Part 9

“It is a sign of my being a philosopher,” gently replied my good master. “It is in the nature of wise men to irritate the rest of mankind. Anaxagoras was a celebrated example of it. I do not speak of Socrates who was but a sophist. But we see that in all times and in all countries the opinions of meditative minds were subjects of scandal. You think yourself very different from your enemies, Mr. Rockstrong, and that you are as lovable as they are odious. Allow me to tell you that this is but the effect of your pride and of your high courage. In actual fact, you share in common with those who condemned you, all human weaknesses and passions. If you are more honest than many of them, and even if you are a man of incomparable vivacity of mind, you are filled with a talent for hatred and discord which renders you very inconvenient in a well-regulated country. The calling of a journalist, in which you excel, has raised to the highest degree of perfection the wonderful partiality of your mind, and though a victim of injustice, you are yourself not just. What I have just said embroils me both with you and with your enemies, and I am very certain I shall never obtain a fat living from the minister who has them in his gift. But I prize freedom of mind more highly than a fat abbey or a cosy priory. I shall have succeeded in vexing all the world, but I shall die in peace, and in contentment of heart.”

“Abbé,” half-laughingly, replied Mr. Rockstrong, “I forgive you, because I think you a little mad. You make no difference between rogues and honest men, and you would not rather have a free country than a despotic and shuffling government. You are a lunatic, and of no ordinary kind.”

“Let us go and drink a pot of wine at the _Petit Bacchus_, Mr. Rockstrong,” said my good master, “and I will explain to you, while emptying my glass, why I am totally indifferent to forms of government, and why I do not trouble myself about any change of masters.”

“Very willingly,” said Mr. Rockstrong, “I shall be interested to drink in company with such a bad arguer as you.”

He sprang lightly down from his ladder, and we all three repaired to the inn.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] I have not found this Mr. Rockstrong mentioned in the memoirs relating to Monmouth’s Rebellion. (ANATOLE FRANCE.)

XV

REVOLUTIONARY MEASURES

Mr. Rockstrong, who was a sensible man, bore my good master no malice for his sincerity of speech. When the landlord of the _Petit Bacchus_ had brought a pot of wine, the pamphleteer lifted his glass and drank to Abbé Coignard’s health, calling him a rogue, a friend of robbers, a tool of tyrants and an old scamp! all with quite a jovial air.

My master returned his compliments with a good grace, congratulating him on the fact that he drank to a man whose natural humour had remained unaffected by philosophy.

“As for myself,” he added, “I feel that my intelligence is quite spoilt by reflection. And as it is not in the nature of mankind to think with any profundity, I own that my leaning to thought is an odd mania and highly inconvenient. In the first place it makes me unfit for any undertaking, for our actions result from a limited outlook and narrow way of thinking. You will be astonished, Mr. Rockstrong, if you picture to yourself the simple-mindedness of the men of genius who have stirred the world. Conquerors and statesmen, who have changed the face of the earth, have never reflected on the essence of the beings they handled so roughly. They shut themselves up altogether in the pettiness of their grand projects and the wisest see but very few things at a time. Such as you see me, Mr. Rockstrong, it would be impossible for me to work like Alexander at the conquest of India, or to found and govern an empire, or, generally speaking, to throw myself into any one of those vast undertakings which tempt the pride of the impetuous. Reflection would hamper me, from the outset, and I should find reasons for coming to a stop at every move I made.”

Then turning to me my good master said sighing:

“Thought is a great infirmity, God keep you from it Tournebroche, my son, as He has kept His greatest saints, and the souls for whom He cherishes a singular predilection, and for whom He reserves eternal glory. Men who think little, or who think not at all, go about their business happily in this world and the next, whilst the meditative soul is incessantly menaced with its temporal and spiritual loss. Such malice lies in thought! Reflect and tremble, my son, at the thought that the serpent of Genesis is the oldest of philosophers and their everlasting prince.”

Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard drank a great draught of wine and went on in a low voice:

“As regards my salvation, that is a subject to which I have never applied my intelligence. I have never exercised my reason on the truths of the Faith. Unhappily, I have meditated the deeds of men and the ways of cities; therefore I am no longer fit to govern an Island, as was Sancho Panza.”

“That is a very good thing,” retorted Mr. Rockstrong, laughingly, “for your isle would be a retreat for bandits and vagabonds where the criminal would judge the innocent, if perchance there were any.

