During the war I was instrumental in saving M. de la Marche’s life, and helping him to escape to a foreign country.
Such, I believe, said old Mauprat, are all the events of my life in which Edmée played a part. The rest of it is not worth the telling. If there is anything helpful in my story, try to profit by it, young fellows. Hope to be blessed with a frank counsellor, a severe friend; and love not the man who flatters, but the man who reproves. Do not believe too much in phrenology; for I have the murderer’s bump largely developed, and, as Edmée used to say with grim humour, “killing comes natural” to our family. Do not believe in fate, or, at least, never advise anyone to tamely submit to it. Such is the moral of my story.
After this old Bernard gave us a good supper, and continued conversing with us for the rest of the evening without showing any signs of discomposure or fatigue. As we begged him to develop what he called the moral of his story a little further, he proceeded to a few general considerations which impressed me with their soundness and good sense.
I spoke of phrenology, he said, not with the object of criticising a system which has its good side, in so far as it tends to complete the series of physiological observations that aim at increasing our knowledge of man; I used the word phrenology because the only fatality that we believe in nowadays is that created by our own instincts. I do not believe that phrenology is more fatalistic than any other system of this kind; and Lavater, who was also accused of fatalism in his time, was the most Christian man the Gospel has ever formed.
Do not believe in any absolute and inevitable fate; and yet acknowledge, in a measure, that we are moulded by instincts, our faculties, the impressions of our infancy, the surroundings of our earliest childhood—in short, by all that outside world which has presided over the development of our soul. Admit that we are not always absolutely free to choose between good and evil, if you would be indulgent towards the guilty—that is to say, just even as Heaven is just; for there is infinite mercy in God’s judgments; otherwise His justice would be imperfect.
What I am saying now is not very orthodox, but, take my word for it, it is Christian, because it is true. Man is not born wicked; neither is he born good, as is maintained by Jean Jacques Rousseau, my beloved Edmée’s old master. Man is born with more or less of passions, with more or less power to satisfy them, with more or less capacity for turning them to a good or bad account in society. But education can and must find a remedy for everything; that is the great problem to be solved, to discover the education best suited to each individual. If it seems necessary that education should be general and in common, does it follow that it ought to be the same for all? I quite believe that if I had been sent to school when I was ten, I should have become a civilized being earlier; but would anyone have thought of correcting my violent passions, and of teaching me how to conquer them as Edmée did? I doubt it. Every man needs to be loved before he can be worth anything; but each in a different way; one with never-failing indulgence, another with unflinching severity. Meanwhile, until someone solves the problem of making education common to all, and yet appropriate to each, try to improve one another.
Do you ask me how? My answer will be brief: by loving one another truly. It is in this way—for the manners of a people mould their laws—that you will succeed in suppressing the most odious and impious of all laws, the lex talionis, capital punishment, which is nothing else than the consecration of the principle of fatality, seeing that it supposes the culprit incorrigible and Heaven implacable.
Endnotes
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I hazard “Headbreaker” and “Hamstringer” as poor equivalents for the Casse-Tête and Coupe-Jarret of the French. —Translator ↩
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The reputation which the Seigneur de Pleumartin has left behind him in the province will preserve the story of Mauprat from the reproach of exaggeration. Pen would refuse to trace the savage obscenities and refinements of cruelty which marked the life of this madman, and which perpetuated the traditions of feudal brigandage in Berry down to the last days of the ancient monarchy. His château was besieged, and after a stubborn resistance he was taken and hanged. There are many people still living, nor yet very advanced in years, who knew the man. ↩
Colophon
Mauprat
was published in 1837 by
George Sand.
It was translated from French in 1902 by
Stanley Young.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Hendrik Kaiber,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2006 by
Dagny, John Bickers, and David Widger
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Portrait of a Young Woman,
a painting completed in 1797 by
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun.
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May you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely,
