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Library Edition
THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
JOHN RUSKIN
ARROWS OF THE CHACE
OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US
THE STORM-CLOUD OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
HORTUS INCLUSUS
NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
NEW YORK CHICAGO
"Our Fathers Have Told Us"
SKETCHES OF THE HISTORY OF CHRISTENDOM
FOR BOYS AND GIRLS
WHO HAVE BEEN HELD AT ITS FONTS
PART I.
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFACE iii
CHAPTER I.--BY THE RIVERS OF WATERS 1
" II.--UNDER THE DRACHENFELS 26
" III.--THE LION TAMER 58
" IV.--INTERPRETATIONS 88
APPENDIX I.--CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF PRINCIPAL EVENTS
REFERRED TO IN THE 'BIBLE OF AMIENS' 143
" II.--REFERENCES EXPLANATORY OF PHOTOGRAPHS TO
CHAPTER IV 144
" III.--GENERAL PLAN OF 'OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US' 153
INDEX 155
PLATES.
ST. MARY (_Frontispiece_) _see page_ 131
_To face page_
PLATE I.--THE DYNASTIES OF FRANCE 8
" II.--THE BIBLE OF AMIENS, NORTHERN PORCH BEFORE
RESTORATION 26
" III.--AMIENS, JOUR DES TRÉSPASSÉS, 1880 58
PLAN OF THE WEST PORCHES 140
Transcriber's Notes:
1. Italic characters have been represented by _xxxxx_
2. Superscript characters have been represented by xxx^yy
3. A macron, or bar over a letter, is shown as [=letter]
4. In the paragraph that begins, "Sketch for yourself, first, a map of
France" there are images in the paragraph. I have represented
back-slanting diagonal shading with "\\\" and forward-slanting
diagonal shading with "///" and horizontal shading with "=".
5. In the original text, footnotes in Chapter I are represented with
numbers, and footnotes in all the rest of the text, including the
notes on Chapter I, are represented with symbols. I have converted
all of them to numbers, since there is no overlap, and they seem to
be used in the same way in the text.
PREFACE.
The long abandoned purpose, of which the following pages begin some
attempt at fulfilment, has been resumed at the request of a young
English governess, that I would write some pieces of history which her
pupils could gather some good out of;--the fruit of historical
documents placed by modern educational systems at her disposal, being
to them labour only, and sorrow.
What else may be said for the book, if it ever become one, it must say
for itself: preface, more than this, I do not care to write: and the
less, because some passages of British history, at this hour under
record, call for instant, though brief, comment.
I am told that the Queen's Guards have gone to Ireland; playing "God
save the Queen." And being, (as I have declared myself in the course
of some letters to which public attention has been lately more than
enough directed,) to the best of my knowledge, the staunchest
Conservative in England, I am disposed gravely to question the
propriety of the mission of the Queen's Guards on the employment
commanded them. My own Conservative notion of the function of the
Guards is that they should guard the Queen's throne and life, when
threatened either by domestic or foreign enemy: but not that they
should become a substitute for her inefficient police force, in the
execution of her domiciliary laws.
And still less so, if the domiciliary laws which they are sent to
execute, playing "God save the Queen," be perchance precisely contrary
to that God the Saviour's law; and therefore, such as, in the long run,
no quantity either of Queens, or Queen's men, _could_ execute. Which is
a question I have for these ten years been endeavouring to get the
British public to consider--vainly enough hitherto; and will not at
present add to my own many words on the matter. But a book has just been
published by a British officer, who, if he had not been otherwise and
more actively employed, could not only have written all my books about
landscape and picture, but is very singularly also of one mind with me,
(God knows of how few Englishmen I can now say so,) on matters regarding
the Queen's safety, and the Nation's honour. Of whose book ("Far out:
Rovings retold"), since various passages will be given in my subsequent
terminal notes, I will content myself with quoting for the end of my
Preface, the memorable words which Colonel Butler himself quotes, as
spoken to the British Parliament by its last Conservative leader, a
British officer who had also served with honour and success.
The Duke of Wellington said: "It is already well known to your
Lordships that of the troops which our gracious Sovereign did me the
honour to entrust to my command at various periods during the war--a
war undertaken for the express purpose of securing the happy
institutions and independence of the country--at least one half were
Roman Catholics. My Lords, when I call your recollection to this fact,
I am sure all further eulogy is unnecessary. Your Lordships are well
aware for what length of period and under what difficult circumstances
they maintained the Empire buoyant upon the flood which overwhelmed
the thrones and wrecked the institutions of every other people;--how
they kept alive the only spark of freedom which was left
unextinguished in Europe.... My Lords, it is mainly to the Irish
Catholics that we all owe our proud predominance in our military
career, and that I personally am indebted for the laurels with which
you have been pleased to decorate my brow.... We must confess, my
Lords, that without Catholic blood and Catholic valour no victory
could ever have been obtained, and the first military talents might
have been exerted in vain."
Let these noble words of tender Justice be the first example to my
young readers of what all History ought to be. It has been told them,
in the Laws of Fésole, that all great Art is Praise. So is all
faithful History, and all high Philosophy. For these three, Art,
History, and Philosophy, are each but one part of the Heavenly Wisdom,
which sees not as man seeth, but with Eternal Charity; and because she
rejoices not in Iniquity, _therefore_ rejoices in the Truth.
For true knowledge is of Virtues only; of poisons and vices, it is
Hecate who teaches, not Athena. And of all wisdom, chiefly the
Politician's must consist in this divine Prudence; it is not, indeed,
always necessary for men to know the virtues of their friends, or
their masters; since the friend will still manifest, and the master
use. But woe to the Nation which is too cruel to cherish the virtue of
its subjects, and too cowardly to recognize that of its enemies!
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS.
CHAPTER I.
BY THE RIVERS OF WATERS.
The intelligent English traveller, in this fortunate age for him, is
aware that, half-way between Boulogne and Paris, there is a complex
railway-station, into which his train, in its relaxing speed, rolls
him with many more than the average number of bangs and bumps
prepared, in the access of every important French _gare_, to startle
the drowsy or distrait passenger into a sense of his situation.
He probably also remembers that at this halting-place in mid-journey
there is a well-served buffet, at which he has the privilege of "Dix
minutes d'arrêt."
He is not, however, always so distinctly conscious that these ten
minutes of arrest are granted to him within not so many minutes' walk
of the central square of a city which was once the Venice of France.