“I well believe it! Mr. Rockstrong, I well believe it!” answered my good master! “It is quite possible that, if I were to govern another island of Barataria, manners would be as you say. With one stroke you have depicted all the empires of the world. I feel that mine would be no better than the rest. I have no illusions about mankind, and, so as not to hate them, I despise them. I despise and pity them, Mr. Rockstrong. But they bear me no good-will for it. They want to be hated. One vexes them when one shows them the gentlest, the most indulgent, the most charitable, most human and gracious of all feelings that they could inspire: contempt. Nevertheless, mutual contempt means peace on earth, and if men would only thoroughly despise one another they would do themselves no further harm and live together in an amiable tranquillity.

“All the ills of civilised societies originate in people thinking too highly of each other, and raising honour, like a monster, above the wretchedness of the flesh and the spirit. This feeling makes them both proud and cruel, and I detest the pride that wants honour to be shown to it and to others, as if anyone descended from Adam could be worthy of honour! An animal which eats, drinks (give me something to drink), and makes love, is worthy of pity, interesting perhaps, even sometimes pleasant and agreeable.

“He can only be honourable by the effect of a most absurd and headstrong prejudice in his favour. This prejudice is the source of all the ills from which we suffer. It is a detestable kind of idolatry. And to assure to humanity a sweetening of their existence you must begin by recalling them to their natural humility.

“They will be happy, when, brought back again to a true appreciation of their condition, they despise one another without there being a single exception to this most excellent contempt.”

Mr. Rockstrong shrugged his shoulders.

“My fat Abbé,” said he, “you are a pig.”

“I am but a man,” replied my master, “you flatter me, and I feel in me the germs of that bitter pride that I detest, and that vain-glory which leads the human race into duels and into war. There are times, Mr. Rockstrong, when I would have my throat cut for my opinions; which would be an act of madness. For who can prove that I reason better than you, you, who reason excessively badly! Give me something to drink!”

Mr. Rockstrong courteously filled my good master’s glass.

“Abbé, you talk nonsense,” he said, “but I love you, and I should much like to know what you find blameworthy in my public behaviour, and why you side against me with tyrants, forgers, thieves, and dishonest judges?”

“Mr. Rockstrong, allow me first of all to diffuse over you and your friends, with a sweet impartiality, that single sentiment which gently puts an end to quarrels, and brings pacification. Bear with me if I respect neither the one nor the other enough to consign them to the vengeance of the law and to call down punishment on their heads. Men, whatsoever they do, are always silly sheep, and I leave to milord-chancellor, who condemned you, the Ciceronian declamations on state crimes. I have little taste for Catiline orations from whichever side they come. I am merely sad to see a man like you occupied in changing forms of government. It is the most frivolous and empty method of using one’s intelligence, and to fight people in office is folly, unless it is a way of earning one’s bread and getting on in the world. Give me something to drink! Bethink you, Mr. Rockstrong, that these startling changes in the State, meditated by you, are merely displacements of particular men, and that men taken in the mass are one like another, average in evil as well as in good; so that to replace two or three hundred ministers, governors of provinces, colonial agents, and bonneted presidents of courts, by two or three hundred others, is as good as doing nothing, and is simply putting Philip and Barnabas in place of Paul and Xavier. As to changing the condition of people at the same time, as you hope to do, that is quite impossible, for that condition does not depend on the ministers, who count for nothing, but on the earth and its fruits, industry, commerce, money amassed in the kingdom, the cleverness of the townfolk in trade and exchange—all things, which be they good or bad, are not kept going by either the prince or the officers of the crown.”

Mr. Rockstrong quickly interrupted my good master:

“Who does not know,” he exclaimed, “that the condition of industry and commerce depends on the government, and that only under a free government can you have good finance?”

“Liberty,” continued Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, “is but the result of the wealth of citizens, who free themselves as soon as they are powerful enough to be independent. People take all the liberty they can enjoy, or, to put it more plainly, they imperiously clamour for institutions in recognition and guarantee of the rights which they have acquired by their industry.

“All liberty emanates from them and their several actions. Their most involuntary movements enlarge the mould of the state which shapes itself on them.[15]

“So that one may say that detestable as tyranny is, every tyranny is necessary, and despotic governments are but the strait-waistcoat on a feeble and dwindled body. And who does not see that the outward appearance of government is like the skin which reveals the structure of an animal without being the cause of it?

“You seize hold upon the skin without troubling yourself about the viscera, in which you show little natural philosophy, Mr. Rockstrong.”

“So you make no difference between a free state and a tyrannical government, and all that you regard as nothing but the hide of the beast, my fat Abbé. And you fail to see that the expenditure of the prince and the depredations of ministers can ruin agriculture and wear out trade by raising the taxes.”

