During the wars of the Empire, while husbands and brothers were in
Germany, anxious mothers gave birth to an ardent, pale, and neurotic
generation. Conceived between battles, reared amid the noises of war,
thousands of children looked about them with dull eyes while testing
their limp muscles. From time to time their blood-stained fathers would
appear, raise them to their gold-laced bosoms, then place them on the
ground and remount their horses.
The life of Europe centred in one man; men tried to fill their lungs
with the air which he had breathed. Yearly France presented that man
with three hundred thousand of her youth; it was the tax to Caesar;
without that troop behind him, he could not follow his fortune. It was
the escort he needed that he might scour the world, and then fall in a
little valley on a deserted island, under weeping willows.
Never had there been so many sleepless nights as in the time of that
man; never had there been seen, hanging over the ramparts of the cities,
such a nation of desolate mothers; never was there such a silence about
those who spoke of death. And yet there was never such joy, such life,
such fanfares of war, in all hearts. Never was there such pure sunlight
as that which dried all this blood. God made the sun for this man,
men said; and they called it the Sun of Austerlitz. But he made this
sunlight himself with his ever-booming guns that left no clouds but
those which succeed the day of battle.
It was this air of the spotless sky, where shone so much glory, where
glistened so many swords, that the youth of the time breathed. They well
knew that they were destined to the slaughter; but they believed that
Murat was invulnerable, and the Emperor had been seen to cross a bridge
where so many bullets whistled that they wondered if he were mortal. And
even if one must die, what did it matter? Death itself was so beautiful,
so noble, so illustrious, in its battle-scarred purple! It borrowed the
color of hope, it reaped so many immature harvests that it became young,
and there was no more old age. All the cradles of France, as indeed
all its tombs, were armed with bucklers; there were no more graybeards,
there were only corpses or demi-gods.
Nevertheless the immortal Emperor stood one day on a hill watching seven
nations engaged in mutual slaughter, not knowing whether he would be
master of all the world or only half. Azrael passed, touched the warrior
with the tip of his wing, and hurled him into the ocean. At the noise of
his fall, the dying Powers sat up in their beds of pain; and stealthily
advancing with furtive tread, the royal spiders made partition of
Europe, and the purple of Caesar became the motley of Harlequin.
Just as the traveller, certain of his way, hastes night and day through
rain and sunlight, careless of vigils or of dangers, but, safe at home
and seated before the fire, is seized by extreme lassitude and can
hardly drag himself to bed, so France, the widow of Caesar, suddenly
felt her wound. She fell through sheer exhaustion, and lapsed into a
coma so profound that her old kings, believing her dead, wrapped about
her a burial shroud. The veterans, their hair whitened in service,
returned exhausted, and the hearths of deserted castles sadly flickered
into life.
Then the men of the Empire, who had been through so much, who had lived
in such carnage, kissed their emaciated wives and spoke of their first
love. They looked into the fountains of their native fields and found
themselves so old, so mutilated, that they bethought themselves of their
sons, in order that these might close the paternal eyes in peace. They
asked where they were; the children came from the schools, and, seeing
neither sabres, nor cuirasses, neither infantry nor cavalry, asked in
turn where were their fathers. They were told that the war was ended,
that Caesar was dead, and that the portraits of Wellington and of
Blucher were suspended in the ante-chambers of the consulates and the
embassies, with this legend beneath: ‘Salvatoribus mundi’.
Then came upon a world in ruins an anxious youth. The children were
drops of burning blood which had inundated the earth; they were born
in the bosom of war, for war. For fifteen years they had dreamed of the
snows of Moscow and of the sun of the Pyramids.
They had not gone beyond their native towns; but had been told that
through each gateway of these towns lay the road to a capital of Europe.
They had in their heads a world; they saw the earth, the sky, the
streets and the highways; but these were empty, and the bells of parish
churches resounded faintly in the distance.
Pale phantoms, shrouded in black robes, slowly traversed the
countryside; some knocked at the doors of houses, and, when admitted,
drew from their pockets large, well-worn documents with which they
evicted the tenants. From every direction came men still trembling with
the fear that had seized them when they had fled twenty years before.
All began to urge their claims, disputing loudly and crying for help;
strange that a single death should attract so many buzzards.
