The Memoirs of Victor Hugo by Victor Hugo (best memoirs of all time txt) 📕

Monsieur Hugo! intelligent princes are very rare. Look at this Pacha of Egypt, who had a bright mind and who abdicates, like Charles V., who, although he was not without genius, committed the same foolish action. Look at this idiotic King of Morocco! What a job to govern amid this mob of bewildered Kings. They won’t force me into committing the great mistake of going to war. I am being pushed, but they won’t push me over. Listen to this and remember it: the secret of maintaining peace is to look at everything from the good side and at nothing from the bad point of view. Oh! Sir Robert Peel is a singular man to speak so wildly. He does not know all our strength. He does not reflect!

“The Prince of Prussia made a very true remark to my daughter at Brussels last winter: ‘What we envy France, is Algeria. Not on account of the territory, but on account of the war. It is a great and rare good fortune for France to have at her doors a war that does not trouble Europe and which is making an army for her. We as yet have only review and parade soldiers. When a collision occurs we shall only have soldiers who have been made by peace. France, thanks to Algiers, will have soldiers made by war.’ This is what the Prince of Prussia said, and it was true.

“Meanwhile, we are making children, too. Last month it was my daughter of Nemours, this month it is my daughter of Joinville. She has given me a princess. I would have preferred a prince. But, pish! in view of the fact that they are trying to isolate my house among the royal houses of Europe future alliances must be thought of. Well, my grandchildren will marry among themselves. This little one who was born yesterday will not lack cousins, nor, consequently, a husband.”

Here the King laughed, and I rose. He had spoken almost without interruption for an hour and a quarter. I had only said a few words here and there. During this sort of long monologue Madame Adelaide passed as she retired to her apartments. The King said to her: “I will join you directly,” and he continued his conversation with me. It was nearly half-past eleven when I quitted the King.

 

It was during this conversation that the King said to me:

“Have you ever been to England?”

“No, sire.”

“Well, when you do go—for you will go—you will see how strange it is. It resembles France in nothing. Over there are order, arrangement, symmetry, cleanliness, wellmown lawns, and profound silence in the streets. The passers-by are as serious and mute as spectres. When, being French and alive, you speak in the street, these spectres look back at you and murmur with an inexpressible mixture of gravity and disdain: ‘French people!’ When I was in London I was walking arm-in-arm with my wife and sister. We were conversing, not in a too loud tone of voice, for we are well-bred persons, you know; yet all the passers-by, bourgeois and men of the people, turned to gaze at us and we could hear them growling behind us: ‘French people! French people!’”

 

September 5, 1844.

The King rose, paced to and fro for a few moments, as though violently agitated, then came and sat beside me and said:

 

“Look here, you made a remark to Villemain that he repeated to me. You said to him:

“‘The trouble between France and England a propos of Tahiti and Pritchard reminds me of a quarrel in a caf� between a couple of sub-lieutenants, one of whom has looked at the other in a way the latter does not like. A duel to the death is the result. But two great nations ought not to act like a couple of musketeers. Besides, in a duel to the death between two nations like England and France, it is civilization that would be slain.’

“This is really what you said, is it not?”

“Yes, Sire.”

“I was greatly struck by your observation, and this very evening I reproduced it in a letter to a crowned head, for I frequently write all night long. I pass many a night doing over again what others have undone. I do not say anything about it. So far from being grateful to me they would only abuse me for it. Oh! yes, mine is hard work indeed. At my age, with my seventy-one years, I do not get an instant of real repose either by day or by night. I am always unquiet, and how can it be otherwise when I feel that I am the pivot upon which Europe revolves?”

 

September 6, 1844.

The King said to me yesterday:

“What makes the maintenance of peace so difficult is that there are two things in Europe that Europe detests, France and myself—myself even more than France. I am talking to you in all frankness. They hate me because I am Orleans; they hate me because I am myself. As for France, they dislike her, but would tolerate her in other hands. Napoleon was a burden to them; they overthrew him by egging him on to war of which he was so fond. I am a burden to them; they would like to throw me down by forcing me to break that peace which I love.”

Then he covered his eyes with his hands, and leaning his head back upon the cushions of the sofa, remained thus for a space pensive, and as though crushed.

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September 6, 1844.

“I only met Robespierre in society once,” said the King to me. “It was at a place called Mignot, near Poissy, which still exists. It belonged to a wealthy cloth manufacturer of Louviers, named M. Decr�teau. It was in ninety-one or two. M. Decr�teau one day invited me to dinner at Mignot. I went. When the time came we took our places at table. The other guests were Robespierre and P�tion, but I had never before seen Robespierre. Mirabeau aptly traced his portrait in a word when he said that his face was suggestive of that of ‘a cat drinking vinegar.’ He was very gloomy, and hardly spoke. When he did let drop a word from time to time, it was uttered sourly and with reluctance. He seemed to be vexed at having come, and because I was there.

