‘But how is it,’ he asked, ‘that such a great king, whose fame has even reached the Hurons, should let himself be deprived of so many folk who would love him with their hearts and serve him with their hands?’
‘It’s because he has been deceived, like other great kings,’ replied the man in black. ‘He has been led to believe that he has only to say a word and everybody will think as he does, and that he could make us change our religion as quickly as his musician Lully can change the scenery in his operas. He has not only lost five or six thousand useful subjects already, but he has made enemies of them; and King William, who is the present ruler of England, has organized several regiments out of those very Frenchmen, who would otherwise have fought for their own king.
‘This disaster is all the more surprising, because the reigning Pope, to whom Louis XIV has sacrificed part of his people, is his avowed enemy. After nine years, they still keep up a violent quarrel. It has gone so far that at last France is hoping to see the breaking of the yoke which has bound her for so many centuries to that foreigner, and more especially to give him no more money; which is the chief motive in the affairs of the world. It therefore looks as if this great monarch has been deceived about his interests as well as about the extent of his powers, and that his advisers have injured his reputation for magnanimity of heart.’
The Child of Nature became more and more moved by this account, and asked who the Frenchmen were who could thus deceive a monarch so dear to the Hurons?
‘The Jesuits,’ was the reply, ‘and chiefly Father de La Chaise, His Majesty’s confessor. It is to be hoped that God will punish them one day, and that they will be driven out as now they drive us out. Is there any misfortune to equal ours? This fellow de Louvois attacks us with Jesuits and dragoons on all sides.’
‘As for that, gentlemen,’ replied the Child of Nature, who could no longer contain himself, ‘I am on my way to Versailles to receive the reward for my services, and I will talk to this fellow de Louvois. I am told he is the man who directs campaigns from his office. I will see the King and I will let him know the truth. It is impossible not to acknowledge the truth of this once you see it. I will soon be back, to marry Mademoiselle de St Yves, and I invite you to the wedding.’
The good people began to think he must be a great nobleman travelling incognito by coach, while some of them took him for the King’s jester.
Among those at table was a Jesuit in disguise, who acted as a spy for the Reverend Father de La Chaise. He took note of everything, and Father de La Chaise passed it on to Monseigneur de Louvois. The spy made his report, which arrived at Versailles almost at the same time as the Huron.
CHAPTER 9
THE ARRIVAL OF THE CHILD OF NATURE AT VERSAILLES, AND HIS RECEPTION AT COURT
THE Child of Nature alighted from his ‘chamber-pot’ * in the kitchen yard. He asked the chairmen what time the King could be seen. They laughed in his face, just as the English Admiral had done, and he treated them in just the same way; that is to say, he boxed their ears. They began to retaliate, and the scene would have been bloody had not a Breton gentleman who was one of the officers of the guard appeared and dispersed the rabble.
‘You seem to me a brave man, sir,’ said the traveller. ‘I am the nephew of the Prior of Our Lady of the Mountain. I have killed some Englishmen, and I have come to speak to the King. I beg you to take me to his room.’
The officer was delighted to discover a gallant man from his own province who appeared ignorant of Court customs, and informed him that one did not go straight in and speak to the King, as it was necessary to be presented by Monseigneur de Louvois.
‘Very well, take me to this Monseigneur de Louvois; no doubt he will conduct me to His Majesty.’
‘To talk to Monseigneur de Louvois,’ replied the officer, ‘is even more difficult than to talk to His Majesty. But I will take you to Monsieur Alexandre, the First Secretary for War. It will be just as good as talking to the Minister.’
Off they went accordingly to see this Monsieur Alexandre, the First Secretary; but they could not be admitted. He was engaged with a lady of the Court, and had given orders that no one was to be allowed in.
‘Never mind,’ said the officer, ‘that’s no great loss. Let us go to Monsieur Alexandre’s First Secretary. It will be just as good as talking to Monsieur Alexandre himself.’
