Alphonse de Lamartine

“ In the evening she visited her friends; in the day an hour's walk in a garden surrounded with high walls. That feeling of strength which steels against fate—that melancholy which softens the soul, and feeds it on its own sensibility,—helped her to pass long winter months in her voluntary captivity.
A feeling of internal bitterness, however, poisoned even this sacrifice. She said to herself that this sensibility was not recompensed. She had flattered herself that M. Roland, on learning of her resolution and retreat, would hasten to take her from this convent and unite their destinies. ”

“ Oh, how that divine blood cleanses! how those divine tears purify!... Yesterday I sent for a holy priest of whom Alain had spoken. He is an old man who knows everything; who forgives all! I have discovered my soul to him, and he has shed on it the love and light of God.... How good is God! how indulgent, how full of loving kindness! How little we know of him! He suffers me to love you, to have you for my brother, to be your sister here below, if I live; your guardian angel above, if I die! O Raphael, let us love him, since he permits that we should love each other as we do!"... ”

“ But you, who love, how can you disbelieve? Does not every throb of our hearts proclaim Him?" "Oh," she answered hastily, "do not interpret as folly the wisdom of those men who have uplifted for me the veils of philosophy, and have caused the broad day of reason and of science to shine before my eyes, instead of the pale and glimmering lamp with which Superstition lights the voluntary darkness, that she wilfully casts around her childish divinity. It is in the God of your mother and my nurse that I no longer believe, and not the God of Nature and of Science. ”

“ Is this because the intelligence of France has not that force, and that severity, which are needed to carry long enough and far enough the idea of God,—the greatest idea of the human soul;—that idea, as it comes from all the evidences of nature, and all the depths of reflection, being the most powerful and the most grave of human intelligence,—and the intelligence of France being the most superficial, the most light, and the least reflecting of the European races? ”

“ What are your labours, your writings? Can you quote, as he can, so many assaults during three years by himself with Voltaire and D'Alembert against the throne, superstition, prejudices, and the aristocracy? Where would you be, where this tribune, were it not for these gentlemen? They are your masters; and you insult those who gain you the voices of the people. You assail Condorcet, as though his life had not been a series of sacrifices! A philosopher, he became a politician ”

“ Explain to me by what chance, on the 21st June, the Tuileries was guarded by the company of the grenadiers of the Rue de l'Oratoire, that you had punished on the 18th of April for having opposed the king's departure? Let us not deceive ourselves: the king's flight is only the result of a plot; there has been a secret understanding, and you, M. de La Fayette, who lately staked your head for the king's safety, do you by appearing in this assembly seek your own condemnation? The people must have vengeance; they are wearied of being thus alternately braved or deceived. ”

“ This assembly had consisted of the most imposing body of men that had ever represented, not only France, but the human race. It was in fact the œcumenical council of modern reason and philosophy. Nature seemed to have created expressly, and the different orders of society to have reserved, for this work, the geniuses, characters, and even vices most requisite to give to this focus of the lights of the age the greatness, éclat, and movement of a fire destined to consume the remnants of an old society, and to illumine a new one. There were sages, like Bailly and Mounier; thinkers, like Siéyès ”

“ I now undertake to write the history of a small party of men who, cast by Providence into the very centre of the greatest drama of modern times, comprise in themselves the ideas, the passions, the faults, the virtues of their epoch, and whose life and political acts forming, as we may say, the nucleus of the French Revolution, perished by the same blow which crushed the destinies of their country. ”

“ There is a man against whom popular movement would fain create distrust, that I firmly believe is undeserved; let us throw ourselves between this distrust and the people. We must have a concentrated, a central force, an arm to act, when we have but one single head to reflect. M. de La Fayette, since the commencement of the revolution, has evinced the opinions and the conduct of a good citizen. It is absolutely necessary that he should retain his credit with the nation. Force is necessary at Paris, but tranquillity is equally so. ”

“ She had in her mind a confused presentiment of this destiny. Genius and Will know their strength,—they feel before others and prophesy their mission. Madame Roland had beforehand seemed carried on by hers to the heart of action. She hastened on the day after her arrival to the sittings of the Assembly. She saw the powerful Mirabeau, the dazzling Cazalès, the daring Maury, the crafty Lameth, the impassive Barnave. ”

“ La Fayette, to consummate the greatest revolution that a nation ever attempted, we required a leader, whose mind was on an equality with so great an event. We accepted you; the pliability of your features, your studied orations, your premeditated axioms—all those productions of art that nature disavows, seemed suspicious to the more clear-sighted patriots. The boldest of them followed you, tore the mask from your visage, and cried—Citizens, this [Pg 253] hero is but a courtier, this sage but an impostor. Now, thanks to you, the Revolution can no longer bite, you have cut the lion's claws ”

“ It is chiefly in the eyes of the cavalry that you behold the love of blood aroused by the double influence of wine and vengeance. It was against women and babes that this army of butchers chiefly directed their fury. The altar of the country is strewn with dead bodies,—it is thus that La Fayette has dyed his hands in the gore of citizens: those hands which, in my eyes, will ever appear to reek with this innocent blood—this very spot where he had raised them to heaven to swear to defend them. From this moment, the most worthy citizens are proscribed ”

“ After dinner there was music; and the stranger sitting beside me, conversed with much affability: we spoke of music, and after a long conversation, I rose to ask him his name. I learned that it was M. Lascaris de Ventimiglia, and that he was a knight of Malta. The following day, I saw him coming to my house, holding in his hand a violin. “My good young man,” said he on entering, “I remarked yesterday how much you like music; I already look upon you as my son, and bring you a violin, of which I beg your acceptance.” ”

