HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY FRANCE

1870-1900

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BOOK I 1870-1873

BOOK II 1873-1875

BOOK III (1875-1877)

BOOK IV 1877-1890

 

The men of the Third Republic:

M. BARTHELEMY ST. HILAIRE

(1805 – 1895)

 

A GOOD sort of Turk being on the trudge to Constantinople, where he purposed presenting a petition to the Sultan, overtook an Armenian, whom he naturally began to question as to the character of the monarch under whom they both had the happiness to live. The Armenian, who was a person fond of kings and of big people generally, instantly swelled his voice to recount the praises of his Sovereign. He was this and he was that ; his life had been as the course of a mudless stream ; perfection was too meagre a term to describe his virtues. The Turk with the petition was pleased to hear all this : but when the other had finished he said, with a thoughtful wag of the head, "Yes, but how about his pipe-bearer ? for I have noticed that the doings of the great depend much less upon their own intentions than upon those of their favoured servants, so that I would almost sooner have to deal with a spiteful Sultan who had a benevolent pipe-bearer than with a Sultan who was merciful and yet had a pipe-bearer who was vicious."

At this present writing there must be more than one petitioner in France who is reasoning like the Armenian, and who feels much less concerned to know what reception his petition will meet with at the hands of M. Thiers than of the effect it will produce on M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire, who is not M. Thiers's pipe-bearer, but his chief secretary, privy councillor, and right-hand man, besides acting as leading whip for the Government party, and more or less as editor of the Journal Officiel. These are many functions for one man to discharge, especially for a man who loves Aristotle more than politics, and has arrived at an age when it is pleasanter to see others bestir themselves than to do so oneself. But M. St. Hilaire is not one of those men who seem to grow old. The pupils who sat under him when he was first appointed to succeed Victor Cousin, in 1838, as Professor of Latin and Greek Philosophy at the College de France ; the memorialists who interviewed him when he was unpaid secretary to the Provisional Government of 1848; the engineers who were amazed by his knowledge of Sanscrit and Hindoo literature when he went with them as commissioner to study the practicability of a Suez Canal—all these, and many others, would now find M. St. Hilaire little changed.

A tall man with an ascetic face, earnest professional manners, and that slight stoop which reveals the scholar, his is the first figure that strikes any visitor to the Presidential mansion, just as it used to arrest one's attention in former days at M. Thiers's house in the Place St. George. M. Thiers used then to say : " St. Hilaire is my regulator ; I never knew a thought of mine but was the better for being passed through his head"—and though this may have been but a friendly compliment, there is certainly this much of truth in it, that M. St. Hilaire's skull probably offers all the phrenological prominences which in M. Thiers's are most deficient. M. Thiers sees straight before him to the object at which he aims ; M. St. Hilaire considers the obstacles in the way. M, Thiers asserts ; M. St. Hilaire argues. M. Thiers is patriotic zeal incarnate, and must have a private idea that there is no country in the world really worth attention but France ; M. St. Hilaire is of opinion that there was a great deal of good in the Greeks, and that one might do worse at times than take a lesson from them. In all essentials the two friends—for they are intimate companions rather than chief and subaltern—think and hope alike ; but there is this difference between their modes of expressing themselves : that whereas M. Thiers's utterances snap with witful shrewdness, but require to be underlined by the speaker's smiles and gestures to produce their full effect, the conversation of M. St. Hilaire might be stenographed straight off, and be printed as it stood, without there being any need to correct the proofs.

There is no French like it but M. Guizot's and Bishop Dupanloup's, so that memorialists who see their requests declined may know that they are being nonplussed according to the strictest rules of syntax, which is, at least, satisfactory, for one should always be thankful for small mercies.

It is one of the enigmas of life how certain men, whom one would think specially fashioned by nature for a stated sphere of duties, manage to adapt themselves to others of a quite opposite kind without the smallest apparent effort. There cannot be an hour of the day in which M. St. Hilaire does not think of his translations from Aristotle, and muse upon the notes that may be added to the next editions of the same. His idea of recreation must be to write a good article for the Dehats on the worship of Vishnu ; his definition of a well-spent afternoon would be standing in his rostrum at the College de France, with a hundred and fifty pupils around him, and discoursing exhaustively to them about the "Republic" of Plato. And yet who could better than himself fulfil the political and social tasks which personal respect for the President of the Republic, and not by any means private inclination, have thrown upon his hands, and induced him to discharge without prospect of reward ? Watch him as he moves hospitably about M. Thiers's drawing-rooms, extending a courteous greeting and saying just the suitable thing to everybody. It has not yet become the custom for any party at Versailles to sulk with the President, so that on reception nights there is a throng such as no French Court, Royal or Imperial, has attracted during the present century. Dukes of the vieille roche, Bonapartist officers, Orleanist merchants and bankers, journalists, barristers, and Radicals of the finest scarlet—men of all ranks and opinions, in short, whom nothing but a Republic could have brought together (and yet they call it the Reign of Discord !), assemble there ; and M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire glides about in their midst almost as much of a host as the host himself. To the Legitimists he speaks with respect of their Henri V, yet adds—not so pungently, perhaps, as M. Thiers, but with conciliatory logic—that France is not the less France because there is no King's head on its postage stamps, and that possibly the French may still be a great people even when they have no more princes to set them examples of good brotherhood. Among the Orleanists his esteem for Louis Philippe's sons is too well known to need repeating ; but he is not the man to shrink from telling even the Duc d'Aumale that for a family to insist upon governing a country because some of their ancestors did so, has about the same sense in it as if different families were to claim the right to drive engines, conduct omnibuses, or doctor the sick by hereditary privilege. As for the Republicans, he warns them that the game is now in their own hands, and that by being cool and cautious they cannot fail to win.

