Mademoiselle Louise Michel

By Patrick LOISEAU

At the end of 2018, with the invective, common sense, intellectual and social authoritarian regression under way increasingly identified with the five-year period of Sarkozy, Hollande and Macron, the real progressives, that is to say, trade unionists and revolutionaries, as enemies to be defeated, -at least in regard to morality and expression-, it is urgent to face this attempt to ideologically crush the portraits of those who have shown us the way to make our society other than a financial market or a feudal state. Mademoiselle Louise Michel is one of these extraordinary characters. I call her Mademoiselle - as her publisher did in 1886 - out of respect and to keep in mind as well the common observation that Louise Michel was not a revolutionary, certainly but also a sensitive and engaging person who said of herself: "I do not deserve it, since I follow my inclinations like all beings and all things do, but I am not a monster either. We are all the product of our times, that's all. Each of us has his qualities and defects, it is the common law, but no matter what we are, if our work is great and covers us with its light; it's not about us in what we start, it's about what will leave for humanity when we are gone. " ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Dec 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781071533321

Book preview

Mademoiselle Louise Michel

Memoirs

Annotated and illustrated by

Patrick LOISEAU

Translated by

Martha MAURI

©Patrick Loiseau

© Patrick Loiseau – Maison du lérot - 2019

Other publications by Patrick LOISEAU:

❖  La cassure (autobiographical narrative)

❖  Voyage dans le ventre humain (philosophical tale – low fantasy)

❖  Dis-moi, mémoire... « Carnets de route 1984-1985 » (review)

❖  « C’est quand même peut-être » - Carnets de route 1986-2003 (review)

❖  Personnages de Charente – Le jeune homme en colère (University manuscript) 

❖  L’estoire de Guillaume longue épée, fils de Rollon, fondateur de la Normandie (MD dissertation of Modern Literature in Humanities)

❖  « Voyages, voyages », petit essai sur la perte de repère scolaire, sur l’autodidaxie et la découverte littéraire (University assay)

❖  Une analyse de « La maison à vapeur » de Jules Verne (University case)

❖  Fables et fabliaux choisis (Ancient literature)

❖  Des Vikings aux Normands : petite iconologie des premiers ducs de Normandie – Suivi du « Livre II » du Roman du Mont Saint-Michel, de Guillaume de Saint-Pair (History/Ancient literature)

❖  Focus sur Berthe aux grands pieds - full, annotated, completed (Ancient literature)

❖  Dictionnaire pratique et complet de vieux Français – unlimited use for autodidacts, pupils and teachers (lexical and etymological French by H. Van Daele)

❖  Bardes et mythes bretons – Le Barzaz Breiz – Tomes 1 et 2 (Ancient literature)

❖  Histoire de la Bretagne – Tome III – Dom MORICE (Medieval History, 2 volumes)

❖  La culture des gilets jaunes – accompagnée d’une référence à la Commune de Paris (Topicality)

❖  Gilets jaunes : de l’espoir à la désillusion – Confidences d’un trotskyste tendance Rhazoui-Polony (assay – social chronicle)

––––––––

Contact by e-mail: [e-mail]

