THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE
IN AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
EDITED BY FREDERIC CHAPMAN

THE OPINIONS OF JÉRÔME COIGNARD

THE OPINIONS OF JÉRÔME COIGNARD

BY ANATOLE FRANCE

A TRANSLATION BY

MRS. WILFRID JACKSON

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
TORONTO: BELL AND COCKBURN: MCMXIII

THE BALLANTYNE PRESS TAVISTOCK STREET COVENT GARDEN LONDON

CONTENTS

THE ABBÉ JÉRÔME
COIGNARD

TO OCTAVE MIRBEAU

here is no need for me to tell over again here the life of Monsieur l'Abbé Jérôme Coignard, professor of oratory at the college of Beauvais, librarian to Monseigneur de Séez, Sagiensis episcopi bibliothecarius solertissimus, as his epitaph has it, later on secretary at the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents, and finally curator of that queen of libraries (the Astaracian), whose loss is for ever to be deplored. He perished, assassinated, on the Lyons road, by a Jew cabalist of the name of Mosaïde (Judæa manu nefandissima), leaving several incomplete works, and the memory of his admirable familiar conversation. All the circumstances of his odd existence and tragic end have been reported by his disciple Jacques Menétrier, called Tournebroche, or Turnspit, because he was the son of a cook in the Rue St. Jacques. This Tournebroche professed for him whom it was his habit to speak of as his good master, a lively and tender admiration. "His was the kindliest soul," said he, "that ever blossomed on this earth." Modestly and faithfully he edited the memoirs of the Abbé, who lives again in the work as Socrates does in the Memorabilia of Xenophon.

Observant, exact, and charitable, he drew a portrait full of life and instinct with a loving faithfulness. It is a work that makes one think of those portraits of Erasmus by Holbein that one sees in the Louvre, at Bale, or at Hampton Court, the delicacy of which never wearies the sense of appreciation. In short, he left us a masterpiece. It will cause surprise no doubt, that he was not careful to have it printed. Moreover, he could have published it himself, for he set up as a bookseller in the Rue St. Jacques at the sign of the Image de Sainte Catherine, where he succeeded Blaizot.

Perhaps, living as he did among books, he feared to add, if it were but a few leaves, to the horrible hoard of blackened paper that mildews unseen on the book-stalls. We may share his disgust when we pass the twopenny box on the quays, where the sun and the rain slowly consume pages written for immortality. Like those pathetic death's-heads that Bossuet sent to the Abbot of la Trappe to divert his solitude, here are subjects for reflection fitted to make the man of letters conceive the vanity of writing. I may say, for my part, that between the Pont Royal and the Pont Neuf, I have felt that vanity to the full. I should incline to believe that Abbé Coignard's pupil never printed his work because, formed by so good a master, he judged sanely of literary glory, and esteemed it at its worth, and that is exactly nothing. He knew it for uncertain, capricious, subject to every vicissitude, and dependent on circumstances themselves petty and wretched. Seeing his contemporaries, ignorant, abusive, and mediocre, he saw no reason to hope that their posterity would suddenly become learned, balanced, and reliable. He merely divined that the Future, a stranger to our quarrels, would accord indifference in default of justice. We are well-nigh assured that, great and small, the Future will unite us in oblivion and cover us in a peaceful uniformity of silence. But if, by some extraordinary chance, that hope deceives us, if future generations keep some memory of our name and writings, we can foresee that they will only make acquaintance with our thoughts by the ingenious labour of gloss and super-gloss which alone perpetuates works of genius through the ages. The long life of a masterpiece is assured only at the price of quite pitiable intellectual hazards, in which the gabble of pedants reinforces the ingenious word-twisting of æsthetic souls. I am not afraid to say that, at the present day, we do not understand a single line of the Iliad, of the Divine Comedy, in the sense primitively attaching to it. To live is to change, and the posthumous life of our written-down thoughts is not free from the rule: they only continue to exist on condition that they become more and more different from what they were when they issued from our minds. Whatsoever in future may be admired in us, will have become altogether alien from us.

Possibly Jacques Tournebroche, whose simplicity we know, did not put himself all these questions in reference to the little book under his hand. It would be an insult to think that he had an exaggerated opinion of himself.

I think I know him. I have meditated over his book. Everything he says, and everything he doesn't say, betrays an exquisite modesty of soul. If, however, he was not without knowledge of his talent, he knew also that it is precisely talent that is least pardonable. In people of note we tolerate easily bareness of soul and falseheartedness. We are quite content that they should be bad or cowardly, and their good-luck even does not raise over much envy so long as it is not merited. Mediocrities are at once raised up, and carried along, by the surrounding nobodies who are honoured in them. The success of a commonplace person disturbs nobody. Rather, it secretly flatters the mob. But there is an insolence of talent which is expiated by dumb hatred, and calumnies not loud but deep. If Jacques Tournebroche consciously renounced the painful honour of irritating the foolish and the wicked by eloquent writing, one can only admire his good sense, and hold him the worthy scholar of a master who knew mankind. However it may be, the manuscript of Jacques Tournebroche, being left unpublished, was lost for more than a century.

I had the extraordinary good luck to find it again at a general broker's on the Boulevard Montparnasse, who spreads behind the dirtied panes of his shop, croix du Lis, médailles de Sainte-Hélène, and decorations de Juillet, without a suspicion that he is furnishing the generations a melancholy lesson on peacemaking. This manuscript was published under my care in 1893, under the title: La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque. I refer the reader to it. He will find there more novelties than he looks for ordinarily in an old book. But it is not with that book that we have to do here.

Jacques Tournebroche was not content to make known the doings and sayings of his master in a connected recital. He was careful to collect much discourse and conversation of Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard that had not found place in the memoirs (for that is the name we must give to La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque) and he made a little note-book of it, which has fallen into my hands along with his other papers.

It is the note-book that I print now under the title: The Opinions of The Abbé Jérôme Coignard. The kind and gracious welcome the public gave the preceding work by Jacques Tournebroche, encourages me to commence forthwith these dialogues, in which we meet once more the former librarian of Monseigneur de Séez with his indulgent wisdom, and that kind of generous scepticism to which his considerations tend, so mingled with contempt and kindliness for man. I have no notion of taking responsibility for the ideas expressed by this philosopher on divers questions of politics and morality. My duties, as editor, merely bind me to present my author's thought in the most favourable light. His unfettered understanding trampled vulgar beliefs underfoot, and did not side uncritically with popular opinion, except in matters touching the Catholic faith, wherein he was immovable. In anything else he did not fear to oppose his age. Were it only for that he would merit esteem. We owe him the gratitude due to minds that have fought against prejudices. But it is easier to praise than to imitate them. Prejudices melt away and grow unceasingly with the eternal mobility of the clouds. They are by nature most imposing, until they become hateful, and men are rare who are free from the superstition of their period, and look squarely at what the crowd dares not face. Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard was independent in a humble walk of life; enough, I think to put him far above a Bossuet, and above all the great people that glitter, according to their degree, in the traditional pomp of custom and belief.

But while we hold that Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard lived as a free man, enfranchised from common errors, and that the spectre of common passions and fears had no empire over him, we must further observe that his surpassing intelligence had originality of outlook on nature and society, and only wanted, in order to astonish and delight mankind by some vast and beautiful mental engineering feat, the skill or the will to scatter sophisms, like cement, in the interstices between truth and truth. It is only in that way that great systems of philosophy are built up and held together by the mortar of sophistry.

The synthetic faculty was wanting in him, or, (if you like), the art and law of symmetry. Without it, he was bound to appear, as in fact he did, a kind of wonderful compound of Epicurus and St. Francis of Assisi.

Those two, it seems to me, were the best friends that suffering humanity has yet met on its confused progress through life.

Epicurus freed the soul from empty fears and taught it to proportion its idea of happiness to its miserable nature and feeble powers. Good St. Francis, tenderer and more material, led the way to happiness by interior vision, and would have had souls expand like his, in joy, in the depths of an enchanted solitude. Both were helpful, one, to destroy illusions that deceive, the other, to create illusions from which one does not wake.

But it does not do to exaggerate. Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard was certainly not the equal, in action or in thought, of the boldest of the sages, nor of the most ardent of the saints. The truths that he discovered he could not fling himself upon headlong. In his hardiest exploration he maintained the pose of a peaceful pedestrian. He did not sufficiently except himself from the contempt other men inspired in him. He lacked that valuable illusion that sustained Descartes and Bacon, who believed in themselves when they believed in no one else. He had doubts of the witness he bore, and scattered heedlessly the treasures of his mind. That confidence, however common in thinkers, was withheld from him, the confidence in himself as the superior of the greatest wits. It is an unpardonable fault, for glory is only given to those who importune it. In Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard it was, moreover, a weakness, and an illogicality. Since he pushed philosophical audacity to its farthest limits, he should not have scrupled to proclaim himself the first of men. But his heart remained simple and his soul pure, and his poorness of spirit that knew not how to rear itself above the world, did him an irreparable wrong. But need I say that I love him better as he was? I am not afraid to affirm that Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard, philosopher and Christian, mingled in an incomparable union the epicurism that wards off grief, and the holy simplicity that conducts to joy.

It is to be remarked that not only did he accept the idea of God as furnished him by the Catholic faith, but further, that he tried to uphold it against argument of the rationalistic kind. He never imitated that practical address of professed Deists, who make a moral, philanthropical and prudish God for their own use, with whom they enjoy the satisfaction of a perfect understanding. The strict relations they establish with Him give much authority to their writings, and much consideration to their persons, before the public. And this God, akin to the government, temperate, weighty, exempt from fanaticism, and who has His following, is a recommendation to them in salons, academies, and public meetings. Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard did not figure the Eternal to himself in so profitable a light. But considering the impossibility of conceiving of the world otherwise than under the category of intelligent beings, and that the cosmos must be held to be intelligible, even if but to demonstrate its absurdity, he referred the cause to an intelligence he called God, leaving the term in its infinite vagueness, relying for the rest on theology, which as we know, treats of the unknowable with minutest accuracy.

This reserve, which marks the limits of his understanding, was fortunate if, as I believe, it deprived him of the temptation to nibble at some appetising system of philosophy, and kept him from putting his nose into one of those mousetraps wherein independent minds are in such hurry to get caught. At his ease in the big old rat-run, he found more than one opening to look out on the world and observe nature. I do not share his religious beliefs, and am of opinion that they deceived him, as they have deceived, for their good or ill, so many generations of men. But it looks as if the old errors were less vexatious than the new, and that, since we are bound to go wrong, it were best to hold by illusions that have lost their sparkle.

It is certain, though, that Abbé Coignard, in accepting Christian and Catholic principles, did not deny himself the deduction of some original conclusions therefrom. Rooted in orthodoxy, his luxuriant spirit flourished singularly in epicurism and in humility. As I have said before he always tried to chase away those phantoms of the night, those empty fears, or as he called them, those gothic diabolisms, which make the pious existence of the simple bourgeois a kind of sordid and day-long witches' sabbath. Theologians have, in our own day, accused him of carrying hope to excess, and even beyond bounds. I meet the reproach once more under the hand of an eminent philosopher.[1]

I do not know if Monsieur Coignard really reposed an exaggerated trust in divine goodness. But certainly he conceived the meaning of grace in a large and natural sense, and the world, in his eyes, less resembled the deserts of the Thebaid than the garden of Epicurus. He took his way through it with that daring ingenuousness which is the most marked trait in his character, and the foundation of his teaching.

Never did a mind show itself at once so bold and so pacificatory, nor soften its disdain with greater gentleness. His rule conjoined the freedom of the cynics and the innocence of the primitive community of the Portiuncula. Tenderly, he despised men. He tried to show them that having no measure of greatness about them save their capacity for sorrow, they could lay up for themselves nothing useful or beautiful save pity; that fit only for desire or suffering, they should practise themselves in the indulgent and the pleasure-giving virtues. He came to consider pride as the source of greatest evil, and the one vice against nature.

It seems likely indeed, that men make themselves miserable by the exaggerated opinion they have of themselves and their kind, and that if they could form a humbler and truer notion of human nature they might be kinder to others and kinder to themselves.

His sympathetic regard, then, urged him to humiliate his fellows, in their opinions, their knowledge, their philosophy, and institutions. He put his heart into showing them that their weak and silly nature has never constructed nor imagined anything worth the trouble of attacking and defending very briskly, and that if they knew the crudity and weakness of their greatest works, such as their laws and their empires, they would only fight in fun or in play, like children building sandcastles by the sea.

