Chapter IV: Part 4

“I will show you, my son,” said my good master, “in the condition of these poor soldiers who are going to serve their king, both man’s shame and his glory. In fact, war sets us back and drives us to our natural savagery. It is the result of the ferocity that we have in common with the beasts; not only with lions and cocks, who bring a gallant bearing to it, but with little birds, such as jays and tits, whose ways are very quarrelsome, and even with insects, such as wasps and ants, who fight with a bloodthirstiness of the like of which the Romans themselves have left no example. The principal causes of war are the same in man and animal, who struggle with one another to gain or keep their prey, to defend their nest or their lair, or to gain a mate. There is no distinction in all this, and the rape of the Sabines perfectly recalls those duels between stags which make the woods bloody of a night. We have merely succeeded in lending a certain colouring to base and natural motives by the notions of honour with which we cover them, and without great exactitude at that. If we believe that we fight for very noble motives in these days, the nobility of them dwells entirely in the vagueness of our sentiments. The less the object of war is simple, clear, and precise, the more war itself is odious and detestable. And if it be true, my son, that we have come to killing one another for honour’s sake, it is beyond all bounds. We have surpassed the cruelty of wild beasts, who do each other no injury without good reason. And it is only right to say that man is wickeder and more unnatural in his wars than are bulls or ants in theirs. But that is not all, for I detest armies less for the death they sow, than for the ignorance and stupidity that follow in their train. There is no worse enemy of the arts than a captain of mercenaries or marauders, and as a rule commanders are as unfitted for letters as are their soldiers. The habit of imposing his will by force makes your old soldier very awkward in speech, for eloquence has its source in the necessity of persuasion. Also, military men affect a disdain of speech and fine attainments. I remember having known at Séez in the days when I was librarian to the Bishop, an old captain, who had grown grey in harness and passed for a gallant man, wearing proudly a large scar across his face. He was an old ruffian, and had killed many a man and violated more than one nun quite good-humouredly. He understood his business fairly well and was very particular regarding the appearance of his regiment, which marched past better than any other. In short, a brave man and a good comrade, when it was question of draining a pot as well I saw at the inn of the _Cheval Blanc_, where many a time I held my own against him. Now it happened one night that I accompanied him (for we were good friends) while he was instructing his men how to find their way by the stars. He first let me have Monsieur de Louvois’ ordinance on the subject, and as he had repeated it by heart for the last thirty years, he made no more mistakes than in his _Pater_ or _Ave_. He started off by saying that the soldiers must begin by searching the heavens for the pole-star, which is fixed in relation to the other stars, which turn round it in the contrary direction to the hands of a watch. But he did not understand all he said. For after having repeated his sentence two or three times in a sufficiently imperious voice, he stooped and said in my ear:

‘Show me this beggar of a pole-star, Abbé. The devil take me if I can distinguish it in this mess of candle-ends with which the sky is littered!’

“I told him at once the way to find it, and pointed it out with my finger. ‘Oh! Oh!’ cried he, ‘the silly thing is perched very high! From where we are we cannot see it without straining our necks.’ And he immediately gave orders to his officers to withdraw the men fifty paces so they should more easily see the pole-star. What I am telling you, my son, I heard with my own ears, and you will agree that this wearer of a sword had a sufficiently naïve notion of the system of the universe, particularly of the stellar parallaxes. Yet he wore the king’s orders on a fine embroidered coat, and was more honoured in the state than a learned divine. It is this uncouthness that I cannot endure in the army.”

My good master having stopped to take breath at these words, I asked him if he did not think, despite this captain’s ignorance, that one must have much intelligence to win battles? He answered me in these words:

“Taking into consideration, Tournebroche, my son, the difficulty that there is in getting together and leading armies, the knowledge necessary in the attack or the defence of a place, and the ability demanded for a good order of battle, one easily admits that only a genius nearly super-human, such as that of a Cæsar, is capable of such an undertaking, and one would be astonished that minds were to be found capable of holding all the qualities proper to a true fighting-man. A great commander does not only know the configuration of a country, but its manners and customs, and also the industries of its inhabitants. He keeps in his mind an infinity of little circumstances from which he forms in the end large and simple views. The plans which he has slowly meditated and traced out beforehand, he may change in the midst of action by a sudden inspiration, and he is at the same time, very prudent and very bold; his thoughts move, now with the dull slowness of the mole, now soar up with an eagle’s flight.

“Nothing is truer than this. But bethink you, my son, that when two armies are in sight of one another, one of them must be conquered; from which it follows that the other will necessarily be victorious, without its chief in command having all the qualities of a great commander, or without his even having one of them. There are, I take it, clever commanders; there are also lucky ones, whose glory is no less. How, in these astounding collisions, are we to disentangle the effect of art from the result of luck? But you are leading me from my subject, Tournebroche, my son, I want to show you that war is man’s disgrace nowadays, but that in other days it was his pride. Of necessity the arbitrament of empires, war has been the great school-mistress of the human race. It is by her that men have learnt patience, firmness, disdain of danger, the glory of sacrifice. The day that the herdsmen first rolled pieces of rock to form an enclosure behind which they defended their women and cattle, the first human society was founded, and the progress of the arts assured. This great good that we enjoy, our native land, that august thing the Romans adored above all their gods, the town, ‘Urbs,’ is the daughter of war.

