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 OF THE 
 
 Romance 
 Seminar 
 
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 i
 
 LOUIS PASTEUR
 
 Ten Frenchmen of the 
 Nineteenth Century 
 
 BY 
 
 F. M. WARREN, Ph.D., L.H.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF MODERN LANGUAGES IN 
 YALE UNIVERSITY 
 
 Author of 
 
 "A Primer of French Literature," "A History of the 
 Novel previous to the Seventeenth Century," etc. 
 
 dlir Ctjautauqua }-)rrss 
 
 CHAUTAUQUA, N. Y. 
 MCM1V
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1904, 
 
 BY 
 
 THE POPULAR EDUCATION PUBLISHING 
 COMPANY 
 
 81)r lakrattir 
 
 R. R. DONNELLEY ii SONS COMPANY 
 CHICAGO
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION i 
 II. GUIZOT AND THE CAUSE OF CONSTITUTIONAL 
 
 MONARCHY - 16 
 
 III. FOURIER AND SOCIALISM - - 43 
 
 IV. THIERS AND THE GROWTH OF REPUBLICAN 
 
 PRINCIPLES - 70 
 
 V. GAMBETTA AND THE THIRD REPUBLIC - - 96 
 
 VI. VICTOR HUGO - 117 
 
 VII. BALZAC AND REALISM IN LITERATURE - - 147 
 
 VIII. ZOLA 176 
 
 IX. RENAN AND BIBLICAL CRITICISM - 202 
 
 X. PASTEUR AND THE GERM THEORY - 229 
 
 XI. DE LESSEPS AND INTER-OCEANIC CANALS - 249
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Louis PASTEUR - Frontispiece 
 
 FRANCOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT - - 16 
 
 FRANCOIS MARIE CHARLES FOURIER 43 
 
 Louis ADOLPHE THIERS - - 70 
 
 LEON MICHEL GAMBETTA 96 
 
 VICTOR MARIE HUGO 117 
 
 HONORE DE BALZAC - 147 
 
 EMILE EDOUARD CHARLES ANTOINE ZOLA 176 
 
 JOSEPH ERNEST RENAN 202 
 
 FERDINAND MARIE DE LESSEPS - 249
 
 TEN FRENCHMEN OF THE 
 NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The achievements of the nineteenth century were the 
 carrying out of the ideas of the eighteenth. Before the 
 French Revolution men theorized; after it they employed 
 themselves in turning the theories into facts. Science 
 left the study for the shop; steam and electricity were 
 put to practical uses; chemistry became a handmaid to 
 industry; while physiology created medicine anew. Like- 
 wise in public affairs. The application of the social views 
 of philosophers and essayists transformed governments, 
 changed constitutions, created states. 
 
 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND FRANCE 
 In no country of Christendom were these results so 
 evident as in France. By the temperament of its people 
 France is subject to violent changes. Other nations yield 
 to the invasion of new ideas gradually, peacefully. In 
 France devotion to tradition and custom is so strong in all 
 matters of private or public import that the forms of the 
 past continue to stand after their content is exhausted. 
 They must be broken by the impact of other forms of new 
 and vigorous content. Hence revolutions in politics and
 
 2 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 literature, violent antagonisms, strifes between the living 
 present and the dead past. The French Revolution is an 
 instance of the way changes in politics are made. By 
 their attacks on religious and civil authority, which went 
 hand in hand in old France, Voltaire and his allies 
 destroyed respect for creed and statute. Their influence 
 was wholly towards pulling down. With his dreams of 
 the primitive happiness of man, a golden age which 
 civilization had corroded and tarnished, Rousseau showed 
 how justice and truth would be found only in a return 
 to nature and a purely democratic state. He would 
 destroy, but in order to create anew. The skepticism of 
 Voltaire and the faith of Rousseau met in the French 
 Revolution. Faith won, as always, and from the chaos 
 of the Reign of Terror a new France emerged. 
 
 THE WORK OF NAPOLEON 
 
 This new France was a land of passion. It believed 
 it had a mission: to proclaim liberty, equality, and frater- 
 nity to all mankind, and free from injustice and oppression 
 the peoples of the world. To direct this enthusiasm Provi- 
 dence raised up a leader. Bonaparte was a great adminis- 
 trator. Modern times have not seen his equal in this 
 respect. His foreign wars may not have been an unmixed 
 blessing to Europe, and were quite certainly an evil to 
 France; but they carried abroad the principles of liberty, 
 and made Germany and Italy nations. His work at home, 
 however, was beneficial. It fashioned the France of the 
 present day. The results of the Revolution were accepted, 
 and incorporated into the common law of the land. Peas- 
 ant proprietorship was sanctioned, and primogeniture 
 abolished. To recompense the Church for the loss of its
 
 Introduction 3 
 
 revenues appropriations were granted direct from the 
 public treasury. Public improvements were planned, set 
 on foot, and carried out in many instances. The internal 
 administration of the country was systematized, and con- 
 centrated in the central authority. Art and science were 
 fostered. Whatever the political vicissitudes which have 
 followed, France has remained in all essential particulars 
 the France of the Empire. 
 
 THE RESTORATION 
 
 With Napoleon finally at St. Helena, Louis XVIII on 
 the throne, and the emigrant nobles back after a twenty 
 years' exile, during which little notion of the great changes 
 at home had entered their minds, France seemed in fair 
 way to return to the ideas of the eighteenth century. The 
 great bulwark against this ebb in the social tide was the 
 peasant proprietorship, sanctioned by the Napoleonic Code. 
 Country and city, though weary of war, joined in success- 
 ful resistance to a political reaction. Fifteen years after 
 Waterloo the Bourbons fled, never to return. 
 
 But the Restoration did more than hold the ground 
 gained by the Revolution. Its era of peace fostered learn- 
 ing and literature. Science became more and more experi- 
 mental. Literature, which had been antagonized in its 
 development by the pagan ideals of the Revolution, re- 
 newed its connection with the nature-worship of Rousseau, 
 who had rejected classical models. Its votaries were di- 
 vided into two camps. One party became deeply religious. 
 Turning away from antiquity it found new and Christian 
 sources of inspiration in the writings and art of the Middle 
 Ages. Chateaubriand headed this group, and many of its 
 members wrote under the influence of English and Ger-
 
 4 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 man romanticists. In politics this faction was conserva- 
 tive, reactionary. The other camp held the liberals, the 
 advocates of democracy and equality of sex. In matters 
 of religion it sided with Voltaire, though its leaders, 
 Mme. de Stae'l, and later, George Sand, were the especial 
 disciples of Rousseau. This group was much less numer- 
 ous than the other. Perhaps also the division between 
 the two is more apparent than real. It is strongly marked 
 only in religious belief and in politics, and towards 1830 
 both factions found themselves united in the French 
 Romantic School. This school included poets like Hugo 
 and Lamartine, and historians like Thierry and Guizot. 
 Beside them stood the romanticists of art, Boulanger and 
 David d'Angers. 
 
 THE REIGN OF LOUIS PHILIPPE 
 
 Liberalism in politics triumphed in the July Revolution 
 of 1830. The aristocracy of birth, which strenuously 
 held to the ways of old France, was supplanted by the 
 caste of bankers and merchants, the Third Estate, which 
 had made the French Revolution, and was now demanding 
 the fruits of its labors. The new monarch, Louis Philippe, 
 of the House of Orleans, a man of simple and democratic 
 ways, received his throne at the hands of Parliament. 
 Napoleon had recognized the democratic principle. His 
 generals had risen from the ranks and had become the 
 dukes and princes of a new nobility. The year 1830, 
 therefore, in many ways joined on to 1815. A signifi- 
 cant sign of this close connection was the substitution of 
 the tri-colored flag of the Empire for the royal white 
 banner and golden lilies of the Restoration. But the July 
 monarchy was in favor of peace. It was a business man's
 
 Introduction 5 
 
 government. The only war it was called upon to under- 
 take was one of territorial aggrandizement, by which 
 Algeria was added to the possessions of France. 
 
 Still the inevitable evolution of the principles of the 
 French Revolution liberty, equality, fraternity went on 
 under this rule of the bourgeoisie. The constitution of the 
 country was patterned on the constitution of England. 
 A property qualification underlay tenure of office and the 
 suffrage. In the eyes of the masses this was not equal- 
 ity. Democratic ideas flourished. Socialism found advo- 
 cates in theory and practice. The government did not 
 understand how to trim its sails to ride out the growing 
 storm, and the Revolution of 1848, supported by the 
 mechanics and day laborers, drove it from power. 
 
 During this period of eighteen years many men of 
 letters had played at politics. Thiers and Guizot, both 
 historians by vocation, had in turn guided the destinies of 
 the nation. The glory of the Empire, now seen in retro- 
 spect, had thrown its suffering into the shade. The 
 so-called Napoleonic legend had daily been gaining 
 strength. The triumphal recovery of the remains of the 
 emperor, in 1840, and their interment at the Invalides 
 had aroused an enthusiasm which disturbed the nibnarchy 
 and cost Thiers his office. Guizot 's failure to compre- 
 hend the times and their demands forced the crisis of 
 1848. Other writers who took part in public affairs, as 
 Lamartine and Hugo, attained no more lasting success. 
 As republicans they survived 1848, but only to lose place 
 and power in the stormy years that followed. 
 
 Their contributions to the literature of their country 
 were, however, more beneficial and more lasting. Around 
 Hugo the second generation of romanticists had gathered,
 
 6 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 Alfred de Musset, Theophile Gautier, Sainte-Beuve. In 
 sympathy with them, but not in such close touch, were the 
 other great writers of the Romantic School, Alexandre 
 Dumas and George Sand. Inspired by them and inspiring 
 them in turn were the artists Horace Vernet and Delacroix; 
 the musicians Chopin, Meyerbeer, and Rossini. On the 
 other hand, opponents of romantic views, while partly 
 imbued with them, included the first and the best of the 
 realists, Stendhal and Balzac. They did not care for art, 
 they gave little heed to style. Observation directed their 
 pen, not imagination; what they saw, rather than what 
 they felt. They left emotion and sentiment to the roman- 
 ticists. Skeptics in religion, conceiving life to be a 
 struggle for material enjoyment, in which the strongest 
 and shrewdest succeeds, taking their model from Napo- 
 leon, the great parvenu, and possessed with the spirit of 
 the exact sciences, they substituted in their works descrip- 
 tions for emotions, the careful narrative of physical man 
 and his surroundings for a picture of the human soul, and 
 the heroes of the shop and professions for the knights of 
 the Middle Ages and the musketeers of Louis XIII. The 
 Third Estate had seized the political power. Why should 
 it not be eulogized in more lasting annals? Some of the 
 realists went farther. Eugene Sue laid the plots of his 
 romances in the resorts of the revolutionists of 1848. 
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 
 
 The Republic of 1848 proved to be lacking in vitality. 
 Its leading men were theorists or Jacobins, and France 
 was not. yet ready for representative government pure and 
 simple. The Republic established universal suffrage, and 
 fell at once into the hands of Louis Napoleon, whom uni-
 
 Introduction 7 
 
 versal suffrage first elected president, then president for 
 ten years, and finally emperor. The attempt to return 
 to the political ideas of 1793 had failed. Public opinion 
 forced on the country a despotism, for fear of a lapse 
 recurring to the anarchy of the Reign of Terror, and 
 socialistic views of ownership. 
 
 The main strength of Napoleon III was derived from 
 the Napoleonic legend, which had grown until it had quite 
 crowded out all other political sentiment. But he pos- 
 sessed also a keen appreciation of the desires of the French 
 people, knew foreign countries, was inclined towards 
 idealism. He declared at once for peace and industry, 
 and in public affairs leaned towards the establishment of 
 a constitutional monarchy. His internal administration 
 was excellent. Important works of improvement were 
 undertaken in the larger towns. Paris was made over, 
 given parks and public buildings. Universal expositions 
 in 1855 and 1867 fostered national industry and art. 
 And all the while the absolute autocracy of the earlier 
 years was yielding little by little to the increasing demand 
 for liberty of thought and action. But in foreign affairs 
 his rule was singularly unfortunate. Intent on making 
 France the center of European diplomacy, and on cheaply 
 purchasing a large amount of military glory, Napoleon III 
 engaged in alliances and expeditions more and more unfor- 
 tunate. The Crimean War, in which he opposed Russia, 
 the natural ally of France, and assisted in perpetuating 
 the power of the Turk in Europe, the Italian War of 
 1859, which ended in a way unsatisfactory to the Italians, 
 the Roman Catholics, and Europe generally, his unfortu- 
 nate attempt to found a Latin state in Mexico were each 
 recognized at the time or later to have constituted a series
 
 8 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 of political mistakes, from which France had gained noth- 
 ing but enmity and distrust. The final blunder of the 
 Franco-Prussian War proved fatal to the Empire. 
 
 In the domain of ideas the Second Empire did not 
 show the robustness of either the Bourbon or the Orlean- 
 ist monarchy. Its pretense of religion and morality was 
 regarded in many quarters as a sham, a cloak to cover 
 irreligion and wrongdoing. However this may have been, 
 the popular philosophy among the scientists was Comte's 
 positivism, which formulated agnosticism. The effect of 
 this creed on literature was striking. With 1848 romanti- 
 cism had ceased to rule, and the best of realism had 
 departed. Chateaubriand had died in that year, and 
 Balzac in 1850. Lamartine had turned hack-writer, 
 De Musset's muse was silent. George Sand had retired 
 to the country, and the coup d'etat of 1851 had driven 
 Hugo into exile. Yet experimental science grew, favor- 
 ing mental doubt until results have been attained, while 
 criticism and research occupied the greater talents, who 
 looked to Germany and England for guidance. These 
 include Renan, the historian; Littre, a disciple of Comte, 
 the linguist and essayist; and Taine, of the same school, 
 the critic. 
 
 Of works of the imagination there are few, apart from 
 Hugo's novels and poetry; for realism in literature had 
 degenerated into a bastard naturalism. Man passed more 
 and more for a mere animal, an animal endowed with evil 
 instincts to the exclusion of the good. The novelist of 
 the day, Flaubert, is a chronicler of human imbecility and 
 physical decay. Baudelaire gave these ideas expression 
 in verse, while a new school of poets, the Parnassians, 
 were devoting their energies to the perfection of technique
 
 Introduction 9 
 
 and form. The drama, in its representatives, the younger 
 Dumas and Augier, portrays the unwholesome traits of 
 contemporaneous manners or argues for reform in social 
 conditions. It is realistic, like Balzac. 
 
 Art also left the domain of the imagination for the 
 field of observation. Studies of nature, landscapes, 
 attained unwonted excellence in the paintings of the Bar- 
 bizon School. The Empire also had its eulogists, who 
 delineated with extreme care and attention to detail the 
 battles of the Grand Army and the military experiences 
 of Napoleon III. Towards the end of the period a revolt 
 in the direction of naturalism becomes manifest. More 
 freedom, a broader treatment, a rejection of conventional 
 themes and color, point the way to greater originality of 
 thought and expression. But official influence was ever 
 on the side of conservatism in either literature or art. 
 Censorship was often exercised. 
 
 THE THIRD REPUBLIC 
 
 The battle of Sedan brought the opposition to imperial- 
 ism to the front, and the republicans of Paris, unrestrained 
 by the presence of the regular army, captive or besieged, 
 proclaimed the Third Republic. The numeral is signifi- 
 cant. It preserves the memory of the French Revolution 
 and the Republic of 1848. There is no question but that 
 the nation as a whole was taken by surprise by this action 
 of the Parisians. For when, after the war and the Com- 
 mune, deputies were elected to the National Assembly, it 
 was found that the republicans were in a minority. But 
 the majority was made up of such antagonistic factions 
 Bonapartists from the north, Bourbons from the west, and 
 Orleanists from many districts controlled by the bourgeoisie
 
 io Ten Frenchmen 
 
 that no agreement among them was possible, and the 
 Republic continued by sufferance. For nearly twenty 
 years this peculiar state of affairs lasted. The existence 
 of the government was often menaced. It often seemed 
 on the verge of destruction. But it was not destroyed, 
 and since 1890 its stability has not been seriously doubted. 
 From a strife between partisans of a monarchy or empire 
 and partisans of representative government, the political 
 contest within the country has passed to the usual struggle 
 between liberals and conservatives. Religious opinion 
 forms much of the party difference. The liberals, who 
 include the moderate socialists, are on the whole against 
 Church influence in public affairs. The conservatives are 
 quite generally stanch churchmen. 
 
 The Republic has shown itself fairly competent in the 
 management of internal affairs. The centralized system 
 of administration, established by Napoleon, remains in 
 full force, though many of the more enlightened citizens 
 favor greater local autonomy, and some steps have been 
 taken toward increasing the attractions of other towns 
 than Paris. This is especially noticeable in the matter of 
 education. Shortly before the fall of the Second Empire, 
 the minister of public instruction, Victor Duruy, the his- 
 torian, brought forward a measure for the extension of 
 common schools under governmental direction. Primary 
 education had been almost entirely in the control of the 
 Church. The Republic, with its leanings away from 
 clericalism, succeeded to Duruy's idea and pushed it for- 
 ward until the youth of France of both sexes enjoy prac- 
 tically the same educational privileges that are enjoyed in 
 Germany. Hand in hand with this movement has gone 
 the development and improvement of the more advanced
 
 Introduction 1 1 
 
 schools of learning. Universities in the provinces, at 
 Grenoble, Montpellier, Toulouse, or Lyons, have enlarged 
 their resources quite as much as the University of Paris. 
 Scientific privileges formerly concentrated in the capital 
 are now available in the more remote districts also. 
 
 In the matter of public works the present government 
 has continued the plans of the Empire. The buildings in 
 Paris ruined by the Commune have been in part replaced, 
 and with greater magnificence. Broad avenues have taken 
 the place of city alleys, bridges have been constructed, 
 while the expositions of 1878, 1889, and 1900 have fairly 
 outdone the fairs of the Second Empire. The policy of 
 fostering art has been continued, museums have been 
 multiplied, and private individuals have vied with the state 
 in increasing the collections open to the public. A notable 
 instance is the gift of the old Conde estate at Chantilly by 
 one of the Orleanist princes, the Due d'Aumale, to the 
 Institute of France. No previous era has seen so much 
 done for the enlightenment and comfort of the people. 
 At the present time the chief obstacle to the success of 
 the existing regime in France is the burden of taxation 
 which its military budget lays upon the people. Neither 
 monarchy nor empire had to contend with expenditures 
 for war when there was no war. 
 
 In foreign affairs the Republic has followed the vacil- 
 lating policy of its predecessor. It has in turn estranged 
 and reconciled Italy, has shown its sympathy with Spain, 
 during the Spanish-American War, and its distrust of 
 England. But no complications have ensued because of 
 its feelings other than those of a tariff war with Italy. 
 And to its great credit can be placed the alliance with 
 Russia, the utility of which had appealed to Bonaparte,
 
 12 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 but had escaped his nephew, Napoleon III. The wars it 
 has waged have been small, if unfruitful, prompted by the 
 spirit of colonization. Algeria has always been commer- 
 cially unprofitable. Now Tunis has been added to it 
 under the guise of a French protectorate. Expeditions 
 to the eastern seas have also been undertaken. Tonquin 
 was wrested from China, and Madagascar from its native 
 rulers. All these petty campaigns have involved some 
 expenditure of blood and still occasion considerable 
 expenditure of money. It is a question whether the 
 resources thus applied might not have been employed at 
 home to better advantage. The French do not colonize. 
 They wisely prefer to dwell in their own fair land. 
 
 The progress of ideas under the Third Republic has 
 kept pace with the evolution of western thought. Inven- 
 tions and discoveries notably those of Pasteur in the line 
 of chemistry have contributed their share to the advance- 
 ment of mankind. In all departments of science there are 
 many workers, some of whom have attained eminence. 
 Literature has suffered, as it has everywhere else. Its 
 springs of inspiration, imaginative or realistic, seem to 
 have dried up. Hugo, the great genius, who had labored 
 in all the epochs of the century since Waterloo, worked 
 on in this also in full possession of his powers; but there 
 was no one to bear him company. In fiction the better 
 writers are realists or naturalists, like Daudet and Zola. 
 In poetry the Parnassians, who counted among their 
 number two men of note, Coppee and Sully-Prudhomme, 
 were soon opposed by the symbolists, who tried to carry 
 poetry back to its origin in music, appealing to the ear 
 and not the eye. The dramatists of the Empire have had 
 no successors. The stage has been occupied with theatri-
 
 Introduction 13 
 
 cal experiments, more or less realistic in their bent, and is 
 now freed of all conventional restraints. Rules of con- 
 struction have given way to complete liberty. Through- 
 out the whole period the influence of Russian and Scandi- 
 navian writers has been plain, affecting now fiction, now 
 drama. But on the whole the various branches of litera- 
 ture, having exhausted the impetus born of the social 
 changes which produced the French Revolution, are wait- 
 ing for new sources of emotion to reveal themselves. 
 
 THE PRESENT OUTLOOK 
 
 The future of France may be judged to some extent 
 from her past. In government she may have reached her 
 goal. No other form of administration since the French 
 Revolution has lasted so long as the Third Republic. Its 
 existence has at times been precarious, but it has survived 
 the revival of Caesarism in Boulanger, the financial scandal 
 of the Panama Canal, the injustice and party spirit of the 
 Dreyfus affair. There is every likelihood that its strength 
 of resistance will grow. In the thirty-four years since 
 Sedan a whole generation has come to maturity, a genera- 
 tion which neither ties of sentiment nor of self-interest 
 attach to a dynasty. The common-school system, spread 
 throughout the land, is in itself a great protection against 
 reaction to a monarchy, where clerical instructors and 
 parochial education would be supreme. Pretenders to 
 the throne are too far removed in blood from the old 
 sovereigns to create any serious diversion in their favor. 
 In foreign affairs the Republic has attained a position of 
 dignity. 
 
 Among the French people there is a visible drift 
 towards socialism, as in all other countries. But in
 
 14 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 France this drift is opposed even more resolutely than 
 elsewhere by the peasant proprietors and the steady, self- 
 centered bourgeoisie. Legislation in behalf of the artisans 
 and non-property-holding classes may be expected, forced 
 as elsewhere by the broadening of the democratic principle 
 and the growth of altruism. But revolutions should be 
 less and less feared as the people learn the art of self- 
 government, and acquire the habit of making the ballot- 
 box the arbiter of disputes. Some decentralization will 
 undoubtedly be carried through, as much as the genius of 
 the nation, which demands order and unity, will allow. 
 In short, the Republic will continue to be, but it will con- 
 tinue to be French, not Germanic nor Anglo-Saxon. 
 Offering, as it does, full play to the expression of indi- 
 vidual thought and opinion, it should be more completely 
 representative of French genius than any despotic or 
 restricted kind of administration. 
 
 As a military power the France of the future will be of 
 less consequence than the France of the past. And the 
 France of the future will also be a less important factor 
 in the industrial world. Individual selfishness and the 
 selfishness of family feeling combine to restrict that 
 growth in population which is a necessary foundation of 
 enterprise and power. If children only avail to fill the 
 places vacated by their parents, invention will decline and 
 the power of initiative will be dwarfed for lack of exer- 
 cise. But France will continue to lead the nations in 
 taste and art. She is the Greece of the modern world. 
 To an unusual degree receptive of ideas, from whatever 
 quarter they may come, she assimilates these ideas, 
 recasts them, and presents them again to their originators 
 clad in her own inimitable form. This process has been
 
 Introduction 15 
 
 repeated at every stage of her existence, since the battle 
 of Hastings and the crusade of Peter the Hermit, ever 
 since France has felt herself a nation. It will continue 
 until she ceases to be a nation. For her supremacy does 
 not rest on the might of armies, but on the charm of 
 thought. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The French People. Arthur Hassall. 
 Modern France, 1789-1895. Andre Lebon.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 GUIZOT AND THE CAUSE OF CONSTITUTIONAL 
 MONARCHY 
 
 [FRANCOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT, born at Nimes, Octo- 
 ber 4, 1787; Adjunct Professor of Modern History in the 
 University of Paris, 1812; Secretary-General in the Ministry 
 of the Interior under Louis XVIII, 1814; Counselor of State, 
 1816-1820; deputy from Lisieux and Minister of the Interior, 
 1830; Minister of Public Instruction, 1832-1836; member of 
 the French Academy, 1836; Ambassador to England, 1840; 
 Minister of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister, 1840-1848; 
 Died at Val Richer, in Normandy, September 12, 1874. Prin- 
 cipal works: "History of Civilization in Europe," 1828; "His- 
 tory of Civilization in France," 1830.] 
 
 The fall of Napoleon was brought about quite as much 
 by the exhaustion of France as by the uprising of Europe. 
 For two decades the French people had lived in a state of 
 almost constant alarm. Campaign had succeeded cam- 
 paign with but short intervals of intermission. To defend 
 the existence of the Republic at first and afterwards to 
 maintain the glories of the Empire, the mask under which 
 Bonaparte concealed his personal ambition, the land had 
 been fairly drained of able-bodied men, and disease and 
 death had seated themselves in the corner of every hearth. 
 Through these privations the nation as a whole had 
 wearied of war. The return of Napoleon from Elba met 
 with only moderate enthusiasm. Few save his restless 
 veterans gathered around his standard. The country 
 longed for peace. For peace it was ready to sacrifice its 
 
 16
 
 FRANqOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
 
 Guizot and Constitutional Monarchy 17 
 
 ambition and much of its pride, and Waterloo occasioned 
 at the time but slight regrets. 
 
 Still the task which devolved on the monarchy of Louis 
 XVIII was not an easy one. The sympathies of the king 
 were naturally with the old order of things. His court, 
 composed in large part of the nobility which had fled from 
 France during the Revolution, and whose estates had been 
 confiscated by the government in consequence, was moved 
 by every private interest to help undo the work of the 
 administrations which had remade France during its 
 absence. But almost at the other end of the social scale 
 was the large body of newly created proprietors, peasants, 
 and small tradesmen, who had held by law these confis- 
 cated estates for twenty years and more. Whether their 
 title was based on right or not, they constituted so numer- 
 ous an element of the population, perhaps even the major- 
 ity, that it was out of the question to dispossess them. 
 And in the center was the great French bourgeoisie, which 
 had carried on the Revolution in order to secure its natural 
 rights, and had increased its wealth gained by manufac- 
 turing and commerce to a degree that made it the equal 
 of the nobility in all material things. This class aimed at 
 social equality, and possessed the means requisite to reach 
 that goal. Over against the nobles its interests lay with 
 the peasant proprietors. The alliance was formidable, 
 preponderant. The advisers of the restored monarchy 
 were forced to heed it. All but the most narrow of the 
 emigres at once realized that the ancien regime was gone 
 beyond recall. The age of special privilege bestowed by 
 birth had passed. It was probable that the influence of 
 the former privileged class would wane. The rising tide 
 of democracy, which had swept the state from its moor-
 
 1 8 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 ings during the Reign of Terror, had found a ruler to be 
 sure in Bonaparte, but a ruler who increased its volume 
 while curbing its current. His check removed, if it was 
 not to engulf anew the whole social fabric, a dike was 
 necessary. This dike could only be found in a union of 
 the nobility with the upper bourgeoisie. Such was the 
 political problem of France from 1815 to 1848. 
 
 Foreigners think of Guizot as a great historian; and 
 in truth, his historical work constitutes the lasting basis of 
 his fame. But he himself desired to be regarded as a 
 statesman, and the years of his most vigorous manhood 
 were given over to politics. Born in Nimes, the old 
 Roman town in the south of France, in 1787, but two 
 years before the beginning of the French Revolution, his 
 career was both made and marred by that great event. 
 It was made because he was a child of Protestant parents, 
 and Protestants of the bourgeois grade could hope for little 
 favor in royal France. It was marred because Guizot 's 
 father, a zealous advocate of liberty, was revolted by the 
 horrors of the Reign of Terror, and answered for his 
 defection with his head, in 1794. The mother remained, 
 a woman of unusual endowments of mind and firmness of 
 character. Under her steady hand the young Francois 
 grew to manhood. She had fled to Geneva with her 
 family, and there, under the protection of a republican 
 form of government, and perhaps subjected to the leveling 
 theories of Rousseau, a native of Geneva, the son began 
 his education and learned the carpenter's trade. In 1805 
 he went to Paris to study law, and at once showed his 
 aptitude for a literary calling. Journal articles, reviews, 
 essays, books even, followed one another in rapid succes- 
 sion, for Guizot ever possessed the capacity for hard labor.
 
 Guizot and Constitutional Monarchy 19 
 
 Finally an annotated translation of Gibbon's "History" 
 gave evidence of his real talent, and brought about, in 
 1 8 12, his nomination to the chair of history at the univer- 
 sity. With his opening lecture his conception of historical 
 investigation was formulated, the school of philosophical 
 history was founded. 
 
 The abdication of Napoleon called Guizot into political 
 life as an officer in the Interior Department. But he soon 
 found that the royalists had much to learn, and provoked 
 by their arrogant demands, he resigned his post on the 
 eve of Napoleon's return from Elba. During the Hun- 
 dred Days, however, the group of liberals who wished a 
 constitutional monarchy, shaped according to the English 
 pattern, perfected a tentative organization. Guizot was 
 their chosen spokesman, and before Waterloo was fought 
 had already carried to Louis XVIII, who had taken 
 refuge in Ghent, their advice to accept the work of the 
 Revolution without reservation, and dismiss all reaction- 
 ary councilors. This embassy to the exiled king, at a 
 time when France was again engaged in foreign wars, was 
 never forgiven by the Bonapartists. In the days of 
 Guizot 's unpopularity it was the great reproach that his 
 enemies cast upon him, so that even the urchins in the 
 streets of Paris were familiar with "that rascal of a Guizot 
 who went to Ghent," without knowing in the least what 
 the phrase meant. 
 
 The Second Restoration called him back into the 
 administration. Again his moderation, his middle course, 
 opposed at once to the extreme reaction towards the old 
 rule and to the claims of unrestrained popular sovereignty, 
 ruined his political prospects. He and his friends, men 
 of patriotism and learning, wished a government which
 
 2O Ten Frenchmen 
 
 should recognize the existing material and social status of 
 the country, and should rule through a sovereign held in 
 check by a constitution and by a parliament, elected from 
 such limited number of citizens as possessed the requisite 
 property qualifications. This program satisfied neither the 
 people nor the nobles. It seems to have been neither 
 reactionary nor progressive. It tried to hold things as 
 they were. The members of this group were maliciously 
 termed "Doctrinaires," and their downfall in 1820 was 
 rejoiced in by both liberals and conservatives. This 
 catastrophe, however, restored Guizot to his professor's 
 chair, and marks the beginning of his professional reputa- 
 tion. 
 
 Lectures, political pamphlets against the government, 
 and historical publications succeeded or accompanied one 
 another during the next decade. Because of his attitude 
 as an opponent the government took the extreme measure 
 of suspending his courses from 1825 to 1828. But this 
 punishment only allowed the student greater opportunity 
 to prosecute his private work. It was also a great factor 
 in increasing his popularity with all classes of society. 
 When, in 1828, he was allowed to resume the duties of 
 his chair, he was greeted with an enthusiasm that quick- 
 ened his natural genius to an unwonted degree, and made 
 the next two years the brilliant ones in the annals of his- 
 torical science. For Guizot's fame rests on his profes- 
 sional writings of this period. They are numerous and 
 weighty. In their preparation he received a very con- 
 siderable help from his talented wife, particularly in the 
 great collection of "Memoirs Relating to Mediaeval French 
 History" and the "Memoirs Relating to the English 
 Revolution" (under Cromwell), both of which seem to
 
 Guizot and Constitutional Monarchy 21 
 
 have been planned by her. From Guizot 's own pen came 
 the "Essays on the History of France in the Fifth Cen- 
 tury," the "History of the English Revolution," and 
 finally the fundamental treatises of the "History of Civili- 
 zation in Europe" and the "History of Civilization in 
 France." In the field of pure literature he gave his name 
 to a revision of a translation of Shakespeare, made by 
 Letourneur in the eighteenth century most of which was 
 due to the hand of Madame Guizot to which he prefaced 
 an introduction on "Shakespeare and Dramatic Poetry." 
 This essay discusses the comparative merits of the roman- 
 tic theater, as represented by the great Englishman, and 
 the classical stage, as conceived by Voltaire. Guizot, 
 with the great men of his time, was a romanticist. In 
 1828 he also assumed the editorship of the Revue Fran- 
 faise, the forerunner of the Revue des Deux Mondes. 
 
 An election to the Chamber of Deputies in 1830, and 
 the July Revolution, which quickly followed, once again 
 transformed the historian into the politician. The latter's 
 views had not been modified during the years of opposi- 
 tion to royal authority. He still held for a constitutional 
 monarchy based on restricted suffrage. For a time this 
 moderate measure was satisfactory to the nation. Guizot 
 successively filled various offices of public trust, in which 
 he came into contact with Thiers, who was just beginning 
 his long career of varied success, which was to culminate 
 in the presidency of the third and lasting Republic. In 
 the most notable of the ministries formed between 1830 
 and 1840 our author won the gratitude of the country by 
 his reorganization of the system of public education. 
 When he retired from power in 1836 he found the doors 
 of the French Academy open to him. Before this emi-
 
 22 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 nent body, composed of the great names of France, he 
 was destined to repeat the oratorical triumphs of the 
 parliamentary tribune. His chief contribution to litera- 
 ture during this decade was one well calculated to attract 
 the attention of Americans. At the request of the trans- 
 Atlantic editors Guizot chose from Sparks 's "Washing- 
 ton" what he judged to be best suited to. interest and in- 
 struct the French people. He translated and published 
 this selection with an essay on Washington's life (1840), 
 which at once took first rank among the masterpieces of 
 biography. There is little doubt that Guizot thought he 
 saw in the calm equipoise of the great leader of our own 
 Revolution a counterpart of his own political moderation, 
 and we may safely assume that the firmness of Washing- 
 ton in the midst of the turmoils of his public life inspired 
 Guizot in maintaining a rigidity of principle which was 
 not justified by the surroundings of a later generation. 
 
 A short residence in London, as ambassador to the 
 court of Saint James, preluded a greater participation of 
 Guizot in the political affairs of France. Though in the 
 ministry which was formed in the autumn of 1840, he 
 was nominally the Minister of Foreign Affairs (State) only, 
 yet he was the guiding spirit of the whole cabinet, was 
 responsible for its measures of. both foreign and domestic 
 policy, and when Marshal Soult, the figure-head, finally 
 retired from the presidency of the cabinet, Guizot was 
 forced to assume the authority in name as well as fact. 
 In his relations with other powers he was able and dis- 
 creet. An open collision with England over the eternal 
 Eastern Question, made acute in 1840 by the attitude of 
 the viceroy of Egypt towards his suzerain at Constanti- 
 nople, was averted by his reasonableness and personal
 
 Guizot and Constitutional Monarchy 23 
 
 acquaintance with the English ministers, and the next 
 year his ability succeeded in putting an end to the isola- 
 tion of France in European affairs, which had been the 
 result of this temporary disagreement. Not long after- 
 wards the conquest of Algeria was definitely assured, and 
 French influence became firmly intrenched beyond the 
 Mediterranean. Other measures, such as joint action 
 with England in regard to the slave trade, and marriages 
 between the princes of the House of Orleans and the 
 royal family of Spain, were conducted to satisfactory con- 
 clusions. In the words of one of his recent biographers, 
 Guizot possessed a "patriotism better conceived (than 
 that of the multitude) broader, into which entered a gen- 
 eral sentiment of justice together with love for humanity." 
 If Guizot's foreign policy was justified by its fruits the 
 exact reverse is true of his domestic administration. It 
 was an increasing failure from start to finish. It was 
 directly responsible for the destruction of the throne and 
 the ruin of constitutional monarchy in France. We can 
 only explain this apparent anomaly in a historian of the 
 first magnitude by the assumption that he was endowed 
 with unusual self-esteem, with a disposition unyielding in 
 the extreme, and that these natural, innate qualities were 
 fortified by arbitrary preconceptions supported by a limited 
 number of deductions from the teachings of history. But 
 whatever our explanation may be, the fact remains that 
 the political Guizot of 1840 was the political Guizot of 
 1815. And yet a generation of men had come and gone. 
 Times had changed, even if we suppose that in 1815 he 
 was in harmony with the times. He alone had not 
 changed. Theoretically he believed in a constitutional 
 monarchy based on a limited electorate, determined by
 
 24 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 the amount of direct taxation assessed on the individual 
 citizen. Practically he stood by the first statutes for 
 determining this amount, which had been voted in 1831, 
 and no pressure nor argument could move him from his 
 position. 
 
 With this question of suffrage was connected the acci- 
 dental one of the propriety of deputies holding offices under 
 the government, for which they might receive pecuniary 
 emolument. Deputies who were also office-holders were 
 naturally the objects of suspicion. Their financial inter- 
 ests were bound to affect their votes. Guizot apparently 
 did not deny this accusation, nor did he consider the elec- 
 toral body of his day an ideal one. He seems to have 
 wished to adjourn discussion on either subject, in the belief 
 that agitation and change would be harmful to the govern- 
 ment. The two questions were in no way associated. It 
 was the opposition of the administration to the consider- 
 ation of either of them that joined them together in the 
 public mind. In 1842 an attempt was made to modify 
 existing regulations in both instances. The number of 
 electors at that time approximated 224,000, out of a pos- 
 sible 7,OOO,OOO, had universal suffrage existed. Of the 
 deputies sitting in the Chamber about one-third were 
 salaried government officials. Guizot approved of the 
 limitations which made the upper bourgeoisie the rulers of 
 the country, a business man's government. He saw no 
 peril in the large proportion of legislators attached by 
 self-interest to the administration. 
 
 He defends in his "Memoirs" his attitude regarding 
 the electorate by claiming that as society had become 
 more united, homogeneous, one man represented more 
 people than he had done in a less consolidated commu-
 
 Guizot and Constitutional Monarchy 25 
 
 nity. Hence the uselessness of universal suffrage and the 
 desirability of a limited body of truly representative men, 
 who possessed to a greater degree than those less suc- 
 cessful in worldly affairs the capacity for political action. 
 But the democratic spirit of the Revolution and Empire, 
 which had worked less openly under the Restoration, had 
 been rapidly gaining ground under the July monarchy. 
 The Napoleonic tradition had recovered from the reaction 
 of the days following the destructive campaigns of Napo- 
 leon, had joined itself to the democratic movement, and 
 lent it the luster of military success. Guizot himself had 
 furthered this sentiment during the months of his residence 
 at London, when, at the instigation of Thiers, he had 
 obtained from the English authorities the permission to 
 bring back to France the remains of the great Emperor. 
 In the minds of a large faction such glory as the Empire 
 had won for the nation had been tarnished by the sordid 
 pursuits of business. It was also evident that the bour- 
 geois electors were rapidly confounding the interests of the 
 state with those of their own families. Corruption entered 
 into elections despite the fact that none of the electors 
 were exposed to financial want. 
 
 As the decade advanced the debates in the Chamber 
 grew more vehement. The aroused partisans of Napo- 
 leon, conscious that the country was behind them, hurled 
 at Guizot the accusation of the famous trip to Ghent 
 during the Hundred Days. He retorted with equal 
 vehemence. The apostles of universal suffrage, no less 
 insistent than their Bonapartist allies, harried the govern- 
 ment with accusations of undue conservatism, with blind- 
 ness to the general interests of the country, with corruption 
 within its own chosen body of voters. All of these
 
 26 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 charges were true, but none was conceded to be so by 
 Guizot. With a fatuity which seems incredible in a 
 student of governmental origin and changes, he rejected 
 all propositions to broaden the electoral body, and assumed 
 that the voice of the upper bourgeoisie was the voice of 
 the people. It was either bend or break. Guizot did 
 not know how to bend, and February, 1848, found the 
 "Man of Ghent" a fugitive with the king. But to his 
 dying day Guizot could not discern wherein he had erred 
 in thought or deed. 
 
 The Revolution of 1848 put an end to all plans of 
 public life on the part of Guizot. His unpopularity knew 
 almost no limit. Universal suffrage, which had come to 
 stay, whether in republic or empire, considered him its 
 greatest enemy, and would have none of him. The pas- 
 sions his rule must have aroused may still be felt in the 
 contemptuous hostility which both the literary class the 
 elite of the social reformers and the populace still feel 
 for the self-absorbed, wealth-begetting bourgeoisie. For 
 they build their hopes for a regenerate France on the 
 nullification of this materialistic middle class. 
 
 Guizot's exile was of short duration. He returned to 
 France in 1849, an d settled down on the estate of Val 
 Richer, in Normandy, which he had owned for some 
 years. A widower, his house was managed by one of his 
 married daughters. Politics were lost to him. He busied 
 himself in the world of affairs with his duties as an acade- 
 mician, and his interests as a Protestant. The various 
 orations he pronounced on the reception of new members 
 by the Academy proved to that enlightened audience that 
 separation from the debates of a legislative assembly had 
 in no wise impaired the wonders of his eloquence. His 
 
 \
 
 Guizot and Constitutional Monarchy 27 
 
 voice was also heard in the consistories held at regular 
 intervals by the Reformed Church, and the services of his 
 pen were enlisted in the struggles occasioned by the 
 schisms of the Protestant sects. Nor was he estranged 
 from writings of a larger content. Early in the fifties 
 he consigned his "Memoirs" to manuscript. He had 
 no apologies to make. He had learned nothing by his 
 failures as a statesman. Later he undertook the well- 
 known popular "History of France Told to my Grand- 
 children," which was planned on an extensive scale, and 
 finished by one of his daughters after his death. Hack 
 work also demanded his attention. For though often 
 accused of corrupting others, he himself remained incor- 
 ruptible, and retired from years of undisputed political 
 power poor in purse and unimpeached in integrity. 
 
 He was destined to survive all of his family save one 
 of his daughters. It was his misfortune also to outlive all 
 the friends of his youth. One by one they passed away, 
 widening about him the void of loneliness. He was paying 
 the penalty of longevity. He also witnessed the humilia- 
 tion of his native country in 1870 and 1871. "I leave 
 the world much disturbed," he had written to one of his 
 friends; "how will it be born again? I do not know how, 
 but I believe it will be." "We must serve France," he 
 used to say to his daughter, Madame de Witt, "a country 
 hard to serve, without foresight and fickle. We must 
 surely serve it; it is a great country." After a few weeks 
 of increasing weakness, affirming to his last breath his love 
 for the land he was leaving, and his belief in the world to 
 come, peopled with so many near and dear to him, he 
 expired on September 12, 1874, within a few days of his 
 eighty-seventh anniversary.
 
 28 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 A striking feature of the inner life of Guizot is the 
 influence of woman. First his mother, slender in form, 
 simple in manners, but clear-sighted, determined, forceful. 
 To her training the boy, orphaned of his father, owed the 
 directness and persistency of his later career. Her reli- 
 gious beliefs, Calvinistic, but not intolerant, if we may 
 judge of them by her son's attitude, remained in him, a con- 
 stant spring of hope and justice. Their years of intimate 
 intercourse were prolonged beyond the wont of nature. 
 She went into exile with him in 1848, and died in England. 
 She had outlived her two daughters-in-law. The first, 
 who was a woman of unusual strength of character and of 
 considerable literary reputation, a disciple of the skeptical 
 philosophy of the eighteenth century, had been married to 
 Guizot in 1 8 12, her junior by fourteen years and more. 
 He owed much of his ambition to her. He confesses this 
 obligation more than once, and on his ill-omened trip to 
 Ghent, writes to her in these words: "Do you know what 
 decided me to go? The desire to become everything that 
 I should be, so that nothing may be wanting to your happi- 
 ness. It is on your account that I do not wish to miss 
 any occasion to distinguish myself from other men; with- 
 out our union I should have lived on in my natural indo- 
 lence." Their happiness was not destined to last. Worn 
 out by an existence which drained her nervous force, she 
 spent her last strength on an educational treatise, and 
 ceased to live in 1827. We have noted the part she took 
 in preparing the collections of memoirs on French and 
 English history. 
 
 Guizot's second wife, a niece of the first, had inherited 
 the former's fondness for literature and aptitude for 
 details. Much of the drudgery connected with the publi-
 
 Guizot and Constitutional Monarchy 29 
 
 cation of the Revue Franfaise was performed by her. She 
 also assisted her husband in gathering the material for his 
 great lecture courses of the years 1828-1830. But her 
 strength, too, was unequal to the task. In 1833 she was 
 gone, and Guizot was left to the care of his mother and 
 daughters during the remainder of his life. From the 
 evidence at hand there seems to be no doubt that his liter- 
 ary work suffered seriously from the loss of these two 
 devoted collaborators. In after years his daughters 
 replaced them to some extent, but rather as scribes than 
 as co-workers. 
 
 In reviewing Guizot 's public career, one must not forget 
 to mention his services to the cause of education. It 
 forms his most enduring monument as an administrator. 
 For the results of his diplomacy were ephemeral, while 
 * his whole internal policy, with the important excep- 
 tion of public instruction, was a fatal mistake. He was 
 Minister of Education from 1832 to 1836. Within that 
 short period of four years he found time to revive the 
 Academy of Moral and Political Science, a branch of the 
 Institute of France, which was established in 1/95, but 
 had been suppressed by Napoleon, in 1803, to found the 
 French Historical Society, which should publish historical 
 works, and to begin the collections of mediaeval chronicles 
 and state papers which succeeding governments have 
 faithfully continued and completed. The school system 
 of France also became an object of his special care. 
 Convinced that popular education should be impregnated 
 with religious feeling, he opposed all attempts to alienate 
 school and church; a separation "destructive of the moral 
 value of the school." Laws to increase the number of 
 public schools were passed, and their direct control lodged
 
 30 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 in boards of education, in which both clergy and laymen 
 had a voice. A system of school inspection was insti- 
 tuted, and inspectors were appointed to visit the schools 
 and advise with their instructors. The effect of these 
 measures was immediate and beneficial. His view of the 
 higher education is best told in his own words, taken from 
 a letter written to his intimate friend, the Due de Broglie, 
 in 1832: 
 
 "There is in it [the higher education] something which 
 no longer answers to present conditions, to the natural 
 bent of society and mankind. I don't know exactly what 
 it is. I am groping. In no way would I like to abolish 
 or even weaken that study of language, the only study 
 really vigorous and learned at this time. I insist on the 
 few years which we pass in familiar intercourse with 
 antiquity; for he who does not know it is but a parvenu 
 in the matter of intelligence. Greece and Rome are 
 schools of good breeding for the mind of man, and in the 
 midst of the ruin of all the aristocracies we must try to 
 keep that one still on its feet. I also consider college 
 life full of occupation and freedom, as intellectually excel- 
 lent on the whole. From it alone come the strong minds, 
 natural and keen at one and the same time, minds well 
 trained, well developed, without any factitious bent, with- 
 out any particular stamp. I am more and more struck 
 with the advantages of classical education, and yet I admit 
 I see, in the person of my son, that there is something to 
 be changed there, and something important. The instruc- 
 tion is too thin and too slow. The distance between the 
 intellectual atmosphere of the real world and that of the 
 college is too great. The methods are calculated to fit 
 large classes, and the result is that good students are
 
 Guizot and Constitutional Monarchy 31 
 
 sacrificed to mediocre ones. The classes are very large 
 because a mass of children cannot find what they need, 
 and wish to learn, taught anywhere. To tell the truth, 
 the college and almost our entire system of public instruc- 
 tion are still patterned on the model of former social 
 conditions. The dreamings of the eighteenth century, 
 the follies of the Revolution in this particular, have rightly 
 disgusted us with the new attempts which turned out so 
 badly, and in returning to the old way we have fallen into 
 the old rut. We must get out of it, but very carefully 
 and cautiously." 
 
 With an opinion like this so uncertain, fluctuating 
 between theoretical and practical ideas, it was useless to 
 expect any satisfactory outcome of the educational prob- 
 lem. Besides, the body of the French bourgeoisie was 
 not prepared and does not seem prepared to-day to 
 accept the principle of freedom of instruction, lay or 
 clerical, which Guizot always championed. The laws he 
 proposed were not voted by the upper house. 
 
 Conservative as he was in the matters of suffrage and 
 representation, Guizot was ahead of his times in the 
 theories of education. Perhaps because he was from the 
 south of France, perhaps because of his historical studies, 
 he believed in the advisability of decentralizing thought 
 and increasing the number of centers for its dissemina- 
 tion. Paris, with its Institute, its schools of art and 
 science, had drained the country and the smaller towns of 
 their intellectual men. To be sure, there were some few 
 groups of teachers employing university methods scattered 
 through the provinces. But these did not suffice to stem 
 the current setting steadily towards the great capital. 
 Guizot wished to try heroic measures. He would estab-
 
 32 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 lish in the four parts of France at Strassburg, Rennes, 
 Toulouse, and Montpellier universities in fact as well as 
 in name, great foundations equipped with the best of 
 buildings and apparatus, manned by men of the highest 
 eminence, offering to students instruction of the highest 
 grade in every branch of learning. These new universi- 
 ties should be true centers of study and wisdom. Another 
 ideal of the great historian which was not realized, and 
 he effected but little else than placing the teaching of 
 philosophy and history on a new and higher plane. 
 
 For history was his avocation and his life. Ambition 
 could lead him into the political arena, but could not give 
 him the victory. Unfortunately, like many other men of 
 letters, particularly of his day and of his school, the time 
 he spent in politics was lost to his reputation with poster- 
 ity. The disastrous effects of public life may be seen in 
 the fact that nearly all his historical works, and those 
 which are most original and most lasting, were written 
 before 1830. Victor Hugo has said that "old age has no 
 hold on minds which follow ideal pursuits," and the say- 
 ing is based on observation of facts. Guizot's best work 
 should have been done after he was sixty years old, espe- 
 cially as advancing years did not at all impair his physical 
 vigor or mental acuteness. But the intervening duties of 
 administrator and diplomat had raised a barrier to his his- 
 torical investigation which he did not surmount. 
 
 From the beginning of his professorship at the Sqr- 
 bonne, in 1812, when but twenty-five years of age, he had 
 formulated the principles which were to revolutionize 
 historical research. In his mind the duty of the historian 
 was "to discern the dominant ideas, the great events 
 which have determined the destiny, the character of a
 
 Guizot and Constitutional Monarchy 33 
 
 long series of generations" rather than make of himself 
 a mechanical chronicler of legislative and military happen- 
 ings. In other words, he should look behind facts for 
 their causes. The results would then follow of them- 
 selves. The historian should also be a philosopher. He 
 should take for his guide his reason, and follow its "postu- 
 lates through the uncertain labyrinth of facts." His 
 principles were thus determined a priori, and facts were 
 made to fit them, too often perhaps in a purely arbitrary 
 way. Yet Guizot did not neglect the study of historical 
 documents. We have seen that he both made collections 
 of texts himself and incited the government to publish all 
 the material which its archives could yield. And on the 
 whole his method remains the method of the present day. 
 Individuals to him were of slight moment. They were 
 borne along on the surface of the social stream. Rarely 
 would he admit that they could impede its progress or 
 direct its flow. So his influence was optimistic. He was 
 a fervent Protestant. He believed in an overruling Provi- 
 dence. Moral and social progress went hand in hand with 
 him. 
 
 As we have seen, in the case of his "Life of Washing- 
 ton," he used his historical studies to guide his political 
 career. The important element in the development of 
 nations, he claims, is contributed not by the upper or 
 lower classes, but by the opulent middle class, which is 
 given over to industry and ever seeking to advance its 
 sway. Some later historians, evidently of Guizot's school, 
 have affirmed that no war of conquest is ever undertaken 
 without a material object in view, namely, the increase of 
 the wealth of the assailants. Guizot may not have formu- 
 lated such a statement, but he could hardly have disowned
 
 34 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 it. His political theories were definitely crystallized by 
 his investigation of the English Revolution, the results of 
 which were to establish on a firm foundation the institu- 
 tions of modern England, at one and the same time Prot- 
 estant and liberal. These outgrowths of many centuries 
 he hoped to adapt to the needs of France. 
 
 It was philosophical history, then, which he cultivated; 
 human events interpreted by man's reason. The danger 
 of such a system is obvious. The reason is individual 
 and consequently the interpretations may be as numerous 
 as the minds which interpret. But such a theory is a 
 great advance over the chronological and biographical 
 method, and with all its defects it is not easy to see how 
 it can be replaced by any other view. To this theory 
 Guizot made three notable contributions, all of which 
 were the products of his lecture courses at the university: 
 the "Essays on French History," in 1823, and the "His- 
 tories of Civilization," in 1828-1830. In the "Essays" 
 he shows how from the beginning France and England 
 differed in their political institutions; how these institu- 
 tions in France were the result of the destruction of the 
 middle classes by the fiscal administration of Rome. The 
 middle classes gone there was no bulwark left to withstand 
 the Germanic invasion of the fifth century. What civili- 
 zation was saved from the wreck was due to the clergy, 
 who preserved to some extent the laws and customs of 
 Rome. Through the clergy these laws and customs were 
 handed down to the communes of the Middle Ages. So 
 with feudalism. Its origins are to be found in the per- 
 sonal relations of men at a period when these relations 
 were peculiarly influenced by the ownership of land or the 
 lack of such ownership. Its reasons for existence lay in
 
 Guizot and Constitutional Monarchy 35 
 
 the needs of the individual. Its growth and decay were 
 alike due to his demands. The lesson of this period is 
 that France of the Middle Ages was individual, while 
 England was national. 
 
