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 Hotel 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 Hotel 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 Hotel 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 lese-humanity.

In 1786, infirmities of all sorts were treated at the Hotel 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 metre 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 Hotel Dieu, which were not a metre 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 Hotel 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 Hotel Dieu of Paris.

If economy be invoked, I find an answer quite a-propos in Bailly: the daily allowance for the patients at the Hotel 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 Hotel 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 Hotel Dieu, compared with those at the Charite: 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 Hotel 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 Hotel 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 Hotel 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 Crequi 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 Crequi 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 Crequi, 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 Crequi 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 proces-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 Abbe 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 Abbe 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 naive 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 Breze. 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'Orleans. 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 fetes, 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 Mery, 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 naively 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 barriere de la Conference, 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 Hotel 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.

The political movement in 1789, had been preceded by two very serious physical perturbations which had great influence on the march of events. Every one is aware, that the excessively rigorous winter of 1788-89 was the cause of severe sufferings to the people. But it may not be so generally known, that on the 13th of July, 1788, a fall of hail of unprecedented size and quantity, in a few hours completely ravaged the two parallel zones lying between the department of the Charente and the frontiers of the Pays-Bas, and that in consequence of this frightful hail, the wheat partly failed, both in the north and in the west of France, until after the harvest of 1789.

The scarcity was already severely felt, when Bailly on the 15th of July accepted the appointment of Mayor of Paris. That day, it had been ascertained, from an examination of the quantity of corn at the Market Hall and of the private stocks of the bakers, that the supply of grain and flour would be entirely exhausted in three days. The next day, the 16th of July, all the overseers in the victualling administration had disappeared. This flight, the natural consequence of the terrible intimidation that hovered over those who were in any way connected with the furnishing of provisions, interrupted the operations which had been commenced, and exposed the city of Paris to famine.

Bailly, a magistrate of only one day's standing, considered that the multitude understands nothing, hears nothing when bread fails; that a scarcity, either real or supposed, is the great promoter of riots; that all classes of the population grant their sympathy to whoever cries, I am hungry; that this lamentable cry soon unites individuals of all ages, of both sexes, of every condition, in one common sentiment of blind fury; that no human power could maintain order and tranquillity in the bosom of a population that dreads the want of food; he therefore resolved to devote his days and his nights to provisioning the capital; to deserve, as he himself said, the title of the Father nourisher of the Parisians,—that title of which he showed himself always so proud, after having painfully gained it.

Bailly day by day recorded in his Memoirs a statement of his actions, of his anxieties, and of his fears. It may be good for the instruction of the more fortunate administrators of the present epoch, to insert here a few lines from the journal of our colleague.

"18th August. Our provisions are very much reduced. Those of the morrow depend strictly on the arrangements made on the previous evening; and now amidst this distress, we learn that our flour-wagons have been stopped at Bourg-la-Reine; that some banditti are pillaging the markets in the direction of Rouen, that they have seized twenty wagons of flour that were destined for us; ... that the unfortunate Sauvage was massacred at Saint Germain-en-Laye; ... that Thomassin escaped with difficulty from the fury of the populace at Choisy."

By repeating either these literal words, or something equivalent to them, for every day of distress throughout the year 1789, an exact idea may be formed of the anxieties that Bailly experienced from the morning after his installation as mayor. I deceive myself; to complete the picture we ought also to record the unreflecting and inconsiderate actions of a multitude of people whose destiny appeared to be, to meddle with every thing and to spoil every thing. I will not resist the wish to show one of these self-important men, starving (or very nearly so) the city of Paris.

"21st August. The store of victuals, Bailly says, was so scanty, that the lives of the inhabitants of Paris depended on the somewhat mathematical precision of our arrangements. Having learnt that a barge with eighteen hundred sacks of flour had arrived at Poissy, I immediately despatched a hundred wagons from Paris to fetch them. And behold, in the evening, an officer without powers and without orders, related before me, that having met some wagons on the Poissy road, he made them go back, because he did not think that there was a wharf for any loaded barge on the Seine. It would be difficult for me to describe the despair and the anger into which this recital threw me. We were obliged to put sentinels at the bakers' doors!"