We must not be astonished or scandalised then, that he depreciated every conception which makes for the honour and glory of mankind, at the expense of their peace. The majesty of the law did not impose on his clear-sighted intellect, and he deplored the fact that the wretched were subjected to so many restraints, of which in most cases, they could not discover the origin or the meaning. All principles appeared equally contestable to him. He had at last come to believe that members of a state would never condemn so many of their kind to infamy, if it were not to taste, by contrast, the pleasure of respectability. Such a view made him prefer bad company to good, after the example of Him who lived among publicans and sinners. But he kept his purity of heart, his gift of sympathy, and the treasure of his pity. I shall not speak here of his actions, which are recounted in La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque. I have no means of knowing whether, as was said of Madame de Mouchy, he was more worthy than his life. Our actions are not altogether our own; they depend less on us than on fortune. They come to us from all sides. We do not always merit them. Our inviolable mind is all we have of our very own. Thence the vanity of the world's judgments. Nevertheless, I can say with pleasure that our leading lights have found Monsieur Coignard an amiable and pleasing person. Indeed one must be a Pharisee not to see in him a beautiful creation of God. So much said I hasten to return to his teachings, which alone matter here.

What he had least of was the bump of veneration. Nature had denied it him, and he took no steps to acquire it. He feared lest, in exalting some, he should cast down others, and his universal charity was extended equally to the humble and the proud. It bore itself to the victims with a greater solicitude, but the executioners themselves seemed to him too wretched to be worthy of hate. He wished them no harm, and merely pitied them that they were wicked.

He had no belief that reprisals, whether spontaneous, or according to law, did anything but add ill to ill. He viewed with complacence neither the vengeance that is private and much to the point, nor the majestic cruelty of the law, and if he happened to smile when the police were being drubbed, it was simply the result of his being but flesh and blood, and naturally a good fellow.

He had, in fact, formed a very simple and sensible notion of evil. He ascribed it altogether to man's functions and natural feelings, without mixing up with it all the prejudices that take on an artificial consistency in the codes. I have said that he formed no system, being little inclined to resolve his difficulties by sophistry. It is evident that, at the outset, a difficulty stopped him short in his meditations on the means of establishing happiness or even peace on earth. He was convinced that man is by nature a vicious animal, and that communities are not abominable simply because he uses all his wits to shape them. Consequently he looked for no benefit from a return to nature. I doubt if he would have changed his opinion if he had lived to read Emile. When he died, Jean-Jacques had not yet stirred the world by eloquence of the sincerest feeling joined to logic or the falsest. He was still but a little vagabond, and unhappily for him, found other Abbés than Monsieur Jérôme Coignard on the benches of Lyons' deserted walks. We may regret that Monsieur Coignard, who knew all sorts of people, never met by chance Madame de Warens' young friend. But it could only have been an amusing incident, a romantic scene. Jean-Jacques would not have found the wisdom of our disillusioned philosopher much to his taste. Nothing could be less like the philosophy of Rousseau than that of Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard. The latter is marked with a kindly irony. It is easy and indulgent. Founded on human infirmity it is solid at bottom. The other is lacking in its gay scepticism and fleeting smile.

Taking its seat on an imaginary base, that of the original virtue of our kind, it finds itself in an awkward position, the comicality of which is not quite evident to itself. It is the doctrine for men who have never laughed. Its embarrassment is seen in its bad humour. It is ungracious. There would be nothing in that but it reinstals man among the monkeys, and then gets unreasonably angry when the monkey is not virtuous. In which it is absurd and cruel. This was well exemplified when statesmen wished to apply the teachings of the Contrat Social to the best of Republics.

Robespierre venerated the memory of Rousseau. He would have held Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard for a bad man. I would not make the remark if Robespierre had been a monster. But, for the learned, there are no monsters. Robespierre was an optimist, who believed in good. Statesmen of this turn do all the evil possible. If one meddles in the government of mankind one must never lose sight of the fact that they are monkeys, and mischievous. Only thus can you have a humane and kindly polity. The folly of the Revolution was to wish to establish virtue on earth. When one would make men good and wise, free, moderate, and liberal, one is led to the fatal desire of killing them all. Robespierre believed in virtue and he brought about the Terror. Marat believed in justice; he demanded two hundred thousand heads. Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard is perhaps, of all the minds of the eighteenth century, the one whose principles were most opposed to the principles of the Revolution. He would not have signed a line of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, because of the excessive and unfair separation it establishes between man and the gorilla.

Last week I had a visit from an anarchist-comrade who honours me with his friendship, and whom I like, because having taken no part as yet in the government of his country, he has kept much of his innocence. He wants to blow up everything merely because he believes men to be naturally good and virtuous. He thinks that, deprived of their goods, and delivered from laws, they would shed their egoism and wickedness. The tenderest optimism has led him to the most savage ferocity. His only misfortune and his only crime, is that he has brought an elysian soul, made for the golden age, into the business of a cook, to which he is condemned. He is a Jean-Jacques, very simple, and very honest, who has never let himself be worried by the sight of a Madame d'Houdetot, nor softened by the refined generosity of a Maréchal de Luxembourg. His candour leaves him at the mercy of his logic, and renders him terrible. He reasons better than a minister, but he starts from an absurd principle. He does not believe in original sin, and yet, for all that, it is a dogma of such solid and stable truth that we have been able to build on it everything we have chosen to.

Why were you not with him in my study, Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard, to make him feel the falsity of his doctrine? You would not have talked to this generous Utopian of the benefits of civilization and of state interests. You knew these to be pleasantries, indecent to vent on the unfortunate. You knew that public order is but public violence, and that each man can judge of the interest he has in it. But you would have drawn a true and terrible picture of that state of nature he wishes to re-establish; you would have shown him in the idyll of his dreams, an infinity of bloody and domestic tragedies, and in his too happy anarchy the beginning of a dreadful tyranny.

And that leads me to define the attitude that Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard at the Petit Bacchus, took in regard to governments and peoples. He respected neither the supports of society nor the vault of Empire. He held as subject to doubt and as matter for dispute the very virtue of the Holy Ampulla, then a principle in the constitution such as universal suffrage is to-day. Such a liberty which would then have scandalised every Frenchman shocks us no longer.

But it would be to misunderstand our philosopher to make excuses for the liveliness of his criticisms on the old order of things.

Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard made no great difference between governments called absolute, and those we call free, and we may well suppose that had he lived in our day he would still have kept a strong dose of that generous discontent of which his heart was full.

Since he dealt in principles, no doubt he would have discovered the vanity of ours. I judge by a remark of his which has come down to us. "In a democracy," said Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard, "a people is subjected to its own will—a very hard slavery. In fact, it has as little knowledge of its own will, and is as opposed to it, as it could be to that of a prince. For the universal will is to be seen scarcely or not at all in the individual, who nevertheless suffers the constraint of all. And universal suffrage is a hoax, like the dove that brought the Sacred Chrism in its beak. Popular government, like monarchy, rests on fiction and lives by expedient. It suffices that the fiction be accepted, and the expedient happy."

This maxim is enough to make us believe that he would have preserved in our day the proud and smiling freedom which was the ornament of his mind in the age of kings. Still, he was never a revolutionary. He had too few illusions for that, and thought that governments should not be destroyed otherwise than by the blind and inexorable forces, slow and irresistible, that carry away all things.

He held that the one people could not be governed two ways at the same time, for this reason, that, nations being indeed bodies, their functions depend on the structure of their parts, and the condition of their organs; that is to say, of the land and the people, and not of the ruling powers, who must be adjusted to a nation as a man's clothes are to his body.

"The misfortune is," added he, "that the people are suited by them like a Harlequin or a Jack-in-the-green. Their coat is ever too loose or too tight, ill-fitting, ridiculous, grubby, covered with stains, and crawling with vermin. We may mend things by shaking it out, cautiously, putting in a stitch here, and when necessary, applying the scissors there, with discretion, so as to avoid being at the expense of another equally bad, but not clinging too obstinately to the old garment when the body has changed its shape by growth."

One sees from this that Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard, was a friend to order and progress, and altogether was not a bad citizen. He incited no man to revolt, and had rather that instituted things were worn and ground-down by incessant friction, than overturned and broken by any great strokes. He was for ever pointing out to his disciples that the harshest laws grew wonderfully smoother in practice, and that the clemency of time is surer than that of man. As for seeing the sprawling Corpus of the law one day re-shaped, he neither hoped it nor wished for it; laying no store by the benefits of hasty legislation. Jacques Tournebroche asked him at times whether he were not afraid that his critical philosophy, as exercised on institutions he himself judged necessary, might not have the inopportune effect of toppling down what he would wish preserved.

"Why, oh best of masters," said his faithful disciple, "why reduce to dust the foundations of all right, of justice, and law, and generally of all civil and military rule, since you acknowledge the necessity of right, justice, armies, magistrates and drill-sergeants?"

"My son," replied Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard, "I have ever remarked that men's prejudices are the source of their ills, just as spiders and scorpions issue from the gloom of cellars and the damp of back-gardens. It is just as well to pass the Turk's head or the broom at random now and then in these dark corners. It is not a bad thing even to give a touch of the pick here and there on the walls of the cellar and garden. It scares the vermin and prepares the way for the ruin that must come."

"I agree willingly," replied the mild Tournebroche; "but when you have destroyed every principle, my master, what will be left?"

And his master replied: "After the destruction of every false principle society will still cohere, because it is founded on necessity, whose laws, older than Saturn, will still prevail when Prometheus shall have dethroned Jupiter."

Prometheus has dethroned Jupiter more than once since the time when Abbé Coignard spoke these words, and the prophecies of the sage have been so literally verified that at the present day one feels doubts, so much does the new resemble the old order, whether the power does not still rest in ancient Jove. There are those who deny the coming of the Titan. There is no sign on his breast, they say, of the wound whence the eagle, the creature of injustice, tore out his heart, the wound that should bleed for ever. He knows nothing of the griefs and insurgence of the exile. This is not the workaday divinity promised, and expected by us. This is the full-fed Jove from the hoary and laughable Olympus. When shall he appear again, the strong friend of men, the fire-kindler, the Titan still nailed to his crag? A terrible noise from out the mountains makes known that he is lifting his lacerated shoulders from off the iniquitous rock, and we can feel, flaming on us, his distant breath.

A stranger to business, Monsieur Coignard inclined to pure speculation and dealt readily in general ideas. This disposition of his, which may have damaged him in the eyes of his contemporaries, gives his reflections some worth and usefulness after a century and a half. We can there learn to know the manners of our own day and disentangle what there is of evil in them.

Injustice, stupidity, and cruelty, do not strike us when they are the common lot. We see them in our ancestors but not in ourselves. Still, since there is no past epoch whatever, when mankind does not seem absurd to us, savage and unjust, it would be a miracle if our age had, by some privilege, cast away every shred of folly, malice, and savagery. The opinions of Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard would help us to make our examination of conscience, if we were not like those idols which have eyes and see not, and ears and hear not. With a little good faith and impartiality we should soon see that our legal codes are still but a hotbed of injustice, that we preserve in our manners the inherited hardness of avarice and pride; that we value wealth alone, and have no respect for labour. Our system of affairs would appear to us what it really is, a wretched and precarious system, condemned by abstract justice if not by that of man, and the ruin of which is beginning. Our rich men would seem to us as foolish as cockchafers continuing to eat the leaves of a tree, while the little beetle on their body devours their entrails. No more would we be lulled to sleep by the false speeches of our statesmen; we should conceive a positive pity for our economists arguing with one another about the cost of the furniture in a burning house. Abbé Coignard's disquisitions reveal to us a prophetic disdain of the great principles of the Revolution and of the rights of the people, on which we have established these hundred years, with every kind of violence and usurpation, an incoherent succession of insurrectionary governments, themselves, innocent of irony, condemning insurrection. If we could begin to smile a little at follies, which once appeared majestic and at times were stained with blood; if we could perceive that our modern prejudices are, like the old, the outcome of something, either ridiculous or hateful; if we could judge one another with a charitable scepticism,[2] quarrels would be less sharp, in the fairest country in the world, and Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard, for one, would have laboured for the universal good.

