Albert D. Vandam

“ No coal or gas was used in the Café de Paris: lamps and wood fires upstairs; charcoal, and only that of a peculiar kind, in the kitchens, which might have been a hundred miles distant, for all we knew, for neither the rattling of dishes nor the smell of preparation betrayed their vicinity. A charming, subdued hum of voices attested the presence of two or three score of human beings attending to the inner man; the idiotic giggle, the affected little shrieks of the shopgirl or housemaid promoted to be the companion of the quasi-man of the world was never heard there. ”

“ I was in the Tuileries gardens on that first Sunday in June, 1837, when the Duchesse d'Orléans made her entrée into Paris. The weather was magnificent, and the set scene—as distinguished from some of the properties, to use a theatrical expression—in keeping with the weather. The crowd itself was a pleasure to look at, as it stood in serried masses behind the National Guards and the regular infantry lining the route of the procession from the Arc de Triomphe to the entrance of the Château. All at once an outrider passes, covered with dust, and the crowd presses forward to get a better view. ”

“ There never were greater tyrants than they were at heart; and if the Duc d'Angoulême or the Comte de Chambord had come to the throne, France would have sunk to the intellectual level of Spain. I would sooner see the most godless republic than a return of that state of things, and I need not tell you that I firmly believe that not a sparrow falls to the earth without God's will. No, I held my tongue about my electrical sensations; if I had not, you would not now be talking to Marshal Vaillant—I should have become a jabbering idiot, if I had lived long enough. ”

“ Without a single spy in France, without a single attaché in the Rue de Lille, Bismarck was enabled by that only to determine beforehand the effects of one serious military defeat on the dynasty of the Emperor; he was enabled to calculate the exact strength of the chain of defence which would be offered subsequently. The French army was like the Scotch lad's porridge, "sour, burnt, gritty, cold, and, —— it, there was not enough of it." It is not underrating Bismarck's genius to say that a man of far inferior abilities than he would have plainly seen the course to pursue. ”

“ Mark my words, the Empress will not cease from troubling until she has driven France into a war with the only great Protestant power on the Continent. That power defeated, she will endeavour to destroy the rising unity of Italy. She little knows that Victor-Emanuel will not wait until then, and that, at the first success of the French on the Rhine, he will cross the Alps at a sign of Prussia; that at the first success of Prussia, the Italian troops will start on their march to Rome. Nay, I repeat, it is the Empress who will prove the ruin of France. ”

“ Vernet was never happier than when at work under such circumstances. Perched on a movable scaffolding or on a high ladder, he reminded one much more of an acrobat than of a painter. Like Dumas, he could work amidst a very Babel of conversation, but the sound of music, however good, disturbed him. In those days, itinerant Italian musicians and pifferari, who have disappeared from the streets of Paris altogether since the decree of expulsion of '81, were numerous, and grew more numerous year by year. ”

“ Then it positively boiled over, and he did not mind what trick he played his interlocutor. The latter might be a wealthy would-be patron, an influential Government official, or a well-known picture-dealer; it was all the same to Delacroix, who had an utter contempt for patronage, nepotism, and money. It was as good as a clever scene in a comedy to see him rise and draw himself up to his full height, in order to impress his victim with a sense of the importance of what he was going to say. ”

“ Meanwhile Sue posed and posed, not as a writer—for, like Horace Walpole, he was almost ashamed of the title—but as "a man of the world" who knew nothing about literature, but whose wish to benefit humanity had been greater than his reluctance to enter the lists with such men as Balzac and Dumas. After his dinner at the Café de Paris, he would gravely stand on the steps smoking his cigar and listen to the conversation with an air of superiority without attempting to take part in it. ”

“ When Balzac was not being harassed by the officials of the Tribunal de Commerce, he had to dodge the authorities of the National Guards, who generally had a warrant against him for neglect of duty. Unlike his great contemporary Dumas, Balzac had an invincible repugnance to play the amateur warrior—a repugnance, by-the-way, to which we owe one of the most masterly portraits of his wonderful gallery, that of the self-satisfied, bumptious, detestable bourgeoise, who struts about in his uniform ”

“ I was very young, and, though perhaps not so enthusiastic about literature as I was about painting and sculpture, it would indeed have been surprising if I had remained indifferent to the fascination experienced by almost every one in their society: for let me state at once that the great poet, the great playwright, and the great novelist were even something more than men of genius; they were men of the world, and gentlemen who thought it worth their while to be agreeable companions. ”

“ They would have laughed to scorn the dictum of the first Napoléon, that "there are no bad regiments, only bad colonels;" in their opinion, there were no bad colonels, except those perhaps who did not constantly jingle their spurs on the carpeted floors of the Empress's boudoir, and the parqueted arena of the Empress's ball-room. The Emperor was too much of a dreamer and a philosopher for them; he could not emancipate himself from his German education. ”