Putting the lagoon islands out of question, the French River-Queen was
nearly as large in compass as Venice herself; and divided, not by slow
currents of ebbing and returning tide, but by eleven beautiful trout
streams, of which some four or five are as large, each separately, as
our Surrey Wandle, or as Isaac Walton's Dove; and which, branching out
of one strong current above the city, and uniting again after they have
eddied through its streets, are bordered, as they flow down, (fordless
except where the two Edwards rode them, the day before Crecy,) to the
sands of St. Valery, by groves of aspen, and glades of poplar, whose
grace and gladness seem to spring in every stately avenue instinct with
the image of the just man's life,--"Erit tanquam lignum quod plantatum
est secus decursus aquarum."
But the Venice of Picardy owed her name, not to the beauty of her
streams merely, but to their burden. She was a worker, like the
Adriatic princes, in gold and glass, in stone, wood, and ivory; she
was skilled like an Egyptian in the weaving of fine linen; dainty as
the maids of Judah in divers colours of needlework. And of these, the
fruits of her hands, praising her in her own gates, she sent also
portions to stranger nations, and her fame went out into all lands.
"Un règlement de l'échevinage, du 12^me avril 1566, fait voir qu'on
fabriquait à cette epoque, des velours de toutes couleurs pour
meubles, des colombettes à grands et petits carreaux, des burailles
croises, qu'on expédiait en Allemagne--en Espagne, en Turquie, et en
Barbarie!"[1]
All-coloured velvets, pearl-iridescent colombettes! (I wonder what
they may be?) and sent to vie with the variegated carpet of the Turk,
and glow upon the arabesque towers of Barbary![2] Was not this a phase
of provincial Picard life which an intelligent English traveller might
do well to inquire into? Why should this fountain of rainbows leap up
suddenly here by Somme; and a little Frankish maid write herself the
sister of Venice, and the servant of Carthage and of Tyre?
[Footnote 1: M. H. Dusevel, Histoire de la Ville d'Amiens. Amiens,
Caron et Lambert, 1848; p. 305.]
[Footnote 2: Carpaccio trusts for the chief splendour of any festa in
cities to the patterns of the draperies hung out of windows.]
And if she, why not others also of our northern villages? Has the
intelligent traveller discerned anything, in the country, or in its
shores, on his way from the gate of Calais to the _gare_ of Amiens, of
special advantage for artistic design, or for commercial enterprise? He
has seen league after league of sandy dunes. We also, we, have our sands
by Severn, by Lune, by Solway. He has seen extensive plains of useful
and not unfragrant peat,--an article sufficiently accessible also to
our Scotch and Irish industries. He has seen many a broad down and
jutting cliff of purest chalk; but, opposite, the perfide Albion gleams
no whit less blanche beyond the blue. Pure waters he has seen, issuing
out of the snowy rock; but are ours less bright at Croydon, at
Guildford, or at Winchester? And yet one never heard of treasures sent
from Solway sands to African; nor that the builders at Romsey could give
lessons in colour to the builders at Granada? What can it be, in the air
or the earth--in her stars or in her sunlight--that fires the heart and
quickens the eyes of the little white-capped Amienoise soubrette, till
she can match herself against Penelope?
The intelligent English traveller has of course no time to waste on
any of these questions. But if he has bought his ham-sandwich, and is
ready for the "En voiture, messieurs," he may perhaps condescend for
an instant to hear what a lounger about the place, neither wasteful of
his time, nor sparing of it, can suggest as worth looking at, when his
train glides out of the station.
He will see first, and doubtless with the respectful admiration which an
Englishman is bound to bestow upon such objects, the coal-sheds and
carriage-sheds of the station itself, extending in their ashy and oily
splendours for about a quarter of a mile out of the town; and then, just
as the train gets into speed, under a large chimney tower, which he
cannot see to nearly the top of, but will feel overcast by the shadow of
its smoke, he _may_ see, if he will trust his intelligent head out of
the window, and look back, fifty or fifty-one (I am not sure of my count
to a unit) similar chimneys, all similarly smoking, all with similar
works attached, oblongs of brown brick wall, with portholes numberless
of black square window. But in the midst of these fifty tall things that
smoke, he will see one, a little taller than any, and more delicate,
that does not smoke; and in the midst of these fifty masses of blank
wall enclosing 'works'--and doubtless producing works profitable and
honourable to France and the world--he will see _one_ mass of wall--not
blank, but strangely wrought by the hands of foolish men of long ago,
for the purpose of enclosing or producing no manner of profitable work
whatsoever, but one--
"This is the work of God; that ye should believe on Him whom He hath
sent"!
Leaving the intelligent traveller now to fulfil his vow of pilgrimage
to Paris,--or wherever else God may be sending him,--I will suppose
that an intelligent Eton boy or two, or thoughtful English girl, may
care quietly to walk with me as far as this same spot of commanding
view, and to consider what the workless--shall we say also
worthless?--building, and its unshadowed minaret, may perhaps farther
mean.
Minaret I have called it, for want of better English word.
Flêche--arrow--is its proper name; vanishing into the air you know not
where, by the mere fineness of it. Flameless--motionless--hurtless--the
fine arrow; unplumed, unpoisoned, and unbarbed; aimless--shall we say
also, readers young and old, travelling or abiding? It, and the walls it
rises from--what have they once meant? What meaning have they left in
them yet, for you, or for the people that live round them, and never
look up as they pass by?
Suppose we set ourselves first to learn how they came there.
At the birth of Christ, all this hillside, and the brightly-watered
plain below, with the corn-yellow champaign above, were inhabited by a
Druid-taught race, wild enough in thoughts and ways, but under Roman
government, and gradually becoming accustomed to hear the names, and
partly to confess the power, of Roman gods. For three hundred years
after the birth of Christ they heard the name of no other God.
Three hundred years! and neither apostles nor inheritors of
apostleship had yet gone into all the world and preached the gospel to
every creature. Here, on their peaty ground, the wild people, still
trusting in Pomona for apples, in Silvanus for acorns, in Ceres for
bread, and in Proserpina for rest, hoped but the season's blessing
from the Gods of Harvest, and feared no eternal anger from the Queen
of Death.
But at last, three hundred years being past and gone, in the
year of Christ 301, there came to this hillside of Amiens, on the
sixth day of the Ides of October, the Messenger of a new Life.
His name, Firminius (I suppose) in Latin, Firmin in French,--so to be
remembered here in Picardy. Firmin, not Firminius; as Denis, not
Dionysius; coming out of space--no one tells what part of space. But
received by the pagan Amienois with surprised welcome, and seen of
them--forty days--many days, we may read--preaching acceptably, and
binding with baptismal vows even persons in good society: and that in
such numbers, that at last he is accused to the Roman governor, by the
priests of Jupiter and Mercury, as one turning the world upside-down.
And in the last day of the Forty--or of the indefinite many meant by
Forty--he is beheaded, as martyrs ought to be, and his ministrations
in a mortal body ended.
