Читать книгу France from Behind the Veil - Catherine Radziwill - Страница 6

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I became very well acquainted with both M. Rouher and M. Emile Ollivier. The latter inspired me with warm feelings of friendship. He was essentially an honest man, and his mistakes were more the faults of others than his own. He never had the opportunity really to show of what stuff he was made. Though possessed of the best intentions in the world, he was always misunderstood and suspected, even by the very people who should have had confidence in him and in his sense of justice and impartiality.

When he was called upon to form a Cabinet he was met by the antagonism of the Empress, who did not approve of the new trend in politics, which had replaced the one inaugurated at the coup d’état. She hated the idea of the slightest diminution in the Imperial power and prestige. She did not believe in the necessity of concessions to public opinion, and she was deeply incensed to find that her ideas on the subject were not shared by her husband, who was more or less under the influence of his new Prime Minister. Eugénie, who was superstitious, declared to her friends that she had the feeling when she spoke with Emile Ollivier that he was going to be fatal to her.

The fact is that fate went against the new Prime Minister. M. Ollivier had hardly been in power when occurred an event almost forgotten to-day, but which was to sound the first knell of the Empire. Prince Pierre Bonaparte shot Victor Noir.

Till that fatal day very few people knew anything about Prince Pierre. He was a distant cousin of the Emperor, with whom his relations had never been either affectionate or even friendly. He was the black sheep of a family which at that time could ill afford a setback, and his political opinions, coupled with an irregular connection with a person belonging to an inferior class, and whom he was ultimately to make his wife, had led to his disgrace by the head of his house. Napoleon III. ignored the existence of this inconvenient kinsman, who lived in a little house at Auteuil.

Prince Pierre was a true Corsican in character: violent, and given to strong fits of passion. He professed, together with most Radical political opinions and strong Republican sympathies, an immense worship for the memory of his great ancestor, the first Napoleon, and a great respect for the family traditions of the Bonapartes. And when one day, in a small newspaper edited at Bastia, he chanced across a very vile attack on the family, he got into a rage, and replied to it in the same paper by an equally virulent attack directed against the author.

The matter did not end there, for very soon the Parisian press took part, and the occasion was used by the enemies of the Imperial regime in order to air their grievances against it. At last one of the editors of an opposition paper called La Revanche, M. Paschal Grousset, who later on was to acquire a sorry celebrity during the excesses of the Commune, sent two of his friends to Prince Pierre, to request him either to apologise in person or else to fight.

What happened during the interview no one will ever know. The versions given by the Prince and that of M. Ulric de Fonville, who together with Victor Noir had called at Auteuil at the request of Paschal Grousset, differ entirely as to what passed. The result, however, was the murder of Noir by the cousin of Napoleon III.

This event, occurring as it did at a moment when the Empire was being attacked on all sides and already tottering, added considerably to the difficulties under which the Emperor was labouring. Unfortunately, neither he nor his responsible advisers calculated its consequences. Instead of following the advice given by M. Rouher, who was of opinion that Prince Pierre should have been imprisoned in a fortress until his crime had been forgotten by the public, Napoleon III. decided to have his cousin tried by a special court which assembled at Tours. The court acquitted the accused, which only added to the general exasperation against the government. M. Ollivier was reproached with having lent himself to a travesty of justice, in order to shield a relative of the Sovereign from a justly deserved punishment, and was accused by his former friends and followers of allowing himself to fall under the influence of the Court.

This was gall and wormwood to that sincere politician, and the bitterness which resulted on both sides made the head of the Cabinet lose that calmness which, more than anyone else, he required in the difficult task that lay before him.

As to Prince Pierre, the cause of all this perturbation, he left France after his acquittal, settled in Brussels, and after the fall of the Empire married the mother of his children, and spent his life in comparative poverty until the marriage of his son Roland Bonaparte with the youngest daughter of the celebrated Blanc, of Monaco fame, which brought back financial prosperity to that branch of the family. He did not enjoy it long, because he died a few months later, and was followed very quickly to the grave by his young daughter-in-law. His widow, the washerwoman whose introduction into his family Napoleon III. had deeply resented, went on living with her son Roland, devoting herself to him and to his baby daughter. She never could learn what manners were, but she was kind-hearted in spite of her vulgarity, and did good in every way she could. Prince Roland, on his side, had the tact never to be ashamed of the humble origin of his mother, to surround her always with the greatest respect, and to treat her with the most tender affection. She did the honours of his house as well as she could, and unfortunately for her, died before the marriage of her granddaughter, the Princess Marie Bonaparte, with Prince George of Greece, an event which, had she only lived long enough to witness it, would have proved the supreme happiness of her life.

