A fortnight later, in December, and in spite of the cold, Monsieur
Grossetete came to the chateau de Montegnac, to “present his protege,”
whom Veronique and Monsieur Bonnet were impatiently awaiting.
“I must love you very much, my dear child,” said the old man, taking
Veronique’s two hands in his, and kissing them with that gallantry of
old men which never displeases women, “yes, I must love you well, to
come from Limoges in such weather. But I wanted to present to you myself
the gift of Monsieur Gregoire Gerard here present. You’ll find him a
man after your own heart, Monsieur Bonnet,” added the banker, bowing
affectionately to the rector.
Gerard’s external appearance was not prepossessing. He was of middle
height, stocky in shape, the neck sunk in the shoulders, as they say
vulgarly; he had yellow hair, and the pink eyes of an albino, with
lashes and eyebrows almost white. Though his skin, like that of all
persons of that description, was amazingly white, marks of the small-box
and other very visible scars had destroyed its original brilliancy.
Study had probably injured his sight, for he wore glasses.
When he removed the great cloak of a gendarme in which he was wrapped,
it was seen that his clothing did not improve his general appearance.
The manner in which his garments were put on and buttoned, his untidy
cravat, his rumpled shirt, were signs of the want of personal care with
which men of science, all more or less absent-minded, are charged. As
in the case of most thinkers, his countenance and his attitude, the
development of his bust and the thinness of his legs, betrayed a sort
of bodily debility produced by habits of meditation. Nevertheless, the
ardor of his heart and the vigor of his mind, proofs of which were given
in this letter, gleamed from his forehead, which was white as Carrara
marble. Nature seemed to have reserved to herself that spot in order to
place there visible signs of the grandeur, constancy, and goodness of
the man. The nose, like that of most men of the true Gallic race, was
flattened. His mouth, firm and straight, showed absolute discretion
and the instinct of economy. But the whole mask, worn by study, looked
prematurely old.
“We must begin by thanking you, monsieur,” said Madame Graslin,
addressing the engineer, “for being willing to direct an enterprise in
a part of the country which can offer you no other pleasure than the
satisfaction of knowing that you are doing a real good.”
“Madame,” he replied, “Monsieur Grossetete has told me enough about your
enterprise as we came along to make me already glad that I can in any
way be useful to you; the prospect of living in close relations with
you and Monsieur Bonnet seems to me charming. Unless I am dismissed from
this region, I expect to end my days here.”
“We will try not to let you change your mind,” replied Madame Graslin,
smiling.
“Here,” said Grossetete, addressing Veronique, whom he took aside,
“are the papers which the _procureur-general_ gave to me. He was quite
surprised that you did not address your inquiry about Catherine Curieux
to him. All that you wished has been done immediately, with the utmost
promptitude and devotion. Three months hence Catherine Curieux will be
sent to you.”
“Where is she?” asked Veronique.
“She is now in the hospital Saint-Louis,” replied the old man; “they are
awaiting her recovery before sending her from Paris.”
“Ah! is the poor girl ill?”
“You will find all necessary information in these papers,” said
Grossetete, giving Veronique a packet.
Madame Graslin returned to her guests to conduct them into the
magnificent dining-room on the ground-floor. She sat at table, but did
not herself take part in the dinner; since her arrival at Montegnac
she had made it a rule to take her meals alone, and Aline, who knew the
reason of this withdrawal, faithfully kept the secret of it till her
mistress was in danger of death.
The mayor, the _juge de paix_, and the doctor of Montegnac had been
invited.
The doctor, a young man twenty-seven years of age, named Roubaud, was
extremely desirous of knowing a woman so celebrated in Limoges. The
rector was all the more pleased to present him at the chateau because he
wanted to gather a little society around Veronique to distract her mind
and give it food. Roubaud was one of those thoroughly well-trained
young physicians whom the Ecole de Medecine in Paris sends forth to the
profession. He would undoubtedly have shone on the vast stage of the
capital; but frightened by the clash of ambitions in Paris, and knowing
himself more capable than pushing, more learned than intriguing, his
gentle disposition led him to choose the narrow career of the provinces,
where he hoped to be sooner appreciated than in Paris.
