On the Situation Made for the Intellectual Party in the Modern World, in the Face of the Accidents of Temporal Glory

De la situation faite au parti intellectuel dans le monde moderne devant les accidents de la gloire temporelle

to the intellectual party in the modern world in the face of the accidents of temporal glory

When one has said what we have only indicated, when one has said that the entry of a young man into the great modern intellectual party automatically confers upon him today all the powers of temporal domination, one has said nothing.

When one has said, when one has noted that the introduction, that the initiation of a young man into the great modern intellectual party automatically opens to him all the powers of modern temporal domination — positions, riches, honors, vanities, sinecures, chairs, titles and decorations, lay prebends, civic incomes, advancements, governments of State, parliamentary political dominations, the honor of saving, — today, — the Republic, — and over and above all that what I see is most prized today by and among our young men: making a great and brilliant marriage, half-rich, or wholly rich, with that wealth very particular to the great university men, in our aristocracies of republican defense, in our political inheritances, in our hereditary governments of the mind, — when one has said all that, when one has enumerated all these grandeurs, — all these sad miseries, — one has still said nothing; one has said nothing that everyone today does not know, — does not declare, confess, recognize, proclaim in some way, or has not, when one is clever, and everyone today is clever, discovered first.

One has said nothing either that is very interesting. For on these great villanies opinions are made, on the great villanies of contemporary history, made, quickly and once for all, well made, judgments are settled, resolutions taken, decisions made. On both sides. A young man who wishes to become a deputy, a minister, a son-in-law, a counselor of State, or even to obtain on the cheap a chair in higher education, knows perfectly how to go about it. He knows what advances must be made, what pledges given, what promises to make, what promises on the contrary to keep, what words to keep and what words to violate, what oaths to swear and what oaths to betray, what drafts to accept and sign, and what drafts then to leave protested, when and how to swear and when and how to perjure oneself, what treasons to commit, and they know how one can even betray treasons themselves. A painter plays up the difficulty by putting whites on whites, blacks on blacks. Our young comrades play up their ease by putting treasons upon treasons. Speaking with them in the so-called scientific language, we shall say that they make treasons of treasons, treasons squared, treasons raised to one no longer knows how many powers. They are not merely skilled at it. They are experts at it. They are artists at it. They know all that much better than we do. They have a competence in it that we shall never have. We are a fool to occupy ourselves with them, even to dare to speak of them. We are novices, beside them. They know what they have to do, and what they do, and we shall never know it. They have no need of our information; they have more of it than we do; they have some that we do not have, that we shall never have; nor of our aversions and our discouragements. They despise us. They hold us for fools. They are quite right.

On these great villanies, on the governmental turpitudes, on the political shames, on the cunning of parliamentary combinations, on the electoral frauds in political elections and in literary elections, on the means of entering the Collège de France by the cellar door, on the art and manner of defending the Third French Republic in Assyriology, on both sides positions are taken. Those who want to, want to; and those who do not want to, do not want to. Those who want to, want so much that you could not make them want more, nor less. Even if you were good for something, which you are not. Those who do not want to, do not want so much that you would not know how to make them not want more, nor less, because you are good for nothing.

On all this, which is customary, which is habitual, all the habits and all the usages are taken.

On the public or secret turpitudes, on the basenesses of temporal dominations, on both sides positions are taken. Quickly taken. The lives are run. He who wishes to arrive arrives. If he does not arrive, it is because they are too many. It is not for lack of knowing. He knows his business. Let us not occupy ourselves with his business.

From the third year of school, from the agrégation, from the first perhaps, from the licence, from the entrance examination, from the cagne (or higher rhetoric), from the old rhetorics of the provinces, from the most innocent and youngest lower classes, from the youngest and freshest sixièmes, with the history of the ancient Egyptians and the cruel Assyrians, from the most ancient and youngest walks and the most violent games of tag under the heavy chestnut trees, from before perhaps, all that was already settled. From the most ancient games of tag, and beneath, and within, that game was settled.

On temporal careerisms, on both sides the dice are cast. Turpid souls go to turpitudes; servile souls go to servitudes.

The imbeciles go to honesty.

And what is most striking is that they have such a taste for it, the imbeciles, for honesty, for old probity, that they remain there.

It is sometimes difficult for the careerist to arrive, because they are too many. But nothing is as easy as not arriving, provided one puts a little of one’s own into it. Because one is not too many. There are thus throughout the world a certain number of young men, not very numerous, — we know many of them at the cahiers, but it is assuredly in the personnel and clientele of the cahiers that one would find and know the most of them, — clever fellows, then, particularly cunning lads, good men who cannot be fooled; old foxes, who have chosen the career of not succeeding, the procession of not arriving. They will enter the careeeer when their elders are no longer in it. They will not have to wait that long. For their elders and they fit perfectly well in the same career. It is even said that they are not too crowded in it, that they move about easily, simply, without hatreds and without much competition. For, at least according to the reports of travelers, it would be a career where one does not jostle.

These people too, these people on their side have no need of our considerations nor of our counsels. When a poor man has probity in his skin, he is lost. I mean lost for the grandeurs. Of all the defects that attack the very bones and marrows, this one is perhaps still the most irremissible and the one that pardons the least. The man who does not arrive, who does not know how to go about it, who does not want to know, the type of our kind, the imbecile at last, the pure simpleton, nidax vere simplex, the good man knows very well, feels very well, ever since he came into the world, and even before, because his father and mother were honest folk, that all his life they will saddle him with the dirty jobs. Or at least those admirable little trades, held and holding, pious and modest, that the great of this world rate as dirty trades. He knows perfectly well that all his life they will have him ruin his eyes correcting papers and compositions or copy and printer’s proofs

In the obscure honors of some legion.

But he loves this, this man. He is so stupid that he does not even think to name it probity, honesty, taste and passion for liberty. He execrates the very word purity. Because of all sepulchres the whitened sepulchres are still those that seem to him the most cemeterial. It is we, the pedants, who amuse ourselves by giving all this the names of virtues. With our mania for making catalogues and indexes. He has need neither of our classifications, nor of our encouragements, nor of our counsels. All he knows, this ignoramus, is that there are steps that the others take all the time and that he will never take, not even once, not even for a single quarter of an hour. Because that quarter of an hour would remain on his stomach, would be impossible for him to digest.

All that he knows too, all that he knows at last, for he sees from far, and to the far, he sees to the end, is that his life will be such, entirely, and that such will be his death, which is for him a sort of end of his life.

For for this sort of people, of little people, it is not, it does not much appear to be the beginning of their eternity.

Infinitely more dangerous than the temptation of temporal government, because it no longer attacks merely the souls of servitude, infinitely more interesting because it attacks also the souls of command, and even some good minds, infinitely more formidable than the base temptation of temporal government is another temptation, a high temptation, a superior temptation, because the other is merely base and this one is superior: the temptation of glory, under all its forms, under all the forms of this veritable affliction.

Experience has unfortunately demonstrated that the temptation of glory produces the forms of a veritable affliction, that there are men who would not betray their friends for the general government of Madagascar, — and dependencies, — and whose heart falters and who would do one does not rightly know what, and one asks oneself with anxiety, merely to be placed in some last chapter that the author would write of the history of Lanson.

It is fortunate for the solidity of the regime that men like Andler and Lanson are firm republicans. That they are its most solid supports and as it were its walking-sticks of old age. One does not know what young men, what young authors would be capable of in order to enter into glory, — even considered as a purely spiritual power, — namely to enter into history, — as one enters it today, that is to say to enter into the linear fabric, into the ribbon of literary evolution, into the scientific ribbon of a linear literary evolution, — simply to enter into a feuilleton of Le Temps; — much more scientifically to be placed in a new chapter of our master M. Lanson; — much more scientifically still, — for there are degrees in science and in the magistracy, — to enter into the cosmos of the thought of our master M. Andler, even unexpressed, even unwritten, even unprinted, as a link in the chain, as a rung of the ladder, as an element, — indispensable, — an element of evolution being always necessary, indispensable, and inevitable, — as an indispensable element in the linear history of the evolution of some literature, even of that execrable and contemptible and last of all literatures, French literature.

As virtue, crime has its degrees. One must congratulate oneself, for the solidity of our institutions, that a man like the honorable M. Gaston Deschamps, that men like our masters M. Andler and M. Lanson are such firm republicans. They themselves do not know, cannot suspect the full extent of their power. And if even they had knowledge of it, fortunately we have the certainty that they would not abuse it. One does not know what entirely disinterested young men would be capable of doing for them. One does not suspect, our masters themselves do not suspect what troops of enthusiastic dictatorship, infinitely more annoying than those they already have, and which are so insupportable, what praetorian guards, and more than devoted, attached, they could raise among so many young men whom one believes and who believe themselves to be of the purest republican defense.

They cannot know it. I do not speak here of that temporal power, I do not return here to that temporal power that we have spoken of and on which I do not think it opportune to return, for everyone knows it, which has come to our masters from the fact that they exercise not merely the functions, but the magistracies and that they pursue or decree the functions of teaching in the State Universities. Men who receive or do not receive, in France, candidates, born French, for the baccalauréats, for the licences, for the agrégations, for the École Normale, for scholarships, even for travel, men who have received license to make doctors and normaliens will always exercise in France an unlimited power. And there will be many who will be in their dependence. We leave for today that power, for today and perhaps for a long time, if not for always. What I say is that, among the superior souls, among the lofty souls, among the few Frenchmen who dare to confront this idea: not to be received at an examination or a competition of State teaching, among these eminent and singularly rare souls a new ravage occurs, by that very fact infinitely more dangerous, since it falls precisely, as if by chance, upon the few who had escaped the first, the old common ravages.

There thus occurs a new, a final wastage, the worst of all.

A somewhat noble soul mistrusts, of itself, instinctively and without anyone having to tell it anything about it, everything that resembles temporal domination. A somewhat decent man has perhaps still more instinctive horror of exercising whatever resembles temporal intellectual domination than of submitting to it. There is therefore no occasion to insist on it. There is not even occasion to speak of it. What must be said, what must be examined a little, is whether the temptation of glory, which reaches, which precisely bites into elevated souls, otherwise unassailable, has not become, it too, in the modern world, a temptation of temporal domination, all the more pernicious because it is more insidious, all the more formidable because it is more insinuating and because it slips into more precious souls, having itself taken on the aspects almost of a virtue, almost of a duty, almost of a metaphysical and moral obligation.

Good minds easily perceive, by birth, by race, and without needing to be pulled by the sleeve, what a temporal domination is, in its gross, known, classified forms, what that weighs, what that is worth. Some good minds may not perceive that glory itself, that the old glory, which indeed had come into the world, into the old world, rather as a spiritual power, that the glory of old time has become in the modern world, by an operation of the encrustation of the modern world, it too a temporal power, modern, like so many others as unfortunately there are.

I say encrustation because I am not scientific. If I were a scholar I would say incrustation, that would make a biologico-sociological law, and everyone would respect me.

On the point of knowing to what point glory itself, literary glory for example, has become in the modern world simply a form, and even a rather gross one, of temporal domination, I find myself compelled to appeal to myself, which is not proper, to my own testimony. But all our subscribers are perhaps not publishers. And some certainly are not journalists. One must have conducted for more than ten years, one must have had the charge and the responsibility of conducting for at least ten years the only enterprise that, without any capitalist resources, has ever been made to fight against the powers of money in the order of publishing, that alone has constantly and without any weakness refused to bend before the powers of money, in order to bring the testimony that I bring here, in order to certify, to this degree of certainty, to what point, of complete disintegration, the ancient glory, which had come into the world and which had grown as child, adolescent and young woman as a power almost uniquely spiritual, has become, by an effect of modern capitalist incrustation, in its old days uniquely a temporal power, and the most degraded of temporal powers.

[I say: the only enterprise which, in the order of publishing; I do not say the only enterprise absolutely speaking. We are several of us, fortunately. But the other enterprises are not properly of the order of publishing. I know as much as anyone, to take an example particularly dear to me, I know perfectly well, since I am enrolled in it, how much that moral person, which was called the Union for Moral Action, and which today is called the Union for Truth, has usefully resisted the temporal powers in the order of opinion, of a certain opinion, namely the powers of money, the capitalist powers.] An order of opinion which was of its very program.

(I hope that this praise that I make of them, that this testimony that I render to their company will not compromise them too much, will not do them harm. I hope also and on the other hand that it will not stun them too much, that so much praise will not seem to them absurd and immoderate. It is a Company indeed which has a certain kind of innocence which makes it that it has shown several times, to my knowledge, a great courage, mental, intellectual, civic, social, — several times interior to the Company itself, which is the most difficult, — of which it did not always appear to be aware.) They will therefore pardon me. Someone must speak sometimes. I am not a specialist, an entrepreneur of praise; I am embarrassed, awkward in praise; but this praise that I make of them is justified beyond what one might believe, beyond even what they perhaps themselves believe. I mean notably and very precisely this: their Company is poor: why hide it? Given the political and social importance that they could have, that it could have, that a very great number of its members already had individually, it would not have remained long or always poor if it had done someone’s business. That is approximately the only law of sociology that has ever verified itself. The business of someone or of some few who were outside, who might be outside, or, what is infinitely more serious, the business of someone who might have been inside. The business of some political party, parliamentary (avowed) or parliamentary claiming to be anti-parliamentary, from outside, or, what is infinitely more serious, of the always parliamentary new political party, of a parliamentary political party that one is, that one becomes, that one (oneself) makes, that one introduces into the dust where there are already so many.

I bring my testimony. I bring it only for the record. I bring it without any illusion. For the form, and for the acquittal of my conscience. For the conduct of the debate. I bring it with the certainty that it will be of no use. It is only a testimony of experience and thus of competence. And nothing is as despised since the advent of the modern intellectual methods claiming to be scientific and their domination as competence, which is not acquired in books, (unless one sells them) (unless one sells some of them), and as that experience, of which one boasts with an indefatigable fatuity.

It is even extraordinary, when one thinks of it, and that is assuredly a note that we shall find again, how this world, which always has this word experience in its mouth, understood in the sense of scientific technique, in the sense of laboratory experiment: to make an experiment, to set up an experiment, to mount an experiment, to succeed, not to succeed in an experiment, we know by experience (which must be pronounced seriously, severely, lowering the eyes and half-closing the mouth, pursing the lips a little) is also the first, is also the only one which has despised to that degree experience proper, experience strictly speaking, that incalculable and constant increase, which is of life itself, that perpetual entry of the total event into the event of one’s own life. We shall certainly return to it.

I therefore bring my testimony only to have my conscience clear, and because one must forget nothing. I have, thank God, not only a great number of comrades, but on the contrary a certain number of friends who are university men. They are friends of the greatest solidity. When they come to see me, which always gives me much pleasure, on the holidays, or those from Paris after class, between two classes, we chat sometimes. A statistic severely established and kept up to date has made it possible to calculate that I never speak for fifteen minutes, and, in thirteen-seventeenths of the cases, for thirteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds and one hundred twenty-one two-hundred-fifty-sevenths of a second, without making intervene in my remarks a certain opposition which I have already a certain number of times made intervene in writing in these very cahiers. It happens to me for example to oppose words such as intellectual to industrial, scholastic to living, functionary to producer, functionary to citizen, functionary to taxpayer, particularly university-man to publisher. It is known well enough, I do not insist on it. What everyone perhaps does not know, because not everyone comes to see me, and they are quite right, is that I am a poor innocent, a poor man who does not have, like our great geniuses, contemporary, infinite resources. Paris is full of people who always know how to write something new, and to say something else. Let us admire these people of Paris. For me, the inexhaustible fecundity of a Léon Blum and of that inexhaustible number of our salon-men has always plunged me not so much into a reverie as into a kind of stupor. I admire, and cannot imitate, to my great shame, I admire all these great men, our contemporaries at home, who have an indefinite number of writings, and a no less indefinite number of remarks, others. I have but one writing, I have been told so often enough. And I have also but one remark. And what is most disagreeable is that the remark is altogether the same as the writing. I say what I write. I write what I say. I was saying then a moment ago that when one of my several university friends is willing to come to see me, and we begin to chat, there does not go by a number of minutes which I have already forgotten, but which is set down somewhere in writing, without my growing tedious and starting to bring out a certain opposition, which is beginning to be known, for example between university-man and industrial. In which I do but follow one of the examples of our good master M. Sorel. As obtuse as I came into the world myself, and as I have remained, I have not failed to notice how, generally at this moment, these interviews turn. It is at this point indeed that my university friends generally shake my hand, with an affectionate, well-affectionate, all-affectionate commiseration, which some scarcely conceal. One could even cite some examples, — for if it is astonishing to what point we are an object of friendships, — and of enmities, — it is still more astonishing to what point I am little an object of respect, — one could even cite some examples that some of them have said to me, in shaking my hand: Yes, old man, — they say: old man; — yes, old man, we know it; or, more trivially, we know it, and sometimes, more briefly: yes, I know it; as one says irreverently of a song: you will copy it out for me. For they know that I know only one song and that it is always the same.

Such are our discourses. And thus do they end. But how can men propose to have two worlds, one for writing, one (other) for speaking (and chatting), one of writing, one of table-talk, when it is already so difficult to have a little piece of one.

I therefore bring this testimony only for the record; by it and to it the face of the reader will brighten, as I know by experience that the faces of my friends brighten at this point; I say it again: a man who has not worked as a producer of common law, as a wage-earning workman or wage-earning patron in a private industrial enterprise, a man who is not under some title in any private commercial enterprise, — and one knows well what I mean by a commercial enterprise, — a man whose very life does not depend on it, a man in short, to say the word, who has not had to pay drafts on the fifteenths and on the ends of months, — and where to find the money for these drafts? — a man who has not had to draw up a budget and who does not have unceasingly to begin again, a man who has not entirely a common-law budget, a private budget, a particular budget, entirely nourished on private, commercial receipts, themselves of common law, if not entirely spent in private expenditures, one must have been squeezed by the throat and have had a colic in the belly from that atrocious anxiety of due-dates, one must have been rolled oneself and devoured in those whirlwinds of war that roll everywhere outside the wickets of the State, in those whirlwinds of economic warfare and universal competition, much more real, being much more general, than what Hervé solemnly and pretentiously names Social War, in order to know I do not say what it is to be poor, — there are many poor functionaries, — but what it is to be wretched, on the one hand, and on the other hand what it is to be honest. Because the others do not know what temptation is.

In this sense, we have said it, we shall return to it, it must be said, and I am assured that Berth and that M. Sorel will understand me well, there is a profound kinship between the patron and the workman. The relations of fact, the relations of reality of workmen and patrons, or, if one wishes to speak a somewhat conceptual language, of the workman and the patron, between the workman and the patron, are much more mingled, intermingled, complicated, implicated than the political parties generally make them, all equally parliamentary, (and at least as much those that call themselves and perhaps believe themselves antiparliamentary, that boast of being antiparliamentary), than the antagonistic political parties themselves make them. There is between the workman and the patron, between the workmen and the patrons, a solidarity, perhaps one should say a synagonism, or to speak perhaps a little more exactly, particular solidarities, particular synagonisms incontestable, undeniable. There is between the patrons and the workmen, between the patronate and the proletariat, (should one say the operariate?) an antinomy, an antagonism, particular antagonisms incontestable, undeniable. All this is much less simple in the disposition of reality, I mean of actual reality, the only one indeed that we know, than in the programs of parties, than in newspaper articles, which today are scarcely anything but bits of party programs, than in the articles of reviews, even fat ones, and not only weekly but monthly, of which many today are unfortunately scarcely anything but newspaper articles, than in books, alas, of which, apart from three or four, it is better not to speak. But besides one and the other, besides these antagonism and solidarity, there is a certain profound kinship, there is between the workman and the patron a certain profound kinship, a certain profound consonance, which I would name industrial, in the sense that we have attributed to that word, a certain profound industrial kinship, a certain profound industrial consonance, which is a sentiment, a situation, a phenomenon of capital importance, of which we have I believe said a few words in a previous cahier, on which we shall certainly return, a kinship, a sentiment, a consonance, a situation, a phenomenon limited to them, which extends to all of them, which extends to none others, which extends to all patrons and workmen, which extends to no one of those who are neither patrons nor workmen.

This wretchedness rages only outside the wickets of the State. A man who has not passed by way of there does not know, cannot say that he knows what it is to be wretched, and what it is to be tempted.