The old, old story, you say? Be it so; you will the more easily
remember it. The Amienois remembered it so carefully, that, twelve
hundred years afterwards, in the sixteenth century, they thought good
to carve and paint the four stone pictures Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4 of our
first choice photographs. (N. B.--This series is not yet arranged, but
is distinct from that referred to in Chapter IV. See Appendix II.).
Scene 1st, St. Firmin arriving; scene 2nd, St. Firmin preaching; scene
3rd, St. Firmin baptizing; and scene 4th, St. Firmin beheaded, by an
executioner with very red legs, and an attendant dog of the character
of the dog in 'Faust,' of whom we may have more to say presently.
Following in the meantime the tale of St. Firmin, as of old time
known, his body was received, and buried, by a Roman senator, his
disciple, (a kind of Joseph of Arimathea to St. Firmin,) in the Roman
senator's own garden. Who also built a little oratory over his grave.
The Roman senator's son built a church to replace the oratory,
dedicated it to Our Lady of Martyrs, and established it as an
episcopal seat--the first of the French nation's. A very notable spot
for the French nation, surely? One deserving, perhaps, some little
memory or monument,--cross, tablet, or the like? Where, therefore,
do you suppose this first cathedral of French Christianity stood, and
with what monument has it been honoured?
It stood where we now stand, companion mine, whoever you may be; and
the monument wherewith it has been honoured is this--chimney, whose
gonfalon of smoke overshadows us--the latest effort of modern art in
Amiens, the chimney of St. Acheul.
The first cathedral, you observe, of the _French_ nation; more
accurately, the first germ of cathedral _for_ the French nation--who
are not yet here; only this grave of a martyr is here, and this church
of Our Lady of Martyrs, abiding on the hillside, till the Roman power
pass away.
Falling together with it, and trampled down by savage tribes, alike
the city and the shrine; the grave forgotten,--when at last the Franks
themselves pour from the north, and the utmost wave of them, lapping
along these downs of Somme, is _here_ stayed, and the Frankish
standard planted, and the French kingdom throned.
Here their first capital, here the first footsteps[3] of the Frank in
his France! Think of it. All over the south are Gauls, Burgundians,
Bretons, heavier-hearted nations of sullen mind: at their outmost brim
and border, here at last are the Franks, the source of all Franchise,
for this our Europe. You have heard the word in England, before now,
but English word for it is none! _Honesty_ we have of our own; but
_Frankness_ we must learn of these: nay, all the western nations of us
are in a few centuries more to be known by this name of Frank. Franks,
of Paris that is to be, in time to come; but French of Paris is in
year of grace 500 an unknown tongue in Paris, as much as in
Stratford-att-ye-Bowe. French of Amiens is the kingly and courtly form
of Christian speech, Paris lying yet in Lutetian clay, to develope
into tile-field, perhaps, in due time. Here, by soft-glittering Somme,
reign Clovis and his Clotilde.
[Footnote 3: The first fixed and set-down footsteps; wandering tribes
called Franks, had overswept the country, and recoiled, again and
again. But _this_ invasion of the so-called Salian Franks, never
retreats again.]
And by St. Firmin's grave speaks now another gentle evangelist, and
the first Frank king's prayer to the King of kings is made to Him,
known only as "the God of Clotilde."
I must ask the reader's patience now with a date or two, and stern
facts--two--three--or more.
Clodion, the leader of the first Franks who reach irrevocably beyond
the Rhine, fights his way through desultory Roman cohorts as far as
Amiens, and takes it, in 445.[4]
[Footnote 4: See note at end of chapter, as also for the allusions in
p. 8, to the battle of Soissons.]
Two years afterwards, at his death, the scarcely asserted throne is
seized--perhaps inevitably--by the tutor of his children, Merovée,
whose dynasty is founded on the defeat of Attila at Chalons.
He died in 457. His son Childeric, giving himself up to the love of
women, and scorned by the Frank soldiery, is driven into exile, the
Franks choosing rather to live under the law of Rome than under a base
chief of their own. He receives asylum at the court of the king of
Thuringia, and abides there. His chief officer in Amiens, at his
departure, breaks a ring in two, and, giving him the half of it, tells
him, when the other half is sent, to return.
And, after many days, the half of the broken ring is sent, and he
returns, and is accepted king by his Franks.
The Thuringian queen follows him, (I cannot find if her husband is
first dead--still less, if dead, how dying,) and offers herself to him
for his wife.
"I have known thy usefulness, and that thou art very strong; and I
have come to live with thee. Had I known, in parts beyond sea, any one
more useful than thou, I should have sought to live with _him_."
He took her for his wife, and their son is Clovis.
A wonderful story; how far in literalness true is of no manner of moment
to us; the myth, and power of it, _do_ manifest the nature of the French
kingdom, and prophesy its future destiny. Personal valour, personal
beauty, loyalty to kings, love of women, disdain of unloving marriage,
note all these things for true, and that in the corruption of these will
be the last death of the Frank, as in their force was his first glory.
Personal valour, worth. _Utilitas_, the keystone of all. Birth
nothing, except as gifting with valour;--Law of primogeniture
unknown;--Propriety of conduct, it appears, for the present, also
nowhere! (but we are all pagans yet, remember).
Let us get our dates and our geography, at any rate, gathered out of
the great 'nowhere' of confused memory, and set well together, thus
far.
457. Merovée dies. The useful Childeric, counting his exile, and reign
in Amiens, together, is King altogether twenty-four years, 457 to 481,
and during his reign Odoacer ends the Roman empire in Italy, 476.
481. Clovis is only fifteen when he succeeds his father, as King of
the Franks in Amiens. At this time a fragment of Roman power remains
isolated in central France, while four strong and partly savage
nations form a cross round this dying centre: the Frank on the north,
the Breton on the west, the Burgundian on the east, the Visigoth
strongest of all and gentlest, in the south, from Loire to the sea.
Sketch for yourself, first, a map of France, as large as you like, as
in Plate I., fig. 1, marking only the courses of the five rivers,
Somme, Seine, Loire, Saone, Rhone; then, rudely, you find it was
divided at the time thus, fig. 2: Fleur-de-lysée part, Frank; \\\,
Breton; ///, Burgundian; =, Visigoth. I am not sure how far these last
reached across Rhone into Provence, but I think best to indicate
Provence as semée with roses.
Now, under Clovis, the Franks fight three great battles. The first,
with the Romans, near Soissons, which they win, and become masters of
France as far as the Loire. Copy the rough map fig. 2, and put the
fleur-de-lys all over the middle of it, extinguishing the Romans (fig.
3). This battle was won by Clovis, I believe, before he married
Clotilde. He wins his princess by it: cannot get his pretty vase,
however, to present to her. Keep that story well in your mind, and the
battle of Soissons, as winning mid-France for the French, and ending the
Romans there, for ever. Secondly, after he marries Clotilde, the wild
Germans attack _him_ from the north, and he has to fight for life and
throne at Tolbiac. This is the battle in which he prays to the God of
Clotilde, and quits himself of the Germans by His help. Whereupon he is
crowned in Rheims by St. Remy.
