CHAPTER II

Bonaparte's attempts at discovering poets--Luce de Lancival --Baour-Lormian--_Lebrun-Pindare_--Lucien Bonaparte, the author--Début of Mademoiselle Georges--The Abbé Geoffroy's critique--Prince Zappia--Hermione at Saint-Cloud

Let us here insert a word or two about Bonaparte's little Court. We are writing memoirs now, and not novels; we must therefore replace fiction by truth, plot by digressions and intrigue by desultory pages.

Oh! if only some man had left us information about the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as I have attempted to leave about the nineteenth, how I should have blessed him, and what hard work he would have spared me!

A few words, therefore, as I have hinted, about Bonaparte and his little Court.

The début of Mademoiselle Georges had made a great sensation at Paris and at la Malmaison. Formerly, one would have said at Paris and at Versailles,--but Versailles was no more in 1802.

The First Consul and his family were greatly interested in literature at that time. Bonaparte's favourite poets were at the two extremes of art, Corneille and Ossian: Corneille as representative of the powers of the intellect, Ossian in the realms of imagination. So Corneille and Ossian took the most prominent place among the poets who figured in the catalogue of his Egyptian library. This partiality for the Scottish bard was so well known that Bourrienne, when he organised the library, guessed who was meant, though Bonaparte had written the word "_Océan_."

It was not Bonaparte's fault if poets failed him, although he had proscribed three of the greatest of his time: Chateaubriand, Madame de Staël and Lemercier. Bonaparte demanded poets from the Chancellor of the University, just as he demanded soldiers from his Minister for War. Unhappily, it was easier for M. le Duc de Feltre to find 300,000 conscripts than for M. de Fontanes to find a dozen poets. So Napoleon was obliged to hang on to all he could find, to Lebrun, to Luce de Lancival, to Baour-Lormian: they all had posts and incomes as though they were true poets--in addition to compliments.

"You have written a fine tragedy," Napoleon once said to Luce de Lancival, about his _Hector_: "I will have it played in one of my camps." And on the night of the representation he authorised a pension of six thousand francs to be granted Luce de Lancival, with the message, "seeing that poets are always in need of money," he should be paid a year in advance. Read _Hector_ and you will see that it was not worth the first payment of six thousand francs. Napoleon also placed Luce de Lancival's nephew, Harel, under Cambacérès, and made him a sub-prefect in 1815.

Baour-Lormian also received a pension of six thousand livres; but according to the witty complaint he laid before the Bourbons concerning the persecutions of the usurper, despotism had been pushed "to the extreme of punishing him with a pension of two thousand crowns," which, he adds, admitting his weakness, he had not dared to decline.

One day--during the rumours of war that were spread abroad in the year 1809--an ode fell into Napoleon's hands which began with this strophe:--

"Suspends ici ton vol.... D'où viens-tu, Renommée? Qu'annoncent tes cent voix à l'Europe alarmée?... --Guerre!--Et quels, ennemis veulent être vaincus? --Russe, Allemand, Suédois déjà lèvent la lance; Ils menacent la France! --Reprends ton vol, déesse, et dis qu'ils ne sont plus!"

This beginning struck him, and he asked--

"Whose verses are these?"

"M. Lebrun's, sire."

"Has he a pension already?"

"Yes, sire."

"Add a second pension of one hundred louis to that which he already has."

And they added one hundred louis to the pension already drawn by Lebrun, who went by the name of _Lebrun-Pindare_, because he turned out ten thousand lines of this kind of thing:--

"La colline qui vers le pôle Domine d'antiques marais,[1] Occupe les enfants d'Éole[2] A broyer les dons de Cérès;[3] Vanvres, qu'habite Galatée,[4] Du nectar d'Io, d'Amalthée, Epaissit les flots écumeux; Et Sèvres, de sa pure argile, Nous pétrit l'albâtre fragile Où Moka nous verse ses feux."[5]

But something happened that no one had foreseen: there lived another poet called Pierre Lebrun--not Lebrun-Pindare. The ode was written by Pierre Lebrun, not by Lebrun-Pindare. So it came to pass that Lebrun-Pindare enjoyed for a long time the pension earned by Pierre Lebrun. Thus we see that Napoleon did his utmost to discover poets, and that it was not his fault if they were not found.

