Part 9

[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.’

“The permanent secretary reappeared before the palace at the end of five years. Walking with crutches, he held by the bridle a small donkey which bore a big book on its back.

“‘Hasten,’ said the officer to him, ‘the king is dying.’

“The king in fact was on his death-bed. He turned on the academician and his big book his nearly expiring gaze, and said with a sigh:

“‘I shall die, then, without knowing the history of mankind!’

“‘Sire,’ replied the learned man, who was almost as near death as himself, ‘I will sum it up for you in three words: _They were born, they suffered, they died!_’

“Thus did the king of Persia learn the history of the world in the evening of his life.”

XVII

MONSIEUR NICODÈME

While, at the sign of the _Image de Sainte Catherine_, my good master, seated on the highest rung of the ladder, was reading Cassiodorus with great pleasure, an elderly man came into the shop, of an arrogant air, and severe aspect. He went straight to Monsieur Blaizot, who smilingly stretched his head over the counter.

“Monsieur,” he said, “you are sworn bookseller, and I must take you for a well-conducted man. Nevertheless, in your display of goods a volume of the works of Ronsard is open at the frontispiece, which represents a naked woman. And it is a thing not fit to be looked at.”

“Pardon me, Monsieur,” replied Monsieur Blaizot, gently, “it is a frontispiece of Léonard Gautier’s who, in his day, was considered a very able draughtsman.”

“It matters little to me,” replied the elder, “that the draughtsman was clever. All that I take into consideration is that he represented nudities. This figure has nothing on but its hair, and I am grievously surprised, Monsieur, that a man of age and prudence, such as you appear, should expose it to the gaze of the young men who frequent the Rue St. Jacques. You would do well to burn it, following the example of Father Garasse, who expended his means in acquiring, in order to burn them, a number of books opposed to public decency and to the Society of Jesus. At least, it would be more decent in you to hide it in the most secret recess of your shop, which conceals, I fear, many a book calculated to excite minds to vice, not only by their text, but by their plates.”

Monsieur Blaizot replied, reddening, that such a suspicion was unjust, and it grieved him coming from a worthy man.

“I must tell you who I am,” said the elder. “You see before you Monsieur Nicodème, the President of the Purity League. The end that I pursue is to outdo in niceness in the matter of modesty the regulations of the _Lieutenant de Police_. I busy myself, with the help of a dozen Parliamentary councillors, and two hundred churchwardens from the principal parishes, in clearing away nudities exposed in public places, such as squares, boulevards, streets, alleys, quays, courts, and gardens. And, not content with establishing modesty in the public way, I exert myself to spread its dominion even into the salon, the study, and the bedroom, whence it is but too often banished. Know, Monsieur, that the Society that I have founded has trousseaux made for young married people, containing long and ample night-garments which permit these young spouses chastely to go about the execution of God’s commandment relative to increase and multiplication. And, to mingle charm, if I may say so, with austerity, these garments are trimmed with pleasing embroidery. I plume myself on having thus invented garments of an intimate nature so well designed to make another Sarah and Tobias of all our young couples, and to cleanse the sacrament of marriage from the impurities which unfortunately have clung to it.”

My good master, who, his nose in Cassiodorus, had been listening to their discourse, replied with the utmost gravity from the top of his ladder, that he thought the invention admirable, and praiseworthy, but that he had a still more excellent one of the kind.

“I would that our young spouses,” said he, “were rubbed from head to foot with blacking before they met, making their skin like boot-leather, which would greatly damp the criminal ardours of the flesh, and be a grievous obstacle to the caresses, kisses, and endearments that lovers practise too generally between the sheets.”

Monsieur Nicodème, lifting his head at these words, saw my good master on the ladder, and saw also from his demeanour that he was laughing at him.

