Chapter I: Part 1

THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE
IN AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
EDITED BY FREDERIC CHAPMAN

THE OPINIONS OF
JÉRÔME COIGNARD

THE OPINIONS OF
JÉRÔME COIGNARD
BY ANATOLE FRANCE

A TRANSLATION BY
MRS. WILFRID JACKSON

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
TORONTO: BELL AND COCKBURN: MCMXIII

THE BALLANTYNE PRESS TAVISTOCK STREET COVENT GARDEN LONDON

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE ABBÉ JÉRÔME COIGNARD 1

THE OPINIONS OF JÉRÔME COIGNARD 29

I. MINISTERS OF STATE 31

II. SAINT ABRAHAM 39

III. MINISTERS OF STATE (_concluded_) 53

IV. THE AFFAIR OF THE MISSISSIPPI 61

V. EASTER-EGGS 69

VI. THE NEW MINISTRY 81

VII. THE NEW MINISTRY (_concluded_) 88

VIII. THE CITY MAGISTRATES 98

IX. SCIENCE 107

X. THE ARMY 115

XI. THE ARMY (_continued_) 124

XII. THE ARMY (_concluded_) 130

XIII. ACADEMIES 137

XIV. SEDITION-MONGERS 148

XV. REVOLUTIONARY MEASURES 156

XVI. HISTORY 166

XVII. MONSIEUR NICODÈME 174

XVIII. JUSTICE 183

XIX. THE BEADLE’S STORY 187

XX. JUSTICE (_continued_) 195

XXI. JUSTICE (_continued_) 208

XXII. JUSTICE (_concluded_) 213

THE ABBÉ JÉRÔME
COIGNARD

TO OCTAVE MIRBEAU

There is no need for me to tell over again here the life of Monsieur l’Abbé Jérôme Coignard, professor of oratory at the college of Beauvais, librarian to Monseigneur de Séez, _Sagiensis episcopi bibliothecarius solertissimus_, as his epitaph has it, later on secretary at the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents, and finally curator of that queen of libraries (the Astaracian), whose loss is for ever to be deplored. He perished, assassinated, on the Lyons road, by a Jew cabalist of the name of Mosaïde (_Judæa manu nefandissima_), leaving several incomplete works, and the memory of his admirable familiar conversation. All the circumstances of his odd existence and tragic end have been reported by his disciple Jacques Menétrier, called Tournebroche, or Turnspit, because he was the son of a cook in the Rue St. Jacques. This Tournebroche professed for him whom it was his habit to speak of as his good master, a lively and tender admiration. “His was the kindliest soul,” said he, “that ever blossomed on this earth.” Modestly and faithfully he edited the memoirs of the Abbé, who lives again in the work as Socrates does in the Memorabilia of Xenophon.

Observant, exact, and charitable, he drew a portrait full of life and instinct with a loving faithfulness. It is a work that makes one think of those portraits of Erasmus by Holbein that one sees in the Louvre, at Bale, or at Hampton Court, the delicacy of which never wearies the sense of appreciation. In short, he left us a masterpiece. It will cause surprise no doubt, that he was not careful to have it printed. Moreover, he could have published it himself, for he set up as a bookseller in the Rue St. Jacques at the sign of the _Image de Sainte Catherine_, where he succeeded Blaizot.

Perhaps, living as he did among books, he feared to add, if it were but a few leaves, to the horrible hoard of blackened paper that mildews unseen on the book-stalls. We may share his disgust when we pass the twopenny box on the quays, where the sun and the rain slowly consume pages written for immortality. Like those pathetic death’s-heads that Bossuet sent to the Abbot of la Trappe to divert his solitude, here are subjects for reflection fitted to make the man of letters conceive the vanity of writing. I may say, for my part, that between the Pont Royal and the Pont Neuf, I have felt that vanity to the full. I should incline to believe that Abbé Coignard’s pupil never printed his work because, formed by so good a master, he judged sanely of literary glory, and esteemed it at its worth, and that is exactly nothing. He knew it for uncertain, capricious, subject to every vicissitude, and dependent on circumstances themselves petty and wretched. Seeing his contemporaries, ignorant, abusive, and mediocre, he saw no reason to hope that their posterity would suddenly become learned, balanced, and reliable. He merely divined that the Future, a stranger to our quarrels, would accord indifference in default of justice. We are well-nigh assured that, great and small, the Future will unite us in oblivion and cover us in a peaceful uniformity of silence. But if, by some extraordinary chance, that hope deceives us, if future generations keep some memory of our name and writings, we can foresee that they will only make acquaintance with our thoughts by the ingenious labour of gloss and super-gloss which alone perpetuates works of genius through the ages. The long life of a masterpiece is assured only at the price of quite pitiable intellectual hazards, in which the gabble of pedants reinforces the ingenious word-twisting of æsthetic souls. I am not afraid to say that, at the present day, we do not understand a single line of the Iliad, of the Divine Comedy, in the sense primitively attaching to it. To live is to change, and the posthumous life of our written-down thoughts is not free from the rule: they only continue to exist on condition that they become more and more different from what they were when they issued from our minds. Whatsoever in future may be admired in us, will have become altogether alien from us.

