation of one of his contes, which followed the original so closely as to be a mere translation. I told him what was the fact, that his work was being shamelessly pillaged by the pirates. He shrugged his shoulders, and referring to the lady in question, said, " Est-elle au moins jolie?" He added, " lis le sont rarement, les bas-bleus." Towards the end, however, he developed very keen business qualities, and one of his last acts, before his fateful visit to the ^ Guy de Maupassant's correspondence with Marie Bashkirtsheff, who had addressed him anonymously, should be remembered. 64 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS South of France, was to expose an act of piracy by which he had been victimised. As I had the advantage of knowing Doctor Blanche, the celebrated physician who kept the private inaison de saitti^ where de Maupassant was treated after they brought him back from the South, I was able to keep myself informed of the progress of his malady. Alas ! at no time was the news reassuring. I used to meet Doctor Blanche on the boulevards — one of the very few distinguished Parisians I have ever met on the boulevards — and we stopped and spoke of the illustrious patient. I was never very easy during these interviews, because Doctor Blanche, like many men whose minds are much occupied, had the habit, after taking one's hand in salute, of forgetting to carry out the motion of greeting. He gripped one's hand, more firmly than otherwise, and kept hold of it. This was also the custom of the late James Blaine, the ex-Secretary, who on one occasion kept me for fully sixty seconds with my hand locked in his, as though we were posturing before a camera. In Blaine's case this gave no cause for special anxiety, but I confess that when Doctor Blanche, the mad-doctor, held me thus in custody, his eyes fixed upon my face, a feeling of some uneasiness used to steal over me. I wanted to listen to what he was saying to me, but I also wanted him to release my hand. The absurd idea beset me that he would suddenly tighten his grip, and, dragging me into his brougham, transport me to Passy, the petite maison and the padded cell. I am quite certain that even the strongest-minded man might feel some qualms in the presence of so reputed a pathologist under such circumstances. MAUPASSANT'S LAST DAYS 65 Poor de Maupassant's madness ran its usual course. He imagined himself the possessor of boundless wealth. His talk was all of millions and billions and trillions. He wanted to dig holes in which to bury his immense accumulations of gold. He shouted into an imaginary- telephone orders to his stockbroker to buy the French Rentes en bloc. At times, flying into mad passions, he would dash round and round the room in pursuit of some phantom thief The only mercy that was shown to him was that he died in one of these terrible paroxysms. He died while he still had the semblance and the bearing of a man. His friends were spared the spectacle of that awful degradation into a condition lower than anything in animal life, to which general paralysis where it runs its whole sacrilegious course, brings its victims. There was no very great change in his appearance when he died. Somebody who saw him after his death said to me, "He looks like a soldier who has died on the field of battle." He certainly bore some resemblance to the popular military type, with his hair cropped a la Bressan, his thick moustache, and the scrupulous neatness of his attire. He was always anxious to disassociate him- self by his personal appearance and dress from the extravagances and Bohemianism of the professional homme de lettres. And though he would not have liked the comparison, I think that it may be said that, as when he was struck down, he was in full literary activity, Guy de Maupassant died ait champ d'honneur CHAPTER V Dumas yf/j and Dumas pere — Dumas yf/j and Jules Verne — His Curiosity about Modem Paris — The Little Old Woman on Two Sticks — Margfuerite Lienard at Home — A Midnight Conversation — The Ob- servations of a Professional Beggar — Her Long Career — The Two Communards, Father and Son — Those that Disappear— The Dead who walk again. IT vvas difficult for me to realize, as I sat talking that evening with the polished and urbane Alexandre Dumas, that this was the son of that Alexandre Dumas of whom Hippolyte Taine, in the conversation to which I have already alluded, spoke to me in the following terms : " Dumas /t-r^? Ah, poor Dumas! An immense genius, but not possible as a member of the French Academy. It would not have been his place, nor would he have been at ease there. Dumas had much of the negro in his exuberant temperament — a Bacchus, a Silenus, a volcano, a fountain, a jet contimi, making fortunes and devouring them, producing books by the hundred, taking here and giving there, at rest never, a spirit of unrest if there ever was one. He was a man," concluded Taine, speaking very pompously, ** whom it was most difficult to admit to an institution where a certain equanimity of temperament is an indispensable qualification." That conversation had not taken place at the time of my first visit to the house in the Avenue de Villiers ; 66 Photo by Pierre Petit &fds, Paris. ALEXANDRE DUMAS fils. ALEXANDRE DUMAS FILS 67 but Taine's description of the elder Dumas only repeated what I had heard of him on every side. Dumas filsy I should say, must have appealed to Taine and his brother academicians as the very type of the writer who, in their jargon, is acaddmisable . He was a man of most distinguished manners, agreeable in voice, apparently modest, certainly courteous, soberly elegant in his dress. In him the man of letters disappeared behind the man of the world. He had that winning and studied manner which used to distinguish the diplomatists of the tradition of Talleyrand or Metternich. Nothing either in his appearance or his temperament betrayed the infusion of neQ;ro blood. He was more Parisian than the Parisians. I found him a kind and obliging man during the eleven years that our acquaintance lasted. He frequently rendered me small services, and very shortly before his death, although at that time he was already ailing, he wrote me a long letter — it was over eight pages in length — to give me some informa- tion for which I had asked. He had none of de Maupassant's reluctance to " talk literature," and that evening he rather closely questioned me on what French books I had read. He was unaffectedly pleased when I told him what a venera- tion we have in England for his father's books, and he said more than once, " Ce bon pere ! Ce grand Dumas ! " I must have omitted to speak of Jules Verne, for at one time he said that he was surprised I had not read these "marvels." I at once told him of the immense popularity that Jules Verne enjoys in England, and indeed surprised him with my account of the enthusiasm of the Anglo-Saxon boy for this author's stories. He said, "I wonder if Jules knows that? You ouo:ht to 68 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS go to Amiens and ttll him. lie is a modest, diffident man." Then he added, " I am trying to get the Academy to recognise his merits. I am pushing his claims to be admitted. But why will he live au bout du mondc ? Why does he live in Amiens ? * Les absents ont toujours tort,' and the fault that they find with hini is that his style is bad, that he has no style, as if that were not a contradiction in itself. To have no style is to have a good style. Dumas had no style. I have no style. Style is a necessity only to the writer who has nothing to say." He showed me where he had written his name in Lady D N 's birthday-book, and, turning over the pages of the little volume, read out some of the aristocratic and royal names which were inscribed there- on. *' You had better not ask Jules to write his name here," he said, " for he is a modest, retiring man. But if you are collecting autographs in Paris you should take it, a few doors off, to Arsene Houssaye. He would be delighted," he added, with the only faint indication of a sneer which I ever saw on his lips, "to figure amongst company so illustrious." He then asked me what I was doing in Paris, and when I told him that for the time being I was seeing everything that the wonderful city could show me, he exclaimed, " How happy you foreigners are! You have time to see Paris, to study Paris. One must be an Englishman or an American to ascend the Vendome column or to read the inscriptions in Notre Dame. We Parisians know nothing of Paris ! Of many of our monuments we know no more than that they exist. And more than the monuments, the types of Paris, the hundred marvellous types of Paris! How few of us trouble to study them ! There is Zola, who is building THE BEGGARS OF MODERN PARIS 69 up a fortune and a fine reputation by doing what we have all neglected to do, studying the types of Paris, like De Nittis, whose atelier is close to my house, who is teaching us the beauties of Paris as landscapes. These men are undoubtedly in the right." He went on to say that the beggars of modern Paris, the " Cour des Miracles " of the day, would form a most interesting study, and he added, " For instance, that old lady who for as long past as I can remember has sat at the corner of the Boulevard des Capucines, just where one turns off to go to the Rue de la Paix. You must have seen her. She has two wooden legs, which she stretches out on the pavement before her. She does not beg, but pretends to sell key-rings. I have often wished to stop and ask her to tell me her story. It should be most interesting. What things that woman must have seen ! What stories she could tell of Paris ! She has been sitting there for years. But possibly she is no observer. She may all the time be calculating her gains and considering what investments she will make. So few people are good observers. We notice that in modern literature." " One could hardly expect blue stockings on the lady in question," I ventured. " She would hardly have any use for them. Her wooden legs are her raison d'etre y He laughed, and then he said, " That is the kind of thing you ought to study in Paris. You should go after the document humain, as they call it now. Tell me, will you go and find out all about this old lady, so that when we next meet you can give me her story ? I was not joking when I said that I have been greatly interested in her, and have often wanted to talk to her. I have an idea — it might be useful." I do not know what it was that prevented me from 70 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS carrying out the suggestion of Duuvas /i/s, but it was not until six years later that I made the acquaintance of the " little old woman on two slicks " in her own home. She did not encourage conversation with me on the boulevard. It might cause a crowd to gather, she used to say, when I tried to get her to talk at her place of business, which was with her back to the corner of the fine confectionery shop at the corner of the Boulevard des Capucines. I met the old lady near her home one night in May of 1890 under curious circumstances. It was a wet night, and the hour was midnight. I had happened to go out to Batignolles, and was walking down the sombre alley known as the Passage Cardinet. The silence was oppressive ; but when I had got about half-way down the passage a curious noise began to make itself heard — Tack ! tack ! tack ! — like the regular fall of an iron hammer on the pavement. What could it be ? On it came. Tack ! tack ! tack ! Then in the vague light of a distant lamp a curious silhouette became visible against the dark background ; curious, because as far as the knees it was the figure of a woman, but from the knees to the ground it was only space, broken by two thin lines. One might have said that it was the figure of a woman with the fleshless tibia of a skeleton. At times these two dark lines became invisible, and then the woman seemed to sway along in the air at a distance of about two feet from the ground. The tack ! tack ! tack ! became louder and louder. When the figure had come within twenty yards, I could see that it was the form of an old woman, on wooden legs, labouring along, a stick in one hand and an umbrella in the other. A minute later I had recog- nised her. It was the woman who had so interested Alexandre Dumas the Younger — that strange, sphinx- A MIDNIGHT ENCOUNTER 71 like old woman who, year in, year out, sat at the corner of the Opera Square in Paris, an object of curiosity, if not of compassion, to every passer-by. "Ah! bon soirf I said, as she came up. "You almost frightened me. Your footfalls sound strange in this deserted street. What on earth brings you out into this part of Paris at this hour of the night ? " " This part of Paris ? " she cried. " You mustn't speak disrespectfully of the Plaine des Batignolles. Don't you know that we are within a stone's throw of the Avenue de Villiers, where all the great artists live?" It was quite true. I had forgotten the fact. As we were standing there we were within about ten minutes' walk of Dumas's house. " I live here," said the old woman, " and have lived here, in the Passage Cardinet, for five years. And I shall live here many years more unless my landlord turns me out, as he is threatening to do." "Why so?" " My rent is 270 francs, so I ought to have given him 67 francs 50 centimes. Instead of this I only gave him 10 francs, and he was indignant, and said that unless I paid him before the end of the month, he would put me into the street, wooden legs or no wooden legs. Ah, sir, why are we not living under the good King Louis Philippe, when for the same money that I am paying now for two miserable rooms I could have had a kitchen, a dining-room, two bedrooms, a cellar, and a grenier ? That was the happy time in France for people of small means." "But," I said, "this is nonsense. You are very rich. You are a well-known person in Paris. You sit at the world's centre, and every passer-by pays tribute to you," / - TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS She stamped one nC her wooden feet indignantly on the pavement. " It's lies!" she cried. " It's all lies. It's lies like these that have ruined me. Everybody thinks that I am very rich, and nobody gives me anything just for that reason. They started a lie years ago about my owning house property." Then interrupting herself, she added : " But it's no use our standing here. I run the risk of catching cold by getting my feet damp. Walk towards my house with me." As we walked along I could not help wondering at the great dexterity with which the crippled, old woman strode along. '' You walk as easily as I do." She laughed. " It would be curious," she said, " if, after sixty-seven years' exercise on these stilts of mine, I couldn't walk. I was born with my legs paralysed. I have my legs, my calves, and my feet just the same as you have, but they are bent up at the knee. I kneel on my wooden legs. " But here we are at my house," she said, pulling at the bell of a house before which she had halted. I pressed a gold coin into her hand, and I said, " You must let me come in and tell me your story. It interests me greatly." " Oh, I have no objection to your coming in," she said. " I have watched you on the boulevards long enough, and I take you for a serious young man. But I have little to tell you and less to show. " I live on the ground-floor," she said, after we had entered the house, "on account of my legs. It is not the Rothschilds' hotel, r/iez mo?'." It certainly was not, but the room into which she ushered me was very clean and tidy. In one corner THE LITTLE OLD WOMAN ON STICKS 73 stood a comfortable bed ; a bright oilcloth was on the table in the centre of the room. " This is my house property in Paris," she said with a laugh, waving her stick round the room. " These are my landed estates. It is not Peru, as you can see, but it is clean and tidy. If you ask me what I am proudest of in the world, it is that." And she pointed to the wall behind her bed. I looked, and saw, side by side, no less than nineteen photographs, each in its little frame. There were three rows of them. " My husband and my children," she said. " I had eighteen children. " You have lost them ? " " They are all dead but three," she said — " two sons and a daughter. My younger son lives with me ; my daughter is married. The elder son is in the South of o France. I was married at the age of fifteen ; but I was a fine young woman at that age, as fine as most women of twenty, as they are nowadays. My husband was a journeyman baker. He married me because of my wooden legs. It was a capital dowry, for I was already well known in Paris, and good year and bad year together they were worth about 2,000 francs a year. I made my d^but at the age of eight — on March 17th, 1831. At first I used to sell flowers ; then I learned the violin and played it." " Then you have been a public figure in Paris " " For fifty-nine years. I have sat where you have seen me sitting for the last twenty years. If I were to tell you all that I have seen, you would want a paper as big as from here to the boulevards to print it in." I asked her what might be the average of her takings every day. 74 TWKNTV YEARS IN PARIS " If I were to say that seven francs is the average daily takings," she said, " I should be speaking very cheerfully. Let us say six francs and tell no lies. Things are very bad just now. There are no rich people in Paris ; at least, none such as I used to have for customers. There was a time when my affairs really did oo well — but now ! I made three sous to-day ; some days 1 make nothing ; and just now, as I have told you, I ^mi on the eve of being turned out of my lodgings. " The rich." she continued, " are not worth what they were. They have no more generosity. All the money I now take is given by the poor — people who have suffered or who have seen suffering and know what it is. I sit all day with my back to one of the oldest and richest con- fectioner's shops in the world. In the afternoons I see rich people driving up in their carriages with splendid horses. They get out, bursting with good food ; they go into that shop, stuff themselves still fuller with the costliest dainties, spend without counting, and as they come out I jingle my key-rings and beat a tattoo on the pavement with my wooden legs. One would think that, being so rich and comfortable and so full of good things, they would be disposed to be charitable. Not a bit ! Never a sou do I get from one of them. " The Due de Nemours is a personal friend of mine. He often comes and chats with me when he is in Paris. Don't you think that a man like that could easily give a poor woman like me a hundred-franc note now and then, to help me pay my rent, to put things right, and make me feel comfortable at home ? But oA ! la, la ! the generosity of the d'Orleans ! I shall not be lying when I tell you that all his gifts put together, since I have known him, do not amount to one half oi the coin SUPERSTITION AND CHARITY 75 you have just given me. I wish," she added, " that your Prince of Wales walked on the boulevards. They say he is a kind-hearted man ; but, voilct, he doesn't walk." She told me that it was between eleven and twelve in the forenoon that she took most money from the public. " I usually make half my day's earnings in that hour. People are only generous to me from habit or from superstition. Superstition ! — that is to say, that there are a number of people who think it will bring them good luck to be generous to me, and on the eve of some big race will give me small sums in the hope that it will help them to win." I asked her whether she did not find it very dull sitting at her corner all day. She said that she passed the time reading ; indeed, I rarely saw her without a paper in her hand. " I like the feuilleton stories so much," she said, " especially those which are about unhappy loves. But there is nothing that I enjoy more in the day than Henri Rochefort's daily article in the Intransigeantr While she was telling me this I had been looking at the portrait of her husband behind the bed on which I was sitting. " Have you been long a widow ? " I asked. "Oh! poor Lienard! Did I tell you that my name was Lienard — Marguerite Augustina Lienard ? My poor husband was killed in the Commune. My son, who was fighting on the side of the Communards, was engaged one evening in removing the dead on the boulevards. Suddenly he came across his father's corpse, and, curiously enough, the Communard who helped him to bring poor Lienard home afterwards became my son- in-law." 76 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS " V^ous ctcs grandmcrc, madamc ? " I said. " No," she answered. " They had a little girl, but she died." Before I took leave of Madame Lienard she was f^ood enoui^h to ask me about my prospects in life. She told me that she had often speculated in her mind on what might be my walk in life. Because I was clean shaven she had at first taken me to be a valet looking for a place ; but then she had seen me in cabs and on the icrrasse of the Cafe de la Paix opposite. " I am a writer, madame," I said. "Ah! that was good formerly. That was good under the kinof. It was a cfood trade under Louis- Philippe. But now everybody knows how to write, and there is nobody to whom to address petitions." Madame Lienard understood me to be a public letter- writer. When I first came to Paris there were still a certain number of these scribes to be found in little sheds at the street-corners ; and so also in those days were there carriers of water, who blew a horn and offered their services. These were picturesque people, swarthy men from Auvergne ; and in the summer months it was pleasant and refreshing to meet them with their dripping buckets in the sultry streets, or to follow in their track up steep and stifling staircases, where each step was splashed and looked cool in the sweltering heat of all else. They have all gone now, and many other of the picturesque types of old Paris have gone with them. Raffaeli just arrived in time to limn some of these once familiar figures which modern Paris shall never see again, extinct now as are the types of Daumier or of Gavarni. The ^crizain ptiblic, such as Madame Lienard took me to be, still survives here and there in THE VACANT CORNER ^^ Paris in remote quarters. His ^choppe may be found near the prisons often. But he is not the confidential friend and adviser of the illiterate as he used to be. Too often he combines with the functions of letter- writer the less honourable trade of private detective. He has been suspected of giving information to the police, and, being a depository of the family secrets of his quartier, to have used this knowledge for extortion. I never knew what became of Madame Lienard. In cities one has no curiosity as to those who disappear. One day one said, " Tiens ! the old woman on sticks isn't at her corner," and one passed on. Some believed her to have retired to enjoy in splendour the rentes which she had amassed. Others fancied that she must be dead, "as it certainly was her turn to be." But nobody cared. For myself I preferred not to inquire. Life has taught me not to hunt after sad emotions, and it pleased me to believe that the son-in-law in the South of France, the Communard who brought the dead journey- man baker home to the woman whom he had married for the sake of her wooden legs, might have taken compassion on her lonely and miserable life, and have offered her a home in some sunny bastide amidst the vines. I used to picture her to myself sitting in the farmhouse kitchen during the long veilldes, knitting by the resined tallow- dip, and relating to the eager villagers all the wonderful things that she had seen in Paris during the sixty odd years that she had shown her legs for a living. And the fact is that many of the people who disappear from Paris and are supposed to have died under circum- stances of exceptional sadness are found to be living quietly in retreat, enjoying a eupeptic and contemplative existence far from the crowd and the noise. Did I not one afternoon in a suburban tramway once meet the great 78 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS Hortensc Schneider ? W's, the Duchess of Gerolstein, tile Grand-Duchess of Gerolstein herself, dressed as a petite hourgcoisey with black filoselle mittens where the the diamond bracelets used to be. She paid the con- ductor with coppers which she extracted one by one from a housekeeping purse, and she anxiously demanded her transfer ticket. She looked very respectable ; she was plump and comfortable, like some prosperous middle- class grandmother who has lived a quiet and orderly life. I think she would have fainted if any indiscreet person had reminded her of the old imperial days and the petits soiipers in that little house at the corner of the Rue Lesueur, facing the Avenue de I'lmperatrice. Did not one hear also, quite recently it seems (though it is fifteen years ago), of the death at Nice of Alphonse Karr, who for close on twenty-five years had disappeared from the boulevards ; and did we not all re-echo at the news the words of Alexander Dumas on a similar occasion and cry, "Quoi? Encore?" ("What? Again?") These people who disappear while it is yet time from the turmoil of the town are the wise people of the world. Paris, if it knows of the retreat of such a one, smiles and says, " II fait son petit Cincinnatus," as though that were the most foolish thing that a man could do. How greatly preferable is such an existence to that living death which is led by so many, who, having lost their health, their fortunes, their powers, persist in walking the streets, in haunting the pleasure-places, pale phantoms of their former selves. I remember once in the Cafe Royal in London asking a friend of mine who an old man was whom I always saw there in the afternoons and evenings, who appeared to have few friends, to be lonely, and from the way the waiters spoke to him, poor. " Oh, that is ," said my friend. THE DEAD WHO WALK AGAIN 79 "In his lifetime he was a great painter, a true artist. Then he died, but came back afterwards, and now he sits in the Cafe Royal all day and most of the night, drinking little glasses of brandy. What a pity it is," he added, " that dead men will come back and persist in showing themselves, just to pretend that they are alive, when everybody knows the contrary ! " Those words have often occurred to me in Paris as I have seen drifting past me in the streets, or crouching in forlorn attitudes in the public resorts, men who once filled the town with the exuberance of their lives. And perhaps never did I recall them with more poignant anguish than when many years later it fell to me to witness this living death of the very man who spoke those words. CHAPTER VI The Modern " Cour des Miracles" — Bibi-la-Puree — A Survivor of the Middle Ages — His Mode of Life — His Friendship for Verlaine — His Last Impersonations — The Old Pole — A King Lear of the Gutter — The Adventures of Fenine — "La Revendication Individuelle" — Our Last Tryst — An Englishman in Paris — A Harboured Resentment — The Lady who called. INDEED, there was no necessity for me to explore Paris (as Dumas had suggested) in search of the Cour des Miracles. This, since the days which Victor Hugo pictured in his N^otre Dame de Paris, has left its cantonments and has spread itself all over the city. In the course of a life such as mine, which took me to all kinds of places, and which brought me into contact with all kinds of people, I have met in Paris so many and such curious types of the class to which the novelist drew my attention, that I can people in fancy a Cour des Miracles fully as weird as that mediaeval lazaretto of which Paris still speaks with a shudder. With this difference : my Cour des Miracles exhibits no sores, no twisted limbs, no horrid ailments. To the outward eye my adventurers appear much like other people, a little more shabby doubtless, but otherwise difficult to differentiate at a cursory glance from the first man in the street. Yet in their way of life, in the resources of their existence, in their moral character, they entirely resemble their less hypocritical fore-runners of the Middle Ages. They will not work ; 80 A SURVIVAL OF THE MIDDLE AGES 8i they never have worked ; their capacity and desire for enjoyment are enormous. I was very well acquainted for years with that extraordinary person Bibi-Ia-Puree. Of him it may be said that he seemed a survival of the Middle Ages. His home, had he ever had one, should have been in the Rue de la Grande Truanderie. If he had lived in the Middle Ages he would have been hanged. He had not, like Villon, the talents which appealed to a clever king and twice saved the poet's neck from the halter. Bibi-la-Puree's real name was Andre Salis, and he was very proud of the fact that he was a nephew of the Abbe Salis who gave evidence in the Tichborne trial, and who had been tutor to the real Sir Roger. He was the son of a marc hand de vins in Angouleme, and so belonged to what the French call a respectable family, but for many years before his death he had cut himself adrift from all his relations, and the only remnant of his former social position consisted in an annuity of three hundred francs, which he used to draw at an insurance office four times a year. In the Latin Quarter, which was largely his sphere of activity, a mistaken belief prevailed that he was a student of law, who having eternally failed in his examinations could not tear himself from the scenes of his academic struggles. We all knew the dtudiant de quinzieme ann(^e ; here was the dtiLdiant de trente- cinquieme. But this was not the case. Bibi-la-Puree was a student only in the University of Life. On the quarter-days on which he used to draw his annuity it was not an unusual experience of mine for Bibi-la-Puree to drive up to my house with a huge bouquet in his hand and to beg me to accompany him as his guest. It was, it appeared, a point of honour 6 82 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS with him that that same night every penny of his seventy-five francs should be spent — '' boufft''' he used to call it. And thcnii^h I never accompanied him on any of these occasions, I used otherwise to see a great deal of this strange, old man, more, perhaps, than was good for my reputation as an honime sdrieux ; and I remember being asked one night by a commissary of police who was inquiring into my identity why I chose such a companion for excursions into the lower depths of Paris. I answered that it was difficult, not to say impossible, to find sub-prefects who were ready to accompany one after midnight. If I had cared to explain, I should have said that the study of Bibi-la- Puree was as interesting a psychological treat as humanity had ever offered me. Yes, Bibi-la-Puree, who now had the face of Voltaire and now of Louis XI. (the very monarch who would have hanged him in his true period) took one straight back to the Middle Ages. I had often regretted that it had not been my lot to live in the days of Francois Villon, that I had not met that strange poet-thief ; and in Bibi-la-Puree one found a Villon, or perhaps rather a Gringoire, walking the streets of Paris at the close of the nineteenth century. Not indeed that he had any literary attain- ments. Indeed, his only attaches to literature were his preference for the society of writers, his long friendship with and devotion to the Poet Verlaine, and a superficial knowledge of what the young men of the Parisian Parnassus were writing. Bui in his manner of life, in his disregard of social conventions, in his hatred of the police, in his constant difficulties with the gens de la justice he walked the streets of Paris, pilfering and light of heart, a Villon redivivus. Even as Villon or BIBI-LA-PUREE'S WEAKNESS 83 Gringoire, he had an utter detestation of the bourgeois qua bourgeois, and considered him, inasmuch as a Philistine, his natural prey. In a eulogistic notice of Bibi-la-Puree which appeared in one of the papers, after his death in the Hotel-Dieu, it was recorded to his credit that, unlike his prototypes, he was honest. This is not the case ; and without his weakness for peculation, his character would have lost much in interest. As a matter of fact he had served one sentence of a year's imprisonment for stealing a brooch. On this occasion, as in all his other acts of larceny, he was prompted by no self- interest. He stole because it was in his nature to steal, just as a magpie pilfers. You had to grasp this fact if you wished to enjoy his society, that, like the Taffy of the nursery-rhyme, Bibi was a thief, and you had to take your precautions accordingly. Whenever, having met him homeless in the midnight streets of Paris, I had given him a night's shelter in my house, I was always careful before parting with him in the morning to empty his pockets of such trifles as he had purloined during my sleep. What he stole — and he was always stealing — was immediately presented to one of his friends. For instance, he often used to leave parcels for me at my concierge's — an umbrella, some books " col- lected " at the second-hand stalls on^the quays, and on one occasion he left a clock. His speciality, however, as I have mentioned above, was the stealing of umbrellas; and when he entered a cafd in the Latin Quarter or in Montmartre, you saw everybody rushing for h.