CHAPTER III

Béranger as Patriot and Republican

When Laffitte became minister, he wanted to bear with him up to the political heights he was himself compelled to ascend, a man who, as we have said, had perhaps contributed more to the accession of Louis-Philippe even than had the celebrated banker himself. That man was Béranger. But Béranger, with his clear-sighted common sense, realised that, for him as well as for Laffitte, apparent promotion really meant ultimate downfall. He therefore let all his friends venture on that bridge of Mahomet, as narrow as a thread of flax, called power; but shook his head and took farewell of them in the following verses:--

"Non, mes amis, non, je ne veux rien être; Semez ailleurs places, titres et croix. Non, pour les cours Dieu ne m'a point fait naître: Oiseau craintif, je fuis la glu des rois! Que me faut-il? Maîtresse à fine taille, Que me faut-il? Maîtresse à fine taille, Petit repas et joyeux entretien! De mon berceau près de bénir la paille, En me créant, Dieu m'a dit: 'Ne sois rien!'

Un sort brillant serait chose importune Pour moi rimeur, qui vis de temps perdu. N'est-il tombé, des miettes de fortune, Tout has, j'ai dit: 'Ce pain ne m'est pas dû. Quel artisan, pauvre, hélas! quoi qu'il fasse, N'a plus que moi droit à ce peu de bien? Sans trop rougir, fouillons dans ma besace. En me créant, Dieu m'a dit: 'Ne sois rien!'

Sachez pourtant, pilotes du royaume, Combien j'admire un homme de vertu Qui, désertant son hôtel ou son chaume, Monte au vaisseau par tous les vents battu, De loin, ma vois lui crie: 'Heureux voyage!' Priant de cœur pour tout grand citoyen; Mais, au soleil, je m'endors sur la plage En me créant, Dieu m'a dit: 'Ne sois rien!'

Votre tombeau sera pompeux sans doute; J'aurai, sous l'herbe, une fosse à l'écart. Un peuple en deuil vous fait cortège en route; Du pauvre, moi, j'attends le corbillard. En vain l'on court ou votre étoile tombe; Qu'importe alors votre gîte ou le mien? La différence est toujours une tombe. En me créant, Dieu m'a dit: 'Ne sois rien!'

De ce palais souffrez donc que je sorte, À vos grandeurs je devais un salut; Amis, adieu! j'ai, derrière la porte, Laissé tantôt mes sabots et mon luth. Sous ces lambris, près de vous accourue, La Liberté s'offre à vous pour soutien ... Je vais chanter ses bienfaits dans la rue. En me créant, Dieu m'a dit: 'Ne sois rien!'"

So Béranger retired, leaving his friends more deeply entangled in the web of power than was La Fontaine's raven in the sheep's wool. Even when he is sentimental, Béranger finds it difficult not to insert a touch of mischief in his poetry, and, perhaps, while he is singing in the street the blessings of liberty, he is laughing in his sleeve; exemplifying that disheartening maxim of La Rochefoucauld, that there is always something even in the very misfortunes of our best friends which gives us pleasure. Yet how many times did the philosophic singer acclaim in his heart the Government he had founded. We say _in his heart_, for whether distrustful of the stability of human institutions, or whether he deemed it a good thing to set up kings, but a bad one to sing their praises in poetry, Béranger never, thank goodness! consecrated by a single line of praise in verse the sovereignty of July which he had lauded in his speech.

Now let us take stock of the length of time his admiration of, and sympathy with, the royal cause lasted. It was not for long! In six months all was over; and the poet had taken the measure of the king: the king was only fit to be put away with Villon's old moons. If my reader disputes this assertion let him listen to Béranger's own words. The man who, on 31 July, had flung _a plank across the stream_, as the _petits Savoyards_ do, is the first to try to push it off into the water: it is through no fault of his if it do not fall in and drag the king with it.

"Oui, chanson, muse, ma fille, J'ai déclaré net Qu'avec Charle et sa famille, On le détrônait; Mais chaque loi qu'on nous donne Te rappelle ici: Chanson, reprends ta couronne! --Messieurs, grand merci!

Je croyais qu'on allait faire Du grand et du neuf, Même étendre un peu la sphère De quatre-vingt-neuf; Mais point: on rebadigeonne Un troûe noirci! Chanson, reprends ta couronne! --Messieurs, grand merci!

Depuis les jours de décembre,[1] Vois, pour se grandir, La chambre vanter la chambre, La chambre applaudir! À se prouver qu'elle est bonne, Elle a réussi ... Chanson, reprends ta couronne! --Messieurs, grand merci!

Basse-cour des ministères Qu'en France on honnit, Nos chapons héréditaires, Sauveront leur nid; Les petits que Dieu leur donne Y pondront aussi ... Chanson, reprends ta couronne! --Messieurs, grand merci!

La planète doctrinaire Qui sur Gand brillait Vent servir la luminaire Aux gens de juillet: Fi d'un froid soleil d'automne De brume obscurci! Chanson, reprends ta couronne! --Messieurs, grand merci!

_Nos ministres, qu'on peut mettre_ _Tous au même point,_[2] Voudraient que la baromètre Ne variât point: Pour peu que là-bas il tonne, On se signe ici ... Chanson, reprends ta couronne! --Messieurs, grand merci!

Pour être en état de grâce Que de grands peureux Ont soin de laisser en place Les hommes véreux! Si l'on ne touche à personne, C'est afin que si ... Chanson, reprends ta couronne! --Messieurs, grand merci!

Te voilà donc restaurée, Chanson mes amours! Tricolore et sans livrée, Montre-toi toujours! Ne crains plus qu'on l'emprisonne, Du moins à Poissy ... Chanson, reprends ta couronne! --Messieurs, grand merci!

