Lucien began to smile; his thoughts had been read so clearly.
“Very well, let us take facts that every schoolboy knows. One day France is almost entirely overrun by the English; the King has only a single province left. Two figures arise from among the people—a poor herd girl, that very Jeanne Darc of whom we were speaking, and a burgher named Jacques Coeur. The girl brings the power of virginity, the strength of her arm; the burgher gives his gold, and the kingdom is saved. The maid is taken prisoner, and the King, who could have ransomed her, leaves her to be burned alive. The King allows his courtier to accuse the great burgher of capital crime, and they rob him and divide all his wealth among themselves. The spoils of an innocent man, hunted down, brought to bay, and driven into exile by the Law, went to enrich five noble houses; and the father of the Archbishop of Bourges left the kingdom for ever without one sou of all his possessions in France, and no resource but moneys remitted to Arabs and Saracens in Egypt. It is open to you to say that these examples are out of date, that three centuries of public education have since elapsed, and that the outlines of those ages are more or less dim figures. Well, young man, do you believe in the last demi-god of France, in Napoleon? One of his generals was in disgrace all through his career; Napoleon made him a marshal grudgingly, and never sent him on service if he could help it. That marshal was Kellermann. Do you know the reason of the grudge? . . . Kellermann saved France and the First Consul at Marengo by a brilliant charge; the ranks applauded under fire and in the thick of the carnage. That heroic charge was not even mentioned in the bulletin. Napoleon’s coolness toward Kellermann, Fouché’s fall, and Talleyrand’s disgrace were all attributable to the same cause; it is the ingratitude of a Charles VII., or a Richelieu, or ——”
“But, father,” said Lucien, “suppose that you should save my life and make my fortune, you are making the ties of gratitude somewhat slight.”
“Little rogue,” said the Abbé, smiling as he pinched Lucien’s ear with an almost royal familiarity. “If you are ungrateful to me, it will be because you are a strong man, and I shall bend before you. But you are not that just yet; as a simple ‘prentice you have tried to be master too soon, the common fault of Frenchmen of your generation. Napoleon’s example has spoiled them all. You send in your resignation because you have not the pair of epaulettes that you fancied. But have you attempted to bring the full force of your will and every action of your life to bear upon your one idea?”
“Alas! no.”
“You have been inconsistent, as the English say,” smiled the canon.
“What I have been matters nothing now,” said Lucien, “if I can be nothing in the future.”
“If at the back of all your good qualities there is power semper virens,” continued the priest, not averse to show that he had a little Latin, “nothing in this world can resist you. I have taken enough of a liking for you already——”
Lucien smiled incredulously.
“Yes,” said the priest, in answer to the smile, “you interest me as much as if you had been my son; and I am strong enough to afford to talk to you as openly as you have just done to me. Do you know what it is that I like about you?—This: you have made a sort of tabula rasa within yourself, and are ready to hear a sermon on morality that you will hear nowhere else; for mankind in the mass are even more consummate hypocrites than any one individual can be when his interests demand a piece of acting. Most of us spend a good part of our lives in clearing our minds of the notions that sprang up unchecked during our nonage. This is called ‘getting our experience.’”