The Village Rector, by Honore de Balzac

To Monsieur Grossetete:

Monsieur,—You have been to me a father when you might have been
only a mere protector, and therefore I venture to make you a
rather sad confidence. It is to you alone, you who have made me
what I am, that I can tell my troubles.

I am afflicted with a terrible malady, a cruel moral malady. In my
soul are feelings and in my mind convictions which make me utterly
unfit for what the State and society demand of me. This may seem
to you ingratitude; it is only the statement of a condition. When
I was twelve years old you, my generous god-father, saw in me, the
son of a mere workman, an aptitude for the exact sciences and a
precocious desire to rise in life. You favored my impulse toward
better things when my natural fate was to stay a carpenter like my
father, who, poor man, did not live long enough to enjoy my
advancement. Indeed, monsieur, you did a good thing, and there is
never a day that I do not bless you for it. It may be that I am
now to blame; but whether I am right or wrong it is very certain
that I suffer. In making my complaint to you I feel that I take
you as my judge like God Himself. Will you listen to my story and
grant me your indulgence?

Between sixteen and eighteen years of age I gave myself to the
study of the exact sciences with an ardor, you remember, that made
me ill. My future depended on my admission to the Ecole
Polytechnique. At that time my studies overworked my brain, and I
came near dying; I studied night and day; I did more than the
nature of my organs permitted. I wanted to pass such satisfying
examinations that my place in the Ecole would be not only secure,
but sufficiently advanced to release me from the cost of my
support, which I did not want you to pay any longer.

I triumphed! I tremble to-day as I think of the frightful
conscription (if I may so call it) of brains delivered over yearly
to the State by family ambition. By insisting on these severe
studies at the moment when a youth attains his various forms of
growth, the authorities produce secret evils and kill by midnight
study many precious faculties which later would have developed
both strength and grandeur. The laws of nature are relentless;
they do not yield in any particular to the enterprises or the
wishes of society. In the moral order as in the natural order all
abuses must be paid for; fruits forced in a hot-house are produced
at the tree’s expense and often at the sacrifice of the goodness
of its product. La Quintinie killed the orange-trees to give Louis
XIV. a bunch of flowers every day at all seasons. So it is with
intellects. The strain upon adolescent brains discounts their
future.

That which is chiefly wanting to our epoch is legislative genius.
Europe has had no true legislators since Jesus Christ, who, not
having given to the world a political code, left his work
incomplete. Before establishing great schools of specialists and
regulating the method of recruiting for them, where were the great
thinkers who could bear in mind the relation of such institutions
to human powers, balancing advantages and injuries, and studying
the past for the laws of the future? What inquiry has been made as
to the condition of exceptional men, who, by some fatal chance,
knew human sciences before their time? Has the rarity of such
cases been reckoned—the result examined? Has any enquiry been
made as to the means by which such men were enabled to endure the
perpetual strain of thought? How many, like Pascal, died
prematurely, worn-out by knowledge? Have statistics been gathered
as to the age at which those men who lived the longest began their
studies? Who has ever known, does any one know now, the interior
construction of brains which have been able to sustain a premature
burden of human knowledge? Who suspects that this question
belongs, above all, to the physiology of man?

For my part, I now believe the true general law is to remain a
long time in the vegetative condition of adolescence; and that
those exceptions where strength of organs is produced during
adolescence result usually in the shortening of life. Thus the
man of genius who is able to bear up under the precocious exercise
of his faculties is an exception to an exception.

If I am right, if what I say accords with social facts and medical
observations, then the system practised in France in her technical
schools is a fatal impairment and mutilation (in the style of La
Quintinie) practised upon the noblest flower of youth in each
generation.

But it is better to continue my history, and add my doubts as the
facts develop themselves.

When I entered the Ecole Polytechnique, I worked harder than ever
and with even more ardor, in order to leave it as triumphantly as
I had entered it. From nineteen to twenty-one I developed every
aptitude and strengthened every faculty by constant practice.
Those two years were the crown and completion of the first three,
during which I had only prepared myself to do well. Therefore my
pride was great when I won the right to choose the career that
pleased me most,—either military or naval engineering, artillery,
or staff duty, or the civil engineering of mining, and ponts et
chaussees.[*] By your advice, I chose the latter.

[*] Department of the government including everything connected
with the making and repairing of roads, bridges, canals, etc.

But where I triumphed how many others fail! Do you know that from
year to year the State increases the scientific requirements of
the Ecole? the studies are more severe, more exacting yearly. The
preparatory studies which tried me so much were nothing to the
intense work of the school itself, which has for its object to put
the whole of physical science, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry,
and all their nomenclatures into the minds of young men of
nineteen to twenty-one years of age. The State, which seems in
France to wish to substitute itself in many ways for the paternal
authority, has neither bowels of compassion nor fatherhood; it
makes its experiments in anima vili. Never does it inquire into
the horrible statistics of the suffering it causes. Does it know
the number of brain fevers among its pupils during the last
thirty-six years; or the despair and the moral destruction which
decimate its youth? I am pointing out to you this painful side of
the State education, for it is one of the anterior contingents of
the actual result.

You know that scholars whose conceptions are slow, or who are
temporarily disabled from excess of mental work, are allowed to
remain at the Ecole three years instead of two; they then become
the object of suspicions little favorable to their capacity. This
often compels young men, who might later show superior capacity,
to leave the school without being employed, simply because they
could not meet the final examination with the full scientific
knowledge required. They are called “dried fruits”; Napoleon made
sub-lieutenants of them. To-day the “dried fruits” constitute an
enormous loss of capital to families and of time to individuals.

However, as I say, I triumphed. At twenty-one years of age I knew
the mathematical sciences up to the point to which so many men of
genius have brought them, and I was impatient to distinguish
myself by carrying them further. This desire is so natural that
almost every pupil leaving the Ecole fixes his eyes on that moral
sun called Fame. The first thought of all is to become another
Newton, or Laplace, or Vauban. Such are the efforts that France
demands of the young men who leave her celebrated school.

Now let us see the fate of these men culled with so much care from
each generation. At one-and-twenty we dream of life, and expect
marvels of it. I entered the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees; I was a
pupil-engineer. I studied the science of construction, and how
ardently! I am sure you remember that. I left the school in 1827,
being then twenty-four years of age, still only a candidate as
engineer, and the government paid me one hundred and fifty francs
a month; the commonest book-keeper in Paris earns that by the time
he is eighteen, giving little more than four hours a day to his
work.

By a most unusual piece of luck, perhaps because of the
distinction my devoted studies won for me, I was made, in 1828,
when I was twenty-five years old, engineer-in-ordinary. I was
sent, as you know, to a sub-prefecture, with a salary of
twenty-five hundred francs. The question of money is nothing.
Certainly my fate has been more brilliant than the son of a
carpenter might expect; but where will you find a grocer’s boy,
who, if thrown into a shop at sixteen, will not in ten years be
on the high-road to an independent property?

