by Eugène Sue
The eloquent malediction of the blindness of subjugated peoples drew a unanimous cry of admiration from the Lebrenn family. Antonicq interrupted his reading for a moment.
“Oh, the book is right!” gravely observed Odelin’s widow. “What monstrous vice can that be that bends under the yoke of ONLY ONE? It is not cowardice! The most cowardly, when they see they are a thousand against one, will not be afraid to attack him. That book is right. What may be the name of the nameless vice?”
Antonicq proceeded:
“It is the people who subjugate themselves; who cut their own throats; who, having the choice between being subject or free, leave their freedom for a yoke; who give their consent to their own ruin, or rather purchase the same. If the recovery of their freedom would have to cost something, it is not I who would press them to the act, although that which man should hold dearest is the recovery of his natural rights, or, to be accurate, from beast to return to man’s estate.
“But no! I do not demand such boldness from the people. What! If, in order to have its liberty, the people need but to will it, can there be a nation on earth to consider the price too dear, being able to regain the boon by wishing? Who would hesitate to recover a boon that should be redeemed with the price of his blood, a boon, which if lost, all honorable men must esteem life a burden and death a relief?
“But no! The more do tyrants pillage, the more do they exact, the more do they ruin, the more do they destroy, — all the more are they paid to do it, all the more are they served, and all the more do they fortify themselves.
“And yet, if nothing were to be allowed to them, if no obedience were to be yielded to them, and that without combat, without striking a blow, they would remain naked, undone, and would cease to be anything — like roots, that, lacking nourishment, become a dry, dead branch.”
“Right!” put in the Franc-Taupin. “Again that book is right. There are donkey-men and lion-men. Say to a donkey: ‘Roar, jump, bite your enemy!’ He will not listen. Say to the brute: ‘Donkey you are, donkey you will be, remain donkey. One does not even expect of you that you rise to the Caesarian heroism of a kick! No, you peaceful beast! All that we ask is that you remain quiet, motionless, stubborn, and do not go to the mill! Aye, my donkey friends, what could the millers do, and their helpers, if, despite all their cudgels, the millions of donkeys, having passed the word along the line, refused point blank to march? Will the millers and their helpers shower blows upon you? Perhaps, but are you spared any blows when you do march? Beaten whether you march or stand still, you might as well stand still and ruin the miller.’ Yes,” added the Franc-Taupin, his face assuming a sad expression; “but how was this unhappy people even to conceive the bare thought of such an inert resistance? Have the monks not monked their brains from the cradle to the grave: ‘Go, thou beast of burden, lick the hand that smites you — bless the burden that crushes your limbs, and galls your spine to the quick — thy salvation hereafter is to be bought by the torments you endure on earth — to the monks belong thy broad back — they straddle it in order to lead you to paradise!’ And,” proceeded the Franc-Taupin, more and more incensed, “should anyone attempt to wrest the besotted wretches from the grip of the monkery, why, then, quick, and quicker than quick! — the jail, the cutlass, the pyre, and torture! Thus came my sister Bridget to die in prison, and her daughter to be burned alive, and Christian to die of grief, and Odelin, his son, to have his throat cut by his own brother, Fra Hervé, the Cordelier! That is the long and short of it!”
These words, which recalled so many painful losses to the memory of the Lebrenn family, were followed by a mournful silence. Tears rolled down the cheeks of Marcienne, Odelin’s widow; her wheel stopped whirring; her head dropped upon her breast and she muttered:
“My mourning will be like my sorrow, eternal! Oh, my children, there are two places that will ever remain vacant at our hearth — your father’s and your sister’s. The poor girl doubted our indulgence and our love for her!”
“Oh, Catherine De Medici! Infamous Queen! Mother of execrable sons! Will the hour of vengeance ever sound!” exclaimed Captain Mirant. “Even the perversest of people shudder at the crimes of the crowned monsters! Their acts are endured, and yet a breath could throw them down! Oh, well may we ask in the language of La Boetie’s book: ‘What is the nameless vice that causes millions of people to submit voluntarily to a power that is abhorred?’”