“Mr. Rockstrong, there cannot be at the same period and for the same country more than one possible form of government, any more than an animal can have more than one pelt at a time. From which it results, that we must leave to the care of Time, who is a courtly person, the changing of empires and the remaking of laws. He works at it slowly, untiringly, and kindly.”

“And you don’t think, my fat Abbé, that we ought to help the old man who figures on the clocks with a scythe in his hand? You do not believe that a revolution, such as that of the English or that in the Low Countries, can have any effect on the condition of the people. No? You old idiot! you deserve to be crowned with a fool’s cap!”

“Revolutions come about in conservation of good things already acquired, and not to gain new. It is the folly of nations, it is your own, Mr. Rockstrong, to found great hopes on the downfall of princes. People assure unto themselves, by revolting from time to time, the preservation of their threatened liberties. They have never gained new liberties thereby. But they are fooled with words. It is remarkable, Mr. Rockstrong, that men will easily let themselves be killed for words of no meaning. Ajax made the remark long ago: ‘I thought in my youth’ the poet makes him say, ‘that deeds were more powerful than words, but I see to-day that the word is the stronger of the two.’ Thus said Ajax, son of Oileus. Mr. Rockstrong, I am very thirsty!”

FOOTNOTES:

[15] In the time of Abbé Coignard the French already thought themselves free. The sieur d’Alquié wrote in 1670:

“Three things make a man happy in this world, to know the charm of intercourse, dainty meats, and liberty, perfect and entire. We have seen in what way our illustrious kingdom has fulfilled the two first, so it remains for us merely to show that the third is not lacking to it, and that liberty is no less a fact than the two preceding advantages. The thing will appear true to you if, to start with, you will consider attentively the name of our state, the matter of its foundation, and its usual customs: for one sees at the start that the name of _France_ means nothing else than _Franchise_ or liberty, conformably to the designs of the founders of this monarchy, who, having noble and generous souls, and being unable to bear either slavery or the least servitude, resolved among themselves to throw off the yoke of all kinds of captivity and to be as free as men may be; this is why they came to the land of the Gauls, which was a country whose people were neither less warlike nor less jealous of their _Franchise_ or liberty than they themselves were. As to the second point, we know that beyond the inclinations and plans they had in founding this state, they were always their own masters; they made laws for their sovereign which, limiting their powers, still preserved their privileges to them, in such wise that if anyone wishes to deprive them of them, they become enraged and rush to arms with such speed that nothing can hold them back when this point is involved. As to the third point, I declare that France is so enamoured of liberty that she cannot endure a slave, so that Turks and Moors and still less Christian people, may never wear irons nor be loaded with chains once in her country, and thus it comes about, that when slaves come to be in France they are no sooner on her territory than, full of joy, they cry: Long live France and her beloved liberty!”

_Les délices de la France_ ... by François Savinien d’Alquié, Amsterdam 1670.

Chapter XVI. entitled “France is a land of freedom for all sorts of people.”

XVI

HISTORY

Monsieur Roman placed half a dozen volumes on the counter.

“I beg of you, Monsieur Blaizot,” said he, “to send me these books.

“There are ‘Mother and Son,’ the ‘Memoirs of the Court of France,’ and the ‘Testament of Richelieu.’ I should be grateful if you will add to them anything new you have received lately in the way of history, and more particularly, anything treating of France since the death of Henry IV.... All these are works in which I am extremely interested.”

“You are right, Monsieur,” said my master. “Books on history are full of light stuff very suitable to amuse an honest fellow, and one is sure of finding a great number of pleasant stories.”

“Monsieur l’Abbé,” answered Monsieur Roman, “what I look for from the historians is not frivolous amusement. It is a serious study, and I am filled with despair if I find fiction mingled with fact. I study human actions in relation to the conduct of nations, and I seek for maxims of government in history.”

“I am not ignorant of that, Monsieur,” said my good master. “Your treatise on ‘Monarchy’ is renowned enough for us to know that you have conceived a political system drawn from history.”

“In such sort,” said Monsieur Roman, “I have been the first to draw rules for princes and ministers which they cannot avoid without danger.”

“And we behold you, Monsieur, on the frontispiece of your book, in the likeness of Minerva, presenting to a youthful king the mirror handed you by the muse, Clio, hovering above your head, in a study decked with busts and pictures. But allow me to tell you, Monsieur, that this muse is a story-teller, and that she holds out to you a mirror of falsehood. There are few truths in history, and the only facts on which all agree are those we get from a single source. Historians contradict one another every time they meet. Even more! We see that Flavius Josephus, who has pourtrayed the same incidents in his ‘Antiquities’ and in his ‘Wars of the Jews,’ records them differently in each of these works. Titus Livius is but a collector of fables; and Tacitus, your oracle, gives me the impression of an unsmiling deceiver who flouts all the world under a pretence of gravity. I have a sufficient esteem for Thucydides, Polybius, and Guicciardini. As for our own Mézeray, he does not know what he is saying, any more than do Villaret and Abbé Vély. But I am accusing historians; it is history itself I should attack.

