THE SECRET SOCIETY LODGE.
The famous royal special court, the “Bed of Justice,” (which is the
French equivalent for the “Star Chamber,”) was held with all the
ceremonial which royal pride required on one hand and the intriguers who
urged their master to this exercise of royal claims, on the other.
The King pretended to be serene, but he was not at ease: yet his
magnificent costume was admired and nothing cloaks a man’s defects like
majesty. The Dauphiness wore a plaintive look through all the affair.
Lady Dubarry was brave, with the confidence given by youth and beauty.
She seemed a ray of lustre from the King whose left-hand queen she was.
Aiguillon walked among the peers firmly, so that none could have guessed
that it was across him the King and Parliament were exchanging blows. He
was pointed at by the crowd and the Parliamentarists scowled at him; but
that was all.
Besides, the multitude, kept at a distance by the soldiers, betrayed its
presence only by a humming, not yet a hooting.
The King’s speech began in honey but ended in a dash of vitriol so sharp
that the nobles smiled. But Parliament, with the admirable unanimity of
constitutional bodies, kept a tranquil and indifferent aspect which
highly displeased the King and the aristocratic spectators on the
stands.
The Dauphiness turned pale with wrath, from thus for the first time
measuring popular resistance, and calculating the weight of its power.
After the King’s speech was read by the Chancellor, the King, to the
amazement of everybody made a sign that he was going to speak.
Attention became stupor.
How many ages were in that second!
“You hear what my chancellor informs you of my will,” he said in a firm
voice: “Think only to carry it out, for I shall never change.”
The whole assembly was literally thunderstricken. The Dauphiness thanked
the speaker with a glance of her fine eyes. Lady Dubarry, electrified,
could not refrain from rising, and she would have clapped her hands but
for the fear that the mob would stone her to death on going out, or to
receive next day satirical songs each worse than the other.
“Do you hear?” she said to the Duke of Richelieu, who had bowed lowly
to his triumphing nephew. “The King will never change, he says.”
“They are terrible words, indeed,” he replied, “but those poor
Parliamentists did not notice that in saying he would never change, the
King had his eyes on you.”
She was a woman and no politician. She only saw a compliment where
Aiguillon perceived the epigram and the threat.
The effect of the royal ultimatum was immediately favorable to the royal
cause. But often a heavy blow only stuns and the blood circulates the
more purely and richly for the shock.
This was the reflection made by three men in the crowd, as they looked
on from the corner. Chance had united them here, and they appeared to
watch the impression of the throng.
“This ripens the passions,” observed one of them, an old man with
brilliant eyes in a soft and honest face. “A Bed of Justice is a great
work.”
“Aye, but you may make a bed and not get Justice to go to sleep on it,”
sneered a young man.
“I seem to know you--we have met before?” queried the old man.
“The night of the accident through the fireworks; you are not wrong, M.
Rousseau.”
“Oh, you are my fellow-countryman, the young surgeon, Marat?”
“Yes, at your service.”
The third man did not speak. He was young and had a noble face; during
the ceremony he had done nothing but study the crowd. The surgeon was
the first to depart, plunging onto the thick of the mob, which had
forgotten him, being less grateful than Rousseau, but he intended to
remind them some day.
Waiting till he had gone, the other young man addressed the philosopher,
saying:
“Are you not going?”
“I am too old to risk myself in that crush.”
“In that case,” said the young man, lowering his voice, “we shall meet
to-night in Plastriere Street--Do not fail, _Brother_ Rousseau!”
The author started as though a phantom had risen in face of him. His
usually pale tint became livid. He meant to reply to the other but he
had vanished.
After these singular words from the stranger, trembling and unhappy,
Rousseau meandered among the groups without remembering that he was old
and feared the press. Soon he got out upon Notre Dame Bridge, and he
crossed in musing and self-questioning, the Grêve Ward next his own.
