Italian, and so, after turning the letters over, he put them in his pocket, promising to return them.
With that his visit ended. The letters from the Italian he gave back next day, but my papers vanished completely. A month passed; I wrote a letter to Cavaignac,3 inquiring why the police did not return my papers nor say what they had found i n them-a matter o f very little consequence t o them, perhaps, but of the greatest importance for my honour.
What gave rise to this last phrase was as follows. Several persons of my acquaintance had intervened on my behalf, considering the visit of the commissaire and the retention of my papers outrageous.
'We wanted to make certain,' Lamoriciere4 told them.,
'whether he was not an agent of the Russian government.'
This was the first time I heard of this abominable suspicion; it was something quite new for me. My life had been as open, as public, as though it had been lived in a glass hive, and now all at once this filthy accusation, and from whom?-from a republican government!
A week later I was summoned to the prefecture. Barlet was with me. We were received in Ducoux's room by a young official very like some free and easy Petersburg head-clerk.
'General Cavaignac,' he told me, 'has charged the Prefect to return your papers without any examination. The information collected concerning you renders it quite superfluous; no suspicion rests upon you ; here is your portfolio. Will you be good enough to sign this paper first?'
It was a receipt stating that all the papers had been returned to me complete.
I stopped and asked whether it would not be more in order for me to look the papers through.
'They have not been touched. Besides, here is the seal.'
'The seal has not been broken,' observed Barlet soothingly.
'My seal is not here. Indeed, it was not put on them.'
'It is my seal, but you know you had the key.'
Not wishing to reply with rudeness, I smiled. This enraged 3 Ca,·aignac, Louis-Eugene ( 1 802-57 ) , the youngest of the three dis·
tinguished Frenchmen of that name, was Commander-in-Chief in 1 848, and an unsuccessful candidate for the presidency of the republic when Louis-Napoleon (afterward;; Napoleon Ill) was elected on 1 0th December, 1 848. ( Tr. ) 4 Lamoriciere, Louis de ( 1806-65) , a prominent politician and general, was exiled in December 1 848, and afterwarJs took command of the Papal troops. ( Tr. )
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them both: the head-clerk became the head of a department; he snatched up a penknife and, cutting the seal, said rudely enough: 'Pray look, if you don't believe, but I have not so much time to waste,' and walked out with a dignified bow. Their resentment convinced me that they really had not looked at the papers, and so, after a cursory glance at them, I signed the receipt and went home.
Tlze llevolzttioJl
of 1 848 irt Fra1zce
I LEFT PARIS in the autumn of 1 847, without having form!'d any ties there; I remained completely outside the literary and political circles. There were many reasons for that. No immediate occasion of contact with them presented itself, and I did not care to seek one. To visit them simply in order to look at celebrities, I thought unseemly. Moreover, I particularly disliked the tone of condescending superiority which Frenchmen assume with Russians: they approve of us, encourage us, commend our pronunciation and our wealth; we put up with it all, and behave as though we were asking them a favour, or were even partly guilty, delighted when, from politeness, they take us for Frenchmen.
The Fr!'nch overwhl'lm us with a flood of words, we cannot keep pace with them ; we think of an answer, but they do not care to hear it; we are ashamed to show that we notice their blunders and their ignorance-they take advantage of all that with hopeless complacency.
To get on to a different footing with them one would have to impress them with one's consequence; to do this one must possess various rights, which I had not at that time, and of which I took advantage at once when they came to be at my disposal.
Moreover, it must be remembered that there are no people in the world with whom it is easier to strike up a nodding acquaintance than the French-and no people with whom it is more difficult to get on to really intimate terms. A Frenchman likes to live in company, in order to display himself, to have an audience, and in that respect he is as much a contrast to the Englishman as in everything else. An Englishman looks at
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people because he is bored; he looks at men as though from a stall in a theatre; he makes use of people as an entertainment, or as a means of obtaining information. The Englishman is always asking questions, the Frenchman is always giving answers. The Englishman is always wondering, always thinking things over; the Frenchman knows everything for certain, he is finished and complete, he will go no further: he is fond of preaching, talking, holding forth-about what, to whom, he does not care. He feels no need for personal intimacy; the cafe satisfies him completely.
Like Repetilov in Woe from Wit, he does not notice that Chatsky is gone and Skalozub is in his place, that Skalozub is gone and Zagoretsky is in his place-and goes on holding forth about the jury-room, about Byron ( whom he calls 'Biron'), and other important matters.
Coming back from Italy not yet cooled from the February Revolution, I stumbled on the 1 5th of May, and then lived through the agony of the June days and the state of siege. It was then that I obtained a deeper insight into the tigre-singe of Voltaireand I lost even the desire to become acquainted with the mighty ones of this republic.
On one occasion a possibility almost arose of common work which would have brought me into contact with many persons, but that did not come off either. Count KsaV''ery Branicki gave seventy thousand francs to found a magazine to deal principally with foreign politics and other nations, and especially with the Polish question. The usefulness and appropriateness of such a magazine were obvious. French papers deal little and badly with what is happening outside France; during the republic, they thought it sufficient to encourage all the heathen nations now and then with the phrase solidarite des peuples, and the promise that as soon as they had time to turn round at home they would build a world-wide republic based upon universal brotherhood.
With the means at the disposal of the new magazine, which was to be called La Tribune des Peuples, it might have been made the international Moniteur of movement and progress. Its success was the more certain because there is no international periodical at all; there are sometimes excellent articles in The Times and the Journal des Debats on special subjects, but they are occasional and disconnected. The A ugsburg Gazette would really be the most international organ if its black-and-yellow proclivities were not so glaringly conspicuous.
But it seems that all the good projects of the year 1 848 were doomed to be born in their seventh month and to die before
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cutting their first tooth. The magazine turned out poor and feeble-and died at the slaughter of the innocent papers after the 1 4th of June, 1 849.
"When everything was ready and standing by, a house was taken and fitted up with big tables covered with cloth and little sloping desks; a lean French litterateur was engaged to watch over international mistakes in spelling; a committee to edit it was set up of former Polish nuncios and senators, and Mickiewicz was appointed head to this with Chojecki as his assistant;all that was left to arrange was a triumphal opening ceremony, and what date could be more suitable for that than the anniversary of February the 24th, and what form could it more decently take than a supper?