THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE
IN AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
EDITED BY FREDERIC CHAPMAN
THE OPINIONS OF
JÉRÔME COIGNARD
[Illustration]
THE OPINIONS OF
JÉRÔME COIGNARD
BY ANATOLE FRANCE
A TRANSLATION BY
MRS. WILFRID JACKSON
[Illustration]
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
PAGE
THE ABBÉ JÉRÔME COIGNARD 1
THE OPINIONS OF JÉRÔME COIGNARD 29
I. MINISTERS OF STATE 31
II. SAINT ABRAHAM 39
III. MINISTERS OF STATE (_concluded_) 53
IV. THE AFFAIR OF THE MISSISSIPPI 61
V. EASTER-EGGS 69
VI. THE NEW MINISTRY 81
VII. THE NEW MINISTRY (_concluded_) 88
VIII. THE CITY MAGISTRATES 98
IX. SCIENCE 107
X. THE ARMY 115
XI. THE ARMY (_continued_) 124
XII. THE ARMY (_concluded_) 130
XIII. ACADEMIES 137
XIV. SEDITION-MONGERS 148
XV. REVOLUTIONARY MEASURES 156
XVI. HISTORY 166
XVII. MONSIEUR NICODÈME 174
XVIII. JUSTICE 183
XIX. THE BEADLE’S STORY 187
XX. JUSTICE (_continued_) 195
XXI. JUSTICE (_continued_) 208
XXII. JUSTICE (_concluded_) 213
THE ABBÉ JÉRÔME
COIGNARD
TO OCTAVE MIRBEAU
There 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
FOOTNOTES:
[1] (Monsieur Jean Lacoste wrote in the _Gazette de France_ of May 20,
1893): Monsieur l’Abbé Jérôme Coignard is a priest full of knowledge,
humility and faith. I do not say that his conduct was always an honour
to his bands or that his robe was unstained. But if he succumbs to
temptation, if the devil has in him an easy prey, he never loses
confidence; he hopes by God’s grace to fall no more, and to reach
the glories of Paradise. And, in fact, he affords us the spectacle
of a very edifying death. Thus a grain of faith beautifies life, and
Christian humility well becomes our human weakness.
Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, if he be not a saint, perhaps deserves
purgatory. But he deserves the fire a very long time, and has run
risk of hell. For in his acts of humility, though sincere, there was
scarcely any repentance. He reckoned too much on the grace of God,
and made no effort to help the workings of grace. That is why he fell
back into his sin. Thus faith availed him little, and he was nearly a
heretic, for the holy council of Trent, by its canons VI. and IX. in
its sixth session, declared all those anathema who pretend “that it is
not in the power of man to give up his evil ways” and who have such
reliance on faith that they think faith alone can save them “without
any motion of the will.” Thus the divine mercy extended to Abbé
Coignard is truly miraculous and beyond ordinary channels.
[2] This has been very favourably received, Monsieur Hugues Rebell
having admitted that there is such a thing as a charitable scepticism.
Referring, not, it is true, to the opinions of Monsieur Coignard, but
to some writings drawn from the same source, he has made some remarks
of which I may avail myself here:
“An interesting vein of thought might be followed up after reading
this work, furnishing, as it does, some valuable teaching: I may be
permitted some reflections on it:
“1. The organisation of a particular society does not depend on
individual wills, but on the compulsion of nature, or to put it more
simply, on the unanimity of the more intelligent beings of which that
society is composed who inevitably choose the most agreeable rule of
life:
“2. Mankind at any one period, having the same organic constitution
and passions as mankind at any other period, can never have entirely
differing institutions. It results from this that a political
revolution is no more than a rotatory movement, round the ancient ways,
which ends where it began; it is just a disease, an interruption in
human development. And the result of this law is that all societies
live and die in the same way.”
HUGUES REBELL in _l’Ermitage_, _April 1893_.
Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard simply says that a people is not susceptible
to more than one form of government at the same period.
THE OPINIONS OF
JÉRÔME COIGNARD
COLLECTED BY
JACQUES TOURNEBROCHE
AND PUBLISHED BY
ANATOLE FRANCE
THE OPINIONS OF
JÉRÔME COIGNARD
I
MINISTERS OF STATE
This 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
One 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.