At Limoges, Roubaud came in contact with the settled practice of the
regular physicians and the habits of the people; he therefore let
himself be persuaded by Monsieur Bonnet, who, judging by the gentle and
winning expression of his face, thought him well-suited to co-operate
in his own work at Montegnac. Roubaud was small and fair; his general
appearance was rather insipid, but his gray eyes betrayed the depths of
the physiologist and the patient tenacity of a studious man. There was
no physician in Montegnac except an old army-surgeon, more devoted to
his cellar than to his patients, and too old to continue with any vigor
the hard life of a country doctor. At the present time he was dying.
Roubaud had been in Montegnac about eighteen months, and was much liked
there. But this young pupil of Desplein and the successors of Cabanis
did not believe in Catholicism. He lived in a state of profound
indifference as to religion, and did not desire to come out of it. The
rector was in despair. Not that Roubaud did any wrong; he never spoke
against religion, and his duties were excuse enough for his absence from
church; besides, he was incapable of trying to undermine the faith of
others, and indeed behaved outwardly as the best of Catholics; he simply
prohibited himself from thinking of a problem which he considered above
the range of human thought. When the rector heard him say that pantheism
had been the religion of all great minds he set him down as inclining to
the doctrine of Pythagoras on reincarnation.
Roubaud, who saw Madame Graslin for the first time, experienced a
violent sensation when he met her. Science revealed to him in her
expression, her attitude, in the ravages of her face, untold sufferings
both moral and physical, a nature of almost superhuman force, great
faculties which would support her under the most conflicting trials;
he detected all,--even the darkest corners of that nature so carefully
hidden. He felt that some evil, some malady, was devouring the heart of
that fine creature; for just as the color of a fruit shows the
presence of a worm within it, so certain tints in the human face enable
physicians to detect a poisoning thought.
From this moment Monsieur Roubaud attached himself so deeply to Madame
Graslin that he became afraid of loving her beyond the permitted line
of simple friendship. The brow, the bearing, above all, the glance of
Veronique’s eye had a sort of eloquence that men invariably understand;
it said as plainly that she was dead to love as other women say the
contrary by a reversal of the same eloquence. The doctor suddenly vowed
to her, in his heart, a chivalrous worship.
He exchanged a rapid glance with the rector, who thought to himself,
“Here’s the thunderbolt which will convert my poor unbeliever; Madame
Graslin will have more eloquence than I.”
The mayor, an old countryman, amazed at the luxury of this dining-room
and surprised to find himself dining with one of the richest men in the
department, had put on his best clothes, which rather hampered him, and
this increased his mental awkwardness. Moreover, Madame Graslin in her
mourning garments seemed to him very imposing; he was therefore mute.
After living all his life as a farmer at Saint-Leonard, he had bought
the only habitable house in Montegnac and cultivated with his own hands
the land belonging to it. Though he knew how to read and write, he would
have been incapable of fulfilling his functions were it not for the help
of his clerk and the _juge de paix_, who prepared his work for him. He
was very anxious to have a notary established in Montegnac, in order
that he might shift the burden of his responsibility on to that
officer’s shoulders. But the poverty of the village and its outlying
districts made such a functionary almost useless, and the inhabitants
had recourse when necessary to the notaries of the chief town of the
arrondissement.
The _juge de paix_, named Clousier, was formerly a lawyer in Limoges,
where cases had deserted him because he insisted on putting into
practice that fine axiom that the lawyer is the best judge of the client
and the case. In 1809 he obtained his present post, the meagre salary of
which just enabled him to live. He had now reached a stage of honorable
but absolute poverty. After a residence of twenty-one years in this poor
village the worthy man, thoroughly countrified, looked, top-coat and
all, exactly like the farmers about him.