\s parapluie. It was understood that this was one of his amiable weak- nesses, and nobody, I am sure, ever thought of informing against him. His talents in this direction were exercised much on behalf of his friend the poet Verlaine, when that 84 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS <^reat man was dying of want and sickness in liis miser- able garret in the Rue St. Victor. Here the magpie disphiyed the amiable qualities of the raven in the Bible story. There was something very touching in this asso- ciation of the genius and the imbecile, of whom one had the outward appearance and the other the sweetest gifts of the mediaeval poet, who, like each of them, had suffered all that Paris offers of suffering, like each of them had lain in gaol. It is recorded that at Verlaine's funeral, at which Bibi-la-Puree represented lafamillc, and led the procession of mourners, he managed to gain felonious possession of the umbrella of Francois Coppee. He had no domicile, he had no means of existence, and no property beyond the ragged finery in which he walked about. He was in perpetual masquerade. He usually wore a high hat, and never went abroad without a huge bouquet in his ragged frock-coat. One day I sent him to dispose of a quantity of odds and ends which I was clearing out. There was a pair of spurs, relics of my Melton days, amongst this lumber, and, item, an antique helmet. He was to dispose of these at a second-hand shop at Mont- martre, and he was to bring me back the money, for that night my purse was empty. But I saw no more, that dinnerless evening, of this fraudulent bailee. I heard, however, that he had been seen in various parts of Paris wearing my spurs on his heels, his head covered with the antique helmet. In the tails of his frock-coat he carried a pair of blacking-brushes ; but his skill in the art of polishing boots was exercised rather for the benefit of his personal friends than for personal gain. You asked Bibi-la-Puree to take a bock, and after he had drunk it he would kneel down in front of everybody in the cafd and vigorously black your boots. In any other country — indeed, in almost any other THE LAST IMPERSONATIONS 85 town than humane and tolerant Paris — Bibi-la-Puree would have spent his life in prison. In England he would have been "dealt with" as an incorrigible rogue and vagabond. Yes, I am afraid that at Quarter Sessions they would have ordered poor Bibi to be birched. In Paris the picturesque harmlessness of his character was so well understood that the very magistrates of the Correctional Police used to treat him with the greatest leniency. He was frequently brought before them for insulting the police, against whom he harboured all the hatred that was entertained for the guet in the Cour des Miracles. Now in France it is a most serious offence to address " outrages " to a policeman in the execution of his duty. It may entail a sentence of one year's imprisonment. Bibi was always lightly punished, even on the famous occasion when he was found clambering into Monsieur Thiers's house on the Place St. Georges, and had to be removed to the police-station in a wheel-barrow, in- veighing against the police all the way, and clamouring for the halcyon days of the Republic under le petit Foutriqtiet. He died, as Gervaise died, of exposure and want and privation. Tuberculosis was the direct cause, and his last days in the Hotel-Dieu Hospital were easy. He remained a buffoon to the last, and the very evening of the night on which he died he was masquerading up and down the ward, bringing smiles to lips as blanched as his own. Dying, he, the beggar, enacted for these beggars on their death-bed the many trickeries which had been their trade in life. In the penumbra of the long room he mimicked for men who had reached their last infirmity the mock infirmities by which they had wrung compassion and largesse from the world which they were leaving. He turned back his eyelids and ^6 TWENTY VI:ARS IN PARIS parodied the blind. Me doubled back his hand and showed a polished stump. He feigned the man who is palsy stricken, and amidst the coughing cachinnations of his audience of experts he played the canting beggar who dupes the pious at the doors of churches. He went out of a world which had not been kind to him, triumphant and mocking to his last breath. He died with the Vos pla2idite of the Roman clown expressed in the grin of his lantern jaws. The papers recorded his death as a matter of public interest, told the story of his life, and spoke gently of his foibles. Another of my strange acquaintances in Paris was that fine, aristocratic old man who for years used to be seen in the end room of the Cafe de la Paix every night of the year, writing, correcting proofs, and wielding a rubber stamp. He was an object of curiosity to all who saw him there for the first time, and I think that many times a day the waiters were asked about him. In spite of his shabby attire he was evidently quelquun. In- deed, he had the appearance which the general hold to be the type of the highest nobility. Some thought him a king in exile, and truly he was Lear in his fall. His name was Wladislas Izycki ; he was of a noble Polish family. There is a Polish nobility, in spite of the fact that every rascal Pole that one meets away from his country claims to be of aristocratic birth. I am not sure that Izycki was not the identical vieux Polonais of Francois Coppee's story. It is certain that he had been finally ruined at the Paris gambling-tables, and that for years he had haunted the clubs and begged of successful gamblers the trifle which should permit him to try his luck once more. He had been a man of immense fortune. He had all the extravagance and all the folly of the Polish aristocrat. His generosity was unbounded ; his "LE VIEUX POLONAIS" 87 contempt for money, in the old days, unparalleled even amongst his countrymen. It was told of him that when he came of age his brothers complained that, though the eldest son, the zaniek, or family mansion, should have been left to him by their father. Had not each one of them an equal right to it ? These recriminations dis- tressed him, and he determined to bring them to an end. The method he chose was characteristic. He invited them to his estate on a given day, and when they arrived they found their brother waiting to greet them under a tent. The palace of their ancestors had been razed to the ground, and the earth levelled. " I hope that we shall now no longer quarrel about the possession of the castle," he said to his brothers. His follies and ex- travagance were at one time the talk of Europe. He freighted a steamer once to convey him across the Atlantic because he was anxious to be present at the ddbut at Chicago of a ballerina for whom he had a kind- ness, and had missed the boat by which she had sailed. He would have appealed to Ouida in her early days. In Paris he had for a brief season been the talk of the gambling-clubs. Some of the banks that were held by Wladislas Izycki are still discussed by the Greeks of Europe with watering mouths. The catastrophe was not long in coming. A final blow was dealt to his fortunes by the dishonesty of a steward, by which he was robbed of his remaining estates in Poland. It was then that he began to figure, if not as the real vietix Polonais who inspired Copp^e's tale, at least in a similar part. One by one the clubs shut their doors on him. From one house where in his prosperous days he had lost a million francs he was ejected by the police. He was more than once arrested for begging, and, I believe, spent some days in prison in consequence. 88 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS Attcrw.irds he hud attracted the attention of the boulevards by paradini^ Paris dressed in sky-blue clothes, carryin^^ a red parasol, and distributlii;^ prospectuses. In the days when I came to know him he was living by playing the flute in an orchestra in a small cafe-concert in Montmartre. When he lost this employment he took to writing begging letters. He knew to a centime what were the charities of all the rich people in Paris. His delight in life was to be able to sit in the Cafe de la Paix, where he drank coffee and smoked cigarettes and wrote his petitions. One day he told me that he had hit upon an idea for making large sums of money. He had written and caused to be printed a little four-page pamphlet in Russian. It was a grotesque exposition of his Socialistic views, accompanied by a description of his own woes. His name and address were printed at the bottom, with the mention that the price of his pamphlet was not less than one franc. These papers he used to embellish with the impress of a rubber stamp which he had designed. The design, he explained, was the key of his system of philosophy. It represented a hand with the fingers and thumb outspread. Each finger bore on it the name of one class of workers, ouvrier, fabricant, artiste. He said that the producers were the only people who ought to be allowed to live in a w-ell-ordered state, and he called his system la doigtologie. He afterwards added, in the centre of the hand, a picture of his eldest son. He spent his time in the Cafe de la Paix stamping these pamphlets and addressing them to all the celebrities who visited Paris. I used to hear from him of the success of his publications and could have annotated my copy of the Almanack de Gotha as the beggar's true guide. It appears that the King of Greece was always ' good for a louis,' and Izycki came to look upon the Hellene dole as part of his income. THE END OF IZYCKI 89 There were granddukes and granddukes : this one used to send ten roubles ; this other left the missive unnoticed. As long as he confined himself to addressing his public through the post, the picturesque old man was not interfered with by the managers of the cap. But the time came when he thought to give extension to his affairs by handing round his leaflets amongst likely customers. It was his ill-fortune one day to hand one in which there were some coarse pleasantries about the Russian police to a high official of the Petersburg Central Of^ce. This person at once complained to the management, and poor Izycki received his congd. I think that this final humiliation broke his heart. I saw him later shufBing about the boulevards, and, when the police were not looking, this fine old man would stretch out his hand for alms. The very last time on which I saw him he came up to me from behind, and, without a word, held out his hand. I took his arm and asked him how he was faring" and where he lived. He laughed and said, " Under the Pont-Neuf Come and see me." Some days later I heard that he had been found dead in the small room to which I had assisted him. It was cold weather, and he had piled all the furniture in the room on his bed to add to the warmth of the blankets. He left nothing behind him but many hundreds of empty matchboxes and a great number of letters from charitable people. There were kings and emperors amongst his correspondents, and the letters would have been estimated a prize by many collectors of autographs. They were, however, impounded by the police, lest they should fall into the hands of some other professional writer of letters. 90 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS It was Izycki who iiurodiiccd nic to another of the waifs of Paris, a man of whom 1 often think with pity and regret. This was a Russian officer named Fenine, under sentence of death in Russia, and for years a fugitive in France. He had been reared at the College of Nobles in Petersburg, and was the son of a Russian officer whose name is still proverbial for its honesty in the Empire. He was blind of one eye, and had the Kalmuk type, presenting altogether as strong a contrast with the aristocratic-looking Pole, Izycki, as one notices often between Poles and Russians. I am always struck with this racial difference when I compare two photo- graphs which stand in my study, the portrait of Henry k Sienkiewicz and that of Fedor Dostoiewski. All his life Fenine had been filled with libertarian impulses, and as an officer, quartered in Warsaw, he put himself on the side of the oppressed. He was mixed up in one of the recurrent conspiracies in that city of disquiet ; the conspiracy was, as usual, made known to the police, and Fenine was forced to fly for his life. " I was in total ignorance," he used to tell me when relating this passage in his life, " that we had been betrayed, and one afternoon was walking home to my house. I had reached the corner of my street, when a man who had passed me turned back, caught me by the arm, and whispered, ' Are you Lieutenant Fenine } ' He then said, ' Don't go home. The plot has been discovered, and the police are hiding in your room to arrest you.' So I turned round on my heel and had to face the world again. I was in uniform ; I had barely a couple of roubles in my pocket ; a price was set upon my head ; the hounds were at my very heels. In the shortest possible time I had to find a disguise, to obtain money for my flight, and to get outside the gates of THE ESCAPE OF FENINE 91 Warsaw. I succeeded in all these things, and my luck was marvellous. The town had been declared in a state of siege, and every exit was closely watched. The sentry at the gate by which I made for freedom was my own orderly. I have never known to this day whether he recognised me or not. At any rate, I was allowed to pass. I tramped through Poland on foot. It was not till I had got a good way into Germany that my friends were able to send me a little money, and I could take the train. I reached Strasburg unmolested ; but at the very point of crossing over into the French part of the station the German soldiers stopped me. Who was I ? Where were my papers ? I gave myself up for lost. At that time the German police were only too glad to be able to render services to their Russian colleagues, and I should have been arrested and sent back to Warsaw, the court-martial, and the gallows. As a matter of fact, I had already been tried in my absence, and was sentenced to be hanged. However, a French abbe who was present interested himself in me. I told him in private, in a few whispered words, who I was and what I feared, and he contrived to persuade the German sentries to let me pass." His life in exile had been one long period of want and suffering. The days had gone past when the Poles were welcomed to France. Young Floquet might cry out in front of the Czar, " Vive la Pologne, monsieur," and so found his political career ; but the general public had had enough of the Revolutionary adventurers who made return for hospitality with every kind of treachery. The Wenceslas Steinbock of Balzac had come to be recognised as a true type, and the French citizen feared for his purse and his domestic honour. Again, poor Fenine was in the peculiar position that he was not 92 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS a Pole, but one of the race of their oppressors, and on his action, which, in fact, was dictated by a pure spirit of humanity and justice, an evil construction might be put. He was forced to gain his living in the hardest manual toil. For years he worked in an iron foundry, where he lost the sight of one eye through an accident. Amongst the declassed he was one of the most cruelly declassed ; yet his love of humanity, his compassion for the sufferings of the poor never grew less. When I made his acquaintance he was earning a miserable wage as occasional secretary to a rich Polish refugee, one of the very class which caused the downfall of their ancient kingdom ; and poor Fenine, who had sacrificed in the cause of Poland his life, his honour itself, was forced to write at this man's dictation lying and vainglorious accounts of the heroic struggles of the Polish nobility, and " unutterably foolish " suggestions of the way in which Poland might yet be saved. He hated his employer as rarely one man ever hated another, and he used to pour into my ear the indignation with which he was inspired. I said to him on one occasion that it had been the misfortune of his life that he had always been obliged to accept employment from those with whose opinions he was entirely at variance ; that circum- stances, in other words, forced upon him the role of traitor. When I knew him he had developed a very keen sympathy with Anarchist principles, though he was much too kind-hearted ever to countenance acts of cruelty. But with the theory of every man's right to practise la revendication individuelle he entirely agreed, and took delight in pilfering whenever the opportunity offered. One day he said to me, " I am so sorry. I wanted to give you an agreeable surprise ; A PROFESSOR OF RUSSIAN 93 but I don't think I shall be able to do it. The old wretch keeps too close a watch upon me." I asked him what he meant, and he explained that his employer possessed a very beautiful inlaid wood paperknife. *' Just the thing," he added, "that would look nice on your writing-table. I made up my mind long ago to get it for you ; but old D , who is as cunning as he is mean, never lets me go out of his sight." I engaged him to give me Russian lessons, and it is to him that I owe any knowledge of that language which I possess. But my education was gained under trying circumstances. Poor Fenine had the vice of many of his countrymen : he used to drink very hard. He often came to my house hopelessly intoxicated; but even then I was able to talk with him. What brought my Russian lessons to a close was that after a while he ceased coming at the appointed hour. I was very busy, and could only spare for the Russian lessons the hour between six and seven. It became quite a usual thing for me to have to wait till a quarter to seven without any news of my professor. At that time, generally, a man in an apron would come from some neighbouring wineshop and tell me that a gentleman was waiting for me at that establishment, and that my immediate attendance there was desired. On reaching the cafi, I used to find Fenine sitting behind a pile of saucers, representing as many glasses of absinthe, for which the landlord was holding him in pawn. It was unfortunately impossible for me then, for want of time, to encourage these amiable eccentricities, and in the end our relations as pupil and teacher came to a close. But I used to see him constantly when he came to call on me, and I was always delighted 94 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS with the man's wonderful conversation and vast erudition. He had never been married, but he had an adoration for women, and his great grievance against the social system lay in the injustice which is meted out to them. He was collecting notes for a book which he proposed to write in re-vindication of woman's true position in society, and at the time of his death had collected an enormous mass of matter. He used to live in a miserable garret in the Rue Visconti, of which it was rumoured in the quarter that it had once been the abode of the great Racine, and which was close to the house in which Balzac carried on that ill-fated printing business which, because he there bankrupted, closed the doors of the Academy against him for ever. Here he had a camp bedstead; he had no other furniture. Indeed, there was no room for anything else, for every other inch of space was filled with books, most of which had been collected on the principle of la revendication individuelle. There was no fireplace in the room, and in the bitter cold of the winter, the poor fellow used to burn paper in the middle of the stone floor, to thaw his frozen fintrers. He always carried a broken horseshoe with him — not for luck indeed, but as a weapon of defence. He was ever at war with the small dealers, whom he accused of adulteration and dishonesty. The marchands de vins, the tobacco dealers of his quarter, had all in turn to listen to his scathing remarks on the vileness of their deceptions. He used to imitate with his fingers, for their confusion, the gesture of a man who sprinkles water. The broken horseshoe, wielded by an orator of his Herculean strength, served to underline his arguments, and secured him liberty of speech. OUR LAST TRYST 95 A time came when I lost sight of him for some months. There had been a slight difference between us, caused by la revendication individuelle. I had seen in the papers that he had been in trouble because of his friendship for some militant Anarchists, and then silence had settled round his name. One day I received from him a letter saying that he was ill, and becfpfingf me to forsfet the triflino- cause of our dissension. I at once wrote back and told him that as soon as I returned to Paris I would welcome him at my house. Some time afterwards I received from the Sister Superior at a convent in a remote part of Paris a letter saying that Fenine had been very pleased with my letter, but that he was too ill and " tired " to come and see me. He prayed I might visit him at the convent where he was being cared for by the holy women. I was not able to go that same day ; but on the morrow I took a cab and drove to the establishment. The horse was a bad one, and we made slow progress. The place, somewhere behind the Gare de Lyon, was a long way off my home, and we took just one hour reaching it. If that wretched horse had been able to cover the distance in only five minutes less time, I should have been spared a lasting and unsolaceable grief. I had to wait for a few moments after I had rung at the gates of the convent. When the door was opened and I had told the blue-hooded nun whom I had come to see, she answered : " Fenine is dead. He died just as you rang the door-bell. I have come from his bed." She took me to his side. I saw that the fingers of the poor gaunt hands that were crossed upon the white coverlid of the bed were stained with ink. I suppose that until almost the very end he had been working at the book which was to sound the tocsin of 96 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS woman's freedom. Well, there were kind women by him when he died. I j-iresume that Dumas fils moved in spheres too exalted, that his mansion was too well guarded ; for, otherwise, surely he would not have needed to regret that time and opportunity had failed him to study the modern Cour des Miracles of Paris. It forces itself upon you at every step ; the difficulty is to know how to avoid its emissaries. And great as may be one's kindness for humanity, it is sadly disappointing work to try to help most of the people whose miseries are thus obtruded upon him. They belong in the main to that class of which the Parisians humorously say that their position may be summed up in the words : " Pas d'argent, pas de position, mauvaise reputation et pas envie de bien faire." It is just that />as envie de bien faire that renders the task so hopeless. It is very rare indeed that one has the satisfaction of seeing one's efforts resulting in anything but most transitory benefit to those one wishes to help. I do not mean to say that there is no good in creating pleasing incidents in the lives of the destitute and forlorn. I hold, on the contrary, that the creator of any incidents is a benefactor — to the extent indeed that in the monotony of a country life I have sometimes felt actually grateful to the little wanton boy who has rung at my door and scurried off. He created an incident and broke with temporary excitement the terrible dulness of the moment. But one hopes to do more than to give momentary pleasure. One can feed the man buried in the mine through a tube, and no doubt it benefits him, but one would like to help him out and set him on his legs again. One very rarely succeeds, and the remembrance of such occasions is a pleasant one. Once when I was living in a very poor way myself AN ENGLISHMAN IN PARIS 97 in a hotel in the Rue Lepelletier, I heard that there was an EngHshman occupying a room on the next floor. I was told that he was engaged in literary work, and I actually found myself envying him his employment. One day, however, the waiter asked me if I would not go and see my countryman, whom he described as being in a dreadful position. I clambered up a kind of ladder into a loft, and there was shown the door of the garret where the co7npatriote resided. It was a dark winter's evening, and when I had opened the door I found myself in black obscurity. " Is there anybody here ?" I asked. A quavering voice answered me. I struck a match, and saw the most forlorn object. It was a man sitting on a broken-down bedstead, dressed in a ragged coat which was fastened round his body with a piece of cord. He told me that he had been without food for three days, that he was ashamed to go out into the streets dressed as he was. I was that night rrtyself impransus; but there was an English insurance clerk in the same hotel, and he readily came to the rescue. We pawned his dress-clothes for three francs, and provided for the immediate want of our countryman. He was in a dreadful condition. His rent was months overdue, he had no work, he was without clothes, and he was affected with a loathsome and disfiguring skin disease. But he certainly had the envie de bien faire. He had come to France some years before the fall of the Empire, and had been engaged as a tutor in the house of one of the Court officials. He had seen the splendours of imperial days, and had been forced to contribute his scot towards the royal extrava- gance of his master, " who dined every week at the Tuileries." After the war there v/as no more Tuileries ; there were no more rich charges at Court. The English 7 98 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS tutor was turm^d out by liis ruined masters without a halfpenny o( long arrears of salary. When I came to hear of him he was entirely without employment ; for some months previously he had subsisted by sending short news-paragraphs to the Figaro. Indeed, in former days his work had attracted the attention of the great de X'illemessant himself; the editor had asked who it was who wrote such clever things in so apt a style about the doings in the streets of Paris, and, astonished to hear that they were the work of an Englishman, invited him to his table. " But I had no clothes," said my new friend, " and I was ashamed to go. So I missed making my fortune." After that the Figaro had been less hospitable. On many pay-days he had not had one halfpenny to receive for lineage ; and hunger had often driven him out of nights down to the Central Markets, to prowl round there, even as Claude in the Ventre de Paris, in the vain hope of earning a few pence by helping the peasants to unload their carts. When I got to know him better I found the man the very model of British honesty. He was most character- istically English. His loyalty to our Royal Family was such that, whenever the Prince came to Paris, he used to go down to the Place Vendome and loiter about, to the alarm of the detectives, for the purpose of raising his hat to the heir-apparent of the British throne. His twenty years of Paris had not altered in a particle his sturdy British contempt for the French ; even his Yorkshire accent had triumphed over the acquired tongue. He considered it his duty to his country to be as careful as possible about his personal appearance, and even when in rags used to carry a pair of gloves, of unrecognisable colour and riddled with holes. It was a difficult task to A HARBOURED RESENTMENT 99 drag this man out of the slough into which circumstances and a lack of all the aggressive qualities had plunged him, and it was years before I was able to help him finally to his feet. The skin disease from which he suffered frightened people of him ; I had to insist at length on his amiable qualities before I could overcome this objection. I may conscientiously say that I worked hard and constantly for him. I was so interested in him that when one day he told me that the great sorrow of his life was that he had not seen his old father for twenty years, and that he feared lest he might die before he had the opportunity of visiting him, or rather before he had the means to pay his fare to the Yorkshire village where his people lived, I immediately bade him arrange to leave Paris the next day, and straightway took him over to England and landed him safely outside the Black Swan in York. His father died a fortnight after I had brought him back to Paris. Eventually he got together a good connection as tutor and as translator for patent agents, and came to do very well indeed. At the same time his manner became more and more distant towards me. He gave me to understand that he had much resented, at the time, my entering his room in the loft of the hotel in the Rue Lepelletier without knocking, and that really he had never forgiven such a breach of the common courtesies of life. His individualism was so pronounced that he often declared that the forlorn who contrive to induce more prosperous people to assist them have no need to feel gratitude. It is their superiority which helps them to best their benefactors. I learned, by the way, that some time before I paid for his journey to York and back he had inherited from an Oxford friend of mine, to whom I had introduced him, and who shot lOO TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS- himseir. a sum oi" fifty pounds. He had never told me a word of this ; it was by pure accident that I heard it. I ran eagerly to communicate the good news to him, and, " Oh, yes, I