Les Misérables v. 4/5: The Idyll and the Epic Read online

  CHAPTER III.

  LOUIS PHILIPPE.

  Revolutions have a terrible arm and a lucky hand; they hit hard andchoose well. Even when incomplete, bastardized, and reduced to thestate of a younger revolution, like that of 1830, they nearly alwaysretain sufficient providential light not to fall badly, and theireclipse is never an abdication. Still, we must not boast too loudly,for revolutions themselves are mistaken, and grave errors have beenwitnessed ere now. Let us return to 1830, which was fortunate in itsdeviation. In the establishment which was called order after therevolution was cut short, the king was worth more than the Royalty.Louis Philippe was a rare man.

  Son of a father to whom history will certainly grant extenuatingcircumstances, but as worthy of esteem as his father was of blame;possessing all the private virtues and several of the public virtues;careful of his health, his fortune, his person, and his businessaffairs; knowing the value of a minute, but not always the value ofa year; sober, serious, peaceful, and patient; a good man and a goodprince; sleeping with his wife, and having in his palace lackeyswhose business it was to show the conjugal couch to the cits,--aregular ostentation which had grown useful after the old illegitimatedisplays of the elder branch; acquainted with all the languages ofEurope, and, what is rarer still, with all the languages of all theinterests, and speaking them; an admirable representative of the"middle classes," but surpassing them, and in every way greater;possessing the excellent sense, while appreciating the blood fromwhich he sprang, of claiming merit for his personal value, and veryparticular on the question of his race by declaring himself an Orléansand not a Bourbon; a thorough first prince of the blood, so long as hehad only been Most Serene Highness, but a frank bourgeois on the daywhen he became His Majesty; diffuse in public, and concise in privatelife; branded as a miser, but not proved to be one; in reality, oneof those saving men who are easily prodigal to satisfy their capricesor their duty; well read and caring but little for literature; agentleman but not a cavalier; simple, calm, and strong; adored by hisfamily and his household; a seductive speaker, a statesman who hadlost his illusions, cold-hearted, swayed by the immediate interest,governing from hand to mouth; incapable of rancor and of gratitude;pitilessly employing superiorities upon mediocrities, and clever inconfounding by parliamentary majorities those mysterious unanimitieswhich growl hoarsely beneath thrones; expansive, at times imprudent inhis expansiveness, but displaying marvellous skill in his imprudence;fertile in expedients, faces, and masks; terrifying France by Europe,and Europe by France; loving his country undeniably, but preferringhis family; valuing domination more than authority, and authoritymore than dignity; a temperament which has this mournful featureabout it, that by turning everything to success it admits of craftand does not absolutely repudiate baseness, but at the same time hasthis advantage, that it preserves politics from violent shocks, theState from fractures, and society from catastrophes; minute, correct,vigilant, attentive, sagacious, and indefatigable; contradictinghimself at times, and belying himself; bold against Austria at Ancona,obstinate against England in Spain, bombarding Antwerp and payingPritchard; singing the Marseillaise with conviction; inaccessibleto despondency, to fatigue, to a taste for the beautiful and ideal,to rash generosity, to Utopias, chimeras, anger, vanity, and fear;possessing every form of personal bravery; a general at Valmy, aprivate at Jemmappes; eight times attacked by regicides, and alwayssmiling; brave as a grenadier, and courageous as a thinker; merelyanxious about the chances of a European convulsion, and unfitted forgreat political adventures; ever ready to risk his life, but not hiswork; disguising his will in influence for the sake of being obeyedas an intellect rather than as king; gifted with observation and notwith divination; paying but slight attention to minds, but a good judgeof men,--that is to say, requiring to see ere he could judge; endowedwith prompt and penetrating sense, practical wisdom, fluent tongue,and a prodigious memory, and incessantly drawing on that memory,his sole similitude with Cæsar, Alexander, and Napoleon; knowingfacts, details, dates, and proper names, but ignorant of the variouspassions and tendencies of the crowd, the internal aspirations andconcealed agitation of minds,--in one word, of all that may be calledthe invisible currents of consciences; accepted by the surface, butagreeing little with the lower strata of French society; getting out ofscrapes by skill; governing too much and not reigning sufficiently; hisown Prime Minister; excellent in the art of setting up the littlenessof realities as an obstacle to the immensity of ideas; mingling witha true creative faculty of civilization, order, and organization, Ido not know what pettifogging temper and chicanery; the founder ofa family and at the same time its man-of-law; having something ofCharlemagne and something of an attorney in him; but, on the whole,as a lofty and original figure, as a prince who managed to acquirepower in spite of the anxiety of France, and influence in spite of thejealousy of Europe,--Louis Philippe would be ranked among the eminentmen of his age, and among the most illustrious governors known inhistory, if he had loved glory a little, and had a feeling for what isgrand to the same extent that he had a feeling for what is useful.

