Jesuits!

Front matter

I'XITED STATES OF AMERICA.

JESUITS!

By PAUL FEVAL.

Table Of Contents

PAGE

Choiseul, D'Aranda, Tanucci, A Simple Glance, . . 279 A Last Word, 323

JESUITS !

II

I was still young in literature ; I ran wildly about after popular success, and I won it to a degree; I had my day, like another, in the society of my associates and friends, Alexandre Dumas, Balzac, Frederick SouliS, Eugene Sue.

This last had just published the Wandenng Jew, which, after all was merely an idea of Roqueplan s fattened by Dr. Veron and baked according to orders Dr. Veron had nothing against the Jesu.ts, nor had Eugene Sue. Dr. Veron was a thoroughpaced bourgeois, with a double chin and a triple belly ; he had a lively horror of revolutions, and .n the interest of his business he helped revolution without being aware of it: an extreme conservafst, he yet dealt in all the materials that build barncades- he was like those unyielding manufacturers who unpave the streets of the city, burn palaces, and profane churches; not with their own hands, great God ! Oh, no, they are too prudent for that ; but by the manufacture of petroleum, wh.ch they sell every day.

A man of intelligence, too, though he had small regard for spelling ; of some wit ; giving remarkable dinners, and disapproving, as perhaps unnecessary, of any assassination of an Archbishop. He has left nephews.

Eug&ne Sue was very different. Though far below Balzac as a painter, or Alexandre Dumas as a story teller, he had an undeniable skill in the presentation of his characters. For a moment he had been admitted to the exclusive society of the Faubourg St. Germain, and he showed himself vain of it; why he left it I cannot say, but his portraits of that society are so dark and spiteful, that the idea of some personal difficulty naturally arises : Prince Eugene, too, is said to have passed over to the enemy from a fit of the pouts.

Eugene Sue was one of the most pronounced aristocrats I have ever met: a real Sybarite, who was tortured by the fold of a rose-leaf. When the enormous success of the Mysteries of Paris had given him over to the democracy, Doctor V6ron said to him : " There is a fortune to be made in attacking the Jesuits." And he laid a hundred thousandfranc notes on the table.

That is the history of the Wandering Jew, related by Dr. Yeron, himself, in the Constitutionnel, and 2* that was the lofty philosophy which directed the contrivance for mowing Jesuits : Doctor Veron afterwards freely confessed that the dearly bought scythe had mown nothing at all, unless it might be the

subscribers.

And now let me relate an anecdote about myseli. At the height of the din caused by the feuilleton and its children, who were laying about with their rods on the bushes supposed to contain St. Ignatius, I had a visit from the manager of a very great Parisian journal, who said to me, too: "There is a fortune to be made with the Jesuits."

When I objected that the Constitutionnel had got the start, he shrugged his shoulders, and replied : « It is old, worn-out matter, nothing but an appeal to the old hatred of priests. We want something different, and I have bought a warehouse

full."

And he added in a tone of confidence, " I have a room full of documents: five manuscripts relating to Father Guignard and to Jean Chatel, a thundering exposure of the Gunpowder Plot, the details of the persecutions directed against that unfortunate Abbe, St. Cyran, cooped up in the castle of Yincennes, two unpublished volumes of the first Arnauld, heavy, but full of spleen, a proclamatioD of Titus Oates, a dispatch of the Due de Cr6qui, a letter of F6nelon's, three of the Regent's, and two good ones, there they are ! of the Cardinal de Noailles: and Fve got all of the Pombal business, a wonderful affair ! Ah ! that scoundrel of a Malagrida ! and that poor thing, the Marchioness of Tavora ! but perhaps it was the other woman. An immense portfolio belonging to Choiseul, containing the consultations of the Jansenist lawyers, and more than a hundred lines of notes in Madame de Pompadour's own hand, authentic, and enamelled with gay little smirtches! what do you think of it? And a very funny, really moral note from Louis XV, with an entire page scrawled by the historical quill of M. de Chalotais, of which Voltaire said : 'That trifle is stronger than Archimedes' lever, for it has upset the world, without a point of support ! ? We shall give a facsimile of the page, and at the foot a portrait of the quill. In fact, I have a treasure, a mine, a quarry ! and I offer you ."

But hush ! It is of little moment what he offered me: I was not worth much. I was only twentyfive, and vainer than any peacock you could find. I was carried away by excitement and even by scandal, which I very innocently took to be glory. I knew the Jesuits only through Provinciates and the Encyclopaedia : I accepted the offer with a lively determination to mow more thoroughly than Eugene Sue had done, or at least to glean all that his engine had left standing in the field of Loyola.

