The History of a Crime, Victor Hugo [white hot kiss .TXT] 📗
- Author: Victor Hugo
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One day, or rather, one night, the moment having come to save society, the coup d'état abruptly seizes the Demagogues, and finds that it holds by the collar, Whom? the Royalists.
They arrived at the barracks, formerly the barracks of the Royal Guard, and on the pediment of which is a carved escutcheon, whereon are still visible the traces of the three fleurs de lis effaced in 1830. They halted. The door was opened. "Why!" said M. de Broglie, "here we are."
At that moment a great placard posted on the barrack wall by the side of the door bore in big letters—
It was the advertisement of a pamphlet, published two or three days previous to the coup d'état, without any author's name, demanding the Empire, and was attributed to the President of the Republic.
The Representatives entered and the doors were closed upon them. The shouts ceased; the crowd, which occasionally has its meditative moments, remained for some time on the quay, dumb, motionless, gazing alternately at the closed gate of the Barracks, and at the silent front of the Palace of the Assembly, dimly visible in the misty December twilight, two hundred paces distant.
The two Commissaries of Police went to report their "success" to M. de Morny. M. de Morny said, "Now the struggle has begun. Excellent! These are the last Representatives who will be made prisoners."
5 The Gerontes, or Gerontia, were the Elders of Sparta, who constituted the Senate.
6 The "bureau" of the Assembly consists of the President, for the time being of the Assembly, assisted by six secretaries, whose duties mainly lie in deciding in what sense the Deputies have voted. The "bureau" of the Assembly should not be confounded with the fifteen "bureaux" of the Deputies, which answer to our Select Committees of the House of Commons, and are presided over by self-chosen Presidents.
7 An allusion to the twenty-five francs a day officially payable to the members of the Assembly.
CHAPTER XIII. LOUIS BONAPARTE'S SIDE-FACE The minds of all these men, we repeat, were very differently affected.
The extreme Legitimist party, which represents the White of the flag, was not, it must be said, highly exasperated at the coup d'état. Upon many faces might be read the saying of M. de Falloux: "I am so satisfied that I have considerable difficulty in affecting to be only resigned." The ingenuous spirits cast down their eyes—that is becoming to purity; more daring spirits raised their heads. They felt an impartial indignation which permitted a little admiration. How cleverly these generals have been ensnared! The Country assassinated,—it is a horrible crime; but they were enraptured at the jugglery blended with the parricide. One of the leaders said, with a sigh of envy and regret, "We do not possess a man of such talent." Another muttered, "It is Order." And he added, "Alas!" Another exclaimed, "It is a frightful crime, but well carried out." Some wavered, attracted on one side by the lawful power which rested in the Assembly, and on the other by the abomination which was in Bonaparte; honest souls poised between duty and infamy. There was a M. Thomines Desmazures who went as far as the door of the Great Hall of the Mairie, halted, looked inside, looked outside, and did not enter. It would be unjust not to record that others amongst the pure Royalists, and above all M. de Vatimesnil, had the sincere intonation and the upright wrath of justice.
Be it as it may, the Legitimist party, taken as a whole, entertained no horror of the coup d'état. It feared nothing. In truth, should the Royalists fear Louis Bonaparte? Why?
Indifference does not inspire fear. Louis Bonaparte was indifferent. He only recognized one thing, his object. To break through the road in order to reach it, that was quite plain; the rest might be left alone. There lay the whole of his policy, to crush the Republicans, to disdain the Royalists.
Louis Bonaparte had no passion. He who writes these lines, talking one day about Louis Bonaparte with the ex-king of Westphalia, remarked, "In him the Dutchman tones down the Corsican."—"If there be any Corsican," answered Jérome.
Louis Bonaparte has never been other than a man who has lain wait for fortune, a spy trying to dupe God. He had that livid dreaminess of the gambler who cheats. Cheating admits audacity, but excludes anger. In his prison at Ham he only read one book, "The Prince." He belonged to no family, as he could hesitate between Bonaparte and Verhuell; he had no country, as he could hesitate between France and Holland.
