Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (76 page)

16
(p. 59)
Louis Blanc:
Louis Blanc, a historian and socialist theoretician, was very active in the provisional government of 1848. His
Histoire de dix ans
(1841-1844; The History of Ten Years) violently attacks the July Monarchy.

17
(p. 65)
The “Bastillization” of Paris, the September laws, Pritchard, Lord Guizot.
“The ‘Bastillization’ of Paris” refers to the construction of fortifications in progress around the capital. The laws of September 1835 increased the government’s control of the press and the theaters. For Pritchard and Guizot, the latter suspected of anglophilia, see note 13 to part one.

18
(p. 74)
The July Column glittered ... the dome of the Tuileries showed its outlines... one great round mass of blue:
The July Column had been erected under Louis-Philippe on the site of the destroyed Bastille to commemorate the revolutions of 1789 and July 1830. The Renaissance-era royal palace of the Tuileries, next to the Louvre, was burned down during the Commune of 1871.

1
(p. 127)
“the Franks will no longer oppress the Gauls”
: According to certain theories, the Frank warriors who invaded Roman Gaul in the fifth century A.D. gave birth to the nobility and the conquered Gauls to the plebeians.

2
(p. 128)
“who are electors, perhaps eligible as candidates
”: In the electoral system then in effect, in order to be an elector one had to have enough means to pay a certain level of taxes; paying yet higher taxes could make one eligible to serve in Parliament.

3
(p. 129)
“Camille Desmoulins ... drove the people on to the Bastille”:
Camille Desmoulins, a republican lawyer and influential journalist, gave important speeches two days before the storming of the Bastille in July 1789 that helped lead to that event.

4
(p.
153) he hoped to reach the
Conseil d’Etat
with the help of... the representative:
The Conseil d‘Etat examines laws before they are presented to the Parliament and serves as the supreme administrative court.

5
(p. 154)
He had annotated the
Contrat Social ...
crammed himself with the
Revue Indépendante ...
acquainted with Mably, Morelly, Fourier, Saint-Simon, Comte, Cabet, Louis Blanc: The Social Contract
(1762), by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is a treatise in favor of democracy. The
Revue Indépendante
(1841-1848), a publication produced by George Sand and Pierre Leroux, was also democratic in inspiration. Gabriel de Mably and Morelly were eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophers; Charles Fourier, Henri de Saint-Simon, Étienne Cabet, and Louis Blanc were nineteenth-century utopian socialists; the philosopher Auguste Comte was the creator of “Positivism.”

6
(p. 156)
murders of Buzançais and the crisis arising from a shortage of food
: This is an allusion to the murder of a rich farmer by hungry rioters in Buzançais, and to the execution of the culprits.

7
(p. 156)
“Are we to follow the advice of the infamous Malthus?
”: The British economist Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) saw population growth as a threat to the survival of the nations; he recommended the voluntary restriction of births as the solution.

8
(p. 156)
listening to the Phalansterians talking.... Fourier was a great man:
The utopian socialist Charles Fourier (1772-1837) advocated a social system based on small communities, “phalanxes,” in which total freedom of passions and activities would prevail. Members lived in buildings called phalansteries.

9
(p. 157)
“Saint-Simon and his church, with his hatred of the French Revolution”:
Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) promoted the “religion of Science” and a socialism based on productivity, technocracy, and the collaboration of the social classes. He was very influential in the nineteenth century.

10
(p. 158)
Barbes had his sympathy:
The republican leader and conspirator Barbès was in prison when the February 1848 revolution liberated him; he was incarcerated again shortly afterward and died in exile.

11
(p. 158)
“For my part, the thing I blame Louis Philippe for is abandoning the Poles”:
Louis-Philippe did nothing to support Poland, which, after its insurrection of 1830 against Russian occupation, suffered severe repression.

12
(p. 159)
“ ’tis an invention of Lafayette! The Poles ... the real ones having been drowned with Poniatowski”:
The Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834), the general who helped American revolutionaries and who was a politician during the French Revolution, had pleaded the cause of Poland against Russia. After 1830 a number of Poles emigrated to Paris. Józef Poniatowski, a Polish general who led a Polish brigade in Napoleon’s army, died heroically in battle in 1813 when he attempted to cross a river on horseback while wounded.

