Chapter XXI: Calumny (1)

The next morning, before any one was up, Albert went in search of Fanny, with whom he had the following conversation:

“You have caused me a useless journey,” said he. “Eugénie loves the engineer.”

“I do not believe it,” replied the servant, either because she did not, or because she wished to console Albert.

“It is of no use to contradict me. I have kept my eyes open, and drawn my own conclusions. I have a better opportunity than you for observation. I tell you she loves him! If you cannot devise some scheme for driving him from her mind, I shall set out to-morrow for the capital.”

“Here is what I call hitting the nail on the head.... I thought of something yesterday exactly to the point.”

It was Albert’s turn to be incredulous. He shrugged his shoulders as a sign of doubt.

“I tell you I can satisfy your demand,” repeated Fanny slowly. “Listen! In a manufactory, everything is talked about. The engineer has for some time frequented a house apparently through charity, but it is my opinion another motive takes him there. There is a young girl in the house—the prettiest, handsomest girl to be seen, they say, for ten leagues around. Besides, she is well behaved, intelligent, and even pious; only, she is pitifully poor.”

“Tell me how he became acquainted with the family.”

“The father is a drunkard; the mother an idle, malicious creature who is employed here. The engineer looks after her. This woman was probably the cause of his going to the house. They are extremely destitute.”

“And the girl: what does she do?”

“She has been very well brought up at an aunt’s in town. The aunt died recently, and so suddenly that she was unable to make her will, as she intended, in favor of her niece. The latter has therefore returned home, to find nothing but wretchedness. I must confess, however, that she has behaved admirably.... All these details are correct, I assure you.... What is no less true, Mlle. Eugénie knows all the poor families that the engineer visits except this one. It is my conviction that he loves this girl, and intends marrying her some day.... There is no need of making people out worse than they are. There are some good things in this M. Louis. All his family are very wealthy. He will not be poor long, and is at liberty to marry a woman who has nothing, if he pleases.”

“Well,” said Albert, “I will reflect on what you have told me. It seems to me, with this information, I can greatly modify my fair cousin’s feelings towards her protégé.”

Before another hour, Albert had gathered full particulars with regard to the subject, and matured his plans. That very afternoon, he asked Eugénie to allow him to accompany her in her rounds among the poor.

“Willingly,” said she. “I have not been to see them for some time. I was just thinking I ought to go to-day.”

They set out together. The day was delightful. Eugénie, lively and witty as usual, took most of the conversation upon herself. Albert had on a dignified air of offence which he wished his cousin to perceive; but she did not notice it, or pretended not. Twenty times he was on the point of alluding to what had taken place the evening before, and as often refrained. Conceited as he was, Albert could not help it—he was not at his ease in Eugénie’s society. Her unvarying frankness, her intelligence, and the vivacity that never forsook her, all these rare qualities rendered him continually diffident in her presence.

At some distance from the manufactory, the road divided. One part turned towards the highway that led to the village; the other followed a gentle declivity to the river half hidden among the willows, rushes, and flowers that make that part of the bank so delightful.

“What a charming view!” said Albert. “Let us go down this way a short distance. We can afterwards return to the highway.”

Eugénie allowed herself to be guided by his wish. When within a hundred steps from the shore, they came to a hut by the wayside, between two large trees, picturesque in appearance, but indicative of poverty. It looked like a forsaken nest in a thicket.

Albert had made particular inquiries, and knew the hut was inhabited by the Vinceneau family—the one, it will be recollected, that Louis took charge of unknown to Eugénie.

“Are there not some of your poor people here whom you ought to visit?” asked Albert, in the most innocent manner.

“No; I have no idea who lives in this cottage.”

“I saw M. Louis coming out of it the other day.”

“He probably came here on business. I know all the families he visits; none of them lives here.”

While thus talking, Albert approached the hut, and, before Eugénie could prevent him, entered. She followed.

Mère Vinceneau was at home that day, in one of her fits of idleness and ill-humor. She at once recognized Eugénie, whom she did not like. She had, as I have already remarked, a general antipathy against the rich.

“What have you come here for?” said she.

“We do not wish to disturb you in the least,” said Eugénie, whose curiosity was now roused. “My cousin and I merely wish to rest ourselves. Perhaps you could give us some milk.”

“I have none.”

Mère Vinceneau was a tall, spare woman, with a forbidding countenance, and covered with rags. Had it not been for her crabbed face, she would certainly have excited compassion. However, Eugénie’s sympathies were awakened at the sight of her wretched condition.

“You seem very destitute, my good woman,” said she. “Can I be of any service to you?”

La Vinceneau softened a little at this gracious offer. “Thank you,” she said. “It is true we are badly off, while some people have too much.... Nevertheless, I ought not to complain. We have one friend.... You know him well—M. Louis, the engineer of your mill. What a kind heart he has! There is one who loves the poor! If the rich only resembled him!...”

“Do you live here alone?”

“No; I have a husband employed at the tile-works, and a daughter who goes out as a seamstress in the village. She is coming now.”

