Part 21 (1/2)
_Rousseau._ You need none.
_Malesherbes._ Promise it, nevertheless.
_Rousseau._ You have said nothing, done nothing, which could in any way displease me.
_Malesherbes._ You grant me, then, a bill of indemnity for what I may have undertaken with a good intention since we have been together?
_Rousseau._ Willingly.
_Malesherbes._ I fell into your views, I walked along with you side by side, merely to occupy your mind, which I perceived was agitated.
In compliance with your humour, to engage your fancy, to divert it awhile from Switzerland, by which you appear and partly on my account to be offended, I began with reflections upon England: I raised up another cloud in the region of them, light enough to be fantastic and diaphanous, and to catch some little irradiation from its western sun. Do not run after it farther; it has vanished already. Consider: the three great nations----
_Rousseau._ Pray, which are those?
_Malesherbes._ I cannot in conscience give the palm to the Hottentots, the Greenlanders, or the Hurons: I meant to designate those who united to empire the most social virtue and civil freedom. Athens, Rome, and England have received on the subject of government elaborate treatises from their greatest men. You have reasoned more dispa.s.sionately and profoundly on it than Plato has done, or probably than Cicero, led away as he often is by the authority of those who are inferior to himself: but do you excel Aristoteles in calm and patient investigation? Or, think you, are your reading and range of thought more extensive than Harrington's and Milton's? Yet what effect have the political works of these marvellous men produced upon the world?--what effect upon any one state, any one city, any one hamlet?
A clerk in office, an accountant, a gauger of small beer, a songwriter for a tavern dinner, produces more. He thrusts his rags into the hole whence the wind comes, and sleeps soundly. While you and I are talking about elevations and proportions, pillars and pilasters, architraves and friezes, the buildings we should repair are falling to the earth, and the materials for their restoration are in the quarry.
_Rousseau._ I could answer you: but my mind has certain moments of repose, or rather of oscillation, which I would not for the world disturb. Music, eloquence, friends.h.i.+p, bring and prolong them.
_Malesherbes._ Enjoy them, my dear friend, and convert them if possible to months and years. It is as much at your arbitration on what theme you shall meditate, as in what meadow you shall botanize; and you have as much at your option the choice of your thoughts, as of the keys in your harpsichord.
_Rousseau._ If this were true, who could be unhappy?
_Malesherbes._ Those of whom it is not true. Those who from want of practice cannot manage their thoughts, who have few to select from, and who, because of their sloth or of their weakness, do not roll away the heaviest from before them.
LUCULLUS AND CAESAR
_Caesar._ Lucius Lucullus, I come to you privately and unattended for reasons which you will know; confiding, I dare not say in your friends.h.i.+p, since no service of mine toward you hath deserved it, but in your generous and disinterested love of peace. Hear me on. Cneius Pompeius, according to the report of my connexions in the city, had, on the instant of my leaving it for the province, begun to solicit his dependants to strip me ignominiously of authority. Neither vows nor affinity can bind him. He would degrade the father of his wife; he would humiliate his own children, the unoffending, the unborn; he would poison his own nascent love--at the suggestion of Ambition.
Matters are now brought so far, that either he or I must submit to a reverse of fortune; since no concession can a.s.suage his malice, divert his envy, or gratify his cupidity. No sooner could I raise myself up, from the consternation and stupefaction into which the certainty of these reports had thrown me, than I began to consider in what manner my own private afflictions might become the least noxious to the republic. Into whose arms, then, could I throw myself more naturally and more securely, to whose bosom could I commit and consign more sacredly the hopes and destinies of our beloved country, than his who laid down power in the midst of its enjoyments, in the vigour of youth, in the pride of triumph, when Dignity solicited, when Friends.h.i.+p urged, entreated, supplicated, and when Liberty herself invited and beckoned to him from the senatorial order and from the curule chair? Betrayed and abandoned by those we had confided in, our next friends.h.i.+p, if ever our hearts receive any, or if any will venture in those places of desolation, flies forward instinctively to what is most contrary and dissimilar. Caesar is hence the visitant of Lucullus.
_Lucullus._ I had always thought Pompeius more moderate and more reserved than you represent him, Caius Julius; and yet I am considered in general, and surely you also will consider me, but little liable to be prepossessed by him.
_Caesar._ Unless he may have ingratiated himself with you recently, by the administration of that worthy whom last winter his partisans dragged before the Senate, and forced to a.s.sert publicly that you and Cato had instigated a party to circ.u.mvent and murder him; and whose carca.s.s, a few days afterward, when it had been announced that he had died by a natural death, was found covered with bruises, stabs, and dislocations.
_Lucullus._ You bring much to my memory which had quite slipped out of it, and I wonder that it could make such an impression on yours. A proof to me that the interest you take in my behalf began earlier than your delicacy will permit you to acknowledge. You are fatigued, which I ought to have perceived before.
_Caesar._ Not at all; the fresh air has given me life and alertness: I feel it upon my cheek even in the room.
_Lucullus._ After our dinner and sleep, we will spend the remainder of the day on the subject of your visit.
_Caesar._ Those Ethiopian slaves of yours s.h.i.+ver with cold upon the mountain here; and truly I myself was not insensible to the change of climate, in the way from Mutina.
What white bread! I never found such even at Naples or Capua. This Formian wine (which I prefer to the Chian), how exquisite!
_Lucullus._ Such is the urbanity of Caesar, even while he bites his lip with displeasure. How! surely it bleeds! Permit me to examine the cup.
_Caesar._ I believe a jewel has fallen out of the rim in the carriage: the gold is rough there.