13
(p. 159)
“the revocation of the Edict of Nanes, and that antiquated nonsense about the Saint-Bartholomew massacre!”
: The Edict of Nantes, which ended the French Wars of Religion in 1598 by granting rights to the Protestants, was revoked by Louis XIV in 1685. The massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Night, in August 1572, is an episode of those wars, in which many Huguenots were killed by Catholic fanatics.

14
(p. 159) tableaux vivants at the Gymnase Theatre, which at that time attracted a great number of people: In tableaux vivants,
living men and women reproduce on stage famous paintings or scenes. The Gymnase Theatre specialized in lightweight theatrical fare.

15
(p. 178)
“What would you expect ... when we see M. de Genoude giving his assistance to
Le Siècle?: In his opposition to the Orleanist monarchy, the Legitimist journalist Genoude shared positions with the leftist newspaper Le
Siècle.

16
(p. 196)
comparing him to Saint Vincent de Paul with a dash of Brutus and Mirabeau:
Saint Vincent de Paul was a seventeenth-century priest famous for his charity. Lucius Junius Brutus was the Roman who in the sixth century
_B
.C. ousted an Etruscan king and established the Roman Republic. For Mirabeau, see the footnote on p. 22.

17
(p. 199)
their Prefect:
In a system instituted by Napoleon, a prefect represents the central government in every
département
(administrative territory). The general council is the elected assembly of a
département.

18
(p. 200)
Père Enfantin gives his blessing ... Pierre Leroux wishes people ... Louis Blanc inclines toward a State religion:
Prosper Enfantin (1796-1864) was the most vocal and eccentric of Saint-Simon’s disciples (see note 9 to part two). Pierre Leroux (1797-1871) was a Christian socialist. For Louis Blanc, see note 16 to part one.

19
(p. 201) the
Academy, the Ecole Normale, the Conservatoire, the Comedie Française, everything that resembled an institution:
The French Academy, founded in 1634, assembles forty writers in charge of composing an ”official“ dictionary. The École Normale (Normal School), founded in 1794, trains future professors and researchers, and the Conservatoire, founded in 1795, trains musicians. The Comédie-Française, the national theater of France, created in 1680 and publicly subsidized, performs plays from a classical repertory.

20
(p. 227) in
the middle of the Champ de Mars, near some other vehicles ... in the Hippodrome:
The Champ-de-Mars, on the west side of Paris, was once used for military parades and is now the site of the Eiffel Tower. The Hippodrome, at the Champ-de-Mars, was the site of horse races at the time of the July Monarchy.

21
(p. 235) he
enquired about the College of France, from which Edgar Quinet and Mickiewicz had been barred:
The College de France is a prestigious institution of higher learning founded in the sixteenth century. Edgar Quinet (1803-1875), a historian and Romantic writer, lost his teaching chair at the College in 1847 because of his anticlericalism. Several years before, Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855), a Polish Romantic poet and patriot, had also been suspended from the College because of the content of his teachings.

22
(pp.
236-237)
”Not Orléans, pray!
...
“Would you prefer a turbot
à la
Chambord?”
: “D‘Orléans” is the title of the younger branch of the Bourbon dynasty, which came to power with Louis-Philippe. The Legitimists were in favor of the older branch that had been in power from the reign of Louis XIV to that of Charles X (with the interruption of the Revolution and the Empire); the last representative of this branch was the Count of Chambord.

23
(p. 243) “The anniversary service for Godefroy Cavaignac is taking place there today”
: Godefroy Cavaignac (1801-1845)—not to be confused with his brother the general—was a popular republican leader whose funeral cortege comprised thousands of sympathizers.

24
(p. 246) Rodolphe in the
Mysteries of Paris: In the famous serial novel by Eugène Sue,
Les Mystères de Paris
(1842-1843), Prince Rodolphe visits the dregs of the Parisian populace in order to practice his philanthropy.

