Chapter II: Part 2

“Even while permitting yourself to pick up here and there what must, after all, be bestowed on you as tokens of gratitude, you, Catherine, could blossom forth in faith, hope, and charity, love the poverty-stricken, and visit the sick. You could be charitable and compassionate; and find pure delight in the sight of the skies, the waters, the woods, and the fields. Of a morning, on opening your window, you could praise God while listening to the song of the birds. On days of pilgrimage you might climb the hill of St. Valérien, and there, beneath the Calvary, softly bewail your lost innocence. You could act in such a way that He who alone reads our hearts would say: ‘Catherine is my creature, and I know her by the glimmerings of a clear light not altogether extinguished in her.’”

Catherine interrupted him:

“But Abbé,” she said drily, “you are spinning me a sermon.”

“Did you not ask me for a dozen?” he replied.

She began to be angry:

“Take care Abbé. It rests with you if we are to be friends or enemies. Will you compose the twelve sermons? Think well before you answer.”

“Mademoiselle,” said Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, “I have done blameworthy things in my life, but not after reflection.”

“You will not? Quite certain? One—two—You refuse? Abbé, I shall take my revenge.”

For some time she sulked, mute and bad-tempered, on the bench. Then all at once she started crying:

“Have done, Monsieur l’Abbé! Have done! At your age, and a man of your cloth to plague me thus! Fie Monsieur l’Abbé! Fie! How shameful, Monsieur l’Abbé!”

As she was squealing at her shrillest, the Abbé saw Mademoiselle Lecoeur, of the draper’s shop at the sign of the _Trois Pucelles_, pass through the porch. She was going thus late to confess to the third _vicaire_ of St. Benoît, and turned away her head in sign of her huge disgust.

He owned to himself that Catherine’s revenge was prompt and sure, for Mademoiselle Lecoeur’s sense of virtue, fortified by age, had become so vigorous, that she was down upon every impropriety of the parish, and seven times a day stabbed with the point of her tongue the carnal sinners of the Rue St. Jacques.

But Catherine herself did not know how complete was her revenge. She had seen Mademoiselle Lecoeur come into the market-place, but she had not seen my father who was following closely.

He was coming with me to look for the Abbé in the porch, and take him to the _Petit Bacchus_. My father had a liking for Catherine. Nothing vexed him more than to see her close beset by gallants. He had no illusions about her conduct. But as he said, knowing and seeing are two different things. Now Catherine’s cries had reached his ears quite clearly. He was hasty and incapable of self-restraint. I was much afraid that his wrath would burst forth in coarse suggestion or savage threats. I already saw him drawing his larding-pin, which he wore on his apron-string like an honourable weapon, for he gloried in his art and in his spit.

My fears were but half-justified. The occasion surprised him, but not unpleasantly, when Catherine showed virtue, and satisfaction overcame anger in his mind.

He accosted my good master fairly civilly and said with mock severity:

“Monsieur Coignard, all priests who cultivate the society of courtesans lose thereby their virtue and their good name. And rightly so, even if no pleasure has rewarded their dishonour.”

Catherine left the spot with a fine air of offended modesty, and my excellent master answered my father with a sweet and smiling eloquence:

“That maxim is excellent, Monsieur Léonard; still one should not apply it without discretion, nor stick it on to everything as the lame cutler labels all his knives ‘sixpence.’ I will not inquire why I merited its application a moment ago. Will it not do if I own that I merited it?

“It is not seemly to talk of oneself and it would be too great a shock to my modesty to be obliged to discourse on what is personal to me. I would rather set up the case of the venerable Robert d’Arbrissel who acquired merit from frequenting courtesans. One might also quote St. Abraham, the anchorite of Syria, who did not fear to enter a house of ill-fame.”

“What St. Abraham was that?” asked my father, whose thoughts were all put to rout.

“Let us sit down outside your door,” said my good master, “bring a jug of wine, and I will tell you the story of this great saint as it was recorded for us by St. Ephraim himself.”

My father made a gesture of ready assent. We all three sat down under the eaves, and my good master spoke as follows:

“St. Abraham, being already old, lived alone in the desert in a little hut, when his brother died leaving a daughter of great beauty, named Mary. Assured that the life he led would be excellent for his niece, Abraham had built for her a little cell near his own, whence he taught her by means of a small window that he had had pierced.

“He took care that she fasted, watched, and sang psalms. But a monk, whom we may suppose to have been a false monk, drew nigh Mary while the holy man Abraham was meditating on the Scriptures, and led the young girl into sin; who thus said to herself:

“‘It were far better, since I am dead to God, to go into a country where I am known to none.’

“Leaving her cell she betook herself to a neighbouring town called Edessa, where there were delightful gardens and cool fountains; it is still to this day the pleasantest of the towns of Syria. Meanwhile, the holy man Abraham remained plunged in profound meditation. His niece had already been gone some days when, opening her little window, he asked:

“‘Mary, why do you no longer sing the psalms you sang so well?’ And receiving no reply he suspected the truth and cried: ‘A cruel wolf has carried off my ewe lamb from me!’