Possibly Jacques Tournebroche, whose simplicity we know, did not put himself all these questions in reference to the little book under his hand. It would be an insult to think that he had an exaggerated opinion of himself.

I think I know him. I have meditated over his book. Everything he says, and everything he doesn’t say, betrays an exquisite modesty of soul. If, however, he was not without knowledge of his talent, he knew also that it is precisely talent that is least pardonable. In people of note we tolerate easily bareness of soul and falseheartedness. We are quite content that they should be bad or cowardly, and their good-luck even does not raise over much envy so long as it is not merited. Mediocrities are at once raised up, and carried along, by the surrounding nobodies who are honoured in them. The success of a commonplace person disturbs nobody. Rather, it secretly flatters the mob. But there is an insolence of talent which is expiated by dumb hatred, and calumnies not loud but deep. If Jacques Tournebroche consciously renounced the painful honour of irritating the foolish and the wicked by eloquent writing, one can only admire his good sense, and hold him the worthy scholar of a master who knew mankind. However it may be, the manuscript of Jacques Tournebroche, being left unpublished, was lost for more than a century.

I had the extraordinary good luck to find it again at a general broker’s on the Boulevard Montparnasse, who spreads behind the dirtied panes of his shop, _croix du Lis_, _médailles de Sainte-Hélène_, and _decorations de Juillet_, without a suspicion that he is furnishing the generations a melancholy lesson on peacemaking. This manuscript was published under my care in 1893, under the title: _La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque_. I refer the reader to it. He will find there more novelties than he looks for ordinarily in an old book. But it is not with that book that we have to do here.

Jacques Tournebroche was not content to make known the doings and sayings of his master in a connected recital. He was careful to collect much discourse and conversation of Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard that had not found place in the memoirs (for that is the name we must give to _La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque_) and he made a little note-book of it, which has fallen into my hands along with his other papers.

It is the note-book that I print now under the title: _The Opinions of The Abbé Jérôme Coignard_. The kind and gracious welcome the public gave the preceding work by Jacques Tournebroche, encourages me to commence forthwith these dialogues, in which we meet once more the former librarian of Monseigneur de Séez with his indulgent wisdom, and that kind of generous scepticism to which his considerations tend, so mingled with contempt and kindliness for man. I have no notion of taking responsibility for the ideas expressed by this philosopher on divers questions of politics and morality. My duties, as editor, merely bind me to present my author’s thought in the most favourable light. His unfettered understanding trampled vulgar beliefs underfoot, and did not side uncritically with popular opinion, except in matters touching the Catholic faith, wherein he was immovable. In anything else he did not fear to oppose his age. Were it only for that he would merit esteem. We owe him the gratitude due to minds that have fought against prejudices. But it is easier to praise than to imitate them. Prejudices melt away and grow unceasingly with the eternal mobility of the clouds. They are by nature most imposing, until they become hateful, and men are rare who are free from the superstition of their period, and look squarely at what the crowd dares not face. Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard was independent in a humble walk of life; enough, I think to put him far above a Bossuet, and above all the great people that glitter, according to their degree, in the traditional pomp of custom and belief.

But while we hold that Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard lived as a free man, enfranchised from common errors, and that the spectre of common passions and fears had no empire over him, we must further observe that his surpassing intelligence had originality of outlook on nature and society, and only wanted, in order to astonish and delight mankind by some vast and beautiful mental engineering feat, the skill or the will to scatter sophisms, like cement, in the interstices between truth and truth. It is only in that way that great systems of philosophy are built up and held together by the mortar of sophistry.

The synthetic faculty was wanting in him, or, (if you like), the art and law of symmetry. Without it, he was bound to appear, as in fact he did, a kind of wonderful compound of Epicurus and St. Francis of Assisi.

Those two, it seems to me, were the best friends that suffering humanity has yet met on its confused progress through life.

Epicurus freed the soul from empty fears and taught it to proportion its idea of happiness to its miserable nature and feeble powers. Good St. Francis, tenderer and more material, led the way to happiness by interior vision, and would have had souls expand like his, in joy, in the depths of an enchanted solitude. Both were helpful, one, to destroy illusions that deceive, the other, to create illusions from which one does not wake.

But it does not do to exaggerate. Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard was certainly not the equal, in action or in thought, of the boldest of the sages, nor of the most ardent of the saints. The truths that he discovered he could not fling himself upon headlong. In his hardiest exploration he maintained the pose of a peaceful pedestrian. He did not sufficiently except himself from the contempt other men inspired in him. He lacked that valuable illusion that sustained Descartes and Bacon, who believed in themselves when they believed in no one else. He had doubts of the witness he bore, and scattered heedlessly the treasures of his mind. That confidence, however common in thinkers, was withheld from him, the confidence in himself as the superior of the greatest wits. It is an unpardonable fault, for glory is only given to those who importune it. In Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard it was, moreover, a weakness, and an illogicality. Since he pushed philosophical audacity to its farthest limits, he should not have scrupled to proclaim himself the first of men. But his heart remained simple and his soul pure, and his poorness of spirit that knew not how to rear itself above the world, did him an irreparable wrong. But need I say that I love him better as he was? I am not afraid to affirm that Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, philosopher and Christian, mingled in an incomparable union the epicurism that wards off grief, and the holy simplicity that conducts to joy.