“ History should pause a moment before this man, who, without having assumed the name of Dictator, concentrated in himself during two years all expiring France, and exercised over his country the most incontestible of dictatorships—that of genius. Dumouriez was of the number of men who are not to be painted by merely naming them, but of those whose previous life explains their nature; who have in the past the secret of their future; who have, like Mirabeau, their existence spread over two epochs; who have their roots in two soils, and are only known by the perusal of every detail. ”

“ In so active a nature as the French, this enthusiasm and this hatred could not remain in mere speculation as in the mind of a native of the north. Scarcely was he himself persuaded, than he wished in his turn to persuade others; his whole life became a multiplied action, tending to one end, the abolition of theocracy, and the establishment of religious toleration and liberty. ”

“ If we judge of men by what they have done, then Voltaire is incontestably the greatest writer of modern Europe. No one has caused, through the powerful influence of his genius alone, and the perseverance of his will, so great a commotion in the minds of men; his pen aroused a world, and has shaken a far mightier empire than that of Charlemagne, the European empire of a theocracy. His genius was not force but light. ”

“ He was a butcher of men, and he boasted of it. It was he who had thrust his hands into the open breasts and plucked forth the hearts of Foulon and Berthier. [14] It was he who had cut off the head of the two gardes du corps, de Varicourt and des Huttes, at Versailles, on the 6th of October. It was he who, entering Paris, bearing the two heads at the end of a pike, reproached the people with being content with so little, and having made him go so far to cut off only two heads! He hoped for better things at Avignon, and went thither. ”

“ It was at this period that the Assembly ordered the removal of Voltaire's remains to the Pantheon: philosophy thus avenged itself on the anathemas that had been thundered forth, even against the ashes of the great innovator. The body of Voltaire, on his death, in Paris, A.D. 1778, had been furtively removed by his nephew at night, and interred in the church of the abbey of Sellières in Champagne; and when the nation sold this abbey, the cities of Troyes and Romilly mutually contended for the honour of possessing the bones of the greatest man of the age. ”

“ It was three hours from Palmyra. We felt a wish to see it; but my adventure with Hessaisoun was too recent to commit ourselves without a strong escort: therefore we begged Sheik Ragial to furnish us with trusty people. Astonished at our project, “You are very curious,” said he: “what does the grotto signify to you? Instead of attending to your business, you pass your time in this trifling. Never did I see such merchants as you.”—“Man always profits,” said I, “by seeing all the beauties that nature has created.” ”

“ Alexandre, the commandant of the battalion of the Gobelins, the hero of the faubourg, the friend of Legendre. Marat, a living conspiracy, who had quitted his subterranean abode in the night; a living martyr of demagogism, revelling in excitement, carrying his hatred of society to madness, exulting in it, and voluntarily playing the part of the fool of the people as so many others had played at the courts the part of the king's fool. Dubois Crancé, a brave and educated soldier. Brune, a sabre, at the service of all conspiracies. Mormoro, a printer, intoxicated with philosophy. ”

“ Châlons once passed, the king's security no longer depended on chance, but on prudence and force. The first relay was at Pont Sommeville. It will be remembered, that in obedience to the orders of M. de Bouillé, M. de Choiseul and M. de Guoguelas, at the head of a detachment of fifty hussars, were to meet the king and follow in his rear, and besides, as soon as the king's carriage appeared, to send off an hussar to warn the troops at Sainte [Pg 62] Menehould and at Clermont of the vicinity of the royal family. The king felt thus certain of meeting faithful and armed friends ”

“ She reproached herself for being too credulous, for she was very pious; but still she believed them. In such matters, a mother is so easy of belief! Her credulity supported her under many trials, but spurred her to efforts beyond her means to educate Raphael, and ultimately deceived her.
I had known Raphael since he was twelve years old, and next to his mother he loved me best on earth. We had met since the conclusion of our studies, first in Paris, then at Rome, whither he had been taken by one of his father's relatives, for the purpose of copying manuscripts in the Vatican Library. ”

“ All these philosophies, or all these deliriums, are the deliriums or philosophies of the stomach! “All this epoch,” future historians will say, “the French must have been a nation distressed by a terrible famine, to have forgotten, in so total an eclipse of the intellectual nature, the great and immortal ideas which have alone inspired even these, the human [Pg 54] race, and rendered the revolutions of the People worthy of the regard of posterity, and of the blood of man. ”

“ It so happened that I had inherited a small estate in his province, and when I went there to dispose of it, I inquired after Raphael. I was told that he had lost father, mother, and wife in the space of a few years; that after these pangs of the heart, he had had to bear the blows of fortune, and that of all the domain of his fathers, nothing now remained to him but the old dismantled tower on the edge of the ravine, the garden, orchard, and meadow, with a few acres of unproductive land. These he ploughed himself, with two miserable cows ”

“ Now, in idea, add six years to the age of that dreaming boy; suppose the features bolder, the complexion more bronzed; place a few furrows on the brow, slightly dim the look, sadden the lips, give height to the figure, and throw out the muscles in bolder relief; let the Italian costume of the days of Leo X. be exchanged for the sombre and plain uniform of a youth bred in the simplicity of rural life, who seeks no elegance in dress,—and, if the pensive and languid attitude be retained, you will have the striking likeness of our "Raphael" at the age of twenty-two. ”

“ Gibbon and the orators of the English opposition, Grimm and the German philosophers, Diderot, Siéyès, Sillery, Laclos, Suard, Florian, Raynal, La Harpe, and all the thinkers or writers who anticipated the new mind, met there with celebrated artists and savans. Voltaire himself, pro [Pg 359] scribed from Versailles by the human respect of a court, which admired his genius, had arrived thither on his last journey. The prince presented to him his children, one of whom reigns to-day over France. The dying philosopher blessed them, as he did those of Franklin, in the name of reason and liberty. ”