“Eh! eh!” laughed the Abbé, “that is not the way to make me wish to live in your Salentum. What you have let me know of it leads me to think that there would be much constraint there.”
Monsieur Jean Hibou replied sententiously: “You would only be constrained to be virtuous.”
“Ah, how right that old woman was, and what reason we have to fear a Jean Hibou after a Dubois and a Fleury! What you offer me, my good sir, is a government of violence and hypocrisy, and to hasten this promised good you undertake to make me a keeper of a coffee-house or a bagnio on a canal in Amsterdam! Thank you for nothing! I stick to the Rue St. Jacques, where we drink cool claret and grumble at the ministers. Do you think you can seduce me by the vision of a government of honest men that so hedges in all liberties that no one can enjoy them?”
“Monsieur l’Abbé,” said Jean Hibou, getting heated, “is it fair to attack a system of State conceived by me in the Bastille, and undisclosed to you?”
“Sir,” retorted my excellent master, “I am suspicious of governments born of cabals and rebellions. To be in opposition is a very bad school of government, and wary politicians, who push themselves into office by this means, take great care to govern by rules entirely opposed to those they formerly taught. You need not go to China to see that! They are guided by the same necessities which lay on their predecessors. And they bring nothing new to the task but their inexperience. Which is one reason, sir, which makes me foretell that a new government would be more vexatious than the one it replaces, without being very different. Have we not already put it to the proof?”
“So,” said Monsieur Jean Hibou, “you hold by abuses?”
“Such is the case,” answered my good master. “Governments are like wines that grow crusted and mellow with age. The roughest lose at length something of their crudity. I fear an empire in the greenness of its youth. I fear the rawness of a republic, and since we must be ill-governed I prefer princes and statesmen in whom the first ardour has cooled off.”
Monsieur Jean Hibou, crushing his hat on his nose, bade us good-bye with irritation in his voice.
As soon as he was gone Monsieur Blaizot looked up over his ledgers, and settling his spectacles, said to my excellent master:
“I have been a bookseller for forty years at the sign of the Image de Sainte Catherine, and it is always a fresh pleasure to me to listen to the converse of the learned men who meet in my shop. But I do not greatly care for discussions on public affairs. People get heated, and quarrel to no purpose.”
“Moreover,” said my good master, “ in this subject there is little solid principle.”
“There is, at least, one that no man will do well to contest,” replied Monsieur Blaizot the bookseller, “and that is that he must be a bad Christian and a bad Frenchman who would deny the virtue of the holy Ampulla of Rheims, by whose unction our kings are made vicars of Jesus Christ for the kingdom of France. Here is the basis of monarchy, which shall never be shaken.”
IV. THE AFFAIR OF THE MISSISSIPPI
It is well known that during the year 1722 the Parliament of Paris sat in judgment on the Mississippi affair, in which were implicated, along with the directors of the Company, a minister of State, secretary to the King, and many subinspectors of provinces. The Company was accused of having corrupted the officers of the King and his dominions, who had in reality stripped it with the greed usual to people in office under weak governments. And it is certain that at this period all the springs of government were slackened and warped.
At one of the sittings of this memorable action, Madame de la Morangère, wife of one of the directors of the Mississippi Company, was called before the members of Parliament in the upper chamber. She gave evidence that a Monsieur Lescot, secretary to the Lieutenant-Criminel, having sent for her to come in secret to the Châtelet, made her understand that it lay with her entirely to save her husband, who was a fine man and of comely aspect. He said to her, nearly in these terms: “Madame, what vexes the true friends of the King in this business is that the Jansenists are not implicated in it. Jansenists are enemies to the Crown as well as to religion. Help us, Madame, to convict one of them and we will acknowledge the service to the State by giving you back your husband with all his possessions.”
