Playing at Monarchy: Sport as Metaphor in Nineteenth-Century France

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pla y ing a t m o n a r c h y

Corry Cropper

Playing at Monarchy Sport as Metaphor in Nineteenth-Century France

un i versi ty o f nebra ska press | linco l n a n d l o n d o n

Publication of this volume was assisted by a grant from the Brigham Young University College of Humanities. Portions of chapter 1 were originally published as “Playing at Monarchy: Le jeu de paume in Literature of Nineteenth-Century France,” French Review 70, no. 4 (2002): 720–29. Portions of chapter 4 were originally published as “Prosper Mérimée and the Subversive ‘Historical’ Short Story,” NineteenthCentury French Studies 33, nos. 1 & 2 (2004–5): 57–74. © 2008 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America.

∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cropper, Corry. Playing at monarchy: sport as metaphor in nineteenth-century France / Corry Cropper. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8032-1773-7 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Sports—France—History—19th century. 2. Sports—Political aspects—France. 3. Sports—Social aspects—France—History— 19th century. 4. Sports and state—France. I. Title. gv609.c76 2008 796'.094409034—dc22 2008024056 Set in Fournier MT. Designed by Joel Gehringer.

Contents

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Mountain Stages and How-to Manuals Paume Anyone? Representing Real Tennis after the Tennis Court Oath The Spanish Bullﬁght in France: Goya, Gautier, and Mérimée Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse: Chance in the Works of Balzac and Mérimée Of Rabbits and Kings: Hunting and Upward Mobility Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance during the Third Republic Olympic Restoration: Coubertin and the European Monarchy Conclusion: Imitation and Resistance Notes Bibliography Index

vi vii xi 1 23 45 85 119 155 181 189 223 235

Illustrations

1. Serment du jeu de paume (The Tennis Court Oath) 2. “Con razón ó sin ella” (Rightly or Wrongly) 3. Pepe Hillo 4. Tauromaquia 5. Seigneurs jouant au tric-trac (Lords Playing Trictrac) 6. Engraving by Régamey in L’escrime et le duel

6 24 25 25 48 142

Acknowledgments

Combien je vous remercie de mon adresse. Charles Baudelaire, Le spleen de Paris

I owe the original idea for this book to friends in my racquetball group. After getting yet another bruise in the back from an errant ball, I decided it would be better for me to spend more time researching sports than actually playing them. The bruises also led me to approach Prosper Mérimée’s tale “La Vénus d’Ille” in a new way. The narrative’s main character is an accomplished tennis player, a star of the court. Following a particularly important match (on the day of his wedding), he ends up dead. I had worked on Mérimée’s literature as a graduate student, in this story studying the construction of the supernatural. But I now came to his text with a new understanding of the connection between racquet sports and pain. So instead of looking for the cause of death in the details surrounding his marriage or in the testimony of his bride, who claimed that a moving statue killed him, I decided to look for reasons in the way he approached the game itself. Can playing tennis actually kill you? The answer, as you will see in the pages that follow, is yes. And so I begin by thanking Allen, Michael, Lee, Lanny, Enoc, Juan, Todd, Brett, and Kerry, whose errant “kill shots” put me on the path that led to this book.

viii | Acknowledgments I am deeply grateful to the many people who have given me feedback on the manuscript as it was in various stages of preparation. Thanks to my colleagues at Brigham Young University: Ed Cutler, Yvon LeBras, Daryl Lee, Marc Olivier, and Matthew Wickman. A special thank you goes to my friend and colleague Scott Sprenger, who read so much of the ﬁrst draft. Thanks also to colleagues at other universities who provided invaluable feedback and support along the way: Scott Carpenter (Carleton College), Antonia Fonyi (cnrs ⁄ item), Kathryn Grossman (Penn State University), Dorothy Kelly (Boston University), Armine Mortimer and Emile Talbot (University of Illinois), and Allan H. Pasco (University of Kansas). I must also thank the numerous friendly people I met in the world of trictrac (a now nearly forgotten board game) and paume (also called “real tennis”): Thierry Depaulis, David Levy, and Philippe Lalanne of the trictrac research group; Joe Wells, who graciously agreed to play several games of trictrac with me; Anthony Scratchley and Angus Williams, the former and current head pros at the paume court in Fontainebleau, who offered me a warm welcome; and Richard Travers, who translated an 1862 work about paume written by Eugène Chapus and Edouard Fournier. I also wish to thank Cordell Cropper and Susan Cropper for their encouragement throughout my entire career; Marvin Gardner and his assistants at the byu Faculty Editing Service; Elizabeth Moesser and Glen Young for their help in proofreading and source checking; and Debbie Van Ausdal and Kathleen Allen for their generous logistical support. The Brigham Young University College of Humanities, Department of French and Italian, Center for the Study of Europe,

Acknowledgments | ix and the Kennedy Center for International Studies have funded research trips and granted me release time to complete the project. I thank them for working with me. Thanks are also due to the entire team at the University of Nebraska Press, which has efﬁciently and politely guided me through the last stages of revision and publication. I am also grateful to the employees of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, who kindly helped me locate many obscure articles and books necessary for the completion of this project. Finally, I express my love to my wife, April, and to our children, for their many years of patience and support.

Introduction Mountain Stages and How-to Manuals

We were very conscious that knowledge about sport was knowledge about society. Norbert Elias, Quest for Excitement

In Marie de France’s twelfth-century poem “Les deux amants,” a king, after the death of his queen, engages in what appears to be an incestuous relationship with his only daughter and refuses to allow her to marry. In order to keep his daughter for himself and silence his critics, he devises a plan: he will allow his daughter to marry, but the suitor must ﬁrst carry the princess to the top of a nearby mountain without stopping to rest during the ascent. Many try, but even the strongest fail, and the king, it appears, will be able to maintain the status quo without sharing his daughter or his kingdom with another man. Love, of course, eventually enters his daughter’s heart. But the object of her affection is a young nobleman who, according to the princess, is not strong enough to even make it halfway up the mountain. Aware of the impossibility of the task, he asks the princess to elope, but she refuses: her father would be too angry. The only way for them to remain together is for the young man to accept the challenge and carry the princess to the top of the mountain. He goes away to prepare, and the princess begins a fast in order to be as light as possible

xii | Introduction for the climb. Her young suitor returns from his training armed with a drink that will strengthen his entire body, including veins and bones, when he needs it. The king is also prepared: he has invited all his relatives, his servants, and “all those he could have” to come and watch the attempt. And people do “come from far and wide” to see the big event. Indeed, the event has all the trappings of a mountain stage in the Tour de France: crowds lining the route to the summit; a challenging stage; fame, wealth, and a beautiful woman waiting at the ﬁnish; and the hidden inﬂuence of performance-enhancing drugs. All that is missing are commercial sponsors and a medical support crew. The king, however, has not invited the entire kingdom to cheer the young suitor on, but to assure that the young man follows the rule: no stopping. Halfway up the mountain the princess encourages the young athlete to drink the herbal beverage. The young man responds, “My love . . . I do not want to stop to drink even for the time I would need to take three steps. These people would scream and their noise would trouble me: they might throw off my concentration. I do not want to stop here.”1 Under the scrutiny of the vast crowd the young man refuses to stop but manages nevertheless to reach the summit, his true love in his arms. The effort proves too much, however, as the young man’s heart bursts, and he dies at the ﬁnish line. The princess, as true lovers are wont to do, dies beside him, overcome with grief. On a basic level this lai embodies the ideals of courtly love: the young man and woman sacriﬁce everything for their love and for each other, and their love carries them above the crowd. The overly controlling king is punished for interfering with love: he loses his beloved daughter and plunges the country into a crisis

Introduction | xiii of succession since he no longer has an heir. The mountain symbolizes the difﬁculty love presents to the suitor who would prove himself worthy of his lady’s affection. On another level, important for this book, the lai points out the importance of sporting events and their direct connection with the political arena. The winner of the race would not only be allowed to marry the princess but would also be in line for the throne. To this end all means are permissible—from recourse to performance-enhancing herbs (the ﬁrst case of doping in French athletics) to a physical training regimen (the daughter’s fasting) to a vast publicity campaign to bring in hordes of spectators. By organizing an entertaining public game the king, reminiscent of Roman emperors, successfully distracts his subjects from a scandalous crisis (incest). For the king it is important that the game be seen as a legitimate contest attracting the most worthy suitors for his daughter. The princess and her young lover (who suggests bypassing the challenge by eloping) certainly see the game as an unjust abuse of royal power. However, respectful of the feudal system—and standing to gain by its safeguarding—they choose to accept the king’s contest. From this very early literary example it is clear that sports and games are used for political ends and that their presentation is crucial in forming and maintaining a cultural and political power structure. 2 In Homo Ludens Huizinga argues that play is “a stepping out of ‘real’ life,”3 but as the above example shows, play can also be an integral, life-and-death part of “real” life. I agree with Norbert Elias, who contends that “knowledge about sport [is] knowledge about society” and that sport and society mirror each other in a very real sense.4 Like literature, sports and games are symbolic

xiv | Introduction representations of cultural values, and in the case of “Les deux amants” courtly love, the feudal system, sexuality, gender roles, and medicine are all reﬂected in the king’s game. I have used this twelfth-century example to demonstrate the extent to which sports or games—playing—are enmeshed with political agendas as far back as France’s literary tradition goes. In addition, “Les deux amants” demonstrates the tight connection between the monarchy and sporting competitions: the king establishes the rules, designates the participants, invites the spectators, and determines the prize. The link between sports and the nobility continues for the life of the ancien régime. Following the Revolution, however, the notion of noble privilege is challenged, traditional symbols of social class are put up for grabs, and leisure activities spread to all levels of society. In the chapters that follow I look at the broad role that sports and games occupy in a changing culture, how sport operates as a “civilizing agent” (Elias), how leisure creates a privileged space for the exchange of “social capital” (Bourdieu), and how representations of sports and games are manipulated by various groups seeking to establish themselves as the dominant class. I examine, further, how sports and games become the symbolic battleﬁeld for the culture wars of an emerging modern state. The nineteenth-century Manuel de l’homme et de la femme comme il faut (Manual of the Elegant Man and Woman) (published in the 1850s) teaches its readers how to behave in polite society, how to dress, what topics of conversation are appropriate, and how best to discuss such topics.5 The manual is divided into three sections: “The Theory of Elegance,” “The Theory of Conversation,” and “The Theory of Fine Manners.” At ﬁrst glance

Introduction | xv the book would hardly seem out of place in a twenty-ﬁrst-century bookstore, whose customers have been force-fed how-to manuals and self-help books since adolescence. But upon closer examination the reader discovers, behind the cover emblazoned with a heraldic crown, that the viscount de Marennes’s objective is to teach his readers to act as if they belong to the nobility: “In the old France of quality elegance was less rare than it is in our day. We know the traditional elegance of courtiers. The reason for this is that each period had its character. Society was divided into compartments, and each had its particular cachet; no one dared step outside of the customs and habits that appertained to his class. A social class was an outﬁt into which one could not enter if one did not possess the size, the line, the spirit, and the character of this outﬁt.”6 In “old France,” the France of the ancien régime, a surplus of elegance emanated from the courtiers—that is, from the nobility—and entrance into their circle was absolutely limited. But by the 1850s, when the ﬁrst edition of the viscount’s text appeared, France’s monarchy had been largely marginalized, social distinctions had become blurred, and social classes appeared ﬂexible. For one franc de Marennes’s readers could learn how to become a member of the elite, belong to the noblesse, to be comme il faut (as one should be).7 They could take advantage of the social confusion of the nineteenth century, follow the text’s step-by-step instructions, distinguish themselves from their peers and become a part of “elegant” society. The book, it seemed, had it all: a viscount for an author with his seal on the cover, a wealth of information regarding the nobility’s conduct, and guidelines for how to imitate it. De Marennes points out, for example, that “everywhere, the man of quality dif-

xvi | Introduction ferentiates himself from those of a lower sphere by the reﬁnement, the arrangement, and the wealth of his dress.”8 And here was a way, available to anyone with the ability to read and one franc to spare, to crack the code of noble distinction and become noble. What was distinction, after all? The text asks and answers this very question: “What is distinction?—the appearance [parure] of respectable people.” 9 Distinction, then, is based on appearance, outward signs. And certainly these could be imitated. This manual, ironically, offers everyone access to exclusivity. The book, naturally, is itself merely an appearance, a fraud. The crown emblazoned on its cover is a fake herald, and the viscount de Marennes is really Eugène Chapus, a bourgeois himself, out to make a buck (or a franc) by selling his book. We are far from the playful supercherie littéraire of nineteenth-century authors who hid behind pseudonyms to avoid censorship. While Napoleon III’s government did condemn several books for outrage à la morale publique, a book on elegance would hardly have attracted a censor’s ﬁrst glance, let alone a second. Instead Chapus hid behind a noble name in order to give the cachet of authority and authenticity to his instructions and, ultimately, to sell more books. Chapus explains: “The work was destined for a particularly deﬁned class of readers; to assure it as much success as possible among this group, the author, in agreement with the publisher, thought to place the book under the reputation of a pseudonym. Its cover was illustrated with a crowned herald and bore the name of the author: the viscount de Marennes.”10 The Manuel de l’homme et de la femme comme il faut (originally entitled Théorie de l’élégance, a likely reference to Balzac’s Traité de la vie élégante) would know ﬁve editions and multiple reprintings from 1844 until 1877 (the

Introduction | xvii year Chapus died).11 Only in the ﬁfth edition did the author reveal that the viscount de Marennes did not exist (explaining, perhaps, why there was no sixth edition and why the fourth edition was the one selected for reprinting). The key to the work’s success was its appearance (it appeared to be a work by a noble), and appearance was what it taught (appear noble, and you can gain access into the grand monde). And the key to appearing noble, after dressing a certain way (or covering one’s book with a heraldic crown), was—according to Chapus—to use the language of the nobility. Rule number one: appear to know nothing of your profession, and avoid technical terms at all times: “There are technical words that imply, when used, the knowledge of a profession. One must take great care to avoid them.”12 Technical terms are appropriate only when discussing several very select topics: “Elegant conversation rigorously requires the use of technical words exclusively when discussing war, horse racing, and hunting, especially hunting.”13 Knowledge of war and horses is acceptable, but knowledge of hunting, it would seem, is an absolute requirement if one is to pass as a member of the nobility: Chapus explains that imprecise hunting terminology (saying horns instead of antlers, for example) exposes the speaker as inelegant, as a fraudulent homme comme il faut.14 In other words, to appear noble the bourgeois must pretend to know nothing of work (which he spends his life doing) and everything about hunting (about which he knows nothing).15 To appear noble one must know the language of leisure. After having published several short stories and novels in the 1830s (none of which was reedited), Chapus had his ﬁrst real success with a book about the hunts of Charles X, released in 1837, with a second edition published in 1838. This book is really a novel

xviii | Introduction about Charles X and his hunts, frequently relating in direct discourse the conversations of a king whom Chapus had never met. In the introduction Chapus writes, “This work will be a veritable initiation into the details, the mores, and the habits of the monarchy that is disappearing in the prosaic and utilitarian France of today.”16 The book functions as a point of entry into the practices of a decaying monarchy that is being swept away by the utilitarian spirit of capitalism. For the bourgeois to understand the monarchy, he must ﬁrst understand the language of leisure and be steeped in the most important ritual of the ancien régime: the hunt. Yes, birth, land, and connections made the noble noble. But these could be neither easily learned nor easily imitated. Hunting and other leisure activities were, in the collective imagination of the lower classes, the primary symbols of noble supremacy. Nobles alone would have the time to devote an entire day to playing a game of paume or tracking down a single stag. Only a noble would have the space to devote an entire room to a billiard table or the money to purchase an ivory-inlaid trictrac table. The bourgeois would have pressing business matters to keep him from the paume court, he would employ his space for more useful things than a billiard table, and he would spend his time studying accounts instead of the odds of winning a jan at trictrac. Chapus argues that in order for the bourgeoisie to become the dominant class, they must learn to favor the useless and graft their present onto the past of the nobility—even if this means adopting a ﬁctional past such as Chapus himself would invent. Like the Romans, who, to prove their dominance, adopted the gods of the Greeks, the nineteenthcentury bourgeoisie must adopt the gods of the monarchy: hunting, trictrac, and paume.

Introduction | xix As the examples from Chapus’s texts demonstrate, after the Revolution, whenever aristocratic games were played, whenever they were evoked, they carried with them the symbolic weight of the old nobility. As leisure activity evolved—from a noble privilege to a bourgeois commodity to a spectacle for the masses—artists, authors, journalists, practitioners, and promoters struggled against or took advantage of the symbolic momentum that sports had accumulated before the Revolution. This is the essence of what I will examine in the chapters that follow: the way in which the sports and games of nineteenth-century France are used and manipulated as markers of social and political status and as means of political commentary. Historians have increasingly turned their attention to sports in France, most notably in a series published by L’Harmattan entitled, “Espaces et temps du sport.” The books in L’Harmattan’s series tend to focus on the end of the nineteenth century and the twentieth century (the so-called modern era of sport). And of course many historians have examined the leisure practices of the ancien régime.17 Those who do study the nineteenth century have primarily examined either the origins of working-class sports (and their corollary, gymnastics), sports and the education system, or the rise of sporting associations, again with an emphasis on the late nineteenth century (i.e., after the advent of the Third Republic, when organizing formal groups became much easier legally).18 This book is primarily focused on the period between the ancien régime and the modern era and on the way in which the sports of the old nobility were either nostalgically defended by the aristocracy or appropriated by other social classes. I note here that I will make no statistical analyses of ties between salaries and

xx | Introduction leisure activities, since I maintain that social class is as much (or more) about perception than it is about reality. While this book concentrates on the way authors use sports and games as metaphoric vehicles for political and class competition, there are of course many other ways sports and games came to shape life and class hierarchy in nineteenth-century France, speciﬁcally via representation and manipulation of the body and via the construction of gender identities. Thierry Terret explains that the eighteenth century transformed perceptions of the body, which up to that point had largely been seen as “too easily overtaken by the devil or by disease.”19 Religious notions of the corrupt body gradually gave way to military and industrial imperatives, and the body was trained to meet utilitarian ends. Physical exercise, in the form of gymnastics for the working class, became a “tool used to control behavior” and a means to check the body’s energies and deviancies. 20 However, in some instances members of the lower nobility or the middle class were depicted as honing their bodies into sculpted perfection through their regular engagement in sport and thus attracting the gaze of those higher up the social ladder. (I am thinking speciﬁcally both of the fencer Hauteclaire in Barbey’s “Le bonheur dans le crime” and of the tennis player Alphonse in Prosper Mérimée’s “La Vénus d’Ille,” whose prowess on the court wins him the affections of a bronze goddess.) The use of sports as a means of social climbing is a theme I will discuss throughout the book. 21 Similarly, while the concept of masculinity is not a central theme to this book, it nevertheless bears mentioning here that sports, over the course of the nineteenth century in particular, played a signiﬁcant role in shaping masculine identity. Allen

Introduction | xxi Guttmann theorizes that many American middle-class men felt emasculated by working in professions that did not require brute strength and that could be performed equally well by women. 22 He continues, “For men too committed to domesticity and urban life to join the army or to seek adventure on the American frontier or in the Australian outback, sports ‘offered the potential of an invigorated manhood.’”23 The same could be said of nineteenthcentury French bourgeois men and their aristocratic counterparts. The wars, duels, and “virile games” (as Pierre de Coubertin called them) of the ancien régime fell out of favor, and men were drawn to sport as a means to reafﬁrm their masculinity. 24 Since I use the word sport in my title, I would like to comment on it brieﬂy. When the word is used today it generally signiﬁes a broad spectrum of potentially competitive physical activities. We would not, as a general rule, call backgammon or chess a sport, and the French did not even have the word sport in their language until it was imported from the English in the second half of the nineteenth century. In his decidedly nationalist 1901 treatise on French sports, J. J. Jusserand argues that the word sport is originally French. According to Jusserand, the word began as the medieval desport, was exported to England, and ﬁnally “returned to its birth country, slightly changed by travels and by absence.”25 Whatever the word’s origins, it was not widely used in France until a Parisian weekly entitled Le Sport ﬁrst appeared in 1854. This paper was edited by none other than Eugène Chapus, and as the subjects it treated testify, the French notion of sport was very different from the English term suggesting activities such as rugby, rowing, and track and ﬁeld. Chapus’s weekly covered horse races, hunts, shooting competitions, chess matches, balls (the dancing

xxii | Introduction variety), beauty pageants, banquets, regattas, and dog races. So while I refer to sports and games throughout the book, I recognize that the word sport is anachronistic, and for this reason the book’s title begins with the more generic word playing. Finally, I should point out that the word metaphor in the title points to an a priori conviction that sport serves as a vehicle for broad cultural and political values and movements. I agree with Eugen Weber, who asserts that “physical exercise and the role that men attribute to it, that society envisages for it, can document times and mentalities as suggestively as can their industrial enterprises.”26 The word metaphor additionally implies a literary approach to my subject. In the pretelevision, pre-Internet era, literature is a primary generator of symbols, and ﬁction offers a glimpse into the way these symbols are interpreted in their cultural context. Therefore, in the ﬁrst three chapters in particular I emphasize the ﬁctional works of authors who treat games as a signiﬁcant organizing principle: novels by Balzac and Stendhal, short stories by Mérimée and Maupassant, and so forth. Indeed, one of my objectives in writing this book is to offer new readings of signiﬁcant literary works by approaching them from the cultural and historical perspectives that sports and games provide. I also examine the representation of sports and games in newspapers, historical studies, game manuals, pamphlets, and brochures. Throughout the book I suggest how representations of play in all types of literature mirror the most important social and political rifts in the struggle for social dominance in post-Revolutionary France. The examples I analyze can generally be divided into three broad categories, though the chapters will reveal that these cat-

Introduction | xxiii egories are far from deﬁnitive or clear-cut. In the ﬁrst part of the book I look at cases in which aspiring members of the bourgeoisie and certain hobereaux de campagne (the lowest of rural nobles) engage in leisure practices of the upper nobility. A close reading of the descriptions of these parvenus reveals that they lack the elegance and disinterested demeanor requisite for “noble” play. In attempting to inﬁltrate the nobility they expose themselves as nouveaux riches and are ridiculed or worse. In a second category of representation, members of the bourgeoisie learn the linguistic, moral, and behavioral codes of the nobility and graft their own leisure activities onto the leisure activities of the ancien régime, depicting themselves as the legitimate successors of the nobility, the new ruling class. The third category presents situations (notably in representations of hunting and fencing and in the conceptualization of Olympic restoration) in which members of the nobility are described as resisting the embourgeoisement of noble values or where their texts theorize a return to noble exclusivity and offer a reassertion of distinction via the world of sports and games.

one

Paume Anyone? Representing Real Tennis after the Tennis Court Oath

Au loin fut un ample manoir, Où le réseau noueux, en élastique égide, Arme d’un bras souple et nerveux, Repoussant la balle rapide, Exerçait la jeunesse en de robustes jeux. Peuple, de tes élus cette retraite obscure Fut la Délos. O murs! temple à jamais fameux! Berceau des lois! sainte masure! André Chénier, “Le jeu de paume”

For centuries le jeu de paume (known as “real tennis” in Britain), a precursor to our modern-day tennis, was the exclusive cultural and social property of France’s nobility. The title of Yves Carlier’s catalog written to accompany a jeu de paume museum exhibit in 2001 represents the tight connection between the nobility and the game: Jeu des rois, roi des jeux (Game of Kings, King of Games). However, it was not always that way. Roger Morgan argues convincingly that paume began in the marketplace and was originally played by the people. As paume became a favorite pastime of the nobility, however, various kings and courts attempted to make it an exclusive royal privilege, some by preventing play on Sunday (thereby limiting play to those who did not work during

2 | Paume Anyone? the week), others by allowing commoners to play only on Sunday (since people were neglecting their work to play paume during the week).1 In the fourteenth century Charles V, by royal decree, forbade anyone not of noble birth to play the game. 2 And in 1480, testifying to the keen interest the nobility took in the game, an ordinance was passed instructing those producing balls for paume exactly how to perform their job: they must “make good balls well covered and stuffed from good leather and good ﬁlling, without adding sand, chalk, metal shards, lime, bran, sawdust, ash, moss, powder or dirt, under penalty of ﬁnes and seizure of all the bad balls that will be burned so that no one will be inconvenienced by them.”3 By the seventeenth century, philosopher Blaise Pascal conﬁdently proclaimed that chasing a ball in order to win a point represented “the very pleasure of kings.”4 To a certain extent the nature of the game itself created barriers that prevented the lower classes from playing: the sport necessitated space, money, and vast amounts of free time. At least three walls enclosed the 110-foot-long court, with the initial serve required to strike an awning on the side wall. In addition, each player or team was obliged to bring a valet to spot and record chases (les chasses: the place where the ball touches the ground on its second bounce). In Diderot’s eighteenth-century Encyclopédie, under the heading “Paume, le jeu de,” Jaucourt writes that “those who play paume usually have two markers. These are jeu de paume valets who mark the chases.” Even if merchants or laborers had the money to pay these valets, they would undoubtedly have difﬁculty ﬁnding enough time to devote to a sport whose three separate “movements” often lasted until dark. As Jaucourt records, “One usually plays a ﬁrst match, a second, and a ﬁnal, and one

Paume Anyone? | 3 cannot leave this last match except with a good reason, like nightfall, or something else like it [autre semblable].” While one can only wonder what “something else like it” could possibly mean, it is clear that the nobility who practiced this sport took its rules very seriously. In fact, the intricate rules of the noble jeu de paume are as complex as the cultural and political rules of the monarchy itself. For example, the receiver has the option of directing the ball into one of the galleries on the service side of the court, returning the ball so that it bounces twice on his opponent’s side of the net, or striking the ball directly into the gallery (the dedans) behind the server. If the ball bounces twice on the server’s side, the returner has succeeded in laying down a chase, that is, a point that must be concluded when he (players were almost exclusively male) moves to the service side of the court prior to the end of the game. In a successful chase the second bounce will strike as close as possible to the back wall. The server, in turn, after hitting his serve off the awning, or toit, can earn quinze (ﬁfteen) by hitting a ball directly into what is known as the grille, a square opening in the back wall, or he can try to cross up his opponent by hitting the ball off of the tambour, an area where the wall juts out, producing erratic bounces. Regarding the scoring in increments of ﬁfteen, Jaucourt posits: “This game is scored in increments of ﬁfteen, saying, for example, thirty, forty-ﬁve, then game at sixty. We are not positive why it is done this way. Some attribute it to astronomers, who, knowing that a sign, which is the sixth part of a circle, is divided into sixty degrees, believed that they should imitate this when scoring le jeu de paume.” And then, in the entry’s greatest understatement, Jaucourt concludes, “But since this explanation poses several problems, we will not declare it a certain thing.”5

4 | Paume Anyone? (It is widely accepted that scoring in increments of ﬁfteen constructed yet another barrier against the lower classes, who would be mystiﬁed by the unusual system.) The Académie universelle des jeux (1718) claims to provide rules for the game: “One will also ﬁnd the rules for Paume and Mail; these two noble exercises that have always served as a pastime for persons of the highest rank.”6 A close reading, however, reveals that the book assumes a great deal of knowledge on the part of the reader, as terms are never deﬁned. Written for the elite, the book addresses only the more obscure aspects of the game (what happens when a ball goes out of bounds, for example) and focuses, in fact, on the social customs that surround the game, for example, who pays the valets, who is expected to buy drinks after the match, and so forth.7 In the nineteenth century the author Charles Sainte-Beuve, struck by the rigidity of the rules of the sport, used le jeu de paume metaphorically in his work Port-Royal, in which a priest criticizes the authors of an etymological treatise for ignoring the inﬂuence of Latin and breaking the rules of serious scholarship: “It is as if, while playing paume, one were to strike the ball after its second bounce and not the ﬁrst.”8 The preeminence of the game’s rules, even into the nineteenth century, suggests a tight link between the sport and the ancien régime, with its web of noble customs and social rules. Not surprisingly, during the First Republic and the Empire the noble sport of le jeu de paume virtually disappeared. As Dick Squires points out in his book The Other Racquet Sports, “The execution of Louis XVI and the rise of French revolutionaries brought the banishment of everything tainted by or associated with aristocracy, and court tennis [le jeu de paume] was at the

Paume Anyone? | 5 top of the list!” 9 In fact, the number of courts in France dwindled from eighteen hundred at the end of the sixteenth century to only ﬁfty by the beginning of the nineteenth. These numbers suggest that in the French collective psyche, in the realm of the symbolic, le jeu de paume was more than an innocent game: it had become a sign of noble power, wealth, and excess. The symbolic value of le jeu de paume would be increased when, in June 1789, deputies of the tiers état declared that no proposals, even those submitted by the king, would be passed into law without their approval. The king, in an effort to circumvent their revolutionary efforts, had the deputies locked out of the Estates General assembly room. Finding the doors locked, the deputies made their way to Versailles’s jeu de paume court and promised to stay there until they had written a constitution. Jacques-Louis David’s painting Serment du jeu de paume serves to strengthen the game’s symbolic value, uniting all the tensions of the Revolution in one physical space: the winds of change suggested by the billowing curtains; the bourgeoisie empowered in a noble realm; the euphoria of victory; and the immense remnant of the ancien régime (the court), which would certainly not fall easily and which, by its sheer size, overshadows the enthusiasm in the foreground. This court becomes a vector for political and cultural tension, a symbolic playing ﬁeld for the political games that would be fought throughout the century. The idealism represented in David’s painting ends, of course, in 1815, when Louis XVIII ushers in the Restoration. Nevertheless, after the Tennis Court Oath le jeu de paume can no longer be represented innocently. In literature of the nineteenth century, while the sport and its court continue to represent the nobility, for the ﬁrst time they also represent a

figure 1. Serment du jeu de paume (The Tennis Court Oath), sketch by JacquesLouis David, 1792. Courtesy Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

physical space connected with failed attempts at social and political ascension. In post-Revolutionary literature, then, authors depict two groups of people who continue to practice the sport: ﬁrst, those connected to the ancien régime who wish to remain so; second, those who aspire to be considered elite but who in reality are not. Members of the ﬁrst group beneﬁt by playing the game. Members of the second group are ultimately destroyed for engaging in a game they are not qualiﬁed to play—in other words, their attempts at social ascension fail. To better situate a discussion of the second group, I will begin with a brief analysis of the ﬁrst, that is, characters connected with the ancien régime who wish to maintain their ties to it, to live in the “good old days” of the monarchy even though the monarchy is dead. Edmond About, in his 1862 novel Le nez d’un notaire, depicts an old nobleman who continues to practice le jeu de paume despite the collapse of the monarchy:

Paume Anyone? | 7 M. de Villemaurin was one of those gentlemen who seems to have been forgotten by death in order to serve as a reminder of historical ages in our degenerated times. . . . By habits of the mind and body he belonged to the 16th century. . . . As a devout Royalist and an austere Catholic . . . he had accompanied Charles X to Scotland after the days of July [the Revolution of 1830]; but he left Holy-Rood after ﬁfteen days, scandalized to see that the court of France did not take its misfortunes seriously. . . . He was a small, stocky man, vigorous and faithful to all the exercises of his youth; he relied more on le jeu de paume than on the doctor to maintain his excellent health.10

Like the sport he regularly practices, M. de Villemaurin belongs in every respect to the ancien régime. He remains situated in the sixteenth century, and the corporal practices of that era lay claim upon his noble body. Nobler than the king, he survives, literally, by remaining faithful to routines of the old nobility: he owes his excellent health not to the intervention of some bourgeois doctor but to playing the noble jeu de paume. To him playing paume is not unlike a return to Eden, a way to ﬁnd relief in the ideals of past glory during the “degenerated times” of the nineteenth century.11 Aside from old-school nobles like M. de Villemaurin, the only other French who are represented as practicing le jeu de paume without serious negative consequences are themselves relics of the ancien régime whose bodies, like Villemaurin’s, belong to another era: the clergy. Sainte-Beuve, in his novel Volupté, depicts the clergy as knowing only three pleasures in life: spiritual illumination, long walks, and le jeu de paume. The novel’s protagonist admits that “besides the divine ecstasy of the altar, his only extreme pleasures were matches of paume twice a day, and long walks on

8 | Paume Anyone? Wednesdays.”12 In J. K. Huysmans’s late-nineteenth-century text A rebours, Des Esseintes has childhood memories of priests “playing paume, their robes rolled up, held between their knees.”13 And Emile Zola joins Huysmans, in La faute de l’abbé Mouret, when he mentions le jeu de paume as a sport regularly enjoyed by the clergy during their recreation.14 Of primary interest here, however, are instances when le jeu de paume appears in unnatural circumstances. In two works written around the time of the monarchy’s ultimate fall (i.e., around the time of the July Monarchy) le jeu de paume ﬁgures prominently in depictions of members of the bourgeoisie or the petite noblesse with noble aspirations. In the unstable political climate of nineteenth-century France, in both Balzac’s “La maison du chat-quipelote” (1829) and Prosper Mérimée’s “La Vénus d’Ille” (1837), le jeu de paume operates in a literary context focused on the rising bourgeoisie, circulating unexpectedly as a symbol of ancien régime values that members of the arriviste bourgeoisie try to mimic but, with their emphasis placed on winning, cannot. PAUM E ’s

goddess: “la vénus d’ille”

“La Vénus d’Ille” in many anthologies is the example par excellence of French fantastic literature. The narrator, closely resembling Mérimée himself, travels to the southern village of Ille to document the region’s archeological and artistic treasures. Upon his arrival two unexpected reports greet him. First, his guide informs him that his host’s son, Alphonse de Peyrehorade, is to be wed at the end of the week. Second, he learns that his host has discovered a Roman statue of Venus in his own backyard. Signiﬁcantly, the Venus is located at the edge of the Peyrehorades’

Paume Anyone? | 9 garden and overlooks the town’s jeu de paume.15 The morning of his wedding, Alphonse, tired of waiting for his mother to dress, is lured into a game of paume. It is important to note here that although Alphonse is a member of the nobility (de Peyrehorade), he is a hobereau de campagne (a lowly provincial noble) who shares more with the nouveaux riches of the bourgeoisie than with ancien régime aristocrats. In his study of social classes Balzac lumps these hobereaux in with doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and bureaucrats.16 As such Alphonse is an exemplary member of the new July Monarchy, which cast out blueblooded legitimists and primarily served the interests of an aspiring middle class. The narrator underlines Alphonse’s provincial bourgeois background, remarking that he dresses “exactly like the engraving in the latest issue of the Journal des modes,” sees beauty in a ring not because of its beauty but because of its monetary value, and is marrying a lovely young woman neither for love nor for political reasons but because she will inherit from an aunt who is “extremely wealthy.” In addition, Alphonse speaks Latin poorly and has “a laborer’s hands sticking out from a dandy’s sleeves.”17 With a noble façade hiding a bourgeois center, Alphonse perfectly represents Louis-Philippe’s paradoxical “liberal monarchy.” In his essay “Sport and Social Class” Pierre Bourdieu notes that for the aristocracy sport represents “activity for no purpose.”18 Sporting events separate the upper class from the working class, whose activity (work) does serve a purpose, albeit a vulgar one. The upper class, according to Bourdieu, “pride themselves on disinterestedness and deﬁne themselves by an elective distance— manifested in art and sport—from material interests.”19 Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, understood

10 | Paume Anyone? this principle and therefore sought to make the modern Olympic Games an event for the elite by instituting an amateur-only policy—amateurs, by deﬁnition, are disinterested participants who participate in sport for sport’s sake, not for money. Even today the participants in so-called “elitist” sports such as golf must dress as if they are not really working: professional golfers were obligated to wear ties in the ﬁrst half of the twentieth century and are still required to wear long pants, regardless of the temperature. To return to “La Vénus d’Ille,” when Alphonse decides to abandon wedding preparations and play a match of paume, he discloses his nonnoble background by becoming too involved in the game: “He removed his coat . . . and challenged the Spaniards. . . . His appearance, which was of such concern to him only moments before, suddenly meant nothing to him.”20 He removes his shoes, his jacket, his tie, and eventually even the ring destined for his bride. Moreover, instead of the aloofness one would expect from a member of the nobility, after missing the ﬁrst ball, “he angrily threw his racquet on the ground,” thus going against the social expectations of le jeu de paume. 21 These expectations were spelled out in the 1530s by the Renaissance pedagogue Barthélemy Aneau and reiterated by the Spanish humanist Jean-Luis Vivés several years later: “Before playing one must calculate everything: consider chance, the money one will spend, and the physical and moral beneﬁt sought. One must therefore pay attention to the manner of playing: accept in advance the twists of chance, be calm and happy, not utter invectives, threats and vulgar language; in victory, not mock one’s opponent; respect the spectators, judges of the match, whatever they decide. The game is part of a naturally good education.”22

Paume Anyone? | 11 As Bourdieu continues, “It is known that among the working classes [remember Alphonse’s ‘laborer’s hands’], the abandonment of sport, an activity whose playlike character seems to make it particularly appropriate to adolescence, often coincides with marriage and entry into the serious responsibilities of adulthood.”23 Alphonse enters this game on the very day of his wedding. Nobles, of course, would continue to practice the sport after marriage, but a member of the “working class” would certainly seek, as Alphonse does, to get in one last game before beginning his serious life as a husband. Perceiving Alphonse’s desire to enter the game, Mérimée’s narrator remarks: “And his ﬁancée? . . . If it had been necessary, he would have, I believe, put off the wedding.”24 Indeed, in this context it is logical that Alphonse would remove, or “put off,” the ring upon entering the athletic playing ﬁeld, for the ring symbolizes those “serious responsibilities” that would prevent him from successfully engaging in sport. Unfortunately for him he places the ring on the Venus’s ﬁnger and unwittingly launches an alliance with her that eventually costs him his life. Alphonse initially enters the game because his hometown team is losing. He is unable to maintain his distance, unable simply to appreciate the inherent beauty of the game as an end in itself. As Bourdieu remarks, “The more superﬁcial the perception, the less it ﬁnds its pleasure in the spectacle contemplated in itself and for itself, and the more it is drawn to the search for . . . victory at all costs.”25 Instead of nobly accepting defeat, maintaining his distance, or simply enjoying the inherent beauty of a good match, Alphonse becomes serious and resolves to win: “He was pale . . . calm and resolute.”26 He is so determined to win that, as noted

12 | Paume Anyone? earlier, he removes every article of clothing and jewelry that might identify him as more than a commoner. And although he is hailed as a champion, he is a champion of commoners, heralded by “polissons” (delinquents) who cannot distinguish art from propaganda, nobility from bourgeoisie. 27 Real nobles are noble, win or lose; Alphonse is noble and heroic only when victorious. And while Alphonse does not go so far as to turn sport into work (a moneymaking venture), he nevertheless, through his lack of composure and restraint, vulgarizes the noble sport of le jeu de paume. Played under the ancien régime, the sport’s primary purpose was to enable the accumulation of what Bourdieu calls “social capital.” That is, the sporting activity represented a “mere pretext for select encounters . . . a technique of sociability.”28 An excellent example of this exchange of social capital takes place in Madame de Lafayette’s 1678 novel La princesse de Clèves: “Several days before the duke d’Albe’s arrival, the king played a match of paume with M. de Nemours, the chevalier de Guise and the vidame de Chartres. The queens went to see them play, followed by all the ladies. . . . After the match, while they were leaving le jeu de paume, Châtelart approached the dauphine and told her that chance had placed in his hands a love letter that had fallen from M. de Nemours’s pocket.”29 Note that the outcome of the match is not even an issue for the spectators—in fact we never do ﬁnd out which team wins. Who attends and the exchange of information (in this case the discovery of a letter) are of far greater importance than winning or losing.30 For Alphonse, on the other hand, winning, not “social capital,” is of interest. His only real encounter is with his adversary, a mule driver from Spain, whom he insults after the match: “We

Paume Anyone? | 13 will play again, my man, he condescendingly told the Spaniard, but I will give you some points.”31 Instead of adhering to the tradition of noble disinterest, Alphonse lords his victory over a simple merchant. Unlike the noble M. de Villemaurin in About’s Le nez d’un notaire, who prolongs his life by engaging in regular matches of paume, Alphonse has his life cut short because he plays. The two cases differ dramatically, however, in that M. de Villemaurin plays a disinterested brand of paume, where the sport is an end unto itself, an aesthetic, circular practice that beneﬁts only the body of the practitioner. Alphonse, on the contrary, already in good health, plays to win, and this involvement betrays him as a noble fraud, a bourgeois gentilhomme. For Alphonse victory covers up a fundamental lack—his lack of aristocratic culture. Placed in its historical context, this win-at-all-costs mentality is not surprising. As seen in David’s painting, victory and its subsequent euphoria are of primary importance for the bourgeoisie and the provincial hobereau. In fact, throughout the entire century the bourgeoisie sought to recapture the euphoria of the Revolution by wresting power away from both the upper nobility and the lower classes. While Alphonse does indeed overcome an initial mistake to win, to put it in ﬁnancial or bourgeois terms, the cost of his victory is high. His victory comes under the eyes of the Venus, a model of ancient perfection, even a symbol of the ancien régime itself. During their initial descent into Ille the narrator’s guide describes the Venus in these terms: “Oh! monsieur, it is not missing a thing. It’s even more beautiful and has a nicer ﬁnish than the painted plaster bust of Louis-Philippe in the town hall.”32 The Venus is the perfect, solid model, compared to which the bust of

14 | Paume Anyone? the Citizen-King, Louis-Philippe, is merely a cheap plaster imitation. The modern bust, symbolic of the liberal July Monarchy, cannot rival its ancient predecessor—it is a false copy of the legitimate nobility of France. The Venus—representative of real art and, more important for our discussion, of real nobility—positioned at the edge of the jeu de paume witnesses Alphonse’s fraud: Alphonse presents himself as a noble but demonstrates, while playing the game of kings, that he is not. His nobility is as superﬁcial as the paint on the town-hall bust of Louis-Philippe. Once his wedding clothes are removed, the “hands of a laborer” are exposed. The Venus, protector of beauty, nobility, and sport, rises from the past, recognizes Alphonse as an unworthy spouse and sportsman, and consequently kills him on his wedding night, purging and purifying legitimate nobility and its sport.33 An inspector, summoned to investigate the death, relates the testimony of Alphonse’s wife, Mlle de Puygarrig: “She turned her head . . . and saw, she says, her husband on his knees next to the bed, his head at the height of the pillow, in the arms . . . of the bronze Venus, M. de Peyrehorade’s statue.”34 While Mérimée generally lauds the July Monarchy, particularly in its early years, this reading suggests that his political collusion in the 1830s has perhaps been overstated. While he appreciated the stability of the compromise between new and old regimes afforded by the July Monarchy, he maintained a healthy dose of skepticism regarding Louis-Philippe’s government and its willingness to protect certain freedoms that Mérimée prized. His unwillingness to accept a position under the Restoration and his praise of the freedoms afforded under the Republic in 1848 lead us to believe that of

Paume Anyone? | 15 the two groups that emerged as the primary political forces of the July Monarchy, Mérimée identiﬁed more closely with the Party of Movement (a liberal group that supported change, freedom of the press, etc.) than with the Party of Resistance (a conservative group that sought to push Louis-Philippe toward an ancien régime ideology).35 As the Party of Resistance gained inﬂuence, and after the passage of the 1835 September Laws that severely limited the freedom of the press, it was clear that Louis-Philippe’s government had begun to lean toward an ancien régime model: the constitutional monarchy looked more and more monarchical and less and less constitutional. “La Vénus d’Ille” can be read as a cautionary political allegory, with Louis-Philippe as the fragile, plaster imitation of a legitimate, ancient sculpture. By allying itself with the Party of Resistance, Louis-Philippe’s government effectively chose the past as its ideal model. For Mérimée (as we will see in chapter 3) the past remains largely inscrutable, even dangerous. Mérimée’s tale implies that creating too close an alliance with the past—in this case a marriage between the rising middle class and the old nobility—can have catastrophic consequences. balzac’s

PAUM E -playing

cat

Le jeu de paume also appears in other works of the nineteenth century, and while its importance may not be as prominent as in “La Vénus d’Ille,” its symbolic value remains constant. One example is Balzac’s “La maison du chat-qui-pelote,” the ﬁrst story in his Comédie humaine. As the work’s title makes clear, le jeu de paume occupies a central position. On the front of M. Guillaume’s shop “could be found an antique painting depicting a cat playing paume. . . . It must be said that the most creative modern painters could

16 | Paume Anyone? not invent such a comical scene. In one of its front paws the animal held a racket as large as himself, and he stood on his back legs to watch an enormous ball that a gentleman in an embroidered suit served to him.”36 Le jeu de paume is placed as the primary symbol of M. Guillaume’s shop and of this narrative, and as the opening symbol of Balzac’s entire Comédie humaine.37 The introduction of le jeu de paume implies from the beginning that Balzac will deal with issues of social class and ascension. Muriel Amar, in an analysis of the shop’s sign, suggests that the cat, a nonnoble, has illegally entered into a royal game.38 Augustine, the shopkeeper’s daughter, ascends the social ladder when she leaves her bourgeois world and marries someone from the “old” nobility, Théodore de Sommervieux. Like the cat on the sign, Augustine breaks away from cultural norms by marrying into the noble world. Like Alphonse’s transgression in “La Vénus d’Ille,” Augustine’s breach of ancien régime cultural behavior, or more precisely her marriage with a symbol of the past, leads to her death—Augustine’s tale becomes a “Chat botté” à rebours (“Puss in Boots” in reverse).39 La duchesse de Carigliano tries to teach Augustine the rules of the game, which she will need to survive. But, too virtuous, Augustine cannot play at adultery and consequently cannot successfully play at nobility. Unlike Alphonse, who as a symbol of a modern bourgeois monarchy transgresses by moving backward and deﬁling a sport reserved for legitimate nobility, Augustine transgresses by leaving her father’s home, a bastion of ancien régime values, where social hierarchies and classes are strictly respected, and moving forward into a relationship characteristic of a soon-to-be-established liberal regime. This inversion, however, comes as no surprise when one

Paume Anyone? | 17 considers the historical context in which the two narratives appeared. Published in October 1829, “La maison du chat-quipelote” precedes the end of the Restoration and the beginning of the July Monarchy: a political marriage of bourgeoisie and nobility (with its accompanying uncertainty) loomed on the horizon. Certainly, those too attached to the values of the ancien régime (like Augustine) would be unable to survive the reign of a Citizen-King. Moreover, such a union was not entirely legitimized until after 1830. Balzac demonstrates that the harmonious marriage of bourgeoisie and nobility depicted on the sign in front of M. Guillaume’s shop is fraudulent: such a marriage cannot withstand the ultimate test of reality. What may succeed in art fails in practice. “La Vénus d’Ille,” on the other hand, published after the creation of the new “liberal monarchy,” depicts the dangers of looking back to an irrecoverable past. By engaging in a match of paume Alphonse unwittingly invokes spirits that he cannot control from a past with which he is incompatible. Le jeu de paume, in each of these instances, stands as a symbol of the ancien régime and points to failed attempts at social ascension. While they may be momentarily successful at achieving noble status, nonnoble characters who engage in the sport (Alphonse) or who are represented in connection with it (Augustine) ultimately fail. In a discussion of sport and culture Roger Caillois explains that games “are historically the residues of culture. Misunderstood survivals of a past era or culture traits borrowed from a strange culture and deprived of their original meaning seem to function when removed from the society where they were originally established. They are now merely tolerated, whereas in the earlier society they were an integral part of its basic institutions, secular or

18 | Paume Anyone? sacred. . . . The transfer or degradation they underwent stripped them of their political and religious signiﬁcance.”40 In the case of le jeu de paume, however, too imbued with the monarchy’s culture, the post-Revolution bourgeoisie cannot entirely strip paume of its old-regime political signiﬁcance. As the bourgeoisie struggles during the July Monarchy to realize the ideals proposed on Versailles’s jeu de paume (to wrest power and capital away from the monarchy), in literature the sport serves to allegorize their failure. In the ﬁrst half of the nineteenth century the image of le jeu de paume became a sort of Pandora’s Box: its evocation brings the rules of the past to bear on the present. Bridging the gap between bourgeoisie and nobility, while it may seem superﬁcially possible, remains symbolically impossible, as nonnoble characters depicted in association with le jeu de paume are punished for transgressing the social codes of the ancien régime and deﬁling the sport of kings. PAUM E

during the second empire

Later in the century, in Le sport à Paris (1854), Eugène Chapus (author of numerous books on sports and etiquette—see the introduction) relates the following discussion between a young man discovering the aristocratic life of Paris and an elderly count (in a reprise of an article ﬁrst published in 1852 in the Almanach du plaisir): —I didn’t know that there were still jeu de paume courts in Paris. I thought they had disappeared with chain mail. —That does not surprise me, said Count Morland. Alas! Monsieur, there is only one court left where there used to be twenty-two that I played in. Yes, there were twenty-two when

Paume Anyone? | 19 I was young, ﬁve in the rue Mazarine alone. It was the preferred entertainment of the youth of that time, and our compatriots had such an aptitude for it that one would have thought the game had grown spontaneously out of the earth of ancient Gaul. It was a great honor for us outside of France, and we were superior in several versions of the sport. All the victories weren’t for the English. If they were better than us with the pistol, horses, boxing, rowing and sailing, racing, and cricket, we would beat them in hunting, in chess, with the sword, at paume, and we were even with them at swimming. —You would make even the most indifferent man want to know this game, Monsieur, said the young Parisian. —It’s a pleasant activity that has the marvelous property of making us good at other pursuits. It was loved by François I, by Henri IV, by Louis XIV.41

In this passage Chapus’s character Morland laments the disappearance of not only a sport but also a way of life, along with the lost grandeur of France. In those days chain mail, a trapping regularly associated with the nobility, still existed. In those days there were twenty-two courts in Paris. And in those days all the victories were not for the English (just some of them were). Importantly, the French won at the most noble sports: hunting, chess, fencing, real tennis. In addition, le jeu de paume was a sport loved by France’s greatest monarchs, and playing paume is a way to invoke their memory. During the reign of Napoleon III (1852–70) le jeu de paume made a comeback that corresponded to a general renewal of aristocratic leisure activities implemented by the emperor. He sought to lead a noble lifestyle worthy of ancient monarchs and thereby

20 | Paume Anyone? establish himself and his descendants as France’s new ruling family. During his reign he not only ordered that the jeu de paume in Versailles be restored as an active court (it had served as a workshop since the Revolution) but also oversaw the construction of the jeu de paume on the Tuileries in the early 1860s. The construction of this building is commemorated in a poem, “Hommage à la paume,” written by Edouard Fournier (or perhaps by his editor, Eugène Chapus). The poem bemoans the fact that the glorious sport from the “halcyon days of chivalry”—this “king of games”—has become an endangered species and risks extinction in France.42 After referring to the sport’s great players as “ghosts,” the poet asks if the sport will completely disappear in France, before concluding optimistically: But no! Here comes the game’s illustrious savior, Whose bounty matches the greatness of his heart. He gave the word, and at the sound of his voice, Tennis [Paume] was reborn, more beautiful and more popular. And in that ancient haven where kings have ever ruled We can once more enjoy the heady days of yesteryear.43

For Fournier and Chapus the emperor represents a royal savior who re-creates the glory of the past and places it within the royal Tuileries gardens and, signiﬁcantly, at the disposal of the bourgeoisie. Aware of the symbolic power that leisure in general, and primarily le jeu de paume, possessed to evoke the memory of both the Revolution (which led his uncle to power) and the ancien régime, the emperor saw to it that an imposing jeu de paume be erected in the heart of the capitol, thereby establishing himself as the natural heir of both republicanism and legitimism.

