CHAPTER IV

The Abbé de Lamennais--His prediction of the Revolution of 1830--Enters the Church--His views on the Empire--Casimir Delavigne, Royalist--His early days--Two pieces of poetry by M. de Lamennais--His literary vocation--_Essay on Indifference in Religious Matters_--Reception given to this book by the Church--The academy of the château de la Chesnaie

We now ask permission to approach a more serious subject, and to dedicate this chapter (were it only for the purpose of forming a contrast with the preceding chapters) to one of the finest and greatest of modern geniuses, to the Abbé de Lamennais. We speak of a period two months after the Revolution of 1830.

Out of the wilds of Brittany, that is, from the château de la Chesnaie, there appeared a priest of forty, small of stature, nervous and pale, with stubbly hair, and high forehead, the head compressed at the sides as though it were enclosed by walls of bone; a sign, according to Gall, indicative of the absence in man of cupidity, cunning and acquisitiveness; the nose long, with dilated nostrils, denoting high intelligence, according to Lavater; and, last, a piercing glance and a determined chin. Everything connected with the man's external appearance revealed his Celtic origin. Such was the Abbé DE LA MENNAIS, whose name was written in three different ways, like that of M. DE LA MARTINE, each different way in which he wrote it indicating the different phases of the development of his mind and the progress of his opinion. We say of his opinion and not opinions, for these three phases, as in Raphael's three styles, mean, not a change of style, but a perfecting of style.

Into the thick of the agitation going on in silent thought or open speech, the austere Breton came to teach the world a word they had not expected; in fact at that time M. de la Mennais was looked upon as a supporter of both _Throne_ and _Church._ The throne had just fallen, and the Church was shaking violently from the changes which the events of 1830 had wrought in social institutions. But the world was mistaken with regard to the views of the great writer, because it only saw in him the author of _L'Essai sur l'indifférence en matière de religion_, a strange book, in which that virile imagination strove against his century, struggling with the spirit of the times, as Jacob strove with the angel. People forgot that in 1828, during the Martignac Ministry, the same de Lamennais had hurled a book into the controversy which had predicted a certain degree of intellectual revival: I refer to _Du progrès de la Revolution et de la guerre contre l'Église._ In this book, the Revolution of 1830 was foretold as an inevitable event. Listen carefully to his words--

"And even to-day when there no longer really exists any government, since it has become the tool and the plaything of the boldest or of the most powerful; to-day, when democracy triumphs openly, is there any more calm in its own breast? Could one find, moreover, no matter what the nature of his opinions may be, one man, one single man, who desires what is, and who _desires only that and nothing more?_ Never, on the other hand, has he more eagerly longed for a new order of things; _everybody cries out for, the whole world is calling for, a revolution, whether they admit it or are conscious of it themselves._ Yes, it will come, because it is imperative that nations shall be unitedly educated and chastised; _because, according to the common laws of Providence, a revolution is indispensable for the preparation of a true social regeneration. France will not be the only scene of action: it will extend everywhere where Liberalism rules either in doctrine or in sentiment; and under this latter form it is universal._"

In the preface to the same book, M. de Lamennais had already said--

"That France and Europe are marching towards fresh revolutions is now apparent to everybody. The most undaunted hopes which have fed themselves for long on interest or stupidity give way before the evidence of facts, in the face of which it is no longer possible for anyone to delude himself. Nothing can remain as it is, everything is unsettled, totters towards a change. _Conturbatœ sunt gentes et inclinata sunt regna._"

We underline nothing in this second paragraph because we should have to underline the whole. Let us pass on to the last words of the book--

"The time is coming when it will be said _to those who are in darkness_: 'Behold the light!' And they will arise, and, with gaze fixed on that divine radiance will, with repentance and surprise, yet filled with joy, worship that spirit which restores all disorder, reveals all truth, enlightens every intelligence: _oriens ex alto._"

The above expressions are those of a prophet as well as of a poet; they reveal what neither the Guizots, the Molés, the Broglies, nor even the Casimir Périers saw, nor, indeed, any of those we are accustomed to style _statesmen_ foresaw.