It is to be remarked that not only did he accept the idea of God as furnished him by the Catholic faith, but further, that he tried to uphold it against argument of the rationalistic kind. He never imitated that practical address of professed Deists, who make a moral, philanthropical and prudish God for their own use, with whom they enjoy the satisfaction of a perfect understanding. The strict relations they establish with Him give much authority to their writings, and much consideration to their persons, before the public. And this God, akin to the government, temperate, weighty, exempt from fanaticism, and who has His following, is a recommendation to them in salons, academies, and public meetings. Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard did not figure the Eternal to himself in so profitable a light. But considering the impossibility of conceiving of the world otherwise than under the category of intelligent beings, and that the cosmos must be held to be intelligible, even if but to demonstrate its absurdity, he referred the cause to an intelligence he called God, leaving the term in its infinite vagueness, relying for the rest on theology, which as we know, treats of the unknowable with minutest accuracy.

This reserve, which marks the limits of his understanding, was fortunate if, as I believe, it deprived him of the temptation to nibble at some appetising system of philosophy, and kept him from putting his nose into one of those mousetraps wherein independent minds are in such hurry to get caught. At his ease in the big old rat-run, he found more than one opening to look out on the world and observe nature. I do not share his religious beliefs, and am of opinion that they deceived him, as they have deceived, for their good or ill, so many generations of men. But it looks as if the old errors were less vexatious than the new, and that, since we are bound to go wrong, it were best to hold by illusions that have lost their sparkle.

It is certain, though, that Abbé Coignard, in accepting Christian and Catholic principles, did not deny himself the deduction of some original conclusions therefrom. Rooted in orthodoxy, his luxuriant spirit flourished singularly in epicurism and in humility. As I have said before he always tried to chase away those phantoms of the night, those empty fears, or as he called them, those gothic diabolisms, which make the pious existence of the simple bourgeois a kind of sordid and day-long witches’ sabbath. Theologians have, in our own day, accused him of carrying hope to excess, and even beyond bounds. I meet the reproach once more under the hand of an eminent philosopher.[1]

I do not know if Monsieur Coignard really reposed an exaggerated trust in divine goodness. But certainly he conceived the meaning of grace in a large and natural sense, and the world, in his eyes, less resembled the deserts of the Thebaid than the garden of Epicurus. He took his way through it with that daring ingenuousness which is the most marked trait in his character, and the foundation of his teaching.

Never did a mind show itself at once so bold and so pacificatory, nor soften its disdain with greater gentleness. His rule conjoined the freedom of the cynics and the innocence of the primitive community of the Portiuncula. Tenderly, he despised men. He tried to show them that having no measure of greatness about them save their capacity for sorrow, they could lay up for themselves nothing useful or beautiful save pity; that fit only for desire or suffering, they should practise themselves in the indulgent and the pleasure-giving virtues. He came to consider pride as the source of greatest evil, and the one vice against nature.

It seems likely indeed, that men make themselves miserable by the exaggerated opinion they have of themselves and their kind, and that if they could form a humbler and truer notion of human nature they might be kinder to others and kinder to themselves.

His sympathetic regard, then, urged him to humiliate his fellows, in their opinions, their knowledge, their philosophy, and institutions. He put his heart into showing them that their weak and silly nature has never constructed nor imagined anything worth the trouble of attacking and defending very briskly, and that if they knew the crudity and weakness of their greatest works, such as their laws and their empires, they would only fight in fun or in play, like children building sandcastles by the sea.

We must not be astonished or scandalised then, that he depreciated every conception which makes for the honour and glory of mankind, at the expense of their peace. The majesty of the law did not impose on his clear-sighted intellect, and he deplored the fact that the wretched were subjected to so many restraints, of which in most cases, they could not discover the origin or the meaning. All principles appeared equally contestable to him. He had at last come to believe that members of a state would never condemn so many of their kind to infamy, if it were not to taste, by contrast, the pleasure of respectability. Such a view made him prefer bad company to good, after the example of Him who lived among publicans and sinners. But he kept his purity of heart, his gift of sympathy, and the treasure of his pity. I shall not speak here of his actions, which are recounted in _La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque_. I have no means of knowing whether, as was said of Madame de Mouchy, he was more worthy than his life. Our actions are not altogether our own; they depend less on us than on fortune. They come to us from all sides. We do not always merit them. Our inviolable mind is all we have of our very own. Thence the vanity of the world’s judgments. Nevertheless, I can say with pleasure that our leading lights have found Monsieur Coignard an amiable and pleasing person. Indeed one must be a Pharisee not to see in him a beautiful creation of God. So much said I hasten to return to his teachings, which alone matter here.

What he had least of was the bump of veneration. Nature had denied it him, and he took no steps to acquire it. He feared lest, in exalting some, he should cast down others, and his universal charity was extended equally to the humble and the proud. It bore itself to the victims with a greater solicitude, but the executioners themselves seemed to him too wretched to be worthy of hate. He wished them no harm, and merely pitied them that they were wicked.

He had no belief that reprisals, whether spontaneous, or according to law, did anything but add ill to ill. He viewed with complacence neither the vengeance that is private and much to the point, nor the majestic cruelty of the law, and if he happened to smile when the police were being drubbed, it was simply the result of his being but flesh and blood, and naturally a good fellow.

