"Go to, poor Jacques Bonhomme!" added the Franc-Taupin. "Fill up your paunch, but bend your back! Pay for the gala! Gnaw at the bones cast to you, and cry 'Thanks!' Oh, if only you knew! If only you wanted to! With one shake of your shoulders, both the tyrants and their cohorts would be thrown to the ground!"
"No! No!" interjected Antonicq. "Do not imagine that our tyrants Catherine De Medici and Charles IX are defended mainly by the arquebusiers of their bodyguards, their light mounted horse and their footmen in arms! Not at all! Just listen to this passage from La Boetie's book:
"I shall now touch upon a point that is the secret spring of the sway, the support and the foundation of tyranny. He who imagines that the halberdiers of the guard constitute the safety and the bulwark of tyrants is, I hold, greatly in error. No; it is not arms that defend a tyrant. At first blush the point may not be granted, nevertheless it is true. It is only four or five men among his accomplices who uphold a tyrant and who keep the country in servitude to him. It has ever been only five or six who have a tyrant's ear, and are invited by him to be the accomplices of his cruelties, the sharers in his amusements, the go-betweens in his debaucheries, the co-partners in his plunder, these five or six hundred have, in turn, under them five or six who are to them what they themselves are to the tyrant—and these five or six hundred have, in turn, under them five or six thousand thieves among whom they have caused the government of the provinces and the administration of the funds to be distributed, in order that they may cater to the avarice and the cruelty of the tyrant, in order that they may promptly execute his orders, and be ready to do so much mischief that they can hold their places only under the shadow of his authority, nor be able to escape the just punishment of their offences but through him. Wide and long is the train that follows these latter ones. Whoever cares to amuse himself in tracing the threads of this woof will see that, not the six thousand only, but hundreds of thousands, aye millions depend through that cord upon the tyrant, who, with the aid of the same, can (as Jupiter boasts in Homer) pull over to himself all the gods by pulling at the chain."
"Well put! Never before has the centralized power of royalty, that fearful engine of tyranny, been more lucidly laid bare!" cried Captain Mirant. "I am more and more convinced—the federation of the provinces, each independent as to itself, but mutually united by the common bond of their common interests, like the Republic of the Swiss cantons, is the sole guarantee of freedom. Commune and Federation!"
"Now," said Antonicq, "do not fail to admire the penetration with which Estienne of La Boetie traces back the secret punishment that is visited upon tyrants, and the awful consequences of tyranny itself. He says:
"From the moment a King has declared himself a tyrant, then, not merely a swarm of thieves and skip-jacks, but all those who are moved by ardent ambition, or overpowering greed, gather around him, and assist him in order to have a share in the booty, and to be, under the great tyrant, petty tyrants themselves. Thus it happens with highwaymen and pirates. One set holds the roads, the other rifles the travelers; one set lies in ambush, the other is on the watch; one set massacres, the other plunders.
"Hence it comes that the tyrant is never loved, and never loves. Friendship is a sacred gift, a holy boon! It never exists but among honorable people, it never arises but through mutual esteem. It is preserved, not so much through gifts as by upright conduct. That which makes one friend feel sure of another is the knowledge he has of the other's integrity. The security he holds from his friend is the latter's good character, his faith, his constancy. No friendship can exist where cruelty, disloyalty and injustice hold sway. When malignant people meet, they meet to plot, not for companionship! They do not mutually aid if they mutually fear one another. They are not friends, they are accomplices in crime and felony.
"This is the reason why, as the saying goes, there is honor among thieves at the distribution of the booty. They supplement one another, and they are unwilling, by falling out, to reduce their strength.
"In that begins the punishment of tyrants. When they die, their execrated name is blackened by the ink of a thousand pens, their reputation is torn to shreds; even their bones, pilloried by posterity, chastise them for their wicked lives. Let us then learn to be upright; let us raise our eyes to heaven; let us implore it to bestow upon us the love of virtue. As to me, meseems nothing is so contrary to God as tyranny, and that He reserves for tyrants some special chastisement."
"Oh, my children!" exclaimed Odelin's widow, "that book which breathes such hatred for tyranny and such generous indignation towards cowards that one must doubt divine justice if he can lightly submit to iniquity;—that book, every page of which bears the imprint of the love of virtue and the execration of evil;—that book should be placed in the hands of every lad about to enter manhood. It would be a wholesome and strong nourishment to their souls. From it they would gather a horror for that cowardly and blind voluntary servitude, and then all, in the name of justice, of human dignity, of right, and of honesty, would rise Against-One, the title of those sublime pages, and they would proclaim everywhere—Commune and Federation!"