Under this coarse exterior Clousier hid a clear-sighted mind, given to
lofty meditation on public policy, though he himself had fallen into a
state of complete indifference, derived from his intimate knowledge
of men and their interests. This man, who baffled for a long time the
rector’s perspicacity and who might in a higher sphere have proved
another l’Hopital, incapable of intrigue like all really profound
persons, was by this time living in the contemplative state of an
ancient hermit. Independent through privation, no personal consideration
acted on his mind; he knew the laws and judged impartially. His life,
reduced to the merest necessaries, was pure and regular. The peasants
loved Monsieur Clousier and respected him for the disinterested fatherly
care with which he settled their differences and gave them advice in
their daily affairs. The “goodman Clousier” as all Montegnac called him,
had a nephew with him as clerk, an intelligent young man, who afterwards
contributed much to the prosperity of the district.
Old Clousier’s personal appearance was remarkable for a broad, high
forehead and two bushes of white hair which stood out from his head
on either side of it. His highly colored complexion and well-developed
corpulence might have made persons think, in spite of his actual
sobriety, that he cultivated Bacchus as well as Troplong and Toullier.
His half-extinct voice was the sign of an oppressive asthma. Perhaps
the dry air of Montegnac had contributed to fix him there. He lived in
a house arranged for him by a well-to-do cobbler to whom it belonged.
Clousier had already seen Veronique at church, and he had formed his
opinion of her without communicating it to any one, not even to Monsieur
Bonnet, with whom he was beginning to be intimate. For the first time
in his life the _juge de paix_ was to be thrown in with persons able to
appreciate him.
When the company were seated round a table handsomely appointed
(for Veronique had sent all her household belongings from Limoges to
Montegnac) the six guests felt a momentary embarrassment. The doctor,
the mayor and the _juge de paix_ knew nothing of Grossetete and Gerard.
But during the first course, old Grossetete’s hearty good-humor broke
the ice of a first meeting. In addition to this, Madame Graslin’s
cordiality led on Gerard, and encouraged Roubaud. Under her touch these
souls full of fine qualities recognized their relation, and felt they
had entered a sympathetic circle. So, by the time the dessert appeared
on the table, when the glass and china with gilded edges sparkled, and
the choicer wines were served by Aline and Champion and Grossetete’s
valet, the conversation became sufficiently confidential to allow
these four choice minds, thus meeting by chance, to express their real
thoughts on matters of importance, such as men like to discuss when they
can do so and be sure of the discretion of their companions.
“Your furlough came just in time to let you witness the revolution of
July,” said Grossetete to Gerard, with an air as if he asked an opinion
of him.
“Yes,” replied the engineer. “I was in Paris during the three famous
days. I saw all; and I came to sad conclusions.”
“What were they?” said the rector, eagerly.
“There is no longer any patriotism except under dirty shirts,” replied
Gerard. “In that lies the ruin of France! July was the voluntary defeat
of all superiorities,--name, fortune, talent. The ardent, devoted masses
carried the day against the rich and the intelligent, to whom ardor and
devotion are repugnant.”
“To judge by what has happened during the past year,” said Monsieur
Clousier, “this change of government is simply a premium given to
an evil that is sapping us,--individualism. Fifteen years hence
all questions of a generous nature will be met by, _What is that to
me?_--the great cry of Freedom of Will descending from the religious
heights where Luther, Calvin, Zwinglius, and Knox introduced it, into
even political economy. _Every one for himself_; _every man his own
master_,--those two terrible axioms form, with the _What is that to
me?_ a trinity of wisdom to the burgher and the small land-owner. This
egotism results from the vices of our present civil legislation (too
hastily made), to which the revolution of July has just given a terrible
confirmation.”
The _juge de paix_ fell back into his usual silence after thus
expressing himself; but the topics he suggested must have occupied the
minds of those present. Emboldened by Clousier’s words, and moved by the
look which Gerard exchanged with Grossetete, Monsieur Bonnet ventured to
go further.
