Chapter VI: Part 6

To conclude: Servan's witty, piquant, agreeably written pamphlet was worthy under this triple claim of the reception with which the public honoured it; but it did not shake, in any one part, the lucid, majestic, elegant report by Bailly. The magistrate of Grénoble has said, that in his long experience he had met men accustomed to reflect without laughing, and other men who only wished to laugh without reflecting. Bailly thought of the first class when he wrote his memorable report. _The Doubts of the Provincial man_ were destined only for the other class.

It was also to these light and laughing souls that Servan exclusively addressed himself some time after, if it be true that the _Queries of the young Doctor Rhubarbini de Purgandis_ were written by him.

Rhubarbini de Purgandis sets to work manfully. In his opinion the report by Franklin, by Lavoisier, by Bailly, is, in the scientific life of those learned men, what the _Monades_ were for Leibnitz, the _Whirlwinds_ for Descartes, the _Commentary on the Apocalypse_ for Newton. These examples may enable us to judge of the rest, and render all farther refutation unnecessary.

Bailly's report destroyed root and branch the ideas, the systems, the practices of Mesmer and of his adepts. Let us add sincerely that we have no right to appeal to him in regard to modern somnambulism. The greater portion of the phenomena now grouped around that name were neither known nor announced in 1783. A magnetizer certainly says the most improbable thing in the world, when he affirms that a given individual in the state of somnambulism can see every thing in the most profound darkness, that he can read through a wall, and even without the help of his eyes. But the improbability of these announcements does not result from the celebrated report, for Bailly does not mention such marvels, neither in praise nor dispraise; he does not say one word about them. The physicist, the doctor, the merely curious man who gives himself up to experiments in somnambulism, who thinks he must examine whether, in certain states of nervous excitement, some individuals are really endowed with extraordinary faculties; with the faculty, for example, of reading with their stomach, or with their heel; people who wish to know exactly up to what point the phenomena so boldly asserted by the magnetizers of our epoch may be within the domain of rogues and sharks; all such people, we say, do not at all deny the authority of the subject in question, nor do they put themselves really in opposition to the Lavoisiers, the Franklins, or the Baillys; they dive into an entirely new world, of which those illustrious learned men did not even suspect the existence.

I cannot approve of the mystery adopted by some grave learned men, who, in the present day, attend experiments on somnambulism. Doubt is a proof of diffidence, and has rarely been inimical to the progress of science. We could not say the same of incredulity. He who, except in pure mathematics, pronounces the word _impossible_, is deficient in prudence. Reserve is especially requisite when we treat of animal organization.

Our senses, notwithstanding twenty-four centuries of study, observations, and researches, are far from being an exhausted subject. Take, for example, the ear. A celebrated natural philosopher, Wollaston, occupied himself with it; and immediately we learn, that with an equal sensibility as regards the low notes a certain individual can hear the highest tones, whilst another cannot hear them at all; and it becomes proved that certain men, with perfectly sound organs, never heard the cricket in the chimney-corner, yet did not doubt but that bats occasionally utter a piercing cry; and attention being once awakened to these singular results, observers have found the most extraordinary differences of sensibility between their right ear and their left ear, &c.

Our vision offers phenomena not less curious, and an infinitely vaster field of research. Experience has proved, for example, that some people are absolutely blind to certain colours, as red, and enjoy perfect vision relatively to yellow, to green, and to blue. If the Newtonian theory of emission be true, we must irrevocably admit that a ray ceases to be light as soon as we diminish its velocity by one ten thousandth part. Thence flow those natural conjectures, which are well worthy of experimental examination: all men do not see by the same rays; decided differences may exist in this respect in the same individual during various nervous states; it is possible that the calorific rays, the dark rays of one person, may be the luminous rays of another person, and reciprocally; the calorific rays traverse some substances freely, which are therefore called diathermal, these substances, thus far, had been called opaque, because they transmit no ray commonly called luminous; now the words opaque and diathermal have no absolute meaning. The diathermals allow those rays to pass through which constitute the light of one man; and they stop those which constitute the light of another man. Perhaps in this way the key of many phenomena might be found, that till now have remained without any plausible explanation.

Nothing, in the marvels of somnambulism, raised more doubts than an oft-repeated assertion, relative to the power which certain persons are said to possess in a state of crisis, of deciphering a letter at a distance with the foot, the nape of the neck, or the stomach. The word _impossible_ in this instance seemed quite legitimate. Still, I do not doubt but some rigid minds would withhold it after having reflected on the ingenious experiments by which Moser produces, also at a distance, very distinct images of all sorts of objects, on all sorts of bodies, and in the most complete darkness.

When we call to mind in what immense proportion electric or magnetic actions increase by motion, we shall be less inclined to deride the rapid actions of magnetizers.

In here recording these developed reflections, I wished to show that somnambulism must not be rejected _à priori_, especially by those who have kept well up with the recent progress of the physical sciences. I have indicated some facts, some resemblances, by which magnetizers might defend themselves against those who would think it superfluous to attempt new experiments, or even to see them performed. For my part, I hesitate not to acknowledge it, although, notwithstanding the possibilities that I have pointed out, I do not admit the reality of the readings, neither through a wall, nor through any other opaque body, nor by the mere intromission of the elbow, or the occiput,--still, I should not fulfil the duties of an academician if I refused to attend the meetings where such phenomena were promised me, provided they granted me sufficient influence as regards the proofs, for me to feel assured that I was not become the victim of mere jugglery.