“He lived in sorrow for two years, after which he learnt that his niece was leading a bad life. Acting with discretion, he begged one of his friends to go to the town and find out what had become of her. The friend’s report was, that, in very deed, Mary was leading a bad life. At this news the holy man begged his friend to lend him a riding-dress and bring him a horse, and putting on his head a big hat which hid his face, so as not to be recognised, he presented himself at the hostelry where they had told him his niece was lodged. He looked on all sides to see if he could not see her, but, as she did not appear, he said to the innkeeper, feigning to smile:

“‘Mine host, they tell me you have a pretty girl here. Can I not see her?’

“The innkeeper, an obliging man, had her called and Mary appeared in a costume, which, according to the words of St. Ephraim himself, sufficed to reveal her mode of life. The holy man was pierced with sorrow.

“He affected gaiety nevertheless, and ordered a good meal. Mary was in a sober mood that day. In giving pleasure one does not always taste it, and the sight of this old man whom she did not recognise, for he had not removed his hat, in no way inclined her to joyousness. The innkeeper cried shame upon her for such naughty behaviour so opposed to the duties of her profession, but she said with a sigh: ‘Would to God that I had died three years ago!’

“The holy man Abraham was careful to adopt the language, as he had taken the coat, of a gallant cavalier:

“‘My child,’ said he, ‘I have come here not to bewail your sins but to partake of your affection.’

“But when the innkeeper left him alone with Mary he feigned no more, but raising his hat, he said weeping:

“‘Mary, my child, do you not know me? Am I not that Abraham who has been a father to you?’

“He took her by the hand and all the night long he exhorted her to repentance and penance. Above all he was careful not to drive her to despair. He repeated incessantly ‘My child, it is only God who is without sin.’

“Mary was naturally a sweet soul. She consented to go back to him. At daybreak they set out. She would have taken her robes and jewels. But the holy man made her understand that it would be more fitting to leave them. He mounted her on his horse and led her back to their cells, where they both took up their past life. Only this time the good man took care that Mary’s room did not communicate with the outside world, and that there was no going out without passing through the room that he himself occupied. By which means and by the grace of God, he kept his ewe lamb. Such is the history of St. Abraham,” said my good master, drinking his cup of wine.

“It is quite beautiful,” said my father, “and the misfortunes of poor Mary have brought tears to my eyes.”

III

MINISTERS OF STATE (_concluded_)

That same day my good master and I were exceedingly surprised to meet at Monsieur Blaizot’s at the sign of the _Image de Sainte Catherine_, a little thin, yellow man, who was no other than the celebrated pamphleteer, Jean Hibou.... We had every reason to believe that he was in the Bastille, where he usually was. And if we had no hesitation in recognising him it was because his face still showed traces of the darkness and mildew of the dungeon. He was turning over with a trembling hand, under the bookseller’s anxious eye, some political writings newly come from Holland. Abbé Jérôme Coignard doffed his hat with a natural grace which would have been more effective if the hat had not been staved in the night before in a scuffle, that need not concern us, in the arbour at the _Petit Bacchus_.

Abbé Coignard having shown his pleasure at meeting so able a man again; Monsieur Jean Hibou replied, “It will not be for long. I am leaving this country where I am unable to live. I cannot breathe the corrupted air of this town any longer. In a month’s time I shall be settled in Holland. It is cruel to have to put up with Fleury after Dubois, and I am too virtuous to be a Frenchman. We are governed on bad principles, by fools and rogues. I cannot endure it.”

“Truly,” said my excellent master, “public affairs are badly managed and there are many thieves in office. Power is divided between fools and knaves, and should I ever write on the affairs of the day I should make a small book on the lines of the _Apokolokyntosis_ of Seneca the Philosopher, or of our own _Satire Ménippée_, which is fairly pungent. This light and pleasant style suits the subject better than the morose stiltedness of a Tacitus or the patient seriousness of a de Thou. I would make copies of this lampoon which would be passed about under the rose, and it should display a philosophical disdain for mankind. The majority of the people in office would be extremely annoyed, but I think some would taste a secret pleasure in seeing themselves covered with shame. I judge so from what I heard said by a lady of good birth whose acquaintance I made at Séez during the time when I was the Bishop’s librarian. She was growing old, but still thrilled to lascivious memories. For I must tell you that for twenty years she had been the most notorious trollop in Normandy. And when I asked her what had given her the most lively pleasure in life, she answered me: ‘To know myself dishonoured.’

“From this reply I gathered that she had some nicety of feeling. I would give as much credit to certain of our ministers, and if ever I write against them it would be to incite them to hug their infamy and viciousness.

“But why postpone the execution of so fine a project? I will ask Monsieur Blaizot at once for half a dozen sheets of paper and set about writing the first chapter of the new _Ménippée_.”

He was already reaching out his hand to the astonished Monsieur Blaizot, when Monsieur Jean Hibou stopped him quickly:

“Keep this splendid scheme for Holland, Monsieur l’Abbé,” he said, “and come with me to Amsterdam, where I will provide you with the means of livelihood at some coffee-house or bagnio. There you will be free, and of nights you shall write your _Ménippée_ at one end of the table, whilst I, at the other, am busy with my lampoons. They shall be full charged with virus, and who knows but what we may bring about a change in the affairs of the kingdom? Pamphleteers play more part than is thought in the downfall of empires. They prepare the catastrophe which is consummated by a popular revolt.”

