Then my heart swells, and I say to myself, as I could
go on saying for ever, “There is nothing you
cannot do with Frenchmen when they are once saturated
with the spirit of obedience, discipline, and duty!”
1844
I had hardly got back to Paris when I was shot on
to the Admiralty Board. A great honour it was,
no doubt, for a junior like myself to be associated
with such veterans in the profession as numbers among
its members were. But this gathering of experienced
men was merely a body of advisers placed at the disposal
of the Minister of Marine, to assist him with its
counsel on any questions he chose to submit to them.
The committee possessed no initiative of its own,
and I felt myself misplaced upon it. I had indeed,
and always have preserved, the deepest respect for
its eminent qualities. It has contributed not
a little, by its consistent action and permanent character,
to the preservation of our naval organisation—the
worth of which has been proved everywhere, in the
Crimea, on the battlefields in 1870, in Tunis, and
in China—from the results of the conceited
ignorance of mushroom politicians. But in the
year 1843 we were on the brink of the inevitable revolution
worked in naval matters by the introduction of steam.
The great object for us was to create, and that rapidly,
under pain of being outstripped by others, a new naval
force, more appropriate, perhaps, than our former
one, to our national genius and resources. Passionately
interested as I was in the greatness of my country,
having leisure time to dispose of, since nothing called
on me to plunge into the paltry bargain-making of
electoral politics in which that country was wallowing,
having no love of red tape nor excess of experience
to hold me back, I was ardently anxious to be employed
where I could actively assist in creating a powerful
element in the national strength. I therefore
merely passed through the Admiralty Board.
My only recollection of it is of having been present
at some very long sittings in a room in the Ministry
of Marine, the windows of which look on to the Rue
Royale, which apartment one of my colleagues, Admiral
de Bougainville, had turned into a sort of stovehouse
by means of hot-air pipes, sandbags, screens, and
foot muffs. We all nearly died of the heat, and
when another colleague of mine, Baron Charles Dupin,
made us long speeches, I had the greatest difficulty
in keeping myself awake.
The Minister of Marine decided, at my entreaty, to
appoint a special naval commission on steam, of which
I was a member. The chief commission did nothing,
or scarcely anything—but a sub-commission
did good work. There were five of us—a
captain in the navy, M. de Verninac (who was afterwards
Minister of Marine under General Cavaignac); a very
clever engineer, formerly Superintendent at Indret,
M. Rossin; an artillery colonel, M. Durbec; M. Touchard,
