Vox Meditantis

30th October, 1844
Palais des Tuileries, Paris

The autumn wind comes sharp through the casement-joint this evening, carrying with it the smell of the Seine and the first intimation of winter. I am permitted candles until nine o’clock, and thus write whilst the light holds and the draughts stir the flame. Three weeks now since my confinement to these chambers overlooking the courtyard – three weeks in which I have learnt more of my own mind than in all the years that preceded this detention.

They call it preventive custody, pending examination of certain pamphlets said to bear my hand. The magistrate’s clerk assures me it is a matter of formality, yet I observe how the formalities of this July Monarchy stretch themselves to accommodate whatever the Ministry deems expedient. Guizot’s men move silently through corridors, and one hears whispers of the Treaty signed at Tangier last month, of ships returning from Morocco, of the Chambers growing restive. But these are the concerns of men still at liberty to shape events. I am reduced to watching leaves scatter across the cobbles below and listening to the sentries change their watch.

In this enforced stillness, I have discovered that imagination possesses a sovereignty which no gaoler can curtail. Each night, when sleep comes late, I find myself transported – not by any narcotic vapour or laudanum dream, but by the mind’s own faculty for conjuring what is absent. I walk again through the galleries of my childhood home in the Limousin; I hear my mother’s voice reading from the Psalter; I taste the bread from our baker’s oven. These phantoms are more vivid than the thin soup they bring me at noon. It is a curious thing: the body may be confined, but the soul retains its wings.

There is a phrase I have been turning over these past days, one I should wish every man to comprehend, whether lettered or unlettered, whether in power or under its heel:

On a Thing All Men Ought to Learn

That imagination is not the enemy of truth, but its handmaiden. Those who govern fear it, for they mistake it for falsehood or sedition. Yet without the capacity to envision what might be otherwise, we are no better than beasts following instinct. The dreamer sees beyond the wall; the man without dreams sees only the wall. Let them call me a scribbler of dangerous fancies if they will – I know that the maps of tomorrow are first drawn in the mind’s eye, and that no State apparatus, however vigilant, can prevent a man from conceiving liberty whilst he yet draws breath.

The wind rises again, rattling the panes. I think of Dante’s souls blown about in the second circle, though I fancy my transgressions are of a milder sort than those tormented lovers. Still, there is something in the sound – that restless keening through the eaves – which speaks to my present condition. The wind goes where it lists, as Scripture says, and no man can bind it. Perhaps that is why I find comfort in its voice.

Tomorrow they tell me the examining magistrate returns from Versailles. I shall answer his questions with what honesty is prudent, and trust that reason may yet prevail over suspicion. Until then, I have my pen, my candle, and the theatre of memory. They are enough.

The flame gutters. I must close.

Set in the July Monarchy (1830-1848), Paris under King Louis‑Philippe and Prime Minister François Guizot emphasised conservative order and press restraints, with the Tuileries Palace serving as the monarch’s residence. Urban discontent and reform agitation culminated in the February 1848 uprising, when troops fired on crowds at the Boulevard des Capucines and barricades rose across Paris. Louis‑Philippe dismissed Guizot, then abdicated on 24 February, ending the July Monarchy. A provisional government proclaimed the Second Republic, followed by the election of Louis‑Napoléon Bonaparte as president later that year. In 1852 he established the Second Empire as Napoleon III, and the Tuileries continued as a royal seat until its destruction in 1871.

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.