When Casimir Delavigne published his first work in 1811, a dithyrambic to the King of Rome, it began with this line:--

"Destin, qui m'as promis l'empire de la terre!"

Napoleon scented a poet, and, although the lines smacked of the schoolboy, he bestowed the academic prize and a post in the excise on the author.

Talma was poetry personified. So, since 1792, Napoleon had allied himself with Talma. Where did he spend his evenings? In the wings of the Théâtre-Français; and more than once, pointing out the man who, twenty years later, was to send from Moscow his famous decree concerning comedians, the porter asked Talma--

"Who is that young officer?"

"Napoleon Bonaparte."

"His name is not down on the free list."

"Never mind; he is one of my friends: he comes with me." "Oh, if he is with you, that is another matter."

Later, Talma had, in his turn, the run of the Tuileries, and more than one ambassador, more than one prince, more than one king asked the emperor--

"Sire, who is that man?"

And Napoleon would reply--

"He is Talma, one of my friends."

Once, when noticing the ease with which Talma draped himself in his toga, Napoleon said, "That man will be able to teach me one day how to wear the imperial mantle."

It was not all joy to have a First Consul who liked Corneille and Ossian; this First Consul had brothers who tried to become poets. They did not succeed; but, at all events, they made the attempt. We must give credit to good intentions. Lucien wrote poetry. The fierce Republican--who refused kingships, and who ended by allowing himself to be made a Roman prince: a prince of what? I ask you! Prince de Petit-Chien (_Canino_),--wrote poetry. A poem of his, entitled _Charlemagne_, remains to remind us of him, or rather, it does not remain, for it is dead enough. Louis took up another line: he wrote blank verse, finding it easier than to compose rhymed verse. He travestied Molière's _l'Avare_ in this fashion. Joséphine, the creole coquette, with her nonchalant grace and her adaptable mind, welcomed everyone, letting the world spin as it liked around her, like Hamlet and, like Hamlet, praising everybody.

Talma was a privileged guest in the little bourgeois Court. He talked of the débutante, Mademoiselle Georges; he spoke of her beauty and promising talent. Lucien became excited over her, and for all the world like John the Baptist in the rôle of a precursor, he managed to have a peep at the subject of the talk of the day, through a keyhole somewhere, or mayhap through a wide open door, and he returned to Malmaison, with a rather suspicious enthusiasm, to report that the débutante's physical beauty was certainly below the praises sung concerning it.

The great day arrived--Monday, 8th Frimaire, year XI (29 November 1802). There had been a crowd waiting outside the Théâtre de la République since eleven o'clock in the morning.

Here, with the reader's permission, we will introduce Geoffroy's account. Geoffroy was a worthless, shallow, unconscientious critic, who had won his reputation at the time of the Terror, and who handed on his pen to a wretch of his own kidney, to whom justice had several times been dealt by the police courts;-a way of dealing with things which seems to me to be a great improvement on the times of our forefathers. We cannot possibly have degenerated in everything!

Geoffroy did not spoil débutants, male or female, especially if they were not wealthy. Hear what this sometime prince of critics had to say about Mademoiselle Georges.

There has always been a man called the prince of critics in France. It is not the rank that is called in question, but the dignity of the particular holder of it.

THÉÂTRE DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE _Iphigénie en Aulide_ Pour le début de Mademoiselle Georges Weymer élève de Mademoiselle Raucourt

"Sufficient measures were not taken to control the extraordinary crowd which so famous a début attracted. All the police were busily engaged at the box offices during the sale of tickets, while the entrance doors were almost unprotected and sustained a terrific siege. Assaults were attempted of which I could render a tragic account, for I was both a spectator and an involuntary actor therein. Chance threw me into the melee before I was acquainted with the danger.

... Quæque ipse miserrima vidi, Et quorum pars magna fui!'

