La confession d'un enfant du siècle. English

  CHAPTER II. REFLECTIONS

  During the wars of the Empire, while husbands and brothers were inGermany, anxious mothers gave birth to an ardent, pale, and neuroticgeneration. Conceived between battles, reared amid the noises of war,thousands of children looked about them with dull eyes while testingtheir limp muscles. From time to time their blood-stained fathers wouldappear, raise them to their gold-laced bosoms, then place them on theground and remount their horses.

  The life of Europe centred in one man; men tried to fill their lungswith the air which he had breathed. Yearly France presented that manwith three hundred thousand of her youth; it was the tax to Caesar;without that troop behind him, he could not follow his fortune. It wasthe escort he needed that he might scour the world, and then fall in alittle valley on a deserted island, under weeping willows.

  Never had there been so many sleepless nights as in the time of thatman; never had there been seen, hanging over the ramparts of the cities,such a nation of desolate mothers; never was there such a silence aboutthose who spoke of death. And yet there was never such joy, such life,such fanfares of war, in all hearts. Never was there such pure sunlightas that which dried all this blood. God made the sun for this man,men said; and they called it the Sun of Austerlitz. But he made thissunlight himself with his ever-booming guns that left no clouds butthose which succeed the day of battle.

  It was this air of the spotless sky, where shone so much glory, whereglistened so many swords, that the youth of the time breathed. They wellknew that they were destined to the slaughter; but they believed thatMurat was invulnerable, and the Emperor had been seen to cross a bridgewhere so many bullets whistled that they wondered if he were mortal. Andeven if one must die, what did it matter? Death itself was so beautiful,so noble, so illustrious, in its battle-scarred purple! It borrowed thecolor of hope, it reaped so many immature harvests that it became young,and there was no more old age. All the cradles of France, as indeedall its tombs, were armed with bucklers; there were no more graybeards,there were only corpses or demi-gods.

  Nevertheless the immortal Emperor stood one day on a hill watching sevennations engaged in mutual slaughter, not knowing whether he would bemaster of all the world or only half. Azrael passed, touched the warriorwith the tip of his wing, and hurled him into the ocean. At the noise ofhis fall, the dying Powers sat up in their beds of pain; and stealthilyadvancing with furtive tread, the royal spiders made partition ofEurope, and the purple of Caesar became the motley of Harlequin.

  Just as the traveller, certain of his way, hastes night and day throughrain and sunlight, careless of vigils or of dangers, but, safe at homeand seated before the fire, is seized by extreme lassitude and canhardly drag himself to bed, so France, the widow of Caesar, suddenlyfelt her wound. She fell through sheer exhaustion, and lapsed into acoma so profound that her old kings, believing her dead, wrapped abouther a burial shroud. The veterans, their hair whitened in service,returned exhausted, and the hearths of deserted castles sadly flickeredinto life.

  Then the men of the Empire, who had been through so much, who had livedin such carnage, kissed their emaciated wives and spoke of their firstlove. They looked into the fountains of their native fields and foundthemselves so old, so mutilated, that they bethought themselves of theirsons, in order that these might close the paternal eyes in peace. Theyasked where they were; the children came from the schools, and, seeingneither sabres, nor cuirasses, neither infantry nor cavalry, asked inturn where were their fathers. They were told that the war was ended,that Caesar was dead, and that the portraits of Wellington and ofBlucher were suspended in the ante-chambers of the consulates and theembassies, with this legend beneath: 'Salvatoribus mundi'.

  Then came upon a world in ruins an anxious youth. The children weredrops of burning blood which had inundated the earth; they were bornin the bosom of war, for war. For fifteen years they had dreamed of thesnows of Moscow and of the sun of the Pyramids.

  They had not gone beyond their native towns; but had been told thatthrough each gateway of these towns lay the road to a capital of Europe.They had in their heads a world; they saw the earth, the sky, thestreets and the highways; but these were empty, and the bells of parishchurches resounded faintly in the distance.

  Pale phantoms, shrouded in black robes, slowly traversed thecountryside; some knocked at the doors of houses, and, when admitted,drew from their pockets large, well-worn documents with which theyevicted the tenants. From every direction came men still trembling withthe fear that had seized them when they had fled twenty years before.All began to urge their claims, disputing loudly and crying for help;strange that a single death should attract so many buzzards.