  Louis Philippe had been handsome, and when aged, remained graceful:though not always admired by the nation he was always so by the mob,for he had the art of pleasing and the gift of charm. He was deficientin majesty, and neither wore a crown though king, nor displayed whitehair though an old man. His manners belonged to the ancient régime,and his habits to the new,--a mixture of the noble and the citizenwhich suited 1830. Louis Philippe was transition on a throne, andretained the old pronunciation and orthography, which he placed at theservice of modern opinions: he was fond of Poland and Hungary, buthe wrote "les Polonois," and pronounced, "les Hongrais." He wore theuniform of the National Guard like Charles X., and the ribbon of theLegion of Honor like Napoleon. He went but rarely to Mass, not at allto the chase, and never to the opera: he was incorruptible by priests,whippers-in, and ballet girls, and this formed part of his citizenpopularity. He had no Court, and went out with an umbrella under hisarm, and this umbrella for a long time formed part of his _nimbus_. Hewas a bit of a mason, a bit of a gardener, and a bit of a surgeon: hebled a postilion who had fallen from his horse, and no more thought ofgoing out without his lancet than Henry III. would without his dagger.The Royalists ridiculed this absurd king, the first who shed blood inorder to cure.

  A deduction must be made in the charges which history brings againstLouis Philippe, and they formed three different columns, each of whichgives a different total,--one accusing royalty, the second the reign,and the third the king. Democratic right confiscated, progress made thesecond interest, the protests of the streets violently repressed, themilitary execution of insurrections, revolt made to run the gauntlet,the Rue Transnonain, the councils of war, the absorption of the realcountry in the legal country, and the government on joint account withthree hundred thousand privileged persons--are the deeds of royalty:Belgium refused, Algeria too harshly conquered with more of barbaritythan civilization, like India by the English, the breach of faith toAbd-el-Kader, Blaye, Deutz bought and Pritchard paid--are chargeable tothe reign; while the policy which cares more for the family than thenation belongs to the king. As we see, when the deductions have beenmade, the charge against the king is reduced; but his great fault wasthat he was modest in the name of France. Whence comes this fault?

  Louis Philippe was a king who was too much a father, and thisincubation of a family which is intended to produce a dynasty isfrightened at everything, and does not like to be disturbed. Hencearises excessive timidity, which is offensive to a nation which hasJuly 14th in its civil traditions and Austerlitz in its militaryannals. However, when we abstract public duties, which should everbe first fulfilled, the family deserved Louis Philippe's profoundtenderness for it. This domestic group was admirable, and combinedvirtue with talent. One of the daughters of Louis Philippe, Maried'Orléans, placed the name of her race among artists as Charlesd'Orléans had done among the poets, and she created from her soul astatue which she called Joan of Arc. Two
of Louis Philippe's sonsdrew from Metternich this demagogic praise: "They are young menwhose like can be found nowhere, and such princes as were never seenbefore." Here is the truth, without extenuating or setting downaught in malice, about Louis Philippe. It was his good fortune tobe in 1830 the Prince Égalité, to bear within him the contradictionbetween the Restoration and the Revolution, to possess that alarmingrevolutionary side which becomes reassuring in the governor: and therewas never a more complete adaptation of the man to the event, forone entered the other and the incarnation took place. Louis Philippeis 1830 made man, and he had also on his side that great designationto a throne, exile. He had been proscribed, wandering, and poor, andhad lived by his own labor. In Switzerland, this heir to the richestprincely domains of France was obliged to sell a horse, in order toeat; at Reichenau, he had given mathematical lessons while his sisterAdelaide was embroidering and sewing. These souvenirs blended with aking rendered the bourgeoisie enthusiastic. With his own hands he haddemolished the last iron cage at Mont St. Michel, erected by LouisXI. and employed by Louis XV. He was the companion of Dumouriez andthe friend of Lafayette; he had belonged to the Jacobin Club, andMirabeau had tapped him on the shoulder, and Danton said to him, "Youngman." At the age of twenty-four in '93, when M. de Chartres, he hadwitnessed from an obscure gallery in the Convention, the trial ofLouis XVI., so well named "that poor tyrant." The blind clairvoyanceof the revolution breaking royalty in the king, and the king withroyalty, while hardly observing the man in the fierce crushing of theidea; the vast storm of the Convention Tribune; Capet not knowingwhat to answer; the frightful and stupefied vacillation of this royalhead before the raging blast; the relative innocence of all mixed upin this catastrophe, of those who condemned as well as of him whowas condemned,--he, Louis Philippe, had looked at these things andcontemplated these vertigos; he had seen centuries appear at the barof the Convention; he had seen behind Louis XVI., that unfortunateand responsible victim, the real culprit, monarchy, emerging fromthe darkness, and he retained in his soul a respectful terror ofthis immense justice of the people which is almost as impersonal asthe justice of God. The traces which the revolution left upon himwere prodigious, and his memory was a living imprint of these greatyears, minute by minute. One day, in the presence of a witness whosestatements we cannot doubt, he corrected from memory the entire letterA in the list of the Constituent Assembly.

