Les Misérables, page 35
CHAPTER I--THE YEAR 1817
1817 is the year which Louis XVIII., with a certain royal assurance which was not wanting in pride, entitled the twenty-second of his reign. It is the year in which M. Bruguière de Sorsum was celebrated. All the hairdressers' shops, hoping for powder and the return of the royal bird, were besmeared with azure and decked with fleurs-de-lys. It was the candid time at which Count Lynch sat every Sunday as church-warden in the church-warden's pew of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in his costume of a peer of France, with his red ribbon and his long nose and the majesty of profile peculiar to a man who has performed a brilliant action. The brilliant action performed by M. Lynch was this: being mayor of Bordeaux, on the 12th of March, 1814, he had surrendered the city a little too promptly to M. the Duke d'Angoulême. Hence his peerage. In 1817 fashion swallowed up little boys of from four to six years of age in vast caps of morocco leather with ear-tabs resembling Esquimaux mitres. The French army was dressed in white, after the mode of the Austrian; the regiments were called legions; instead of numbers they bore the names of departments; Napoleon was at St. Helena; and since England refused him green cloth, he was having his old coats turned. In 1817 Pelligrini sang; Mademoiselle Bigottini danced; Potier reigned; Odry did not yet exist. Madame Saqui had succeeded to Forioso. There were still Prussians in France. M. Delalot was a personage. Legitimacy had just asserted itself by cutting off the hand, then the head, of Pleignier, of Carbonneau, and of Tolleron. The Prince de Talleyrand, grand chamberlain, and the Abbé Louis, appointed minister of finance, laughed as they looked at each other, with the laugh of the two augurs; both of them had celebrated, on the 14th of July, 1790, the mass of federation in the Champ de Mars; Talleyrand had said it as bishop, Louis had served it in the capacity of deacon. In 1817, in the side-alleys of this same Champ de Mars, two great cylinders of wood might have been seen lying in the rain, rotting amid the grass, painted blue, with traces of eagles and bees, from which the gilding was falling. These were the columns which two years before had upheld the Emperor's platform in the Champ de Mai. They were blackened here and there with the scorches of the bivouac of Austrians encamped near Gros-Caillou. Two or three of these columns had disappeared in these bivouac fires, and had warmed the large hands of the Imperial troops. The Field of May had this remarkable point: that it had been held in the month of June and in the Field of March (Mars). In this year, 1817, two things were popular: the Voltaire-Touquet and the snuff-box _à la Charter_. The most recent Parisian sensation was the crime of Dautun, who had thrown his brother's head into the fountain of the Flower-Market.
They had begun to feel anxious at the Naval Department, on accountof the lack of news from that fatal frigate, _The Medusa_, which wasdestined to cover Chaumareix with infamy and Géricault with glory.Colonel Selves was going to Egypt to become Soliman-Pasha. The palace ofThermes, in the Rue de La Harpe, served as a shop for a cooper. On theplatform of the octagonal tower of the Hotel de Cluny, the little shedof boards, which had served as an observatory to Messier, the navalastronomer under Louis XVI., was still to be seen. The Duchesse de Durasread to three or four friends her unpublished _Ourika_, in her boudoirfurnished by X. in sky-blue satin. The N's were scratched off theLouvre. The bridge of Austerlitz had abdicated, and was entitled thebridge of the King's Garden [du Jardin du Roi], a double enigma, whichdisguised the bridge of Austerlitz and the Jardin des Plantes at onestroke. Louis XVIII., much preoccupied while annotating Horace with thecorner of his finger-nail, heroes who have become emperors, and makersof wooden shoes who have become dauphins, had two anxieties,--Napoleonand Mathurin Bruneau. The French Academy had given for its prizesubject, _The Happiness procured through Study_. M. Bellart wasofficially eloquent. In his shadow could be seen germinating thatfuture advocate-general of Broë, dedicated to the sarcasms of Paul-LouisCourier. There was a false Chateaubriand, named Marchangy, in theinterim, until there should be a false Marchangy, named d'Arlincourt._Claire d'Albe_ and _Malek-Adel_ were masterpieces; Madame Cottinwas proclaimed the chief writer of the epoch. The Institute had theacademician, Napoleon Bonaparte, stricken from its list of members.A royal ordinance erected Angoulême into a naval school; for the Ducd'Angoulême, being lord high admiral, it was evident that the city ofAngoulême had all the qualities of a seaport; otherwise the monarchicalprinciple would have received a wound. In