Information: A Historical Companion

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INFORMATION
 INFORMATION
A HISTORICAL COMPANION

Edited by Ann Blair, Paul Duguid,

Anja-­Silvia Goeing, and Anthony Grafton

P R I N C E ­T O N U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S
P R I N C E ­T O N A N D O X F O R D
Copyright © 2021 by Prince­ton University Press

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work

should be sent to permissions@press​.­princeton​.­edu

Published by Prince­ton University Press

41 William Street, Prince­ton, New Jersey 08540
6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR

press​.­princeton​.­edu

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Blair, Ann, 1961– editor. | Duguid, Paul, 1954– editor. |

Goeing, Anja-Silvia, editor. | Grafton, Anthony, editor.
Title: Information : a historical companion / edited by Ann Blair,
Paul Duguid, Anja-Silvia Goeing, and Anthony Grafton.
Other titles: Information (Blair, Duguid, Goeing, Grafton)
Description: Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2021] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020025889 (print) | LCCN 2020025890 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780691179544 (hardback) | ISBN 9780691209746 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Information science—History. | Information resources—History |
Information science—Encyclopedias.
Classification: LCC Z665 .I57815 2021 (print) | LCC Z665 (ebook) |
DDC 020.9—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020025889
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020025890

British Library Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data is available

Editorial: Anne Savarese and Jenny Tan

Production Editorial: Natalie Baan and Karen L. Car­ter
Text Design: Carmina Alvarez
Jacket Design: Layla Mac Rory
Production: Erin Suydam
Publicity: Kate Hensley, Jodi Price, and Amy Stewart
Copyeditor: Kathleen Kageff

This book has been composed in Charis

Printed on acid-­free paper. ∞

Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca

10 ​9 ​8 ​7 ​6 ​5 ​4 ​3 ​2 ​1
CONTENTS

Introductionvii

Alphabetical List of Entries xiii

Thematic List of Entries xv

Contributorsxvii

PART ONE

1 Premodern Regimes and Practices 3

2 Realms of Information in the Medieval Islamic World 21

3 Information in Early Modern East Asia 38

4 Information in Early Modern Eu­rope 61

5 Networks and the Making of a Connected World in

the Sixteenth C
­ entury 86

6 Rec­ords, Secretaries, and the Eu­ro­pean Information

State, circa 1400–1700 104

7 Periodicals and the Commercialization of Information

in the Early Modern Era 128

8 Documents, Empire, and Capitalism in the

Nineteenth ­Century 152

9 Nineteenth-­Century Media Technologies 174

10 Networking: Information Circles the Modern World 190

11 Publicity, Propaganda, and Public Opinion: From the

Titanic Disaster to the Hungarian Uprising 211
12 Communication, Computation, and Information 238

13 Search 259

PART TWO

Alphabetical Entries 287

Glossary833

Index8 41
INTRODUCTION

Information: A Historical Companion explores how information has ­shaped and been
­shaped by ­human society across ages past and pre­sent. It offers readers views of history
through the lens of information and views of information through the lens of history.
Such a proj­ect might seem paradoxical. In 1964, the media scholar Marshall McLuhan
declared his the “age of information.” The idea was widely taken up, so that in the fol-
lowing de­cade an IBM advertisement could announce, “Information: ­there’s growing
agreement that it’s the name of the age we live in.” Both announcements thrust infor-
mation to the fore but in the pro­cess suggested that it and related information tech-
nologies of the sort IBM made had created a fundamental break from the past. History,
by ­these and similar accounts, can seem retrograde, irrelevant to forward-­looking in-
formation. This book is built on the belief that, contrary to IBM’s assertion, “growing
agreement” might reasonably be claimed to point another way. Since the 1970s, books,
conferences, and university courses have shown increasing interest in information in
prior ages. In the pro­cess, a growing body of information-­focused research has thrown
new light on both the past and the pre­sent, drawing the two together rather than sepa-
rating them. Indeed, as this book goes to press, two other significant collections, Infor-
mation Keywords and Literary Information in China: A History, are also coming into print.
Together ­those volumes and this one reveal the remarkable range of approaches to and
topics in information history that are raising interest and enthusiasm within academia
and beyond.
For its part, this book assem­bles researchers who have engaged directly with infor-
mation in historical context to illustrate for scholars and general readers alike the breadth
and the depth of t­ hese developing perspectives. The contributors look at the emergence
across history of new information practices, technologies, and institutions as ­these de-
veloped to address informational challenges of their day. In par­tic­u­lar, they look at mo-
ments of confrontation and transition—­beginning, for example, with Columbus’s leg-
endary encounter with Ca­rib­bean socie­ties in 1492—to reveal how approaching ­these
as part of a history of information provides fresh insight into how they unfolded at the
time and how they might be better understood t­ oday. From this starting point, the thir-
teen long articles in part 1 of the book pre­sent a cumulative narrative bringing this
exploration of information in history to the pre­sent. The 101 short entries in part 2 ex-
amine in depth par­tic­u­lar topics that are critical to such an exploration. Together,
contributors to Information: A Historical Companion show how information and infor-
mation technology w ­ ere crucial to e­ arlier ages, as they are to our age ­today.
Information, of course, is an expansive term. Consequently, any starting point for an
investigation can seem arbitrary, and convincing arguments can always be made for
starting elsewhere. But given inevitable constraints of space and time in a publishing
venture such as this, the editors have chosen to focus principally on the *early modern
and modern periods, from circa 1450 to the pre­sent. Nonetheless the early articles and
viii introduction

