Читать книгу Twenty Years in Europe - Samuel H. M. Byers - Страница 6

LOUIS BLANC, THE STATESMAN-HIS NOVEL COURTSHIP-HIS APPEARANCE-INVITES US TO PARIS-JUST MISS VICTOR HUGO-HIS SPEECH AT MADAME BLANC’S GRAVE-LETTER FROM LOUIS BLANC-ALABAMA ARBITRATORS-SEE GAMBETTA AND JULES FAVRE.

May 9, 1872.-On this day Louis Blanc, the French statesman and historian, called. It was to thank me for a favor I had done on a time for his nephew, but the visit resulted in a friendship that lasted till his death, ten years later.

Louis Blanc had been to the old French Republic (1848) what Brentano had been to the revolution of South Germany. At one time he was the most powerful member of the French Assembly. His writings, more than all things else, brought about the revolution that for a time made him President. In this 1872, he is again in the Assembly of a new republic.

While he stayed at Zurich, we came to know his friend, the vivacious English writer and traveler, Hepworth Dixon. We met often. Once Louis Blanc gave us all a dinner in the Neptun, and Dixon kept the table in a roar, telling of his ridiculous experiences in American overland coaches, in Texas and elsewhere. Of Texas, he had views alarmingly like those of Sheridan. If he owned hell and Texas, he certainly would rent out Texas and live in hell. “And do you tell us that is manners down South in the United States?” queried Mr. Louis Blanc, in the naivest manner. “Indeed I do; surely, surely,” said the traveler, glancing at Mrs. Blanc, “I saw it a hundred times. Pistols, bowie-knives and swearing. Nothing else in Texas.” The kind Frenchman believed it all, for he believed all men honest as himself; only at the close of the dinner did Mr. Dixon let him know that part of his talk was good-natured champagne chaff.

Louis Blanc was the smallest big man I ever saw. He was only five feet high. His head was big enough for Alexander the Great. He was only fifty-nine years old now, but it seemed to me his life and actions went back to the Revolution. His hair was long and black and straight as an Indian’s. He had no beard. His face was rosy as a girl’s. His little hands were white as his white cravat; his feet were like a boy’s; his eyes brown, large, and full of kindness; his voice sweet as a woman’s. He dressed in full black broadcloth and wore a tall silk hat. He looked, when walking in the street, like a rosy-faced boy in man’s clothes.

His little stature and apparent innocence of half that was going on about him, kept Madame Blanc in a constant worry for fear he would be run over by passing wagons when we were out walking together. “Now run over here quick,” she would say to him at a crossing. “Do, my dear, be careful. See the horses coming.” Out of doors, or on our little excursions to the mountains, he was perpetually and literally under her wing. She knew the treasure she had in him.

I constantly thought of the story of his past; for was not this little, low-voiced man, walking with us, he who had written “The Ten Years” that had helped destroy Louis Philippe; was not this the same voice that had enchained assemblies, and led France?

Once in a little log schoolhouse in the backwoods of the West, where, as a young fellow, I was teaching, I had read some of his books. Poor as I was, I would have given a month’s salary then, to have taken Louis Blanc by the hand. How little I dreamed that some day I should not only take him by the hand, but have his warm friendship.

Louis Blanc’s head was all there was to him-that and a great heart.

His marriage to Madame Blanc was a marvel. They met in London. She was German and could speak no French. He was French and could speak no German. He courted her in broken English; and he did well, for a better woman never lived.

Victor Hugo, standing at her grave years later, pronounced one of his noblest eulogies to womanhood. It was an outburst of remembered oratory.

We were glad of the friendship of such a man as Louis Blanc. He wrote me many letters and invited us to Paris, where we spent some delightful days. His brother Charles was the director of Fine Arts and Theaters there. We had invitations to the best operas and plays. One night I had the pleasure of hearing Gounod lead the Grand Opera House orchestra in his own “Faust.” Monsieur Blanc also took us out to see the National Assembly sitting at Versailles, where he was a senator. By good luck we saw and heard Gambetta and Jules Favre. There was no disorder that day, at least, and the speaking was moderate in tone. It was no noisier than our own senate. Louis Blanc also spoke a few words in a quiet way. He wished them to move the Assembly into Paris. “It is all nonsense,” he said to me, “this pretense of fearing a Paris mob. ‘Do right,’ I might have said to them, ‘and the mob will let you alone. Do wrong, and-well, it is not far from Paris to Versailles, and there was a time when a mob could escort a king even, from the one place to the other.’” He meant Louis XVI. and his queen, whom the mob led from this same palace to the Paris scaffold.