“The first city was a fortified enclosure, and it was in that rough and bloody cradle that were nursed august laws, flourishing industries, science and learning. And that is why the true God wishes to be called the God of battles.

“What I tell you on this subject, Tournebroche, my son, does not mean that you should sign your engagement to this recruiting-sergeant and be seized with the desire to become a hero as the recipient of sixty strokes of the rod on your back every day, on an average.

“War is, moreover, in our time but an inherited evil, a prurient return to savage life, a criminal puerility. The princes of our day, and especially the late king, will for ever bear the notoriety of having made war the sport and amusement of courts. It saddens me to think that we have not yet seen the end of this preconcerted slaughter.

“As to the future, the unfathomable future, let me, my son, dream of it as more in accord with the spirit of sweetness and equity which dwells in me. The future is a place where there is room for dreams. It is there, as in Utopia, that it pleases the wise men to build. I should like to believe that nations will one day cultivate the virtues in peace. It is in the increasing size of armaments that I flatter myself I see a far-distant presage of universal peace. Armies will augment unceasingly in strength and number. Whole nations will be swallowed up by them. Then the monster will perish from his surfeit. He will burst from too much fatness.”

XIII

ACADEMIES

We learnt that day that the Bishop of Séez had just been elected a member of the _Académie Française_. Twenty years ago he had delivered a panegyric on St. Maclou, which was considered rather a good thing, and I am willing to believe that there were some excellent passages in it; for my good master, Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, had put a hand to it before quitting the Bishop’s palace with Madame de la Baillive’s chambermaid. Monseigneur de Séez was descended from the best Norman aristocracy. His piety, his cellar, and his stable, were justly vaunted throughout the kingdom, and his own nephew dispensed the ecclesiastical patronage all over the country. His election surprised nobody. It was approved by all the world, save by the “grey-stockings” of the _Café Procope_, who are never content. They are grumblers.

My good master blamed them gently for their contradictory temper.

“Of what does Monsieur Duclos complain?” said he. “Since yesterday, he is the equal of Monseigneur de Séez, who has the handsomest clergy and the finest pack of hounds in the kingdom. For academicians are equal by virtue of the statutes.[9]

“It is true that it is the insolent equality of revellers, which ceases, when, the meeting over, my lord bishop steps into his chariot, leaving Monsieur Duclos to splash his woollen stockings in the gutter. But if he does not want thus to be put on a par with my lord Bishop of Séez, why does he rub shoulders with the badge bedecked. Why does he not hie him to a tub, like Diogenes, or like me, to a stall at the Innocents? It is only in a tub, or in a stall, that one can lord it over this earthly grandeur. It is only there that one is a real prince, and a real lord. Happy is he who has not fixed his hopes on the Academy! Happy is he who lives exempt from fears and desires, and who knows the emptiness of all things! Happy is he who knows that it is equally a vanity to be an Academician, or not to be one. Such a one leads, untroubled, a life obscure and unseen. Fair liberty follows him everywhere he goes. He celebrates in the shade the stilly offices of wisdom, and all the Muses smile on him as on one initiated into their service.”

Thus spoke my good master, and I admired the pure enthusiasm which swelled his voice and shone in his eyes. But the restlessness of youth fermented in me. I wanted to take sides, to throw myself into the fight, to declare myself for or against the Academy.

“Monsieur l’Abbé,” I asked. “Should not the Academy call to itself the best minds in the kingdom, rather than the uncle of the man who has the ecclesiastical patronage in his gift?”[10] I asked my good master.

“My son,” he answered gently, “if Monseigneur de Séez appears austere in his ordinances, great and gallant in his life, and if he is in fact, a paragon among prelates, and pronounced that panegyric on St. Maclou, the exordium of which, relative to the healing of the King’s evil by the King of France, seemed to be noble, do you want the Society to turn him out for the sole reason that he has a nephew as powerful as he is amiable? That would be showing a truly ferocious virtue, and punishing Monseigneur de Séez inhumanly for the grandeur of his family. The Academy wished to forget that. That alone, my son, is sufficiently magnanimous.”

I was daring enough to make reply to this speech, so carried away was I by the fire of youth.

“Monsieur l’Abbé,” said I, “allow my feelings to oppose your arguments. All the world knows that Monseigneur de Séez has only become considerable by the suppleness of his character and his manners, and what one admires in him is his skill in detaching himself from both parties.... We have seen him glide gently between the Jesuits and the Jansenists, tincting his pale prudence with the roses of Christian charity.... He thinks he has done enough when he has displeased no one, and all his care is to sustain his position. Thus it is not his great heart which has gained for him the suffrages of the King’s illustrious _protégés_.[11] Neither is it his great mind. For, with the exception of this panegyric on St. Maclou, which he had (as all the world knows) but the trouble of reading, this peace-loving bishop has only let us hear the depressing instructions issued to his clergy.

“He recommends himself by the amenity of his language and the politeness of his conversation. Are these sufficient titles to immortality?”

