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LAFAYETTE57 (1833)
By HEINRICH HEINE
TRANSLATED BY CHARLES GODFREY LELAND
PARIS, January 19, 1832.
The Temps remarks today that the Allgemeine Zeitung now publishes articles which are hostile to the royal family, and that the German censorship, which does not permit the least remark to be leveled at absolute kings, does not show the least mercy toward a citizen-king. The Temps is really the shrewdest and cleverest journal in the world! It attains its object with a few mild words much more readily than others with the most blustering polemics. Its crafty hint is well understood, and I know of at least one liberal writer who no longer considers it honorable to use, under the permission of the censorship, such inimical language of a citizen-king as would not be allowed when applied to an absolute monarch. But in return for that, let Louis Philippe do us one single favor—which is to remain a citizen-king; for it is because he is becoming every day more and more like an absolute king that we must complain of him. He is certainly perfectly honorable as a man, an estimable father of a family, a tender spouse and a good economist, but it is vexatious to see how he allows all the trees of liberty to be felled and stripped of their beautiful foliage that they may be sawed into beams to support the tottering house of Orleans. For that, and that only, the Liberal press blames him, and the spirits of truth, in order to make war on him, even condescend to lie. It is melancholy and lamentable that through such tactics even the family of the King must suffer, although its members are as innocent as they are amiable. As regards this, the German Liberal press, less witty but much kinder than its French elder sister, is guilty of no cruelties. "You should at least have pity on the King," lately cried the good-tempered Journal des Débats. "Pity on Louis Philippe!" replied the Tribune. "This man asks for fifteen millions and our pity! Did he have pity on Italy, on Poland?"—et cetera.
I saw a few days ago the young orphan of Menotti, who was hanged in Modena. Nor is it long since I saw Señora Luisa de Torrijos, a poor deathly-pale lady, who quickly returned to Paris when she learned on the Spanish frontier the news of the execution of her husband and of his fifty-two companions in misfortune. Ah! I really pity Louis Philippe.
La Tribune, the organ of the openly declared Republican party, is pitiless as regards its royal enemy, and every day preaches the Republic. The National, the most reckless and independent journal in France, has recently chimed in to the same air in a most surprising manner. And terrible as an echo from the bloodiest days of the Convention sounded the speeches of those chiefs of the Société des Amis du Peuple who were placed last week before the court of assizes, "accused of having conspired against the existing Government in order to overthrow it and establish a republic." They were acquitted by the jury, because they proved that they had in no way conspired, but had simply uttered their convictions publicly. "Yes, we desire the overthrow of this feeble Government, we wish for a republic." Such was the refrain of all their speeches before the tribunal.
While on one side the serious Republicans draw the sword and growl with words of thunder, the Figaro flashes lightning, and laughs and swings its light lash most effectually. It is inexhaustible in clever sayings as to "the best republic," a phrase with which poor Lafayette is mocked, because he, as is well known, once embraced Louis Philippe before the Hôtel de Ville and cried, "Vous êtes la meilleure république!" The Figaro recently remarked that we of course now require no republic, since we have seen the best. And it also said as cruelly, in reference to the debates on the civil list, that "la meilleure république coute quinze millions." The Republican party will never forgive Lafayette his blunder in advocating a king. They reproach him with this, that he had known Louis Philippe long enough to be aware beforehand what was to be expected of him. Lafayette is now ill—malade de chagrin—heart-sick. All! the greatest heart of two worlds must feel bitterly the royal deception. It was all in vain that he in the very beginning continually insisted on the Programme de l'Hôtel de Ville, on the republican institutions with which the monarchy should be surrounded, and on similar promises. But he was out-cried by the doctrinaire gossips and chatterers, who proved from the English history of 1688 that people in Paris in July, 1830, had fought simply to maintain the Charter, and that all their sacrifices and struggles had no other object than to replace the elder line of the Bourbons by the younger, just as all was finished in England by putting the House of Orange in place of the Stuarts. Thiers, who does not think with this party, though he now acts as their spokesman, has of late given them a good push forward. This indifferentist of the deepest dye, who knows so admirably how to preserve moderation in the clearness, intelligence, and illustration of his style, this Goethe of politics, is certainly at present the most powerful defender of the system of Périer, and, in fact, with his pamphlet against Chateaubriand he well-nigh annihilated that Don Quixote of Legitimacy, who sat so pathetically on his winged Rosinante, whose sword was more shining than sharp, and who shot only with costly pearls instead of good, piercing, leaden bullets.
