SACROVIR'S BIRTHDAY.
The family of Marik Lebrenn were assembled in their little parlor on the
day after the merchant's arrival. It was the birthday of his son, who on
that day completed his twenty-first year.
"My son," Lebrenn said to Sacrovir, "to-day you are twenty-one years of
age. The time has come to introduce you to the chamber with the closed
window that has so often excited your curiosity. You are about to become
acquainted with its contents. I wish first to explain to you the reason
for and the cause of this mystery. The moment you are initiated, my son,
I know your curiosity will turn to pious respect. Accident has so willed
it that the day of your initiation into this family mystery should be
providentially chosen. Since my arrival yesterday, we have given
ourselves over to tokens of love, and have had little time to consider
public matters. Nevertheless, a few words that escaped you--as well as
you, my dear George," added the merchant addressing his daughter's
husband, "cause me to apprehend that you feel discouraged--that you may
even despair."
"It is but too true, father," answered Sacrovir.
"When one witnesses the things that are happening every day," added
George, "one may well feel alarmed for the future of the Republic, and
of mankind."
"Well, tell me, children," asked Lebrenn with his usual smile, "what is
happening that is so very terrible? Tell me all about it."
"Everywhere at this hour the people's liberty is being kicked and
cuffed, and even strangled by the henchmen of absolute Kings. Italy,
Prussia, Germany, Hungary, are all again forced under the bloody yoke
that, electrified by our example in 1848, they that year broke, relying
upon our support as their brothers! To the northeast the despot of the
Cossacks planted one foot upon Poland, another upon Hungary, smothered
both countries in their own blood, and now threatens the independence of
Europe with his knout, and is even ready to hurl upon us his savage
hordes!"
"Similar hordes, my children, our wooden-shoed fathers rolled in the
dust in the days of the Convention--we shall do as much. As to the
Kings, they massacre, they threaten, they foam at the mouth with
rage--and, above all, with terror! Already they see myriads of avengers
arise out of the blood of the martyrs whom they assassinated. These
crown-carriers have the vertigo. And there is good reason therefor. If a
European war breaks out, immediately the Revolution will raise its head
in their own camp and devour them; if peace prevails, the pacific tide
of civilization will rise higher and higher, and engulf their thrones.
Proceed, children."
"But at home!" cried George. "At home!"
"Well, my friend, what is happening at home?"
"Alas, father! Mistrust, fear, misery sowed everywhere by the hereditary
enemies of the people and the bourgeoisie. Credit is destroyed. Turn
around, the population, misled, betrayed and deceived, mutinies against
the Republic."
"Poor dear blind boys!" replied Lebrenn with his placid and sarcastic
smile. "Does not the prodigious industrial movement that is going on
among the working class and the bourgeoisie strike your eyes? Only
consider the innumerable workingmen's associations that are founded on
all sides; consider the admirable attempts made at establishing banks of
exchange, commercial bureaus, land credits, co-operative associations,
etc. Of these attempts, some are already crowned with success, others
are still doubtful, but they are all undertaken with intelligence,
boldness, probity, perseverance and faith in the democratic future of
society. Do not they prove that the people and the bourgeoisie, no
longer leaning upon government for support, seek their strength and
resources in themselves, with the end in view of freeing themselves from
capitalist and usurious exploitation? Believe me, my children, when the
mass of a people like ours goes about seeking the solution of the
problem as to the source of their true liberty, of their labor, of their
wellbeing and the wellbeing of their families, the problem can not
remain unsolved, and, with Socialism giving its help, the problem will
be solved."
"But where are our forces, father? Our party is shattered! The
republicans are hounded down, calumniated, imprisoned, proscribed!"
"And what is the conclusion you draw from your discouragement, my boys?"
"Alas," answered Sacrovir sadly, "what we fear is the ruin of the
Republic and the return of the days of old; retrogression instead of
progress; the desolate conviction that, instead of steadily marching
forward, mankind is fatedly condemned to turn in a circle, unable ever
to step out of that iron grip. If the Republic goes down we run the risk
of retrogressing, who knows how far back, perchance back to the point
from which our fathers started in 1789!"
"That, indeed, is exactly what the royalists say and hope, my children.
That the royalists should be blind enough to incur that error in logic
is easily understood. Nothing blinds so completely as passion,
interests, or caste prejudices. But that we, my children, that we should
shut our eyes to the obvious evidences of progress, evidences more
glaring than the sun, and plunge ourselves in the dismal vapors of
doubt;--that we, my children, should do the sanctity of our cause the
injustice of questioning its power and its ultimate, supreme triumph,
when on all sides it manifests--"
"But, father--"
"As I was saying, when it manifests its power on all sides! I repeat
it--under such circumstances to allow oneself to be disheartened and
discouraged, that would be to endanger our cause. But humanity pursues
its steady march onward, despite the incredulity, the blindness, the
weakness, and also the treasons and the crimes of man!"
