With Americans of Past and Present Days - Jusserand Jean Jules (читаем бесплатно книги полностью TXT) 📗

The poorer classes took part, indeed, with alacrity; the necessary sum was promptly collected; the medal was struck, and it was presented by Eugene Pelletan to Mr. Bigelow, with these words: "Tell Mrs. Lincoln that in this little box is the heart of France." The inscription, in French, is an excellent summing up of Lincoln's character and career: "Dedicated by French Democracy to Lincoln, President, twice elected, of the United States—Lincoln, honest man, who abolished slavery, re-established the Union, saved the Republic, without veiling the statue of liberty."[242]

The French press had been unanimous; from the Royalist Gazette de France to the Liberal Journal des Debats came expressions of admiration and sorrow, by the writers of greatest repute, present or future members, in many cases, of the French Academy, Prevost-Paradol, John Lemoine, Emile de Girardin, the historian Henri Martin, the publicist and future member of the National Assembly of 1871, Peyrat, and with them some ardent Catholics, like Montalembert.

"Who among us," said the Gazette de France, "would think of pitying Lincoln? A public man, he enters by the death which he has received in the midst of the work of pacification after victory into that body of the elite of the historic army which Mr. Guizot once called the battalion of Plutarch. A Christian, he has just ascended before the throne of the final Judge, accompanied by the souls of four million slaves created, like ours, in the image of God, and who by a word from him have been endowed with freedom."[243]

In his La Victoire du Nord aux Etats Unis, Montalembert expressed, with his usual eloquence and warmth of heart, the same sorrow at Lincoln's death, and the same joy also at the "success of a good cause served by honorable means and won by honest people.... God is to be thanked because, according to the surest accounts, victory has remained pure, unsullied by crimes or excesses.... That nation rises now to the first rank among the great peoples of the world.... Some used to say: Don't talk to us of your America with its slavery. She is now without slaves; let us talk of her."

But happy as he was at the results, Montalembert rendered, nevertheless, full justice to the South and its great leaders: "The two parties, the two camps, have shown an equal courage, the same indomitable tenacity, the same wonderful energy ... the same spirit of sacrifice. All our sympathies are for the North, but they in no way diminish our admiration for the South.... How not to admire the Southerners, while regretting that such rare and high qualities had not been dedicated to an irreproachable cause! What men, and also, and especially, what women! Daughters, wives, mothers, those women of the South have revived, in the midst of the nineteenth century, the patriotism, devotion, abnegation of the Roman ones in the heyday of the republic. Clelia, Cornelia, Portia have found their equals in many a hamlet, many a plantation of Louisiana or Virginia."[244]

Many among the Liberals seized this opportunity to praise the American system of government as opposed to European ones: "Democracy," said Peyrat, "is not incompatible with great extent of territory or the power and duration of a great government. This has been demonstrated on the other side of the Atlantic, and that is the service which the United States have rendered to liberty.

"They have rendered another, equally important to human dignity, in showing that the citizen has become among them great and powerful, precisely because he has been little governed; they have proved that the real grandeur of the state depends upon the high personal qualities of the individuals. In our old societies, power put man into tutelage, or rather, man put himself in that position at the hands of the government, to which he looked for everything he wanted in life and for solutions which no government, whether monarchical or republican, could give.

"The United States, on the contrary, have granted to public power just what it is fit that that power should possess, neither more nor less."[245]

In the Journal des Debats, Prevost-Paradol, one of the best writers of the day, said: "The political instinct which caused enlightened Frenchmen to be interested in the maintenance of American power, more and more necessary to the equilibrium of the world, the desire to see a great democratic state surmount terrible trials and continue to give an example of the most perfect liberty united with the most absolute equality, assured to the cause of the North a number of friends among us.... Lincoln was indeed an honest man, if we give to the word its full meaning, or rather, the sublime sense which belongs to it when honesty has to contend with the severest trials which can agitate states and with events which have an influence on the fate of the world.... Mr. Lincoln had but one object in view from the day of his election to that of his death, namely, the fulfilment of his duty, and his imagination never carried him beyond it. He has fallen at the very foot of the altar, covering it with his blood. But his work was done, and the spectacle of a rescued republic was what he could look upon with consolation when his eyes were closing in death. Moreover, he has not lived for his country alone, since he leaves to every one in the world to whom liberty and justice are dear a great remembrance and a great example."[246]

Accounts of Lincoln's career multiplied in order to answer popular demand. The earliest one, by Achille Arnaud, was printed immediately after his death, and concluded thus: "There is in him a more august character than even that of the statesman and reformer, namely that of the man of duty. He lived by duty and for duty.... No mistake is possible; what Europe honors in Lincoln, whether or not she is aware of it, is duty. She thus affirms that there are not two morals, one for the masters, the other for the slaves; one for men in public life, the other for obscure citizens; that there is only one way to be great: never to lie to oneself, nor to others, and to be just."[247]

Regis de Trobriand, whose loyalty to Lincoln never wavered, and who had believed in him even in the darkest hours, well saw the importance for the whole world of the issue of the great conflict, and justly stated that, though more directly concerning the United States, the fight had been for "those grand principles of progress and liberty toward which modern societies naturally tend, and to which civilized nations legitimately aspire. Such a cause is worth every sacrifice. By defending it at all costs the United States have done more than fulfil a task worthy of their power and patriotism, for their triumph is a victory for mankind."

Lectures were delivered in France on Lincoln and America, one, under the chairmanship of Laboulaye, by Augustin Cochin, a member of the Institute, showing that Lincoln was "not only a superior type of the American race, but one of the highest and most respected of the human race," something more than a great man: a great honest man.[248]

As a sort of pendant and counterpart for the funeral ceremony held in the Invalides at the death of Washington, the French Academy gave as the subject of its grand prize in poetry: La mort du President Lincoln. Selected in the year following the event, the subject excited immense interest; almost a hundred poets (some of whom, truth to say, were only would-be poets) took part in the competition, which was decided in 1867; several of the productions proved of great literary merit. The prize went to a former secretary of embassy, Edouard Grenier, who had already made his mark as a gifted literary artist, and whom many of us still remember: a lovable old man, of upright ideas, a model of courtesy, counting only friends in the very large circle of his acquaintances. He ended with these admirable lines: