A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

The Paris Sketch Book

W >> William Makepeace Thackeray >> The Paris Sketch Book




"At last, by dint of imploring God--by dint of inquiry into the
history of man, a ray of the truth has descended on my brow, and
the shadows of the past have melted from before my eyes. I have
lifted a corner of the curtain: I have seen enough to know that my
life, like that of the rest of the human race, has been a series of
necessary errors, yet, to speak more correctly, of incomplete
truths, conducting, more or less slowly and directly, to absolute
truth and ideal perfection. But when will they rise on the face of
the earth--when will they issue from the bosom of the Divinity--
those generations who shall salute the august countenance of Truth,
and proclaim the reign of the ideal on earth? I see well how
humanity marches, but I neither can see its cradle nor its
apotheosis. Man seems to me a transitory race, between the beast
and the angel; but I know not how many centuries have been
required, that he might pass from the state of brute to the state
of man, and I cannot tell how many ages are necessary that he may
pass from the state of man to the state of angel!

"Yet I hope, and I feel within me, at the approach of death, that
which warns me that great destinies await humanity. In this life
all is over for me. Much have I striven, to advance but little: I
have labored without ceasing, and have done almost nothing. Yet,
after pains immeasurable, I die content, for I know that I have
done all I could, and am sure that the little I have done will not
be lost.

"What, then, have I done? this wilt thou demand of me, man of a
future age, who will seek for truth in the testaments of the past.
Thou who wilt be no more Catholic--no more Christian, thou wilt ask
of the poor monk, lying in the dust, an account of his life and
death. Thou wouldst know wherefore were his vows, why his
austerities, his labors, his retreat, his prayers?

"You who turn back to me, in order that I may guide you on your
road, and that you may arrive more quickly at the goal which it has
not been my lot to attain, pause, yet, for a moment, and look upon
the past history of humanity. You will see that its fate has been
ever to choose between the least of two evils, and ever to commit
great faults in order to avoid others still greater. You will
see . . . . on one side, the heathen mythology, that debased the
spirit, in its efforts to deify the flesh; on the other, the
austere Christian principle, that debased the flesh too much, in
order to raise the worship of the spirit. You will see, afterwards,
how the religion of Christ embodies itself in a church, and raises
itself a generous democratic power against the tyranny of princes.
Later still, you will see how that power has attained its end, and
passed beyond it. You will see it, having chained and conquered
princes, league itself with them, in order to oppress the people,
and seize on temporal power. Schism, then, raises up against it the
standard of revolt, and preaches the bold and legitimate principle
of liberty of conscience: but, also, you will see how this liberty
of conscience brings religious anarchy in its train; or, worse
still, religious indifference and disgust. And if your soul,
shattered in the tempestuous changes which you behold humanity
undergoing, would strike out for itself a passage through the rocks,
amidst which, like a frail bark, lies tossing trembling truth, you
will be embarrassed to choose between the new philosophers--who, in
preaching tolerance, destroy religious and social unity--and the
last Christians, who, to preserve society, that is, religion and
philosophy, are obliged to brave the principle of toleration. Man
of truth! to whom I address, at once, my instruction and my
justification, at the time when you shall live, the science of truth
no doubt will have advanced a step. Think, then, of all your fathers
have suffered, as, bending beneath the weight of their ignorance and
uncertainty, they have traversed the desert across which, with so
much pain, they have conducted thee! And if the pride of thy young
learning shall make thee contemplate the petty strifes in which our
life has been consumed, pause and tremble, as you think of that
which is still unknown to yourself, and of the judgment that your
descendants will pass on you. Think of this, and learn to respect
all those who, seeking their way in all sincerity, have wandered
from the path, frightened by the storm, and sorely tried by the
severe hand of the All-Powerful. Think of this, and prostrate
yourself; for all these, even the most mistaken among them, are
saints and martyrs.

"Without their conquests and their defeats, thou wert in darkness
still. Yes, their failures, their errors even, have a right to
your respect; for man is weak. . . . . Weep then, for us obscure
travellers--unknown victims, who, by our mortal sufferings and
unheard-of labors, have prepared the way before you. Pity me, who
have passionately loved justice, and perseveringly sought for
truth, only opened my eyes to shut them again for ever, and saw
that I had been in vain endeavoring to support a ruin, to take
refuge in a vault of which the foundations were worn away." . . . .

