The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of 1830
very much like to have done so. They lowered their eyes, and the duke
contented himself with sighing in quite an audible manner. But the
speaker was put upon his mettle.
"My audience is eager for me to finish," he said vigorously, completely
discarding that smiling politeness and that balanced diction that
Julien thought had expressed his character so well. "It is eager for
me to finish, it is not grateful to me for the efforts I am making to
offend nobody's ears, however long they may be. Well, gentlemen, I will
be brief.
"I will tell you in quite common words: England has not got a sou with
which to help the good cause. If Pitt himself were to come back he
would never succeed with all his genius in duping the small English
landowners, for they know that the short Waterloo campaign alone cost
them a milliard of francs. As you like clear phrases," continued the
speaker, becoming more and more animated, "I will say this to you: Help
yourselves, for England has not got a guinea left to help you with,
and when England does not pay, Austria, Russia and Prussia--who will
only have courage but have no money--cannot launch more than one or two
campaigns against France.
"One may hope that the young soldiers who will be recruited by the
Jacobins will be beaten in the first campaign, and possibly in the
second; but, even though I seem a revolutionary in your prejudiced
eyes, in the third campaign--in the third campaign I say--you will have
the soldiers of 1794 who were no longer the soldiers enlisted in 1792."
At this point interruption broke out simultaneously from three or four
quarters.
"Monsieur," said the president to Julien, "Go and make a précis in the
next room of the beginning of the report which you have written out."
Julien went out to his great regret. The speaker was just dealing
with the question of probabilities which formed the usual subject
for his meditations. "They are frightened of my making fun of them,"
he thought. When he was called back, M. de la Mole was saying with a
seriousness which seemed quite humorous to Julien who knew him so well,
"Yes, gentlemen, one finds the phrase, 'is it god, table or tub?'
especially applicable to this unhappy people. '_It is god_' exclaims
the writer of fables. It is to you, gentlemen, that this noble and
profound phrase seems to apply. Act on your own initiative, and noble
France will appear again, almost such as our ancestors made her, and as
our own eyes have seen her before the death of Louis XVI.
"England execrates disgraceful Jacobinism as much as we do, or at any
rate her noble lords do. Without English gold, Austria and Prussia
would only be able to give battle two or three times. Would that be
sufficient to ensure a successful occupation like the one which M. de
Richelieu so foolishly failed to exploit in 1817? I do not think so."
At this point there was an interruption which was stifled by the hushes
of the whole room. It came again from the old Imperial general who
wanted the blue ribbon and wished to figure among the authors of the
secret note.
"I do not think so," replied M. de la Mole, after the uproar had
subsided. He laid stress on the "I" with an insolence which charmed
Julien.
"That's a pretty piece of acting," he said to himself, as he made his
pen almost keep pace with the marquis' words.
M. de la Mole annihilated the twenty campaigns of the turncoat with a
well turned phrase.
"It is not only on foreign powers," continued the marquis in a more
even tone, "on whom we shall be able to rely for a new military
occupation. All those young men who write inflammatory articles
in the _Globe_ will provide you with three or four thousand young
captains among whom you may find men with the genius, but not the good
intentions of a Kléber, a Hoche, a Jourdan, a Pichegru."
"We did not know how to glorify him," said the president. "He should
have been immortalized."
"Finally, it is necessary for France to have two parties," went on M.
de la Mole; "but two parties not merely in name, but with clear-cut
lines of cleavage. Let us realise what has got to be crushed. On
the one hand the journalists and the electors, in a word, public
opinion; youth and all that admire it. While it is stupefying itself
with the noise of its own vain words, we have certain advantages of
administrating the expenditure of the budget."
At this point there was another interruption.
"As for you, monsieur," said M. de la Mole to the interrupter, with an
admirable haughtiness and ease of manner, "you do not spend, if the
words chokes you, but you devour the forty thousand francs put down to
you in the State budget, and the eighty thousand which you receive from
the civil list."
"Well, monsieur, since you force me to it, I will be bold enough to
take you for an example. Like your noble ancestors, who followed Saint
Louis to the crusade, you ought in return for those hundred and twenty
thousand francs to show us at any rate a regiment; a company, why, what
am I saying? say half a company, even if it only had fifty men, ready
to fight and devoted to the good cause to the point of risking their
lives in its service. You have nothing but lackeys, who in the event of
a rebellion would frighten you yourselves."
"Throne, Church, Nobility are liable to perish to-morrow, gentlemen,
so long as you refrain from creating in each department a force of
five hundred devoted men, devoted I mean, not only with all the French
courage, but with all the Spanish constancy.
"Half of this force ought to be composed of our children, our nephews,
of real gentlemen, in fact. Each of them will have beside him not a
little talkative bourgeois ready to hoist the tricolor cockade, if 1815
turns up again, but a good, frank and simple peasant like Cathelineau.