ANATOLE FRANCE

THE OPINIONS OF
JÉRÔME COIGNARD
COLLECTED BY
JACQUES TOURNEBROCHE
AND PUBLISHED BY
ANATOLE FRANCE

THE OPINIONS OF
JÉRÔME COIGNARD

I
MINISTERS OF STATE

his afternoon, Abbé Jérôme Coignard visited, as he was in the habit of doing, Monsieur Blaizot, the bookseller in the Rue Saint-Jacques, at the sign of the Image de Sainte Catherine.

Perceiving the works of Jean Racine on the shelves he set about carelessly turning over the leaves of one of the volumes.

"This poet," he informed us, "was not lacking in genius, and had he but risen to the writing of his tragedies in Latin verse he would be worthy of praise, more especially in the case of his Athalie, where he shows that he understood politics well enough. In comparison with him Corneille is but an empty ranter. This tragedy of the accession of Joas shows us some of the forces whose play raises empires or casts them down. And one must perforce believe that Monsieur Racine possessed that spirit of finesse which we should hold of more account than all the sublimities of poetry and eloquence, which in reality are but rhetorical tricks serving for the amusement of the vulgar. To raise mankind to the sublime belongs to an inferior order of mind self-deceived on the true nature of Adam's race, which is altogether wretched and deserving of pity. I refrain from calling man a ridiculous animal for the sole consideration that Jesus Christ ransomed him with His precious blood. The nobility of mankind is based only upon this inconceivable mystery, and of themselves human beings, be they mean or great, are but savage and disgusting beasts."

Just as my good master pronounced these final words Monsieur Roman came into the shop.

"Stop! Monsieur l'Abbé," exclaimed this able man. "You forget that those disgusting and ferocious beasts are, in Europe at any rate, subjected to an admirable government, and that states, such as the kingdom of France, and the Dutch Republic, are far removed from the barbarous and rude conditions which offend you."

My good master replaced the volume of Racine on the shelf, and replied to Monsieur Roman with his customary grace:

"I grant you, Monsieur, that in the writings of the philosophers, who treat of these subjects, the doings of public men take on a certain symmetry and perspicuousness, and in your treatise on Monarchy I admire the sequence and connection of ideas. But it is to you alone that I do honour for the fine sentiments that you attribute to the great politicians of times past and present. They had not the wit you endow them with, and these illustrious beings, who appear to have led the world, were themselves but the plaything of nature and chance. They did not rise above human imbecility, and were in fact but brilliant nobodies."

While listening impatiently to this speech Monsieur Roman had seized hold of an old atlas. He began to turn it about with a noise which mingled with the sound of his voice.

"What blindness!" said he. "What! to fail to understand the actions of great statesmen, of great citizens! Are you so ignorant of history that it does not appear obvious to you that a Cæsar, a Richelieu, a Cromwell, moulded his people as a potter his clay? Do you not see that a state goes like a watch in the hands of a watchmaker?"

"I do not see it," replied my good master, "and during the fifty years of my life I have noticed that this country has changed its form of government several times without changing the condition of the people, excepting for an insensible progress that does not depend on the human will. From which I conclude that it is well-nigh immaterial whether we be governed one way or another, and that statesmen are only noteworthy by reason of their coats and their coaches."

"Can you talk like this," replied Monsieur Roman, "on the day following the death of a statesman who took such a prominent part in affairs, and who, after long disgrace, dies at the moment he has regained power and honour? By the tumult round his bier you may judge the result of his work. This result lasts after him."

"Monsieur," answered my good master, "this statesman was an honest man, laborious and painstaking, and it might be said of him as of Monsieur Vauban, that he was too well-bred to affect the appearance of it, for he never took pains to please any one. I would praise him before all, for having improved where others in the same business do but deteriorate. He possessed his soul and had a glowing sense of the greatness of his country. He was praiseworthy also, in that he carried easily on those broad shoulders the spites of hucksters and rufflers. Even his enemies accord him a concealed approval. But what big things did he ever do, my good sir, and why does he seem to you anything but the sport of the winds which blew round him? The Jesuits whom he drove away, have come back; the little religious war he kindled to amuse the people has gone out, leaving next day but the stinking shell of a bad firework. I grant you he was clever in diverting opinion, or rather, in deflecting it. His party, which was but a party of opportunism and expediency, did not wait for his death to change its name and its chief without changing its doctrine. His cabal remained faithful to its chief and to itself in continuing to submit to circumstances. Is there anything astonishingly great about that?"

"There is certainly something admirable," replied Monsieur Roman. "Had he only withdrawn the art of government from the clouds of metaphysics to lead it back to reality, he should have all my praise. His party, you say, was one of opportunism and expediency. But to excel in human affairs what needs one but to seize the happy moment and have recourse to utilitarian methods? This is what he did, or, at least, this is what he would have done, if the chicken-hearted instability of his friends and the false effrontery of his foes had left him any peace. But he wore himself out in the vain endeavour to placate the latter and steady the former. Time and men, those necessary tools, both were wanting to establish his beneficent rule. At least he framed admirable plans for home politics. And you ought not to forget that he endowed his country with vast and fertile possessions abroad. We owe him all the more gratitude in that he made these successful conquests alone and in spite of the parliament from which he drew his powers."

"Monsieur," answered my good master, "he showed energy and skill in colonial affairs, but not perhaps much more than a plain man displays in buying a piece of land. And what is not to my taste in all these over-sea affairs is the way the Europeans deal with the peoples of Africa and America. White men, when they come to grips with black and yellow races find themselves forced to exterminate them. One can only conquer the savage by a higher form of barbarity. Here is the extreme to which all foreign enterprises tend. I am not denying that the Spaniards, the Dutch, and the English have drawn profit from them. But, ordinarily speaking, they launch themselves haphazard, and quite recklessly on these big and cruel undertakings.

"What is the wisdom and the will of one man in enterprises affecting commerce, agriculture, and navigation, which necessarily depend on an immense number of units? The part played by a statesman in such affairs is a very small one, and if it seems marked to us it is because our minds, turning to mythology, too willingly give a name and a personality to all the secret workings of nature.

"What did he discover in the matter of colonisation that was not already known to the Phœnicians in the time of Cadmus?"

At these words Monsieur Roman let fall his atlas, which the bookseller quietly picked up.

"I discover to my sorrow, Monsieur l'Abbé," said he, "that you are a sophist. For that he must be who can thus smother the colonial enterprises of the dead and gone minister with Cadmus and the Phœnicians. You are unable to deny that these undertakings were his work and you have made this pitiable introduction of Cadmus to set us at loggerheads."

"Monsieur," said the Abbé, "let us leave Cadmus alone if he annoys you. I merely wish to say that a statesman plays but a small part in his own works, and he deserves neither the glory nor the shame of them. I mean to say that, if, in this wretched comedy of life, princes appear to rule and people to obey, it is but a game, an empty show; and that really they are, both one and the other, directed by an unseen force."

II
SAINT ABRAHAM

ne summer night, while the gnats danced round the lamp of the Petit Bacchus, Abbé Coignard was taking the air in the porch of St. Benoît-le-Bétourné. There he was meditating, as his habit was, when Catherine came up and seated herself by him on the stone bench. My good master was ever inclined to praise God in his works. He took pleasure in the contemplation of this handsome girl, and as he had an agreeable and graceful wit he held her in pleasant talk. He paid tribute not only to the charm of her tongue, but to that of her neck and the rest of her person, and to the fact that she smiled no less with all the dimplement and lines of her pretty body than with lips and cheeks; in such sort that one submitted with impatience to drapery disguising the rest of the smile.

"Since we must needs all sin in this world and no one, without pride, may believe himself infallible, it is when with you, Mademoiselle, by preference, if such were your pleasure, that I would the Divine Grace failed me. I should gain thereby two valuable advantages, to wit: firstly, to sin with rare delight and unusual pleasure; secondly, to find thereafter an excuse in the strength of your fascination; for it is doubtless written in the Judgment Books that your charms are irresistible. That should be taken into consideration. There are imprudent people who sin with women ugly and ill-made. These unhappy mortals, setting about it in this way, run great risk of the loss of their souls, for they sin for sinning's sake, and their onerous ill-doing is full of evil intent. Whereas, so fair a skin as yours, Catherine, is an excuse in the eyes of the Almighty. Your charms wonderfully alleviate the fault, which becomes pardonable, being involuntary. In fact, to tell you the plain truth, Mademoiselle, when I am near you Divine Grace abandons me at one stroke of the wing. At this moment that I am talking to you, it is but as a little white spot above those roofs where, on the tiles, the cats make love with mad cries and childish lamentation, the while the moon is perched unblushingly on a chimneypot. What I see of your person, Catherine, appeals to me; but what I do not see appeals to me still more."

At these words she lowered her gaze on her lap; then turned its liquid appeal on the Abbé. And in a very sweet voice she said:

"As you wish me well, Monsieur Jérôme, do promise to grant me the favour I am going to ask you, and for which I shall be so grateful."

My good master promised. Who would not have done as much in his place?

Catherine then said vivaciously:

"You know, Monsieur l'Abbé, that Abbé La Perruque, the vicaire of St. Benoît, accuses brother Ange of having stolen his donkey, and he has carried his complaint to the ecclesiastical court. Now, nothing could be more untrue. The good brother had borrowed the donkey to take some relics to various villages. The donkey was lost on the way. The relics were found. That is the essential point, says brother Ange. But Abbé La Perruque reclaims his donkey, and won't listen to anything else. He is going to put the little brother in the Archbishop's prison. You alone can soften his anger and induce him to withdraw his complaint."

"But, Mademoiselle," said Abbé Coignard, "I have neither the power nor the inclination to do so."

"Oh!" resumed Catherine, sliding near to him and looking at him with a great pretence of tenderness, "I shall be very unhappy if I cannot succeed in giving you the inclination. Whilst as to the power, you have it, Monsieur Jérôme; you have it! And nothing would be easier for you than to save the little brother. You have only to give Monsieur La Perruque eight sermons for Lent and four for Advent. You write sermons so well that it must be a real pleasure to you to write them. Compose these twelve sermons, Monsieur Jérôme; compose them at once. I will come and fetch them myself from your stall at the Innocents. Monsieur La Perruque, who thinks a great deal of your worth and your knowledge, reckons that twelve of your sermons are as good as a donkey. As soon as he has the dozen he will withdraw his complaint. He has said so. What are twelve sermons, Monsieur Jérôme? I promise to write Amen at the foot of the last one. I have your promise?" she added, putting her arms round his neck.

"As for that," Monsieur Coignard said roughly, disengaging the pretty hands clasped on his shoulder, "I refuse flatly. Promises made to pretty girls are but skin deep, and it is no sin to retract them. Don't count on me, my beauty, to drag your bearded gallant from the hands of the ecclesiastical court! Should I write a sermon, or two, or twelve, they would be directed against the bad monks who are the shame of the Church, and are as vermin clinging to the robe of St. Peter. This brother Ange is a rascal. He gives good women to touch, as relics, some old mutton or pork bone which he has gnawed himself with disgusting greediness. I wager he bore on Monsieur La Perruque's donkey a feather of the Angel Gabriel, a ray from the wise men's star, and in a little phial a trifle of the sound of the bells that rang in the belfry of Solomon's temple. He is a dunce, he is a liar, and you love him. There are three reasons why I should dislike him. I leave you to judge, Mademoiselle, which of the three is the strongest. Perchance it may well be the least honest; for in truth I was, a moment ago, drawn to you with a violence neither befitting my age nor my condition. But make no mistake; I resent extremely the insults offered by your cowled rascal to the Church of our Saviour Jesus Christ, of which I am a very unworthy member. And this capuchin's example fills me with such disgust that I am possessed by a sudden longing to meditate on some beautiful passage of St. John Chrysostom, instead of sitting knee to knee with you, Mademoiselle, as I have been doing for the last quarter of an hour. For the desire of the sinner is short-lived and the glory of God is everlasting. I have never held an exaggerated notion of sins of the flesh. I think in justice to me that must be allowed.

"I am not scared like Monsieur Nicodème, for example, at such a little thing as taking one's pleasure with a pretty girl. But what I cannot endure is the baseness of soul, the hypocrisy, the lies, and the crass ignorance, which make your brother Ange an accomplished monk. From your intercourse with him, Mademoiselle, you get a habit of crapulence which drags you much below your position, which is that of a courtesan. I know the shame and the misery of it; but it is a far superior state to that of a monk. This rascal dishonours you even as he dishonours the gutters of the Rue St. Jacques by dipping his feet into them. Think of all the virtues with which you might adorn yourself, Mademoiselle, in your precarious walk of life, and one alone of which might one day open Paradise to you, if you were not subjugated and enslaved to this unclean beast.