Paume Anyone? | 21 It is telling that the French expression vieux jeu (“outdated” or “staid”) originated as a reference to le jeu de paume in the late nineteenth century. Today only three paume courts are in operation in France: one in Bordeaux, another in Paris’s sixteenth arrondissement, and one at the Fontainebleau chateau. And the sport’s current status is still very much colored by political symbolism. When I asked the head pro at the jeu de paume in Fontainebleau in 2004 if his was indeed the court where Napoleon had once tried his hand at paume, his contemptuous reply demonstrated lingering offense at the fact that the usurper had dared to violate the sanctity of the sport of kings.

two

The Spanish Bullﬁght in France Goya, Gautier, and Mérimée

Le Scandale est après tout une assez bonne arme dans un pays constitutionnel, qu’il ne faut pas négliger. Prosper Mérimée, Correspondance générale

Following the Spanish War of Independence (fought against French imperial troops from 1808 until 1814), Francisco Goya moved from Spain to France, where he lived for some four years prior to his death. While in Bordeaux he added to his artistic output by completing a series of engravings, La tauromaquia, focusing on the bullﬁght, or corrida. Enrique Ferrari describes this bullﬁghting series as “a novel aspect of Goya and his oeuvre as engraver, an interval of rest following the satirical and tragic themes of Los caprichos and Los desastres de la guerra. The human spirit cannot continuously withstand the tension of high drama and polemic. And so with the Tauromaquia, the artist pauses in his labors.”1 But if Goya was less overtly political in La tauromaquia than he was in his Caprichos and Desastres de la guerra, it is not clear that he entirely abandoned “the tension of high drama and polemic.” Indeed, a close “reading” of his Tauromaquia engravings reveals many similarities with his earlier works and points to the engravings’ covert political intentionality. In fact, in his bullﬁghting engravings Goya creates a visual

figure 2. “Con razón ó sin ella” (Rightly or Wrongly), engraving by Francisco Goya, 1810–14. Courtesy Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

allegory between the corrida and revolutionary Spain, the primary subject of his Desastres de la guerra. In the Desastres series French soldiers are generally depicted in a physical position similar to that of the bulls in Goya’s Tauromaquia: their heads down, riﬂes menacing, bayonets bared—like bull horns—while members of the Spanish plebe stand in front of them, exposed to danger, lances ready. I am thinking speciﬁcally of Goya’s engraving Con razón ó sin ella (ﬁgure 2), but other engravings share the same motif (e.g., Y son ﬁeras), as does Goya’s famous painting of the 3 May 1808 shootings in Madrid. In this painting the heroic revolutionary— like the espada, or matador—exposes himself to the danger of the riﬂes and bayonets lowered at him by the faceless French soldiers. In Goya’s Tauromaquia the bullﬁghters, or toreros—like the revolutionaries in Con razón ó sin ella—brandish spears to gain control over the menacing bull. Like revolutionaries the toreros, too, are depicted by Goya at the moment they are being killed by their en-

figure 3. Pepe Hillo, by Francisco Goya. Courtesy Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

figure 4. Tauromaquia, by Francisco Goya. Courtesy Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

26 | The Spanish Bullﬁght in France emy (as in Goya’s Pepe Hillo engravings) and at the moment of their triumph (see ﬁgures 3 and 4). In Tauromaquia Goya capitalizes on bullﬁghting as a symbol of resistance to the dominant order, of a popular Spain battling tyrannical control. This reading of the bullﬁght as a symbol of popular revolution in the nineteenth century is supported by François Zumbiehl, who, in the preface to La tauromachie art et littérature, writes that “Goya’s fascination for bullﬁghting at the time of the Revolution allows him to forcefully depict popular exuberance through it.”2 One reason that bullﬁghting can be seen as an allegory for popular revolution, as Zumbiehl explains, is because of a signiﬁcant rules shift that came at the end of the eighteenth century: “When the rules of bullﬁghting were established at the end of the eighteenth century, they consecrated the people’s rise to power.”3 This shift in the ring moved the champions from horseback (the noble position) to foot, not only making the spectacle more dangerous (and, by extension, more entertaining) but also turning the man on the ground into the bullﬁght’s most heralded participant, thereby inverting the noble/commoner hierarchy. This change infused bullﬁghting with political, class, and revolutionary subtexts that were present whenever the corrida was represented. Although bullﬁghting came to symbolize the power of the people during their ﬁght for independence in Spain, once the absolutist Ferdinand VII was back on the throne, he saw ﬁt to bring the sport back under monarchical control (via a May 1830 royal decree) by establishing a government academy to train toreros in Sevilla.4 This academy produced Francisco Montès, the matador who would become the undisputed master of the ring until 1843.

The Spanish Bullﬁght in France | 27 Yet the academy was also sharply criticized by liberals who considered it too traditional and conservative. Eventually these liberals had the academy closed when Ferdinand VII died in 1833.5 The discussion of what is largely a Spanish spectacle in a book on French sports may initially seem out of place, to say the least. But bullﬁghting became something of an obsession in France during the July Monarchy. Spain became so stylish, in fact, that in 1838, midway through his reign, Louis-Philippe opened a gallery of Spanish art in the Louvre. Further, the bullﬁght’s cultural resonance will prove critical in understanding the way French authors Prosper Mérimée and Théophile Gautier depict the corrida in their works. In fact, I argue that these two authors use Spanish bullﬁghting to allegorically address French social and political issues. This analysis of bullﬁghting’s representation will ﬁnally lead to a new reading of Mérimée’s best-known story, Carmen. mérimée’s “letters from spain” Prosper Mérimée traveled to Spain in 1830, attending and then writing about bullﬁghts and about Madrid’s museum, where a number of Goya’s works were housed.6 I do not contend that Mérimée’s representation of bullﬁghting is inspired by Goya. Rather, like Goya, Mérimée (and later Gautier) saw and used the symbolic potentiality of corrida as a weapon in the political arena. However, instead of using bullﬁghting to allegorically represent Spanish struggles between the people and the monarchy, or between revolutionaries and foreign occupiers, Mérimée and Gautier use the bullﬁght to allegorize French political tensions. Mérimée wrote his “Les combats de taureaux” in the fall of 1830, while in Madrid (or so he claims), and had it published in the

28 | The Spanish Bullﬁght in France Revue de Paris in January 1831. In this “Letter from Spain” he offers a description of the Spanish “amusement national,” detailing the spectacle in the arena, as well as the reactions and attitudes of those who come to watch.7 First of all he notes that bullﬁghting is considered antithetical to the Church: “I do not believe that priests are forbidden from going to these spectacles; however, I have seen only one present in his robes (in Seville). I have been told that some priests go in disguise.”8 Elsewhere he remarks that the spectators at a bullﬁght demonstrate little respect for the king. At the beginning of each corrida an announcement is read outlining proper behavior for the spectators: “In the name of the king, our Lord, may God protect him. . . . Boos and jeers shower down from every section, and continue for the duration of the proclamation, which, in any case, is never heeded.”9 Mérimée concludes, “In the arena, and only there, the people rule as sovereign, and can say and do whatever they please.”10 In the next paragraph Mérimée compares the costumes worn by the toreros to the costume “of Figaro in The Barber of Seville.”11 In short, the bullﬁght is a privileged space where the monarchy is symbolically deposed, the Church is marginalized, the “people are sovereign,” and the principal actors are dressed as Beaumarchais’s rebellious servant Figaro. Mérimée’s evocation of this play brings to mind the reasons Beaumarchais set his play in Spain. Pierre Larthomas explains that its characters “are Spanish, even if they belong to an artiﬁcial Spain and owe their nationality primarily to Beaumarchais’ cautiousness and to censorship.”12 In other words, Beaumarchais’s Spain is a disguised France, a construct that allows the author to subversively criticize the class system in his own country.13 Similarly, Mérimée’s description of the

The Spanish Bullﬁght in France | 29 bullﬁght can be seen as a mise-en-scène of France and French politics in 1830: disregard for the king and his divine authority, popular revolution, and a leveling of social classes. That Mérimée would describe the bullﬁght in such a popular, revolutionary manner is not surprising, given that this letter was written shortly after the July Revolution, or the “people’s rise to power,” in France.14 Before 1830, like most intellectuals of the time, Mérimée despised the government of the Restoration, even refusing a position within the regime.15 At the time Mérimée was writing about bullﬁghting in Spain, he was also obsessed with the recent July Revolution. In September 1830, while in Seville, Mérimée wrote the following to his friend Philippe Albert Stapfer: “I wanted to return when I ﬁrst heard the news [of the July Revolution], but the letters from my parents informed me that everything was calm. I cannot forgive myself for having missed a spectacle that happens only once every thousand years. I have now missed two performances, the ﬁrst because I was born a little too late, and the other (an extraordinary performance for our beneﬁt) because of this unfortunate trip to Spain.”16 The theatrical language used here to describe the French revolutions of 1789 and 1830 underscores the parallel between popular revolution and bullﬁghting, a revolutionary spectacle also described by Mérimée in theatrical terms. One hero that he describes at some length is the picador Francisco Sevilla, “a courageous man” (un brave) who was knocked off his horse by a bull that then tried to gore him. Sevilla grabbed the beast by one ear and one nostril and held on for a full two minutes while the bull kicked at him, shook him, and slammed him against the ground. Once Sevilla escaped, instead of being carried off to a doctor, he immediately found another horse and

30 | The Spanish Bullﬁght in France attacked the bull in the middle of the arena: “The impact of these two valiant adversaries was so terrible that the horse and the bull fell to their knees. Oh! if you had heard the vivas, if you had seen the frenetic joy, the sort of drunkenness of the crowd when they saw so much courage and happiness, you would have been envious, as I was, of Sevilla’s fortune! This man has become immortal in Madrid.”17 This positive, even heroic description of the corrida parallels Mérimée’s optimism regarding a new freedom in France, linked to the downfall of the Restoration monarchy. Sevilla represents the man of the people who is able to defeat a superior oppressing force and awaken popular pride and admiration. Twelve years later, in June 1842, Mérimée returns to his “Combats de taureaux” and adds several footnotes and a fourpage epilogue, where he laments that the Homeric Francisco Sevilla has died, and not even in the arena, “but claimed by a diseased liver.”18 In his place the Spanish public has chosen a new hero, Francisco Montès. A product of Ferdinand VII’s academy, Montès displeases “good patriots” because he is a “volunteer royalist,” a matador who lives “nobly” and has “aristocratic manners.”19 Mérimée writes: “I remember that he [Montès] refused to dine with us when we invited Sevilla. On this occasion Sevilla gave us his opinion of Montès in his typically frank manner.— ‘Montès no fue realista; es buen compañero, luciente matador, atiende a los picadores, pero es un p. . . .’ This means that he wears a tailcoat outside of the arena, that he never goes to bars, and that his manners are too ﬁne. Sevilla is the Marius of bullﬁghting, Montès is its Caesar.”20 In Mérimée’s eyes the bullﬁght, from 1830 to 1842, lost its grit and became banally antiseptic. Once a subversive symbol of ple-

The Spanish Bullﬁght in France | 31 beian resistance, the corrida had been assimilated by the Spanish gentry. Mérimée’s Roman analogy (Sevilla as bullﬁghting’s Marius, Montès as its Caesar) is telling: Gaius Marius, elected consul seven times, was a soldier who had risen through the ranks to become a popular leader, a savior of Rome. Caesar, on the other hand, ruled as emperor and put down the republic and its supporters, ﬁnishing off the most vehement believers in the republic at the battle of Munda—in Spain. Sevilla, like Gaius Marius, was the people’s bullﬁghter, rising from among them to become a hero and to symbolize resistance to monarchical conformity. 21 Montès, like Caesar, took over from Sevilla and ruled in the arena like an emperor. The people’s bullﬁghter had been replaced by a nobleman who ruled in an aristocratic fashion, with “ﬁne manners.” I support this contention more thoroughly below, in the discussion of Carmen, but I would like to propose here that Mérimée’s description of the bullﬁght—its shift from a popular spectacle where the “people rule as sovereign” to a sport of noble supremacy presided over by a modern-day Caesar—mirrors in many ways the changes (as Mérimée viewed them) that took place in France under the July Monarchy. Born of an enthusiastic popular revolution, with hopes of a more liberal government in 1830, Louis-Philippe’s regime slowly began to resemble more and more the regimes that had preceded it by limiting the freedom of the press and squelching political opposition. théophile gautier’s VOYAGE and “la tauromachie”

E N ESPAGNE

At nearly the same time as Mérimée published his addendum to “Combats de taureaux,” Théophile Gautier was writing his own

32 | The Spanish Bullﬁght in France analysis of the Spanish bullﬁght in Tra los montes: Voyage en Espagne 1840. Like Mérimée, Gautier is struck by the theatricality of the corrida and, again like Mérimée, by how brilliant and intense the spectacle is when compared to the dimly lit Paris theaters. 22 Even in his description of Montès, Gautier, like Mérimée, is somewhat critical of the torero’s too-polished, monarchical approach to the sport: “Montès is wealthy,” Gautier notes, and gained a “profound knowledge of his art” while attending Ferdinand VII’s royal bullﬁghting academy. 23 In addition, Montès maintains a noble detachment from the emotion of the spectacle: “He is so calm, such a master of himself, he appears so certain of his success that the combat itself seems only a child’s game.”24 While he initially praises Montès, Gautier later spends a great deal of time outlining an incident that took place in Malaga, when Montès seemed scared and was ultimately booed out of town. In Malaga Montès’s group was called upon to take on an aggressive bull named, signiﬁcantly, Napoleon—“the only name capable,” Gautier remarks, “of describing his [the bull’s] incontestable superiority.”25 After several horses had been killed, Montès, who “himself appeared troubled” by the bull, was ﬁnally called upon to kill Napoleon. 26 The pride of the monarchical bullﬁghting school, Montès, cautiously entered the arena, careful to stay close to the fence, wary of the menacing bull: “He was very pale, and, without demonstrating any of his typical ﬂirtatious acts of courage that have won him the admiration of all Spain, he . . . called the bull, who did not hesitate to attack.”27 After only several passes the bull suddenly fell dead, to the general surprise of the spectators: “The sword had entered through the bull’s forehead and had pierced its brain, a move banned by the laws of bullﬁghting, the mata-

The Spanish Bullﬁght in France | 33 dor being required to pass his arm between the animal’s horns and strike it between the base of the neck and the shoulder, thereby increasing the danger for the man and according a small chance to his bestial adversary.”28 When the spectators realized what had happened, “a cry of indignation rose from” every section of the stadium. 29 Admiration turned to unanimous anger directed at the man who had killed “Napoleon” in such an unacceptable and unjust manner. Montès and his company, insulted and sworn at, were ﬁnally run out of town on a rail. The noble Montès is thus here revealed as a cowardly matador who defeats his adversary only by cheating, while the bull, Napoleon, comes to represent the people, a symbol of resistance to noble treachery. Conscious of the political implications, Gautier, in his 1843 article “La tauromachie,” published in the Musée des familles (a conservative Parisian periodical), cleans up his description of the bullﬁght and rehabilitates Montès. He here depicts bullﬁghting as a “noble, heroic” practice representing the victory of “mind over matter,” in which the weaker participant successfully dominates the more powerful one.30 Surprisingly, Gautier even implies that bullﬁghting can be viewed as a metaphor for the way the ruling class maintains its dominance over the more powerful, but bulky and unpredictable, lower classes. Risking one’s life is “a beautiful thing,” he writes, be it for applause or “to conquer a throne.”31 Dominating a dangerous and large force such as a bull (referred to as “l’animal stupide” in Tra los montes) is akin to taking and maintaining power over the people.32 Through political dexterity a king (such as the contemporary king of the French, LouisPhilippe) uses posturing, ﬂag-waving, and intelligence to bring the people under his control. Notably, in this article Montès’s fear

34 | The Spanish Bullﬁght in France before the bull Napoleon is never referenced. Rather, Montès is presented as a complete master, the perfect product of Ferdinand VII’s noble “bullﬁghting conservatory.”33 mérimée’s

CARMEN

These two descriptions of bullﬁghting (by Mérimée and Gautier) give us a sense of the way the sport was used to allegorize political and class tensions in July Monarchy France, at a time when the controlling regime had a known penchant for Spanish aesthetics. In what follows I analyze how the symbolism and political implications of the bullﬁght inﬂect our understanding of the era’s best-known French work on Spain—perhaps the best-known French work on Spain ever published. I am speaking, of course, of Mérimée’s novella Carmen. Carmen, to begin with, offers an excellent example of Mérimée’s use of duplicitous, masked identities. On the one hand, the frame narrator (embarking on the task of discovering the location of Caesar’s battle of Munda) represents the scholarly inspecteur des monuments historiques: he is Mérimée’s serious, public facade. On the other hand, the passionate, shocking narrative of Don José and Carmen reveals the hidden Mérimée, the man behind Clara Gazul’s mantilla.34 When the erudite frame narrator describes the central narrative of Carmen as “a little story” told “while waiting for my dissertation to ﬁnally resolve the geographic problem that is causing the entire European academic community to hold its collective breath,” it is hard to take him at face value.35 The assertion that all of Europe is waiting in suspense for the conclusion of his geographic study amounts to a wink and a nudge to the reader

The Spanish Bullﬁght in France | 35 from a man who is parodying his own public image and, I will argue, subversively criticizing the government for which he works. Thanks in part to Bizet’s music, perhaps, one cannot think of Carmen without thinking of bullﬁghting. One commentator, for example, summarizes the story as follows: “An essential character in literary history and in the history of the opera, Carmen was born from the imagination of Prosper Mérimée, who sees in a corner of Spain a gypsy revealing the story of a woman who leads a man into a universe of love and death, into the heart of a Goyesque Spain, made of shadow and light, gold and blood. Carmen will direct her own death, her own corrida.”36 This interpretation is not surprising, especially for operagoers, who see Bizet’s heroine killed outside the Seville arena at virtually the same moment a bull is killed inside. It is natural, especially in this context, to equate Don José with a matador and Carmen with a bull, to see the similarities between the matador’s ritualistic slaying of a bull and Don José’s somewhat ritualistic murder of Carmen. In fact, in Mérimée’s tale Don José, at the moment of truth, readies his sword like a matador would, while Carmen stomps her foot like a deﬁant bull: “I drew my knife. . . . ‘For the last time,’ I screamed, ‘do you want to stay with me!’ ‘No! no! no!’ she said while stomping her foot.”37 While these parallels are certainly interesting (for one thing raising further questions about Carmen’s sexual ambiguity), juxtaposing Mérimée’s “Les combats de taureaux” with Carmen (published just three years after his epilogue to the bullﬁghting letter) opens up yet another reading of the novella that has broad implications for Mérimée’s views on politics and social class. Recall that in “Les combats de taureaux” Mérimée holds that bullﬁght-

36 | The Spanish Bullﬁght in France ing had degenerated from 1830 to 1842, this shift paralleling the decline of the July Monarchy, which, from its hopeful, egalitarian beginning in 1830, had slipped toward increasingly stiﬂing policies in the 1840s. This transformation is also reﬂected in Carmen. The story begins, like “Les combats de taureaux,” during the narrator’s trip to Spain in 1830 (“Me trouvant en Andalousie au commencement de l’automne de 1830”).38 The narrator of Carmen explains that he is in Spain to locate “the memorable spot where, for the last time, Caesar played double or nothing against the champions of the republic.”39 Signiﬁcantly, Mérimée here represents this ancient struggle for political control as a game, a game between a dictator and the “champions” of the republic. Additionally, by setting this research trip in 1830, Mérimée calls to mind the 1830 July Revolution, when the champions of yet another republic fought against what they viewed as the tyrannical government of Charles X. The narrator, therefore, brings together games, risk, and political insurgency (both ancient and contemporary). Mérimée’s narrator is looking for the place where the republic was defeated, where tyranny won out over freedom. I suggest that he ﬁnds what he is looking for in the narrative itself. The narrator of the novella’s central story, Don José, can be seen as a symbol of the July Monarchy. A nobleman, he compromises his strict adherence to traditional values when he forms a union with Carmen, the symbol of plebeian freedom, of unrestrained speech and action. I agree with Evlyn Gould, who writes that José “can be read as both supportive of the hierarchical values of the ancien régime—church, military, and state—and, at the same time, corrupted and seduced by the bohemian champions of

The Spanish Bullﬁght in France | 37 a republican lifestyle.”40 Gould continues, “It is clear that, situated in 1830, his lifestyle can be equated with the compromise and duplicity of the bourgeoisie itself.”41 Moreover, even in Don José’s initial self-description, there exist a number of “compromises” that can be equated with the compromises of the July Monarchy: I was born, he said, in Elizondo, in the Baztan valley. My name is Don José Lizarrabengoa, and you know Spain well enough, sir, to know right away from my name that I am Basque and from an old Christian family. If I use the don, it is because I have the right to it, and if I were in Elizondo, I would show you my genealogy on a parchment. They wanted me to become a man of the Church, and they made me study, but I did not take advantage of it. I liked playing paume too much, and that was my downfall. When we play paume we Navarros forget everything. One day after I won, a man from Alava wanted to ﬁght; we took our maquilas, and I won again; but I had to leave the region.42

The word elizondo means, according to the modern village’s Web site, “junto a la iglesia”—that is, “together with the church.”43 Don José belongs to an old, noble Christian family, and he is from a region, Navarre, that was faithful to the monarchy (it was the ﬁrst Basque region to sign a ley foral, uniting it with Spain in 1841) and that, in the collective memory of the French, is linked with their own monarchy (Henri de Navarre would become Henri IV, and Marguerite, queen of Navarre, was the sister of François I). But Don José is also Basque and thus implicated in a centurieslong struggle for independence and in resistance to Spanish and French rule. He is, therefore, a compromise between nobility and

38 | The Spanish Bullﬁght in France independence, between a long family history of faithfulness to the Church and personal resistance to it. He also has a bloody history, having killed someone with whom he had played paume. LouisPhilippe’s genealogy is relevant here: his father, Philippe Egalité, though a descendant of Louis XIII, had voted in favor of the execution of Louis XVI, and Louis-Philippe himself came to power thanks to a brief, violent revolution. Thus, Don José, like LouisPhilippe, has blood on his hands. And ﬁnally, like the bourgeois/ noble Alphonse of “La Vénus d’Ille,” Don José plays paume but is unable to maintain the requisite noble detachment (see chapter 1).44 He is, for all these reasons, the perfect symbol of France’s constitutional monarchy and its Citizen-King. Jerrold Seigel, in his book Bohemian Paris, explains that the “bourgeois monarchy” of 1830 originally encompassed two very different philosophies of how the government should be run. The more liberal bourgeoisie allied itself with the Party of Movement and “demanded a wide franchise, freedom of speech, press, and association, vigorous action against the hated Bourbon ministers, and an interventionist foreign policy.”45 The other bourgeois camp, the Party of Resistance, was “more conservative. . . . [It] resisted change and preferred restrictions on political debate and organization, a narrower electorate and no foreign adventures.”46 Seigel continues, “As things worked out, [the Party of Resistance’s] victory over the Party of Movement during the 1830s led to an increasing policy of reconciliation between the July Monarchy and representatives of the Old Regime during the 1840s.”47 Seigel argues that during the 1840s, as the July Monarchy became increasingly conservative in nature, the bohemian came to stand as the symbol par excellence of liberal resistance: “With its orientation

The Spanish Bullﬁght in France | 39 toward the lower parts of society . . . Bohemianism would exhibit many parallels, some rough and some precise, to political tendencies like the Party of Movement. Both sought to keep bourgeois society open to new elements and energies.”48 To Mérimée’s readership of the 1840s Carmen (repeatedly referred to by the narrator as “la bohémienne,” even “ma bohémienne”) is the perfect symbol of freedom, of a rupture with traditional, ancien régime values, of the Party of Movement, and of resistance to the July Monarchy.49 The narrator proudly notes that several “honnêtes gens” (i.e., “upstanding citizens,” or the quintessential symbol of the July Monarchy bourgeoisie) are scandalized to see this bohemian in the narrator’s presence.50 Carmen characterizes deﬁance of authoritarian rule—“When someone tells me I cannot do something, it is soon done!”—and personiﬁes a rough, unromantic brand of liberty—“I do not want to be tormented, nor most of all ordered around. What I want is to be free and to do what pleases me.”51 Don José puts it bluntly: “For people of her race, liberty is everything.”52 Ultimately Carmen’s desire for independence leads her away from Don José and toward a new lover. Signiﬁcantly, the new lover —like the free-spirited, liberal-minded Sevilla—is a picador. Loving the picador is Carmen’s way of asserting her independence from Don José.53 For his part, Don José is hell-bent on bringing Carmen entirely under his control. Before killing her, however, he does give her the option of going with him to America. Ironically, for Carmen, America represents a land devoid of freedom, a land where, cut off from her network of acquaintances and the many countercultural opportunities offered her in Europe, she would become isolated, a prisoner of Don José. Carmen refuses, pre-

40 | The Spanish Bullﬁght in France ferring to die rather than give up her freedom: “As my rom [husband/lover] you have the right to kill your romi. But Carmen will always be free. Calli she was born, calli she will die.”54 Don José, who initially describes himself as a man of compromises, is ultimately revealed instead as a man whose life is consumed by his desire to control every move of the free-spirited Carmen. Don José—who by the end is no longer thought of as Basque, but as Navarro, being called “Jose Navarro” or simply “The Navarro”—mirrors in many respects the increasingly rigid policies of the July Monarchy.55 Indeed, signs of the true nature of Louis-Philippe’s government could be clearly seen in the implementation of what are known as the “September Laws,” passed in September 1835. Historians H. A. C. Collingham and R. S. Alexander sum up their essence: “The most important bill concerned the press: incitement to insurrection, to hatred of the king and attacks on his authority were classed as crimes against the state, which could be tried by the peers and not by a jury, and which were punishable by imprisonment and ﬁnes up to 50,000 francs. It was forbidden to demand a change of dynasty, invoke the fallen Bourbons, call for a republic or show adherence to another form of government, attack property rights, the laws or the Constitution, also to publish the names of jurymen or to give an account of the jury’s proceedings.”56 In addition, members of the press were required to name all their sources and could suffer imprisonment, ﬁnes, or the closure of their newspaper if they refused to heed the laws.57 Another example of the “uncompromising” nature of the July Monarchy came during the Egyptian diplomatic crisis (Britain and Russia leaving France entirely out of the ofﬁcial process): “In

The Spanish Bullﬁght in France | 41 Paris, the king, with the advice of Desages, director of political affairs at the Foreign Ministry, decided French policy.”58 So certain was Louis-Philippe that he was rightfully the central player in the question of Egypt and Syria, he opted to undermine the British and pursue an agenda that alienated his country from its diplomatic allies. Collingham and Alexander offer this assessment of the Citizen-King’s policy during the crisis: “Louis-Philippe moved towards disaster with uncompromising blindness.”59 They continue, “By 1845 [the year Mérimée wrote Carmen] there was widespread dissatisfaction, both amongst the conservatives and their opponents.”60 That Mérimée was upset by the increasing erosion of freedom under the July Monarchy is apparent in a letter written in July 1848, shortly after Louis-Philippe was deposed: “For my part, I so value freedom, that the Republic has not yet dissuaded me from believing it to be the most important possession.”61 While he deplored the senseless violence of the revolutionaries, and while the overexuberance of the Second Republic left him amused, Mérimée preferred its follies to the restricting policies that came to characterize the July Monarchy. Mérimée paints a pathetic picture of the deposed Louis-Philippe: “I hear from London that Louis-Philippe is leading a miserable life there, only worried about piecing together the debris of his private fortune. He does not regret losing the throne, but does miss his forests and houses.”62 During the reign of Louis-Philippe Mérimée could not afford to engage in direct attacks on the regime that employed him. Scott Carpenter has demonstrated that Mérimée wrote against LouisNapoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon III) from within the government via allegory, penning historical analyses of false or counterfeit

42 | The Spanish Bullﬁght in France heads of state (from his Les faux Démétrius to his Histoire de la fausse Elisabeth II). Carpenter suggests that Mérimée, writing of the imposture of Russian leaders and thus hiding his critique behind the mask of scholarly, historical research, was in fact implying that France’s new emperor was himself an impostor. I believe that this practice—of allegorically criticizing the government in power—in fact began much earlier in Mérimée’s career and is certainly noticeable in Carmen. With Mérimée hidden behind the mask of scholarship (the narrator ostensibly researching the life of Caesar and studying gypsy culture), Carmen explores Don José’s transition from a man of compromises, in love with the very embodiment of freedom, to a tyrant who kills Carmen and her former lover.63 This change reﬂects not only the shift in the nature of the July Monarchy but also the transformation Mérimée describes in his “Combats de taureaux,” where the aristocratic Montès supplants the man of the people, Sevilla. At this point we recall the frame narrator’s primary reason for traveling to Spain: to ﬁnd the location of the battle of Munda, the place where Caesar defeated the republic, where totalitarianism gained the upper hand over freedom. We also recall Mérimée’s description of the two preeminent Spanish bullﬁghters of the early nineteenth century: “Sevilla is the Marius of bullﬁghting, Montès is its Caesar.”64 By connecting the dots among “Les combats de taureaux,” Carmen, and the July Monarchy, Mérimée implies a link between Caesar’s victory over republicanism, Montès’s displacement of Sevilla, and the July Monarchy’s squelching of liberties. David Mickelsen correctly argues that in Carmen the foreign other is “ultimately subordinated to French law”; the “other, exotic culture is domesticated.”65 Mickelsen goes on to argue that Mérimée’s

The Spanish Bullﬁght in France | 43 text is in a sense a prototypical manifestation of colonialist propaganda: “Carmen portrays the desire to dominate an alien culture with French values.”66 I agree that Mérimée’s Spain is in many ways colored by French values, but not because Mérimée is seeking to support an emerging brand of French nationalism and colonialism. Rather, if in Carmen Spain is subordinate to the French gaze, it is because Mérimée’s Spain is very much a reﬂection of French tensions and of the French political landscape during the time period framed by the narrative itself. Indeed, Carmen opens in 1830—at the very moment the July Monarchy comes to power—and concludes in the present, in 1845. It is a cautionary narrative that demonstrates the harsh fate of both those who uphold freedom in the face of tyranny and those who exercise violence in order to maintain control.

three

Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse Chance in the Works of Balzac and Mérimée Je dis, que l’on doit faire ainsi qu’au jeu de dés, Où, s’il ne vous vient pas ce que vous demandez, Il faut jouer d’adresse, et, d’une âme réduite, Corriger le hasard par la bonne conduite. Molière, L’école des femmes

In his Essai sur les fondements de la connaissance (Essay on the Foundations of our Knowledge) (1851) Antoine Augustin Cournot posits that history can best be seen as a game and historical events as moves in that game. The unfolding of history, in other words, can be understood in the same way one would understand the strategy behind a player’s moves in a game. But which game? Not a lottery, since the lottery’s random outcomes are not linked in any causal way: “The results of a public lottery could provide a succession of singular results, sometimes piquing our curiosity, but would not constitute a history: for the results follow one after the other without being linked. The ﬁrst numbers have no inﬂuence whatsoever on those that follow.”1 History is, instead, similar “to a game like trictrac, where each roll of the dice, produced by chance, nevertheless inﬂuences the results of the subsequent moves.”2 However, Cournot quickly corrects himself and writes that history is, in fact, more like chess, a game where chance (char-

46 | Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse acterized in trictrac by the rolling dice) is replaced by the players’ decisions: “History is even more like a game of chess, where the reasoned determination of the players is substituted for the randomness of the dice.”3 One eighteenth-century chess manual describes chess as absolutely antithetical to the notion of chance: “There is hardly a game that requires more conduct, more attention, and more reason than chess; and skill is such a requirement that chance plays no role; and if one loses, it is one’s own fault.”4 While players may make mistakes, producing random scenarios, each move can nevertheless be explained in terms of causality; as Cournot puts it, in chess we see the requisite “conditions of a historical sequence.”5 By allegorizing history as a game of chess Cournot aligns himself closely with the philosophy of Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827), who, in his Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, argues that the concept of chance exists only as a result of our ignorance: All events, even those that on account of their rarity seem not to obey the great laws of nature, are as necessary a consequence of these laws as the revolutions of the sun. Ignorant of the bonds that link them to the entire system of the universe, we have made them depend on ﬁ nal causes, or on chance, according as they occur and succeed each other in a regular fashion, or without apparent order. But these fancied causes have been successively moved back as the boundaries of our knowledge have expanded, and they vanish entirely in the face of a sound philosophy, which sees in them only the expression of our ignorance of the true causes.6

Laplace summarizes his perspective on historical discourse as follows: “The connexion between present and preceding events is

Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse | 47 based on the evident principle that a thing cannot come into existence without there being a cause to produce it.”7 For Laplace chance has no role whatsoever in the course of history. Were it not for our ignorance, history—indeed all events—could be explained in purely causal, even mathematical, terms. Signiﬁcantly, Cournot does differ from Laplace in that he at least imagines a model in which chance could play a slight role in historical discourse. While he ultimately turns to chess as the ideal model, he also theorizes the possibility of viewing history as a game of trictrac, where chance plays a considerable role. In this chapter I examine the interplay between chance and history in works by Balzac and Mérimée and examine how games, primarily chess and trictrac, serve to allegorize this interplay. Before looking speciﬁcally at the works of these two authors, however, a brief history and analysis of trictrac will prove useful. brief analysis of trictrac While chess is a game that is still widely played, and a chess set is likely owned by most readers of this book, trictrac is today nearly entirely unknown. The word trictrac itself is often erroneously translated into English as backgammon (since the trictrac board does, with only small differences, resemble a backgammon board), but the two games are signiﬁcantly different. Backgammon is essentially a racing game: the winner is the ﬁrst player to get all his or her pieces safely off the board. By contrast, in trictrac victory is achieved by winning twelve rounds, or “holes,” and each hole is earned by scoring twelve points before an opponent does. Points are scored via a large number of moves and conﬁgurations ( jans) that I will not be able to fully detail here. 8

figure 5. Seigneurs jouant au tric-trac (Lords Playing Trictrac), by Henri Lefort. Courtesy of the author.

Trictrac appears to have become popular in the sixteenth century (it is mentioned by Rabelais, Brantôme, and Ronsard) but was ﬁrst codiﬁed in the seventeenth century by Jollivet, in his manual entitled L’excellent jeu du tricque-trac: Tres-doux esbat és nobles compagnies (1656). In addition to enumerating the scoring moves, Jollivet argues that trictrac is the greatest of all games. It is best, ﬁrst of all, because it serves as a metaphor for noble life:

Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse | 49 “We say for all occasions, ‘the trictrac of the court,’ ‘the trictrac of worldly affairs,’ to show the vicissitude and changes in both courtly affairs and the complications of the world.”9 Unlike chess, which is governed solely by the decisions of the players, trictrac players are subject to the rolling dice, just as politicians or nobles governing wealth and land fall prey to the uncontrollable powers of chance. Second, only the ﬁnest people (i.e., the most noble) really know how to play trictrac: Another reason for the game’s excellence can be seen in the fact that of the hundred thousand people who have heard of the game, only ten are of such a condition that they know and play it correctly. Almost all the others are as common as pages—servants and lackeys among princes, lords, and gentlemen: For dice, chess, checkers, piquet, paume, mail, boulle, trois, lansquenet, reversis, homme, and berlan are all common and popular games where there is usually a lot of cheating and only a small amount of wit [esprit]. As for grand trictrac, only people of honor [a euphemism for the nobility] practice it, and even then only the most intelligent [spirituel], active, and vigilant can understand it.10

This elite status is imposed in part by the cost of the tables (a 1715 manual instructs that they should be made exclusively of ebony and ivory) and maintained by the game’s complex scoring system.11 Much of Jollivet’s text, and much of the description of the game in the Académie universelle des jeux, is little more than a list of scoring positions, or jans.12 Further, should one player neglect to notice he or she has scored, that person’s opponent is allowed to claim the points. This is known as une école. The player who neglects his or her points, in other words, is penalized and sent to

50 | Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse “school.” This rule virtually makes ownership of books, and the time to read and study the rules, a requirement, thereby reserving the game for society’s wealthiest. Social etiquette is emphasized over rules in many of the manuals: “It is not enough to simply know the game; in order to play it nobly, one must also respect the rules of social etiquette, these rules of politeness that constitute society’s charm.”13 The early eighteenth-century Charpentier manual suggests that women should always be given their choice of color and generally be offered the ebony pieces, since their dark color will enhance the pale tone of a woman’s hands.14 Soumille indicates that “a nobleman who is going to play trictrac with a woman, or with another person that he wishes to honor, must ask her on which side she would like to establish the talon [the starting pile of checkers].”15 Le Peintre speciﬁes that players must maintain a healthy dose of distance from the game: “A well-educated player must not play angry, nor get mad when the die is not in his favor: nothing is more detestable than a bad player in a salon. One must lose with resignation, with calm, I will even say with grace; and if one wins, one must try and attribute it not to one’s good play but to the dice, to good fortune, in order to shield your opponent’s pride: for there are not small injuries in matters of pride, not even in trictrac.”16 In addition, manuals offer instructions on how to roll the dice, where to position the table in a room, what to say when an opponent is having a run of bad luck, and so forth. In this respect trictrac is like le jeu de paume, the accumulation of social capital stressed over winning or winnings. Symbolically the game is generally considered, like chess, a war game. Philippe Lalanne explains that the game includes a coin

Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse | 51 de repos, a place of rest (the last arrow on a player’s own side of the table), so called because it is a space where the warrior is protected and can rest. In addition, when a player rolls a number that would cause him to land between two of his opponent’s pieces, the opposing player earns points: this is referred to as “Margot la fendue”—or, literally, “Margot the split” or “Margot the thrustthrough.” In short, the warrior is allowed to rest in the coin de repos and must pay to visit a woman of “little virtue.”17 Unlike the chess player, however, the warrior in trictrac does not actually capture pieces in order to defeat his opponent. This is a war game stripped of violence: when a player rolls a number that would allow him to capture his opponent’s uncovered piece (a single piece on an arrow), instead of taking that piece, he simply receives the points as if he had done so and then moves other pieces on his own side of the board. This is called striking a piece en puissance. In other words, because of a position of strength (puissance) a player may earn points as if he had “gone to war,” even though he actually remains passively on his own half of the board. Position, not action, is the key to success in trictrac. This is the perfect image of the nobility, particularly in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: the noblesse de robe began to displace the noblesse d’épée; the duel was outlawed (see chapter 5); and as power coalesced around the king, differences were resolved via recourse to judges and reliance on status and reputation instead of through strength of arms. Power became a matter of position, earned through proximity to the king instead of through military prowess. Where chess represents the violence of a feudal system in which power is earned via the sword, trictrac is a game in which the warrior’s sword is for show only and passivity trumps action. Trictrac is a perfect

52 | Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse example of a game’s ritualistic potential to replace actual violence with “imaginary danger, mimetic fear and pleasure.”18 Not surprisingly, during the Revolution knowledge of and interest in trictrac declined signiﬁcantly. In Le Peintre des Roches’s 1818 manual he laments the setbacks trictrac suffered during the Revolution: “The current generation, too turbulent in its customs, raised amid political agitations, long tormented by a military spirit, changed by this devouring worry that results from great social upheavals and that subsists long after the events have ceased; the current generation, I say, has overly neglected peaceful games that require focused meditation.”19 The current generation, in other words, lacks the patience to become proﬁcient in this game of the old regime, while those who know the game, the nobility, are dying out. Le Peintre adds: “Trictrac counts only several old-timers as its principal proponents. There are no longer any truly strong players since the recent death of a very distinguished character who excelled at trictrac (the late duke de Laval-Montmorency). In the present day we only meet routine-minded players who ignore the transcendent calculations of the game, who can conceive of nothing outside the well-trod paths.”20 He goes on to predict that the restoration of the monarchy (in 1815) will eventually bring with it the restoration of noble games: “This game would be threatened with total decadence in the salons if the restoration of the elite company did not guarantee us its restoration. Let us not doubt it, it will come back into fashion, it will again become what it was in the past: namely, the recreation of honorable people and of well-born and well-raised persons.”21 Le Peintre’s hope that trictrac would return to prominence may have been momentarily realized, but trictrac, like the Bourbon Restoration, eventually

Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse | 53 died out entirely. The last trictrac manual was published in France in 1852, and the only people who play trictrac today are enthusiasts who have reconstructed the rules based on old publications. 22 trictrac, chance, and history In the work of Cournot and even earlier (in the work of Prosper Mérimée) trictrac served as a symbol of chance and a metaphor for historical discourse in the nineteenth century. But the authors of early nineteenth-century trictrac manuals were the ﬁrst to make this connection, arguing that trictrac taught those who played it how to manage the inevitable chance events with which life—and history—would confront them. These authors consistently contrast trictrac with chess, a game where causality and reason govern each move. Trictrac, they claim, is superior to chess precisely because chance plays a role. 23 Trictrac, it seems, was the perfect game for a period when events as inexplicable and as illogical as the Revolution were still fresh in everyone’s mind. N. Guiton, writing in his 1816 Traité complet du jeu de trictrac, describes trictrac as follows: “Trictrac is a game dominated by chance, whose inﬂuence, present in each move, determines success and failure: but this chance itself is subject to calculations; and to control it, the skill lies in constantly employing the theory of probabilities that, when they are well known and when one knows how to apply them correctly, can in part regulate or at least modify this inﬂuence of chance, and make something probable that is, by its nature, uncertain: that is the science of this game.”24 Chance is the principal force of the game, but the key to success is being able to control, or at least contain, the effects of chance by good play, or what Guiton calls “science.” Guiton continues: “Chance and

