the secret of the tyranny she exercised. She was not handsome--scarcely
comely; she was not even as smart in her appearance as dozens of
servants I have seen, and her mental attainments, as far as I could
judge, were not above those of her own class. One can understand a
Turner, a Jean Jacques Rousseau, submitting to the influence of such a
low-born companion, because, after all, they, though men of genius,
sprang from the people, and may have felt awkward, ill at ease, in the
society of well-bred men and women, especially of women. Béranger
sometimes gave me that idea. But, as I have already said, no one could
mistake M. de Saint-Georges for anything but a well-bred man.
Notwithstanding his little affectations, his inordinate love of scents,
his somewhat effeminate surroundings, good breeding was patent at every
sentence, at every movement. He was not a genius, certainly not, but the
above remarks hold good of a man who _was_ a genius, and who sprang,
moreover, from the higher bourgeoisie of the eighteenth century--I am
alluding to Eugène Delacroix.

CHAPTER V.

     The Boulevards in the forties -- The Chinese Baths -- A favourite
     tobacconist of Alfred de Musset -- The price of cigars -- The
     diligence still the usual mode of travelling -- Provincials in
     Paris -- Parliamentary see-saw between M. Thiers and M. Guizot --
     Amenities of editors -- An advocate of universal suffrage --
     Distribution of gratuitous sausages to the working man on the
     king's birthday -- The rendezvous of actors in search of an
     engagement -- Frédérick Lemaître on the eve of appearing in a new
     part -- The Legitimists begin to leave their seclusion and to
     mingle with the bourgeoisie -- Alexandre Dumas and Scribe -- The
     latter's fertility as a playwright -- The National Guards go
     shooting, in uniform and in companies, on the Plaine Saint-Denis
     -- Vidocq's private inquiry office in the Rue Vivienne -- No
     river-side resorts -- The plaster elephant on the Place de la
     Bastille -- The sentimental romances of Loïsa Puget -- The songs
     of the working classes -- Cheap bread and wine -- How they
     enjoyed themselves on Sundays and holidays -- Théophile Gautier's
     pony-carriage -- The hatred of the bourgeoisie -- Nestor
     Roqueplan's expression of it -- Gavarni's -- M. Thiers' sister
     keeps a restaurant at the corner of the Rue Drouot -- When he is
     in power, the members of the Opposition go and dine there, and
     publish facetious accounts of the entertainment -- All
     appearances to the contrary, people like Guizot better than
     Thiers -- But few entries for the race for wealth in those days
     -- The Rothschilds still live in the Rue Lafitte -- Favourite
     lounges -- The Boulevards, the Rue Le Peletier, and the Passage
     de l'Opéra -- The Opéra -- The Rue Le Peletier and its
     attractions -- The Restaurant of Paolo Broggi -- The Estaminet du
     Divan -- Literary waiters and Boniface -- Major Fraser -- The
     mystery surrounding his origin -- Another mysterious personage --
     The Passage de l'Opéra is invaded by the stockjobbers, and loses
     its prestige as a promenade -- Bernard Latte's, the publisher of
     Donizetti's operas, becomes deserted -- Tortoni's -- Louis-Blanc
     -- His scruples as an editor -- A few words about duelling -- Two
     tragic meetings -- Lola Montès -- Her adventurous career -- A
     celebrated trial -- My first meeting with Gustave Flaubert, the
     author of "Madame Bovary" and "Salambô" -- Émile de Girardin --
     His opinion of duelling -- My decision with regard to it -- The
     original of "La Dame aux Camélias" -- Her parentage -- Alexandre
     Dumas gives the diagnosis of her character in connection with his
     son's play -- L'Homme au Caméllia -- M. Lautour-Mézerai, the
     inventor of children's periodical literature in France -- Auguste
     Lireux -- He takes the management of the Odéon -- Balzac again --
     His schemes, his greed -- Lireux more fortunate with other
     authors -- Anglophobia on the French stage -- Gallophobia on the
     English stage.

Even in those days "the Boulevards" meant to most of us nothing more
than the space between the present opera and the Rue Drouot. But the
Crédit Lyonnais and other palatial buildings which have been erected
since were not as much as dreamt of; if I remember rightly, the site of
that bank was occupied by two or three "Chinese Baths." I suppose the
process of steaming and cleansing the human body was something analogous
to that practised in our Turkish baths, but I am unable to say from
experience, having never been inside, and, curious to relate, most of my
familiars were in a similar state of ignorance. We rarely crossed to
that side of the boulevard except to go and dine at the Café Anglais. At
the corner of the Rue Lafitte, opposite the Maison d'Or, was our
favourite tobacconist's, and the cigars we used to get there were vastly
superior to those we get at present in Paris at five times the cost. The
assistant who served us was a splendid creature. Alfred de Musset became
so enamoured of her that at one time his familiars apprehended an
"imprudence on his part." Of course, they were afraid he would marry
her.

In those days most of our journeys in the interior of France had still
to be made by the mails of Lafitte-Caillard, and the people these
conveyances brought up from the provinces were almost as great objects
of curiosity to us as we must have been to them. It was the third lustre
of Louis-Philippe's reign. "God," according to the coinage, "protected
France," and when the Almighty seemed somewhat tired of the task, Thiers
and Guizot alternately stepped in to do the safeguarding. Parliament
resounded with the eloquence of orators who are almost forgotten by now,
except by students of history; M. de Genoude was clamouring for
universal suffrage; M. de Cormenin, under the _nom de plume_ of "Timon,"
was the fashionable pamphleteer; the papers indulged in vituperation
against one another, compared to which the amenities of the rival
Eatanswill editors were compliments. Grocers and drapers objected to the
participation of M. de Lamartine in the affairs of State. The _Figaro_
of those days went by the title of _Corsaire-Satan_, and, though
extensively read, had the greatest difficulty in making both ends meet.
In order to improve the lot of the working man, there was a gratuitous
distribution of sausages once a year on the king's fête-day. The
ordinary rendezvous of provincial and metropolitan actors out of an
engagement was not at the Café de Suède on the Boulevard Montmartre, but
under the trees at the Palais-Royal. Frédérick Lemaître went to
confession and to mass every time he "created" a new rôle. The
Legitimists consented to leave their aristocratic seclusion, and to
breathe the same air with the bourgeoisie and proletarians of the
Boulevard du Crime, to see him play. The Government altered the title of
Sue and Goubeaux's drama "Les Pontons Anglais" into "Les Pontons,"
short, and made the authors change the scene from England to Spain.
Alexandre Dumas chaffed Scribe, and flung his money right and left;
while the other saved it, bought country estates, and produced as many
as twenty plays a year (eight more than he had contracted for). The
National Guards went in uniform and in companies to shoot hares and
rabbits on the Plaine Saint-Denis, and swaggered about on the
Boulevards, ogling the women. Vidocq kept a private inquiry office in
the Passage Vivienne, and made more money by blackmailing or catching
unfaithful husbands than by catching thieves. Bougival, Asnières and
Joinville-le-Pont had not become riparian resorts. The plaster elephant
on the Place de la Bastille was crumbling to pieces. The sentimental
romances of Madame Loïsa Puget proved the delight of every bourgeoise
family, while the chorus to every popular song was "Larifla, larifla,
fla, fla, fla."

Best of all, from the working man's point of view, was the low price of
bread and wine; the latter could be had at four sous the litre in the
wine-shops. He, the working man, still made excursions with his wife and
children to the Artesian well at Grenelle; and if stranded perchance in
the Champs-Élysées, stood lost in admiration at the tiny carriage with
ponies to match, driven by Théophile Gautier, who had left off wearing
the crimson waistcoats wherewith in former days he hoped to annoy the
bourgeois, though he ceased not to rail at him by word of mouth and with
his pen. He was not singular in that respect. Among his set, the hatred
of the bourgeois was ingrained; it found constant vent in small things.
Nestor Roqueplan wore jackboots at home instead of slippers, because the
latter chaussure was preferred by the shopkeeper. Gavarni published the
most biting pictorial satires against him. Here is one. A
dissipated-looking loafer is leaning against a lamp-post, contemptuously
staring at the spruce, trim bourgeois out for his Sunday walk with his
wife. The loafer is smoking a short clay pipe, and some of the fumes of
the tobacco come between the wind and the bourgeois' respectability.
"Voyou!" says the latter contemptuously. "Voyou tant que vous voulez,
pas épicier," is the answer.

In those days, when M. Thiers happened to be in power, many members of
the Opposition and their journalistic champions made it a point of
organizing little gatherings to the table-d'hôte kept by Mdlle. Thiers,
the sister of the Prime Minister of France. Her establishment was at the
entrance of the present Rue Drouot, and a signboard informed the
passer-by to that effect. There was invariably an account of these
little gatherings in next day's papers--of course, with comments. Thiers
was known to be the most wretched shot that ever worried a gamekeeper,
and yet he was very fond of blazing away. "We asked Mdlle. Thiers,"
wrote the commentators, "whether those delicious pheasants she gave us
were of her illustrious brother's bagging. The lady shook her head.
'Non, monsieur; le Président du Conseil n'a pas l'honneur de fournir mon
établissement; à quoi bon, je peux les acheter à meilleur marché que lui
et au même endroit. S'il m'en envoyait, il me ferait payer un bénéfice,
parcequ'il ne fait jamais rien pour rien. C'est un peu le défaut de
notre famille.'" I have got a notion that, mercurial as was M. Thiers up
to the last hour of his life, and even more so at that period, and
sedate as was M. Guizot, the French liked the latter better than the
former.

M. Guizot had said, "Enrichissez vous," and was known to be poor; M.
Thiers had scoffed at the advice, and was known to be hoarding while
compelling his sister to earn her own living. It must be remembered that
at the time the gangrene of greed had not entered the souls of all
classes of Frenchmen so deeply as it has now, that the race for wealth
had as yet comparatively few votaries, and that not every stockjobber
and speculator aspired to emulate the vast financial transactions of the
Rothschilds. The latter lived, in those days, in the Rue Lafitte, where
they had three separate mansions, all of which since then have been
thrown into one, and are at present exclusively devoted to business
purposes. The Rue Lafitte was, however, a comparatively quiet street.
The favourite lounges, in addition to the strip of Boulevards I have
already mentioned, were the Rue Le Peletier and the galleries of the
Passage de l'Opéra. Both owed the preference over the other
thoroughfares to the immediate vicinity of the Opéra, which had its
frontage in the last-named street, but was by no means striking or
monumental. Its architect, Debret, had to run the gauntlet of every kind
of satire for many a year after its erection; the bitterest and most
scathing of all was that, perhaps, of a journalist, who wrote one day
that, a provincial having asked him the way to the grand opéra, he had
been obliged to answer, "Turn down the street, and it is the first large
gateway on your right."

But if the building itself was unimposing, the company gathered around
its entrance consisted generally of half a dozen men whose names were
then already household words in the musical world--Auber, Halévy,
Rossini and Meyerbeer, St. Georges, Adam. Now and then, though rarely
together, all of these names will frequently reappear in these notes.
The chief attractions, though, of the Rue Le Peletier were the famous
Italian restaurant of Paolo Broggi, patronized by a great many singers,
the favourite haunt of Mario, in the beginning of his career, and
l'Estaminet du Divan, which from being a very simple café indeed,
developed into a kind of politico-literary club under the auspices of a
number of budding men of letters, journalists, and the like, whose
modest purses were not equal to the charges of the Café Riche and
Tortoni, and who had gradually driven all more prosaic customers away. I
believe I was one of the few habitués who had no literary aspirations,
who did not cast longing looks to the inner portals of the offices of
the _National_, the bigwigs of which--Armand Marrast, Baron Dornés,
Gérard de Nerval, and others--sometimes made their appearance there,
though their restaurant in ordinary was the Café Hardi. The Estaminet du
Divan, however, pretended to a much more literary atmosphere than the
magnificent establishment on the boulevard itself. It is a positive fact
that the waiters in the former would ask, in the most respectful way
imaginable, "Does monsieur want Sue's or Dumas' feuilleton with his
café?" Not once but a dozen times I have heard the proprietor draw
attention to a remarkable article. Major Fraser, though he never dined
there, spent an hour or two daily in the Estaminet du Divan to read the
papers. He was a great favourite with every one, though none of us knew
anything about his antecedents. In spite of his English name, he was
decidedly not English, though he spoke the language. He was one of the
best-dressed men of the period, and by a well-dressed man I do not mean
one like Sue. He generally wore a tight-fitting, short-skirted, blue
frock coat, grey trousers, of a shape which since then we have defined
as "pegtops," but the fashion of which was borrowed from the Cossacks.
They are still worn by some French officers in cavalry regiments,
notably crack cavalry regiments.

Major Fraser might have fitly borrowed Piron's epitaph for himself: "Je
ne suis rien, pas même Académicien." He was a bachelor. He never alluded
to his parentage. He lived by himself, in an entresol at the corner of
the Rue Lafitte and the Boulevard des Italiens. He was always flush of
money, though the sources of his income were a mystery to every one. He
certainly did not live by gambling, as has been suggested since; for
those who knew him best did not remember having seen him touch a card.

