When Macaire has sufficiently exploité the Bourse, whether as a gambler in the public funds or other companies, he sagely perceives that it is time to turn to some other profession, and, providing himself with a black gown, proposes blandly to Bertrand to set up—a new religion. ‘Mon ami,’ says the repentant sinner, ‘le temps de la commandite va passer, mais les badauds ne passeront pas.’ (O rare sentence! it should be written in letters of gold!) ‘Occupons-nous de ce qui est éternel. Si nous fassions une religion?’ On which M. Bertrand remarks, ‘A religion! what the devil—a religion is not an easy thing to make.’ But Macaire’s receipt is easy. ‘Get a gown, take a shop,’ he says, ‘borrow some chairs, preach about Napoleon, or the discovery of America, or Molière—and there’s a religion for you.’
We have quoted this sentence more for the contrast it offers with our own manners, than for its merits. After the noble paragraph, ‘Les badauds ne passeront pas. Occupons-nous de ce qui est éternel,’ one would have expected better satire upon cant than the words that follow. We are not in a condition to say whether the subjects chosen are those that had been selected by Père Enfantin, or Chatel, or Lacordaire; but the words are curious, we think, for the very reason that the satire is so poor. The fact is, there is no religion in Paris; even clever M. Philipon, who satirises everything, and must know, therefore, some little about the subject which he ridicules, has nothing to say but, ‘Preach a sermon, and that makes a religion; anything will do.’ If anything will do, it is clear that the religious commodity is not in much demand. Tartuffe had better things to say about hypocrisy in his time; but then Faith was alive; now, there is no satirising religious cant in France, for its contrary, true religion, has disappeared altogether; and having no substance, can cast no shadow. If a satirist would lash the religious hypocrites in England now—the High Church hypocrites, the Low Church hypocrites, the promiscuous Dissenting hypocrites, the No-Popery hypocrites—he would have ample subject enough. In France, the religious hypocrites went out with the Bourbons. Those who remain pious in that country (or, rather, we should say, in the capital, for of that we speak) are unaffectedly so, for they have no worldly benefit to hope for from their piety; the great majority have no religion at all, and do not scoff at the few, for scoffing is the minority’s weapon, and is passed always to the weaker side, whatever that may be. Thus H. B. caricatures the Ministers: if by any accident that body of men should be dismissed from their situations, and be succeeded by H. B.’s friends, the Tories,—what must the poor artist do? He must pine away and die, if he be not converted; he cannot always be paying compliments; for caricature has a spice of Goethe’s Devil in it, and is ‘der Geist, der stets verneint,’ the Spirit that is always denying.
With one or two of the French writers and painters of caricatures, the King tried the experiment of bribery; which succeeded occasionally in buying off the enemy, and bringing him from the Republican to the Royal camp; but when there, the deserter was never of any use. Figaro, when so treated, grew fat and desponding, and lost all his sprightly verve; and Nemesis became as gentle as a Quakeress. But these instances of ‘ratting’ were not many. Some few poets were bought over; but, among men following the profession of the Press, a change of politics is an infringement of the point of honour, and a man must fight as well as apostatise. A very curious table might be made, signalising the difference of the moral standard between us and the French. Why is the grossness and indelicacy, publicly permitted in England, unknown in France, where private morality is certainly at a lower ebb? Why is the point of private honour now more rigidly maintained among the French? Why is it, as it should be, a moral disgrace for a Frenchman to go into debt, and no disgrace for him to cheat his customer? Why is there more honesty and less—more propriety and less?—and how are we to account for the particular vices or virtues which belong to each nation in its turn?
The above is the Reverend M. Macaire’s solitary exploit as a spiritual swindler; as Maître Macaire in the courts of law, as avocat, avoué—in a humbler capacity even, as a prisoner at the bar, he distinguishes himself greatly, as may be imagined. On one occasion we find the learned gentleman humanely visiting an unfortunate détenu—no other person, in fact, than his friend M. Bertrand, who has fallen into some trouble, and is awaiting the sentence of the law. He begins—
‘Mon cher Bertrand, donne-moi cent écus, je te fais acquitter d’emblée.’
‘J’ai pas d’argent.’
‘Hé bien, donne-moi cent francs?’
‘Pas le sou.’
‘Tu n’as pas dix francs?’
‘Pas un liard.’