 The great works of Guizot are his two histories of 
 civilization, in Europe and in France. The first general, 
 the second special and illustrative of the first. In these 
 new lectures the views of the "Essays" are taken up and 
 carried out with a greater wealth of material, wider illus- 
 trations, and more convincing logic. France, for Guizot, 
 is the center of European civilization, hence the close 
 connection between the two courses. Distanced at times 
 by its sister nations, France nevertheless has in the long 
 run maintained her supremacy over them. She shows 
 most clearly the workings out of the development of all 
 the states, through the progress of the individual on the 
 one hand and of society on the other. The history of 
 Europe has been told by the struggles of these two 
 antagonistic principles. And the conflict between the 
 government on the one side, and the people on the other, 
 has not yet reached a solution. The nearest approach to 
 a lasting truce is found in England, where the church and 
 state developed side by side, as also the aristocracy and 
 democracy. On the Continent the growth of each of 
 these elements was antagonized by the other, and the 
 essence of Protestantism freedom of investigation of 
 truth has constantly clashed with the tendency towards 
 the centralization of power. 
 
 In France the upper classes of society, the nobility and 
 the bourgeoisie, have remained constantly hostile to each 
 other. The French people once in possession of an idea 
 follow it out to its logical extreme, to a point where retreat
 
 36 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 becomes inevitable. On the contrary, the individual and 
 society in general have advanced together in France. 
 Ideas and facts have been intimately united. Speculative , 
 thought and its practical application have never remained 
 far apart. The one has closely followed in the footsteps 
 of the other, as witness the eighteenth century and the 
 reforms induced by its philosophers. The cause for this 
 association is found in the reasonable character of the 
 different classes which compose French society. The 
 clergy, learned and active in parochial work; the lawyers 
 and magistrates, steeped in sound doctrine and insistent 
 in experimentation; above all, the moderation, the avoid- 
 ance of extremes, which is the distinctive trait of French 
 character from one generation to another. So civilization 
 in France, in Guizot's opinion, reproduces most faithfully 
 the general type of civilization. Its visible tendency 
 towards national unity, and therefore towards political 
 unity, reveals the final goal of the more halting civiliza- . 
 tions around it. 
 
 This study of civil society was to be followed by studies 
 of religious society in its relation to the state and the 
 papacy. A further extension of the plan would embrace 
 the history of the human mind as shown in the modern 
 tongues, the national literatures, and the Latin language, 
 the vehicle of theological and philosophical thought. But 
 the July Revolution interrupted this masterful program, 
 and it was never resumed. Yet what was committed to 
 manuscript and given to the public has proved a model 
 and guide for subsequent students of the historical 
 sciences.
 
 Guizot and Constitutional Monarchy 37 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM THE WRITINGS OF GUIZOT 
 
 The Opening Lecture of ' ' The History of Civilization in 
 Europe 1 ' 
 
 [Guizot resumes his lectureship after some years of governmental 
 injunction.] 
 
 Gentlemen: I am deeply touched by the greeting I receive 
 from you. I will allow myself to say that I accept it as a pledge 
 of the sympathy which has not ceased to exist between us in spite 
 of so long a separation. I say that the sympathy has not ceased 
 to exist, as if I found again in this hall the same people, the same 
 generation which was accustomed to come here seven years ago, 
 and share in my labors. (Guizot seems moved and stops a 
 moment.) I beg your pardon, gentlemen, your kindly welcome 
 
 has affected me a little Because I return here it seems to 
 
 me that all should return, that nothing is changed. Everything is 
 changed none the less, and much changed ! Seven years ago we 
 used to enter here uneasy, preoccupied with a sad, burdensome 
 thought. We knew we were surrounded with difficulties, with 
 perils; we felt ourselves drawn along towards an evil which we 
 vainly tried to turn aside by dint of seriousness, calmness, 
 reserve. To-day we all come, you as well as I, confidently and 
 hopefully, our hearts at peace and our thoughts free. We have 
 but one way of worthily showing our gratitude for this, and that 
 way is to bring to our reunions and studies the same calmness, 
 the same reserve we used to bring when we thought every day we 
 
 should see them hindered or forbidden We have but a 
 
 very short time before the end of the year. I have had very little 
 time to think over the course I should offer you. I have tried to 
 find the subject which could be best treated in the very few months 
 which remain, and in the very few days allowed me for prepara- 
 tion. It seemed to me that a general picture of modern European 
 history, considered in its relation to the development of civiliza- 
 tion, a general glance at the history of European civilization, its 
 origins, progress, goal,' and character it seemed to me, I 
 repeat, that such a picture could be fitted to the time at our dis- 
 posal. This is the subject I have settled upon to talk to you about.
 
 38 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 I say the civilization of Europe. It is evident that there is a 
 European civilization, that a certain unity is manifest in the civili- 
 zation of the different states of Europe, that in spite of great 
 differences in time, place, circumstances, this civilization takes its 
 rise in facts that are almost alike, is attached to the same prin- 
 ciples, and tends to bring about like results almost everywhere. 
 There is, then, a European civilization, and I wish to call your 
 attention to its general features. 
 
 On the other hand, it is evident that this civilization cannot be 
 found, that its history cannot be traced, in the history of a single 
 one of the states of Europe. If it possesses unity, its variety is 
 none the less prodigious. It has not developed in its entirety in 
 any special country. Its features are diverse; we must look for 
 the elements of its history, now in France, now in England, now 
 in Germany, now in Spain. 
 
 We are well placed to give ourselves up to this research and 
 study European civilization. We should not flatter any one, not 
 even our country. However, I believe we may say without flattery 
 that France has been the center, the hearth of European civiliza- 
 tion. It would be too much to claim that she has always marched 
 at the head of nations in every direction. At various epochs she 
 has been outstripped, by Italy in the arts, by England from the 
 standpoint of political institutions. Perhaps in other particulars 
 we would find other countries of Europe superior to her at certain 
 moments. But it is impossible to deny that every time France 
 has seen herself outstripped in the career of civilization she has 
 taken on a new vigor, has rushed ahead, and has soon found her- 
 self on a level with all the rest or ahead of them. And not only 
 has the peculiar destiny of France been such as I have said, but 
 the ideas, the civilizing institutions, which had their birth in other 
 territories, when they wished to transplant themselves, to become 
 fruitful and general, to act to the common profit of European 
 civilization, have been seen in some degree obliged to undergo a 
 new preparation in France; and it is from France, as from a 
 second fatherland, that they have gone forth to the conquest of 
 Europe. There is hardly any great idea, any great principle of 
 civilization, which, in order to spread everywhere, has not first 
 passed through France.
 
 Guizot and Constitutional Monarchy 39 
 
 The fact is that there is something sociable, something sympa- 
 thetic, in the genius of the French, something which is propagated 
 with more ease and energy than the genius of any other people. 
 Whether because of our language or the turn of our mind, of our 
 manners, our ideas are more popular, present themselves more 
 clearly to the masses, penetrate among them more easily. In a 
 word, clearness, sociability, sympathy, are the peculiar character- 
 istics of France, of its civilization, and these qualities have made 
 her eminently fitted for marching at the head of European civili- 
 zation. 
 
 From the Opening Lecture of ' ' The History of Civiliza- 
 tion in France" 
 
 Gentlemen: Some of you recall the object and nature of the 
 course which finished some months ago. It was very general, 
 very rapid. I tried to make the historic picture of European 
 civilization pass before your eyes in a very short time. I ran, as 
 it were, from peak to peak, limiting myself almost constantly to 
 general facts and assertions, at the risk of not always being clearly 
 understood, nor believed perhaps. 
 
 Necessity, as you know, had imposed that method on me, and 
 in spite of the necessity I should have hardly resigned myself to 
 its inconveniences had I not foreseen that I could remedy it in sub- 
 sequent courses; had I not proposed at that time to fill out some 
 day the frame I sketched and make you attain those general 
 results, which I had the honor of unfolding to you, by the same 
 way which had led me to them, by an attentive and complete 
 study of the facts. This is the design I come to-day to try to 
 accomplish. 
 
 Two methods of attaining this end are offered to me. I might 
 begin again the course of last summer, and take up again the gen- 
 eral history of European civilization in its entirety, relating in 
 detail what I could present only in a mass, going over with slow 
 footsteps the road we almost breathlessly traveled. Or I could 
 study the history of civilization in one of the principal countries, 
 with one of the greatest peoples of Europe where it developed, 
 and thus limit the field of my researches in order to tell it 
 better.
 
 40 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 I decided to prefer this second method, to abandon the general 
 history of European civilization among all the peoples who con- 
 tributed to its formation, in "order to busy myself with you on an 
 especial civilization only, which, in taking differences into account, 
 can become for us the image of the great destiny of Europe. 
 
 The choice of method once made, the choice of the country 
 offered no difficulty to me. I took the history of France, of 
 French civilization. I certainly shall not deny that in making this 
 choice I felt a feeling of pleasure. All the emotions, all the sus- 
 ceptibilities of patriotism are legitimate. The important thing is 
 that they be avowed by truth, by reason. Some people seem to 
 fear to-day lest patriotism may greatly suffer from the extension 
 of sentiments and ideas which spring from the present condition 
 of European civilization. It is predicted that it will become ener- 
 vated, and be lost in cosmopolitanism. I cannot share such fears. 
 The love of one's fatherland will fare to-day as all opinions, all 
 
 actions, all human sentiments, will fare I think I can affirm 
 
 that if any other history in Europe had seemed greater to me, 
 more instructive, more suited than that of France to represent the 
 course of general civilization, I should have chosen it. But I am 
 right in choosing France. Independently of the special interest 
 which her history has for us, European opinion has long pro- 
 claimed France to be the most civilized country of Europe. Every 
 time that national jealousies are not excited, when you look for the 
 real and disinterested opinion of peoples in their action and ideas, 
 where it is indirectly manifested without taking the form of con- 
 troversy, you recognize that France is the country whose civiliza- 
 tion has appeared most complete, most communicative, and has 
 struck the imagination of Europe most vividly 
 
 You recall, I hope, the definition of civilization which I tried 
 to give on opening last summer's course. I tried to find the ideas 
 which the good, common sense of men attached to this word. It 
 seemed to me that in the general opinion civilization consisted 
 essentially in two facts, the development of the social state and 
 the development of the intellectual state; the development of the 
 external general condition of man, and the development of his 
 internal and personal nature. In a word, the process of perfect- 
 ing society and humanity.
 
 Guizot and Constitutional Monarchy 41 
 
 And not only these two facts constitute civilization, but their 
 simultaneousness, their intimate and rapid union, their reciprocal 
 action, are indispensable to its perfection. I have shown that if 
 they do not always happen together, if now the development of 
 society, now the development of the individual man, proceeds more 
 quickly and goes farther, they are none the less necessary to each 
 other, and soon or late incite and lead on each other. When they 
 go for a long time, one without the other, when their union is 
 greatly delayed, the sense of a painful gap, of something incom- 
 plete, of regret, seizes on the spectators. If a great social ameli- 
 oration, a great progress in material comfort, is revealed in a 
 people, without being accompanied by a fine intellectual develop- 
 ment, by an analogous progress in the minds of men, the social 
 amelioration seems precarious, inexplicable, almost unlawful 
 
 When, on the contrary, a great development of the intellect 
 shows itself anywhere, and no social progress seems attached 
 to it, we are surprised and disturbed. You seem to see a fine tree 
 which does not bear fruit, a sun which does not give heat, nor 
 fertility. We are seized by a kind of disdain for such sterile 
 
 ideas, which do not take possession of the outside world 
 
 So firmly seated in man is the feeling that his duty here below is 
 to have ideas embody themselves in facts, to reform, to regulate 
 the world he inhabits, according to the truth he conceives. So 
 closely united to each other are the two great elements of civiliza- 
 tion, intellectual and social development. So true it is that its 
 perfection consists not only in their union, but in their simultane- 
 ousness, in the extent, the facility, the rapidity with which they 
 mutually summon and produce each other. 
 
 Let us now try to ccnsider the different countries of Europe 
 from this standpoint. Let us seek out the particular character- 
 istics of each one of them, and the extent to which these charac- 
 teristics coincide with that essential, fundamental, sublime fact 
 which now constitutes for us the perfection of civilization. In 
 this way we shall succeed in discovering which of the different 
 European civilizations is the most complete, the nearest akin to 
 the type of civilization in general; which consequently has the 
 first claims on our study, and best represents the history of 
 Europe in its entirety.
 
 42 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Guizot's many writings have nearly all been translated into 
 English and published by various editors. 
 
 M. Guizot in Private Lije. By his daughter, Madame H. G. 
 de Witt. 
 
 Guizot. A. Bardoux. 
 
 Articles in Overland Monthly, Vol. XIII, pp. 410 ff. 
 
 Littett's Living Age, Vol. CXXIII, pp. 749 ff., and Vol. 
 CLXIV, pp. 387 ff-
 
 FRANgOIS MARIE CHARLES FOURIER
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 FOURIER AND SOCIALISM 
 
 [FRANQOIS MARIE CHARLES FOURIER, born at Besancon, 
 April 7, 1772; served in the cavalry, 1794-1796; died at Paris, 
 October IO, 1837. Principal works: "Theory of the Four 
 Movements and the General Destinies," 1808; "Treatise on 
 Domestic Rural Association or Industrial Attraction" (later 
 called "Theory of Universal Unity"), 1822; "The New Indus- 
 trial and Social World," 1829.] 
 
 During the last half of the eighteenth century discon- 
 tent with the social conditions existing in England and on 
 the Continent was rapidly increasing. In a famous essay 
 on the effects of progress on the human race, Jean Jacques 
 Rousseau had bitterly attacked the works of civilization as 
 detrimental to both goodness and happiness. Art and 
 industry, instead of strengthening the virtues of man, 
 were rapidly multiplying his vices. Private property was 
 based on plunder. The growth of communities only 
 widened the gulf between the strong, the rich, and the 
 weak, the poor. No relief was to be hoped for from 
 institutions which had grown out of the so-called develop- 
 ment of the world. To bring back justice and peace 
 these institutions must be destroyed, and their works 
 must perish with them. Mankind was originally happy. 
 All things were then held in common. Envy was absent, 
 and violence. Restore this Golden Age by returning to 
 nature. Leave the cities, dwell in the country, cultivate 
 the soil, establish pure democracies. So Rousseau argued. 
 
 43
 
 44 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 The French Revolution was one answer to his plea. It 
 made all men equal before the law. It could not or did 
 not change their natures, nor did it touch the principles 
 of individual ownership. When its agitation had ceased, 
 and men could take an account of what it had accom- 
 plished, it was seen that the essential causes of social 
 inequality had in no way been overthrown by its political 
 reforms. So far as the general bearing of its results were 
 concerned, the world's future was to resemble the world's 
 past. 
 
 Many who had hoped for some kind of a Utopia on 
 earth were discouraged by the failure of such a vast effort. 
 Their exaltation sank back into indifference or bitterness. 
 Others were inspired by the failure to seek other means. 
 The great mathematician Condorcet took refuge in opti- 
 mism, and wrote, while in hiding from the agents of the 
 Terror, a treatise on human perfectibility, in which he 
 defends the civilization that Rousseau had scourged, and 
 deduces from the lessons of the past that inequality of 
 privilege between nations and classes will gradually disap- 
 pear, and the individual will come at last into complete 
 moral, intellectual, and physical freedom. We now call 
 this view of the world's destinies the theory of evolution. 
 On the other hand, Baboeuf could not await the tardy 
 steps of justice. Allying himself with like-minded asso- 
 ciates, he plotted to seize the government and found by 
 force a communistic state which should realize to some 
 degree the theories of Rousseau. 
 
 Another consequence of the fiasco of the Revolution 
 was the formulation of doctrines for the production and 
 distribution of wealth, which have since been defined by 
 the term "socialism." They are to be distinguished from
 
 Fourier and Socialism 45 
 
 the programs of the reformers antecedent to the Revolu- 
 tion by their acceptance of the results of the world's 
 labors. They start with the industrial conditions of mod- 
 ern life, so stimulated by the inventions of the end of the 
 eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, by 
 which manufacturing and the mechanical trades passed 
 through a veritable renaissance. They would adapt them- 
 selves to these new conditions by improving them, not by 
 destroying them. In France the leading expounders of 
 these doctrines are Fourier and Saint Simon. Like the 
 men of their day, and of the generations since their day, 
 these expounders were primarily interested in the physical 
 sciences. They sought in science a universal truth which 
 should solve all special problems of labor and life. Saint 
 Simon, later in date, but more popular, based his system 
 on charity and merit. All social institutions should aim 
 at the improvement of the poorest class. All the mem- 
 bers of society should work with brain or hand, and each 
 laborer should be paid according to his merit or capacity. 
 Saint Simonism is also deeply religious. Its principle is 
 brotherly love. 
 
 Fourierism is much more complex and less popular. 
 Its founder, Charles Fourier, was born at ( Besancon, in 
 eastern France, in 1772. His father was a dealer in cloth, 
 of some means, and his son, though orphaned of him in 
 1781, received the education of his time, and won prizes 
 at school for Latin composition. He also showed unusual 
 inclination for the study of geography, was passionately 
 fond of flowers, and possessed much aptitude for music. 
 He himself wished to make engineering his vocation. But 
 his plebeian birth forbade, and after some years of travel 
 he invested his patrimony in foreign wares and started in
 
 46 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 business at Lyons. This was in 1793. The attack on 
 that town by the government troops a few weeks later 
 consumed his cotton bales in works of defense, and his 
 rice, sugar, and coffee in support of the defenders. He 
 lost his property and almost lost his life, escaping from 
 Lyons only to find himself imprisoned at Besanfon. The 
 conscription authorized by the Convention that same year 
 gathered him in. He served as cavalryman from June, 
 1794, to January, 1796, when he was retired for reasons 
 of health. Now he could give himself up to plans of 
 social reform which had long been germinating in his brain. 
 It is said that the evils of existing conditions had been 
 impressed upon him when still a young boy. He had told 
 the truth to some of his father's customers regarding his 
 wares, and had been punished for it. He was then but 
 five years of age. As a consequence, in the language of 
 his disciple and eulogist, Victor Considerant, "he had 
 
 taken Hannibal's oath against business This oath, 
 
 which he kept so well, is the origin of his discovery [sys- 
 tem]; for it was in seeking the means of introducing truth 
 and loyalty into the mechanism of trade that he reached 
 in later years the Rural Association, the great Seriary Law, 
 and the immortal theorem of the Attractions Proportional 
 to the Destinies." This early conception of the world of 
 affairs was strengthened in 1799 by an errand he was 
 forced to perform for the firm which employed him as a 
 commercial traveler. He had to order a cargo of rice 
 thrown overboard in the harbor of Marseilles, because the 
 firm in question had allowed it to rot rather than break a 
 "corner" in grain, which they themselves had artificially 
 created. This wanton destruction of food almost under 
 the eyes of a starving population marks the culmination
 
 Fourier and Socialism 47 
 
 of Fourier's resolution to exert all his energies to put a 
 stop to crimes against society committed under the name 
 of trade. For several years yet he supported himself by 
 the brokerage and commission business, occupied his spare 
 moments with the preparation of his economic views and 
 wrote articles on the events of the day. One such article 
 in the Bulletin de Lyon, of December 17, 1803, shows 
 how Europe was fast coming into the control of France, 
 Russia, Austria, and Prussia. The last, and weakest, it 
 argues, would become the victim of the other three. Then 
 Austria would be dismembered. And finally, either France 
 or Russia would engulf the other and become the master 
 of the world. If France did not give heed to her ways 
 the victor would be Russia. This article attracted the 
 attention of Bonaparte, and its tenor bears a curious like- 
 ness to the policy he afterwards inaugurated. 
 
 In 1808 Fourier's ideas of social reform appeared in 
 print under the title of "The Theory of the Four Move- 
 ments and the General Destinies. ' ' The caption is formid- 
 able. The contents are no less so. The "movements" 
 are social, animal, organic, and material, of which the 
 first three, we are told, are new to mankind. The fourth, 
 the "movements" of the material world, had been discov- 
 ered by Newton, and their laws had been revealed by 
 Leibnitz. Fourier had discovered the laws of the other 
 three, a discovery which seems to have been directly pro- 
 voked by the destruction of the rice at Marseilles. The 
 failure of the French Revolution to benefit mankind had 
 led him to consider the possibilities of a new social science 
 which should do away with "poverty, lack of work, 
 the success of trickery, maritime piracies, commercial 
 monopoly, the slave trade, and many other misfortunes
 
 48 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 which need not be named, but which cause us to wonder 
 whether civilized industry is not a calamity invented by 
 God to chastise the human race." To find the natural 
 order of things he adopted the principle of universal 
 doubt, which Descartes had once "partially" used, 
 together with the principle of the rejection of all known 
 theories. To test his method he began with the consider- 
 ation of "rural association," a means of land cultivation 
 agreeable to all concerned in it, and "the indirect sup- 
 pression of insular commercial monopoly." The solution 
 of the first problem entails the solution of the second. 
 By steadily working on this question Fourier saw that the 
 law of the material universe, formulated by Newton, the 
 "law of attraction," as he terms it, was the true law of 
 the social, animal, and organic world as well. Give this 
 law free play and every man will desire to work. He will 
 be drawn to it by his natural propensities. "Emulation, 
 self-love, and other motives compatible with self-interest" 
 will spur him on. 
 
 Exploitation in common will prove that the net profits 
 of labor will be increased. Take a village, for instance. 
 Assume that it holds one thousand people cooperating 
 with one another. Each has some special aptitude. The 
 men of brain will perfect the instruments of toil. One 
 barn well cared for will replace three hundred poorly 
 kept. One laundry will do the work of three hundred. 
 The number of fires necessary can be reduced to three or 
 four. "They will send to the city but one milkwoman 
 with a barrel of milk hung on cart wheels, and so will save 
 a half-day's work of one hundred milkwomen carrying one 
 hundred jugs of milk." Hence a greater profit for the 
 community by this cooperation, and consequently a
 
 Fourier and Socialism 49 
 
 greater gain for each individual in it. With greater gain 
 a greater control of the good things of life. And the 
 conclusion here reached by Fourier gives the substance of 
 his doctrine: "To summarize, this theory of Rural Asso- 
 ciation, which is going to change the lot of the human 
 race, flatters the passions which are common to all men, 
 and allures them by the seductions of profit and pleas- 
 ures; this is the guaranty of its success with savages and 
 barbarians as well as with civilized peoples, for the pas- 
 sions are the same everywhere." 
 
 These statements are perfectly clear. Fourier's "dis- 
 covery" was the fact that the emotions or "passions" are 
 the mainspring of human action. "The passions," he 
 says, "which we have thought hostile to concord .... 
 tend only to concord, to the social unity from which we 
 thought them so far removed; but they can be harmon- 
 ized only so far as they develop regularly in the Progress- 
 ive Series or Series of Groups of people. Outside of this 
 mechanism the passions are but unchained tigers." And 
 he illustrates by showing how mankind is led along by the 
 love of riches and pleasures. Instead of repressing the 
 passions he will increase their intensity and their control 
 of the individual by keeping them in a constant state of 
 tension. He will excite envy by proving that the men of 
 his "associations" live better and have more physical 
 enjoyment than those outside of their circle. "When men 
 notice that residence in a Phalanx (the name I shall give to 
 the association which cultivates a district [Canlon]) affords 
 such fine fare that you have a service three times as delicate 
 and abundant for one-third the expense of a private 
 table .... besides avoiding the trouble of buying pro- 
 visions and preparing them; when, besides, they see that
 
 5<D Ten Frenchmen 
 
 in the relations between the members of the Series you 
 never experience deception, and that the people who are 
 so false and boorish in civilization become surprisingly 
 truthful and refined in the Series, they will come to hate 
 private households, cities, civilization; .... they will 
 want to join a Phalanx of Series and dwell in its building." 
 
 This theory of association led Fourier to the discovery 
 of two new sciences: One was the theory of passionate 
 Attraction, capable of mathematical statement, the laws 
 of which are in every way like those of material attrac- 
 tion as explained by Newton and Leibnitz. They prove 
 that there is "unity in the system of movement for the 
 material world and for the spiritual." This theory in 
 turn led to the discovery of the other fixed science: "the 
 Analogy of the four movements material, organic, animal, 
 and social or the Analogy of the modifications of matter 
 with the mathematical theory of the passions of man and 
 the animals." These sciences pointed the way to others 
 which embraced the whole domain of human activity and 
 learning. By their harmony and unity the riches in reach 
 of man will be multiplied. All classes of society will be 
 sheltered from want. Wealth is the goal of humanity. 
 The Theory of the Destinies will assure it this opulence. 
 Our present civilization is a scourge which properly 
 belongs to the primitive periods of existence. The pride 
 or the negligence of the philosophers had already unneces- 
 sarily prolonged it two thousand and three hundred years. 
 All the grades of savage, patriarchal, barbarous, and 
 civilized society are but steps towards "a better social 
 order, the Order of the Progressive Series which is the 
 Industrial Destiny of man." 
 
 To further illustrate this progression from the unfin-
 
 Fourier and Socialism 5 1 
 
 ished to the complete, Fourier draws a picture of "the 
 vegetable career of the globe," which he embraces in a 
 cycle of eighty thousand years. The first five thousand, 
 or one-sixteenth of the whole, he ranges under the head 
 of Ascending Chaos, or the Reign of Ignorance and Phi- 
 losophy, Collision of the Passions through the Lack of 
 Social Art. This era is in turn divided into seven periods, 
 of which Civilization is the fifth, "Guaranteeism" the 
 sixth, and "Outlined Series" the seventh. Here we get a 
 glimpse of the "dawn of happiness." This dawn becomes 
 full day in the next era of thirty-five thousand years, or 
 seven-sixteenths of the whole, classed under the head of 
 Ascending Harmony or Social Light, Vigor of the Globe 
 and the Creatures, Development and Interlinking of all 
 the Passions. This era is subdivided into nine periods, 
 one of the Simple Series Combined, seven of the Com- 
 posed Ascending Series, which are distinguished by seven 
 "Harmonic Creations," at intervals of four thousand 
 years each, and the ninth of the First Septigeneric Crea- 
 tion and Ascending Plenitude. Following this creation 
 comes the Pivotal or Amphiharmonic Period, of about 
 eight thousand years, which is the Apogee of Happiness. 
 In this era of thirty-five thousand years, directly after its 
 first period, the "Boreal Crown" comes into being, and 
 "the seas are disinfected and perfumed by the boreal fluid, " 
 while the Crown sheds aromatic dew upon the earth. 
 
 In the next cycle of thirty-five thousand years, the 
 cycle of Descending Harmony, our planet will enter on 
 an epoch of decline, which is divided into nine periods. 
 It will witness in the first period a Second Septigeneric 
 Creation and Descending Plenitude, in the next seven, of 
 the Composed Descending Series, seven more Harmonic
 
 52 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 Creations, during which the seas will return to their origi- 
 nal taste through failure of the boreal fluid, and the aro- 
 matic dew will cease to fall because of the exhaustion of 
 the Boreal Crown. In the ninth period the Boreal Crown 
 will become extinct. As from the first to the second cycle 
 the world rose from chaos to harmony, so at the end of 
 the third it falls from harmony into chaos, and its last 
 cycle of five thousand years, divided into 'seven periods, 
 and called Descending Chaos (General Overturn by the 
 Eighteenth Creation, Clash of Passions because of Failure 
 of Luxury), repeats in inverse order the stages of the first 
 cycle, and ends in the physical death and dissolution of 
 the globe. The first two cycles are grouped together 
 under the head of Ascending Vibration. The Apogee of 
 Happiness separates them from the last two, of Descend- 
 ing Vibration. 
 
 Thus Fourier mixes geology and ethics. Harmony in 
 the one science is reflected in the other. The cooperation 
 of mankind in the production of wealth under the guid- 
 ance of its passions changes, in the long run, the nature of 
 the earth's surface. Two ages of Combined Order will 
 give birth to the Boreal Crown, a luminous ring which 
 will turn the North Pole into an arable region whose fer- 
 tility will endure for seventy thousand years. So with the 
 laws of the dependence of human progress on mathe- 
 matics. "Without this dependence there would be no 
 harmony in nature and God would be unjust," for he 
 would be arbitrary in his dealings. 
 
 The exposition of these views, as might be inferred 
 from the outline already given, offers a mixture of fact 
 and fancy which is perplexing rather than interesting. At 
 times Fourier's criticisms of the waste of our present
 
 Fourier and Socialism 53 
 
 social methods impress us with their justness. His rem- 
 edy of cooperation appeals to us most strongly. But 
 directly afterwards he starts upon a line of argument and 
 illustrations which seem to be the empty vagaries of a dis- 
 ordered brain. Clearly his strength lies in his critical 
 remarks. His constructive powers are questionable. His 
 jumble of science and morals, and his claims of the influ- 
 ence of the fraternity of man on the productiveness of 
 matter, calls his very sanity into question. 
 
 In the explanation of the meaning of his tabular view 
 of the world's life, and the explanation of his terms, with 
 which he continues his treatise, there is the same mixture 
 of sense and nonsense. Take, as an example, his ideas of 
 the Boreal Crown. They are based on the assumption 
 that the earth will give birth to new creations, but these 
 creations will not begin until humanity has reached the 
 Simple Combined Series of the Ascending Harmony. By 
 that time the increasing concord of the passions will have 
 allured into domestic use such wild animals as the zebra 
 and ostrich. The earth will have been brought under 
 cultivation as far as the sixty-fifth parallel of latitude. The 
 temperature of the planet will have been raised. "The 
 Aurora Borealis, more and more frequent in its recur- 
 rence, will finally fix itself at the pole, and enlarge into the 
 shape of a crown. The fluid which to-day is only lumi- 
 nous will acquire a new property, that of distributing 
 warmth with light." Therefore the heat of the polar 
 regions will exceed that of the temperate zone, and will 
 therefore favorably affect the temperature of that zone. 
 Excess of cold will be prevented as well as excess of heat. 
 Two harvests will become the rule. Late springs and 
 early winters will not be known. Another result of the
 
 54 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 action of the Boreal Crown will be to change the taste of 
 sea water, "by decomposing or precipitating the bitu- 
 minous particles through the expansion of a borealic citric 
 acid. This fluid combined with salt will give sea water 
 the taste of a kind of lemonade which we call aigre de 
 ctdre." This water can then be easily distilled and used 
 on shipboard. It will also give birth to new sea animals 
 which can be taught to draw ships and fish, while 
 it will kill the useless and destructive denizens of the 
 ocean, "those infamous creatures, images of the fury of 
 our passions, which are represented by the deadly wars 
 of so many monsters." 
 
 So much for the nonsense, which goes on and on. But 
 in the very midst of it we meet this striking passage, 
 prophecy of the future. The natural result of the heat of 
 the Boreal Crown will be to make the northern seas and 
 their tributary rivers, now closed by ice, navigable. God 
 has intended this, as we see by the grouping of the conti- 
 nents about the North Pole. However, "we might com- 
 plain that God has carried the Magellaic point [Cape 
 Horn] too far, which causes a temporary obstacle [to 
 commerce] : but his intention is that this route be aban- 
 doned, and channels navigable for large vessels be made at 
 the Isthmuses of Suez and Panama. These works, and so 
 many others which terrify the minds of the civilized, will 
 be but children's games for the industrial armies of the 
 Spherical Hierarchy." 
 
 The social system of Guaranteeism which follows on 
 the present period of civilization is thus defined: "It still 
 preserves family life, marriage, and the principal attributes 
 of the philosophic system [the present]: but it already 
 reduces revolutions and indigence to a marked degree."
 
 Fourier and Socialism 55 
 
 Civilization has been responsible for many evils: "There 
 are other calamities which would spring from it and which 
 the philosophers can in no way foresee; such is Commer- 
 cial Feudalism, which would not have been less odious 
 than the reign of the Clubs [of the Terror]. It would 
 have been the result of the influence which the commer- 
 cial spirit daily acquires over our social system. " Fourier 
 will furnish by his theory the means to avert this new 
 tyranny. 
 
 The passions which we should cultivate, rather than 
 repress as the moralists tell us, because they are in con- 
 sonance with nature, include "the five appetites of the 
 senses which exercise more or less sovereignty on the 
 individual" taste, touch, sight, smell, hearing "the four 
 simple appetites of the soul, to wit : the Group of Friend- 
 ship, the Group of Love, the Group of Paternity or Fam- 
 ily, the Group of Ambition or Corporation," all of which 
 are known to these same moralists, "although they possess 
 but very imperfect ideas regarding the four principal 
 ones," and finally three others discovered by Fourier and 
 now revealed by him under the collective name of "dis- 
 tributive" passions. These twelve passions naturally 
 divide into three groups. The first five, of the senses, 
 form the Group of Luxury. The next four, "called 
 affective," form "the Groupism or desire for Groups." 
 The last three form "the Seriism or desire for Series." 
 They all combine and unite in "Unityism, a passion which 
 comprises the three primary branches and is the result of 
 their combined development." This Unityism "is the 
 tendency of the individual to harmonize his happiness 
 with the happiness of all that surrounds him and all the 
 human race, now so hateful to him. It is a limitless
 
 56 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 philanthropy, a universal good will which can be devel- 
 oped only when the entire human race shall be rich, free, 
 and just, conformable to the three groupings of passions 
 under Luxury, Groupism, and Seriism, which demand, 
 as a first development, graduated riches for the five 
 senses, as a second, absolute liberty for the four "affect- 
 ive" groups, as a third, distributive justice for the "dis- 
 tributive passions." These last are not easily named. 
 After a few trials Fourier settles down on Dissident or 
 Cabalist, Variant or Papillonne, Engrenant or Composit. 
 He also calls Unityism "Harmonism." 
 
 In other words, Fourier argues that all our passions 
 should be given free rein. Any other course is contrary 
 to nature, and with him, as with Rousseau, nature is the 
 model. By allowing them full play they will give rise to 
 higher forms of passion, create new ones, and eventually 
 lead to the perfect state of harmony and happiness. Here 
 Fourier becomes the ally of the theory of human perfecti- 
 bility put forward by Condorcet. It will be noticed that 
 he demands "absolute liberty" for the four "affective" 
 passions, which are Friendship, Love, Paternity or Fam- 
 ily, Ambition or Corporation. He scouts the notion of 
 duty "which has no relation to nature; duty comes from 
 men, Attraction comes from God. Now, if one wishes 
 to know God's views he must study Attraction, nature 
 only, without any acceptation of duty, which varies in 
 each age and in each region, while the nature of passion 
 has been and will remain invariable among all peoples." 
 The practical result of this theory is obvious. Friendship 
 should be free, love should be free, paternity free, ambi- 
 tion free. That is, all ties of marriage and family should 
 be broken, for true attraction does not belong to compui-
 
 Fourier and Socialism 57 
 
 sion or restraint. Children do not understand paternal 
 authority, often abused as it is, and when grown they 
 notice the discrepancy between its theory and practice. 
 Hence a lessening of affection on the part of the child to 
 the parent. The same reasoning applies to the marriage 
 relationship, where the ideal and the facts are so discord- 
 ant as often to produce repulsion. But it is by attraction 
 that nature governs, and Fourier invites us "to the analy- 
 sis of that Passionate Attraction, which appears vicious to 
 us because we are ignorant of its goal." 
 
 The pages on family relations, husband and wife, chil- 
 dren and parents, are filled with the same mingling of 
 sound criticism of the present conditions and fanciful 
 assumptions of the blessings of a pure state of nature, 
 which we have already noted in the chapters on physical 
 geography and ethics. The present isolated household 
 with its permanent marriage relations will give way to the 
 Progressive Household of the seventh period of the "Out- 
 lined Series." Some one hundred persons of unequal 
 fortune will be grouped together as a "Tribe" in one 
 building, eighty of one sex, the employers, and twenty 
 domestics of both sexes. The eighty will be approxi- 
 mately divided into nine groups of nine people each. 
 Each group will eat at a different hour or in a different 
 room in order to avoid uniformity. Each Tribe will exer- 
 cise three compatible trades. Each member will contrib- 
 ute his share of the capital, large or small. The buildings 
 of the various Tribes will communicate with one another 
 so that you may pass into the successive buildings without 
 fear of heat or cold, rain or snow. 
 
 Suppose there are six Tribes, three of men and three 
 of women. Emulation will arise. The poorer tribe will
 
 58 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 seek to gain as much wealth as the richer tribe. Expen- 
 ses of the state administrations will decrease and the waste 
 of housekeeping will diminish. Therefore, the same 
 private income will purchase more comforts or luxuries. 
 An esprit de corps, jealousy for the honor of each Tribe, 
 will cause coarseness and uncleanliness to disappear. The 
 vexations of domestic service which are principally due 
 to three causes, low wages, incompatibility of disposition, 
 and multiplicity of functions will cease, because fewer 
 servants will be required than in isolated households, the 
 servants can choose the employers they like best and also 
 the kind of employment they prefer. Old people, now a 
 burden, will find vocations suited to their years, and help- 
 ful to the Tribe, and women who dislike housekeeping will 
 be relieved by those who like it. The men also will 
 choose the occupations they prefer. Division of labor 
 according to taste will replace the jack-at-all-trades neces- 
 sity of the isolated household. Close upon the sketch of 
 this possible existence follows a graduated plan for the 
 gratification of the animal passions and the propagation 
 of the race, by which women may choose husbands, para- 
 mours, and lovers at will. As the choice lies with woman, 
 she will rise in the social scale. This is one of the objects 
 of Fourier's system. In his own words, "the extension of 
 the privileges of women is the general principle of all social 
 progress." 
 
 If liberty in family relations is entirely desirable, so is 
 liberty in business, the passion of Ambition or Corpora- 
 tion. The present system "subordinates the social body 
 to a class of parasitical and unproductive agents, who are 
 the merchants." In the Sixth Period, of Guaranteeism, 
 this class is to be subordinated "to the interests of the pro-
 
 Fourier and Socialism 59 
 
 ducers, manufacturers, cultivators, and proprietors." 
 The merchant to-day is independent. The system of free 
 competition prevails. Under this system the social body 
 is a prey to bankruptcy, to "corners" in the necessaries 
 of life (Fourier's experience at Marseilles in 1799), which 
 "doubles the price of a raw material of which there is no 
 real scarcity," and thereby disorganizes manufacturing, 
 merely in order to enrich a coalition of gamblers. A 
 third despoiler is found in brokerage, which plunges finan- 
 cial markets into panics. And a fourth is the undue mul- 
 tiplication of middlemen, of agents who stand between the 
 producer and consumer, and who for the most part are 
 ruined by their own numerical excess, after a fierce strug- 
 gle which is productive of deceit and disorder. As a 
 bulwark against this state of anarchy the period of Civili- 
 zation is evolving commercial feudalism, or the restriction 
 of trade to the control of a few large companies. Thus 
 civilization rushes from one extreme to the other, never 
 resting at a golden mean. The antidote to all these con- 
 tradictions and this social waste is found in the Societary 
 Competition of the period of Guaranteeism, which carries 
 on the great corporations "without constraint or exclusive 
 privileges, economizes capital, restores the middlemen to 
 labor, and subjects business to taxation." An epilogue on 
 the Social Chaos of the World, eloquent and hortatory, 
 ends this singular treatise. 
 
 No attention was paid to Fourier's "Theory of the 
 Four Movements." It seems to have attracted but very 
 few readers. The wars of the Empire did not favor the 
 propagation of humanitarian theories; or it may be that 
 such an attack on civilization was confused with Rous- 
 seau's, and the outline of the advance of mankind with
 
 60 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 Condorcet's picture. Fourier continued to live on in 
 obscurity, gaining now and then an adherent, notably Just 
 Muiron, in 1814. In 1816 he retired to the small town 
 of Belley to the house of a sister, and there gave himself 
 up to elaborating his discovery and his theory. In 1822 
 his "Treatise on Domestic Rural Association" saw the 
 light, or as he preferred to call it, the "Theory of Uni- 
 versal Unity." 
 
 It is quite out of the question to analyze this book. 
 The ideas of the "Theory of the Four Movements" are 
 taken up again and commentated, now with a free use of 
 musical terms as well as mathematical. Economic and 
 philosophical questions are touched on and summarized in 
 bewildering confusion. Criticisms of society, attacks on 
 other social reformers, answers to criticisms of his own 
 views, are thrown together in a most haphazard manner. 
 The designs of God in creating the world, the immortality 
 of the soul, the training of children and youth, past, pres- 
 ent, and future, take up quite as much space as the chap- 
 ters on passionate attraction and cooperative association. 
 According to Pellarin, his biographer, Fourier would have 
 based his "Treatise" on the dictum of the German phi- 
 losopher, Schelling, that "the universe is made according 
 to the pattern of the human soul." But whatever the 
 subject and the digression, the author rarely proceeds far 
 in his discussion without recurring to his main point of 
 Industrial Attraction, which makes work a pleasure, and 
 to its embodiment in a laboring household of four hundred 
 to sixteen hundred souls. 
 
 The public ear proved quite as deaf to this longer 
 harangue as it had to the shorter one of 1808. Nor did 
 a summary of it in 1823 have any greater success. No
 
 Fourier and Socialism 61 
 
 one came forward with the capital sufficient to put the 
 main plan to a test. Fourier spent some years in a vain 
 search for this desired capitalist, and then losing hope for 
 the time being, hired out to a Lyons firm in 1825, and a 
 year later to an American house doing business tempo- 
 rarily at Paris. During 1826 and 1827 he gave his atten- 
 tion to the preparation of another volume on his system, 
 an abridgement of the "Theory of Universal Unity." 
 No publisher for it could be found at Paris. In 1828 he 
 went back to Besancon; a printer was ready for his ser- 
 vice, and "The New Industrial and Social World" 
 appeared in 1829. 
 
 This book is distinguished from its fellows by a clearer 
 construction and a more logical exposition. After a 
 criticism of the existing social state, its author passes on 
 to an analysis of Passionate Attraction and the twelve 
 passions which lead to Unityism. The three "distribu- 
 tive" passions are defined they had been loosely indicated 
 in the "Theory of Universal Unity." The Cabalist pas- 
 sion is partisanship, intrigue. It mingles calculation with 
 passion. Its office is to excite emulation between the 
 Groups, both in production and consumption. The Papil- 
 lonne passion is the need of variety in man, change of 
 scene, novelty which stimulates the senses and also the 
 soul. This need of variety "is felt to a moderate degree 
 every hour, and keenly every two hours." If it is not 
 satisfied man relapses into lukewarmness and ennui. The 
 labor and the pleasures of civilization weary by their 
 duration. Fourier shows how a judicious variation of 
 work and recreation in the Harmonic state may constantly 
 keep mind and body on the alert. He prepares two 
 schedules of a daily occupation, one for the beginning of
 
 62 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 the Harmonic existence, the other for the period of its 
 development. They differ in two ways. The first varies 
 occupations or amusements every two hours as a rule, 
 while the second varies them every hour. The first 
 begins the day at half-past three, provides for three meals, 
 and ends the day at ten. The second begins the day at 
 the same hour, provides for five meals, and ends it at half- 
 past ten. He explains the increase of meals in the com- 
 plete Harmonic state as due to the active life, the habit of 
 short and varied sessions which "will give a prodigious 
 appetite." The limited space assigned to sleep is attrib- 
 uted to the "refined hygiene, joined to the variety of 
 sessions," which will cause little fatigue and physical 
 waste. The Composit passion finally is a state of exhilar- 
 ation, a blind enthusiasm "born of the conjunction of 
 several pleasures of the senses and soul, enjoyed simul- 
 taneously." It is called "bastard" when formed of 
 pleasures of one kind, sensual or spiritual. Together 
 with the Cabalist passion it gives Harmonic society its 
 motives for action. But the important passion of all is 
 the Papillonne, the need of variety, so decried by our 
 present-day moralists. 
 
 From the theory and explanation of the passions of 
 this perfected stage of humanity we pass to its mode of 
 existence. The Phalanx is the nucleus, as we have seen. 
 From the experimental Tribe of one hundred persons of 
 the "Theory of the Four Movements" it had reached in 
 the "Theory of Universal Unity" the Association of 
 fifteen hundred to sixteen hundred, cultivating a square 
 league. All classes and conditions, male and female (the 
 males slightly in excess, according to nature's laws), rich 
 and poor, should inhabit the same building and work
 
 Fourier and Socialism 63 
 
 together in friendly rivalry. The distribution of profits, 
 according to the ' ' Theory of Universal Unity, ' ' should be 
 five-twelfths to manual labor, four-twelfths to capital, three- 
 twelfths to theoretical and practical knowledge (talent). 
 In the "New Industrial and Social World" the ideal 
 phalanx numbers sixteen hundred and twenty persons, of 
 whom two hundred and twenty are under four and a half 
 years of age, forty-five extremely old, and one hundred 
 and twenty ill, infirm, or absent. The others are classi- 
 fied according to their years and character. This body 
 lives in an immense building called the phalanstery, mod- 
 eled somewhat on the architecture of the French palaces, 
 with arcades, gardens, stables, barnyard, theater, church, 
 ball-room, and all the appurtenances of a city in minia- 
 ture. The inhabitants of the phalanstery, in the complete 
 Harmonic state, will be divided into four hundred and 
 five series, each composed of individuals of like tastes, 
 who will give themselves up to their favorite occupation. 
 For the incomplete state but one hundred and thirty-five 
 series will be formed, of which fifty will busy themselves 
 with the vegetable world, thirty with the animal, and 
 twenty with manufacturing. The remaining thirty-five 
 are divided among domestic service and professions, in the 
 widest acceptation of the term. All labor, of course, is 
 prompted by the natural tendency of the twelve passions 
 already described and their concord in Unityism, the 
 desire for universal harmony. 
 
 The problem of the rearing of children and their edu- 
 cation becomes of primal importance in a state founded 
 on passionate attraction, for children lack such an attri- 
 bute. Yet they do possess the desire for luxury, bestowed 
 on them bv nature. This desire is to be excited and
 
 64 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 turned towards the useful by the various allurements of 
 playthings, games, and emulation. Such is Fourier's fond- 
 ness for details and analysis that he mentions some 
 twenty-four means of diverting a child of two years of 
 age. Afterwards, their natural talents are cultivated by 
 being allowed full play. Even those children inclined to 
 filthiness are to be trained to care for sewers, drains, and 
 the like ! They should study books only on stormy days, 
 because they prefer to be out of doors during fine weather. 
 Above all, no constraint. As they grow older the same 
 attraction will work on them which prevails over the 
 passions of adults. Industrial life is the goal, and all 
 training should tend to industry. But "all the passions 
 go together, and the agreeable is always allied with the 
 useful." The question of marriage is not again consid- 
 ered, probably because of the criticism of the views pre- 
 viously expressed, but the right of woman to teach and 
 practice medicine is affirmed, and her supremacy in the 
 world of art asserted. 
 
 More attention was paid to this last work of Fourier 
 than had been given to his former publications. It was 
 reviewed by the press, and its doctrines attacked. A few 
 disciples came forward, among them a future leader of 
 the sect, Victor Considerant. Some deserters from Saint 
 Simonism, which was then meeting with considerable 
 favor, came over to the Phalanstery camp. In 1832 a 
 weekly was started, Le Phalansthe ou La Re'forme indus- 
 trielle. An experimental phalanstery even was projected, 
 but was soon abandoned because of lack of capital. 
 Courses of lectures on the theory were given, however, at 
 Paris and elsewhere. In 1835 Fourier published a 
 defense of himself and an attack on his critics, under the
 
 Fourier and Socialism 65 
 
 title of "False Industry." In 1836 Le Phalanstere (dead 
 in 1834) was succeeded by another journal. The public 
 became well informed of the movement. But no money 
 was available to make the experiment, and Fourier, whose 
 health had been steadily declining, died on October 9, 
 l837> without seeing the desire of his heart realized. 
 
 Shortly after Fourier's death his system seemed on the 
 point of gaining a firm foothold. It was brought to 
 America and made the subject of many experiments, the 
 most notable of which was that faint reproduction of a 
 phalanstery known as Brook Farm, in which Charles A. 
 Dana, Margaret Fuller, and other celebrities of the world 
 of letters took part, and which gave Hawthorne the 
 material for his "Blithedale Romance." In France, 
 after some years of halting, a stove manufacturer, in 
 i860, built a phalanstery at Guise (called Familistere), 
 and rented it to his workmen. Many of the ideas of 
 Fourier are here found in practical application. Some 
 eighteen hundred people inhabit the building, which 
 includes shops and a theater, young children are cared for 
 in a day nursery, and the comfort of the sick and old is 
 secured. A scheme of profit-sharing on the cooperative 
 plan furnishes an incentive to industry. But the occupa- 
 tion of the community is manufacturing, while Fourier 
 evidently considered a return to nature and agriculture an 
 essential factor in his new world. 
 
 The general interest excited by Fourier's views, an 
 interest which has led to so many attempts to realize the 
 practical side of them, and which has only recently sug- 
 gested the theme of Zola's regenerative novel, "Labor" 
 ("Travail"), seems capable of a rational explanation. In 
 spite of his extravaganzas, his irrelevancies, his absurdi-
 
 66 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 ties of thought or statement, Fourier quite consistently 
 advocates two principles which commend themselves to 
 the judgment of modern thinkers. These principles are 
 those of evolution and private property. Perfection is not 
 to be suddenly attained by Fourier. The world is not to 
 change its habits over night. Through a series of cen- 
 turies, of epochs only, eras of constant improvement in 
 the dispositions and manners of men, are we to reach the 
 perfect social state. The human mind will react with 
 beneficial results on nature. The better spirit of mankind 
 will make the wilderness blossom as the rose (the theory 
 of the Boreal Crown) . There is some truth at the bottom 
 of all this. And it satisfies the universal longing for the 
 future of the race. It is in imaginative accord at least 
 with the present teachings of science. 
 
 Furthermore, this ideal future is not to be reached by 
 sacrificing the individual to the extent that communism 
 and other doctrines of socialism would sacrifice him. In 
 Fourier's social unit, the phalanstery, each associate 
 retains his own property, and thereby the incentive to 
 increase it. Each can hand it down to his children or 
 friends. There seems no reasonable solution of the prob- 
 lem of society which ignores the predominant factor of 
 individual effort. Fourier's plan preserves this essential 
 agent. It goes even farther, and gives this agent a wider 
 scope by the economies gained in cooperative work, and 
 the division of labor according to personal inclinations. 
 Cooperative housekeeping, for instance, is becoming 
 more and more desirable, provided the family privacy is 
 not endangered. It may be possible that the general 
 trend of the arguments urged by Fourier may one day 
 lead to a practical solution of this vexatious problem.
 
 Fourier and Socialism 67 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM THE WORKS OF FOURIER 
 
 Extracts from the Introduction to Fourier's ''New 
 Industrial and Social World, ' ' 
 
 A means of suddenly quadrupling the products of industry; of 
 bringing all the masters to the conventional enfranchisement of 
 negroes and slaves; of refining barbarians and savages without 
 delay; .... of spontaneously establishing all unities in lan- 
 guage, measures, money, typography, etc. ! This is some char- 
 latanry, the wits will say 
 
 A modern has rightly said: "The last wrong we pardon is that 
 of announcing new truths." 
 
 This is the wrong I have done, to unveil many new and emi- 
 nently useful sciences; the most precious novelties were rejected 
 at first; potatoes and coffee were proscribed by parliamentary 
 edicts; vaccination, the steam engine, were likewise slandered 
 when they appeared 
 
 But let us stop this discussion; it is more urgent to acquaint 
 the reader with the subject in hand, the scale of the social states 
 superior to civilization, whose mechanism has been discovered at 
 last. Humanity in its social career has thirty-six periods to cover; 
 I give here a schedule of the first, which will be sufficient for the 
 documents contained in this volume : 
 
 SCALE OF THE FIRST AGE OF THE SOCIAL WORLD 
 
 Periods ( K. Bastard, without men. C. I. 
 
 anterior to ] I. Primitive, called Eden. C. 2. 
 
 industry. ( 2. Savagery, or inertia. C. 3. 
 
 Industry frag- t 3. Patriarchal, petty industry, 
 
 mentary, deceitful, -j 4. Barbarism, mean industry, 
 
 repugnant. ' 5. Civilization, great industry. 
 
 ( 6. Guaranteeism, half-association. 
 
 Industry societary, \ ; Sociantism, simple association. C. 4. 
 
 true, attractive. ( g Harmonism> com bined association. C. 5. 
 
 NOTE. The letter C indicates the epochs of past and future 
 creations of which we speak farther on.
 
 68 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 I do not mention period 9 and following periods, because 
 we can at present rise to period 8 only, already infinitely blessed 
 in comparison with the four societies now existing. It will sud- 
 denly and spontaneously extend to the whole human race, by the 
 mere influence of profits, pleasures, and especially industrial 
 attraction, a mechanism not at all known to our politicians and 
 moralists 
 
 In order to create this attraction we had to discover the method 
 called Passionate Series, explained in this work. It is gradually 
 established during the periods 6, 7, 8 of the above schedule. 
 Period 6 creates but a half-attraction, and would not allure the 
 savages. The 7th' would begin to attract them. The 8th will 
 win over the idle rich also. We can pass over the 6th and 7th 
 periods, thanks to the invention of the Passionate Series, which 
 forms the mechanism of the 8th period 
 
 Civilized peoples are persuaded that they are hastening to per- 
 fectibility when they are overwhelmed with new and recent calami- 
 lies; .... among others the scourge of public debts, ever 
 increasing, and which at the first war among the western nations 
 would bring on universal bankruptcy, followed by revolutions. 
 