In their irritation at the lamentable turn which events have taken, many of the enthusiasts for freedom go so far as to slander Lafayette. How far a man can go astray in this direction is shown by the book of Belmontet, which is also an attack on the well-known pamphlet by Chateaubriand, and in which the Republic is advocated with commendable freedom. I would here cite the bitter passages against Lafayette contained in this work, were they not on one side too spiteful, and on the other connected with a defense of the Republic which is not suitable to this journal. I therefore refer the reader to the work itself, and especially to a chapter in it entitled "The Republic." One may there see how evil fortune may make even the noblest men unjust.
I will not here find fault with the brilliant delusion of the possibility of a republic in France. A royalist by inborn inclination, I have now, in France, become one from conviction. For I am convinced that the French could never tolerate any republic, neither according to the constitution of Athens or of Sparta, nor, least of all, to that of the United States. The Athenians were the student-youths of mankind; their constitution was a species of academic freedom, and it would be mere folly to seek to introduce it in this our matured age, to revive it in our senile Europe. And how could we put up with that of Sparta, that great and tiresome manufactory of patriotism, that soldiers' barrack of republican virtue, that sublimely bad kitchen of equality, in which black broth was so vilely cooked that Attic wits declared it made men despise life and defy death in battle? How could such a constitution flourish in the very foyer of gourmands, in the fatherland of Véry, of Véfour, and of Carême? This latter would certainly have thrown himself, like Vatel, on his sword, as a Brutus of cookery and as the last gastronome. Indeed, had Robespierre only introduced Spartan cookery, the guillotine would have been quite superfluous, for then the last aristocrats would have died of terror, or emigrated as soon as possible. Poor Robespierre! you would introduce stern republicanism to Paris—to a city in which one hundred and fifty thousand milliners and dressmakers, and as many barbers and perfumers, exercise their smiling, curling, and sweet-smelling industries!
The monotony, the want of color, and the petty domestic citizens' life of America would be even more intolerable in the home of the "love of the spectacular," of vanity, fashion, and novelties. Indeed, the passion for decorations flourishes nowhere so much as in France. Perhaps, with the exception of August Wilhelm Schlegel, there is not a woman in Germany so fond of gay ribbons as the French; even the heroes of July, who fought for freedom and equality, afterward wore blue ribbons to distinguish themselves from the rest of the people. Yet, if I on this account doubt the success of a republic in Europe, it still cannot be denied that everything is leading to one; that the republican respect for law in place of veneration of royal personages is showing itself among the better classes, and that the Opposition, just as it played at comedy for fifteen years with a king, is now continuing the same game with royalty itself, and that consequently a republic may be for a short time, at least, the end of the song. The Carlists are aiding this movement, since they regard it as a necessary phase which will enable them to reëstablish the absolute monarchy of the elder branch; therefore they now bear themselves like the most zealous republicans. Even Chateaubriand praises the Republic, calls himself a Republican from inclination, fraternizes with Marrast, and receives the accolade from Béranger. The Gazette—the hypocritical Gazette de France—now yearns for republican state forms, universal franchise, primary meetings, et cetera. It is amusing to see how these disguised priestlings now play the bully-braggart in the language of Sans-culottism, how fiercely they coquet with the red Jacobin cap, yet are ever and anon afflicted with the thought that they might forgetfully have put on in its place the red cap of a prelate; they take for an instant from their heads their borrowed covering and show the tonsure unto all the world. Such men as these now believe that they may insult Lafayette, and it serves as an agreeable relaxation from the sour republicanism, the compulsory liberty, which they must assume.
But let deluded friends and hypocritical enemies say what they will, Lafayette is, after Robespierre, the purest character of the French Revolution, and, next to Napoleon, its most popular hero. Napoleon and Lafayette are the two names which now bloom most beautifully in France. Truly their fame is each of a different kind. The latter fought for peace, not victory; the former rather for the laurel wreath than for that of oak leaves. It would indeed be ridiculous to measure the greatness of the two heroes with the same metre, and put one on the pedestal of the other, even as it would be absurd to set the statue of Lafayette on the Vendôme column—that monument made of the cannon conquered on so many fields of battle, the sight of which, as Barbier sings, no French mother can endure. On this bronze column place Napoleon, the man of iron, here, as in life, standing on his fame, earned by cannon, rising in terrible isolation to the clouds, so that every ambitious soldier, when he beholds him, the unattainable one, there on high, may have his heart humbled and healed of the vain love of celebrity, and thus this colossal column of metal, as a lightning conductor of conquering heroism, will do much for the cause of peace in Europe.