“Tournebroche,” answered Monsieur l’Abbé, civilly, “you reason with the simplicity given to you by Madame, your mother, at your birth, and I see that you will keep your natural candour for long enough. I congratulate you upon it. But innocence must not make you unjust; it is enough that it leaves you ignorant. The immortality that they have bestowed on Monseigneur de Séez does not call for the attainments of a Bossuet or a Belzunce; it is not graven in the heart of an astounded people—it is inscribed in a big book; and you can well understand that these paper laurels only suit the heads of such heroes.

“If, among the Forty, there are persons of more gentility than genius, what harm do you see in it? Mediocrity triumphs in the Academy. But where does it not? Do you see it less powerful in Parliament or in the royal Council, where doubtless it is less fitted to find place? Must one be an exceptional man to work at a dictionary which wishes to regulate custom, and can only follow it?

“Academicians, or academists, were instituted, as you know, to fix the best usage in matters of speech, to purge the language of all archaisms and vulgar impurities, and to see that a second Rabelais, or a second Montaigne, does not arise, smelling of the rabble, of pedantry, or of the provinces. They assembled, to this end, gentlemen, who knew good usage and writers who were interested in knowing it. That gave rise to alarm lest the assembly should, tyrannically, reform the French language. But it was soon recognised that these fears were vain, and the academists, far from imposing custom, obeyed it. In spite of their veto we continue to say as before, ‘I shut my door.’[12]

“The Assembly soon resigned itself to entombing the progress of usage in a big dictionary. It is the sole care of the Immortals.[13] When they are not sitting they find leisure for recreation with one another. For that they need pleasant companions, easy and affable, amiable colleagues, well-informed men, and men who know the world. This is not always the case with men of great talent. Genius is sometimes unsociable. An exceptional man is rarely a man of resource. The Academy could do without Descartes and Pascal. Who says that it could do well without Monsieur Godeau or Monsieur Conrart, or any other person of a supple, complacent, and circumspect turn of mind?”

“Alas!” I sighed, “then it is no senate of divine beings, or council of immortals, no august Areopagus of poetry and eloquence?”

“By no means, my son. It is a society which teaches manners, and which has gained a great reputation for that among foreign nations, and particularly among the Muscovites. You have no idea what admiration the _Académie Française_ inspires among German barons, colonels of the Russian Army and English milords. Europeans rate nothing higher than our Academicians and our dancers. I knew a Sarmatian princess of great beauty who, passing through Paris, impatiently sought for an academician, whoever he might be, to make him a present of her virtue.”

“If it be thus,” I cried, “why do the academicians risk compromising their good reputation by these unfortunate selections which are so universally blamed?”

“Stop, Tournebroche, my son, do not say anything evil of unfortunate selections,” replied my master. “To begin with, in all human undertakings one must take into consideration the part played by chance, which is, upon the whole, the part played by God on earth, and the only occasion where Divine Providence manifests itself clearly in this world. For you well understand, my son, that what we call the absurdity of chance and the caprice of fortune, are, in reality, but the revenge taken in sport by Divine justice on the counsels of the would-be wise. In the second place, it is suitable in assemblies to give some play to caprice and fancy. A perfectly reasonable society would be a perfectly unbearable one. It would languish under the cold rule of justice. It would not have any belief in its own power or freedom if it did not taste, from time to time, the delicious pleasure of braving public opinion and good sense. It is the darling sin of the powers of this world to be taken with bizarre caprices. Why should not the Academy indulge in whims just as much as the Grand Turk or a pretty woman?

“Many opposite passions unite to inspire these unfortunate selections which vex simple souls. It is a pleasure for good people to take an unfortunate mortal and make an academician of him. Thus the God of the psalmist takes the poor man from his dunghill. _Erigens de stercore pauperem, ut collocet eum cum principibus, cum principibus populi sui._ These are strokes which astonish the nations and those who deal them must think themselves armed with a mysterious force and terrible power. And what pleasure to drag the poor soul from his dunghill, while leaving, meanwhile, some intellectual despot in the shade! It is to quaff, at a draught, a rare and delicious mixture of charity fulfilled and jealousy satisfied. It is enjoyment in every sense and content for the whole man. And you want the academicians to resist the sweetness of such a philtre!

“We must take into consideration again, that in procuring for themselves this very sophisticated pleasure, the academicians act for the best in their own interests. A society formed exclusively of great men would not be numerous, and would appear rather depressing.

“Great men cannot endure one another, and they have little wit. It is good to let them mix with smaller fry. It amuses them. The small fry benefit by their neighbourhood, the great by the comparison with the small, and there is profit for both one and the other. Let us admire by what skilful play, what ingenious contrivance, the _Académie Française_ passes on to some of its members the importance it gains from others. It is a collection of suns and planets, where all shine with their own or with a borrowed effulgence.

“I go even further. Unfortunate selections are necessary to the existence of this society. If, in the elections, the Academy did not take the side of weakness and error, if it did not have the air of choosing haphazardly at times, it would make itself so hated by all that it could no longer continue to exist. In the republic of letters it would be as a tribunal set in the midst of condemned men. Infallible, it would appear odious. What an affront for those who were not chosen, were the elected one always the best! The daughter of Richelieu must seem a little volatile, so as not to appear too insolent. What saves her is that she takes fancies. Her injustice proves her innocence. It is because we know her capricious that she can reject us without wounding us. It is sometimes so advantageous to her to deceive herself that I am tempted to believe, notwithstanding appearances, that she does it on purpose. She has admirable ruses for dealing tactfully with the self-love of the candidates she sets aside. An election of such a kind disarms envy. It is in her apparent faults that you must admire her true wisdom.”