 There are many other wounds unperceived. Such is the 
 encroachment of commerce, which threatens to invade everything, 
 and which is finally alarming the governments. The societary 
 theory can alone teach the means of striking down this political 
 Titan 
 
 For three thousand years philosophy has not been able to 
 invent anything new in industrial and social politics. Its innumer- 
 able systems are based only on a distribution by families, the 
 smallest and most ruinous unity. 
 
 Here are new ideas at last, a theory adapted to the views of 
 governments, instead of tormenting them by philanthropic visions, 
 true masks for agitators. Every minister will appreciate a method 
 which, while quadrupling the revenue available, will at once allow 
 taxes to be doubled, while really decreasing the burdens of the 
 tax-payers by one-half. (They will pay but double on a quadruple 
 product.) .... 
 
 A more brilliant effect will be to operate on the entire world, 
 savage, barbarous, and civilized; to change it all by an experi-
 
 Fourier and Socialism 69 
 
 ment limited to a square league and eighteen hundred people. 
 What a contrast with philosophy, which overturns empires with- 
 out any guarantee of good results 
 
 Poor civilization makes gigantic efforts for nothing; sending 
 armies and navies to deliver perhaps one-tenth of Greece; revolu- 
 tions and massacres, as attempts to emancipate the negroes; 
 fruitless endeavors to aid poverty. All this pygmy labor is going 
 to cease. The human race is going to be enfranchised and deliv- 
 ered altogether. It will rally everywhere to attractive industry as 
 soon as it knows, by an experiment on one district, the prodigies 
 of riches, pleasures, and virtues reaped from it. 
 
 There the chimeras and furies of party spirit will end. Each 
 one, seeing the true destiny of man, the mechanism of the passions, 
 will be so confounded at the absurdities of civilization that he will 
 elect to forget them as quickly as possible 
 
 At Paris they are trying to extirpate begging Those in 
 
 charge of this attempt do not know that they must operate on the 
 country before operating on the city, effect industrial reform in 
 agriculture, manufacturing, commerce, and housekeeping. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 French and German Socialism in Modern Times. Richard T. 
 Ely. 
 
 Fourierism New International Encyclopedia. 
 
 The Guise Familistcre is described in The Fortnightly Review, 
 Vol. LIII (1893), pp. 418-426, and Harper's Monthly, Vol. 
 LXXI (1885), pp. 912-918.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 TRIERS AND THE GROWTH OF REPUBLICAN 
 PRINCIPLES 
 
 [Louis ADOLPHE THIERS, born at Marseilles, April 16, 1797; 
 journalist at Paris from 1822; deputy from Aix, 1830; Minister 
 of the Interior, 1832; member of the French Academy, 1834; 
 in exile, 1851-1852; deputy from Paris, 1863; President of 
 France, 1871-1873; died at St. Germain, September 3, 1877. 
 Principal works : "History of the French Revolution," 1823- 
 1827; "History of the Consulate and Empire," 1845-1862.] 
 
 There were many in France, like Fourier and Guizot, 
 who had profited by the great Revolution, but to whom it 
 had not been an unmixed blessing. Fourier had lost his 
 property in it, Guizot his father. Their attitude towards 
 the movement, in common with the opinion of a large 
 number of their countrymen, particularly those who 
 belonged to the higher bourgeoisie, was one of approval 
 with reservations. The greater measure of liberty it had 
 brought they enjoyed. But they wished this liberty to be 
 held in check, controlled by a conservative moderation. 
 On the other hand, the mass of the population indorsed 
 the ideas of the Revolution and approved of its acts. The 
 peasant had become owner of the soil he had tilled for 
 centuries, confiscated from the clergy and nobility. The 
 small tradesman, roofed in by the ledge of caste, had 
 suddenly found the rock above him blasted away, and the 
 fields of opportunity lying at his feet. The peasantry and 
 the petty bourgeoisie easily outnumbered the other classes. 
 
 70
 
 LOUIS ADOLPHE TRIERS
 
 Thiers and Republican Principles 71 
 
 They had no apologies to proffer for the way in which 
 their social status had been transformed. After the des- 
 potism of the Empire they quickly found their leaders, 
 and chief among these stood Adolphe Thiers. 
 
 This champion of democracy, and president to be, was 
 born at Marseilles, in 1797. Of a family that was not 
 particularly prosperous, he had obtained his education in 
 the local schools by means of a scholarship. Going in 
 1815 to Aix to study law, he found there, as fellow-student, 
 the future historian Mignet, with whom he formed a last- 
 ing friendship. During this residence at Aix Thiers 's 
 political leanings became manifest. It is told that on the 
 occasion of a prize competition proposed by the Academy 
 of Aix, in 1820, Thiers, who had just graduated from the 
 law school, offered a eulogy of the eighteenth-century 
 philosopher and essayist, Vauvenargues. It was the best 
 of all the pieces submitted. But the name of its author 
 was revealed, and the reactionary Academy could not 
 make up its mind to thus publicly reward a defender of 
 the Revolution. So the competition was annulled for 
 that year. The year following Thiers submitted hi s 
 eulogy again under his own name, and also a second piece 
 which purported to come from Paris, and which did not 
 bear a signature. The Academy, thus tricked, awarded 
 the prize to the latter essay, and gave honorable mention 
 to the former. 
 
 In 1821 Thiers and Mignet went to Paris. Thiers was 
 soon admitted to the staff of Le Constitutionnel, and was 
 also assigned the political review of a weekly paper. Le 
 Constitulionnd was radical in its leanings. It supported 
 the cause of the Revolution. Thiers took the side of 
 democracy against the aristocracy of the Restoration.
 
 72 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 He also tried art criticism, and wrote up the picture 
 exhibit (Salon) of 1822 for the romantic journal, Le Globe. 
 In 1823 a book on the Pyrenees and South France, osten- 
 sibly a narrative of travel, but really a political pamphlet 
 against the proposed expedition into Spain to restore 
 Ferdinand VII illustrated in a concrete way his powers 
 of argument and satire. ' Some years afterwards, in 1830, 
 he was active in founding a new journal, Le National, in 
 which he continued to sustain the work of the Revolu- 
 tion. In practice, however, he considered, with Guizot, 
 that liberty would be best conserved by a constitutional 
 monarchy after the pattern of England, not a republic 
 like the United States. As he himself expressed it: "We 
 must cross the Channel, and not the Atlantic." This 
 position, once assumed, seems to have been maintained 
 by him to the end. The name mattered little. He was 
 ready to uphold any government which should guarantee 
 to the governed the liberty won by the Revolution. The 
 great obstacle to the furtherance of this liberty, he claimed, 
 was the divine right of kings, which the Bourbons still 
 maintained. Now the monarch, emperor, or president of 
 the modern state should derive his powers from the con- 
 sent of the governed. Specifically he would be an Orlean- 
 ist, were the opportunity given. The opportunity came 
 in 1830, and Thiers entered public life. 
 
 During these ten years of literary and political activity 
 the journalist had shown himself an historian also. His 
 "History of the French Revolution," begun in 1823, had 
 expanded to ten volumes by the time it was finished, in 
 1827. When he first proposed it to a publisher, the latter 
 required that he add as collaborator the name of Felix 
 Bodin, a well-known writer of historical summaries for
 
 Thiers and Republican Principles 73 
 
 popular use, books of facts and dates rather than of judg- 
 ment and description. The first two volumes of the 
 "History" bore, therefore, the names of both Thiers and 
 Bodin. From the third the name of Thiers appears alone. 
 Nor is there any reason to suppose that he had received 
 much assistance from Bodin, unless indeed in the sug- 
 gestion of the work itself. Thiers's method of historical 
 writing is quite the reverse of Guizot's. If the latter's 
 may be rightly called philosophical, the former's may per- 
 haps be termed journalistic. Thiers certainly did not shut 
 himself up in his study and absorb himself in the contem- 
 plation of the principles of the world's progress, illustrat- 
 ing these principles by documents in hand. On the 
 contrary, he went out into the street, entered cafes, 
 joined groups in the public squares, frequented salons, 
 questioning the men and women who had played a part 
 in the great drama, or who had accounts of it from eye- 
 witnesses. This is the reportorial way of gathering news. 
 It has its merits. The facts collected are quick with life, 
 the impressions received glow with passion, the opinions 
 expressed still quiver with the emotion of personal experi- 
 ence. But all the notes thus made, however vivid their 
 content, are quite untrustworthy in their application to 
 events. They cannot lay claim to impartiality at least. 
 They are personal, partisan. And so it was with the 
 history which Thiers made up from them. It was vivid, 
 clear in expression, vibrating with feeling, but superficial 
 as to the exposition of causes, and filled with party spirit 
 in the narration of events. Inevitably, certain of the 
 great figures became heroes in the author's eyes; others 
 quite as great suffered by his hostility. His prejudices 
 were those of the Third Estate, and the lower Third Estate
 
 74 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 at that. He had suffered nothing in property or in life 
 by the political and social changes of the revolutionary 
 period. He had gained rather by the general results of 
 the changes. Therefore, he comes forward as their 
 defender. It is the radical republican daring to praise 
 what had been condemned by the writers of the Restora- 
 tion. He was not actuated by sentiment. There is little 
 that is romantic in his inspiration. Thiers belonged to 
 the class of materialists who recognize facts because they 
 are facts, and accept them because they are. So the 
 general thought of his "History" is stamped with fatalism. 
 What must be must be, the creed of that embodiment of 
 the Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte. The style and 
 content go well together. Both are equally clear, direct, 
 forceful. 
 
 Consequently the success of this book was unusual. 
 The passing generation, of whatever shade of belief, found 
 in it the recital of its exploits or its wrongs. Partisans 
 of every sort denounced it or defended it, but all read it. 
 Furthermore, its publication came at what is generally 
 called the "psychological moment." A new generation 
 had come forward, contemporaries of Thiers, who knew 
 of the excesses of the Terror by hearsay only, as he did, 
 but who saw that whatever injustices had been done in the 
 name of liberty, the fact remained that liberty had been 
 acquired and the class privileges of the ancien regime had 
 gone forever. These people had benefited by the change. 
 They were tired of the denunciation of the methods by 
 which the change had been wrought. They were begin- 
 ning to feel their power and they hailed the daring protag- 
 onist of their views as the champion of the new democ- 
 racy. The "History of the French Revolution" laid the
 
 Thiers and Republican Principles 75 
 
 foundations for Thiers's political career. Henceforward 
 he felt behind him a party, increasing in numbers and 
 growing in wealth and influence. Relying on its support 
 he had helped found Le National, its votes had elected 
 him to the Assembly in the same year, and he represented 
 it in the ministry of the new government which was formed 
 after the Revolution of 1830. 
 
 Thiers was not a republican yet. He still held to the 
 idea of a constitutional monarchy based on the model of 
 the English government. He thought it best adapted to 
 preserve the liberties which had been won by the French 
 against both despotism and anarchy. In this respect he 
 agreed with Guizot and for a time we find these two 
 working together. But Guizot, as we have seen, pos- 
 sessed but a restricted notion of political liberty. Not only 
 should it be conserved by a monarchy, but it should also 
 be guaranteed by a choice body of voters selected from the 
 upper bourgeoisie, to which Guizot himself belonged. 
 Now Thiers was of the petty bourgeoisie. He could see 
 no harm in bringing his own social caste into participa- 
 tion in public affairs. It was soon evident that the advo- 
 cate of the wider democracy could not dwell in peace with 
 him who saw all political wisdom concentrated in the 
 upper bourgeoisie. In 1840 they came to an open sepa- 
 ration. 
 
 The intervening ten years, 1830 to 1840, had confirmed 
 Thiers in his attitude of political progress, and had intro- 
 duced him to the public as an orator of the first rank. 
 His maiden speech, however, as one of the secretaries of 
 the Treasury Department, had been a failure. Monoto- 
 nous in tone and hesitating in speech, his physical appear- 
 ance, short, ugly, had added to his discomfiture. But his
 
 j6 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 reappearance on the floor the following year, 1831, in a 
 debate on foreign affairs, had at once convinced his fellow- 
 members of their wrong judgment. Clear, logical, inci- 
 sive, witty, passionate, his emotion and his energy trans- 
 formed his very body. ' Such merits could not be neglected 
 by the government, and in 1832 he became Minister of 
 the Interior, thus entering on a career of administrative 
 responsibility which lasted four years, and during which 
 he was closely associated with Guizot. Both retired at 
 the same time in 1836. Thiers resumed power for a few 
 months in 1840, this time, however, to be replaced by 
 Guizot, whose attitude of conservatism stood higher in 
 the favor oT the king. 
 
 During this decade the reaction against the condemna- 
 tion of the Revolution had been steadily gaining headway. 
 The glory of Napoleon, obscured for a time by the 
 remembrance of the wretchedness his wars had brought 
 to the homes of France, had also come out from its 
 eclipse. The splendor of his conquests illuminated all his 
 deeds. The legend of the Little Corporal began, fostered 
 by the sentimentality of the veterans of the Grand Army 
 and by the fireside poetry of a Beranger. A Bonapartist 
 revival was well under way. Certain public events had 
 been created by it, and had assisted it in turn. In 1833 
 the statue of the Emperor had been restored to the pedes- 
 tal on which it had formerly stood, the Vendome column, 
 cast by Napoleon out of the cannon captured in his Euro- 
 pean campaigns. In 1836 the Arch of Triumph, begun 
 by him to celebrate his victories and turned from this plan 
 by the government of the Restoration, was restored to its 
 original purpose and finished by Louis Philippe. Finally, 
 in 1840, during the short interval that Thiers was head of
 
 Thiers and Republican Principles 77 
 
 affairs, Guizot, then ambassador to England, acting at 
 Thiers's instigation, obtained from the English ministry 
 the permission to remove Napoleon's remains from St. 
 Helena to French soil. Bonaparte had said in his will: 
 "I wish my ashes to repose on the banks of the Seine, in 
 the midst of that French people I have so loved," and 
 the popular desire had long looked forward to a consum- 
 mation of this wish. In November, 1840, his body arrived 
 at Cherbourg. From that port to Paris the funeral cortege 
 moved along escorted by the acclamations of the whole 
 population. So slow was the progress in the midst of the 
 unbounded enthusiasm, that it was the middle of Decem- 
 ber before the final resting-place was reached under the 
 dome of the church of the Invalides. 
 
 Thiers may not have aided this apotheosis of Napoleon 
 with his own political interests in view, but he as surely 
 aided it. His "History of the French Revolution" had 
 pointed that way. His speech at the time of his recep- 
 tion to the French Academy (1834) further showed the 
 inclination of his mind. In the midst of the praise of his 
 predecessor, the dramatist Andrieux, the newly elected 
 Academician found room for the eulogy of the times in 
 which Andrieux had lived. This eulogy better than any 
 words of paraphrase or comment can throw light on the 
 attitude of a large group of the French people towards 
 the Revolution and the Empire: "What a time, what 
 things, what men, from that memorable year of 1789 to 
 that other year no less memorable of 1830! The old 
 French society of the eighteenth century, so polished but 
 so badly ordered, ends in a frightful storm. A crown 
 falls with a crash, carrying with it the august head which 
 wore it. Immediately and without respite the most
 
 78 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 precious and illustrious heads are stricken low: genius, 
 heroism, youth, succumb to the fury of factions, which are 
 irritated by all that charms men. And from out this 
 bloody chaos an extraordinary genius suddenly arises, 
 who seizes that society, stops it, gives it at the same time 
 order, glory, realizes civil equality, the most genuine of 
 its needs, postpones the liberty which would have impeded 
 its progress, and hastens to carry through the world the 
 puissant truths of the French Revolution. One day his 
 tri-colored banner shines forth on the heights of Mount 
 Tabor; another day, on the Tagus; finally on the Borys- 
 thenes. He falls at last, leaving the world filled with his 
 works, the human mind full of his image. And the most 
 active of mortals goes away to die, to die of inaction, on 
 an island of the great ocean! .... We have seen a 
 forum as bloody as that of Rome; we have seen the heads 
 of orators borne to the tribune's seat; we have seen kings 
 more unfortunate than Charles I, more sadly blinded than 
 James II; we see every day the prudence of William of 
 Orange; and we have seen Caesar Caesar himself! 
 Among you who are listening to me there are witnesses 
 who have had the glory of approaching him, of meeting 
 his gleaming glance, of hearing his voice, of receiving his 
 orders from his own lips, and of hastening to execute 
 them through the smoke of battle-fields." 
 
 The bearing of such eloquent sentences is unmistak- 
 able. Thiers, willingly or not, was already a pronounced 
 admirer of Napoleon, and saw in him the personification 
 of the principles of the Revolution. But apart from this 
 admiration of the man he still stood for a constitutional 
 monarchy, and not for an empire. Throughout the eight 
 years of political opposition that followed 1840, the years
 
 Thiers and Republican Principles 79 
 
 in which Guizot's "doctrinaire" ideas of a bourgeoisie 
 administration, stubbornly adhered to, were ruining the 
 cause of a constitutional monarchy, Thiers abode by that 
 principle. He argued for an extension of the suffrage, 
 and the incompatibility of office-holding with the function 
 of a deputy to the Assembly, but he never spoke for either 
 republic or empire. In the last days of Louis Philippe 
 he carefully abstained from overt acts of disapproval, and 
 when at the supreme moment Guizot was forced to give 
 up the direction of affairs, he even consented to head a 
 more liberal ministry. But it was too late. The day of 
 compromise had passed. Universal suffrage triumphed in 
 the Revolution of 1848. 
 
 Thiers accepted the Republic as he would have accepted 
 any form of government which should preserve the results 
 attained by the French Revolution. Shortly before the 
 fall of the monarchy he had affirmed his position before a 
 hostile house in these words: "I am not a radical, gentle- 
 men; the radicals know that very well, and to read their 
 journals is enough to be convinced of it. But listen well 
 to my opinion, I am of the party of the Revolution, both 
 in France and in Europe. I hope the government of the 
 Revolution may remain in the hands of moderates. I 
 shall do all I can to have it remain there. But even 
 though this government should pass into the hands of men 
 who are less moderate than I and my friends, into the 
 hands of ardent men, even were they radicals, I shall not 
 abandon my cause on that account; I shall always belong 
 to the party of the Revolution." He accepted an election 
 from Paris to the new house of representatives, and in its 
 deliberations ranked himself among the conservatives. 
 To combat the theories of the socialists, which were
 
 8o Ten Frenchmen 
 
 attaining prominence at this time, he published a witty 
 defense of the rights of individual ownership ("On Prop- 
 erty," 1848). In the house itself he led the majority 
 against a proposition of the socialist writer, Proudhon. 
 Later, in the presidential election, he supported the can- 
 didacy of Louis Napoleon, perhaps because of his devo- 
 tion to the cause of the first Napoleon, perhaps because 
 he considered the nephew of the great Emperor more 
 conservative than the other candidates, and did not fear 
 any reaction in the government. Napoleon was elected 
 by an overwhelming majority, and with him an Assembly 
 which numbered but very few partisans of a republic. 
 The sequel of this election is well known. Greeted by 
 the sober mass of the population as the restorer of law 
 and order, crowned with the halo of the Napoleonic glory, 
 supported by the clergy and the advocates of clerical 
 authority, Louis Napoleon dared affront the men who had 
 aided his advancement, gained control of the regular 
 army, and established despotic power in France by the 
 coup d'etat of December 2, 1851. Thiers had foreseen 
 the catastrophe, had striven to avert it by recalling his 
 countrymen to the defense of the law. On the dissolu- 
 tion of the Assembly, he was arrested by order of the 
 conspirators and sent into exile. A few weeks later the 
 famous plebiscite voted the Second Empire into being. 
 
 The coup d'etat gave Thiers back to the duties of pri- 
 vate life. The decree of his exile was revoked in the sum- 
 mer of 1852, and he returned to France, to the meetings 
 of the Academy, to the salons of Paris, mainly hostile to 
 the new master, to new studies in the natural sciences and 
 astronomy, to attendance on the lectures of Pasteur at 
 the Ecole Normale, above all, to the composition of his
 
 Thiers and Republican Principles 81 
 
 greater historical work, "History of the Consulate and the 
 Empire." He had begun this sequel to his "French 
 Revolution" in 1845, while still engaged in parliamentary 
 work. Five volumes had been published in that year, two 
 each in 1847 an d 1849, an d three in 1851. The period 
 of exile had interrupted him. Some time elapsed before 
 he could settle down to his task again. Not till 1856 was 
 publication renewed, and 1862 first saw the completion of 
 the undertaking. The same success was won here that 
 was gained by his "French Revolution." The methods 
 employed in writing the two books varied, of course. 
 The men who had taken part in the politics and wars 
 under Napoleon, while still numerous, retained impres- 
 sions of events that were less vivid than those of the 
 survivors of the revolutionary period, in 1823. Many 
 details had escaped them. Their passions had cooled in 
 the thirty years and more of interval. From them Thiers 
 gleaned what he could. But other sources were open to 
 him. The government archives, the memoirs and cor- 
 respondence of contemporaries and participants, the judg- 
 ments pronounced by predecessors how much use he 
 made of this written material cannot be determined. He 
 is accused of restricting himself to the files of the govern- 
 ment organ, Le Monitettr. An unjust accusation probably, 
 but which might well be true, in view of the fact that he 
 wholly neglected the accounts of English and German 
 authorities. Consequently, from an historical standpoint, 
 the "Consulate and Empire" possesses little value. 
 
 The public at large, however, did not look so closely. 
 It was attracted to the work by the same qualities which 
 had furthered the vogue of the "French Revolution." 
 The same clear style, the same rapid sequence of events
 
 82 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 narrated, the same disregard of philosophical meditation on 
 cause and effect. Heroes come and go. Those who 
 succeed are praised, those who fail are condemned. Such 
 are the fortunes of war, and Thiers was not an idealist. 
 Even the great hero, the genius whose career was so elo- 
 quently outlined in the speech delivered at Thiers 's recep- 
 tion into the French Academy, shares like fate with the 
 heroes of less eminence. All conquering he was all wise. 
 But his campaigns in Spain and Russia demonstrated his 
 fallibility. Thiers 's critics attribute this alteration of 
 eulogy in the case of the great Napoleon to the political 
 deeds of the "petty Napoleon," as Hugo delighted to 
 call him. Between the first volumes of the history and 
 the last the coup d'etat had intervened. It may be these 
 reproaches of undue influence are right. Yet it was 
 Thiers's way to reward success with praise, failure with 
 blame. It was this characteristic of his work which gives 
 it the name of "fatalistic." Napoleon was no exception 
 to his rule. 
 
 No sooner was this second great literary undertaking 
 ended than an indication of liberalism in the policy of 
 Napoleon III called Thiers once more into the political 
 arena. In the election of 1863 he was returned to the 
 house ("corps legislatif") as member from Paris. His 
 appearance was a political event. The old guard of con- 
 stitutional liberty in France reentered the parliament of 
 France with him. This idea was clearly affirmed in his 
 first long speech. He asks for liberty individual, elec- 
 toral, parliamentary; liberty of the press and ministerial 
 responsibility. He asks for these "necessary liberties" 
 quietly, dispassionately. Yet he points out the danger of 
 refusing them. And he continued on this course, a critic
 
 Thiers and Republican Principles 83 
 
 01 the administration, but not a hostile one, more desirous 
 of seeing the return of representative government than of 
 accomplishing the ruin of the Empire. He was not an 
 extremist. He was not even a republican by conviction. 
 He still modeled his opinion on the English constitution. 
 He often stood alone, between the imperialists on the one 
 hand, and the radicals on the other. 
 
 But even a temperate critic found occasions enough to 
 employ all the resources of his talent. The Second 
 Empire was tossed from one mistake to another. The 
 Emperor was a mixture of an autocrat and a humani- 
 tarian. At times he was more than suspected of socialistic 
 views. He constantly wavered in both his domestic and 
 foreign policy. Extreme measures in one direction were 
 soon balanced by extreme measures in the opposite direc- 
 tion. For a while at least the people of France were not 
 affected by his home policy. All classes were satisfied 
 the workmen, peasants, business men, and clergy. But 
 the French have always been peculiarly sensitive to their 
 standing among nations. They would play a large part 
 in the politics of the world. Napoleon III recognized 
 this trait, and tried to suit it. The Crimean War was 
 one consequence of his attempts to please, a war which 
 estranged both enemy and ally. Another endeavor was 
 the war against Austria for the independence of Italy, 
 which was brought to an abrupt close without Italy's con- 
 sent. The war in Mexico grew out of a mixture of busi- 
 ness with dreams of a Latin empire. French pride was 
 touched by its unfortunate conclusion. So with the other 
 events of the day, the Schleswig-Holstein imbroglio, the 
 war between Prussia and Austria in 1866, the failure to 
 secure Luxembourg, the expedition into Italy in 1867.
 
 84 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 Every undertaking of the Emperor, the result of his own 
 emotions, or the country's ambition, with which he had 
 no real sympathy at heart, alienated some portion of the 
 nation because of its lack of decision and thoroughness. 
 Finally the elections of 1869 showed that the peasants 
 alone remained loyal to the government. The cities were 
 all in active opposition. A liberal administration was 
 tried. A constitution was submitted to popular vote. It 
 was overwhelmingly ratified. The pure Bonapartists took 
 courage. Absolutism seemed possible again. A success- 
 ful war might confirm its hold on the nation for another 
 generation. Urged on by partisans, by dynastic consider- 
 ations, by popular jealousy of Prussia, the fatalistic Em- 
 peror yielded to the importunities of his advisers and 
 consented to a breach of peace. The Empire paid the 
 price, but the humiliation of France was complete. 
 
 Throughout these years of unrest Thiers had remained 
 a critic, and an ally as well. He had deplored the mistakes 
 in the foreign policy, had urged vigorous measures at the 
 time of the Danish war in 1864, and again on the occa- 
 sion of the Austrian defeat in 1866. Opponents even 
 assert that he was partly responsible for the final catas- 
 trophe of 1870, because of his insistence on military inter- 
 ference with Prussia in these other affairs. And indeed, 
 his foreign policy as a minister under Louis Philippe had 
 not lacked in aggressiveness. However all this may be, 
 when in July, 1870, it came to the point of declaring war 
 against the German state, he opposed the declaration with 
 all his might. For hours this old man, of more than 
 threescore years and ten, pleaded with the excited Bona- 
 partist majority and endured its insults. He knew that 
 France was in no condition for war, and that Prussia was
 
 Thiers and Republican Principles 85 
 
 ready. Yet, when his advice was disregarded, when the 
 Emperor had gone to the front and the first reverses were 
 pushing the French armies back onto their own soil, he 
 did not stand aloof. He made common cause with the 
 Empire in the defense of the fatherland, and accepted a 
 nomination to the Council of Defense. And he contin- 
 ued at this post even when all his protests were unheeded. 
 Sedan came. The Emperor was deposed. The Third 
 Republic was proclaimed on September 4th, by the citizens 
 of Paris. The deputies of the capital accepted the situ- 
 ation, the Corps Legislatif was dissolved, and an unauthor- 
 ized government took charge of public affairs. Thiers 
 would not consent to become a part of it, though he did 
 undertake at its request a mission to foreign courts. For 
 more than a month this wonderful septugenarian made 
 the tour of Europe, to London, to Turin, to Vienna, to 
 St. Petersburg, pleading with unsympathetic governments 
 for intervention in behalf of France. He obtained the 
 expression of a desire for an armistice, and Bismarck 
 consented to open negotiations. But once again Thiers 
 was baffled, this time by his very friends. Gambetta, in 
 the provinces, did not wish to link the name of republic to 
 an inglorious peace, the inevitable result of an armistice 
 under existing conditions. The populace of Paris, agi- 
 tated by theories of social reforms, and irritated at the 
 incapacity of its generals, coerced the authorities, and 
 would not listen to Thiers's proposals. The siege and 
 the desultory war dragged on. Paris was starved into 
 submission in January, 1 87 1, and all resistance disappeared 
 with its surrender. At last it was seen that some regular 
 administration should replace the temporary expedient of 
 the government of national defense. General elections
 
 86 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 were held throughout France, and in February a new 
 Assembly met at Bordeaux. 
 
 This Assembly wished for peace. It was elected with 
 peace in view. Because the republic had stood for war, 
 under Gambetta's leadership, only a minority of the 
 deputies were republicans. The large majority was com- 
 posed of monarchists of different stripes. A few were 
 imperialists. Yet all factions united to put at their head 
 the man whose opposition to the war and whose efforts 
 for peace had made him the most prominent figure in the 
 country. Thiers was chosen Chief of the Executive 
 Power of the French Republic, with the mandate to make 
 a treaty with the Germans, a duty which he performed 
 with considerable difficulty. The Prussian demands had 
 been already indicated. France was to pay for the cost 
 of the war and in addition was to lose her eastern prov- 
 inces, Alsace, always a German-speaking land, and part of 
 Lorraine, including the fortress of Metz. It was the 
 territorial concession which made Thiers 's task peculiarly 
 painful. The deputies from Alsace-Lorraine opposed 
 their denationalization by voice and petition. But no way 
 of escape could be found. Belfort, on the southern edge, 
 was the utmost concession allowed by Bismarck. Under 
 the stress of necessity the Assembly ratified the prelimi- 
 naries of peace, and in May the treaty was concluded. 
 
 Meanwhile another evil had threatened to destroy the 
 enfeebled vitality of the nation. Discontented with the 
 management of the war and the conditions of peace, 
 smarting under the rebuffs administered to the national 
 honor by the victorious alien, suspecting the royalist 
 majority in the Assembly of attempting to do away with 
 the republican form of government, lured with the pic-
 
 Thiers and Republican Principles 87 
 
 tures of Utopias where labor would possess all the rewards 
 and pure democracy would protect true liberty, equality, 
 and fraternity, above all without occupation in the weeks 
 of transition between siege and peace, the laborers of 
 Paris, under the leadership of daring dreamers, rose in 
 rebellion and endeavored to establish an independent gov- 
 ernment. The Commune was an echo of the French 
 Revolution, fostered by the social theories of Saint 
 Simon, Fourier, and their successors. It was hostile to 
 all restraint of law or property. A less resolute man 
 than Thiers would have yielded to discouragement and 
 given the country over to anarchy. He had neither army 
 nor means at hand. But he saw that the revolt must be 
 suppressed. At his suggestion the seat of government 
 was transferred from Bordeaux to Versailles. An army 
 was concentrated there, made up for the most part of the 
 troops who were returning from German prisons. The 
 conquest of Paris was attempted. In spite of a desperate 
 resistance, which lasted over six weeks, and desolated the 
 very streets of the capital, Thiers 's wisdom and energy 
 triumphed. The revolt was attended by all the horrors 
 of a civil war. Class hatred intensified its bitterness, 
 and Rousseau's argument for the ills born of civilization 
 was given a concrete example. Many of the public build- 
 ings were burned. The intention of the communist chiefs 
 was to involve the whole city in destruction. Prompt 
 action saved the French from this catastrophe, but the 
 fall of the Commune left its aftermath of dissension and 
 ill-will. 
 
 From this chaos of ruined and tottering governments 
 the French Republic finally emerged. It is probable that 
 the personality of Thiers contributed in great measure to
 
 88 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 this result. During the last years of the Second Empire 
 he had been gradually led to the opinion that a republic, 
 and not a constitutional monarchy, would be the outcome 
 of the natural political movement of the nation. When 
 Sedan was over he did not associate himself with the gov- 
 ernment of national defense, though he served it and his 
 country to the best of his ability, and after the new 
 Assembly was elected, he strictly adhered to the agree- 
 ment to free France from invasion before raising the 
 question of her future administration. This work had 
 been done. The Republic had got the credit for it. The 
 Commune had been ruthlessly crushed. Thiers could 
 therefore expect the support of all conservatives. Sup- 
 plementary elections in July, 1871, had added to the 
 number of , republican deputies. All these things con- 
 spired to make the moderate royalists acquiesce in the 
 conditions existing. Agitation was feared. The repub- 
 licans thought they saw signs of a royalist plot. The 
 royalists trembled at the prospect of a Jacobin revolution. 
 The firmness and tact of Thiers, who was now wholly 
 convinced of the desirability of continuing the republican 
 form of government (a conviction, it is alleged, which was 
 strengthened by the dictates of his private ambition), suc- 
 ceeded in drawing together the more reasonable of all 
 groups. On August 30 he was formally elected president 
 of the French Republic, and given the power to consti- 
 tute a cabinet. But he was made subject to the vote of 
 the Assembly. In reality his attributes were little other 
 than those of a prime minister. But the name had come, 
 and, as the sequel showed, the thing followed. 
 
 In the treaty of peace it was stipulated that the with- 
 drawal of the German armies should be in proportion to
 
 Thiers and Republican Principles 89 
 
 the payment of the indemnity. This indemnity was fixed 
 at five milliards of francs about one billion dollars. It 
 was thought that a country overrun and demoralized as 
 France had been could not soon rally, and there is no 
 doubt that the Germans looked forward to a somewhat 
 protracted residence. But the outcome of the govern- 
 ment appeals to provide for the indemnity was most 
 unusual. Thiers had made his first appearance in public 
 life as a secretary in the Treasury Department. At the 
 age of seventy-four he was called upon to justify this early 
 office. The Germans were paid off ahead of time, and 
 their last regiment withdrew in September, 1873. 
 "Liberator of the territory" is the title which public 
 opinion conferred on the man who had achieved this great 
 result. It settled Thiers's position with posterity, and 
 yet it was fatal to his further career as a statesman. 
 
 The Assembly, the only legislative body of the nation, 
 was supposed to dissolve when the Germans withdrew, 
 and allow new elections, free from the emotions of war, 
 to decide the future of France. But the Assembly was 
 anti-republican. The majority in it was united in opposi- 
 tion to a republic. Late in 1872 Thiers brought this 
 opposition to a head by proposing that the Assembly pro- 
 ceed to discuss plans for a permanent constitution. The 
 majority feared that such a measure would establish the 
 Republic beyond a doubt. They now sought to undermine 
 Thiers and replace him with a president in harmony with 
 their views. The radicals unwittingly aided this plan. 
 Thiers's intimate friend De Remusat was defeated in a 
 Paris election by Barodet, whom Gambetta championed. 
 At a new session of the Assembly in May, 1873, a reso- 
 lution was proposed for discussion which Thiers declined to
 
 90 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 accept. The discussion was voted, and the first president 
 of the Third Republic resigned at once. He was suc- 
 ceeded by Marshal MacMahon. 
 
 But the conservative coalition was still only a negative 
 one. Partisans of the old dynasty, known as Legitimists, 
 the Orleanists, and the Bonapartists, could unite against 
 the Republic, but could not agree on any other form of 
 government to take its place. Shortly after the accession 
 of MacMahon a deputation from the royalist factions had 
 waited on the Comte de Chambord, the representative of 
 the Bourbons. It seemed as though a throne would rise 
 again in France. But his conditions were impossible, 
 particularly a sentimental one, which demanded the sub- 
 stitution of the old fleur-de-lis banner for the tricolor of 
 the Napoleonic and Franco-Prussian wars. MacMahon 
 consequently was given a term of seven years. He urged 
 a constitution. In 1875 it was adopted. It provided for 
 a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies. Thiers had voted 
 for it, though he had taken little part in the debates on 
 this or other subjects. His attention was mainly given to 
 reconstructing his house which the Commune had 
 destroyed, and the preparation of a treatise on scientific 
 philosophy. But he stood again for election in 1876. 
 Belfort named him senator and Paris deputy. He chose 
 the latter mandate, which seated him in the legislative 
 body that was nearer the people. The country had 
 returned a republican majority, and MacMahon was 
 forced to form a cabinet which should represent its opin- 
 ions. This cabinet was short-lived. The Marshal's reac- 
 tionary advisers forced his hand. He dismissed the 
 ministry, and went so far as to dissolve the House. A 
 royalist coup d'etat was feared. Excitement grew apace.
 
 Thiers and Republican Principles 91 
 
 All shades of republicans, seeing that the crisis had come, 
 united to save the Republic. Thiers was among them. 
 He consented to stand for Paris. His electoral manifesto 
 had been partly written. But before it could be finished 
 a stroke of apoplexy brought his busy life to an end, on 
 September 3, 1877. He had passed his eightieth birthday. 
 
 The death of Thiers only preluded the triumph of that 
 republic in which he had come at last to believe. It still 
 endures. Its foundations seem fixed. It will transmit 
 with its permanence the name of its first president to 
 posterity. But Thiers 's services to the state in the time 
 of its great need transcend the bounds of governmental 
 polity, and appeal to all Frenchmen of whatever political 
 creed. He had the satisfaction of enjoying this reward in 
 advance. An accident had revealed it to him. Just 
 before the dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies, in 
 June, 1877, one of the members of the cabinet, in alluding 
 to the liberation of the territory from the German troops, 
 had given the credit for it to the old Assembly. The 
 effect of this statement was electrical. Leaping to his 
 feet, with all the impetuosity of his nature, Gambetta 
 stretched out his hand towards the white-haired states- 
 man, "There is the liberator of the territory!" he cried, 
 while with almost one accord the deputies rose in their 
 places to do homage to their acknowledged benefactor. 
 
 Thiers had no descendants. His will bequeathed to 
 the nation the collection of pictures and statuary which 
 had adorned his house in Paris. The Thiers Prize in his- 
 tory had previously been established by him with the prize 
 money awarded him by the French Academy, in 1 86 1, for 
 his "History of the Consulate and Empire." But his 
 chief memorial is the Thiers Foundation, maintained by
 
 92 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 the estate left by his widow, through which five scholars 
 of promise, nominated by the scientific associations of 
 France, are generously supported for a period of three 
 years. 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF THIERS 
 
 Preface to the '''History of the French Revolution" 
 
 I propose to write the history of a memorable revolution 
 which has moved men deeply, and which still divides them to-day. 
 I do not hide from myself the difficulties of the enterprise, for 
 passions which were supposed to be stifled under the influence of 
 military despotism have just been awakened again. All of a sud- 
 den men overwhelmed with years and labor have felt sentiments 
 revive in themselves which had seemed to be appeased, and have 
 communicated them to us, us their sons and heirs. But if we have 
 to sustain the same cause we have not to defend their conduct, 
 and we can distinguish the liberty of those who served it well from 
 the liberty of those who served it ill, while we possess the advan- 
 tage of having heard and observed these old men who, still full of 
 their recollections, still agitated by their impressions, reveal to us 
 the spirit and character'of the parties, and teach us how to under- 
 stand them. Perhaps the moment when the actors are about to 
 pass away is the time best suited to write history; we can listen 
 to their testimony without, however, sharing all their passions. 
 
 Be this as it may, I have endeavored to still all sentiment of 
 hatred in my soul. I have in turn fancied to myself that, born 
 under a roof of thatch, animated by a just ambition, I have wished 
 to acquire what the pride of the upper classes had unjustly refused 
 me; or that, reared in palaces, heir to ancient privileges, it was 
 painful for me to renounce a possession which I used to consider 
 a legitimate right. Henceforward I could not feel any irritation. 
 I have pitied those who waged the warfare, and I have found a 
 recompense in adoring the noble souls.
 
 Thiers and Republican Principles 93 
 
 From the Speeches on the Preliminaries of the Treaty of 
 Peace between France and Germany 
 
 [The treaty was attacked in the Assembly by Victor Hugo and 
 others because it looked to the separation of Alsace-Lorraine. 
 Thiers replied supporting it.] 
 
 If there was, in my eyes, one single chance of keeping up the 
 struggle, with prospects of success, never would I have imposed 
 on myself one of the greatest griefs of my life in signing the pre- 
 liminaries of the treaty I have brought to you. It is the absolute 
 conviction of the impossibility of continuing that struggle which 
 has constrained me to bow my head under the might of the 
 foreigner. I beg you not to ask me to give the motives for my 
 conviction. My silence is a sacrifice which I make to the safety 
 and the future of my country. Yes, it is my deep conviction that 
 in making peace to-day, in submitting to a great sorrow, we are 
 saving the country's future, we are making its future greatness 
 sure. It is this hope only, this hope alone, which was able to 
 bring me to a decision. 
 
 I give the Assembly no advice. I cannot advise it except by 
 my example. I repeat I have imposed on myself one of the most 
 cruel sorrows of my life. (He is so moved as to be obliged to 
 stop a moment amidst the applause of the Assembly.) 
 
 (He speaks a second time.) I will say but a few words; but 
 it is necessary that the question be clearly put and the responsi- 
 bilities exactly assigned. The war had two periods, one which 
 followed the famous declaration you have just condemned and 
 punished, the other which succeeded the 4th of September* I 
 judge no one, I condemn no one; I am convinced that every one 
 did his best. I was a stranger to both periods. If the war was 
 not successful, neither I nor the colleagues the Assembly gave me 
 a few days ago can be accused of its failure. 
 
 When I was obliged to negotiate I found Sedan, Metz, and 
 Paris lost, and the armies dispersed which were to go to aid the 
 capital, but could not reach it. I have conducted the negotiations 
 with all the patriotism of which I was capable. I struggled for 
 days with all my might. I was not able to do better than I 
 did. .
 
 94 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 I do not doubt France's strength, but I doubt its present 
 organization. Its military organization is broken; here is the 
 secret of its weakness. 
 
 Why was that organization broken? I will say but one word 
 on the subject, without going into details. When they had the 
 madness to declare war last July, I said from the start that France 
 was not ready. When they had infantry regiments of thirteen 
 hundred to fourteen hundred actual men, how could they in a 
 week raise them to a war-footing of three thousand men? It was 
 impossible. I said to the ministsrs: "Set me before the Minister 
 of War and I will prove to him that VQU are not ready, that you 
 can't be ready." .... 
 
 Well, let some one come now and tell me we can resist an 
 army of five hundred thousand regular troops. I will tell him we 
 cannot. You would ruin France, you would impoverish it, you 
 would squander its last resources and take from it the means of 
 reaching that future you hope for, and of which I catch a glimpse 
 with the sole satisfaction I can feel to-day. 
 
 Yes, gentlemen, you wish other destinies for the fatherland. 
 So do I. I eagerly wish for them, and what supports me at my 
 advanced age is the hope of being able to aid in their coming, not 
 for very long, but for some time still. To accomplish this pur- 
 pose you must know the truth, you must have the courage to tell 
 yourselves the truth and to believe it 
 
 To my last hour I shall not change my line of action and I will 
 do all I can to make my countrymen hear the entire truth. Six 
 months ago they would not listen to it. More recently still they 
 would not listen to it. But I am not discouraged. If you, in your 
 turn, will not listen to it, you will make me very unhappy for my 
 country. But if I dared say so, while being very unhappy about 
 my country, I would perhaps be happy for myself because you 
 didn't believe me. I would have thrown off the burden you had 
 confided to me, and I would thank you for it, though weeping over 
 my unfortunate country. 
 
 Gentlemen, hear the truth. But if you do not know where 
 truth is to be found, if you do not wish to listen to it and believe 
 it, you may boast of our nation's future, it will be a vain boast. 
 You will ruin it at the very moment you are boasting of it.
 
 Thiers and Republican Principles 95 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 A. Thiers. P. de Remusat. 
 Life of Thiers. F. Le Goff. 
 
 Articles in The Century Magazine, Vol. I, pp. 439 ff., and 
 The Chautauquan, Vol. XXV, pp. 239 ff.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 GAMBETTA AND THE THIRD REPUBLIC 
 
 [Lox MICHEL GAMBETTA, born at Cahors, April 2, 1838; 
 educated at the Lyc6e of Cahors and Law School at Paris; 
 admitted to the bar, 1860; the Baudin trial, November 14, 
 1868; elected to the Corps Legislatif from Paris and Mar- 
 seilles, 1869; Minister of the Interior in the Government of 
 National Defense, 1870; elected to the Assembly, 1871; leader 
 of the majority in the Chamber of 1875; President of the 
 Chamber, 1879; Prime Minister, 1881; died at Ville d'Avray, 
 December 31, 1882.] 
 
 The present government of France has lasted full 
 thirty-three years, a generation of humanity. When it 
 was established few believed in its permanency, and it 
 must be confessed that this unbelief was reasonable. 
 Since the French Revolution of 1/89 the nation had seen 
 half a score of administrations of greater or less endur- 
 ance, but none so robust as to reach their majority. The 
 Second Empire, the longest of them all, died in its nine- 
 teenth year, the monarchy of Louis Philippe in its eight- 
 eenth, the Restoration and the First Empire at an earlier 
 age even. As for the republics, they had shown still less 
 vitality, and the more recent one of 1848 had proved 
 weaker even than the older republic of 1793. So many 
 political overturnings in such rapid succession could well 
 be taken as indications of the future. They showed 
 unusual instability, greater even than the restlessness of 
 which the pulpit orator Bossuet had accused England in 
 
 96
 
 LEON MICHEL GAMBETTA
 
 Gambetta and the Third Republic 97 
 
 the seventeenth century. Besides it was well known that 
 republicans, pure and simple, were comparatively rare in 
 France. In 1852, when Napoleon III put the Empire 
 to the test of a popular approval, but half a million votes, 
 representing all sorts of opposition, were polled against 
 it. In 1870 the half million had increased to a million 
 and a half, but this number was still a hopeless minority. 
 How many republicans it included cannot be known. 
 There is good reason to believe that it counted more 
 advocates of a constitutional monarchy than sincere par- 
 tisans of a republican form of government. Elections 
 after 1870 showed this fact plainly, though there was an 
 apparent drift, as we have noticed in the case of Thiers, 
 from Orleanism to republicanism as the only possible 
 solution of the political problem. 
 
 The elections of 1863 had returned a handful of repub- 
 licans, together with Thiers, to the Corps Legislatif . The 
 election of 1869 had multiplied their number. Among 
 the newcomers was Gambetta, borne into political life on 
 the crest of a legal plea of a political nature. If Thiers 
 was to found the republic on the discord of its opponents, 
 this younger, genuine democrat, Gambetta, was to 
 strengthen its foundations by winning over the opposi- 
 tion. He was a Southerner like Thiers. His father was 
 a Genoese grocer, who had settled at Cahors and married 
 there. He named his first child, a son, born April 2, 
 1838, Leon Michel. He gave this son the education 
 within his reach, and after the Cahors lycee (high school) 
 made the sacrifice of sending him to Paris to study law. 
 Young Gambetta reached the capital in 1857. In spite 
 of his liking for argument and debate, his delight in 
 companionship and fondness for popularity, in spite also
 
 98 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 of the loss of one eye from an accident when he was but 
 eight years old, he seems to have made a fairly diligent 
 student, and early in 1860 was admitted to the bar. 
 
 It was these first years in Paris, years of work and 
 good fellowship, that formed Gambetta's character and 
 showed him the road he was to follow. Like all students 
 of his day he lived in the students' district, the Latin 
 Quarter. The glory it had inherited from the men of 
 1830, sculptors, poets, painters, dramatists, novelists, 
 physicians, still lingered in its tortuous streets and 
 weather-stained garrets. The flowing locks of the 
 romanticists and the red waistcoats of the night of 
 Hugo's "Hernani" still distinguished its more devoted 
 denizens. The evening life of the region was in the 
 cafes. There art, philosophy, religion, literature, politics, 
 furnished abundant material for nightly debate. In the 
 cafes the eloquence and wit of Gambetta found ample 
 room for display before an admiring circle. Alphonse 
 Daudet, the novelist, has chronicled for us the impres- 
 sions made upon him at that time by the future ruler of 
 France: "The Gambetta of those days was sowing his 
 wild oats, and was deafening with his thundering elo- 
 quence the cafes of the Latin Quarter. But make no 
 error, the cafes of the Quarter at that epoch were not 
 merely the saloon where you drink and smoke. In the 
 midst of Paris, muzzled by the Second Empire, without 
 public life, without newspapers, those reunions of a studi- 
 ous and noble youth, true schools of opposition, or rather 
 of legal resistance, remained the only places where a free 
 voice could still be heard. Each of them had its own 
 orator, a table which at certain moments became almost a 
 speaker's desk, and each orator in the Quarter had his
 
 Gambetta and the Third Republic 99 
 
 admirers and partisans Doubtless some of our 
 
 young speakers never progressed, grew old without advan- 
 cing, spoke constantly, and never did anything 
 
 But Gambetta was not of that number. If he fenced under 
 the gas at the cafe, it was only after he had filled his day 
 with real labor. As the factory gets rid of its steam at 
 night, he came there to let his surplus vigor and ideas 
 overflow in words. This did not at all prevent him from 
 being a serious student, from having his triumphs at 
 Mole's lecture-hall, from being promoted in his courses 
 
 and winning his diploma Not stout as yet, but 
 
 squarely built, stoop-shouldered, with familiar gestures, 
 already liking to lean on a friend's arm while walking 
 and talking, he spoke a great deal, at every opportunity, 
 with that hard, strong voice of the South which cuts off 
 phrases like a pendulum and stamps words like medallions. 
 But he also listened, questioned, read, assimilated every- 
 thing, and was laying in that enormous supply of facts 
 and ideas so necessary to any one who claims to direct a 
 time and a country as complicated as ours. Gambetta is 
 one of the rare politicians who like art and suspect that 
 
 literature may occupy some place in a people's life 
 
 These strolls through the Art Exhibitions and the Louvre 
 Museum .... had given Gambetta a reputation for 
 laziness with certain verdant statesmen, stiff and starched 
 since childhood. These same men, now grown up, 
 always full of themselves and always hermetically sealed, 
 take him to be a frivolous man and a politician lacking in 
 seriousness, because he likes the company of a witty actor. 
 At the very most this would prove that then, as to-day, 
 Gambetta knew men, and knew the great secret of making 
 them useful, which is by winning their affection. A char-
 
 ioo Ten Frenchmen 
 
 acteristic trait will finish the portrait of the old Gambetta. 
 That speaking-trumpet of a voice, that terrible talker, 
 that great Gasconizer was not a Gascon. Is it race influ- 
 ence? On more than one side this mad son of Cahors 
 
 came near to Italian prudence Speaking often, 
 
 always speaking, he never let himself be carried away by 
 the whirlwind of his speech. Very enthusiastic, he knew 
 in advance the precise point where his enthusiasm should 
 stop." 
 
 Daudet's sketch indicates the traits which made Gam- 
 betta a power in France. He was friendly to all men. 
 He was careless in dress and companions, thereby disarm- 
 ing the jealousy of his more severe and better bred rivals. 
 His voice overwhelmed all others, and the flow of his 
 words swept opposition from its feet. With all this, while 
 seemingly on fire with enthusiasm, heating the emotion of 
 his hearers to a glow, he himself was a cool, observant 
 master of his own actions and the actions of those he had 
 inspired. Assiduous in the collection of information, he 
 gradually amassed a knowledge of things and men which 
 fully atoned for his lack of breeding and the narrowness 
 of his home life. 
 
 Admission to the bar had been gained in 1860, but his 
 life at Paris had weakened his constitution. A few 
 months' rest became imperative. He returned to Cahors 
 to recruit. Restored to health, the question of locating 
 himself for the practice of his profession arose. The 
 father felt he had done all he could. The son longed to 
 try Paris. The financial difficulty was solved by the 
 devotion of an aunt, who moved to Paris in 1861, and on 
 her small income started housekeeping, in which she fig- 
 ured as both servant and mistress. In this way her
 
 Gambetta and the Third Republic 101 
 
 nephew was given a home and support, until the slow 
 remunerations from his infrequent briefs should bring him 
 a livelihood. Entering law offices as a student or clerk 
 he got now and then a case of a political nature, and 
 gradually became known. His native eloquence stood 
 him in good stead. Lawyers admired it. It brought 
 him more clients. At last it brought him success. 
 
 The coup d'etat of December 2, 1851, had met with 
 slight resistance. Little blood had been shed. Yet 
 among the victims was Baudin, a member of the As- 
 sembly, shot down on the only apology for a barricade 
 that had been built. Baudin, however, had been forgot- 
 ten, until a book on the coup d'etat, published in 1868, 
 revived his memory. Then the republicans seized upon 
 his fate as a means of annoying the government. Speeches 
 were made at his grave. Certain newspapers began to 
 collect funds for a statue. The authorities took the 
 matter up and prosecuted some of the journalists con- 
 cerned. Among the lawyers appearing in their defense 
 was Gambetta, and his speech was the speech of the trial, 
 and the beginning of his political career. In it he de- 
 nounced the coup d'etat. He contrasted the adherents of 
 Napoleon III with his opponents. He dilated on the 
 dishonor and loss of prestige which the foreign policy of 
 the Empire had brought on France. He satirized the 
 pretenses of the government in the light of its accom- 
 plishments. And all this in a great voice that drowned 
 all answers, and a torrent of invective which the imperial 
 lawyers could not stem. Gambetta had seized on the 
 "psychological moment." He had expressed what the 
 nation was feeling. His words penetrated the utmost 
 corners of France, and carried with them the celebrity of
 
 IO2 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 his name. This was in November, 1868. The following 
 May two districts elected him to the Corps Legislatif. 
 He declined the Paris mandate and sat for Marseilles. 
 
