Chapter III (9)

Epicurus, Lucretius, Hobbes, Helvetius, Volney, and the whole Voltairean tribe in France, have all substantially taken this view of the question of morality; and Mill's opinion on the subject did not, except in form, differ from theirs. His father was the friend of Bentham, an advocate of the utilitarian theory of morality, which he applied to civil and criminal law; and young Mill became an enthusiastic disciple of the Benthamic philosophy.

"The principle of utility," he writes, "understood as Bentham understood it, and applied in the manner in which he applied it through these three volumes, fell exactly into its place as the keystone which held together the detached and fragmentary component parts of my knowledge and beliefs. It gave unity to my conceptions of things. I now had opinions, a creed, a doctrine, a philosophy; in one among the best senses of the word, a religion; the inculcation and diffusion of which could be made the principal outward purpose of a life."[257]

Bentham sought to save the ethics of utility by generalizing the principle of self-interest into that of the greatest happiness; and it was this "greatest-happiness principle" that gave Mill what he calls a religion. Though less grovelling than the theory of self-interest, yet, equally with it, it deprives morality of a solid foundation, substitutes force for right, and consecrates all tyranny.

If there be no God, and interest is the sole criterion of what is good, in the name of what am I commanded to sacrifice my particular interest to general interest? If interest is the law, then my own interest is the first and highest. If happiness be the supreme end of life, and there be no life beyond this life, in order to ask of me the sacrifice of my happiness, it must be called for in the name of some other principle than happiness itself.

And if "the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns,

"What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys,
Tho' the deep heart of existence beat for ever like a boy's?"

Besides being false, this "greatest-happiness principle" is impossible in practice. Who can tell what is for the greatest good of the greatest number? It is very difficult, often impossible, when we consider only our individual interest, to decide what actions will be most conducive to our happiness, in the utilitarian sense of the word. How, then, are we to decide when the interests of a whole people, of humanity, and for all future time, are to be consulted? Would any atheist of the school of Mill, who is not wholly fanatical, dare affirm that the greatest number would be happier, even in a low and animal sense, without faith in God and a future life? And yet, according to his own theory, unless he is certain of this when he attempts to destroy the religious belief of his fellow-beings, his act is immoral.

Was it not in the name of, and in strict accordance with, the principles of this theory that Comte planned what Mill calls "the completest system of spiritual and temporal despotism which ever yet emanated from a human brain, unless, possibly, that of Ignatius Loyola--a system by which the yoke of general opinion, wielded by an organized body of spiritual teachers and rulers, would be made supreme over every action, and, as far as is in human possibility, every thought of every member of the community, as well in the things which regard only himself as in those which concern the interests of others"?[258]

There is yet another vice in this system. If the good is the greatest interest of the greatest number, then there are only public and social ethics, and personal morality does not exist. Our duties are towards others, and we have no duties towards ourselves. Thus the very source of moral life is dried up.

Let us come to considerations less general and more immediately connected with Mill's life.

Of his father's opinions on this subject he says: "In his views of life, he partook of the character of the Stoic, the Epicurean, and the Cynic, not in the modern but the ancient sense of the word. In his personal qualities the Stoic predominated. His standard of morals was Epicurean, inasmuch as it was utilitarian, taking as the exclusive test of right and wrong the tendency of actions to produce pleasure or pain. But he had (and this was the Cynic element) scarcely any belief in pleasure, at least in his later years, of which alone, on this point, I can speak confidently.... He thought human life a poor thing at best after the freshness of youth and of unsatisfied curiosity had gone by.... He would sometimes say that if life were made what it might be by good government and good education, it would be worth having; but he never spoke with anything like enthusiasm even of that possibility."[259]

This certainly is a gloomy, not to say hopeless, view of life, and one which, in spite of Mill's attempt to produce a contrary impression, pervades the whole book. The thoughtful reader cannot help feeling that Mill's state of mind was very like that described by the apostle: "having no hope, and without God in the world." A deep and settled dissatisfaction with all he saw around him, the feeling that all was wrong--society, religion, government, the family, human life, the philosophic opinions of the whole world except himself, together with an undercurrent of despair, which made him doubt whether they would ever be right, gave a coloring of melancholy to his character which he is unable to hide. Life was no boon, and not even the faintest ray of light pierced the black gloom of the grave.

Of his father he writes: "In ethics, his moral feelings were energetic and rigid on all points which he deemed important to human well-being, while he was supremely indifferent in opinion (though his indifference did not show itself in personal conduct) to all those doctrines of the common morality which he thought had no foundation but in asceticism and priest-craft. He looked forward, for example, to a considerable increase of freedom in the relations between the sexes, though without pretending to define exactly what would be, or ought to be, the precise conditions of that freedom."[260]

Here we have an instance of the truth of the inference which we have already drawn from the principles of the utilitarian ethics--that they take no account of personal purity of character, and teach that man's duties are towards others, and not towards himself. There is a still more striking example of this in Mill's _Autobiography_.