FOOTNOTES:

[9]

_Cf._ SAINT-EVREMONT (_Les Académiciens_):

GODEAU. Good-day, dear Colletet.

COLLETET (_throwing himself on his knees_). Say, my lord of Grasse,
What I must do when I before you pass.
Should I not kiss, perhaps, your hallowed shoon?

GODEAU. We are all equal, all Apollo’s own.
“Rise up, my Colletet—”

COLLETET. “Does your worship’s grace
Permit the liberty, to your very face!”

GODEAU. “Our intercourse is nothing changed, elsewhere
You see me bishop; _Godeau_, simply, here.”

Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, lived under the old régime. In those days it was said that the French Academy had the merit of establishing perfect equality between its members, an equality not recognised in law. Nevertheless, it was destroyed in 1793 as “the last refuge of aristocracy.”

[10] He means the bishop whom the king had appointed distributor of ecclesiastical patronage.

[11] The king was protector of the Academy.

[12] It is true that the Academy condemned this expression:

“Custom, too strong, as oftentime before,
Makes us, improperly, say _Shut the Door_,
Usage will, daily, authorise a word,
Natheless employed in manner quite absurd.
Would you escape December’s cold and gloom,
You must _Push to the Door_ and _Shut the Room_.”

SAINT-EVREMONT (_Les Académiciens_).

[13] In those days the Academy awarded no prizes.

XIV

SEDITION-MONGERS

My good master and I having paid our accustomed visit at the sign of the _Image de Sainte Catherine_, we found in the shop the famous Mr. Rockstrong, mounted on the highest rung of the ladder ferreting out the old books, of which he is a connoisseur. For it pleases him, as is well known, in his troubled existence to collect precious books and fine prints.

Condemned by the English Parliament to imprisonment for life for taking part in Monmouth’s Rebellion, he lives in France, whence he is continually sending articles to the gazettes of his country.[14]

My good master, as his habit was, let himself down on to a stool, then raised his eyes to the ladder where Mr. Rockstrong was turning about with the squirrel-like agility he has preserved in his declining years.

“God be thanked!” said he, “I see, _Monsieur le Rebelle_, you are as well and as young as ever.”

Mr. Rockstrong turned on my good master the glowing eyes that light up his sallow countenance.

“Why do you call me a rebel?” he asked, “you fat Abbé!”

“I call you a rebel, Mr. Rockstrong, because you have failed. One is a rebel when one is vanquished. Victors are never rebels.”

“Abbé, you speak with a disgusting cynicism.”

“Beware, Mr. Rockstrong; that maxim does not come from me. It comes from a very great man. I found it among the papers of Julius Cæsar Scaliger.”

“Well, Abbé, those are villainous papers. And it is an infamous saying. Our loss, due to the irresolution of our chief, and to an indolence which he paid for with his life, does not alter the goodness of our cause. And honest people conquered by rogues, remain honest people.”

“It pains me to hear you talk of honest people and rogues, in public matters, Mr. Rockstrong. These simple expressions might suffice to indicate the good and the bad side in those combats of angels which were fought in Heaven before the creation of the world; and which your fellow countryman, John Milton, has sung with very great barbarity. But, on this terraqueous globe, camps are not, however desirable it might be, so equally divided that one can discriminate, without prejudice or compliance, between the army of the pure and the impure; nor even distinguish the side of the just from the unjust. So that, success must necessarily remain the only witness to the goodness of a cause. I annoy you, Mr. Rockstrong, by telling you that one is rebel when one is vanquished. Yet when it happens to you to climb to power, you will not suffer rebellion.”

“Abbé, you do not know what you are saying. I have always hastened to the side of the vanquished.”

“Truly, Mr. Rockstrong, you are a natural and constant enemy of the State. You are hardened in your enmity by the force of your genius, which finds pleasure in destruction and ruin.”

“Abbé, do you call me a criminal?”

“Mr. Rockstrong, if I were a statesman, or a friend of the prince, like Monsieur Roman, I should take you for a remarkable criminal. But I am not a sufficiently fervent believer in the religion of politics to be very terrified at the murmur of your crimes, or of outrages which make more noise than they do harm.”

“Abbé, you are immoral!”

“If it be only at such a price one can afford to be indulgent, Mr. Rockstrong, do not blame me too severely.”

“I have no use, my fat Abbé, for an indulgence that you share between me, the victim, and the scoundrels in Parliament, who condemned me with such revolting injustice.”

“It is amusing to hear you talk of the injustice of the lords, Mr. Rockstrong.”

“Is it not a crying injustice?”