Lafayette has raised for himself a better column than that of the Place Vendôme, and a better monumental image than one of metal or marble. Where is there marble as pure as the heart of old Lafayette, or metal as firm as his fidelity? It is true that he was always one-sided, but one-sided like the magnetic needle, which always points to the north, and never once veers to south or west. So he has for forty years said the same thing, and pointed constantly to North America. He is the one who opened the Revolution with the declaration of the rights of man; to this hour he perseveres in this belief, without which there is no salvation and no health to be hoped for—the one-sided man with his one-sided heavenly region of freedom. He is indeed no genius, as was Napoleon, in whose head the eagles of inspiration built their nests, while the serpents of calculation entwined in his heart; but then he was never intimidated by eagles nor seduced by serpents. As a young man he was wise as a graybeard, as a graybeard fiery as a youth, a protector of the people against the wiles of the great, a protector of the great against the rage of the people, compassionating yet combating, never arrogant and never discouraged, equally firm and mild—the unchangeable Lafayette! and so, in his one-sidedness and equanimity, he has remained on the same spot from the days of Marie Antoinette to the present hour. And, as a trusty Eckart of liberty, he still stands leaning on his sword before the entrance to the Tuileries, warning the world against that seductive Venusberg, whose magic tones sing so enticingly, and from whose sweet snares the poor wretches who are once entangled in them can never escape.
It is certainly true that the dead Napoleon is more beloved by the French than is the living Lafayette. This is perhaps because he is dead, which is to me the most delightful thing connected with him; for, were he alive, I should be obliged to fight against him. The world outside of France has no idea of the boundless devotion of the French people to Napoleon. Therefore the discontented, when they determine on a decided and daring course, will begin by proclaiming the young Napoleon, in order to secure the sympathy of the masses. Napoleon is, for the French, a magic word which electrifies and benumbs them. There sleep a thousand cannon in this name, even as in the column of the Place Vendôme, and the Tuileries will tremble should these cannon once awake. As the Jews never idly uttered the name of their God, so Napoleon is here very seldom called by his, and people speak of him as l'homme, "the man." But his picture is seen everywhere, in engravings and plaster casts, in metal and wood. On all boulevards and carrefours are orators who praise and popular minstrels who sing him—the Man—and his deeds. Yesterday evening, while returning home, I came into a dark and lonely lane, in which there stood a child some three years old, who, by a candle stuck into the earth, lisped a song praising the Emperor. As I threw him a sou on the handkerchief spread out, something slid up to me, begging for another. It was an old soldier, who could also sing a song of the glory of the great Emperor, for this glory had cost him both legs. The poor man did not beg in the name of God, but implored with most believing fervor, "Au nom de Napoléon, donnez-moi un sou." So this name is the best word to conjure with among the people. Napoleon is its god, its cult, its religion, and this religion will, by and by, become tiresome, like every other.
Lafayette, on the contrary, is venerated more as a man or as a guardian angel. He, too, lives in picture and in song, but less heroically; and—honorably confessed!—it had a comic effect on me when, last year, on the 28th July, I heard in the song of La Parisienne the words—
"Lafayette aux cheveux blancs,"
while I saw him in person standing near me in his brown wig. It was the Place de la Bastille; the man was in his right place, but still I needs must laugh to myself. It may be that such a comic combination brings him humanly somewhat nearer to our hearts. His good-nature, his bonhomie, acts even on children, and they perhaps understand his greatness better than do the grown people. And here I will tell a little story about a beggar which will show the characteristic contrast between the glory of Lafayette and that of Napoleon. I was lately standing at a street corner before the Pantheon, and as usual lost in thought in contemplating that beautiful building, when a little Auvergnat came begging for a sou, and I gave him half-a-franc to be rid of him. But he approached me all the more familiarly with the words, "Est-ce que vous connaissez le général Lafayette?" and as I assented to this strange question, the proudest satisfaction appeared on the naïve and dirty face of the pretty boy, and with serio-comic expression he said, "Il est de mon pays," for he naturally believed that any man who was generous enough to give him ten sous must be, of course, an admirer of Lafayette, and judged me worthy that he should present himself as a compatriot of that great man. The country folk also have for Lafayette the most affectionate respect, and all the more because he chiefly busies himself with agriculture. From this, result the freshness and simplicity which might be lost in constant city life. In this he is like one of those great Republicans of earlier days who planted their own cabbages, but who in time of need hastened from the plough to the battle or the tribune, and after combat and victory returned to their rural work. On the estate where Lafayette passes the pleasant portion of the year, he is generally surrounded by aspiring young men and pretty girls. There hospitality, be it of heart or of table, rules supreme; there are much laughing and dancing; there is the court of the sovereign people; there any one may be presented who is the son of his own works and has never made mésalliance with falsehood—and Lafayette is the master of ceremonies. The name of this country place is Lagrange, and it is very charming when the hero of two worlds relates to the young people his adventures; then he appears like an epos surrounded by the garlands of an idyll.
