'You cannot imagine,' I said to him jokingly, 'what a peculiar satisfaction you give me by what you leave out. I have been for fifteen years speaking about the monarchy just as you speak about the republic. Our roles are changed ; in defending the republic, I am the consen·ative, ,...-hile you, defending the legitimist monarchy, are a perturbateur de l'ordre politique.'
The old gentleman and the Englishman burst out laughing.
The Comte d'Argout,3 a tall, gaunt gentleman, whose nose has 2 That is the rising of Colombia against Spanish domination m 1 8 1 0.
( A .S.)
3 Antoine l\taurice. Comte d'Argout ( 1 782--1 858) , had much to do in bringing about the fall of Charles X, and held several i mportant ministerial appointments under Louis-Philippe. ( Tr.)
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been immortalised by Charivari4 and Philipon came up to us.
(Charivari used to declare that his daughter did not marry because she did not want to sign herself 'So-and-so, nee d'Argout.') He joined in the conversation, addressed the old gentleman with deference, but looked at me with a surprise not far removed from repulsion; I noticed this, and began to be at least four times redder in my remarks.
'It is a very remarkable thing,' the grey-headed old Frenchman sai d to me: 'you are not the first Russian I have met of the same way of thinking. You Russians are either the most absolute slaves of your Tsar, or-passez-moi le mot-anarchists. And it follows from that, that it will be a long time before you are free.'5
Our political conversation continued in that strain.
When we were approaching Marseilles and all the passengers were busy looking after their luggage, I went up to the old gentleman and, giving him my card, said that I was glad to think that our discussion on the rolling boat had left no unpleasant results. The old gentleman said good-bye to me very nicely, delivered himself of another epigram at the expense of the republicans whom I should see at last at closer quarters, and gave me his card. It was the Due de Noailles, a kinsman of the Bourbons and one of the leading counsellors of Henri V.6
Though this incident is quite unimportant, I have told it for the benefit and education of our 'dukes' of the first three ranks. If some senator or privy councillor had been in Noaillcs's place he would simply have taken what I said for insolent breach of discipline and would have sent for the captain of the ship.
In the year 1 850 a certain Russian mini5ter7 sat with his family in his carriage on the steamer to avoid all contact with passengers who were common mortals. Can one imagine anything more ridiculous than sitting in an unharnessed carriage 4 Le Charivari was the French Punch (earlier in date, howeYer, Punch being called 'The London ChariYari' as a sub-title), founded in 1 83 1 by Charles Philipon ( 1 802-62) , a caricaturist of greal talent. ( Tr.) 5 I have heard this criticism a dozen times since.
6 The Comte de Chambord, grandson of Charles X, was by the royalists called Henri V. (Tr. ) In part of an early edition of Leiters from France and Italy H. speaks of a 'court('OUS old gentleman,' who is called the Due de Rohan. There was a D. de R. who participated (as H. writes there) in Napoleon's Russian campaign. It has been impossible to establish whether there was such a Due de Noailles as he describes here. (A .S.) 7 The celebrated Victor Panin.
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and on the sea, too, and for a man double the ordinary size into the bargain!
The arrogance of our great dignitaries is not due to aristocratic feeling-the grand gentleman is dying out; it is the feeling of liveried and powerful flunkeys in great houses, extremely abject in one direction and extremely insolent in the other. The aristocrat is a personality, while our faithful servants of the throne are entirely without personality; they are like Paul's medals, which bear the inscription:8 'Not unto us, not unto us, but unto thy name.' Their whole training leads up to this: the soldier imagines that the only reason why he must not be beaten with rods is that he wears the Anna ribbon ; the station superintendent considers his position as an officer the barrier that protects his cheek from the traveller's hand; a n insulted clerk points to his Stanislav o r Vladimir ribbon-'not by us, not by us . . . but by our rank ! '
O n leaving the steamer at Marseilles, I met a great procession of the National Guard, which was carrying to the Hotel de Ville the figure of Liberty, i.e. of a woman with huge curls and a Phrygian cap. With shouts of 'Vive la Republique!' thousands of armed citizens were marching in it, among them workmen in blouses who had joined the National Guard after 24th of February. I need hardly say that I followed them. When the procession reached the Hotel de Ville, the general, the mayor, and the commissaire of the Provisional Government, Demosthene 01-l ivier, came out into the portico. Demosthene, as might be expected from his name, prepared to make a speech. A big circle of people formed about him : the crO\vd, of course, moved forward, the National Guards pressed it back, the crowd would not yield; this offended the armed workmen: they lowered their rifles, turned round and began to squash with the butts the toes of the people who stood in front; the citizens of the 'one and indivisible Republic' stepped back . . . .
This proceeding surprised me the more because I was still completely under the influence of the manners of Italy, and especially of Rome, where the proud sense of personal dignity and the inviolability of the person is fully developed in every man-not merely in the facclzino and the postman, but even in the beggar who holds out his hand for alms. In the Romagna such insolence would have been greeted with twenty coltellate.9
s This is the inscription not on 'Paul's medals' but on those issued by Alexander I as memorials of the Patriotic 'War of 1 8 12. (A.S. ) 9 I.e., stabs with a dagger. (Tr.)
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The French drew back-perhaps they had corns?
This incident affected me unpleasantly. Moreover, when I reached the hotel I read in the newspapers what had happened at Rouen.10 What could be the meaning of it? Surely the Due de Noailles was not right?
But when a man wants to believe, his belief is not easily uprooted, and before I reached Avignon I had forgotten the riflebutts at Marseilles and the bayonets at Rauen.
In the diligence with us there was a full-bodied, middle-aged abbe of stately deportment and pleasant appearance. For the sake of propriety he at first took to his breviary, but to avoid dropping asleep put it back soon afterwards in his pocket and began talking pleasantly and intelligently. With the classical correctness of the language of Port-Royal and the Sorbonne, and with many quotations and chaste witticisms.
Indeed, it is only the French who know how to talk. The Germans can make declarations of love, confide their secrets, preach sermons or swear. In England routs are so much liked just because they make conversation impossible . . . there is a crowd, no room to move, everyone is pushing and being pushed, no one knows anybody ; while if people come together in a small party they immediately have \'\Tetchedly poor music, singing out of tune, or boring little games, or with extraordinary heaviness the hosts and guests try to keep the ball of conversation rolling, with sighs and pauses, reminding one of the luckless horses on the to\v-path who almost at their last gasp drag a loaded barge against the current.