I learned then to what these terrible efforts of mental power,
these gigantic exertions demanded by the State were to lead. The
State now employed me to count and measure pavements and heaps of
stones on the roadways; I had to keep in order, repair, and
sometimes construct culverts, one-arched bridges, regulate
drift-ways, clean and sometimes open ditches, lay out bounds, and
answer questions about the planting and felling of trees. Such are
the principal and sometimes the only occupations of ordinary
engineers, together with a little levelling which the government
obliges us to do ourselves, though any of our chain-bearers with
their limited experience can do it better than we with all our
science.

There are nearly four hundred engineers-in-ordinary and pupil
engineers; and as there are not more than a hundred or so of
engineers-in-chief, only a limited number of the sub-engineers can
hope to rise. Besides, above the grade of engineer-in-chief, there
is no absorbent class; for we cannot count as a means of
absorption the ten or fifteen places of inspector-generals or
divisionaries,—posts that are almost as useless in our corps as
colonels are in the artillery, where the battery is the essential
thing. The engineer-in-ordinary, like the captain of artillery,
knows the whole science. He ought not to have any one over him
except an administrative head to whom no more than eighty-six
engineers should report,—for one engineer, with two assistants is
enough for a department.

The present hierarchy in these bodies results in the subordination
of active energetic capacities to the worn-out capacities of old
men, who, thinking they know best, alter or nullify the plans
submitted by their subordinates,—perhaps with the sole aim of
making their existence felt; for that seems to me the only
influence exercised over the public works of France by the
Council-general of the Ponts et Chaussees.

Suppose, however, that I become, between thirty and forty years of
age, an engineer of the first-class and an engineer-in-chief
before I am fifty. Alas! I see my future; it is written before my
eyes. Here is a forecast of it:—

My present engineer-in-chief is sixty years old; he issued with
honors, as I did, from the famous Ecole; he has turned gray doing
in two departments what I am doing now, and he has become the most
ordinary man it is possible to imagine; he has fallen from the
height to which he had really risen; far worse, he is no longer on
the level of scientific knowledge; science has progressed, he has
stayed where he was. The man who came forth ready for life at
twenty-two years of age, with every sign of superiority, has
nothing left to-day but the reputation of it. In the beginning,
with his mind specially turned to the exact sciences and
mathematics by his education, he neglected everything that was not
his specialty; and you can hardly imagine his present dulness in
all other branches of human knowledge. I hardly dare confide even
to you the secrets of his incapacity sheltered by the fact that he
was educated at the Ecole Polytechnique. With that label attached
to him and on the faith of that prestige, no one dreams of
doubting his ability. To you alone do I dare reveal the fact that
the dulling of all his talents has led him to spend a million on a
single matter which ought not to have cost the administration more
than two hundred thousand francs. I wished to protest, and was
about to inform the prefect; but an engineer I know very well
reminded me of one of our comrades who was hated by the
administration for doing that very thing. “How would you like,” he
said to me, “when you get to be engineer-in-chief to have your
errors dragged forth by your subordinate? Before long your
engineer-in-chief will be made a divisional inspector. As soon as
any one of us commits a serious blunder, as he has done, the
administration (which can’t allow itself to appear in the wrong)
will quietly retire him from active duty by making him inspector.”

That’s how the reward of merit devolves on incapacity. All France
knew of the disaster which happened in the heart of Paris to the
first suspension bridge built by an engineer, a member of the
Academy of Sciences; a melancholy collapse caused by blunders such
as none of the ancient engineers—the man who cut the canal at
Briare in Henri IV.‘s time, or the monk who built the Pont Royal
—would have made; but our administration consoled its engineer
for his blunder by making him a member of the Council-general.

Are the technical schools vast manufactories of incapables? That
subject requires careful investigation. If I am right they need
reforming, at any rate in their method of proceeding,—for I am
not, of course, doubting the utility of such schools. Only, when
we look back into the past we see that France in former days never
wanted for the great talents necessary to the State; but now she
prefers to hatch out talent geometrically, after the theory of
Monge. Did Vauban ever go to any other Ecole than that great
school we call vocation? Who was Riquet’s tutor? When great
geniuses arise above the social mass, impelled by vocation, they
are nearly always rounded into completeness; the man is then not
merely a specialist, he has the gift of universality. Do you think
that an engineer from the Ecole Polytechnique could ever create
one of those miracles of architecture such as Leonardo da Vinci
knew how to build,—mechanician, architect, painter, inventor of
hydraulics, indefatigable constructor of canals that he was?

Trained from their earliest years to the baldness of axiom and
formula, the youths who leave the Ecole have lost the sense of
elegance and ornament; a column seems to them useless; they return
to the point where art begins, and cling to the useful.

But all this is nothing in comparison to the real malady which is
undermining me. I feel an awful transformation going on within me;
I am conscious that my powers and my faculties, formerly
unnaturally taxed, are giving way. I am letting the prosaic
influence of my life get hold of me. I who, by the very nature of
my efforts, looked to do some great thing, I am face to face with
none but petty ones; I measure stones, I inspect roads, I have not
enough to really occupy me for two hours in my day. I see my
colleagues marry, and fall into a situation contrary to the spirit
of modern society. I wanted to be useful to my country. Is my
ambition an unreasonable one? The country asked me to put forth
all my powers; it told me to become a representative of science;
yet here I am with folded arms in the depths of the provinces. I
am not even allowed to leave the locality in which I am penned, to
exercise my faculties in planning useful enterprises. A hidden but
very real disfavor is the certain reward of any one of us who
yields to an inspiration and goes beyond the special service laid
down for him.

No, the favor a superior man has to hope for in that case is that
his talent and his presumption may not be noticed, and that his
project may be buried in the archives of the administration. What
think you will be the reward of Vicat, the one among us who has
brought about the only real progress in the practical science of
construction? The Council-general of the Ponts et Chaussees,
composed in part of men worn-out by long and sometimes honorable
service, but whose only remaining force is for negation, and who
set aside everything they no longer comprehend, is the
extinguisher used to snuff out the projects of audacious spirits.
This Council seems to have been created to paralyze the arm of
that glorious youth of France, which asks only to work and to be
useful to its country.

Monstrous things are done in Paris. The future of a province
depends on the mere signature of men who (through intrigues I have
no time to explain to you) often stop the execution of useful and
much-needed work; in fact, the best plans are often those which
offer most to the cupidity of commercial companies or speculators.

Another five years and I shall no longer be myself; my ambition
will be quenched, my desire to use the faculties my country
ordered me to exercise gone forever; the faculties themselves are
rusting out in the miserable corner of the world in which I
vegetate. Taking my chances at their best, the future seems to me
a poor thing. I have just taken advantage of a furlough to come to
Paris; I mean to change my profession and find some other way to
put my energy, my knowledge, and my activity to use. I shall send
in my resignation and go to some other country, where men of my
special capacity are wanted.