He had, in fact, formed a very simple and sensible notion of evil. He ascribed it altogether to man’s functions and natural feelings, without mixing up with it all the prejudices that take on an artificial consistency in the codes. I have said that he formed no system, being little inclined to resolve his difficulties by sophistry. It is evident that, at the outset, a difficulty stopped him short in his meditations on the means of establishing happiness or even peace on earth. He was convinced that man is by nature a vicious animal, and that communities are not abominable simply because he uses all his wits to shape them. Consequently he looked for no benefit from a return to nature. I doubt if he would have changed his opinion if he had lived to read _Emile_. When he died, Jean-Jacques had not yet stirred the world by eloquence of the sincerest feeling joined to logic or the falsest. He was still but a little vagabond, and unhappily for him, found other Abbés than Monsieur Jérôme Coignard on the benches of Lyons’ deserted walks. We may regret that Monsieur Coignard, who knew all sorts of people, never met by chance Madame de Warens’ young friend. But it could only have been an amusing incident, a romantic scene. Jean-Jacques would not have found the wisdom of our disillusioned philosopher much to his taste. Nothing could be less like the philosophy of Rousseau than that of Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard. The latter is marked with a kindly irony. It is easy and indulgent. Founded on human infirmity it is solid at bottom. The other is lacking in its gay scepticism and fleeting smile.

Taking its seat on an imaginary base, that of the original virtue of our kind, it finds itself in an awkward position, the comicality of which is not quite evident to itself. It is the doctrine for men who have never laughed. Its embarrassment is seen in its bad humour. It is ungracious. There would be nothing in that but it reinstals man among the monkeys, and then gets unreasonably angry when the monkey is not virtuous. In which it is absurd and cruel. This was well exemplified when statesmen wished to apply the teachings of the _Contrat Social_ to the best of Republics.

Robespierre venerated the memory of Rousseau. He would have held Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard for a bad man. I would not make the remark if Robespierre had been a monster. But, for the learned, there are no monsters. Robespierre was an optimist, who believed in good. Statesmen of this turn do all the evil possible. If one meddles in the government of mankind one must never lose sight of the fact that they are monkeys, and mischievous. Only thus can you have a humane and kindly polity. The folly of the Revolution was to wish to establish virtue on earth. When one would make men good and wise, free, moderate, and liberal, one is led to the fatal desire of killing them all. Robespierre believed in virtue and he brought about the Terror. Marat believed in justice; he demanded two hundred thousand heads. Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard is perhaps, of all the minds of the eighteenth century, the one whose principles were most opposed to the principles of the Revolution. He would not have signed a line of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, because of the excessive and unfair separation it establishes between man and the gorilla.

Last week I had a visit from an anarchist-comrade who honours me with his friendship, and whom I like, because having taken no part as yet in the government of his country, he has kept much of his innocence. He wants to blow up everything merely because he believes men to be naturally good and virtuous. He thinks that, deprived of their goods, and delivered from laws, they would shed their egoism and wickedness. The tenderest optimism has led him to the most savage ferocity. His only misfortune and his only crime, is that he has brought an elysian soul, made for the golden age, into the business of a cook, to which he is condemned. He is a Jean-Jacques, very simple, and very honest, who has never let himself be worried by the sight of a Madame d’Houdetot, nor softened by the refined generosity of a Maréchal de Luxembourg. His candour leaves him at the mercy of his logic, and renders him terrible. He reasons better than a minister, but he starts from an absurd principle. He does not believe in original sin, and yet, for all that, it is a dogma of such solid and stable truth that we have been able to build on it everything we have chosen to.

Why were you not with him in my study, Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, to make him feel the falsity of his doctrine? You would not have talked to this generous Utopian of the benefits of civilization and of state interests. You knew these to be pleasantries, indecent to vent on the unfortunate. You knew that public order is but public violence, and that each man can judge of the interest he has in it. But you would have drawn a true and terrible picture of that state of nature he wishes to re-establish; you would have shown him in the idyll of his dreams, an infinity of bloody and domestic tragedies, and in his too happy anarchy the beginning of a dreadful tyranny.

And that leads me to define the attitude that Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard at the _Petit Bacchus_, took in regard to governments and peoples. He respected neither the supports of society nor the vault of Empire. He held as subject to doubt and as matter for dispute the very virtue of the Holy Ampulla, then a principle in the constitution such as universal suffrage is to-day. Such a liberty which would then have scandalised every Frenchman shocks us no longer.

But it would be to misunderstand our philosopher to make excuses for the liveliness of his criticisms on the old order of things.

Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard made no great difference between governments called absolute, and those we call free, and we may well suppose that had he lived in our day he would still have kept a strong dose of that generous discontent of which his heart was full.

Since he dealt in principles, no doubt he would have discovered the vanity of ours. I judge by a remark of his which has come down to us. “In a democracy,” said Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, “a people is subjected to its own will—a very hard slavery. In fact, it has as little knowledge of its own will, and is as opposed to it, as it could be to that of a prince. For the universal will is to be seen scarcely or not at all in the individual, who nevertheless suffers the constraint of all. And universal suffrage is a hoax, like the dove that brought the Sacred Chrism in its beak. Popular government, like monarchy, rests on fiction and lives by expedient. It suffices that the fiction be accepted, and the expedient happy.”