The despair and the anger of Bailly were very natural. Even now, after more than half a century, no one thinks without a shudder of that obscure individual who, from not believing that a loaded barge could get up to Poissy, was going, on the 21st August, 1789, to plunge the capital into bloody disorders.

By means of perseverance, devotedness, and courage, Bailly succeeded in overcoming all the difficulties that the real scarcity, and the fictitious one, which was still more redoubtable, caused daily to arise. He succeeded, but his health from that epoch was deeply injured; his mind had undergone several of those severe shocks that we can never entirely recover from. Our colleague said, "when I used to pass the bakers' shops during the scarcity, and saw them besieged by a crowd, my heart sunk within me; and even now that abundance has been restored to us, the sight of one of those shops strikes me with a deep emotion."

The administrative conflicts, the source of which lay in the very bosom of the Council of the Commune, daily drew from Bailly the following exclamation, a faithful image of his mind: I have ceased to be happy. The embarrassments that proceeded from external sources touched him much less, and yet they were far from contemptible. Let us surmount our repugnance, although a reasonable one; let us cast a firm look on the sink where the unworthy calumnies were manufactured, of which Bailly was for some time the object.

Several years before our first revolution, a native of Neufchatel quitted his mountains, traversed the Jura, and lighted upon Paris. Without means, without any recognized talent, without eminence of any sort, repulsive in appearance, of a more than negligent deportment, it seemed unlikely that he should hope, or even dream, of success; but the young traveller had been told to have full confidence, although a celebrated academician had not yet given that singular definition of our country, "France is the home of foreigners." At all events, the definition was not erroneous in this instance, for soon after his arrival, the Neufchatelois was appointed physician to the household of one of the princes of the royal family, and formed strict intimacies with the greater part of the powerful people about the court.

This stranger thirsted for literary glory. Amongst his early productions, a medico-philosophical work figured in three volumes, relative to the reciprocal influences of the mind and the body. The author thought he had produced a chef d'oeuvre; even Voltaire was not thought to be above analyzing it suitably; let us hasten to say that the illustrious old man, yielding to the pressing solicitations of the Duke de Praslin, one of the most active patrons of the Swiss doctor, promised to study the work and give his opinion of it.

The author was at the acme of his wishes. After having pompously announced that the seat of the soul is in the meninges (cerebral membrane), could there be any thing to fear from the liberal thinker of Ferney? He had only forgotten that the patriarch was above all a man of good taste, and that the book on the body and soul offended all the proprieties of life. Voltaire's article appeared. He began with this severe and just lesson—"We should not be prodigal of contempt towards others, and of esteem for ourselves, to such a degree as will be revolting to our readers." The end was still more overwhelming. "We see harlequin everywhere cutting capers to amuse the pit."

Harlequin had received a sufficient dose. Not having succeeded in literature, he threw himself upon the sciences.

On betaking himself to this new career, the doctor of Neufchatel attacked Newton. But unluckily his criticisms were directed precisely to those points wherein optics may vie in evidence with geometry itself. This time the patron was M. de Maillebois, and the tribunal the Academy of Sciences.

The Academy pronounced its judgment gravely, without inflicting a word of ridicule; for example, it did not speak of harlequin; but it did not therefore remain the less established that the pretended experiments, intended, it was said, to upset Newton's, on the unequal refrangibility of variously coloured rays, and the explanation of the rainbow, &c., had absolutely no scientific value.

Still the author would not allow himself to have been beaten. He even conceived the possibility of retaliation; and, availing himself of his intimacy with the Duke de Villeroy, governor of the second city in the kingdom, he got the Academy of Lyons to propose for competition all the questions in optics, which for several years past had been the subjects of its disquisitions; he even furnished the amount of the prize out of his own pocket, under an assumed name.