the Council of Ministersthe question was agitated whether vignettes representing slack-ropeperformances, which adorned Franconi's advertising posters, and whichattracted throngs of street urchins, should be tolerated. M. Paër, theauthor of _Agnese_, a good sort of fellow, with a square face and a warton his cheek, directed the little private concerts of the Marquise deSasenaye in the Rue Ville l'Évêque. All the young girls were singingthe _Hermit of Saint-Avelle_, with words by Edmond Géraud. _The YellowDwarf_ was transferred into _Mirror_. The Café Lemblin stood up for theEmperor, against the Café Valois, which upheld the Bourbons. The Duc deBerri, already surveyed from the shadow by Louvel, had just been marriedto a princess of Sicily. Madame de Staël had died a year previously. Thebody-guard hissed Mademoiselle Mars. The grand newspapers were allvery small. Their form was restricted, but their liberty was great. The_Constitutionnel_ was constitutional. _La Minerve_ called Chateaubriand_Chateaubriant_. That _t_ made the good middle-class people laughheartily at the expense of the great writer. In journals which soldthemselves, prostituted journalists, insulted the exiles of 1815. Davidhad no longer any talent, Arnault had no longer any wit, Carnot was nolonger honest, Soult had won no battles; it is true that Napoleon had nolonger any genius. No one is ignorant of the fact that letters sent toan exile by post very rarely reached him, as the police made it theirreligious duty to intercept them. This is no new fact; Descartescomplained of it in his exile. Now David, having, in a Belgianpublication, shown some displeasure at not receiving letters which hadbeen written to him, it struck the royalist journals as amusing; andthey derided the prescribed man well on this occasion. What separatedtwo men more than an abyss was to say, the _regicides_, or to saythe _voters_; to say the _enemies_, or to say the _allies_; to say_Napoleon_, or to say _Buonaparte_. All sensible people were agreedthat the era of revolution had been closed forever by King Louis XVIII.,surnamed "The Immortal Author of the Charter." On the platform of thePont-Neuf, the word _Redivivus_ was carved on the pedestal that awaitedthe statue of Henry IV. M. Piet, in the Rue Thérèse, No. 4, was makingthe rough draft of his privy assembly to consolidate the monarchy.The leaders of the Right said at grave conjunctures, "We must write toBacot." MM. Canuel, O'Mahoney, and De Chappedelaine were preparing thesketch, to some extent with Monsieur's approval, of what was to becomelater on "The Conspiracy of the Bord de l'Eau"--of the waterside.L'Épingle Noire was already plotting in his own quarter. Delaverderiewas conferring with Trogoff. M. Decazes, who was liberal to a degree,reigned. Chateaubriand stood every morning at his window at No. 27 RueSaint-Dominique, clad in footed trousers, and slippers, with a madraskerchief knotted over his gray hair, with his eyes fixed on a mirror,a complete set of dentist's instruments spread out before him, cleaninghis teeth, which were charming, while he dictated _The Monarchyaccording to the Charter_ to M. Pilorge, his secretary. Criticism,assuming an authoritative tone, preferred Lafon to Talma. M. de Féletezsigned himself A.; M. Hoffmann signed himself Z. Charles Nodier wrote_Thérèse Aubert_. Divorce was abolished. Lyceums called themselvescolleges. The collegians, decorated on the collar with a goldenfleur-de-lys, fought each other _apropos_ of the King of Rome. Thecounter-police of the château had denounced to her Royal HighnessMadame, the portrait, everywhere exhibited, of M. the Duc d'Orléans, whomade a better appearance in his uniform of a colonel-general ofhussars than M. the Duc de Berri, in his uniform of colonel-general ofdragoons--a serious inconvenience. The city of Paris was having thedome of the Invalides regilded at its own expense. Serious men askedthemselves what M. de Trinquelague would do on such or such an occasion;M. Clausel de Montals differed on divers points from M. Clausel deCoussergues; M. de Salaberry was not satisfied. The comedian Picard, whobelonged to the Academy, which the comedian Molière had not been ableto do, had _The Two Philiberts_ played at the Odéon, upon whose pedimentthe removal of the letters still allowed THEATRE OF THE EMPRESS tobe plainly read. People took part for or against Cugnet de Montarlot.Fabvier was factious; Bavoux was revolutionary. The Liberal, Pélicier,published an edition of Voltaire, with the following title: _Works ofVoltaire_, of the French Academy. "That will attract purchasers," saidthe ingenious editor. The general opinion was that M. Charles Loysonwould be the genius of the century; envy was beginning to gnaw at him--asign of glory; and this verse was composed on him:--
"Even when Loyson steals, one feels that he has paws."