[Illustration: Plate I. THE DYNASTIES OF FRANCE.]
And now, in the new strength of his Christianity, and his twin victory
over Rome and Germany, and his love for his queen, and his ambition
for his people, he looks south on that vast Visigothic power, between
Loire and the snowy mountains. Shall Christ, and the Franks, not be
stronger than villainous Visigoths 'who are Arians also'? All his
Franks are with him, in that opinion. So he marches against the
Visigoths, meets them and their Alaric at Poitiers, ends their Alaric
and their Arianism, and carries his faithful Franks to the Pic du
Midi.
And so now you must draw the map of France once more, and put the
fleur-de-lys all over its central mass from Calais to the Pyrenees:
only Brittany still on the west, Burgundy in the east, and the white
Provence rose beyond Rhone. And now poor little Amiens has become a
mere border town like our Durham, and Somme a border streamlet like
our Tyne. Loire and Seine have become the great French rivers, and men
will be minded to build cities by these; where the well-watered
plains, not of peat, but richest pasture, may repose under the guard
of saucy castles on the crags, and moated towers on the islands. But
now let us think a little more closely what our changed symbols in the
map may mean--five fleur-de-lys for level bar.
They don't mean, certainly, that all the Goths are gone, and nobody but
Franks in France? The Franks have not massacred Visigothic man, woman,
and child, from Loire to Garonne. Nay, where their own throne is still
set by the Somme, the peat-bred people whom they found there, live there
still, though subdued. Frank, or Goth, or Roman may fluctuate hither and
thither, in chasing or flying troops: but, unchanged through all the
gusts of war, the rural people whose huts they pillage, whose farms they
ravage, and over whose arts they reign, must still be diligently,
silently, and with no time for lamentation, ploughing, sowing,
cattle-breeding!
Else how could Frank or Hun, Visigoth or Roman, live for a month, or
fight for a day?
Whatever the name, or the manners, of their masters, the ground
delvers must be the same; and the goatherd of the Pyrenees, and the
vine-dresser of Garonne, and the milkmaid of Picardy, give them what
lords you may, abide in their land always, blossoming as the trees of
the field, and enduring as the crags of the desert. And these, the
warp and first substance of the nation, are divided, not by dynasties,
but by climates; and are strong here, and helpless there, by
privileges which no invading tyrants can abolish, and through faults
which no preaching hermit can repress. Now, therefore, please let us
leave our history a minute or two, and read the lessons of constant
earth and sky.
In old times, when one posted from Calais to Paris, there was about
half an hour's trot on the level, from the gate of Calais to the long
chalk hill, which had to be climbed before arriving at the first
post-house in the village of Marquise.
That chalk rise, virtually, is the front of France; that last bit of
level north of it, virtually the last of Flanders; south of it,
stretches now a district of chalk and fine building limestone,--(if you
keep your eyes open, you may see a great quarry of it on the west of the
railway, half-way between Calais and Boulogne, where once was a blessed
little craggy dingle opening into velvet lawns;)--this high, but never
mountainous, calcareous tract, sweeping round the chalk basin of Paris
away to Caen on one side, and Nancy on the other, and south as far as
Bourges, and the Limousin. This limestone tract, with its keen fresh
air, everywhere arable surface, and quarriable banks above well-watered
meadow, is the real country of the French. Here only are their arts
clearly developed. Farther south they are Gascons, or Limousins, or
Auvergnats, or the like. Westward, grim-granitic Bretons; eastward,
Alpine-bearish Burgundians: here only, on the chalk and finely-knit
marble, between, say, Amiens and Chartres one way, and between Caen and
Rheims on the other, have you real _France_.
Of which, before we carry on the farther vital history, I must ask the
reader to consider with me, a little, how history, so called, has been
for the most part written, and of what particulars it usually
consists.
Suppose that the tale of King Lear were a true one; and that a modern
historian were giving the abstract of it in a school manual,
purporting to contain all essential facts in British history valuable
to British youth in competitive examination. The story would be
related somewhat after this manner:--
"The reign of the last king of the seventy-ninth dynasty closed in a
series of events with the record of which it is painful to pollute the
pages of history. The weak old man wished to divide his kingdom into
dowries for his three daughters; but on proposing this arrangement to
them, finding it received by the youngest with coldness and reserve,
he drove her from his court, and divided the kingdom between his two
elder children.
"The youngest found refuge at the court of France, where ultimately
the prince royal married her. But the two elder daughters, having
obtained absolute power, treated their father at first with
disrespect, and soon with contumely. Refused at last even the comforts
necessary to his declining years, the old king, in a transport of
rage, left the palace, with, it is said, only the court fool for an
attendant, and wandered, frantic and half naked, during the storms of
winter, in the woods of Britain.
"Hearing of these events, his youngest daughter hastily collected an
army, and invaded the territory of her ungrateful sisters, with the
object of restoring her father to his throne; but, being met by a well
disciplined force, under the command of her eldest sister's paramour,
Edmund, bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester, was herself defeated,
thrown into prison, and soon afterwards strangled by the adulterer's
order. The old king expired on receiving the news of her death; and the
participators in these crimes soon after received their reward; for the
two wicked queens being rivals for the affections of the bastard, the
one of them who was regarded by him with less favour poisoned the other,
and afterwards killed herself. Edmund afterwards met his death at the
hand of his brother, the legitimate son of Gloucester, under whose rule,
with that of the Earl of Kent, the kingdom remained for several
succeeding years."
Imagine this succinctly graceful recital of what the historian
conceived to be the facts, adorned with violently black and white
woodcuts, representing the blinding of Gloucester, the phrenzy of
Lear, the strangling of Cordelia, and the suicide of Goneril, and you
have a type of popular history in the nineteenth century; which is,
you may perceive after a little reflection, about as profitable
reading for young persons (so far as regards the general colour and
purity of their thoughts) as the Newgate Calendar would be; with this
farther condition of incalculably greater evil, that, while the
calendar of prison-crime would teach a thoughtful youth the dangers of
low life and evil company, the calendar of kingly crime overthrows his
respect for any manner of government, and his faith in the ordinances
of Providence itself.
Books of loftier pretence, written by bankers, members of Parliament,
or orthodox clergymen, are of course not wanting; and show that the
progress of civilization consists in the victory of usury over
ecclesiastical prejudice, or in the establishment of the Parliamentary
privileges of the borough of Puddlecombe, or in the extinction of the
benighted superstitions of the Papacy by the glorious light of
Reformation. Finally, you have the broadly philosophical history,
which proves to you that there is no evidence whatever of any
overruling Providence in human affairs; that all virtuous actions have
selfish motives; and that a scientific selfishness, with proper
telegraphic communications, and perfect knowledge of all the species
of Bacteria, will entirely secure the future well-being of the upper
classes of society, and the dutiful resignation of those beneath them.