“What a triumph,” he added, in a voice which whistled through his blackened teeth, carious with the bitter humours of his mouth, “what joy if I effected the destruction of one of those ministers, who, like cowards, shut me in the Bastille! Will you not take a share in such good work, Monsieur l’Abbé?”

“By no means,” replied my good master, “I should be very sorry to change anything in the system of the State, and if I thought that my _Apokolokyntosis_ or _Ménippée_ could have such a result, I would never write it.”

“What!” exclaimed the disappointed pamphleteer, “didn’t you tell me but a moment ago, that the present government was wicked?”

“No doubt,” said Monsieur l’Abbé, “but I merely imitate the wisdom of that old crone of Syracuse who, at the time when Dionysius treated his people most execrably, went to the temple every day to pray to the gods for the life of the tyrant. Told of this singular piety, Dionysius wished to know the reason for it. He sent for the good woman, and questioned her:

“She replied, ‘I am no longer young and have lived under many tyrants, and I have always observed that a bad one was succeeded by a worse. You are the most detestable that I have yet seen. From which I conclude that your successor will be, if possible, more wicked than yourself, and I pray the gods to give him to us as late as may be.’

“That old woman was very sensible, and I think as she did, Monsieur Jean Hibou, that sheep do well to allow themselves to be sheared by their old shepherd, for fear a younger one should come along, who would but shear them closer.”

Monsieur Jean Hibou’s gall, stirred by this discourse, spent itself in bitter words:

“What cowardly talk! What shameful sentiments! Oh! Monsieur l’Abbé, what little love you bear to the public good, and how ill you deserve the oak-leaf crown promised by the poets to civic heroes. You should have been born amongst the Turks, amongst the Tartars, slave to a Genghis Khan or a Bajazet, rather than in Europe where principles of public right are taught, and divine philosophy. What! you endure bad government nor even wish to alter it! Such sentiments would be punished in a republic of my making by exile or banishment at least. Yes, Monsieur l’Abbé, in the constitution that I meditate, which is to be formulated on the maxims of antiquity, I shall add a clause for the punishment of such bad citizens as you, and I shall proclaim penalties against whomsoever can improve his State but does not do so.”

“Eh! eh!” laughed the Abbé, “that is not the way to make me wish to live in your Salentum. What you have let me know of it leads me to think that there would be much constraint there.”

Monsieur Jean Hibou replied sententiously: “You would only be constrained to be virtuous.”

“Ah, how right that old woman was, and what reason we have to fear a Jean Hibou after a Dubois and a Fleury! What you offer me, my good sir, is a government of violence and hypocrisy, and to hasten this promised good you undertake to make me a keeper of a coffee-house or a bagnio on a canal in Amsterdam! Thank you for nothing! I stick to the Rue St. Jacques, where we drink cool claret and grumble at the ministers. Do you think you can seduce me by the vision of a government of honest men that so hedges in all liberties that no one can enjoy them?”

“Monsieur l’Abbé,” said Jean Hibou, getting heated, “is it fair to attack a system of State conceived by me in the Bastille, and undisclosed to you?”

“Sir,” retorted my excellent master, “I am suspicious of governments born of cabals and rebellions. To be in opposition is a very bad school of government, and wary politicians, who push themselves into office by this means, take great care to govern by rules entirely opposed to those they formerly taught. You need not go to China to see that! They are guided by the same necessities which lay on their predecessors. And they bring nothing new to the task but their inexperience. Which is one reason, sir, which makes me foretell that a new government would be more vexatious than the one it replaces, without being very different. Have we not already put it to the proof?”

“So,” said Monsieur Jean Hibou, “you hold by abuses?”

“Such is the case,” answered my good master. “Governments are like wines that grow crusted and mellow with age. The roughest lose at length something of their crudity. I fear an empire in the greenness of its youth. I fear the rawness of a republic, and since we must be ill-governed I prefer princes and statesmen in whom the first ardour has cooled off.”

Monsieur Jean Hibou, crushing his hat on his nose, bade us good-bye with irritation in his voice.

As soon as he was gone Monsieur Blaizot looked up over his ledgers, and settling his spectacles, said to my excellent master:

“I have been a bookseller for forty years at the sign of the _Image de Sainte Catherine_, and it is always a fresh pleasure to me to listen to the converse of the learned men who meet in my shop. But I do not greatly care for discussions on public affairs. People get heated, and quarrel to no purpose.”

“Moreover,” said my good master, “in this subject there is little solid principle.”

“There is, at least, one that no man will do well to contest,” replied Monsieur Blaizot the bookseller, “and that is that he must be a bad Christian and a bad Frenchman who would deny the virtue of the holy Ampulla of Rheims, by whose unction our kings are made vicars of Jesus Christ for the kingdom of France. Here is the basis of monarchy, which shall never be shaken.”

IV

THE AFFAIR OF THE MISSISSIPPI

It is well known that during the year 1722 the Parliament of Paris sat in judgment on the Mississippi affair, in which were implicated, along with the directors of the Company, a minister of State, secretary to the King, and many subinspectors of provinces. The Company was accused of having corrupted the officers of the King and his dominions, who had in reality stripped it with the greed usual to people in office under weak governments. And it is certain that at this period all the springs of government were slackened and warped.