This Napoleon had taken St. Helena in good part. He admired England. Resentment! To what purpose? For him on earth there only existed his interests. He pardoned, because he speculated; he forgot everything, because he calculated upon everything. What did his uncle matter to him? He did not serve him; he made use of him. He rested his shabby enterprise upon Austerlitz. He stuffed the eagle.
Malice is an unproductive outlay. Louis Bonaparte only possessed as much memory as is useful. Hudson Lowe did not prevent him from smiling upon Englishmen; the Marquis of Montchenu did not prevent him from smiling upon the Royalists.
He was a man of earnest politics, of good company, wrapped in his own scheming, not impulsive, doing nothing beyond that which he intended, without abruptness, without hard words, discreet, accurate, learned, talking smoothly of a necessary massacre, a slaughterer, because it served his purpose.
All this, we repeat, without passion, and without anger. Louis Bonaparte was one of those men who had been influenced by the profound iciness of Machiavelli.
It was through being a man of that nature that he succeeded in submerging the name of Napoleon by superadding December upon Brumaire.
CHAPTER XIV. THE D'ORSAY BARRACKS It was half-past three.
The arrested Representatives entered into the courtyard of the barracks, a huge parallelogram closed in and commanded by high walls. These walls are pierced by three tiers of windows, and posses that dismal appearance which distinguishes barracks, schools, and prisons.
This courtyard is entered by an arched portal which extends through all the breadth of the front of the main building. This archway, under which the guard-house has been made, is close on the side of the quay by large solid folding doors, and on one side of the courtyard by an iron grated gateway. They closed the door and the grated gateway upon the Representatives. They "set them at liberty" in the bolted and guarded courtyard.
"Let them stroll about," said an officer.
The air was cold, the sky was gray. Some soldiers, in their shirt-sleeves and wearing foraging caps, busy with fatigue duty, went hither and thither amongst the prisoners.
First M. Grimault and then M. Antony Thouret instituted a roll-call. The Representatives made a ring around them. Lherbette said laughingly, "This just suits the barracks. We look like sergeant-majors who have come to report." They called over the seven hundred and fifty names of the Representatives. To each name they answered "Absent" or "Present," and the secretary jotted down with a pencil those who were present. When the name of Morny was reached, some one cried out, "At Clichy!" At the name of Persigny, the same voice exclaimed, "At Poissy!" The inventor of these two jokes, which by the way are very poor, has since allied himself to the Second of December, to Morny and Persigny; he has covered his cowardice with the embroidery of a senator.
The roll-call verified the presence of two hundred and twenty Representatives, whose names were as follows:—
Le Duc de Luynes, d'Andigné de la Chasse, Antony Thouret, Arène, Audren de Kerdrel (Ille-et-Vilaine), Audren de Kerdrel (Morbihan), de Balzac, Barchou de Penhoen, Barillon, O. Barrot, Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, Quentin Bauchard, G. deBeaumont, Béchard, Behaghel, de Belèvze, Benoist-d'Azy, de Benardy, Berryer, de Berset, Basse, Betting de Lancastel, Blavoyer, Bocher, Boissié, de Botmillan, Bouvatier, le Duc de Broglie, de la Broise, de Bryas, Buffet, Caillet du Tertre, Callet, Camus de la Guibourgère, Canet, de Castillon, de Cazalis, Admiral Cécile, Chambolle, Chamiot, Champannet, Chaper, Chapot, de