LESSON XXXIII.

THE TYRANT TRIUMPHANT.

In those days, a large, civilized, educated, but peaceful nation had a tyrant for a king. That king, emboldened by his first successes, & regarding all of his subjects as so many beasts of burden, said to himself one day: They have borne this, that, & still other taxes; they could bear many others. As a result, the despot announced a new form of taxation, more exorbitant than those that came before. This time, the nation could not stop itself from murmuring, & even offered some resistance. The tyrant, who did not expect an event that seemed to him the height of audacity & insubordination, & was not, moreover, in a mood to yield, flew into a rage that is hard to describe. A skillful politician, he had assembled a great number of soldiers around his palaces, & and at the crossroads of the principal cities in his kingdom, in order to insure indirectly, & under the pretext of a more precise military discipline, the obedience of his subjects, if necessary. His troops were devoted to him, because he took the finest care of them; he showered them with privileges, dressed them superbly and fed them well; & the people paid for all that: like children who are forced to pay the costs of their own punishment.

The despot, in his blind rage, gave the signal to his bodies of troops to gather & swoop down upon the disarmed nation. (The soldiers no longer have relatives, the moment that they are the king’s men.) The dismayed people could see nothing to do but to flee. They took refuge among the mountains, which were abundant in the country, scattering there, secluding themselves in family groups, & left all the cities, all the larger towns, without any inhabitants. The soldiers, tempted by the occasion, (they could not have hoped for a better one), scorned the fugitives, in order to plunder at their ease the treasures that they had abandoned to their mercy; so that the palace of the marvelously well served tyrant was no longer large enough to contain the spoils left by his subjects. His heart quivered with joy at that sight; &, in recognition, he gave a portion of the booty to those who had so faithfully brought it to him. The first euphoria having passed, he wanted to enjoy the honors of triumph in the finest cities of his States. But he could not find anyone to be the witness to it; everyone had disappeared. Go, he told his soldiers, go and tell them that I pardon them; they can return to inhabit their houses; I am satisfied with them. They have abandoned their goods to me; let them come and acquire new ones through new labors. I will protect them with the shadow of my paternal scepter. The unarmed soldiers hurried to track down their countrymen, & urged them to leave their mountains, & set out for the city & their hearths.—We will only leave here in pieces, they responded; divided by families, with no other master than nature, with no other kings than our patriarchs, we renounce forever life in the cities that we have built at great cost, & whose every stone is washed with our tears & dyed with our blood. The soldiers, who were moved, & who, moreover, no longer had any picking to hope for, were converted to peace, to liberty, resolved to remain with their brothers, & sent back their uniforms to the tyrant who awaited them. As for that tyrant, abandoned by all, starving amidst his treasures, in his impotent rage he tore at his own flesh with his teeth, & died, wracked by the agonies of need.