The King of France was on his throne, looking here and there to see if
he could perchance find a bee [symbol of Napoleon D.W.] in the royal
tapestry. Some men held out their hats, and he gave them money; others
extended a crucifix and he kissed it; others contented themselves with
pronouncing in his ear great names of powerful families, and he replied
to these by inviting them into his grand salle, where the echoes were
more sonorous; still others showed him their old cloaks, when they had
carefully effaced the bees, and to these he gave new robes.
The children saw all this, thinking that the spirit of Caesar would
soon land at Cannes and breathe upon this larva; but the silence was
unbroken, and they saw floating in the sky only the paleness of the
lily. When these children spoke of glory, they met the answer:
“Become priests;” when they spoke of hope, of love, of power, of life:
“Become priests.”
And yet upon the rostrum came a man who held in his hand a contract
between king and people. He began by saying that glory was a beautiful
thing, and ambition and war as well; but there was something still more
beautiful, and it was called liberty.
The children raised their heads and remembered that thus their
grandfathers had spoken. They remembered having seen in certain obscure
corners of the paternal home mysterious busts with long marble hair and
a Latin inscription; they remembered how their grandsires shook their
heads and spoke of streams of blood more terrible than those of the
Empire. Something in that word liberty made their hearts beat with the
memory of a terrible past and the hope of a glorious future.
They trembled at the word; but returning to their homes they encountered
in the street three coffins which were being borne to Clamart;
within were three young men who had pronounced that word liberty too
distinctly.
A strange smile hovered on their lips at that sad sight; but other
speakers, mounted on the rostrum, began publicly to estimate what
ambition had cost and how very dear was glory; they pointed out the
horror of war and called the battle-losses butcheries. They spoke so
often and so long that all human illusions, like the trees in autumn,
fell leaf by leaf about them, and those who listened passed their hands
over their foreheads as if awakening from a feverish dream.
Some said: “The Emperor has fallen because the people wished no more
of him;” others added: “The people wished the king; no, liberty; no,
reason; no, religion; no, the English constitution; no, absolutism;” and
the last one said: “No, none of these things, but simply peace.”
Three elements entered into the life which offered itself to these
children: behind them a past forever destroyed, still quivering on its
ruins with all the fossils of centuries of absolutism; before them
the aurora of an immense horizon, the first gleams of the future; and
between these two worlds--like the ocean which separates the Old World
from the New--something vague and floating, a troubled sea filled with
wreckage, traversed from time to time by some distant sail or some ship
trailing thick clouds of smoke; the present, in a word, which separates
the past from the future, which is neither the one nor the other, which
resembles both, and where one can not know whether, at each step, one
treads on living matter or on dead refuse.
It was in such chaos that choice had to be made; this was the aspect
presented to children full of spirit and of audacity, sons of the Empire
and grandsons of the Revolution.
As for the past, they would none of it, they had no faith in it; the
future, they loved it, but how? As Pygmalion before Galatea, it was
for them a lover in marble, and they waited for the breath of life to
animate that breast, for blood to color those veins.
There remained then the present, the spirit of the time, angel of
the dawn which is neither night nor day; they found him seated on a
lime-sack filled with bones, clad in the mantle of egoism, and shivering
in terrible cold. The anguish of death entered into the soul at the
sight of that spectre, half mummy and half foetus; they approached it
as does the traveller who is shown at Strasburg the daughter of an
old count of Sarvenden, embalmed in her bride’s dress: that childish
skeleton makes one shudder, for her slender and livid hand wears the
wedding-ring and her head decays enwreathed in orange-blossoms.
As on the approach of a tempest there passes through the forests a
terrible gust of wind which makes the trees shudder, to which profound
silence succeeds, so had Napoleon, in passing, shaken the world; kings
felt their crowns oscillate in the storm, and, raising hands to steady
them, found only their hair, bristling with terror. The Pope had
travelled three hundred leagues to bless him in the name of God and to
crown him with the diadem; but Napoleon had taken it from his hands.
Thus everything trembled in that dismal forest of old Europe; then
silence succeeded.