Where M. St. Hilaire is seen to most advantage, however, is when quietly nursing one of that weak-kneed congregation who sit in the middle of the House, and call themselves "Centrists." A French Centrist is—exceptis excipiendis—a man who has never been able to make up his mind, nor is likely to. At the Opera he feels like a Monarchist, because the coronation scene in the Prophète stirs up the loyal instincts of his imagination. When he passes by the Invalides and perceives a battered veteran with two crutches and three medals, he reflects: —"The Napoleons were certainly a great race." An evening's perusal of the Revue des Deux Mondes, however, sends him back to Constitutional Orleanism : and when M. Thiers speaks he gets a notion that he is a Republican. Then his hobby is to "ponderate" and "reconcile." He would like to see things managed by mutual alliances, agreements, and concessions. If this prince's son, for instance, were to marry this other prince's daughter, and if both families could be induced kindly to admit the Republic on condition of their being appointed to the chief offices under it, how blessed a consummation that would be! But again, his Republicanism is of a weathercock order, liable to abrupt changes. Let an oilman's shop in Paris catch fire, and he will discern the hands of the Communists in this piece of work, and clamour that MacMahon is the only man fit to govern the Republic ; on the other hand, let the Government give proof of vigour in dealing with its enemies, and he is the first to grumble that repressive measures were never to his liking. Salmon fishing is child's sport compared to the angling after this kind of gentleman. M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire, who knows him well (there are about one hundred and fifty types of him in the House), has to follow him circumspectly, manage never to frighten him, blow little ripples of flattery into his ears, and hook him by his tender point, which is the horror of assuming any responsibility, least of all such a one as occasioning a Ministerial crisis or a revolution. The history of states is not all comprised in the public records which every one can read ; there is always a secret history, and in such histories men like M. Barthdlemy St. Hilaire are the heroes. Active, conscientious, devoted, he walks in front of his chief much as those Persian ferashes who run ahead of their masters to remove stumblingblocks, wave flies away, and beat the vulgar back. But the comparison is not, after all, quite a just one, for the ferash cannot perform his work without noise ; and M. St. Hilaire makes no noise. He is not a political shouter, a striker, or in any sense a militant. It is not even very certain that he understands the meaning of parliamentary tactics. All he knows is the part of persuading men, in polished language, to be reasonable ; and the fact that by no other magic than this he should have succeeded hitherto in keeping M. Thiers' s party compact, is a proof, if one were needed, that the French are only unmanageable when coerced by unreasonable means.

M. Jules Barthelemy St. Hilaire is not by any means a representative of those official middlemen who weigh just now upon Governments. He is one of the most learned and respectable men in France. He is a financier of great experience, and a writer with thought and reason on his pen. Politics have been a study, not a trade, to him : and he has never derived much emolument from them. He is a Parisian by birth, and came to light on the 19th of August, 1805. Though he began his career as a Government clerk in the French Treasury, he showed a rare spirit of independence ; and from 1826 to 1830 wrote very freely in the newspapers. He was on the regular staff of the Globe, and went so far as to sign the protest of the journalists on the 28th of July, 1830. After the Revolution he abandoned politics for literature, wath an untroubled mind. In 1834 he was appointed Examiner at the Polytechnic school. When elected a deputy in 1848, he associated himself with the moderate party, who sought to calm the phrenzy of that excited time. He approved the measures taken against the Socialists, but refused his confidence to General Cavaignac ; and made himself mouthpiece of that weak Dictator's opponents. Finally, at a period of life when ordinary men are little disposed to set out as volunteers to seek a fortune, he resigned his chair at the college of France rather than swear fidelity to the Empire, and recording his solemn protest against a form of government which dissatisfied his judgment, went tranquilly back to his books, and dived deeply into the history of the Indian philosophies. But he did not sulk in his retirement, and though he declined to mingle in politics he was ready to take part in scientific works of public utility.

After the fall of the Empire, M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire was elected a member of the National Assembly for the Department of Seine et Oise by 47,224 votes ; and joined with Grévy, Dufaure, Leon de Malleville, and Vitet, in proposing that M. Thiers should be appointed Chief of the Executive power. He formed one of the committee of fifteen who were named to assist the Government in conducting the negotiations for peace with Prussia. He took his seat in the Left Centre, voted for the preliminaries of peace, the abrogation of the laws of exile, the treaty of commerce, and the return of the Parliament to Paris; but on more than one occasion he has publicly expressed opinions opposed to those of the Government, and his language was once, (Feb., 1872) formally disavowed by the President. Such is M. Barthdlemy St. Hilaire, no timeserver, no led captain, but an independent, honest, and accomplished gentleman. There are, perhaps, few things in the life of M. Thiers which do more credit to his wisdom and character than that of having secured so firm and so honourable a friend ; there are, perhaps, still fewer things which on the windy eminence where he now stands are more comfort ing to him.