“So, the secret which every one initiated is sworn to guard at the peril
of his life, is in the grip of the first comer. This is the result of
the secret societies being made too popular. A man knows me, that I am
his associate--perhaps his accomplice! Such a state of things is absurd
and intolerable. I wanted to learn the bottom of the plan for human
regeneration framed by those chosen spirits called the Illuminati: I was
mad enough to believe that good ideas could come from Germany, that land
of mental mist and beer. I have entangled myself with some idiots or
knaves who used it as cloak to conceal their folly. But no, this shall
not be. A lightning flash has shown me the abyss, and I am not going to
throw myself into it with lightness of heart.”
Leaning on his cane, he stopped in the street for an instant.
“Yet it was a lovely dream,” he meditated. “Liberty in bondage, the
future conquered without noise and shocks, and the net mysteriously spun
and laid over the tyrants while they slumbered. It was altogether too
lovely and I was a dupe to believe it. I do not want any of these fears,
doubts and shadows which are unworthy of a free mind and independent
body.”
At this, he caught sight of some police officers, and they so frightened
the free mind and impelled the independent body, that he hastened to
seek the darkest shade under the pillars where he was strolling.
It was not far to his house, where he took refuge from his thoughts and
his wife, the spitfire of this modern Socrates.
He now began to think that there might be danger in not keeping the
appointment at the secret lodge of which the stranger in the mob had
spoken.
“If they have penalties against turncoats, they must have them for the
lukewarm and the negligent,” he reasoned. “I have always noticed that
black threats and great danger amount to little; one must be on guard
against petty stings, paltry revenge; hoaxes and annoyances of small
calibre. The application of wild justice by capital sentences is
extremely rare. Some day my brother Freemasons will even up matters with
me by stretching a rope across my staircase so that I shall break a limb
or knock out the half-dozen teeth still my own. Or a brick may stave in
my skull as I go under a scaffolding. Better than that, they may have
some pamphleteer, living near me, in the league, who will watch what I
do. That can be done as the meetings are held in my own street. This
quill-driver will publish details of how my wife scolds, which will make
me the laughing-stock of all the town. Have I not enemies all around
me?”
Then his thoughts changed.
“Pah, where is courage, and where honor?” he said. “Am I afraid of
myself? Shall I see a rogue or a poltroon when I look in the glass? No,
this shall not be. I will keep the tryst though the entire universe
coalesces to work my misery--though the cellars in the street broke down
to swallow me up. Pretty reasonings fear lead a man into. Since that man
spoke to me, I have been swinging round in a circle of nonsense. I am
doubting everything--myself included. This is not logical. I know that I
am not an enthusiast and I would not believe this association could work
wonders unless it would do so. What says that I am not going to be the
regenerator of humanity,--I, who have searched, and whom the mysterious
agents of this limitless power sought out on the strength of my
writings? Am I to recede from following up my theory and putting it into
action?”
He became animated.
“What is finer? Ages on the march--the people issuing from the state of
brutes; step following step in the gloom and a hand beckoning out of the
darkness. The immense pyramid arising on the tip of which future ages
will set the crown--the bust of Rousseau, citizen of Geneva, who risked
his life and his liberty to be true to his motto: ‘Truth is more than
life.’”
Night came and he passed out of his house.
He peeped around to make sure.
No vehicles were about. The street was full of loungers, who stared at
one another, as usual, or halted at the store-windows to ogle the girls.
A man the more would not be perceived in the scuffle. Rousseau dived
into it, and he had no long road to travel.
Before the door where Rousseau was to meet the brothers, a street singer
with a shrill fiddle was stationed. Nothing was more favorable to a jam
in the thoroughfare than the crowd caused by the amateurs of this rude
music. Everybody had to go one side or another of the group. Rousseau
remarked that many of those who chose to take the inside and go along by
the houses, became lost on the road as though they fell down some
trapdoor. He concluded that they came on the same errand as himself and
meant to follow their example.
Passing behind the group round the musician, he watched the first person
passing this who went up the alley of the house. He was more timid than
him, and his friends, for he waited till ten had disappeared. Then, too,
when a cab came along and called all eyes toward the street, he dived
into the passage.
It was black, but he soon spied a light ahead, under which was seated a
man, placidly reading as a tradesman is in the custom to do after
business hours. At Rousseau’s steps, he lifted his head, and plainly
laid his finger on his breast, lit up by the lamp. The philosopher
replied to the sign by laying a finger on his lips.
