y^k^ ■•Si*, r*,- v' ^■* ' ,.>1.s A- ■^^» ■s^P- ?* H * -*^ iS^ ■ r\s^ ^^i^■>^s^-"'VI' yi!^^:i»«^J^^^5^^ '^"t^^j -« 2fAI^|j:L:E'D:i=f filliDU^lIH^ iriEII lILIPg. li EMINENT Orators of France BY T 11^1 ON, iVISCOUNT DE CORMENIN.) TRANSLATED FROM THE XIV™ PARIS EDITION. NEW EDITION. I LLUSTR ATED. PIIILADRLIMIIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 1880. CONTENTS. PAOl Editor's Advertisement, ........ vii Translator's Preface, ........ ix An Essay on the rise and fall of eloquence in the French Revo- lution, ......... XV CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY MlKACISATr. • . . 1 THE CONVENTION. Danton. . ..,,»,.,, SI THE EMPIRE. Kapoli:on Bonapartk. . . . > ■ 60 THE RESTORATION. M. Dk Skure 102 Genep.al Foy. . 11? Benja.min Constant. 123 RoYER-Coi.I.AKD. . ....... 133 Manuel ..... HC REVOLUTION OF JULY. Gaii\il:k-Page.s. ........ 151 Casimiii-Pekif.k. ........ 174 Sauzei, Pcsjilcnt of the ChiinibLM- of Deputies. . . 181 Gk.nkkai. Lakayktte. ....... 192 Odillon-Bakkot. . 199 M. DupiN 21 fi vi C O N T E N TS . REVOLUTION OF JULY— (continued.) Fagb M. Bekryer ... 229 Lamartine 241 GuizoT. 263 M. Thiers 286 O'CONNELL • . . . 314 BIOGRAPHICAL ADDENDA. MiRABEAU S27 Danton. 354 Benjamin Constant. ....... 362 RoYER-CoLLARD. ^^65 Lamartine. ..... .... 367 Gttizot. . ..... , . 373 Thiers. » . . 378 .O"'!' TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. Two or three objects have been principally contemplated in the introduction of this celebrated book to the American public : they relate to the Nature of the subject, the Execu- tion of the original, and the Aim of the translation. The importance of the Oratorical art it would doubtless be superfluous to urge upon a community wherein, daily, even its semblance is seen to command that political considera- tion which is accessible only to birth, or to fortune, or (but rarer alas!) to wisdom, in other conditions of society : of its productive value, at least in this personal respect, our read- ers are all sufficiently sensible. But the urgency, espe- cially of the public interest, for something more of the real- ity^ is felt, perhaps, not so generally ; and by fewer still con- ceived, the proper mode and means of attaining it. To such a situation and purpose nothing could well be more suitable than the treatise of de Corrienin ; as sliould, indeed, be expected from a man of European distinction in nearly all the qualifications, practical as well as theoretical, for the task. Of the two Parts, into which it is divided, the present publication contains but the Second. The First lays down the Principles and Precepts, and in the several species of eloquence, the Forensic, Military, Pulpit, Popular as well as the Parliamentary — including, also, the '■ xa,/.!"'<" of par- ties, of deliberative assemblies, of Opposition and Ministerial policy; all which the Portraits, here presented, were meant to illustrate by example, in a corresponding series. And this was the methodical arrangement, uiufoubtedly. But the inverse order is better adapted, probably, to the readers of this translation. And, at all events, the c(iiinl('r|iart may lie expected to follow soon — composing a volinne of nearly equal size. X translator's preface. Besides the interest of the matter, the work presents, r.yiore. over, in its method and style, a consummate model, espe- cially for political writing, that is to say the writing which is long to remain in chief request in our country. This fea- ture must be obvious ".o the least instructed of the readers. It is, in fact, as a writer unapproached in the combination of dialectical precision with amplitude of view, of pol- jshed and even courteous elegance of lantjuage with the most truculent severity of invective, and of picturesqueness of expression with profundity of thought — it is for this that the author's name, or rather pseudonyme, is renowned, in even Europe, rather than for his qualities, scarce less eminent, as statesman and jurist. But more express than his gen- eral example, we are furnished, in the didactic part alluded to, with a chapter devoted to the regular institution of polit- ical writing. To evince the deplorable need of amendment in this par- ticular also, it is not necessary, and were invidious, to go into the actual character of this principal branch of our lit- erature. If it have any, one might describe it — a confused compost of the hacknied and half-obsolete forms and phrase- ology of British journalism and politics, always without sys- tem, frequently without signification, utterly without style. Evidence of this will occur, indii-ectly, in the following pages, where care has been taken, with this very view, to render several terms of the original, chiefly political, ac- cording to reason and the analogy, rather than the corrupt practice, of our idiom. And if the reader, when his atten- tion shall probably be arrested by such as '' strange," will, instead of dismissing them for French fantasies, but compare (hem intelligently with the word he would have expected according to popular usage, he will find this- contrast open curious gleams into the real condition of much of our politi- cal and juridical terminology. It must be suggestive tohim of still more than this. He will doubtless proceed to ask himself, how the French, a people so much younger politi- cally than the English race, have yet already come to be translator's PREFACE XI our masters in the dialects of politics and of administration, as well as of fasliion and cookery ? The inevitable an- swer will lead him to generalize his inference of defective- ness, from a special aepartment, to the body, of our language ; and will, at the same time, strikingly exhibit, by results of fact, what is so difficult of direct demonstration — the im- mense and universal advantages of a logical and scientific superiority of language. To direct the thoughtful reader's attention to this compar- ative deficiency, not alone of our political, but also of our popular and literary vocabulary, was the third object, above- mentioned, proposed by this publication. Or rather, it was to inculcate by a slight example, the most efficient, perhaps, or at least the most available mode of gradually supplying it — I mean intelligent translation. Translation amongst us — and the reproach may be extended to England — since it has become a mere handcraft, is but a wretched travesty, at least in books of the aesthetical kind. Especially is this the case with versions from the French, in consequence chiefly of the disparity of development alluded to, between the lan- guages. Now, this mutilation, besides the implied insult to the " reading public" and the flagrant outrage upon the au- thor, IS censurable, moreover, in neglecting, in abusing, this excellent means of amending and enriching the vernacular language, excellent especially when the dialect of the origi- nal is, like the French, the more advanced. But the ex- cuse is ready and recognized. Idiomatic expressions arc to be insurmountably reverenced, says one of those pedantic superstitions which, in language, as well as law, politics and the rest, would ever have the manhood of the mind still move in the go-car of its infancy. To hear the herd of our critics descant upon, as beauties of the language, what are real! v badges of its barbarism — necessarily vulgarities of the populace before they became refinements of the purists — do you not fancy a crowd of cripples who, though now quite healed by the unconscious overflow of tlie Siloan wa- ters of advancing science, should not only pei-»ist in using xii translator's preface. the crutches instead of their legs, but limp about priding themselves upon their enlightened preference, and preaching it to all around ? But the subject is too large for this place. Be the prin- ciple as it may, to any one really competent to translate (an accomplishment by the way not so common perhaps as most people think) these peculiarities of expression can offer lit- tle or no difficulty, in dialects come, to the stage of matu- rity to own a literature worth translating. To explain briefly : Idioms, as they take rise from an extremely con- crete state of the language, so tend to disappear with its proficiency in generalization ; thus we find no idioms in the language of philosophy and science. In the merely literary and popular phraseology, the epuration proceeds variously, according as they are idioms of phrase, or only o^ terms. The former begin to drop off at an earlier stage of logical refinement, and fall into utter disuse. Already, no English writer would venture to use the greater part of even the famous idioms of Addison, though still cant- ing about them, mechanically, as the last perfections of the language. And amongst ourselves, what educated writer or talker now employs the American idioms of Sam Slick, for example? — which, however, would no doubt have been, to- day, in a fair way of becoming the Addisonian elegancies of our men of letters, had our society been left, in anything, to the natural growth, and had not the language especially been under the wholesome control, or the nipping criticism, of British literature. Inaccuracy or uncouthness in our translations, then, should find no excuse on the score of idioms of this class ; of which any that remain still in use are for the most part genera] maxims of common sense, such as proverbs, and susceptible, by reason of this universality, of being ren- dered by equivalent, when not by analogical, expressions. The idioms of word or term are more permanent and form in fact the chief part of the difficulty in question. In these the progression operates, not as in the other by decay, but by a species of transformation. And the reason is conclu- TRANSLATOR S PREFACE Xlll sive. The idiom of phrase is a combination, good for only a special purpose, with which it must consequently cease ; whereas the word is an element, and thus equally adapts itself to other combinations or modifications. Now, it is precisely in the imperfect development of these derivative forms, in tlie deficiency of its abstract and generalized vocabulary, that our language, and our translators (from the French es- pecially) seem both to be at fault. But this is ordinarily remediable under the guidance of analogy, and not only so legitimately, but laudably. The process has received special attention in the following version. And if we duly consider the characteristic refinements of style together with the evanescent metaphysics of moral portraiture, which make this book perhaps the most difficult in any language to translate, it will be allowed that the experiment has been put fairly to the test. If at all successful, it may lead our translators to attempt, or at least the public to exact, more care in the manufacture of this the present, and indeed prospective, sta- ple of our original or unpilfered literature. Not, however, that I pretend the translation does not remain very suscep- tible of improvement, as I have found but too sensibly on a running revisal of the proofs. In truth it was done hastily, and with the desiirn of ulterior correction, which has been precluded by other engagements deemed of more conse- quence. At the same time, I do not decline the respon- pihility at least of two qualities, which it may look, indeed, like satire to profess: The diction is English; the thought is that of the Author, not merely in substance but even form. In averirig fidelity, I should in rigor perhaps except a few olfnsions of transcendental democracy ; which, though ex- cellent, of course, upon occasion, I took the liberty of sup. pressing, at the suggestion of the proverb against " carrying coals to Newcastle." Hut here the responsibility of the translator ends. For the residue of the contents, the credit (or otherwise) is fairly due to the publishers, wlio, with the friend wliose name is afllved as editor, have (in consequence of the en- xiv translator's preeace. gagements alluded to) discharged me of all attention to the details of publication. As to the general merits of the work itself, with these few observations, I leave them to the readers to appreciate, or perhaps only postpone them to the issue of the other volume. I close with transcribing from a late Paris Journal {le Na- tional) the following notice of the work, announcing the six- teenth edition. " What remains, at this day, to be said of the Livre des Orateurs, except that it has proved a fortune to the publisher, and a source of new triumphs to the author : the rapid sale of fifteen editions speaks abundantly the opinion of the pub- lic. But with M. DE CoKMENiN the editions succeed each other without being alike. He touches and retouches un- ceasingly his elaborate pages ; he adds, retrenches, trans- poses, polishes : he is eminently the writer of the file and smoothing-plane {de la lime et du rahot,) a rare merit in our days, and which evinces in the author a proper respect for both the public and himself. " The edition now issued contains some new Portraits, or rather outlines, in the modest expression of the author. For as soon as an orator appears, ' Timon' takes his pencil, draws a profile, sketches a head, completes a bust according to the rank assigned to each in the parliamentary hierarchy. Thus does he constantly keep up to the current of parliamentary life, though, in truth, at present, neither active nor brilliant. And as the sessions march on, the ' Book of the Orators' marches with them, advancing daily more and more in pub- lie admiration, and above all, in pecuniary productiveness." The Translator. AN ESSAY OS THE RISE nd FALL Of HLOIIUENCE I\ THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. BY J. T. HEADLEY. The end of all eloquence is to sway men. It is therefore bound by no arbitrary rules of diction or style — formed on no specific models, and governed by no edicts of self-selected judges. It is true, there are degrees of eloquence, and equal success does not imply equal excellence. That which is adapted to sway the strongest minds of an enlightened age, ought to be esteemed the most perfect, and doubtless should be the gauge by which to test the abstract excellence of all oratory. But every nation has its peculiar tem- perament and tastes, which must be regarded in making up our judgments. Indeed, the language it- self of different countries compels a widely diflerent style and manner. To the cold and immobile Eng- lishman, the eloquence of Italy appears like frothy declamation ; while to the latter, the passionless man- ner, and naked argument of the former, seem tame and commonplace. No man of sense would harangue the French, with their volatile feelings and love of scenic etlect, in the same manner he would the Dutch their neighbors. A similar contrast often exists in the same nation. He who could chain a Boston audience by the depth and originality of his j)hilosophy, miLdit be esteemed a dreamer in the far West. Colonel Crockett and Mr. Emerson would be very unequal XVI CHANGES IN TASTE AND STYLE. candidates for fame amid our frontier population. A similar though not so striking a contrast, exists be- tween the North and South. A speech, best adapted to win the attention of a mixed southern assembly, would be regarded too ornamental, nay, perhaps mer- etricious by one in New England. The warm blood of a southern clime will bear richer ornament and more imaginative style, than the calculating spirit of a northern man. The same law of adaptation must be consulted in the changes of feeling and taste that come over the same people. Once our forefathers liked the stern, unadorned old Saxon in which the Bible is written, and which characterized the sturdy English divines. A few years passed by, and the classic era, as it was called, came — that is, a preference of Latin-derived words to Saxon, or of harmony to strength. Johnson's lofty diction threw Cicero's high- sounding sentences into the shade, and Addison's fault- less elegance became to language what miniature painting is to the art of painting itself At length another generation came, and the strong energetic style of Macaulay, or the equally strong but uncouth sentences of Carlyle, and the concentration of Broug- ham, shoved the English classics from the stage. Now the man who sighs over this departure from classic models, and prates of corrupt English, shows himself shallow both in intellect and philosophy. Let him mourn over the new spirit that has seized the world — there lies the root of the evil, if there be any. Men at auction now-a-days will not talk as Dr. Johnson did in the sale of Thrale's brewery — nor in the present ear- nestness, nay eagerness of human thought and feeling, will the fiery Saxon heart sacrifice vigor to beauty- directness to harmony. He is a good writer who em- LAW OF ADAPTATION. XVU bodies in his works the soul and spirit of the times in which he hves, provided they are worth embodying — and the common sympathy ofthe great mass is sounder criticism by far tlian the rules of mere scholars, who, buried up in their formulas, cannot speak so as to arrest the attention or move the heart. Adaptation without degeneracy is the great law to be followed. If the speech of Patrick Henry before the House of Delegates had been made when the Stamp Act first besran to be discussed, it would have been considered foolish bluster; but delivered at the very moment when the national heart was on fire, and needed but a touch to kindle it into a blaze, it was the perfection of elo- quence. So, the speech that Sir Walter Scott puts into the mouth of Ephraim Macbriar. on one of the successful battle fields of the Covenanters, is in itself a piece of wild declamation, but in the circumstances under which it was delivered, and to secure the object in view, the truest oratory. As the young preacher stood, pale with watch ings and fastings and long im- prisonment, and cast his faded eye over the field of slaughter, and over those brave men whose brows were yet unbent from the strife, he knew that reason and argument would be lost in the swelling passions that panted for action, and he burst forth into a ha- rangue that thrilled every heart, and sent every hand to its sword : — and when he closed, those persecuted men " would have rushed to battle as to a banquet, and embraced death with rapture." When the national heart is heaving with excite- ment, he who would control its pulsations and direct its energies, must speak in the language of enthusiasm. The power of an orator lies in the sympathy between XVlll THREE DEPARTMENTS OF ORATORY. him and the people. This is the chord which binds heart to heart, and when it is strucK, thousands burst into tears or rouse into passion, like a single indi- vidual. If these principles be true, it is necessary to throw ourselves into the scenes of the French Revolution, in order to judge correctly of the orators who controlled it. The Duke of Wellington, addressing the English army in India in the language Bonaparte used to his troops at the base of the Pyramids, would be guilty of ridiculous bombast ; but in the mouth of the latter, and to such men as followed his standard, it exhibited the true orator. Nelson saying to his crew before the battle of Trafalgar, " England expects every man to do his duty," and Cromwell reading the Psalms of David to his steel-clad Ironsides before the battle of Naseby, present a widely different appearance, but show equal skill and art. In ordinary times, there are three great departments of oratory : the bar, the parliament, and the pulpit. The latter, no doubt, ought to take the highest rank. With three worlds for a field from which to gather thoughts, images and motives to action — with the soul of man, its hopes, fears and sympathies, and awful des- tiny, its theme — it embraces all that is great and fear- ful and commanding. But in Catholic countries it has sunk into neglect. Hooded over and fettered by su- perstition, and wrapped in endless forms, its power is lost. This country is fast following in their footsteps. Inspiration is gone, enthusiasm derided or shunned, and good, plain instruction has usurped the place of eloquence. In the legislative hall, powerful appeals to the feel- ings are dangerous, for the watchful eye of opposition THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. XIX IS ever ready to make bathos of pathos. At the bar, oratory is apt to become mere acting. The habit of taking any side, and advocating directly opposite prin- ciples, destroys the earnestness of sincere feeling, and compels the pleader to resort to art for success. Like a fine actor, he must study the hearts of others, and not trust to his own impulses, if he would awaken sym- pathy. But the advocate and the divine disappeared in the French Revolution, and the press and legislative hah were the media through which the soul of the nation uttered itself. The Convention of the States-General, and final or- ganization of the National Assembly, fixed irretrieva- bly the French Revolution. The deputies of the peo- ple, assembled from every quarter of France, found themselves at the outset in collision with the throne and aristocracy. The nation was to be saved from the famine, and distress, and bankruptcy, which threat- ened to overthrow it; and they boldly entered on the task. They had not come together to speak, but to act. Met at every turn by a corrupt Court and nobi- lity, they found themselves compelled to spend months on the plainest principles of civil liberty. But facts were more potent than words, and it needed only an eloquent tongue in order to bind the Assembly toge- ther, and encourage it to put forth those acts which the welfare of the nation demanded. It was not easy at once to destroy reverence for the throne, and set at nought royal authority, yet the ref- ormations which the state of the kingdom rendered imperative would do both. Right onward must this National Assembly move, or France be lost I To carry it thus forward, united, strong and bold, one all- XX M I R A B E A U . powerful tongue was sufficient, — and the great orator of the Assembly was Mirabeau. At the outset, hurl- ing mingled defiance and scorn both on the nobility, from whom he had been excluded, and the king, M'ho thought to intimidate the deputies, he inspired the Tiers- Etat with his own boldness. No matter what vacillation or fears might agitate the members, when his voice of thunder shook the hall in which they sat, every heart grew determined and resolute. With his bushy black hair standing on end, and his eye flash- ing fire, he became at once the hope of the people and the terror of the aristocracy. Incoherent and un- wieldy in the commencement of his speech, steady and strong when fairly under motion, he carried re- sistless power in his appeals. As a huge ship in a dead calm rolls and rocks on the heavy swell, but the moment the wind fills its sails stretches proudly away, throwing the foam from its front. — so he tossed irregf- ular and blind upon the sea of thought, until caught by the breath of passion, when he moved majestically, ir- resistibly onward. The Constituent Assembly of France sat from 1789 to 1791. The overthrow of the Bastile and triumph 3f the people frightened the nobility, so that they fled in crowds from France. Hitherto they had consti- tuted the opposition against which the deputies of the people had to struggle. After their flight, there being no longer an opposition, the deputies naturally split into two parties among themselves. The Girondists were at first the republicans, and demanded a govern- ment founded on the principles of the ancient repub- lics ; but a faction springing up more radical than their own, and pushing the state towards anarchy THE GIRONDISTS. XX\ they became conservatives. In the meantime Mira- beau, full of forebodings, died. This Assembly, however, lasted but nine months, .'or the revolt of the 10th of August came ; the Tuil- eries ran blood, and the Bourbon dynasty closed. The Legislative Assembly then changed itself into the Con- vention, and the great struggle between the Girondists and Jacobins commenced. It was a life and death struggle, and all the mental powers of these two bodies were brought to the task. The Girondists em- braced in their number some of the finest oratoi's France has ever produced. They were the philoso- phers of the Revolution, ever talking of Greece and Rome, and fondly dreaming that the glorious days of those ancient republics could be recalled. Their elo- quence had given immense popularity to the Revolu- tion and hastened it on. Grand and generous in their plans, they filled the imaginations of the people with beautiful but unreal forms. But while they were thus speaking of Cataline and Cicero, and Brutus and Cae- sar, and the heroes of Greece, the Jacobins were talk- ing of aristocrats in Paris, and arousing the passions rather than exciting the imaginations of men. There could be no combination of circumstances better adapted to call forth the spirit and power of the nation, than that in which France now found herself. The fall of the throne, and sudden rising of a republic in its place — the removal of all those restraints which had for ages fettered thought — the terrific events that had just passed, and the still more terrible ones at the door — the vast field opened at once to the untried powers — the dark and troubled sea rolling around this phantom republic, blazing with artificial ligiit ; nay, ihe excited soul itself--called on man trumpet-tongued, XXU WAKING UP THE FRENCH M[ND. to give his greatest utterance. Into this new freedom the emancipated spirit stepped with a bewildered look, and stretching forth its arms, giant-like, made every- thing hitherto stable and steady, rock and shake on its ancient foundations. Never before was the human mind roused to such intense action, and never did it work with such fearful rapidity and awful power. The hall of the National Convention became the thea- tre of the most exciting scenes ever witnessed in a legislative body. The terrible struggle between an- cient despotism and young and fierce democracy had closed, and the throne gone down in the tumult. The elements which had been gathering into strength for ages — the swell which had not been born of a sudden gust of passion, but came sweeping from the realms of antiquity had burst, and there lay the fragments of a strong monarchy — the splendid wreck of a system hoary with age and rich with the fruits of oppression. Into this chaos the soul of France was cast, and be- gan to work out its own ends. In the meantime, Europe, affrighted at the apparition of a new republic rising in its midst, based on fallen kingship, moved to arms, and trusted, with one fell blow, to overthrow it. All the great interests of life — everything that kindles feeling and passion — awakens thought and stimulates to action, were here gathered together; and no wonder the genius of France burst forth with astonishing splendor! Gi'ecian art and learning were the offspring of the struggle between the young republic of Greece and Persian despotism ; and out of the desperate re- sistance of early Rome to the efforts put forth for ner overthrow, sprung that power which finally over- shadowed the earth; while from our own Revolution emerged the spirit of enterprise of which the history VERGNIAUD. XXll of the race furnishes no parallel, and those principles destined to make the tour of the world. But if the French Revolution gave birth to grand displays of genius and intellect, it also furnished ex- hibitions of human depravity and ferocity never before equalled. The chief leaders that entered this great arena, were Robespiere, Danton, Marat, Camille Desmoulins, Va- rennes, St. Just, and Collot d'Herbois, on the side of the Radicals, or Mountain — Vergniaud, Guadet, Gen- sonne, Lanjuinais, Roland, Barbaroux, Louvet, and others, on that of the Girondists. The collision be- tween these noble and eloquent men, on the one side, and those dark, intriguing, desperate characters on the other, produced the finest specimens of oratory ever witnessed in France. V^ergniaud, generous and noble — too good to believe in the irredeemable de- pravity of his adversaries — was the most eloquent speaker that ever mounted the tribune of the French Assembly. Carried away by no passion — not torrent- like, broken, and fragmentary, as Mirabeau — but like a deep and majestic stream, he moved steadily onward, pouring forth his rich and harmonious sentences in strains of impassioned eloquence. At the trial of Louis his speech thrilled both Jacobins and Conser- vatives with electric power. On the occasion oi the failure of the first conspiracy of the Jacobins against the Girondists, he addressed the Convention and in his speech occurred the following remarkable words: "We march from crimes to amnesties, and from amnesties to crimes. The great body of citizens are so blinded by their frequent occurrence, that they confound these seditions disturbances with the grand national movement in fa .'or of freed(jm — regard th» A XXIV L O UV E T. violence of brigands as the efforts of energetic minds, and consider robbery itself a,s indispensable to public safety. You are free, say they ; but unless you think like us, we will denounce you as victims to the ven- geance of the people. You are free ; but unless you join us in persecuting those whose probity or talents we dread, we will abandon you to their fury. Citi- zejis, there is too much room to dread that the Revolu- tion, like Saturn, will necessarily devour all its pro- geny, and finally leave only despotism, with all the calamities which it produces." A prophecy which soon proved true ; and he was among the first of those children which the Revolution, Snturn-like, devoured Thrown into prison with his compatriots, he finalh underwent the farce of a trial, and was sentenced to the guillotine. His friends had secretly provided him with poison, by which he could escape the ignominy of the scaffold, and die a sudden and easy death. But he nobly refused to take it, preferring to suffer with his friends. On the last night of his life he addressed his fellow-prisoners on the sad fate of the French Republic. He spoke of its expiring liberty, of the bright hopes soon to be extinguished in blood, of the terrible scenes before their beloved country, in terms that made the doomed victims forget their ap- proaching fate. Never before did those gloomy walls ring to such thrilling words. Carried away by the enthusiasm of his feelings, and the picture that rose before his excited imagination, he poured forth such strains of impassioned eloquence, that they all fell in tears in each other's arms. Louvet was bold and energetic, hurling his accusa- tions against Marat and Robespierre with equal daring and power. When the latter, wincing under the im- GUADET AND BARBABOUX. XXV plied charges conveyed by Roland in a speech before the Convention, mounted the Tribune and exclaimed : "No one will dare accuse me to my face," Louvet rose to hi« feet, and fixing on him a steady eye, said, in a firm voice.