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  • BOOK FIFTH. CHAPTER I.

  • ABBAS BEATI MARTINI.

  • Dom Claude's fame had spread far and wide. It procured for him, at about the epoch

  • when he refused to see Madame de Beaujeu, a visit which he long remembered.

  • It was in the evening.

  • He had just retired, after the office, to his canon's cell in the cloister of Notre-

  • Dame.

  • This cell, with the exception, possibly, of some glass phials, relegated to a corner,

  • and filled with a decidedly equivocal powder, which strongly resembled the

  • alchemist's "powder of projection," presented nothing strange or mysterious.

  • There were, indeed, here and there, some inscriptions on the walls, but they were

  • pure sentences of learning and piety, extracted from good authors.

  • The archdeacon had just seated himself, by the light of a three-jetted copper lamp,

  • before a vast coffer crammed with manuscripts.

  • He had rested his elbow upon the open volume of Honorius d'Autun, De

  • predestinatione et libero arbitrio, and he was turning over, in deep meditation, the

  • leaves of a printed folio which he had just

  • brought, the sole product of the press which his cell contained.

  • In the midst of his revery there came a knock at his door.

  • "Who's there?" cried the learned man, in the gracious tone of a famished dog,

  • disturbed over his bone. A voice without replied, "Your friend,

  • Jacques Coictier."

  • He went to open the door. It was, in fact, the king's physician; a

  • person about fifty years of age, whose harsh physiognomy was modified only by a

  • crafty eye.

  • Another man accompanied him. Both wore long slate-colored robes, furred

  • with minever, girded and closed, with caps of the same stuff and hue.

  • Their hands were concealed by their sleeves, their feet by their robes, their

  • eyes by their caps.

  • "God help me, messieurs!" said the archdeacon, showing them in; "I was not

  • expecting distinguished visitors at such an hour."

  • And while speaking in this courteous fashion he cast an uneasy and scrutinizing

  • glance from the physician to his companion.

  • "'Tis never too late to come and pay a visit to so considerable a learned man as

  • Dom Claude Frollo de Tirechappe," replied Doctor Coictier, whose Franche-Comte accent

  • made all his phrases drag along with the majesty of a train-robe.

  • There then ensued between the physician and the archdeacon one of those congratulatory

  • prologues which, in accordance with custom, at that epoch preceded all conversations

  • between learned men, and which did not

  • prevent them from detesting each other in the most cordial manner in the world.

  • However, it is the same nowadays; every wise man's mouth complimenting another wise

  • man is a vase of honeyed gall.

  • Claude Frollo's felicitations to Jacques Coictier bore reference principally to the

  • temporal advantages which the worthy physician had found means to extract, in

  • the course of his much envied career, from

  • each malady of the king, an operation of alchemy much better and more certain than

  • the pursuit of the philosopher's stone.

  • "In truth, Monsieur le Docteur Coictier, I felt great joy on learning of the bishopric

  • given your nephew, my reverend seigneur Pierre Verse.

  • Is he not Bishop of Amiens?"

  • "Yes, monsieur Archdeacon; it is a grace and mercy of God."

  • "Do you know that you made a great figure on Christmas Day at the bead of your

  • company of the chamber of accounts, Monsieur President?"

  • "Vice-President, Dom Claude.

  • Alas! nothing more." "How is your superb house in the Rue Saint-

  • Andre des Arcs coming on? 'Tis a Louvre.

  • I love greatly the apricot tree which is carved on the door, with this play of

  • words: 'A L'ABRI-COTIER--Sheltered from reefs.'"

  • "Alas!

  • Master Claude, all that masonry costeth me dear.

  • In proportion as the house is erected, I am ruined."

  • "Ho! have you not your revenues from the jail, and the bailiwick of the Palais, and

  • the rents of all the houses, sheds, stalls, and booths of the enclosure?

  • 'Tis a fine breast to suck."

  • "My castellany of Poissy has brought me in nothing this year."

  • "But your tolls of Triel, of Saint-James, of Saint-Germainen-Laye are always good."

  • "Six score livres, and not even Parisian livres at that."

  • "You have your office of counsellor to the king.

  • That is fixed."

  • "Yes, brother Claude; but that accursed seigneury of Poligny, which people make so

  • much noise about, is worth not sixty gold crowns, year out and year in."

  • In the compliments which Dom Claude addressed to Jacques Coictier, there was

  • that sardonical, biting, and covertly mocking accent, and the sad cruel smile of

  • a superior and unhappy man who toys for a

  • moment, by way of distraction, with the dense prosperity of a vulgar man.

  • The other did not perceive it.

  • "Upon my soul," said Claude at length, pressing his hand, "I am glad to see you

  • and in such good health." "Thanks, Master Claude."

  • "By the way," exclaimed Dom Claude, "how is your royal patient?"

  • "He payeth not sufficiently his physician," replied the doctor, casting a side glance

  • at his companion.

  • "Think you so, Gossip Coictier," said the latter.

  • These words, uttered in a tone of surprise and reproach, drew upon this unknown

  • personage the attention of the archdeacon which, to tell the truth, had not been

  • diverted from him a single moment since the

  • stranger had set foot across the threshold of his cell.

  • It had even required all the thousand reasons which he had for handling tenderly

  • Doctor Jacques Coictier, the all-powerful physician of King Louis XI., to induce him

  • to receive the latter thus accompanied.

  • Hence, there was nothing very cordial in his manner when Jacques Coictier said to

  • him,--

  • "By the way, Dom Claude, I bring you a colleague who has desired to see you on

  • account of your reputation."

  • "Monsieur belongs to science?" asked the archdeacon, fixing his piercing eye upon

  • Coictier's companion.

  • He found beneath the brows of the stranger a glance no less piercing or less

  • distrustful than his own.

  • He was, so far as the feeble light of the lamp permitted one to judge, an old man

  • about sixty years of age and of medium stature, who appeared somewhat sickly and

  • broken in health.

  • His profile, although of a very ordinary outline, had something powerful and severe

  • about it; his eyes sparkled beneath a very deep superciliary arch, like a light in the

  • depths of a cave; and beneath his cap which

  • was well drawn down and fell upon his nose, one recognized the broad expanse of a brow

  • of genius. He took it upon himself to reply to the

  • archdeacon's question,--

  • "Reverend master," he said in a grave tone, "your renown has reached my ears, and I

  • wish to consult you.

  • I am but a poor provincial gentleman, who removeth his shoes before entering the

  • dwellings of the learned. You must know my name.