had it ! " he told me. Emissaries from the Cour des Miracles were con- stantly calling at my house, until I removed my name from the annuary, Lc Tout-Paris. I thus became acquainted with an extraordinary category of mendicants. In ingenuity and plausibility I am sure that no city can show Impostors more efficient. The cleverness with which these people had constructed, on the narrow basis of the bald biographical facts which appeared next to my name in the annuary, a story which was likely to appeal to my compassion always filled me with admiring wonder. Unfortunately, I was very busy, and had not the time to listen to their tales. Men it was easy enough to get rid of; but no doubt, because of this fact, the impostors tackled the ladies, and sent their womenfolk to visit the men. I shall always remember an old lady who called on me one mail-day, just as I was sitting down to write, against time, an article for my American paper. She was very neatly dressed, and her manner was civil and insinuating. But almost her first words aroused my ire. She represented herself to be the daughter of a former correspondent of the Times who had never existed. I did very much object to listening to lies, when these had been fashioned with no artistry of verisimilitude. Besides, that day I was very busy. I requested the old lady to leave ; I told her that I was tres occupy. She must remember how feu monsieur son pere objected to being interrupted when in the throes of composition for the Times. She then prayed to be allowed to sit down. She felt faint, she said. I could not refuse this request, and turned once more to my writing-table. I had only THE LADY WHO CALLED loi just the time in which to finish my task. My employer was not a man to allow himself to be disappointed by any of his correspondents. It was the hardest work to write with the old lady sitting there, for every now and then she gave a groan to remind me of her suffering presence. But I took no heed. She was too obvious an impostor. At last, as I was in the midst of an effective sentence, she rose to her feet, threw out her arms, and let herself slip backwards on to the floor. I knew that it was all a sham ; but I was naturally forced to go to her assistance. I tried to raise her ; she made herself heavy and kept slipping back into a recumbent position. I could see her eyes twinkling maliciously behind the half-closed lids. " C'est la faim," she muttered. In the end I put my hand into my pocket and produced a coin. At the sight of it she sprang to her feet, snatched the money out of my hand, and made for the door. Here she paused and cried out some words of triumph and derision. No, there is never any need in Paris to go in search of the Cour des Miracles. CHAPTER VII Baron Haussmann — His Home, Rue Boissy d'Anglas — A Pen-Portrait — The Writing of his Memoirs — His Acknowledgment of Napoleon's Share in his Work — His Opposition to the Franco-Prussian War — Bismarck's Rude Reception at Biarritz — The Real Cause of the War — Haussmann's\ Political Opinions — The Story of his Career — His Last Words — Paul Deroul^de and 'La Revanche' — Old Paris. THE actual site of the mediaeval Cour des Miracles was, as we know, in the neighbourhood of Notre Dame des Victoires, in one of the picturesque quarters of old Paris, which, under the Second Empire, were so ruthlessly swept away by Baron Haussmann. I must say that for some years after my arrival in Paris I bore at heart a grudge against this man. The Paris that I loved was the Paris that had not been " Haussmanised." I used to hunt out in midnight rambles such narrow streets, such gabled roofs, such memories of a more romantic age as the city could still afford. I still feel at times a revolt, and this in common with most Parisians, at the mournful monotony of the architecture which he imposed. The Boulevard Haussmann, for instance, at all times depresses him who passes along it. It is the very thoroughfare of stolid ennui. But for the man himself, after I had come to know him, I felt nothing but respect, and I think that that opinion is now the general one in Paris. His name has been disassociated from what was unworthy in the administration to which he belonged. It is known that 102 BARON HAUSSMANN 103 he had no personal ambitions ; that he never sought to enrich himself. He took no part in any Curde, though the opportunity was offered to him of amassing, by speculations in house property, a most colossal fortune. It is a well-known fact that he laughingly declined the tide of duke which Napoleon tried to force upon him. The Emperor desired to create him Due de Paris, but Haussmann reminded him that there was a Count of Paris who had better claims to the appanage than he. When I first arrived in Paris, in 1883, Haussmann was one of those celebrities who had disappeared in the way I have referred to in a previous chapter. Most people fancied that he was dead : he went nowhere ; his name never appeared in the gazettes. He was living in retirement in the heart of Paris, a disappointed, lonely, and unhappy old man. He was an irreconcilable opponent of the Republican form of government, and seemed to regret that he had outlived the disaster of Sedan and the 4th of September. It was only when the announcement appeared that his Memoirs were to be published — this was one year before his death — that people realized that the architect of modern Paris was still living in their midst. It was about this time that I first came to know him personally. The date of my first long conversation with him is one of those dates which one does not readily forget. It was February 21, 1890. I had a warmly worded letter of introduction to the Baron, and but for it I do not think that I should have gained access to the old man, who then was a confirmed invalid. His door was closed to all except members of his family and his oldest friends. But my letter won me access to him. I never regretted the trouble that I had taken to obtain it. 104 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS I can sec as clearly as though my visit dated but from yesterday the various details of the home of the man who had transformed the habitations of Paris. The Baron Haussmann Hved in an apartment on one of the upper stories of a house in the Rue Boissy d'Anglas. It was not a Haussmann house. His ante-chamber, the hall of Parisian apartments, was hung with ugly brown curtains. There was neither style nor taste in any of the rooms which I entered. The place looked as though it had been furnished, certainly regardless of expense, from a bric-a-brac shop. In the drawing-room, where 1 waited some time before I was received, the furniture was rococo, but there was a magnificent suite of Louis XY. chairs amidst this harlequinade. A large and beautiful water-colour drawing of Empress Eugenie hung over one of the gilt consoles. The Baron's study, however, where I presented myself, had a strong individual character. All the man, one might say, was in this room. The politician was shown by the numerous photographs of members of the Bonaparte family, signed by the givers, which hung in luxurious frames upon the walls. A large portrait of Napoleon III. met one's eyes as one entered. The furniture was in the style administratif \ the chairs were stiff-backed and covered with green baize. There was a large square writing-table heaped up with papers, orderly disposed. I am not sure that a stand filled with green cardboard boxes was not to be seen in one corner of the room. The Baron's study was the office of a Cabinet Minister not too certain of his majority. The vague perfume of the Third Empire invaded the nostrils. The Baron received me sitting in a low armchair, that fmiteiiil Voltaire to which all invalids in France Photo by Pierre Petit, Fa BARON HAUSSMANN. A PORTRAIT OF HAUSSMANN 105 used to come in their old days. He was close to the fire, and his back was turned to the light. Seen thus, he might easily have been taken for a man of not more than fifty years of age. His face, which was clean- shaven, reminded me now of Goethe, now of Words- worth ; at times of Christian, the Vaudeville actor. The touch of cabotinage which tinged the Third Empire throughout was not to be wanting here. Though he coughed sadly all the time that I was with him, he seemed, in his eighty-first year, to be wonderfully well preserved. He used no spectacles, his voice was rich and full, and he appeared at least to have all his teeth. In some way that I cannot define he constantly reminded me of his imperial master and friend, as though their long association had left on the servant some of the personality of his superior. His manner was most courteous and urbane. He apologized for not rising to welcome me, " I have been very ill," he said, " and cannot move about much." He added that the publishing of his Memoirs was giving him great trouble and no little anxiety. ** I cannot tell you," he said, " the labour that this book has entailed upon me. When I first wrote it, it was simply with the intention of leaving to my children a story of my private and my public life, with the explana- tion of the hundred and one things that in the one or the other capacity of my existence may have puzzled them. As a public man, I have had to do many things which have been turned into reproaches against me» and which I never before had been able to explain. It was my intention in writing my Memoirs to furnish my children and family with this explanation. However, friends who had seen the manuscript found it so interesting a contribution to history that they begged io6 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS me to publish it for the general public, and after some hesitation I consented to do so. " Hut I never expected that getting a book printed meant such a lot of fuss and trouble. My publisher, Havard, saw the manuscript, said it was very good, and began printing at once. Then, when the first-proof was ready, he came to me and said that there were too many notes at the bottom of the pages, and that I must change this, because the public did not like to be con- stantly referred to the bottom of the pages. After that, he found that my chapters were much too long, and I had to arrange all the subdivisions of the book over again. ' Mon Dieu, monsieur, quel metier ! ' It serves me right. I used to say that all literary folk were idlers. I know the truth now. " Another reason why I want to publish this book is to give the Emperor full credit for his share in the improvements in Paris with which my name is associated. He deserves far more credit for this than has ever been given to him. If you do me the honour of reading my first volume, you will find that I give a list of the names of the many colleagues who were associated with me in the gigantic work of transforming the shabby Paris which the Emperor found when he came to his throne into the beautiful city that she now is. At the head of the list I place the Emperor himself Nobody so well as myself knows the important 7'ole he played in the municipal improvements. It was he, I may tell you, who first designed with his own hands the plan of the wonderful iron Central Markets, which were afterwards constructed by Baltard. I may say that there is hardly a single improvement that was carried out in Paris under the Empire which was not first suggested by Napoleon III. And you must remember, what people THE "NAPOLEONISATION" OF PARIS 107 often forget, that the Haussmannisation — it would be fairer to call it the Napoleonisation — of Paris consisted of far more than what is nowadays understood by that term. We did not only destroy and reconstitute whole quarters of Paris ; we improved the water supply enor- mously, we built canals, we laid numerous squares and gardens. ' Mon Dieu, monsieur,' said the old architect, leaning back in his y^^//^/«7 Voltaire and closing his eyes, ' quel coup de pioche ! ' " In the course of our conversation I asked Baron Haussmann whether he had taken any great part in the politics of the Empire. He said, " I can hardly speak of a political career. I could speak with better aptness of my reminiscences of political affairs with which I was brought into contact. I have never assumed the role of an active politician, though I won't deny that I have very strong political opinions. It was my duty as Prefect of the Seine to be present at every one of the Cabinet Councils which were held under the Empire, and the whole political history of that period is clear in my mind. I may devote a fourth volume of my Memoirs to this part of my experiences, and I think that I should be able to give the public some very interesting information. I am well aware that I could have been infinitely more interesting if I had prepared myself all along for writing a book. But had I time to think of Memoirs in my active days ? "It has only been in the last few years that I have made up my mind to record my life and my work. I have kept no notes and not one of the thousands of interesting documents that came into my hands. Only think, if I had collected all the papers that came my way, notes from the Emperor, notes from the Empress, from Bismarck, from the King of Prussia, letters from everybody of note loS TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS and oi^ importance of the century, — I should have had the material for a score of volumes ! But I never attached any importance to these documents. I was far too busy to collect them and too careless to preserve them." We talked of Madame Marianne, the Republic, and it was interesting to me to hear the way in which he spoke of /a gueiise, as poor Paul de Cassagnac always called her. " I am, and always have been, of the firm opinion," Baron Haussmann told me, "that there is no other form of Government possible in France except Empire. I am an Imperialist by birth and by conviction, and I consider that the only possible form of democratic government under which France can prosper is Empire. France, of all peoples in the world, is one nation ; her government should be one also. The executive should be stable, by means of heredity, with the sovereignty of the people firmly assured and protected. The title worn by the chief of the State in France should be such as to put his dignity on a par with that of the loftiest monarchs of the world. " Those are my opinions, and, having given them, I need hardly say what I think of General Boulanger or of the Republic as a form of government. I will say, however, that such a Republic as was proposed by Boulanger could never have taken deep root in France, and that for the reason that a Republican form of Government, no matter what form it may assume, must and always will be antipathetic to the hearts of French- men. France may put up with a Republic for some years, for many years ; but just as surely as water finds its way eventually back to the sea, so also will France find her way back to monarchical government, repre- HAUSSMANN'S POLITICAL DREAM 109 senting in the authority of one man the sovereignty of the people. " I cannot say that I agreed with the policy followed by the Emperor. I was the strongest opponent of the war with Prussia that lived in France. It was all along my dream and my hope that France should ally herself with Prussia, so that by the consent and with the help of that State she might obtain the Rhenish provinces. My reason for desiring that France should obtain and hold the Rhenish provinces was, first, because the Rhine appears to be destined by Nature to form the frontier between France and Germany ; and, secondly, because it is from the Rhenish provinces that the French people originate ; for, as you know, the French are Franks, and the Franks came from the banks of the Rhine. Personally, as a descendant of the Lords of Andernach, near Cologne, seven generations back, I had special reasons for wishing that my policy might be put into execution. " Over and over again was my dream near to its realization. It was as good as offered us by the Prusstans on several occasions. When Bismarck came to sp£nd a few days with the Emperor and the Imperial Family at Biarritz in 1864, he told me that he was authorized to propose to Napoleon III. that Prussia, in return for France's using her influence against Austria, and thus assisting Prussia in the realization of her dream of founding the German Empire with Prussia at its head, would arrange for the retrocession to France of all the territory on the left banks of the Rhine. But there was influence in favour of Austria at work at Court, an influence so strong that Bismarck, although he was a guest, was received, as the saying is, ' like a dog in a game of skittles.' I was quite ashamed of the treat- no TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS ment which was accorded to him during his stay, and I feel sure that much of his bitterness against France was caused by his remembrance of that visit to Biarritz. That was before Sadowa. " Of course, after the Austro-Prussian war, Prussia had no longer any need of our assistance against Austria, and the Emperor, in his anxiety to "court the cabbage and the goat alike," or, as you say in England, " to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds," had missed a splendid opportunity. Still, even then my project might have been carried into effect, because the German Empire was still not founded, and Prussia would still have been glad of an alliance with France, even after Sadowa, to enable her to carry out plans which even to-day she has not realized. " It was at that time that I was frequently sounded both by the King of Prussia, Herr von Bismarck, and others, as to the chances of moving the Emperor to conclude such an alliance. I told them that it was useless to hope to move Napoleon. At that time I knew that nothing could be done in that direction. By that time I had recognized the omnipotence of the influence that drove the Emperor to sympathize with Austria, and I saw that no consideration would have any counter-effect. This influence was that of the Empress Eugenie, and it was she alone who all along turned the Emperor against Prussia and made him espouse the cause of Austria. She did this, firstly, because she is a Roman Catholic, and because her sympathies were accordingly rather with Catholic Austria than with Lutheran Prussia ; and secondly, and chiefly, because she was under the influence of her very deep affection for Madame de Metternich, the wife of the Austrian Ambassador to France. THE REAL CAUSE OF THE WAR in "It was thanks to this love of Austria that she urged on the Emperor to take the first opportunity of breaking the power of Prussia, and hence the war of 1870. That war, consequently, was caused directly by little Madame de Metternich, through the Empress Eugenie and her paramount influence on Napoleon HI, I, as I have said, opposed it all along ; but my position in the Cabinet Council was rather one of mere supernumerary or figurant than of councillor, and I had no opinion to give. My opinions have not changed since those days, and I still believe that the wisest policy that France could follow would be to join a triple alliance with Ger- many and Russia. Germany needs ports on the south. The alliance would ensure her the possession of Trieste. Thus France would have issue on the Mediterranean, Germany on the Adriatic, and Russia on the Caspian Seas, and the triple alliance would command the south as well as the north, and be absolute masters of the world. I do not say that this policy is advisable, or even possible, to-day ; for since the last war the idea of an alliance with Prussia must be distasteful to most Frenchmen. But I still think that the future power of France and the peace of Europe lie in that direction." On another occasion Baron Haussmann, in telling me of his childhood and youth, said : " I was born in Paris in 1809. My people destined me for the Civil Service ; but no child under the First Empire could dream of becoming anything else but a soldier, and it was from my very childhood my desire to follow the profession of my father, who was an officer. It was about that time that the disasters of France began, the battle of Leipsic and the invasion of France, which was the consequence of Leipsic. I was at Chaville all that time, and, child as I was, I suffered as much as any 112 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS Frencliman at the disasters of my country. I can remember the fcelini^ of bitter shame that came over me when one day, after a skirmish near Versailles, I saw my grandmother and her women forced to bind up the wounds of some Bavarian soldiers. When people talk to me of la rez'anc/ie, I say that I must see a double revanche to be satisfied: that of 1815 as well as that of 1870. " At eleven years of age I had become quite a sturdy youngster, and could be moved to Paris, where I entered the Lycee Henri-Ouatre, or, as it is now called, the Lycee Condorcet. From the Lycee Henri-Ouatre I went, at the age of sixteen, to the College Bourbon. One of my chums was the Duke of Orleans. Another chum was Alfred de Musset, whom we used to call Mademoiselle de Musset, because he was so slender, delicate, and fair. None of us ever had any idea that he would develop into the charming poet that he after- wards became. " As soon as I had passed my baccalau7'dat I entered as student at the Law School, and was able to pass my examination as Doctor of Law in 1831. It was during the Revolution of July that I won my first decoration. I cannot say that I deserved it, for it was only by chance that I happened to be present at the 7nelde in which I received the wound for which it was given to me. My father was at that time one of the directors and editors of Le Temps, which contributed not a little to the overthrow of the Legitimist cause. My father was one of the men who signed the famous protestation of the journalists. I was with him during the whole of the troubled days of July, when our presses were seized and we had to print the paper in the cellar with presses that had been hidden there for the emergency. HAUSSMANN'S LAST WORDS 113 Monsieur Thiers did not at that time behave with any- particular courage ; he deserted his friends of La Nationale to seek safety in the country. On May 22, 183 1, I was attached as General Secretary to the Pre- fecture of the Department of Vienne. Twenty-two years later I came to Paris to occupy the post of Prefect of the Seine which I continued to hold until the fall of the Empire." On this occasion, the last on which I saw him, Baron Haussmann had promised to give me a 7'humd of his poli- tical experiences, together with some personal souvenirs of the Emperor, whom he more than once described to me as un grand mdconnu. But from the first moment I saw that he was not in a fit state to talk. He coughed several times badly whilst he was telling me about his boyhood, and indeed I was rising to go when a most violent fit of coughing seized him. For an instant I was in terror that he might expire before my eyes, but the servant for whom he had rung before the paroxysm came on, hurried in, administered remedies, and brought him round. He recovered, but he was then so exhausted that I prayed him to defer till another day the interesting story that he had promised me. I remember the last words he said to me as though they had just been spoken. " Another day, 77ion ami ? Shall we ever meet again ? I may be carried off at any moment by one of those crises which you have just witnessed. May it be so. I look forward with confidence to death, and my only hope is that death may find me standing [debout) as it found all the strong men of my generation. I shall leave this life," said Baron Haussmann, " if not with an erect head as formerly, at least with a firm heart ; and as to the things of the world beyond the grave, full of hope in the merciful justice of the Most High God." 8 114 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS The eyes of Baron Haiissmann were dim as I left him. I am not ashamed to say that mine were also. Very shortly after this visit had taken place his door was shut to everybody. I never saw him again in life. I do not think that his Memoirs attracted much attention ; it is quite certain that nobody reads them now ; the Empire and all that it broui^ht forth seem so far away. People have forgotten. Even the war is not remembered. Talk about la revanche, which was quite common even at the time when I first met Baron Haussmann, is now restricted to a few of the more ardent members of the Ligiie des Patriotcs. Perhaps now that Paul Deroulede is returning to France we may hear more about it. It is what the French call Deroulede's craquette. For the rest, I think that every- body who loves the picturesqueness of politics will be pleased that Deroulede's term of exile has been reduced. He introduces a dramatic element into all popular gatherings for which one cannot be sufficiently grateful. His is a striking figure. If he has of Don Quixote the appearance, he also shows his chivalry. I have always had a very considerable respect for Paul Deroulede. Like Henri Rochefort, he is the least self-seeking and most honest of politicians. He suffers under this terrible disadvantage in political life : he has a heart — under his rugged exterior he has a heart. He is a poet. His Chants cite Soldat have a peculiar charm, and are full of power. He has sacrificed more than one fortune to the cause which he believes to be just. There have been times when he has been on the verge of destitution for this reason. But his pen would always suffice to earn for him an honourable living. He comes of literary stock. He is a nephew of Emile Augier, and a cousin to the Bellocs, Hilaire and THE QUIXOTISM OF DEROULEDE 115 Marie (Belloc-Lowndes), who have won in their youth as distinguished a place in English letters as their mother has enjoyed for years past. The only true reproach that can be made against Deroulede is that he is not practical. But then who expects a poet to be practical ? He is not destined to succeed as politician, for he is too honest and too single-hearted ; and besides, the Masonic loges which now rule France will have none of a man who has sympathy with the Church. But he will continue to charm us with his wild and impossible schemes for winning back to France the military greatness which is given once and once only to nations. It was very interesting to hear Baron Haussmann talk of the vieux PaiHs, which he demolished, and which many still regret. I have often deplored that I kept no record of the things he told me. He seemed to share my admiration for picturesque and mediaeval streets, but he was convinced that air and hygiene were of more importance than a beauty which only appeals to the few. I remember his particular satisfaction at having demolished the fetid quarter through which the Avenue de rOpera now runs, and especially his pride in having transformed the quarter of the Place du Chatelet. " Cetait une cloaque," he said. It was through this •' cloaque " that ran that street, the Rue de la Vieille- Lanterne, where hard by the tavern of " Veau qui Tette," Gerard de Nerval, poet and lover of the Queen of Sheba, was found hanging. One had always understood that the poet committed suicide, weary of life and of debauch ; but Haussmann maintained that he had been assured by the police that Gerard, de Nerval was murdered. There were two theories to account for the motive which prompted this crime : one was that Gerard de Nerval had been ii6 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS gambling succcsstully in the tavern, and that he was Hrst robbed and then killed; the other, favoured by the police at the time, was that he had been taken for a police spy by the ruffians who frequented the " Veau qui Tette " and the other kens of Old Lanthorne Street. To police spies even to-day in Paris mercy is never shown. The poet had the habit of taking notes when anything occurred to him, an idea, a turn of phrase, and this would seem suspicious conduct to the illiterate brutes who sat about him. He was taken for a mouchard or a 7?W2don, and was disposed of by the law of lynch. He was not dead when he was found danolinfj from the railing- where he was hanged ; but those who found him feared to touch him before the police had been fetched, and in the meanwhile the gentle poet, ceasing to struggle, had breathed his last. It was then remembered that he had once asked himself, " Dost thou absolutely wish to die a horizontal death ? " It appears that the exact spot where his body hung was where is now the opening of the prompter's box on the stage of Madame Sarah Bernhardt's theatre. " He possibly anticipated Sarah's five thousandth performance of La Dame aiix Camdias when he selected that spot to hang himself," said a cynic to whom I once mentioned the fact. In the days before I knew Baron Haussmann and had grown to like and respect him, it was my habit, as I wandered about Paris and found some architectural relic of the past, a tortuous street, a mediaeval house, a gabled roof, even a name painted at a street corner which dated from a less materialistic age, it was my habit, I say, to rub my hands and, addressing an imaginary Haussmann, whom I represented to myself as a paunchy man with whiskers, to exclaim, " Encore un morceau que tu n'auras pas." In much the same way OLD PARIS 117 as to this very hour on the Breton coast the fisherfolk after a hearty meal, remembering what they have heard their fathers tell of British raids upon their coasts, will push away their plates and with a sigh of satisfaction cry out, " Encore un que ces cochons d' Anglais n'auront pas." There are still many places in Paris where one can plunge into the middle of the ages. To the right and the left of the Boulevard St. Michel there are still many quaint streets. But it was in one of these streets that only the other day I had a sad disappointment. This is the street known as Git-le-Coeur. Written so, the name implies some story of a bleeding heart, some far-off romance. I often used to wonder what that story might be. Well, only a day or two ago, returning there again, I happened to look up more attentively than had been my custom at the corner where the name is enamelled in white letters on a blue ground, " Rue Git-le-Coeur." Well, below the enamelled iron plate, I then for the first time descried hewn in the stone, and painted over with yellow paint which had masked the lettering, the old name of the street. This was Rue Gilles Coeur. It was only Giles Coeur Street after all, and all the romance was fled. I presume that when the street plates were affixed throughout Paris, some member of the Commission which had to do with this quarter of Paris thought that Git-le-Coeur would sound and look prettier than Gilles Coeur, and so effaced the memorial to a man who may have been a worthy burgher under Henri Ouatre. Such disappointments are not unfrequent to those who go a-hunting for romance. I consoled myself by walking on to the Rue Guenegaud at the corner of the Quai de Conti and looking at the wine-shop which stands there, and which, like all mediaeval wine-shops, is as in a cage iis T\vi:\rv vi'ARs i\ paris of iron bars. In the former times all taverns had thus, by police decree, to be provided with iron bars both as to the doors and to the windows. This was not to protect the tavern keeper from the street, but to protect the street from the people in the tavern. These might cut