r. Rockstrong, who was a sensible man, bore my good master no malice for his sincerity of speech. When the landlord of the Petit Bacchus had brought a pot of wine, the pamphleteer lifted his glass and drank to Abbé Coignard's health, calling him a rogue, a friend of robbers, a tool of tyrants and an old scamp! all with quite a jovial air.
My master returned his compliments with a good grace, congratulating him on the fact that he drank to a man whose natural humour had remained unaffected by philosophy.
"As for myself," he added, "I feel that my intelligence is quite spoilt by reflection. And as it is not in the nature of mankind to think with any profundity, I own that my leaning to thought is an odd mania and highly inconvenient. In the first place it makes me unfit for any undertaking, for our actions result from a limited outlook and narrow way of thinking. You will be astonished, Mr. Rockstrong, if you picture to yourself the simple-mindedness of the men of genius who have stirred the world. Conquerors and statesmen, who have changed the face of the earth, have never reflected on the essence of the beings they handled so roughly. They shut themselves up altogether in the pettiness of their grand projects and the wisest see but very few things at a time. Such as you see me, Mr. Rockstrong, it would be impossible for me to work like Alexander at the conquest of India, or to found and govern an empire, or, generally speaking, to throw myself into any one of those vast undertakings which tempt the pride of the impetuous. Reflection would hamper me, from the outset, and I should find reasons for coming to a stop at every move I made."
Then turning to me my good master said sighing:
"Thought is a great infirmity, God keep you from it Tournebroche, my son, as He has kept His greatest saints, and the souls for whom He cherishes a singular predilection, and for whom He reserves eternal glory. Men who think little, or who think not at all, go about their business happily in this world and the next, whilst the meditative soul is incessantly menaced with its temporal and spiritual loss. Such malice lies in thought! Reflect and tremble, my son, at the thought that the serpent of Genesis is the oldest of philosophers and their everlasting prince."
Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard drank a great draught of wine and went on in a low voice:
"As regards my salvation, that is a subject to which I have never applied my intelligence. I have never exercised my reason on the truths of the Faith. Unhappily, I have meditated the deeds of men and the ways of cities; therefore I am no longer fit to govern an Island, as was Sancho Panza."
"That is a very good thing," retorted Mr. Rockstrong, laughingly, "for your isle would be a retreat for bandits and vagabonds where the criminal would judge the innocent, if perchance there were any.
"I well believe it! Mr. Rockstrong, I well believe it!" answered my good master! "It is quite possible that, if I were to govern another island of Barataria, manners would be as you say. With one stroke you have depicted all the empires of the world. I feel that mine would be no better than the rest. I have no illusions about mankind, and, so as not to hate them, I despise them. I despise and pity them, Mr. Rockstrong. But they bear me no good-will for it. They want to be hated. One vexes them when one shows them the gentlest, the most indulgent, the most charitable, most human and gracious of all feelings that they could inspire: contempt. Nevertheless, mutual contempt means peace on earth, and if men would only thoroughly despise one another they would do themselves no further harm and live together in an amiable tranquillity.
"All the ills of civilised societies originate in people thinking too highly of each other, and raising honour, like a monster, above the wretchedness of the flesh and the spirit. This feeling makes them both proud and cruel, and I detest the pride that wants honour to be shown to it and to others, as if anyone descended from Adam could be worthy of honour! An animal which eats, drinks (give me something to drink), and makes love, is worthy of pity, interesting perhaps, even sometimes pleasant and agreeable.
"He can only be honourable by the effect of a most absurd and headstrong prejudice in his favour. This prejudice is the source of all the ills from which we suffer. It is a detestable kind of idolatry. And to assure to humanity a sweetening of their existence you must begin by recalling them to their natural humility.
"They will be happy, when, brought back again to a true appreciation of their condition, they despise one another without there being a single exception to this most excellent contempt."
Mr. Rockstrong shrugged his shoulders.
"My fat Abbé," said he, "you are a pig."
"I am but a man," replied my master, "you flatter me, and I feel in me the germs of that bitter pride that I detest, and that vain-glory which leads the human race into duels and into war. There are times, Mr. Rockstrong, when I would have my throat cut for my opinions; which would be an act of madness. For who can prove that I reason better than you, you, who reason excessively badly! Give me something to drink!"