many of the entries look back well before this to allow the overall collection to develop
a continuous, information-­focused narrative across many historical contexts down to
the pre­sent in the scope of a single volume and with sufficient depth to reveal emergent
and enduring themes. Within this constraint of continuity, the editors sought entries
that engaged diverse issues and places and took distinct approaches to the topic of in-
formation. The attempt to achieve both continuity and diversity makes no claim to com-
prehensiveness. While it is hoped that this se­lection ­will appear judicious, all contribu-
tors, as well as the editors, are aware of inevitable gaps. They hope that the collection
as a w ­ hole can indicate how topics omitted might nonetheless be illuminated by the
overall information perspectives of the collection. Together, the articles reveal recur-
ring responses to social change, thereby making evident over time and across cul-
tures the resilience of attitudes familiar ­today, such as information optimism and in-
formation anxiety or faith in information “solutions” and surprise at their unintended
consequences.
The opening account of Columbus and the Silk Road introduces globalization as one
of the volume’s major themes, represented by emerging networks of travel and com-
munication across Asia, the Islamic world, and Eu­rope. Informational connections in-
evitably ­shaped this “road” as not only silk and spices but also word of supply and de-
mand and technologies such as paper and forms of writing and mathe­matics passed back
and forth, opening new worlds, both literally and meta­phor­ically, to recipients. T ­ hese
exchanges also fostered spiritual and scientific engagements, as intrepid Buddhists, Mus-
lims, and Christians traveled in opposite directions along ­these interconnecting path-
ways, appearing in new environments and before new audiences, then sending back
reports of such encounters. Supporting this circulation, the Silk Road and similar com-
munication channels emerge as complex sets of social, institutional, and geo­graph­i­cal
networks, continuously circumscribed by short-­and long-­distance demands of and for
information. In response to t­hese demands, practices from printing to rec­ord keeping
developed to formalize and reify information in dif­fer­ent ways, and new communica-
tion channels able to carry such reifications arose, including crucially impor­tant forms
of postal networks.
­These developing interconnections played a significant role in shaping what we now
think of as information technologies. Printing, which appeared first in the Sinosphere
and centuries l­ater in Eu­rope, was crucially transformed and transforming in interac-
tions with state, market, and culture. Analyses of t­ hese dif­fer­ent settings and the infor-
mation practices they favored add complexity to the s­ imple determinism that accounts
of information technology other­wise often assume. New information techniques also
accompanied the formation of commercial relations, including the emergence of ac-
counting devices for making and recording market exchanges, such as the financial
“ledger” (a historical, transnational technology whose enduring contribution is evident
­today in the ledgers of Bitcoin and other digital currencies). On the one hand the arti-
cles track an increasing use of information to control and stabilize markets, as well as
attempts by markets to control information in order to commodify and commercialize
it. On the other hand the articles also explore the drive to resist control by removing
restrictions and liberating the circulation of information. This re­sis­tance to control is
particularly noticeable in the accounts of scientific groups and educational institutions
that sought autonomy for members and also for their information so both could circu-
introduction ix