“It is quite true, Mr. Rockstrong, that you were convicted, on a ridiculous charge, by the Lord-Chancellor for a collection of libels, none of which came in particular under the ban of the English law; it is true that in a country where one is allowed to write anything and everything, you were punished for some pungent writings; it is true that they used, as weapons, obsolete and out-of-the-way forms whose imposing hypocrisy poorly dissimulated the impossibility of getting at you by legal methods; it is true that the milords who judged you were interested in your ruin, since Monmouth’s, and your success would infallibly have dragged them from their seats. It is true your ruin was decided on beforehand in the royal Councils. It is true you escaped by flight, from a mediocre kind of martyrdom in truth, but a painful one. For imprisonment for life is a penalty even if one may reasonably hope to escape from it soon. But there is no justice nor injustice there. You were condemned for State reasons—which is extremely honourable. And more than one of the lords who condemned you had conspired with you twenty years before. Your crime was to have frightened those in office—and it is an unpardonable one. Ministers and their friends invoke the safety of the State when danger threatens their fortunes or their posts. And they are willing to believe themselves necessary for the preservation of the empire, for they are for the most part interested parties and no philosophers. But that does not make bad men of them. They are human beings and that is quite enough to explain their pitiable mediocrity, their stupidity and their avarice. But whom do you set up against them, Mr. Rockstrong? Other men of equal mediocrity, and yet more greedy, because they are hungrier. The people of London would have borne with them as they bear with the others. They awaited your victory or your defeat to declare themselves, wherein they gave proof of remarkable sagacity. The people are well advised when they judge that they have nothing to gain or lose by change of masters.”

Thus spoke Abbé Coignard, and Mr. Rockstrong with inflamed countenance, eyes on fire, and wig starting from his head, shouted at him with gestures from the top of his ladder: “Abbé, I understand thieves and all types of rogues in Chancery and Parliament. But I do not understand you, who, without any personal interest in the matter, out of pure malice, propound maxims that they themselves profess but for their own profit. You must be wickeder than they, for you have nothing to gain in the matter. It is beyond me, Abbé!”

“It is a sign of my being a philosopher,” gently replied my good master. “It is in the nature of wise men to irritate the rest of mankind. Anaxagoras was a celebrated example of it. I do not speak of Socrates who was but a sophist. But we see that in all times and in all countries the opinions of meditative minds were subjects of scandal. You think yourself very different from your enemies, Mr. Rockstrong, and that you are as lovable as they are odious. Allow me to tell you that this is but the effect of your pride and of your high courage. In actual fact, you share in common with those who condemned you, all human weaknesses and passions. If you are more honest than many of them, and even if you are a man of incomparable vivacity of mind, you are filled with a talent for hatred and discord which renders you very inconvenient in a well-regulated country. The calling of a journalist, in which you excel, has raised to the highest degree of perfection the wonderful partiality of your mind, and though a victim of injustice, you are yourself not just. What I have just said embroils me both with you and with your enemies, and I am very certain I shall never obtain a fat living from the minister who has them in his gift. But I prize freedom of mind more highly than a fat abbey or a cosy priory. I shall have succeeded in vexing all the world, but I shall die in peace, and in contentment of heart.”

“Abbé,” half-laughingly, replied Mr. Rockstrong, “I forgive you, because I think you a little mad. You make no difference between rogues and honest men, and you would not rather have a free country than a despotic and shuffling government. You are a lunatic, and of no ordinary kind.”

“Let us go and drink a pot of wine at the _Petit Bacchus_, Mr. Rockstrong,” said my good master, “and I will explain to you, while emptying my glass, why I am totally indifferent to forms of government, and why I do not trouble myself about any change of masters.”

“Very willingly,” said Mr. Rockstrong, “I shall be interested to drink in company with such a bad arguer as you.”

He sprang lightly down from his ladder, and we all three repaired to the inn.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] I have not found this Mr. Rockstrong mentioned in the memoirs relating to Monmouth’s Rebellion. (ANATOLE FRANCE.)

XV

REVOLUTIONARY MEASURES

Mr. Rockstrong, who was a sensible man, bore my good master no malice for his sincerity of speech. When the landlord of the _Petit Bacchus_ had brought a pot of wine, the pamphleteer lifted his glass and drank to Abbé Coignard’s health, calling him a rogue, a friend of robbers, a tool of tyrants and an old scamp! all with quite a jovial air.

My master returned his compliments with a good grace, congratulating him on the fact that he drank to a man whose natural humour had remained unaffected by philosophy.

“As for myself,” he added, “I feel that my intelligence is quite spoilt by reflection. And as it is not in the nature of mankind to think with any profundity, I own that my leaning to thought is an odd mania and highly inconvenient. In the first place it makes me unfit for any undertaking, for our actions result from a limited outlook and narrow way of thinking. You will be astonished, Mr. Rockstrong, if you picture to yourself the simple-mindedness of the men of genius who have stirred the world. Conquerors and statesmen, who have changed the face of the earth, have never reflected on the essence of the beings they handled so roughly. They shut themselves up altogether in the pettiness of their grand projects and the wisest see but very few things at a time. Such as you see me, Mr. Rockstrong, it would be impossible for me to work like Alexander at the conquest of India, or to found and govern an empire, or, generally speaking, to throw myself into any one of those vast undertakings which tempt the pride of the impetuous. Reflection would hamper me, from the outset, and I should find reasons for coming to a stop at every move I made.”