Nor did Franklin, Lavoisier, or Bailly believe in Mesmeric magnetism before they became members of the Government Commission, and yet we may have remarked with what minute and scrupulous care they varied the experiments. True philosophers ought to have constantly before their eyes those two beautiful lines:--

"To suppose that every thing has been discovered is a profound error:
It is mistaking the horizon for the limits of the world."[12]

FOOTNOTES:

[7]

"Le voilà, ce mortel, dont le siècle s'honore,
Par qui sont replongés au séjour infernal
Tous les fléaux vengeurs que déchaîna Pandore;
Dans son art bienfaisant il n'a pas de rival,
Et la Grèce l'eut pris pour le dieu d'Epidaure."

[8]

"Les sots sont ici-bas pour nos menus plaisirs."

[9]

"Un décrotteur â la royale,
Du talon gauche estropié,
Obtint pour grace spéciale
D'être boiteux de l'autre pié."

[10]

"De par le Roi, défense à Dieu
D'opérer miracle en ce lieu!"

[11]

"Il est des noeuds secrets, il est des sympathies,
Dont par les doux rapports les âmes assorties
S'attachent l'une à l'autre."

[12]

"Croire tout découvert est un erreur profonde:
C'est prendre l'horizon pour les bornes du monde."

ELECTION OF BAILLY INTO THE ACADEMY OF INSCRIPTIONS.

In speaking of the pretended identity of the Atlantis, or of the kingdom of Ophir under Solomon with America, Bailly says, in his fourteenth letter to Voltaire: "Those ideas belonged to the age of learned men, but not to the philosophic age." And elsewhere (in the twenty-first letter) we read these words: "Do not fear that I shall fatigue you by heavy erudition." To have supposed that erudition could be heavy and be deficient in philosophy, was for certain people of a secondary order an unpardonable crime. And thus we saw men, excited by a sentiment of hate, arm themselves with a critical microscope, and painfully seek out imperfections in the innumerable quotations with which Bailly had strengthened himself. The harvest was not abundant; yet, these eager ferrets succeeded in discovering some weak points, some interpretations that might be contested. Their joy then knew no bounds. Bailly was treated with haughty disdain: "His literary erudition was very superficial; he had not the key of the sanctuary of antiquity; he was everywhere deficient in languages."

That it might not be supposed that these reproaches had any reference to Oriental literature, Bailly's adversaries added: "that he had not the least tincture of the ancient languages; that he did not know Latin."

He did not know Latin? And do you not see, you stupid enemies of the great Astronomer, that if it had been possible to compose such learned works as _The History of Astronomy_, and _The Letters on the Atlantis_, without referring to the original texts, by using translations only, you would no longer have preserved any importance in the literary world. How is it that you did not remark, that by despoiling Bailly (and very arbitrarily) of the knowledge of Latin, you showed the inutility of studying that language to become both one of your best writers, and one of the most illustrious philosophers of the age?

The Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, far from participating in these puerile rancours, in the blind prejudices of some lost children of erudition, called Bailly to its bosom in 1785. Till then, Fontenelle alone had had the honour of belonging to the three great Academies of France. Bailly always showed himself very proud of a distinction which associated his name in an unusual manner with that of the illustrious writer, whose eulogies contributed so powerfully to make science and scientific men known and respected.

Independently of this special consideration, Bailly, as member of the French Academy, could all the better appreciate the suffrages of the Academy of Inscriptions, since there existed at that time between those two illustrious Societies a strong and inexplicable feeling of rivalry. This had even proceeded so far, that by a most solemn deliberation of the Academy of Inscriptions, any of its members would have ceased to belong to it, would have been irrevocably expelled, if they had even only endeavoured to be received into the French Academy; and the king having annulled this deliberation, fifteen academicians bound themselves by oath to observe all its stipulations notwithstanding; furthermore, in 1783, Choiseul Gouffier, who was accused of having adhered to the principles of the fifteen confederates, and then of having allowed himself to be nominated by the rival Academy, was summoned by Anquetil to appear before the Tribunal of the Marshals of France for having broken his word of honour.

But, I may be allowed here to remark, superior men have always had the privilege of upsetting, by the mere influence of their name, the obstacles that routine, prejudices, and jealousy wished to oppose to the progress and the union of souls.

REPORT ON THE HOSPITALS.

Scientific tribunals, which should pronounce in the first instance while awaiting the definitive judgment of the public, were one of the requisites of our epoch; and thus, without any formal prescription of its successive regulations, the Academy of Sciences has been gradually led on to appoint committees to examine all the papers that have been presented to it, and to pronounce on their novelty, merit, and importance. This labour is generally an ungrateful one, and without glory, but talent has immense privileges; entrust Bailly with those simple Academical Reports, and their publication becomes an event.

M. Poyet, architect and comptroller of buildings in Paris, presented to Government in the course of the year 1785, a paper wherein he strove to establish the necessity of removing the Hôtel Dieu, and building a new hospital in another locality. This document, submitted by order of the king to the judgment of the Academy, gave rise, directly or indirectly, to three deliberations. The Academic Commissioners were, Lassone, Tenou, Tillet, Darcet, Daubenton, Bailly, Coulomb, Laplace, and Lavoisier. It was Bailly, however, who constantly held the pen. His reports have been honoured with a great and just celebrity. The progress of science would now perhaps allow of some modification being made in the ideas of the illustrious commissioners. Their views on warming-rooms, on their size, on ventilation, on general health, might, for example, receive some real ameliorations; but nothing could add to the sentiments of respect inspired by Bailly's work. What clearness of exposition! What neatness, what simplicity of style! Never did a writer put himself more completely out of view; never did a man more sincerely seek to make the sacred cause of humanity triumph. The interest that Bailly takes in the poor is deep, but always exempt from parade; his words are moderate, full of gentleness, even where hasty feelings of anger and indignation would have been legitimate. Of anger and of indignation! Yes, Gentlemen; listen, and decide!

