Our gentleman will have educated him, it will be his own foster brother if it is possible.
Let each of us sacrifice the fifth of his income in order to form this little devoted force of five hundred men in each department.
Then you will be able to reckon on a foreign occupation.
The foreign soldier will never penetrate even as far as Dijon if he is not certain of finding five hundred friendly soldiers in each department.
"The foreign kings will only listen to you when you are in a position to announce to them that you have twenty thousand gentlemen ready to take up arms in order to open to them the gates of France.
The service is troublesome, you say.
Gentlemen, it is the only way of saving our lives.
There is war to the death between the liberty of the press and our existence as gentlemen.
Become manufacturers, become peasants, or take up your guns.
Be timid if you like, but do not be stupid. Open your eyes.
"'Form your battalions,' I would say to you in the words of the Jacobin songs. Some noble Gustavus Adolphus will then be found who, touched by the imminent peril of the monarchical principle, will make a dash three hundred leagues from his own country, and will do for you what Gustavus did for the Protestant princes.
Do you want to go on talking without acting?
In fifty years' time there will be only presidents or republics in Europe and not one king, and with those three letters R. O. I. you will see the last of the priests and the gentlemen.
I can see nothing but candidates paying court to squalid majorities.
"It is no use your saying that at the present time France has not a single accredited general who is universally known and loved, that the army is only known and organised in the interests of the throne and the church, and that it has been deprived of all its old troopers, while each of the Prussian and Austrian regiments count fifty non-commissioned officers who have seen fire.
"Two hundred thousand young men of the middle classes are spoiling for war—"
"A truce to disagreeable truths," said a grave personage in a pompous tone. He was apparently a very high ecclesiastical dignitary, for M. de la Mole smiled pleasantly, instead of getting angry, a circumstance which greatly impressed Julien.
"A truce to unpleasant truths, let us resume, gentlemen. The man who needs to have a gangrened leg cut off would be ill advised to say to his surgeon, 'this disease is very healthy.'
If I may use the metaphor, gentlemen, the noble duke of —— is our surgeon."
"So the great words have at last been uttered," thought Julien. "It is towards the —— that I shall gallop to-night." _____
CHAPTER LIII
THE CLERGY, THE FORESTS, LIBERTY _____
The first law of every being, is to preserve itself and live.
You sow hemlock, and expect to see ears of corn ripen.—Machiavelli. _____
The great personage continued. One could see that he knew his subject. He proceeded to expound the following great truths with a soft and tempered eloquence with which Julien was inordinately delighted:—
"1.
England has not a guinea to help us with; economy and Hume are the fashion there.
Even the saints will not give us any money, and M. Brougham will make fun of us.
"2.
The impossibility of getting the kings of Europe to embark on more than two campaigns without English gold; two campaigns will not be enough to dispose of the middle classes.
"3.
The necessity of forming an armed party in France. Without this, the monarchical principle in Europe will not risk even two campaigns.
"The fourth point which I venture to suggest to you, as self-evident, is this:
"The impossibility of forming an armed party in France without the clergy.
I am bold enough to tell you this because I will prove it to you, gentlemen.
You must make every sacrifice for the clergy.
"Firstly, because as it is occupied with its mission by day and by night, and guided by highly capable men established far from these storms at three hundred leagues from your frontiers——"
"Ah, Rome, Rome!" exclaimed the master of the house.
"Yes, monsieur, Rome," replied the Cardinal haughtily. "Whatever more or less ingenious jokes may have been the fashion when you were young, I have no hesitation in saying that in 1830 it is only the clergy, under the guidance of Rome, who has the ear of the lower classes.
"Fifty thousand priests repeat the same words on the day appointed by their chiefs, and the people—who after all provide soldiers—will be more touched by the voices of its priests than by all the versifying in the whole world." (This personality provoked some murmurs.)
"The clergy has a genius superior to yours," went on the cardinal raising his voice. "All the progress that has been made towards this essential point of having an armed party in France has been made by us."
At this juncture facts were introduced. "Who used eighty thousand rifles in Vendee?" etc., etc.
"So long as the clergy is without its forests it is helpless.
At the first war the minister of finance will write to his agents that there is no money to be had except for the cure.
At bottom France does not believe, and she loves war.
Whoever gives her war will be doubly popular, for making war is, to use a vulgar phrase, the same as starving the Jesuits; making war means delivering those monsters of pride—the men of France—from the menace of foreign intervention."
The cardinal had a favourable hearing.
"M. de Nerval," he said, "will have to leave the ministry, his name irritates and to no purpose."
At these words everybody got up and talked at the same time.
"I will be sent away again," thought Julien, but the sapient president himself had forgotten both the presence and existence of Julien.