My uncle Sosthène was a freethinker, like many others, a freethinker from sheer stupidity. People are very often religious for the same reason. The mere sight of a priest threw him into a violent rage; he would shake his fist and grimace at him, and touch a piece of iron when the priest's back was turned, forgetting that the latter action showed a belief after all, the belief in the evil eye. Now when beliefs are unreasonable, one should either have all or none at all. I myself am a freethinker; I revolt at all the dogmas which have invented the fear of death, but I feel no anger toward places of worship, be they Catholic Apostolic, Roman, Protestant, Greek, Russian, Buddhist, Jewish, or Mohammedan. I have a peculiar manner of looking at them and explaining them. A place of worship represents the homage paid by man to the unknown. The more extended our thoughts and our views become, the more the unknown diminishes, and the more places of worship will decay. I, however, instead of incense burners, would fit them up with telescopes, microscopes, and electrical machines; that is all.
My uncle and I differed on nearly every point. He was a patriot, while I was not—for, after all, patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.
My uncle was a Freemason, and I used to declare that they are stupider than the pious old ladies. That is my opinion, and I maintain it; if we must have any religion at all, the old one is good enough for me.
Those imbeciles simply imitate priests. Their symbol is a triangle instead of a cross. They have chapels which they call lodges, and a whole lot of different sects: the Scottish rite, the French rite, the Grand Orient, a collection of balderdash that would make a cat laugh.
What is their object? Mutual help to be obtained by tickling the palms of each other's hands. I see no harm in it, for they put into practice the Christian precept: "Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you." The only difference consists in the tickling, but it does not seem worth while to make such a fuss about lending a poor devil five francs.
Convents whose duty and business it is to administer alms and help, put the letters "J.M.J." at the head of their communications. The Masons put three periods in a row after their signature. It is six of one and half a dozen of the other.
My uncle's reply used to be:
"We are raising up a religion against a religion; Free-thought will kill clericalism. Freemasonry is the headquarters of those who are demolishing all deities."
"Very well, my dear uncle," I would reply (in my heart I felt inclined to say, "You old idiot!"); "it is just that which I am blaming you for. Instead of destroying, you are organizing competition; it is only a case of lowering the prices. And then, if you only admitted freethinkers among you I could understand it, but you admit anybody. You have a number of Catholics among you, even the leaders of the party. Pius IX is said to have been one of you before he became Pope. If you call a society with such an organization a bulwark against clericalism, I think it is an extremely weak one."
"My dear boy," my uncle would reply, with a wink, "our most formidable actions are political; slowly and surely we are everywhere undermining the monarchical spirit."
Then I broke out: "Yes, you are very clever! If you tell me that freemasonry is an election-machine, I will grant it. I will never deny that it is used as a machine to control candidates of all shades; if you say that it is only used to hoodwink people, to drill them to go to the voting-urn as soldiers are sent under fire, I agree with you; if you declare that it is indispensable to all political ambitions because it changes all its members into electoral agents, I should say to you, 'That is as clear as daylight.' But when you tell me that it serves to undermine the monarchical spirit, I can only laugh in your face.
"Just consider that vast and democratic association which had Prince Napoleon for its Grand Master under the Empire; which has the Crown Prince for its Grand Master in Germany, the Czar's brother in Russia, and to which the Prince of Wales and King Humbert and nearly all the royalists of the globe belong."
"You are quite right," my uncle said; "but all these persons are serving our projects without knowing it."
"And vice versa, what?"
And I added, to myself, "pack of fools!"
It was, however, indeed a sight to see my uncle when he had a freemason to dinner.
On meeting they shook hands in a mysterious manner that was irresistibly funny; one could see that they were going through a series of secret mysterious pressures. When I wished to put my uncle in a rage, I had only to tell him that dogs also have a manner which savours very much of freemasonry, when they greet one another on meeting.
Then my uncle would take his friend into a corner to tell him something important, and at dinner they had a peculiar way of looking at each other, and of drinking to each other, in a manner as if to say: "We belong to it, don't we?"
And to think that there are millions on the face of the globe who are amused at such monkey tricks! I would sooner be a Jesuit.
Now in our town there really was an old Jesuit who was my uncle's pet aversion. Every time he met him, or if he only saw him at a distance, he used to say: "Dirty skunk!" And then, taking my arm, he would whisper to me:
"Look here, that fellow will play me a trick some day or other, I feel sure of it."
My uncle spoke quite truly, and this was how it happened, through my fault moreover.
It was close on Holy Week, and my uncle made up his mind to give a dinner on Good Friday, a real dinner with chitterlings and saveloy sausage. I resisted as much as I could, and said:
"I shall eat meat on that day, but at home, quite by myself. Your manifesto, as you call it, is an idiotic idea. Why should you manifest? What does it matter to you if people do not eat any meat?"
But my uncle would not be persuaded. He asked three of his friends to dine with him at one of the best restaurants in the town, and as he was going to pay the bill, I had certainly, after all, no scruples about manifesting.
At four o'clock we took a conspicuous place in the Café Pénélope, the most frequented restaurant in the town, and my uncle in a loud voice described the menu.
We sat down at six o'clock, and at ten o'clock we had not finished. Five of us had drunk eighteen bottles of fine wines, and four of champagne. Then my uncle proposed what he was in the habit of calling: "The archbishop's feat." Each man put six small glasses in front of him, each of them filled with a different liqueur, and then they had all to be emptied at one gulp, one after another, while one of the waiters counted twenty. It was very stupid, but my uncle thought it was very suitable to the occasion.
At eleven o'clock he was as drunk as a fiddler, so we had to take him home in a cab and put him to bed, and one could easily foresee that ............