The rest of the book of Spiridion is made up of a history of the
rise, progress, and (what our philosopher is pleased to call) decay
of Christianity--of an assertion, that the "doctrine of Christ is
incomplete;" that "Christ may, nevertheless, take his place in the
Pantheon of divine men!" and of a long, disgusting, absurd, and
impious vision, in which the Saviour, Moses, David, and Elijah are
represented, and in which Christ is made to say--"WE ARE ALL
MESSIAHS, when we wish to bring the reign of truth upon earth; we
are all Christs, when we suffer for it!"

And this is the ultimatum, the supreme secret, the absolute truth!
and it has been published by Mrs. Sand, for so many napoleons per
sheet, in the Revue des Deux Mondes: and the Deux Mondes are to
abide by it for the future. After having attained it, are we a
whit wiser? "Man is between an angel and a beast: I don't know how
long it is since he was a brute--I can't say how long it will be
before he is an angel." Think of people living by their wits, and
living by such a wit as this! Think of the state of mental debauch
and disease which must have been passed through, ere such words
could be written, and could be popular!

When a man leaves our dismal, smoky London atmosphere, and
breathes, instead of coal-smoke and yellow fog, this bright, clear,
French air, he is quite intoxicated by it at first, and feels a
glow in his blood, and a joy in his spirits, which scarcely thrice
a year, and then only at a distance from London, he can attain in
England. Is the intoxication, I wonder, permanent among the
natives? and may we not account for the ten thousand frantic freaks
of these people by the peculiar influence of French air and sun?
The philosophers are from night to morning drunk, the politicians
are drunk, the literary men reel and stagger from one absurdity to
another, and how shall we understand their vagaries? Let us
suppose, charitably, that Madame Sand had inhaled a more than
ordinary quantity of this laughing gas when she wrote for us this
precious manuscript of Spiridion. That great destinies are in
prospect for the human race we may fancy, without her ladyship's
word for it: but more liberal than she, and having a little
retrospective charity, as well as that easy prospective benevolence
which Mrs. Sand adopts, let us try and think there is some hope for
our fathers (who were nearer brutality than ourselves, according to
the Sandean creed), or else there is a very poor chance for us,
who, great philosophers as we are, are yet, alas! far removed from
that angelic consummation which all must wish for so devoutly. She
cannot say--is it not extraordinary?--how many centuries have been
necessary before man could pass from the brutal state to his
present condition, or how many ages will be required ere we may
pass from the state of man to the state of angels? What the deuce
is the use of chronology or philosophy? We were beasts, and we
can't tell when our tails dropped off: we shall be angels; but when
our wings are to begin to sprout, who knows? In the meantime, O
man of genius, follow our counsel: lead an easy life, don't stick
at trifles; never mind about DUTY, it is only made for slaves; if
the world reproach you, reproach the world in return, you have a
good loud tongue in your head: if your straight-laced morals injure
your mental respiration, fling off the old-fashioned stays, and
leave your free limbs to rise and fall as Nature pleases; and when
you have grown pretty sick of your liberty, and yet unfit to return
to restraint, curse the world, and scorn it, and be miserable, like
my Lord Byron and other philosophers of his kidney; or else mount a
step higher, and, with conceit still more monstrous, and mental
vision still more wretchedly debauched and weak, begin suddenly to
find yourself afflicted with a maudlin compassion for the human
race, and a desire to set them right after your own fashion. There
is the quarrelsome stage of drunkenness, when a man can as yet walk
and speak, when he can call names, and fling plates and wine-
glasses at his neighbor's head with a pretty good aim; after this
comes the pathetic stage, when the patient becomes wondrous
philanthropic, and weeps wildly, as he lies in the gutter, and
fancies he is at home in bed--where he ought to be; but this is an
allegory.

I don't wish to carry this any farther, or to say a word in defence
of the doctrine which Mrs. Dudevant has found "incomplete";--here,
at least, is not the place for discussing its merits, any more than
Mrs. Sand's book was the place for exposing, forsooth, its errors:
our business is only with the day and the new novels, and the
clever or silly people who write them. Oh! if they but knew their
places, and would keep to them, and drop their absurd philosophical
jargon! Not all the big words in the world can make Mrs. Sand talk
like a philosopher: when will she go back to her old trade, of
which she was the very ablest practitioner in France?