This maxim is enough to make us believe that he would have preserved in our day the proud and smiling freedom which was the ornament of his mind in the age of kings. Still, he was never a revolutionary. He had too few illusions for that, and thought that governments should not be destroyed otherwise than by the blind and inexorable forces, slow and irresistible, that carry away all things.

He held that the one people could not be governed two ways at the same time, for this reason, that, nations being indeed bodies, their functions depend on the structure of their parts, and the condition of their organs; that is to say, of the land and the people, and not of the ruling powers, who must be adjusted to a nation as a man’s clothes are to his body.

“The misfortune is,” added he, “that the people are suited by them like a Harlequin or a Jack-in-the-green. Their coat is ever too loose or too tight, ill-fitting, ridiculous, grubby, covered with stains, and crawling with vermin. We may mend things by shaking it out, cautiously, putting in a stitch here, and when necessary, applying the scissors there, with discretion, so as to avoid being at the expense of another equally bad, but not clinging too obstinately to the old garment when the body has changed its shape by growth.”

One sees from this that Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, was a friend to order and progress, and altogether was not a bad citizen. He incited no man to revolt, and had rather that instituted things were worn and ground-down by incessant friction, than overturned and broken by any great strokes. He was for ever pointing out to his disciples that the harshest laws grew wonderfully smoother in practice, and that the clemency of time is surer than that of man. As for seeing the sprawling Corpus of the law one day re-shaped, he neither hoped it nor wished for it; laying no store by the benefits of hasty legislation. Jacques Tournebroche asked him at times whether he were not afraid that his critical philosophy, as exercised on institutions he himself judged necessary, might not have the inopportune effect of toppling down what he would wish preserved.

“Why, oh best of masters,” said his faithful disciple, “why reduce to dust the foundations of all right, of justice, and law, and generally of all civil and military rule, since you acknowledge the necessity of right, justice, armies, magistrates and drill-sergeants?”

“My son,” replied Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, “I have ever remarked that men’s prejudices are the source of their ills, just as spiders and scorpions issue from the gloom of cellars and the damp of back-gardens. It is just as well to pass the Turk’s head or the broom at random now and then in these dark corners. It is not a bad thing even to give a touch of the pick here and there on the walls of the cellar and garden. It scares the vermin and prepares the way for the ruin that must come.”

“I agree willingly,” replied the mild Tournebroche; “but when you have destroyed every principle, my master, what will be left?”

And his master replied: “After the destruction of every false principle society will still cohere, because it is founded on necessity, whose laws, older than Saturn, will still prevail when Prometheus shall have dethroned Jupiter.”

Prometheus has dethroned Jupiter more than once since the time when Abbé Coignard spoke these words, and the prophecies of the sage have been so literally verified that at the present day one feels doubts, so much does the new resemble the old order, whether the power does not still rest in ancient Jove. There are those who deny the coming of the Titan. There is no sign on his breast, they say, of the wound whence the eagle, the creature of injustice, tore out his heart, the wound that should bleed for ever. He knows nothing of the griefs and insurgence of the exile. This is not the workaday divinity promised, and expected by us. This is the full-fed Jove from the hoary and laughable Olympus. When shall he appear again, the strong friend of men, the fire-kindler, the Titan still nailed to his crag? A terrible noise from out the mountains makes known that he is lifting his lacerated shoulders from off the iniquitous rock, and we can feel, flaming on us, his distant breath.

A stranger to business, Monsieur Coignard inclined to pure speculation and dealt readily in general ideas. This disposition of his, which may have damaged him in the eyes of his contemporaries, gives his reflections some worth and usefulness after a century and a half. We can there learn to know the manners of our own day and disentangle what there is of evil in them.

Injustice, stupidity, and cruelty, do not strike us when they are the common lot. We see them in our ancestors but not in ourselves. Still, since there is no past epoch whatever, when mankind does not seem absurd to us, savage and unjust, it would be a miracle if our age had, by some privilege, cast away every shred of folly, malice, and savagery. The opinions of Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard would help us to make our examination of conscience, if we were not like those idols which have eyes and see not, and ears and hear not. With a little good faith and impartiality we should soon see that our legal codes are still but a hotbed of injustice, that we preserve in our manners the inherited hardness of avarice and pride; that we value wealth alone, and have no respect for labour. Our system of affairs would appear to us what it really is, a wretched and precarious system, condemned by abstract justice if not by that of man, and the ruin of which is beginning. Our rich men would seem to us as foolish as cockchafers continuing to eat the leaves of a tree, while the little beetle on their body devours their entrails. No more would we be lulled to sleep by the false speeches of our statesmen; we should conceive a positive pity for our economists arguing with one another about the cost of the furniture in a burning house. Abbé Coignard’s disquisitions reveal to us a prophetic disdain of the great principles of the Revolution and of the rights of the people, on which we have established these hundred years, with every kind of violence and usurpation, an incoherent succession of insurrectionary governments, themselves, innocent of irony, condemning insurrection. If we could begin to smile a little at follies, which once appeared majestic and at times were stained with blood; if we could perceive that our modern prejudices are, like the old, the outcome of something, either ridiculous or hateful; if we could judge one another with a charitable scepticism,[2] quarrels would be less sharp, in the fairest country in the world, and Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, for one, would have laboured for the universal good.