The prize so longed for, and so singularly proposed, was not obtained, however, by the Duke de Villeroy's candidate, but by the astronomer Flaugergues. From that instant, the pseudo-physicist became the bitter enemy of the scientific bodies of the whole universe, of whoever bore the title of an academician. Putting aside all shame, he no longer made himself known in the field of natural philosophy, merely by imaginary experiments, or by juggleries; he had recourse to contemptible practices, with the object of throwing doubt upon the clearest and best proved principles of science; for example, the metallic needles discovered by the academician Charles, and which the foreign doctor had adroitly concealed in a cake of resin, in order to contradict the common opinion of the electric non-conductibility of that substance.

These details were necessary. I could not avoid characterizing the journalist who by his daily calumnies contributed most to undermine the popularity of Bailly. It was requisite besides, once for all, to strip him in this circle of the epithet of philosopher, with which men of the world, and even some historians, inconsiderately gratified him. When a man reveals himself by some brilliant and intelligent works, the public is pleased to find them united with good qualities of the heart. Nor should its joy be less hearty on discovering the absence of all intellectual merit in a man who had before shown himself despicable by his passions, or his vices, or even only by serious blemishes of character.

If I have not yet named the enemy of our colleague, if I have contented myself with recounting his actions, it is in order to avoid as much as I can the painful feeling that his name must raise here. Judge, Gentlemen, weigh, my scruples: the furious persecutor of Bailly, of whom I have been talking to you for some minutes, was Marat.

The revolution of '89 just occurred in time to relieve the abortive author, physiologist, and physicist from the intolerable position into which he had been thrown by his inability and his quackery.

As soon as the revolution had assumed a decided movement, great surprise was occasioned by the sudden transformations excited in the inferior walks of the political world. Marat was one of the most striking examples of these hasty changes of principles. The Neufchatel physician had shown himself a violent adversary to those opinions that occasioned the convocation of the assembly of Notables, and the national commotion in '89. At that time democratical institutions had not a more bitter or more violent censor. Marat liked it to be believed that in quitting France for England, he fled especially from the spectacle of social renovation which was odious to him. Yet a month after the taking of the Bastille, he returned to Paris, established a journal, and from its very beginning left far behind him, even those who, in the hope of making themselves remarkable, thought they must push exaggeration to its very farthest limits. The former connection of Marat with M. de Calonne was perfectly well known; they remembered these words of Pitt's: "The French must go through liberty, and then be brought back to their old government by licence;" the avowed adversaries of revolution testified by their conduct, by their votes, and even by their imprudent words, that according to them, the worst was the only means of returning to what they call the good; and yet these instructive comparisons struck only eight or ten members of our great assemblies, so small a share has suspicion in the national character, so painful is distrust to French sincerity. The historians of our troubles themselves have but skimmed the question that I have just raised—assuredly a very important and very curious one. In such matters, the part of a prophet is tolerably hazardous; yet I do not hesitate to predict, that a minute study of the conduct and of the discourses of Marat, would lead the mind more and more to those chapters in a treatise on the chase, wherein we see depicted bad species of falcons and hawks, at first only pursuing the game by a sign from the master, and for his advantage; but by degrees taking pleasure in these bloody struggles, and entering on the sport at last with passion and for their own profit.

Marat took good care not to forget that during a revolution, men, naturally suspicious, act in their more immediate affairs so as to render those persons suspected whose duty it is to watch over them. The Mayor of Paris, the General Commandant of the National Guard, were the first objects, therefore, at which the pamphleteer aimed. As an academician, Bailly had an extra claim to his hate.

Among men of Marat's disposition, the wounds of self-love never heal. Without the hateful passions derived from this source, who would believe that an individual, whose time was divided between the superintendence of a daily journal, the drawing up of innumerable placards with which he covered the walls of Paris, together with the struggles of the Convention, the disputes not less fierce of the clubs; that an individual who, besides, had given himself the task of imposing an Agrarian law on the country, could find time to write the very long letters against the old official adversaries of his bad experiments, his absurd theories, his lucubrations devoid both of erudition and of talent; letters in which the Monges, the Laplaces, the Lavoisiers are treated with such an entire neglect of justice and of truth, and with such a cynical spirit, that my respect for this assembly prevents my quoting a single expression.