I have cited the names of the commissioners. At no time, and in no country, could more virtue and learning have been united. These select men, regulating themselves in this respect according to the most common logic, felt that the task of pronouncing on a reform of the Hôtel Dieu imposed on them the necessity of examining that establishment. "We have asked," said their interpreter, "we have asked the Board of Administration to permit us to see the hospital in detail, and accompanied by some one who could guide and instruct us ... we required to know several particulars; we asked for them, but we obtained nothing."

We have obtained nothing! These are the sad, the incredible words, that men so worthy of respect are obliged to insert in the first line of their report!

What then was the authority that allowed itself to be so deficient in the most usual respect towards commissioners invested with the confidence of the King, the Academy, and the Public? This authority consisted of several administrators (the type of them, it is said, is not quite lost), who looked upon the poor as their patrimony, who devoted to them a disinterested but unproductive activity; who were impatient at any amelioration, the germ of which had not developed itself either in their own heads, or in those of certain men, philanthropic by nature, or by the privilege of their station. Ah! if by enlightened and constant care that vast asylum, opened to poverty and sickness, near Notre-Dame, had been then conducted, now sixty years ago, only in a tolerable way, we should have understood how, in taking human nature into consideration, the promoters of this great benefit would have repelled an examination that seemed to throw a doubt on their zeal and on their good sense. But alas! let us take from Bailly's work a few traits of the moderate and faithful picture that he drew of the Hôtel Dieu, and you shall decide, Gentlemen, whether the susceptibility of the administrators was authorized; whether, on the contrary, they ought not themselves to have anticipated the unhoped-for help from the king's power, united to science, which was now offered to them; whether by retarding certain ameliorations by a single day, they did not commit the crime of lèse-humanity.

In 1786, infirmities of all sorts were treated at the Hôtel Dieu: surgical maladies, chronic maladies, contagious maladies, female diseases, infantine diseases, &c. Every thing was admitted, but all presented an inevitable confusion.

A patient on arriving was often laid in the bed and in the sheets of a man who had had the itch, and had just died.

The department reserved for madmen being very confined, two were put to sleep together. Two madmen in the same sheets! Nature revolts at the very thought of it.

In the ward of St. Francis, reserved exclusively for men having the smallpox, there were sometimes, for want of other space, as many as six adults or eight children in a bed not a mètre and a half wide.

The women attacked with this frightful disease were mixed in the ward of St. Monique with others who had only a simple fever, and the latter fell an inevitable prey to the hideous contagion, in the very place where, full of confidence, they had hoped to recover their health.

Women with child, women in their confinement, were equally crowded, pell-mell, on narrow and infected truckle-beds.

Nor let it be supposed that I have borrowed from Bailly's Report some purely exceptional cases, belonging to those cruel times, when whole populations, suffering under some epidemic, were tried beyond all human anticipation. In their usual state, the beds of the Hôtel Dieu, which were not a mètre and a half wide, contained four, and often six patients; they were placed alternately head and feet, the feet of one touching the shoulders of the next; each had only for his share of space 25 centimetres (9 inches); now, a man of medium size, lying with his arms close to his body, is 48 centimetres (16 inches) broad at the shoulders. The poor patients then could not keep within the bed but by lying on their side perfectly immovable; no one could turn without pushing, without waking his neighbour; they therefore used to agree, as far as their illness would allow, for some of them to remain up part of the night in the space between the beds, whilst the others slept; and when the approaches of death nailed these unfortunate people to their place, did they not energetically curse that help, which in such a situation could only prolong their painful agony.

But it was not only that beds thus placed were a source of discomfort, of disgust; that they prevented rest and sleep; that an insupportable heat occasioned and propagated diseases of the skin and frightful vermin; that the fever patient bedewed his neighbours with his profuse perspirations; and that in the critical moment he might be chilled by contact with those whose hot fit would occur later, &c. Still more serious effects resulted from the presence of many sick in the same bed; the food, the medicines, intended for one person, often found their way to another. In short, Gentlemen, in those beds of multiple population, the dead often lay for hours, and sometimes whole nights, intermingled with the living. The principal charitable establishment in Paris thus offered those dreadful coincidences, that the poets of Rome, that ancient historians have represented under King Mezentius, as the utmost extreme of barbarism.

Such was, Gentlemen, the normal state of the old Hôtel Dieu. One word, one word only, will suffice to tell what was the exceptional state: they placed some patients on the tops or testers of those same beds, where we have found so much suffering, so many authorized maledictions.

Now, Gentlemen, let us, together with our fellow academician, cast a glance on the ward of surgical operations.

