Juliette Adam

“ How could we forget those who have not ceased to remember? Shall it be said that we failed those who rather than yield have suffered every form of torture? Let us endeavour together to prove in a more active manner our devotion to the brethren who are separated from us. Now that Prince Bismarck has one foot in the grave, now that the Russian Alliance is in the hands of the Government of France, let us devote all our strength and all the resources of our advocacy, all our love of justice, to the cause of Alsace-Lorraine. ”

“ If my half-sisters desire to repair the wrong they have done me, I approve their conduct; if my stepmother, now very old, wishes to die without remorse, I understand it. That is why I desire that you should play a part in this scheme of reconciliation, more worthy of our family than the unworthy machinations of former times. It is not a question of money, but of a triumph for your grandfather and myself, should your aunts make you their heiress. You see, Juliette, there is nothing more noble than to repair one’s wrong by a righteous act. ”

“ Let each one of us do all that lies in his power not to assist in any way the industry and commerce of Germany, which devour and destroy our own. Let us enlighten those near to us who in their turn will enlighten their neighbours, and let us stimulate a movement of resistance to the invasion of German produce of every kind; let every one of us contribute his share to the strengthening of public opinion for the struggle against the spirit of Germanism, which is gradually undermining the national spirit of France. ”

“ The memories which the Empress went to recall at Saint-Cloud and at Versailles were the same as those which she compelled us to call from the past: memories glorious for her but unforgettably sad for us, memories which, in reminding her of victory, were meant to remind us of a defeat to which our conquerors have added cruelty.
I watch with fervour the expression of our patriotism. A race which forgets the brutal insults of superior force deserves slavery. Italy would never have reconquered Milan and Venice had she resigned herself to see them pass under the yoke of the stranger. ”

“ I would like to die! Do not let them take my daughter from me, for pity’s sake!”
“Your daughter cannot remain here,” replied my mother; “her grandmother is waiting for her, for it was she who brought me home; she is at the Decaisne’s. Juliette will now be always tossed about between us; it is she who will be the shipwrecked one. Besides, I do not want her! Her grandmother has taken her, brought her up according to her ideas; let her keep her, marry her, arrange her happiness according to her will; it is not our place to meddle with it. ”

“ The challenges that men fling at the ideal structure of the principles of humanity are like the stones that children throw at monuments. They accumulate and serve to consolidate that which they were meant to destroy.
No one can reproach William II with inactivity, and in this the monarch at Berlin is of one mind with Germany. He draws the nation after him; it follows blindly on dizzy paths of adventure and the pursuit of wealth. ”

“ Grandmother replied:
“I am a philosopher because I bear with you, and am not angry with you in spite of all you have made me endure. I am no longer in love with you, but is it not because my passion for my husband was destroyed at a very early hour that I remain in love with love, and that I console or distract myself in reading of the romantic happiness or unhappiness of others?” ”

“ It seems that we have not the right, a free people, to give to sorely oppressed Alsace-Lorraine (which never ceases to give proofs of her fidelity to France) a proof in our turn, that we remember the disaster which has separated us, that we lament this disaster, and hope one day to repair, if not to avenge it. Our pride is being systematically humiliated in every direction! The nature and consequences of victory have indeed been cruelly modified, if one must submit to the law of the conqueror after having been delivered from him for twenty-five years. ”

“ She had begun to question me, anxiously, when my mother, who had taken the donkey to the stable followed by Arthémise, came like a bomb into the drawing-room, and began again the eternal “family drama” so angrily that the quarrel became more and more passionate. Finally I, crying in despair, was taken with a nose-bleeding, which my handkerchief, already saturated with blood, could not stanch, and I was literally covered with blood.
I could understand nothing of my mother’s and grandmother’s explanations, they were so mixed up, and, besides, my head was aching so badly. ”

“ No sooner is there evidence of an improvement in our relations with Italy, than he invites King Humbert to be present at the German military manoeuvres, in order to create dissension between the two countries. And so it is in everything. He makes it his business to inspire weariness and vexation of spirit, to destroy those hopes and feelings which restore vitality to the soul of a people. He is for ever stretching out a hand that would fain control by itself the rotation of the globe, and he sets it all awry.
The glorification of William II at Kiel is founded upon shifting sands. ”

“ Whenever papa comes to Chauny he recites to me a new canto of the ‘Iliad,’ or the ‘Odyssey.’ I make him begin over again those I like the best. You can question me, aunt Sophie; I know the names of all the gods and the heroes of Greece. Ancient Greece and ancient Gaul are my two passions. But I shall not like your Latin. I hate the Romans, whose greatest man was Cæsar; he put out the eyes of our Vercingetorix; the Romans pillaged Greece and then——”
“We shall get on very well, Juliette,” said aunt Sophie, “and I will teach you to love Virgil, who is the most Greek of the Latin poets. ”

“ Having overthrown the Empire, the King of Prussia, who had declared that he was fighting against it alone, made war on France, well aware that sufficient vitality remained in the broken pieces to enable them to come together again, and that, under the threat of a French revanche, Prussia would be able to keep Germany exercised in such a state of mind as would reconcile her to remaining under the military yoke of the Hohenzollerns. And Europe, without protest, accepts this condition of things, fatal to her interests and security, created for the sole profit of the lowest of nations. ”