  The King of France was on his throne, looking here and there to see ifhe could perchance find a bee [symbol of Napoleon D.W.] in the royaltapestry. Some men held out their hats, and he gave them money; othersextended a crucifix and he kissed it; others contented themselves withpronouncing in his ear great names of powerful families, and he repliedto these by inviting them into his grand salle, where the echoes weremore sonorous; still others showed him their old cloaks, when they hadcarefully effaced the bees, and to these he gave new robes.

  The children saw all this, thinking that the spirit of Caesar wouldsoon land at Cannes and breathe upon this larva; but the silence wasunbroken, and they saw floating in the sky only the paleness of thelily. When these children spoke of glory, they met the answer:

  "Become priests;" when they spoke of hope, of love, of power, of life:"Become priests."

  And yet upon the rostrum came a man who held in his hand a contractbetween king and people. He began by saying that glory was a beautifulthing, and ambition and war as well; but there was something still morebeautiful, and it was called liberty.

  The children raised their heads and remembered that thus theirgrandfathers had spoken. They remembered having seen in certain obscurecorners of the paternal home mysterious busts with long marble hair anda Latin inscription; they remembered how their grandsires shook theirheads and spoke of streams of blood more terrible than those of theEmpire. Something in that word liberty made their hearts beat with thememory of a terrible past and the hope of a glorious future.

  They trembled at the word; but returning to their homes they encounteredin the street three coffins which were being borne to Clamart;within were three young men who had pronounced that word liberty toodistinctly.

  A strange smile hovered on their lips at that sad sight; but otherspeakers, mounted on the rostrum, began publicly to estimate whatambition had cost and how very dear was glory; they pointed out thehorror of war and called the battle-losses butcheries. They spoke sooften and so long that all human illusions, like the trees in autumn,fell leaf by leaf about them, and those who listened passed their handsover their foreheads as if awakening from a feverish dream.

  Some said: "The Emperor has fallen because the people wished no moreof him;" others added: "The people wished the king; no, liberty; no,reason; no, religion; no, the English constitution; no, absolutism;" andthe last one said: "No, none of these things, but simply peace."

  Three elements entered into the life which offered itself to thesechildren: behind them a past forever destroyed, still quivering on itsruins with all the fossils of centuries of absolutism; before themthe aurora of an immense horizon, the first gleams of the future; andbetween these two worlds--like the ocean which separates the Old Worldfrom the New--something vague and floating, a troubled sea filled withwreckage, traversed from time to time by some distant sail or some shiptrailing thick clouds of smoke; the present, in a word, which separatesthe past from the future, which is neither the one nor the other, whichresembles both, and where one can not know whether, at each step, onetreads on living matter or on dead refuse.

  It was in such chaos that choice had to be made; this was the aspectpresented to children full of spirit and of audacity, sons of the Empireand grandsons of the Revolution.

  As for the past, they would none of it, they had no faith
in it; thefuture, they loved it, but how? As Pygmalion before Galatea, it wasfor them a lover in marble, and they waited for the breath of life toanimate that breast, for blood to color those veins.

  There remained then the present, the spirit of the time, angel ofthe dawn which is neither night nor day; they found him seated on alime-sack filled with bones, clad in the mantle of egoism, and shiveringin terrible cold. The anguish of death entered into the soul at thesight of that spectre, half mummy and half foetus; they approached itas does the traveller who is shown at Strasburg the daughter of anold count of Sarvenden, embalmed in her bride's dress: that childishskeleton makes one shudder, for her slender and livid hand wears thewedding-ring and her head decays enwreathed in orange-blossoms.

  As on the approach of a tempest there passes through the forests aterrible gust of wind which makes the trees shudder, to which profoundsilence succeeds, so had Napoleon, in passing, shaken the world; kingsfelt their crowns oscillate in the storm, and, raising hands to steadythem, found only their hair, bristling with terror. The Pope hadtravelled three hundred leagues to bless him in the name of God and tocrown him with the diadem; but Napoleon had taken it from his hands.Thus everything trembled in that dismal forest of old Europe; thensilence succeeded.