The Huron followed him in astonishment, and they waited half an hour in a little antechamber.
‘What’s all this?’ asked the Child of Nature. ‘Is everyone invisible in this part of the world? It is much easier to fight the English in Lower Brittany than it is to find the people you have to deal with at Versailles.’
He passed the time by telling his compatriot about his love affairs. But the hour struck and recalled the officer to his post. They promised to meet again the next day, and the Child of Nature waited another half hour in the antechamber, dreaming of Mademoiselle de St Yves and the difficulty of speaking to Kings and First Secretaries.
At last the chief appeared.
‘Sir,’ said the Child of Nature, addressing him, ‘if I had waited as long to repel the English as you have kept me waiting for audience, they would now be ravaging Lower Brittany at their leisure.’
These words attracted the Secretary’s attention, and he said to the Breton: ‘What do you want?’
‘My reward,’ replied the other. ‘Here’s proof of what I’ve done,’ and he held out all his certificates. The Secretary read them, and told him that he would probably be allowed to buy himself a commission.
‘What’s that you say? I am to put down some money for driving the English off? To pay for the privilege of getting myself killed for you, while you sit here quietly giving audiences? You must be joking. I want a company of cavalry for nothing. I want the King to get Mademoiselle de St Yves out of her convent and give her to me in marriage. I want to plead with the King on behalf of fifty thousand families, whom I mean to restore to him. In short, I want to be useful, I want to be employed and get on in the world.’
‘What is your name, Sir, that you talk so loudly?’
‘Oh indeed,’ replied the Child of Nature. ‘So you haven’t read my testimonials? That’s the treatment you get, is it? My name is Hercules de Kerkabon, I have been baptized, I am lodging at the Blue Dial, and I shall complain of you to the King.’
The Secretary concluded, as the people of Saumur had done, that he was not quite right in the head, and did not take much notice of him.
The same day, the Reverend Father de La Chaise, confessor to Louis XIV, had received the letter from his spy accusing the Breton Kerkabon of taking sides with the Huguenots and condemning the conduct of the Jesuits. Monseigneur de Louvois, for his part, had received a letter from the inquisitive Magistrate describing the Huron as a young rogue who wanted to set fire to convents and carry off the girls.
The Child of Nature took a turn in the gardens of Versailles, which did not appeal to him, and dined like a Huron and a Low Breton; he went to bed with the delicious thought of seeing the King next day, obtaining the hand of Mademoiselle de St Yves in marriage, commanding at least a cavalry company, and ending the persecution of the Huguenots. He was indulging himself with these flattering visions when the police entered his room.
They first seized his double-barrelled gun and his great broadsword. Then they made a record of his ready money, and carried him off to that sinister fortress built by King Charles V, son of John II, near the rue St Antoine at the Tournelles gate.
I will leave you to imagine the astonishment of the Child of Nature on his way there. At first he thought it was a dream, and sat paralysed, until suddenly he was seized by a fit of anger which redoubled his strength. Grasping two of his guards by the throat, he threw them out of the carriage door and hurled himself after them, pulling along the third, who was trying to hold him back. The effort brought him to the ground, and he was tied up and put back in the carriage.
‘Look at that!’ he said. ‘Tha
t’s what one gets for chasing the English out of Lower Brittany. What would you say, my lovely St Yves, if you saw me in this state?’
At last they arrived at the quarters which were destined for him. He was borne in silence into the room where he was to be shut up, like a corpse that is carried to the cemetery. The room was already occupied by an old man, a ‘hermit’ from the Port Royal called Gordon, who had languished in it for two years.
‘Hallo there,’ said the chief of the myrmidons. ‘Here’s some company I’ve brought you.’ Without more ado the huge bolts of the thick door were thrust into their sockets and secured with great bars. The two prisoners were cut off from the whole universe.