their throats within the bars as much as they pleased, and throw their pots and brandish chairs. The burghers passing in the street were secure because the iron bars (which had to be painted red for danger signal) kept close and tight the wild beasts — the Francis Archers and other drunken serving-men with knives for killing INIarlowes in tavern brawls. Indeed, at every step almost along the stretch of quays from the Place St. Michel to the Pont Royal there is something to recall the past with interest. On the very last occasion when I was with Alphonse Daudet, and I had told him that I was staying at the Hotel V^oltaire on the Quai Voltaire, he said to me: "You have chosen the best place in Paris where to live. You are surrounded with noble memories. When I was a young man I spent some of the most inspiring days of my life in that quarter." He added, when I had told him that I was moving to the Rue Condorcet : " Oh, why leave the land of poetry and romance to plunge yourself into the midst of la potirriture niont7itartraise (the putridity of Montmartre) ? " It was at this Hotel Voltaire that I first saw Oscar Wilde as a young man in the full bloom of his genius. Here it was that one night I once aroused Henry Harland from his sleep to ask him to serve me as a second in a duel which had been forced upon me. Here I once dined with Rollinat, the poet and musician, for whom so dreadful a fate was reserved. Further on is the house where is the bookshop, now HOW "LE REVE" WAS WRITTEN 119 owned by Monsieur Honore Champion, which used to be kept by the father of Anatole Thibaud (better known as Anatole France), where in 1844 the future master of French prose was born, and where with the very air which he breathed the child sucked in his love of letters. Champion, by the way, was a friend of Zola's. They were booksellers' clerks together, and it is Honore Champion's boast and pride that it was he who prompted Zola to write Le Reve. " We had been buying an antique manuscript together," he tells one, " at the Hotel Drouot, and, as we were walking away, I re- proached him that his Rougon-Macquart family was but a collection of the very worst people that one could conceive. I said, * Emile, you will give the world a very poor opinion of us if you impose your Rougon- Macquarts as typical of a modern French family. We none of us can date our pedigrees further back than the Revolution. Are the Rougon-Macquarts to be con- sidered representative of the new France which blossomed on the ruins of the old ? ' I said that it was not natural that every member of a family should be so entirely degenerate, and I reminded him that even on the most decayed of forest trees one finds fresh and healthy shoots. I think that he took my words to heart, and that Le Reve was the consequence of the lecture which I gave him." Still further on is the house where once stood the Cafe d'Orsay, which used at one time to be the house of call of young men of letters who took their profession au s^rieux. Overhead lived the daughter of Monsieur Buloz, the separated wife of Maxime Pailleron, author of Le Monde ou Von s Ennuie, and in an adjoining apartment, separated from his wife's home only by a door which was ever kept locked, lived Maxime Pailleron himself. I20 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS One was thus, when in tlie Cafe d'Orsay, below stairs of the highest life in the world of letters, and each glance at the decorated ceiling of the caf(^ was the ad asfra glance of healthful ambition. Here I used to meet Bourget, who had not then "arrived." John Sergeant, the painter, sometimes came there, and others whom one has not heard of since. From the terrace of this caf(f one could see the Rue de Bac, down which the stream used to flow, on whose banks Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sevign^, lived in lettered ease. Tradition of the noblest kind peered at one round every corner. Not very far away was the French Academy. Daudet was living a stone's throw from the place, and hard by was one of the houses where Gerard de Nerval lived his most productive years. It is only quite recently that modern Haussmanns, Haussmanns only in their ruthless iconoclasm, have begun to devastate this quarter also. CHAPTER VIII Ferdinand de Lesseps — On the Science of Antechambering — A Meeting of the Council— His Entire Confidence — Countess Kessler's Dinner Party — An Introduction to Magnard — De Lesseps to the Rescue — • De Lesseps and the Poor Woman — The Report of his Death — A Stock-jobbing Manoeuvre — A Drive to the Institute. I AM not at all certain that those who live their lives in cities have not often reason to feel thankful to the men who demolish and rebuild. They remove what are the landmarks in one's life ; they do away with places which are associated in one's mind with men and women and things that have been in the past ; they blunt the edge of memory. Now it is, I am afraid, the experience of most who have passed many years in one town that to remember is to mourn. There is, for an instance, a certain spot in the Avenue des Champs Elysees which formerly used to bring back to my mind the remembrance that it was there that for the first time I saw Ferdinand de Lesseps. The fine old man came dashing past on horseback, followed in gay cavalcade by his beautiful children on their ponies. That was twenty years ago, and for a long period the remembrance was indeed a pleasant one ; such a splendid cavalier he looked, and his children so bonny, so full of joy and life. Then came the days when the picture so evoked, so bright and gladsome, immediately transformed itself into the mournful vision 122 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS of the old m;in as I saw him last, surrounded by his children, whom grief had touched. But now, since the great alterations that were carried out in this part of the avenue in 1900, I can pass that way with no fear lest recollection should come to trouble me. It is alto- gether a different place ; the scene around me does not jog my memory at all. It was three years after I first saw him riding so Sfallantlv at the head of his children — his smala he used to call them, in remembrance of his Egyptian days — that I came to know him ; and so it was given to me to enjoy for three years the friendship and kindness of a good and noble man. My admiration for him was unbounded. It is a trait of English character to offer a homage almost akin to worship to men in whom great energy has survived their tale of years ; and here was a man of eighty-three, who, blithe and light-hearted, had engaged in one of the most colossal fights for which enterprise has ever thrown down its gauntlet. He was so young, he was so merry, so debonair, so full of life and strength, that he appeared to me to be one of the most wonderful old men that the world had ever produced. Not long after the day on which I first shook hands with him he did me an act of kindness which bound me to him with chains of steel. I have often taken a secret and malicious joy, whenever the name of Ferdinand de Lesseps has been mentioned in my presence, and people have made haste to say evil things about him, to state that I owed him a great debt, that he had placed me under an obligation which I had never been able to repay. I then have watched in the eyes of those to whom I have said this the glint of query, and I have always been able to read the question, " How much was it ?" I give them no information ; but I hug myself to think MONSIEUR LE PRESIDENT 123 of what It really was, that I was one of de Lesseps' most ardent supporters, the champion of his name and honour, at a time when to go with the world one had to cast stones upon his ruined greatness, and that amongst my treasured autographs is a letter from his wife in which she told me that I had shown myself " le courtisan de la derniere heure." The proprietor of the New York paper for which in 1887 I was acting as Paris correspondent was a personal friend of Monsieur de Lesseps, and for this reason rather than because the American public had any financial interests in the Panama Canal Company, he had directed me to call on Lesseps and keep the paper informed of the progress of his enterprise. It was for the same reason, no doubt, also, that to a letter which I wrote in December of that year, asking to be allowed to call on him, a most courteous invitation to attend at the offices of the vSuez Canal Company was sent in reply by Monsieur le President. For at the offices of the Suez Canal it was as Monsieur le President and as Monsieur le President alone that one had to ask for the man who afterwards came to be spoken of as le nom^nS Lesseps. I can remember the indignation with which one of the liveried huissiers at the palace in the Rue de Charras corrected me when I asked him if he would take my card in to Monsieur de Lesseps. " Monsieur le President," he cried, shaking his head in indignation at my disrespectfulness till the silver-gilt chain round his neck rattled again. Then he glanced contemptuously at my card, and, having looked me up and down to enforce the lesson which he had just given me, waved his hand round the huge hall and asked, " What likelihood is there that Monsieur le President will be able to receive you ? " There were 124 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS over a hundred people waiting an audience, most of them people of very much greater importance than a mere reporter. I recognised several deputies, a senator or two, and some of the best-known engineers and financiers in Paris. " For the rest," he said, " Monsieur le President is not at home." Then he turned his back on me and walked away. There was a deputy there whom I knew, and I learned from him that it was true that Lesseps had not yet arrived, "which," said the legislator, " is preventing me from taking my apdritif and will spoil my d(^jeunerj' One has not the time in the rush of modern life to play the Dr. Johnson in any great man's antechamber, and I have ever found it a good thing on occasions like this so to place myself that the great man may be aware of my presence. I have always felt sure that if Lord Chesterfield could have known that the doctor was waiting outside, the occasion for a famous letter would never have arisen, and I cannot look at a certain en- graving without thinking that if instead of moping out of sight round a corner, Doctor Johnson had planted himself squarely in the passage of which my lord, finicking in his chair, had an uninterrupted view, Colley Gibber's petty triumph would have been but a short one. On this occasion I decided that if I was to see Lesseps that day, I must let him know, what the ktiissiers would not, that I was in attendance ; and accordingly I went downstairs and waited in the court- yard, where Monsieur le President would see me as soon as he alighted from his carriage. Presently a dashing brougham drove up with a smart coachman on the box and a high-stepping bay between the shafts. Monsieur de Lesseps was inside, and seated by him was a valet in plain clothes. The carriage was filled with toys, A MEETING OF THE COUNCIL 125 Christmas presents and Strennes for the Httle ones at home. I was dehghted to see the brisk way in which the count opened the door and sprang to the ground, and the firm tread with which he walked away. I raised my hat as he passed me, and as he saluted me in return I mentioned my name. Then I hurried back to the antechamber, and bade the huissier to whom I had first spoken take in my card at once. There was a murmur of indignation from the crowd which was waiting, now swollen to over two hundred people. The huissier said that it was quite useless, that Monsieur le President was en confdrence, that matters of the highest importance were being discussed in the chambre de conseil, and that in any case my turn would come after all these other gentlemen had been received. There is one excellent thing about the new journalism, and that is that it dispels all false modesty. When one has either to do or to " get left," and when to get left usually means to die of hunger, one develops remarkable energy in the assertion of one's personality. I roughly ordered the man to take in my card, and asked him if he thought that the " American millions" could be kept waiting, no matter the importance of the things under discussion in the council chamber. He may have fancied that the " American millions" meant dollars, my mental reservation being the alleged number of readers of the paper which I represented, for he appeared awed, and departed with my card. He returned in a very short time with considerable alacrity and actually bowed to me. However, for the benefit of the gallery, he qualified his announcement that Monsieur le President was expect- ing me, and that I could be received at once, with the remark " in spite of the urgent affairs under discussion." 120 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS I always am diffident and iccl awkward in the pre- sence of men of business, and as I followed the liveried official to the council room, I felt like little Oliver when he was about to be laid before the Board. A moment later the hiiissier had ushered me into a magni- ficent room, which at first sight appeared to me to be absolutely empty. A long table covered with green baize, and set out with that array of stationery which is a familiar feature of board-rooms, ran down the centre of the apartment, flanked on each side with rows of comfortable fanteuils. There were maps on the walls, and books and pamphlets in masses on various pieces of furniture ; but where was the Board and where was Monsieur le President ? Monsieur de Lesseps was sitting by the fireplace, which was in a line with the door by which I had entered. He was simply warming his hands by the fire. He got up when he saw me and gave me a very pretty bow, and then he shook hands. He was good enough to say that he was very pleased to see me. I said that I had understood that he w^as en confh'ence^ and he answered, " So I am. With the fire, the tongs, the poker, and the shovel." " And yonder," I said, pointing to the coal-scuttle, " is no doubt the gentleman who is to join the Board after allotment?" "And why so ? " asked de Lesseps. "His mouth is so very wide open," I said. He laughed at this, and then bade me take a chair and sit down and warm myself. " C'est qu'il ne fait pas chaud du tout," he said. We chatted on various topics for some time before I could bring him to speak about the Panama Canal. W^hat he then did say on the subject I desire to repeat, for I think that it shows his absolute sincerity and confidence in that ill-fated enterprise, which was to bring such disaster on DE LESSEP'S CONFIDENCE 127 thousands of Frenchmen. His words belong to history. " I am," he said, " as full of confidence as ever. If you are a shareholder in the Panama Company, let me advise you to put your shares away in a safe, and to bolt and bar them in. We shall open our canal at the end of 1889, after the Exhibition here, or at the very latest at the beginning of 1890. That is certain. I say it and I mean it. What was the reason of the recent fall in the shares ? The manoeuvres of certain rogues, speculators of course, who trade on the pusil- lanimity of the shareholders. Just before that fall thousands of copies of a broadsheet, headed " The Cataclysm of the Canal of Panama," were hawked about Paris and thrust upon the public. An abominable lie, of course, but one which, though it left us as indifferent as I am now to the barking of that dog in the street, created a panic among some of the shareholders. As soon as the speculators had got what they wanted the rumours were contradicted, the broadsheets disappeared, and the shares went back. "No, there are no ways of putting a stop to these manoeuvres, even if I cared to trouble to do so. A friend of mine who had bought one of these papers hauled the hawker off to the police-station, and charged him with obtaining money by false pretences. He got two months. But I find it best to treat these fellows and the rogues who set them at work with the contempt they deserve. I confess, though, that the other day I laid my cane about the back of one of these hawkers. He was selling a sheet with something of a very offensive personal nature. I don't think that he will offer me one of his broadsheets again in a hurry. How can I care for these attacks, when I have never cared 128 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS for difficulties which, compared to these molehills, have been as mountains ? "Why, did I not go right through with the Suez Canal, and need I recapitulate all the opposition that I met with there ? Do you know the story of what occurred on the very evening before the inauguration ? It was at a grand ball at the Consulate. About mid- night in the middle of a waltz, a Job's messenger of a fellow, with a face as long as — that, comes to me from the works, and whispers to me that a dredging-boat laden with sand had sunk and made the canal impassable. ' Blow it up with dynamite, and at once,' I said, and went on with my dance. " The following day was my wedding-day also, I must tell you. Part of the money which my father- in-law gave me in dowry with my wife was a sum of 100,000 francs. This money on my wedding-day, as soon as I had received it, I sent to Paris and bought Suez Canal shares for the amount. Well, those 100,000 francs realised 1,500,000 francs for my wife, and it is with 800,000 francs of that amount that I bought for her the house she now possesses in the Avenue Montaigne. So you see that I have some right to have confidence, and, as I tell you, I have full con- fidence in this Panama scheme. Why, at one time the Suez Canal shares were down to 150 francs, and that is lower than the Panama shares have ever ofone. " As to the Nicaraguan expedition," he said, " I fear no competition at all. It is impossible to make a prac- tical canal fit for ocean traffic with fresh water. As to all the other canals which are being talked of, I shall only be too glad to see the Americans make them in as great a number and in as many directions as possible. All that will be good for trade, and the better trade is, THE CO-OPERATION OF EIFFEL 129 the more tolls there will be paid at the gates of our canal It will all bring grist to our mill. I am going to run over to Panama towards the beginning of March, and I may tell you that I am taking Eiffel with me. We have just drawn up a contract with Eiffel & Son to construct for us a huge lock with iron gates at the foot of the Culebra, to be fed with the waters of the Chagrds river there, and it is thanks to the construction of this lock that we shall be able to open the canal by the date I have mentioned." More than once in the course of his remarks about the Panama Company he advised me, if I were a share- holder, to keep fast to my shares. I do not want any better proof of his absolute good faith, of his entire confidence in the soundness of his undertaking than that. I do not suppose that Christophle himself or any other of the bitterest enemies of " the great Frenchman " would go so far as to accuse de Lesseps of having wilfully deceived by unnecessary lies a young man who was not well off I was so pleased with the kindness of my reception and so interested in his conversation that it was not until much later that, thinking over what had passed between us, I recognised that possibly, if indeed I had been a shareholder, I might have felt some uneasiness, in spite of the entire confidence he showed. He spoke so lightly of the difficulties ; he seemed to think that the matter was not one that wanted discussing at all. It appeared to me that he took far more pleasure in telling me little stories and making little jokes than in talking of business. It occurred to me more than once during the course of our conversation that the crowd of suitors in the antechamber believed us to be in weighty con- ference. He spent quite a quarter of an hour in telling 9 I30 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS me about a recent visit of his to Berlin, and the hospitality which had been shown to him at the Prussian Court. The Emperor had been very kind to him, and he had been delighted with the Empress. He also talked about Sir Edward Malet, a mutual acquaintance, and how he had first met him in Egypt. And apropos of Egypt, he suddenly exclaimed, " You English will have to clear out of Egypt. You will never be able to remain there. No race can obtain absolute possession of a country which it has invaded unless it is able to intermarry with the subjected natives and absorb the inferior race. Egypt must be for the Egyptians, and for the simple reason that no inter- marriage between Egyptians and foreigners is possible. Such marriages are always childless." I left him that day feeling full of enthusiasm both for the man and the enterprise. After I had left the room, he opened the door behind me and came a little way out, beckoning me back. " You must come to the Avenue Montaigne and see us," he said. " You must come -and have ddjeuner with us one day. I want you to see my children, all my children." I shall not forget the face of the huissier with the gilt chain round his neck when he heard Monsieur le President saying this to me. It was suffused with awe and respect, and he sprang forward to pilot me through the vulgar mob that crowded the entrance-hall. His activity with his hands and elbows on my behalf was surprising, and his " Way there ! Way there ! Gentleman from the Chambre du Conseil," was emphatic as to my importance. I suppose that he thought that he could not be energetic enough in the service of the representative of the " American millions." It may never have occurred to him that Monsieur de Lesseps was a friendly old gentleman who, finding a COUNTESS KESSLER'S DINNER-PARTY 131 sympathetic listener, had enjoyed an hour's chat about places and people familiar to us both. A week or two later I dined one night at the house of Count Kessler on the Cours-la-Reine. The Count was married to an Irish lady of remarkable beauty and the greatest charm. Their house — they entertained very largely — was one of the very best houses in Paris. One met everybody there. The countess's little dinners had a European reputation. Kessler was the kindest of men and an admirable host. His death a few years ago left a great gap in Parisian society. That night there were many very distinguished people among the guests who were assembled in the drawing- room. There was a superfluous king, there was an American railway magnate, there was the needy Princess Pierre Bonaparte and her millionaire son Roland, there was a French Minister of State, there was the editor of the Figaro, and a number of other people of note and distinction. Standing with his back to the fire was the grand Frangais^ Ferdinand de Lesseps. He was talking to the superfluous king and the railway magnate, and a bevy of adoring women were standing around the group. I was very pleased to see a man there whom I respected, but it never occurred to me that he would remember me, nor did I expect him to take any notice of a person whose intrinsic insignificance was heightened by the splendour of the company in which he found himself. Shortly before dinner was announced, Kessler came up to me and said, "Oh, I want to introduce you to Magnard, the editor of the Figaro. He's a man you ought to know in Paris, and he might be useful to you. Come along." Magnard was standing in the very centre of the drawing-room, talking to G B , who at that time was one of the editors of Le Petit Journal, and added 132 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS considerably to his income by teaching foreign prime donnc how to pronounce French. I had heard all about him from Melba. Magnard's back was towards us. The Count touched him on the shoulder and said, " Oh, Magnard, here is a young confrere of yours whom I want you to know. It is Mr. Robert Sherard, of the New York " Having said this, Kessler, who was one of the most vigilant of hosts, darted off to attend to the comfort of some one else. Magnard said nothing, but bowed a mock bow, bending his fat little body in two, so that his hair nearly touched the points of his shoes. Then he swung round on his heel, presented his fat back to my gaze, and quietly went on talking to G B . I never felt more confused in my life. This scene had been enacted in the very middle of the drawing-room, and had been noticed by everybody present. I confess that for a moment I had it in mind to step back and take a drop at goal with the plump rotundity that the uncivil editor so temptingly displayed. Magnard's pantomime, of course, was intended to convey to me and to the lookers-on that the editor of Le Figaro was a man of far too great importance to waste even a word on an obscure young foreigner. I heard more than one titter. I was at an entire loss how to withdraw in a dignified manner. At that moment I saw a movement round the fireplace, and I heard de Lesseps say, " Oh, pardon me, but I see a young friend of mine there. I must go and speak to him." And breaking off his conversation with the two kings, and passing through the bevy of adoring women, the kind old gentleman came across the room to me with outstretched hands, saying such flattering things as, " Ouelle bonne surprise ! Quel plaisir de vous revoir ! " He came right up to where I stood in utter confusion, I DE LESSEPS TO THE RESCUE 133 and gripped my hand, and then, taking me by the arm, drew me on one side — away from my pillory — and kept me talking with him until dinner was announced. It was done from sheer kindness. He had seen the public affront put upon me ; he had disapproved of the rudeness shown to a young man of no importance ; he had given Magnard and those who had applauded his buffoonery a well-deserved lesson. The effect produced was immediate, for in those days Ferdinand de Lesseps was still one of the most important persons in the world. I at once became a personage. I was courted at table. In the smoking-room afterwards the magnate gave me a " pointer " about Milwaukees, and the superfluous king handed me his gold cigarette-case. But, better than this, Magnard himself came up to me and made himself as pleasant as he could. He hoped that I would call on him at the Figaro. He would be glad to receive me at any time. This was the kindness which Lesseps did to me ; this was the act which I never forgot. I frequently saw him afterwards. Once I walked home with him from the Rue de Charras to the Avenue Montaigne. From the number of times we were saluted in the street, I could gauge the extent of his popularity. My arm quite ached from raising my hand to my hat. And during the course of this walk I had another proof how entirely his confidence was still unshaken. As we were waiting at the Rond-Point in the Champs-Elysees to cross over to the Avenue Montaigne, a woman of the people, recognising Lesseps rushed up to him, and, catching hold of his hand, almost knelt down before him, imploring him to tell her if " Panama was good." Was she to keep her shares } He was very kind to her, and he said : " Parbleu ! Panama is good. If it weren't good, ma pauvre dame, do you 134 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS think that I, a phr dc famille, would have put all the dowries of my children into Panama shares?" The woman went away radiant. I often thought of her after the catastrophe. On the last day of the subscription of the 1888 loan, one afternoon a newspaper agency telephoned to me to tell me that Lesseps had died suddenly. This state- ment was made with such authority that I immediately rang up the Avenue de Montaigne. A minute later I had heard Madame de Lesseps' laughing denial. She told me that I had better go to the Suez office and convince myself of the falsehood of the report. I found the old gentleman in the company of General Saussier, the mammoth governor of Paris, and another man who since those days has loomed large in Panama's affairs. It was Bunaud Varrila. Lesseps introduced him to me and said, " This is our chief engineer. He has just returned from Panama, and he can tell you that every- thing is going on very well out there. There have been no cases at all of sickness during the last two months." I repeat these words because they show how de Lesseps was being misinformed. Things were not going on very well in Panama on the canal works in June, 1888, and there never was a period of two months without a single case of sickness amongst the workers. But in June, 1888, there were still millions in the Panama cashbox, and it was to the interest of some people to keep the President in happy ignorance of the true state of things. He told me that the subscription was a success, that they had already got what they wanted, that is to say, enough to complete the work. " The subscription would have been still more successful but for this last manoeuvre, the report of my death. Dead, I ! Is it not amusing ? I don't look very much A DRIVE TO THE ACADEMY 135 like a dead man, do I ? I am in better health and in better spirits than I have been for a long time. This morning I took a three hours' ride with my children in the Bois." He then asked me which way I was going, and when I told him that I had no particular engagement he asked me to come with him in his carriage. He was driving over to the Institute, to attend a sitting of the French Academy. On our way there he told me that the meeting had been called to hear the refusal of the Government to the petition sent in by the Academy that the Due d'Aumale might be allowed to return to France from exile. He then told me many interesting anecdotes about the duke, and referred to the rumour of his intention to marry the Comtesse de Clinchamps. De Lesseps laughed at this report. " I have known Madame de Clinchamps a long time," he said. " She is an old lady, older than the Due d'Aumale. She first entered his service as the head of the laundry at Chantilly. She was a very intelligent woman, and the duke liked her so well that he promoted her to the general management of his palace. Since then she has acted as gouvernante. I fancy, though, that if the duke had intended to remarry he would have chosen a younger woman." He also talked about the trouble that there was then at Chenonceaux, where Daniel Wilson's sister, Madame Pelouze, had just had her goods seized by the bailiffs. " There is to be a sale there," he said, " in the chateau where Diane de Poictiers lived and loved. What would Catherine de Medicis have said to find bailiffs in her bedroom ? We are wondering why neither Grevy nor Wilson, who both have sacks of money {(jtii out le sac tous les deux), don't help her out of her difficulty, for the credit of the name. Surely there have been enough 1^6 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS o Wilson scandals. The debts amount to over a million and a half francs, and include such miserable amounts as one hundred francs owing to the village baker." He was very merry and entertaining, and the drive was a pleasant one. This was, however, to be one of the last occasions when I was in his company which I can remember with gladness. CHAPTER IX Ferdinand de Lesseps — Three Years Later — How he heard of the Prosecu- ion — His Resignation — His Wife's Courage — Widespread Sympathy — An Emperor's Letter — The Family's Losses — His Faith in Panama — His DisHke of Speculation. THREE years later, in June once more, and, I think, upon the very anniversary of the day on which I had had that pleasant drive with Ferdinand de Lesseps, the Academician, from the mansion of the Suez Canal Company to the Palace of the Institute of France, I was once more in his company. I had learned that the Government had at last decided to prosecute those whom it pretended to hold responsible for the catas- trophe of the Panama Canal Company, and that Count Ferdinand de Lesseps and his son Charles were to be sacrificed to the rancours of those who had been robbed of their money. The robbers were certain people whose names are notorious, besides a number of deputies and senators, and hundreds of journalists, engineers, financiers, blackmailers, inventors, politicians ; and every one of these, with the exceptions of two penitent thieves, who were fools enough to confess, were allowed to escape punishment of every kind. As Madame de Lesseps wrote to me in 1894, " Nos ennuis ne sont pas finis, et les innocents paient pour les coupables." The inno- cent paid for the guilty right through in this miserable affair. 