Memoirs of the Prince of Joinville. Prince of Joinville
leaving nothing standing but animal man and his animal passions and appetites. The long death-struggle of a passionately loved sister, who was supported by the constant ministrations of the Bishop of Beauvais, M. Feutrier, and her calm end, of which he was an eyewitness, began the change within him. When, in later years, the Abbe Dupanloup, then Vicar of the Church of the Assumption, was charged with the care of my religious education, he and Trognon became very intimate, and death alone interrupted the close communion then established between these two great minds.
The first years of my education were very happy. Anything dry about it was liberally compensated for by the constant intimacy of the family circle. We were three sisters and six brothers (this last number soon reduced to five by the death of my brother Penthievre), all living together, eating together, often doing lessons together, together always in all games and pleasure parties and excursions. What a joyous band we were may easily be guessed. Each boy had his own tutor, and two governesses were in charge of my sisters. So long as tutors and governesses
only had to deal with their own pupils, all went well, but when the brothers and sisters were all together, and influenced by the spirit of insubordination and love of playing pranks which the elder ones brought back from school, we made life hard and sour to the preceptorial body. But they got on, somehow. The GRANDSPARENTS, as we called our parents, taken up as they were by their social engagements, left all initiative to the tutors. Each of these was only expected to enter daily in a book his report and opinion of the pupil committed to his care. This book was seen by my father, and he added his own remarks and orders, and then returned it.
Our day generally began at five o'clock in the morning. The elder ones went to school to attend their classes, took their meals and played with the boarders, and came home after evening school. The boys who were not at school and the girls spent the day doing their lessons. In the evening, pupils and teachers of both sexes all dined together, and then went to the drawing-room, where there was always company, for my parents received every evening. Thursdays and Sundays, which were school holidays, were given up specially to lessons in what were known as accomplishments: drawing, music, physical exercises, riding, fencing, singlestick, dancing, &c. On Sundays, every one, great and small, dined at "THE GREAT TABLE," and this life of ours was as regular as clockwork summer and winter alike.
In winter time we lived in the Palais-Royal, which then was not at all what it is nowadays. Where the Galerie d'Orleans is now to be seen, there were hideous wooden passages, with muddy floors, exclusively occupied by milliners' shops, and peopled, it was said, by thousands of rats. To get rid of this collection of shanties, they were sawn through below, and allowed to come down with a crash. Crowds of people came to witness the collapse, in the hope of seeing the expected multitude of rats rush out. There was not a single one! They had all cleared
out in good time. Such is the wisdom of the brute creation!
When I first lived at the Palais-Royal, I had a room in the Rue de Valois, which overlooked the Boeuf a la Mode restaurant, and opposite there dwelt an old lady, always dressed in black, who regularly every day, at the very same hour, placed an indispensable article of domestic use upon her window-sill, so that it was as good as a clock to us. Later on, I changed my room for one looking over the courtyard, facing the rooms occupied by an actor at the Comedie-Francaise named Dumilatre, and his daughters; Dumilatre, whom I knew well, having seen him play those small tragedy parts which consist in making a dignified exit and saying, "Yes, my lord," had the same habits as my black lady, and the same object used to appear upon his window-sill with equal regularity. I had only changed my clock!
It was during the winter sojourn at the Palais-Royal, too, that our masters and their lessons multiplied. And several of these masters were oddities, amongst others our professor of German. Picture a little bland-mannered old man, dressed all in black, with satin breeches, woollen stockings, enormous shoes, and a broad-brimmed hat. He had been tutor to Prince Metternich in his youth. I know not what chance had later driven him into France—where, during the Terror, he became one of the
secretaries of the much-dreaded Committee of Public Safety at Strasbourg. He lived alone with his daughter, whom he often sent to Germany, not by the ordinary means of communication, but concealed in the van which was sent periodically into Hungary to fetch supplies of leeches for the hospitals, which circumstance made us conclude that the simple name of "Herr Simon" by which he called himself probably concealed some deep mystery. Nothing, alas! remains to me of his German, nor of that of a valet of the same race, who had been put about me, so ill adapted has my mental constitution always proved to any foreign language.
Another oddity was our dancing master, an Opera dancer, named Seuriot. What a fine presence that man had! His lesson, which we all took together, like a little corps de ballet, was a great amusement to us, especially because of the theatrical stories we used to make him tell us. One day he arrived in a great state of excitement, and addressing the governesses he said, "Ladies, you see before you a man who had a remarkable escape yesterday. The ballet called Les Filets de Vulcain was being danced, I was playing Jupiter, and I was just going to ascend in my glory, with Mercury beside me, when I felt that same glory was out of order, and I had only just time to jump off, and to shout to Mercury, 'Jump, my friend, jump, don't lose an instant!' Well, well!" During the pauses in the lesson, when his fiddle ceased, and while he wiped the perspiration from his brow, we used to crowd round him and ask him questions. The elder ones always tried to get him on the subject of a danseuse named Mademoiselle Legallois, one on which he would descant unendingly. This was the lady who on one occasion appeared in a ballet as the allegorical representative of Religion, which fact caused it to be said of a certain [Illustration: Man and woman dancing.] Marshal of France "qu'il s'etait eteint dans les bras de la religion" (that he had passed away peacefully in the arms of religion). But the moment we were seen crowding round and whispering with the old dancer, the governesses would charge down upon us with their "What is it? What is it?" and we began our BATTEMENTS and our steps again. Personally I owed one of the earliest successes in my life to old Seuriot. I had profited so much by his lessons, that I appear to have danced the minuet in a quite remarkable way, so much so that my parents had a complete crimson velvet dress in the style of the last century made for me, with the indispensable three-cornered hat and a sword with knots of ribbon. Thus accoutred, with powdered head and pigtail, I had to give several performances of my minuet, which I danced with
my sister Clementine, both of us displaying all the airs and graces of bygone times. My marquis's dress, of which I was excessively proud, served me also for a fancy dress ball given by the Duchesse de Berri, at which, identifying myself too much with my character, I had a quarrel with a Cossack of my own age, young de B— about a partner. In my fury I drew my sword, he did likewise, and we were just falling on each other, when the Duchesse rushed up crying, "Stop, you naughty children! Take their swords away, M. de Brissac!" As for my sister Clementine, who was at the ball too, wearing her minuet gown, and looking utterly bewitching in her powder and her looped-up dress, she attracted the notice of Charles X., to whom she doubtless brought back memories of his own youth. He came to her and kissed her, and gazed at her for a long time, holding her hand. Then, turning to my father, he said, "Monsieur, if I were forty years younger, your daughter should be Queen of France," whereupon he kissed her over again.
Our dancing lessons, which were looked upon as recreation, alternated with walks about Paris. The girls went in one direction, and the boys in another. When we went out thus, one tutor alone took the extra duty of looking after us. When it was Trognon who came out, we always expected to be taken to Sautelet's, a bookseller in the Rue de Richelieu, whose establishment became, I recollect, in later days, the head office of the NATIONAL. There Trognon would hold forth amongst the journalists, while the clerks talked to us. I remember their showing me the splendid manuscript of the Memoirs of Saint-Simon, which Sautelet was then publishing. When, on the other hand, it was Cuvillier-Fleury who marshalled us, the objects of our walks became more varied, and we soon began to discover that there was not unfrequently a petticoat somewhere about. Yet I owe to him the precious memory of a visit to the studio of Eugene Delacroix; and also of one to M. de Lavalette, Postmaster-
General under the first Napoleon, a most interesting man, well known for his celebrated escape on the eve of the day appointed for his execution, after the Hundred Days, when his wife came