About this period a curious quarrel arose between two gentlemen of the names of Bricqueville and La Maugerie, about the sale of a house: the affair commenced with kicks and cuffs, and was terminated with sword and pistol. The finding of the Constabular court was remarkable: declaring Bricqueville guilty of having excédé La Maugerie with various sword-wounds, fining him in the sum of one hundred francs, and fixing the costs at thirty-six thousand; condemning him, moreover, to live at a distance of not less than thirty leagues from the town of St. Lo for a period of twenty years. This law-suit lasted four years!
Such was the state of duelling during this disgusting reign and its preceding regency: one might fancy that the putrid malady that terminated the inglorious existence of the monarch was typical of the corruption of his government and his degraded minions; his putrescent remains, which repelled the courtier from the regal bier, were emblematic of his court. It was this reign that in a great measure paved the fearful high-road to the French revolution. It has been truly observed by a late writer, that, in France, glory alone can reconcile the nation to tyranny. This has been fully proved during the reigns of the fourteenth Louis and Napoleon: the yoke of the great French monarch had been oppressive and galling, but it had been padded with laurel leaves; the yoke of his successor was comparatively light, yet it seemed of iron, and the people winced under its fretting sway. The nation forgave their warlike sovereign when he said, “I am the state;” nay, the insulting expression flattered their crouching vanity: but when a despicable tutor told his grandson, “Sire, this people is your property!” the Bastille was undermined, and the Louvre doomed to be overthrown. A voluptuous prince, who sleeps confidingly on his downy couch, may be convinced that the people are awake on their bed of straw; the luxurious comfort of the eider-down should never make him forget that thousands are sleepless on a miserable pallet: sooner or later the crown must be abdicated when a court becomes the type of corruption, and the diadem will be picked up by the iron hand of a soldier, after having been borne for a short while in triumph by the mob.
Such were the destinies of France, destinies which still influence the world. If corruption destroys, it will also create; and it is in general during the effervescence of a nation that individuals of gigantic powers arise upon the surface from the fermenting mass. I cannot better describe the rise of some of the most extraordinary characters of the period alluded to, than in the words of a late writer.
“The first figure that appears, and dominates over the century, was Voltaire. He was the literary monarch of his times, and held at Ferney an European court: he corresponded with various sovereigns, and exchanged with them the incense of flattery in return for more solid gifts; for there is no doubt that Voltaire received from crowned heads a more substantial reward of his services than their fulsome praise.
“The weapons of Rousseau, his rival, were more logical; his were sarcastic—an arm less dignified, but the most powerful in France. Rousseau was admired, Voltaire produced enthusiasm: the one addressed the understanding, the other spoke to the passions. The one fenced dexterously with a sword, the other stabbed the social body with his dagger. The Genevese Heraclitus, although far more eloquent, was much less popular than the Democritus of Ferney. Vain, frivolous, vicious, and immoral; cynical in his countenance, essentially a mocker and a scoffer, faithless in controversy, violent in polemical discussion, vindictive and implacable, yet the flatterer of power, abject and crouching at the footstool of kings, their favourites, and their mistresses, and ever courting aristocratic distinction and drawing-room favours: Voltaire was, in short, the personification of his time.
“Rousseau, more austere, was gathered up in the dignity of the man and the philosopher. His logic was inflexible, and he carried it to its utmost limits. Rigorous and absolute in principle, he not unfrequently wandered in the exaggeration of results, and boldly laid down theories without duly considering how far they might prove practicable. In politics be appeared rarely to have contemplated the present; but his eagle-eye sought to pierce into futurity, and gaze upon the splendour of a republican democracy.
“Rousseau prepared a political reform. Voltaire operated a revolution in religion, attacking its influence with insult and mockery. Philosophy, handled by him, became sophistical and narrow; but nevertheless, as Chateaubriand observes, it disengaged Christianity from its trammels, to restore it ultimately to all its purity.”
While thus endeavouring to accelerate a reform in the social order, Rousseau was most energetic in denouncing the practice of duelling; and the following are his memorable remarks on the subject:
“Beware how you confound the sacred name of honour with that ferocious prejudice which places virtue on the sword’s point, and which is only calculated to make brave ruffians.
“And what constitutes this prejudice?—the most extravagant and barbarous idea that ever entered the human mind; fancying that all social duties will find a substitute in valour; that a man ceases to be a rogue, a cheat, a slanderer, and becomes civilized, humane, and polite, when he knows how to fight! that falsehood becomes truth, theft legitimate, treachery and perfidiousness praiseworthy, so soon as he can maintain these qualities sword in hand! that an insult is wiped away by the wound of a sword, and that you can never be in the wrong when you have killed your adversary! There does exist, I admit, a sort of affair in which politeness is combined with cruelty, and where people only kill each other by chance; and this is when men fight for the first blood. The first blood! good God! And what dost thou want with this blood, ferocious beast? dost thou want to drink it?
“The bravest men of antiquity never thought of avenging injuries by single combat. Did Cæsar send a challenge to Cato, or Pompey to Cæsar, after the repeated affronts that they both had received? Was the greatest captain of Greece dishonoured when struck with a staff?
“The upright man, whose life has been spotless, and who never betrayed any symptoms of cowardice, will ever refuse to soil his hand by homicide, and will not be the less honoured. Ever prompt to serve his country, and to afford protection to the weak; to fulfill the most perilous duties, and to defend at the price of his blood everything that is just, honest, and dear to him; he will display in every act of his life that unshaken fortitude which is ever the attribute of true courage. Secure in the consciousness of his integrity, he will step out with head erect, and neither seek nor shun an enemy: he fears death much less than a foul deed, and dreads a crime more than danger. If vile prejudices assail him for a time, every day of his honourable life is a witness to defend him, when all his actions are judged by each other.
“Those captious persons who are so ready to provoke others are in general dishonest men, who, under the apprehension that they will meet with the contempt they deserve, endeavour to shield by an affair of honour the infamy of their entire life.
“Such a man will make a single effort, and face the world once, that he may remain concealed for the remainder of his days. True courage possesses more constancy and less anxiety. It is ever what it should be, and requires neither excitement nor restraint. The upright man never moves without it—in battle with the enemy, in society, in advocating the cause of the absent and of truth; on his couch, in bearing with fortitude the attacks of pain and of death. The strength of mind that inspires this quality belongs to every age; and, ever placing virtue above worldly wants, it seeks not the combat, but it dreads no danger.”
In this moral revolution the strangest event was, to behold those whom it was most likely to affect becoming powerful auxiliaries to the contemplated reforms, reforms in which they were doomed to perish. Still they rushed like men stricken with blindness into a new order of things—a new state of society; tired of the old one, and, from having been sceptical in their sensuality,