He early in life made the acquaintance of a married lady, for whom he conceived a very strong affection. He spent a good deal of his time with her, and says: "I was greatly indebted to the strength of character which enabled her to disregard the false interpretations liable to be put on the frequency of my visits to her while living generally apart from Mr. Taylor, and on our occasionally travelling together"; though their relation at that time, he tells us, was only that of strong affection and confidential intimacy. The reason which he assigns for this is certainly most curious: "For though," he says, "we did not consider the ordinances of society binding on a subject so entirely personal, we did feel bound that our conduct should be such as in no degree to bring discredit on her husband, nor therefore on herself."[261]

In other words, Mill recognizes no obligation of personal purity, even in the married, but holds that unchastity is wrong only when it brings discredit on others; though he was unfaithful even to this loose ethical code, since, according to his own account, his conduct was such as to be liable to misinterpretation, and, therefore, such as might bring disgrace upon the husband of the woman with whom he was associating.

His hatred of marriage and of the restraints which it imposes is seen in several parts of the work before us.

Of the Saint-Simonians he says: "I honored them most of all for what they have been most cried down for--the boldness and freedom from prejudice with which they treated the subject of the family, the most important of any, and needing more fundamental alterations than remain to be made in any other great social institution, but on which scarcely any reformer has the courage to touch. In proclaiming the perfect equality of men and women, and an entirely new order of things in regard to their relations with one another, the Saint-Simonians, in common with Owen and Fourier, have entitled themselves to the grateful remembrance of future generations."[262]

A man who puts himself forward as the advocate of free-love should not, one would think, insist especially on the moralities, or give himself prominence as a proof that belief in God is not useful either to the individual or to society.

Mill's social ethics are of the same character. He is a socialist of the most radical type, and considers the great problem of the future to be how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action with a common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labor; though the "uncultivated herd who now compose the laboring masses," as well as the mental and moral condition of the immense majority of their employers, convince him that this social transformation is not now either possible or desirable. Still, his ethics lead him to hope that private property will be abolished, and that the whole earth will be converted into a kind of industrial school, in which every man, woman, and child will be required to do certain work, and receive in remuneration whatever the controllers of the general capital may see fit to give them. Thus, in the name of the greatest good of the greatest number, personal purity, the family, private property, society, are all to be no more, and the human race is to be managed somewhat like a model stock-farm, in which everything, from breeding down to the minutest details of food and exercise, is to be under the control of a supervisory committee.

As we have already seen, Mill, after reading Bentham, got what he called a religion: he had an object in life--to be a reformer of the world.

This did very well for a time; but in the autumn of 1826, whilst, as he expresses it, he was in a dull state of nerves, he awakened as from a dream. He put the question to himself: "'Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions to which you are looking forward could be effected at this very instant; would this be a great joy and happiness to you?' And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, 'No!' At this my heart sank within me; the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down.... I seemed to have nothing left to live for.

"At first I hoped that the cloud would pass away of itself; but it did not.... I carried it with me into all companies, into all occupations. Hardly anything had power to cause me even a few minutes' oblivion of it.... The lines in Coleridge's 'Dejection'--I was not then acquainted with them--exactly describe my case:

"'A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet or relief
In word, or sigh, or tear.'"[263]

He now felt that his father had committed a blunder in the education which he had given him; that the habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings and dry up the fountains of pleasurable emotions; that it is a perpetual worm at the root both of the passions and of the virtues; and, above all, fearfully undermines all desires and all pleasures which are the effects of association.

"My education, I thought, had failed to create these feelings in sufficient strength to resist the dissolving influence of analysis, while the whole course of my intellectual cultivation had made precocious and premature analysis the inveterate habit of my mind. I was thus, as I said to myself, left stranded at the commencement of my voyage, with a well-equipped ship and a rudder, but no sail; without any real desire for the ends which I had been so carefully fitted out to work for; no delight in virtue or the general good, but also just as little in anything else.... I frequently asked myself if I could, or if I was bound to, go on living, when life must be passed in this manner. I generally answered to myself that I did not think I could possibly bear it beyond a year."[264]