* " / am he who accuses you ; yes, Robespierre, I uccuse you." He then, went on in a strain of fervid eloquence, following Robespierre, as Cicero did Cataline, in all his devious ways — to the Jacobin club, to the municipal authorities and the As- sembly ever vaunting of his services, exciting the people to massacre, and spreading terror and death on every side — and closed up with " the glory of the revolt of the 10th of August is common to all, but the glory of the massacres of September 2nd to you; on you and your associates may they rest foj-ever." After the revolution which overthrew the Girond- ists, he fled to the mountains of Jura, and wandered for months amid their solitudes and caverns, pondering over the strange scenes through which he had passed. Guadet was full of spirit — seizing with the intuition of genius the changes of the stormy Convention and moulding it to his purpose. He died with the firm- ness of an old Roman on the scaflbld. Barbaroux was fiery, prompt and penetrating. Fore- seeing clearly the course of the Jacobins, he strove manfully to crush them, and would have succeeded had he been sustained by his friends. On that last terrible day to the Girondists, when eighty thousand armed men stood arrayed in dark columns around the Hall of the Convention, and a hundred and sixty pieces of artillery were slowly advancing with lighted matches treinl)ling above them, and the tocsin was sounding and generale beating, and cannon thundering in the dis tance, and the Convention tossing like a shattered ves- iCXVl ROBESPIERRE AND DANTON. sel in a storm, ht rose, and sending his fearless voice over the tempes., exclaimed: ^^ I have sworn to die at my post ; I will keep my oath. Bend, if you please, before the municipality — you who refused to arrest their wickedness ; or else imitate us whom their fury immediately demands — wait and brave their fury. You may compel me to sink under their daggers — • you shall not make me fall at their feet" Roland clear and truthful — Gensonne. firm, resolute, and decided — Lanjuinais, intrepid, and fearless, lifting his voice, even when dragged by violence from the Tribune — Brissot and Buzot helped to complete this galaxy of noble and eloquent men. On the other hand, Robespierre combatted these bursts of oloquence by his daring plans — insinuating, yet energetic, discourse — his terse, vigorous sentences, and his character as a patriot. Danton was like a roused lion, and his voice of thunder fell with startling power on the Convention. Once when he heard the tocsin sounding and cannon roaring, he said, all that is required is " boldness, boldness, boldness !" and this, with his relentless severity, was the secret of his strength. Marat, with the face of a monster and the heart of a fiend, had that art, or rather ferocity, which appeals to hate, murder and revenge. With such energetic, pow- erful minds locked in mortal combat, no wonder there were bursts of unsurpassed eloquence — thrilling ap- peals, noble devotion, such as never before shook a parliament. The fact that the Legislative Assembly constituted one body, thus keeping the exciting topics of this most exciting time ever revolving in its midst, conspired to give greater intensity to the feelings, and preserve that close and fierce collision from which fire is always struck. In halls of legislation the eloquence THE FRENCH MIND. XXvii of feelinn — the spontaneous outbursts of passion con- stituting tiie highest kind of impassioned oratory are seldom witnessed. But here the impulses were not restrained — each uttered what he felt, and that lofty daring which will of itself create genius, characterized the leaders. But when the Jacobins through their appeals to the passions, triumphed, and the Girondists were dispersed or executed, the eloquence of the Convention departed forever. In the Reign of Terror, Danton was the chief orator, but action, action was wanted more than speeches. To awe, to terrify, to crush, was now the task of the Convention, and it went on destroying with a blind fury until at last it began to destroy itself. At length it turned fiercely on Danton its head, and that voice, after uttering its last challenge, hurling its last curse and scorn, was hushed by the guillotine, llobes- pierre soon followed, and the yell of terror he gave on the scaffold, as the bandage was torn from his maimed jaw, letting it full on his breast, was the last time his tongue froze the hearts of the people with fear. The Revolution now began to retrograde, and the French mind, which had been so terribly excited, for awhile stood paralyzed, and the tongue was dumb. Nothing shows the difference between the two na- tions, France and England, more cl.earlythan the con- trast this Revolution presented to'that of the English jjnder Cromwell. n both the commons of the people came in collision with the throne, and conquered. In both the kijig perished on the scaffold, and the Par liament seized supreme power. Yet in the one case no atrocity marked (he progress of freedom — even civil law remained m full force amid the tumult and vio- lence before which the royal dynasty disapjieared The minds of the two nations are as different as the XXVUl BONAPARTE. progress and results of the two Revolutions. The French excitable and imaginative, no sooner seize a theory than they push it to the extremest limit. En- thusiasm and hope guide the movement, while reason and conscience control the passions of the English people. One dreams, the other thinks ; hence to the former, eloquence which appeals to the imagination and feelings is the truest and the best. The Tiers- Etat, now assembled in Berlin, will not move on to freedom as did that of France. The Germans are more sober, reflecting and cautious. This fact should be kept in mind in reading the speeches of French orators. Those things which would be extravagancies to an English or Dutch, are not to a French parlia- ment. Bursts of sentiment which would draw tears from the lattei", would provoke a smile of incredulity or derision in the former. The mathematician and the poet are to be moved by different appeals. Under the Directory there was but little display of eloquence, and scarcely none at all under the Empire When Bonaparte mounted to supreme power, he wished to be the only speaker, as he was the only ac- tor, in France. He established the strictest censor- ship both over the press and the tongue, and men dared not speak, except to echo him. If France was amazed at the disappearance of the throne and aristocracy, and sudden rising of a republic, with all its blinding, dazzling light, in their place, she was no less so at the vast empire that sprung up so rapidly at the touch of Napoleon. Men spoke no more of Greece or of Rome, except to hint at Csesar and his legions. " Rights of the people," "freedom of the press and speech," and all those spell- words by which the revolutionary lead- ers had gained power were forgotten, and the "glory of France" absorbed every other thought. To this THE RESTORATION. XXlX boundless enthusiasm, Napoleon knew how to address himself, and became at once the greatest military ora- tor of the world. In any other time, and to any other army, his speeches would have been mere declama- tion, but taking both into consideration they are models of oratory. He could speak with power, for his ac- tions were eloquent, and stirred the heart of France to its core. The Restoration brought a great change over the parliament of France. From a constitutional mon- archy she had passed into a free republic, thence into the rudest anarchy that ever shook the world, thence into a vast and glorious empire, and now, fallen, ex- hausted, and bewildered, sunk back into the arms of a Bourbon. And when the representatives of the peo- ple again assembled, there were delegates from all these great epochs, — royalist emigrants, filled more than ever with the idea of the divine rijjht of kinjis — • old soldiers from Napoleon's victorious armies, still dreaming of glory — and ardent republicans, who would not, for all that had passed, abandon their lib- eral principles. The new Parliament at length settled down into three political parties — the Legitimists, who reverenced kingship, and prated constantly of the throne and its prerogatives, and the aristocracy and its privileges — the Constitutionalists, or those who wished to establish the supremacy of the parliament balanced by royal authority and other powers, as in England — and the Liberals. These discordant elements brought to the surface a group of statesmen and orators as diflerent in their views and opinions, as if they had been men of diflerent ages of the worlrl. The Liberalists con- stituted llic opposition, and numbered among its lead crs, Manuel, General Foy, IJenjamin Constant, Lalitte c' XXX PRESENT FRENCH PARLIAMENT. Bignon, Casimir-Perier, and others. Under Charles X it was a struggle of reason against blind devotion to old rules and forms. At length the last gave way — Charles X. was compelled to abdicate, and the Revo- lution of 1830 introduced a new order of things, which still continues. It is useless to speak of the present Parliament of France. Like the American Congress, or the British Parliament, it is governed by the spirit of the politi- cian, rather than the elevated views of the statesman, or the devotion of the patriot. Between the different parties it is a struggle of tactics rather than of intel- lect — votes are carried, and changes wrought, more by the power of machineiy than the power of truth or eloquence. The Chamber of Peers is almost a nul- lity, while over that of the deputies the politic Louis Philippe holds a strong and steady hand. Guizot and Thiers have occupied the most prominent place in the public eye, under the present dynasty. But the strat- egy of parliaments is now of more consequence and interest than their speeches, for management is found to secure votes better than they. This is natural — in unexciting times everything assumes a business form and is conducted on business principles — and com- merce, and finance, and tariff', and trade, are not cal- culated to develop the powers of the orator, r r call forth the highest kind of eloquence. ORATORS OF FRANCE. CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. M I R A. B E A U . As Christopher Columbus, after having traversed a vast extent of ocean, was advancing tranquilly towards the con- tinent of America, all of a sudden the wind blows, the light- ning flashes, the thunder mutters, the cordage is rent, the pilot alarmed, and the vessel is on the verge of being lost, of being engulfed in the waves. But Columbus himself, while his soldiers and sailors gave themselves up to prayer and to despair, confiding in his high destinies, seized the helm, steered through the roarings of the tempest and the horrors of the deep night, and feeling the prow of his vessel ground upon the shores of the New World, he cried with a loud voice : " Land ! land !" So, wlien the Revolution was losing its course with started anchors and torn sails, upon a rocky and tempestuous sea, Mirabeau taking his stand on the fore- deck, bade defiance to the flashing of the thunderbolt, and cheering the trembling passengers, raised in the midst of them his prophetic voice, and pointed them out the promised land of liberty. All things concurred to make Mirabeau the grand poten- tate of the tribune, his peculiar organization, his life, his studies, his domestic broils, the extraordinary times in which ho npprared, the spirit and manner of deliberation of the Constituent Assembly, ;nirl the ( ( mbination truly marvellous of his oratorical faculties. It is requisite, in an assembly of t\\clvf liiiiulifd Ir-gislators, that tlie orator shoulil l)r dis- c<'rnible from a distance, an was destined to become speedily the leader, no less than the orator of the Constituent Assembly, the prince of tlie modern tribune, the very god of eloauence, and, to say all 1* 6 CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. in a word, the grand impersonation of the Revolution of 1789. The Revolution of 1789 has been the great even of modern times. The philosophers by their writings, the Parliaments by their resistances, the court by its insane prodigalities, the clergy by its excessive wealth, the people by its misery, the financial establishment by its bankrupt- cies legislation by its abuses, civilization by its progress, England and the United States by their example, — all por- tended the approach of a catastrophe. The old social structure of our fathers had run to decay from top to bottom. As portions of the edifice were strip- ped to be repaired, it was found to be all gnawn by worms and undermined by time. Accordingly, as soon as the hammer of the demolisher had detached a few stones, the walls shook throughout, and the fabric fell to pieces. All was confusion amid the ruins, when the States-General were convoked. A general cry arose to demand, that there should no more be divers stories superposited one upon an- other, neither spacious apartments for one or a few persons, nor small ones for a multitude of men ; that thenceforth the edifice should not belong to a single proprietor, but to all the inhabitants of the States, and that their delegates should be charged to provide for the re-construction, insurance, and furnishing of the new social mansion. Mirabeau step- ped forth upon the course like a giant, and the ground trembled beneath his footsteps. A noble, he leads to battle the Tiers-etat against the nobility, who had imprudently driven him from their ranks. He compares himself to Gracchus, proscribed by the Roman senate. " Thus," said he, " perished the last of the Gracchi by the hands of the patricians. But, having received the moi'tal blow, he flung a handful of dust towards heaven, attesting the avenging gods, and from this dust arose Marius — Marius less great in having exterminated the Cimbri, than in having quelled in Rome the aristocracy of the nobility !" There is not in antiquity a passage more oratorical. Furthermore, all this M I R A B E A U i discourse is of a liigh ortlcr of eloquence, and it terminates with this beautiful prophecy : " Privileges must have an end. but the people is eternal." This lofty reply made his adversaries quake, and Mira- bcau threw himself without more reserve into the paths of democracy. Once upon this ground he tempered it, lie solidified it under his feet, he took his position, and wrestled as the popular champion, against the Orders of Clergy and Nobility, with all the power of his logic, and all the energy of his indomitable will. It is vulsarlv imajjined that the force of Mirabeau con- sisted in the dewlaps of his bullish neck, in the thick masses of his lion-like hair ; that he swept down his adversaries by .1 swing of his tail ; that he rolled down upon them with the .roarings and fury of a torrent ; that he dismayed them by II look ; that he overwhelmed them with the bursts of his ihunder-like voice : this is to praise him for the exterior qualities of port, voice, and gesture, as we would praise a .gladiator or a dramatic actor ; it is not to praise as he ought to be praised this great orator. Doubtless Mirabeau owed a great deal, at the outset of his oratorical career, to the prestige of his name. For he was already master of the Assembly by the reputation of his eloquence, before he be- came so by his eloquence itself. Doubtless Mirabeau owed much to that penetrating, flex- ible, and sonorous voice which used to fill with case tlio ears of twelve hundred persons, to those haughty accents which infu.sed life and pa.ssion into his cause, to tho.se im- petuous gestures, wliich flung to his afl'righted adversaries defiances that dared them to reply. Doubtless he owed much to the inferiority of his rivals ; for in his presence the other celebrities were eflaccd, or rather they were grouped as satellites about thi.s magnificent luminary only to render it, by the contrn.st, of a more vivid efl'ulgcnce. The able Maury was but an elegant rhetorician ; Cazales, a fluent speaker ; Sieyc.'^, a taciturn metaphysician ; Thouret, u 8 CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. jurist; Barnave, a hope. But what established lis un- rivalled dominion over the Assennbly was, in the first place, tlie enthusiastical predisposition of the Assembly itself; i*. was the multitude and the concurrence of his astonishing faculties, his productive facility, the immensity of his studies and his knowledge ; it was the grandeur and breadth of his political views, the solidity of his reasoning, the elaborate- ness and profundity of his discourses, the vehemence of his improvisations, and the pungency of his repartees. How different those times from ours ! The whole popu- lation of Paris used to mingle breathlessly in the discus- sions of the legislature. One hundred thousand citizens filled the Tuileries, the Place Vendome, tlie streets adjacent, and copied bulletins were passed from hand to hand, circu- lated, thrown among the crowd, containing the occurrences of each moment of the debate. There was then some pub- lic life and spirit. The nation, the citizens, the Assembly, were all in expectation of some ^reat events, all full of that electric and vague excitement so favorable to the exhibitions of the tribune and the triumphs of eloquence. We, who live in an epoch without faith or principles, devoured as we are from head to foot with the leprosy of political material- ism — we. Assemblies of manikins who inflate ourselves like the mountain in labor, to bring forth but a mouse — we, seekers of jobs, of ministerial office, of ribbons, epaulettes, collectorships and judgeships — we, a race of brokers and stockjobbers, of Haytian or Neapolitan three or five per cent — we, men of court, of police, of coteries, of all sorts of times, of all sorts of governments, of all sorts of journal- ism, of all sorts of opinion — we, deputies of a parish or of a fraternity ; deputies of a harbor, of a railroad, of a canal, of a vineyard ; deputies of sugar-cane or beet-root ; depu- ties of oil or of bitumen ; deputies of charcoal, of salt, of iron, of flax ; deputies of bovine, equine, asinine interests ; deputies, in short, of all things except of France, we shall never be able to comprehend all that there was in that famous Constituent Assembly of deep conviction and MIRABEAU. 9 thorough sincerity, of simplicity of heart, of singleness of purpose, of virtue, of disinterestedness, and of veritable grandeur. No, one would have said there existed then in this As- sembly and this nation of our fathers, no men of mature years who had experienced the evil days of despotism, none of old age who remembered the past. All was generous self-sacrifice, patriotic enthusiasm, raptures of liberty, bound- less aspirations after a happier future. It was as a beauti- ful sun which dissolves the clouds of spring, warms the fro- zen limbs, and gilds every object with its pure and genial light. The nation, youthful and dreamy, had imaginings of distant voices inviting it to the loftiest destinies. It had fits of trembling, of tears, of smiles, like a mother in the do- livery of her first-born child. It was the Revolution in the cradle. Our present Chambers are so many little chapels, where each one places his own image upon the altar, chants mag- nificates, and pays adoration to himself. Our present ora- tors are generally but oflicers without soldiers. They re- present but obsolete opinions, decayed and dying parties, fractions of fractions, if not of units. They are never heard of beyond the range of their voice. They have no influence upon the public. On the contrary, Mirabeau represented and conducted an era. We seem to see him still in the stormy night of the past, standing on the mountain, like another Moses, amid thunder and lightning, bearing tiie tables of the law in his hands, and his brow encircled with a halo of flame, until he disappears into the deptiis of the shade wliicli rises and wraps him. It is at the voice of Mirabeau that the States-General as- semble. It is by the light of his torch they begin their march. The Or-der of tlie Nobility separate violently and revolt. Mirabeau moderates, by his fortjearance, the hot- headedness of the Tirrs-Elat. He flatters, he courts, he honors the minority of the Clergy, (or the purpose of win 10 CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. ning it to his side ; he ascribes to the King his own thoughts, to intimidate the Nobles. Then, after he has by little and little infused confidence into the timid burgesses (bourgeois) of the Commons — at first astonished at the temerity of their undertaking — he dazzles them of a sudden with the title of Representative of the people. They are no longer a fraction of the Assembly — not even the largest — but the whole Assembly. The orders of the Clergy and of the No- bles are about to fade and be absorbed, like feeble rays in the blaze of the national majesty. " What ! need I," says he, " demonstrate that the division of Orders, that debate and deliberation by Order, would be a contrivance truly sublime for the purpose of establishing constitutionally selfishness in the priesthood, pride in the aristocracy, baseness in the people, confusion among all in- terests, corruption in all classes, cupidity in every soul, the insignificance of the nation, the impotence of the prince, the despotism of the ministry ?" It was not enough for Mirabeau to have, by an able ma- noeuvre, separated the forces and sundered the union of the two dissenting orders, to have sanctioned the permanence of insurrection by the personal inviolability of the insurgents, in fine, to have obtained a decreeal of the unity, indivisi- bility, and sovereignty of the Constituent Assembly — it was further necessary to find for this sovereignty occupation and authority. The Court, by its insane, arbitrary and prodigal creation of imposts, and the Nobles and Clergy, by their refusal to contribute, had piled up the public debt and precipitated the ruin of the finances. The evil bore within itself the rem- edy, remedy still more of a political than a financial nature, remedy which could cure the nation only in as far as it should be applied by its own hands. This remedy was the pre- vious voting of all taxation by the people. But the Con- stituent Assembly represented the people. Therefore, by refusing the supplies, it could arrest the government, as we dismount the spring of a clock, as the axle-tree is de- MIRABEAU. 