I have always had an idea, though I can give no reason for it, that
Major Fraser was the illegitimate son of some exalted personage, and
that the solution of the mystery surrounding him might be found in the
records of the scandals and intrigues at the courts of Charles IV. and
Ferdinand VII. of Spain. The foreign "soldiers of fortune" who rose to
high posts, though not to the highest like Richards and O'Reilly, were
not all of Irish origin. But the man himself was so pleasant in his
intercourse, so uniformly gentle and ready to oblige, that no one cared
to lift a veil which he was so evidently anxious not to have disturbed.
I only remember his getting out of temper once, namely, when Léon
Gozlan, in a comedy of his, introduced a major who had three crosses.
The first had been given to him because he had not one, the second
because he had already one, and the third because all good things
consist of three. Then Major Fraser sent his seconds to the playwright;
the former effected a reconciliation, the more that Gozlan pledged his
word that an allusion to the major was farthest from his thoughts. It
afterwards leaked out that our irrepressible Alexandre Dumas had been
the involuntary cause of all the mischief. One day, while he was talking
to Gozlan, one of his secretaries came in and told him that a particular
bugbear of his, and a great nonentity to boot, had got the Cross of the
Legion of Honour.

"Grand Dieu," exclaimed Gozlan, "pourquoi lui a-t-on donné cette croix?"

"Vous ne savez pas?" said Alexandre, looking very wise, as if he had
some important state secret to reveal.

"Assurément, je ne le sais pas," quoth Gozlan, "ni vous non plus."

"Ah, par exemple, moi, je le sais."

"Hé bien, dites alors."

"On lui a donné la croix parceque il n'en avait pas."

It was the most childish of all tricks, but Gozlan laughed at it, and,
when he wrote his piece, remembered it. He amplified the very small
joke, and, on the first night of his play, the house went into
convulsions over it.

Major Fraser's kindness and gentleness extended to all men--except to
professional politicians, and those, from the highest to the lowest, he
detested and despised. He rarely spoke on the subject of politics, but
when he did every one sat listening with the raptest attention; for he
was a perfect mine of facts, which he marshalled with consummate ability
in order to show that government by party was of all idiotic
institutions the most idiotic. But his knowledge of political history
was as nothing to his familiarity with the social institutions of every
civilized country and of every period. Curiously enough, the whole of
his library in his own apartment did not exceed two or three scores of
volumes. His memory was something prodigious, and even men like Dumas
and Balzac confessed themselves his inferiors in that respect. The mere
mention of the most trifling subject sufficed to set it in motion, and
the listeners were treated to a "magazine article worth fifty centimes
la ligne au moins," as Dumas put it. But the major could never be
induced to write one. Strange to say, he often used to hint that his was
no mere book-knowledge. "Of course, it is perfectly ridiculous," he
remarked with a strange smile, "but every now and again I feel as if all
this did not come to me through reading, but from personal experience.
At times I become almost convinced that I lived with Nero, that I knew
Dante personally, and so forth."

When Major Fraser died, not a single letter was found in his apartment
giving a clue to his antecedents. Merely a file of receipts, and a scrap
of paper attached to one--the receipt of the funeral company for his
grave, and expenses of his burial. The memorandum gave instructions to
advertise his demise for a week in the _Journal des Débâts_, the money
for which would be found in the drawer of his dressing-table. His
clothes and furniture were to be sold, and the proceeds to be given to
the Paris poor. "I do not charge any one with this particular duty," the
document went on; "I have so many friends, every one of whom will be
ready to carry out my last wishes."

Another "mystery," though far less interesting than Major Fraser, was
the Persian gentleman whom one met everywhere, at the Opéra, at the
Bois de Boulogne, at the concerts of the Conservatoire, etc. Though
invariably polite and smiling, he never spoke to any one. For ten years,
the occupant of the stall next to his at the Opéra had never heard him
utter a syllable. He always wore a long white silk petticoat, a
splendidly embroidered coat over that, and a conical Astrakan cap. He
was always alone; and though every one knew where he lived, in the
Passage de l'Opéra, no one had ever set foot in his apartment. As a
matter of course, all sorts of legends were current about him. According
to some, he had occupied a high position in his own country, from which
he had voluntarily exiled himself, owing to his detestation of Eastern
habits; according to others, he was simply a dealer in Indian shawls,
who had made a fortune. A third group, the spiteful ones, maintained
that he sold dates and pastilles, and that the reason why he did not
speak was because he was dumb, though not deaf. He died during the
Second Empire, very much respected in the neighbourhood, for he had been
very charitable.

Towards the middle of the forties the Passage de l'Opéra began to lose
some of its prestige as a lounge. The outside stockjobbers, whom the
police had driven from the Boulevards and the steps of Tortoni, migrated
thither, and the galleries that had resounded with the sweet
warblings--in a very low key--of the clients of Bernard Latte, the
publisher of Donizetti's operas, were made hideous and unbearable with
the jostling and bellowing of the money-spinners. Bernard Latte himself
was at last compelled to migrate.

In the house the ground-floor of which was occupied by Tortoni, and
which was far different in aspect from what it is now, lived Louis
Blanc. Toward nine in the morning he came down for his cup of café au
lait. It was the first cup of coffee of the day served in the
establishment. I was never on terms of intimacy with Blanc, and least of
all then, for I shared with Major Fraser a dislike to politic-mongers,
and, rightly or wrongly, I have always considered the author of
"L'Histoire de Dix Ans" as such. Though Louis Blanc was three or four
and thirty then, he looked like a boy of seventeen--a fact not
altogether owing to his diminutive stature, though he was one of the
smallest men, if not the smallest man, I ever saw. Of course I mean a
man not absolutely a dwarf. I have been assured, however, that he was a
giant compared to Don Martinoz Garay, Duke of Altamira, and Marquis of
Astorga, a Spanish statesman, who died about the early part of the
twenties. These notes do not extend beyond the fall of the Commune, and
it was only after that event that I met M. Blanc once or twice in his
old haunts. Hence my few recollections of him had better be jotted down
here. They are not important. The man, though but sixty, and apparently
not in bad health, looked _désillusionné_. They were, no doubt, the most
trying years to the Third Republic, but M. Blanc must have perceived
well enough that, granting all the existing difficulties, the men at the
head of affairs were not the Republicans of his dreams. He had,
moreover, suffered severe losses; all his important documents, such as
the correspondence between him and George Sand and Louis-Napoléon while
the latter was at Ham, and other equally valuable matter, had been
destroyed at the fire of the Northern Goods Station at La Villette, a
fire kindled by the Communists. He was dressed almost in the fashion of
the forties, a wide-skirted, long, brown frock coat, a shirt innocent of
starch, and a broad-brimmed hat. A few years later, he founded a paper,
_L'Homme-Libre_, the offices of which were in the Rue Grange-Batelière.
The concern was financed by a Polish gentleman. Blanc gave his readers
to understand that he would speak out plainly about persons and things,
whether past or present; that he would advance nothing except on
documentary proofs; but that, whether he did or not, he would not be
badgered into giving or accepting challenges in defence of his writings.
"I am, first of all, too old," he said; "but if I were young again, I
should not repeat my folly of '47, when I wanted to fight with Eugène
Pelletan on account of a woman whose virtue, provided she had any, could
make no difference to either of us. It does not matter to me that we
were not the only preux chevaliers of that period, ready to do battle
for or against the charms of a woman whose remains had crumbled to dust
by then."[14]

         [Footnote 14: M. Eugène Pelletan, the father of M. Camille
         Pelletan, the editor of _La Justice_, and first lieutenant to
         M. Clemenceau, having severely criticized some passages in M.
         Blanc's "Histoire de la Révolution," relating to
         Marie-Antoinette, the author quoted a passage of Madame
         Campan's "Mémoires" in support of his writings. The critic
         refused to admit the conclusiveness of the proof, whereupon M.
         Blanc appealed to the Société des Gens de Lettres, which, on
         the summing up of M. Taxile Delord, gave a verdict in his
         favour. M. Pelletan declined to submit to the verdict, as he
         had refused to admit the jurisdiction, of the tribunal. M.
         Blanc, who had at first scouted all idea of a duel, considered
         himself obliged to resort to this means of obtaining
         satisfaction, seeing that M. Pelletan stoutly maintained his
         opinion. A meeting had been arranged when the Revolution of '48
         broke out. The opponents having both gone to the
         Hôtel-de-Ville, met by accident at the entrance, and fell into
         one another's arms. "Thank Heaven!" exclaimed Thiers, when he
         heard of it. "If Pelletan had killed Blanc, I should have been
         the smallest man in France."

         M. Blanc's allusion to other "preux chevaliers" aimed
         particularly at M. Cousin, who, having become a minister
         against his will, resumed with a sigh of relief his studies
         under the Second Empire. He was especially fond of the
         seventeenth century, and all at once he, who had scarcely ever
         noticed a pretty woman, became violently smitten with the
         Duchesse de Longueville, who had been in her grave for nearly
         two centuries. He positively invested her with every
         perfection, moral and mental; unfortunately, he could not
         invest her with a shapely bust, the evidence being too
         overwhelmingly against her having been adorned that way. One
         day some one showed him a portrait of the sister of the "grand
         Condé," in which she was amply provided with the charms the
         absence of which M. Cousin regretted. He wrote a special
         chapter on the subject, and was well-nigh challenging all his
         contradictors.--EDITOR.]

M. Blanc's boast that he would advance nothing except on proof positive
was not an idle one, as his contributors found out to their cost. Every
afternoon, at three, he arrived at the office to read the paper in proof
from the first line to the last. Not the slightest inaccuracy was
allowed to pass. Kind as he was, his reporters' lives became a burden.
One of the latter told me a story which, though it illustrates the
ridiculousness of M. Blanc's scruples when carried too far, is none the
less valuable. A dog had been run over on the Boulevards, and the
reporter, with a hankering after the realistic method, had endeavored to
reproduce onomatopoeically the sounds uttered by the animal in pain.

"Are you quite sure, monsieur, about your sounds?" asked Blanc.

"Of course, I am as sure as a non-scientific man can be," was the
answer.

"Then strike them out; one ought to be scientifically sure. By-the-by, I
see you have made use of the word 'howl' (_hurler_). Unless I am
mistaken, a dog when in pain yelps (_glapit_). Please alter it."

On another occasion, on going through the advertisements, he found a new
one relating to a cough mixture, setting forth its virtues in the most
glowing terms. Immediately the advertisement canvasser was sent for, M.
Blanc having refused to farm out that department to an agency, as is
frequently done in Paris, in order to retain the absolute control over
it.

"Monsieur, I see that you have a new advertisement, and it seems to me a
profitable one; still, before inserting it, I should like to be certain
that the medicine does all it professes to do. Can you personally vouch
for its efficiency?"

"Mon Dieu, monsieur, I believe it does all it professes to do, but you
can scarcely expect me to run the risk of bronchitis in order to test it
upon myself!"

"Heaven forbid that I should be so exacting and indifferent to other
people's health, but until you can bring me some one who has been cured,
we will not insert it."

Let me come back for a moment to that sentence of Louis Blanc, about the
practice of duelling, in connection with one of the most tragic affairs
of that kind within my recollection. I am alluding to the
Dujarrier-Beauvallon duel. I have been in the habit for years, whenever
an important meeting took place in France, to read every shade of
English opinion on the subject; and while recognizing the elevated
sentiments of the writers, I have no hesitation in saying that not a
single one knew what he was writing about. They could not grasp the fact
that for a man of social standing to refuse a challenge or to refrain
from sending one, save under very exceptional circumstances, was
tantamount to courting social death. They knew not that every door would
henceforth be closed against him; that his wife's best friends would
cease to call upon her, by direction of their husbands; that his
children at school would be shunned by their comrades; that no young man
of equal position to his, were he ever so much in love with his
daughter, would ask her to become his wife, that no parents would allow
their daughter to marry his son. That is what backing out of a duel
meant years ago; that is what it still means to-day--of course, I
repeat, with certain classes. Is it surprising, then, that with such a
prospect facing him, a man should risk death rather than become a
pariah? Would the English leader-writer, if he be a man of worth, like
to enter his club-room without a hand held out to welcome him from those
with whom he was but a few weeks ago on the most friendly footing,
without a voice to give him the time of day? I think not; and that is
what would happen if he were a Frenchman who neglected to ask
satisfaction for even an imaginary insult.