  • I am called Gossip Tourangeau."

  • "Strange name for a gentleman," said the archdeacon to himself.

  • Nevertheless, he had a feeling that he was in the presence of a strong and earnest

  • character.

  • The instinct of his own lofty intellect made him recognize an intellect no less

  • lofty under Gossip Tourangeau's furred cap, and as he gazed at the solemn face, the

  • ironical smile which Jacques Coictier's

  • presence called forth on his gloomy face, gradually disappeared as twilight fades on

  • the horizon of night.

  • Stern and silent, he had resumed his seat in his great armchair; his elbow rested as

  • usual, on the table, and his brow on his hand.

  • After a few moments of reflection, he motioned his visitors to be seated, and,

  • turning to Gossip Tourangeau he said,-- "You come to consult me, master, and upon

  • what science?"

  • "Your reverence," replied Tourangeau, "I am ill, very ill.

  • You are said to be great AEsculapius, and I am come to ask your advice in medicine."

  • "Medicine!" said the archdeacon, tossing his head.

  • He seemed to meditate for a moment, and then resumed: "Gossip Tourangeau, since

  • that is your name, turn your head, you will find my reply already written on the wall."

  • Gossip Tourangeau obeyed, and read this inscription engraved above his head:

  • "Medicine is the daughter of dreams.-- JAMBLIQUE."

  • Meanwhile, Doctor Jacques Coictier had heard his companion's question with a

  • displeasure which Dom Claude's response had but redoubled.

  • He bent down to the ear of Gossip Tourangeau, and said to him, softly enough

  • not to be heard by the archdeacon: "I warned you that he was mad.

  • You insisted on seeing him."

  • "'Tis very possible that he is right, madman as he is, Doctor Jacques," replied

  • his comrade in the same low tone, and with a bitter smile.

  • "As you please," replied Coictier dryly.

  • Then, addressing the archdeacon: "You are clever at your trade, Dom Claude, and you

  • are no more at a loss over Hippocrates than a monkey is over a nut.

  • Medicine a dream!

  • I suspect that the pharmacopolists and the master physicians would insist upon stoning

  • you if they were here. So you deny the influence of philtres upon

  • the blood, and unguents on the skin!

  • You deny that eternal pharmacy of flowers and metals, which is called the world, made

  • expressly for that eternal invalid called man!"

  • "I deny," said Dom Claude coldly, "neither pharmacy nor the invalid.

  • I reject the physician."

  • "Then it is not true," resumed Coictier hotly, "that gout is an internal eruption;

  • that a wound caused by artillery is to be cured by the application of a young mouse

  • roasted; that young blood, properly

  • injected, restores youth to aged veins; it is not true that two and two make four, and

  • that emprostathonos follows opistathonos."

  • The archdeacon replied without perturbation: "There are certain things of

  • which I think in a certain fashion." Coictier became crimson with anger.

  • "There, there, my good Coictier, let us not get angry," said Gossip Tourangeau.

  • "Monsieur the archdeacon is our friend." Coictier calmed down, muttering in a low

  • tone,--

  • "After all, he's mad." "Pasque-dieu, Master Claude," resumed

  • Gossip Tourangeau, after a silence, "You embarrass me greatly.

  • I had two things to consult you upon, one touching my health and the other touching

  • my star."

  • "Monsieur," returned the archdeacon, "if that be your motive, you would have done as

  • well not to put yourself out of breath climbing my staircase.

  • I do not believe in Medicine.

  • I do not believe in Astrology." "Indeed!" said the man, with surprise.

  • Coictier gave a forced laugh. "You see that he is mad," he said, in a low

  • tone, to Gossip Tourangeau.

  • "He does not believe in astrology." "The idea of imagining," pursued Dom

  • Claude, "that every ray of a star is a thread which is fastened to the head of a

  • man!"

  • "And what then, do you believe in?" exclaimed Gossip Tourangeau.

  • The archdeacon hesitated for a moment, then he allowed a gloomy smile to escape, which

  • seemed to give the lie to his response: "Credo in Deum."

  • "Dominum nostrum," added Gossip Tourangeau, making the sign of the cross.

  • "Amen," said Coictier.

  • "Reverend master," resumed Tourangeau, "I am charmed in soul to see you in such a

  • religious frame of mind.

  • But have you reached the point, great savant as you are, of no longer believing

  • in science?"

  • "No," said the archdeacon, grasping the arm of Gossip Tourangeau, and a ray of

  • enthusiasm lighted up his gloomy eyes, "no, I do not reject science.

  • I have not crawled so long, flat on my belly, with my nails in the earth, through

  • the innumerable ramifications of its caverns, without perceiving far in front of

  • me, at the end of the obscure gallery, a

  • light, a flame, a something, the reflection, no doubt, of the dazzling

  • central laboratory where the patient and the wise have found out God."

  • "And in short," interrupted Tourangeau, "what do you hold to be true and certain?"

  • "Alchemy."

  • Coictier exclaimed, "Pardieu, Dom Claude, alchemy has its use, no doubt, but why

  • blaspheme medicine and astrology?"

  • "Naught is your science of man, naught is your science of the stars," said the

  • archdeacon, commandingly. "That's driving Epidaurus and Chaldea very

  • fast," replied the physician with a grin.

  • "Listen, Messire Jacques. This is said in good faith.

  • I am not the king's physician, and his majesty has not given me the Garden of

  • Daedalus in which to observe the constellations.

  • Don't get angry, but listen to me.

  • What truth have you deduced, I will not say from medicine, which is too foolish a

  • thing, but from astrology?

  • Cite to me the virtues of the vertical boustrophedon, the treasures of the number

  • ziruph and those of the number zephirod!"

  • "Will you deny," said Coictier, "the sympathetic force of the collar bone, and

  • the cabalistics which are derived from it?" "An error, Messire Jacques!

  • None of your formulas end in reality.

  • Alchemy on the other hand has its discoveries.

  • Will you contest results like this?

  • Ice confined beneath the earth for a thousand years is transformed into rock

  • crystals. Lead is the ancestor of all metals.

  • For gold is not a metal, gold is light.

  • Lead requires only four periods of two hundred years each, to pass in succession

  • from the state of lead, to the state of red arsenic, from red arsenic to tin, from tin

  • to silver.

  • Are not these facts?