Table des matières

Table des matières............................7

Preface by Patrick Loiseau...................11

Preface from the Editor (1886 edition).......18

LOUISE MICHEL MEMOIRS.................28

DEDICATION................................30

PART ONE...................................32

I...........................................32

II..........................................38

III..........................................52

IV..........................................69

V..........................................82

VI..........................................92

VII........................................115

VIII.......................................132

IX........................................155

X.........................................172

XI........................................182

XII........................................198

XIII.......................................229

XIV.......................................253

XV........................................266

XVI.......................................297

XVII......................................311

SECOND PART.............................319

I..........................................319

II.........................................342

III........................................351

IV........................................362

V.........................................373

Note by P. Loiseau : On September 12th 1880, in Saint-Cloud (Seine-et-Oise), was the first number of the La Révolution Sociale issued. Or how a weekly anarchist newspaper comes to be created from scratch and financed with the secret funds of the Paris Prefect of Police, Louis Andrieux, to better infiltrate the anarchist movement and possibly cause the provocation ... Using for this an undercover agent (Egide Spilleux), who claims that the money comes from a rich English sympathizer, he manages to decive Louise Michel who gives moral support to the newspaper. Fifty-six issues appear until September 18, 1881, before certain companions are astonished by the casual manner in which the newspaper publishes their names and addresses. (...) Thus, in the night of June 15 to 16, 1881, an attack against the statue of Thiers in St-Germain-en-Laye will in fact be telegraphed by the Prefect of Police himself, which will laugh at this provocation in his Souvenirs of a Prefect of Police published in 1885. (source: http://www.ephemanar.net/septembre12.htm#12)  386

VI........................................387

VII........................................449

VIII.......................................459

IX........................................483

X.........................................500

XI........................................517

XII........................................549

XIII.......................................563

XIV.......................................583

XV........................................601

XVI.......................................626

APPENDIX – MY TRIALS...................654

FIRST TRIAL - LA COMMUNE............654

SECOND TRIAL - BLANQUI ANNIVERSARY666

THIRD TRIAL – DEMONSTRATION AT L'ESPLANADE DES INVALIDES........668

Preface by Patrick Loiseau

With the original Les mémoires de Louise Michel écrits par elle-même (Memoirs of Louise Michel written by herself), from 1886, I went through this book with the desire to discover the other person, the one that lived under the embroidery of the public figure.

This book was the reason why I wanted to write a series in which, through the publications in reviews of revolutionaries whose cause or character I adopted, I could figure out the secondary character - the other self - the shadow of this other individual whose story would probably only preserve feats or dramas, which I would rather call cartoons, of her existence. ...

Louise Michel, after my own review with "carnets de route 1984-1985", is my first affective reading where I try to understand that other person ...

Far from the simplistic views of the common good spirit that persist in enclosing exceptional men and women a shell-type caricature, a skeletal semantic architecture, pointing out one of them by a term or a fact, and the other by a joke or an insult, the revolutionaries, whoever they might be, are men and women with multiple internal passions. Just like you all.

But they are also different in the way that there is a dark part, an almost indescribable fusion between the dream and the action. They are ready and willing to have changes, adventures, because they are the performers of such changes themselves.

At the end of 2018, with the invective, common sense, intellectual and social authoritarian regression under way increasingly identified with the five-year period of Sarkozy, Hollande and Macron, the real progressives, that is to say, trade unionists and revolutionaries, as enemies to be defeated, -at least in regard to morality and expression-, it is urgent to face this attempt to ideologically crush the portraits of those who have shown us the way to make our society other than a financial market or a feudal state.

Mademoiselle Louise Michel is one of these extraordinary characters.

I call her Mademoiselle - as her publisher did in 1886 - out of respect and to keep in mind as well that Louise Michel was not only a revolutionary, but also a person. It could be said that she is a special human being with an infinite number of intimate portions that bring her closer to all of us. Her thinking, perceived by reading her memoirs, was immersed not only in a constant concern for integrity, but also in a poetic record that could almost make her forget her promiscuity with death and suffering. Mademoiselle Louise, who managed very well with all these paradoxes, takes us for a walk through her gallery of memoirs. It is endearing. The wording is sublime. It is touching. Louise Michel is a true poet, a legitimate revolutionary, and a real woman. Reading here Mémoires is undoubtedly compelling.

In order to share this journey, I transcribed herein the whole book deliberately adopting an extravagant reading mode, that is to say, always keeping in mind not to worry about having Louise as an external spectator - as a reader - but rather as a kind of double of herself, and putting myself mentally and physically in her place, as much as I could, as a co-actor. When, climbed on a tree, she shared in a high-pitched tone, with her cousin sitting in another tree, some rants of the works she had read before or some words about their reciprocal love, one for the devil, the other for George Sand, I immediately got carried away, in thought, to an identical tree and tried to create all the references in question, rereading the same texts or deliberately putting myself in the same situations, in order to get closer to her experience, with the same circumstances as much as possible ... As a revolutionary activist, my posture, and political and union commitment throughout my life, I have lived many passionate or negative adventures that have helped me to know the political system in which we are living. Despite the time difference and political commitment, Louise an anarchist and I a Trotskyist, we share something in common, we have both become masters of a self-taught process, especially through literary and scientific reading since we were very young, and we also completely rebellious against to what is supposed to be real, that reality that some sell us as justified and intangible that encompasses a series of unacceptable injustices.

