Anatole France

“ You yourself, Fra Ambrogio, have you not read in your book: "For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth Beasts; as the one dieth so dieth the other." But if, like ordinary souls, I believed in God, I would pray to him to leave the whole of me here after death, that soul and body alike might be buried in my tomb beneath the walls of my beautiful San Giovanni. All around are coffins hewn out of stone by the Romans to receive their dead. ”

“ In the wars of Vendée forty men made themselves the masters of a department. The whole mass of the people desire peace at any price, order and an end of quarrelling. Fear of Jacobins, Émigrés, Chouans will throw them into the arms of a master." "And this master?" inquired Berthollet. "He will doubtless be a military leader?"
"Not at all," replied Bonaparte swiftly. "Not at all I A soldier never will be the master of this nation, a nation illuminated by philosophy and science. If any General were to attempt the assumption of power, his audacity would soon be punished. ”

“ Dimly he discerned the confused movements of the panic-stricken legionaries running along the beach. Their shouts reached his ear like the noise of a storm. Then he raised his eyes to the divine moon, worshipped by the Atrebates who dwell on river-banks and in the deep forests. In the stormy British sky she hung like a shield. He knew that it was she, the copper moon at the full, that had brought this spring tide and caused the tempest, which was now destroying the Roman fleet. ”

“ The heroes keep herds of oxen and heifers in the meadows. They have a goodly number of strong and comely slaves; the doors of their houses are of ivory and of brass, and their tables are laden with pitchers of gold. The courage of their hearts assured them of wealth, which they sometimes keep until old age. In my youth, certes, I was not inferior to them in courage, but I had neither horses nor chariots, nor servants, nor even armour strong enough to vie with them in battle and to win tripods of gold and women of great beauty. ”

“ And he advanced among the shattered and trampled vestiges of Gallic huts, the thatched roofs of which once extended like some motionless army and which were now degraded into less even than ruins—into little more than a heap of manure spread upon the ground. And he reflected:
"Behold what remains of so many ages of men! Behold what they have made of the dwellings wherein the chiefs of the Atrebates hung their arms!"
The sun had risen over the grades of the amphitheatre, and with insatiable and inquisitive hatred the Gaul wandered among the vast enclosures filled with bricks and stones. ”

“ And think you not, Messer Farinata, that you yourself, by drawing the Florentine army into a snare, offended the just God and did that which is not lawful?
FARINATA.
Everything is lawful to him who obeys the dictates of a vigorous mind and a strong heart. When I deceived my enemies I was magnanimous, not treacherous. And if you make it a crime to have employed, in order to save my party, the man who tore down his party's standard, then you are wrong, Fra Ambrogio, for nature, not I, had made him a traitor, and it was I, not nature, who turned his treachery to good use. ”

“ Straightway the rival herdsmen cast themselves upon one another, exchanging blows and insults.
In vain did Meges and the Kings endeavour to separate the combatants. Even the wise Oineus himself was repulsed by the herdsmen whom a god had bereft of reason. Brass vessels flew through the air on all sides. Great ox-bones, smoking torches, bronze tripods rose and fell upon the combatants. The interlaced bodies of men rolled over the hearth on which the fire was dying, in the midst of the liquor which flowed from the burst wine-skins. ”

“ A year later the Château de Vaux received the widow of Charles I, Henriette of France, Queen of England. She was accompanied by her daughter, Henrietta of England, and the Duc d'Orléans, her son-in-law. Henrietta, or, to give her her title, Madame, was in all the brilliance of her youth, had a genius both for affairs of gallantry and matters of State. She lived as though in haste, consuming in coquetry and in intrigue a life which was not fated to be a lone one. ”

“ After a long and arduous march, Komm, with his chiefs and fighting-men, reached the mountainous country of the Edni. From the heights surrounding the plateau of Alesia he beheld the Roman camp and the earthworks dug all around it by those little dark men, who waged war with the mattocks and the spade rather than with the javelin and the sword. This seemed to him to augur ill, for he knew that against trenches and machines the Gauls were of less avail than against human breasts. ”

“ No, indeed, we on Arbia's banks were not playing a game of dice under the trellis, tablets on knee and little white pebbles to mark the score. It was conquest that we were working for. And each side knew it.
Nevertheless, I grant you, Fra Ambrogio, that it would have been better to settle our quarrel between Florentines alone. Civil war is so grand, so noble, so fine a thing, that it should, if possible, be waged without alien intervention. Those who engage in it should be fellow-citizens and preferably nobles, who would bring to it an unwearying arm and keen intelligence. ”

