The attack against the Jesuits had begun; one heard the trite and threadbare accusations against that famous Order, in which, it must be admitted, reigns something disquieting, for a mysterious cloud always covers the affairs of the Jesuits.

Letter from M. de Montlosier.

With regard to the Jesuits, I received the following letter from M. de Montlosier, and I sent him the reply which will be read after the letter:

Forsake not an old friend,
for the new will not be like to him.—Eccles[287].

"My dear friend, these words are not only of a high antiquity, they are not only of a high wisdom; for the Christian they are sacred. In addressing you, I invoke all the authority that they possess. Never among old friends, never among good citizens, has the need for drawing together been greater. To dose up the ranks, to close up all the bonds between us, to excite with emulation all our wishes, all our efforts, all our sentiments is a duty commanded by the eminently deplorable state of king and country. In addressing these words to you, I know that they will be received by a heart which has been rent by ingratitude and injustice; and yet I still address them to you with confidence, certain as I am that they will make their way through all the clouds. In this delicate point, I do not know, my dear friend, if you will be pleased with me; but, in the midst of your tribulations, if perchance I have heard you accused, I have not made it my business to defend you: I have not even listened. I have said to myself, 'And if it were so?' I do not know that Alcibiades did not display a little too much humour when he put out of his own house the rhetorician who could not show him the works of Homer. I do not know that Hannibal did not display a little too much violence when he threw from his seat the senator who was talking against his opinion. If I were allowed to tell my way of thinking of Achilles, perhaps I should not approve of his leaving the army of the Greeks for some chit of a girl who had been carried off from him. After that, it is enough to pronounce the names of Alcibiades, Hannibal and Achilles to put an end to all contention. It is the same to-day with the iracundus, inexorabilis Chateaubriand. When one has pronounced his name, all is said and done. With that name, when I say to myself, 'He is complaining,' I feel my affection moved; when I say to myself, 'France is indebted to him,' I feel myself penetrated with respect. Yes, my friend, France is indebted to you. She must be indebted to you still further; she has recovered from you her love for the religion of her fathers: this benefit must be preserved to her; and for that, she must be preserved from the mistakes of her priests, those priests themselves preserved from the fatal declivity on which they have placed themselves.

"My dear friend, you and I, for long years, have not ceased fighting. It remains to us to preserve the King and the State from ecclesiastical, self-styled religious preponderance. In the old situations, the evil with its roots lay within ourselves: we could circumvent and master them. To-day the branches which cover us within have their roots without. Doctrines covered with the blood of Louis XVI. and Charles I. have consented to leave their place to doctrines stained with the blood of Henry IV. and Henry III. Neither you nor I will surely suffer this state of things; it is to unite with you, it is to receive your approval for my encouragement, it is to offer you as a soldier my heart and my arms, that I write to you.

"It is with these sentiments of admiration for yourself and of a true devotion, that I implore you with affection and also with respect.

"Comte de Montlosier.

"Randanne, 28 November 1825."

My reply to M. de Montlosier.

"Paris, 3 December 1825.

"Your letter, my dear old friend, is very serious, and yet it has made me laugh where I am concerned. Alcibiades, Hannibal, Achilles! You do not say all that to me seriously. As to the chit of a girl of the son of Peleus, if it is my portfolio that is in question, I protest to you that I did not love the faithless one for three days, and that I did not regret her for a quarter of an hour. My resentment is another matter. M. de Villèle, to whom I was sincerely, heartily attached, has not only been lacking towards the duties of friendship, towards the public marks of affection which I gave him, towards the sacrifices which I had made for him, but even in the simplest matters of conduct.

"The King had no further need of my services: nothing more natural than to remove me from his counsels; but manner is everything to an honest man and, as I had not stolen the King's watch from his mantel-piece, I ought not to have been turned out as I was. I had made the Spanish War alone and kept Europe in peace during that dangerous period; by that single fact I had given an army to the Legitimacy and, of all the ministers of the Restoration, I was the only one thrust out of my office without any mark of remembrance from the Crown, as though I had betrayed the Sovereign and the country. M. de Villèle thought that I would accept that treatment, and he has made a mistake. I have been a sincere friend, I shall remain an irreconcilable enemy. I was unluckily born; the injuries people do me never heal.

"But this is too much about myself: let us speak of something more important. I fear lest I should not come to an understanding with you on serious objects, and that would distress me greatly! I want the Charter, the whole Charter, the public liberties to their full extent. Do you want them?

"I want religion, like yourself; like you, I hate the Congregation and those societies of hypocrites who transform my servants into spies and who seek nothing at the altar but power. But I think that the clergy, rid of those parasites, may very well enter into a constitutional system and even become the stay of our new institutions. Do you not wish too much to separate it from the political order? Here I am giving you a proof of my extreme impartiality. The clergy, which, I venture to say, owes me so much, does not love me at all, has never defended me nor rendered me any service. But what matter? It is a question of being just and of seeing what is good for religion and the monarchy.

"I did not, old friend, doubt your courage; you will, I am convinced, do all that will appear to you to be useful, and your talent answers for your triumph. I shall expect to hear from you again, and I embrace my faithful companion in exile with all my heart.

"Chateaubriand."

I resumed my controversies. Every day I had skirmishes and van-guard actions with the soldiers of the ministerial hangers-on; they did not always fight with clean weapons. In the two first centuries of Rome, they punished the horse-soldiers who rode badly to the charge, whether because they were too stout or not brave enough, by condemning them to undergo a bleeding: I made the chastisement my affair.

"The universe is changing around us," I said: "new peoples are appearing upon the world's scene, ancient peoples are rising again in the midst of ruins; astonishing discoveries proclaim an approaching revolution in the arts of peace and war: religion, politics, manners, all is assuming a different character. Do we take notice of that movement? Are we marching with society? Are we following the course of the time? Are we preparing to keep our place in a transmuted or growing civilization? No: the men who rule us are as foreign to the state of things in Europe as though they belonged to the people lately discovered in the interior of Africa. What do they know then? The stock-exchange: and even that they know badly. Are we condemned to bear the burden of obscurity to punish us for having undergone the yoke of glory[288]?"

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