“Monsieur l’Abbé,” said he, with sadness and indignation, “I would forgive you did you merely laugh at me. But you ridicule at the same time, decency and public morals, and there you are much to blame. In spite of wicked jokes, the Society that I have founded has already done good and useful work. Crack your jokes, sir! We have fixed six hundred vine or fig-leaves on the statues in the king’s gardens.”

“Admirable indeed, sir,” responded my good master, adjusting his spectacles, “and at that rate every statue will soon have its leaf. But (seeing that objects have no meaning for us save by association of ideas) in placing vine-leaves and fig-leaves on statues, you transfer the quality of indecency to the leaves; so that one can no longer see vine or fig-tree on the countryside without conceiving them as sheltering some indecency; and it is no small sin, my good sir, to fix immodesty on these innocent plants. Allow me to tell you further that it is a dangerous thing to make a study, as you do, of everything that may cause disquietude and uneasiness to the flesh, without reflecting that if a given shape be such as to scandalise souls, each of us who bears the original of that shape will scandalise himself, except he be less than a man—a thing one does not like to contemplate.”

“Monsieur,” responded the aged Nicodème, rather heatedly, “I gather from the language you hold that you are a libertine and a debauchee.”

“Monsieur,” said my good master, “I am a Christian, and as for living in debauchery, I could not think of such a thing, having enough to do to gain my daily bread, wine, and tobacco. Such as you see me, Monsieur, I know no orgy but the silent orgies of meditation, and the only feast I sit down to is the feast of the Muses. But I, as a wise man, consider that it is a bad thing to outbid in shamefacedness the teachings of the Catholic religion, which on this subject allows a good deal of liberty, and adjusts itself easily to people’s customs and prejudices. I take you to be tainted with Calvinism and to be leaning to the heresy of iconoclasm. For, in truth, one does not know whether your zeal will not go so far as to burn images of God and the saints, from hatred of the humanity evident in them. Such words as modesty, decency, and shame, which come so readily from your mouth, have as a matter of fact no precise and constant meaning. Custom and nice feeling can alone define them with truth and moderation. I only acknowledge poets, artists, and pretty women, as judges in these delicate matters. What an extraordinary notion, to set up a row of attorneys in judgment on Grace and Pleasure!”

“But, Monsieur,” replied the aged Nicodème, “we have nothing to do with Smiles or Graces, still less with images of God and the saints, and you are maliciously fastening a quarrel on us. We are decent people, who wish to turn aside the eyes of our sons from improper sights, and one knows well enough what is decent and what is not. Do you wish, Monsieur l’Abbé, that our young people should be open to every temptation of the streets?”

“Ah! Monsieur,” replied my good master. “We must all be tempted. It is the lot of men and Christians on this earth. And the most formidable temptation comes from within—not from without. You would not take so much trouble to remove from the shop windows any sketch of nude women if, as I have done, you had studied the lives of the Fathers of the desert. There you would have seen how, in a frightful wilderness, far from any carved or painted shape, torn with hair-shirts, macerated with penance, faint from fasting, tossing on a bed of thorns, the anchorites were penetrated to the very marrow with the prickings of carnal desire. In their wretched cells they saw visions a thousand times more voluptuous than this allegory which offends you in Monsieur Blaizot’s window.

“The devil, or, as free-thinkers would say, nature, is a better painter of lascivious scenes than Giulio Romano himself. He surpasses all the Italian and Flemish masters in grouping, movement, and colour. Alas! one is powerless against his glowing pictures. Those that shock you are of small account in comparison, and you would do wisely to leave to the care of the _Lieutenant de Police_, as your fellow citizens are willing it should be left, the guardianship of public decency. Truly your ingenuousness astonishes me; you have little notion what a man is, and what society is, and of the fever and insurgence of a great city. Oh! the silly greybeards, who in the midst of all the uncleanness of a Babylon where every lifted curtain shows the eye or the arm of a courtesan, where busy humanity touch and quicken one another in the public squares, fall a-groaning and complaining of a few naughty pictures hung up on book-sellers’ stalls; and carry their lamentations even to the very Parliament of the kingdom when a woman has shown her legs to some fellows in a dancing-saloon—just the most ordinary sight in the world for them.”