This ward was full of patients. The operations were performed in their presence. Bailly says, "We see there the preparations for the torment; there are heard the cries of the tormented. He who has to suffer the next day has before him a picture of his own future sufferings; he who has passed through this terrible trial, must be deeply moved at those cries so similar to his own, and must feel his agonies repeated; and these terrors, these emotions, he experiences in the midst of the progress of inflammation or suppuration, retarding his recovery, and at the hazard of his life."... "To what purpose," Bailly justly exclaims, "would you make an unfortunate man suffer, if there is not a probability of saving him, and unless we increase that probability by all possible precautions?"

The heart aches, the mind becomes confused, at the sight of so much misery; and yet this hospital, so little in harmony with its intended purpose, still existed sixty years ago. It is in a capital, the centre of the arts, of knowledge, of polished manners; it is in an age renowned for the development of public wealth, for the progress of luxury, for the ruinous creation of a crowd of establishments devoted to amusements, to worldly and futile pleasures; it is by the side of the palace of an opulent archbishop; it is at the gate of a sumptuous cathedral, that the unfortunate, under the deceitful mask of charity, underwent such dreadful tortures. To whom should we impute the long duration of this vicious and inhuman organization?

To the professors of the art? No, no, Gentlemen! By an inconceivable anomaly the physicians, the surgeons, never obtained more than a secondary, a subordinate influence over the administration of the hospitals. No, no, the sentiments of the medical body for the poor could not be doubted, at an epoch and in a country where Dr. Anthony Petit thus answered the irritated queen, Marie Antoinette: "Madam, if I came not yesterday to Versailles, it was because I was attending the lying-in of a peasant, who was in the greatest danger. Your Majesty errs, however, in supposing that I neglect the Dauphin for the poor; I have hitherto treated the young child with as much attention and care as if he had been the son of one of your grooms."

Preference was granted to the most suffering, to those in most danger, disregarding rank and fortune; such was, you see, Gentlemen, the sublime rule of the French Medical Corps; and such is still its gospel. I want no other proof of it than those admirable words addressed by our fellow labourer Larrey, to his friend Tanchou, when wounded at the Battle of Montmirail: "Your wound is slight, sir; we have only room and straw in this ambulance for serious wounds. They will take you into that stable."

The medical corps could not, therefore, with any reason be accused or suspected in regard to the old Hôtel Dieu of Paris.

If economy be invoked, I find an answer quite à-propos in Bailly: the daily allowance for the patients at the Hôtel Dieu was notably higher than in other establishments in the capital more charitably organized.

Would any one go so far as to assert that the sick condemned to seek refuge in the hospitals, having their sensibilities blunted by labour, by misery, by their daily sufferings, would but faintly feel the effects of the horrible arrangements that the old Hôtel Dieu revealed to all clear-sighted people? I will quote from the report of our colleague; "The maladies continue nearly double the time at the Hôtel Dieu, compared with those at the Charité: the mortality there is also nearly double!... All the trepanned die in that hospital; whilst this operation is tolerably successful in Paris, and still more so at Versailles."

The maladies continue double the time! The mortality there is double! All those who are trepanned die! The lying-in women die in a frightful proportion, &c. These are the sinister words that strike the eye periodically in the statements of the Hôtel Dieu; and yet, let us repeat it, years passed away, and nothing was altered in the organization of the great hospital! Why persist in remaining in a condition that so openly wounds humanity? Must we, together with Cabanis, who also abused the old Hôtel Dieu severely, "must we exclaim, that abuses known by all the world, against which every voice is raised, have secret supporters who know how to defend them, in a manner to tire out well-meaning people? Must we speak of false characters, perverse hearts, that seemed to regard errors and abuses as their patrimony?" Let us dare to acknowledge it, Gentlemen, evil is generally perpetrated in a less wicked manner: it is done without the intervention of any strong passion; by vulgar, yet all-powerful routine, and ignorance. I observe the same thought, though couched in the calm and cleverly circumspect language of Bailly: "The Hôtel Dieu has existed perhaps since the seventh century, and if this hospital is the most imperfect of all, it is because it is the oldest. From the earliest date of this establishment, good has been sought, the desire has been to adhere to it, and constancy has appeared a duty. From this cause, all useful novelties have with difficulty found admission; any reform is difficult; there is a numerous administration to convince; there is an immense mass to move."

The immensity of the mass, however, did not discourage the old Commissioners of the Academy. Let this conduct serve as an example to learned men, to administrators, who might be called upon to cast an investigating eye on the whole of our beneficent and humane establishments. Undoubtedly, the abuses, if any yet exist, have not individually any thing to be compared to those to which Bailly's report did justice; but would it be impossible for them to have sprung up afresh in the course of half a century, and that in proportion to their multiplicity, they should still make enormous and deplorable breaches in the patrimony of the poor?

I shall modify very slightly, Gentlemen, the concluding words of our illustrious colleague's report, and I shall not in the least alter their innate meaning, if I say, in finishing this long analysis: "Each poor man is now laid alone in a bed, and he owes it principally to the gifted, persevering, and courageous efforts of the Academy of Sciences. The poor man ought to know it, and the poor man will not forget it." Happy, Gentlemen, happy the academy that can adorn itself with such reminiscences!

REPORT ON THE SLAUGHTER-HOUSES.

An attentive glance at the past has been, in all ages and in all countries, the infallible means of rightly appreciating the present. When we direct this glance to the sanitary state of Paris, the name of Bailly will again present itself in the first line amongst the promoters of a capital amelioration, which I shall point out in a few words.