As Cardinal Fesch refused to resign, M. de Pins, Archbishop of Amasie,administered the diocese of Lyons. The quarrel over the valley of Dappeswas begun between Switzerland and France by a memoir from Captain,afterwards General Dufour. Saint-Simon, ignored, was erecting hissublime dream. There was a celebrated Fourier at the Academy of Science,whom posterity has forgotten; and in some garret an obscure Fourier,whom the future will recall. Lord Byron was beginning to make his mark;a note to a poem by Millevoye introduced him to France in these terms:_a certain Lord Baron_. David d'Angers was trying to work in marble. TheAbbé Caron was speaking, in terms of praise, to a private gathering ofseminarists in the blind alley of Feuillantines, of an unknown priest,named Félicité-Robert, who, at a latter date, became Lamennais. A thingwhich smoked and clattered on the Seine with the noise of a swimming dogwent and came beneath the windows of the Tuileries, from the Pont Royalto the Pont Louis XV.; it was a piece of mechanism which was notgood for much; a sort of plaything, the idle dream of a dream-riddeninventor; an utopia--a steamboat. The Parisians stared indifferently atthis useless thing. M. de Vaublanc, the reformer of the Institute bya coup d'état, the distinguished author of numerous academicians,ordinances, and batches of members, after having created them, couldnot succeed in becoming one himself. The Faubourg Saint-Germain and thepavilion de Marsan wished to have M. Delaveau for prefect of police, onaccount of his piety. Dupuytren and Récamier entered into a quarrel inthe amphitheatre of the School of Medicine, and threatened each otherwith their fists on the subject of the divinity of Jesus Christ. Cuvier,with one eye on Genesis and the other on nature, tried to please bigotedreaction by reconciling fossils with texts and by making mastodonsflatter Moses.
M. François de Neufchâteau, the praiseworthy cultivator of the memoryof Parmentier, made a thousand efforts to have _pomme de terre_ [potato]pronounced _parmentière_, and succeeded therein not at all. The AbbéGrégoire, ex-bishop, ex-conventionary, ex-senator, had passed, in theroyalist polemics, to the state of "Infamous Grégoire." The locution ofwhich we have made use--_passed to the state of_--has been condemnedas a neologism by M. Royer Collard. Under the third arch of the Pontde Jéna, the new stone with which, the two years previously, the miningaperture made by Blücher to blow up the bridge had been stopped up, wasstill recognizable on account of its whiteness. Justice summoned to itsbar a man who, on seeing the Comte d'Artois enter Notre Dame, had saidaloud: _"Sapristi! I regret the time when I saw Bonaparte and Talmaenter the Bel Sauvage, arm in arm."_ A seditious utterance. Six monthsin prison. Traitors showed themselves unbuttoned; men who had gone overto the enemy on the eve of battle made no secret of their recompense,and strutted immodestly in the light of day, in the cynicism of richesand dignities; deserters from Ligny and Quatre-Bras, in the brazennessof their well-paid turpitude, exhibited their devotion to the monarchyin the most barefaced manner.
This is what floats up confusedly, pell-mell, for the year 1817, and isnow forgotten. History neglects nearly all these particulars, and cannotdo otherwise; the infinity would overwhelm it. Nevertheless, thesedetails, which are wrongly called trivial,--there are no trivial factsin humanity, nor little leaves in vegetation,--are useful. It is ofthe physiognomy of the years that the physiognomy of the centuries iscomposed. In this year of 1817 four young Parisians arranged "a finefarce."