11 tacheJ from the whirling chariot. With the refusal of the impost proposed by Mirabcau, the Revolution was already accomplislied. Our fathers cast their works in brass, we scrape ours upon ^lass. They wisely looked for resemblances, we foolishly amalgamate contraries. They invented, we copy. They were architects, we are but masons. Since Mirabcau, we have scarce done anything but retrograde in political sci- ence ; and if they doubt this, let them I'ead the Declaration of the Rights of Man, by Mirabeau. It contained : The equality and the liberty of all men by right of birth. — The establishment, modification and periodic revision of the Constitution by the people ; the Law, the expression of the general will ; the delegation of the legislative power to representatives frequently renewed, legally and freely elect- ed, always existing, annually assembled, and inviolable. The infallibility of the King, and the responsibility of lh°. ministers. The liberty of others, the limit of the liberty of each. The liberty of the person, and by way of guarantee, the publicity of the charge, the proceedings and the judgment, the priority and gradation of penalties. The liberty of thouglit, by speech, writing, or printing, sub- ject to the repression of abuse. Tiie liberty of worship, subject to the police. The liberty of political association, subject to municipal surveillance. The liberty of locomotion from the interior to other coun- tries. The liberty of property, commerce, and labor. The expropriation of private property for public use, providing a just indemnity. The previous voting, the proportional equality, the mo- rality, justice, and moderation of taxation. The eslablislimcnt of a regular accountability, economy in expcndilurcs, moderate salaries, and the abolition of per- quisites and sinecures. 12 CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. The admissibility of every citizen to the offices civil, ecclesiastical, military. The subordination of the military to the civil authorities. Resistance to oppression. The Declaration of Rights was a magnificent prologue to the Constitution, like those porches with which the an- cients adorned the temples of their gods. It was a political declaration full of grandeur and majesty, a synopsis of the doctrines of the philosophers and publicists of the eighteenth century, an imitation of the American constitution. The French genius loves to generalize, and in the fluctuating disorder of opinions, it was necessary to have a rallying point, a basis of discussion. The preamble of the Consti- tution of 1793, and the charters of 1814 and 1830 are, in many respects, but the reproduction, democratized or aris- tocratized, of Mirabeau's " Declaration of the Rights of Man." The speeches of Mirabeau are commonly but the eloquent commentary of his Declaration of Rights. He was not content, this bold innovator, with discovering new coasts and erecting upon them a few landmarks. He built walls and cities, and beneath the rubbish and ruins of so many consti- tutions which have since crumbled upon one another, we find still this day the granite foundations whereupon they were raised. He sowed profusely in his comprehensive course, all the just and sacred maxims of representative government — the sovereignty of the people ; the delegation of powers ; the veto, the independence, responsibility, and countersignature of the ministers; the grand jury; the equality of taxation. He advocates the liberty of the press, of religious worship, of the individual, of locomotion ; amotion from office ; the constitution of municipalities and courts of justice ; the establishment of the National Guard and of the Jury ; the variability of the civil list, and its reduction to a million of income ; exemption from taxes of the necessitous classes ; uniformity of the currency and the decimal calculation ; MIRABEAU. 13 the liberty of peaceful and unarmed a isociations ; the se- creey of letters ; the frequent and periodic renewal of llie legislature ; the annual vote of the army estimates ; the pecuniary responsibility of the collectors, and the penal re- sponsibility of the communes ; the passports to deputies ; the sale of national property ; the verification of parliamen- tary powers by the Parliament ; the employment of armed force at the requisition, and in presence of the mimicipal officers elected by the people ; houses of paternal correc- tion ; martial law ; equality of successions; the legal pre- sence, and the right of interrogating the ministers in the bosom of the Assembly ; the denomination of the depart- ments ; a civic education. He opposed the peremptory mandates, the duality of the Chambers ; the immutability of the church property ; the initiative direct and personal of the King j the lottery system ; the permanence of ihd districts. One is surprised, recoils affrighted, before the gigantic works accomplished by Mirabeau during the two years of his parliamentary life. Elaborate discourses, apostrophes, replies, motions, addresses, letters to constituents, newspaper controversy, reports, morning sessions, evening sessions, committee business, he participates in all, superintends all. Nothing for him was too great, nothing too little ; nothing too complex, and nothing too simple. He bears upon his shoulders a world of labors, and seems, in that Herculean career, to experience neither fatigue or distaste. He un- ravelled with perfect ease the most complicated difficulties, and his restless activity exhausted the whole circle of sub- jects, without being able to satisfy itself. Ho kept occuj)ied all at the same time his numerous friends, his constituents, his agents, his secretaries. He conversed, debated, listened.' dictated, read, compiled, wrote, declaimed, maintained a cor- respondence with all France. He digested the labors of otiiers, assimilating them so as that they became his own. He used to receive notes as he ascended the tribune, in tiic tributio even, and pass t lem, without pausing, into the texture of 2 14 C O N S T I r U E N T ASSEMBLY. his discourse. He retouched the harangues and rejiorts of which he had given the frame, the plan, the idea He chastened them with his practised judgment, colorea them with his vivid expressions, strengthened them with his vigorous thought. This sublime plagiarist, this grand mas- ter, employed his aids and his pupils to extract the marble from the quarry and chip off the grosser parts, like the statuary who, when the block is rough-hewn, approaches, takes his chisel, gives it respiration and life, and makes it a hero or a god. Mirabeau had a perfect understanding of the mechanism and the rights of a deliberative body. He knew how far it may go and where it should stop. His disciplinary for- mulas have passed into our rules, his maxims into our laws, his counsels into our policy. His words were law. He presided as he spoke, with a grave dignity, and used to re- ply to the several deputations with such fertility of elo- quence and felicity of language, that it may be truly said the Constituent Assembly has never been better represented than by Mirabeau, whether in the chair of the president or in the tribune of the orator. What a grand conception he formed of the national representation when saying : "Every deputation from the people astounds my courao-e." It was with these holy emotions he approached the tribune. Mirabeau used to premeditate most of his discourses. — His comparison of the Gracchi, his allusion to the Tar- peian rock, his apostrophe to Sieyes, his famous speeches on the constitution, on the right of war and peace, the royal veto, the property of the Clergy, the lottery, the mines, bank- ruptcy, the assignats, slavery, national education, the law of successions, where he displays such treasures of science and profound elaboration of thought — all these are written pieces. His manner as an orator is tliat of the great masters of antiquity, with an admirable energy of gesture and a vehe- mence of diction which perhaps they had never reached. He is strong, because he does not diffuse himself; he is MIRABEAU. 15 natural, because he uses no ornaments ; he is eloquent, because he is simple ; he does not imitate others, because he needs but to be himself; he does not surcharge his dis- course with a baggage of epithets, because they would retard it ; he does not run into digressions, for fear of wandering from the question. His exordiums are sometimes abrupt, sometimes majestic, as it comports with the subject. His nar- ration of facts is clear. His statement of the question is pre- cise and positive. His ample and sonorous phraseology much resembles the spoken phraseology of Cicero. He unrolls, with a solemn slowness, the folds of his discourse. He does not accumulate his enumerations as ornaments, but as proofs. He seeks not the harmony of words, but the con- catenation of ideas. He does not exhaust a subject to the dregs, he takes but the flower. Would he dazzle, the most brilliant images spring up beneath his steps ; would he touch, he abounds in raptures of emotion, in tender persua- sions, in oratorical transports which do not conflict with, but sustain, which are never confounded with, but follow, each other, which seem to produce one another successively and flow with a happy disorder from that fine and prolific nature. But when he comes to the point in debate, when he enters the heart of the question, he is substantial, nervous, logical as Demosthenes. He advances in a serried and impenetra- ble order. He reviews his proofs, disposes the plan of attack, and arrays them in order of battle. Mailed in the armor of dialectics, he .sounds the charge, rushes upon the adversaries, seizes and prostrates them, nor does he loose his hold till he compels them, knee on neck, to avow themselves vanquislied. If they retreat, he pursues, at- tacks them front and rear, presses upon them, drives them, and brings them inevitably within the imperial circle which he had designated for their destruction ; like those who, upon the deck of a narrow vessel, captured by board- ing her, place a hopeless enemy between their sword and the ocean. 16 CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. How his language must have surprised by its novelty and thrilled the popular heart, when he drew this picture of a legal constitution : — " Too often are bayonets the only remedy applied to the convulsions of oppression and want. But bayonets never re-establish but the peace of terror, the silence of despotism. Ah ! the people are not a furious herd which must be kept in chains ! Always quiet and moderate, when they are truly free, they are violent and unruly but under those governments where they are systematically debased in order to have a pretext to despise them. When we con- sider what must result to the happiness of twenty-five millions of men, from a legal constitution in place of minis- terial caprices, — from the consent of all the wills and the co-operation of all the lights of the nation in the improvement of our laws, from the reform of abuses, from the reduction of taxes, from economy in the finances, from the mitigation of the penal laws, from regularity of procedure in the tri- bunals, from the abolition of a multitude of servitudes which shackle industry and mutilate the human faculties, in a word, from that grand system of liberty, which, planted on the firm basis of freely-elected municipalities, rises gradu- ally to the provincial administKations, and receives its com. pletion from the annual recurrence of the States-General — when we weigh all that must result from the restoration of this vast empire, who does not feel that the greatest of crimes, the darkest outrage against humanity, would be to ofter opposition to the rising destiny of our country and thrust her back into the depths of the abyss, there to hold her oppressed beneath the burthen of all her chains." With what accuracy, with what nicety of observation he enumerates the difficulties of the civil and military adminis- tration of Bailly and Lafayette when he proposes to vote them the thanks of the Assembly : — " What an administration ! what an epoch, where all is to be feared and all to be braved ! when tumult begets tumult, when an affray is produced by the very means taken MIRABEAU. n to prevent it : — when moderation is unceasingly necessary, and moderation appears pusillaniniity, timidity, treason^ when you are beset with a thousand counsels, and yet must take your own — when all persons are to be dreaded, even ciMzens whose intentions are pure, but whom distrust, ex. citement, exatjtjeration, render almost as formidable as con- spirators — when one is obliged, even in critical circum- stances, to yield up his wisdom, to lead anarchy in order to" repress it, to assume an employment glorious, it is true, but environed with the most harassing alarms — when it is ne- cessary besides, in the midst of such and so many difficul- lies, to show a serene countenance, to be always calm, to enforce order even in the smallest details, to offend no one, to heal all jealousies, to serve incessantly and seek to please, but without the appearance of being a servant !" When M. Neckar, minister of finance, asked the Assem- bly for a vote of confidence, Mirabeau, in order to carry it by storm, displayed all the irony of his eloquence and all the might of his logic ; and when he saw the auditory shaken, he hurled against bankruptcy the following fulmi- nations : — " Oh ! if declarations less solemn did not guarantee our respect for the public faith, our horror of the infamous word Bankruptcy, I should say to those who familiarize them- selves perhaps with the idea of repudiating tlie public en- gagements, through fear of excessive sacrifices, through terror of taxation : — ' What, then, is bankruptcy, if it is not the crudest, the most iniquitous, the most disastrous of imposts? My friends, listen to mo, a word, a single word ! " ' Two centuries of depredation and robbery have oxca- vated the abyss wherein the kingdom is on the verge of bring engulfed. This frightfiil gulf it is indispensable to fill up. Well, here is a list of the proprietors. Choose from among the richest, so as to sacrifice the smallest number of the citizens. liut choose ! f)r is it not expedient tiiat ii small lunnber perish to save the mass of the people ? Ciime— these two thousand notables possess wherewith to sup|)ly 2* 18 CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY the deficit. Restore order to our finances, peace and pros- perity to the kingdom. Strike, and immolate pitilessly these melancholy victims, precipitate them into the abyss ; it is about to close What, you recoil with horror ! . . . . . Inconsistent, pusillanimous men ! And do you not see that in decreeing bankruptcy — or, what is more odious still, in rendering it inevitable without decreeing — you disgrace yourselves with an act a thousand times more criminal ; for, in fact, that horrible sacrifice would remove the deficien- cy. But do you imagine, that because you refuse to pay, you shall cease to owe ? Do you think the thousands, the mil- lions of men who will lose in an instant, by the dreadful ex- plosion or its revulsions, all that constituted the comfort of their lives, and perhaps their sole means of subsistence, will leave you in the peaceable enjoyment of your crime ? Stoical contemplators of the incalculable woes which this catastrophe will scatter over France ; unfeeling egotists, who think these convulsions of despair and wretchedness will pass away like so many others, and pass the more rapidly as they will be the more violent, are you quite sure that so many men without bread will leave you tranquilly to luxuriate amid the viands which you will have been unwilling to curtail in either variety or delicacy ? No, you will perish ; and in the universal conflagration, which you do not tremble to kindle, the loss of your honor will not save you a single one of your detestable luxuries ! Vote, then, this extraordinary subsidy, and may it prove sufficient ! Vote it, because the class most interested in the sacrifice w hich the government demands, is you yourselves ! Vote it, because the public exigencies allow of no evasion, and that you will be responsible for every delay ! Beware of asking time ; misfortune never grants it. What! gentlemen, in reference to a ridiculous movement of the Palais-Royal, a ludicrous insurrection which had never any consequence oxcept in the weak imaginations or the wicked purposes of a few designing men, you have heard not long since these in- sane cries : Calaline is at the (fates of Rome, and you de- MIRABEAir. 10 liberate .• And assuredly, there was around you neither Cataline, nor danger, nor factions, nor Rome But to-day, bankruptcy, hideous bankruptcy, is there before you. It threatens to consume you, your country, your property, your honor ! And you deliberate !' " This is as beautiful as it is antique. Mirabeau in his premeditated discourses was admirable. But what was he not in his extemporaneous effusions ? His natural vehemence, of which he repressed the flights in his j)repared speeches, broke down all barriers in his improvi- sations. A sort of nervous irritability gave then to his whole frame an almost preternatural animation and life. His breast dilated with an impetuous breathing. His lion face became wrinkled and contorted. His eyes shot forth flame. He roared, he stamped, he shook the fierce mass of his hair, all whitened with foam ; he trod the tribune with tlie supreme authority of a master, and the imperial air of a king. What an interesting spectacle to behold him, mo- mently, erect and exalt himself under the pressure of obsta- cle ! To see him display the pride of his commanding brow ! To see him, like the ancient orator, when, ■'.vith all the pow- ers of his unchained eloquence, he was wont to sway to and fro in the Forum the agitated waves of the Roman multitude ! Then would he throw by the measured notes of his decla- mation, habitually grave and solemn. Then would escape him broken exclamations, tones of thunder, and accents of heart-rending and terrible pathos. He concealed with the flpsii and color of his rhetoric the sinewy arguments of his dialectics. He transported the Assembly, because he was himself transported. And yet — so extraordinary was his force — he abandoned himself to the torrent of his eloquence, without wandering from his course ; he mastered others by its sovereign sway, without losing for an instant his own Bclf-control. His improvisations, whether from rapid exhaustion, or rather instinct of liis art, were brief. He knew tiiat stronji amotions lose their pfTcct by duration — tliat it is unwise to 20 CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. leave the enthusiasm of friends the time to cool, or the ob- jections of adversaries time for preparation — that people soon come to laugh at the thunder which rumbles in the air with- out producing a bolt, and that an antagonist should be struck down promptly, like the cannon ball which kills at a blow. It was contended the Assembly ought not to have the ini- tiative in the impeachment of the ministers. Mirabeau re- plied on the spot : " You forget that the people to whom you oppose the lim- itation of the three powers, is the source of all the powers, and that it alone can delegate them ! You forget that it is to the sovereign you would deny the control of his own ad- ministrators ! You forget, in short, that we, the representa- tives of the sovereign, — in presence of whom stand suspended all the powers of the State, those even of the chief of the nation in case of confliction, — you forget that we by no means pretend to place or displace ministers by virtue of our de- crees, but solely to manifest the opinion of our constituents respecting such or such a minister ! What ! you would re- fuse us the simple right of declaration — you who accord us that of accusing, of prosecuting, and of creating a tribunal to punish these fabrications of iniquity, the machinations of which, by a palpable contradiction, you would have us to con- template in a respectful silence ! Do you not see then how much a better lot I would ensure our governors than you, how much I exceed you in moderation ? You allow no in- terval between a boding silence and a sanguinary denunci- ation. To say nothing or to punish, to obey or to strike — such is your system ! And for me, I would notify before denouncing, 1 would remonstrate before casting reproach !" He frequently used, by inspiration, thsse vivid figures which transport of a sudden, men, objects, and places on the stage, and make them hear, speak, and act, as if they were really present. The Assembly was about to plunge im- prudently into religious quarrels. Mirabeau, to cut the mat- ter short, rose and said : " Recollect that from this place, from the very tribune where I now speak, I can see the window MIRABEAU. 21 of the palace through which factious miscreants, uniting temporal interests with the most sacred interests of religion, liad fired by the hand of a king of the French the fatal gun which was to be the sifrnal of the massacre of the Ilufrucnots !" A deputation of the Assembly was preparing to wait upon the King to request the dismission of the troops, al. ready three times refused. The indignant Mirabeau, un- able to contain himself, addresses the Committee : — " Say to the King — say to him, that the hordes of foreign- ers by whom we are invested, have received yesterday the visit of the princes, of the princesses, of the favorites, male and female, also their caresses, and their exhortations, and their presents ! Say to him that the whole night, these for- eign satellites, gorged with gold and wine, have been pre- dicting in their impious songs the enslavement of France, and invoking witli their brutal vows the destruction of the National Assembly ! Say to him that in his very palace, the courtiers have led their dances to the sound of this bar- barous music, and that such was the prelude of the Saint- Bartholomew !" In his fine discourse on the " right of peace and war," Mirabeau had arrived after some confusion of ideas, at a precise solution of the difficulty, by means of ministerial responsibility, and the refusal of the supplies on the part of the legislative power. But as soon as he had uttered these closing words : " Fear not that a rebel King, abdicating of himself his sceptre, will expose himself to the peril of run- ning from victory to the scaffold, " he was interrupted with violent murmurs. D'Espremenil moved that he be called to order, for having attacked the inviolability of the King ! " You have all," replied Mirabeau at the instant, " heard my supposition of a despotic and revolted King, who should come, with an army of Frenchmen, to conquer the position of tyrants. But a King in this position, is no longer a King." — (Jcncral applause : — Mirabeau proceeds : " It is tlie tocsin of necessity alone which can give tlie signal, when the moment is come for fulfilling the imprcscriptable 22 CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLV. duty of resistance — a duty always imperative whenever the Constitution is violated, always triumphant when the resist- ance is just and truly national." Are not these words the prophetic and living picture of the Revolution of July. In the same effusion and a little after, Mirabeau, in a celebrated adjuration, introduces on the stage the Abbe Sieyes. — " I will not conceal," said he, " my deep regret that tlie man who has laid the foundations of the Constitution, that the man who has revealed to the world the true princi- ples of representative government, who condemns himself to a silence which I deplore, which I think culpable, that the Abbe Sieyes — I ask his pardon for naming him — does not come forward to insert, himself, in his constitution, one of the most important springs of the social order. This occasions me the more pain, that crushed beneath a weight of labor beyond my intellectual forces, unceasingly hurried off from self-collection and meditation, which are the prin- cipal sources of mental power, I had not myself turned at- tention to this question of the completion of my work, ac- customed as I was to repose upon that great thinker. 1 have pressed him, conjured, implored in the name of the friendship with which he honors me, in the name of Patri- otism — that sentiment far more energetic and holy — to en- dow us with the treasure of his ideas, not to leave a blank in the Constitution. He has refused me, I denounce him to you ! I conjure you, in my turn, to obtain his opinion which ought not to be a secret, to rescue in fine from discourage- ment a man whose silence and seclusion I regard as a pub- lic calamity." I liave remarked that what has raised Mirabeau mcom- parably beyond other orators, is the profundity and breadth of his thoughts, the solidity of his reasoning, the vehemence of his improvisations ; but it is especially the unexampled felicity of his repartees. In fact, the auditors and princi- pally the rival orators hold themselves on their guard against premeditated speeches. As they know that the orator has M I R A B E A U . 