At one of the sittings of this memorable action, Madame de la Morangère, wife of one of the directors of the Mississippi Company, was called before the members of Parliament in the upper chamber. She gave evidence that a Monsieur Lescot, secretary to the _Lieutenant-Criminel_,[3] having sent for her to come in secret to the Châtelet, made her understand that it lay with her entirely to save her husband, who was a fine man and of comely aspect. He said to her, nearly in these terms: “Madame, what vexes the true friends of the King in this business is that the Jansenists are not implicated in it. Jansenists are enemies to the Crown as well as to religion. Help us, Madame, to convict one of them and we will acknowledge the service to the State by giving you back your husband with all his possessions.”

When Madame de la Morangère had reported this conversation, which was not intended for the public, the President of the Parliament was obliged to call Monsieur Lescot to the upper chamber, who at first tried to deny it. But Madame de la Morangère had beautiful ingenuous eyes, whose gaze he could not meet. He grew troubled and was confounded. He was a big, villainous-looking, red-haired man like Judas Iscariot. This affair, noticed by the Press, became the talk of Paris. It was spoken of in the salons, on the public walks, at the barbers’, and in the coffee-houses. Everywhere Madame de la Morangère gained as much sympathy as Lescot caused disgust.

Public curiosity was still rife when I accompanied my good master Monsieur Jérôme Coignard to Monsieur Blaizot’s, who, as you know, is a bookseller in the Rue St. Jacques, at the sign of the _Image de Sainte Catherine_. In the shop we found Monsieur Gentil, private secretary to one of the ministers of State, whose face was hidden in a book newly come from Holland, and the celebrated Monsieur Roman, who has treated of systems of State in various estimable works. Old Monsieur Blaizot was reading his paper behind the counter.

Monsieur Jérôme Coignard, always avid of news, slid up to him to glean what he could across his shoulder. This man, learned and of so rare a genius, owned nothing of the goods of this world, and when he had drunk his pint at the _Petit Bacchus_ he had not a halfpenny left in his pockets to buy a news-sheet. Having read the depositions of Madame de la Morangère over Monsieur Blaizot’s shoulder, he cried out that it was well, and that it pleased him to see wickedness topple from its high seat under the weak hand of woman, as in wonderful examples witnessed to in Holy Writ.

“This lady,” he added, “although allied with public men of whom I do not approve, may be likened unto those strong women lauded in the Book of Kings. She pleases by an uncommon mixture of straightforwardness and finesse, and I applaud her telling victory.”

Monsieur Roman interrupted him:

“Take care, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said he, stretching out his arm, “take care how you look at this affair from an individual and personal point of view, without troubling yourself as you should do with the public interests that are bound up in it. There are reasons of State in all this, and it is clear that this supreme reason demanded that Madame de la Morangère should not speak, or that her words should not find credence.”

Monsieur Gentil lifted his nose from his book. “The importance of this incident,” said he, “has been much exaggerated.”

“Ah, Mr. Secretary,” retorted Monsieur Roman, “we cannot believe that an incident that will lose you your place can be without importance. For you will fall by it, sir, you and your master. For my part, I am full of regrets. But what consoles me for the fall of the Ministry now reeling under the shock is that they were powerless to prevent it.”

Monsieur Gentil made us understand by a slight wink that on this point he saw eye to eye with Monsieur Roman.

The latter continued:

“The State is like the human body—all the functions it accomplishes are not noble. Some there are indeed that one must needs hide, I may say the most necessary.”

“Ah, Monsieur,” said the Abbé, “was it then necessary that Monsieur Lescot should so behave to the unfortunate wife of a prisoner? It was infamous!”

“Oh,” said Monsieur Roman, “it was infamous when it was known. Before, it was of no importance. If you wish to enjoy the benefit of being governed, which alone raises mankind above the animals, you must leave, to those who govern, the means of exercising power, and the first of these means is secrecy. That is why popular government, which is the least secret of all, is also the weakest. Do you then think, Monsieur l’Abbé, that you can govern men by virtue? That is a wild dream!”

“I do not think so,” replied my good master, “I have noticed in the varied chances of my life that men are evil beasts; one can only control them by force and cunning. But one must be measured and not offend the small amount of good tendencies which mingles with the evil instincts in their minds. For after all, Monsieur, man, all cowardly, stupid, cruel, as he is was made in God’s image, and there remain to him still certain features of his primal shape. A government drawn from the common stock of average honesty, and that yet scandalises the people, should be deposed.”

“Speak lower, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said the Secretary.

“The King can do no wrong,” said Monsieur Roman, “and your maxims are seditious, Monsieur l’Abbé. You deserve, you and your like, not to be governed at all.”

“Oh!” said my good master, “if, as you give us to understand, government consists in swindling, violence, and exactions of all kinds, there is not much fear that this threat will take effect, and we shall find, for long enough yet, ministers of State and governors of provinces to carry on our affairs. Only I should much like to see others in place of these. The new-comers could not be worse than the old, and who knows but that they may be even slightly better?”

“Take care!” said Monsieur Roman, “take care! What is admirable in a state, is succession and continuity, and if there is no perfect state in this world, it is because, according to my idea, the flood in the time of Noah disordered the transmission of crowns. It is a confusion we have not quite set straight to this day.”