I should have been glad to give some extracts from the dramatic and
descriptive parts of the novel, that cannot, in point of style and
beauty, be praised too highly. One must suffice,--it is the
descent of Alexis to seek that unlucky manuscript, Spiridion.

"It seemed to me," he begins, "that the descent was eternal; and
that I was burying myself in the depths of Erebus: at last, I
reached a level place,--and I heard a mournful voice deliver these
words, as it were, to the secret centre of the earth--'He will
mount that ascent no more!'--Immediately I heard arise towards me,
from the depth of invisible abysses, a myriad of formidable voices
united in a strange chant--'Let us destroy him! Let him be
destroyed! What does he here among the dead? Let him be delivered
back to torture! Let him be given again to life!'

"Then a feeble light began to pierce the darkness, and I perceived
that I stood on the lowest step of a staircase, vast as the foot of
a mountain. Behind me were thousands of steps of lurid iron;
before me, nothing but a void--an abyss, and ether; the blue gloom
of midnight beneath my feet, as above my head. I became delirious,
and quitting that staircase, which methought it was impossible for
me to reascend, I sprung forth into the void with an execration.
But, immediately, when I had uttered the curse, the void began to
be filled with forms and colors, and I presently perceived that I
was in a vast gallery, along which I advanced, trembling. There
was still darkness round me; but the hollows of the vaults gleamed
with a red light, and showed me the strange and hideous forms of
their building. . . . . I did not distinguish the nearest objects;
but those towards which I advanced assumed an appearance more and
more ominous, and my terror increased with every step I took. The
enormous pillars which supported the vault, and the tracery thereof
itself, were figures of men, of supernatural stature, delivered to
tortures without a name. Some hung by their feet, and, locked in
the coils of monstrous serpents, clenched their teeth in the marble
of the pavement; others, fastened by their waists, were dragged
upwards, these by their feet, those by their heads, towards
capitals, where other figures stooped towards them, eager to
torment them. Other pillars, again, represented a struggling mass
of figures devouring one another; each of which only offered a
trunk severed to the knees or to the shoulders, the fierce heads
whereof retained life enough to seize and devour that which was
near them. There were some who, half hanging down, agonized
themselves by attempting, with their upper limbs, to flay the lower
moiety of their bodies, which drooped from the columns, or were
attached to the pedestals; and others, who, in their fight with
each other, were dragged along by morsels of flesh,--grasping
which, they clung to each other with a countenance of unspeakable
hate and agony. Along, or rather in place of, the frieze, there
were on either side a range of unclean beings, wearing the human
form, but of a loathsome ugliness, busied in tearing human corpses
to pieces--in feasting upon their limbs and entrails. From the
vault, instead of bosses and pendants, hung the crushed and wounded
forms of children; as if to escape these eaters of man's flesh,
they would throw themselves downwards, and be dashed to pieces on
the pavement. . . . . The silence and motionlessness of the whole
added to its awfulness. I became so faint with terror, that I
stopped, and would fain have returned. But at that moment I heard,
from the depths of the gloom through which I had passed, confused
noises, like those of a multitude on its march. And the sounds
soon became more distinct, and the clamor fiercer, and the steps
came hurrying on tumultuously--at every new burst nearer, more
violent, more threatening. I thought that I was pursued by this
disorderly crowd; and I strove to advance, hurrying into the midst
of those dismal sculptures. Then it seemed as if those figures
began to heave,--and to sweat blood,--and their beady eyes to move
in their sockets. At once I beheld that they were all looking upon
me, that they were all leaning towards me,--some with frightful
derision, others with furious aversion. Every arm was raised
against me, and they made as though they would crush me with the
quivering limbs they had torn one from the other." . . . .

It is, indeed, a pity that the poor fellow gave himself the trouble
to go down into damp, unwholesome graves, for the purpose of
fetching up a few trumpery sheets of manuscript; and if the public
has been rather tired with their contents, and is disposed to ask
why Mrs. Sand's religious or irreligious notions are to be brought
forward to people who are quite satisfied with their own, we can
only say that this lady is the representative of a vast class of
her countrymen, whom the wits and philosophers of the eighteenth
century have brought to this condition. The leaves of the Diderot
and Rousseau tree have produced this goodly fruit: here it is,
ripe, bursting, and ready to fall;--and how to fall? Heaven send
that it may drop easily, for all can see that the time is come.