It was not then only the Mayor of Paris whom the pretended friend of the people persecuted; it was also the Academician Bailly. But the illustrious philosopher, the virtuous magistrate, gave no hold for positive and decided criminations. The hideous pamphleteer understood this well; and therefore he adopted vague insinuations, that allowed of no possible refutation, a method which, we may remark by the way, has not been without imitators. Marat exclaimed every day: "Let Bailly send in his accounts!" and the most powerful figure of rhetoric, as Napoleon said, repetition, finally inspires doubts in a stupid portion of the public, in some feeble, ignorant, and credulous minds in the Council of the Commune; and the scrupulous magistrate wished, in fact, to send in his accounts. Here they are in two lines: Bailly never had the handling of any public funds. He left the Hotel de Ville, after having spent there two thirds of his patrimony. If his functions had been long protracted, he would have retired completely ruined. Before the Commune assigned him any salary, the expenses of our colleague in charities already exceeded 30,000 livres.

That was, Gentlemen, the final result. The details would be more striking, and the name of Bailly would ennoble them. I could show our colleague entering only once with his wife, to regulate the furnishing of the apartments that the Commune assigned him; rejecting all that had the appearance of luxury or even of elegance; to replace sets of china by sets of earthenware, new carpets by the half-used ones of M. de Crosnes, writing tables of mahogany by writing tables of walnut, &c. But all this would appear an indirect criticism, which is far from my thoughts. From the same motives, I will not say, that inimical to all sinecures, of all plurality of appointments, when the functions are not fulfilled, the Mayor of Paris, since he no longer regularly attended the meetings of the National Assembly, no longer fingered the pay of a deputy, and that this was proved, to the great confusion of the idiots, whose minds had been disturbed by Marat's clamours. Yet I will record that Bailly refused all that in the incomes of his predecessors had proceeded from an impure source; as, for example, the allowances from the lotteries, the amount of which was by his orders constantly paid into the coffers of the Commune.

You see, Gentlemen, that no trouble was required to show that the disinterestedness of Bailly was great, enlightened, dictated by virtue, and that it was at least equal to his other eminent qualities. In the series of accusations that I have extracted from the pamphlets of that epoch, there is one, however, as to which, all things considered, I will not attempt to defend Bailly. He accepted a livery from the city; on this point no blame was attached to him; but the colours of the livery were very gaudy. Perhaps the inventors of these bright shades had imagined, that the insignia of the first magistrate of the metropolis, in a ceremony, in a crowd, should, like the light from a Pharos, strike even inattentive eyes. But these explanations regard those who would make of Bailly a perfectly rational being, a man absolutely faultless; I, although his admirer, I resign myself to admit that in a laborious life, strewed with so many rocks, he committed the horrible crime, unpardonable let it be called, of having accepted from the Commune a livery of gaudy colours.

Bailly figured in the events of the month of October 1789, only by the unsuccessful efforts he made at Paris, to arrange with Lafayette how to prevent a great crowd of women from going to Versailles. When this crowd, considerably increased, returned on the 6th October very tumultuously escorting the carriages of the royal family, Bailly harangued the king at the Barriere de la Conference. Three days after, he also complimented the Queen at the Tuileries in the name of the Municipal Council.

On retiring from the National Assembly, which he then called a Cavern of Anthropophagi, Lally Tollendal published a letter in which he found bitter fault with Bailly on account of these discourses. Lally was angry, recollecting that the day when the king reentered his capital as a prisoner, surrounded by a very disrespectful crowd, and preceded by the heads of his body-guards, had appeared to Bailly a fine day!

If the two heads had been in the procession, Bailly becomes inexcusable; but the two epochs, or rather hours (to speak more correctly), have been confounded; the wretched men, who after a conflict with the body-guard, brought their barbarous trophies to Paris, left Versailles in the morning; they were arrested and imprisoned, by order of the municipality, as soon as they had entered the barriers of the capital. Thus the hideous circumstance reported by Lally was the dream of a wild imagination.



A GLANCE AT THE POSTHUMOUS MEMOIR OF BAILLY.

Bailly's Memoirs have thus far served me as a guide and check; now that this resource fails me, let us refer to his posthumous work.