“Monsieur,” retorted my good master, “you are amusing with your theories. The history of the world is full of revolutions. One sees but civil wars, tumults, and seditions, caused by the wickedness of princes, and I know not which to admire the most nowadays, the impudence of the rulers, or the patience of the people.”

The secretary complained then that Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard overlooked the benefits of royalty, and Monsieur Blaizot represented to us that it was not fitting to contend about public matters in a bookseller’s shop.

When we were outside, I pulled my good master by the sleeve.

“Monsieur l’Abbé,” I said, “have you then forgotten the old woman of Syracuse, that you now want to change the tyrant?”

“Tournebroche, my son,” answered he, “I acknowledge with a good grace that I have fallen into a contradiction. But this ambiguity, that you justly point out in my words, is not as evil as that called antinomy by the philosophers. Charron, in his book on ‘Wisdom,’ affirms that antinomies exist which cannot be resolved. For my part, I am no sooner plunged in meditations of the kind than I see in my mind’s eye half a dozen of these she-devils take each other by the nose and make pretence to tear each other’s eyes out, and one sees at once that one would never come to the end of reconciling these obstinate shrews. I lose all hope of making them agree, and it is their fault if I have not much advanced metaphysics. But in the present case the contradiction, my son, is merely apparent. My reason always sides with the old woman of Syracuse. I think to-day what I thought yesterday. Only I have let my feelings run away with me and have yielded to passion as do the vulgar.”

FOOTNOTES:

[3] A stipendiary magistrate.

V

EASTER EGGS

My father kept a cook-shop in the Rue St. Jacques opposite to St. Benoît-le-Bétourné. I do not pretend that he had any affection for Lent; the sentiment would not have been natural in a cook. But he observed the fasts and days of abstinence like the good Christian that he was. For lack of money to buy a dispensation from the Archbishop he supped off haddock on fast-days, with his wife, his son, his dog, and his usual guests, of whom the most assiduous was my good master, Monsieur l’Abbé Jérôme Coignard. My pious mother would not have allowed Miraut, our watchdog, to gnaw a bone on Good Friday. That day she put neither meat nor fat in the poor animal’s mess. In vain did Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard represent to her that this was doing the wrong thing, and that in all justice, Miraut, who had no share in the sacred mysteries of redemption, ought not to suffer in his allowance.

“My good woman,” said this great man, “it is fitting, that we, as members of the Church, should sup off haddock; but there is a certain superstition, impiety, temerity—nay even sacrilege—to associate a dog, as you do, with these mortifications of the flesh, made infinitely precious by the interest God Himself takes in them, and which that interest apart would be contemptible and ridiculous. It is an abuse, which your simplicity renders innocent, but which would be criminal in a Divine, or even in a judiciously minded Christian. Such a practice, my good lady, leads straight to the most shocking heresy. It tends to no less than the upholding of the theory that Jesus Christ died for dogs even as for the sons of Adam. And nothing is more contrary to the Scriptures.”

“That may be,” replied my mother. “But if Miraut ate meat on Good Friday I should fancy to myself that he was a Jew, and have a horror of him. Is that committing a sin, Monsieur l’Abbé?”

My excellent master answered gently, taking a drink of wine:

“Ah dear creature, without deciding at this moment if you sin or if you do not, I can tell you for a certainty that there is no malice in you, and I believe more surely in your eternal salvation than in that of five or six bishops and cardinals of my acquaintance, who have nevertheless written fine treatises on the canon law.”

Miraut swallowed his mess sniffing at it, as if he did not like it, and my father went off with Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard to take a stroll to the _Petit Bacchus_.

Thus passed the holy time of Lent at the _Sign of the Reine Pédauque_. But from early Easter morn, when the bells of St. Benoît-le-Bétourné announced the joyful Resurrection, my father spitted chickens, ducks, and pigeons by the dozen, and Miraut, in the corner by the glowing fire-place, sniffed the good smell of fat, wagging his tail with grave and pensive joy. Old, tired, and nearly blind, he still relished the joys of this life, whose ills he accepted with a resignation which made them less unkind for him. He was a sage, and I am not surprised that my mother associated such a reasonable creature in her good works.

Having heard High Mass we dined in the savoury-smelling shop. My father brought to this repast a pious joy. He had commonly, as companions, a few attorneys’ clerks, and my good master Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard. This year of grace 1725, at Easter-tide, I remember, my good master brought Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, whom he had dragged from a loft in the Rue des Maçons, where this learned man wrote, day and night, news of the republic of letters for Dutch publishers. On the table a mound of red eggs rose from a wire basket. And when Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard had said the Benedicite, these eggs formed the topic of conversation.

“One reads in Ælius Lampridus,” said Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, “that a hen owned by the father of Alexander Severus laid a red egg on the birthday of that child destined to Empire.”

“This Lampridus, who had not much intelligence,” said my good master, “had better have left such a tale to the old wives who have spread it abroad. You have too much good sense, sir, to deduce from this ridiculous fable the Christian custom of serving red eggs on Easter Day?”

“I do not indeed believe,” replied Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, “that this usage is derived from the egg of Alexander Severus. The only conclusion that I wish to draw from the fact, as reported by Lampridus, is that a red egg, among the heathen, presaged supreme power. For the rest,” he added, “that egg must have been reddened in some manner, for hens do not lay red eggs.”