As a consequence to this idea of trying to follow in her footsteps, I completed her memoirs with annotations to clarify some scholarly references forgotten by our contemporary understanding, as well as some illustrations for those who adopted Louise’s thinking or vision.

I thought that with this approach towards her, even virtual or relative, Louise Michel's memoirs could leave her banal historical state in order to become part of the real and the living, so that they no longer remain as a simple file or a forgotten book at the bottom of an old trunk, at the mercy of moisture or cobwebs...

And like her, I proclaim: Long lives the revolution!

Patrick Loiseau – 24.10.2018

Preface from the Editor (1886 edition)

There are names so resounding and so notorious that it is enough to put them on the cover of a book without having to present the author to the public.

And yet I think it useful to precede these Memoirs with a short preface.

Everybody knows, or thinks to know, the former deported of 1871, the former boarder of the prison of Clermont, the prisoner before whom the doors of Saint-Lazare were finally opened.

But there are two Louise Michel, that of legend and that of reality, which have no point of resemblance with each other.

For many people, and why deny it before the vast majority of the public, and especially in provinces, Louise Michel is a kind of scarecrow, a ruthless virago, an ogress, a monster with a human face, willing to spread everywhere iron, fire, oil and dynamite. If need be, she would have been accused of eating little children raw.

This is the legend.

Reality is so different though:

Those who approach her for the first time are astonished to find themselves in front of a woman with a friendly, sweet voice, sparkling eyes with intelligence and kindness. As soon as one has talked a quarter of an hour with her, all prevention fades, all prejudice disappears, one finds oneself subjugated, charmed, fascinated, conquered.

Anyone can reject her ideas, blame her actions; one can not help but love and respect, even in their differences, the ardent and sincere convictions that animate her.

This violent anarchist is a seducer. The directors and employees of the many prisons she has passed through have all become her friends; the nuns themselves of Saint-Lazare lived with this atheist, with this fierce revolutionary in perfect intelligence.

She has, indeed -Mademoiselle Louise Michel forgive me! - something about the sister of charity in her. She is incarnate selflessness and devotion. She plays around her, without realising it, or noticing it, the role of someone providential. She cares only about the sorrows or needs of others, leaving aside her own needs or problems.

She lives and works for other parents, friends and strangers. And the Saint-Lazare visiting room, where she received many daily visits, had become a kind of charity office at the same time as an employment agency, for the prisoner in the back of her cell was struggling to find jobs for those who were without work and to provide bread to those who were hungry. She multiplied the correspondences, did not hesitate to bother her friends who never complained to plead for those she protects.

The following anecdote will give the extent of her goodness:

Three years ago, she was going to give a series of conferences in Lyon and other cities in the Rhône region. Leaving with a brand new dress, she returned a fortnight later, with a simple skirt to the scandal of her poor mother; the black cashmere dress had disappeared! Since she had no more money, she had given it in Saint-Etienne to an unfortunate woman who had none, renewing thus the legend of Saint Martin.

The bishop of Tours only gave away half of his coat while Louise Michel offered her whole dress!

I talked about his mother. Oh! There is another touching side of Mademoiselle Michel. Upon reading her memoirs, we shall see her sense for filial piety. It was a real adoration. This woman, at the age of forty, was subjected to the maternal authority as if she were a little ten years old girl. A terrible child, sometimes, it's true! Using, to spare her worthy mother an anxiety and anguish in the midst of her perilous adventures, a crowd of innocent subterfuges and little lies!

Just by hearing her say Mom, we felt moved we had not recalled that she had reached maturity. She has kept a young heart and pace, a freshness of feelings that give her an incredible charm: cuddly, tender, affectionate, scolded by her friends, and she tormenting them, for her part, through a mutiny from a young girl.