“ When I was young, I composed love-songs, which ladies marvelled at and the clerks put into their books. With that exception, I have always despised letters as greatly as the arts, and I have no more troubled to write than to weave wool. Let every man follow my example and act according to his rank in life. But you, Fra Ambrogio, who are a very learned scribe, it is for you to relate the great enterprises I have led. Great honour would it bring you, if you told them not as a monk, but as a noble, for they are knightly and noble deeds. ”

“ Wherefore, at the hour when the first stars glimmer in the pale sky, he girded himself with the cord of his lyre and went forth, along the sea-shore, toward the dwellings of rich men, who, during their lengthy feasts, love to hearken to the praise of heroes and the genealogies of the gods.
Having, according to his custom, journeyed all night, in the rosy dawn of morning he descried a town perched upon a high headland, and he recognized the opulent Hissia, dove-haunted, which from the summit of her rock looks down upon the white islands sporting like nymphs in the glistening sea. ”

“ In front of the chiefs' dwellings poles were erected from which hung the antlers of deer, the skulls of boars and the fair-haired heads of men. Komm was taken into a hut which contained nothing save a hearthstone still covered with ashes, a bed of dried leaves and the image of a god shapen from the trunk of a lime-tree. Bound to the pillar which supported the thatched roof, the Atrebate meditated on his ill luck and sought in his mind for some magic word of power or some ingenious device which should deliver him from the wrath of the British chieftains. ”

“ But how can love engender hatred? And wherefore am I odious to my well-beloved city?
FRA AMBROGIO.
Since you wish it, Messer Farinata, I will give you an answer. But from my lips you will have naught but truthful words. Your fellow citizens cannot forgive you for having fought at Montaperto, beneath Manfred's white banner, on the day when the Arbia was stained with Florentine blood. ”

“ But suddenly the herdsmen's dispute, appeased for a while, broke out afresh. Heated with wine, they challenged one another to wrestle and to race. Their wild cries rose above the musician's voice, and vainly he endeavoured to make the harmonious sounds which proceeded from his mouth and his lyre heard by the assembly. The herdsmen who followed Peiros and Thoas, flushed with wine, struck their hands and grunted like hogs. They had long formed themselves into rival bands which shared the chiefs' enmity. ”

“ Komm assumed a suppliant's attitude and entreated Cæsar to pardon the British chiefs.
"When they fought against you," he said, "these chiefs did not act according to their own heart, the dictates of which are always noble. When they drove against you their chariots of war, they obeyed, they commanded not. They yielded to the will of the poor and humble tribesmen who assembled in great numbers against you; for they lacked understanding and were incapable of comprehending your might. You know that in all things the poor are inferior to the rich. ”

“ His tunic and his feet were the colour of the roads which he had trodden for so many years. A roughly made lyre hung at his side. He was known as the Aged One, and also as the Bard. Yet another name was given him by the children to whom he taught poetry and music, and many called him the Blind One, because his eyes, dim with age, were overhung by swollen lids, reddened by the smoke of the hearths beside which he was wont to sit when he sang. But his was no eternal night, and he was said to see things invisible to other men. ”

“ The elders of the city, wishful to honour the bard, had sent it to him on the previous day. He rejoiced at the sight of it. As he stood drawing a long breath into a chest which was shrunken with age, he took from beneath his tunic, with a few cloves of garlic remaining from his alfresco supper, the King of Ægea's gift; it was a stone fallen from heaven and precious, for it was of iron, though too small for a lance-tip. He brought with him also a pebble which he had found on the road. On this pebble, when looked at in a certain light, was the form of a man's head. ”

“ In a few days he had, with his little band, captured several convoys of flour and cattle, massacred isolated legionaries up to the very walls of Nemetacum and terrified the Roman population of the town.
"These Gauls," said the tribunes and centurions, "are cruel barbarians, mockers of the gods, enemies of the human race. Scorning their plighted word, they offend the majesty of Rome and of Peace. They deserve to be made an example. We owe it to humanity to chastise these criminals."
The complaints of the settlers and the cries of the soldiers penetrated into the quæstor's tribunal. ”

“ Detained until the end of summer on the Morini shore, Cæsar set sail one night about the third watch, and by the fourth hour of day had sight of the Island. The Britons awaited him on the beach. But neither their arrows of hard wood nor their scythed chariots, nor their long-haired horses trained to swim in the sea among the shoals, nor their countenances made terrible with paint gave check to the Romans. The Eagle surrounded by legionaries touched the soil of the barbarians' Island. The Britons fled beneath a shower of stone and lead hurled from machines which they believed to be monsters. ”