“We Huguenots, at least, showed our teeth to the monsters,” put in Barbot the boilermaker. “Nevertheless, to talk shop, I must confess our mistake. It was our duty to throw into the furnace and melt once for all that old royal boiler in which for a thousand and odd years the Kings have been boiling Jacques Bonhomme, and serving him up in all manner of sauces for their repasts. Once that boiler is melted, the devil’s kitchen would be done for!”
“Yes, indeed, comrade,” replied Captain Mirant, “we made that mistake, and yet we were the most daring among the oppressed! And we made the mistake notwithstanding we were repeatedly imposed upon and betrayed by treacherous edicts. May it please God that this last edict do not fare like the previous ones, and that Louis Rennepont may speedily bring us tidings from Paris to dispel our apprehensions!”
“Brother,” observed Marcienne, “I can not but mistrust the pledges of Charles IX and his mother. Alas, I can not forget the revelations made in the letter to her father by my poor daughter before she leaped voluntarily to death at the battle of Roche-la-Belle. Catherine and her sons are well capable of scheming the massacre that she confided to the Jesuit Lefevre. At the same time we must not forget that Admiral Coligny, so prudent, so wise, so experienced a man, in short, better qualified than anyone else to appreciate the situation, seeing he is in close touch with the court, reposes full confidence in the peace. Did he not give us positive proof of his sense of security by inducing the Protestants to restore to the King, before the date fixed by the edict, the fortified towns of asylum that were placed in their power?”
“Oh, sister, sister!” interjected Captain Mirant. “I shall ever congratulate myself upon having been on the Board of Aldermen among those who most decidedly opposed the relinquishing of La Rochelle! Thank God, this fortified place remains to us. Here at least we may feel safe. I very much fear the loyalty of the Admiral may not be a match for the duplicity of the Italian woman.”
“I must say that I am increasingly impatient for my husband’s return home,” observed Theresa. “He will have had an interview with Admiral Coligny; he will have expressed to him the fears and misgivings of the Rochelois. At least we shall know for certain whether we are to feel safe or not.”
“Do you call that living?” cried Captain Mirant. “Why should we, honorable people, be kept ever in suspense as though we were criminals! Mistrust ever sits in our hearts! Our ears ever are on the watch, our hands on our swords! Whence come these mortal alarms? The reason is that, despite our old municipal franchises, despite the ramparts of our town, we are, after all, the subjects of the King, instead of belonging to ourselves, like the Swiss cantons, that are freely federated in a Republic! Oh, liberty! liberty! Shall our eyes ever see your reign among us?”
“Yes!” answered Antonicq. “Yes! We would see that beautiful reign if the admirable sentiments of La Boetie could be made to penetrate the souls of our people! But listen, I shall read on:
“Oh, liberty! So great, so sweet a boon, that, once lost misfortune follows inevitably, and even the enjoyments that may remain behind wholly lose their taste and flavor, being tainted with servitude! Liberty is not desired by men for no other reason, it seems to me, than that, if they were to desire it, they would have it! One would think they refuse the priceless conquest only because it is so easily won! The beasts (may God help me!) where men are too deaf to hear, scream in their ears — Long live Freedom! Many animals die the moment they are captured. Fishes lose their lives with their element: they die unable to survive their natural franchise! If animals recognized rank in their midst they woul
d turn liberty into — nobility! From the largest to the smallest, when caught, they offer so emphatic a resistance with nails, horns, feet, or beaks that they sufficiently declare how highly they prize what they are losing. When caught, they give us so many manifest tokens of how thoroughly they realize their misfortune that, if they continue to live, it is rather to mourn over their lost freedom than to accommodate themselves to servitude.