"But, father--does humanity, indeed, march steadily on the path of
progress?"
"Steadily, my sons."
"But yet, centuries ago, our forefathers the Gauls lived free and happy!
Nevertheless, were they not forced backward on the path of progress?
They were despoiled and enslaved by the Roman conquest, and later by the
Frankish Kings."
"I did not say, my friends, that our forefathers did not suffer; what I
said was that mankind marched onward. The latest descendants of an old
world that was crumbling down on all sides to make room for the
Christian world--an immense progress!--our fathers were bruised and
mutilated under the falling ruins of ancient society. Nevertheless a
deep-reaching and far-spreading social transformation was taking place.
Mankind marches evermore--slowly, at times--never, however, does it take
a step backward."
"Father, I believe you--yet--"
"Despite yourself, still you doubt, Sacrovir? I can understand it.
Fortunately, the _lessons_, the _proofs_, the _data_, the _facts_, the
_names_, that you are about to be made acquainted with in the mysterious
chamber, will go further to convince you than any words of mine. When
you will see, my friends, that in the gloomiest days of our
history--such days as the Kings, the seigneurs and the clergy have
almost always afflicted man with; when you will see that we, the
conquered, started with slavery and arrived step by step to popular
sovereignty; you will then ask yourselves whether, at this hour, when we
find ourselves invested with that so painfully earned sovereignty, it
would not be criminal on our part to mistrust the future. To mistrust
it! Great God! Oh! Our fathers, despite all their martyrdom never did
mistrust the future! There was hardly a century when they failed to take
a step towards deliverance! Alas, almost always that step was marked
with blood! If our masters, the conquerors, showed themselves
implacable, there hardly was a century when, as you will see, there were
not frightful reprisals levied upon them to satisfy divine justice. Yes,
you will see, there hardly was a century when the woolen cap did not
rise against the casque of gold, when the peasant's scythe did not
strike fire with the lance of the knight, when the horny hand of the
vassal did not smite the delicately pampered hand of some episcopal
petty tyrant! You will see it, my children--hardly a century when the
infamous debauches and acts of rapine and ferocity indulged in by the
Kings and most of the seigneurs and upper clergy failed to rouse the
people, or when they failed to protest, arms in hand, against the
tyranny of the throne, the nobility and the Popes! You will see
it--hardly a century, when the famishing masses, rising as inexorable as
hunger, failed to throw their lordlings into terror--hardly a century
without its Belshazzar's feast, buried along with its golden drinking
cups, its flowers, its songs and its displayful magnificence, under the
avenging wave of some popular torrent. Undoubtedly, alas! the terrible,
though legitimate, reprisals of the oppressed were succeeded by
ferocious acts of revenge. Nevertheless, formidable examples had been
made. At each recurring epoch the Revolution wrung from the hereditary
oppressors of our fathers some lasting concession, registered in the law
and necessarily observed."
"I believe you," said Sacrovir. "Judging the past by the present, in
1789 the Revolution conquered our freedom; in 1830 the Revolution
returned to us a part of our rights; finally, last year, in 1848, the
Revolution proclaimed the sovereignty of the people and universal
suffrage, which is calculated to put an end to bloody fratricidal
conflicts."
"And so it ever has been, my boy. You will see it--_there is not a
single social, political, civil or religious reform that our fathers
were not forced to conquer from century to century at the price of their
blood_. Alas! This is a cruel fact--it is deplorable. There was no
choice but to resort to arms so long as the only answer made by the
stiff-necked and inexorable enjoyers of privilege to the tears, the
sorrows, the prayers of the oppressed was--No! No! No! Then frightful
outbursts of rage flared up--then torrents of blood flowed on both
sides. It was by dint of unterrified valor, persistent efforts, battles
and martyrdom that our fathers first broke the old shackles of slavery
in which the Franks kept them since the conquest. Thence they arrived
at serfdom, a somewhat less horrible condition. Next, from serfs, they
became vassals, thereupon subject to mortmain--each of these a step
upwards. And evermore thus, from step to step, cutting themselves by
dint of abnegation a path across the centuries and all obstacles, they
finally came so far as to conquer the sovereignty of the people. And you
despair of the future when now, thanks to universal suffrage, the
disinherited are able to impose their sovereign will upon the privileged
minority! What, you despair, now that power is revokable by the voice of
our representatives, whom we select as the supreme judges of the
executive power! What, you despair because we have had eighteen months
of constant struggle and of occasional suffering! Oh, it was not for so
short a period as eighteen months that our forefathers struggled and
suffered; it was for the long-drawn period of more than eighteen
centuries! If every generation had its martyrs, it also registered its
conquests! It is of those martyrs and those conquests that you are about
to see the pious relics, the glorious trophies! Come, my children."
With this solemn invocation Marik Lebrenn proceeded, followed by his
family, to the room with the closed windows, which the son, the daughter
and the son-in-law of the merchant now entered for the first time.