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.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] _Vide post_, p. 174.
[5] Monsieur Baiselance or Baisselance, succeeded Montaigne,
considerably later, as Mayor of Bordeaux. [A. F.]
VII
THE NEW MINISTRY (_concluded_)
After 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.”
FOOTNOTES:
[6]
Ces petits souverains qu’on fait pour une année,
Voyant d’un temps si court leur puissance bornée,
Des plus heureux desseins font avorter le fruit,
De peur de le laisser à celui que les suit.
Comme ils ont peu de part aux biens dont ils ordonnent,
Dans le champ du public largement ils moissonnent,
Assurés que chacun leur pardonne aisément,
Espérant à son tour un pareil traitement.
VIII
THE CITY MAGISTRATES
That 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