A man rather advantageously known as a journalist and who has remained a journalist in employments where one generally remains so a little less, a man who has of the journalist that gift of making a fortune for certain words, good or bad, just or improper, that he invents, or that he borrows, a man who has notably made a certain fortune for the word bloc, M. Georges Clemenceau has also made a certain fortune for the word barricade, a new fortune, in speaking of those who are of one and of the other side, who are not on the same side of the barricade. Unfortunately it was only a journalist’s quip. And perhaps a romantic’s reminiscence. The barricade is no longer today the great social and political instrument, the great apparatus of government or of revolution, the great apparatus of discernment. It is no longer the barricade today that discerns, that separates in two the good people of France, the populations of the kingdom. It is a much smaller apparatus, but infinitely more widespread, especially today, that one names the wicket. A few wooden frames, more or less mobile, a metal grating, more or less fixed, make up all the cost of a wicket. It is with that, however, it is with that little that one governs France very well. Good ordinary format. Whereas it took barrels, and even hogsheads, and if I remember rightly omnibuses, almost buildings, to make a barricade. It is even no doubt for this reason that finally, it is at least one of the reasons for which probably there have finally come into the world many more wickets than there were ever barricades sprung up. It is that it was perhaps easier to make. It is enough to have oneself gone to buy stamps or to pay one’s taxes, which we name contributions, and to understand a little, to know how to read a little what one is doing, to have discovered for oneself this elementary truth of fact. We no longer have today the discriminating barricade. We have the discriminating wicket. There is he who is behind the wicket, and he who is in front. He who is, seated, behind, and those who are standing in front, those who file past, in front, as on parade, in I know not what grotesque parade of servitude freely consented to. There is the great, the true separation of the people of France. And it is for that reason that the great political debates of these last years and of this present one do not succeed in impassioning me. O subtle but declamatory Gonzalve la Flize. Whom I have learned not to confuse with the first Gonzalve, with the other, with the false, with the ancient one, the one who was of Cordoba and who was a good military man, although there is in your style, which I had not the honor of knowing until this year, a certain military tone, a certain air, one would be mistaken for it, an air of fanfare and triumph, with trumpets, which is very agreeable. As much as they impassion the French people. All these men, all these parties that are fighting or that pretend to be fighting, I easily recognize them for what they are, I have long known them as one great, as one immense, as one single party. All of them belong to the same great and unique party, which is the party of those who are on the other side of the wicket, on the good side, according to them. All of them belong to the same great and only party of the bureaucracy. Those who are in it cling to it. Those who are no longer in it ask only one thing, which is to return to it. Those who are not yet in it ask only one thing, which is to come into it. Bureaucrats, all, and having of the world and of life, notably of political and social life, a bureaucrats’ representation. Bureaucrats all, even and especially the one who is an orator, even and also the one who is a journalist. Bureaucrat Jaurès, bureaucrat Clemenceau, — that is why their oratorical duels are purely fictitious, — and do not succeed in moving me and why I scarcely follow them: I feel too much the ballyhoo, the secret understanding, that they are the (two) same men at bottom, that they are companions and confederates, the men of the same world, of the same system, which is the bureaucratic system; — no less bureaucratic, and perhaps more so, the anti-ministers, — the ministers, — of the General Confederation of Labor. Bureaucrats over and against whoever is of the small populace: voters, or simply registered, in the political order, and, in the economic order, taxed, named taxpayers, workmen in revolt or resigned workmen, seed of voters, seed of strikers, and always seed of victims sacrificed.

They fight, among themselves, but they fight only behind the wicket. One will never fight across the wicket, because then it would be serious.

When we say to our friends on the other side of the lycée door that one must have suffered in the street and have been jostled in the distress of the street to know what it is to be wretched and what it is to be honest, because inside the box one has so to speak never been tempted, they believe us, of course, because they have friendship for us, very willingly they do us the friendship of believing it, or much more exactly, and simply, of believing us, or rather they believe they believe it, but they only know it. A philosopher on his deathbed was saying recently to the most faithful of his disciples, who has gathered up for us this remark; having reached an advanced age, a few moments before the instant of his death this philosopher was saying, in substance: I know that I am going to die, but I do not believe it. He no doubt meant by these words, as much as one can explain, by analysis, words as profound, and as just, he no doubt meant by these words that he knew, that he foresaw, that he foreknew his imminent death by a full intellectual, historical and scientific knowledge, implying an indisputable, inevitable historical and scientific certainty, but that he did not foreknow it, that he did not foresense his own approaching death by an organic interior knowledge. One knows one’s death, one does not believe it, or one does not believe in it. It is I believe one of the most profound words that has been pronounced since there has been death. And it has been a long time that there has been death. It is a word so profound, and which reaches so profoundly to the most profound and essential sentimental sources that it does not apply only to death, that it is not true only of death, but that it is true of all that is of the same degree of profundity as death, of the same order of magnitude as life and death; it is not true only of probity, which is a virtue of race, and of which the improbous can have not even any organic idea; it is true above all of wretchedness, which is so profoundly akin to death, being, as I believe I have indicated in a very old cahier of Jean Coste, very exactly what the very rare formula of the Greek Antigone says: a living death.

He who has not been tempted, in wretchedness, does not know what wretchedness is and what temptation is, and consequently he does not know what probity is, what it is to be honest. Or to speak quite exactly and to hold ourselves in all rigor to the word we have reported, he can know it, but he only knows it: he does not believe it and he does not believe in it.

I shall not delay returning to what I have said of wretchedness in a very old cahier. I shall delay still less to treat of probity, even to speak of it. The virtues and the vices have no need of us to continue, to run their careers. What I wished to note only today, and it is for that reason that I appealed to my own testimony, to my own experience, for lack of another, is that there are three degrees in the temptation of power.

The first degree is the temptation of temporal power. It is a degree of a temptation so low that we shall not have to occupy ourselves with it here. For and against this first temptation positions are taken, and well taken. He who succumbs to a temptation so gross, so vile, so basely and grossly vile, was someone who wanted to succumb. We have not to occupy ourselves with him. We have nothing to say to him. He is marked. He is not admissible.

We can occupy ourselves here only with what happens after admissibility, with what is between admissibility and admission; we work, we can work only the oral. One must reduce oneself and we have reserved for ourselves the summits (we have said it often, the limit cases). He who succumbs to the temptation of temporal power, who even undergoes it in any way, who even thinks of it, is not even admissible. He is rejected first. He who succumbs to the temptation of what there is of the socially temporal in the intellectual powers, who even undergoes it in any way, who even thinks of it, is no more even admissible. He is also rejected first. He who succumbs to the temptation of glory, who even undergoes it in any way, who even thinks of it, would indeed be admissible. But unfortunately he is rejected, he fails at the oral, he is unfortunately not on the list definitive.

Such are sensibly the relations, the superpositions and imbrications of these three degrees.

A second degree is the temptation, intermediate and transitory, composite, mixed of the one and the other element, the temptation of what there is of the socially temporal in the intellectual powers: chairs, examinations, competitions, positions and decorations. And money and consideration in all that. This temptation is even more gross, more vile and more base than the first. He who tarries at this temptation is even more judged than the other, than the first. Even less admissible. We shall therefore not tarry at it.

There is indeed in this case, in this second case, a kind of contamination, a sort of particular intoxication very particularly disagreeable. We regard, we consider with quite another regard the pure and simple ambitious man, the proper ambitious man, the one whom we have named the ambitious of the first degree, the temporal man, in short the temporal ambitious man who has only (socially) temporal ambitions, properly, purely and simply, and the other ambitious man, the second, the one of this second degree, the temporally intellectual man, in short the socially temporally intellectual ambitious man, the one who covets what there is of the socially temporal in the intellectual powers. We would almost have sympathy for the first, by comparison with the second. We prefer, we almost love the first, in comparison with the second. We much prefer to have to do with the first. We infinitely prefer the one who plies his trade, or who looks as if he plies his trade, the ambitious man who exercises (ambition) (temporal) as a recognized profession. We hate the other. In the past we regard, we consider with quite another regard the temporal ambitions of the barons, for example, than those of the bishops (unless those bishops were, as was so frequent, purely and simply barons); the temporal ambitions of the laics quite otherwise than those of the clerics; of men-at-arms than of priests. We accept readily enough, and as it were naturally, that the captains, that the barons, that the people of war, that all the laics should wish to have, that all the temporals should covet the temporal, châteaux and temporal lands, powers, arms, temporal titles. They did, for us, as it were their trade. Whereas we have always, on the contrary, a feeling of a particular kind of prevarication, of a sort of simony, a very clear feeling, when the spirituals, officially intemporal, coveted the temporal. We suffer for them. We look on them only with a painful regard. That spirituals, that officially intemporal men, should covet temporal (goods), there is what at bottom we do not admit, what we cannot digest. What gives us an after-feeling, an after-taste, an after-thought of simony, of some simony. This after-thought, this after-feeling, this after-taste is so profound, this after-memory, this after-recollection is so profound that it has survived even the establishment of the modern world, where so many memories, more or less organic, have foundered, that it has remained at the bottom even in this modern world where so many traces have not survived, have been abolished. Today even still, performing a kind of transposition, of particular filiation, and considering almost in spite of ourselves the intellectuals as sorts of (unworthy) successors of the spirituals, we are not embarrassed when the so to speak qualified ambitious men, when an avowed ambitious man, when so to speak professional ambitious men, that is to say, exactly and definitively, in exact definitive, when a temporal temporally ambitious man, when a minister, when a deputy, when a politician, when a parliamentarian, when a professional finally, when a journalist covets, pursues a temporal increase, a charge, a grandeur, a temporal largeness, even when he wishes to have, to acquire, to take temporal money, when he wishes finally to give himself volume and mass and especially temporal weight. We consent to it, as to their trade. We even believe we make a good showing, give proof of good character to authorize them in it. Within ourselves and for our personal satisfaction. For socially they do not ask us for it, our authorization. They have no need of it. They get along perfectly without it. They even appear to us as authorized automatically. We do not suffer from it. Neither for them nor for ourselves. Whereas we are truly embarrassed (although they are beginning to accustom us to it), when on the contrary it is an intellectual, and even generally when it is an intemporal, when it is a professor, when it is a magistrate (although these, truly, have accustomed us to it more than others), even when it is an officer (military), although one is doing everything one can to accustom us to it today. And those of our comrades who have temporal ambitions (in which one may put as a particular case, exceptional, as a disinterested case the very legitimate ambition of rendering public services by and in the temporal administration, by and in the temporal government) we infinitely prefer that they pursue their ends by the temporal means in the temporal situations than that they stay in our legs to put themselves in our legs by the temporally intellectual means in the intellectual situations. Even at the limit, in strictness, as a particular case, exceptional, as a disinterested case, but very real, and very really realizable, one can conceive, one can represent to oneself, one can admit for example that a professor proposes to himself to become successively municipal councillor of a small commune, general councillor, senator, minister in order to render in these successive temporal situations and by these temporal means as many services as he will be able to render to the public; he can thus render him, he can thus render many public, temporal services, and even, without any embarrassment, without any inconvenience, spiritual ones, or at least intellectual ones. Not only is this legitimate; but it can make a good employment of life, a very good plan, a very good purpose, a very good proposition of life. And even if they did no good, they cannot at any rate do much evil. Even those who would be ill-intentioned, (there are some), even those who would be vulgar and base ambitious men cannot do much evil. Provided that they remain in the temporal, that they set in play only temporal springs. Because in the temporal, in politics (temporal), we are forewarned, we are not disarmed, we are on guard, we are vaccinated, we are unfortunately beginning to be vaccinated against the doings of the politicians, we are accustomed, against politics and the temporal, against everything that is of politics. In politics therefore we do not dread politics as much. In the temporal we do not dread the temporal as much. In fact those of our comrades who have become, who have made themselves resolutely politicians, parliamentarians, journalists (Téry), mayor (Herriot), even those who are dreaded, and reputed as dangerous, even when they do not do much good, do not, cannot either do much evil. Today. Given the state of mind which we have happily attained today (and unfortunately also alas) with regard to politics and politicians, generally with regard to the temporal. Those who are dangerous, those who are formidable, those who are our enemy, because here unquestionably our enemy is our master, are those who do politics in the unpolitical, in that which ought to have remained unpolitical; the parliamentary in the unparliamentary, in that which ought to have remained unparliamentary; generally the temporal in the intemporal, in that which ought to have remained intemporal. Because then and there one does not mistrust. Those who are infinitely dangerous are those who are tyrannical, are those who by temporal means in intellectual situations want to introduce, want to establish an (absolute, tyrannical) government of minds, are those who want to regiment the young men, to lead minds with the rod, to make schools and sects that are like Prussian regiments, are those men, those professors who behave in their chairs like prefects, of Combes or of Clemenceau, who have introduced, who have introduced into the Sorbonne, into the École Normale (into the new École Normale), into the Pedagogical Museum, into the entire University, into all teaching, under the pretext, under the name of pedagogy, sociology (which we shall henceforth name, I warn you, sociagogy, because it is much better), demagogy and all other agogies, who have undertaken to exercise, who literally exercise a mental, intellectual, moral, civic tyranny (it is the case for joining these two words, as on the manuals of our primary apprenticeship), one must always come back to this word a government of minds, who have introduced a whole apparatus, governmental, a whole instrument, of reign, of government of minds, who finally are and have made themselves political, parliamentary, politicians, generally temporal in a world, a domain, in a kingdom particular, in a city, in a republic of minds where it is essentially important that no government be established, where we shall not tolerate, where we shall never tolerate that a tyranny found itself and reign and live in peace, men finally like the honorable MM. Aulard and Charles Five Langlois, to cite only these two historians, to cite only historians. For the sociologists, one would have to cite them all.

That is where the danger is, the insupportable tyranny; that is where the danger is, the unendurable audacity of tyranny; the threat that no one will support; that is where, that is when there occurs that kind of contamination, that sort of intoxication, that some simony of which we were speaking at the very beginning of this brief interruption. Because there, because then we are not forewarned, because one does not mistrust, because here we would be disarmed. Because they are political, parliamentary, politicians, even police, generally temporal where one must not, absolutely not be all that. They produce the heterogeneous, confound the orders, put together two orders that one must never put together. That smacks of the mixture, of the apothecary’s jar, and nothing is as insupportable as a pharmaceutical tyranny of a grocer. These men who confound all the same too much the ministry of public instruction with the ministry of the Interior and the Sorbonne with the Prefecture of police.

The third degree of the temptation, particularly dangerous, is the degree of the temptation of glory. Particularly noxious, particularly formidable because it attacks noble souls, unwary.

A capital revolution has been accomplished, in the social history of the arts and letters, with the advent of modern times. One forgets too much that the modern world, under another face, is the bourgeois world, the capitalist world. It is even an amusing spectacle to see how our antichristian socialists, particularly anticatholic, heedless of the contradiction, cense the same world under the name of modern and brand, the same, under the name of bourgeois and capitalist. Such a contradiction, more or less conscious or unconscious, would cause scandal if we were at one contradiction more or less in this parliamentary political world. And at one scandal more or less. One forgets too much thus that the advent of the modern world has been, under another face, the advent of the same political parliamentary economic bourgeois and capitalist world. It is therefore not astonishing that by an effect of modern capitalist incrustation glory itself has finally become a temporal power.

Under the ancient regimes, glory was an almost uniquely spiritual power. Under the ancient regimes, enough powers counterbalanced the powers of money, — powers of force, other powers of force or powers of mind, — so that across all these powers, and across their very combats and their debates, and especially here, glory could remain an almost uniquely spiritual power. By a singular combination, by a singular play of events, at the advent of modern times a great quantity of powers of force, most of them even, have fallen, but far from their fall having served in any way the powers of mind, by giving them the free field, on the contrary the suppression of the other powers of force has scarcely profited any but that power of force which is money. It has scarcely served but to vacate the place for the profit of the powers of money. The counter-weights of force, of the other forces, being suppressed, nothing has gone to mind, which supposedly was waiting, to the powers of mind, for whom the revolution of the modern world was supposedly to be made. Contrary to what one could hope, when one was ill-informed, contrary to what perhaps indeed the demolishers of the old world or most of these demolishers and the promoters and the introducers of the modern world hoped, everything has gone to the only powers of force that had remained, to the powers of money.

In the ancient worlds, under the ancient regimes, other powers of force balanced at once both that power of force which is money and the powers of mind. And there were enough of them, because the world was rich in powers. Powers of arms and especially powers of race; power of the fist, power of the gauntlet, power of the dagger, power of tradition, itself half-intellectual or spiritual, power of so many rhythms that beat in so many hearts, powers of so many lives that beat their measure, powers of so many bodies that were not enslaved, powers of the hierarchy, themselves half-intellectual or half-spiritual, powers of the city, powers of the commune, civic powers, powers of the community, half temporal and half of mind, nautical power (Athens) or power of chivalry, and above all powers of the race, then the strongest of all, and the most beautiful, really dynastic powers, dynasties of kings, dynasties of grandees, dynasties of beggars, all equally dynastic, everyone then was dynast, an infinity of beautiful and strong powers of force, at the limit all temporal and thence indefinitely degraded into powers that became in an indefinity of gradations spiritualized, an indefinity of powers of force or of half-force at once struggled or pacted and combated among themselves, and thus doubly balanced themselves, and at once now struggled against the powers of mind, or pacted and married themselves more or less with them.

There resulted from this in the ancient worlds and under the ancient regimes a sort of unstable equilibrium that was perpetually to be reestablished, to be renewed, to be reinvented, to be remade, but that, in fact, reestablished itself, renewed itself almost always, that succeeded almost always in reinventing itself. It remade itself. And even some humanities obtained several times that there were very durable equilibria, equilibria truly stable, equilibrium so to speak unilinear of ancient Egypt, passionate equilibria of the people of Israel, equilibria of the Hellenic cities, equilibrium of the Pax Romana, — where however the powers of money committed a first essay of their domination, and which will remain the most disgusting of the ancient equilibria, because it is the one that most resembles our modern equilibrium of death, to such a point that it is as it were an attempt, as it were a temptation, an essay, a, first, model, an image of prefiguration, — equilibrium of life of Christendom, equilibrium of the feudal world, equilibrium of the royal world, equilibrium of the ancient kingdom of France. By all these together equilibrium finally of ancient France. And these equilibria themselves were what we have said, answered to the general conditions that we have said. That is to say that enough powers of force and of mind combined themselves and balanced themselves in them so that the powers of mind were not infallibly subjected in them, which for them is as much as to say dead, so that each particular power of mind was in them ultimately or became in them free and surviving. As much as it wished. That is to say as much as it had in itself of force, and thus of reason of being and of justification. By whatever disequilibria, by whatever troubles and by whatever disorders these equilibria, afterward, were successively cut, since these disequilibria had, at bottom, exactly the same principle and the same habitus and the same attitude as their brothers these equilibria, equally in the equilibria, equally and even at least as much in the disequilibria, in the inequilibria and in the intercalated restorations of equilibrium, however long they were, there persisted that character common to all the ancient humanities, — the Roman imperial, as I have said, perhaps partially excepted, — that the power of money was very far from being there the only power of force, and that such a debate and such alliances and such collisions and collusions of all sorts pursued themselves there tirelessly between all these temporal powers and from all these powers together and separately to the powers of mind together or separately, such combats and such alliances that in all this order and in all this disorder, in all this peace and in all this war, in all these equilibria and in all these inequilibria the powers of mind, combated, spared, sought after, threatened, pursued, for the good or for the bad motive, for ignominy or for glory, for defeat or for victory, for battle even or for level peace, for alliance or for persecution, in this mysterious clutter of temporal grandeurs and miseries which makes the whole warp, which makes the whole tissue of the histories of the successive humanities, in this living clutter of equilibria and disequilibria the powers of mind lived. They too had their grandeurs and their miseries. They too lived. And it is even for that, because they lived, that they had their grandeurs and their miseries. They shared the common grandeurs and the common miseries of the temporal powers in which they were entangled, they participated in them, and besides they had their own grandeurs and their own miseries. Perhaps honors enough surrounded his life. In all this, in all this clutter and in this common entanglement, and thanks precisely to the play that so many powers, temporal, gave, many powers of mind played, and so lived. They ended up, they too, by organizing themselves for more or less precarious equilibria, by disequilibria themselves more or less prolonged. Living among organisms and organizations, across many risks and perils without number they could nevertheless organize themselves. They must even organize themselves, and live. They were bound to it. Living among and against or with living organisms, not only could they organize themselves, but they were by that very fact as it were invited to organization. They were inclined to life. A friendly organism could invite them to organization, lead them to life. A hostile organism also invites and leads to organization and to life, since it constrains you there, were it only to combat it. What is dangerous is that great dead cadaver of the modern world.

In the ancient worlds, under the ancient regimes, worlds and times of initiatives, the powers of mind always ended by arranging themselves so as to fall back roughly on their feet, they always ended by arranging themselves so as to find their account, to bring in in humanity the receipt they had to bring in or wished to bring in. Every idea made its harvest. Every idea then had its granary and its barn.