Thereupon the guard rose and opening a door so artistically cut in the
panelling so as to be unseen, he showed Rousseau a flight of stairs. It
went steeply down into the ground.
On the visitor entering, the door closed noiselessly but rapidly.
Groping with his cane, Rousseau went down the steps, thinking it a poor
joke for his colleagues to try to break his neck and limbs so soon on
the threshold.
But the stairs were not so long as steep. He had counted seventeen steps
when a puff of the warm air from a collection of men smote his face.
It was a cellar, hung with canvas painted with workmen’s tools, more
symbolical than accurate. A solitary lamp swung from the ceiling and
cast a sinister glimmer on faces honest enough in themselves. The men
were whispering to each other on benches. Instead of carpet or even
planks, reeds had been strewn to deaden sound.
Nobody appeared to pay any heed to Rousseau. Five minutes before, he had
wished for nothing so much as this entrance; now he was sorry that he
had slipped in so smoothly.
He saw one place empty on one of the rear benches and he went and sat
there modestly. He counted thirty-three heads in the gathering. A desk
on a raised stage waited for the chairman of the club.
He remarked that the conversation was very brief and guarded. Many did
not move their lips; only three or four couples really chatted.
Those who were silent strove to hide their faces, an easy matter from
the lamp throwing masses of shadow. The refuge of these timid folk
seemed to be behind the chairman’s stage.
But two or three, to make up for this shrinking, bustled about to
identify their colleagues. They went to and fro, spoke together, and
often disappeared through a doorway masked by a curtain painted with red
flames on a black ground.
Presently a bell rang.
Plainly and simply a man left the bench where he had been mixed up with
the others and took his place at the desk. After having made some signs
with fingers and hands which the assemblaged repeated, and sealed all
with a more explicit gesture, he declared the lodge open.
He was a complete stranger to Rousseau; under the appearance of a
superior craftsman, he hid much presence of mind and he spoke with
eloquence as fluent as a trained orator. His speech was clear and short,
signifying that the lodge was held for the reception of a new member.
“You must not be surprised at the meeting taking place where the usual
initiation ceremonies cannot be performed. Such tests are considered
useless by the chiefs. The brother to be received is one of the torches
of contemporaneous philosophy, a deep spirit devoted to us by
conviction, not fear. He who has plumbed all the mysteries of nature and
the human heart would not feel the same impression as the ordinary
mortal who seeks our assistance in will, strength and means. To win his
co-operation it will be ample to be content with the pledge and
acquiescence of this distinguished mind and honest and energetic
character.”
The orator looked round to see the effect of his plea. It was magical on
Rousseau. He knew what were the preliminary proceedings of secret
societies; he viewed them with the repugnance natural in superior minds.
The absurd concessions but useful ones, required to simulate fear in the
novices when there was nothing to fear appeared to him the culmination
of puerility and idle superstition.
Moreover, the timid philosopher, the enemy of personal display, reckoned
himself unfortunate if compelled to be a sight even though the attacks
upon him would be in earnest. To be thus dispensed from the trial was
more than satisfaction. He knew the rigor of Equality in the masonic
rites; this exception in his favor was therefore a triumph.
“Still,” said the chairman, “as the new brother loves Equality like
myself, I will ask him to explain himself on the question which I put
solely for form’s sake: ‘What do you seek in our society?’”
Rousseau took two steps forward, and answered, as his dreamy and
melancholy eye wandered over the meeting:
“I seek here what I have not found elsewhere. Truths, not sophisms. If I
have agreed to come here, after having been entreated--(he emphasized
the word)--it is from my belief that I might be useful. It is I who am
conferring the obligation. Alas! we all may have passed away before you
can supply me with the means of defense, or help me to freedom with your
hands if I should be imprisoned, or give me bread and comfort if
afflicted--for the light cometh slowly, progress has a halting step, and
where the light is quenched, none of us may be able to revive it---- ”
“Illustrious brother, you are wrong,” said the soft and penetrative
voice of one who charmed the philosopher, “more than you imagine lies in
the scope of this society: it is the future of the world. The future is
hope--science--heaven, the Chief Architect who hath promised to
illuminate His great building, the earth. The Architect does not lie.”
