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It was probably the proudest moment of Lamartine's life; in that flood-tide of his popularity he easily could have seized supreme power. All through the provinces disturbances went on. The object of the Red Republicans had at first been to oppose the election of the National Assembly.
There was, however, no actual office, except Lamartine's house, and the subscriptions, which were paid in advance in gold, poured literally into his pockets, and were either spent at once or put into some sort of receptacle which represented the immortal and inexhaustible French family stocking.
Lamartine's dress was marvellous. Apparently it chiefly consisted of white duck trousers, which were folded round his portly form in some extraordinary manner. There was also a white waistcoat, and, as far as I remember, something in the nature of a tight-waisted frock-coat.
The army of France in January, 1848, had been about three hundred thousand men, of whom one hundred thousand were in Algeria; by May it was five hundred thousand, not including the Garde Mobile, which was of Lamartine's raising.
Lamartine's version of Lady Hester's conversation is sometimes of dubious accuracy. "Eöthen," pp. 81, 82. In the following narrative we very frequently adopt, with slight alteration and condensation, Mr. Kinglake's language. "This branch at least" and here she showed The branch within her raiment stowed "You needs must own"... He answers not, but eyes the sheen Of the blest bough.
Dauriat had this and that in hand, which took up all his time; a new volume by Canalis was coming out, and he did not want the two books to clash; M. de Lamartine's second series of Meditations was in the press, and two important collections of poetry ought not to appear together.
He told me that the Provisional Government had appointed him Mayor of the Eleventh Arrondissement. "They have sent for you for something of the same kind, I suppose?" he said. "No," I answered, "I have not been sent for. I came of my own accord just to shake Lamartine's hand." M. Froment-Meurice returned and announced that Lamartine awaited me.
Thus Lamartine's mother is said to have trained him in altogether erroneous ideas of life, in the school of Rousseau and Bernardin de St.-Pierre, by which his sentimentalism, sufficiently strong by nature, was exaggerated instead of repressed: and he became the victim of tears, affectation, and improvidence, all his life long.
We now discovered that our travelling companions were two sisters the one, an admirable specimen of the belle villageoise, in her charming lace coiffe; the other, equally good-looking, but as much vulgarized by her Parisian costume as Lamartine's sea-heroine, Graziella, when she had exchanged her contadine's dress for modern millinery.
We were accustomed, two or three friends and I, to walk every Thursday to the Saleve, Lamartine's Saleve aux flancs azures; we dined there, and did not return till nightfall." They were days devoted to debauches platoniciennes, to "the free exchange of ideas, the free play of fancy and of gayety.
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