Meantime, the two ignored powers--the Providence of Heaven, and the
virtue of men--have ruled, and rule, the world, not invisibly; and
they are the only powers of which history has ever to tell any
profitable truth. Under all sorrow, there is the force of virtue; over
all ruin, the restoring charity of God. To these alone we have to
look; in these alone we may understand the past, and predict the
future, destiny of the ages.
I return to the story of Clovis, king now of all central France. Fix
the year 500 in your minds as the approximate date of his baptism at
Rheims, and of St. Remy's sermon to him, telling him of the sufferings
and passion of Christ, till Clovis sprang from his throne, grasping
his spear, and crying, "Had I been there with my brave Franks, I would
have avenged His wrongs."
"There is little doubt," proceeds the cockney historian, "that the
conversion of Clovis was as much a matter of policy as of faith." But
the cockney historian had better limit his remarks on the characters
and faiths of men to those of the curates who have recently taken
orders in his fashionable neighbourhood, or the bishops who have
lately preached to the population of its manufacturing suburbs.
Frankish kings were made of other clay.
The Christianity of Clovis does not indeed produce any fruits of the
kind usually looked for in a modern convert. We do not hear of his
repenting ever so little of any of his sins, nor resolving to lead a new
life in any the smallest particular. He had not been impressed with
convictions of sin at the battle of Tolbiac; nor, in asking for the help
of the God of Clotilde, had he felt or professed the remotest intention
of changing his character, or abandoning his projects. What he was,
before he believed in his queen's God, he only more intensely afterwards
became, in the confidence of that before unknown God's supernatural
help. His natural gratitude to the Delivering Power, and pride in its
protection, added only fierceness to his soldiership, and deepened his
political enmities with the rancour of religions indignation. No more
dangerous snare is set by the fiends for human frailty than the belief
that our own enemies are also the enemies of God; and it is perfectly
conceivable to me that the conduct of Clovis might have been the more
unscrupulous, precisely in the measure that his faith was more sincere.
Had either Clovis or Clotilde fully understood the precepts of their
Master, the following history of France, and of Europe, would have
been other than it is. What they could understand, or in any wise were
taught, you will find that they obeyed, and were blessed in obeying.
But their history is complicated with that of several other persons,
respecting whom we must note now a few too much forgotten particulars.
If from beneath the apse of Amiens Cathedral we take the street
leading due south, leaving the railroad station on the left, it brings
us to the foot of a gradually ascending hill, some half a mile long--a
pleasant and quiet walk enough, terminating on the level of the
highest land near Amiens; whence, looking back, the Cathedral is seen
beneath us, all but the flêche, our gained hill-top being on a level
with its roof-ridge: and, to the south, the plain of France.
Somewhere about this spot, or in the line between it and St. Acheul,
stood the ancient Roman gate of the Twins, whereon were carved Romulus
and Remus being suckled by the wolf; and out of which, one bitter
winter's day, a hundred and seventy years ago when Clovis was
baptized--had ridden a Roman soldier, wrapped in his horseman's
cloak,[5] on the causeway which was part of the great Roman road from
Lyons to Boulogne.
[Footnote 5: More properly, his knight's cloak; in all likelihood the
trabea, with purple and white stripes, dedicate to the kings of Rome,
and chiefly to Romulus.]
And it is well worth your while also, some frosty autumn or winter day
when the east wind is high, to feel the sweep of it at this spot,
remembering what chanced here, memorable to all men, and serviceable,
in that winter of the year 332, when men were dying for cold in Amiens
streets:--namely, that the Roman horseman, scarce gone out of the city
gate, was met by a naked beggar, shivering with cold; and that, seeing
no other way of shelter for him, he drew his sword, divided his own
cloak in two, and gave him half of it.
No ruinous gift, nor even enthusiastically generous: Sydney's cup of
cold water needed more self-denial; and I am well assured that many a
Christian child of our day, himself well warmed and clad, meeting one
naked and cold, would be ready enough to give the _whole_ cloak off
his own shoulders to the necessitous one, if his better-advised nurse,
or mamma, would let him. But this Roman soldier was no Christian, and
did his serene charity in simplicity, yet with prudence.
Nevertheless, that same night, he beheld in a dream the Lord Jesus,
who stood before him in the midst of angels, having on his shoulders
the half of the cloak he had bestowed on the beggar.
And Jesus said to the angels that were around him, "Know ye who hath
thus arrayed me? My servant Martin, though yet unbaptized, has done
this." And Martin after this vision hastened to receive baptism, being
then in his twenty-third year.[6]
[Footnote 6: Mrs. Jameson, Legendary Art, Vol. II., p. 721.]
Whether these things ever were so, or how far so, credulous or
incredulous reader, is no business whatever of yours or mine. What is,
and shall be, everlastingly, _so_,--namely, the infallible truth of
the lesson herein taught, and the actual effect of the life of St.
Martin on the mind of Christendom,--is, very absolutely, the business
of every rational being in any Christian realm.
You are to understand, then, first of all, that the especial character
of St. Martin is a serene and meek charity to all creatures. He is not a
preaching saint--still less a persecuting one: not even an anxious one.
Of his prayers we hear little--of his wishes, nothing. What he does
always, is merely the right thing at the right moment;--rightness and
kindness being in his mind one: an extremely exemplary saint, to my
notion.
Converted and baptized--and conscious of having seen Christ--he
nevertheless gives his officers no trouble whatever--does not try to
make proselytes in his cohort. "It is Christ's business, surely!--if
He wants them, He may appear to them as He has to me," seems the
feeling of his first baptized days. He remains seventeen years in the
army, on those tranquil terms.
At the end of that time, thinking it might be well to take other
service, he asks for his dismissal from the Emperor Julian,--on whose
accusation of faintheartedness, Martin offers, unarmed, to lead his
cohort into battle, bearing only the sign of the cross. Julian takes
him at his word,--keeps him in ward till time of battle comes; but,
the day before he counts on putting him to that war ordeal, the
barbarian enemy sends embassy with irrefusable offers of submission
and peace.
The story is not often dwelt upon: how far literally true, again
observe, does not in the least matter;--here _is_ the lesson for ever
given of the way in which a Christian soldier should meet his enemies.
Which, had John Bunyan's Mr. Great-heart understood, the Celestial
gates had opened by this time to many a pilgrim who has failed to hew
his path up to them with the sword of sharpness.
