Part 32 (1/2)

Val Richer was full of little fairies in that bright summer weather. The Pied Piper of Hamelin must have pa.s.sed that way, losing some stragglers of his army as he moved along. Wherever you strolled in the park you came unexpectedly upon little blonde heads and laughing eyes peering through the shrubbery, and saw small imps scampering madly off across the meadows. On the Sunday night of the election, music and mirth chased the hours away, till, just after midnight, a joyous clamour in the outer hall announced some event of importance. From the far-off Cambremer and Beuvron-sur-Auge a delegation of staunch electors had arrived to announce the crowning victory. Thanks to the distance and the 'sections,' the votes had been long in counting, but they had been counted, and not found wanting. One of these bringers of good tidings might have sat or stood for a statue of William the Conqueror preparing to make France pay dearly for the jest of the French King anent his colossal bulk. He was a man in the prime of life, but he cannot possibly have weighed less than 400 pounds. Yet he moved about alertly, and he had driven over in a light wagon at full speed (the Norman horses are very strong) to congratulate his candidate on the issue of a fray in which he had borne his own part most manfully. M. Pierre de Witt had received 1,042 votes as Councillor-General, against no more than 140 given to his medical compet.i.tor!

One bold voter had deposited a single vote for General Boulanger! 'Had there been any disturbances anywhere?' No, none at all. 'We cheered when we got the returns,' said the giant; 'we cheered for M. de Witt, and we cried ”Vive le Roi!” They didn't like it, but they were so badly beaten, they kept quiet. I believe though,' he added, 'they would have arrested us if we had cried ”Vive Bocher!” That is more than they can bear!' and therewith he laughed aloud, a not unkindly, but formidable laugh.

M. Bocher, who was made Prefect of the Calvados by M. Guizot, and who is now a senator for that department, is, I am a.s.sured, the special _bete noire_ of the Third Republic in Normandy. His long and honourable connection with the public service has won for him the esteem of all the people of the Calvados, while his thorough knowledge of the political history of the country and of his time, his cool clear judgment, his temperate but fearless a.s.sertion through good and evil report of his political convictions, and his keen insight into character, must give him long odds in any contest with the ill-trained and miserably-equipped political camp-followers who have been coming of late years into the front of the Republican battle.

They gave M. Bocher a banquet not long ago at Pont-l'Eveque, at which he made a very telling speech, and brought down the house by inviting his hearers to contemplate M. Grevy and M. Carnot as typical ill.u.s.trations of the great superiority of a republic over a monarchy, and of the elective over the hereditary principle! The Republicans, he said, had twice elected to the chief magistracy an austerely virtuous Republican whom they had finally been compelled to throw out at the window of the Elysee, as 'the complaisant and guilty witness, if not the interested accomplice, of scandals which revolted the public conscience!' And whom had the elective principle put into his place, under the pressure of irreconcilable personal rivalries, and of a threatened popular outbreak?

A man whose recommendations were his own relative personal obscurity and the traditional reputation of his grandfather!

With M. Grevy and M. Carnot the Norman farmers have a special quarrel which gave zest to the caustic periods of M. Bocher. The all-powerful son-in-law of M. Grevy, M. Wilson, proposed in the National a.s.sembly in 1872, and with the influence of M. Thiers, then President, succeeded in pa.s.sing a law heavily taxing, and in an inquisitorial fas.h.i.+on, the domestic fabrication of spirits. This is an old and prosperous industry in Normandy. It is carried on, according to an official estimate made in 1888, by above five hundred thousand farmers in France; and in Normandy particularly, a land of apples and pears, it is a great resource of the farmers. They make here a liquor called Calvados, which when it attains a certain age is much more drinkable and much less unwholesome than most of the casual cognac of our times. After three years this very unpopular law was repealed in 1875, mainly through the efforts of M. Bocher. It had plagued the farmers more than it benefited the Treasury.

The _bouilleurs de cru_, as these domestic distillers are called, had made during the three years 1869-72, 1,199,000 hectolitres of spirits which paid excise duties. During the three years 1872-75 under the Wilson law the production fell to about 165,000 hectolitres a year. In the first year, 1875-76, after the repeal of the law it rose to 301,000 hectolitres.

