Not the constitution of the Ministry, but rather the political condition of the country, may, indeed, be productive of difficulties and dangers to the Republic. Were we to believe the reactionary papers and the anxious spirits, the greatest danger France is exposed to arises from the revival of Socialistic ideas occasioned by the return of the insurgents of the Commune. That disquieting signs and tendencies show themselves in that direction is true. The amnestied, who should have been received as penitent and pardoned culprits, have, by many—by M. Talandier, M. L. Blanc, and others of the Extreme Left—been welcomed as reinstated martyrs. People even went so far on their arrival as to dare to raise a cry of "Vive la Commune." One of the most criminal, M. Alphonse Humbert, who edited in 1871 a filthy and bloodthirsty paper, Le Père Duchesne, and in it directly provoked the murder of Gustave Chaudey, has been elected municipal councillor of Paris by the Javel Ward. Though the Comité Socialiste d'aide aux Amnistiés had rudely repudiated all community of action with the Republican committee presided over by V. Hugo, and contemptuously alluded to it as le comité bourgeois, the Rappel did not hesitate to support this candidature, stained as it was with blood. Hardly is old Blanqui released from his imprisonment at Clairvaux when he starts for a tour in the south to propagate his revolutionary doctrines, and finds people credulous enough to applaud the senile declamations in which he accuses M. Grévy and M. Gambetta of having sold themselves to the Jesuits and the Orleanists. M. Louis Blanc, whilst issuing in book form, under the title of "Dix ans de l'Histoire d'Angleterre" (Lévy), the wise and impartial letters he addressed to Le Temps from London between 1860 and 1870, has reverted to his dreams of 1848, and, more intent on winning a vain popularity than on consolidating the Republican régime, has aroused the passions and desires of an ignorant multitude by unfolding to them the chimerical and deceptive picture of a complete remodelling of the French Constitution, and the prosperity which, according to him, might be secured to all if they would lay down their liberties and their rights for the benefit of a Socialist State. Finally, the Workmen's Congress in Marseilles revealed with the utmost naïveté the false notions, the gross ignorance, and the bad instincts that M. Blanqui draws out from a fanatic monomania, and M. Louis Blanc encourages from desire for noisy popularity. The majority of the Congress plainly declared that they preferred the revolutionary course of an insurrection to the peaceful course of voting and legal action, that gradual progress was a chimera, that individual property must be converted into collective property, and that such conversion could only be effected by force. What was, perhaps, even more disquieting at the Marseilles Congress than these brutal declarations, was the almost fabulous ignorance, stupidity, and credulity displayed by most of the delegates, who must, nevertheless, be among the most intelligent and educated members of the Syndical Chambers. Neither in England nor in Germany would an assembly of workmen put up with such silly and empty discussions in which not a single practical question was treated seriously, and the general reform of society was accomplished in three or four high-sounding and pretentious phrases. The ignorance of the multitude is an immense danger, leaving it a prey to every illusion and dream and to the brutal impulse of its instincts.
Without being blind to the gravity of these symptoms, or denying that much of the leaven that produced the Commune is still to be found amongst the inhabitants of the great towns, I do not think the fact presents any immediate danger, or that there is any chance of a rising in Paris, or a revival of the Commune. The late manifestations have done exactly the reverse of furthering the end in view. At Bordeaux, Blanqui, who was elected in the first instance, failed in the second. His journey, triumphant at the outset, ended amidst murmurs on the one hand and indifference on the other. Humbert's election excited the disgust of the most advanced Republicans, and has insured the rejection of every new proposal of pardon for the members of the Commune. The folly talked at the Marseilles Congress provoked the protests of a strong minority in the very heart of the Congress, which energetically defended the principles of good sense and public order. If the revival of Socialism threaten the existence of the Republic, it is not so much on account of the possibility of its bringing back the Commune as that it may serve to provoke an anti-Republican reaction.