But true in some practical and effectual way the story _is_; for after
a while, without any oratorizing, anathematizing, or any manner of
disturbance, we find the Roman Knight made Bishop of Tours, and
becoming an influence of unmixed good to all mankind, then, and
afterwards. And virtually the same story is repeated of his bishop's
robe as of his knight's cloak--not to be rejected because so probable
an invention; for it is just as probable an act.
Going, in his full robes, to say prayers in church, with one of his
deacons, he came across some unhappily robeless person by the wayside;
for whom he forthwith orders his deacon to provide some manner of
coat, or gown.
The deacon objecting that no apparel of that profane nature is under
his hand, St. Martin, with his customary serenity, takes off his own
episcopal stole, or whatsoever flowing stateliness it might be, throws
it on the destitute shoulders, and passes on to perform indecorous
public service in his waistcoat, or such mediæval nether attire as
remained to him.
But, as he stood at the altar, a globe of light appeared above his
head; and when he raised his bare arms with the Host--the angels were
seen round him, hanging golden chains upon them, and jewels, not of
the earth.
Incredible to you in the nature of things, wise reader, and too
palpably a gloss of monkish folly on the older story?
Be it so: yet in this fable of monkish folly, understood with the
heart, would have been the chastisement and check of every form of the
church's pride and sensuality, which in our day have literally sunk
the service of God and His poor into the service of the clergyman and
his rich; and changed what was once the garment of praise for the
spirit of heaviness, into the spangling of Pantaloons in an
ecclesiastical Masquerade.
But one more legend,--and we have enough to show us the roots of this
saint's strange and universal power over Christendom.
"What peculiarly distinguished St. Martin was his sweet, serious,
unfailing serenity; no one had ever seen him angry, or sad, or, gay;
there was nothing in his heart but piety to God and pity for men. The
Devil, who was particularly envious of his virtues, detested above all
his exceeding charity, because it was the most inimical to his own
power, and one day reproached him mockingly that he so soon received
into favour the fallen and the repentant. But St. Martin answered him
sorrowfully, saying, 'Oh most miserable that thou art! if _thou_ also
couldst cease to persecute and seduce wretched men, if thou also
couldst repent, thou also shouldst find mercy and forgiveness through
Jesus Christ.'"[7]
[Footnote 7: Mrs. Jameson, Vol. II., p. 722.]
In this gentleness was his strength; and the issue of it is
best to be estimated by comparing its scope with that of the work of
St. Firmin. The impatient missionary riots and rants about Amiens'
streets--insults, exhorts, persuades, baptizes,--turns everything, as
aforesaid, upside down for forty days: then gets his head cut off, and
is never more named, _out_ of Amiens. St. Martin teazes nobody, spends
not a breath in unpleasant exhortation, understands, by Christ's first
lesson to himself, that undipped people may be as good as dipped if
their hearts are clean; helps, forgives, and cheers, (companionable
even to the loving-cup,) as readily the clown as the king; he is the
patron of honest drinking; the stuffing of your Martinmas goose is
fragrant in his nostrils, and sacred to him the last kindly rays of
departing summer. And somehow--the idols totter before him far and
near--the Pagan gods fade, _his_ Christ becomes all men's Christ--his
name is named over new shrines innumerable in all lands; high on the
Roman hills, lowly in English fields;--St. Augustine baptized his
first English converts in St. Martin's church at Canterbury; and the
Charing Cross station itself has not yet effaced wholly from London
minds his memory or his name.
That story of the Episcopal Robe is the last of St. Martin respecting
which I venture to tell you that it is wiser to suppose it literally
true, than a _mere_ myth; myth, however, of the deepest value and
beauty it remains assuredly: and this really last story I have to
tell, which I admit you will be wiser in thinking a fable than exactly
true, nevertheless had assuredly at its root some grain of fact
(sprouting a hundred-fold) cast on good ground by a visible and
unforgettable piece of St. Martin's actual behaviour in high company;
while, as a myth, it is every whit and for ever valuable and
comprehensive.
St. Martin, then, as the tale will have it, was dining one day at the
highest of tables in the terrestrial globe--namely, with the Emperor and
Empress of Germany! You need not inquire what Emperor, or which of the
Emperor's wives! The Emperor of Germany is, in all early myths, the
expression for the highest sacred power of the State, as the Pope is the
highest sacred power of the Church. St. Martin was dining then, as
aforesaid, with the Emperor, of course sitting next him on his
left--Empress opposite on his right: everything orthodox. St. Martin
much enjoying his dinner, and making himself generally agreeable to the
company: not in the least a John Baptist sort of a saint. You are aware
also that in Royal feasts in those days persons of much inferior rank in
society were allowed in the hall: got behind people's chairs, and saw
and heard what was going on, while they unobtrusively picked up crumbs,
and licked trenchers.
When the dinner was a little forward, and time for wine came, the
Emperor fills his own cup--fills the Empress's--fills St.
Martin's,--affectionately hobnobs with St. Martin. The equally loving,
and yet more truly believing, Empress, looks across the table, humbly,
but also royally, expecting St. Martin, of course, next to hobnob with
_her_. St. Martin looks round, first, deliberately; becomes aware of a
tatterdemalion and thirsty-looking soul of a beggar at his chair side,
who has managed to get _his_ cup filled somehow, also--by a charitable
lacquey.
St. Martin turns his back on the Empress, and hobnobs with _him_!
For which charity--mythic if you like, but evermore exemplary--he
remains, as aforesaid, the patron of good-Christian topers to this
hour.
As gathering years told upon him, he seems to have felt that he had
carried weight of crozier long enough--that busy Tours must now find a
busier Bishop--that, for himself, he might innocently henceforward take
his pleasure and his rest where the vine grew and the lark sang. For his
episcopal palace, he takes a little cave in the chalk cliffs of the
up-country river: arranges all matters therein, for bed and board, at
small cost. Night by night the stream murmurs to him, day by day the
vine-leaves give their shade; and, daily by the horizon's breadth so
much nearer Heaven, the fore-running sun goes down for him beyond the
glowing water;--there, where now the peasant woman trots homewards
between her panniers, and the saw rests in the half-cleft wood, and the
village spire rises grey against the farthest light, in Turner's
'Loireside.'[8]
[Footnote 8: Modern Painters, Plate 73.]
All which things, though not themselves without profit, my special
reason for telling you now, has been that you might understand the
significance of what chanced first on Clovis' march south against the
Visigoths.
"Having passed the Loire at Tours, he traversed the lands of the abbey
of St. Martin, which he declared inviolate, and refused permission to
his soldiers to touch anything, save water and grass for their horses.
So rigid were his orders, and the obedience he exacted in this
respect, that a Frankish soldier having taken, without the consent of
the owner, some hay, which belonged to a poor man, saying in raillery
"that it was but grass," he caused the aggressor to be put to death,
exclaiming that "Victory could not be expected, if St. Martin should
be offended."