"Even while permitting yourself to pick up here and there what must, after all, be bestowed on you as tokens of gratitude, you, Catherine, could blossom forth in faith, hope, and charity, love the poverty-stricken, and visit the sick. You could be charitable and compassionate; and find pure delight in the sight of the skies, the waters, the woods, and the fields. Of a morning, on opening your window, you could praise God while listening to the song of the birds. On days of pilgrimage you might climb the hill of St. Valérien, and there, beneath the Calvary, softly bewail your lost innocence. You could act in such a way that He who alone reads our hearts would say: 'Catherine is my creature, and I know her by the glimmerings of a clear light not altogether extinguished in her.'"

Catherine interrupted him:

"But Abbé," she said drily, "you are spinning me a sermon."

"Did you not ask me for a dozen?" he replied.

She began to be angry:

"Take care Abbé. It rests with you if we are to be friends or enemies. Will you compose the twelve sermons? Think well before you answer."

"Mademoiselle," said Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard, "I have done blameworthy things in my life, but not after reflection."

"You will not? Quite certain? One—two—You refuse? Abbé, I shall take my revenge."

For some time she sulked, mute and bad-tempered, on the bench. Then all at once she started crying:

"Have done, Monsieur l'Abbé! Have done! At your age, and a man of your cloth to plague me thus! Fie Monsieur l'Abbé! Fie! How shameful, Monsieur l'Abbé!"

As she was squealing at her shrillest, the Abbé saw Mademoiselle Lecoeur, of the draper's shop at the sign of the Trois Pucelles, pass through the porch. She was going thus late to confess to the third vicaire of St. Benoît, and turned away her head in sign of her huge disgust.

He owned to himself that Catherine's revenge was prompt and sure, for Mademoiselle Lecoeur's sense of virtue, fortified by age, had become so vigorous, that she was down upon every impropriety of the parish, and seven times a day stabbed with the point of her tongue the carnal sinners of the Rue St. Jacques.

But Catherine herself did not know how complete was her revenge. She had seen Mademoiselle Lecoeur come into the market-place, but she had not seen my father who was following closely.

He was coming with me to look for the Abbé in the porch, and take him to the Petit Bacchus. My father had a liking for Catherine. Nothing vexed him more than to see her close beset by gallants. He had no illusions about her conduct. But as he said, knowing and seeing are two different things. Now Catherine's cries had reached his ears quite clearly. He was hasty and incapable of self-restraint. I was much afraid that his wrath would burst forth in coarse suggestion or savage threats. I already saw him drawing his larding-pin, which he wore on his apron-string like an honourable weapon, for he gloried in his art and in his spit.

My fears were but half-justified. The occasion surprised him, but not unpleasantly, when Catherine showed virtue, and satisfaction overcame anger in his mind.

He accosted my good master fairly civilly and said with mock severity:

"Monsieur Coignard, all priests who cultivate the society of courtesans lose thereby their virtue and their good name. And rightly so, even if no pleasure has rewarded their dishonour."

Catherine left the spot with a fine air of offended modesty, and my excellent master answered my father with a sweet and smiling eloquence:

"That maxim is excellent, Monsieur Léonard; still one should not apply it without discretion, nor stick it on to everything as the lame cutler labels all his knives 'sixpence.' I will not inquire why I merited its application a moment ago. Will it not do if I own that I merited it?

"It is not seemly to talk of oneself and it would be too great a shock to my modesty to be obliged to discourse on what is personal to me. I would rather set up the case of the venerable Robert d'Arbrissel who acquired merit from frequenting courtesans. One might also quote St. Abraham, the anchorite of Syria, who did not fear to enter a house of ill-fame."

"What St. Abraham was that?" asked my father, whose thoughts were all put to rout.

"Let us sit down outside your door," said my good master, "bring a jug of wine, and I will tell you the story of this great saint as it was recorded for us by St. Ephraim himself."

My father made a gesture of ready assent. We all three sat down under the eaves, and my good master spoke as follows:

"St. Abraham, being already old, lived alone in the desert in a little hut, when his brother died leaving a daughter of great beauty, named Mary. Assured that the life he led would be excellent for his niece, Abraham had built for her a little cell near his own, whence he taught her by means of a small window that he had had pierced.

"He took care that she fasted, watched, and sang psalms. But a monk, whom we may suppose to have been a false monk, drew nigh Mary while the holy man Abraham was meditating on the Scriptures, and led the young girl into sin; who thus said to herself:

"'It were far better, since I am dead to God, to go into a country where I am known to none.'

"Leaving her cell she betook herself to a neighbouring town called Edessa, where there were delightful gardens and cool fountains; it is still to this day the pleasantest of the towns of Syria. Meanwhile, the holy man Abraham remained plunged in profound meditation. His niece had already been gone some days when, opening her little window, he asked:

"'Mary, why do you no longer sing the psalms you sang so well?' And receiving no reply he suspected the truth and cried: 'A cruel wolf has carried off my ewe lamb from me!'

"He lived in sorrow for two years, after which he learnt that his niece was leading a bad life. Acting with discretion, he begged one of his friends to go to the town and find out what had become of her. The friend's report was, that, in very deed, Mary was leading a bad life. At this news the holy man begged his friend to lend him a riding-dress and bring him a horse, and putting on his head a big hat which hid his face, so as not to be recognised, he presented himself at the hostelry where they had told him his niece was lodged. He looked on all sides to see if he could not see her, but, as she did not appear, he said to the innkeeper, feigning to smile:

"'Mine host, they tell me you have a pretty girl here. Can I not see her?'

"The innkeeper, an obliging man, had her called and Mary appeared in a costume, which, according to the words of St. Ephraim himself, sufficed to reveal her mode of life. The holy man was pierced with sorrow.

"He affected gaiety nevertheless, and ordered a good meal. Mary was in a sober mood that day. In giving pleasure one does not always taste it, and the sight of this old man whom she did not recognise, for he had not removed his hat, in no way inclined her to joyousness. The innkeeper cried shame upon her for such naughty behaviour so opposed to the duties of her profession, but she said with a sigh: 'Would to God that I had died three years ago!'

"The holy man Abraham was careful to adopt the language, as he had taken the coat, of a gallant cavalier:

"'My child,' said he, 'I have come here not to bewail your sins but to partake of your affection.'

"But when the innkeeper left him alone with Mary he feigned no more, but raising his hat, he said weeping:

"'Mary, my child, do you not know me? Am I not that Abraham who has been a father to you?'

"He took her by the hand and all the night long he exhorted her to repentance and penance. Above all he was careful not to drive her to despair. He repeated incessantly 'My child, it is only God who is without sin.'

"Mary was naturally a sweet soul. She consented to go back to him. At daybreak they set out. She would have taken her robes and jewels. But the holy man made her understand that it would be more fitting to leave them. He mounted her on his horse and led her back to their cells, where they both took up their past life. Only this time the good man took care that Mary's room did not communicate with the outside world, and that there was no going out without passing through the room that he himself occupied. By which means and by the grace of God, he kept his ewe lamb. Such is the history of St. Abraham," said my good master, drinking his cup of wine.

"It is quite beautiful," said my father, "and the misfortunes of poor Mary have brought tears to my eyes."

III
MINISTERS OF STATE (concluded)

hat same day my good master and I were exceedingly surprised to meet at Monsieur Blaizot's at the sign of the Image de Sainte Catherine, a little thin, yellow man, who was no other than the celebrated pamphleteer, Jean Hibou.... We had every reason to believe that he was in the Bastille, where he usually was. And if we had no hesitation in recognising him it was because his face still showed traces of the darkness and mildew of the dungeon. He was turning over with a trembling hand, under the bookseller's anxious eye, some political writings newly come from Holland. Abbé Jérôme Coignard doffed his hat with a natural grace which would have been more effective if the hat had not been staved in the night before in a scuffle, that need not concern us, in the arbour at the Petit Bacchus.

Abbé Coignard having shown his pleasure at meeting so able a man again; Monsieur Jean Hibou replied, "It will not be for long. I am leaving this country where I am unable to live. I cannot breathe the corrupted air of this town any longer. In a month's time I shall be settled in Holland. It is cruel to have to put up with Fleury after Dubois, and I am too virtuous to be a Frenchman. We are governed on bad principles, by fools and rogues. I cannot endure it."

"Truly," said my excellent master, "public affairs are badly managed and there are many thieves in office. Power is divided between fools and knaves, and should I ever write on the affairs of the day I should make a small book on the lines of the Apokolokyntosis of Seneca the Philosopher, or of our own Satire Ménippée, which is fairly pungent. This light and pleasant style suits the subject better than the morose stiltedness of a Tacitus or the patient seriousness of a de Thou. I would make copies of this lampoon which would be passed about under the rose, and it should display a philosophical disdain for mankind. The majority of the people in office would be extremely annoyed, but I think some would taste a secret pleasure in seeing themselves covered with shame. I judge so from what I heard said by a lady of good birth whose acquaintance I made at Séez during the time when I was the Bishop's librarian. She was growing old, but still thrilled to lascivious memories. For I must tell you that for twenty years she had been the most notorious trollop in Normandy. And when I asked her what had given her the most lively pleasure in life, she answered me: 'To know myself dishonoured.'

"From this reply I gathered that she had some nicety of feeling. I would give as much credit to certain of our ministers, and if ever I write against them it would be to incite them to hug their infamy and viciousness.

"But why postpone the execution of so fine a project? I will ask Monsieur Blaizot at once for half a dozen sheets of paper and set about writing the first chapter of the new Ménippée."

He was already reaching out his hand to the astonished Monsieur Blaizot, when Monsieur Jean Hibou stopped him quickly:

"Keep this splendid scheme for Holland, Monsieur l'Abbé," he said, "and come with me to Amsterdam, where I will provide you with the means of livelihood at some coffee-house or bagnio. There you will be free, and of nights you shall write your Ménippée at one end of the table, whilst I, at the other, am busy with my lampoons. They shall be full charged with virus, and who knows but what we may bring about a change in the affairs of the kingdom? Pamphleteers play more part than is thought in the downfall of empires. They prepare the catastrophe which is consummated by a popular revolt."

"What a triumph," he added, in a voice which whistled through his blackened teeth, carious with the bitter humours of his mouth, "what joy if I effected the destruction of one of those ministers, who, like cowards, shut me in the Bastille! Will you not take a share in such good work, Monsieur l'Abbé?"

"By no means," replied my good master, "I should be very sorry to change anything in the system of the State, and if I thought that my Apokolokyntosis or Ménippée could have such a result, I would never write it."

"What!" exclaimed the disappointed pamphleteer, "didn't you tell me but a moment ago, that the present government was wicked?"

"No doubt," said Monsieur l'Abbé, "but I merely imitate the wisdom of that old crone of Syracuse who, at the time when Dionysius treated his people most execrably, went to the temple every day to pray to the gods for the life of the tyrant. Told of this singular piety, Dionysius wished to know the reason for it. He sent for the good woman, and questioned her:

"She replied, 'I am no longer young and have lived under many tyrants, and I have always observed that a bad one was succeeded by a worse. You are the most detestable that I have yet seen. From which I conclude that your successor will be, if possible, more wicked than yourself, and I pray the gods to give him to us as late as may be.'

"That old woman was very sensible, and I think as she did, Monsieur Jean Hibou, that sheep do well to allow themselves to be sheared by their old shepherd, for fear a younger one should come along, who would but shear them closer."

Monsieur Jean Hibou's gall, stirred by this discourse, spent itself in bitter words:

"What cowardly talk! What shameful sentiments! Oh! Monsieur l'Abbé, what little love you bear to the public good, and how ill you deserve the oak-leaf crown promised by the poets to civic heroes. You should have been born amongst the Turks, amongst the Tartars, slave to a Genghis Khan or a Bajazet, rather than in Europe where principles of public right are taught, and divine philosophy. What! you endure bad government nor even wish to alter it! Such sentiments would be punished in a republic of my making by exile or banishment at least. Yes, Monsieur l'Abbé, in the constitution that I meditate, which is to be formulated on the maxims of antiquity, I shall add a clause for the punishment of such bad citizens as you, and I shall proclaim penalties against whomsoever can improve his State but does not do so."