25
(p.
246)
he even attempted a pun; for he said, as they passed a heath-cock: “There’s the best of La Bruyère’s characters!”:
A heath-cock is a coq
de bruyère
in French; hence the pun on the name Jean de La Bruyère, seventeenth-century author of
Les Caractères... ou les moeurs de ce siecle (1688; The Characters, or the Manners of the Age).

26
(p. 259) had as his teacher a former disciple of Chalier ... admission into the “Society of Families.
” . . .
he became a fanatical follower ofAlibaud:
Marie-Joseph Chalier was a Jacobin leader in Lyons during the Revolution. The Society of Families was a secret society directed by Barbès and Louis-Auguste Blanqui that in May 1839 organized a failed insurrection. Alibaud was executed for attempting to kill Louis-Philippe.

27
(p. 264) He took a copy of the
Revue des Deux Mondes ...
between an
Imitation
and an
Almanach de Gotha: For the
Revue des Deux Mondes,
see the footnote on p. 30. The
Imitation of Christ,
originally in Latin, is an anonymous spiritual guide that has been widely read since the fifteenth century. The
Almanach de Gotha,
an annual publication in French and German, provides the genealogies of royal families.

28
(p. 267) the English Bill of Rights, and Article 2 of the Constitution of ’91:
The English Bill of Rights of 1689 limited royal power. The French Constitution of 1791 defined the natural and inalienable rights of men, which included the right to resist oppression.

29
(p.
267)
A manufacturer, who had formerly been a member of the Carbonari, tried to show that the Orléans family possessed good qualities:
The Carbonari was a secret society in Italy, France, and Spain. In France its members were opponents of the Restoration; most were republicans, some Orleanists.

30
(p. 293) this precious English alliance was lost, because of the Spanish marriages:
Following Great Britain’s position, France supported Belgium’s independence from Holland in 1830. But the marriage of Isabel of Spain to a son of Louis-Philippe displeased the English crown.

31
(p. 296) the Juggler of the Hôtel de Ville, the friend of the traitor Dumouriez
: These phrases are derogatory references to Louis-Philippe, who had been proclaimed king at the Hotel de Ville (City Hall) in Paris and had served during the revolution under General Charles Dumouriez (1739-1823), who later switched his allegiance to the enemy.

32
(p. 317) It was the firing of muskets on the Boulevard des Capucines:
On the evening of February 23, 1848, soldiers opened fire on demonstrators on the Boulevard des Capucines, killing around a hundred people. The corpses were paraded in carts all night long on the streets of Paris. This atrocity fired up the revolution of 1848.

1
(p. 328) The people ... informed them that the Duchesse d‘Orléans had been appointed Regent:
As a result of the revolution of 1848, Louis-Philippe abdicated in favor of his nine-year-old grandson, whose mother, the Duchess of Orleans, was to become regent. But the revolution did not let this come to pass.

2
(p. 330) he had managed to see Ledru-Rollin, and... had obtained from him a post, a mission:
The provincial commissioners replaced Louis-Philippe’s prefects. The lawyer Alexandre Ledru-Rollin was a minister in the provisional government until June 1848.

3
(p. 330) in reference to the red flag
,
“which had only been carried round the Champ de Mars, whereas the tri-colored flag . . .
”: This refers to lines from the famous speech that Lamartine made in February 1848: “... while the tricolored flag had made its way around the world upholding the name, the glory and the liberty of the homeland,” following which the blue, white, and red flag of the French Revolution was adopted.

4
(p. 340) one copied Saint-Just, another Danton, another Marat... he tried to be like Blanqui, who imitated Robespierre:
Louis de Saint-Just, Georges Danton, Jean-Paul Marat, and Maximilien Robespierre were leaders of the French Revolution. Louis-Auguste Blanqui was a socialist theoretician and militant active in the workers’ movement of 1848.

5
(p. 353) the national workshops:
Proposed by Louis Blanc, who was active in the provisional government of 1848, these workshops were organized to guarantee labor for the workers, but turned out to be closer to welfare centers.