In this work M. de Lamennais appealed solemnly "for the alliance of Catholics with all sincere Liberal spirits." This book is really in some measure the hinge on which turned the gate through which M. de Lamennais passed from his first political phase to the second.

M. de Lamennais was born at St. Malo, in the house next to that in which Chateaubriand was born, and a few yards only from that in which Broussais came into the world. So that the old peaceful town gave us, in less than fifteen years, Chateaubriand, Broussais and Lamennais, names representative of the better part of the poetry, science and philosophy of the first half of the nineteenth century. M. de Lamennais had, like Chateaubriand, passed his childhood by the sea, had listened to the roar of the ocean, watching the waves which are lost to sight on infinite horizons, eternally returning to break against the cliffs, as the human wave returns to break itself against invincible necessity. He preserved, I recollect (for one feature in my existence coincided with that of the author of _Paroles d'un Croyant_), he preserved, I repeat, from his earliest childhood, the vivid and clear recollections which he connected with the grand and rugged scenery of his beloved Brittany.

"I can still hear," he said to us, at a dinner where the principal guests were himself, the Abbé Lacordaire, M. de Montalembert, Listz and myself--"the cry of certain sea-birds which passed _barking_ over my head. Some of those rocks, which have looked down pityingly for numberless centuries upon the angry impotent waves which perish at their feet, are stocked with ancient legends."

M. de Lamennais related one of these in his _une Voix de prison._ It is that of a maiden who, overtaken by the tide, on a reef of rocks, tied her hair to the stems of sea-weeds to keep herself from being washed off by the motion of the waves, far away from her native land.

M. de Lamennais's youth was stormy and undisciplined. He loved physical exercises, hunting, fencing, racing and riding; strange tastes these, as preparation for an ecclesiastical career! But it was not from personal inclination or of his own impulse that he entered the priesthood, but by compulsion from the noble families in the district. On his part, the bishop of the diocese discerned in the young man a superior intellect, a lofty character, a tendency towards meditation and thoughtfulness, and drew him to himself by all kinds of seductions. They spared him the trials of an ecclesiastical seminary, at which his intractable disposition might have rebelled; but, priest though he was, M. de Lamennais did not discontinue to ride the most fiery horses of the town, or to practise shooting. It was the Empire, that régime of glory and of despotism, which wounded the sensitive nerves of the young priest of stern spirit and Royalist sympathies. Brittany remembered her exiled princes, and the family of M. de Lamennais was among those which faithfully preserved the worship of the past; not that their family was of ancient nobility: the head of the house was a shipowner who had made his wealth by distant voyages, and who was ennobled at the close of the last century for services rendered to the town of St. Malo. The Empire fell, and M. de Lamennais, casting a bird's-eye view over that stupendous ruin, wrote in 1815--

"Wars of extermination sprang up again; despotism counted her expenditure in men, as people reckon the revenue of an estate; generations were mowed down like grass; and men daily sold, bought, exchanged and given away like flocks of little value, often not even knowing whose property they were, to such an extent did a monstrous policy multiply these infamous transactions! Whole nations were put in circulation like pieces of money!"

To profess such principles was, of course, equivalent to looking towards the Restoration, that dawn without a sun. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that, in those days, all young men of letters were carried away with the same intoxication for monarchical memories. Poets are like women--I do not at all know who said that poets were women--they make much of a favourable misfortune. This enthusiasm for _the person of the king_ was shared, in different degrees, even by men whose names, later, were connected with Liberalism. Heaven alone knows whether any king was ever less fitted than Louis XVIII. for calling forth tenderness and idolatry! But that did not hinder Casimir Delavigne from exclaiming--

"Henri, divin Henri, toi que fus grand et bon, Qui chassas l'Espagnol, et finis nos misères, Les partis sont d'accord en prononçant ton nom; Henri, de les enfants fais un peuple de frères! Ton image déjà semble nous protéger: Tu renais! avec toi renaît l'indépendance! Ô roi le plus Français dont s'honore la France, Il est dans ton destin de voir fuir l'étranger! Et toi, son digne fils, après vingt ans d'orage, Règne sur des sujets par toi-même ennoblis; Leurs droits sont consacrés dans ton plus bel ouvrage. Oui, ce grand monument, affermi d'âge en âge, Doit couvrir de son ombre et le peuple et les lys Il est des opprimés l'asile impérissable, La terreur du tyran, du ministre coupable, Le temple de nos libertés! Que la France prospère en tes mains magnanimes; Que tes jours soient sereins, tes décrets respectés, Toi qui proclames ces maximes: 'Ô rois, pour commander, obéissez aux lois! Peuple, en obéissant, sois libre sous tes rois!'"