23 spread in advance his toils to surprise them, they prepare ac- cordingly in advance to elude him. They search for, ihey di- vine, they discover, they dispose for themselves, with more or less of ability, the arguments which he must employ, his facts, his proofs, his insinuations, and sometimes even his fig- ures and happiest movements. They have thus, all ready to meet him, their objections. They shut the air-and-eye holes of their helmet, they cover the weak points of their cui- rass where his lance might penetrate ; and when the orator crosses the barrier, and rushes impetuous to the conflict, he encountei's before him an enemy armed cap-a-pie, who bars his way and disputes valiantly the victory. — But a happy oratorical retort astonishes and delights even your adversa- ries ; it produces the effect of things unexpected. It is a startling counterplot, which cuts the gordian knots of tlie play and precipitates the catastrophe. It is the lightning flash amid the darkness of night. It is the arm which strikes in the buckler of the enemy, who draws it instantly and returns it to pierce the bosom of him who had launched it. — The repartee shakes the irresolute and floating masses of an assembly. It comes upon you, as the eagle, concealed in the hollow of a rock, makes a stoop at its prey and car- ries it offall palpitating in its talons, before it even has emitted a cry. It arouses, by the stimulant of its novelty, the thick- skulled, phlegmatic, and drowsy deputies who were falling asleep. It sends a sudden and softening thrill to the soul. It fires the audience to cry. To arms ! to arms ! It wrings from the bosom exclamations of wrath. It provokes laugh- ter inextinguishable. It compels the adversary — oflicer or soldier — to go hide his shame in the ranks of his company, who open them to receive him but with pity and derision. It resolves with a word tiie question in a debate. It signifies nn event. It reveals a character. It paints a situation. It absolves, it condemns, a party. It makes a reputation, or it unmakes it. It glorifies, it stigmatizes, it dejects, it cheers, it unbinds, it reattaches, it saves, it slays. It attracts, it suspends magically, a.s by a golden chain, an entire assem- 24 CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. bly from the lips of a single man. It concentrates at the same time its whole attention upon a single point, for a mo- ment produces unanimity, and may decide of a sudden the loss or the gain of a parliamentary battle. Never did Mirabeau shrink from an objection or an ad- versary. He drew himself up to his full height under the menace of his enemies, and burst by sledge-blows the nail which it was intended he should draw. — In the tribune he braved the prejudices, the dumb objurgations and muttering impatience of the Assembly. Immovable as a rock, he crossed his arms and awaited silence. — He retorted instantly, blovv after blow, upon all opponents and on all subjects, with a rapidity of action and a nicety of pertinence really sur- prising. He painted men and things with a manner and words entirely his own. — How energetically did he describe France, "an unconstituted aggregation of disunited people." — He used to say in his monarchical language : " The mon- arch is the perpetual representative of the people, and the deputies are the temporary representatives." — Member of the directory of Paris, he expressed himself thus before ihe King : " A tall tree covers with its shade a large surface. Its roots shoot wide and deep through the soil and entwine themselves around eternal rocks. To pull it down the earth itself must be uptorn. Such, Sire, is the image of oonstitu- tional monarchy." — Assailed impertinently by M. de Fau- cigny, he words the reprimand in these terms : " The As- sembly, satisfied with the repentance you testify, remits you, sir, the penalty which you have incurred." What vivacity, what actuality, what nobleness in all these repartees ! what keen and chivalrous irony ! what vigor ! The pretensions of the republic of Genoa to the island of Corsica were occupying the deliberation of the house at un- necessary length. Mirabeau : — " I do not think that a league between Ra- gusa, Lucca, Saint-Maro, and some other powers equally formidable, ought to give you great inquietude ; nor do I re- gard as very dangerous the republic of Genoa, whose armies MIRABEAL 25 have been put to flight by twelve me: and twelve women on the sea-coast in Corsica. I move an extremely indefinite ad- journment." Cazales proposed, as a remedy for the public evils, the investment of the King during three months with unlimited executive power. — Mirabeau said : " M. de Cazales is be- side the question, for he discusses whether or not the King is to be accorded a dictatorship." — And as the Abbe Maury ijisisted upon the right of Cazales to make this motion, Mi- rabeau replied : " 1 have pretended not that the preceding speaker had transgressed his riglit; I have said only that he was beside the question. He has demanded the dictatorship ; the diclatorsiiip over a nation of twenty-five millions of souls ! The dictatorship to one man ! in a country actually occupied in forming its Constitution, in a country whose representatives are assembled in council, the dictatorship to a single indi- vidual !" To the optimists who slumbered in presence of the men- acing state of aftairs : — " We sleep ; but do not people sleep at the foot of Vesuvius ?" To the Abbe Maury, who taunted him with invoking tlie aid of the populace : — " I will not stoop to repel the charge •ust made upon me, unless the Assembly dignify it to my level, by ordering me to reply. In that case, I would deem it sufheicnt lor my vindication and my glory to name my ac- cuser and t-o name myself." To a verbal dispute respecting the wording of a clause in the Constitution : — " I will observe that it would not be amiss that the National Assembly of France should speak Frencii, and even indite in French the laws which it proposes." To those who claimed the inalienability of tiie ancient fnuniliilioiis of the Clergy : — "If all the men who have lived upon the eartli had each had a separate tomb, it would have been indispensable, in order to find lands for cultivation, 1o pull down these monuments, and to [)lougii the ashes of the dead for tlie sustenance of the living." To a deputy who moved the adjournment uf a motion 3 2G CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. relative to some unfortunates under capital sentence : — " Were you going to be hung, sir, would you propose the adjournment of an investigation which might result in saving your life ?" To those who pretended that the demand upon the king to dismiss the ministry must prove the ruin of England : — " Enr from the j(>alous leaven of tiiat spirit of opposition which, ever since tiie feuihd times, 104 THE RESTORATION animated it heriditarily against the Courtiers, or that it de- sired to concentrate the forces of the aristocracy in the local administrations, demanded urgently, under a popular pre, text, the election by two degrees. M. de Serre baffled thia stratagem, and carried the direct form of election ; and when in 1819, the charge was renewed against this mode of elec- tion, de Sen*e defended it with arguments so convincing and an eloquence so captivating that the enthusiasm of his very adversaries burst forth in acclamations. The oratorical career of M. de Serre was brief, but how richly filled up ! What energy of will ! what power of reasoning ! what force ! what fulness, what variety in his discourses ! what a multitude of combats ! what a succes- sion of victories ! How he pleads with ardor against the bankruptcy orators who, to annul or reduce the mortgage of the public creditors, stigmatized the origin and occasion of their titles ! How he puts to shame the denouncers of the illustrious Massena ! How he braves the call to order, for having opposed the proposition to render the clergy proprie- tary, to endow it with a rent-charge in perpetuity of forty, two millions, to restore to it the church property remaining unsold, to commit to it public instruction of all degrees, as also the civil registers, and to recast in the same mould the constitution of Church and State ! How he seeks to move, where he cannot convince ! How his voice softens, how he turns to invoke pity, when there are no ears for justice ! As minister, M. de Serre continued to march in the path of progress. His code of the press was a measure of great liberality, a work at that time prodigiously difficult in the elaboration of the subject, a production complete in the definition of the offences, in the forms of the procedure and the articulation of the penalties. M. Guizot, without the eloquence and comprehensiveness of de Serre, sustained him, however, lionorably in that admirable discussion, and this noble action of his past life merits him the absolution of many a fault. Never, since the establishment of our M. DE SERRE. 105 representative government, in any debate, has any ministet soared to the same elevation as M. de Serre. He showed himself alternately a statesman in the political consideration of the subject, a dialectitian in the deduction of the proofs, a jurisconsult in the graduation of the penalties, an orator in the refutation of his adversaries. Wiser than the attorney- generals of the day, he maintained the reference of offences of the press to the jury. More liberal than the Opposition itself, he combattcd the motion of Manuel to extend the in- violability to written opinions, and not those pronounced in the tribune. How many beautiful and stirring expressions dropped at that period from de Serre: "I do not interdict the deputy the right of being a writer." And this : "Lib- erty is no less necessary to the moral and religious, than to the political, progression of the people." It was during this discussion that de Serre having said that all majorities had been sound : " And the Convention too ?" cried M. de la Bourdonnaie, — " Yes, sir," rejoined de Serre, " and the Convention too, if the Convention had not deliberated with the dagger at its breast." Oh ! what would be the indignation and pity of de Serre, had he the misfortune of living under our regime without liberty because it is without principles, without popularity because without grandeur ; could he compare the temperate legislation of the press, under the king of 1819, — king by the grace of God — with the violent legislation of Septem- ber, under tlie king of 1841, king by the grace of the Peo- ple ; and if he could see alongside the jury, that liberal ju- dicatory of the country, our poor petty ministerial peerage pronouncing, upon poor paltry proceedings, its poor pitiful decrees. Confiscation abaslicd, crinio punislied, justice reinstated, denunciations stilled, public credit restored, finidalisni tram- pled down, tlie elections purified, the right of petition vindi- cated, parties equipoised, IcgislatJDii enlightened, the tribune free, tlie press assured : such were tiie labors and the re- sult.'; of llie firs' uiid brilliant period of tiie parliamentary 106 THE RESTORATION. life of M. de Serre, as deputy, as president of the Chamber, and as minister. But behold you, all of a sudden, M. de Serre, after hav- ing been the most vigorous champion of liberty, constitutes himself fatally the liege-servant of power. He attacks what he had defended. He burns his idol. He announces the approaching, tempest ; he utters from the topmast a cry of distress, and clings upon the shoals, overhanging the gulf whereinto the election law was drawing the monar- chy. His energies are wasted, and, to recruit them, he leaves a moment the parliamentary scene. Meanwhile, his colleague, M. Pasquier, withstood the onset of the Opposi- tion, but in retreating. The heavens were gloomy and the cloud was about to burst. De Serre is recalled in all haste ; he returns, he rushes desperately into the strife. He changes the ground of the battle, carries the war with the victory into the camp of the Liberals, and saves the monarchy. We must be unjust to no man. The Opposition prosecut- ed its trade of opposition. Why should not M. de Serre prosecute his of minister ? The governments, whose basis is not broad and national are sickly bodies, which a dose, a little too strong of liberty, kills infallibly. M. de Serre was the responsible adviser, the political physician, of an infirm royalty. He could not kill his patient. But there was then more peril, peril of death for the dynasty, in the election laws of 1817, than in universal suffrage itself. If desired, I am ready to prove it. But we radicals are inclined too often to judge our adver- saries from our point of view, and take it ill, not that they do not adopt our peinciples, but that they act, or that they speak according to their own. It is as if a general should blame the enemy he attacks, for repulsing him. To judge M. de Serre impartially, he must be viewed not from our position, but from his. M. de Serre was emigrant, royalist, aristocrat, and minister. When there was a reaction of roy- alty against liberty, he defended liberty, through liberalism, net republicanism. When there was a reaction of liberty M. DE SERRE. 107 against royalty, he defended royalty through loyalty, not servility. In bo;h these cases he was quite consistent. The character of M. de Serre would permit no half-way meas- ures with either his friends or his enemies. Once, with the throne at his back, he began to oppose with a lofty and des- perate vigor the coalition of parties, the democracy of elec- tions, and the menaces of the press. M. Pasquier was of an adroit and polished address. That of M. de Serre was frank and unceremonious. He dis- dained to disguise himself under the artifices of language. He went right to the adversary, and dealt him a blow of his club. I was present and can imagine I see him still, when turning to the Opposition and looking it fixedly between the eyes, he said : " I have seen through you, I have penetrated your designs, I have unmasked you." The Opposition could scarce restrain its fury. " Whatever you may have done for the new order of interests," said he on another occasion to the deputies of the Extreme Left, " you have not done more than I have !" And this was perfectly true. The expositions of M. de Serre were at least equal to his speeches. What a master touch in this picture of the lib- erty of the press in the United States and in England ! " Suppose a population complexionally calm and cold, scattered over a vast territory, surrounded by the ocean and the desert, absorbed in the occupations of agriculture and trade, as yet independent of the wants of the intellect and the torments of ambition. Divide this population into a number of small States more or less democratic, weakly constituted, without distinction or rank, and you will com- prehend how the licentiousness of the press may there be tolerable ; how it may be even a useful instrument of de- mocratic government, a stimulant to wrest tlic individual citizens from their liomestic concerns, and bring them to the discussion of tiio great interests of tiio puijiic." " Suppose elsewhere a kingdom wherein time has accu- mulated upon a haughty aristocracy, inlluence, dignities, riches and possessions almost kingly. It is rotiuisilc that 108 THE RESTORATION. there be a check upon the pride of the great ; ihey must bfc reminded constantly what they owe to the throne and to the people ; it must be inculcated upon them day by day that influence can be retained but as it has been acquired, by science and courage, by patriotism and public services. Tlie newspapers and even their abuse are admirable for this purpose. Add that this aristocracy is not an isolated body in the State ; that below it, descending and widening are several successive degrees ; that these degrees are firmly linked, indissolubly welded into one simple hierarchy ; that by this all is moved, government, justice civil and criminal, administration, police ; then be not astonished that a society thus constructed survives the agitation of the periodical press." M. de Serre had an organizing genius. He was alarmed at the dissolvent progress of individualism. He wished, like Napoleon, to institute classes, corporations, cities, coun- ter-weights, a resisting system of political forces. He was not aristocratic by prejudice or caste, by opposition or by pride ; but he seemed possessed by the necessity of a hie- rarchical discipline, an ascending and descending classifica- tion of Chambers, and of society itself. Happily, societies do not suffer themselves to be thus shaped by the capricious finger of the legislator. France has the manners of equal- ity ; it has a repugnance, quite as much from temperament as wisdom, to the stiff and intolerant hierarchies of social condition and political power. Educated in the school of German philosophy, M. de Serre brought into the discussion of affairs, the processes of a method profound without being hollow, ingenious without being subtle. He loved to go back to the sources of the subject, and he was admirable in his historical expositions. He commented learnedly the antinomies of legislation. He treated all topics civil, political, military, fiscal, religious, with a singular precision of view and great soundness of doctrine. Customs, Budget, Registry, Press, personal Lib- erty, Petitions, Chamber rules. Elections, Pensions, Publio M. DE SERRE. 109 Instruction, Council of State, Foreign Affairs, he spoke upon all these questions, nor quitted them without marking his steps with trains of light. By his manner of stating the di- visions of his discourse, in the firmness of his progressions, and the catenation substantial and sustained of his reason- ings, you at once recognized the march of a superior mind. M. Guizot has a good deal of this manner. M. de Serre was tall and meagre of body. He had a high and prominent forehead, lank hair, a lively eye, the pendant lips and anxious physiognomy of a man of strong passions. He stammered in beginning to speak, and you saw by the working of his temples that the ideas amassed slowly and elaborated themselves with effort in his brain. But by little and little they became arranged, they made headway, and rolled forth in a compact and marvellous order. He plied, he palpitated beneath their weight and flung them abroad in magnificent images and expressions picturesque and creative. I will mention but a kw of these sayings, or rather thoughts which escaped him in such vivid abundance. — " In proportion as the people unlearn to obey, the minis- ter unlearns to govern." — " A well-ordered society is the fairest temple tliat can be erected to the Eternal." — " Extraordmary tribunals take badly in France." — " If ministers abused their power, there would then be no difficulty in discovering the laws of responsibility, and the modes of impeachment." — " Young men of the schools, you have to learn science and wisdom, and you affect to guarantee us science and wis- dom, and you pretend to judge your masters and the supe- riors of your masters !" — " If stripped of the moss of ago, the roots of all rights could be laid bare to the eye, would they be found pure of all usurpation, of all stain 7'' — " Law is the relation of beings to each other; jurispru- dence is the expression lA' those relations." But if i)y tiie flash of thought, by the skill of coloring, by lU 110 THE RESTORATION. t}i«5 nerve and vehemence of discourse, M. de Serre was the most eloquent man of the Restoration ; he fell occasion, ally, like the greatest orators, into the natural extravagan- cies of a fervid and impetuous delivery. He uttered his famous NEVER, which he has been so much reproached for, and lias sufficiently repented. M. de Serre was, during his later years, the target of the Opposition. It is against this lofty genius, against this pow- erful head (to speak the language of Benjamin Constant) that the Opposition directed its shafts. It harassed this lion of the ministry. It pulled him by the mane and pierced him with its sharpest javelins. It would have wished to be able to clip off his claws and confine him in an iron cao-e Foy, Benjamin Constant, Manuel, Chauvelin, hovered ince santly about this formidable foe, without letting him breathe an instant ; and Casimir-Perier, who, become minister, could not suffer that he was handled so mildly, and who cried with a tone of command to his band of servile depu- ties : " Come, come then ! up, gentlemen, up !" permitted himself against de Serre the most extraordinary violence of gesture and language. Were it allowed me to forget that I here draw but an oratorical portrait, I would say that M. de Serre was a good man, courageous, sincere, upright, adorned with all the do- mestic virtues, too tender-hearted perhaps ! The tribune wastes rapidly those nervous organizations. General Foy was affected in the heart, Casimir-Perier in the liver, and de Serre in the brain. This exquisiteness of sensibility gives perfection no doubt to the orator, but death to the man. After the Court party had used M. de Serre to beat down the electoral law, and then the press, he was stripped of the seals and tiie simar and sent into the brilliant exile of an embassy, to meditate upon the nothingness of parliamentary triumphs. This man, who had been president of the Cham ber, and was the most eloquent of its orators, had not credit enough to obtain a re-election as deputy. He was though! too royalist by the liberals, and too liberal by the royalists. M.DESERRE. Ill Besides, most burgess electors do not like men of intellectual superiority. Genius overshadows, and, by a sort of instinct, mediocrity assimilates itself. To please the multitude, to remain their man, you must make yourself all things to all ; not do too much harm nor too much good ; not swim right in the current, but drift aside like scum, upon the shore of party ; bury your head between your shoulders, squat in a corner so as not to see the setting, but so as to hail the ris- ing sun ; live the animal life of ministerial dinners and Court soirees. Be this, and you will be always deputy ! M. de Serre took violently to heart this his electoral repu- diation. He got deranged, and his eyes turned towards that tribune of France still resounding with the echoes of his eloquence so much regretted, he died. Vanity of reputations ! Who has any remembrance to- day of M. de Serre ? Vanity of his painter ! Who would know but for me, if I had not reproduced his lineaments, his physiognomy, his strong and masculine eloquence, if I had not thrown him upon the canvass and restored him to the light, who would know, in this oblivious age of ours, that M. de Serre lived, crushed a civil war, saved the mon- archy, was a great orator — so great that, among the princes of the modern tribune, he could be compared but to Ber- ryer, if Berryer were comparable to any one ! 112 THE RESTORATION GENERAL FOY The public, at the commencement of the Restoration, were but imperfectly acquainted with the full import of the Charter of 1814, copied after the English constitution, with the metaphysical fiction of its trinity of members, its double Chambers, the vain responsibility of its ministers and the lying balance of its powers. Tiie Doctrinarians were not heard out of the sanctuary of their little chapel. Hatred of the foreigner, whose intolerable yoke weighed upon our territory, hatred of the aristocracy, who were constantly chafing the vanity of the burgess class and menacing the new interests established by the Revolution — these were the most general sentiments then pervading the nation. General Foy made his entrance into the Chambers with this twofold hatred at heart. When, mounting for the first time the tribune, he dropped this expression : '' France has still an echo for the words honor and country," the national pride was excited, and the tears flowed from the eyes of all the old warriors of the Empire. It seemed to them as if they had heard a war-cry raised against the foreigner. Tlie speeches of Foy owed their extraordinary success to the same cause as the songs of Beranger and the pamphlets of Poul- Louis Courier. They were all three possessed of exquisite sense, a lively and rare intelligence, and the wants of their epoch. They had all the gift of speaking to the peo- ple its language of the moment ; for the people, according to the period, has more than one tongue at its disposal. It was by labor agricultural, industrial, scientific and mil GENERAL FOY. 113 itary, that the new generation had elevated itself upon the ruins of aristocratical idleness. Accordingly, when Gen- oral Foy overwhelmed with his sarcasms the gentlemen of the Court and the Emigration, entire France was unani- mous in applause. It is tliat Foy, like Poul-Louis, and Be- ranger, had touched the fibre of the national heart which vibrated most sensitively at the time. He was in unison with it. After so many lawyer orators, all very nearly cast in the same mould, the tribune had at length obtained its military orator. Tlie eclat and picquancy of this novelty, with the influence of military valor upon all Frenchmen, even un- consciously to themselves, made General Foy dear to the Opposition, without being disagreeable to the Emigration, not- withstanding his attacks. Nothing more was needed to encircle General Foy, from the moment of his first appearance on the parliamentary stage, with that brilliant renown which attended him to the grave. But posterity will not ratify the too precipitate judg- ment of contemporaries. M. de Serre has been, under the Restoration, the eagle of the tribune. Foy is only second to him. What in fact is an orator wlio does not extemporize ? The speeches of General Foy do not equal in vigor of thought, in imagery of style, in logical connection, in vehe- mence, in depth, in point, those of Royer-Collard and Ben- jamin Constant. They are marred by the tinselry of a false rhetoric, and are really no better than school-boy amplifica- tions in comparison with the famous harangues of Greece and Rome. These discourses are moreover confined to the narrow circle of a bastard constitutionalism. Tiiey are just as liberal as the epoch, but do not advance beyond it. They do not look enough into the future. They do not suf ficientlv take for wiiat they are, for what they are worth, tlie fictions of that absurd representation, the existence of which posterity will one day call in doubt ; which limps and dislocates itself at every step, and is unable to stand the test cither of locic or of business. They are stricken with that 114 THE RESTORATION. incurable impotence A\hich paralyzes all the orators of our monopoly legislatures. They want genius. But the profundity of thought, the boldness of speculation, the veritude of principles, the beauty of form, the science ol composition, are appreciated but by a few connoisseurs. General Foy had that sort of splendor mixed with the false and the true, which was calculated to dazzle the multitude of an assembly. Men of intellect themselves, on seeing the crowd pass, excited by the common enthusiasm, mingled* with it and accompanied the triumphal car. But, after the procession comes the critic, who calls gold what is gold, and tinsel what is tinsel, and who restores men and things to their appropriate places. A certain person whom no one now reads, has had his speeches gilt-edged, printed upon vellum to the number of ten thousand copies, and lauded by his panegyrists as eqtial to the orations of Cicero and Demosthenes. To a certain other person, or even if you will, to General Foy, a marble cenotaph has by subscription been erected, as to the god of eloquence. Scarcely could the purse of his friends afford to-day to plant over him a wooden cross. General Foy had the exterior, the attitude and the ges- tures of the orator, a prodigious memory, a clear voice, eyes beaming with intellect, and a turn of head which might be described as chivalrous. His prominent forehead, tossed backward, lightened with enthusiasm, or writhed with wrath. He shook the tribune, and had something of the sibyl on her tripod. He checked himself, so to say, heroically in the impetuosity of argument, and foamed without contortion, I had well nigh said, with grace. Frequently he was seen to leave all of a sudden his seat, and scale the tribune as if he was marching to victory. Mounted, he launched forth his words with an air of command, like another Conde hurling his constable's-stafFover the redoubts of the enemy. General Foy was not accustomed to improvisate his set discourses. A man over forty years of age does not learn extemporization, any more than swimming, horsemanship, GENERAL FOY. 115 or music. The tribune has, so to speak, its fingering like the piano. The French speech especially, so correct, so surcharged with incisives, so interrupted with ablatives, so reserved, so prudish, requires to be elaborated and practised early. Accordingly the only speakers commonly unprepared are the lawyers, or the professors, or the drawing-room babblers, those men with woman tongue. To supply tiie deficiency of his oratorical education. General Foy used to meditate laboriously his harangues. He could fornmlize and distribute in his capacious memory their whole plan and proportions. He disposed his exordiums, classed his facts, prepared his theses, and sketched his perorations. Then behold him ascend the tribune, and, master of his subject, fecundated by study and inspiration, he gave him- self up to the current of his thought. His head butts, his discourse warms, distends, dilates, takes consistence, form, color. He knows what he is going to say, but not how he is going to say it. He sees the end, but not by what route he is to gain it. He has his hands full of arguments, images and flowers, and according as they present them- selves, he takes, selects, and assorts them into the garland of his eloquence. It is neither the coldness of reading, nor the monotonous psalmodizing of recitation. It is a mixed procedure, whereby the orator, at once hermit and enthusi- ast, improvisator and writer, chains his own frenzy without ceasing to be free, forgets and remembers, bursts the thread of his discourse, and knots, but to sunder it again and still recover it without the least disconcertion ; blends the sallies, the incidents, the surprises, the picturesque of language, with reflexion, sequence and thouirht, and draws his re- sources and his power alike from ihr premeditated and the unforeseen, from tlif vigorous precision of art tuid tiio sim- ple graces of nature. To be an orator after this fashion is not a thing to be liad bv a wish ; for it requires memorv, invention, originality and taste, the ease of the gentleman and the erudition of tlie scholar^-cjualities exclusive of each other most commonly. 