Behold me then, at work ! and with a will ! And truly the manager of the great daily had not misled me, for he had treasures of papers, cases of pamphlets, and great heaps of what he took delight in calling " documents." All day long, the men of his establishment made journeys between his office and me with fragments of Jesuits under their arms, in baskets, in napkins : our manager came with his pockets full; and in addition to all this, he wrote me letters that were so heavy as to have four stamps; the post-office would carry nothing heavier!

Our manager was not a great scholar, but he was so good-natured ! and so positive ! and so savage in our undertaking ! I remember an expression of his, written on a card accompanying some scribbling attributed to Mme. de Pompadour : " traced by that hand of velvet

(velours) which atoned for Latude, by caressing Voltaire ! n Well, he was drawn in a vague, sad sort of way towards style ! But velours was written without s. He and I w T orked like negroes for a month : he especially. I am not sure but his terrific passion was directed more against Eugene Sue and the Constitutionnel y than against the Jesuits. He became so embittered in the work, that he used to fancy every morsel of Jesuit served out to appease the craving of the Constitutionnel' 's subscribers, was a palatable tid-bit that Doctor Ve>on had snatched from his mouth. " Let us begin to appear," he said to me with tears in his eyes, " let us begin at once, or there will be nothing left ! "

What a mistake ! There was still something left, and something will always be left, for after thirty years have passed, four or five hundred thousand Frenchmen and Frenchwomen breakfast every morning on the meats which were first cooked by Eugene Sue, and have since been stewed and made over into hash in the miserable little skillets which replace his generous kettle of Christian flesh.

At the end of a month, I wrote to our excellent manager one fine spring morning: "I am going to Brittany, and I have thrown the sheets of our book into the fire. Pardon me for returning your 'documents' and your money, but I find that I undertook in a trifling way, and ignorantly, a task that does not become an honorable writer, and though I am utterly indifferent as far as religion goes, I am as careful of my literary honesty as I am of the apple of my eye. Understand, I am not attacking others' honor or honesty: opinions are free : I speak for myself alone.

" I have delayed longer than was necessary perhaps in writing yon this, but I was anxious to keep my promise if possible. I have found out by reading your own ( documents/ that I had undertaken to calumniate for so much a Hoe, men who are not only innocent of all crime, but are useful citizens, benefactors of mankind, soldiers of science, peaceful conquerors, apostles, heroes, saints whose only fault is having excelled all other bodies of men in bringing out by the strength of their arms, their sweat, their blood itself, what is perhaps the most astonishing work of civilization in modern times. All this I have read in your own house in one of D'Alembert's beautiful pages. Certainly such a task cannot be suitable for me."

I wrote those lines thirty years before my conversion.

You shall see that our manager was not a difficult man. While I was busy with my trunks, he burst into my room like a bombshell, and, almost before he was over the threshold, broke out :

" Bravo ! You are on the right track ! You see things from au original point of view ! We shall make the sensation of the day ! At all events, they will not accuse us of keeping in the wake of the Constitution ael ! You know the religious sentiment is not dead. Why, my wife hankers after holy water, and I think a man can never be much out of the way in trusting to the feminine instinct. So here goes, then, for our new manoeuvre. Change direction to the right ! and then forward along the whole line ! But then we shall have to be serious about this ! We must not indulge too much in playful humor. We shall turn the Provinciates inside out ! But no offensive language, mind; that sort of thing has had its day ! a dignified impertinence ! And documents ! Facts, my boy, facts ! some wit, the Devil himself! powder, torpedoes, a few martyrs, not too many, you know; a great many good-looking people, the deacon Paris, if need be. And soldiers, headstrong fellows, but honorable ! Excitement ! passion ! drums and trumpets ! Ten volumes ! or fifteen ! or twenty ! That funny little note of yours can be put in as a sort of introduction. Fll give it back to you, so that you can fix it up, and spice it, and lengthen it a little. I tell you what, I think thifc is a capital idea. A young writer sets himself to work to destroy those modern vampires, the Jesuits, who have been so awkwardly attacked by an organ of the old school of liberalism, giving its readers their fill of worn-out lies and exploded calumnies, and who suddenly discovers — I mean the young writer — that Rodin is a noble exponent of the principles of '89, and that Father d'Aigrigny was playing with Eugene Sue when he passed himself off for a meek sufferer. It is a great idea ! it is magnificent ! Of course it don't agree exactly with the politics of our paper, but then we must try to keep a little on all sides at once, and, besides, a little bit of paradox is always agreeable — and here is the title : Rodin's Revenge ! Ten thousand dollars for advertisement! Walking-signboards on all the boulevards; a direct challenge to Voltaire! We shall send up advertising balloons that will shower our prospectuses broadcast ! Beranger will be an old song ! We shall have troops of equestrians to distribute our dodgers ! And the clergy will be with us! And little circulars, neatly got up, you know, with an engraving, must be left at every house in the Xth arondissement ! And perhaps we can get the Jesuits themselves to work for us — they're a deep lot, you know ! They will give us one of their gallions, loaded to the water's edge with quadruple pistoles, worth 87 francs, 38 centimes apiece, and a draft for five hundred thousand rupees on one of their banks in Camboge, or Bimilipatum, or Ellisheepoor. What do you think of that?"