"The assailants were inspired with the desire to see the new actress, and filled with the enthusiasm which a celebrated beauty always rouses. In such cases curiosity is nothing short of an insane and savage passion. Such scenes are orgies of ferocity and barbarism. Women, suffocating, uttered piercing shrieks, while men forgot all manners and gallantry in a savage silence, intent only on opening a passage at the expense of all who surrounded them. Nothing can be more indecorous than such struggles, taking place in an enlightened and philosophical nation; nothing can be more shameful among a free and an unselfish people. We may perhaps have better plays and better actors than the Athenians,--that is not yet sufficiently established,--but it is certain that the Athenians displayed greater dignity and nobility at their public entertainments. I view the rapid progress of the passion for theatre-going, the blind furore for frivolous amusement, with ever increasing pain, since history teaches me that it is an infallible sign of intellectual decadence and a decline in manners. It is also a calamity for true connoisseurs, for it lends countenance to the theory that the plays most run after must necessarily be the best...."

Would my readers have suspected that the famous Geoffroy could write in such a style?--No?--Well, neither would I.

Let us proceed. As we advance, its dulness ceases: it becomes almost fanciful.

"When King Priam's councillors saw Helen pass by, they exclaimed, 'Such a beautiful princess is indeed worth fighting for; but, however marvellous her beauty, peace is more to be desired.'

"And when I saw Mademoiselle Georges I said, 'Is it to be wondered at that people submit to be suffocated in order to see such superb womanly beauty? But were it possible for her to be more beautiful than she is, it would still be better not to be stifled, even in her own interest; for spectators will be more severely critical in their estimate of a débutante if it cost them so much to gain a sight of her.

"Mademoiselle Georges Weymer's beauty was greatly extolled before her appearance on the stage, and it does not fall below expectation. Her features combine the regularity and dignity of Greek form with French grace; her figure is that of the sister of Apollo, when she walks on the shores of Eurotas, surrounded by her nymphs, her head uplifted above theirs; she would make a perfect model for Guérin's chisel...."

Ah, Geoffroy, I do not know whether the critics of the time of Pericles were better than those of the age of Bonaparte, first of that name; but I do know that at least one or two of ours can write in a better style....

You think not?

Well, then, here is a portrait of the same person, written by a critic in 1835. Notice the progress in style made in the thirty-three years between Geoffroy's time and that of Théophile Gautier.

"If I mistake not, Mademoiselle Georges is like a medallion from Syracuse or an Isis from an Æginæan bas-relief. The arch of her eyebrows, traced with incomparable fineness and purity, extends over dark eyes which are full of fire and flashes of tragic lightning. Her nose is thin and straight, with obliquely cut nostrils which dilate when she is passionately moved; her whole profile is grand in its simple uniformity of line. The mouth is strong, superbly haughty and sharp at its corners, like the lips of an avenging Nemesis, who awaits the hour to let loose her iron-clawed lion; yet over her lips flickers a charming smile, full of regal grace; and it would be impossible to believe, when she chooses to express the tender passions, that she has hurled forth, but a short while before, a classic imprecation or a modern anathema. Her chin is full of character and of determination; it is firmly set, and its majestic curves relieve a profile that belongs rather to a goddess than to a mortal. Mademoiselle Georges possesses, in common with all the beautiful women of pagan ages, a broad forehead, full at the temples, but not high, very like that of the Venus de Milo, a wilful, voluptuous, powerful forehead. There is a remarkable peculiarity about her neck: instead of rounding off inwardly from the nape, it forms a full and unbroken curve and unites the shoulders to the base of her head without the slightest flaw. The set of her arms is somewhat formidable by reason of the strength of the muscles and the firmness of contour; one of her shoulder-straps would make a girdle for the waist of a medium-sized woman; but they are very white, very clear, and they end in a wrist of childlike fragility and tiny dimpled hands--hands which are truly regal, fashioned to hold the sceptre and to clasp the dagger's hilt in the plays of Æschylus and Euripides."

Thank you, my dear Théophile, for allowing me to quote that splendid passage, and pardon me for placing you in such bad company. Faugh!

I now return to Geoffroy. He continues:--

"Talent responded to beauty. The theatre was packed throughout and thoroughly excited; the First Consul and all his family were in the box to the right of the proscenium; he clapped his hands several times, but this did not prevent some signs of opposition breaking out at the line--

'Vous savez, et Calchas mille fois vous l'a dit.' ..."