If I find I cannot do this, then I shall throw myself into the
struggle of the new doctrines, which certainly seem calculated to
produce great changes in the present social order by judiciously
guiding the working-classes. What are we now but workers without
work, tools on the shelves of a shop? We are trained and organized
as if to move the world, and nothing is given us to do. I feel
within me some great thing, which is decreasing daily, and will
soon vanish; I tell you so with mathematical frankness. Before
making the change I want your advice; I look upon myself as your
child, and I will never take any important step without consulting
you, for your experience is equal to your kindness.

I know very well that the State, after obtaining a class of
trained men, cannot undertake for them alone great public works;
there are not three hundred bridges needed a year in all France;
the State can no more build great buildings for the fame of its
engineers than it can declare war merely to win battles and bring
to the front great generals; but, then, as men of genius have
never failed to present themselves when the occasion called for
them, springing from the crowd like Vauban, can there be any
greater proof of the uselessness of the present institution? Can’t
they see that when they have stimulated a man of talent by all
those preparations he will make a fierce struggle before he allows
himself to become a nonentity? Is this good policy on the part of
the State? On the contrary, is not the State lighting the fire of
ardent ambitions, which must find fuel somewhere.

Among the six hundred young men whom they put forth every year
there are exceptions,—men who resist what may be called their
demonetization. I know some myself, and if I could tell you their
struggles with men and things when armed with useful projects and
conceptions which might bring life and prosperity to the half-dead
provinces where the State has sent them, you would feel that a man
of power, a man of talent, a man whose nature is a miracle, is a
hundredfold more unfortunate and more to be pitied than the man
whose lower nature lets him submit to the shrinkage of his
faculties.

I have made up my mind, therefore, that I would rather direct some
commercial or industrial enterprise, and live on small means while
trying to solve some of the great problems still unknown to
industry and to society, than remain at my present post.

You will tell me, perhaps, that nothing hinders me from employing
the leisure that I certainly have in using my intellectual powers
and seeking in the stillness of this commonplace life the solution
of some problem useful to humanity. Ah! monsieur, don’t you know
the influence of the provinces,—the relaxing effect of a life
just busy enough to waste time on futile labor, and not enough to
use the rich resources our education has given us? Don’t think me,
my dear protector, eaten up by the desire to make a fortune, nor
even by an insensate desire for fame. I am too much of a
calculator not to know the nothingness of glory. Neither do I want
to marry; seeing the fate now before me, I think my existence a
melancholy gift to offer any woman. As for money, though I regard
it as one of the most powerful means given to social man to act
with, it is, after all, but a means.

I place my whole desire and happiness on the hope of being useful
to my country. My greatest pleasure would be to work in some
situation suited to my faculties. If in your region, or in the
circle of your acquaintances, you should hear of any enterprise
that needed the capacities you know me to possess, think of me; I
will wait six months for your answer before taking any step.

What I have written here, dear sir and friend, others think. I
have seen many of my classmates or older graduates caught like me
in the toils of some specialty,—geographical engineers,
captain-professors, captains of engineers, who will remain captains
all their lives, and now bitterly regret they did not enter active
service with the army. Reflecting on these miserable results, I
ask myself the following questions, and I would like your opinion
on them, assuring you that they are the fruit of long meditation,
clarified in the fires of suffering:—

What is the real object of the State? Does it truly seek to obtain
fine capacities? The system now pursued directly defeats that end;
it has crated the most thorough mediocrities that any government
hostile to superiority could desire. Does it wish to give a career
to its choice minds? As a matter of fact, it affords them the
meanest opportunities; there is not a man who has issued from the
Ecoles who does not bitterly regret, when he gets to be fifty or
sixty years of age, that he ever fell into the trap set for him by
the promises of the State. Does it seek to obtain men of genius?
What man of genius, what great talent have the schools produced
since 1790? If it had not been for Napoleon would Cachin, the man
of genius to whom France owes Cherbourg, have existed? Imperial
despotism brought him forward; the constitutional regime would
have smothered him. How many men from the Ecoles are to be found
in the Academy of Sciences? Possibly two or three. The man of
genius develops always outside of the technical schools. In the
sciences which those schools teach genius obeys only its own laws;
it will not develop except under conditions which man cannot
control; neither the State nor the science of mankind,
anthropology, understands them. Riquet, Perronet, Leonardo da
Vinci, Cachin, Palladio, Brunelleschi, Michel-Angelo, Bramante,
Vauban, Vicat, derive their genius from causes unobserved and
preparatory, which we call chance,—the pet word of fools. Never,
with or without schools, are mighty workmen such as these wanting
to their epoch.

Now comes the question, Does the State gain through these
institutions the better doing of its works of public utility, or
the cheaper doing of them? As for that, I answer that private
enterprises of a like kind get on very well without the help of
our engineers; and next, the government works are the most
extravagant in the world, and the additional cost of the vast
administrative staff of the Ponts et Chaussees is immense. In
all other countries, in Germany, England, Italy, where
institutions like ours do not exist, works of this character are
better done and far less costly than in France. Those three
nations are remarkable for new and useful inventions in this line.
I know it is the fashion to say, in speaking of our Ecoles, that
all Europe envies them; but for the last fifteen years Europe,
which closely observes us, has not established others like them.
England, that clever calculator, has better schools among her
working population, from which come practical men who show their
genius the moment they rise from practice to theory. Stephenson
and MacAdam did not come from schools like ours.

But what is the good of talking? When a few young and able
engineers, full of ardor, solve, at the outset of their career,
the problem of maintaining the roads of France, which need some
hundred millions spent upon them every quarter of a century (and
which are now in a pitiable state), they gain nothing by making
known in reports and memoranda their intelligent knowledge; it is
immediately engulfed in the archives of the general Direction,—
that Parisian centre where everything enters and nothing issues;
where old men are jealous of young ones, and all the posts of
management are used to shelve old officers or men who have
blundered.

This is why, with a body of scientific men spread all over the
face of France and constituting a part of the administration,—a
body which ought to enlighten every region on the subject of its
resources,—this is why we are still discussing the practicability
of railroads while other countries are making theirs. If ever
France was to show the excellence of her institution of technical
schools, it should have been in this magnificent phase of public
works, which is destined to change the face of States and nations,
to double human life, and modify the laws of space and time.
Belgium, the United States of America, England, none of whom have
an Ecole Polytechnique, will be honeycombed with railroads when
French engineers are still surveying ours, and selfish interests,
hidden behind all projects, are hindering their execution.

Thus I say that as for the State, it derives no benefit from its
technical schools; as for the individual pupil of those schools,
his earnings are poor, his ambition crushed, and his life a cruel
deception. Most assuredly the powers he has displayed between
sixteen and twenty-six years of age would, if he had been cast
upon his own resources, have brought him more fame and more wealth
than the government in whom he trusted will ever give him. As a
commercial man, a learned man, a military man, this choice
intellect would have worked in a vast centre where his precious
faculties and his ardent ambition would not be idiotically and
prematurely repressed.

