Civilisation would be perfect, if it could continue the delicate pleasures of the nineteenth century with a more frequent presence of danger.[4]
It ought to be possible to augment a thousandfold the pleasures of private life by exposing it frequently to danger. I do not speak only of military danger. I would have this danger present at every instant, in every shape, and threatening all the interests of existence, such as formed the essence of life in the Middle Ages. Such danger as our civilisation has trained and refined, goes hand in hand quite naturally with the most insipid feebleness of character.
I hear the words of a great man in A Voice from St Helena by Mr. O'Meara:—
Order Murat to attack and destroy four or five thousand men in such a direction, it was done in a moment; but leave him to himself, he was an imbecile without judgment. I cannot conceive how so brave a man could be so "lâche." He was nowhere brave unless before the enemy. There he was probably the bravest man in the world.... He was a paladin, in fact a Don Quixote in the field; but take him into the Cabinet, he was a poltroon without judgment or decision. Murat and Ney were the bravest men I ever witnessed. (O'Meara, Vol. II, p. 95.)
[1] This is historical. Many people, though very curious, are annoyed at being told news; they are frightened of appearing inferior to him who tells them the news.
[2] Memoirs of M. Realier-Dumas. Corsica, which, as regards its population of one hundred and eighty thousand souls, would not form a half of most French Departments, has produced in modern times Salliceti, Pozzo di Borgo, General Sebastiani, Cervioni, Abbatucci, Lucien and Napoleon Bonaparte and Aréna. The Département du Nord, with its nine hundred thousand inhabitants, is far from being able to show a similar list. The reason is that in Corsica anyone, on leaving his house, may be greeted by a bullet; and the Corsican, instead of submitting like a good Christian, tries to defend himself and still more to be revenged. That is the way spirits like Napoleon are forged. It's a long cry from such surroundings to a palace with its lords-in-waiting and chamberlains, and a Fénelon obliged to find reasons for his respect to His Royal Highness, when speaking to H. R. H. himself, aged twelve years. See the works of that great writer.
[3] At Paris, to get on, you must pay attention to a million little details. None the less there is this very powerful objection. Statistics show many more women who commit suicide from love at Paris than in all the towns of Italy together. This fact gives me great difficulty; I do not know what to say to it for the moment, but it doesn't change my opinion. It may be that our ultra-civilised life is so wearisome, that death seems a small matter to the Frenchman of to-day—or more likely, overwhelmed by the wreck of his vanity, he blows out his brains.
[4] I admire the manners of the time of Lewis XIV: many a man might pass in three days from the salons of Marly to the battlefield of Senet or Ramillies. Wives, mothers, sweethearts, were all in a continual state of apprehension. See the Letters of Madame de Sévigné. The presence of danger had kept in the language an energy and a freshness that we would not dare to hazard nowadays; and yet M. de Lameth killed his wife's lover. If a Walter Scott were to write a novel of the times of Lewis XIV, we should be a good deal surprised.