54 | Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse science are in continual opposition. . . . Often chance triumphs over science, but more frequently science dominates and masters chance, or weakens its inﬂuence. From this constant struggle frequent vicissitudes result, catastrophes, unforeseen revolutions; the most brilliant hopes can be deceived, unexpectedly destroyed by one roll of the dice, and be replaced by the most menacing danger.”25 Despite a player’s best efforts, unexpected events brought about by the dice—by the forces of chance—can disrupt the bestlaid plans and lead to dangerous, unforeseen revolutions. Trictrac and history are more explicitly aligned in the 1818 manual by Le Peintre des Roches, who writes that “Bonaparte would not have made the enormous mistakes that led to his fall had he known trictrac.”26 Relating a conversation he had with another trictrac enthusiast, Le Peintre describes Napoleon’s defeat in Russia using the terms of the game: “In general terms, Napoleon’s mistakes are like those that a reckless or thoughtless player can commit; you know how much the different situations in this game require prudence and to what extent aggressiveness can be dangerous. Nothing is more striking to me than the analogy between Bonaparte’s mistakes and those that are frequently made in trictrac.”27 Napoleon’s great mistake, in sum, lay in his inability to manage chance, to quit when ahead and take advantage of his early favorable luck: “Yes, yes, Bonaparte was like those bad trictrac players who never remove their pieces [i.e., who risk their advantage instead of conservatively returning to the starting position]: chance may favor them; they may often win with fortunate dice; but in the end they lose in a moment what they had won over the long course of the game. An unskilled trictrac player will win eleven holes in a row, but, with one bad decision [tenue, ‘keeping

Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse | 55 one’s pieces in place’], he will lose the entire game before taking the twelfth hole.”28 Le Peintre then goes on to emphasize the primacy of chance in trictrac and equates this to real life: When all is said and done, what is life but a perpetual game? What is society but an academy where men play against each other? Now, does luck not play a role in all games? And is luck not subject to chance? Without a doubt, the die is the principal actor in trictrac; and the most in-depth calculations can only serve to mitigate its whims. If the most experienced player, despite a most judicious strategy, loses against a weaker player when the dice turn against him, do we not see people in the world, full of all the wisdom, intelligence, and talent possible, succumb to the blows of fate? One could argue that the stronger player will eventually win over the weaker one. Of course, if he plays one hundred games, he will win sixty or even eighty. But the great game that nature makes us play here below is not the same; each man’s existence is often but one game, and fortune, who throws the dice, rarely allows him to begin another before he dies. There is but a small number of men to whom this blind goddess grants a second chance; and even fewer who are allowed to remake themselves. We could therefore metaphysically compare the existence of one hundred individuals to one hundred games that combine chance and strategy, like trictrac. Supposing that each man plays wisely, of those who made no mistakes only slightly more than half would win. And in life, there are not one hundred who make no mistakes in all of Europe! Of these one hundred, I maintain that nearly half must fail and lose themselves, and this because

56 | Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse neither our fortune nor our happiness depend primarily on us, in the same way a victory in a game of trictrac does not entirely depend on the skill of the player. 29

Le Peintre’s philosophy differs diametrically from that of his contemporary Laplace, for whom everything follows a logical order, for whom chance is but a symptom of humanity’s ignorance. For Le Peintre des Roches chance is the predominant force in the life of individuals and in the historical course of societies. While all may attempt to control the impact of chance in their lives, few will succeed, crushed by this vengeful “blind goddess.” Le Peintre’s and Guiton’s views can be similarly contrasted with Cournot’s philosophy, in which chance is limited to the “accidental encounters” brought about by causal thinking, as in a game of chess. These opposing philosophies (Laplace versus Le Peintre, causality versus chance) are mirrored in the works of two postRevolutionary French authors for whom chance’s role in society and in the construction of history is key. I will ﬁrst look at Balzac, author of La comédie humaine, then at Mérimée’s short stories and historical pieces. chance in balzac’s fiction In Circumstances: Chance in the Literary Text David Bell argues that Balzac’s representation of humanity is at odds with Laplacian theories of causality, that Balzac gives free play to the aleatory and demonstrates the futility of a purely causal explanation of events. While this is clearly true on the level of most Balzacian characters, who are unable to see the end from the beginning, it may not be true of Balzac’s omniscient narrator, who resembles Laplace’s

Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse | 57 demon, “an intelligence that, at a given instant, could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings that make it up.”30 In his analysis of Ferragus Bell dismisses this idea: “In fact, it could be argued that the position of the third-person omniscient narrator corresponds in a striking manner to the position of Laplace’s demon, since, ideally, he is the master of all causal sequences in his story. But . . . we must remember that he too wanders in search of his story, unable to begin before holding forth on a subject (Parisian streets) ostensibly unrelated to the plot that subsequently unfolds.”31 The narrator, Bell points out, even returns to a discussion of Parisian streets and the Parisian homeless in the concluding pages of the novella. Bell concludes: “The edges of what otherwise gives every impression of being a sharply ordered performance by the narrator are slightly frayed, haunted by an air of hesitation, by what would almost seem an inability to get to the point. . . . Not only do the beginning and the ending of Ferragus illustrate the effects of chance encounters . . . but the narrator himself is ultimately infected by the very structure he attempts to describe. The classic Balzacian narrative style is threatened to an extent one does not always suspect by a disintegration leading it down the path of haphazard musings.”32 I contend, rather, that the introduction and conclusion of Ferragus, like the introduction of La ﬁlle aux yeux d’or and so many of Balzac’s other texts, instead of demonstrating an “inability to get to the point,” express the very point the narrator is trying to make. The narrator inscribes chance encounters, the aleatory events of the narrative that the characters themselves cannot comprehend, within the framework of his overarching view of Society. Yes, chance plays a role in the unfolding of the

58 | Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse drama, but the narrator is there to help the reader contextualize the events, to understand how speciﬁc characters ﬁt into the different spheres of Parisian or French society outlined in the whole of La comédie humaine. At the end of Ferragus we see the title character entranced by the games of boules played on the esplanade of Montparnasse: “The man . . . would unﬂaggingly attend every match of boules.”33 But Balzac’s narrator points out that this spectator “walked sympathetically with the cochonnet, the small ball that serves as the target and constitutes the interest of the game; he would lean against a tree when the cochonnet stopped; then, with the same attention that a dog gives its master, he would watch the boules ﬂying in the air or rolling on the ground. You would have taken him for the fantastic genie of the cochonnet.”34 Even in a downpour “he stayed near the cochonnet,” but he never seems to notice the presence of the players, who believe him to be deaf and dumb.35 This description allegorically points to the problems of Ferragus’s other characters and even to the problem of society: that is, all focus on a small part of the game and fail to notice the larger picture. Ferragus ﬁ xates solely on the small wooden target and sees the boules arriving, as if from nowhere, and rolling up to the target. This is why, for Ferragus, there is a supernatural element to the game: he maintains a sort of magical “sympathy” with the cochonnet. Ferragus and the other characters thus remain blind to other levels of causality (as Bell points out); they do not see the hand launching the boules.36 The narrator, on the other hand, sees and describes the players just as he sees and describes the context into which Ferragus and the other characters ﬁt. In describing Ferragus, for example, the narrator even makes reference to scientiﬁc

Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse | 59 categorization and remarks that were it permissible to assimilate Parisians into zoological classiﬁcations, Ferragus would belong to the mollusk genus. The narrator, like Laplace’s demon, can and does see the broader spectrum of humanity and perceives chance encounters within this broader context, describing this big picture purposefully in the narrative’s so-called haphazard introductions and conclusions. While chance exists, a higher force controls it: in Balzac’s texts chance is subject to the overarching power of a social and cultural system. The same is true in La peau de chagrin, the Balzacian narrative of chance par excellence. The motor that sets the entire plot in motion here is a game of chance, trente et quarante, represented in great detail in the novel’s opening pages. By the end of the novel, however, this eruption of chance can be seen as the willful expression of a higher power—that of the narrator. Of this novel’s conclusion Bell contends that chance retains its sway: “The untidiness of the epilogue, its supplementary character, is reason enough to point to it as a rather chaotic moment.”37 But the epilogue, while it certainly does not limit the text’s multivalent nature, does cause the reader to reconsider the chance occurrences of the narrative as part of a broader allegorical framework that the narrator explicitly elucidates. Pauline is an idyllic image, a vaporous ﬂame, a woman “who wanted to protect her country against modern invasions.”38 As for Foedora, “yesterday she was at the theater, tonight she will go to the Opera, she is everywhere, she is, if you will, Society.”39 While the narrator’s explanations are far from complete, and while the narrative voice does not offer explicit interpretations of either the ass’s skin or Raphaël’s death, the narrator does imply that the apparently chance happenings in the novel are to be understood

60 | Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse allegorically, that they suggest wide-ranging social issues. The epilogue, in fact, makes it clear that the narrator, not chance, has created the events in question in an attempt to construct an allegorical representation of France in the immediate wake of the July Revolution of 1830.40 Even the scene where chance is plainly the predominant force—Raphaël’s visit to the gaming house—is apparently directed by another, higher, unseen power. The other players can sense this unseen power, and one of them thus bets all his money against Raphaël, doubling his money. Raphaël’s loss at the gaming table is what leads him to aimlessly wander the streets of Paris and to eventually discover the wild ass’s skin. This socalled chance happening is thereby inscribed in a causal chain of events that becomes clear in retrospect. Balzac describes himself as a historian, as seeking to present “the general history of Society” through the lives of his characters: “I grant as much importance to the consistent, everyday, secret or obvious events, to the individual acts, to their causes and their principles, as historians have attached to the public events of nations. The unknown battle in a valley of the Indre province between Madame de Mortsauf and her passion is perhaps as important as the most illustrious of well-known battles.”41 La peau de chagrin, rather than a text representing the uncontrollable nature of chance, is a study analyzing “Life itself . . . in conﬂict with Desire, principle of all Passion.”42 In other words, Balzac’s individuals are to be understood as types, types motivated by “causes” and “principles,” cogs in a broad cultural, political, and historical system. Simply put, Balzac attempts to show how all the random “forms” taken by humans in fact ﬁt into a system of “Social Spe-

Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse | 61 cies” that resembles but extends beyond the various branches of zoological species classiﬁed by Buffon.43 What initially appears inchoate or aleatory, Balzac in the end places into categories—nuanced, complex, and polyvalent, to be sure, but categories nonetheless. Chance is beholden to the rigorous control of Balzac’s narrators and governed by Balzac’s project of classiﬁcation. In the foreword to La comédie humaine, while Balzac does acknowledge the role of chance (“The Social Estate is inﬂuenced by chance occurrences [des hasards] that Nature does not allow”; “Chance is the world’s greatest novelist”), he posits that le hasard, when studied carefully, can instead be understood as part of a larger system of human behavior.44 Nature, or science, may not be able to describe humanity’s chance occurrences, but his system will. Just after writing that “chance is the world’s greatest novelist,” Balzac, in the same paragraph, offers the reader a sketch of this system: “When establishing the inventory of vices and virtues, when assembling the principal facts of passions, when painting the temperaments, when choosing the principal events of Society, when composing types by assembling several homogeneous traits, perhaps I could manage to write the history forgotten by so many historians: the human moral history.”45 Balzac claims that while he takes le hasard as a starting point, he will move beyond it and ultimately reveal the moral causality behind what the isolated characters may perceive as chance events: “To warrant the praises each artist seeks, was I not obliged to study the reasons or the reason of these social outcomes, to surprise the hidden meaning in this immense conglomeration of ﬁgures, of passions and of events.”46 “Reason” will supplant chance as Balzac explains the heretofore “hidden meaning” of events. He concludes: “Society should hold

62 | Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse within itself the reason of its movement.”47 In other words, the great overarching reason, or “social motor,” is to be found not in the realm of chance, but in society itself.48 For Balzac, where the uninitiated see le hasard, he sees reasons, categories, types. The mechanism at work in Balzac’s Comédie humaine is in fact a principle outlined by Laplace in his Philosophical Essay on Probabilities: “The most precise observations and experiments are always subject to errors that inﬂuence the values of the elements one wishes to infer from them. To get rid of these errors, in as much as it is possible, by doing away with them one by one, we must increase the number of observations; for the more observations there are, the more accurate will the mean be.”49 In the course of La comédie humaine Balzac’s narrators multiply their observations over and over as they look at various social classes and various geographic locations, eventually extracting types and positing conclusions that the individual characters, blinded by what they see only as chance events, cannot comprehend. Christopher Prendergast, in his study of mimesis in La comédie humaine, puts it this way: “The question that presses itself upon Balzac is how to gather up this heterogeneous, mobile and often deceptive material into a uniﬁed and coherent whole.”50 Balzac, Prendergast claims, is driven by a “desire to identify and order the heterogeneous according to systems of representation that are ﬁ xed and hierarchical.”51 In other words, Balzac imposes a structure upon the disparate by forcing chance events into logical, ordered categories. Prendergast is quick to point out, however, that such a “response was not the only available one in the period.”52 In the pages that follow I will look at another available response to the inchoate, this time in the works of Prosper Mérimée.

Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse | 63 chance in mérimée’s works We have already witnessed how Mérimée’s stories are colored by the social and historical movements of his time (see chapter 1). But ironically, the narratives written by this historian and inspecteur des monuments historiques work in a direction opposite Balzac’s. From a rational beginning they consistently fray into illogical, random dénouements. The logical narrator of “La Vénus d’Ille,” like a detective in a mystery novel, attempts to ﬁnd causal explanations for Alphonse’s death but in the end is unable to do so. Based on the scant information we have about the events leading up to Alphonse’s murder, the most plausible explanation— the one supported by an eyewitness, by creaking stairs, and by small footprints in the mud—is the least rational: that Alphonse was murdered by a jealous statue. In other words, causal reasoning leads us to an unreasonable conclusion. The process of causality is further subverted by the randomness of the murder. While the narrator and his host, M. de Peyrehorade, attempt to pin down and deﬁne the statue throughout the narrative (linguistically, historically, and artistically), in the end they meet with failure. The chance event of the narrative’s opening pages (the discovery of the Venus buried under an olive tree) proves too great to master, too random to conﬁne to any scientiﬁc or artistic classiﬁcation. The narrator is not even able to draw the statue (“Since eight in the morning I had been sitting in front of the Venus, pencil in hand, trying for the twentieth time to draw the statue’s head without being able to capture her expression”).53 Its malicious powers seem to prohibit all attempts by the well-educated Frenchman to represent or deﬁne it in any way. The narrator’s rationality cannot grapple with the apparent supernatural workings afoot. As a his-

64 | Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse torian Mérimée knew well that the past would always maintain its share of secrets. Moreover, like the Venus, history can never be entirely captured or understood, least of all by tidy, causal explanations. Like Alphonse’s random death, many events in history hinge on the irrationality of forces outside of human control. In Lokis causal reasoning again leads to irrational, troubling conclusions. The doctor’s examination of the body found in the nuptial chamber leads to the following causal conclusion: that Count Szémioth inexplicably and suddenly lost his head and tore open his new bride’s throat with his teeth (“Those are bite marks!”).54 Piecing together the other clues of the narrative leads the rational reader to yet another entirely irrational conclusion: that the count’s mother was raped by a bear and that the count is thus, disturbingly, half man, half bear! This randomness is underscored by the numerous references to games throughout the narrative: from the doctor’s invitation to play the card game douratchki; to the hunt during which the count’s mother is ravaged by a bear; to the salon game where the narrator, the count, and other guests are blindfolded and end up with their hands in a jar of honey.55 These events, like the bride’s murder, prove too unpredictable to master, too irrational for the historian/narrator to ﬁt into any kind of causal system. Lokis ends with a dry, linguistic discussion of the word lokis. There is no mention of the count’s bestial appetite for blood, no attempt to explain or situate the narrative’s horriﬁc conclusion. This is similar to the end of Carmen, where the narrator launches into an academic discussion of gypsies: “Spain is one of the countries where you can still ﬁnd, and in even greater number, these nomads, dispersed throughout Europe, and known as Bohémiens,

Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse | 65 Gitanos, Gypsies, Zigeuner, etc.”56 Carmen’s narrator justiﬁes his detached analysis in the novella’s closing paragraph: “That should be enough to give Carmen’s reader an advantageous idea of my studies on the Rommani.”57 This is the only mention of Carmen in the concluding chapter, where Don José is not named at all. As with the conclusion of Lokis, no overarching lesson is drawn from the narrative’s tumultuous events, and no system is established to include or explain its tragic dénouement. All the narrator can say for sure is that Carmen was a Gypsy who spoke Romany and that he can trace the etymology of several French words back to this language. While there are certainly a number of compelling reasons for ending the narratives this way, the primary one may be that Mérimée thus sought to underscore the random, inexplicable nature of his narratives and by extension the disconnected, haphazard nature of any sort of history—moral, societal, or otherwise. Though written very early in his literary career (1829), Mérimée’s “Vision de Charles XI” hints at the problematic nature of using causal reasoning to arrive at a historical account. This short story describes the vision of the Swedish king Charles XI. One evening, we are told, the king and several of his associates notice bright lights in the General Assembly room of the castle. Upon entering the room they see a blood-covered cadaver on the throne and then witness a beheading. The blood of the executed man ﬂows down and stains the king’s shoe. This is followed by a prophecy: “This blood will not be shed during your reign . . . but ﬁve reigns after yours. Cursed, cursed, cursed be the blood of Wasa!”58 The story of this vision, the narrative recounts, is based on an afﬁdavit signed by the king and the other witnesses. The narrative ends by

66 | Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse outlining the vision’s fulﬁllment in the murder of Gustave III and the execution of his assassin. Instead, then, of building a historical discourse that works backward, ﬁnding causal explanations for present circumstances, this narrative works from the past forward (anticipating the future via the vision), thereby undermining the very notion of historical causal relationships. Instead of the causes that led to the murder of the king, we are shown the events, supernaturally, before they occur. The vision is presented as a random occurrence, its only connection to Charles XI his genealogical relationship to the ﬁgures present in the apparition. The fantastical nature of the vision further serves to undermine the authority of historical documents: can one trust an afﬁdavit that conﬁrms the presence of supernatural forces? The ﬁrst sentence of the narrative places the events within the context of historical discourse: “We make fun of visions and supernatural apparitions; some of them, however, are so well documented that, if we refuse to believe in them, we would be obligated, in order to be consistent, to reject en masse all historical testimony.”59 By the end we are tempted to agree that “all historical testimony” should, in fact, be rejected. Signiﬁcantly, the document on which Mérimée based his “Vision de Charles XI” was, as Maurice Parturier notes, “a literary hoax [une supercherie littéraire], fabricated for political ends” in 1742.60 Mérimée is himself, of course, the master of literary hoaxes, publishing his plays under the name of the Spanish actress Clara Gazul, passing off original poetry as a translation (La guzla), and in 1833 publishing a collection of short stories (Mosaïque) written by “the author of Théâtre de Clara Gazul” (Mérimée’s name ﬁgures nowhere in the volume). When Mérimée republished “Vision de Charles XI” in 1833, an envoy of the Swedish king felt

Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse | 67 compelled to publish a letter in the Revue de Paris protesting the story’s publication and refuting its errors. The story’s very sources again call into question the reliability of historical interpretation and emphasize the potential for deception and manipulation within the ﬁeld of history. Mérimée’s “La partie de trictrac” is emblematic of his perspective of history. Trying to kill time while stuck in a calm at sea, the narrator, wishing to imitate a sailor who is throwing his knife into the ship’s ﬂoorboards, asks the captain for his knife. The captain declines; his knife once belonged to a friend, Lieutenant Roger, whose story the captain then begins to relate: Roger, the illegitimate son of a nobleman, falls in love with an actress named Gabrielle and after risking his life (as well as the lives of his friends) ﬁnally wins her affections. After three months of bliss a Dutch frigate enters the port. The French naval ofﬁcers feel obligated to entertain their Dutch colleagues, but since the Dutchmen speak French poorly, they resort to gambling to pass the time: “The Dutch seemed to have a lot of money; and their ﬁrst lieutenant wanted to wager so much that none of us dared play with him. Roger, who normally did not gamble, felt that on such an occasion he needed to defend his country’s honor. So he played and agreed to whatever the Dutch lieutenant proposed.”61 The sums wagered increase signiﬁcantly until the ofﬁcers are playing for twenty-ﬁve napoleons a game: “It was an enormous sum for poor ofﬁcers like us. It represented over two months’ worth of wages. After a week Roger had lost all the money he had, plus three or four thousand francs that he had borrowed from various people.”62 Roger continues to lose, ﬁnally wagering the household money shared with Gabrielle:

68 | Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse Soon he was down to his last twenty-ﬁve napoleons. He played horribly. And the game was long and tightly contested. At one point it was Roger’s turn, and he had one chance left to win: I think he needed to roll a six and a four. It was late. An ofﬁcer who had been watching them play for some time had fallen asleep in an armchair. The Dutchman was worn out and drowsy; what’s more, he had had a lot to drink. Only Roger was wide awake and weighed down with violent despair. He trembled as he rolled the dice. He threw them so forcefully that a candle fell to the ﬂoor. The Dutchman ﬁrst looked at the candle that had just covered his new pants with wax then looked at the dice: a six and a four. Roger, as pale as death, took the twenty-ﬁve napoleons. They kept playing. Luck turned in favor of my sad friend despite the fact that he played poorly and forgot to count points he had earned [faisait école sur école]—as if he were trying to lose. The Dutch lieutenant insisted they keep playing. He doubled, quadrupled the wager, but still lost. I can still see him. He was tall and blond, cool with a face that seemed to be made of wax. He ﬁ nally left the table, having lost forty thousand francs. He paid his losses without the slightest show of emotion. Roger told him: “What we did tonight means nothing. You were half asleep. I don’t want your money.” “You’re joking,” the cool Dutchman replied. “I played very well, but the dice were against me. I’m sure I could always beat you, even giving you a four-hole lead. Goodnight!” And he left. The next day we learned the Dutch lieutenant, depressed because of his loss, had blown his brains out in his room after drinking a bowl of punch.63

Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse | 69 Several remarks regarding the representation of trictrac are pertinent here. Roger makes mistakes (besides manipulating the dice, as he admits later on) that violate the limits of socially acceptable behavior outlined in trictrac manuals. Jollivet, playing on the word dame—a word that means both “ladies” and “checkers”— remarks: “Please allow me here to warn players to treat their checkers [dames] gently. If one uses modesty and gentleness with wooden checkers, which are insensitive, one will by nature or by habit speak, treat, and conduct oneself modestly with people and living women [dames] who only require love and gentleness in their friendships.”64 According to Jollivet, since Roger mistreats the checkers, he will mistreat the women in his life; since he cheats at trictrac, he will cheat in love. This may explain why Roger feels he will never again be able to love Gabrielle as he did before and why he feels that cheating at a game reveals a deep-seated ﬂaw in his character. Le Peintre indicates that a player “should not play for sums that go beyond his wealth: when one places one’s ﬁnancial resources in danger, one can no longer enjoy the game, and it is an inexcusable stupidity to play a game that is not in proportion with one’s means in a company that has met solely for amusement.”65 Both Roger and the Dutch lieutenant clearly violate this principle, wagering sums so large that Roger in particular is unable to maintain his noble detachment from the game’s outcome. In his discussion of Castiglione’s sixteenth-century treatise on gambling, Thomas Kavanagh puts it this way: “There are ways of gambling that are unacceptable for the true courtier: to play with the primary intention of winning money; to cheat; or, when losing, to act in such a way as to reveal an inordinate attachment to money. . . .

70 | Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse Gambling must . . . be an occasion for the courtier to demonstrate his independence from money as money.”66 The more one wagers, the more one is able to distinguish oneself from the bourgeois who does value money for money’s sake.67 Roger, in attempting to assert his noble status (as a nobleman’s illegitimate son) by wagering sums far above his means, instead, because he lacks the requisite detachment from money, reveals to what extent he is a bourgeois gentilhomme. Finally, Le Peintre indicates the type of attitude a player should maintain throughout the game: “One must avoid . . . being silent and somber, in order to not make a state affair out of an amusement. Moreover, if one does this one appears to accord more importance to the game than to the person with whom one is playing.”68 Again, Roger, “weighed down with violent despair” and “pale as death,” demonstrates that he is a poor trictrac player. Like Alphonse in “La Vénus d’Ille,” Roger breaches the limits expected in a noble game, and this leads him to cheat, which in turn pushes him into a state of suicidal depression. Signiﬁcantly here, Roger’s behavior when playing trictrac indicates that he is unable to effectively manage or endure the effects of chance. He is so incapable that he cheats in order to get a handle on chance’s disruptive inﬂuence both in his life and on his wallet. From this point on Roger is consumed by his guilt. And while Gabrielle and the captain/narrator convince him not to commit suicide, he willfully exposes himself to enemy ﬁre during a tour of duty, thereby ﬁxing the circumstances of his death and once again attempting to manipulate chance. Fatally wounded, he implores his friend to end his life:

Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse | 71 “Throw me overboard,” he screamed, swearing horribly and grabbing the coattails of my uniform. “You can see I’m not going to recover; throw me in the ocean, I don’t want to see our ﬂag captured.” Two sailors approached in order to carry him below deck. “Man your cannons, swabs,” he yelled. “Load grapeshot and aim at their deck. And you, if you don’t keep your word, then you can go to hell, you coward!” His wound was certainly fatal. I saw the captain call a cadet and order him to surrender our ﬂag. “Give me your hand,” I told Roger. As we were surrendering . . . “Captain, a whale off the starboard bow!” An ensign, running toward the captain, interrupted our conversation. “A whale!” the captain exclaimed, carried away with joy and abandoning his narrative; “Quick, lower the launch! lower the yawl! lower all the launches!—Harpoons, ropes! etc., etc.” I never did learn how poor Lieutenant Roger died.69

Mérimée’s story ends here, with emphasis on its very lack of closure. Like a historian whose research is set in motion by the discovery of an ancient building, work of art, or relic, the narrator begins this story by discovering an artifact, the knife, and is taken back in time to discover its signiﬁcance. While much of the mystery is elucidated, the full meaning of the knife—its potential role in Roger’s death, how it came to be in the captain’s possession, and so on—is never revealed. The causal sequencing from artifact to event is disrupted and incomplete.70 Moreover, the central, endemic scene in the narrative (the game of trictrac) underscores the role of chance in Mérimée’s dis-

72 | Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse course. It is this game of chance that leads to the protagonist’s guilt, depression, and subsequent death. Roger’s problems begin, in fact, when he plays with chance by manipulating the dice to get a favorable outcome. From that point on it seems as if chance becomes an autonomous force out for revenge. The captain remarks, “Luck turned in favor of my sad friend” (La chance devint favorable à mon malheureux ami).71 This sentence is particularly ironic, since the word heureux stems from the twelfth-century word euros, meaning “beneﬁting from . . . luck.” 72 The sentence could in fact be translated as follows: “Luck turned in favor of my unlucky friend.” Roger is unlucky, in this case, because despite his best (or his worst) efforts he continues to win. The text indicates that Roger makes “école sur école” (school after school). In other words, he intentionally fails to record his own points (and they are therefore awarded to his opponent). Moreover, he moves his pieces incorrectly (“casait mal”), losing even more points. Nevertheless, he wins forty thousand francs! Chance acts here as an uncontrollable force of chaos that counteracts human intention and strategy. As in so many of Mérimée’s texts, key elements are left unexplained. Forces outside of the narrator’s comprehension disrupt what should be a harmonious, congruent narrative. As in his ﬁction, in his historical writing Mérimée resists any historical argument that leads to a categorical, overarching explanation of events. In 1855 Mérimée published an article entitled “Des mythes primitifs” in which he reviews F. de Rougemont’s book Le peuple primitif, sa religion, son histoire et sa civilisation. He criticizes the book because de Rougemont imposes an a priori system, maintaining that pagan myths are all degenerated forms of biblical stories. De Rougemont, Mérimée remarks, has “an opin-

Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse | 73 ion that is too set in advance as to the results of his investigations. . . . Much virtue is required if one is to renounce a bad argument when it seems useful to the system one has constructed.” 73 In a sense Mérimée attacks Rougemont because he is trying to make everything ﬁt into a preconceived mold instead of letting history act itself out, instead of allowing chance to play a role. Mérimée’s criticism of de Rougemont’s argument is reminiscent of the narrator’s criticism of M. de Peyrehorade in “La Vénus d’Ille.” M. de Peyrehorade views the Venus as a piece of evidence supporting his broad theory about the Roman and even Phoenician origins of the region. The narrator calls his host’s theories “far-fetched,” but in the end even his own theories prove unable to fully capture or explain the Venus.74 This in turn mirrors Mérimée’s own approach to history and his interpretation of modern events. In short, history cannot be entirely understood. Contemporary events cannot be fully appreciated. Like trictrac, chance can be partially understood (in terms of probability), but certain of its aspects, like single throws of the dice, will always remain unpredictable and possibly detached from preceding and subsequent events. The concluding sentences of his 1829 historical novel, Chronique du règne de Charles IX, reveal Mérimée’s reluctance to deﬁnitively tie up history with tidy conclusions: “Was Mergy consoled? Did Diane take another lover? I leave the decision up to the reader, who, in this manner, will always ﬁnish the novel as he likes.”75 Where Balzac places chance events within a broader scope or system, Mérimée leaves his texts unresolved. In fact, when we read his texts, we too are duped. The systems or philosophies that we, as readers, think will explain chance events unravel in the end or turn out to be canulars (hoaxes, practical

74 | Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse jokes).76 Along Cournot’s chance-in-history spectrum Balzac would be aligned with the history-as-chess model, while Mérimée would be closer to history-as-trictrac. When Balzac mentions trictrac in Le lys dans la vallée, chance is completely mastered by the superior player (Félix), who is able to win or lose as he desires.77 Mérimée’s character must cheat to change outcomes and then, despite his best efforts, cannot lose even when he tries. The force of the dice is stronger than human control, outside of it. For Balzac the historical backstory is a system that, though the characters cannot perceive it, is preexisting; it is the hidden cause of the visible effects. Mérimée begins with effects and works backward, suggesting causes but also allowing much about random, unresolved events to remain unexplained. It may now be possible to theorize that the introduction of the fantastic in Mérimée’s ﬁction is comparable to what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls a “Black Swan.” Taleb describes the Black Swan’s tripartite makeup as follows: “First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.”78 Taleb goes on to argue that Black Swans—the events that shake up governments and transform civilizations—expose the lie of conventional historical discourse, namely the accepted idea that major changes are caused by a logical sequence of events that lead to an inevitable and predictable crisis, revolution, or transformation. He posits that historians “cheat”—that is, they construct systems that explain why momentous events were, in retrospect, inevitable, even

Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse | 75 though just before the cataclysmic event no one suspected what was about to occur. Mérimée’s fantastic—the introduction of the unpredictable in the form of ghosts, moving statues, and mysterious knives—may be read as emblematic of his conception of history as a series of profound but unpredictable events—events, like the Black Swan, that fall outside the bell curve of probability and whose causes are too abstract to be represented in a conventional narrative. Attempts to “concoct” explanations after the fact, while they speak to humanity’s desire to place events in comprehensible systems, do not honestly reﬂect the random nature of many violent, society-changing episodes. If a lack of resolution is emphasized in Mérimée’s ﬁction, it is also underscored in his formal, historical studies. Here is the conclusion of Mérimée’s “Histoire de don Pèdre Ier”: “Either Don Pèdre’s pride, satisﬁed by the success of this short expedition, was more amenable, or, as one can assume, his mistrust led him to discover dangers known only to him within his kingdom; he seemed to accept the mediation of the Holy See with pleasure this time.”79 The words either, or, and seemed typify the doubt that underscores Mérimée’s unwillingness to deﬁnitively portray or limit the import of historical events. Indeed, Mérimée’s historical analyses are ﬁlled with questions, with words and phrases like probably, perhaps, I believe, and one must assume. 80 The concluding paragraph of his history of the false Elizabeth II (of Russia) is characteristic of Mérimée’s historical approach: The false Elizabeth went to the grave with her secret. . . . But how can we explain that a number of intelligent people were her dupes or at least granted her a certain amount of attention that she did not seem to deserve? . . . There are people who converse brilliant-

76 | Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse ly but who are unable to write what they know how to say intelligently. Our adventuress was perhaps of this ilk. However, when we examine her letters to Golitsyne and to the Empress, their absurdity and disjointedness indicate something more than a simple inability to express her thoughts. Is it not possible that Catherine was right when she wrote that the false Elizabeth’s head was not right? We have seen that several imposters, Mathurin Bruneau, for example, were mad. 81

Even at the end of this history—ostensibly destined to elucidate the origins and motivations of the “adventuress”—questions and suppositions persist, and the false Elizabeth’s aura of mystery remains (she “went to the grave with her secret”). Instead of making a concrete assertion, Mérimée concludes with an undeveloped hypothesis: that the false Elisabeth was deranged. As a historian he is unafraid to show his doubts, his hesitations, his inability to explain everything, to offer readers a tightly constructed historical narrative. He presents history as chaos that can be approximated and loosely connected via hypothesis, but never fully understood or represented. The conclusion of Mérimée’s Essai sur la guerre sociale is reminiscent of the concluding paragraph of his historical novel Chronique du règne de Charles IX: “These rights, after the reestablishment of order, did they receive them thanks to the pity of some Roman magistrate? Were they obtained from the dictator himself once he ceased to fear them? The fact remains uncertain; but I cannot consider it improbable that Sylla, satisﬁed to have abolished their nationality and not wanting to exterminate each individual, consented to assimilate them with the Romans, and perhaps, for his part, this apparent pity was a reﬁned form of ven-

Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse | 77 geance.”82 Questions, uncertainty, and the use of the words improbable and perhaps all tend to leave the past both open to further conjecture and eerily undeﬁned. It is in fact as “conjectures” that Mérimée presents whatever conclusions he arrives at in his historical studies. In the ﬁrst paragraph of La conjuration de Catalina he writes, “It is by analyzing and comparing authors who wrote on this memorable period, by studying the personalities and interests of the characters of this great drama, that I hope to justify my explanations, or, if you prefer, my conjectures.”83 He goes on to lament that so much of the past will never be known: “Time has unfortunately destroyed several . . . works that would have shed great light on the period I have chosen to study. . . . These lacunae are almost impossible to ﬁll.” 84 Elsewhere, in a review of Napoleon III’s Histoire de Jules César, Mérimée writes: “As soon as one attempts to understand all the details of a bygone civilization, one is constantly stopped by difﬁcult problems that necessitate recourse to scholarship and archeology. It is not enough to know the classical authors and their commentators; one most also examine the monuments, inscriptions, and medals. No piece of information can be neglected. And yet, no matter how extensive this research may be, it is extremely rare to completely dissipate the obscurity that envelops these distant ages.”85 Any complete explanation of the past is impossible: too many lacunae exist for certainty to be established, and many events can only be explained as chance occurrences. And when the political regimes of the Restoration or the July Monarchy or even the Second Empire rely so heavily on the interpretation of the past to justify their own existence, Mérimée’s undermining of deﬁnitive historical discourse also subtly undermines their authority. 86

78 | Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse mérimée versus michelet and guizot To understand the extent to which chance—or the incomprehensible—colors Mérimée’s representation of history, we should brieﬂy contrast Mérimée’s self-questioning style with Michelet’s elegiac, nationalistic, and self-assured style. In her study of nineteenth-century historiography Linda Orr remarks that “nineteenth-century historians . . . focused on unity and harmony and, because they had to bring about that unity, highlighted images around which their society could rally.” 87 In other words, historians preferred to minimize the incomprehensible violence of the Revolution, favoring a representation that couched arbitrary events in a logical series of progressive change. As Orr inimitably puts it, “Historical writing of the nineteenth century . . . had to excise or assimilate into the logic of history the cup of blood, heads bobbing on pikes, and the slash of the guillotine.” What seemed to be random, inexplicable violence needed to be subsumed into a causal teleology that “lines up from a beginning through the present to an ultimate end.”88 Michelet in particular epitomizes this sort of teleological approach to history. In his work Le peuple Michelet describes France as the pontiff of the age of Enlightenment. But this lofty position does not result from some chance event; rather, it stems from a far-reaching chain of historical progress: “This is not an accident of recent centuries, a revolutionary stroke of luck [un hasard révolutionnaire]. It is the legitimate result of a tradition two thousand years in the making.”89 And if the present is linked causally to the past, the future too is a result of present acts and desires: “The future is a religion, as an unborn son is for an expectant mother. What act [gives birth to the future]? An act of love and gener-

Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse | 79 ation that creates what it loves. The future is the loved and desired object, it is not produced by capriciousness nor by chance [hasard] nor by possibility, but engendered by legitimate causality [causalité légitime], through sovereign reason that grants existence to both future and past.” 90 Michelet uses the same maternal imagery when describing the creation of social classes. Speaking of the people, he writes: “I do not see this mass suddenly born, as if by chance [hasard], like an ephemeral monster bursting out of the ground; I see it descend by a legitimate generation from the depths of history. Life is less mysterious when one knows its birth, its ancestors and predecessors, when one has seen how the living creature existed . . . well before its birth.”91 History therefore is as easily understood as the oldest of human processes: love, procreation, and birth. By using such a metaphor to describe historical development Michelet posits that there exists a cause-and-effect, even genealogical relationship among the past, present, and future. And mystery (or the “fantastic,” as it is called in Mérimée’s case) can be eliminated from history when one correctly understands the reasons leading up to a given situation or event (“Life is less mysterious when”). The opening lines of Michelet’s preface to his Introduction à l’histoire universelle demonstrate his approach to history: This little book could also be titled: “Introduction to the History of France”; it is destined to lead us to France. And patriotism has nothing at all to do with it. In his profound solitude, far from the inﬂuence of any school, sect, or party, the author, via logic and history, came to one conclusion: that his glorious country is from now on the pilot of humanity’s vessel. But this vessel sails today in a great storm; it is going so fast, so fast, that even the most

80 | Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse solid become faint, and every breast is oppressed. What can I do in this beautiful and terrible movement? One thing only: understand it.92

Michelet claims to have used logic to arrive at a deﬁnitive conclusion: that France is unquestionably the world’s captain. And what will he do about the storm currently troubling France? Quite simply, understand it. While Mérimée positions himself as the historian who will study the past and offer conjectures or raise questions, Michelet positions himself as the historian who will understand the past, answer the questions, and explain these answers to his readers in no uncertain terms, thereby righting the wavering vessel of France. Guizot is another nineteenth-century historian whose approach at ﬁrst glance bears some similarity to Mérimée’s. In his Histoire de la civilisation en Europe (1828) Guizot presents European history as chaotic, stormy, and varied, when compared with that of other “ancient civilizations.”93 Unlike Mérimée, however, Guizot argues that order and stability eventually replace chaos, that temperance eventually soothes extremism and absolutism. “Theocratic, monarchical, aristocratic, and popular beliefs overlap, contradict, limit, and modify themselves” and eventually lead to a European brand of unity, characterized by moderation.94 In retrospect, presenting the European political landscape as varied and chaotic serves primarily to justify the July Monarchy (1830–48, Guizot serving as prime minister in 1847–48), a constitutional monarchy based on compromise that theoretically brought together republican and monarchical ideals without the extremism that had accompanied them in the past. Guizot’s famous lectures on history (1829–32) suggest that the events of the past can be ex-

Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse | 81 plained and understood as leading inevitably toward the great compromise of the July Monarchy. This idea of compromise and the extremism that leads to it is the unseen force governing all of Guizot’s historical analyses. If I have summarily examined the construction of history in the works of these authors, it is primarily to underscore the uniqueness of Mérimée’s perspective on chance and history. For Laplace, Balzac, Michelet, Guizot, and even Fichte and Hegel human history can be understood as a series of logically connected events guided by overarching political, deterministic, or divine forces.95 For Mérimée if such a force exists, it can never be fully understood, certainly not by using a priori logic or conventional, teleological historical models.96 In terms of nineteenth-century historians Mérimée’s approach is perhaps closest to that of Alexis de Tocqueville, who acknowledges that the French Revolution came as a surprise to contemporary observers: “The event was no better judged at home than abroad. In France, on the eve of the Revolution, people still had no clear idea of what it would do. Among the mass of cahiers, I could ﬁnd only two which showed any fear of the populace.”97 In other words, the Revolution initially appeared as a random occurrence beyond the limits of any predictable paradigm, experienced as “contrary to the whole previous course of history . . . so incomprehensible, that in regarding it the mind lost its bearings.”98 Here Tocqueville recognizes that the causal narrative explaining the Revolution had been constructed by historians after the fact. And while he does provide his own explanation for the Revolution, Tocqueville ﬁrst acknowledges that what he offers is a postmortem, conceivable only because of his ﬁfty-year distance from the events.

82 | Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse By representing history as subject to the uncontrollable force of chance, Mérimée set himself at odds with the dominant mindset of his day. Kavanagh explains that “the emerging ideology of a bourgeoisie insisting on a respect for instrumental reason, a recognition of personal merit, and a reverence for individual wealth would leave no room for chance.”99 By infusing his writing with doubt, chance, and the fantastic, Mérimée resists the imposition of the bourgeois system of a posteriori categories, where every event is neatly labeled for mass distribution. But this resistance should not be perceived as some sort of Romantic defense of ancien régime ideologies. It is instead Mérimée’s attempt to preserve his scholarly independence and to study historical moments either as products of far-reaching cultural and political currents or as inscrutable, random, unconnected occurrences. In the end historians like Michelet, with a predilection for systems and deﬁnitive answers, corresponded more adequately to the rise in positivist thinking and the development of statistics (the science of controlling chance), their approach winning out by the latter part of the nineteenth century.100 This is perhaps why the baron Pierre de Coubertin, in his 1897 historical treatise on the evolution of France, wistfully remembers the days when history and chance were inextricably intertwined: The annals of monarchy were full of the unexpected; the events therein always bore the stamp of the sovereign will: either that of the monarch, or that of the ministers to whom the monarch delegated or abandoned the exercise of power. Athwart the march of events the human soul was perceptible, always inﬂuenced by surroundings and circumstances, yet acting in a thoroughly individual manner. Democratic history, on the contrary, is full of

Trictrac and Chess as Models of Historical Discourse | 83 logic; it is made by peoples, and not by men; there is a sort of fatality and mathematical rigidity in the way in which everything is linked together, and the slow forces, the irresistible currents, which characterize it have deep origins and remote results.101

Coubertin views history during the ancien régime as a series of chance events, inﬂuenced by the random decisions of monarchs who imposed their individual whims on the “march of events.” The Republic, on the other hand, creates a situation in which causality and logic, even “mathematical rigidity,” replace chance. If Coubertin is correct, this may explain why, to this day, the republican consciousness has favored nineteenth-century “chess” historians, such as Michelet and Guizot, over the likes of Mérimée.

four

Of Rabbits and Kings Hunting and Upward Mobility

La chasse est un remède souverain pour bien des maux qui afﬂ igent notre triste humanité, mais jusqu’à présent on n’a pu rien trouver pour guérir de la chasse. Elzéar Blaze, Le chasseur conteur

In a pamphlet published six weeks after the July Revolution of 1830, a subject of the former monarch, Charles X, outlines numerous blunders made by the king—blunders that eventually led to the king’s ouster. The pamphlet criticizes Charles X for appointing farceurs (pranksters) and canaille (rabble) to high ministerial positions, for “always having thirty dishes on [his] table while [his] subjects were dying of hunger,” and for sending troops to Spain to help an unworthy king (Ferdinand VII)—a “soft pear” of a Christian—regain the throne.1 The pamphlet’s author further insults the former king as impotent and unable to read. But the author’s strongest criticism, the accusation repeated time after time, is that Charles X spent far too much time hunting: “When a sovereign likes . . . hunting too much, he exposes himself to the danger of being hunted off the throne.”2 And who was the author with enough chutzpa to publish such virulent attacks against a recently deposed monarch? None other than Jeannot, the “philosophizing rabbit,” whose pamphlet is entitled “Letter from a Rabbit at Saint-

86 | Of Rabbits and Kings Cloud to Charles X, on the Signiﬁcant Drawbacks of Loving the Hunt too Much, Contaning Moral and Political Reﬂections Concerning the Royal Hunt of July 29, 1830.” One might argue that Jeannot wrote from the perspective of a rabbit to avoid potential ﬁnes or prison should the former monarch return, but it is more likely that he adopted this perspective for comic effect, to take advantage of the symbolic potency of the hunt.3 The “rabbit” asks Charles X what good he has done since being put on the throne: Did you work even one hour for the happiness of your subjects? . . . They were certainly worth taking care of. They gave you a very agreeable employment; you were perfectly housed, well fed, furnished with heat and light and with forty million of annual revenue on top of it all. What did we ask in return? The only work we wanted you to do was to not be mean. It was not too tricky, and yet you did not want to complete such an easy task. What did you spend your time doing instead? In the morning you went fasting to Mass in order to be forgiven of your old sins. Then, you ate an excellent lunch. . . . Finally, to aid your digestion, you would come into our woods accompanied by several two-legged animals to chase poor, innocent, defenseless beasts.4

Our rabbit goes on to lament that he was wounded by “lead that your royal hands administered to me during one of your amusements” and repeats several times that the king had failed in his duties because he spent too much time hunting.5 Jeannot tells the king that if he had taken the time to read the paper, he would have discovered that something was amiss in the government: “Perhaps you would have taken a few moments away from hunting to dis-

Of Rabbits and Kings | 87 cover what was brewing. Perhaps you could have thereby avoided the great debacle of July 29.”6 The rabbit goes on to compare Charles X to another famous monarch who shared both the king’s name and his love of the hunt: “You neglected to learn the needs and wishes of the nation that would have happily entrusted you with its future. It is a mistake for which Lucifer will hold you accountable when he puts your old soul into the furnace where he has already placed your worthy ancestor Charles IX.” 7 (This comparison will be examined in detail below.) Of the July Revolution Jeannot writes: “Oh! I will remember the twenty-ninth of July my whole rabbit life. When we heard the shooting we believed, we residents of your royal domain, that you were once again coming to pay us one of those friendly visits during which, as a pastime, you would slaughter a hundred innocent creatures. Soon after, we learned that we were not the ones being hunted, rather it was our eternal hunter. . . . No more hunting rabbits, no more hunting rabbits!”8 The rabbit concludes: “The man who replaces your majesty will keep his promises, we are convinced. He said that he would not hunt: in truth, he will lease out the royal forest to relieve the people, and we will sometimes be troubled, but at least we will die for the nation. . . . Dulce est pro patria mori!”9 This pamphlet underscores the political signiﬁcance of the hunt, while exposing the prevailing attitude toward it: in 1830 people viewed hunting as symbolic of both royal excess and neglect for national well-being. According to the rabbit, the king values hunting over his obligation to care for his subjects. The accessibility of royal forests was generally seen as a gauge of the level of access people had to their government and its representatives.