  It is said that when you meet a mad dog, if you keep quietly on yourway without turning, the dog will merely follow you a short distancegrowling and showing his teeth; but if you allow yourself to befrightened into a movement of terror, if you but make a sudden step, hewill leap at your throat and devour you; that when the first bite hasbeen taken there is no escaping him.

  In European history it has often happened that a sovereign has made sucha movement of terror and his people have devoured him; but if one haddone it, all had not done it at the same time--that is to say, one kinghad disappeared, but not all royal majesty. Before the sword of Napoleonmajesty made this movement, this gesture which ruins everything, notonly majesty but religion, nobility, all power both human and divine.

  Napoleon dead, human and divine power were reestablished, but belief inthem no longer existed. A terrible danger lurks in the knowledge of whatis possible, for the mind always goes farther. It is one thing to say:"That may be" and another thing to say: "That has been;" it is the firstbite of the dog.

  The fall of Napoleon was the last flicker of the lamp of despotism;it destroyed and it parodied kings as Voltaire the Holy Scripture. Andafter him was heard a great noise: it was the stone of St. Helena whichhad just fallen on the ancient world. Immediately there appeared in theheavens the cold star of reason, and its rays, like those of the goddessof the night, shedding light without heat, enveloped the world in alivid shroud.

  There had been those who hated the nobles, who cried out againstpriests, who conspired against kings; abuses and prejudices had beenattacked; but all that was not so great a novelty as to see a smilingpeople. If a noble or a priest or a sovereign passed, the peasants whohad made war possible began to shake their heads and say: "Ah! when wesaw this man in such a time and place he wore a different face." Andwhen the throne and altar were mentioned, they replied: "They are madeof four planks of wood; we have nailed them together and torn themapart." And when some one said: "People, you have recovered from theerrors which led you astray; you have recalled your kings and yourpriests," they replied: "We have nothing to do with those prattlers."And when some one said "People, forget the past, work and obey," theyarose from their seats and a dull jangling could be heard. It was therusty and notched sabre in the corner of the cottage chimney. Then theyhastened to add: "Then keep quiet, at least; if no one harms you, do notseek to harm." Alas! they were content with that.

  But youth was not content. It is certain that there are in man twooccult powers engaged in a death-struggle: the one, clear-sighted andcold, is concerned with reality, calculation, weight, and judges thepast; the other is athirst for the future and eager for the unknown.When passion sways man, reason follows him weeping and warning, him ofhis danger; but when man listens to the voice of reason, when he stopsat her request and says: "What a fool I am; where am I going?" passioncalls to him: "Ah, must I die?"

  A feeling of extreme uneasiness began to ferment in all young hearts.Condemned to inaction by the powers which governed the world, deliveredto vulgar pedants of every kind, to idleness and to ennui, the youth sawthe foaming billows which they had prepared to meet, subside. All thesegladiators glistening with oil felt in the bottom of their souls aninsupportable wretchedness. The richest became libertines; those ofmoderate fortune followed some profession and resigned themselves tothe sword or to the church. The poorest gave themselves up with coldenthusiasm to great thoughts, plunged into the frightful sea of aimlesseffort. As human weakness seeks association and as men are gregarious bynature, politics became mingled with it. There were struggles withthe 'garde du corps' on the steps of the legislative assembly; at thetheatre Talma wore a wig which made him resemble Caesar; every oneflocked to the burial of a Liberal deputy.

  But of the members of the two parties there was not one who, uponreturning home, did not bitterly realize the emptiness of his life andthe feebleness of his hands.

  While life outside was so colorless and so mean, the inner life ofsociety assumed a sombre aspect of silence; hypocrisy ruled in alldepartments of conduct; English ideas, combining gayety with devotion,had disappeared. Perhaps Providence was already preparing new ways,perhaps the herald angel of future society was already sowing in thehearts of women the seeds of human independence. But it is certain thata strange thing suddenly happened: in all the salons of Paris the menpassed on one side and the women on the other; and thus, the one cladin white like brides, and the other in black like orphans, began to takemeasure of one another with the eye.

  Let us not be deceived: that vestment of black which the men of our timewear is a terrible symbol; before coming to this, the armor must havefallen piece by piece and the embroidery flower by flower. Human reasonhas overthrown all illusions; but it bears in itself sorrow, in orderthat it may be consoled.