Excuse me! I must again interrupt myself, or rather, I must interrupt Geoffroy.

The reader knows that it was the custom for the audience to look forward to the way in which debutantes delivered this line.

Why so? the reader may inquire.

Ah! truly, one does not know these things unless one is compelled to know them.

I will explain.

Because that line is too simple, and unworthy of tragedy.

You may not, perhaps, have been aware of that, monsieur? Perhaps it is news to madame, who does me the honour to listen to me? But your servant Geoffroy, who is obliged to read everything, knew it.

Now, listen carefully; for we have not reached the end. This line being, from its simplicity, unworthy of tragedy, the audience wanted to see how the actress, correcting the poet, would treat it.

Mademoiselle Georges did not pretend to possess greater genius than Racine: she delivered the line simply, and with the most natural intonation imaginable, since it was written with the simplicity of passion. The audience dissented; she repeated it with the same accent; again they demurred.

Fortunately, Raucourt was present, in spite of an accident she had met with; she had had herself carried to the theatre, and encouraged her pupil from a little box, concealed behind a harlequin's cloak.

"Be bold, Georgine! Stick to it!" she cried.

And Georgine--it will appear odd to you, I imagine, that Mademoiselle Georges should ever have been called _Georgine_ repeated the line for the third time in the same simple and natural accent. The audience applauded. From that moment her success was assured, as they say in theatrical parlance.

"The only thing that marred the play (said Geoffroy) was _Talma's lack of intelligence, proportion and nobility in the part of Achilles._"

I begin to think we must have been deceived in the matter of worthy M. Geoffroy's impartiality and that he had received before the play a very significant message from one of the members of the Bonaparte family who was in the box of the First Consul.

Mademoiselle Georges played the part of Clytemnestra three times running. It was an immense success. Then she went on to the part of Aménaïde,--_that maiden attacked with hysterical vapours_, as Geoffroy said later,--and her popularity went on increasing. Then, after the rôle of Aménaïde, she took the part of Idamé in _l'Orphelin de la Chine._

If men wondered how debutantes in the part of Clytemnestra would deliver the famous line so unworthy of Racine--

"Vous savez, et Calchas mille fois vous l'a dit...."

women waited just as impatiently for the appearance of debutantes in the part of Idamé to see how they would dress their hair.

Mademoiselle Georges' hair was arranged very simply _à la chinoise_--that is to say, with her locks arranged on the top of her head and tied with a golden ribbon. This arrangement suited her admirably, so I was told, not by Lucien but by his brother King Jérôme, a keen appreciator of beauty in all its forms, who, like Raucourt, kept the habit of calling Georges, _Georgine._

The night that the _Orphelin de la Chine_ was to be played, whilst Georgine, about whom, at that hour, the whole of Paris was talking, was partaking of a lentil supper at the _hôtel du Pérou_,--not because, like Esau, she was fond of this fare, but because there was nothing else in the house,--Prince Zappia was announced. Who might Prince Zappia be? Was he, too, a prince among critics? Not so: he was a real prince, one of those art-loving princes whose line died out with the Prince de Ligne, a Prince Hénin, one of those princes who frequented the lounge of the Comédie-Française, as Prince Pignatelli did the lounge of the Opéra. The lounge of the Comédie-Française was, apparently, a wonderful place in those days--I only saw the remains of it.

After each great representation--and every time such actors as Talma, Raucourt, Contat, Monvel or Molé played was a great occasion--all the noted people in the artistic, diplomatic or aristocratic circles went to have a few minutes' chat in the box of the hero or of the heroine of the evening; then they returned to the lounge and joined the general company there.

Bonaparte's budding Court, which made such efforts to establish itself as a Court, was rarely as brilliant as the lounge of the Théâtre-Français.

We were privileged to witness the fading light of those brilliant days when it shone on the box of Mademoiselle Mars.

All came to these assemblies in full dress. There were scarcely any who had not their own footstools, chairs and lounges. These were very formal occasions and, indeed, to be called a "_dame de la Comédie-Française_" meant a great deal; people still remember the occasion of the first attack upon this crusted etiquette.