I could only consult those Memoirs as far as they related to the public or private life of our colleague. Historians may consult them in a more general point of view. They will find some valuable facts in them, related without prejudice; ample matter for new and fruitful reflections on the way in which revolutions are generated, increase, and lead to catastrophes. Bailly is less positive, less absolute, less slashing, than the generality of his contemporaries, even respecting those events in which circumstances assigned to him the principal part to be acted; hence when he points out some low intrigue, in distinct and categorical terms, he inspires full confidence.

When the occasion will allow of it, Bailly praises with enthusiasm; a noble action fills him with joy; he puts it together and relates it with relish. This disposition of mind is sufficiently rare to deserve mention.

The day, still far off, when we shall finally recognize that our great revolution presented, even in the interior, even during the most cruel epochs, something besides anarchical and sanguinary scenes: the day when, like the intrepid fishermen in the Gulf of Persia and on the coasts of Ceylon, a zealous and impartial writer will consent to plunge head-foremost into the ocean of facts of all sorts, of which our fathers were witnesses, and exclusively seize the pearls, disdainfully rejecting the mud,—Bailly's Memoirs will furnish a glorious contingent to this national work. Two or three quotations will explain my ideas, and will show, besides, how scrupulously Bailly registered all that could shed honour on our country.

I will take the first fact from the military annals; a grenadier of the French Guard saves his commanding officer's life, although the people thought that they had great reason of complaint against him. "Grenadier, what is your name?" exclaimed the Duke de Chatelet, full of gratitude. The soldier replied, "Colonel, my name is that of all my comrades."

I will borrow the second fact from the civil annals: Stephen de Lariviere, one of the electors of Paris, had gone on the 20th of July, to fetch Berthier de Sauvigny, who had been fatally arrested at Compiegne, on the false report that the Assembly of the Town Hall wished to prosecute him as intendant of the army, by which a few days before the capital had been surrounded. The journey was performed in an open cabriolet, amidst the insults of a misled population, who imputed to the prisoner the scarcity and bad quality of the bread. Twenty times, guns, pistols, sabres, would have put an end to Berthier's life, if, twenty times, the member of the Commune of Paris had not voluntarily covered him with his body. When they reached the streets of the capital, the cabriolet had to penetrate through an immense and compact crowd, whose exasperation bordered on delirium, and who evidently wished to perpetrate the utmost extremities; not knowing which of the two travellers was the Intendant of Paris, they betook themselves to crying out, "let the prisoner take off his hat!" Berthier obeyed, but Lariviere uncovered his head also at the same instant.

All parties would gain by the production of a work, that I desire to see most earnestly. For my part, I acknowledge, I should be sorry not to see in it the answer made to Francis II. by one of the numerous officers who committed the fault, so honestly acknowledged afterwards,—a fault that no one would commit now,—that of joining foreigners in arms. The Austrian prince, after his coronation, attempted, at a review, to induce our countrymen to admire the good bearing of his troops, and finally exclaimed, "There are materials wherewith to crush the Sans-culottes." "That remains to be seen!" instantly answered the emigre officer.

May these quotations lead some able writer to erect a monument still wanting to the glory of our country! There is in this subject, it seems to me, enough to inspire legitimate ambition. Did not Plutarch immortalize himself by preserving noble actions and fine sentiments from oblivion?



EXAMINATION OF BAILLY'S ADMINISTRATION AS MAYOR.

The illustrious Mayor of Paris had not the leisure to continue writing his reminiscences beyond the date of the 2d of October, 1789. The analysis and appreciation of the events subsequent to that epoch will remain deprived of that influential sanction, pure as virtue, concise and precise as truth, which I found in the handwriting of our colleague. Xenocrates, historians say, who was celebrated among the Greeks for his honesty, being called to bear witness before a tribunal, the judges with common consent stopped him as he was advancing towards the altar according to the usual custom, and said, "These formalities are not required from you; an oath would add nothing to the authority of your words." Such, Bailly presents himself to the reader of his Posthumous Memoirs. None of his assertions leave any room for indecision or doubt. He needs not high-flown expressions or protestations in order to convince; nor would an oath add authority to his words. He may be deceived, but he is never the deceiver.

