The Salt Smugglers (31 page)

62
Théophile de Viau:
This baroque poet (1590-1626), a frequent visitor to the castle of Chantilly, was the author of
Le Bosquet de Sylvie
. Nerval's most celebrated novella — Proust's favorite among his works — is entitled “Sylvie.”

65
the new metric system:
The metric system became the law of the land on January 1, 1840.

65
the Tinguy amendment:
The Tinguy amendment, added as a rider to the press laws of July 16, 1850, stipulated that “any newspaper article containing political, philosophical, or religious discussions must be signed by its author.” Prior to this law, Nerval often published his newspaper pieces anonymously or under a variety of different initials. Now journalists would be obliged to speak — and, more crucially, be legally answerable — under their own names.

65
Vitam impendere vero:
In his “Letter to d'Alembert” (1758), Rousseau announces that he will henceforth take as his motto this phrase from Juvenal, variously translated as “I shall risk my life on the truth” or “I shall consecrate my life to truth.”

66
Palais-National:
The Palais-Royal, rebaptized the Palais-National after the 1848 Revolution, was plundered on February 24, 1848.

66
Horace Vernet:
Derided as a hack by Baudelaire in his art criticism, Horace Vernet (1789-1863) was a specialist in military scenes.

67
M. Arago:
The physicist and astronomer François Arago (1786-1853) was a member of the Provisional Government of 1848.

71
the prefect of the Seine:
In 1850, this position was held by Jean-Jacques Berger — who had replaced Rambuteau and who would later be succeeded by Haussmann, in 1853. Nerval would appear to have moved to this address at 4 rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre around 1848. He evokes this same neighborhood near the Louvre when chronicling his “bohemian” youth on the impasse du
Doyenné in his book of reminiscences,
Petits châteaux de Bohême
(1853). The demolition of the Louvre district also provides the subject for Baudelaire's poem “Le Cygne” (first published in 1860). As his various lifts from the latter's
Voyage en Orient
attest, Baudelaire was one of Nerval's most astute readers. Could his great allegory of modernity contain unconscious reminiscences of this particular section of
Les Faux Saulniers
— which in the course of a few pages moves from the urban renewal of Paris to a brief glimpse of a disoriented swan?

72
This king whom I cordially detest:
Nerval's negative view of the much-beloved Henri IV reflects the animus of various liberal historians of the period who considered him to be the founder of France's absolute and centralized monarchy — hostile to regional independence and, more importantly for Nerval, responsible for the expulsion of the Medici from the Valois. Voltaire's epic poem
La Henriade
evokes Henri IV's romantic idylls with Gabrielle d'Estrées, modeled after Canto VII of Ariosto's
Orlando Furioso
.

73
the Desert:
Name given to a large sandy expanse near Ermenonville — now the Mer de Sable amusement park.

74
René de Girardin:
Proprietor of the domain of Ermenonville, where he hosted Rousseau during the philosopher's final days in 1778, the Marquis René de Girardin (1755-1808) was also the author of an influential treatise on landscape gardening,
De la composition des paysages
(1777), whose principles he applied to the various parks on his estate. When Rousseau died, he was buried on the Isle of Poplars in the Elysium that Girardin had created on his property: his grave quickly became a pilgrimage site for literary tourists.

74
the Illuminati:
In his
Les Illuminés: The Precursors of Socialism
(1852), Nerval gathered a series of biographical essays intended to illustrate that broad spectrum of esoteric or occult thought which he believed had provided the counter-Enlightenment illumination for the French Revolution. Among those mentioned here: the Count of Saint-Germain (1698?-1780), a colorful alchemist and spiritist well-known to the various courts of Europe, was said to have initiated the Italian magus and necromancer Alessandro Cagliostro (1743-1795) into the mysteries of Egyptian Masonry. Cagliostro would exercise an extraordinary fascination over the court of Louis XVI, where he was implicated in the celebrated Affair of the Diamond Necklace. The theories of animal magnetism and hypnotic trance therapy popularized by the German physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) similarly enjoyed a considerable vogue in Paris just prior to the Revolution. The “School of Geneva” alludes to the first Swiss Masonic Lodge, founded in 1737.