 During the months that followed, so long as the 
 so-called "Liberal Empire" endured, under Ollivier's 
 premiership, Gambetta continued in parliament the atti- 
 tude of opposition he had assumed before he entered 
 public life. As is seen by the circumstances of his birth, 
 he represented a lower social class than had either Thiers 
 or Guizot, and consequently having less to lose than 
 either of these statesmen, and more to gain, his tendency 
 was more radical than theirs. He was a democrat from 
 the start, an advocate of a republican form of govern- 
 ment, not a constitutional monarchy. His political plat- 
 form included the separation of church and state and the 
 election of all public officers by the people. Universal 
 suffrage was his idol, and in words at least he never for- 
 sook it. Napoleon III did not hold his mandate from 
 universal suffrage, he said, therefore the Empire should 
 give way to an administration which the nation should 
 sanction. All plebiscites were thus a mockery. With 
 Thiers and the straight-out republicans he opposed the 
 declaration of war against Prussia. Once declared he 
 voted for the measures in its support. When Sedan fell 
 and the Corps Legislatif, by its procrastination, allowed 
 itself to be overrun by the mob, Gambetta, with other 
 deputies from Paris, retired to the City Hall, and there 
 from one of the windows, by Gambetta's voice, the Repub- 
 lic was proclaimed. This was on September 4, 1870. 
 
 In the hastily formed organization which now under- 
 took the defense of the country, Gambetta held the post 
 of Minister of the Interior. When the Germans sur-
 
 Gambetta and the Third Republic 103 
 
 rounded Paris, and it was necessary for the central com- 
 mittee there to keep in touch with their adherents in the 
 provinces, Gambetta was chosen as ambassador. With 
 his secretary he escaped in a balloon from the capital, 
 beyond the lines of the enemy, who almost perforated his 
 carriage, and from Tours first, afterwards from Bordeaux, 
 directed what remained of national resistance. Filled 
 with the traditions of 1792, when the citizen soldiery of 
 France met and vanquished the trained veterans of mon- 
 archical Europe, he would not be discouraged by defeat 
 or discord. With his burning appeals to the honor of the 
 nation he roused the dormant spirit of all factions. All 
 united to furnish men and means to resist invasion. But 
 supplies were lacking, officers were lacking, even maps 
 and charts were not at hand. Hastily raised levies under 
 such conditions could be little else than a half-armed 
 rabble when brought in contact with Von Moltke's per- 
 fectly equipped armies, led by most capable generals. 
 
 To add to his trials Metz surrendered. Its beleaguer- 
 ing forces were thrown at once on his patriotic bands. 
 Some doubtful battles were fought, a victory or two 
 were won. But such scattered successes could not 
 affect the general results. The odds were too overwhelm- 
 ing. Still Gambetta labored and planned, encouraged and 
 ordered. Even the fall of Paris found him undaunted, 
 but the entreaties of his colleagues, who now could reach 
 him, broke down his obstinacy. Elected to the Assembly 
 which met at Bordeaux in February, 1871, he sat for an 
 Alsatian district, and when the preliminaries of peace were 
 agreed to by the House, he left the session together with 
 the other representatives of the ceded provinces. He 
 left France also, and during the whole outbreak of the
 
 IO4 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 Commune lived in retirement at St. Sebastian, just across 
 the Spanish frontier. If it was rest he sought he had 
 well earned it. The amount of work he had performed 
 since the previous October was well nigh incredible. For 
 four months he had practically been the dictator of 
 France. 
 
 The Commune had been crushed, the treaty of peace 
 signed. Elections to fill vacancies in the Assembly had 
 been fixed for July. Gambetta returned to contest a 
 seat. His program, as before, was a government elected 
 by universal suffrage, with the education of the lower 
 classes, particularly the peasant, the center of political 
 conservatism, to an appreciation of their duty towards 
 society. Such a government would naturally be a repub- 
 lic. He was elected by several constituencies, and chose 
 to sit for Paris. His course as a deputy was in harmony 
 with his platform. He lost no occasion to preach republi- 
 canism to the royalist majority, and he opposed the 
 declaration made by the Assembly, when Thiers was 
 elected president, that it had the right to vote a constitu- 
 tion. It should have been dissolved when oeace was once 
 assured. 
 
 During the winter and spring of 1872 he kept on with 
 his political proselyting, traveling about the country and 
 addressing the electors on each and all occasions. In 
 these speeches he developed his ideas of the mission of 
 the Republic. It should uphold the good results of the 
 French Revolution. It should look for support to the 
 lower social classes. It should subordinate the church to 
 the state and restrict the range of the evils arising from 
 clericalism. When these things were done a new and 
 happier life would prevail in France. Between times he
 
 Gambetta and the Third Republic 105 
 
 employed .his surplus energies in editing La Republique 
 Franfaise, a daily he had founded in November, 1871. 
 Such persistency in pleading for a larger democracy 
 naturally displeased the majority in the Assembly. 
 Debates grew fierce. His endeavors also reacted on 
 Thiers, and caused the breach between him and the House 
 to widen. Finally, as we have seen, in April, 1873, the 
 election of a radical in Paris, whose cause Gambetta 
 undertook, over a member of the Thiers cabinet, brought 
 on a crisis. The majority in the Assembly insisted on a 
 vote committing the government to greater conservatism. 
 Thiers replied with the proposition to found a republic. 
 He was outvoted and resigned. His resignation brought 
 Gambetta to the front. 
 
 MacMahon was president, the Due de Broglie prime 
 minister. The policy of the new administration was 
 openly anti-democratic. It soon showed its animus by 
 suppressing a radical newspaper. Gambetta's speeches 
 themselves became subject to discipline. It was at this 
 time that the throne was offered on the part of the major- 
 ity to the Comte de Chambord, and declined by him unless 
 it carried with it the white flag of the ancien regime. The 
 failure of this negotiation resulted in a vote fixing Mac- 
 Mahon's tenure of office at seven years. Meanwhile 
 the republicans were steadily gaining in strength. The 
 extremists among them were quiet. The divisions among 
 the monarchists became accentuated after the demands of 
 the Comte de Chambord were seen to be inadmissible. 
 The royalists were disheartened and the Bonapartists 
 encouraged. The latter began to display unusual activity. 
 It was an opportunity for the republicans. Under Gam- 
 betta and Thiers, now united in a common purpose, they
 
 io6 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 began to detach adherents from the cause of a constitu- 
 tional monarchy, the Orleanists in particular, by showing 
 the hopelessness of their case and the imminence of a Bona- 
 partist restoration. Gambetta, radical and petty bourgeois 
 as he was at heart, also changed his tone, and took occa- 
 sion to compliment the upper bourgeoisie, to which he had 
 been steadfastly hostile. Thus led on by one motive and 
 another, by fear of despotism and by dread of lawlessness, 
 the moderate men of the Assembly joined together in a 
 series of compromises which resulted in the adoption of 
 a constitution for France. The final vote was taken on 
 February 25, 1875. Its most important provisions estab- 
 lished a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies, gave to them 
 conjointly the election of president, and fixed the latter's 
 tenure of office at seven years. Gambetta was one of the 
 most important factors in bringing about this result. To 
 do this he had to sacrifice much of his personal opinion, 
 and retract many of his former statements. The choice 
 of a president by an electoral college rather than by uni- 
 versal suffrage, his political cure-all, must have been a 
 particularly hard concession for him to make. But he 
 made it, and France for a while was saved the dangers of 
 a monarchical reaction. 
 
 But only for a time. The ensuing elections resulted 
 favorably to the republicans, though the Senate, chosen 
 for the most part by the councils of the various "depart- 
 ments" into which France is divided, showed a reaction- 
 ary majority. In the Chamber the republicans prevailed, 
 but soon split into factions. Besides, MacMahon, who 
 owed his election to the monarchists, and was not depend- 
 ent on popular favor, thought that his duty lay in the 
 direction of conservatism, and gave the country cabinets
 
 Gambetta and the Third Republic 107 
 
 which were not in accord with the legislative majority. 
 Still Gambetta was for peace. He counseled moderation 
 everywhere. Only the clericals and their pernicious 
 influence incited him to invectives. Finally this idea of 
 clericalism became too strong to be suppressed. The 
 republican majority adopted it, pressed it to a vote, with 
 the result that MacMahon, who stood for quite the oppo- 
 site, lectured his last prime minister, who had not yet 
 been defeated in the Chamber, for his subservience to 
 Gambetta, and practically forced his resignation. This 
 proceeding was not constitutional. Furthermore, it was 
 a challenge to that part of the government which alone 
 represented universal suffrage. 
 
 Gambelta, now the leader of the majority, lost no time. 
 That very day he gathered the republicans together, pro- 
 posed and carried a resolution not to support any ministry 
 which should not govern according to republican prin- 
 ciples. At the regular meeting of the Chamber on the 
 day following the majority ratified the resolutions of the 
 republican meeting. MacMahon answered with the ap- 
 pointment of a royalist cabinet, and adjourned the Cham- 
 ber for a month. The republicans, under Gambetta's 
 guidance, took the country into their confidence with a 
 manifesto. All factions were now thoroughly united. 
 The Chamber met again for a few days in June, long 
 enough for Gambetta's dramatic reference to the "liber- 
 ator" Thiers, and was then dissolved. General elections 
 followed. Again the republicans were united, the mon- 
 archists divided. Gambetta caught the popular ear with 
 the cry of "irreconcilable opposition" to the Empire, and 
 with the statement that after the poll was once known the 
 Marshal could do nothing but submit or resign ("se
 
 io8 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 soumettre ou se dtmettre"). His newspaper was prose- 
 cuted by the authorities for contumacy, and Gambetta 
 was fined. Yet in the end he won a victory. The elec- 
 tions did not return the desired number of republicans, the 
 three hundred and sixty-three who had opposed the 
 Marshal in June, but the party still had a majority, and 
 used it in the new Chamber to unseat its opponents. It 
 also refused to recognize a new ministry appointed by the 
 marshal-president. Furthermore, following Gambetta's 
 lead, it declined to vote the budget. MacMahon yielded 
 at last. The republicans controlled the next cabinet of 
 December, 1877. 
 
 Though the conservative Marshal refused him a minis- 
 terial office, Gambetta was now the acknowledged head of 
 the governing majority. Unfortunately for his reputation, 
 the merits of statesmanship, which had shone out so 
 brightly in times of adversity, were somewhat beclouded 
 or even eclipsed during this period of prosperity. Far 
 from conciliating the opposition and winning over its less 
 extreme adherents, he antagonized it in word and deed. 
 During the senatorial elections of the autumn of 1878 he 
 repeatedly assailed "the enemy" of clericalism and its 
 connection with the schools, and asked for the suppression 
 of nonauthorized religious communities practically the 
 measures that the French administration is pushing to-day. 
 He also demanded the discharge of all magistrates and 
 office-holders who were not republicans. The newly 
 elected senators now gave him the control of the upper 
 house, and MacMahon, weary of the fruitless contest, 
 concluded to resign. Jules Grevy was elected in his 
 stead. Gambetta, who might have been president per- 
 haps, was chosen to be Grevy 's successor in presiding over
 
 Gambetta and the Third Republic 109 
 
 the Chamber. This office he discharged with fairness and 
 vigor. 
 
 His assumption of the presidency of the Chamber was 
 the beginning of the decline of Gambetta's influence in . 
 public affairs. His policy, which aimed at compromises, 
 moderation, made use of accidental circumstances, such 
 as divisions among the reactionary elements, and for this 
 living from hand to mouth had been, perhaps contemptu- 
 ously, dubbed "opportunism," was not based on any 
 enduring principle of government, and of course satisfied 
 none of the out-and-out partisans, who are always in a 
 majority. Consequently, from the day that MacMahon 
 resigned and the republicans took entire control of the 
 administration, he, as the leader of the republicans, the 
 man who had done most to bring about the existing con- 
 ditions, was attacked on every side, by the extreme royal- 
 ists, by the imperialists, and also by the radicals to whom 
 he by nature and environment really belonged. He was 
 accused of all kinds of misdeeds, of aiming to make him- 
 self dictator, of secret intrigues with state officials, of a 
 desire to provoke foreign wars, of enriching himself at the 
 public expense. As a rule these attacks were passed over 
 in silence. Occasionally he would come down from his 
 desk and reply to them on the floor of the House. 
 
 There was one reform on which his heart was set and 
 which was destined to prove his undoing. Seeing how 
 parliamentary government was made impossible by the 
 number of parties of various shades, from legitimists to 
 radicals, into which the deputies were divided, he deter- 
 mined to try to change the mode of election from the dis- 
 trict to the "department." For instance, he would have 
 the deputies from Paris and suburbs elected together on
 
 no Ten Frenchmen 
 
 a general ticket ("scrutin de liste" the plan was called), 
 representing the whole department instead of singly by 
 subdivisions of the departments, or congressional districts 
 ("scrutin d'arrondissement"). In this way he claimed that 
 men of larger caliber would be nominated, of broader 
 views, less dominated by local interests. He also hoped 
 that such a measure would diminish the number of fac- 
 tions, and force the people into two great political parties. 
 The Chamber, which might be supposed to oppose such 
 a law, as tending to diminish the importance of the indi- 
 vidual deputy, finally passed the bill, in May, 1881. But 
 the Senate rejected it. 
 
 General elections ensued in August. Gambetta stood 
 for two Paris districts, and was elected in one. His plat- 
 form was one of opportunism and reform combined. In 
 his addresses he particularly inveighed against violence, 
 which by its prominence during the French Revolution, 
 and again in the Commune, still kept many conservatives 
 away from the republican ranks. When the new Cham- 
 ber met, the cabinet was engaged in the expedition to 
 Tunis. Its policy was opposed and it fell. Gambetta, 
 who had been considering the question of the premiership, 
 consented to form a new ministry. His efforts met with 
 little response from the leading republicans, and he was 
 forced to fall back upon his personal following. The 
 impression thus made was unfavorable. Various meas- 
 ures of administration contributed to the irritation of the 
 Chamber, particularly the creation of a ministry of agri- 
 culture and one of fine arts, and the appointment of con- 
 servatives to prominent positions. Finally the program 
 of the new cabinet, which included reforms in the civil 
 service, as well as in the other departments of government,
 
 Gambetta and the Third Republic in 
 
 and a project for election by a "scrutin de liste," brought 
 the opposition to a head. After but sixty-six days of ser- 
 vice the Gambetta ministry surrendered its charge. 
 
 Its head returned at once to his newspaper work, while 
 continuing to discharge his duties as a deputy, and speak- 
 ing occasionally in the Chamber. His last speech, in 
 July, 1882, was on the Egyptian question. In the 
 autumn of that year he retired to Ville d'Avray, near 
 Versailles, to the house of Les Jardies, which Balzac had 
 once occupied, and which he had recently bought. There, 
 on November 27, he was wounded by a pistol shot, whether 
 accidentally or by design has never been satisfactorily 
 proven. It was reported and commonly believed that his 
 mistress had shot him in a quarrel. His friends claimed 
 it was only an accidental wound. Whatever may have 
 been the occasion, the consequences were not directly 
 serious. But this injury preluded a severe malady. No 
 sooner was the hand healed than a disturbance became 
 manifest in the abdomen. The symptoms described by 
 the attendant physicians resemble those that are caused 
 by appendicitis. However, no operation was attempted. 
 The disease went its way, and Gambetta 's body, spent in 
 many years of storm and labor, and so lately shocked by 
 the injury to his hand and wrist, offered but a poor resist- 
 ance to its encroachments. For weeks his strength 
 steadily decreased. He alone seemed unable to appre- 
 ciate his decline, but talked and read and occupied his 
 thoughts with the affairs of the political world. The 
 crisis drew near. On the night of December 31, 1882, 
 he passed away. 
 
 With the death of the great republican the voice of 
 calumny was stilled. The antagonisms he had aroused
 
 ill Ten Frenchmen 
 
 subsided. His mistakes, his weaknesses, were willingly 
 forgotten. He ceased to be the leader of a party in the 
 public mind. He became the representative of the whole 
 nation. For it was he alone who had appealed to national 
 honor in the day of direst calamity. He alone, rallying 
 the sons of France, had led them undaunted to a glori- 
 ous defeat. This is the memory which France cherishes 
 of Gambetta. Some of the measures he advocated, notably 
 those against clericalism, have since become laws. But 
 his name is not connected with them. What the French 
 people think of Gambetta, the idea which he stands for in 
 their minds, is expressed in unmistakable terms wrought 
 out of stone and bronze. After a state funeral had been 
 accorded to his remains, and official eulogies had been duly 
 pronounced, a popular subscription took it upon itself to 
 perpetuate his memory. In the outer court of the Louvre, 
 fronting a broad highway which connects the two great 
 divisions of the city of Paris, stands a granite pedestal 
 upholding a shaft of granite. Allegorical figures of 
 bronze surround and crown the stone. But in relief 
 against the shaft, clothed in his customary civilian dress, 
 Gambetta rises erect among a group of the French people 
 hovering under the folds of the French flag. And above 
 his head is inscribed the words of i. : = Tours proclamation 
 in that sad autumn of 1870: "Frenchmen, raise your 
 souls and your resolutions to a level with the perils burst- 
 ing on the fatherland. It still depends on you to show to 
 the universe what a great people who will not perish is ' '
 
 Gambetta and the Third Republic 113 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM THE WORKS OF GAMBETTA 
 
 Extracts from the Speech at the Baudin Trial 
 
 [Gambetta is defending the journalist Delescluze for 'having 
 solicited funds for a statue to Baudin. He begins by alluding to 
 the speech of the prosecuting attorney, and continues :] 
 
 I agree with him on what is really the question here. Like 
 him, and following him, I come to discuss that terrible question, 
 the highest we can submit to men whose profession is to respect 
 justice and to those whose calling it is to defend justice. Here 
 is the question: Can there exist for a nation, in the bosom of a 
 civilized society, a moment when state policy, when state violence, 
 can with impunity, under pretext of public safety, violate the law, 
 overturn the constitution, and treat as criminals those who defend 
 the right at the peril of their lives? .... 
 
 I do not knew whether I am deluding myself, but it seems to 
 me that the last place where such assertions should be made and 
 such crimes should be glorified is the court of a judge, for here 
 law alone should speak and be heard. Law alone should be the 
 interest and the passion of the magistrate, since without it there 
 is nothing lasting and respected, since without it all social cer- 
 tainty disappears, and we inevitably end in anarchy, with all the 
 disorders and meannesses it involves. I ask myself whether it is 
 in this especial sanctuary of justice that it will be allowed to con- 
 tradict me? 
 
 Do you recall what December 2 is? Do you remember what 
 happened? The annals have just been taken up and told again by 
 M. Tenot, in their heart-rending episodes. You have read this 
 story, limited to the facts, and all the more avenging because of 
 its impartiality. You know what blood, and griefs, and tears 
 there are in that date. But what must be said here, what must be 
 touched with the finger, is the machination, the consequences, the 
 evil caused to France, the trouble made in consciences by this 
 criminal attempt, it is this which constitutes the real responsibil- 
 ity. It is this alone which can make you appreciate how far you 
 owe us aid and protection, when we come to honor the memory 
 of those who fell defending the law and the constitution, which 
 was being massacred.
 
 H4 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 Yes, on December Second, were grouped around a pretender 
 men whom France had not known up to that time, who had neither 
 talent, nor honor, nor rank, nor position, people such as, at every 
 epoch,, are accomplices of violence, people of whom you can 
 repeat what Sallust said of the rabble that surrounded Cataline, 
 what Caesar himself said in tracing the portraits of his accom- 
 plices, eternal offscourings of regular society. 
 
 Acre alieno obruti et vitiis onusti 
 
 "A pack of men ruined by debt and crime," as Corneille has 
 translated. It is by this kind of men that institutions and laws 
 have been slaughtered for ages, and the conscience of mankind is 
 powerless to react, in spite of the sublime procession of a Socrates, 
 a Thraseas, a Cicero, a Cato, of thinkers and martyrs who protest 
 in the name of immolated religion, of wounded morals, of right 
 crushed under the heel of a soldier 
 
 On which side was genius, morals, virtue? All had gone 
 down under the foul conspiracy ! . . . . 
 
 Those who seized the country put its freedom in fetters, made 
 use of the new means given man by science to enter into com- 
 munication with one another. Centralization and terror did the 
 work. Paris was deceived by means of the provinces, the prov- 
 inces by means of Paris ! Steam and the telegraph became the 
 instruments of power. They spread through all the departments 
 that Paris had yielded ! Yielded ! It was assassinated. Yielded ! 
 It was struck down with bullet and grape-shot. I who am speaking 
 to you, I had friends do you understand? who were killed as they 
 came out of the Law School. They were unarmed. It is true 
 that they were very rash and very guilty to have come to study 
 law in a country where law is respected in such a way 
 
 At the end of seventeen years of reign you perceive it would 
 be a good thing to forbid the discussion of these facts by means 
 of a posthumous ratification given out from a police court. No, 
 it shall not be so. No, you will not give, you cannot give, this 
 satisfaction, for there exists no court of appeals for this case. It 
 was judged yesterday, it will be judged to-morrow, the day after 
 to-morrow, forever, without truce or armistice, until justice has 
 received its supreme satisfaction. This trial of December Second,
 
 Gambetta and the Third Republic 115 
 
 whatever you may do, will remain living and ineffaceable at Paris, 
 at London, at Berlin, at New York, in the whole woild, and every- 
 where the universal conscience of man will pronounce the same 
 verdict. 
 
 There is already something besides which judges our adver- 
 saries. Listen! For seventeen years you have been the absolute 
 masters of France and governed it at your discretion the state- 
 ment is your own. We do not ask what use you have made of her 
 treasure, blood, honor, and glory. We will not speak of her 
 integrity compromised, nor of what has become of the fruits of 
 her industry, without mentioning the fact that no one is ignorant 
 of the financial catastrophes which at this very moment are explod- 
 ing like mines beneath our footsteps. But what best judges you, 
 because it is the witness of your own remorse, is that you have 
 never dared say: "We will celebrate December Second as a 
 national anniversary, we. will place it among the festivals of 
 France !" And yet all the governments which have succeeded one 
 another in this country have honored the day that saw their birth. 
 They have celebrated July Fourteenth, August Tenth. The days 
 of July, 1830, have also been celebrated, as well as February 
 Twenty-fourth. There are but two anniversaries, the Eighteenth 
 Brumaire and December Second, which have never been put 
 among the national festivals, because you know that the universal 
 conscience of man would reject them if you wished to place them 
 there. 
 
 Well, this anniversary which you have refused, we claim it, we 
 take it for our own. We will always celebrate it, always. It will 
 be, each year, the anniversary of our dead, until the day when the 
 country, becoming master once again, will inflict on you the great 
 national expiation in the name of liberty, equality, fraternity. 
 
 From a Speech of January 26, 1882, Defending the 
 Scrutin de Liste 
 
 [Gambetta affirms the necessity of electing the deputies by 
 departments instead of by districts. The vote which followed 
 forced his resignation as premier.] 
 
 I hear very well the answer: No. Well, you will see, gentle- 
 men, that the near future will prove the wisdom of my words, and
 
 n6 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 for this reason, because I have the deep inner conviction, when I 
 resist you, when I struggle against you, that it is my sad and 
 imperious duty to declare to you that it is a governmental neces- 
 sity 
 
 I can only meet your apprehensions with my loyalty, the sin- 
 cerity of my words, the plans we have made ready, my past, in 
 short, and I appeal to your consciences. 
 
 Yes, I think that the republican legion with which I began my 
 career, with which I have passed through the struggles and tests 
 of years, will no more fail us on the day of success than it failed us 
 on the day of battle. In any case it will be without bitterness, 
 especially without the shadow of a wounded personal feeling, that 
 I shall bow before your verdict. For whatever may have been 
 said, there is something which I set above all ambitions, even law- 
 ful ambitions, and that is the confidence of the republicans, with- 
 out which I could not accomplish I indeed have some right to say 
 it my task in this country, the restoration of the fatherland. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The Evolution oj France under the Third Republic. Pierre de 
 Coubertin. 
 
 Life of Leon Gambetta. (The Statesmen Series.) Frank T. 
 Marzials. 
 
 Articles in LittelVs Living Age, Vol. CLVI, pp. 667 ff . Century, 
 Vol. Ill, pp. 708 ff. Critic, Vol. XXXVII, pp. 72 ff.
 
 VICTOR MARIE HUGO
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 VICTOR HUGO 
 
 [VICTOR MARIE HUGO, born at Besai^on, February 26, 1802; 
 educated at Madrid and Paris; prize poems, 1819, journalist, 
 1819; "Odes," 1822; "Hernani," 1830; "Notre-Dame de 
 Paris," 1831; elected to the French Academy, 1841; peer of 
 France, 1845; deputy to the Assembly, 1848; in exile, 1851; 
 in residence at Guernsey, 1855; return to France, 1870; 
 deputy, 1871; senator, 1876; died at Paris, May 22, 1885. 
 Works: poems, dramas, novels, essays.] 
 
 The nineteenth century in France witnessed one of the 
 greatest manifestations of her literary genius. It acknowl- 
 edged, in fact, but two rivals in the annals of the nation. 
 Once, when after the conquest of Sicily and England by 
 the Normans, and the surging of the knights and peasants 
 of the West to the invasion of Asia and the rescue of the 
 Holy Sepulcher, the young society, born of these move- 
 ments, broke out into Troubadour song. Again, when 
 after the last bulwark of the Byzantine Empire had fallen, 
 and Greek learning had finally been driven from its 
 ancient seats, after Columbus had discovered a new world, 
 and the rude soldiery of Charles VIII had discovered 
 Italy, the revival of learning and ancient art and culture 
 formed the Pleiades, inspired Montaigne, and shaped the 
 talent of Corneille, Moliere, Racine, and Bossuet. Deep 
 social movements gave birth to the mediaeval and the 
 Greek renaissances. As profound a stirring of man's 
 emotions, the humanitarian crusade of a Voltaire and a 
 
 117
 
 1 1 8 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 Rousseau, the democratic crusade of the armies of the 
 Republic and Empire, brought forth the romantic and 
 realistic literature of the nineteenth century. 
 
 The writers of the nineteenth century were eminent in 
 all branches of composition. They admitted the suprem- 
 acy of the seventeenth in drama, in philosophical, oratori- 
 cal, or epistolary prose. But they claimed the preemi- 
 nence, even over the twelfth and the sixteenth, in lyric 
 poetry, and over the seventeenth and the eighteenth in 
 criticism and historical prose ; and they stood without rivals 
 in the field of fiction. Among their representatives some 
 few authors united many of their excellencies. None 
 combined them in a higher degree or showed greater origi- 
 nality and vigor than Victor Hugo, poet, dramatist, orator, 
 novelist. 
 
 Hugo is deservedly called the great writer of the nine- 
 teenth century. His life was almost contemporaneous 
 with its decades. He was born on February 26, 1802, 
 at Besancon, in the west of France. The locality was of 
 no consequence, for the family's stay there was but 
 temporary, occasioned merely by the military duties of 
 the older Hugo, an officer in the French army. For the 
 same reasons the family soon moved south, wandered 
 over the islands of Corsica and Elba, then to Paris (1805- 
 1807), again to Italy, and again to Paris (1808). Finally, 
 in 1811, it moved to Spain, where Victor attended school 
 at Madrid, and received his first impressions of Spanish 
 scenery and architecture. In 1812 it was once more the 
 turn of Paris, and this time permanently. The father 
 was away on campaigns. The young Victor was given 
 over to the care of his mother and an ex-priest. He 
 passed his leisure hours in the garden of the old convent,
 
 Victor Hugo 119 
 
 where they made their home, or in reading the literature 
 of the century just gone. As he himself sings in his 
 "Lights and Shadows": "I had in my blond infancy 
 alas! too fleeting three masters, a garden, an old priest, 
 and my mother." 
 
 Under the Restoration this irregular education was 
 systematized by attendance at a private school which had 
 affiliations with a Parisian lycee (high school). Victor 
 showed proficiency in both language and science. He 
 won honorable mention in physics at a general municipal 
 examination of the pupils in his grade, composed French 
 tragedies, and wrote poems, both original and translated. 
 In the latter instance he showed particular fondness for 
 Virgil, and Virgil's influence was to prove a lasting one. 
 Some poetry, provoked by prize competitions under the 
 auspices of the French Academy, received favorable men- 
 tion (in 1817 and in 1819), and called the attention of the 
 literary public to his precocious talent. In 1819 he com- 
 peted for prizes which had been offered by the Academy 
 of Floral Games at Toulouse, and won two. This suc- 
 cess was partially repeated in 1820. In December, 1819, 
 together with his two older brothers, he had begun a 
 fortnightly review, Le Conservateur Litteraire, to which he 
 contributed poetry, criticisms among them an article on 
 Scott's "Ivanhoe" and fiction. A small pension from 
 the king rewarded his efforts. 
 
 The tide of literature was now strongly setting towards 
 romanticism. Already in school Hugo had imbibed the 
 mysticism of the melancholy Ossianic poetry, which 
 reflected the shadowy mists of the Scottish Highlands, 
 filled with calm brooding over a vain and transitory life. 
 He had also made himself acquainted with Chateaubriand,
 
 12O Ten Frenchmen 
 
 the idol of his generation, a noble, who during the Revo- 
 lution, weary of a fruitless existence in his own land, had 
 fled from its scenes of violence and had carried his bitter 
 hopelessness across the Atlantic, had visited Niagara, 
 skirted the old French settlements of western Pennsyl- 
 vania, looked on the sources of the Ohio, and crossed its 
 watershed to the ocean again. What he had seen of fron- 
 tier life and the vastness of American forests kindled his 
 imagination. He rose from the real to the conceivable, 
 which he argued from the real, and seizing his pen, wrote 
 the epic of the New World in his romances of "Atala" 
 and "Rene"." His was a blase hero, seeking refuge for 
 fanciful ills among the wild tribes of a virgin continent. 
 
 But Chateaubriand drew also from other springs of 
 inspiration than nature's. The worship of nature he had 
 found in Rousseau. His egotistic melancholy, which 
 buried itself in nature, had come from within him. But 
 his admiration for the Middle Ages, a large element in 
 the broader manifestation of romanticism, and bearing 
 with it a revival of the Christian faith, after the skepti- 
 cism of the philosophers of the school of Locke and 
 Hobbes had worn itself threadbare, he had inherited 
 from his English and German predecessors. This he 
 handed down to his compatriots in his "Genius of Chris- 
 tianity." He was Hugo's great teacher, after Virgil. In 
 both of these masters, the romancer and the poet, thought 
 and style blended to a charm. 
 
 By 1820, however, romanticism was no longer content 
 with its conquest of prose. It was seeking an outlet for 
 its feelings in another rhythm than the harmonious, pic- 
 turesque period. Lyric poetry had for generations lain 
 dormant in France. The new voice of passion and long-
 
 Victor Hugo 121 
 
 ing was now to arouse it, recall it to its younger days. 
 Lamartine wrote his "Lake" and the "Meditations." To 
 the French people of that time (1820) it seemed, as has 
 often been quoted, that the world had changed during the 
 night. Hugo could not remain untouched by this event, 
 for his temperament was such that he vibrated with every 
 motion of the nation. Though saturated with Ossian and 
 Chateaubriand, his political ideas as a strict adherent of 
 the Bourbons had hitherto kept him a regular, a classicist, 
 in literature. He was also a devout churchman, and the 
 'new religion was suspected of heresy. 
 
 Certain domestic trials, however, shook his steadfast- 
 ness to the legitimist and the classical cause. His mother, 
 practically the only parent he had known, died in 1821. 
 His projected marriage with a friend of long standing, 
 Adele Foucher, was opposed by her family, because of 
 financial reasons. From these sorrows Hugo sought 
 refuge in poetry, and in 1822 published his first volume 
 of "Odes." It attracted little attention, for it lacked the 
 personal note, and Lamartine, whose verse expressed the 
 emotions of the individual soul, could not be dethroned by 
 objective harmonies, however sonorous their cadence. 
 Still the "Odes" advanced Hugo's fortunes, and his mar- 
 riage shortly followed. But at the wedding banquet his 
 brother Eugene went mad, a serious grief to Victor. In 
 the following year he consented to give out something of 
 his inner self to the public. The strange romance of 
 "Han d'Islande, " suggested by the blood-and-thunder 
 school of English fiction, in which the hero cherishes a 
 tender affection for a lovable woman, revealed some of the 
 author's trials in his own courtship. And his inner nature 
 was to be again stirred within him. A child was born to
 
 122 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 him. Its life was short, but Hugo's sorrow was lasting. 
 It entered into his very being, and was reflected in the 
 verses of his after years. 
 
 The romanticists by this time had formed a well-defined 
 circle, and Hugo became one of the group. They met 
 in the offices of a new journal, La Muse Franfaise, and also 
 at the rooms of one of the romantic pioneers, Charles 
 Nodier, the author of fairy stories, romances, and 
 "Trilby." They incited Hugo to the composition of 
 new "Odes," which appeared (1824) with a preface that 
 proclaims poetical liberty. These were followed, in 
 1826, by another fantastic romance on West Indian slav- 
 ery and revolt, "Bug-Jargal," and the same year by a new 
 volume of "Odes and Ballads," where Hugo's household 
 poetry begins under the influence of his little daughter 
 Leopoldine. 
 
 In 1827 he attempted dramatic poetry in a drama 
 which was not intended for acting. As the tragedy of 
 the seventeenth century, which was modeled after the 
 drama of Greece and Rome, chose for a subject the inter- 
 esting episode in the life of an individual, and studied that 
 one event alone, so Hugo, now an out-and-out romanti- 
 cist, sets over against this dramatic ideal the broader 
 theme of the whole delineation of a man. This man was 
 none other than Oliver Cromwell, whose various charac- 
 teristics are brought out as he meets with enemies, friends, 
 astrologers, or relatives. Accompanying "Cromwell" 
 was a long preface, in which Hugo advocated at length 
 the theatrical doctrines of the new sect. The great 
 exemplar, he asserts, is Shakespeare. Like him the 
 French playwrights should aim to present broad pictures 
 of life, rather than restricted crises, should mingle the
 
 Victor Hugo 123 
 
 serious with the humorous, should no longer be bound by 
 the time limit of twenty-four hours for the supposed 
 action, nor by one single place for its exposition. But 
 the scenery, plot, and characters should be true to 
 nature, for "everything which is in nature is in art" a 
 dogma carried to the bitter extreme by later French nov- 
 elists. 
 
 It is interesting to trace the development of a genius. 
 By the beginning of 1828, when Hugo was as yet hardly 
 twenty-six years old, he had passed his formative period 
 'and already was the great poet, dramatist, and novelist 
 that we know. In the next ten years poem succeeded 
 poem, play followed play, with marvelous rapidity. In a 
 new edition of the "Odes and Ballads," in 1828, the poet 
 breaks the traditional mold of classical rhythm. Under 
 the influence of the great critic Sainte-Beuve, he adopts 
 the measures of the Pleiades school of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, fails to always observe a fixed caesura, or pause in 
 the middle of the line, and deliberately carries the sense 
 over from one line to the next, thus producing overflow 
 verse, which had also been tabooed by the classicists. In 
 politics he had undergone as significant a change. From 
 the Bourbon of the beginning, and the fervent royalist, by 
 successive steps he had grown into a Bonapartist, and in 
 1827 had welcomed the reviving glory of the Empire in 
 his famous "Ode to the Vendome Column." 
 
 Both of these conversions, the literary and the political, 
 were in keeping with the march of events. For Hugo 
 ever showed himself most sensitive to the currents of 
 popular opinion. The Napoleonic legend was gaining 
 headway, as the splendor of the imperial sway dimmed 
 the memory of the suffering on which it was grounded.
 
 124 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 Be"ranger's poetry had made the Little Corporal an idol of 
 the fireside. He had sung, in Young's translation, 
 
 "Ay, many a day the straw-thatched cot 
 Shall echo with his glory!" 
 
 So Hugo, reminding his audience that his father had been 
 a general under the Corsican, carried Napoleon's praises 
 into a higher social circle. And together with these eulo- 
 gies he couples the praise of a peaceful home, the medita- 
 tions of a philosophic dreamer, the description of current 
 events, or even the images of the mysterious East, with 
 all its color and fire of passion. 
 
 He launched also a series of romantic dramas, begin- 
 ning with "Hernani," in 1830. All the theories of 
 "Cromwell" he here strives to convert into dramatic facts, 
 and purposely applies to the versification of the play the 
 heresies he had learned from Ronsard and his associates 
 of the Pleiades. The classicists, who still stood for the 
 dramatic ideals and verse of Corneille and Racine, were 
 warned in advance that the gauge of battle was to be 
 thrown down to them in "Hernani." They gladly took 
 it up, but as they entered the theater on the fateful night 
 of its first representation they found the strategic points 
 occupied by their foes, a Spartan band of authors, paint- 
 ers, musicians, disciples of the new creed, gathered from 
 the Latin Quarter, and led by the poet Theophile Gautier, 
 whose costume, which included a scarlet vest and the 
 flowing locks that are now typical of the artistic world, 
 was in itself a shock and offense to the periwigged purists. 
 The combat was unequal. The lungs of the recruits 
 from the garrets and studios were invincible. Besides, 
 they had a winning cause to champion, for French poetry
 
 Victor Hugo 125 
 
 contains few passages that can rival "Hernani" in lyric 
 beauty. The classicists tvere routed, horse and foot, 
 and though on succeeding evenings they returned to the 
 charge, the advantage on the whole remained with their 
 opponents. 
 
 Hugo followed up the success of "Hernani" with 
 several other plays, but with the exception of "Ruy 
 Bias" (1838), and also perhaps "Marion Delorme" 
 (1831), they verged too much on the blood-and-thunder 
 of his early romances, and have disappeared from sight. 
 Finally the production of "The Burgraves, " in 1843, met 
 with such a chilling reception, because of its impossible 
 events and stage effects, that it confirmed in itself the 
 restoration of the classical drama which was already under 
 way. 
 
 This interval of time (1828-1843) showed Hugo in 
 other capacities than as poet or dramatist. He had con- 
 tinued his role as critic, already essayed while a journalist. 
 He had begun his career as a reformer, by pamphlets 
 directed against capital punishment, as the gruesome and 
 harrowing "Last Days of a Condemned Man" (1829). 
 He had become the recognized head of the new "Cenacle" 
 of authors, artists, and contributors to the romantic organ, 
 Le Globe, which numbered such celebrities as Alfred de 
 Musset, De Vigny, Sainte-Beuve, the elder Dumas, and 
 the painter Delacroix. He had published a narrative of 
 travel in Germany under the title of "The Rhine" (1842). 
 He had received the honor of an election to the French 
 Academy (1841), after having solicited it three times to 
 no purpose. But most important of all he had published, 
 in 1831, his great novel of "Notre-Dame de Paris," com- 
 posed under pressure in the short interval of six months,
 
 126 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 begun with the first drop of a quart bottle of ink, he says, 
 and finished with the last drop. 
 
 In this romance, which mingles nineteenth-century 
 ideas and fifteenth-century manners, we get a glimpse of 
 the Hugo of "Les Mise"rables." It is the people of Paris 
 under Louis XI which he endeavors to portray, their 
 amusements, occupations, crimes, spirit. And through- 
 out this narrative of the life of the crowded capital, with 
 its courts, its squares, its thieves' quarter, the Cour des 
 Miracles, its places of public torture and executions, runs 
 the praise of its great center, the metropolitan cathedral, 
 with its towers and buttresses, its volutes, sculptures, 
 altars, and high arches, a steadfast, immovable rock amid 
 the swirl of human passions that eddy about it, and flood 
 at times its portals. Some of the book we have seen 
 before. Characters and episodes have been drawn from 
 the older stories of "Han d'Islande" and "Bug-Jargal," 
 molded again and perfected. The long chapters of eulogy 
 on Gothic architecture may have been suggested by 
 Hugo's early admiration for Chateaubriand. But what 
 had not been previously revealed, even in a glimpse, was 
 the fairy-like figure of Esmeralda, a picture of youth, 
 gayety, and innocence, in bright contrast to the ugliness 
 of a Quasimodo and the gloom of cloister and hovel. In 
 "Notre-Dame de Paris" we also catch the fondness of 
 Hugo for symbolism. The cathedral is the material sign 
 of the immaterial thought. With its slow accretions of 
 chapels and naves, of decorations, grotesque or beautiful, 
 it embodies the life of generations of the people, who have 
 thus wrought their transitory being into its immutable 
 forms. And in its larger meaning, the people of Paris 
 taken as an epitome of humanity, the novel tells the story
 
 Victor Hugo 127 
 
 of man's struggles against his destiny, against the unseen, 
 the supernatural. 
 
 Esmeralda, the young girl, is no doubt the ideal image 
 of Hugo's devotion to his own children, particularly to his 
 daughter Leopoldine. And up to the time of the publica- 
 tion of "Notre-Dame de Paris" nothing which was within 
 his power had lessened the joy of his family life. We have 
 noticed how he had wooed and won the love of his youth, 
 triumphing at last over all opposition. He had been 
 faithful to this love, and the union had been thrice blessed 
 since the death of the first born. Here surely was a 
 happy household, destined to greater happiness as the 
 years rolled by, a constant source of inspiration for the 
 talent of its father and protector. And as we know it did 
 inspire him. From his poems on infancy and childhood 
 a whole volume has been made, appropriately called "The 
 Mother's Book." Why, then, was this picture torn, its 
 brightness tarnished? Was it because of merited and 
 continuous praise bestowed on one who after all was only 
 a mortal, and who, unable to withstand its glorification 
 began to look on himself as in all ways perfect and inca- 
 pable of doing evil? Or was it a simple infatuation? It is 
 difficult to decide. All we know is that one of the minor 
 parts of "Lucretia Borgia," a tragedy by Hugo, played in 
 1833, was filled by an actress of mediocre fame, Juliette 
 Drouet. But her beauty was alluring, if not her ability, 
 for all critics unite in praising it. It touched Hugo. He 
 renewed the romantic days of his early flame. He carried 
 her away from her unworthy surroundings, domiciled her 
 close to his own dwelling, and made her his lasting confidante 
 and companion. Many of the finest passages of Hugo's 
 verse were called out by this extraordinary association.
 
 128 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 It was at the end of this period of unusual literary 
 activity, when all things had conspired to secure the hap- 
 piness of his genius and exalt his fame, that Hugo met 
 with the greatest sorrow if we may judge from its per- 
 manence of his whole career. In 1843 his daughter 
 Le"opoldine had become the bride of Charles Vacquerie, 
 a family friend of long standing. A few months later the 
 young couple went for a sail on the Seine. The boat 
 upset. The husband, unable to save the wife, preferred 
 to die with her. They were found locked in each other's 
 arms. To Hugo this event was a catastrophe. In a 
 volume of verse, "The Contemplations," published in 
 1856-1857, he separates the poems written before 1843 
 from those written after that date. Many of the anni- 
 versaries of the accident are marked by his compositions, 
 mile-stones on the road of sorrow. Here is a portion of 
 one, written a year later, in 1844, as given in Dean Car- 
 rington's translation: 
 
 When we our life together led 
 
 On the hillside, now long ago, 
 Where waved the trees, and waters sped, 
 
 Where the house hugged the wood below 
 
 She was ten years thrice ten was I. 
 
 I was the universe to her. 
 How sweet the grass, how clear the sky, 
 
 Beneath the thick green woods of fir. 
 
 My lot she glad and happy made, 
 My labors light, and blue my sky; 
 
 When she "My father!" to me said, 
 My full heart would "My God!" reply. 
 
 'Mid thousand dreams, by fancy wrought, 
 I heard her prattle, fond and bright;
 
 Victor Hugo 129 
 
 My forehead, shadowed o'er with thought, 
 Her merry glance o'erflowed with light. 
 
 And when her little hand I took, 
 Like a princess she proudly trod, 
 
 And always would for flowers look, 
 And for the poor upon the road. 
 
 She was like angels of the skies 
 How charmingly she greeted you ! 
 
 Heaven's grace had placed within her eyes 
 The look that could not be untrue. 
 
 I was so young when she was born 
 
 To shine upon my destiny; 
 She was the child of my glad morn, 
 
 The star of dawn that lit my sky. 
 
 And then how glad she was how gay, 
 Sweet angel, with unspotted mind ! 
 
 But all these things are past away 
 Gone like a shadow, or the wind ! 
 
 The death of Leopoldine put a stop for a time to the 
 outward literary work of Hugo. He continued to write 
 poetry, and was already planning "Les Miserables, " part 
 of which he committed to manuscript. But to the public 
 he was now an Academician and a politician. His taste 
 for the latter calling had been increased by his appoint- 
 ment to the peerage in 1845, under Louis Philippe. He 
 sat in the upper house and took part in debates, proving 
 himself to be an orator of considerable power. Political 
 changes were pending in France. Hugo, with his mobile 
 temperament, keenly alive to the veerings of the popular 
 compass, felt them. Already an ardent admirer of Napo- 
 leon, his humanitarianism, shown so strikingly in "Notre-
 
 130 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 Dame de Paris," inclined him to democratic views of state 
 management. He was a liberal now, perhaps in theory a 
 republican even. But he did not openly advocate a repub- 
 lic. When the Revolution of 1848 came, and Louis 
 Philippe fell, Hugo stood for a Paris constituency on a 
 conservative republican platform. He failed once, but 
 was elected a second time. In the following autumn he 
 favored Louis Napoleon as presidential candidate. But 
 in 1849, when he was reelected to the Assembly, he sud- 
 denly appeared as a radical his critics say because he saw 
 greater possibilities of preferment in a party which could 
 claim few members of eminence. From now on, instead 
 of sharing in the Napoleonic revival, to which he had so 
 greatly contributed, he opposed with word and pen the 
 pretensions of Napoleon's nephew. No longer a conser- 
 vative, he seized every opportunity to extol the French 
 Revolution, and based his hopes for a future France on 
 universal suffrage, with the attachment of what is now 
 known as the referendum. Such extreme views only 
 paved the way for the Second Empire. The coup d'etat 
 of December 2, 1851, came; Baudin was killed; Hugo 
 escaped arrest, and for two days sought to incite resist- 
 ance. But few responded to his appeals, and he soon fled 
 in disguise to Brussels. 
 
 A new career was opened for Hugo by the coup d'etat. 
 It added to his endowments as an author the qualifications 
 of a political agitator. From the time he reached Belgium 
 until he came back to Paris, after Sedan, he did not cease 
 to assail, in prose and verse, the Second Empire, its ruler, 
 its leading men, its measures. He might have accepted 
 the amnesty of 1859 had his hostility allowed him, but he 
 preferred to remain a living protest against the crime of
 
 Victor Hugo 131 
 
 December Second. At first his exile was vexatious. 
 Napoleon had been elected ruler of the French, and as 
 such was acknowledged the head of the state. Conse- 
 quently, when Hugo put through the press, in 1852, a 
 most virulent attack on him in the prose work "Napo- 
 leon the Little," the Belgian government refused him 
 further shelter. He moved on to the Channel Islands 
 and took up his residence in Jersey, where his family 
 joined him. Here he produced that marvelous collection 
 of invective poetry, "The Chastisements" (1853), where 
 in a series of pen pictures we find that Napoleon's expia- 
 tion for his crimes was not to be the Russian campaign, 
 nor Waterloo, nor yet St. Helena, but his nephew Louis. 
 He also composed the "History of a Crime," namely the 
 coup d'etat, but this narrative was not published until 1877. 
 Soon further trials came to the exiles. France and Eng- 
 land, having formed an alliance, were engaged in the 
 Crimean War. This was gall and bitterness to the band 
 of French patriots in Jersey, and often did they inveigh 
 against it in their newspaper, L'Homme. Finally, when 
 Queen Victoria visited Paris and met the Emperor, a letter 
 to the Queen, most insulting in its tenor, was printe in 
 this sheet. The inhabitants of the little island were 
 aroused. They called on the governor to act. He ex- 
 pelled the editors, and the Hugos sailed away to Guern- 
 sey. This removal took place in the autumn of 1855. 
 
 From 1855 to 1870 Hauteville House, on the island of 
 Guernsey, was one of the most notable buildings of Europe. 
 As the Second Empire waned and the protests of the French 
 radicals won a hearing Hugo gradually advanced in public 
 esteem until he became quite as important a figure as any 
 monarch of them all. And then his fame as an author
 
 132 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 was constantly increasing. "The Contemplations," a 
 collection of meditative, lyric, and philosophical verse, 
 published in two volumes in 1856 and 1857, "The Legend 
 of the Ages" (1859), where the history of mankind in its 
 typical episodes is sung in almost epic strains, and the 
 lighter themes of "The Songs of the Streets and the 
 Woods" (1865) were accompanied by "Les Miserables" 
 (1862), "The Toilers of the Sea" (1866), "The Man 
 Who Laughs" (1869) for romances, and "William 
 Shakespeare" (1864), a sounding eulogy of the dramatist 
 and also of Victor Hugo; for the egotism of the latter 
 had enough on which to feed. And pamphlets multiplied 
 without number, appeals to this and to that, articles against 
 slavery, remonstrances against the execution of John 
 Brown, satires on the mal-administration of the Second 
 Empire. No question debated in either hemisphere was 
 foreign to Hugo's mind. Such a combination of political 
 and literary renown has hardly been equaled. Pilgrim- 
 ages to Hauteville House became the fashion. Every- 
 thing was admired, the manuscripts of unpublished 
 masterpieces, the sketches which whiled away leisure 
 hours for Hugo possessed considerable artistic talent 
 and adulation rose higher and higher, as one disciple 
 crowded the other at the feet of "the master." 
 
 But a word or two regarding the novels which have 
 entered into the world's literature. "Les Miserables," 
 begun, as we have seen, before 1848, had been shaped 
 and enlarged by that event and its political conse- 
 quences, until it became quite truly the romance of the 
 outcast and down-trodden. Somewhat of the symbolism 
 of "Notre-Dame de Paris" is visible in its pages. There 
 is the struggle of man, of the individual, this time not
 
 Victor Hugo 133 
 
 against fate, the intangible, supernatural, but against his 
 fellowmen, against society. There is the great material 
 abode for the victims of social laws, the galleys, ever 
 yawning to receive Jean Valjean. They dominate the 
 scene, not so toweringly as the cathedral had done in 
 "Notre-Dame," but quite as vividly. And then the agent 
 of the law, typified in Javert, the police automaton, 
 which cannot comprehend the fact that a lawbreaker may 
 cease to be a criminal, and when the fact becomes too 
 potent to be ignored, despairs of its own rightfulness and 
 commits suicide. The young girl, too, reappears, trans- 
 formed from the airy Esmeralda into the gentle Cosette, 
 and the young man, whose early history is the history of 
 Hugo himself. But the teaching of "Les Miserables" is 
 not the doctrine of despair. In that respect it differs from 
 "Notre-Dame." Jean Valjean, though he tries in vain 
 to redeem his faults in the eyes of man, is justified by the 
 infinite, and receives even in this life the reward of an 
 upright conscience, free from all reproach. And the same 
 hope is found in "The Toilers of the Sea," a story 
 suggested by Guernsey scenery. The fisherman, wild 
 and true, conquers in vain the ocean and its monsters. 
 His light-headed sweetheart sails away, while he buries 
 himself in the element he had overcome. But the symbol- 
 ism is apparent. Man fights with nature, the waves, and 
 the animate but unconscious devil-fish. And man wins 
 the fight. Hugo is becoming optimistic. 
 
 The ruin of the Empire brought Hugo back to Paris 
 amid the acclamations of the populace, which crowded 
 the streets of the great town. He was shut up in the city 
 by the Germans, occupied himself in encouraging resist- 
 ance, appealed to the enemy to cease their warfare, wrote
 
 134 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 poems on scenes and events suggested to him by the 
 times. After the siege he was elected to the Assembly 
 from the "department" of the Seine, and spoke in 
 favor of continuing the war rather than abandon Alsace- 
 Lorraine. He opposed clericalism, and resigned his seat, 
 when attacked for a eulogy of Garibaldi. During the 
 Commune he stayed at Brussels, where he had gone on a 
 business errand. His sympathies were to a certain degree 
 with the Communists, and therefore for a second time the 
 Belgian government requested him to make his residence 
 elsewhere. He afterwards failed of reelection to the 
 Assembly, and when in 1876 he was named senator it was 
 too late for him to exert much influence in political life. 
 But as a private citizen he never ceased to champion the 
 cause of the oppressed, whether they were oppressed 
 wrongfully or rightly. 
 
 Apart, then, from these early months of 1871, Hugo's 
 attention after his return from exile is almost entirely 
 given up to literature. The poetry he had written, and 
 in which Napoleon III, the Prussians, and the priests 
 came in for denunciation, was published in 1872, under 
 the title of "The Terrible Year." Before this, during 
 his stay at Guernsey, the wars of the Reds and the Blues, 
 in Vendee during the French Revolution, had suggested 
 an historical novel, which saw the light in 1874, as 
 "Ninety-Three." Its manner is the manner of "The 
 Toilers of the Sea. ' ' Inanimate nature furnishes once more 
 the symbolism. A feudal castle is the central picture, 
 the fight of a man with a ship's cannon, which had broken 
 loose from its moorings, recalls the struggle of the fisher- 
 man with the devil-fish. Here again man triumphs, mind 
 conquers matter. Children occupy a prominent place in
 
 Victor Hugo 135 
 
 the narrative, and it is a mother's love which solves the 
 plot, by inciting the leader of the Blues to rescue her little 
 ones at the sacrifice of his own freedom, and the future 
 of his cause. But the mass of new publication consisted 
 of poetry. "The Legend of the Ages" received consider- 
 able additions, while philosophical, satirical, and lyric 
 verse filled several good-sized volumes. 
 