That is it for the woman:

As for his political role, I cannot get to appreciate it here, at the top of these pages where, with her usual frankness, a systematic disconnection that it is quite fitting and the desired neglect of form and style that give all that she writes a particular originality, she recounts her life, her impressions, her thoughts, her acts, her sufferings, her doctrines.

In editing this book, which is addressed to everyone, to the adversaries of the author as to her friends, I have neither to blame nor to approve; nor to endorse or decline responsibility of its content. Readers shall judge, according to their tendencies, according to their tastes, according to their ideas, according to their hostilities or their sympathies. It is their task, not mine.

But there is one point on which we will agree to whatever party we belong to, and on which there is never, in the press, a single voice, when it comes to Louise Michel.

We love, in France, and we admire simplicity and cruelty, even among those whose actions are repudiated. One feels unity of life and good faith, even in error.

Mademoiselle Louise Michel has been constantly given this justice, never changed, nor ever recoiled before the consequences of her attempts. She is not one of those who flee, and one remembers that after the scuffle of the esplanade of the Invalides, she resisted all the instances of the friendly family from which she was a refugee, and held to be a prisoner. She is neither a coward nor an open spinner.

And what a simple, dignified bravery, devoid of pose and vainglory, in the presence of her judges! With what calmness she is used to accept the situation she has freely made, rightly or wrongly, never takes shelter behind false pretences, excuses or escape routes!

Be in front of the council of war of Versailles, in 1871; before the police court, after the Blanqui demonstration, in 1882; or in her last lawsuit, in 1883, before the assize court of the Seine, she was always proudly raising her head, answering everything, trying to justify her co-defendants without justifying herself, and leading all solidarities!

The appendix at the end of the first volume includes the record taken from the Gazette des tribunaux of these three trials, which is not suspect of complacency for the accused, and it will be seen that the condemned is really a character.

As for the resignation, the bitter joy with which it has borne the different crimes held against her: deportation, prison, penitentiary, we must go back to the first centuries of our era, and find among the Christian martyrs, something equivalent.

Born nineteen centuries before, she would have been sent to the beasts of the amphitheatre; at the time of the inquisition she would have been burned alive to the Reformation, she would have nobly given herself up to Catholic executioners. She seems to have been born for suffering and martyrdom.

Just a few days ago, when the decree of pardon rendered by the President of the Republic was served, did it not almost take force to send her to Saint-Lazare? She did not want a clemency that did not apply to all her friends. Her release was an eviction, and she protested energetically. Louise Michel is no less intellectually than morally gifted. Well educated, good musician, drawing very well, having a singular facility for the study of foreign languages; experienced in botany, natural history -this volume includes interesting researches on the fauna and flora of New Caledonia- she even had the intuition of some scientific truths, recently brought to light. That is how she anticipated to Mr Pasteur in his new applications of cholera and rabies vaccines. Some years ago, the Noumea deportee, as we shall see later, had the idea of ​​vaccinating the plants themselves!

But above all, she is a poet, a poet in the true meaning of the word, and the few fragments thrown here and there in her Memoirs reveal a dreamy, meditative, thirsty ideal nature. Most of her verses are irreproachable in form as well as substance and thought.

I shall stop.

Now that I, at the risk of being reproached by Mademoiselle Louise Michel, presented, in its true light, one of the most interesting faces of our time, I confidently give this book to the public, and I give the floor to the author.

THE EDITOR

Paris, February 1886.

LOUISE MICHEL MEMOIRS

DEDICATION

MYRIAM!

Myriam the name of both!

My mother!

My friend!

Go, my book on the graves where they sleep!

My life wears out so fast that soon I shall sleep near them!

And now, if by any chance my activity rendered some good, know me none, all of you who judge by the facts: I am stunned, that is all.

The big trouble holds me. Since I have nothing to hope or fear for, I hasten to the goal, as those who throw the cup with the rest of untruth.

LOUISE MICHEL.