9* 110 THE RESTORATION. This method of General Foy, and which became perhap* but liim alone, is not without advantage. In the first place, parliamentary assemblies are flattered by the trouble you take to please them. Again, the limits of the discourse being thus demarcated in advance, the orator is not liable to lose himself in the endless space of divagation. He does not present himself in slippers and morning-gown on the liustings, and keep stringing words together until the idea otfers, as if the auditors were present for the mere purpose of waiting upon you ! The most brilliant sayings of General Foy were but points kept in reserve, set in framing as it were, for the nonce. With what art he could introduce a preconcerted situation, a dramatic incident, a striking figure, a happy allusion ! With what pertinence, for example, he brings into a discussion on the budget, the portrait of Marshal Gouvian Saint-Cyr, drawn beforehand, so admirably drawn ! But if the longer discourses of Greneral Foy, despite the perfect exposition of the subject, the perspicuity of the die- tion and abundanceof the arguments, are not without faults ; if they may be reproached with betraying somewhat of the compass, being a little too elaborate, with smelling too much of the lamp, I should not say the same of his extempora- neous efforts which flowed with equal facility and brevity. How natural ! what vivid and powerful irony ! what in- credible felicity of retort ! and this on all occasions, at each step, at every interruption, and always the exact, the deci- sive word ! To some who reproached him with regretting the tri-colored cockade : " Ah ! he said, it surely would not be the shades of Philippe-Auguste and of Henry IV. that should feel indig- nant, in their tombs, to behold the Jleurs-de-lis of Bouvines and of Ivry on the banner of Austerlitz.' To those who asked him tauntingly : What then do you call the aristocracy ? " The aristocracy ! I shall tell you . the aristocracy is the league, the coalition of those who would consume with- GENERAL FOY. 117 out producing, live without laboring, possess themselves of all the public offices without being qualified to fill them, seize upon all the honors of the state without having merited any — this is the aristocracy !" To those who cried : Adjourn ! adjourn ! — " You natur- ally wish adjournments, and not truths. The truths swamp you." To a fellow who said to him : Send your foreign news to the Bourse : " I know nothintr of the jjamblinsjs of the Bourse : I only speculate in the rise of the national honor !" To certain deputies who pretended that tlie commission of censorship had been placed under half-pay : " If this be true, I desire that the commission be treated as the half-pay offi- cers are for two years back. I desire it be never recalled into service." To ministers who defended the ludicrous extravaijance and sinecures of the department of foreign affairs : " Ac- quaint us then with those diplomats of yours, who have served neither before, nor after, nor during our heroic revo- lution ; your pensions to this man for writing a book, to the otlier, not to write one ; your physicians who have never had a patient to attend ; your historiographors with no his- tory to record ; your sketchers who know of no other land- scape to draw than the kitchen-garden of Wagram." Speaking of M. de Serre, a renegade to liberalism : " There are in politics situations so degraded that they cease to go for anything in any division of opinion." Directly addressing dc Serre, keeper of the seals: "As sole vengeance, as sole punishment, I condemn you, sir, to cast your eyes, as you leave this hall, upon the statues of d'llopital and Dagesseau !" This oratorical apostrn[)he is of the highest beauty. They were proud times compared with ours, those times of the Opposition of fifteen years since, times never to re- turn ! 'I'he Carhonari had not yet quitted their stalls and cellars, to revel in the orgies of power, 'i'he deputies of 118 THE RESTORATION. the Left had not yet forsworn their oaths, had not basely sac rificed democracy to dastardly concessions, to disgraceful honors or womanish fears. People then were in the inno- cence of early illusions. They put faith in the probity of politicians. You did not see under the garb of a colleague a hand preparing to betray you, a dagger ready to pierce you. The deputies of the Opposition had all but one voice, one soul, one sentiment. They watched, all over each, and each over all. Always booted and spurred, always on the breach, beaten on one side, rallying themselves on the other, and never despairing of their little band, of liberty or the future. Systematically organized, they had their chiefs, their ad- vanced guards, their flank and main armies, their plan of at- tack and defence, their password. France observed them with eyes and heart, and attended their struggles with ap- plauses and palms. There was, it must be repeated, some honor in being then deputy. It was a great one to be an orator, greater than to have gained victories — for formerly there were victories and heroes by the hundred. But to- day to be a deputy is so small a matter ! To be a peer is, still less, much less. We have seen so many mountebanks gambol on the trestle of the Representative ! In vain do our polichinellos now play their antics; the people turn away disgusted and seek other amusements. General Foy, for his part, took up his representative duties in earnest, and studied them day and night. He col- lated assiduously the documents and reports, the ordinances and the laws. He dictated, took notes, analyzed his im- mense reading, culling thus the flower of each subject where- from to compose his honey. He did not disdain to descend into the labyrinth of our financial laws. He conned our voluminous budget, chapter by chapter, article by article, with the dry and minute patience of an oflice clerk. Nothing escaped his amazing sagacity. Equally attentive to the de- tails of execution and the spirit of the rules, he investigated the occasion of the expenditures, calculated the accounts, verified the figures, and decomposed the entire elements of GENERAi. FOY. 119 each department of service. He saw into all, examined all, discussed all. Ecclesiastical law, civil law, procedure even, he must needs understand. Loans, rents, taxes, civil list, press, public instruction, internal administration, foreign affairs, nothing appertaining to those questions so diverse and so difficult found him unprepared. He was a man of iron, one of those men of the Napoleonian school, who went to the conquest of liberty with the same pace that they marched to the conquest of the world, with erect brow and resolute eye, without fear of obstacles or doubt of victory ; who sac- rifice their days, their nights, their fortunes, their health, their existence to duty ; who cling, as if by cramps, to what- ever is most difficult in each subject, who never flag, who live, and who die of the energy of their will ! But what evinces especially the superior sense of General Foy, is the bloody struggle, the returning struggle of every day, which he maintained to prevent the alteration of the electoral law. The electoral law ! this in effect is ihu whole government, the whole State, the whole Constitution. I might even go so far as to say that there is in the country no other political law, or if you will, in other words, that it contains all other laws, since it is the mother law of all. The Constitution is society at rest. The electoral law is society in action. Tell me who arc your electors, and I will tell you what is your government. If they bo place-holders, you will have a despotism. If the wealthy proprietors, you will have an oligarchy. With the suffrage universal, you will have a democratic government. General Foy felt instinctively tliiit the electoral law of qualification would infallibly bring the government info the hands of the mercantile and moneyed class. He labored, witl)out intending it, for the ignoble triumph of the every, one-for-himself jirinciple. In history, however, we see but the people and the aristocracy who have accomplished great things. The wealthy burgess class never rise above the altitude of the breeches pocket. A burgess regime, 120 THE RESTORATION. without liberty and without glory, I much doubt if Foy, while subserving it, would have greatly relished. To what end, for the rest, so many fine speeches about the simple vote and the double vote ! Is it that in the assemblies of a monopoly representation, Eloquence, that daughter of heaven, has ever cured a corrupted heart or rectified a perverted intellect ? Is it that it is ever law that governs the world — and not the unforeseen ? Who would have said, three days before the 25th of July, that a coup-d'et.at would demolish the Constitution, and three days after, that a popular insurrection should subvert the mon- archy ? Eloquence produces at most the effect of the drum which beats the charge; but it is the musketry and cannon, shot that decides the victory. A noble heart was that of General Foy, a heart full of lofty sentiments of patriotism and national independence, a heroic heart, loving glory, not for himself, not for its own sake, but for that of his country, as it was loved at Austerlitz, as it was loved in the days so pure of the dawning repub- lic ! Never had the army, that pearl of our national diadem, in the parliamentary lists, a more brilliant knight. They have the weight of authority, those men who talk of war, while exhibiting a breast covered with scars and arms fur- rowed by the bullets of the enemy ! It is reported that his private life deserved all admiration, the life of a soldier and a citizen, tender and blameless in his family affections, devoted to his friends, simple and stu- dious, upright, guileless, disinterested, and worthy, like the gfeat men of antiquity, to be written by another Plutarch. There is in the discourses of General Foy I know not what of chaste and attractive, I know not what odor of virtue, what grace of the heart which, in the orator, makes us love the man : you see, you feel that in speaking, his soul is upon his lips. But they will open no more, those eloquent lips ! the flame of eloquence has consumed them. Yes, the tribune is death to the conscientious orator. He has no rest by day GENERAL FOY. 121 and no sleep by night. He lives but a life of agitation and excitement. The action of the organs is suspended or pre- cipitated. The head turns gray and the hands are tremu- lous, the heart contracts, dilates and breaks. Vainly have I post[)oned, I find myself obliged to meet a question of political physiology which I have proposed myself a hundred times. Had Louis XVIII. on his return from Gand, offered General Foy the governorship of a prov- ince, who can say that General Foy would have refused it, and if not, what would have become of all that tempest of eloquence? not even mere wind. How many have we not witnessed, in the Chamber of 1816, and out of it, of this kind of liberals, and among the most ardent who were such only for the nonce, the parvenue nobility of Napoleon, because they were stupidly ashamed of being branded on the forehead with the original sin of low birth. The pro- pensity to please the master has always been with the French, the malady of the most respectable people. Nearly all the friends of General Foy, almost all the deputies whose sad and sorrowful faces seem to weep on the bas-reliefs of his mausoleum, have deserted the sacred cause of liberty which constituted their glory and our hope! All those Scevolas, those Cincinnatuses, those Brutuses of the Opposi- tion, except two or three, have plunged body and soul into the new regime. Would General Foy have, like the others, embraced the altars of the 7th August? It is with pain 1 say tiial I believe he would. In truth, no orator of the Left made, under the Restoration, so many dynastic profes- sions : he overwhelii]* d the Bourbon family witii so many compliments, so many significant protestations, so many delicate attentions, tliiit some have doubted that lie would have passed in l^'.iU into the popular ranks. But there are other reasons still more decisive. General Foy wiis one of the confidants of tlie Orleans coterie. In tlie Chamber of 182r) he advocated the appurie- nances of the crown. He would gladly have torn up the historic escutcheons of tlio old nobilitv, to wliicli ho did not 11 122 THE RESTORATIO^. belong. But perhaps he would have been less virulent against that holiday nobility which haunts at present the halls of the Tuileries. He inclined to a hereditary peerage with Casimir Perrier and almost the entire Opposition for fifteen years. A man of action, a man of excitement, he would have ffone with the current of 1830. He would .lave left the people on the shore, and embarked in the (folden vessel which bore the fortunes of another dynasty. To resist the temptation, it was not sufficient to have a noble heart, it was not sufficient to have eloquence; it was neces- sary to have principles : General Foy had none. The best of our monopoly orators are often but poor politicians. They drape themselves theatrically in the purple of constitutional fopperies. They trumpet the words equality, liberty, coun- try, independence, economy, virtue. They know the oroper place of every figure of rhetoric, the apostrophe, the metaphor, the prosopopoeia. They open wide their mouth to inspire the bald official acclamations which have been squandered tui-n after turn upon Louis XVI., upon the Convention, the Directory, the Consulate, the Empire, the Restoration and all the rest. They can tell you how to gloss the usurpations of force and fraud upon the rights of the people. But of the origin of those rights, of their sove- reignty, their universality, their imprescriptibility, their in- violability, their character, and their guarantees, what do they understand ? This is not to be learned in the school of the rhetoricians or the parliaments of privilege. The book of the people has never been open before their eyes. How many a time has Napoleon regretted having sur- vived a day ! Oh ! how he envied, upon the rock of Saint- Helena, the destiny of the soldier who fell by the first bullet at Waterloo ! Fortune, on the contrary, in entombing him in the midst of his oratorical triumphs, has been unwilling that General Foy should lose anything of his noble name and his spotless renown. Had he lived, he had been a courtier of Louis-Philippe, Minister of war, Marshal of France, Constable perhaps ! He has done better, and died. BENJAMIN CONSTANT. 123 BENJAMIN CONSTANT. Benjamin Constant was the orator and the publicist of the English school : a sickly exotic which will never be ac- climated in France ; an incomprehensible trinity of per- sons unequal in power, different in origin, opposite in will — - a strange constitution wherein people pretend to find elemen- tary principle in accidental amalgamation, harmony in an- tagonism, truth in fiction, movement in resistance, and life in death — a systematic division into hierarchies, castes, mo- nopolies, privileges, of a society which tends incessantly to agglomeration and unity — a production, in fine, anti-French and anti-natural, which is repulsive to temperament, man- ners, logic and equality, which loads the feet of the govern- ment mslead of giving it wings, which imparts to it neither force within nor grandeur without, and seems eternally on the eve of perishing in the tempests of democracy, or under the iron heel of some fortunate soldier. But pel-haps, after the enervating influence of despotism upon the hearts and minds of the public, the nation, infirm and sickly, had strength to bear but a regimen of transi- tion : perhaps remedies too heroical would have proved fatal. Benjamin Constant was wonderfully well qualified to ex- tract from this mixed regime, all that it might have con- tained of just and liijcral. He even exaggerated the conse- quences of tlie Charter of 1814, and had imagination enough to think that he had favored liberty in tlie particular, where it was clearer than day that he had meant to advance, and had in fact advanced, but the interests of power. Swayed, against his own will, l)v the genius of our na- tion, he explained upon tlie theory of equality, those English institutions whieii have been contrived but fur an suistocracv. This was what wc call to pile fiction upon fiction, with a 124 THE RESTORATION. vengeance But what matter for the source, provided good be done ? Benjamin Constant put the nation in train. He taught, before acting, to think. He educated politically the middle classes, not being able to do so by the masses. Benjamin Constant had neither the facility of Manuel, nor the profundity of lloyer-Collard, nor the vehemence of Casimir-Perrier, nor the brilliancy of Foy, nor the harmony of Laine, nor the graces fo Martignac, nor the power of de Serre ; but of all the orators of the Left he was the most intellectual, the most ingenious, and the most pro- lific. He was of slim make, lank-legged, round-shouldered, long-armed. A profusion of yellow and curling hair fell over his shoulders, and enchased becomingly his expressive countenance. His tongue sometimes stuck between his teeth, and gave him the lisping of a woman, something between a whistle and a stammer. When he recited, he drawled the voice monotonously. When he extemporized, he rested both hands on the front of the tribune, and rolled forth the flood of his words. Nature had denied him all those exterior advantages of person, gesture and voice of which she has been so prodigal towards Berryer. But he supplied these deficiencies by force of intellect and labor. An unwearied soldier of the press and the tribune, and armed with this, his two-edged sword, Benjamin Constant did not, during a fifteen years' campaign, leave the breach a single moment. When he was not speaking, he wrote ; when he was not writing, he spoke. His articles, his letters, his pamphlets and discourses would compose over a dozen vol- umes. It was the written discourses of Foy, Bignon, Constant, Lafitte, Dupont, (d I'Eure,) Royer-Collard in particular, that accomplished the education of the liberal party of France. Speeches which produce little effect in the Chambeis, on the deputies, may exercise great influence in print, upon the public. If they have less influence on the formation of laws, they have more in the formation of opinion ; and ulti- BENJAMIN CONSTANT. 125 mately, is t not opinion that gives sanction to the laws ? Is it not better to have millions of readers than a few hun- dreds of auditors ? This furnishes, besides, a commodious and quite simple means of deciding tliat much controvert- ed question about the relative superiority of writing and speaking. No one no"w reads speeches, no one listens to extemporize rs. Never did orator manage -with more dexterity than Ben- jamin Constant the language of politics. Whence is it that we can read, up to this day, without fatigue, his lengthiest speeches ? It is because they contain the princi- ple of perpetuation style, a style full of attraction. Most of them are masterpieces of animated and stringent dialec- tic, which have had since nothing to equal them, and which are the delight of those capable of appreciating them. What wealth of imagery ! what abundance of illustration ! what flexibility of tone ! what varieties of topic ! what suavity of language ! what marvellous art in the disposition and the linked deduction of his reasonings ! how finely tis sued that web ! how exquisitely shaded, how harmoniousl} blended all the colors ! Thus we see, beneath a transpa- rent and glossy skin, the blood circulate, the veins turn blue, and the muscles slightly apparent. Perhaps these discourses are even too highly finished, too elaborate, too ingenious for the tribune. In reading, if one docs not comprehend at once, he has the resource of re- perusal. If a speaker be not apprehended at once, there is no moans of obtaining a repetition. Repetitions are in- tolerable in reading, they are necessary in the tribune, as in the theatre it is only the recitative sounds tiiat familiarize themselves completely to the ear of the spectators. Orators are like those statues placed in elevated niches, which must be cut somewiiat roughly to produce cfiect from u distance. The ('hanibcrs are not like the drawing-rooms of the aris- tocracy. Tiie flowers of rhetoric are ordinarily in them without fragrance or color. The antitheses escape them, and reasonings too vigorously knotted, fatigue their atten- 11* 120 THE RESTORATION. tion. To be understood, you must repeat the same thing to them three or four times in succession. To please them, you must have regard rather to the strength of the blow, than the justness of the aim, and speak to their passions rather than to their intelligence. The Right disliked Benjamin Constant less than Manuel. It is that in French assemblies, of whatever sort, there is al- ways a weak preoilection in favor of men of wit. Of the French preeminently it may be said with the poet •. Jhi ri, me voild desarme. The prejudice of party is proof against eloquence, against facts, against logic, against enthusiasm even ; it yields be- fore a laugh. Benjamin Constant was always master of his expression as of his thought. If the Right felt hurt by some word a little sharp, he found, without breaking the thread of the discourse, an equivalent to it, and if the equivalent offended still, he substituted a third approximation. This presence of mind, this deep knowledge of the resources of the lan- guage, this wonderful graduation of softening synonymes, used to surprise agreeably his adversaries themselves. So, for example, he said : I wish to spare the Crown (mui'murs ;) he changes — the Monarch (murmurs still ;) he resumes — the constitutional King, (the murmurs cease.) Benjamin Constant was much more caustic than Manuel. But he steeped his sting in honey. He said what he pleased because he had the art of saying what he pleased. More- over, though a liberal and an opponent, Benjamin Constant was a thorough gentleman, and those Chambers of gentle- men had a foible for this quality. It must be added that he was endowed, in the highest per- fection, with that power of adaptation which distinguishes literary men, and is the faculty of penetrating and active imaginations. This description of minds will present you a subject in a variety of modes of resemblance which create an illusion to the common eye. They have but the sem- BENJAMIN CONSTANT. 127 blance of science. They have often but the terms, and you vvoukl think they are masters of the substance and founda- tion. His discourses abounded in lively, ingenious, and keen expressions. He characterized tlie press as follows : " The press is the tribune amplified. Spcccii is the ve- hicle of intelligence, and intelligence is the mistress of the material world." He defined the censorship : " A monopoly of calumny exercised by baseness for the profit of power." Of the ministry, he used to say: "It is as impossible, in all that pertains to despotism, to calumniate, as to soften tliem." Speaking of some deputies who made verbose defences of sinecures : " They are not for economy in either money or words." All this is witty, but it savors of the writer rather than «)f the orator. Here is a brilliant denunciation of the lottery system, which will give an idea of the excellences and defects of his manner : " If there existed, gentlemen, in your public squares, or in some obscure den, a species of game which brought in- fallible ruin upon the players; if tiie director of this illicit and deceitful concern were to avow to you that he played with an absolute certainty of winning, that is to say, in o])- position to tiie rules of the most ordinary probity ; tliat to insure the success of his dishonest s[)cculation, he lays his snare for the class the most easily deceived and cor- rupted ; if he were to tell you that he surrounds the poor with allurements; that he drives the innocent to the most culpaljjo deeds; tliat ho has recourse, for the purpose of inveigling his |)rey, to legerdemain and lying; that his lies and impostures am hawked in open day in every street of tiie city ; thiit Iiis absurd and illusory promises are rung in the ears of credulity and ignorance; that he has organized a system of secrecy and darkness, so that these dupes should 128 THE RESTORATION, plunge into the gulf before reason could enlighten, fear of blame repress, or the warning of their neighbors preserve them from the temptation — were he to add, that to respond to his perfidious invitations, renewed incessantly, the domes- tic robs his master, the husband pillages his wife, the father his children, and that he, seated tranquilly in his privileged cavern, at once instigator, and receiver, and accomplice, stretches out his hand to grasp the produce of theft and the miserable pittances torn from the subsistence of families — if he ended by admitting that year after year the disorders which he occasioned brought his victims from want to crime and from crime to the prison, suicide, or the scaffold ; what would be your sentiments ?" When Benjamin Constant was worried by interruptions, his eye would flash fire, and he poured forth a volley of natural and cutting repartees. He turned everything to account, a letter, a fact, the slightest circumstance, a histor- ical analogy, an admission, an exclamation, a word. With elbow on the edge of his desk, ear erect, outstretched neck, pen in hand, he seemed to devour the debate, the tribune and the speaker. His attention was so absorbing and his facility of composition so great, that while listening to the discourse of his adversary he wrote currente calamo its refu- tation, which he came forward to read immediately to the tribune. Method, arrangement, argument, style, it was in all complete ; such was his power of self isolation and self- abstraction, not only from the noise and throng around him, but even from his own emotions ! But it must be said, these refinements of style, this ex- quisite elegance, this art of hair-splitting synonymes, takes from parliamentary recitation its vigor, its natural suppleness, and even its grace. The tribune should not smell too much of the Academy, nor the orator be but an artist. To each place the proper kind, to each personage the proper char- acter. There are two species of dialectic : the one compact and nervous, the other insinuating a^id acute ; the one batter- BENJAMIN CONSTANT. 