“Excuse me,” said my mother, who was standing by the fire-place decorating the dishes, “in my childhood I saw a black hen who laid eggs shading into brown; that is why I am ready to believe that there are hens whose eggs are red, or of a colour approaching red, as for instance brick-colour.”

“That is quite possible,” said my good master, “and Nature is more diverse and varied in her productions than we commonly believe. There are oddities of every sort in the generating of animals, and one sees in natural-history collections far stranger monsters than a red egg.”

“For instance, they keep a calf with five feet, and a child with two heads, in the King’s collection,” said Monsieur Nicolas Cerise.

“They can better that at Auneau, near Chartres,” said my mother, putting on the table, as she spoke, a dozen strings of sausages and cabbage, whence a pleasing odour rose up to the joists of the ceiling. “I saw there, gentlemen, a new-born infant with goosefeet and a serpent’s head. The midwife who received it got such a shock that she threw it in the fire.”

“Be careful,” said Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, “be careful, for man is born of woman to serve God, and it is unimaginable that he could serve Him with a serpent’s head, and it follows therefore that there are no children of the kind, and that your midwife was dreaming or making fun of you.”

“Monsieur l’Abbé,” said Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, with a slight smile. “You have seen as I have, in the King’s collection, a bi-sexual fœtus with four legs, preserved in a jar filled with spirits of wine, and in another jar, a child without a head and with an eye over the navel. Could these monsters serve God any better than the child with the serpent’s head our hostess speaks of? And what is one to say of those who have two heads, so that one does not know whether they have two souls? Acknowledge, Monsieur l’Abbé, that nature, while amusing herself with such cruel sport, puzzles the theologian no little?”

My good master had already opened his mouth to speak, and doubtless he would have entirely demolished the objection of Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, had not my mother, whom nothing could stop when she wanted to speak anticipated him by saying very loudly that the child at Auneau was no human creature, and it was the devil himself who had fathered it on a baker’s wife. “And the proof is,” she added, “that no one thought of having it baptized, and that it was buried in a napkin at the bottom of the enclosed garden. If it had been a human being it would have been buried in consecrated ground. When the devil fathers a child it takes the shape of an animal.”

“My good woman,” replied Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, “it is marvellous that a villager should know more of the devil than a Doctor of Divinity. I admire the way you interest yourself in the matron of Auneau, to the extent of knowing if such fruit of a woman is one with mankind, redeemed by the blood of God. Believe me, these devilries are but unclean fancies which you should purge from your mind. It is not written in the Fathers that the devil fathers children on poor girls. All these tales of satanic fornication are disgusting imaginings, and it is a disgrace that the Jesuits and Dominicans have written treatises on them.”

“You speak well, Abbé,” said Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, impaling a sausage from the dish. “But you give no answer to what I said, that the children born without heads are far from being adapted to the destiny of mankind, which, the Church tells us, is to know God and to serve Him and to love Him, and in that, as in the amount of germs which are wasted, nature is not, speaking plainly, sufficiently theological and Christian. I may add that she exhibits no religious spirit in any of her acts, and seems to ignore her God. That is what frightens me, Monsieur l’Abbé.”

“Oh!” cried my father, waving on the end of his fork a drum-stick of the chicken he was carving, “Oh! this is indeed gloomy and dreary talk, ill-suited to the feast we celebrate to-day. And it is my wife who is to blame, who offers us a child with a serpent’s head as if it were an agreeable dish for honest company. That out of my beautiful red eggs should come so many diabolical tales!”

“Ah, mine host,” said Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard. “It is true that everything comes out of the egg. From this idea the heathens have drawn many philosophical fables. But that from eggs, so Christian under their antique purple as those we have just eaten, should escape such a flight of wild impieties, that is what amazes me.”

Monsieur Nicolas Cerise looked at my good master, winking his eye, and said, with a thin laugh:

“Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, these eggs, whose beetroot-tinted shells lie scattered on the floor under our feet, are not in their essence as Christian and Catholic as it pleases you to think them. Easter Eggs, on the contrary, are of heathen origin, and recall, at the time of spring equinox, the mysterious burgeoning of life. It is an ancient symbol which has been preserved in the Christian religion.”

“One might equably reasonably uphold,” said my good master, “that it is a symbol of the Resurrection of Christ. I, for one, have no wish to load religion with symbolical subtleties. I would most willingly believe that the pleasure of eating eggs, denied to us during Lent, is the sole reason why on this day they appear on the tables with honour and clothed in royal purple. But no matter, these are mere trifles, serving to amuse the learned and the bookmen. What is worth considering in your talk, Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, is that you bring into opposition nature and religion, and you want to make them inimical to each other. Impiety! Monsieur Nicolas Cerise. And so horrible that this good fellow of a cook trembles at it without understanding it. But I am not a whit disturbed; and such arguments cannot, even for one minute, seduce a mind which knows how to govern itself.