A slight cloud came over Eugénie’s face. It became still darker when Madeleine Vinceneau entered. Madeleine was not merely beautiful: she was dazzling. Poorly but neatly clad, she came forward with a dignity and grace that inspired astonishment as well as respect. Her large black eyes, her pale, refined face, her smiling lips, and her whole appearance, had an air of aristocratic distinction.

“What a lovely creature!” was Eugénie’s first thought. Then another presented itself: “Perhaps Louis loves her.” She shuddered. A feeling of displeasure and sadness came over her: “I must be in love with him myself without being aware of it, to be so jealous,” she said to herself. This doubt was natural. Eugénie determined to solve it. Such is our nature. We can never see so clearly what is passing in the depths of our hearts as in a tempest.

Eugénie began to question the girl discreetly. She wished to ascertain if her nature was as angelic as her exterior. She was soon satisfied on this point. Madeleine was innocence itself, and as good as she was innocent. She confirmed all her mother had said, and in her turn praised Louis with an ingenuousness that assured Eugénie she did not love him. “But he—is he as indifferent to her?...” was Eugénie’s thought as she left the house. She could not get rid of the painful suspicion, consequently she was in rather a gloomy mood. Albert noticed it, but refrained from saying anything. One unguarded word would have counteracted the happy effect of his perfidious scheme. But he was triumphant when he returned to his room. “I have dealt my rival a severe blow,” said he to himself—“a blow he can hardly recover from; for he will not suspect its source, and Eugénie will never mention it to him. Even if she wished to, how could they have any explanation? They never meet except in the presence of others. Before such an explanation takes place, I must find other means of completing his ruin.... I have begun well, and must bring things to a crisis....”

All this occurred the day before Louis came to see us. Mère Vinceneau told him of the visit a short time after. He suspected there was some scheme of Albert’s at the bottom of it, and dwelt on the means he should use to defeat his calculations. Meanwhile, his enemy was contriving a new plot destined to cause him still greater embarrassment.

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE EMPIRE.

FROM THE REVUE DU MONDE CATHOLIQUE.

THE imperial form of government has sprung up in France within seventy years, and been only slightly modified by the different administrations that have succeeded each other. And yet nothing could be more at variance with the traditions, customs, and genius of the nation. This _régime_ is of foreign origin. It is the recrudescence of the conquest of Gaul by Julius Cæsar. It has subjected us again to a yoke analogous to the condition we were in after Gaul lost its independence. The veil that blinded us to its real nature has fallen off in the shock of momentous events. It is important to reassert a truth that will now be better comprehended. The historians of the Revolution have endeavored to show that the revolutionary movement of 1789 was purely French, and the result of national necessity; but the very violence that accompanied it proves the contrary. Natural developments are effected peacefully. Louis XVI., so far from resisting the torrent, seconded it, and abandoned himself to it. Nothing shows so fully what an effort was necessary for the triumph of the Revolution as the impossibility of its succeeding by regular means and the assent of the country. It took France by assault. It profited by circumstances, but this does not change the nature of its deeds or the character of its success. We do not deny that this pagan and Cæsarean tradition might have found its way into France with the monarchy, but it is certain that, however restrained it had been by Christian principles, it all at once broke through its bounds. Half the members of the Constituent Assembly belonged to the legal profession. Imbued with the absolutist teachings of Roman law, they energetically sought to apply them. The Revolution recalls ancient Greco-Roman days; there is nothing Christian about it. What is the sovereignty of the people but the very principle that laid the foundation of despotism in Greece? The title of “citizen” implies that all Frenchmen belong to the same city or town. This rising _en masse_, and the notion that every Frenchman is a soldier, are wholly pagan. The legislative corps—that means the people make their own laws, only they do so by proxy. What! the people not exercise their special prerogative! In ancient times, though the people only amounted to a few thousand voters, they never fully enjoyed the legislative power. Besides, in consequence of the institution of slavery, every shade of democracy was equivalent to an aristocracy. The legislators of 1789 only recognized the slavery of citizens with respect to the state, which induced them to create a power strong enough to counterbalance and represent their ten millions of constituents.

Their proscriptions, denunciations, conspiracies, and struggles recall the time of Marius and Sylla. It is worthy of notice that in the revolutionary documents the heroes of Athens and Rome replace the saints of the calendar. This imitation is extremely amusing. A religion utterly pagan follows. A Pantheon is opened to modern divinities, and great men deified. Catholicism undergoes a persecution unsurpassed by the persecutions of the emperors of the first three centuries. It alone is excluded from the Pantheon. Under the empire, this imitation is so striking that it is impossible to mistake it. The Napoleonic era recalls that of the Cæsars. In this new civilization, or ancient civilization revived, new terms are necessary to express the changes made. Political language is modified. First we have consuls, then tribunes, then a senate, and at last an emperor. The senatus-consultum keeps pace with the plebiscitum. The subdued provinces are governed by prefects. The judges are merely Napoleon’s delegates. The whole of this organization is of foreign, not French, origin. Our history presents no parallel to it. And the reality corresponds with the appearances: it is the engrafting of absolute power on the sovereignty of the people. For the emperor never disguised the source of his authority. He always assumed to be the representative of the people. Like Augustus and Tiberius, he derived the imperial inviolability from the tribunitian character with which he was invested. The empire had its _noblesse_, but a _noblesse_ of titles and decorations similar to that of the Lower Empire. All independence was denied this _noblesse_. The army was likewise organized after the manner of the Roman legion. There were no longer any local distinctions. Each regiment was composed of a confused mixture of the various French peoples. The officers even did not belong to their regiments. They knew, in their nomadic life, only the will of Cæsar, on whom alone they depended, and who transported them from one regiment to another, and from one place to another. Passive instruments, they had no will of their own. Therefore, they were ready for anything.