“The good King Charles X.,” he said, “has just failed in the most
far-sighted and salutary enterprise a monarch ever planned for the
welfare of the people confided to him; and the Church ought to feel
proud of the part she took in his councils. But the upper classes
deserted him in heart and mind, just as they had already deserted him
on the great question of the law of primogeniture,--the lasting honor of
the only bold statesman the Restoration has produced, namely, the Comte
de Peyronnet. To reconstitute the nation through the family; to
take from the press its venomous action and confine it to its real
usefulness; to recall the elective Chamber to its true functions; and
to restore to religion its power over the people,--such were the four
cardinal points of the internal policy of the house of Bourbon. Well,
twenty years from now all France will have recognized the necessity
of that grand and sound policy. Charles X. was in greater peril in the
situation he chose to leave than in that in which his paternal power has
been defeated. The future of our noble country--where all things will
henceforth be brought periodically into question, where our rulers
will discuss incessantly instead of acting, where the press, become a
sovereign power, will be the instrument of base ambitions--this future
will only prove the wisdom of the king who has just carried away with
him the true principles of government; and history will bear in mind the
courage with which he resisted his best friends after having probed
the wound and seen the necessity of curative measures, which were not
sustained by those for whose sake he put himself into the breach.”
“Ah! monsieur,” cried Gerard, “you are frank; you go straight to your
thought without disguise, and I won’t contradict you. Napoleon in his
Russian campaign was forty years in advance of the spirit of his age;
he was never understood. The Russia and England of 1830 explains the
campaign of 1812. Charles X. has been misunderstood in the same way. It
is quite possible that in twenty-five years from now his ordinances may
become the laws of the land.”
“France, too eloquent not to gabble, too full of vanity to bow down
before real talent, is, in spite of the sublime good sense of its
language and the mass of its people, the very last nation in which two
deliberative chambers should have been attempted,” said the _juge de
paix_. “Or, at any rate, the weaknesses of our national character should
have been guarded against by the admirable restrictions which Napoleon’s
experience laid upon them. Our present system may succeed in a country
whose action is circumscribed by the nature of its soil, like England;
but the law of primogeniture applied to the transmission of land
is absolutely necessary; when that law is suppressed the system of
legislative representation becomes absurd. England owes her existence to
the quasi-feudal law which entails landed property and family mansions
on the eldest son. Russia is based on the feudal right of autocracy.
Consequently those two nations are to-day on the high-road of startling
progress. Austria could only resist our invasions and renew the way
against Napoleon by virtue of that law of primogeniture which preserves
in the family the active forces of a nation, and supplies the great
productions necessary to the State. The house of Bourbon, feeling that
it was slipping to the third rank in Europe, by reason of liberalism,
wanted to regain its rightful place and there maintain itself, and the
nation has thrown it over at the very time it was about to save the
nation. I am sure I don’t know how low down the present system will drop
us.”
“If we have a war, France will be without horses, as Napoleon was in
1813, when, being reduced to those of France only, he could not profit
by his two victories of Lutzen and Botzen, and so was crushed at
Leipzig,” cried Grossetete. “If peace continues, the evil will only
increase. Twenty-five years from now the race of cattle and horses will
have diminished in France by one half.”
“Monsieur Grossetete is right,” remarked Gerard. “So that the work
you are undertaking here, madame,” he added, addressing Veronique, “is
really a service done to the country.”
“Yes,” said the _juge de paix_, “because Madame has but one son, and
the inheritance will not be divided up; but how long will that condition
last? For a certain length of time the magnificent culture which you are
about to introduce will, let us hope, belong to only one proprietor, who
will continue to breed horned beasts and horses; but sooner or later the
day must come when these forests and fields will be divided up and sold
in small parcels. Divided and redivided, the six thousand acres of that
plain will have a thousand or twelve hundred owners, and thenceforth--no
more horses and cattle!”
“Oh! as for those days”--began the mayor.