All this was said with a laugh, so as not to compromise himself too much, even with me. But you know the laugh of an editor-in-chief, who is beating the bushes and not very sure whether an elephant or a hare will pop into view. Under his irony there was an emotion that could turn into enthusiasm. His paper was a great one, but new. He could set his sail to any wind, that was likely to be a favorable one. And, of course, the principles of ? 89 have never interfered with a speculation; quite the contrary.

While he was indulging in his cackling, there was passing before my eyes all that I had found in his "documents": the humble and magnificent procession of those great men who, since the first years of the XVIth century, whether conquerors or martyrs, have bared their breasts to all sorts of lies, and tyrannies, and opposition, and ferocity, and beastliness, and I asked myself, how could any one make up the character of that evil-minded little monster of a Rodin out of the knightly Loyola, or Francis Xavier, the miraculous apostle of tenderness ; Canisius, the oracle; the brilliant Laynez; Cardinal Toledo, who gave absolution and the crown of 3

France to the best of our kings ; Matthew Ricci, who overcame the impossible; Claver, slave of the slaves; Francis Regis, Ravignan — but why name them? There is not room enough for them here, and indeed the list of their heroic names would take many a page; names of statesmen like Bellarmin, names of orators like Bourdaloue, names of savants, of fathers of the Church, of luminous masters; true friends and benefactors of youth, who put the spirits of darkness to flight, though the imps made use of the old trick of crying " Stop thief " as they scampered away.

I asked myself, what sort of rage is it that makes the enemies of truth deceive the herd, and what sort of curse has seized the crowd that they depend upon the orbs of blind men, instead of turning their own eyes towards the blazing light of evidence.

I said to myself, it would be of some use, and easy enough, too, to call out " take care" to the fools who are hoodwinked with the rags of sophistry and are reeling and staggering in the mud of their ignorance as they wend their way to the cabaret to take part in its enlightened discussions. It would be useful ; there is not a poor wife of one of those unfortunate men, who devour the dry crusts that are left for their little one's nourishment, because the philosophers have robbed them of their heart when they took away their God, not one of those women but would thank me. And how easy it would be! undeniable facts are plentiful ; they talk, they cry out, they glitter in their beauty under the brushwood that has been systematically thrown upon them. And it would be opportune, for Diogenes has been too long strutting about with his lantern, at high noon, denying the glorious daylight. And there w T ould be something admirable in running the risk of being stoned to death by cynicism, by absynth, by the burlesque song, by the enormous varieties of small trades which deal in vice, in crime, in enervation, in defeat, and which would have to shut up shop if, by chance, Tom Goodfellow should awake some morning with a clear head and a pair of eyes of his own.

All these things passed through my mind, and I confused, as you see, the cause of the Jesuits with the cause of God, which was, which is, and which always will be the cause of the poor man, even in spite of the poor fellow himself and his poisoners.

And yet I let our manager go away full of his notion, though perfectly impartial, ready to profit by the right or by the left, without love, hate, or conviction, but possessed by an enthusiasm ever ready for anything black or white according to the wind, the tide, and the opportunity ; an image of the wonderfully empty activity which is the very life of our day, at once so intelligent and so cramped.

I refused to take sides, for the wrong out of honesty, disgust, and manly honor; for the right out of cowardice. I was afraid.

III

I was afraid of falling into bad odor with the people who dispense success, and I worshipped success ; my only God was success. I was afraid of my enemies, but, above all, I feared my friends. To make known all the testimony unwillingly favorable to the Jesuits that I had found, while bent on their condemnation, amid the heap of papers livid with their adversaries' hatred, would have been to "compromise" me for ever.