CHAPTER 10
THE CHILD OF NATURE IMPRISONED IN THE BASTILLE WITH A JANSENIST
MONSIEUR GORDON was a lively and serene old man, who was experienced in two most important things, in making the best of adversity, and consoling the unfortunate. With a frank and compassionate expression he approached his companion, embraced him, and addressed him thus :
‘Whoever you may be that come to share my tomb, you may be sure that I will always put aside my own troubles to soften yours in this infernal abyss to which we have been committed. Let us worship Providence, which has brought us here. Let us suffer in silence, and be hopeful.’
These words had the same effect on the youth as the English cordial which revives a dying man; it made him open his eyes a little with astonishment.
As soon as the first civilities had been exchanged, the gentleness of Gordon’s conversation, and the interest which two unfortunates naturally take in one another, persuaded the Huron to open his heart and lay down the burden which was overwhelming him, though he was not pressed to do so. He could make no guess at the reason for his misfortune, which seemed to him an effect without a cause; and the worthy Gordon was as much astonished as he was.
‘Surely the Lord must have great designs for you,’ said the Jansenist to the Huron, ‘since He has brought you all the way from Lake Ontario to England and then to France, has had you baptized in Lower Brittany, and then placed you here for your salvation!’
‘Believe me,’ replied the young man, ‘it’s the devil alone that has had a hand in my destiny, I’m thinking. My American compatriots would never have treated me with such barbarity. They have no notion of it. They are called “savages", and certainly they are uncouth; but they are decent folk, and the people of this country are refined blackguards. I must confess that I am much surprised to find I have come from the other side of the world to be shut up on this side behind four bolts with a priest. But I must not forget the prodigious number of men who leave one hemisphere to go and get themselves killed in the other, or who get shipwrecked on the way, and are food for fishes. I fail to see what gracious plans the Lord had for them either.’
Their dinner was handed to them through a grille. Conversation turned on Providence, on arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, and on the art of surviving the misfortunes to which every man is exposed in this world.
‘I have been here for two years now,’ said the old man, ‘with nothing to console me but myself and some books, and I have never had a moment’s ill humour.’
‘But Monsieur Gordon,’ exclaimed the Child of Nature, ‘you are not in love with your godmother. If you knew Mademoiselle de St Yves, as I do, you would be in despair.’
As he uttered these words he could no longer refrain from weeping, and this made him feel a little better.
‘How is it,’ he wanted to know, ‘that tears can bring relief? It seems to me they ought to have the opposite effect.’
‘My son,’ replied the good old man, ‘everything inside us is purely physical. Each secretion is good for us, and everything that comforts the body comforts the soul. We are machines made by Providence.’
We have often had occasion to remark that the Child of Nature had a great deal of intelligence; he brooded upon this idea, which seemed to correspond to something within him. Eventually he asked his companion why his bodily machine had been for two years behind locks and bar.
‘I am here by the efficacious grace of God,’ replied Gordon. ‘I am what is called a Jansenist; I knew Arnaud and Nicole. We were persecuted by the Jesuits. We believe that the Pope is only a bishop like any other; and that is why Father de La Chaise obtained an order from the King, who is his penitent, to have me deprived of man’s most precious possession, liberty, without so much as a trial.’
‘That is very strange,’ remarked the Child of Nature. ‘The Pope seems to be at the bottom of all the troubles I have met so far. As for your efficacious grace, I must admit that I don’t understand a word of it; but I think it was a great sign of grace that God has found me a man like you in the hour of my misery, a man who finds consolation for me which I thought I was incapable of receiving.’
Each day their conversation grew more interesting and more instructive, and the two captives grew warmly attached to each other. The old man was well-informed, and the young one was eager to learn. At the end of a month he was studying geometry, and he absorbed it fast. Gordon made him read Rohault’s Physics, which was still fashionable, and he had the perspicacity to find nothing but uncertainties in it.
After that, he read the first volume of Malebranche’s Search for Truth, a work which threw new light upon the subject for him.