137 I3S TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS It was throuL^h an ill-conditioned newspaper reporter, so Madame dc Lesseps told mc, that the Count and his family had heard that the prosecution had been decided upon. " It was last Thursday evening," she told me. " We had been out driving together, and as we entered we saw a man arguing with our concierge." " A difficult thing to get the best of your concierge, madame," I said. "He has the reputation amongst the newspaper men in Paris of being most devoted to your service. He is as discreet as the tomb ; he is sturdy and vigorous, and can repel any attempts to reach the staircase with violence and arms." " Yes," she said, "he is a splendid servant. But all our people are devoted to Monsieur de Lesseps. You should see his valet. Well," she continued, " as soon as this man, who was arguing with the concierge, saw us come in, he made a spring forward, and managed to escape the porter, and came running up the stairs behind us, with the porter in chase behind him. The Count saw this, and, with his usual kindness, said, ' Let him come up. Come up, sir,' — and he came up and followed us into this room. Monsieur de Lesseps sat down there, and the reporter — oh, he was such an ugly man ! — sat there. Then, without any preface or preamble, he came out with : ' Can you tell me for what day you have been summoned before the Court of Appeal, because, as a Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honour, it is, of course, before the Court of Appeal that you will have to appear to answer the charges made against you with reference to Panama?' I jumped up, I could have boxed his ears. ' How dare you, sir?' I cried. ' How dare you say such things to my husband ? Mightn't it have killed him to have this news broken to him like that?'" DE LESSEPS IN ADVERSITY 139 I found de Lesseps much as I had always known him His eyes were still bright, and he carried himself erect ; but he looked pale and very weary. A rug was drawn over his knees as he sat on the sofa, though it was summer-time. We were in the little drawing-room on the entresol of the house in the Avenue de Montaigne, the family-room, as it might be called, in distinction to the apartments of State. Here de Lesseps used to play with his children. The room that day was filled with a delightful bevy of little folks, beautiful children, with great Spanish eyes and curly heads. Poor Madame de Lesseps was in black, and seemed very nervous and exhausted. " I keep everybody away from him," she said. " I do not let any letters reach him. He is a very old man, and he is not the same as he was before the crash came." Young Ismail de Lesseps, a gentlemanly young man, was in the room. He told me that he had just returned from undergoing his examination for admission to St. Cyr Military College. He was so nice and gentle to his father and so courteous to his mother that I liked him from the very first. His mother was saying that it had been very hard on the lad to have a difficult exami- nation to go through, and to have all these troubles to bear besides. I can hear his " Mais non, maman ; mais non, maman," still. With his usual kindness, de Lesseps made room for me on the sofa, and I sat down by his side. He patted my hand as though it were I who stood in need of consolation (as indeed I did), and said : " I have had my good days and I have had my bad days. These are bad days ; they will pass like the rest." I made no reference to the catastrophe, but talked to him of other things. I told him the gossip of the 140 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS boulevard, and made him laugh with Aurelien Scholl's latest mot. Every now and then one of the children ran up and hugged and kissed the old man, and called him " Papa cheri," and it was pleasant indeed to see how his face lit up as he returned their caresses. I had a long talk with Madame de Lesseps that afternoon, and I admired her immensely for her devotion to her husband. It was a great blessing that the poor old man — he was eighty-six then — had this splendid woman, so full of courage and energy, by his side when the storm broke over his head. I asked her how he was bearing it. She said : "He says very little. He is not what he was before the company failed, and this last blow has had less effect upon him now he has survived the failure of his great ambition three years than it would have had then. He is easy, with an easy conscience. His only regret is for France and for the faithful who followed him. He regrets their losses bitterly. He has often said so to me, and I know that it is so. But he feels assured that, with the exception of the yelping curs from the blackmailing offices of newspaper and finance blacklegs, everybody believes in his sincerity. And that is so. We have had proof of it over and over again. Look at all these letters." I glanced at some of the papers which the Countess laid before me. There was one in the palsied writing of a man sick abed, which spoke of "all my heartfelt sympathy," and which was signed : " Votre vraiment bien affectionne, Dom Pedro," coming from the ex- Emperor of Brazil, who was then lying ill at Vichy. A high dignitary of the Catholic Church wrote : " Mais il est ecrit quelque part que tous les grands hommes auront leur Calvaire, comme le divin Maitre." Photo by Gerschel, Paris. COMTESSE DE LESSEPS. MADAME DE LESSEPS' DEFENCE 141 " I have hundreds of such letters," she said. Then she made me sit down right opposite to her, and said : " I want to talk to you. I have got a lot on my heart, and it will relieve me if I can say it right out. Will you listen to me, and not interrupt me, and let me go on to the end? Then I will give you tea." This is in brief what she wanted to say to me, and said with her eyes flashing and her colour mounting : " I am a God-fearing woman, and I believe in a here- after, and it sometimes seems to me that my husband was sent on earth to do a great work, and that he is an angel. An angel he certainly is in simplicity and good- ness and loyalty. There has never been a more unselfish man than he is. His whole life protests against the abominable charges that his enemies are making against him. He devoted himself to France. He wished to bestow on France the splendid enterprise of the Panama Canal. He believed in it heart and soul. When it failed . . . well, you have seen he is not the same man. This prosecution, which commences with my husband's appearance before the Court of Appeal on Monday next, is the culminating point of the base malice and ven- geance of his enemies. Why has he enemies ? Why, because he succeeded ; because Suez is each year be- coming more and more his splendid triumph. Suez is earning so much money, and making so many fortunes, that it prevents many an envious soul from sleeping. His great enemy throughout has been M. Christophle, backed, I believe, by some men in power. " But there have been enemies on every side. Why, at the last dmission, as we know for a fact, a thousand telegrams were sent out from Paris stating that my husband had committed suicide, and publishing other lies with the object of spoiling the loan. Till then the 142 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS agents dc change everywhere had been assured that the loan would be covered three times over. People have never pardoned him for Suez. The foulest stories about him, about myself, even, have been made current over and over again. Why, about ten years ago it was gravely announced that I had eloped with a captain of artillery, and that I was being confined clandestinely in a village near Paris. A very probable story, nest-ce-pas ? that I should elope with an artillery captain ! " To-day, when our enemies have succeeded, as they think, in bringing disgrace upon him, the vilest stories are passed about. We are said to have hoarded millions. They say that we have forty millions in the Bank of England. Where are these forty millions ? The contrary is true. If you wish to convince yourself of it, you may go from me to our notary and our solicitor. They will tell you the exact figure of the sums we have lost : I have not got it at the tip of my tongue, but there is one thing that I do know, and that is, that before the failure of the Panama Company I had of my own fortune a sum of sixty thousand francs coming in annually, and that that has all been swept away. I know that when we married our daughter a little while ago we gave her a dot of which most people would be ashamed. Yes, the daughter of the creator of Suez received a marriage portion of a bare one hundred thousand francs. I don't mean to say that we are totally ruined, but I mean to say that, financially speaking, we are perhaps the largest sufferers by the Panama crash. We have a fortune still, of course, which we derive from Monsieur de Lesseps' interest in Suez. We shan't be obliged to go en famille on to the Pont de I'Alma and beg for our bread. Would it be fair, do you think, that the family of Ferdinand de Lesseps, who gave Suez to France, should hold out their DE LESSEPS, NO SPECULATOR 143 hands on the Pont de I'Alma ? Yet that is what a great many people seem to desire to see. We lost all that we had in Panama. It is an infamous lie to say that one centime of the money that was subscribed to that enterprise benefited us in any way. And whilst I am speaking about this, let me say that the attacks which are being made against Charles de Lesseps and my other stepsons are one in point of infamy with the attacks which are being made upon us. " Both my stepsons are thoroughly honourable men. Being the sons of Ferdinand de Lesseps, they could not be otherwise. People say that the Count knew some time beforehand that the crash was comino-, and took the o precaution to sell out all his shares. It is exactly the opposite that is true. Until the very last he believed in its success. "I, for my part, was very nervous. You see, it was my children's fortunes that were at stake, and I remember saying to him on one occasion that perhaps it would be more judicious to invest the large sums which we had invested in the Panama Canal shares, in some more absolutely safe securities. He almost got angry with me, and cried out, ' Madame, are the children my children or are they Rothschild's children? If they are Rothschild's children, let us think of securing their fortunes ; if they are mine, they shall follow my fortune, and stand or fall with me.' And so the money went and to-day we are much poorer than we were then. " Ferdinand de Lesseps is not a speculator, and never has been. I remember that when Suez Canal shares were standing at seven hundred francs I came in for a little residuary legacy from my father's estate, fifty thousand francs invested in Austrians, and I said to my husband that I thought that it would be a good thing to sell out and 144 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS invest this money in Suez, as I believed that they were certain to rise. He was angry, and rebuked me for my apparent love of speculation, and would not allow me to sell out ; so you can compute just what that cost us in hard cash, seeing to what the seven hundred franc shares have risen since then. "It is a shame!" she cried, springing to her feet. " Such ingratitude is a shame ! But it is the fate of all great men, as Monseigneur writes me and as others have written to me. It is the reward of greatness to be sacrificed. Mention one great man in France who has not been rewarded in this way ! But it is the same in other countries. One need but remember Columbus. But I don't know why I get angry like this. It is what one must expect in France, governed as she is at present. And, moreover, though our enemies think that they have triumphed, and that they have succeeded in besmirching the great name of the Great Frenchman, they have done nothing of the sort. I have shown you some of the letters that we have received ; I have hundreds more upstairs from all parts of France and from all sorts and conditions of men. The belief in de Lesseps is as strong as ever ; it is only that his enemies are noisier now than they have been for some time. A man like Ferdinand de Lesseps is not to be besmirched. There are certain people who are above the attacks of the mob." I wrote that night to London about the prosecution, and I said that the evil things that were being said about Ferdinand de Lesseps were too despicable for comment. Indeed, I think that his beautiful and courageous wife, in the words that I have quoted above, and his friends in the letters that I had read, made all the comment that was required on the actions of those who put on an old THE REWARD OF DE LESSEPS 145 man of eighty-six, who had given milHons in the past, and a source of millions for the future to his country, and who was then poorer himself than he had been twenty years previously, the affront of a summons into a public court of justice. What would have been one's indignation if one had known how mercilessly the poor old man was to be hounded into imbecility and death, while the thieves and extortioners were allowed to enjoy their gains in peace and quiet ? 10 CHAPTER X After the Dt'hdclc—K Visit to La Chesnaye— A House of Mourning — How De Lesseps and his Family were beloved — The Lesseps Children and their Stepbrother Charles — Ferdinand de Lesseps portrayed — Renan's Tribute — Friends in Adversity — The Family at Luncheon — De Lesseps' Hope in Queen Victoria — My Last View of the Great Frenchman. SOME months later — in the spring of 1892 — I paid another visit to Ferdinand de Lesseps. In the following pages I give the account of this visit, which I wrote at the time. I was not to see the old man again. Seated in an arm-chair, now feebly turning over the leaves of his Souvenii's of Forty Years, now letting his dimmed eyes wander listlessly over the broad expanse of fields and woodlands outside the windows, Ferdinand de Lesseps, the great Frenchman, drags out the agony of his old age. The visitor to him in his retreat arrives at La Chesnaye to some extent attuned to melancholy, for the long diligence ride from the nearest railway station, twenty-four kilometres away, is across a most desolate country. This part of the ancient Duchy of Berry is one of the districts in France which has most suffered by the ruin of the vine culture : the lands seem deserted and abandoned, the roads are neglected, and little life is seen anywhere till the sleepy burgh of Vatan is 146 A VISIT TO LA CHESNAYE 147 reached. From Vatan, which is a market town on the old and now disused high road from Paris to Toulouse, to the chateau of La Chesnaye, there are four more kilometres of road across an equally desolate country to be taken. The buildings of the home farm are the first human habitations that one sees all the long way. An oppressive sense of desolation imposes itself on even the casual wayfarer, and prepares for the sorrowful sight that awaits him who goes to La Chesnaye to salute the fallen greatness of the old man who but two years ago was the greatest Frenchman in France. The chateau of La Chesnaye, a modest country house of irregular shape, and flanked at the angles with towers, has been in the possession of M. de Lesseps for fifty years. Except for a large modern wing, it stands just as Agnes Sorel, its first occupant, left it. In her days it had served as a hunting-box for her royal patron and the Berry squires, and at present is still surrounded with fields scantily timbered. There is no well-kept lawn, but the fields of grass are full of violets, and there is a trim look about the stables. On a bright day the white of the stone, contrasted with the green of the grass, gives a cheerful look to the scene, but it is indescribably mournful of aspect in the days of rain and snow and wind. About half a mile on the road, before the chateau is in sight, an avenue of trees is reached. " Those trees were planted by M. de Lesseps him- self forty years ago, and every time that he passes this way he relates the fact." So spoke to me the English governess of the de Lesseps children, whom Madame de Lesseps had despatched to meet me with the pony carriage at Vatan. I4S TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS " The Countess is terribly busy to-day with her papers, for she is expecting a barrister from Paris, who is to receive some instructions in view of the new trial ; but she will nianaoe to give you an hour, and wants you to drive to church with her, so that you can talk on the way." As we entered the courtyard the Countess's carriage was in waiting at the front entrance. It was the landau of the days of triumphant drives in the Champs Elys(^es, and the horses were the same pair which excited the admiration and envy of the connoisseurs of the Avenue des Acacias, "Juliette" and "Panama," which latter is now never called by that name. It is talked about as " the other," for the ill-fated word Panama is never even whispered, lest any echo of it should reach the ears of him to whom this word has meant ruin and disgrace and a broken heart. I waited for the Countess at the bottom of the spiral staircase, and presently saw a lady descending, who greeted me in a familiar voice, but whom I failed to recognise. " But, yes," she said, holding out her hand, " I am Madame de Lesseps. I have changed, have I not ? " When I last met Madame de Lesseps in Paris, though at that time the shadow of the present was already upon her, she was in the full of her matronly beauty, large, ample, and flourishing. It was a wasted woman who addressed me, pinched and thin. "If I were to remove my veil," she added, "you would see an even greater change. It is a sad moment that you have chosen to visit us, and you find us in terrible circumstances," she said as we drove away. Then, turning to the lady who accompanied her, she remarked: " This is the first time I have been out for A HOUSE OF MOURNING 149 three weeks, and I ought not to have gone out to-day, except for the fact that I can't miss going to church again. It is the only comfort I have left to me. All my days, and most of my nights, when not attending on my husband, are taken up answering letters and telegrams which keep pouring in upon me from all parts of the world. And then I am in constant correspondence with the lawyers in Paris as to the prosecution of my son for corruption and the revision of the last judgment of the Court of Appeal." The church which is attended by the La Chesnaye party is situated in a village about three miles off^ which is called Guilly, " the mistletoe hamlet," as all the trees around are covered with this parasite. We were passing a fine old oak, the upper part of which was loaded with mistletoe, when the lady who was with us laughed scornfully, and, pointing, said : "One would say Herz, Arton, and the rest," referring to the Panama parasites. " Would you believe me," said Madame de Lesseps, " that until these recent revelations I had never even heard the names of either Arton or Herz or the Baron de Reinach ? " Outside the church was standing a char-a-banc drawn by two horses, and it was in this that, after service, I returned to La Chesnaye with the children and the governess. It was interesting to see how devoted the people of Guilly seem to be to the de Lesseps family, and how the men and women bowed and courtesied as the Countess came out of church. Here, as at Vatan and in allthe district, the love and respect for " Monsieur le Comte " have been increased rather than diminished by the persecutions to which he has been subjected. It was on the great fair-day at Vatan 150 TWEN IV \1<:.\I^S IN IWRIS that the news o\ liis coiulemnation was iiiaJe public, and at once the villaoers, in sign of mournin<^, stopped the piiliHc ball, which is a /c^/e to which the young peoj^le of the district look forward for months beforehand. Sturdy Berrichon lads have been seen to flourish their sticks and heard to say that the Parisians had better keep their hands off " Monsieur le Comte." Nor is it surprising that in his own country M. de Lesseps should be loved and venerated. Always de- lighting in acts of kindness, his generosity towards his poor neighbours throughout the district has been con- stant and large-handed. Never a marriage takes place in any of the surrounding villages but that a handsome present from La Chesnaye is thrown into the bride's coi'beille. The children are dressed for confirmation at the expense of the chateau, layettes are found for poor mothers, and no case of distress is allowed to pass unrelieved. Since the heavy losses which the Panama failure has entailed on the family, no change nor diminution in these liberalities has been made. But perhaps what the people in the district like the best in the La Chesnaye folk is their extreme simplicity. Chateau folk are not generally very popular in France, and certainly not in republican circumscrip- tions, because republican electors of the peasant class have inherited prejudices about them ; and if the de Lesseps family are so very popular, it is because of the extreme simplicity of their manners and of the way in which they live the lives of the people around them. For instance, not the children alone, but even the elegant Madame de Lesseps herself, are dressed in clothes purchased and made in Vatan. Nothing is got from Paris, and the Vatan people are highly pleased with the unusual compliment thus paid to them. THE DE LESSEES CHILDREN 151 By the church at Guilly is an orphanage, which was founded by the de Lesseps and is entirely kept up at their expense. It is a rule with Madame de Lesseps to pay a visit to this orphanage each Sunday after mass, and, accordingly, as she left the church she asked me to return home with the children. Of these there are now seven at home, Matthew, who has just returned on sick leave from the Soudan, being in Paris near his stepbrother Charles. Ismail is serving in the army as a soldier in a regiment of chasseurs at St. Germain ; and the eldest daughter, the Comtesse de Gontaut-Biron, is in Nice, whither she has been sent by her doctors. Lolo, aged eighteen, is the eldest girl at home ; and Paul, a handsome lad of twelve, with long ringlets down his back, is the eldest boy. The youngest children are mere babies. There is Zi-Zi, a tiny little boy, with fair curls and dark eyes ; and Griselle, a charming little mite, who on that Sunday was dressed in a Kate Greenaway bonnet and gown, and looked sweetly pretty. The char-a-banc, spacious as it was, was quite filled. Besides all the children, from Lolo down to Zi-Zi, there were the English and German governesses, Paul and Robert's tutor, the niece of Madame de Lesseps, who for many years past has lived with the family, and an intimate friend, Mademoiselle Mimaut. It was a merry party, and yet, whenever the name of the poor old father at home was mentioned, silence came over the prattle of the children. "They all feel it deeply," said Madame de Lesseps to me later on, "though their youth often gets the better of their feelings. And what grieves them most is, to know that their brother Charles, whom they all love and respect like a second father, is in prison, whilst they can run 152 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS about. Zi-Zi and Griscllc write to him every day at Mazas or the Conciergerie, and send him violets and little stories which they compose for his amusement, spending long hours inking their fingers over their paper." About halfway home the carriage passed the rural postman, trudging along on his daily thirty-mile round. The children would have the carriage stopped, and, though it was quite full, place was made for him. Father Pierre seemed quite a favourite with the children, for is it not he, as little Griselle said, who brings letters from brother Charles ? Charles, it seems, writes every day, and his letters, to judge by what every member of the family told me, are admirable in their manly unselfishness. There is never a word of complaint about the wretchedness of his position ; his only anxiety is about his father, and he is ready to undergo everything so that the old man may be spared a moment's pain. Ruined, disgraced, though not dis- honoured, having to face a long period of imprisonment, which at his age and in his physical condition may kill him, he affects in his letters the greatest cheerfulness. Nor is his heroic unselfishness without its reward. He is the idol of everybody at La Chesnaye and for miles around. Only one complaint has escaped him since his confinement, and that was when, during his hurried visit, under guard, to his father, he went with the children for a favourite walk to a neighbouring wood. Here, as he was walking- alonor the avenue which runs through some magnificent timber, he looked around at the detectives behind him, and said with a sigh, " And to-morrow I shall be again within four grey walls ! " But immediately he added that if he could only be allowed to come and pass an afternoon in the wood with his AFTER THE "DEBACLE" 153 brothers and sisters every month, he would not mind his confinement in the least, and would resign himself to the prospect of imprisonment for the rest of his days. Yet he is past fifty-three, and his health has suffered terribly from what he has undergone. The half hour before lunch was spent by the children in showing their pets, A prime favourite with them just now is a little Newfoundland puppy, which has quite dethroned in their affections an old shepherd dog, who, as Zi-Zi relates, "came one day and liked us so much that she has never left us." Another pet of whom a great deal is made is an African monkey which Matthew brought home from the Soudan. It is called Bou-Bou, and when it is scolded it hides its face in its hands. It is quite tame, and runs free, without a chain. Just before lunch the children set about picking violets, each a bunch. This they do every day. One is for Charles at Mazas, another for Madame de Lesseps, but the sweetest is for the old father to wear in his buttonhole at lunch, which is the only meal he takes with the family. The child whose bouquet is worn by the father is the proudest child in Berry that day. I could not refrain from a movement of the most painful surprise when, after a few moments spent in the drawing-room, I was invited by Madame de Lesseps into the room where her husband sat. I have known M. de Lesseps for many years, and though the last time that I saw him he was already under the influence of the sorrow of defeat — it was just after he had been called before a magistrate for examination — my recollection of him had always been as of a man of most surprising vitality and highest spirits — keen, bright, energetic ; defy- ing the wear of time ; a man of eternal youth in spite of 154 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS his white hairs. I rcnuinlHTcd liiin last erect, with clear voice and tlashini^ eyes, and now I saw him huddled to<]^ether in a chair, a wrap about his knees, nodding his head as under sleep ; pale, inert, and with all the life gone out of his eyes. Behind him was a large screen tapestried with red stuff, against which the waxen whiteness of his face and hands stood out in strong relief. How old he looked, whom age had seemed to spare so long ! For the most part the head drooped forward on his chest ; but now and then he raised it listlessly and let his eyes wander round the room or across the panes on to the fields beyond. There was rarely recognition in his glance ; mostly a look of unalterable sadness — of w'onder, it may be, at the terrible hazards of life. Yet when now and then one of the children, who were crowding about his chair, pressed his hand or kissed his cheek or said some words of endearment to him, the smile which was one of his characteristics came over his face, and for a brief moment he seemed himself again. Himself again, that is to say, in the goodness and great-heartedness which more than all he has ever done for France merited for him the name of " the Great Frenchman." For greatness of heart has always been the keynote of the character of Ferdinand de Lesseps. It was the secret of the indescribable seduction which he e.xercised over every one who came near him, from emperor to labourer. It was to this quality of his that M. Renan, albeit a sceptic himself, rendered such signal homage in the speech in which he welcomed M. de Lesseps to the French Academy on the day of his admittance. " You were good to all who came," said M. Renan. " You made them feel that their past would be effaced ERNEST KENAN'S TRIBUTE 155 and that a new life lay before them. In exchange you only asked them to share your enthusiasm in the work which you had devoted to the interest of France. You held that most people can amend, if only one will forget their past. One day a whole gang of convicts arrived at Panama and took work at the canal. The Austrian consul demanded that they should be handed over to him ; but you delayed giving satisfaction to his request, and at the end of some weeks the Austrian consulate was fully occupied in remitting home to Austria^ — to their families, or, it may be, to their victims — the moneys which these outcasts, whom you had transformed into honest workmen, were earning with the work of their hands. "You have declared your faith in humanity. You have convinced yourself, and tried to convince others, that men are loyal and good if only they have the wherewithal to live. It is your opinion that it is only hunger that makes men bad. ' Never,' said you in one of your speeches, * have I had cause for complaint against any of the workmen, although I have employed outcasts, pariahs, and convicts. Work has redeemed even the most dishonest. I have never been robbed, not even of a handkerchief It is a fact which I have proved, that men can be brought to do anything by showing them kindness and by persuading them that they are working in a cause of universal interest.' Thus you have made green again what seemed withered for ever and aye. You have given, in a century of unbelief, a startling proof of the efficacy of faith." In view of the awful change that, within so short a time, has been made in this gentleman, I cannot but think that it must be attributed to the shock produced in a very old man by an experience which shows him 156 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS