To-day, they show him the thief picking
his lock, the assassin watching until he sleeps. We confess that we do
not clearly understand how they will reconcile him with the humanity he
despises, how they will move his pity for the sufferings of the poor man
whom he fears, by showing him that same poor man in the guise of the
escaped felon and the burglar. Ghastly Death, gnashing his teeth and
playing the violin in the productions of Holbein and his predecessors,
found it impossible in that guise to convert the perverse and to comfort
their victims. Is it not a fact that the literature of our day is in
this respect following to some extent in the footsteps of the artists of
the Middle Ages and the Renaissance?
Holbein's drunkards fill their glasses in a sort of frenzied desire to
put aside the thought of Death, who, unseen by them, acts as their
cup-bearer. The wicked rich men of to-day demand fortifications and
cannon to put aside the thought of a rising of the Jacquerie, whom art
shows them at work in the shadow, separately awaiting the moment to
swoop down upon society. The Church of the Middle Ages answered the
terrors of the powerful ones of the earth by selling indulgences. The
government of to-day allays the anxiety of the rich by making them pay
for many gendarmes and jailers, bayonets and prisons.
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