Formerly, the army could not be employed against the nation. It represented the different social elements, and enjoyed the independence natural to these elements. The officers retained their independence, for they served at their own expense from a sense of duty. The administration, the bar, and the army under the empire depended on one individual. Neither local customs, nor municipal corporations, nor right of property could withstand this despotism. A universal levelling under the name of equality smoothed away every obstacle before Cæsar. What rank could stand before the formidable title of the sovereignty of the people? This Cæsarean power found no embodiment in one of French origin. It fell to an Italian, a Roman, to one who rivalled Plutarch’s heroes. This Italian assumed control of the Revolution without ceasing to be Italian, or rather Roman; for Roman he was, a cosmopolite. His aim was to restore the Roman Empire, or the Empire of the West. The French nation was to be the means of universal conquest, as the Gauls in the hands of his predecessors, the Cæsars. Of old France he preserved no vestige. And he carried into Italy his achievements in France. He extended the Revolution to Spain. There was nothing French in a single characteristic of his genius. And his race have obstinately pursued the imperial career which he opened. His nephew, like himself, a mixture of astuteness, violence, boundless ambition, utopianism, literary tastes, and fatalism, renewed the glory of the empire. Louis Napoleon also belonged to all lands. Italian, Swiss, German, English, American—he had something of them all. He spoke all languages as well as the French, and his French was that of a refugee. During his reign, he assembled around him none but foreigners. His apartments were never clear of the outlandish people he had become acquainted with in his wanderings. He loved to converse with them, to tell them his plans. And these adventurers enjoyed being with him. They found him as utopian as ever, as unchanged in his notions, and the phenomenon interested them. No Frenchman of note consented to serve him. France was given up to foreigners. They penetrated everywhere, and took possession of the country. Imperial cosmopolitanism attracted them, and sheltered them, and overloaded them with favors. French policy became English, Italian, American. The denationalization of France was effected by the laws, public schools, new manners, and the transformation of Paris into an European capital of pleasures and the arts: France disappeared. This system was overthrown when, arrived at the highest pitch of madness, Louis Napoleon, after effecting the unity of Italy, so powerfully aided King William in setting up the new Empire of Germany as a rival to France. He sacrificed France to the triumph of the imperial idea in Italy and Germany.

The Bonaparte family is completely destitute of patriotism. Its cosmopolitan character is constantly asserting itself. Louis Napoleon’s foreign policy was essentially anti-French. His constant desire to effect the unity of Italy and that of Germany was the wish of an alien. Our interior legislation became no less opposed to the national character. What is the civil code but the systematization of principles laid down in the Digest? The right of property restricted by the legislator, family rights suppressed for the benefit of Cæsar, and property, as well as individuals, placed under administrative direction—all this is Bonapartism as well as Cæsarism. Outside of the central power, there was no authority possessing any freedom of action in France. No municipal body was safe from dissolution. No corporation was allowed to stand alone. Obedience became the lot of the French; which does not imply order and unanimity, for the government, with contradictory aims, and without any real permanence, imposed laws that were contradictory and impracticable. The distinguishing feature of Bonapartism is the union of liberal theories with absolute power. In spite of universal suffrage and deliberative assemblies, despotism increased and was strengthened. It even relied on the opposing and controlling influences it created. The senate and the legislative corps were subservient to the empire, and sustained it. The idea of equality and liberty constantly held out by high imperial functionaries contributed to the popularity of the Napoleons. Under the late _régime_, Prince Jerome Napoleon was charged with representing the democratic side of the imperial government. But we know now, by the revelations of the papers found, that his opinions always coincided with the emperor’s. This was what may be called playing into each other’s hands. The tip of the ear shows itself in those liberal speeches which were apparently most hostile to the government in such a way that no one who knows how to read can fail to perceive it. Under his forcible language is concealed a faint, half-expressed, vague opinion, but which is clearly and positively opposed to the rights of assemblies. What enthusiastic liberalism did not M. de Persigny manifest! According to him, provincial liberty was upheld by the _préfets_, whom he styled, on one occasion, the fathers of the departments. This sally caused much laughter, but M. de Persigny did not laugh. This same minister bethought himself of some conflicting elements that had evaded the superintending eye of Cæsar. It occurred to him to place his master officially at the head of the secret societies, and he transformed free-masonry into an imperial institution.

