Anatole France The Revolt of the Angels

Anatole France

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pubOne.info present you this wonderfully illustrated edition. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this text. For a complete list, please see the bottom of this document.

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• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 27 septembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819925385
• Langue: English

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Transcriber's Note
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected inthis text. For a complete list, please see the bottom of thisdocument.
A Table of Contents has been added.
THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE
IN AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
EDITED BY FREDERIC CHAPMAN
THE REVOLT OF THE ANGELS
THE REVOLT
OF THE ANGELS
BY ANATOLE FRANCE
A TRANSLATION BY
MRS. WILFRID JACKSON


LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
MCMXXIV
Copyright, 1914,
by
Dodd, Mead and Company
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXII
CHAPTER XXXIII
CHAPTER XXXIV
CHAPTER XXXV
THE
REVOLT OF THE ANGELS
[7]
THE REVOLT OF THE ANGELS
CHAPTER I
containing in a few lines the history of a frenchfamily from 1789 to the present day


ENEATH the shadow of St. Sulpice the ancient mansionof the d'Esparvieu family rears its austere three stories between amoss-grown fore-court and a garden hemmed in, as the years haveelapsed, by ever loftier and more intrusive buildings, wherein,nevertheless, two tall chestnut trees still lift their witheredheads.
Here from 1825 to 1857 dwelt the great man of thefamily, Alexandre Bussart d'Esparvieu, Vice-President of theCouncil of State under the Government of July, Member of theAcademy of Moral and Political Sciences, and author of an Essayon the Civil and Religious Institutions of Nations , in threeoctavo volumes, a work unfortunately left incomplete. [8]
This eminent theorist of a Liberal monarchy left asheir to his name his fortune and his fame, Fulgence-Adolphe Bussartd'Esparvieu, senator under the Second Empire, who added largely tohis patrimony by buying land over which the Avenue de l'Impératicewas destined ultimately to pass, and who made a remarkable speechin favour of the temporal power of the popes.
Fulgence had three sons. The eldest, Marc-Alexandre,entering the army, made a splendid career for himself: he was agood speaker. The second, Gaétan, showing no particular aptitudefor anything, lived mostly in the country, where he hunted, bredhorses, and devoted himself to music and painting. The third son,René, destined from his childhood for the law, resigned hisdeputyship to avoid complicity in the Ferry decrees against thereligious orders; and later, perceiving the revival under thepresidency of Monsieur Fallières of the days of Decius andDiocletian, put his knowledge and zeal at the service of thepersecuted Church.
From the Concordat of 1801 down to the closing yearsof the Second Empire all the d'Esparvieus attended mass for thesake of example. Though sceptics in their inmost hearts, theylooked upon religion as an instrument of government.
Mark and René were the first of their race to showany sign of sincere devotion. The General, [9] whenstill a colonel, had dedicated his regiment to the Sacred Heart,and he practised his faith with a fervour remarkable even in asoldier, though we all know that piety, daughter of Heaven, hasmarked out the hearts of the generals of the Third Republic as herchosen dwelling-place on earth.
Faith has its vicissitudes. Under the old order themasses were believers, not so the aristocracy or the educatedmiddle class. Under the First Empire the army from top to bottomwas entirely irreligious. To-day the masses believe nothing. Themiddle classes wish to believe, and succeed at times, as did Marcand René d'Esparvieu. Their brother Gaétan, on the contrary, thecountry gentleman, failed to attain to faith. He was an agnostic, aterm commonly employed by the modish to avoid the odious one offreethinker. And he openly declared himself an agnostic, contraryto the admirable custom which deems it better to withhold theavowal.
In the century in which we live there are so manymodes of belief and of unbelief that future historians will havedifficulty in finding their way about. But are we any moresuccessful in disentangling the condition of religious beliefs inthe time of Symmachus or of Ambrose?
A fervent Christian, René d'Esparvieu was deeplyattached to the liberal ideas his ancestors [10] hadtransmitted to him as a sacred heritage. Compelled to oppose aJacobin and atheistical Republic, he still called himselfRepublican. And it was in the name of liberty that he demanded theindependence and sovereignty of the Church.