It is said that when you meet a mad dog, if you keep quietly on your
way without turning, the dog will merely follow you a short distance
growling and showing his teeth; but if you allow yourself to be
frightened into a movement of terror, if you but make a sudden step, he
will leap at your throat and devour you; that when the first bite has
been taken there is no escaping him.
In European history it has often happened that a sovereign has made such
a movement of terror and his people have devoured him; but if one had
done it, all had not done it at the same time--that is to say, one king
had disappeared, but not all royal majesty. Before the sword of Napoleon
majesty made this movement, this gesture which ruins everything, not
only majesty but religion, nobility, all power both human and divine.
Napoleon dead, human and divine power were reestablished, but belief in
them no longer existed. A terrible danger lurks in the knowledge of what
is possible, for the mind always goes farther. It is one thing to say:
“That may be” and another thing to say: “That has been;” it is the first
bite of the dog.
The fall of Napoleon was the last flicker of the lamp of despotism;
it destroyed and it parodied kings as Voltaire the Holy Scripture. And
after him was heard a great noise: it was the stone of St. Helena which
had just fallen on the ancient world. Immediately there appeared in the
heavens the cold star of reason, and its rays, like those of the goddess
of the night, shedding light without heat, enveloped the world in a
livid shroud.
There had been those who hated the nobles, who cried out against
priests, who conspired against kings; abuses and prejudices had been
attacked; but all that was not so great a novelty as to see a smiling
people. If a noble or a priest or a sovereign passed, the peasants who
had made war possible began to shake their heads and say: “Ah! when we
saw this man in such a time and place he wore a different face.” And
when the throne and altar were mentioned, they replied: “They are made
of four planks of wood; we have nailed them together and torn them
apart.” And when some one said: “People, you have recovered from the
errors which led you astray; you have recalled your kings and your
priests,” they replied: “We have nothing to do with those prattlers.”
And when some one said “People, forget the past, work and obey,” they
arose from their seats and a dull jangling could be heard. It was the
rusty and notched sabre in the corner of the cottage chimney. Then they
hastened to add: “Then keep quiet, at least; if no one harms you, do not
seek to harm.” Alas! they were content with that.
But youth was not content. It is certain that there are in man two
occult powers engaged in a death-struggle: the one, clear-sighted and
cold, is concerned with reality, calculation, weight, and judges the
past; the other is athirst for the future and eager for the unknown.
When passion sways man, reason follows him weeping and warning, him of
his danger; but when man listens to the voice of reason, when he stops
at her request and says: “What a fool I am; where am I going?” passion
calls to him: “Ah, must I die?”
A feeling of extreme uneasiness began to ferment in all young hearts.
Condemned to inaction by the powers which governed the world, delivered
to vulgar pedants of every kind, to idleness and to ennui, the youth saw
the foaming billows which they had prepared to meet, subside. All these
gladiators glistening with oil felt in the bottom of their souls an
insupportable wretchedness. The richest became libertines; those of
moderate fortune followed some profession and resigned themselves to
the sword or to the church. The poorest gave themselves up with cold
enthusiasm to great thoughts, plunged into the frightful sea of aimless
effort. As human weakness seeks association and as men are gregarious by
nature, politics became mingled with it. There were struggles with
the ‘garde du corps’ on the steps of the legislative assembly; at the
theatre Talma wore a wig which made him resemble Caesar; every one
flocked to the burial of a Liberal deputy.
But of the members of the two parties there was not one who, upon
returning home, did not bitterly realize the emptiness of his life and
the feebleness of his hands.
While life outside was so colorless and so mean, the inner life of
society assumed a sombre aspect of silence; hypocrisy ruled in all
departments of conduct; English ideas, combining gayety with devotion,
had disappeared. Perhaps Providence was already preparing new ways,
perhaps the herald angel of future society was already sowing in the
hearts of women the seeds of human independence. But it is certain that
a strange thing suddenly happened: in all the salons of Paris the men
passed on one side and the women on the other; and thus, the one clad
in white like brides, and the other in black like orphans, began to take
measure of one another with the eye.
Let us not be deceived: that vestment of black which the men of our time
wear is a terrible symbol; before coming to this, the armor must have
fallen piece by piece and the embroidery flower by flower. Human reason
has overthrown all illusions; but it bears in itself sorrow, in order
that it may be consoled.