This is much more to be dreaded at present than any demagogical excesses. The attitude of the Conservative party presents much greater dangers to the Republic than that of the Socialist party. The Republic's only chance is its free acceptance by the bourgeoisie and the formation of a large Conservative but not reactionary party to counteract the impatience of the progressive element. Until now no such party exists. Many Conservatives have undoubtedly stuck to the Republic, but they are absorbed by the progressive Republican mass; the others have preserved a hostile attitude, and cherish visions of a Monarchical or Imperialist restoration. Clerical ideas confirm them in this attitude, and render them the irreconcilable enemies of the present order of things; they follow the inspirations of the clergy, who are convinced that no Republic can give them the liberty of action they desire, and who, moreover, consider themselves persecuted wherever they are not masters. The thing is to convince this Conservative mass, now enrolled under the banner of clericalism, that it is possible to give the clergy the honours and the liberty they deserve, whilst confining them strictly within the religious domain, and that the public régime can be a secular one without recourse to persecution. This is what the few members of the old Left Centre who refused to join the ranks of the Ministerial Left, and are headed by MM. Dufaure, De Montalivet, Ribot, Lamy, &c., are trying to convince the Conservatives of. They have started a new paper, Le Parlement, to vent their ideas, conducted with talent and earnestness, which if it succeed in its object will have done the Republic good service by calling a Republican Right into existence, whereas at present only a Republican Left exists, without any counterweight, and bounded by two abysses, the Commune on the one hand and Bonapartism on the other.
Certain members of the Republican party and even of the present Ministry thought that the deplorable influence Catholicism exercises on public affairs might be counteracted by open contest, and this was the origin of Clause 7, and the war at present waged everywhere against the Catholic bodies and the action of the clergy. Unfortunately there is a fatal solidarity between the Catholic religion itself and its most compromising representatives; the regular and secular clergy are united by the closest ties; it is impossible to deal a blow at the clergy on one point without in appearance attacking religion itself. Moreover it loves strife, and above all persecution; it feeds upon it; it wins the sympathy of the simple-minded by resisting, in the name of conscience, all even the most legitimate attacks against the authority it has usurped. The duty of a wise Government, therefore, is as far as possible to let all religious questions lie dormant, to cultivate towards them a salutary indifference, to avoid the possibility of being accused either of favouring or persecuting the clergy, so as to secure the countenance of all those who, without being hostile to the Church, have no wish to be its blind servants. One must be content to resist the Church's encroachments without attacking it in its own precincts. The present Ministry has stirred up, we think with unfortunate precipitancy, questions which might still have remained awhile untouched, and thus needlessly lessened the number of its partisans. But to be fair, it is certainly very difficult to be impartial and indifferent in face of a body in open revolt against the Government, whose bishops, like Monseigneur Freppel at the inauguration of the monument to Lamoricière, preach contempt for the Constitution and the law. The behaviour of the Belgian episcopate, on the occasion of the new school law, has proved that neither justice nor moderation is to be expected from the Catholic Church. Whence violent minds are too disposed to conclude that reconciliation being impossible, intolerance must be met by violence, and fanaticism by persecution.
Were it not for this unfortunate clerical question, the opposition to the Republican form of Government would be reduced to a minimum. The Legitimist banquets organized throughout the country in commemoration of the Comte de Chambord's birthday, September 29th, testified to the ridiculous weakness of a number of aged children who indulge in the phrases and fables of a bygone time. This flourish of forks was met by all parties with ironical compassion. The Bonapartist party has but imperfectly recovered from the blow dealt it in the death of the Prince Imperial. Prince Jerome Napoleon may alter his outward line, become as reserved as formerly he was unguarded in his language, organize his house on a princely footing, have his organs amongst the press, rally round him a great number of those who but now overwhelmed him with the most ribald insults; he will never either wipe out a too well-known past, or with all his intelligence make up for the total absence of military prestige or personal regard. Nevertheless, Bonapartism is so decidedly the fatal incline towards which France will always be impelled if she become disgusted with the Republic, that he appears to some the only issue in case of a new revolution, and more than one of those who had of late reattached themselves to the Republic were seen to turn their eyes to Prince Napoleon when Humbert's election or the Socialist speeches at Marseilles renewed their old terrors. Universal suffrage is always threatening France with sudden surprises. If, as some politicians wish, the scrutin de liste be substituted for the scrutin d'arrondissement, it might yet be that the name of Napoleon would find a formidable echo in the popular mass, and eclipse all the new names which want its legendary and historical prestige. This might happen, especially if the depression of trade and the clerical contest were by degrees to weary and disgust the mass of the electors with political questions, as would appear to have been the case at the legislative elections of Bordeaux and the Paris municipal elections, when more than two-fifths of the electors abstained from voting. It might, above all, happen if the Chambers continue to postpone all the reform laws, those relating to the army, to education, and to the magistracy, which await discussion and passing from session to session.
