The History of a Crime: The Testimony of an Eye-WitnessHugo, Victor
History
The History of a Crime: The Testimony of an Eye-Witness
Hugo, Victor
France -- History -- 1789-1900
Shortly afterwards arrived two of those little chariots which are called
"forty sons," and two _fiacres_, escorted by two detachments of the
Republican Guard and of the Chasseurs de Vincennes, and by several squads
of police. The Commissaries Bertoglio and Primorin alighted from the two
chariots.
As these carriages drove up a personage, bald, but still young, was seen
to appear at the grated door of the Place de Bourgogne. This personage
had all the air of a man about town, who had just come from the opera,
and, in fact, he had come from thence, after having passed through a den.
He came from the Elysée. It was De Morny. For an instant he watched the
soldiers piling their arms, and then went on to the Presidency door.
There he exchanged a few words with M. de Persigny. A quarter of an hour
afterwards, accompanied by 250 Chasseurs de Vincennes, he took possession
of the ministry of the Interior, startled M. de Thorigny in his bed, and
handed him brusquely a letter of thanks from Monsieur Bonaparte. Some
days previously honest M. De Thorigny, whose ingenuous remarks we have
already cited, said to a group of men near whom M. de Morny was passing,
"How these men of the Mountain calumniate the President! The man who
would break his oath, who would achieve a _coup d'état_ must necessarily
be a worthless wretch." Awakened rudely in the middle of the night, and
relieved of his post as Minister like the sentinels of the Assembly, the
worthy man, astounded, and rubbing his eyes, muttered, "Eh! then the
President _is_ a ----."
"Yes," said Morny, with a burst of laughter.
He who writes these lines knew Morny. Morny and Walewsky held in the
quasi-reigning family the positions, one of Royal bastard, the other of
Imperial bastard. Who was Morny? We will say, "A noted wit, an intriguer,
but in no way austere, a friend of Romieu, and a supporter of Guizot
possessing the manners of the world, and the habits of the roulette
table, self-satisfied, clever, combining a certain liberality of ideas
with a readiness to accept useful crimes, finding means to wear a
gracious smile with bad teeth, leading a life of pleasure, dissipated but
reserved, ugly, good-tempered, fierce, well-dressed, intrepid, willingly
leaving a brother prisoner under bolts and bars, and ready to risk his
head for a brother Emperor, having the same mother as Louis Bonaparte,
and like Louis Bonaparte, having some father or other, being able to call
himself Beauharnais, being able to call himself Flahaut, and yet calling
himself Morny, pursuing literature as far as light comedy, and politics,
as far as tragedy, a deadly free liver, possessing all the frivolity
consistent with assassination, capable of being sketched by Marivaux and
treated of by Tacitus, without conscience, irreproachably elegant,
infamous, and amiable, at need a perfect duke. Such was this malefactor."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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