X
THE ARMY
o, being on the Pont Neuf, we heard the roll of drums. It was the call to attention of a recruiting-sergeant, who, hand on hip, was strutting in an open space in front of a dozen soldiers, who were carrying bread and sausages spiked on the bayonets of their guns. A circle of beggars and youngsters looked on open-mouthed.
He twirled his moustache and made his proclamation.
"Do not let us listen to him," said my good master to me. "It would be waste of time. This sergeant speaks in the king's name. He has no talent for speaking. If it would please you to hear a clever discourse on the same subject you should go into one of those bakehouses on the Quai de la Ferraille, where the crimps cajole the lackeys and bumpkins. These crimps, being rascals, are bound to be eloquent. I remember, in my youth, in the time of the late king, having heard the most wonderful harangue from the mouth of one of these dealers in men, who kept shop in the Unhappy Valley, which you can see from here, my son. Recruiting men for the Colonies: 'Young men who surround me,' said he, 'you have no doubt heard tell of the Land of Cockayne; it is to India you must go to find this land of fortune, where one is in clover. Do you wish for gold, pearls, diamonds? The roads are paved with them, one has but to stoop to pick them up. And you need not even stoop. The savages will pick them up for you. I do not even mention the coffee, the lemons, pomegranates, oranges, pineapples, and the thousand delicious fruits which grow without cultivation as in an earthly paradise. Did I speak to women and children I might extol all these dainties, but I am talking to men.' I omit, my son, all that he said about glory, but you may believe he equalled Demosthenes in vigour and Cicero in fluency. The result of his discourse was the sending of five or six unhappy beings to die of yellow fever in the swamps, so true is it that eloquence is a dangerous weapon, and that talent for the arts exercises its irresistible force for evil as well as for good. Thank God, Tournebroche, in that, not having given you talents of any kind, He does not expose you to become one day the scourge of nations. One recognises the favourites of God by their lack of wit, and I have experienced that the fairly quick intelligence heaven has given me has been but an unceasing cause of danger to my peace in this world and in the next. What would it be if the heart and thought of a Cæsar dwelt in my head and my breast? My desires would recognise no sex and I should be untouched by pity. I should light the fire of inextinguishable war at home and abroad. And yet the great Cæsar had a delicate soul and a certain gentleness. He died decently under the dagger of his virtuous assassins. Day of the Ides of March! Ever fatal day, when sententious brutes destroyed this charming monster! I am fain to weep over the divine Julius along with Venus, his mother, and if I call him a monster it is from affection, for in his equable soul nothing was excessive save power. He had a natural feeling for rhythm and proportion. He found equal pleasure in his youth in the beauties of debauchery or those of grammar. He was an orator, and his beauty doubtless ornamented the purposed dryness of his speeches. He loved Cleopatra with that geometric exactitude that he brought to all his doings. He put in his writings and in his actions his talent for clarity. He was the friend of order and peace, even in war, sensitive to harmony, and so able a maker of laws that we still live, barbarians as we are, under the majesty of his rule, which has made the world what it is to-day. You see, my son, I am not sparing in praise or love for him. Commander, dictator, sovereign-pontiff he moulded the world with his beautiful hands. And I—I, have been professor of eloquence at the college of Beauvais, secretary to an opera-singer, librarian to my Lord Bishop of Séez, public-writer at the cemetery of the Holy Innocents, and tutor to the son of your father at the sign of the Reine Pédauque. I have made a beautiful catalogue of precious manuscripts, I have written some pamphlets, of which it is best not to speak, and set down on wastepaper certain maxims scornfully declined by the booksellers. Nevertheless, I would not change my existence for that of the great Cæsar. It would cost my innocence too much. And I would rather be an obscure man, poor and despised, as indeed I am, than rise to the height whence new destinies are opened to the world through paths of blood.