"Eh! eh!" laughed the Abbé, "that is not the way to make me wish to live in your Salentum. What you have let me know of it leads me to think that there would be much constraint there."

Monsieur Jean Hibou replied sententiously: "You would only be constrained to be virtuous."

"Ah, how right that old woman was, and what reason we have to fear a Jean Hibou after a Dubois and a Fleury! What you offer me, my good sir, is a government of violence and hypocrisy, and to hasten this promised good you undertake to make me a keeper of a coffee-house or a bagnio on a canal in Amsterdam! Thank you for nothing! I stick to the Rue St. Jacques, where we drink cool claret and grumble at the ministers. Do you think you can seduce me by the vision of a government of honest men that so hedges in all liberties that no one can enjoy them?"

"Monsieur l'Abbé," said Jean Hibou, getting heated, "is it fair to attack a system of State conceived by me in the Bastille, and undisclosed to you?"

"Sir," retorted my excellent master, "I am suspicious of governments born of cabals and rebellions. To be in opposition is a very bad school of government, and wary politicians, who push themselves into office by this means, take great care to govern by rules entirely opposed to those they formerly taught. You need not go to China to see that! They are guided by the same necessities which lay on their predecessors. And they bring nothing new to the task but their inexperience. Which is one reason, sir, which makes me foretell that a new government would be more vexatious than the one it replaces, without being very different. Have we not already put it to the proof?"

"So," said Monsieur Jean Hibou, "you hold by abuses?"

"Such is the case," answered my good master. "Governments are like wines that grow crusted and mellow with age. The roughest lose at length something of their crudity. I fear an empire in the greenness of its youth. I fear the rawness of a republic, and since we must be ill-governed I prefer princes and statesmen in whom the first ardour has cooled off."

Monsieur Jean Hibou, crushing his hat on his nose, bade us good-bye with irritation in his voice.

As soon as he was gone Monsieur Blaizot looked up over his ledgers, and settling his spectacles, said to my excellent master:

"I have been a bookseller for forty years at the sign of the Image de Sainte Catherine, and it is always a fresh pleasure to me to listen to the converse of the learned men who meet in my shop. But I do not greatly care for discussions on public affairs. People get heated, and quarrel to no purpose."

"Moreover," said my good master, "in this subject there is little solid principle."

"There is, at least, one that no man will do well to contest," replied Monsieur Blaizot the bookseller, "and that is that he must be a bad Christian and a bad Frenchman who would deny the virtue of the holy Ampulla of Rheims, by whose unction our kings are made vicars of Jesus Christ for the kingdom of France. Here is the basis of monarchy, which shall never be shaken."

IV
THE AFFAIR OF THE MISSISSIPPI

t is well known that during the year 1722 the Parliament of Paris sat in judgment on the Mississippi affair, in which were implicated, along with the directors of the Company, a minister of State, secretary to the King, and many subinspectors of provinces. The Company was accused of having corrupted the officers of the King and his dominions, who had in reality stripped it with the greed usual to people in office under weak governments. And it is certain that at this period all the springs of government were slackened and warped.

At one of the sittings of this memorable action, Madame de la Morangère, wife of one of the directors of the Mississippi Company, was called before the members of Parliament in the upper chamber. She gave evidence that a Monsieur Lescot, secretary to the Lieutenant-Criminel,[3] having sent for her to come in secret to the Châtelet, made her understand that it lay with her entirely to save her husband, who was a fine man and of comely aspect. He said to her, nearly in these terms: "Madame, what vexes the true friends of the King in this business is that the Jansenists are not implicated in it. Jansenists are enemies to the Crown as well as to religion. Help us, Madame, to convict one of them and we will acknowledge the service to the State by giving you back your husband with all his possessions."

When Madame de la Morangère had reported this conversation, which was not intended for the public, the President of the Parliament was obliged to call Monsieur Lescot to the upper chamber, who at first tried to deny it. But Madame de la Morangère had beautiful ingenuous eyes, whose gaze he could not meet. He grew troubled and was confounded. He was a big, villainous-looking, red-haired man like Judas Iscariot. This affair, noticed by the Press, became the talk of Paris. It was spoken of in the salons, on the public walks, at the barbers', and in the coffee-houses. Everywhere Madame de la Morangère gained as much sympathy as Lescot caused disgust.

Public curiosity was still rife when I accompanied my good master Monsieur Jérôme Coignard to Monsieur Blaizot's, who, as you know, is a bookseller in the Rue St. Jacques, at the sign of the Image de Sainte Catherine. In the shop we found Monsieur Gentil, private secretary to one of the ministers of State, whose face was hidden in a book newly come from Holland, and the celebrated Monsieur Roman, who has treated of systems of State in various estimable works. Old Monsieur Blaizot was reading his paper behind the counter.

Monsieur Jérôme Coignard, always avid of news, slid up to him to glean what he could across his shoulder. This man, learned and of so rare a genius, owned nothing of the goods of this world, and when he had drunk his pint at the Petit Bacchus he had not a halfpenny left in his pockets to buy a news-sheet. Having read the depositions of Madame de la Morangère over Monsieur Blaizot's shoulder, he cried out that it was well, and that it pleased him to see wickedness topple from its high seat under the weak hand of woman, as in wonderful examples witnessed to in Holy Writ.

"This lady," he added, "although allied with public men of whom I do not approve, may be likened unto those strong women lauded in the Book of Kings. She pleases by an uncommon mixture of straightforwardness and finesse, and I applaud her telling victory."

Monsieur Roman interrupted him:

"Take care, Monsieur l'Abbé," said he, stretching out his arm, "take care how you look at this affair from an individual and personal point of view, without troubling yourself as you should do with the public interests that are bound up in it. There are reasons of State in all this, and it is clear that this supreme reason demanded that Madame de la Morangère should not speak, or that her words should not find credence."

Monsieur Gentil lifted his nose from his book. "The importance of this incident," said he, "has been much exaggerated."

"Ah, Mr. Secretary," retorted Monsieur Roman, "we cannot believe that an incident that will lose you your place can be without importance. For you will fall by it, sir, you and your master. For my part, I am full of regrets. But what consoles me for the fall of the Ministry now reeling under the shock is that they were powerless to prevent it."

Monsieur Gentil made us understand by a slight wink that on this point he saw eye to eye with Monsieur Roman.

The latter continued:

"The State is like the human body—all the functions it accomplishes are not noble. Some there are indeed that one must needs hide, I may say the most necessary."

"Ah, Monsieur," said the Abbé, "was it then necessary that Monsieur Lescot should so behave to the unfortunate wife of a prisoner? It was infamous!"

"Oh," said Monsieur Roman, "it was infamous when it was known. Before, it was of no importance. If you wish to enjoy the benefit of being governed, which alone raises mankind above the animals, you must leave, to those who govern, the means of exercising power, and the first of these means is secrecy. That is why popular government, which is the least secret of all, is also the weakest. Do you then think, Monsieur l'Abbé, that you can govern men by virtue? That is a wild dream!"

"I do not think so," replied my good master, "I have noticed in the varied chances of my life that men are evil beasts; one can only control them by force and cunning. But one must be measured and not offend the small amount of good tendencies which mingles with the evil instincts in their minds. For after all, Monsieur, man, all cowardly, stupid, cruel, as he is was made in God's image, and there remain to him still certain features of his primal shape. A government drawn from the common stock of average honesty, and that yet scandalises the people, should be deposed."

"Speak lower, Monsieur l'Abbé," said the Secretary.

"The King can do no wrong," said Monsieur Roman, "and your maxims are seditious, Monsieur l'Abbé. You deserve, you and your like, not to be governed at all."

"Oh!" said my good master, "if, as you give us to understand, government consists in swindling, violence, and exactions of all kinds, there is not much fear that this threat will take effect, and we shall find, for long enough yet, ministers of State and governors of provinces to carry on our affairs. Only I should much like to see others in place of these. The new-comers could not be worse than the old, and who knows but that they may be even slightly better?"

"Take care!" said Monsieur Roman, "take care! What is admirable in a state, is succession and continuity, and if there is no perfect state in this world, it is because, according to my idea, the flood in the time of Noah disordered the transmission of crowns. It is a confusion we have not quite set straight to this day."

"Monsieur," retorted my good master, "you are amusing with your theories. The history of the world is full of revolutions. One sees but civil wars, tumults, and seditions, caused by the wickedness of princes, and I know not which to admire the most nowadays, the impudence of the rulers, or the patience of the people."

The secretary complained then that Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard overlooked the benefits of royalty, and Monsieur Blaizot represented to us that it was not fitting to contend about public matters in a bookseller's shop.

When we were outside, I pulled my good master by the sleeve.

"Monsieur l'Abbé," I said, "have you then forgotten the old woman of Syracuse, that you now want to change the tyrant?"

"Tournebroche, my son," answered he, "I acknowledge with a good grace that I have fallen into a contradiction. But this ambiguity, that you justly point out in my words, is not as evil as that called antinomy by the philosophers. Charron, in his book on 'Wisdom,' affirms that antinomies exist which cannot be resolved. For my part, I am no sooner plunged in meditations of the kind than I see in my mind's eye half a dozen of these she-devils take each other by the nose and make pretence to tear each other's eyes out, and one sees at once that one would never come to the end of reconciling these obstinate shrews. I lose all hope of making them agree, and it is their fault if I have not much advanced metaphysics. But in the present case the contradiction, my son, is merely apparent. My reason always sides with the old woman of Syracuse. I think to-day what I thought yesterday. Only I have let my feelings run away with me and have yielded to passion as do the vulgar."

V
EASTER EGGS

y father kept a cook-shop in the Rue St. Jacques opposite to St. Benoît-le-Bétourné. I do not pretend that he had any affection for Lent; the sentiment would not have been natural in a cook. But he observed the fasts and days of abstinence like the good Christian that he was. For lack of money to buy a dispensation from the Archbishop he supped off haddock on fast-days, with his wife, his son, his dog, and his usual guests, of whom the most assiduous was my good master, Monsieur l'Abbé Jérôme Coignard. My pious mother would not have allowed Miraut, our watchdog, to gnaw a bone on Good Friday. That day she put neither meat nor fat in the poor animal's mess. In vain did Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard represent to her that this was doing the wrong thing, and that in all justice, Miraut, who had no share in the sacred mysteries of redemption, ought not to suffer in his allowance.

"My good woman," said this great man, "it is fitting, that we, as members of the Church, should sup off haddock; but there is a certain superstition, impiety, temerity—nay even sacrilege—to associate a dog, as you do, with these mortifications of the flesh, made infinitely precious by the interest God Himself takes in them, and which that interest apart would be contemptible and ridiculous. It is an abuse, which your simplicity renders innocent, but which would be criminal in a Divine, or even in a judiciously minded Christian. Such a practice, my good lady, leads straight to the most shocking heresy. It tends to no less than the upholding of the theory that Jesus Christ died for dogs even as for the sons of Adam. And nothing is more contrary to the Scriptures."

"That may be," replied my mother. "But if Miraut ate meat on Good Friday I should fancy to myself that he was a Jew, and have a horror of him. Is that committing a sin, Monsieur l'Abbé?"

My excellent master answered gently, taking a drink of wine:

"Ah dear creature, without deciding at this moment if you sin or if you do not, I can tell you for a certainty that there is no malice in you, and I believe more surely in your eternal salvation than in that of five or six bishops and cardinals of my acquaintance, who have nevertheless written fine treatises on the canon law."

Miraut swallowed his mess sniffing at it, as if he did not like it, and my father went off with Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard to take a stroll to the Petit Bacchus.

Thus passed the holy time of Lent at the Sign of the Reine Pédauque. But from early Easter morn, when the bells of St. Benoît-le-Bétourné announced the joyful Resurrection, my father spitted chickens, ducks, and pigeons by the dozen, and Miraut, in the corner by the glowing fire-place, sniffed the good smell of fat, wagging his tail with grave and pensive joy. Old, tired, and nearly blind, he still relished the joys of this life, whose ills he accepted with a resignation which made them less unkind for him. He was a sage, and I am not surprised that my mother associated such a reasonable creature in her good works.