ANATOLE FRANCE

FOOTNOTES:

[1] (Monsieur Jean Lacoste wrote in the _Gazette de France_ of May 20, 1893): Monsieur l’Abbé Jérôme Coignard is a priest full of knowledge, humility and faith. I do not say that his conduct was always an honour to his bands or that his robe was unstained. But if he succumbs to temptation, if the devil has in him an easy prey, he never loses confidence; he hopes by God’s grace to fall no more, and to reach the glories of Paradise. And, in fact, he affords us the spectacle of a very edifying death. Thus a grain of faith beautifies life, and Christian humility well becomes our human weakness.

Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, if he be not a saint, perhaps deserves purgatory. But he deserves the fire a very long time, and has run risk of hell. For in his acts of humility, though sincere, there was scarcely any repentance. He reckoned too much on the grace of God, and made no effort to help the workings of grace. That is why he fell back into his sin. Thus faith availed him little, and he was nearly a heretic, for the holy council of Trent, by its canons VI. and IX. in its sixth session, declared all those anathema who pretend “that it is not in the power of man to give up his evil ways” and who have such reliance on faith that they think faith alone can save them “without any motion of the will.” Thus the divine mercy extended to Abbé Coignard is truly miraculous and beyond ordinary channels.

[2] This has been very favourably received, Monsieur Hugues Rebell having admitted that there is such a thing as a charitable scepticism. Referring, not, it is true, to the opinions of Monsieur Coignard, but to some writings drawn from the same source, he has made some remarks of which I may avail myself here:

“An interesting vein of thought might be followed up after reading this work, furnishing, as it does, some valuable teaching: I may be permitted some reflections on it:

“1. The organisation of a particular society does not depend on individual wills, but on the compulsion of nature, or to put it more simply, on the unanimity of the more intelligent beings of which that society is composed who inevitably choose the most agreeable rule of life:

“2. Mankind at any one period, having the same organic constitution and passions as mankind at any other period, can never have entirely differing institutions. It results from this that a political revolution is no more than a rotatory movement, round the ancient ways, which ends where it began; it is just a disease, an interruption in human development. And the result of this law is that all societies live and die in the same way.”

HUGUES REBELL in _l’Ermitage_, _April 1893_.

Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard simply says that a people is not susceptible to more than one form of government at the same period.

THE OPINIONS OF
JÉRÔME COIGNARD
COLLECTED BY
JACQUES TOURNEBROCHE
AND PUBLISHED BY
ANATOLE FRANCE

THE OPINIONS OF
JÉRÔME COIGNARD

I

MINISTERS OF STATE

This afternoon, Abbé Jérôme Coignard visited, as he was in the habit of doing, Monsieur Blaizot, the bookseller in the Rue Saint-Jacques, at the sign of the _Image de Sainte Catherine_.

Perceiving the works of Jean Racine on the shelves he set about carelessly turning over the leaves of one of the volumes.

“This poet,” he informed us, “was not lacking in genius, and had he but risen to the writing of his tragedies in Latin verse he would be worthy of praise, more especially in the case of his _Athalie_, where he shows that he understood politics well enough. In comparison with him Corneille is but an empty ranter. This tragedy of the accession of Joas shows us some of the forces whose play raises empires or casts them down. And one must perforce believe that Monsieur Racine possessed that spirit of finesse which we should hold of more account than all the sublimities of poetry and eloquence, which in reality are but rhetorical tricks serving for the amusement of the vulgar. To raise mankind to the sublime belongs to an inferior order of mind self-deceived on the true nature of Adam’s race, which is altogether wretched and deserving of pity. I refrain from calling man a ridiculous animal for the sole consideration that Jesus Christ ransomed him with His precious blood. The nobility of mankind is based only upon this inconceivable mystery, and of themselves human beings, be they mean or great, are but savage and disgusting beasts.”

Just as my good master pronounced these final words Monsieur Roman came into the shop.

“Stop! Monsieur l’Abbé,” exclaimed this able man. “You forget that those disgusting and ferocious beasts are, in Europe at any rate, subjected to an admirable government, and that states, such as the kingdom of France, and the Dutch Republic, are far removed from the barbarous and rude conditions which offend you.”

My good master replaced the volume of Racine on the shelf, and replied to Monsieur Roman with his customary grace:

“I grant you, Monsieur, that in the writings of the philosophers, who treat of these subjects, the doings of public men take on a certain symmetry and perspicuousness, and in your treatise on _Monarchy_ I admire the sequence and connection of ideas. But it is to you alone that I do honour for the fine sentiments that you attribute to the great politicians of times past and present. They had not the wit you endow them with, and these illustrious beings, who appear to have led the world, were themselves but the plaything of nature and chance. They did not rise above human imbecility, and were in fact but brilliant nobodies.”

While listening impatiently to this speech Monsieur Roman had seized hold of an old atlas. He began to turn it about with a noise which mingled with the sound of his voice.