88 | Of Rabbits and Kings These parallels, however, were not new to 1830: the ties between politics and hunting can be traced far back into the Middle Ages. Of all the leisure activities practiced during the ancien régime none served as a stronger mark of nobility than hunting. To ﬁnd an example one need look no further than the depiction of William the Conqueror’s triumph over the Saxon traitor Harold in the eleventh-century Bayeux Tapestry. Early in the tapestry, in order to identify the protagonists and set them apart from their subjects, the artists consistently depict Harold and William with falcons perched on their wrists and hunting dogs at their feet. The falcons and hounds—symbols of the hunt—here replace the scepter as indicators of power and status. At the same time no leisure practice so encroached on the life of the French commoner as hunting. Under the entry “Chasse [Jurisprud.]” (“Hunting Law”) Diderot’s Encyclopédie explains that until the fourteenth century, while hunting in the king’s forest was forbidden, people were allowed to hunt in other forests and on land that belonged to local communities. In 1396, however, Charles VI “formally made it a crime for nonnobles . . . to hunt large beasts, small beasts, or birds, on the king’s land or off of it.” Even then farmers were still allowed to hunt on their own land, provided they gave the killed game to the local lord or paid him for it. Eventually this concession too was eliminated, as power coalesced around the king. Royal edicts made hunting almost entirely illegal for nonnobles, thereby reserving the privilege (or “right”) of the hunt for royalty. Edicts from the court of Henri IV (similar to those published by François I) made it a crime—punishable by ﬂogging and banishment—to touch pheasant, quail, or partridge eggs found even on one’s own property. And hunting

Of Rabbits and Kings | 89 deer or wild boar was punishable by public ﬂogging (“seront battus de verges sous la custode jusques à effusion de sang”), ﬁnes, life in the galleys, or even death (the “dernier supplice”).10 For smaller game edicts offered a detailed list of ﬁnes for each offense. For the ﬁrst the offender would be forced either to pay ten and two-thirds crowns or, if he lacked funds, to spend one month in prison on bread and water. For the second the offender had the option of paying thirteen and a third crowns or being beaten and placed in the stocks for three hours during the public market. His Majesty did, however, exempt well-born people from corporal punishment: “We do not intend, however, that the penalties inﬂicted on the body be executed except on vile and abject persons and not others.” Comfort indeed. Under Louis XIV the laws became even more absurdly strict. Along with the penalties mentioned above, for example, subjects were now ﬁned if their fences had openings large enough for game to pass through. These laws, of course, generated a great deal of resentment, resentment that was spelled out in the Encyclopédie entry on hunting, penned by Diderot himself: “This right [of the nobility] has been the source . . . of countless wrongs directed at their vassals whose ﬁelds have been destroyed by animals preserved for hunting. The farmer has seen his harvests consumed by stags, by boar, by deer, by every species of bird; the fruit of his labors lost without being allowed to prevent it and without receiving any compensation.”11 The death penalty associated with poaching, mentioned in the same Encyclopédie entry, leads to this comment: “If the life of a stag is so precious, why kill any? If it is nothing, if the life of a man is worth more than the life of all stags, why punish a man with death for having attempted to take the life of a stag?”12

90 | Of Rabbits and Kings Finally, the entry points out that certain members of the nobility have become so obsessed with hunting that they have “neglected all other study and know nothing but horses, dogs, and birds.”13 Given this background it is not surprising that at the fall of the ancien régime the people stormed the countryside, reclaiming a right they felt had been unjustly abused by the monarchy for centuries: “On the infamous night of August 4 the national assembly proclaimed the abolition . . . of the exclusive rights to hunt. . . . Immediately the countryside was inundated with hunters who proceeded to massacre game en masse, without respecting the harvests under way. Even private properties were invaded, the royal and princely hunting ofﬁces pillaged by armed men.”14 To the people protected forests represented bastions of noble excess that, like the Bastille, needed to be breached. Unlike the Bastille, however, forests could be overrun time after time by groups or individuals who sought to exert their newfound dominance over royal territory. Additionally, as Elzéar Blaze wrote in his 1840 history, hunting always served as an ideal mask for political maneuvering. Before providing historical examples of kings escaping captors via the hunt, and conspirators plotting an overthrow while hunting, Blaze offers these introductory remarks: “Diana is the enemy of love; ancient mythology was correct: when a man hunts, he has things to worry about other than romance. A man’s heart cannot nourish two great passions at the same time. This is why hunting has often been used to mask political projects of the highest importance. No one supposes that a hunter can conspire.”15 Even in Blaze’s own works (examined below) hunting serves as a mask for politics. Indeed, given its history, in the nineteenth century

Of Rabbits and Kings | 91 one could not write about hunting without simultaneously taking sides regarding the ancien régime or the continued role of the monarchy in politics. Following the Revolution at least four distinct models for representing the hunt in literature can be discerned. Some works depict hunting as a pageant or ritual inextricably linked to the bygone days of the ancien régime, a glorious moment in history that can never be recaptured. Others depict hunting as a contemporary pastime carried out on private lands, while parodying the highmindedness of those who venerate the hunt as a sacred right of the aristocracy. Yet others represent the hunt as an imitable aspect of noble life, an activity that the bourgeoisie can duplicate, thereby supplanting the nobility. And still others use the hunt to allegorize the political conﬂicts of the nineteenth century. These competing depictions mirror the real social and political tensions in France, reﬂecting the battle for social dominance waged throughout the nineteenth century. hunting, literature, and political allegory In Prosper Mérimée’s 1829 Chronique du règne de Charles IX servants organize a hunt for the king and his court.16 Brief descriptions of rich clothing and superb horses are followed by scenes in which elegant conversations ﬁgure prominently. The conclusion of the hunt is never in doubt as a stag is released and carefully tracked by the hunt’s managers. The king and his suite follow the pack of hunting dogs as they track down the weary stag and back it into a corner. The king then approaches the stag from behind and cuts the tendons behind its knees: “Twenty dogs immediately leapt on the stag. Seized by the throat, by the muzzle, by the tongue, it

92 | Of Rabbits and Kings was held immobile. Large tears ﬂowed from its eyes. ‘Have the ladies approach!’ cried the king. The ladies approached; nearly all of them dismounted. ‘Take this, parpaillot!’ the king said as he plunged his knife into the stag’s ﬂank; then he turned the blade in the wound to widen it. Blood spurted out forcefully and covered the King’s face, hands, and clothes. Parpaillot was an insulting term that Catholics frequently used to designate Calvinists.”17 The most important part of the hunt, as with le jeu de paume, is not the victory—the killing of the stag—but the exchange of social capital. During the hunt Mérimée presents at length a conversation between his protagonist, Bernard de Mergy, newly arrived at court, and the seductive and socially wise countess de Turgis. The countess teaches de Mergy important social lessons and presents him with a small relic that will, the next day, save his life during a duel. Further, when the king does kill the stag, he underscores the symbolic signiﬁcance of this particular hunt by calling the dying animal a parpaillot. On one level, then, the hunt offers a foreshadowing of the massacre of Protestants on Saint Bartholomew’s Day, which Mérimée describes in subsequent chapters. On another it underscores the political aspects inherent in the nobleman’s leisure activities. As we have already seen, Mérimée was certainly cognizant of the symbolic value of sports and games and their reﬂection of class and politics in the nineteenth century. And the representation of Charles IX as a vindictive, violent hunter in this 1829 novel immediately conjures up images of another King Charles, who, like Charles IX, spent a great deal of time hunting. Despite their apparently apolitical content, Mérimée felt that his ﬁctional works represented fairly blatant attacks on the power

Of Rabbits and Kings | 93 structure. In December 1829 he wrote to Mme Récamier: “I am the author of several mediocre works, and as such my name has appeared in the press. A stranger all my life to politics, in my books I showed (and perhaps too bluntly) my opinion. I have concluded that under the current administration, accepting even the least important position would amount to disagreeing with myself.”18 In which of his works did he feel he had offered a political opinion that was too blunt, one apparently in opposition to the government of Charles X? The Chronique du règne de Charles IX was undoubtedly such a one—a text that resisted the dominant voice of the “current administration” via Mérimée’s allegorizing of one King Charles with another. The similarities between the political tensions in the novel and those of Restoration France are in fact scandalous. The Protestants of 1572 are much like the liberals of 1829: there are protests against the rigidity of a deﬁant regime opposed to change, the threat of a revolt permeates Paris, corruption abounds on both sides, important ﬁgures change their political or religious convictions, and so on.19 Roger Mathé, in his discussion of the Chronique, writes, “Between 1572 and 1829 one detects analogies: Charles X and the Ultras of Villèle’s government—Charles IX and the Guise family.”20 Claudie Bernard, too, perceives the analogy, remarking in a footnote that “the hard-line Catholics of the sixteenth century are similar to the Congregation [a secretive far-right monarchist political group], powerful under Charles X.”21 Finally, the central historical ﬁgure of Mérimée’s novel, Charles IX, strikingly resembles the key political ﬁgure of 1829. Mérimée’s narrator describes Charles IX “dressed as a hunter, with a large hunting horn around his neck. . . . His expression

94 | Of Rabbits and Kings is more stupid and worried than harsh and ﬁerce.”22 Lamartine describes Charles X similarly: “Charles X’s ﬂaws were not in his personality, they were to be found in his intelligence. . . . He loved horses, forests, the sound of hounds, the thrill of chasing deer or roe deer, the natural joys of the mort, the sounds of the horn after the triumph.”23 Mérimée takes his political allegory even further by having his description of the king revolve around the hunt. Mérimée’s account of the hunt is set in opposition to other descriptions of the hunt (examined below) that romanticize hunting as a venerable ancien régime ritual. The hunt described in the Chronique, rather, underscores the king’s inhumanity and, with the graphic description of splattering blood, the hunt’s gory violence. Charles X is known to have restored many of the royal forests and to have spent an enormous amount of his time hunting. If legend is to be believed, he was even informed of the July Revolution of 1830 while hunting. Mérimée’s description of the hunt in his novel viliﬁes the hunt as practiced by the royalty and implies that a king obsessed with the hunt is prone to despotic violence. the romantic hunt: nostalgia for the

A NCIE N R ÉGIM E

Unlike Mérimée, Baron Dunoyer de Noirmont prefers to remember the glorious days of the hunt and depicts hunting as a positive extension of noble values. Writing in 1867 Dunoyer de Noirmont explains his objective: “Our entire ambition would be to make our book a veritable mirror of the hunts of the past, a past that, from our point of view at least, should be called the good old days [le bon vieux temps].”24 From there Dunoyer de Noirmont sets out to document the grandeur of the hunt in France and implies that hunting in all cultures (he discusses ancient Israel, Egypt, Persia, Greece,

Of Rabbits and Kings | 95 Rome, etc.) had reached its apogee in ancien régime France: “Our ancestors, Gauls and Franks, invented hunting with hounds [la vénerie], the most beautiful and the most learned of all the forms of hunting.”25 With over 130 pages of endnotes and “pièces justiﬁcatives” to support their authenticity, Dunoyer de Noirmont relates stories of regal hunts from Charlemagne to the Revolution. Here is one example from the late sixteenth century: “April 8 of the same year [1590], during the siege of Rouen, Henri IV wrote the following message to the Marquis de Vitry, who was at the time serving in the army of the Ligue: ‘Upon receiving this letter, do not fail to come and ﬁnd me to hunt stags, since most of my people are sick.’ The letters were shown to M. de Guise who gave him license to go, because he was a good hunter, and Vitry went to Trie, where the king was.”26 Here hunting takes precedence over political and religious disputes, even war, as the king and his enemy, the duc de Guise, remember the common bond linking all noblemen: the hunt. As the title of his book indicates (Histoire de la chasse en France depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à la Révolution [History of the Hunt in France from the Most Distant Past until the Revolution]), the hunt, as Dunoyer de Noirmont describes it, did not survive the Revolution: “The fatal hour had struck. It is not our task to describe here the gigantic movement that reduced the old society to dust and changed the face of the world. Let us simply express our regret for the loss of our ancient and noble French hunts whose traditions are forgotten a little more each day despite the generous efforts of some. These hunts served as a model to the rest of Europe for centuries, while we now must look overseas for lessons from those who were for so long our humble imitators.”27

96 | Of Rabbits and Kings In other words, the Revolution deﬁnitively ended the glory days (“le bon vieux temps”) of the hunt, and as a result France had lost its prominent position in the world. Attempts to re-create those bygone days were ultimately doomed to fail, since the social structure that supported them had been reduced to dust. Chateaubriand too writes nostalgically about hunting in his Mémoires d’outre-tombe. He imagines what his life would have been like had he married a former lover, Charlotte Ives: “Buried in a county of Great Britain, I would have become a gentleman hunter. . . . I would already have had many calm days, instead of the troubled days that have become my lot. The Empire, the Restoration, the divisions, the quarrels of France, what harm could all that have done to me? I would have not been required to mitigate mistakes and ﬁght against errors.”28 In other words, marrying an Englishwoman would have led to a life of hunting, and in turn he would have been spared all the turmoil caused by the Revolution and the end of the old nobility. Hunting would have shielded him from the upheaval in France and allowed him to maintain an ancien régime lifestyle. Certainly living in England alone would have protected Chateaubriand from trouble in France more than hunting would have. But given the way he describes hunters, it is clear that the association between hunting and his way of life prior to the Revolution is symbolically signiﬁcant. Chateaubriand’s hunters are most often idyllic and primitive, looking down from lofty mountain perches, untouched by the violence of civilization. Consider a few examples: “We saw a solitary Indian hunter, who, leaning on his bow and immobile on the peak of a boulder, resembled a statue, raised up on the mountain”; “The hunter who sees

Of Rabbits and Kings | 97 them from the top of the hill”; “From his high summits the hunter discovers an enchanted land.”29 The hunters in these passages are untainted by the turmoil of the Revolution and remain godlike in their ancient purity. They are detached from the villages below them, free from the constraints of encroaching European civilization. Finally, they are statuesque (“ressembloit à une statue”), as if ﬁxed in an irrecoverable past. This Romantic vision of the hunt is shared by Balzac, particularly in his short work Adieu, written in 1830. In an introduction to the Pléiade edition of Adieu, Moïse Le Yaouanc writes: “Adieu is not without its ﬂaws. The beginning pages lack energy: this account of the end of a hunt (hardly Balzacian on the whole) is slow, labored, too obviously based on the pattern of classical introductions.”30 But to dismiss the ﬁrst pages as merely stock classical imagery is to miss the signiﬁcant symbolic role played by the hunt in Balzac’s story. Adieu is the story of Philippe de Sucy, a member of the nobility (“wealthy, titled, of old nobility”) who was separated from his true love, Stéphanie, during Napoleon’s ill-fated campaign in Russia.31 Philippe ﬁnds Stéphanie years later, but she has gone mad and can only say one word, adieu, the last word she spoke to Philippe before their abrupt, tragic separation. In an attempt to restore her sanity Philippe re-creates the moment of their separation, complete with boys dressed like soldiers, smoke, overturned carriages, and snow. His efforts ultimately fail. Stéphanie does momentarily regain her sanity, but only has time to recognize Philippe before saying, “I love you, adieu!” and dying.32 Philippe’s attempt to summon the past conjures only a momentary illusion, in the end failing to create any lasting change. As we observed earlier (see chapter 1), for Balzac past and present remain entirely incom-

98 | Of Rabbits and Kings patible. The Restoration period, like Philippe’s restoration of the past, is an unsustainable and poor imitation of the ancien régime. This idea of restoration and re-creation is foreshadowed in Adieu’s opening scene. The narrative begins in the summer of 1819 with a description of two hunters wandering with four dogs through the countryside. It has not been a productive day of hunting, and the overweight deputy, d’Albon, an embodiment of the new Restoration government, is too tired and hungry to continue. “If only I had killed a rabbit,” he laments.33 Philippe, on the other hand, a member of the old nobility, seems comfortable and in command, even controlling the dogs that belong to d’Albon. The hunt is, like the story’s culminating scene, a re-creation of the past, a relic of France before the bloodshed of the Revolution and the Empire. It is, to be sure, a masculine re-creation of the past, as the men go from hunting rabbits to hunting a woman (the narrator several times describes Stéphanie as animal-like). The hunt’s failure (stemming from the depletion of game) points to the degradation caused by the Revolution and offers an initial indication that the two characters will be unable to successfully bring the past (in the form of a woman) to life. The hunt, like the scene Philippe re-creates at the end of the narrative, is an imperfect copy of the past, and its representation implies the futility of attempting to restore anything from the past, be it social mores, economic systems, governments, love, or even leisure activities. In the end Philippe proves to be a relic himself, too connected to the past to integrate into the present. As a result he takes his own life. To the alert reader the hunt—dismissed by Le Yaouanc as an awkward cliché—serves as an important initial indicator of Adieu’s primary theme: the failed attempt to bring the past back to life.

Of Rabbits and Kings | 99 mocking the monarchy: the democratization of the hunt Charles X, as mentioned above, was known as an avid hunter who wished to restore hunting to its ancien régime grandeur. His hunts were eulogized by Eugène Chapus in one of his earliest books, Les chasses de Charles X, souvenirs de l’ancienne cour (The Hunts of Charles X, Memories of the Old Court), its ﬁrst edition published in 1837, the second in 1838. In the introduction Chapus spells out his intentions: “For some, this work will be a veritable initiation into the details, mores, and customs of a monarchy that is being swept away by the prosaic and utilitarian France of today. And if this hope is not realized I have the assurance that for others this work will be a book of sweet memories and savory consolations. By reading it they will be able to remember the good years of their existence, and they will rediscover the spirit of this time that is no more.”34 In the ﬁrst part of this quote Chapus announces what will become his central objective in the 1840s, ’50s, and ’60s, namely, to initiate the bourgeoisie into the cultural practices of the nobility (we will return to this below). The critical point here, however, is Chapus’s intention to paint a romantic picture of the good old days (in the fashion of Dunoyer de Noirmont) for those who regret the decline of the monarchical way of life. This idealization of the hunt and longing for the past are precisely what other authors, most notably Elzéar Blaze, satirize in their midcentury hunting manuals.35 In Le Chasseur conteur ou les chroniques de la chasse contenant des histoires, des contes, des anecdotes, et par-ci, par-là, quelques hableries sur la chasse depuis Charlemagne jusqu’à nos jours (The Story-Telling Hunter; or, Chronicles of the Hunt Containing Histories, Stories,

100 | Of Rabbits and Kings Anecdotes, and Here and There Some Boasts about Hunting from Charlemagne to Our Days), ﬁrst published in 1840, Blaze turns the reverence for past hunts typiﬁed by Chapus’s text on its head. Regarding Charles X Blaze bluntly writes that while the monarch was one of the best shooters of his time, he was incapable of leading military or hunting maneuvers and therefore could only kill animals that were stationary (e.g., a boar wallowing in the mud). Adding insult to injury, Blaze’s description of Charles X’s weaknesses appears in a chapter that compares the former monarch with Napoleon: Napoleon could lead troops, Blaze writes, but was a terrible shot.36 The chapter is entitled simply “Napoleon and Charles X,” an offensive (to some) conjoining of the usurper and the last king of France. Elsewhere Blaze discusses Charles IX, who passes as legendary among hunting historians thanks to the detailed and accurate hunting manual he personally authored. Of him Blaze writes (with no small amount of irony) that “Charles IX was a great king. . . . And the Saint Bartholomew massacre? you ask. To that I will answer that these comical political events are not my thing and hardly concern me. Yes, Charles IX was a great king, a very great king, for he loved to hunt and this should sufﬁce to make us forget all his peccadilloes.”37 Blaze further parodies the sanctimonious attitude held by many regarding the hunt via exaggerated anecdotes: hunters who outsmart the king’s foresters when hunting on royal land or outsmart the gendarmes when illegally hunting on public land; hunters who tell unbelievable tales of killing seven rabbits with one shot or killing four partridges with two shots; hunters whose wives cheat on them while they are away hunting (thus the expression porter des cornes: to wear horns, to be cuckolded). The lone hunter

Of Rabbits and Kings | 101 who breaks the king’s laws emerges victorious in nearly all the tales in this “history.” But Blaze’s attacks on the sanctity of the hunt actually began several years earlier, in 1836, when he published Le chasseur au chien d’arrêt, a text outlining the principles of hunting alone with a single dog on one’s own property. In this book’s opening passages he proposes that the Revolution was in fact beneﬁcial to hunting (an opinion that contrasts singularly with the one offered several years later by Dunoyer de Noirmont): Thanks to the Revolution of 1789, all of these old laws strike us as incredible. Today a man’s home is his castle. The owner of a small plot of land can kill the animals that eat his crops and eat them in turn. All the old books on hunting discuss hunting with hounds, falconry, the grand hunts undertaken by kings and powerful lords. With the exception of a few ﬁ nancial magnates, there are today very few men who can relate to these books. The division of properties and every man’s right to hunt on his own land have increased the number of hunters. At least 95 percent of them hunt with a pointer hound; I write for them.38

What Blaze proposes here is a democratization of the hunt: the hunt as a spectacle (la vénerie), led by a nobleman surrounded by spectators, dogs, and servants on a vast domain, has been stripped down to one man hunting with one dog on his small parcel of personally owned land. He further implies that those who hunt in the ancien régime fashion are no longer those of royal blood but those of wealthy blood—the afﬂuent businessman has already begun to replace the nobleman in the social hierarchy. In a chapter entitled “Rois et princes chasseurs” Blaze, after

102 | Of Rabbits and Kings debunking the proverb “hunting is in the image of war,” attacks another commonplace: “Kings like hunting, hunting is a king’s pleasure.”39 He writes: This is another stupidity: kings do not know the pleasure of the hunt. To appreciate a refreshing drink, one must know thirst; the word hunting signiﬁes searching with the hope of ﬁnding and killing. To appreciate the pleasure of a full game bag, one must occasionally bring it home empty and ﬂapping in the breeze. Charles X was a great hunter; he would kill between seven and eight hundred animals a day: rabbits, hares, and pheasants passed continually before him; he only had to choose between riches. It was, in my opinion, a very sad occupation. . . . To take pleasure from hunting, one must leave with the vague fear of coming home empty-handed. . . . But when the good days are eight hundred kills, the bad days seven hundred, the difference is nonexistent. . . . Kings see game at only twenty paces away from them, they never touch what they kill, and they eat without pleasure. Their job is to ﬁre a thousand shots from their riﬂe: a steam engine could do the same.40

Thus Charles X was not a true hunter and could not know the real “pleasures of the hunt.” Rather, he was like a mindless machine, pumping out bullets as rapidly as possible. Several pages later Blaze makes an even more scandalous comparison: “You must seek out the game; if it comes to you, the pleasure is reduced. A beautiful woman who offers herself loses three-fourths of her charm; what am I saying? She loses it all. Consider the women in pink-feathered hats, in turbans topped with birds of paradise, who, in the evening at dusk, seduce the

Of Rabbits and Kings | 103 regulars of the Boulevard Italien; if you met them elsewhere you would be their humble servant, you would go to great lengths to serve them, but at the instant you hear the fatal, ‘Do you want to come upstairs with me?’ a feeling of disgust makes you quickly move on.”41 The grandeur of the royal hunt, killing a stag tracked by servants, shooting animals released from cages—all these practices characteristic of Charles X’s hunts are, in Blaze’s estimation, as base and simple as bedding prostitutes from the Grands Boulevards! By establishing a link between sexuality and hunting the passage further calls into question the king’s sexual potency, since he is only able to “kill” animals that are offered to him. The king, who should be a paragon of masculinity, instead of tracking and slaying hard-to-ﬁnd game is here reduced to the level of a Parisian bourgeois pleasure-seeker, picking off easily slain “birds of paradise.”42 It is hard to imagine how anyone could do more to debase the “good old days” of the hunt than through a royal hunt/prostitution allegory, but Blaze manages: the end of his book relates stories (reminiscent of medieval fabliaux) depicting poor, or at least nonnoble, hunters who outsmart their noble counterparts. For example, Blaze tells the story of a grenadier hunting on a marquis’s lands. The marquis catches the poacher quite literally with his pants down, as he is busy defecating. In his condition the grenadier is unable to run away or to reach for his riﬂe. The malevolent marquis then makes the grenadier eat half of his own excrement. As the marquis turns to leave, the grenadier grabs his riﬂe, points it at the marquis, and orders him to eat the leftovers. Charitably the grenadier stops the marquis just before he actually eats the ﬁrst handful. The two part ways, promising not to tell

104 | Of Rabbits and Kings anyone of the event. The next day, as fate would have it, they meet each other again and politely greet each other as old friends. The grenadier’s companions are shocked: “‘Goodness!’ his comrades said. ‘It seems that you’re in good with monsieur the Marquis.’— ‘Pretty good . . . yesterday we had lunch together.’”43 The inclusion of this scatological tale in a book on hunting serves several purposes. First, it makes hunting a very human activity—the idealization of the hunt seems entirely incompatible with bowel movements. Second, it makes a joke of the nobles’ desire to reserve their large domains for themselves: in the end the grenadier outsmarts the marquis and gets away (at some expense) with both hunting and defecating on the marquis’s land. The tale additionally demonstrates the cruelty of the marquis and the humanity of the grenadier, who ultimately shows mercy to the nobleman. Finally, it makes the noble marquis and the lowly grenadier equals; the distinction between them is erased, ironically enough, through hunting. playing at monarchy: bourgeois imitation A third attitude toward the hunt in many ways contradicts the two representations described above. It suggests that the hunts of the ancien régime can and should be imitated and that this imitation is in fact a means for the bourgeoisie to assert itself as the new dominant class and to become comme il faut (“as one should be,” a euphemism for an aristocrat).44 Eugène Chapus wrote short stories and published novels in the 1820s, ’30s and ’40s with the same publisher (Eugène Renduel) and in the same series as Victor Hugo, Charles Nodier, Eugène Sue, and Sainte-Beuve. His short stories and novels (Un caprice,

Of Rabbits and Kings | 105 Titime?, La carte jaune) were, in a word, bad. Their sentimentality and shallowness make it easy to understand why the name “Chapus” does not appear on any recommended reading lists. For one studying sport and its development in France, however, this name is a central one. In 1855 his editor called him “the historiographer of sport,” and by that time Chapus had indeed published numerous articles and books on sport and the history of sport. In 1853 Chapus founded a newspaper called Le Sport: Journal des gens du monde, the ﬁrst newspaper in French to be devoted entirely to sports. The paper primarily covered horse races and horse breeding, while providing descriptions of hunts in the woods surrounding Paris (Fontainebleau, Saint-Germain, Rambouillet, etc.). In addition, in the late 1840s and principally in the early 1850s Chapus published books on hunting, horse racing, and other sports in Paris. In a three-year period, between 1853 and 1855, in addition to founding the newspaper, Chapus published at least six full-length books on travel and sports. While he certainly cannot be considered a sociologist of sport, his unabashed promotion of sport during the middle of the nineteenth century provides us with a unique insight into the transition sports underwent from royal pursuit to bourgeois leisure activity. In the ﬁrst article published in Le Sport Chapus outlines his philosophy on sport and in particular his thoughts on hunting and social class: Among the pleasures of Paris, Sport now occupies a special and beautiful place. For the last several years the taste of Parisian youth has been drawn more and more to these aristocratic distractions. . . . The brilliant cult of Sport conjures up the great and aristocratic existence through its peaceful and continued enjoy-

106 | Of Rabbits and Kings ment, and it is for this reason that its development has long been restricted here. We have too harshly attacked everything that hints at grandeur; we have attacked hunting [la vénerie] and elegant carriages; it has been a perpetual calumny against these opulent practices. . . . Today we are galloping in a countermovement of reaction. The society of the elite is organizing itself, reconstituting itself. Saint-Germain, Fontainebleau, Marly, Compiègne, Rambouillet, all these beautiful places so favorable for the noble exercises of the great hunt have returned to the monarchical domain. They have been repopulated with wild beasts and game and returned to their eternal and primitive use.45

Chapus, via his newspaper and books, hopes to re-create, or “reconstitute,” the noble exercises of the past. He apparently believes that such a restoration, despite revolutions and major political changes, is not only possible but also happening under his readers’ very eyes (in the same article he makes reference to the courtlike existence adopted by Louis Napoleon after being proclaimed emperor in 1852). What Chapus fails to specify is who his readers are. They are not the Dunoyer de Noirmonts of France; they are, rather, members of the growing bourgeoisie, supporters of Napoleon III bent on imitating their noble predecessors. This new ruling class sought to gain acceptability and superiority by imitating the leisure activities of the former ruling class. Noble birth, vast domains, and titles are harder to come by than learning to hunt. And Chapus’s success proves that there was a market among people who wanted to learn to act like an aristocrat. In his Manuel de l’homme et de la femme comme il faut (see the introduction) Chapus points out how society has changed since the Revolution: “Today confusion still reigns in ideas and in so-

Of Rabbits and Kings | 107 cial classes; social classes, professional molds, and character hardly exist anymore.46 Chapus, under the pseudonym of the viscount de Marennes, takes advantage of the confusion and new mobility afforded in contemporary France and provides a road map that explains how one may become a member of the elite. The key to becoming “elegant,” according to Chapus, lies not only in the way one dresses but also in the words one uses: “Pretty words are diamonds of conversation; an original series that will inspire conversationalists is included here.”47 He then offers some gems: What is equality?—The utopia of the unworthy. What disease devours all pride in France?—The need for equality. Is modern France a democracy or an aristocracy?—It is a nation of mediocrity. What is distinction?—The apparel of those who respect themselves.48

After reading this trite list one wonders if Chapus could have inspired Flaubert’s mockery of such clichés in his Dictionnaire des idées reçues. But these phrases do underscore one of Chapus’s obsessions: the confusion of social class and the desire to take advantage of this confusion. Distinction, he claims, is the parure, the outward symbol, the appearance of those who respect each other. This superﬁcial parure can of course be learned and manipulated. If one can dress and speak comme il faut, then one can be comme il faut. In conversations one must know when to “speak and when to be quiet,” and one must also know the “customs and traditions” on which “elegant” conversation is based.49 Above all one must

108 | Of Rabbits and Kings obey two cardinal rules: (1) appear to not work, and (2) appear to know how to hunt: There are technical words that imply, when used, the knowledge of a profession. One must take great care to avoid them. Words used in workshops, in the business arena, and slang are ignoble; they destroy the good tenor of language; they blemish the conversation! Elegant conversation rigorously requires the use of technical words only when discussing war, horse racing, and hunting, especially hunting. When one prides oneself on speaking well, one simply cannot say the hair of a stag when speaking of its coat; its horns and head when speaking of its antlers and attire. A wolf is never sent to the pasture but to the carnage. A fox is not taken in a trap, but in a snare. The skin, the nose, the ears, the tail, the head and the feet of a boar are translated as the wall, the snout, the écoutes, the vrille, the hure and the tracks!50

In short, to be a member of the elite the bourgeois must pretend to know nothing about the very activity his life probably centers on, his work, while pretending to know the smallest details of the primary leisure activity of ancien régime aristocrats. Here is the key to being noble: know how to talk about hunting. It is signiﬁcant that what Chapus proposes here is similar, in some respects, to what Diderot hoped to accomplish with his Encyclopédie. That is, the Encyclopédie made the secret vocabulary of the nobility accessible to anyone who knew how to read. Making this knowledge available to the broad public eliminated the nobility’s exclusive access to it and undermined their grip on

Of Rabbits and Kings | 109 cultural supremacy. For example, the Encyclopédie entry on the royal hunt (vénerie) offers detailed deﬁnitions of the numerous people involved in the hunt (from the veneur to the piqueurs) and gives the technical terms for every aspect of the stag. The article is so precise, it indicates that the stag’s testicles, “en termes de vénerie” (in terms of hunting), are referred to as daintiers. Unlike Diderot’s, however, Chapus’s text is written not to undermine privilege but to imitate it. Many of Chapus’s other books are aimed at helping the bourgeois learn the terms and royal history of the hunt. Several of his works were published by the Bibliothèque Nouvelle. This editor’s clearly stated objective appears at the end of the books: “Give a lot, give at a good price, that is the key today, it has been proven twenty times over. The volumes of the Bibliothèque Nouvelle will be, at the start, printed at 10,000 copies and the price will be uniform, accessible to all:— only ONE franc.”51 For one franc readers could purchase Chapus’s Manuel de l’homme et de la femme comme il faut, Les haltes de chasse, or Les soirées de Chantilly. Les haltes de chasses (1860) is a particularly instructive work for the bourgeois desiring to imitate his noble predecessors. In the text Chapus relates the story of a former soldier, three businessmen (a doctor, a lawyer, and a banker), and a viscount who spend two months together at the property of their common friend, M. de Morland de Pont-Kerlo. During their stay they frequently debate the value of hunting. The soldier, doctor, lawyer, and banker represent “the philosophy of the 18th century” and “the more modern school of the utilitarians,” while the viscount “disdained even considering hunting as a hygienic measure; he looked at the question from a higher perspective.”52 The passage further re-

110 | Of Rabbits and Kings lates that “one day, after a long debate, his adversary unexpectedly asked him what hunting was good for;—he replied that it was good precisely because it was not good for anything. . . . Hunting . . . is good primarily because it introduces into human relationships a motive other than interest.”53 In addition to defending hunting the viscount enjoys listening to the gaffes made by the other guests who, unbeknownst to themselves, embarrass themselves each time they discuss hunting: You should have seen the subtle smile spread across his face when he heard their incorrect locutions. Not only was the vocabulary of a veneur [leader of a regal hunt] a closed book to them, but they committed the strangest abuses of words. In their phraseology the boar was always old or young, it was never marcassin [young] or ragot [two to three years old, no longer en compagnie] or bête de compagnie [a young boar living with other boars], or tiers an [three years old] or quartanier [four years old] or miré [an older boar whose tusks are curled under]. . . . They said a fat hare for a large hare, which is the consecrated expression. . . . Their errors were so numerous that not a day went by without a humorous reprise of the famous scene with Larissole and Merlin in the play Le mercure galant.54

Chapus goes on to describe how each member of the party would spend his day: the doctor would help sick people, the lawyer would read and consult with his host, the banker would take walks, the ofﬁcer would go on rides with Morland’s wife, and the viscount de Reix would hunt with the narrator. One day after a successful hunt the viscount returns to Morland’s home and declares: “‘Now the house is stocked for at least the rest of

Of Rabbits and Kings | 111 the week. . . . My day was not a loss.’ The others began to mock him. ‘Who among you can claim to have used your time as profitably?’ Monsieur de Reix asked with a truly dramatic attitude. The doctor laughed, as did the lawyer; the businessman looked at Morland in a way that meant, ‘What do you think?’”55 Each goes on to relate his accomplishments that day: the physician saved the gardener’s daughter; the lawyer, when looking through Morland’s documents, discovered that his host could close a service road and triple the value of that part of his property; the banker proposed some lucrative investments to Morland; the soldier saved Mme de Pont-Kerlo’s life by stopping her horse when it was on the verge of charging into a violent river. “‘I am defeated,’ M. de Reix said humbly. ‘My day, messieurs, was not as worthwhile as yours.’”56 The following spring the narrator encounters Morland in the Tuileries: “Surprised at the sight of the strange change that had occurred in him, I anxiously asked him the cause.”57 Morland’s life, it seems, has fallen apart since the narrator last saw him. He found his wife cheating on him with the soldier and challenged this rival to a duel. Morland was victorious, slaying the soldier, but his wife left him anyway. Upon the advice of the lawyer Morland took his neighbor to court to have the service road closed, but he lost, damaging his fortune and his reputation in the process. The banker had gone bankrupt, taking one hundred thousand of Morland’s francs down with him. As for the physician, the gardener’s daughter whom he claimed to have saved died because his prescribed treatment proved too aggressive. The viscount de Reix, however, had stayed beside Morland through all the difﬁculties, leading Morland to exclaim, “He is a man that I will love until I die.”58

112 | Of Rabbits and Kings The narrator (Chapus’s avatar) then offers the following moral: “Thus, I said to myself, of all the talents of highly esteemed men that chance had united for two months—a lawyer’s talent, a businessman’s talent, a doctor’s talent—the consequences were a scandalous affair, a bankruptcy, a lost lawsuit, and a homicide.”59 Finally Chapus’s narrator concludes ironically, “Praise, therefore, the excellence of useful professions!”60 If this story were related in an expensive, leather-bound volume, we would be tempted to think that Chapus wrote it for the aristocracy and that he tells this story in defense of the aristocratic values embodied by the viscount de Reix. But the story appears in a mass-produced, one-franc paperback. Les haltes de chasse is, therefore, a how-to book for the middle class. The story teaches them that to appear elite is to appear disinterested, and to do this one should engage in hunting for hunting’s sake, not for any utilitarian or hygienic reasons. It reiterates the importance of hunting’s technical vocabulary while denigrating the “useful professions.” The story is, in short, a mise en scène of principles elaborated by Chapus in his Manuel de l’homme et de la femme comme il faut in favor of hunting: hunting brings out the noble sentiment in men, it furnishes a remedy for the difﬁculties of modern life, and it can even make a nonnoble (such as the narrator) a bona ﬁde member of society’s elite. Another Chapus text about royal hunts (Les chasses princières en France de 1589–1841) was published in 1853 in a special series called the “Bibliothèque des chemins de fer” (Railway Library) and had as its target audience the growing consumer class taking the train out of Paris in search of leisure.61 While the book is ostensibly a historical description of princely hunts of the ancien

Of Rabbits and Kings | 113 régime, it is as much an itinerary for the nouveaux riches, a sort of travel guide that allows the nineteenth-century hunter to walk in the footsteps of bygone monarchs. From the ﬁrst page our author explicitly addresses the “bourgeois de Paris” leaving Paris in order to hunt. Chapus provides speciﬁc details so that the traveler can ﬁnd the exact forest where Henri IV hunted and follow the same paths he did. The past (“then”) and the present (“today”) are constantly brought into parallel: “Above, near this forest that existed then as today and whose border is covered with brush, those two houses, whitewashed and surrounded by apple trees, that are today modest farms were then the chapel and the hospice of Saint-Etienne.”62 Chapus names hills and identiﬁes small villages passed during the king’s hunt, sites that the traveler might still ﬁnd: “Saint-Nicolas d’Alihermont, then as today, was a small village hidden in the middle of the forest.”63 He even identiﬁes, should the bourgeois traveler ﬁnd himself (like the king) hungry and weary, an inn where the king dined and passed the night. Throughout the text Chapus underscores the links between past and present, between the nobility of “then” and the bourgeoisie of “today,” and suggests a transfer of power from the ﬁrst group to the second that takes place via the hunt. Chapus also alludes to the various amorous exploits of several princes during the hunt, implying that similar pleasures perhaps await the Parisian bourgeois traveler: “Richard I, Duke of Normandy, having heard stories about the beauty of the wife of one of his foresters who lived here, came to hunt in this forest with amorous intent.”64 The clever wife, however, to remain faithful to her husband and to satisfy Richard, has her sister take her place in bed with the duke, who, though he notices the switch, does

114 | Of Rabbits and Kings not complain. Chapus also relates the following anecdote: “In the principal street of the village . . . Henri IV noticed a genteel, delicate woman standing by the entrance to an inn. . . . He entered and immediately began to ﬂirt with the lady. The beautiful woman . . . was charmed by his gallant behavior, and responded in such a manner as to increase the happiness of the king.”65 This connection between hunting and sexual prowess (seen above in Balzac’s and Blaze’s texts) is here held up as a reward for the avid bourgeois traveler. Hunting is represented as a means of masculinizing members of the bourgeoisie who are otherwise drained of their vitality in their Parisian ofﬁces. Chapus’s description of Henri IV’s hunt is designed to be imitated by the Parisian bourgeois: it includes an itinerary that can be followed, dialogues that can be copied, and cultural and sexual mores that can be duplicated. But unlike Dunoyer de Noirmont’s rigorously documented history, Chapus’s “history” is largely ﬁctional. M. Chapus, in a country whose social structure had been overturned and complicated by a series of revolutions, invents a model of social behavior based on recognizable practices of the ancien régime mixed with values of the bourgeoisie. Bourdieu, in the introduction to his own work on distinction and taste, argues that modern art can only be understood within the ﬁeld in which it is generated. Since it is not purely mimetic, the spectator must possess a certain “cultural competence” in order to understand it.66 The same can be said of hunting. It is inextricably linked to cultural, historical, and class sensibilities. Chapus, who creates some of the context in which he places hunting, provides a way for the naive spectator to gain the required “cultural competence” to understand it. And understanding the hunt, according

Of Rabbits and Kings | 115 to Chapus, is the key to gaining access to the ruling, elite class, the way for the bourgeois to imitate and replace the monarchy at the top of the social ladder. By imitating the hunts of powerful ancien régime leaders, the new ruling class takes on the virile potency of the former one. In the collective consciousness of the mid-nineteenth century hunting becomes a bridge to a mythical upper class. mocking the bourgeois parvenu: maupassant and hunting Guy de Maupassant’s well-known short story “La parure” presents a married couple who, it seems, have been inﬂuenced by the kind of thinking presented by Chapus in his many texts, notably his ideas of social class and of social climbing associated with one’s wardrobe and with hunting. Attention in “La parure” is naturally focused on Mathilde Loisel, a young woman who, in her desire to imitate a wealthy friend, borrows a necklace to wear to a ball, loses it, then spends the best years of her life working menial jobs to pay off the expensive replacement, only to ﬁnd out in the end that the original necklace was a fake. Mathilde is punished for believing that être (being, reality) and paraître (appearance) are one and the same, for assuming that her friend, Mme Forestier, is wealthy because she looks and acts like she is. While Mathilde’s “disease” is evident, little attention is paid to her husband, who nevertheless suffers from the same illness. That is to say, he, like his wife, has illusions of climbing higher on the social ladder and believes he can achieve status by adopting the outward trappings of the upper class. Whereas Mathilde (who feels she is poor as a result of “an error of destiny”) wants money to buy a suitable new

116 | Of Rabbits and Kings dress so she can look the part at the ball, her husband wants to use the same money to buy a new riﬂe: “He paled slightly, for he was saving just that amount to buy a riﬂe so that he could hunt on the Nanterre plain the following summer.”67 This explains why he too is unwilling to tell Mme Forestier that the necklace has been lost; why he assumes that appearance and reality are one and the same; why he, like his wife, believes the necklace to be made of real diamonds. Maupassant’s story is really a subtle mockery of a lower-class couple who believe that a dress and a necklace or a riﬂe will turn them into aristocrats, who believe that outward trappings can cause a man or woman to become comme il faut. This joke would not have been lost on the tale’s original readers: “La parure” was ﬁrst published in 1884 in Le Gaulois, a periodical with noticeable monarchist tendencies. In fact, the story can be read as a parody of the Third Republic, a government composed of parvenus, for which M. Loisel works as a low-level clerk. One additional telling detail is that the minister who invites the couple to the ball is named Ramponneau, the name of a well-known but dubious cabaret in the rue de Clignancourt.68 And the name “Ramponneau” further brings to mind the French verb ramper, meaning to crawl, slither, grovel. This gives us an idea of the scant respect Maupassant held for the republican ministerial crowd. In a word, like Mathilde and her husband, the Third Republic was governed by bourgeois who usurped the appearance of the aristocracy but who could never substantially imitate the aristocrats’ “class.” This same treatment of hunting and social class appears in Maupassant’s “Farce normande.” This is the story of the wedding night of Jean Patu and his young bride, Rosalie Roussel, who, we

Of Rabbits and Kings | 117 are told, settled on Patu “because he had more cash” than her other suitors.69 Patu is wealthy and handsome, but “more than anything a passionate hunter, who would go to irrational extremes to satisfy this passion, and who would spend huge sums of money for his dogs, his guards, his ferrets, and his riﬂes.” 70 After the wedding, the wedding procession, and a long wedding banquet, the couple retires to the nuptial chamber. Patu carries his wife to bed, “feeling her [la palpant] under her loose robe.” As they undress and begin to embrace, a shot rings out, then another. Furious that poachers would take advantage of him, Patu angrily swears, then says, “They think that I won’t go after them because of you? . . . They’ll see!” 71 Patu “dressed, grabbed the riﬂe that he always kept within reach, and, since his overwhelmed wife was hanging to his knees and begging him to stay, he pulled himself away violently, ran to the window and jumped into the courtyard.” 72 He is found the next morning, tied from head to foot, his underwear on backward, with a sign around his neck reading, “Qui va à la chasse, perd sa place” (He who goes hunting loses his place).73 After the event Patu exclaims, “They caught me in a noose like a rabbit, the sons-of-bitches, and they put my head in a bag so I couldn’t see. But if I ever get my hands on them [je les tâte], they’ll pay!” 74 Patu the hunter becomes Patu the hunted. Whereas he was initially feeling his bride (“la palpant”), he is now feeling the poachers (“je les tâte”). His eroticism is transferred to hunting, and he is unable to distinguish one pleasure from the other.75 As in “La parure,” for Maupassant a farmer or bourgeois who hunts cannot distinguish substance from appearance (in this case real poachers from pranksters) and ultimately sets himself up to be ridiculed. Maupassant’s treatment of the hunt ridicules not only the hunter

118 | Of Rabbits and Kings for whom Chapus wrote but also the hunter whom Blaze described in his works—the hunter who, like Patu, hunts alone on his own land. In many respects Maupassant’s stories resemble Blaze’s, but with one important difference: in Blaze’s stories it is generally the nobleman who is mocked; in Maupassant’s it is the bourgeois.

