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CHAPTER X.

GUIZOT STEERS FOR MAELSTROM.

It was, however, during these years 1840-3, when his malady made upon him its first deadly spring, that Heine found energy enough to become again political correspondent to the Allgemeine Zeitung.' We know not what were the antecedent circumstances under which the journal was induced to make use of the services of a writer to whom it had felt itself constrained by the pressure of the Austrian Cabinet to close its columns eight years before. Dr. Gustav Kolb, however, was still editor of the paper, and he remained always Heine's steadfast friend; and it was doubtless owing to his good offices that Heine found himself installed anew as Parisian correspondent to the Augsburg journal.

The letters thus published in the columns of the Allgemeine,' and afterwards collected in two volumes and published both in German and French, embrace nearly the first half of the time known as the parliamentary period of the reign of Louis Philippe-a period remarkable for the brilliance and abundance of its parliamentary debates, when Guizot and Thiers contended for mastery in the Chambers and before the public, and carried on a rivalry fraught with the most momentous consequences to France.

The period at which Heine thus again took up his pen as correspondent was a few days antecedent to the advent of M. Thiers to power, on March 1, 1840. The vivid sketch which Heine has left of the orator and statesman as he thus appeared to him thirty-five years ago will be read with the

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liveliest interest in the present day by a generation which has so lately witnessed the old veteran directing the destinies of his country in one of the most tragic and difficult crises in which it was ever the lot of statesman to be called to office. This ministry of Thiers, which came to an end on October 29 in the same year, was remarkable chiefly for the difficulties which arose in Syria, and which seemed at one time likely to result in a European war between France, which supported Mehemet Ali, on the one side, and England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, who entered into a convention for supporting the interests of the Sultan, on the other. M. Thiers, as is well known, seemed to be inspired at that time by the very spirit of Bellona, and peace was only preserved by his retirement at the request of Louis Philippe, and the accession to power of M. Guizot who then remained in office seven years and eight months, steering all the time straight for Maëlstrom with composed and disdainful countenance.

Another important affair which characterised the ministry of M. Thiers was the decision to which the Chambers came to bring the ashes of Napoleon from Saint Helena-a decision which was carried out under the ministry of M. Guizot, and which assisted to keep alive in the hearts of a large portion of the French people that Napoleonic worship which has inflicted such calamities upon the country. It will be seen what different terms Heine at this period used for the ruthless soldier who regarded mankind as so much chair à canon, to those which he employed in the enthusiasm of his boyhood; and other radical changes of political sentiment will not fail to be remarked in comparing this correspondence with the former series.

We proceed to select from the two volumes such of the letters as are most illustrative as well of the period during which they were written as of the opinions of Heine himself.

In about eleven weeks after the installation of M. Thiers

as minister appeared the following appreciation of the orator and statement of his political situation :

'Paris, May 20, 1840.

'M. Thiers has again won new laurels by the convincing clearness with which he has treated in the chamber the driest and most intricate subjects. The banking question, the sugar question, as well as the affairs of Algiers, are made selfevident by his speech. The man understands everything: it is a pity that he has not applied himself to German philosophy

-he would have known how to make it as clear as day. But who knows? if circumstances were to rouse him, and he had to occupy himself with Germany, he would speak as instructively about Hegel and Schelling as about sugar-canes and beetroot.

'Of more importance for the interests of Europe, however, is the solemn return of the earthly remains of Napoleon than the commercial, financial, and colonial questions. This affair is occupying all spirits here, the highest as well as the lowest. While below there among the people there is nothing but joy and exultation, warmth and fire, in the colder regions of society they shake the head about the dangers which are daily drawing nearer from Saint Helena and threaten Paris with a very portentous "festival of the dead." If, indeed, one could place the ashes of the Emperor to-morrow morning under the cupola of the Palace of the Invalides, one could accredit the present ministry with sufficient strength to prevent any over-violent outbreak of passion. But will this strength be sufficient six months hence, at the time when the triumphant coffin is brought floating up the Seine?'

In the following passage Heine shows how the Bonapartist party in 1842 were growing up-how, namely, the Bonapartist flag collected gradually to it all the unprincipled discontented spirits, the political adventurers and blacklegs of the time, men without any convictions at all, and with no

ambition or aim except that of sharing in the plunder of a Bonapartist régime ::

In the time of fluctuations, when no one knows what the immediate future will bring to him-in which many, discontented with the present, do not dare to break decidedly with the government of the day-in which the majority desire to take up a position which shall not bind them for ever, and not deeply compromise them, but permit them, without especially difficult recantations, either to go over to the camp of the victorious republic or that of the monarchy in case it should prove invincible-in such a time Bonapartism is a convenient party of transition. On these grounds do I explain it to myself how it is that every one who does not precisely know either what he wishes, or what he stands in need of, or what he is fit for, gathers around the imperial standard. Here there is no necessity for swearing an oath to any idea, and perjury is here no sin against the Holy Ghost. Conscience and honour here will oppose themselves to no defection and no change of flag, and in fact the Napoleonic empire was itself nothing else than a neutral ground for men of the most heterogeneous opinions: it was a useful bridge for people who had freed themselves from the stream of the revolution, and ran up and down it for twenty years together, undecided whether to betake themselves to the right or the left bank of the opinions of the time. This Napoleonic empire was in fact nothing else than an adventurous interregnum without spiritual notabilities, and all its ideal bloom resumes itself in one man who at last is nothing but a splendid fact, whose significance even now is half a mystery. This material interregnum was quite appropriate to the necessities of the time. How lightly could the French sansculottes jump into the gold-laced gala pantaloons of the Empire, and with what lightness could they again hang up on the nail the feathered hat and gold jacket of glory and

snatch up again the red cap and the rights of man! And the starved-out emigrants, the proud royalist nobles, they had no need to renounce their inborn courtier-needs-they could play the lackey to Napoleon I. instead of Louis XIV., leaving them free to turn their backs on the former, and then pay homage to their legitimate lord, Louis XVIII.

In spite, however, of all this-of the fact that Bonapartism finds some sympathies in the people, and gathers towards it a mass of ambitious men-in spite of this, I do not think it will carry off the victory so easily: if, however, it arrived at power, its reign would not be of long duration, and it would, just like the first Napoleonic rule, only form a short period of transition. Meanwhile, all possible birds of prey are gathering together around the dead eagle: the farsighted ones among the French are thereby filled with no small anxiety. The majority in the Chamber were, perhaps, not altogether wrong when they refused the second million for the interment [of Napoleon].'

In the summer of 1840, Heine undertook a journey along the coasts of Normandy and Brittany. He found the population everywhere agitated with rumours of war on the fatal Eastern Question, which was then again agitating all men's minds, and setting diplomacy and fleets in motion. News of a massacre of Jews in Damascus, of a revolution of the Maronites in the Lebanon, of the march of Mehemet Ali into Syria, had come quickly one after the other. France was arming, recruits besieged the recruiting offices, her forts were being prepared, war seemed at one time inevitable, and, to increase the fever of uncertainty which had taken possession of the whole nation, Louis Napoleon, in the month of August, had made his unsuccessful adventure at Boulogne.

The following extracts from his letters, written soon after Heine's return to Paris, give some idea of the state of the public mind :