This digression has led me far away from M. Emile Ollivier. I had the opportunity to see him on the day following the acquittal of Prince Pierre Bonaparte, and was surprised to find him considerably irritated against M. Rouher, whom he accused of trying to influence the Emperor in a direction contrary to the resolutions which the Sovereign had taken in conjunction with Ollivier himself. He seemed as if he wanted to find someone on whom he might vent his anger at his own mistakes. A phrase which he uttered on that day, but to which I did not pay any attention at the moment, struck me later on as the expression of a desire to regain a popularity he had lost:

“Il nous faut maintenant à tout prix regagner notre popularité” (“We must now at all costs win back our popularity”).

It was immediately after these troubled days that the important question of the Plebiscite was raised. It was violently opposed by M. Thiers and his followers, and also by several of the Emperor’s personal friends, who dreaded what it might mean to him. Even when its result ratified the country’s confidence in the Empire and in the Emperor, they were not inspired with any greater confidence in the future. I remember that at a dinner which took place at the house of Marshal Canrobert and at which I was present, M. Rouher, who was among the guests, remarked sadly that there was nothing to be so very proud of in the results of the Plebiscite, because Paris had proved by its vote that it was distinctly hostile to the Government. “Et c’est Paris qui fait les révolutions et renverse les gouvernements” (“And it is Paris which makes revolutions and upsets governments”), he concluded with a sigh.

Without being on intimate terms with him, I liked M. Rouher exceedingly. For one thing, he was really the Emperor’s friend, and for another, when all is said and done, he was a statesman. It is not to be denied that he was ambitious and liked power for power’s sake. He did not care so much for the welfare of France as he did for that of the Bonaparte dynasty, but he had a clear apprehension of all the political necessities of the moment, and saw farther than those who were listened to with greater attention than himself. He did not perhaps like the Empress very much, but he remained faithful to her, and out of respect for the place which she occupied and the crown which she wore, always tried to uphold her prestige. He loved Napoleon III. truly and sincerely, and always gave him disinterested advice. Like all strong men he had enemies, and like all sincere people he was accused of dissimulation and intrigue by those who did not understand that to tell the truth is sometimes the best way not to be believed.

He has been accused of having gathered immense riches whilst he was in power. I can testify that this has not been the case by far, and that when the “Second Emperor,” as he was sometimes called, died, he was comparatively a poor man.

Socially, M. Rouher was charming, and his conversation was most enjoyable. He had what French people call “le mot pour rire,” as well as a marvellous skill for parrying questions addressed to him, and replying without answering anything. He had dignity, and gave constant proofs of it in his presidency of the Senate, where he displayed the rarest qualities of tact and skill.

Talking of tact, leads me to say a few words respecting a personage who, to his own misfortune, as well as to that of other people, did not know the significance of that word. It is of Prince Napoleon, Prince Plon Plon, as the Prussians called him, that I am thinking.

This first cousin of the Emperor was certainly a remarkable personage, and undoubtedly a most clever man. But evidently, also, a bad fairy had presided at his birth, and blighted with her magic wand all the great qualities with which nature had endowed him. His was essentially a restless nature, incapable of contentment, even when it had what it wanted. Had he been Emperor he would have lived in opposition to himself, faute de mieux. Of ambition he had a lot; of desires and passions even more, but he lacked an evenly balanced mind, and that most essential of all qualities, submission before accomplished facts and the things that human will cannot change. His intelligence was sharp, bright, and clear; he was capable of resolution, and had initiative in his character. He was gifted with rare eloquence, and, possessing also an easy pen, wrote pages that great writers would have felt proud to sign. He was brilliant, too, in conversation, and to all these talents he added qualities that, joined with the prestige of his name, and of his position, might have called him to great destinies, could he but have learned how to use them. His existence was essentially one aptly described by the French expression “une vie manquée,” and he was his own worst enemy. Always in opposition to his cousin he succeeded in rousing in revolt against himself not only the advisers of the Crown, but also the Emperor, and especially the Empress. Eugénie, with whom he had been ardently in love when she was still Mademoiselle de Montijo, was the object of his especial animosity later on, and he never lost an opportunity of displaying it, forgetting even that she was a lady, and that he should have shown himself a gentleman in his behaviour towards her. Among the survivors of the time none will have forgotten the scandal he caused at Compiègne when he refused to propose the health of the Empress on the day of St. Eugénie, when the Emperor asked him to do so. On that occasion as on many others, he quite lost sight of the politeness which a Sovereign and a woman has the right to expect, even from her worst enemies.

Prince Napoleon was all his life in opposition to somebody or something, and by poetic justice before his death he was to experience the sorrow of finding his own son oppose him and his principles. Deception dogged his footsteps, disappointment seemed to pursue him, for which he himself was partly responsible, and partly the victim of circumstances. He is more to be pitied than anything else. His life seemed to be spent in seeing withdrawn from his lips the cup that a wicked fairy kept presenting to him in order to tempt him with its contents.