I knew M. Dujarrier, the general manager of _La Presse_, and feel
convinced that he was not a bit more quarrelsome or eager "to go out"
than Louis Blanc. It is, moreover, certain that he felt his inferiority,
both as a swordsman and as a marksman, to such a practised shot and
fencer as M. de Beauvallon; and well he might, seeing that subsequent
evidence proved that he, Dujarrier, had never handled either weapon. Yet
he not only strenuously opposed all attempts on the part of his friends
to effect a reconciliation, but would not afford a hint to his adversary
of his want of skill, lest the latter should make him a present of his
life. The present would not have been worth accepting. It would have
been a Nessus-shirt, and caused the moral death of the recipient.
Consequently, Dujarrier literally went like a lamb to the slaughter
rather than be branded as a coward, and he made no secret of his
contemplated sacrifice. "I have no alternative but to fight," he said,
two days before the meeting, to Alexandre Dumas, who taxed all his own
ingenuity, and that of his son, to prevent, at any rate, a fatal issue.
The only way to effect this, according to the very logical reasoning of
the two Dumases, was to induce Dujarrier, who, as the offended party,
had the choice of weapons, to choose the sword. They counted upon the
generosity of Beauvallon, who, as a gentleman, on discovering his
adversary's utter lack of skill, would disarm, or inflict a slight wound
on him. Unfortunately, young Dumas, with the best intentions,
unburthened himself to that effect among those most interested in the
affair, namely, the staffs of _La Presse_ and _Le Globe_. These two
journals were literally at daggers drawn, and some writers connected
with the latter went hinting, if not saying openly, that Dujarrier was
already showing the white feather. Whether Dujarrier heard of the
comments in that shape, or whether he instinctively guessed what they
would be, has never been clearly made out, but it is certain that from
that moment he insisted upon the use of pistols. "I do not intend my
adversary to show me the slightest favour, either by disarming me or by
wounding me in the arm or leg. I mean to have a serious encounter," he
said. Young Dumas, frightened perhaps at his want of reticence in the
matter, begged his father to go and see Grisier,[15] and claim his
intervention. Alexandre Dumas, than whom no stauncher friend ever
existed who would have willingly risked his own life to save that of
Dujarrier, had to decline the mission suggested by his son. "I cannot do
it," he said; "the first and foremost thing is to safeguard Dujarrier's
reputation, which is the more precious because it is his first duel."

         [Footnote 15: The great fencing-master, whom Dumas immortalized
         in his "Maître d'Armes."--EDITOR.]

"His first duel,"--here is the key-note to the whole of the proceedings
as far as Dujarrier and his personal friends were concerned. Had
Dujarrier been in the position of the editor of his paper, Émile de
Girardin,--had he been out before and killed or severely wounded his
man, as the latter killed Armand Carrel nine years before,--he might
have openly announced his determination "never to go out again" under no
matter what provocation. Unfortunately, Dujarrier was not in that
position; in fact, it is no exaggeration to say that Dujarrier paid the
penalty of M. de Girardin's decision. A great deal of mawkish sentiment
has been wasted upon the tragic fate of Armand Carrel; in reality, he
had what he deserved, albeit that no one more than M. de Girardin
himself regretted his untimely end. Most writers will tell one that
Carrel fell a victim to his political opinions; nothing is farther from
the truth. Armand Carrel fell a victim to a "question of shop" of which
he allowed himself, though perhaps not deliberately, to become the
champion. After many attempts, more or less successful, in the way of
popular journalism, M. de Girardin, in 1836, started _La Presse_, a
serious journal of the same size as the then existing ones, but at half
the subscription of the latter, all of which absolutely banded at once
against him. Armand Carrel, who was a soldier, and a valiant soldier, a
writer of talent, and a gentleman to boot, ought to have stood aloof
from that kind of polemics. Émile de Girardin was not the likely man to
submit to open or implied insult. His best, albeit his least-known book,
"Émile," which is as it were an autobiography, had given the measure of
his thoughts on the subject of duelling. "Émile" goes into society as a
soldier would go into an enemy's country. Not that he is by nature cruel
or bloodthirsty, but he knows that, to hold his own, he must be always
ready, not only for defence, but for attack.

"The secret one is bound to preserve with regard to the preparations for
a meeting, and those preparations themselves are simply horrible. The
care, the precautions to be taken, the secret which is not to leak out,
all these are very like the preparations for a crime," he says.
"Nevertheless," he goes on, "the horror of all this disappears, when the
man, impelled by hatred or resentment, is thirsting for revenge; but
when the heart is absolutely without gall, and when the imagination is
still subject to all the softer emotions, then, in order not to recoil
with fear at the ever horrible idea of a duel, a man must be imbued with
all the force of a prejudice which resists the very laws that condemn
it."

It was under the latter circumstances that M. de Girardin confronted his
adversary. The two men had probably never exchanged a word with one
another, they felt no personal animosity; nay, more, the duel was not an
_inevitable_ one; and yet it cost one man his life, and burthened the
other with lifelong regrets.

Had the issue been different, _La Presse_ would probably have
disappeared, and all recrimination ceased. As it was, unable to goad M.
de Girardin into a reversal of his decision "never to go out again," and
that in spite of nine years of direct insult from a so-called political
party, of every kind of quasi-legal vexation, M. de Beauvallon
constituted himself a second Armand Carrel, selecting Dujarrier as his
victim, the chief not being available. But here all resemblance to
Armand Carrel ceased, and the law itself was anxious to mark the
difference. In the one case it had been set at nought by two men of
undoubted courage and undoubted honour, meeting upon equal terms; in the
other, it was proved that, not content with Dujarrier's well-known
inferiority, De Beauvallon's pistols had been tried before the
encounter. The court could take no cognizance of this, but it marked its
disapproval by sentencing Beauvallon to eight years', and one of his
seconds, M. d'Ecquevilley, to ten years' imprisonment for perjury. Both
had declared on oath that the pistols had not been tried. The Dujarrier
duel caused a deep and painful sensation. I have dwelt upon it at
greater length than was absolutely necessary, because it inspired me
with a resolution from which I have never departed since. I was
twenty-seven at the time, and, owing to circumstances which I need not
relate here, foresaw that the greater part of my life would be spent in
France. I am neither more courageous nor more cowardly than most
persons, but I objected to be shot down like a mad dog on the most
futile pretext because some one happened to have a grudge against me. To
have declined "to go out" on the score of my nationality would not have
met the case in the conditions in which I was living, so from that
moment I became an assiduous client at Gosset's shooting-gallery, and
took fencing lessons of Grisier. I do not know that I became very
formidable with either weapon, only sufficiently skilled not to be
altogether defenceless. I took care at the same time to let it go forth
that a duel to me not only meant one or both parties so severely wounded
as not to be able to continue the struggle, but the resumption of the
combat, when he or they had recovered, until one was killed. Of course,
it implied that I would only go out for a sufficiently weighty reason,
but that, if compelled to do so for a trifling one, I would still adhere
to my original resolution. Only once, more than twelve years afterwards,
I had a quarrel fastened upon me, arising out of the excitement
consequent upon the attempt of Orsini. I was the offended party, and, as
such, could dictate the conditions of the meeting. I declined to modify
in the least the rules I had laid down for my own guidance, and stated
as much to those who were to act for me--General Fleury and Alexandre
Dumas. My adversary's friends refused to accept the terms. I was never
molested afterwards, though an Englishman had not always a pleasant life
of it, even under the Second Empire.

In connection with Dujarrier's duel, I may say a few words here of that
quasi-wonderful woman, Lola Montès. I say "quasi," because really there
was nothing wonderful about her, except perhaps her beauty and her
consummate impudence. She had not a scrap of talent of any kind;
education she had none, for, whether she spoke in English, French, or
Spanish, grammatical errors abounded, and her expressions were always
those of a pretentious housemaid, unless they were those of an excited
fishwife. She told me that she had been at a boarding-school in Bath,
and that she was a native of Limerick, but that when quite a child she
was taken to Seville by her parents. Her father, according to her
account, was a Spaniard, her mother a Creole. "But I scandalized every
one at school, and would not learn." I could quite believe that; what I
could not believe was that a girl of her quick powers--for she
undoubtedly possessed those--could have spent, however short a time in
the society of decent girls of her own age, let alone of presumedly
refined school-mistresses, without having acquired some elementary
notions of manner and address. Her gait and carriage were those of a
duchess, for she was naturally graceful, but the moment she opened her
lips, the illusion vanished--at least to me; for I am bound to admit
that men of far higher intellectual attainments than mine, and familiar
with very good society, raved and kept raving about her, though all
those defects could not have failed to strike them as they had struck
me. I take it that it must have been her beauty, for, though not devoid
of wit, her wit was that of the pot-house, which would not have been
tolerated in the smoking-room of a club in the small hours.

When Dujarrier was carried home dying to the Rue Lafitte, a woman flung
herself on the body and covered his face with kisses. That woman was
Lola Montès. In his will he left her eighteen shares in the Palais-Royal
Theatre, amounting in value to about 20,000 francs. She insisted
afterwards in appearing as a witness at the trial in Rouen, although her
evidence threw not the slightest light upon the matter. She wanted to
create a sensation; and she accomplished her aim. I was there, and
though the court was crowded with men occupying the foremost ranks in
literature, art, and Paris society, no one attracted the attention she
did. Even the sober president and assessors sat staring at her
open-mouthed when she took her stand behind the little rail which does
duty for a witness-box in France. She was dressed in mourning--not the
deepest, but soft masses of silk and lace--and when she lifted her veil
and took off her glove to take the prescribed oath, a murmur of
admiration ran through the court. That is why she had undertaken the
journey to Rouen, and verily she had her reward.

It was on that occasion that I became acquainted, though quite by
accident, with the young man who, ten or eleven years later, was to leap
into fame all of a sudden with one novel. I have already said that the
court was very crowded, and next to me was standing a tall, strapping
fellow, somewhat younger than myself, whom, at the first glance, one
would have taken to be an English country gentleman or well-to-do
farmer's son. Such mistakes are easily made in Normandy. When Lola
Montès came forward to give her evidence, some one on the other side of
him remarked that she looked like the heroine of a novel.

"Yes," he replied; "but the heroines of the real novels enacted in
everyday life do not always look like that."

Then he turned to me, having seen me speak to several people from Paris
and in company of Alexandre Dumas and Berryer, whom everybody knew. He
asked me some particulars about Lola Montès, which I gave him. I found
him exceedingly well-informed. We chatted for a while. When he left he
handed me his card, and hoped that we should see one another again. The
card bore the simple superscription of "Gustave Flaubert." I was told
during the evening that he was the son of a local physician of note.
Twelve years later the whole of France rang with his name. He had
written "Madame Bovary," and laid the foundation of what subsequently
became the ultra-realistic school of French fiction.

To return for a moment to Lola Montès. The trial was really the
starting-point of her notoriety, for, in spite of her beauty, she had
been at one time reduced to sing in the streets in Brussels. That was
after she had fled from Calcutta, whither her first husband, a captain
or lieutenant James, in the service of the East India Company, had taken
her. She landed at Southampton, and, during her journey to London,
managed to ingratiate herself with an English nobleman, by pretending
that she was the wife a Spanish soldier who had been shot by the
Carlists. She told me all this herself, because she was not in the least
reticent about her scheming, especially after her scheming had failed.
She would, however, not divulge the name of her travelling companion,
who tried to befriend her by introducing her to some of his
acquaintances, with the view of obtaining singing lessons for her. "But
I did not make my expenses, because you English are so very moral and my
patron was suspected of not giving himself all that trouble for nothing.
Besides, they managed to ferret out that I was not the widow of a
Spanish officer, but the wife of an English one; and then, as you may
imagine, it was all up. I got, however, an engagement at the Opera House
in the ballet, but not for long; of course, I could not dance much, but
I could dance as well as half your wooden ugly women that were there.
But they told tales about me, and the manager dismissed me."[16]

         [Footnote 16: The English nobleman must have been Lord
         Malmesbury, who alludes to her as follows: "This was a most
         remarkable woman, and may be said by her conduct at Munich to
         have set fire to the magazine of revolution, which was ready to
         burst forth all over Europe, and which made the year 1848
         memorable. I made her acquaintance by accident, as I was going
         up to London from Heron Court, in the railway. The Consul at
         Southampton asked me to take charge of a Spanish lady who had
         been recommended to his care, and who had just landed. I
         consented to do this, and was introduced by him to a remarkably
         handsome person, who was in deep mourning, and who appeared to
         be in great distress. As we were alone in the carriage, she, of
         her own accord, informed me, in bad English, that she was the
         widow of Don Diego Leon, who had lately been shot by the
         Carlists after he was taken prisoner, and that she was going to
         London to sell some Spanish property that she possessed, and
         give lessons in singing, as she was very poor. On arriving in
         London she took some lodgings, and came to my house to a little
         concert which I gave, and sang some Spanish ballads. Her accent
         was foreign, and she had all the appearance of being what she
         pretended to be. She sold different things, such as veils,
         etc., to the party present, and received a good deal of
         patronage. Eventually she took an engagement for the ballet at
         the Opera House, but her dancing was very inferior. At last she
         was recognized as an impostor, her real name being Mrs. James,
         and Irish by extraction, and had married an officer in India.
         Her engagement at the Opéra was cancelled, she left the
         country, and retired to Munich. She was a very violent woman,
         and actually struck one of the Bavarian generals as he was
         reviewing the troops. The king became perfectly infatuated with
         her beauty and cleverness, and gave her large sums of money,
         with a title, which she afterwards bore when she returned to
         England." ("Memoirs of an Ex-minister," by the Earl of
         Malmesbury.)

         Lord Malmesbury is wrong in nearly every particular which he
         has got from hearsay. Lola Montès did not retire to Munich
         after her engagement at the Opera House had been cancelled, but
         to Brussels, and from there to Warsaw. Nor did she play the
         all-important part in the Bavarian riots or revolution he
         ascribes to her. The author of these notes has most of the
         particulars of Lola Montès' career previous to her appearance
         in Munich from her own lips, and, as he has already said, she
         was not in the least reticent about her scheming, especially
         when her scheming had failed. For the story of the events at
         Munich, I gather inferentially from his notes that he is
         indebted to Karl von Abel, King Ludwig's ultramontane minister,
         who came afterwards to Paris, and who, if I mistake not, was
         the father or the uncle of Herr von Abel, the Berlin
         correspondent of the _Times_, some fourteen or fifteen years
         ago.--EDITOR.]