129 ing down by the weight of its reasonings, the other piercing through with the sharp point of its dart ; the one going directly to seek the question in the question, the other twist- ing itself about it, and penetrating it by the joints and issues. Benjamin Constant had this latter species of dialectic. There are two sorts of eloquence : the one issuing from ♦he depth of the soul, as from a spring, rolling along its copious floods, sweeping all before it, overwhelming by its very mass, pressing, upsetting, ingulfing its adversaries ; the other weaving its threads around them, drawing them gradually into its web, fascinating theni with its gaze, entan- gling them, liming them, holding them fast, and putting them to death by a thousand bites. Benjamin Constant had this last sort of eloquence. It dazzled rather than warmed. He was more adroit than vehement, more persuasive than con- vincing, more pictui'esque than profound, more artful than strong, more subtile than solid. He loved art as a political instrument, he also loved it for its own sake. He delighted in the niceties of style, in the oppositions of words and of thoughts, and he amused himself in glancing the sunbeams from the facets of the antithesis. Parliamentary oratory re- quires more of nerve, of gravity, of simplicity and ampli- tude. To be an orator, it is not necessary to strive too much to appear one. Benjamin Constant was not a mere speech-maker, he was also a great publicist; and it is in this quality more especially, that he has assumed the mission of protecting political wri- ters. No one has better understood, no one has better de- fended, than he, the rights of the press — of tliat power more mighty than armies, religions, legislatures and kings, more rapid than the winds, more boundless than space, as intelli- gent as thonglit. But the special character of all the par- liaments of tlie Restoration, was the envious, instinctive and deadly hatred of the press. Had they a latent presentiment that the press would prove their overthrow ? Yes, the press did niderd overthrow them, but they gave it no small nid. Besides this, the tribune has, in all times, been jealous of 130 THE RESTORATION. the press. The tribune has always sought to humble it by pot-house abuse, and to stifle its voice beneath iniquitous proceedings and outrageous penalties. It is the revolt of property against intellect. The most obscure deputy of the most unknown village of France has the pitiful presump- tion to think himself far above a journalist. He does not dream that one of those country hinds, who mounts the tri- bune, there to mouth their patois, would not be deemed wor- thy of admission among the paper-folders, and superscribers of tlie editor's back office, lest they should bungle the subscri- ber's name on the wi^pper. Benjamin Constant never forgot, that before being depu- ty, he was an editor, and that this was the highest feather in his cap. On every occasion, and at every moment, he called with energy for reform of the arbitrary feature of the censorship, the abolition of all exceptional jurisdiction, the trial by jury in offences against the Court and the tribunals, and the liberty of publication. To-day, he would have the same guarantees to ask for ; for, to the shame of a govern- ment, born of the blood and vitals of the press, the press still writhes and stJ'uggles in the same shackles as under the Restoration. Its only alternative is to lie or be silent. It must either abstain from discussing the principle of the gov- ernment, or receive the kicks and spittings of a gouty Sen- ate. It is bound hand and foot, and placed, thus manacled, between the ruin of confiscation and the burning tombs of Salazie ; and as a worse insult, a last torment, the vile tools of all this are heard to bawl themselves hoarse in crying : " A triumph ! a triumph ! the press is free !" Benjamin Constant loved to bestow magnificent eulogies upon the studious youth of the schools. Now, this youth is sunk in inertness like the rest of the nation. We surcharge its memory, in place of forming its judgment. Its tender mind is enervated by a superfetation of lectures and courses. It is dipped over and over in the materialities of eclecticism. It is taught neither religion, nor morality, nor logic, nor brotherly love, nor love of country. But it must be owned BENJAMIN CONSTANT. 131 the studious and golden youth has never been more expert at dancintT the cachucha. Constant's instruction as a legislator was not particularly solid. Like all the publicists of the Restoration, he was little versed in the material interests and the true principles of industrial and rural economy. There was also in his re- ligious notions and his political philosophy, something of vagueness, as of a reflection of the infidelity and scepticism of the 18th century. His faith was that of the intellect, not that of the heart. He did not value religion for its dogmas, but for its soothing influence upon the conscience. He did not give his support to Royalty because it was right, but because it was necessary. He disapproved not the prin- ciples of a republic, but its form. " Republican institutions," he used to say, " are impossible in the state of general intelli- gence, in the condition industrial, mercantile, military and European of France." It was with him a question of op- portunity, almost of geography. He attacked Rousseau for having maintained the divine right, while he himself disallowed the sovereignty of the people, holding but a sort of sovereignty of justice, not un- like the sovereignty of reason of the Doctrinarians, and quite as undefinablc, as incomprehensible, as inapplicable. Does not the sovereignty of the people, such as we understand it, imply necessarily the sovereignty of right, of justice, and of reason ? I know scarcely a single political or social question that the sovereignty of the people does not solve. Politically, the sovereignty of the people is the luminary which shines in the darkness of human disputation. It is by its light alone that the logicians can proceed. Beyond it all is arbitrary, is iniquity, contradiction, chaos. For want jf this pilot so sure, so infallible, the greatest politician of the Restoration went head-foremost, like a vulgar helmsman, upon the shoals of the Revolution of July. He did not see that no power can either prescribe, or prevail against, the eternal right of nations to govern themselves as they please. His second vrrnv was to imagine that he could hold ollico 132 THE RESTORATION. and retain his independence. Instead of staying (vith tha people on the bank, and looking on while the Doctrinarian torrent was passing away, he stopped in the middle of the current and was carried off by the flood. His lofty reason stooped and his imagination became quite reconciled to the situation. Before, a look from Napoleon was enough to fascinate him. He now fell anew under the charm of an- other power. But he recovered gradually the plenitude of his faculties. He opened his eyes and saw with Lafayette, Salverte, Arago, and all that glorious band of patriots, that the Revolution of July was not a peace, but a truce. He would soon have abandoned the booty to mix in the scram- ble, and been dismissed or resigned, had he not been slow to sound the signal of opposition. But already the springs of life were fast giving way. His noble head was drooped, and he sometimes held it between his hands as if to meditate on the vanity of revolutions. His dreams of the future, those beautiful illusions which for fif- teen years back he had been cherishing, had vanished be- fore him, one after the other. He felt himself alTected with gloomy dejection and invincible melancholy. He crawled with difficulty from his bench to the tribune, and with pallid lips which could smile no more, he bade adieu to dying lib- erty and descended with it into the tomb. ROYER-COLLARD. 133 ROYER-COLLARD. RoYER-CoLLARD is the venerable patriarch of the consti- tutional royalists of the Restoration. We may now speak of Royer-Collard with entire impar- tiality and unreserve. He has still a seat in the Chamber of Deputies, but he takes no part in the debates. He passes back and forth before us, merely to remind us that such a man has lived ; like those majestic caryatides of Osiris and of Isis which the Romans, when masters of Egypt, used to place in front of the new temples, to testify to futurity that there had been on these shores another temple and other di- vinities, a different creed and diilerent pontitfs. Seated at the head of the Chamber, M. Royer-Collard no more directs, he observes. He does not speak, he meditates. He now belongs but to the past. We may already pass upon him the judgment of the dead. The Chambers of tlie Restoration had divers politi- cal schools. General Foy represented the military school ; Casimir Perrier, the financial school ; de Serre, the gram- matical school ; Benjamin Constant, the constitutional school ; Royer-Collard, the philosophical. He had less brilliancy than General Foy, less subtlety, dialectic skill and flexibility than Benjamin Constant, less impetuosity and fire tlian Casimir Perrier, less of legislative science and of originality than de Serre. But he was the first of our parliamentary writers. He had a sort of large and magnificent style, a firm toucli, certain erudite and pro. digiously elaborate artifices of language, and tiiose feli«i- tous expressions which cling to the memory and wiiich are the lucky chances of the orator. There is a virility in iiis speeches which reminds one of Mirabeau, and some orator- ical movements scarce sooner loosed than checked, as if he feared tlieir velicmcnce ; a lofty reason in matters of relig- 12 I J4 THE RESTORATION ion and morals ; on every subject, a method ample without stiffness, severe, dogmatical. A single axiom, a word impregnated by the meditation of that powerful head, germinated, grew up, expanded like the acorn which becomes an oak, all whose ramifications spring from the same trunk, and which, animated by the same vi- tality, nourished by the same sap, forms but an individual whole, despite the variety of its foliage and the infinite mul- tiplicity of its branches. Such were the discourses of Royer- Colland, admirable for the vigorous shoots of the style and the beauty of the form. It was philosophy applied to politics, with its abstract and rather obscui'e formularies. M. Royer-Collard was, if I may be allowed the expression, a delver of ideas. He was a speaking intellect. There is sometimes, however, more void than substance in that profundity, and the splendor of the form deludes re- specting the hollowness of the principles. M. Royer-Collard has, more than any other man, by the authority of his name and his eloquence, contributed to the formation of our public manners termed constitutional. He urged the middle classes, without meaning it, to the subver- sion of the throne. He was one of the most, unintentional no doubt, but one of the most active, demolishers of that regime. A burgess royalist, an able, ardent and inexorable enemy of aristocratic privileges, he assailed them without respite by means of irony, of argument, of eloquence. But could a conceded charter dispense with the support of an interme- diate body in the State? This charter was not a contract, but a gift. A mountain rock witli the soil removed from around its base must fall. So fell the throne. To attack the crown and disarm the people, this was the inconsistency of the liberals of those times. Fifteen years were spent in organizing antagonism be- tween the Chambers and the King. The latter pushed for- ward to i's proper end of d(^spotisin, the former to their pro. ROYER-COLLARD. 135 per end of omnipotence. The Restoration was but a per- petual struggle between these two powers, to gain, one upon the other, a few inches of ground. But the true theory of the matter recognizes but a single power of which no one then made the least account — the nation. King, president, consul, chambers, ministers are but the delegates of the na- tion. To one class of delegates it intrusts the legislative, to another the executive department. It does not say to them : Divide yourselves into factions and waste the time in partisan conflict ; but it says : Cultivate a community of understanding and" agreement, and a harmony of policy and procedure. What would a farmer say to his plough-boys, if, instead of tilling the soil and gathering in the harvest, they should fall to beating each other, to the infliction of bloody noses? What would a manufacturer say to his op- eratives, if, in place of keeping each to his tools and his trade, they were to set to quarrelling with each other ? In the working of any machine whatever, be it industrial or political, there must be unity, there must be harmony. The theories of representative government which se- duced M. Royer-Collard, are more metaphysical than po- litical, more speculative than experimental. They are ranged in beautiful order; but hobble, when set a-iroino-. He has varnished them over with the colors of a brilliant style, l)ut they will not bear analysis, they would not with- stand the slightest assault of logic. His subtile and too often misty distinctions between per- sonal qualifications and public interests, as conditions of representative eligibility, between parties and factions, be- tween the sovereignty of the people and the sovereignty of reason, are arguments for the schools, rather than for the tri- bune. It is almost always a professor of pliilosophy you hear speak, not a publicist. The political life of Royer-Collard has been but a con- tinual passing back and forth, from power to liberty, and from liberty to power. He changed from one jjarty to the other, shoving to its fate lliat whicii was going down, check- 136 THE RESTORATION. ing the precipitancy of the victorious side, forgetting but one thine — never to define the limits of either. The error of General Foy, of Royer-CoUard, and others, was, to contend that, " the Charter, being the fundamen- tal law, it was not for theory to discuss it." I humbly beg your pardon, gentlemen ; but theory, which is but the faculty of free examination, has the supreme right of discussing everything ; and in fact, the theory of national sovereignty, the sole true one, did discuss the Charter of 1814 so effectually as to demolish it. What a spectacle, what a lesson is this idle and impotent struo-orle of the greatest intellects, against the principle greater still of the popular sovereignty, which presses and enfolds them, as the bark of the fabled trees did, with their invincible clasp, the heroes and the demi-gods of the poet ! Of this principle, Royer-CoUard remarks : " The popu- lar will of to-day retracts that of yesterday, without engag- ing; that of to-morrow." To this we might reply, that the absolute monarch too may change his will, from minute to minute. But if, in a society ruled by a single man, these changes at sight do not occur, why should they be made in a country governed by law alone ? Why should that which is done for the inter- est of one or of few, be less liable to change than what is done for the interest of all ? Your life too is your own ; none can hinder you to go throw yourself into the river, or shoot yourself: you do not kill yourself however ! you may burn your own house or level it with the ground ; yet you do not do it ! Equally groundless is the objection of M. Royer-CoUard, drawn from what he calls right. " There cannot be a par- ticular right which is in contravention of abstract right — that right without which there is nothing upon this earth, but a life without dignity, and a death without hope." Perfectly well said. But it remains to define right and designate where it resides ; this M. Royer-CoUard has not ROYER-COLLARD. 137 done, and it is the whole difficulty. Or rather, if you ex- amine closely, you will find that definitively this abstract right yields to the law of numbers, because definitively it results from numbers. This is so true, that right, as it is embodied in legislation, as it is determined in application, always depends upon a single voice. A hundred and one to a hundred, such is the test of the legal right which com- mands obedience, and which orders and conducts the whole society. The fundamental laws of which M. Royer-Collard speaks, neither are nor can be but those which the nation has given itself, and which it may therefore alter. The national rights he speaks of, neither are nor can be other than the rights of the nation. There is no going beyond. No nation could be governed forever by the laws of its fathers, for it would not be free. Nations, being composed of men who are in their nature restless and cliangeablc, cannot remain stationary and always the same. The dead have not the power to bind, against their will, the living. Each generation belongs to itself, and can no more bind the future than it can have been bound by the past. This is fact and right, and what is there to be said against the fact and the right ? Nothing. "Others," saitl Royer-Collard himself, "may grieve and rage at it ; for my part, I thank Providence that he has called to the benefits of civilization a large number of his creatures." Very well ! tliat which Royer-Collard demanded fir tlie interest of tlie middle class, we (of the popular party) ask for the interest of the people. We ask, as ho dors, that there be called to tlie benefits of civilization, a still larger number of human creatures. I\I. Royer-Collard is here, without suspecting, and without wishing it, on the brink of luiiversal suffrage. He was on his way to it; we have ar. rived. Yet he persists : " The sovereignly of the people is but the 12* 1 38 THE RESTORATION. sovereignty of brute force, and the form the most absolute of absolute power." But if the power which emanates from the whole consti- tutes necessarily the most absolute of all powers, how should not the sovereignty of the people, which is the form of that power, be the most absolute of all the forms ? It is the in- evitable consequence of the principle. The question besides is not whether it forms the most absolute, but whether it be the truest and best. M. Royer-Collard hastens to add, not without some con- tradiction : " With a sovereignty of this sort without rules or limits, without duties or conscience, there are neither constitutions nor laws, nor good, nor evil, nor past, nor future." I fear this is no better than pure declamation. For to reject the authority of the greatest number, or what is the same, of the majority, is to place the government in the hands of the minority. Therefore, either it must be ad- mitted, that the sovereignty of the minority is also without rule or restriction, without duty or conscience, and that with it there can be neither constitution, nor law, nor good, nor evil, nor past nor future, or it must be allowed that the majority or greatest number has duties, rules, limits, con- science, quite as well as the minority or lesser number. We do not see that the United States, where universal suffrage exists in full opinion and full operation, are not quite as stable, quite as orderly, quite as moral, quite as conscientious as monarchical governments. And in addi- tion, they have the advantage of enjoying the realities of liberty, while the monarchies have but its shadow ; they liave right on their side, and how many monarchies can with truth say the same? From the commencement of the Restoration, M. Royer- Collard foresaw the Revolution of July, which was visible already on tlie lowering confines of the political horizon. He classified and defined after 'tiis manner the only two ROYER-COLLARD. 130 parties whd then had any life, and who contended for supremacy. " There is a faction born of the Revolution, of its bad doctrines and its bad actions, whose vague perhaps, but wiiose constant, aim is usurpation, because it has come to be a matter of taste with them still more than of wanl. There is a faction born of privilege which detests equality and seeks to destroy it at any cost. I know not what these factions do, but I know what they mean, and above all I understand what they say. I recognize tlie one by its hatred of all legitimate authority, political, moral, religious ; the other by its instinctive contempt for all rights public and private, by the arrogant cupidity which leads it to covet all the advantages of public office and of social con- sideration. The factions I speak of, reduced to their proper force, are weak in numbers ; they are odious to the nation and will never strike deep root in its soil : but also they are ardent, and while we are divided, they march towards their object. If, from the persistence of the government in abandoning us and abandoning itself, they should come into collision once more, if our unhappy country is to be again torn and ensanguined by their conflicts, my mind is made up ; I declare in advance to the victorious faction, which- ever it may be, that I shall detest its victory ; I ask from this day ibrth to be inscribed on the list of its proscrip- tions." What M. Royor-Collard terms, in his Doctrinarian phra- seology, the struggle of two factions, is no other than the contest between aristocracy and democracy, of these two indestructible and rival powers, which Providence has liid -..-en, and the Dy- nasties if they think themselves really to represent the coun- try : they will tell you the thing is evident, since the coun- try has not remonstrated against their charter and their laws, and that silence gives consent. To this I would reply in turn, that the Turks do not take it into their heads to remonstrate against the firmans of his Highness the Sultan Mahomet, a thing which docs not at all prove that the Turks are free, nor that they have the smallest relish for the regime of the bastinado and the sack. This is, in fact, a very pretty dilemma. If you do not remonstrate, you are taken to consent ; but if you do remonstrate, you are incarcerated provisionally in the Concrergerie, whence you are led in the company of thieves, to be escorted in the company of gendarmes, to the prison of Clairvau.\, where, lodged between four walls, you are at liberty, if you have the least inclination, to remonstrate a3 loud and as lorlg as you please. Very honest governments, tiid very truthful roprfscntations are those governments and representations of the '■'■ silence gives consent !" Ask now the Legitimists, who take the oath in the religious e several are right rather than one, and all than several. I{ is the holiest, only because it is the most perfect realization of the symbolical equality of all men. It is the most phi- losophic, but because it dispels the prejudices of aristocracy and of divine right. It is the most logical, but because there is not one serious objection which it cannot resolve, nor a form of government to which it cannot adapt itself, without altering its principle. In fine, it is the most magnificent, but because from the immense trunk of the sovereignty of nations, spring at once all the branches of the social tree, charged with sap ani with foliage, with fruits and flowers. 15* 174 REVOLUTION OF JULY. CASIMIR-PERIER. The Court, as yet ill fortified within and without, moved gropingly along the way of its infant establishment. Rid at last of Lafayette and of Lafitte, whom it had loved so much and pressed so often to its heart, it found itself placed be- tween the adventurers of the doctrinism and the tremblers of the commonalty : it cast its eyes upon Casimir-Perier. His immense wealth gave him that sort of apparent in- dependence which elevates a man above the suspicions of corruption, and which always imposes upon the vulgar, He attracted the Legitimists by the secret predilection of Charles X. for his person, and he could excite no distrust in Louis-Philippe, having never served another master. His impassioned dialectic rendered him marvellously fit to strug- gle against the Opposition, man to man, invective to invec- tive. He was a personage of action and vivid retort, en- dowed with more parliamentary resolution than personal courage, always ready to take the tribune by storm, and tak- ing it in fact. There was nothing even to the height of his stature, his quick and imperious step, his eyes hidden under the thick lashes and always full of a red and glowing flame, which did not complete the wholeness of his circumstantial superiority. He seemed made for the command and for the presidency of the Council, and there was none, not even the conqueror of Toulouse, who thought of contesting it witli him. The Court, the burgess tremblers, the peers of legiti- macy, the sharpers of the Bourse, and the sheeplike majority of the Chamber, all threw themselves at the feet of Casimir- Perier to implore him to take the helm of State, to guide ana save them. Here, I must honestly beg the reader not to examine the portrait I am about to paint, but with a degree of distrust, of reserve at least. I am sincere, but I am not impartial. CASlMIR-rERIER. 175 Casimir-Perier deceived my liberal hopes. He violently attacked my character. It may well be that, in this situa- lion of mind, I have, in depicting him, now some years ago, mixed too much black upon my easel. But it is necessary on the other hand, if I would not lie, to say what I have seen. I then drew, besides, but the sick man, a prey to keen and internal suffering, and to embarrassments of government and politics well capable of disturbing the thoughts and dis- ordering the judgment. These precautions taken against the possible error of my appreciation, I proceed. Casimir-Perier exhibited towards his last days, a tempes- tuous energy which sapped his strength, and was carrying him rapidly to the tomb. lie stirred up, he inflamed, with- out knowing it, without willing it perhaps, and by a sort of convulsive sympathy, all these bad passions which ever nlumber in the corner of the most tranquil souls. His voice •was the signal to both parties to rush upon one another, and you would have taken the Chamber for an unchained mad- house rather than an assembly of sober legislators. The sessions at tliat period were somewhat like those of the Convention, with the exception of the theatric grandeur of the events, and the tragic end of the actors. The minis- ters and the Centres were afraid of themselves and of each other ; it is an anmsement like any other. Instead of action there was abuse ; and tlie Chamber presented the spectacle of a reign of terror in miniature. Fear has always been and ever will be, of all parliamen- tary springs, tho most energetic and perhaps the most ( ili- cient. It acts upon the women, the children, the aged, and upon the j)Usillanimous deputies, who, in dangers, real or imaginary, (lock tremblingly together. Add to their real fi-ars, those they feign : for there is upon the ministerial benches a crowd of timorous pigeons, always in a flutter to get behind the altar and shelter themselves under the wing of the god who reigns and who governs for the time being. Casimir-P( rio-r sliould be seen in these moments, seen 17G REVOLUTION OF JULY. face to face as I have seen him, to paint him faithfully His lofty stature was already bowed. His beautiful antt majestic countenance was altered with shade and wrinkles. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes rolled a fire mixed with blood. His words burned like the fever he felt, and he had fits of derangement. He abused, lashed, tyrannized the majority quite the same as the minority, and by his conduct astounded the other ministers. There was no distinction at that time of Third-party, of pure ministerialists, and of Doc- trinarians. Casimir-Perier left the fractions of the majority no time to recognize and count themselves. He brought them together, he compressed them rigorously under his crisped fingers, and then dispatched pell-mell to the combat, Dupin, Thiers, Guizot, Barthe, Jaubert, Jacqueminot and Kei'atry. He himself wrestled in the estrade of the tribune, with the deputy Jousselin. Another time, an officer had to be sent to whisper to him that his garments were in disorder. So much had the preoccupations of the parliamentary strug- gle absorbed the entire man. The majority did not obey him by conviction, opposition or system ; it rallied mechanically to the will, to the ire of this maniac. It imitated his attitude, his gesture, his tone of voice, his anger. Like him, it leaped, stamped, howled and wrung its arms. But when, after several fits of parliamentary frenzy, Casimir-Perier had attained the paroxysm of his fury, his head grew dizzy ; he sunk ex- hausted, shattered down, and giving up the ghost. Since his death, these intelligent and peremptory tran- sports passed for firmness, and two or three phrases, always the same, which were prompted to him, and which he re- peated without compreliending, got him the reputation of genius. The priesthood of the Jusie-milieu concealed the secret of their knaveries in the hollow of that idol, and gilded it from head to foot to captivate the homage of the vulgar. We owe the dead no more than truth ; but this is due to them in eulogy as well as in criticism, and I feel here the CASIMIR-PERIER. 17" necessity of retouching some features of my former portrait. Thus while now repeating that Casimir-Perier was harsh, irascible, imperious, without taste, without reading, without literary instruction, without philanthropy, without philoso- phy, I will say that he also possessed three great and prin- cipal qualities of the statesman, ardor and vivacity of con- ception, decision of command, force and persistence of will. The friends of liberty who would not be ungrateful will always distinguish two periods in his life ; the one glorious, his career of representative ; the other fatal to France as to himself, his career of minister. The Revolution of July owes him too much in its early struggles not to praise him, and he has done it too much prejudice afterwards not to merit its blame. This personage has been the representative the most vehement and perhaps the most sincere of the old liberal. ism. He had it not merely upon his lips like his ministerial successors, but also in his heart. But, whether blindness, or force of habit, he was unable to comprehend, that there is, between legitimacy and the popular sovereignty, all the depth of an abyss. I do not see that the present benches of the Opposition possess an orator of the stamp of Casimir-Perier. Not one, whose penetration is so sagacious, whose eloquence so simple, so ready. Casimir-Perier was exercised in the animated contentions of the Restoration. Scarce did his wary eye see Villele put the finger to the trigger, than his own charge was off and in the bosom of the man of power. He plungf'd headf()romost into the melee; he marched right to the minister and sat beside him on his bench of torture ; he pressed hirn around the loins, he worried him with questions, he overwhelmed him with apostrophes, with- out leaving him time to recover or to I)reatiie ; lie held him obstinately ujxiii his seat, and interrogated him authorita- tively as if ho was his judge. We are a quarrelsome peo- pic, more hardy to attack thun oaticnt to defend: we like 17b REVOLUTION OF JULY. aggression. Perhaps that would fail another, which has so well succeeded in the case of Perier ! but it suited the man. While Royer-Collard gave his recriminations the philo- sophic elevation of an axiom, Casimir-Perier was ciphering his argumentations. With Lafitte and Casmir-Perier, those anatomists of budgets, those seekers, those investiga- tors, those rummage rs, those discussers of funds secret and disguised, it was not possible, as is the complaint now-a- days, to slip, into the chapter of criminal justice, the dowery of a beloved daughter or the cachmere shawl of an adored wife ; in the purchase of military beds, the price of a boudoir and a silken divan ; in the rough repairs of a partition-wall, the decoration of a dining-hall ; in the pur- chase of a counting-desk, the expenses of a pleasure-trip ; in the re-establishment of the fathers of La Trapp, the grati- fication of a cook ; in fine in the expenditures upon the orphans of the Legion of Honor, the pension of an opera- girl. Casimir-Perier had, during the Restoration, been engaged in speculations upon a vast scale, and there is not so much difference as is commonly thought, between a great finan- cier and a great administrator. He had a practised apti- tude for finance, and understood it in theory and detail He saw the point of contestation better than other bankers, and almost with the promptness of an advocate. He introduced into the affairs of the State the same order which reigned in his own.* He possessed comprehensiveness of view, • This, as a fact, has not, I think, been commonly the case. On the contrary, the greatest statesmen have often been among the least prudent managers of their private affairs. View the two great rival statesmen of England, in the last century, in this character. Even Burke, a greater far than either, though brought up in the school of adversity, was very little better as a domestic economist. A like im- putation is sometimes made upon the first of our own statesmen, Webster. The instances are without number. Indeed they consti tute the principle. For the breadth of intellect and the elevation of CASIMIR-PERIER. 11 ii and in his character, in his intellect, in his habits, in his person, had that absoluteness, that peremptoriness, that de- cision wiiich is perhaps indispensable to a minister of the Interior, in order to overcome the doubts and hesitations of prefects and commissioners, to get rid of the courtiers and office-seekers, to cut short the perplexities of detail, to sweep away the encumbrance of arrears, to open and con- clude great undertakings, and to conduct resolutely the af- fairs and interests of France. Doubtless, he cannot be too severely reproached for hav- ing inflicted upon the Revolution of July the violence of a transient reaction ;* but had he lived, he would, I believe, have returned to the normal ground of the Charter. He could have never imagined that a revolution was brought about merely to paint yellow the shutters of the representa- tive shop. He would not have erected the Chamber of Peers into a court of provost, and recommended, as did the Doctrinarians, to expose the naked head of the proscribed to the burning sun of the equator. He \vould have battered down the barriers of the Dardanelles, launclied our fleets, marched our armies, emptied the treasury, rather than suf- fer an insult to France, a spot upon our flag. Born a great soul which qualify to conduct the affairs and the destinies of a nation seem to be incompatible with the narrow-eyed minuteness and the mercantile spirit, which give to personal concerns their system and their success. * The chief endeavor of M. Perier's Ministry appears to have been " to keep France at peace with Europe, and thereby to make commerce and manufactures flourish, to establish civil liberty, and re- press the military spirit ; and secondly, to render the government more finu." The Opposition reproached him wilii ignoininiously court- ing the favor of the absolute monarchs. with having deprived Franco of the honorable and elevated position duo to her in the European System, with being unwilling to follow up frankly the principles of the '-July Revolution," and with "having sacrificed Italy to Austria, and Poland to Russia." But Perier's administration was of great value to France, on account of his financial abilitiet; — for France hivd not yet rccoTcrcd from the cihuustion produced by her protracted wars. 180 CASIMIR-PERIEE. personage on the birth-day of the dynasty, he knew by ex- perience how kings are made and of what stuff. He was not a man to be flattered into a prostration of his indomitable will at the feet of a master. He would not therefore be content to be a nominal President, a Comarilla* valet, a train-bearer of the commandants of the wardrobe, and leav- ing Royalty to reign amid the splendors of its gold upon its solitary throne, he would have stopped it at the legal limits of the government, saying : " Thus far, but no farther !" • A nickname of the Louis-Philippe dynasty. S A U Z ET. 181 SAUZET. PRESIDENT OF THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTEE3. The orator does not exhibit himself in profile, like the writer, but in full face. He attires, gesticulates, declaims upon a stage, before a number of spectators, who survey him as we do a mimic, from head to foot. The writer is account- able but for his intellect. The orator is held responsible for his figure. M. Sauzet is somewhat effeminate and negligent in his personal habits. He is not muscular nor well set. His complexion is fair and slightly colored ; his countenance is open, and his blue eyes are full of sweetness. He is a mix- ture of the man and the woman. Simple, easily led, not sufficiently bearded and tempered with vigor for great effort. A good sort of man, and who must be put to bed by his wife, if he is married, and by the servant, if he is not. M. Sauzet fidgets and waddles about like a child, so that it is impossible to seize his outline, and it will be necessary to wait till the perfected daguerreotype come to my aid to keep him quiet, at least for a moment, in the field of the came- ra-obscura. And then M. Sauzet too would perhaps like — they have all this failing — that I should make him a Demos- thenes. But it is not my fault, no more is it yours, reader, if the Demosthenes of the city of Canuts does not resemble completely the Demosthenes of tiie city of Minerva. When the Lyonese lawyer made iiis appearance in the Chamber, he carried constantly a smile upon his lips. Be it natural affability, or policy, he set himself to please every- body, and especially tlie ministers. He courted with fawn- If. 182 REVOLUTION OP JULY. ing gaze, one after the other, the melancholy figures on that bench of paui, whereon he grew impatient and fretful that he had not as yet a seat. M. Sauzet has what we call good natural advantages, a sonorous voice, a pleasing countenance, a prompt intelli- gence, and a clear and easy elocution. His voice is ample, and perfectly audible throughout the Chamber. There are however some false notes in its intonation, and its flagging cadences fall with the period. M. Sauzet is mild, polite, affable, moderate. He courts the good- will of others and imparts to them his own. There is in his face, his sentiments, and his language, something I know not what of honest and ensfaa;infj which charms and attracts you. With a mind better furnished with ideas and of a more practical cast, he has nearly the figurative style and cadenced modulation of another orator, the demi-god of poetry. He is M. de Lamartine made man. Memory is the principal agent of his eloquence. At the age of ten, he used to recite, word for word, a chapter of Telemachus, which he had read but once. He can, while speaking, suppress entire fragments of his discourse, and substitute new portions, which he inserts into the same tis- sue, as properly as if he had fastened them with pins. His intellect is wrought to a point, and puns occur to him so familiarly in conversation, that, when he speaks in the tribune, he has to chase them away, as he would an impor- tunate fly that should keep buzzing at his ear. M. Sauzet is the type of the provincial orator. His pom- pous style is inflated rather than full. It pleases the ear, but does not reach the soul. He seems as if he had been spoiled by his practice in the Court of Assize. He squan- ders, by handfuls, the brilliant flowers of language, the modulations of harmony, rambling epithets and college met- aphors — an obsolete rhetoric, which has now scarce name or value in the commerce of political eloquence. It is not that I blame M. Sauzet for having recourse be- SAUZET. 18.'3 fore a jury, and in a Court of Sessions, to these patJietical means of saving the accused. That spectacle of a woman in tears who clasps the altars of mercy and of justice — those heart-rending cries of remorse — those young men about to be cut off in the bloom of life by the axe of the executioner, like the lilies of spring by the ploughshare — innocence struggling against the terrors of punishment — the dark un- certainties of the prosecution, those glimmerings of doubt tJiat flit before you, now brightening, then expiring — those broken sighs, those muttering lips, those plaints, those im- plorings, those melting images of a young and helpless fam- ily asking back its father, and doomed to perish if he perish, or of an old man crowned with gray hairs, who throws him- self at your knees to expiate the involuntary crime of a misguided son ; — all this is drawn from nature, all this has been beautiful in its time, all this may still have an effect upon fancies easily moved, and sensible, like unsophisticated men, to the charm of public speaking and the exciting dramas of eloquence. But to deputies, to those men surfeited with intellectual delicacies, to those cloyed stomachs, we should present the viands of oratory but with fresh stimulants and fresh season- ings. It is not well that the spectators see too near the ma- chinery of the green-room, lest their illusion be dispelled. A discourse should not have too much pomp and savor of tlie stage. The great art, in a parliamentary orator, lies in his skill to conceal art. It is said that M. Sauzet has no principles : but where then, pray, is the practising advocate who has principles ? When a man has, for twenty years of his life, been labor- ing indifferently in the cause of truth and of falsehood ; wiien he has been the habitual and hired protector and con- cealer of malice and fraud, it is difiicult, it is impossible that he should have any fixity in his principles. The lawyers have always a slock of fine phrases respect, ing wha* they call their professional discretion. 184 REVOLUTION OF JULY. But, would you know what this discretion of a practising lawyer comes to ? Peter sues Paul ; he instantly takes a chaise, and drives post to the office of the most celebrated lawyer in the city, who says to him : " You have a better case than Paul." Paul, who started later, arrives ten min. utes after, at the office of the same advocate, who tells him : " You have a better case than Peter ; but what can I do ? he was before you." I surely do not mean that the lawyer is the first-comer's man always, but almost always. It is well known that the lawyers carry in one of the pockets of their robe, the reasons for, and in the other, the reasons against either and every side. But they sometime."* mistake the right pocket in the hurry of pleading, and this is why their conclusion is not always in very perfect accord with their exordium. They hardly know how to come to a decision, and are never very sure of their ground. If they press upon you with a huge argumentation, you may hold them in check by a quite triffing objection. To them everything presents a question, everything is an obstacle. Throw, under their whirling chariot-wheel, a grain of sand, they will climb down to inspect it, instead of passing it over. They will deny, with the sun before you, that it is day, and if you begin to laugh, they will undertake to convince you. Singular fact ! These men who, all their lives, have studied nothing but the laws, are forever in doubt about the laws. For them the law has always two meanings, two accepta- tions, a double language and a Janus face. They see less the causes than the effects, the spirit than the letter, the law than the fact, the principle than the applica- tion, and the plan than the details. A new government, monarchical, aristocratical, republi- can, or of whatever sort, ought to strive to gain the army by honors, the commercial classes by security, and the people by justice : it need not concern itself about the law yers. It is all but certain to have them in its favor. S AU Z E T. 185 The lawyers have the art of keeping up a revolution by their interminable speeching ; but it is never they who begin nor who finish it. There is no truth so clear that they do not tarnish, by dint of polishing it. There is no patience of ear they do not weary by the endless flux of their orations. There is no reasoning, be it ever so powerful and nervous, that does not lose in their hands, by dint of repetition, its elasticity and vigor. Do not hasten to think they will enter at once upon the subject, because you may have said to them : " Well, what do you wait for ; go on !" They must first arrange their rabat, they must fix their cap over the ear, they must truss up gracefully the flowing folds of their robe,* they must hem, they must spit, and they must sneeze. This done, they prelude like musicians who tune their violin, or dancing- girls who practise their capers behind the curtain, or like the rope-dancers, making trial of their balancer. They keep bowing and turning to either side of them in their saluta- tions, and it takes them a large quarter-hour of oratorical precautions, of phrases, of periphrases, of circumlocutions, of turnings and windings, before they determine to say at last: Gentlemen of the Jury, the case is this. Let no one say to me : Are you not afraid to stir up against you this waspish race ? You have there taken in hand a pretty business, and truly, I admire your temerity ! Ad- mire nothing, for you know as well as I do, however bad may be my cause against the lawyers, I will find lawyers to plead it ; anu I myself — is it that you think I am not equal to my own defence ? Who, pray, could hinder me to paint them, with thnir various physiognomies, as they are, and as I see thoni ? This one, for example, this Krgaste, merited that I should draw his portrait at full length. But 1 have sought in vain under what standard and colors to class him. In what • Neither robe nor rabat is worn in this country, and only the for mer in Edk1:uiiI 16* 18fl REVOLUTION OF JULY. memorable parliamentary action has he taken any part ? It the debate respect material interests, Ergaste speaks and sheds light upon the subject from his stores of knowledge. If it be a political question — vast, fundamental, peremptory — he is silent as a statue. He seems to possess two qualities, contradictory of one another : by character he is concilia- tory, by talent he is aggressive. No matter : his physiognomy suits the fancy of my pen- cil. The sunny south beams in his burning glance. His hair waves gracefully and glossily, his voice of silvery distinctness vibrates upon my ear. Ergaste has the ges- tures, the attitude, the eye, the animation and the rapid impassionate movements of the orator. He does not ramble in his exordiums. He grapples at once with his subject and shakes it vigorously. His eloquence is nervous, and there is muscle and life in his discourses. Ergaste was born an orator. It has been his will to remain an advocate. Well, let him plead at the bar, let him plead still in the tri- bune, let him die an advocate ! This other is Cleophon, who perpetrates wit unintention- ally, by sheer naivete, and as others do a blunder. At the outset of his legislative career, this Norman advocate used to pump from the depths of his thorax, a voice which he inflated and inflated till it swelled into a roar. He poured it forth at random and tolled it as loudly as the cathedral bell of Rouen. He shook the old hall of the Palais Bourbon, whicn, to say truth, was not very solid, and the colleagues of Cleophon raised their eyes, while he spoke, to the shiver- ing windows of the cupola, fearing it should tumble about their ears. The next has a keen and intellectual countenance, and his eloquence flows from a spring, not from a cistern. But his attitudinizing is too studied, too ambitious. He does not enough forget the Court of Sessions, and speaks before the deputies, as if he was before a jury. Juries are gener- ally a sort of well-meaning men, natural, simple, somewhat credulous, confiding ; who open themselves to emotion, who 3 A U Z E T. 187 invite it, who absolutely require it, and who allow them- selves to be taken and led captive by its influence. The deputies are, on the contrary, an artificial, cold, banter- ing, suspicious, heartless race, who resist all emotions by a sort of induration of the political lymph, rather than through wisdom. In them the pulse scarce beats, and to draw the blood demands the nicest adroitness. Here is no place for startling effects, or oratorical draperies, or high- flown eloquence. To fix the attention of the auditory in a deliberative assembly, to keep it up, to suspend and then precipitate it and force it along with you, this is a grand art. It is the art of the consummate orator ; and Pherinte is but a tyro. Oronte spoils his exordiums by the fastidious superabun- dance of his oratorical preliminaries. You would say that lie has always his pockets filled with flasks of per- fumery, for fear of oiTending the smell of his auditors when he advances to address them, and that he will not touch their hand but with gloves of the finest kid. Aii ! my God ! Be not so squeamish. Grasp and shake vigor- ously these hardened reprobates with gauntlets of iron, if you can, and until they cry out for mercy ! Do they give quarter to the people, they, who take them by the throat and plunder them of the best of their substance? Isocles is a man of probity, conscience, honesty, no one denies it. But, by an awkward contrast, his ideas are often trivial and his expressions inflated, whereas tlie for- mer should be elevated and the latter simple. Isocles has brought to the tribune the vicious forms of the bar, and the extravagant gesticulation of the Court of Sessions. Mc takes the solemn intonation of a melo-dramatic liero, to re- late the smallest fact. He is moved to tears over the dis- asters of a mortgage. He gets info a towering passion about a question of bankruptcy. The bar is not always- far from it — a good school of politics. The practice stiflea all originality of tiiought. Lawyers I)y profession niake, oidiuarily, judges without decision and ministers without 188 REVOLUTION OF JULY. views and without capacity, diffuse, hair-splitting, redun dant, declamatory. They understand nothing of State affairs. It is but after an hour's exercise that they begin to warm, that the blood creeps into their face and some faith into their hearts. Still is it with much difficulty that they determine to come to any conclusion, and they would cheei fully render thanks to the assembly which would permit thenti to remain suspended arms aloft and erect on tip-toe, between the pro and the con of the question. A government of sharpers would be a government with- out morality and without economy. A government of soldiers would be a government without gentleness and with- out justice. A govejnment of lawyers would be a govern- ment without conviction, without ideas, without principles and what is perhaps worse, without action. Unfortunately for himself, M. Sauzet has not put off the old man, his lawyer's gown. He empties out, good or bad, the whole contents of his sack. He knows not how to re- strain his intemperance of argument. He wants the skill to choose, to pick out his political topics. He pleads them all, except however those, mind you, which might compro- mise him with the majority. M. Sauzet is no writer. His manner is that of rhetori- cians, feeble and tumid. His logic — which is not the exact- est, does not proportion his consequences to their principle. M. Sauzet, whether from mental propensity, or imitation, or calculation, is of the school of Martignac. Less temper- ate, less graceful, less elegant, less adroit than his master, but more copious, more vehement, more pathetic, more pic- turesque. Like M. de Martignac, he parries with address, and steps aside from the lance of the antagonist. He does not suffer himself easily to be unhorsed, and slides to the ground rather than falls. Like Martignac, he continues still a worshipper of those representative forms and that hol- low and metaphysical constitutionalism which is called the balanced government of three powers. Like Martignac — for a final point of resemblance — M. Sauzet resumes admi- S A U Z E T . 189 rably the opinions of others, ana acquits himself in the most intricate discussions, with a sagacity, a delicacy and a skill that have not been dulv admired. With wliat profundity of science, with what solidity of sense, with what dialectic ability he has conducted the de- bate upon the law of Mines! The more his language is pompous when he declaims, too pompous, the more it is sim- ple, elegant, and beautiful when he discusses. He over- looks no grave objection, and he appends the reply at the instant. He is never afraid of breaking through, because he knows where he is about to put his foot. He does not allow himself to be provoked to odensive personalities, nor does he substitute epigrams to arguments, or hypotheses to the realities of the question. His mind maintains all its firmness and all its presence, and his'march is always j)ro- gressive, logical and steady. M. Sauzet may console him- self for the fall of his oratorical reputation. He will bo, whenever he wishes, the first business orator of the Cham- ber, and what is there higher than this ? I am not surprised that he presided over the Council of State with so remarkable a superiority. He should have been left at the head of tiiis le, luiil tliat, despondent, repentant, weary of others and of itself, it would liide from all eyes, and in the depths of solitutle, its sorrow and remorse. 