Chapter XIV: Sacrovir's Birthday

The family of Marik Lebrenn were assembled in their little parlor on the day after the merchant's arrival. It was the birthday of his son, who on that day completed his twenty-first year.

"My son," Lebrenn said to Sacrovir, "to-day you are twenty-one years of age. The time has come to introduce you to the chamber with the closed window that has so often excited your curiosity. You are about to become acquainted with its contents. I wish first to explain to you the reason for and the cause of this mystery. The moment you are initiated, my son, I know your curiosity will turn to pious respect. Accident has so willed it that the day of your initiation into this family mystery should be providentially chosen. Since my arrival yesterday, we have given ourselves over to tokens of love, and have had little time to consider public matters. Nevertheless, a few words that escaped you--as well as you, my dear George," added the merchant addressing his daughter's husband, "cause me to apprehend that you feel discouraged--that you may even despair."

"It is but too true, father," answered Sacrovir.

"When one witnesses the things that are happening every day," added George, "one may well feel alarmed for the future of the Republic, and of mankind."

"Well, tell me, children," asked Lebrenn with his usual smile, "what is happening that is so very terrible? Tell me all about it."

"Everywhere at this hour the people's liberty is being kicked and cuffed, and even strangled by the henchmen of absolute Kings. Italy, Prussia, Germany, Hungary, are all again forced under the bloody yoke that, electrified by our example in 1848, they that year broke, relying upon our support as their brothers! To the northeast the despot of the Cossacks planted one foot upon Poland, another upon Hungary, smothered both countries in their own blood, and now threatens the independence of Europe with his knout, and is even ready to hurl upon us his savage hordes!"

"Similar hordes, my children, our wooden-shoed fathers rolled in the dust in the days of the Convention--we shall do as much. As to the Kings, they massacre, they threaten, they foam at the mouth with rage--and, above all, with terror! Already they see myriads of avengers arise out of the blood of the martyrs whom they assassinated. These crown-carriers have the vertigo. And there is good reason therefor. If a European war breaks out, immediately the Revolution will raise its head in their own camp and devour them; if peace prevails, the pacific tide of civilization will rise higher and higher, and engulf their thrones. Proceed, children."

"But at home!" cried George. "At home!"

"Well, my friend, what is happening at home?"

"Alas, father! Mistrust, fear, misery sowed everywhere by the hereditary enemies of the people and the bourgeoisie. Credit is destroyed. Turn around, the population, misled, betrayed and deceived, mutinies against the Republic."

"Poor dear blind boys!" replied Lebrenn with his placid and sarcastic smile. "Does not the prodigious industrial movement that is going on among the working class and the bourgeoisie strike your eyes? Only consider the innumerable workingmen's associations that are founded on all sides; consider the admirable attempts made at establishing banks of exchange, commercial bureaus, land credits, co-operative associations, etc. Of these attempts, some are already crowned with success, others are still doubtful, but they are all undertaken with intelligence, boldness, probity, perseverance and faith in the democratic future of society. Do not they prove that the people and the bourgeoisie, no longer leaning upon government for support, seek their strength and resources in themselves, with the end in view of freeing themselves from capitalist and usurious exploitation? Believe me, my children, when the mass of a people like ours goes about seeking the solution of the problem as to the source of their true liberty, of their labor, of their wellbeing and the wellbeing of their families, the problem can not remain unsolved, and, with Socialism giving its help, the problem will be solved."

"But where are our forces, father? Our party is shattered! The republicans are hounded down, calumniated, imprisoned, proscribed!"

"And what is the conclusion you draw from your discouragement, my boys?"

"Alas," answered Sacrovir sadly, "what we fear is the ruin of the Republic and the return of the days of old; retrogression instead of progress; the desolate conviction that, instead of steadily marching forward, mankind is fatedly condemned to turn in a circle, unable ever to step out of that iron grip. If the Republic goes down we run the risk of retrogressing, who knows how far back, perchance back to the point from which our fathers started in 1789!"

"That, indeed, is exactly what the royalists say and hope, my children. That the royalists should be blind enough to incur that error in logic is easily understood. Nothing blinds so completely as passion, interests, or caste prejudices. But that we, my children, that we should shut our eyes to the obvious evidences of progress, evidences more glaring than the sun, and plunge ourselves in the dismal vapors of doubt;--that we, my children, should do the sanctity of our cause the injustice of questioning its power and its ultimate, supreme triumph, when on all sides it manifests--"

"But, father--"

"As I was saying, when it manifests its power on all sides! I repeat it--under such circumstances to allow oneself to be disheartened and discouraged, that would be to endanger our cause. But humanity pursues its steady march onward, despite the incredulity, the blindness, the weakness, and also the treasons and the crimes of man!"

