THE PHILOSOPHERS

Where is the time when La Bruyère wrote: “A man born Christian and French finds himself constrained in satire. The great subjects are forbidden him.” Where is the time when the advocate Barbier put this sentence in his journal: “I think one ought to employ himself honorably, without meddling in State affairs over which he has neither power nor authority.” Prudence, reserve, respect for authority, fear of weakening the foundations of the social edifice,—the philosophers have changed all that. The salons have become academies in which people incessantly talk of religion and politics, for the sake of attacking the Church and even royalty. In 1762 Bachaumont calls attention to a deluge of pamphlets, brochures, and political dissertations, “a rage to argue on matters of finance and government.” Horace Walpole affirms in 1765, that “the atheists who engross conversation inveigh as loudly against kings as against priests.... They do nothing but preach, and their avowed doctrine is atheism.... Even Voltaire does not satisfy them. One of their devotees said of him: ‘He is bigoted, he is a deist.’”

The philosophers are the heroes of the day. Their doctrines have not as yet penetrated the masses of the people. But in the aristocracy, the wealthy commoners, the world of letters, the superior magistracy, the world of finance, they take the arrogant tone of masters. One meets them in all the academies, the houses of all the great nobles, at every fête, every elegant supper. Certain prelates of the upper clergy even are accused of fraternizing with them. Now that the fops are out of fashion, the men in vogue are the philosophers. A philosopher with all his subversive ideas appears as indispensable to a well-kept salon as a chandelier with all its candles. Philosophy, before becoming the supreme danger, is a pastime, a diversion, an elegancy. The fire which is to burn the edifice shows itself at first under the aspect of an evening illumination, an amusing Bengal light. The great nobles play with loaded guns without suspecting that they are about to go off. They are like workmen who, undertaking works of demolition, should delude themselves and naïvely imagine that they are building. Strange types, these revolutionists in lace jabots, with their fashionable blasphemies, their cups of gold or crystal full of an intoxicating but poisonous beverage, these effeminate philosophers who, with such a charming smile and eyes so soft, utter in refined and pleasing tones the most impious remarks in the very manner in which one would recite an idyl or a madrigal! Curious repasts, these suppers, where “one is at table amidst a delicate luxury, among smiling and well-dressed women, with learned and agreeable men, in a society where intelligence is prompt and intercourse safe. After the second course there is an explosion of animation, sallies flash out, wits flame or sparkle. At dessert could one avoid making witticisms on the gravest subjects? With coffee arises the question of the immortality of the soul and the existence of God.”[27] Scepticism is regarded as a thing pertaining to good society. People make a pleasure, a glory of it. The old-time aristocratic stiffness changes into persiflage or irony concerning sacred things. The revolution still wears ruffles. Before putting on the carmagnole it drapes itself in silk and velvet. It will end with red caps; it begins with red-heeled slippers.

In all this there are many oddities, many inconsistencies. Let Walpole describe it for us. “By what I said of their religious or rather irreligious opinions, you must not conclude their people of quality atheists,—at least, not the men. Happily for them, poor souls! they are not capable of going so far into thinking. They assent to a great deal, because it is the fashion, and because they don’t know how to contradict. They are ashamed to defend the Roman Catholic religion, because it is quite exploded; but I am convinced they believe it in their hearts.”[28]

The philosophers themselves recoil before the consequences and the application of their doctrines. Diderot, in his _Projet d’instruction publique pour la Russie_, recognizes that “atheism, adapted to a small number of thinkers, cannot be suitable for a society.” He, the pretended destroyer of religions and tyrannies, he who, in an access of savage fury, wrote this outrageous distich,—

“_Et ma main ourdirait les entrailles du prêtre,_ _A défaut de cordon pour étrangler les rois._”—[29]

he professes a naïve adoration for the Empress Catherine II., goes to Russia to pay her homage, and receives from her northern majesty a heap of compliments and presents. Voltaire exclaims in a candid moment: “The wretch,”—it is the patriarch of Ferney’s appellation for the Catholic religion,—“the wretch is good for the rabble great and small.”

I read in Bachaumont, under date of April 23, 1769: “It is known from various letters which M. Voltaire has written in this region, that this great poet has renewed this year the edifying spectacle of the last one, and has again received his Easter Communion with much devotion, but in a less public manner; he has alleged certain inconveniences which oblige him to keep his bed, and receive Communion in his own house.