My disposition is such that I cannot do things by halves. Had I inserted only the tip of my finger, I should have thrown myself in bodily. With my disposition and the recklessness of my age, at that time, I saw that I would be defiantly insulting a consecrated iniquity, which had grown into " public opinion" since the time of Pascal, the great unfortunate tool of the Calvinistic treason that dwelt only half-concealed beneath the solemn robes of the "solitaires " of Port Royal.

This lie, or if we must be polite to those who insult us, this error, thanks to the different layers of 3* opposition that had become a solid residuum forming guano during three centuries, had acquired what might be called an official sanction ; for the opposition always becomes the government in the course of time, to teach simpletons that it is in opposition for no other purpose than to become the government, and that the high sounding phrases by which it pretends to attack the ills of society contain nothing at all but the insanity of a few ambitious fellows who overturn the State in order to be able to put on an embroidered coat in place of the felon's suit they have deserved! this lie, said I, or this error, approved in the palaces of kings by their favorites, their ministers, by their parliaments, by a portion happily small of the clergy, by poets, lawyers, philosophers, by conceited marquises, by hangers-on, in a word, by the opposition of the palace, the bureau, or the alley; by all those who delved at revolution knowingly, or ignorantly, had appeared to liberal people with the form of something so holy as to be unassailable. From the doctors who calumniate in immense volumes too heavy for a weak man to lift, to the devil-may-cares who penny-a-line their insults in the daily papers, who bake them in small ovens for the news column, who dress them out in caricature array for the humorous periodicals, every one gave the obligatory kick to the Jesuits, just as every one is vaccinated, just as every one takes his chance in the conscription. I had seen this often; not to spit on the Jesuit was indecent.

When a miserable pleasantry has reached that monumental state of " respectability," it is better than a dozen and a half of maxims, because of the countless army of fools who are gulled by it, and because of the regiment of less honest men, the jokers who have concocted it and have set it afloat, and who consequently watch its course with an interested devotion.

I was afraid of the journals I contributed to, I was afraid of my readers, whom I liked, and who liked me. It made my flesh creep to think of the amount of popular prejudice.

But how often between that hour of my flight and the moment when I surrendered to truth and the duties it imposes, how often has the proposition of our facile manager taken hold of my thoughts ? I continued to think of the Jesuits in spite of myself: I read with a strange eagerness whatever bore upon the Jesuits. When they were well attacked, I was pleased to a certain degree : for it seemed to countenance my prudence, but then in the storehouse of my recollections I always found, in spite of myself, some "document" to thwart the most plausible attack : and it must be confessed, that what fell into my hands was mostly poor rubbish. The trade of slapping at the Jesuits is so profitable that the publishers accept a pamphlet from any pair of paws: they no longer condescend to examine, and when one of the filthiest of the literary scavengers is at a loss how to buy a dinner, he has only to write Jesuits at the head of his "copy," to entice some unprincipled bookseller first, and then one or two thousand readers, who make a specialty of conning the bookstands every morning for fresh information on the new crime of the Jesuit. It is so profitable a sort of work that princes of the pen are not ashamed to be found in this rich gulch, plunging their arms with their sleeves rolled up into the brook whose bed is covered with precious metal so easy to reach.

Nevertheless God sought me out. My wandering path happened once upon a time to cross the straight and beautiful way on which was walking Father Olivaint, crowned a martyr shortly after by some misguided ones belonging to that people of Paris whom he loved so ardently and had worked for all his life. My two eldest sons had been confided to the Jesuits, and the other two followed as soon as they were old enough. Did I understand then the greatness of the Institution? I think not, for in fact I still knew the Jesuits only through the hymn which their calumniators in empty rage chanted in their praise. I needed something better than that, I was dozing in my wordly prosperity, I needed misfortune to awaken me, and a sorrow that should scald my eyes with tears. The misfortune came : an unaccustomed sorrow fell upon me without warning, threw me to the earth, and in that solemn moment when the soul hesitates and shivers, called on one side by repentance and life, on the other by revolt and death, I was assisted by a Jesuit who touched the crucifix to my pains and lifted me out of despair.

And one day, the happiest of my days, I knelt in a chapel of the Jesuits before a tomb where repose the mortal remains of that man so mild, so humble, that proud spirit, that apostle, that Jesuit Pierre Olivaint who was between the altar and me and was praying for me at the moment when I was receiving pardon from my God in the sacred host.

I have said that before : here, there, everywhere ; do not blame me for saying it over again, it would be of no use. I will say it, and say it again in the thankful joy of my heart until the last hour of my life.