The sale of crosses of the Legion, official contracts and other operations not consistent with that virtue on which alone Montesquieu tells us a republic can safely repose, made an end of M. Wilson and of his father-in-law. But the enormous Republican deficit kept on increasing, and in 1888, under the presidency of M. Carnot, the Republicans revived a project formed by M. Carnot when Minister of Finance, in 1886, for imposing upon the _bouilleurs de cru_ anew the severe and inquisitorial taxation of 1872. Under the law introduced to effect this, January 12, 1888, the whole of the buildings in which any part of the processes of this production may be carried on must be open to the tax-officers _at all hours of the day or night_. As many of the _bouilleurs de cru_ are small farmers who use part of their houses for some of these processes, it may be imagined how bitterly they oppose such a law. They have no more love for tax-gatherers than the people of other countries have; but the English maxim that every man's house is his castle is a distinctly Norman maxim, and this menace offered to the sanct.i.ty and privacy of the domicile has profoundly exasperated the Norman populations. It is of a piece, they think, with the arbitrary school system and with the elaborate contrivances devised to deprive the communes of the right finally to certify and give effect to the returns of their own elections. Above all, it is an interference with an ancient and customary right. 'What business have these lawyers and doctors at Paris,' said a farmer here to me, 'to be meddling with our usages and ways here on our lands in Normandy? Let them fix general taxes, and leave us to pay them in our own way!'

The war against the Church affects these Normans in the same way. It does not seem to rouse them into a kind of fanatical fervour, such as blazes up here and there in other parts of France, but it angers them as a disturbance of their settled habits and convictions. 'The Church,'

said one of these Calvados farmers to M. de Witt; 'the Church is the key of our trade. They must not touch it!'

What he meant was, that on Sunday at the village church the farmers, after the ma.s.s, are in the habit of talking over all their affairs together. It is a kind of social exchange for men whose calling in life keeps them far apart during the week.

Is it to be supplanted for the benefit of the France of the future by c.o.c.kpits and cabarets, or courses of lectures delivered in 'scholastic palaces,' by spectacled and decorated professors, on the 'struggle for life,' and the 'survival of the fittest'?

The victory of M. Pierre de Witt in July was too complete to leave any pretext for meddling with its results of which the authorities liked to avail themselves. The law, however, gives abundant opportunities for such meddling wherever a plausible pretext can be found. After the votes of a commune have been verified and counted, two of the a.s.sessors start off at once with all the votes and papers for the chief town of the canton. The bureau of this chief town has power to 'verify and, if need be, remake the calculations which show the majority. It may modify the decisions of the communal bureaux as to the candidate to whom certain votes properly belong, may decide what votes are to be treated as entirely null, or to be counted in estimating the majority without being held as given to either candidate. It may also decide what votes belong to a candidate. It may also take away from the candidates elected, or claiming to have been elected, all votes found in the urn or urns in excess of the number of electors actually tallied as voting.'

The decisions reached by the bureau are next to be collated with the _proces-verbaux_ of the communal bureaux--after which all the doc.u.ments connected with the election, including the tally-lists of the voters, are to be sent to the prefect of the department.

When the legislative elections came on in September the authorities of the Calvados made desperate efforts to break the solid front of the Monarchist deputation from this department. In the arrondiss.e.m.e.nt of Pont-l'Eveque, where M. Conrad de Witt stood as the Monarchist candidate, the official interference against him was so open that the Prefect, M. de Brancion, did not hesitate to sign and circulate a letter intended to affect the elections, though by Article 3 of the law of November 30, 1875, regulating elections, all agents of the Government are expressly forbidden to distribute ballots, professions of faith, or circulars affecting the candidates. M. de Witt had cited to the electors a remarkable declaration made in the Senate by M. Leon Say as to the inevitable increase of local taxation which must be expected from the development and enforcement of the Government policy in regard to education.

M. Leon Say resigned his seat in the Senate last year that he might enter the Chamber, his friends having convinced themselves, on no very apparent grounds, that his appearance in the Chamber would rally around him the support of Conservative men of all shades of opinion, and make him master of the situation. He was a candidate in the Hautes Pyrenees.