The despotism that has weighed on France for seventy years is unknown to the rest of Europe. We do not say that other nations have not undergone various degrees of despotism, but the despotism of a dictatorship founded on the sovereignty of the people is a privilege France alone has enjoyed. A dictatorship, that institution of republican Rome, has been known here since 1789. Successive governments have been set up in the name of the people; they have all been ephemeral; they have acknowledged no other will but their own—at least, in the beginning. The dictatorship is renewed every ten years. At Rome, before the empire, it has been calculated that every three years and a half a dictatorship was established, which lasted six months or thereabouts. Our situation, therefore, is preferable. It may, however, be questioned if it is the ideal of a Christian nation. Louis Napoleon became the open apologist of Julius Cæsar: he took sides against the Gauls and Franks, who were our ancestors. This audacity excited universal astonishment. The Romans from the beginning were accustomed to absolute power and anarchy. In the vast series of revolutions that make up their history, we find no fixed form of government. The consuls, prætors, and tribunes at Rome, and in the provinces the proconsuls and governors, exercised unlimited power. The emperor was only a perpetual dictator. Roman civilization was absolute power opposed to the liberties of foreign and barbarous nations who preserved a primitive social organization, and lived under patriarchal institutions. The Roman historians acknowledge that the barbarians fought for liberty. The Romans governed the provinces as, at a later period, the Turks governed the countries they conquered. Science and literature have depicted their sanguinary course with brilliant sophistry, and erected it into a system. There is no doubt that the thousands of jurisconsults who devoted their talents to the empire never questioned the legitimacy of Cæsarism. They did not even comprehend German liberty. They often spoke of it with a rare ignorance.

Tacitus sometimes forgets the fidelity with which he has described the manners of the Germans. He passes this singular judgment on a people of Thrace whose independent spirit he mentions: _Ne regibus parere nisi ex libidine soliti_[169]—they obey their kings only according to their caprice or humor. To us this has no sense. Tacitus sees that these people obey sometimes, but not always. He does not perceive the link that connects these two facts. To obey through humor or caprice is not to obey at all. What is their legal obligation? It is sufficient to examine their barbarous institutions. The barbarous king is neither a dictator nor consul: he is like a father. His authority is limited by other heads of families and by their customs. The tribe obeys, but only after discussing the point in the assemblies of the nation. The people obey when the king has received the necessary approval of the established authorities. There is not, as under the Roman government, a man who rules, and a nation that obeys. This dualism does not exist among the barbarians. The king is a part of the nation, as a father is of his family, which attributes a high dignity to both king and father, but not great power. Unity of action, in this case, comes by the concurrence of wills. This concurrence is permanent, and the easier because nature, through the family ties, softens difference of opinion, lessens rivalries, and produces men of incontestable authority whose very birth commands respect. Their laws are less severe and stringent, but liberty reigns, and society is based on the affections, and not on the mere predominance of force. Tacitus would be more intelligible if he said that the people only obeyed after giving their approval according to forms which custom had established. Strictly speaking, the word _libido_ might imply either consent or assent. The idea is somewhat obscure. But there is nothing to authorize a translator to say the people obeyed their king only through caprice or humor. Tacitus finds it difficult to comprehend the organization of the tribe, and does not regard it as of much account. He judges like a Roman who has a clear notion only of military rule and passive obedience. In spite of himself, however, he dwells on these barbarians, who inspire him with a kind of terror. He points out the effects of their patriarchal institutions from which the liberty of modern nations has sprung. His books are for us a title of honor. Our ancestors figure therein as conquered: their features are changed, but not unrecognizable. We love to find proofs that the traditions of liberty among the French race preceded the importation of despotism.

Despotism came to us by the way of revolution. This will not surprise any one. The empire is the highest and most definite form of despotism among civilized nations. Our enlightenment, or pretended enlightenment, so far from having any repugnance to it, evidently led to it. Are we more enlightened than the Greeks and Romans? Are our rulers better versed in art, law, or literature than the rulers of Athens or Rome? The idea of despotism has been so infused into the modern mind that even the extreme partisans of liberty can conceive of nothing but despotism as the basis of their theories. M. Jules Simon, the worthy successor of M. Duruy, dreams of subjecting France to the communist system of Spartan education. And hardly any one ventures to oppose him. What notions of liberty have children reared by the state? They are brought up in the official world, imbibe its sentiments and the ideas of the state, and reproduce them in their public and private life. We who cannot consent to the suppression of the family are desirous that children should bear the impress of family influences. The family yoke is sweet and light; the assimilation of children to their parents is easy. The liberty of children is guaranteed. Family authority is a less burdensome restraint than that of the state, and the multitude of families creates a sort of counterpoise, so that their minds are not formed by a single will, but develop according to their various aptitudes. If any one objects that the state teaches no doctrines, we reply that to teach none is to teach some. In fact, this is really the source of indifference, or the system of practical atheism. Is not this the doctrine that is agitating France?

