Memoirs of the Prince of Joinville. Prince of Joinville
brought him garments to escape in. But oftenest of all we used to go to a bookseller's in the Rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts, who was a great friend of Fleury's, and we were always sure to find either him or his charming wife at home.
Fleury's friendship for this bookseller was indeed the cause of a comical adventure. In the confusion of the first few days of the Revolution of 1830, the gentleman in question appeared before us with white belt and a sword over his civilian's dress. "Look here, Fleury," said he, "what use can I be to you today?" Fleury considered for a minute, and then he said he really didn't quite see, but that after all he thought nobody had troubled their heads about the Prefecture of Police. "I'll be off there," said my bookseller, and off he went, appointed himself Prefect of Police, and performed all his functions for several days. I have never heard of him since.
Turn about with these walks, too, we had lessons in gymnastics, of which science a certain Colonel Amoros was the apostle. This worthy colonel gave prizes to everybody, so as to make his classes popular. These prizes took the form of collars, inscribed in large painted letters with the particular merit of the pupil rewarded, such as agility, courage, strength, &c. One pupil was given a prize for "hidden virtue." After the gymnastic lessons came riding lessons, for which we were taken to the Cirque Olympique, I and my two elder brothers being always put in the charge of a single tutor. But as he invariably found the riding school too cold, he used to go and shut himself up in the manager's room, and leave us to the tender care of Laurent Franconi and the rough riders, which amounted to leaving us to ourselves. This icy cold arena, in the Place du Chateau-d'Eau consisted of one immense hall, where the place of the pit was
taken up by the circus or riding school for all sorts of horsemanship, which circus was connected with the stage by inclined planes, whenever a military piece with battles in it was performed. In this circus Laurent Franconi made us practise "la haute ecole," and his assistants. Bassin and Lagoutte, taught us to vault on horseback, astride and sitting, and standing upright—after every fashion, in fact. And to our great amusement, too, these lessons, falling as they did on Sunday afternoons, generally coincided with the rehearsals on the stage, in which we joyfully took our share during the intervals we were allowed for rest, scaling the practicable scenery, or taking part with the artists in certain interludes not mentioned on the programme. This was not indeed our only initiation into theatrical art, a career bearing so much analogy to that of every prince. Taking advantage of the close proximity of the Palais-Royal to the Comedie-Francaise, my father had added a regular course of dramatic literature to the educational plan he had laid out for us. So very often when the old stock plays were being given at the Francais, he would take us by a door leading from his drawing-room into the passage which separates the side scenes from the artists' green-room, and leave us in his box—the three centre ones on the grand tier thrown together—returning to fetch us at the end of the performance. Those evenings at the Comedie-Francaise were our greatest joy, and taught us many a useful lesson, filling our heads with classic literature far more efficiently than all the reading and courses of lectures in the world. But those unlucky classics were very much neglected. They were not a bit the fashion. There would hardly be two hundred people in the theatre, and all the boxes were empty. A wretched orchestra, conducted by a stout man of the name of Chodron, squeaked a tune that set everybody's teeth on edge. Up would go the curtain, without any warning, in the very middle of some phrase in the music which would break off with a sigh from the clarionet, and drearily the
play would begin. We were all eyes and ears in spite of that, and nothing in the play of the tragic actresses—Madame Duchesnois, Madame Paradol, and Madame Bourgoin—ever escaped us. I can see and hear yet all Corneille's plays, and Racine's too, and Zaire, and Mahomet, and L'Orphelin de la Chine, and many more. But what we longed for most impatiently were Moliere's plays. They were our prime favourites, and what actors too! Monrose, Cartigny, Samson, Firmin, Menjaud, and Faure, whose appearances as Fleurant in Le Malade and Truffaldin in L'Etourdi we always greeted with delight, on account of the properties he carried in his hand. This same Faure, an old soldier of 1782, never failed to say to my father, as he escorted him to the door, taper in hand, "Ha, Sir! this is not the camp at la Lune!" referring to a bivouac just before the battle of Valmy. It was always a great amusement to us to go along the passages behind the scenes, especially when the classic Roman processions were being formed up there for the tragedies, for among the lictors and the other Romans we recognized many of the clerks and workmen employed about the Palais-Royal, and we used to bid them good day, and call them by their names, and be very proud indeed of speaking to artists, and we went home to our own fold, imitating the call in the theatre: "On va-a commmencer! On co-mmence!" (Going to begin, just beginning).Sometimes too we were taken to see modern plays, but that did not happen often. Yet even now I seem to hear the actor Armand, just before 1830, talking thick behind his Directoire cravat, in TOM JONES:—
Point d'amis, point de grace,
A la session prochaine il faudra qu'on y passe!