Mais, pourtant, laisse en jachère Mon sol fatigué; Mes jeunes rivaux, ma chère, Ont un ciel si gai! Chez eux la rose foisonne, Chez moi le souci. Chanson, reprends ta couronne! --Messieurs, grand merci!"

These verses were nothing short of a declaration of war, but they escaped unnoticed, and those poets who talked of them seemed to talk of them as of something fallen from the moon, or some aerolite that nobody had picked up.

A song of Béranger? What was it but a song by him? The public had not read this particular one, though it was aware of the existence of a poet of that name who had written _Le Dieu des bonnes gens, L'Ange Gardien, Le Cinq mai, Les Deux Cousins, Le Ventru_, all songs that more or less attacked Louis XVIII. and Charles X.; but they did not recognise a poet of the name of Béranger who allowed himself to go so far as to attack Louis-Philippe. Why this ignorance of the new Béranger? Why this deafness as to his new song? We will explain.

There comes a reactionary period after every political change, during which material interests prevail over national, and shameful appetites over noble passions; during such a period,--as Louis-Philippe's reign, for example--that government is in favour which fosters these selfish interests and surfeits ignoble passions. The acts of such a government, no matter how outrageously illegal and tyrannical and immoral, are looked upon as saving graces! They praise and approve them, and make as much noise at the footstool of power, as the priests of Cybele, who clashed their cymbals round Jupiter's cradle. Throughout such a period as this, the only thing the masses fear, who, living by such a reaction, have every interest in upholding it, is, lest daylight break on the scene of Pandemonium, and light shine into the sink where speculators and moneymakers and coiners of crowns and paper money jostle, and crowd and hustle one another amid that jingling of money which denotes the work they are engaged in. Whether such a state of things lasts long or only briefly, we repeat that, while it endures until an honest, pure and elevated national spirit gets the upper hand, nothing can be done or said or hoped for; everything else is cried up and approved and extolled beforehand! It is as though that fine popular spirit which inspires nations from time to time to attempt great deeds has vanished, has gone up to the skies, or one knows not where. Weaker spirits despair of ever seeing it come back, and nobler minds alone, who share its essence, know that it ever lives, as they possess a spark of that divine soul, believed to be extinct, and they wait with smiling lips and calm brow. Then, gradually, they witness this political phenomenon. Without apparent cause, or deviation from the road it had taken, perhaps for the very reason that it is still pursuing it, such a type of government, which cannot lose the reputation it has never had, loses the factitious popularity it once possessed; its very supporters, who have made their fortunes out of it, whose co-operation it has rewarded, gradually fall away from it, and, without disowning it altogether, already begin to question its stability. From this very moment, such a government is condemned; and, just as they used to approve of its evil deeds, they criticise its good actions. Corruption is the very marrow of its bones and runs through it from beginning to end and dries up the deadly sap which had made it spread over a whole nation, branches like those of the upas tree, and shade like that of the manchineel. Into this atmosphere, which, for five, ten, fifteen, twenty years, has been full of an impure element that has been inhaled together with other elements of the air, there comes something antagonistic to it, something not immediately recognised. This is the returning spirit of social probity, entering the political conscience; it is the soul of the nation, in a word, that was thought to have fainted, risen to the sky, gone, no one knew where, which comes back to reanimate the vast democratic masses, which it had abandoned to a lethargy that surrounding nations, jealous and inimical, had been all too eager to proclaim as the sleep of death! At such a crisis the government, by the mere returning of the masses to honesty, seems like a ship that has lost its direction, which staggers and wavers and knows not where it is going! It has withstood fifteen years of tempests and storms and now it founders in a squall. It had become stronger by 5 and 6 June, on 13 and 14 April and 15 May, but falls before 24 February.

Such a government or rather governments show signs of their decline when men of heart and understanding refuse to rally to their help, or when those who had done so by mistake quit it from disgust. It does not follow that these desertions bring about an immediate fall--it may not be for years after, but it is a certain sign that they will fall some day, alone, or by their own act, and the public conscience, at this stage of their decline, needs but to give it a slight push to complete the ruin!

Now Béranger, with his fine instinct of right and wrong, of good and evil, knew all this; not in the self-saving spirit of the rat which leaves the ship where it has fattened, when it is about to sail. As we have seen, he would receive nothing at the hands of the Government or from the friends who formed its crew; but, like the swift, white sea-bird, which skims the crests of the rising waves, he warned the sailors of coming storms. From this very moment, Béranger decides that royalty in France is condemned, since this same royalty, which he has kneaded with his own hands, with the democratic element of a Jacobin prince in 1791, a commandant of the National Guard, a Republican in 1789 and a popular Government in 1830, is turning to a middle-class aristocracy, the last of the aristocracies, because it is the most selfish and the most narrow-minded,--and he dreams of a Republic!

But how was he to attack this popular king, this king of the bourgeois classes and of material interests, the king who had saved society? (Every form of government in France as it arose has made that claim!) The king was invulnerable; the Revolution of '89, which was looked upon as his mother, but was only his nurse, had dipped him in the furnace of the Three Days, as Thetis dipped her son Achilles in the river Styx; but he, too, had his weak spot like Homer's hero.

Is it the head? Is it the heel? Is it the heart? The poet, who will not lose his time in manufacturing gunpowder, which might easily be blown away, before it was used, will look for this weak spot, and, never fear, he will find it.

[1] We shall talk about these directly, but, desiring to dedicate a chapter or two now to Béranger, who, as poet and politician, took a great part in the Revolution of July, we are obliged to take a step in advance.

[2] What would have become of Béranger if he had followed the power of the ministers who could be put all on the same level? For notice that the ministers he speaks of here are his friends, who did not send in their resignation till 13 March.