Notwithstanding the numerous acts of parliament,--notwithstanding the positive police regulations, which dated back to Charles IX., to Henry III., to Henry IV., slaughter-houses still existed in the interior of the capital in 1788; for instance, at l'Apport-Paris, La Croix-Rouge, in the streets of the Butcheries, Mont-Martre, Saint-Martin, Traversine, &c. &c. The oxen were, consequently, driven in droves through frequented parts of the town; enraged by the noise of the carriages, by the excitements of the children, by the attacks or barking of the wandering dogs, they often sought to escape,--entered houses or alleys, spread alarm everywhere, gored people, and committed great damage. Fetid gases exhaled from buildings too small and badly ventilated; the offal that had to be carried away gave out an insupportable smell; the blood flowed through the gutters of the neighbourhood, with other remains of the animals, and putrefied there. The melting of tallow, an inevitable annexation of all slaughter-houses, spread around disgusting emanations, and occasioned a constant danger of fire.

So inconvenient, so repulsive a state of things, awakened the solicitude of individuals and of the public administration; the problem was submitted to our predecessors, and Bailly, as usual, became the reporter of the Academical Committee. The other members were Messrs. Tillet, Darcet, Daubenton, Coulomb, Lavoisier, and Laplace.

When Napoleon, wishing to liberate Paris from the dangerous and insalubrious results of internal slaughter-houses, decreed the construction of the fine slaughter-houses known by everybody, he found the subject already well examined, exhibited in all its points of view, in Bailly's excellent work. "We ask," said the reporter of the Academical Commission in 1788, "we ask that the shambles be removed to a distance from the interior of Paris;" and these interior shambles have disappeared accordingly. Does it create surprise that it required more than fifteen years to obtain the grant of this most reasonable demand? I will further remark that, unfortunately, there was nothing exceptional in this; he who sows a thought in a field rank with prejudices, with private interests, and with routine, must never expect an early harvest.

BIOGRAPHIES OF COOK AND OF GRESSET.

The publication of the five quarto volumes of which _the History of Astronomy_ consists, together with the two powerful _reports_ that I have just described, had worn out Bailly. To relax and amuse his mind, he resumed the style of composition that had enchanted him in his youth; he wrote some biographies, amongst others, that of Captain Cook, proposed as a prize-subject by the Academy of Marseilles, and the Life of Gresset.

The biography of Gresset first appeared anonymously. This circumstance gave rise to a singular scene, which the author used to relate with a smile. I will here myself repeat the principal traits of it, if it be only to deter writers, whoever they may be, from launching their works into the world without affixing their names to them.

The Marchioness of Créqui was a lady in the high circles of society, to whom a copy of the eulogium of the author of _Vert-Vert_ was presented as an offering. Some days after Bailly went to pay her a visit; did he hope to hear her speak favourably of the new work? I know not. At all events, our predecessor would have been ill rewarded for his curiosity.

"Do you know," said the great lady as soon as she saw him, "a Eulogy of Gresset recently published? The author has sent me a copy of it, without naming himself. He will probably come to see me; he may, perhaps, have come already. What could I say to him? I do not think any one ever wrote worse. He mistakes obscurity for profundity; it is the darkness before the creation."

Notwithstanding all Bailly's efforts to change the subject of the conversation, perhaps on account of those very efforts, the Marchioness rose, goes in search of the pamphlet, puts it into the author's hands, and begs of him to read aloud, if it be but the first page--quite enough, she said, to enable one to judge of the rest.

Bailly used to read remarkably well. I leave it to be guessed whether, on this occasion, he was able to exercise this talent. Superfluous trouble! Madame de Créqui interrupted him at each sentence by the most disagreeable commentaries, by exclamations such as the following: "Detestable style!" "Confusion worse confounded!" and other similar amenities. Bailly did not succeed in extorting any indulgences from Madame de Créqui, when, fortunately, the arrival of another visitor put an end to this insupportable torture.

Two years after this, Bailly having become the first personage in the city, some booksellers collected all his opuscula and published them. This time, the Marchioness, who had lost all recollection of the scene that I have been describing, overpowered the Mayor of Paris with compliments and felicitations on account of this same eulogy, which she had before treated with such inhuman rigour.

Such a contrast excited the mirth of the author. Still, might I dare to say so, Madame de Créqui was, perhaps, sincere on both occasions; had the exaggerations of praise and of criticism been put aside, it would not have been impossible to defend both opinions. The early pages of the pamphlet might appear embarrassed and obscure, whilst in the rest there might be found great refinement, elegance, and appreciations full of taste.

ASSEMBLY OF THE NOTABLES.--BAILLY IS NAMED FIRST DEPUTY OF PARIS; AND SOON AFTER DEAN OR SENIOR OF THE DEPUTIES OF THE COMMUNES.

The Assembly of the Notables had no other effect than to show in a stronger light the disorder of the finances, and the other wounds that were galling France. It was then that the Parliament of Paris asked for the convocation of the States General. This demand was unfavourably received by Cardinal de Brienne. Soon afterwards the convocation became a necessity, and Necker, now in the ministry, announced, in the month of November, 1788, that it was decreed in Council, and that the king had even granted to the third estate a double representation, which had been so imprudently disputed by the courtiers.

The districts were formed, on the king's convocation, the 21st of April, 1789. That day was the first day of Bailly's political life. It was on the 21st of April that the Citizen of Chaillot, entering the Hall of the _Feuillants_, imagined, he said, that "he breathed a new atmosphere," and regarded "as a phenomenon that he should have become something in the body-politic, merely from his being a citizen."