Our government has been copied from the Cæsarean government. Everywhere is to be seen a gradation of functionaries who receive their orders from Paris, and are not opposed by any provincial action capable of resisting them. It is useless to enumerate all the public or collective offices in order to show how they are combined under a single impulsion. No country in Europe has attained to such perfection of the imperial _régime_. The Roman Empire even has been surpassed, for we have the advantage of the press, railways, and telegraphs, which increase the power of the state to an indefinite degree. New ideas have also arisen to the aid of this despotism. Political economy declares the loan to be the best of investments. The patrimony of future generations has been invested in bonds regulated by the present generation. By successive loans, all individual capital has fallen into the hands of the state. In a more or less indirect way, the state has taken possession of all the charitable or other funds created by associations or individuals. Confiscations are not nominally practised, but by the ingenuity of our fiscal system, and the skilful apportionment of the taxes, the whole value of the soil passes into the fiscal treasury in forty years. This is really a kind of confiscation. Cæsarism found out how to transform the Chamber of Deputies into a fiscal instrument. Instead of moderating, limiting, or abolishing the taxes, the Chamber of Deputies, and especially our recent legislative corps, have studied how to increase them. All the representatives of the people have looked upon their constituents as subjects to be taxed and made use of. The government has had more income from the taxes than it wanted. This work of communism has been applauded in a thousand revolutionary papers. In this respect, the republican assemblies have not differed from the imperial. Whether the deputies were chosen by the ballot, by the nomination of Parisian committees, or the appointment of the Minister of the Interior, the state of the case and the result have been the same.

The organization of our army is entirely Cæsarean. Though levied from the whole country, it takes cognizance of nothing that is local or provincial. Individual measures are repressed by the bureaucracy, which is subservient to Cæsar because it is detached from the soil, and is influenced only by the hope of promotion.

But the French magistracy at least enjoys independence? It did previous to 1789. The government did not interpose in the appointment of magistrates. This system, otherwise very defective, did not err through servility. The empire, artfully retaining a certain semblance of the ancient _régime_, was careful not to do so where the independence of the magistracy was concerned. The emperor nominated all the magistrates, and made them removable at pleasure. This system did not suit the Restoration, and immovability was established. Under Louis Philippe, the magistracy rapidly diminished. The more honest felt themselves bound by their oath, and refused to serve the royalty of July. But the Third Empire, by its administrative practices, effaced the last trace of judiciary independence, and destroyed the permanence of the office by the prospect of lucrative advancement. Hitherto money had not seemed to be the aim of the magistrate. The idea of a career to pursue never entered his head. The magistrate did not have to earn his livelihood, and he belonged to his native place, where, regarded with universal respect, he lived on his own fortune, which was the exterior pledge of his independence. The needy and the ambitious did not seek such a post. The empire raised the salaries of the magistrates only to make the office accessible to that class of people who are ready to obey at whatever cost. Immovability was illusory when the greater part of the magistrates, desirous only of advancement, went from one place to another according to the ministerial humor. Besides, the government asked nothing better than to have in each locality transient magistrates who were strangers to the people, and only awaited an opportunity of ascending the ladder of promotion. This allurement was more efficacious than fear in effecting the change in our judiciary customs. The justiceship of the peace, which ought to be a kind of rural and local institution, and which for some time preserved that character, speedily degenerated. The empire at last ended by bringing it completely under the yoke of centralism. Instead of being the independent arbiter of petty quarrels and trivial interests that required immediate solution because they were not worth the expense and delay of a suit, the justice of the peace now found himself an electoral agent, and implicated in politics. He had to be chosen from the nomadic class of civilians. To prevent all ties with the people, fees were done away with, and his salary made equal to that of the judges of the inferior court. The pretext was made that the dignity of the magistracy did not allow a judge to receive perquisites. The truth is that there was a very different reason. The justices of the peace, being natives of the country, and already in possession of a patrimony, had no eye to the fees. Many of them had scarcely any. On an average, the perquisites did not amount to more than five or six hundred francs, and were not always easily collected. A mere income of seven or eight hundred francs was not sufficient to attract a stranger, especially when there was no prospect of promotion. The empire sought to bind the justices of the peace closely to itself, and deprived the office, practically speaking, of its perpetuity, for the same reason that it had made the assize judges removable. The justiceship of the peace, having been made a round of the judiciary ladder, became accessible to those civilians or agents who only asked to serve the government. Our judiciary army, as numerous as our administrative army, and composed of agents nominated directly by the state, had, then, but one course open to it. Its apparent immovability no longer hid anything. Those who are familiar with the affairs of the empire know what to think of a magistracy which takes it upon itself to sound its own praises. Though founded on very different principles, the French magistracy, by a sudden deviation, has gone back to the Cæsarean type of Byzantium.

This mixture of the appearance of freedom with despotism is natural to an absolute power resting on a popular basis. We cannot see how it could be otherwise. Ancient Rome afforded the same spectacle. The Cæsars never ceased to repeat that they were the representatives of the people, and the defenders of national liberty. We are not astonished that the French government which sprang from the Revolution has assumed this attitude. The Romans only admitted Roman civilization, which they called “Roman peace.” Their poets often speak of “the majesty of Roman peace.” Civilization, then, consisted in obeying the proconsuls, paying the taxes, furnishing recruits, and working on the roads and public monuments. At this price, the provinces enjoyed a little tranquillity. It is noteworthy that the French Revolution assumed to be the only light capable of guiding the world in the way of liberty, equality, fraternity, progress, civilization, comfort, etc. Its disciples still assert that France is continuing to fulfil this mission. This is what Louis Napoleon meant when he said that France alone contended for an idea. This immeasurable pride in thinking ourselves superior to other nations has had to bow down. It was not by virtue of our actual qualities that we undertook to assume such a supremacy, but, on the contrary, by virtue of the errors and vices that have sprung up in modern times. In the XVIIth century, when our moral superiority was acknowledged and incontestable, no Frenchman ever advertised any pretension to overrule other nations, or believed that our nation was destined to precede others in order to enlighten them. This pretension sprang up in 1789, at the time when a new system was promulgated in the midst of the terrors of the Revolution. Supposing this idea to be new, what right had France to impose it forcibly on other nations? Europe rose in arms to repel revolutionary or Cæsarean invasions, and before the coalition France has three times fallen.

