The Magic Skin

“That sort of uncle is a monster; he misappropriates existence.”

“Then,” the speaker on uncles went on, “tell him, while he is digesting it, that his banker has failed.”

“How if he bears up?”

“Let loose a pretty girl on him.”

“And if – ?” asked the other, with a shake of the head.

“Then he wouldn’t be an uncle – an uncle is a gay dog by nature.”

“Malibran has lost two notes in her voice.”

“No, sir, she has not.”

“Yes, sir, she has.”

“Oh, ho! No and yes, is not that the sum-up of all religious, political, or literary dissertations? Man is a clown dancing on the edge of an abyss.”

“You would make out that I am a fool.”

“On the contrary, you cannot make me out.”

“Education, there’s a pretty piece of tomfoolery. M. Heineffettermach estimates the number of printed volumes at more than a thousand millions; and a man cannot read more than a hundred and fifty thousand in his lifetime. So, just tell me what that word education means. For some it consists in knowing the name of Alexander’s horse, of the dog Berecillo, of the Seigneur d’Accords, and in ignorance of the man to whom we owe the discovery of rafting and the manufacture of porcelain. For others it is the knowledge how to burn a will and live respected, be looked up to and popular, instead of stealing a watch with half-a-dozen aggravating circumstances, after a previous conviction, and so perishing, hated and dishonored, in the Place de Greve.”

“Will Nathan’s work live?”

“He has very clever collaborators, sir.”

“Or Canalis?”

“He is a great man; let us say no more about him.”

“You are all drunk!”

“The consequence of a Constitution is the immediate stultification of intellects. Art, science, public works, everything, is consumed by a horribly egoistic feeling, the leprosy of the time. Three hundred of your bourgeoisie, set down on benches, will only think of planting poplars. Tyranny does great things lawlessly, while Liberty will scarcely trouble herself to do petty ones lawfully.”

“Your reciprocal instruction will turn out counters in human flesh,” broke in an Absolutist. “All individuality will disappear in a people brought to a dead level by education.”

“For all that, is not the aim of society to secure happiness to each member of it?” asked the Saint-Simonian.

“If you had an income of fifty thousand livres, you would not think much about the people. If you are smitten with a tender passion for the race, go to Madagascar; there you will find a nice little nation all ready to Saint-Simonize, classify, and cork up in your phials, but here every one fits into his niche like a peg in a hole. A porter is a porter, and a blockhead is a fool, without a college of fathers to promote them to those positions.”

“You are a Carlist.”

“And why not? Despotism pleases me; it implies a certain contempt for the human race. I have no animosity against kings, they are so amusing. Is it nothing to sit enthroned in a room, at a distance of thirty million leagues from the sun?”

“Let us once more take a broad view of civilization,” said the man of learning who, for the benefit of the inattentive sculptor, had opened a discussion on primitive society and autochthonous races. “The vigor of a nation in its origin was in a way physical, unitary, and crude; then as aggregations increased, government advanced by a decomposition of the primitive rule, more or less skilfully managed. For example, in remote ages national strength lay in theocracy, the priest held both sword and censer; a little later there were two priests, the pontiff and the king. To-day our society, the latest word of civilization, has distributed power according to the number of combinations, and we come to the forces called business, thought, money, and eloquence. Authority thus divided is steadily approaching a social dissolution, with interest as its one opposing barrier. We depend no longer on either religion or physical force, but upon intellect. Can a book replace the sword? Can discussion be a substitute for action? That is the question.”

“Intellect has made an end of everything,” cried the Carlist. “Come now! Absolute freedom has brought about national suicides; their triumph left them as listless as an English millionaire.”

“Won’t you tell us something new? You have made fun of authority of all sorts to-day, which is every bit as vulgar as denying the existence of God. So you have no belief left, and the century is like an old Sultan worn out by debauchery! Your Byron, in short, sings of crime and its emotions in a final despair of poetry.”

“Don’t you know,” replied Bianchon, quite drunk by this time, “that a dose of phosphorus more or less makes the man of genius or the scoundrel, a clever man or an idiot, a virtuous person or a criminal?”

“Can any one treat of virtue thus?” cried Cursy. “Virtue, the subject of every drama at the theatre, the denoument of every play, the foundation of every court of law…”

“Be quiet, you ass. You are an Achilles for virtue, without his heel,” said Bixiou.

“Some drink!”

“What will you bet that I will drink a bottle of champagne like a flash, at one pull?”

“What a flash of wit!”

“Drunk as lords,” muttered a young man gravely, trying to give some wine to his waistcoat.

“Yes, sir; real government is the art of ruling by public opinion.”

“Opinion? That is the most vicious jade of all. According to you moralists and politicians, the laws you set up are always to go before those of nature, and opinion before conscience. You are right and wrong both. Suppose society bestows down pillows on us, that benefit is made up for by the gout; and justice is likewise tempered by red-tape, and colds accompany cashmere shawls.”

“Wretch!” Emile broke in upon the misanthrope, “how can you slander civilization here at table, up to the eyes in wines and exquisite dishes? Eat away at that roebuck with the gilded horns and feet, and do not carp at your mother…”

“Is it any fault of mine if Catholicism puts a million deities in a sack of flour, that Republics will end in a Napoleon, that monarchy dwells between the assassination of Henry IV. and the trial of Louis XVI., and Liberalism produces Lafayettes?”

“Didn’t you embrace him in July?”

“No.”

“Then hold your tongue, you sceptic.”

“Sceptics are the most conscientious of men.”

“They have no conscience.”

“What are you saying? They have two apiece at least!”

“So you want to discount heaven, a thoroughly commercial notion. Ancient religions were but the unchecked development of physical pleasure, but we have developed a soul and expectations; some advance has been made.”

“What can you expect, my friends, of a century filled with politics to repletion?” asked Nathan. “What befell The History of the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles, a most entrancing conception?..”

“I say,” the would-be critic cried down the whole length of the table. “The phrases might have been drawn at hap-hazard from a hat, ‘twas a work written ‘down to Charenton.’”

“You are a fool!”

“And you are a rogue!”

“Oh! oh!”