The elections were to be made in two gradations. Bailly was named first elector of his district. A few days after, at the general meeting, the Assembly called him to the Board in quality of secretary. Thus it was our fellow-academician who, in the beginning, drew up the celebrated _procès-verbal_ of the meetings of the electors of Paris, so often quoted by the historians of the revolution.

Bailly also took an active part in drawing up the records of his district, and the records of the body of electors. The part he acted in these two capacities could not be doubtful, if we judge of it by the three following short quotations extracted from his memoirs: "The nation must remember that she is sovereign and mistress to order every thing.... It is not when reason awakes, that we should allege ancient privileges and absurd prejudices.... I shall praise the electors of Paris who were the first to conceive the idea of prefacing the French Constitution with a declaration of the Rights of Man."

Bailly had always been so extremely reserved in his conduct and in his writings, that it was difficult to surmise under what point of view he would consider the national agitation of '89. Hence, at the very beginning, the Abbé Maury, of the French Academy, proposed to unite himself to Bailly, and that they should reside at Versailles, and have an apartment in common between them. It is difficult to avoid a smile when one compares the conduct of the eloquent and impetuous Abbé with the categorical declarations, so distinct and so progressive, of the learned astronomer.

On Tuesday, the 12th of May, the general assembly of the electors proceeded to ballot for the nomination of the first deputy of Paris. Bailly was chosen.

This nomination is often quoted as a proof of the high intelligence, and of the wisdom of our fathers, two qualities which, since that epoch, must have been constantly on the decline, if we are to believe the blind Pessimists. Such an accusation imposed on me the duty of carrying the appreciation of this wisdom, of this intelligence that is held up against us, even to numerical correctness. The following is the result: the majority of the votes was 159; Bailly obtained 173; this was fourteen more than he required. If fourteen votes had changed sides the result would have been different. Was this an incident, I ask, to exclaim so much against?

Bailly showed himself deeply affected by this mark of the confidence with which he was regarded. His sensibility, his gratitude, did not prevent him, however, from recording in his memoirs the following _naïve_ observation: "I observed in the Assembly of the Electors a great dislike for literary men, and for the academicians."

I recommend this remark to all studious men who, by circumstances or by a sense of duty, may be thrown into the whirlpool of politics. Perhaps I may yield to the temptation of developing it, when I shall have to characterize Bailly's connection with his co-laborers in the first municipality of Paris.

The great question on the verification of the powers was already strongly agitated, the day that Bailly and the other Deputies of Paris for the first time were able to go to Versailles; our academician had only spoken once in that majestic assembly, viz: to induce the adoption of the method of voting by members being _seated_ or _standing_,--when, on the 3d of June, he was named Senior of the Deputies of the Communes (or Commons). Formerly, the right of presiding in the third house of the kingdom belonged to the provost of the merchants. Bailly in his diffidence thought that the assembly, in assigning the chair to him, had wished to compensate the capital for the loss of an old privilege. This consideration induced him to accept of a duty that he thought above his powers,--he who always depicted himself as timid to an extreme, and not possessing a facility of speaking.

Men's minds were more animated, more ardent in 1789 than those would admit who always see in the present a faithful image of the past. But calumny, that murderous arm of political party, already respected no position. Knowledge, loyalty, virtue, did not suffice to shelter any one from its poisoned darts. Bailly experienced it on the very day after his nomination to such an eminent post as President of the Communes.

On the 29th of May, the Communes had voted an address to the king on the constantly recurring difficulties that the nobility opposed to the union of the States General in one assembly. In order to carry out this most solemn deliberation, Bailly solicited an audience, in which the moderate and respectful expression of the anxiety of six hundred loyal deputies was to be presented to the monarch. In the midst of these strifes the Dauphin died. Without taking the trouble to consult dates, the court party immediately represented Bailly as a stranger to the commonest proprieties, and totally deficient in feeling; he ought, they said, to have respected the most allowable of griefs; his importunities had been barbarous.

I had imagined that such ridiculous accusations were no longer thought of; the categorical explanations that Bailly himself gave on this topic, seemed to me as if they would have sufficed to convince the most prejudiced. I was deceived, Gentlemen; the reproach of violence, of brutal insensibility, has just been repeated by the pen of a clever and a conscientious man. I will give his recital: "Scarcely two hours had elapsed since the royal child had breathed his last sigh, when Bailly, President of the Third Estate, insisted on admission to the king, who had prohibited any one being allowed to intrude upon him. But so positive was the demand, that they were obliged to yield, and Louis XVI. exclaimed, 'There are then no fathers in that chamber of the Third Estate.' The chamber very much applauded this trait of brutal insensibility in Bailly, which they termed a trait of Spartan stoicism."

As many errors as words. The following is the truth. The illness of the Dauphin had not prevented the two privileged orders from being received by the king. This preference offended the Communes. They ordered the President to solicit an audience. He discharged his duty with great caution. All his proceedings were concerted with two ministers, Necker and M. de Barentin. The king answered, "It is impossible for me to see M. Bailly in the situation in which I am to-night, nor to-morrow morning, nor to fix a day for receiving the deputation of the Third Estate." The note ends with these words: "Show my note to M. Bailly for his vindication."

Thus, on the day of these events the Dauphin was not dead; thus the king was not obliged to yield, he did not receive Bailly; thus the chamber had no act of insensibility to applaud; thus Louis XVI. perceived so clearly that the President of the Communes was fulfilling the duties of his office, that he felt it requisite to give him an exoneration.

