Note 432 — BOOK II[407]

Pierre Clément Bérard (1798—circa 1890). During the Hundred Days, being then seventeen years of age, he had enlisted in the corps of Royal Volunteers of the Paris School of Law and accompanied King Louis XVIII. to Ghent. In 1831 and 1832, he published a little weekly pamphlet, the Cancans, whose title varied with every number: Cancans parisiens, Cancans accusateurs, Cancans courtisans, Cancans inflexibles, Cancans saisis, Cancans prisonniers, etc. Each issue ended with a song. It was, as it were, a resurrection, after 1830, of the Actes des Apôtres of Rivarol, Champeenetz and their friends, with the same violence and also the same pluck and spirit. Only, the Cancans were edited, not by a company of wits, but by M. Bérard alone: true, he was as witty as any four or forty. Seizures and prosecutions rained upon the Cancans and their author, who was at last condemned to fourteen years' imprisonment and a fine of thirteen thousand francs. Fortunately, he succeeded in escaping to Holland, thus exchanging prison for exile. In 1833, he published Mon Voyage à Prague and then went to Rome, where the Legitimists had founded a bank in which Bérard accepted a clerkship. He was not again to leave the Eternal City, where he died, not very many years ago, an impenitent Royalist. His Souvenirs sur Sainte-Pélagie en 1832 appeared in 1886.—B.