“What is history? A miscellany of moral tales, or an eloquent medley of narratives and speeches, according as the historian is a philosopher or a spouter. You may find eloquent passages, but one must not look for the truth there, because truth consists in showing the necessary relation of things, and the historian does not know how to establish this relation, because he is unable to follow the chain of effects and causes. Consider that every time that the cause of an historical fact lies in a fact that is not historical, history fails to see it. And as historical facts are intimately allied to non-historical facts, it comes about that events are not linked after their natural order in history, but are connected one with another by mere artifices of rhetoric. And I ask you also to notice that the distinction between facts which appear in history and facts which do not is entirely arbitrary. It results from this that, far from being a science, history is condemned by a vice in its essence to the chaos of untruth. Sequence and continuity will always be lacking to it, and without these there can be no true knowledge. You see also that one can draw no prognostic as to the future of a nation from its past history. Now, the peculiarity of science is to be prophetic, as may be seen by those tables where the moon’s periods, tides, and eclipses are to be found calculated beforehand, whilst revolutions and wars escape calculation.”

Monsieur Roman explained to Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard that he merely asked of history facts, somewhat confused it is true, uncertain, mingled with errors, but infinitely precious, through their subject, which is man.

“I know,” he added, “how human annals are curtailed and mixed with fable. But, though a strict sequence of cause and effect fails us, I see in it a kind of plan that one loses and then finds again, like the ruins of temples half-buried in the sand. That alone is of immense value to me. And I flatter myself that, in the future, history, formed from abundant material and treated with method, will rival in exactitude the natural sciences.”

“Do not reckon on that,” said my good master, “I should rather believe that the growing abundance of memoirs, correspondence, and filed records, will render the task more difficult to future historians. Mr. Elward, who gives up his life to the study of the revolution in England, assures me that one man’s lifetime would not suffice in which to read the half of what was written during the disturbances. It reminds me of a story told to me by Monsieur l’Abbé Blanchet on this subject, which I will tell you as I remember it, regretting that Monsieur l’Abbé Blanchet is not here to tell it you himself, for he is a man of wit.

“Here is the apologue:

“When the young prince Zémire succeeded his father on the throne of Persia, he called all the academicians of his kingdom together, and said:

“‘The learned Zeb, my instructor, has taught me that monarchs would be liable to fewer errors if they were enlightened by past experience. Therefore I wish to study the history of nations. I order you to compose a universal history and to neglect nothing to make it complete.’

“The wise men promised to carry out the prince’s desire, and having withdrawn they set to work immediately. At the end of twenty years they appeared before the king, followed by a caravan composed of twelve camels each bearing 500 volumes. The secretary of the academy, having prostrated himself on the steps of the throne, spoke in these terms:

“‘Sire, the academicians of your kingdom have the honour to place at your feet the universal history that they have compiled at your majesty’s behests. It comprises 6000 volumes and contains all that we could possibly collect regarding the customs of nations and the vicissitudes of empires. We have inserted the ancient chronicles which have been luckily preserved, and we have illustrated them with abundant notes on geography, chronology, and diplomacy. The prolegomena are alone one camel’s load, and the paralipomena are borne with great difficulty by another camel.’

“The king answered:

“‘Gentlemen, I thank you for the trouble that you have taken. But I am very busy with the cares of state. Moreover, I have aged while you worked. I am arrived, as says the Persian poet, half-way along the road of life, and even supposing I die full of years, I cannot reasonably hope to have the time to read such a lengthy history. It shall be placed in the archives of the kingdom. Be good enough to make me a summary better fitted to the brevity of human life.’

“The Persian academicians worked twenty years; then they brought to the king 1500 volumes on three camels.

“‘Sire,’ said the permanent secretary, in a weakened voice, ‘here is our new work. We believe we have omitted nothing essential.’

“‘That may be,’ answered the king, ‘but I shall not read it. I am old; lengthy undertakings do not suit my years; abridge it further and do not be long about it.’

“They lingered so little that at the end of ten years they returned followed by a young elephant bearing 500 volumes.

“‘I flatter myself I have been succinct,’ said the permanent secretary.

“‘You have not yet been sufficiently so,’ answered the king.

“‘I am at the end of my life. Abridge, abridge, if you want me to know the history of mankind ere I die.’