Charencey, Chasseigne, Chauvin, Chazant, de Chazelles, Chegaray, Comte de Coislin, Colfavru, Colas de la Motte, Coquerel, de Corcelles, Cordier, Corne, Creton, Daguilhon, Pujol, Dahirel, Vicomte Dambray, Marquis de Dampierre, de Brotonne, de Fontaine, de Fontenay, Vicomte de Sèze, Desmars, de la Devansaye, Didier, Dieuleveult, Druet-Desvaux, A. Dubois, Dufaure, Dufougerais, Dufour, Dufournel, Marc Dufraisse, P. Duprat, Duvergier de Hauranne, Étienne, Vicomte de Falloux, de Faultrier, Faure (Rhône), Favreau, Ferre, des Ferrès, Vicomte de Flavigny, de Foblant, Frichon, Gain, Gasselin, Germonière, de Gicquiau, de Goulard, de Gouyon, de Grandville, de Grasset, Grelier-Dufougerais, Grévy, Grillon, Grimault, Gros, Guislier de la Tousche, Harscouët de Saint-Georges, Marquis d'Havrincourt, Hennequin, d'Hespel, Houel, Hovyn-Tranchère, Huot, Joret, Jouannet, de Kéranflech, de Kératry, de Kéridec, de Kermazec, de Kersauron Penendreff, Lèo de Laborde, Laboulie, Lacave, Oscar Lafayette, Lafosse, Lagarde, Lagrenée Laimé, Lainé, Comte Lanjuinais, Larabit, de Larcy, J. de Lasteyrie, Latrade, Laureau, Laurenceau, General Marquis de Lauriston, de Laussat, Lefebvre de Grosriez, Legrand, Legros-Desvaux, Lemaire, Emile Leroux, Lespérut, de l'Espinoy, Lherbette, de Linsaval, de Luppé, Maréchal, Martin de Villers, Maze-Saunay, Mèze, Arnauld de Melun, Anatole de Melun, Merentié, Michaud, Mispoulet, Monet, Duc de Montebello, de Montigny, Moulin, Murat-Sistrière, Alfred Nettement, d'Olivier, General Oudinot, Duc de Reggio, Paillat, Duparc, Passy, Emile Péan, Pécoul, Casimir Perier, Pidoux, Pigeon, de Piogé, Piscatory, Proa, Prudhomme, Querhoent, Randoing, Raudot, Raulin, de Ravinel, de Rémusat, Renaud, Rezal, Comte de Rességuier, Henri de Riancey, Rigal, de la Rochette, Rodat, de Roquefeuille des Rotours de Chaulieu, Rouget-Lafosse, Rouillé, Roux-Carbonel, Saint-Beuve, de Saint-Germain, General Comte de Saint-Priest, Salmon (Meuse), Marquis Sauvaire-Barthélemy, de Serré, Comte de Sesmaisons, Simonot, de Staplande, de Surville, Marquis de Talhouet, Talon, Tamisier, Thuriot de la Rosière, de Tinguy, Comte de Tocqueville, de la Tourette, Comte de Tréveneue, Mortimer-Ternaux, de Vatimesnil, Baron de Vandoeuvre, Vernhette (Hérault), Vernhette (Aveyron), Vézin, Vitet, Comte de Vogué.
After this list of names may be read as follows in the shorthand report:—
"The roll-call having been completed, General Oudinot asked the Representatives who were scattered about in the courtyard to come round him, and made the following announcement to them,—
"'The Captain-Adjutant-Major, who has remained here to command the barracks, has just received an order to have rooms prepared for us, where we are to withdraw, as we are considered to be in custody. (Hear! hear!) Do you wish me to bring the Adjutant-Major here! (No, no; it is useless.) I will tell him that he had better execute his orders.' (Yes, yes, that is right.)"
The Representatives remained "penned" and "strolling" about in this yard for two long hours. They walked about arm in arm. They walked quickly, so as to warm themselves. The men of the Right said to the men of the Left, "Ah! if you had only voted the proposals of the Questors!" They also exclaimed: "Well, how about the invisible sentry!"8 And they laughed. Then Marc Dufraisse answered, "Deputies of the People! deliberate in peace!" It was then the turn of the Left to laugh. Nevertheless, there was no bitterness. The cordiality of a common misfortune reigned amongst them.
They questioned his ex-ministers about Louis Bonaparte. They asked Admiral
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