The Parisians — Complete by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (beautiful books to read TXT) 📖

Isaura left her letter uncompleted. On the following Monday she was present at a crowded soiree given by M. Louvier. Among the guests were some of the most eminent leaders of the Opposition, including that vivacious master of sharp sayings, M. P———-, whom Savarin entitled “the French Sheridan;” if laws could be framed in epigrams he would be also the French Solon.

There, too, was Victor de Mauleon, regarded by the Republican party with equal admiration and distrust. For the distrust, he himself pleasantly accounted in talk with Savarin.

“How can I expect to be trusted? I represent ‘Common Sense;’ every Parisian likes Common Sense in print, and cries ‘Je suis trahi’ when Common Sense is to be put into action.”

A group of admiring listeners had collected round one (perhaps the most brilliant) of those oratorical lawyers by whom, in France, the respect for all laws has been so often talked away: he was speaking of the Saturday’s ceremonial with eloquent indignation. It was a mockery to France to talk of her placing Liberty under the protection of the Empire.

There was a flagrant token of the military force under which civil freedom was held in the very dress of the Emperor and his insignificant son: the first in the uniform of a General of Division; the second, forsooth, in that of a sous-lieutenant. The other liberal chiefs chimed in: “The army,” said one, “was an absurd expense; it must be put down:” “The world was grown too civilised for war,” said another: “The Empress was priest-ridden,” said a third: “Churches might be tolerated; Voltaire built a church, but a church simply to the God of Nature, not of priestcraft,”—and so on.

Isaura, whom any sneer at religion pained and revolted, here turned away from the orators to whom she had before been listening with earnest attention, and her eyes fell on the countenance of De Mauleon, who was seated opposite.

The countenance startled her, its expression was so angrily scornful; that expression, however, vanished at once as De Mauleon’s eyes met her own, and drawing his chair near to her, he said, smiling: “Your look tells me that I almost frightened you by the ill-bred frankness with which my face must have betrayed my anger, at hearing such imbecile twaddle from men who aspire to govern our turbulent France. You remember that after Lisbon was destroyed by an earthquake a quack advertised ‘pills against earthquakes.’ These messieurs are not so cunning as the quack; he did not name the ingredients of his pills.”

“But, M. de Mauleon,” said Isaura, “if you, being opposed to the Empire, think so ill of the wisdom of those who would destroy it, are you prepared with remedies for earthquakes more efficacious than their pills?”

“I reply as a famous English statesman, when in opposition, replied to a somewhat similar question,—‘I don’t prescribe till I’m called in.’”

“To judge by the seven millions and a half whose votes were announced on Saturday, and by the enthusiasm with which the Emperor was greeted, there is too little fear of an earthquake for a good trade of the pills of these messieurs, or for fair play to the remedies you will not disclose till called in.”

“Ah, Mademoiselle! playful wit from lips not formed for politics makes me forget all about emperors and earthquakes. Pardon that commonplace compliment—remember I am a Frenchman, and cannot help being frivolous.”

“You rebuke my presumption too gently. True, I ought not to intrude political subjects on one like you—I understand so little about them—but this is my excuse, I do so desire to know more.”

M. de Mauleon paused, and looked at her earnestly with a kindly, half compassionate look, wholly free from the impertinence of gallantry. “Young poetess,” he said, softly, “you care for politics. Happy, indeed, is he—and whether he succeed or fail in his ambition abroad, proud should he be of an ambition crowned at home—he who has made you desire to know more of politics!”

The girl felt the blood surge to her temples. How could she have been so self-confessed? She made no reply, nor did M. de Mauleon seem to expect one; with that rare delicacy of high breeding which appears in France to belong to a former generation, he changed his tone, and went on as if there had been no interruption to the question her words implied.

“You think the Empire secure—that it is menaced by on earthquake? You deceive yourself. The Emperor began with a fatal mistake, but a mistake it needs many years to discover. He disdained the slow natural process of adjustment between demand and supply—employer and workmen. He desired—no ignoble ambition—to make Paris the wonder of the world, the eternal monument of his reign. In so doing, he sought to create artificial modes of content for revolutionary workmen. Never has any ruler had such tender heed of manual labour to the disparagement of intellectual culture. Paris is embellished; Paris is the wonder of the world; other great towns have followed its example; they, too, have their rows of palaces and temples. Well, the time comes when the magician can no longer give work to the spirits he raises; then they must fall on him and rend: out of the very houses he built for the better habitation of workmen will flock the malcontents who cry, ‘Down with the Empire!’ On the 21st of May you witnessed the pompous ceremony which announces to the Empire a vast majority of votes, that will be utterly useless to it except as food for gunpowder in the times that are at hand. Seven days before, on the 14th of May, there was a riot in the Faubourg d’Temple—easily put down—you scarcely hear of it. That riot was not the less necessary to those who would warn the Empire that it is mortal. True, the riot disperses—but it is unpunished; riot unpunished is a revolution begun. The earthquake is nearer than you think; and for that earthquake what are the pills you quacks advertise? They prate of an age too enlightened for war; they would mutilate the army—nay, disband it if they could—with Prussia next door to France. Prussia, desiring, not unreasonably, to take that place in the world which France now holds, will never challenge France; if she did, she would be too much in the wrong to find a second: Prussia knowing that she has to do with the vainest, the most conceited, the rashest antagonist that ever flourished a rapier in the face of a spadassin—Prussia will make France challenge her.

“And how do ces messieurs deal with the French army? Do they dare to say to the ministers, ‘Reform it’? Do they dare say, ‘Prefer for men whose first duty it is to obey, discipline to equality—insist on the distinction between the officer and the private, and never confound it; Prussian officers are well-educated gentlemen, see that yours are’? Oh no; they are democrats too stanch not to fraternise with an armed mob; they content themselves with grudging an extra sou to the Commissariat, and winking at the millions fraudulently pocketed by some ‘Liberal contractor.’ Dieu des dieux! France to be beaten, not as at Waterloo by hosts combined, but in fair duel by a single foe! Oh, the shame! the shame! But as the French army is now organised, beaten she must be, if she meets the march of the German.”

“You appal me with your sinister predictions,” said Isaura; “but, happily, there is no sign of war. M. Duplessis, who is in the confidence of the Emperor, told us only the other day that Napoleon, on learning the result