I will spare no effort to give to the description of the latter part of Bailly's life, all the correctness which can result from a sincere and conscientious comparison of the writings published as well by the partisans as by the enemies of our great revolution. Such, however, is my desire to prevent two phases, though very distinct, being confounded together, that I shall here pause, in order to cast a scrupulous glance on the actions and on the various publications of our colleague. I shall moreover thus have an easy opportunity of filling up some important lacunae.

I read in a biographical article, otherwise very friendly, that Bailly was nominated the very day of, and immediately after, the assassination of M. de Flesselles; and in this identity the wish was to insinuate that the first Mayor of Paris received this high dignity from the bloody hands of a set of wretches. The learned biographer, notwithstanding his good will, has ill repelled the calumny. With a little more attention he would have succeeded better. A simple comparison of dates would have sufficed. The death of M. de Flesselles occurred on the 14th of July; Bailly was nominated two days after.

I will address the same remark to the authors of a Biographical Dictionary still more recent, in which they speak of the ineffectual efforts that Bailly made to prevent the multitude from murdering the governor of the Bastille (de Launay). But Bailly had no opportunity of making an effort, for he was then at Versailles; no duty called him to Paris, nor did he become Mayor till two days after the taking of the fortress. It is really inexcusable not to have compared the two dates, by which these errors would have been avoided.

Many persons very little acquainted with contemporaneous history, fancy that during the whole duration of Bailly's administration, Paris was quite a cut-throat place. That is a romance; the following is the truth:—

Bailly was Mayor during two years and four months. In that time there occurred four political assassinations; those of Foulon and of Berthier de Sauvigny, his son-in-law, at the Hotel de Ville; that of M. Durocher, a respectable officer of the gendarmerie, killed at Chaillot, by a musket-shot, in August, 1789; and that of a baker massacred in a riot in the month of October of the same year. I do not speak of the assassination of two unfortunate men on the Champ de Mars in July, 1791, as that deplorable fact must be considered separately.

The individuals guilty of the assassination of the baker were seized, condemned to death, and executed. The family of the unfortunate victim became the object of the anxious care of all the authorities, and obtained a pension.

The death of M. Durocher was attributed to some Swiss soldiers who had revolted.

The horrible and ever to be deplored assassinations of Foulon and of Berthier, are among those misfortunes which, under certain given circumstances, no human power could prevent.

In times of scarcity, a slight word, either true or unfounded, suffices to create a terrible commotion.

Reveillon is made to say, that a workman can live upon fifteen sous per diem, and behold his manufactory destroyed from top to bottom.

They ascribe to Foulon the barbarous vaunt; "I will force the people to eat hay;" and without any order from the constituted authorities, some peasants, neighbours of the old minister, arrest him, take him to Paris, his son-in-law experiences the same fate, and the famished populace immolates both of them.

In proportion as the multitude appear to me unjust and culpable, in attacking certain men respecting a scarcity of provisions, when it is the manifest consequence of the severity of the seasons, I should be disposed to excuse their rage against the authors of factitious scarcities. Well, Gentlemen, at the time that Foulon was assassinated, the people, deceived by some impassioned orators of the Assembly, might, or let us rather say, ought to believe, that they were wilfully famished. Foulon perished the 22d of July, 1789; on the 15th, that is to say, seven days before, Mirabeau had addressed the following incendiary words to the inhabitants of the capital, from the National Tribune:—

"Henry IV. allowed provisions to be taken into besieged and rebellious Paris; but now, some perverse ministers intercept convoys of provisions destined for famished and obedient Paris."

Yet people have been so inconsiderate as to be astonished at the assassinations of Foulon and of Berthier. Going back in thought to the month of July, 1789, I perceive in the imprudent apostrophe of the eloquent tribune, more sanguinary disorders than the contemporary history has had to record.