“Poor, miserable people! Poor senseless beings! Oh, ye nations stubbornly addicted to your own evil! Blind to your weal! You allow yourselves to be carried away, to be ravished of the best that you have, of the prime of your revenue; your fields to be pillaged; your homes to be robbed; your paternal furniture and heirlooms to be taken for spoils! Your life is such that you may say nothing is your own. Would it be that wise unless you are tolerant of the thief who plunders you, and the accomplice of the murderer who slays you? Are you not traitors to yourselves? You sow your fields for him to gorge himself! You furnish your houses in order to furnish matter for his burglaries! You bring up your daughters that there may be food for his debauches! You bring up your sons that he may lead them to slaughter and turn them into the instruments of his greed and the executors of his revenges. You stint your bodies that he may revel in the delights you are deprived of, and wallow in lecherous and vile pursuits!
“True enough, physicians advise not to lay hands upon wounds that are incurable. Perhaps I act not wisely in seeking to give advice to the people in this matter. They have long lost consciousness; they are no longer aware of their ailment; the disease is mortal!”
“The reproach is severe, and, I think, unmerited,” objected Odelin’s widow. “Did not Estienne of La Boetie himself, who died only nine years ago, see the Protestants thrice run to arms in the defense of their faith?”
“Sister,” asked Captain Mirant, “did the whole people run to arms? Alas, no! The majority, the masses — blind, ignorant, wretched, and dominated by the monks — have they not ever risen at the command of their clerical misleaders, and fallen with fanatical rage upon what they call the ‘heretics’? Even among ourselves, is it not a small majority that realizes the truth of what Christian your husband’s father used to say, when he warned the Protestants that neither religious nor any other freedom could ever be permanently secured so long as royalty, the hereditary accomplice of the Church, was left standing? Do not the majority of Protestants, even Admiral Coligny himself, entertain respect and love, if not for Kings, at least for the monarchy? Do they not seek to place that institution beyond the reach of the religious wars? Sister, Boetie’s book tells the truth: The masses of the people, degraded, brutified, besotted and kept in ignorance by hereditary serfdom no longer feel the gall of servitude. Does it, therefore, follow the disease is incurable, and fatal? No! No! In that respect I look to better things than does La Boetie. History, in accord therein with the chronicles of your husband’s family, proves that a slow and mysterious progress is taking its course across the ages. Serfs replaced slaves; vassals replaced serfs; some day, vassalage also will disappear as did slavery and serfdom! The religious wars of our century are another step toward ultimate freedom. The revolt against the throne will closely follow the revolt against the Church. But, alas! how many years are yet to elapse before the arrival of the day foretold by Victoria the Great — as narrated in your family history!”
“Oh, the genius of tyranny is so resourceful in infernal plans to protect its empire!” exclaimed Antonicq. “Do you remember, uncle, how surprised you and I were at the account, given us by some travelers who returned from Paris, of the infinite number of public festivities — tourneys, tilts, processions — gotten up to keep the people amused?”
“Yes, and we listened to their report as to a fairy tale,” interjected Cornelia. “We wondered how the people could feel so giddyheaded in Paris; how they could crowd to festivities given upon places that were still dyed red with the blood of martyrs, and still warm with the ashes of pyres!”
“Cornelia,” replied Antonicq, proud of the noble words of his bride, “tyrants rule less, perhaps, through force that terrorizes than through corruption that depraves. Listen to these profound and awful words of La Boetie upon this very subject:
“No better insight can be got into the craftiness of tyrants to brutify their subjects than from the measure that Cyrus adopted towards the Lydians after he took possession of Sardis, the principal city of Lydia, and reduced to his mercy Croesus, the rich King, and carried him off a prisoner of war. Cyrus was notified that the people of Sardis rose in rebellion. He speedily reduced them to order, but unwilling to put so beautiful a place to the sack, and also to be himself put to the trouble of garrisoning the city with a large force in order to keep it safe, he hit upon a master scheme to make sure of his conquest. He set up in Sardis a large number of public houses for debauchery, and issued a decree commanding the people to frequent these brothels. That garrison answered his purpose so well that never after did he have to draw the sword against the Lydians.