Now, mark you well, this passage of the Loire at Tours is virtually
the fulfilment of the proper bounds of the French kingdom, and the
sign of its approved and securely set power is "Honour to the poor!"
Even a little grass is not to be stolen from a poor man, on pain of
Death. So wills the Christian knight of Roman armies; throned now high
with God. So wills the first Christian king of far victorious
Franks;--here baptized to God in Jordan of his goodly land, as he goes
over to possess it.
How long?
Until that same Sign should be read backwards from a degenerate
throne;--until, message being brought that the poor of the French
people had no bread to eat, answer should be returned to them "They
may eat grass." Whereupon--by St. Martin's faubourg, and St. Martin's
gate--there go forth commands from the Poor Man's Knight against the
King--which end _his_ Feasting.
And be this much remembered by you, of the power over French souls,
past and to come, of St. Martin of Tours.
NOTES TO CHAPTER I.
The reader will please observe that notes immediately necessary to the
understanding of the text will be given, with _numbered_ references,
under the text itself; while questions of disputing authorities, or
quotations of supporting documents will have _lettered_ references,
and be thrown together at the end of each chapter.[9] One good of this
method will be that, after the numbered notes are all right, if I see
need of farther explanation, as I revise the press, I can insert a
letter referring to a _final_ note without confusion of the standing
types. There will be some use also in the final notes, in summing the
chapters, or saying what is to be more carefully remembered of them.
Thus just now it is of no consequence to remember that the first
taking of Amiens was in 445, because that is not the founding of the
Merovingian dynasty; neither that Merovæus seized the throne in 447
and died ten years later. The real date to be remembered is 481, when
Clovis himself comes to the throne, a boy of fifteen; and the three
battles of Clovis' reign to be remembered are Soissons, Tolbiac, and
Poitiers--remembering also that this was the first of the three great
battles of Poitiers;--how the Poitiers district came to have such
importance as a battle-position, we must afterwards discover if we
can. Of Queen Clotilde and her flight from Burgundy to her Frank lover
we must hear more in next chapter,--the story of the vase at Soissons
is given in "The Pictorial History of France," but must be deferred
also, with such comment as it needs, to next chapter; for I wish the
reader's mind, in the close of this first number, to be left fixed on
two descriptions of the modern 'Frank' (taking that word in its
Saracen sense), as distinguished from the modern Saracen. The first
description is by Colonel Butler, entirely true and admirable, except
in the implied extension of the contrast to olden time: for the Saxon
soul under Alfred, the Teutonic under Charlemagne, and the Frank under
St. Louis, were quite as religious as any Asiatic's, though more
practical; it is only the modern mob of kingless miscreants in the
West, who have sunk themselves by gambling, swindling, machine-making,
and gluttony, into the scurviest louts that have ever fouled the Earth
with the carcases she lent them.
[Footnote 9: The plan for numbered and lettered references is not
followed after the first chapter.]
* * * * *
"Of the features of English character brought to light by the spread
of British dominion in Asia, there is nothing more observable than the
contrast between the religious bias of Eastern thought and the innate
absence of religion in the Anglo-Saxon mind. Turk and Greek, Buddhist
and Armenian, Copt and Parsee, all manifest in a hundred ways of daily
life the great fact of their belief in a God. In their vices as well
as in their virtues the recognition of Deity is dominant.
"With the Western, on the contrary, the outward form of practising
belief in a God is a thing to be half-ashamed of--something to hide. A
procession of priests in the Strada Reale would probably cause an
average Briton to regard it with less tolerant eye than he would cast
upon a Juggernaut festival in Orissa: but to each alike would he
display the same iconoclasm of creed, the same idea, not the less
fixed because it is seldom expressed in words: "You pray; therefore I
do not think much of you." But there is a deeper difference between
East and West lying beneath this incompatibility of temper on the part
of modern Englishmen to accept the religious habit of thought in the
East. All Eastern peoples possess this habit of thought. It is the one
tie which links together their widely differing races. Let us give an
illustration of our meaning. On an Austrian Lloyd's steamboat in the
Levant a traveller from Beyrout will frequently see strange groups of
men crowded together on the quarter-deck. In the morning the missal
books of the Greek Church will be laid along the bulwarks of the ship,
and a couple of Russian priests, coming from Jerusalem, will be busy
muttering mass. A yard to right or left a Turkish pilgrim, returning
from Mecca, sits a respectful observer of the scene. It is prayer, and
therefore it is holy in his sight. So, too, when the evening hour has
come, and the Turk spreads out his bit of carpet for the sunset
prayers and obeisance towards Mecca, the Greek looks on in silence,
without trace of scorn in his face, for it is again the worship of the
Creator by the created. They are both fulfilling the _first_ law of
the East--prayer to God; and whether the shrine be Jerusalem, Mecca,
or Lhassa, the sanctity of worship surrounds the votary, and protects
the pilgrim.
"Into this life comes the Englishman, frequently destitute of one
touch of sympathy with the prayers of any people, or the faith of any
creed; hence our rule in the East has ever rested, and will ever rest,
upon the bayonet. We have never yet got beyond the stage of conquest;
never assimilated a people to our ways, never even civilized a single
tribe around the wide dominion of our empire. It is curious how
frequently a well-meaning Briton will speak of a foreign church or
temple as though it had presented itself to his mind in the same light
in which the City of London appeared to Blucher--as something to loot.
The other idea, that a priest was a person to hang, is one which is
also often observable in the British brain. On one occasion, when we
were endeavouring to enlighten our minds on the Greek question, as it
had presented itself to a naval officer whose vessel had been
stationed in Greek and Adriatic waters during our occupation of Corfu
and the other Ionian Isles, we could only elicit from our informant
the fact that one morning before breakfast he had hanged seventeen
priests."
The second passage which I store in these notes for future use, is the
supremely magnificent one, out of a book full of magnificence,--if truth
be counted as having in it the strength of deed: Alphonse Karr's "Grains
de Bon Sens." I cannot praise either this or his more recent
"Bourdonnements" to my own heart's content, simply because they are by a
man utterly after my own heart, who has been saying in France, this
many a year, what I also, this many a year, have been saying in England,
neither of us knowing of the other, and both of us vainly. (See pages 11
and 12 of "Bourdonnements.") The passage here given is the sixty-third
clause in "Grains de Bon Sens."
"Et tout cela, monsieur, vient de ce qu'il n'y a plus de croyances--de
ce qu'on ne croit plus à rien.
"Ah! saperlipopette, monsieur, vous me la baillez belle! Vous dites
qu'on ne croit plus à rien! Mais jamais, à aucune époque, on n'a cru à
tant de billevesées, de bourdes, de mensonges, de sottises,
d'absurdités qu'aujourd'hui.