Clutter, that is in definitive the very word of liberty, it is also the word of life, especially when one wants to insult it, which was not at all my intention. Our good master M. Andler did not ignore this when receiving as homage from the author and from the hands of the author a cahier that had just appeared and that indeed pertained to the Germanic government, he said amiably to the author, with his habitual good humor, and without any nervousness: I hope that your cahier will be noticed, in the clutter of the cahiers. He evidently said this word clutter to give me very great pleasure. He has succeeded beyond all his hope. Such a word is the most precious consecration of all that we have of free and living. Our master knew that clutter is the pet name of liberty. I would gladly say the baptismal name; but one must not compromise anyone; and especially one must not compromise liberty; liberty has no need that one compromise her; she herself has taken the liberty of compromising herself enough. Our master knew that clutter is the very name of liberty, when one does not have her oneself, and that a living clutter is worth more than a dead order.

With a clutter, with a living disorder, there is always resource, and hope. There is no more any hope with a dead order.

In all the ancient worlds, under all the ancient regimes there was life everywhere; the humanities oozed life. Then all life could always arrange itself, and effect its birth, however small, and its nourishment, and its life, and its place. All life obtained its growth. In life, in a universe of life, life too could come, all life could and must grow, all individual or personal life, temporal and spiritual. In life, life naturally came. Homogeneous or antagonistic, nature itself demanded that it come. Thus so many powers of mind came into the world and lived. And sterility had not obtained the government of peoples. One had to reach the advent of the modern world to assist officially at the advent also of the government of sterility. In all the ancient worlds, under all the ancient regimes there were so many temporal powers that lived, organized, and these temporal powers themselves were engaged in so great a number of actions and reactions among themselves and with the powers of mind that one always arranged. The powers of mind could always slip in somewhere, conduct some adventure, play in some manner, improvise, invent, push, like a clump of dog-violets, in some joint of some stone of some wall, and, starting from there, prosper and flourish. They could do so all the more in that besides, and in a second degree of increase, in all this inexhaustibly vigorous world they were themselves of a vigor that all the ages of humanity, that all the worlds, that all the ancient humanities had known, that all the regimes and all the disciplines have known, that we alone today no longer know, that the modern humanity alone has unlearned to know.

All vigor was roaring in full eruption. They could do so all the more in that besides still, and in a third degree of increase, more interiorly so to speak they intimately penetrated the temporal powers themselves their contemporaries. We have said it of some and one could say it of all. One can say that all the ancient temporal powers, all the temporal powers of the ancient times and of the ancient regimes, forces of arms, forces of dynasties, forces of tradition, powers of civic spirit or of chivalry, religious forces, in a certain sense, and for a part, even labels and rites, forces of hierarchy, and above all forces of race, were more or less profoundly as it were penetrated, as it were armed interiorly with a substance, with an instance, as it were with a marrow of the spiritual. All, save one alone, which is precisely the only one too that has survived the advent of the modern world, that by this advent has been made autocrat, and which is the power of money.

When the intellectual party rather recently agglomerated in this modern world wishes to defend that fat prebend of money that this modern world has become for it, generally it uses an astute stratagem that would make a curious displacement of responsibilities. It pretends to ignore that humanity has already been going on for a bit of time, and it knows, will know, pretends to know, in order to oppose it to the modern world, only a certain ancien régime. Such is the philosophy of history of these conglomerates. Dreading for their modern world, not without some appearance of reason, the judgment of some honest man, if a single one had remained afloat, or of some intelligent man, if a single one by chance had survived the assassinations of the ancient carnages, this agglomerate conglomerated, or this conglomerate agglomerated has imagined to invent a certain ancien régime that should be, for it, of all repose. One knows how it has proceeded. One had to make a certain ancien régime, that naturally should not be the true one, that was the first condition, an ancien régime inoffensive, I mean for modern times by comparison, an ancien regime that was without noxiousness. One knows enough how the party has proceeded. Taine was there, for a stroke. To constitute this non-noxious ancien régime, innocent, which opposed by way of comparison should do no wrong to the splendor of the modern world and regime, one well knew how it had to be done. One had to feign, it sufficed to feign a certain little ancien régime of convention. A wholly little chap, detestable, of a little ancien régime of compliance and docility. It was a particularly brilliant political, parliamentary operation, and which succeeded beyond all expectation, very particularly in the world of primary teaching. We ourselves, we Péguy, having come out, as a primary pupil, of the old primary teaching, which then was the new primary teaching, — one sees how they have succeeded, — we primary, one forgets too much, we underwent or we received this teaching from the hands of excellent masters, who themselves had docilely, piously received it from the hands of our grand-master M. Ferdinand Buisson. M. Ferdinand Buisson was not, then, the grand-master of the University. It was the ministers who were the grand-masters of the University. Director of primary teaching for one does not know how many years, and he himself no longer knows it, M. Ferdinand Buisson was, what is otherwise capital, in France, the grand-master of primary teaching. By that title twenty-five or thirty generations of Frenchmen, — I count by annual generations, — twenty-five or thirty annuities of good Frenchmen passed more or less indirectly through his hands. Not counting that all the movements that we are witnessing today which take place in the primary are but continuations, more or less direct, more or less justified, more or less followed and avowed, more or less bastard or acknowledged, more or less faithful, of that great initial movement. One knows in what this operation consisted, which has perfectly succeeded, like all the operations of this order. One had only to feign a little ancien régime, convenient, portable, good-natured, and all ready to let itself be convinced and beaten, moreover perfectly false, by putting end to end a few anecdotes more or less trumped up that one had requested from the reign of Louis XV, a few hearsays borrowed from the reign of Louis XVI; and so that it would not be said that one had not gone back high enough, to the sources enough, a few bits of gossip come, descended even from the reign of Louis XIV. Perhaps even the regime of Louis XI was put under contribution. But I do not know why, one took care as of fire not to put under contribution the regime and the reign of Louis IX (yet there was only a tiny graphic inversion to make, the I to change place, to put before the X, instead of after) Joinville, Guillaume de Nangis, and the confessor of queen Marguerite. For one had to go, decidedly, and not to stop until before the origins. There were even in all this a rather great number of truths, as in any feint operation that respects itself, in any feint operation well conducted. A feint operation indeed is not well done, it is done by an imbecile pure and simple, if all its elements are too obviously false. A good feint operation supposes, admits, loves a contingent, learnedly dosed, of incontestable truths. It supposes besides, it admits and it loves a scientific clothing. It is a ready-made clothing, today, and that is what costs least today. Who today does not have his (little) scientific clothing. What idea, what hypothesis, what system. A system would look as if it were going, marching all naked in the world if it had not put on its little scientific clothing. One would certainly shut it up as mad. And one would douche it. One had to find for this operation a scientific clothing. Taine was there. Taine ancien régime. Taine thus became the supplier, official, but the supplier of ready-made garments, always a little stiff, and which make folds, just where they should not, where it shows clearly, that crease, that pleat, that gape, the Aristide Boucicaut of this Bon Marché (exceptional), (a slightly less great perhaps Aristide Boucicaut, because the movement of systems will always be less great than the movement of fabrics, fortunately, and of all that the other has imagined and realized to sell together, and that the other has had quite other department heads, but at least as great a Bon Marché, perhaps an even greater Bon Marché, for if it does much less business in Paris, since it sends into all the departments, and even into Corsica, into all the communes of all the cantons of all the arrondissements of all the French departments, into Algeria, into Tunisia, into the colonies and the protectorate countries, and as it has even begun to export a great deal abroad, which the other does not do by far as much, it makes up by and on the universal regularity of this official governmental commerce what it loses, what it lacks, what it misses gaining, what it has less by the compared insufficiency of its Parisian commerce.) We shall therefore say the perhaps slightly less great Boucicaut of that assuredly at least as great Bon Marché, of that very great Bon Marché that the great intellectual market of the modern world has become and it is all modern science that has become the great Madame Boucicaut of this great intellectual market of the modern world, supplying ready-made scientific garments to all the systems that have need of them, and God knows there are some, notably to the parliamentary political systems. Which are those that ask the most of them. It is moreover and generally a department very much in demand; and a great commerce is made of it. And it is singular, it is interesting, but it is by no means astonishing that we find again precisely here the name and the man whom we struck against at the very beginning of these studies. It is not by chance that we struck against him at the very beginning, from the very first beginning of these studies; it is not by chance that we find them again here and that we strike against him here, that we find again to strike against him here; it is always the same clash and the same accompaniment; these two names, Taine, Renan, these two men, Taine, Renan welcomed us, greeted us at the threshold of these researches; we greeted them then from our side; since they have not ceased, they will never cease to accompany us; they will not cease to be faithful to us; and answering to this fidelity, we shall not cease to be faithful to them too, and to their good accompaniment. Until the completion, the crowning of these studies, if we ever attain that completion. Only, when one had finished explaining to the little boys what there was in Taine ancien régime, one took good care not to explain to them what there was in Taine Revolution and Empire and Republic and the whole shebang. The entire new regime. The Origins of what he names rather improperly contemporary France: one must not say merely France, as though it were a question of a people or a fatherland, of a people, particular, of a nation, particular, of a fatherland, particular, but one must say generally of the whole world or capitally of France at the head of the whole world, before the whole world, in advance of the whole world; and one must not say contemporary; contemporary moves with us, contemporary is of a time that moves with us, with ours; contemporary stirs; contemporary moves; contemporary varies; one uses contemporary in the course of a sentence, to mark a time as it were in passing, in the course of a sentence, a time by comparison, to us, to our time, a time by way of relation, by way of the relation it bears to us, to our time, of being of the same or the same (time) as we, as this same (our) time; but contemporary, which is fleeting, which is light, fickle, which moves, which flees, exactly with the same velocity as we, as our time, since it is of the same or the same, does not suffice, is not what is needed for engraving, for an inscription, for the taking of a date, for an assise as grave as that of a title, and which must be as monumentary, as monument, especially as that title there, for such a work, covering the whole of such a work, itself as monumentary and as monument, in the thought of such an author, himself as architect. One must say modern. When we say modern, it is the very name of which they boast, it is the name of their pride and of their invention, it is the name that they love, that they claim, or, as they say, that they affection, it is the name of mad pride with which they clothe their pride, nomen adjectivum: the modern era, modern science, the modern State, the modern school, they even say: the modern religion. There are even some, several, who say modern Christianity. And there is one who says: modern Catholicism. Now it is a very good, an excellent method, every time that one can, historically to choose, in order to apply it to an idea, to a system, to a caste, to a school, to a sect, to a class, to a party, exactly the name, precisely the title that this idea, that this system, that this caste, that this school, that this sect, that this class, that this party has itself arrogated, has interiorly chosen, that it claims and has allotted itself, that it has personally assumed, the name that interiorly, personally has sprung from its pride or from its revolt. Or that has flowed from its insufficiency or from its imbecility. This good, this very good, this excellent interior and personal method is exactly and symmetrically the counter-method, makes exactly and symmetrically the counterpart as complementary to that other, apparently contrary (at bottom it is the same) method, so well known, become classic, by which, which consists in a party (political, national, religious, intellectual, a party of every kind) taking, picking up a name and clothing itself with it and praising itself with it and flattering itself with it, a name that had been thrown to it as into the mud of battle by the contempt of the enemy, the procedure, the method by which it has been recounted to us in all our history courses how the Gueux of Holland had finally taken that name, by which, without going so far, and without going, without seeking so far, we ourselves have well and good taken that name of dreyfusards. Without being Dutch. But I am mistaken. It is at least as far as Holland, at present. These two methods of naming, or rather these two complementary parts, apparently contrary, apparently adverse, of the same method, these two faces of the same method, at bottom as interior and personal the one as the other, this interior and personal method is the best method, the only manner of naming. It is the only one that gives spurt, spontaneity, tone, interior, hollow. It is the only one that gives a name that resembles the object named, that has the same head as the object named, because it comes from within, because it issues from the interior of the object named, or, in the case of the enemies, from an exterior which is an (other) interior, being a riposte, wishing to reach the interior, which is in a sense the same, which has a pretension, a penetration, an interior attainment, which by hatred is worth an interior. When secondly besides we say modern, thus we name a very determined time, with a beginning (an epoch) and a period, having a beginning, an epoch and a period, a very determined time of which we know very well, of which very clearly I see the beginning, of which we have seen the beginning, of which we are perhaps seeing at this very moment the middle, (but is it just the beginning of the middle, or the middle of the middle, or the end of the middle, and the beginning of its temporal decadence, that is what we do not know) of which assuredly the world will see the end, of which without any doubt the world and humanity will see successively the beginning, the middle, the end of the end (it has seen many others) if we do not have, ourselves, even if we ourselves should not have this happiness, that we have perhaps not yet deserved, that we no doubt have not obtained. When therefore secondly we say modern, we employ, we introduce a technical word, a very technical word, and not at all, and no longer a word of literature and of epithet. Modern is fixed. Modern is dated, registered, paraphed. Modern could be put on a date stamp, on an automatic dater. Modern is known. Modern is determined. Modern no longer moves. Modern is a period, perfectly determined. Modern has (had) a beginning, (has had or has or will have) a middle and (will have) an end. Modern has limits, it has frontiers indisplaceable. It has had them happily, and which are indisplaceable, happily, in the past. It will have them, happily, and which, once obtained, will thus also have become in their turn indisplaceable, happily, in the future. Modern is a technical term, in the whole sense and force of the word term, of the term terminus, in the whole sense and force of the word technical. Modern is the stone sought, Tu es Petrus, Thou art Peter, as our collaborator from Pulligny wrote to us recently, in conformity with Matthew, XVI, 17, 18, 19. Modern is the stone sought, and as it is also a block, it is thus a block of stone, the stone that was wanted for a monumentary inscription, the lapidary title. Whereas contemporary. Modern is in stone. Contemporary is in lace. And even if it were, or wished to be a lace of stone, a lace of stone is still further from stone, more foreign to stone, if possible, than a simple lace, than the ordinary lace of thread and linen. Modern is hard. Contemporary is almost elegant. Contemporary is the boundary stone that would move with the terrain, with the field of the race or with the fixed field of plowing or of any culture or fallow or non-culture. Contemporary is a term that would move, that therefore would not be a god Terminus. Modern is a little acrid to the taste, a little sharp, bitter. A little green, a little sour. Contemporary has I know not what of a little sweet. There would be in contemporary (by way of acquisition, naturally, by absorption, and not at all evidently by way of etymology) a suspicion of confectionery that I would not be otherwise astonished about. It is a word that has taken today a certain taste of salon, of five-and-quarter tea, and of little cakes. To say everything, in a word, it is a word that is a little too much in the tone and in the taste of the life and the opinions of M. Frédéric-Thomas Graindorge, twelfth edition, one volume. Modern at least, in all its pedantry, has remained a hard word, a rough word, a word of school and of battle. Contemporary will always disagreeably remind me of that sergeant who in the time when one still knew what it is to make a square movement was commanding his section: guide, you will direct yourselves on the man who is pacing back and forth at the edge of the river. All that floats. Then. All that flows, glides with time. On the river, on the inexhaustible flood of time.

Modern finally can be a word of insult. One does not insult a gentleman by calling him contemporary.

When one had finished explaining to the little boys what there was in Taine ancien régime (two volumes) one took good care not to explain to them what there was in Taine Revolution (six volumes) Taine Anarchy (two volumes) Taine Jacobin Conquest (two volumes) Taine Revolutionary Government (two volumes) and above all what there was in what Taine so justly (see above) so properly names the modern regime, Taine modern regime, three volumes.

Modern regime. One must indeed say thus: modern regime; and the whole modern world. And not (merely) France, nor contemporary. And modern regime is the true title of the whole, not of a part only.

An operation thus conducted cannot fail to succeed. This one has succeeded beyond all reckoning. Twenty, thirty generations of Frenchmen, not counting the following ones, and those that are coming, in advance, believe that indeed it happened like that. That it is like that. That all the folk without any exception since the beginning of the world, which however was not created, until the thirty-first of December seventeen hundred and eighty-eight, — after the birth of Christ, — at midnight, were damned fools, midnight being counted as eleven o’clock sixty, and not a minute more, and that the first of January seventeen hundred and eighty-nine, at midnight zero minute zero second one tenth of a second, — and even then the real scholars do not stop at the tenth of a second, — the whole world was created splendid, the whole world, except, of course, the reactionaries. Thirty and forty generations of Frenchmen today believe that hard as iron. Indefinities of generations of Frenchmen will always believe it. For what there is of most advantageous in an operation of this sort, is that when it is done, it is done once for all. When a mechanism of this sort is set up, especially an electoral mechanism, one no longer perceives any kind of reason why it should ever dismantle, why it should grow tired, why it should stop, functioning. On the contrary. The more it works, the better it works. And the more it wants to work. So that one does not see the end of it. A majority swells by the mere fact of its lasting. From the moment one has put oneself, and remains, under the law of pure majority, the more it lasts, the more solid it is, and the bigger it is. The more it goes on, the more it is the same thing, and the more it is the same thing, the more it goes on. The more there are generations that have taken a certain road, the more there are of following ones that take it. The majority generations, grouped, massed, compact, which grow by one every year, make a majority government. And as it is the government, as it is this majority government that makes the elections, and the electors, and as it naturally does not fail to make them in its own image and likeness, majoritarian like itself and of the same majority, it is, it is the case to say it, a vicious circle, and automatically, mechanically, not only is there no reason for it to cease, but there are many, there are of all sorts, or rather there is one total one, largely sufficient, that in effect it cannot stop, and that it does not cease to grow and to beautify. One has not yet measured, far from it, the whole effect of this belief. One has noted, a little in all the newspapers, one has remarked, at the moment of the last legislative elections, that the entry into line, that the debouching under the fire of the electoral battles of the first classes of this contingent had no doubt had an important repercussion on the results of the elections to which we owe the fine Chamber that we have. It was a very just remark. But one has not finished seeing its repercussions.

These repercussions are endless. Mechanically, automatically, exteriorly they are endless. For that to break, it must break from within, as indeed seems well in train to begin to occur, the automatic, mechanical, exterior repercussions must be interrupted by the sudden effect of some interior fracture.

An operation of this order always succeeds. And it is without any danger. At least for the operator. How would these poor little boys perceive that they have been told stories? Any verification is impossible. Among these droves of little boys who traditionally wear out the seats of their breeches on the benches of our schools, how many can there be who will one day perceive that good masters have made them excellent tales. It would be necessary for that either that they themselves one day did some reading. But thank God there is not one Frenchman in a million who of himself and without any instruction could have the idea of having recourse to a text. Or that they should become traditionally, following the channel, pupils of our secondary teaching or of our higher teaching. Of one and of the other, or of one or of the other. Happily, — happily for the tranquillity of the government of the intellectual party, — it is not for the timid attempts at culture of secondary teaching, it is still less for the dangerous though timid attempts at liberties of higher teaching that our more than one hundred thousand devoted schoolmasters and other primary masters teach more than five or six millions of their good pupils to read, to write and to count, — not counting many other fine things, for one has greatly perfected all that, since the time when we were little, and they must at least learn sociology by now. An infinitesimal minority alone will enter into the secondary. And of this infinitesimal minority a new infinitesimal minority, a second and imperceptible minority, fraction of a fraction, minority of a minority, will enter into the higher. All the others, the immense majority, the near unanimity, one knows what their culture will be, and what their liberty will be. It is not for the formation of the person, it is not for the dangers of culture and the dangers of liberty, it is not for the teaching of the secondary or the teaching of the higher that armies of schoolmasters teach a people of schoolboys all that we do not know. It is so that at thirteen years old, and even before, they can read with knowledge of letters the pornographies of la culotte rouge, and others. It is so that at twenty-one years old accomplished, and even before, often before, with almost as much zeal, they can read with knowledge of letters the pornographies of the electoral programs.

And covering it all, supplying it all, for the crimes, for the horrors of modern alcoholism.

They are thus guarded, and well guarded, against the dangers of the old catechisms. They are guaranteed, fast-dyed, against the dangers of the (Roman) catechism.

To any person who would contradict me on this point, I offer to do for one month, at his expense, naturally, because I am a tightwad, what I often do myself for my private use: the morning or evening journey, on any line of the Parisian suburbs, in a workers’ train.

Ah no, they are not illiterates. And one will not be able to say that we are under the government of illiterates. One will even be able to say that we are under the government of the literates.

When the whole entire world was an immense, was a total organism, when in this total organism, forming, organizing this total organism so many organisms of all sorts played, lived, temporal organisms and organisms of all sorts, particular organisms themselves organizing more vast organisms, organizing themselves thus from near to near up to the total organism, up to the great organisms, the powers of mind were constrained also to be organized, living, to be organisms. Even if they had not wished it, naturally, even if they had not had the essence, the life, the inner genius, the nature, that they had. They were constrained to it. Otherwise they were little by little, they were at last finally eliminated, like a dead substance from a living body, from any living body, like a splinter or a scab of a scar. In a body well alive, that is to say well organized, well organism, a dead defect, a dead residue does not remain, tranquil. In a total, general organism, well alive, particular organisms, well alive, do not suffer that a dead neighbor, that a corpse of a dead neighbor cohabit with them. Thus a hostile organism compels as much to life in order to hate and to combat as a friendly organism in order to love and to support.

