DURING the wars of the Empire, while the husbands and brothers were in
Germany, the anxious mothers brought forth an ardent, pale, nervous
generation. Conceived between two battles, educated amidst the noises of
war, thousands of children looked about them with a somber eye while
testing their puny muscles. From time to time their blood-stained fathers
would appear, raise them on their gold-laced bosoms, then place them on
the ground and remount their horses.
The life of Europe was centered in one man; all were trying to fill their
lungs with the air which he had breathed. Every year France presented
that man with three hundred thousand of her youth; it was the tax paid to
Caesar, and, without that troop behind him, he could not follow his
fortune. It was the escort he needed that he might traverse the world,
and then perish in a little valley in a deserted island, under the
weeping willow.
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, they
said, and they called it the Sun of Austerlitz. But he made this sunlight
himself with his ever-thundering cannons which dispelled all 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 hecatomb; but they regarded Murat as
invulnerable, and the emperor had been seen to cross a bridge where so
many bullets whistled that they wondered if he could die. And even if one
must die, what did it matter? Death itself was so beautiful, so noble, so
illustrious, in his battle-scarred purple! It borrowed the color of hope,
it reaped so many ripening harvests that it became young, and there was
no more old age. All the cradles of France, as all its tombs, were armed
with shield and buckler; there were no more old men, there were corpses
or demi-gods.
Nevertheless, the immortal emperor stood one day on a hill watching seven
nations engaged in mutual slaughter; as he did not know whether he would
be master of all the world or only half, Azrael passed along, touched him
with the tip of his wing, and pushed 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, all the royal spiders made the partition of
Europe, and the purple of Caesar became the frock of Harlequin.
Just as the traveler, sure of his way, hastens night and day through rain
and sunlight, regardless of vigils or of dangers; but when he has reached
his home and seated himself before the fire, he is seized upon by a
feeling of extreme lassitude and can hardly drag himself to his bed: thus
France, the widow of Caesar, suddenly felt her wound. She fell through
sheer exhaustion, and lapsed into a sleep so profound that her old kings,
believing her dead, wrapped about her a white shroud. The old army, its
hair whitened in service, returned exhausted with fatigue, 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 natal prairies and found
themselves so old, so mutilated, that they bethought themselves of their
sons, in order that they might close their eyes in peace. They asked
where they were; the children came from the schools, and seeing neither
sabers, nor cuirasses, neither infantry nor cavalry, they 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 antechambers of the consulates and the embassies, with
these two words beneath: _Salvatoribus mundi_.
Then there seated itself on a world in ruins an anxious youth. All 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 they were told that through each
gate of these towns lay the road to a capital of Europe. They had in
their heads all the world; they beheld the earth, the sky, the streets
and the highways; all these were empty, and the bells of parish churches
resounded faintly in the distance.
Pale fantoms shrouded in black robes, slowly traversed the country;
others knocked at the doors of houses, and when admitted, drew from their
pockets large well-worn documents with which they drove out the tenants.
From every direction came men still trembling with the fear which had
seized them when they fled twenty years before. All began to urge their
claims, disputing loudly and crying for help; it was strange that a
single death should attract so many crows.
The king of France was on his throne, looking here and there to see if he
could perchance find a bee in the royal tapestry. Some held out their
hats, and he gave them money; others showed him 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 apparel.
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 were answered: "Become priests;" when
they spoke of hope, of love, of power, of life: "Become priests."
And yet there mounted the rostrum a man who held in his hand a contract
between the king and the 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 their grandfathers
had spoken thus. They remembered having seen in certain obscure corners
of the paternal home mysterious marble busts with long hair and a Latin
inscription; they remembered seeing their grandsires shake their heads
and speak of a stream of blood more terrible than that of the emperor.
There was something in that word liberty that 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
on the street three panniers which were being borne to Clamart; there
were, within, 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 to publicly estimate what
ambition had cost and how very dear was glory; they pointed out the
horror of war and called the hecatombs butcheries. And 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 though awakened 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 repose."
Three elements entered into the life which offered itself to these
children: behind them a past forever destroyed, moving uneasily 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--something like the Ocean which separates the old world
from Young America, something vague and floating, a troubled sea filled
with wreckage, traversed from time to time by some distant sail or some
ship breathing out a heavy vapor; the present, in a word, which separates
the past from the future, which is neither the one nor the other, which
resemble both, and where one can not know whether, at each step, one is
treading on a seed or a piece of refuse.
It was in this chaos that choice must 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 loved Galatea: it was for
them a lover in marble and they waited for the breath of life to animate
that breast, for the blood to color those veins.