Where, then, is progress? Man and State are both kept backward by
this system. Does not the experience of a whole generation demand
a reform in the practical working of these institutions? The duty
of culling from all France during each generation the choice minds
destined to become the learned and the scientific of the nation is
a sacred office, the priests of which, the arbiters of so many
fates, should be trained by special study. Mathematical knowledge
is perhaps less necessary to them than physiological knowledge.
And do you not think that they need a little of that second-sight
which is the witchcraft of great men? As it is, the examiners are
former professors, honorable men grown old in harness, who limit
their work to selecting the best themes. They are unable to do
what is really demanded of them; and yet their functions are the
noblest in the State and demand extraordinary men.

Do not think, dear sir and friend, that I blame only the Ecole
itself; no, I blame the system by which it is recruited. This
system is the concours, competition,—a modern invention,
essentially bad; bad not only in science, but wherever it is
employed, in arts, in all selections of men, of projects, of
things. If it is a reproach to our great Ecoles that they have not
produced men superior to other educational establishments, it is
still more shameful that the grand prix of the Institute has not
as yet furnished a single great painter, great musician, great
architect, great sculptor; just as the suffrage for the last
twenty years has not elected out of its tide of mediocrities a
single great statesman. My observation makes me detect, as I
think, an error which vitiates in France both education and
politics. It is a cruel error, and it rests on the following
principle, which organizers have misconceived:—

Nothing, either in experience or in the nature of things, can
give a certainty that the intellectual qualities of the adult
youth will be those of the mature man.
At this moment I am intimate with a number of distinguished men
who concern themselves with all the moral maladies which are now
afflicting France. They see, as I do, that our highest education
is manufacturing temporary capacities,—temporary because they
are without exercise and without future; that such education is
without profit to the State because it is devoid of the vigor of
belief and feeling. Our whole system of public education needs
overhauling, and the work should be presided over by some man of
great knowledge, powerful will, and gifted with that legislative
genius which has never been met with among moderns, except perhaps
in Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Possibly our superfluous numbers might be employed in giving
elementary instruction so much needed by the people. The
deplorable amount of crime and misdemeanors shows a social disease
directly arising from the half-education given the masses, which
tends to the destruction of social ties by making the people
reflect just enough to desert the religious beliefs which are
favorable to social order, and not enough to lift them to the
theory of obedience and duty, which is the highest reach of the
new transcendental philosophy. But as it is impossible to make a
whole nation study Kant, therefore I say fixed beliefs and habits
are safer for the masses than shallow studies and reasoning.

If I had my life to begin over again, perhaps I would enter a
seminary and become a simple village priest, or the teacher of a
country district. But I am too far advanced in my profession now
to be a mere primary instructor; I can, if I leave my present
post, act in a wider range than that of a school or a country
parish. The Saint-Simonians, to whom I have been tempted to ally
myself, want now to take a course in which I cannot follow them.
Nevertheless, in spite of their mistakes, they have touched on
many of the sore spots which are the fruits of our present
legislation, and which the State will only doctor by insufficient
palliatives,—merely delaying in France the moral and political
crisis that must come.

Adieu, dear Monsieur Grossetete; accept the assurance of my
respectful attachment, which, notwithstanding all these
observations, can only increase.

According to his old habit as a banker, Grossetete had jotted down his reply on the back of the letter itself, heading it with the sacramental word, Answered.

It is useless, my dear Gerard, to discuss the observations made in
your letter, because by a trick of chance (I use the term which
is, as you say, the pet word of fools) I have a proposal to make
to you which may result in withdrawing you from the situation you
find so bad. Madame Graslin, the owner of the forests of Montegnac
and of a barren plateau extending from the base of a chain of
mountains on which are the forests, wishes to improve this vast
domain, to clear her timber properly, and cultivate the stony
plain.

To put this project into execution she needs a man of your
scientific knowledge and ardor, and one who has also your
disinterested devotion and your ideas of practical utility. It
will be little money and much work! a great result from small
means! a whole region to be changed fundamentally! barren places
to be made to gush with plenty! Isn’t that precisely what you
want,—you who are dreaming of constructing a poem? From the tone
of sincerity which pervades your letter, I do not hesitate to bid
you come and see me at Limoges. But, my good friend, don’t send in
your resignation yet; get leave of absence only, and tell your
administration that you are going to study questions connected
with your profession outside of the government works. In this way,
you will not lose your rights, and you will have time to judge for
yourself whether the project conceived by the rector of Montegnac
and approved by Madame Graslin is feasible.

I will explain to you by word of mouth the advantages you will
find in case this great scheme can be carried out. Rely on the
friendship of

Madame Graslin replied to Grossetete in few words: “Thank you, my friend; I shall expect your protege.” She showed the letter to the rector, saying,—

The rector read the letter, reread it, made two or three turns on the terrace silently; then he gave it back to Madame Graslin, saying,—

“A fine soul, and a superior man. He says the schools invented by the genius of the Revolution manufacture incapacities. For my part, I say they manufacture unbelievers; for if Monsieur Gerard is not an atheist, he is a protestant.”

XVII. THE REVOLUTION OF JULY JUDGED AT MONTEGNAC

A fortnight later, in December, and in spite of the cold, Monsieur Grossetete came to the chateau de Montegnac, to “present his protege,” whom Veronique and Monsieur Bonnet were impatiently awaiting.

“I must love you very much, my dear child,” said the old man, taking Veronique’s two hands in his, and kissing them with that gallantry of old men which never displeases women, “yes, I must love you well, to come from Limoges in such weather. But I wanted to present to you myself the gift of Monsieur Gregoire Gerard here present. You’ll find him a man after your own heart, Monsieur Bonnet,” added the banker, bowing affectionately to the rector.

Gerard’s external appearance was not prepossessing. He was of middle height, stocky in shape, the neck sunk in the shoulders, as they say vulgarly; he had yellow hair, and the pink eyes of an albino, with lashes and eyebrows almost white. Though his skin, like that of all persons of that description, was amazingly white, marks of the small-box and other very visible scars had destroyed its original brilliancy. Study had probably injured his sight, for he wore glasses.

When he removed the great cloak of a gendarme in which he was wrapped, it was seen that his clothing did not improve his general appearance. The manner in which his garments were put on and buttoned, his untidy cravat, his rumpled shirt, were signs of the want of personal care with which men of science, all more or less absent-minded, are charged. As in the case of most thinkers, his countenance and his attitude, the development of his bust and the thinness of his legs, betrayed a sort of bodily debility produced by habits of meditation. Nevertheless, the ardor of his heart and the vigor of his mind, proofs of which were given in this letter, gleamed from his forehead, which was white as Carrara marble. Nature seemed to have reserved to herself that spot in order to place there visible signs of the grandeur, constancy, and goodness of the man. The nose, like that of most men of the true Gallic race, was flattened. His mouth, firm and straight, showed absolute discretion and the instinct of economy. But the whole mask, worn by study, looked prematurely old.