that he has been mistaken all his lift' long. It is terrible to wake up at eighty-five and find that things are not what one has believed during his past life, and that the men whom one has loved and respected are unworthy. I believe that what has struck Ferdinand de Lesseps down in his chair in full vitality is an immense disap- pointment, not at the failure of his hopes — for he has always been indifferent to money, and has never had the wish to leave his children large fortunes — but at the falseness of a creed which was optimistic to the point of blindness, I believe that Ferdinand de Lesseps is dying of a broken heart, broken by the immense ingratitude of men. And if the loss of all the money that has been sunk in the Panama mud and the pockets of the intri- gants of the Third Republic adds to his sorrow, it is certainly not for himself nor his family, but for all those who are suffering because they shared his belief in his star, and who blindly followed him to ruin. He knew that they were of the humble, and often told me so. " Panama will be carried out with the savings in woollen stockings of the peasant and of the workman," he used to say. He has never been self-seeking. He presented France with a concession, that of the Suez Canal, estimated at one hundred millions of francs, and with lands worth another thirty millions, and fought heroically for years to render to his gift its greatest value. In the words of M. Renan, the courage, the energy, the resources of all sorts expended by M. de Lesseps in this struggle were nothing short of prodigious. In ex- change he took for himself enough to enable him to lead the life of a gentleman and to do good around him. Each of his children he endowed with not more than DE LESSEES' NOBLE CHARACTER 157 seventy thousand francs, the revenues from which, to- gether with his wife's private fortune, are now all that remain to the family. I firmly believe that all his life he acted only from feelings of philanthropy and from patriotism of the most chivalrous type. He never had any desire to leave a large fortune, and I can remember his saying to me very emphatically that his children must do as he had done, and that they would do so if they were worthy of his name ; that he had never wished to leave them large fortunes, but an honourable name, a love for their country equal to his, and an example which he hoped they would follow. " Let them work as I have done," said this most tender of fathers. It seems that not even this heritage of an honoured name is, if the persecutors of the old man can have their way, to be left to his family. Since he has been down, the number of his adversaries has, of course, increased tenfold. Even those who owe him all — many officials at the Suez Canal Company, for instance, who owe their positions and fortunes to his genius — seem glad to revenge themselves for their obligation. De Lesseps has done too much good to men not to be hated, and it Is to be regretted that poor de Maupassant cannot wield his pen in analysis of the motives which are actuating his former dependants in their endeavours to renounce all solidarity with the dying octogenarian of La Chesnaye. I visited the offices of the Suez Canal Company a few days ago, and, prepared as one is for human in- gratitude, it was distressing in the extreme to see how poor a thing to charm with was the name at the sound of which, as I can well remember, all the flunkeys of the place, in livery or black frock-coat, doubled up in the 158 TWI-NTV YEARS IN PARIS days that arc past. The Hon is down, and every ass of Paris has a heel to kick him with. On the other hand, the adversities of the de Lesseps family have revealed to them the immense number of friends which they possess in all parts of the world. Letters and telegrams keep pouring in from all sides to La Chesnaye, and all the available pens are kept busy most of the day and night in answering the kindest expressions of sympathy, many from utter strangers. " This is the only thing that gives me courage to bear it all," said Madame de Lesseps. Helene told me, with some amusement, that a Spanish banker had the day before written to Madame de Lesseps to offer her a present of a million, and that there had been many similar offers of pecuniary assistance from people who believed the family to be totally ruined. When Charles was down at La Chesnaye, and was walking in the woods with his escort behind him, a serious proposal was made to him by friends who had gathered around him to effect his rescue, if he would but give the word. As for tokens of sympathy from all the country round, they are unending. The farmer at the home farm, which was built by M. de Lesseps, and which has been in the occupation of the present tenants from the beginning, was at dinner when the paper containing the news of Charles's conviction and sentence reached him. " He turned quite white," said his wife to me, " and rushed out of the house, and went roaming about the woods like a demented man until late at night. And I have cried every time I have thought of M. Charles, whom I knew when he was a baby not higher than my knee." But perhaps the most devoted friend that remains to the family is M. de Lesseps' valet, who since his FRIENDS IN ADVERSITY 159 master's fall has never left him for more than ten minutes together, sleeping on a mattress in his bedroom, and waiting on him patiently all day and all night. " Don't let any one, I don't care who it may be," he says, clenching his fist, " come near my master. I will be killed before any offence shall be put upon him." And though one is rather sceptical as to such professions, I fully believe that in this case they are sincere. It was touching to note with what reverence, when lunch was served, this valet approached his master, and, mindful of old formalities of respect, bowed and said that Monsieur the Count was served ; to note with what womanly gentleness this strong man lifted his feeble master up, and guided his tottering steps into the adjoining dining-room. What a beautiful family it was, to be sure, that gathered round that table ! — Paul, with his girlish ringlets ; Robert, also in curls ; Helene, who sat next to her father, with her jet-black hair loose down her back, and her bright eyes contrasting with the ivory pallor of her face, worn out as the poor child is with care and sorrow and hard work as her mother's penwoman. Then there was Lolo, a young lady of eighteen, roughly dressed, but of great elegance, who looked even sadder than the rest, but who tried to be bright and gay ; and on the other side of her Solange, who, though she is quite a woman in appearance, hates to be considered so, wants to be treated as a child, refuses to wear long dresses, and loves to climb trees in the park and to give picnics to her little brothers and sisters in a mud hovel which she has constructed in the garden. Then there are Zi-Zi and Griselle — more than twenty in all around the long oval table. Every now and then one of the children rises from its seat and runs up to i6o TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS the old father and kisses him on the cheek or presses his hand ; and I iliink all envied Helene, who sat next to him, and could caress him when she liked. I was seated just opposite the old man, and I am afraid my presence disturbed him, for he seemed to listen to what I said, and to wonder who I was and what I might want. I shall never forget the sight of him as he faced me, sunk down in his chair, with one trembling hand holding his napkin to his breast, and feebly with the other guiding the morsels to his mouth. He seemed to eat with some appetite, though under persistent drowsiness, which was only shaken off for a moment when his wife, who came in late, took her seat at the table. Then his head was lifted, and a bright look came into his eyes, as if of salute to the comrade of his life. Whatever Madame de Lesseps may have suffered, I am sure that she feels herself repaid each time that those eyes are so lifted to hers. The ddjeiiner was a simple though ample one, the menu being in keeping with the manner of life at Chesnaye, which is that of comfort without ostentation. The wine is grown by Madame de Lesseps herself, on vineyards of her own planting, and is that " grey wine " which is so much appreciated by connoisseurs. It has a beautiful colour in a cut-glass decanter. The conversation was a halting one. Each tried to be gay, each tried to forget the deep shadow that lay over that family gathering. When the old man's eyes wandered around the table as if in quest of some one whom he desired, but who was not there, a silence imposed itself on all, for all knew whom he was seeking and where that dear one was. In his buttonhole was H^lene's bouquet of violets, underneath which peeped HOPE IN QUEEN VICTORIA i6i out the rosette of the Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour — alas, in jeopardy ! We took coffee in the drawing-room. It was served on a table which stood underneath a fine portrait of Agnes Sorel, once the mistress of the- house. Facing us were two pictures of the inauguration of the Suez Canal. The furniture was covered with tapestries, mostly from the needle of the Countess. It was here that Madame de Lesseps told me of the old man's present life. "He has the fixed idea that the Queen of England will come and make all things right. He often rises in his chair and asks if Queen Victoria has arrived, and when any visitor comes he thinks it is she at last." Then blanching, the Countess added, "You think, sir, do you not, that he is in ignorance of what has happened ? You do not think that he has any suspicion ? Sometimes the dreadful thought troubles me that he knows all, and that, great-hearted gentleman that he is, he lends himself to this most tragic comedy that we are playing. I sometimes doubt. Would not that be terrible ? And again there are times when I am con- vinced that our efforts to hide all that is are successful. We give him last year's papers to read. I have had collections sent down. Formerly we used to cut out or erase parts which we did not want him to see, but he seemed to notice the alterations, and so we ordered down papers of a year ago. And it is quite pathetic to hear the remarks he occasionally makes. Thus a few days ago he called me to his side in high glee, and said how happy he was to hear that his old friend M. Ressman had been appointed Italian Ambassador to France, an event of more than a year ago. There are times, too, when he gets very impatient at being kept down here, II i62 TWEN'IV YEARS IN PARIS and what he misses chiefly is the French Academy. He is constantly telling me how anxious he is to attend, and I have ti) invent the sorriest fables to explain to him that the Academicians are not holding any meetings, as, for instance, that they'are all old men, and that they are taking a long hoHday." The Countess sighed, and said, " I do what I can, but that terrible doubt pursues me often. You see, he did know that the Panama affair had resulted in ruin. It is since he was called before that examining magis- trate, M. Prinet, that he has been as you have seen him. He must suspect something. How much w^e shall never know." Then she added, " He is constantly asking after Charles. He knows that he is in trouble, but we hope that he does not suspect what the trouble is. Before he was taken as he is, Charles had, to his knowledge, become involved in that Societe des Comptes Courants bankruptcy, which ruined him, and perhaps his father thinks that his son's troubles are in connection with that affair." Then the stepmother broke out into impassioned praise of the stepson : " The noblest heart ! He will suffer all, rather than let the slightest harm come to his father. He is a hero, a gentleman! — a hero, a hero! When he was here he told us what he had undergone, and said that he was willing to undergo ten times as much, so that his father be left unmolested, " It is strangers who send us expressions of their sympathy. Those whom de Lesseps has enriched have forgotten him. And yet I am unjust. I have had letters from people who risked their positions, their daily bread, in writing to me as they did. But not a single political man has written a word to express condolence with the A LAST VIEW OF DE LESSEPS 163 great patriot or with his family. They dare not. None of my letters are safe. Many of my friends have re- ceived my letters open. Many letters addressed to me have gone astray. It is dangerous to-day to be the friend of the man who gave a fortune to his country. "He sits there all day," she continued, "and reads his Souvenirs of Forty Years, the souvenirs which he has dedicated to his children. And at times he is quite his old self again ; but drowsiness is always coming upon him. Mon Dieu ! that he may be spared to us a little longer ! " Helene just then passed through the room. " There is a paper in papa's room," she whispered, " which I must take away. There is the word Panama upon it." Our conversation was held with bated breath, and the ill-fated word was scouted like an unclean thing. And whilst we were talking, the sunny, curly-headed Paul ran into the room and cried out, "Oh, do come and see papa ! Bou-Bou has jumped on to his shoulder and is picking his violets." We moved towards the door, and this was the last that I saw, or may ever see, of Ferdinand de Lesseps.^ Against the red background of the two-fold screen he sat, sunken asleep in his arm-chair, with the two volumes ^ I was never to see him again. He died about eighteen months later, with the resignation of a Christian martyr. As he lay on his death-bed, so I have been told, he looked like a young man again, with all the care and trouble wiped away from his noble face. Since then the children whom I had known as little ones have all grown up. Seven of them are married and have children of their own. Madame de Lesseps has now ten grandchildren. The youngest daughter, who was a baby in a pinafore when I visited La Chesnaye, has recently become engaged to be married. One could wish for no better memorial to the Great Frenchman than this large descendance, by whom his name will be handed down to the generations yet to come with the love and veneration which it so well deserves. i64 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS that tell the story of liis heroism in his lap, and on his shoulders perched a grinning Barbary ape, pulling at and munching the violets which Helene had picked for him, and which hid in his buttonhole his jeopardised rosette of the Legion of Honour. Around him stood his children, and it was sad to see, and sadder still to think, that, his family excepted, what holds this great heart and splendid gentleman in dearest affection is not the millionaire grown rich on his achievements, but a witless, speechless thing, that perhaps has feeling what a great and generous heart is here. CHAPTER XI Mon sieur Eiffel — Meetings with him in Elevated Spheres — His Visit to England — "A Magnificent Experience " — A Tribute to English Railways — The Firth of Forth Bridge — The Prince and the Engineer — The Eloquence of the Weather — " The Ascertained Average " — " Per ;^4o,ooo Life"— "The Most Remarkable Construction, bar none" — Edison and Eiffel — Eiffel's Modesty. IT was Monsieur de Lesseps who introduced me to Eiffel, and I saw a good deal of that famous engineer. A great many people who lost their money in the Panama Canal Scheme have very bitter things to say about him ; even his complete downfall and disgrace have not satisfied their rancours ; they are pleased that with his own hands he raised to himself, so hiofh that all the world may see it, a memorial tower which none looks at without remembering a certain verdict and a certain judgment. For my part I can only say that Monsieur Eiffel always impressed me as being a straightforward, plain- spoken business man, as full of energy as he seemed devoid of cunning. I cannot now believe that there was duplicity in his conduct towards Lesseps. I always knew him as a rich man, who could command any capital that he needed for any enterprise, and who had far more work brought to his office than he could possibly attend to. I have been in his company on many occasions, and I liked him better each time I saw him. I had a very sincere admiration for his quiet, determined air. He 165 i66 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS was the ideal type of tlie engineer, I never yet saw a I'Venchman who resembled him. It is true that his enemies say tliat he had no Erench blood in him. We met in society ; we met in the not less exalted sphere of his office at the very top of the tower, just under the lightning conductor, where one afternoon he entertained me, and gave me full technical details about this colossal undertaking. I also frequently saw him in his office in town, which was close to the expiatory chapel of Louis XVI., in a quiet street of that quiet quarter. His business premises occupied a whole house, which was home-like and English in its exterior appearance, and, like the man himself, quiet, reserved, and modest. On the door was a small brass plate with Eiffel's name upon it. The interior was luxuriously furnished ; one was impressed with the fact that this was the abode of a successful and prospering man. The entrance hall was thickly carpeted, and was gay with flowers and palms. The waiting-room was a very salon, most sumptuously furnished, the walls being hung with plans and designs of gigantic enter- prises, accomplished or under consideration. Footmen in livery were in attendance. An adjoining room was Eiffel's private office. It was soberly but richly fur- nished, and was similarly decorated with pictures of his triumphs over iron and steel, Eiffel's table was at the far end of this room, a plain working-table. His son-in- law sat opposite to him. Between them on the wall were all kinds of electrical apparatus for killing space and time I remember calling on him here one day shortly after his visit to England, whither he had gone, in company with other distinguished Frenchmen, to be present at the inauguration of the Firth of Forth Bridge. We had on that occasion a long conversation about A TRIBUTE TO ENGLISH RAILWAYS 167 this structure and about English . railways, in the course of which the famous engineer paid a very high tribute to our country. He spoke of his visit as " a magnificent experience," and he said, " What perhaps struck me most during my journey in England was the admirable arrangements which regulate your railway traffic, the special conditions of comfort that are to be found in railway-travelling in England, the rapidity of the trains, the easiness of the motion, the perfect disci- pline of the men, and the absolute regularity of the service throughout. In all these respects English railway-travelling compares most favourably with that in any other country that I know. I include France in the comparison. The speed of your trains is remarkable. I am sure that on my way to Scotland the average speed at which we travelled was forty-five kilometres, while at certain periods during the run it must have exceeded one hundred kilometres an hour. Well, even when we were travelling at the highest rate of speed the motion was one of delicious ease. There was no straining, no jolting, no sickening swaying from side to side. We ran as a sledge runs over level ice. Your railway men have suppressed the fatigue of railway travelling, and I was particularly grateful for the fact, for I was very tired when I set out for Scotland, having been hurried from the banquet-hall into the train, fen Mais ravi. As an engineer I was struck with the absolute regularity of the onward movement of the train, its perfect uniformity, showing the excellent construction of your iron roads. When a railway is badly constructed the traveller feels the changes in speed, now slow, now fast, and a very uncomfortable feeling it is. On the English railways that sensation is never experienced ! " The other day, when I was travelling in Poland, i68 TWRXTY YKARS IN PARIS EificTs words c;iinc I)ack to mc at c;ach nauseating roll and lurch of the train. One must go abroad to appreciate the good things that are in England. EitVcl was very enthusiastic about the Forth Bridge. He said, " I was very much struck by it. J'en dtais iout-a-fait frappcK And I may say the same of all my French colleagues. I consider that its construction in no single point leaves anything to be desired. It is a piece of work which does the greatest possible honour to English engineering, even without taking the special difficulties which stood in the way of the engineers into consideration. These were colossal. The high winds that sweep down the Firth at all times, the terrible agitation of the waters, the enormous distance from pillar to pillar. "The weather which we had on the day of inauguration opened our eyes to what your engineers had had to contend with. His Royal Highness said to me, while we were on the bridge : ' I am sorry, Monsieur Eiffel, that we can't offer you better weather for your visit.' I answered, ' Your Highness will allow me to differ. The weather could not be better for us. It shows us what difficulties were put in the way of the men who built this bridge.' " And, indeed, the howling of the winds and the hissing of the waters below were eloquent in the extreme of the skill and resolution of these men. Each hat that was blown away off some visitor's head was a bravo in their honour. And, apropos of the dangers and difficulties of the enterprise, there is another thing connected with this construction that shows how thoroughly competent were the engineers : the number of workmen who were killed during the carrying out of the work was much below the ascertained average." "THE ASCERTAINED AVERAGE" 169 I confess that I felt a shiver running over me as Eiffel said these words in his cold, matter-of-fact way. I gasped out, " The ascertained average ? " " Yes, it has been ascertained by statistical observation that in engineering enterprises, one man is killed for every million francs that is spent on the work. Thus, sup- posing you have to build a bridge at an expense of one hundred million francs, you must be prepared for the death of one hundred men. In building the Eiffel Tower, which was a construction costing six million and a half, we only lost four men, thus remaining below the average. In the construction of the Forth Bridge, fifty- five men were lost over forty-five million francs' worth of work. Here the average is much exceeded ; but when the special risks are remembered, this number shows as a very small one, and reflects very great credit on the engineers for the precautions which they took on behalf of their men." Some days later I met Eiffel at a dinner-party, and once more heard him talking of his visit. He was asked what had been his first impression of the bridge when it came in view. He said : " I had studied the plans and pictures of the bridge before I saw it, and so went prepared for a grand sight. But what I had imagined was nothing compared to the reality. My first impression was one of amazement. It was grandiose." A gentleman said : " What place would you give to the Firth of Forth Bridge among the great constructions of the world ? " Eiffel answered in a very decisive tone : ** The first absolutely ; the first, bar none. It is, I consider, the most remarkable construction that the world can boast of, and the most beautiful piece of work in metal that exists, not excepting our tower, from which, as Fowler I70 TWENTY VF.ARS I\ PARIS was good enough to say, some of the inspiration which guided the engineers was drawn. I take into con- sideration the importance of the construction and the difficulties that stood in its way. The excessive length, for instance, that intervenes between the several pillars. It is this, indeed, which is the most remarkable feature in the construction. There is nothing like it anywhere else. Owing to the extreme depth of the water, the number of pillars had to be a very small one, and conse- quently the span of each of the arches had to be very large, larger than in any railway bridge that has ever yet been constructed. Certainly there are longer bridges in the world, but the merit of this construction lies in the very great difficulties attaching to it," He was asked his opinion on the cantilever system, which since those days has been largely introduced into bridge-building in France. He said : " I have never made use of it myself in any of my constructions ; and, indeed, there is only one bridge in France where it was used, and that is the "V^iaur Viaduct, It is a beautiful system. The bridge grows out and out without scaffold- ings, each fresh part forming the scaffolding for the part that is to come next," A lady wanted to know what faults Monsieur Eiffel had to find with the Forth Bridge, Had his eye noticed any defect which might some day account for a terrible tragedy? He answered in his familiar decisiveness of tone : " None at all. I can predict no tragedies, I have no fault of any kind to find with it. I am con- vinced that it will fulfil its purpose in every way." "But I have been told," said the lady, "that it is the climax of what is ugly," "Is what is useful ever ugly.'*" answered Monsieur Eiffel. EIFFEL'S MODESTY 171 That evening he said to me : " I can hardly express how greatly I was gratified at the most cordial and kind reception that your compatriots gave me during my visit to England. It was touching in the extreme, and gave me more pleasure than anything that I can remember in the course of my career. The Prince was kindness itself; and then there were Mr. Fairbairn, of the Great Northern, and Sir Lowthian Bell, and Mr. Forbes, who were all most amiable. I was quite sur- prised to find," he added, " how popular I was in England. I had no idea of anything of the sort. Everybody seemed to take such an interest in my personality that I felt quite confused at times. Then there were photographers who wanted to take my photograph, and numbers of people wrote to me for my autograph, just as if I were a celebrity." I looked hard at Eiffel as he spoke these words, for I could hardly believe that he was speaking seriously. But no twinkle came into his eyes ; his manner was perfectly natural. Those words were typical of the man, and I often think of them, and regret that a man of such great achievements and such noble simplicity should have come to disaster. An Englishman who was at the dinner asked Eiffel what nation took the most interest in his tower. He said that the three nations who showed themselves most impressed by that construction were the Americans first, then the Russians, and next the English. He added that, unfortunately. Sir Edward Watkin had been ill when he was in London, for he had much wanted to talk to him about his projected tower, which was to be fifty metres higher than his own. He said that he was much interested in it, although he did not see that England had any reason to desire to cap his work in 172 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS Paris, for the Forth Bridge did that. No doubt since those words were spoken a good many people have regretted that Eifiel did not meet Sir Edward Watkin, and possibly dissuade him from embarking on his ill- fated scheme. Apropos of his remark that the Americans showed great interest in the Eiffel Tower, I was able to tell Monsieur Eiffel how delighted Edison had been with that construction. "I am glad to hear it," he said; " for when Edison lunched with me in my room at the top — you remember, the place where we took an apc'ritif together — he hardly spoke, and I must say I should have liked to hear his opinion." " Edison is not a maker of phrases," I said. *' I lunched with him on the tower, chez Brdbant. We naturally talked of it. Somebody said : ' 'Tis the work of a bridge-builder,' with something of a sneer in his voice. ' No,' said Edison decisively — ' no ; it is a great idea. The glory of Eiffel is in the magnitude of the conception and the nerve in the execution. That admitted, and the money found, the rest is, if you like, mere bridge-building. I like the French,' he added ; ' they have big conceptions. The English ought to take a leaf out of their book. What Englishman would have had this idea ? What Englishman could have conceived the Statue of Liberty?'" " If Monsieur Edison had said that to me," answered Eiffel, " I should respectfully have pointed out to him that the Forth Bridge is a much greater conception, and that it needed very much more nerve in its execution than my tower. But, all the same, I am much pleased to hear that Edison thought so highly of my experiment." " Yes," I said ; " but he added that New York was going to build a tower of two thousand feet in height. EDISON AND EIFFEL 173 'We'll go Eiftel lOO per cent, better,' he said, 'without discount.' " "Eh, bien!" said Eiffel very quietly, " nous verrons cela." And, as with some other announcements that the Americans have made, we are still waiting to see. It is a curious psychological fact that whenever the name of Eiffel occurs to me, the first thing of many things that he told me which comes into my mind is that cold-blooded statistical average which engineers have established for computing, besides the cost of an under- taking, the amount of workmen's lives which will be sacrificed, and, further, the number of widows and father- less children that will be created. It is necessary, indispensable, no doubt ; but the absolute certitude that any undertaking which progress or speculation may dictate must be cemented with so much human blood impresses me always as a very mournful circumstance. And when I read of wretched criminals who have killed men and women for the sake of some paltry plunder, my indignation against them knows no bounds. Joseph Aubert, for instance, who slew a man to rob him of about eight pounds : just the five-thousandth part of the market price of a man's life, according to engineering statistics. He merited all his punishment. One does not so outrageously cut the established rates. CHAPTER XII Thomas Alva Edison — How I made his Acquaintance — A Characteristic Letter — The King's Envoye — Count and Countess Edison — Edison's Opinion on Paris — A Dt'jeuner on the Eiffel Tower — The Simplicity of a Great Man — Edison on Electrocution — " What is Electricity, after all?" — Edison and Mr. Gladstone — His Opinion on Eiffel, President Carnot, and Prime Minister Tirard. AMONGST my most pleasant recollections of the Paris Exhibition of 1889 are the hours which I spent in the company of that great, simple man, Thomas Alva Edison. If he had never invented any- thing, if his nemie were not synonymous with some of the most marvellous inventions of human genius, if his life-story did not exemplify to what heights of wealth and influence the poorest lad may raise himself by means of certain gifts, and more particularly by means of certain qualities, such as pluck, perseverance, and total abnegation of self, he would still be the most delightful companion that a man could wish to meet. He is a big boy, full of fun and humour, simple, un- affected, and kind-hearted. He has the secret of perennial youth ; for though his hair is grey, there is not a wrinkle on his forehead. It can do no one any- thing but much good to be in Edison's society. I know that often when I have risen, depressed and dead in heart and hope, from reading the elegies of some modern Schopenhauer, I have thought, " Oh, why is Orange 174 EDISON'S PARIS MAILBAG 175 so many thousand miles of land and water away from here, and why can't I go to Edison and get him to tell me that life is a fine thing ? " When in the early part of August of that year I heard that Edison had arrived with his bride at the Hotel du Rhin, I determined that I must make his acquaintance ; and as I did not want to wait till I could get a letter of introduction to him, I wrote to him and asked him to let me come and see him. He was being inundated with letters at the time. As he told me after- wards, " An unpleasant recollection of Paris, when I ofet back home, will be that of the enormous number of cranks and crooks that there are here. You would be surprised to read some of the letters which I receive daily by the hundreds. I have given up looking at them at all. Some of these letters contained the strangest offers that you could imagine. Many were from in- ventors, who begged me to come to their places to give the last touches to some lunatical invention of theirs. There was one man who wrote several times. He had invented an electrical toothbrush or some such nonsense. But the bulk of them wanted assistance in another way. I have had hundreds of applications for loans from people of every description. The low flattery displayed in these letters is enough to sicken a man. It would have required an enormous fortune to meet all these demands. There was one young fellow who wanted me to allow him an income while he finished his studies. He hoped to get through with them in about ten years, at the end of which time he would be in a position to place a really valuable col- laborator at my disposal." The letter, however, in which, like Mr. Toots, I asked him for the pleasure of his acquaintance, brought 170 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS nic an immediate and most characteristic reply, which is reproduced on opposite page. " H6tel du Rhin, ••4.P''" Vend6me. " Friend Sherard, — "All right. Friday about 11 in mng. I'll be sane by that time. My intellect is now making 275 revolutions a minute. " Yours, Edison." The Edisons occupied the grand first floor of the fashionable hotel, and in more ways than one the simple inventor and man of genius looked out of place in the vulgar surroundings of wealth. Of course, one knew that the shabbily dressed, ascetic-looking man could, if he chose, write out a cheque which would have repre- sented the value of the house from ground to attic, with all that it contained, twenty times over, and the beautiful young bride had all the elegance of the wife of an American millionaire. But somehow one did not " place " Thomas Alva Edison amongst gilded furniture, with velvet curtains about him and lace hangings. He is the sort of man that one likes to see with a pen, or, better, with a pair of pliers in his hands and his shirt- sleeves tucked up. When I was ushered into the room I saw the master standing by the mantelpiece listening to an excitable little man who was dressed in the height of fashion and who was waving a box in his hand which looked like a jewel-case. He was speaking, so I heard, " in the name of humanity." He was addressing the " King of Science," and he was most verbose and gesti- culative. I liked Edison the man before I had exchanged a single word with him, for his delightful attitude face to face with the bore. His face wore the sweetest and kindest of smiles, and he was apparently HOTEL Du F^HIN 4,P" Vendome Jji ifew cLy\^^er\ cA/».