 The last fifteen years of Hugo's life, 1870 to 1885, 
 were passed in the midst of such popularity as rarely falls 
 to the lot of a mortal. Adulation almost reached the 
 heights of apotheosis. With the exception of some politi- 
 cal opponents, the extreme clericals, whom he had offended 
 by his attacks, and the more aristocratic set of the nobil- 
 ity, all France looked upon him as the embodiment of the 
 nation's genius. Pilgrimages to his house at Paris multi- 
 plied, literary men and those wishing to be such, natives 
 of Besancon and exiles from Alsace, tourists and notables 
 from foreign lands, schemers in finance or politics, the 
 needy and the hare-brained, all crowded into his drawing- 
 room in gratification of curiosity or in hope that a word 
 from the great man might be used to their temporal or 
 professional advantage. There were daily receptions, 
 almost daily addresses from individuals or delegations, an 
 existence that truly seemed founded on declamation. 
 And yet Hugo reserved time for work eight volumes of 
 poetry between 1877 and 1883, a drama, "Torquemada," 
 which was not played, and the "History of a Crime." 
 For his habits had become fixed. He gave his forenoons 
 to intellectual pursuits, and the regularity of his hours 
 produced in the long run unusual results. He was fond 
 of recreation also. Frequent excursions to the suburbs of 
 Paris, to which his favorite conveyance was the top of an
 
 136 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 omnibus or a third-class seat in a railway coach, formed 
 his chief delight. His white head and beard, his pink 
 cheeks and sparkling dark eyes, became one of the few 
 sights of the capital that were known to all its inhabitants. 
 He even took part in balloon ascensions, whereby he 
 showed his Gallic temperament. 
 
 But the ideal side of these later years is most strongly 
 seen in his relations with his grandchildren. Since the 
 death of Leopoldine, in 1843, he had been called upon to 
 mourn his wife, who had passed away at Brussels in 1868, 
 his son Charles, stricken down with apoplexy in 1871, 
 while on his way to his father's rooms, his other son, 
 Francois, who succumbed to a long illness in 1873, an d 
 his youngest child, Adele, who had inherited the family 
 insanity. There were left to him his friends, the ever- 
 faithful Madame Drouet, and Charles's two children, 
 Georges and Jeanne. His delight in childhood, always 
 keen, grew even greater in the presence of these comforts 
 of his declining years.' They became his chief concern. 
 Their joys, sorrows, health, maladies, games, studies were 
 his constant occupation, and furnished his muse with a 
 never- failing source of literary material. In 1877 a num- 
 ber of the poems addressed to them were collected in a 
 volume called "The Art of Being a Grandfather." The 
 art is a simple one indulgence. Do whatever the grand- 
 child asks you to do. This grandfather did so, and 
 boasted of it in many a line of delightful rhythm. And 
 as Hugo's household poetry is perhaps not so well known 
 abroad as his other work we cite the "Grandfather's 
 Song," a rhyme for children's rounds, also from Dean 
 Carrington's translation:
 
 Victor Hugo 137 
 
 Dance, little girls, 
 
 All in a ring; 
 To see you so pretty, 
 
 The forest will sing. 
 
 Dance, little queens, 
 
 All in a ring; 
 Lovers to lasses 
 
 Sweet kisses will bring. 
 
 Dance, little madcaps, 
 
 All in a ring; 
 The crabbed old mistress 
 
 Will grumble and fling. 
 
 Dance, little beauties, 
 
 All in a ring: 
 The birds will applaud you 
 
 With clapping of wing. 
 
 Dance, little fairies, 
 
 All in a ring; 
 With corn-flower garlands 
 
 And fair as the spring. 
 
 Dance, little women, 
 
 All in a ring; 
 Each beau to his lady 
 
 Says some pretty thing. 
 
 But all things have an end here below, and Hugo was 
 but a mortal in spite of his fourscore hale and hearty 
 years. His health was spared to the last. In May, 
 1885, after one of his field excursions he seemed ailing. 
 Pneumonia set in, and nine days later, May 22, he died. 
 His obsequies were notable. The nation took them in 
 charge. Under the great sweep of the Arc de Triomphe, 
 which was draped in black, the body lay in state at the
 
 138 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 head of the Champs Elyse"es, and visible from the heart of 
 Paris. And when it was removed it was only to be borne 
 down the wide avenue, over the Seine to its resting-place 
 in the church of the Pantheon, which the government now 
 set apart for the burial of the illustrious dead of the land. 
 Thousands followed behind the little black hearse the 
 hearse of the poor people, which Hugo had himself 
 desired and tens of thousands lined the way to witness 
 perhaps the greatest pageant of the century. 
 
 The funeral rites of Hugo were a wonderful tribute to 
 the power of the mind, paid by a people who have ever 
 shown a peculiar admiration for military power. It was 
 an homage done to art, to literature, to the intellect, and 
 in doing it France recognized what constitutes her true 
 and lasting glory. For Hugo's work did not die with 
 him. We might say even that his literary activity did 
 not cease. In spite of the great amount of publication 
 in prose and verse, carried on with slight interruptions for 
 nearly seventy years, his productiveness had not been 
 exhausted. From the material which his executors found 
 in his papers, half a dozen more collections of poetry 
 have been made, two volumes of dramas, and as many of 
 travel and narrative. And through the same self-sacri- 
 ficing filial devotion the house which Hugo occupied in 
 the Place des Vosges (old Place Royale) from 1832 to the 
 Revolution of 1848, has recently been set apart for a 
 museum of the author and made the property of the 
 nation.
 
 Victor Hugo 139 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM THE WORKS OF VICTOR HUGO 
 
 Beginning of Monologue from Act IV^ Scene 2, of 
 "Jfernani." (Bohn s Translation^) 
 
 [Don Carlos (the future Charles V) is before the tomb of 
 Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle, and is considering the Holy 
 Roman Empire.] 
 
 DON CARLOS (Alone) 
 
 Forgive me, Charlemagne ! Oh, this lonely vault 
 
 Should echo only unto solemn words ! 
 
 Thou must be angry at the babble vain 
 
 Of our ambition at thy monument. 
 
 Here Charlemagne rests ! How can the somber tomb 
 
 Without a rifting spasm hold such dust? 
 
 And art thou truly here, colossal power, 
 
 Creator of a world? And canst thou now 
 
 Crouch down from all thy majesty and might? 
 
 Ah, 'tis a spectacle to stir the soul, 
 
 What Europe was and what by thee 'twas made ! 
 
 Mighty construction with two men supreme, 
 
 Elected chiefs to whom born kings submit. 
 
 States, duchies, kingdoms, marquisates, and fiefs, 
 
 By right hereditary most are ruled. 
 
 But nations find a friend sometimes in Pope 
 
 Or Cassar; and one chance another chance 
 
 Corrects; thus even balance is maintained 
 
 And order opens out. The cloth-of-gold 
 
 Electors, and the scarlet cardinals, 
 
 The double sacred senate, unto which 
 
 Earth bends, are but paraded outward show. 
 
 God's fiat rules it all. One day He wills 
 
 A thought, a want, should burst upon the world, 
 
 Then grow and spread, and mix with everything, 
 
 Possess some man, win hearts, and delve a groove; 
 
 Though kings may trample on it, and may seek 
 
 To gag; only that they some morn may see
 
 140 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 At diet, conclave, this the scorned idea, 
 
 That they had spurned, all suddenly expand 
 
 And soar above their heads, bearing the globe 
 
 In hand, or on the brow tiara. Pope 
 
 And Emperor, they on earth are all in all. 
 
 A mystery supreme dwells in them both, 
 
 And Heaven's might, which they still represent, 
 
 Feasts them with kings and nations, holding them 
 
 Beneath its thunder-cloud the while they sit 
 
 At table with the world served out for food. 
 
 Alone they regulate all things on earth, 
 
 Just as the mower manages his field. 
 
 All rule and power are theirs. 
 
 From "The Djinns " ("The Oriental Poems") 
 
 THE DJINNS 
 
 [The genii of the Arabs approach, pass, and depart.] Trans- 
 lated by J. L. O'Sullivan. 
 
 Town, tower, 
 Shore, deep, 
 Where lower 
 Cliffs steep; 
 Waves gray, 
 Where play 
 Winds gay, 
 All sleep. 
 
 Hark ! a sound, 
 Far and slight, 
 Breathes around 
 On the night; 
 High and higher, 
 Nigh and nigher, 
 Like a fire, 
 Roaring bright.
 
 Victor Hugo 141 
 
 Now on 'tis sweeping 
 With rattling beat, 
 Like dwarf imp leaping 
 In gallop fleet : 
 He flies, he prances, 
 In frolic fancies, 
 On wave-crest dances 
 With pattering feet. 
 
 Hark, the rising swell, 
 With each new burst ! 
 Like the tolling bell 
 Of a convent curst; 
 Like the billowy roar 
 On a storm-lashed shore 
 Now hushed, but once more 
 Maddening to its worst. 
 
 O God ! the deadly sound 
 Of the Djinns' fearful cry! 
 Quick ! neath the spiral round 
 Of the deep staircase fly ! 
 See, see our lamplight fade ! 
 And of the balustrade 
 Mounts, mounts the circling shade 
 Up to the ceiling high ! 
 
 'Tis the Djinns' wild streaming swarm 
 Whistling in their tempest flight; 
 Snap the tall yews 'neath the storm, 
 Like a pine flame crackling bright. 
 Swift though heavy, lo ! their crowd 
 Through the heavens rushing loud 
 Like a livid thunder-cloud 
 With its bolt of fiery might 1 
 
 They have passed ! and their wild legion 
 Cease to thunder at my door; 
 Fleeting through night's rayless region, 
 Hither they return no more.
 
 142 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 Clanking chains and sounds of woe 
 Fill the forests as they go, 
 And the tall oaks cower low, 
 Bent their flaming light before. 
 
 On ! on ! the storm of wings 
 
 Bears far the fiery fear, 
 
 Till scarce the breeze now brings 
 
 Dim murmurings to the ear; 
 
 Like locusts humming hail; 
 
 Or thrash of tiny flail, 
 
 Plied by the fitful gale 
 
 On some old roof-tree sere. 
 
 Fainter now are borne 
 Feeble mutterings still; 
 As when Arab horn 
 Swells its magic peal, 
 Shoreward o'er the deep 
 Fairy voices sweep, 
 And the infant's sleep 
 Golden visions fill. 
 
 Each deadly Djinn, 
 Dark child of fright, 
 Of death and sin, 
 Speeds in wild flight 
 Hark, the dull moan, 
 Like the deep tone 
 Of Ocean's groan 
 Afar, by night ! 
 
 More and more 
 Fades it slow, 
 As on shore 
 Ripples flow 
 As the plaint 
 Far and faint 
 Of a saint 
 Murmured low.
 
 Victor Hugo 143 
 
 Hark! hist! 
 Around, 
 Hist! 
 
 The bounds 
 Of space 
 All trace 
 Efface 
 Of sound. 
 
 From " The Shooting Stars." "Sotigs of the Streets and 
 the Woods" 
 
 (Dean Carrington's translation.) 
 
 Lovers twain, beneath the night, 
 Dream, a young and happy pair; 
 
 Through the sky-space infinite, 
 Suns are seeded everywhere, 
 
 Athwart th' heav'n's loud-sounding dome, 
 White from the night's extremest way, 
 
 Showers of sparkling dawn-dust roam, 
 Stars that pass and fade away. 
 
 Heaps of falling stars are shed 
 
 Through the vast dark zenith high; 
 
 Kindled ash, which censers spread, 
 Incense of infinity. 
 
 And beneath, which dews bedew, 
 
 Showing pinks and violets shy, 
 Yellow primrose, pansy blue, 
 
 Lilies, glory of July. 
 
 By the cool mist, nearly drowned, 
 
 Lies the meadow far away, 
 Girded by the forest round, 
 
 Shivering, so that one would say
 
 144 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 That the earth 'neath veil of showers, 
 Which the tear-wet forest sheds, 
 
 Wide its apron, decked with flowers, 
 To receive the stars outspread. 
 
 The Wave and the Shadow ("Les Miserables," Book //, 
 Chapter 8} 
 
 [An allegory which contains the thought of "Les Miserables" 
 the abandonment of the criminal by society.] 
 
 Man overboard ! 
 
 What matters! The ship does not stop. The wind blows. 
 That somber ship has a route it must pursue. It passes on. 
 
 The man disappears, then reappears ; he sinks and rises again 
 to the surface ; he calls ; he stretches out his arms ; he is not heard ; 
 the ship, trembling under the hurricane, is wholly taken up with 
 its own handling; the sailors and passengers no longer even see 
 the man who has sunk ; his wretched head is but a speck in the 
 enormous mass of water. 
 
 He utters despairing cries in the depths. What a ghost that 
 fleeing sail is! He looks at it, he looks at it madly. It goes 
 away, it grows dim, it grows smaller. A moment ago he was 
 there, with the crew; he was coming and going on the deck with 
 the others; he was enjoying his share of breath and sunshine; he 
 was a living being. Now, what indeed has happened? He 
 slipped, he fell, it is over. 
 
 He is in the monstrous water. Under his feet there is nothing 
 left but flight and crumbling. The billows, rent and torn by the 
 wind, surround him hideously; the rollings of the abyss carry him 
 away; all the tatters of the waters stir about his head; a populace 
 of waves spit upon him ; murky openings half devour him ; each 
 time that he sinks down he catches glimpses of precipices full of 
 night; fearful unknown vegetations seize him, tie his feet, pull 
 him to themselves; he feels he is becoming abyss; he is a part 
 of the foam; the waves throw him to one another; he drinks 
 bitterness; the cowardly ocean is bent on drowning him; enormity 
 sports with his death struggle. All that water seems hate itself.
 
 Victor Hugo 145 
 
 Nevertheless he fights on. 
 
 He tries to defend himself; he tries to keep up; he makes an 
 effort; he swims. He, that poor force at once exhausted, he 
 fights against the inexhaustible. 
 
 Where, then, is the ship? Yonder. Scarcely visible in the 
 pale shades of the horizon. 
 
 The blasts blow! all the particles of foam overwhelm him. 
 He lifts his eyes and sees only the livid clouds. He witnesses, 
 dying, the sea's vast madness. He is tortured by this madness. 
 He hears noises foreign to man, which seem to come from beyond 
 the earth and from some frightful alien region. 
 
 There are birds in the clouds, as there are angels above the 
 distress of humanity, but what can they do for him? They fly, 
 sing, and soar, and he he gives the death rattle. 
 
 He feels himself entombed at the same time by these two 
 infinities, ocean and sky; one is a grave, the other is a shroud. 
 
 Night falls ; he has been swimming for hours ; his strength has 
 reached its limit; that ship, that distant thing where men were, has 
 died away; he is alone in the formidable twilight gulf; he sinks; 
 he stiffens to resist; he twists about; he feels beneath him the 
 waves, monsters of the invisible; he calls. 
 
 All men are gone. Where is God? 
 
 He calls. Help! help! He keeps on calling. 
 
 Nothing on the horizon; nothing in the sky. 
 
 He implores space, the wave, the sea wrack, the reef; they are 
 deaf. He begs the tempest; the imperturbable tempest obeys 
 only the infinite. 
 
 Around him are shadow, mist, solitude, the stormy, insensate 
 tumult, the confused curling of wild waters. In him are horror 
 and fatigue. Under him, falling. No supporting crevice. He 
 thinks of the darksome adventures of the corpse in the limitless 
 shade. The bottomless cold paralyzes him. His hands stiffen, 
 shut, seize on nothingness. Winds, clouds, whirlwinds, blasts, 
 stars, are useless! What is to be done? The despairing man 
 gives up; he who is weary concludes to die; he yields, lets himself 
 go, relaxes his grasp, and there he is rolling forever in the mourn- 
 ful depths of the engulfing chasm. 
 
 Oh, implacable march of human society ! Losses of men and
 
 146 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 souls on your way ! Ocean into which falls all that the law lets 
 fall 1 Sinister disappearance of help ! Oh, moral death 1 
 
 The sea is the inexorable social night into which the penal 
 system casts its criminals. The sea is wretchedness immense. 
 
 The soul floating in this gulf may become a corpse. Who 
 will revive it? 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Translations from tJie Poems of Victor Hugo. Henry Carrington. 
 
 Life of Victor Hugo. Frank T. Marzials. 
 
 Articles in Harper's Monthly, Vol. CII, pp. IOO ff., and 444 
 ff.; Scribner's, Vol. XXI, pp. 108 ff.; The Chautauquan, Vol. 
 XXV.
 
 HONORS DE BALZAC
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 BALZAC AND REALISM IN LITERATURE 
 
 [HONOR DE BALZAC, born at Tours, May 16, 1799; educated at 
 Vendome College, in Paris schools, and at the Paris Law 
 School, 1807-1819; life of writing and reading at Paris, 1819- 
 1820; at home at Villeparisis, 1821-1824; publisher at Paris, 
 1824-1825; printer, 1826-1828; novelist, 1829-1848; died at 
 Paris, August 18, 1850. Leading novels: "Louis Lambert," 
 1832; "Eugenie Grandet," 1833; "Pere Goriot," 1834; 
 "Seraphita," 1835; "The Lily in the Valley," 1835; "Cesar 
 Birotteau," 1837; "Ursule Mirouet," 1841; "Cousin Pons," 
 1847.] 
 
 French realism in the literature of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury differs from English realism in at least one essential 
 particular, the amount of moral fiber in its heroes and 
 heroines. While the realistic writers of both nations 
 agree in presenting life such as they see it around them, 
 with its trials and changes, the English author balances 
 the evil of that life with the good. The French author, 
 as a rule, does not. The reason for this striking diver- 
 gence is not far to seek. The English novelists were not 
 guided by a preconceived theory. The French were. As 
 the French are at bottom a logical people, and demand 
 conclusions which proceed strictly from accepted prem- 
 ises, so in their literature they wish consistency in argu- 
 ment. Now, the argument of realism is fidelity to facts, 
 facts separated from everything which is imaginative or 
 immaterial, absolute, scientific facts. French realism 
 
 H7
 
 148 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 added to this postulate the further one of man considered 
 as an animate being. 
 
 France had received from England, from Locke, the 
 doctrine of knowledge derived through the senses. The 
 disciples of this philosophical school, carried away by their 
 logical temperament, pushed this doctrine to an extreme, 
 and claimed that man has no other sources of knowledge 
 than through his body. The influence of the great teach- 
 ers of medicine, who in France began to reorganize the 
 study of that profession towards the last years of the 
 eighteenth century, tended in the same direction. So 
 much so, indeed, that under this combined pressure from 
 philosophy and physiology few -Frenchmen of the first half 
 of the nineteenth century, save the most devout, seem to 
 have looked on man as anything but an animal. If he 
 receives all his knowledge through his physical being as 
 the dog or the horse does, he differs from the dog and 
 horse only in degree. When the sources of his knowl- 
 edge cease, when the body dies, the man is dead. He 
 has no mind apart from his body, no soul. 
 
 Apply this creed to literature and see the result. 
 Realism is observation of the facts of life. Philosophy 
 and science both limit the observation of man to the facts 
 of his material existence. They do not show that he has 
 any other existence. Consequently a study of man, i-f 
 pursued in a scientific way, as realism claims it should be, 
 resolves itself into the study of an animal, of its needs and 
 its appetites. The animal wants something and seeks it. 
 So does man. Neither is endowed with the capacity to 
 resist its desires, so far as science shows. Man is higher 
 than the brute in the order of creation. He has more 
 brains. He is actuated by other instincts than hunger
 
 Balzac and Realism in Literature 149 
 
 and thirst. His faculties admit of ambition, avarice. He 
 loves power, luxury. As the senses furnish no valid rea- 
 sons why he should not get what he wants, he strives to 
 get it by all the means he possesses, by violence, deceit, 
 labor. 
 
 This is the principle of French realism. In contrast 
 to the English practice of assuming that man has both a 
 spiritual and a physical nature, and that the two often 
 clash, the French theory is more simple. It does away 
 with the inner struggle of the individual, and considers only 
 the struggles between individuals, where the strong or the 
 crafty destroy the weak or the simple. In other words, 
 French realism ignores the question of the individual 
 conscience. It deliberately confines itself to the descrip- 
 tion of that part of humanity which is not disturbed by 
 ethical considerations. 
 
 Connected with this principle of French realism is 
 another, subordinate to it, but still important in compari- 
 son with its relative across the Channel. The French 
 Revolution, as we have seen, made for the widening of 
 those who are socially capable, for democracy. Chateau- 
 briand, Madame de Stael, both romanticists, remained 
 aristocrats in their writings. Hugo began as such, but 
 was soon carried towards democracy by his surroundings 
 and sympathies. Yet he still believed in man's moral 
 nature. The remaining romanticists either remained 
 aristocratic or mingled aristocracy with democracy, as 
 Alfred de Vigny in poetry, Alexandre Dumas and George 
 Sand in romance. But the true realist could not be an 
 aristocrat. Political power had fallen into the hands of 
 the Third Estate, and the realist must recognize that fact. 
 The aristocracy was dying, was losing property and social
 
 150 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 position to the successful plebeian, the bourgeois banker, 
 merchant, manufacturer. The new-school novelists must 
 tell of the rise of the poor boy, with passions or ambitions 
 to gratify, through the social strata, across the ruins of 
 the upper layers, to prominence or indulgence. And they 
 had before them a model, the embodiment of democracy 
 and materialism, Napoleon, who without apparent regard 
 for morals, individual or social, went straight about his 
 work of leveling mankind to one huge democracy under 
 him. He was the idol of the first realistic novelist, 
 Stendhal, who exalts him in "Red and Black" and "The 
 Chartreuse of Parma." His success was also ever pres- 
 ent before the eyes of the greater realistic author, who 
 began his genuine career at the flood-tide of the Napole- 
 onic legend, Honore de Balzac. 
 
 Balzac was born at Tours in 1/99, on the calendar day 
 of St. Honorius, from whom he took his name, as was the 
 custom. His family was well to do, and had not suffered 
 by the Revolution. The first four years of his life he 
 passed with a peasant nurse in the country, also custom- 
 ary with French children of respectable parentage. At 
 the age of eight he was sent to the college at Vendome, 
 where he spent six years without vacation or holiday. 
 Our first glimpse at his character is obtained here, from 
 the school register: "Honore Balzac, aged eight years 
 and one month. Has had the smallpox and is without 
 infirmity. Temperament sanguine; easily excited; sub- 
 ject to feverish attacks." The confinement of this exist- 
 ence for a child who had passed nearly all his hours out 
 of doors seemed at last to benumb his faculties, and he 
 was sent home to recruit. So he hated these years, as 
 many of his countrymen do the years of their prison-like
 
 Balzac and Realism in Literature 151 
 
 education, and in his novel of "Louis Lambert" has left 
 us the legacy of his abhorrence. In 1814 his family 
 moved to Paris, and Honore continued his study in the 
 schools of the capital. He then entered the Law School, 
 and also got practical legal experience in the offices of 
 friends of his family. From these first years at Paris he 
 gained his personal knowledge of Napoleon, whom he had 
 seen, and his familiarity with legal terms, both of which 
 were to enter widely into the composition of his future 
 works. 
 
 By 1819 the Balzac family had retired to the country, 
 and Honore, refusing to practice law, had wrung from 
 his father a reluctant consent to give himself up to liter- 
 ary pursuits. He established himself in a garret near one 
 of the libraries of Paris, and read, wrote, and observed 
 the life and occupations of the town. But he strangely 
 misjudged his own talent. Filled with a desire for liter- 
 ary fame at all hazards, he took the shortest road to 
 that goal in France. He chose a tragedy, and a trag- 
 edy on Cromwell. He composed the tragedy, read 
 it to his family, and submitted it to friends. It was 
 wretched, and resulted in his recall to the family home. 
 There, although subject to many interruptions, he began 
 to work on fiction. In 1822 he published five romances 
 of four volumes each. In 1823, 1824, and 1825 he added 
 three more to the number, all under pseudonyms, mainly 
 that of Horace de Saint-Aubin. But these stories were 
 always refused a place in his complete works by him. 
 They are novels in the extravagant taste of the time, and 
 are now of interest only because Balzac wrote them. 
 
 In 1823 he wished to take up his residence in Paris 
 again. Unfortunately his career had not yet justified any
 
 152 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 further liberality on the part of his parents, and he was 
 forced to rely on himself. Acting on the advice of a 
 business acquaintance who lent him the money for the 
 enterprise, he turned publisher, and got out the complete 
 works of Moliere and La Fontaine in one volume each, 
 the first attempt, it is said, to make compact editions of 
 the French classics. But nobody bought them, and 
 Balzac was left in debt. Here begins the struggle against 
 financial burdens with which he consumed his vitality. 
 From publishing he went to printing, in a vain hope to 
 retrieve his fortunes, using for his purpose the patrimony 
 his family advanced to him, and when printing proved 
 unsuccessful, he bought a type-foundry, a good specula- 
 tion had he possessed sufficient capital. Indeed, it may 
 be said of Balzac's financial schemes in general, that they 
 were good ones; but he did not have the money to push 
 them. And the close of the year 1828 saw him out of 
 them all, but deep in pecuniary obligations. He owed, 
 he says, about twenty- four thousand dollars. 
 
 His failures in business restored him to literature. In 
 1827 he had begun the first novel he was to acknowledge 
 later, a story of the Vendean war anticipating Hugo's 
 "Ninety-Three" which he named "Les Chouans." It 
 was published in 1829 under his own name, and as the 
 book has merit, and the fashion of the day favored histori- 
 cal romances in the manner of Walter Scott, whom Balzac 
 here takes for a model, it brought reputation to its author, 
 and encouraged further literary undertakings. Of these 
 there was no end. Balzac's memory was unusual. His 
 reading had been enormous, his observation long contin- 
 ued, his experience varied, and he had the habit of supple- 
 menting his after impressions by a kind of scrap-book he
 
 Balzac and Realism in Literature 1 53 
 
 carried on his person. Our guide to his career in these 
 first thirty years of his existence is his devoted sister, 
 Madame de Surville. Speaking of his method of accu- 
 mulation she says: "Wherever he went he studied what 
 he saw towns, villages, country places, and their inhabi- 
 tants ; collecting words or speeches which revealed a char- 
 acter or painted a situation. He called, rather slightingly, 
 the scrap-book in which he kept these notes of what he 
 saw and heard, his 'meat-safe.' ' 
 
 Out of this faculty of observation of places and men 
 grew many of his stories and novels. "Les Chouans" 
 itself had been suggested by a visit to friends who lived in 
 Brittany, and it contains descriptions of Breton scenery. 
 So his early years had given him surroundings and events. 
 Tours is celebrated ("The Curate of Tours"), the fertile 
 valleys which lie near it ("The Lily in the Valley"), the 
 residences of acquaintances as he visits them from time to 
 time, towns he stays in, as Saumur ("Eugenie Grandet") 
 or Angouleme ("Lost Illusions"). During his early soli- 
 tary life in Paris he himself tells how he made a point of 
 using even his exercise to gather material for fiction. He 
 noticed people, their dress, their manners, drew near to 
 listen to their conversation, and tried by it to enter into 
 their beings and lead their lives. His imagination was so 
 powerful he actually succeeded in this last instance. He 
 claims he could feel the clothes of others upon himself, 
 could share their angers and pleasures. He found in this 
 kind of metamorphosis a relaxation from the fatigue of 
 toil. And this trait grew on him with years. His sister 
 shows how he considered the characters of his work as 
 living beings, how interested he was in their plans and 
 fortunes. Such a power explains the attraction which his
 
 154 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 writings exert. He lived out his people. He thus makes 
 them vivid for us. They are real flesh and blood, because 
 for the time being they were a part of humanity. 
 
 Endowed with this gift, Balzac could not satisfy him- 
 self with the rather distant domain of historical fiction. 
 With a few slight' exceptions "Les Chouans" remains his 
 only incursion into that field. He was full of the world 
 around him. He had shared the passions, good and bad, 
 of his contemporaries. His observations of things and 
 manners, attributes of these contemporaries and their 
 environment, had led him along the way of actuality. It 
 is said that Stendhal, intent on his sketches of Parisian 
 society, influenced Balzac to follow his example. This is 
 possible. But it is not necessary to explain his course. 
 His genius was realistic. His material was objective. 
 His own life even was a matter of analysis to himself. His 
 imagination consisted mainly in his transformation of him- 
 self into others, whose profession or trade he studied and 
 embraced for the moment. And then at bottom he was 
 unemotional; or if not unemotional, he was surely unsym- 
 pathetic. The prizes of this world are for the strong, he 
 argued. You cannot spare the weak without falsifying the 
 reality of life. So his sister says that when she interceded 
 with him in behalf of some unfortunate of his unfinished ro- 
 mances, he would answer: "Don't bewilder me with your 
 sensibilities; truth before everything. Those persons are 
 feeble, incapable; what happens to them must happen; so 
 much the worse for them." Napoleon, the great realist, 
 could hardly have spoken otherwise of the victims of his 
 ambition. 
 
 "Les Chouans," therefore, was not repeated. The 
 year 1830 saw a large number of sketches and short
 
 Balzac and Realism in Literature 155 
 
 stories from his pen, some fanciful, some historical, some 
 drawn from life. Emile de Girardin, the great journalist 
 of his time, opened to him the columns of his newspaper, 
 La Mode, and also the doors of Madame Sophie Gay's 
 salon, Madame Girardin's mother. There Balzac could 
 meet the best minds of the nation. Hugo, Lamartine, 
 artists, musicians, or politicians like Thiers. He also 
 aided Girardin in founding a new weekly, devoted to litera- 
 ture and art. In 1831 he left his ugly quarters for an 
 apartment which he was to occupy for seven years, and 
 which he fitted up with considerable taste, though denying 
 himself at the same time many of the necessaries of life. 
 It is in this new house that he wrote the works which 
 brought him fame, and where he conceived the plan of 
 what he was pleased to call surely in imitation of Dante 
 "The Human Comedy." And yet it was the spur of 
 debt which goaded him on. 
 
 His method of work, of actual labor in writing out his 
 stories, has been told so often that it has become legend- 
 ary. Having prepared himself with subject, plan, and 
 material, he would isolate himself from the world during 
 the process of composition. One of his publishers tells 
 us that he would retire at eight in the evening, rise by 
 two in the night, and write as fast as he could carry his 
 quill it was before the time of steel pens until six. A 
 long bath at six, coffee at eight, when the publisher 
 would call with proofs and to get copy, and writing again 
 from nine to noon, lunch and writing again from one to 
 six. Dinner followed, and at seven the publisher would 
 call again, and occasionally Balzac's intimates. He him- 
 self gives a picture of his own manner of work to his 
 sister, in the year 1833. It is practically the existence
 
 156 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 sketched by his publisher, though the details are some- 
 what different: "I have begun hard work again. I go to 
 bed at six with my dinner in my mouth. The animal 
 digests, and sleeps till midnight. Then Auguste makes 
 me a cup of coffee, on which the mind works without a 
 break till noon. I rush to the printing-office to take my 
 copy and get my proofs, in order to give the animal exer- 
 cise, who dreams as he goes. One puts a good deal of 
 black on white, little sister, in twelve hours; and after a 
 month of this existence there's not a little work done. 
 Poor pen! it must be made of diamond not to be worn 
 out by so much toil. To increase its master's reputa- 
 tion .... to enable him to pay his debts to all, and 
 then to give him, some day, rest upon the mountain that 
 is its task." 
 
 Before this account, he had told his mother, in 1832, 
 of his experience in writing "Louis Lambert": "I was 
 worn out with the labor which 'Louis Lambert' caused 
 me; I had sat up many nights and drank so much coffee 
 that I suffered stomach pains which amounted to cramps. 
 'Louis Lambert' is, perhaps, a masterpiece, but it has 
 cost me dearly six weeks of unremitting toil at Sache 
 and ten days at Angouleme." In other words, when at 
 work he would pass from six to eight weeks away from 
 every one but his publisher, turning night into day by the 
 free use of coffee. His actual time at his desk was twelve 
 hours daily. 
 
 This unusual existence has become attached to the 
 name of Balzac and stamped itself on his history. Yet 
 it did not fill up all his life, nor possibly the greater part 
 of it. For when once released from his self-imposed 
 prison, he was off, visiting friends and places, observing
 
 Balzac and Realism in Literature 1 57 
 
 men and landscapes, speculating on financial schemes, and 
 planning more books, the meanwhile writing letters, many 
 and long, to correspondents of all kinds. During these 
 intermissions he attempted other vocations. Once he 
 thought of turning politician, and actually stood for two 
 constituencies in 1831, one in 1832, and again in 1834. 
 But the party he belonged to was the Legitimist, the 
 Bourbon party, and the larger number of its members 
 protested against the July Monarchy by refusing to vote 
 under it. Consequently Balzac had little support at the 
 polls. His political program did not stop with affirming 
 the excellence of a limited constitutional government, with 
 the larger part of its legislative power lodged in an upper 
 house of peers, who represented landed property. He 
 had views of his own regarding the liberty of the press, 
 and advocated the remission of taxation on newspapers, 
 so that many should be printed and the one-cent sheet 
 might be possible. He also wished France to prepare for 
 foreign wars by a general conscription of the whole nation 
 after the model of Prussia. This was in 1831. 
 
 And then Balzac had desires to shine socially. His 
 writings had brought him many admirers among women, 
 who sent him letters eulogistic of his work as 
 was the case of Madame Hanska, whom he afterwards 
 married and who opened to him the doors of their 
 houses. In this way he became acquainted with some of 
 the leaders of fashion, and drew on his experience at their 
 receptions for his episodes of high life. The remarkable 
 thing of it all is, that in spite of these opportunities, and 
 notwithstanding that both here and in literary and family 
 circles he constantly met women of the greatest refine- 
 ment, he seems to have never known what a lady was,
 
 158 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 and his portraits of what he considered grandes dames are 
 simply absurd witness Madame de Beause"ant and the 
 Duchesse de Langeais in "Pere Goriot." One would 
 say their originals were bold, vulgar upstarts who had 
 derived their ideas of breeding from the haughty heroines 
 of flashy romances. In this respect his observation cer- 
 tainly failed him, perhaps the only respect. But this 
 particular failure spoils many of the pages in which he 
 evidently took unusual delight. The reflex influence on 
 his private life is seen in the extravagance he indulged in, 
 for a short period only, it is true, of a carriage and groom, 
 with which ornaments he appeared in the favorite streets 
 and parks of the French capital. 
 
 But politics and society occupied an extremely small 
 fraction of Balzac's life. Nor does he seem to have 
 fostered love affairs either. His mind was intent on 
 books, always books. He carried the plots of several in 
 his head at once. Two or three would actually be on the 
 stocks at the same time. Quite likely he found mental 
 relief in changing from one to the other and back again, 
 just as he found recreation in embodying himself now in 
 this now in that character. To one of his correspond- 
 ents, Madame Carraud, he thus describes the state of his 
 brain, in 1833: "I assure you I live in an atmosphere of 
 thoughts, ideas, plans, labors, conceptions; which cross 
 one another, boil, crackle in my head enough to drive me 
 crazy. But nothing makes me thin. I am the truest 
 portrait of a monk ever seen since the first hour of 
 monasteries." 
 
 Yet with all this material on hand, and in process of 
 casting, he was not careless in his use of it. Indeed, 
 Balzac was the terror of type-setters. It was his custom
 
 Balzac and Realism in Literature 159 
 
 to send to the printer an outline of his stories merely, 
 which was set up and returned to him in separate columns 
 on large sheets of paper. This sketch he would elabo- 
 rate, correcting, adding, and with the return of this copy 
 the next day would continue to change and amplify. 
 Sometimes as many as eleven or twelve proofs would 
 thus pass before his eyes. He was rarely satisfied even 
 then, for though he possessed little artistic ability, he was 
 always seeking to improve his style. The cost of so many 
 alterations was, of course, enormous. The printers gener- 
 ally refused to pay for them, and he was forced to bear 
 the burden. In one letter he speaks of a new publisher 
 having paid for four thousand francs of proof corrections 
 in order to relieve him. So we may not wonder that he 
 had difficulties with the publication of his books, or that 
 he antagonized many with whom he had business relations. 
 He also had causes for disagreement with the journalists, 
 not always of his own making, and after a lawsuit, in 
 1835-1836, with Buloz, the editor of the Revue de Paris, 
 as well as the Revue des Deux Mondes, he found the col- 
 umns of the press practically closed to him. So he seemed 
 to wish an organ of his own. In 1836 he started the 
 semi-weekly Chronique de Paris, which lasted less than a 
 year. In 1840 he tried the monthly Revue Parisienne, 
 which died with the third issue. 
 
 The years between 1832 and 1836, to which period these 
 comments belong, established Balzac's fame on a lasting 
 foundation. His manner of work, his working costume 
 of a white cashmere dressing-gown, made like a monk's 
 habit, and fastened with a cord around the waist, his 
 frugal life of abstinence, all contributed to invest his per- 
 son with interest. And his novels confirmed these exter-
 
 160 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 nal signs of genius. In 1832, together with many short 
 stories, "The Curate of Tours" and "Louis Lambert" 
 saw the light; in 1833 "The Country Doctor" and 
 "Eugenie Grandet"; in 1834-1835 " Se"raphita, " "La 
 Recherche de 1'Absolu," and "Pere Goriot"; in 1835- 
 1836 "The Lily in the Valley." Nor were the following 
 years less productive. In 1838 he left Paris for the 
 suburb of Ville-d'Avray, where he bought land on a hill- 
 side, and built some buildings, to which he gave the name 
 of Les Jardies. He had long desired a country place. 
 Here he remained four years, then returned to Paris, 
 where he finally (in 1846) bought a house of his own, the 
 Beaujon Hotel in Rue Balzac (former Rue Fortunee), 
 which he filled with many curiosities and bric-a-brac. To 
 the first six years belong the voluminous "Lost Illusions," 
 "Cesar Birotteau" (1837), "Beatrix" (1839), "Ursule 
 Mirouet" (1841), and "Albert Savarus" (1842). 
 
 The year 1843 marks an epoch in Balzac's life. 
 Among the women whose attention had been aroused by 
 Balzac's first successes was, as we have noticed, Madame 
 Hanska, a Pole. The correspondence she carried on with 
 the novelist led to various interviews, as she visited France 
 or the neighboring lands. In 1843 ner husband, who was 
 many years her senior, died, and that summer Balzac 
 visited her at her home. The affection which had been 
 steadily increasing in his heart was now aroused to a 
 passion. Unfortunately it was not to be soon satisfied. 
 Duties toward her daughter, a minor, unusual state regu- 
 lations regarding property in Russia, and differences of 
 religion delayed the projected marriage. In 1846 they 
 became formally engaged. In October, 1848, Balzac 
 went to Poland to stay until he should return with his
 
 Balzac and Realism in Literature 161 
 
 bride. One circumstance after another delayed the wed- 
 ding. Finally, on March 14, 1850, it took place. In 
 April the bridal trip to Paris was begun, and May found 
 the husband and wife installed in the Beaujon house. 
 
 But all these delays had left their impress on Balzac. 
 The consequences of his unnatural mode of life, excessive 
 hours, lack of sleep, and overstimulation were already 
 noticeable by 1842. A letter to his mother, in April of 
 that year, reveals discouragement, and speaks of his pro- 
 ductiveness as diminishing. By 1844 the breakdown had 
 become serious. He writes of fever and internal pains. 
 Mental distress augmented his physical discomfort. The 
 postponement of his union with Madame Hanska weighed 
 upon him. The uncertainty attending the outcome of his 
 courtship an accepted lover and yet separated from his 
 love, his "star" as he delighted to call her distracted 
 his mind. His work became more and more halting, the 
 times of inspiration less frequent. Still with all these ills, 
 physical and mental, when he did work his talent showed 
 no signs of diminution. "Modeste Mignon" belongs to 
 1844, "The Peasants" to 1844-1845, "Cousin Pons" 
 and "Cousine Bette" to 1846-1847. His art gallery of 
 the Beaujon house did service in "Cousin Pons." But 
 with his journey to Russia, in 1848, disease finally con- 
 quered. The climate aggravated his maladies, and when 
 he returned to France, in May, 1850, it was only to die. 
 Standing on the threshold of happiness, holding what he 
 had so long desired, a woman's love, freed from his life 
 incubus of debt, his frame was too weak to sustain any 
 longer the soul which had overwrought it. On August 
 1 8, 1850, he passed away. 
 
 The extent of Balzac's work renders any detailed
 
 1 62 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 analysis of it quite impossible. He had begun his career 
 under Walter Scott's influence, and expected to write 
 historical novels like him. But his own experience and 
 the atmosphere in which he lived were both opposed to 
 this idea, and after "Les Chouans" and several shorter 
 sketches of an historical nature he settl d down to put into 
 fiction what he himself had seen or fancied. As early as 
 1830 he had recognized this bent of his genius, and 
 affirmed that he was painting a picture of men and man- 
 ners in the first part of the nineteenth century. In a letter 
 to Madame Hanska, written in January, 1833, he states 
 that he has "undertaken, rashly doubtless, to represent all 
 literature in the whole of his work," and that "wishing t 
 build a monument durable more for its size and accumula- 
 tion of material than because of the beauty of its struc- 
 ture," he is "obliged to attempt every kind of subject so 
 as not to be accused of lack of power. ' ' He had long been 
 seeking for a general classification for this material. He 
 had tried "Philosophical Romances and Stories" for some, 
 "Scenes of Private Life," "Scenes of Provincial Life" 
 for others; he had settled on a more comprehensive title for 
 the latter varieties in 1834, with "Studies of Manners in 
 the Nineteenth Century," and had changed the heading of 
 the former to "Philosophical Studies" in 1835. Later 
 he conceived the idea of grouping all his work of what- 
 ever nature under the name of "The Human Comedy," 
 with the subdivisions of "Scenes of Private Life," "Pro- 
 vincial Life," "Parisian Life," "Military Life," "Politi- 
 cal Life," "Country Life," "Philosophical Studies," and 
 "Analytical Studies." And these titles appear in his 
 final edition, begun in 1842. 
 
 This edition has a preface which contains Balzac's
 
 Balzac and Realism in Literature 163 
 
 literary theories, and a defense against his critics as well. 
 In it he says that the underlying idea of his work was 
 based on a comparison between man and animals. As the 
 zoologists had claimed that all animals came originally 
 from one form, which had developed differently in differ- 
 ent environments, and produced at last different species, 
 so man is one in his origin, and differs from his fellow-man 
 merely because of his environment. Buff on, the great 
 naturalist of the eighteenth century, had written the 
 chronicles of the animal kingdom. Balzac would now 
 record the annals of humanity existing in organized soci- 
 ety. Before 1842, in a preface to "Lost Illusions," 
 printed in 1837, we can see the embryo of this idea: 
 "When a writer has undertaken a complete description of 
 society, seen under all its forms, noted in all its phases, 
 starting from the principle that the social state so fits men 
 to its needs and transforms them so thoroughly that no- 
 where are men like one another, and that it has created as 
 many species as it has professions; that social humanity, in 
 short, presents as many varieties as zoology does." . . . 
 This scientific principle once laid down, Balzac consid- 
 ers himself as the recorder of the facts which proceed 
 from it. He would do for his own time what Walter 
 Scott had done for the Middle Ages, and thus "give the 
 novel its philosophical value of history." He would be 
 simply a secretary of society, would take an inventory of 
 its vices and virtues, would relate its deeds, paint its char- 
 acters, making "types by means of the traits of several 
 homogeneous characters," and thereby leave a history of 
 the manners of his own time such as had never been 
 bequeathed to posterity by any other writer of any epoch. 
 And then when all these facts had been noted he would
 
 164 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 go beneath the surface and study their causes, find out 
 the "social motor," dwell on "natural principles," and 
 determine how closely society comes to "the eternal rule 
 of the true and good." But already he can affirm that 
 society does not harm man, as Rousseau argued. It im- 
 proves him. He is "neither good nor bad; he is born 
 with instincts and aptitudes," but "self-interest does 
 develop his evil inclinations, ' ' which it is the province of 
 the church to suppress. In other places he is even more 
 explicit about individual development. He says that the 
 social law affecting man is that of "each for himself," 
 what we now term "the survival of the fittest." And 
 necessarily in telling the truth about what he sees he nar- 
 rates many things which are unpleasant, vicious, and 
 criminal, the consequence of his secretaryship of society. 
 Balzac, as we see, lays down theoretically the two 
 leading principles of French realism, the treatment of 
 humanity from the physiological point of view, and the 
 portrayal of society as a whole, the upper, middle, and 
 lower strata. And he justifies his theory by his practice. 
 Indeed, he justified it in practice long before he formulated 
 it in words. With the exception of some notable works, 
 all his stories and novels are based on the assumption that 
 man is guided by "his instincts and aptitudes"; that he 
 observes the law of "each one for himself"; or in other 
 words, that he is governed by his appetites, physical or 
 mental; that he seeks for luxury or power, that his goal 
 is enjoyment, and his whole conception of life materialistic. 
 The men who engage in these struggles, and the women 
 also, represent all classes of society, but more especially 
 the middle class, the Third Estate which planned the 
 French Revolution, which profited again by the Revolution
 
 Balzac and Realism in Literature 165 
 
 of 1830, and under Guizot's leadership came into its own 
 with Louis Philippe, whose reign bounds Balzac's chief 
 literary productiveness. Science in fiction and democracy 
 are his mottoes. He rarely proves false to them. 
 
 Take, for instance, his heroes. Who are the young 
 men in his novels, whence do they come, and what do they 
 want? They are, as a rule, poor country lads, with 
 respectable connections, who want social prominence at 
 Paris. They are ambitious. They care for money, to 
 be sure, but only as a means to an end power. Balzac 
 has rung the changes on the greed for gain. He has 
 sketched misers, like Gobseck or old Grandet ; he has 
 portrayed the rage of relatives as they crowd to seize the 
 property of the weak or the legacy of the dying or dead, 
 as in "Ursule Mirouet" or "Cousin Pons"; he has shown 
 the straits to which the need of money reduces aspirants 
 to social honors, as in "Pere Goriot." But his heroes, it 
 must be confessed, are not interested in money for itself. 
 They wish it for what it will bring. Apart from this dis- 
 tinction they are as unscrupulous in getting it as the misers 
 are. No pricks of conscience restrain them in their self- 
 ish desire. And if they attain their goal they do so at 
 the expense of others weaker than they, and sometimes 
 better than they. To these gladiators in the struggle for 
 existence even love appeals only as a weapon with which 
 they may hew their way to something material, higher 
 up; and marriage is a business arrangement which, if 
 well carried out, frees one from his creditors. Still, in 
 the majority of cases the assumed or real love of these 
 men does not lead to marriage. They pay their court to 
 married women by whom they expect to be more quickly 
 advanced.
 
 1 66 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 And his heroines? With hardly an exception they are 
 the victims of man. Their love once won by the social 
 struggler is used to the full extent of its worth by him, 
 and then thrown aside when no further advantage is to 
 be derived from it. Whether married or not the story is 
 the same. Few of the married women are happy. They 
 look for consolation and affection outside of marriage, and 
 are easily beguiled by the first adventurer who presents 
 himself. Yet Balzac believed in these marriages de con- 
 venance, as the saying is, and opposed marriages for love. 
 In his "Memoirs of Two Young Brides" we trace the 
 happy or phlegmatic career of the one who married for 
 material reasons, and see it contrasted with the unhappy 
 career because, forsooth, of financial troubles of the 
 one who married for love. The material outcome dwarfs 
 all others in his eyes. Still his ideal, Madame de Mort- 
 sauf, who made the proper marriage ("The Lily in the 
 Valley") is anything but happy. Nor, on the other hand, 
 is Madame Claes, devoted to her husband, who in turn is all 
 wrapped up in the scientific pursuits which finally destroy 
 her ("La Recherche de 1'Absolu"). The girls who fail 
 to marry the man they love are not happy ("Eugenie 
 Grandet"), nor are those who succeed in doing so 
 ("Beatrix," "The Muse of the Department"). We are 
 puzzled to understand why with so many heroines who 
 are seeking for happiness through love so few succeed in 
 attaining it. But Balzac gives his own reasons. Women 
 are born to serve men. They are destined to sorrow and 
 to suffer. Their mission is to help the sterner sex, even 
 at the expense of their own hearts. The best among 
 them lead but a thankless life. As he says in "Eugenie 
 Grandet," where he sums up his theory on this point:
 
 Balzac and Realism in Literature 167 
 
 "To feel, to love, to suffer, to sacrifice themselves to 
 others, will always be the text of women's lives." 
 
 The rascals are not Balzac's only heroes. His novels, 
 even his leading ones, contain characters which he con- 
 siders good or are really so. He evidently considers old 
 Goriot good, who allows himself to be plundered by his 
 self-seeking daughters, and who encourages them in all 
 their immoral conduct, provided it will bring them happi- 
 ness ("Pere Goriot"). He seems to look upon the fond 
 mother in "Beatrix" as good even in her desire to see her 
 son gratify his passion. And he surely thinks the wife 
 good in "La Recherche de PAbsolu," who allows her 
 husband to ruin the family. All these are types of affec- 
 tion, and others might be included, as Cousin Pons. But 
 there are good people in Balzac who prosper. In his 
 longer stories a noteworthy instance is the Birotteau fam- 
 ily ("Cesar Birotteau"), and Daniel Darchon, the journal- 
 ist, who appears now and then in the histories of Parisian 
 life. And in many of his tales of manners outside of 
 Paris, "The Country Doctor," "The Village Curate," 
 "Modeste Mignon," and many others, we see good peo- 
 ple at work who reach good results. Indeed, in these 
 provincial scenes he is a more accurate observer. He 
 gives a wider view of man. For one reason and another 
 the moment Balzac catches a glimpse of Paris or Pari- 
 sians his sense of observation is blunted, his judgment 
 impaired, and his desires for luxury taking fire with the 
 contact flame up in extravagant portrayals of an existence 
 which is partly real, but which is mainly created by his 
 own imaginative longings and by the theories of the cor- 
 rupting influence of society he had inherited from Rousseau. 
 An example of this literary legacy is the character of
 
 1 68 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 Vautrin in "Pere Goriot," as well as the demoralization 
 which sets in on his provincials when they once tread the 
 streets of the capital. 
 
 Balzac, the secretary of society, the painter of so many 
 scenes and of so many people that are real, possessed 
 other gifts as a novelist. As an omnivorous reader he 
 had chanced on the books of the mystics, he had reveled 
 in Dante's pictures of the unseen, he had imbibed notions 
 of mesmerism, he had studied the tenets of Swedenborg. 
 The result is a number of stories and novels which cannot 
 be classed as realistic, but as romantic, imaginative. In 
 them he never saw what he describes. Under this head 
 comes "The Magic Skin" (1831), whose steady contrac- 
 tion reveals to his owner his waning life; "Louis Lambert" 
 (1832), part of which is an autobiography of the author 
 while at school at Vendome, part the sketch of a romantic 
 hero like Goethe's "Werther" or Chateaubriand's 
 "Rene", " epistolary in his habits and misunderstood by 
 the world, and part Swedenborgian mysticism. But the 
 crown of all this writing is "Seraphita" (1835), a presen- 
 tation of the doctrines of Swedenborg, by means of fiction, 
 where the hero shows himself as a man, Seraphitus, to 
 Minna, the type of earthly love, and as a woman, Sera- 
 phita, to Wilfrid, who personifies worldly ambition. The 
 teachings of this twofold being gradually wean the two 
 mundanes from their material desires, and when in pro- 
 cess of time the body of this being is wholly transformed 
 by her soul, and she becomes transfigured, the two, ripe 
 at last for heavenly love, are permitted to witness her 
 transfiguration. Thus Balzac redeems his materialism 
 by a poetical picture of the ideal state.
 
 Balzac and Realism in Literature 169 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM THE WORKS OF BALZAC 
 From the Preface to "The Human Comedy'' 1 (1842) 
 
 In giving to a work undertaken almost thirteen years ago the 
 name of The Human Comedy it is necessary to say what its idea 
 was, to tell its origin, explain its plan briefly, while trying to 
 speak of these things as though I was not interested in them 
 
 The idea of The Human Comedy was first like a dream in my 
 mind, like one of those impossible projects which you cherish and 
 allow to escape. 
 
 This idea came from a comparison between mankind and 
 animals. 
 
