THE PEOPLE

Do you see, in country places, a sort of wild animal, male and female, “black, livid, and scorched by the sun, attached to the earth which they dig and turn over with invincible obstinacy? They have a kind of articulate voice, and when they rise to their feet they show a human face, and in fact they are human beings. At night they retire into dens, where they live on bread, water, and roots. They spare other men the trouble of sowing, laboring, and reaping in order to live, and thus deserve not to lack some of the bread which they have sown.”[9]

Do you see them, notwithstanding, “in frightful misery, without beds or furniture; the majority of them even lacking that bread of oats and barley which is their sole nourishment, and which they are obliged to tear from their own mouths and those of their children to pay the taxes”?[10] Do you see “these poor slaves, these beasts of burden fastened to a yoke, and whipped along”?[11] These unfortunates who in years of famine—years which frequently recur—eat grass like sheep and die like flies? Well, if one can believe it, they do not complain. They do not even think of complaining. Their sufferings and privations seem to them as natural as winter or the hail. They do not complain. Why not? Because if they have not the bread of the body, they at least have hope, the bread of the _soul_. Yes, the hope of heaven, the hope of an ideal world which hovers above the real one like a pavilion of gold above a filthy sewer, the hope of the true country where there are neither fatigues, nor tears, nor sorrows,—hope, their support, their consolation, their future; hope, that supreme good which the philosophers are determined at any cost to wrench from them! What they have left, and what the philosophers have no longer, is the sacred poesy of the Church, its hymns of sadness and of joy, the cycle of its feasts which vary and adorn the year. They have the steeple of their native village, the graveyard where their parents sleep and where they offer prayer, the crucifix, the image of the Man-God whose hands and feet and side they kiss while weeping. They have what you have not, men of the world and free-thinkers: the real good, the inestimable treasure, that which subsists entire even when the bell is ringing for the dying, that which death itself has no power against: they have faith! The angels of Christ hover over each thatched cabin, the angels who, when the unfortunates would like to turn away from the chalice of bitterness, induce them to drink it calmly and with resignation even to the dregs!

Great lords and ladies, adepts of the Encyclopedia, savants and literary men, be careful! You mock, perhaps, at these poor people. You criticise what you call their ignorance, because they still worship as of old, because, in their simplicity, on All Saints’ Day they lay a plate for the dead on their wretched tables. You deride them because when they have saved a few farthings they spend them,—for what? In order to burn some candles. Take care,—if they did not burn these candles which you sneer at, they would burn your houses, your castles. Don’t flout these people who are and have little or nothing, who are the majority, and who would only have to crowd together in order to stifle you. Great philosophers, why do you not try to make your discoveries contribute somewhat to preserve that sacred object, the human soul, to wrest it from misery and cast it, consoled, pacified, elevated, into the bosom of God? Ah! why do you belong to that frightful race of men who injure souls? Why do you discourage the cabin where men die of hunger, the workshop where the proletarian, become a wheel of flesh in a machine, can no longer breathe the air of God nor be illumined by His sunshine? Take care! Take care! What will become of you on the day when these poor people say to you, nobles: “You are men like others”; to you, prelates: “You are impostors.” Take care! if your impious doctrines triumph, here are the workmen, the peasants, all the disinherited of fortune, who will cry to you in terrible voices: “No more resignation, vengeance! No more tears. Muskets, and if there are no muskets, pikes! And if there are no pikes, clubs! Enough of docility! Enough of patience! Enough of humility! Come on!” Madmen! Fools! It is you who have just said to them: “Poor wretch, you are awaiting life eternal to find at last a compensation for your sufferings. There is no eternal life. Poor wretch, you are amassing as if there were savings, your tears and sorrows, and those of your wife and your children, in the hope of bringing them after death to the foot of God’s judgment seat. Well, there is no God!” Admirers of Helvétius, Baron d’Holbach, Diderot, great philosophic nobles, be on your guard! on the day when your unbelief shall have spread beyond your salons, your boudoirs, and academies, into the cabins of your peasantry, tremble, for that day will be the vengeance of heaven!

It is the people they lose sight of, and it is they above all who should never be forgotten. It is in them that a strong and intelligent royalty finds its fulcrum, its natural authority, and its moral prestige. It is the people who give their sweat and blood without a murmur. It is the people who in times of peace and times of war, in cities and country places and on battle-fields, utter enthusiastically and with all the force of their robust lungs, the cry which sums up the unity of the country, the cry of loyalty and patriotism: Long live the King! Reforms are necessary. But it is not a Voltairean nobility and a magistracy honeycombed by the spirit of rebellion which can cause order and liberty to triumph. It is not a middle class which, after all, represents only a feeble minority. No. It is the people taken as a whole, that is to say the entire nation, which can be counted on for the work of true progress. The sovereign reformers have always relied on the people, not on the privileged classes. This is what is forgotten in the apartments of Versailles. People busy themselves with the surface of society, not with its depths. They think too much about the houses of the Faubourg Saint Germain, about academies, salons, castles, palaces of justice, and not enough about the garrets and thatched cabins, the devout and honest masses who would be such a powerful rampart for majesty against the invasions of a revolution half aristocratic, half middle class. There would be the rejuvenescence and the future of the monarchy. The King should appear, not merely to the ruling classes, but to the mass of his subjects, as a protector, friend, and father. Louis XV. does not remember often enough that of all classes of society in the eighteenth century, the best, most worthy, most patriotic, is that of the poor, the humble, the workmen, peasants, and laborers. Among them is found the basis of honesty, industry, and piety, the compensation for the scandals of the court and the city, beautiful souls under rude envelopes. There, if royalty comprehended the situation, it would find the consolidation of the throne and the welfare of the country.