The opinions of Jérôme Coignard

by Anatole France

He held that the one people could not be governed two ways at the same time, for this reason, that, nations being indeed bodies, their functions depend on the structure of their parts, and the condition of their organs; that is to say, of the land and the people, and not of the ruling powers, who must be adjusted to a nation as a man's clothes are to his body.

"The misfortune is," added he, "that the people are suited by them like a Harlequin or a Jack-in-the-green. Their coat is ever too loose or too tight, ill-fitting, ridiculous, grubby, covered with stains, and crawling with vermin. We may mend things by shaking it out, cautiously, putting in a stitch here, and when necessary, applying the scissors there, with discretion, so as to avoid being at the expense of another equally bad, but not clinging too obstinately to the old garment when the body has changed its shape by growth."

One sees from this that Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard, was a friend to order and progress, and altogether was not a bad citizen. He incited no man to revolt, and had rather that instituted things were worn and ground-down by incessant friction, than overturned and broken by any great strokes. He was for ever pointing out to his disciples that the harshest laws grew wonderfully smoother in practice, and that the clemency of time is surer than that of man. As for seeing the sprawling Corpus of the law one day re-shaped, he neither hoped it nor wished for it; laying no store by the benefits of hasty legislation. Jacques Tournebroche asked him at times whether he were not afraid that his critical philosophy, as exercised on institutions he himself judged necessary, might not have the inopportune effect of toppling down what he would wish preserved.

"Why, oh best of masters," said his faithful disciple, "why reduce to dust the foundations of all right, of justice, and law, and generally of all civil and military rule, since you acknowledge the necessity of right, justice, armies, magistrates and drill-sergeants?"

"My son," replied Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard, "I have ever remarked that men's prejudices are the source of their ills, just as spiders and scorpions issue from the gloom of cellars and the damp of back-gardens. It is just as well to pass the Turk's head or the broom at random now and then in these dark corners. It is not a bad thing even to give a touch of the pick here and there on the walls of the cellar and garden. It scares the vermin and prepares the way for the ruin that must come."

"I agree willingly," replied the mild Tournebroche; "but when you have destroyed every principle, my master, what will be left?"

And his master replied: "After the destruction of every false principle society will still cohere, because it is founded on necessity, whose laws, older than Saturn, will still prevail when Prometheus shall have dethroned Jupiter."

Prometheus has dethroned Jupiter more than once since the time when Abbé Coignard spoke these words, and the prophecies of the sage have been so literally verified that at the present day one feels doubts, so much does the new resemble the old order, whether the power does not still rest in ancient Jove. There are those who deny the coming of the Titan. There is no sign on his breast, they say, of the wound whence the eagle, the creature of injustice, tore out his heart, the wound that should bleed for ever. He knows nothing of the griefs and insurgence of the exile. This is not the workaday divinity promised, and expected by us. This is the full-fed Jove from the hoary and laughable Olympus. When shall he appear again, the strong friend of men, the fire-kindler, the Titan still nailed to his crag? A terrible noise from out the mountains makes known that he is lifting his lacerated shoulders from off the iniquitous rock, and we can feel, flaming on us, his distant breath.

A stranger to business, Monsieur Coignard inclined to pure speculation and dealt readily in general ideas. This disposition of his, which may have damaged him in the eyes of his contemporaries, gives his reflections some worth and usefulness after a century and a half. We can there learn to know the manners of our own day and disentangle what there is of evil in them.

Injustice, stupidity, and cruelty, do not strike us when they are the common lot. We see them in our ancestors but not in ourselves. Still, since there is no past epoch whatever, when mankind does not seem absurd to us, savage and unjust, it would be a miracle if our age had, by some privilege, cast away every shred of folly, malice, and savagery. The opinions of Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard would help us to make our examination of conscience, if we were not like those idols which have eyes and see not, and ears and hear not. With a little good faith and impartiality we should soon see that our legal codes are still but a hotbed of injustice, that we preserve in our manners the inherited hardness of avarice and pride; that we value wealth alone, and have no respect for labour. Our system of affairs would appear to us what it really is, a wretched and precarious system, condemned by abstract justice if not by that of man, and the ruin of which is beginning. Our rich men would seem to us as foolish as cockchafers continuing to eat the leaves of a tree, while the little beetle on their body devours their entrails. No more would we be lulled to sleep by the false speeches of our statesmen; we should conceive a positive pity for our economists arguing with one another about the cost of the furniture in a burning house. Abbé Coignard's disquisitions reveal to us a prophetic disdain of the great principles of the Revolution and of the rights of the people, on which we have established these hundred years, with every kind of violence and usurpation, an incoherent succession of insurrectionary governments, themselves, innocent of irony, condemning insurrection. If we could begin to smile a little at follies, which once appeared majestic and at times were stained with blood; if we could perceive that our modern prejudices are, like the old, the outcome of something, either ridiculous or hateful; if we could judge one another with a charitable scepticism,[2] quarrels would be less sharp, in the fairest country in the world, and Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard, for one, would have laboured for the universal good.