Voltaire's Romances Part 40

"A morsel of bread, my reverend father. The new edicts have stripped me of every thing."

"Son, know that we ourselves beg charity; we do not bestow it."[1]

"What! while your holy inst.i.tute forbids you to wear shoes, you have the house of a prince, and can you refuse to me a meal?"

"My son, it is true, we go without stockings and shoes; that is an expense the less; we feel no more cold in our feet than in our hands.

As to our fine house, we built it very easily, as we have a hundred thousand livres a year of income from houses in the same street."

"So, then! you suffer me to die of hunger, while you have an income of a hundred thousand livres! I suppose you pay fifty thousand of these to the new government?"

"Heaven preserve us from paying a single farthing! It is only the produce of the land cultivated by laborious hands, callous with work, and moistened with tears, that owes taxes to the legislative and executive power. The alms which have been bestowed upon us, have enabled us to build those houses, by the rent of which we get a hundred thousand livres a year. But these alms, coming from the fruits of the earth, and having, consequently, already paid the tax, ought not to pay twice. They have sanctified the faithful believers, who have impoverished themselves to enrich us, and we continue to beg charity, and to lay under contribution the Fauxbourg of St. Germain, in order to sanctify a still greater number of the faithful believers."[2]

Having thus spoken, the Carmelite politely shut the door in my face.

I then pa.s.sed along and stopped before the _Hotel_ of the _Mousquetaires gris_, and related to those gentlemen what had just happened to me. They gave me a good dinner and half a crown, (_un ecu_). One of them proposed to go directly and set fire to the convent; but a musqueteer, more discreet than he, remonstrated with him, insisting that the time for action had not yet arrived, and implored him to wait patiently a little longer.[3]

[1] Victor Hugo in his poem, _Christ at the Vatican_, (translated by G.B. Burleigh,) rebukes this inhuman spirit of monkish greed and avarice, which always receives but neves gives in return. In the poem, Christ is represented as saying:

"----I have said, 'I will have mercy and not sacrifice;'-- Have said, 'Give freely what, without a price, Was given to you.' To my redeemed, instead, You sell baptism upon their natal bed; Sell to the sinner void indulgences; To lovers sell the natural right to wed; Sell to the dying the privilege of decease, And sell your funeral ma.s.ses to the dead!

Your prayers and ma.s.ses and communions sell; Beads, benedictions, crosses; in your eyes Nothing is sacred,--all is merchandise."--E.

[2] In a recent number of _The Nineteenth Century_, Mr. Alex. A. Knox, in an able criticism on the writings of Voltaire, says very truly:

"It should not be forgotten that in his day a very large portion of the soil of France was in the hands of the clergy, free from all burdens, save in so far as the clergy chose to execute them by the way of 'gratuitous gifts.' The condition of the French peasant was frightful.

Arthur Young, Dr. Moore, and others have described it at a somewhat later date, but it was even so in Voltaire's time. Of course the 'clerical immunities' were far from being the only cause of all this misery; but they were a frightful addition to it."

[3] The degradation of labor, and the corruption and injustice of the papal priesthood, were the inciting causes of the great revolution in France, which at length overturned the monarchy, and convulsed, for so long a period, every nation in Europe. In reading this romance of the hards.h.i.+ps of the laborer, we may learn to comprehend the true principles of Voltaire, and recognize his great benevolence and sympathy with suffering and distress. We may also listen to the first faint mutterings of the terrible storm of blood and retribution, that was so soon to burst over unhappy France, and overwhelm in its lurid course all ranks and conditions of mankind--the innocent and the guilty, the oppressed and the oppressor, the peasant and the priest.--E.

V.

AUDIENCE OF THE COMPTROLLER GENERAL.

I went, with my half-crown, to present a pet.i.tion to the comptroller general, who was that day giving audience.

His anti-chamber was filled with people of all kinds. There were there especially some with more bluff faces, more prominent bellies, and more arrogant looks than my man of eight millions. I durst not draw near to them; I saw them, but they did not observe me.

A monk, a great man for t.i.thes, had begun a suit at law against certain subjects of the state, whom he called his tenants. He had already a larger income than the half of his paris.h.i.+oners put together, and was moreover lord of the manor. His claim was, that whereas his va.s.sals had, with infinite pains, converted their heaths into vineyards, they owed him a t.i.the of the wine, which, taking into the account the price of labor, of the vine-props, of the casks and cellarage, would carry off above a quarter of the produce.

"But," said he, "as the t.i.thes are due, _jure divino_, I demand the quarter of the substance of my tenants, in the name of G.o.d."