She fostered no illusions with regard to her choregraphic talents; in
fact, she fostered no illusions about anything, and her candour was the
best trait in her character. She had failed as a dancer in Warsaw,
whither she had gone from London, by way of Brussels. In the Belgian
capital, according to her own story, she had been obliged to sing in the
streets to keep from starvation. I asked her why she had not come from
London to Paris, "where for a woman of her attractions, and not hampered
by many scruples," as I pointed out to her, "there were many more
resources than elsewhere." The answer was so characteristic of the
daring adventuress, who, notwithstanding her impecuniosity, flew at the
highest game to be had, that I transcribe it in full. I am often
reluctant to trust to my memory: in this instance I may; I remember
every word of it. This almost illiterate schemer, who probably had not
the remotest notion of geography, of history, had pretty well "the
Almanach de Gotha" by heart, and seemed to guess instinctively at things
which said Almanach carefully abstained from mentioning, namely, the
good understanding or the reverse between the married royal couples of
Europe, etc.

"Why did I not come to Paris!" she replied. "What was the good of coming
to Paris where there was a king, bourgeois to his finger-nails,
tight-fisted besides, and notoriously the most moral and best father all
the world over; with princes who were nearly as much married as their
dad, and with those who were single far away? What was the good of
coming to a town where you could not bear the title of 'la maîtresse du
prince' without the risk of being taken to the frontier between two
gendarmes, where you could not have squeezed a thousand louis out of any
of the royal sons for the life of you? What was the good of trying to
get a count, where the wife of a grocer or a shoemaker might have
objected to your presence at a ball, on the ground of your being an
immoral person? No, I really meant to make my way to the Hague. I had
heard that William II. whacked his wife like any drunken labourer, so
that his sons had to interfere every now and then. I had heard this in
Calcutta, and from folk who were likely to know. But as I thought that I
might have the succession of the whacks, as well as of the lord, I
wanted to try my chance at Brussels first; besides, I hadn't much
money."

"But King Leopold is married, and lives very happily with his wife," I
interrupted.

"Of course he does--they all do," was the answer; "mais ça n'empêche pas
les sentiments, does it?" I am very ignorant, and haven't a bit of
memory, but I once heard a story about a Danish or Swedish king--I do
not know the difference--who married an adventuress like myself, though
the queen and the mother of his heir was alive. He committed bigamy, but
kings and queens may do things we mayn't. One day, he and his lawful
wife were at one of their country seats, and, leaning out of the window,
when a carriage passed with a good-looking woman in it, 'Who is this
lady?' asked the queen. 'That's my wife,' replied the king. 'Your wife!
what am I, then?' said the queen. 'You? well, you are my queen.'[17]

         [Footnote 17: Lola Montès was perfectly correct. It was
         Frederick IV. of Denmark, only the woman was not an adventuress
         like herself, but the Countess Reventlow, whom he had
         abducted.--EDITOR.]

"Never mind, whatever my intentions on Leopold's money or affections may
have been, they came to nothing; for before I could get as much as a
peep at him, my money had all been spent, and I was obliged to part
with my clothes first, and then to sing in the streets to get food. I
was taken from Brussels to Warsaw by a man whom I believe to be a
German. He spoke many languages, but he was not very well off himself.
However, he was very kind, and, when we got to Warsaw, managed to get me
an engagement at the Opéra. After two or three days, the director told
me that I couldn't dance a bit. I stared him full in the face, and asked
him whether he thought that, if I could dance, I would have come to such
a hole as his theatre. Thereupon he laughed, and said I was a clever
girl for all that, and that he would keep me on for ornament. I didn't
give him the chance for long. I left after about two months, with a
Polish gentleman, who brought me to Paris. The moment I get a nice round
lump sum of money, I am going to carry out my original plan; that is,
trying to hook a prince. I am sick of being told that I can't dance.
They told me so in London, they told me in Warsaw, they told me at the
Porte Saint-Martin where they hissed me. I don't think the men, if left
to themselves, would hiss me; their wives and their daughters put them
up to it: a woman like myself spoils their trade of honest women. I am
only waiting my chance here; for though you are all very nice and
generous and all that kind of thing, it is not what I want."

Shortly after this conversation, the death of Dujarrier and his legacy
to her gave her the chance she had been looking for. She left for
London, I heard, with an Englishman; but I never saw him, so I cannot
say for certain. But, it appears, she did not stay long, because, a
little while after, several Parisians, on their return from Germany,
reported that they had met her at Wiesbaden, at Homburg, and elsewhere,
punting in a small way, not settling down anywhere, and almost
deliberately avoiding both Frenchmen and Englishmen. The rumour went
that her husband was on her track, and that her anxiety to avoid him had
caused her to leave London hurriedly. In spite of her chequered career,
in spite of the shortcomings at Brussels, Lola Montès was by no means
anxious for the "sweet yoke of domesticity." In another six months, her
name was almost forgotten by all of us, except by Alexandre Dumas, who
now and then alluded to her. Though far from superstitious, Dumas, who
had been as much smitten with her as most of her admirers, avowed that
he was glad she had disappeared. "She has 'the evil eye,'" he said;
"and sure to bring bad luck to any one who closely links his destiny
with hers, for however short a time. You see what has occurred to
Dujarrier. If ever she is heard of again, it will be in connection with
some terrible calamity that has befallen a lover of hers." We all
laughed at him, except Dr. Véron, who could have given odds to Solomon
Eagle himself at prophesying. Fortunately he was generally afraid to
open his lips, for he was thoroughly sincere in his belief that he could
prevent the event by not predicting it--at any rate aloud. For once in a
way, however, Alexandre Dumas proved correct. When we did hear again of
Lola Montès, it was in connection with the disturbances that had broken
out at Munich, and the abdication of her royal lover, Louis I. of
Bavaria, in favour of his eldest son, Maximilian.

The substance of the following notes relating to said disturbances was
communicated to me by a political personage who played a not
inconsiderable part in the events themselves. As a rule it is not very
safe to take interested evidence of that kind, "but in this instance,"
as my informant put it, "there was really no political reputation to
preserve, as far as he was concerned." Lola Montès had simply tried to
overthrow him as Madame Dubarry overthrew the Duc de Choiseul, because
he would not become her creature; and she had kept on repeating the
tactics with every succeeding ministry, even that of her own making. But
it should be remembered that revolution was in the air in the year '48,
and that if Lola Montès had been the most retiring of favourites, or
Louis I. the most moral of kings, the uprising would have happened just
the same, though the upshot might have been different with regard to
Louis himself.

Here is a portrait of him, which, in my literary ignorance, I think
sufficiently interesting to reproduce.

"Louis was a chip of the old Wittelsbach block; that is, a Lovelace,
with a touch of the _minnesinger_ about him. Age had not damped his
ardour; for, though he was sixty-one when Lola Montès took up her
quarters at Munich, any and every 'beauty' that came to him was sure of
an enthusiastic welcome. And Heaven alone knows how many had come to him
during his reign; they seemed really directed to him from every quarter
of the globe. The new arrival had her portrait painted almost
immediately; it was added to the collection for which a special gallery
had been set apart, and whither Louis went to meditate by himself at
least once a day. He averred that he went thither for poetic
inspiration, for he took himself au sérieux as a poet, and, above all,
as a classical poet modelling his verse upon those of ancient times. He
had published a volume of poems, entitled 'Walhalla's Genossen';[18] but
his principal study of antiquity was mainly confined to the rites
connected with the worship of Venus. He was very good-natured and
pleasant in his dealings with every one; he had not an ounce of gall in
the whole of his body. He was, moreover, very religious in his own way,
and consequently the tool of the Jesuits, who really governed the
kingdom, but who endeavoured to make his own life sweet and pleasant to
him. They liked him to take part in the religious processions, as any
burgher of devout tendencies might, but being aware of his tendency to
be attracted by the first pretty face he caught sight of, they took care
to relegate all the handsome maidens and matrons to the first and second
floors. In that way Louis's eyes were always lifted heavenwards, and
religious appearances were preserved.

         [Footnote 18: "Companions in Walhalla."--EDITOR.]

"Under such conditions, it was not difficult for a woman of Lola Montès'
attractions and daring to gain her ends. She was not altogether without
means when she came to Munich, though the sum in her possession was far
from a hundred thousand francs, as she afterwards alleged it was. At any
rate, she was not the penniless adventuress she had formerly been, and
when, in her beautiful dresses, she applied to the director of the
Hof-Theatre for an engagement, the latter was fairly dazzled, and
granted her request without a murmur. She did, however, not want to
dance, and, before her first appearance, she managed to set tongues
wagging about her beauty, and, as a matter of course, the rumours
reached the king's ears. I am afraid I shall have to prefer a grave
charge, but I am not doing so without foundation. It is almost certain
by now that the Jesuits, seeing in her a tool for the further
subjugation of the superannuated royal troubadour, countenanced, if they
did not assist her in her schemes; they, the Jesuits, did many things of
which a Catholic, like myself, however firm in his allegiance to Rome,
could not but disapprove. At any rate, three or four days after the
king's first meeting with her, Lola Montès was presented at court, and
introduced to the royal family and corps diplomatique by the sovereign
himself, as 'his best friend.' Events proceeded apace. In August, '47,
the king granted her patents of 'special naturalization,' created her
Baroness von Rosenthal, and, almost immediately afterwards, Countess von
Landsfeld. She received an annuity of twenty thousand florins, and had a
magnificent mansion built for her. At the instance of the king, the
queen was compelled to confer the order of St. Thérèse upon her. I, and
many others, had strenuously opposed all this, though not unaware that,
up till then, the Jesuits were on her side, rather than on ours. We paid
the penalty of our opposition with our dismissal from office, and then
Lola Montès confronted the Jesuits by herself. She was absolutely mad to
invade Wurtemberg, not for any political reason; she could no more have
accounted for any such than the merest hind, but simply because, a few
months before her appearance at Munich, she had been, in her opinion,
slighted by the old king. The fact was, old William, sincerely attached
to Amalia Stubenrauch, the actress, had not fallen a victim to Lola
Montès' charms, and had taken little or no notice of her. The
contemplated invasion of Wurtemberg was an act of private revenge. But
mad as she was, there was some one more mad still--King Louis I. of
Bavaria.

"The most ill-advised thing she did, perhaps, was to change her
supporters. Like the ignorant, overbearing woman she was, she would not
consent to share her power over the king with the Jesuits; she tried to
form an opposition against them among the students at the University,
and she succeeded to a certain extent. These adherents constituted the
nucleus of a corps which soon became known under the title of
'Allemanen.' But the more noble-minded and patriotic youths at the
Munich University virtually ostracized the latter, and several minor
disturbances had already broken out in consequence of this, when, in the
beginning of February, '48, a more than usually serious manifestation
against 'Lola's creatures,' as they were called, took place. The woman
did not lack pluck, and she insisted upon defying the rioters by
herself. But they proved too much for her; and, after all, she was a
woman. She endeavoured to escape from their violence, but every house
was shut against her; the Swiss on guard at the Austrian Embassy refused
her shelter. A most painful scene happened; the king himself, the moment
the news reached him, rushed to her rescue, and, having elbowed his way
through the threatening, yelling crowd, offered her his arm, and
conducted her to the church of the Theatines, hard by. As a matter of
course, several officers had joined him, and all might have been well,
if she had taken the lesson to heart. But her violent, domineering,
vindictive temper got the better of her. No sooner did she find herself
in comparative safety, than, emboldened by the presence of the officers,
she snatched a pistol from one of them, and, armed with it, leapt out of
the building, confronting the crowd, and threatening to fire. Heaven
alone knows what would have been the result of this mad act, but for the
timely arrival of a squadron of cuirassiers, who covered her retreat.

"The excitement might have died out in a week or a fortnight, though the
year '48 was scarcely a propitious one for a display of such
quasi-feudal defiance, if she had merely been content to forego the
revenge for the insults she herself had provoked; but on the 10th of
February she prevailed upon the king to issue a decree, closing the
University for a twelvemonth. The smouldering fire of resentment against
her constant interference in the affairs of the country blazed forth
once more, and this time with greater violence than ever. The working
men, nay, the commercial middle classes, hitherto indifferent to the
king's vagaries, which, after all, brought grist to their mill, espoused
the students' cause. Barricades were erected; the cry was not 'Long live
the Constitution,' or 'Long live the Republic,' but 'Down with the
concubine.' It was impossible to mistake the drift of that insurrection,
but, in order to leave no doubt about it in the sovereign's mind, a
deputation of the municipal council and one of the Upper House waited
upon Louis, and insisted upon the dismissal of Lola Montès, who, in less
than an hour, left Munich, escorted by a troop of gendarmes, who,
however, had all their work to do to prevent her from being torn to
pieces by the mob. Her departure was the signal for the pillaging of her
mansion, at which the king looked on--as he thought--incognito. It is
difficult to determine what prompted him to commit so rash an act. Was
it a feeling of relief at having got rid of her--for there was a good
deal of cynicism about that semi-philosophical, semi-mystical
troubadour--or a desire to chew the cud of his vanished happiness?
Whatever may have been the reason, he paid dearly for it, for some one
smashed a looking-glass over his head, and he was carried back to the
palace, unconscious, and bleeding profusely. It was never ascertained
who inflicted the wounds, though there is no doubt that the assailant
knew his victim. Meanwhile Lola Montès had succeeded in slipping away
from her escort, and three hours later she re-entered Munich disguised,
and endeavoured to make her way to the palace. But the latter was
carefully guarded, and for the next month all her attempts in that
direction proved fruitless, though, audacious as she was, she did not
dare stop for a single night in the capital itself. Besides, I do not
believe that a single inhabitant would have given her shelter. Unlike a
good many royal favourites of the past, she had no personal adherents,
no faithful servants who would have stood by her through thick and thin,
because she never treated any one kindly in the days of her prosperity:
she could only bribe; she was incapable of inspiring disinterested
affection among those who were insensible to the spell of her marvellous
beauty."