“In the middle of the dinner, P�tion, addressing M. Decr�teau, exclaimed: ‘My dear host, you must get this buck married!’ He pointed to Robespierre.

“‘What do you mean, P�tion?’ retorted Robespierre.

“‘Mean,’ said P�tion, ‘why, that you must get married. I insist upon marrying you. You are full of sourness, hypochondria, gall, bad humour, biliousness and atrabiliousness I am fearful of all this on our account. What you want is a woman to sweeten this sourness and transform you into an easy-going old fogey.’

“Robespierre tossed his head and tried to smile, but only succeeded in making a grimace. It was the only time,” repeated the King, “that I met Robespierre in society. After that I saw him in the tribune of the Convention. He was wearisome to a supreme degree, spoke slowly, heavily and at length, and was more sour, more gloomy, more bitter than ever. It was easy to see that P�tion had not married him.”

 

September 7, 1844.

Said the King to me last Thursday:

“M. Guizot has great qualities and immense defects. (Queerly enough, M. Guizot on Tuesday had made precisely the same remark to me about the King, beginning with the defects.) M. Guizot has in the highest degree, and I esteem him for it profoundly, the courage of his unpopularity among his adversaries; among his friends he lacks it. He does not know how to quarrel momentarily with his partisans, which was Pitt’s great art. In the affair of Tahiti, as in that of the right of search, M. Guizot is not afraid of the Opposition, nor of the press, nor of the Radicals, nor of the Carlists, nor of the Legitimists, nor of the hundred thousand howlers in the hundred thousand public squares of France; he is afraid of Jacques Lefebvre. What will Jacques Lefebvre say? And Jacques Lefebvre is afraid of the Twelfth Arrondissement.* What will the Twelfth Arrondissement say? The Twelfth Arrondissement does not like the English: we must stand firm against the English; but it does not like war: we must give way to the English. Stand firm and give way. Reconcile that. The Twelfth Arrondissement governs Jacques Lefebvre, Jacques ]Lefebvre governs Guizot; a little more and the Twelfth Arrondissement will govern France. I say to Guizot: ‘What are you afraid of? Have a little pluck. Have an opinion.’ But there they all stand, pale and motionless and make no reply. Oh! fear! Monsieur Hugo, it is a strange thing, this fear of the hubbub that will be raised outside! It seizes upon this one, then that one, then that one, and it goes the round of the table. I am not a Minister, but if I were, it seems to me that I should not be afraid. I should see the right and go straight towards it. And what greater aim could there be than civilization through peace?”

* Twelfth District of Paris.

 

The Duke d’Orleans, a few years ago, recounted to me that during the period which followed immediately upon the revolution of July, the King gave him a seat at his council table. The young Prince took part in the deliberations of the Ministers. One day M. Merilhou, who was Minister of Justice, fell asleep while the King was speaking.

“Chartres,” said the King to his son, “wake up Monsieur the Keeper of the Seals.”

The Duke d’Orleans obeyed. He was seated next to M. Merilhou, and nudged him gently with his elbow. The Minister was sleeping soundly; the Prince recommenced, but the Minister slept on. Finally the Prince laid his hand upon M. Merilhou’s knee. The Minister awoke with a start and exclaimed:

“Leave off, Sophie, you are tickling me!”

This is how the word “subject” came to be eliminated from the preamble of laws and ordinances.

M. Dupont de l’Eure, in 1830, was Minister of Justice. On August 7, the very day the Duke d’Orleans took the oath as King, M. Dupont de l’Eure laid before him a law to sign. The preamble read: “Be it known and decreed to all our subjects,” etc. The clerk who was instructed to copy the law, a hot-headed young fellow, objected to the word “subjects,” and did not copy it.

The Minister of Justice arrived. The young man was employed in his office.

“Well,” said the Minister, “is the copy ready to be taken to the King for signature?”

“No, Monsieur the Minister,” replied the clerk.

Explanations. M. Dupont de l’Eure listened, then pinching the young man’s ear said, half smilingly, half angrily:

“Nonsense, Monsieur the Republican, you just copy it at once.”

The clerk hung his head, like a clerk that he was, and copied it.

M. Dupont, however, laughingly told the King about it. The King did not laugh. Everything appeared to be a serious matter at that time. M. Dupin senior, Minister without a portfolio, had entered the council chamber. He avoided the use of the word and got round the obstacle. He proposed this wording, which was agreed to and has always been used since: “Be it known and decreed to all.”

 

1847.

 

The State carriage of Louis Philippe was a big blue coach drawn by eight horses. The interior was of gold coloured damask. On the doors was the King’s monogram surmounted by a crown, and on the panels were royal crowns. The roof was bordered by eight little silver crowns. There was a gigantic coachman on the box and three lackeys behind. All wore silk stockings