  • But to believe in the collar bone, in the full line and in the stars, is as

  • ridiculous as to believe with the inhabitants of Grand-Cathay that the golden

  • oriole turns into a mole, and that grains

  • of wheat turn into fish of the carp species."

  • "I have studied hermetic science!" exclaimed Coictier, "and I affirm--"

  • The fiery archdeacon did not allow him to finish: "And I have studied medicine,

  • astrology, and hermetics. Here alone is the truth."

  • (As he spoke thus, he took from the top of the coffer a phial filled with the powder

  • which we have mentioned above), "here alone is light!

  • Hippocrates is a dream; Urania is a dream; Hermes, a thought.

  • Gold is the sun; to make gold is to be God. Herein lies the one and only science.

  • I have sounded the depths of medicine and astrology, I tell you!

  • Naught, nothingness! The human body, shadows! the planets,

  • shadows!"

  • And he fell back in his armchair in a commanding and inspired attitude.

  • Gossip Touraugeau watched him in silence.

  • Coictier tried to grin, shrugged his shoulders imperceptibly, and repeated in a

  • low voice,-- "A madman!"

  • "And," said Tourangeau suddenly, "the wondrous result,--have you attained it,

  • have you made gold?"

  • "If I had made it," replied the archdeacon, articulating his words slowly, like a man

  • who is reflecting, "the king of France would be named Claude and not Louis."

  • The stranger frowned.

  • "What am I saying?" resumed Dom Claude, with a smile of disdain.

  • "What would the throne of France be to me when I could rebuild the empire of the

  • Orient?"

  • "Very good!" said the stranger. "Oh, the poor fool!" murmured Coictier.

  • The archdeacon went on, appearing to reply now only to his thoughts,--

  • "But no, I am still crawling; I am scratching my face and knees against the

  • pebbles of the subterranean pathway. I catch a glimpse, I do not contemplate!

  • I do not read, I spell out!"

  • "And when you know how to read!" demanded the stranger, "will you make gold?"

  • "Who doubts it?" said the archdeacon.

  • "In that case Our Lady knows that I am greatly in need of money, and I should much

  • desire to read in your books. Tell me, reverend master, is your science

  • inimical or displeasing to Our Lady?"

  • "Whose archdeacon I am?" Dom Claude contented himself with replying,

  • with tranquil hauteur. "That is true, my master.

  • Well! will it please you to initiate me?

  • Let me spell with you." Claude assumed the majestic and pontifical

  • attitude of a Samuel.

  • "Old man, it requires longer years than remain to you, to undertake this voyage

  • across mysterious things. Your head is very gray!

  • One comes forth from the cavern only with white hair, but only those with dark hair

  • enter it.

  • Science alone knows well how to hollow, wither, and dry up human faces; she needs

  • not to have old age bring her faces already furrowed.

  • Nevertheless, if the desire possesses you of putting yourself under discipline at

  • your age, and of deciphering the formidable alphabet of the sages, come to me; 'tis

  • well, I will make the effort.

  • I will not tell you, poor old man, to go and visit the sepulchral chambers of the

  • pyramids, of which ancient Herodotus speaks, nor the brick tower of Babylon, nor

  • the immense white marble sanctuary of the Indian temple of Eklinga.

  • I, no more than yourself, have seen the Chaldean masonry works constructed

  • according to the sacred form of the Sikra, nor the temple of Solomon, which is

  • destroyed, nor the stone doors of the

  • sepulchre of the kings of Israel, which are broken.

  • We will content ourselves with the fragments of the book of Hermes which we

  • have here.

  • I will explain to you the statue of Saint Christopher, the symbol of the sower, and

  • that of the two angels which are on the front of the Sainte-Chapelle, and one of

  • which holds in his hands a vase, the other, a cloud--"

  • Here Jacques Coictier, who had been unhorsed by the archdeacon's impetuous

  • replies, regained his saddle, and interrupted him with the triumphant tone of

  • one learned man correcting another,--"Erras amice Claudi.

  • The symbol is not the number. You take Orpheus for Hermes."

  • "'Tis you who are in error," replied the archdeacon, gravely.

  • "Daedalus is the base; Orpheus is the wall; Hermes is the edifice,--that is all.

  • You shall come when you will," he continued, turning to Tourangeau, "I will

  • show you the little parcels of gold which remained at the bottom of Nicholas Flamel's

  • alembic, and you shall compare them with the gold of Guillaume de Paris.

  • I will teach you the secret virtues of the Greek word, peristera.

  • But, first of all, I will make you read, one after the other, the marble letters of

  • the alphabet, the granite pages of the book.

  • We shall go to the portal of Bishop Guillaume and of Saint-Jean le Rond at the

  • Sainte-Chapelle, then to the house of Nicholas Flamel, Rue Manvault, to his tomb,

  • which is at the Saints-Innocents, to his two hospitals, Rue de Montmorency.

  • I will make you read the hieroglyphics which cover the four great iron cramps on

  • the portal of the hospital Saint-Gervais, and of the Rue de la Ferronnerie.

  • We will spell out in company, also, the facade of Saint-Come, of Sainte-Genevieve-

  • des-Ardents, of Saint Martin, of Saint- Jacques de la Boucherie--."

  • For a long time, Gossip Tourangeau, intelligent as was his glance, had appeared

  • not to understand Dom Claude. He interrupted.

  • "Pasque-dieu! what are your books, then?"

  • "Here is one of them," said the archdeacon.

  • And opening the window of his cell he pointed out with his finger the immense

  • church of Notre-Dame, which, outlining against the starry sky the black silhouette

  • of its two towers, its stone flanks, its

  • monstrous haunches, seemed an enormous two- headed sphinx, seated in the middle of the

  • city.

  • The archdeacon gazed at the gigantic edifice for some time in silence, then

  • extending his right hand, with a sigh, towards the printed book which lay open on

  • the table, and his left towards Notre-Dame,

  • and turning a sad glance from the book to the church,--"Alas," he said, "this will

  • kill that." Coictier, who had eagerly approached the

  • book, could not repress an exclamation.

  • "He, but now, what is there so formidable in this: 'GLOSSA IN EPISTOLAS D. PAULI,

  • Norimbergoe, Antonius Koburger, 1474.' This is not new.

  • 'Tis a book of Pierre Lombard, the Master of Sentences.

  • Is it because it is printed?"

  • "You have said it," replied Claude, who seemed absorbed in a profound meditation,

  • and stood resting, his forefinger bent backward on the folio which had come from

  • the famous press of Nuremberg.