Many look forward to a time when these everlasting political questions will cease to burn so fiercely, when the suppression of State or Church will no longer be a daily question, and more modest and practical measures of reform can be taken in hand. A committee of lawyers has elaborated an important scheme for the reform of our criminal procedure, long known to be seriously defective. Will there be an opportunity of bringing it before the Chambers? Even more interesting is the divorce question, which has found an able, persevering, and eloquent advocate in M. Naquet. Of all others, this reform is the most urgent. Those acquainted with family life in France know the fatal moral consequences arising from judicial separation, the only resource of ill-assorted couples. Not to speak of the flagrant injustice which allows the man to separate from his wife on account of offences she is obliged to tolerate in him, the two, though separated, remain jointly and severally liable. The woman is obliged, in a number of instances, such as the marriage of a child confided to her care, to obtain the husband's authorization, whilst she, on her part, can drag in the mire the name of her husband which she continues to bear, or pass off children upon him which are not his. Separation has all the drawbacks of divorce, besides others peculiar to it, which divorce remedies. M. Naquet has treated the question from the tribune, as also in a series of articles published in the Voltaire, wherein he cites a number of heartrending cases in which divorce would be the only possible remedy, and, finally, in the lectures he has been holding in all the large towns. His campaign has been crowned with success, and the law will, it is believed, be passed by the Chambers. No small credit is due to M. Naquet, for he had to contend with prejudices of several kinds—the religious prejudices of Catholicism, which does not admit the power of the civil law to cancel a sacrament of the Church; the political prejudices of Republican theorists, who affect to attach a more sacred and indelible character to the civil consecration of the magistrate than to the religious one of the priest; the prejudices of immoral and unprincipled men, who form a numerous class everywhere, who never having felt the restraints of moral law are not troubled by the misfortunes springing from unhappy marriages, but, on the contrary, are glad to take advantage of them; finally, with the prejudices of some serious-minded persons, who are afraid that in sanctioning divorce the Republic may appear to violate the respect due to marriage. The last aspect of the question has been ably supported by a deputy, M. Louis Legrand, in his interesting study, "Le Mariage;" but M. Naquet finds no difficulty in proving that marriage is more respected where divorce is possible than where judicial separation only can be obtained, nor in showing religious men that the Church has always recognised fourteen cases in which marriage becomes void, whilst the French law only recognises one, mistaken identity, which practically never occurs.
We have but to open a French novel, or visit the theatre, to convince ourselves of the necessity of divorce. Mme. Gréville, in "Lucie Rodey" (Plon), depicts a young woman reduced by her husband to the most wretched condition, with no resource but resignation and a pardon all but dishonourable to her; Mme. Bentzon, in "Georgette" (Lévy), describes with exquisite delicacy the painful position of a woman who, separated from her husband, and living on terms the world condemns with a man of elevated character, is driven in the presence of her innocent daughter to blush for a position the disgrace of which her own elevation of sentiment had hitherto veiled from her. Half the novels in France turn on the domestic misery arising from the indissolubility of the marriage tie. Hackneyed as the subject is, it presents so many aspects that new effects can always be derived from it. Such dramas will ever remain the most touching source the imagination of the novelist has to draw upon. From the princess to the peasant, humanity is the same in its affections and sufferings. If you want to know how the peasant suffers read "Un Coin de Village," by M. Camille Lemonnier (Lemerre), a picturesque and piquant young writer, who combines the touching grace of Erckmann-Chatrian with a power of realistic observation quite his own. If you wish for something more recherché, dealing with the richer and higher classes of society, M. Gualdi, a young naturalized Italian, French in talent, provides you with a drama of the most brilliant originality in his "Mariage Extraordinaire" (Lemerre). A charming but poor girl, Elise, is on the point of marrying a man she does not love to save her parents from ruin. She is attached to a young man, Giulio, worthy of her, but poor also; he has been obliged to expatriate himself, and Elise's mother makes her believe that her fiancé has forgotten and betrayed her. The Comte d'Astorre, an elegant and magnificent viveur, with a generous soul under his frivolous exterior, is touched by Elise's fate; to enable her to escape a hateful marriage he offers her the shelter of his name and house, promising that he will consider himself as a friend, not a husband. For a time the compact is kept, but the Comte d'Astorre ends by falling in love with his wife; the quondam viveur becomes the timid, trembling, and naïf suitor. Elise ends by allowing herself to be moved, and when poor Giulio comes back from India, true to the faith he had sworn, she repulses him, first in the name of duty, and soon, one is made to feel, in the name of a new nascent love. This singular and delicate theme is treated by M. Gualdi with a refinement of touch that indicates the acute psychologist, and the passionate scene between Giulio and Elise on their meeting again is really beautiful.