PART ONE

––––––––

I

I have often been asked to write my Memoirs, but whenever I tried to talk about myself, I have felt the same repugnance like that of being undressed in public.

Today, despite this puerile and bizarre feeling, I resign myself to gather some of my memories.

I'll try to make sure they are not impregnated with too much sadness.

Marie Ferré, my beloved friend, had already collected fragments that these wrecks bear the name; she has also some of my dear and good mother.

My existence consists of two very distinct parts that form a complete contrast. The first one is made up of dreams and study; the second one is about events, as if the aspirations of the calm period come to life in the period of struggle.

I will combine as little as possible in this account the names of the persons I lost sight of a long time ago in order not to cause them the unpleasant surprise of being accused of connivance with the revolutionaries.

Who knows, it might become a crime for them to have known me and might be treated as anarchists, without knowing exactly what anarchism is.

Marie Ferré (1852-1882)

My life is full of poignant memories, I shall often talk about my feelings randomly; if I give my thought and my pen the right to wander, I have paid dearly for this right.

I admit that there shall be feelings; we women do not pretend to tear the heart from our chest, we find the human being -I was going to say the human beast- rather incomplete without them; we prefer to suffer and live by feeling as well as intelligence.

Should a bit of bitterness slips into these pages, there shall never be any venom: I hate the cursed mould in which we throw secular errors and prejudices, but I do not believe much in responsibility. It is not the fault of the human race if we crush it eternally according to such a miserable type and if, like the beast, we consume ourselves in the struggle for existence.

When all the forces turn against the obstacles that hinder humanity, it will pass through the turmoil.

In our unceasing battle the lone human being is not and cannot be free.

We are on the raft of Medusa; we still want to leave the sinister wreck free at anchor amid the reeves. We act as shipwrecked.

When shall black raft cut the rope while singing the new legend?

I was thinking about the Virginie, while the sailors heaved up the anchor singing Bardits d'armor.

Bac va lestr ce sobian hac ar mor cézobras!

The rhythm, the sound multiplied the forces; the cable rolled up; sweaty men; dull crackles escaped the vessel and chests.

We too, our vessel, like the old sea bandit, is small and the sea is big But we know the legend of the pirates Turn your bow to the wind, said the kings of the seas, all shores are ours!

I remember I am writing my Memoirs, so I must come to speak about myself: I shall do it boldly and frankly regarding everything that concerns me personally, leaving in the shadows they loved those people who have brought me up (in the old ruin of Vroncourt in Haute-Marne, where I was born).

The war council of 1871, while investigating thoroughly the bottom of my cradle, respected my relatives; it is not I who shall disturb the remains in ashes.

Moss has erased their names off from the cemetery tombstones; the old castle has fallen down but I still see the nest of my childhood and those who raised me often leaning on me. I shall often see them also in this book.

Alas! of the memories of the dead, of the thought that flees, of the hour that has passed, nothing remains! Nothing remains, but the duty to fulfil, and a life to be roughly led so that it gets exhausted more quickly.

But why soften yourself, amid general suffering? Why get drown in a glass of water? Let us look at the ocean!

I wish to include my three trials in my memoirs.

For us, every trial is a clash over which our flag is waving, covering my book as it covered my life, and it shall wave over my coffin.

I have an extract from the Gazette des tribunaux, which no one can expect of being too favourable. (Apart from the second that, being in the penitentiary only, has not been related.)

I will add for the masses, the large crowd, my love, some observations which I did not think it proper to do to the judges. They shall be found along with the trials at the end of the volume.

II

The nest of my childhood had four square towers, the same height as the main building, with roofs in the form of steeples. The south side had no windows, and the loopholes in the towers made it look like a mausoleum or a fortress, depending to the point of view.

It was formerly called the Fortress at the time we lived in it, I often heard it called the Tomb.

This vast ruin, where the wind blew as in a ship, had to the east a vineyard, and the village was separated by a grassy road as wide as a prairie.

At the end of this road, which was called the "routote," (big road) a brook flowed down the only street in the village. It grew so much during winter that stones had to be placed there for it to be crossed.