Having heard High Mass we dined in the savoury-smelling shop. My father brought to this repast a pious joy. He had commonly, as companions, a few attorneys' clerks, and my good master Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard. This year of grace 1725, at Easter-tide, I remember, my good master brought Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, whom he had dragged from a loft in the Rue des Maçons, where this learned man wrote, day and night, news of the republic of letters for Dutch publishers. On the table a mound of red eggs rose from a wire basket. And when Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard had said the Benedicite, these eggs formed the topic of conversation.

"One reads in Ælius Lampridus," said Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, "that a hen owned by the father of Alexander Severus laid a red egg on the birthday of that child destined to Empire."

"This Lampridus, who had not much intelligence," said my good master, "had better have left such a tale to the old wives who have spread it abroad. You have too much good sense, sir, to deduce from this ridiculous fable the Christian custom of serving red eggs on Easter Day?"

"I do not indeed believe," replied Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, "that this usage is derived from the egg of Alexander Severus. The only conclusion that I wish to draw from the fact, as reported by Lampridus, is that a red egg, among the heathen, presaged supreme power. For the rest," he added, "that egg must have been reddened in some manner, for hens do not lay red eggs."

"Excuse me," said my mother, who was standing by the fire-place decorating the dishes, "in my childhood I saw a black hen who laid eggs shading into brown; that is why I am ready to believe that there are hens whose eggs are red, or of a colour approaching red, as for instance brick-colour."

"That is quite possible," said my good master, "and Nature is more diverse and varied in her productions than we commonly believe. There are oddities of every sort in the generating of animals, and one sees in natural-history collections far stranger monsters than a red egg."

"For instance, they keep a calf with five feet, and a child with two heads, in the King's collection," said Monsieur Nicolas Cerise.

"They can better that at Auneau, near Chartres," said my mother, putting on the table, as she spoke, a dozen strings of sausages and cabbage, whence a pleasing odour rose up to the joists of the ceiling. "I saw there, gentlemen, a new-born infant with goosefeet and a serpent's head. The midwife who received it got such a shock that she threw it in the fire."

"Be careful," said Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard, "be careful, for man is born of woman to serve God, and it is unimaginable that he could serve Him with a serpent's head, and it follows therefore that there are no children of the kind, and that your midwife was dreaming or making fun of you."

"Monsieur l'Abbé," said Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, with a slight smile. "You have seen as I have, in the King's collection, a bi-sexual fœtus with four legs, preserved in a jar filled with spirits of wine, and in another jar, a child without a head and with an eye over the navel. Could these monsters serve God any better than the child with the serpent's head our hostess speaks of? And what is one to say of those who have two heads, so that one does not know whether they have two souls? Acknowledge, Monsieur l'Abbé, that nature, while amusing herself with such cruel sport, puzzles the theologian no little?"

My good master had already opened his mouth to speak, and doubtless he would have entirely demolished the objection of Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, had not my mother, whom nothing could stop when she wanted to speak anticipated him by saying very loudly that the child at Auneau was no human creature, and it was the devil himself who had fathered it on a baker's wife. "And the proof is," she added, "that no one thought of having it baptized, and that it was buried in a napkin at the bottom of the enclosed garden. If it had been a human being it would have been buried in consecrated ground. When the devil fathers a child it takes the shape of an animal."

"My good woman," replied Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard, "it is marvellous that a villager should know more of the devil than a Doctor of Divinity. I admire the way you interest yourself in the matron of Auneau, to the extent of knowing if such fruit of a woman is one with mankind, redeemed by the blood of God. Believe me, these devilries are but unclean fancies which you should purge from your mind. It is not written in the Fathers that the devil fathers children on poor girls. All these tales of satanic fornication are disgusting imaginings, and it is a disgrace that the Jesuits and Dominicans have written treatises on them."

"You speak well, Abbé," said Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, impaling a sausage from the dish. "But you give no answer to what I said, that the children born without heads are far from being adapted to the destiny of mankind, which, the Church tells us, is to know God and to serve Him and to love Him, and in that, as in the amount of germs which are wasted, nature is not, speaking plainly, sufficiently theological and Christian. I may add that she exhibits no religious spirit in any of her acts, and seems to ignore her God. That is what frightens me, Monsieur l'Abbé."

"Oh!" cried my father, waving on the end of his fork a drum-stick of the chicken he was carving, "Oh! this is indeed gloomy and dreary talk, ill-suited to the feast we celebrate to-day. And it is my wife who is to blame, who offers us a child with a serpent's head as if it were an agreeable dish for honest company. That out of my beautiful red eggs should come so many diabolical tales!"

"Ah, mine host," said Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard. "It is true that everything comes out of the egg. From this idea the heathens have drawn many philosophical fables. But that from eggs, so Christian under their antique purple as those we have just eaten, should escape such a flight of wild impieties, that is what amazes me."

Monsieur Nicolas Cerise looked at my good master, winking his eye, and said, with a thin laugh:

"Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard, these eggs, whose beetroot-tinted shells lie scattered on the floor under our feet, are not in their essence as Christian and Catholic as it pleases you to think them. Easter Eggs, on the contrary, are of heathen origin, and recall, at the time of spring equinox, the mysterious burgeoning of life. It is an ancient symbol which has been preserved in the Christian religion."

"One might equably reasonably uphold," said my good master, "that it is a symbol of the Resurrection of Christ. I, for one, have no wish to load religion with symbolical subtleties. I would most willingly believe that the pleasure of eating eggs, denied to us during Lent, is the sole reason why on this day they appear on the tables with honour and clothed in royal purple. But no matter, these are mere trifles, serving to amuse the learned and the bookmen. What is worth considering in your talk, Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, is that you bring into opposition nature and religion, and you want to make them inimical to each other. Impiety! Monsieur Nicolas Cerise. And so horrible that this good fellow of a cook trembles at it without understanding it. But I am not a whit disturbed; and such arguments cannot, even for one minute, seduce a mind which knows how to govern itself.

"In truth, Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, you have proceeded by that rational and scientific route which is but a narrow, short, and dirty blind-alley, on coming to the end of which we break our noses ingloriously. You argue in the manner of a thoughtful apothecary, who thinks he understands nature because he can smell some of her manifestations. And you have concluded that natural generation producing monsters is no part of the secret of God, Who creates men to celebrate His glory, 'Pulcher hymnus Dei homo immortalis': It was very generous of you to omit mention of the new-born who die as soon as they see the light, of the mad, and the imbecile, and all creatures who are not, from your point of view, what Lactantius calls a worthy hymn to God, Pulcher hymnus Dei. But what do you know of it all, and what do we know of it all, Monsieur Nicolas Cerise? You take me for one of your readers at Amsterdam or at the Hague, to wish to make me believe that the unintelligibility of nature is an objection to our holy Christian faith. Nature, sir, shows to our eyes but a succession of incoherent images in which it is impossible for us to find a meaning, and I grant you, that according to her, and in tracking her footsteps, I fail to discern in the child that is born either the Christian, the man, or even the individual; and the flesh is an absolutely indecipherable hieroglyphic. But that matters nothing, and we are looking at the wrong side of the tapestry. Do not let us fix our gaze on that, but understand that from that side we can know nothing. Let us turn entirely to the understandable, which is the human soul united to God.

"You are amusing, Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, with your nature and your generation. You are, to my mind, like some good fellow who thinks he has surprised the King's secrets because he has seen the paintings which decorate the council chamber. In the same way that the secrets are to be found in the conversation of the King and his ministers, so is the fate of man in the thought which proceeds alike from the created and the Creator. All the rest is but folly and amusement, fit to divert the loungers, of whom one sees many in the Academies. Do not talk to me of nature, except of what one sees at the Petit Bacchus in the person of Catherine the lace-maker, who is plump and well-made.

"And you, mine host," added Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard, "give me to drink, for I have a thirst on me, all the fault of Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, who thinks nature an atheist. And, by a thousand devils, so she is, and perforce must be, to some extent; and if at all times she declares the glory of God, it is without knowing it, for there is no knowledge, save in the mind of man, which alone proceeds from both the finite and the infinite. Give me to drink!"

My father poured out a brimming glass for my good master, Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard, and for Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, and forced them to clink their glasses, which they did right heartily, for they were good fellows.

VI
THE NEW MINISTRY

r. Shippen, who practised the trade of a locksmith at Greenwich, dined every day, during his short stays in Paris, at the Sign of the Reine Pédauque, in the company of his landlord and of my good master, Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard.

That day, at dessert, having called for a bottle of wine as was his custom, lighted his pipe, and drawn from his pocket the London Gazette, he set himself peaceably to smoke, drink, and read; then folding his paper, and placing his pipe on the edge of the table, he said:

"Gentlemen, the Government is defeated."

"Oh!" said my good master, "it is of no consequence."

"Pardon me," said Mr. Shippen, "it is a matter of consequence, for the former ministry being Tory, the new one will be Whig, and moreover, everything that happens in England is of importance."

"Sir," replied my good master, "We have seen greater changes than that in France. We have seen the four officials known as Secretaries of State replaced by six or seven Councils of ten members apiece, and the Secretaries of State hewn in ten pieces and then re-established in their original shape. At each of these changes there were some who swore that all was lost, and others that all was saved. And rhymes were made about it all. For my part, I take little interest in what is done in the King's cabinet, for I notice that the course of life is in no way changed, and after reforms men are as before, selfish, avaricious, cowardly, cruel, stupid and furious by turns, and there is always a nearly even number of births, marriages, cuckolds, and gallowsbirds, in which is made manifest the beautiful ordering of our society. This condition is stable, sir, and nothing could shake it, for it is founded on human misery and imbecility, and those are foundations which will never be wanting. The whole edifice gains from them a strength which defies the efforts of the worst of princes, and of the ignorant crowd of officials who assist them."

My father, who, larding-pin in hand, was listening to this conversation, made this amendment with deferential firmness: that good ministers are to be found, and that he could remember one, who had recently died, as the author of a very wise regulation protecting cooks against the devouring ambitions of butchers and confectioners.

"That may be, Monsieur Tournebroche," retorted my good master, "and it is a matter to discuss with confectioners. But what is necessary to consider is that empires subsist, not by the wisdom of certain Secretaries of State, but by the needs of millions of men, who, to live, work at all sorts of lowly and ignoble arts such as industry, commerce, agriculture, war, and navigation. These individual hardships make up what is called the greatness of a people, and neither prince nor ministers have a part in them."

"You are mistaken, sir," said the Englishman, "ministers do their part by making laws, of which a single one may enrich or ruin the nation."

"Oh, as for that," replied the Abbé, "it is a risk that must be run. Since the affairs of the State are so widespread that the intelligence of a single man cannot embrace them, we must forgive ministers for working blindly thereat, and harbour no resentment against the good or evil they do, but suppose that they moved as in a game of blind-man's buff. Moreover, this evil and this good would seem less to us if estimated without superstition, and I doubt, sir, if a general order could have the effect that you mention. I judge by the women of the town, who are themselves alone, in a year, the object of more regulations than are put forth in a century for all other classes in the kingdom, and who, none the less, carry on their business with an exactitude based on the forces of nature. They laugh at the simple blackening which a magistrate named Nicodème[4] meditates in regard to them, and make fun of Monsieur Baiselance, the mayor[5] who has formed, along with several attorneys and treasury officials, an impotent association for their ruin. I can tell you that Catherine, the lace-maker, is ignorant of the very name of Baiselance, and that she will remain ignorant of it until her end, which will be a Christian one—at least I hope so. And I infer that all the laws with which a minister swells his portfolio, are but useless papers which neither enable us to live nor prevent us from living."

"Monsieur Coignard," said the locksmith from Greenwich, "it is easy to see by the baseness of your talk that you are accustomed to servitude. You would speak differently of statesmen and laws if you had, as I have, the happiness to enjoy a free Government."

"Mr. Shippen," said the Abbé, "true liberty is that of a soul enfranchised from the vanities of this world. As for public liberty, I do not care a cherrystone for it! It is an illusion which flatters the vanity of the ignorant."

"You confirm me in the idea," said Mr. Shippen, "that the French are mere monkeys."

"Allow me," said my father, brandishing his larding-pin, "there are lions also to be found amongst them."

"Only citizens fail you then," retorted Mr. Shippen. "All the world discusses public matters in the Tuileries Gardens, without one reasonable notion resulting from their squabbles. Your population is but a turbulent wild-beast show."

"Sir," said my good master, "it is true that when human societies attain to a certain degree of refinement, they turn aside from the manners of a menagerie, and that it is evidence of progress to live in a cage, instead of wandering miserably in the woods. And this tendency is common to all the countries of Europe."