The customs of students and artists, those customs so free, so
beautiful, so full of youth, began to experience the universal change.
Men in taking leave of women whispered the word which wounds to
the death: contempt. They plunged into the dissipation of wine and
courtesans. Students and artists did the same; love was treated as were
glory and religion: it was an old illusion. The grisette, that woman so
dreamy, so romantic, so tender, and so sweet in love, abandoned herself
to the counting-house and to the shop. She was poor and no one loved
her; she needed gowns and hats and she sold herself. Oh! misery! the
young man who ought to love her, whom she loved, who used to take her
to the woods of Verrieres and Romainville, to the dances on the lawn,
to the suppers under the trees; he who used to talk with her as she sat
near the lamp in the rear of the shop on the long winter evenings; he
who shared her crust of bread moistened with the sweat of her brow, and
her love at once sublime and poor; he, that same man, after abandoning
her, finds her after a night of orgy, pale and leaden, forever lost,
with hunger on her lips and prostitution in her heart.
About this time two poets, whose genius was second only to that of
Napoleon, consecrated their lives to the work of collecting the elements
of anguish and of grief scattered over the universe. Goethe, the
patriarch of a new literature, after painting in his Weyther the passion
which leads to suicide, traced in his Faust the most sombre human
character which has ever represented evil and unhappiness. His writings
began to pass from Germany into France. From his studio, surrounded
by pictures and statues, rich, happy, and at ease, he watched with a
paternal smile his gloomy creations marching in dismal procession across
the frontiers of France. Byron replied to him in a cry of grief which
made Greece tremble, and hung Manfred over the abyss, as if oblivion
were the solution of the hideous enigma with which he enveloped him.
Pardon, great poets! who are now but ashes and who sleep in peace!
Pardon, ye demigods, for I am only a child who suffers. But while I
write all this I can not but curse you. Why did you not sing of the
perfume of flowers, of the voices of nature, of hope and of love, of
the vine and the sun, of the azure heavens and of beauty? You must have
understood life, you must have suffered; the world was crumbling
to pieces about you; you wept on its ruins and you despaired; your
mistresses were false; your friends calumniated, your compatriots
misunderstood; your heart was empty; death was in your eyes, and you
were the Colossi of grief. But tell me, noble Goethe, was there no more
consoling voice in the religious murmur of your old German forests? You,
for whom beautiful poesy was the sister of science, could not they find
in immortal nature a healing plant for the heart of their favorite?
You, who were a pantheist, and antique poet of Greece, a lover of sacred
forms, could you not put a little honey in the beautiful vases you made;
you who had only to smile and allow the bees to come to your lips? And
thou, Byron, hadst thou not near Ravenna, under the orange-trees of
Italy, under thy beautiful Venetian sky, near thy Adriatic, hadst thou
not thy well-beloved? Oh, God! I who speak to you, who am only a feeble
child, have perhaps known sorrows that you have never suffered, and yet
I believe and hope, and still bless God.
When English and German ideas had passed thus over our heads there
ensued disgust and mournful silence, followed by a terrible convulsion.
For to formulate general ideas is to change saltpetre into powder, and
the Homeric brain of the great Goethe had sucked up, as an alembic, all
the juice of the forbidden fruit. Those who did not read him, did not
believe it, knew nothing of it. Poor creatures! The explosion carried
them away like grains of dust into the abyss of universal doubt.
It was a denial of all heavenly and earthly facts that might be termed
disenchantment, or if you will, despair; as if humanity in lethargy had
been pronounced dead by those who felt its pulse. Like a soldier who is
asked: “In what do you believe?” and who replies: “In myself,” so the
youth of France, hearing that question, replied: “In nothing.”
Then formed two camps: on one side the exalted spirits, sufferers, all
the expansive souls who yearned toward the infinite, bowed their heads
and wept; they wrapped themselves in unhealthful dreams and nothing
could be seen but broken reeds in an ocean of bitterness. On the other
side the materialists remained erect, inflexible, in the midst of
positive joys, and cared for nothing except to count the money they had
acquired. It was but a sob and a burst of laughter, the one coming from
the soul, the other from the body.
