25 APRIL 1874, Page 11

THE OLD NOBLESSE OF FRANCE. • TN Quatre- Treize Victor

Hugo has put forth all his 1 strength in painting a typical member of that class which once treated the common people of France as mere beasts of burden, and which the Revolution tried to sweep away. And the portrait of the Marquis de Lantenac, Prince de Breton, is cer- tainly one of the most striking figures that Victor Hugo ever drew. The figure is colossal in every way. In frame as well as in soul the man is an aristocrat. Old age has scarcely lessened the vigour of muscle or dimmed the fire of eye which have been transmitted to him by generations of ancestors lifted above grovelling toil, and never smitten with poverty or disease. The same ancestors, who have obeyed no beings less seraphic than princes, and who have themselves been the princes of their own peasantry, have transmitted to Lantenac the imperial qualities of command. He possesses that inde- scribable something which exacts and receives obedience. Men of all classes obey him, they scarcely know why. And he is as imperious to his retainers and his followers as any of his crusading ancestors could have been to the motley crowd which followed them to the Holy Land. He disdains to regard the low-born throng as his own flesh and blood. If the Church calls them such, that is only her way of speaking, and practically it means nothing to men like him. He will not even discuss the vile and stupid rant of the Revolutionists about Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. They are all scoundrels, who would have been broken on the wheel when France was really great. They are so infinitely contemptible that a noble would disgrace him- self if he were to pay them the tribute of anger. It is enough to know that they have come from the Devil, and will go to the Devil again. Raising his eyes above the vulgar scum of mankind, Lantenac fixes them on the Court and his own order. His devotion to the King is charged with the strength of a religious passion, and in truth it is a religion. Equally fervent and sancti- fied is the pride with which he regards his ancestry and his class. To him France means a country created by Heaven to set off the glories of the Bourbons, and to draw forth the energies of the nobles who have fought for that House on a hundred battle-fields. Even the Church seems to have the same function ; for the priests, bishops, and archbishops scarcely find a place in his scheme of life, except in so far as they lead up by gradations of saiutly pomp to the throne. In his heart, Lautenac may slightly disbelieve the dogmas of the Church, but he disdains to be so false to his order or his King as to say his doubts aloud. The Church must be revered because she is part of France, and for that France he will gladly give his own blood or the blood of his kinsmen. The in- firmity of fear has never smitten any members of his race, and it is as much a matter of course that he should be disdainfully brave before a foe, as that he should be able to turn a compliment in the presence of a lady. But he is as pitiless as he is intrepid. The Crown is the Moloch of his worship, and he will sacrifice to that Moloch defenceless women as well as armed men with the cool fury of an Inquisitor. Raising the standard of the King in La Vendee, he orders the peasantry to give no quarter as calmly as he might command them to keep a sharp look-out for the enemy. Thus the nature of the Marquis de Lantenac is highly strung. Intense in his contempt for the mob and his devotion to the King, intense in his courage and his cruelty, intense in the courtesy with which he salutes all men of his own rank, and in the polished brutality with which he speaks of the low-born, he is capable of every heroism but a passion for truth, and of every vice but meanness of soul.