“We must begin by thanking you, monsieur,” said Madame Graslin, addressing the engineer, “for being willing to direct an enterprise in a part of the country which can offer you no other pleasure than the satisfaction of knowing that you are doing a real good.”

“Madame,” he replied, “Monsieur Grossetete has told me enough about your enterprise as we came along to make me already glad that I can in any way be useful to you; the prospect of living in close relations with you and Monsieur Bonnet seems to me charming. Unless I am dismissed from this region, I expect to end my days here.”

“We will try not to let you change your mind,” replied Madame Graslin, smiling.

“Here,” said Grossetete, addressing Veronique, whom he took aside, “are the papers which the procureur-general gave to me. He was quite surprised that you did not address your inquiry about Catherine Curieux to him. All that you wished has been done immediately, with the utmost promptitude and devotion. Three months hence Catherine Curieux will be sent to you.”

“She is now in the hospital Saint-Louis,” replied the old man; “they are awaiting her recovery before sending her from Paris.”

“You will find all necessary information in these papers,” said Grossetete, giving Veronique a packet.

Madame Graslin returned to her guests to conduct them into the magnificent dining-room on the ground-floor. She sat at table, but did not herself take part in the dinner; since her arrival at Montegnac she had made it a rule to take her meals alone, and Aline, who knew the reason of this withdrawal, faithfully kept the secret of it till her mistress was in danger of death.

The doctor, a young man twenty-seven years of age, named Roubaud, was extremely desirous of knowing a woman so celebrated in Limoges. The rector was all the more pleased to present him at the chateau because he wanted to gather a little society around Veronique to distract her mind and give it food. Roubaud was one of those thoroughly well-trained young physicians whom the Ecole de Medecine in Paris sends forth to the profession. He would undoubtedly have shone on the vast stage of the capital; but frightened by the clash of ambitions in Paris, and knowing himself more capable than pushing, more learned than intriguing, his gentle disposition led him to choose the narrow career of the provinces, where he hoped to be sooner appreciated than in Paris.

At Limoges, Roubaud came in contact with the settled practice of the regular physicians and the habits of the people; he therefore let himself be persuaded by Monsieur Bonnet, who, judging by the gentle and winning expression of his face, thought him well-suited to co-operate in his own work at Montegnac. Roubaud was small and fair; his general appearance was rather insipid, but his gray eyes betrayed the depths of the physiologist and the patient tenacity of a studious man. There was no physician in Montegnac except an old army-surgeon, more devoted to his cellar than to his patients, and too old to continue with any vigor the hard life of a country doctor. At the present time he was dying.

Roubaud had been in Montegnac about eighteen months, and was much liked there. But this young pupil of Desplein and the successors of Cabanis did not believe in Catholicism. He lived in a state of profound indifference as to religion, and did not desire to come out of it. The rector was in despair. Not that Roubaud did any wrong; he never spoke against religion, and his duties were excuse enough for his absence from church; besides, he was incapable of trying to undermine the faith of others, and indeed behaved outwardly as the best of Catholics; he simply prohibited himself from thinking of a problem which he considered above the range of human thought. When the rector heard him say that pantheism had been the religion of all great minds he set him down as inclining to the doctrine of Pythagoras on reincarnation.

Roubaud, who saw Madame Graslin for the first time, experienced a violent sensation when he met her. Science revealed to him in her expression, her attitude, in the ravages of her face, untold sufferings both moral and physical, a nature of almost superhuman force, great faculties which would support her under the most conflicting trials; he detected all,—even the darkest corners of that nature so carefully hidden. He felt that some evil, some malady, was devouring the heart of that fine creature; for just as the color of a fruit shows the presence of a worm within it, so certain tints in the human face enable physicians to detect a poisoning thought.

From this moment Monsieur Roubaud attached himself so deeply to Madame Graslin that he became afraid of loving her beyond the permitted line of simple friendship. The brow, the bearing, above all, the glance of Veronique’s eye had a sort of eloquence that men invariably understand; it said as plainly that she was dead to love as other women say the contrary by a reversal of the same eloquence. The doctor suddenly vowed to her, in his heart, a chivalrous worship.

He exchanged a rapid glance with the rector, who thought to himself, “Here’s the thunderbolt which will convert my poor unbeliever; Madame Graslin will have more eloquence than I.”

The mayor, an old countryman, amazed at the luxury of this dining-room and surprised to find himself dining with one of the richest men in the department, had put on his best clothes, which rather hampered him, and this increased his mental awkwardness. Moreover, Madame Graslin in her mourning garments seemed to him very imposing; he was therefore mute. After living all his life as a farmer at Saint-Leonard, he had bought the only habitable house in Montegnac and cultivated with his own hands the land belonging to it. Though he knew how to read and write, he would have been incapable of fulfilling his functions were it not for the help of his clerk and the juge de paix, who prepared his work for him. He was very anxious to have a notary established in Montegnac, in order that he might shift the burden of his responsibility on to that officer’s shoulders. But the poverty of the village and its outlying districts made such a functionary almost useless, and the inhabitants had recourse when necessary to the notaries of the chief town of the arrondissement.

The juge de paix, named Clousier, was formerly a lawyer in Limoges, where cases had deserted him because he insisted on putting into practice that fine axiom that the lawyer is the best judge of the client and the case. In 1809 he obtained his present post, the meagre salary of which just enabled him to live. He had now reached a stage of honorable but absolute poverty. After a residence of twenty-one years in this poor village the worthy man, thoroughly countrified, looked, top-coat and all, exactly like the farmers about him.

Under this coarse exterior Clousier hid a clear-sighted mind, given to lofty meditation on public policy, though he himself had fallen into a state of complete indifference, derived from his intimate knowledge of men and their interests. This man, who baffled for a long time the rector’s perspicacity and who might in a higher sphere have proved another l’Hopital, incapable of intrigue like all really profound persons, was by this time living in the contemplative state of an ancient hermit. Independent through privation, no personal consideration acted on his mind; he knew the laws and judged impartially. His life, reduced to the merest necessaries, was pure and regular. The peasants loved Monsieur Clousier and respected him for the disinterested fatherly care with which he settled their differences and gave them advice in their daily affairs. The “goodman Clousier” as all Montegnac called him, had a nephew with him as clerk, an intelligent young man, who afterwards contributed much to the prosperity of the district.

Old Clousier’s personal appearance was remarkable for a broad, high forehead and two bushes of white hair which stood out from his head on either side of it. His highly colored complexion and well-developed corpulence might have made persons think, in spite of his actual sobriety, that he cultivated Bacchus as well as Troplong and Toullier. His half-extinct voice was the sign of an oppressive asthma. Perhaps the dry air of Montegnac had contributed to fix him there. He lived in a house arranged for him by a well-to-do cobbler to whom it belonged. Clousier had already seen Veronique at church, and he had formed his opinion of her without communicating it to any one, not even to Monsieur Bonnet, with whom he was beginning to be intimate. For the first time in his life the juge de paix was to be thrown in with persons able to appreciate him.

