第64章

The Bibliographical Dictionaries, producing no evidence, name quite another person, or series of persons, [A certain "N. de Bonneville" (afterwards a Revolutionary spiritual-mountebank, for some time) is now the favorite Name;--proves, on investigation, to be an impossible one. Barbier (Dictionnaire des Anonymes), in a helpless doubting manner, gives still others.] highly unmemorable otherwise. Whereupon you proceed to said other person's acknowledged WORKS (as they are called);and find there a style bearing no resemblance whatever; and are left in a dubious state, if it were of any moment. In the absence of proof, I am unwilling to charge his Highness de Ligne with such an action; and indeed am little careful to be acquainted with the individual who did it, who could and would do it. A Prince of Coxcombs I can discern him to have been; capable of shining in the eyes of insincere foolish persons, and of doing detriment to them, not benefit; a man without reverence for truth or human excellence; not knowing in fact what is true from what is false, what is excellent from what is sham-excellent and at the top of the mode; an apparently polite and knowing man, but intrinsically an impudent, dark and merely modish-insolent man;--who, if he fell in with Rhadamanthus on his travels, would not escape a horse-whipping, Him we will willingly leave to that beneficial chance, which indeed seems a certain one sooner or later; and address ourselves to consider the theory itself, and the facts it pretends to be grounded on.

"As to the theory, I must needs say, nothing can be falser, more heretical or more damnable. My own poor opinion, and deep conviction on that subject is well known, this long while. And, in fact, the summary of all I have believed, and have been trying as I could to teach mankind to believe again, is even that same opinion and conviction, applied to all provinces of things.

Alas, in this his sad theory about the world, our poor impudent Pamphleteer is by no means singular at present; nay rather he has in a manner the whole practical part of mankind on his side just now; the more is the pity for us all!--"It is very certain, if Beelzebub made this world, our Pamphleteer, and the huge portion of mankind that follow him, are right. But if God made the world; and only leads Beelzebub, as some ugly muzzled bear is led, a longer or shorter temporary DANCEin this divine world, and always draws him home again, and peels the unjust gains off him, and ducks him in a certain hot Lake, with sure intent to lodge him there to all eternity at last,--then our Pamphleteer, and the huge portion of mankind that follow him, are wrong.

"More I will not say; being indeed quite tired of SPEAKING on that subject. Not a subject which it concerns me to speak of; much as it concerns me, and all men, to know the truth of it, and silently in every hour and moment to do said truth. As indeed the sacred voice of their own soul, if they listen, will conclusively admonish all men; and truly if IT do not, there will be little use in my logic to them. For my own share, I want no trade with men who need to be convinced of that fact. If I am in their premises, and discover such a thing of them, I will quit their premises;if they are in mine, I will, as old Samuel advised, count my spoons. Ingenious gentlemen who believe that Beelzebub made this world, are not a class of gentlemen I can get profit from.

Let them keep at a distance, lest mischief fall out between us.

They are of the set deserving to be called--and this not in the way of profane swearing, but of solemn wrath and pity, I say of virtuous anger and inexorable reprobation--the damned set. For, in very deed, they are doomed and damned, by Nature's oldest Act of Parliament, they, and whatsoever thing they do or say or think;unless they can escape from that devil-element. Which I still hope they may!--"But with regard to the facts themselves, 'DE NOTRE MAISON,'

I take leave to say, they too are without basis of truth. They are not so false as the theory, because nothing can in falsity quite equal that. 'NOTRE MAISON,' this Pamphleteer may learn, if he please to make study and inquiry before speaking, did not rise by worship of Beelzebub at all in this world; but by a quite opposite line of conduct. It rose, in fact, by the course which all, except fools, stockjobber stags, cheating gamblers, forging Pamphleteers and other temporary creatures of the damned sort, have found from of old to be the one way of permanently rising: by steady service, namely, of the Opposite of Beelzebub. By conforming to the Laws of this Universe; instead of trying by pettifogging to evade and profitably contradict them. The Hohenzollerns too have a History still articulate to the human mind, if you search sufficiently;and this is what, even with some emphasis, it will teach us concerning their adventures, and achievements of success in the field of life. Resist the Devil, good reader, and he will flee from you!"--So ends our indignant friend.

How the Hohenzollerns got their big Territories, and came to what they are in the world, will be seen. Probably they were not, any of them, paragons of virtue. They did not walk in altogether speckless Sunday pumps, or much clear-starched into consciousness of the moral sublime; but in rugged practical boots, and by such roads as there were. Concerning their moralities, and conformities to the Laws of the Road and of the Universe, there will much remain to be argued by pamphleteers and others. Men will have their opinion, Men of more wisdom and of less; Apes by the Dead-Sea also will have theirs. But what man that believed in such a Universe as that of this Dead-Sea Pamphleteer could consent to live in it at all? Who that believed in such a Universe, and did not design to live like a Papin's-Digester, or PORCUS EPICURI, in an extremely ugly manner in it, could avoid one of two things:

Going rapidly into Bedlam, or else blowing his brains out?