Sovereignty cannot be divided. Therefore the king does not share his power with the great of the land. These latter have no privileges, but they have duties. They form the king's council; they are guardians of the national unity, inasmuch as they unite the people to the throne, and guardians of the national continuity, inasmuch as they are the sustainers of tradition. It is their duty perpetually to proclaim to the people the benefit of authority, and to the king the benefits of liberty. The law is, as law, the same for all, therefore destitute of the pliability which is a necessity if freedom is to be granted and ensured. An enlightened autocracy secures liberty.
When Bonaparte appears and quickly develops into Napoleon, Joseph de Maistre is, naturally, his implacable enemy. Nevertheless, he recognises the autocrat in him. He feels that the unity of the French nation is embodied in him, and this though he regards him as the demonium meridianum (see Correspondance diplomatique, ii. 65). In July 1807 he writes: "In those newspapers which are his organs Bonaparte causes himself to be called the messenger of God. Nothing could be truer. Bonaparte comes straight from heaven ... as lightning does." In other words, De Maistre saw in the calamities which Napoleon brought upon Europe, as in all "heaven-sent" calamities, judgments, the justice of which did not diminish the guilt of those who executed them. In 1808, out of love for his country, he did violence to his own inclinations by endeavouring to obtain an audience of Napoleon for the purpose of pleading the cause of Sardinia. He took this step not in his capacity of minister, but privately and on his own responsibility. Napoleon, though he did not answer De Maistre's letter (written from St. Petersburg), was evidently impressed by the quality of the man; he ordered the French ambassador at the Russian court to show him favour, and did not take his audacity at all amiss. De Maistre's own court, however, did. It was intimated to him that the Cabinet, to which he had sent immediate notice of the measure taken, had been disagreeably surprised by it. He replies proudly and satirically: "The Cabinet has been surprised! The skies may fall—that is a matter of no consequence—but heaven preserve us from an unexpected idea! I am now more than ever persuaded that I am not the man you want. I can promise you to transact His Majesty's affairs as well as any man, but I cannot promise never to surprise you. That is a weakness in my character which I am incapable of curing." He proved the truth of what he himself somewhere says, that trusting to the constancy of court favour is "like lying down on the wing of a windmill to sleep soundly." When vindicating himself he writes: "I know everything that can be said against Bonaparte; he is a usurper, he is a murderer; but note well that he is less of a usurper than William of Orange and less of a murderer than Elizabeth of England. ... As yet we are not stronger than God, and we must come to terms with him to whom it has pleased God to entrust the power." (Lettres et opuscules, i. 114.)
Joseph de Maistre spent fourteen years of his life as envoy at St. Petersburg. The long separation from the female members of his family was very painful to him, and the cares of a father often weighed heavily on his mind. It is touching to read in one of his letters that when he was lying awake at night, over-tired with work, he often imagined that he heard his youngest little daughter, whom he did not know, crying in Turin.
As a proof of his favour and esteem for De Maistre, the Czar gave commissions in the Russian army to his brother and son. The brother was wounded during the campaign in the Caucasus. The son fought in the war against Napoleon. "No one," writes the father, "knows what war is unless he has a son fighting. I do what I can to banish the thoughts of hewn-off arms and smashed skulls that constantly torment me; then I sup like a youth, sleep like a child, and awake like a man, that is to say, early."
The great panegyrist of the executioner and the auto da fé had in private life a very tender heart. His private utterances often convey the impression of kindliness, as his public do of whimsical wit.
