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.

Albert Dürer, Michael Angelo, Holbein, Callot, Goya, produced powerful
satires upon the evils of their age and their country. They are immortal
works, historical pages of unquestionable value; we do not undertake,
therefore, to deny artists the right to probe the wounds of society and
lay them bare before our eyes; but is there nothing better to be done
to-day than to depict the terrifying and the threatening? In this
literature of mysteries of iniquity, which talent and imagination have
made fashionable, we prefer the mild, attractive figures to the villains
for dramatic effect. The former may undertake and effect conversions,
the others cause fear, and fear does not cure egoism, but increases it.

We believe that the mission of art is a mission of sentiment and love,
that the novel of to-day ought to replace the parable and the fable of
simpler times, and that the artist has a broader and more poetic task
than that of suggesting a few prudential and conciliatory measures to
lessen the alarm his pictures arouse. His object should be to make the
objects of his solicitude lovable, and I would not reproach him for
flattering them a little, in case of need. Art is not a study of
positive reality, it is a quest for ideal truth, and the _Vicar of
Wakefield_ was a more useful and healthy book for the mind than the
_Paysan Perverti_ or the _Liaisons Dangereuses._