  • Then he added these mysterious words: "Alas! alas! small things come at the end

  • of great things; a tooth triumphs over a mass.

  • The Nile rat kills the crocodile, the swordfish kills the whale, the book will

  • kill the edifice."

  • The curfew of the cloister sounded at the moment when Master Jacques was repeating to

  • his companion in low tones, his eternal refrain, "He is mad!"

  • To which his companion this time replied, "I believe that he is."

  • It was the hour when no stranger could remain in the cloister.

  • The two visitors withdrew.

  • "Master," said Gossip Tourangeau, as he took leave of the archdeacon, "I love wise

  • men and great minds, and I hold you in singular esteem.

  • Come to-morrow to the Palace des Tournelles, and inquire for the Abbe de

  • Sainte-Martin, of Tours."

  • The archdeacon returned to his chamber dumbfounded, comprehending at last who

  • Gossip Tourangeau was, and recalling that passage of the register of Sainte-Martin,

  • of Tours:--Abbas beati Martini, SCILICET

  • REX FRANCIAE, est canonicus de consuetudine et habet parvam proebendam quam habet

  • sanctus Venantius, et debet sedere in sede thesaurarii.

  • It is asserted that after that epoch the archdeacon had frequent conferences with

  • Louis XI., when his majesty came to Paris, and that Dom Claude's influence quite

  • overshadowed that of Olivier le Daim and

  • Jacques Coictier, who, as was his habit, rudely took the king to task on that

  • account.

  • -BOOK FIFTH. CHAPTER II.

  • THIS WILL KILL THAT.

  • Our lady readers will pardon us if we pause for a moment to seek what could have been

  • the thought concealed beneath those enigmatic words of the archdeacon: "This

  • will kill that.

  • The book will kill the edifice." To our mind, this thought had two faces.

  • In the first place, it was a priestly thought.

  • It was the affright of the priest in the presence of a new agent, the printing

  • press.

  • It was the terror and dazzled amazement of the men of the sanctuary, in the presence

  • of the luminous press of Gutenberg.

  • It was the pulpit and the manuscript taking the alarm at the printed word: something

  • similar to the stupor of a sparrow which should behold the angel Legion unfold his

  • six million wings.

  • It was the cry of the prophet who already hears emancipated humanity roaring and

  • swarming; who beholds in the future, intelligence sapping faith, opinion

  • dethroning belief, the world shaking off Rome.

  • It was the prognostication of the philosopher who sees human thought,

  • volatilized by the press, evaporating from the theocratic recipient.

  • It was the terror of the soldier who examines the brazen battering ram, and

  • says:--"The tower will crumble." It signified that one power was about to

  • succeed another power.

  • It meant, "The press will kill the church."

  • But underlying this thought, the first and most simple one, no doubt, there was in our

  • opinion another, newer one, a corollary of the first, less easy to perceive and more

  • easy to contest, a view as philosophical

  • and belonging no longer to the priest alone but to the savant and the artist.

  • It was a presentiment that human thought, in changing its form, was about to change

  • its mode of expression; that the dominant idea of each generation would no longer be

  • written with the same matter, and in the

  • same manner; that the book of stone, so solid and so durable, was about to make way

  • for the book of paper, more solid and still more durable.

  • In this connection the archdeacon's vague formula had a second sense.

  • It meant, "Printing will kill architecture."

  • In fact, from the origin of things down to the fifteenth century of the Christian era,

  • inclusive, architecture is the great book of humanity, the principal expression of

  • man in his different stages of development, either as a force or as an intelligence.

  • When the memory of the first races felt itself overloaded, when the mass of

  • reminiscences of the human race became so heavy and so confused that speech naked and

  • flying, ran the risk of losing them on the

  • way, men transcribed them on the soil in a manner which was at once the most visible,

  • most durable, and most natural. They sealed each tradition beneath a

  • monument.

  • The first monuments were simple masses of rock, "which the iron had not touched," as

  • Moses says. Architecture began like all writing.

  • It was first an alphabet.

  • Men planted a stone upright, it was a letter, and each letter was a hieroglyph,

  • and upon each hieroglyph rested a group of ideas, like the capital on the column.

  • This is what the earliest races did everywhere, at the same moment, on the

  • surface of the entire world. We find the "standing stones" of the Celts

  • in Asian Siberia; in the pampas of America.

  • Later on, they made words; they placed stone upon stone, they coupled those

  • syllables of granite, and attempted some combinations.

  • The Celtic dolmen and cromlech, the Etruscan tumulus, the Hebrew galgal, are

  • words. Some, especially the tumulus, are proper

  • names.

  • Sometimes even, when men had a great deal of stone, and a vast plain, they wrote a

  • phrase. The immense pile of Karnac is a complete

  • sentence.

  • At last they made books.

  • Traditions had brought forth symbols, beneath which they disappeared like the

  • trunk of a tree beneath its foliage; all these symbols in which humanity placed

  • faith continued to grow, to multiply, to

  • intersect, to become more and more complicated; the first monuments no longer

  • sufficed to contain them, they were overflowing in every part; these monuments

  • hardly expressed now the primitive

  • tradition, simple like themselves, naked and prone upon the earth.

  • The symbol felt the need of expansion in the edifice.

  • Then architecture was developed in proportion with human thought; it became a

  • giant with a thousand heads and a thousand arms, and fixed all this floating symbolism

  • in an eternal, visible, palpable form.

  • While Daedalus, who is force, measured; while Orpheus, who is intelligence, sang;--

  • the pillar, which is a letter; the arcade, which is a syllable; the pyramid, which is

  • a word,--all set in movement at once by a

  • law of geometry and by a law of poetry, grouped themselves, combined, amalgamated,

  • descended, ascended, placed themselves side by side on the soil, ranged themselves in

  • stories in the sky, until they had written

  • under the dictation of the general idea of an epoch, those marvellous books which were

  • also marvellous edifices: the Pagoda of Eklinga, the Rhamseion of Egypt, the Temple

  • of Solomon.

  • The generating idea, the word, was not only at the foundation of all these edifices,

  • but also in the form.

  • The temple of Solomon, for example, was not alone the binding of the holy book; it was

  • the holy book itself.

  • On each one of its concentric walls, the priests could read the word translated and

  • manifested to the eye, and thus they followed its transformations from sanctuary

  • to sanctuary, until they seized it in its

  • last tabernacle, under its most concrete form, which still belonged to architecture:

  • the arch.

