Bonaparte’s Familiar Spirits

M. Mérimée was vile by nature, he must not be blamed for it.

With regard to M. de Morny it is otherwise, he was more worthy; there was something of the brigand in him.

M. de Morny was courageous. Brigandage has its sentiments of honor.

M. Mérimée has wrongly given himself out as one of the confederates of the coup d’état. He had, however, nothing to boast of in this.

The truth is that M. Mérimée was in no way a confidant. Louis Bonaparte made no useless confidences.

Let us add that it is little probable, notwithstanding some slight evidence to the contrary, that M. Mérimée, at the date of the 2d December, had any direct relations with Louis Bonaparte. This ensued later on. At first Mérimée only knew Morny.

Morny and Mérimée were both intimate at the Elysée, but on a different footing. Morny can be believed, but not Mérimée. Morny was in the great secrets, Mérimée in the small ones. Commissions of gallantry formed his vocation.

The familiars of the Elysée were of two kinds, the trustworthy confederates and the courtiers.

The first of the trustworthy confederates was Morny; the first — or the last — of the courtiers was Mérimée.

This is what made the fortune of M. Mérimée.

Crimes are only glorious during the first moment; they fade quickly. This kind of success lacks permanency; it is necessary promptly to supplement it with something else.

At the Elysée a literary ornament was wanted. A little savor of the Academy is not out of place in a brigand’s cavern. M. Mérimée was available. It was his destiny to sign himself “the Empress’s Jester.” Madame de Montijo presented him to Louis Bonaparte, who accepted him, and who completed his Court with this insipid but plausible writer.

This Court was a heterogeneous collection; a dinner-wagon of basenesses, a menagerie of reptiles, a herbal of poisons.

Besides the trustworthy confederates who were for use, and the courtiers who were for ornament, there were the auxiliaries.

Certain circumstances called for reinforcements; sometimes these were women, the Flying Squadron.

Sometimes men: Saint–Arnaud, Espinasse, Saint–George, Maupas.

Sometimes neither men nor women: the Marquis de C.

The whole troop was noteworthy.

Let us say a few words of it.

There was Vieillard the preceptor, an atheist with a tinge of Catholicism, a good billiard player.

Vieillard was an anecdotist. He recounted smilingly the following:— Towards the close of 1807 Queen Hortense, who of her own accord lived in Paris, wrote to the King Louis that she could not exist any longer without seeing him, that she could not do without him, and that she was about to come to the Hague. The King said, “She is with child.” He sent for his minister Van Maanen, showed him the Queen’s letter, and added, “She is coming. Very good. Our two chambers communicate by a door; the Queen will find it walled up.” Louis took his royal mantle in earnest, for he exclaimed, “A King’s mantle shall never serve as coverlet to a harlot.” The minister Van Maanen, terrified, sent word of this to the Emperor. The Emperor fell into a rage, not against Hortense, but against Louis. Nevertheless Louis held firm; the door was not walled up, but his Majesty was; and when the Queen came he turned his back upon her. This did not prevent Napoleon III. from being born.

A suitable number of salvoes of cannon saluted this birth.

Such was the story which, in the summer of 1840, in the house called La Terrasse, before witnesses, among whom was Ferdinand B——, Marquis de la L——, a companion during boyhood of the author of this book, was told by M. Vieillard, an ironical Bonapartist, an arrant sceptic.

Besides Vieillard there was Vaudrey, whom Louis Bonaparte made a General at the same time as Espinasse. In case of need a Colonel of Conspiracies can become a General of Ambuscades.

There was Fialin,14 the corporal who became a Duke.

There was Fleury, who was destined to the glory of travelling by the side of the Czar on his buttocks.

There was Lacrosse, a Liberal turned Clerical, one of those Conservatives who push order as far as the embalming, and preservation as far as the mummy: later on a senator.

There was Larabit, a friend of Lacrosse, as much a domestic and not less a senator.

There was Canon Coquereau, the “Abbé of La Belle–Poule.” The answer is known which he made to a princess who asked him, “What is the Elysée?” It appears that one can say to a princess what one cannot say to a woman.

There was Hippolyte Fortoul, of the climbing genus, of the worth of a Gustave Planche or of some Philarête Chasles, an ill-tempered writer who had become Minister of the Marine, whic............