But it is in the real middle-class more than any other, that is, among tradespeople and small shop-keepers, that there is the most veneration for Lafayette. They simply worship him. Lafayette, the establisher of order, is their idol. They adore him as a kind of Providence on horseback, an armed tutelary patron of public peace and security, as a genius of freedom, who also takes care in the battle for freedom that nothing is stolen and that everybody keeps his little property. The great army of public order, as Casimir Périer called the National Guard, the well-fed heroes in great bearskin caps into which small shopmen's heads are stuck, are drunk with delight when they speak of Lafayette, their old general, their Napoleon of peace. Truly he is the Napoleon of the small citizen, of those brave folks who always pay their bills—those uncle tailors and cousin glove-makers who are indeed too busy by day to think of Lafayette, but who praise him afterward in the evening with double enthusiasm, so that one may say that it is about eleven o'clock at night, when the shops are shut, that his fame is in full bloom.
I have just before used the expression "master of ceremonies." I now recall that Wolfgang Menzel has in his witty trifling called Lafayette a master of ceremonies of Liberty. This was when the former spoke in the Literaturblatt of the triumphal march of Lafayette across the United States, and of the deputations, addresses, and solemn discourses which attended such occasions. Other much less witty folk wrongly imagine that Lafayette is only an old man who is kept for show or used as a machine. But they need hear him speak only once in public to learn that he is not a mere flag which is followed or sworn by, but that he is in person the gonfalonière in whose hands is the good banner, the oriflamme of the nations. Lafayette is perhaps the most prominent and influential speaker in the Chamber of Deputies. When he speaks, he always hits the nail, and his nailed-up enemies, on the head.
When it is needed, when one of the great questions of humanity is discussed, then Lafayette ever rises, eager for strife as a youth. Only the body is weak and tottering, broken by age and the battles of his time, like a hacked and dented old iron armor, and it is touching when he totters under it to the tribune and has reached his old post, to see how he draws a deep breath and smiles. This smile, his delivery, and the whole being of the man while speaking on the tribune, are indescribable. There is in it all so much that is winsome and yet so much delicate irony, that one is enchained as by a marvelous curiosity, a sweet, strange enigma. We know not if these are the refined manners of a French marquis or the straightforward simplicity of an American citizen. All that is best in the ancien régime, the chivalresque courtesy and tact, are here wondrously fused with what is best in the modern bourgeoisie, love of equality, simplicity, and honesty. Nothing is more interesting than when mention is made, in the Chamber, of the first days of the Revolution, and some one in doctrinaire fashion tears some historical fact from its true connection and turns it to his own account in speech. Then Lafayette destroys with a few words the erroneous deduction by illustrating or correcting the true sense of such an event by citing the circumstances relating to it. Even Thiers must in such a case strike sail, and the great historiographer of the Revolution bows before the outburst of its great and living monument, General Lafayette.
There sits in the Chamber, just before the tribune a very old man, with long silvery hair falling over his black clothing. His body is girted with a very broad tricolored scarf; he is the old messenger who has always filled that office in the Chamber since the beginning of the Revolution, and who in this post has witnessed the momentous events of the world's history from the days of the first National Assembly till the juste milieu. I am told that he often speaks of Robespierre, whom he calls le bon Monsieur Robespierre. During the Restoration the old man suffered from colic, but since he has wound the tricolored scarf round his waist he finds himself well again. His only trouble now, in the dull and lazy times of the juste milieu, is drowsiness. I once even saw him fall asleep while Mauguin was speaking. Indeed, the man has, doubtless, in his time heard better than Mauguin, who is, however, one of the best orators of the Opposition, though he is not found to be very startling or effective by one qui a beaucoup connu ce bon Monsieur de Robespierre. But when Lafayette speaks, then the old messenger awakes from his twilight drowsiness, he seems to be aroused like an old war-horse of hussars when he hears the sound of a trumpet—there rise within him sweet memories of youth, and he nods delightedly with his silver-white head.