It is since that time, and it is for this reason, among many others, but it is much for this reason that secondary teaching, and, naturally, still more higher teaching have become to that point suspect to democracy, and that they have been so maltreated, and that everything possible has been done to demolish them, without always looking as if. There are so many means, sugary or sour, sly or violent, of demolishing a teaching that has ceased to please, a State teaching, when one is the State. There is the unceasing recasting of programs, learnedly conducted, learnedly dosed, learnedly administered. There is a happy choice of titulars, a particular conduct of advancement. There is nepotism, there is brother-in-law-ism, there is the calculated degradation of the Collège de France, by the double play, by the play of the chairs and by the play of the titulars, the concerted, long-conducted diminution, and learnedly, of that house considered, not without some appearance, as the most dangerous of all, having been founded to be the asylum of intellectual liberty and having unfortunately committed the unpardonable fault of remaining sufficiently faithful to its program, to the statute of its institution. A house that not only has no dormitories, but that under the Third Republic would understand liberty as under François the First. A happy recasting of programs and of chairs, many recastings, an unceasing recasting, the scandalous choice of certain candidates for titulars, a marked preference, renewed, unceasingly confirmed for political candidates over simply university candidates, simply intellectual, simply hard-working, there are a hundred means for a State, all equally sure, of surely dishonoring, of depreciating a State teaching, of degrading it, of diminishing it, of starving it, of exhausting it and thus and finally of killing it. It is by these fine means, by these simple means that in less than ten years Hellenism, Hellenic culture, has been completely suppressed, annihilated, and that having done and succeeded in this fine stroke one wishes today to suppress, just as completely, to annihilate (which perhaps will not come back completely to the same), Christianity, Christian culture (and which perhaps will not happen quite in the same way), which were, on very different titles, the only two pieces of humanity that one had, the one essentially eternal, but the other so respectable, in so many senses, that one could hope that this respect at least, in default of a power and even of a present temporal residence, would make it at least as it were temporally eternal, and perhaps more. All the more so and all the better in that if the operation is conducted with a little dexterity, nothing prevents one from maintaining a certain framework, exterior, certain scaffoldings, certain aspects, certain flags and decorations, certain décors, titles and garments that give all the more easily the change in that everyone, at bottom, asks only to receive it, the change. A gross people asks only not to see, clearly, and not to occupy itself with anything. And to be left in peace. The interested parties only too often give the spectacle of betraying their duties, and even their interests, professional, technical, the simplest, the most elementary. And they too, alas, are to be left in peace. Provided then, provided that one takes certain precautions, that one keeps certain appearances, that allow hypocrisies to cover themselves, lazinesses to plead, cowardices to justify themselves, a State can avoid causing too much outcry, a State can hollow out interiorly a State teaching, a State can empty a State teaching of all its content of culture and of liberty. And let the exterior order remain the same. Effect by happy unceasing recastings an unceasing degradation of the programs. Eliminate from them learnedly, drive out from them brutally all that is culture and all that is liberty. Effect by happy choices an unceasing degradation of the personnel, by family nepotism and by clan nepotism, by the most shameful favoritism of dynasty and of party, eliminate slyly, push back brutally and unceasingly to the low places, to the poor places, to the ungrateful, despised posts, — to the posts and to the places which alone are of veritable honor, today, — all that is weak, — socially, — all that is poor, all that is cultivated, all that is free. Effect an invasion, brutal or sly, but always complete, of politics into the functions of teaching. Protest now and then against this invasion, and pursue it only the more constantly. Give to politicians, parliamentary politicians or university politicians, parliamentary politicians and together university politicians, all that is choice posts and places, places and posts in view, and consequently posts and places of leadership, of influence, of some command. Calculated degradation of the programs. And by favoritism calculated degradation of persons. Besides and together, refuse the most indispensable credits, which one wastes everywhere else. Degrade, starve. From all hands diminish, weaken. There are some only of the treatments that are made to be seen inside the booth, there are some only of the treatments that one shows there and that one exhibits there, there are some only of the treatments that the State makes the University undergo, that it can make it undergo with impunity, since the ancient imperial University is the wife of the French State, a united household, because the two consorts who form this odd household unfortunately do not live under the regime of separation of goods and still less, if possible, of separation of bodies.

Put at the service of the State, which has become all-powerful in the modern world, that surety of instinct (the only one it has) that surety of striking of the envious, of the mediocre against everything that is culture.

Those are the treatments that the State can make, with impunity, the University undergo, because the University is not separated from the State.

It never will be. For one must not imagine that it is only by favoritism and to place its creatures that a political parliamentary, electoral government installs its creatures in all the eminent posts of State teaching and pushes back, in this way and also, into the less important posts the true and pure university men, into the so-called sacrificed posts, into the disgraced posts. I shall go so far as to say that it is the contrary. Or at least these are two movements admirably complementary, that complete each other, that join, that facilitate each other and that conspire admirably. That fit end to end admirably well. On the one hand the State can thus place its creatures. And that naturally is very agreeable to it and it is always so much gained. But of creatures there will always be, the good electoresses will always make some. It is even singular how this country, which lacks progeniture, absolutely speaking, never lacks progeniture of political creatures. There is here a very singular phenomenon. See Demography. And even mathematical demography. The creatures make a continuous and unceasingly unlimited series. And even an always growing one. By the same gesture, by the same continued action the State pursues, the State obtains another, a second result, which in the operation is rigorously complementary of the first, which at bottom is even much dearer to it, to it the State, much more precious, being much more essential to it: for by this second part of the operation, it degrades the teaching, it degrades the University.

One could almost say that at bottom, and despite appearances, the State takes pleasure even more in degrading the teaching than in placing its creatures; it rejoices, it enjoys more profoundly, in the secret of its baseness, in its instinct of envious jealousy, as feeling itself even more profoundly engaged in its meaning and in its own way when it degrades something, some institution, than when it places friends and comrades. To place parliamentary political friends and comrades, for the modern State, that is but of its utility. To degrade is of its instinct.

To degrade is of its instinct, the most profound. When it degrades, whatever it is, very profoundly but very surely it feels well in the way of its destination.

It should rather then be said that it is still rather to degrade the teaching that the State places its creatures than that one must say that it is to place its creatures or, unconsciously and as it were innocently in placing its creatures that it degrades the teaching. It is rather still, in this double operation, in these two complementary parts of operation, the degradation that is the secret desire, the more profound end, the less immediate end, the less daily end, the profound end, and the placement that is a means, than it is the placement that is the end and the degradation that would be a means, a consequence, a clause or condition.

To place creatures is good. It is one of the most important cogs of the modern governmental mechanism. It is known well enough and I do not insist on it. It is also one of the most apparent cogs. But the apparent cogs are not the whole mechanism and this placement makes only a first part of this operation. A more profound cog of the mechanism, less apparent but all the more profound, a second part of the operation, much more profound, closely fitted moreover, imbricated in the first, closely complementary of the first, much more important, much more in the heart, is to degrade.

The modern world degrades. Other worlds had other occupations. Other worlds had other ulterior thoughts, other ulterior intentions. Other worlds had other employments of temporal time, between meals. The modern world degrades. Other worlds idealized or materialized, built or demolished, did justice or did force, other worlds made cities, communities, men or gods. The modern world degrades. It is its specialty. I would almost say that it is its trade, if one did not have to respect above everything that fine name of trade. When the modern world degrades, let us say that it is then that it is at work in its own line.

The modern world degrades. It degrades the city; it degrades man. It degrades love; it degrades woman. It degrades the race; it degrades the child. It degrades the nation; it degrades the family, it degrades even, (always our limits) it has succeeded in degrading what is perhaps most difficult to degrade in the world, because it is something that has in itself, as in its texture, a particular kind of dignity, as it were a singular incapacity for being degraded: it degrades death. A few days after the burial of Berthelot I met at the exit of the Sceaux station one of our most devoted collaborators, one of those — worthy — heirs of those great families and those great names of the Berthelots, of the Halévys, of several of those great republican or liberal families that were and that have remained related and as woven together as the great and at once high dynasties of science and of letters and of the modern world. After a few half-sad remarks and which, on his part, were meant to be optimistic, as always: Look here, he said to me suddenly, I thought of you the other day. (It was one of those sudden recalls of memory, unforeseen by the subject himself, and yet so profound, profound against the subject himself, which make a kind of upward surge, a refoulement, a point of origin, and of contrariety, a source, in the water, an angular spring-point, like a wave of upward surge, that are, that create a counter-wave in the almost linear declivity, in the going down with the stream of the remark and of memory.) I thought of you the other day. — You are very kind. — Yes I thought of you; you know; I was at the burial of Berthelot. I was inside. You were not inside, you. Your reactionary soul would have rejoiced to see what they made of the burial of Berthelot.

He smiled sadly, and his lips marked a certain bitterness deliberately optimistic. He had underlined with a smile of understanding three-quarters sad this word reactionary, and had emphasized it with a glance, because he understood as well and even better than you, dear readers and subscribers, what there he meant by this word reactionary. And this word rejoice, said by him, had a particularly severe sense.

The details followed, lamentable. No, indeed, I did not know what they had made of the burial of Berthelot. A few indications only, sufficed, a few indications followed, pitiable, odious for one who heard, and which the spectator was ashamed to relate, which the interlocutor was ashamed to say.

A few details escaped, followed, an unavowable cortege of ragamuffins, lugubrious, but not in the sense in which in the word lugubrious there is the word mourning, or if you will it was a mourning of grotesque contrast infinitely more atrocious than a true and simple mourning, a few details said with regret, odious for one who has some sense of one of the oldest feelings that humanity has known, of one of the most precious also, of a feeling that all the humanities a little worthy of that name, of man, have known, esteemed, at its value, piously fomented; of one of the dearest old-man feelings that sometimes come to sit on the warmed threshold; for one who has kept some sense of the very old and very venerable respect. Our collaborator had received, being of the family, an entry card. The ceremony, inside the Panthéon, that is to say the most official ceremony, the most sumptuously and splendidly official and governmental, this lay ceremony willed, simmered like an apotheosis of the modern world, imagined as a personal apotheosis, fabricated as an apotheosis of the modern world in the person and on the body of one of its most eminent representatives (for they are pursued in their imitations by the idea of the body and of real presence, at least, in default of another, in default of the other, of the presence at least of this miserable carnal, mortal, already dead, perishable body), in all this apotheotic ceremony there was not one gesture that was not an offense to respectable respect. One was standing, seated. Leaning, tensed. One was not lying down. One had one’s hat on one’s head. Except, however, those who had too warm hair. One was talking, shouting, laughing, calling out, stamping the foot, one could not hear oneself. They had put there, I think, the music of the republican guard, as at the new feast of Jeanne d’Arc. And when the honorable M. Fallières was in sight and about to enter, one of the ushers shouting to the bandmaster, in the general tumult, in the tumultuous brouhaha of the women of republican defense, in the silly nothings that rang out, in the trifles that drooled, in this brouhaha of public square transported inside a temple, in these gossipings, in these murmurings, in these vanities, in these fatuities, in these unhealthy curiosities an ill-bred usher, an usher without bearing, an usher without style shouting across all that to the bandmaster: Come on! hop! over there! the music. Here’s the president. Yer Marseillaise.

You there.

Ushers of the Republic, apparitors of these new funeral pomps, will you make us regret the less coarse sacristans?

That is what they told me they had made of the burial of Berthelot. That is what they told me from several quarters they had made on the inside. They told me: I was not there. There was no countermark service, and I am not in the Republic a grand enough lord to have had tickets.

One will not accuse the modern world and modern crowd of respecting respect; it is a weakness unknown to it. You will tell me that one perhaps listened to the music. I know that music takes more and more place. Not only in the ceremonies, official ones, but in the very tissue of modern life. There would remain only to discern what there is of sincerity in this sudden love of music, and what there is on the contrary of snobbery. Or, as one used to say when one spoke French, of infatuation. I would only like to point out that in this use, new, that is made of music for the ceremonies, official ones, of governmental burials, there is an abuse that comes from a proper insincerity, from a misunderstanding more or less conscious, more or less voluntary. That there is here a duplicity, the exploitation of a double meaning. This very good music indeed that they have us make at the funeral ceremonies by very good musicians, either it is bad, and then it is properly modern, and even contemporary. Or it is good, and it is always religious music, in the most strictly exact sense of this word. And even it is only good, for this sort of ceremonies, in this sense, for this cause and on this condition, that it is exactly religious music. Music of genius created and brought into the world by a certain number of very good Christians of whom Rolland would give you the successive names as many as you might want.

There is here a veritable abuse, perfectly characterized, a veritable duplicity, finally all that our master M. Maurice Bouchor, when he was drunk, — drunk on music, certainly, that is the only intoxication ever known of him, — ingenuously named a seduction of a minor. One takes a music truly, properly religious, namely Christian, made by very good Christians, and one transports it like that, in military wagons, shall I say one transports it into a deconsecrated Panthéon? not at all to be there an ornament, more or less superfluous, superadded, more or less supplementary, but, everyone feels it well, to make of it the very heart and the substance of the ceremony.

To be all that counts in the ceremony.

And after (or before), the next day (or the eve), one meets people who say to you: I went (or I shall go) to such a burial (or to such a wedding); they made there (or will make there) some very fine music. I do not know how that happens, I perhaps do not have a soul modern enough, but I am shocked by such talk. It seems to me that formerly a wedding, a burial, were worth something in themselves and by themselves. That they had a meaning. That they were not merely a pretext. A tea.

And it is not because I am not a musician that I am offended. On the contrary. If I were a musician I would be offended besides and on the contrary on the part of music.

If one wished to make the trial of the modern world, — and there are days, truly, when one would almost be tempted, — it would be easy to make seen that the modern world always behaves thus. And it is thus sometimes that it succeeds in masking its poverty, in making coagulate as it were a crust of more honest poverty, a superficial crust of decency or of apparent wealth or dignity upon the hollow of its irremediable void. He who would wish to make a trial of the modern world, and who could not resist the temptation, it would be necessary first, in order to find the incurable foolishness, to pierce, to denounce all that universal parasitism of the modern world living solely, living only off the inheritances of all these ancient worlds of which it spends at the same time all its time saying that all these worlds, that all these worlds precisely were stupid worlds, damned foolish worlds, and the last of imbecilic worlds.

Method: he who could not resist the temptation, of making a trial of the modern world, however weak, naturally, it would be necessary to begin by establishing a serious balance sheet. And in this balance sheet it would not be only the quantities that would be difficult to calculate. It would not be even only the qualities, natures, species and values of the merchandise that would be difficult. To determine. One would have to first pay good attention to this. One would have to first, and above all, as a rule of general method, and preliminary, well discern, well share and well distribute, make a redistribution, well distribute what would be the meaning of the different values, and above all not to mistake the sign. I take this expression in the most rigorous sense of the mathematicians: not to put the + sign by mistake instead of the — sign, nor the — sign by mistake instead of the + sign. The modern world tries more or less unconsciously to give the change, (that is to say, very precisely, to make one mistake the sign) — and perhaps it is in this more or less confusedly sincere, — over the thine and the mine, over what is its own and over what is not its own. Over what is therefore of the plus, and over what is of the minus. Or of the zero, in the inventories. In reality, with an imperturbable aplomb, and which is perhaps its only invention and all that there is of it in the whole movement, it lives almost entirely off the past humanities, which it despises, and pretends to ignore, of which it very really ignores the essential realities, of which it does not ignore the conveniences, usages, abuses and other utilizations. The only fidelity of the modern world is the fidelity of parasitism. For all its vices and for all its pettinesses, for the small change of its vices and the petty daily household of its basenesses, for its teachings the modern world is sufficient unto itself. It believes, it affects more or less sincerely to believe that the world began, clean, between the thirty-first of December and the first of January of I no longer know what year. But let it have to organize something that exceeds, in its thought, let it have to organize whatever it might have more or less vaguely the impression of, however little, that it must exceed, in some manner, then quickly, with an incalculable nerve itself, with an unbelievable aplomb it dons the old boots, it puts on the old hats. One coiffes one’s feet, said a character of the first Victor Hugo, who was I think our old scapegrace friend don César de Bazan. The modern world, for itself, coiffes its head with impunity. It coiffes it even with the most antique helmets. And it shoes itself with boots, military and others, that are older than the oldest and the most authentic seven-league boots.

It bestrides the old horses with a tranquil impudence, an offhandedness, with a poise, an unconsciousness of which perhaps it itself is unaware. This perpetual borrowing, this offhandedness and this usurpation, this misappropriation above-said is seen above all, is perceived, itself, at the ceremonies, official ones. And indeed it is in a certain sense there that it must be perceived most. The ceremonies, official ones, are indeed manifestations voluntarily culminating; they have a sense voluntarily marked; it is well there that a whole world, represented by its government, officially, wishes to make culminate and bring to a head all that it thinks it has in itself that it is capable of making seen, of showing in the street, in public, in broad day, that is worthy of it, according to it, all that it can bring out. A ceremony is willed, produced, calculated. It is truly an official act of representation, an official manifestation, where the governmental world, acting for the whole world that it governs, officially, here for the modern world, brings out all that it has best, all that it can show to the people and to foreigners, its fine uniforms, its fine musics, its fine uniforms of souls, if it has any, and of bodies, its fine constituted bodies.

Now what do we see when the government of this modern people comes to that test, of bringing out a ceremony? We see first, — I am not malicious, it is known, and I have no embarrassment in noting that this ceremony, when it is a political ceremony, and especially a ceremony of international politics, is often and even generally successful. And sometimes even very successful. The Republic knows how very perfectly to receive kings. It also receives just as well anything you wish, the peoples, or simply the chambers of commerce and the municipalities. But, then and after that, how do we see that it goes about it to effect, to order one of these ceremonies. Oh then we see that there is no longer any question that the world came into the world this thirty-first of December at midnight. With a liberality, with a breadth of mind of which one must be all the more grateful to it, with a veritable largesse, of which we must all the more praise it that it is no doubt half-unconscious, the good Republic of this modern people, without any rancor, borrows from all hands from these past worlds, that a moment ago did not exist.

We receive very perfectly well the peoples and the kings. Moreover we are now in the habit of it. And we are getting more into it every day. But of what are these very perfect ceremonies made? What is their décor? One can say, this time, that the décor of them was already made and that the modern world was happy that the worlds its fathers had come into the world before it.

That is where one must see in the accounts what is of the asset, what is of the liability, what is of the arrears, what is of the zero, what is of the for and of the against, of the plus and of the minus, of the going and of the coming, of the descending and of the ascending again, of the sense and of the counter-sense. To pay good attention that the same words cover, can cover different realities, even contrary ones, that reciprocally different, even contrary names, words, cover, can cover the same realities. Always these doublings and these doublets. This society, this world, this same world, that one brands with the name of bourgeois and of capitalist, and the same, exactly, identically the same, that one celebrates under the name and under the name of modern. Thus, again, this government, this system of government, that one defends, that one celebrates, that one extols under the name of constitutional, of Republic, and of republican, that one demolishes when need be, the same, under the name of parliamentary.

It is fortunate for the modern world, which moreover makes use of it very liberally, with an unaffected ease, it is fortunate for it, and for us who watch it making use of them, that other worlds its fathers came into the world before it, and that these damned foolish worlds, which moreover did not exist, do not exist and have never existed, which will never exist, that at least one is sure of, since it is of the past, made and left it Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle, made it the admirable Invalides and the Arc de Triomphe, made it, my God, this Panthéon itself, and that unique monument in the world: Paris.

The very perfect, very horizontal and very vertical, very perfectly, the very Roman and very other, very imperial and very classical Arc de Triomphe.

Very imposing, very majestic, but of an assurance without pride, so perfectly assured is it. Of a grandeur such, of a grandeur where pride would be foolish. Very military and very imperial, very Roman vault too; and yet so familiar, so passing, that you see people, behind the curbs and the chains, people who dare to pass beneath it. To cross the square.

And then there is, on your side, on your right, that Marseillaise of Rude, that Marseillaise of stone, which officially is a Song of Departure, or a Departure of the Volunteers, or a Song of the Departure of the Volunteers.

