Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
_Emperor._ In regard to the worship of idols, they have not a great
deal to learn from us; and what is deficient will come by degrees as
they grow humaner. But how little care can any ruler have for the
happiness and improvement of his people, who permits such ferocity in
the priesthood. If its members are employed by the government to
preside at burials, as according to thy discourse I suppose, a
virtuous prince would order a twelvemonth's imprisonment, and spare
diet, to whichever of them should refuse to perform the last office of
humanity toward a fellow-creature. What separation of citizen from
citizen, and necessarily what diminution of national strength, must be
the consequence of such a system! A single act of it ought to be
punished more severely than any single act of sedition, not only as
being a greater distractor of civic union, but, in its cruel
sequestration of the best affections, a fouler violator of domestic
peace. I always had fancied, from the books in my library, that the
Christian religion was founded on brotherly love and pure equality. I
may calculate ill; but, in my hasty estimate, damnation and dog-burial
stand many removes from these.
'Wait a little,' the Emperor continued: 'I wish to read in my library
the two names that my father said are considered the two greatest in
the West, and may vie nearly with the highest of our own country.'
Whereupon did his majesty walk forth into his library; and my eyes
followed his glorious figure as he passed through the doorway,
traversing the _gallery of the peacocks_, so called because fifteen of
those beautiful birds unite their tails in the centre of the ceiling,
painted so naturally as to deceive the beholder, each carrying in his
beak a different flower, the most beautiful in China, and bending his
neck in such a manner as to present it to the passer below. Traversing
this gallery, his majesty with his own hand drew aside the curtain of
the library door. His majesty then entered; and, after some delay, he
appeared with two long scrolls, and shook them gently over the
fish-pond, in this dormitory of the sages. Suddenly there were so many
splashes and plunges that I was aware of the gratification the fishes
had received from the grubs in them, and the disappointment in the
atoms of dust. His majesty, with his own right hand, drew the two
scrolls trailing on the marble pavement, and pointing to them with his
left, said:
'Here they are; Nhu-Tong: Pa-Kong. Suppose they had died where the
sorcerer's men held firm footing, would the priests have refused them
burial?'
I bowed my head at the question; for a single tinge of red, whether
arising from such ultra-bestial cruelty in those who have the
impudence to accuse the cannibals of theirs, or whether from abhorrent
shame at the corroding disease of intractable superstition, hereditary
in the European nations for fifteen centuries, a tinge of red came
over the countenance of the emperor. When I raised up again my
forehead, after such time as I thought would have removed all traces
of it, still fixing my eyes on the ground, I answered:
'O Emperor! the most zealous would have done worse. They would have
prepared these great men for burial, and then have left them
unburied.'
_Emperor._ So! so! they would have embalmed them, in their reverence
for meditation and genius, although their religion prohibits the
ceremony of interring them.
_Tsing-Ti._ Alas, sire, my meaning is far different. They would have
dislocated their limbs with pulleys, broken them with hammers, and
then have burnt the flesh off the bones. This is called an _act of
faith_.
_Emperor._ _Faith_, didst thou say? Tsing-Ti, thou speakest bad
Chinese: thy native tongue is strangely occidentalized.
_Tsing-Ti._ So they call it.
_Emperor._ God hath not given unto all men the use of speech. Thou
meanest to designate the ancient inhabitants of the country, not those
who have lived there within the last three centuries.
_Tsing-Ti._ The Spaniards and Italians (such are the names of the
nations who are most under the influence of the spells) were never so
barbarous and cruel as during the first of the last three centuries.
The milder of them would have refused two cubits of earth to the two
philosophers; and not only would have rejected them from the cemetery
of the common citizens, but from the side of the common hangman; the
most ignorant priest thinking himself much wiser, and the most
enlightened prince not daring to act openly as one who could think
otherwise. The Italians had formerly two illustrious men among them;
the earlier was a poet, the later a philosopher; one was exiled, the
other was imprisoned, and both were within a span of being burnt
alive.
_Emperor._ We have in Asia some odd religions and some barbarous
princes, but neither are like the Europeans. In the name of God! do
the fools think of their Christianity as our neighbours in Tartary
(with better reason) think of their milk; that it will keep the longer
for turning sour? or that it must be wholesome because it is heady?
Swill it out, swill it out, say I, and char the tub.
LOUIS XVIII AND TALLEYRAND
_Louis._ M. Talleyrand! in common with all my family, all France, all
Europe, I entertain the highest opinion of your abilities and
integrity. You have convinced me that your heart, throughout the
storms of the revolution, leaned constantly toward royalty; and that
you permitted and even encouraged the caresses of the usurper, merely
that you might strangle the more certainly and the more easily his
new-born empire. After this, it is impossible to withhold my
confidence from you.