“ In the grey morning light Komm saw figures painted on the walls of the houses. They were ethereal pictures of dancing girls and scenes drawn from a history of which he was ignorant: a young virgin whom heroes were offering up as a sacrifice, a mother in her fury plunging a dagger into her two children as yet unweaned, a man with the hoofs of a goat raising his pointed ears in surprise, when, unrobing a sleeping and reclining virgin, he discovers her to be at once a youth and a woman. ”

“ I will act for the good of my brethren who drink the waters of the Thames. Cæsar's friendship, which I came to their Island to offer them, I will restore to them now that they have lost it through their folly. Cæsar, who loves Komm, and has made him to be King over the Atrebates and the Morini who wear collars of shells, will love the British chiefs, painted with glowing colours, and will establish them in their wealth and power, because they are the friends of Komm, who drinketh the waters of the Somme. ”

“ Perceiving the Aged One to be a good singer, he gave him a place of honour by the hearth and said to him:
"Old Man, when we have satisfied our hunger, thou shalt sing to us all thou knowest of Achilles and Ulysses. Endeavour to charm the ears of Oineus, my guest, for he is a hero full of wisdom."
And Oineus, who had long wandered over the sea, asked the minstrel whether he knew "The Voyages of Ulysses." But the return of the heroes who had fought at Troy was still wrapped in mystery, and no one knew what Ulysses had suffered in his wanderings over the pathless sea. ”

“ These forest-dwellers, these men of the marsh and the beach, were of high stature. They wore their fair hair long, and they wrapped their great white bodies in mantles of wool of the colour of the vine-leaf when it grows purple in the autumn. They were subject to chiefs who held sway over the tribes.
The Atrebates knew that the Romans had come to make war on the peoples of Gaul, and that whole nations with all their possessions had been sold beneath their lance. News of happenings on the Rhone and the Loire had reached them speedily. Words and signs fly like birds. ”

“ THE CHÂTEAU DE VAUX-LE-VICOMTE PREFACE
In 1656, Foucquet was forty-one years of age. For five years he had been Attorney-General in the Paris Parliament, and for three Comptroller of Finance, having been the control of the Treasury at the troubles which had afflicted France during the minority of Louis XIV. He had successfully weathered a difficult period, and had acquired no little confidence in his genius and his guiding star. Now, in the prime of life, feeling securely established in office, he proceeded to order his life in accordance with the magnificence of his tastes. ”

“ Generally speaking, neither profit nor honour results from waging these great wars unaided. A wise people will employ mercenaries, and delegate the enterprise to experienced captains who know how to win much with few men. Nothing but professional courage is needed, and it is better to spill gold than blood. One cannot put one's heart into it. For it would hardly be wise to hate a foreigner because his interests are opposed to ours, while it is natural and reasonable to hate a fellow-citizen who opposes what one esteems useful and good. ”

“ Winter came and covered Gaul with darkness, with ice and with snow. The hearts of the warriors in their wattle huts were moved as they thought on the chiefs and their retainers whom Cæsar had slain or sold by auction. Sometimes to the door of the hut came à man begging bread and showing his wrists with the hands cut off by a lictor. And the warriors' hearts revolted. Words of wrath passed from mouth to mouth. They assembled by night in the depths of the woods and the hollows of the rocks.
Meanwhile King Komm with his faithful followers hunted in the forests, in the land of the Atrebates. ”

“ As Bonaparte was walking alone on deck, Berthollet came up to him.
"General, you were well advised to tell Lavallette not to be afraid and that we should be able to continue on our course."
Bonaparte smiled.
"I reassured one who is weak but devoted. Your character, Berthollet, is different, and to you I shall speak differently. The future must not be counted upon. The present alone matters. One must dare and calculate, and leave the rest to luck."
And, quickening his steps, he muttered:
"Dare ... calculate ... avoid any cast-iron plan ... conform to circumstances, follow where they lead. ”

“ Whosoever draws sword against such a soldier is another Antiochus, fighting for our Lord Jesus Christ. But, having instituted empires, kingdoms and republics, God suffers them to be defended by arms, and He looks down upon the captains who, having called upon Him, draw sword for the deliverance of their country. But He turns away His countenance from the citizen who strikes His city and sheds its blood, as you were so ready to do, Messer Farinata, undeterred by the fear that Florence, exhausted and rent by you, might have no strength to withstand her enemies. ”