That one made for it Paris, monument of monuments, monument of the monuments, capital monument of so many elementary monuments, monument-city, monument-capital, this people of houses, of streets and of monuments, this people of gables and of roofs, which all are still not modern, and thus are not all ugly, the city of the three hills, equidistant, equilateral, equitable, and of that circle of hills, of that circus, more or less exterior today, circumferential, which all will gradually be eaten up, and thus will become interior, learnedly, wisely, intelligently spaced, discreetly, elegantly disposed, sown, this network of streets and of ways, of veins and of arteries, this central aorta, the Seine, lightly, slowly, attentively curved, not bent, curved (the crozier), this people also of a people, people of houses of a people of men, this people also of peoples, people of houses of so many peoples of men, this people finally of memory, this people of memories, this people of remembrances, where the whole universality of the horizontal cut of the present time multiplies itself infinitely by the whole universality of the strike of the sounding-line, of the vertical deepening, by the whole universality of the vertical cut and of the elevation, of the vertical thread, by the whole universality of the vertical past, vertically the richest, of an infinite vertical past for each of the points of this infinite horizontal universe of the present time, the city where not a paving stone that does not sound a remembrance of the past, that does not call, that does not evoke, that does not sound the remembrance of the memory of the past, where the very mud of the gutter is a mud of history, where there is not a paving stone that does not sound under the heel the resonance, the evocation, the reverberation of an infinite past, city where the least block of wood paving covers, halts, plugs as with a stopper the vertical line ascending and re-ascending perpetually to the day, alive, invincibly, rebellious to dying, and to disappearing, and to being effaced, under the feet, reappearing always, like the bloodstain (and it is often a bloodstain) of the memory of an event of the past that has always been capital in the history of the world, temporal capital of the world, intellectual capital, alas (must one say alas?) and spiritual capital, still, always, all the same spiritual capital; the city that has suffered most for the temporal salvation of humanity, the city of the world that has labored most for the salvation, for the temporal salvation of the world, the city also, the city still, the city always, the city all the same that has suffered most, that has labored most, that has prayed most for a salvation that infinitely surpasses the temporal salvation; this first city of the world; capital of the kingdom; unique city of the world; the most intellectual, alas, for the intellectuals; and on the contrary the most voluptuous for the voluptuous, the most carnal for the carnal; and also for the mystics the most mystical; at this very moment, in this time, present, in the misfortunes and the miseries of this time the one that still, the one that always, all the same the one that suffers, that labors, that prays the most and the best for that salvation that passes infinitely the temporal salvation of humanity; city the most temporal for time and for temporals, at the same time, together the most eternal for eternals and for eternity; unique city of the world; modern city, antique city; the first of the modern cities of the world, as modern, the first of the antique cities of the world, as antique; after Jerusalem and Rome; and yet there is in Lutetia, and even in Paris itself, I know not what of antiquity, I know not what antiquity that goes back as far as anyone, an antiquity than which one sees none, one sees none that is more authentic, more ancient, more antique; an antiquity full, and thus distant, far-off, going back, far, because time, and even so to speak date, measures itself all the same a little by duration; that is to say, in a certain sense, by the number, by the importance, by the fullness, by the abundance, by the plenum of events that have effected themselves between this date and the present date, between this past time and the present time, by the plenum of events that have (come)up, by the plenum of work done, by the plenum of life lived, by the plenum of history made, by the plenum of all history, of intercalary history.

By the plenum of intercalary events, of intercalary work, of intercalary fact; of intercalary life, of intercalary history, of intercalary world.

City of the world the most royal, even at present the most royal for the kings (if there were kings) by the ancient kings; the most imperial, on account of the Emperor (there is no longer any emperor); city of the world the most republican, if there were any Republic.

City of the world for republicans the most republican, for monarchists the most monarchic and monarchist; particularly for legitimists the most legitimist and the most legitimate (there is only one thing that it is not, only one opinion that it does not have: Paris is not, has perhaps never been much, in any case is assuredly no longer at all Orleanist: it is even the only opinion it does not have, or that it has, as one will (of not having it, of not having this opinion, the Orleanist, Orleanism, of not being that, Orleanist.) But it is a very deliberate purpose, a well-settled opinion. The eldest city of the world, the eldest of the cities of the world could not stop at this opinion, at this situation. The eldest city could not be, could not make of itself a younger-branch city.)

For republicans city of the world the most republican. If there were any. And for reactionaries city also the most reactionary in the world. For conservatives the most conservatory city, the most and the best preserved. For revolutionaries not only, no longer only the most revolutionary city, but the only revolutionary city in the world.

The most recent, the most modern, the most new of all modern cities; historic city, antique city the most ancient, the most historic, the most authentic, the most traditional of antique cities, the most antique of the preserved cities. City where the very sewers, no matter how they are redone and modernized, city where the very sewers are historic monuments, have a tracing, follow historic tracings, underline historic tracings, dig in earths where there is not a clod, all black blue violet and penetrated today with infiltrations of lighting gas issued, slipped from the black pipes, filtered from the lead joints, earths mortal today for our chestnuts and for our new plane trees, earths mortal for the roots, that is not of the humus and of the historical compost.

City so to speak the most exterior of the most interior life.

City of the greatest peopling, of the most overpopulation. City also of the most solitude, of the greatest, of the most august, of the most royal solitude. City of the most frequency and of frequentation, of the most chatter (this impiety), (perpetual), of the most relations, of the most salon, of world, of mondain, of mondaneity. City the most serious, city the most frivolous. All full of its frivolity, of its innumerable frivolities, inexhaustibly renewed, indefatigably reinvented, made with more ardor than one would put into, with more zeal, with more care, with more seriousness, with more frivolity also than any would put into work. City of the most chitchat, of janitor-gossip, of calumny, of malicious-talk, of pettiness, of grandeur. City of the most prattling, of time lost, of time gained. Of time employed. Of time occupied. Seriously. Temporally. And even eternally. City of the most journalism, of theatrics, of literature, of theatre (almost always infamous). And city also, city in the same time of the greatest solitude, of an entire, of a total isolation. City of retreat. City of work. City of the street and at once almost too much city of libraries. And of museums. City of dispersion and almost too much city of concentration. Interior. City of the body and city of the spirit. City of the legs and city of the brain. City of commerce, of plying the merchandise, and perpetual stove, stove on the spot, stove at home, little (or great) Holland for the philosophers. City when one wishes of the greatest solitude. Of the most sincere, of the most authentic, of the most fruitful. City of the most false and of the most true, of the most snob and of the most sincere, of the most theatrics and of the most art, of philosophy, of sciences, of letters. Sincere. True.

City of the most culture.

Odious city of the most chirping, and respectable city, respectful city, city when one wishes of the most total silence, of the most infinite, of the most eternal, of the most authentic silence.

Of the greatest of goods: silence. Of silence which is almost as dear as the conversation of a friend, more eternal, almost as dear as the interruption that a friendly voice makes to it; the greatest perhaps of earthly prefigurations.

A city where in August and September, when you are alone in Paris, you have a Luxembourg, a garden, before the door of your station, the most beautiful flowers in the world in the most beautiful garden in the world (it is never so beautiful as in this period; it begins perhaps in the last two fortnights of July, in the last one, on the fourteenth of July), in this season, the most perfectly drawn, and which knows how to be silent,

The city then of play, of prattling and of divertissement. City of the most elevation, of the most contemplation, of the most meditation. City of the greatest prayer.

City where there is fabricated, city where there is fomented and cooked, as one cooks bread, city where germinates and is worked the most of this matter of elevation in this form of elevation, of contemplation, of meditation. Of prayer.

City where there is sold the most vice, where there is given the most prayer.

Where you have this friendly Luxembourg so to speak all to yourself. And you are still a very great number who have it thus all to yourselves. And in September the sun has a taste so fine, so amber, so reposoir, of a light so rare, after the light, after the transparent mist of September of the morning, so rested, before the return, before the labors, before the great troubles of the last autumn, of the second autumn, of a clarity so pure and so arrested, of an admirable tepidity of farewell, calm, of a smell of fruit, of a scent of autumn rose (an autumn rose is more than another exquisite) and not yet of great dry leaf, passage from the exterior to the interior, from the open air and full sunlight to the intimacies of the hearth, approach of the winter vigils, poignant double-faced feeling, expectation and fear, hope, calm, with, perhaps, a hint of regret.

Singularly calm color of the September sun. The fevers are past, definitively for a year, the ardors, the sunstrokes. The other fevers, the vile fevers of men, have not yet begun.

City of silence where this total silence, this universal silence, one can almost make for oneself almost the whole year, with a little goodwill, with a little more: with a little will, even in seeing many people, in continuing to see as many people, because there are gardens, interior Luxembourgs. Open, closed the whole year.

In the great heats of summer, in the great colds of winter one had forgotten this taste of the September sun. One no longer remembered this taste. But in September one is well content to find it again.

City of perdition. City of salvation.

City along this river of these admirable quays, bilateral, longitudinary, profiled; insular, in the two (or three) isles; these quays of the bookstalls; and on this river of all these bridges of all ages, and, according to their age, of all styles and of all workmanships, all so to speak equally beautiful, all almost equally Parisian, except however this Alexander III bridge, still very beautiful, but, as a metal bridge, much less beautiful than the Mirabeau bridge, the rhyme indicates it, the rhyme demands it, the rhyme requires it; and that could even be sung; of a line much less pure; much more July and August consequently; the heavinesses of summer; and thus infinitely less septembral; infinitely less amber, less fine, less pure; drawn much less sharply, much less thrown, from one bank to the other, much less hurled, much less posed, as with the hand; much less fine, much less stroke; of an indication much less prompt, of a hurl much less sure and less firm, of a throwing much less fine, of a drawing (must one say of a design, and it is not a pun, it is the same word), the other of a drawing much more deliberate, of an intention much more thrown, of a deliberation much more arrested, much more simple, much more one, much more pure, of an intention, of an arrest, of a stroke infinitely more clean: a bridge infinitely more line; the line alone; the master line; all the beauties, all the beauty of the arch, metallic, all the vaulting of the arch, and together, intimately penetrated, by a miracle of geometry, all the beauty of the straight line; a curve, by this miracle, almost straight (I say the Mirabeau bridge, I am always speaking of the Mirabeau bridge); barely supported; without any heaviness; without a suspicion; of heaviness; indicated only; almost in dry-point; let us say drawn in Faber; and the key of the Mirabeau bridge (I dare not say the keystone, so light it is): a nothing; whereas this Alexander III bridge has remained somewhat what it had come into the world being (it is natural) (and we are not to hold it against it) (and we then would be fools), a bit Russian alliance, almost a bit Franco-Russian, a bit heavy, a bit sumptuous, a bit carpet, and even heavy carpet, and fringe, and hanging, a bit international, alliances and ententes, a bit lampstand, a bit ceremony, a bit pomps, even funereal, a bit hearse, with these tufted ornaments of zinc or of bronze that wish to pass for monumental plume or gold, a bit ornamental, a bit overloaded, a bit ornament itself, a bit ornamentary, a bit reception of kings and emperors, consequently a bit too much bridge of republican defense and alliance, to which however one must do this justice that seen from below, from underneath, it makes a beautiful vaulting to let the beautiful river pass through, a beautiful arch to straddle so many beautiful boats, a beautiful curve, heavy and a bit dull, but beautiful, majestic, where the beautiful river passes and on the river where so many beautiful boats pass, barges of every sort and every cargo, tugs so swift, so fine, relatively so small, so valiant and so wasp-like, as some of them are called, even the passenger boats, the omnibus boats, which have their kind, a kind a little omnibus, the name indicates it, but anyway; even, in another sense, and especially those two or more beautiful great English boats that come together or in turn to moor at the Louvre quay, freight boats that in a single stroke, in a single run, all full, without lightening, without slackening, go, navigate to the quays of London; and full come back; and this justice also, and especially this justice that seen from above, seen from on top, seen by him who passes or is about to pass over it, it makes a very fine, very wide, very sumptuous, very majestic avenue, very worthy assuredly of the two modern palaces from which it comes; whence it brings, whence it carries, assuredly not entirely unworthy of the very admirable and very perfect classical monument to which it leads, to which it conducts, to which itself it betakes itself; whose esplanade it opens; it is a good point for the avenue of this bridge that it is by no means unworthy of these two modern palaces from which it comes, the great and the small, of which I very well know that one must say, on pain of passing for an imbecile in Paris, that one is a pure little marvel, and the other a horror (unfortunately I do not know which one it is that is a little pure marvel, and the other a horror) (because these two palaces, modern, of which one sometimes speaks, I have never seen; not that I do not pass that way as often as in my turn, and more often than in my fool’s turn; on the impériale of Passy-Hôtel-de-Ville and all others, and at least as often on foot; but I do not know how it happens, when I pass on that fatal quay, wherever I am going, wherever I am coming from, however I pass, I have always the face turned toward the Invalides; I can never be turned otherwise: one has, in families, such infirmities; and then my eyes, the fools, which always look in front of themselves, always look at the Invalides; and I am behind; so I cannot see these beautiful modern monuments; when they want me to see beautiful modern monuments, I believe they will have to not put them within reach of the Invalides;) it is for this avenue, for the avenue of this bridge, a greater good point, a better good point, if I can say it, I mean a more good point, this: that this avenue, that the avenue of this bridge is such that when one walks upon it, going toward the admirable monument, not looking at it, looking only at the admirable building and the admirable dome, this admirable view is not at all marred by it and that this avenue finally bears no injury, does no offense to the sole of our shoes; that it does no offense, even thus indirectly, to the line of the monument, that it bears no injury to that impeccable horizontal, to that dome, under the flamboyant ardors of summer, in the fine, in the tenuous mist of autumn, on account of the Seine, which is so near, in the transparent mist of the first autumn, under the snows of winter; and I forbid you to look at the Invalides under the snow without immediately that snow being the imperial snow of the retreat from Russia, for there has never been but one snow that has fallen upon the dome of the Invalides, and it is the snow of the Emperor, the imperial snow of the retreat from Russia, just as there has never been but one snow that fell in that imperial retreat from Russia, there has never been but one imperial snow, a snow of the Emperor, and by a singular rapprochement, by a profound interior accord it is the snow of Hugo, the snow that never more will cease to fall in Les Châtiments, in l’Expiation: It was snowing, it was always snowing! Les Châtiments, the greatest monument, with the Arc de Triomphe, that has been raised to the glory of the Empire. It was snowing. One was vanquished by one’s conquest. Under this reservation, under the reservation of this somewhat festooned bridge, so many beautiful bridges of all ages, that pass, that span, that leap the beautiful river, each according to its means, with their step, with their foot, according to the more or the less, according to the infirmities of their age, some sprightly, in a single stroke, others, infinitely more venerable, already as it were a bit on crutches; one of these old ones is naturally named the Pont-Neuf; and it is precisely yours, Halévy; all beautiful, according to the beauty of their age; all therefore, all thus marvelously attuned, of one single accord attuned among themselves directly; and all together attuned to the beautiful river; mutual direct accord, accord with the river; representing, symbolizing, gathering thus, in this linear foreshortening, all the beauty of this city where so many beauties of so many ages marry themselves directly among themselves, accord themselves, hear themselves mutually and directly among themselves, all together accord themselves, accord themselves with the beauty of the city, with the total beauty, with the beauty of the terrain; and besides, and also, from every other side, from every other elsewhere, from the top of those three equivalent hills, excellently from the top of Montmartre, from the heights of the rue Lepic, ocean of roofs; immense immobile waves of the roofs of so many houses; apparently mobile; mobile immobile waves; immense mobile immobiliary waves; that cover, that clothe, that translate, that do but translate the framings, the close-pressed, the strong framework of the subordinate terrain, of a terrain wholly uncollapsible, perforated nevertheless since the highest antiquity, pierced, perforated everywhere and without cease, today still (Metropolitan and North-South, water, gas, on every floor, electricity, everything) (compressed air) literally terebrated.

For us Frenchmen city of France the most French, the most profoundly, the most essentially, the most authentically; the most traditionally French; a province all by itself, an old French province; and not only capital of the kingdom; but capital of itself, of itself a province, and, around it, capital also of that other, of that admirable neighboring province that the ancient Île de France was. Of that admirable province that still is made of the current Île de France, so good an heir, which has inherited so much from the ancient one.

And for everyone the city of the world the most insupportably cosmopolitan; an orgy of nations; a crossroads the most banal in the world; a caravanserai of peoples; the most antique of modern Babels; the confusion of tongues; the most modern of antique Babels; a boulevard where one speaks everything except French. Especially when one sets to speaking Parisian there.

City of the world the most international, and the only truly internationalist, passage and sojourn of the peoples of the earth, of all the peoples; and national city, even narrowly, and nationalist.

A province all by itself, a nation, a people all by itself; a kingdom, a world all by itself. And not only capital of the kingdom. But capital of the world.

Not precisely, not entirely, not yet capital of the kingdom of the world, because the world does not yet form a kingdom; but provisionally, while waiting for more, while waiting for better, capital of the kingdoms of the world.

City of the most order and of the most disorder; of the greatest order, of the only one that is veritably, real; apparently of the greatest disorder; really of the greatest disorder, of the only fecund one.

City of disquiet, of an incurable disquiet, and of vicissitudes, of perpetual tribulations, of the essential ones, of the essential tribulation.

City the most pagan. The most Christian. Certainly the most Catholic.

City apparently the most follow-the-fashion, where all the follies, where all the facetiousnesses, where all the silliness, where all the insanities, where all the stupidities, where all the imbecilities of the world, where all the prides, where all the futilities, where all the vanities of the earth find immediately and automatically an asylum. More than an asylum, a temple. A favor, a credit, an incomparable luster. Unique. City of infatuation. And of the most foolish. And of the most tireless. Imbecile however the beneficiary who would make himself there. Just as immediately afterward, just as automatically city that rids itself of the mud, of the strangles, of the scum of every infatuation.

City the most immobile. And which follows the least. Which never follows.

City which receives from every hand, which every morning makes for you some (new) snobbery, every day something new, Italianism, Spanishanianism, Americanism, Orientalism, Occidentalism, Englishanianism, Septentrionalism, yesterday Gorkyism, today what? Confucianianism, or Confusionism (Jaurès), all these good fellows must believe it is the same thing, Meridionalism, and -ianisms of all the collateral points you like, Oceanianianism, Germanism, Japonism, Sinism, Swissism, Belgicism, Hollandianism, Prussism, puffism, bluffism, Maritimism, Mountainism, Parisianism, Malaisianism, Scandinavianism, Danishianism, Swedishianism, Norwegianianism, Slavism, lesser and greater Russism, Polishianism (not counting all the French provincialisms one after the other); from all the others — and which the next day, in the morning, every next day, without any fault, pulls itself together again, which rids itself, which washes itself, which washes and cleans its face, in order to begin again. So that one has never seen in the history of the world a straight line made of so many curves, of so many breakings and so many things broken, a creation, a creature so continuous made of so much that is discontinuous, a straight road made of so many crossroads, a virtue made of so many faults, a straight line pursued so infallibly; so severely, so seriously, so strictly assured by so many apparent and real uncertainties, by so many false and true aberrations.

Of Modernanianism, rendezvous of all heresies.

And of systems thus, which are very really so many provincialisms, which are nationalisms and idiotisms. Regionalisms.

The most beautiful continuity in the world. And by the most incoherencies, apparent or real, by the most discontinuities, apparent or real.

For the mad, the maddest city, the city of the most madness; for the wise, the wisest city, the city of the most of the greatest wisdom. The only wise city. Of the only wisdom. The greatest ancient wisdom of the world, since the ruin of the ancient world, since the death of Athens (and of Rome). And the most Christian faith. The most faithful Christian faith.

Capital of lust. Capital of prayer. Capital of faith. Capital of charity. Capital of everything.

Capital also of (temporal) glory. But what is glory, after all that.

Capital of lust (so it is said). Capital of vice (so it is claimed). Capital of virtue. Capital, apparently, of sin. City of so many grandeurs, of every grandeur. City of so many basenesses, of every misery. City of all charity, in every sense of that word, excellently, eminently, infinitely in that technical sense which infinitely outweighs the others. City of pride and of humility, of modesty always. Capital of thought. Capital of the production and of the consumption of thought.

City of the world where the temporal climbers arrive the most, the fastest, the most infallibly, the most automatically. And all the temporal snobs. City also which most infallibly, most acceleratedly wears out the temporal climbers, and as if automatically, and which almost at once breaks their backs, so that one speaks of them no more.

City whence radiates, alas, the most intelligence in the world, Lighthouse and City of Light as say, firstly, the imbeciles, secondly the official ceremonies, thirdly the romantics, fourthly Hugo all alone. Brain in which is wrought the most thought. Heart from which rises, in all that vapor which you see from Montmartre, in that fog, in all that sea-vapor, in that industrial vapor, dusts of coals, dusts of boxwood paving-blocks, dusts of stone paving-blocks, dusts of residues, of filth of every kind, dusts of steam, vapors of water, vapors today of gasoline and of petroleum and of so many heavy oils, vapors also of so many unhealthy breathings, heart from which rises, through all this temporal vapor, the most specifically, the most technically true prayer.

Just as (generally, universally speaking), it is very fortunate for the modern world that those same worlds, fucking stupid and without any kind of existence, invented, invented for it, without even asking its opinion, the insolents, made a certain number of introductions, naturally stupid, introduced a certain number of inventions, all of them naturally more stupid the one than the other, such as having invented the Bible and the Prophets, the cross and the banner, the wheelbarrow, the city, the wheel, the omnibuses, justice, the dump-carts, the truth, the helm, the oar, the boats, salvation, and Platonic philosophy, and the lever, and Jesus and the Gospels, and the most capital, no doubt, of temporal inventions: the helicoidal and ever-furrowing plow.

