Therefore it was bound to accomplish itself, to be what it was; but, suppose the flight of the King without impediment, Robespierre escaping or Bonaparte assassinated—chances which depended upon an innkeeper proving less scrupulous, a door being left open, or a sentinel falling asleep—and the progress of the world would have taken a different direction.
They had no longer on the men and the events of that period a single well-balanced idea. In order to form an impartial judgment upon it, it would have been necessary to have read all the histories, all the memoirs, all the newspapers, and all the manuscript productions, for through the least omission might arise an error, which might lead to others without limit.
They abandoned the subject. But the taste for history had come to them, the need of truth for its own sake.
Perhaps it is easier to find it in more ancient epochs? The authors, being far removed from the events, ought to speak of them without passion. And they began the good Rollin.
"What a heap of rubbish!" exclaimed Bouvard, after the first chapter.
"Wait a bit," said Pécuchet, rummaging at the end of their library, where lay heaped up the books of the last proprietor, an old lawyer, an accomplished man with a mania for literature; and, having put out of their places a number of novels and plays, together with an edition of Montesquieu and translations of Horace, he obtained what he was looking for—Beaufort's work on Roman History.
Titus Livius attributes the foundation of Rome to Romulus; Sallust gives the credit of it to the Trojans under Æneas. Coriolanus died in exile, according to Fabius Pictor; through the stratagems of Attius Tullius, if we may believe Dionysius. Seneca states that Horatius Cocles came back victorious; and Dionysius that he was wounded in the leg. And La Mothe le Vayer gives expression to similar doubts with reference to other nations.
There is no agreement as to the antiquity of the Chaldeans, the age of Homer, the existence of Zoroaster, the two empires of Assyria. Quintus Curtius has manufactured fables. Plutarch gives the lie to Herodotus. We should have a different idea of Cæsar if Vercingetorix had written his Commentaries.
Ancient history is obscure through want of documents. There is an abundance of them in modern history; and Bouvard and Pécuchet came back to France, and began Sismondi.
The succession of so many men filled them with a desire to understand them more thoroughly, to enter into their lives. They wanted to read the originals—Gregory of Tours, Monstrelet, Commines, all those whose names were odd or agreeable. But the events got confused through want of knowledge of the dates.