This sad state of mind was the protest of the soul against the skeleton of intellectual formulas into which it had been cramped. A man is not going to live or die for conclusions, opinions, calculations, analytical nothings. Man is not and cannot be made to be a mere reasoning machine, a contrivance to grind out syllogisms. He is a seeing, feeling, contemplating, believing, acting animal. We cannot construct a philosophy of life upon abstract conclusions of the analytical faculty; life is action and for action, and, if we insist on analyzing and proving everything, we shall never come to action. Humanity is a mere fiction of the mind, and can be nothing, whilst God, to most men at least, is a living reality, to be believed in, hoped in, loved. Were it possible for us to accept the doctrines of Stuart Mill, we should feel the same interest in his humanitarian projects that we do in Mr. Bergh's society for the prevention of cruelty to animals. We pity the poor brutes, but we butcher them and eat them all the same. If there is nothing but nature and nature's laws, it is perfectly right that the few should live for the many, and that thousands should sweat and groan to fill the belly of one animal who is finer and stronger than those he feeds upon. Neither the law of gravity, nor that of the conservation of forces, nor that which impels bodies along the line of least resistance, nor that which causes the fittest--which means the strongest--to survive, can impose upon us a moral obligation not to do what we have the strength to do. These infidels talk of the intellectual cowardice of those who believe. Let them first be frank, and tell us, without circumlocution or concealment, that there is nothing but force; that whatever is, must be; and that nothing is either right or wrong. If we are permitted to swallow oysters whole, to butcher oxen and imprison monkeys in mere wantonness; and if these are our forefathers, why may not the strong and intelligent members of the human race put the weak and ignorant to any use they may see fit; or why may we not imitate the more natural savage who roasts or boils his man as his civilized brother would a pig?

It is easy to make a show of despising the argument implied in this question; but, admitting the atheistic evolutionary hypothesis, it cannot be answered.

Cannibals hold that it is for the greatest happiness of the greatest number that their enemies should be eaten; and, after all, what is happiness, in the utilitarian and animal sense, but an affair of taste, to a great extent even of imagination? Have not slave-owners in all times held that it was for the greatest good of the greatest number that slavery should continue to exist? Or has the greatest-happiness principle had anything to do with the abolition of slavery among the Christian nations or elsewhere?

Men appealed in the name of right, of justice, of the inborn dignity of the human soul, of God-given liberty, and the conscience of the nations was awakened. They gave no thought to the idle theories of brains, from which the heart and soul had been strained, about a greatest-happiness principle. What have atheists ever done but talk, and mock, and criticise, and seek their own ease whilst discoursing on the general good?

Mill takes the greatest care to record, in more than one place, that he and his father occasionally wrote articles for the _Westminster Review_ without receiving pay for them; thinking it, evidently, worthy of remark that an atheist should even write except for money. Here we may note a vice inherent in atheism, which proves at once its untruth and its impotence. It leaves man without enthusiasm, without hope, without love, to fall back upon himself, a wilted, shrunken thing, to mix with matter, or to vanish in lifeless, logical formalism. It has no heroes, no saints, no martyrs, no confessors. Its advocates either abandon themselves to lust and the senses, or, making a divinity of their own imagined superiority, worship the ghost they have conjured up, whilst looking down upon the rest of mankind as a vulgar herd still intellectually walking on four feet. Mill makes no effort to conceal his contempt for the mass of mankind; and contempt does not inspire love, which alone renders man helpful to man.

The gloom which settled around the life of John Stuart Mill, when he once fully realized that, holding the intellectual opinions which he held, nothing was worth living for, and that he was consequently left without a motive or an object in life, never really left him. He tells us, indeed, that the cloud gradually drew off, and that, though he had several relapses which lasted many months, he was never as miserable as he had been; but it is quite evident, from the whole tone of this _Autobiography_, that his disappointed soul, like the wounded dove, drew the wings that were intended to lift it to God close to itself, and, hopeless, sank into philosophical despair. Happiness he considered the sole end of life; and yet he says that the enjoyments of life, which alone make it worth having, when made its principal object, pall upon us and sicken the heart. "Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life."

In other words, in Mill's philosophy, the end of life is happiness, which can be possessed only by those who persuade themselves that this is not the end of life. The doctrine of philosophical necessity, during the later returns of his despondency, weighed upon him like an incubus: "I felt as if I was scientifically proved to be the helpless slave of antecedent circumstances; as if my character and that of all others had been formed for us by agencies beyond our control, and was wholly out of our own power. I often said to myself, What a relief it would be if I could disbelieve the doctrine of the formation of character by circumstances!"[265]

He tries to escape from the fatal web in which his soul hung helpless; but sophisms and quibbles of the brain cannot minister to a mind diseased or pluck sorrow from the heart.

But the saddest part of Mill's _Autobiography_ is the portion devoted to the woman whose friendship he called the honor and chief blessing of his existence. The picture which he has drawn of his childhood is at once painful and ludicrous.

He does not even incidentally allude to a single fact which would lead one to suppose that he had a mother or had ever known a mother's love.

The father, as described by the son, was cold, fanatical, morose, almost inhuman, acting as though he thought children are born merely for the purpose of being crammed with Greek roots and logical formulas. John Stuart was put at Greek vocables when only three years old. His father demanded of him not only the utmost that he could do, but much that it was utterly impossible that he should do. He was guilty, for instance, of the incredible folly of making him read the _Dialogues_ of Plato when only seven years old. He never knew anything of the freshness or joyousness of childhood, or what it is to be "boy eternal." He grew up without the companionship of children, blighted and dwarfed by the abiding presence of the narrow and unnatural man who nipped the flower of his life in the bud, and repressed within him all the sentiments and aspirations which are the spontaneous and healthful product of youth. He was not taught to delight in sunshine and flowers, and music and song; but even in his boyish rambles there strode ever by his side the analytical machine, dissecting, destroying, marring God's work with his lifeless, hopeless theories. The effect of this training was, as we have already seen, that when the boy became a man, he found himself like a ship on the ocean without sail or compass, and there gathered around his life the settled gloom of despair, which his philosophical opinions tended only to deepen.