“There! don’t you hear the _What is that to me?_ Monsieur Clousier
talked of?” cried Monsieur Grossetete. “Taken in the act! But,
monsieur,” resumed the banker, gravely addressing the dumfounded mayor,
“those days have really come. In a radius of thirty miles round Paris
the land is so divided up into small holdings that milch cows are no
longer seen. The Commune of Argenteuil contains thirty-eight thousand
eight hundred and eighty-five parcels of land, many of which do not
return a farthing of revenue. If it were not for the rich refuse of
Paris, which produces a fodder of strong quality, I don’t know how
dairymen would get along. As it is, this over-stimulating food and
confinement in close stables produce inflammatory diseases, of which the
cows often die. They use cows in the neighborhood of Paris as they do
horses in the street. Crops more profitable than hay--vegetables, fruit,
apple orchards, vineyards--are taking the place of meadow-lands. In a
few years we shall see milk sent to Paris by the mail-coaches as they
now send fish. What is going on around Paris is also going on round all
the large cities of France; the land will thus be used up before many
years are gone. Chaptel states that in 1800 there were barely two
million acres of vineyard in France; a careful estimate would give
ten million to-day. Divided _ad infinitum_ by our present system of
inheritance, Normandy will lose half her production of horses and
cattle; but she will have a monopoly of milk in Paris, for her climate,
happily, forbids grape culture. We shall soon see a curious phenomenon
in the progressive rise in the cost of meat. In twenty years from now,
in 1850, Paris, which paid seven to eleven sous for a pound of beef in
1814, will be paying twenty--unless there comes a man of genius who can
carry out the plan of Charles X.”
“You have laid your finger on the mortal wound of France,” said the
_juge de paix_. “The root of our evils lies in the section relating to
inheritance in the Civil Code, in which the equal division of property
among heirs is ordained. That’s the pestle that pounds territory into
crumbs, individualizes fortunes, and takes from them their needful
stability; decomposing ever and never recomposing,--a state of things
which must end in the ruin of France. The French Revolution emitted a
destructive virus to which the July days have given fresh activity. This
vitiating element is the accession of the peasantry to the ownership of
land. In the section ‘On Inheritance’ is the principle of the evil, the
peasant is the means through which it works. No sooner does that class
get a parcel of land into its maw than it begins to subdivide it, till
there are scarcely three furrows left in each lot. And even then the
peasant does not stop! He divides the three furrows across their length,
as Monsieur Grossetete has just shown us at Argenteuil. The unreasonable
price which the peasant attaches to the smallest scrap of his land makes
it impossible to repurchase and restore a fine estate. Monsieur,” he
went on, indicating Grossetete, “has just mentioned the diminution in
the raising of horses and cattle; well, the Code has much to do with
that. The peasant-proprietor owns cows; he looks to them for his means
of living; he sells the calves, he sells his butter; he never dreams
of raising cattle, still less of raising horses; but as he cannot raise
enough fodder to support his cows through a dry season, he sends them to
market when he can feed them no longer. If by some fatal chance the hay
were to fail for two years running, you would see a startling change the
third year in the price of beef, but especially in that of veal.”
“That may put a stop to ‘patriotic banquets,’” said the doctor,
laughing.
“Oh!” exclaimed Madame Graslin, looking at Roubaud, “can’t politics get
on without the wit of journalism, even here?”
“In this lamentable business, the bourgeoisie plays the same _role_ as
the pioneers of America,” continued Clousier. “It buys up great estates,
which the peasantry could not otherwise acquire. It cuts them up and
then sells, either at auction or in small lots at private sale, to the
peasants. Everything is judged by figures in these days, and I know none
more eloquent than these. France has ninety-nine million acres, which,
subtracting highways, roads, dunes, canals, and barren, uncultivated
regions deserted by capital, may be reduced to eighty millions. Now out
of eighty millions of acres to thirty-two millions of inhabitants we
find one hundred and twenty-five millions of small lots registered on
the tax-list (I don’t give fractions). Thus, you will observe, we have
gone to the utmost limit of agrarian law, and yet we have not seen the
last of poverty or dissatisfaction. Those who divide territory into
fragments and lessen production have, of course, plenty of organs to
cry out that true social justice consists in giving every man a life
interest, and no more, in a parcel of land; perpetual ownership, they
say, is robbery. The Saint-Simonians are already proclaiming that
doctrine.”