“In truth, Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, you have proceeded by that rational and scientific route which is but a narrow, short, and dirty blind-alley, on coming to the end of which we break our noses ingloriously. You argue in the manner of a thoughtful apothecary, who thinks he understands nature because he can smell some of her manifestations. And you have concluded that natural generation producing monsters is no part of the secret of God, Who creates men to celebrate His glory, ‘_Pulcher hymnus Dei homo immortalis_’: It was very generous of you to omit mention of the new-born who die as soon as they see the light, of the mad, and the imbecile, and all creatures who are not, from your point of view, what Lactantius calls a worthy hymn to God, _Pulcher hymnus Dei._ But what do you know of it all, and what do we know of it all, Monsieur Nicolas Cerise? You take me for one of your readers at Amsterdam or at the Hague, to wish to make me believe that the unintelligibility of nature is an objection to our holy Christian faith. Nature, sir, shows to our eyes but a succession of incoherent images in which it is impossible for us to find a meaning, and I grant you, that according to her, and in tracking her footsteps, I fail to discern in the child that is born either the Christian, the man, or even the individual; and the flesh is an absolutely indecipherable hieroglyphic. But that matters nothing, and we are looking at the wrong side of the tapestry. Do not let us fix our gaze on that, but understand that from that side we can know nothing. Let us turn entirely to the understandable, which is the human soul united to God.

“You are amusing, Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, with your nature and your generation. You are, to my mind, like some good fellow who thinks he has surprised the King’s secrets because he has seen the paintings which decorate the council chamber. In the same way that the secrets are to be found in the conversation of the King and his ministers, so is the fate of man in the thought which proceeds alike from the created and the Creator. All the rest is but folly and amusement, fit to divert the loungers, of whom one sees many in the Academies. Do not talk to me of nature, except of what one sees at the _Petit Bacchus_ in the person of Catherine the lace-maker, who is plump and well-made.

“And you, mine host,” added Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, “give me to drink, for I have a thirst on me, all the fault of Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, who thinks nature an atheist. And, by a thousand devils, so she is, and perforce must be, to some extent; and if at all times she declares the glory of God, it is without knowing it, for there is no knowledge, save in the mind of man, which alone proceeds from both the finite and the infinite. Give me to drink!”

My father poured out a brimming glass for my good master, Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, and for Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, and forced them to clink their glasses, which they did right heartily, for they were good fellows.

VI

THE NEW MINISTRY

Mr. Shippen, who practised the trade of a locksmith at Greenwich, dined every day, during his short stays in Paris, at the _Sign of the Reine Pédauque_, in the company of his landlord and of my good master, Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard.

That day, at dessert, having called for a bottle of wine as was his custom, lighted his pipe, and drawn from his pocket the London Gazette, he set himself peaceably to smoke, drink, and read; then folding his paper, and placing his pipe on the edge of the table, he said:

“Gentlemen, the Government is defeated.”

“Oh!” said my good master, “it is of no consequence.”

“Pardon me,” said Mr. Shippen, “it _is_ a matter of consequence, for the former ministry being Tory, the new one will be Whig, and moreover, everything that happens in England is of importance.”

“Sir,” replied my good master, “We have seen greater changes than that in France. We have seen the four officials known as Secretaries of State replaced by six or seven Councils of ten members apiece, and the Secretaries of State hewn in ten pieces and then re-established in their original shape. At each of these changes there were some who swore that all was lost, and others that all was saved. And rhymes were made about it all. For my part, I take little interest in what is done in the King’s cabinet, for I notice that the course of life is in no way changed, and after reforms men are as before, selfish, avaricious, cowardly, cruel, stupid and furious by turns, and there is always a nearly even number of births, marriages, cuckolds, and gallowsbirds, in which is made manifest the beautiful ordering of our society. This condition is stable, sir, and nothing could shake it, for it is founded on human misery and imbecility, and those are foundations which will never be wanting. The whole edifice gains from them a strength which defies the efforts of the worst of princes, and of the ignorant crowd of officials who assist them.”

My father, who, larding-pin in hand, was listening to this conversation, made this amendment with deferential firmness: that good ministers are to be found, and that he could remember one, who had recently died, as the author of a very wise regulation protecting cooks against the devouring ambitions of butchers and confectioners.

“That may be, Monsieur Tournebroche,” retorted my good master, “and it is a matter to discuss with confectioners. But what is necessary to consider is that empires subsist, not by the wisdom of certain Secretaries of State, but by the needs of millions of men, who, to live, work at all sorts of lowly and ignoble arts such as industry, commerce, agriculture, war, and navigation. These individual hardships make up what is called the greatness of a people, and neither prince nor ministers have a part in them.”

“You are mistaken, sir,” said the Englishman, “ministers do their part by making laws, of which a single one may enrich or ruin the nation.”

“Oh, as for that,” replied the Abbé, “it is a risk that must be run. Since the affairs of the State are so widespread that the intelligence of a single man cannot embrace them, we must forgive ministers for working blindly thereat, and harbour no resentment against the good or evil they do, but suppose that they moved as in a game of blind-man’s buff. Moreover, this evil and this good would seem less to us if estimated without superstition, and I doubt, sir, if a general order could have the effect that you mention. I judge by the women of the town, who are themselves alone, in a year, the object of more regulations than are put forth in a century for all other classes in the kingdom, and who, none the less, carry on their business with an exactitude based on the forces of nature. They laugh at the simple blackening which a magistrate named Nicodème[4] meditates in regard to them, and make fun of Monsieur Baiselance, the mayor[5] who has formed, along with several attorneys and treasury officials, an impotent association for their ruin. I can tell you that Catherine, the lace-maker, is ignorant of the very name of Baiselance, and that she will remain ignorant of it until her end, which will be a Christian one—at least I hope so. And I infer that all the laws with which a minister swells his portfolio, are but useless papers which neither enable us to live nor prevent us from living.”