Without a mother's love, without a father whom it was possible to love, without friends of his own age, without God, dejected, despondent, hopeless, he met the wife of a friend of his father, who, from the manner in which she controlled her first and second husbands, must have been a clever woman, and he became an idolater, giving to her the adoration which his father had taught him to withhold from God. That there is no exaggeration in this statement every one who will take the trouble to read the seventh chapter of Mill's _Autobiography_ will be ready to confess.

He married this woman in 1851, when he was forty-five and she but two years younger, and seven years later her death occurred. Mill wishes the world to believe that this woman was the prodigy of the XIXth century, surpassing in intellectual vigor and moral strength all men and all other women; that to her he owed all that is best in his own writings; and that he is but the interpreter of the wonderful thoughts of this incomparable woman, whom others have deemed merely a commonplace woman's rights woman.

"Thus prepared," he writes, "it will easily be believed that when I came into close intellectual communion with a person of the most eminent faculties, whose genius, as it grew and unfolded itself in thought, struck out truths far in advance of me, but in which I could not, as I had done in those others, detect any mixture of error, the greatest part of my mental growth consisted in the assimilation of those truths; and the most valuable part of my intellectual work was in building the bridges and clearing the paths which connected them with my general system of thought."[266]

Mill seems to have been incapable of a healthful sentiment of any kind. The same quality in his stunted and warped moral nature which caused him to have a false and exaggerated sense of the evil that is in the world, leading him to atheism, made him a blind and superstitious worshipper of the imaginary endowments of his wife. But one must read the book itself to realize how far he carried this idolatry.

When she dies, he again sinks into the gloom which his superstition had seemed to cause him partially to forget; and if he continues to work, it is only with the feeble strength "derived from thoughts of her and communion with her memory." Her death was a calamity which took from him all hope, and he found some slight alleviation only in the mode of life which best enabled him to feel her still near him.

She died at Avignon, and he bought a cottage as close as possible to the place where she was buried; and there he settled down in helpless misery, feeling that all that remained to him in the world was a memory.

"Her memory," he writes, "is to me a religion, and her approbation the standard by which, summing up, as it does, all worthiness, I endeavor to regulate my life."[267]

He did not believe in God, in the soul, in a life beyond life; he had scarcely any faith in the practical efforts of the age to improve the condition of the masses, upon whom he looked as the common herd; his own countrymen especially he despised as selfish and narrow above all other men, grovelling in their instincts, and low in the objects which they aim at; happiness he held to be the sole end of existence; and at the close of his life, an old man, in a foreign land, in immedicable misery, he stood beside a grave, and sought with feeble fingers to clutch the shadow of a dream, which he called his religion; and so he died.

We have never read a sadder book, nor one which to our mind contains stronger proof that the soul longs with an infinite craving for God, and, not finding him, will worship anything--a woman, a stone, a memory.

FOOTNOTES:

[249] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by Rev. I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

[250] _Autobiography._ By John Stuart Mill. New York: Holt & Co. 1873.

[251] P. 41.

[252] P. 43.

[253] P. 44.

[254] P. 46.

[255] _Apologia_, p. 268.

[256] P. 70.

[257] P. 67.

[258] P. 213.

[259] P. 48.

[260] P. 107.

[261] P. 230.

[262] P. 167.

[263] P. 134.

[264] P. 140.

[265] P. 169.

[266] P. 243.

[267] P. 251.

THE FARM OF MUICERON.

BY MARIE RHEIL.

FROM THE REVUE DU MONDE CATHOLIQUE.

XVI.

However, our good friends at Muiceron had not become, believe me, so entirely perverted by vanity as to lose all remembrance of the past. They could not have lived twenty years with a boy as perfect in conduct and affection as Jean-Louis without missing him as the days rolled on.

I acknowledge, nevertheless, that the first week passed so quickly in the midst of the flurry and fuss of the marriage contract and presents--bought on credit--that the absence of the good child was scarcely felt; but, towards the end of the second week, one evening Pierrette asked Ragaud if the time had not nearly expired that Jean-Louis had been lent to Michou for the clearing of the forest of Montreux; "for," said she, "I cannot live any longer without him, he was of so much use to me, and the house is so empty without him."

"I gave him for a fortnight," replied Ragaud, "and I would not disoblige Michou by reclaiming him before; but I think we will see him next week, and then I hope he will be over his little miff."

"What miff?" asked Pierrette.

"Bless me! wife, you are a little too simple if you have not noticed long before this how sullen the boy has become."