We have been sobered by this experience. The _rôle_, brilliant as it was, has only left us bitter remembrances. It remains for us to govern ourselves without any pretension to govern others. Our political and military organization has suddenly crumbled to pieces. That masterpiece, which was a combination of contradictions, order, and disorder, is now only a ruin. Lamentations are heard on all sides. It is perceived that, under the pretext of equality, all Frenchmen have been reduced to equal powerlessness. When men of good-will sprang up on every hand to the help of France, leaders were wanting; there was no one to direct. Overwhelmed in the first place by number, we ended by overcoming that difficulty, and then there was a deficiency of organization. Leaders and discipline are not the work of a day. If education has not developed individual ability, in vain will you seek for genuine, natural, and acknowledged leaders. The spirit of the family alone, by forming the character, habituates men to a necessary subordination. The atheism of the state tends to root out of every conscience the sense of duty. How obey, if we do not comprehend the obligation of obedience, and if those who rule over us do not seem worthy of ruling us? Discipline is a certain moral order. It should first exist within us by submission to Providence and to the social order established by Providence. Imperial and republican despotism have aimed at moulding the whole French nation after one single type. And when the overruling, guiding will was gone, the whole nation was paralyzed. The Roman Empire had the same fate. It fell both in the east and west from causes analogous to those that are preying on us. An able despotism, a vast material organization, admirable military traditions, and the assent of the people, could not ensure the stability of the brilliant communities of Rome and Byzantium. The same principles must lead to the same consequences: no stable form of government; the supreme power constantly at the mercy of elections, factions, and violence. The Cæsarean system, whenever it obtains sway, gives glory, and grandeur, and brilliancy to society, but also leads to anarchy and incurable weakness.

Roman civilization was overthrown by pastoral nations: in the East, by the Arabs and Turks; in the West, by the Germans. Cæsarean France easily obtained the ascendancy over Italy, Austria, and Spain, because, already initiated into Cæsarism by Roman law, they offered but slight resistance. But when it undertook a struggle with Germany, its fortune changed, because that country has many strong elements opposed to Cæsarism and the principles of the French Revolution. Its _esprit de famille_, its tendency to decentralization, and its official morality, superior to ours, are among the differences that carry us back to the invasions of the first four centuries. Cæsarean France has played a great part against modern Germany. But France is not so thoroughly Cæsarean as the Roman Empire. Its interests, its customs, and its traditions, impregnated with Catholicism, resist this assimilation. The Italian astuteness of the Bonapartes succeeded in making us think despotism would lead to liberty. Our eyes are painfully opened to the imperial _régime_ and modern institutions. We can no longer deny that our social condition has approximated to ancient Cæsarism, and reproduced its principal conditions. The empire did not even conceal this imitation. The public works and the plebiscitum were the popular side of this _régime_. No nation of Europe has experienced anything comparable to it. In no other has the government become the contractor and general constructor of all the public works.

The Roman Empire alone presents a similar spectacle. The emperors provided for the amusement of the Roman people. They instituted festivals and games. They everywhere erected buildings for ornament or public utility, the ruins of which are still famous. The great monuments of our ancient monarchies were due to individuals, guilds, and the zeal of the faithful. The state did not interpose. Since 1789, the state alone has erected edifices because it alone has had wealth. This system of public works is only one form of communism. Though Louis Napoleon had no taste for the arts, he had a passion for building. This phlegmatic Cæsar, like the Roman emperors, made it a duty to amuse the people. Family gatherings and the old festivals authorized by religion did not meet with his approval. Such festivals are, from their very nature, anti-Cæsarean. They recall principles and sentiments opposed to Cæsarism. But the individual must not escape Cæsar. Public amusements have a certain influence of their own. They must divert the mind from all the influences of family, corporations, and religion, and partake of the vulgar communism authorized by the state. It is thus Cæsar undertook to amuse the people. Who does not know what the Paris theatres became? The towns in the provinces followed the movement, constrained by the _préfets_ and mayors. Corruption, promoted by books and official addresses, was put in practice in every theatre of the empire. When the immense bazaar of the Universal Exposition was opened, Louis Napoleon invited all the sovereigns of Europe to be present. They had no wish to attend, but yielded to his importunities. They held a grudge against their Amphitryon. That was not the only mark of superiority he affected with respect to them. He proposed a congress to sanction the principles of the French Revolution. He neglected no opportunity of influencing their policy. He was constantly shaking the thrones of Europe by his democratic pretensions. He believed himself alone to be legitimate, and pitied the other sovereigns who lacked the consecration of universal suffrage. Experience has once more shown us that immense powers may rest on fragile foundations, but the lesson will be of no use to the Bonapartes, who are ready to recommence. Shall it be lost on France?