five

Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance during the Third Republic Les femmes le lorgnaient et lui faisaient des agaceries; car la réputation de duelliste était alors surtout un moyen certain de toucher leur coeur. Prosper Mérimée, Chronique du règne de Charles IX

I claim in this chapter’s title that I will discuss fencing, and I will. Primarily, however, this chapter will focus on duels. If my title appears misleading, this puts me in good company. Many nineteenth-century fencing manuals, while they condemn duels at the outset, nevertheless substantially glorify them in the body of the text and offer instructions governing how they should be conducted. Most notably, a weekly paper entitled L’Escrime (Fencing), launched in 1881, devotes a majority of its articles to duels, their history, and the results of duels from the past week. In fact fencing becomes a code word for dueling, and not only for duels with the expected foils or swords but also for duels with pistols. Under the heading “Escrime” Diderot’s Encyclopédie indicates that while the word usually refers to sword combat, escrime more broadly designates the “general idea of combat between two people.” One of the earliest mentions of a duel in French literature is found in La chanson de Roland, a text dating from the late eleventh to the early twelfth century. In this well-known epic the trea-

120 | Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance sonous Ganelon tells the enemy king, Marsile, exactly where and when he will be able to attack and defeat Roland, Charlemagne’s devoted nephew and rearguard. Marsile follows Ganelon’s advice, and Roland and his men are all killed. Instead of giving up after the death of Roland, as Ganelon predicted he would, Charlemagne returns and defeats Marsile, the emir Baligant, and their vassals. Upon his return to Aix Charlemagne accuses Ganelon of treason and organizes a trial for him: “Lord barons, said the king Charlemagne, judge Ganelon for me according to the law! He was in the army with me in Spain and he brutally took twenty thousand of my Frenchmen and my nephew that you will never see again, and the valiant and courteous Olivier. He betrayed my twelve peers for silver.”1 While Charlemagne seems convinced of Ganelon’s treason, the barons judging Ganelon hesitate to ﬁnd him guilty. Today we would say these barons were victims of jury tampering. Ganelon’s relative Pinabel explains the situation, arms in hand, to Ganelon: “You will soon be saved. No Frenchman will condemn you to be hanged; for if the emperor brings us to blows, I will prove him wrong with my steel blade.”2 Anyone daring enough to suggest Ganelon be hanged must be willing to put his life on the line and ﬁght against Pinabel, Ganelon’s hand-picked “valiant soldier.”3 After deliberation the barons render their verdict: “Sire, we pray that you declare Count Ganelon acquitted since he serves you with ﬁdelity and love. Let him live, for he is of high nobility.”4 Charlemagne’s response is unambiguous: “You are all traitors.”5 To the aid of the grieving monarch, however, steps one who is unafraid of Ganelon’s thug: “Now a knight, Thierry, stands before him. . . . His body is thin, frail, willowy, his hair black, his face

Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance | 121 rather brown; he is neither very large, nor too small.”6 Thierry pledges his continued support to Charlemagne, believing Ganelon to be a traitor who should be hanged, tormented, and destroyed. He adds, “If he has a relative who wants to prove me wrong, with this sword that I am wearing here I want to immediately support my judgment.”7 Pinabel steps forward: “He is large, strong, brave, agile. Whoever is struck once by him, his life is over.”8 The combatants prepare by dressing in their armor, hearing Mass, and going to confession. Charlemagne has the battleground prepared by installing seating and appointing an arbitrator. As the duel begins “one hundred thousand knights weep, out of love for Roland and pity for Thierry.”9 The two men are quickly unseated from their horses and begin a long sword ﬁght on foot. Pinabel is strong and strikes Thierry so forcefully on the helmet “that sparks ﬂy and set the grass on ﬁre.”10 Thierry’s face is cut open, and his armor is cracked from head to waist. Nearly defeated, Thierry makes one ﬁnal desperate move: “Thierry sees that he has been struck on his face: his clear blood falls on the grass. He strikes Pinabel on his brown steel helmet and splits it down to the nose piece; from his head brain ﬂows out; he turns his blade and strikes him dead. By this blow that battle is won. The Frenchmen shout: ‘God has wrought a miracle. It is just that Ganelon be hanged.’”11 This last line revealing God’s role in the duel’s outcome (“God has wrought a miracle”) is hinted at from the outset: “God knows what the end will be”; “Ah! God, said Charlemagne, make justice prevail”; “May God, today, indicate the right between the two of us” (as Thierry says to Pinabel); “God saved him [Thierry] from being overthrown and killed.”12 In Violence and the Sacred René

122 | Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance Girard maintains that the introduction of chance into funeral rites is a way to open a line of communication with the supernatural world. For example, Canelos Indians throw dice over the corpse of the deceased, believing that the dead man’s spirit decides the outcome of their game: “The sacred . . . envelops the notion of play.”13 Similarly, in La chanson de Roland the duel serves not as an expression of chance but as a means to make the will of God manifest. The duel becomes a conduit for the revelation of divine justice, and God—not Thierry, not Charlemagne—exposes Ganelon as a traitor. That the smaller, weaker man wins makes the outcome even more clearly “a miracle,” an expression of God’s judgment. Thierry wins not because he lands a lucky blow but because God has intervened and given him victory (just as he did for the two-hundred-year-old Charlemagne when he fought the emir Baligant). The notion of the duel as an expression of divine will can be traced through the centuries. Under the heading “Duel” Diderot’s Encyclopédie tells us that “formerly, these sorts of combats were authorized in certain cases . . . : duels were called the judgment of God.”14 And further, “One had recourse to this test, in both civil and criminal matters, as both a judicial proof to know the innocence or the right of a party, and even to decide the truth of a point of right or fact, in the presupposition that the winner of the combat was always right.” Instead of “might makes right,” the prevailing belief was that “right makes might” and that “might” was power dispersed from God. Brantôme (1538–1614), in his Discours sur les duels, offers example after example of weaker ﬁghters winning duels thanks to divine intervention. One case in point: “I heard of a large, courageous, and valiant lord . . . who, when entering a

Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance | 123 closed ﬁeld for a duel, had resolved to do the same with his enemy [torture and kill him after winning], who was in no way equal to him in strength nor prowess: but God, supporting the cause of the weak man, did not give the victory to the valiant man, but to the weak one, who could not have won by himself, but by God.”15 The weaker man in this case is spared when bleachers holding spectators collapse and distract his opponent: a clear example of divine intervention. If the duel was ﬁrst and foremost a manifestation of God’s will and judgment, in time it slowly became a means of circumventing royal authority. In France, beginning with Louis VII, kings attempted to regulate and limit duels held in the kingdom. But these good intentions, as the Encyclopédie explains, remained little more than intentions, “so engrained was the custom of the duel.”16 The more respectful subjects would hold their duels on the land of independent barons, but most simply ignored the kings’ injunctions. The fact that Louis XIII (and his prime minister, Richelieu) renewed interdictions against duels some eight times in the space of twenty-three years demonstrates the futility of such laws.17 At the end of the sixteenth century the nobility, according to Pascal Brioist, began “to desert the ﬁelds of battle” but nevertheless maintained their swords as symbols of their nobility: “Each nobleman was authorized to think that the blood of several generations of warriors ﬂowed in his veins. Carrying arms, ﬁghting in duels, would become the sign of this heritage.”18 For those descended from the old military leaders the sword became the primary signiﬁer of their nobility. These noblemen identiﬁed themselves as belonging to the noblesse d’épée and thus distinguished themselves from the new members of the nobility, who had been

124 | Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance appointed or had bought their charge, members of the so-called noblesse de robe. As power coalesced around the king throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, members of the noblesse d’épée sought to maintain their independence from the throne by ignoring laws and taking justice into their own hands. Corneille’s Le Cid, written during the reign of Louis XIII, reﬂects the fact that dueling, illegal at the time, was acceptable in certain circumstances. Early in the play, after Chimène’s father has slapped Rodrigue’s father, thereby challenging him (or his son, as the rules allow for men over sixty) to a duel, the king, Don Fernand, sends Don Arias to stop the ﬁght. Using the terms of the duel Arias addresses the following rebuke to Chimène’s father, Don Gomès: To the will of the King your courage must yield: He is very concerned, and his troubled soul Will turn his full authority against you. Moreover, you do not have a valid defense: The rank of the offended man, the severity of the offense, Require submission and duties That exceed the usual satisfactions.19

Despite the express order of the king, Don Gomès refuses to abandon his violent intentions and remains unmoved by threats of punishment for his disobedience: “The entire state will perish, if I must perish . . . The King is too dependent upon me, / And my head, were it to fall, would bring down his crown.”20 Throughout this scene, as he has done earlier in the play, Don Gomès implies that his own judgment and strength are superior to the king’s, and he insists that the king has made the wrong decision in choos-

Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance | 125 ing Rodrigue’s father over him as the prince’s tutor. 21 He stands as a symbol of the Fronde, an early seventeenth-century royalist movement that sought to retake and decentralize the king’s power. He insists that a duel take place to demonstrate, through his victory, that his judgment is superior to the king’s and that the judgment of his sword is superior to that of any civil or royal court. As in most texts the stronger ﬁghter (in this case Don Gomès) is defeated in the duel by his weaker, less experienced opponent, Rodrigue, thereby punishing the man who would dare rebel against his monarch. The king nevertheless reiterates his hatred for the duel in these terms: This old custom, well established in these parts, Under the pretext of punishing an unjust attack, Has deprived the State of its best soldiers; Often the deplorable realization of this crime Oppresses the innocent and upholds the guilty. 22

Despite his expressed feelings on the matter, the king eventually pardons Rodrigue and even endorses a duel in the play’s ﬁnal act in an attempt to placate Chimène. While the king claims that he wants to entirely abolish the duel, he is unable and unwilling to do so since it occasionally serves his purposes. Later in the seventeenth century Louis XIV imposed such severe penalties on those participating in, planning, or even watching a duel (death, prison, banishment, loss of titles and privilege) that, according to the Encyclopédie, the number of duels drastically decreased. This stringent interdiction of the duel under the reign of Louis XIV may explain why, in Molière’s plays—written for Louis XIV and his courtiers—arguments touching on the honor

126 | Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance of noblemen are settled by trials and politicking instead of duels. In Les fâcheux Eraste, continually delayed in his attempts to rejoin his beloved Orphise, is ﬁrst interrupted by the recently offended Alcandre, who wants Eraste to arrange a duel in his behalf. After meditating, Eraste answers: A duel places people in a bad situation: And our King is not a monarch in name only. He knows how to make even the most powerful obey him, And I ﬁ nd that he acts as a worthy potentate. When I must serve him I have the courage to do so; But I do not feel the same courage when displeasing him. I consider his orders my supreme law: If you seek one who will disobey him, seek another. 23

Throughout Molière’s plays duels, it seems, are replaced by references to trials, judges, and lawyers. When Alceste is accused of writing a scandalous book in Le misanthrope, instead of seeking satisfaction via a duel, he is obliged to await a decision from the judicial system. Likewise, when Alceste offends Oronte by criticizing his poetry, Oronte seeks reparation not in a duel, but by taking his case to the authorities (in the seventeenth century the Maréchaux, referred to in the play in Act II, scene 6, were to judge issues involving honor and reputation and thereby prevent duels). The fact that Alceste loses his trial despite his innocence is a subtly subversive critique not only of the period’s judicial system but also of the fact that duels were entirely illegal. Society supports fraud, while those who are too noble to play the judicial game (Alceste, instead of hiring a lawyer, tells Philinte that he will be defended by “reason, right, and equity”) are forced to leave the court. 24

Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance | 127 In all of Molière’s plays only the scandalous Dom Juan seems to have actually engaged in a duel, having killed the commander six months prior to the beginning of the play (“Did I not kill him well?”). 25 When Dom Juan is later challenged to a duel by Done Elvire’s brother, he insists that he cannot cross swords with anyone since “heaven” forbids it: “I declare unto you, for my part, that I do not want to ﬁght: heaven forbids the thought.”26 That he avoids the duel out of hypocrisy may represent, again, a subtle criticism of those who refuse to engage in duels for legal reasons. This play encapsulates the ambiguous opinion many nobles undoubtedly held regarding the duel. During the reign of Louis XIV the duel itself was a double-edged sword: those who dueled were criminals, while those who did not were represented as either hypocrites or victims of an unfair judicial system. The faulty judicial system and a persistent sense that duels were the best means to settle matters of honor may explain why, despite interdictions, duels continued in France into the twentieth century. To cite one example, in Laclos’s masterpiece, Les liaisons dangereuses, Danceny defends his honor by killing Valmont in a duel. Danceny is warned that he may be prosecuted (letter CLXVII), and he leaves Paris to go underground for a brief time. Valmont’s relative, however, decides not to press charges, and Danceny is able to go on with his life. Even if this novel only partially represents the reality of the late eighteenth century, it is clear that duels still took place and that they were largely tolerated when they proved justiﬁed. This introduction serves to establish two primary themes tied to the representation of the duel. First, for centuries the duel was thought of as a manifestation of divine judgment. Even in the lib-

128 | Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance ertine Liaisons dangereuses the death of Valmont proves just, and it leads to the scandalous revelations that destroy Mme de Merteuil’s reputation. Second, the duel served as a means to sidestep the judicial system and settle matters of honor in a nobler, more digniﬁed fashion. Its existence reﬂects the belief that individual honor and nobility are superior to government-backed justice. Certainly the two ideas are connected: divine judgment and a nobleman’s personal honor are clearly superior to the decisions of any professional tribunal. However, these two central representations of the duel would be signiﬁcantly challenged through the course of the nineteenth century. While an 1818 fencing manual maintains that “the art of fencing is a noble exercise; it is the foundation of courage, as well as the basis of justice, of right, and the security of the State,” the duel seems to have lost much of its blood and Brantôme-esque grit after the Revolution and by the time of the Restoration. 27 Scratches came to replace ﬁghts to the death. The notion of chance or the fantastic replaced divine judgment as the perceived hidden force behind victory in a duel. And the duel would come to serve as a means of resistance not to a monarch’s judgment, but to the legal and social conventions of the Republic. the duel desacralized To return one last time to Mérimée, in his Chronique du règne de Charles IX (see chapter 4) Mérimée pays considerable attention to a duel between the young Protestant Bernard de Mergy, newly arrived at court, and the experienced swordsman Comminges. The duel commences as beautiful Diane de Turgis drops her glove at the feet of Bernard, who, “struck by her beauty,” stands motion-

Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance | 129 less. 28 Comminges, proﬁting from Bernard’s hesitation, pushes past his young rival, picks up the glove, and returns it to Diane. It is only later that Bernard is made aware of the insult and decides to challenge Comminges to a duel. Comminges, by this time, has garnered a reputation as “one of our best swords,” having studied fencing with a master in Rome and surpassed a wellknown Parisian swordsman in talent. At this point Bernard is poised to win the duel: he is a younger, less talented ﬁghter, and his victory will demonstrate that God is on his side. And naturally Bernard does win the duel, planting his dagger in Comminges’s eye. But his victory is not thanks to God, but thanks to a magic relic Diane gives him the day before that he wears around his neck. During the duel the point of Comminges’s blade strikes the relic and glances to the side, superﬁcially wounding Bernard and leaving Comminges exposed to a counterattack, which Bernard makes. Far from implying the power of Catholic belief, however, this relic’s power stems from much more ambiguous sources. While Bernard believes his victory was gained by mere chance, Diane, we learn, has faith, not in divine Christian miracles and relics, but in sorcery. At one point a disguised Diane tells Bernard that the relic “is probably a charm, a dangerous talisman that you are wearing. Turgis, people say, is a great magician.”29 Further, in order to ensure Bernard heals properly from his wounds the countess hires a sorceress who maintains that Bernard can be healed only by obeying “the rules of magic sympathies” and by frequently offering sacriﬁces to “the spirits of the earth and the air.”30 The implication, whether we view Bernard’s victory as luck or magic, is that his victory has nothing to do with expressing God’s will. Such a representation of the duel points to Stendhal’s

130 | Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance claim, in Le rouge et le noir (published a year after Mérimée’s Chronique), that the duel has lost something of its ancien régime splendor (a claim I will analyze fully below). Mérimée’s text suggests that the missing element is precisely the notion of divine intervention. This intervention had been rendered impossible by the advance of Enlightenment philosophy, by the Revolution, and by a general desacralization of all French institutions.31 By bringing the magic talisman into play Mérimée not only acknowledges the historical assumption that black magic was common at the court of Catherine de Medicis but also points toward the fantastic, toward a realm where vampires and moving statues seem to ﬁll roles previously occupied by more divine personages. The inclusion of the fantastic also reﬂects a rising interest in the occult during the early nineteenth century, a movement that served to ﬁll the void left by the desacralization of both the Church and the state. the duel satirized In Stendhal’s Le rouge et le noir (written just before and during the July Revolution) Julien, the protagonist, rises through the social ranks from carpenter’s son to nobleman’s secretary to ofﬁcer in the royal army. His huge break—the break that enables his move from simple secretary to being counted among the ranks of the nobility—comes when the marquis de La Mole begins to treat Julien as the illegitimate son of a nobleman. What leads directly to this attribution of alleged nobility is Julien’s participation in a duel against the chevalier de Beauvoisis: “The duel was over in an instant: Julien was hit with a ball in the arm; the others wrapped it in scarves soaked with strong drink, and the chevalier de Beauvoisis very politely asked Julien to allow him to accompany him home,

Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance | 131 in the same coach in which they had arrived.”32 To avoid appearing ridiculous for having fought in a duel against a simple secretary, Beauvoisis spreads the rumor that Julien “was the illegitimate child of a close friend of the marquis de La Mole.”33 As a result of the duel and Beauvoisis’s subsequent rumor, the marquis, as we learn in the next chapter, has decided to give Julien a blue suit that he is to wear when he wants to be “the son of my friend, the old duke.”34 When he wears it, “the marquis treated him as an equal.”35 And Julien plays his role well—so well, in fact, that even the marquis’s daughter, Mathilde, begins to take an amorous interest in him. But the duel, she laments, is no longer in 1830 the true test of a man’s courage; it is a practice that is already staid and scripted. The men who are legitimately in Mathilde’s circle of friends are “brave, and nothing else. Even then, brave in what way? she asked herself: in a duel, but the duel is no longer anything more than a ceremony. Everything is scripted in advance, even what must be said when falling. Stretched out on the grass, and the hand on the heart, a generous pardon of the adversary is required, as is a word for a beautiful, often imaginary, woman.”36 Mathilde wonders if Julien is like these men or like her sixteenth-century ancestors: “Alas! Mathilde thought. Great men of character and noble birth were to be found in Henri III’s court! Ah! If Julien had served at Jarnac or at Moncontour, I would have no more doubts. . . . Ah! In the heroic days of France, in the century of Boniface de La Mole, Julien would have been the head of a squadron.”37 So Julien, through the duel, gains access to the noble world. But to distinguish himself (in the eyes of Mathilde) as superior to the other young men who stick to convention, he must demonstrate

132 | Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance that his duel was impetuous, that his use of arms was more than merely an attempt to follow the social script, that he is a worthy descendant of heroic predecessors. The decisive scene (wherein Julien demonstrates his “nobility”) again employs the symbolic currency of the duel and its primary weapon, the sword. After Julien’s ﬁrst night with Mathilde, Mathilde begins to doubt the grandeur of her lover, to question his noble heart. “I am ashamed to have given myself to the ﬁrst man to offer himself,” she tells him.38 Furious, Julien seizes a medieval sword displayed in the library: “He would have been the happiest of men were he able to kill her. At the moment he drew the sword, with some difﬁculty, from its antique sheath, Mathilde, overcome with the happiness of such a new sensation, walked proudly toward him; her tears had dried.”39 At this moment Julien remembers the generosity of Mathilde’s father and restrains himself. He slowly places the sword back in its sheath and then hangs it back on the wall: “Mademoiselle de La Mole looked at him with surprise. I was on the verge of being killed by my lover! she told herself. This thought transported her back to the most beautiful time of the century of Charles IX and of Henri III.”40 Mathilde cannot forget this moment: “Enraptured, Mademoiselle de La Mole was caught up in her happiness at having been on the verge of being killed. She went so far as to tell herself: he is worthy of being my master, since he was on the verge of killing me. How many handsome young society men would need to be melted together to muster one such passionate act?”41 While this scene may point to the troubled beginnings of Julien and Mathilde’s sexual relationship (he unsheathes the sword “with some difﬁculty”), it also points to the force of the sword, notably a medieval one, and by

Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance | 133 extension to the force of the duel in evoking the past and conjuring up images of noble glory. Seeing a sword as it was used in the “heroic days of France” causes Mathilde to see Julien as distinct from and more passionate—more “sixteenth century”—than the young aristocrats courting her. Ultimately of course Julien plays his role too well (perhaps despite himself), and he, like Mathilde’s ancestor Boniface, is beheaded. He is condemned, at least in part, for having extended himself beyond the limits of his social class, for having adopted the lifestyle of the nobility. In front of the jury Julien explains: “I see men who . . . would like to punish me in order to discourage once and for all this class of youth, born in an inferior class and in a way oppressed by poverty, who are lucky enough to receive a good education and audacious enough to mingle with those whom the prideful rich call ‘society.’ That, sirs, is my crime.”42 Here, as with other sports (e.g., paume, hunting), the representation of the duel evokes the social rules of the past. While Julien is momentarily granted access to the nobility, in the end he is punished for leaving his own social class. Like Alphonse de Peyrehorade, Julien is portrayed as a parvenu, a fraudulent participant in a noble competition, who, like Alphonse, pays for his transgression with his life. In Gustave Flaubert’s L’education sentimentale the protagonist, Frédéric, challenges the viscount de Cisy to a duel after the viscount offends him by insulting the love of his life, Mme Arnoux. However, instead of slapping the viscount, as tradition requires, Frédéric, seated across a table from his adversary, throws his plate at him: “Frédéric threw a plate at his face. In a ﬂash it ﬂew across the table, knocked over two bottles, demolished a fruit bowl, and, shattering into three pieces on the centerpiece, struck the viscount

134 | Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance in the stomach.”43 This act nevertheless is sufﬁcient for the two military ofﬁcers consulted in the matter to conclude that Frédéric was the aggressor and that the choice of arms, therefore, belongs to de Cisy. After the time, place, and weapons are decided, Frédéric has time to think about his upcoming duel. As in previous scenes Frédéric believes that he is about to embark on a heroic Romantic quest. While looking at himself in the mirror he says out loud: “I am going to duel. Say, I am going to duel, how strange.”44 Later, while Frédéric looks up at the stars, the narrator gives us the following insight into his thinking: “The idea of ﬁghting for a woman made him feel more important, it ennobled him.”45 For Frédéric this duel represents another of the Romantic quests he feels he must embark upon, and like his other Romantic illusions, it leads only to deception. Nevertheless, like Flaubert’s famous heroine Madame Bovary, Frédéric attempts to follow the sentimental script, writing his own Romantic novel in his head. The reality of the duel, naturally, proves quite different. Instead of gazing at stars, Frédéric’s opponent spends the night before the duel with his friend Vezou: “They spent the entire night playing cards. The viscount made it a point to lose in order to purge himself of bad luck. M. Vezou took advantage of the situation.”46 In medieval times combatants prepared themselves for duels by fasting and calling upon God, the ultimate arbitrator. But in the nineteenth century chance replaces Providence as the spirit that must be conjured up, as the force that will decide the outcome of the conﬂict. Granted, chance is still treated as a supernatural force, but we are far from the supernal preparations and appeals to divine will that characterized the ancien régime duel.

Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance | 135 When the time for the duel ﬁnally arrives Frédéric’s second, a “citizen” overly enthusiastic about seeing a nobleman fall at the hands of a member of the third estate, cuts short any talk of peacefully ending the disagreement. “Do you think we are here to pluck ducks, damn it?” he asks tersely. “En garde!”47 He then gives the order to ﬁght: “Allons.” Normally duels and fencing matches begin when a third party says “allez,” the second-person plural command for “go” or “begin.” Frédéric’s citizen, however, replaces “allez” with “allons” (let’s go), the ﬁrst word of the Republican hymn, “La marseillaise.” He thereby vicariously places himself alongside Frédéric as an enemy of the noble if clownlike de Cisy and couches Frédéric’s duel in broad revolutionary terms. As the duel begins the adversaries face each other and raise their swords: “Cisy became frighteningly pale. The end of his blade trembled, like a horsewhip. His head pitched back, his arms spread wide, he fell on his back, unconscious. Joseph lifted him up; and, while pushing a ﬂask under his nostrils, he shook him forcefully. The viscount opened his eyes, then all of a sudden, jumped like a madman on his sword. Frédéric had kept his sword, and he waited, his eyes steady, his hand high.”48 At this moment Arnoux arrives, mistakenly believing that Frédéric is ﬁghting to protect his reputation (not his wife’s), and declares his intention to stop the duel. But one of de Cisy’s seconds is already trying to stop the duel because of the rule of ﬁrst blood: “‘End it! The viscount is bleeding!’ ‘I am?’ de Cisy said. Indeed, he had, when he fell, scratched his left thumb. ‘But it was when he fell,’ the citizen added.”49 Despite the citizen’s desire to see the nobleman’s head roll, the duel is stopped as a result of de Cisy’s bleeding thumb. The two men, having never crossed swords, “weakly” shake hands,

136 | Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance emotionally wrung out by their near miss, and go their separate ways. Some time later the real story of the duel is written and even published. But instead of appearing as part of a Romantic novel, as Frédéric dreamed, the account appears in a satirical newspaper in an article entitled “Une poulette entre trois cocos” (roughly, “A Chick between Three Nuts,” la poulette being Mme Arnoux, the three cocos Frédéric, de Cisy, and Arnoux). Instead of becoming a hero Frédéric ﬁnds himself, on the contrary, the butt of jokes, laughed at by former friends. While this representation of the duel underscores the central theme of Flaubert’s novel (namely the undoing of a Romantic idealist), it also indicates a new low for the status of the duel. The duel is not only staid: it has become a joke. Written during the Second Empire, L’éducation sentimentale represents the duel in a way that reﬂects Marx’s well-known axiom regarding Napoleon III: ﬁrst time tragedy, second time farce.50 Frédéric, the provincial, bourgeois parvenu, can match his heroic ﬁctional predecessors in neither love nor war and ends up with nothing but the memories of unfulﬁlled expectations. His duel interruptus, like his love affair with Mme Arnoux, is a near miss, a Romantic cliché that remains on the level of anticipation.51 fencing and the third republic After 1870, during the Third Republic, fencing enjoyed a signiﬁcant face-lift. While fencing manuals had been published earlier in the nineteenth century, many of them were military in nature, with titles such as Théorie de l’escrime à cheval (Theory of Fencing on Horseback) (1828), Nouveau système d’escrime pour la cavalerie

Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance | 137 (New Fencing System for the Cavalry) (1834), and Escrime à la baïonnette (Fencing with a Bayonet) (1849). But there was a veritable explosion of publications treating fencing (and the duel) in the last thirty years of the century. A title search for escrime in the Bibliothèque Nationale’s database reveals 56 titles in the ﬁrst seventy years of the century, or 0.8 titles per year, while 109 titles were published between 1870 and 1900, or 3.63 titles per year.52 Signiﬁcantly, Brantôme’s Discours sur les duels was reedited several times in the nineteenth century. In an 1887 edition of the text the editors remark, tellingly: “Among ancient works, if one stands out as truly pertinent to our day, it is certainly Brantôme’s Discours sur les duels. . . . Without a doubt duels have never been less deadly than they are in our day; but they have perhaps never taken place with such frequency.”53 Robert Nye’s recent calculations corroborate the observations of Brantôme’s nineteenth-century editors. Based upon “inventories compiled by enthusiasts, and . . . the practice of publishing the procès-verbaux of duels in the newspapers, we may estimate that the rate, after remaining at a level of about 100 per year in the decades prior to 1860, began to increase rapidly, reaching a high of between 400 and 500 per year after 1880 until well into the 1900s.”54 Duels were common enough that insurance companies even began offering policies to protect against losses suffered or inﬂicted in a duel.55 Nye goes on to suggest that fencing and duels, while inspired by aristocratic models, nevertheless “served as instruments of the new democracy and as emblems of a new ideal of civic manhood.”56 However, the number of bourgeois who practiced the sport was not signiﬁcant enough to conclude that the duel and fencing represented “emblems of a new democracy.”57 Nye cor-

138 | Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance rectly observes that “in 1882 a Société de l’encouragement de l’escrime was founded for serious Parisian amateurs, and by 1889 it had well over 400 dues-paying members.”58 But if in all of Paris fewer than ﬁve hundred men had joined this society in seven years, it is difﬁcult to conclude that admiration for fencing had become universal among citizens of the Republic. Pierre Arnaud concludes instead that fencing was one of the sports that remained aristocratic during the Third Republic despite attempts to popularize it: “If businessmen or workers attempt to practice fencing they immediately encounter enormous difﬁculties,” such as the rising costs of materials, instruction, and dues to join a local fencing society.59 My analysis reveals in fact that fencing is generally represented as a means of resistance to the Republic—not as an instrument of support for it. The monarchists whose elitism had been threatened by the implantation of the republican government turned to fencing as a means to reassert the codes of the past and to challenge, not serve, the authority of the Third Republic. After offering detailed instruction on fencing techniques and tactics, J. A. Blot adds a section on duels to his 1887 manual (ﬁrst published in 1872), L’école de l’escrime suivi du code du duel. He offers the following justiﬁcation for the addition: “The most severe penalties against duels, the regulations of the French Marshals in 1653, king’s edicts, parliamentary laws, reprimands by the clergy, etc., etc., and in our days the shackles of the police and the repression of the courts, nothing has been able to stop them. It is therefore a duty, and a service rendered to humanity, to outline the rules of the duel.”60 Blot’s text thus represents an example of a fencer (and duelist) who viewed the Third Republic as the enemy: the Third Republic’s institutions (police and tribunals) have attempted to put an end to the duel, but Blot, publishing the rules of

Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance | 139 dueling, offers his own seditious attempt to undermine the government’s authority. Like Blot, Prévost and Jollivet, in their 1891 book entitled L’escrime et le duel, depict the duel as standing outside of contemporary legal and political structures. Jollivet writes that in France duels take place “each time a question of honor is in play [en jeu] and one wishes to resolve it without turning to the law or the court of public opinion.”61 Public opinion and justice, pillars of the Third Republic, remain antithetical to the duel and its ancien régime ideals of honor. Jollivet continues: “These rules and customs [governing the duel], can they constitute a Code in the precise, solemn sense of the word? We do not believe so. It does not seem appropriate to employ a legal term to describe the customs governing an act that is explicitly illegal.”62 While the marquis de Chatauvillard published the “code” of the duel in 1836, Jollivet argues that the term is misplaced in 1891 precisely because at this time the duel stands in opposition to the legal system of the Third Republic.63 Nye states that the duel was not “formally illegal” during the Third Republic, leaving the reader to wonder if it could have been approved of or even encouraged by the government.64 Jollivet, however, makes it clear that prosecutors routinely brought duelists to court: Since the law did not specify duels, the enemies of this practice turned to case law to punish duelists. The articles of the penal Code against assault and injuries gave them the means. . . . By virtue of this law numerous cases have been ﬁ led in these last twenty-ﬁve years. . . . In the beginning the courts only pursued the man who had injured the other and his witnesses. In this manner they remained faithful to the strict text of the law on assault

140 | Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance and injuries. Then around 1870 they thought to include in the lawsuits the injured man himself, should he still be alive, under pretext that he had intended to injure and had begun to execute his intent. Several guilty sentences were pronounced under the authority of this extensive jurisprudence. 65

In other words, under the Third Republic (“around 1870,” “in the last twenty-ﬁve years”) the duel became an even riskier activity than before. Given the potential legal jeopardy of the participants, the question remains: if not to uphold the values of a new Republic, why did the number of duels increase in the last three decades of the nineteenth century? Earlier in L’escrime et le duel Prévost places the renewal of fencing in the following historical context: Our kings encouraged this art . . . and those who practiced it. And masters at arms remind us with a point of pride that the ﬁrst institution in France to be known as an Academy was theirs. Created by royal privilege in 1567 and placed under the aegis of the memorable patron of fencing, Saint Michael, this Company reached its zenith under Louis XIV, who conﬁrmed the statutes established by his predecessors and increased its numerous privileges. The former Academy of Arms counted twenty members, the ﬁrst six were of the old nobility and decorated by royal orders. . . . This academy of arms disappeared under the Revolution when oaths and royal masters were suppressed. It reappeared in 1886 with the following program: To create a common center of study for masters at arms and establish frequent meetings between them.

Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance | 141 To watch over the dignity of teaching and to encourage by all possible means the prosperity of the art of arms. Among the traditions that the Academy of Arms brought back to life . . . we must mention the banquet of Saint Michael that took place for the ﬁrst time on 29 January 1888. During this celebration of the sword a ﬁrst consecration to the new health of arms was presented by the Committee and published shortly thereafter under its supervision.66

The restoration of the Academy of Arms and of the banquet of Saint Michael coincides with the restoration of other ancient and ancien régime practices, such as the 1896 Olympics (see chapter 6), shooting, and hunting, to name a few. Frédéric Régamey’s engraving (ﬁgure 6), from the introductory pages of Prévost’s book, ﬁguratively depicts the cultural restoration represented by the return of fencing academies and banquets. The contemporary aristocrat raises his glass, while his noble ancestors, wearing the clothing of earlier centuries, look on approvingly. The modern fencer is surrounded by ancient swords, the very symbols of prestigious ancien régime nobles who distinguished themselves from their parvenu rivals (members of the bureaucratic noblesse de robe) by taking up the title noblesse d’épée, nobility of the sword. He further stands beneath a sculpture of that great symbol of the power of the Church, Saint Michael, whose sword is raised to strike down Satan, symbolizing the power of the sword to do good and exercise God’s justice. Prévost’s description of fencing mirrors the message of Régamey’s engraving (clearly establishing the practice’s noble roots), while at the same time identifying fencing as antithetical to the republican objectives of the French Revolution. Given the political scene, the timing of this

figure 6. Engraving by Frédéric Régamey in L’escrime et le duel, by Camille Prévost and G. Jollivet (Paris: Hachette, 1891). Courtesy Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance | 143 renewed interest in ancien régime activities is not surprising. After the creation of the Third Republic many monarchists had held out hope for a monarchical restoration. However, once the Count of Chambord, in line for the French throne, turned down an invitation to return as the head of the government in 1871, such political hopes were dashed.67 After this the monarchists turned instead to cultural restorations—focusing on creating an ancien régime, Catholic sphere in which to ﬁnd protection against the rise of secular republicanism. To return brieﬂy to J. A. Blot, he laments in the introduction to his manual that since the Revolution of 1830 the stature of fencing has declined. Before 1830 Blot had been a member of a prestigious fencing society. He writes, “The Revolution of 1830 was the occasion for the dissolution of this society that I still miss and that I would like to see reborn.”68 He argues that restoring fencing at the end of the nineteenth century to what it had been in the days of the monarchy would help restore respect and dignity to a society in trouble: “In a word, fencing is an art as difﬁcult as it is noble. The method is indispensable and the respect of ancient principles a necessity. Our predecessors understood this. Today these principles have been abandoned; this is a great error. We must return to the severe behavior, to the rigorous observation of the rules.”69 The ﬁrst issue of a weekly paper entitled L’Escrime, Gazette des salles d’armes, des tirs et des sports, suggests, like Blot’s and Prévost’s texts, that the renewed interest in fencing represents something of an aristocratic restoration: “After having slept for a time, this noble science of Fencing awakens and spreads, each day, a little more.”70 This ﬁrst issue is ﬁlled with sketches of fencers in

144 | Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance action: some wear sixteenth-century rufﬂe collars, others seventeenth- or eighteenth-century shirts, and still others contemporary vests. Subsequent issues carry a running feature on the history of duels in France. The newspaper’s presentation and content stress a link between contemporary and ancien régime values, between the duel of Third Republic France and the duel of the ancien régime. In both cases it is illegal. And in both cases it afﬁrms the prestige and nobility of the practitioner. In the same ﬁrst issue the editors coyly dismiss those who suggest that fencing leads to violence by arguing that fencing, on the contrary, leads one to be “moderate yet ﬁrm; and since this force leads others to be moderate toward you, it follows logically that skill in fencing provides a double reason to ﬁght less often.”71 Despite this argument the last section of the paper, “Echos de partout,” presents the results of a number of recently fought duels. In fact, over the course of the next several issues more ink is used to describe duels than to cover fencing techniques or strategy. A typical example is the story of the duel between Prince Alphonse de Chimay and Baron Albert de Béville. The baron, it seems, published a newspaper article that offended the prince. As a result the prince challenged the baron to a duel. The prince won, wounding de Béville extensively enough that the attending physician, brought by the two duelists, declared him too injured to continue—so much for fencing leading to moderation. In what was perhaps a not-so-subtle message to elected deputies L’Escrime also ran a series of articles entitled “Les duels parlementaires.” In the ﬁrst issue the reader is informed that the current elected ofﬁcials are neither honorable nor courageous, but they are certainly loquacious:

Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance | 145 The “parliamentary duel” is not well considered today. Most affairs of honor between deputies are worked out amiably; it begins by sending insults in the chamber, continues by sending witnesses, and ends by sending excuses. The national assembly, elected in 1871, had already distinguished itself for its repugnance for duels; I am, to be sure, far from calling this aversion a crime; but if ever an Assembly in the world had reasons to go to the ﬁeld, it was assuredly that Assembly. Our constituents of 1871, split in two irreconcilable camps, had many good reasons to kill each other; they contented themselves with using words as daggers and with massacring each other with metaphors.72

In another installment of “Les duels parlementaires” the all-talkand-no-action National Assembly of the Third Republic is contrasted with two deputies of the July Monarchy, Bugeaud and Dulong, who did not content themselves with words: “The duel took place with pistols. Hit a little above the left eye, Dulong fell without crying out. He lived until the next morning.”73 Heroic, stoic, and detached, even in his own death, Dulong is held up as a model and antidote to the quibbling, antiduel deputies of the 1880s. In L’Escrime of 1 January 1882 the editors published a letter from a lawyer on the Paris appeals court denouncing duels as an “ignorant prejudice . . . that leads us to barbarism.” 74 The lawyer continues by asking the paper’s editors, “By what right do you seek to deprive one of your fellow men of his life? Did you give him his existence to be able to take it from him?” A journalist, who signs his name X. Z., replies: “There would be enough material to ﬁll a volume if we were to respond in detail to this correspondence that condemns the duel as an assassination. We would

146 | Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance have to go over for the thousandth time all the arguments put forth by the defenders and the detractors of a practice that we continue to view as a social necessity.”75 The journalist concludes that the end of duels would mark “the end of human dignity and the beginning of shame and degradation.” 76 This exchange marks the extent to which the institutions of the Republic and the defenders of the duel were at odds. It also demonstrates the marginalized position of the aristocratic men who defended the duel—despite the freedom of the press at this time, the editors, journalists, and columnists in L’Escrime rarely provide their names, and when they do the names are certainly not real (X. Z., Marforio, etc.). I would like to return momentarily to Nye’s argument that the duel became a force for socializing the bourgeois in the aristocratic mold. The problem with this assertion, as we saw with hunting, is that by the time of the Third Republic the bourgeois had already been imitating the aristocracy for decades. At the same time, in order to survive ﬁnancially the aristocracy had begun to imitate the bourgeois, investing money in stocks, for example. This explains why page 2 of each issue of L’Escrime featured a “Revue ﬁnancière,” offering reports on stocks and the signiﬁcant market happenings of the previous week. Despite this bourgeoisiﬁcation of the aristocracy (or the aristocratization of the bourgeoisie), it is clear that the newspaper’s readers still belonged to the upper crust of France’s elite and that the paper’s readers were still very much at odds with what they undoubtedly viewed as the plebeian spirit of the Third Republic. This is not to say that in fencing circles this marriage of bourgeois and aristocratic values went entirely unnoticed or was accepted without criticism. A case in point is “Le bonheur dans le

Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance | 147 crime,” a story written by the legitimist author Barbey d’Aurevilly at the beginning of the Third Republic (in 1871) and published in Les diaboliques in 1874.77 This narrative is pertinent to our study because it demonstrates how fencing places one immediately in the heart of the noble class and then details the consequences of this admittance. It tells the story of a soldier named Stassin who retires to the city of V——, marries a working-class girl, and opens a fencing school. This, we are told, is a “brilliant idea” because in the city of V——, known for being “more royalist than the king,” the nobles did not wish merely to kill a man but “to kill him skillfully and artfully.”78 During the Restoration (1815–30) the nobles of V—— accept Stassin “as if he were one of their own,” grateful for his efforts to restore the “art of the sword, the glory of our fathers.”79 But this remains an “as if,” since the old soldier can never really be “one of their own.” When Stassin has a daughter, he naturally names her Hauteclaire, the name of the sword of Olivier (Roland’s friend in La chanson de Roland), and immediately begins training her in the art of fencing. After Stassin’s death Hauteclaire replaces her father and continues the school, her talent with the sword surpassing that of the best fencers in France. One day, with no warning, Hauteclaire disappears. The physician/narrator eventually discovers her working as a servant for the countess de Savigny under the name Eulalie. The narrator describes how one night, he ventures to the de Savigny chateau after midnight and is surprised to hear, from the most distant pavilion of the chateau, “the rattling sound of swords crossing, slapping and rubbing against each other.”80 The erotic language used to describe the crossing swords is explained several sentences later. Savigny, a former student at Stassin’s school, has fallen in love with Haute-

148 | Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance claire and invited her into his home as his wife’s servant. Fencing is “their way to make love.”81 Savigny’s wife is described as “one of these women of old race, exhausted, elegant, distinguished, haughty, who, from the depths of their paleness and their thinness, seem to say, ‘I am conquered by time, as is my race; I am dying, but I scorn you!’”82 She is a symbol of the old, pure nobility, among the last of a dying breed whose sole passion is “the feeling of their own nobility.”83 After a time Hauteclaire “accidentally” poisons the countess, giving her toxic ink instead of the medicine the physician prescribes. 84 Before dying the countess tells the physician/narrator that her poisoning was intentional and had been done with the approval of her husband. She makes the physician promise, however, not to reveal the secret and to convince the public that her murder really was an accident. The physician reasons, “I supposed that she loved her husband so much that she wanted to save him.”85 Guessing his thoughts, the countess explains that she hates her husband but wants to save the nobility from scandal: “Oh! if it were only about him, he is worthy of all the scaffolds! . . . But it is about all of us, the people of distinction [les gens comme il faut] of the country!”86 She is so committed to the purity of the nobility that she would rather die than tarnish the history of a distinguished name and title: If we were still what we should be, I would have thrown this Eulalie in one of the dungeons of the Savigny chateau, and we would have never heard anything more about it! But at the present we are no longer masters in our own house. We no longer have our expedient and silent justice, and I do not want any part of the public scandals of your people, doctor; and I would rather

Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance | 149 leave them in each other’s arms, happy and free from me, and die enraged as I am dying, than to think, while dying, that the nobility of V—— would ignominiously count a poisoner among its ranks. 87

The nobles are no longer masters in France; they have been replaced by creatures of the doctor’s species, that is, by the Voltairian bourgeois. Because of this change the countess realizes that her husband’s two crimes (bringing his mistress into his home and murdering his wife) will be made public under the current legal system. She cannot, as her ancestors could, quietly impose her own private justice and dispose of Hauteclaire. Reminiscent of the duelist’s argument, the physician comments, “In our ﬂat modern morals . . . law has replaced passion.”88 The Third Republic has pushed matters of honor into a republican courtroom and replaced passion and energy with sterile laws. Despite the countess’s attempts to protect the reputation of the nobility and the de Savigny name, two years after her death de Savigny marries Hauteclaire. However, other characters in the story are not sure how the countess died: “They only know of the monstrous misalliance that caused the count de Savigny to be shamed and isolated like a man with the plague. . . . You know what a dishonor it is, or rather was, since things have also changed in that realm, to say of a man: he married his servant! This dishonor spread and remained on Serlon like a stain.”89 This stain, however, does nothing to diminish the count’s happiness, as he and Hauteclaire, the new countess de Savigny, enjoy a long, unblemished, blissful existence together with neither remorse nor embarrassment. Barbey’s tale “Le bonheur dans le crime” could have easily

150 | Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance been entitled “Le bonheur dans l’escrime,” since Hauteclaire’s happiness stems as much from fencing as it does from crime.90 In addition, fencing is her path to becoming comme il faut. Despite Hauteclaire’s happiness—the primary and ironic moral of the story being that conscience is overrated—she is guilty of killing off the story’s real, blue-blooded noble (the countess’s body is “veined like a bluish mother-of-pearl”), usurping her place in bed and in society (Hauteclaire after her marriage is given the title countess de Savigny), and emasculating the count (“Hauteclaire, whom I believed to be the man in their intimate relationship”; “It was the woman who had the muscles, and the man who had the anxious nerves”; “They never had children”).91 After degrading the nobility Hauteclaire effectively becomes more noble than the actual nobles. At the very least she possesses a “royal attitude.”92 Her arrival in the nobility, however, is still as much a fraud in the late nineteenth century as was Julien’s in the early part of the century. This story is on some levels a warning to those who would interpret the outward trappings of nobility (in this case fencing) as indicative of the real thing. Hauteclaire succeeds in reversing both the social and the sexual orders, subverting the old power structure at its most fundamental level. And she accomplishes this via fencing, through the symbolic (and phallic) power of the sword.93 On a broader level “Le bonheur dans le crime” can be read as a critique of the moderate legitimists during the Third Republic who, unlike the Count of Chambord, sought to compromise with the Republic (to marry their servants, so to speak) by keeping the tricolor ﬂag and maintaining a form of government dominated by an elected parliament (propositions rejected by the Count of Chambord in 1871).94 The compromises were tacitly accepted by

Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance | 151 many aristocrats but certainly offended true legitimists. Barbey chose fencing (and women, in particular Hauteclaire) to symbolize a form of unscrupulous social climbing, a dilution of legitimist values. Fencing was a sort of blind spot in the aristocracy’s cultural practices through which some members of the lower classes could pass into aristocratic circles. Instead of turning Republicans into honorable citizens, Barbey suggests, fencing turned lowerclass practitioners into monsters. fencing from coubertin to today Because of the signiﬁcant amount of time required to become proﬁcient at fencing, the money necessary to belong to fencing clubs, and the clubs’ relatively exclusive natures, fencing remained very much a gentleman’s, elitist, nonrepublican sport during the Third Republic. Fencing and the duel primarily served as a means for legitimists to demonstrate that their “passion,” their sense of justice, was above the law and above the reach of the moderates’ compromises. Along with several other sports fencing remained so attached to the monarchical social class that the baron Pierre de Coubertin, outlining his rules of amateurism in 1894, contemplated allowing prize money for fencing, convinced that it would not prove any sort of corrupting inﬂuence: “Fencing is there to attest that it is not impossible to attain the sporting ideal in a nearly absolute manner; often, a fencer does not even receive a medal for his victory: one would say that the thrust concluding the assault carries within itself the highest recompense that can be bestowed, the only recompense that the hand holding a sword can accept.” 95 Paying the winner of a fencing contest (and Coubertin also later mentions yachting and riding) may have been accept-

152 | Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance able in Coubertin’s mind (and in fact fencing medalists did receive cash prizes in the 1900 Olympics) because the participants in such sports were clearly not professionals; they were gentlemen—that is, they were like Coubertin himself and like “X. Z.”96 For such men the greatest reward comes in the form of the activity itself, not in petty pecuniary rewards. The baron’s description of fencing as “containing within itself the highest recompense that can be awarded” is reminiscent of Bourdieu’s formula contrasting “activities which are an end in themselves” with the “victory at all costs” mantra of the working class.97 Fencing’s transformation into a sport at the end of the nineteenth century and its subsequent departure from the noble ideals of honor associated with the duel are what eventually caused it to fall in line with the Republic’s acceptable, legal activities. Points and prize money replaced blood and honor, judges replaced seconds, and noble fencing clubs were appropriated by sporting organizations governed by the minister of sport. Athletes representing their country in international sporting events replaced nobles defending their personal or familial honor. But even in the late twentieth century fencing was still trying to shake an elitist image. In a 2001 article in L’Equipe the elitist days of fencing are remembered wistfully by at least one signiﬁcant fencer: “Long a sport exclusively of the upper class, the art of blades was still considered, at the beginning of the century, a posh activity, practiced in very closed circles, like bridge. ‘All these messieurs and these ladies with whom they would get into their Rolls,’ sighs the slightly dreaming director of French teams, Christian Martin. ‘A world that has today disappeared.’” 98 It perhaps took the 2004 Olympic medals of Laura Flessel (from French Guyana) and

Fencing and Aristocratic Resistance | 153 Maureen Nisima (from a relatively poor Parisian suburb)—two black, female fencers, shouting with determination and joy after each touch won (the opposite of the characteristic detachment of aristocratic fencing) and capturing France’s media spotlight—to ﬁnally push fencing out of the Rolls Royces and into the French mainstream.

six

Olympic Restoration Coubertin and the European Monarchy

It is difﬁcult for Americans to understand the march of political events in France, and their details, because they lose sight of the struggle between the aristocrat and the democrat. . . . Many of those who still have monarchical beliefs will only admit that the great rural proprietors, or at most the great industrial magnates and the great bankers, can have the pretension to govern their country. The idea that a lawyer, a doctor, a journalist, has any right to sit in the Chamber or the Senate seems to them absurd. Pierre de Coubertin, The Century Magazine, 1897

It has become commonplace to state that the Olympic games of recent memory reﬂect the tensions of a global society. The exclusion of athletes who protested against racial discrimination during the 1968 Olympics in Mexico reﬂected a global movement toward tolerance. The murder of Israeli athletes and coaches during the Munich games has been seen as part of a pattern of global terrorism. The boycotting of games held in the Soviet Union and in the United States in the 1980s reﬂected Cold War politics. And the commercialization of the Olympics since the 1990s reﬂects the growing liberalization of the world economy. I point to these obvious examples because I intend to look at the Olympics’ nineteenth-century origins and suggest that the games have

156 | Olympic Restoration always been used for social or political ends, that the Coubertinian ideal of sport for sport’s sake served a very speciﬁc agenda. Previous chapters have examined the embourgeoisement of sports and games previously reserved for the nobility. I will argue here that the Olympics originally represented Pierre de Coubertin’s attempt to both resist this undermining of noble privilege and to create an instrument capable of reinvigorating the European monarchy. olympics and nationalism What were Coubertin’s objectives, and why did he push to “reestablish” the Olympics in 1896? Bill Henry, in his book entitled An Approved History of the Olympic Games, presents the consensus answer, namely, that the baron Pierre de Coubertin, disturbed by the humiliating French military defeat of 1870, reorganized the Olympics in an effort to strengthen a weakened country: “The period in which young Pierre de Coubertin was inspired to revive the Olympic Games was . . . a postwar period. His country, France, had been overrun by Germany in 1870. . . . Coubertin stood poised at the threshold of life disillusioned, disturbed, and dissatisﬁed with the pathways that lay before him. Analyzing the situation, Coubertin, at the risk of oversimpliﬁcation, felt that since his country was in fact composed of individual people, the way to a better France lay in the development of better Frenchmen.”1 According to Henry, after studying the English system Coubertin concluded that athletics would provide the path to improving his country in the aftermath of the 1870 defeat at the hands of the Prussians. The baron thus undertook educational reform in his country, and this led him eventually to “see if some

Olympic Restoration | 157 way could not be found to . . . make it possible for the youth of many nations to beneﬁt by a meeting of the minds and of the muscles. This was the birth of the modern Olympic games.”2 This explanation is echoed by David C. Young in his 1996 book, The Modern Olympics: “It is a commonplace of modern Olympic history that Coubertin’s interest in physical education, sports, and even the Olympics was rooted in patriotism. He conceived the idea that France had lost the Franco-Prussian War because of the physical degeneracy of the young men in the French army; on the other side, he thought, the superior physical training the youth in the German army received in their German schools put them at a great military advantage.”3 Young does go on to suggest an error in this “commonplace,” namely that Coubertin’s idea to revive the Olympics was not his own but that of Dr. W. P. Brookes, a physician who encouraged exercise in French schools and even founded an Olympian Class in 1850.4 However, Young does not refute the fundamental commonplace: the link among 1870, patriotism, and the Olympics. Even the reliable Allen Guttmann falls victim to the idée reçue: “Pierre de Coubertin was still a child when France suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Prussians in 1870. . . . Like most Frenchmen, the young Coubertin burned with a desire to avenge the defeat and to recover the lost provinces. As the child of one of France’s most aristocratic families, Coubertin may have felt a special responsibility to seek revanche for the debacle at Sedan.”5 Guttmann continues, explaining that when he was older “Coubertin was haunted by memories of the Franco-Prussian War. He attributed the defeat not to the arrogance of Napoleon III . . . but rather to the physical inferiority of the average French

158 | Olympic Restoration youth.”6 While we can only muse as to why an aristocrat would want to avenge the loss of an emperor, it is clear that Guttmann, like many others, attempts to link Coubertin’s organization of the Olympics with a nationalistic desire for revenge.7 In this chapter I intend to offer a more nuanced answer to the question of why Coubertin organized the Olympics. A careful reading of Coubertin’s writings (regarding education, sports, and history) reveals that his desire to reorganize the Olympics stemmed more from his disappointment with the failure of the Restoration of 1815–30 than from any embarrassment he felt at the French defeat at the hands of the Prussians in 1870. Instead of remedying a military defeat, the Olympics represent in part Coubertin’s attempt to “restore” the cultural superiority of a defeated aristocracy. Athletics became a means to reestablish the nobility’s cultural preeminence, which Coubertin judged to be under attack by the politics of the Third Republic. Several points hamper the notion that Coubertin strove to reestablish the Olympics as a means to strengthen France and prevent another disaster like 1870. First, Coubertin was only seven when the Prussian occupation took place. It would be overly simplistic to conclude that this traumatic experience led him to organize the Olympics twenty-six years later. Yes, Coubertin did want to reform the system of physical education in France, but never does he suggest that this is in response to 1870. Louis Callebat, who himself argues that Coubertin’s desire to reestablish the Olympics stemmed from the 1870 defeat, reminds us in his biography of Coubertin that several educators had already instituted educational reforms of physical education, most signiﬁcantly Jules Ferry, who made gymnastic exercise obligatory in 1880. 8

Olympic Restoration | 159 Ironically, if Coubertin did want to reform physical education in the school system, it was because he judged that its practice at the time was too military in nature: “The gymnastic societies organized following the national trials of 1870 . . . were primarily misguided, in my opinion, since they were much more militaristic then than they later became; they primarily sought the cultivation of discipline.”9 For someone supposedly motivated primarily by a military loss, criticizing physical education programs for focusing too much on military discipline is at the least incongruous. To be fair, Coubertin does go on to say that this emphasis on military exercise saps youth of their “individual initiative,” which a heavier emphasis on sport would promote (by “sport” Coubertin implies competitive physical games like those organized by students in England and the United States). He remains, however, consistently unconcerned with the impact his proposed reforms might have on the military might of France. Another weakness in the logic that links the organization of the Olympics with the defeat of 1870 is that it somehow supposes a link among Coubertin’s proposed educational reforms, French nationalism, and international sporting events. To be sure, Coubertin was in a certain manner nationalistic and believed that sports in schools would improve the “virility” of his countrymen: “In France, notably, scholarly virility was lacking, and it [sport] was the only recipe for national grandeur that our governments had neglected to emphasize and put into practice for several centuries.”10 Eugen Weber, in his underread study of Coubertin, points out that indeed the baron was widely criticized for imposing foreign models on France, for not being sufﬁciently nationalistic.11 In addition, his efforts to reform physical education (which met

160 | Olympic Restoration with very limited success) are difﬁcult to connect with his proposition to reorganize the Olympics. An international sporting competition among high-level athletes had no more inﬂuence on public education then than it does now. The argument that 1870 led Coubertin to seek educational reform, which in turn led him to organize the Olympics, would only make sense if his “Olympics” were yearly competitions for French schoolchildren, designed to improve the physical ﬁtness of his countrymen.12 Guttmann senses this disconnect. But, holding to his 1870 theory, he is obliged to explain that “by the time he came to this decision [to organize the Olympics], Coubertin had begun to outgrow the vindictiveness that had originally motivated his interest in sports. . . . His youthful fantasy of revanche against the loathsome Prussians was gradually tempered by a more humane philosophy. He was still a patriotic Frenchman . . . but he was no longer a chauvinist.”13 Most tellingly, Coubertin himself denies that the defeat of 1870 led to his reestablishment of the Olympics. In 1894, before the now-historic “Sorbonne Congress,” where Coubertin’s idea to reorganize the Olympics on an international scale ﬁnally met with warm support, members of the French delegation threatened to withdraw if any Germans were in attendance. Coubertin wrote: This perpetual “protest” directed toward the victor of 1870 exasperated me. In reality, what was less French, less chivalrous . . . than to angrily shake one’s ﬁst while remaining seated? . . . I cannot say how often during my adolescence I suffered from this attitude that a false and petty conception of nationalism imposed upon my generation. Even though I grew up in the shadow of Sedan [the defeat of 1870], I never felt like a conquered soul. The wake-up call

Olympic Restoration | 161 of 1878 enlightened me, and the magniﬁcent turning point of 1889 [two “Expositions universelles” held in Paris] freed me by showing me a new way to conceive of national capacities and the faith in a future different from the past, but not unworthy of it.14

In fact, where the Olympics today evoke a great deal of nationalistic fervor, Coubertin originally envisioned the Olympics as a sort of peaceful, international competition, and many early Olympic teams (in such sports as tennis, tug-of-war, and rowing) were made up of athletes from different countries. In addition, thanks in part to Coubertin’s aversion to extreme nationalism, to this day the International Olympic Committee (ioc) does not ofﬁcially recognize medal counts by country. Coubertin’s objective, as I will show, was not to create a stronger sense of nationalism, with revenge in mind, but to build up the strength and unity of the international aristocracy. Coubertin’s desires to reform education and to reorganize the Olympics do in fact stem from a single, overarching motivation, but this motivation is not the defeat of 1870. Callebat offers the following quote from Coubertin to support the ties between 1870 and educational reform: “I decided, in 1886, to undertake the rebronzing of France by reforming the educational system.”15 Callebat goes on to explain: “By choosing the term ‘rebronzing,’ Coubertin situates his action in reference to a historical moment—that of ‘the humiliation and weakening of the defeat’ [of 1870]—and deﬁnes, in the plastic beauty and solidity of bronze, the ambitious ideal of a physical, intellectual, and moral renewal.”16 Callebat erroneously assumes that for Coubertin the degradation of France begins just before 1870 and culminates in the defeat at the hands of the Prussians. But the troubles, according to Coubertin, began

162 | Olympic Restoration much earlier, as he writes on the very ﬁrst page of Une campagne de vingt-et-un ans: “The revolutions of 1830, of 1848, of 1870, the coups d’état of 18 brumaire [1799] and of 2 December [1851] constituted a series of events that made me feel humiliated. Nothing troubled my national pride like the presence of coins in my pocket each bearing a different efﬁgy. Did this not underscore our repeated confusion, and did it not accentuate the ridiculousness of our instability?”17 Several aspects of this quote deserve our attention. First, it is signiﬁcant that what troubles Coubertin about 1870 is the change of government (from an empire to a republic), not the French defeat at the hands of the Prussians. Second, he is humiliated by the lack of stability in the French system since 1830, not just since 1870. Callebat deﬁnes Coubertin’s rebronzing as “the expression of an ambition, of an ideal, of a conviction,” implying that the Olympics are built on an ideology of progress and future perfection.18 However, rather than looking to the future, Coubertin’s rebronzing signiﬁes in fact an idealization of the past. One bronzes an object in an attempt to preserve something old that would otherwise be discarded. What Coubertin is attempting to “bronze” is France, as it was before the start of its troubles— that is, before 1830. coubertin and monarchical renewal Indeed, in France since 1814, published in English in 1900, Coubertin presents the Restoration (1815–30) and its kings (particularly Louis XVIII) in an extremely positive light. Here is an example from Coubertin’s France since 1814: “The French people were as yet unaware of the political genius and persevering will that were latent in Louis XVIII.”19 In his book Pages d’histoire

Olympic Restoration | 163 contemporaine, published in 1909, Coubertin proclaimed, “When the preconceived ideas which stop us from understanding and appreciating the Restoration will have been dissipated by the clarity of truly impartial research, we will be surprised to see the extent to which this government, criticized within, shone without and with what bright light its liberalism, misunderstood up close, shone afar.”20 If the Restoration ultimately failed it was because the kings and their ministers were derailed in their faithful service to the people and their commitment to the greater good by the bickering parties in the chamber of deputies: “The king and his ministers, almost without exception, did their duty by France. The parties failed in theirs. Therein lay the danger for the future.”21 Coubertin continues: “From 1816 to 1824 the Parliament had almost entirely withheld its support. When we look at the long series of French parliamentary assemblies, they reveal a peculiar threefold character which seems to have been pretty much the same from the very beginning of the century. Intemperance of language, and a certain inconsequence of action, with an irresistible tendency, if not to form conspiracies of their own, at any rate to denounce other people’s, are the distinguishing characteristics of French deputies to the present day.”22 The primary structural weakness that plagued the Restoration, as Coubertin depicts it, is mirrored in contemporary Third Republic France: too much power in the hands of fragmented parties in the parliament and not enough in the hands of an inspired monarch who would serve the interests of the people (described by Coubertin as a fairly monolithic, conservative, provincial lot), not the interests of the parties. The other plague of the Restoration, according to Coubertin, was “a mischievous and violent press that mistook intransigence for

164 | Olympic Restoration strength and carping for cleverness.”23 Reformer Adolphe Thiers was the worst of the lot: “factitious but extremely seductive” and ﬁlled with “egotistic vanity and boundless ambition.”24 In the end Coubertin expresses his regret at the fall of the Bourbon reign. Discussing the war in Spain, which served to demonstrate the French army’s ﬁdelity to the crown, Coubertin writes: “One of the good results of this war was that it threw full light on the future heir to the throne, the man who then seemed destined to become Louis XIX [the duc d’Angoulême]. Unhappily, his excess of modesty and ﬁlial reverence caused him, in 1830, to add his abdication to that of his father, with disastrous consequences to France.”25 For Coubertin the problem with all the governments since the Restoration was their inability to rise above parliamentary debates and serve the people. Only a strong, enlightened monarch could accomplish this. Given Coubertin’s admiration for the Bourbon Restoration, it should come as no surprise that he continued to hope for some sort of Bourbon revival or aristocratic restoration. In their history of the Third Republic Jean-Marie Mayeur and Madeleine Rebérioux remind us of the widespread conservative moralist movement of the 1870s, with its attachment to the Church and its belief in cultural renewal: “This expectation of a millennium was closely bound up with the hopes of a restoration of the comte de Chambord; it was an integral, if often forgotten, part of the mentality of the time.”26 Coubertin’s fascination with the Restoration, which seems strangely anachronistic to us today, was perfectly natural in the late nineteenth century. But Coubertin seems to have come to terms with the fact that, in the political arena, hopes for a restoration were dim—especially following the Count

Olympic Restoration | 165 of Chambord’s 1874 letter in which he refused to compromise his monarchical principles for the parliamentary conditions of the Third Republic: “Convinced that his mission was to re-establish the ideal Christian monarchy outlined by Cardinal Pie, Bishop of Poitiers, the exile of Frohsdorf [the Count of Chambord] persisted in awaiting the hour of providence.”27 His gamble of course did not pay off. Coubertin, however, defends the count’s decision in his book The Evolution of France under the Third Republic: A legend has been formed on this subject. The prince has been represented as the victim of the awkwardness of his followers, as not having been able, of himself, to estimate the condition of France. One is at liberty, today, to wonder whether, on the contrary, he did not perceive, much more clearly than his partisans, the whole state of the case, as often happens with those who look on from afar, and from a height. . . . He wished to be the king of all, and preferred not to reign, rather than to reign, like Charles X, Louis Philippe, and Napoleon III. . . . Thanks to him, the House of Bourbon underwent none of those adventures and compromises which, too often, have marked the decline and disappearance of great royal races. 28

This nostalgia and deep admiration for the Bourbons are also evident in an 1897 article published in the American periodical Century Magazine. The article is entitled “Royalists and Republicans: Notes of a Parisian” and describes Coubertin’s 1880 visit to Frohsdorf, residence of the Count of Chambord, the man who would have been king of France. Coubertin writes: How long did he retain the hope of reconquering his throne? I had, as I looked at him, almost the certitude that he had ceased

166 | Olympic Restoration to harbor any illusions as to the possibility of a restoration. It is probable that he had lost hope toward 1856, when Napoleon III was at the summit of his fortunes, and that it awakened in him again after the empire had come to lamentable ruin with the Franco-Prussian war. But the conviction was soon forced upon him that France, instead of coming nearer to him, was drawing farther away from him every day. From that time on he had one idea only—to maintain his house and its principles above all parties, beyond the reach of intrigues, safe from assault, to enforce universal respect for them, and to bury them intact and spotless. 29

This quote makes it clear that for Coubertin the Count of Chambord had made the proper decision and protected the heritage of the Bourbon monarchy and its white lily from the stains of the Republic and its tricolor. But was an Orléanist or some other noble restoration still possible? Would the monarchists be willing to compromise? Coubertin suggests as much in an article written in 1902: One must really be unaware of what is happening outside our borders to not see that the Republic, as a dogma, has lost most of its devoted followers. A new form of monarchy has been born that meshes better with modern ambitions; the old dynasties, by adhering to it, have found renewed vigor and agility. As the head of the army and the head of industry, today’s monarch sees his subjects return to him and restore a large part of both the rights they had taken from his predecessors and the initiatives that they had conﬁscated and given to their elected representatives.30

But Coubertin realizes that to return to this happy form of monarchy in the midst of a republic one must play by the repub-

Olympic Restoration | 167 lic’s rules: “One may conspire against a sovereign, overthrow a monarchy. What power can be used against a republic based on the ballot? To all Pretenders the republic replies: ‘You wish to take my place? Very well, you have the right to do so. Get a majority. Get them to elect you.’ An electoral majority large enough to modify the constitution in favor of the individual to whom democracy gives its conﬁdence, that is the only chance in a republic.”31 The obvious problem is obtaining a majority. In the 1890s and early twentieth century, however, were there enough strong leaders in the ranks of the French aristocracy to sway public opinion in their favor? Coubertin is skeptical, as the following daydream illustrates: As I sat in the gallery of the Chamber of Deputies, one day, I amused myself by mentally reconstructing a government of the Right. I imagined that the monarchy had been reëstablished, and that the Count de Paris, now Philippe VII, king of France, had intrusted to me the task of forming a ministry, distributing its portfolios among his partizans. To my great surprise, I could not succeed in drawing up a proper list. Everybody can be a minister, of course, and some of those whom one might choose at random for the ofﬁce would not ﬁ ll it worse than many others, provided they were not called upon to deal with situations of exceptional delicacy. But that was not what I was looking for. . . . I was searching the monarchical ranks for men with the force of character of MM. Dupuy, Spuller, or Burdeau . . . I could not discover them. Never before had the complete inferiority of the monarchical party in this respect come home to me more forcibly.32

The problem with France, its Achilles’ heel, was not to be found

168 | Olympic Restoration in the degradation of schoolboys’ physical ﬁtness, or in its soldiers’ fear at the thought of another 1870, but in the emasculation of the monarchy and an inability to produce noble men of character who could lead France out of its parliamentary stagnation. A restoration of monarchical prominence would only be possible if a new generation of nobility could rise out of the Bourbon ashes and motivate a majority of Frenchmen to grant them the government. This “new form of monarchy” would provide the stability for France that a republic, according to Coubertin, could never guarantee. Now, if only there were a motor that would inspire the nobility to improve their moral ﬁ ber . . . some event that would motivate the elite to rebronze the monarchy and encourage French legitimists to join with the elite from other countries, whose nobility “meshe[d] better with modern ambitions.” Coubertin’s Olympics accomplished this. How better to follow the example of England and Greece—two modern monarchies admired by Coubertin for effectively bridging the gap between republic and monarchy—than to emulate them via the Olympics—an ancient Greek tradition showcasing English sports? Signiﬁcantly, the Olympics were ﬁrst held in Greece in 1896, then in Paris in 1900, and then (after Saint Louis in 1904) in London in 1908. Bringing together the elite of many nations would strengthen both the French aristocracy and the international aristocracy, while furnishing a means for these same elite to improve their physical and moral strength through competition. Guttmann relates a story that illustrates the extent to which the early Olympics were enmeshed with the monarchy. Among the French athletes who traveled to the 1896 Olympics in Athens,

Olympic Restoration | 169 the most famous was the runner Albin Lermusieux. When asked “why he was putting on a pair of white gloves just before the start of the 100-meter race, the answer was simple enough: ‘Ah-ha! Zat is because I run for ze king!’”33 The Olympics served as an attempt to restore and protect the cultural ideals of monarchists, which Coubertin viewed as being under attack by the policies of the Third Republic. As we have seen, many sports reserved for the monarchy in pre-Revolution days later began to be “usurped” by the bourgeoisie. By creating an international bastion for nonprofessional athletes who, to train, essentially required a noble lifestyle (time, money, space, etc.), Coubertin in his own way “restored” an elitist cultural space. In an article entitled “Le rétablissement des Jeux olympiques,” published in 1894 in La Revue de Paris, Coubertin justiﬁes the reestablishment of the Olympics and situates his “restoration” in relationship to the fall of the ancien régime: “Let us note simply that everywhere, at the end of the eighteenth century, violent exercises and virile games went out of style, and men sought distraction and pleasure elsewhere.”34 Following the Revolution the nobleman had become a man of leisure and, having abandoned physical exercise, was no longer able to meet his potential. In the same article Coubertin offers some telling examples: “In France the jeu de paume courts are deserted; oaths are exchanged on them, but games are not played. We are far removed from the time when the lord of Gouberville played ball on the Contentin beaches on Sunday afternoons, surrounded by the valiant youth of nearby villages; from the time when, from parish to parish people engaged in Homeric combats that were described by Mr. Siméon Luce; from the time when the clergy of Avranches . . . descended

170 | Olympic Restoration in procession to the beach to play a game of stick and ball. All that is dead.”35 These “virile games” embody, for Coubertin, the grandeur of the ancien régime.36 However, he explains in the same article, the games and their practitioners were killed by revolutionaries: “This blood that they [the revolutionaries] spilt, it is the blood of paume players and the blood of the lords of Gouberville.”37 Restoring the games would allow a way to revisit the glorious, “virile,” bygone pre-Revolution days and to restore a chivalrous, detached, noble approach to play. Further evidence tying the Olympics to the ancien régime can be found in an 1897 book entitled Souvenirs d’Amérique et de Grèce. Here Coubertin draws parallels between the ancient Olympics and medieval games: At the height of the Middle Ages there was a return of the athletic spirit; it was called chivalry. This knightly vigil that preceded the festival full of joy and physical activity in which the young knight began his new life is perhaps the activity that has most resembled the Olympic Games in ﬁfteen hundred years. . . . So too the young Greek spent the last evening in solitude and reﬂection under the marble porticos of the gymnasium of Olympia . . . far from the temples and the noise; he too had to be irreproachable, both hereditarily and personally, without ﬂaw in his life or in the lives of his ancestors; he too associated his act with his national religion, pledged his honor before altars, and as a reward received the simple green wreath, a symbol of detachment.38

For Coubertin then the Olympian and the medieval French knight shared similar ideals: an athletic spirit, physical ﬁtness, devotion to the national religion, a dose of detachment, and an irreproachable

Olympic Restoration | 171 family line. In other words, Olympians in ancient Greece were noble (“hereditarily irreproachable”), as were their medieval imitators. By extension the modern Olympian should be hereditarily irreproachable and of high and noble birth.39 At the very least the Olympics could (in Coubertin’s mind) re-create the noble ideals of both ancient Greece and, importantly for our study, medieval France and teach participants to respect their religion and their ancestors, all while maintaining their noble “désintéressement.” Speaking of detachment, in his article “Le rétablissement des Jeux olympiques” (The Restoration of the Olympic Games) Coubertin argues, “If it is noble and beautiful to train for war, if it is praiseworthy and wise to think of hygiene, it is more perfectly human to pay a detached homage to physical activity and to appreciate it solely because it is physical activity!”40 Several pages later he continues: “Sport can produce positive moral effects and subsist only when founded on detachment, loyalty, and chivalrous sentiments.”41 Such passages remind us of Bourdieu’s description of the aristocratic perception of sport (discussed at length in chapter 1) as “activity for no purpose,” where the accumulation of social capital outweighs the importance of winning or any ﬁnancial gain. In fact Coubertin goes on to explain the importance of amateurism in the Olympics (except, of course, for fencing, yachting, and shooting—games whose aristocratic nature puts them above the pecuniary rules of amateurism), which helps guarantee “detachment” and makes the Olympics into “physical activity” for physical activity’s sake.42 What is at work here—the “social capital” to be gained— is nothing short of what the baron views as a cultural revival or restoration that, if successful, would lead to the restoration of the

172 | Olympic Restoration modern monarchy, as imagined by Coubertin. Coubertin maintains that the Olympics will be modern: “These restored Olympic Games will be modern, very modern.”43 They will be modern just as the new monarchy Coubertin envisions is modern: adapted to contemporary economic and political forces but still based on medieval values, with a strong, enlightened monarch at the helm. Nevertheless, while Coubertin proclaims the games’ modernity, the organizational conﬂicts of the Paris Olympics in 1900, as I will show below, demonstrate the extent to which Coubertin wanted the games to be reserved primarily for the elite and to be organized with the past as the ideal model. old france versus “progress”: the 1900 games After a successful ﬁrst Olympics in Athens, Paris was to play host to the Olympics in 1900. The plan was to hold the games in conjunction with the “Exposition universelle,” organized that year by Alfred Picard. Picard, a fervent republican, clashed in every conceivable way with Coubertin, particularly in his vision of the image France should present to the world. While Picard wanted to portray France gazing forward to the future, on the cutting edge of progress, Coubertin wished to look back to ancient history and revive the ﬂames of the past. Coubertin himself noted that for Picard the Olympics, in the context of the 1900 “Exposition universelle,” represented nothing more than an absurd “anachronism” that ﬂew in the face of the modern image of France Picard wanted to paint.44 As for politics and historical models, Picard wrote the following in a letter to Jules Sansboeuf, one of the organizers of the international competitions: “The Universal Exposition of 1900 must

Olympic Restoration | 173 be the philosophy and the synthesis of the century; it must have grandeur, grace, and beauty; it must reﬂect the evident genius of France and show us, as in the past, on the forefront of progress; it must honor the country and the Republic; we must appear as the worthy sons of the men of 1789.”45 For Picard then the games needed to be built on the republican ideals of France, to exude the glory of 1789, and to be open to the masses, whereas for Coubertin the games in a sense needed to erase 1789 and return the country to a pre-Republican elitism. Frustrated with Picard’s attitude, Coubertin set up a committee (entirely independent of Picard and his Exposition universelle) that, he hoped, would organize the games as he intended. The committee was chaired by the viscount de La Rochefoucauld and composed of counts, barons, dukes, and generals.46 In his Mémoires olympiques Coubertin calls Picard’s plans for the games to be held during the exposition “a sort of chaotic and vulgar fair,” then outlines what he hoped the new committee would accomplish: “In Athens the athletes came in contact with the most pure antiquity. Paris must show them old France with its traditions and its reﬁned surroundings. The masses will have their competitions and the fairs of the Exposition, and we will make Games for the elite: elite competitors, not numerous, but including the best champions in the world; elite spectators, aristocrats, diplomats, professors, generals, members of the Institute. For them what could be more ravishing, more delightful, than a garden party in Dampierre, a night festival in the rue de Varennes, an excursion to Esclimont or to Bonnelles?”47 Picard hoped to spread the competition across Paris and to include as many competitors as possible, while Coubertin wanted

174 | Olympic Restoration to reserve the games for the “elite,” complete with parties in the aristocratic seventh arrondissement (in the rue de Varennes, where the Matignon Palace is located) or at chateaux with large gardens outside of Paris. Ultimately Coubertin would lose this battle. The La Rochefoucauld committee was dissolved when the Union des sociétés françaises de sports athlétiques (usfsa), the organization out of which the International Olympic Committee (ioc) was formed, opted to support Picard’s plan. Coubertin did maintain some responsibility over the track and ﬁeld events, but he appears to have grudgingly accepted defeat. Where the La Rochefoucauld committee had recommended some ﬁfteen disciplines, there were in the end nearly forty.48 Where Coubertin had wanted only elite athletes, few in number, the games of 1900 included nearly sixty thousand athletes, with over six thousand competing in the shooting events alone.49 Where Coubertin had wished to maintain strict adherence to the rules of amateurism, during the games of the Exposition universelle nearly one million francs were distributed to the winners as prize money.50 Another debate between Picard and Coubertin centered on the role of athletics in society. While Coubertin viewed athletics as a means of making the country’s elite—indeed, the elite of Europe—capable of enlightened leadership, Picard viewed them, ironically in the context of this chapter, as a means of preparing his compatriots to avenge the loss of 1870! André Drevon explains: “Moreover, since the defeat of 1870 the problem of physical renaissance had become a political objective in the country: the youth must be trained within the perspective of revenge. . . . The demonstration of a scope ‘without precedent in the history of expositions,’ which Picard decides to organize according to ‘a ra-

Olympic Restoration | 175 tional and philosophical plan,’ will ﬁnd in sport . . . the best way to generate interest in practicing physical education at school and physical exercise in the country. In 1900 sports will become, for the summer, an affair of State.”51 In addition, Picard, a good defender of republican bourgeois values, viewed sport as a means to improve the health, morals, and productivity of students and of the working class, and he arranged the international competitions to reﬂect this utilitarian philosophy. This so offended Coubertin (a defender of the “activity for no purpose” philosophy) that he wrote the following in a letter addressed to the minister of commerce: The words gymnastics, fencing, scholarly games humbly end the long enumeration of objects included in category 2 under the title “Secondary Education.” . . . Sports clubs are mentioned in category 107, to which you have kindly assigned me, and which is designed to showcase institutions for the “intellectual and moral development of the working class.” As a result, if visitors to the Exposition wish to admire the elegant gymnastics of the Chicago Athletic Club, for example, which is a club for adults, they will have to go ﬁnd them in the material of high schools and juniorhigh schools, and if the sports club of the île de Puteaux or the Paris Polo Club wants to offer a demonstration, they will take their place among the “working class institutions.”52

It is clear that Coubertin, while he deplored the spread-out organization of athletic events at the exposition, was even more offended that sports would lose their ancient luster in the utilitarian service of republicanism and that his elite Olympians would be mixed with members of the working class.53

176 | Olympic Restoration conclusions Let us return to my original question: why did Coubertin restore the Olympics? Disillusioned by the failure of French regimes to establish any kind of stable political system, he felt that the solution could be found in a restoration of monarchical values. The French nobility, however, at the time was not up to the task and needed to experience moral and physical renewal through contact with aristocrats in other European countries. To facilitate this renewal and to create a safe haven for the elite, Coubertin restored the Olympics. This restoration in the realm of sports also served as a means of resisting the dominant political and cultural ideas of the Third Republic. In his insightful 2002 study Stephen Wassong addresses Coubertin’s motivations for restoring the Olympics and concludes, “It can be said that in assessing Coubertin’s motives for reintroduction of the Olympic Games, the role of antiquity and nationality is clearly overrated and that of internationalism is unjustiﬁably underrated.”54 Wassong spends some time establishing a connection between Coubertin and late-nineteenth-century peace movements, suggesting that the Olympics may share with these movements a common goal of peaceful internationalism. Wassong argues that Coubertin would have come into contact with international peace movements at the World Expositions in which he participated and that Coubertin’s desire to hold the ﬁrst Olympics in conjunction with the 1900 Exposition universelle attests to his afﬁnity for the peaceful and progressive objectives of these gatherings.55 However, the baron’s resistance to Picard and to the republican ideals of the 1900 World’s Fair demonstrates that his sympathies for peace movements and expositions had their

Olympic Restoration | 177 limits. Wassong states, “There is controversy in contemporary research over whether the reintroduction of modern Olympic games was only a way for Coubertin to support his national education campaign, or whether the idea of holding an international sport event every four years at different locations demonstrates Coubertin’s afﬁnity to peaceful internationalism emerging in the late nineteenth century.”56 While I agree that the importance of Coubertinian internationalism has not received the attention it deserves, linking that internationalism to late-nineteenth-century peace movements does not take into account the multiple political motives of Coubertin’s thought. I contend that his internationalism extended only as far as a desire to unite the aristocracy of France with other European aristocracies—that Coubertin felt more afﬁnity for a pan-European monarchical community than for narrow French republican nationalism or any international peace organization. Such a vision of a European monarchy united through sport should come as no surprise when we remember Coubertin’s great admiration for the Bourbon Restoration of 1815–30. This government was born out of the Congress of Vienna, a European summit that granted legitimacy to the reign of Louis XVIII. The Olympics served to establish regular contact among the elite of Europe and to create a common set of rules for all European athletes. Despite being offended that track and ﬁeld events were nearly grouped under the rubric of working-class hygiene in 1900, by 1931 Coubertin would write that the future of the Olympics depended on these same “travailleurs manuels” (manual workers), concluding that “sport is not a luxury object, an activity for the idle. . . . It is for every man a source of eventual internal improvement regardless of his profession.”57 By this time (he was no lon-

178 | Olympic Restoration ger president of the ioc) it appears that Coubertin had realized that his legacy would be the Olympics, not any kind of political renewal of the aristocracy. In addition, following World War I the political landscape of Europe had changed dramatically. As a result Coubertin too had changed. His writing now showed more concern for the games themselves and less for social distinctions. Unfortunately the ioc itself remained steeped in an elitist, aristocratic mindset. After a prince’s tenure as head of the ioc (for the 1896 Olympics in Athens) and then the baron’s, there followed a count, a lord, a marquis, and one extremely wealthy elitist.58 Thus the elitist mentality that originated in Coubertin’s philosophies at the end of the nineteenth century hampered the ioc throughout the twentieth. For example, in their book Périls sur les Jeux olympiques Charpentier and Billouin detail the ioc’s reluctance to ﬁnd and prosecute athletes using performance-enhancing drugs. The Moscow games of 1980 represent a blatant case in point. While evidence uncovered since the breakup of the Soviet Union reveals that steroids and other drugs were administered to athletes in East Germany and in the USSR as a matter of course well before 1980, during the 1980 Olympics not a single athlete tested positive for doping. Further, independent testing reveals that over 10 percent of athletes use performance-enhancing drugs, and the stories of former athletes suggest that in some sports this number has been as high as 100 percent.59 Not surprisingly, however, the number of athletes who tested positive for doping since the ioc began testing in 1968 is a miniscule 0.37 percent.60 Certainly there are ﬁnancial reasons that would lead the ioc to prefer to keep the matter quiet, but there is also a signiﬁcant amount of naiveté on the part of ioc ofﬁcials, who continue to believe that the athletes are, as Coubertin described them, “hereditarily and personally pure” in

Olympic Restoration | 179 every way. Astoundingly the marquis Juan Antonio Samaranch, as president of the ioc, despite East Germany’s wide-scale doping program, nevertheless awarded the East German chancellor with the gold medal of the Olympic Order in 1985 and then, in 1988, singled out that country’s athletes as “true examples for the youth of the entire world.”61 The same sort of blind naiveté has extended to the ioc’s treatment of ﬁnancial matters. So convinced were its members that noble ideals govern athletes and ioc members (or so blindly wanting to believe this is the case), that ioc presidents up through Samaranch seemingly could not comprehend the pressures that commercialism and ﬁnancial interests were exerting on the games. The apparent shock of ioc executives (if their reaction was sincere) when learning of the bribes used to secure an Olympic bid by Salt Lake City in 2002 sufﬁces to demonstrate the extent to which their heads were buried in the sand, especially since further investigation has revealed that such bribery, in the absence of any regulatory guidelines, has been commonplace for decades. In short, the ioc has remained so enamored with purity and elitism that it has been unable to adequately acknowledge and address its own corruption. Only since Jacques Rogge took over as ioc president in 2001 has there been a real effort on the part of Coubertin’s organization to tackle the problems mentioned above. Time will tell if Rogge’s publicly expressed desire to implement reform and confront the political, economic, and ethical realities of the games will be strong enough to overcome a century of Coubertinian elitism.

Conclusion Imitation and Resistance

Organized free time is compulsory. Theodor Adorno, “Free Time”

In his essay on leisure Theodor Adorno argues that free time is in reality very serious business: “Free time . . . does not . . . stand in opposition to labour. In a system where full employment itself has become the ideal, free time is nothing more than a shadowy continuation of labour.”1 Adorno adds that sports in particular teach “modes of behavior which, sublimated to a greater or lesser degree, are required . . . by the work process.”2 Seen in this light the modern, utilitarian notion of free time is clearly antithetical to the ancien régime idea of leisure. Sport has been transformed from an “activity for no purpose” into a utilitarian activity in the service of corporations and consumerism. The compulsion to work is mirrored by the compulsion to recreate. In other words, recreation must be as productive as work. In France the concept of free time is generally linked with the rise of the Popular Front and its implementation of the forty-hour workweek and paid vacation for the French working class (passed into law in 1936). But the transition of sport from noble privilege to utilitarian obligation began much earlier. The writings of Eugène Chapus, whom we have studied in several chapters, indicate that

182 | Conclusion by the middle of the nineteenth century sports had already begun to transition into what Adorno refers to as a “leisure industry.” Chapus appears at the crucial turning point in the history of sport in France, when sporting practices (and practitioners) had ceased to survive under the protection of the nobility and come to rely instead on the interest of paying consumers. Chapus himself depended on these consumers for his daily bread. In addition to describing sport’s ties to the past, his writing also appealed to members of the bourgeoisie and their utilitarian spirit. He explains on the ﬁrst page of Le turf (1854), a book devoted to equestrian affairs, that sports provide a distraction for the man who would otherwise be entirely consumed with business: “If one were to banish sport and arts from the life of nations, society would only have unfortunate people condemned to spend their entire lives rowing the galère [slave ship] of business.”3 Here sports become as necessary to modern society as work itself. Thanks to the occasional distraction sports provide, the man who seriously engages in sports will be better prepared to seriously engage in business. Adorno puts it this way: “Free time must not resemble work in any way whatsoever, in order, presumably, that one can work all the more effectively afterwards.”4 As the ultimate proof that sports are no longer reserved for the elite and that they are useful in building an economy, Chapus offers the following example: “Sport does not belong to the aristocrat only; it ﬂourishes and is very in vogue in a country where a republic is more than a theory, in the United States. In the mores of this industrial, commercial, positive, utilitarian country, one thing strikes the visitor: the brilliant worshipping of sport!”5 He goes on to argue that the French, more than any other people,

Conclusion | 183 should be leading the world in their commitment to sport. As a result of France’s “industry, wealth, and chivalrous customs” the French should be on the forefront of sporting “progress.” They should understand that over the course of the nineteenth century sports had been stripped of their “futile façade” and that they now “respond to serious necessities in our civilization.”6 Here again Chapus presents sport as serious business that, when studied carefully, is not a waste of energy (“activity for no purpose”). It becomes instead a “serious necessity” for the continued progress of France. At ﬁrst glance it may seem incongruous that Chapus, at the same time he was publishing books and a newspaper about sports, was also publishing travel books (De Paris au Havre [1855], De Paris à Dieppe [1856], De Paris à Rouen et au Havre [1862]) and preparing a new edition of his book on elegance, reprinted as Manuel de l’homme et de la femme comme il faut—essentially a handbook on etiquette. These three different types of publications, however, all share one overall objective, namely, introducing the bourgeoisie—the new nobility—to the codes and signs and leisure activities of the old monarchy. In a way all these books are travel guides, as they initiate the uninitiated middle class into the heretofore unknown world of the old nobility. I should point out here that this “old nobility” is largely a ﬁction. It is a construct, created by the bourgeoisie, of what the nobility was like. Unlike the noble Dunoyer de Noirmont, for whom the hunts of the past were of real historical signiﬁcance, Chapus never provides sources for his descriptions of hunts. His depictions of the hunts of Henri IV or Louis XIV are ﬁctions designed to create a world or model to emulate. The dress and conversa-

184 | Conclusion tions in Chapus’s accounts are closer to a historical novel than to any real event. Places (e.g., the Valley of Arques, where Henri IV hunted and fought) and major events (e.g., Charles X’s hunt interrupted by news of the July 1830 Revolution) may be factual, but the descriptions of the hunts, the extensive dialogues, the legends of gallantry all create a ﬁctional standard that the bourgeoisie can imitate. This is a false past that enables the new bourgeois/ aristocracy to graft themselves onto the old, to fully assume their position as the dominant class and to justify their superiority. This explains why Chapus wrote so many books and articles about the hunt: it was a matter of usurping the former ruling class’s religion. To be viewed as the dominant class, the bourgeoisie needed to adopt the practices of the former ruling class in the same way the Romans adopted Greek gods, in the same way Napoleon imitated the dress and architecture of ancient Rome, in the same way Napoleon III (emperor when Chapus wrote most of his books on sport) imitated his uncle. Of course the imitations need only be superﬁcial—the appearance of the past is enough, usually, to convince the masses that the current powers are the legitimate heirs of the former. In Le turf Chapus’s descriptions of the past veer into nationalism: “Our French equestrian chronicles stretch far into the past! They reach the prodigious century of Charlemagne, of this great emperor who, a perfect squire history tells us, dressed his hunting and war horses himself. We also know that, as early as the tenth century, Hugues Capet sent horses as a gift to King Athestan, whose daughter he sought in marriage. We know that William and his soldiers took all of the equestrian practices of France’s most advanced civilization into England.”7 Chapus argues for the preemi-

Conclusion | 185 nence of France in the history of all things equestrian and evokes the glorious days of French military conquest. Beyond evoking great monarchs of the past Chapus situates the ancient history of horse racing in the hexagon. But, he laments just a page later, “this French scepter . . . slipped away little by little.”8 The English now have the upper hand, Chapus explains, largely because the French have failed to channel enough resources into sports. Raising and racing horses become, in Chapus’s text, a matter of national security: “Few interests, among those that arouse our national emulation, deserve such high consideration: horse races directly inﬂuence the prosperity of nations, their glory, their future; they are inextricably linked to the most signiﬁcant issues of social order; it is thanks to racing, among other advantages, that a country can free itself from foreign inﬂuence by strengthening its cavalry, its artillery, and its armies, as well as providing for its luxury needs.”9 Elsewhere Chapus depicts the founders of the Jockey Club as national heroes who established their organization with a patriotic objective (“but patriotique”).10 In his 1854 Le sport à Paris Chapus describes wrestling in a similar nationalistic fashion: In the Middle Ages wrestling was held in high esteem by princes and the upper nobility. In the camp of the golden ﬂag it was among the spectacles enjoyed by the monarchs of France and England. Henry VIII had the best champions of his kingdom come; François I had also called his, but he did so rather quickly and without much discretion. The French were defeated. The event kindled the national pride of the two monarchs, rivals in pomp, and they challenged each other in order to determine national superiority. They grappled, and François I restored

186 | Conclusion France’s reputation by defeating Henry VIII, whom he violently threw to the ground.11

Again it is the English who must be defeated to restore national pride, and of course in the old days of the monarchy the French emerged victorious. Since many of the sports that the bourgeoisie began to practice were English imports (as was the word sport itself), Chapus plays up the French history of sport and highlights sports that are distinctly French (paume, savate [a form of French boxing], etc.). But this is done, it seems, less out of sincere nationalistic fervor and more as a marketing strategy to persuade more governmental and individual consumers to embrace the utilitarian value of sport and buy more of Chapus’s books.12 While we generally think of the use of nationalism to market sports (and attract sponsors) as a twentieth-century phenomenon (most in evidence during the fifa World Cup and the Olympics), Chapus’s texts make it clear that such practices date back well into the nineteenth century. I have returned to Chapus here in part because his writing typiﬁes the way sports changed from ancien régime spectacle to a modern, consumer-oriented affair. Chapus’s texts exemplify the ﬂuctuating representations of sport in the nineteenth century— from symbol of the past and noble exclusivity to symbol of commodiﬁcation and upward mobility. Chapus exploited a concept that twenty-ﬁrst-century sponsors know only too well: representations of sports convey a powerful message of cultural acceptability; establish standards of social class; and promote values of either work or leisure, nationalism or internationalism, populism or elitism. Chapus’s texts demonstrate the central thesis of this book, namely that sports, more than mirroring social and cultural

Conclusion | 187 changes, operate as a motor propelling or resisting social change throughout the nineteenth century and into the twenty-ﬁrst. Chapus’s writing additionally provides a glimpse into the complexities of France’s changing social structure during the nineteenth century. In this book’s early chapters we examined cases where sports evoked the ethos of the ancien régime, an ethos in conﬂict with the bourgeois values represented by literary characters like “La Vénus d’Ille”’s Alphonse de Peyrehorade or “La partie de trictrac”’s Lieutenant Roger. In these narratives games and sports serve to demonstrate rifts between the past and the present, between the bourgeois and the nobleman, between the rationalist and the superstitious. To simplify, in the ﬁrst half of the nineteenth century a game of paume or trictrac functions as a litmus test, ﬁltering out the phony bourgeois gentilhomme from the real blue-blooded nobleman. For Chapus and others like him sports, instead of acting as a ﬁltering mechanism, function as a socializing agent, a training ground where members of the newly empowered middle class learn the linguistic, social, and moral codes that will enable them to play at monarchy. Chapus’s texts blur the lines between classes and suggest ways to avoid detection as a parvenu. And his discussion of nationalism, beyond implying that the contemporary French bourgeois is the rightful successor of the medieval nobility, posits that his class is the best situated to instill a sense of national pride. While the nobility was more attuned to the European community (as the previous chapter argues), the bourgeoisie was positioned to bring about a renaissance of French conﬁdence by becoming competitive in sports. The aristocracy would seek to re-create exclusivity and push back against the embourgeoisement of sport. They

188 | Conclusion would do this, for example, by turning to the duel and away from the republican legal system; by writing histories of the royal hunt; and by creating the Olympics, a pan-European sporting event for the elite. Ultimately of course the commercial model of sports would come to dominate, leading some to nostalgically consider nineteenth-century sports as existing in a state of “Coubertinian” purity. Yet although the agendas have changed, this book should at the least serve as a reminder that sports then were no less manipulated for political, cultural, or economic ends than they are today.