204 REVOLUTION OF JULY- It knew not even to what degree it was advancing towards the Centre, of which the Third party debarred it the way, nor where it halted in the direction of the extreme Left. It was incapable of either defining its position, of counting its forces, or conducting itself or getting itself con- ducted ; it knew not where to plant its standard, nor under what banner to rank itself; nor what was the password, nor when the day of battle, nor for what cause to fight, nor who was to be commander. Had it two leaders ? Had it only one ? Was this Odillon-Barrot ? Was it Maguin ? If Odillon-Barrot desired to take the command, Maguin spited, like another Achilles, pouted in his tent, abandoning the Greeks to the darts of Hector and the wrath of the gods. No consultation, no combination, no plan, no system, Odillon-Barrot was too absorbed in his political reveries to discipline his troops. Maguin was too venturesome for them to confide themselves to the caprices of his schemes. One was too absent-minded, the other too light-minded. They were not content to be soldiers, they were not qualified to be officers. The dynastic Opposition was accustomed to act with a sloth of movement, a circumspection of periphrases and a superabundance of academical preliminaries, which is quite antipathical to the French character. You were constantly tempted to cry to these orators : To the fact ! to the fact ! come at last to the fact ! It never attacked, it only resisted. It dissertated, but did not argue. It complimented the ministry upon its good intentions, while it was transgressing still more by the intention than the fact. It began with anger to end with disgust. It stopped short in the middle of its consequence, through fear of the principle. It would not say of a bad institution that it was bad, but that it was badly applied. It would have a monarchy without the conditions of mon- archy, and it demanded what a republic alone could yield, while strenuously denying that it had the least desire of a republic. The strong were mortified at its lack ODILLON-IiARROT. 205 of energy ; the weak, themselves, began to fear, in leaning upon it, that it would sink beneath them. Its temporizing was but inertness, its moderation but pusillanimity. As it knew not itself what it was it wanted, the patriots throughout the country knew not what it ought to seek. Each session passed away in hearing speeches, very fine to be sure, rather inconclusive, and three weeks thereafter to be buried in oblivion. Who remembers anything of them ? and what did they say ? You have seen those meagre grasses that sprout througn the chinks of a wall ; it is well that they be a little agitated by the wind to strengthen their filaments. So with the ministry ; the gentle and rustling attacks of the Opposition, instead of shaking its hold, only give it vigor and root. Another reproach to be made the dynastic Opposition, and this is the gravest, is that it pays too little attention to the in- struction and moralizalion of the people. Of constitutional phraseology, it will be as profuse, in the Chamber, as you please; but of money or time elsewhere, not an hour or a stiver. It is found at the head of no intellectual establish- ment. It directs nothing, centralizes nothing, vivifies noth- ing. The session closed, each takes flight towards the stee- ple of his locality, re-enters his nest, and there squats, warm and reposing, until the season of parliamentary storms. I have asked myself often, not why I should not partici- pate the opinions of Odillon-Barrot, but why he should not be of mine. If I had Odillon-Barrot in a corner of the confessional, 1 am sure that between his ideas and mine there would not be the breadth of a hair. But, out of the con- fessional, it would no longer be the same tiling. Odillon- Barrot, like several other great and good patriots, commenced by serving tlie government of the 7lh August, which since but there are certain prcceiients which explain cer- tain managemfnts, and whicii f»rce a man into situations of inconsistence from which, once entered, no efforts can after extricate him. But we, wiio have liad the good fortune not to accept the fat favors and employments that Merc flung a 18 20G REVOLUTION OF JULY. our head, we who have not been soiled by the impure touch of the ministry, we are not disposed, for our part, lo con- tinue lliis comedy of fifteen years. We are aware that people say, some that we are imprudent, and others that we are dupes. These, that we are ambitious — ambitious of what? Those, that we are utopists, Carlists, anarchists, agrarians, and whatever you please. With a few spots and a little paint on both cheeks, we might win the good graces of the electors and the caresses of power. But we should play an unworthy part, a part we certainly will not play. We are perfectly aware, we can expect but to be despised, scoffed at, hrssed, persecuted for our love to liberty, and what is worst of all, to be mistaken for suspicious patriots, and misapprehended by the ignorant. But there is such a power of attraction in truth, there is a gratification of conscience so noble and so pure in defending the popular cause, that the greatest sacrifices, were they needed, would appear to us light indeed, and all the joys of the world have nothing comparable to this ! The difference between Odillon-Barrot and us, is this : that we insist upon the consequences of our principle, whereas he renounces the principle of his consequences. Another difference is, that he does not wish our co-operation, and that we, on the contrary, are desirous of his. We de- sire it in order at least to see resolved this insoluble problem of a monarchy dancing upon a slack-rope without the aid of a balancer. It is a regret, a heartfelt regret, to me espe» cially who esteem and love him, as he well knows, these twenty years back, not to be able to be on his side, and to see myself obliged, perhaps some day, to be opposed to him ; a circumstance which, while, through patriotism, I desire his accession to power, would lead me, through affection, to dep- recate it. I honor Odillon-Barrot, but I pity him. I pity and blame him. For he is not, like me, and like so many others, master of his political individuality. He is more than a person, he is at present, in the Chamber and the na- tion, the head of a collective opinion, the representative of ODILLON-BAIIROT. 207 the liberal burgess class, the avowed and incontestable leader of a numerous and powerful party. Odillon-Barrot leads to combat the most numerous phalanx of the Clianiber. They are but chance soldiers, conscript aggregations, bat- talions of accident, officers without troops, scouts, guerillas, adventurers and mercenaries. But by dint of enjoining his people to be very reasonable, very wise, not to furbish their arms, not to make too much noise, to wait, to wait always, Odillon-Barrot has rendered them cautious, laggard and almost timorous. So well has he clipped the wings of the dynastic Opposition, for fear apparently of its escape, that it can no longer either fly or walk. In place of returning its adversary dart for dart, it contents itself quite christianly with stanchinjT the blood and binding the wound. Instead of flowing always in the same channel and retaining the same name, it has mingled with other rivers sprung from other sources, so that we can no more recognize either its course or its waters. It has ceased to have any proper and distinct personality. It goes and comes like a floating body from one bank to the other. It explodes and dissipates its force. It extends and coils itself. It has no limits, because it has no domain, and that it transfers its territory and stand- ard wheresoever the caprice of the winds may carry and keep it. It is the ally of all who ask it, but under the odd condition of never profiting by the victory. It lends to whoever would borrow, but at tbe interest of never repay- ing. It gives but never receives. It chains itself to parties without exacting tbe least reciprocity of tie. It assumes all the duties, without claiming the rights, all the charges with- out enjoying the benefits. It fears its enemies to the degree of not daring to look them in the face. It is afraid of itself, to the degree of not venturing to count its numbers. It takes its illusions for sentiments, and its sentiments for max- ims. It is polite and courteous, but it is a dupe. It is hon- est, disinterested, virtuous, eloquent, but it is not capable. It docs the business of the government, but not that of France. Would it not be better to leave the sewers of cor- 208 REVOLUTION OF JULY. ruption to disgorge themselves, without wallowing in their mire, to repudiate adulterous and disreputable connections, to press around the flag of liberty, and fight to the last drop of blood for the eternal truth of principle, and say with Francis First, on delivering up his sword : " All is lost ex- cept honor !" But it is that the dynastic Opposition is not reduced to this, and that it has lost nothing, neither honor nor the rest. I insist, because this anomaly is the trait the most charac- teristic of the physiognomy of Odillon-Barrot ; never has there been witnessed so much force and so much feebleness, so many engagements, with so large a troop and so few vic- tories, so much speech-making and so little action, so much noise and so little wool. What or who is to blame? Fa- tality, the fault of the principle, the want of skill, the color of the banner, the soldiers or the general ? What better is needed, however, and when to be expected ? I do not fear exaggerating when I say that at the moment I write, Odillon- Barrot, with the elections free, would, if he wished, be made a candidate in two hundred of the electoral colleges. So completely is he the expression, the formula, the true truth of the burgess monopoly. Situation without example in our annals, fortune unheard of and which seems to have befallen him asleep ! but also responsibility far greater than that of any minister, and of which he will one day owe an account to his country. Does he not already hear electoral France cry : " Varus, give me back my legions !''" It is however a pity ! What a fine and valiant band you had to lead, and whither would they not have carried you, Varus, had you known to avoid the defiles and gorges of Germany ! What soldiers ! But since they are defiling before me, why may I not runningly sketch their roll ? It was you, first, M. Dufatjre, terror of the Doctrinarians, minister dead and laid out at your full length in the sweat and dust of the 29th October, who would be very glad of a res- urrection before the final judgment, and who had commenced vour career as aide-de-camp of Odillon-Barrot. You con. O n I L L O \ - B A R R O T . 209 \fcyed, the day of battle, tlie order of your general, and caracoled about the wings of the dynastic Opposition. You supported the harassed troops and covered their retreat. You were cobnel of the heavy cavalry. Your weapon was ar- gument, and you excelled in its management. You masierec the questions of law. You took them on every side. You divided, dissected, unfolded them in some sort, and laid hart their inmost recesses. You came next, M. Duces, with eyes full of fire, and as- pect pale and contemplative. M. Ducos hassomethingof the Girondist in the pomp and brilliance of his language. Ho makes his heart discourse with a religious abundance, and the sacred words of country, of conscience, of virtue flow unctuously from his lips. I fear there is more imagination and tenderness of soul in his talent than of logic. M. Ducos has somethinor candid in his manner which touches and pleases. He has the heart and the voice of an orator. At the time of the famous discussion respecting the con- temptible affair of the American claims, M. Ducos had the sagacity to see what it was to enter upon a false route. As he made use of terms mysterious, covert, inexplicable in ap- pearance, to say, rather not to say, what had become of the funds, M. Guizot, ferule in hand, rushed to the tribune, and in the tone of a master who orders up a scholar, summoned M. Ducos to explain his hieroglyphics. Ducos stammered, and it was amusing to see the doctrinarian hold M. Ducos in his clutches like a poor bird, and refuse to let him go witliout a formal retraction of what he had said or not said. Tliere was, in truth no need of getting into such a rage. No one has ever pretended that M. Guizot had pilfered, stolen, trafTicked, sold, discounted, embezzled the American debt. All ! my God, M. Guizot, you well know that the allusion was not to you. You do not gamble stocks in the dens of brokerage. You are not the person who sends gold in bars to the banks of l^ngland and the United Slates. You are not a large capitalist, an enormous stockjobber. You know perfectly well that tliese delits, though nominally in the lb* 210 REVOLUTION OF JULY. hands of American owners, had not the less really and foully fallen into hands which we dare not name ; which make money of everything,, which are proverbial for rapacity, and which will, one day, be nailed to the pillory of history. You knew all this, M. Guizot, quite as well as we. Must we then write you the names with the finger? Come, come, only have the will and you will soon cease to be ignorant of what everybody knows. You too, were you not, are you not still, one of the troop, you M. IsAMBERT, man of vast erudition in all law, civil, crim- inal, administrative, diplomatic and commercial, I do not say ecclesiastical, for we are not agreed upon the matter wherein I had the honor to encounter and perhaps discomfit you. Conscientious man, whence your eloquence, when occasion- ally you are so ? Why, from your heart. Rifler of recoi'ds, of secret documents and unofficial treatises, where do you unearth all these things ? Why, where your science and your ardor guide you, where others do not think of going, do not know how to study, to explore, to plunder. M. Isambert shakes off" the dust from mouldy archives and old books. He analyzes, extracts, deciphers manuscripts. He collates the editions, compares the passages, and confronts curiously the dates. He amalgamates afterwards the whole in an exposition substantiated and sustained by facts, calculations and author- ities. He has none of those theories which fall in beautiful cadence and flatter agreeably the ear, like the windy rhetori- cians of the Socialist party. He reasons upon documents and figures ; for the ministers who laugh at your theories, cannot dispose quite so cavalierly of facts. If the facts are not true, they deny them ; if they are true, they deny them still. But M. Isambert displays before their eyes the texts, and if they are unwilling to read them themselves, he reads them. M. Isambert dismays and torments them. Poor fel- lows ! What is it they have done to merit such treatment ? He, with hair prematurely gray and countenance so pale, whom death has surprised in a dilemma, it was NicoD ; a powerful dialectitian, an intellect comprehensive and vigor- O D I L L O N •■ n A R R O T. 211 ous, who approached his subject without indecision and dis. patched it without fatigue. The thoughts of Nicod flowed vivid and copious. His strength had nothing too strained or too salient. A democrat from conviction, independent in spite of his amovability, passionate but in the cause of jus- tice. When he got animated and indignant at the violation of a principle, he found eloquence in defending but right, and seeking but truth. There goes Bignon, whom relentless death has already wrapped in his shadow ; Bignnn, a clever write', an inge- nious and learned speaker, a lover of our nationality, but moderate to timidity. There are who betray their trust by abuse of speech ; there are who betray it by abuse of si- lence. For a long time, people asked why Bignon, the first diplomatist of the Chamber, never spoke upon foreign af- fairs. Were we then become anew the conquerors of Eu- rope ? Bignon was not so proud as this ! He had the honor to be deputy, the first honor of the country, and he suffered himself to be travestied a peer of France. Oh ! weakness of old age ! Pass, pass before me M. Charamaule, dogged jurisconsult, subtle dialectian, and most puzzling of cross-questioners. You, M. Charlemagne, so precise and so penetrating. You, M. Dubois, doctrinal rather than doctrinarian, profound and solid metaphysician, warm and radiant writer ! You con- ceive with fruitfuiness, but bring forth with pain. When your thoughts and sentiments flow over, you are unable to contain them. They seem to inundate you, to take you by the throat and stifle you. You would unbosom yourself of them all at once, but your imperfect expression fails you. You seek them as they escape you, you disconcert yourself, you get emljarrassed, you interrupt yourself, and strike, as if to recall them, whh reiterated blows the resounding man- tel of tlip tribune. There are some orators whom their words sufHjcate ; with M. Dubois, it is the ideas. You, M. Havin, keen and piquant observer, who can touch with address the most delicate subjects, and tell the 212 REVOLUTION OF JULY. ministers, with a smile, some good truths which do not make them smile. Officer in waiting of Odil.on-Barrot, is it not you? Oh ! yes, it is surely you who narrated the banquet of Thorigny with a wealth of description and a party adroit- ness for which I have, I think, already made you my com- pliments. You, M. Pages, disciple and brilliant successor of Benja- min Constant. Less versatile perhaps, less broken to the language of business, not possessing the skill of your mas- ter, to entwine himself serpent-wise around a thesis, and clasp it in the thousand coils of his crushing argumentation. Less dialectical, less copious, less natural and less ingeni- ous ; but perhaps more able and more practised in the art of throwing your ideas with precision into- axioms ; more sparkling in the variety of your antitheses, more religious in your political morals, more chastened, more pure in the forms of your expression, and the only deputy whose writ- ten discourses can captivate, by the sustained splendor of style and thought, the attention of a Chamber distrait, care- less, and very little sensible to the pains taken to entertain it with eloquence. You, M. Roger, of financial and maritime notoriety ; useful and honest deputy, who filled the Chamber with shudderings of horror, while you painted to it in living colors, the tortures of imprisonment beneath the lurid and devouring sky of Senegal. You, M. de Sade, conscientious disserter, who recite with a surd and psalmodizing voice whole discourses learned by rote and painfully elaborated. Well-instructed publicist, mod- erate Liberal, and one of the honestest men of the Chamber. You, M. DE Tracy, universal philanthropist, champion of humanity, man of virtue and purity, who find in your noble soul the loftiest impulses of eloquence, and who preferred the palms of the elective deputation to the burning and branding stigmas of the ministerial peerage. You, General Bertrand, energetic and true patriot, whose name shall never perish as long as fidelity to misfortune ODILLON-BAIIROT. 213 shall be honored among men, and as long as the rock of Saint-Helena shall hold its place amid the waves. Unlimited freedom of the press ! was his exclamation al the close of each of his speeches ; and in fact this is ihe bulwark of all representative government. If tlie friend of Napoleon is so liberal as this, it is not probable that Napoleon was, after all, so much the despot ! And in truth, notwithstanding the absolute character of his government, there were more ideas of liberty in the head of Napoleon, tlian in tliat of all the living kings of Europe at the present day. You, M. Chapays de Moxtaville, who is it has advised you, I know not wherefore, to paint me on foot, with a pur- ple cloak, the cut of an artist and other fancy decorations, which do much more honor to your imagination than your judgment. For me, I will not draw even your oratorical sketch ; I am unwilling that it should be said : " Ah ! Ti- mon, Timon, you praise those who praise you, and vou too, then, have your confederates of adulation !" You, M. Chambolle, pupil of Carrel, indefatigable ath- lete of the press, who multiply by your able and elegant pen, the friends of liberty, and who never leave unwhippcd either an apostasy of party or a treachery of principle. You, M. Salverte, exemplary man, austere philanthro- pist, courageous citizen, erudite scholar. Exact to your post, you are the first to enter and the last to quit the Cham- ber. Riveted to your bench, you follow continually with tlie keen eyes of intelligence, the most dry and dillieult discussions. Not a law of any importance found you mute, not a ministerial villainy escaped your penetration, not a thesis of political economy whereupon you did not pour floods of liglit from your pregnant, practised and sa- gacious intellect. Whatever may be, even after death, tlie recklessness and injustice of parties, they cannot deprive you of your name of model-deputy. And you too, I must not forget you, M. Billaut, elegant and fluent orator, juris! and administrator, dialrctition co- gent, nervous, rapid, incisive, who quitted but with regret 214 REVOLUTION OF JULV the standard of Odillon-Barrot, and who would, were ,ou pressed to it, again attach yourself to his fortunes. Such are the chiefs of the brave, intellectual and learned band which Odillon-Barrot has allowed to slip like water through his hands ! At last a few passed over into the ranks of the Extreme Left. The condottieri of the party, seeing that they were not occupied, determined to make war on their own account. They passed, arms and bag- gage, into the ministerial camp. The others, less prompt, less eager for the spoils, less impatient to take the yoke of servitude, have crossed the lines and hedges of the dynastic Opposition, and spread, on marauding excursions, through the vineyard of M. Thiers ; but after they have slept off the wine of contraband, they will return perhaps to the homestead. Odillon-Barrot has, besides, scarce ever had any trouble to give himself. As soon as he commits a foult, it is repair- ed. In proportion as he deserts himself, he is supported. According as he occasions a void in his ranks, it is filled up. Thus, while a portion of his adherents, through sheer neglect on his part, secede from Odillon-Barrot, there formed, there gathered upon his deserted wings, a little pha- lanx, aristocratic in origin, expert in the exercitations of philosophy, history and political economy, friendly to meas- ured but limited progress, who are disgusted with the cor- ruption of what they see, with the sterility of what they hear, who are tired of the desperate strife of so many petty and sordid ambitions, who take concern in the amelioration of the condition of the people, and who would strip politics of that mass of misty fictions which envelope it, and would shod over it some rays of fresh and pure light. In this little band of officers, march in ranks unequal but close, M.M. de 'J'ocqueville, de Sivry, de Terrebasse, de Laborde, de Ram- pon, de La Sizeraime, de Chasseloup, de Lanjuinais, de Cor- celles, de Courbarel, de Grammont. Here they are all armed, equipped and ready to mount ! They wait to charge but a sign from Odillon-Barrot. But ODILLDN-BARROT. 215 an act of will is necessary, and can Odillon-Barrol perform it ? Is he after all made only to subserve the purposes of M. Thiers and to add a cipher to his unity ? Does he not comprehend that the parliamentary Opposition cannot re- main, like a sort of Olympian Jupiter in a majestic repose, gazing with indifference as they pass upon the things of iieaven and earth ? Its part is motion, and perpetual motion. When it can, like the Extreme Left, pick up but principles, it takes the principles. When it can, like the Left, glean at once both the principles and the facts which put them in action, it must descend from theory to practice, and take the government at the point of the bayonet. Odillon-Barrol has been reproached with being too ambitions. My reproach would be, that he is not ambitious enough. He loans hia funds to people who use them for their own ends, and return him neither principal nor interest. This is the trade of p. dupe. Poor Chamber and poor Country ! public opinion is fasil evaporating in smoke, and progress is fallen lame. Whilo the parliament is at a halt, the Court recedes at a giant pace into the past. The Camarilla is spinning us days of shame and servitude. The government is fallen to a woman. During this time, what does the dynastic Opposition ? There it is reclining on the beach, iv amuses itself by throwing grains o sand in^o tne counter- '•evolutionary tor- rent which passes and carrie: '^ off. 21G REVOLUTION OF JULY. M. DUPIN. The chameleon which changes color even under the ga- zer's eye, the bird that makes a thousand twirls and darts off in the air, the disk of the moon which slips aside from the field of the telescope, the skiff that, on a stormy sea, mounts, dives, and reappears on the crest of the billows, a flitting shadow, a startled fly, a whirling wheel, a gleam of lightning, a vanishing sound — all these comparisons give but an imperfect idea of the rapidity of sensation and mobil- ity of mind of M. Dupin. How shall I contrive to sketch that disparate and ever- varying physiognomy ? by what means can I seize it, and where begin ? I tell you plainly, M. Dupin, that if you keep constantly stirring on your chair, if you keep turning about your head every moment, and do not sit for me better than that, I mean to break my pallet and fling down my pencils ! You wish that I make you a likeness, do you not ? Very well, be so kind then as to let me examine you for a few minutes merely. Also, do not se' to scolding me if the proportions of your face are not always in accord, and some of the fea- tures be distorted. 1 am a painter, and to imitate nature, I must make the portrait conformable to the model. There are in M. Dupin two, three, four men; nay, an infinity of different characters. There is the man of Saint- Acheul and the man of France, the man of the Tuileries and the man of the shop-keepers, the man of courage and the man of fear, the man of prodigality and the man of economy, the man of the exordium and the man of the peroration, the man who wishes and the man who docs not, the man of the past and the man of the present — never the man of the fu- ture. M. DUPIN. 217 M. Dupin is an author, a lawyer, a magistrate, a presi- dent, an orator and a wit.* M. Dupin has written a good deal, some eren in Latin — in bad Latin, to be sure, but it is still Latin — which he has learned late, almost without a teacher, and with a rare force of intelligence. He has written a multitude of elementary treatises upon law, good as well as bad, which might be strung one after another like beads, and which compose his entire ba