"This recruiting-sergeant, whom you can hear from here promising these vagabonds a halfpenny a day, with bread and meat, fills me, my son, with profound reflections on war and armies. I have worked at all trades save that of a soldier, which has always filled me with disgust and terror, by the characteristics of servitude, false glory, and cruelty, attached to it, which are in direct opposition to my peaceful temper, to my wild love of freedom, and to my turn of mind, which, judging sanely of glory, estimates at its rightful worth that attainable by a musketeer. I am not speaking at all of my incorrigible leaning to meditation which would have been exceedingly thwarted by sword and gun exercise. Not desirous of being Cæsar you will easily understand that neither do I wish to be a La Tulipe or Brin-d'Amour. And I own to you, my son, that military service seems to me to be the most terrible pest of civilised nations.
"This is the opinion of a philosopher. There is nothing to show that it will ever be shared by a large number of people. And in actual fact, kings and republics will always find as many soldiers as they want for their parades and their wars. I have read Machiavelli's treatises at Monsieur Blaizot's, at the sign of the Image de Sainte Catherine, where they are all very nicely bound in parchment. They deserve it my son, and, for my part, I hold an infinitely high opinion of the Florentine secretary, who was the first to remove from political action the legendary foundation of justice, on which they set up nothing but highly respectable villainies. This Florentine, seeing his country at the mercy of its hireling defenders, conceived the idea of a national and patriotic army. He says somewhere in his books that it is right that all citizens should unite for the safety of their country and all be soldiers. I have likewise heard this theory sustained at Monsieur Blaizot's by Monsieur Roman, who is very zealous, as you know, for state rights. He has no care save for the general, and the universal, and will never be content until the day when every private interest is sacrificed to the public interest. Thus Machiavelli and Monsieur Roman wish us all to be soldiers, since we are all citizens. I do not say, as do they, that it is just, nor do I say that it is unjust, because justice and injustice are matter for debate, and it is a subject which only sophists can decide."
"What! my good master," I cried in sorrow and surprise, "you hold that justice depends on the reasoning of a sophist, and that our actions are just or unjust according to the arguments of a clever man! Such a maxim shocks me more than I can say."
"Tournebroche, my son," replied Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard, "you must consider that I speak of human justice, which is different from God's justice, and generally opposed to it. Men have never upheld the idea of justice and injustice save by eloquence which is prone to embrace the for and against. Perhaps, my son, you would seat justice on sentiment, but beware lest on this petty site you merely raise some humble domestic hovel, some cabin of old Evander, or hut for a Philemon and Baucis. But the palace of law, the tower of State institutions, needs other foundations. Ingenuous nature alone could not support such weight of inequity, and these redoubtable walls rise from a foundation of most ancient falsehood, by the subtle and fierce art of law-givers, magistrates, and princes. It is folly, Tournebroche my son, to enquire if a law be just or unjust, and it is the same of military service as of other institutions of which one cannot say if they be good or bad on principle, since there is no principle saving God, from Whom all things come. You must protect yourself, my son, against this kind of slavery to words, to which men submit themselves with such docility. Know then, that the word justice has no meaning, if it be not in theology, where it is terribly expressive. Recognise that Monsieur Roman is but a sophist when he demonstrates to you that one owes service to a prince. Nevertheless, I think if the prince ever orders all citizens to become soldiers, he will be obeyed, I don't say with docility, but light-heartedly. I have noticed that the profession most natural to man is that of a soldier; it is the one to which he is drawn the most easily by his instincts, and by his tastes, which are not always good. And beyond some rare exceptions, of which I am one, man may be defined as an animal with a musket. Give him a fine uniform with the hope of fighting, and he will be happy. Also, we make the military calling the noblest, which is true, in a sense, for it is the oldest calling, and the earliest of mankind made war. The military calling, moreover, has this appropriateness to human nature, that it never thinks, and clearly we are not made for thought.
"Thought is a malady peculiar to certain individuals which cannot propagate itself without promptly ending the race. Soldiers live in company, and man is a sociable animal. They wear blue-and-white, blue-and-red, or grey-and-blue coats, ribbons, plumes, and cockades, which give them the same advantage over women as the cock over the hen. They march to war and pillage and man is naturally thievish, libidinous, destructive, and easily touched by glory. The love of glory decides us Frenchmen, above all, to take up arms. And it is certain, that in public opinion, military glory eclipses all. To be assured of this, read history. La Tulipe may be held excused if he was no more a philosopher than Titus Livius."