So far the narrative of my informant. The rest is pretty well known by
everybody. A few years later, she committed bigamy with another English
officer, named Heald, who was drowned at Lisbon about the same time that
her real husband died. Alexandre Dumas was right--she brought ill-luck
to those who attached themselves to her for any length of time, whether
in the guise of lovers or husbands.

These notes about Lola Montès remind me of another woman whom public
opinion would place in the same category, though she vastly differed in
character. I am alluding to Alphonsine Plessis, better known to the
world at large as "La Dame aux Camélias." I frequently met her in the
society of some of my friends between '43 and '47, the year of her
death. Her name was as I have written it, and not Marie or Marguerite
Duplessis, as has been written since.

The world at large, and especially the English, have always made very
serious mistakes, both with regard to the heroine of the younger Dumas'
novel and play, and the author himself. They have taxed him with having
chosen an unworthy subject, and, by idealizing it, taught a lesson of
vice instead of virtue; they have taken it for granted that Alphonsine
Plessis was no better than her kind. She was much better than that,
though probably not sufficiently good to take a housemaid's place and be
obedient to her pastors and masters, to slave from morn till night for
a mere pittance, in addition to her virtue, which was ultimately to
prove its own reward--the latter to consist of a home of her own, with a
lot of squalling brats about her, where she would have had to slave as
she had slaved before, without the monthly pittances hitherto doled out
to her. She was not sufficiently good to see her marvellously beautiful
face, her matchless graceful figure set off by a cambric cap and a
calico gown, instead of having the first enhanced by the gleam of
priceless jewels in her hair and the second wrapped in soft laces and
velvets and satins; but, for all that, she was not the common courtesan
the goody-goody people have thought fit to proclaim her--the common
courtesan, who, according to these goody-goody people, would have
descended to her grave forgotten, but for the misplaced enthusiasm of a
poetical young man, who was himself corrupted by the atmosphere in which
he was born and lived afterwards.

The sober fact is that Dumas _fils_ did not idealize anything at all,
and, least of all, Alphonsine Plessis' character. Though very young at
the time of her death, he was then already much more of a philosopher
than a poet. He had not seen half as much of Alphonsine Duplessis during
her life as is commonly supposed, and the first idea of the novel was
probably suggested to him, not by his acquaintance with her, but by the
sensation her death caused among the Paris public, the female part of
which--almost without distinction--went to look at her apartment, to
appraise her jewels and dresses, etc. "They would probably like to have
had them on the same terms," said a terrible cynic. The remark must have
struck young Dumas, in whose hearing it was said, or who, at any rate,
had it reported to him; for if we carefully look at _all_ his earlier
plays, we find the spirit of that remark largely pervading them.

Alphonsine Plessis had probably learned even less in her girlhood than
Lola Montès, but she had a natural tact, and an instinctive refinement
which no education could have enhanced. She never made grammatical
mistakes, no coarse expression ever passed her lips. Lola Montès could
not make friends; Alphonsine Plessis could not make enemies. She never
became riotous like the other, not even boisterous; for amidst the most
animated scenes she was haunted by the sure knowledge that she would die
young, and life, but for that knowledge, would have been very sweet to
her. Amidst these scenes, she would often sit and chat to me: she liked
me, because I never paid her many compliments, although I was but six
years older than the most courted woman of her time. The story of her
being provided for by a foreign nobleman because she was so like his
deceased daughter, was not a piece of fiction on Dumas' part; it was a
positive fact. Alphonsine Plessis, after this provision was made for
her, might have led the most retired existence; she might, like so many
demi-mondaines have done since, bought herself a country-house,
re-entered "the paths of respectability," have had a pew in the parish
church, been in constant communication with the vicar, prolonged her
life by several years, and died in the odour of sanctity: but,
notwithstanding her desperate desire to live, her very nature revolted
at such self-exile. When Alexandre Dumas read the "Dame aux Camélias" to
his father, the latter wept like a baby, but his tears did not drown the
critical faculty. "At the beginning of the third act," he said
afterwards, "I was wondering how Alexandre would get his Marguerite back
to town without lowering her in the estimation of the spectator.
Because, if such a woman as he depicted was to remain true to nature--to
her nature--and consequently able to stand the test of psychological
analysis, she could not have borne more than two or three months of such
retirement. This does not mean that she would have severed her
connection with Armand Duval, but he would have become 'un plat dans le
menu' after a little while, nothing more. The way Alexandre got out of
the difficulty proves that he is my son every inch of him, and that, at
the very outset of his career, he is a better dramatist than I am ever
likely to be. But depend upon it, that if, in real life and with such a
woman, le père Duval had not interfered, la belle Marguerite would have
taken the 'key of the street' on some pretext--and that, notwithstanding
the sale of her carriages, the pledging of her diamonds and her furs--in
order not to worry the man she loved, for the time being, with money
matters. Honestly speaking, it wanted my son's cleverness to make a
piece out of Alphonsine Plessis' life. True, he was fortunate in that
she died, which left him free to ascribe that death to any cause but the
right one, namely, consumption. I know that he made use of it, but he
took care to show the malady aggravated by Armand Duval's desertion of
her, and this is the only liberty he took with the psychological,
consequently scientific and logical, development of the play. People
have compared his Marguerite Gautier to Manon Lescaut, to Marion
Delorme, and so forth: it just shows what they know about it. They might
just as well compare Thiers to Cromwell. Manon Lescaut, Marion Delorme,
Cromwell, knew what they wanted: Marguerite Gautier and Thiers do not;
both are always in search of _l'inconnu_, the one in experimental
politics, the other in experimental love-making. Still, my son has been
true to Nature; but he has taken an episode showing her at her best. He
was not bound to let the public know that the frequent recurrence of
these love episodes, but always with a different partner, constitutes a
disease which is as well known to specialists as the disease of
drunkenness, and for which it is impossible to find a cure. Messalina,
Catherine II., and thousands of women have suffered from it. When they
happen to be born in such exalted stations as these two, they buy men;
when they happen to be born in a lowly station and are attractive, they
sell themselves; when they are ugly and repulsive they sink to the
lowest depths of degradation, or end in the padded cells of a madhouse,
where no man dares come near them. Nine times out of ten the malady is
hereditary, and I am certain that if we could trace the genealogy of
Alphonsine Plessis, we should find the taint either on the father's side
or on the mother's, probably on the former's, but more probably still on
both."[19]

         [Footnote 19: The following is virtually a summary of an
         article by Count G. de Contades, in a French bibliographical
         periodical, _Le Livre_ (Dec. 10, 1885), and shows how near
         Alexandre Dumas was to the truth. I have given it at great
         length. My excuse for so doing is the extraordinary popularity
         of Dumas' play with all classes of playgoers. As a consequence,
         there is not a single modern play, with the exception of those
         of Shakespeare, the genesis of which has been so much commented
         upon. It is no exaggeration to say that most educated
         playgoers, not to mention professional students of the drama,
         have at some time or other expressed a wish to know something
         more of the real Marguerite Gautier's parentage and antecedents
         than is shown by Dumas, either in his play or in his novel, or
         than what they could gather from the partly apocryphal details
         given by her contemporaries. Dumas himself, in his preface to
         the play, says that she was a farm servant. He probably knew no
         more than that, nor did Alphonsine Plessis herself. In
         after-years, the eminent dramatist had neither the time nor the
         inclination to search musty parish registers; Count de Contades
         has done so for him. Here are the results, as briefly as
         possible, of his researches. Alphonsine Plessis' paternal
         grandmother, "moitié mendiante et moitié prostituée,"
         inhabited, a little less than a century ago, the small parish
         of Longé-sur-Maire, which has since become simply Longé in the
         canton of Briouze, arrondissement of Argentan (about thirty
         miles from Alençon). She had been nicknamed "La Guénuchetonne,"
         a rustic version of the archaic French word _guénippe_
         (slattern). Louis Descours, a kind of country clod who had
         entered the priesthood without the least vocation, and just
         because his people wished him to do so, becomes enamoured of
         "La Guénuchetonne," and early in January, 1790, the curé
         Philippe christens a male child, which is registered as Marin
         Plessis, mother Louis-Renée Plessis, father unknown. That the
         father was known well enough is proved by the Christian name
         bestowed upon the babe, Marin, which was that of Louis
         Descours' father. This gallant adventure of the country priest
         was an open secret for miles around.

         Marin Plessis grew into a handsome fellow, and when about
         twenty took to travelling in the adjacent provinces of lower
         and upper Normandy with a pack of small wares. Handsome and
         amiable besides, he was a welcome guest everywhere, and soon
         became a great favourite with the female part of the Normandy
         peasantry. For a little while he flitted from one rustic beauty
         to another, until he was fairly caught by one more handsome
         than the rest, Marie Deshayes. She was not, perhaps,
         immaculately virtuous, but, apart from her extraordinary
         personal attractions, she was something more than an ordinary
         peasant girl.

         Some sixty years before Marin Plessis' union with Marie
         Deshayes, there lived in the neighbourhood of Evreux a spinster
         lady of good descent, though not very well provided with
         worldly goods. She was comely and sweet-tempered enough, but
         then, as now, comeliness and a sweet temper do not count for
         much in the French matrimonial market, and least of all in the
         provincial one. Owing to the modesty of her marriage portion,
         she had no suitors for her hand, and, being of an exceedingly
         amorous disposition, she bestowed her affection where she
         could, "without regret, and without false shame," as the old
         French chronicler has it.

         The annals of the village--for, curiously enough, these annals
         do exist, though only in manuscripts--are commendably reticent
         about the exact number and names of her lovers. It would seem
         that the author, a contemporary of Mdlle. Anne du Mesnil
         d'Argentelles and the great-grandfather of the present
         possessor of the notes, a gentleman near Bernay, was divided
         between the wish of not being too hard upon his neighbour, who
         was, after all, a gentle-woman, and the desire to leave a
         record of a peculiar phase of the country manners of those days
         to posterity. Be this as it may, Mdlle. d'Argentelles' swains,
         previous to the very last one, have been doomed to anonymous
         obscurity. But with the advent of Étienne Deshayes, the
         annalist becomes less reticent, he is considered worthy of
         being mentioned in full, perhaps as a reward for having finally
         "made an honest woman" of his inamorata. For that is the final
         upshot of the love-story between him and Mdlle. d'Argentelles,
         which, in its earlier stages, bears a certain resemblance to
         that between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Madame de Warens, with
         this difference--that the Normand Jean-Jacques is considerably
         older than his mistress.

         The children born of this marriage were very numerous. One of
         them, Louis-Deshayes, married a handsome peasant girl,
         Marie-Madeleine Marra, who appears to have been somewhat too
         intimate with a neighbouring squire, but who gave birth a few
         years after to a daughter, of whose paternity there could not
         be the smallest doubt, seeing that she grew up into a speaking
         likeness of her maternal grandmother, the erstwhile Mdlle. Anne
         du Mesnil d'Argentelles. Fate ought to have had a better lot in
         store for beautiful Marie Deshayes than a marriage with a poor
         pedlar like Marin Plessis; but the latter was very handsome,
         and, notwithstanding the opposition of the family, she became
         his wife. On the 15th of January, 1824, the child which was to
         be immortalized as "La Dame aux Camélias" saw the light, in a
         small village in Lower Normandy.--EDITOR.]

There were few of us who, during Alphonsine Plessis' lifetime, were so
interested in her as to have gone to the length of such a psychological
analysis of her pedigree. Nevertheless, most men were agreed that she
was no ordinary girl. Her candour about her early want of education
increased the interest. "Twenty or twenty-five years ago," said Dr.
Véron, one day, after Alphonsine Plessis had left the dinner table, "a
woman of her refinement would not have been phenomenal in her position,
because at that period the grisette, promoted to the rank of femme
entretenue, had not made her appearance. The expression 'femme
entretenue' was not even known. Men chose their companions, outside
marriage, from a different class; they were generally women of education
and often of good family who had made a faux pas, and, as such,
forfeited the society and countenance of their equals who had not
stumbled in that way, at any rate not in the sight of the world. I
confess, Alphonsine Plessis interests me very much. She is, first of
all, the best-dressed woman in Paris; secondly, she neither flaunts nor
hides her vices; thirdly, she is not always talking or hinting about
money; in short, she is a wonderful courtesan."