 .... In reading again the extraordinary works of the mystics 
 who have busied themselves with science in its relation to the 
 infinite, such as Swedenborg, Saint-Martin, etc., and the writings 
 of the best geniuses in natural history, such as Leibnitz, Buff on, 
 Charles Bonnet, etc., we find in the monads of Leibnitz, the 
 organic molecules of Buffon, the vegetating force of Needham, 
 the fitting together of similar parts of Charles Bonnet, who was so 
 daring as to write, in 1760, "The animal vegetates like the plant," 
 we find, I say, the rudiments of that fine law of self for self on 
 which unity of composition rests. There is but one animal. The 
 Creator used but one and the same model for all organized beings. 
 The animal is a principle which takes its external form, or speak- 
 ing more exactly, the differences of its form from the surround- 
 ings in which it is called upon to develop itself. Zoological 
 species result from these differences 
 
 Imbued with this system long before the debates to which it 
 gave rise, I saw that in this respect society resembled nature. 
 Does not society make of man, according to the environment in 
 which its action is exerted, as many different men as there are 
 varieties in zoology? The differences between a soldier, a work- 
 man, an administrator, a lawyer, an idler, a scientist, a statesman, 
 a trader, a sailor, a poet, a poor man, a priest are, though more 
 difficult to grasp, as great as those which distinguish the wolf, the 
 lion, the ass, the crow, the shark, the seal, the sheep, etc. There- 
 fore social species have existed, will always exist, just as much as
 
 170 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 zoological species. If Buffon did a magnificent work in trying to 
 represent in one book all of zoology, was there not a work of this 
 kind to be done for society? But in the case of the animal vari- 
 eties nature has placed limits which could not contain society. 
 When Buffon painted the lion he finished the picture of the lioness 
 in a few phrases ; whereas in society woman is not always the 
 female of man. There can be two completely unlike beings in 
 
 one household The description of the social species was, 
 
 therefore, at least double that of the animal species, taking only 
 the two sexes into consideration. Finally there are few dramas 
 among animals, there is scarcely any confusion; they attack each 
 other, that is all. Men also attack each other, but their greater 
 or less degree of intelligence makes their conflict more compli- 
 cated Then Buffon found life among animals very simple. 
 
 The animal has but little furniture, it has neither arts nor sciences; 
 while man, by a law which is yet to be determined, tends to repre- 
 sent his manners, his thought, and his life in everything he appro- 
 priates to his needs The habits of each animal are, in our 
 
 eyes at least, constantly alike at all times; while the habits, the 
 clothes, the words, the dwellings of a prince, a banker, an artist, 
 a tradesman, a priest, and a poor man are wholly unlike and 
 change with changing civilizations. 
 
 So the work to be done must have a threefold form : men, 
 women, and things; that is to say, people and the material repre- 
 sentation they make of their thought; in short, man and life 
 
 But how make a drama of the three or four thousand charac- 
 ters which a society offers interesting? How please at the same 
 time the poet, the philosopher, and the masses who wish poetry 
 and philosophy in striking pictures? .... Walter Scott raised 
 the romance to the philosophical value of history .... He put 
 into it the spirit of olden times, combined in it drama, dialogue, 
 portrait, landscape, description; he caused to enter into it the 
 
 marvelous and the true Though .... dazzled by the 
 
 surprising fecundity of Walter Scott .... I did not despair, 
 for I found the reason for this talent in the infinite variety of 
 
 human nature French society was to be the historian. I 
 
 was to be the secretary only. By drawing up an inventory of 
 vices and virtues, by collecting the principal deeds of the passions,
 
 Balzac and Realism in Literature 171 
 
 by painting characters, by choosing the leading events of society, 
 by forming types out of the union of the features of several homo- 
 geneous characters, perhaps I might succeed in writing the history 
 which had been forgotten by so many historians, the history of 
 manners. With much patience and courage I might realize with 
 France of the nineteenth century that book we all regret Rome, 
 Athens, Tyre, Memphis, Persia, and India did not leave to us about 
 
 their civilizations As to the intimate sense, the soul of 
 
 that work, here are the principles on which it is based. 
 
 Man is neither good nor evil ; he is born with instincts and 
 aptitudes; society, far from making him depraved, as Rousseau 
 has claimed, perfects him, makes him better; but self-interest 
 also develops his bad inclinations. Christianity, and Roman 
 Catholicism especially, being, as I have said in "The Country 
 Doctor," a complete system of repression for the depraved ten- 
 dencies of man, is the greatest element of social order 
 
 In copying all society, grasping it in the immensity of its 
 movements, it happens, it was bound to happen, that such and 
 such a composition offered more evil than good, that such and 
 
 such a section of the fresco represented a guilty group In 
 
 this respect I must call attention to the fact that the most consci- 
 entious moralists very much doubt whether society can offer as 
 many good actions as it does bad ones, and in the picture I make 
 
 of it there are more virtuous than blameworthy people 
 
 Obliged to conform to the ideas of an essentially hypocritical 
 country, Walter Scott was humanly false in his portrayal of woman, 
 because his models were dissenters. The Protestant woman has 
 no ideal. She may be chaste, pure, virtuous, but her unemotional 
 
 love will always be calm and composed like a duty done 
 
 In Protestantism there is nothing possible for woman after sin, 
 while in the Catholic Church the hope of pardon makes her sub- 
 lime. So there is but one kind of woman for a Protestant writer, 
 while the Catholic author finds a new woman in each new situ- 
 ation. . . . Passion is humanity entire. Without it religion, his- 
 tory, fiction, art, would be useless. 
 
 In seeing me gather together so many facts and paint them as 
 they are with passion for an element, some people have very 
 wrongly imagined that I belonged to the sensualist and materialist
 
 1 72 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 school, two faces of the same thing, pantheism. But perhaps 
 they might be, are'bound to be, mistaken. I do not at all share 
 the belief in the indefinite progress of society: I believe in the 
 progress of the individual. Those who think they see in me an 
 intention to consider man as a finite creature are strangely mis- 
 taken. "Seraphita," the doctrine of the Christian Buddha in 
 action, seems to me a sufficient answer to that lightly advanced 
 accusation 
 
 In noticing the sense of this work you will recognize that I 
 grant to constant, daily facts, secret or manifest, to the acts of 
 individual lives, their causes and their principles, as much impor- 
 tance as historians have hitherto attached to events in the public 
 life of nations. The unknown battle waged in a valley of the Indre 
 between Madame de Mortsauf and passion is perhaps as great as 
 the most illustrious of known battles ("The Lily in the Valley"). 
 In the latter the glory of a conqueror is at stake; in the other 
 heaven. The misfortunes of the Birotteaus, the priest, and the 
 perfumer are for me the misfortunes of humanity. La Fosseuse 
 ("The Country Doctor") and Madame Graslin ("The Village 
 Curate") represent almost complete types of women. We suffer 
 in this way every day. I have had to do a hundred times what 
 Richardson did but once. Lovelace has a thousand forms, for 
 social corruption takes on the colors of all the surroundings in 
 which it is developed. 
 
 The immensity of a plan which at the same time embraces 
 history and the criticism of society, the analysis of its evils and 
 the discussion of its principles, authorizes me, I think, to give my 
 work the title under which it appears to-day, "The Human Com- 
 edy." Is this ambitious? Is it only just? That is what the 
 public will decide when the work is ended. 
 
 SAINTE-BEUVE'S OPINION OF BALZAC IN 1834 
 
 [Article occasioned by "La Recherche de 1'Absolu."] 
 
 It is time to come, in this gallery which without it would be 
 incomplete, to the most productive, the most popular, of contempo- 
 rary novelists, to the novelist of the moment par excellence, to that
 
 Balzac and Realism in Literature 173 
 
 one who unites in so great number the qualities or the defects of 
 speed, abundance, interest, chance, and prestige, which the title of 
 story-teller or novelist presupposes. M. de Balzac has become 
 celebrated in this way within four years only. His "Last 
 Chouan," in 1829, called attention to him for the first time, but 
 without raising him above the crowd; his "Physiology of Mar- 
 riage" had won for him the reputation of a witty man, an exact 
 observer, .... but it is with "The Magic Skin" that M. de 
 Balzac first gained the ear of the public, which he has since, if 
 not entirely won over, at least stirred, furrowed in every direction, 
 astonished, surprised, shocked, or tickled in a thousand ways. 
 And we must admit that in this rapid success, aside from the 
 trumpeting at the beginning about the sale of "The Magic Skin," 
 the press of Paris has been but a sorry ally of M. de Balzac's, 
 that he has himself created his vogue and favor with many people 
 by dint of activity, inventiveness, each new work serving, so to 
 speak, as an advertisement and aid to its predecessor. M. de 
 Balzac at the very start secured for himself one-half of the public, 
 which it is very essential to gain, and has made it his accomplice 
 by artfully flattering its secretly known fibers. "Woman is on 
 Balzac's side," M. Janin has somewhere said. "She belongs to 
 him in her finery, in her neglige, in the most minute things of her 
 heart; he dresses and undresses her." .... In order to insinu- 
 ate himself among women with his stories and novels, he hit on 
 the fortunate moment, when their imagination was most aroused, 
 after the July Revolution, by the pictures and the promises of 
 
 Saint-Simonism Saint-Simonism, M. de Balzac on his 
 
 part, the illustrious writer called George Sand on hers, have been 
 the instruments and organs of that change which has come about, 
 not at all in manners, but in the expression of manners. In the 
 provinces especially, where the existence of some women is more 
 sorrowful, more stifled, more pallid, than in Parisian society, 
 where discord in the marriage relation is more compressing and 
 less easy to escape from, M. de Balzac has met with keen and 
 tender enthusiasm. The number of women from twenty-eight to 
 thirty-five, to whom he tells their secrets, who make a profession 
 of loving Balzac, who discuss his genius and try, pen in hand, to 
 embroider and vary in their turn the inexhaustible theme of these
 
 174 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 charming stories, "The Woman of Thirty," "The Unhappy 
 Woman," "The Abandoned Woman," is great there 
 
 One of the reasons which further explains Balzac's rapid 
 vogue throughout France is his skill in the successive choice of 
 the places where he sets the scene of his tales. Travelers are 
 shown in one of the streets of Saumur Eugenie Grandet's house; 
 at Douai probably they are already pointing out the Claes house. 
 With what mild pride the possessor of La Grenadiere must have 
 smiled, indolent Tourangean that he is ! This flattery directed at 
 each city where the author places his characters is as good as 
 
 winning it In Paris, on the contrary, his success has been 
 
 less, though very considerable still; but he is denied several 
 merits. As poet, as artist, as writer, his sentiment has often been 
 decried, and his manner of composition. He has had difficulty in 
 pushing himself, in ranking himself higher than his popularity, and 
 in spite of his redoubtable talent, in spite of his marvelously deli- 
 cate observation, he fails to rise to a certain serious position in 
 
 the esteem of some people To these reproaches, more or 
 
 less well founded, to these dislikes or this disdain, too often 
 justifiable, M. de Balzac has answered only by an increasing con- 
 fidence in his imagination and an exuberance of novels, of which 
 some have found favor in all eyes, and merit a triumph. The 
 author of "Louis Lambert" and "Eugenie Grandet" is no longer 
 a man whom we can reject and fail to recognize 
 
 M. de Balzac has a very keen, deep feeling for private life, 
 which often goes as far as minutiae in detail, and as far as supersti- 
 tion. He knows how to move you and make you tremble at the very 
 outset, merely by describing a garden walk, a dining-room, a set 
 of furniture. He divines the mysteries of provincial life, he some- 
 times invents them. He most often fails to recognize the modest, 
 quiet, concealed part of this style of life, and violates both it and 
 the poetry it hides. He succeeds better in the parts that are less 
 
 delicate from the moral standpoint In the invention of his 
 
 subject, as well as in the details of style, Balzac's pen is flowing, 
 uneven, sensational. He goes, he starts at a gentle walk, he 
 gallops wonderfully, and suddenly there he is down, but rises to 
 fall again. Most of his beginnings are charming, but his endings 
 degenerate or become excessive. There is a moment, a point,
 
 Balzac and Realism in Literature 175 
 
 where he runs away in spite of himself. His coolness as an 
 
 observer leaves him Chance and accident play a great 
 
 part even in his best productions. He has a manner, but it is 
 uncertain, restless, often seeking to find itself. You feel you have 
 a man who has written thirty volumes before acquiring a manner. 
 When one has been so long in finding it, he is not very sure of 
 
 always keeping it We must, however, accept M. de Balzac 
 
 as he is, and accept him according to his nature and habit. We 
 must not advise him to make a selection, to repress himself, but 
 to go on and continue constantly. He will make it up to us in 
 quantity. He is a little like those generals who do not take the 
 smallest position without lavishing the army's blood (it is ink only 
 that he lavishes) and losing a great many soldiers. But although 
 economy of means should count, the essential thing after all is to 
 reach a result, and M. de Balzac on many an occasion is and 
 remains victorious. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 A Memoir of Honor c de Balzac. Katharine Prescott Wormeley. 
 
 Balzac. W. P. Trent. In Warner's "Library of the World's 
 Best Literature," Vol. Ill, or Warner's "Classics." 
 
 Articles in The Atlantic, Vol. LXXVIII, pp. 566 ff.; Cosmo- 
 politan, Vol. XXVI, pp. 238 ff.; Tlie Chautauquan, Vol. 
 XXXIII, pp. 180 ff.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ZOLA 
 
 [MILE DOUARD CHARLES ANTOINE ZOLA, born at Paris, April 2, 
 1840; educated at the Aix lycee, and Lycee Saint Louis at 
 Paris, 1852-1859; clerk at Hachette's, 1862-1866; journalism 
 and hack writing, 1866-1869; novelist, 1869; the Dreyfus 
 Affair, 1898; died at Paris, September 29, 1902. Chief works, 
 in the Rougon-Macquart series: "L'Assommoir," 1877; 
 "Germinal," 1885; "La Debacle," 1892.] 
 
 The distinguishing characteristics of French realism, 
 science and democracy, had been thoroughly established 
 by Balzac's "Human Comedy." Subsequent adherents 
 of the school had little to do but carry out the principles 
 laid down in that work to their logical conclusion. And 
 this is what was done. The generation which succeeded 
 the master pushed the study of man, the animal, to an 
 extreme, and chose its heroes and heroines from the petty 
 bourgeoisie or the proletariat itself. In Balzac you can 
 still find traces of moral responsibility with the people 
 who play the parts in his dramas, while their social con- 
 nections rarely fall below the reputable level of the Third 
 Estate which owned the government of Louis Philippe. 
 But with Flaubert, who had seen 1 848 and the coup d'etat, 
 whose manhood was passed under the sway of that uni- 
 versal suffrage which buoyed up for a while the Second 
 Empire, and whose mental training had been acquired 
 through association with the students of experimental 
 medicine and the expounders of positive science, the scen- 
 
 176
 
 EMILE EDOUARD CHARLES ANTOINE ZOLA
 
 Zola 177 
 
 ery changes and new actors mount the boards. His master- 
 piece, "Madame Bovary" (1857), is the panegyric of the 
 shallow, discontented woman, educated above her station 
 in life, who knows no other guide than her emotions and 
 appetites. Her surroundings are ordinary, her acquaint- 
 ances superficial like herself, and like herself seeking each 
 his own material gratification. And her story is told, her 
 downfall traced, with a cold-bloodedness which was for- 
 eign to Balzac, and also in a language to which he rarely 
 attained. For the motto of the new school of realists 
 was an objectiveness which entirely ruled out the person- 
 ality of the author and made him a mechanical recorder of 
 the facts he saw. And united to this realism was a wor- 
 ship of style which made art an end in itsejf, not a means 
 to an end. This school, which is first exemplified in 
 "Madame Bovary," has since received the name of 
 "naturalistic." It claimed to be more faithful to life, to 
 nature, than the school of the earlier realists. 
 
 In the sixties Flaubert's impersonality of observation 
 and desire for artistic composition won disciples in the 
 persons of the De Goncourt brothers. But they indulged 
 in theories, while Flaubert had merely practised. Accept- 
 ing without reservation the Balzac view of physiological 
 man, and the Flaubert example of objective reproduction 
 of facts, they argued that novel writing had passed the 
 stage of romancing, and had erected itself into a science, 
 as exact as medicine, as unimpassioned as history. The 
 first duty of the novelist, therefore, is to reproduce what 
 he sees with the fidelity of a photograph, uncontaminated 
 by reminiscences or by ideas obtained from books. He 
 should also be comprehensive in his facts, and as the nine- 
 teenth century was the century of democracy, he should
 
 178 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 introduce the working classes into romance, and see 
 whether there are misfortunes too low, too ignoble, to be 
 given a literary setting. For the novel "is becoming by 
 its analysis and psychological research, the moral history 
 of contemporaneous society," and what it chronicles 
 should be "true biography like modern historical biog- 
 raphy." Nothing should appear in the book but what 
 took place in the life of the individual represented in the 
 book. No type should be formed by the fusion of homo- 
 geneous traits, as had been Balzac's custom, but each 
 character should be some particular person who passed 
 through the actual experiences narrated. And as the 
 individuals who found their biographers in the De Gon- 
 courts were uneducated, for the most part, and unrefined, 
 we have the story of cooks and unfortunate women, told 
 us with an exactness of details which leaves nothing to be 
 desired. Only they, the authors, abstained from the 
 expressions suitable to the class they depicted. They 
 chose their own words. This reservation was illogical. 
 It contradicted the photographic exactness so loudly pro- 
 claimed. Each character should speak his own language, 
 and not the author's. The De Goncourts' artistic tempera- 
 ment hesitated at this final step. Zola's did not, and 
 with a courage which may or may not be attributed to a 
 desire for notoriety he carried naturalism to its conclusion. 
 Zola was born at. Paris in 1840. His mother was 
 French, but his father came of mingled Greek and Italian 
 stock, was somewhat of a rover, and followed the calling 
 of a civil engineer. At the time of his son's birth he was 
 engaged on a project of supplying the city of Aix, in 
 South France, with water, and when the boy was three 
 years old the family returned to that town, where the
 
 Zola 179 
 
 father died, in 1847. The mother continued to live at 
 Aix, and aided by her parents gave young Zola the educa- 
 tion which was at hand, a private school, followed, in 
 1852, by instruction at the Aix lycee. But the greater 
 part of his patrimony consisted in lawsuits against the 
 municipality. Money was lacking, and in 1858 his 
 mother moved to Paris, and entered her son at the Lycee 
 Saint Louis, near the Sorbonne. The transference of the 
 youth from the open life of Aix to the confinement of 
 Paris seems to have acted on his reserved and liberty- 
 loving nature much as Balzac's school-life had done on his. 
 He proved a poor student, failed to get his degree at the 
 end of the course, and failed again at Marseilles a few 
 months later, near the end of 1859. 
 
 During his school years Zola had shown some aptitude 
 for literary composition, and had written the usual plays 
 and verse of the French lyceen. He was fond of reading. 
 Of the moderns he had begun with Hugo, but soon passed 
 on to Alfred de Musset. Among the older French au- 
 thors Rabelais and Montaigne were his chief delight, and 
 undoubtedly the example of the former incited him to his 
 later coarseness of expression. But he had no way of 
 earning a livelihood by writing, and took a clerkship in a 
 business house, which he held but a few weeks. Now 
 ensued a period of idleness and want. At night he would 
 write, by day he would stroll about the streets, dipping 
 into the second-hand books displayed in such abundance 
 in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Finally he fell into the 
 lowest kind of a lodging house, from which he emerged on 
 his engagement as clerk by the publishing firm of Hachette, 
 in January, 1862. This position relieved him of absolute 
 need, brought him into contact with the outside of books
 
 180 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 at least, and at times into the presence of men of letters. 
 He seems, however, to have derived little benefit from 
 these surroundings, and made few acquaintances who 
 could help him in his literary work. The stories written 
 during this period, collected in 1864 in the "Stories to 
 Ninon," are rather tiresome than otherwise. Still they 
 afford a glimpse of the future Zola, in the close connec- 
 tion they assumed between inanimate nature and man, 
 both products of the same creation, both loving and dying 
 together. 
 
 This volume called some attention to its author, and 
 seems to have opened to him the columns of Parisian and 
 provincial newspapers. It also encouraged Zola in his 
 literary career, and in 1865 he published a novel, "Claude's 
 Confession," which appears to have attracted notice 
 because of its coarseness only. A few weeks after its 
 appearance Zola left Hachette's employ, and was at once 
 engaged by De Villemessant, the proprietor of Le Figaro, 
 to write book notices for a new journalistic venture, 
 L?venement. These notices proved such an attraction 
 that their author was intrusted with the criticisms of the 
 annual picture exhibition also, the "Salon," so called. 
 Here was an excellent chance for self-advertising which 
 Zola improved to the utmost. Attacks on the received 
 canons of painting and the artists in vogue were accom- 
 panied by the exaltation of what is now named "impres- 
 sionism." The scandal was great and the critic became 
 notorious. But a serial story started in the same paper 
 was a failure, and De Villemessant soon dropped Zola 
 from his staff. 
 
 This dismissal took place ir the first days of 1867. 
 Once more Zola found himself reduced to a precarious
 
 Zola 181 
 
 livelihood. He managed to eke out a scanty subsistence 
 by miscellaneous newspaper articles, and a serial which 
 ran for many months in a Marseilles journal, and which 
 was published in book form under the title of "The Mys- 
 teries of Marseilles." It was a compilation of police 
 records, strung along a plot. It was all true, because it 
 was based on legal documents, but its tone was entirely 
 melodramatic the virtuous rewarded, the vicious punished 
 and its animus against the upper social circles evident. 
 Only certain of its phrases and the conception of nature, 
 as an animate being close to man, remind one of the later 
 Zola or rather of the real Zola. In the same year he 
 was slowly finishing a novel, begun in 1866, which does 
 foreshadow his future work. This novel was "Therese 
 Raquin." Its plot was suggested by a novel published 
 in Le Figaro and reviewed by Zola, in which a husband 
 is killed by his wife and her lover. He now renews the 
 interest of the story by showing how the terror of their 
 crime wrecked the nerves of the guilty pair and finally 
 drove them to suicide. 
 
 In "Therese Raquin" we find the essential character- 
 istics of the naturalist school, already exemplified by 
 Flaubert and the De Goncourts. The people in the book 
 belong to the lower classes of Parisian society, they have 
 no other life than the life their appetites grant them. 
 And they own no other law than the law of the flesh. 
 They are animals, endowed with a finer nervous system 
 than the beasts or birds, and this nervous system proves 
 their ruin. In a preface in answer to his critics Zola 
 admits this view of humanity. He is studying tempera- 
 ments, not characters, he declares, and he is studying 
 them from the standpoint of scientific analysis. His
 
 1 82 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 manner is also found in "The"rese Raquin" his sensual 
 descriptions, his favorite phrases. The year 1868 saw 
 another novel in print, "Madeleine Fe"rat," which was the 
 expansion of a play Zola had written in 1865, and which 
 had been refused by the theaters. The success of 
 "The'rese Raquin" was not repeated, but certain ideas 
 of heredity, in which Zola had long been interested, were 
 here developed and prepared for later use. 
 
 Ten years had almost passed in this literary apprentice- 
 ship, and still Zola had not attained fame. Indeed, the 
 talent he undoubtedly possessed had scarcely been recog- 
 nized, obscured as it had been by his tendency towards 
 coarseness and indecency. His direct use of the ignoble 
 term to express what was low had shocked and offended 
 the general public, accustomed to see vice pleasantly 
 garbed. Force was conceded to him, and aggressiveness. 
 Rebuffs had not daunted him. But that he occupied any 
 respectable literary position in 1868 does not seem to have 
 occurred to any one. Zola himself must have been aware 
 of this very limited appreciation of his ability, for he now 
 set to work to justify his ambition. He aimed high. He 
 would be the Balzac of his generation, and paint for it the 
 picture of its life and manners as Balzac had painted his 
 contemporaries of the July Monarchy. And he makes a 
 better plan than Balzac had done. Instead of connecting 
 his various sketches of the society of his day by characters 
 chosen somewhat at random, who reappear in different 
 novels, Zola, acting under the influence of a more exact 
 scientific environment, chooses his connecting links from 
 the chain of heredity. His heroes and heroines will be 
 bound to one another by the ties of blood relationship, a 
 relationship not of brother and sister, as a rule, but of
 
 Zola 1 83 
 
 cousins in the third generation. In other words, he will 
 write the history of a family, but will make that family 
 representative of its neighbors also, and thus will chronicle 
 the France of the Second Empire. 
 
 Zola's science is more exact than Balzac's, as the 
 science of 1860 was more positive and experimental than 
 the science of 1830. In other respects, however, he 
 strongly resembles his great predecessor. He might be 
 called a Balzac of the decadence. For with him physio- 
 logical man is everything, man who differs from the plants 
 and animals which surround him only by being a higher 
 order of creation. From nature man came, to nature he 
 shall return. While on this earth he follows the behests 
 of nature only, his appetites of the body, his passions of 
 the mind, which are gratified by the possession of power. 
 When his race is run he dies as the dog dieth. There is 
 no religion in Zola, not even the superficial religion of 
 Balzac. He is an annihilationist, save as the race works 
 out its own salvation by life following closely on the heels 
 of death. 
 
 Zola differs from Balzac also in the social position of 
 his characters. The Third Estate, which made the French 
 Revolution, had found in Balzac its great apologist. Zola 
 goes deeper. Like Flaubert and the De Goncourts he 
 digs down even to the people, the workmen and the peas- 
 ants, and it is the epic of the proletariat and its successful 
 offshoots pushing their way through the upper strata of 
 society which inspires his pen. So the field of observa- 
 tion is widened. Literature becomes still more demo- 
 cratic, keeping step with the social and political evolution 
 of mankind. The influence of humanity on its individual 
 members is described with greater precision, the effect of
 
 184 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 environment on man's development, as well as the effect 
 on him of his race and epoch. In 1864 Taine had applied 
 these criteria of positivism to his study of English litera- 
 ture, and his example may have influenced Zola in his 
 definiteness. For in his novels strong natures assimilate 
 their surroundings to themselves, weak ones yield to their 
 degrading tendencies. 
 
 With these' theories fully in mind, and with the ambition 
 to force them upon the public only whetted by the partial 
 successes already attained along like lines, Zola, in 1869, 
 undertook his series of the Rougon-Macquart novels, 
 names which represented by their sound another trait of 
 Balzac's the strong and weak sides of the family, and 
 defined the series by the sub-title of the "Natural and 
 Social History of a Family Under the Second Empire." 
 He contracted with a publisher to furnish two volumes a 
 year, and started at once on the initial volume. But vari- 
 ous interruptions, including the catastrophe of the Franco- 
 Prussian War, prevented the carrying out of the mechanical 
 task he had set himself, and it was only in 1 87 1 that the 
 first of the series, "The Fortune of the Rougons," ap- 
 peared. The preface to this book summarizes what has 
 been said: How a family under hereditary impulses, 
 guided by its physical temperament and its environment, 
 a temperament which has for its chief characteristic 
 "overflowing appetites" and desires for self-gratification, 
 starts at the bottom of the social ladder, mounts all its 
 rungs, even to the top, and thus narrates in its various 
 situations the story of the Second Empire "from the 
 ambush of the coup d'etat to the treason of Sedan." 
 
 But another point remains to be noticed. This family 
 is not any family whatsoever. It has a flaw, a taint in its
 
 Zola 185 
 
 blood, an "organic lesion, " which produces certain disturb- 
 ances of the nerves and veins "which determine with the 
 individuals of this race, according to their environment, 
 the feelings, the desires, the passions, all the human 
 manifestations, natural and instinctive, whose products 
 are known under the conventional name of virtues and 
 vices." In other words, the grandmother of all the 
 Rougon-Macquart was an epileptic, who passed among 
 her acquaintances as mildly insane, and whose animal 
 instincts were not repressed by private misgivings or 
 regard for public appearances. One branch of her de- 
 scendants looked back to a grandfather who was a hard- 
 headed, hard-working peasant, the other to an ancestor 
 whose trade was smuggling, a vagabond by nature, and 
 enslaved by drink. So by their blood the unhappy grand- 
 children of either pair were incited to wantonness and 
 bodily enjoyment, unrestrained by ethical considerations, 
 and in many of their number this vicious inclination was 
 coupled with a desire for license and a thirst for liquor. 
 In other words, by his very choice, Zola is consciously 
 limiting his picture of imperial society to exceptional char- 
 acters, persons who do not represent the average of man- 
 kind, but rather its diseased minority, what we now term 
 the degenerate. It is necessary to keep this fact con- 
 stantly in mind in order to reach a clear appreciation of 
 the author's work, and a just comprehension of the extent 
 to which the people of France are portrayed in his suc- 
 cessive volumes. 
 
 For over twenty years, 1871-1893, this self-imposed 
 labor went on regularly, systematically, not so fast as Zola 
 had planned, for it required all that time to publish the 
 twenty books of the series, but quite fast enough for the
 
 1 86 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 public demand. At first the sale of the successive biog- 
 raphies was small, the politician's, the real estate specula- 
 tor's, the priest's, the tradesman's; and Zola was forced 
 to earn his living by newspaper work of various kinds. 
 Still he persevered, regularly, systematically, setting aside 
 the morning hours for sloWj patient composition, as he 
 had once done in the case of "Therese Raquin, " and 
 giving up his afternoon and evening to the pursuit of a 
 livelihood. If the adage labor omnia vincit was ever illus- 
 trated it was in the person of Zola. To hard and con- 
 stant and regular work he not only owes his success, but 
 seems to owe the development of his talent even. Incon- 
 siderable at first, unremitting application seems to have 
 developed it, fashioned it, and qualified its natural strength 
 with breadth and picturesqueness. His imagination ex- 
 panded under the stress, and finally illuminated the details 
 his industry had accumulated. 
 
 His method of preparation was also uniform and regu- 
 lar. As he came to each occupation or profession he was 
 to describe he would gather facts bearing on them, would 
 visit the localities where they were exercised in order to 
 procure the exact setting or scenery, would frequent the 
 people .engaged in them, acquire their ways of speech, 
 their technical terms, notice their garb, their habits, their 
 amusements. He would not disdain the use of books at 
 this time, and would frequent libraries, reading descrip- 
 tions, copying illustrations, or would search into criminal 
 and civil records for instances of typical events, crimes 
 committed by artisans, peasants, strikes organized by 
 miners, financial panics engineered by operators. And 
 when his preparation was complete, his mind impregnated 
 with the surroundings, habits, speech of the people he
 
 Zola 187 
 
 was to paint, he would work out a rough sketch of their 
 characters, their conversation, their connection with one 
 another, the houses, streets, or localities they frequented, 
 and all mechanically constructed, divided into parts, into 
 scenes. Finally, with this full outline before him, he 
 would settle down to the composition, always in the 
 morning, always so many pages of print a day (four or 
 three), no more no less, writing slowly, carefully, without 
 corrections. 
 
 In this way he achieved his purpose. "L'Assom- 
 moir, " which ran in serial form in a newspaper until 
 popular clamor forced it into a review, was published in 
 1877, and Zola was famous. And what is "L'Assom- 
 moir"? It is the story of two of the Rougon-Macquarts, 
 distant relatives, married to each other, who under the 
 influence of the double pressure of temperaments inclined 
 to sensuality and drink, and surroundings fostering the 
 instinctive development of these temperaments, gradually 
 fall from the position of diligent working men and women 
 to the padded cell and the gutter. And the center of 
 their life, the life of the quarter, is "The Assommoir, " 
 the saloon, the meeting-place of the working classes, their 
 solace and their bane. The story is true. Its reality 
 was attested by so many protests from the readers of the 
 newspaper in which it began that they caused its with- 
 drawal. All the events it describes can be proven by 
 documents. But it is not typical. Working people who 
 do not work are few in number. Someone must fashion 
 the vast amount of material things which supply the 
 demands of modern life. 
 
 "L' Assommoir" is not the only striking novel of 
 the Rougon-Macquart series, though it is quite certainly
 
 1 88 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 its masterpiece. Zola continued on his way unmoved by 
 criticism, compliments, or abuse. His next production 
 was less sensational, "A Page of Love," and whatever 
 his purpose, which he asserts was psychological, the book 
 is mainly interesting for the variety of descriptions it con- 
 tains of the city of Paris as seen from the high ground of 
 Passy. Then came "Nana" (1880), devoted to the 
 career of a wanton, with scenes from the boulevard thea- 
 ters and horse races. Other volumes followed of less 
 merit of description and force of plot, until in "Germi- 
 nal" (1885), on miners and mining, Zola again reaches 
 the strength of "L'Assommoir." In "Germinal" we 
 see the beginning of those socialistic theories which were 
 to occupy so large a part of Zola's later writings. "The 
 Earth" (1887), on peasant existence, is powerful in its 
 delineation of the overwhelming passion the agriculturist 
 feels for the land he tills, but its episodes are little else 
 than a succession of sensual and brutal crimes, which rob 
 it of much of its intended merit. Certain scenes revolted 
 many of his strongest admirers, and the appearance of the 
 volume was followed by a public protest against its ex- 
 cesses, to which were appended the signatures of some of 
 the best known writers of the younger generation. It was 
 evident that the limits of "naturalism" had been reached. 
 Zola himself felt the sting of this protest, and at once 
 betook himself to the composition of an idyl, "The 
 Dream" (1888), which would show the world that he 
 could treat other subjects than those which were furnished 
 by vice and degradation. The young girl of "The 
 Dream" who falls in love with the militant saint, pictured 
 in the cathedral window, has sensuous longings, for she is 
 one of the Rougon-Macquart race, but her soul is pure
 
 Zola 189 
 
 and her passion ideal. "The Dream" is an idyl in fact, 
 but from it Zola turns to the crimes of a railroad engi- 
 neer, possessed of the devil of homicide ("The Human 
 Beast," 1890), and the lubricities and swindles of a stock 
 speculator ("Money," 1891). Then came months of 
 preparation for the story of the soldier's life in that crisis 
 of the fatherland, the Franco- Prussian War ("La 
 Debacle" "The Downfall," 1892), where the sacrifice 
 of the armies of France to the political necessities of the 
 Bonapartist dynasty is recited in tones which at times 
 exceed the epic elevation of "Germinal." Finally the 
 concluding volume of the series appears. We follow the 
 career of the philosopher of the family ("Doctor Pascal," 
 1893), and his meditative review of the hereditary ten- 
 dencies so fully displayed in the lives of his more worldly 
 kinsmen. 
 
 The Rougon-Macquart novels remain the great work 
 of Zola. They show his purpose and his manner. He 
 stands or falls with them. The first impression they 
 make as a whole is one of vulgarity and coarseness. 
 Accepting the premises from which they are derived, that 
 they are the history of the lower classes, or rather of a 
 portion of the populace which has inherited evil instincts, 
 that this history is almost wholly physiological, and merely 
 chronicles the doings of the human animal, we neverthe- 
 less cannot deny that the narrative is overcharged with 
 episodes of crime and sensuality. If it is necessary to tell 
 all the ignoble details of a degraded existence in order to 
 make it true to life, perhaps "L'Assommoir" is artis- 
 tically correct. But "Nana" is not, nor "Germinal," 
 where the coarse episodes detract greatly from the real 
 import of the story; nor "The Earth," where these same
 
 190 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 / 
 episodes overpower the excellent conception of the book; 
 
 nor "La Debacle," where they can be entirely passed 
 over, erased, without affecting the narrative in the least. 
 And it is quite useless for Zola to defend his superfluity 
 of vulgarity with the threadbare argument that "every- 
 thing should be said, that there are abominable words as 
 necessary as a cauterizing iron," which he urges in his 
 story of an artist's life ("L'CEuvre," "The Work," 
 1886). The excess of these scenes and expressions, dis- 
 turbing as they often do the action of the plot, proves that 
 the author's artistic sense is often overruled by a natural 
 liking for them, which "Claude's Confession" had fore- 
 shadowed. 
 
 But there is one conception of Zola which he uses to 
 justify this coarseness, a conception of "vast nature 
 eternally in creation, life in short, total, universal life, 
 which goes from one end of the animal kingdom to the 
 other, neither high nor low, neither beautiful nor ugly," 
 that commands our respect, though it entails at times a 
 certain broadness of description. The conception is in 
 essence pantheistic. Man and nature are one. They 
 bloom, mature, and die together. The animal is man's 
 brother. What matters it whether he or the animal is 
 perpetuated, so long as the life of the world goes on from 
 generation to generation? This idea, which lies at the 
 bottom of Zola's best composition, is particularly elabo- 
 rated in one of his earlier stories, "The Sin of Abbe 
 Mouret" (1874), where that priest, wandering one day 
 into a wildwood just expanding under the breath of 
 spring, meets with a child of nature as shy as a bird, and 
 as untrained, loves her amid the flowering of nature, and 
 is reclaimed to duty as the grain yellows to the harvest.
 
 Zola 1 9 1 
 
 And the woodland sprite, abandoned, dies, suffocated by 
 the ripe perfume of those flowers whose buds had taught 
 her love. Here is the elegy. Then comes the grotesque, 
 but which only strengthens the author's argument. As 
 the stricken maiden is lowered into the grave, in the 
 neighboring stable a calf is born. So life continues on the 
 earth. So nature is the mother of all, untiring, resistless, 
 turning the dead into the living. The miners of "Germi- 
 nal, ' ' radiating through the veins of the mine, are merely 
 furrowing the land for a future generation of the just and 
 good. Nature is also beneficent, fertile, providing food 
 for man and beast. 
 
 This notion of nature approaches symbolism, and many 
 of the Rougon-Macquart novels are illustrated by sym- 
 bols. As Hugo had made the great cathedral the central 
 point of his "Notre-Dame de Paris," so Zola expresses the 
 idea of "L'Assommoir, " by the saloon, of "Germinal" 
 by the shaft, which daily swallows up and daily disgorges 
 the population of the whole region, of "Le Ventre de 
 Paris" (1873) by the fish market, of "The Work" by the 
 painting which never satisfies. These symbols are evi- 
 dent. There are others more recondite. The idea of 
 "Nana, " for instance, is in Zola's mind the allegory of a 
 beautiful flower growing on the dunghill of society, which 
 poisons by its exhalations the whole social system. 
 Therefore, if society allows its weaker section to fester in 
 sin and want, it will perish by the miasma exhaled from 
 the corruption. But it must be confessed that this moral 
 application is not suggested by the reading of the novel 
 in question. 
 
 When we look beyond the general conception of Zola's 
 books to the details which form them we see that his
 
 192 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 power lies in his descriptions. His people are too often 
 automatons. They are quite usually eccentricities. They 
 have instincts instead of character. Consequently we are 
 rarely attracted to them, though we may at times deplore 
 their misfortunes. But his descriptions of things and 
 places, of nature in its varying manifestations, of groups 
 of men and the works of man, are not excelled by any 
 writer of his generation. It is interesting to note how he 
 produces his great descriptive effects. He begins with the 
 smallest objects, coins a picturesque expression, the 
 "black ants" of the German armies in "La Debacle" 
 for instance, which he repeats and repeats, enlarging 
 steadily his circle of observation. Then, after one is 
 almost weary of the constant, swelling repetition, after 
 detail has been added to detail, and all the standpoints of 
 view have been occupied, he finally proceeds to sum up 
 the whole picture with a breadth of expression and a 
 sweep of diction which bear us away in admiration. One 
 can compare the process in some degree to the prepara- 
 tion for the crises in a Wagnerian opera. Famous among 
 these descriptions are the fish market in "Le Ventre de 
 Paris." the spring opening in the dry goods store of "Au 
 Bonheur des Dames" (1883), the plains of Beauce rolling 
 mile on mile to the distant horizon ("The Earth"), the 
 Stock Exchange in "Money." The power of his driving 
 style makes material things animate, and raises us at times 
 to the notion of the supernatural, the deified forces of 
 natural religion. And with this strength and vividness 
 goes the poetical, the epic, where we meet with intangible 
 things, the spirits of the invisible. This trait is espe- 
 cially noticeable in "La Debacle." The French army, 
 disorganized, disheartened, led hither and yon without
 
 Zola 193 
 
 reason, learns its doom from the shadows of night: 
 "Hours must have passed, the whole camp black, motion- 
 less, seemed annihilated under the oppression of the vast 
 evil night, where was weighing down that frightful thing, 
 nameless as yet. Quick starts came from a lake of shade, 
 a sudden death rattle was heard in an invisible tent." 
 
 Zola's entire strength between "L'Assommoir" 
 and "Doctor Pascal" was, to be sure, not given to the 
 Rougon-Macquart series. Having bought a place outside 
 of Paris at Medan, he devoted considerable time to the 
 entertainment of guests, the criticism of the works of 
 younger authors. Out of such meetings came at least 
 one book, "The Evenings of Medan," a collection of 
 stories, published in 1880 by Zola and his intimates, 
 which contains Guy de Maupassant's famous "Boule de 
 Suif." For some years he was also correspondent of a 
 Russian newspaper. The articles written for it were 
 afterwards printed in book form in France under the 
 titles of "The Experimental Novel" and "The Naturalist 
 Novelists." He also tried the stage with indifferent suc- 
 cess. His "Assommoir," when dramatized, became a 
 genuine melodrama. Towards 1 888 he began to aspire 
 to a seat in the French Academy, and for years offered 
 himself as a candidate for nearly every vacancy. But he 
 was never elected. 
 
 Early in the eighties Zola had begun to tire of the 
 inevitable end of his documented plots, of his human ani- 
 mals who died like the beasts, without hope of the future 
 on earth or in heaven. Such a solution was becoming 
 more and more unsatisfactory. It explained nothing, led 
 to nothing. And besides, if man ends with the body, why 
 disturb his natural course with considerations of imma-
 
 194 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 terial things? In other words, Zola was looking for a 
 religion which would take the place of the religion he had 
 rejected. Renan had found it in science, Zola found 
 it in work. Work will bring contentment, if not happi- 
 ness, he argues. Therefore, work. This doctrine was 
 preached at the end of "The Work." It became the 
 text for the remainder of the series. And soon there was 
 coupled with this glorification of work the eulogy of life, 
 the life that goes on from one generation to another, the 
 life by which the world will eventually be redeemed, by 
 each generation improving on its predecessor. It is evo- 
 lution expressed in Zola's terms. 
 
 After the Rougon-Macquart series was finished, Zola, 
 then but fifty-three years of age, undertook to formulate 
 this religion. He conceived the idea of substituting it for 
 decadent Christianity, and with this object in view, he 
 composed the trilogy of novels, known as "The Three 
 Cities:" "Lourdes," "Rome," and "Paris." The hero 
 of all three is a priest, who in the three successive volumes 
 tries to revive his waning faith by pilgrimages to the Vir- 
 gin's shrine at Lourdes, miraculous Christianity, the Holy 
 See at Rome, historical Christianity, and finally by philan- 
 thropic work at Paris, private, and organized charity. But 
 his attempt is vain. Christianity can no longer work 
 miracles; it has died in its own capital; it has failed in its 
 mission to unfortunate man. The dispenser of private 
 charity is swindled; organized charity, fashionable and 
 complicated, reaches the recipient too late. Nor is social- 
 ism a substitute for Christianity. Those who try to 
 reform society, especially those who wish to destroy it, 
 the anarchists, injure the weak only. The strong escape 
 their avenging arm. But after all there is a refuge from
 
 Zola 195 
 
 the ills of this world. It is found in work and marriage. 
 And the unfrocked priest, united to a calm and serious 
 helpmeet, holding his child in his arms, looks out from 
 his workshop on Montmartre at the close of day on Paris. 
 "Paris was glowing, sown with light by the divine sun, 
 rolling in its glory the future harvest of truth and justice." 
 Zola had now come to consider himself the adviser and 
 guide for the France of the future, and he was planning 
 a new series, "The Four Gospels," which should preach 
 Fecundity, and a return to tilling the ground, Labor, 
 Truth, and Justice, when an unforeseen event threw him 
 suddenly into the midst of an unprecedented political agi- 
 tation. The scandal occasioned by the Panama catas- 
 trophe had hardly died away in France before a new 
 question arose affecting the honor of the nation, and 
 dividing it into hostile camps. Late in 1894 a captain of 
 the army, Dreyfus, was accused of selling military secrets. 
 He was publicly degraded and sent into solitary confine- 
 ment. Although the secrecy and haste with which the 
 matter had been managed seemed suspicious, the public 
 accepted the verdict without debate. But Dreyfus's 
 friends did not allow the matter to rest. New appointees 
 in military circles found evidences of fraud. It was clear 
 that injustice was being done some one. But nevertheless 
 the affair was being successfully stifled when Zola's atten- 
 tion was attracted to the subject. An investigation led 
 him to the conviction that Dreyfus was an innocent man, 
 and that he was being wronged. He determined to 
 reopen the case by forcing it into the courts, and with 
 that purpose in view, on January 13, 1898, he published 
 in the daily newspaper, DAurore, his famous letter of 
 accusation. All principals and agents in the trial and
 
 196 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 condemnation of Dreyfus were cited by him before the 
 bar of the public conscience. The letter accomplished 
 its purpose. Zola was tried and convicted. He appealed, 
 was tried again, fled to England in order to escape im- 
 prisonment, and remained there a year. Meanwhile new 
 forgeries were being foisted on the French authorities, 
 forgeries which were soon startlingly revealed by confes- 
 sions and suicide. Dreyfus was brought back from his 
 exile, and Zola returned to Paris. 
 
 His appearance in the political arena had interfered 
 but little with his literary work. He brought back from 
 England the manuscript of "Fcondite", " the first of the 
 Four Gospels, and had it published at once, in 1899. In 
 1901 "Travail" ("Labor") appeared, and in 1902 
 "Verite" (Truth"). But its author did not live to see it 
 in book form. Returning to Paris from Medan, late in 
 September of that year, he had a coal fire made in order 
 to warm his apartment. Gas escaped from a defective 
 flue, and the next morning, September 29, 1902, he was 
 found asphyxiated beyond resuscitation. His attitude in 
 the Dreyfus affair, which had suggested the plot of 
 "Ve'rite, " made of his funeral a notable event, and in the 
 eyes of many this act of patriotic courage has gone far to 
 atone for the unwonted license of his works of fiction.
 
 Zola 197 
 
 Preface to the Rougon-Macquart Series in ""The Fortune 
 of the Rougons" 
 
 I wish to explain how a family, a small group of beings, acts 
 in a.given society, expanding so as to give birth to ten, twenty 
 individuals, who appear at first glance to be profoundly unlike, but 
 whom an analysis shows closely bound to one another. Heredity 
 has its laws, like gravitation. 
 
 I shall try to find and follow, in solving the double question of 
 temperaments and environments, the thread which mathematically 
 leads from one man to another. And when I hold all the threads, 
 when I have a whole social group in my hands, I will show this 
 group at work, an actor in an epoch of history, I will create it 
 acting in the complexity of its efforts, I will analyze at the same 
 time the amount of the will of each of its members and the general 
 tendency of the whole. 
 
 The Rougon-Macquarts, the group, the family I propose to 
 study, has as a characteristic the overflowing appetites, the broad 
 upheaval of our age, which rushes towards enjoyment. Physio- 
 logically, they are the slow succession of variations in nerves and 
 blood which show themselves in a race in consequence of a primary 
 organic lesion; and which determine in each of the individuals of 
 that race, according to his environment, the feelings, desires, 
 passions, all the human manifestations, natural and instinctive, 
 whose products take on the conventional names of virtues and 
 vices. Historically they start with the populace, they spread into 
 contemporaneous society in its entirety, they rise to all positions 
 through that essentially modern impulse which the lower classes 
 receive on their way through the social body, and thus they tell the 
 story of the Second Empire, by means of their individual dramas, 
 from the ambuscade of the coup d'c'tat to the treason of Sedan. 
 
 For three years I had been collecting documents for this 
 great work, and the present volume was even written when the 
 fall of the Bonapartes, which as an artist I needed, and which I 
 always found logically at the end of the drama, without daring to 
 hope it was so near, came to give me the terrible and necessary
 
 198 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 > 
 
 solution to my work. This work is now complete. It moves in a 
 rounded circle. It becomes the picture of a dead reign, of a 
 strange era of madness and of shame. 
 
 This work, which will form several episodes, is then in my 
 mind the Natural and Social History of a Family Under the 
 Second Empire. And the first episode, "The Fortune of the 
 Rougons," should be called by its scientific title, "The Origins." 
 
 The March of the Striking Miners, from "Germinal" 
 
 [The strikers on their way to close up mines which were still 
 working, reach the house of the company's superintendent.] 
 
 Twilight was already filling the darkening room with gloom, it 
 was five o'clock, when an uproar made M. Hennebeau start, dazed, 
 motionless as he was, his elbows still buried in the midst of his 
 
 papers The tumult increased, a cry burst forth, a terrible 
 
 cry, at the moment he drew near the window. 
 
 "Bread! Bread! Bread!" 
 
 .... The women had appeared, almost a thousand women, 
 with streaming hair, disheveled by their march, with rags which 
 showed their bare flesh, the nudities of women weary of bearing 
 children to die of hunger. Some held their little ones in their 
 arms, bore them aloft, waved them, like a flag of mourning and of 
 vengeance. Others, younger, with Amazonian breasts, brandished 
 clubs. While the old women, frightful, shrieked so fiercely that 
 the cords of their skinny necks seemed to be breaking. And the 
 men rolled down after them, two thousand mad workmen, .... 
 a compact mass which rolled along in a single block, pressed 
 together, commingled, to such an extent that you could not dis- 
 tinguish the faded trousers nor the ragged woolen jackets, blotted 
 out in the same ashy uniformity. Their eyes burned, you only 
 saw the holes of their black mouths singing the Marseillaise, 
 whose stanzas were lost in a confused roar, accompanied by the 
 clacking of wooden shoes on the hard earth. Above their heads, 
 among the bristling iron bars, an axe stood up, carried high in air. 
 And this solitary axe, which was like a standard for the band, had 
 the sharp outline of a guillotine's knife in the bright sky. 
 
 f . . . Anger, hunger, those two months of suffering and this
 
 Zola 199 
 
 mad rush over and through the coal-pits had lengthened the placid 
 faces of the Montsou miners into jaws like those of wild beasts. 
 At this moment the sun was setting, its last rays reddened the 
 plain with their dark purple blood-stain. Then the road seemed 
 flowing with blood, women and men went on galloping, bloody as 
 slaughtering butchers. 
 
 It was the red vision of the revolution which would sweep all 
 away, beyond recovery, on some bloody evening of the century's 
 wane. Yes, some evening the people, let loose, would gallop thus 
 unrestrained along the highways. And it would drip with the 
 blood of the burghers, it would carry their heads along with it, it 
 would scatter the gold of their broken chests. The women would 
 howl, the men would have those wolfish jaws open to bite. Yes, 
 it would be the same rags, the same thunder of heavy shoes, the 
 same fearful mob, with dirty skin and pestilential breath, sweeping 
 away the old world under their overwhelming rush of barbarian 
 hordes. Fires would flame up, not a stone of the cities would be 
 left standing, all would return to wild woodland life after the 
 great passion, the great revelry, in which the poor in a night would 
 wear down the women and empty the cellars of the rich. There 
 would be nothing left, not a sou of the fortunes, not a title of rank 
 and office, until the day when perhaps a new earth would blossom 
 forth again. Yes, it was these things which were going by, like a 
 force of nature 
 
 A great cry arose, sounded above the Marseillaise. 
 
 "Bread! Bread! Bread!" 
 
 The World 1 s Future Belongs to the Working Class 
 (From the Closing Pages of ''Germinal " ) 
 
 [The strike has failed through violence and want. All the 
 miners have gone back to work. Their leader takes leave of them 
 as [they enter the pit, and goes away, consoled for the future by 
 his thoughts and reviving nature.] 
 
 Etienne took the Joiselle road to the left. He remembered he 
 had prevented the marching miners from attacking Gaston-Marie. 
 Far away in the bright sunshine he could see the belfrys of several 
 coal-pits, Mirou on the right, Madeleine and CrevecuL-ur side by
 
 2OO Ten Frenchmen 
 
 side. The work was everywhere rumbling on, the strokes of the 
 miners' picks which he thought he could hear in the depths of the 
 earth were now rapping from one end of the plain to the other. 
 One stroke, and another stroke, and always strokes, under the 
 fields, the roads, the villages laughing in the light, all the hidden 
 work of these underground galleys, so crushed down by the enor- 
 mous mass of rocks that you must know they were there under- 
 neath you in order to perceive their great dolorous sigh. And 
 now he was thinking how violence did not perhaps advance things. 
 Cut cables, torn up rails, broken lamps, what a useless task that 
 wasl Forsooth, they were well worth the trouble of galloping 
 three thousand strong in a devastating band ! Vaguely he was 
 divining that some day legal forms might be more terrible. His 
 reason was ripening; he had sowed the wild oats of his grudges. 
 Yes, Maheude, with her good sense, had well said that this would 
 be the thing to do : to enroll quietly, become acquainted with one 
 another, get together in associations, when the law should allow. 
 Then, the day when you felt your comrades close beside you, 
 when you found yourself, working millions, face to face with a 
 few thousand idlers, seize the power, become the masters. Ah! 
 what an awakening of truth and justice! The satiated, unwieldy 
 god would be done to his death at once, that monstrous idol, 
 hidden in the depths of his tabernacle, in that far-off unknown, 
 where wretches were feeding him on their flesh, without having 
 ever seen him. 
 
 But Etienne, leaving the Vandame road, was coming out on 
 the paved turnpike. To the right he could see Montsou strag- 
 gling down its hillside, dying away from sight. Opposite were the 
 mines of the Voreux shaft, the accursed hole at which three pumps 
 were unceasingly working; then there were the other pits on 
 the horizon, Victory, Saint Thomas, Feutry Cantel; while towards 
 the north the lofty towers of the high furnaces and the files of coke 
 ovens were smoking in the quiet air of the morning. If he didn't 
 want to miss the eight o'clock train he should hurry, for he still 
 had six kilometers to cover. 
 