“What blindness!” said he. “What! to fail to understand the actions of great statesmen, of great citizens! Are you so ignorant of history that it does not appear obvious to you that a Cæsar, a Richelieu, a Cromwell, moulded his people as a potter his clay? Do you not see that a state goes like a watch in the hands of a watchmaker?”

“I do not see it,” replied my good master, “and during the fifty years of my life I have noticed that this country has changed its form of government several times without changing the condition of the people, excepting for an insensible progress that does not depend on the human will. From which I conclude that it is well-nigh immaterial whether we be governed one way or another, and that statesmen are only noteworthy by reason of their coats and their coaches.”

“Can you talk like this,” replied Monsieur Roman, “on the day following the death of a statesman who took such a prominent part in affairs, and who, after long disgrace, dies at the moment he has regained power and honour? By the tumult round his bier you may judge the result of his work. This result lasts after him.”

“Monsieur,” answered my good master, “this statesman was an honest man, laborious and painstaking, and it might be said of him as of Monsieur Vauban, that he was too well-bred to affect the appearance of it, for he never took pains to please any one. I would praise him before all, for having improved where others in the same business do but deteriorate. He possessed his soul and had a glowing sense of the greatness of his country. He was praiseworthy also, in that he carried easily on those broad shoulders the spites of hucksters and rufflers. Even his enemies accord him a concealed approval. But what big things did he ever do, my good sir, and why does he seem to you anything but the sport of the winds which blew round him? The Jesuits whom he drove away, have come back; the little religious war he kindled to amuse the people has gone out, leaving next day but the stinking shell of a bad firework. I grant you he was clever in diverting opinion, or rather, in deflecting it. His party, which was but a party of opportunism and expediency, did not wait for his death to change its name and its chief without changing its doctrine. His cabal remained faithful to its chief and to itself in continuing to submit to circumstances. Is there anything astonishingly great about that?”

“There is certainly something admirable,” replied Monsieur Roman. “Had he only withdrawn the art of government from the clouds of metaphysics to lead it back to reality, he should have all my praise. His party, you say, was one of opportunism and expediency. But to excel in human affairs what needs one but to seize the happy moment and have recourse to utilitarian methods? This is what he did, or, at least, this is what he would have done, if the chicken-hearted instability of his friends and the false effrontery of his foes had left him any peace. But he wore himself out in the vain endeavour to placate the latter and steady the former. Time and men, those necessary tools, both were wanting to establish his beneficent rule. At least he framed admirable plans for home politics. And you ought not to forget that he endowed his country with vast and fertile possessions abroad. We owe him all the more gratitude in that he made these successful conquests alone and in spite of the parliament from which he drew his powers.”

“Monsieur,” answered my good master, “he showed energy and skill in colonial affairs, but not perhaps much more than a plain man displays in buying a piece of land. And what is not to my taste in all these over-sea affairs is the way the Europeans deal with the peoples of Africa and America. White men, when they come to grips with black and yellow races find themselves forced to exterminate them. One can only conquer the savage by a higher form of barbarity. Here is the extreme to which all foreign enterprises tend. I am not denying that the Spaniards, the Dutch, and the English have drawn profit from them. But, ordinarily speaking, they launch themselves haphazard, and quite recklessly on these big and cruel undertakings.

“What is the wisdom and the will of one man in enterprises affecting commerce, agriculture, and navigation, which necessarily depend on an immense number of units? The part played by a statesman in such affairs is a very small one, and if it seems marked to us it is because our minds, turning to mythology, too willingly give a name and a personality to all the secret workings of nature.

“What did he discover in the matter of colonisation that was not already known to the Phœnicians in the time of Cadmus?”

At these words Monsieur Roman let fall his atlas, which the bookseller quietly picked up.

“I discover to my sorrow, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said he, “that you are a sophist. For that he must be who can thus smother the colonial enterprises of the dead and gone minister with Cadmus and the Phœnicians. You are unable to deny that these undertakings were his work and you have made this pitiable introduction of Cadmus to set us at loggerheads.”

“Monsieur,” said the Abbé, “let us leave Cadmus alone if he annoys you. I merely wish to say that a statesman plays but a small part in his own works, and he deserves neither the glory nor the shame of them. I mean to say that, if, in this wretched comedy of life, princes appear to rule and people to obey, it is but a game, an empty show; and that really they are, both one and the other, directed by an unseen force.”

II

SAINT ABRAHAM

One summer night, while the gnats danced round the lamp of the _Petit Bacchus_, Abbé Coignard was taking the air in the porch of St. Benoît-le-Bétourné. There he was meditating, as his habit was, when Catherine came up and seated herself by him on the stone bench. My good master was ever inclined to praise God in his works. He took pleasure in the contemplation of this handsome girl, and as he had an agreeable and graceful wit he held her in pleasant talk. He paid tribute not only to the charm of her tongue, but to that of her neck and the rest of her person, and to the fact that she smiled no less with all the dimplement and lines of her pretty body than with lips and cheeks; in such sort that one submitted with impatience to drapery disguising the rest of the smile.