The quotation made by M. de Witt from his sensible speech in the Senate much disturbed the Republicans in the Calvados, and some official application was evidently made to him on the subject; for, without denying that he had said in the Senate what was imputed to him, he seems to have a.s.sured the Republicans of the Calvados that it was absurd to suppose he would so speak of the Government policy when he was standing as a Government candidate for election to the Chamber. This obvious but quite irrelevant statement was instantly circulated all over the department by the Prefect himself. As it was very easily disposed of, it did no great harm. But it is a curious ill.u.s.tration of the way in which these election matters are managed now in France. M. de Witt was triumphantly re-elected, receiving 6,972 votes against 5,189 in the arrondiss.e.m.e.nt of Pont-l'Eveque. The Monarchists also carried every other seat for the Calvados, making seven in all.

In 1885, under the _scrutin de liste_, the votes given to M. de Witt show a Conservative majority in the Calvados of 13,722 in a total poll of 89,064. In 1889, taking all the districts together, the Calvados showed a Monarchist majority of 19,868 in a total poll of 82,216. This gives us a falling off in the total poll of 6,848, and an increase in the Monarchist majority of 6,497 votes!

I called M. Conrad de Witt's attention, after the legislative elections were over, to an article in an English periodical by a French Protestant writer, M. Monod, in which the Monarchist majority of 1889 in the Calvados was attributed to the bad harvest of pears and apples. The veteran Protestant President of the Society of Agriculture in the Calvados smiled in a quiet and significant way, and simply said, 'Ah! I think we are more solid than that!'

So indeed it would seem!

The 'apple-blight' of the Calvados must obviously have extended into the neighbouring department of the Eure, or at least into the great and busy arrondiss.e.m.e.nt of Bernay, which gave the Monarchist candidate in September 1889 the tremendous majority of 5,550 votes in a total poll of 12,772. Possibly, too, there may be some occult relation between this remarkable result and the presence in this arrondiss.e.m.e.nt of one of the most distinguished of living Frenchmen, and one of the most outspoken champions of the Const.i.tutional Monarchy. An able man with a mind of his own, and the courage to speak it, is a force in any country at any time.

In France at this time such a man is a determining force. The obvious weakness of the Monarchical party in France was touched by the Committee of the Catholic a.s.sociation in their report to which I have alluded in another chapter. It is the a.s.sociation in the popular mind of the monarchical idea with the traditions of Versailles and with the 'pomps and vanities' of what is ridiculously called '_le high-life_' of modern Paris. As a matter of fact, all that was silliest and most scandalous in the Court life of France in the eighteenth century was reproduced and exaggerated under the Directory. What is there to choose between Louis XV. doffing his hat beside the coach of Madame Du Barry, and Barras ordering Ouvrard to keep Madame Tallien in diamonds, opera-boxes, coaches and villas, out of the profits of public loans and contracts for the service of the 'Republic one and indivisible'? Formula for Formula (to speak after the manner of Mr. Carlyle), is not the Republican Formula of the two the more demoralizing, dismal, degraded, and altogether hopeless? What is called '_le high-life_' of Paris is neither Royalist nor Republican. It is merely shallow and vulgar, like the '_high-life_' of sundry other places ruled by governments of divers forms. But when young men born to names which in the popular mind represent the history of France show themselves as athletes in a Parisian circus, or appear as grooms on the carriages of _cocottes_ in the Bois de Boulogne, their folly naturally damages more or less in the public estimation the principles with which the names they bear are a.s.sociated.

Under the Empire the Legitimists, as a body, really played the game of the Emperor by holding themselves aloof from public life in all its departments, in accordance with the policy adopted by the Comte de Chambord. The inevitable effect of this policy was to widen the gulf between them and the body of the French people. It tended to bring about in France results like those aimed at by the National League in Ireland, and to prevent a gradual and wholesome reconciliation between the heirs of the cla.s.s which was exiled and plundered during the Revolution, and the heirs of the cla.s.ses which eventually profited by the proscriptions and confiscations of that unhappy time. The disastrous war of 1870-71 did much to counteract the social mischief thus wrought.