When the company were seated round a table handsomely appointed (for Veronique had sent all her household belongings from Limoges to Montegnac) the six guests felt a momentary embarrassment. The doctor, the mayor and the juge de paix knew nothing of Grossetete and Gerard. But during the first course, old Grossetete’s hearty good-humor broke the ice of a first meeting. In addition to this, Madame Graslin’s cordiality led on Gerard, and encouraged Roubaud. Under her touch these souls full of fine qualities recognized their relation, and felt they had entered a sympathetic circle. So, by the time the dessert appeared on the table, when the glass and china with gilded edges sparkled, and the choicer wines were served by Aline and Champion and Grossetete’s valet, the conversation became sufficiently confidential to allow these four choice minds, thus meeting by chance, to express their real thoughts on matters of importance, such as men like to discuss when they can do so and be sure of the discretion of their companions.

“Your furlough came just in time to let you witness the revolution of July,” said Grossetete to Gerard, with an air as if he asked an opinion of him.

“Yes,” replied the engineer. “I was in Paris during the three famous days. I saw all; and I came to sad conclusions.”

“There is no longer any patriotism except under dirty shirts,” replied Gerard. “In that lies the ruin of France! July was the voluntary defeat of all superiorities,—name, fortune, talent. The ardent, devoted masses carried the day against the rich and the intelligent, to whom ardor and devotion are repugnant.”

“To judge by what has happened during the past year,” said Monsieur Clousier, “this change of government is simply a premium given to an evil that is sapping us,—individualism. Fifteen years hence all questions of a generous nature will be met by, What is that to me?—the great cry of Freedom of Will descending from the religious heights where Luther, Calvin, Zwinglius, and Knox introduced it, into even political economy. Every one for himself; every man his own master,—those two terrible axioms form, with the What is that to me? a trinity of wisdom to the burgher and the small land-owner. This egotism results from the vices of our present civil legislation (too hastily made), to which the revolution of July has just given a terrible confirmation.”

The juge de paix fell back into his usual silence after thus expressing himself; but the topics he suggested must have occupied the minds of those present. Emboldened by Clousier’s words, and moved by the look which Gerard exchanged with Grossetete, Monsieur Bonnet ventured to go further.

“The good King Charles X.,” he said, “has just failed in the most far-sighted and salutary enterprise a monarch ever planned for the welfare of the people confided to him; and the Church ought to feel proud of the part she took in his councils. But the upper classes deserted him in heart and mind, just as they had already deserted him on the great question of the law of primogeniture,—the lasting honor of the only bold statesman the Restoration has produced, namely, the Comte de Peyronnet. To reconstitute the nation through the family; to take from the press its venomous action and confine it to its real usefulness; to recall the elective Chamber to its true functions; and to restore to religion its power over the people,—such were the four cardinal points of the internal policy of the house of Bourbon. Well, twenty years from now all France will have recognized the necessity of that grand and sound policy. Charles X. was in greater peril in the situation he chose to leave than in that in which his paternal power has been defeated. The future of our noble country—where all things will henceforth be brought periodically into question, where our rulers will discuss incessantly instead of acting, where the press, become a sovereign power, will be the instrument of base ambitions—this future will only prove the wisdom of the king who has just carried away with him the true principles of government; and history will bear in mind the courage with which he resisted his best friends after having probed the wound and seen the necessity of curative measures, which were not sustained by those for whose sake he put himself into the breach.”

“Ah! monsieur,” cried Gerard, “you are frank; you go straight to your thought without disguise, and I won’t contradict you. Napoleon in his Russian campaign was forty years in advance of the spirit of his age; he was never understood. The Russia and England of 1830 explains the campaign of 1812. Charles X. has been misunderstood in the same way. It is quite possible that in twenty-five years from now his ordinances may become the laws of the land.”

“France, too eloquent not to gabble, too full of vanity to bow down before real talent, is, in spite of the sublime good sense of its language and the mass of its people, the very last nation in which two deliberative chambers should have been attempted,” said the juge de paix. “Or, at any rate, the weaknesses of our national character should have been guarded against by the admirable restrictions which Napoleon’s experience laid upon them. Our present system may succeed in a country whose action is circumscribed by the nature of its soil, like England; but the law of primogeniture applied to the transmission of land is absolutely necessary; when that law is suppressed the system of legislative representation becomes absurd. England owes her existence to the quasi-feudal law which entails landed property and family mansions on the eldest son. Russia is based on the feudal right of autocracy. Consequently those two nations are to-day on the high-road of startling progress. Austria could only resist our invasions and renew the way against Napoleon by virtue of that law of primogeniture which preserves in the family the active forces of a nation, and supplies the great productions necessary to the State. The house of Bourbon, feeling that it was slipping to the third rank in Europe, by reason of liberalism, wanted to regain its rightful place and there maintain itself, and the nation has thrown it over at the very time it was about to save the nation. I am sure I don’t know how low down the present system will drop us.”

“If we have a war, France will be without horses, as Napoleon was in 1813, when, being reduced to those of France only, he could not profit by his two victories of Lutzen and Botzen, and so was crushed at Leipzig,” cried Grossetete. “If peace continues, the evil will only increase. Twenty-five years from now the race of cattle and horses will have diminished in France by one half.”

“Monsieur Grossetete is right,” remarked Gerard. “So that the work you are undertaking here, madame,” he added, addressing Veronique, “is really a service done to the country.”

“Yes,” said the juge de paix, “because Madame has but one son, and the inheritance will not be divided up; but how long will that condition last? For a certain length of time the magnificent culture which you are about to introduce will, let us hope, belong to only one proprietor, who will continue to breed horned beasts and horses; but sooner or later the day must come when these forests and fields will be divided up and sold in small parcels. Divided and redivided, the six thousand acres of that plain will have a thousand or twelve hundred owners, and thenceforth—no more horses and cattle!”

“There! don’t you hear the What is that to me? Monsieur Clousier talked of?” cried Monsieur Grossetete. “Taken in the act! But, monsieur,” resumed the banker, gravely addressing the dumfounded mayor, “those days have really come. In a radius of thirty miles round Paris the land is so divided up into small holdings that milch cows are no longer seen. The Commune of Argenteuil contains thirty-eight thousand eight hundred and eighty-five parcels of land, many of which do not return a farthing of revenue. If it were not for the rich refuse of Paris, which produces a fodder of strong quality, I don’t know how dairymen would get along. As it is, this over-stimulating food and confinement in close stables produce inflammatory diseases, of which the cows often die. They use cows in the neighborhood of Paris as they do horses in the street. Crops more profitable than hay—vegetables, fruit, apple orchards, vineyards—are taking the place of meadow-lands. In a few years we shall see milk sent to Paris by the mail-coaches as they now send fish. What is going on around Paris is also going on round all the large cities of France; the land will thus be used up before many years are gone. Chaptel states that in 1800 there were barely two million acres of vineyard in France; a careful estimate would give ten million to-day. Divided ad infinitum by our present system of inheritance, Normandy will lose half her production of horses and cattle; but she will have a monopoly of milk in Paris, for her climate, happily, forbids grape culture. We shall soon see a curious phenomenon in the progressive rise in the cost of meat. In twenty years from now, in 1850, Paris, which paid seven to eleven sous for a pound of beef in 1814, will be paying twenty—unless there comes a man of genius who can carry out the plan of Charles X.”