“ She said, speaking to me of her own people: “We are descended from those merchant families of Noyon, of Chauny, of Saint-Quentin, so influential in the councils of the communes, of whom several were seneschals, faithful to their town, to their province above all, faithful to royalty, not always to the king, to religion, not always to the Pope; liberals, men of progress, of pure Gallic race, enriching themselves with great honesty and strongly disdaining those among themselves who, for services rendered to the sovereign, solicited from him titles of nobility.” ”

“ Nothing could have been more bluntly expressed; it is now perfectly clear that the reduction of armaments has no place in the dreams of William II. I know not by what subterfuge he will pretend to approve of a Congress "to prepare for universal peace," but I know that, for him, the dominating and absorbing interest of life lies in conquest, in victories, in war. Turkey victorious, America victorious, England victorious—these are the lights that lead him on. He excels at gathering in the inheritance won for him by his own people, and he likes to have a share also in the successes of others. ”

“ They looked as if they wore a disguise, but the expression of their faces, their way of speaking, and all their gestures, were distinguished and elegant.
“We are boring this child; she is cutting the clover as hard as she can so as not to fall asleep,” said Anastasie.
“You are mistaken, auntie,” I answered, “I am listening. Papa wants to make a Republican of me, grandmother is determined that I shall be a Royalist, and grandfather tries all the time to make me love his Emperor. So I am delighted to hear about the Italian Republics. ”

“ Merely to prove that Austria and Germany refuse to be
parties to these proceedings, and to speak plainly, support the Sultan.
Ah, if Russia could only be kept busy in China! What a godsend if
France could be left alone to play the part of this admirable European
Concert, the genial notion of our last Minister of Foreign Affairs!
Germany alone secures her ends, profits by all the disturbances she creates, waxes and grows fat, and William II smiles at the thought of a world-wide kingdom ruled by himself alone. Once master of the whole earth, he may come to stand face to face with God. ”

“ My aunts detested Balzac.
“He is a creator of unwholesome characters,” said aunt Anastasie; “the heroes of Monsieur de Balzac can easily enter into one’s life and lead one to live in the same manner in which they live themselves. They are so real that you think you have known them; they take possession of me when I read one of his novels. I cannot free my mind of people whom I do not like, whose acts I blame, and who impose themselves on my judgment, as an ugly fashion is sometimes imposed on well-dressed women. ”

“ May our fellow-countrymen out yonder be firmly convinced that, no matter what their situation, be they priests or merchants, the protection of the German Empire will be extended to them with all possible energy by means of the warships of the Imperial fleet. And should any one ever infringe our just rights strike him with your mailed fist! If God so will He shall bind about your young brow laurels of which none, throughout all Germany, shall be jealous! ”

“ I threw myself in his arms, crying, my face bloated, swollen, and bleeding, in such a misery of abandonment and feeling so forsaken that my grandfather’s heart was convulsed with pain.
“You are, each of you, madder, more wicked, more ferocious than the other,” he cried, in a furious voice. “Your quarrels, your suspicions, your idiotic, imbecile explanations crush every atom of maternal feeling in your hearts. You will kill the child, do you hear? you will kill her! Olympe, do you not remember that your son died of convulsions after one of your quarrels? ”

“ Let us, in the first place, inquire how it has come to pass that William II has been able to convince a certain number of people, either through their "human stupidity" or their cowardice, that he is striving for and towards peace, when every single act of his proves the opposite. Is it enough that, because he declares himself a pacifist, men should go about saying "Thank God that he, who seemed most eager for war, now sings the praises of peace"? And there are others who earnestly implore us to think no more or war "now that William of Germany no longer dreams of it." ”

“ His admiration of Eugène Suë was so exaggerated that it would have made aunt Sophie repeat one of her favourite sayings: “There are some opinions which are crimes.”
“Eugène Suë,” said my father, “is a genius; he will deliver France from all the Rodins; a new epoch will begin from his influence, an epoch when our country will at last be delivered from the church; Eugène Suë has moulded the soft clay of which the people are still made; some other man will obtain hard marble from this same people on which to sculpture his ideas. Events in our day move rapidly forward. ”

“ Thus, then, twenty-seven years after the war, when we have spent countless millions on the remaking of our army and navy, when every Frenchman has bled himself to the bone to make France so strong and independent that she might cherish the brightest hopes, a President of the French Council has the unutterable weakness, from the tribune, to threaten France with the German cane, should she dare to follow any other policy than that desired by Berlin! ”

“ Pélagie Raincourt took in his comings and goings.
“Why, his father being a doctor at Compiègne, has this young surgeon come to establish himself at Chauny?” asked the grandmother often. “There must be something,” she said.
Oh, yes! there was something. And, as Pierre Seron was rather talkative and as Compiègne was not a hundred leagues from Chauny, the story was soon known.
He was simply a hero of romance. “His life is a romance—a great, a real romance,” cried Pélagie one day on returning from a visit paid to an old relative whom Pierre Seron was attending and from whom she had heard it all! ”

“ By the victories and conquest of 1870, this genius became suddenly and entirely absorbed in Prussian militarism, and has now grown to be a force hostile to all other races. The power of the intellect in all its forms, recognises reciprocity and scientific research; the power of brute force only recognises the idea of predominance and the subjection of others. The genius of Prussianised Germany to-day combines the lust of conquest and power with the shopkeeping spirit, but even in this last, there is no idea of reciprocity but only of exclusive encroachment. ”