“The magistrate has spoken,” said Grossetete, “and here’s what the
banker adds to those bold considerations. The fact that the peasantry
and the lesser bourgeoisie can now acquire land does France an injury
which the government seems not even to suspect. We may estimate the
number of peasant families, omitting paupers, at three millions. These
families subsist on wages. Wages are paid in money, and not in kind--”
“Yes, that’s another blunder of our laws!” cried Clousier, interrupting
the banker. “The right to pay in kind might have been granted in 1790;
now, if we attempted to carry such a law, we should risk a revolution.”
“Therefore, as I was about to say, the proletary draws to himself the
money of the country,” resumed Grossetete. “Now the peasant has no other
passion, desire, or will, than to die a land-owner. This desire, as
Monsieur Clousier has well shown, was born of the Revolution, and is the
direct result of the sale of the National domain. A man must be ignorant
indeed of what is going on all over France in the country regions if he
is not aware that these three million families are yearly hoarding at
least fifty francs, thus subtracting a hundred and fifty millions from
current use. The science of political economy has made it an axiom
that a five-franc piece, passing through a hundred hands in one day, is
equivalent to five hundred francs. Now, it is perfectly plain to all of
us who live in the country and observe the state of affairs, that every
peasant has his eye on the land he covets; he is watching and waiting
for it, and he never invests his savings elsewhere; he buries them. In
seven years the savings thus rendered inert and unproductive amount to
eleven hundred million francs. But since the lesser bourgeoisie bury
as much more, with the same purpose, France loses every seven years the
interest of at least two thousand millions,--that is to say, about one
hundred millions; a loss which in forty-two years amounts to six hundred
million francs. But she not only loses six hundred millions, she fails
to create with that money manufacturing or agricultural products, which
represent a loss of twelve hundred millions; for, if the manufactured
product were not double in value to its cost price, commerce could not
exist. The proletariat actually deprives itself of six hundred millions
in wages. These six hundred millions of dead loss (representing to a
stern economist a loss of twelve hundred millions, through lack of the
benefits of circulation) explain the condition of inferiority in which
our commerce, our merchant service, and our agriculture stand,
as compared with England. In spite of the difference of the two
territories, which is more than two thirds in our favor, England could
remount the cavalry of two French armies, and she has meat for every
man. But there, as the system of landed property makes it almost
impossible for the lower classes to obtain it, money is not hoarded;
it becomes commercial, and is turned over. Thus, besides the evil of
parcelling the land, involving that of the diminution of horses, cattle,
and sheep, the section of the Code on inheritance costs us six hundred
millions of interest, lost by the hoarding of the money of the peasantry
and bourgeoisie, and twelve hundred millions, at least, of products; or,
including the loss from non-circulation, three thousand millions in half
a century!”
“The moral effect is worse than the material effect,” cried the rector.
“We are making beggar-proprietors among the people and half-taught
communities of the lesser bourgeoisie; and the fatal maxim ‘Each for
himself,’ which had its effect upon the upper classes in July of this
year, will soon have gangrened the middle classes. A proletariat devoid
of sentiment, with no other god than envy, no other fanaticism than
the despair of hunger, without faith, without belief, will come forward
before long and put its foot on the heart of the nation. Foreigners, who
have thriven under monarchical rule, will find that, having royalty,
we have no king; having legality, we have no laws; having property,
no owners; no government with our elections, no force with freedom, no
happiness with equality. Let us hope that before that day comes God may
raise up in France a providential man, one of those Elect who give a new
mind to nations, and like Sylla or like Marius, whether he comes from
above or rises from below, remakes society.”
“He would be sent to the assizes,” said Gerard. “The sentence pronounced
against Socrates and Jesus Christ would be rendered against them in
1831. In these days as in the old days, envious mediocrity lets thinkers
die of poverty, and so gets rid of the great political physicians who
have studied the wounds of France, and who oppose the tendencies of
their epoch. If they bear up under poverty, common minds ridicule them
or call them dreamers. In France, men revolt in the moral world against
the great man of the future, just as they revolt in the political world
against a sovereign.”