  The customs of students and artists, those customs so free, sobeautiful, so full of youth, began to experience the universal change.Men in taking leave of women whispered the word which wounds tothe death: contempt. They plunged into the dissipation of wine andcourtesans. Students and artists did the same; love was treated as wereglory and religion: it was an old illusion. The grisette, that woman sodreamy, so romantic, so tender, and so sweet in love, abandoned herselfto the counting-house and to the shop. She was poor and no one lovedher; she needed gowns and hats and she sold herself. Oh! misery! theyoung man who ought to love her, whom she loved, who used to take herto the woods of Verrieres and Romainville, to the dances on the lawn,to the suppers under the trees; he who used to talk with her as she satnear the lamp in the rear of the shop on the long winter evenings; hewho shared her crust of bread moistened with the sweat of her brow, andher love at once sublime and poor; he, that same man, after abandoningher, finds her after a night of orgy, pale and leaden, forever lost,with hunger on her lips and prostitution in her heart.

  About this time two poets, whose genius was second only to that ofNapoleon, consecrated their lives to the work of collecting the elementsof anguish and of grief scattered over the universe. Goethe, thepatriarch of a new literature, after painting in his Weyther the passionwhich leads to suicide, traced in his Faust the most sombre humancharacter which has ever represented evil and unhappiness. His writingsbegan to pass from Germany into France. From his studio, surroundedby pictures and statues, rich, happy, and at ease, he watched with apaternal smile his gloomy creations marching in dismal procession acrossthe frontiers of France. Byron replied to him in a cry of grief whichmade Greece tremble, and hung Manfred over the abyss, as if oblivionwere the solution of the hideous enigma with which he enveloped him.

  Pardon, great poets! who are now but ashes and who sleep in peace!Pardon, ye demigods, for I am only a child who suffers. But while Iwrite all this I can not but curse you. Why did yo
u not sing of theperfume of flowers, of the voices of nature, of hope and of love, ofthe vine and the sun, of the azure heavens and of beauty? You must haveunderstood life, you must have suffered; the world was crumblingto pieces about you; you wept on its ruins and you despaired; yourmistresses were false; your friends calumniated, your compatriotsmisunderstood; your heart was empty; death was in your eyes, and youwere the Colossi of grief. But tell me, noble Goethe, was there no moreconsoling voice in the religious murmur of your old German forests? You,for whom beautiful poesy was the sister of science, could not they findin immortal nature a healing plant for the heart of their favorite?You, who were a pantheist, and antique poet of Greece, a lover of sacredforms, could you not put a little honey in the beautiful vases you made;you who had only to smile and allow the bees to come to your lips? Andthou, Byron, hadst thou not near Ravenna, under the orange-trees ofItaly, under thy beautiful Venetian sky, near thy Adriatic, hadst thounot thy well-beloved? Oh, God! I who speak to you, who am only a feeblechild, have perhaps known sorrows that you have never suffered, and yetI believe and hope, and still bless God.

  When English and German ideas had passed thus over our heads thereensued disgust and mournful silence, followed by a terrible convulsion.For to formulate general ideas is to change saltpetre into powder, andthe Homeric brain of the great Goethe had sucked up, as an alembic, allthe juice of the forbidden fruit. Those who did not read him, did notbelieve it, knew nothing of it. Poor creatures! The explosion carriedthem away like grains of dust into the abyss of universal doubt.

  It was a denial of all heavenly and earthly facts that might be termeddisenchantment, or if you will, despair; as if humanity in lethargy hadbeen pronounced dead by those who felt its pulse. Like a soldier who isasked: "In what do you believe?" and who replies: "In myself," so theyouth of France, hearing that question, replied: "In nothing."

  Then formed two camps: on one side the exalted spirits, sufferers, allthe expansive souls who yearned toward the infinite, bowed their headsand wept; they wrapped themselves in unhealthful dreams and nothingcould be seen but broken reeds in an ocean of bitterness. On the otherside the materialists remained erect, inflexible, in the midst ofpositive joys, and cared for nothing except to count the money they hadacquired. It was but a sob and a burst of laughter, the one coming fromthe soul, the other from the body.

