Draft translation of an unpublished text published in André Le Breton, Rivarol: Sa vie, ses idées, son talent d’après des documents nouveaux (Paris: Hachette, 1895), pp. 258–9. A brief, ironic piece touching on the relation of sacred authority and secular power.
PDF here.
King: ‘How is it, impostor, that you come to my states to found a false religion?’
Apostle: ‘Sir, my religion is not false; nor could it be.’
‘What! Will you prove your religion to me?’
‘No, Sir, I will preach it.’
The nobility is an instrument
polished by time.
The nobility, in the eyes of the
people, is a sort of religion of which gentlemen are the priests and towards
which, among the bourgeois, more are impious than are unbelieving.
The nobles are more or less
ancient coins which time has turned into medals.
Sovereigns ought never to forget
that, the people being a permanent child, the government must always be a
father.
A few “maxims and missiles,” or “pensées et paradoxes,” by the Comte de Rivarol, translated from Rivarol: avec une notice et une portrait (Paris: Mercure de France, 1906), pp. 351–9. For something similar, see “Selections from Vauvenargues” (this blog, 17 September 2020) and “Steps upon the Sand,” Azure Bell (20 October 2020).
Men are
not as wicked as you say. Twenty years it took you to write a bad book; and but
a moment it took them to forget it.
“You spoke
a lot with some rather annoying men.” “I spoke for fear of listening.”
