Part 50

Anthony Thouret met Prudhon.

“Things are going badly,” said Prudhon.

“To what cause do you attribute our embarrassments?” queried Anthony Thouret.

“The Socialists are at the bottom of the trouble, of course.

“What! the Socialists? But are you not a Socialist yourself?”

“I a Socialist! Well, I never!” ejaculated Prudhon.

“Well, what in the name of goodness, are you, then?”

“I am a financier.”

BLANQUI.

Blanqui got so that he no longer wore a shirt. For twelve years he had worn the same clothes--his prison clothes--rags, which he displayed with sombre pride at his club. He renewed only his boots and his gloves, which were always black.

At Vincennes during his eight months of captivity for the affair of the 15th of May, he lived only upon bread and raw potatoes, refusing all other food. His mother alone occasionally succeeded in inducing him to take a little beef-tea.

With this, frequent ablutions, cleanliness mingled with cynicism, small hands and feet, never a shirt, gloves always.

There was in this man an aristocrat crushed and trampled upon by a demagogue.

Great ability, no hypocrisy; the same in private as in public. Harsh, stern, serious, never laughing, receiving respect with irony, admiration with sarcasm, love with disdain, and inspiring extraordinary devotion.

There was in Blanqui nothing of the people, everything of the populace.

With this, a man of letters, almost erudite. At certain moments he was no longer a man, but a sort of lugubrious apparition in which all degrees of hatred born of all degrees of misery seemed to be incarnated.

LAMARTINE. February 23, 1850.

During the session Lamartine came and sat beside me in the place usually occupied by M. Arbey. While talking, he interjected in an undertone sarcastic remarks about the orators in the tribune.

Thiers spoke. “Little scamp,” murmured Lamartine.

Then Cavaignac made his appearance. “What do you think about him?” said Lamartine. “For my part, these are my sentiments: He is fortunate, he is brave, he is loyal, he is voluble--and he is stupid.”

Cavaignac was followed by Emmanuel Arago. The Assembly was stormy. “This man,” commented Lamartine, “has arms too small for the affairs he undertakes. He is given to joining in mêlées and does not know how to get out of them again. The tempest tempts him, and kills him.”

A moment later Jules Favre ascended the tribune. “I do not know how they can see a serpent in this man,” said Lamartine. “He is a provincial academician.”

Laughing the while, he took a sheet of paper from my drawer, asked me for a pen, asked Savatier-Laroche for a pinch of snuff, and wrote a few lines. This done he mounted the tribune and addressed grave and haughty words to M. Thiers, who had been attacking the revolution of February. Then he returned to our bench, shook hands with me while the Left applauded and the Right waxed indignant, and calmly emptied the snuff in Savatier-Laroche’s snuffbox into his own.

BOULAY DE LA MEURTHE.

M. Boulay de la Meurthe was a stout, kindly man, bald, pot-bellied, short, enormous, with a short nose and a not very long wit. He was a friend of Hard, whom he called mon cher, and of Jerome Bonaparte, whom he addressed as “your Majesty.”

The Assembly, on January 20, made him Vice-President of the Republic.

It was somewhat sudden, and unexpected by everybody except himself. This latter fact was evident from the long speech learned by heart that he delivered after being sworn in. At its conclusion the Assembly applauded, then a roar of laughter succeeded the applause. Everybody laughed, including himself; the Assembly out of irony, he in good faith.

Odilon Barrot, who since the previous evening had been keenly regretting that he did not allow himself to be made Vice-President, contemplated the scene with a shrug of the shoulders and a bitter smile.