"Sir," said the Greenwich locksmith, "England is no menagerie, for she has a Parliament on which her Ministers depend."

"Sir," said the Abbé, "it may be that one day France will also have Ministers obedient to a Parliament. Better still. Time brings many changes in the constitution of empires, and one can fancy that, in a century or two, France may adopt popular government. But, sir, secretaries of State, who count for little in our day, will then no longer count for anything. For instead of depending on the King, from whom they derive their period and power, they will be subject to public opinion, and will share its instability. It is to be remarked that statesmen only exercise their power, with any force, in absolute monarchies, as is seen in the example of Joseph the son of Jacob, Pharaoh's Minister, and in that of Haman, Minister to Ahasuerus, who played a great rôle in the government; the first in Egypt, the second among the Persians. It needed the coincidence of a strongly established crown and a weak king, in France, to strengthen the arm of a Richelieu. Under popular government, ministers will become so impotent that even their wickedness and stupidity will do harm no more.

"They will receive from the general assemblies only an uncertain and precarious authority; unable to indulge in far-flung hopes and vast schemes, they will spend their ephemeral existence in wretched expedients. They will grow jaundiced in the unhappy effort to read their orders on the five hundred faces of a crowd, ignorant and at cross-purposes; they will languish in restless impotence. They will become unused to foresee anything or prepare anything, and they will only study intrigue and falsehood. They will fall from so low that their fall will do them no harm, and their names, chalked on the walls by little scribbling school-boys, will make the bourgeois laugh."

Mr. Shippen shrugged his shoulders at this speech.

"It's possible," he said, "I can well enough imagine the French in such a state."

"Oh," said my good master, "in that state the world will go on its way. We shall still have to eat, it is the great need which gives rise to all others."

Mr. Shippen said, shaking out his pipe:

"In the meanwhile they promise us a minister who will favour the farmers, but who will ruin trade if he has his way. I must look to it, for I am a locksmith at Greenwich, and I shall call all the locksmiths together and address them."

He put his pipe in his pocket and went out without saying good-night to us.

VII
THE NEW MINISTRY (concluded)

fter supper, as it was a fine night, Abbé Jérôme Coignard took a turn in the Rue St. Jacques where the lamps were being lighted, and I had the honour to accompany him. He stopped under the porch of St. Benoît-le-Bétourné, and pointing with a plump hand, shaped equally well for scholastic demonstration and for delicate caress, at one of the stone benches ranged on either side beneath the antique statues fouled with obscene scrawls. "Tournebroche, my son," said he, "if you are of the same turn of mind we will take the air for a moment or two on one of these well-polished old stones where so many beggars before us have rested from their troubles. Perchance some of those countless poor creatures have here held quite excellent talk among themselves.... We shall run the risk of catching fleas. But you, my son, being at the amorous age, may believe they are Jeannette, the viol player's, or Catherine, the lace-maker's, who are in the habit of bringing their gallants here at dusk; and their bite will seem sweet to you. That is an illusion permitted to your youth. For me, who am past the age of these charming follies, I shall tell myself that one must not give way too much to the weakness of the flesh, and that a philosopher must not trouble about fleas which, like all else in the world, are among God's mysteries."

So saying, he sat down, taking care not to disturb a small Savoyard and his marmoset who were sleeping their innocent sleep on the old stone bench. I sat down by his side. The conversation which had occupied the dinner-hour came back to my mind:

"Monsieur l'Abbé," I asked this good master, "you were speaking a while ago of ministers. Those of the King did not impress you by their clothes, nor by their coaches, nor by their genius, and you judged them with the freedom of a mind which nothing astonishes. Then, considering the lot of these officials in a popular state (should it ever be established), you showed them to us as wretched to excess and less worthy of praise than of pity. Are you then, perhaps, opposed to free governments as revived from the republics of antiquity?"

"I am personally inclined to love popular government, my son," answered my good master. "My humbleness of condition draws me towards it, and Holy Writ, of which I have made some study, confirms me in this preference, for the Lord said in Ramah: 'The people of Israel desired a king that I should not reign over them.' And He said, 'Now this will be the manner of king that shall reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them for himself and for his chariots, and to be his horsemen, and some shall run before his chariot. And he will take your daughters to be confectioners and to be cooks and to be bakers.' Filias quoque vestras faciet sibi unguentarias et focarias et panificas. That is said expressly in the Book of Kings, and one still sees that the monarch brings his subjects two grievous gifts: war and tithes. And if it be true that monarchies are of Divine institution it is equally true that they present all the characteristics of human imbecility and wickedness. It is credible that Heaven has given them to the people for their chastisement: Et tribuit eis petitionem eorum.

'Often in His anger He accepts our sacrifice,

His gifts are often the penalty of our crimes.'

"I could quote, my son, many fine passages from old authors where the hatred of tyranny is described with admirable vigour. Finally, I think I have always shown some strength of soul in disdaining the pride of the flesh, and have, quite as much as the Jansenist Blaise Pascal, the disgust for swashbucklers. All these reasons speak to my heart and to my intelligence in favour of popular government. I have made it the subject of meditations, which one day I shall put down in writing, in a work of that kind of which they say that one must break the bone to find the marrow. I want you to understand from that, that I shall compose a new Praise of Folly which will appear frivolity to the frivolous, but the wise will recognise wisdom under the cap and bells. In short, I shall be a second Erasmus; following his example I shall teach the people by a learned and judicious playfulness. And you will find, my son, in one chapter of this treatise, every enlightenment on the subject that interests you; you will acquire a knowledge of the condition of statesmen placed in dependence on popular states or assemblies."

"Oh, Monsieur l'Abbé!" I cried, "how impatient I am to read this book! When do you think it will be written?"

"I do not know," replied my good master, "and truth to tell I think I shall never write it. Plans made by man are often thwarted. We have no power over the smallest particle of the future, and this uncertainty common to Adam's race, is carried to extremes in my case by a long series of misfortunes. That is why, my son, I despair of ever being able to compose this respectable jest. Without giving you a political treatise, seated on this bench, I will tell you at least how I came to have the idea of introducing into my imaginary book a chapter wherein would appear the weakness and spite of servants taken on by good man Demos when master, if he ever become so, of which I am not quite decided, for I do not meddle in prophecy, leaving this preoccupation to maidens who vaticinate after the manner of the sibyls such as the Cumean, the Persian, or the Tiburtine, 'quarum insigne virginitas est et virginitatis præmium divinatio.' Let us then turn to our subject. It is nearly twenty years since I lived in the pleasant town of Séez, where I was librarian to the Bishop. Some travelling actors, who chanced to pass, gave a fairly good tragedy in a barn; I went to it and saw a Roman emperor appear whose wig was decorated with more laurels than a ham at the fair of Saint Laurence. He seated himself in a curule chair; his two ministers, in court dress with their impressive insignia, took their place on either side on stools, and the three formed a Council of State before the footlights, which stank exceedingly. Eventually, during the course of their deliberations, one of the councillors drew a satirical portrait of the consuls during the latter period of the Republic. He showed them as impatient to use and abuse their temporary power—enemies of the public good, and jealous of their successors, in whom they were only assured of seeing accomplices to their robbery and peculation. This is how he spoke:

'These little monarchs, reigning for a year,

Seeing the limit of their rule so near,

Spoil the green fruit, of fairest seed and growth,

Rather than leave what they to leave are loath.

Since they have little part in what they wield,

Take a full harvest from the public field,

Assured of pardon, for their easy heirs

Hope for like treatment when the turn is theirs.'[6]

"Well, my son, these lines which, by their sententious precision recall the quatrains of Pibrac, are more excellent as regards meaning than the rest of the tragedy, which smells a little too much of the pompous frivolities of the princes' Fronde, and is altogether spoilt by the heroic love-affairs of a kind of Duchesse de Longueville, who appears under the name of Émilie. I took care to remember them so as to meditate upon them. For one finds beautiful maxims even in works written for the theatre. What the poet says in these eight lines, on consuls of the Roman Republic, applies equally well to ministers of democracies whose power is precarious.

"They are weak, my son, because they depend on a popular assembly, incapable equally of the large and profound views of a politician, and of the innocent stupidity of an idle king. Ministers are only great if they second, as did Sully, an intelligent prince, or if, like Richelieu, they take the place of the monarch. And who does not feel that Demos will have neither the obstinate prudence of a Henry IV, nor the favourable inertia of a Louis XIII? Even supposing he knows what he wants he will not know how to carry out his wishes, nor even if they be feasible. Ordering ill, he will be badly obeyed, and will always believe himself betrayed. The deputies he will send to his States-General will keep up his illusions by ingenious lies up to the moment of falling under his unjust or legitimate suspicions. These states will perpetuate the same confused mediocrity as the mob from which they spring. They will revolve multiple and obscure thoughts. They will give the heads of government the task of carrying out vague wishes of which they themselves are not conscious, and their ministers, more unhappy than Œdipus in the fable, will be devoured, each in turn, by the Sphinx with a hundred heads for not having guessed the riddle of which the Sphinx herself was ignorant. The source of their greatest unhappiness will be their enforced resignation to impotence, and to talk instead of action. They will become rhetoricians and very bad rhetoricians, for talent, bringing some clarity with it, will be their undoing. They will have to train themselves to speak without saying anything, and the least foolish amongst them will be condemned to lie more than all the others. So, the most intelligent will become the most despicable. And if any are to be found clever enough to conclude treaties, regulate finance, and see to business, their knowledge will serve them nothing, for time will fail them, and time is the stuff of great undertakings.

"These humiliating conditions will discourage the good and lend ambition to the bad. From all sides, ambitious incompetence will rise from the depth of struggling villages to the first posts in the State, and as probity is not natural to mankind, but must be cultivated with great care and long-continued artifice, we shall see clouds of peculators fall on the public treasury. The evil will be much increased by the outburst of scandal, for, as it is difficult to hide anything under popular government, by the fault of some all will become suspect.

"I do not conclude from this, my son, that people will be more unhappy then than they are now, I have told you often enough in our former conversations that I do not think the fate of a nation depends on its prince and its ministers, and it is ascribing too much virtue to laws to make them the source of general prosperity or unhappiness. Nevertheless, the multitude of laws is grievous, and I also fear that the States-General will abuse their legislative powers.

"It is the harmless foible of Colin and Jeannot to frame laws while they keep their sheep, and to say: 'If I were king!' When Jeannot is king he will promulgate more edicts in a year than the Emperor Justinian codified during all his reign. It is in that direction, it seems to me, that Jeannot's reign will prove formidable. But that of kings and emperors was usually so bad one could not fear a worse, and Jeannot, no doubt, will not commit many more follies, nor wickednesses, than all those princes girt with the double or triple crown, who, since the deluge, have covered the world with blood and destruction. His very incapacity and turbulence will have this much good in them that they will render impossible those learned correspondences between country and country we call diplomacy, which end in nothing but in the artistic lighting-up of useless and disastrous wars. The ministers of good man Demos unceasingly kicked, hustled, humiliated, thrown down and assailed with more rotten apples and eggs than the worst harlequin in a booth at a fair, will have no leisure to prepare carnage politely, in the secrecy and peace of the cabinet, on the board of green cloth, by conferences in regard to what is called the balance of Europe, which is but the happy hunting-ground of the diplomat. There will be no more foreign policy, and that will be a great thing for unhappy humanity."

At these words my good master rose up, and continued as follows: "It is time to go in, my son, for I feel the dew penetrate by reason that my clothes are in holes in various places. Also, by remaining any longer under this porch, we risk frightening away the lovers of Catherine and Jeannette, who here await the hour of tryst."

VIII
THE CITY MAGISTRATES

hat evening we betook ourselves, my master and I, to the arbour of the Petit Bacchus, where we found Catherine the lace-maker, the lame cutler, and the father who begot me. They were all seated at the same table before a jug of wine, of which they had taken enough to be pleasant and sociable.

Two magistrates had just been elected according to form, out of four, and my father was talking of it, according to the measure of his lights and his talents.

"The pity is," said he, "that these city magistrates are gentlemen of the long robe, and not cooks, and that they hold their magistracy from the king, and not from the tradesmen, notably not from the corporation of Parisian cooks of which I am the banner-bearer. If they were of my choosing they would abolish tithes and the salt tax, and we should all be happy.... At any rate, if the world does not walk backwards like a crab, a day will come when magistrates will be elected by the tradesmen."