^ IS irS TWENTY YEARS IX PARIS giving his entire attention to the man. I heard after- wards, however, that at such times, a certain deafness aiding, he is able to tix his thoughts elsewhere. Yet that certain ezarcment of which de la Rochefoucauld speaks is never to be noticed in his eyes. Colonel Gouraud. who at that time was Edison's London representative, and who was present amongst other people in the drawing-room of the Hotel du Rhin, drew me aside and said, " I may tell you something which Mr. Edison would never tell you. That gentleman who is talking to him is the Cavaliere Copello. He has just come to Paris on a special mission trom the King of Italv to Mr. Edison, bringing him the insignia of Grand Omcer of the Crown of Italy." " Sav. Gouraud." cried Edison, "let me see the letter that came along of the insignia." It was delightful to hear how he pronounced the last word. The tone was one of amused tolerance. The Minister's letter was as follows : '■ The presentation by Cavaliere Copello to the King, my august Sovereign, of the phonograph invented by your Signaria, produced the deepest impression on the mind of His Majesrv", who has recorded on the machine itself his greatest admiration. The King, in consequence, wishing; to give vou a well-merited testimonial of honour for the great scientific discoveries which are associated with your name, so universally known, has been pleased, of his own accord, to confer upon you the rank of Grand Officer of the Crown of Italy. I am happy to present to you herewith, on behalf of His Majesty, the insignia of this high honour, and reserve to myself to send you as soon as possible the Royal letters patent of the same. In the meanwhile deign to accept, etc. '• Rattazzi." COUNT AND COUNTESS EDISON 179 " This order confers upon you, sir, the title of count," said the Cavaliere Copello, " and on you. madame," he added, turning and bowing to Mrs. Edison, " the title of countess." I wished that a few representatives of European flunkeydom could have seen Edison's face when this announcement was made to him b}'^ the little Cavaliere. He actually laughed, much to Signor Copello's astonish- ment, and not a Httle to his confusion. A few minutes later I was able to get into conversation with him. I said : • I suppose, Mr. Edison, I must ask you what vou think of Paris ? " He said : " Oh, I am dazed I My head's all in a muddle, and I reckon it will take me at least a year to reco\er my senses. I wish now that I had come over in my laboratory- blouse, and could have gone about unknown and have seen something. The Exhibition is immense, larger than our Philadelphian Exhibition. So far,, however, I have set- very^ httle of it. Still, this morning I saw a tool which will save me six thousand dollars a year. It is a chisel worked by hydraulic pressure. I just saw it as I was passing by — iust a glance. I shall order some and send them out ; they will enable us to reduce our labour by eighteen hands. " What has struck me so far chiefly," he ccritinued. " is the absolute laziness of the people over here. When do these people work ? What do they work at ? I have not seen a cartload of goods in the strer:s s'r.ce I came to Paris. People here seem to have r?: blished an elaborate system of loafing. These er^:.-:s who come to see me. fashionably dressed, with walking-sticks in their hands, when do they do their work ? I can't understand it at all." I said : '• We know you are terrible for work yourself. iSo TWI'NTV YFARS IN PARIS We hear wonderful stories over here. You have the reputation of beine^ able to work for twenty-three hours .1 day lor an indefinite period." "Oh!" said Edison, smiling, "I have done more than that, haven't I, Gouraud ? As a rule, though, I get through twenty hours a day. I find four hours' sleep quite sufficient for all purposes." At that time Edison was perfecting the phonograph, and I think that he entertained hopes of its usefulness which have not since been realised. I remember his saying to me : " We have got the phonograph into practical form. Already eighteen hundred machines are in use in com- mercial houses, and our factories are now turning out forty complete machines per diem. I have also at last been able to make a perfectly solid mailable cylinder, which can go through the post for any distance without any risk of damage. All this has been very hard work. On the tools for making the phonograph alone we spent five thousand dollars. I have also created a small model — a pocket phonograph, if you like to call it so — the cylinder of which will register three hundred words, the length of an ordinary letter, which will be very practical for ordinary correspondence. The phonograph is being used in the newspaper offices, too. It is being used in the JVezu York World office. The machine is placed downstairs ; the reporters come in and talk to it ; then the cylinder is sent upstairs to the composing-rooms, and the compositors set up from its dictation. They attain much greater speed, make more ' ems ' an hour, than with the old system, and earn more money." I believe that since those days the phonograph has not been found practical for work of this kind, and that most literary men have been forced to abandon it. Robert Barr at one time used one in the Idler office, and Guy EDISON AND THE REPORTERS i8i Boothby was reported to dictate all his novels into a phonograph receiver. But amongst the presidents of the Republic of Letters the custom never obtained. The literature so produced was redolent of the contrivance, I asked Edison about his well-known kindness for newspaper men. He said : " I think the New York reporters are the smartest set of men in creation, and I am fond of them. Almost every Sunday I have a party of them down at my place, and some of them spend all the day with me. I take in two New York papers, and read every word of them." I may remark that Edison's kindness to newspaper men is so well known in New York that whenever a reporter who is attached to a paper on lineage or space rates is desperately hard up for copy, he goes as a rule to Edison, who is always ready to welcome him and to talk over what he is doing, and so help the journalist to write a column for his paper. This explains why one is con- stantly reading in the papers that Edison is going to do this or that wonderful thing. Some of the " boys " have been to Orange to see " old man Edison," have had a talk with him, and on their return to their offices have written out an imaginative account of the great scientist's projects, well knowing that, whatever absurdities they may put into his mouth, Edison is much too kind-hearted a man to contradict them. As a matter of fact, and such was my experience of him, Edison does not like to give information about ideas. It is at such times that his fits of deafness come over him, and he will deplore his im- possibility to continue the conversation. In him every- thing is so practical that it seems he cannot talk about what is phantom merely. It is the "what is" that interests him, and not the " what is to be." I think it would be well if this were generally known, iS2 TWKXrV YEARS IN PARIS because Edison's reputation has somewhat suffered over in Europe by the periodical publication in the papers of alleged boasts which he has made of wonderful things that he is going to do. The man is the least self- advertising of scientists ; he has never boasted of any- thing in his life, and if he does not contradict the predictions which are attributed to him, it is because he does not want to get some poor newspaper man into trouble. During the course of that morning I asked him about different projects which had been attributed to him, notably about the far-seeing machine, and of this he said : " I have heard that some European inventors claim to have preceded me in this, but I do not know anything about their inventions. My own machine is getting on very nicely." Then he added very modestly : " I don't think that it will ever be useful for long distances, and it is absurd to say that it will enable one to see things ten thousand miles away. In a city, however, it will be of practical use. I don't look for anything further — at least at present." The only time when I heard him predict was with refer- ence to his famous ore-extracting machine, but that was in one sense ay^zV accompli. He said : " It is going to be a great thing. Already we have eighty machines at work in the iron mines. It is, however, only as yet adapted for iron ore. I am studying the question of a machine for treating refractory silver ore and gold ore, and shall get them out by-and-by. Then we shall make more money." Edison talks of money with the respect of a man who recognises its potency as a factor in social and industrial dynamics. Personally he cares nothing for money ; per- sonally he has no use for it ; his wants are of the fewest. He could live comfortably on ten shillings a week — EDISON AND EMPEROR WILLIAM 183 indeed, he spends less than that on himself; and ii he seems pleased to earn huge sums, it is, firstly, because money proves that his ideas and inventions are popular and successful, and, secondly, because the possession of large wealth enables him to be lavish in experimenting. He is never prevented from testing an idea for the want of the money, and has spent millions in his laboratory on research. Mrs. Edison had invited the Cavaliere Copello to lunch with her and her husband on the Eiffel Tower, chez Brdbant ; and I was invited, too. Another guest was a strange young man who had written a book on Edison, and who clung to the inventor's coat-tails. It was this young man who afterwards told me that Edison had said that he would send me a phonograph as a present as soon as he got back to Orange. The phonograph never came, but I did not take that as a sign that the promise had never been made. It was a little joke of Edison's to promise phonographs to people, and then to forget all about it. The Americans were hugely delighted when they heard that the Emperor of Germany had reminded Edison, through his Minister at Washington, that he had led him to expect a model of the wonderful machine, and that Edison had answered His Excellency : " Yes, now I come to think of it, I did say something to the young man about sending him one." It seemed such a tribute to American democracy to forget a promise made to an Emperor, and to speak of him as " the young man." My ddjeimer with Edison on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower was one of the most pleasant meals it has ever fallen to my lot to share. I sat next to the great man, and we talked together all the time. " When we were on board ship," he said, as we sat down, " they put iS4 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS rolls and cottec on the tablt' for breakfast. I thought that that was a very poor breakfast for a man to do any work upon. But I suppose that one gets used to it. Still, I would like one American meal for a change — plenty of pie, for a change." He then smashed \\\s pclit pain with his fist. There were some shrimps among the hors (fceuvres, and he looked at them in a surprised fashion. He had never seen shrimps before. " Do they grow any larger ? " he asked me. I suppose that he imagined that they were the young of lobsters. When I told him that they did not grow, he said : " Well, they give a great deal of trouble for very small results." We talked of many things. The Tower, of course, came under discussion, and then Edison made the remarks which I quoted to Eiffel. What I did not tell Eiffel was something that Edison said about him personally on another occasion, for I knew Eiffel to be a modest man. What Edison then said was : " I met Monsieur Eiffel at a soirde he gave, and I think that he is just the nicest fellow that I have met since I came to France, so simple and modest. He is not looking very well. I daresay that it is his work and all the worries attending it that have worn him out. I was sorry to see him looking so bad, for he is a splendid fellow. He is going to give a lunch in my honour on the very top of the Tower before I go to Germany." To return to our dejeuner, I asked him what he thought about the system of electrocution which was then being proposed for adoption in New York State — a subject on which I afterwards made a careful inquiry amongst the leading scientists in Paris — when Edison's opinion was supported in a most striking manner. " It is Westinghouse's system," he said, " that is to be used for this business, and it is being employed very much EDISON ON ELECTROCUTION 185 against his will. He is indignant that his studies in electrical science should be put to such a use. I, too, as an electrician . , . But, then, I am against executions of any description. Put the men away, and make them work." Over the soles /rites somebody asked him if it were true that he had been experimenting in photography in colours. He said : " No, that is not true. That sort of thing is sentimental. I do not go in for sentiment. Carnegie does. Poor Carnegie has turned sentimental, quite sentimental. When I saw him last I wanted to talk to him about his ironworks. That is what interests me — immense factories going day and night, with the roar of the furnaces and the crashing of the hammers ; acres and acres of activity — man's fight with the metal. But Carnegie wouldn't talk about it. He said, 'All that is brutal.' He is now interested in, and will only talk about, French art and amateur photography." Edison's own views on French art he gave me on a subsequent occasion, when I had asked him if the pictures at the exhibition had pleased him. " Oh, yes," he then said, " they are grand art. I like modern pictures as much as I dislike antique stuff I think nothing of the pictures in the Louvre. I have no use for the old things ; they are wretched old things. Now the pictures in the Exhibition are all as new and modern as they can be ; they are good." As they brought in the Jilels Brdbant at the Eiffel Tower dc^jeuner, I asked him, mimicking little Paul Dombey on a famous occasion, " What is electricity, after all ? " Edison said : " It is a mode of motion, a system of vibrations. A certain speed of vibration produces heat ; a lower speed, light ; still lower, something else." i86 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS He was asked whether it was within the range of practical science to construct a machine which could be adapted to the head, and which would record one's thoughts, saving the trouble of speaking or of writing. Edison reflected. Then he said : " Such a machine is possible! But," he added, "just think if it were to be invented. Every man would flee his neighbour — flee for his life to any shelter." I asked him what were the true uses of electricity as applied to medicine. He said : " There is a great deal of humbug in all that." Just then the niaitre dliotel was pouring out the cradled Clos Vougeot, serving it with great exaggerations of precaution and almost ludicrous ceremonial. "And," added Edison, who had been watching him with an amused smile on his face, " there is a great deal of humbug about wine, too — and about cigars. Men go by cost. The real connoisseurs are few. At home, for fun, I keep a lot of wretched cigars made up on purpose in elegant wrappers, some with hairs in them, some with cotton- wool plugged into the middle. I give these to the critical smokers — the connoisseurs, as they call them- selves — and I tell them that they cost me 35 cents, apiece. You should hear them praise them." I said : " What you say about wines, Mr. Edison, is quite correct. Joseph, Vanderbilt's famous chef, told me that the man who pays more than a dollar a bottle for any red wine at even the finest restaurant in Paris is a fool, because you can get the best bottle of claret or of Burgundy for a dollar. When you select higher- priced wines on the list, you are paying for label and dust." " Is that the Joseph to whom Vanderbilt is said to be paying ten thousand a year } " he asked. When I EDISON AND THE SIMPLE LIFE 187 had answered in the affirmative, he remarked : " Bright's disease of the kidneys is all the dividend that that man will draw for his investment of capital." Edison, by the way, seems to delight in making use of commercial phrases. It is a treat to hear him pronounce the words " make money." Commerciality with him, as I have explained, is dignified and impressive, vulgar as it is with most men. Brebant's ddjetmer was rechei^-ch^ in the extreme ; but Edison barely touched anything. " A pound of food a day," he told me, " is what I need when I am working, and at present I am not working." And as just then a fresh course was brought in, he took advantage of the open door and slipped out. A minute or two later I found a pretext for following. I was looking about for him, when a waiter came up to me and said : " Monsieur cherche son pere ? Voila le pere de monsieur," and pointed to where Edison was leaning over the railing, gazing down at the people hundreds of feet below. He told me that he was cal- culating the vibration or swaying of the tower. He laughed when I had told him what the waiter had supposed, and asked me what I had answered. I said : " I told him that I was not le Vicomte Edison." " Say, Sherard," said Edison, " don't let them know in New York about that tomfoolery about the count and countess. They would never stop laughing at me in New York." I answered : " I am very sorry, Mr. Edison ; you ought to have warned me before. I cabled it to New York from the hotel just one minute after the announcement was made. They know all about it by now." He laughed very good-humouredly, and said: "Well, I suppose that I shall have to put up with it. They i8S TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS will be getting pictures out of me represented as an Italian organ-grinder with a crown on my head, and perhaps Gouraud as the monkey. No, I don't blame you. It was a ' beat,' and of course you couldn't miss it. Besides, our Italian friend will have it in every paper in Paris before the niyht is here." They had waited in the breakfast-room for Edison's return before serving champagne. After it had been poured out, toasts were proposed and drunk. Edison said to me : " The Cavaliere is profuse, but not so much so as another Italian gentleman who once proposed my health, and who remarked that even the chickens in his country knew my name. It's a regular sanatorium," he observed a moment later, "so much health being ladled out." Again : " All this is new and strange to me," alluding to the ceremonial of our festivities. " If I stay long in this country, I, too, shall soon be able to get up and make speeches and wave my arms about." When the coffee and cigars came in, his face brightened up. " Mr. Edison is beginning to breakfast now," said Colonel Gouraud. "Yes," said Edison, taking an Havannah, "my breakfast begins with this." Then, speaking of his habit of smoking, he added, " I don't find smoking harms me in the least. I smoke twenty cigars a day, and the more I work the more I smoke." I think it was Mrs. Edison who then remarked : " Mr. Edison has an iron constitution, and does every- thing that is contrary to the laws of health ; yet he is never ill." While we were smoking, the Cavaliere made a furious onslaught on his host, urging him to come to Italy, to be presented to the King, who was most anxious to see him. Science, Art, and Municipality would unite to do EDISON AND MR. GLADSTONE 189 him honour. Edison was very emphatic in his refusal of these honours. He shook his head, and Edison has a way of shaking his head which is a more decided negative than all the circles of the Greek artist. " No," he said, " my nerves won't stand it. I shall just go quietly back to the States from Paris. I shan't go to London, even, that most cheerful of places. I am all topsy-turvy in my head as it is." When I took leave of my hosts on that occasion, the Cavaliere was still urging his point and Edison was still shaking his head. I frequently saw him again in Paris, and about a month later, just before he was leaving for Berlin, I had another long talk with him at his hotel. I had found him looking rather pale, and I had remarked upon it. He said : " At first it was my head that worried me in Paris. I was quite dazed ; but now the worry is lower down — the effect of all these dinners. Another banquet, or whatever you call it, last night upset me dreadfully. And," he added, with a groan, " I have a whole lot more banquets to attend before I leave for Berlin. I am going there to see my friend Dr. Siemens, and after that I may visit Krupp's works at Essen. They seem very anxious for me to come." Mr. Gladstone was in Paris at the time, and I asked Edison if he had yet met him. He said : " No, I have only seen him across the road at the window of his apartment in the Bristol Hotel. I see, though, in this morning's Figaro that he has expressed a desire to make my acquaintance, and that both he and Mrs. Gladstone had left very pretty messages for me in one of my phonographs at the Exhibition." As to the Exhibition itself, he was not particularly enthusiastic. He said : " It is a sadly tiring place. The I90 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS machinery hall is too biq;, altogether too big, miles and miles too much of it. 1 have a headache when I even think of it. I can't say that I've seen a quarter of what is to be seen there, and I don't suppose that I ever will. So far as I have seen. I have not been struck by any novelty on a large scale. There are plenty of improve- ments in small things, clever little dodges, especially in the milling-screw machines, and many improvements in matters of detail, but nothing new in the way of inven- tions of whole machines. The French inventors, such as they are, seem to go in for detail." " Why do you say ' such as they are,' Mr. Edison ? " '■ Oh. they don't have inventors, in our American sense of the word, in Paris at all. They haven't any professional inventors here, as we have on the other side ; that is to say, men who will go into a factory, sit down and solve any problem that may be put before them. That is is a profession which they seem to know nothing about over here. In America we have hundreds of such men. I can't say," he added, speaking of the American Exhibition, " that ours is at all a creditable show. What there is good, but then there is just nothing ; it represents nothing. It represents American industry just as much as that cabhorse out there represents the animal kingdom. It is a one-horse concern altogether. I am quite of Chauncey Depew'sopinion on the subject. Depew said : ' The Ameri- can citizen drapes himself in the American flag as he enters the Exhibition by the Trocadero. After he has visited the American section, he takes off that flag and folds it up and puts it into his pocket.' That's just how I feel about it. I must say that the Eiffel Tower is grand, and, after that, what impresses me most is the machinery hall. It impressed me almost painfully on account of its im- mensity. I think that if they had made everything on a EDISON AND CARNOT 191 much smaller scale at the Exhibition, people would have enjoyed it ever so much more." Since my last visit to the Hotel du Rhin, Edison's drawing-room bore many outward signs of the popularity which he was enjoying in Paris. Baskets of the rarest flowers, floral offerings to Mrs. Edison, crowded every piece of furniture. A mass of beautiful passion-flowers half hid a model of the phonograph. A box of talking cylinders was almost invisible behind an enormous bouquet from Madame Carnot, choking as it were with Republican fragrance the voices of the numberless princes and potentates which lay bottled up therein. For Edison himself there were photographs of almost every man of note in Paris. There was a portrait of Monsieur Eiffel on the mantelpiece, one of Monsieur Tirard, the Prime Minister, on the sideboard, and one of President Carnot on the sofa. On each photograph was an autograph dedication, couched in most flattering terms. I asked him how he liked the President. " Very much," he answered. " Carnot is so simple and modest. He is an engineer, you know, and a very clever one too. He knows all about everything. I fancy that of all the thousands who have visited the Exhibition he is the man who has the best understood and appreciated it. He has been very friendly to me and said many things, flattering things, to me ; but he does not say much at any time. As to Prime Minister Tirard, I dined with him the other night, but I did not have any conversation with him. He is a political man, and I know nothing about politics." " Oh !" I said, " he is a watchmaker, too, and could have told you all about springs and movements and things of that kind." "Well, I didn't know that. I thought it was all the 192 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS political racket lliat w is in his head. I have been well treated here. Indeed, I have been greatly astonished at the cordiality of our reception. We have been treated with princely hospitality — rather too princely indeed for my comfort." Before I took my final farewell of Edison, he kindly asked me, in the event of my going to New York, to come and see him at his works. I have often since regretted that during my short stay in America I did not avail myself of this invitation and renew an acquaintance which had given me so much pleasure. But after my experiences at Ellis Island — to undergo which was the purpose of my voyage to the States — I had only one desire, as soon as I had written out my account of the way in which pauper aliens used to be treated in that place of detention — and that was to hurry home to Europe and a kinder world with all the speed that I could compass.