The French Legitimists came forward in all parts of France to the defence of their country. They were brought thus into contact with the people and the people with them. They ceased to be a caste and began to be citizens. The way was thus prepared, too, for that fusion of the two great Royalist camps, the camp of the Legitimists and the camp of the Orleanists, which has since taken place. A very intelligent young officer of Engineers, himself the heir of an ancient name, told me at Dijon that there are at this time more men of the old families of France on the rolls of the army than ever before since 1789. Instead of rejoicing in this as the wholesome sign of a growing moral harmony between all cla.s.ses of Frenchmen, the leaders of the Republican party have been incensed by it. Doubtless they regard it as an obstacle to the development of their idea of 'moral unity.' Under President Grevy, the Minister of War actually drove one of the best soldiers in France, General Schmidt, out of his command at Tours by insisting that he should forbid his officers to accept invitations from their friends who lived in the chateaux which are the glory of Touraine, the traditional garden of France. Imagine a High Church secretary-at-war in England issuing an order that no officer in a garrison corps should dine with a Catholic or a Dissenter.

This was not a freak. It was a policy. It was in perfect keeping with an amazing attack made by the Republican press of Paris not long afterwards upon the then American Minister in France, Mr. Morton, now Vice-President of the United States, for giving a dinner in honour of the Comte de Paris. The Comte de Paris and his brother, the Duc de Chartres, had served with distinction on the staff of the Commander-in-Chief of the Union armies in America. They were the sons of a French sovereign, with whose government the government of the United States had long held close and friendly relations. The Comte de Paris is the author of the most careful, thorough, and impartial history yet written of the American Civil War of 1861-65. Yet, for showing his personal and official respect for a French prince possessing such claims upon the respect of Frenchmen as well as of Americans, the diplomatic representative of the United States was a.s.sailed with coa.r.s.e and vulgar violence in the columns of journals a.s.suming to represent the civilization of the capital of France!

Some time after the incident to which I have referred at Tours occurred, I drove from St.-Malo to La Ba.s.se Motte, the charming and picturesque house of General de Charette, in the Ille-et-Vilaine, with the Marquis de la Roche-Jaquelein. The autumn manoeuvres of the French army were then going on. On the way he told me among other things that the officers of a cavalry brigade encamped for two or three days in the neighbourhood of his chateau had been forbidden by their brigade commander to accept a dinner to which he had invited, not only them, but their commander also! The general in command of the cavalry division fortunately happened to arrive before the day fixed for the dinner, and, having been informed of this state of affairs, quietly authorized the officers to attend the dinner, and attended it himself.

Can anything be more absurd than to attempt to naturalize a Republic in France by identifying Republican inst.i.tutions with such tyrannical interference as this in the private and social relations of French officers and citizens?

The Third Republic has improved upon Cambon's piratical watchword, _Guerre aux chateaux; paix aux chaumieres_. It makes war socially upon the _chateaux_, and it makes war religiously and financially upon the _chaumieres_.

All this must bring out into clearer relief before the French people the unquestionable personal superiority of the Monarchist over the Republican leaders and representatives. It is undeniable that an overwhelming majority of the ablest and most influential men in France, of all cla.s.ses and conditions, are to-day in open opposition either to the policy or to the const.i.tution of the existing Republic, or to both.

Many--I think most of them--are agreed that the Monarchy must be restored if France is to be saved from anarchy and dismemberment. The rest of them are agreed that the Republic must be so remodelled as to become in fact, if not in name, a monarchy. In this condition of the country, the avowed Monarchists must inevitably draw to themselves the support of all who differ from them, not as to the end, but as to the means only. For the logic of events is steadily strengthening the verdict uttered by the Duc de Broglie three years ago on the Republican experiments, in a speech made by him before the Monarchist Union at Paris on May 29, 1887. 'All these political ghosts must go flitting by, but France will endure and remain, forced to pay the price of their follies in the form of interest on their loans!'

There is no war now between the Chateau de Broglie and the cottages of the Eure; certainly no war between the chateau and the town of Broglie.