THE CASE OF PEYTEL:

IN A LETTER TO EDWARD BRIEFLESS, ESQUIRE, OF PUMP COURT, TEMPLE.


PARIS, November, 1839.

MY DEAR BRIEFLESS,--Two months since, when the act of accusation
first appeared, containing the sum of the charges against Sebastian
Peytel, all Paris was in a fervor on the subject. The man's trial
speedily followed, and kept for three days the public interest
wound up to a painful point. He was found guilty of double murder
at the beginning of September; and, since that time, what with
Maroto's disaffection and Turkish news, we have had leisure to
forget Monsieur Peytel, and to occupy ourselves with [Greek text
omitted]. Perhaps Monsieur de Balzac helped to smother what little
sparks of interest might still have remained for the murderous
notary. Balzac put forward a letter in his favor, so very long, so
very dull, so very pompous, promising so much, and performing so
little, that the Parisian public gave up Peytel and his case
altogether; nor was it until to-day that some small feeling was
raised concerning him, when the newspapers brought the account how
Peytel's head had been cut off at Bourg.

He had gone through the usual miserable ceremonies and delays which
attend what is called, in this country, the march of justice. He
had made his appeal to the Court of Cassation, which had taken time
to consider the verdict of the Provincial Court, and had confirmed
it. He had made his appeal for mercy; his poor sister coming up
all the way from Bourg (a sad journey, poor thing!) to have an
interview with the King, who had refused to see her. Last Monday
morning, at nine o'clock, an hour before Peytel's breakfast, the
Greffier of Assize Court, in company with the Curé of Bourg, waited
on him, and informed him that he had only three hours to live. At
twelve o'clock, Peytel's head was off his body: an executioner from
Lyons had come over the night before, to assist the professional
throat-cutter of Bourg.

I am not going to entertain you with any sentimental lamentations
for this scoundrel's fate, or to declare my belief in his
innocence, as Monsieur de Balzac has done. As far as moral
conviction can go, the man's guilt is pretty clearly brought home
to him. But any man who has read the "Causes Célèbres," knows that
men have been convicted and executed upon evidence ten times more
powerful than that which was brought against Peytel. His own
account of his horrible case may be true; there is nothing adduced
in the evidence which is strong enough to overthrow it. It is a
serious privilege, God knows, that society takes upon itself, at
any time, to deprive one of God's creatures of existence. But when
the slightest doubt remains, what a tremendous risk does it incur!
In England, thank heaven, the law is more wise and more merciful:
an English jury would never have taken a man's blood upon such
testimony: an English judge and Crown advocate would never have
acted as these Frenchmen have done; the latter inflaming the public
mind by exaggerated appeals to their passions: the former seeking,
in every way, to draw confessions from the prisoner, to perplex and
confound him, to do away, by fierce cross-questioning and bitter
remarks from the bench, with any effect that his testimony might
have on the jury. I don't mean to say that judges and lawyers have
been more violent and inquisitorial against the unhappy Peytel than
against any one else; it is the fashion of the country: a man is
guilty until he proves himself to be innocent; and to batter down
his defence, if he have any, there are the lawyers, with all their
horrible ingenuity, and their captivating passionate eloquence. It
is hard thus to set the skilful and tried champions of the law
against men unused to this kind of combat; nay, give a man all the
legal aid that he can purchase or procure, still, by this plan, you
take him at a cruel, unmanly disadvantage; he has to fight against
the law, clogged with the dreadful weight of his presupposed guilt.
Thank God that, in England, things are not managed so.

