At the close of the session of January 21, 1847, at which the Chamber of Peers discussed Cracow and kept silent concerning the frontier of the Rhine, I descended the grand staircase of the Chamber in company with M. de Chastellux. M. Decazes stopped me and asked:
“Well, what have you been doing during the session?”
“I have been writing to Mme. Dorval.” (I held the letter in my hand.)
“What a fine disdain! Why did you not speak?”
“On account of the old proverb: ‘He whose opinion is not shared by anybody else should think, and say nothing.’
“Did your opinion, then, differ from that of the others?”
“I should have protested and spoken without finding any echo to my words; I preferred to say nothing.”
“Ah! the Rhine! To have the Rhine! Yes, that is a fine idea. Poetry! poetry!”
“Poetry that our fathers made with cannon and that we shall make again with ideas!”
“My dear colleague,” went on M. Decazes, “we must wait. I, too, want the Rhine. Thirty years ago I said to Louis XVIII.: ‘Sire, I should be inconsolable if I thought I should die without seeing France mistress of the left bank of the Rhine. But before we can talk about that, before we can think of it even, we must beget children.’”
“Well,” I replied, “that was thirty years ago. We have begotten the children.”
The Chamber of Peers is discussing a pretty bad bill on substitutions for army service. To-day the principal article of the measure was before the House.
M. de Nemours was present. There are eighty lieutenant-generals in the Chamber. The majority considered the article to be a bad one. Under the eye of the Duke de Nemours, who seemed to be counting them, all rose to vote in favour of it.
The magistrates, the members of the Institute and the ambassadors voted against it.
I remarked to President Franck-Carré, who was seated next to me: “It is a struggle between civil courage and military poltroonery.”
The Girardin* affair was before the Chamber of Peers to-day. Acquittal. The vote was taken by means of balls, white ones for condemnation, black ones for acquittal. There were 199 votes cast, 65 white, 134 black. In placing my black ball in the urn I remarked: “In blackening him we whiten him.”
* Emile de Girardin had been prosecuted for publishing an article in a newspaper violently attacking the government.