“It is claimed that M. Voltaire, piqued by the complaints of the Bishop of Belley, lamenting over his incredulity and his continued obstinacy in spreading libels against religion, determined to verify this Catholic action, and that he had recourse to notaries to receive at this moment his profession of faith, which he has sent to Monseigneur. However it may be with regard to this circumstance, about which people differ, it is evident in several letters to his friends how much he is attached to religion, what respect he has for it, and with what humility he has hastened to satisfy the obligations of Catholicity.”

Is Bachaumont altogether serious when he thus expresses himself? I could not answer for it. It is certain, at all events, that Voltaire built a Catholic church at his own expense, close beside his château, and that on the portal of it he had sculptured this inscription, more haughty than evangelic: _Deo erexit Voltaire_.

Such contradictions exasperate Horace Walpole’s common sense. “Atheism,” he writes, “is a pitiable mess, although all the cooks of France exert themselves to invent new sauces for it. As to the soul, perhaps they have none on the continent, but I think we have such things in England. I think that Shakespeare, for example, had several for his part. As to what concerns the Jews, although they don’t eat pork, I like them, because they are better Christians than Voltaire.”[30] Walpole, the phlegmatic Englishman, so moderate, courteous, liberal, so accustomed to the civil manners of his country, Walpole, the friend of the Marquise Du Deffand, the wit, the man of fashion, the frequenter of salons, could not accustom himself to the philosophers of France. He found them ill-bred, pretentious, tiresome. He accuses them of “having taken up gravity, thinking it was philosophy and English, and so have acquired nothing in the room of their natural levity and cheerfulness.... They are contemptuous and reserved, instead of being ridiculously, consequently pardonably, impertinent.”[31] What has become of the old French gaiety? For the nation it is no longer anything but a souvenir of its youth. “Laughing is as much out of fashion as pantins or bilboquets. Good folks, they have no time to laugh. There is God and the King to be pulled down first; and men and women, one and all, are devoutly employed in the demolition. They think me profane for having any belief left. But this is not my only crime: I have told them, and am undone by it, that they have taken from us to admire the two dullest things we had, Whist and Richardson.[32]... There was no soul in Paris but philosophers, whom I wished in heaven, though they do not wish themselves so. They are so overbearing and underbred.... I sometimes go to Baron d’Olbach’s; but I have left off his dinners, as there was no bearing the authors, and philosophers, and savants, of which he has a pigeon-house full. They soon turned my head with a new system of antediluvian deluges, which they have invented to prove the eternity of matter.”[33]

All this philosophic and scientific flurry bewildered and bored the witty Englishman. These endless blasphemies made him love religion. “Don’t be astonished,” he writes, “if I become a thorough Jesuit.” These gilded salons resplendent with lights, these perfumed boudoirs filled with flowers, where marchionesses and duchesses, powdered, glittering, covered with precious stones, and great nobles in velvet coats with iridescent reflections, give themselves up to senseless invectives against the Christ, make him wish to turn his back upon them all and betake himself to tranquil meditation in the depths of some cloister, far from the philosophers. “When I get too tired of their madness,” he says again, “I retire to the Chartreuse,[34] where I am tempted to prefer Lesueur to all the painters I know.” This Carthusian convent he always revisited with emotion on each of his journeys. In 1739 he had said: “One finds there every convenience which melancholy, meditation, or despair could desire. And yet, one is pleased there.” But in 1771 the impression is not so vivid. He writes, July 9: “I have not half the pleasure in visiting the churches and convents that I formerly felt. The consciousness that the vision is dispelled, the lack of the fervor so necessary in all that is religious, gives these places the aspect of theatres doomed to destruction. The monks trot from one side to the other as if they had not much longer to stay there, and what once appeared to me a sacred twilight is now only dirt and shadows.”

Who knows whether impious doctrines have not already crossed the thresholds of these pious asylums where souls once found emotions so pure and such sweet consolations? The stone saints of Gothic architecture no longer seem so venerable. The changing lights of stained windows have no more the same mysterious clearness. The sound of the organ is less grandiose, less touching. Walpole is afflicted by that spirit of the times, that accursed breath which corrupts and withers human souls. The same sentiment of vague disquiet, of melancholy discouragement, is found in many minds; above all, in many hearts. In the midst of this society, ailing in spite of its brilliancy, in spite of the paint and patches which cover the cheeks of its fashionable beauties, how many strive to stupefy themselves, like those timid people who sing when they are afraid! What do these successful personages, men or women, say to themselves when, wrested from the worldly tumult, they enter into themselves a moment? What do they think at the hour when the festal lamps are extinct, the flowers faded, and when, after a night noisy with impieties and so-called pleasures, the clarity of dawn appears?

SECOND PART

THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES AT THE END OF THE REIGN OF LOUIS XV.

[1768-1774]