L'homme qui rit. English

  III.

  One idiotic habit of the people is to attribute to the king what they dothemselves. They fight. Whose the glory? The king's. They pay. Whose thegenerosity? The king's. Then the people love him for being so rich. Theking receives a crown from the poor, and returns them a farthing. Howgenerous he is! The colossus which is the pedestal contemplates thepigmy which is the statue. How great is this myrmidon! he is on my back.A dwarf has an excellent way of being taller than a giant: it is toperch himself on his shoulders. But that the giant should allow it,there is the wonder; and that he should admire the height of the dwarf,there is the folly. Simplicity of mankind! The equestrian statue,reserved for kings alone, is an excellent figure of royalty: the horseis the people. Only that the horse becomes transfigured by degrees. Itbegins in an ass; it ends in a lion. Then it throws its rider, and youhave 1642 in England and 1789 in France; and sometimes it devours him,and you have in England 1649, and in France 1793. That the lion shouldrelapse into the donkey is astonishing; but it is so. This wasoccurring in England. It had resumed the pack-saddle, idolatry of thecrown. Queen Anne, as we have just observed, was popular. What was shedoing to be so? Nothing. Nothing!--that is all that is asked of thesovereign of England. He receives for that nothing L1,250,000 a year. In1705, England which had had but thirteen men of war under Elizabeth, andthirty-six under James I., counted a hundred and fifty in her fleet. TheEnglish had three armies, 5,000 men in Catalonia; 10,000 in Portugal;50,000 in Flanders; and besides, was paying L1,666,666 a year tomonarchical and diplomatic Europe, a sort of prostitute the Englishpeople has always had in keeping. Parliament having voted a patrioticloan of thirty-four million francs of annuities, there had been a crushat the Exchequer to subscribe it. England was sending a squadron to theEast Indies, and a squadron to the West of Spain under Admiral Leake,without mentioning the reserve of four hundred sail, under Admiral SirCloudesley Shovel. England had lately annexed Scotland. It was theinterval between Hochstadt and Ramillies, and the first of thesevictories was foretelling the second. England, in its cast of the net atHochstadt, had made prisoners of twenty-seven battalions and fourregiments of dragoons, and deprived France of one hundred leagues ofcountry--France drawing back dismayed from the Danube to the Rhine.England was stretching her hand out towards Sardinia and the BalearicIslands. She was bringing into her ports in triumph ten Spanishline-of-battle ships, and many a galleon laden with gold. Hudson Bay andStraits were already half given over by Louis XIV. It was felt that hewas about to give up his hold over Acadia, St. Christopher, andNewfoundland, and that he would be but too happy if England would onlytolerate the King of France fishing for cod at Cape Breton. England wasabout to impose upon him the shame of demolishing himself thefortifications of Dunkirk. Meanwhile, she had taken Gibraltar, and wastaking Barcelona. What great things accomplished! How was it possible torefuse Anne admiration for taking the trouble of living at the period?

  From a certain point of view, the reign of Anne appears a reflection ofthe reign of Louis XIV. Anne, for a moment even with that king in therace which is called history, bears to him the vague resemblance of areflection. Like him, she plays at a great reign; she has hermonuments, her arts, her victories, her captains, her men of letters,her privy purse to pension celebrities, her gallery of chefs-d'oeuvre,side by side with those of his Majesty. Her court, too, was a cortege,with the features of a triumph, an order and a march. It was a miniaturecopy of all the great men of Versailles, not giants themselves. In itthere is enough to deceive the eye; add God save the Queen, which mighthave been taken from Lulli, and the ensemble becomes an illusion. Not apersonage is missing. Christopher Wren is a very passable Mansard;Somers is as good as Lamoignon; Anne has a Racine in Dryden, a Boileauin Pope, a Colbert in Godolphin, a Louvois in Pembroke, and a Turenne inMarlborough. Heighten the wigs and lower the foreheads. The whole issolemn and pompous, and the Windsor of the time has a faded resemblanceto Marly. Still the whole was effeminate, and Anne's Pere Tellier wascalled Sarah Jennings. However, there is an outline of incipient irony,which fifty years later was to turn to philosophy, in the literature ofthe age, and the Protestant Tartuffe is unmasked by Swift just in thesame way as the Catholic Tartuffe is denounced by Moliere. Although theEngland of the period quarrels and fights France, she imitates her anddraws enlightenment from her; and the light on the facade of England isFrench light. It is a pity that Anne's reign lasted but twelve years, orthe English would not hesitate to call it the century of Anne, as we saythe century of Louis XIV. Anne appeared in 1702, as Louis XIV. declined.It is one of the curiosities of history, that the rise of that paleplanet coincides with the setting of the planet of purple, and that atthe moment in which France had the king Sun, England should have had thequeen Moon.

  A detail to be noted. Louis XIV., although they made war with him, wasgreatly admired in England. "He is the kind of king they want inFrance," said the English. The love of the English for their own libertyis mingled with a certain acceptance of servitude for others. Thatfavourable regard of the chains which bind their neighbours sometimesattains to enthusiasm for the despot next door.

  To sum up, Anne rendered her people _hureux_, as the French translatorof Beeverell's book repeats three times, with graceful reiteration atthe sixth and ninth page of his dedication and the third of his preface.