"D'abord, on _croit_ a l'incrédulité--l'incrédulité est une croyance,
une religion très exigeante, qui a ses dogmes, sa liturgie, ses
pratiques, ses rites! ...son intolérance, ses superstitions. Nous
avons des incrédules et des impies jésuites, et des incrédules et des
impies jansénistes; des impies molinistes, et des impies quiétistes;
des impies pratiquants, et non pratiquants; des impies indifférents et
des impies fanatiques; des incrédules cagots et des impies hypocrites
et tartuffes.--La religion de l'incrédulité ne se refuse même pas le
luxe des hérésies.
"On ne croit plus à la bible, je le veux bien, mais on _croit_ aux
'écritures' des journaux, on croit au 'sacerdoce' des gazettes et
carrés de papier, et à leurs 'oracles' quotidiens.
"On _croit_ au 'baptême' de la police correctionnelle et de la Cour
d'assises--on appelle 'martyrs' et 'confesseurs' les 'absents' à
Nouméa et les 'frères' de Suisse, d'Angleterre et de Belgique--et,
quand on parle des 'martyrs de la Commune' ça ne s'entend pas des
assassinés, mais des assassins.
"On se fait enterrer 'civilement,' on ne veut plus sur son cercueil
des priéres de l'Eglise, on ne veut ni cierges, ni chants
religieux,--mais on veut un cortége portant derrière la bière des
immortelles rouges;--on veut une 'oraison,' une 'prédication' de
Victor Hugo qui a ajouté cette spécialité à ses autres spécialités, si
bien qu'un de ces jours derniers, comme il suivait un convoi en
amateur, un croque-mort s'approcha de lui, le poussa du coude, et lui
dit en souriant: 'Est-ce que nous n'aurons pas quelque chose de vous,
aujourd'hui?'--Et cette prédication il la lit ou la récite--ou, s'il
ne juge pas à propos 'd'officier' lui-même, s'il s'agit d'un mort de
plus, il envoie pour la psalmodier M. Meurice ou tout autre 'prêtre'
ou 'enfant de coeur' du 'Dieu,'--A défaut de M. Hugo, s'il s'agit
d'un citoyen obscur, on se contente d'une homélie improvisée pour la
dixième fois par n'importe quel député intransigeant--et le _Miserere_
est remplacé par les cris de 'Vive la République!' poussés dans le
cimetière.
"On n'entre plus dans les églises, mais on fréquente les brasseries et
les cabarets; on y officie, on y célèbre les mystères, on y chante les
louanges d'une prétendue république _sacro-sainte_, une, indivisible,
démocratique, sociale, athénienne, intransigeante, despotique, invisible
quoique étant partout. On y communie sous différentes espèces; le matin
(_matines_) on 'tue le ver' avec le vin blanc,--il y a plus tard les
vêpres de l'absinthe, auxquelles on se ferait un crime de manquer
d'assiduité.
"On ne croit plus en Dieu, mais on _croit_ pieusement en M. Gambetta,
en MM. Marcou, Naquet, Barodet, Tartempion, etc., et en toute une
longue litanie de saints et de _dii minores_ tels que Goutte-Noire,
Polosse, Boriasse et Silibat, le héros lyonnais.
"On _croit_ à 'l'immuabilité' de M. Thiers, qui a dit avec aplomb 'Je
ne change jamais,' et qui aujourd'hui est à la fois le protecteur et
le protégé de ceux qu'il a passé une partie de sa vie à fusilier, et
qu'il fusillait encore hier.
'On _croit_ au républicanisme 'immaculé' de l'avocat de Cahors qui a
jeté par-dessus bord tous les principes républicains,--qui est à la
fois de son côté le protecteur et le protégé de M. Thiers, qui hier
l'appelait 'fou furieux,' déportait et fusillait ses amis.
"Tous deux, il est vrai, en même temps protecteurs hypocrites, et
protégés dupés.
"On ne croit plus aux miracles anciens, mais on _croit_ à des miracles
nouveaux.
"On _croit_ à une république sans le respect religieux et presque
fanatique des lois.
"On _croit_ qu'on peut s'enrichir en restant imprévoyants, insouciants
et paresseux, et autrement que par le travail et l'économie.
"On se _croit_ libre en obéissant aveuglément et bêtement à deux ou
trois coteries.
"On se _croit_ indépendant parce qu'on a tué ou chassé un lion et
qu'on l'a remplacé par deux douzaines de caniches teints en jaune.
"On _croit_ avoir conquis le 'suffrage universel' en votant par des
mots d'ordre qui en font le contraire du suffrage universel,--mené au
vote comme on mène un troupeau au pâturage, avec cette différence que
ça ne nourrit pas.--D'ailleurs, par ce suffrage universel qu'on croit
avoir et qu'on n'a pas,--il faudrait _croire_ que les soldats doivent
commander au général, les chevaux mener le cocher;--_croire_ que deux
radis valent mieux qu'une truffe, deux cailloux mieux qu'un diamant,
deux crottins mieux qu'une rose.
"On se _croit_ en République, parce que quelques demi-quarterons de
farceurs occupent les mêmes places, émargent les mêmes appointements,
pratiquent les mêmes abus, que ceux qu'on a renversés a leur bénéfice.
"On se _croit_ un peuple opprimé, heroïque, que brise ses fers, et
n'est qu'un domestique capricieux qui aime à changer de maîtres.
"On _croit_ au génie d'avocats de sixième ordre, qui ne se sont jetés
dans la politique et n'aspirent au gouvernement despotique de la
France que faute d'avoir pu gagner honnêtement, sans grand travail,
dans l'exercice d'un profession correcte, une vie obscure humectée de
chopes.
"On _croit_ que des hommes dévoyés, déclassés, décavés, fruits secs,
etc., qui n'ont étudié que le 'domino à quatre' et le 'bezigue en
quinze cents' se réveillent un matin,--après un sommeil alourdi par le
tabac et la bière--possédant la science de la politique, et l'art de
la guerre; et aptes à être dictateurs, généraux, ministres, préfets,
sous-préfets, etc.
"Et les soi-disant conservateurs eux-mêmes _croient_ que la France
peut se relever et vivre tant qu'on n'aura pas fait justice de ce
prétendu suffrage universel qui est le contraire du suffrage
universel.
"Les croyances out subi le sort de ce serpent de la fable--coupé,
haché par morceaux, dont chaque tronçon devenait un serpent.
"Les croyances se sont changées en monnaie--en billon de crédulités.
"Et pour finir la liste bien incomplète des croyances et des
crédulités--vous _croyez_, vous, qu'on ne croit à rien!"