He perhaps shows most amiably in his letters to his daughter: "You ask me, dear child, why it is that women are condemned to mediocrity. They are not. They may become great, but it must be in a feminine way. Every creature ought to keep to its own place and not strive after advantages other than those which properly belong to it. I have a dog called Biribi, who is a great amusement to us all; if he were to take it into his head to have himself saddled and bridled to carry me out into the country, I should be as little pleased with him as with your brother's English mare if she were to take it into her head to jump on my knee or to sit down at the breakfast-table with me. The mistakes some women make come from their imagining that in order to rise above the common level they must act like men.... If twenty years ago a pretty woman had asked me: 'Do you not believe that a woman is just as capable of being a great general as a man?' I should have answered: 'Most undoubtedly I do, Madam. If you commanded an army, the enemy would fall on their knees to you as I do now, and you would enter their capital with drums beating and banners flying.' If she had said to me: 'What is there to prevent my knowing as much of astronomy as Newton?' I should have replied with equal sincerity: 'Nothing whatever, O peerless beauty! You have but to look through the telescope, and the stars will consider it an honour to be gazed at by your beautiful eyes, and will hasten to discover all their mysteries to you.' These are the things we say to women, both in prose and verse; but the woman who takes such speeches seriously is uncommonly stupid." After declaring that woman's mission is to bear and to bring up men, he adds: "But, dear child, I am for moderation in everything. I believe, speaking generally, that women ought not to aim at acquirements which are at variance with their duties, but I am far from thinking that they ought to be perfectly ignorant. I do not wish them to believe that Pekin is in France, or that Alexander the Great proposed marriage to a daughter of Louis XIV." And in a following letter he writes: "I see that you are angry with me for my impertinent attack on learned women. It is absolutely necessary that we should make friends again before Easter. The fact that you have misunderstood me ought to make the process easy. I never said that women were monkeys; I swear to you by all that is most holy that I have always thought them incomparably more beautiful, more amiable, and more useful; but I did say, and this I abide by, that the women who want to be men are monkeys; for wanting to be learned is wanting to be a man. I think that the Holy Spirit has shown His wisdom in arranging things as they are, sad as it may seem. I make my humble obeisance to the young lady you tell me of, who is writing an epic poem, but heaven preserve me from becoming her husband; I should live in terror of seeing her delivered in my house of a tragedy, or possibly even of a farce—for when talent has once set off, there is no knowing where it will stop."
"The best and most convincing observation in your letter is that upon the raw material employed in the creation of man. Strictly speaking, it is only man who is made of dust and ashes, or, not to mince matters, of dirt, whereas woman was made of a mire that had already been prepared and elevated to the dignity of a rib. Corpo di Bacco! questo vuol dir molto. You cannot say too much, my dear child, as far as I am concerned, about the nobility of women, even those of the bourgeois class; to a man there should be nothing more excellent than a woman, just as to a woman, &c., &c.... But it is precisely because of the exalted opinion I have of these noble ribs that I become seriously angry when I see any of them desiring to transform themselves into original mire. And now it seems to me that the question is completely disposed of." (Lettres et opuscules, i. 145, 156).
It surprises us to find the strictly orthodox Catholic jesting thus lightly with Bible legend; but even in his witty and sportive moods De Maistre is faithful to his reactionary principles. It is one of his characteristics that a certain piquant wit goes hand in hand with the violent, dæmonic energy of his attack, an energy which reveals itself even in the little fact that his favourite expression is à brûle-pourpoint (in its literal meaning—to fire with the muzzle of one's pistol upon one's antagonist's coat).
In the Soirées de St. Pétersbourg, in which he already writes of Bacon with some of that animosity to which he afterwards gave full vent in a large and erudite work, he makes a humorous observation which is quite in accord with the newest scientific view of the matter: "Bacon was a barometer that announced fine weather, and because he announced it, men believed that it was he who had produced it." And in a letter he writes: "I cannot tell how there came to be this war to the death between me and the late Lord Chancellor Bacon. We have boxed like two Fleet Street boxers, and if he has pulled out some of my hair, I imagine that his wig no longer sits very straight on his head."
When De Maistre is broaching his favourite theories, his humour is often very sarcastic, as, for instance, when he discourses, in the second part of the Soirées, on the ways of maintaining esprit de corps. There is much cynicism in such pleasantry as this: "To produce discipline and the feeling of honour in any corps or society, special rewards are of less avail than special punishments." He shows how the idea had occurred to the Romans of making military punishment a privilege—only soldiers had the right to be beaten with rods made of the wood of the vine. No man who was not a soldier might be beaten with such a rod, and no other kind of rod might be used to flog a soldier with. "I cannot understand how some such idea has not occurred to any of our modern rulers. If I were asked for advice on the subject, I should not go back to the vine rod, for slavish imitation is useless. I should suggest laurel rods." He further proposes that a great forcing-house should be erected in the capital, exclusively for the purpose of producing the necessary supply of laurel branches with which the non-commissioned officers are to belabour the backs of the Russian army. This forcing-house is to be under the supervision of a general, who must also be a Knight of St. George of the Second Class, at lowest, and whose title is to be "Chief Inspector of the Laurel Forcing-House"; the trees are to be attended to by old pensioners of unblemished character; models of the rods, which must all be exactly alike, are to be kept in a red case at the War Office; each non-commissioned officer is to carry one hanging by a ribbon of St. George from his button-hole; and on the façade of the forcing-house is to be inscribed: This is my tree, which brings forth my leaves.