Thus spoke my good master from the top of his ladder. But Monsieur Nicodème stopped his ears in order not to hear him, and cried out on his cynicism.

“Heavens!” he sighed, “what can be more disgusting than a naked woman, and how shameful to compromise, as does this Abbé, with an immorality which is the ruin of a country, for people can only exist by purity of morals.”

“It is true, Monsieur,” said my good master, “that peoples are strong only so long as they preserve their morals; but by that is understood a community of rules, opinions, and interests, and a generous-minded obedience to law; not trifles such as occupy you. Beware, moreover, lest shamefacedness, failing as a charm, become but a piece of stupidity, and less the artless dullness of your fears present a ridiculous spectacle and one not a little indecent.”

But Monsieur Nicodème had already left the place.

XVIII

JUSTICE

Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, who should rather have been nourished at the Prytaneum by a grateful republic, gained his bread by writing letters for servant-girls in a stall near the cemetery of the Innocents. There he happened to serve in the office of secretary to a Portuguese lady who was crossing France, with her nigger-boy. She gave him a _liard_ for a letter written to her husband, and an _écu_ of six _livres_ for another to her lover. It was the first _écu_ my good master had handled since the feast of St. John; and since he was open-handed, even to magnificence, he straightway took me to the _Pomme d’Or_, on the Quai de Grève, close to the Town-hall, where the wine is not doctored, and the sausages are of the best. And the big dealers, who buy apples on the Mall, go there ordinarily towards midday to try to best one another. It was spring-time, and sweet to be alive on such a day. My good master had our table spread on the embankment, and we hearkened, as we dined, to the lapping of the water under the oars of the boatmen. A light caressing breeze laved us with gentle breath, and we were glad to be alive and in the sunlight. While we were eating our fried gudgeons a noise of men and horses at our elbow made us turn round.

Guessing what made us curious a dingy little old man, at the next table, said, with an obliging smile:

“It is nothing, gentlemen—a servant-girl whom they are taking to be hanged for stealing some bits of lace from her mistress.”

And indeed, as he spoke, we saw, seated at the tail of a cart between two mounted police-sergeants, a girl, quite pretty, her appearance bewildered, her bosom forced into relief by the drag of her arms, which were bound behind her back. She passed in a moment, and yet I shall always see before my eyes that vision of a white face, and that look that already stared out upon nothing.

“Yes, gentlemen,” said the dingy little old man, “she is the servant of Madame Josse, the councillor’s wife, and to make herself smart when going with her lover to Ramponneau’s stole from her mistress a lace head-dress in _point a’ Alençon_, and then, having committed the theft, ran away. She was taken in a house by the Pont-au-Change, and at once confessed her crime. Accordingly she was not put to the torture for more than an hour or two. What I tell you, gentlemen, I know to be true, as I am beadle at the court where she was tried.”

The dingy little old man attacked his sausage, for it was getting cold, and continued:

“She should be at the scaffold by now, and in five minutes, perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less, the pretty rogue will have given up the ghost. Some of the hanged give no trouble to the executioner. No sooner is the cord round their neck than they quietly expire. But there are others who positively live at the rope’s end, and make a furious to-do about it. The most demoniacal of all was a priest, who was sentenced last year for forging the Royal signature on lottery tickets. For more than twenty minutes he fought like a carp on the end of a line.

“He! He!” chuckled the little old man, “the Abbé was modest and did not want the honour of a step up in the world. I saw him when they took him out of the cart. He cried and struggled so that the hangman said to him: ‘Do not be a child, Monsieur l’Abbé!’ But the oddest thing was, that, there being another thief along with him, he was, at first, taken for the chaplain, and that by the executioner, whom the police-officer had the greatest difficulty in undeceiving. Wasn’t that amusing?”