True, fifteen years later, the author of _La Semaine de Paris_ sang, almost in the same lines of the accession to the throne of King Louis-Philippe. Rather read for yourself--

"Ô toi, roi citoyen, qu'il presse dans ses bras, Aux cris d'un peuple entier dont les transports sont justes. Tu fus mon bienfaiteur ... Je ne te loûrai pas: Les poètes des rois sont leurs actes augustes. Que ton règne te chante, et qu'on dise après nous: 'Monarque, il fut sacré par la raison publique; Sa force fut la loi; l'honneur, sa politique; Son droit divin, l'amour de tous!'"

Let us read again the lines we have just quoted--those which were addressed to Louis XVIII. we mean--and we shall see that Victor Hugo, Lamartine and Lamennais never expressed their delight at the return of the Bourbons in more endearing terms than did Casimir Delavigne. What, then, was the reason why the Liberals of that day and the Conservatives of to-day bitterly reproached the first three of the above-mentioned authors for these pledges of affection for the Elder Branch, whilst they always ignored or pretended to ignore the covert royalism of the author of _Messéniennes_? Ah! Heavens! It is because the former were sincere in their blind, young enthusiasm, whilst the latter--let us be allowed to say it--was not. The world forgives a political untruth, but it does not forgive a conscientious recantation of the foolish mistakes of a generously sympathetic heart. In the generous pity of these three authors for the Bourbon family there was room for the shedding of a tear for Marie-Antoinette and for Louis XVII.

M. de Lamennais hesitated, for a while, over his literary vocation, or at least, over the direction it should take. The solitude in which he had lived, by the sea, had filled his soul with floating dreams, like those beauteous clouds he had often watched with his outward eyes in the depths of the heavens. He was within an ace of writing novels and works of fiction; he did even get so far as to write some poetry, which, of course, he never published. Here are two lines, which entered, as far as I can remember, into a description of scholastic theology--

"Elle avait deux grands yeux stupidement ouverts, Dont l'un ne voyait pas ou voyait de travers!"

M. de Lamennais then became a religious writer and a philosopher more from force of circumstances than from inclination. His taste, he assured us in his moments of expansion, upon which we look back with respect and pride, would have led him by preference towards that style of poetical prose-writing which Bernardin de Saint-Pierre had made fashionable in _Paul et Virginie_, and Chateaubriand in _René._ So he communed with himself and, with the unerring finger of the implacable genius of the born observer, he touched upon the wound of his century--indifference to religious matters. Surely the cry uttered by that gloomy storm-bird, "the gods are departing!" had good reason for startling the pious folk and statesmen of that period! Were not the churches filled with missions and the high roads crowded with missionaries? Was there not the cross of Migné, the miracles of the Prince of Hohenlohe, the apparitions and trances of Martin de Gallardon and others? What, then, could this man mean? M. de Lamennais took, as the motto for his book, these words from the Bible--

"_Impius, cum in profundum venerit contemnit._"

In his opinion, contempt was the sign by which he recognised the decline of religious feeling. The seventeenth century believed, the eighteenth denied, the nineteenth doubted.

The success of the book was immense. France, agitated by vast and conflicting problems, a Babel wherein many voices were speaking simultaneously, in every kind of tongue, the France of the Empire, of the Restoration, of Carbonarism, of Liberalism and of Republicanism, held its peace to listen to the weighty and inspired utterance of this unknown writer: "_et siluit terra in conspectu ejus!_" The voice came from the desert. Who had seen, who knew this man? He had dropped from the region where eagles dwell; his name was mentioned by all lips, in the same breath with that of Bossuet. _L'Essai sur l'indifférence_ was little read but much admired; the poets--they are the only people who read--recognised in it a powerful imagination, at times almost an affrighted imagination, which, both by its excesses and its terrors, hugged, as it were, the dead body of religious belief, and shook it roughly, hoping against hope, to bring it back to life again. Of all prose-writers, Tacitus was the one whom the Abbé de Lamennais admired the most; of all poets, Dante was the one he read over and over again the most frequently; of all books, the one he knew by heart was the Bible.