That picture is, of course, as much exaggerated as the figures of Michael Angelo. There never was, there never will be, such a flesh-and-blood reproduction of Milton's "Satan." But the Mar- quis de Lantenac does condense the characteristic qualities of those nobles who helped to build up the history of France in the wars of Saint Louis, the League, the Fronde, and Louis XIV. Or rather, he condenses the qualities of those Breton nobles who lived much among their own retainers, in spite of the rigour with which Richelieu and Colbert stripped them of their feudal power; who never allowed the atmosphere of the Court to soften their manliness, and who never fell under the spirit of respect for the teaching of books. But those men formed a comparatively small class on the eve of the Revolu- tion. By the system of centralisation, which had already reached a gigantic height in the reign of Louis XIV., the mass of the nobles had been stripped of the functions which gave them princely power in their provinces, and in truth, when the Revolution broke out the French nobles had loss feudal power than the English. Hence all went to Court who could, and they lost much of their old strength of fibre amid the dissipations of Versailles. They would still, however, have remained essentially unchanged, but for a far subtler force than the influence of the Court, and that was the force of books. Literature had pushed itself to the front before the great Louis had stamped it with the seal of his patron- age. The French language had already become a marvel of in- tellectual delicacy, and great writers had cast it into imperishable forms. The cultivated part of the nation was feverishly appre- ciative of song, drama, argument, and declamatory discourse. No satirist had ever a more applauding audience than Pascal when he lampooned the Jesuits. The dramas of Racine exactly suited the taste of a society which was the most polished in the world, and which talked almost as good French as Racine's own char- acters. The fact that Moliere was a player and a Bohemian, and that his terrible pen might find a theme in the vices or the follies of any courtier, could not deaden the pleasure with which society saw the wit and the truthfulness of his dramas. Bossuet, the first of pulpit declaimers, spoke to the most appreciating audience that Europe has ever seen when he pronounced his funeral orations over the Duchess of Orleans and the Prince of Conk. That society was as able to see the exquisite beauty of his phrases as to pass judgment on the finished politeness with which he reminded Heaven that the Bourbons were only a little lower than the angels. And the polished society of France was ready for Voltaire by the time that he began to satirise the Church. Good society had learned to shrug its shoulders at many of the beliefs to which it did homage on Sunday, and the jibes of Voltaire at the Catholic religion were often merely epigrammatic expressions of floating ideas, rather than discoveries of his own. lie was pre-eminently powerful chiefly because he said with incomparable clearness and vigour what everybody was thinking and trying to utter. As his influence spread and his school grew, scepticism became the fashion, until it was as much a matter of course that a fine young gentleman should make jokes about Scripture as that he should wear a laced coat. The Encyclopaedists found the courtiers almost as ready as the men about town to receive the tidings that the tales of the priests were useful only to frighten children and women. Nice little atheistical supper-parties broke the monotony of Court life. Great ladies as well as great gentle- men coquetted with Atheism and quoted Voltaire. They did not, it is true, proclaim their scepticism from the house-tops. They were too well-bred to cast public contempt on so old a family as the Christian priesthood. Nay, they even went to mass for the sake of appearances, and they were as polite to a Bishop as if they did not believe him to be an impostor. There were, of course, many nobles who had never lost their faith, who hated Voltaire, and who were really devout, but they were a minority. Most were either sceptical or indifferent. Thus was the aristocratic society of France honeycombed with unbelief on the eve of the Revolution ; and thus, also, did it lose its instinctive sense of the danger which was coming to its order. The solvent of criticism had eaten away, not only the faith of the nobles in the Church, but also their belief that they were a sacred caste, lifted above the plebeian throng, specially created to rule men, and gifted with a function of command which the mob did not give, and which the mob could not take away. Had they all remained as fanatically aristocratic as Victor Hugo's Lantenac, they would either have pre- cipitated the Revolution, and made it fall an easy prey to grape- shot ; or they would have postponed it for a quarter of a century, and perhaps, by making it less sudden, have made it less horrible. But they had lost faith in themselves and their traditions, while the plebeian society bad gathered a faith of fanatical strength in the purposes of destruction. So they cowered before the blast of Revolution. Had they heroically determined to remain at all hazards, and had they refused to lay aside the spirit of command, they might have given a happier turn to the history of France ; but they fled, and the Revolution swept them all away. Then began a course of bitter penitence. They repented of that Voltairianism which had smitten their order with decay. They repented of their sneers at that Church which they now saw had been their best friend. They did penance in sackcloth and ashes for the sacrilegious levity of their pampered idleness. At last they saw bow hideous was the" Philosophical Dictionary." They were driven to Church by the goddess of Reason. They were made pious by Ararat. During the Babyloni:1 captivity which lasted till the Hundred Days, they tuned their harps sadly to the strains of the Church. By the waters of the Rhenish Babylon they sat down and wept, as they remembered the Zion of the Seine. And they brought back a new spirit of faith to their Jerusalem.