Temporal inventions, spiritual inventions which all at their beginning were in no way automobile.

And not only Paris, but even around Paris, around its surroundings, that one made for it Versailles and even Saint-Germain,

I would give Versailles, Paris, and Saint-Denis;

They have been given to it, Versailles, and Paris, and Saint-Denis; many others have been given to it; that one made for it and gave it the towers of Notre-Dame, and the bell-tower of my country; that one made for it and gave it Versailles, and Fontainebleau, and even Rambouillet, dwellings, or as one says, royal residences; that one made for it and gave it the bell-tower of my country, that is to say, for I know it, the bell-tower of my country, that one made for it and gave it so many admirable French cathedrals, the two formidable jambs, the two enormous legs, so normal, so square, so powerful, so classical, the two thrusts, the two ascensions, the two ascents, the two trunks, the two vegetal stems of the two towers of Notre-Dame, the gallery of kings, the gallery of voids, or gallery of angels, the nave of Amiens, the spire of Chartres — but why detail, why dismember — that one made for it and gave it so many admirable French cathedrals entire, Notre-Dame entire, Amiens entire, Chartres entire, all the others entire, and how many, the others, so many admirable, so many infinite exterior forests, so many admirable, so many infinite interior vessels; so many simple admirable parish churches, so many admirable châteaux of the French Renaissance and of other times, so many admirable villages and towns, so many of those admirable little French towns, and of those large market-towns, monuments unique, my dear Porché, an infinity of monuments unique to the life of former days, fresh as stone, burning as the sun, faithful as the tomb, silent as an eternity, where one knows what a summer is and a winter, a spring and an autumn, where one has not lost the memory of the four seasons, where one knows also what day is and what night, market-towns and towns of churches and of townhouses, so many market-towns and almost as many towns that so many modern municipalities, tirelessly conspiring, have not succeeded in deteriorating, nor in ruining sensibly, those packed market-towns, but not smothered, those circles and those perfect ovals of ramparts, those linear moats, those mails, circumferential, and those martrois, central, those circular promenades and the shapes of those mails, and not only the circular villages, the round villages, which on our maps today make a spot, my dear Blanchard, on our General-Staff maps, on the 1:80,000, a round, a perfectly delimited spot, not only the packed market-towns; but the other villages, the square or diagonal villages of crossroads, the villages of crosses, the Croix de Berny, the Christ of Saclay, villages of crossings and of inns at the four or eight or ten corners of roads, sometimes a little dispersed already; and the other villages still, the simple villages of road and of path, the villages elongated, linear, filiform, a little dispersed, a little scattered, a little sown all along the road, for they are not less than the white pebbles of Tom Thumb: they serve to recognize our road when we return to the house of our father, so many villages not humble but modest, stretched warmly upon the maternal earth, so many beautiful villages perfectly designed, houses grouped in a beautiful flock of sheep on the two sides of the road, in the network of roads and paths, in the innumerable lakes of the earth, walls and recuttings gently rectangular, fleeces of mosses, parallelogram roofs, villages lying at the foot of their churches, — villages faithful, become faithless, — like the greyhounds of honorable tombs.

Tightened villages, lair villages, shelter villages; crossroads villages, inn villages; landmark villages, milestone villages.

Cuirassed villages; villages simply protected; cruiser villages; villages relaxed. And as if abandoned along a road, as if lying down in the ditches of the road. Because it is hot, on the road, in summer.

Quadrangular and parallelogram walls and roofs; linear and perfectly drawn; perfectly long, perfectly horizontal, perfectly great; infinite longitudes and courses of buildings; obliquely slanted roofs regularly slanted; obliquely slanted roofs, naturally of the same obliquity, of the same slope as a very strong middling oblique rain; angles at forty-five degrees; short breadths in the trees; brief latitudes; walls of gardens, walls of houses; walls of trellises and walls of espaliers; blue roofs and brown roofs; aged-red roofs; vigor and blood of brown roofs; severities of blue roofs: vigors of tiles; hardnesses of slates; all moist and all equally sheltering.

Perfect profiling of the French village.

That one made for it and kept for it to give it all those admirable and perfect undulations of the Île-de-France, the most perfect Soissonnais; not only so many high and deep forests; but the country of admirable lines, where pools and marshes know how to be more perfectly beautiful than lakes, the country of perfect planes, of perfect curves and undulations, of almost planar perfect lines, of admirable descents, of descents almost without ascents, of descents which are descensions, of lines of rest and of action, of lines of beauty, of perfectly noble lines, the country of Racine and of La Fontaine.

Country of undulations and of fleecings and of sheep-flockings without end, all equally velvety, all equally soft, fleecy fleeces of lichens and of mosses clothing the roofs of the houses, fleecings of the woods, of the harvests, of the hays clothing the soil, roof of the earth.

The Vermandois, the Thiérache, the Tardenois, Fère-en-Tardenois.

The most beautiful country of before the judgment.

That out of all that one made for it and kept to commit to it this monument unique in the world: France.

That one made for it and kept for it this immense Beauce, vast as the sea, immense and infinite as the sea, sad as much and as deep as the sea; this ocean of wheat; not one of those perfect undulations of before and of after; but a picture of an entirely other order, of an infinitely graver order; or rather a country which surpasses all art, all interpretation, all design; but a perfect plateau, without a snag, without an amusement, without a single picturesqueness, without a frivolity, without an odd note, without a vanity; without a smirk, without a frippery, without a rumple, and therefore without any rascality; with nothing but those few folds of very great development, of very small folding, without breaks, which are the folds of the very garment of the earth and which only betray that the geoid is a living being; no longer those somehow angular and recessed beauties of secrets and of undulations; no longer only those angular and rectangular and quadrangular beauties of obliquely slanted roofs perfectly horizontal; no longer those beauties of the first book of geometry, and of the third; but a beauty perfectly horizontal, fairly latitudinarian and altogether longitudinarian; a beauty infinitely superficial and linear; a beauty of perfect flatness, without a flaw, without a meanness, without a lack, without a smallness; the country of true sunsets; for the setting sun does not there set for this or that point, for these or those corners of the earth in particular; it does not set there successively and in several times; in several journeys; it does not play the romantic there; it does not hook there more or less desperately some last rays, some extreme rays, some supreme rays, more or less successive, more or less definitive, onto some summits; onto some peaks, onto some hollows; no, it does not die there in several times; it does not die there in several journeys; it does not make the great journey in several journeys; it does not take at the wicket round-trips; but borrowing the great classical manner, or rather creating it no doubt, without declamations and without preferences, in an implacable and serene equality, without a caprice of farewell for this or that corner of the wretched earth, in a perfect equality, without a fantasy, in all its planar amplitude and all its amplitude, in all its lying majesty, every evening it sets, every evening it dies in a single stroke for the world, in a single time for all the world, without a regret, lost, for a detail of the earth, without a particular earthly friendship, without straying a ray, without one of those secondhand-dealer rays which hook themselves onto temporal details like one of those odious crowns of immortelles which lugubriously hook themselves onto the spikes of worm-eaten bronze of the gratings of the tombs of cemeteries.

Infinite plain. Plain infinitely great. Plain infinitely sad. Serious and tragic. Plain without a hollow and without a mound. Without a misstep, without a tilt, without a wrench. Plain of immense solitude in all its immense fecundity. Plain where nothing of the earth hides and masks the earth. Where not one earthly accident steals away, disfigures the essential earth. Plain where Father Sun sees the earth face to face. Plain of no trickery. Without any makeup, without preparation, without any show. Plain where the sun rises, plain where the sun planes, plain where the sun descends equally for everyone, without doing for any particular creature the homage, doing to all creation the injury of some foul kiss-curl, of an affection, of a particular attention. Plain of the total and universal presence of all the sun, for all the earth. Then of its total and universal absence. Plain where the sun is born and dies equally for all creation, without a favor, without a baseness, for all the creation of the earth in the same calm unalterable splendor.

Plain of the judgment, where the sun rises like a sentence of justice.

Plain, ocean of wheat, living wheats, moving waves; barely a few squares of alfalfa for a few rare cows, barely some forage for the horses, sainfoin, because after all one really must have horses for the farms; and in the middle of the line several great triangles and great squares of beets; a stain; a blemish; but it is for the great sugar-mill of Toury.

Plain, ocean of wheat, moving wheats, living waves, vegetal waves, infinite undulations; tillable sea, and no longer as was that of the ancient Hellenes, untillable and rebellious to the plow; but equally invincible, and equally inexhaustible; essential earth of midday, king of summers; inexhaustible undulations of the ears; ocean of green, ocean of yellow and of blond and of golden; slow and sure rustlings, rustlings indefinitely reborn, and softly murmuring, moiré and living rustlings of the inexhaustible cereal waves; then perfect alignments of the beautiful stubble-fields; of the great and perfectly beautiful gilded ricks; ricks, houses of wheat, entirely made of wheat, granaries without roofs, granaries without walls, roofs and walls of straw and of wheat protecting, defending the straw and the wheat; sheaves, ears, straw, wheat, protecting themselves, defending themselves, better than that, constituting themselves, building themselves; immense buildings of cereals, perfect houses of wheat, well full, well paunched, without obesity however, well comfortable; and that sacramental form, old as the world, one of the oldest of forms, indicated by itself, inevitable and all the more beautiful, all the more perfect, being more perfectly accommodated, the old ogive, with perfect curves on all sides, with the perfect terminal curved angle, soft and slow termination and ogival point; innocent curves and forms, you say; innocent, apparently; cunning in reality, cunning and very skillful, of a patient and invincible peasant skill, invincibly cunning against the oblique rain and the demolishing wind.

Forms which give the least, — or the most, — of gutters to the rain, the fewest angles to the wind, the least grip to the tempest, the least surface to misfortune.

Buildings of wheat, unsinkable to the tempests of land, which standing against the wind, against the broad autumn winds, against the hard winter winds, against the soft west winds, against the dry east winds, against the snow, against the hail, against the interminable rains, against those inexhaustible rains of autumn and of mild winters, against those eternities of rains, figurations of eternities, where all the air rains, where the wind rains, where the sky rains and penetrates your soul, as if it were all together and indefinitely and one no longer knows whether it is the rain that blows, the wind that rains, standing against the four cardinal points, and even, they too, against all the collateral points one might wish, in all weathers, without budging from your place, sail indifferently against all weathers, great cargo vessels which make and hold head against all the tempests of the land, vessels which sail always, and always hove-to, vessels with the big belly, with the full belly, not obese, vessels with nautical curves, designed to cleave the waves of the wind, the waves of the rain, the waves of misfortune.

Buildings of wheat, indefatigable navigators, which in your wheat-bellies, in your straight and curved flanks defend and save the precious wheat.

Then, at this season, land of stubble, hard floor to the soles, between the ricks rebellious to misfortune; soil universally sharp, pricking the feet; and then afterwards, between the two harvests, between the harvest that is coming and the harvest that is going away, between the wheat that one is going to sow and the wheat one has just gathered, between the future wheat, which one knows will come, and the past wheat, which one holds in those ricks, deep plowing of the lands, ocean of plowings, of deep and rich lands, moist and full, black and red, black and blue, black and white, ocean of animal earths, greasy, fertile, nourishing.

Then the earth without more, the earth without anything, the plowed skin of the earth.

Plain of flatness. The only horizon where the sun reigns, and does not amuse itself with making fancy quips for the painters.

A country perfectly classical, perfectly honest, where there is not one effect.

Not a hollow where an effect would nest, where an effect would hide.

Plain, ocean, plateau, universe of temporal wheats; plateau flat as the hand, you say; without a retreat, without a recess, without a discretion: always the same peasant cunning; plateau where you could hide, Halévy, twenty divisions; there, before you; as if in the hollow of the hand. One must have done the great maneuvers in Beauce. 1900. A few folds, undulations that are nothing. No, they are nothing in the immensity of this universe of the horizontal, a nothing, innocent undulations: where you could hide the Grande Armée. You will see only whether that masks an independent cavalry division of three brigades of three regiments. Of one no longer knows how many squadrons and platoons. Plains equitable, indeed. Just, not democratic. I thought a great deal there, Halévy, and within them I thought a great deal of you the last time I seriously saw wheat. It was unfortunately not in Beauce. Non licet omnibus. Not being a university man, you still know a little Latin. Out of friendship. It was in a country that I love very much, that you love very much, that I find very beautiful, that you find very beautiful, that I love very much for itself, and because we have sometimes walked there side by side, a country we have a few times traversed together, a few rare times, where we have a few rare times made this alliance, that I walked like you, with you, without much talking (silence is so good), at your pace, which is appreciably stronger than mine, more willed, more robust, more territorial, but perhaps a very little more intellectual, of your foot, not beside you, but at your side, at your right; and even once we sat down, still together; it was after having finished climbing the rather strong, rather gentle slope of the national highway, of the main road (rather gentle compared to the slope of Saint-Clair or Gometz-le-Châtel); we had finished climbing the slope of the main road which, leaving Orsay by le Guichet, is the road to Versailles; we sat down because we were about to part; you were going to leave me; because you were going back to Jouy, for lunch; it was the day on which you had brought me that admirable Histoire de quatre ans; some time ago already; four years; but four years less full; perhaps; than yours; we sat down on the edge of the slope of the ditch, on the outer rim, to the left of the road; I see us still; I was in clogs, although I am no poser, you know it; and you were in shoes; you were quite right; but I was very near my house; and it was you, in passing, who had carried me off; I was even explaining to you (we can unfortunately never do without explanations (that is the great intellectual vice), without giving and listening to explanations, always) (without receiving them, and, when none are given to us, without asking for them) I remember very well that I was explaining to you that one is always told about the armies of the Revolution, about the soldiers of the Revolution, that one is always told the army of the Moselle in clogs, the army of Sambre-et-Meuse, that all the same one must agree on the matter, that nothing is so good as a good pair of clogs, for long marches, for very long marches, very pushed, very sustained, very patient, especially as soon as one had to do with soft or softened lands, notably with plowed lands: that the shoe regained its advantages, and its rights, only on the firm and dry soil of a road, well kept up, of, so to speak, a theoretical road in summer; that for the peasants we were (in those days), to the point of having remained so even now in these days, that for the peasants we were, and that I very well remember, walking on real earth, on peasant earth, nothing was worth two good clogs of birch or of beech to put inside one’s feet, or to put one’s feet into, as you will, with some good well-dried straw; that therefore all those fellows were not so unfortunate as one makes them out to us to have been; that they walked like good fellows, with their clogs; that they put their feet into them; they were not, indeed, clogs of literature, they were good clogs of wood; and when their clogs embarrassed them, when their clogs bothered them, when their clogs hampered them, when they no longer felt like them (clogs may well be good, and worth more than shoes, all the same one may grow tired of them, in the end) they did, the good fellows, as one has always done in every country of the world where one has known how to walk properly when one has wanted to walk properly: they put their two clogs on their shoulder, tied with a string by the two holes as at the shopkeeper’s, and they went off barefoot; I know it; I remember it very well.

Long live wooden clogs. They put their two clogs on their pack; on this sole condition that they had a pack; and their pack itself, when they had one, which was at least as rare as having clogs, and almost as rare as having shoes, their pack was not at all that enormous modern stiff pack of modern armies, that scientific pack, into which one has put everything, in which one has foreseen everything, except, that pack enemy of man, scientifically made, scientifically established, scientifically constructed, scientifically imagined, into which one has scientifically put everything, scientifically foreseen everything, save, except that one has scientifically forgotten to put into it this: that the man would have a desire to carry it; to have it, to keep it, on his two shoulders, to walk under it; modern pack, enemy of man, in which scientifically and modernly everything has been foreseen, except, scientifically and modernly, a little well-sheltered corner, inside, in which to put the good will, the (good) desire that the man would have to carry it; so that today, I mean to say tomorrow, ineluctably, infallibly, scientifically, there would be quantities of those scientific modern packs, made solely for the great maneuvers, and even so, by the most powerful modern scientific military commissions, that would go and sit down (I do say the packs, I do not say the men) which would be politely requested to go and sit down in the ditches of the roads, a number which would be still to be calculated, evidently, which would remain to be determined by more scientific means, but one may put forth a good number, a rather large number, and to wait there patiently either for the friendly wagons, or for the enemy wagons; but since the enemy wagons would be no less embarrassed than the friendly wagons, and would no less remain broken down, to wait there preferably for the end of the hostilities.

It was a friendly pack. Their pack was not, need it be said, a modern and automatic pack, imbecile and scientific, established scientifically by commissions of old generals who put it on their backs for three minutes and a quarter to see how it goes, to inquire, to ascertain scientifically how it goes. It was as it was. A pack. In short you know what a pack is. Everyone would know what a pack is if there were not the scientists; the commissions; the generals commanding army corps. As it was. As it happened. A pack, common noun. Not a Pack. Generally a pack of skin, with hairs on it, tawny. And that pack, fancy, do you know what it was: it was portable. One has no idea of that. If we did not have the texts, the monuments, the most authentic testimonies. It is unbelievable. A pack, which is made to be carried, well, it was portable. It could have been anything, that pack, mark you: it could have been geometric, administrative, immovable: it liked better, it preferred to be portable: so the men carried it. It was not heavy by a decree of the President of the Republic. Heavy or light, according to the occasion, according to the event, according to the fortune. Of the day. When it was light, that was well, because it was not heavy to carry. One put into it what one could, what one found, what there was in the place, what one needed to put into it, well. And when it was heavy, that was well. It was even better: it was because one had put into it what one needed. Because it was not heavy with unbelievable quantities of tripoli scientifically calculated. By additions, multiplications and divisions of days and of men. But it was heavy from what one had found, from what one had been able to put into it, from what one had wanted and needed to put into it. And what they had wanted and needed to put into it, you know as well as I, Halévy, since you have made yourself such a good walker: it was something to drink and to eat; come now; because, is it not, we must not be told stories, and made to believe that all those people conquered the world, traversed Europe twenty times, not counting the battles, without eating and without drinking a single moment. And again I am not speaking of La Fontaine IX, 2, 17.

And the little administration that there needs to be in a pack, they themselves administered.

The drink and the food, without which man has never done anything in the world.

They were men, poor men like us.

When therefore they carried their pack, they were happy about it, about their pack. And about carrying it. It was a friend. It was not the pack, it was their pack. It was their own affair. They put their affairs into it. When they carried this pack, they were carrying an affair of their own; they were carrying their affairs; their own interest; their interests; they carried their own body. They were not carrying an object of reviews, of miseries, of inspections of all sorts, of bothers. They were working for themselves at last, they were not working for the government. They were not working officially, they were working really. They were not working administratively, they walked like good children, like good fellows. They were not working arbitrarily, they were working freely. They were not working governmentally, they were working naturally. They were not working scientifically. They worked, they went, they lived humanly.

Carrying that friendly pack, carrying their friend their pack, their only furniture, but their furniture, their little piece of furniture, by God, a shepherd’s pack, a cowherd’s, a fieldworker’s: I have said it: a pack of animal skin, tawny, with the hair; but were they not all that and were they not going to become so altogether on the grand scale; shepherds, cowherds of what great flocks; marshals of the Empire; literally with the pack of vagabonds, but were they not essentially vagabonds, and have they not been essentially great companions, companions of the tour of Europe just as for centuries there were so many companions of the tour de France, just as there perhaps still are today some few; and the wars of the Revolution and of the Empire, is that not what they are; have they not all come from this: from a deep instinct, from a need old and powerful as a race, deep as a people, of a whole race of companions, of a whole people of vagabonds who, having finished, once and for all finished their tour de France, felt that need, that irrepressible need to make a little, afterwards, (and that is so easily understood), their tour of Europe; and the Revolution itself and the Empire itself, is it not all there, all of it issued, come out, come from there: a whole race, a whole people of intellectual vagabonds who, having made their tour of the world, the tour of their intellectual world, and who wanted (why, my God) to make in addition the tour of politics; they went therefore barefoot along the roads of Europe and of politics; what came of it, we know; and the history of this world will never forget it; those who had no shoes had clogs; those who had no clogs walked barefoot; those who had clogs generally walked barefoot also; sometimes they put on their clogs, to walk; because the clog-maker had told them, had wanted to make them believe that it was made for that; but generally, following instinct (and reason, because it is one of the greatest principles (of rational morals) that the clog comes before the shoe and that, by as much, the bare foot comes before the clog) generally, like the urchins of the woods and the plains, like those great urchin marauders and nest-finders that they all were (nothing of the contamination of the primary school) they put their clogs, when they had any, where we have said, on their shoulder, on the pack, on this pack; they kept their clogs for the great occasions; they took care of their clogs, the misers; they told themselves that skin of a good race always grows back to make good leather soles of skin; and that a wooden sole, when it is worn out, you have to go to the shopkeeper; they therefore kept their clogs for the all-too-bad roads of pebbles and bad stones, too sharp, too irregular, too dancing under the foot and piercing; they kept their clogs, must it be said, history is implacable, and what I am going to tell you, but do not speak too much of it, I know it, I too have my files; they kept their clogs, the rascals, the rogues, they kept their clogs to make their triumphal entries into the towns.