It was Mademoiselle Bourgoin who broke through it, by asking for some cakes and a glass of Alicante. The old members of the company raised their hands to Heaven in that day and cried out at such an abomination of desolation. And their dismay was quite logical: a breach, if not repaired, is ever apt to grow larger, especially in a theatre. And that very infraction is responsible for the beer and fried eggs of to-day.

Well, as Georgine was eating her lentils, Prince Zappia was announced to her. What did Prince Zappia want at such an hour? He came to offer the key of a suite of rooms in the rue des Colonnes, which he had furnished since the previous evening at a cost of over fifty thousand francs. He assured the fair Georgine, as he handed her this key, that it was the one and only key that existed.

An oath was needed to induce the débutante to leave the _hôtel du Pérou._ This oath Prince Zappia took. On what did he swear? We don't know. We inquired of Mademoiselle Georges herself; but she replied to us, with the magnificent naïvete of a Lucrezia Borgia--

"Why do you wish to know that, my dear fellow? Many people have sworn oaths to me which they have not kept."

Lucien was not at all pleased at this change of residence. Lucien was not a prince at that time; Lucien was not wealthy; Lucien made love to her as a scholar; Lucien laid claim to the position of lover, which is always a rather difficult matter when one's apartments are dingy and cupboards bare: he was present one evening, I repeat, when Hermione's chambermaid came into her apartment, thoroughly scared, and told her that the First Consul's valet de chambre had come.

The First Consul's valet de chambre? he who had dressed him on the morning of 18 Brumaire? No! quite another person than Prince Zappia! They showed the First Consul's valet de chambre in with as much deference as they would have shown in 1750 to M. Lebel when he visited Madame Dumesnil.

The First Consul awaited Hermione at Saint-Cloud. Hermione was to come as she was: she could change her clothes there. The invitation was curt, but quite characteristic of the First Consul's manners.

Antony, it will be remembered, bade Cleopatra join him in Cilicia. Bonaparte might well beg Hermione to join him at Saint-Cloud. The Grecian princess was not prouder than the Queen of Egypt; Hermione was not less beautiful than Cleopatra, and ought to have been taken down the Seine in a gilded galley, just as the Queen of Egypt ascended the Cydnus. But that would have taken too long: the First Consul was impatient to pay his addresses and, admitting the weakness artistes have for flattery, the débutante was probably in no less hurry to receive them.

Hermione reached Saint-Cloud half an hour after midnight, and left it at six in the morning. She came out victorious as Cleopatra: like Cleopatra, she had had the conqueror of the world at her feet. But the conqueror of the world, who thought it astonishing that a débutante, whom his brother had told him lived in the _hôtel du Pérou_, drank water and lived on lentils, should possess an English veil worth a hundred louis and a cashmere shawl worth a thousand crowns, tore in pieces, in a fit of jealousy, both the cashmere shawl and the English veil.

I have often argued with Georges that this was not done out of jealousy, but simply for the fun of the thing. She always persisted it was done out of jealousy, and I had not the desire to contradict her.

Some days after Georgine's little nocturnal journey, the rumour of her triumph leaked out; she was playing the part of Émilie, and when she declaimed, in accents of true Roman pride, the line--

"Si j'ai séduit Cinna, j'en séduirai bien d'autres...." the whole audience turned towards the First Consul's box and burst into applause.

From that night there sprang up two dramatic, and almost political, factions in the Théâtre-Français: the partisans of Mademoiselle Georges, and the partisans of Mademoiselle Duchesnois--the _Georgians_, and the _Carcassians._ The word _Carcassians_ was doubtless substituted for _Circassians_ as being more expressive. But what is the meaning of the word? Upon my word, I dare not say: I leave it to the investigation of savants and the research of etymologists. Lucien Bonaparte, Madame Bacciochi and Madame Lætitia were at the head of the _Georgians_; Joséphine flung herself headlong into the _Carcassian_ party; Cambacérès remained neutral.

[1] Montmartre.

[2] Le vent.

[3] Le blé.

[4] Galatée ayant été nymphe, _Vauvres, qu'habite Galatée_, signifie: Vauvres où il y a des bergers.

[5] Façon poétique de dire qu'il y a une manufacture de porcelaines à Sèvres.