  • Thus the word was enclosed in an edifice, but its image was upon its envelope, like

  • the human form on the coffin of a mummy.

  • And not only the form of edifices, but the sites selected for them, revealed the

  • thought which they represented, according as the symbol to be expressed was graceful

  • or grave.

  • Greece crowned her mountains with a temple harmonious to the eye; India disembowelled

  • hers, to chisel therein those monstrous subterranean pagodas, borne up by gigantic

  • rows of granite elephants.

  • Thus, during the first six thousand years of the world, from the most immemorial

  • pagoda of Hindustan, to the cathedral of Cologne, architecture was the great

  • handwriting of the human race.

  • And this is so true, that not only every religious symbol, but every human thought,

  • has its page and its monument in that immense book.

  • All civilization begins in theocracy and ends in democracy.

  • This law of liberty following unity is written in architecture.

  • For, let us insist upon this point, masonry must not be thought to be powerful only in

  • erecting the temple and in expressing the myth and sacerdotal symbolism; in

  • inscribing in hieroglyphs upon its pages of stone the mysterious tables of the law.

  • If it were thus,--as there comes in all human society a moment when the sacred

  • symbol is worn out and becomes obliterated under freedom of thought, when man escapes

  • from the priest, when the excrescence of

  • philosophies and systems devour the face of religion,--architecture could not reproduce

  • this new state of human thought; its leaves, so crowded on the face, would be

  • empty on the back; its work would be mutilated; its book would be incomplete.

  • But no.

  • Let us take as an example the Middle Ages, where we see more clearly because it is

  • nearer to us.

  • During its first period, while theocracy is organizing Europe, while the Vatican is

  • rallying and reclassing about itself the elements of a Rome made from the Rome which

  • lies in ruins around the Capitol, while

  • Christianity is seeking all the stages of society amid the rubbish of anterior

  • civilization, and rebuilding with its ruins a new hierarchic universe, the keystone to

  • whose vault is the priest--one first hears

  • a dull echo from that chaos, and then, little by little, one sees, arising from

  • beneath the breath of Christianity, from beneath the hand of the barbarians, from

  • the fragments of the dead Greek and Roman

  • architectures, that mysterious Romanesque architecture, sister of the theocratic

  • masonry of Egypt and of India, inalterable emblem of pure catholicism, unchangeable

  • hieroglyph of the papal unity.

  • All the thought of that day is written, in fact, in this sombre, Romanesque style.

  • One feels everywhere in it authority, unity, the impenetrable, the absolute,

  • Gregory VII.; always the priest, never the man; everywhere caste, never the people.

  • But the Crusades arrive.

  • They are a great popular movement, and every great popular movement, whatever may

  • be its cause and object, always sets free the spirit of liberty from its final

  • precipitate.

  • New things spring into life every day. Here opens the stormy period of the

  • Jacqueries, Pragueries, and Leagues. Authority wavers, unity is divided.

  • Feudalism demands to share with theocracy, while awaiting the inevitable arrival of

  • the people, who will assume the part of the lion: Quia nominor leo.

  • Seignory pierces through sacerdotalism; the commonality, through seignory.

  • The face of Europe is changed. Well! the face of architecture is changed

  • also.

  • Like civilization, it has turned a page, and the new spirit of the time finds her

  • ready to write at its dictation.

  • It returns from the crusades with the pointed arch, like the nations with

  • liberty.

  • Then, while Rome is undergoing gradual dismemberment, Romanesque architecture

  • dies.

  • The hieroglyph deserts the cathedral, and betakes itself to blazoning the donjon

  • keep, in order to lend prestige to feudalism.

  • The cathedral itself, that edifice formerly so dogmatic, invaded henceforth by the

  • bourgeoisie, by the community, by liberty, escapes the priest and falls into the power

  • of the artist.

  • The artist builds it after his own fashion. Farewell to mystery, myth, law.

  • Fancy and caprice, welcome. Provided the priest has his basilica and

  • his altar, he has nothing to say.

  • The four walls belong to the artist. The architectural book belongs no longer to

  • the priest, to religion, to Rome; it is the property of poetry, of imagination, of the

  • people.

  • Hence the rapid and innumerable transformations of that architecture which

  • owns but three centuries, so striking after the stagnant immobility of the Romanesque

  • architecture, which owns six or seven.

  • Nevertheless, art marches on with giant strides.

  • Popular genius amid originality accomplish the task which the bishops formerly

  • fulfilled.

  • Each race writes its line upon the book, as it passes; it erases the ancient Romanesque

  • hieroglyphs on the frontispieces of cathedrals, and at the most one only sees

  • dogma cropping out here and there, beneath the new symbol which it has deposited.

  • The popular drapery hardly permits the religious skeleton to be suspected.

  • One cannot even form an idea of the liberties which the architects then take,

  • even toward the Church.

  • There are capitals knitted of nuns and monks, shamelessly coupled, as on the hall

  • of chimney pieces in the Palais de Justice, in Paris.

  • There is Noah's adventure carved to the last detail, as under the great portal of

  • Bourges.

  • There is a bacchanalian monk, with ass's ears and glass in hand, laughing in the

  • face of a whole community, as on the lavatory of the Abbey of Bocherville.

  • There exists at that epoch, for thought written in stone, a privilege exactly

  • comparable to our present liberty of the press.

  • It is the liberty of architecture.

  • This liberty goes very far. Sometimes a portal, a facade, an entire

  • church, presents a symbolical sense absolutely foreign to worship, or even

  • hostile to the Church.

  • In the thirteenth century, Guillaume de Paris, and Nicholas Flamel, in the

  • fifteenth, wrote such seditious pages. Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie was a whole

  • church of the opposition.

  • Thought was then free only in this manner; hence it never wrote itself out completely

  • except on the books called edifices.

  • Thought, under the form of edifice, could have beheld itself burned in the public

  • square by the hands of the executioner, in its manuscript form, if it had been

  • sufficiently imprudent to risk itself thus;

  • thought, as the door of a church, would have been a spectator of the punishment of

  • thought as a book.

  • Having thus only this resource, masonry, in order to make its way to the light, flung

  • itself upon it from all quarters.

  • Hence the immense quantity of cathedrals which have covered Europe--a number so

  • prodigious that one can hardly believe it even after having verified it.

  • All the material forces, all the intellectual forces of society converged

  • towards the same point: architecture.

  • In this manner, under the pretext of building churches to God, art was developed

  • in its magnificent proportions. Then whoever was born a poet became an

  • architect.