 And under his feet the deep, obstinate strokes of the picks 
 continued. His comrades were all there, he could hear them fol- 
 lowing him at every stride. Wasn't that Maheude under that bed
 
 Zola 20 1 
 
 of beets, her back bent double, and her breath ascending so 
 hoarse, accompanied by the puff of the ventilator? To the left, 
 to the right, farther on he thought he recognized others, under the 
 grain, under the quickset hedges, under the young trees. Now 
 the sun of April was streaming down in its glory from the high 
 heaven, warming the earth in her travail. From her maternal flank 
 life was gushing forth, the buds were bursting into leaf, the fields 
 were quivering with the shooting stalks. On every side the seeds 
 were swelling, reaching forth, cracking the plain, driven on by a 
 need of warmth and light. Sap was flowing full with whispering 
 voices, the noise of germs was rising in a great kiss. Again, 
 again, more and more distinctly, as though they had come nearer 
 to the upper soil, his comrades were tapping. In the blazing rays 
 of the great star, on that morning of youth, this noise was filling 
 the countryside. Men were pushing up from the earth, a black, 
 avenging army, slowly sprouting in the furrows, growing for the 
 harvests of the future ages, and their germination was soon to 
 cleave the earth asunder. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 mile Zola. R. H. Sherard. 
 mile Zola. E. A. Vizetelly. 
 
 See also article on Zola and Dreyfus in Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 
 LXXXI, pp. 589 ff.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 [JOSEPH ERNEST RENAN, born at Treguier, Brittany, February 27, 
 1823; educated in seminaries at Treguier (1830-1838) and 
 Paris (1838-1845); tutor, 1845; mission to Italy, 1850; assist- 
 ant in the National Library, 1851; mission to Palestine, 1860; 
 professor of Hebrew at the College de France, 1862; elected 
 to the Academy, 1878; administrator of the College de France, 
 1884; died at Paris, October 2, 1892. Chief works: "Aver- 
 roes and Averroism," 1852; "General History and Compara- 
 tive System of the Semitic Languages," 1855; "Life of 
 Jesus," 1863; "Philosophical Dialogues and Fragments," 
 1876; "Recollections of Childhood and Youth," 1883; "His- 
 tory of the People of Israel," 1887-1894.] 
 
 The scientific spirit which the nineteenth century had 
 inherited from the eighteenth gained impetus with its pro- 
 gressing decades. It had begun with the French disciples 
 of Locke, philosophers and essayists. With them it 
 rarely passed the bounds of speculation. Towards the 
 French Revolution, however, it seems to have been on 
 the point of extending itself, of leaving the domain of 
 theory for the field of practical investigation. The physi- 
 cal sciences felt this extension, chemistry, botany, zoology, 
 physiology. After the turmoil of the Empire had settled, 
 and men were once more free to give themselves over to 
 the vocations of peace, concrete application of the scien- 
 tific idea became more and more evident. Under the 
 influence of the great scholars of Germany this spirit 
 invaded all branches of learning and renewed their method 
 
 302
 
 JOSEPH ERNEST RENAN
 
 Renan and Biblical Criticism 203 
 
 and vitality. Literature also recognized its sway. We 
 have seen how Balzac based the plan of "The Human 
 Comedy" on the new zoological theories of his day. 
 Before him even, in 1827, the novelist Stendhal had 
 lamented the utilitarian tendency of the age. In the pre- 
 face to his story of "Armance, " he had said: "We need 
 thrifty management, stubborn labor, solidity, and heads 
 from which every illusion is absent, in order to turn the 
 steam engine to account. Such is the difference between 
 the century which ended in 1789 and the one which began 
 towards 1815." And once again in the story itself: 
 "Since the steam engine has become the queen of the 
 world a title is an absurdity." So Stendhal's hero, a 
 noble by birth, wishes he were a chemist. And Sten- 
 dhal's perception was correct. His tentative prophecy was 
 borne out by subsequent facts. The heroes of the nine- 
 teenth century were chemists, physicists, biologists. 
 
 Ernest Renan, too, belongs among the scientists, 
 though it is somewhat difficult to assign him his proper 
 category. He was in turn a philologist, a historian, a 
 critic, an author. He confesses to a fundamental faith 
 in mathematics and physical induction, and had he studied 
 the natural sciences thinks he might have reached some 
 of Darwin's conclusions. There is, in fact, a curious 
 likeness between the English scholar and the French, 
 engaged though they were in wholly different occupations. 
 It is a likeness based on their mentality, the authority 
 which reason exercised over them both, and their passion 
 for objective truth. Therefore, by whatever name Renan 
 may be designated as a writer, he was primarily a scien- 
 tist. The story of his life narrates to a considerable 
 extent the progress of pure science in France.
 
 1O4 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 He was born at Tre"guier, in the old province of Brit- 
 tany, on February 27, 1823. His father was a native of 
 the country, a mariner and trader. His mother was of 
 Gascon parentage, like D'Artagnan of "The Three 
 Musketeers." This mixture of race is used by Renan to 
 explain his twofold character much as Hugo had made 
 his parentage responsible for his political views. The 
 Breton was sad, dreamy, the Gascon merry, gay. "This 
 complex origin," he says, "is, I believe, the cause, to a 
 great extent, of my apparent contradictions. I am double ; 
 sometimes one part of me laughs when the other is weep- 
 ing. As there are two men in me there is always reason 
 for one of them to be satisfied." His father was drowned 
 when Ernest was but five years old, and an older sister, 
 Henrietta, became the mainstay of the family. At the 
 age of fifteen she set up a school in Tre"guier, and earned 
 enough by it to give her brother a steady subsistence. 
 Through her and the local clergy he began his education 
 in a religious seminary of the town, an education that was 
 curiously behind the times, dating perhaps from the seven- 
 teenth century, but which gave him, notwithstanding, a 
 thorough drill in mathematics. He studied well, absorbed 
 himself in dreams and books, took many prizes, and finally 
 was chosen to recruit a school newly established in Paris. 
 Thither he went in September, 1838, and there he "saw 
 things. as new to me as if I had been suddenly thrown into 
 France from Tahiti or Timbuctoo." 
 
 The transfer from Treguier to Paris was vital in 
 Kenan's experience. He had left behind him simple- 
 minded priests, whose lives were passed in training the 
 middle and lower classes of a devout population Brittany 
 and its neighbor, the Vendee, have ever been the strong-
 
 Renan and Biblical Criticism 205 
 
 hold of French Catholicism. In his new seminary of 
 Saint Nicholas du Chardonnet, just intrusted to the bril- 
 liant Abbe Dupanloup, a man of the world, devoted to his 
 creed and party, but a clerical dilettante rather than a 
 profound theologian, he was to meet students drawn from 
 the most promising of the aspirants to Church orders in 
 France, mingled with the aristocratic scions of the old 
 nobility. The school was a fashionable one. On the 
 clerical side it was destined to train future priests in good 
 manners as well as piety. Renan's sensitive soul was at 
 once aware of the change. "My coming to Paris was a 
 passing from one religion to another. My Breton Chris- 
 tianity no more resembled the Christianity I found 
 here than an old canvas hard as a plank resembles 
 
 percale It was the most serious crisis of my life. 
 
 It is hard to transplant a young Breton. The keen moral 
 repulsion I felt, complicated by an entire change in adminis- 
 tration and habits, gave me a most terrible fit of home- 
 sickness." He fell ill from the confinement, which 
 followed so close upon the open life at Treguier. He 
 poured out his loneliness in tender letters to his mother. 
 But this melancholy of the heart soon vanished with 
 the illness it had caused. Renan's intellect was stimu- 
 lated by the literary education of the seminary, where 
 even the director talked romanticism and classicism. The 
 course in history, which included selections from Michelet, 
 fascinated his ear and brain. "Thus the century gained 
 access to me through all the cracks of a broken cement. 
 I had come to Paris morally formed, but as ignorant as 
 possible. I had everything to learn. I found out with 
 astonishment that there were serious and learned laymen. 
 I saw that something existed outside of antiquity and the
 
 206 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 Church, and especially that there was a contemporaneous 
 literature worthy of some attention." The result of this 
 training, in which the refinement of Virgil held quite as 
 much place as the dogmas of Scripture, and where knowl- 
 edge of the world was deemed of quite as much importance 
 as familiarity with Church history, altered the purity of 
 Kenan's faith and aroused in his soul a rival to the Chris- 
 tianity which had wholly occupied it. Still he did not 
 doubt. 
 
 In 1841, after three years' residence at Saint Nicholas, 
 Renan entered the seminary of St. Sulpice as a candidate 
 for priestly orders. The first two years of this novitiate 
 were passed outside of Paris, at Issy. There he studied 
 a little natural history, which gave him his first inkling of 
 genuine science, and a great deal of philosophy of the 
 rationalistic sort. Always of a shrinking, meditative dis- 
 position Renan now gave himself almost bodily to books, 
 reading the philosophers, especially Descartes, his disciple 
 Malebranche, Locke, Leibnitz. In this reading he lost 
 all faith in abstract metaphysics: "Positive science re- 
 mained the sole source of truth for me. The scientific 
 spirit was the basis of my nature." What he learned of 
 physical science showed him the insufficiency of spiritual 
 doctrines: "An eternal fieri, an endless metamorphosis, 
 seemed to me the law of the world." And yet he still 
 was a believing Christian. The example of others, par- 
 ticularly of Malebranche, who made the physical world an 
 attribute of God, known to the mind only through God in 
 whom all things are, held him back from unbelief. But 
 all at once the logical consequences of these views came 
 to light. It was the custom to train the future priests in 
 theological argument. This was an exercise Renan thor-
 
 Renan and Biblical Criticism 207 
 
 oughly enjoyed. His reasoning ability easily got the 
 better of his adversaries. Church dogmas when assailed 
 by him found but a moderate defense. One evening, 
 after such a debate, he was reproached for his fondness 
 for study by one of his instructors. Research was use- 
 less, he was told: "Everything essential has been found 
 out. Science does not save souls. And becoming more 
 and more excited, he exclaimed to me, with an accent full 
 of passion, 'You are not a Christian!' " But this judg- 
 ment, though a true one, had for the time being no other 
 result than Kenan's sincere distress. 
 
 After Issy it was the turn of the seminary in Paris, 
 where the study of Hebrew was begun. The classes were 
 conducted by a scholar well versed in German exegesis, 
 and unaffected by its heterodoxy. This man found in 
 Renan a most enthusiastic pupil. He taught him the 
 other Semitic languages also, and put his library at his 
 disposal. The lectures at the College de France were 
 also open. Renan at once showed great aptitude for 
 philology. The world of science revealed itself to him. 
 He learned German with the intention of pushing his new 
 studies further. It was another epoch in his life: "The 
 peculiar intellectuality of Germany at the end of the last 
 century and in the first half of this [nineteenth] made a 
 vivid impression on me. I thought I was entering a 
 temple. That was what I was seeking, the reconcilia- 
 tion of a highly religious with the critical spirit." But 
 he could not justify this reconciliation to himself. He 
 was too rigorously scientific. If the Bible was divine it 
 must be infallible everywhere. But Renan saw in the 
 Bible contradictions, blunders, errors, and his logic forced 
 him to unbelief in the inspiration of the Scriptures. He
 
 208 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 had learned from his favorite philosopher, Malebranche, 
 to subordinate everything to reason, and that "the duty of 
 man is to put himself before the truth," and let himself 
 follow wherever truth may lead. He went this way and 
 soon found his reason pitted against his faith. The con- 
 sequences, for his scientific temperament, were inevitable. 
 He renounced the priesthood. 
 
 It was during the summer vacation of 1845, spent in 
 Brittany, that he finally decided on this momentous course. 
 His sister, whose sympathy had never failed him in all his 
 experiences and emotions, came once more to his support 
 with an offer to defray his expenses for further independ- 
 ent study at Paris. His masters of St. Sulpice were sur- 
 prised at the revelation of his mind, but agreed with him 
 in his purpose. His mother was grieved, for she could 
 not understand his feelings. Her sorrow was her son's 
 severest trial. After one or two experiments at a liveli- 
 hood he settled down as a tutor in a private school attached 
 to one of the Paris lycees. Here again he was to meet 
 with a new inspiration. Among the pupils of the school 
 was Marcellin Berthelot, the future chemist, but four years 
 younger than Renan. A close and lifelong friendship 
 joined the two together from the very outset. Berthelot, 
 plunged in the study of natural sciences with all the ardor 
 of a new disciple, overflowed with the spirit of scientific 
 investigation, which sought for truth through physical 
 induction. Renan was no less scientific in his pursuit of 
 linguistic verities. Each reacted on the other, and but a 
 few months were needed to finish the destruction of every- 
 thing in their minds which implied faith. "The affirma- 
 tion that everything in the world is of one and the same 
 color, that there is nothing supernatural or revealed by a
 
 Renan and Biblical Criticism 209 
 
 special revelation, forced itself on our minds in an abso- 
 lute fashion. The clear scientific view of a universe, 
 where there is no free will at work in any appreciable 
 manner which is superior to the will of man, became, 
 with the first months of 1846, an immovable anchor for 
 us which has never dragged." 
 
 But the strength of Kenan's previous training was 
 equally irresistible. Had he never entered St. Sulpice, 
 had he given himself over to the study of natural 
 science on leaving Issy, he thinks he might have made a 
 reputation of like kind to Darwin's. But St. Sulpice had 
 interested him in the history of the Christian religion. 
 "The studies I had begun at the seminary had so absorbed 
 me that I thought of nothing else than to take them up 
 again. One occupation only seemed worthy to me of 
 filling up my life; it was the continuation of my critical 
 researches on Christianity through the wider means which 
 were placed at my disposal by secular learning." He 
 was aware that his criticism of texts reflected his former 
 belief. At first conservative it always remained Catholic, 
 literary, temperate, in contradistinction to the Protestant 
 criticism of the German universities. And for these 
 qualities, and others of character and manner, he was 
 ever grateful to his teachers of St. Sulpice. 
 
 With his change of vocation Renan had left his old 
 friends. The years found him new ones. The distin- 
 guished scholars of the capital soon recognized his talent. 
 In 1847 he competed for the Volney Prize for the best 
 philological essay, and won it with the embryo of his 
 future history of the Semitic languages. In 1848 he won 
 another prize for an essay on Greek, and contributed to 
 the periodical La Liberte de Penser, founded in that year,
 
 2io Ten Frenchmen 
 
 an article on "The Origin of Languages" which he after- 
 ward revised and published in book form (1858). He 
 also began a treatise to be called "The Future of 
 Science," which did not see the light till 1890, but which 
 furnished a chapter to La Liberie de Penser, in 1849. 
 More important perhaps for his career was a monograph 
 on "The Critical Historians of Jesus," published in the 
 same periodical, severely attacking Strauss 's "Life of 
 Jesus," and foreshadowing Kenan's own famous biog- 
 raphy. Other literary work and a short service as substi- 
 tute professor of philosophy at the Versailles lyce"e 
 increased his reputation in scientific circles. In 1850 
 he was given a commission to explore in behalf of the 
 government the libraries of Italy. His particular duty 
 was to report on any rare Syriac and Arabic manuscripts 
 he might find or documents relating to mediaeval French 
 literature. 
 
 This trip to Italy, while unimportant in the history of 
 Kenan's thought, did not remain without influence on his 
 literary expression. Italian art and civilization appealed 
 to his naturally refined temperament and increased the 
 value he had always set on outward form and style. The 
 information gathered during the mission he also turned to 
 good use. In order to attain the degree of Doctor of 
 Letters in France, it is necessary to submit two disserta- 
 tions, one in Latin and one in French. In 1852 Kenan 
 came forward as a candidate equipped with the proper 
 literary baggage. His French dissertation, the volume 
 published under the title of "Averroes and Averroism, " a 
 treatise on mediaeval Moslem philosophy in its relations 
 with the scholasticism of Europe, while abounding in 
 facts and most learned in conception, was so simply and
 
 Renan and Biblical Criticism 211 
 
 pleasantly written that it appealed to the literary world, 
 as well as to the world of science. It extended its author's 
 reputation as a scholar across the boundaries of France. 
 
 The Revolution of 1848 could not fail to interest a 
 mind so alert and open to impressions as Kenan's. He 
 hailed it much as the republicans of 1789 had welcomed 
 the dawn of the French Revolution. The people at last 
 were to come into the possession of their own. Democ- 
 racy was to triumph under the leadership of reason. 
 Science was to inculcate truths which should lead all 
 classes to a higher moral and mental plane, while manual 
 labor and culture would go hand in hand. These were 
 the utterances of Renan in the first enthusiasm of his new- 
 found ideal. Wider experience with men and acquaint- 
 ance with other peoples of different ethical views were 
 afterwards to change his position regarding the best prac- 
 tical state, if not to modify his governmental ideal. To 
 him as to many others of the best minds in France the 
 coup d'etat of December 2, 1851, was to prove a bitter 
 grief. 
 
 In 1851 his subsistence was assured by an appointment 
 to the department of Oriental manuscripts at the National 
 Library. His sister Henrietta, who had been teaching 
 abroad, had returned to France the year before, and was 
 now keeping house for her brother in the Rue du Val de 
 Grace. The light duties required of him at the library 
 left him abundant leisure for private work, and the results 
 soon appeared in his dissertations already noticed, and his 
 first great work, the "General History and Comparative 
 System of the Semitic Languages," which appeared in 
 1855, an expansion of the Volney prize essay of 1847. 
 Here Renan buttresses his illuminating theory of the
 
 212 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 fundamental difference between the Aryan and Semitic 
 races, a difference not of language only, he claims, but 
 also of religion. The peoples of the former race were 
 polytheists, worshiping the powers of nature. The 
 Semitic peoples were monotheists. They created Juda- 
 ism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism, and forced these 
 last two creeds on the Aryans. The Institute at once 
 crowned this book and elected him to the Academy of 
 Inscriptions and Belles Lettres. In the same year of this 
 election (1856) he married the niece of Ary Scheffer, the 
 distinguished painter, through whose personality and 
 surroundings the poetic side of Kenan's temperament, 
 already aroused by his Italian mission, was further devel- 
 oped. A constant contributor to the Journal des De'bats 
 and the Revue des Deux Mondes, with articles and essays 
 on all kinds of subjects, religious, historical, philological, 
 his style had become perfected until it combined ease, 
 simplicity, and grace with unusual flexibility of expres- 
 sion. Many of these essays were published in book form, 
 in his "Studies of Religious History" (1857), and his 
 "Ethical and Critical Essays" (1859). In 1858 he 
 revised his journalistic article of ten years previous, and 
 published it under the title "On the Origin of Language." 
 In 1859 a translation of the book of Job saw the light, 
 together with a discussion of its period and spirit. In 
 1860 the Song of Solomon was edited, arranged as a pas- 
 toral drama. 
 
 This year of i860 was a notable one in Kenan's career. 
 Through the mediation of mutual friends he received a 
 commission from the government to explore the territory 
 once known as Phoenicia, collect its inscriptions, and 
 investigate its monuments. It was October when he
 
 Renan and Biblical Criticism 213 
 
 reached Beirut. He visited Palestine, saw the land once 
 trod by the Savior's feet, looked on the hills and valleys, 
 lakes and rivers, which had listened to his voice, and at 
 last began the long-cherished project of telling the story 
 of his life. Hardly had the first draft of this volume been 
 written when he and his sister, who was with him, were 
 stricken down with fever. She died in September, 1861. 
 He lived to profit by her devotion and perpetuate his 
 gratitude in a most tender and beautiful memorial, which 
 was first published after his death. To her was dedicated 
 also the "Life of Jesus," that appeared in 1863. Her 
 influence on him had been early exerted, and proved 
 lasting. 
 
 Election to a professorship followed close upon Kenan's 
 return to Paris. For some years the chair of Hebrew 
 had been vacant at the College de France. It had been 
 a post long coveted by Renan, ever since his attendance 
 on courses there, while a student at St. Sulpice. When 
 the government asked the nominating faculties of the 
 College and Institute for candidates, they both placed 
 Renan first on the list. In January, 1862, he was ap- 
 pointed. The government had taken a hazardous step. 
 Renan's contributions to general literature, and his ver- 
 sions of Job and the Song of Solomon, had made his name 
 and career familiar to all the educated public. And it 
 was a career which was bound to meet with the disap- 
 proval of the orthodox in religion, especially of the digni- 
 taries of the Church, one of the mainstays of the Second 
 Empire. Caution, therefore, was advisable for the new 
 incumbent, who in a certain sense was a representative of 
 the government and responsible for his words to the ruling 
 powers who had given him his office. That caution was
 
 214 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 not exercised. His opening lecture in February was 
 delivered before a large audience. He took for his sub- 
 ject his theory of the religious difference between the 
 polytheistic Aryans and the monotheistic Semites, and the 
 great debt owed by the former to the latter. They might 
 even have forced Judaism on the western world, he said, 
 had not Judaism been re-formed into Christianity at the 
 critical moment by one who had reached the greatest 
 religious height ever attained by man, so great that Renan . 
 would not "wish to contradict those .... who call him 
 God." Later came the Moslem creed, hostile to science 
 and civilization, which must disappear before the new 
 religion Europe was to proclaim, the religion of science, 
 which advocates liberty and human rights. At the close 
 of this address the lecturer was led home in triumph by 
 his sympathizers. But the clericals, aroused by the 
 denial of the deity of Christ, and also by a passage which 
 foretold of the separation of Church and State, carried 
 their cause to the Tuileries, and Kenan's course of lec- 
 tures was quickly suspended. However, he continued to 
 give instruction at his house to all students who desired it. 
 As may be supposed, the publication of the "Life of 
 Jesus," a year afterwards, did nothing to allay the hostil- 
 ity excited by this lecture. For it was a decided affirma- 
 tion of the statement already made that Christ was the 
 greatest of men, the man nearest God, and yet a man. 
 The book is the consummation of a purpose to reconsti- 
 tute the life of this man, in his surroundings, his teach- 
 ings, and his ways. The result is little short of wonderful. 
 Through his visit to the places mentioned in the Gospels, 
 his faculty of calling up before himself the scenes and 
 people of Judea and Galilee, and his appreciation of the
 
 Renan and Biblical Criticism 215 
 
 character of Christ's mission and its historical significance, 
 Renan has succeeded in placing before us the living, 
 breathing personality of the Great Teacher. The founder 
 of Christianity passes from the realm of the abstract into 
 the domain of the real, the tangible. 
 
 In the "Life of Jesus" Renan combines those qualities 
 which have made him one of the most stimulating of his- 
 torians. We see in its pages a profound erudition 
 which searches into meanings of the texts which contain 
 the historical material in this case the Gospels, the Old 
 Testament prophecies, Jewish records, early Christian 
 traditions, and the like a logical alertness which 
 enables him to induce conclusions of actual scientific 
 value, an imagination which, tempered by criticism, fills 
 up the gaps in his narratives, paints portraits, interprets 
 symbols, and a style, simple, expressive, luminous. 
 There is little wonder that such a subject, treated by such 
 a man, should have produced a work of unusual power 
 and steadily widening influence. The demand for the 
 "Life of Jesus" was immediate and great. It pleased, 
 to be sure, neither the strictly orthodox nor the skeptics, 
 yet it gave light to many believers who sought for a more 
 real foundation for their faith, and by its reverential 
 reasonableness held many back from the aridity of 
 agnosticism. 
 
 These results, however, which obtained with the moder- 
 ate, were only an offense to the extremists of either 
 party. In 1864 the Church authorities procured Renan's 
 dismissal from his professorship and he was left dependent 
 on his own resources. These had profited by the popu- 
 larity of his last volume, and were sufficient to enable him 
 to continue his scientific pursuits. His intellectual activ-
 
 216 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 ity was not in the least lessened, and an article which soon 
 appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes on the ultimate 
 reign of science through progressive evolution, a reign in 
 which the good and true will forever annihilate the evil 
 and false, proved to many of his countrymen a new incen- 
 tive to virtue and self-sacrifice. 
 
 The "Life of Jesus" was the first part of a general 
 treatise on the origins of Christianity, which Renan now 
 prepared to continue. As he had visited Palestine in view 
 of his initial volume he now followed the journeyings of 
 the apostles over the Mediterranean. The results of this 
 journey, added to his usual scientific research and text 
 criticism this time on the Acts of the Apostles and St. 
 Paul's Epistles appeared in 1866 in "The Apostles," 
 and in 1869 in "St. Paul." The historical value of both 
 works does not fall beneath the worth of their predeces- 
 sors in the series, and Kenan's interpretation given to the 
 services of St. Paul in rescuing the new religion from the 
 constraints of Judaism constitutes an important chapter in 
 the history of the early Church. 
 
 At the same time other interests were appealing to 
 Renan. The practical bent of his disposition had long 
 before drawn his attention to the study of political and 
 social conditions. In a collection of articles published in 
 1868 under the title of "Questions of the Day" he goes 
 so far as to discuss the state of public affairs in France. 
 He opposes the temporal power of the pope, supported at 
 that time by French bayonets, and criticizes the foreign 
 policy of the government. In 1869 he offered himself as 
 a candidate for the Corps Legislatif on a platform of 
 peace and progress, freedom of the press and a continua- 
 tion of the Empire. He was defeated by both a republi-
 
 Renan and Biblical Criticism 217 
 
 can and a conservative imperialist, but continued to advocate 
 a constitutional monarchy. He was strongly opposed to 
 the war with Prussia. He knew the Germans were 
 superior to the French in military affairs as well as in 
 science, and besides he wished to cultivate a national 
 friendship with the people whose scholarship had formed 
 so large a part of his own inspiration. 
 
 The Commune he detested. While it was sinking in 
 blood, in May, 1 87 1, he penned at Versailles the larger 
 part of his "Philosophical Dialogues and Fragments." 
 During the short period of the Franco- Prussian War he 
 had been engaged in a patriotic controversy with his 
 former idol, Strauss, and after the treaty of peace was 
 signed, in 1871, he appealed to France to profit by her 
 misfortunes and rise to better things. His ideal state 
 now was a king upheld by a devoted aristocracy, and 
 aided by men of learning. For universal suffrage, the 
 suffrage of the plebiscites, he had learned to have little 
 regard. Socialistic experiments, accompanied as they had 
 been by violence and civil strife, he would guard against 
 by a series of colonizing expeditions which should employ 
 this dangerous energy in the useful task of subjecting 
 inferior races to the rule of the higher. 
 
 In 1873 Renan continued his history of the origins of 
 Christianity with a fourth volume, "The Antichrist," 
 which dealt with the visit of St. Paul to Rome, Nero's 
 persecution of the Christians, the belief that the emperor 
 had not died, but would soon return from the East to 
 harry them again the Antichrist of St. John's Reve- 
 lation and finally the destruction of the Temple at 
 Jerusalem, the last tie which bound Christianity back to 
 Judaism. In 1877 a fifth volume appeared, on the com-
 
 2i 8 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 position of the Gospels by the converts of the apostles, 
 "The Gospels and the Second Generation of Christians," 
 and in 1879 a sixth, "The Christian Church," a history 
 of the heresies following the composition of the Gospel 
 according to St. John and of the persecutions under the 
 Antonines. In the meantime, in 1875, ne had recruited 
 his wavering health by a trip to Sicily, had published (in 
 1 876) his "Dialogues," written during the Commune, and 
 composed a philosophical drama on democracy protecting 
 science ("Caliban," 1878). The "Dialogues" once more 
 affirmed his belief in evolution, a progress in which physics 
 and chemistry would be leading factors, and in the resur- 
 rection of all consciences that had ever existed at the end 
 of the world. There runs, however, through all these 
 writings an ever- widening vein of pessimism. Is the final 
 goal of nature really good, after all? Is it worth while 
 to try to elevate the mass of mankind? Much of this dis- 
 couragement was no doubt due to the Franco-Prussian 
 War, which transformed in Kenan's mind the intellectual 
 German into a brutal warrior, and to the Commune, which 
 had defiled by its very touch the principles of liberty, 
 equality, and fraternity, it had so loudly advocated. 
 
 In 1880 Renan crossed the Channel for the purpose of 
 delivering the annual lectures of the Hibbert Foundation. 
 His subject was taken from the pages of the "Origins of 
 Christianity." Soon after his return to France he issued 
 the concluding volume of this series, "Marcus Aurelius" 
 (1882), in which the reforms and the philosophy of the 
 great emperor, his persecution of the Christians, the final 
 constitution of the Church on the basis of the authority 
 of the bishops, and the history of that Church in outline, 
 are discussed, together with a prophecy that the Church
 
 Renan and Biblical Criticism 219 
 
 will become independent of the state, and finally unite its 
 most progressive children with liberal Protestants and 
 Jews in a common, pure, and true religion. Though his 
 years were increasing, and his health waning, evidences 
 of his literary and scholarly activity became greater and 
 greater. In 1883, at the age of sixty, he wrote the story 
 of his early life up to the years which followed his separa- 
 tion from the Church ("Recollections of Childhood and 
 Youth"), an autobiography where he shows the reasons 
 for his change of faith. In 1878 he had been elected to 
 the French Academy, and during the eighties was more 
 than once called upon to welcome still younger members. 
 Two of his discourses on these occasions are especially 
 noteworthy, one in 1882, greeting Pasteur, whose life 
 devotion to science so much resembled his own, and one 
 in 1885, congratulating De Lesseps on the achievement 
 of the Suez Canal which, however, he did not admit to 
 be a work of peace, but rather a fresh cause for the rivalry 
 of nations, who would make it their objective point in case 
 of war. He continued his philosophical dramas, in an 
 Epicurean spirit, it must be admitted, which disconcerted 
 the more serious of his admirers, translated the pessimistic 
 book of Ecclesiastes, published new collections of essays, 
 and delivered addresses, official and private. In 1884 he 
 was elected administrator of the College de France, and 
 took up his residence in that building, where his recep- 
 tions gathered together the artists and scholars of the 
 French capital. With a revival of interest in his native 
 soil he attended a celebration held the same year in his 
 honor at Trguier, and soon afterwards purchased a sum- 
 mer residence on the coast of Brittany. 
 
 In this secluded spot, far away from the bustle of Paris,
 
 220 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 he found leisure to plan the great work of his closing days, 
 the "History of the People of Israel," which appeared in 
 five volumes, from 1887 to 1894. The undertaking was a 
 greater one than his "Origins of Christianity," for it 
 covered the whole period comprised by the books of the 
 Old Testament and their sequels down to the birth of 
 Christ. But German criticism proved a more efficient aid 
 here than in the former work, and Renan brought to it the 
 same marvelous erudition, the same philosophical argu- 
 mentation, and the same wealth of imagination which had 
 characterized the history of the early Church. He affirms 
 again the monotheistic religion of the Semites as opposed 
 to the polytheistic worship of their Aryan neighbors, 
 dwells on the strife which existed for centuries between 
 the adherents of the Elohim, the myriad manifestations 
 of the one divine presence, a universal deity, and the 
 partisans of Jehovah, the national deity of Israel, whose 
 attributes encouraged self-seeking, race prejudice, war 
 with the foreigner, and abhorrence of his contact. It was 
 two talented authors, representatives of each of these 
 factions, who, in the ninth century before Christ, united 
 the legends of the people with the traditions of their con- 
 quests into separate narratives tinged with their partisan- 
 ship, and it is their accounts, combined with each other 
 under the reign of Hezekiah, two centuries later, which 
 form the greater part of Old Testament history. 
 
 But these records would have proved of little im- 
 portance and would have passed into merited oblivion 
 had they not been supplemented by the utterances of 
 a new school of prophets which appeared near the be- 
 ginning of the eighth century with the prophet Amos. 
 Amos proclaims Jehovah a universal God, not a tribal,
 
 Renan and Biblical Criticism 221 
 
 Hebrew deity, a God who created the world and guides 
 it, whose attributes are justice and mercy. Subse- 
 quent reactions of national feeling reduced the bound- 
 aries of this deity's beneficence, but the spirit of the 
 prophets survived among the few, breaking out now 
 and again, and culminating in the world-wide morality and 
 religion of the last of their succession, the Messiah, the 
 Prince of Peace. With him narrow Judaism was finally 
 merged in the broader Christianity, which in turn will 
 fade away before its descendant, Socialism. Liberty of 
 the individual, which Jesus proclaimed, will remain, an 
 acquired good, but its continuance will be bought by 
 concessions granted by it to the rights of the community. 
 In the future political and national questions will occupy 
 less and less attention, social questions more and more. 
 
 It is significant of Renan's real nature that his great 
 works end with a forecast of humanity's future. Like the 
 great prophets of Israel, whom he so admired, his soul 
 was only temporarily bowed down by sorrow and dis- 
 couragement. In the preface to his "Recollections of 
 Childhood and Youth" he had regretfully admitted the 
 advent of the rule of the multitude, the "Americaniza- 
 tion," as he termed it, of the nations, but universal 
 vulgarity once allowed he found in it a hope for the con- 
 tinuance of scientific investigation, of research after the 
 truth, under better conditions than in the more aristo- 
 cratic administrations of the past. In the body of the 
 book, indeed, he had rather disclaimed any liberal views 
 of government: "I would willingly resign myself," he 
 says, "if the occasion should offer (and I must say that it 
 grows more and more distant each day), to serve for the 
 greater benefit of poor humanity, so wrecked at the pres-
 
 222 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 ent time, a tyrant who would be philanthropic, learned, 
 intelligent, and liberal." And in the last year of his 
 life, in an essay on God and the visible universe, while 
 reaffirming that nothing within our finite comprehension 
 reveals the intervention of a superior power into nature, 
 he admits that there may be an infinite universe to which 
 ours is subordinated, and in which the intervention of a 
 God may be the rule. The "kingdom of God," foretold 
 by Christianity, may become some day a reality, and the 
 world now ruled by blind unconsciousness may in the 
 future be governed by a consciousness which is supremely 
 good and supremely just. Then wrong will be suppressed, 
 and "every tear be dried. 'And God shall wipe away all 
 tears from their eyes.' ' Thus with hope for a future 
 state in which he could not rightly believe, amid severe 
 physical pains, but preserving the lucidity of his mental 
 faculties to the last, Renan passed away in the College de 
 France on October 2, 1892. A state funeral was accorded 
 his remains, which were finally deposited in the Pantheon. 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF RENAN 
 
 Translations from "Recollections of Childhood and 
 Youth" 
 
 [He is about to leave Issy for St. Sulpice. History and natural 
 science studies.] 
 
 It was decided, therefore, that after my two years of "phi- 
 losophy" I should enter the seminary of Saint Sulpice in oider to 
 study theology. The flash which ; had lighted up for a moment 
 M. Gottofrey's mind [that Renan was no longer a Christian] had 
 failed to produce any results. But to-day, at thirty-eight years 
 of distance, I recognize the great penetration he showed. He 
 alone was clear sighted, for he was a genuine saint. I surely 
 regret now that I did not follow his admonition. I should have
 
 Renan and Biblical Criticism 223 
 
 left the seminary without having studied Hebrew or theology. 
 Physiology and the natural sciences would have attracted me. 
 But I can safely say it the extreme ardor which those vital 
 sciences excited in my mind makes me believe that had I culti- 
 vated them regularly I should have reached several of Darwin's 
 results, of which I had a glimpse. I went to Saint Sulpice, I 
 learned German and Hebrew; that changed everything. I was 
 drawn towards the historical sciences, petty conjectural sciences 
 which are undone as soon as formed, and which will be neglected 
 in a hundred years. Indeed, we are witnessing the dawn of an 
 age in which man will no longer accord much interest to his past. 
 I am very much afraid that our exact contributions of the Acad- 
 emy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, destined to give a certain 
 definiteness to history, will decay before they are read. It is 
 through chemistry at one end of the ladder, through astronomy at 
 the other, it is through general physiology especially that we 
 really attain the secret of being, of the world, of God, as they 
 wish to call him. My lifelong regret is that I chose for my 
 studies a kind of research which will never reach conclusions, but 
 will always remain in a state of interesting considerations about a 
 reality gone forevermore. But so far as the exercise and pleasure 
 of my thought were concerned, I certainly chose the better part. 
 At Saint Sulpice, in fact, I was placed face to face with the Bible 
 and the sources of Christianity. In the following account I will 
 tell with what ardor I set about this study, and how by a series of 
 critical deductions, which forced themselves onto my mind, the 
 foundations of my life, such as I had understood it to be up to 
 that time, were wholl" overthrown. 
 
 From the Preface to the ' ' Recollections of Childhood and 
 Youth.'" On the Americanization of Europe and the 
 Future of the Universe 
 
 On the whole, it is quite possible that the American kind of 
 society, towards which we are advancing, whatever our form of 
 government may be, will not be more unendurable for intellectual 
 people than the social conditions we have passed through, which 
 offered better guaranties. We will be able to make quite calm
 
 224 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 retreats for ourselves in such a world. "The era of mediocrity is 
 beginning in all things," said recently a talentedjthinker (Amiel). 
 "Equality engenders uniformity, and it is by sacrificing the excel- 
 lent, the remarkable, the extraordinary that we get rid of the bad. 
 Everything becomes less uncouth; but everything is more vulgar." 
 At least we may hope that vulgarity will not turn persecutor of free 
 thought so quickly. Descartes, in that brilliant seventeenth cen- 
 tury, found himself nowhere so well off as at Amsterdam, because 
 "everybody there being engrossed in trade" no one bothered 
 about him. Perhaps general vulgarity will some day be the con- 
 dition of the happiness of the elect. American vulgarity would 
 not burn Giordano Bruno, would not persecute Galileo. We have 
 no right to be very hard to suit. In the past, in the best of times, 
 we have been no'more than tolerated. We shall surely obtain this 
 tolerance at least from the future. A limited democratic govern- 
 ment is, as we know, prone to be vexatious. Still intellectual 
 people live in America, provided they do not exact too much. 
 "Touch me not," is all we must ask of democracy. We shall yet 
 pass through many alternatives of anarchy and despotism before 
 we find repose in that golden mean. But liberty is like truth. 
 Almost no one cares for it for itself, and yet, on account of the 
 impossibility of extremes, we always return to it. 
 
 Let us, then, without being disturbed, allow the destinies of 
 the planet to be fulfilled. Our cries won't do any good; our ill 
 humor would be out of place. It isn't certain that the earth will 
 not fail of its destiny, as innumerable worlds have probably done. 
 It is even possible that our times may be an epoch which is con- 
 sidered to be the highest point, beyond which humanity will only 
 decline. But the universe does not know discouragement. It 
 will begin again, and endlessly again, the ill-fated task. Each 
 failure leaves it young, alert, full of illusions. Courage, courage, 
 nature ! Like the deaf and blind starfish, which vegetates at the 
 bottom of the ocean, pursue thy obscure life labor. Be persistent. 
 Repair for the millionth time the broken mesh of the net, make 
 over the auger which bores to the last limits of the attainable the 
 well whence living water will gush forth. Aim and aim again at 
 the mark thou hast missed since eternity began. Try to steal into 
 the imperceptible hole of the orifice which leads to another sky.
 
 Renan and Biblical Criticism 225 
 
 Thou hast infinite space and infinite time for thy experiment. 
 When one has the right to make mistakes with impunity, success 
 is always sure. 
 
 " The Life of Jesus" 
 (Dedication.) 
 
 To the pure soul of my sister Henrietta, dead at Byblos, Sep- 
 tember 24, 1861. 
 
 Do you remember, in the bosom of God, where you are rest- 
 ing, those long days at Ghazir, where alone with you, I wrote 
 these pages inspired by the places we had visited together? 
 Silent by my side you read over each page and copied it as soon 
 as it was written, while sea, villages, ravines, mountains, unrolled 
 themselves at our feet. When the blinding light had given way to 
 the innumerable army of stars,'your keen and subtle questions 
 your prudent doubts, would lead me back to the sublime object of 
 our common thought. One day you told me you would love this 
 book, in the first place because you had helped make it, and also 
 because it pleased you. If you sometimes feared the narrow 
 judgments of frivolous people on it, you were always sure that the 
 souls of the truly religious would finally like it. In the midst of 
 these sweet communings death struck both of us with his wing. 
 The sleep of fever seized us both at the same hour. I awoke 
 alone! .... You are sleeping now in Adonis's land, near holy 
 Byblos, by the sacred waters where the women of the ancient 
 mysteries came to mingle their tears. Reveal, good genius, to me 
 whom you loved those truths which rule over death, prevent our 
 fearing it, and almost make us love it. 
 
 From the Last Chapter of the ' ' Life of Jesus. ' ' The 
 Essential Character of Jesus' Work 
 
 Jesus' activity, as we have seen, was never exerted outside the 
 circle of the Jews. Although his sympathy for all those scorned 
 by the orthodox inclined him to admit pagans into the kingdom of 
 God, although he resided more than once in pagan territory, and 
 once or twice we find him in kindly relations with unbelievers, we 
 may say that his entire life was passed in the little shut-up world 
 where he was born. Greek and Roman countries did not hear of
 
 226 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 him. His name is not found in profane writers until a century 
 later, and then in an indirect way, in connection with seditious 
 movements provoked by his teaching, or persecutions of which 
 his disciples were the object. In the bosom of Judaism even 
 Jesus did not make a very lasting impression. Philo, who died 
 towards 50 A.D., has no suspicion of him. Josephus, born in 37, 
 and writing in the last years of the century, mentions his execution 
 in a few lines, as an event of secondary importance. In the enu- 
 meration of the sects of his day he omits the Christians 
 
 The essential work of Jesus was to create a circle of disciples 
 around him, in whom he inspired a limitless attachment, and in 
 whose bosom he placed the germ of his doctrine. To have made 
 himself loved "to such a degree that they did not cease to love 
 him after his death," this is the master work of Jesus and the 
 thing which struck his contemporaries the most. His doctrine 
 was something so lacking in dogmatism that he never thought of 
 writing it down or having it written down. Men became his dis- 
 ciples, not by believing this or that, but by attaching themselves to 
 his person and loving him. Some sentences soon taken down 
 from memory, and especially his moral type and the impression 
 he had left were what remained of him. Jesus is not a founder 
 of dogmas, a maker of symbols; he is the one who initiates the 
 
 world into a new spirit To cling to Jesus in view of the 
 
 kingdom of God, that was what was first called being a Christian. 
 In this way we understand how pure Christianity, by an excep- 
 tional destiny, still presents itself at the end of eighteen centuries 
 with the character of a universal and eternal religion. It is 
 because in fact the religion of Jesus is in some respects the defini- 
 tive religion. The product of a perfectly spontaneous movement 
 of souls, freed at its birth from all dogmatic constraint, having 
 struggled three hundred years for liberty of conscience, Chris- 
 tianity, in spite of the relapses which have followed, still reaps the 
 fruits of this excellent origin. To be renewed it has only to revert 
 to the Gospel. The kingdom of God, as we conceive it, differs 
 notably from the supernatural apparition which the first Christians 
 hoped to see burst forth in the clouds of heaven. But the senti- 
 ment which Jesus introduced into the world is truly ours. His 
 perfect idealism is the highest rule for a self-renunciating and vir-
 
 Renan and Biblical Criticism 217 
 
 tuous life. He has created the heaven of pure souls where is 
 found what we in vain ask for from the earth, perfect nobility of 
 God's children, absolute purity, total separation from the world's 
 uncleanness, liberty finally which actual society excludes as an 
 impossible thing and^which reaches its whole amplitude only in 
 the domain of thought. The great master of those who take refuge 
 in this ideal kingdom of God is Jesus still. He first proclaimed 
 the royalty of _the mind. He first said, by his acts at least, "My 
 kingdom is not of this world." The foundation of true religion 
 is indeed his work. After ^him nothing remains to be done but 
 develop and fructify. 
 
 The Final Paragraphs in ''Marcus Aurelius." On the 
 World's Future 
 
 What is beyond all doubt is that whatever be the religious 
 future of mankind, Jesus' place in it will be very great. He was 
 the founder of Christianity, and Christianity remains the bed of 
 the great religious stream of humanity. Tributaries coming from 
 the most opposite' points of the horizon have mingled there. In 
 this meeting of waters no one source can now say, "This is my 
 tide." But let us not forget the primitive brook of the origins, the 
 mountain spring, the headwaters, where a river which afterwards 
 became broad as the Amazon, at first ran along in a fold of 
 ground no wider than a step. It is the picture of this head 
 stream that I have wished to draw, fortunate if I presented in its 
 truth the sap and the vigor there was on those high peaks, the 
 sensations, now warm, now icy, the life divine, the intercourse with 
 heaven ! The creators of Christianity rightly occupy the first rank 
 in the homage of humanity. These men were very inferior to us 
 in their knowledge of the real, but they had no equals in convic- 
 tion, in devotion. And yet this is what founds things. The 
 solidity of a structure is in proportion to the amount of virtue 
 that is to say, of sacrifice which has been placed in its founda- 
 tions. In this edifice which has been ruined by time what excellent 
 stones, moreover, which might be employed again just as they 
 are to the profit of our modern buildings ! What will teach us an 
 unshaken hope in a fortunate future better than messianic Judaism,
 
 228 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 faith in a brilliant destiny for humanity, under the government of 
 an aristocracy of just men? Is not the kingdom of God the 
 complete expression of the final end which the idealist pursues? 
 The Sermon on the Mount remains its finished code. Reciprocal 
 love, gentleness, goodness, disinterestedness, will always be the 
 essential laws of the perfect life. The association of the weak is 
 the legitimate solution of the greater part of the problems which 
 the organization of humanity raises. On this point Christianity 
 can give lessons to all the ages. The Christian martyr will remain 
 to the end of time the typical defender of the rights of the con- 
 science. In short, the difficult and dangerous art of governing 
 sc^ils, if it is taken up some day, will be taken up on the basis of 
 models furnished by the first Christian doctors. They possessed 
 secrets which we shall learn in their school only. There have 
 been more austere professors of virtue, more unyielding perhaps, 
 but there have never been such masters of the science of happi- 
 ness as they. The soul's delight is the great Christian art, to 
 such a degree that civil government has been obliged to take pre- 
 cautions that men may not bury themselves in it. Fatherland and 
 family are the two great natural forms of human association. 
 Both of them are necessary, but they could not suffice. We must 
 maintain [by their side the place of an institution where one may 
 receive nourishment for the soul, consolation, advice, where 
 charity may be organized, where spiritual teachers may be found, 
 a spiritual guide. This is called the Church. We shall never get 
 rid of it, unless we wish to reduce life to a despairing aridity, espe- 
 cially for women. What we are concerned about is that ecclesi- 
 astical society may not weaken civil society, that liberty be one 
 and undivided, that the Church does not wield temporal power, 
 that the state pay no attention to it, either to control it or foster 
 it. During two hundred and fifty years Christianity gave perfect 
 models of these small and free associations. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Ernest Renan. Sir M. E. Grant Duff. 
 Life of Ernest Renan. F. Espinasse. 
 
 Renan. F. Brunetiere, in Warner's "Library of the World's 
 Best Literature," Vol. XXI.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 PASTEUR AND THE GERM THEORY 
 
 [Louis PASTEUR, born at Dole, December 27, 1822; educated at 
 Arbois (1829), Besancon (1839), and the Ecole Normale 
 at Paris (1843) ; assistant professor of Chemistry in the Uni- 
 versity of Strassburg, 1849; full professor, 1852; dean of the 
 Faculty of Sciences at Lille, 1854; director of sciences at^he 
 Ecole Normale, 1857; professor of Geology and Chemistry at 
 the Ecole des Beaux- Arts, 1863; professor of Chemistry at 
 the Sorbonne, 1867; pensioned by the government, 1875; 
 elected to the French Academy, 1881; Pasteur Institute 
 founded, 1888; died at Villeneuve 1'Etang, September 28, 
 1895. Chief discoveries : Molecular dissymmetry of crystals, 
 1848; fermentations, 1857; spontaneous generations, 1862; 
 diseases of wine, 1865: silkworm disease, 1868; studies on 
 beer, 1876; vaccine virus, 1881; prophylactic for hydro- 
 phobia, 1885.] 
 
 While the nine'teenth century witnessed the rapid 
 strides of the natural sciences the one nearest the heart 
 of humanity, the science of medicine, was advancing with 
 faltering steps. The reason for this lagging is now clearly 
 seen. For many centuries disease had been treated theo- 
 retically, with remedies prepared beforehand and applica- 
 ble to nearly all forms of illness. With the discovery of 
 the circulation of blood by William Harvey in the seven- 
 teenth century, observation began to be substituted for 
 theory. So fast as the minds of practitioners could be 
 freed from prejudice the symptoms of different kinds of 
 maladies were noted, and experiments tried to meet their 
 
 229
 
 230 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 peculiar conditions. Though much good was accom- 
 plished in this way, by discontinuing the use of harmful 
 prescriptions and allowing nature to follow her own 
 course, though the patient in many cases was relieved 
 from unnecessary torture and his vitality given a fair 
 chance to assert itself, yet the disease was not stopped, 
 nor even scotched in its first stages. In other words, the 
 mere observation of the phenomena of disease and the 
 deductions made from them produced really negative 
 results. Something which should go behind the symp- 
 toms and reach their hidden causes was essential to any 
 forward movement. So medicine was forced to wait on 
 the progress of the other sciences, chemistry, biology, 
 physiology, even physics, and it was only in the last half 
 of the nineteenth century that these allies were ready to 
 come to its aid. 
 
 In the light of these facts it should be no matter of 
 surprise to us, that one of those investigators, who have 
 most contributed to the advancement of medical knowl- 
 edge in the past thirty years, should begin his career as a 
 devotee of the natural sciences and always hold the official 
 title of professor of chemistry, and that the discoveries 
 and inventions which have entered into the daily life of 
 nearly every household in Christendom should be made by 
 a student whose researches were first directed towards 
 problems of a purely theoretical nature. It is not neces- 
 sary to name Louis Pasteur. 
 
 Pasteur was born in 1822 at Dole, in the Jura Moun- 
 tains, the son of a Napoleonic veteran, decorated on the 
 battle-field, who had retired to the homely vocation of a 
 tanner. When the child was two years old the family 
 moved to Arbois, and it was there that he first attended
 
 Pasteur and the Germ Theory 231 
 
 school. For a while his father was more ambitious than 
 he. He desired to see his son a teacher in this petty insti- 
 tution, but young Pasteur seemed to prefer an outdoor 
 existence and the drawing pencil to the use of books. 
 However, as he grew older his interest became awakened. 
 When he reached the limit of instruction at Arbois he was 
 sent to Besancon, where he took his baccalaureate in 
 1840. Appointed tutor in the school on graduation, he 
 began to devote himself to mathematics, got all the chem- 
 istry which the teacher and the town apothecary could 
 give him, and prepared for the examination in science at 
 the Ecole Normale at Paris. Failing in 1842 to pass with 
 as high a grade as he wished he went to Paris, entered a 
 private school, and in October, 1843, entered the Ecole 
 Normale with improved standing. His taste for chem- 
 istry had grown. The courses at the school and the 
 Sorbonne were open to him. His toil was unremitting, 
 his progress rapid. 
 
 One of the lecturers at the Ecole Normale was devoted 
 to the study of molecular physics, and communicated this 
 enthusiasm to his pupil. With a mind full of the subject, 
 the announcement in 1844 by the German chemist, 
 Mitscherlich,' of an unexplained difference in regard to 
 the polarization of light between two apparently like sub- 
 stances, the paratartrate and the tartrate of soda and 
 ammonia, attracted Pasteur to the investigation of crys- 
 tals. Availing himself of experiments made on rock- 
 crystal years before, he entered on a series of tests, and 
 after long months of patient effort, discovered that the sub- 
 stances mentioned by Mitscherlich were not alike in the 
 disposition of the atoms in their molecules. This discov- 
 ery, which affirmed the theory of molecular dissymmetry,
 
 232 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 has proved of great value to chemical science, and 'a 
 quarter of a century later led to the foundation of what is 
 now called stereo-chemistry. Pasteur's results were made 
 known in 1848. His three years at the cole Normale 
 had expired in 1846, but he had remained as assistant in 
 the laboratory. 
 
 In 1848 he was appointed professor of physics at the 
 Dijon lyce"e, but after three months' service was trans- 
 ferred to the University of Strassburg as assistant pro- 
 fessor of chemistry. Here he continued his work on 
 molecular dissymmetry, verifying with other substances the 
 results already reached with soda and ammonia. All this 
 study lay in the domain of theoretical science. But 
 Pasteur's mind was such that practical results were quite 
 sure to follow in the steps of theory. They came about 
 in this way. A firm of chemists had noticed that impure 
 tartrate of lime in contact with organic matter fermented 
 in warm weather. Pasteur's attention being attracted to 
 this fact, he began experimenting with one of the ammonia 
 tartrates, and produced fermentation by mixing it with 
 albumen. An examination of the mixture revealed the 
 presence of a microscopic organism, small living cells, 
 which were afterwards shown to produce the fermenta- 
 tion. Following up this test with a similar one on the 
 paratartrate of ammonia, he discovered that the organism 
 destroyed some of the crystals and did not affect others. 
 This discovery has proved of great importance to the 
 science of bacteriology, proving as it does that substances 
 which are chemically alike may be very different physio- 
 logically. 
 