To ascend a step higher in the social hierarchy and learn what a queen, wounded in her feelings as a woman and a mother, can suffer, read M. A. Daudet's last novel, "Les Rois en Exil" (Dentu), in which he continues to work the vein he opened so successfully in "Le Nabab," the portraiture of Parisian life, viewed from its most brilliant side as from that most flecked with impurity, disorder, and adventure. In the "Nabab," M. Daudet had the advantage of describing the world he had been most familiar with, since his two chief personages were M. de Morny, whose secretary he had been for several years, and M. Bravay, his former friend. But this advantage was also a defect, for no true novel is possible with very well-known contemporary personages for the characters; and the "Nabab," marvellous as regards truth and vivid detail, was poor as regards composition. In "Les Rois en Exil" we again meet with a number of well-known personages: the King of Hanover, the Queen of Spain, the Prince of Orange, the Queen of Naples, Don Carlos. Elysée Méraut, the little prince's tutor, is said to be the portrait of an excellent youth, by name Thérion, also entrusted with a prince's education, and who was horrified to find that he believed more firmly in the principles of legitimacy and divine right than his pupil's parents. The father of Elysée Méraut, the old Legitimist peasant who sees his son's future insured because the Comte de Chambord promises to bear him in mind, is no other than A. Daudet's own father. But all the real portraits are secondary characters that form the background of the picture. The leading personages of the drama, Christian II., the dethroned king of Illyria, who takes his exile very lightly, and forgets it by wallowing in the mire of Parisian dissipations; his wife, the noble Fréderique, who lives but for one thing, the recovery of the throne of her husband and son, and in that hope endures every affront; their trusty attendants, the two Rosens; and finally John Lévis, the unscrupulous man of business, who knows the tariff of all the vices, and with his wife Séphora, takes advantage of the dissolute weakness of Christian II.,—all these leading figures, though compounded of traits, if not real at least profoundly true, are the author's own creation. They are artistically superior, moreover, to those of the "Nabab," more complete, more lifelike even, for they are stripped of such traits as are too personal, secondary, fleeting, contrary to actual reality, and wear rather the character of types. Types they truly are, this king and queen, representative of all the grandeur and vileness, the heroism and cowardice, the noble pride and foolish prejudice, dwelling in the exiled sovereigns who came to Paris, some to weep for monarchy, others to hold its carnival, some as to the centre of pleasure, others to that of political intrigue; and is there not a philosophy, historical and political, in M. Daudet's novel, in his picture of Christian II. forced to abdicate his royal pretensions after sacrificing them to the love of an unworthy woman who has fooled him, and Fréderique bidding farewell to all the hopes that centred in her little Zara, forgetting everything besides being a mother, and devoting all her powers towards rescuing her child from the sickness that is killing him? It is unfair to M. Daudet to say that he only possesses the art of painting the chatoyant lights, the picturesque outside of Parisian life, the dresses, the furniture, and the scenery; to represent him as merely a skilful manufacturer of bimbeloterie. We may tax him with abuse of description, and that habit of reportage peculiar to the daily press; and it would be vain to look in him for the sobriety that enhances the beauty of some immortal works of art; but such sobriety is incompatible with an art which aims at painting human life in all its aspects, all its details, all its colours. Neither Shakspeare, Dickens, nor Balzac is sober. To be sure M. Daudet is neither a Dickens nor a Balzac, but his delicate sensibility makes him penetrate far below the outer crust, to the human ground of the characters, and the life they live is a real one. On account of this, the first quality of a novelist, one forgives the brutality and the pretentious passages, an imitation, the one of M. Zola, the other of M. de Goncourt, and the inequalities of a style which is, nevertheless, in wonderful harmony with the world he paints.
