Complete Works of Anatole France

by Anatole France

  “This book of M. Cazeaux’s,” answered M. Bergeret, “appeared to me to be interesting from several points of view. For want of a knowledge of theology I lost myself in it more than once. Yet I fancied I could see in it that the blessed Raymond, rigidly orthodox monk as he was, claimed for the teacher the right of professing two contradictory opinions on the same subject, the one theological and in accordance with revelation, the other ‘purely human and based on experience or reason. The balsamic doctor, whose statue adorns so sternly the courtyard of the Archbishop’s palace, maintained, according to what I have been able to understand, that one and the same man may deny, as an observer or as a disputant, the truths which, as a Christian, he believes and confesses. And it seemed to me that your pupil, M. Cazeaux, approved of a system so strange.”

  Abbé Lantaigne, quite animated by what he had just heard, drew his red silk handkerchief from his pocket, unfurled it like a flag, and with flushed face and mouth wide open flung himself fearlessly on the challenge thrown down.

  “Monsieur Bergeret, as to whether one can have, on the same subject, two distinct opinions, the one theological and of divine origin, the other purely rational or experimental and of human origin, that is a question which I answer in the affirmative. And I am going to prove to you the truth of this apparent contradiction by a most common instance. When, seated in your study, before your table loaded with books and papers, you exclaim, ‘It is incredible! I have just this moment put my paper-knife on this table and now I do not see it there. I see it, I’m sure I see it, and yet I no longer see it.’ When you think in this way, Monsieur Bergeret, you have two contradictory opinions with respect to the same object, one that your paper-knife is on the table because it ought to be there: that opinion is based on reason; the other that your paper-knife is not on the table, because you do not see it there: that opinion is based on experience. There you have two irreconcilable opinions on the same subject. And they are simultaneous. You affirm at the same time both the presence and the absence of the paper-knife. You exclaim, ‘It is there, I am sure of it,’ at the very moment you are proving it is not there.”

  And, having finished his demonstration, Abbé Lantaigne waved his chequered, snuff-besprinkled silk handkerchief, like the flaming banner of scholasticism.

  But the professor of literature was not convinced. He had no difficulty in showing the emptiness of this sophism. He replied quite gently in the rather weak voice that he habitually husbanded, that, in looking for his paper-knife, he experienced fear and hope, by turns and not simultaneously, the result of an uncertainty which could not last; for it ended by his making sure whether the knife was on the table or not.

  “There is nothing, monsieur l’abbé,” added he, “nothing in this instance of the boxwood knife that is applicable to the contradictory judgment which the blessed Raymond, or M. Cazeaux, or you yourself, might form on such or such a fact recorded in the Bible, when you state that it is at the same time both true and false. Allow me, in my turn, to give you an instance. I choose, not, of course, in order to ensnare you, but because this incident comes of its own accord into my mind, — I choose the story of Joshua causing the sun to stand still...

  M. Bergeret passed his tongue over his lips and smiled. For in truth he was, in the secret places of his soul, a Voltairean:

  ...Joshua causing the sun to stand still. Will you tell me, straight out, monsieur l’abbé, that Joshua made the sun stand still and did not make it stand still?”

  The head of the high seminary had by no means an air of embarrassment. Splendid controversialist as he was, he turned to his opponent with flashing eyes and heaving breast.

  “After every reservation has been expressly made with respect to the true interpretation, both literal and spiritual, of the passage in Judges which you attack and against which so many unbelievers have blindly dashed themselves before you, I will reply to you fearlessly. Yes, I have two distinct opinions as to the interpretation of this miracle. I believe as a natural philosopher, for reasons drawn from physics, that is to say, from observation, that the earth turns round a motionless sun. And as a theologian I believe that Joshua caused the sun to stand still. There is here a contradiction. But this contradiction is not irreconcilable. I will prove it to you at once. For the idea which we form of the sun is purely human; it only concerns man and could not be applicable to God. For man, the sun does not turn round the earth. I grant it, and am willing to decide in favour of Copernicus. But I will not go so far as to force God to become a Copernican like myself, and I shall not inquire whether, for God, the sun turns or does not turn round the earth. To speak truly, I had no need of the text of Judges in order to know that our human astronomy is not the astronomy of God. Speculations as to time, number and space do not embrace infinity, and it is a mad idea to wish to entangle the Holy Spirit in a physical or mathematical difficulty.”