 Pasteur's practical bent was further stimulated by a 
 change of residence. After being made full professor at
 
 Pasteur and the Germ Theory 233 
 
 Strassburg in 1852, he was appointed, in 1854, dean of 
 the Faculty of Sciences in a new institution at Lille, with 
 the commission to organize the work. Lille is a manu- 
 facturing center, and Pasteur saw the advisability of bring- 
 ing his school into touch with local industries. Among 
 these latter was the manufacture of alcohol from beet root 
 and grain. Pasteur at once offered a course of lectures 
 on fermentation. He had already convinced himself that 
 ferments, contrary to the generally received opinion, are 
 living things, and the so-called ferments, as yeast, are 
 really the especial food of ferments. The changes they 
 produce in a substance, which often is apparently putrefy- 
 ing, are therefore not chemical but physiological. They are 
 replete with life, not with death. Various investigations 
 confirmed these opinions, especially one connected with 
 the souring of milk. For in the solid matter which is 
 deposited during this process, Pasteur found minute rod- 
 like corpuscles, wholly unlike the yeast cells of alcoholic 
 fermentation. Taking some of these corpuscles and plac- 
 ing them in a mixture of dissolved sugar, yeast, and chalk, 
 he found that they multiplied and produced fermentation. 
 Carrying on this process from one substance to another, 
 but always providing the chemical element which gave the 
 corpuscles food, he finally showed that brewer's yeast is a 
 living organism, whose growth is accompanied by the 
 conversion of sugar into alcohol and carbonic anhydrid. 
 These conclusions on the fermentation of milk and alco- 
 holic fermentation were published in 1860, and mark the 
 first step in the science of bacteriology. 
 
 Meanwhile he had left Lille, in 1857, for his old insti- 
 tution, the Ecole Normale, where he was made director 
 of sciences, and where we have seen Thiers among his
 
 234 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 pupils. In one of the garrets of the school he had set up 
 an apology for a laboratory. Pursuing his studies in fer- 
 mentation, he had not only reached the results already 
 noted, but had further demonstrated 4 , by experiments on 
 butyric acid, that exposure to the air, to a large supply of 
 oxygen, stops the fermenting process in certain sub- 
 stances. The conclusion was at once drawn, that besides 
 the living beings which need free oxygen in order to live, 
 there are other beings whose power of respiration is such 
 that they can live by robbing certain compounds of their 
 oxygen, thus decomposing them. This class would be 
 represented by the ferments, and the most active ferments 
 are those which can live without free air. The tremen- 
 dous part played by these micro-organisms, "microbes" as 
 we now call them, was at once manifest. They destroy 
 the old and produce the new, preserving the world from 
 decay and death. 
 
 But Pasteur was now turned aside from following out 
 the consequences of these great discoveries by matters of 
 a minor though pressing importance. In the first place, 
 he had to combat a revival of the theory of "spontaneous 
 generation," which claimed that life could originate spon- 
 taneously. In 1860 the Academy of Sciences had offered 
 this question as a subject for a prize competition. Pasteur 
 set about the task of reaching a definite solution, and in 
 1862 demonstrated in the presence of the Academy itself 
 that the theory was not tenable, and that substances sub- 
 jected to certain temperatures come to show entire lack 
 of life. 
 
 The same year of 1862 saw Pasteur once more occu- 
 pied with the problem of fermentation, the vinegar vats of 
 the manufactories at Orleans furnishing him the material
 
 Pasteur and the Germ Theory 235 
 
 for his researches. He showed the vinegar-makers that 
 the conversion of wine into vinegar was caused by a minute 
 organism requiring free oxygen, which could be cultivated, 
 and by its cultivation greatly reduce the time required for 
 vinegar fermentation. From experiments with vinegar he 
 was naturally led to a consideration of the diseases which 
 affect the production of its "raw material," wine, The 
 wine growers were having much difficulty with their vine- 
 yards. The wine in many cases spoiled on their hands. 
 Pasteur discovered in some wines, in addition to the regu- 
 lar yeast cells of fermentation, a microscopic organism 
 which was absent from the good wines. He suggested 
 raising the wines thus affected to a certain temperature, 
 which should be sufficient to stop the growth of the bac- 
 teria and yet preserve the native flavor of the wine. This 
 process of partial sterilization, now known by the term 
 "Pasteurization," has already proved of the greatest 
 benefit to humanity, notably in the case of milk. And its 
 application to provisions of a perishable nature may be 
 said to be still in its infancy. 
 
 In 1863 Pasteur added to his position at the Ecole 
 Normale ,the professorship of geology and chemistry at 
 the School of Fine Arts. The new post in no way inter- 
 fered with his assiduous daily attendance at his laboratory, 
 nor in the prosecution of his favorite studies. But in 
 1865 he was called upon to give them up for the time 
 being and begin another line of work. The silkworm 
 disease had attained the proportions of a national calamity 
 in France. The regions given over to the cultivation of 
 raw silk had been practically ruined. As long before as 
 1857 the government had sent Pasteur's old teacher at the 
 Sorbonne, Dumas, to the stricken localities to examine
 
 236 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 into the situation. But he had been unable to suggest 
 remedies. In 1865 the question again became urgent. 
 Dumas had done his best. He fell back on Pasteur. The 
 latter objected to abandoning his experiments on fermenta- 
 tion, but finally yielded to pressure, and once more shifted 
 his specialty, this time to the field of entomology. He 
 knew nothing at all about the subject, but profiting by the 
 reports of predecessors aifd his own observation on the 
 spot, he decided that the root of the trouble lay in minute 
 corpuscles which were present in large numbers in the 
 bodies of the diseased worms. How they came there 
 was the question. Unexpected obstacles baffled for a 
 while the investigator, and even turned him into the 
 wrong way, but finally his persistent toil and concentra- 
 tion of purpose won the victory. He reached the conclu- 
 sion that the disease was due to a parasite, that this 
 parasite first existed in the moth which laid the eggs 
 which hatched into worms. By pounding the body of the 
 moth in a mortar, mixing the dust with water, and ex- 
 amining the liquid thus formed under a microscope he 
 discovered the same organism which had been noticed in 
 the worms. It was absent from healthy moths. All that 
 was necessary, therefore, was to persuade the silkworm 
 growers to examine the moths under a microscope and 
 separate the healthy ones from the diseased. This is 
 what is done to-day. In ferreting out the origin of this 
 disease Pasteur discovered the existence of another, which 
 attacks the worms after they have grown. For this also 
 he suggested remedies. 
 
 Rewards followed the success of this work. In 1868 
 the University of Bonn conferred on him the honorary 
 degree of Doctor of Medicine. The same year the Aus-
 
 Pasteur and the Germ Theory 237 
 
 trian government awarded him a prize which had been 
 offered for the extermination of the disease among silk- 
 worms, and in 1869 he was elected a foreign member of 
 the Royal Society of London. Napoleon III offered him 
 the Prince Imperial's estate near Trieste for further ex- 
 perimentation with the worms, and in July, 1870, nomi- 
 nated him to the Senate of the Empire. His book on 
 "Silkworm Diseases," published in 1870, was dedicated 
 to Empress Eugenie. 
 
 But such results had not been reached without much 
 self-sacrifice. In 1866 his wife and daughters had joined 
 him at Alais, in southern France, near which town he was 
 experimenting. One of the children developed typhoid 
 fever there and died. In the autumn of 1868 anxiety 
 over the outcome of the investigations, coupled with over- 
 work, brought on an attack of paralysis, from the effects 
 of which his body never fully recovered. But his mind 
 remained clear, and as soon as he could be moved, he 
 insisted on returning to the field of action, where he 
 directed his humanitarian campaign from his arm-chair. 
 During the Franco-Prussian War, a war which inflicted 
 such wounds on his patriotism that he formally requested 
 the University of Bonn to take back the degree conferred 
 on him in 1868, he was forced to remain inactive. But 
 his energy was only heightened by his involuntary vaca- 
 tion, and in the spring of 1871 he returned to his researches 
 into fermentation. The Commune held Paris. He took 
 refuge with an old pupil in the latter's laboratory at Cler- 
 mont-Ferrand. Partly actuated by a desire to contribute 
 to the restoration of France, he now took up the subject 
 of beer, and found out how to preserve its yeast pure and 
 uncontaminated. Further experiments in sterilization
 
 238 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 accompanied these studies, while the phenomena of fer- 
 mentation were reviewed and explained, particularly in 
 regard to the varying amounts of oxygen required in the 
 fermentation of different substances. 
 
 We have reached the time when Pasteur was to give 
 himself up to studies even more closely related to the 
 health of man. It was evident that what had happened 
 in the case of silkworms, a disease cured by the removal 
 of the germ which caused the disease, could also happen 
 in the case of mammals. That this deduction had long 
 suggested itself to Pasteur's mind is proven by various 
 allusions in his publications to the possibility of destroying 
 infectious diseases. His studies on fermentation had 
 aroused universal interest, and had led to many investiga- 
 tions and successful experiments, among which should be 
 mentioned the antiseptic treatment of wounds in surgery, 
 by which the harmful bacteria are made innocuous. He 
 had also cultivated germs and transplanted them from one 
 medium to another, as we have seen. Furthermore, 
 during his long years of laboratory work he had come 
 into the possession of apparatus of unusual efficiency and 
 variety. So that when, in 1876, his attention was called 
 to the prevalence of splenic fever in cattle by a mono- 
 graph on the subject by the now famous German, Doctor 
 Koch, he was quite prepared to push on the discoveries 
 made by this younger student and his older predecessors. 
 
 For over twenty years it had been asserted that splenic 
 fever was contagious, and that the seat of the contagion 
 undoubtedly lay in small, rod-like bodies to be found in the 
 blood of the infected animals. But these views were not 
 generally accepted, and part of Pasteur's service was to 
 lie in the way of proving them beyond a doubt. He does
 
 Pasteur and the Germ Theory 239 
 
 this by cultivating the bacillus of the fever and inoculating 
 successive flasks of sterilized liquid with it. Traces of 
 the microbe could be found even in the last and weakest 
 of the inoculations. He then proceeded to further tests, 
 which finally revealed in the blood of animals that had 
 died of the fever another and more virulent bacillus. This 
 newcomer would declare itself only a few hours after 
 death, and would destroy the first bacillus. He also 
 noted that this bacillus, while destroyed in turn by the 
 oxygen of the air, could put out spores which resist the 
 air's action. The report of these experiments was first 
 given to the Institute in 1877, on which occasion Pasteur 
 particularly emphasized the annihilation of one bacillus by 
 another, a new step won in the domain of bacteriology. 
 It is the bacillus which can do without free oxygen that 
 triumphs. Pasteur had also noticed that the regular 
 bacillus of the fever when inoculated into rabbits, sheep, 
 and other animals invariably proved fatal, but had no 
 effect on fowls. This peculiarity led him to the idea that 
 this failure was due to the higher temperature of the blood 
 of bipeds. He lowered this temperature artificially, and 
 succeeded in proving that his conception was correct. 
 The fowl died if left at low temperature, or recovered 
 if gradually warmed to its normal. 
 
 Filled with these ideas, advancing from one step to 
 another, Pasteur discovered the germ of puerperal fever. 
 Koch's introduction of gelatine plates for the purpose not 
 only of studying bacteria in a transparent medium, as had 
 already been done, but also with the intention of isolating 
 the microbes rendered all such experiments much easier 
 of prosecution and gave them a great extension. Pasteur, 
 however, was now deeply engrossed in the corollary of his
 
 240 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 theory, how to produce immunity from the virulence of 
 these unwholesome organisms. Turning to fowl cholera 
 he discovered the microbe which caused it, inoculated 
 rabbits with it with fatal results, guinea pigs without 
 harming them, but on reintroducing it from the pigs into 
 the fowls found it had lost none of its activity. No 
 progress had been made evidently. Vacation had come 
 it was the summer of 1880 and the laboratory was 
 abandoned for a while. On Pasteur's return, some weeks 
 later, it was found that many of his cultures were dead. 
 Those which still lived he transplanted, but with poor 
 results. The fowls remained healthy. It then occurred 
 to him to inoculate the same fowls with new bacteria. 
 They were not affected by them, while other fowls not 
 previously inoculated, died of the disease. Here was a 
 discovery, of which it remained to test the circumstances. 
 The experiments which followed showed that the virus, if 
 kept at a fairly high temperature, and exposed to the action 
 of air, lost the malignity it retained away from free oxygen. 
 Here was vaccine matter which possessed the power to 
 transmit its weakened character. Fowls inoculated with 
 it were but slightly affected, and proved immune to the 
 attacks of the unmodified germ. 
 
 Encouraged by these results, Pasteur returned to his 
 original proposition, the discovery of a vaccine for the 
 cattle disease. This was a more difficult problem, for 
 the spores put out by the splenic fever bacillus resisted 
 the action of free oxygen. It was necessary to prevent 
 this production of spores. Various tests were made. 
 Experiment followed experiment. The "Master," as his 
 assistants delighted to call him, became more and more 
 preoccupied, more and more concentrated. Finally it was
 
 Pasteur and the Germ Theory 241 
 
 found that the virus did not form spores at a certain high 
 temperature, that after a lapse of time it lost some of its 
 power and transmitted this lower activity to other gener- 
 ations. Here was the vaccine. In February, 1881, 
 the report was given to the Institute, and in May of that 
 year the test was made on a large scale with fifty sheep 
 near Melun. The verification was absolute, and the 
 vaccination of cattle and sheep for splenic fever has since 
 this date been extensively performed in France. Soon 
 afterwards a vaccine for swine measles was obtained by 
 passing its virus through rabbits, from one to another 
 until its activity was lessened and it could be used on 
 swine again for inoculation. On the other hand, if the 
 same virus be passed through the bodies of successive 
 pigeons it increases in virulence. It must be remembered 
 that a great share of the actual labor of these experiments 
 devolved on the "Master's" devoted assistants, among 
 whom were counted some of the foremost scholars of 
 the present generation in France. 
 
 From the disease of animals Pasteur rose, in 1881, to 
 the diseases of man, or rather to a disease of both ani- 
 mals and men. He now possessed abundant leisure and 
 means for prosecuting these more complicated researches. 
 Already, in 1875, he had resigned his Sorbonne profes- 
 sorship, conferred on him in 1867, and was thus rid of 
 even the somewhat perfunctory instruction the position 
 had required. At the same time the National Assembly 
 had recognized the value of his private work by granting 
 him an annual pension of twelve thousand francs. In 
 1883 this sum was increased to twenty-five thousand, and 
 its provisions extended to cover the lifetime of his wife 
 and children. On the financial side, therefore, he had no
 
 242 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 cares, and it was with undivided attention that he now 
 gave himself up to the study of hydrophobia. His choice 
 of this somewhat unimportant malady was probably deter- 
 mined by the consideration that its causes could be dis- 
 covered through experiments made on animals. 
 
 Various attempts to inoculate dogs with the disease 
 met with but slight success. It was recognized that the 
 seat of hydrophobia is located in the nervous system. 
 Now, the center of the nervous system lies in the brain, 
 and the best test of rabies cultivation would be to intro- 
 duce the virus into the brain, an operation which would 
 require trepanning. Out of dislike to cause suffering 
 Pasteur hesitated before this act, and finally it was per- 
 formed by his assistant, Doctor Roux, during his absence. 
 Subsequent experiments showed that exposure to free 
 oxygen, to a dry atmosphere, diminished the power of the 
 virus, and that animals inoculated three times in daily suc- 
 cession with the virus, weakened in varying degrees, 
 became immune to the disease. It was also proven that 
 the vaccine process takes two weeks, and as hydrophobia 
 in man requires a month or more for its development, 
 there was no reason why prompt attention to the bites of 
 rabid animals should not save the victims from serious 
 consequences. In July, 1885, this conclusion, was first 
 verified in the person of a young Alsatian, who had come 
 to Paris to be treated, and in October of the same year 
 Pasteur felt authorized to make an official report to the 
 Institute on the subject. Since that date patients have 
 not been lacking, and the statistics show that immunity 
 has been brought about in all but five per cent of the 
 individuals thus treated. 
 
 The vaccine for hydrophobia was the last of the great
 
 Pasteur and the Germ Theory 243 
 
 discoveries made by Pasteur himself. Though still com- 
 paratively young in years he had but just passed his 
 sixty-second birthday his constitution had been weak- 
 ened by the arduous toil he had forced upon it, and his 
 nerves shaken by the anxieties attendant on the solution 
 and promulgation of his results. For his life had been 
 one of almost unceasing warfare. His conclusions had 
 been attacked again and again, each in turn as they ap- 
 peared, by many of the most competent scholars of the 
 day. And this last battle was not the least severe. For 
 the solicitude with which he watched over each human 
 patient destroyed his rest, and caused disorders which 
 necessitated a journey to Italy for relief. Besides, in his 
 anxiety to relieve all victims of the fearful madness he 
 attempted cures which were hopeless from the outset, 
 failures that were magnified by his opponents in an 
 endeavor to hide his triumphs. Hugo's dictum that 
 "Old age has no hold on geniuses of the ideal" leaves 
 the nerves out of account. Pasteur returned indeed from 
 Italy, but his work as an experimenter was ended. Hence- 
 forth he must content himself as a scientist with the 
 wonderful researches in pathology and bacteriology which 
 his devoted career had done so much to set in motion. 
 
 Yet he had his reward. Not only did he live to see all 
 criticism confounded, but he knew the joys of popularity 
 and hero-worship. His investigations tended in such a 
 large degree towards practical and beneficial results that 
 all classes of society and all civilized peoples united in his 
 praise. Foreign nations vied with one another in bestow- 
 ing honors and dignities on him. Nor did his countrymen 
 lag behind. In 1 88 1 he had been elected to the French 
 Academy, and his reception into that body in 1882 had
 
 244 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 been signalized quite as much by his assertion of a belief 
 in the supernatural, which his predecessor, the positivist 
 Littre", had denied, as by the eloquent eulogy which Renan 
 had pronounced on his work. A decade later, in 1892, 
 on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, a jubilee cele- 
 bration was held at Paris, which was attended by the 
 President of the Republic and high state officials, the 
 Institute of France in a body, deputations from the scien- 
 tific societies and universities of France and Europe, and 
 admirers of all ranks, who in the name of their constituent 
 bodies presented to the distinguished Frenchman a medal 
 provided by international subscriptions. But the greatest 
 testimonial to his worth had already taken shape at Paris 
 in the buildings of the Pasteur Institute. 
 
 The idea of this famous structure seems to have been 
 suggested by the overcrowding of Pasteur's laboratory by 
 patients attracted by the knowledge of the cure for hydro- 
 phobia. In 1886 a popular subscription to furnish more 
 commodious quarters was planned, and was carried out 
 in France and elsewhere with the greatest enthusiasm. 
 Some three million francs were thus raised, of which 
 some two million were used in construction. On Novem- 
 ber 14, 1888, the Institute was formally opened in the 
 presence of a distinguished assembly. It is here that the 
 bacteriological and pathological work of the nation now 
 centers, directed by eminent specialists who have received 
 their training from the master hand. It has a practical 
 purpose also to prevent diseases by discovering the germs 
 and the antidotes for them. The anti-toxin for diphtheria 
 is one of the results already reached. Hydrophobia 
 patients continue to be treated at the Institute, vaccine 
 matter for the inoculation of cattle and hogs is prepared
 
 Pasteur and the Germ Theory 245 
 
 there, and Pasteur's studies on fermentations are carried 
 on. The Institute also supports a journal, which con- 
 tains reports of the experiments made by its officers and 
 attendants. 
 
 All this preparation to extend the scope of his discover- 
 ies arid the field of his influence Pasteur lived to see. His 
 mind continued active and his interest in laboratory work 
 unabated. But his bodily weakness grew. His jubilee 
 answer to the addresses of congratulation was his last 
 public utterance, and even this had to be read in his pres- 
 ence by his son. He lingered still for nearly three years. 
 In September, 1895, paralysis reappeared. He died on 
 the 28th of that month at Villeneuve 1'Etang, an estate 
 which had been assigned to him for experimental purposes 
 by the French government. His remains were given a 
 public funeral at Notre Dame in Paris. They have found 
 an abiding resting-place at the end of a corridor in the 
 Institute called after his name. 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 From the Discours de Reception, before the French 
 Academy 
 
 [Pasteur affirms his belief in the supernatural.] 
 
 Science begets wonders every day. You have wished to bear 
 witness once again to the deep impression which society, the habits 
 of life, literature, receive in turn from so many accumulated dis- 
 coveries. If you deigned to cast your glance on me the nature 
 of my work doubtless spoke in my favor. In several places it is 
 concerned with the manifestations of life. 
 
 By proving that up to the present time life has never been 
 shown to man as a product of the forces which rule matter, I have 
 been of service to the doctrine of spirituality, much neglected
 
 246 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 elsewhere, but assured at least of finding in your ranks a glorious 
 refuge. 
 
 Perhaps you have also been well disposed toward me for hav- 
 ing carried into this arduous question of the origin of the infinitely 
 small an experimental rigor which has finally tired out contradic- 
 tion. Let us, however, refer the merit of this to the severe appli- 
 cation of the rules of the method which the great experimenters 
 Galileo, Pascal, Newton, and their rivals have bequeathed to us 
 for two centuries. Admirable and sovereign method which has, 
 as constant guide and director, observation and experience, freed 
 from all metaphysical prejudice, like the reason which sets them 
 at work, a method so fruitful that superior minds, dazzled by the 
 conquests which the human intelligence owes it, have thought it 
 could solve all problems 
 
 What is there beyond this starry vault? Other starry heavens. 
 Well, and beyond? The human mind, urged by an invincible 
 force, will never cease to ask itself: What is there beyond? Sup- 
 pose the mind stops somewhere in time or space? As the point 
 where it stops is only of a finite greatness, greater only than all 
 those which have come before it, the mind hardly begins to con- 
 template it before the implacable question returns, and returns 
 again, without the mind being able to make its cry of curiosity 
 cease. It is of no use to answer: Beyond are spaces, times, or 
 limitless greatnesses. No one understands these words. He 
 who proclaims the existence of the infinite and no one can 
 escape from it accumulates in this affirmation more of the super- 
 natural than exists in all the miracles of all religions. For the 
 notion of the infinite has this double character, it forces itself upon 
 our mind and yet is incomprehensible. When this notion takes 
 possession of the understanding we have only to bow before it. 
 At this moment of keen anguish we must ask our reason to pardon 
 us. All the springs of intellectual life threaten to relax. We feel 
 ourselves on the point of being seized by Pascal's "sublime mad- 
 ness." This notion, which is positive and primordial, positivism 
 gratuitously puts aside, together with all its consequences on the 
 life of society.
 
 Pasteur and the Germ Theory 247 
 
 Reply of Renan to Pasteur on the Same Occasion 
 
 We are quite incompetent, sir, to praise what makes your true 
 glory, those admirable experiments by which you attain even the 
 limits of life, that ingenious way of questioning nature which has 
 availed you so many times the clearest answers from her, those 
 precious discoveries which are every day transformed into con- 
 quests of primal importance for humanity. You would repudiate 
 our eulogies, accustomed as you are to value the judgments of 
 your peers alone, and in the scientific debates which so many new 
 ideas excite, you would not wish to see literary appreciations 
 come to mingle with the suffrages of the scientists whom the 
 fraternity of glory and labor brings near to you. Between you 
 and your learned rivals we may not intervene. But outside the 
 substance of the doctrine, which is not in our province, there is a 
 school, sir, where our acquaintance with the human mind gives us 
 the right to express an opinion. There is something which we 
 can recognize in the most diverse applications, something which 
 belongs in the same degree to Galileo, Pascal, Michael Angelo, 
 Moliere, something which causes the poet's sublimity, the philos- 
 opher's profundity, the fascination of the orator, the divination 
 of the scientist. That common base of all beautiful and true 
 works, that divine flame, that indefinable spirit which inspires 
 science, literature, and art we have found, sir, in you. It is 
 genius. No one has traversed with so sure a step the circles of 
 elementary nature. Your scientific career is like a luminous trail 
 in the great night of the infinitely small, in those outermost 
 abysses of being where life is born. 
 
 How fortunate you are, sir, to thus reach through your art to 
 the very sources of life ! Yours are admirable sciences ! Nothing 
 is lost in them. You will have set a valuable stone in the founda- 
 tion of the eternal edifice of truth. Among those who give them- 
 selves up to the other departments of mental work, who can have 
 the same assurance? M. de Maistre somewhere paints modern 
 science "under the scanty garb of the North, .... its arms 
 laden with books and instruments, pale with vigil and labor, drag- 
 ging itself, stained with ink and panting, along the road of truth, 
 always bending towards the ground its forehead furrowed with
 
 248 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 algebra." How well you have acted, sir, not to stop short at this 
 preoccupation of a nobleman ! Nature is plebeian. She wishes 
 us to work. She likes callous hands, and reveals herself, to 
 anxious brows only. 
 
 Your austere life, wholly consecrated to disinterested research, 
 is the best answer to those who consider our century cut off, as it 
 were, from the great gifts of the soul. Your laborious assiduity 
 would not know diversion or repose. Receive the reward for this 
 in the respect that surrounds you, in that sympathy, the manifesta- 
 tions of which appear to-day in such great numbers about you, 
 and above all in the joy of having done your work well, of having 
 taken your place in the first rank of that chosen company, which 
 assures itself against oblivion by a very simple means, by creating 
 works which last. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Louis Pasteur, his Life and Labors. By his Son-in-law. Trans- 
 lated by Lady Claude Hamilton, with Introduction by John Tyndall. 
 
 Pasteur. Percy Frankland and Mrs. Percy Frankland (Cen- 
 tury Science Series) . 
 
 The Life of Pasteur. R. Vallery-Radot. Translated by Mrs. 
 R. L. Devonshire.
 
 FERDINAND MARIE DE LESSEPS
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 DE LESSEES AND INTER-OCEANIC CANALS 
 
 [FERDINAND MARIE DE LESSEPS, born at Versailles, November 
 19, 1805; educated at Paris; entered public service, 1823; 
 vice-consul at Alexandria and Cairo, 1832-1837; consul at 
 Malaga and Barcelona, 1839-1848; minister to Spain, 1848; 
 retired, 1849; efforts to build Suez Canal, 1854-1859; con- 
 struction of the canal, 1859-1869; freedom of the city of Lon- 
 don, 1870; Panama Canal Company, 1879; construction of 
 the Panama Canal, 1881; elected to the French Academy, 
 1884; failure of the Panama Canal Company, 1888; died at 
 La Chesnaie, December 7, 1894.] 
 
 Perhaps the most striking result of the practical appli- 
 cations of science in the nineteenth century is seen in the 
 inventions which shorten distance. The steam engine, 
 the electric telegraph, the telephone, all tend to a common 
 purpose, to put men living in different localities into rapid 
 communication with one another. In the twentieth cen- 
 tury this movement is continuing with ever-increasing 
 intensity. Faster trains, faster steamboats, faster street 
 cars, more speedy electrical transmissions, are demanded 
 and supplied. Humanity would seem to be engaged in 
 one absorbing endeavor to annihilate time and space. 
 This purpose has always prevailed. Succeeding genera- 
 tions throughout time have been coming more and more 
 into closer relations among themselves. But while once 
 such quickening of speed was arithmetical, it now might 
 be fairly termed geometrical. And one of the most evi- 
 
 249
 
 250 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 dent proofs of this heightened acceleration is offered by 
 the building of isthmian canals. 
 
 The idea of piercing necks of land which separate 
 navigable bodies of water is not a new one. Indeed, it is 
 quite probable that it presented itself quite as forcibly to 
 the peoples of the most remote civilizations as it does to 
 our own. More forcibly perhaps, for the perils of navi- 
 gation were much greater in the distant past, and capes 
 were not doubled with impunity. So the Greeks looked 
 with longing eyes at the narrow ledge of rock which sepa- 
 rated the yEgean Sea from the Gulf of Corinth, and the 
 conquerors of the East at the stretch of sand between the 
 Red Sea and the Mediterranean. This latter obstacle 
 was indeed overcome. Rameses II of Egypt, the probable 
 Pharaoh of the Jewish oppression, is credited with a 
 waterway dug from the delta of the Nile to the Red Sea. 
 Centuries later, when the sands of the desert had partially 
 choked its channel, it is said that Darius I of Persia 
 cleared and used it. Then, in the Christian era, after 
 the death of Mohammed, when Moslem invaders attacked 
 Egypt, its bed was once again restored. But after- 
 wards one of the rulers of the land wilfully filled it up, and 
 it remained abandoned for more than a thousand years. 
 The eighteenth century saw the birth of a short-lived 
 project to utilize it again. And finally, when western 
 enterprise reached the East, in the person of Napoleon 
 Bonaparte, a French engineer, Lepere, was asked to 
 report on the feasibility of reviving the old canal. He 
 claimed that either this could be done or that a new 
 passage could be cut from sea to sea. Nothing, 
 however, came of this report. Later engineers studied 
 the question at various times without tangible results,
 
 De Lesseps and Inter-Oceanic Canals 251 
 
 until at last it came to the attention of Ferdinand de 
 Lesseps. 
 
 This future canal-builder came of enterprising blood. 
 His father was in the diplomatic service of France, and 
 had been consul in Egypt. His uncle was a sailor, had 
 visited the northern coast of Asia, and returned to 
 France through Siberia. His mother was of Spanish 
 origin, a great-aunt of the future Empress Eugenie. 
 Ferdinand himself was born at Versailles in 1805, 
 followed as a child his father to an Italian consulate 
 (at Leghorn), but returned to study at the College of 
 Henry IV, in Paris. At the age of eighteen he was 
 ready to begin life, and entered government employ in the 
 commissary department of the army. Two years later, 
 in 1825, he was attached to the French consulate at Lis- 
 bon, where his uncle was in charge. In 1828 he was 
 again at Paris, in the department of foreign affairs. In 
 1829 he was made assistant to the vice-consul at Tunis, 
 under his father, who was consul general. In 1832 he 
 was transferred to Alexandria as vice-consul, and for the 
 next five years occupied this post or a similar one at .Cairo, 
 distinguishing himself for his energy and alertness, and 
 the excellent administration of his office during a severe 
 pestilence. During this residence he had become ac- 
 quainted with the views of Napoleon's engineer, Lepere, 
 and had contracted a firm friendship with the young 
 prince, Said Pasha, whose father had profited by the good 
 offices of the elder De Lesseps when he was consul at 
 Cairo in 1803. 
 
 Returning to France at the end of 1837, De Lesseps 
 was appointed consul at Rotterdam, Malaga, and Barce- 
 lona, in succession. At the last named place he gave new
 
 252 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 proofs of his activity and courage in protecting during a 
 civil war all who put themselves in his care. For this 
 praiseworthy conduct he was publicly thanked by the city 
 of Barcelona, his own and foreign governments, who con- 
 ferred various orders on him as tokens of their regard. 
 In 1848, in the first months of that Republic which had 
 displaced Louis Philippe, De Lesseps became minister to 
 Spain. One of his official acts in this new post was to 
 intercede for some friends of Eugenie de Montijo (later 
 Empress Eugenie), who had been sentenced to death for 
 mutiny. Recalled at the end of the year, he was intrusted 
 with a mission to the Roman republic, just established. 
 Louis Napoleon, then President of France, expected 
 duplicity on the part of his agent. But De Lesseps pro- 
 ceeded according to the letter of his instructions, and 
 tried to induce the Italian republicans to consent to the 
 presence of the French troops which had been sent to pro- 
 tect the person of the pope. His acts, however, were 
 neutralized by the French general in command, who was 
 following secret instructions from Louis Napoleon, and 
 De Lesseps asked to be relieved of his mission. On his 
 arrival at Paris his management was made the subject of 
 an official inquiry, which resulted in his condemnation. 
 He retired at once from the service of the state and 
 began to occupy his leisure with studies on agriculture. 
 It was during this period of retirement that his plan of 
 piercing the Isthmus of Suez was matured. 
 
 The general trend of De Lesseps 's official career so 
 suddenly terminated shows a character which was unusu- 
 ally open, straightforward, and self-sacrificing. Several 
 times during his consular residences, particularly in Egypt 
 and Spain, he had exposed his health and reputation to
 
 De Lesseps and Inter-Oceanic Canals 253 
 
 rescue others from disease or violence. He was a man 
 who seems to have always acted on the principle of ser- 
 vice to his fellows, whatever the consequences to himself, 
 and as we have seen in the instance of the double dealing 
 of the French government with the people of Rome, he 
 could not be brought to deception, even though his 
 own future were at stake. He began his real life as a 
 builder of canals with clean hands and an honest purpose. 
 The five years (1849-1854) which he passed on his 
 farm in the old province of Berry were employed in ac- 
 quiring information regarding commerce and transporta- 
 tion. Excited by Lepere's report, instigated by other 
 developments, as Fourier's writings, the engineers' 
 experiments, and a project advocated in the late forties 
 by the followers of Saint Simon, the socialist, he became 
 fully possessed of the idea that a canal should be cut 
 through the Isthmus of Suez; that it should be a maritime 
 canal, from sea to sea, and that it should be level, without 
 locks. These points are important because their justifica- 
 tion when put into execution at Suez involved the later 
 failure at Panama. Furthermore, at the rate at which 
 traffic was increasing the canal would prove a financial 
 success almost at the start. These views he submitted 
 to the Sultan of Turkey in 1852, who returned them after 
 a courteous examination. But in 1854 the way was 
 opened. The Viceroy of Egypt died, and Said Pasha, 
 De Lesseps's young friend of the thirties, ruled in his 
 stead. In answer to a letter of congratulation the new 
 Viceroy invited De Lesseps to visit him. The visit was 
 paid. Royally welcomed, the visitor did not delay in lay- 
 ing his plan of a canal before the new sovereign. The 
 latter called his generals into consultation, and as they
 
 254 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 were already favorably disposed towards the foreigner 
 because of his feats at horsemanship so De Lesseps 
 himself says they agreed in advising the concession to 
 dig the canal. It was officially granted on November 30, 
 1854. 
 
 It was now in order to survey the route and raise 
 money for the undertaking. De Lesseps and his friends 
 provided for the preliminary work, and when this fund 
 was exhausted the Egyptian government came to the 
 rescue. But the sanction of Turkey, Egypt's over-lord, 
 was necessary, and owing to the opposition of England, 
 then all-powerful at Stamboul, some time elapsed before 
 a tacit permission could be secured. De Lesseps was 
 everywhere, at Constantinople, Paris, London, where he 
 argued long and eloquently with Lord Palmerston, ap- 
 pealed to the British public, and formed an international 
 commission to look into the matter, returned to France, 
 to England again, saw the Queen and Prince Albert, made 
 addresses, wrote letters, interviewed statesmen and rulers 
 until all Europe but Great Britain was on his side. Yet 
 this attitude of the insular power now began to work in 
 his favor. The enterprise came to be regarded in France 
 as a patriotic one. Subscriptions to the company flowed 
 in. Nearly twenty million dollars were raised there and 
 elsewhere on the Continent, while the Khedive of Egypt 
 advanced one-half that sum, and a like amount was placed 
 in the other markets of Europe and in the United States, 
 which had supported the project from its inception. In 
 all, four hundred thousand shares of stock were issued at 
 one hundred dollars a share, including the original shares 
 of the 'preliminary survey. Actual work was begun with- 
 out receiving the Sultan's permission, which came several
 
 De Lesseps and Inter-Oceanic Canals 255 
 
 months later, and on April 25, 1859, De Lesseps himself, 
 in the presence of engineers and workmen, gave the first 
 blow with the pick and turned the first shovelful of earth 
 on the Mediterranean side of the canal, at a spot now called 
 after the Viceroy, Port Said. 
 
 Thousands of laborers were soon swarming along the 
 route. In 1862 a canal was completed, which brought 
 Nile water to the middle of the isthmus, and in November 
 of that year the Mediterranean was allowed to flow along 
 the newly dug bed to Lake Timsah. Dredging machines 
 had been invented for the undertaking. All was going 
 well, when the friendly Khedive died, in January, 1863. 
 Under his successor, Ismail Pasha, also well disposed, it 
 was argued by Turkey that the work was being done by 
 forced labor, contrary to the law of the land, and a 
 demand was made for this compulsion to cease, and a 
 concession of the land bordering the canal to be made by 
 the company. The whole matter was finally submitted 
 to Napoleon III to arbitrate. In 1864 a decision was 
 reached which compromised all the points involved, and 
 the permission for the construction of the waterway was 
 embodied in a firman of the Sultan, issued March 19, 
 1866. But from 1864 on the work had been vigorously 
 pushed, and on November 17, 1869, in the presence of 
 many European sovereigns and diplomats and a large 
 concourse of visitors from all parts of the world, the im- 
 perial yacht of France bearing the Empress Eugenie, long 
 bound to De Lesseps by ties of gratitude for his media- 
 tion while minister to Spain, steamed into the cut at Port 
 Said, and escorted by other royal yachts and men of war, 
 proceeded by slow stages to Suez. 
 
 De Lesseps 's success, his triumph over so much politi-
 
 256 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 cal opposition for the obstacles raised by nature were 
 few made him the hero of the day. It also brought 
 him many honors and decorations, including one even from 
 England. A visit paid to that country in 1870 was 
 turned into a popular ovation, and on July 30 he was 
 awarded the unsuual distinction of the freedom of the 
 city of London. But in one respect his plans had lacked 
 exactness, the expense. The canal had cost fifteen million 
 dollars more than the estimates a sum which had been 
 raised by issuing bonds. The receipts for the first few 
 years of operation proved unequal to meeting the interest 
 thus pledged, and in 1874 the sum in arrears was added 
 to the capital stock. In November, 1875, the British 
 government bought the Khedive's shares for twenty mil- 
 lion dollars, which, however, represented but a fraction 
 of the eighty millions and over the canal is supposed to 
 have cost Egypt. Political susceptibilities were aroused 
 by this transaction, in Russia as well as in France. But 
 nothing of a serious nature followed. 
 
 In 1882, on the occasion of Arabi's rebellion, England 
 felt called upon to insure navigation through the canal for 
 herself, bombarded Alexandria, and occupied Egypt. 
 France unfortunately declined to share in the responsibili- 
 ties which the pacification of the country would incur, and 
 taking advantage of the poor management of the company, 
 a meeting of English merchants was held in May, 1883, 
 to consider the construction of another waterway through 
 Egypt. But De Lesseps was enabled to come to an 
 understanding with the English government, and in 1884 
 improvements were begun on the bed of the canal which 
 resulted in widening and deepening it, and the reduction 
 of the time of transit to less than twenty hours. In
 
 De Lesseps and Inter-Oceanic Canals 257 
 
 December, 1 888, after six years of negotiations, the neu- 
 trality of the canal and its outlets was guaranteed by the 
 powers of Europe. Since 1880 traffic has increased to 
 such an extent that large dividends have been paid, and 
 the market value of the stock has risen to eight times its 
 face value. 
 
 Meanwhile De Lesseps 's activity had not been restricted 
 to his duties of the presidency of the Suez Canal Com- 
 pany. In 1873 ne was working upon the project of a 
 railroad through Central Asia, which was submitted to 
 Russia, but declined. He also interested himself in the 
 scheme of turning part of the Desert of Sahara into an 
 inland sea, which later surveys have shown impracticable, 
 and gave his influence to the opening up of the Congo 
 under the leadership of the King of Belgium. But 
 another idea was nearer to his heart. He had joined the 
 Mediterranean to the Red Sea and opened a pathway 
 between West and East. He aspired to connect the 
 Atlantic with the Pacific, and complete his cutting of the 
 globe in half. 
 
 The idea of piercing the Isthmus of Panama had 
 haunted mariners and idealists ever since the voyages of 
 Balboa in discovery of the Pacific Ocean. Routes by 
 Darien, Nicaragua, and Tehuantepec were planned on 
 paper time and again during the sixteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries. In the nineteenth the notion was vigor- 
 ously revived. A canal through Nicaragua was seriously 
 considered in 1850, so much so that when Said Pasha 
 announced the Suez concession to the foreign representa- 
 tives at Cairo, on his accession to power in 1854, he said 
 to the American consul: "We are going to start an oppo- 
 sition to the Isthmus of Panama, and we shall be done
 
 258 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 before you." He was right. Work had not been even 
 begun at Panama when Suez was already an accomplished 
 fact. In 1870 a report had been presented to the Ameri- 
 can government favoring a canal with locks at Panama. 
 In 1875 a d 1876 successive international congresses had 
 sanctioned engineering expeditions to Central America, 
 and on May 15, 1879, at a new session of the congress, 
 presided over by De Lesseps, and attended by many 
 Americans from the north and south, the whole matter 
 was taken up afresh, the different routes discussed at 
 length, and the report of the French engineer, Bonaparte 
 Wyse, which outlined a canal at Panama, was adopted. 
 Wyse's scheme utilized the Chagres River, tunneled the 
 Cordilleras, and reached the Pacific by the valley of the 
 Rio Grande. This route had been favored by De Lesseps 
 because it was shorter, because the Nicaragua route was 
 exposed to earthquakes, and also because the latter route 
 required locks, which in the opinion of De Lesseps the 
 Panama did not. In other words, without personal in- 
 spection, guided simply by logic, he decided that what 
 had been done at Suez could be done elsewhere, whatever 
 the physical differences, and his prestige decided the votes 
 of the congress. 
 
 It must be remembered that at the time of this deci- 
 sion "The Great Frenchman," as he was now dubbed 
 by Gambetta, had more than passed his threescore and 
 ten. His physical strength, developed so well by the 
 athletic pursuits of his early years, and preserved by his 
 open-air life, had fortified that self-confidence which the 
 opening of Suez in the face of ill-boding prophecies and 
 opposition had abundantly justified. He had always been 
 right. He could not conceive at the age of seventy-three
 
 De Lesseps and Inter-Oceanic Canals 259 
 
 that he could err. A glamour surrounded him. He was 
 looked upon very much as a wizard, capable of overcom- 
 ing nature. No doubt the touch of his wand would sub- 
 due the Chagres and open the rocks of the Cordilleras. 
 And so the congress, charmed by him, adopted his views. 
 A Universal Inter-Oceanic Canal Company was incorpo- 
 rated on October 20, 1879, which took over concessions 
 granted by the United States of Colombia to Wyse. No 
 time was lost. Subscriptions to stock were immediately 
 opened. But the public was as yet uninformed about the 
 project, and failed to respond. 
 
 De Lesseps started for the American isthmus. His 
 young daughter formally gave the first blow on the exca- 
 vation on January i, 1880. After a hasty inspection he 
 estimated that the cost would be some one hundred and 
 seventy million dollars, and hurried back to France by the 
 way of the United States, where he was given the oppor- 
 tunity to appeal to the good will of Americans, and their 
 financial assistance at dinners held in his honor. Reach- 
 ing home after this somewhat spectacular journey he 
 again called on the savings of France to the extent of one 
 hundred million dollars. His name was one to conjure 
 by. The profits from Suez were now becoming evident. 
 The loan was covered several times, and on February I, 
 1 88 1, work was actually begun on the isthmus. 
 
 The difficulties of the enterprise soon became manifest. 
 The estimates proved far below the actual expenses, and 
 in September, 1882, an issue of bonds was made which 
 realized some twenty-two million dollars. The same 
 month a severe earthquake threw doubts on the availabil- 
 ity of this route too, and later in the season the contract- 
 ors canceled their contract. New contracts were let, a
 
 260 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 new issue of bonds followed, in 1883, and work was 
 vigorously pushed. Still the expenses grew. Not only 
 was the nature of the soil and the climate of the locality 
 hostile to invasion, but moderation was lacking in the 
 supply of incidentals and accessories, such as luxurious 
 quarters for the engineers, staffs of useless officials, and 
 even private grounds constructed out of the company's 
 treasury. In 1885 another loan was made. In 1886 the 
 French government sent a special agent to the isthmus to 
 inspect the condition of affairs. His report was so 
 unfavorable, particularly in its condemnation of the waste 
 everywhere visible, that the Assembly refused its permis- 
 sion to raise more money by a lottery scheme. 
 
 In November, 1887, De Lesseps at last renounced the 
 idea of a canal at tide level, and contracted with the cele- 
 brated engineer, Eiffel, for the construction of several 
 locks. Money, however, was not forthcoming, and dis- 
 aster seemed inevitable. To avert it a regular campaign 
 was planned at home. Newspapers were heavily subsi- 
 dized or menaced for the number of stock and bond 
 holders in France was very large deputies were influ- 
 enced by every means that could be devised, and under 
 this pressure the Assembly, in 1888, passed a bill which 
 authorized the company to place a lottery loan. But the 
 loan, when issued, was not covered, and in December, 
 
 1888, the company suspended payments. In February, 
 
 1889, a receiver was appointed to take charge of its 
 affairs. Work now ceased. Distress ensued among the 
 workmen on the isthmus, and accusations against the 
 management began to be heard in France. Finally, 
 after many months of debate and petitioning, the As- 
 sembly took up the matter in January, 1892. In Sep-
 
 De Lesseps and Inter-Oceanic Canals 261 
 
 tember of that year some of the deputies who had voted for 
 the lottery loan of 1888 were alleged to have been bribed. 
 In November De Lesseps and his fellow directors were 
 cited to appear before the civil authorities for malversa- 
 tion, and in February, 1893, he was judged guilty of the 
 charge. 
 
 The condemnation struck a defenseless head. The 
 aged engineer had never rallied from the shock of the 
 company's failure, and early in 1892 had fallen into a 
 state of numb senility, of somnolence, from which it was 
 almost impossible to arouse him. He had been taken 
 from Paris to his country-seat of La Chesnaie, and was 
 not present at the court either during the trial or on the 
 day of sentence. Nor is it believed that he knew any- 
 thing about the criminal proceedings which were carried 
 on against him. His son Charles exposed himself on all 
 occasions to save his father, and perhaps assumed respon- 
 sibilities which should have been borne by the latter. The 
 whole family keenly felt the disgrace of its position, but 
 did not relax in its devotion to its head. Another year 
 and more passed. The Great Frenchman's vigorous 
 frame yielded slowly to the attacks of time, and it was 
 only on December 7, 1894, at the age of nearly fourscore 
 years and ten, that he breathed his last, far away from the 
 scenes of his triumphs and defeat. 
 
 But the last decade of his life had not been one of con- 
 stant disappointment. Though it must have been plain as 
 early as 1882 that the Isthmus of Panama was not to be 
 conquered as easily as Suez, yet De Lesseps 's optimism 
 was such, and his physical condition so sound, that he 
 apparently felt few misgivings. The public still adored 
 him. In 1884 the popular voice had voted him into the
 
 262 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 French Academy, in spite of his entire lack of literary 
 work, and his reception in 1885 had been an event, 
 marked by the eloquence of Renan, who officially wel- 
 comed him. In 1887 the French government had even 
 intrusted him with a secret mission to Berlin. Always 
 his figure had been one of the prominent ones at Paris. 
 At the age of eighty and more it was one of the morning 
 sights, at the Place de la Concorde, to see De Lesseps on 
 horseback leading a bevy of his children, mounted on 
 ponies and fillies of different sizes, on a canter towards 
 the Bois de Boulogne. And when the evil days came, 
 though technically a criminal, few believed he had con- 
 sciously done wrong. He was sanguine, absolutely self- 
 confident, impatient of opposition. It is quite certain 
 also that he was averse to the consideration of details. 
 His vague estimates and hurried inspection show this. 
 And then he was old, and had a right to lean on younger 
 shoulders. But he risked his fortune as well as the sav- 
 ings of his compatriots. All he possessed seems to have 
 gone into the enterprise. Panama swallowed Suez, and 
 it was the latter company which came to the aid of his 
 impoverished family. 
 
 Now it is apparent that his eclipse was only temporary. 
 His failure is dead. It may be even changed to victory 
 by the completion of the undertaking which caused it. 
 His success lives. His statue cast in bronze and erected 
 in 1899 near Port Said perpetuates the good he accom- 
 plished in the Old World. And it may be that in the 
 New those prophetic words will some day come true 
 which were uttered in 1896, at the reception of his suc- 
 cessor into the French Academy: "Yes, the interrupted 
 work will be begun again and finished. By whom and for
 
 De Lesseps and Inter-Oceanic Canals 263 
 
 whom? Political interests and passions will perhaps 
 decide. But the day when the first flags shall cross the 
 space which separates the two oceans forgetting the 
 failings of age and the slights of fortune, misfortunes, 
 and faults, the entire world will remember that the man 
 who had taken up the idea of Leibnitz and Goethe, in 
 order to accomplish it for the profit of mankind, was he 
 whom a popularity that was universal had named 'The 
 Great Frenchman.' " 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 From the Speech of Anatole France on his Reception into 
 
 the French Academy as the Successor of De Lesseps. 
 
 His Character 
 
 I must finish my purpose and follow M. Ferdinand de Lesseps 
 in the last years of his life. When he was near to death he was 
 smitten by a misfortune which had the extent of a public misfor- 
 tune. The disaster was great, like the dream which had preceded 
 it. The enterprise of the inter-oceanic canal crumbled to dust; 
 its ruins still breathe forth groans. Here is neither the place nor 
 the time to consider them. You do not expect me to search into 
 their causes. Scarcely am I allowed to point out the most general 
 among them, and to say that in France the slow, concealed, some- 
 times obscure, but constant and sovereign, will which sustained 
 the work of Suez was no longer there to withstand the violent 
 blows of passion, instinct, and chance in order to defend a new 
 enterprise, more adventurous than the first, against itself, and give 
 it moderation; and that in the weak, diffuse, and changing man- 
 agement of public affairs nothing was left which was henceforth 
 capable of restraining the covetousness of a crowd of financiers, 
 adventurers, and political robbers, nor of stopping that instinctive 
 panic of the mob which upsets everything in a moment. Every- 
 thing gave way. Conquered by age, overwhelmed by the blow 
 which struck him, but retaining (I think I know this is so) all his
 
 264 Ten Frenchmen 
 
 clearness of mind, M. de Lesseps knew the extent of his misfor- 
 tune. In the hour which was tragic for his glory and his name, 
 alone among his own in that rustic dwelling of La Chesnaie, where 
 almost half a century before he had traced on a chart the little line 
 which was to unite two worlds, feeble now, inert, afflicted, pulling 
 up over his shivering knees his traveling rug, the great traveler 
 was dying in silence. But one day on his dry cheeks they saw 
 tears flowing. 
 
 Ferdinand de Lesseps finished dying December 7, 1894. I 
 have been obliged to show him to you still laden with the faults 
 which time will carry away. Such a man as I have made him 
 appear to you, such as he was, imprudent, rash, too trustful in 
 himself and his long good fortune, but generous, great, full of 
 goodness, force, and courage, sympathizing with the human race, 
 capable above all men of acting and inciting action, he worked on 
 vast and peaceful tasks all his life, and won his place among the 
 elite of useful men by hard toil. What he did is immense and 
 good. He opened an outlet for the West, which was compressed 
 in too tight limits. He blazed new ways for energy, he gave to the 
 purposes of men causes for acting usefully in concord and har- 
 mony. Such a man has but one judge, the universe. He served 
 the interests of humanity. Grateful humanity will keep for him 
 the names of benefactor and friend. And his image, erected at 
 Suez on the wall of the canal, will be saluted through the ages by 
 the flags of the nations. 
 
 De Lesseps 's Speech at the New York Dinner of March I, 
 1880, as Reported in The Tribune 
 
 I should weaken the force of the eloquent words which your 
 president has so kindly spoken in my favor, if I added a word to 
 his admirable discourse. He has spoken like a true American, 
 and has touched upon my project from a truly American point of 
 view. I do not desire to enter upon a discussion of the questions 
 he so gracefully and yet so forcibly touched upon, but as a French- 
 man, I wish to add just one word. In our negotiations with refer- 
 ence to the opening of the new canal of Panama, for which I have 
 the concession of the Government of Colombia, I formally declared
 
 De Lesseps and Inter-Oceanic Canals 265 
 
 that I had no political interest in the matter, and did not seek to 
 further the particular interest of my own country. I frankly state 
 this now, and I will say to the President of the United States, 
 when I meet him in Washington on Thursday, that if ever any 
 difficulty arises in regard to the control of this canal, I myself will 
 carefully watch over the interests of the United States. 
 
 The United States ought to take a prominent part in this mat- 
 ter, and I sincerely trust they will. Science has pronounced this 
 canal possible, and I am the servant of science. I will carry out 
 this work, and make America Queen of the Seas. 
 
 I present my thanks to this assembly for its very gracious 
 reception 1 , and in the recollections of my visit to this great Repub- 
 lic this gathering will be one of the most prominent and pleasant 
 features. I leave this city shortly and shall visit in turn Wash- 
 ington, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco, to lay 
 before your people the merits of my project. I shall state frankly 
 in those cities what I have stated here, and if it is as courteously 
 received as in New York, the success of my undertaking will be 
 assured. It is to the best interests of America and to her future 
 prosperity that this enterprise will chiefly tend, and she ought, and 
 I trust will, make her contributions toward the necessary outlay 
 adequate to the immense advantages which are bound to accrue 
 to her from its success. Gentlemen, I thank you. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Recollections of Forty Years. Ferdinand de Lesseps. Trans- 
 lated by C. B. Pitman. 
 
 The Life and Enterprises oj Ferdinand de Lesseps. G. Barnett 
 Smith. 
 
 See also Atlantic Monthly, Vol. LXXVI, pp. 285 ff.; The 
 Chautauqiian, Vol. XVI, pp. 58 ff.
 
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