Mr. Rockstrong courteously filled my good master's glass.
"Abbé, you talk nonsense," he said, "but I love you, and I should much like to know what you find blameworthy in my public behaviour, and why you side against me with tyrants, forgers, thieves, and dishonest judges?"
"Mr. Rockstrong, allow me first of all to diffuse over you and your friends, with a sweet impartiality, that single sentiment which gently puts an end to quarrels, and brings pacification. Bear with me if I respect neither the one nor the other enough to consign them to the vengeance of the law and to call down punishment on their heads. Men, whatsoever they do, are always silly sheep, and I leave to milord-chancellor, who condemned you, the Ciceronian declamations on state crimes. I have little taste for Catiline orations from whichever side they come. I am merely sad to see a man like you occupied in changing forms of government. It is the most frivolous and empty method of using one's intelligence, and to fight people in office is folly, unless it is a way of earning one's bread and getting on in the world. Give me something to drink! Bethink you, Mr. Rockstrong, that these startling changes in the State, meditated by you, are merely displacements of particular men, and that men taken in the mass are one like another, average in evil as well as in good; so that to replace two or three hundred ministers, governors of provinces, colonial agents, and bonneted presidents of courts, by two or three hundred others, is as good as doing nothing, and is simply putting Philip and Barnabas in place of Paul and Xavier. As to changing the condition of people at the same time, as you hope to do, that is quite impossible, for that condition does not depend on the ministers, who count for nothing, but on the earth and its fruits, industry, commerce, money amassed in the kingdom, the cleverness of the townfolk in trade and exchange—all things, which be they good or bad, are not kept going by either the prince or the officers of the crown."
Mr. Rockstrong quickly interrupted my good master:
"Who does not know," he exclaimed, "that the condition of industry and commerce depends on the government, and that only under a free government can you have good finance?"
"Liberty," continued Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard, "is but the result of the wealth of citizens, who free themselves as soon as they are powerful enough to be independent. People take all the liberty they can enjoy, or, to put it more plainly, they imperiously clamour for institutions in recognition and guarantee of the rights which they have acquired by their industry.
"All liberty emanates from them and their several actions. Their most involuntary movements enlarge the mould of the state which shapes itself on them.[15]
"So that one may say that detestable as tyranny is, every tyranny is necessary, and despotic governments are but the strait-waistcoat on a feeble and dwindled body. And who does not see that the outward appearance of government is like the skin which reveals the structure of an animal without being the cause of it?
"You seize hold upon the skin without troubling yourself about the viscera, in which you show little natural philosophy, Mr. Rockstrong."
"So you make no difference between a free state and a tyrannical government, and all that you regard as nothing but the hide of the beast, my fat Abbé. And you fail to see that the expenditure of the prince and the depredations of ministers can ruin agriculture and wear out trade by raising the taxes."
"Mr. Rockstrong, there cannot be at the same period and for the same country more than one possible form of government, any more than an animal can have more than one pelt at a time. From which it results, that we must leave to the care of Time, who is a courtly person, the changing of empires and the remaking of laws. He works at it slowly, untiringly, and kindly."
"And you don't think, my fat Abbé, that we ought to help the old man who figures on the clocks with a scythe in his hand? You do not believe that a revolution, such as that of the English or that in the Low Countries, can have any effect on the condition of the people. No? You old idiot! you deserve to be crowned with a fool's cap!"
"Revolutions come about in conservation of good things already acquired, and not to gain new. It is the folly of nations, it is your own, Mr. Rockstrong, to found great hopes on the downfall of princes. People assure unto themselves, by revolting from time to time, the preservation of their threatened liberties. They have never gained new liberties thereby. But they are fooled with words. It is remarkable, Mr. Rockstrong, that men will easily let themselves be killed for words of no meaning. Ajax made the remark long ago: 'I thought in my youth' the poet makes him say, 'that deeds were more powerful than words, but I see to-day that the word is the stronger of the two.' Thus said Ajax, son of Oileus. Mr. Rockstrong, I am very thirsty!"