Our revolutions and various _coups d’état_ within a century have transformed us into a Cæsarean nation. All our political elements bear the impress of this fatal destiny. The army, the magistracy, the administration, and the schools are disciplining us for this social system. There is no power but the state. Property is no longer managed according to the wishes of the proprietor, but by those of the legislator. Luxury has increased to an astonishing degree. How easily it has pervaded all classes of society! It is the government that has led us to yield to these new requirements of fashion. Economically speaking, luxury is waste of capital, and an unproductive expenditure. Old French society, founded on the right of property and the permanence of families and fortunes, rejected luxuries, superfluities, and useless expense. In everything, it had an eye to the solid and durable. That, in fact, was the character of French industry. The Roman Empire was a stranger to lasting influences and hereditary fortunes. Proscriptions and confiscations made short work of them. Nothing must appear to rival Cæsar, and manifest any power or independence. Christian society pursued and attained a different object. With us, the civil code takes the place of confiscations and proscriptions; it takes care that fortunes are as speedily wasted as acquired; it ruins by periodical liquidations families scarcely formed. In spite of this, the instincts of nature incline us to a certain care of our property. Speedily acquired fortunes, made by commerce, industrial pursuits, or legal transmission, became a source of anxiety to the imperial mind. They might foster independence! Thence the constant preoccupation of the empire to lead the whole nation into luxurious habits by the temptation of pleasures and large salaries. The multiplication of cabarets is an unmistakable evidence of this. Obliged to expend more than they gained, the office-holders remained in servitude. And from one to another the emulation has extended throughout France. Cæsar not only amused the people, but, led away by example, the people sought additional amusements at their own expense. Thus property, idly spent, and lacking the permanence that assures independence, ceased to limit or be an obstacle to Cæsar’s will. All wealth became dependent on the public credit and the stock market, and had an interest in the continuance of Cæsar’s reign. The whole interior policy of the empire was based on this principle. The political institution of luxury kept pace with the theatre and literature.

The immorality of Cæsarism may be readily understood. Morality in a nation is solely engendered by domestic life. But the family is the _bête noire_ of Cæsarism. It was by destroying it and assuming its functions that Cæsarism succeeded in training the people. A man, separated from his family and the place where he ought to live, and transported to another region where he is only accountable to the state, a stranger to the people among whom he lives, no longer thinks about his morality, but the service he must render to the state. How many functionaries, inadmissible in one place on account of tricks frowned upon by public opinion, are sent elsewhere without losing the favor of the government!

France was as surprised by the invasion as the old world by the deluge. Let us admire her patience and courage. We must remember, however, that it was not Cæsarism that saved her. The official world had disappeared. What remained rather clogged than aided the movement for repairing our disaster. Our deliverance sprang from the people not enrolled under the official banner. Without a government, France has shown her spirit of unity, and revealed her moral and material resources. It was not only the emperor, but the whole empire, that surrendered its sword to the King of Prussia at Sedan. In the same way, Napoleon surrendered to England after Waterloo. The high functionaries that only existed by the will or caprice of Cæsar, and who only served him by giving up all responsibility, were suddenly left in darkness. The emperor only sought _ex officio_ supporters. In a country like France, these are always to be found. Messrs. Morny, Billault, Troplong, Rouher, and Ollivier had pliancy of mind enough to say and do anything to palliate and excuse everything. Thus, without any counterpoise, the imperial government consisted in a single will which was intermittent, fluctuating, and a perpetual source of troubles and catastrophes to France. History is not a casualty. It has its laws which control events. It is well to repel invasions; it is better to do away with their cause. Demosthenes replied to the Athenians who sought news of Philip: “Why, of what consequence is it? Should he have perished, you would create another by your dissensions. The Macedonian domination is only the result of Greek anarchy.”

The French Empire, like the Roman, is the creation of historic necessities produced by an age of revolutions and the application of principles that only find complete development under an autocratic form. Anarchy, in a proud and powerful nation with a glorious past and a warlike spirit, will always end in military supremacy. Christianity alone was able to check the system of perpetual war kept up by paganism. It framed the law of nations, making them a Christian republic. By the Revolution of 1789, France abandoned this system. The Restoration of 1814 re-established it in part, but in 1830 the European treaties were broken. Europe had to be on its guard against us, and exclude us from its alliances. Louis Napoleon openly and officially expressed his contempt for treaties. With him France took refuge in proud isolation, affecting an intellectual dictatorship, the prelude of wars. War alone, in fact, can impose the will of one nation on another. This reign of armed propagandism has not ceased its manifestations since 1848. The public schools, all the academies, and the entire press came to the aid of Bonapartism. The personal enemies of the emperor were his most active auxiliaries. He was well aware of this. He carefully promoted Carbonarism in Italy, and Jacobinism in France—two terms for expressing the same thing. The attempts against his life only promoted his success, instead of being an obstacle to it. He recognized, so to speak, their justice, for he had taken the oaths of Carbonarism. When he realized that a crisis was at hand, he was not willing for France to escape the Revolution, the reins of which he held with apparent moderation. He successively let loose the press, the clubs, the secret societies, and even the mob. He weakened and degraded authority in the person of his agents, assured the pardon of all political offences, frequently changed his ministers without any reason or pretext, that the people might be convinced that they were all puppets. In this way, and under the pressure of invasion, he seemed preparing for a movement analogous to that of 1792. His death then would have thrown us into a state of anarchy which would probably have brought on the same invasion we have just undergone. He left behind him only reflections of himself. When he disappeared from the scene, all this was effaced. The regency of Eugénie amounted to about as much as the regency of Maria Louisa—vain imitation, and a manifest proof that, apart from the imperial person, there was no imperial government or recognized authority, and that the empire and anarchy were brother and sister.