Not only even the army of the Moselle in clogs; but the army of the Moselle altogether barefoot; let us not pity them; let us envy them rather. One is very fine walking in clogs, and even barefoot, when one is they. Sadness and fear were unknown to them. They would, without any doubt, have scaled the clouds… But I cannot recite to you all of that Obéissance passive.

They were happy. It is we who make them unhappy, who pity them. Fools that we are. It is we. Or rather, among us, it is the pale historian, the intellectual historian, the cerebral historicus who artificially makes them unhappy. Ask the great fellows, the true historians, Michelet, Hugo, those who saw them, really, saw them, whether they were unhappy.

They were happy, the fellows. They were doing something. And they knew very well that they were doing something. Let us envy them. Hugo: those superb barefoot fellows; it is literally true that one saw them marching upon the dazzled world. Their clogs, their bare foot have obtained from this world a resounding which has been granted to no man since. Their bare foot has obtained from the instrument world a resonance, strings, from the roads of this world a resonance, a resounding which none have drawn from it since.

No man, isolated, no great man has drawn from it since a resounding of this resonance. And still less men in troops.

Paris city of revolt. City of submission. City of so many servitudes. City of liberty. Liberty, on this fine day. Of so many flatnesses. Of such a pride. Parisians of the heart of Paris, and of the Paris of that time, of the heart of the old faubourgs, of the faubourg Marceau, of the faubourg Antoine, and among them, mingled with them, and all around them little French peasants, peasant urchins, peasants of the plains and of the undulations, peasants of the woods and of the hillsides, marauder urchins, urchin peasants, urchin nest-finders, peasants of the Île-de-France, peasants of the Beauce, peasants of the valley of the Loire; and also, some few, peasants of the mountains, or at least peasants of the slopes; shepherds, cowherds, pastors, peasant workers, they set out to find quite other nests; having scarcely glimpsed, or not at all, that great Paris, the Paris of that time, all together they went on their light foot, on their bare foot, they went to sow their Paris, their France, the Paris of that time, the France of that time, on all the roads of the world.

They were happy. It is we, the pedants, who make them unhappy, in our books, in the history manuals.

O soldiers of the year Two! O wars! Epics! That is it, my friend, an epic. It is always an operation of joy. It consists in walking on a road (in fighting), and in this, that the sound of the steps one has made on this road can no more be effaced from the memory of peoples.

Companions of the tour of Europe. On condition that Europe be the world. Which it was, moreover, in that time. Almost. In any case far more than at present. And I do not speak only of Egypt and of more or less Lesser Asia, of the most ancient Egypt and of the plagues of Jaffa and of Saint-Jean-d’Acre. They did not only do a part of the ancient continent, desire India and the greater Orient (Bonaparte). They did not only almost exhaust the Mediterranean world, from Spain to Cairo, and to the Pyramids. They had begun with the other continent. They had begun by the end, by the (little) last one. Which could only enter joyously into their general method. They had begun, they had taken care to begin with the New Continent, with the young Continent which was at that time the New Continent. By free America they had begun. For, is it not so, all that sacred history of Lafayette and Rochambeau, of which they now make us histories in bronze, statues in bronze, with horses in bronze, brandishing swords in bronze, precisely on the Passy–Hôtel-de-Ville stretch, two steps from the rails, and there is even a stop, on purpose, but the statue is not like that of the Commendatore: it never mounts, of which they make us ceremonies and over our heads very chic Franco-American banquets, all that was already the beginning of the French Revolution and of the Empire; a kind of great festival; military; a whole race, a whole people becoming crazy at once, a whole nation, and setting itself to occupy itself with all that did not concern it.

Another definition of the epic: To meddle (frenetically) with everything that does not concern you.

In particular, for a people, to meddle with the world; to assume the temporal conduct of the world; to govern history.

Louis XVI, thus, fomented the beginning of the Revolution and of the Empire. It serves him right. And in so many other respects, it had been fomented since before Richelieu.

Tourism, too. Naturally very great tourism. To begin with America. In that time New York was not five days and one no longer knows how many hours and minutes, but very few, from Queenstown.

Their pack was a tourist’s pack. In no way a pack that you set down, that you put on some fellow.

They did not get bored, the fellows, in the world. They even did, they even succeeded in doing what is the hardest thing to do in the world, a calendar. They made succeed a new calendar. Not succeed in making it be used. In getting it adopted. That would have been too good, and has no doubt become literally impossible. One no longer opens an era. There is one that has been opened, no doubt for good and all. But to succeed in getting it never forgotten. To succeed to the point that one does not forget it henceforth, to the point of not letting it be forgotten any more, of making it, of rendering it unforgettable: a calendar. Without them, what would the republican calendar be? It had sunk, it was sinking quite naturally into ridicule, all by itself, it was disappearing, ridicule learnedly supported moreover, strongly prepared, let us not doubt it, by the (imperial and) reactionary politics. A newspaper today which dates its issue from one no longer knows how many years, with a baroque dating, a baroque numbering, appears to us grotesque. We hate the décadi. And then, what would the decadal rest be, when it is barely already that the weekly rest is enough for us, at present, when in reality the weekly rest is no longer enough for us. We should have saved only those fine names of months, not for use naturally, for the memory, which rhyme so poetically among themselves, which the dictionaries attribute to Fabre d’Églantine, which rhyme so poetically to Il pleut, il pleut, bergère, and at bottom to that very Églantine of that very Fabre d’Églantine himself. They, they saved from oblivion, they saved for memory a name even of year. A date of year. Ninety-three is very beautiful, in our calendar. Ninety-four does not exist. Except for the savants, for the historians. Through them, and also through Hugo, but in the end that is legitimate, and besides it comes to the same thing, this simple date, the Year Two, this simple name of date, this cardinal numeral adjective for ordinal, thus placed, will remain ineffaceable in the memory of peoples.

We others go upon the roads, and however good walkers we may be, whatever love also we may have of the natural creation, of those plains and of those wheats, of those ricks and of those stubbles, love born in us, after us, before us, temporal love of temporal creation, temporally infinitely older than we, natural love of natural creation born infinitely before us in our people and in our race, whatever this love that is born in us, and whatever it has become there, when we walk on these roads our steps are effaced there scarcely have we passed; other steps innumerable efface them, as temporary, as precarious as ours, as ephemeral, as temporary, as precarious as we, the innumerable steps of innumerable men as little, as miserable, as insignificant, as transitory as we; thus we go upon the plain, on the roads and through the paths of the plain; we go there for hygiene, alas; at the most, at best for training, to do training there; to combat our migraines; to relax our brain; our nerves; for our liver; miseries; for our digestions; in short all that is walking, or strolling, in some pharmaceutical sense; the best we can do, is that it be in order to keep ourselves mobilizable up to the age of forty-five years; that is all we have, all we can have of military; and all that saves us a little, is that love of nature, which we have, which takes hold of us again as soon as we arrive up there, which we had, which had us, which held us deeply already, obscure regret, temporally eternal, invincible, at home, always, before setting out, lying on our table of writings and of proofs.

We go upon the roads; and instantaneously the traces of our steps are effaced there; the sun makes dust of them, the rain makes mud of them. On the macadam of the roads, today sometimes tarred, the traces of our steps count no more, remain no more than all those traces of large auto-wheels, the traces of our steps are as fugitive, as mobile as all those traces of those enormous automobile wheels which go effacing one another.

They went upon the roads; they went, they walked nevertheless as we; neither the sun has ever made dust of, nor the water shall ever make mud of, nor any wheel of cart shall ever efface the trace of their step.

The strongest part, the fellows, is that they knew it; very well. They had forgotten to be stupid. And to be ignorant of it; in no way. It is the property, it is one of the properties of temporal eternity that the one who obtains it can, so to speak, I do not say always, but in certain cases, under certain forms, can so to speak touch it instantaneously, that temporal eternity can be touched instantaneously. Having obtained temporal eternity, they knew perfectly that they had, indeed, just obtained it, that it was a thing accomplished, for this temporal eternity, which they generally did not fail to take for an eternal eternity.

Naturally.

When a people, when a nation; when men, when a race obtains in some manner, under some form a temporal consecration, when it obtains a temporal eternity, that temporal eternity, in short temporal eternity (of this earth), the only one which presently, actually is at our disposal, generally that is known, that is felt (I say generally because one could perhaps imagine, strictly, cases where this instantaneous knowledge would perhaps not be produced); and generally the depositary, the holder is the first informed of it (I say generally, because strictly perhaps one could imagine cases, not cases of peoples, of nations, nor of races, but cases of men, isolated, of great temporal men who would themselves not know, neither instantaneously, nor in their lifetime, in the duration, in the course of their temporal life, this event (temporal), this designation, this attribution (temporal), in short their own grandeur (temporal). For that, it would be necessary for that to suppose a case which seems to me very extraordinary, a temporal power which would wait in order to reveal itself, a designation, an attribution, a temporal election which would not burst forth; which would conceal itself for a time, a temporal explosion which would hang fire, which would wait, under what ash, in order to burst forth, the death of the holder himself. A kind of secret of temporal power which would wait for later, which would keep itself. It is very improbable. As natural and frequent as such a procedure is for a spiritual power, as many examples of it as we know, for a designation, for a spiritual vocation, so unsuitable does it appear for a destination, for a temporal fortune. One does not see a temporal fortune waiting, for what, in order to manifest itself. On the contrary it is the property of temporal fortune to be immediate for the beneficiary. I believe that we are straying here, that we have let ourselves be drawn along by an excess of scruple, by an excess of conscience, into considering cases, a (purely) logical case, in consequence, that is to say, an unreal case, unrealizable; impossible. And of a false analogy. A case logically symmetrical from the temporal to the spiritual. Of a false symmetry. It is the property of the spiritual to wait; in order to explode, or simply to render. It is its (almost) habitual procedure; at least very frequent; one could say the most frequent. It is almost, it is often its own property, to wait until after the death of the holder. And often even (much) further. The temporal on the contrary touches itself at once. One does not see that it waits, nor even how it would wait.) (Nor what it would wait for.) Men, a people, a nation, a race, a man who obtains to have temporal power, a temporal fortune, a temporal history perceives it at once, come now. Those fellows were not so stupid. They knew very well, they knew perfectly when they placed, at the very moment they placed their foot in the dust or in the mud of the roads, that no dust ever would efface, that no mud ever would soak, that no other memory, that no other trace ever would abolish the trace of their step, that they were creating an indelible trace, that the sound of their steps would be heard always in the history of the sounds of history, that the tracing would be read always, that the trace of their steps would be seen temporally always in the memory of the world.

And France too, by Jove, entirely she knew well that she was making the Revolution.

A whole people felt it. Knew it.

When armies, when a (single) army, when men, when a whole people, a nation, when a whole race, when a man obtains thus to strike a temporal event, generally he perceives it, he is seized by it, in full knowledge of cause, instantaneously, historically instantaneously. All those fellows knew very well what they were doing. I mean with a historical instantaneity, in a historical instantaneity, the little time it takes for a people, of duration, historical, the little time it takes a wave, historical, of knowledge, of consciousness, to penetrate, historically, a whole (such) people.

Let us not pity them therefore; let us envy them rather. Not only were they happy, but they knew that they were happy. Not only had they obtained, were they obtaining to strike an event, an eternally temporal power, a singular eternally temporal power, but instantaneously they knew, with a knowledge, with an instantaneous consciousness, that it was so.

A singular eternally temporal fortune, instantaneously known. Known. Possessed.

Above all let us not whine for them. They did not whine, the good marchers. They did not whine, themselves, over themselves. Let us not whine, for them, over them. That would indeed be the worst manner of bringing ourselves back to their good remembrance. Let us love heroes as they loved themselves. Let us love, let us remember, let us recall to the world the heroes, let us celebrate the heroes as they loved themselves, as they recalled themselves, themselves to themselves, those who could, those who became (rather) old, and there were (many) more of them than is believed, many more than is remembered, or than one believes to remember, as themselves they recalled themselves to the world, those who had the time to write, as they celebrated themselves (in their festivals). Including in their interior festivals, in the great secret festivals of their spirit, of their thought, of their memory, in their memoirs, thought, spoken, dictated, written. Their temporal glory was essentially glorious. It was made essentially of glory and of joy, of gaiety even. At least we unworthy, we little ones, let us not do them the injury of unmarking them, of undoing them, of denaturing them. Let us not disfigure them. Let us not make them unrecognizable.

I have just pronounced, I have just said, just let escape a very great word, a word that frightens me. A word that I do not like, because I find that it is much abused. A word of which I am wary. And of those who use it. A word that one always uses, today. Precisely since it has fallen off. It is always so. A word which on the contrary must be used very rarely. Today more rarely than ever. It seems to me indeed that I have spoken of heroes. I had begun by saying, I believe, that they were, that they were epic. I meant naturally by that, very properly, very technically, that they were making epic. It is moreover thus that we must understand that Hugo already understood it:

They, in the carrying-away of their epic struggles.

So when it escaped us to say that they were heroes, I meant naturally by that, very properly, very technically, that they were making heroism. It is moreover thus too that we must understand that Hugo just as soon understood it:

Drunk, they savored all the heroic sounds.

Now heroism is essentially a virtue, a state, the heroic action is essentially an operation of health, of good humor, of joy, even of gaiety, almost of jest, an action, an operation of ease, of largesse, of facility, of convenience, of fecundity; of going well; of mastery and of possession of oneself; almost of habit so to speak and as of usage, of good usage. Of interior fecundity; of strength as of a beautiful spring-water of strength drawn from the blood of the race and from the man’s own blood, an overflow of sap and of blood. Without any stiffening, without any rigidity. Without toiling. Without sweating.

Above all without complaining. Without moaning and without whining. The temporal hero plays his time. He has no reason, no desire, no idea, no image even of whining and does not whine. He does not whine because in the mode he has no feeling, no suspicion of suffering in any way whatever. He does not whine because in the event he has no feeling, no suspicion of clinging to the event, to the outcome, to the result, to the success to the point of whining and complaining of another event. A bad player who wants to win. A bad temporal player. What these great players need, is to play. It is first of all, it is solely to play.

The play alone is essential to these great players. The play alone interests them. They love infinitely better to play without winning, than they would love to win without playing.

What I am saying here, all that we have just said is totally true of peoples; of a nation, of a people, of an army, of a race. It is perhaps a little less true of the poor isolated man, because the individual is always more ungrateful, does not yield as much, because a man is not worth a people, ever, because a man, in the temporal, does not express as much, does not (re)present as much, does not weigh, is not worth as much.

A man, whatever it may seem, yields less, always yields less than a people, than his people.

The life of heroism, for one who does not use this word in a vague literary sense, is infinitely, (temporally) infinitely an operation of joy. Let us not pity them therefore. Let us envy them rather. When they did not complain, let us not pity them, for them, let us not do them the injury of pitying them, for them. When they did not whine, let us not whine, for them, over them. Let us not do them that outrage.

All the more because it does not escape one that to whine over them would already be a manner, treacherous, of making them whine.

To weep, to moan is equally cowardly. I reserve to pray, I withdraw to pray, which perhaps has not always been what Vigny thought. It is even for that reason that this verse is heterogeneous, that the three (infinitive) subjects do not go (well) together. And that one never remembers where to pray is, among the three, nor even where the other two are between themselves. To pray, to weep, to moan; to weep, to pray, to moan: there are unfortunately six combinations (see formulas).

a (a-1)

To pray is of another order than the other two. To pray is no doubt not what Vigny had represented to himself that day. Nor any other day. Even, pushing the analysis further, one would discover rather quickly that the two other terms unsolder themselves one from the other; that to weep unsolders itself from to moan; or rather, pushing the analysis still a little further, entering into the elementary analysis, into the analysis of the word, into the verbal analysis, that to weep itself cuts itself in two, analyzes itself in two, unsolders itself from itself, that there is a to weep which goes back down toward to moan, toward whining and complaining, but that there is a to weep which rises back toward to pray. (Saint Louis, the gift of tears)

Just as (to) lament, lamentation is altogether another thing.

To pity them would be an artful manner of making them complain. By the reverberation of memory. By the vital participation of remembrance. And also, in the sense, in the two senses in which we are their children, their sons, their (temporal) carnal children and their temporal children of glory, by that ascending responsibility, ascending benediction or malediction, by that ascending heredity of which I have spoken.

As also it is a means, sly, an artful manner of bringing them back down to us, of reducing them to us, of lowering them to us.

The hero, the true hero, must draw in the strength of his race as in an inexhaustible source. He has only to stoop to take some. And he draws there inexhaustibly an inexhaustible strength of joy.

(If such is the hero, if such a life of heroism, what then will it be when we speak of the saint and of a life of sanctity. As the temporal hero draws in the strength of his race an inexhaustible strength of joy, so, in another order, in an infinitely superior order, the saint, the true saint draws in the operation of grace, in the strength of the operation of grace, an inexhaustible strength of joy. There are no more grumbling saints than there are grumbling heroes. The mode, the tone is identically the same. Each in his order, naturally. Contrary to the end which in these two orders, in the temporal order and in the eternal order, in the one and in the other, in the one by opposition, by contrariety to the other, is, becomes diametrically opposed, diametrically contrary. The temporal hero indeed plays in order to play, in order to be, in order to be (a) (temporal) hero, not in order to win. He loves infinitely better to play without winning, than to win without playing. He loves to play without winning. He does not love, he would not love to win without playing. A saint on the contrary who would amuse himself with playing (his salvation), who would love to play (it), who would not propose to himself uniquely, in this order, to win (heaven), would commit perpetually, and so to speak at the maximum, at the infinite, at the limit, at the eternal, that of all the sins which is rated the driest, pride, and no doubt, along with it, a certain number of others. Which would be the most rigorously contradictory in the very terms.

Since it would be making of the principle of his very sanctity a principle of sin itself, of a perpetual and so to speak itself eternal sin.

Thus appears suddenly, thus is born under the pen, at the moment when it was least expecting it, thus is revealed, thus bursts forth, thus suddenly breaks open, thus springs up under the pen at the moment when one was not expecting it, thus naturally escapes you at the very moment when one was expecting it least one of those fundamental oppositions, one of those invincible contrarieties, one of those distancings, one of those disparities, one of those discords, dull, suddenly bursting, one of those differences, one of those distances, one of those odd notes, one of those inequalities that mark with an indelible mark, one of those irreducible oppositions, one of those infinite contrarieties which betray, which represent, which manifest, ineluctably which bring out that gap, that irreduction, that distance, that absolute irreducibility, that opposition, that contrariety, that incompetence and that absolute, infinite incompatibility, itself eternal, of the eternal to the temporal. He who is of time, the hero who is of time loves infinitely to play (his time); he loves infinitely better to play without winning than to win without playing; he loves infinitely to play, even without winning; he would not love to win without playing. He who is of eternity, the saint who is of eternity, one cannot even represent how he would love to play his eternity.

Thus it is the very mechanism of the relation of the end to the means and of the means to the end which is counter-indicated, counter-launched, counter-thrown in the two cases; counter in the one as in the other; one has reversed the steam; which, in the words of Immanuel, is the most important thing in an economy.

The most important, according to Immanuel, in a pragmatic economy, in an economy of conduct and of action.

A saint does not play at all, can play not at all, can have no idea nor representation of any sort nor even imagination of playing.

One does not see, one does not represent to oneself how he would play, how he would love to play.

Opposition, total, irreducible, infinite, absolute contrariety, itself eternal, all the more capital, all the more significant in that the mode, as we have said, and more than ever it must be said again, having noted this essential contrariety, all the more significant in that the mode is, identically, the same; on the contrary. So that at the very moment when the temporal makes for the eternal a diametrical contrariety in the object, in the mechanism of the relation of the end to the means and of the means to the end, in the same time, at the same time it does not cease to make for it, on the contrary, it continues, if need be it would begin to make for it a parallel, to present for it, to lend to it, to make for it a temporal figure, a temporal representation for the whole mode. There are no more sulky saints than there are sulky heroes. The hero, who infinitely contradicts the saint in the object, represents, figures the saint in the mode. The (temporal) hero figures in the mode the (eternal) saint. As the hero draws inexhaustibly his strength, of strength, in the strength of his race and in the strength of his blood, in the strength of the blood of his race and in the strength of his own blood, so the saint draws inexhaustibly his strength, of strength, in the strength of the operation of grace; and in a certain sense, mutatis mutandis, as figure, by figuration, by way of figuration, as figured, in a certain sense the communion (of saints) is for the saint as the race, what the race (of heroes) is for the hero. As the blood of the race rises and overflows in the heart of the hero, so the blood of grace rises and overflows in the heart of the saint. Cf. Polyeucte and all the other sacred authors.