“In the olden time sophists talked to a limited number of men; to-day
the periodical press enables them to lead astray a nation,” cried the
_juge de paix_; “and that portion of the press which pleads for right
ideas finds no echo.”
The mayor looked at Monsieur Clousier in amazement. Madame Graslin, glad
to find in a simple _juge de paix_ a man whose mind was occupied with
serious questions, said to Monsieur Roubaud, her neighbor, “Do you know
Monsieur Clousier?”
“Not rightly until to-day, madame. You are doing miracles,” he answered
in a whisper. “And yet, look at his brow, how noble in shape! Isn’t it
like the classic or traditional brow given by sculptors to Lycurgus
and the Greek sages? The revolution of July has an evidently retrograde
tendency,” said the doctor (who might in his student days have made
a barricade himself), after carefully considering Grossetete’s
calculation.
“These ideas are threefold,” continued Clousier. “You have talked of law
and finance, but how is it with the government itself? The royal power,
weakened by the doctrine of national sovereignty, in virtue of which
the election of August 9, 1830, has just been made, will endeavor to
counteract that rival principle which gives to the people the right
to saddle the nation with a new dynasty every time it does not fully
comprehend the ideas of its king. You will see that we shall then have
internal struggles which will arrest for long periods together the
progress of France.”
“All these reefs have been wisely evaded by England,” remarked Gerard.
“I have been there; I admire that beehive, which sends its swarms over
the universe and civilizes mankind,--a people among whom discussion is
a political comedy, which satisfies the masses and hides the action
of power, which then works freely in its upper sphere; a country where
elections are not in the hands of a stupid bourgeoisie, as they are in
France. If England were parcelled out into small holdings the nation
would no longer exist. The land-owning class, the lords, guide the
social mechanism. Their merchant-service, under the nose of Europe,
takes possession of whole regions of the globe to meet the needs of
their commerce and to get rid of their paupers and malcontents. Instead
of fighting capacities, as we do, thwarting them, nullifying them, the
English aristocratic class seeks out young talent, rewards it, and is
constantly assimilating it. Everything which concerns the action of
the government, in the choice of men and things, is prompt in England,
whereas with us all is slow; and yet the English are slow by nature,
while we are impatient. With them money is bold and actively employed;
with us it is timid and suspicious. What Monsieur Grossetete has said of
the industrial losses which the hoarding peasantry inflict on France has
its proof in a fact I will show to you in two words: English capital,
by its perpetual turning over, has created ten thousand millions of
manufacturing and interest-bearing property; whereas French capital,
which is far more abundant, has not created one tenth of that amount.”
“And that is all the more extraordinary,” said Roubaud, “because they
are lymphatic, and we, as a general thing, are sanguine and energetic.”
“Ah! monsieur,” said Clousier, “there you touch a great question,
which ought to be studied: How to find institutions properly adapted
to repress the temperament of a people! Assuredly Cromwell was a great
legislator. He alone made the England of to-day, by inventing the
‘Navigation Act,’ which has made the English enemies of all the world,
and infused into them a ferocious pride and self-conceit, which is their
mainstay. But, in spite of their Malta citadel, if France and Russia
will only comprehend the part the Mediterranean and the Black Sea ought
to be made to play in the future, the road to Asia through Egypt or by
the Euphrates, made feasible by recent discoveries, will kill England,
as in former times the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope killed
Venice.”
“Not one word of God’s providence in all this!” cried the rector.
“Monsieur Clousier and Monsieur Roubaud are oblivious of religion. How
is it with you, monsieur?” he added, turning to Gerard.
“Protestant,” put in Grossetete.
“You guessed it,” cried Veronique, looking at the rector as she took
Clousier’s arm to return to the salon.
The prejudice Gerard’s appearance excited against him had been quickly
dispelled, and the three notables congratulated themselves on so good an
acquisition.
“Unfortunately,” said Monsieur Bonnet, “there is a cause of
antagonism between Russia and the Catholic countries which border the
Mediterranean, in the very unimportant schism which separates the Greek
religion from the Latin religion; and it is a great misfortune for
humanity.”