Then turning to me my good master said sighing:

“Thought is a great infirmity, God keep you from it Tournebroche, my son, as He has kept His greatest saints, and the souls for whom He cherishes a singular predilection, and for whom He reserves eternal glory. Men who think little, or who think not at all, go about their business happily in this world and the next, whilst the meditative soul is incessantly menaced with its temporal and spiritual loss. Such malice lies in thought! Reflect and tremble, my son, at the thought that the serpent of Genesis is the oldest of philosophers and their everlasting prince.”

Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard drank a great draught of wine and went on in a low voice:

“As regards my salvation, that is a subject to which I have never applied my intelligence. I have never exercised my reason on the truths of the Faith. Unhappily, I have meditated the deeds of men and the ways of cities; therefore I am no longer fit to govern an Island, as was Sancho Panza.”

“That is a very good thing,” retorted Mr. Rockstrong, laughingly, “for your isle would be a retreat for bandits and vagabonds where the criminal would judge the innocent, if perchance there were any.

“I well believe it! Mr. Rockstrong, I well believe it!” answered my good master! “It is quite possible that, if I were to govern another island of Barataria, manners would be as you say. With one stroke you have depicted all the empires of the world. I feel that mine would be no better than the rest. I have no illusions about mankind, and, so as not to hate them, I despise them. I despise and pity them, Mr. Rockstrong. But they bear me no good-will for it. They want to be hated. One vexes them when one shows them the gentlest, the most indulgent, the most charitable, most human and gracious of all feelings that they could inspire: contempt. Nevertheless, mutual contempt means peace on earth, and if men would only thoroughly despise one another they would do themselves no further harm and live together in an amiable tranquillity.

“All the ills of civilised societies originate in people thinking too highly of each other, and raising honour, like a monster, above the wretchedness of the flesh and the spirit. This feeling makes them both proud and cruel, and I detest the pride that wants honour to be shown to it and to others, as if anyone descended from Adam could be worthy of honour! An animal which eats, drinks (give me something to drink), and makes love, is worthy of pity, interesting perhaps, even sometimes pleasant and agreeable.

“He can only be honourable by the effect of a most absurd and headstrong prejudice in his favour. This prejudice is the source of all the ills from which we suffer. It is a detestable kind of idolatry. And to assure to humanity a sweetening of their existence you must begin by recalling them to their natural humility.

“They will be happy, when, brought back again to a true appreciation of their condition, they despise one another without there being a single exception to this most excellent contempt.”

Mr. Rockstrong shrugged his shoulders.

“My fat Abbé,” said he, “you are a pig.”

“I am but a man,” replied my master, “you flatter me, and I feel in me the germs of that bitter pride that I detest, and that vain-glory which leads the human race into duels and into war. There are times, Mr. Rockstrong, when I would have my throat cut for my opinions; which would be an act of madness. For who can prove that I reason better than you, you, who reason excessively badly! Give me something to drink!”

Mr. Rockstrong courteously filled my good master’s glass.

“Abbé, you talk nonsense,” he said, “but I love you, and I should much like to know what you find blameworthy in my public behaviour, and why you side against me with tyrants, forgers, thieves, and dishonest judges?”

“Mr. Rockstrong, allow me first of all to diffuse over you and your friends, with a sweet impartiality, that single sentiment which gently puts an end to quarrels, and brings pacification. Bear with me if I respect neither the one nor the other enough to consign them to the vengeance of the law and to call down punishment on their heads. Men, whatsoever they do, are always silly sheep, and I leave to milord-chancellor, who condemned you, the Ciceronian declamations on state crimes. I have little taste for Catiline orations from whichever side they come. I am merely sad to see a man like you occupied in changing forms of government. It is the most frivolous and empty method of using one’s intelligence, and to fight people in office is folly, unless it is a way of earning one’s bread and getting on in the world. Give me something to drink! Bethink you, Mr. Rockstrong, that these startling changes in the State, meditated by you, are merely displacements of particular men, and that men taken in the mass are one like another, average in evil as well as in good; so that to replace two or three hundred ministers, governors of provinces, colonial agents, and bonneted presidents of courts, by two or three hundred others, is as good as doing nothing, and is simply putting Philip and Barnabas in place of Paul and Xavier. As to changing the condition of people at the same time, as you hope to do, that is quite impossible, for that condition does not depend on the ministers, who count for nothing, but on the earth and its fruits, industry, commerce, money amassed in the kingdom, the cleverness of the townfolk in trade and exchange—all things, which be they good or bad, are not kept going by either the prince or the officers of the crown.”

Mr. Rockstrong quickly interrupted my good master:

“Who does not know,” he exclaimed, “that the condition of industry and commerce depends on the government, and that only under a free government can you have good finance?”

“Liberty,” continued Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, “is but the result of the wealth of citizens, who free themselves as soon as they are powerful enough to be independent. People take all the liberty they can enjoy, or, to put it more plainly, they imperiously clamour for institutions in recognition and guarantee of the rights which they have acquired by their industry.

“All liberty emanates from them and their several actions. Their most involuntary movements enlarge the mould of the state which shapes itself on them.[15]

“So that one may say that detestable as tyranny is, every tyranny is necessary, and despotic governments are but the strait-waistcoat on a feeble and dwindled body. And who does not see that the outward appearance of government is like the skin which reveals the structure of an animal without being the cause of it?

“You seize hold upon the skin without troubling yourself about the viscera, in which you show little natural philosophy, Mr. Rockstrong.”