One of the most honourable, one of the most respectable and the most respected members of the institute, having been led, in a recent work, to relate the assassination of Foulon, has thrown on the conduct of Bailly, under those cruel circumstances, an aspersion that I read with surprise and grief. Foulon was detained in the Hotel de Ville. Bailly went down into the square, and succeeded for a moment in calming the multitude. "I did not imagine," said the Mayor in his memoirs, "that they could have forced the Hotel de Ville, a well-guarded post, and an object of respect to all the citizens. I therefore thought the prisoner in perfect safety; I did not doubt but the waves of this storm would finally subside, and I departed."

The honourable author of the History of the Reign of Louis XVI. opposes to this passage the following words taken from the official minutes of the Hotel de Ville: "The electors (those who had accompanied Bailly out to the square) reported in the Hall the certainty that the calm would not last long." The new historian adds: "How could the Mayor alone labour under this delusion? It is too evident, that on such a day, the public tranquillity was much too uncertain, to allow of the chief magistrate of the town absenting himself without deserving the reproach of weakness." The remainder of the passage shows too evidently, that in the author's estimation, weakness here was synonymous with cowardice.

It is against this, Gentlemen, that I protest with heartfelt earnestness. Bailly absented himself because he did not think that the Hotel de Ville could be forced. The electors in the passage quoted do not enunciate a different opinion: where then is the contradiction?

Bailly deceived himself in this expectation, for the multitude burst into the Hotel de Ville. We will grant that there was an error of judgment in this; but nothing in the world authorizes us to call in question the courage of the Mayor.

To decide after the blow, with so little hesitation or consideration, that Bailly ought not to have absented himself from the House of the Commune, we must forget that, under such circumstances, the obligations of the first magistrate of the city were quite imperious and very numerous; it is requisite, above all, not to remember that each day, the provision of flour required for the nourishment of seven or eight hundred thousand inhabitants, depended on the measures adopted on the previous evening. M. de Crosne, who on quitting the post of Lieutenant of Police, had not ceased to be a citizen, was during some days a very enlightened and zealous councillor for Bailly; but on the day that Foulon was arrested, this dismissed magistrate thought himself lost. He and his family made an appeal to the gratitude and humanity of our colleague. It was to procure a refuge for them, that Bailly employed the few hours of absence with which he was so much reproached: those hours during which that catastrophe happened which the Mayor could not have prevented, since even the superhuman efforts of General Lafayette, commanding an armed force, proved futile. I will add, that to spare M. de Crosne an arbitrary arrest, the imminent danger of which alas! was too evident in the death of Berthier, Bailly absented himself again from the Hotel de Ville on the night of the 22d to the 23d of July, to accompany the former Lieutenant of Police to a great distance from Paris.

There is not a more distressing spectacle than that of one honest man wrongfully attacking another honest man. Gentlemen, let us never willingly leave the satisfaction and the advantage of it to the wicked.

To appreciate the actions of our predecessors with impartiality and justice, it would be indispensable to keep constantly before our eyes the list of unheard-of difficulties that the revolution had to surmount, and to remember the very restricted means of repression placed at the disposal of the authorities in the beginning.

The scarcity of food gave rise to many embarrassments, to many a crisis; but causes of quite another nature had not less influence on the march of events.

In his memoirs, Bailly speaks of the manoeuvres of a redoubtable faction labouring for ... under the name of the.... The names are blank. A certain editor of the work filled up the lacunae. I have not the same hardihood, I only wished to remark that Bailly had to combat at once both the spontaneous effervescence of the multitude, and the intrigues of a crowd of secret agents, who distributed money with a liberal hand.

Some day, said our colleague, the infernal genius who directed those intrigues and le bailleur de fonds will be known. Although the proper names are wanting, it is certain that some persons inimical to the revolution urged it to deplorable excesses.

These enemies had collected in the capital thirty or forty thousand vagabonds. What could be opposed to them? The Tribunals? They had no moral power, and were declared enemies to the revolution. The National Guard? It was only just formed; the officers scarcely knew each other, and moreover scarcely knew the men who were to obey them. Was it at least permitted to depend on the regular armed force? It consisted of six battalions of French Guards without officers; of six thousand soldiers who, from every part of France, had flocked singly to Paris, on reading in the newspapers the following expressions from General Lafayette: "They talk of deserters! The real deserters are those men who have not abandoned their standards." There were finally six hundred Swiss Guards in Paris, deserters from their regiments; for, let us speak freely, the celebrated monument of Lucerne will not prevent the Swiss themselves from being recognized by impartial and intelligent historians, as having experienced the revolutionary fever.