This is what the soul said:
“Alas! Alas! religion has departed; the clouds of heaven fall in rain;
we have no longer either hope or expectation, not even two little pieces
of black wood in the shape of a cross before which to clasp our hands.
The star of the future is loath to appear; it can not rise above the
horizon; it is enveloped in clouds, and like the sun in winter its disc
is the color of blood, as in ‘93. There is no more love, no more glory.
What heavy darkness over all the earth! And death will come ere the day
breaks.”
This is what the body said:
“Man is here below to satisfy his senses; he has more or less of white
or yellow metal, by which he merits more or less esteem. To eat, to
drink, and to sleep, that is life. As for the bonds which exist between
men, friendship consists in loaning money; but one rarely has a friend
whom he loves enough for that. Kinship determines inheritance; love is
an exercise of the body; the only intellectual joy is vanity.”
Like the Asiatic plague exhaled from the vapors of the Ganges, frightful
despair stalked over the earth. Already Chateaubriand, prince of poesy,
wrapping the horrible idol in his pilgrim’s mantle, had placed it on
a marble altar in the midst of perfumes and holy incense. Already the
children were clenching idle hands and drinking in a bitter cup the
poisoned brewage of doubt. Already things were drifting toward the
abyss, when the jackals suddenly emerged from the earth. A deathly and
infected literature, which had no form but that of ugliness, began to
sprinkle with fetid blood all the monsters of nature.
Who will dare to recount what was passing in the colleges? Men doubted
everything: the young men denied everything. The poets sang of despair;
the youth came from the schools with serene brow, their faces glowing
with health, and blasphemy in their mouths. Moreover, the French
character, being by nature gay and open, readily assimilated English and
German ideas; but hearts too light to struggle and to suffer withered
like crushed flowers. Thus the seed of death descended slowly and
without shock from the head to the bowels. Instead of having the
enthusiasm of evil we had only the negation of the good; instead of
despair, insensibility. Children of fifteen, seated listlessly under
flowering shrubs, conversed for pastime on subjects which would have
made shudder with terror the still thickets of Versailles. The Communion
of Christ, the Host, those wafers that stand as the eternal symbol of
divine love, were used to seal letters; the children spit upon the Bread
of God.
Happy they who escaped those times! Happy they who passed over the abyss
while looking up to Heaven. There are such, doubtless, and they will
pity us.
It is unfortunately true that there is in blasphemy a certain outlet
which solaces the burdened heart. When an atheist, drawing his watch,
gave God a quarter of an hour in which to strike him dead, it is certain
that it was a quarter of an hour of wrath and of atrocious joy. It was
the paroxysm of despair, a nameless appeal to all celestial powers; it
was a poor, wretched creature squirming under the foot that was crushing
him; it was a loud cry of pain. Who knows? In the eyes of Him who sees
all things, it was perhaps a prayer.
Thus these youth found employment for their idle powers in a fondness
for despair. To scoff at glory, at religion, at love, at all the world,
is a great consolation for those who do not know what to do; they mock
at themselves, and in doing so prove the correctness of their view. And
then it is pleasant to believe one’s self unhappy when one is only idle
and tired. Debauchery, moreover, the first result of the principles of
death, is a terrible millstone for grinding the energies.
The rich said: “There is nothing real but riches, all else is a dream;
let us enjoy and then let us die.” Those of moderate fortune said:
“There is nothing real but oblivion, all else is a dream; let us
forget and let us die.” And the poor said: “There is nothing real but
unhappiness, all else is a dream; let us blaspheme and die.”
Is this too black? Is it exaggerated? What do you think of it? Am I a
misanthrope? Allow me to make a reflection.
In reading the history of the fall of the Roman Empire, it is impossible
to overlook the evil that the Christians, so admirable when in the
desert, did to the State when they were in power. “When I think,” said
Montesquieu, “of the profound ignorance into which the Greek clergy
plunged the laity, I am obliged to compare them to the Scythians of whom
Herodotus speaks, who put out the eyes of their slaves in order that
nothing might distract their attention from their work.... No affair
of State, no peace, no truce, no negotiations, no marriage could be
transacted by any one but the clergy. The evils of this system were
beyond belief.”