“So you make no difference between a free state and a tyrannical government, and all that you regard as nothing but the hide of the beast, my fat Abbé. And you fail to see that the expenditure of the prince and the depredations of ministers can ruin agriculture and wear out trade by raising the taxes.”

“Mr. Rockstrong, there cannot be at the same period and for the same country more than one possible form of government, any more than an animal can have more than one pelt at a time. From which it results, that we must leave to the care of Time, who is a courtly person, the changing of empires and the remaking of laws. He works at it slowly, untiringly, and kindly.”

“And you don’t think, my fat Abbé, that we ought to help the old man who figures on the clocks with a scythe in his hand? You do not believe that a revolution, such as that of the English or that in the Low Countries, can have any effect on the condition of the people. No? You old idiot! you deserve to be crowned with a fool’s cap!”

“Revolutions come about in conservation of good things already acquired, and not to gain new. It is the folly of nations, it is your own, Mr. Rockstrong, to found great hopes on the downfall of princes. People assure unto themselves, by revolting from time to time, the preservation of their threatened liberties. They have never gained new liberties thereby. But they are fooled with words. It is remarkable, Mr. Rockstrong, that men will easily let themselves be killed for words of no meaning. Ajax made the remark long ago: ‘I thought in my youth’ the poet makes him say, ‘that deeds were more powerful than words, but I see to-day that the word is the stronger of the two.’ Thus said Ajax, son of Oileus. Mr. Rockstrong, I am very thirsty!”

FOOTNOTES:

[15] In the time of Abbé Coignard the French already thought themselves free. The sieur d’Alquié wrote in 1670:

“Three things make a man happy in this world, to know the charm of intercourse, dainty meats, and liberty, perfect and entire. We have seen in what way our illustrious kingdom has fulfilled the two first, so it remains for us merely to show that the third is not lacking to it, and that liberty is no less a fact than the two preceding advantages. The thing will appear true to you if, to start with, you will consider attentively the name of our state, the matter of its foundation, and its usual customs: for one sees at the start that the name of _France_ means nothing else than _Franchise_ or liberty, conformably to the designs of the founders of this monarchy, who, having noble and generous souls, and being unable to bear either slavery or the least servitude, resolved among themselves to throw off the yoke of all kinds of captivity and to be as free as men may be; this is why they came to the land of the Gauls, which was a country whose people were neither less warlike nor less jealous of their _Franchise_ or liberty than they themselves were. As to the second point, we know that beyond the inclinations and plans they had in founding this state, they were always their own masters; they made laws for their sovereign which, limiting their powers, still preserved their privileges to them, in such wise that if anyone wishes to deprive them of them, they become enraged and rush to arms with such speed that nothing can hold them back when this point is involved. As to the third point, I declare that France is so enamoured of liberty that she cannot endure a slave, so that Turks and Moors and still less Christian people, may never wear irons nor be loaded with chains once in her country, and thus it comes about, that when slaves come to be in France they are no sooner on her territory than, full of joy, they cry: Long live France and her beloved liberty!”

_Les délices de la France_ ... by François Savinien d’Alquié, Amsterdam 1670.

Chapter XVI. entitled “France is a land of freedom for all sorts of people.”

XVI

HISTORY

Monsieur Roman placed half a dozen volumes on the counter.

“I beg of you, Monsieur Blaizot,” said he, “to send me these books.

“There are ‘Mother and Son,’ the ‘Memoirs of the Court of France,’ and the ‘Testament of Richelieu.’ I should be grateful if you will add to them anything new you have received lately in the way of history, and more particularly, anything treating of France since the death of Henry IV.... All these are works in which I am extremely interested.”

“You are right, Monsieur,” said my master. “Books on history are full of light stuff very suitable to amuse an honest fellow, and one is sure of finding a great number of pleasant stories.”

“Monsieur l’Abbé,” answered Monsieur Roman, “what I look for from the historians is not frivolous amusement. It is a serious study, and I am filled with despair if I find fiction mingled with fact. I study human actions in relation to the conduct of nations, and I seek for maxims of government in history.”

“I am not ignorant of that, Monsieur,” said my good master. “Your treatise on ‘Monarchy’ is renowned enough for us to know that you have conceived a political system drawn from history.”

“In such sort,” said Monsieur Roman, “I have been the first to draw rules for princes and ministers which they cannot avoid without danger.”

“And we behold you, Monsieur, on the frontispiece of your book, in the likeness of Minerva, presenting to a youthful king the mirror handed you by the muse, Clio, hovering above your head, in a study decked with busts and pictures. But allow me to tell you, Monsieur, that this muse is a story-teller, and that she holds out to you a mirror of falsehood. There are few truths in history, and the only facts on which all agree are those we get from a single source. Historians contradict one another every time they meet. Even more! We see that Flavius Josephus, who has pourtrayed the same incidents in his ‘Antiquities’ and in his ‘Wars of the Jews,’ records them differently in each of these works. Titus Livius is but a collector of fables; and Tacitus, your oracle, gives me the impression of an unsmiling deceiver who flouts all the world under a pretence of gravity. I have a sufficient esteem for Thucydides, Polybius, and Guicciardini. As for our own Mézeray, he does not know what he is saying, any more than do Villaret and Abbé Vély. But I am accusing historians; it is history itself I should attack.

