BAILLY QUITS THE MAYORALTY THE 12TH OF NOVEMBER, 1791.—THE ESCHEVINS.—EXAMINATION OF THE REPROACHES THAT MIGHT BE ADDRESSED TO THE MAYOR.
I resume the biography of Bailly at the time when he quitted the Hôtel de Ville after a magistracy of about two years.
On the 12th November, 1791, Bailly convoked the Council of the Commune, rendered an account of his administration, solemnly entreated those who thought themselves entitled to complain of him, to say so without reserve; so resolved was he to bow to any legitimate complaints; installed his successor Pétion, and retired. This separation did not lead to any of those heartfelt demonstrations from the co-labourers of the late Mayor, which are the true and the sweetest recompense to a good man.
I have sought for the hidden cause of such a constant and undisguised hostility towards the first Mayor of Paris. I asked myself first, whether the magistrate's manners had possibly excited the susceptibilities of the Eschevins.[14] The answer is decidedly in the negative. Bailly showed in all the relations of life a degree of patience, a suavity, a deference to the opinions of others, that would have soothed the most irascible self-love.
Must we suspect jealousy to have been at work? No, no; the persons who constituted the town-council were too obscure, unless they were mad, to attempt to vie in public consideration and glory with the illustrious author of the History of Astronomy, with the philosopher, the writer, the erudite scholar who belonged to our three principal academies, an honour that Fontenelle alone had enjoyed before him.
Let us say it aloud, for such is our conviction, nothing personal excited the evil proceedings, the acts of insubordination with which Bailly had daily to reproach his numerous assistants. It is even presumable, that in his position, any one else would have had to register more numerous and more serious complaints. Let us be truthful: when the aristocracy of the ground-floor, according to the expression of one of the most illustrious members of the French Academy, was called by the revolutionary movements to replace the aristocracy of the first-floor, it became giddy. Have I not, it said, conducted the business of the warehouse, the workshop, the counting-house, &c., with probity and success; why then should I not equally succeed in the management of public affairs? And this swarm of new statesmen were in a hurry to commence work; hence all control was irksome to them, and each wished to be able to say on returning home, "I have framed such or such an act that will tie the hands of faction for ever; I have repressed this or that riot; I have, in short, saved the country by proposing such or such a measure for the public good, and by having it adopted." The pronoun I so agreeably tickles the ear of a man lately risen from obscurity.
What the thorough-bred Eschevin, whether new or old, dreads above every thing else, is specialties. He has an insurmountable antipathy towards men, who have in the face of the world gained the honourable titles of historian, geometer, mechanician, astronomer, physician, chemist, or geologist, &c.... His desire, his will, is to speak on every thing. He requires, therefore, colleagues who cannot contradict him.
If the town constructs an edifice, the Eschevin, losing sight of the question, talks away on the aspect of the façades. He declares with the imperturbable assurance inspired by a fact that he had heard speak of whilst on the knees of his nurse, that on a particular side of the future building, the moon, an active agent of destruction, will incessantly corrode the stones of the frontage, the shafts of the columns, and that it will efface in a few years all the projecting ornaments; and hence the fear of the moon's voracity will lead to the upsetting of all the views, the studies, and the well-digested plans of several architects. Place a meteorologist on the council, and, despite the authority of the nurses, a whole scaffolding of gratuitous suppositions will be crumbled to dust by these few categorical and strict words of science; the moon does not exert the action that is attributed to it.
At another time, the Eschevin hurls his anathema at the system of warming by steam. According to him, this diabolical invention is an incessant cause of damp to the wood-work, the furniture, the papers, and the books. The Eschevin fancies, in short, that in this way of warming, torrents of watery vapour enter into the atmosphere of the apartments. Can he love a colleague, I ask, who after having had the cunning patience to let him come to the conclusion of his discourse, informs him that, although vapour, the vehicle of an enormous quantity of latent heat, rapidly conveys this caloric to every floor of the largest edifice, it has never occasion therefore to escape from those impermeable tubes through which the circulation is effected!
Amidst the various labours that are required by every large town, the Eschevin thinks, some one day, that he has discovered an infallible way of revenging himself of specialties. Guided by the light of modern geology, it has been proposed to go with an immense sounding line in hand, to seek in the bowels of the earth the incalculable quantities of water, that from all eternity circulate there without benefiting human nature, to make them spout up to the surface, to distribute them in various directions, in large cities, until then parched, to take advantage of their high temperature, to warm economically the magnificent conservatories of the public gardens, the halls of refuge, the wards of the sick in hospitals, the cells of madmen. But according to the old geology of the Eschevin, promulgated perhaps by his nurse, there is no circulation in subterranean water; at all events, subterranean water cannot be submitted to an ascending force and rise to the surface; its temperature would not differ from that of common well-water. The Eschevin, however, agrees to the expensive works proposed. Those works, he says, will afford no material result; but once for all, such fantastic projects will receive a solemn and rough contradiction, and we shall then be liberated for ever from the odious yoke under which science wants to enslave us.