During the long debates on the Separation and thequarrels over the Inventories, the synods of the bishops and theassemblies of the faithful were held in his house. While the mostauthoritatively accredited leaders of the Catholic party: prelates,generals, senators, deputies, journalists, were met together in thebig green drawing-room, and every soul present turned towards Romewith a tender submission or enforced obedience; while Monsieurd'Esparvieu, his elbow on the marble chimney-piece, opposed civillaw to canon law, and protested eloquently against the spoliationof the Church of France, two faces of other days, immobile andspeechless, looked down on the modern crowd; on the right of thefire-place, painted by David, was Romain Bussart, a working-farmerat Esparvieu in shirt-sleeves and drill trousers, with arough-and-ready air not untouched with cunning. He had good reasonto smile: the worthy man laid the foundation of the family fortuneswhen he bought Church lands. On the left, painted by Gérard infull-dress bedizened with orders, was the peasant's son, BaronEmile Bussart d'Esparvieu, prefect under the Empire, Keeper of theGreat [11] Seal under Charles X, who died in 1837,churchwarden of his parish, with couplets from La Pucelle onhis lips.
René d'Esparvieu married in 1888 Marie-AntoinetteCoupelle, daughter of Baron Coupelle, ironmaster at Blainville(Haute Loire). Madame René d'Esparvieu had been president since1903 of the Society of Christian Mothers. These perfect spouses,having married off their eldest daughter in 1908, had threechildren still at home— a girl and two boys.
Léon, the younger, aged seven, had a room next tohis mother and his sister Berthe. Maurice, the elder, lived in alittle pavilion comprising two rooms at the bottom of the garden.The young man thus gained a freedom which enabled him to endurefamily life. He was rather good-looking, smart without too muchpretence, and the faint smile which merely raised one corner of hismouth did not lack charm.
At twenty-five Maurice possessed the wisdom ofEcclesiastes. Doubting whether a man hath any profit of all hislabour which he taketh under the sun he never put himself out aboutanything. From his earliest childhood this young hopeful's soleconcern with work had been considering how he might best avoid it,and it was through his remaining ignorant of the teaching of the École de Droit that he became a doctor of law and abarrister at the Court of Appeal. [12]
He neither pleaded nor practised. He had noknowledge and no desire to acquire any; wherein he conformed to hisgenius whose engaging fragility he forbore to overload; hisinstinct fortunately telling him that it was better to understandlittle than to misunderstand a lot.
As Monsieur l'Abbé Patouille expressed it, Mauricehad received from Heaven the benefits of a Christian education.From his childhood piety was shown to him in the example of hishome, and when on leaving college he was entered at the École deDroit , he found the lore of the doctors, the virtues of theconfessors, and the constancy of the nursing mothers of the Churchassembled around the paternal hearth. Admitted to social andpolitical life at the time of the great persecution of the Churchof France, Maurice did not fail to attend every manifestation ofyouthful Catholicism; he lent a hand with his parish barricades atthe time of the Inventories, and with his companions he unharnessedthe archbishop's horses when he was driven out from his palace. Heshowed on all these occasions a modified zeal; one never saw him inthe front ranks of the heroic band exciting soldiers to a gloriousdisobedience or flinging mud and curses at the agents of thelaw.
He did his duty, nothing more; and if hedistinguished himself on the occasion of the great pilgrimage of1911 among the stretcher-bearers [13] at Lourdes, wehave reason to fear it was but to please Madame de la Verdelière,who admired men of muscle. Abbé Patouille, a friend of the familyand deeply versed in the knowledge of souls, knew that Maurice hadonly moderate aspirations to martyrdom. He reproached him with hislukewarmness, and pulled his ear, calling him a bad lot. Anyway,Maurice remained a believer.
Amid the distractions of youth his faith remainedintact, since he left it severely alone. He had never examined asingle tenet. Nor had he enquired a whit more closely into theideas of morality current in the grade of society to which hebelonged. He took them just as they came. Thus in every situationthat arose he cut an eminently respectable figure which he wouldhave assuredly failed to do, had he been given to meditating on thefoundations of morality. He was irritable and hot-tempered andpossessed of a sense of honour which he was at great pains tocultivate. He was neither vain nor ambitious. Like the majority ofFrenchmen, he disliked parting with his money. Women would neverhave obtained anything from him had they not known the way to makehim give. He believed he despised them; the truth was he adoredthem. He indulged his appetites so naturally that he neversuspected that he had any. What people did not know, himself leastof all, — though the gleam that [14] occasionallyshone in his fine, light-brown eyes might have furnished the hint—was that he had a