However, a hundred authors, one after another, have related this adventure, though Joinville, a contemporary, who was on the spot, says nothing about it—"Et voilà justement comme on écrit l'histoire."
The Jesuit Maimbourg, the Jesuit Daniel, twenty other Jesuits, and Mézeray—though he was not a Jesuit—have repeated this absurdity. The Abbé Véli, in his history of France, tells it over again with perfect complaisance, without any discussion, without any examination, and on the word of one William of Nangis, who wrote about sixty years after this fine affair is said to have happened at a time when history was composed from nothing but town talk.
If none but true and useful things were recorded, our immense historical libraries would be reduced to a very narrow compass; but we should know more, and know it better.
For six hundred years the story has been told over and over again, of the Old Man of the Hill—le vieux de la montagne—who, in his delightful gardens, intoxicated his young elect with voluptuous pleasures, made them believe that they were in paradise, and sent them to the ends of the earth to assassinate kings in order to merit an eternal paradise.
Near the Levantine shores there dwelt of old
An aged ruler, feared in every land;
Not that he owned enormous heaps of gold,
Not that vast armies marched at his command,—
But on his people's minds he things impressed,
Which filled with desperate courage every breast
The boldest of his subjects first he took,
Of paradise to give them a foretaste—
The paradise his lawgiver had painted;
With every joy the lying prophet's book
Within his falsely-pictured heaven had placed,
They thought their senses had become acquainted.
And how was this effected? 'Twas by wine—
Of this they drank till every sense gave way,
And, while in drunken lethargy they lay,
Were borne, according to their chief's design,
To sports of pleasantness—to sunshine glades,
Delightful gardens and inviting shades.
Young tender beauties were abundant there,
In earliest bloom, and exquisitely fair;
These gayly thronged around the sleeping men,
Who, when at length they were awake again,
Wondering to see the beauteous objects round,
Believed that some way they'd already found
Those fields of bliss, in every beauty decked,
The false Mahomet promised his elect.
Acquaintance quickly made, the Turks advance;
The maidens join them in a sprightly dance;
Sweet music charms them as they trip along;
And every feathered warbler adds his song.
The joys that could for every sense suffice.
Were found within this earthly paradise.
Wine, too, was there—and its effects the same;
These people drank, till they could drink no more,
Were earned to the place from whence they came.
And what resulted from this trickery?
These men believed that they should surely be
Again transported to that place of pleasure,
If, without fear of suffering or of death,
They showed devotion to Mahomet's faith,
And to their prince obedience without measure.
Thus might their sovereign with reason say,
And that, now his device had made them so,
His was the mightiest empire here below....
All this might be very well in one of La Fontaine's tales—setting apart the weakness of the verse; and there are a hundred historical anecdotes which could be tolerated there only.
SECTION II.
Assassination being, next to poisoning, the crime most cowardly and most deserving of punishment, it is not astonishing that it has found an apologist in a man whose singular reasoning is, in some things, at variance with the reason of the rest of mankind.
In a romance entitled "Emilius," he imagines that he is the guardian of a young man, to whom he is very careful to give an education such as is received in the military school—teaching him languages, geometry, tactics, fortification, and the history of his country. He does not seek to inspire him with love for his king and his country, but contents himself with making him a joiner. He would have this gentleman-joiner, when he has received a blow or a challenge, instead of returning it and fighting, "prudently assassinate the man." Molière does, it is true, say jestingly, in "L'Amour Peintre," "assassination is the safest"; but the author of this romance asserts that it is the most just and reasonable. He says this very seriously, and, in the immensity of his paradoxes, this is one of the three or four things which he first says. The same spirit of wisdom and decency which makes him declare that a preceptor should often accompany his pupil to a place of prostitution, makes him decide that this disciple should be an assassin. So that the education which Jean Jacques would give to a young man consists in teaching him how to handle the plane, and in fitting him for salivation and the rope.
We doubt whether fathers of families will be eager to give such preceptors to their children. It seems to us that the romance of Emilius departs rather too much from the maxims of Mentor in "Telemachus"; but it must also be acknowledged that our age has in all things very much varied from the great age of Louis XIV.