^ ^ " Used to be treated." I had the good fortune to attract the attention of President Roosevelt to the abominable state of things then prevailing in Ellis Island by the published account of my experiences there. He ordered an immediate inquiry to be made, and, finding that the abuses, as I had described them, existed, in spite of all official repudiations of my veracity, appointed Commissioner Williams to carry out the most drastic reforms. CHAPTER XIII On Electrocution — Edison's Disapproval prompts a Close Inquiry — Unanimous Condemnation by Leading Scientists — The Executioner's View — Monsieur de Boer, Editor of U Electricite- — Monsieur Joubert's Experiments — Monsieur Cornu — " Science has no Place in the Shambles" — The Greatest Physiologist — Doctor d' Arson val — A Scathing Denunciation — " Impracticable, Illogical, and Uncertain" — Death only Apparent — Electrical Asphyxia a Hideous Torture — Dr. Brown- Se'quard's Opinion — Unanimous Accordance of German Scientists — American Indifiference — How I missed Fame and Fortune. IN the course of one of my conversations with Thomas Alva Edison, he expressed to me, in his usual emphatic manner, his disapproval, both as a man and as a scientist, of the proposed reform in the matter of capital executions in the State of New York. Since then electrocution has been practised in that State as well as in other American States which have followed its pernicious example, and to humanity is afforded the abominable spectacle of men being put to death by law in a manner uncertain, protracted, and cruel. In the minds of many people in the Old World the idea obtains that electrocution was only adopted in New York State, not because it kills in a speedy, absolute, and therefore merciful manner, but because certain New Yorkers desired at any cost to posture as in the very van of scientific progress. As, in spite of the continued opposition of true scientists, to say nothing of the humani- tarians, electrocution continues to be practised, and seems, 193 13 104 TWF.XTV YKARS IN PARIS after fifiecn years, to have acquired that fixity of tenure hv wliich e\en the most e\il things impose respect, it may be of service in enhghtening the public as to the real nature of this abuse to repeat some of the opinions on the subject of execution of criminals by this means which were expressed to me shortly before the bar- barous death of the murderer Kemmler. With Edison's remarks on electrocution very fresh in my mind, I was more horrified perhaps than most people by the dreadful prospect of the sufferings which that wretched man was to endure at the hand of his justiciaries, and I determined to consult on the question the leading scientists in France, and to lay their opinions before the people of America. I did not find one sing"le man of science who was not opposed to the use of electricity for the judicial destruction of life, and to-day, fifteen years after these horrible forebodings were realised, not one of the men whom I consulted has seen any reason to modify the opinions which he then expressed. Those opinions may be summed up in the words that electrocution is cruel and uncertain ; that no current is absolutely fatal ; that death by electricity, although, as in drowning, the patient dies from asphyxia, unlike drowning, is painful. I think that this is a matter of which the public should be reminded. The first person whom I sought out in the course of this inquiry was Monsieur Deibler, the public execu- tioner. I was determined to let no personal considerations stand in the way of making the case against this new form of torture as clear as possible, and it was as well that people should be forced to face the fact that this reform was one in which Schinderhannes took as keen an interest as any notoriety-seeking dabbler in the THE EXECUTIONER'S VIEW 195 sciences. Monsieur Deibler, who interrupted a game of la manille in his favourite cafe on the Boulevard Voltaire to talk to me, reminded me with some pride that he had " assisted at over three hundred executions," and then went on to give his opinion. It was that the New York Legislature was making a great mistake, " Une bourde, m'sieu, une vraie bourde, ce qu'on appelle une bourde," and that the Americans would find by experience that the new system would not work satisfactorily. He added that no means of execution can beat the guillotine, which he considered a perfectly painless form of death. He said that the real punishment of the condemned man comes when the news of his approaching end is announced to him, and that afterwards he falls into such a state of terror that he is really unconscious of all that ensues from the time he leaves his cell to the moment when the knife falls. Monsieur Deibler hoped to live to see the day when all nations, following the lead of France in this as in all other matters, would adopt the guillotine. Monsieur de Boer, the editor of the technical journal U ElectiHcite, then the principal organ of electrical science in France, said : " My personal objections to electrocution are based more on sentimental grounds. I consider electricity too beautiful a thing to be used in work of that kind. But, of course, that is an objection which would not weigh a feather weight with such practical people as the Americans. I may tell you that the subject is creating great interest in technical circles in Paris, and that we are all awaiting the result with great scientific curiosity. What will be Kemmler's manner of death ? We have frequendy talked about the matter in this office, and I have not heard one man express himself in favour of the innovation. Monsieur Joubert, one of the greatest of French electricians, who 196 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS was in here a ivw days ago. said that in three cases out of five in which he had experimented upon animals with the lethal apparatus — an apparatus similar, as far as he could judge, to the one that is in readiness for Kemmler's execution — the current had to be delivered twice before the desired effect was produced. What was a matter of little importance where rabbits were the victims becomes naturally of very serious importance indeed where the life of a human being is in question. We understand over here that in America it was considered that death inflicted by electricity would be much less painful than death on the gallows. I am not at all certain of the correctness of that opinion. I imagine that the passage of the current through the body of the condemned man will produce hellish torture. It is contended, I am aware, that death will be so rapid that the victim will feel nothing ; but this argument is urged by people who ignore the truth that to the man in the expectation of death time is infinitely longer than under ordinary cir- cumstances. One second to the man under the knife of the guillotine is a long period of suffering — a fact which is known to every physiologist who has studied the question. It is, therefore, nonsense to say that death by electro- cution will be as quick as it is painless." Both the Monsieur Joubert referred to above and Monsieur Maxime Cornu, one of the most distinguished professors of the College de France, spoke emphatically in favour of the old methods. Monsieur Cornu said : " I have a very great admiration for the inventiveness and the spirit of progress of the Americans. I fully appreciate the immense services that they have rendered to science in the domain of electricity, for example ; but I cannot congratulate them on this last departure. Science has no place in the shambles. If the death penalty has A UNANIMOUS DISAPPROVAL 197 to be inflicted at all, the old methods are decidedly- preferable. I have not heard a single one of my confreres express a contrary opinion. We look upon this experi- ment as a costly farce. I am aware that some people contend that it is being done from a merciful feeling, that electrocution has been invented expressly to accelerate the death of the condemned man ; but surely the gallows, the guillotine, and the garrotte effect their purpose admir- ably. After all, the death-penalty is intended as a punishment, and I ask why should its penalty be diminished when at the same time a great danger is incurred that the condemned man may be unnecessarily tortured ? I confess that I have not looked into the matter as closely as I might have done, but the con- victions which I have expressed are very strong ones with me, and nothing that I have read on the subject has induced me to alter them one jot." The opinion, however, to which I even then attached most importance, was that of Doctor d'Arsonval, of the College de France, who to-day ranks as one of the fore- most physiologists and electrical scientists in the world. In 1890 he was still pr^parateur to Doctor Brown- Sequard, and this fact may have detracted a little from the value of the most emphatic declaration which he then made to me on this important question. For at that time Brown-Sequard had excited considerable ridicule in the scientific world by the failure of the serum of perpetual youth which he imagined himself to have discovered. He had announced to the world that in his laboratory he had been able to compose a fluid which, when injected into the feeblest and least virile of old men, would produce upon them all the happy effects that in the Middle Ages were attributed to the waters of the Fountain of Jouvence. 198 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS It can be readily imagined that here was a topic which lent itself to the purposes of the prurient wit of the boulevards. The laboratory in the Rue Claude- Berniird, where great things had been done, and where under d'Arsonval still greater things were to be done, was at that time, to some extent, under the ban of public opinion. Otherwise, I cannot see how after such a pronouncement as the one I am about to quote, from a scientist of d'Arsonval's standing, the purpose of the American experimenters could have survived a single hour. " I am entirely opposed to the plan of executing human beings by electricity," he said. " I consider it impracticable, illogical, and above all uncertain. This is also the opinion of every one of my confreres with whom I have spoken on the subject. I do not deny that death can be produced by means of these appliances, but not definitely in every case. Electricity applied to the human body produces death either by direct action (that is, by the disruptive effect of the discharge in the nerve tissues) or by reflex or indirect action on the nerve centres. The effects are greatly varied, and have been fully explained by my friend and master, Doctor Brown-Sequard, under the names of inhibition and dynamogenics. This simple distinction, which is estab- lished by a most careful study of the facts, has a practical value in this respect, that in the first case insensibility is fatal and definite, while in the second case, as my experiments have shown me, the patient can be brought back to life. The only cases in which I have been able to produce death irrevocably have been where I have laid bare the spinal cord and have applied the current directly to the naked mass. Of course, it will not be practicable for the executioner to do that, and it would be infinitely simpler for him just to thrust the knife into the DEATH ONLY APPARENT 199 spinal cord. That would have exactly the same effect as the electric current, namely, it would disorganise the nervous tissues so completely as to cause death." " But," I said, " you have produced death ? " " Yes," said Doctor d'Arsonval gloomily, " if you like to call it so." " How ' if you like to call it so ' ? " " Death is only apparent in these cases. In every instance it was within my power to bring the victim back to life by practising artificial respiration upon the body. Suppose that I have electrocuted two big dogs. I leave one alone and begin to practise artificial respira- tion on the other. In a few minutes the latter regains consciousness, and soon is as well as if he had been saved from drowning. The former dies from exactly the same cause which kills the drowning man — that is to say, from asphyxiation. I have thus killed and brought back to life again the same dog ten times running. At the end of the experiments he was just as well as before I commenced them. One might make this sentimental objection to execution by electricity, that it will be terrible for the executioner, and those who back him up in his horrid work, to know that after the body has been removed from the lethal chair, they can, if they choose, recall their victim back to life. I cannot determine exactly how long it takes before the asphyxiation does its work and the victim finally succumbs, but I believe that it is a very long while in many cases, I base this theory on the fact that persons who have been a long while under water can be restored to life by the means I have mentioned. For my part, I have always applied the restorative treatment immediately, and, as I say, I have never once failed in bringing the animal back to life and health." 200 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS " Is it absolutely certain," I asked, " that death by electricity is caused by asphyxiation ? " " The remedies which cure asphyxiation restore life to the man who accidentally, or the animal who purposely, has been submitted to the electric shock, and when I have dissected the bodies either of animals or of men who have succumbed to this shock, administered by any known dynamos, I have been unable to find any traces other than those which are left by asphyxiation. Thus the heart is always found to be in a state of complete contraction. Of a disorganisation of the nerve tissues there is little or no vesti^^e." " But just now you said that in one or two cases, by using certain machines, you had been able to produce absolute dissolution ?" " That was when I was fortunate enough to apply the current so that its effect was produced directly on the bulb or brain centre — a circumstance which occurs so irregularly that it can be described as of anything but certain effect. The practical objection against the proposed plan is this : So much apparatus is needed for such a purpose, a steam-engine, a battery, an electrician, besides the hangman, and I do not know what else besides. It is much too complicated. The guillotine attains the same result so much more simply. Here in France we think that it is morbid curiosity that prompted the Americans to take this resolution." I remarked as to the uncertainty of death that surely lightning killed instantaneously. "Yes," said Doctor d'Arsonval, "so it does; but there is no battery made by the hands of man which has the force of lightning. A shock like that is, of course, enough to disrupt all the centres and to produce death. But there is no battery yet constructed, and I might A HIDEOUS TORTURE 201 almost say constructable, which is able to produce any- such effect." I told the doctor that many of the physiologists with whom I had conversed on the subject had expressed the opinion that death by electricity is very painful. " Do not call it death by electricity," he said. "You should call it death from asphyxia caused by electric shock. Then I am of their opinion. I imagine that no more hideous death than this can be inflicted, and I will tell you why. Electrical asphyxia, as I may call it, does not resemble death by any other kind of asphyxia. In almost every case of asphyxiation, other than by electric asphyxia, consciousness is entirely suspended, and the victim glides insensibly from life to death. Electrical asphyxia resembles far more the asphyxia caused by the poison curare with which the Indians used to tip their arrows. This poison produces in its victim complete immobility. Every motive power in his body is paralysed. He cannot breathe ; he cannot move a muscle. But he retains his consciousness to the end. He sees, he hears, he feels, he knows everything that is going on around him. There is no greater mistake than to imagine that the absence of movement in electrified people denotes a loss of feeling. " I have experimented with curare on dogs, and have found the effects to be identical in every respect to those produced by asphyxia from electrical shock. Here also I have been able to restore the victim to life by practising artificial respiration. I have thus experi- mented ten times running on the same dog. As I say, the effects are exactly the same, and in both cases death is produced by asphyxiation. In the one case — namely, that of poisoning by curare — we know for a fact that consciousness is not suspended, and this allows us to 202 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS fear lh;U in the case of electrical asphyxia the same phenomenon is produced. Is it not terrible to think that, when the condemned man is removed from the lethal chair, he may be as fully conscious of what is going on around him as any man present in the execution chamber ? I, for my part, believe that he will be so, unless by rare good luck the executioner has been able to determine the right spot on the man's head against which to direct the current — namely, that which corresponds exactly with the bulb. This, of course, differs on every head. " And is it not more terrible to think that this fearful torture of death in life may be prolonged for many hours ? The victim will see the preparations being made for his own post-mortem ! No, I am most decidedly opposed to this innovation. I consider it neither practical nor humane, and, above all, it is uncertain. That is the opinion of us all. Only a day or two ago Doctor Brown-Sequard said: ' It is scandalous that an unknown agent should be used for such a purpose.' The responsibility of the men who passed that Bill and the responsibility of the men who will carry out its provisions is indeed a terrible one." In Germany the unanimous opinions of all the lead- ing scientists was in full accordance with that expressed in France. Our protest, however, was without avail. Kemmler's martyrdom followed closely on the broadcast publication in America of d'Arsonval's terrible indictment of the new method ; and who has forgotten, even after fifteen years, the sickening details of his prolonged torture and agonising death ? The leading Americans themselves, whom I used to meet in Paris — men of standing in many fields : poli- ticians, Senators, and Congressmen, ex-Secretaries of AMERICAN INDIFFERENCE 203 State, Ministers on their way to their embassies, pro- minent editors, princes of finance, the most famous men and women of letters — seemed, when I asked them for a disavowal of the abominable system which disgraced the State of New York, to consider that people who got so low down in the world as to be eligible for the electric chair were people about whom it was really a waste of time to trouble one's head. In a commercial country the man who has failed and is bankrupt ceases to be a man of any account whatever ; and what more deplorable schedule of bankruptcy can a wretched man file than one in which he cannot even set down a right to existence as an asset ? It was impressed upon me in some cases that the people who spoke to me had no sympathy to waste on persons of such very small social importance. In other cases I found that never a thought had been given to the matter, and ** That so ? " was all the comment that was elicited when I repeated what d'Arsonval had told me of the horrors of the electric chair. I must not omit to mention, as an illustration of the ethics of the new journalism, that when I told the editor of the paper in which I printed the protest of the French scientists, that d'Arsonval had offered to electrocute me and restore me to life, thus pledging his reputation on the truth of his theory that death was only apparent, and consciousness was fully retained during asphyxia by electric shock, and giving me a splendid opportunity of proving my case against the system which we were denouncing, the editor said : " Well, and why didn't you tell him to go ahead ? That would have made a good story for the paper. It would have been a scoop, and it would have been suitably remunerated." CHAPTER XIV Ernest Renan— On Future Punishment — The Genesis of the Idea — Its Development— The BeHef of the Romans— The Inferno of the Bud- dhists—Ernest Renan as a Man — His Home in the College de France — A Man of Many Books — His Opinion on the Naturahsts— Renan and Daudet. ONE of the distinguished Americans to whom I repeated what Monsieur d'Arsonval had said about the tortures which a man under electrocution must endure, remarked in an offhand way that as a convicted murderer was bound in all justice to go to hell, these tortures would be a sort of preparation for him, " a kind of letting him down gradually." It is because the subject of electrocution has re- minded me of this that I am led to think also of a long and interesting conversation which I once had — it was in 1892 — with Monsieur Ernest Renan about that place of future torment which we know by the name of Hell. Renan denied that we have any Old Testament authority whatsoever for believing in the existence of such a place. I remember that on calling on him that day in his rooms at the College de France, I said to him : " Master, I have come to talk to you about hell. You are being much criticised in England for your writings and your unbelief. In no country is the odium theologiami so strong as in England, and it has been poured forth upon you." 204 ON FUTURE PUNISHMENT 205 He smiled and raised his shoulders, and smiled again ; then deprecatingly stretching forth plump, beauti- ful white hands, he said : " We must blame nobody for absurdity of religious beliefs. There are things in religion which are infantine in their absurdity. But tradition, atavism, education, aye, and patriotism, will make even enlightened men accept — where religious belief is concerned — things at which in everyday life they would be the first to smile. That explains why men who are justly reputed to be master-minds are really true believers. It is not hypocrisy on their parts ; they are sincere. Family traditions, atavism, and patriotism create their faiths." " Since when have people held this dreadful creed of future punishment — this belief in hell ?" I asked. " Since about one hundred and fifty years before the birth of Christ. The Jews of the Old Testament had no belief in a future state ; at least, you will find no allusion whatever to either the future punishment of the evil or the future beatitude of the good in the Old Testament. The reason of this was, no doubt, that up to the period which I mention the Jews were fairly happy. But in 175 b.c. Epiphanes Antiochus came and persecuted the Jews terribly. Then they suffered horrors of gibbet and sword, of torture and fire, and many of them were martyred. It was then that the belief arose that those who had suffered martyrdom should in after-life be compensated for their terrible sufferings, whilst to the executioners and torturers, the valets of Epiphanes, future punishment should be dealt out. The hankering after a quid pro quo is a primary factor in the Judaic psychology. Each man, they thought, must get his fair share of good and of evil. Those that suffered on earth should have compensation 2o6 TWEXTV YEARS IN PARIS in a future state, while those who were happy here and made others suffer shouKl in ihcir turn have to undergo pain hereafter. It may thus be said that it was between the years 175 and 163, that is to say, some time during the reign of Epiphanes Antiochus, otherwise Antiochus I\^, that the world saw the genesis of that terrible idea of future punishment which has terrorised the civilised world ever since." " Had not heaven, the idea of heaven," I asked, " its genesis simultaneously — that grand idea of future happiness which has kept the poor and oppressed so patient and submissive ever since ? " '' Yes, simultaneously that idea arose. Future suffering for the torturers, Antiochus and his crew ; and for the tortured, the persecuted and martyred Jews, future happiness. A squaring of accounts." " Eternal beatitude for these ; for those, eternal pain." " Not a bit of it. The Jews could not conceive eternal life in any form for a finite being. Eternity, in their belief, was alone the prerogative of Almighty God, the Eternal Being. Opinions varied as to the duration of the beatitude which should be enjoyed by those who had suffered on earth. Some thought that it would last four hundred years ; others maintained it would be for a thousand years. None hoped for eternal beatitude." " Then in this respect also," I said, " humanity, an inch being granted to it, has ended by taking an infinity of ells ? " " As humanity will do under all circumstances. How far are the hopes of the believer of to-day from the hopes of the Jew of one hundred and fifty years before Christ, who only looked for seven lifetimes of THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IDEA 207 happiness ! Appetite has come to us while eating. None to-day would be satisfied with the prospect of a thousand years of beatitude. All expect to be happy for ever and ever. In the nine hundred and ninety-ninth year all would revolt, raise barricades in Paradise, and insist on a renewal a perpdtuitd of the awarded felicities." " But," I remarked, " the promises and the menaces of the Lord Jesus ? " Renan bowed his head. Then he said : " They were a continuation — a development of the ideas current among the Maccabeans, the genesis of which I have exposed to you. The formulae given in the Gospels are an extension of similar formulae to be found in such works as The Book of Enoch and The Assumption of Moses. Christ's menaces were a consider- able development." " Why do you say that, niditre ? " *' Because the original idea of punishment was less a state of suffering than one of complete annihilation. The wicked man was to be crushed out, while the good man was to enjoy from four hundred to a thousand years of felicity. At the same time the idea of annihilation was not generally accepted. Many people liked the idea that others would be in a state of suffering in the after-life, so that their own state of felicity might be, as it were, increased by the contrast. It was to make a contrast possible, for the sake of a comparison." "Was it held that this state of suffering should be eternal ? " " I have already said that the Jews, from whom the Christians have inherited their beliefs, could not conceive an eternity for men, believing that state to be alone the prerogative of the Almighty.' 2oS TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS " And whence iirosc the idea tliat there would be burning in hell — fire in hell ? " "It was thought that the pain of burning was the most atrocious pain that could be endured by the body, and so it was applied to the soul. I have said that in matters of religion none should be astonished at the utmost childishness of belief. But the germ idea of this form of punishment may be found in the sacred Book of Isaiah, which is not contained in the Bible, and which was written during the time of the Captivity. And the fire and the worm of the later belief were doubtless inspired by recollections of the worship of Moloch, before whom children were sacrificed in burning braziers. The Valley of Gehenna, near Jerusalem, a sort of Montfaucon, where corpses were left to rot — 2^ pourrissoir — and where fires burned to clear the pestiferous air, did also suggest the idea of a terrible place of punish- ment, a place where Vermis eorum non moritur et ignis non extinguitur." " Why," I asked, " was hell supposed to be below the surface of the earth ? Surely to the ignorant the region of fire is where the lightning is ? " '* It had to be placed somewhere. Above, in the bright azure of the beautiful skies, was naturally the place of beatitude. Nor was the presence of subterranean fire unknown, for the volcanoes were proof of its existence. For contrast, also, heaven above, and hell, consequently, below." " But did not the Romans entertain any idea of a place of punishment after death ? " " Not the cultured, not the intelligent. The ignorant possibly may have done so. To the cultured the stories of Ixion, Tantalus, and the other sufferers appeared as they THE BELIEF OF THE ROMANS 209 do to us — creations of poetical minds. Amongst the cul- tured, at the most, existed indifference and doubt. What does Tacitus say ? ' Si, ut sapientibus placet, non cum corpore extinguantur magnae animae.' 'If, as it pleases the learned to say.' ... Is not that an immense shrug of the shoulders ? Such was the general attitude amongst Romans who thought. The vulgar very possibly be- lieved in Styx and Tartarus and the tortures that the poets spoke about." " But amongst other peoples ?" " Yes, there were the Buddhists." " Ah, yes ! they looked forward to an ultimate Nirvana." " No, only the cultured Buddhists did that. But the ignorant, the vulgar, the general had an idea of a place of future punishment of which we know many pictorial representations to have survived. These pictures, frescoes mostly, show us that the vulgar, un- cultured Buddhists believed in a place of future punish- ment which very closely resembled the Inferno described by Dante. You remember the lines : Quivi sospiri, pianti ed alti guai Risonavan per I'aer senza stelle, Perch'io al cominciar ne lagrimai. Diverse lingue, orribili favelle, Parole di dolore, accenti d'ira, Voci alte, e fioche e suon di man con elle." " Where did Dante get his ideas of Inferno from ?" I asked. " They were the current ideas of his time — the ideas of hell which were current in the thirteenth century, as is shown by the numerous paintings which existed con- temporaneously with Dante in the churches in Italy. And now let me say that almost as long as humanity 14 2IO TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS has existed there h;is been entertained the hope that the wicked — that is, the man who made one suffer — would eventually be served out. Man has ever considered himself a beast of burden, on whose back the wicked rains down blows with a cudgel. He has always hoped that, if he never should be able to serve the wielder of the cudgel out, yet somehow or somewhere the latter should suffer in his turn. ' Un jour viendra qui tout paiera ' is the expression of a hope which is almost coeval with mankind." "And about purgatory?" " Traces of the idea of a middle place can be found in the writings of early Christianity. But it was in the Middle Ages that the belief in purgatory became general. An espece de moyen terine was wanted. It was found useful to have a place for those who had sinned moderately, a place of expiation for peccadilloes, a place for those who could not be damned outright. But it was chiefly to the rapacity of the Church that the invention of purgatory may be ascribed. It was a speculation on the part of the priests — an excellent speculation, I may add ; for no invention of human ingenuity has brought in more money than this. You see, a soul in purgatory could be released by so many masses at so much a mass. Gold poured into the coffers of the Church — legacies, indulgences, all the tricks. " It is all so simple and all so obvious," he added, "and yet people appear to be very angry with me, and assail me with letters. Not that these letters are usually controversial. No, they need no answer ; they merely make statements. I cannot tell you how many letters I have received of late in which was the simple assertion, ' There is a heaven ' (// y a wi Paradis), heavily underlined." THE CHRISTIANITY OF RENAN 211 Ernest Renan was, of course, no believer in the divinity of Christ ; but he loved Him and followed His laws naturally, without any hope of a reward hereafter. He was one of the truest Christians that I have ever met ; but, as a matter of fact, it has been my general experience in life that the best and worthiest disciples of Christ are more often to be found among those who do not see in Christianity more than a philosophical system. Ernest Renan was the simplest of men. From his universal reputation and the great success of his books he derived no vainglorious emotions. The praise of the humblest gratified him as a tribute of which he was unworthy. I remember telling him on the first occasion on which we met that his Vie de J^sus had long been with me a livre de chevet. He really was pleased at this meagre tribute from me. " You are very kind ; you are very kind, sir," he kept repeating, and he looked gratified, and he put his beautiful little white hand on mine as he talked. I have known authors, very far removed from his celebrity, who have appeared to resent any praise of their books, giving one the impression that they held that no words could adequately convey a description of the merits of the works. Renan had the Christian regard for the humble, for the little children of the Scriptures. He respected poverty ; indeed, he lived and died poor himself, although he might have been a very rich man. An offer was made to him of 1,000,000 francs if he would give a certain complexion to the history of the Jews not warranted by historical fact. He naturally refused the bribe, and in other ways, too, he showed his contempt for money and possession. When he died he was so poor that the nation had to pension his widow. I was a frequent visitor at his home. He lived on 212 TWENTY YEARS IN PARIS the second floor of the Kcolc tie France. His apartment looked out on the quadran