It was there that the shadows held him fast.
His feet were cold and dead, but his head survived with all the power of life, and seemed full of light.
G——, at this solemn moment, resembled the king in that tale of the Orient who was flesh above and marble below.
There was a stone there.
The Bishop sat down.
The exordium was abrupt.
“I congratulate you,” said he, in the tone which one uses for a reprimand.
“You did not vote for the death of the king, after all.”
The old member of the Convention did not appear to notice the bitter meaning underlying the words “after all.”
He replied. The smile had quite disappeared from his face.
“Do not congratulate me too much, sir. I did vote for the death of the tyrant.”
It was the tone of austerity answering the tone of severity.
“What do you mean to say?” resumed the Bishop.
“I mean to say that man has a tyrant,—ignorance.
I voted for the death of that tyrant.
That tyrant engendered royalty, which is authority falsely understood, while science is authority rightly understood.
Man should be governed only by science.”
“And conscience,” added the Bishop.
“It is the same thing.
Conscience is the quantity of innate science which we have within us.”
Monseigneur Bienvenu listened in some astonishment to this language, which was very new to him.
The member of the Convention resumed:—
“So far as Louis XVI. was concerned, I said ‘no.’
I did not think that I had the right to kill a man; but I felt it my duty to exterminate evil.
I voted the end of the tyrant, that is to say, the end of prostitution for woman, the end of slavery for man, the end of night for the child.
In voting for the Republic, I voted for that.
I voted for fraternity, concord, the dawn.
I have aided in the overthrow of prejudices and errors.
The crumbling away of prejudices and errors causes light.
We have caused the fall of the old world, and the old world, that vase of miseries, has become, through its upsetting upon the human race, an urn of joy.”
“Mixed joy,” said the Bishop.
“You may say troubled joy, and to-day, after that fatal return of the past, which is called 1814, joy which has disappeared!
Alas! The work was incomplete, I admit: we demolished the ancient regime in deeds; we were not able to suppress it entirely in ideas.
To destroy abuses is not sufficient; customs must be modified.
The mill is there no longer; the wind is still there.”
“You have demolished.
It may be of use to demolish, but I distrust a demolition complicated with wrath.”
“Right has its wrath, Bishop; and the wrath of right is an element of progress.
In any case, and in spite of whatever may be said, the French Revolution is the most important step of the human race since the advent of Christ.
Incomplete, it may be, but sublime.
It set free all the unknown social quantities; it softened spirits, it calmed, appeased, enlightened; it caused the waves of civilization to flow over the earth.
It was a good thing.
The French Revolution is the consecration of humanity.”
The Bishop could not refrain from murmuring:—
“Yes?
‘93!”
The member of the Convention straightened himself up in his chair with an almost lugubrious solemnity, and exclaimed, so far as a dying man is capable of exclamation:—
“Ah, there you go;
‘93!
I was expecting that word.