"He never says much," replied Pierrette, "and we have all been so very busy lately, it has made him more silent even than usual."

"That is precisely it," said Ragaud. "You have petted him so much, he fancied everything was his; and when he saw us so occupied with Jeannette's marriage, he took it in dudgeon, and became offended."

"That would be very wrong in him," replied La Ragaude, "and I don't believe Jeannet capable of such wicked sentiments. Jealousy is not one of his faults; on the contrary, he always thinks of others before himself."

"That may be, that may be, but you cannot judge of wine, no matter how old you may know it to be, before tasting; and, in the same way, you cannot answer for any quality of the heart until it has been tried. So it was very easy for Jeannet not to be jealous when there was no subject for jealousy; but, if you were not always blind and deaf to his defects, you would acknowledge that from the day that Isidore put his foot in this house he has changed as much as milk turned into curds."

"That may all be," said Pierrette, who could not answer her husband's objections.

"That may all be so easily that it is positively so," replied Ragaud, "and Jeannet will not re-enter this house until I have spoken very plainly to him, and made him promise to treat Isidore as a brother."

"That is just what I think," replied good Pierrette, who loved peace above all things, "and you always speak wisely."

Jeannette, for her part, had a little secret annoyance that she carefully concealed, but which made her more irritable and less docile than usual, greatly to the astonishment of Pierrette, who thought her to be at the summit of happiness. After being rather sullen with Jeannet, because he did not appear delighted with her marriage, and, above all, with her intended, she was now displeased to see Isidore parading before every one--and to her the first--his great satisfaction at the departure of Jean-Louis. He even seemed to seek every occasion to speak injuriously of him before her parents, and allowed no one to praise him in his presence. The child was not very patient, we already know, and, as Solange truly said, her head alone was dazzled; her heart was not spoiled enough to make her lose her good sense. Still further, she began to feel very uneasy on a subject which she wished to understand clearly before finally engaging herself--it was that of religion. She had felt the ground around Perdreau, and, although he was as hypocritical as the devil, he had attempted several very disagreeable jokes about the church and her ceremonies which, I must say, provoked Jeannette to such a degree, she openly showed her displeasure. Thereupon Isidore, seeing that he had gone too far, and that he must be more careful or he would lose her dowry, tried to play the part of a saint in his niche; but it was a comedy in which he was not well skilled from want of practice, and Jeannette, more and more worried and unhappy, commenced to regret that the good and wise Jeannet was no longer at her side to aid her with his advice, of which she had never before felt such urgent need.

So she, in her turn, hazarded the same request as Pierrette, and asked her father when they might expect the return of Jean-Louis.

Ragaud made her nearly the same reply as he had done to his wife, without mentioning his ideas in relation to Jeannet's supposed jealousy; and Jeannette patiently awaited him.

But the fortnight went by without any sign of the boy, and it could be easily perceived that Jeannette was becoming nervous--a kind of sickness little known in the country even by name, but which mademoiselle's example had taught Jeannette to attempt whenever things did not go on exactly as she wished. However, affairs went on precisely as those rascally Perdreaux desired. The marriage-contract was prepared, and, after an immense scrawl of big words, which Ragaud did not understand, it concluded by making the good man abandon all his personal and landed property to his daughter, only reserving for himself a moderate annuity. Ragaud was ashamed to avow that all this waste paper was entirely above his comprehension. He tried to look very wise, but proved by his questions that he was caught in a trap; for, after the reading of the knavish document, which stripped him of everything, he innocently asked if he would retain the right to manage Muiceron, and live there as master during his life.

"Undoubtedly," replied the notary; "your children would be unnatural to let it be otherwise. I have done all for the best, for I suppose you do not wish to oblige my son to marry under the _dotal law_?"

"What is the _dotal law_?" said Ragaud.

"It is the greatest disgrace that can be imposed on a man," gravely replied the notary.

"Oh! I beg pardon, M. Perdreau; and so in your paper there is no question of that?"

"Certainly not," said the notary. "I have drawn up the papers for the good father and honorable man that you are."

"Then it is all right, and I have nothing more to do but to thank you," said the honest farmer.

"We could both sign it this evening," said the head rascal.

"There is no hurry," said Ragaud; "we will do that when all the family are present, before my wife and the children. I wish Jeannet to sign it also."

"Sign? Your Jean-Louis can't sign it," said the notary, "as he has no name; the law, M. Ragaud, does not recognize illegitimate children."

"Really! That is cruel for the boy, monsieur; at least, I would like him to hear the paper read."

"For what reason?"

"To please him, that is all; he has been like a child to us for twenty years, and has never deserved to be driven from the family."

"As you please; I think it useless. In business, you see, there is no such thing as sentiment; however, if you prefer it...."

"I certainly do prefer it," replied Ragaud firmly. "I have been a just man all my life, monsieur, and I do not wish now to act unjustly toward a child who has always served me so faithfully."