  • Genius, scattered in the masses, repressed in every quarter under feudalism as under a

  • testudo of brazen bucklers, finding no issue except in the direction of

  • architecture,--gushed forth through that

  • art, and its Iliads assumed the form of cathedrals.

  • All other arts obeyed, and placed themselves under the discipline of

  • architecture.

  • They were the workmen of the great work.

  • The architect, the poet, the master, summed up in his person the sculpture which carved

  • his facades, painting which illuminated his windows, music which set his bells to

  • pealing, and breathed into his organs.

  • There was nothing down to poor poetry,-- properly speaking, that which persisted in

  • vegetating in manuscripts,--which was not forced, in order to make something of

  • itself, to come and frame itself in the

  • edifice in the shape of a hymn or of prose; the same part, after all, which the

  • tragedies of AEschylus had played in the sacerdotal festivals of Greece; Genesis, in

  • the temple of Solomon.

  • Thus, down to the time of Gutenberg, architecture is the principal writing, the

  • universal writing.

  • In that granite book, begun by the Orient, continued by Greek and Roman antiquity, the

  • Middle Ages wrote the last page.

  • Moreover, this phenomenon of an architecture of the people following an

  • architecture of caste, which we have just been observing in the Middle Ages, is

  • reproduced with every analogous movement in

  • the human intelligence at the other great epochs of history.

  • Thus, in order to enunciate here only summarily, a law which it would require

  • volumes to develop: in the high Orient, the cradle of primitive times, after Hindoo

  • architecture came Phoenician architecture,

  • that opulent mother of Arabian architecture; in antiquity, after Egyptian

  • architecture, of which Etruscan style and cyclopean monuments are but one variety,

  • came Greek architecture (of which the Roman

  • style is only a continuation), surcharged with the Carthaginian dome; in modern

  • times, after Romanesque architecture came Gothic architecture.

  • And by separating there three series into their component parts, we shall find in the

  • three eldest sisters, Hindoo architecture, Egyptian architecture, Romanesque

  • architecture, the same symbol; that is to

  • say, theocracy, caste, unity, dogma, myth, God: and for the three younger sisters,

  • Phoenician architecture, Greek architecture, Gothic architecture,

  • whatever, nevertheless, may be the

  • diversity of form inherent in their nature, the same signification also; that is to

  • say, liberty, the people, man.

  • In the Hindu, Egyptian, or Romanesque architecture, one feels the priest, nothing

  • but the priest, whether he calls himself Brahmin, Magian, or Pope.

  • It is not the same in the architectures of the people.

  • They are richer and less sacred.

  • In the Phoenician, one feels the merchant; in the Greek, the republican; in the

  • Gothic, the citizen.

  • The general characteristics of all theocratic architecture are immutability,

  • horror of progress, the preservation of traditional lines, the consecration of the

  • primitive types, the constant bending of

  • all the forms of men and of nature to the incomprehensible caprices of the symbol.

  • These are dark books, which the initiated alone understand how to decipher.

  • Moreover, every form, every deformity even, has there a sense which renders it

  • inviolable.

  • Do not ask of Hindoo, Egyptian, Romanesque masonry to reform their design, or to

  • improve their statuary. Every attempt at perfecting is an impiety

  • to them.

  • In these architectures it seems as though the rigidity of the dogma had spread over

  • the stone like a sort of second petrifaction.

  • The general characteristics of popular masonry, on the contrary, are progress,

  • originality, opulence, perpetual movement.

  • They are already sufficiently detached from religion to think of their beauty, to take

  • care of it, to correct without relaxation their parure of statues or arabesques.

  • They are of the age.

  • They have something human, which they mingle incessantly with the divine symbol

  • under which they still produce.

  • Hence, edifices comprehensible to every soul, to every intelligence, to every

  • imagination, symbolical still, but as easy to understand as nature.

  • Between theocratic architecture and this there is the difference that lies between a

  • sacred language and a vulgar language, between hieroglyphics and art, between

  • Solomon and Phidias.

  • If the reader will sum up what we have hitherto briefly, very briefly, indicated,

  • neglecting a thousand proofs and also a thousand objections of detail, he will be

  • led to this: that architecture was, down to

  • the fifteenth century, the chief register of humanity; that in that interval not a

  • thought which is in any degree complicated made its appearance in the world, which has

  • not been worked into an edifice; that every

  • popular idea, and every religious law, has had its monumental records; that the human

  • race has, in short, had no important thought which it has not written in stone.

  • And why?

  • Because every thought, either philosophical or religious, is interested in perpetuating

  • itself; because the idea which has moved one generation wishes to move others also,

  • and leave a trace.

  • Now, what a precarious immortality is that of the manuscript!

  • How much more solid, durable, unyielding, is a book of stone!

  • In order to destroy the written word, a torch and a Turk are sufficient.

  • To demolish the constructed word, a social revolution, a terrestrial revolution are

  • required.

  • The barbarians passed over the Coliseum; the deluge, perhaps, passed over the

  • Pyramids. In the fifteenth century everything

  • changes.

  • Human thought discovers a mode of perpetuating itself, not only more durable

  • and more resisting than architecture, but still more simple and easy.

  • Architecture is dethroned.

  • Gutenberg's letters of lead are about to supersede Orpheus's letters of stone.

  • The invention of printing is the greatest event in history.

  • It is the mother of revolution.

  • It is the mode of expression of humanity which is totally renewed; it is human

  • thought stripping off one form and donning another; it is the complete and definitive

  • change of skin of that symbolical serpent

  • which since the days of Adam has represented intelligence.

  • In its printed form, thought is more imperishable than ever; it is volatile,

  • irresistible, indestructible.

  • It is mingled with the air. In the days of architecture it made a

  • mountain of itself, and took powerful possession of a century and a place.

  • Now it converts itself into a flock of birds, scatters itself to the four winds,

  • and occupies all points of air and space at once.

  • We repeat, who does not perceive that in this form it is far more indelible?

  • It was solid, it has become alive. It passes from duration in time to

  • immortality.

  • One can demolish a mass; how can one extirpate ubiquity?

  • If a flood comes, the mountains will have long disappeared beneath the waves, while

  • the birds will still be flying about; and if a single ark floats on the surface of

  • the cataclysm, they will alight upon it,

  • will float with it, will be present with it at the ebbing of the waters; and the new

  • world which emerges from this chaos will behold, on its awakening, the thought of

  • the world which has been submerged soaring above it, winged and living.