To the east, there was a screen of poplar trees where the wind murmured sweetly, and behind were the blue mountains of Bourmont.

When I saw Sydney surrounded by bluish peaks, I recognized (on a large scale) the peaks of mountains dominated by the Cona.

To the west were the hills and the forest of Suzerin, from where the wolves, when the snow was deep, would creep through the cracks in the wall, and would howl in the courtyard.

The dogs would answer them, furious, and this concert would last until morning. All was well at the Tomb, and I loved those nights.

I loved them especially when the wind raged, and we read late, the family gathered in the Great hall, the winter setting, and frozen upper rooms. The white shroud of snow, the wind choruses, the wolves, and the dogs, would have been enough to make me a little poet, even though there had been no poets from the cradle; it was a legacy that has its legend.

It was freezing cold in these enormous rooms where we huddled around the fire with my grandfather sitting in his easy chair, between his bed and a pile of all kinds of rifles. He was dressed in a big cloak of white flannel, wearing wooden shoes with trimmed sheepskin. I often sat on these wooden shoes, almost snuggling in the ashes with the dogs and cats.

There was a big Spanish female hound, with long yellow hair, and two sheepdogs, all three answered to the name of Presta. We also had a black and white dog named Médor, and a very young bitch, named La Biche in memory of an old mare that had just died.

We cried La Biche; my grandfather and I had wrapped her head in a white cloth so no dirt would touch her, at the bottom of a great hole where we buried her near the acacia of the bastion.

All female cats were called Galta, wildcats and redheads.

All male cats were called Lion or Darling; there were legions.

Sometimes, with the tip of the tongs, my grandfather showed them a glowing coal; then the whole pack would flee to return the next moment to the assault of the hearth.

Around the table were my mother, my aunt, my grandmothers, one reading aloud, the others knitting or sewing.

I have here the basket in which my mother kept her work.

Often friends came to visit with us. When Bertrand or Mr Laumond, the old schoolmaster of Ozieres, the little one, came the vigil would extend. They wanted to send me to bed so they could finish the chapters that did not want to read in front of me.

On those occasions, I sometimes stubbornly refused (and almost always won my case), and other times, eager to hear what they wanted to hide from me, I obeyed willingly, but remained behind the door instead of going to my bed.

During summer the Tomb was filled with birds that flew in through the windows. The swallows returned to their nests; sparrows flew in and out of the broken windows and larks sang loudly with us (keeping quiet when we went into a minor key).

The birds were not the only boarders of dogs and cats; there were partridges, a turtle, a deer, wild boars, a wolf, owls, bats, orphaned hare litters raised by spoon feeding, a whole animal park, not to mention the colt Zéphir and his grandmother Brouska whose age was no longer counted, and who entered the rooms to take bread or sugar from the hands she pleased. To people she didn’t like, she would show her huge yellow teeth, as if she were laughing at them. Old Biche had a pretty funny habit: if I had a bouquet, she offered it to me, and ran her tongue over my face.

And the cows? The great white Bioné, and the two young Bella and Nera, with whom I went to their stable to talk with them, and who answered me in their own way, looking at me with their dreamy eyes. All these animals lived in good terms; the cats would lie curled up carelessly following with their sight the birds, partridges, and quails trotting on the ground.

Behind the green tapestry, mice circulated in the holes covering the walls, uttering little cries, fast but not frightened; I never saw a cat coming out to disturb them in their peregrination.

Besides, mice behaved themselves perfectly, never gnawing on the papers or books, and never placed their teeth on the violins, guitars, cellos scattered everywhere.

My house and my life were so peaceful at this time!

I was not better, it is true. Student by rage, but still finding time to do mischief to the bad people, I made them have a tough time! Maybe I was not wrong! At each event in the family, my grandmother would write an account in the form of verses, in two collections of thick cardboard in red, which I have at her death shut up in black crepe.

My grandfather added a few pages, and myself, as a child, I dared to start there a Universal history, because that of Bossuet (A monseigneur le dauphin) was boring and my cousin Jules had won the general history of his college after the holidays. I followed as far as I could the main facts.

