Complete Works of Anatole France

by Anatole France

  “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.

  “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!”

  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 Livris 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 eloquen
t 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 NICODEME

  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 j 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.”