late across national, po­liti­cal, and religious bound­aries. In par­tic­u­lar the development
and spread of new forms of scholarly information included natu­ral histories, encyclo-
pedias, and other kinds of reference works (all in dif­fer­ent ways, of course, forerunners
of this book).
One of the most influential developments explored across this volume is the rise of
the “information state” and its informational apparatus—­chanceries, secretaries, sur-
veillance, archives, and the like—­designed to help assert po­liti­cal control over popula-
tions. Among the most pervasive state-­driven contributions revealed in t­ hese accounts
are the standardization of information, through such t­ hings as forms and questionnaires,
and the quantification such standardization allowed as populations ­were counted in dif­
fer­ent ways for dif­fer­ent reasons. The passport, as one article shows, offers an unex-
pected and insightful view of the state’s attempts to standardize both information and
population and of their normative impact. Conversely, as the state sought to control
­people through information, ­others sought to use information to help control the state,
and inevitably states pushed back. Thus articles in part 1 move from the rise of “public
information” in Japan to the periodical and the press in the West and the emergence of
the information media of the “public sphere” along with state initiatives to control the
press and public opinion directly or indirectly.
The cluster of articles focused on the nineteenth c­ entury and early twentieth cen-
tury track the development of electromagnetic and then electric technologies, including
the telegraph, telephone, phonograph, radio, and tele­vi­sion, showing how ­these tech-
nologies transformed prior assumptions about the relation between information, nation-­
states, and the public. Nonetheless, despite t­hese apparently transformative technolo-
gies, themes of unequal distribution, problematic standardization, commodification,
normativity, and state control return, along with new bouts of anxiety about increasing
quantities of information and contrasting optimism about its potential to create effi-
cient and effective markets and democracies. The final articles in part 1 take the col-
lection from telephone and telegraph into IBM’s “information age” with discussions of
new communication and search technologies, exploring ways in which, despite claims
of “revolution,” recent developments and enthusiasms often parallel ­those discussed
in ­earlier chapters. Throughout, ­these discussions repeatedly raise impor­tant ques-
tions of information politics and ethics that run from Magellan’s (and Columbus’s)
willingness to lie to their crews to the development of propaganda to support state in-
terests and the appropriation of personal information to improve search and surveil-
lance technologies.
While part 1 builds a chronological narrative from the early modern period to the
pre­sent, each of the entries in part 2 focuses on a par­tic­u­lar topic critical to understand-
ing information in history, from accounting, algorithms, and archivists to secretaries,
social media, surveilling, and much more. The 101 short entries, which appear alpha-
betically, are also grouped together u ­ nder a series of thematic categories (the category
“objects,” for instance, includes essays on coins, government documents, and inscrip-
tions) and are linked to one another by cross-­references. The book also contains a glos-
sary, collecting and elaborating terms that may be unfamiliar to readers or that are used
in distinctive ways in this volume. The cross-­references and the glossary seek to sup-
port both the autonomy and the focus of par­tic­u­lar pieces as well as the cumulative
interdependence of the collection as a ­whole.
x introduction

Information’s complex character pre­sents challenges to anyone trying to undertake

