Paul-Louis Courier: A Selection from the Works

Sainte-Beuve, in his masterly study of Courier, observes : * Sa vie se partage très nettement en deux parties, avant 1 8 1 5 et après. Après 18 15, on eut le Paul- Louis Courier soi-disant vigneron, ancien canonnier à cheval, ayant son rôle, sa blouse, son fusil de paysan et, peu s'en faut, de braconnier, tirant au noble et au capucin, guerroyant à tout bout de champ derrière la haie ou le buisson, ami du peuple, et le louant, le flattant

^ Prefîxed to the Sautelet édition (1829).

Xll PAUL-LOUIS COURIER

fort, se vantant d'en être, enfin le Paul-Louis que vous savez. ' Avant 1815, on a un autre Courier, qui a devancé l'autre et j qui l'explique, mais qui n'a rien encore de l'homme de parti ; j soldat déjà trop peu discipliné sous la République, devenu ', incompatible et tout à fait récalcitrant sous l'Empire, mais ', curieux de l'étude, amateur du beau en tout ; un Grec, un Napolitain, un Italien des beaux temps, le moins Gaulois , possible ; s'abandonnant tant qu'il peut à tous les caprices de sa libre vocation ; indépendant avec délices ; délicat et quinteux ; misanthrope et pourtant heureux ; jouissant des beautés de la nature, adorant les anciens, méprisant les hommes, ne croyant surtout pas aux grands hommes, faisant son choix de très peu d'amis. Tel il était à l'âge de quarante-trois ans,^ tel au fond il resta jusqu'à la fin ; mais les dix années finales (1815-1825), où il devint et où il fit un personnage populaire, méritent d'être comprises à part.' 2

Few * Courierists ' would disagree with this summary except on two points. It îs hardly correct to describe the Courier ofthe first period as Me moins Gaulois possible.' It is indeed the inimitable combination of Atticism and gauloiserie which will make the Lettres the etemal delight of ail who appreciate delicacy of form and that perfection of irony which only the restraint of the true French style can attain. Nor is 181 5 the turning-point in Courier's career. He viewed the disasters of 181 3-1 5 with the ironie detachment of a man to whom nationality and country are matters of complète indifférence.^ The fall of the Empire, though it was an institution which he cordially detested, left him cold, and, if he contemplated leaving Paris on its first occupation by the Allies

^ Courier was forty-three in 181 5.

" Causeries du lundis voL vi. p. 323.

8 • Tout le monde ici lit la gazette et parle de nouvelles. Je vois des gens qui suivent les armées sur la carte et ne les perdent non plus de vue que s'ils répondaient de l'événement. Dieu me fait la grâce d'être là-dessus d'une parfaite indifférence' (To the Princess of Salm-Dyck, Sept. 39, 1813). Such sentiments from a Frenchman, on the eve of the catastrophe of Leipzig, are almost stupefying.

INTRODUCTION XIU

(March 1814), it was chiefly because his artistic sensé revolted at M'odieuse nécessité de voir partout chez lui des figures russes et allemandes.' ^ The true division in Courier^s life is 181 2, the year of his last farewell to Italy and his definite settlement in France — first at Paris, later in Touraine. Or one might say that the short period 181 2-1 5, between his retum to France and the Restoration, is an interlude between the period of the Lettres and that of the Pamphlets,

Paul- Louis Courier was bom at Paris in 1772. His father, Jean- Paul Courier, was a burgess of substance, originally from Normandy. He became at différent times (1768, 1774) the owner by purchase of two important estâtes in Touraine, the possession of which entitled him to rank among the nobility.^ But thèse estâtes were in his eyes only spéculative acquisitions to be let or exploited commercially. His attitude towards the nobility was one of detestation, and he preferred to réside with his small family in modest farmsteads, first at La Véronique, on the banks of the Loire, and later on at La Filonnière, near Luynes. It was in thèse rural surroundings that Paul-Louis spent his childhood, receiving his early éducation from his father, a good Latinist, who imbued him early with that love of the classics which was the one absorbing passion of his life. From his father also he inherited that Norman love of litigation and that unrelenting avarice ^ which had so much to do with his troubled life and tragic end.

In 1784 the family moved to Paris in order to give Paul- Louis the wider éducation which was to prépare his entry into

1 Œuvres t iii. 378.

2 ' Paul-Louis fut baptisé sous ce nom de terre (Méré) qu'il ne porta jamais de peur qu'on ne le crût gentilhomme ' (Notice prefixed to édition of 1828).

' It is, however, a remarkable trait in Courier's characler that he never attempted to make money out of his writings. In the Lettre à M. Renouard he sa)rs, ' Vous n'ignorez pas, monsieur, que je m'occupe de ces études imiquement par goût . . . que je n'y attache aucune importance, et n'en tire nul profit' ; and again, writing to Mme Courier (Aug. 1821) on the ofFers made by the publishers for his translation of Herodotus, ' Je ne puis me faire à l'idée de vendre ce que j'écris.'

the Engineers. The Révolution did not affect the Courier family, and in 1792 Paul-Louis followed his mathematical tutor, Labey, to the Artillery School of Châlons, thus definitely abandoning his projected career as a sapper for that of a gunner. Among his contemporaries at Châlons were Marmont and Duroc, both of whom, in their later magnificence, used their influence on his behalf ; Griois, whose Mémoires give a curious picture of Courier as a soldier; and Haxo, *the Vàuban of the nineteenth century,* who remained his close friend throughout his life. £ven at this early period of his military career, and at so critical a moment for his country, ^ his letters show absolutely no interest in his profession. Indeed, his life as a soldier is only important by the fact that it gave him the opportunity of travelling in Italy, and seeing and recording caustically some features of various <sideshows * which do not occupy much place in European history. His contempt for great men and for the art of war belongs to his own grudging tempérament, and perhaps to the consciousness of his own inefïiciency. To quote Sainte-Beuve again, < La fortune le lui rend bien : voyez comme elle le punit de sa taquinerie et de son scepticisme. En cet âge de grandes choses, elle le fait assister aux petites ; elle le jette par deux fois dans le royaume de Naples . . . ; il y voit une guerre de brigands toute décousue, tout atroce, toute bouffonne. . . . Courier, qui n'a vu de la guerre que ce côté désastreux et cette lisière délabrée, juge par là de tout le reste.' ^ Only once had he the whim to share in the * grandes choses,' when, after resigning his commission, he was allowed to rejoin for the Austrian campaign, and his curiosity was quickly satisfied (see Note on p. 58). Probably we shall not be far wrong in accepting the estimate given by his comrade Griois — * Comme militaire il était absolument nul et son caractère ni ses goûts ne pouvaient se plier à l'exactitude du métier, non plus qu'aux études et aux occupations tant soit peu routinières qu'il exige.' ^

1 Op. cit. p. 332.

2 Quoted by Gaschet, Jeunesse de Paul-Louis Courier^ p. 176.