  • And when one observes that this mode of expression is not only the most

  • conservative, but also the most simple, the most convenient, the most practicable for

  • all; when one reflects that it does not

  • drag after it bulky baggage, and does not set in motion a heavy apparatus; when one

  • compares thought forced, in order to transform itself into an edifice, to put in

  • motion four or five other arts and tons of

  • gold, a whole mountain of stones, a whole forest of timber-work, a whole nation of

  • workmen; when one compares it to the thought which becomes a book, and for which

  • a little paper, a little ink, and a pen

  • suffice,--how can one be surprised that human intelligence should have quitted

  • architecture for printing?

  • Cut the primitive bed of a river abruptly with a canal hollowed out below its level,

  • and the river will desert its bed.

  • Behold how, beginning with the discovery of printing, architecture withers away little

  • by little, becomes lifeless and bare.

  • How one feels the water sinking, the sap departing, the thought of the times and of

  • the people withdrawing from it!

  • The chill is almost imperceptible in the fifteenth century; the press is, as yet,

  • too weak, and, at the most, draws from powerful architecture a superabundance of

  • life.

  • But practically beginning with the sixteenth century, the malady of

  • architecture is visible; it is no longer the expression of society; it becomes

  • classic art in a miserable manner; from

  • being Gallic, European, indigenous, it becomes Greek and Roman; from being true

  • and modern, it becomes pseudo-classic. It is this decadence which is called the

  • Renaissance.

  • A magnificent decadence, however, for the ancient Gothic genius, that sun which sets

  • behind the gigantic press of Mayence, still penetrates for a while longer with its rays

  • that whole hybrid pile of Latin arcades and Corinthian columns.

  • It is that setting sun which we mistake for the dawn.

  • Nevertheless, from the moment when architecture is no longer anything but an

  • art like any other; as soon as it is no longer the total art, the sovereign art,

  • the tyrant art,--it has no longer the power to retain the other arts.

  • So they emancipate themselves, break the yoke of the architect, and take themselves

  • off, each one in its own direction.

  • Each one of them gains by this divorce. Isolation aggrandizes everything.

  • Sculpture becomes statuary, the image trade becomes painting, the canon becomes music.

  • One would pronounce it an empire dismembered at the death of its Alexander,

  • and whose provinces become kingdoms.

  • Hence Raphael, Michael Angelo, Jean Goujon, Palestrina, those splendors of the dazzling

  • sixteenth century. Thought emancipates itself in all

  • directions at the same time as the arts.

  • The arch-heretics of the Middle Ages had already made large incisions into

  • Catholicism. The sixteenth century breaks religious

  • unity.

  • Before the invention of printing, reform would have been merely a schism; printing

  • converted it into a revolution. Take away the press; heresy is enervated.

  • Whether it be Providence or Fate, Gutenburg is the precursor of Luther.

  • Nevertheless, when the sun of the Middle Ages is completely set, when the Gothic

  • genius is forever extinct upon the horizon, architecture grows dim, loses its color,

  • becomes more and more effaced.

  • The printed book, the gnawing worm of the edifice, sucks and devours it.

  • It becomes bare, denuded of its foliage, and grows visibly emaciated.

  • It is petty, it is poor, it is nothing.

  • It no longer expresses anything, not even the memory of the art of another time.

  • Reduced to itself, abandoned by the other arts, because human thought is abandoning

  • it, it summons bunglers in place of artists.

  • Glass replaces the painted windows.

  • The stone-cutter succeeds the sculptor. Farewell all sap, all originality, all

  • life, all intelligence. It drags along, a lamentable workshop

  • mendicant, from copy to copy.

  • Michael Angelo, who, no doubt, felt even in the sixteenth century that it was dying,

  • had a last idea, an idea of despair. That Titan of art piled the Pantheon on the

  • Parthenon, and made Saint-Peter's at Rome.

  • A great work, which deserved to remain unique, the last originality of

  • architecture, the signature of a giant artist at the bottom of the colossal

  • register of stone which was closed forever.

  • With Michael Angelo dead, what does this miserable architecture, which survived

  • itself in the state of a spectre, do? It takes Saint-Peter in Rome, copies it and

  • parodies it.

  • It is a mania. It is a pity.

  • Each century has its Saint-Peter's of Rome; in the seventeenth century, the Val-de-

  • Grace; in the eighteenth, Sainte-Genevieve.

  • Each country has its Saint-Peter's of Rome. London has one; Petersburg has another;

  • Paris has two or three.

  • The insignificant testament, the last dotage of a decrepit grand art falling back

  • into infancy before it dies.

  • If, in place of the characteristic monuments which we have just described, we

  • examine the general aspect of art from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, we

  • notice the same phenomena of decay and phthisis.

  • Beginning with Francois II., the architectural form of the edifice effaces

  • itself more and more, and allows the geometrical form, like the bony structure

  • of an emaciated invalid, to become prominent.

  • The fine lines of art give way to the cold and inexorable lines of geometry.

  • An edifice is no longer an edifice; it is a polyhedron.

  • Meanwhile, architecture is tormented in her struggles to conceal this nudity.

  • Look at the Greek pediment inscribed upon the Roman pediment, and vice versa.

  • It is still the Pantheon on the Parthenon: Saint-Peter's of Rome.

  • Here are the brick houses of Henri IV., with their stone corners; the Place Royale,

  • the Place Dauphine.

  • Here are the churches of Louis XIII., heavy, squat, thickset, crowded together,

  • loaded with a dome like a hump.

  • Here is the Mazarin architecture, the wretched Italian pasticcio of the Four

  • Nations.

  • Here are the palaces of Louis XIV., long barracks for courtiers, stiff, cold,

  • tiresome.

  • Here, finally, is Louis XV., with chiccory leaves and vermicelli, and all the warts,

  • and all the fungi, which disfigure that decrepit, toothless, and coquettish old

  • architecture.

  • From Francois II. to Louis XV., the evil has increased in geometrical progression.

  • Art has no longer anything but skin upon its bones.

  • It is miserably perishing.

  • Meanwhile what becomes of printing? All the life which is leaving architecture

  • comes to it. In proportion as architecture ebbs,

  • printing swells and grows.

  • That capital of forces which human thought had been expending in edifices, it

  • henceforth expends in books.

  • Thus, from the sixteenth century onward, the press, raised to the level of decaying

  • architecture, contends with it and kills it.