  “Then,” asked the professor, “you admit that, even in mathematics, it is permissable to have two contradictory opinions, the one human, the other divine?”

  “I will not risk being reduced to that extremity,” answered Abbé Lantaigne. “There is in mathematics an exactitude which practically reconciles it with absolute truth. Numbers, on the contrary, are only dangerous because the reason, being tempted to seek in them for its own principle, runs the risk of going so far astray as to see nothing in the universe save a system of numbers. This error has been condemned by the Church. Yet I will answer you boldly that human mathematics are not divine mathematics. Doubtless, however, it would not be possible for one to contradict the other, and I prefer to believe that you do not wish to make me say that for God three and three can make nine. But we do not know all the properties of numbers, and God does.

  “I hear that there are priests, regarded as eminent, who maintain that science ought to agree with theology. I detest this impertinence, I will say this impiety, for there is a certain impiety in making the immutable and absolute truth walk in harmony with that imperfect and provisional truth which is called science. This madness of assimilating reality to appearance, the body to the soul, has produced a multitude of miserable, baneful opinions through which the apologists of this period have allowed their foolhardy feebleness to be seen. One, a distinguished member of the Society of Jesus, admits the plurality of inhabited worlds; he allows that intelligent beings may inhabit Mars and Venus, provided that to the earth there be reserved the privilege of the Cross, by which it again becomes unique and peculiar in the Creation. The other, a man who not without some merit occupied in the Sorbonne the chair of theology which has since been abolished, grants that the geologist can trace the vestiges of preadamites and reduces the Genesis of the Bible to the organisation of one province of the universe for the sojourn of Adam, and his seed. O dull folly! O pitiable boldness! O ancient novelties, already condemned a hundred times! O violation of sacred unity! How much better, like Raymond the Great and his historian, to proclaim that science and religion ought no more to be confused with each other than the relative and the absolute, the finite and the infinite, the darkness and the light!”

  “Monsieur l’abbé,” said the professor, “you despise science.”

  The priest shook his head.

  “Not so, Monsieur Bergeret, not so! I hold, on the contrary, according to the example of Saint Thomas Aquinas and all the great doctors, that science and philosophy ought to be held in high esteem in the schools.

  “One does not despise science without despising reason; one does not despise reason without despising man; one does not despise man without insulting God. The rash scepticism which lays the blame on human reason is the first step towards that criminal scepticism that defies the divine mysteries. I value science as a gift which comes to us from God. But if God has given us science, he has not given us His science. His geometry is not ours. Ours speculates on one plane or in space; His works in infinitude. He has not conceived us: that is why I consider that there is a true human science. He has not taught us all: that i
s why I declare the powerlessness of this science, even though true, to agree with the truth of truths. And this dis-crepancy, every time that it occurs between the two, I see without fear: it proves nothing, neither against heaven, nor earth.”

  M. Bergeret confessed that this system seemed to him as clever as it was bold, and ultimately consonant with the interests of the faith.

  “But,” added he, “it is not our Archbishop’s doctrine. In his pastoral letters, Monseigneur Chariot speaks voluntarily of the truths of religion being confirmed by the discoveries of science, and especially by the experiments of M. Pasteur.”

  “Oh!” answered Abbé Lantaigne in a nasal voice that hissed with scorn, “His Eminence observes, in philosophy at least, the vow of evangelical poverty.”

  At the moment when this phrase was lashing the air beneath the quincunxes, a corpulent great-coat, capped by a wide clerical hat, passed in front of the bench.

  “Speak lower, monsieur l’abbé,” said the professor; “Abbé Guitrel hears you.”