Those who, with such poor means of repression, flattered themselves that they could entirely prevent any disorder, in a town of seven or eight hundred thousand inhabitants in exasperation, must have been very blind. Those, on the other hand, who attempt to throw the responsibility of the disorders on Bailly, would prove by this alone, that good people should always keep aloof from public affairs during a revolution.

The administrator, a being of modern creation, now declares, with the most ludicrous self-sufficiency, that Bailly was not equal to the functions of a Mayor of Paris. It is, he says, by undeserved favour that his statue has been placed on the facade of the Hotel de Ville. During his magistracy, Bailly did not create any large square in the capital, he did not open out any large streets, he elevated no splendid monument; Bailly would therefore have done better had he remained an astronomer or erudite scholar.

The enumeration of all the public erections that Bailly did not execute is correct. It might also have been added, that far from devoting the municipal funds to building, he had the vast and threatening castle of the Bastille demolished down to its very foundation's; but this would not deprive Bailly of the honour of having been one of the most enlightened magistrates that the city of Paris could boast.

Bailly did not enlarge any street, did not erect any palace during the twenty-eight months of his administration! No, undoubtedly! for, first it was necessary to give bread to the inhabitants of Paris; now the revenues of the town, added to the daily sums furnished by Necker, scarcely sufficed for those principal wants. Some years before, the Parisians had been very much displeased at the establishment of import dues on all alimentary substances. The writers of that epoch preserved the burlesque Alexandrine, which was placarded all over the town, on the erection of the Octroi circumvallation:

"Le mur murant Paris, rend Paris murmurant."[13]

The multitude was not content with murmuring; the moment that a favourable opportunity occurred, it went to the barriers and broke them down. These were reestablished by the administration with great trouble, and the smugglers often took them down by main force. The Octroi revenue from the imports, which used to amount to 70,000 francs, now fell to less than 30,000. Those persons who have considered the figures of the present revenue, will assuredly not compare such very dissimilar epochs.

But it is said that ameliorations in the moral world may often be effected without expense. What were those for which the public was indebted to the direct exertions of Bailly? The question is simple, but repentance will follow the having asked it. My answer is this: One of the most honourable victories gained by mathematics over the avaricious prejudices of the administrations of certain towns has been, in our own times, the radical suppression of gambling-houses. I will hasten to prove that such a suppression had already engaged Bailly's attention, that he had partly effected it, and that no one ever spoke of those odious dens with more eloquence and firmness.

"I declare," wrote the Mayor of Paris on the 5th of May, 1790, "that the gambling-houses are in my opinion a public scourge. I think that these meetings not only should not be tolerated, but that they ought to be sought out and prosecuted, as much as the liberty of the citizens, and the respect due to their homes, will admit.

"I regard the tax that has been levied from such houses as a disgraceful tribute. I do not think that it is allowable to employ a revenue derived from vice and disorder, even to do good. In consequence of these principles, I have never granted any permit to gambling-houses; I have constantly refused them. I have constantly announced that not only they would not be tolerated, but that they would be sought out and prosecuted."

If I add that Bailly suppressed all spectacles of animal-fighting, at which the multitude cannot fail to acquire ferocious and sanguinary habits, I shall have a right to ask of every superficial writer, how he would justify the epithet of sterile, applied with such assurance to the administration of our virtuous colleague.

Anxious to carry out in practice that which had been largely recognized theoretically in the declaration of rights—the complete separation of religion from civil law,—Bailly presented himself before the National Assembly on the 14th of May, 1791, and demanded, in the name of the city of Paris, the abolition of an order of things which, in the then state of men's minds, gave rise to great abuses. If declarations of births, of marriages, and of deaths are now received by civil officers in a form agreeing with all religious opinions, the country is chiefly indebted for it to the intelligent firmness of Bailly.