The death of the Dauphin happened on the 4th of June. As soon as the assembly of the Third Estate were informed of it, they charged the President, I quote the very words, "to report to their majesties the deep grief with which this news had penetrated the Communes."

A deputation of twenty members, having Bailly at their head, was received on the 6th. The President thus expressed himself: "Your faithful Communes are deeply moved by the circumstance in which your majesty has the goodness to receive their deputation, and they take the liberty to address to you the expression of all their regrets, and of their respectful sensibility."

Such language can, I think, be delivered without uneasiness to the appreciation of all good men.

Let us be correct; the Communes did not obtain at once the audience that they demanded on account of the difficulties of the ceremonial. They would have wished to make the Third Estate speak kneeling. "This custom," said M. de Barentin, "has existed from time immemorial, and if the king wished...." "And if twenty-five millions of men do not wish it," exclaimed Bailly, interrupting the minister, "where are the means to force them?" "The two privileged orders," replied the Guard of the Seals, somewhat stunned by the apostrophe, "no longer require the Third Estate to bend the knee; but, after having formerly possessed immense privileges in the ceremonial, they limit themselves now to asking some difference. This difference I cannot find." "Do not take the trouble to seek for it," replied the President hastily: "however slight the difference might be, the Communes will not suffer it."

This digression was required through a grave and recent error. The memory of Bailly will not suffer by it, since it has afforded me the opportunity of establishing, beyond any reply, that in our fellow academician a noble firmness was on occasions allied to urbanity, mildness, and politeness. But what will be said of the puerilities which I have been obliged to recall, of the mean pretensions of the courtiers on the eve of an immense revolution? When the Greeks of the Lower Empire, instead of going on the ramparts valiantly to repel the attacks of the Turks, remained night and day collected around some sophists in their lyceums and academies, their sterile debates at least related to some intellectual questions; but at Versailles, there was nothing in action, on the part of two out of three orders, but the most miserable vanity.

By an express arrangement, decreed from the beginning, among the Members of the Communes, the Dean or President had to be renewed every week. Notwithstanding the incessant representations of Bailly, this legislative article was long neglected, so fortunate did the Assembly feel in having at their head this eminent man, who to undeniable knowledge, united sincerity, moderation, and a degree of patriotism not less appreciated.

He thus presided over the Third Estate on the memorable days that determined the march of our great revolution.

On the 17th of June, for instance, when the Deputies of the Communes, worn out with the tergiversations of the other two orders, showed that in case of need they would act without their concurrence, and resolutely adopted the title of National Assembly,--they provided against presumed projects of dissolution, by stamping as illegal all levies of contribution which were not granted by the Assembly.

Again, on the 20th of June, when the Members of the National Assembly, affronted at the Hall having been closed and their meetings suspended without an official notification, with only the simple form of placards and public criers, as if a mere theatre was in question, they assembled at a tennis-court, and "took an oath never to separate, but to assemble wherever circumstances might render it requisite, until the Constitution of the Kingdom should be established and confirmed on solid foundations."

Once more, Bailly was still at the head of his colleagues on the 23d of June, when, by an inexcusable inconsistency, and which perhaps was not without some influence on the events of that day, the Deputies of the Third Estate were detained a long time at the servants' door of the Hall of Meeting, and in the rain; while the deputies of the other two orders, to whom a more convenient and more suitable entrance had been assigned, were already in their places.

The account that Bailly gave of the celebrated royal meeting on the 23d of June, does not exactly agree with that of most historians.

The king finished his speech with the following imprudent words: "I order you, Gentlemen, to separate immediately."

The whole of the nobility and a portion of the clergy retired; while the Deputies of the Communes remained quietly in their places. The Grand Master of the Ceremonies having remarked it, approaching Bailly said to him, "You heard the king's order, Sir?" The illustrious President answered, "I cannot adjourn the Assembly until it has deliberated on it." "Is that indeed your answer, and am I to communicate it to the king?" "Yes, Sir," replied Bailly, and immediately addressing the Deputies who surrounded him, he said, "It appears to me that the assembled nation cannot receive an order."

It was after this debate, at once both firm and moderate, that Mirabeau addressed from his place the well-known apostrophe to M. de Brézé. The President disapproved both of the basis and the form of it; he felt that there was no sufficient motive; for, said he, the Grand Master of the Ceremonies made use of no menace; he had not in any way insinuated that there was an intention to resort to force; he had not, above all, spoken of bayonets. At all events, there is an essential difference between the words of Mirabeau as related in almost all the Histories of the Revolution, and those reported by Bailly. According to our illustrious colleague the impetuous tribune exclaimed, "Go tell those who sent you, that the force of bayonets can do nothing against the will of the nation." This is, to my mind, much more energetic than the common version. The expression, "We will only retire by the force of bayonets!" had always appeared to me, notwithstanding the admiration conceded to it, to imply only a resistance which would cease on the arrival of a corporal and half-a-dozen soldiers.

Bailly quitted the chair of President of the National Assembly on the 2d of July. His scientific celebrity, his virtue, his conciliating spirit, had not been superfluous in habituating certain men to see a member of the Communes preside over an assembly in which there was a prince of the blood, a prince of the church, the greatest lords of the kingdom, and all the high dignitaries of the clergy. The first person named to succeed to Bailly was the Duke d'Orléans. After his refusal, the Assembly chose the Archbishop of Vienne (Pompignan).