  VIII

  MLE PRÉFET WORMS-CLAVELIN was chatting with Abbé Guitrel in the shop of Rodonneau junior, goldsmith and jeweller. He leant back in an arm-chair and crossed his legs so that the sole of one of his boots stuck up towards the placid old man’s chin.

  “Monsieur l’abbé, it is useless for you to speak: you are an enlightened priest; you see in religion a collection of moral precepts, a necessary discipline, and not a set of antiquated dogmas, of mysteries whose absurdity is only too little mysterious.”

  As a priest M. Guitrel had excellent rules of conduct. One of these rules was to avoid scandal and to hold his tongue, rather than expose the truth to the mockery of unbelievers. And, as this precaution agreed with the bent of his character, he observed it scrupulously. But M. le préfet Worms-Clavelin was lacking in discretion. His vast, fleshy nose, his thick lips, seemed like a powerful apparatus of suction and absorption, whilst his receding forehead, above his great pale eyes, betrayed his opposition to all moral delicacy. He persisted, marshalled against Christian dogmas the arguments of the masonic lodges and the literary cafés, and concluded by saying that it was impossible for an intelligent man to believe a word of the Catechism. Then, bringing down his fat, beringed hand on the priest’s shoulder, he said:

  “You don’t answer, my dear abbé; you are of my opinion.”

  M. Guitrel, in some sort a martyr, was forced to confess his faith.

  “Pardon me, monsieur le préfet; that little book, the Catechism, which it is the fashion to despise in certain quarters, contains more truths than the great treatises on philosophy which make such a vast noise in the world. The Catechism unites the most learned metaphysics with the most effective simplicity. This appreciation is not mine; it is that of an eminent philosopher, M. Jules Simon, who ranks the Catechism above Plato’s Timæus.”

  The préfet dared not contradict the opinion of an ex-minister. He remembered at the same time that his official superior, the present Secretary of State for the Home Department, was a Protestant. He said:— “As an official I respect all religions equally, Protestantism as well as Catholicism. As a man, I am a freethinker, and if I had any preference as to dogma, let me tell you, monsieur l’abbé, that it would be in favour of the Reformed Party.”

  M. Guitrel replied in an unctuous voice: “There are, doubtless, among Protestants, many persons eminently estimable from the point of view of morals, and I dare say many exemplary persons, if they are judged from the world’s standpoint. But the so-called reformed Church is but a limb hacked from the Catholic Church, and the place of the wound still bleeds.”

  Indifferent to this powerful phrase, borrowed from Bossuet, M. le préfet drew from his case a big cigar, lighted it, and holding out the case to the priest:

  “Will you accept a cigar, monsieur l’abbé?”

  Being densely ignorant of ecclesiastical discipline, and believing that tobacco-smoking was forbidden to the clergy, he offered a cigar to M. Guitrel in order to make him look awkward or to lead him astray. In his ignorance he believed that by this offer he was leading a wearer of the cassock into sin, making him fall into disobedience, perhaps into sacrilege, and almost into apostasy. But M. Guitrel placidly took the cigar, slipped it carefully into the pocket of his great-coat, and said urbanely that he would smoke it after supper in his room.

  Thus M. le préfet Worms-Clavelin and Abbé Guitrel, professor of sacred rhetoric at the high seminary, conversed in the goldsmith’s office. Near them, Rondonneau junior, contractor to the Archbishop, who also worked for the prefecture, listened to the conversation discreetly, without taking part in it. He was preparing his mail, and his bald pate came and went among his account-books and the samples of commercial jewellery heaped up on the table.

  With a brusque movement M. le préfet stood upright, pushed Abbé Guitrel to the other end of the room, into the recess of the window, and whispered in his ear:

  “My dear Guitrel, you know that the bishopric of Tourcoing is vacant.”

  “I have in fact,” answered the priest, “learnt of the death of Monseigneur Duclou. It is a great loss for the Church of France. Monseigneur Duclou’s merits were only equalled by his modesty. He excelled in preaching. His pastoral addresses are models of hortatory eloquence. Shall I dare to recall to mind that I knew him in Orleans, at the time when he was still Abbé Duclou, the revered curé of Saint-Euverte, and that at that time he deigned to honour me with his gracious friendship? The news of his premature death was particularly distressing to me.”