“We all preach our own saint,” said Madame Graslin. “Monsieur Grossetete
thinks of the lost millions; Monsieur Clousier, of the overthrow
of rights; the doctor here regards legislation as a question of
temperaments; and the rector sees an obstacle to the good understanding
of France and Russia in religion.”
“Add to that, madame,” said Gerard, “that I see, in the hoarding of
capital by the peasant and the small burgher, the postponement of the
building of railroads in France.”
“Then what is it you all want?” she asked.
“We want the wise State councillors who, under the Emperor, reflected
on the laws, and a legislative body elected by the intelligence of the
country as well as by the land-owners, whose only function would be to
oppose bad legislation and capricious wars. The Chamber, as constituted
to-day, will proceed, as you will soon see, to govern, and that is the
first step to legal anarchy.”
“Good God!” cried the rector, in a flush of sacred patriotism, “how can
such enlightened minds as these,” and he motioned to Clousier, Roubaud,
and Gerard, “how can they see evil so clearly and suggest remedies
without first looking within and applying a remedy to themselves? All of
you, who represent the attacked classes, recognize the necessity of
the passive obedience of the masses of the State, like that of soldiers
during a war; you want the unity of power, and you desire that it
shall never be brought into question. What England has obtained by the
development of her pride and self-interest (a part of her creed) cannot
be obtained in France but through sentiments due to Catholicism, and
none of you are Catholics! Here am I, a priest, obliged to leave my own
ground and argue with arguers. How can you expect the masses to become
religious and obedient when they see irreligion and want of discipline
above them? All peoples united by any faith whatever will inevitably
get the better of peoples without any faith at all. The law of public
interest, which gives birth to patriotism, is destroyed by the law
of private interest, which it sanctions, but which gives birth to
selfishness. There is nothing solid and durable but that which is
natural; and the natural thing in human policy is the Family. The family
must be the point of departure for all institutions. A universal effect
proves a universal cause; and what you have just been setting forth as
evident on all sides comes from the social principle itself; which is
now without force because it has taken for its basis independence of
thought and will, and such freedom is the parent of individualism. To
make happiness depend on the stability, intelligence, and capacity of
all is not as wise as to make happiness depend on the stability and
intelligence of institutions and the capacity of a single head. It is
easier to find wisdom in one man than in a whole nation. Peoples have
heart and no eyes; they feel, and see not. Governments ought to see,
and not determine anything through sentiment. There is, therefore, an
evident contradiction between the impulses of the multitude and the
action of power whose function it is to direct and unify those impulses.
To meet with a great prince is certainly a rare chance (to use your
term), but to trust to a whole assembly, even though it is composed
of honest men only, is folly. France is committing that folly at this
moment. Alas! you are just as much convinced of that as I am. If all
right-minded men, like yourselves, would only set an example around
them, if all intelligent hands would raise, in the great republic of
souls, the altars of the one Church which has set the interests of
humanity before her, we might again behold in France the miracles our
fathers did here.”
“But the difficulty is, monsieur,” said Gerard,--“if I may speak to you
with the freedom of the confessional,--I look upon faith as a lie we
tell to ourselves, on hope as a lie we tell about the future, and on
charity as a trick for children to keep them good by the promise of
sugar-plums.”
“Still, we sleep better for being rocked by hope, monsieur,” said Madame
Graslin.
This speech stopped Roubaud, who was about to reply; its effect was
strengthened by a look from Grossetete and the rector.
“Is it our fault,” said Clousier, “that Jesus Christ had not the time
to formulate a government in accordance with his moral teaching, as did
Moses and Confucius, the two greatest human law-givers?--witness the
existence, as a nation, of the Jews and Chinese, the former in spite of
their dispersion over the whole earth, and the latter in spite of their
isolation.”
“Ah! dear me! what work you are cutting out for me!” cried the rector
naively. “But I shall triumph, I shall convert you all! You are much
nearer to the true faith than you think you are. Truth always lurks
behind falsehood; go on a step, turn round, and then you’ll see it.”
This little outburst of the good rector had the effect of changing the
conversation.