  • In the seventeenth century it is already sufficiently the sovereign, sufficiently

  • triumphant, sufficiently established in its victory, to give to the world the feast of

  • a great literary century.

  • In the eighteenth, having reposed for a long time at the Court of Louis XIV., it

  • seizes again the old sword of Luther, puts it into the hand of Voltaire, and rushes

  • impetuously to the attack of that ancient

  • Europe, whose architectural expression it has already killed.

  • At the moment when the eighteenth century comes to an end, it has destroyed

  • everything.

  • In the nineteenth, it begins to reconstruct.

  • Now, we ask, which of the three arts has really represented human thought for the

  • last three centuries? which translates it? which expresses not only its literary and

  • scholastic vagaries, but its vast,

  • profound, universal movement? which constantly superposes itself, without a

  • break, without a gap, upon the human race, which walks a monster with a thousand

  • legs?--Architecture or printing?

  • It is printing.

  • Let the reader make no mistake; architecture is dead; irretrievably slain

  • by the printed book,--slain because it endures for a shorter time,--slain because

  • it costs more.

  • Every cathedral represents millions.

  • Let the reader now imagine what an investment of funds it would require to

  • rewrite the architectural book; to cause thousands of edifices to swarm once more

  • upon the soil; to return to those epochs

  • when the throng of monuments was such, according to the statement of an eye

  • witness, "that one would have said that the world in shaking itself, had cast off its

  • old garments in order to cover itself with a white vesture of churches."

  • Erat enim ut si mundus, ipse excutiendo semet, rejecta vetustate, candida

  • ecclesiarum vestem indueret.

  • (GLABER RADOLPHUS.) A book is so soon made, costs so little,

  • and can go so far! How can it surprise us that all human

  • thought flows in this channel?

  • This does not mean that architecture will not still have a fine monument, an isolated

  • masterpiece, here and there.

  • We may still have from time to time, under the reign of printing, a column made I

  • suppose, by a whole army from melted cannon, as we had under the reign of

  • architecture, Iliads and Romanceros,

  • Mahabahrata, and Nibelungen Lieds, made by a whole people, with rhapsodies piled up

  • and melted together.

  • The great accident of an architect of genius may happen in the twentieth century,

  • like that of Dante in the thirteenth.

  • But architecture will no longer be the social art, the collective art, the

  • dominating art.

  • The grand poem, the grand edifice, the grand work of humanity will no longer be

  • built: it will be printed.

  • And henceforth, if architecture should arise again accidentally, it will no longer

  • be mistress.

  • It will be subservient to the law of literature, which formerly received the law

  • from it. The respective positions of the two arts

  • will be inverted.

  • It is certain that in architectural epochs, the poems, rare it is true, resemble the

  • monuments. In India, Vyasa is branching, strange,

  • impenetrable as a pagoda.

  • In Egyptian Orient, poetry has like the edifices, grandeur and tranquillity of

  • line; in antique Greece, beauty, serenity, calm; in Christian Europe, the Catholic

  • majesty, the popular naivete, the rich and

  • luxuriant vegetation of an epoch of renewal.

  • The Bible resembles the Pyramids; the Iliad, the Parthenon; Homer, Phidias.

  • Dante in the thirteenth century is the last Romanesque church; Shakespeare in the

  • sixteenth, the last Gothic cathedral.

  • Thus, to sum up what we have hitherto said, in a fashion which is necessarily

  • incomplete and mutilated, the human race has two books, two registers, two

  • testaments: masonry and printing; the Bible of stone and the Bible of paper.

  • No doubt, when one contemplates these two Bibles, laid so broadly open in the

  • centuries, it is permissible to regret the visible majesty of the writing of granite,

  • those gigantic alphabets formulated in

  • colonnades, in pylons, in obelisks, those sorts of human mountains which cover the

  • world and the past, from the pyramid to the bell tower, from Cheops to Strasburg.

  • The past must be reread upon these pages of marble.

  • This book, written by architecture, must be admired and perused incessantly; but the

  • grandeur of the edifice which printing erects in its turn must not be denied.

  • That edifice is colossal.

  • Some compiler of statistics has calculated, that if all the volumes which have issued

  • from the press since Gutenberg's day were to be piled one upon another, they would

  • fill the space between the earth and the

  • moon; but it is not that sort of grandeur of which we wished to speak.

  • Nevertheless, when one tries to collect in one's mind a comprehensive image of the

  • total products of printing down to our own days, does not that total appear to us like

  • an immense construction, resting upon the

  • entire world, at which humanity toils without relaxation, and whose monstrous

  • crest is lost in the profound mists of the future?

  • It is the anthill of intelligence.

  • It is the hive whither come all imaginations, those golden bees, with their

  • honey. The edifice has a thousand stories.

  • Here and there one beholds on its staircases the gloomy caverns of science

  • which pierce its interior.

  • Everywhere upon its surface, art causes its arabesques, rosettes, and laces to thrive

  • luxuriantly before the eyes.

  • There, every individual work, however capricious and isolated it may seem, has

  • its place and its projection. Harmony results from the whole.

  • From the cathedral of Shakespeare to the mosque of Byron, a thousand tiny bell

  • towers are piled pell-mell above this metropolis of universal thought.

  • At its base are written some ancient titles of humanity which architecture had not

  • registered.

  • To the left of the entrance has been fixed the ancient bas-relief, in white marble, of

  • Homer; to the right, the polyglot Bible rears its seven heads.

  • The hydra of the Romancero and some other hybrid forms, the Vedas and the Nibelungen

  • bristle further on. Nevertheless, the prodigious edifice still

  • remains incomplete.

  • The press, that giant machine, which incessantly pumps all the intellectual sap

  • of society, belches forth without pause fresh materials for its work.

  • The whole human race is on the scaffoldings.

  • Each mind is a mason. The humblest fills his hole, or places his

  • stone.

  • Retif de le Bretonne brings his hod of plaster.

  • Every day a new course rises.

  • Independently of the original and individual contribution of each writer,

  • there are collective contingents.

  • The eighteenth century gives the Encyclopedia, the revolution gives the

  • Moniteur.

  • Assuredly, it is a construction which increases and piles up in endless spirals;

  • there also are confusion of tongues, incessant activity, indefatigable labor,

  • eager competition of all humanity, refuge

  • promised to intelligence, a new Flood against an overflow of barbarians.

  • It is the second tower of Babel of the human race.

BOOK FIFTH. CHAPTER I.

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