Victor Hugo - The Man Who Laughs - Cosmopolitan University 2

epublican reveries. He did not appreciate the profitable example given
by kings in those grand Babylonian gaieties, which, after all, maintain
luxury. He did not understand the utility of vice. Here is a maxim: Do
not extirpate vice, if you want to have charming women; if you do you
are like idiots who destroy the chrysalis whilst they delight in the
butterfly.
Charles II., as we have said, scarcely remembered that a rebel called
Clancharlie existed; but James II. was more heedful. Charles II.
governed gently, it was his way; we may add, that he did not govern the
worse on that account. A sailor sometimes makes on a rope intended to
baffle the wind, a slack knot which he leaves to the wind to tighten.
Such is the stupidity of the storm and of the people.
The slack knot very soon becomes a tight one. So did the government of
Charles II.
Under James II. the throttling began; a necessary throttling of what
remained of the revolution. James II. had a laudable ambition to be an
efficient king. The reign of Charles II. was, in his opinion, but a
sketch of restoration. James wished for a still more complete return to
order. He had, in 1660, deplored that they had confined themselves to
the hanging of ten regicides. He was a more genuine reconstructor of
authority. He infused vigour into serious principles. He installed true
justice, which is superior to sentimental declamations, and attends,
above all things, to the interests of society. In his protecting
severities we recognize the father of the state. He entrusted the hand
of justice to Jeffreys, and its sword to Kirke. That useful Colonel, one
day, hung and rehung the same man, a republican, asking him each time,
"Will you renounce the republic?" The villain, having each time said
"No," was dispatched. "_I hanged him four times_," said Kirke, with
satisfaction. The renewal of executions is a great sign of power in the
executive authority. Lady Lisle, who, though she had sent her son to
fight against Monmouth, had concealed two rebels in her house, was
executed; another rebel, having been honourable enough to declare that
an Anabaptist female had given him shelter, was pardoned, and the woman
was burned alive. Kirke, on another occasion, gave a town to understand
that he knew its principles to be republican, by hanging nineteen
burgesses. These reprisals were certainly legitimate, for it must be
remembered that, under Cromwell, they cut off the noses and ears of the
stone saints in the churches. James II., who had had the sense to choose
Jeffreys and Kirke, was a prince imbued with true religion; he practised
mortification in the ugliness of his mistresses; he listened to le Père
la Colombière, a preacher almost as unctuous as le Père Cheminais, but
with more fire, who had the glory of being, during the first part of his
life, the counsellor of James II., and, during the latter, the inspirer
of Mary Alcock. It was, thanks to this strong religious nourishment,
that, later on, James II. was enabled to bear exile with dignity, and to
exhibit, in his retirement at Saint Germain, the spectacle of a king
rising superior to adversity, calmly touching for king's evil, and
conversing with Jesuits.
It will be readily understood that such a king would trouble himself to
a certain extent about such a rebel as Lord Linnæus Clancharlie.
Hereditary peerages have a certain hold on the future, and it was
evident that if any precautions were necessary with regard to that lord,
James II. was not the man to hesitate.