"No doubt," said Monsieur l'Abbé, "magistrates will one day be elected by the masters and their apprentices."

"Mind what you are saying, Monsieur l'Abbé," said my father anxiously, and drawing his brows together. "When apprentices mix themselves up with the election of magistrates all will be lost. In the days when I was apprenticed I thought of nothing but of misappropriating my master's wife and goods. But since I own a shop and a wife I attend to the public interest, in which my own is bound up."

Lesturgeon, our landlord, brought a jug of wine. He was a small, red-haired man, quick, and rough.

"You speak of the new magistrates," he said, his hands on his hips, "I only wish them as much wisdom as the old ones, who were nevertheless not very knowing about the public welfare. But they were beginning to learn their business. You know, Monsieur Léonard (he spoke to my father), the school where the children of the Rue St. Jacques go to learn their alphabet, is built of wood, and a slow match and a few shavings would suffice to make it blaze like a veritable midsummer night's bonfire. I warned the gentlemen of the Hôtel de Ville about it. My letter did not err in style for I had it written for sixpence by a scrivener who has a stall under the Val-de-Grace. I represented to the magistrate that all the small boys of the neighbourhood were in daily danger of being grilled, like chitterlings, which was a matter for thought, having regard to the sensibility of mothers. The magistrate who has to do with the schools answered politely, after a year had elapsed, that the danger run by the small boys of the Rue St. Jacques roused all his solicitude, and that he was eager to remove it, and, in consequence he was sending a fire-engine to the afore-mentioned pupils. 'The king,' he added, 'having in his goodness built a fountain in commemoration of his victories, at two hundred paces from the school, water would not be lacking, and the children will learn in a few days to manage the engine which the town consents to grant them free.'

"On reading this letter I jumped to the ceiling. And returning to Val-de-Grace I dictated a reply to the scrivener as follows:

"'Honoured City-magistrate—Sir, in the schoolhouse of the Rue St. Jacques are two hundred youngsters, of whom the oldest is but seven years of age. These are fine firemen, sir, to work your fire-engine. Take it back again, and have a schoolhouse built of stone and rubble.'

"This letter, like the former one, cost me sixpence, including the seal. But I did not lose my money, for, after twenty months had passed, I received a reply in which the magistrate assured me that the youngsters of the Rue St. Jacques were worthy of the care of the Parisian magistrates, who would prudently watch over their safety. We remain there. If my magistrate leaves his post I shall have to begin all over again, and pay a shilling once more to the scrivener in the Val-de-Grace. That is why, Monsieur Léonard, although I am firmly convinced there are faces at the town-hall which would be better fitted to play the buffoon at a fair, I have not the slightest desire to see new faces there, and I particularly wish to keep him of the fire-engine."

"For my part," said Catherine, "it is the Lieutenant-Criminel I have a grudge against. He allows Jeannette, the viol player, to prowl about every day, at twilight, under the porch of St. Benoît-le-Bétourné. It is a disgrace. She walks through the streets with a kerchief tied round her head, and trails her dirty skirts through every gutter in the place. The public places should be reserved for girls well turned-out enough to show themselves with credit."

"Oh! I reckon the pavement belongs to all the world," said the lame cutler. "And one of these days I shall follow the example of our landlord, Lesturgeon, and go to the scrivener in the Val-de-Grace to get him to draw up, in my name, a fine petition in favour of poor hawkers. I cannot push my cart into a good position but I am at once bothered by the police, and as soon as a lackey or a couple of servant-girls stop at my stall, a big, black rascal turns up and orders me, in the name of the law, to go and undo my bundle elsewhere. Sometimes I am on ground rented by the market people, at others, I find myself a near neighbour of Monsieur Leborgne, sworn cutler. Another time I must yield the pavement to the carriage of a bishop or a prince. And there I am, getting into my harness and pulling at the straps, happy if the lackeys and the chambermaids have not carried off without payment, profiting by my awkwardness, a needle-case, some scissors, or a fine blade from Chatellerault. I am sick of suffering tyranny. I am sick of experiencing the injustice of the justiciaries. I feel a great desire to revolt."

"I know from that sign," said my good master, "that you are a magnanimous cutler."

"I am not at all magnanimous, Monsieur l'Abbé," modestly replied the cripple, "I am vindictive, and resentment has pushed me to sell, in secret, songs written against the king, his mistresses, and his ministers. I keep a fairly good assortment in the tilt of my cart. Do not betray me. That of the twelve reed-pipes is admirable."

"I will not betray you," answered my father, "a good song is worth a glass of wine to me, and even more, I do not say anything either about the knives, and I am glad, my good fellow, that you sell yours, for all the world must live. But acknowledge that one cannot allow wandering hawkers to enter into competition with tradesmen who rent a shop and pay taxes. Nothing is more contrary to law and order. The impudence of these draggle-tails is unspeakable. How far would it not go were it not checked. Last year did not a peasant from Montrouge come to a stop in front of the Reine Pédauque with his little cart full of pigeons that he was selling, ready cooked, for two liards and a sou cheaper than I sell mine! And the bumpkin cried, in a voice fit to crack the windows of my shop, 'Beautiful pigeons for five sous.' I threatened him twenty times with my larding-pin. But he answered me, stupidly, that the street belonged to all the world. I made a complaint to the Lieutenant-Criminel who saw justice done, and rid me of the villain. I do not know what has become of him, but I owe him a grudge for the harm he did me, for the sight of my usual customers, buying his pigeons, by couples, nay even by half-dozens, gave me an attack of jaundice, from the effect of which I became melancholy for a long time. I wish they'd stick as many feathers on his body, with glue, as he had plucked from the winged creatures he sold ready-cooked in my very face, and that thus be-feathered from head to foot he was led through the streets at the tail of his cart."

"Monsieur Léonard," said the lame cutler, "you are hard on poor people. It is thus the unfortunate are driven to desperation."

"Master Cutler, I counsel you," said my good master, laughing, "to order at the Innocents by some paid writer, a satire on Maître Léonard and to sell it along with your songs on the twelve pipes of King Louis. Our friend here should be celebrated a little, who, in a semi-servile state, aspires, not to freedom but to tyranny. I conclude from all your talking, gentlemen, that the policing of towns is a difficult art, that one must try and reconcile diverse and often contrary interests, that the public welfare is made up of a large number of private and individual woes, and that in fact, it is already rather wonderful that people shut up within walls do not devour one another. It is a blessing one must attribute to their poltroonery. Public peace is founded simply on the feeble courage of citizens who hold each other in respect by reason of their reciprocal fear. And the prince, in inspiring all with awe, assures to them the inestimable benefit of peace. As to your magistrates, whose power is weak, and who are incapable of serving or of injuring you much, and whose merits consist chiefly in their tall canes and wigs, do not complain overmuch that they are chosen by the king and ranked, or little short of it, since the last reign, with officers of the Crown. Friends of the prince, they are vaguely inimical to all citizens, and this enmity is rendered bearable to each by the perfect equality with which it bears upon all. It is like rain, of which one with another we receive but a few drops. One day, when they are elected by the people (as they tell us they were in the early days of the monarchy) magistrates will have friends and foes in the town. Elected by the shop-people, paying rent and tithes, they will ill-use the hawkers. Elected by the hawkers, they will ill-use the tradesmen. Elected by the artisans, they will be in opposition to the masters, who make the artisans work. It will be an incessant cause of dispute and quarrels. They will form a turbulent council where each will agitate for the interests and passions of his electors. Nevertheless, I fancy they will not make the present magistrates regretted who only depend on the prince. Their clamorous vanity will amuse the citizens who will see themselves as in an enlarging mirror. They will employ mediocre powers after a mediocre fashion. Risen from the mass of the people they will be as incapable of fostering it as of restraining it. The rich will be frightened at their audacity, and the poor will blame their fearfulness, whereas they will really display only noise and impotence. For the rest, they may be equal to common tasks, and to administering the public wealth with that insufficient sufficiency which they always attain to and never get beyond."

"Ouf!" said my father, "you have spoken well, Monsieur l'Abbé—now drink!"

IX
SCIENCE

hat day we tramped as far as the Pont Neuf, my good master and I, where the recesses were covered with those trestles on which the second-hand booksellers expose a conglomeration of romances and books of devotion. There one may find at twopence apiece the complete Astrée and the Grand Cyrus, worn and thumbed by provincial readers, with the "Ointment for Burns," and divers works of the Jesuits. My good master was accustomed, in passing, to read some pages of these works, of which he made no purchase, being out of funds, and wisely keeping for the Petit Bacchus the sixpence he happened by a rare chance to have in his breeches' pocket. For the rest, he did not thirst to possess the good things of this world, and the best works did not make him envious so long as he could get acquainted with the noble passages in them, on which he expatiated afterwards with admirable wisdom. The trestles of the Pont Neuf pleased him in that the books were impregnated with the smell of frying from the near neighbourhood of the hot-potato sellers, and this great man inhaled at the same time the welcome fragrance of cooking and of science.

Adjusting his spectacles, he examined the display of a second-hand dealer with the contentment of a happy soul, to which all things are gracious, for all things gain a grace from their reflection in it.

"Tournebroche, my son," he said to me, "there are books to be found on the stall of this good man, fashioned in the days when printing was, so to speak, in its swaddling-clothes, and these books still suffer from the effects of the roughness of our forbears. I find a barbarous chronicle of Monstrelet, an author said to have been more frothy than a pot of mustard, and two or three lives of Ste. Marguerite, which the gossips of old put as a compress on their stomachs during the pains of childbirth. It would be inconceivable that men could be so idiotic as to write and to read similar absurdities, if our holy religion did not teach us that they are born with a germ of imbecility. And as the light of faith has never failed me, not even, happily, in the sins of the couch or of the table, I can more easily understand their past stupidity than their present intelligence, which, to speak frankly, appears to me illusory and deceptive, as it will seem to future generations, for man is in his essence a stupid animal, and the progress of his mind is but the empty consequence of his restlessness. That is the reason, my son, that I mistrust what they call science and philosophy, which are, to my mind, but an abuse of visions, and fallacious figures, and, in a certain sense, the advantage gained by the evil spirit over the soul. You will understand that I am far from believing all the devilries with which popular credulity frightens itself. I think with the Fathers that temptation is within us, and that we are to ourselves our own demons and bedevilments. But I bear a grudge against Monsieur Descartes and against all the philosophers who, following his example, have searched for a rule of life and the principles of conduct in the knowledge of nature. For, after all, Tournebroche, my son, what is knowledge of nature if it be not a fantasy of the senses? And what does science add to it, I ask you, with its savants, from the time of Gassendi, who was no donkey, and Descartes and his disciples, down to that precious fool, Monsieur de Fontenelle? Large spectacles, my son, spectacles like those which sit on my nose. All the microscopes and telescopes which we make a show of, what are they but glasses a little clearer than these of mine, that I bought last year at the fair of St. Laurence, of which the glass for the left eye, the one I see the best with, was unhappily cracked this winter by a footstool flung at my head by the lame cutler, who fancied I was kissing Catherine the lace-maker, for he is a coarse man, and utterly obfuscated by his visions of carnal desires. Yes, Tournebroche, my son, what are these instruments with which the savants and the curious fill their galleries and their cabinets? What are spectacles, astrolabes, compasses, if not the means of helping the senses to keep their illusions, and to multiply our fatal ignorance of nature while we multiply our relations with her? The most learned among us differ merely from the ignorant by the faculty they acquire of amusing themselves with manifold and complicated errors. They see the world in a faceted topaz, instead of seeing it as does Madame, your mother, for instance, with the naked eye the good God has given her. But they do not alter their eyes in donning spectacles; they do not alter dimensions in using apparatus proper to the measurement of space; they do not alter the weight of things in using very sensitive scales. They discover new appearances merely, and are but the plaything of new illusions. That is all! If I were not convinced, my son, of the holy truths of our religion, there would be left to me in this conviction, which I hold, that all human knowledge is but a progress in phantasmagoria, nothing but to throw myself from this parapet into the Seine, which has seen many others drown since she began to flow, or to go and ask of Catherine that form of oblivion from the ills of this world which one finds in her arms, and for which it would be indecent for me to look, in my position, and above all, at my age. I should not know what to believe in the midst of all this apparatus, whose powerful deceptions would increase immeasurably the falsehood of my outlook and I should be an entirely miserable academician."