74
all came to this castle:
Jacques Cazotte (1719-1792), author of the fantastic tale
Le Diable amoureux
and of a famous prophecy predicting the execution of Louis XVI. Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin (1743-1803), mystical illuminist and theosophist. Dupont de Nemours (1739-1817), French economist associated with the Physiocrats. Étienne de Senancour (1770-1846), author of
Obermann
, admired by Nerval for his pantheistic philosophy.

75
Nostradamus:
French astrologer and physician (1503- 1566), author of a collection of rhymed prophecies,
The Centuries
(1555). In this anecdote, Nerval confuses Marie with Catherine de Médicis.

75
the doctrines of Weisshaupt and Boehme:
Adam Weisshaupt (1748-1830), German founder of the sect of the Illuminati. Jakob Boehme (1575-1624), German mystic and student of Paracelsian philosophy.

75
Frederick William was induced to perceive a vision:
Frederick William II, king of Prussia from 1786 to 1797, nephew and successor of Frederick II (Frederick the
Great), member of the European coalition against the French Republic. Both he and his prime ministers were Rosicrucians.

75
the Prince of Anhalt:
Nerval nods: it was Field Marshal Blücher (1742-1819).

76
Gessner:
Salomon Gessner (1730-1788), Swiss author of the widely imitated collections of bucolic poetry,
Idylls
(1756 and 1772).

76
Roucher . . . Delille:
Antoine Roucher (1745-1794), minor didactic poet. Abbé Jacques Delille (1738-1813), author of descriptive landscape poetry.

78
Ver — or Eve:
Anagrams of Rêve — dreamland.

80
They were in fact Templars:
In
Les Illuminés
, Nerval argues that the Templars' attempts to syncretize Christian doctrines with Oriental spiritual traditions and the mystery cults of Antiquity provided the eventual basis for Freemasonry, which in turn prepared the French Revolution.

81
a play . . . about the death of Rousseau:
This madcap scenario was cobbled together out of various legends surrounding the death of Rousseau: Corancez had come up with the Wertherian suicide by pistol, whereas Mme de Staël had opted for the more Socratic hemlock diluted in bowl of café au lait. In his 1821 book
Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
V. D. Musset-Pathay also attempted to argue — against the eyewitness testimony to the contrary offered by Rousseau's patron René de Girardin and his common-law wife, Thérèse — for Rousseau's suicide.

81
Mme d'Épinay:
Louise Florence Pétronille Tardieu d'Esclavelles d'Épinay (1726-1783), French writer known for her liaisons with Rousseau and the Baron von Grimm — as well as for her close acquaintanceship with the philosophers Diderot, d'Alembert, and d'Holbach — who Rousseau, toward the end of his life, deliriously imagined were leagued against him in a “plot” or organized conspiracy. At her Château de la Chevrette in the valley Montmorency, Mme d'Épinay had supplied a home for Rousseau in 1756, which she named the Hermitage, but during the years 1757 to 1759, She paid long visits to Geneva, where she was a constant guest of Voltaire, thus earning her the jealous enmity of Rousseau.

81
Mme d'Houdetot:
Elisabeth-Françoise-Sophie de la Live de Bellegarde (1730-1813), wife of the count d'Houdetot, and subsequently mistress of Saint-Lambert. Rousseau met her at the Hermitage through her sister-in-law, Mme d'Épinay, and fell head over heels in love with her. Book Nine of his
Confessions
describes how he sublimated this impossible passion into the plot of his best-selling novel of 1761,
La Nouvelle Héloïse
— with the love triangle that existed between himself, Mme d'Houdetot, and Saint-Lambert now transformed into the fictional relationship of St. Preux, Julie, and M. de Wolmar.

81
Grimm:
Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm (1723- 1807), German-born encyclopedist and correspondent of many of the great sovereigns and courts of Europe. Originally a close friend of Rousseau, who introduced him to Mme d'Épinay at Montmorency; their resultant love affair aroused the animosity of the Swiss philosopher.

81
Thérèse:
Thérèse Levasseur (?-1801), semi-literate seamstress and common-law wife of Rousseau, to whom she may have borne as many as five children, all of whom were given away to foundling homes between 1746 and 1752. After Rousseau's death in 1778, she became the sole heiress of all his belongings, including his manuscripts and royalties, and married the valet Jean-Henri Bally the following year.