Strength of the blood. Power of the race. Power of grace. Temporal power of the blood. Eternal power of grace.

Eternal power of eternal blood. Of an eternal blood.

It is even for that reason, by an effect of this deep kinship, by an effect, by a particular case of this figuration that the greatest, that the only poet of heroes has been also the greatest, the only poet also of the saint; that the only poet of the blood of heroes has been also the only poet of eternal blood; that the only poet of the blood of the race has been also the only poet of the blood of grace. A God who loving us with an infinite love. He had begun by making for himself his own figures, so to speak, he had begun by trying to make for himself his own figuration. That is to say that he had begun, willed (obscurely, geniusly) willed to begin with pupil’s strokes. He made himself known at two times. A whole figuration, a whole people of figures of heroes; heroes of (human) love, heroes of war, heroes of chivalry, heroes of fidelity, heroes of the race, heroes of the family, heroes of the fatherland, heroes of the city, heroes of courage, heroes of heroism, all sorts of heroes, all heroes of (human, temporal) honor. Then suddenly, all at once, after all that temporal figuration, passing himself, in a single leap, in the only leap of this order that there is in the history of literatures, from the figure to the figured, from all those figures to the figured, from all those diverse, from all those varied, from all those plural figures to the figured, from all that people of figures to the unique, to the unique figured, with a single poetic stroke, with a single dramatic stroke, with a single stroke he made that Polyeucte (and that Pauline) to whom, to which nothing is comparable in the history of the world and which is a history, itself a grace such as has not fallen upon the head of any man in the history of the world. A tragedy which surpasses everything, which surpasses even sensibly the Pensées.

In a single stretch.

Figuration in the greatest detail even; thus, this single example, in particular the stances of the Cid as figuration, as temporal figure of the stances of Polyeucte.

And afterwards naturally he hardly did anything but jests. Because, what would he have done?

City (adopted), adoptive city of Corneille: native, native city, birth city, birth-city of the Cid and of Polyeucte; native, native city of Molière: city of Molière; city of Voltaire; and city of the failure and of the wounding of Joan of Arc; city of Saint Geneviève and of Saint Louis.

That one made for it at last and kept for it, that one gave it, that one handed it over to it, that one lent it, committed in keeping and in trust the heart and the marrow; of the whole country; not only that admirable plateau where the movements of the terrain are not more marked, are not more exaggerated than the beautiful movements of the breathing of a body; not only that perfect plateau where a royal sun, where a king sun, where a master sun, where a perfect sun reigns over a perfect earth, without an epithet, without a suspicion of literature. Not only all that, but the beautiful body, the perfect body, the being at last, the beautiful and perfect organism, animal organism, vegetal organism? is it not rather the organism itself, an anterior organism, which has not followed, which has not espoused the dissociation of the animal and the vegetal, a common organism, in the sense in which the network of the venations of leaves, of the leaf of a vegetal stem draws, represents the design of so many animal networks, draws the venations of the networks of sanguine invasculations, of the networks of arteries and of veins, the venations of the networks of innervations, the threads of the nervous trees, let us therefore say an organism anterior, common, general, simply living, the geographically and historically beautiful and perfect organism, the cradle of the French language, of French culture, the admirable and perfect valley, the valley of sweetness and of mansuetude, the valley of intelligence and of liberality, the royal valley of largesse and of light; not only the valleys of undulations and of wooded recuttings; but within those very woods, at the issue of those very valleys and of those very undulations, at the recrossing, at the recutting of recuttings, in the linear hollow of the terrain, gathering maternally all those secondary undulations, all those filial valleys, peopling, furnishing all those plantings a little half-scattered, the axial valley, the stone in the casket, the broad and intelligent and liberal valley of courtesy and of nobility, of ceremony and of feast; the valley of pavane and of perfectly intelligent kindness.

And within the valley itself at last, gathering paternally so many beloved, so many affectionate affluents, so many threads and so many secondary water-currents, the sovereign river, the river not only royal, but king, the majestic river, but majestic with a correctness, with an ease, with an inimitable curve. Born majestic. But majestic not as our poor kings, as our poor majesties of today. As our modern kings. Majestic as if it were his trade and his being. Majestic by birth and by race.

The Loire is a queen and the kings have loved her.

Gathering so many intelligent and tepid waters, so many French waters, so many waters of so many springs, not, no doubt, the very waters of Surgères, but at least all the waters of all the green Vendômois, gathering them in the hollow of his great river-hand, in the hollow of the valley, which is itself in the hollow of the terrain, gathering them and assembling them softly in the double shelter of this double hollow, of this hollow within this hollow, the great river in the great valley, the great valley in the great country, the grandfather river with the flowering beard, not a silty beard like that old statufied mythological Rhine, but a beard blond and clear itself like a gaze, the river with the inexhaustible moiré waves, the royal river with the blond strands, with the supple lines, and with the strands nevertheless clean, with the intelligent descent, — not capricious, — with the unencumbered current, with the deliberate descension, sometimes fiery and full as a savage, and then the river with yellow and cream waters, creamed with foam, with foaming waves, ballooning and breaking, with trampling and pushing-back floods, with bubbling boilings flowing, crumbling and crashing; and sometimes no longer this river-strength; no longer a whole river crashing down; but the river that pretends to be indolent; and which so perfectly succeeds in fooling the imbeciles that ignorant ones, — barbarians, — have spoken of softness: it lingers only to look at the most beautiful country in the world.

Orléans and all the downstream of Orléans; the Touraine; the grace and the Touraine sweetness,

And more than the sea air the Angevin sweetness.

Grace, quality, character, — I mean of landscapes, — more mysterious still and which perhaps goes deeper than beauty, grace, more arbitrary still, more free, more sovereign, more perfectly illogical and gratuitous, disquieting too, like everything that is given, gratuitously, with an insolent gratuity, absolute, without recourse, without appeal and without justification, like everything that has no kind of account to render, absolutely, like everything that is absolutely not sold, in any sense, in any manner, neither exchanged nor bartered in any sort; and that indeed is why the Loire is at the same time so disquieting, in its rest, in its action, in its peace and in its tranquillity; it is not only, it is not that one drowns there; it is that this country has obtained, without asking for it, what so many others would ask in vain; it is that this people has obtained, this people of apparent impiety, of impiety insolent, displayed, ostentatious, it is that this impious people, — and there is the whole mystery of the destination of this people, — it is that this impious and ill-bred people has obtained and continues to obtain what so many pious peoples, what so many wise peoples, so many applied peoples, so many good-pupil peoples would ask in vain, and which is simply to lead the world, as if he who leads the leaders loved to throw off purely human judgment, and more than any other devout judgment, as if he had one knows not what weakness for one knows not what insubordination, as if he had a certain particular incomprehensible affection (for a human wisdom) for a certain sort of bad pupils (and that is so easily understood on the part of an intelligent teacher).

Grace, more disquieting still and more mysterious, being no doubt deeper, than beauty; not only, not hesitation of justice, for human gaze, but often very formal disavowal of justice and very assuredly triumph of injustice, seen with a human gaze, and so to speak miracle of the arbitrary; injustice, arbitrary and miracle in the destination of men; injustice, arbitrary and miracle in the destination of peoples; injustice, arbitrary and miracle in the destination of countries; this country which loses no occasion of denying everything that is not of the temporal, this people which is never so content as to affirm, and which loses not even a semblance of an occasion of affirming not only the domination, the prepotence, the omnipotence, but the unipotence and the uniexistence of the temporal, is also the only one that has obtained and maintained, that has received and kept, that still holds the leading of the world exactly for all that is not of the temporal.

And which in the temporal so marvelously fails.

So deliberately drawn sentences of grace. Injustice of the landscapes, which renders so disquieting, in their temporal quietude, those landscapes of the Loire; Angevin sweetness and grace; Touraine sweetness and grace; admirable sinuosities; not, — some barbarian would have said it, — not sinuosities of indecision, gropings of the blind, hesitations of a one-armed man, — but sinuosities of relaxation and of caress, enlacings, deliberate sinuosities, embracings of the earth by the river; not romantic sinuosities, détours for saying nothing, comings and goings of contortions and of colics, declamatory sinuosities and nervosities; but noble turns and detours; admirable, patient, slow sinuosities; learned, also; the river has wanted to see everything; it has not only taken its time;

When I wish in love to take my passe-temps;

Curves taken at the turn of his route as you will never take them; here they are then, the edges slightly raised; banking curves, without a swerve, just at the level of the slope; what chariot ever around what marker, chariot of Roman race in the hands of what charioteer, racing automobile or road automobile in the hands of what chauffeur, what railway train at the tail of what heavy locomotive, itself in the hands of what couple of stoker and engineer, the outer rail slightly raised, by a few centimeters, five, seven, nine, what as great chariot on what as great track, around what as great markers and under the gaze of what as great amphitheaters, what as great road around what as great slopes will ever take you a curve in this style?

*In the dust and the sun of the new roads * *If the regret of the paths of former times pricks you, * *Climb the hill, open your eyes and see, * See the roads flowing like beautiful rivers.

a curve in this style? Thus from one end to the other double sinuosities; I do not mean sinuosities in two senses, in the two opposite senses, like others; not successive aberrations, weaknesses of will, perpetual aberration, of sense, in the direction, in the sense of the march, regrets, remorses of him who does not know where he is going; regret itself is incompatible with this grace; but on the contrary intelligent insistence, advised, of him who knows quite well where he stops; double sinuosities in this sense that they pursue themselves not only on two banks, a little independent, in design, the one from the other, it must be acknowledged, — and one must know how to say, and to confess what one is; — but in this sense that on each bank even they pursue themselves on two lines, on a double shoreline of each bank; first shoreline in summer, or in the heart of winter, when for several weeks it has frozen dry and hard, first shoreline the strands themselves, the admirably sinuous strands; here it is so to speak the interior shoreline, the inner garment, finer, more supple, paler too, the white and blond linen of the strands; this interior garment, this inner shoreline disappears, not that it disappears, but it disappears from sight, simply covered, in the rains, in the great floods of autumn and of spring; and second shoreline, outside the strands, exterior shoreline, outer garment, and overgarment, garment for going out, and so that the Loire may go into the world, perpetual shoreline, and valid for the whole year, for the four seasons, sole shoreline in high waters, second shoreline and shoreline so to speak of covering in low waters, shoreline of lid and of closing, metal of the clasp, old gold, green bronze, second shoreline the feet of the slopes nobly inclined, regularly leaning, the rims of the very slopes, the edges admirably a little less sinuous; harder; almost a little a cuirass: an outer garment must withstand every inclemency; a little firmer therefore, drawn a little more emphatically; of a tone, of a more firm color too, of a more clean color, more entire, of a more vigorous color, — how do you say that, Laurens; I mean to say of colors that have more recently come out of the dealer’s; — green undulations, woods, a little scattered, curtains, sometimes, of poplars, dappled mantle of cultivations, cords of paths, lines and ribbons of roads, perpetual, modest, faithful tow-path, white roads, alignments more or less reticulated, more or less bushwacking of the vine-stocks and bushes of vine of that wine of sand; lacings of roads; all that makes almost a beginning of armature; an almost laced corselet: for an outer garment must be drawn firm and of clean color;

trellises which are espalier vines; tepid trellises, warm trellises, ripe trellises; storehouses, reservoirs of sun; trellises voluptuously quartered; trellises elongated, apparently lazy; trellises of the walls of the gardens and of the houses of the farms and of the villages of this valley elongated itself, quartered as espalier.

Above all that, or rather within it on the contrary, coming out from within it, far from entering into it, a light that illuminates the sun, a blond light, you say, yes, apparently blond, but of such a brilliance, while remaining really blond, that the very native, who returns, that the prodigal child cannot sustain that brilliance, without migraine and without furrowing the folds of the brow.

Corseted banks; almost an armor; a survival, a memory of armor; for they do not date from today nor from yesterday; they date almost from the time of armor; and at the time when they were donned forever for the first time, a (good) stab of the dagger was quickly given. A good cuirass of a few metallic pieces and of buffalo-skin.

the rivers and the river of the Pléiade and of all the French Renaissance, the country of Ronsard and of du Bellay;

at last the admirable châteaux of the admirable valley; more than a double row, not a double row: a strewing of châteaux; river of which it is said that it is not navigable, and which bears more palaces than the others trail barges; what other valley in the slanting hollow of its rims encloses so many marvels; what other river has been able to make for itself such a royal cortège, moving river, of immovable splendors; loves of Cassandre; loves of Marie; loves of Astrée; poems for Hélène; amours diverses; odes; eclogues; elegies; hymn; poems; gaieties; diverse poems; the Bocage royal; so many sonnets, perfect, so many poems, perfect; purity itself; the line and the tint; châteaux themselves; châteaux and palaces of language, French; and at the same time, in the same country, in the same valley, with the same gesture, with the same blossoming, with the same language, with the same style, châteaux of the same French language, châteaux and palaces of stone and of brick; double architectures; parallel architectures not supplicating; sonnets and poems that are châteaux and palaces; châteaux and palaces which are sonnets and poems; the same language, equally perfect, in two systems, in a system of stone and of brick, in a system of words and of sentences; the same rhythm in two systems of monuments; monuments, — are they equally imperishable, — which say the same word of courtesy in two modes, solid monuments of stone and of brick, same and equally solid monuments of words and of sentences, and obeying the laws of the same gravity.

Flowers, leaves, lace, gowns and trains of stone; flowers, leaves, lace, gowns and trains of words.

Perfect lightening of the architectonic monuments; perfect architecture, perfect horizontality, perfect verticality of the prosodic monuments. Proportions equally kept in the ones and in the others, equally perfect, equally wise, equally harmonious.

River which sings eternally the poem of solitude and of infinite tranquillity, the only one however which has a court, the only one which by a marvelous interior contradiction lives indeed in the most eternal solitude, in the most infinite quietude and tranquillity, in the peace of the heart and in the noble alone and alone worthy silence, and which at the same time and yet, by an admirable intimate contrariety, is also the only one which has made for itself more than a cortège, more than a court: the only one which could make for itself a whole people of châteaux.

Architectures admirably ordered of stone and of brick, where the brick gives the fullness of the matter, perfect marriage where the red of the brick gives the fullness, the blood of the matter, where the brilliant whiteness, then aged, faded, yellowed like a parchment, cream, creamy, ivory, blond almost like the strands themselves, gilded almost as much as the subtersinuous strands, where the whiteness once brilliant, today brilliant past, where the ancient brilliant whiteness, patinated, of the learned and perfect and perfectly rectangular cut stone brings, gives the line, makes the information, gives the arrested nobility, the decision, the deliberation of the form, marks the stroke, underlines the gesture, makes the limit, arrests and limits the matter, gives the vertical, gives the horizontal, gives the window, gives the door, gives the rail and the elbow-height, gives the living and patiently ascensional curve of the staircase, gives the bannister, imposes the transom, prepares the very gutter, (a fool who would despise the gutter; the cathedral, which was no fool, did not despise it, did not hide it, rather showed it, amused itself with it no doubt, with a kind of ostentation; a fool who would have despised it under the name of gargoyle; a fool also who would despise it under the more modest name, more elongated, it too more linear, under the more modest form, linear, of eaves-trough; when all this Loire, what indeed is it but the immense and central gutter of so many secondary gutters of all the rains of all this château of terrains, of this great château of terrains which is its river basin.) draws the corner, cuts the window and the door, eternally recalls to the matter, discreetly but with an invincible firmness recalls to the matter, to the burning and living red fullness of the matter of brick, and even to the slanted shining blue plane so strangely vibrating in plaques, moiré, changing, shining sometimes in pink and in wet plaques, almost of red, of the slate, where the old faded white of the noble cut stone recalls to all this matter, however noble it be itself, to the fulnesses and to the planes of all this matter, that there is a form, that there is a limit, that there is a line; and that for color even there is not only the red of the blood of arteries and the blue of the sky, that there is not only the red of the firing of bricks and the blue of the sky repainted in shining plaques more marked but changing on the sharp inclination most immediately near to the roofs, but that there is also white, the noble white, the pure light, the pure line, the terminal white, the limit white, beyond which none passes; itself matter; but matter of what forms; Hellenic matter of the marble of statuary; particularly charged with recalling to all this matter that in the world there is a form, that in creation there is a line; cut stone fundamental, eternal as geometry itself, of which it is an expression, a representation made concrete but perfectly exact and pure, particularly charged with recalling to all this matter of creation, — the brick being essentially molecular, elementary, atomistic, equivalential, — particularly charged with recalling to all this material brick, to all this content, in a calm and courteous tone, but firm, in a straight and steady language, but firm, and from which it never departs, — for it discharges itself of it, — that the element is not all, that there is the ensemble; that the cell is not all, that there is the tissue; that the limb is not all, that there is the body; that there is an armature and a bone-structure; that the content is not all, that there is a boundary, that there is a geometry, that there is a straight line, a horizontal, a vertical, that it is not a matter of overflowing, inconsiderately, of having bellies and hollows, but that there is the straight line, the perfect delimitation, the periphery and the perimeter, the turn, the détour and the surround; the contour; and as matter, cut stone particularly charged with recalling to the material colors that there is also an eminent matter, a pure light, the white of the marble of statuary; particularly charged with recalling to our lady architecture, in a courteous but firm language, in a language by definition measured, that there is our lady sculpture, that there is statuary sculpture; or rather which of those very châteaux and of those palaces, of those truly organic buildings, of those truly corporeal monuments, themselves bodies, makes as many statues, of admirable, of living, of perfect statues, which of all those architectures themselves makes as many sculptures and as many statuaries; which in those châteaux at last, and in those palaces, and always as matter, as material, makes the sole material of so many admirable details, fouilled, pushed, not overloaded, of a courteous justness, which must not be called ornaments, but which must not be called at all, for they are the very arteries of the body, for the form, the veins that run, climb, creep at the skin’s surface, the threads of the nerves, the edging, the very stroke and the underlining, to which therefore one must give no general nor generic name of ornament, and of which you would tell me the names of detail, the particular names, the technical names, the proper names, Fritel, for a hundred and seven hours, and the sources, and the causes, and the origins, all moldings and venations, leaves and flowers of stone, florescences, fleurons, foliages, roots and stems of cut stone of which tirelessly you would make me the most scrupulous drawing.

Poems which speak like stone, as hard under the nail, as firm, as courteous, as architecture and statuary; stone, châteaux and palaces which very exactly speak the language of Ronsard.

Supreme recutting at last, recutting of the word and of the stone, of the spoken language and of the drawn language, marvelous interior accord by which the very names of these châteaux ring like poems, like abridgments, like shortenings, like extracts of poems, like poems in a word, — we have gone beyond the short story in three lines, — like a culmination of a poem in a word, — concentrated without effort by what poet, by what obscure and marvelously sure instinct of the language of a whole people altogether a poet, — marvelous and easy conformity, marvelous accord of the name and the object, just application of the name onto the object, perfectly fitting crowning of the object by the name to which we owe these names so perfectly beautiful, Blois, Chenonceaux, Chambord, Langeais; so many others: but why fill a cahier with names of which one would make a whole railway timetable; Beaugency, Amboise, Valençay, Ussé; let us be silent; and by a second supreme recutting, by a second supreme crowning, by an even more marvelous redoubling of this supreme crowning these names of poets which are beautiful as names of châteaux, which are made altogether like names of châteaux, Pierre de Ronsard, Jean Daurat was a pseudonym; but by Jove what a pseudonym; it was a very beautiful pseudonym; and then in the end he was named Disnemandy, which is worth as much as the others; the names of the seven stars, Pierre de Ronsard, Jean-Antoine de Baïf, Joachim du Bellay, who made the two most beautiful sonnets in the world, Pontus de Thyard, Remi Belleau, Jodelle; let us be silent: and those whom it does not see itself, the Loire river, those whose feet it does not bathe, believe, my dear Halévy, that it does as we do; it does not take the railway to go and see them; we know at last today, by the most recent teachings of the history of religions, we know with a truly scientific knowledge and thus with a certainty, that since the cosmogonies of the highest antiquities the totems have never authorized the river-gentlemen to take the railway; the river has never had the right to travel save on foot; it is, I believe, the means of locomotion that you too love, that you prefer by far, for which you have a true cult; it is therefore also the only one we shall permit it; and then it has not the time, this river that is called lazy; it is lazy as some are; none works as much as certain lazy ones, as a lazy genius; this lazy river is a lazy man in the genre of that La Fontaine; already named; it cannot have the time; those therefore whom itself it does not bathe, those whose beautiful stone feet it does not wash, those whom it does not know with a direct sight, with a grasp, with an embracing, with an immediate embrace, — you see, my dear collaborator, that we know how to speak as at the Collège de France, — believe, my dear Halévy, that it does as we do, the river: it hears them spoken of.

Charles Péguy