My conversion constitutes my nobility, my glory, and my triumph in this world, and it will be my salvation in the one to come. And I gather with a pious care whatever relates to my conversion. I have already made one book about it, and I shall make others, repeating : Quia fecit mihi magna qui potens est. Is it not my right and my duty to chant the Magnificat of my conversion?

God, sovereign saviour and helper, thou dost not lead all hearts by the same means ; thou dost offer to every spirit, long before the time of need, a way of crossing the abyss, suitable to his nature. I was frivolous and keen : thou didst throw in my road this little adventure both frivolous and keen, this affair of " documents" contrived to crush thy servants, and which tossed about by the hand of a mercenary (I mean my own hand) looking for weapons and munitions for a bad cause, suddenly revealed the truth flashing amid the calumny so laboriously collected and concentrated.

I think nothing could have struck me so forcibly as that coup de theatre. Fabricating catastrophes and surprises, I found myself face to face with a surprise and a catastrophe that had been arranged by God's own hand. I was not yet converted, because I did not desire conversion, but I was warned. The artillery borrowed by me from skepticism, Jansenism, Protestantism, and nihilism, from all who take the thirty pieces of silver that they cannot carry beyond the grave, had done like the Chinese cannon we read of, which spit fire at the breach. That much I had found out even before engaging in the fight, merely while learning how to use the weapons. And I so easily discovered the poor quality of these arms that I can never bring myself to believe in the good faith of those who use them.

Certainly we have a right to allow for prejudice, stubbornness, blindness, hatred, all the passions that weaken our miserable nature, but there is evidence so loud that the ears must be stopped up that do not hear it, even if one has put out his own eyes so as not to see. We belong to such and such a party, or are under the influence of such a set of opinions, and it is no longer noblesse oblige, it is, alas, " business is business ! "

Corner one of those people, for instance, who is prating about the nuns shutting up girls in their convents, and they will willingly confess that they are only indulging in harmless metaphor.

The only thing inconvenient about all this, is that at the next martyr's day some of those sisters will have to suffer for these metaphors. So far I believe they have omitted to shoot any of the sisters : it is an oversight. If you only knew, gentlemen, you who denounce piety, what an enthusiastic hymn of mercy these brave women will sing in your behalf on the day when your pens that, in the Chinese fashion discharge in the rear and on the side, shall have violently opened, though in spite of you, the gate of the heavenly paradise for them.

As we are in the mood for a few minutes chat, my dear friends, of former days that I still love, and that I pray for tenderly morning and evening without asking the least thanks from you for it, I remember how indignant, how grieved, above all, how frightened you were six years ago, just after the terrible events that stupefied Paris, France, and the whole world. I think I can say that the assassination of the hostages (even including the Jesuits) caused you a feeling that was almost akin to horror, and you indignantly protested when the logic of some of us pointed out the connection between those disasters and the charming wit of your articles.

You were displeased. You would not acknowledge that the chassepot of a drunkard reeking in blood was aimed with greater precision because your essays had indicated the game to be brought down.

And yet for three months your articles took a certain tone — indeed, they took a tone that was almost edifying.

Of course I can understand how it was. When a child, I happened to set fire to our house, as I was playing with some matches, and, for three months after, matches caused me a good deal of repugnance.

At the end of three months, like you, I opened the match-box again. Well, you may believe me if you choose, the same cause produced the same effect, and something was burned at our place. Fortunately our house was insured. My friends, is France insured ? If I were in your place, I should be certain of this before playing with fire.

IV

Thirty years have passed since that excellent, skilful director of the great daily proposed to me to put the Jesuits in the pillory, or set them up on a pedestal to be hooted at, according to my preference. I have spent thirty years, not in making this book, which I entitle Jesuits ! with an exclamation point, but in summoning up courage enough to write the first line of it.

Would to God that I had spent this better half of my life in letting light on the subject to the extent of my poor ability ! But I have sown my long road with light pages that have been the sport of the wind. In them the name of God is dubiously honored, religion receives an empty respect, and there is scarcely one of those pages that I can read with unmixed pleasure. I have lost too much time. Thirty years ! Jesuits ! How often, and for how long a time I have lightly used that word, before considering it as the greatest title of honor that can be given a servant of Jesus.

I use it here in its opprobrious sense, humbly and proudly accepted, containing the outraged name of God and much more insulting to God than to the men of God. I call my book Jesuits! just as I should call it Thieves! or Felons! just as Voltaire called Jesus or His Church infdme! It is still the thrice holy name of the Saviour of men, spit upon in the presence of men, and with the approbation of men, by the descendants of those who founded Christianity in spite of themselves, when they nailed Christ to the cross.