Upon seeing for a long time the superiority of the courses adopted in the colleges on those who still compose the education of provincial girls, I had the opportunity many years later to check the difference in interest and result between two courses given in the same place one for the ladies, and the other for the strong gender! I went there as a man, and I could convince myself that I was not mistaken.

We are told a lot of nonsense, supported by reasoning of La Palisse, while we try to make our lords and masters swallow pellets of science until they choke. Alas! It is still a ridiculous education in spite of that, and those who shall be in our place in a few hundred years shall be beautiful litter -even the education of men.

There must have been many stupid things in my work; I consulted many infallible books for this, but I was given some volumes of Voltaire and I left my work unfinished for a great poem on the Cona, of which Big Laumont had thought to disenchant me by telling me about the mountain of Bourmont enough burlesque legends to make all the stones of Haute-Marne laugh.

Formerly, there, in a hermitage, lived for a long time a wretch, a holy man during the day, a robber of travellers during the night, to whom the folk of the countryside paid dearly with prayers to deliver them from the peut-âbre[1] who ran the woods and the plains, as soon as the moon would rise.

And as soon as the moon rose, the holy man would retreat into solitude, for he was the peut-âbre!

What prevented me from finishing the famous poem of the Cona is a mammoth tooth, of which even Big Laumont, in other words Dr. Laumont, spoke with enthusiasm. I left the poetry to establish, at the top of the northern tower, a small cell full of everything that looked like geological findings. I added modern skeletons of dogs, cats, skulls of horses found in the fields, crucibles, a stove, and a tripod. The devil, if he existed, would know everything I tried there: alchemy, astrology, evocations of spirits, from Nicolas Flamel to Faust.

Nicolas Flamel represented as an alchemist in the romantic portrait of the Galerie historique des Célébrités populaires (1840)

I had my lute, a horrible instrument I made myself out fir board and old guitar strings, -that I mended with new ones, true.

It is this barbaric instrument of which I pompously spoke to Victor Hugo in the verses I addressed to him: he never knew what this poet’s lute really looked like, this lyre with which I sent him the sweetest greetings!

In my tower I also had a magnificent barn owl with phosphorescent eyes whom I called Olympe, and I had darling bats who drank milk like little cats, and for which I stripped the grills of the big horse box, their safety demanded that they were caged during the day.

My mother, half frowning, half laughing, heard me sing for a few days on my lute the Grilla rapita, which she preserved with old papers under the title Chants de l'aube (Songs from the heart). Here is the song:

LA GRILLA RAPITA

Ah ! quelle horrible fille !

Elle a brisé la grille

Du grand van pour le grain.

Et l'on vanne demain!

Si fa, fa ré, ré si; si ré fa, si do ré.

Elle en fait une cage,

De nocturne présage

Pour ses chauves-souris !

Cela n'est pas permis.

Si fa, fa ré, ré si, si ré fa, si do ré.

Mais partout je la cherche :

Sans doute elle se perche

Dans son trou du grenier !

Allons la corriger.

Si fa, fa ré, ré si, si ré fa, si do ré.

Ah ! c'est bien autre chose.

Voici le pot au rose !

Un fourneau, des creusets...

Tout cela sent mauvais !

Si fa, fa ré, ré si, si ré fa, si do ré.

Appelons sa grand'mère !

Appelons son grand-père !

Il faut bien en finir.

Mais comment la punir?

Si fa, fa ré, ré si, si ré fa, si do ré.

THE SECRET GATE

Oh! what a terrible girl!

She found the secret

Of the winnow for the grain.

For tomorrow and today!

Si fa, fa re, re si; si re fa, si do re.

She makes a cage,

Nocturnal omen

For her bats!

This is taboo.

Si fa, fa re, re si, si re fa, si do re.

But I look for her everywhere

Maybe she abides

In her attic hole!

Let's set her right.

Si fa, fa re, re si, si re fa, si do re.

Ah! Something else is.

Here is the secret!

A stove, crucibles ...

A foul smell!

Si fa, fa