  This is what the soul said:

  "Alas! Alas! religion has departed; the clouds of heaven fall in rain;we have no longer either hope or expectation, not even two little piecesof black wood in the shape of a cross before which to clasp our hands.The star of the future is loath to appear; it can not rise above thehorizon; it is enveloped in clouds, and like the sun in winter its discis the color of blood, as in '93. There is no more love, no more glory.What heavy darkness over all the earth! And death will come ere the daybreaks."

  This is what the body said:

  "Man is here below to satisfy his senses; he has more or less of whiteor yellow metal, by which he merits more or less esteem. To eat, todrink, and to sleep, that is life. As for the bonds which exist betweenmen, friendship consists in loaning money; but one rarely has a friendwhom he loves enough for that. Kinship determines inheritance; love isan exercise of the body; the only intellectual joy is vanity."

  Like the Asiatic plague exhaled from the vapors of the Ganges, frightfuldespair stalked over the earth. Already Chateaubriand, prince of poesy,wrapping the horrible idol in his pilgrim's mantle, had placed it ona marble altar in the midst of perfumes and holy incense. Already thechildren were clenching idle hands and drinking in a bitter cup thepoisoned brewage of doubt. Already things were drifting toward theabyss, when the jackals suddenly emerged from the earth. A deathly andinfected literature, which had no form but that of ugliness, began tosprinkle with fetid blood all the monsters of nature.

  Who will dare to recount what was passing in the colleges? Men doubtedeverything: the young men denied everything. The poets sang of despair;the youth came from the schools with serene brow, their faces glowingwith health, and blasphemy in their mouths. Moreover, the Frenchcharacter, being by nature gay and open, readily assimilated English andGerman ideas; but hearts too light to struggle and to suffer witheredlike crushed flowers. Thus the seed of death descended slowly andwithout shock from the head to the bowels. Instead of having theenthusiasm of evil we had only the negation of the good; instead ofdespair, insensibility. Children of fifteen, seated listlessly underflowering shrubs, conversed for pastime on subjects which would havemade shudder with terror the still thickets of Versailles. The Communionof Christ, the Host, those wafers that stand as the eternal symbol ofdivine love, were used to seal letters; the children spit upon the Breadof God.

  Happy they who escaped those times! Happy they who passed over the abysswhile looking up to Heaven. There are such, doubtless, and they willpity us.

  It is unfortunately true that there is in blasphemy a certain outletwhich solaces the burdened heart. When an atheist, drawing his watch,gave God a quarter of an hour in which to strike him dead, it is certainthat it was a quarter of an hour of wrath and of atrocious joy. It wasthe paroxysm of despair, a nameless appeal to all celestial powers; itwas a poor, wretched creature squirming under the foot that was crushinghim; it was a loud cry of pain. Who knows? In the eyes of Him who seesall things, it was perhaps a prayer.

  Thus these youth found employment for their idle powers in a fondnessfor despair. To scoff at glory, at religion, at love, at all the world,is a great consolation for those who do not know what to do; they mockat themselves, and in doing so prove the correctness of their view. Andthen it is pleasant to believe one's self unhappy when one is only idleand tired. Debauchery, moreover, the first result of the principles ofdeath, is a terrible millstone for grinding the energies.

  The rich said: "There is nothing real but riches, all else is a dream;let us enjoy and then let us die." Those of moderate fortune said:"There is nothing real but oblivion, all else is a dream; let usforget and let us die." And the poor said: "There is nothing real butunhappiness, all else is a dream; let us blaspheme and die."

  Is this too black? Is it exaggerated? What do you think of it? Am I amisanthrope? Allow me to make a reflection.

  In reading the history of the fall of the Roman Empire, it is impossibleto overlook the evil that the Christians, so admirable when in thedesert, did to the State when they were in power. "When I think," saidMontesquieu, "of the profound ignorance into which the Greek clergyplunged the laity, I am obliged to compare them to the Scythians of whomHerodotus speaks, who put out the eyes of their slaves in order thatnothing might distract their attention from their work.... No affairof State, no peace, no truce, no negotiations, no marriage could betransacted by any one but the clergy. The evils of this system werebeyond belief."