However, I am not about to entertain you with ignorant disquisitions
about the law. Peytel's case may, nevertheless, interest you; for
the tale is a very stirring and mysterious one; and you may see how
easy a thing it is for a man's life to be talked away in France, if
ever he should happen to fall under the suspicion of a crime. The
French "Acte d'accusation" begins in the following manner:--

"Of all the events which, in these latter times, have afflicted the
department of the Ain, there is none which has caused a more
profound and lively sensation than the tragical death of the lady,
Félicité Alcazar, wife of Sebastian Benedict Peytel, notary, at
Belley. At the end of October, 1838, Madame Peytel quitted that
town, with her husband, and their servant Louis Rey, in order to
pass a few days at Macon: at midnight, the inhabitants of Belley
were suddenly awakened by the arrival of Monsieur Peytel, by his
cries, and by the signs which he exhibited of the most lively
agitation: he implored the succors of all the physicians in the
town; knocked violently at their doors; rung at the bells of their
houses with a sort of frenzy, and announced that his wife,
stretched out, and dying, in his carriage, had just been shot, on
the Lyons road, by his domestic, whose life Peytel himself had
taken.

"At this recital a number of persons assembled, and what a
spectacle was presented to their eyes.

"A young woman lay at the bottom of a carriage, deprived of life;
her whole body was wet, and seemed as if it had just been plunged
into the water. She appeared to be severely wounded in the face;
and her garments, which were raised up, in spite of the cold and
rainy weather, left the upper part of her knees almost entirely
exposed. At the sight of this half-naked and inanimate body, all
the spectators were affected. People said that the first duty to
pay to a dying woman was, to preserve her from the cold, to cover
her. A physician examined the body; he declared that all remedies
were useless; that Madame Peytel was dead and cold.

"The entreaties of Peytel were redoubled; he demanded fresh
succors, and, giving no heed to the fatal assurance which had just
been given him, required that all the physicians in the place
should be sent for. A scene so strange and so melancholy; the
incoherent account given by Peytel of the murder of his wife; his
extraordinary movements; and the avowal which he continued to make,
that he had despatched the murderer, Rey, with strokes of his
hammer, excited the attention of Lieutenant Wolf, commandant of
gendarmes: that officer gave orders for the immediate arrest of
Peytel; but the latter threw himself into the arms of a friend, who
interceded for him, and begged the police not immediately to seize
upon his person.

"The corpse of Madame Peytel was transported to her apartment; the
bleeding body of the domestic was likewise brought from the road,
where it lay; and Peytel, asked to explain the circumstance, did
so." . . . .

Now, as there is little reason to tell the reader, when an English
counsel has to prosecute a prisoner on the part of the Crown for a
capital offence, he produces the articles of his accusation in the
most moderate terms, and especially warns the jury to give the
accused person the benefit of every possible doubt that the
evidence may give, or may leave. See how these things are managed
in France, and how differently the French counsel for the Crown
sets about his work.

He first prepares his act of accusation, the opening of which we
have just read; it is published six days before the trial, so that
an unimpassioned, unprejudiced jury has ample time to study it, and
to form its opinions accordingly, and to go into court with a
happy, just prepossession against the prisoner.

Read the first part of the Peytel act of accusation; it is as
turgid and declamatory as a bad romance; and as inflated as a
newspaper document, by an unlimited penny-a-liner:--"The department
of the Ain is in a dreadful state of excitement; the inhabitants of
Belley come trooping from their beds,--and what a sight do they
behold;--a young woman at the bottom of a carriage, toute
ruisselante, just out of a river; her garments, in spite of the
cold and rain, raised, so as to leave the upper part of her knees
entirely exposed, at which all the beholders were affected, and
cried, that the FIRST DUTY was to cover her from the cold." This
settles the case at once; the first duty of a man is to cover the
legs of the sufferer; the second to call for help. The eloquent
"Substitut du Procureur du Roi" has prejudged the case, in the
course of a few sentences. He is putting his readers, among whom
his future jury is to be found, into a proper state of mind; he
works on them with pathetic description, just as a romance-writer
would: the rain pours in torrents; it is a dreary evening in
November; the young creature's situation is neatly described; the
distrust which entered into the breast of the keen old officer of
gendarmes strongly painted, the suspicions which might, or might
not, have been entertained by the inhabitants, eloquently argued.
How did the advocate know that the people had such? did all the
bystanders say aloud, "I suspect that this is a case of murder by
Monsieur Peytel, and that his story about the domestic is all
deception?" or did they go off to the mayor, and register their
suspicion? or was the advocate there to hear them? Not he; but he
paints you the whole scene, as though it had existed, and gives
full accounts of suspicions, as if they had been facts, positive,
patent, staring, that everybody could see and swear to.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.