The notary did not reply, but his ugly weasel-face showed such bitter displeasure that Ragaud, already dissatisfied with the conversation, suddenly remembered Jacques Michou's remarks, and promised himself to keep his eyes open.

Fortunately, the good God gives to honest men a sense of distrust which is easily sharpened. The peasant, in particular, is never entirely at ease when spoken to in more difficult language than two and two make four. Now, Ragaud, on account of his vanity, did not wish to acknowledge before others that he understood nothing of all the fine writing on the stamped paper, but he avowed it to himself, and, putting on a perfectly innocent air, he said to Perdreau:

"Will you have the kindness to let me have the papers for a few days? I would like to read them over again when I have time."

"Very willingly," replied the notary, well convinced--and there he was right--that good Ragaud could not decipher the handwriting, and that it would be all Greek to him. "I was even going to propose it to you. Take them, M. Ragaud, and read them at your leisure; but I need not tell you that it must remain a secret between us until the day the contract is signed."

"I understand," replied Ragaud. "I know how to be discreet, monsieur, and I am not more desirous than you that my daughter's affairs should be known all over the neighborhood."

He did not speak falsely in promising it; for to a Christian the word of a priest is sacred, and he only intended to let the _curé_ read the contract under the seal of confession.

The next day it so happened that M. Perdreau went to the city, where he expected to pass two days, to plan an affair still worse than the rest, which you will know in due time. Ragaud, thus having the field clear, hurried off to Val-Saint, with the papers carefully folded under his blouse.

That morning Jeannette was not in good humor. Three weeks had gone by without any news of Jeannet, who did not even return to sleep at Muiceron. She received her loving Isidore like a spoiled child, shrugged her shoulders when he told her she was charmingly pretty, and ended by telling him he must find out something about Jean-Louis, and bring him back to her as quickly as possible, or else she would not believe he loved her.

Isidore, who had every defect--above all, the silly vanity to think that he was fully capable of turning the heads of all the girls, which is, in itself, a proof of presumptuous folly--pretended at first to take it as a joke, imagining that Jeannette wished to provoke his jealousy. But seeing her serious and resolute, he replied in an angry tone that such a commission was not to his taste.

"In that case," she replied, "it is not to mine to talk to you to-day."

"Then I will take my leave," said he, touching his hat.

She did not detain him, and contented herself with smiling, which he thought another little coquettish trick.

"You are like all women," said he slowly, "who do not mind sacrificing their hearts for a whim."

"What do you call a whim?" replied Jeannette. "Is the desire to see my brother again a whim? Very well, then, I declare to you that I will regard nothing decided as to our marriage until Jean-Louis has returned home."

"Do you think, my little beauty," said he, turning red with anger, "that I will let you call that vagabond of a foundling brother after you become my wife?"

"We will see," replied she; "but, meanwhile, I do not intend to change, and neither will I allow Jeannet to be insulted in my presence; it is not the first time I have told you so, M. Isidore."

"And so you are capable of becoming seriously angry with me, who adores you, on account of your pretended brother?"

"If you are unreasonable and unjust," said she resolutely, "I will no longer love you."

"You scarcely love me now," said he sullenly. "I did not believe that the day would ever come when you could think so little of me."

"I have always thought," she replied, "that husband and wife should agree upon all points. Ever since I can remember, I have always had a respect and friendship for Jean-Louis, and never has he behaved otherwise than well in this house, where he is looked upon as a son. I don't know why my marriage should change my feelings in regard to him; and that is a question I confess we had better settle at once before going any further.

"Very well," said M. Isidore, speaking like one who had suddenly decided upon some plan. "I am very sorry to be obliged to pain you, but I will not bother myself about this bast--about this Jean-Louis, and that because it is time you should know the truth about him; he is far from being worthy of your esteem, my dear Jeanne."

"Oh! indeed!" said she. "Here is something very new; and the proof, if you please?"

"You insist upon knowing it?"

"Absolutely and quickly," replied Jeannette, who began to grow impatient.

"You will certainly be grieved, and there is reason for it," said Isidore in a sad tone. "Know, then, that this Jean-Louis, whom you fancy dying with grief because he no longer sees you, is all the while enjoying himself immensely."

"How can he amuse himself?" asked Jeannette. "You are telling stories. Jeannet is in the wood of Montreux, where he has too much to do, in clearing out the forest, to think of anything else; besides, he is not naturally very gay, poor boy!"

"_Poor boy!_ Don't pity him so much; he would laugh if he heard you. Clearing the wood of Montreux--he? It is a mere pretence to hide his game; he wishes to be more at ease to court Solange Luguet.

"M. Isidore," cried Jeannette, starting up, pale with anger, "keep on speaking ill of Jean-Louis--he is a man, and can defend himself; but to speak thus of my cousin Solange is a cowardly falsehood!"