The result of all this admiration was very favourable to Alexandre Dumas
_fils_ when he brought out his book about eighteen months after her
death. It was in every one's hands, and the press kept whetting the
curiosity of those who had not read it as yet with personal anecdotes
about the heroine. In addition to this, the title was a very taking one,
and, moreover, absolutely new; for, though it was obvious enough from
Alphonsine Plessis' habit of wearing white camellias the greater part of
the year, no one had ever thought of applying it to her while she was
alive; hence, the credit of its invention belongs decidedly to Dumas
_fils_.

I may return to the subject of "La Dame aux Camélias" in connection with
the play; meanwhile, I will say a few words of the only man among our
set who objected to the title, "because it injures my own," as he put
it; namely, M. Lautour-Mézerai, who had been surnamed "L'Homme au
Caméllia;" in the singular, from his habit of never appearing in public
without that flower in his button-hole. And be it remembered that in
those days, the flower was much more rare than it is at present, and
consequently very expensive. The plagiarist, if there was one, must have
been Alphonsine Plessis, for Dr. Véron, who was one of his oldest
friends, did not remember having ever seen him _minus_ the camellia, and
their friendship dated from the year 1831. It is computed that during
the nineteen years Mézerai was in Paris, previous to his departure for
the South of France and afterwards for Algeria, in both of which
provinces he fulfilled the functions of prefect, he must have spent no
less than fifty thousand francs on his favourite floral ornament, for he
frequently changed it twice a day, and its price, especially in the
thirties and earlier part of the forties, was not less than five francs.
It is, therefore, not surprising that he resented the usurpation of his
title. M. Lautour-Mézerai was one of the most elegant men I knew. He not
only belonged to a very good provincial stock, but his family on both
sides counted some eminent names in literature.[20] He was a most
charming companion, exceedingly generous; but he would not have parted
with the flower in his button-hole for any consideration, not even to
oblige his greatest friend, male or female. It was more than an ornament
to him, he looked upon it as a talisman. He always occupied the same
place at the Opéra, in the balcony, or what we call the "dress-circle,"
and many a covetous glance from the brightest eyes was cast at the
dazzling white camellia, standing out in bold relief against the dark
blue coat, but neither glances nor direct requests had any effect upon
him. He became absolutely savage in his refusal when too hardly pressed,
because, by his own admission, he was superstitious enough to believe
that, if he went home without it, something terrible would happen to him
during the night.

         [Footnote 20: Curiously enough, he belonged to the same
         department, and died almost on the very spot where Marin
         Plessis was born.--EDITOR.]

M. Lautour-Mézerai was, however, something more than a mere man of
fashion. To him belongs the credit of having founded--at any rate in
France--the children's periodical. For the comparatively small
subscription of six francs per annum, thousands of little ones received
every month a number of the _Journal des Enfants_, stitched in blue
paper, and with their own name on the wrapper. It flattered their pride
to be treated like their elders by having their literature despatched to
them in that way, and there is no doubt that this ingenious device
contributed, to a certain extent, to the primary and enormous success of
the undertaking. But M. Lautour-Mézerai was too refined a littérateur to
depend upon such a mere trick, and a look at even the earlier numbers of
the _Journal des Enfants_, would prove conclusively that, in the way of
amusing children while instructing them a little, nothing better has
been done since, whether in France, England, or Germany. The editor and
manager succeeded in grouping around him such men as Paul Lacroix (_le
bibliophile Jacob_) and Charles Nodier, both of whom have never been
surpassed in making history attractive to young minds. Émile Souvestre,
Léon Gozlan, Eugène Sue, and even Alexandre Dumas told them the most
wonderful stories. The men who positively kept the adult population of
France spellbound by their stirring romances seemed to take a delight in
competing with women like Virginie Ancelot, the Duchesse d'Abrantès, and
others on the latter's ground. As a consequence, it became the fashion
to present the young ones on New Year's Day with a receipt for a
twelvemonth's subscription, made out in their names, instead of the
everlasting bag of sweets. At one time the circulation of _Le Journal
des Enfants_ was computed at 60,000, and M. Lautour-Mézerai was said to
make 100,000 francs per annum out of it.

In a former note, I incidentally mentioned Auguste Lireux. He is
scarcely remembered by the present generation of Frenchmen; I doubt
whether there are a hundred students of French literature in England who
know his name, let alone his writings: yet he is worthy of being
remembered by both. He had--what a great many French writers of talent,
far greater than his own, essentially lack--humour. True, the latter was
not subtle; but it was rarely, if ever, coarse. The nearest approach to
him among the journalists of the present day is M. Francisque Sarcey;
but the eminent dramatic critic has had a better education.
Nevertheless, if Lireux had finished as he began, he would not be so
entirely forgotten. Unfortunately for his fame, if not for his material
welfare, he took it into his head to become a millionnaire, and he
almost succeeded; at any rate, he died very well off, in a beautiful
villa at Bougival.

I remember meeting with Lireux almost immediately after he landed in
Paris, at the end of '40 or the beginning of '41. He came, I believe,
from Rouen; though, but for his accent, he might have come from
Marseilles. Tall, well-built, with brown hair and beard and ruddy
complexion, a pair of bright eyes behind a pair of golden spectacles,
very badly dressed, though his clothes were almost new, very loud and
very restless, his broad-brimmed hat cocked on one side, he gave one the
impression of what in Paris we used to call a "departemental oracle."
He was that to a certain extent, still he was not really pompous, and
the feeling of discomfort one experienced at first soon wore off. He was
not altogether unknown among the better class of journalists in the
capital, for it appears that he frequently contributed to the Paris
papers from the provinces. He had a fair knowledge of the French drama
theoretically, for he had never written a piece, and openly stated his
intention never to do so. But in virtue of his dramatic criticisms in
several periodicals--which, in spite of the difference in education
between the two men, read uncommonly like the articles of M. Sarcey in
the _Temps_--and his unwavering faith in his lucky star, he considered
himself destined not only to lift the Odéon from the slough in which it
had sunk, but to make it a formidable rival to the house in the Rue de
Richelieu. He had no ambition beyond that. The Odéon was really at its
lowest depth. Harel had enjoyed a subsidy of 130,000 francs, M. d'Epagny
eleven years later had to content himself with less than half, and yet
the authorities were fully cognizant of the necessity of a second
Théâtre-Français. Whether from incapacity or ill-luck, M. d'Epagny did
not succeed in bringing back the public to the old house. The direction
was offered then to M. Hippolyte Lucas, the dramatic critic of _Le
Siècle_, and one of the best English scholars I have ever met with among
the French, and, on his declining the responsibility, given to Lireux,
who for the sake of making a point, exclaimed, "Directeur!... au refus
d'Hippolyte Lucas!"[21]

         [Footnote 21: An imitation of the line of Don Carlos in Hugo's
         "Hernani": "Empereur!... au refus de Frédéric-le-Sage!"--EDITOR.]

It was a piece of bad taste on Lireux's part, because M. Lucas was his
superior in every respect, though he would probably have failed where
the other succeeded--at least for a while. Save for this mania of saying
smart things in and out of season, Lireux was really a good-natured
fellow, and we were all glad that he had realized his ambition. The
venture looked promising enough at the start. He got an excellent
company together, comprising Bocage, Monrose, Gil-Pères, Maubant,
Mdlles. Georges and Araldi, Madame Dorval, etc.; and if, like young
Bonaparte's troops, they were badly paid and wanted for everything, they
worked with a will, because, like Bonaparte, Lireux inspired them with
confidence. He, on the other hand, knew their value, and on no pretext
would allow them to be ousted from the positions they had honourably
won by their talents and hard work. Presumptuous mediocrity, backed
either by influence or intrigue, found him a stern adversary; the
intriguer got his answer in such a way as to prevent him from returning
to the charge. One day an actor of reputed incapacity, Machanette,
claimed the title-rôle in Molière's "Misanthrope."

"You have no one else to play Alceste," he said.

"Yes, I have. I have got one of the checktakers," replied Lireux.

Auguste Lireux was one of those managers the race of which began with
Harel at the Porte Saint-Martin and Dr. Véron at the Opéra. Duponchel,
at the latter house, Montigny at the Gymnase, Buloz and Arsène Houssaye
at the Comédie-Francaise, endeavoured as far as possible to follow their
traditions of liberality towards the public and their artists, and
encouragement given to untried dramatists. It was not Lireux's fault
that he did not succeed for any length of time. Of course, there is a
ridiculous side to everything. During the terrible cholera visitation of
1832, Harel published a kind of statistics, showing that not a single
one of the spectators had been attacked by the plague; but all this
cannot blind us to the support given to the struggling playwright,
Dumas, in the early part of his career. During the winter of 1841-'42,
which was a severe one, Lireux sent foot-warmers to the rare audience
that patronized him on a bitterly cold night, "when tragedy still
further chills the house"; the little bit of charlatanism cannot disturb
the fact of his having given one of the foremost dramatists of the day a
chance with "La Cigue." I am alluding to the first piece of Émile
Augier.

This kind of thing tells with a general public, more so still with a
public composed of generous-minded, albeit somewhat riotous youths like
those of the Quartier-Latin in the early forties. Gradually the latter
found their way to the Odéon, "sinon pour voir la pièce, alors pour
entendre Lireux, qui est toujours amusant"; which, in plain language,
meant that come what may they would endeavour to provoke Lireux into
giving them a speech.

Flattering as was this resolve on their part to Lireux's eloquence, the
means they employed to encompass their end would have made the existence
of an ordinary manager a burden to him. But Lireux was not an ordinary
manager; he possessed "the gift of the gab" to a marvellous degree:
consequently he made it known that he would be happy at any time to
address MM. les étudiants without putting them to the expense of apples
and eggs on the evening of the performance, and voice-lozenges the next
day, if they, MM. les étudiants, would in return respect his furniture
and the dresses of his actors. The arrangement worked exceedingly well,
and for four years the management and the student part of the audience
lived in the most perfect harmony.

Lireux did more than that, he forestalled their possible objections to a
doubtful episode in a play. I remember the first night of "Jeanne de
Naples." The piece had dragged fearfully. Lireux had made three
different speeches during the evening, but he foresaw a riot at the end
of the piece which no eloquence on his part would be able to quell. It
appears--for we only found this out the next day--that the condemned
woman, previous to being led to execution, had to deliver a monologue of
at least a hundred and fifty or two hundred lines. The unhappy queen had
scarcely begun, when a herculean soldier rushed on the stage, took her
into his arms and carried her off by main force, notwithstanding her
struggles. It was a truly sensational ending, and the curtain fell
amidst deafening applause. It redeemed the piece!

Next day Lireux made his appearance at Tortoni's in the afternoon, and,
as a matter of course, the production of the previous evening was
discussed.

"I cannot understand," said Roger de Beauvoir, "how a man with such
evident knowledge of stagecraft as the author displayed in that
dénoûment, could have perpetrated such an enormity as the whole of the
previous acts."

Lireux was fairly convulsed with laughter. "Do you really think that was
his own invention?" he asked.

"Of course I do," was the reply.

"Well, it is not. His dénoûment was a speech which would have taken
about twenty minutes, at the end of which the queen is tamely led off
between the soldiers. I know what would have been the result: the
students would have simply torn up the benches and Heaven knows what
else. You know that if the gas is left burning, if only a moment, after
twelve, there is an extra charge irrespective of the quantity consumed.
I looked at my watch when she began to speak her lines. It was exactly
thirteen minutes to twelve; she might have managed to get to the end by
twelve, but it was doubtful. What was not doubtful was the row that
would have ensued, and the time it would have taken me to cope with it.
My mind was made up there and then. I selected the biggest of the
supers, told him to go and fetch her, and you know the rest."

There were few theatrical managers in those days who escaped the
vigilance of Balzac. Among the many schemes he was for ever hatching for
benefiting mankind and making his own fortune, there was one which can
not be more fitly described than in the American term of "making a
corner"; only that particular "corner" was to be one in plays.

About two years before the advent of Lireux, and when the house at Ville
d'Avray, of which I have spoken elsewhere, was completed, a party of
literary men received an invitation to spend the Sunday there. It was
not an ordinary invitation, but a kind of circular-letter, the
postscriptum to which contained the following words: "M. de Balzac will
make an important communication." Léon Gozlan, Jules Sandeau, Louis
Desnoyers, Henri Monnier, and those familiar with Balzac's schemes, knew
pretty well what to expect; and when Lassailly, one of the four men
whose nose vied with the legendary one of Bouginier, confirmed their
apprehensions that it was a question of making their fortunes, they
resigned themselves to their fate. Jules Sandeau, who was gentleness
itself, merely observed with a sigh that it was the fifteenth time
Balzac had proposed to make him a millionnaire; Henri Monnier offered to
sell his share of the prospective profits for 7 francs, 50 centimes;
Léon Gozlan suggested that their host might have discovered a diamond
mine, whereupon Balzac, who had just entered the room, declared that a
diamond mine was nothing to it. He was simply going to monopolize the
whole of the Paris theatres. He exposed the plan in a magnificent speech
of two hours' duration, and would have continued for two hours more had
not one of the guests reminded him that it was time for dinner.

"Dinner," exclaimed Balzac; "why, I never thought of it."

Luckily there was a restaurant near, and the future millionnaires and
their would-be benefactor were enabled to sit down to "a banquet quite
in keeping, not only with the magnificent prospects just disclosed to
them, but with the splendour actually surrounding them," as Méry
expressed it.