_Talleyrand._ Conscious of the ridicule his arrogance and presumption
would incur, the usurper attempted to silence and stifle it with
other and far different emotions. Half his cruelties were perpetrated
that his vanity might not be wounded: for scorn is superseded by
horror. Whenever he committed an action or uttered a sentiment which
would render him an object of derision, he instantly gave vent to
another which paralysed by its enormous wickedness. He would extirpate
a nation to extinguish a smile. No man alive could deceive your
majesty: the extremely few who would wish to do it, lie under that
vigilant and piercing eye, which discerned in perspective from the
gardens of Hartwell those of the Tuileries and Versailles. As joy
arises from calamity, so spring arises from the bosom of winter,
purely to receive your majesty, inviting the august descendant of
their glorious founder to adorn and animate them again with his
beneficent and gracious presence. The waters murmur, in voices
half-suppressed, the reverential hymn of peace restored: the woods bow
their heads....
_Louis._ Talking of woods, I am apprehensive all the game has been
woefully killed up in my forests.
_Talleyrand._ A single year will replenish them.
_Louis._ Meanwhile! M. Talleyrand! meanwhile!
_Talleyrand._ Honest and active and watchful gamekeepers, in
sufficient number, must be sought; and immediately.
_Louis._ Alas! if the children of my nobility had been educated like
the children of the English, I might have promoted some hundreds of
them in this department. But their talents lie totally within the
binding of their breviaries. Those of them who shoot, can shoot only
with pistols; which accomplishment they acquired in England, that they
might challenge any of the islanders who should happen to look with
surprise or displeasure in their faces, expecting to be noticed by
them in Paris, for the little hospitalities the proud young gentlemen,
and their prouder fathers, were permitted to offer them in London and
at their country-seats. What we call _reconnaissance_, they call
_gratitude_, treating a recollector like a debtor. This is a want of
courtesy, a defect in civilization, which it behoves us to supply. Our
memories are as tenacious as theirs, and rather more eclectic.
Since my return to my kingdom I have undergone great indignities from
this unreflecting people. One Canova, a sculptor at Rome, visited
Paris in the name of the Pope, and in quality of his envoy, and
insisted on the cession of those statues and pictures which were
brought into France by the French armies. He began to remove them out
of the gallery: I told him I would never give my consent: he replied,
he thought it sufficient that he had Wellington's. Therefore, the next
time Wellington presented himself at the Tuileries, I turned my back
upon him before the whole court. Let the English and their allies be
aware, that I owe my restoration not to them, but partly to God and
partly to Saint Louis. They and their armies are only brute
instruments in the hands of my progenitor and intercessor.
_Talleyrand._ Fortunate, that the conqueror of France bears no
resemblance to the conqueror of Spain. Peterborough (I shudder at the
idea) would have ordered a file of soldiers to seat your Majesty in
your travelling carriage, and would have reinstalled you at Hartwell.
The English people are so barbarous, that he would have done it not
only with impunity, but with applause.
_Louis._ But the sovereign of his country ... would the sovereign
suffer it?
_Talleyrand._ Alas! sire! Confronted with such men, what are
sovereigns, when the people are the judges? Wellington can drill
armies: Peterborough could marshal nations.
_Louis._ Thank God! we have no longer any such pests on earth. The
most consummate general of our days (such is Wellington) sees nothing
one single inch beyond the field of battle; and he is so observant of
discipline, that if I ordered him to be flogged in the presence of the
allied armies, he would not utter a complaint nor shrug a shoulder; he
would only write a dispatch.
_Talleyrand._ But his soldiers would execute the Duke of Brunswick's
manifesto, and Paris would sink into her catacombs. No man so little
beloved was ever so well obeyed: and there is not a man in England, of
either party, citizen or soldier, who would not rather die than see
him disgraced. His firmness, his moderation, his probity, place him
more opposite to Napoleon than he stood in the field of Waterloo.
These are his lofty lines of Torres Vedras, which no enemy dares
assail throughout their whole extent.
_Louis._ M. Talleyrand! is it quite right to extol an enemy and an
Englishman in this manner?
_Talleyrand._ Pardon! Sire! I stand corrected. Forgive me a momentary
fit of enthusiasm, in favour of those qualities by which, although an
Englishman's, I am placed again in your majesty's service.
_Louis._ We will now then go seriously to business. Wellington and the
allied armies have interrupted and occupied us. I will instantly
write, with my own hand, to the Marquis of Buckingham, desiring him to
send me five hundred pheasants' eggs. I am restored to my throne, M.
Talleyrand! but in what a condition! Not a pheasant on the table! I
must throw myself on the mercy of foreigners, even for a pheasant!
When I have written my letter, I shall be ready to converse with you
on the business on which I desired your presence. [_Writes._] Here;
read it. Give me your opinion: is not the note a model?
_Talleyrand._ If the charms of language could be copied, it would be.
But what is intended for delight may terminate in despair: and there
are words which, unapproachable by distance and sublimity, may wither
the laurels on the most exalted of literary brows.
_Louis._ There is grace in that expression of yours, M. Talleyrand!
there is really no inconsiderable grace in it. Seal my letter: direct
it to the Marquis of Buckingham at Stowe. Wait: open it again: no, no:
write another in your own name: instruct him how sure you are it will
be agreeable to me, if he sends at the same time fifty or a hundred