"How pretty you look!" said Isidore insolently. "Anger is so becoming to you, I would always like to see you so, if it were not so painful to me to excite you thus. No, Jeanne, I do not lie. M. Jean-Louis, who owes his life to your parents, and whom you call brother, at this very instant ridicules the whole household. He is going to marry Solange, and I don't believe he will even inform you of it."

"Who told you so?" asked Jeannette, amazed. "People will gossip so."

"I had it from Pierre Luguet. It is true it is common talk, but I would not have believed it, if Solange's own brother had not said it."

"Can you swear it to me?" said she.

"I can swear to it positively. Ask Pierre; you see I am not afraid of being proved a liar."

"I believe you," said Jeanne, who sought in vain to keep back the tears that filled her eyes. "Never, I confess, would I have believed that of Jean-Louis."

"You understand now why I did not care to start in search of that gentleman. I am indignant at his conduct; it is frightful ingratitude. To think that he had here a father, a mother, a sister, and that he abandons all to go off and be secretly married! Is it not proof in itself that he renounces and despises you?"

"Oh! it is very wrong, very wrong!" said Jeannette, much excited. "You were right--I can no longer call him brother."

"I hope not; it would be affection very badly bestowed, and which would make you the laughing-stock of the village. Are you still angry with me, my dear Jeanne?"

"Pardon me," said she, extending her hand; "you see, I have had good reason for sorrow."

And then she burst into tears, no longer able to restrain them, but without exactly knowing the cause of so real a pain.

Isidore did not expect to succeed so well. This time he had not lied; he really believed Jeannet would be married, as that giddy-brained Pierre had announced the fact to him. And yet he did not like to see Jeanne weep for such a little thing. It made him think that the affection of these two children, who had lived together as brother and sister for so many years, was much stronger than he had believed, and he was more determined than ever to put a stop to it after he was married, and even before, if he could.

He left Muiceron very much dissatisfied. Jeannette was sad; she let him go off without scarcely noticing him. When she was alone, the wish to seek some consolation led her to go after her mother, to see if she had heard the news, and to talk with her about it.

But, behold! just as she left the room she ran against some one, and who should it be but Jean-Louis, who had come after some changes of clothes to carry off to the wood, and who, knowing that she was with her intended, did not wish to disturb her.

At the sight of her brother all the readiness of her character came back and took the place of her vexation. She assumed an air so haughty that Jeannet, all ready to embrace her, stepped back, dumb with astonishment.

"_You there?_" said Jeannette, with a frown on her brow.

"You there? Why do you speak so to me?" asked he, astonished.

"You must not forget," continued Jeanne, who proudly raised her head as she spoke, "that I am engaged to Isidore Perdreau."

"Yes, I know it," said Jean-Louis.

"Consequently," she replied, "it is no longer possible for me to treat you as formerly. You know why?"

"I know it," answered he, lowering his head.

"It is no longer proper," said she, "for us to behave as brother and sister, since we are not so really."

"That is true," said Jeannet, his heart aching with mortal agony.

"That is all I have to say," added Jeannette in a still haughtier tone; "and now, Jean-Louis, I wish you much joy and happiness--this I say in remembrance of our friendship!"

"Are you bidding me farewell?" asked he.

"I will see you later--and--and your wife also; but you understand?"

"My wife?" said Jeannet.

"Enough," replied Jeanne; "I do not wish to know your secrets. It is useless for you to seek my father and my mother."

And with that she rapidly crossed the room, and hurried off; for, between ourselves, this great anger was not very real, and the longer she looked at the pale, beautiful face of her brother, whom she had not seen for such a long time, the more she felt like throwing her arms around his neck, instead of ill-treating him. But her words had been too cruel; they had entered the soul of Jean-Louis like so many sword-thrusts. It was all ended for him. Proud as he was, and always overwhelmed with the secret grief of his birth, to have it recalled to him by so dear a mouth was deadly suffering. He remained an instant as though his senses had left him, not knowing what to do or to think; then all at once his reason returned. He had just been driven out, and, after all, they had the right to do it. He made the sign of the cross on his heart, and left the house, with the intention of never returning.

He went back to Michou, and passed the evening with him at the Luguets'. He said nothing of what had happened to any one. Dear, good Solange noticed that he was sadder than usual, but that was not astonishing; she knew he had been that day to Muiceron, and she very truly thought he had possibly heard things which could not contribute to lighten his heart and make him gay.

It is now time to tell you that old Perdreau was one of the leaders of a band of ruffians who assembled in a lonely field every week in our city of Issoudun, where, after taking the most frightful oaths, they plotted, murder, arson, and the robbery of the châteaux and churches. It was what is called a secret society, and was known by the name of _la Martine_; and some weeks afterwards, when the Revolution of 1848 broke out, which caused such havoc among us, there was a well-known man, so I have been told, who bore the same name, and who placed himself at the head of the insurgents, believing them, in good faith, to be the most honest men in the world. This man, who was as good as any one you could find, and even a passable Christian, my father assured me, bit his thumbs until the blood came when he saw himself despised and his counsel disregarded. But it was too late; the evil was done. Undoubtedly you know much more about it than I, and so I scarcely dare venture to say any more on the subject. You must only know that the cursed notary had used all the money of M. le Marquis to pay the rabble of _la Martine_, with the understanding that, when they pillaged the château, he should have half the estate, including the dwelling-house.