Our gentleman will have educated him, it will be his own foster brother
if it is possible. Let each of us sacrifice the fifth of his income in
order to form this little devoted force of five hundred men in each
department. Then you will be able to reckon on a foreign occupation.
The foreign soldier will never penetrate even as far as Dijon if he
is not certain of finding five hundred friendly soldiers in each
department.
"The foreign kings will only listen to you when you are in a position
to announce to them that you have twenty thousand gentlemen ready to
take up arms in order to open to them the gates of France. The service
is troublesome, you say. Gentlemen, it is the only way of saving our
lives. There is war to the death between the liberty of the press and
our existence as gentlemen. Become manufacturers, become peasants, or
take up your guns. Be timid if you like, but do not be stupid. Open
your eyes.
"'_Form your battalions_,' I would say to you in the words of the
Jacobin songs. Some noble Gustavus Adolphus will then be found who,
touched by the imminent peril of the monarchical principle, will make
a dash three hundred leagues from his own country, and will do for
you what Gustavus did for the Protestant princes. Do you want to go
on talking without acting? In fifty years' time there will be only
presidents or republics in Europe and not one king, and with those
three letters R. O. I. you will see the last of the priests and the
gentlemen. I can see nothing but candidates paying court to squalid
majorities.
"It is no use your saying that at the present time France has not
a single accredited general who is universally known and loved,
that the army is only known and organised in the interests of the
throne and the church, and that it has been deprived of all its old
troopers, while each of the Prussian and Austrian regiments count fifty
non-commissioned officers who have seen fire.
"Two hundred thousand young men of the middle classes are spoiling for
war--"
"A truce to disagreeable truths," said a grave personage in a pompous
tone. He was apparently a very high ecclesiastical dignitary, for M.
de la Mole smiled pleasantly, instead of getting angry, a circumstance
which greatly impressed Julien.
"A truce to unpleasant truths, let us resume, gentlemen. The man who
needs to have a gangrened leg cut off would be ill advised to say to
his surgeon, 'this disease is very healthy.' If I may use the metaphor,
gentlemen, the noble duke of ---- is our surgeon."
"So the great words have at last been uttered," thought Julien. "It is
towards the ---- that I shall gallop to-night."
CHAPTER LIII
THE CLERGY, THE FORESTS, LIBERTY
The first law of every being, is to preserve itself and
live. You sow hemlock, and expect to see ears of corn
ripen.--_Machiavelli_.
The great personage continued. One could see that he knew his subject.
He proceeded to expound the following great truths with a soft and
tempered eloquence with which Julien was inordinately delighted:--
"1. England has not a guinea to help us with; economy and Hume are
the fashion there. Even the saints will not give us any money, and M.
Brougham will make fun of us.
"2. The impossibility of getting the kings of Europe to embark on more
than two campaigns without English gold; two campaigns will not be
enough to dispose of the middle classes.
"3. The necessity of forming an armed party in France. Without this,
the monarchical principle in Europe will not risk even two campaigns.
"The fourth point which I venture to suggest to you, as self-evident,
is this:
"The impossibility of forming an armed party in France without the
clergy. I am bold enough to tell you this because I will prove it to
you, gentlemen. You must make every sacrifice for the clergy.
"Firstly, because as it is occupied with its mission by day and by
night, and guided by highly capable men established far from these
storms at three hundred leagues from your frontiers----"
"Ah, Rome, Rome!" exclaimed the master of the house.
"Yes, monsieur, Rome," replied the Cardinal haughtily. "Whatever more
or less ingenious jokes may have been the fashion when you were young,
I have no hesitation in saying that in 1830 it is only the clergy,
under the guidance of Rome, who has the ear of the lower classes.
"Fifty thousand priests repeat the same words on the day appointed by
their chiefs, and the people--who after all provide soldiers--will be
more touched by the voices of its priests than by all the versifying in
the whole world." (This personality provoked some murmurs.)
"The clergy has a genius superior to yours," went on the cardinal
raising his voice. "All the progress that has been made towards this
essential point of having an armed party in France has been made by
us." At this juncture facts were introduced. "Who used eighty thousand
rifles in Vendée?" etc., etc.
"So long as the clergy is without its forests it is helpless. At
the first war the minister of finance will write to his agents that
there is no money to be had except for the curé. At bottom France
does not believe, and she loves war. Whoever gives her war will be
doubly popular, for making war is, to use a vulgar phrase, the same as
starving the Jesuits; making war means delivering those monsters of
pride--the men of France--from the menace of foreign intervention."
The cardinal had a favourable hearing. "M. de Nerval," he said, "will
have to leave the ministry, his name irritates and to no purpose."
At these words everybody got up and talked at the same time. "I will be
sent away again," thought Julien, but the sapient president himself had
forgotten both the presence and existence of Julien.
All eyes were turned upon a man whom Julien recognised. It was M. de
Nerval, the prime minister, whom he had seen at M. the duc de Retz's
ball.
The disorder was at its height, as the papers say when they talk of the