Bailly recalls to mind with sensibility, in his memoirs, the testimonies of esteem that he obtained through his difficult and laborious presidency. The 3d of July, on the proposition of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld and of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, the National Assembly sent a deputation to their illustrious ex-president, to thank him (these are the precise words) "for his noble, wise, and firm conduct." The electoral body of Bordeaux had been beforehand with these homages. The Chamber of Commerce of that town, at the same time, decided that the portrait of the great citizen should decorate their hall of meeting. The Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, did not remain insensible to the glory that one of their members had acquired in the career of politics, and testified it by numerous deputations. Finally, Marmontel, in the name of the French Academy, expressed to Bailly "how proud that assembly was to count, among its members an Aristides that no one was tired of calling the Just."

I shall not excite surprise, I hope, by adding, after such brilliant testimonies of sympathy, that the inhabitants of Chaillot celebrated the return of Bailly amongst them by fêtes, and fireworks, and that even the curate of the parish and the churchwardens, unwilling to be surpassed by their fellow-citizens, nominated the historian of antediluvian astronomy honorary churchwarden. I will, at all events, repress the smile that might arise from such private reminiscences, by reminding the reader that a man's moral character is better appreciated by his neighbours, to whom he shows himself daily without disguise, than that of more considerable persons, who are only seen on state occasions, and in official costume.

BAILLY BECOMES MAYOR OF PARIS.--SCARCITY.--MARAT DECLARES HIMSELF INIMICAL TO THE MAYOR.--EVENTS OF THE 6TH OF OCTOBER.

The Bastille had been taken on the 14th of July. That event, on which, during upwards of half a century, there have been endless discussions, on opposite sides, was characterized in the following way, in the address to the National Assembly, drawn up by M. Moreau de Saint Méry, in the name of the City Committee:--

"Yesterday will be for ever memorable by the taking of a citadel, consequent on the Governor's perfidy. The bravery of the people was irritated by the breaking of the word of honour. This act (the strongest proof that the nation who knows best how to obey, is jealous of its just liberties,) has been followed by incidents that from the public misfortunes might have been foreseen."

Lally Tollendal said to the Parisians, on the 15th of July: "In the disastrous circumstances that have just occurred, we did not cease to participate in your griefs; and we have also participated in your anger; it was just."

The National Assembly solicited and obtained permission from the king on the 15th of July, to send a deputation to Paris, which they flattered themselves would restore order and peace in that great city, then in a convulsed state. Madame Bailly, always influenced by fear, endeavoured, though vainly, to dissuade her husband from joining the appointed deputies. The learned academician naïvely replied, "After a presidency that has been applauded, I am not sorry to show myself to my fellow-citizens." You see, Gentlemen, that Bailly always admits the future reader of his Posthumous Memoirs confidentially into his most secret feelings.

The deputation completed its mandate at the Town Hall, to the entire satisfaction of the Parisian populace; the Archbishop of Paris, its President, had already proposed to go in procession to the Cathedral to sing _Te Deum_; they were preparing to depart, when the Assembly, giving way to a spontaneous enthusiasm, with an unanimous voice, proclaimed Bailly Mayor of Paris, and Lafayette Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard, the creation of which had just been authorized.

The official minutes of the Municipality state, that on being thus unexpectedly named, Bailly bent forward to the Assembly, his eyes bathed in tears, and that amidst his sobs he could only utter a few unconnected words to express his gratitude. The Mayor's own recital differs very little from this official relation. Still I shall quote it as a model of sincerity and of modesty.

"I know not whether I wept, I know not what I said; but I remember well that I was never so surprised, so confused, and so beneath myself. Surprise adding to my usual timidity before a large assembly, I rose, I stammered out a few words that were not heard, and that I did not hear myself, but which my agitation, much more than my mouth, rendered expressive. Another effect of my sudden stupidity was, that I accepted without knowing what a burden I was taking on myself."

Bailly having become Mayor, and being tacitly accepted by the National Assembly, even from the 16th of July, availed himself of his intimacy with Vicq-d'Azyr, the Queen's physician, to persuade Louis XVI. to show himself to the Parisians. This advice was listened to. On the 17th the new magistrate addressed the king near the barrière de la Conférence, in a discourse that began thus:--

"I bring to your Majesty the keys of your good city of Paris. They are the same that were presented to Henry IV. He had reconquered his people, here the people have reconquered their king."

The antithesis: "he had reconquered his people, here the people have reconquered their king," was universally applauded. But since then, it has been criticized with bitterness and violence. The enemies of the Revolution have striven to discover in it an intention of committing an outrage, to which the character of Bailly, and still more so the first glance at an examination of the rest of his discourse, give a flat contradiction. I will acknowledge, Gentlemen, I think that I have even a right to decline the epithet of "unfortunate," which one of our most respectable colleagues in the French Academy has pronounced relative to this celebrated phrase, while doing justice at the same time to the sentiments of the author. The poison contained in the few words that I have quoted, was very inoffensive, since more than a year passed without any courtier, though furnished like a microscope with, all the monarchical susceptibilities, beginning to suspect its existence.

The Mayor of Paris was at the Hôtel de Ville in the midst of those same Parisian citizens who inspired him, a few months before, with the mortifying reflection already quoted: "I remarked in the Assembly of Electors a dislike to literary people and Academicians." The feeling did not appear to be changed.