Jules Simon

“ Down to the middle of the nineteenth century the orthodoxy of Bossuet, stiffly opposing the letter of Scripture to every step in the advance of science, had only yielded in a very slight degree. But then came an event ushering in a new epoch. At that time Jules Simon, afterward so eminent as an author, academician, and statesman, was quietly discharging the duties of a professorship, when there was brought him the visiting card of a stranger bearing the name of "Ernest Renan, Student at St. ”

“ Saint-Simon has drawn of him one of his most arresting portraits:
HENRI JULES DE BOURBON, DUC D’ENGHIEN (AFTERWARDS PRINCE DE CONDÉ)
FROM AN ENGRAVING BY N. POILLY, AFTER THE PAINTING BY MIGNARD
“He was a little man, very thin and slenderly made, whose [253] countenance, though somewhat mean, was still imposing from the fire and intelligence of his eyes; while his nature was a compound as rare as could be met with. No man was ever endowed with a keener or more varied intelligence, which extended even to the arts and mechanics, and was joined to an exquisite taste. ”

“ This done, his mission was ended, and he died May 19th, 1825, and I suppose was buried.
Saint-Simon, the preacher of a new Christianity, very soon attracted disciples, chiefly from the pupils of the Polytechnic School; ardent and lively young men, full of enthusiasm, brought up without faith in the gospel and yet unable to live without religion of some sort. Among the active members of the sect were at one time Pierre Leroux, Jules and Michel Chevalier, Lerminier, [and] my personal friend Dr. Poyen, who initiated me and so many others in New England into the mysteries of animal magnetism. ”

“ Simon, do us the favour to tie us up in sacks and throw us into the river that we may give up our thieving ways and become the owners of flocks.’
‘I am ready,’ answered Simon, ‘to do what you please; there’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t do for you.’
So he took three strong sacks and put a man in each of them, and fastened them up so tightly that they couldn’t get out, and then he threw them all into the river; and that was the end of the three rogues. But Mr. Simon returned home to his faithful Nina rich in flocks and gold, and lived for many a year in health and happiness. ”

“ In his young days Simon had been one of the gayest and most active youths of the neighbourhood, but as he grew old and stiff he found it very difficult to walk, and his faithful servant urged him to get a horse so as to save his poor old bones. At last Simon gave way to the request and persuasive eloquence of his housekeeper, and betook himself one day to the market where he had seen a mule, which he thought would just suit him, and which he bought for seven gold pieces. ”

“ In accordance with the orders he had received, Simon allowed his prisoner to go down into the garden every day, and sometimes took him with him when he went up on the roof of the Tower to breathe the air and smoke his pipe undisturbed. The boy followed him with hanging head, like a whipped dog; he never ventured to raise his eyes to his master’s face, knowing he should meet only hatred and abuse. ”

“ At first alone in his chamber, in a state of exasperation difficult to describe, Marshal Simon had begun to walk hastily up and down, his handsome, manly face inflamed with rage, his eyes sparkling with indignation, while on his broad forehead, crowned with short-cut hair that was now turning gray, large veins, of which you might count the pulsations, were swollen almost to bursting; and sometimes his thick, black moustache was curled with a convulsive motion, not unlike that which is seen in the visage of a raging lion. ”

“ When Simon saw this he could not forbear weeping and began to tell her a dismal story concerning the stocks; but she wanted her money for the eggs: But Simon being deaf, could not hear her, which made her fall on him with such fury, that at last he was obliged to run upstairs and jump out of the chamber window which when she saw, she followed him down the town with an hundred boys and girls after them, Simon still crying out to the people people, You may see what it is to be married. ”

“ But the philosophy of the two Simple Simons is plain enough. The former is an expansion of simplicity towards complexity; Simon, conscious that he cannot himself make pies, approaches them with an ardour not unmixed with awe. But the latter is a reaction of complexity towards simplicity; in other words, the other Simon refuses pies for various reasons, often including the fact that he has eaten too many of them. Most of the Simple Life as we see it to-day is, of course, a thing having this character of the surfeit or satiety of Simon, when he has become less simple and certainly less greedy. ”

“ As the former is the younger by many years, he is regarded as quite a youthful blade by the general, who moreover looks upon him as a man of great wit and prodigious acquirements. I have already hinted that Master Simon is a family beau, and considered rather a young fellow by all the elderly ladies of the connexion; for an old bachelor, in an old family connexion, is something like an actor in a regular dramatic corps, who seems to “flourish in immortal youth,” and will continue to play the Romeos and Rangers for half a century together. ”

“ But over and above all this, Simon himself is a most vehement orator, trained in the dialectic art, and in the meshes of syllogisms; and what is worse than all, he is greatly skilled in the magic art. And therefore I fear, lest haply, being so strongly fortified on every side, he shall be thought to be defending the truth, whilst he is alleging falsehoods, in the presence of those who do not know him. ”

“ They turned instinctively to each other, as all turn to those who can recreate for them the young beginnings of their lives. On the marsh Simon always felt immeasurably old, weighted as with an actual burden by the years. He saw himself looking behind him at them as at monsters created in his pride, which now and for ever were out of his control. With Will beside him, they would lie in front as they used to do, rolling meadowlands still untouched by the plough of time. Because they had been young together it would be impossible for them to be really old. ”

“ After growing rich with his accumulated booty, Simon was inclined to become respectable, a recourse which was always open to him—France, England, Spain, the United Provinces, vieing with each other to secure him by high rank and pay as an honoured member of their national marine. ”

