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In the nervous, unsettled state of my mind at that moment, I found it much easier to make my inventory than to make my reflections, and thereupon soon gave up all hope of thinking in Le Maistre's fanciful track or, indeed, of thinking at all. I looked about the room at the different articles of furniture, and did nothing more.
Lamennais brought De Maistre's opinions into practical politics, and insisted with burning eloquence on the need for the submission of all mankind to the Pope, the 'living tradition of mankind, through whom alone individual reason receives the truth. Veuillot continued the crusade with unpitying logic and unquenchable zeal.
Then my longing to travel returns, vainer to-day than ever, unless one could find a seat on that carpet of which we read in the Arabian Nights, the famous carpet whereon one had but to sit to be carried whithersoever he pleased. O marvellous conveyance, far preferable to Xavier de Maistre's post-chaise! If I could only find just a little corner on it, with a return-ticket! I do find it.
De Maistre's deity is thus a colossal Septembriseur, enthroned high in the peaceful heavens, demanding ever-renewed holocausts in the name of the public safety. It is true, as a general rule of the human mind, that the objects which men have worshipped have improved in morality and wisdom as men themselves have improved.
The point so constantly dwelt upon by Bossuet, the obligation of the canons upon the Pope, was of very little worth in De Maistre's judgment, and he almost speaks with disrespect of the great Catholic defender for being so prolix and pertinacious in elaborating it.
If you measure the proceedings of omnipotence by the uses to which a wise and benevolent man would put such superhuman power, if we can imagine a man of this kind endowed with it, De Maistre's theory of the extent to which a supreme being interferes in human things, is after all only a degree less ridiculous and illogical, less inadequate and abundantly assailable, than that Protestantism which he so heartily despised.
If Joseph de Maistre's axiom, Qui n'a pas vaincu a trente ans, ne vaincra jamais, were true, there would be little hope of him, for he has won no battle yet. But there is something solid and doughty in the man, that can rise from defeat, the stuff of which victories are made in due time, when we are able to choose our position better, and the sun is at our back.
The discomforts of De Maistre's life at St. Petersburg were extreme. The dignity of his official style and title was an aggravation of the exceeding straitness of his means. The ruined master could do little to mitigate the ruin of his servant. He had to keep up the appearance of an ambassador on the salary of a clerk.
And in this way De Maistre's mind continued the picture down to the latest days of all, when there had arisen men who, denying God and mocking at Christ, were bent on the destruction of the very foundations of society, and had nothing better to offer the human race than a miserable return to a state of nature.
Some such reflections as these must have been at the bottom of De Maistre's great apology for the Papal supremacy, or at any rate they may serve to bring before our minds with greater clearness the kind of foundations on which his scheme rested. For law substitute Christianity, for social union spiritual union, for legal obligations the obligations of the faith.
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