A good many of Prince Napoleon’s defects proceeded from a spirit of bravado, such as that which distinguished the Italian condottieri of old. He took a vicious pleasure in appearing to be what in reality he was not, and in defying public opinion, as in the case of his famous Good Friday dinners, when he asked his best friends to help him to eat ham and roast beef on an occasion when the gayest of gay Parisians would not have dreamt of touching anything else but fish. His unorthodoxy was more affected than sincere, more frequently it was adopted because it amused him to shock people.

His wife, the virtuous Princess Clotilde of Savoy, was a saint in her life and habits. She had absolutely no bond of sympathy with him, and made him always feel that duty alone kept her at his side. She had great, noble, and even grand qualities, but her disposition was neither amiable, nor sympathetic, and Prince Napoleon should have had a wife he could love, rather than one whom he could only respect.

When he died alone in Rome, within a stone’s throw from the palace where his distinguished relative, Madame Mère, had ended her sad existence, and within sight of the chapel where rests the mortal remains of the Princess Borghese, née Pauline Bonaparte, he was on terms of intimate friendship with a lady well known in Paris society, the Marquise de ——, whose salon is to this day the rendezvous of a certain circle of people, among whom may be seen some enjoying a great social position, and about which I shall have something more to say later on. This lady was passionately attached to Prince Napoleon, for whom she had sacrificed a good deal. She had been a beautiful woman, gifted with a splendid voice, admired by many, and loved by not a few. Her devotion to the Prince was admirable, but her presence at his bedside robbed his last hours of dignity.

His widow, the Princess Clotilde, retired to the castle of Moncalieri, where she, too, died a few years ago, after having seen her eldest son, Prince Victor, married to the Princess Clementine of Belgium. Her youngest boy, Prince Louis Napoleon, after serving for several years in the ranks of the Russian army, lives now in comparative solitude, at the castle of Prangins in Switzerland, having inherited the fortune of his aunt, the Princess Mathilde. As for Princess Clotilde’s daughter, the Princess Letitia Bonaparte, she married, under rather singular circumstances, her uncle, the Duke of Aosta, the brother of King Humbert of Italy. When I use the words “singular circumstances,” I am alluding to the popular belief that the Duke had no particular intention of marrying his niece. The Princess Letitia, however, had inherited the ardent temperament of her father, Prince Napoleon. The Duke died shortly after the marriage. At present the widowed Duchess of Aosta spends part of her time in Turin, and part in Paris, where she has an apartment in the Hotel de Castiglione, Rue de Rivoli, and enjoys herself as much as she possibly can, being a general favourite everywhere.

After the Plebiscite, it was generally felt that some changes in the Cabinet of M. Emile Ollivier had become imperative, especially as its principal members, M. Buffet and M. Daru, were not entirely in accord with M. Ollivier, being more or less under the influence of Thiers, who had been a resolute adversary of the Plebiscite. The portfolio of Foreign Affairs, becoming vacant owing to the retirement of Comte Napoleon Daru, was offered to the Duc de Gramont, who accepted.

The Duc de Gramont, among all the people who had rallied to the Empire, was the one whose adherence had caused the most pleasure at the Tuileries. He had been the favourite of the Duchess d’Angoulême, the daughter of Louis XVI. and of Marie Antoinette, and had inspired such a deep affection in that severe Princess, that she had left him a large fortune, from which he derived an income of about one million francs. All his family traditions were connected with those of the House of Bourbon, and one would have thought that nothing could have made him swerve from his allegiance to the Comte de Chambord. When he forsook his former masters, and enlisted among the followers of the Napoleonic dynasty, there was great rejoicing at this unhoped-for and unexpected defection, and great bitterness at Frohsdorf. The Empress Eugénie lavished her best and most amiable smiles on the descendant of the famous Corisande, and very soon the Duke found himself the cherished guest at all the festivities that took place, either at Fontainebleau or at Compiègne, or the Tuileries.

He was made an ambassador at Vienna, no one knew why, presumably for no other reason than that it was necessary to make something out of him, and to shower honours and dignities on his head. He did not make himself liked in Austria, and the statesmen with whom he found himself thrown into contact did not form a high opinion of his diplomatic talents. He felt himself secretly despised, and being of an ambitious turn of mind, he wanted to do something very striking in order to make himself appreciated by others to the same degree as he appreciated himself.

It was with joy he accepted the portfolio of Foreign Affairs, and the first time he presented himself before Eugénie after his appointment he told her rather theatrically: “Les intérêts de la France ont été remis en de bonnes mains par l’Empereur, Madame, soyez en sûre” (“The interests of France have been confided by the Emperor into good hands, rest assured of that, Madame”).

I did not know the Duc de Gramont well, and for that reason refrain from judging him. He has been accused of being the most guilty among the many guilty people to whom the responsibility of the unfortunate Franco-German War may be attributed. Doctor Evans, in the very interesting memoirs published after his death, relates that at the time of the Duke’s appointment at the head of foreign affairs, a foreign statesman whom he knew well used the following ominous words: “Believe me, this nomination is the forewarning of a Franco-German war.”

It would not be fair to go as far as that, but I will say that the Duke was attacked more than any of his colleagues with the folie des grandeurs. Moreover, he was suffering acutely from the national vanity which felt itself thoroughly convinced that nothing could resist the courage of the French army. It did not strike him that this courage would be of no avail in the presence of the perfect discipline of the foe it would have to meet.

I must say, when I look back on this period which preceded the war, that a general uneasiness had pervaded the public mind ever since the constitution of the Ministry presided over by Emile Ollivier. No one trusted it, even among the personal friends of its head, and as a very clever woman, the Vicomtesse de Janzé, now Princesse de Lucinge, said at the time: “Its enemies do not trust it, and its supporters do not like it.” The words were cruel, but very true.

The last twelve months of the Empire’s existence saw vanish from the political, and indeed from this earthly scene, three men who had once played a considerable part in the world, and whose names are remembered to this day: Montalembert, Berryer, and Lamartine. I never saw Lamartine, but had the honour to know Montalembert well, and to have been received often by Berryer, whose great figure considerably impressed me. It was impossible to feel for him anything else but the deepest, the most sincere respect. He was an admirable example of fidelity to principles, of convictions that the vicissitudes of life cannot change, and that even the errors of those who represent them cannot weaken. He died as he had lived, a Legitimist, believing in the divine right of kings, and determined to uphold his ideals to the end. Throughout his career he retained a wide sympathy in his estimates of men and of things, and an indulgence for the imperfections of those with whom he came into contact. Though he would permit no compromise with his own conscience, he realised very well that other people were different, and that he must make allowances. Though very disdainful, he was not vindictive in his old age, whatever he might have been in his youth, and the admirable serenity which pervaded all his judgments and opinions reminded me very often of the beautiful sunset of a beautiful day.

Montalembert, though broken by illness more than by old age, had, nevertheless, kept some of that brilliant and caustic wit for which he had been famous, and which had amused me so much when I first saw him in the early ’sixties. He was of that school of French Catholics who had never been able to shake off the influence of Lamennais, and to whom the exuberance of men like Veuillot was simply insufferable. The question of the Papal infallibility, which had been submitted by Pius IX. to the Vatican Council just before his death, had been the last great preoccupation of Montalembert, who could not reconcile himself to what, in his eyes, was a disastrous measure. His religion was of the broadest, and in his last years he looked at things with less partisan enthusiasm, and more clearness of judgment. I believe that in his inmost heart he regretted sometimes having violently separated himself from Lamennais, with whom he had worked on the famous paper L’Avenir. He never owned it, however; he always said that intentions were what must be considered and thought of, and that it was by their intentions, more than by their actions, that people ought to be judged. In his way Charles de Montalembert was just as great a figure as Berryer, whom he only survived by a few months.

As for Lamartine, his death brought back to the public mind all the events which had preceded the proclamation of the Second Empire, and that period during which he had been at the head of the Republic, whose triumph he was not destined to see. Cruel material losses had reduced him almost to penury, and his only means of existence was a pension which, unknown to many, he received from the private purse of the Emperor, who had had the delicacy to extend it to him in such a way that the poor poet never knew to whom he owed the gift.

This reminds me of one of the nicest remarks that Napoleon III. ever made in his life. When he was asked why he insisted so much on Lamartine never learning who was his secret benefactor, the Emperor replied that “France owed so much to M. de Lamartine, that it would be a great shame if he was made to feel he had need to be grateful to its Sovereign.”

The year 1869 had come to an end under a cloud, which even the Empress’s triumphs in Egypt and at Constantinople had not brightened. Napoleon III. was worried, not only by the political situation, but also by the state of his health. Notwithstanding the absence of his Consort he invited people to Compiègne as usual, and there several persons besides myself noticed that he looked ill and tired, and that his eyes had an anxious expression which had never been observable before. He showed himself even more affectionate than usual towards his son, and was heard sometimes to sigh whilst watching him. Nevertheless, no one suspected that anything was radically wrong, and not a single man or woman among those who were gathered in the Castle thought that it was the last time that they would be the guests of the Sovereign who welcomed them with such kindness and affability. Among all those who passed their hours in amusement in the Salle des Gardes, or in the long gallery where meals were served, not one recognised that a hand was already writing on the wall the same fatal words that appeared during the Babylonian monarch’s last banquet.