“Monsieur Coignard,” said the locksmith from Greenwich, “it is easy to see by the baseness of your talk that you are accustomed to servitude. You would speak differently of statesmen and laws if you had, as I have, the happiness to enjoy a free Government.”

“Mr. Shippen,” said the Abbé, “true liberty is that of a soul enfranchised from the vanities of this world. As for public liberty, I do not care a cherrystone for it! It is an illusion which flatters the vanity of the ignorant.”

“You confirm me in the idea,” said Mr. Shippen, “that the French are mere monkeys.”

“Allow me,” said my father, brandishing his larding-pin, “there are lions also to be found amongst them.”

“Only citizens fail you then,” retorted Mr. Shippen. “All the world discusses public matters in the Tuileries Gardens, without one reasonable notion resulting from their squabbles. Your population is but a turbulent wild-beast show.”

“Sir,” said my good master, “it is true that when human societies attain to a certain degree of refinement, they turn aside from the manners of a menagerie, and that it is evidence of progress to live in a cage, instead of wandering miserably in the woods. And this tendency is common to all the countries of Europe.”

“Sir,” said the Greenwich locksmith, “England is no menagerie, for she has a Parliament on which her Ministers depend.”

“Sir,” said the Abbé, “it may be that one day France will also have Ministers obedient to a Parliament. Better still. Time brings many changes in the constitution of empires, and one can fancy that, in a century or two, France may adopt popular government. But, sir, secretaries of State, who count for little in our day, will then no longer count for anything. For instead of depending on the King, from whom they derive their period and power, they will be subject to public opinion, and will share its instability. It is to be remarked that statesmen only exercise their power, with any force, in absolute monarchies, as is seen in the example of Joseph the son of Jacob, Pharaoh’s Minister, and in that of Haman, Minister to Ahasuerus, who played a great _rôle_ in the government; the first in Egypt, the second among the Persians. It needed the coincidence of a strongly established crown and a weak king, in France, to strengthen the arm of a Richelieu. Under popular government, ministers will become so impotent that even their wickedness and stupidity will do harm no more.

“They will receive from the general assemblies only an uncertain and precarious authority; unable to indulge in far-flung hopes and vast schemes, they will spend their ephemeral existence in wretched expedients. They will grow jaundiced in the unhappy effort to read their orders on the five hundred faces of a crowd, ignorant and at cross-purposes; they will languish in restless impotence. They will become unused to foresee anything or prepare anything, and they will only study intrigue and falsehood. They will fall from so low that their fall will do them no harm, and their names, chalked on the walls by little scribbling school-boys, will make the bourgeois laugh.”

Mr. Shippen shrugged his shoulders at this speech.

“It’s possible,” he said, “I can well enough imagine the French in such a state.”

“Oh,” said my good master, “in that state the world will go on its way. We shall still have to eat, it is the great need which gives rise to all others.”

Mr. Shippen said, shaking out his pipe:

“In the meanwhile they promise us a minister who will favour the farmers, but who will ruin trade if he has his way. I must look to it, for I am a locksmith at Greenwich, and I shall call all the locksmiths together and address them.”

He put his pipe in his pocket and went out without saying good-night to us.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] _Vide post_, p. 174.

[5] Monsieur Baiselance or Baisselance, succeeded Montaigne, considerably later, as Mayor of Bordeaux. [A. F.]

VII

THE NEW MINISTRY (_concluded_)

After supper, as it was a fine night, Abbé Jérôme Coignard took a turn in the Rue St. Jacques where the lamps were being lighted, and I had the honour to accompany him. He stopped under the porch of St. Benoît-le-Bétourné, and pointing with a plump hand, shaped equally well for scholastic demonstration and for delicate caress, at one of the stone benches ranged on either side beneath the antique statues fouled with obscene scrawls. “Tournebroche, my son,” said he, “if you are of the same turn of mind we will take the air for a moment or two on one of these well-polished old stones where so many beggars before us have rested from their troubles. Perchance some of those countless poor creatures have here held quite excellent talk among themselves.... We shall run the risk of catching fleas. But you, my son, being at the amorous age, may believe they are Jeannette, the viol player’s, or Catherine, the lace-maker’s, who are in the habit of bringing their gallants here at dusk; and their bite will seem sweet to you. That is an illusion permitted to your youth. For me, who am past the age of these charming follies, I shall tell myself that one must not give way too much to the weakness of the flesh, and that a philosopher must not trouble about fleas which, like all else in the world, are among God’s mysteries.”

So saying, he sat down, taking care not to disturb a small Savoyard and his marmoset who were sleeping their innocent sleep on the old stone bench. I sat down by his side. The conversation which had occupied the dinner-hour came back to my mind:

“Monsieur l’Abbé,” I asked this good master, “you were speaking a while ago of ministers. Those of the King did not impress you by their clothes, nor by their coaches, nor by their genius, and you judged them with the freedom of a mind which nothing astonishes. Then, considering the lot of these officials in a popular state (should it ever be established), you showed them to us as wretched to excess and less worthy of praise than of pity. Are you then, perhaps, opposed to free governments as revived from the republics of antiquity?”