第46章

The names of those two men are graven on our hearts and we have taken them as our models.We should be happy indeed if we ourselves could some day acquire in Paris the influence that country doctor had in his canton.But here, the sore is vast, beyond our strength at present.

May God preserve to us Madame, may he send us some young helpers like you, and perhaps we may yet leave behind us an institution worthy of his divine religion.And now good-bye; your initiation begins--Ah! Ichatter like a professor and forget the essential thing! Here is the address of that family," he added, giving Godefroid a piece of paper;"I have added the number of Dr.Berton's house in the rue d'Enfer; and now, go and pray to God to help you."[*] The Country Doctor.Little, Brown & Co., Boston.

[I assume the "Little, Brown & Co." is a reference to a publisher.Iwill remove this in the finished version of the text.Elsewhere she has used a different method of indicating a reference to another work in La Comedie.--JB.]

Godefroid took the old man's hands and pressed them tenderly, wishing him good-night, and assuring him he would not neglect a single point of his advice.

"All that you have said to me," he added, "is graven in my memory forever."The old man smiled, expressing no doubts; then he rose, to kneel in his accustomed place.Godefroid retired, joyful in at last sharing the mysteries of that house and in having an occupation, which, feeling as he did then, was to him an untold pleasure.

The next day at breakfast, Monsieur Alain's place was vacant, but no one remarked upon it; Godefroid made no allusion to the cause of his absence, neither did any one question him as to the mission the old man had entrusted to him; he thus took his first lesson in discreetness.Nevertheless, after breakfast, he did take Madame de la Chanterie apart and told her that he should be absent for some days.

"That is good, my child," replied Madame de la Chanterie; "try to do honor to your godfather, who has answered for you to his brothers."Godefroid bade adieu to the three remaining brethren, who made him an affectionate bow, by which they seemed to bless his entrance upon a painful career.

ASSOCIATION, one of the greatest social forces, and that which made the Europe of the middle-ages, rests on principles which, since 1792, no longer exist in France, where the Individual has now triumphed over the State.Association requires, in the first place, a self-devotion that is not understood in our day; also a guileless faith which is contrary to the spirit of the nation, and lastly, a discipline against which men in these days revolt and which the Catholic religion alone can enforce.The moment an association is formed among us, each member, returning to his own home from an assembly where noble sentiments have been proclaimed, thinks of making his own bed out of that collective devotion, that union of forces, and of milking to his own profit the common cow, which, not being able to supply so many individual demands, dies exhausted.

Who knows how many generous sentiments were blasted, how many fruitful germs may have perished, lost to the nation through the infamous deceptions of the French Carbonari, the patriotic subscriptions to the Champ d'Asile, and other political deceptions which ought to have been grand and noble dramas, and proved to be the farces and the melodramas of police courts.It is the same with industrial association as it is with political association.Love of self is substituted for the love of collective bodies.The corporations and the Hanse leagues of the middle-ages, /to which we shall some day return/, are still impossible.Consequently, the only societies which actually exist are those of religious bodies, against whom a heavy war is being made at this moment; for the natural tendency of sick persons is to quarrel with remedies and often with physicians.France ignores self-abnegation.Therefore, no association can live except through religious sentiment; the only sentiment that quells the rebellions of mind, the calculations of ambition, and greeds of all kinds.The seekers of better worlds ignore the fact that ASSOCIATION has such worlds to offer.

As he walked through the streets Godefroid felt himself another man.

Whoever could have looked into his being would have admired the curious phenomenon of the communication of collective power.He was no longer a mere man, he was a tenfold force, knowing himself the representative of persons whose united forces upheld his actions and walked beside him.Bearing that power in his heart, he felt within him a plenitude of life, a noble might, which uplifted him.It was, as he afterwards said, one of the finest moments of his whole existence; he was conscious of a new sense, an omnipotence more sure than that of despots.Moral power is, like thought, limitless.

"To live for others," he thought, "to act with others, all as one, and act alone as all together, to have for leader Charity, the noblest, the most living of those ideal figures Christianity has made for us, this is indeed to live!--Come, come, repress that petty joy, which father Alain laughed at.And yet, how singular it is that in seeking to set myself aside from life I have found the power I have sought so long! Yes, the world of misery will belong to me!"