Now it may be asked how it happens that Béranger, a Republican, resides peacefully in the avenue de Chateaubriand (No. 5), at Paris, whilst Victor Hugo is living in Marine Terrace, in the island of Jersey. It is simply a question of age and of temperament. Hugo is a fighter, and scarcely fifty: while Béranger, take him all in all, is an Epicurean and, moreover, seventy years of age;[1] an age at which a man begins to prepare his bed for his eternal sleep, and Béranger (God grant he may live many years yet, would he but accept some years of our lives!) wishes to die peacefully upon the bed of flowers and bay leaves that he has made for himself. He has earned the right to do so--he has struggled hard enough in the past, and, rest assured, his work will continue in the future! Let us just say, in conclusion, that those who were then spoken of as the _young school_ (they are now men of forty to fifty) were not fair to Béranger. After Benjamin Constant had exalted him to the rank of a great epic poet, they tried to reduce him to the level of a writer of doggerel verses. By this action, criticism innocently made itself the accomplice of the ruling powers; it only intended to be severe, but was, really, both unjust and ungrateful! It needs to be an exile and a poet living in a strange land, far from that communion of thought which is the food of intellectual life, to know how essentially French, philosophical and consolatory, the muse of the poet of Passy really was. In the case of Béranger, there was no question of exile, and each exile can, while he sings his songs, look for the realisation of that prophecy which Nostradamus has fixed for the year 2000. But we are a very long way from the artillery, which we were discussing, and we must return to it again and to the riot in which it was called upon to play its part. Let us, then, return to the riot and to the artillery. But, dear Béranger, dear poet, dear father, we do not bid you _adieu_, only _au revoir._ After the storm, the halcyon!--the halcyon, white as snow, which has passed through all the storms, its swan-like plumage as spotless as before. [1] See Note A, at end of the volume. CHAPTER V Death of Benjamin Constant--Concerning his life--Funeral honours that were conferred upon him--His funeral--Law respecting national rewards--The trial of the ministers--Grouvelle and his sister--M. Mérilhou and the neophyte--Colonel Lavocat--The Court of Peers--Panic--Fieschi