“You have laid your finger on the mortal wound of France,” said the juge de paix. “The root of our evils lies in the section relating to inheritance in the Civil Code, in which the equal division of property among heirs is ordained. That’s the pestle that pounds territory into crumbs, individualizes fortunes, and takes from them their needful stability; decomposing ever and never recomposing,—a state of things which must end in the ruin of France. The French Revolution emitted a destructive virus to which the July days have given fresh activity. This vitiating element is the accession of the peasantry to the ownership of land. In the section ‘On Inheritance’ is the principle of the evil, the peasant is the means through which it works. No sooner does that class get a parcel of land into its maw than it begins to subdivide it, till there are scarcely three furrows left in each lot. And even then the peasant does not stop! He divides the three furrows across their length, as Monsieur Grossetete has just shown us at Argenteuil. The unreasonable price which the peasant attaches to the smallest scrap of his land makes it impossible to repurchase and restore a fine estate. Monsieur,” he went on, indicating Grossetete, “has just mentioned the diminution in the raising of horses and cattle; well, the Code has much to do with that. The peasant-proprietor owns cows; he looks to them for his means of living; he sells the calves, he sells his butter; he never dreams of raising cattle, still less of raising horses; but as he cannot raise enough fodder to support his cows through a dry season, he sends them to market when he can feed them no longer. If by some fatal chance the hay were to fail for two years running, you would see a startling change the third year in the price of beef, but especially in that of veal.”

“That may put a stop to ‘patriotic banquets,’” said the doctor, laughing.

“Oh!” exclaimed Madame Graslin, looking at Roubaud, “can’t politics get on without the wit of journalism, even here?”

“In this lamentable business, the bourgeoisie plays the same role as the pioneers of America,” continued Clousier. “It buys up great estates, which the peasantry could not otherwise acquire. It cuts them up and then sells, either at auction or in small lots at private sale, to the peasants. Everything is judged by figures in these days, and I know none more eloquent than these. France has ninety-nine million acres, which, subtracting highways, roads, dunes, canals, and barren, uncultivated regions deserted by capital, may be reduced to eighty millions. Now out of eighty millions of acres to thirty-two millions of inhabitants we find one hundred and twenty-five millions of small lots registered on the tax-list (I don’t give fractions). Thus, you will observe, we have gone to the utmost limit of agrarian law, and yet we have not seen the last of poverty or dissatisfaction. Those who divide territory into fragments and lessen production have, of course, plenty of organs to cry out that true social justice consists in giving every man a life interest, and no more, in a parcel of land; perpetual ownership, they say, is robbery. The Saint-Simonians are already proclaiming that doctrine.”

“The magistrate has spoken,” said Grossetete, “and here’s what the banker adds to those bold considerations. The fact that the peasantry and the lesser bourgeoisie can now acquire land does France an injury which the government seems not even to suspect. We may estimate the number of peasant families, omitting paupers, at three millions. These families subsist on wages. Wages are paid in money, and not in kind—”

“Yes, that’s another blunder of our laws!” cried Clousier, interrupting the banker. “The right to pay in kind might have been granted in 1790; now, if we attempted to carry such a law, we should risk a revolution.”

“Therefore, as I was about to say, the proletary draws to himself the money of the country,” resumed Grossetete. “Now the peasant has no other passion, desire, or will, than to die a land-owner. This desire, as Monsieur Clousier has well shown, was born of the Revolution, and is the direct result of the sale of the National domain. A man must be ignorant indeed of what is going on all over France in the country regions if he is not aware that these three million families are yearly hoarding at least fifty francs, thus subtracting a hundred and fifty millions from current use. The science of political economy has made it an axiom that a five-franc piece, passing through a hundred hands in one day, is equivalent to five hundred francs. Now, it is perfectly plain to all of us who live in the country and observe the state of affairs, that every peasant has his eye on the land he covets; he is watching and waiting for it, and he never invests his savings elsewhere; he buries them. In seven years the savings thus rendered inert and unproductive amount to eleven hundred million francs. But since the lesser bourgeoisie bury as much more, with the same purpose, France loses every seven years the interest of at least two thousand millions,—that is to say, about one hundred millions; a loss which in forty-two years amounts to six hundred million francs. But she not only loses six hundred millions, she fails to create with that money manufacturing or agricultural products, which represent a loss of twelve hundred millions; for, if the manufactured product were not double in value to its cost price, commerce could not exist. The proletariat actually deprives itself of six hundred millions in wages. These six hundred millions of dead loss (representing to a stern economist a loss of twelve hundred millions, through lack of the benefits of circulation) explain the condition of inferiority in which our commerce, our merchant service, and our agriculture stand, as compared with England. In spite of the difference of the two territories, which is more than two thirds in our favor, England could remount the cavalry of two French armies, and she has meat for every man. But there, as the system of landed property makes it almost impossible for the lower classes to obtain it, money is not hoarded; it becomes commercial, and is turned over. Thus, besides the evil of parcelling the land, involving that of the diminution of horses, cattle, and sheep, the section of the Code on inheritance costs us six hundred millions of interest, lost by the hoarding of the money of the peasantry and bourgeoisie, and twelve hundred millions, at least, of products; or, including the loss from non-circulation, three thousand millions in half a century!”

“The moral effect is worse than the material effect,” cried the rector. “We are making beggar-proprietors among the people and half-taught communities of the lesser bourgeoisie; and the fatal maxim ‘Each for himself,’ which had its effect upon the upper classes in July of this year, will soon have gangrened the middle classes. A proletariat devoid of sentiment, with no other god than envy, no other fanaticism than the despair of hunger, without faith, without belief, will come forward before long and put its foot on the heart of the nation. Foreigners, who have thriven under monarchical rule, will find that, having royalty, we have no king; having legality, we have no laws; having property, no owners; no government with our elections, no force with freedom, no happiness with equality. Let us hope that before that day comes God may raise up in France a providential man, one of those Elect who give a new mind to nations, and like Sylla or like Marius, whether he comes from above or rises from below, remakes society.”