“What is history? A miscellany of moral tales, or an eloquent medley of narratives and speeches, according as the historian is a philosopher or a spouter. You may find eloquent passages, but one must not look for the truth there, because truth consists in showing the necessary relation of things, and the historian does not know how to establish this relation, because he is unable to follow the chain of effects and causes. Consider that every time that the cause of an historical fact lies in a fact that is not historical, history fails to see it. And as historical facts are intimately allied to non-historical facts, it comes about that events are not linked after their natural order in history, but are connected one with another by mere artifices of rhetoric. And I ask you also to notice that the distinction between facts which appear in history and facts which do not is entirely arbitrary. It results from this that, far from being a science, history is condemned by a vice in its essence to the chaos of untruth. Sequence and continuity will always be lacking to it, and without these there can be no true knowledge. You see also that one can draw no prognostic as to the future of a nation from its past history. Now, the peculiarity of science is to be prophetic, as may be seen by those tables where the moon’s periods, tides, and eclipses are to be found calculated beforehand, whilst revolutions and wars escape calculation.”

Monsieur Roman explained to Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard that he merely asked of history facts, somewhat confused it is true, uncertain, mingled with errors, but infinitely precious, through their subject, which is man.

“I know,” he added, “how human annals are curtailed and mixed with fable. But, though a strict sequence of cause and effect fails us, I see in it a kind of plan that one loses and then finds again, like the ruins of temples half-buried in the sand. That alone is of immense value to me. And I flatter myself that, in the future, history, formed from abundant material and treated with method, will rival in exactitude the natural sciences.”

“Do not reckon on that,” said my good master, “I should rather believe that the growing abundance of memoirs, correspondence, and filed records, will render the task more difficult to future historians. Mr. Elward, who gives up his life to the study of the revolution in England, assures me that one man’s lifetime would not suffice in which to read the half of what was written during the disturbances. It reminds me of a story told to me by Monsieur l’Abbé Blanchet on this subject, which I will tell you as I remember it, regretting that Monsieur l’Abbé Blanchet is not here to tell it you himself, for he is a man of wit.

“Here is the apologue:

“When the young prince Zémire succeeded his father on the throne of Persia, he called all the academicians of his kingdom together, and said:

“‘The learned Zeb, my instructor, has taught me that monarchs would be liable to fewer errors if they were enlightened by past experience. Therefore I wish to study the history of nations. I order you to compose a universal history and to neglect nothing to make it complete.’

“The wise men promised to carry out the prince’s desire, and having withdrawn they set to work immediately. At the end of twenty years they appeared before the king, followed by a caravan composed of twelve camels each bearing 500 volumes. The secretary of the academy, having prostrated himself on the steps of the throne, spoke in these terms:

“‘Sire, the academicians of your kingdom have the honour to place at your feet the universal history that they have compiled at your majesty’s behests. It comprises 6000 volumes and contains all that we could possibly collect regarding the customs of nations and the vicissitudes of empires. We have inserted the ancient chronicles which have been luckily preserved, and we have illustrated them with abundant notes on geography, chronology, and diplomacy. The prolegomena are alone one camel’s load, and the paralipomena are borne with great difficulty by another camel.’

“The king answered:

“‘Gentlemen, I thank you for the trouble that you have taken. But I am very busy with the cares of state. Moreover, I have aged while you worked. I am arrived, as says the Persian poet, half-way along the road of life, and even supposing I die full of years, I cannot reasonably hope to have the time to read such a lengthy history. It shall be placed in the archives of the kingdom. Be good enough to make me a summary better fitted to the brevity of human life.’

“The Persian academicians worked twenty years; then they brought to the king 1500 volumes on three camels.

“‘Sire,’ said the permanent secretary, in a weakened voice, ‘here is our new work. We believe we have omitted nothing essential.’

“‘That may be,’ answered the king, ‘but I shall not read it. I am old; lengthy undertakings do not suit my years; abridge it further and do not be long about it.’

“They lingered so little that at the end of ten years they returned followed by a young elephant bearing 500 volumes.

“‘I flatter myself I have been succinct,’ said the permanent secretary.

“‘You have not yet been sufficiently so,’ answered the king.

“‘I am at the end of my life. Abridge, abridge, if you want me to know the history of mankind ere I die.’

“The permanent secretary reappeared before the palace at the end of five years. Walking with crutches, he held by the bridle a small donkey which bore a big book on its back.

“‘Hasten,’ said the officer to him, ‘the king is dying.’

“The king in fact was on his death-bed. He turned on the academician and his big book his nearly expiring gaze, and said with a sigh:

“‘I shall die, then, without knowing the history of mankind!’

“‘Sire,’ replied the learned man, who was almost as near death as himself, ‘I will sum it up for you in three words: _They were born, they suffered, they died!_’

“Thus did the king of Persia learn the history of the world in the evening of his life.”

XVII

MONSIEUR NICODÈME

While, at the sign of the _Image de Sainte Catherine_, my good master, seated on the highest rung of the ladder, was reading Cassiodorus with great pleasure, an elderly man came into the shop, of an arrogant air, and severe aspect. He went straight to Monsieur Blaizot, who smilingly stretched his head over the counter.