Startled by this lofty language, Rousseau looked and recognized the
young man who had reminded him of the meeting at the street corner. It
was Baron Balsamo. Clad in black with marked richness and great style,
he was leaning on the side rail of the platform, and his face, softly
lighted up, shone with all its beauty, grace and natural expressiveness.
“Science?” repeated the author, “a bottomless pit. Do you prate to me of
science--comfort, future and promise where another tells of material
things, rigor and violence--which am I to believe?” And he glanced at
Marat whose hideous face did not harmonize with Balsamo’s. “Are there in
the lodge meeting wolves just as in the world above--wolf and lamb! Let
me tell you what my faith is, if you have not read it in my books.”
“Books,” interrupted Marat, “granted that they are sublime; but they are
utopias; you are useful in the sense of the old prosers being useful.
You point out the boon, but you make it a bubble, beautiful with the
sunshine playing in a rainbow on it, but it bursts and leaves a nasty
taste on the lips.”
“Have you seen the great acts of nature accomplished without
preparation?” retorted Rousseau. “You want to regenerate the world by
deeds? this is not regeneration but revolution.”
“Then,” sharply replied the surgeon, “you do not care for independence,
or liberty?”
“Yes, I do,” returned the other, “for independence is my idol--liberty
my goddess. But I want the mild and radiant liberty which warms and
vivifies. The equality which brings men together by friendship, not
fear. I wish the education and instruction of each element of the social
body, as the joiner wishes neat joints and the mechanician harmony. I
retract what I have written--progress, concord and devotion!”
Marat smiled with disdain.
“Rivers of milk and honey--the dreams of the poets which philosophers
want to realise.”
Rousseau replied no more, it was so odd for him to be accused of
moderation when all Europe called him an extreme innovator. He sat down
in silence after having sought for the approval of the person who had
defended him.
“You have heard?” asked the chairman, rising. “Is the brother worthy to
enter the society? does he comprehend his duties?”
“Yes,” replied the gathering, but the one of reservation showed no
unanimity.
“Take the oath,” said the presiding officer.
“It will be disagreeable to me to displease some of the members,” said
the philosopher with pride, “but I think that I shall do more for the
world and for you, brothers, apart from you, in my own isolation. Leave
me then to my labors. I am not shaped to march with others whom I shun;
yet I serve them, because I am one of you, and I try to believe you are
better than you are. Now, you have my entire mind.”
“He won’t take the oath!” exclaimed Marat.
“I refuse positively. I do not wish to belong to the society. Too many
proofs come up that I shall be useless to it.”
“Brother,” said the member with the conciliating speech, “allow me thus
to call you, for we are all brothers apart from all combinations of
human minds--do not yield to a movement of spite--sacrifice a little of
your proper pride. Do for us what may be repugnant to you. Your counsel,
ideas and presence are the Light. Do not plunge us into the double
darkness of your refusal and your absence.”
“Nay, I take away nothing,” said the author; “if you wish the name and
the spiritual essence of Jean Jacques Rousseau, put my books on your
chairman’s table, and when my turn to speak comes round, open one and
read as far as you like. That will be my advice--my opinion.”
“Stop a moment,” said Surgeon Marat as the last speaker took a step to
go out. “Free will is all very well and the illustrious philosopher’s
should be respected like the rest; but it strikes me as far from regular
to let an outsider into the sanctuary who--being bound by no clause,
even tacit--may, without being a dishonest man, reveal our proceedings.”
Rousseau returned him his pitying smile.
“I am ready for the oath, if one of discretion,” he said.
But the unnamed member who had watched the debate with authority which
nobody questioned, though he stood in the crowd, approached the chairman
and whispered in his ear.
“Quite so,” replied the Venerable, and he added: “You are a man, not a
brother, but one whose honor places you on our level. We here lay aside
our position to ask your simple promise to forget what has passed
between us.”
“Like a dream in the morning: I swear on my honor,” replied Rousseau
with feeling.
He went out upon these words, and many members at his heels.