  He was silent, letting his lips droop in sign of grief.

  “It’s not a question of that,” said the préfet. “He is dead; it is a question of filling his place.”

  M. Guitrel’s face changed. Now, screwing up his little eyes till they were quite round, he looked like a rat who sees bacon in the larder.

  “You must know, my dear Guitrel,” continued the préfet, “that this business has nothing whatever to do with me. It is not I who appoint the bishops. I am not the keeper of the seals, nor the nuncio, nor the Pope. God be thanked!”

  And he began to laugh.

  “By the bye, on what terms do you stand with the nuncio?”

  “The nuncio, monsieur le préfet, looks upon me with friendliness, as a humble and dutiful servant of the Holy Father. But I do not flatter myself that he especially heeds me, in the humble station in which I have been placed and where I am content to remain.”

  “My dear abbé, if I speak to you about this affair — quite between ourselves, isn’t it? — it is because there is a question of sending a priest from my county town to Tourcoing. I hear on good authority that the name of Abbé Lantaigne, head of the high seminary, is being brought forward, and it is not impossible that I may be asked to supply confidential information about the candidate. He is your ecclesiastical superior. What do you think of him?”

  M. Guitrel answered, with downcast eyes:

  “It is certain that Abbé Lantaigne would bring to the episcopal see once sanctified by the apostle Loup both eminent piety and the precious gifts of eloquence, His Lenten sermons preached at Saint-

  Exupère have been justly admired for their logical arrangement of ideas and power of expression, and it is commonly recognised that some of the sermons would fall in no respect short of perfection, if there were present in them that unction, that perfumed and consecrated oil, if I may dare so to call it, which alone penetrates the heart.

  “The curé of Saint-Exupère took pleasure in being the first to declare that M. Lantaigne, in speaking the word from the pulpit of the most venerable church in the diocese, had deserved well of the great apostle of the Gauls who laid the first stone of it, by reason of an ardour and a zeal whose very excesses were excused by their benevolent origin. He only deplored the orator’s excursions into the domain of contemporary history. For it must needs be confessed that M. Lantaigne has no fear of walking on embers that are still burning. M. Lantaigne is distinguished by piety, learning and talent.
What a pity that a priest worthy of being raised to the highest positions in the Church should believe it to be his duty to proclaim a devotion, doubtless praiseworthy in principle, but reckless in its results, to an exiled family from whom he has received favours. He takes pleasure in showing a copy of the Imitation de Jésus-Christ, bound in purple and gold, which was given to him by the Comtesse de Paris, and he displays far too freely the extent of his gratitude and fidelity. And what a misfortune that an arrogance, excusable perhaps in such lofty talent, should lead him even to the lengths of speaking publicly under the quincunxes about the Cardinal-Archbishop in terms which I dare not repeat! Alas! failing my voice, all the trees on the Mall would re-utter these words that fell from the mouth of M. Lantaigne, in the presence of M. Bergeret, professor of literature:— ‘In brain alone, His Eminence observes the evangelical vow of poverty!’ Such sayings are habitual with him, and was he not heard to say at the last ordination, when His Eminence advanced clothed in those pontifical ornaments which he bears with so much dignity, notwithstanding his short stature: ‘Golden cross, wooden bishop’? Most unseasonably he thus censured the magnificence with which Monseigneur Chariot delights to celebrate the offices as well as to regulate the ordering of his official banquets, and especially the dinner which he gave to the general in command of the new army-corps, and to which you were invited, Monsieur le préfet. And in particular any better agreement between the prefecture and the archbishopric offends Abbé Lantaigne, who is far too inclined, unfortunately, to prolong the painful misunderstandings from which Church and State suffer equally, in scorn of the precepts of St. Paul and the teaching of His Holiness Leo XIII.”

  The préfet opened his mouth quite wide, being in the habit of listening with it. He burst out: