M. LANTAIGNE: “That comes from your not having the theological
mind. At one time even laymen received some impress of it. Their
college note-books, which they preserved, supplied them with the
elements of philosophy. That is especially true of the men of the
seventeenth century. At that time all those who were educated knew
how to reason, even the poets. It is the teaching of Port-Royal that
underlies the _Phèdre_ of Racine. But to-day when theology has been
relegated to the seminaries, no one knows how to reason, and men of
the world are almost as foolish as poets and savants. Did not M. de
Terremondre, believing that he was speaking to the point, tell me
yesterday, on the Mall, that Church and State ought to make mutual
concessions? People no longer know, they no longer think. Empty words
pass and repass in the air. We are in Babel. You, Monsieur Bergeret,
are much better read in Voltaire than in Saint Thomas.”
M. BERGERET: “It is true. But did you not say, monsieur
l’abbé, that the Republic is _diversity_, and that in that respect it
is essentially bad? That is what I beg you to explain to me. Perhaps
I might succeed in understanding you. I know more theology than you
credit me with. Note-book in hand, I have read Baronius.”
M. LANTAIGNE: “Baronius is only an annalist, although the
greatest of all; and I am quite sure that from him you have only been
able to carry away some historic odds and ends. If you were in the
slightest degree a theologian, you would be neither surprised nor
disconcerted at what I have just said.
“Diversity is hateful. It is the characteristic of evil to be diverse.
This characteristic manifests itself in the government of the Republic,
which is more alienated than any other from unity. With its want of
unity it fails in independence, permanence, and power. It fails in
knowledge, and one may say of it that it knows not what it does.
Although for our chastisement it continues, yet it has no continuity.
For the idea of continuity implies that of identity, and the Republic
of one day is never the same as that of the day before. Even its
ugliness and its vices do not belong to it. And you have yourself
remarked that by them it has never been discredited. Reproaches and
scandals that would have ruined the mightiest empire have poured over
it harmlessly. It is indestructible, for it is destruction. It is
dispersion, it is discontinuity, it is diversity, it is evil.”
M. BERGERET: “Are you speaking of Republics in general, or
only of our own?”
M. LANTAIGNE: “Obviously I am considering neither the Roman
Republic, nor the Dutch, nor the Swiss, but only the French. For these
governments have nothing in common save the name, and you will not
charge me with judging them by the name by which they call themselves,
nor by those points in which they seem, one and all, opposed to
monarchy—an opposition which is not in itself necessarily to be
condemned; but the Republic in France means nothing more than the lack
of a prince and the want of a governing power. And this nation was too
old at the time of the amputation for one not to fear that it would die
of it.”
M. BERGERET: “Yet France has already survived the Empire by
twenty-seven years, the _bourgeois_-king by forty-eight years, and the
legitimate sovereign by sixty-six years.”
M. LANTAIGNE: “Say rather that for a century France, wounded
to death, has been dragging out a miserable remnant of life in
alternate fits of fever and prostration. And do not imagine that I
flatter the past or base my regrets on lying pictures of an age of
gold which never existed. The conditions of national life are quite
familiar to me. Its hours are marked by perils, its days by disasters.
And it is just and necessary that it should be so. Its life, like
that of individual men, if it were exempt from trials, would have no
meaning. The early history of France is full of crimes and expiations.
God ceaselessly chastened this nation with the zeal of an untiring
love, and in the time of the kings His mercy spared her no suffering.
But, being then Christian, her woes were useful and precious to her.
In them she recognised the ennobling power of chastisement. From them
she derived her lessons, her merits, her salvation, her power, and her
renown. Now her sufferings have no longer any meaning for her; she
neither understands them nor acquiesces in them. Whilst undergoing
the test she rebels against it. And the demented state expects good
fortune! It is in losing faith in God that one loses, along with the
idea of the absolute, the knowledge of the relative and even the
historic sense. God alone informs the logical sequence of human events
which, without Him, would no longer follow one another in a rational
and conceivable manner. And for the last hundred years the history of
France has been an enigma for the French. Yet even in our days there
was one solemn hour of hope and expectation.
“The horseman who rides forth at the hour appointed by God, and who
is called now Shalmanezar, now Nebuchadnezzar, then Cyrus, Cambyses,
Memmius, Titus, Alaric, Attila, Mahomet II., or William, had ridden
with fiery trail across France. Humiliated, bleeding, and mutilated,
she raised her eyes to Heaven. May that moment be counted to her for
righteousness! She seemed to understand, and along with her faith to
recover her intelligence, to recognise the value and the use of her
vast and providential woes. She aroused her just men, her Christians,
to form a sovereign assembly. Then appeared the spectacle of that
assembly, renewing a solemn custom and consecrating France to the heart
of Jesus. We saw, as in the times of Saint Louis, churches rising on
the mountains, before the gaze of penitent cities; we saw the foremost
citizens preparing for the restoration of the monarchy.”
M. BERGERET (_sotto voce_): “1. The Assembly of Bordeaux. 2.
The Sacré-Cœur of Montmartre and the Church of Fourvières at Lyons. 3.
The Commission of the Nine and the mission of M. Chesnelong.”