evening school, and go down the Rue de la Montagne
or the Rue des Sept-Voies playing a thousand pranks
as I went, and that my grief used be keen indeed when
I had to go back the next morning. Yet some good
comrades I had whom I dearly loved, and amongst whom
I improved in playing various games, and learned the
art of both giving and receiving kicks and cuffs.
But, take it all in all, my schooldays are, as they
say in mathematics, “a minus quantity”
to me.
1830-1833
[Illustration: Boy waving flag and shooting a
gun.]
The Revolution of 1830 broke out during my schooldays.
I was twelve years old—too young therefore,
by far, to estimate its character, political or social,
correctly. I only remember that it filled me with
the deepest astonishment. Never having witnessed
any kind of disturbance, I had not the faintest notion
what a revolution might be like. I had always
seen the King and the Royal Family treated with a
respect which, indeed, they have never forfeited, and
I was a hundred miles from the thought that they could
possibly be banished. It is a fact, nevertheless,
that the beginning of 1830 differed from other years,
and that something seemed to be brewing. Strange
remarks were made at school, over and over again,
even among us little ones; our tutors, all of them
connected with the press, were what was called in
those days “dans le mouvement”—abreast
of the times, and they never stopped talking politics.
Where were they not talked, indeed? It was a
downright disease. The speech of M. de Salvandy,
on the occasion of the fete given by my father at
the Palais-Royal in May, that year, in honour of the
King of Naples, my uncle and godfather, may be called
to mind. “A real Neapolitan fete indeed,
Sire!—for we are dancing on a volcano.”
And a truly Neapolitan fete it was, not only on account
of the presence of the sovereigns of the two Sicilies,
and of the ideal beauty of the night, but also by
reason of the tarantella, a sort of ballet, which was
danced in the middle of the evening, by Madame la Duchesse
de Berri and thirty of the most beautiful young ladies
of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, in Neapolitan costume,
among whom I think I still see, compact of
grace and elegance, the lovely Denise du Roure, soon
to become Comtesse d’Hulst. The tarantella
was followed by a polonaise, led by Comte Rodolphe
Appony and the Duchesse de Rauzan, resplendent in blue
and gold. A more sedate dance, this, performed
by noble lords and ladies, all in Hungarian costume,
and escorted by pages, bearing their respective banners.
It would have been hard to say which of the ladies
taking part in these two dances bore off the palm for
aristocratic beauty. They were worthy representatives
of their race.
