III
MINISTERS OF STATE (concluded)
hat same day my good master and I were exceedingly surprised to meet at Monsieur Blaizot's at the sign of the Image de Sainte Catherine, a little thin, yellow man, who was no other than the celebrated pamphleteer, Jean Hibou.... We had every reason to believe that he was in the Bastille, where he usually was. And if we had no hesitation in recognising him it was because his face still showed traces of the darkness and mildew of the dungeon. He was turning over with a trembling hand, under the bookseller's anxious eye, some political writings newly come from Holland. Abbé Jérôme Coignard doffed his hat with a natural grace which would have been more effective if the hat had not been staved in the night before in a scuffle, that need not concern us, in the arbour at the Petit Bacchus.
Abbé Coignard having shown his pleasure at meeting so able a man again; Monsieur Jean Hibou replied, "It will not be for long. I am leaving this country where I am unable to live. I cannot breathe the corrupted air of this town any longer. In a month's time I shall be settled in Holland. It is cruel to have to put up with Fleury after Dubois, and I am too virtuous to be a Frenchman. We are governed on bad principles, by fools and rogues. I cannot endure it."
"Truly," said my excellent master, "public affairs are badly managed and there are many thieves in office. Power is divided between fools and knaves, and should I ever write on the affairs of the day I should make a small book on the lines of the Apokolokyntosis of Seneca the Philosopher, or of our own Satire Ménippée, which is fairly pungent. This light and pleasant style suits the subject better than the morose stiltedness of a Tacitus or the patient seriousness of a de Thou. I would make copies of this lampoon which would be passed about under the rose, and it should display a philosophical disdain for mankind. The majority of the people in office would be extremely annoyed, but I think some would taste a secret pleasure in seeing themselves covered with shame. I judge so from what I heard said by a lady of good birth whose acquaintance I made at Séez during the time when I was the Bishop's librarian. She was growing old, but still thrilled to lascivious memories. For I must tell you that for twenty years she had been the most notorious trollop in Normandy. And when I asked her what had given her the most lively pleasure in life, she answered me: 'To know myself dishonoured.'
"From this reply I gathered that she had some nicety of feeling. I would give as much credit to certain of our ministers, and if ever I write against them it would be to incite them to hug their infamy and viciousness.
"But why postpone the execution of so fine a project? I will ask Monsieur Blaizot at once for half a dozen sheets of paper and set about writing the first chapter of the new Ménippée."
He was already reaching out his hand to the astonished Monsieur Blaizot, when Monsieur Jean Hibou stopped him quickly:
"Keep this splendid scheme for Holland, Monsieur l'Abbé," he said, "and come with me to Amsterdam, where I will provide you with the means of livelihood at some coffee-house or bagnio. There you will be free, and of nights you shall write your Ménippée at one end of the table, whilst I, at the other, am busy with my lampoons. They shall be full charged with virus, and who knows but what we may bring about a change in the affairs of the kingdom? Pamphleteers play more part than is thought in the downfall of empires. They prepare the catastrophe which is consummated by a popular revolt."
"What a triumph," he added, in a voice which whistled through his blackened teeth, carious with the bitter humours of his mouth, "what joy if I effected the destruction of one of those ministers, who, like cowards, shut me in the Bastille! Will you not take a share in such good work, Monsieur l'Abbé?"
"By no means," replied my good master, "I should be very sorry to change anything in the system of the State, and if I thought that my Apokolokyntosis or Ménippée could have such a result, I would never write it."
"What!" exclaimed the disappointed pamphleteer, "didn't you tell me but a moment ago, that the present government was wicked?"
"No doubt," said Monsieur l'Abbé, "but I merely imitate the wisdom of that old crone of Syracuse who, at the time when Dionysius treated his people most execrably, went to the temple every day to pray to the gods for the life of the tyrant. Told of this singular piety, Dionysius wished to know the reason for it. He sent for the good woman, and questioned her:
"She replied, 'I am no longer young and have lived under many tyrants, and I have always observed that a bad one was succeeded by a worse. You are the most detestable that I have yet seen. From which I conclude that your successor will be, if possible, more wicked than yourself, and I pray the gods to give him to us as late as may be.'
"That old woman was very sensible, and I think as she did, Monsieur Jean Hibou, that sheep do well to allow themselves to be sheared by their old shepherd, for fear a younger one should come along, who would but shear them closer."
Monsieur Jean Hibou's gall, stirred by this discourse, spent itself in bitter words:
"What cowardly talk! What shameful sentiments! Oh! Monsieur l'Abbé, what little love you bear to the public good, and how ill you deserve the oak-leaf crown promised by the poets to civic heroes. You should have been born amongst the Turks, amongst the Tartars, slave to a Genghis Khan or a Bajazet, rather than in Europe where principles of public right are taught, and divine philosophy. What! you endure bad government nor even wish to alter it! Such sentiments would be punished in a republic of my making by exile or banishment at least. Yes, Monsieur l'Abbé, in the constitution that I meditate, which is to be formulated on the maxims of antiquity, I shall add a clause for the punishment of such bad citizens as you, and I shall proclaim penalties against whomsoever can improve his State but does not do so."
"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."