That evening we went late to dinner. The Blanc’s lived on an upper floor of house No. 96, on the Rue du Rivoli. It was rather far. “But why didn’t you come earlier?” said Mrs. Blanc, meeting us at the door. “You can’t guess who was here.” It was Victor Hugo. How sorry we were to have missed the opportunity of seeing the most famous man in France.

It happened later that I was in Paris the day after Victor Hugo’s funeral. Everybody said it was like the funeral of a great king. I went up to the “Arc de Triomphe.” The great monument built by Napoleon, in his own honor, was covered with wreaths in honor of Victor Hugo. Which man, I thought, does France, in her inmost heart, revere the most-the poet, or the conqueror?

I do not recall much that Louis Blanc said to me that first time in Paris, but something he said in reply to some words of Mr. Dixon’s, at the banquet, I wrote down. Dixon was chaffing, in an exaggerated way, about the patriot’s idea of liberty. “Ah!” replied Louis Blanc, quoting from another Frenchman, “there is but one thing only, which dreads not comparison with Glory; that is Liberty.”

The nephew whom I had obliged, and through whom our friendship with the statesman came about, fell ill in Paris, and Louis Blanc wrote me this:

“Paris, 96 Rue du Rivoli, Dec. 21, 1871.

“Dear Sir: It grieves me to the very heart to have to say that my nephew is most dangerously ill. He has now been in bed for about a month, and his precarious state keeps both my poor wife and myself in a state of unspeakable anxiety. This domestic affliction, added to the necessity I am under to spend the whole of my time at Versailles, where the Assembly is now residing and threatens to settle, has as yet prevented me from seeing Mr. Washburne. But I have not lost sight of my promise, which I hope I shall be able to fulfill before long. Many thanks for the photographs. That of Mrs. Byers is very far, indeed, from doing her justice. We wish we had a better one. I will write to you soon. In the meantime, accept, my dear sir, our most cordial thanks for the kindness you and your dear wife have shown to our nephew and to ourselves. With my wife’s best regards to Mrs. Byers and yourself, I remain, very truly yours,

Louis Blanc.”

The youth got well, but he did not take much to the Zurich schools after all. He had gone home again, and the uncle decided on letting him go to sea.

“Paris, 96 Rue du Rivoli, July 14, 1872.

“My Dear Sir: Many thanks for your very kind letter. Our nephew is quite recovered, and more than ever determined to be a sailor; so much so, that we have made up our minds to let him go as a midshipman. He will probably start in a month or two.

“My wife and myself speak often of you both and of the friendly reception we met at your hands. May we indulge the hope of returning it soon, on your visit to Paris?

“I would have been glad to make General Sherman’s acquaintance, but, unfortunately, I found no opportunity to do so.

“Mrs. Louis Blanc and nephew unite with me in kindest regards to Mrs. Byers and yourself. Most sincerely yours,

“Louis Blanc.”

September, 1872.-All this past summer the international arbitrators at Geneva have been trying to settle our difficulty with England over the Alabama pirate business. Our Mr. Evarts has won great honor in his management of our side of the matter. Still we have virtually lost the case. A few days ago, the 14th, the treaty was signed. True, it gives us fifteen millions, but we set out with claiming two hundred and fifty millions. What a bagatelle to have to accept after that. The testimony really tends to show that the Rebels never hurt the North with their cruisers a hundredth part as much as everybody supposed they had. It was only a little Captain Kidd sea robbery after all.

It is something, however, to make England come to time, if only a little, for only the other day a London paper declared England will never pay the Yankees a dollar, no matter what the arbitrators say. We shall see.