“Never! never!” replied the vicar, smiling. “You have said that we are in advance of you in the conception of association and of life in common; we are also in advance of you from a religious point of view. Christianity represents the present and the future!” And he added, mockingly: “Paganism will continue to be more and more a thing of the past.”
“So be it!” the Mayor replied, gaily, leading off the vicar, who came to breakfast with us.
“I believe,” said my father, in the manner of one proposing a toast, at the end of the repast, “in an absolute, undeniable way, that the Republic is the consecration of liberty, of conscience, and of tolerance, and I, as Mayor, will prove to you, reverend vicar, with what largeness, what elevation of ideas, with what grandeur we democratic-socialist republicans understand liberty!”
XXXIII
“OTHER TIMES, OTHER MANNERS”
MY progress as a student suffered considerably from my serious political preoccupation.
My father came to see us every week, most anxious to keep me well advised of all passing events. He gave me cuttings, selected and cleverly classified, from the Democratie Pacifique, and brought me books, pamphlets, and proclamations. One would have thought that it was very necessary that I should be instructed about the acts of the members of the Provisionary Government and with the writings of those who showed themselves the most ardent among the reformers. The study of the French language, of history, geography, and literature, were secondary things to the author of my being.
Besides, in truth, who knew whether the French tongue might not become universal; whether the history of kings would be able to keep its footing amid the events of the great revolutionary outburst; whether the geography of our planet was not going to be changed in such a way by the fraternity of peoples that it would be almost useless to learn it under the form given to it by the odious past?
The future meant progress, light, new things! All the old forms were to be banished. But, by a strange contradiction, which, however, seemed to strike no one, this progress, this light, these new things continued to be based on the evangelical principles of liberty, equality, and on the morality of Christ, “the Precursor,” the first Socialist.
In the jargon of the epoch, the Republic of Pericles, of Socrates, of Plato, mingled its history with that of the great French Revolution. The beauty of Athenian art alternated with the porridge of Sparta; the naked feet, or the sabots, of the soldiers of the fourteen armies with the magnificence of the festivals of the Goddess of Reason.