“ Only those who were at a distance from Paris on the 4th of September, 1870, can be deluded into the belief that the scenes enacted there on that day partook of a dramatic character. Carefully and scrupulously dovetailed, they constitute one vast burlesque of a revolution. It is not because the overthrow of the Second Empire was accomplished without bloodshed that I say this. Bloodshed would have only made the burlesque more gruesome, but it could have never converted it into a tragedy, the recollection of which would have made men think and shudder even after the lapse of many years. ”

“ Madame Sand ne met pas ses amants dans son cœur, elle les mets dans ses livres; et elle le fait si diablement vite qu'on n'a pas le temps de la devancer." Mérimée was right, each of George Sand's earlier books had been written with the heart's blood of one of the victims of her insatiable passions—for I should not like to prostitute the word "love" to her liaisons; and I am glad to think that Eugène Delacroix was spared that ordeal. ”

“ I am alluding to the Dujarrier-Beauvallon duel. I have been in the habit for years, whenever an important meeting took place in France, to read every shade of English opinion on the subject; and while recognizing the elevated sentiments of the writers, I have no hesitation in saying that not a single one knew what he was writing about. They could not grasp the fact that for a man of social standing to refuse a challenge or to refrain from sending one, save under very exceptional circumstances, was tantamount to courting social death. ”

“ When the news of Emperor Maximilian's death reached Paris, there was the rumbling of a storm which foreboded no good. For days before, there had been vague rumours of the catastrophe. It had been whispered at the annual distribution of prizes at the Collége de France, where one of (p. 316) the young Cavaignacs had refused to receive his reward at the hands of the Prince Imperial. In short, indignation was rife among all classes. The Empress, on hearing of the insult, had burst into hysterical tears, and been obliged to leave the reception-rooms. In short, a dark cloud hung over the Tuileries. ”

“ Compiègne was less than a hundred miles from Paris; thousands would flock, not only from the neighbouring towns, but from the capital also, and the glowing accounts they would be sure to bring back would produce their effect. There would be, moreover, less risk of incurring the remarks of an irreverent Paris mob, a mob which instinctively finds out the ridiculous side of every ceremonial instituted by the court, except those calculated to gratify its love of military pomp and splendour. As yet, it was too early to belie the words, "L'empire, c'est la paix;" ”

“ When he heard Mozart's "Don Juan" for the first time, he said, "This is the music of a lover of twenty, and if a man be not an imbecile, he may always have in a little corner of his heart the sentiment or fancy that he is only twenty."
There was but one drawback to Auber's enjoyment of the society of women—he was obliged to take off his hat in their presence, and he hated being without that article of dress. He might have worn a skull-cap at home, though there was no necessity for it, as far as his hair was concerned, for up to the last he was far from bald; but he wanted his hat. ”

“ De Persigny was amiable and obliging enough, provided one knew how to manage him, and with those whom he liked, but exceedingly thin-skinned and often violent with those whom he disliked. He was, moreover, very jealous with regard to Louis-Napoléon's affection for him. I doubt whether he really minded the influence wielded by the Empress, De Morny, and Walewski over the Emperor, but he grudged them their place in the Emperor's heart. ”

“ The minority which might have protested was so utterly insignificant in numbers, as to make action on their part impossible. No, it was neither fear nor shame that stayed the rabble's hands; it was a sentiment for which I can find no name. It was the consciousness that these objects had belonged to a king, to a royal family, which made them gaze upon them in a kind of superstitious wonder. It did not last long. We were on the ground floor, which mainly consisted of the private apartments of the household of Louis-Philippe. ”

“ The bourgeois Voltairien was more biting in his sarcasm. In his speech to the grand officers of State and corporations, Napoléon had alluded to Empress Joséphine: "France has not forgotten that for the last seventy years foreign princesses have only ascended the steps of the throne to see their race scattered and proscribed, either by war or revolution. One woman alone appears to have brought the people better luck, and to have left a more lasting impression on their memory, and that woman, the modest and kindly wife of General Bonaparte, was not descended from royal blood." ”

“ There was but one man who stood steadfast by the Emperor and his bride, Dupin the elder; but his ironical defence of the choice was nearly as bad as his opposition to it could have been. "People care very little as to what I say and think, and perhaps they are right," he remarked; "but still, the Emperor acts more sensibly by marrying the woman he likes than by eating humble-pie and bargaining for some strait-laced, stuck-up German princess, with feet as large as mine. At any rate, when he kisses his wife, it will be because he feels inclined, and not because he feels compelled." ”