‘Can it be,’ he exclaimed, ‘that our imagination and our feelings deceive us to this extent? Our ideas are not based upon what we observe, and we have no means of forming them for ourselves!’
By the time he had read the second volume, he was less satisfied, and decided that it was easier to be destructive than constructive. His fellow-prisoner was astonished to find this uneducated young man coming to a conclusion of a much maturer mind, and formed a high opinion of his intelligence and a still deeper attachment to him.
‘This Malebranche of yours,’ the Child of Nature remarked one day, ‘seems to me to have written half his book with the aid of his reason, and the other half under the influence of his imagination and his prejudices.’
A few days later, Gordon asked him what he thought about the soul, the way we receive ideas:
‘What are your views on the passions, on divine grace, and on free will?’
‘I have no opinions,’ replied the Child of Nature. ‘If I believe anything, it is that we are in the power of an eternal Being, just as the stars and the elements are. He controls us, and we are little cogs in the immense machine of which He is the soul. I believe, too, that He works by general laws and not with particular objects in view. That’s as far as I can go; all the rest is an unfathomable depth of shadows.’
‘But, my son, that would mean that the Lord was the author of evil!’
‘But, Father, your theory of efficacious grace would also make God the author of evil, because it is certain that all would sin if this grace were denied them, and surely he that delivers us to evil must be the author of evil?’
The good old man was much distressed by this display of sincerity. He felt he was struggling in vain to extricate himself from the mire, and he poured out so many words which seemed to have sense yet meant nothing (like the chatter about physical predetermination) that the Child of Nature was moved to pity him. The question clearly depended on the origin of good and evil, and inevitably poor Gordon had to bring up in turn Pandora’s box, the egg of Ormuzd which Ahriman pierced, the enmity between Typhon and Osiris, and finally original sin. The two ran hither and thither in this primeval darkness without ever meeting each other. But this romance of the soul succeeded in distracting attention from their misery; and by some sort of magic the thought of the calamities heaped upon the universe diminished their sense of their own afflictions; they did not dare to complain, when the whole world was suffering.
But when night came, the image of the lovely St Yves blotted out all these moral and metaphysical ideas from the mind of her lover. He woke up with tears in his eyes, and the old Jansenist forgot his efficacious grace, and
the Abbé de St Cyran, and Jansen, in order to console a young man whom he believed to be in a state of mortal sin.
When they had finished discussing and disputing, they returned to their adventures, and after these useless reminiscences they took to reading, either separately or together. The young man’s intelligence developed rapidly, especially in mathematics, and he would no doubt have gone a long way in this branch of study, had he not been so distracted by the thought of Mademoiselle de St Yves.
He read history and was saddened by it, for the world seemed to him altogether too wicked and miserable. After all, history is but a chronicle of crime and misery. The host of innocent and peaceloving people always disappears from view in this vast theatre, while the chief actors are nothing but evil and ambitious men. There seems to be no pleasure in History any more than in Tragedy, which languishes unless it is enlivened by passion, crime, and great misfortune. Clio as well as Melpomene must be armed with a dagger.
The history of France is as full of horrors as the rest. But there was so much to displease him in the early stages, so much that was dry in the middle period, so much that was petty even in the days of Henri IV – no sign of the great monuments and the bold discoveries which have done honour to other nations – that he was obliged to struggle with boredom in reading all the details of minor calamities confined to a corner of the world.
Gordon felt the same. They laughed with pity when the people concerned were the sovereigns of Fezensac, Fesan-saguet, and Astarac, those tiny tracts in Armagnac, a subject for study which would interest only their descendants, if they had any.
The splendid centuries of the Roman republic made him indifferent for a time to the rest of the world, and his whole mind was engrossed in the spectacle of victorious Rome as lawgiver of the nations. He grew excited at the idea of a people who for seven hundred years were governed by enthusiasm for liberty and glory.