Part 34 (1/2)

Pasquier's, and a lady-killing smile like M. Brifaut's.

With that he is a curt, bold, expeditious man, resolute, but cunning and reserved.

At the Chamber he occupies the extreme end of the fourth bench of the last section on the left, exactly above M. Ledru-Rollin.

He usually sits with folded arms. The bench on which Ledru-Rollin and Lamennais sit is perhaps the most habitually irritated of the Left.

While the a.s.sembly shouts, murmurs, yells, roars, and rages, Changarnier yawns.

LAGRANGE.

Lagrange, it is said, fired the pistol in the Boulevard des Capucines, fatal spark that heated the pa.s.sions of the people and caused the conflagration of February. He is styled: Political prisoner and Representative of the people.

Lagrange has a grey moustache, a grey beard and long grey hair. He is overflowing with soured generosity, charitable violence and a sort of chivalrous demagogy; there is a love in his heart with which he stirs up hatred; he is tall, thin, young looking at a distance, old when seen nearer, wrinkled, bewildered, hoa.r.s.e, flurried, wan, has a wild look in his eyes and gesticulates; he is the Don Quixote of the Mountain. He, also, tilts at windmills; that is to say, at credit, order, peace, commerce, industry,--all the machinery that turns out bread. With this, a lack of ideas; continual jumps from justice to insanity and from cordiality to threats. He proclaims, acclaims, reclaims and declaims.

He is one of those men who are never taken seriously, but who sometimes have to be taken tragically.

PRUDHON.

Prudhon was born in 1803. He has thin fair hair that is ruffled and ill-combed, with a curl on his fine high brow. He wears spectacles. His gaze is at once troubled, penetrating and steady. There is something of the house-dog in his almost flat nose and of the monkey in his chin-beard. His mouth, the nether lip of which is thick, has an habitual expression of ill-humour. He has a Franc-Comtois accent, he utters the syllables in the middle of words rapidly and drawls the final syllables; he puts a circ.u.mflex accent on every ”a,” and like Charles Nodier, p.r.o.nounces: ”_honorable, remarquable_.” He speaks badly and writes well.

In the tribune his gesture consists of little feverish pats upon his ma.n.u.script with the palm of his hand. Sometimes he becomes irritated, and froths; but it is cold slaver. The princ.i.p.al characteristic of his countenance and physiognomy is mingled embarra.s.sment and a.s.surance.

I write this while he is in the tribune.

Anthony Thouret met Prudhon.

”Things are going badly,” said Prudhon.

”To what cause do you attribute our embarra.s.sments?” 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!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Prudhon.

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