When Madame de la Morangère had reported this conversation, which was not intended for the public, the President of the Parliament was obliged to call Monsieur Lescot to the upper chamber, who at first tried to deny it. But Madame de la Morangère had beautiful ingenuous eyes, whose gaze he could not meet. He grew troubled and was confounded. He was a big, villainous-looking, red-haired man like Judas Iscariot. This affair, noticed by the Press, became the talk of Paris. It was spoken of in the salons, on the public walks, at the barbers’, and in the coffee-houses. Everywhere Madame de la Morangère gained as much sympathy as Lescot caused disgust.
Public curiosity was still rife when I accompanied my good master Monsieur Jérôme Coignard to Monsieur Blaizot’s, who, as you know, is a bookseller in the Rue St. Jacques, at the sign of the Image dé Sainte Catherine. In the shop we found Monsieur Gentil, private secretary to one of the ministers of State, whose face was hidden in a book newly come from Holland, and the celebrated Monsieur Roman, who has treated of systems of State in various estimable works. Old Monsieur Blaizot was reading his paper behind the counter —
Monsieur Jérôme Coignard, always avid of news, slid up to him to glean what he could across his shoulder. This man, learned and of so rare a genius, owned nothing of the goods of this world, and when he had drunk his pint at the Petit Bacchus he had not a halfpenny left in his pockets to buy a newssheet. Having read the depositions of Madame de la Morangère over Monsieur Blaizot’s shoulder, he cried out that it was well, and that it pleased him to see wickedness topple from its high seat under the weak hand of woman, as in wonderful examples witnessed to in Holy Writ.
“This lady,” he added, “although allied with public men of whom I do not approve, may be likened unto those strong women lauded in the Book of Kings. She pleases by an uncommon mixture of straightforwardness and finesse, and I applaud her telling victory.”
Monsieur Roman interrupted him:
“Take care, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said he, stretching out his arm, “ take care how you look at this affair from an individual and personal point of view, without troubling yourself as you should do with the public interests that are bound up in it. There are reasons of State in all this, and it is clear that this supreme reason demanded that Madame de la Morangère should not speak, or that her words should not find credence.”
Monsieur Gentil lifted his nose from his book. “ The importance of this incident,” said he, “has been much exaggerated.”
“Ah, Mr. Secretary,” retorted Monsieur Roman, “we cannot believe that an incident that will lose you your place can be without importance. For you will fall by it, sir, you and your master. For my part, I am full of regrets. But what consoles me for the fall of the Ministry now reeling under the shock is that they were powerless to prevent it.”
Monsieur Gentil made us understand by a slight wink that on this point he saw eye to eye with Monsieur Roman.
The latter continued:
“The State is like the human body — all the functions it accomplishes are not noble. Some there are indeed that one must needs hide, I may say the most necessary.”
“Ah, Monsieur,” said the Abbé, “was it then necessary that Monsieur Lescot should so behave to the unfortunate wife of a prisoner? It was infamous!”
“Oh,” said Monsieur Roman, “it was infamous when it was known. Before, it was of no importance. If you wish to enjoy the benefit of being governed, which alone raises mankind above the animals, you must leave, to those who govern, the means of exercising power, and the first of these means is secrecy. That is why popular government, which is the least secret of all, is also the weakest. Do you then think, Monsieur l’Abbé, that you can govern men by virtue? That is a wild dream!”
&
nbsp; “I do not think so,” replied my good master, “I have noticed in the varied chances of my life that men are evil beasts; one can only control them by force and cunning. But one must be measured and not offend the small amount of good tendencies which mingles with the evil instincts in their minds. For after all, Monsieur, man, all cowardly, stupid, cruel, as he is was made in God’s image, and there remain to him still certain features of his primal shape. A government drawn from the common stock of average honesty, and that yet scandalises the people, should be deposed.”
“Speak lower, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said the Secretary.
“The King can do no wrong,” said Monsieur Roman, “and your maxims are seditious, Monsieur l’Abbé. You deserve, you and your like, not to be governed at all.”
