Then he turned suddenly round, and looking at aunt from head to foot, and raising his voice; he went on: "And that is the reason why I like Bonaparte better than the Comte d'Artois, the émigrés, the missionaries, and the workers of miracles; at least he is forced to keep something of the Revolution, he is forced to respect the national domain, to guarantee to every one his property, his rank, and everything he has acquired under the new laws. Without that, what right would he have to be Emperor? If he had not maintained equality why should the nation wish to have him? The others, on the contrary, have attacked everything; they want to destroy everything that we have done. Now you understand why I like him better than the others.
"Ah!" said Mother Grédel, "that is new!" and she laughed contemptuously. I would have given anything if she had been at Quatre Vents.
"There was a time when you talked otherwise, when he re-established the bishops and the archbishops and the cardinals, when he had himself crowned by the Pope, and consecrated with oil from the holy ampoule,[[1]] when he recalled the émigrés, when he gave up the chateaux and forests to the great families, when he made princes and dukes and barons by the dozen; how many times have I heard you say that all that was atrocious, that he had betrayed the Revolution, that you would have preferred the Bourbons, because they did not know any other way, that they were like blackbirds, who only whistle one tune because they know no other, and because they think it the most beautiful air in the world. While he, the result of the Revolution, whose father had only a few dozens of goats on the mountains of Corsica, should have known that all men are equal, that courage and genius alone elevate them above their fellows,—that he should have despised all those old notions, and that he should have made war only to defend the new rights, the new ideas, which are just and which nothing can arrest: did you not say that, when you were talking with old Colin in the rear of our garden, for fear of being arrested—did you not say that between yourselves and before me?"
[[1]] Vial which contains the oil for anointing the kings of France.
Father Goulden had grown quite pale. He looked down at his feet and turned his snuff-box round and round in his fingers as if he were thinking, and I saw his emotion in his face.
"Yes, I said it," he replied, "and I think so still—you have a good memory, Mother Grédel. It is true that for ten years Colin and I have been obliged to hide ourselves if we spoke of events that will certainly be accomplished, and it is the despotism of one man born among us, whom we have sustained with our own blood, which compelled us to do that. But to-day everything is changed. The man, to whom you cannot deny genius, has seen his sycophants abandon and betray him; he has seen that his strength lies in the people, and that those alliances of which he had the weakness to be so proud, were the cause of his ruin. He has come now to rid us of the others, and I am glad."
"Then you have no faith in yourself, eh? Have you any need of him?" exclaimed Aunt Grédel. "If the processions annoyed you, and if you were, as you say, 'the people,' why do you need him?"
Father Goulden smiled, and said, "If everybody had the courage to follow his own conscience, and if so many persons who joined the processions had not done so from vanity or to show their fine clothes, and if others had not joined from interest, from the hope of getting a good office, or to obtain permits, then Madame Grédel you would be right, and we should not have needed Bonaparte to overturn all that, and you would have seen that three-quarters of the people had common-sense, and perhaps even the Comte d'Artois himself would have cried, Hold! But as hypocrisy and interest hide and obscure everything and make night out of the broad day, unhappily we must have thunder-bolts to make us see clearly. It is you, and those who are like you, who have caused those who have never changed their opinions, to rejoice when fever takes the place of colic."
Father Goulden rose and walked up and down in great agitation, and as Aunt Grédel was going on again, he took his cap and went out, saying: