Letters of Two Brides

This preface, my sweetheart, made me really serious, and I said: "Speak, father."

Here, then, is the deliverance of the statesman:

"My child, France is in a very critical position, which is understood

only by the King and a few superior minds. But the King is a head

without arms; the great nobles, who are in the secret of the danger,

have no authority over the men whose co-operation is needful in order

to bring about a happy result. These men, cast up by popular election,

refuse to lend themselves as instruments. Even the able men among them

carry on the work of pulling down society, instead of helping us to

strengthen the edifice.

"In a word, there are only two parties--the party of Marius and the

party of Sulla. I am for Sulla against Marius. This, roughly speaking,

is our position. To go more into details: the Revolution is still

active; it is embedded in the law and written on the soil; it fills

people's minds. The danger is all the greater because the greater

number of the King's counselors, seeing it destitute of armed forces

and of money, believe it completely vanquished. The King is an able

man, and not easily blinded; but from day to day he is won over by his

brother's partisans, who want to hurry things on. He has not two years

to live, and thinks more of a peaceful deathbed than of anything else.

"Shall I tell you, my child, which is the most destructive of all the

consequences entailed by the Revolution? You would never guess. In

Louis XVI. the Revolution has decapitated every head of a family. The

family has ceased to exist; we have only individuals. In their desire

to become a nation, Frenchmen have abandoned the idea of empire; in

proclaiming the equal rights of all children to their father's

inheritance, they have killed the family spirit and created the State

treasury. But all this has paved the way for weakened authority, for

the blind force of the masses, for the decay of art and the supremacy

of individual interests, and has left the road open to the foreign

invader.

"We stand between two policies--either to found the State on the basis

of the family, or to rest it on individual interest--in other words,

between democracy and aristocracy, between free discussion and

obedience, between Catholicism and religious indifference. I am among

the few who are resolved to oppose what is called the people, and that

in the people's true interest. It is not now a question of feudal

rights, as fools are told, nor of rank; it is a question of the State

and of the existence of France. The country which does not rest on the

foundation of paternal authority cannot be stable. That is the foot of

the ladder of responsibility and subordination, which has for its

summit the King.