The minister of the revenue said to him, "I see how charitable you are."

A farmer-general, extremely well-skilled in a.s.sessments, interposed, saying:

"Sir, that village can afford nothing to this monk; as I have, but the last year, made the paris.h.i.+oners pay thirty-two taxes on their wine, besides their over-consumption of the allowance for their own drinking.

They are entirely ruined. I have seized and sold their cattle and movables, and yet they are still my debtors. I protest, then, against the claim of the reverend father."

"You are in the right," answered the minister of the revenue, "to be his rival; you both equally love your neighbor, and you both edify me."

A third, a monk and lord of the manor, whose tenants were in mortmain, was waiting for a decree of the council that should put him in possession of all the estate of a Paris c.o.c.kney, who having, inadvertently, lived a year and a day in a house subject to this servitude, and inclosed within the hands of this priest, had died at the year's end. The monk was claiming all the estate of this c.o.c.kney, and claiming it _jure divino_.

The minister found by this, that the heart of this monk was as just and as tender as those of the others.

A fourth, who was comptroller of the royal domains, presented a specious memorial, in which he justified himself for his having reduced twenty families to beggary. They had inherited from their uncles, their aunts, their brothers, or cousins; and were liable to pay the duties. The officers of the domain had generously proved to them, that they had not set the full value on their inheritances,--that they were much richer than they believed, and, consequently, having condemned them to a triple fine, ruined them in charges, and threw the heads of the families into jail, he had bought their best possessions without untying his purse-strings.

The comptroller general said to him, in a tone indeed rather bitter:

_"Euge, controlleur bone et fidelis, quia supra pauca fuisti fidelis, fermier-general te const.i.tuam."_

But to a master of the requests, who was standing at his side, he said in a low voice:

"We must make these blood-suckers, sacred and profane, disgorge. It is time to give some relief to the people, who, without our care, and our equity, would have nothing to live upon in this world at least, however they might fare in the other."

Some, of profound genius, presented projects to him. One of them had imagined a scheme to lay a tax on wit. "All the world," said he, "will be eager to pay, as no one cares to pa.s.s for a fool."

The minister declared to him, "I exempt you from the tax."

Another proposed to lay the _only_ tax upon songs and laughing, in consideration that we were the merriest nation under the sun, and that a song was a relief and comfort for every thing. But the minister observed, that of late there were hardly any songs of pleasantry made; and he was afraid that, to escape the tax, we would become too serious.

The next that presented himself, was a trusty and loyal subject, who offered to raise for the king three times as much, by making the nation pay three times less. The minister advised him to learn arithmetic.

A fourth proved to the king in the way of _friends.h.i.+p_, that he could not raise above seventy-five millions, but that he was going to procure him two hundred and twenty-five. "You will oblige me in this," said the minister, "as soon as we shall have paid the public debts."

At length, who should appear but a deputy of the new author, who makes the legislative power co-proprietor of all our lands, _jure divino_, and who was giving the king twelve hundred millions of revenue. I knew the man again who had flung me into prison for not having paid my twenty crowns, and throwing myself at the feet of the comptroller general, I implored his justice; upon which, he burst out a laughing, and telling me, it was a trick that had been played me, he ordered the doers of this mischief in jest to pay me a hundred crowns damages, and exempted me from the land-tax for the rest of my life. I said to him, "G.o.d bless your honor!"

VI.

THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS MARRIES, BECOMES A FATHER, AND DESCANTS UPON THE MONKS.

The Man of Forty Crowns having improved his understanding, and having acc.u.mulated a moderate fortune, married a very pretty girl, who had an hundred crowns a year of her own. As soon as his son was born, he felt himself a man of some consequence in the state. He was famous for making the best baskets in the world, and his wife was an excellent seamstress.

She was born in the neighborhood of a rich abbey of a hundred thousand livres a year. Her husband asked me one day, why those gentlemen, who were so few in number, had swallowed so many of the forty crown lots?

"Are they more useful to their country than I am?" "No, dear neighbor."

"Do they, like me, contribute at least to the population of it?" "No."

"Do they cultivate the land? Do they defend the state when it is attacked?" "No, they pray to G.o.d for us." "Well, then, I will pray to G.o.d for us." "Well, then, I will pray to G.o.d for them, in return."

QUESTION.--How many of these useful gentry, men and women, may the convents in this kingdom contain?

ANSWER.--By the lists of the superintendents, taken toward the end of the last century, there were about ninety thousand.