and the whole house rose at him! I remember also being taken to the first night of Henri III., and being very much amused by the cups and balls and the pea-shooters. I was much affected too by the death of Arthur, a charming page in a violet dress, played by Mile. Despreaux, who afterwards became Madame Allan. I had
no eyes for anybody else. As we were going away, my father leading me by the hand, we found the Duchesse de Guise, Mademoiselle Mars, panting, and wrapped in a rose-coloured satin cloak lined with swansdown, waiting for the compliments which my father showered on her. She had not impressed me nearly so much as the page in violet.
Talking of Henri III., a play we took great interest in, because its author, quite unknown at the time, belonged to our household, I will recall here a recollection connected with the name of Alexandre Dumas. Everybody knows he began life as a clerk in my father's library at the Palais-Royal. The chief librarian was Vatout, whose works, and perhaps too some well-known songs, have gained him a seat in the Academy. But Vatout was never in the library by any chance. The real librarian, and a very worthy fellow he was, was a man of the name of Tallencourt. He was an old soldier, and this caused him to be elected captain of a grenadier company in the Citizen Guard—a position to which, in the first blush of his enthusiasm, he attached an exaggerated importance. Well, some time after Dumas had resigned his position in the library, in the midst of the riots which occurred so frequently about that period, we saw Tallencourt come home one day in full warlike attire, with his bearskin cap and his cloak, and a very gloomy countenance. "What do you think has just happened to me? I was in command of a patrol in my ward—as we had heard several shots, we were advancing with the greatest caution, in double file, keeping close to the walls, with our eyes and ears open. All at once I heard a shout—'Here's for you, de Tallencourt!' and then a shot. Well, the shout—that voice—it was Alexandre Dumas' voice!" "Oh, nonsense!" we all cried. But he stuck to it—and we resisted the violent inclination to laugh that assailed us, convinced as we were that if the worthy man really had recognized the voice, he had been the victim of a prank of Alexandre Dumas, who had doubtless enjoyed the fun
of seeing the rout of his former chief and his brave "guernadiers"!
When our father did not take us to the Theatre Francais, we spent our evenings in those beautiful rooms in the Palais-Royal where he had gathered together so many admirable pictures and works of art, plundered and dispersed since by the revolutionists and their tribe, together with the splendid furniture which was used to burn a detachment of the 14th Regiment of the Line alive, on the 24th of February, on which day it was on guard at the Palais-Royal. And to think that a French Chamber actually voted national rewards to people who had made an AUTO DA FE of French soldiers who were guilty of defending till death the post which duty and honour at once made sacred to them! But let that pass; worse things happen nowadays, but at the happy time I speak of nobody thought of the possibility of such shameful doings. This is what men call progress! As far as we ourselves were concerned, we spent our evenings in all the carelessness of our youth, playing together merrily and noisily in the family drawing-room, a large gallery running from the courtyard to the Rue de Valois. The games were liveliest on Sundays and Thursdays, because, those days being school holidays, our merry band was reinforced by my brothers' class-mates, MM. de Laborderie, Guillermy, d'Eckmul, Albert, &c., &c., and by Alfred de Mussetas well, whom I still seem to see, with