"But, father--does humanity, indeed, march steadily on the path of progress?"

"Steadily, my sons."

"But yet, centuries ago, our forefathers the Gauls lived free and happy! Nevertheless, were they not forced backward on the path of progress? They were despoiled and enslaved by the Roman conquest, and later by the Frankish Kings."

"I did not say, my friends, that our forefathers did not suffer; what I said was that mankind marched onward. The latest descendants of an old world that was crumbling down on all sides to make room for the Christian world--an immense progress!--our fathers were bruised and mutilated under the falling ruins of ancient society. Nevertheless a deep-reaching and far-spreading social transformation was taking place. Mankind marches evermore--slowly, at times--never, however, does it take a step backward."

"Father, I believe you--yet--"

"Despite yourself, still you doubt, Sacrovir? I can understand it. Fortunately, the _lessons_, the _proofs_, the _data_, the _facts_, the _names_, that you are about to be made acquainted with in the mysterious chamber, will go further to convince you than any words of mine. When you will see, my friends, that in the gloomiest days of our history--such days as the Kings, the seigneurs and the clergy have almost always afflicted man with; when you will see that we, the conquered, started with slavery and arrived step by step to popular sovereignty; you will then ask yourselves whether, at this hour, when we find ourselves invested with that so painfully earned sovereignty, it would not be criminal on our part to mistrust the future. To mistrust it! Great God! Oh! Our fathers, despite all their martyrdom never did mistrust the future! There was hardly a century when they failed to take a step towards deliverance! Alas, almost always that step was marked with blood! If our masters, the conquerors, showed themselves implacable, there hardly was a century when, as you will see, there were not frightful reprisals levied upon them to satisfy divine justice. Yes, you will see, there hardly was a century when the woolen cap did not rise against the casque of gold, when the peasant's scythe did not strike fire with the lance of the knight, when the horny hand of the vassal did not smite the delicately pampered hand of some episcopal petty tyrant! You will see it, my children--hardly a century when the infamous debauches and acts of rapine and ferocity indulged in by the Kings and most of the seigneurs and upper clergy failed to rouse the people, or when they failed to protest, arms in hand, against the tyranny of the throne, the nobility and the Popes! You will see it--hardly a century, when the famishing masses, rising as inexorable as hunger, failed to throw their lordlings into terror--hardly a century without its Belshazzar's feast, buried along with its golden drinking cups, its flowers, its songs and its displayful magnificence, under the avenging wave of some popular torrent. Undoubtedly, alas! the terrible, though legitimate, reprisals of the oppressed were succeeded by ferocious acts of revenge. Nevertheless, formidable examples had been made. At each recurring epoch the Revolution wrung from the hereditary oppressors of our fathers some lasting concession, registered in the law and necessarily observed."

"I believe you," said Sacrovir. "Judging the past by the present, in 1789 the Revolution conquered our freedom; in 1830 the Revolution returned to us a part of our rights; finally, last year, in 1848, the Revolution proclaimed the sovereignty of the people and universal suffrage, which is calculated to put an end to bloody fratricidal conflicts."

"And so it ever has been, my boy. You will see it--_there is not a single social, political, civil or religious reform that our fathers were not forced to conquer from century to century at the price of their blood_. Alas! This is a cruel fact--it is deplorable. There was no choice but to resort to arms so long as the only answer made by the stiff-necked and inexorable enjoyers of privilege to the tears, the sorrows, the prayers of the oppressed was--No! No! No! Then frightful outbursts of rage flared up--then torrents of blood flowed on both sides. It was by dint of unterrified valor, persistent efforts, battles and martyrdom that our fathers first broke the old shackles of slavery in which the Franks kept them since the conquest. Thence they arrived at serfdom, a somewhat less horrible condition. Next, from serfs, they became vassals, thereupon subject to mortmain--each of these a step upwards. And evermore thus, from step to step, cutting themselves by dint of abnegation a path across the centuries and all obstacles, they finally came so far as to conquer the sovereignty of the people. And you despair of the future when now, thanks to universal suffrage, the disinherited are able to impose their sovereign will upon the privileged minority! What, you despair, now that power is revokable by the voice of our representatives, whom we select as the supreme judges of the executive power! What, you despair because we have had eighteen months of constant struggle and of occasional suffering! Oh, it was not for so short a period as eighteen months that our forefathers struggled and suffered; it was for the long-drawn period of more than eighteen centuries! If every generation had its martyrs, it also registered its conquests! It is of those martyrs and those conquests that you are about to see the pious relics, the glorious trophies! Come, my children."

With this solemn invocation Marik Lebrenn proceeded, followed by his family, to the room with the closed windows, which the son, the daughter and the son-in-law of the merchant now entered for the first time.