  Montesquieu might have added: Christianity destroyed the emperors butit saved the people. It opened to the barbarians the palaces ofConstantinople, but it opened the doors of cottages to the ministeringangels of Christ. It had much to do with the great ones of earth. Andwhat is more interesting than the death-rattle of an empire corruptto the very marrow of its bones, than the sombre galvanism under theinfluence of which the skeleton of tyranny danced upon the tombs ofHeliogabalus and Caracalla? How beautiful that mummy of Rome, embalmedin the perfumes of Nero and swathed in the shroud of Tiberius! It hadto do, my friends the politicians, with finding the poor and givingthem life and peace; it had to do with allowing the worms and tumorsto destroy the monuments of shame, while drawing from the ribs of thismummy a virgin as beautiful as the mother of the Redeemer, Hope, thefriend of the oppressed.

  That is what Christianity did; and now, after many years, what have theydone who destroyed it? They saw that the poor allowed themselves to beoppressed by the rich, the feeble by the strong, because of that saying:"The rich and the strong will oppress me on earth; but when they wish toenter paradise, I shall be at the door and I will accuse them before thetribunal of God." And so, alas! they were patient.
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  The antagonists of Christ therefore said to the poor: "You waitpatiently for the day of justice: there is no justice; you wait for thelife eternal to achieve your vengeance: there is no life eternal; yougather up your tears and those of your family, the cries of childrenand the sobs of women, to place them at the feet of God at the hour ofdeath: there is no God."

  Then it is certain that the poor man dried his tears, that he told hiswife to check her sobs, his children to come with him, and that he stooderect upon the soil with the power of a bull. He said to the rich: "Thouwho oppressest me, thou art only man," and to the priest: "Thou whohast consoled me, thou hast lied." That was just what the antagonists ofChrist desired. Perhaps they thought this was the way to achieve man'shappiness, sending him out to the conquest of liberty.

  But, if the poor man, once satisfied that the priests deceive him, thatthe rich rob him, that all men have rights, that all good is of thisworld, and that misery is impiety; if the poor man, believing in himselfand in his two arms, says to himself some fine day: "War on the rich!For me, happiness here in this life, since there is no other! for me,the earth, since heaven is empty! for me and for all, since all areequal." Oh! reasoners sublime, who have led him to this, what will yousay to him if he is conquered?

  Doubtless you are philanthropists, doubtless you are right about thefuture, and the day will come when you will be blessed; but thus far, wehave not blessed you. When the oppressor said: "This world for me!" theoppressed replied: "Heaven for me!" Now what can he say?

  All the evils of the present come from two causes: the people who havepassed through 1793 and 1814 nurse wounds in their hearts. That whichwas is no more; what will be, is not yet. Do not seek elsewhere thecause of our malady.

  Here is a man whose house falls in ruins; he has torn it down in orderto build another. The rubbish encumbers the spot, and he waits for newmaterials for his new home. At the moment he has prepared to cut thestone and mix the cement, while standing pick in hand with sleevesrolled up, he is informed that there is no more stone, and is advised towhiten the old material and make the best possible use of that. Whatcan you expect this man to do who is unwilling to build his nest outof ruins? The quarry is deep, the tools too weak to hew out the stones."Wait!" they say to him, "we will draw out the stones one by one; hope,work, advance, withdraw." What do they not tell him? And in the meantime he has lost his old house, and has not yet built the new; he doesnot know where to protect himself from the rain, or how to prepare hisevening meal, nor where to work, nor where to sleep, nor where to die;and his children are newly born.

  I am much deceived if we do not resemble that man. Oh! people of thefuture! when on a warm summer day you bend over your plows in the greenfields of your native land; when you see in the pure sunlight, under aspotless sky, the earth, your fruitful mother, smiling in her matutinalrobe on the workman, her well-beloved child; when drying on your browthe holy baptism of sweat, you cast your eye over the vast horizon,where there will not be one blade higher than another in the humanharvest, but only violets and marguerites in the midst of ripening ears;oh! free men! when you thank God that you were born for that harvest,think of those who are no more, tell yourself that we have dearlypurchased the repose which you enjoy; pity us more than all yourfathers, for we have suffered the evil which entitled them to pity andwe have lost that which consoled them.