“Indeed, no bird is more easily caught with bird-lime, no fish is more securely hooked with an appetizing bait, than the masses of the people are lured to servitude by the tickle of the smallest feather, which, as the saying goes, is passed over their lips. Theaters, games, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures and other trifles were, to the peoples of antiquity, the charms of servitude, the price of their freedom, the instruments of tyranny.
“These lures kept the people under the yoke. Thus, mentally unnerved, they found the pastimes pleasant, they were amused by the idle spectacles that were paraded before their eyes, and they were habituated to obedience as fully, but not as usefully to themselves, as little children, who, in order to gladden their eyes with the brilliant pictures of illuminated books insensibly learn to read.
“The tyrant Romans furthermore resorted to the plan of feasting the populace, which can be led by nothing so readily as by the pleasures of the mouth. The cleverest of them all would not have dropped his bowl of soup to recover the liberty of the Republic of Plato. The tyrants made bountiful donations of wheat, of wine and corn. Whereupon the cry went up lustily — Long live the King! The dullards did not realize they were receiving but a small portion of what belonged to them, and that even the portion which they received the tyrant would not have it to give, but for his first having taken it away from themselves.”
“The cleverest of them all would not have dropped his bowl of soup to recover the Republic,” repeated Captain Mirant. “The fact is shockingly, distressfully true! Men become animals when they sacrifice everything to perverse instincts and vulgar appetites. Nevertheless, a curse upon all tyrants! It is they who incite these very appetites, in order to rule the heart through the stomach, and the mind through the eyes, by attracting the peoples to tourneys, tilts and such other pageants, amusements that are but disgraceful badges of servitude, and must be paid for by the fruit of the labor of the slaves themselves!”
“Go to, poor Jacques Bonhomme!” added the Franc-Taupin. “Fill up your paunch, but bend your back! Pay for the gala! Gnaw at the bones cast to you, and cry ‘Thanks!’ Oh, if only you knew! If only you wanted to! With one shake of your shoulders, both the tyrants and their cohorts would be thrown to the ground!”
“No! No!” interjected Antonicq. “Do not imagine that our tyrants Catherine De Medici and Charles IX are defended mainly by the arquebusiers of their bodyguards, their light mounted horse and their footmen in arms! Not at all! Just listen to this passage from La Boetie’s book:
“I shall now touch upon a point that is the secret spring of the sway, the support and the foundation of tyranny. He who imagines that the halberdiers of the guard constitute the safety and the bulwark of tyrants is, I hold, greatly in error. No; it is not arms that defend a tyrant. At first blush the point may not be granted, nevertheless it is true. It is only four or five men among his accomplices who uphold a tyrant and who keep the country in servitude to him. It has ever been only
five or six who have a tyrant’s ear, and are invited by him to be the accomplices of his cruelties, the sharers in his amusements, the go-betweens in his debaucheries, the co-partners in his plunder, these five or six hundred have, in turn, under them five or six who are to them what they themselves are to the tyrant — and these five or six hundred have, in turn, under them five or six thousand thieves among whom they have caused the government of the provinces and the administration of the funds to be distributed, in order that they may cater to the avarice and the cruelty of the tyrant, in order that they may promptly execute his orders, and be ready to do so much mischief that they can hold their places only under the shadow of his authority, nor be able to escape the just punishment of their offences but through him. Wide and long is the train that follows these latter ones. Whoever cares to amuse himself in tracing the threads of this woof will see that, not the six thousand only, but hundreds of thousands, aye millions depend through that cord upon the tyrant, who, with the aid of the same, can (as Jupiter boasts in Homer) pull over to himself all the gods by pulling at the chain.”
“Well put! Never before has the centralized power of royalty, that fearful engine of tyranny, been more lucidly laid bare!” cried Captain Mirant. “I am more and more convinced — the federation of the provinces, each independent as to itself, but mutually united by the common bond of their common interests, like the Republic of the Swiss cantons, is the sole guarantee of freedom. Commune and Federation!”