“ Thus at the age of eighteen he found himself in a position theoretically superior to every man in France except the princes of the blood, and his few brother peers—theoretically, for the rule of Louis did not admit of any real exercise of the privileges of the peerage. Saint Simon, however, began at once to show his devotion to the idol of his whole life—the status of his order—by going to law with Luxembourg, the famous Marshal, on a question of precedence and title of the most intricate kind. ”

“ Suggs groaned, as he was wont to do in the pulpit, at this display of Simon’s viciousness.
“Simon,” said he, “you’re a poor ignunt creetur. You don’t know nothin’ and you’ve never been no whars. If I was to turn you off, you’d starve in a week.”
“I wish you’d try me,” said Simon, “and jist see. I’d win more money in a week than you can make in a year. There aint nobody round here kin make seed corn off o’ me at cards. I’m rale smart,” he added, with great emphasis.
“Simon! Simon! you poor unletered fool. Don’t you know that all card-players and chicken-fighters, and horse-racers go to hell? ”

“ They had reached the shore by now and had come up with the Jesuit and Master Simon who stood talking earnestly together as they waited on the beach. Through the fog came the sound of creaking rowlocks and the splash of oars approaching nearer and nearer. It was plain from the priest’s words that he was overcome at the thought of what might happen after his departure and was begging Master Simon to flee the danger completely and to leave Hopewell.
“You think not as these other Puritans do, good sir,” he was saying. “You are ever in danger on account of their narrow laws and your wider views. ”

“ At the bend in the stream where the little Jesuit priest had built his woodland chapel and decked his altar, there is now a busy humming factory town, called by his name and driving its noisy spinning-wheels by means of the river that once babbled past his door. Rows of toiling men and women can look out through their tall windows down upon the grave of Jeremiah Macrae where the Indians set up a rough white stone at the bidding of their dearly loved French father.
In the midst of all this change and growth and bustle of new business, Master Simon’s garden is still untouched. ”

“ Simon bade Henry take shelter with him and have no fear of the storm. The king refused with petulant wit. "If I fear the thunder, I fear you, Sir Earl, more than all the thunder in the world." But Simon had probably small faith in the cumbrous system of government which the Barons devised, and it was with reluctance that he was brought to swear to the Provisions of Oxford which embodied it. With their home government he had little to do, for from the autumn of 1258 to that of 1259 he was chiefly busied in negotiation in France. ”

“ He has got something better than polish, I think, and that is breeding. He is not the least shop-walkerish, and yet they have the best manners in the world. Simon says the most awful things, rude things, natural things, but how can one be angry with him, when he says them with his head on one side? Not Ariadne, certainly, and yet she can’t stand chaff as a general thing. Peter Ball could make her cry by crooking his little finger at her. ”

“ It is sufficient to say that it is a great mistake to regard Saint Simon as a mere selfish aristocrat in the cant sense. He would have had the kingdom justly and wisely governed for the benefit of the whole nation, but he regarded the nobility, and, above all, the peers, as the pre-destined instruments of government. 'Much for the people, but nothing by the people,' was his political motto.
The importance of Saint Simon in literature is, however, entirely independent of his standpoint as a politician, though that standpoint was not without influence on his literary characteristics. ”

“ Yet at this moment Simon had grave trouble of his own, and felt as sick in spirit as his friend in body. For a year the difficulty had been the subject of discussion between them. Simon was in love, and, alas, with the daughter of a licensed victualler—an eater of flesh, a drinker of ale, a female Gallio in regard to her lover's enthusiasms. Yet a good girl, for all that, and not indisposed to favour Simon's suit would he but waive the conditions on which he had hitherto insisted. They had long known each other, and regularly every week Simon ran down to St. ”

“ He lived long enough to be extensively useful and earned a rich fame—imperishable as the pages of history—lasting as human intelligence. From the moment he first took his place in society to the present—the tongue of slander or the breath of detraction have never attempted to cast a slur upon his reputation as a public man or private citizen. He was a rare model of discretion, propriety and usefulness—a true specimen of the Simon pure salt of the body politic, rendering efficient services to his country without noise or parade and without the towering talents of a Henry. ”

“ Every morning when Simon opened his eyes, he saw the same grey line ripening into red in the furthest east, until the bright rim pushed itself above that far-off horizon across which no living creature had ever been known to come. Slowly the sun swept across the huge arch of the heavens, and as the shadows shifted from the black rocks which jutted upward from above his cell, so did the hermit regulate his terms of prayer and meditation. There was nothing on earth to draw his eye, or to distract his mind, for the grassy plain below was as void from month to month as the heaven above. ”

“ From that moment Simon was virtually governor of king and kingdom. His exceptional importance, and the exceptional danger to which it exposed him, were marked by his solitary exemption from a decree forbidding all persons to wear arms (16 July) , and by a warning written to the barons by "a faithful Englishman," to bethink them of another leader in case he should die. Dangers indeed were thickening round him. In September he and his partisans were excommunicated by a papal legate. In November the lawless doings of the royalists on the Welsh border forced him to march against them. ”

“ This time Simon turned as white as a sheet, and seemed stupefied, as if a sudden electric shock had smitten him. He babbled some incoherent words, and went hastily to a small closet where he usually kept his liquors. Although astonished at his emotion, I was too preoccupied with my own idea to pay much attention to anything else.
"You say truly when you call Madame Vulpes a devil of a woman," I continued, "Simon, she told me wonderful things tonight, or rather was the means of telling me wonderful things. Ah! if I could only get a diamond that weighed one hundred and forty carats!" ”

“ And onward he strove, seasoned to hardship in early life, he slept but little, the morning bell upon his plantations sounded its iron notes up and down the Mississippi long before daylight every morning, that the slaves might be ready to resume their work as soon as they could see. Simon's anxiety to die a rich man had so worked upon his feelings for twenty years, that he was a hard master and a keen financier. ”