We live in a time when orations are heard praising the magnanimity of white bears and the tender feelings of panthers. Amnesty, clemency, grandeur of soul; an era of felicity opens; fatherly love is the order of the day; see all that is already done; it must not be thought that the march of the age is not understood; august arms are open; rally still closer round the emperor; Muscovy is kind-hearted. See how happy the serfs are! The streams are to flow with milk, with prosperity and liberty for all. Your princes groan like you over the past; they are excellent. Come, fear nothing, little ones! so far as we are concerned, we confess candidly that we are of those who put no reliance in the lachrymal gland of crocodiles. The actual public monstrosities impose stem obligations on the conscience of the thinker, philosopher, or poet. Incorruptibility must resist corruption. It is more than ever necessary to show men the ideal,--that mirror in which is seen the face of God. CHAPTER V. There are in literature and philosophy men who have tears and laughter at command,--Heraclituses wearing the mask of a Democritus; men often very great, like Voltaire. They are irony keeping a serious, sometimes tragic countenance. These men, under the pressure of the influences and prejudices of their time, speak with a double meaning. One of the most profound is Bayle,[1] the man of Rotterdam, the powerful thinker. When Bayle coolly utters this maxim, "It is better worth our while to weaken the grace of a thought than to anger a tyrant," I smile; I know the man. I think of the persecuted, almost proscribed one, and I know well that he has given way to the temptation of affirming merely to give me the longing to contest. But when it is a poet who speaks,--a poet wholly free, rich, happy, prosperous almost to inviolability,--one expects a clear, open, and healthy teaching, one cannot believe that from such a man can emanate anything like a desertion of his own conscience; and it is with a blush that one reads this:-- "Here below, in time of peace, let every man sweep his own street-door. In war, if conquered, let every man fraternize with the soldiery.... Let every enthusiast be put on the cross when he reaches his thirtieth year. If he has once experienced the world as it is, from the dupe he becomes the rogue.... What utility, what result, what advantage does the holy liberty of the press offer you? The complete demonstration of it is this: a profound contempt of public opinion.... There are people who have a mania for railing at everything that is great,--they are the men who have attacked the Holy Alliance; and yet nothing has been invented more august and more salutary for humanity."