Now, it might assuredly have been believed that this citadel, intended to protect the weak walls of Catholicism, _L'Essai sur l'indifférence en matière de religion_, was viewed with favourable eyes by the French clergy; no such thing! Quite the contrary; a cry went up from the heart of the Church, not of joy or admiration, but of terror. They were scared by the genius of the man; religion was no longer in the habit of having an Origen, a Tertullian, or a Bossuet to defend it; it was afraid of being supported by such a defender and, little by little, the shudder of fear reached even as far as Rome; and the book was very nearly placed on the _Index._ These suspicions were aroused by the nature of the arguments of which the author made use to repel the attacks of philosophers. The Abbé de Lamennais foresaw, through the gloom, the causes at work undermining the old edifice of orthodoxy, and tried to put it on a wider basis of toleration and to prop it up, as he himself expressed it, by the exercise of common sense. To this end he made incredible flights into metaphysical realms, to prove that Catholicism was, and always had been, the religion of Humanity.

The Abbé de Lamennais taught in the seminaries, but his teaching was looked upon with suspicion; and young people were forbidden the reading of a work, which the outside world regarded as that of a misguided god who wanted to deny man the right of freedom of thought. No suicide was ever more heroic, never did intellect bring so much courage and logic to the task of self-destruction. But, in reality, and from his point of view, the Abbé de Lamennais was right: if you believe in an infallible Church you must bravely destroy the eyes of your intellect and extinguish the light of your soul, and, having voluntarily made yourself blind, let yourself be led by the hand. But, however high a solitary intellect may be placed, it is very quickly reached by the influence of the times in which it lives.

Two or three years ago, an aeronautic friend of mine, Petin, seriously propounded to me _viva voce_, and to the world through the medium of the daily papers, that he had just solved the great problem of serial navigation. He reasoned thus--

"The earth turns_--E pur si muove!_--and in the motion of rotation on its own axis, it successively presents every part of its surface, both inhabited and uninhabited. Now, any person, who could raise himself up into the extreme strata of ambient air, and could find a means to keep himself there, would be able to descend in a balloon and alight upon whatever town on the globe he liked; he would only have to wait until that town passed beneath his feet; in that way he could go to the Antipodes in a dozen hours, and without any fatigue whatsoever, since he would not stir from his position, as it would be the earth which would move for him."

This calculation had but one flaw: it was false. The earth, in its vast motion, carries with it every atom of the molecules of its seething atmosphere. It is the same with great spirits which aim at stability; without perceiving that, at the very moment when they think they have cast anchor in the Infinite, they wake up to find they are being carried away in spite of themselves by the irresistible movement of their age. The spirit of Liberalism, with which the atmosphere of the time was charged, carried away the splendid, obstinate and lonely reason of the Abbé de Lamennais. It was about the year 1828. Whilst fighting against the Doctrinaire School, for which he showed a scarcely veiled contempt, M. de Lamennais sought to combine the needs of faith with the necessities of progress; with this end in view he had installed at his château at La Chesnaie a school of young people whom he inculcated with his religious ideas. La Chesnaie was an ancient château of Brittany, shaded by sturdy, centenarian oaks--those natural philosophers, which ponder while their leaves rustle in the breeze on the vicissitudes of man, of which changes they are impassive witnesses. There, this priest, who was already troubled by the new spirit abroad, educated and communed with disciples who held on from far or near to the Church; amongst them were the Abbé Gerbert, Cyprien Robert, now professor of Slavonic literature in the College of France, and a few others. Work--methodical and persevering--was carried on within those old walls, which the sea winds rocked and lashed against. This new academy of Pythagoras studied the science of the century in order to combat it; but, at each fresh ray of light, it recoiled enlightened, and its recoil put weapons to be used against itself into the hands of the enemy. That enemy was Human Thought.