For it should be added that the sumptuous dwelling which was to be, was
at that moment absolutely bare of furniture, save a few deal chairs and
tables. The garden was a wilderness, intersected by devious paths,
sloping so suddenly as to make it impossible to keep one's balance
without the aid of an Alpenstock or the large stones imbedded in the
soil, but only temporarily, by the considerate owner. One day, Dutacq,
the publisher, having missed his footing, rolled as far as the wall
inclosing the domain, without his friends being able to stop him.

The garden, like everything else connected with the schemes of Balzac,
was eventually to become a gold-mine. Part of it was to be built upon,
and converted into a dairy; another part was to be devoted to the
culture of the pineapple and the Malaga grape, all of which would yield
an income of 30,000 francs annually "at least"--to borrow Balzac's own
words.

The apartments had been furnished in the same grandiose
way--theoretically. The walls were, as I have already remarked,
absolutely bare, but on their plaster, scarcely dry, were magnificent
inscriptions of what was to be. They were mapped out regardless of
expense. On that facing the north there was a splendid piece of
thirteenth-century Flemish tapestry--in writing, of course, flanked by
two equally priceless pictures by Raphael and Titian. Facing these,
one by Rembrandt, and, underneath, a couch, a couple of arm-chairs,
and six ordinary ones, Louis XV., and upholstered in Aubusson
tapestry--subjects, Lafontaine's Fables. Opposite again, a monumental
mantelpiece in malachite (a present of Czar Nicholas, who had
expressed his admiration of Balzac's novels), with bronzes and clock
by De Gouttières. The place on the ceiling was marked for a chandelier
of Venetian glass, and in the dining-room a square was drawn on the
carpetless floor for the capacious sideboard, whereon would be
displayed "the magnificent family plate."

Pending the arrival of the furniture, the building of the dairy,
hothouses, and vineries, the guests had to sit on hard wooden chairs, to
eat a vile dinner, supplemented, however, by an excellent dessert.
Balzac was very fond of fruit, and especially of pears, of which he
always ate an enormous quantity. The wine was, as a rule, very inferior,
but on that particular occasion Balzac's guests discovered that their
host's imagination could even play him more cruel tricks in the
selection of his vintages than it played him in his pursuit of financial
schemes and the furnishing of his house.

When the fruit was placed upon the table, Balzac assumed a most solemn
air. "Gentlemen," he said, "I am going to give you some Château-Lafitte,
such as you have never tasted--such as it has been given to few mortals
to taste. I wish you to sip it carefully--I might almost say reverently,
because the opportunity may not repeat itself in our lives."

Wherewith the guests' glasses were filled; all of them made horrible
faces, for it was abominable stuff, but one more outspoken than the rest
gave his opinion there and then--

"This may be 'Château de la Rue Lafitte,' but it is enough to give one
the colic."

Any one else but Balzac would have been horribly disconcerted; he, on
the contrary, did not budge. "Yes," he said proudly, "you are right in
one respect; this ambrosial nectar comes in a straight line from the Rue
Lafitte, for it is Baron James de Rothschild who made me a present of
two barrels, for which I am profoundly grateful. Drink, gentlemen,
drink, and be thankful also."

Those who would consider this a clever piece of acting on Balzac's part,
would be greatly mistaken. His imagination at times affected his palate
as well as his other organs, and at that moment he was under the
distinct impression that he was offering his guests one of the rarest
vintages on record.

I have endeavoured hitherto to digress as little as possible in my
recollections, though their very nature made it difficult. In this
instance, digression was absolutely necessary to convey an idea of the
shock which would naturally result from the contact of two such brains
as those of Balzac and Lireux; for it was not long after the young
manager's advent to the Odéon that Balzac found his way to his sanctum.
The play he offered him was "Les Ressources de Quinola." Strange as it
may seem to us, even as late as '42, Balzac's name as a novelist did not
rank first in the list with the general public, still it is very
doubtful whether any young manager would have refused a stage play by
him; consequently, Lireux accepted "Les Ressources de Quinola" almost
without fear. It is not to the purpose to say that it was a bad play,
and that he ought to have known better; it has been amply proved by now
that the most experienced manager is not infallible; but it is a moot
point whether the greatest masterpiece would have succeeded with the
tactics adopted by Balzac to insure its success. The following may
appear like a scene from a farcical comedy; I can vouch for the truth of
every word of it, because I had it from the lips of Lireux himself, who,
after all, was the heaviest sufferer by Balzac's incurable greed, or, to
put it as leniently as one can, by his constant chase after a capital
stroke of business. His resolve to pack the house on the first night was
not due to a desire to secure a favourable reception from a friendly
audience, but to the determination to secure "a lump sum," let come what
might. In Balzac are found the two contradictory traits of the
money-grubber and the spendthrift.

The scene alluded to just now, took place when the rehearsals were far
advanced; the author and the manager were discussing the invitations to
be sent out, etc. All at once Balzac declared that he would have none
but Knights of the Order of Saint-Louis in the pit. "I am agreeable,"
replied Lireux, "provided you ferret them out."[22]

         [Footnote 22: It shows that Lireux was not very familiar with
         the royal edicts affecting that order, and that Balzac himself
         exaggerated the social and monetary importance of its wearers.
         For, though Louis-Philippe at his accession suppressed the
         order, not less than twelve thousand new knights had been
         created by his two immediate predecessors. They, the recently
         created knights, were allowed to retain their honours and
         pensions; but, even before the fall of the Bourbons, the
         distinction had lost much of its prestige. After the Battle of
         Navarino, Admiral de Rigny, soliciting rewards for his officers
         who had distinguished themselves, tacitly ignored the order of
         Saint-Louis in favour of that of the Legion of Honour. The
         order, as founded by Louis XIV. in 1693, was only available to
         officers and Catholics. Several modifications were introduced
         afterwards in its statutes. The Order of Saint-Louis and that
         of "Military Merit" were the only two recognized by the
         Constituent Assembly of 1789; but the Convention suppressed the
         former, only leaving the latter.--EDITOR.]

"I'll see to that," said Balzac. "Pray go on. What is the next part of
the house?"

"Orchestra stalls."

"Nothing but peers of France there."

"But the orchestra stalls will not hold them all, Monsieur de Balzac."

"Those who cannot find room in the house will have to stand in the
lobbies," said Balzac, imperturbably.

"Stage boxes?" continued Lireux.

"They will be reserved for the Court."

"Stage boxes on the first tier?"

"For the ambassadors and plenipotentiaries."

"The open boxes on the ground floor?"

"For the wives and families of the ambassadors."

"Upper circle?" enumerated Lireux, not a muscle of his face moving.

"For the deputies and grand officers of State."

"Third circle?" enumerated Lireux.

"The heads of the great banking and financial establishments."

"The galleries and amphitheatre?"

"A carefully selected, but varied, bourgeoisie," wound up Balzac.

Lireux, who was a capital mimic, re-enacted the scene for us
four-and-twenty hours after it had been enacted in his own room, and
while he was still under the impression that it was merely a huge joke
on Balzac's part. He soon discovered, however, that the latter was
terribly in earnest, when, a few days later, Balzac claimed the whole of
the seats for the first three nights, on the penalty of withdrawing his
piece there and then. Lireux foolishly submitted, the box office was
closed; every one applying for tickets was referred to Balzac himself,
or rather to the shady individual who had egged him on to this
speculation. The latter, at the first application, had run up the
prices; the public felt disgusted, and when the curtain rose upon "Les
Ressources de Quinola," the house was almost empty. Thereupon a batch of
nondescripts was sent into the streets to dispose of the tickets at any
price; the bait was indignantly rejected, and the curtain fell amidst
violent hisses. I repeat, a masterpiece would have failed under such
circumstances; but the short run of the revival, almost a quarter of a
century later at the Vaudeville, proved that the piece was not even an
ordinary money-drawing one. It only kept the bills for about nine or ten
days.

Lireux was more fortunate with several other pieces, notably with that
of Léon Gozlan, known to students of the French drama as "La Main Droite
et la Main Gauche," but which originally bore the title of "Il était une
Fois un Roi et une Reine." There could be no doubt about its tendency in
its original form; it was nothing less than an indictment for bigamy
both against Queen Victoria and her Consort; and the authorities had to
insist not only upon the change of title and the names of the _dramatis
personæ_, but upon the action being shifted from London to Stockholm.
The author and manager had to comply; but the public, who had got wind
of the affair, crowded the house every night in order to read between
the lines.

One of my great sources of amusement for many years has been the perusal
of political after-dinner speeches, and political leaders in the English
papers, especially when the speakers and writers have endeavoured to lay
stress upon the cordial relations between the French and the English,
upon the friendly feelings guiding their actions on both sides. I am
putting together these notes nearly fourteen years after the conclusion
of the Franco-German War, nearly three quarters of a century after
Waterloo. There is not a single Frenchman, however Chauvinistic, who
ever thinks, let alone talks, of avenging Napoléon's defeat by
Wellington; while, on the other hand, there is not a single Frenchman,
however unpatriotic, who does not dream now and then of wiping out the
humiliation suffered at Sedan. Well, in spite of the almost entire
oblivion of the one disaster, and the poignant recollection of the
other, the French of to-day hate the English more than the Germans;
or--let me put it more correctly--they hate the Germans, they despise
us. Nothing that we can do will ever remove this dislike of us.

It has been thus as long as I can remember; no royal visits, no exchange
of so-called international courtesies will alter the feeling. It is
ready to burst forth, the smallest provocation or fancied one will set
it ablaze. During the forties there were a good many real or imaginary
provocations on the part of England, and, as a consequence, the hostile
feeling against her broke forth where it is almost always sure to break
forth first in France--on the stage and in song. After "La Main Droite
et la Main Gauche," came Halévy's opera of "Charles VI." It is but fair
to say that the Government did all it could to stem the tide, but,
notwithstanding its positive orders to modify the chorus of the famous
war song in the first act, the song was henceforth regarded as a
patriotic hymn. Nor did the visit of the Queen to Louis-Philippe at Eu,
in 1843, effect much improvement in this state of things; and, as a
matter of course, we on the English side of the Channel retaliated the
skits, etc., though I do not think we took them au grand sérieux. When,
in January, '44, I went to London for a few days, I found the Christmas
pantomime of "King Pippin" in full swing at Drury Lane. I well remember
a scene of it, laid in the shop of a dealer in plaster figures. Two of
these represented respectively the King of France and the Queen of
Great Britain and Ireland. At a given moment, the two statues became
animated, drew close to one another, and exchanged the most profuse
salutations. But meanwhile, at the back of the stage, the Gallic cock
and the British lion (or leopard) assumed a threatening attitude, and at
each mark of affection between the two royal personages, shook their
heads violently and seemed to want desperately to come to close
quarters. The audience applauded vociferously, and it was very evident
to me that neither in Paris nor in London the two nations shared the
entente cordiale of their rulers.

CHAPTER VI.

     Rachel and some of her fellow-actors -- Rachel's true character
     -- Her greediness and spitefulness -- Her vanity and her wit --
     Her powers of fascination -- The cost of being fascinated by her
     -- Her manner of levying toll -- Some of her victims, Comte
     Duchâtel and Dr. Véron -- The story of her guitar -- A little
     transaction between her and M. Fould -- Her supposed charity and
     generosity -- Ten tickets for a charity concert -- How she made
     them into twenty -- How she could have made them into a hundred
     -- Baron Taylor puzzled -- Her manner of giving presents --
     Beauvallet's precaution with regard to one of her gifts --
     Alexandre Dumas the younger, wiser or perhaps not so wise in his
     generation -- Rachel as a raconteuse -- The story of her _début_
     at the Gymnase -- What Rachel would have been as an actor instead
     of an actress -- Her comic genius -- Rachel's mother -- What
     became of Rachel's money -- Mama Félix as a pawnbroker --
     Rachel's trinkets -- Two curious bracelets -- Her first
     appearance before Nicholas I. -- A dramatic recital in the open
     air -- Rachel's opinion of the handsomest man in Europe -- Rachel
     and Samson -- Her obligations to him -- How she repays them --
     How she goes to Berryer to be coached in the fable of "The Two
     Pigeons" -- An anecdote of Berryer -- Rachel's fear of a "warm
     reception" on the first night of "Adrienne Lecouvreur" -- How she
     averts the danger -- Samson as a man and as an actor --
     Petticoat-revolts at the Comédie-Française -- Samson and Régnier
     as buffers -- Their different ways of pouring oil upon the
     troubled waters -- Mdlle. Sylvanie Plessy -- A parallel between
     her and Sarah Bernhardt -- Samson and Régnier's pride in their
     profession -- The different character of that pride -- "Apollo
     with a bad tailor, and who dresses without a looking-glass" --
     Samson gives a lesson in declamation to a procureur-impérial --
     The secret of Régnier's greatness as an actor -- A lesson at the
     Conservatoire -- Régnier on "make-up" -- Régnier's opinion of
     genius on the stage -- A mot of Augustine Brohan -- Giovanni, the
     wigmaker of the Comédie-Française -- His pride in his profession
     -- M. Ancessy, the musical director, and his three wigs.