82
Émile:
Rousseau's treatise on education,
Émile
, was banned or burned upon its publication in Paris and Geneva in 1762 because of its controversial section including the “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar.”

82
his Armenian outfit:
Rousseau explains in his
Confessions
just why he adopted the loose flowing robes of this “Armenian” outfit: the wearing of trousers irritated his genitals, causing him to urinate too frequently.

82
his herbals . . . and some periwinkles:
During the years he spent under the maternal tutelage of Mme de Warens (1699-1762) at Les Charmettes in 1735-36, Rousseau learned the rudiments of botany. He describes foraging for plants for his herbals in his posthumous
Reveries of a Solitary Walker
. His discovery of the mnemonic talisman of the periwinkle — or
pervenche
— provides a classic Proustian madeleine moment in Book Six of his
Confessions
.

83
Ten-day hiatus:
No installments of Nerval's feuilleton appeared in
Le National
between November 23 and December 6. In its place, this editorial notice was inserted: “Desirous to provide our readers at long last with the HISTORY OF THE ABBÉ DE BUCQUOY, M. Gérard de Nerval wishes to devote all his time to the pursuit of his elusive hero. We respect his prerogatives as a historian and therefore suspend the course of his narrative until such a day as he will have laid hands on the book in question — which will no doubt soon cease to evade the perseverance of his research.”

84
The Dream of Polyphile:
I.e.,
Polyphilo Hypnerotomachia
(1499) by the Venetian neo-Platonist Francesco Colonna.

86
the celebrated Augusta Suessonium:
Founder of the Merovingian dynasty, Clovis (c.466-511), defeated the Roman legions at Soissons in 486.

87
Lucrèce Borgia:
Melodramatic historical drama by Victor Hugo (1838).

88
Merlinus Coccaius:
Pseudonym of the Italian poet Teofilo Folengo (1496-1544), whose macaronic burlesques of chivalric romances prefigure Cervantes. The first-century authors Petronius and Lucian round out this Bakhtinian tradition of the “dialogical” novel.

89
Facilis descensus Averni: Aeneid
, VI, 126: “It is easy to descend into Avernus.”

89
these lovely lines by Chénier:
André-Marie Chénier (1762-1794), French poet and martyr who was imprisoned at Saint-Lazare in 1794 on trumped-up charges; accused of having participated in a prison conspiracy, he was guillotined as a subversive the same year. Nerval quotes (loosely) from one of his
Odes
.

89
Prince Eugène was scoring successes:
François-Eugène, Prince of Savoy-Carignan (1663-1736), French-born military commander who, rejected by King Louis for service in the French army, transferred his loyalty to the Habsburg Monarchy. During the War of the Spanish Succession, in partnership with the Duke of Marlborough, he secured victories against the French on the fields of Blenheim, Oudenaarde, and Malplaquet.

89
the words of a folk song:
I.e., “Marlborough s'en va't-en guerre” (also known as “Mort et convoi de l'invincible Marlborough”), sung to the tune of “For He's a Jolly Good Fellow.”

89
revocation of the Edict of Nantes:
The Edict of Nantes was issued in 1598 by Henri IV to guarantee the Calvinist Protestants of France their rights and to bring the wars of religion to an end. In 1685, Louis XIV revoked the Edict and declared Protestantism illegal, thus creating an exodus to Great Britain, Prussia, the Dutch Republic, and the French colonies of North America. The Huguenots of the Cévennes region of south-central France, known as the Camisards, raised an insurrection against the persecution of Protestants, which lasted on and off from 1702 to 1715.

90
Mme de Maintenon:
Françoise d'Aubigné Scarron (1635- 1719), morganatic second wife of Louis XIV — though
her marriage to the king was never officially announced or admitted to. Deeply pious, she advised the king on domestic and foreign policy, while encouraging his religious devotion.

90
the battle of Hochstedt:
August 13, 1704: Prince Eugène and Marlborough defeat the army of Louis XIV.

90
Where was he coming from?:
Compare the celebrated opening paragraph of Diderot's
Jacques le fataliste
: “How had they met? By chance, like everybody. What were their names? Why do you care? Where were they coming from? From the nearest point. Where were they going? Does one ever know?”