The Memoirs of Victor Hugo Part 34

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?"

"I am a financier."

BLANQUI.

Blanqui got so that he no longer wore a s.h.i.+rt. For twelve years he had worn the same clothes--his prison clothes--rags, which he displayed with sombre pride at his club. He renewed only his boots and his gloves, which were always black.

At Vincennes during his eight months of captivity for the affair of the 15th of May, he lived only upon bread and raw potatoes, refusing all other food. His mother alone occasionally succeeded in inducing him to take a little beef-tea.

With this, frequent ablutions, cleanliness mingled with cynicism, small hands and feet, never a s.h.i.+rt, gloves always.

There was in this man an aristocrat crushed and trampled upon by a demagogue.

Great ability, no hypocrisy; the same in private as in public. Harsh, stern, serious, never laughing, receiving respect with irony, admiration with sarcasm, love with disdain, and inspiring extraordinary devotion.

There was in Blanqui nothing of the people, everything of the populace.

With this, a man of letters, almost erudite. At certain moments he was no longer a man, but a sort of lugubrious apparition in which all degrees of hatred born of all degrees of misery seemed to be incarnated.

LAMARTINE. February 23, 1850.

During the session Lamartine came and sat beside me in the place usually occupied by M. Arbey. While talking, he interjected in an undertone sarcastic remarks about the orators in the tribune.

Thiers spoke. "Little scamp," murmured Lamartine.

Then Cavaignac made his appearance. "What do you think about him?" said Lamartine. "For my part, these are my sentiments: He is fortunate, he is brave, he is loyal, he is voluble--and he is stupid."

Cavaignac was followed by Emmanuel Arago. The a.s.sembly was stormy.

"This man," commented Lamartine, "has arms too small for the affairs he undertakes. He is given to joining in melees and does not know how to get out of them again. The tempest tempts him, and kills him."

A moment later Jules Favre ascended the tribune. "I do not know how they can see a serpent in this man," said Lamartine. "He is a provincial academician."

Laughing the while, he took a sheet of paper from my drawer, asked me for a pen, asked Savatier-Laroche for a pinch of snuff, and wrote a few lines. This done he mounted the tribune and addressed grave and haughty words to M. Thiers, who had been attacking the revolution of February.

Then he returned to our bench, shook hands with me while the Left applauded and the Right waxed indignant, and calmly emptied the snuff in Savatier-Laroche's snuffbox into his own.

BOULAY DE LA MEURTHE.