  Louis Philippe was an open-air king; during his reign the press wasfree, debates were free, conscience and speech were free. The Lawsof September had a clear track. Though he knew the corrosive powerof light upon privileges, he left his throne exposed to the light,and history will give him credit for this honorable behavior. LouisPhilippe, like all historic men who have quitted the stage, is at thepresent day being tried by the human conscience, but this trial has notyet gone through its first stage. The hour when history speaks with itsvenerable and free accent has not yet arrived for him; the moment hasnot yet come for the final judgment. Even the stern and illustrioushistorian, Louis Blanc, has recently toned down his first verdict.Louis Philippe was elected by the two hundred and twenty-one deputiesin 1830, that is to say, by a semi-Parliament and a semi-revolution;and, in any case, we cannot judge him here philosophically, withoutmaking some reservations in the name of the absolute democraticprinciple. In the eyes of the absolute, everything is usurpation whichis outside of these two rights,--first, the right of man and in thenext place the right of the people; but what we are able to say atpresent is, that in whatever way we may regard him, Louis Philippe,taken by himself, and looked at from the stand-point of human goodness,will remain, to employ the old language of old history, one of thebest princes that ever sat on a throne. What has he against him? Thisthrone; take the king away from Louis Philippe and the man remains.This man is good, at times so good as to be admirable. Often in themidst of the gravest cares, after a day's struggle, after the wholediplomacy of the Continent, he returned to his apartments at night;and then, though exhausted by fatigue and want of sleep, what did he?He would take up a list of sentences and spend the night in revisinga criminal trial, considering that it was something to hold his ownagainst Europe, but even greater to tear a culprit from the hands ofthe executioner. He obstinately resisted his keeper of the seals, anddisputed the scaffold inch by inch with his attorney-generals, those"chatterers of the law," as he called them. At times piles of sentencescovered his table, and he examined them all, and felt an agony atthe thought of abandoning these wretched condemned heads. One day hesaid to the witness whom we just now quoted, "I gained seven of themlast night." During the earlier years of his reign the penalty ofdeath was, as it were, abolished, and the re-erection of the scaffoldwas a violence done to the king. As the Grève disappeared with theelder branch, a bourgeois Grève was established under the name of theBarrière St. Jacques, for "practical men" felt the necessity of aquasi-legitimate guillotine. This was one of the victories of CasimirPerier, who represented the narrow side of the bourgeoisie, over LouisPhilippe, who represented the liberal side. The king annotated Beccariawith his own hand, and after the Fieschi machine he exclaimed, "Whata pity that I was not wounded, for then I could have shown mercy!"Another time, alluding to the resistance offered by his ministers, hewrote with reference to a political culprit, who is one of the mostillustrious men of the day, "His pardon is granted, and all that Ihave to do now is to obtain it." Louis Philippe was as gentle as LouisIX., and as good as Henri IV., and in our opinion, in history, wheregoodness is the rare pearl, to have been good is almost better than tohave been great.

  As Louis Philippe has been sternly judged by some, and perhaps harshlyby others, it is very simple that a man, himself a phantom at thepresent day, who knew that king, should offer his testimony for him inthe presence of history; this testimony, whatever its value may be, isevidently, and before all, disinterested. An epitaph written by a deadman is sincere; one shadow may console another shadow, for sharing thesame darkness gives the right to praise, and there is no fear that itwill ever be said of two tombs in exile,--this man flattered the other.