“Since we must needs all sin in this world and no one, without pride, may believe himself infallible, it is when with you, Mademoiselle, by preference, if such were your pleasure, that I would the Divine Grace failed me. I should gain thereby two valuable advantages, to wit: firstly, to sin with rare delight and unusual pleasure; secondly, to find thereafter an excuse in the strength of your fascination; for it is doubtless written in the Judgment Books that your charms are irresistible. That should be taken into consideration. There are imprudent people who sin with women ugly and ill-made. These unhappy mortals, setting about it in this way, run great risk of the loss of their souls, for they sin for sinning’s sake, and their onerous ill-doing is full of evil intent. Whereas, so fair a skin as yours, Catherine, is an excuse in the eyes of the Almighty. Your charms wonderfully alleviate the fault, which becomes pardonable, being involuntary. In fact, to tell you the plain truth, Mademoiselle, when I am near you Divine Grace abandons me at one stroke of the wing. At this moment that I am talking to you, it is but as a little white spot above those roofs where, on the tiles, the cats make love with mad cries and childish lamentation, the while the moon is perched unblushingly on a chimneypot. What I see of your person, Catherine, appeals to me; but what I do not see appeals to me still more.”

At these words she lowered her gaze on her lap; then turned its liquid appeal on the Abbé. And in a very sweet voice she said:

“As you wish me well, Monsieur Jérôme, do promise to grant me the favour I am going to ask you, and for which I shall be so grateful.”

My good master promised. Who would not have done as much in his place?

Catherine then said vivaciously:

“You know, Monsieur l’Abbé, that Abbé La Perruque, the _vicaire_ of St. Benoît, accuses brother Ange of having stolen his donkey, and he has carried his complaint to the ecclesiastical court. Now, nothing could be more untrue. The good brother had borrowed the donkey to take some relics to various villages. The donkey was lost on the way. The relics were found. That is the essential point, says brother Ange. But Abbé La Perruque reclaims his donkey, and won’t listen to anything else. He is going to put the little brother in the Archbishop’s prison. You alone can soften his anger and induce him to withdraw his complaint.”

“But, Mademoiselle,” said Abbé Coignard, “I have neither the power nor the inclination to do so.”

“Oh!” resumed Catherine, sliding near to him and looking at him with a great pretence of tenderness, “I shall be very unhappy if I cannot succeed in giving you the inclination. Whilst as to the power, you have it, Monsieur Jérôme; you have it! And nothing would be easier for you than to save the little brother. You have only to give Monsieur La Perruque eight sermons for Lent and four for Advent. You write sermons so well that it must be a real pleasure to you to write them. Compose these twelve sermons, Monsieur Jérôme; compose them at once. I will come and fetch them myself from your stall at the Innocents. Monsieur La Perruque, who thinks a great deal of your worth and your knowledge, reckons that twelve of your sermons are as good as a donkey. As soon as he has the dozen he will withdraw his complaint. He has said so. What are twelve sermons, Monsieur Jérôme? I promise to write Amen at the foot of the last one. I have your promise?” she added, putting her arms round his neck.

“As for that,” Monsieur Coignard said roughly, disengaging the pretty hands clasped on his shoulder, “I refuse flatly. Promises made to pretty girls are but skin deep, and it is no sin to retract them. Don’t count on me, my beauty, to drag your bearded gallant from the hands of the ecclesiastical court! Should I write a sermon, or two, or twelve, they would be directed against the bad monks who are the shame of the Church, and are as vermin clinging to the robe of St. Peter. This brother Ange is a rascal. He gives good women to touch, as relics, some old mutton or pork bone which he has gnawed himself with disgusting greediness. I wager he bore on Monsieur La Perruque’s donkey a feather of the Angel Gabriel, a ray from the wise men’s star, and in a little phial a trifle of the sound of the bells that rang in the belfry of Solomon’s temple. He is a dunce, he is a liar, and you love him. There are three reasons why I should dislike him. I leave you to judge, Mademoiselle, which of the three is the strongest. Perchance it may well be the least honest; for in truth I was, a moment ago, drawn to you with a violence neither befitting my age nor my condition. But make no mistake; I resent extremely the insults offered by your cowled rascal to the Church of our Saviour Jesus Christ, of which I am a very unworthy member. And this capuchin’s example fills me with such disgust that I am possessed by a sudden longing to meditate on some beautiful passage of St. John Chrysostom, instead of sitting knee to knee with you, Mademoiselle, as I have been doing for the last quarter of an hour. For the desire of the sinner is short-lived and the glory of God is everlasting. I have never held an exaggerated notion of sins of the flesh. I think in justice to me that must be allowed.

“I am not scared like Monsieur Nicodème, for example, at such a little thing as taking one’s pleasure with a pretty girl. But what I cannot endure is the baseness of soul, the hypocrisy, the lies, and the crass ignorance, which make your brother Ange an accomplished monk. From your intercourse with him, Mademoiselle, you get a habit of crapulence which drags you much below your position, which is that of a courtesan. I know the shame and the misery of it; but it is a far superior state to that of a monk. This rascal dishonours you even as he dishonours the gutters of the Rue St. Jacques by dipping his feet into them. Think of all the virtues with which you might adorn yourself, Mademoiselle, in your precarious walk of life, and one alone of which might one day open Paradise to you, if you were not subjugated and enslaved to this unclean beast.