第76章

When the company were seated round a table handsomely appointed (for Veronique had sent all her household belongings from Limoges to Montegnac) the six guests felt a momentary embarrassment. The doctor, the mayor and the /juge de paix/ knew nothing of Grossetete and Gerard. But during the first course, old Grossetete's hearty good- humor broke the ice of a first meeting. In addition to this, Madame Graslin's cordiality led on Gerard, and encouraged Roubaud. Under her touch these souls full of fine qualities recognized their relation, and felt they had entered a sympathetic circle. So, by the time the dessert appeared on the table, when the glass and china with gilded edges sparkled, and the choicer wines were served by Aline and Champion and Grossetete's valet, the conversation became sufficiently confidential to allow these four choice minds, thus meeting by chance, to express their real thoughts on matters of importance, such as men like to discuss when they can do so and be sure of the discretion of their companions.

"Your furlough came just in time to let you witness the revolution of July," said Grossetete to Gerard, with an air as if he asked an opinion of him.

"Yes," replied the engineer. "I was in Paris during the three famous days. I saw all; and I came to sad conclusions."

"What were they?" said the rector, eagerly.

"There is no longer any patriotism except under dirty shirts," replied Gerard. "In that lies the ruin of France! July was the voluntary defeat of all superiorities,--name, fortune, talent. The ardent, devoted masses carried the day against the rich and the intelligent, to whom ardor and devotion are repugnant."

"To judge by what has happened during the past year," said Monsieur Clousier, "this change of government is simply a premium given to an evil that is sapping us,--individualism. Fifteen years hence all questions of a generous nature will be met by, /What is that to me?/-- the great cry of Freedom of Will descending from the religious heights where Luther, Calvin, Zwinglius, and Knox introduced it, into even political economy. /Every one for himself/; /every man his own master/,--those two terrible axioms form, with the /What is that to me?/ a trinity of wisdom to the burgher and the small land-owner. This egotism results from the vices of our present civil legislation (too hastily made), to which the revolution of July has just given a terrible confirmation."

The /juge de paix/ fell back into his usual silence after thus expressing himself; but the topics he suggested must have occupied the minds of those present. Emboldened by Clousier's words, and moved by the look which Gerard exchanged with Grossetete, Monsieur Bonnet ventured to go further.

"The good King Charles X.," he said, "has just failed in the most far- sighted and salutary enterprise a monarch ever planned for the welfare of the people confided to him; and the Church ought to feel proud of the part she took in his councils. But the upper classes deserted him in heart and mind, just as they had already deserted him on the great question of the law of primogeniture,--the lasting honor of the only bold statesman the Restoration has produced, namely, the Comte de Peyronnet. To reconstitute the nation through the family; to take from the press its venomous action and confine it to its real usefulness; to recall the elective Chamber to its true functions; and to restore to religion its power over the people,--such were the four cardinal points of the internal policy of the house of Bourbon. Well, twenty years from now all France will have recognized the necessity of that grand and sound policy. Charles X. was in greater peril in the situation he chose to leave than in that in which his paternal power has been defeated. The future of our noble country--where all things will henceforth be brought periodically into question, where our rulers will discuss incessantly instead of acting, where the press, become a sovereign power, will be the instrument of base ambitions-- this future will only prove the wisdom of the king who has just carried away with him the true principles of government; and history will bear in mind the courage with which he resisted his best friends after having probed the wound and seen the necessity of curative measures, which were not sustained by those for whose sake he put himself into the breach."

"Ah! monsieur," cried Gerard, "you are frank; you go straight to your thought without disguise, and I won't contradict you. Napoleon in his Russian campaign was forty years in advance of the spirit of his age; he was never understood. The Russia and England of 1830 explains the campaign of 1812. Charles X. has been misunderstood in the same way.

It is quite possible that in twenty-five years from now his ordinances may become the laws of the land."