That which constitutes M. Daudet's great superiority over other novelists of the realistic school, is that he has no contempt for humanity, that he always loves it, often pities, and sometimes admires it. Nothing can be more false, more unpleasant, or, we may venture to say, more tiresome, than the view taken by a certain would-be scientific pessimism of humanity, as being nothing but a compound of vileness, vapidness, and folly. M. Zola is learning it to his cost. After the immense success of "L'Assommoir," due to the great power of the painter, as also to the horror inspired by scenes of unparalleled crudeness, he wished to outdo himself and depict in "Nana" the lowest depths of Parisian corruption. To make the impression the more complete, he has not let in a single breath of pure air; or introduced a single character which was not insipidly stupid and sensual, enslaved by the lowest appetites, incapable of a single noble thought or generous sentiment. The effect on the public was weariness rather than disgust. Le Voltaire, which had expected to make its fortune by bringing out the book in feuilletons, was greatly surprised to see its circulation rapidly fail, actually on account of M. Zola's novel. We are afraid the same thing will happen with regard to the work announced by M. Flaubert. This great writer and conscientious artist is unfortunately persuaded, in spite of his admiration for I. Tourguéneff (that true painter of humanity, of its virtues as of its vices), that the novel should confine itself to the portrayal of the mediocre and uniform mass which makes up the majority of men. Already in "L'Education Sentimentale" he sought to show the vulgarity and coarseness that generally conceal themselves under what is called love; in the novel he is now engaged on he shows us two men brutalized by the mechanical routine of a bureaucratic career, studying every human science, and finding in the study merely an occasion for the better display of their incurable folly. Such mistakes committed by men of genius cause us the better to appreciate less powerful certainly, but more human, works, by writers who seek to render life attractive to us, such as A. Theuriet, for instance, who has just produced a new novel, "Le Fils Mangars" (Charpentier). M. Theuriet is one of the few French writers of fiction who, instead of dealing with the tragedies of guilty passion succeed in shedding a dramatic interest over the affections and sufferings of pure young hearts. In this he resembles the English novelists. Innocent love forms the groundwork of his books, and constitutes their poetry and their charm. "Le Fils Mangars" is the first of a series of studies entitled "Nos Enfants," dealing with the various complications arising out of the disagreement of parents and children. In "Le Fils Mangars" we are introduced to a father, who has devoted all his efforts towards amassing a fortune for his son, has to that end made use of dishonest means, and finds his punishment in the loyalty of the one for whom he committed the wrong. His son refuses to benefit by the wealth dishonestly acquired, and falls in love with the daughter of one of the men his father has ruined. This poignant theme is handled with the airy and attractive delicacy that characterizes Theuriet's touch.
Were the surly critics to be trusted, we should not be leaving the domain of fiction in turning to the new volume M. Renan has devoted to the history of the sources of Christianity, entitled "L'Eglise Chrétienne" (Lévy). It deals with the definitive constitution of the Church, at the moment when dogma forms itself by contact with, and in opposition to, the various heresies, and the organization of the hierarchy takes place. It is true that M. Renan could, if he so wished, be a wonderful writer of fiction. With what art he brings on his personages, how admirably he infuses life into the thousand dry and scattered fragments collected by erudition, and forms them into a co-ordinate and complete whole! With what psychological penetration he enters into the minds of his personages, and makes us familiarly acquainted with the Roman Cæsars or the Church Fathers! What wealth of imagination! what witchery of style! At times he is, no doubt, led away by his imagination; too often the desire to invest old facts with life and reality leads him to compare, or even assimilate, the present with the past, and, in his exposition of ancient ideas, to mix them up with his own, ideas so peculiar to our time and to M. Renan himself, that the intermixture produces a false impression. It is daring to ascribe the Fourth Gospel to Cerinthus, and still more so to regard the letter of the Lyons Church on the martyrdom of Pothin and his companions as a proof of the Lyonnese being false-minded, and to connect the fact with the Socialist tendencies of modern Lyons. From his comparing Hadrian in some respects to Nero, we gather that M. Renan has yielded to the indulgence he had already testified towards Nero in his volume on "L'Antechrist," an indulgence grounded on the artistic tastes, or rather pretensions, of the royal stage-player. But these blemishes, and occasional breaches of historical truth or good taste, ought not to blind us to the historical value of a work which, if it be the work of a great artist, is likewise that of a scholar of the first order. Numbers of men can pore over texts and critics, but to revive the past, and introduce into the domain of history, and make the general public familiar with subjects reserved hitherto to theologians and critics by profession, is the work of a genius only. Scholars find much to censure in Michelet's "Histoire de Franceau moyen Age;" but whatever its inexactitudes, he is the only man who has succeeded in restoring to life the France of bygone days. And is not life one of the most important elements of reality? Even an imperfect acquaintance with a living man enables one to form a truer notion of the man than the most minute autopsy of a dead body. Moreover, as regards the past we have not the whole body, but only scattered fragments; the breath of genius must pass over these dry bones—restore to them flesh, blood, colour, movement, and voice.