Notes

introduction 1. The translations in this book are mine unless an English translation is indicated in the bibliography. 2. Given that courtly love itself is frequently represented as a game, it is not surprising that games are central to so many of Marie’s lais (e.g., hunting and a tournament are mentioned in Guigemar; hunting ﬁgures prominently in Equitan; and chess, according to Eve Whittaker, is an organizing principle in Eliduc). In fact, The Art of Courtly Love, by Andreas Capellanus, presents rules for love and approaches this matter of the heart as one might approach a hunt. Both literature and sport, or play, are symbolic representations of cultural values. 3. Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 8. 4. Elias and Dunning, Quest for Excitement, 20. 5. Sima Godfrey’s article “‘Rien que ton constume’” is an excellent introduction to the link between fashion and social status in nineteenth-century French literature. 6. Chapus, Manuel (1862), 13. 7. De Marennes explains that some women, born to be “grande dame”— that is, members of the upper nobility—end up in the working class, while some who are “drawn to court by magniﬁcent horses would have divinely been at their place next to a worker’s table” (Chapus, Manuel [1862], 4). His implication is that true nobility (what he calls “elegance” in this edition) can be learned. In a later edition the author proclaims, “There exist ranks, nobilities [des noblesses], honoriﬁc distinctions” (Chapus, Manuel [1877], 8; italics in original).

190 | Notes to pages xvi–xvii The expression comme il faut serves to further blur the lines between nobility and bourgeoisie, since it does not explicitly designate a class of origin. The term also appears to have a slightly different meaning from author to author. For Chapus (writing in 1855 under the pseudonym “Le vicomte de Marennes”) it clearly means someone who has mastered the codes of the aristocracy (whether born noble or not). In his 1850 tale “Le dessous de cartes” Barbey d’Aurevilly calls one of his very noble characters a “femme comme il faut” (Les diaboliques, 192). In one Balzac story a “femme comme il faut” is a mediocre nineteenthcentury woman unable to rival the grande dame of the ancien régime. But elsewhere, in his 1830 essay “Des mots à la mode,” Balzac writes that being comme il faut is precisely what distinguishes the nobleman from the merchant. For both Chapus and Balzac the term elegance and its derivatives are consistently clear substitutes for nobility. For more on Balzac’s man and woman comme il faut, and the ambiguities surrounding the expression, see Allan Pasco’s Balzacian Montage, particularly pages 77–82. My note on this expression in the chapter on hunting (chapter 4) provides further details. 8. Chapus, Manuel (1877), 8. 9. Chapus, Manuel (1877), 197. 10. Chapus, Manuel (1862), iii; italics in original. 11. In her introduction to Balzac’s Pathologie de le vie sociale Rose Fortassier includes Chapus’s manual among the works published in the wake of Balzac’s 1830 Traité de la vie élégante (Balzac, Comédie humaine, 12:195). Unlike Balzac, however, Chapus insists on the reader’s potential to learn and master the mannerisms and language of the nobility. Balzac repeatedly underscores the difﬁculty, even the impossibility, of learning the codes of “elegant” life. Axiom number nine in Balzac’s Traité reads, “Although elegance is less an art than a feeling, it stems from both instinct and habit” (Comédie humaine, 12:231). Elegance, then, is not an art or ar-

Notes to page xvii | 191 tiﬁce that can be studied and mastered; rather, it is an instinct developed from birth. Instead of a tool that teaches the reader how to be elegant, Balzac’s text is presented as a scientiﬁc study (he compares himself to the linguist Champollion [12:261]) and an analysis of the unlearnable “codes” (12:278) that regulate sociability and class in nineteenth-century France. Christopher Prendergast argues that the Revolution led to “an obliteration of the traditional markers of class difference” and that Balzac’s treatise is an attempt to provide a “map” or a measure of “legibility” to the ever-changing social landscape (Order of Mimesis, 93). 12. Chapus, Manuel (1855), 101. 13. Chapus, Manuel (1855), 102; italics in original. 14. Chapus, Manuel (1855), 102; italics in original. In Giraudoux’s Ondine (1939) Hans uses the same litmus test to determine the level of culture of his bride. He laments: hans: It is the time of tournaments and hunts: I tremble at the idea of the words Ondine will use at these spectacles where each pass, each riding maneuver, each volt has a speciﬁc name. I instruct her, but without success. With each technical term, each new word I teach her, she kisses me. There were thirty-three in the ﬁrst parade alone that I tried to teach her yesterday. bertha: Thirty-four! . . . hans: It is true: with the collar disengagement, thirty-four! Where was my head! Bravo Bertha! bertha: You were blinded by a kiss. . . . Entrust Ondine to me, Hans. With me, you will no longer risk missing anything. And I know jousting and stag hunting. (90) Of all Ondine’s gaffes at the court this one is the most revealing. It is the key conversation that brings Hans back toward his former lover,

192 | Notes to pages xvii–xxi Bertha. Ondine’s inability to master the language of noble play is the primary symbol of her inability to integrate into the nobility, to fully participate in the lifestyle of the (human) upper class. 15. While I am aware of Sarah Maza’s argument that the French bourgeoisie did not exist, the term bourgeoisie has come to broadly signify the wealthy but nonnoble men (and to a lesser extent women) who rose in prominence primarily during the nineteenth century. Part of Maza’s argument is that aristocratic suspicion of capitalism led nobles to promote the idea of the bourgeoisie, thereby creating a group to serve as scapegoat for society’s pecuniary woes. In other words, the bourgeoisie exists in the French imaginary, in the world of signs and metaphor. It is the impact of this symbol that I study in the pages that follow. 16. Chapus, Les chasses, xiv. 17. See, e.g., Mehl, Jeux, sports et divertissements; Brioist, Drévillon, and Serna, Croiser le fer. 18. See, e.g., Arnaud, Les origines du sport ouvrier en Europe, particularly the chapter entitled “Le sport des ouvriers avant le sport ouvrier”; Arnaud, Les athlètes de la république; Weber, “Gymnastics and Sports in Fin-de Siècle France.” 19. Terret, Histoire du sport, 46. 20. Terret, Histoire du sport, 46, 47. For a detailed analysis of the development of French gymnastics in the late nineteenth century, see the second part of Arnaud, Les athlètes de la république, particularly pages 163–203. 21. For more on the body as a political metaphor, see Baecque, Body Politic; Melzer and Norberg, From the Royal to the Republican Body. My focus is on sports and games themselves as political and social metaphors. 22. Guttmann, Erotic in Sports, 59. 23. Guttmann, Erotic in Sports, 63. 24. I discuss this topic brieﬂy in the chapters on hunting and fencing (chap-

Notes to pages xxi–9 | 193 ters 4 and 5), but for a more extended analysis see Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor. See Kelly, Fictional Genders, for the concept of gender in nineteenth-century French literature. 25. Jusserand, Les sports, 3. 26. Weber, “Gymnastics and Sports,” 70. 1.

PAU M E

anyone?

1. For the ordinance prohibiting Sunday play, as well as play on holidays, see the 1612 Arrêts de parlement de Rouen. For the ordinance allowing commoners to play only on Sundays, put into effect in June 1397, see Luze, La magniﬁque histoire, 34. 2. Luze, La magniﬁque histoire, 34. 3. Luze, La magniﬁque histoire, 292. 4. Pascal, Pensées, 91. 5. Diderot, “Paume, le jeu de,” in Encyclopédie. 6. Académie universelle, n.p. 7. Académie universelle, 246. 8. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, 405. 9. Squires, Other Racquet Sports, 14. 10. About, Le nez, 53–56. 11. It merits noting that authors from the noble classes, like Montaigne, were laudatory toward the sport, whereas Rousseau, although he appreciated the physical beneﬁts of regular exercise, regarded le jeu de paume as a dead sport, no longer in practice, belonging to what he calls “l’ancienne gymnastique” (Lettres, 137). 12. Saint-Beuve, Volupté, 51. 13. Huysmans, A rebours, 170. 14. Zola, La faute, 58. 15. Given that Ille is in southwestern France, it is more likely that the town would have had a pelota or longue paume court. With his intimate

194 | Notes to pages 9–14 knowledge of the region and his penchant for “local color,” Merimée would have certainly written pelota in his story had he been opting for realism. He opts instead for jeu de paume, conscious of the game’s symbolic signiﬁcance. 16. Balzac, Comédie humaine, 12:214. 17. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:91. 18. Bourdieu, “Sport and Social Class,” 824. 19. Bourdieu, “Sport and Social Class,” 824. 20. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:106. 21. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:107. 22. Cited in Carlier and Bernard-Tambour, Jeu des rois, 66. 23. Bourdieu, “Sport and Social Class,” 823. 24. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:107. 25. Bourdieu, “Sport and Social Class,” 829. 26. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:107. 27. Mérimée uses the word polissons to describe two superstitious vandals from Ille who, during the narrator’s ﬁrst evening in the village, attempt to deface the statue of Venus. 28. Bourdieu, “Sport and Social Class,” 839. 29. LaFayette, Romans et nouvelles, 321. 30. Brantôme acknowledges that paume served to accumulate “social capital”: Henri IV, for example, played in front of the women of the court in order to gain their favor (Brantôme, Oeuvres completes, 3:277, cited in Carlier and Bernard-Tambour, Jeu des rois, 116). 31. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:107. 32. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:89. 33. The narrator mentions that the statue looks as if she is playing a game: “Her right hand, raised to the height of the breast, was turned, palm inward, the thumb and two ﬁngers extended, the two others slightly bent. . . . The attitude of this statue was reminiscent of that of someone play-

Notes to pages 14–20 | 195 ing mourre” (Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:96; my emphasis). The statue is quite literally playing a palm game, a jeu de paume. 34. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:116. 35. In December 1829 Mérimée wrote to Mme Récamier: “I am the author of several mediocre works, and as such my name has appeared in the press. An outsider all my life to politics, in my books I expressed (and perhaps too openly) my opinion. I thought that under the current government, accepting even an insigniﬁcant position would be to go against my convictions” (Mérimée, Correspondance générale, 1:51; italics in original). Later he wrote, “For my part, I so value freedom that the Republic has still not stopped me from considering it the most important possession” (Correspondance générale, 5:376). 36. Balzac, Comédie humaine, 1:40. 37. “Le chat qui pelote” was the name of a jeu de paume in Paris probably dating to the sixteenth century (Carlier and Bernard-Tambour, Jeu des rois, 100). 38. Amar, “Autour de ‘La maison,’” 141–55. 39. Perrault’s fairytale too is one of social ascension, where cat and master successfully rise from obscurity to the highest order of nobility. The tale ends happily when the miller’s son Carabas weds the king’s daughter and becomes heir to the throne. Balzac, however, instead of setting his tale in a distant “once upon a time,” roots it in the spatio-temporal reality of Paris under the Restoration. Unfortunately for Augustine the narratives differ further in that Balzac does not conclude Augustine’s story at her wedding. Once married she ﬁ nds herself unable to adapt to a different, noble way of life and consequently dies. 40. Caillois, Man and Games, 58–59. 41. Chapus, Le sport à Paris, 120–21. 42. Fournier, Tennis, 62. The authorship of Le jeu de paume: Son histoire et sa description, the book in which this poem appears, remains unclear.

196 | Notes to pages 20–28 Edouard Fournier wrote the introductory essay, but at least two authors (Julian Marshall and Albert de Luze), contemporaries of Chapus, maintain that Chapus wrote the body of the text. Richard Travers, who translated the book into English, is convinced, given his sloppy editing job, that Chapus could not have written the poem. But Chapus did possess some literary talent, publishing a number of stories (one appearing in a collection alongside a tale by Charles Nodier) and novels in the 1830s and 1840s. 43. Fournier, Tennis, 62–63. 2. the spanish bullfight in france 1. Ferrari, “La Tauromaquia,” 60. 2. Zumbiehl, “Avant propos,” 9. 3. Zumbiehl, “Avant propos,” 9. 4. Bennassar, “Histoire de la tauromachie,” 17. 5. Bennassar, “Histoire de la tauromachie,” 18. 6. Mérimée wrote a letter to the Revue de Paris, published in March 1831, entitled “Les grands maîtres au musée de Madrid.” He mentions Goya several times in his Correspondance générale (although not always in positive terms): 3:345, 5:194, 14:494. 7. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:387. 8. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:389. 9. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:390; italics in original. 10. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:390. 11. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:390. 12. Larthomas, “Preface,” 7. 13. Spain as an allegory for France, as I mention earlier, is a running topos in French literature: from Corneille’s Le Cid to Beaumarchais’s Figaro to Mérimée, Spain serves as a disguised France. In a 2004 article on Mérimée’s Théatre de Clara Gazul I suggest how these 1825 plays reﬂect

Notes to pages 29–32 | 197 many of the social and political rifts of Charles X’s France; see Cropper, “Revolution under the Mantilla.” Just as Mérimée, a French author, hid behind the mantilla of a Spanish playwright when publishing these plays, so French issues of constitutionalism versus divine right and French monarchical restoration and revolution are hidden behind Spanish motifs. By setting his works in Spain Mérimée deﬂects readers from his works’ underlying political allegories. By hiding under Clara’s mantilla Mérimée implies that the turmoil and violence beneath the Spanish veneer is unmistakably French. His letter on Spanish bullﬁghting, examined above, is similarly imbued with distinctively French tensions. 14. Zumbiehl, “Avant propos,” 9. 15. Mérimée, Correspondance générale, 1:51. 16. Mérimée, Correspondance générale, 1:70–71; my emphasis. 17. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:399. 18. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:400. 19. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:402. 20. Mérimée, Correspondance générale, 1:402. While Mérimée is almost always positive toward Julius Caesar, one must conclude (especially given the paragraph immediately prior to this comparison of Montès and Caesar) that in this text, as in Carmen, for reasons I will elaborate later, Mérimée chose to represent him negatively. 21. Mérimée describes one instance when Sevilla went against an ofﬁcial quarantine edict—in other words, using his popular authority to resist the legal authority of the government. 22. Gautier, Tra los montes, 87. 23. Gautier, Tra los montes, 273. 24. Gautier, Tra los montes, 275. 25. Gautier, Tra los montes, 276. 26. Gautier, Tra los montes, 276. 27. Gautier, Tra los montes, 277.

198 | Notes to pages 33–39 28. Gautier, Tra los montes, 277. 29. Gautier, Tra los montes, 277. 30. Gautier, “La tauromachie,” 341. 31. Gautier, “La tauromachie,” 341. 32. Gautier, Tra los montes, 93. 33. Gautier, “La tauromachie,” 341. 34. See note 13. 35. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:345. 36. Thibaud Plantevin, Zic Trad, http://www.zictrad.free.fr/Populaire -savant/Carmen-Bizet.htm, accessed 18 Jan. 2008 (my translation). 37. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:401. 38. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:345. 39. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:345. 40. Gould, Fate of Carmen, 87. 41. Gould, Fate of Carmen, 87. 42. Merimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:366. 43. See http://www.elizondo-baztan.com/Espanol/Elizondo(e).html, accessed 18 Jan. 2008. 44. Allan Pasco remarks that Don José’s passion for le jeu de paume and the fact that he blames his love of the game for his ﬁrst murder point to Don José’s most signiﬁcant character ﬂaw: his inability to take responsibility for his faults (“Mérimée’s ‘Carmen,’” 63–64). Pasco further argues for the importance of the narrative’s ﬁrst and last chapters (related by the archeologist), demonstrating that they serve to focus attention on Carmen’s character, while “raising walls of scholarly objectivity between [the architect] and the dangerous freedom of bohemia” (71). 45. Seigel, Bohemian Paris, 7. 46. Seigel, Bohemian Paris, 7–8. 47. Seigel, Bohemian Paris, 8. 48. Seigel, Bohemian Paris, 8–9.

Notes to pages 39–41 | 199 49. Merimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:360. 50. Merimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:360. 51. Merimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:397, 2:395. 52. Merimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:373. It should be pointed out that Mérimée in no way idealizes Carmen’s form of liberty. Though she is wearing blue (shoes), white (blouse), and red (skirt), allegorically embodying the colors of the French Republic, her stockings are ﬁ lled with holes, and her freedom comes at the price of violence, sexuality, and irrational excess. Moreover, she is never entirely free from the masculine order that grants her power only as she exerts her eroticism. Finally, her “freedom” respects laws of her choosing, what she calls the laws of “Egypt.” 53. Carmen’s love affair with the picador Lucas calls to mind Mérimée’s 1829 play Le carrosse du saint-sacrement, in which an actress, lover of the Viceroy of Lima, deﬁantly takes another lover, a bullﬁghter named Ramon. Carmen’s similarities to this play cause the reader to place Don José alongside the viceroy and to see him as a symbolic envoy of a king, as a bourgeois bureaucrat becoming more and more despotic as he ages. Unlike the viceroy in Le carrosse, however, Don José is still strong enough to impose his authority on Carmen, and he offers her one last chance: live with him under his law or die. She deﬁantly chooses the latter. 54. Merimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:401. 55. Merimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:354, 2:364. 56. Collingham and Alexander, July Monarchy, 166. 57. Collingham and Alexander, July Monarchy, 166. 58. Collingham and Alexander, July Monarchy, 222. 59. Collingham and Alexander, July Monarchy, 224; my emphasis. 60. Collingham and Alexander, July Monarchy, 385. 61. Merimée, Correspondance générale, 5:376.

200 | Notes to pages 41–47 62. Merimée, Correspondance générale, 5:376. 63. I agree with Peter Cogman, who argues convincingly that the ﬁnal chapter of Carmen—an 1847 addition in which the narrator dispassionately describes gypsy language and culture—represents “the death of [the narrator’s] younger self” (“Narrators of Mérimée’s Carmen,” 12)—that is, the death of the 1830 narrator’s naiveté (8). The younger narrator, Cogman points out, embodies a certain measure of freedom in morals and even disrespect for the law (9–11), while the ﬁ nal chapter serves as proof that this youthful enthusiasm has been extinguished. For me this shift is yet one more example that Mérimée’s work in the 1840s reﬂects his growing disillusionment with the July Monarchy, a regime he had “naively” embraced in 1830. 64. Merimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:378. 65. Mickelsen, “Travel, Transgression, and Possession,” 338, 339. 66. Mickelsen, “Travel, Transgression, and Possession,” 340. 3. trictrac and chess as models of historical discourse 1. Cournot, Essai sur les fondements, 461. 2. Cournot, Essai sur les fondements, 461. I have translated the French word hasard as “chance.” For a discussion of this word’s history and changing meaning, see Kavanagh, Enlightenment and the Shadows of Chance, 1–6. 3. Cournot, Essai sur les fondements, 461. 4. Le jeu des échecs, 157. 5. Cournot, Essai sur les fondements, 461. 6. Laplace, Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, 2. 7. Laplace, Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, 2. 8. The best resources for the rules of trictrac are currently online. For rules in English see David Levy’s site: http://pages.sbcglobal.net/ david.levy/trictrac/rules/rules.htm. For rules in French see Philippe Lalanne’s site: http://trictrac.aquitain.free.fr/, accessed 18 Jan. 2008.

Notes to pages 49–53 | 201 9. Jollivet, L’excellent jeu, 11. 10. Jollivet, L’excellent jeu, 11. 11. Le jeu du trictrac, 6. 12. Much of the description of trictrac in Diderot’s Encylopédie is taken from the Académie universelle des jeux’s description of the game. 13. Le Peintre des Roches, Cours complet de trictrac, 135. 14. Le jeu du trictrac, 9. 15. Soumille, Le grand trictrac, 10. 16. Le Peintre des Roches, Cours complet de trictrac, 157. 17. See http://trictrac.aquitain.free.fr/, accessed 18 Jan. 2008. 18. Elias and Dunning, Quest for Excitement, 42. 19. Le Peintre des Roches, Cours complet de trictrac, 1. 20. Le Peintre des Roches, Cours complet de trictrac, 2–3. 21. Le Peintre des Roches, Cours complet de trictrac, 3. 22. The last trictrac manual (Le jeu de trictrac rendu facile) was written by “J. L.” in 1852. In research presented on the Yahoo trictrac forum, Thierry Depaulis has demonstrated that “J. L.” is in fact Julien LelasseuxLafosse. David Levy founded this forum in 2002, allowing enthusiasts and scholars to continue to debate and reconstruct trictrac’s rules. 23. Guiton writes, “The game of chess is certainly the most beautiful and the most erudite of games, but it is neither the most pleasant nor the most interesting in the variety and nature of events. In this game science is everything and chance nothing” (Traité complet [1816], 294). He notes, in a later edition, “In trictrac, on the contrary, a weaker player does not lose sight of the fact that in chance he has a powerful ally: this idea sustains his courage, rekindles his emulation. In fact, chance can provide him with unexpected resources, either by granting him favorable outcomes to poor moves or by bringing to his opponent one of those catastrophes that can be neither predicted nor prevented: hope to which he gives himself with even more conﬁdence than he usually

202 | Notes to pages 53–60 realizes, hope that sustains his courage and his interest” (Traité complet [1822], 268–69). 24. Guiton, Traité complet (1816), 4–5; italics in original. 25. Guiton, Traité complet (1822), 262–63; my emphasis. 26. Le Peintre des Roches, Cours complet de trictrac, 3. 27. Le Peintre des Roches, Cours complet de trictrac, 4–5. 28. Le Peintre des Roches, Cours complet de trictrac, 6. 29. Le Peintre des Roches, Cours complet de trictrac, 7–8. 30. Laplace, Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, 2. 31. Bell, Circumstances, 141–42. 32. Bell, Circumstances, 142. 33. Balzac, Comédie humaine, 5:902. 34. Balzac, Comédie humaine, 5:902. 35. Balzac, Comédie humaine, 5:903. 36. Bell, Circumstances, 129–30. 37. Bell, Circumstances, 192. 38. Balzac, Comédie humaine, 10:294. 39. Balzac, Comédie humaine, 10:294. 40. Kavanagh too sees the gambling in the opening scene as part of “an allegory of how the history of revolutionary, Napoleonic, and restoration France had redeﬁ ned the individual’s most intrinsic sense of self” (Dice, Cards, Wheels, 146). Individuals, like France itself, are subject to failure if they do not hedge their bets, “play the odds and cover the contingencies, no matter how incompatible they are one with another” (149). In a sense the July Monarchy—a constitutional monarchy—does just this, wagering some on the old monarchy and some on a republican-style constitution. Kavanagh additionally suggests that this regime, with its “bourgeois king,” is mirrored by “the allegory of the gambling den and the antiquary shop,” the gambling den representing the “ethos of rapacious acquisitiveness” characteristic of the July Monarchy and the an-

Notes to pages 60–67 | 203 tiquary shop a symbol of regimes of the past that the July Monarchy superﬁcially imitates (147–48). 41. Balzac, Comédie humaine, 1:18, 1:17. 42. Balzac, Comédie humaine, 1:19. 43. Balzac, Comédie humaine, 1:8. 44. Balzac, Comédie humaine, 1:9, 1:11. 45. Balzac, Comédie humaine, 1:11. 46. Balzac, Comédie humaine, 1:11. 47. Balzac, Comédie humaine, 1:12. 48. Balzac, Comédie humaine, 1:11. 49. Laplace, Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, 62. 50. Prendergast, Order of Mimesis, 117. 51. Prendergast, Order of Mimesis, 117–18. 52. Prendergast, Order of Mimesis, 118. 53. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:106. 54. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:489. 55. In the game douratchki, also called durak, the player left holding a card at the end of the game is the durak (fool). The game’s objective is the same as that of the salon game played with honey—namely to make a fool out of someone. Scott Carpenter points out that in Lokis these games/practical jokes have a violent undertone and are taken very seriously by the count, who gets his revenge by killing his bride. See Carpenter, “Supercherie et violence,” particularly 52. 56. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:403. 57. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:409. 58. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:265. 59. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:259. 60. Qtd. in Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:257. 61. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:335. 62. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:335.

204 | Notes to pages 68–74 63. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:336–37. 64. Jollivet, L’excellent jeu, 6–7. 65. Le Peintre des Roches, Cours complet de trictrac, 138. 66. Kavanagh, Enlightenment, 38. 67. Kavanagh, Enlightenment, 41. Kavanagh’s compelling work discusses gambling, debt, and the ancien régime nobility at length. 68. Le Peintre des Roches, Cours complet de trictrac, 139. 69. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:345–46. 70. Peter Cogman argues that “La partie de trictrac” amounts to an act of “narrative cheating”: “In place of a direct, unmediated account of events (and in particular, of the key event), Mérimée presents it as told by the Captain. What he recounts, however, contains from the start substantial elements of hearsay (sometimes explicitly), to tell of events at which he was not present” (“Cheating at Narrating,” 83). Cogman’s assertion gives weight to my claim that this story is emblematic of Mérimée’s perception of historical discourse—that is, historical discourse depends on unreliable witnesses, hearsay, and conjecture. 71. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:336. 72. This is from the entry “heureux” in the dictionary Trésor de la langue française informatisé, http://atilf.atilf.fr/tlﬁ.htm. 73. Mérimée, “Des mythes primitifs,” 5–7. 74. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 2:99. 75. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:231. 76. See Scott Carpenter’s article on the canular, particularly its concluding pages: “The Fantastic, like the hoax or practical joke, wagers on the credulity of the reader: like the hoax, it exploits the stylistic detours of realism in order to make the reader believe the most unbelievable things; like the hoax, it leaves an aftertaste in the mouth of the reader, who knows he has been had but who takes pleasure in falling into the trap” (“Supercherie et violence,” 56). I would add that Mérimée’s objective is

Notes to pages 74–77 | 205 to undermine the reader’s faith both in the novelist’s authority and in historical discourse that presents itself as deﬁ nitive or authoritative. 77. Félix notes, “When I had acquired a superior game, I led the battle as I wished; I made sure that at the end everything was about equal, by letting him win the ﬁrst half of the game and reestablishing equality in the second half” (Balzac, Comédie humaine, 9:1022). And further: “I played in such a way that M. de Mortsauf won” (9:1024). The one time M. de Mortsauf loses when Félix intends to let him win, M. de Mortsauf, in his anger, reveals his increasing folly (9:1025). The narrator calls this “un hasard malheureux” (an unfortunate chance event), but it nevertheless ﬁts within the broader system of Balzac’s narrative, since it ultimately increases the level of conﬁdence between Félix and Mme de Mortsauf. 78. Taleb, Black Swan, xvii–xviii. 79. Mérimée, “Histoire de don Pèdre Ier,” 47–48. 80. Mérimée, “Histoire de don Pèdre Ier,” 1003. 81. Mérimée, Histoire de la fausse Elisabeth II, 54–55. 82. Mérimée, Essai sur la guerre sociale, 317–18. 83. Mérimée, La conjuration de Catalina, 37; italics added. 84. Mérimée, La conjuration de Catalina, 43. 85. Mérimée, Mémoires histoiriques, 52–53. 86. To justify returning land and wealth to nobles who had ﬂed during the Revolution, Louis XVIII tried to establish a historical discourse that aggrandized the glory of the ancien régime and presented the Revolution and the Second Empire as “an unfortunate parenthesis in the evolution of the nation” (Bertier de Sauvigny, La Restauration, 44). The July Monarchy required that people remember the excesses both of popular, republican rule and of monarchical rule, thereby justifying their policy of the juste milieu. Signiﬁcantly, Louis-Philippe’s government also attempted to placate bonapartists by returning Napoléon’s remains to Paris, giving him a measure of historical importance while keeping

206 | Notes to pages 78–82 power away from his political descendants. The Second Empire, clearly, relied heavily upon the remembrance of the glory of the First Empire of Napoléon I. Instead of calling himself Louis-Napoléon, the new emperor called himself Napoléon III, creating a historical link to the political clout of his “great” uncle. 87. Orr, Headless History, 18. 88. Orr, Headless History, 37. 89. Michelet, Le peuple, 327. 90. Michelet, Journal 1828–48, 591. 91. Michelet, Le peuple, 191. 92. Michelet, Introduction à l’histoire universelle, 401. 93. Guizot, Histoire de la civilisation en Europe, 6–7. 94. Guizot, Histoire de la civilisation en Europe, 7. 95. Hegel banishes chance from a role in human history: “World history exhibits nothing other than the plan of providence. God rules the world” (qtd. in Taylor, Hegel and Modern Society, 95). For Fichte civilization progresses through various stages, each stage logically building upon the previous one. 96. Although he does not cross over into writing history per se, Mérimée’s friend Stendhal seems to have shared his views on chance and history. A well-known example can be found in Stendhal’s historical novel Le rouge et le noir, in which the protagonist, Julien, attempts to murder a former lover. No causal explanation is ever explicitly given for Julien’s apparently irrational act of violence. For a book-length analysis of “destiny” in Stendhal see Georges Kliebenstein’s Figures du destin stendhalien. For another point of view see David Bell’s Circumstances, which extensively and convincingly analyzes chance in Stendhal. 97. Tocqueville, Old Regime, 94. 98. Tocqueville, Old Regime, 95. 99. Kavanagh, Dice, Cards, Wheels, 67.

Notes to pages 82–90 | 207 100. In Discipline and Punish Michel Foucault suggests that a similar mindset led to the transformation of France’s legal system: “The question is no longer simply: ‘Who committed [the crime]’ But: ‘How can we assign the causal process that produced it? Where did it originate in the author himself? Instinct, unconscious, environment, heredity?’” (19). As historical discourse became more and more concerned with causal explanations, legal systems too shifted from viewing a crime as an isolated occurrence to seeking to reconstruct a causal history for each criminal and criminal act. 101. Coubertin, Evolution of France, xxx. 4. of rabbits and kings 1. Lettre d’un lapin, 13, 8, 12. 2. Lettre d’un lapin, 8. 3. This story can be read as a nineteenth-century update of Le roman de Renart, a thirteenth-century tale told from the perspective of a fox who, in one episode, outsmarts a “seigneur d’un chastel bel et noble” who tries to hunt him down with his pack of hounds and his many valets. 4. Lettre d’un lapin, 8–9. 5. Lettre d’un lapin, 9. 6. Lettre d’un lapin, 14. 7. Lettre d’un lapin, 14. 8. Lettre d’un lapin, 15. 9. Lettre d’un lapin, 16. 10. Diderot, “Chasse,” in Encyclopédie. This entry also lists a history of laws governing hunting, including a reference to capital punishment for offenders. 11. Diderot, “Chasse.” 12. Diderot, “Chasse.” 13. Diderot, “Chasse.”

208 | Notes to pages 90–98 14. Dunoyer de Noirmont, Histoire de la chasse, 351–52. 15. Blaze, Le chasseur conteur, 207. 16. Parts of the following section appeared in my article “Prosper Mérimée and the Subversive ‘Historical’ Short Story,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 33, nos. 1 & 2 (2004–5): 57–74. 17. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:107. 18. Mérimée, Correspondance générale, 1:51; italics in original. 19. Even in the details there are similarities between the past and present. Mérimée describes and underscores the presence of German soldiers in France—a scene not unfamiliar to readers of 1829, who had seen German troops march into Paris following the fall of Napoleon. Further, Mérimée’s depiction of the Protestant leader in the novel, l’Amiral de Coligny, is reminiscent of Philippe Albert Stapfer, the liberal minister of the Helvetic Confederation in Paris, whose salon Mérimée attended regularly. 20. Mathé, “L’illusion historique,” 42. 21. Bernard, “Roman historique,” 110. 22. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:86. 23. Le Nabour, Charles X, 248. 24. Dunoyer de Noirmont, Histoire de la chasse, vi; italics in original. 25. Dunoyer de Noirmont, Histoire de la chasse, 1. 26. Dunoyer de Noirmont, Histoire de la chasse, 179. 27. Dunoyer de Noirmont, Histoire de la chasse, 352. 28. Chateaubriand, Mémoires d’outre-tombe, 458; italics added. 29. Chateaubriand, Génie du christianisme, 211; Chateaubriand, Natchez, 152, 232. 30. Le Yaouanc, “Introduction,” 10:969. 31. Balzac, Comédie humaine, 10:1014. 32. Balzac, Comédie humaine, 10:1013. 33. Balzac, Comédie humaine, 10:975.

Notes to pages 99–104 | 209 34. Chapus, Chasses princières en France, xiv–xv. 35. For another example see Les nouveaux savans de société. This text includes the typical “gasconnades” (exaggerated hunting tales), but the butt of the joke is the nobleman who is outwitted by the practical Gascon. Notably this book lists as one of its objectives the democratization of leisure: “Young or old, rich or poor, philosopher or artisan, all have need of amusements” (iv). 36. Chapus, writing during the Second Empire, lauds Napoleon’s hunts and includes descriptions of them in Les chasses princières. Blaze, on the other hand, writes that Napoleon once shot at a stag that had already been killed by one of his men and, instead of hitting the stag, killed one of the dogs. According to Blaze, the inept emperor assumed he had killed the stag in a single shot. 37. Blaze, Le chasseur conteur, 206. 38. Blaze, Le chasseur au chien, xxiii; italics in original. 39. Blaze is taking on the long-standing notion, proposed by Buffon and reiterated in an anonymous 1825 hunting manual, that links war with hunting. This same 1825 manual also emphasizes the noble aspect of the hunt: “To render the pleasure of the hunt more lively and poignant, to make this most noble of all exercises even more noble, we have turned it into an art about which even sovereigns have deigned to write” (Manuel du chasseur, 1). 40. Blaze, Le chasseur au chien, 275–77. 41. Blaze, Le chasseur au chien, 279. 42. For more on the connection between the king’s political power and his sexual prowess (or lack thereof) see Baecque’s Body Politic. 43. Blaze, Le chasseur au chien, 369. 44. In his 1830 essay “Des mots à la mode” Balzac explains that due to the leveling of social classes, a bureaucrat may be able “to best a marquis by his grace of manners, his elegant fashion, and sometimes by the

210 | Notes to pages 106–113 power of his speech.” But, he continues, “nuances” will always allow people “comme il faut” to recognize one another (34). Elsewhere Barbey d’Aurevilly, in his “Le dessous de cartes d’une partie de whist” (1850), describes the very noble countess du Tremblay de Stasseville as “une femme comm il faut” (Les diaboliques, 192). Also see my note in the introduction regarding this expression. 45. Chapus, Le sport, 1. 46. Chapus, Manuel (1862), 26. 47. Chapus, Manuel (1877), 169. 48. Chapus, Manuel (1877), 171, 172, 181, 197. 49. Chapus, Manuel (1862), 208. 50. Chapus, Manuel (1862), 190–91. 51. This is in boldface in the original. 52. Chapus, Les haltes de chasse, 4. 53. Chapus, Les haltes de chasse, 4–5. 54. Chapus, Les haltes de chasse, 6. This seventeenth-century play by Boursault features a scene in which a soldier, La Rissole, exposes his class inferiority through his speech. Speciﬁcally he incorrectly forms plurals: navaux instead of navals, mals instead of maux, and so on. 55. Chapus, Les haltes de chasse, 7. 56. Chapus, Les haltes de chasse, 9. 57. Chapus, Les haltes de chasse, 9. 58. Chapus, Les haltes de chasse, 11. 59. Chapus, Les haltes de chasse, 11–12. 60. Chapus, Les haltes de chasse, 12. 61. For more on Hachette’s Railway Library see Eileen DeMarco’s Reading and Riding. 62. Chapus, Les chasses princières en France, 2. 63. Chapus, Les chasses princières en France, 8. 64. Chapus, Les chasses princières en France, 8.

Notes to pages 114–121 | 211 65. Chapus, Les chasses princières en France, 13. 66. Bourdieu, Social Critique, 2. 67. Maupassant, Boule de suif, 160, 163. 68. We can thank Marie-Claire Bancquart for this detail. She mentions it in a footnote to the Albin Michel edition of the narrative (Maupassant, Boule de suif, 162). 69. Maupassant, Contes et nouvelles, 63. 70. Maupassant, Contes et nouvelles, 63. 71. Maupassant, Contes et nouvelles, 67. 72. Maupassant, Contes et nouvelles, 67. 73. Maupassant, Contes et nouvelles, 67. 74. Maupassant, Contes et nouvelles, 67. 75. In Maupassant’s story “La Rouille” the main character, like Patu, conﬂates hunting and sexuality. He falls in love with Mme Vilers because of her talent with a shotgun and compares his impotence to a hunter returning home empty-handed (bredouille). For Maupassant such quid pro quo serve to mock the provincial hunters (whether bourgeois or hobereaux) unable to maintain the requisite noble detachment from their passions. 5. fencing and aristocratic resistance 1. La chanson de Roland, 353. 2. La chanson de Roland, 357. 3. La chanson de Roland, 357. 4. La chanson de Roland, 359. 5. La chanson de Roland, 359. 6. La chanson de Roland, 359. 7. La chanson de Roland, 361. 8. La chanson de Roland, 361. 9. La chanson de Roland, 363.

212 | Notes to pages 121–129 10. La chanson de Roland, 367. 11. La chanson de Roland, 369. 12. La chanson de Roland, 363, 365, 367. 13. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 311–12. Here, as earlier (154), Girard is challenging Huizinga’s notion that culture began as play and that play “envelops the sacred.” Girard, as would be expected, argues that it works the other way around. 14. Diderot, “Duel,” in Encyclopédie; italics in original. 15. Brantôme, Discours sur les duels (1997), 44. 16. Diderot, “Duel.” 17. “In 1611, 1613, 1614, 1617; by an edict in August 1623, and a declaration dated 26 June 1624, and another in 1626, & and a rule in the month of May 1634” (Diderot, “Duel”). 18. Brioist, Drévillon, and Serna, Croiser le fer, 50. 19. Corneille, Le Cid, II, 1. 20. Corneille, Le Cid, II, 1. 21. Corneille, Le Cid, I, 3. 22. Corneille, Le Cid, IV, 5. 23. Molière, Les fâcheux, I, 6. 24. Molière, Le misanthrope, I, 1. 25. Molière, Dom Juan, I, 2. 26. Molière, Dom Juan, V, 3. 27. Chatelain, Traité d’escrime, 7. 28. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:89. 29. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:140. The use of magic was expressly banned from duels in the Middle Ages. Diderot’s Encyclopédie article on the duel explains that “the champions knelt face to face, their ﬁ ngers crossed and interlaced, asking for justice, swearing to refrain from falsehood and to seek victory neither by fraud nor by magic.” 30. Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, 1:121.

Notes to pages 130–136 | 213 31. For a more detailed discussion of this point see chapter 1. 32. Stendhal, Le rouge et le noir, 306–7. 33. Stendhal, Le rouge et le noir, 308. 34. Stendhal, Le rouge et le noir, 310. 35. Stendhal, Le rouge et le noir, 310. 36. Stendhal, Le rouge et le noir, 366. 37. Stendhal, Le rouge et le noir, 367. 38. Stendhal, Le rouge et le noir, 387. 39. Stendhal, Le rouge et le noir, 387. 40. Stendhal, Le rouge et le noir, 387. 41. Stendhal, Le rouge et le noir, 389. 42. Stendhal, Le rouge et le noir, 530. 43. Flaubert, L’éducation sentimentale, 2:27. 44. Flaubert, L’éducation sentimentale, 2:32. 45. Flaubert, L’éducation sentimentale, 2:32. 46. Flaubert, L’éducation sentimentale, 2:34. 47. Flaubert, L’éducation sentimentale, 2:36. 48. Flaubert, L’éducation sentimentale, 2:37. 49. Flaubert, L’éducation sentimentale, 2:37. 50. On the relationship between Flaubert and Marx see Terdiman, Discourse/Counter-Discourse, particularly chapter 4: “Counter-Humorists: Strategies of Resistance in Marx and Flaubert.” 51. It should be noted that Flaubert’s disciple Maupassant penned a short story entitled “Le duel” in which a Parisian bourgeois kills a Prussian soldier in a duel shortly after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. Like Flaubert’s story Maupassant’s is humorous in some respects. The Frenchman has no experience with arms, and his seconds are two English tourists who, like England during the war, are merely curious onlookers, staying aloof (while remaining punctual). But there is a serious side to Maupassant’s story. The Frenchman, Dubuis, pushed by a

214 | Notes to pages 137–139 deep-seated, violent patriotism, refuses to bend to the Prussian’s will, and he is ultimately victorious thanks to his sudden courage, deﬁance, and dumb luck. Maupassant seems to imply that the most passive bourgeois can be moved to action when he and his country are insulted. His tale may also be a criticism of the French, who so quickly lost to, then ran from, the Prussians in 1870: an overweight but patriotic bourgeois succeeds where so many decorated French soldiers failed. 52. I am the ﬁrst to admit that this is not a scientiﬁc statistical analysis (e.g., I cannot give you a margin of error), but it does provide a general idea of the increased interest in fencing in the last thirty years of the century. 53. Brantôme, Discours sur les duels (1887), i. 54. Nye, “Fencing,” 371. 55. One company advertised a policy, sold for 25 francs a year, that awarded different amounts for different wounds: in the event of death 10,000 francs was awarded to the survivor’s family; for the loss of two limbs or both eyes 10,000 francs; for one limb or one eye 5,000 francs; and up to 10,000 francs in the event that wounds left the insured incapacitated for over twenty days. In addition, the policy covered a “third party” (at the same levels) injured by the policy holder while fencing (Le Chartier, L’escrime, 8). 56. Nye, “Fencing,” 369. Nye is correct in his central thesis that the duel served to “masculinize” Frenchmen, who, in Maupassant’s stories, for example, are shown as emasculated by their 1870 defeat at the hands of the Prussians. 57. Nye, “Fencing,” 375. 58. Nye, “Fencing,” 370. 59. Arnaud, “Sport des ouvriers,” 62–63. 60. Blot, L’école, 119. 61. Prévost and Jollivet, L’escrime et le duel, 190. 62. Prévost and Jollivet, L’escrime et le duel, 190.

Notes to pages 139–147 | 215 63. According to James Whitman, Chatauvillard’s “codes” were in fact unofﬁcially accepted as law in France: “In a remarkable tale of the interaction of social and legal norms, the French courts of the nineteenth century accepted the validity of Chatauvillard’s code, acquitting duelists who had lived up to the demands of Chatauvillard” (“Enforcing Civility,” 1362). However, based on Jollivet’s comments, this practice seems to have ceased during the Third Republic. 64. Nye, “Fencing,” 371. 65. Prévost and Jollivet, L’escrime et le duel, 244–45. 66. Prévost and Jollivet, L’escrime et le duel, 3–4. 67. It was in fact after 1871 that the explosion of publications on fencing took place. From 1861 through 1871 the Bibliothèque Nationale’s database lists only three texts published with escrime in their titles. In 1872 alone, however, six such books were published. I contend that the political end of the monarchy led to the cultural revival of monarchical sporting practices. 68. Blot, L’école, 5. 69. Blot, L’école, 5; my emphasis. 70. L’Escrime, Gazette des salles d’armes, 9 Oct. 1881, 2. 71. L’Escrime, 9 Oct. 1881, 3. 72. L’Escrime, 16 Oct. 1881, 7–8. 73. L’Escrime, 16 Oct. 1881, 6. 74. L’Escrime, 1 Jan. 1882, 179. 75. L’Escrime, 1 Jan. 1882, 180. 76. L’Escrime, 1 Jan. 1882, 180. 77. Susanne Rossbach describes Barbey as “a staunch monarchist who deeply resented the nineteenth-century bourgeois society in which he lived. Like many of his contemporaries, he yearned for an idealized society in France’s prerevolutionary past, believing his own time to be an era of decline and decay, ‘a diseased century,’ ‘crudely materialistic and utilitarian’” (“Dandyism,” 81–82).

216 | Notes to pages 147–151 78. Barbey D’Aurevilly, Les diaboliques, 130, 131. 79. Barbey D’Aurevilly, Les diaboliques, 131, 130. 80. Barbey D’Aurevilly, Les diaboliques, 154. The original French text reads “un cliquetis d’épées qui se croisent, et se frottent, et s’agacent.” S’agacer means “to bother or grate” but can also mean “to cause to stand on edge, to excite or to titivate” (from the Larousse dictionary). I use the word slap because it implies a certain measure of violence present in agacer, while also conveying Barbey’s obvious erotic overtones. 81. Barbey D’Aurevilly, Les diaboliques, 155. 82. Barbey D’Aurevilly, Les diaboliques, 142. 83. Barbey D’Aurevilly, Les diaboliques, 148. 84. This “encre double” brings to mind the potent, deadly nature of the pen, which in Barbey’s case may in fact be mightier than the sword: his writing attacks the bourgeois, utilitarian takeover of France’s political landscape. 85. Barbey D’Aurevilly, Les diaboliques, 162. 86. Barbey D’Aurevilly, Les diaboliques, 163. 87. Barbey D’Aurevilly, Les diaboliques, 163. 88. Barbey D’Aurevilly, Les diaboliques, 147. 89. Barbey D’Aurevilly, Les diaboliques, 160. 90. Thanks to Deborah Bailey for pointing out this phonetic similarity. 91. Barbey D’Aurevilly, Les diaboliques, 165, 126, 171. 92. Barbey D’Aurevilly, Les diaboliques, 171. 93. Others have commented on the phallic nature of Hauteclaire’s sword and on her bisexual nature. For a recent publication that deals with this subject see Michèle Respaut, “Doctor’s Discourse.” 94. On the failed attempt to return a king to the throne in the early 1870s see Mayeur and Rebérioux, Third Republic from Its Origins, particularly 8–36. 95. Coubertin, “Congrès international de Paris,” 178.