As for Isidore, he was fully up to the business, and worked at it assiduously, as much at Paris as elsewhere. The men who worked in the wood of Montreux belonged to the gang; he knew them all by name, and kept them all near Val-Saint, so as to be ready for the contemplated insurrection. But in case the thing should not succeed, or would be delayed, he did not think it beneath him to provide himself with a pear to satisfy his thirst, and that was his marriage.

Our good Ragaud returned from his interview with M. le Curé rather depressed in spirits. The contract, as read by the holy man, did not appear to him as captivating as when explained by the notary. He had learned still further, from a few words discreetly uttered, that it would be well not to place implicit faith in Master Perdreau, and believe him the personification of honor, as until then he had innocently imagined. What now could be done to arrange, or rather disarrange, affairs so far advanced? The poor man was devoured with care and anxiety. He dared not speak to his daughter, whom he thought to reduce to desperation at the mere mention of the word rupture; and then to withdraw from the contract now would lower him tremendously in the eyes of the world around. No longer able to see clearly, Ragaud kept quiet, locked the documents safely in his chest, and waited--which, in many circumstances, is the wisest policy.

A long week passed; then came the festivals of Christmas and New Year. Old Perdreau was half dead with impatience, but nevertheless dared not say a word, or even appear too anxious. What bothered him, besides, was that the rascally gang in the wood of Montreux were constantly receiving messages from their infernal society to hurry up affairs, and, therefore, they threatened to commence the dance before the violins were ready, which would have spoiled all the plans. Pushed to extremity, he determined, one fine day, to send his son secretly to allay the storm by speaking to his worthy companions in roguery.

Isidore, who feared nothing and no one, ridiculed his father's anxiety. He promised to quiet them that very night, and about eleven o'clock, in spite of the bad weather--for it was snowing, and the wind was very high--he left for Val-Saint.

The place they were clearing was quite far from M. Michou's little house, where Jean-Louis slept, together with the game-keeper. The men, as is customary among wood-cutters, had constructed a large retreat formed of the trunks of trees, cemented with mud and moss. It was towards this spot that young Perdreau directed his steps; and never did a stormier night fall upon an uglier traveller.

XVII.

It is not difficult to conjecture that Jeannet, in spite of his heart-troubles and sorrows, had not been--sharp as he was--blind to the character of the men who worked under his orders in the wood of Montreux. In the first place, Michou warned him from the beginning to be watchful, and not to allow the slightest infringement of discipline or drunkenness among men, who were unknown and of decidedly doubtful appearance. One warning sufficed; he observed for himself, and caught at random more than one stray expression which he chanced to overhear. And then, what could be expected from men who seemed to be without family or friends, who never frequented the church, and shunned the places where the honest people of the commune were accustomed to assemble? Certainly, our good Jean-Louis was not wanting in penetration, and old Michou, who prided himself upon seeing very far into everything, was as distrustful as he; consequently, they agreed that every night one or the other should take a turn around the retreat of the wood-cutters, and see what was going on in this nest of mischievous rascals. To do this, Jeannet had skilfully managed to make an opening in the angle opposite to that where the men had established their fireplace, so that, the room being well lighted inside, everything could be clearly seen outside.

Usually, and for many nights, all was quiet and orderly; the greater part of the band of _la Martine_, tired out with the day's labors, slept soundly all the evening, stretched pell-mell upon heaps of dried leaves strewed over the floor of their bivouac. Only a few remained drinking by the hearth; so that the watchers, after a glance around, went off to sleep in their turn.

On the night of which I speak, Michou should have made the round, but Jean-Louis, who since the scene at Muiceron had been miserably unhappy, and could not sleep, asked leave to fulfil the extra duty.

"It is very stormy," said he to his old comrade. "Remain at home, M. Jacques; I will go to Montreux in your place."

"Be off, then," said the keeper, without waiting to be asked twice, "you are young and not rheumatic; and I will smoke my pipe while waiting for you."

Jeannet threw over his shoulders a heavy brown wrapper, and was off in a flash.

When he reached the retreat, he was surprised to see light shining through the two or three little windows under the roof, and a big column of smoke coming out of the chimney. Just at this moment Isidore entered from his side; he made them open the door, by means of a signal well known among men of that stamp; they received him with much honor, and rekindled the fire, which was burning rather low.

Jeannet looked through the opening; judge of his astonishment when he recognized Jeannette's intended, and saw the cordial welcome extended to him by the men, who grasped him by the hand, and made room for him among them. He was dumfounded, almost fancied himself in a dream, but, at the same time, shook with anger, shame, and sorrow.