The downfall of the French monarchy plunged France once more into a state of paganism. Our wars and invasions have been of the same character as the wars and invasions of the first centuries of our era. The French Empire had an insatiable thirst to invade Europe. Germany, on her side, has retained a power of expansion that recalls ancient times. She no longer emigrates _en masse_, but by the indirect ways of modern civilization. She first sends her pioneers. Her tillers of the soil go to the Sclave provinces of Austria and the Russian coasts of the Baltic. By their aptitude for labor, they take the lead, amass capital, and end by controlling the people that receive them. There is a German party in Russia, and this party has a controlling influence over the czars, or Muscovite Cæsars. The Sclave race, more impressible, more poetic, and less tenacious, less laborious, feels set aside by the new settlers. It realizes that it is the victim of its hospitable and beneficent nature. A reaction will soon take place. The czar will be forced to take the national cause in hand. Russia has not uttered its last word. She has been in some sort under foreign influence since she imbibed the corrupt Christianity of Byzantium. It was only under the direction of the French philosophers of the XVIIIth century that she finally became a part of the European world. After the wars of the Revolution and the empire, our influence greatly diminished, and yielded to German influence. Destitute of scientific or literary traditions, Russia sent her young men intended for office to the German universities. They returned with the scientific jargon of the schools, a strong dose of atheism, affiliated with the secret societies, and without any sympathy with the tastes and sentiments of the Sclave race. Thus favored, German influence has increased to such a degree as to cause anxiety in the Russian Empire. In its encroachments on Austria, Germany did not begin with pacific conquests. Silesia, seized by Frederic II., was colonized gradually. Finally, German emigration filled our banks, our counting-rooms, and our railway offices. This tendency to expansion could only be restrained or repressed by our alliance with a great nation. Unfortunately, France affected to be above European law. She pretended to promulgate a new law, a new civilization. She refused, in the name of the principles of 1789, to allow that there were any legitimate sovereigns in Europe. France, plunged into Cæsarism, found a rival in Germany, which had more ancient Cæsarean traditions, and which, less ravaged by revolution, was better organized than we for attack and defence. It is still increasing in population, whereas France, under the rule of economists, diminishes every day. This alone ought to warn French policy of the error into which it has fallen. The German Confederation, the imposing remains of Christian ages, was the safeguard of Europe, by maintaining a peaceful equilibrium in Germany. France and England, unwisely governed, allowed the German Confederation to be dismembered. The Germanic union under Prussia was evidently threatening. Lord Palmerston and Louis Napoleon, statesmen who had no correct notions of Christianity, could not see anything or comprehend anything. It was, however, evident that a peculiar kind of Cæsarism was to spring from this overturning of Germany. A slight knowledge of history and the German character should have been sufficient to convince Europe of this. The diplomacy which, by the treaty of 1856, arraigned the Sovereign Pontiff at its bar, rejoiced at the destruction of the Germanic Confederation, without dreaming that a few years later the Empire of Germany would consign the once powerful nations of England, France, and Russia to the second rank. At the moment of this change, it is not useless to remark how many deadly struggles the Papacy has had with Cæsarism. It was by the diffusion of Christian principles that it laid the foundation of Christian society.

The political life of the Papacy has been wholly spent in combating Cæsarism. It struggled against the Roman emperors for three centuries, and then against the heresies of Byzantium. In our age, Napoleon exhausted all his arts and violence on Pius VII. Pius IX. found himself at issue with Louis Napoleon, and Victor Emanuel, the Italian representative of Cæsarism. The contest of the popes with the emperors of Germany is celebrated. It was the Papacy that preserved human liberty throughout the middle ages. Germany had seized the imperial sceptre that had fallen from the hands of the weak successors of Charlemagne. In the XIIIth century, the Cæsarean rule threatened the whole of Europe. Frederic II., more perverse and more able than his namesake of the XVIIIth century, found himself the master of Germany. He triumphed in Italy through the support of the legists, and extended his claims to the rest of Europe. Innocent IV., by issuing the bull of excommunication against Frederic II. at the Council of Lyons, stopped the German Cæsar in his career, and put an end to the invasions of Italy he was constantly making. Italy, under the auspices of the Papacy, displayed a long career of municipal liberty.