Notes to pages 152–159 | 217 96. When the proposal to organize the Olympics was agreed upon in 1894, the ﬁrst stipulation was that all participants be amateurs, with the single exception of fencers. Article II reads: “That with the exception of fencing, Olympic events shall be organized solely for amateurs” (Coubertin, “Congrès international,” 536). 97. Bourdieu, “Sport and Social Class,” 823, 829. 98. Issert, “Le charme discret,” 9. 6. olympic restoration. 1. Henry, Approved History, 5. 2. Henry, Approved History, 8. 3. Young, Modern Olympics, 68. 4. Young, Modern Olympics, 70. 5. Guttmann, Olympics, 7. 6. Guttmann, Olympics, 8. 7. I am not the ﬁrst to question the conventional view of Coubertin. JeanMarie Brohm tackles the ideological myth of Coubertin and suggests that his image is a sort of screen that serves as “propaganda in favor of peace and friendship among nations” (“Pierre de Coubertin,” 283). Brohm suggests that Coubertin is like Gandhi—“everyone pretends to know him but no one has read his writings”—and concludes that Coubertin is a representative of the established bourgeois order (290). I argue in this chapter that Coubertin is instead a representative of a displaced aristocratic order. 8. Callebat, Pierre de Coubertin, 90. 9. Coubertin, Une campagne, 16. In another article, entitled, “Le rétablissement des jeux olympiques,” Coubertin discusses physical exercise as practiced in Germany and condemns it because it is too focused on military gymnastics and “does not contain within itself its raison d’être” (173). He further laments that this sort of utilitarian exercise “will

218 | Notes to pages 159–161 always manage to sprout in places where there are vast national ambitions to satisfy, revenge to take, or some sort of bondage to break” (173). The very type of exercise Coubertin criticizes in this article is the type one would expect him to promote were he bent solely on rectifying the humiliation of 1870. 10. Coubertin, Une campagne, 7. Signiﬁcantly—and I will look at this in greater detail below—Coubertin’s perspective as revealed in this quote (the plural “governments” and “centuries”) extends well beyond “disillusionment” in the wake of 1870. It is true that Coubertin wished to follow the British educational model and improve his own country. He admired the British Empire’s size and attributed its growth to sports in English schools, but he also admired Britain’s blend of democracy and monarchy (Coubertin, Une campagne, 4–6). 11. Weber, “Pierre de Coubertin,” 10–12. The criticism came primarily from Coubertin’s contemporary Paschal Grousset, a former communard who insisted on calling football by the French term, barette, and who also advocated instituting an Olympiad, but as a purely French affair. 12. The attempts to revive the Olympics pre-Coubertin were in fact regional (like the games proposed by Coubertin’s friend W. P. Brooke) or national (like Soustos and Zappas’s revival in Greece). Had Coubertin followed their model, the 1870 theory might be plausible. For more on these earlier attempts at organizing Olympics in the nineteenth century see Young, Modern Olympics. I should note here that Coubertin had organized athletic competitions for Parisian grammar schools at the 1889 World’s Fair (Wassong, Pierre de Coubertin’s American Studies, 43), but he abandoned this model in favor of competition for the elite in 1896 and 1900. 13. Guttmann, Olympics, 11. 14. Coubertin, Mémoires olympiques, 17.

Notes to pages 161–171 | 219 15. Callebat, Pierre de Coubertin, 87. 16. Callebat, Pierre de Coubertin, 88. 17. Coubertin, Une campagne, 1. 18. Callebat, Pierre de Coubertin, 109. 19. Coubertin, France since 1814, 19. 20. Coubertin, Pages d’histoire contemporaine, 27. 21. Coubertin, France since 1814, 62. 22. Coubertin, France since 1814, 36. 23. Coubertin, France since 1814, 76; italics in original. 24. Coubertin, France since 1814, 83. 25. Coubertin, France since 1814, 60. 26. Mayeur and Rebérioux, Third Republic, 8. 27. Mayeur and Rebérioux, Third Republic, 21. 28. Coubertin, Evolution of France, 40, 41. 29. Coubertin, “Royalists and Republicans,” 644. 30. Coubertin, Pages d’histoire contemporaine, 28. 31. Coubertin, “Royalists and Republicans,” 646. 32. Coubertin, “Royalists and Republicans,” 651–52. 33. Guttmann, Olympics, 17. 34. Coubertin, “Le rétablissement,” 171. 35. Coubertin, “Le rétablissement,” 171. 36. It is worth remembering here that le jeu de paume was revived as an Olympic event in 1908. 37. Coubertin, “Le rétablissement,” 172. 38. Coubertin, Souvenirs, 111–12. 39. When Coubertin ﬁrst announced his idea to restore the Olympics in 1892, his speech on sports in modern times was preceded by a speech by Georges Boudon on sports in antiquity and another by J. J. Jusserand on sports in the Middle Ages (MacAloon, This Great Symbol, 163). Cou-

220 | Notes to pages 171–175 bertin consistently viewed the days of chivalry as a link between the ancient and the modern games. 40. Coubertin, “Le rétablissement,” 174. In this article Coubertin also explains that the hygienic movement, as practiced in Sweden (where ice skating was encouraged to promote hygiene), was also too utilitarian and would not sufﬁce to motivate youth to practice sports. 41. Coubertin, “Le rétablissement,” 178. 42. Coubertin, “Le rétablissement,” 178. During the 1896 Paris Congress, where the restoration of the Olympics was decided, Coubertin includes on the list of the committee’s determinations the following exceptions to the amateur-only rule: horseback riding, yachting, shooting, and fencing (Coubertin, “Congrès international de Paris,” 535–36). Aristocratic detachment is so linked to Coubertin that the Paris daily Libération declared Zinedine Zidane’s headbutt in the 2006 World Cup Final the last step in the “decoubertinization” of sport: “Avec Noah et Platini, hier, Zidane et Mauresmo, aujourd’hui, la ‘découbertinisation’ du sport français est achevé” (10 July 2006). 43. Coubertin, Le rétablissement,” 184. 44. Coubertin, Mémoires olympiques, 54. 45. Drevon, Les Jeux olympiques oubliés, 23. 46. For a complete list of the members of this committee and their titles see Drevon, Les Jeux olympiques oubliés, 22. 47. Coubertin, Mémoires olympiques, 49, 50. 48. Drevon, Les Jeux olympiques oubliés, 23. 49. Drevon, Les Jeux olympiques oubliés, 217. 50. Drevon, Les Jeux olympiques oubliés, 217. 51. Drevon, Les Jeux olympiques oubliés, 14. In this passage Drevon is citing the Rapport ofﬁciel des Concours internationaux d’exercices physique et de sports, a report written under the direction of Picard’s delegate, Daniel Mérillon.

Notes to pages 175–185 | 221 52. Drevon, Les Jeux olympiques oubliés, 20. 53. Pierre Arnaud insists that while Coubertin wanted to popularize sports, “he nevertheless maintained an ambiguous attitude toward members of the working class who participated in these aristocratic sports” (“Le sport des ouvriers,” 61). 54. Wassong, Pierre de Coubertin’s American Studies, 206. 55. Wassong, Pierre de Coubertin’s American Studies, 41–42. 56. Wassong, Pierre de Coubertin’s American Studies, 56. 57. Coubertin, Mémoires olympiques, 213. 58. Prince Demetrius Bikelas, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, Count Henri de Baillet-Latour, Lord Michael Killanin, Marquis Juan Antonio Samaranch, and Avery Brundage. For an analysis of Avery Brundage’s elitism see Charpentier and Billouin, Périls sur les Jeux olympiques, particularly chapter 1. 59. Charpentier and Billouin, Périls sur les Jeux olympiques, 159, 164. 60. Charpentier and Billouin, Périls sur les Jeux olympiques, 276. For further evidence of doping see Paul Yonnet’s chapter on the subject in his Huit leçons sur le sport. 61. Charpentier and Billouin, Périls sur les Jeux olympiques, 170. conclusion 1. Adorno, “Free Time,” 194. 2. Adorno, “Free Time,” 195. 3. Chapus, Le turf, 1. 4. Adorno, “Free Time,” 190. 5. Chapus, Le turf, 3. 6. Chapus, Le turf, 4. 7. Chapus, Le turf, 5. 8. Chapus, Le turf, 6. 9. Chapus, Le turf, 4–5.

222 | Notes to pages 185–186 10. Chapus, Le sport à Paris, 10. 11. Chapus, Le sport à Paris, 117–18. 12. In the pages of his newspaper Le Sport Chapus discusses attempts to get government backing for equestrian events (1855), and in Le turf he points to the extravagant amount of money spent by Americans and British on sports as an example the French should follow (3).

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Index

Page numbers in italic refer to illustrations.

discourse, 82–83, 205n86; and hunting, 88–91, 94–99, 101, 112–13, 114–15; and

About, Edmond: Le nez d’un notaire, 6–7, 13

the July Monarchy, 15, 36–37, 39; and

L’académie des jeux oubliés (Lalanne), 50–51

the Olympics, 169–71, 219n39; and

Académie universelle des jeux, 4, 49

paume, 4–9, 12, 13–14, 16–18, 20; and

Academy of Arms, 140–41. See also dueling

symbolism, 5, 13–14, 36–37. See also

The Art of Courtly Love (Capellanus), 189n2

class structure; monarchy

Adieu (Balzac), 97–98

Aneau, Barthélemy, 10

Adorno, Theodor: “Free Time,” 181, 182

An Approved History of the Olympic Games

Alexander, R. S., 40, 41 allegory: bullﬁghting as, 23–24, 26–30, 31, 34–

(Henry), 156–57 Arnaud, Pierre, 138, 221n53

40, 42–43; in Carmen (Mérimée), 34–38, 40–43, 196n13, 200n63; and chance,

backgammon, 47. See also trictrac

59–60; chess and history, 46; and duel-

Baecque, Antoine de: The Body Politic,

ing, 144–45; in Ferragus (Balzac), 58–59;

192n21, 209n42

and hunting, 90–94, 103; in “La Vénus

Baillet-Latour, Henri de, 221n58

d’Ille” (Mérimée), 14–15, 18. See also

Balzac, Honoré, 189n7, 209n44; chance in

metaphor; symbolism Alphonse de Peyrehorade (ﬁctional character), xx, 8–9, 10–14, 17, 38, 63–64, 70, 133. See also “La Vénus d’Ille” (Mérimée) Amar, Muriel, 16 amateurism, 10, 151–52, 169, 171, 174, 217n96, 220n42. See also nobility; Olympics ancien régime, xxi, 181, 186; and class struc-

the ﬁction of, 56–62; as compared to Mérimée, 63, 73–74, 81; and historical discourse, 60, 73–74 —Works: Adieu, 97–98; La comédie humaine, 8, 9, 15–17, 56–62, 74, 97–98, 190n11, 195n39, 205n77; Ferragus, 57–59; Le lys dans la vallée, 74; “La maison du chat-qui-pelote,” 8, 15–17, 195n39; La peau de chagrin, 59–61

ture, xix–xx, 16; and dueling, 130,

Balzacian Montage (Pasco), 189n7

131, 132–33, 134, 141–44; and historical

Bancquart, Marie-Claire, 211n68

236 | Index The Barber of Seville (Beaumarchais), 28 Barbey d’Aurevilly, Jules, 215n77, 216n84; “Le bonheur dans le crime,” xx,

the Judgment of Taste, 114; “Sport and Social Class,” 9, 11, 171 bourgeoisie, 192n15, 215n77, 216n84; and

146–51; Les diaboliques, xx, 146–51,

dueling, 137–38, 146–49; and historical

189n7, 209n44, 216n80

discourse, 82; and hunting, 99, 104–18,

the Bastille, 90

183–84; and the July Monarchy, 17–18,

Bayeux Tapestry, 88

38–39; and paume, 8–9, 10–14, 16, 18;

Bell, David: Circumstances: Chance in the

and the Revolution, 13; and sports

Literary Text, 56–57, 58, 59, 206n96 Bernard, Claudie, 93 Bernard-Tambour, Thierry: Jeu des rois, roi des jeux, 195n37 Bertier de Sauvigny, G. de: La Restauration, 205n86

and games, 70, 186–88. See also class structure Brantôme, Pierre de Bourdeille seigneur de, 194n30; Discours sur les duels, 122–23, 137 Brioist, Pascal: Croiser le fer, 123

Béville, Baron Albert de, 144

Brohm, Jean-Marie, 217n7

Bikelas, Prince Demetrius, 221n58

Brookes, W. P., 157, 218n12. See also Olympics

Billouin, Alain: Périls sur les Jeux

Brundage, Avery, 221n58

olympiques, 50, 178–79, 221n58

bullﬁghting: and class structure, 28–29,

The Black Swan (Taleb), 74–75

33, 37–38; in Goya’s art, 23–26, 27;

Blaze, Elzéar, 118, 209n36, 209n39; Le chas-

and the July Monarchy, 27, 31, 34,

seur au chien d’arrêt, 101–4; Le chasseur

36–37, 40, 42–43; as metaphor for rul-

conteur, 85, 90–91, 99–101

ing class, 33–34; under monarchical

Blot, J. A.: L’école de l’escrime suivi du code du duel, 138–39, 143

control, 26–27, 30–34; as political allegory, 23–24, 26–30, 31, 34–40, 42–43;

The Body Politic (Baecque), 192n21, 209n42

rules of, 26, 32–33; and symbolism,

Bohemian Paris (Seigel), 38–39

26, 32–33, 36–38, 39. See also Carmen

Bonaparte. See Napoleon Bonaparte (Na-

(Mérimée)

poleon I) “Le bonheur dans le crime” (Barbey d’Aurevilly), xx, 146–51, 216n93

Caillois, Roger: Man, Play, and Games, 17–18

Boudon, Georges, 219n39

Callebat, Louis: Pierre de Coubertin, 158, 161

boules, 58

Une campagne de vingt-et-un ans (1887–

Bourbon Restoration. See Restoration (1814–1830) Bourdieu, Pierre, xiv; A Social Critique of

1908) (Coubertin), 159, 162, 217nn9–10 Capellanus, Andreas: The Art of Courtly Love, 189n2

Index | 237 Carlier, Yves, 1; Jeu des rois, roi des jeux, 1, 195n37 Carmen (ﬁctional character), 34, 35, 39–40, 42, 65. See also Carmen (Mérimée) Carmen (Mérimée), 64–65, 197n20, 198n44; as political allegory, 34–38, 40–43, 196n13, 200n63; symbolism in,

Charles VI, 88 Charles IX, 87, 100 Charles X, xvii–xviii, 7, 36, 196n13; and hunting, 85–87, 93–94, 99–100, 102–3, 184 Charpentier, Henri: Périls sur les Jeux olympiques, 50, 178–79, 221n58

36–38, 39–40, 199nn52–53. See also

Les chasses de Charles X (Chapus), 99, 100

bullﬁghting

Les chasses princières en France de 1589–1841

Le carrosse du saint-sacrement (Mérimée), 199n53 Carpenter, Scott: “Supercherie et violence,” 41–42, 203n55, 204n76 The Century Magazine, 155, 165–67

(Chapus), 112–15, 209n36 Le chasseur au chien d’arrêt (Blaze), 101–4 Le chasseur conteur (Blaze), 85, 90–91, 99–101 Chateaubriand, F.-R. de: Mémoires d’outretombe, 96–97

Chambord (Count), 143, 150, 164–66

“Cheating at Narrating” (Cogman), 204n70

chance: in Balzac’s ﬁction, 56–62; and duel-

Chénier, André: “Le jeu de paume,” 1

ing, 122, 134; and historical discourse,

chess, 49, 201n23; as metaphor for history,

45–47, 53–56, 81–83, 206n95; in Méri-

45–46, 47, 53, 74, 83; symbolism of, 50,

mée’s works, 63–78, 82; in La peau de

51, 189n2. See also trictrac

chagrin (Balzac), 60–62; and trictrac,

Chimay, Prince Alphonse de, 144

53–56, 67–72, 73. See also trictrac

Chronique du règne de Charles IX (Mérimée),

La chanson de Roland, 119–21, 122, 147 Chapus, Eugène, xxi, 20, 104–5, 118, 195n42,

73, 76, 91–94, 119, 128–30 the Church. See religion

222n12; and Le Sport: Journal des gens

Le Cid (Corneille), 124–25, 196n13

du monde (newspaper), 105–6; and

Circumstances: Chance in the Literary Text

sports and leisure time, 181–87 —Works: Les chasses de Charles X, 99, 100; Les chasses princières en France de

(Bell), 56–57, 58, 59, 206n96 Citizen King. See Louis-Philippe class structure, xvii–xx, xxii–xxiii, 15, 28,

1589–1841, 112–15, 209n36; Les haltes

186, 187–88; and the ancien régime,

de chasse, 109–12; Manuel de l’ homme

xix–xx, xv, 16; and bullﬁghting,

et de la femme comme il faut, xiv–xix,

28–29, 33, 37–38; described metaphori-

106–9, 112, 183, 189n7, 190n11; Les soi-

cally, 79; and dueling, 133; and el-

rées de Chantilly, 109; Le sport à Paris,

egance, 189n7, 190n11, 191n14, 209n44;

18–19, 185–86; Le turf, 182–83, 184–85

and etiquette guides, xiv–xvii; and

Charles V, 2

hunting, 88–91, 94–99, 104–18, 183–84;

238 | Index class structure (cont.) during the July Monarchy, 17–18; and

Cours complet de trictrac (Le Peintre des Roches), 50, 52, 54–56, 69, 70

paume, 1–9, 10–14, 16–21, 38, 50, 193n11,

courtly love, xi–xiii, xiv, 189n2

194n30; in La peau de chagrin (Balzac),

Croiser le fer (Brioist), 123

60–62; and the Revolution, 106–7. See also bourgeoisie; nobility clergy, 7–8, 28. See also religion Cogman, Peter: “Cheating at Narrating,” 204n70; “Narrators of Mérimée’s Carmen,” 200n63 Collingham, H. A. C., 40, 41 “Les combats de taureaux” (Mérimée), 27–31, 35–36, 42 La comédie humaine (Balzac), 8, 9, 15–17, 56–62, 74, 97–98, 190n11, 195n39, 205n77 Congress of Vienna, 177 La conjuration de Catalina (Mérimée), 77

“Dandyism in the Literary Works of Barbey d’Aurevilly” (Rossbach), 215n77 David, Jacques-Louis: Serment du jeu de paume, 5, 6, 13 DeMarco, Eileen: Reading and Riding, 210n61 Depaulis, Thierry, 201n22 Desastres de la guerra (Goya), 23–24 “Les deux amants” (Marie de France), xi–xiii, xiv Les diaboliques (Barbey d’Aurevilly), xx, 146–51, 189n7

“Con razón ó sin ella” (Goya), 24, 24

Dice, Cards, Wheels (Kavanagh), 82, 202n40

Corneille, Pierre: Le Cid, 124–25, 196n13

Diderot, Denis: Encyclopédie, 2–3, 88,

Correspondance générale (Mérimée), 23

89–90, 108–9, 119, 122, 123, 125, 201n12,

corrida. See bullﬁghting

212n29

Coubertin, Baron Pierre de, xxi, 9–10, 151–52, 155, 165–68, 217n7, 221n58; and the Olympics, 156–63, 168–72, 173–79, 218n12, 219n39 —Works: Une campagne de vingt-et-un ans (1887–1908), 159, 162, 217nn9–10; The

Discipline and Punish (Foucault), 207n100 Discourse/Counter-Discourse (Terdiman), 213n50 Discours sur les duels (Brantôme), 122–23, 137 divine will, 121–23, 127–30, 134. See also religion

Evolution of France under the Third

Dom Juan (Molière), 126–27

Republic, 82–83, 165; France since 1814,

Don José (ﬁctional character), 34, 35, 36–38,

162, 163–64; Mémoires olympiques, 173,

39–40, 42, 65, 198n44, 199n53. See also

177; Pages d’ histoire contemporaine,

Carmen (Mérimée)

162–63; Souvenirs d’Amérique et de

douratchki (durak), 64, 203n55

Grèce, 170

Drevon, André: Les Jeux olympiques oubliés:

Cournot, Antoine Augustin: Essai sur les fondements de la connaissance, 45–46, 47, 53, 56, 74

Paris 1900, 174–75, 220n51 dueling, 119, 212n29; and the ancien régime, 130, 131, 132–33, 134, 141–44; and the

Index | 239 bourgeoisie, 137–38, 146–49; in La

L’Equipe, 152

chanson de Roland, 119–21, 122; in

The Erotic in Sports (Guttmann), xx–xxi

Chronique du règne de Charles IX

L’Escrime, 119, 143–46

(Mérimée), 128–30; and divine will,

Escrime à la baïonnette, 137

121–23, 127–30, 134; in L’éducation sen-

L’escrime et le duel (Prévost and Jollivet),

timentale (Flaubert), 133–36; illegality

139–43

of, 124–27, 128, 138–40; insurance poli-

Essai sur la guerre sociale (Mérimée), 76–77

cies, 137, 214n55; manuals, 119, 136–37,

Essai sur les fondements de la connaissance

138–39, 215n67; and the nobility, 123–28, 130–35, 146–51; and political allegory, 144–45; in Le rouge et le noir (Stendahl), 130–33, 206n96; satirization of, 130–36; and sexuality, 147–48, 150, 216n80, 216n93; Third Republic revival of, 136–51. See also fencing Dunoyer de Noirmont, Baron Joseph, 183; Histoire de la chasse en France, 94–96, 99, 101, 114 L’école de l’escrime suivi du code du duel (Blot), 138–39, 143 L’école des femmes (Molière), 45 L’éducation sentimentale (Flaubert), 133–36 Egalité, Philippe, 38 Elias, Norbert: Quest for Excitement, xi, xiii, xiv Encyclopédie (Diderot): and dueling, 119, 122, 123, 125, 201n12, 212n29; and hunting, 88, 89–90, 109; and the language of nobility, 108–9; and paume, 2–3 “Enforcing Civility and Respect” (Whitman), 215n63 Enlightenment, 78, 130 Enlightenment and the Shadows of Chance (Kavanagh), 69–70, 204n67

(Cournot), 45–46, 47, 53, 56, 74 etiquette: manuals, xiv–xix, 183; and paume, 4; and social class, 107–8; and trictrac, 50, 69–70. See also class structure The Evolution of France under the Third Republic (Coubertin), 82–83, 165 L’excellent jeu du tricque-trac (Jollivet), 48–49, 69 Exposition universelle, 172–74, 176. See also Olympics Les fâcheux (Molière), 126 “Farce normande” (Maupassant), 116–18 La faute de l’abbé Mouret (Zola), 8 “Les faux Démétrius” (Mérimée), 42 fencing, 119, 128; manuals, 119, 136–37, 138–39, 215n67; as modern-day sport, 151–53; Third Republic revival of, 136–51. See also dueling “Fencing, the Duel and Republican Manhood” (Nye), 137–38, 139, 214n56 Ferdinand VII, 26–27, 30, 32, 34, 85 Ferragus (Balzac), 57–59 Ferrari, Enrique, 23 Ferry, Jules, 158 Fictional Genders (Kelly), 192n24 Figures du destin stendhalien (Kliebenstein), 206n96

240 | Index Flaubert, Gustave, 107, 213nn50–51; L’éducation sentimentale, 133–36

Le grand trictrac (Soumille), 50 This Great Symbol (MacAloon), 219n39

Flessel, Laura, 152–53

Grousset, Paschal, 218n11

Fortassier, Rose, 190n11

Guiton, N.: Traité complet du jeu de trictrac,

Foucault, Michel: Discipline and Punish, 207n100 Fournier, Edouard, 195n42; “Hommage à la paume,” 20 France since 1814 (Coubertin), 162, 163–64 François I, 37, 88, 185–86 Franco-Prussian War (1870), 156–59,

53–54, 56, 201n23 Guizot, François: Histoire de la civilisation en Europe, 80–81; and historical discourse, 80–81, 83 Guttmann, Allen: The Erotic in Sports, xx– xxi; The Olympics, 157–58, 160, 168–69 “Gymnastics and Sports” (Weber), xxii

160–62, 174, 213n51, 214n56. See also Olympics

Les haltes de chasse (Chapus), 109–12

“Free Time” (Adorno), 181, 182

Headless History (Orr), 78

From the Royal to the Republican Body

Henri IV, 37, 88, 95, 113, 114, 194n30

(Melzer and Norberg), 192n21

Henry, Bill: An Approved History of the Olympic Games, 156–57

games. See sports and games

“Histoire de don Pèdre Ier” (Mérimée), 75

Le Gaulois (periodical), 116

Histoire de Jules César (Napoleon III), 77

Gautier, Théophile, 27; “La tauromachie,”

“Histoire de la fausse Elisabeth II” (Méri-

33–34; Tra los montes: Voyage en Espagne 1840, 31–33 gender identities, xx–xxi, 3, 103, 114, 147–48, 150, 168, 192n24, 199n52, 214n56, 216n80, 216n93 Girard, René: Violence and the Sacred, 121–22, 212n13

mée), 42, 75–76 Histoire de la chasse en France (Dunoyer de Noirmont), 94–96, 99, 101, 114 Histoire de la civilisation en Europe (Guizot), 80–81 Histoire du sport en Europe (Terret), xx historical discourse: in Balzac’s ﬁction, 60,

Giraudoux, Jean: Ondine, 191n14

73–74; and chess metaphor, 45–46, 56,

Godfrey, Sima: “Rien que ton constume,”

74, 83; in the works of Guizot, 80–81;

189n5 Gould, Evlyn, 36–37 Goya, Francisco, 196n6; “Con razón ó sin ella,” 24, 24; Desastres de la guerra, 23–24; Pepe Hillo, 25; La tauromaquia, 23–24, 25, 26. See also bullﬁghting

in the works of Mérimée, 63–67, 72–78, 80, 81–82, 204n70; in the works of Michelet, 78–80; and trictrac metaphor, 45, 47, 53–56, 67–72, 73–74, 83. See also chance hoaxes, literary, 66–67, 73–74

Index | 241 “Hommage à la paume” (Fournier), 20

205n86; and bullﬁghting, 27, 31, 34,

Homo Ludens (Huizinga), xiii

36–40, 42–43; and class structure,

Hugo, Victor, 104

17–18; and historical discourse, 77,

Huizinga, Johan, 212n13; Homo Ludens, xiii

80–81; and political repression, 40–43;

hunting: and the ancien régime, 88–91,

and symbolism, 13–15, 202n40. See also

94–99, 101, 112–13, 114–15; and the bourgeoisie, 99, 104–18, 183–84; and

Louis-Philippe July Revolution (1830), 29, 60, 85, 87, 94,

the monarchy, 85–87, 91–94, 99–100,

130, 143. See also July Monarchy

102–3, 113–14, 184; and nobility, xvii–

(1830–1848)

xviii, 88–91, 94–98, 107–9, 183–84; and poaching, 89–90, 103–4; as political

Jusserand, J. J., 219n39; Les sports et jeux d’exercice dans l’ancienne France, xxi

allegory, 90–94, 103; satirization of, 99–104; and sexuality, 211n75; and

Kavanagh, Thomas: Dice, Cards, Wheels,

symbolism, 87–88, 90–91, 97, 98,

82, 202n40; Enlightenment and the

209n39. See also Chapus, Eugène

Shadows of Chance, 69–70, 204n67

Huysmans, J. K.: A rebours, 8

Kelly, Dorothy: Fictional Genders, 192n24 Killanin, Michael, 221n58

International Olympic Committee (ioc), 161, 174, 177–79. See also Olympics

Kliebenstein, Georges: Figures du destin stendhalien, 206n96

Introduction à l’ histoire universelle (Michelet), 79–80 Ives, Charlotte, 96

Laclos, Pierre Choderlos de: Les liaisons dangereuses, 127–28 LaFayette, Madame de: La princesse de

le jeu de paume. See paume “Le jeu de paume” (Chénier), 1 Jeu des rois, roi des jeux (Carlier and Bernard-Tambour), 195n37 Les Jeux olympiques oubliés: Paris 1900 (Drevon), 174–75, 220n51 Jollivet, Euverte Sieur de Votilley: L’excellent jeu du tricque-trac, 48–49, 69 Jollivet, G.: L’escrime et le duel, 139–43 judicial system, 127, 128, 139, 207n100. See also dueling July Monarchy (1830–1848), 8, 9, 145, 200n63,

Clèves, 12 Lalanne, Philippe, 200n8; L’académie des jeux oubliés, 50–51 language: erotic, and fencing, 147–48; and nobility, xvii–xx, 107–9, 190n11, 191n14; and social class, 107–9, 110, 210n54; and word “sport,” xxi–xxii. See also class structure Laplace, Pierre-Simon: Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, 46–47, 56–57, 59, 62, 81 Lefort, Henri: Seigneurs jouant au tric-trac, 48

242 | Index leisure activities. See sports and games

Marennes (Viscount). See Chapus, Eugène

Lelasseux-Lafosse, Julien, 201n22

Marguerite (Queen of Navarre), 37

Le Peintre des Roches, Pierre-Marie-Mi-

Marie de France: “Les deux amants,”

chel: Cours complet de trictrac, 50, 52, 54–56, 69, 70

xi–xiii, xiv, 189n2 “La marseillaise,” 135

Lermusieux, Albin, 169

Marshall, Julian, 195n42

“Letter from a Rabbit at Saint-Cloud to

Martin, Christian, 152

Charles X,” 85–87 Levy, David, 200n8, 201n22 Le Yaouanc, Moïse, 97, 98 Les liaisons dangereuses (Laclos), 127–28

masculinity, xx–xxi, 3, 103, 114, 150, 192n24, 199n52, 214n56; and the monarchy, 168 Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France (Nye), 192n24

Lokis (Mérimée), 64–65, 203n55

Mathé, Roger, 93

Lords Playing Trictrac (Lefort), 48

Maupassant, Guy de, 211n75, 213n51, 214n56;

Louis VII, 123

and class structure, 115–18; “Farce

Louis XIII, 38, 123, 124

normande,” 116–18; “La parure,”

Louis XIV, 89, 125–26, 127, 140 Louis XVI, 4, 38

115–16, 117 Mayeur, Jean-Marie: The Third Republic

Louis XVIII, 5, 162, 177, 205n86

from Its Origins to the Great War,

Louis XIX, 164

1871–1914, 164–65, 216n94

Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. See Napoleon III (Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte) Louis-Philippe, 13–14, 15, 27, 31, 33, 38, 40–41, 205n86. See also July Monarchy (1830–1848) Luce, Siméon, 169 Luze, Albert de, 195n42 Le lys dans la vallée (Balzac), 74

Maza, Sarah: The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie, 192n15 Medicis, Catherine de, 130 Melzer, Sara: From the Royal to the Republican Body, 192n21 Mémoires d’outre-tombe (Chateaubriand), 96–97 Mémoires olympiques (Coubertin), 173, 177 Mérillon, Daniel, 220n51

MacAloon, John: This Great Symbol, 219n39 “La maison du chat-qui-pelote” (Balzac), 8,

Mérimée, Prosper, 196n6, 204n70; and chance, 63–70, 74, 81–82; as compared

15–17, 195n39. See also paume

to Balzac, 63, 73–74, 81; as compared

Man, Play, and Games (Caillois), 17–18

to Guizot, 80–81, 83; as compared to

Manuel de l’ homme et de la femme comme il

Michelet, 78–80, 82, 83; fantastic ele-

faut (Chapus), xiv–xix, 106–9, 112, 183,

ments in the ﬁction of, 8, 74–75, 79, 82,

189n7, 190n11

129–30, 204n76, 212n29; and historical

Index | 243 discourse, 63–67, 72–78, 80, 81–82,

Mickelsen, David, 42–43

204n70; political opinions of, 13–15, 29,

Le misanthrope (Molière), 126

41–42, 92–93, 195n35

The Modern Olympics (Young), 157, 218n12

—Works: Carmen, 34–38, 39–43, 64–65, 196n13, 197n20, 198n44, 199nn52–53, 200n63; Le carrosse du saint-sacrement, 199n53; Chronique du règne de Charles

Molière, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 125–27; Dom Juan, 126–27; L’école des femmes, 45; Les fâcheux, 126; Le misanthrope, 126 monarchy: and bullﬁghting, 26–27, 30–31,

IX, 73, 76, 91–94, 119, 128; “Les com-

37; and dueling, 123–27; and hunting,

bats de taureaux,” 27–31, 35–36, 42; La

xvii–xviii, 85–89, 91–94, 99–100, 102–

conjuration de Catalina, 77; Correspon-

3, 184; and paume, 6–7, 19; renewal of,

dance générale, 23; Essai sur la guerre

and the Olympics, 155–56, 158, 162–72,

sociale, 76–77; “Les faux Démétrius,”

173–74, 176–78; and restoration of

42; “Histoire de don Pèdre Ier,”

trictrac, 52; and sporting competi-

75; “Histoire de la fausse Elisabeth

tions, xiv. See also July Monarchy

II,” 42, 75–76; Lokis, 64–65, 203n55;

(1830–1848); nobility

Mosaïque, 66; “Des mythes primitifs,”

Montès, Francisco, 26, 30–31, 32–34, 42

72–73; “La partie de trictrac,” 67–72,

Morgan, Roger: Tennis: The Development of

187; “La Vénus d’Ille,” xx, 8–9, 10–14,

the European Ball Game, 1

15, 17, 38, 63–64, 70, 73, 187, 193n15,

Mosaïque (Mérimée), 66

194n27, 194n33; “Vision de Charles

Musée des familles, 33

XI,” 65–67

“Des mythes primitifs” (Mérimée), 72–73

metaphor: bullﬁghting and the ruling class, 33–34; chess and history, 45–46, 56,

The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie (Maza), 192n15

74, 83; class structure and history, 79; France and the Enlightenment, 78; hunting, 102–3; paume rules and scholarship, 4; sports and culture, xiii,

Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon I), 21, 54, 100, 205n86, 209n36 Napoleon III (Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte),

xxii, 14–15, 21; trictrac and historical

xvi, 19–20, 41–42, 77, 106, 136, 157, 184,

discourse, 45, 47, 53–56, 67–72, 73–74,

205n86

83; trictrac and nobility, 48–50. See also allegory; symbolism Michelet, Jules, 82, 83; and historical discourse, 78–80, 83; Introduction à l’ histoire universelle, 79–80; Le peuple, 78–79

“Narrators of Mérimée’s Carmen” (Cogman), 200n63 National Assembly, 145. See also Third Republic nationalism, 156–61, 176–77, 184–86, 187. See also Olympics

244 | Index Le nez d’un notaire (About), 6–7, 13

Orr, Linda: Headless History, 78

Nisima, Maureen, 153

The Other Racquet Sports (Squires), 4–5

nobility: and dueling, 123–24, 130–35, 147–51; and hunting, xvii–xviii, 88–91, 94–98, 107–9, 183–84; and language, xvii–xx, 107–9, 190n11, 191n14; and paume, 1–8, 9, 12–14, 16–21, 38; and sports and games, 182, 186, 187–88; and trictrac, 48–53, 69–70. See also class structure

Pages d’ histoire contemporaine (Coubertin), 162–63 Paris Olympics (1900), 172–75. See also Olympics “La partie de trictrac” (Mérimée), 67–72, 187. See also trictrac

Nodier, Charles, 104, 195n42

Parturier, Maurice, 66

Norberg, Kathryn: From the Royal to the

Party of Movement, 15, 38–39. See also July

Republican Body, 192n21 Nouveau système d’escrime pour la cavalerie, 136–37 Les nouveaux savans de société, 209n35 Nye, Robert, 146; “Fencing, the Duel and Republican Manhood,” 137–38, 139, 214n56; Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France, 192n24 Olympics, 9–10, 188, 217n96, 218n12, 220n42; and the ancien régime, 169–71, 219n39; and fencing, 151–53; and monarchical renewal, 155–56, 158, 162–72, 173–74, 176–78; and nationalism, 156–61, 176–77; in Paris (1900), 172–75; and performance-enhancing drugs, 178–79, 221n60; and physical education reform, xix, xx, 156–57, 158–60, 174–75, 217n9 The Olympics (Guttmann), 157–58, 160, 168–69 Ondine (Giraudoux), 191n14 The Order of Mimesis (Prendergast), 62, 190n11

Monarchy (1830–1848) Party of Resistance, 15, 38. See also July Monarchy (1830–1848) “La parure” (Maupassant), 115–16, 117 Pascal, Blaise: Pensées, 2 Pasco, Allan, 198n44; Balzacian Montage, 189n7 paume: and the ancien régime, 4–9, 12, 16–18, 20; and class structure, 1–9, 10–14, 16–21, 38, 50, 193n11, 194n30; and etiquette, 4, 10; during the First Republic, 4–5; as metaphor, 4; in modern-day France, 21; and the Olympics, 219n36; and the Revolution, 4–5, 20; rules of, 2–4, 10; during the Second Empire, 18–20; symbolism of, 3, 5–6, 8, 15–17, 20–21, 193n15. See also “La Vénus d’Ille” (Mérimée) La peau de chagrin (Balzac), 59–61 Pensées (Pascal), 2 Pepe Hillo (Goya), 25 performance-enhancing drugs, 178–79, 221n60 Périls sur les Jeux olympiques (Charpentier and Billouin), 50, 178–79, 221n58

Index | 245 Le peuple (Michelet), 78–79 Le peuple primitif, sa religion, son histoire et sa civilisation (Rougemont), 72–73 Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (Laplace), 46–47, 56–57, 59, 62, 81 physical education, xix, xx, 156–57, 158–60, 174–75, 217n9. See also Olympics Picard, Alfred, 172–75, 220n51 Pierre de Coubertin (Callebat), 158, 161 “Pierre de Coubertin” (Weber), 159, 218n11 Pierre de Coubertin’s American Studies (Wassong), 176–77, 218n12

religion: and bullﬁghting, 28, 37–38; and dueling, 121–23, 127–30 Republic, 14–15, 128, 152, 166–68 Respaut, Michèle, 216n93 La Restauration (Bertier de Sauvigny), 205n86 Restoration (1814–1830), 5, 14–15, 17, 29, 52–53, 77, 98, 147; and the Olympics, 158, 162–68, 177 Revolution, xiv, xix, 78, 81; and the bourgeoisie, 13; and class structure, 106–7; and dueling, 130; and hunting, 95–98,

playing. See sports and games

101; and paume, 4–5, 20; and political

poaching, 89–90, 103–4. See also hunting

symbolism, 26, 29–30; and trictrac, 52,

political allegory: and bullﬁghting, 23–24,

53–54. See also political allegory

26–30, 31, 34–40, 42–43; in Carmen (Mérimée), 34–38, 40–43, 196n13,

Revolution of 1830. See July Revolution (1830)

200n63; and chance, 59–60; and duel-

La Revue de Paris, 67, 169–70, 171, 172, 196n6

ing, 144–45; in “La Vénus d’Ille”

Richard I, 113–14

(Mérimée), 14–15, 18. See also allegory

“Rien que ton constume” (Godfrey), 189n5

Popular Front, 181

Rochefoucauld (Viscount), 173, 174

Port-Royal (Sainte-Beuve), 4

Rogge, Jacques, 179

positivism, 82

Le roman de Renart, 207n3

Prendergast, Christopher: The Order of

Rossbach, Susanne: “Dandyism in the Lit-

Mimesis, 62, 190n11 Prévost, Camille: L’escrime et le duel, 139–43

erary Works of Barbey d’Aurevilly,” 215n77 Le rouge et le noir (Stendahl), 130–33, 206n96

Quest for Excitement (Elias), xi, xiii, xiv

Rougemont, F. de: Le peuple primitif, sa religion, son histoire et sa civilisation,

Reading and Riding (DeMarco), 210n61

72–73

Rebérioux, Madeleine: The Third Republic from Its Origins to the Great War, 1871–1914, 164–65, 216n94 A rebours (Huysmans), 8 Régamey, Frédéric, 141, 142

Sainte-Beuve, Charles, 104; Port-Royal, 4; Volupté, 7 Samaranch, Marquis Juan Antonio, 179, 221n58

246 | Index Sansboeuf, Jules, 172–73

Le sport à Paris (Chapus), 18–19, 185–86

satire: and hunting, 99–104

Le Sport: Journal des gens du monde (news-

Second Empire, 18–20, 77, 205n86 Second Republic, 41 Seigel, Jerrold: Bohemian Paris, 38–39

paper), xxi, 105–6, 222n12. See also Chapus, Eugène sports and games: and class structure, xiv–

Seigneurs jouant au tric-trac (Lefort), 48

xx, 182, 186; as metaphor for politics,

“September Laws,” 40. See also July Monar-

xiii, xiv, xx, 14–15, 18; and monarchy,

chy (1830–1848)

xiv, xvii–xviii; and nationalism,

Serment du jeu de paume (David), 5, 6, 13

156–61, 176–77, 184–86; symbolism

Sevilla, Francisco, 29–31, 42, 197n21

of, xiii–xiv, xix–xx, xxii–xxiii, 9–10,

social capital: and hunting, 92; and the

186–87; types of, xxi–xxii; as utilitar-

Olympics, 171–72; and paume, 12–13,

ian activities, 181–83. See also bull-

50, 194n30; and sports, xiv; and tric-

ﬁghting; fencing; hunting; Olympics;

trac, 50. See also class structure social class. See class structure social climbing, xx; and dueling, 151; and hunting, 115–16; and paume, 6, 8–9, 10–12, 16–17. See also class structure; etiquette A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Bourdieu), 114 Société de l’encouragement de l’escrime, 138. See also dueling

paume; trictrac Les sports et jeux d’exercice dans l’ancienne France (Jusserand), xxi Squires, Dick: The Other Racquet Sports, 4–5 Stapfer, Philippe Albert, 29, 208n19 Stendahl: Le rouge et le noir, 130–33, 206n96 Sue, Eugène, 104 “Supercherie et violence” (Carpenter), 41–42, 203n55, 204n76

Les soirées de Chantilly (Chapus), 109

swords. See dueling

“Sorbonne Congress,” 160. See also

symbolism: and the ancien régime, 5, 13–14,

Olympics Soumille, Abbé Bernard Laurent: Le grand trictrac, 50 Souvenirs d’Amérique et de Grèce (Coubertin), 170 Spain, 23–24, 26–28, 29–31, 32, 37, 42–43, 85, 196n13. See also bullﬁghting

36–37; and bullﬁghting, 26, 32–33, 36–38, 39; in Carmen (Mérimée), 36–38, 39–40, 42–43, 199nn52–53; of chess, 50, 51, 189n2; of hunting, 87–88, 90–91, 97, 98, 209n39; in “La maison du chat-qui-pelote” (Balzac), 8, 15–17; and paume, 3, 5–6, 8, 13–14, 15–17,

Spanish “War of Independence,” 23

20–21, 193n15; of trictrac, 50–52, 53;

“Sport and Social Class” (Bourdieu), 9,

in “La Vénus d’Ille” (Mérimée), 8,

11, 171

13–14. See also allegory; metaphor

Index | 247 Taleb, Nassim Nicholas: The Black Swan, 74–75 “La tauromachie” (Gautier), 33–34 La tauromaquia (Goya), 23–24, 25, 26

tion, 52, 53–54; rules of, 47, 49–50, 200n8, 201n22–23; symbolism of, 50–52, 53. See also chance; chess Le turf (Chapus), 182–83, 184–85

tennis. See paume Tennis Court Oath (David), 5, 6, 13 Tennis: The Development of the European Ball Game (Morgan), 1

Union des sociétés françaises de sports athlétiques (usfsa), 174. See also International Olympic Committee (ioc)

Terdiman, Richard: Discourse/CounterDiscourse, 213n50 Terret, Thierry: Histoire du sport en Europe, xx Théorie de l’élégance. See Manuel de l’ homme et de la femme comme il faut (Chapus) Théorie de l’escrime à cheval, 136

“La Vénus d’Ille” (Mérimée), xx, 8–9, 10–14, 15, 17, 38, 73, 187, 193n15, 194n27, 194n33; and chance, 63–64, 70. See also paume Violence and the Sacred (Girard), 121–22, 212n13

Thiers, Adolphe, 164

“Vision de Charles XI” (Mérimée), 65–67

Third Republic: and fencing, 136–51; and

Vivés, Jean-Luis, 10

the Olympics, 158, 163, 164–65, 169,

Volupté (Sainte-Beuve), 7

176; parodies of the, 116 The Third Republic from Its Origins to the Great War, 1871–1914 (Mayeur and Rebérioux), 164–65, 216n94 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 81 Traité complet du jeu de trictrac (Guiton), 53–54, 56, 201n23 Tra los montes: Voyage en Espagne 1840 (Gautier), 31–33 Travers, Richard, 195n42

Wassong, Stephen: Pierre de Coubertin’s American Studies, 176–77, 218n12 Weber, Eugen: “Gymnastics and Sports,” xxii; “Pierre de Coubertin,” 159, 218n11 Whitman, James: “Enforcing Civility and Respect,” 215n63 Whittaker, Eve, 189n2 World War I, 178

trictrac: and chance, 53–56, 67–72, 73; and etiquette, 50, 69–70; history of, 47–53; as metaphor for history, 45, 47,

Young, David C: The Modern Olympics, 157, 218n12

53–54, 67–72, 73–74, 83; and the nobility, 48–53, 69–70; in “La partie de

Zidane, Zinedine, 220n42

trictrac,” 67–72; and the Restoration

Zola, Emile: La faute de l’abbé Mouret, 8

(1815–1830), 52–53; during the Revolu-

Zumbiehl, François, 26