Montesquieu might have added: Christianity destroyed the emperors but
it saved the people. It opened to the barbarians the palaces of
Constantinople, but it opened the doors of cottages to the ministering
angels of Christ. It had much to do with the great ones of earth. And
what is more interesting than the death-rattle of an empire corrupt
to the very marrow of its bones, than the sombre galvanism under the
influence of which the skeleton of tyranny danced upon the tombs of
Heliogabalus and Caracalla? How beautiful that mummy of Rome, embalmed
in the perfumes of Nero and swathed in the shroud of Tiberius! It had
to do, my friends the politicians, with finding the poor and giving
them life and peace; it had to do with allowing the worms and tumors
to destroy the monuments of shame, while drawing from the ribs of this
mummy a virgin as beautiful as the mother of the Redeemer, Hope, the
friend of the oppressed.
That is what Christianity did; and now, after many years, what have they
done who destroyed it? They saw that the poor allowed themselves to be
oppressed by the rich, the feeble by the strong, because of that saying:
“The rich and the strong will oppress me on earth; but when they wish to
enter paradise, I shall be at the door and I will accuse them before the
tribunal of God.” And so, alas! they were patient.
The antagonists of Christ therefore said to the poor: “You wait
patiently for the day of justice: there is no justice; you wait for the
life eternal to achieve your vengeance: there is no life eternal; you
gather up your tears and those of your family, the cries of children
and the sobs of women, to place them at the feet of God at the hour of
death: there is no God.”
Then it is certain that the poor man dried his tears, that he told his
wife to check her sobs, his children to come with him, and that he stood
erect upon the soil with the power of a bull. He said to the rich: “Thou
who oppressest me, thou art only man,” and to the priest: “Thou who
hast consoled me, thou hast lied.” That was just what the antagonists of
Christ desired. Perhaps they thought this was the way to achieve man’s
happiness, sending him out to the conquest of liberty.
But, if the poor man, once satisfied that the priests deceive him, that
the rich rob him, that all men have rights, that all good is of this
world, and that misery is impiety; if the poor man, believing in himself
and in his two arms, says to himself some fine day: “War on the rich!
For me, happiness here in this life, since there is no other! for me,
the earth, since heaven is empty! for me and for all, since all are
equal.” Oh! reasoners sublime, who have led him to this, what will you
say to him if he is conquered?
Doubtless you are philanthropists, doubtless you are right about the
future, and the day will come when you will be blessed; but thus far, we
have not blessed you. When the oppressor said: “This world for me!” the
oppressed replied: “Heaven for me!” Now what can he say?
All the evils of the present come from two causes: the people who have
passed through 1793 and 1814 nurse wounds in their hearts. That which
was is no more; what will be, is not yet. Do not seek elsewhere the
cause of our malady.
Here is a man whose house falls in ruins; he has torn it down in order
to build another. The rubbish encumbers the spot, and he waits for new
materials for his new home. At the moment he has prepared to cut the
stone and mix the cement, while standing pick in hand with sleeves
rolled up, he is informed that there is no more stone, and is advised to
whiten the old material and make the best possible use of that. What
can you expect this man to do who is unwilling to build his nest out
of ruins? The quarry is deep, the tools too weak to hew out the stones.
“Wait!” they say to him, “we will draw out the stones one by one; hope,
work, advance, withdraw.” What do they not tell him? And in the mean
time he has lost his old house, and has not yet built the new; he does
not know where to protect himself from the rain, or how to prepare his
evening meal, nor where to work, nor where to sleep, nor where to die;
and his children are newly born.
I am much deceived if we do not resemble that man. Oh! people of the
future! when on a warm summer day you bend over your plows in the green
fields of your native land; when you see in the pure sunlight, under a
spotless sky, the earth, your fruitful mother, smiling in her matutinal
robe on the workman, her well-beloved child; when drying on your brow
the holy baptism of sweat, you cast your eye over the vast horizon,
where there will not be one blade higher than another in the human
harvest, but only violets and marguerites in the midst of ripening ears;
oh! free men! when you thank God that you were born for that harvest,
think of those who are no more, tell yourself that we have dearly
purchased the repose which you enjoy; pity us more than all your
fathers, for we have suffered the evil which entitled them to pity and
we have lost that which consoled them.