There were few authors of my time who came in contact with Rachel
without writing about her; there were absolutely none who have
represented her in her true character. Either her genius blinded them to
her faults, or else they were content to perpetuate the popular belief
in her amiability, good nature, generosity, etc. The fact is, that
Rachel off the stage was made of very ordinary clay. She had few of the
good qualities of her race, and a good many of the bad ones; she was
greedy to a degree, and could be very spiteful. All these drawbacks, in
the eyes of most of her biographers, were redeemed by her marvellous
tragic abilities on the stage, by a wonderful "gift of the gab," by a
"happy-go-lucky," "hail-fellow, well-met" manner off the stage to those
whom she liked to propitiate. Nevertheless, there were times when she
had not a single friend at the Comédie-Française, and though her
champions attributed this hostility to jealousy of her great gifts, a
moment's consideration would show us that such a feeling could scarcely
have influenced the men who to a great extent shared her histrionic
triumphs, viz., Beauvallet, Régnier, Provost, Samson, and least of all
the latter. Still, all these would have willingly kept her out of the
Comédie-Française after she had left it in a huff. She was difficult to
get on with; her modesty, assumed in everyday life, was a sham, for woe
to the host who, deceived by it, did not at once make her the queen of
the entertainment! And, in reality, nothing in her warranted such a
temporary elevation. She was witty in her way and after her kind--that
is, she had the quick-wittedness of the French woman who is not an
absolute fool, and who has for many years rubbed elbows with everything
distinguished in art and literature. Notwithstanding this intimacy, I am
doubtful whether she had ever read, let alone appreciated, any of the
masterpieces by the writers of her own days that did not directly bear
upon her profession. I exclude fiction--I mean narrative fiction, and
especially that of a sensational kind, of which she was probably as fond
as the meanest concierge and most romantic milliner-girl.

Nevertheless, provided one did not attempt to analyze it, the power of
fascinating the coldest interlocutor was there. To their honor be it
said, her contemporaries, especially the men, rarely made such an
attempt at analysis. They applauded all she said (off and on the stage),
they tolerated all she did, albeit that they paid the cost of many of
her so-called "amiable tricks," which were mainly so many instances of
greed and nothing else. One evening she was dining at Comte Duchâtel's,
the minister of Louis-Philippe. The table was positively laden with
flowers, but Rachel did not care much about them; what she wanted was
the splendid silver centre-piece. But she was too clever to unmask her
batteries at once, so she began by admiring the contents, then at last
she came to the principal point. The host was either in one of his
generous or foolish moods, and made her a present of it there and then.
Rachel knew, though, that even with a grand seigneur like Comte
Duchâtel, there are "les lendemains de l'enthousiasme," especially when
he is a married man, whose wife does not willingly submit to have her
home stripped of its art-treasures. The tragédienne came in a hackney
cab; the comte offered to send her back in his carriage. She struck the
iron while it was hot. "Yes, that will do admirably; there will be no
fear of my being robbed of your present, which I had better take with
me." "Perfectly, mademoiselle," replied the comte; "but you will send me
back my carriage, won't you?"

Dr. Véron was despoiled with even less ceremony. Having taken a fancy to
some silver saucers or cups in which the proprietor of the
_Constitutionnel_ offered ices to his visitors, she began by pocketing
one, and never rested until she had the whole of the set. In short,
everything was fish to her net. She made her friends give her bibelots
and knickknacks of no particular value, to which she attached some
particular legend--absolute inventions for the greatest part--in order
to sell them for a thousand times their original cost. One day she
noticed a guitar at the studio of one of her familiars. "Give me that
guitar; people will think it is the one with which I earned my living on
the Place Royale and on the Place de la Bastille." And as such it was
sold by her to M. Achille Fould for a thousand louis. The great
financier nearly fell into a fit when the truth was told to him at
Rachel's death; he, in his turn, having wanted to "do a bit of
business." In this instance no Christian suffered, because buyer and
vendor belonged to the same race. Of course the panegyrists of Rachel,
when the story came to their ears, maintained that the thousand louis
were employed for some charitable purpose, without, however, revealing
the particular quarter whither they went; but those who judged Rachel
dispassionately could not even aver that her charity began at home,
because, though she never ceased complaining of her brother's and her
sisters' extravagance, both brother and sisters could have told very
curious tales about the difficulty of making her loosen her
purse-strings for even the smallest sums. As for Rachel's doing good by
stealth and blushing to find it fame, it was all so much fudge. Contrary
to the majority of her fellow-professionals, in the past as well as the
present, she even grudged her services for a concert or a performance in
aid of a deserving object, although she was not above swelling her own
hoard by such entertainments.

The following instance, for the absolute truth of which I can vouch, is
a proof of what I say. One day the celebrated Baron Taylor, who had been
the director of the Comédie-Française, came to solicit her aid for a
charity concert; I am not certain of the object, but believe it was in
aid of the Christians in Persia or China. The tickets were to be a
hundred francs each. Sontag, Alboni, Rosine Stoltz, Mario, Lablache,
Vieuxtemps, and I do not know how many more celebrated artists had
promised their services.

It was in 1850 when M. Arsène Houssaye was her director, and I am
particular about giving the year, because Rachel refused on the pretext
that her director would never give her leave to appear on any other
stage. Now, it so happened that no woman ever had a more devoted friend
and chivalrous champion than Rachel had in Arsène Houssaye. His
friendship for her was simply idolatry, and I verily believe that if she
had asked him to stand on his head to please her, he would have done so,
at the risk of making himself supremely ridiculous--he who feared
ridicule above everything, who was one of the most sensible men of his
time, who was and is the incarnation of good-nature, to whom no one in
distress or difficulties ever appealed in vain.

Baron Taylor argued all this, but Rachel remained inflexible. "I am very
sorry," he said at last, rising to go, "because I am positive that your
name on the bill would have made a difference of several thousand francs
in the receipts."

"Oh, if you only want my name," was the answer, "you may have it; you
can make an apology at the eleventh hour for my absence on the score of
sudden indisposition--the public at charity concerts are used to that
sort of thing; besides, you will have so many celebrities that it will
make very little difference. By-the-by"--as he was at the door--"I think
my name is worth ten or twenty tickets." Taylor knew Rachel too well to
be in the least surprised at the demand, and left ten tickets on the
mantelpiece.

That same afternoon he met Count Walewski, and as a matter of course
asked him to take some tickets.

"Very sorry, cher baron, but I have got ten already. You see, poor
Rachel did not know very well how to get rid of the two hundred you
burdened her with as a lady patroness; so she wanted me to have twenty,
but I settled the matter with ten. As it is, it cost me a thousand
francs."

Taylor did not say another word--he probably could not; he was struck
dumb with astonishment at the quickness with which Rachel had converted
the tickets into money. But what puzzled him still more was the fact of
her having offered Walewski double the quantity of tickets he had given
her. Where had she got the others from? He was coming to the conclusion
that she had offered twenty in order to place ten, when he ran against
Comte Le Hon, the husband of the celebrated Mdlle. Musselmans, the
erstwhile Belgian ambassador to the court of Louis-Philippe, who averred
frankly that he was the father of a family, though he had no children of
his own.

Taylor thought he would try another chance, and was met with the reply,
"Cher baron, I am very sorry, but I have just taken five tickets from
Mdlle. Rachel. It appears that she is a lady patroness, and that they
burdened her with two hundred; fortunately, she told me, people were
exceedingly anxious to get them, and these were the last five."

"Then she had two hundred tickets after all," said Baron Taylor to
himself, making up his mind to find out who had been before him with
Rachel. But no one had been before him. The five tickets sold to Comte
Le Hon were five of the ten she had sold to Comte Walewski. When the
latter had paid her, she made him give her five tickets for herself and
family, or rather for her four sisters and herself. Of Comte Le Hon she
only took toll of one, which, wonderful to relate, she did not sell.
This was Rachel's way of bestirring herself in the cause of charity.

"Look at the presents she made to every one," say the panegyrists. They
forget to mention that an hour afterwards she regretted her generosity,
and from that moment she never left off scheming how to get the thing
back. Every one knew this. Beauvallet, to whom she gave a magnificent
sword one day, instead of thanking her, said, "I'll have a chain put to
it, mademoiselle, so as to fasten it to the wall of my dressing-room. In
that way I shall be sure that it will not disappear during my absence."
Alexandre Dumas the younger, to whom she made a present of a ring, bowed
low and placed it back on her finger at once. "Allow me to present it to
you in my turn, mademoiselle, so as to prevent you asking for it." She
did not say nay, but carried the matter with one of her fascinating
smiles. "It is most natural to take back what one has given, because
what one has given was dear to us," she replied.

Between '46 and '53 I saw a great deal of Rachel, generally in the
green-room of the Comédie-Française, which was by no means the
comfortable or beautiful apartment people imagine, albeit that even in
those days the Comédie had a collection of interesting pictures, busts,
and statues worthy of being housed in a small museum. The chief ornament
of the room was a large glass between the two windows, but if the
apartment had been as bare as a barn, the conversation of Rachel would
have been sufficient to make one forget all about its want of
decoration; for, with the exception of the elder Dumas, I have never met
any one, either man or woman, who exercised the personal charm she did.
I have been told since that Bismarck has the same gift. I was never
sufficiently intimate with the great statesman to be able to judge,
having only met him three or four times, and under conditions that did
not admit of fairly testing his powers in that respect, but I have an
idea that the charm of both lay in their utter indifference to the
effect produced, or else in their absolute confidence of the result of
their simplicity of diction. Rachel's art of telling a story, if art it
was, reminded one of that of the chroniclers of the _Niebelungen_; for
notwithstanding her familiarity with Racine and Corneille, her
vocabulary was exceedingly limited, and her syntax, if not her grammar,
off the stage, not always free from reproach.

I do not pretend, after the lapse of so many years, to give these
stories in her own language, or all of them; there are a few, however,
worth the telling, apart from the fascination with which she invested
them.

One evening she said to me, "Do you know Poirson?"

I had known Poirson when he was director of the Gymnase. He afterwards
always invited me to his soirées, one of which, curiously enough, was
given on the Sunday before the Revolution of '48. So I said, "Yes, I
know Poirson."

"Has he ever told you why he did not re-engage me?"

"Never."

"I'll tell you. People said it was because I did not succeed in 'La
Vendéenne' of Paul Duport; but that was not the cause. It was something
much more ridiculous; and now that I come to think of it, I am not sure
that I ought to tell you, for you are an Englishman, and you will be
shocked."

I was not shocked, I was simply convulsed with laughter, for Rachel, not
content with telling the story, got up, and, gradually drawing to the
middle of the room, enacted it. It was one of those ludicrous incidents
that happen sometimes on the stage, which no amount of foresight on the
part of the most skilful and conscientious manager or actor can prevent,
but which almost invariably ruins the greatest masterpiece. There were
about eight or nine actors and actresses in the room--Régnier, Samson,
Beauvallet, etc. It was probably the most critical audience in Europe,
but every one shook, and Mdlle. Anaïs Aubert went into a dead faint.
Régnier often averred that if Rachel had been a man, she would have been
the greatest comic actor that ever lived; and it is not generally known
that she once played Dorine in "Tartuffe," and set the whole of the
house into a perfect roar; but on that evening I became convinced that
Rachel, in addition to her tragic gifts, was the spirit of
Aristophanesque comedy personified. I am afraid, however, that I cannot
tell the story, or even hint at it, beyond mentioning that Poirson is
reported to have said that Rachel did not want a stage-manager, but a
nurse to take care of her. The criticism was a cruel one, though
justified by appearances. It was Mama Félix, and not her daughter, who
was to blame. The child--she was scarcely more than that--had hurt
herself severely, and instead of keeping her at home, she sent her to
the theatre, "poulticed all over," as Rachel expressed it afterwards.

Mama Félix was the only one who was a match for her famous daughter in
money matters. What the latter did with the enormous sums of money she
earned has always been a mystery. As I have already said, they were not
spent in charity. Nowadays, whatever other theatres may do, the
Comédie-Française dresses its pensionnaires as well as its sociétaires
from head to foot; it pays the bootmaker's as well as the wigmaker's
bill, and the laundress's also. Speaking of the beginning of her career,
which coincided with the end of Rachel's, Madeleine Brohan, whose
language was often more forcible than elegant, remarked, "Dans ma
jeunesse, on nous mettait toutes nues sur la scène; nous étions assez
jolies pour cela." But Rachel's costumes varied so little throughout her
career as to have required but a small outlay on her part. Nor could her
ordinary dresses and furniture, which I happened to see in April, 1858,
when they were sold by public auction at her apartments in the Place
Royale, have made a considerable inroad on her earnings. The furniture
was commonplace to a degree; such pictures and knickknacks as were of
value had been given to her, or acquired in the manner I have already
described; the laces and trinkets were, undoubtedly, not purchased with
her own money. It is said that her brother Raphael was a spendthrift. He
may have been, but he did not spend his celebrated sister's money; of
that I feel certain. Then what became of it? I am inclined to think that
Mdlle. Rachel dabbled considerably in stocks, and that, notwithstanding
her shrewdness and sources of information, she was the victim of people
cleverer than she was. At any rate, one thing is certain--she was nearly
always hard up; and, after having exhausted the good will of all her
male acquaintances and friends, compelled to appeal to her mother, who
had made a considerable hoard for her other four sisters, and perhaps
also for her scapegrace son; for, curiously enough, with Mama Félix
every one of her children was a goddess or god, except _the goddess_.
This want of appreciation on the mother's part reminds me of a story
told to me by Meissonier. His granddaughter, on her fifteenth or