There remained then, the present, the spirit of the time, angel of the
dawn who 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 specter, half mummy and half fetus; they approached it as the
traveler 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 falls into dust in the midst of orange blossoms.
As upon the approach of a tempest there passes through the forests a
terrible sound which makes all the trees shudder, to which profound
silence succeeds, thus had Napoleon, in passing, shaken the world; kings
felt their crowns vacillate in the storm and, raising their hands to
steady them, they found only their hair, bristling with terror. The pope
had traveled 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; when the first bite has been taken there is no
escaping him.
In European history it has often happened that a sovereign has made that
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 loses everything, and not
only majesty, but religion, nobility, all power both human and divine.
Napoleon dead, human and divine power were re-established, 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 deposition 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 at
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 rumbling could be heard. It was the rusty and notched saber 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 thirsty 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: "And
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 robe. 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 herds by nature, politics
became mingled with it. There were struggles with the _garde du corps_ on
the steps of the legislative assembly; at the theater, Talma wore a
peruke 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 interior life of
society assumed a somber aspect of silence; hypocrisy ruled in all
departments of conduct; English ideas of devotion, gaiety even, 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 to one
side and the women to the other; and thus, the one clad in white like a
bride and the other in black like an orphan began to take measurements
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 glory and religion: it was an
old illusion. The grisette, that class 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 wanted dresses and hats and
she sold herself. O, 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 having abandoned her, finds her after a
night of orgie, 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 all the
elements of anguish and of grief scattered over the universe. Goethe, the
patriarch of a new literature, after having painted in "Werther" the
passion which leads to suicide, traced in his "Faust" the most somber
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 by a cry of grief
which made Greece tremble, and suspended "Manfred" over the abyss as if
nothingness had been the answer of the hideous enigma, with which he
enveloped him.
Pardon me! O, great poets! who are now but ashes and who sleep in peace!
Pardon me; you are demi-gods and I am only a child who suffers. But while
writing all this I can not help cursing 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, and the world was crumbling to
pieces about you, you wept on its ruins and you despaired; and your
mistresses were false; your friends calumniated, your compatriots
misunderstood; and your heart was empty; death was in your eyes, and you
were the very Colossi of grief. But tell me, you 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
you with their aid find in immortal nature no 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, thou Byron, hadst thou not near Ravenna,
under thy orange trees of Italy, under thy beautiful Venetian sky, near
thy dear Adriatic, hadst thou not thy well beloved? O, God! I who speak
to you and who am only a feeble child, I have perhaps known sorrows that
you have never suffered, and yet I believe and I hope, and yet I bless
God.
When English and German ideas passed thus over our heads there ensued
disgust and mournful silence, followed by a terrible convulsion. For to
formulate general ideas is to change saltpeter 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 degeneration of all things of heaven and of earth that might be
termed disenchantment, or if you preferred, despair; as if humanity in
lethargy had been pronounced dead by those who held its place. Like a
soldier who was asked: "In what do you believe?" and who replied: "In
myself." Thus the youth of France, hearing that question, replied: "In
nothing."
Then they formed into two camps: on one side the exalted spirits,
sufferers, all the expansive souls who had need of the infinite, bowed
their heads and wept; they wrapt themselves in unhealthy dreams and there
could be seen nothing but broken reeds on an ocean of bitterness. On the
other side the men of the flesh remained standing, inflexible in the
midst of positive joys, and cared for nothing except to count the money
they had acquired. It was only 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 rise; it can not get above the horizon; it
is enveloped in clouds, and like the sun in winter its disk is the color
of blood, as in '93. There is no more love, no more glory. What heavy
darkness over all the earth! And we shall be dead when 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 to which he owes 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 tightening their idle hands and drinking in their bitter
cup the poisoned brewage of doubt. Already things were drifting toward
the abyss, when the jackals suddenly emerged from the earth. A cadaverous
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 sung 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 principle 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 motionless groves 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 discharge
of power 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. And 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 of
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 oneself unhappy when one is only idle and
tired. Debauchery, moreover, the first conclusion of the principle 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."
This is too black? It is 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 Chustions, so admirable in the desert, did
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 negotiation, 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 somber galvanism under the
influence of which the skeleton of tyranny danced upon the tombs of
Heliogabalus and Caracalla! What a beautiful thing that mummy of Rome,
embalmed in the perfumes of Nero and swathed in the shroud of Tiberius!
It had to do, messieurs 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
who destroyed it done? 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
upon the earth 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; 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 fresh
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 meantime
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. O, 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, when
there will not be one blade higher than another in the human harvest, but
only violets and marguerites in the midst of ripening sheafs. 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.