Les Misérables, page 177
CHAPTER I--AN ANCIENT SALON
When M. Gillenormand lived in the Rue Servandoni, he had frequentedmany very good and very aristocratic salons. Although a bourgeois, M.Gillenormand was received in society. As he had a double measure of wit,in the first place, that which was born with him, and secondly, thatwhich was attributed to him, he was even sought out and made much of. Henever went anywhere except on condition of being the chief person there.There are people who will have influence at any price, and who will haveother people busy themselves over them; when they cannot be oracles,they turn wags. M. Gillenormand was not of this nature; his dominationin the Royalist salons which he frequented cost his self-respectnothing. He was an oracle everywhere. It had happened to him to hold hisown against M. de Bonald, and even against M. Bengy-Puy-Vallée.
About 1817, he invariably passed two afternoons a week in a house inhis own neighborhood, in the Rue Férou, with Madame la Baronne de T.,a worthy and respectable person, whose husband had been Ambassador ofFrance to Berlin under Louis XVI. Baron de T., who, during his lifetime,had gone very passionately into ecstasies and magnetic visions, had diedbankrupt, during the emigration, leaving, as his entire fortune,some very curious Memoirs about Mesmer and his tub, in ten manuscriptvolumes, bound in red morocco and gilded on the edges. Madame de T. hadnot published the memoirs, out of pride, and maintained herself on ameagre income which had survived no one knew how.
Madame de T. lived far from the Court; "a very mixed society," as shesaid, in a noble isolation, proud and poor. A few friends assembledtwice a week about her widowed hearth, and these constituted a purelyRoyalist salon. They sipped tea there, and uttered groans or cries ofhorror at the century, the charter, the Bonapartists, the prostitutionof the blue ribbon, or the Jacobinism of Louis XVIII., according as thewind veered towards elegy or dithyrambs; and they spoke in low tones ofthe hopes which were presented by Monsieur, afterwards Charles X.
The songs of the fishwomen, in which Napoleon was called _Nicolas_, werereceived there with transports of joy. Duchesses, the most delicate andcharming women in the world, went into ecstasies over couplets like thefollowing, addressed to "the federates":--
Refoncez dans vos culottes Le bout d' chemis' qui vous pend. Qu'on n' dis' pas qu' les patriotes Ont arboré l' drapeau blanc?20
There they amused themselves with puns which were considered terrible,with innocent plays upon words which they supposed to be venomous, withquatrains, with distiches even; thus, upon the Dessolles ministry, amoderate cabinet, of which MM. Decazes and Deserre were members:--
Pour raffermir le trône ébranlé sur sa base, Il faut changer de sol, et de serre et de case.21
Or they drew up a list of the chamber of peers, "an abominably Jacobinchamber," and from this list they combined alliances of names, in sucha manner as to form, for example, phrases like the following: _Damas.Sabran. Gouvion-Saint-Cyr_.--All this was done merrily. In that society,they parodied the Revolution. They used I know not what desires to givepoint to the same wrath in inverse sense. They sang their little _Çaira: _--
Ah! ça ira ça ira ça ira! Les Bonapartistes à la lanterne!
Songs are like the guillotine; they chop away indifferently, to-day thishead, to-morrow that. It is only a variation.
In the Fualdès affair, which belongs to this epoch, 1816, they tookpart for Bastide and Jausion, because Fualdès was "a Buonapartist." Theydesignated the liberals as f_riends and brothers_; this constituted themost deadly insult.
Like certain church towers, Madame de T.'s salon had two cocks. One ofthem was M. Gillenormand, the other was Comte de Lamothe-Valois, of whomit was whispered about, with a sort of respect: "Do you know? That isthe Lamothe of the affair of the necklace." These singular amnesties dooccur in parties.
Let us add the following: in the bourgeoisie, honored situations decaythrough too easy relations; one must beware whom one admits; in the sameway that there is a loss of caloric in the vicinity of those who arecold, there is a diminution of consideration in the approach of despisedpersons. The ancient society of the upper classes held themselves abovethis law, as above every other. Marigny, the brother of the Pompadour,had his entry with M. le Prince de Soubise. In spite of? No, because. DuBarry, the god-father of the Vaubernier, was very welcome at the houseof M. le Maréchal de Richelieu. This society is Olympus. Mercury andthe Prince de Guémenée are at home there. A thief is admitted there,provided he be a god.
The Comte de Lamothe, who, in 1815, was an old man seventy-five years ofage, had nothing remarkable about him except his silent and sententiousair, his cold and angular face, his perfectly polished manners, his coatbuttoned up to his cravat, and his long legs always crossed in long,flabby trousers of the hue of burnt sienna. His face was the same coloras his trousers.
This M. de Lamothe was "held in consideration" in this salon on accountof his "celebrity" and, strange to say, though true, because of his nameof Valois.
As for M. Gillenormand, his consideration was of absolutely first-ratequality. He had, in spite of his levity, and without its interfering inany way with his dignity, a certain manner about him which was imposing,dignified, honest, and lofty, in a bourgeois fashion; and his greatage added to it. One is not a century with impunity. The years finallyproduce around a head a venerable dishevelment.
In addition to this, he said things which had the genuine sparkle of theold rock. Thus, when the King of Prussia, after having restored LouisXVIII., came to pay the latter a visit under the name of the Count deRuppin, he was received by the descendant of Louis XIV. somewhatas though he had been the Marquis de Brandebourg, and with the mostdelicate impertinence. M. Gillenormand approved: "All kings who arenot the King of France," said he, "are provincial kings." One day, thefollowing question was put and the following answer returned in hispresence: "To what was the editor of the _Courrier Français_ condemned?""To be suspended." "_Sus_ is superfluous," observed M. Gillenormand.22Remarks of this nature found a situation.
At the Te Deum on the anniversary of the return of the Bourbons, hesaid, on seeing M. de Talleyrand pass by: "There goes his Excellency theEvil One."
M. Gillenormand was always accompanied by his daughter, that tallmademoiselle, who was over forty and looked fifty, and by a handsomelittle boy of seven years, white, rosy, fresh, with happy and trustingeyes, who never appeared in that salon without hearing voices murmuraround him: "How handsome he is! What a pity! Poor child!" This childwas the one of whom we dropped a word a while ago. He was called "poorchild," because he had for a father "a brigand of the Loire."
This brigand of the Loire was M. Gillenormand's son-in-law, who hasalready been mentioned, and whom M. Gillenormand called "the disgrace ofhis family."