“Oh!” said my good master, “if, as you give us to understand, government consists in swindling, violence, and exactions of all kinds, there is not much fear that this threat will take effect, and we shall find, for long enough yet, ministers of State and governors of provinces to carry on our affairs. Only I should much like to see others in place of these. The new-comers could not be worse than the old, and who knows but that they may be even slightly better?”
“Take care!” said Monsieur Roman, “take care! What is admirable in a state, is succession and continuity, and if there is no perfect state in this world, it is because, according to my idea, the flood in the time of Noah disordered the transmission of crowns. It is a confusion we have not quite set straight to this day.”
“Monsieur,” retorted my good master, “you are amusing with your theories. The history of the world is full of revolutions. One sees but civil wars, tumults, and seditions, caused by the wickedness of princes, and I know not which to admire the most nowadays, the impudence of the rulers, or the patience of the people.”
The secretary complained then that Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard overlooked the benefits of royalty, and Monsieur Blaizot represented to us that it was not fitting to contend about public matters in a bookseller’s shop.
When we were outside, I pulled my good master by the sleeve.
“Monsieur l’Abbé,” I said, “have you then forgotten the old woman of Syracuse, that you now want to change the tyrant?”
“Tournebroche, my son,” answered he, “I acknowledge with a good grace that I have fallen into a contradiction. But this ambiguity, that you justly point out in my words, is not as evil as that called antinomy by the philosophers. Charron, in his book on ‘ Wisdom,’ affirms that antinomies exist which cannot be resolved. For my part, I am no sooner plunged in meditations of the kind than I see in my mind’s eye half a dozen of these she-devils take each other by the nose and make pretence to tear each other’s eyes out, and one sees at once that one would never come to the end of reconciling these obstinate shrews. I lose all hope of making them agree, and it is their fault if I have not much advanced metaphysics. But in the present case the contradiction, my son, is merely apparent. My reason always sides with the old woman of Syracuse. I think to-day what I thought yesterday. Only I have let my feelings run away with me and have yielded to passion as do the vulgar.”
V. EASTER EGGS
MY father kept a cook-shop in the Rue St. Jacques opposite to St. Benoit-le-Bétourné. I do not pretend that he had any affection for Lent; the sentiment would not have been natural in a cook. But he observed the fasts and days of abstinence like the good Christian that he was. For lack of money to buy a dispensation from the Archbishop he supped off haddock on fast-days, with his wife, his son, his dog, and his usual guests, of whom the most assiduous was my good master, Monsieur l’Abbé Jérôme Coignard. My pious mother would not have allowed Miraut, our watchdog, to gnaw a bone on Good Friday. That day she put neither meat nor fat in the poor animal’s mess. In vain did Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard represent to her that this was doing the wrong thing, and that in all justice, Miraut, who had no share in the sacred mysteries of redemption, ought not to suffer in his allowance.
“My good woman,” said this great man, “it is fitting, that we, as members of the Church, should sup off haddock; but there is a certain superstition, impiety, temerity — nay even sacrilege — to associate a dog, as you do, with these mortifications of the flesh, made infinitely precious by the interest God Himself takes in them, and which that interest apart would be contemptible and ridiculous. It is an abuse, which your simplicity renders innocent, but which would be criminal in a Divine, or even in a judiciously minded Christian. Such a practice, my good lady, leads straight to the most shocking heresy. It tends to no less than the upholding of the theory that Jesus Christ died for dogs even as for the sons of Adam. And nothing is more contrary to the Scriptures.”
“That may be,” replied my mother. “But if Miraut ate meat on Good Friday I should fancy to myself that he was a Jew, and have a horror of him. Is that committing a sin, Monsieur l’Abbé?”
My excellent master answered gently, taking a drink of wine:
“Ah dear creature, without deciding at this moment if you sin or if you do not, I can tell you for a certainty that there is no malice in you, and I believe more surely in your eternal salvation than in that of five or six bishops and cardinals of my acquaintance, who have nevertheless written fine treatises on the canon law.”
Miraut swallowed his mess sniffing at it, as if he did not like it, and my father went off with Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard to take a stroll to the Petit Bacchus.