The Restoration opened a fresh chapter in the history of the old noblesse. Mr. Darwin tells us that, in certain conditions, races tend to revert to the original type. That is what the aristocracy of France have been doing for half a century. Bringing back from exile the belief that the Church was the bulwark of their order, they gave her such political power as she had not wielded in France for two hundred years. The influence of the priests under Louis XVIII. and Charles X. was a fact of first-rate political importance. They laid their hands, not only on the schools and the University, but on the Army. Few officers had any chance of being promoted, unless they were supported by the almoner of the regiment or by high clerical authority. Society flung itself into the arms of the Church, and a ban was put upon the faintest whisperings of Voltairianism. Religion became as fashionable as pleasure. Notre Dame was often as crowded as the Comedie Francaiae, and a great preacher would draw as enthusiastic a throng as a prima donna. Heine, the most gifted Pagan since Goethe, and the teacher on whom the mantle of Voltaire's irreverence fell, was struck by the crowds which, during Lent, filled the churches of Paris more than thirty years ago ; and he records the sight in one of his scoffing epigrams. "'The bon Dieu receives many visits to- day,' said a friend to me. ' Yes,' I replied ; ' they are visits of adieu!' " But they were not visits of adieu. Although there was a slight lapse into indifferentism during the reign of Louis Philippe, the Church of France has been regaining its hold over the rich and the middle-classes for half a century, and the Royalists have become morbidly clerical. The representa- tives of the old noblesse now pride themselves on their fanati- cism, as much as on the purity and the antiquity of their lineage. If M. de Charette, General Cathelineau, and General du Temple had lived rather more than a hundred years ago, they might have quoted Voltaire, and sought introductions to Diderot, or at least have shrugged their shoulders at the tales of the priests. But now they are devotees. Now their fondest wish is to release the Vicar of Christ from the robber grasp of Victor Emanuel, and to make France once more obedient to the Pope. They enlist in the Papal Zouaves, they make pilgrimages to Lourdes, and they reverentially study the ferocious piety of Louis Veuillot. The old noblesse has once more become religious. No doubt much of its outward respect for the Church is only a veil for scepticism, and at heart many Legitimists are as deter- mined Voltairians as the Radical Republicans themselves. The history of French Royalism shows that a seeming respect for wink- ing Virgins is quite compatible with a mental contempt for the whole fabric of religion. Although the pillar of Catholicity as well as the restorer of Monarchy, Louis XVIII. shared the opinions of Voltaire and read him devoutly. It is notorious that the same scepticism forms the real creed of many Legitimists who clamour for the dominion of the Church because they know the Church to be the one hope of the King. Nay, it is more than suspected that dis- ciples of Voltaire did not disdain to join the pilgrims at Lourdes, and listen devoutly to the eloquence of the Pere Felix. Nor has England any reason to be surprised at such political eagerness to regard the Vatican as an international Scotland Yard, and the priests as spiritual policemen, sworn to put down the Reds. Bolingbroke would devoutly take the Sacrament at Westminster Abbey in the morning after drinking all night with Gay, and laughing at religion so long as his lordly eloquence remained articulate. Nay, even in our own day, there are supposed to have been Bishop-makers whose religion might easily have been con- densed into an epigram of denial. There are many such political Christians among the devotees of the Comte de Chambord. But, on the other hand, the Legitimist cause is buoyed up by a large amount of sincere faith in the mysteries of Catholicity, and even in the doctrines of the Syllabus. Montalembert was only one among a crowd of educated devotees. The sermons of Ravignan and Lacordaire found much real belief among the higher classes. The influence of the Comte de Falloux has helped, not only to deepen the bate with which the titled families regard the Revolution, but to give them a fervent faith in the creed which the Revolution tried to efface. Their new devotion can restore neither the Monarchy nor the old noblesse, but it has added one more to the anarchical forces which are raging in France, and it will render the final struggle for supremacy more intense.