“He would be sent to the assizes,” said Gerard. “The sentence pronounced against Socrates and Jesus Christ would be rendered against them in 1831. In these days as in the old days, envious mediocrity lets thinkers die of poverty, and so gets rid of the great political physicians who have studied the wounds of France, and who oppose the tendencies of their epoch. If they bear up under poverty, common minds ridicule them or call them dreamers. In France, men revolt in the moral world against the great man of the future, just as they revolt in the political world against a sovereign.”

“In the olden time sophists talked to a limited number of men; to-day the periodical press enables them to lead astray a nation,” cried the juge de paix; “and that portion of the press which pleads for right ideas finds no echo.”

The mayor looked at Monsieur Clousier in amazement. Madame Graslin, glad to find in a simple juge de paix a man whose mind was occupied with serious questions, said to Monsieur Roubaud, her neighbor, “Do you know Monsieur Clousier?”

“Not rightly until to-day, madame. You are doing miracles,” he answered in a whisper. “And yet, look at his brow, how noble in shape! Isn’t it like the classic or traditional brow given by sculptors to Lycurgus and the Greek sages? The revolution of July has an evidently retrograde tendency,” said the doctor (who might in his student days have made a barricade himself), after carefully considering Grossetete’s calculation.

“These ideas are threefold,” continued Clousier. “You have talked of law and finance, but how is it with the government itself? The royal power, weakened by the doctrine of national sovereignty, in virtue of which the election of August 9, 1830, has just been made, will endeavor to counteract that rival principle which gives to the people the right to saddle the nation with a new dynasty every time it does not fully comprehend the ideas of its king. You will see that we shall then have internal struggles which will arrest for long periods together the progress of France.”

“All these reefs have been wisely evaded by England,” remarked Gerard. “I have been there; I admire that beehive, which sends its swarms over the universe and civilizes mankind,—a people among whom discussion is a political comedy, which satisfies the masses and hides the action of power, which then works freely in its upper sphere; a country where elections are not in the hands of a stupid bourgeoisie, as they are in France. If England were parcelled out into small holdings the nation would no longer exist. The land-owning class, the lords, guide the social mechanism. Their merchant-service, under the nose of Europe, takes possession of whole regions of the globe to meet the needs of their commerce and to get rid of their paupers and malcontents. Instead of fighting capacities, as we do, thwarting them, nullifying them, the English aristocratic class seeks out young talent, rewards it, and is constantly assimilating it. Everything which concerns the action of the government, in the choice of men and things, is prompt in England, whereas with us all is slow; and yet the English are slow by nature, while we are impatient. With them money is bold and actively employed; with us it is timid and suspicious. What Monsieur Grossetete has said of the industrial losses which the hoarding peasantry inflict on France has its proof in a fact I will show to you in two words: English capital, by its perpetual turning over, has created ten thousand millions of manufacturing and interest-bearing property; whereas French capital, which is far more abundant, has not created one tenth of that amount.”

“And that is all the more extraordinary,” said Roubaud, “because they are lymphatic, and we, as a general thing, are sanguine and energetic.”

“Ah! monsieur,” said Clousier, “there you touch a great question, which ought to be studied: How to find institutions properly adapted to repress the temperament of a people! Assuredly Cromwell was a great legislator. He alone made the England of to-day, by inventing the ‘Navigation Act,’ which has made the English enemies of all the world, and infused into them a ferocious pride and self-conceit, which is their mainstay. But, in spite of their Malta citadel, if France and Russia will only comprehend the part the Mediterranean and the Black Sea ought to be made to play in the future, the road to Asia through Egypt or by the Euphrates, made feasible by recent discoveries, will kill England, as in former times the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope killed Venice.”

“Not one word of God’s providence in all this!” cried the rector. “Monsieur Clousier and Monsieur Roubaud are oblivious of religion. How is it with you, monsieur?” he added, turning to Gerard.

“You guessed it,” cried Veronique, looking at the rector as she took Clousier’s arm to return to the salon.

The prejudice Gerard’s appearance excited against him had been quickly dispelled, and the three notables congratulated themselves on so good an acquisition.

“Unfortunately,” said Monsieur Bonnet, “there is a cause of antagonism between Russia and the Catholic countries which border the Mediterranean, in the very unimportant schism which separates the Greek religion from the Latin religion; and it is a great misfortune for humanity.”

“We all preach our own saint,” said Madame Graslin. “Monsieur Grossetete thinks of the lost millions; Monsieur Clousier, of the overthrow of rights; the doctor here regards legislation as a question of temperaments; and the rector sees an obstacle to the good understanding of France and Russia in religion.”

“Add to that, madame,” said Gerard, “that I see, in the hoarding of capital by the peasant and the small burgher, the postponement of the building of railroads in France.”

“We want the wise State councillors who, under the Emperor, reflected on the laws, and a legislative body elected by the intelligence of the country as well as by the land-owners, whose only function would be to oppose bad legislation and capricious wars. The Chamber, as constituted to-day, will proceed, as you will soon see, to govern, and that is the first step to legal anarchy.”

“Good God!” cried the rector, in a flush of sacred patriotism, “how can such enlightened minds as these,” and he motioned to Clousier, Roubaud, and Gerard, “how can they see evil so clearly and suggest remedies without first looking within and applying a remedy to themselves? All of you, who represent the attacked classes, recognize the necessity of the passive obedience of the masses of the State, like that of soldiers during a war; you want the unity of power, and you desire that it shall never be brought into question. What England has obtained by the development of her pride and self-interest (a part of her creed) cannot be obtained in France but through sentiments due to Catholicism, and none of you are Catholics! Here am I, a priest, obliged to leave my own ground and argue with arguers. How can you expect the masses to become religious and obedient when they see irreligion and want of discipline above them? All peoples united by any faith whatever will inevitably get the better of peoples without any faith at all. The law of public interest, which gives birth to patriotism, is destroyed by the law of private interest, which it sanctions, but which gives birth to selfishness. There is nothing solid and durable but that which is natural; and the natural thing in human policy is the Family. The family must be the point of departure for all institutions. A universal effect proves a universal cause; and what you have just been setting forth as evident on all sides comes from the social principle itself; which is now without force because it has taken for its basis independence of thought and will, and such freedom is the parent of individualism. To make happiness depend on the stability, intelligence, and capacity of all is not as wise as to make happiness depend on the stability and intelligence of institutions and the capacity of a single head. It is easier to find wisdom in one man than in a whole nation. Peoples have heart and no eyes; they feel, and see not. Governments ought to see, and not determine anything through sentiment. There is, therefore, an evident contradiction between the impulses of the multitude and the action of power whose function it is to direct and unify those impulses. To meet with a great prince is certainly a rare chance (to use your term), but to trust to a whole assembly, even though it is composed of honest men only, is folly. France is committing that folly at this moment. Alas! you are just as much convinced of that as I am. If all right-minded men, like yourselves, would only set an example around them, if all intelligent hands would raise, in the great republic of souls, the altars of the one Church which has set the interests of humanity before her, we might again behold in France the miracles our fathers did here.”