Thus passed the holy time of Lent at the Sign of the Reine Pédauque. But from early Easter morn, when the bells of St. Benoît-le-Bétourné announced the joyful Resurrection, my father spitted chickens, ducks, and pigeons by the dozen, and Miraut, in the corner by the glowing fire-place, sniffed the good smell of fat, wagging his tail with grave and pensive joy. Old, tired, and nearly blind, he still relished the joys of this life, whose ills he accepted with a resignation which made them less unkind for him. He was a sage, and I am not surprised that my mother associated such a reasonable creature in her good works.
Having heard High Mass we dined in the savoury smelling shop. My father brought to this repast a pious joy. He had commonly, as companions, a few attorneys’ clerks, and my good master Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard. This year of grace 1725, at Easter-tide, I remember, my good master brought Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, whom he had dragged from a loft in the Rue des Maçons, where this learned man wrote, day and night, news of the republic of letters for Dutch publishers. On the table a mound of red eggs rose from a wire basket. And when Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard had said the Benedicite, these eggs formed the topic of conversation.
“One reads in Ælius Lampridus,” said Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, “that a hen owned by the father of Alexander Severus laid a red egg on the birthday of that child destined to Empire.”
“This Lampridus, who had not much intelligence,” said my good master, “had better have left such a tale to the old wives who have spread it abroad. You have too much good sense, sir, to deduce from this ridiculous fable the Christian custom of serving red eggs on Easter Day?”
“I do not indeed believe,” replied Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, “ that this usage is derived from the egg of Alexander Severus. The only conclusion that I wish to draw from the fact, as reported by Lampridus, is that a red egg, among the heathen, presaged supreme power. For the rest,” he added, “that egg must have been reddened in some manner, for hens do not lay red eggs.”
“Excuse me,” said my mother, who was standing by the fire-place decorating the dishes, “ in my childhood I saw a black hen who laid eggs shading into brown; that is why I am ready to believe that there are hens whose eggs are red, or of a colour approaching red, as for instance brick-colour.”
“That is quite possible,” said my good master, and Nature is more diverse and varied in her productions than we commonly believe. There are oddities of every sort in the generating of animals, and one sees in natural-history collections far stranger monsters than a red egg.”
“For instance, they
keep a calf with five feet, and a child with two heads, in the King’s collection,” said Monsieur Nicolas Cerise.
“They can better that at Auneau, near Chartres,” said my mother, putting on the table, as she spoke, a dozen strings of sausages and cabbage, whence a pleasing odour rose up to the joists of the ceiling. “I saw there, gentlemen, a new-born infant with goose-feet and a serpent’s head. The midwife who received it got such a shock that she threw it in the fire.”
“Be careful,” said Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, “be careful, for man is born of woman to serve God, and it is unimaginable that he could serve Him with a serpent’s head, and it follows therefore that there are no children of the kind, and that your midwife was dreaming or making fun of you.”
“Monsieur l’Abbé,” said Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, with a slight smile. “You have seen as I have, in the King’s collection, a bi-sexual foetus with four legs, preserved in a jar filled with spirits of wine, and in another jar, a child without a head and with an eye over the navel. Could these monsters serve God any better than the child with the serpent’s head our hostess speaks of? And what is one to say of those who have two heads, so that one does not know whether they have two souls? Acknowledge, Monsieur l’Abbé, that nature, while amusing herself with such cruel sport, puzzles the theologian no little?”
My good master had already opened his mouth to speak, and doubtless he would have entirely demolished the objection of Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, had not my mother, whom nothing could stop when she wanted to speak anticipated him by saying very loudly that the child at Auneau was no human creature, and it was the devil himself who had fathered it on a baker’s wife. “And the proof is,” she added, “that no one thought of having it baptized, and that it was buried in a napkin at the bottom of the enclosed garden. If it had been a human being it would have been buried in consecrated ground. When the devil fathers a child it takes the shape of an animal.”
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 80