this sort of historical enquiry. As noted, influenced by arguments like ­those of McLuhan
and IBM about the “information age,” many assume that information is a critical fea-
ture for the pre­sent age alone. Conversely, other scholars have followed the linguist
and computer scientist Anthony Oettinger, who in 1980 argued that “­every society is
an information society.” Information: A Historical Companion, while recognizing changes
over time, clearly takes the latter view. But in so ­doing, it ­faces questions about whose
notion of information is at stake. Is it the historian’s notion or that of the subjects of
historical study? The latter perspective is exemplified in the words of the historian Peter
Burke, whose Social History of Knowledge (2000–2012) seeks to trace “what early mod-
ern ­people—­rather than the pre­sent author or his readers—­considered to be knowledge.”
This is an impor­tant distinction; hence this book highlights ­people becoming aware of
information as a critical aspect of their lives. But the alternative view, allowing exami-
nation of historical actors who did not have the term or the concept but whose be­hav­ior
can nonetheless be illuminated with insight from current perspectives of information,
is equally impor­tant h ­ ere. Contributors have taken what they have seen as the appro-
priate approach for each topic.
Using the term information itself pre­sents further challenges. Not only does the word
­favor par­tic­u­lar (i.e., Latinate) languages, but even within ­those languages, information
has been used in quite dif­fer­ent ways in dif­fer­ent times and contexts. Given ­these com-
plexities, it might seem plausible to define information as a technical term to be shared
among this book’s contributors, thus putting to one side both historical and con­temporary
variations. Unfortunately, such definitions are as likely to generate as to resolve diffi-
culties. For instance, it seems unexceptional to take “information” as a carrier of mean-
ingful ideas between p ­ eople. Such views, however, must confront the pioneering infor-
mation theorist Claude Shannon, whose work, discussed in several of the pieces that
follow, prob­ably did more than any other to promote ideas of an “information age.”
Shannon’s theory held meaning as irrelevant to information. Many also assume that
information is an objective entity. Yet Geoffrey Bateson’s famous definition of informa-
tion as “a difference that makes a difference” (which is, deservedly, one of the most
cited definitions in this book) portrays information as personally subjective: the ability
to make a difference depends not only on the communication, but also on what the re-
cipient knew before. Similarly, some take information as an autonomous entity that can
be removed from one context and unproblematically presented in another. McLuhan,
however, famously argued that in the age of information “the medium is the message,”
suggesting that context is inescapable.
Overall, the prob­lems of definition are perhaps best exposed in a study in 2007 by
the information scientist Chaim Zins that compiled definitions of information (and data
and knowledge) offered by forty-­five information scholars from sixteen countries. The
compilation revealed 130 distinct notions, with dif­fer­ent degrees of compatibility with
one another, but no one capable of encompassing all the dif­fer­ent variations. Contribu-
tors to this collection proceeded using their own understandings rather than subordi-
nating themselves to a single definition. Their contributions reveal both common and
distinctive threads across the volume’s dif­fer­ent historical and thematic explorations.
Nonetheless, one aim of the book is, where pos­si­ble, to encourage contributors and read-
ers to weave ­these threads together.
introduction xi

While following the development of current scholarship, another goal of this book is
to engage readers outside the acad­emy. Consequently, the book eschews scholarly foot-
notes and long biblio­graphies, offering instead short “further reading” lists. (For ­those
seeking more depth, the editors are maintaining a fuller bibliography of works explic­
itly and implicitly invoked in articles. This can be reached through the Prince­ton Uni-
versity Press website for this book at https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/​
9780691179544/information.) Overall, both long and short pieces work individually and
together to illustrate key facets of information’s *longue durée and wide reach from mul-
tiple perspectives. Again, this collection makes no claim to be comprehensive but rather
aspires to be illustrative. Its editors hope that it ­will provide a range of audiences with
useful and reliable insights, but also that it ­will prompt readers in the developing field of
information history to pursue new questions and fill gaps made evident by this attempt.
Paul Duguid

ACKNOWL­EDGMENTS
The editors would like to extend deepest thanks to the contributors to Information: A
Historical Companion. Their enthusiasm in the pro­cess of putting the volume together,
their responsiveness to comments, the help that they lent to one another, and the qual-
ity of their final submissions all lie quite beyond initial expectations and ­will be, we
are confident, appreciated as much by the readers as by the editors. In par­tic­u­lar, we
would like to acknowledge the work of the authors of the articles in part 1 for both
their remarkable contributions and their significant collaborations with the editors and
with one another. The editors extend similar thanks for their oversight to the proj­ect’s
advisory board, Jean Bauer, Arndt Brendecke, Peter Burke, Michael Cook, Richard Dray-
ton, Markus Friedrich, Randolph Head, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Carla Nappi, Daniel
Rosenberg, and Jacob Soll, several of whom also contributed to the book. The editors
are also deeply grateful to Prince­ton University Press and Anne Savarese and her staff,
in par­tic­u­lar Thalia Leaf, Jenny Tan, and Natalie Baan, for the extraordinary support
and responsiveness provided throughout the pro­cess of assembling the book, and also
to Kathleen Kageff for scrupulous copyediting and Tobiah Waldron for indexing the
volume. Warm thanks also go to Jeremy Norman for the support of his History of Infor-
mation website (HistoryofInformation​.­com) and to Theodore Delwiche for his work on
the preparation of the glossary and related materials. All t­hese ­people helped make a
long pro­cess much easier for the editors, resulting in what, it is hoped, w
­ ill be for all an
informative and rewarding endeavor.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

Part 1 contains thirteen long articles that together provide a chronological narrative of
the history of information from the early modern period to the pre­sent. Part 2 contains
101 short entries, focused on par­tic­u­lar issues central to that history.
The short entries are arranged alphabetically. Each concludes with cross-­references
(labelled “see also”) pointing to other entries in the volume that explore related topics.
xii introduction

For readers interested in further research, each entry concludes with a “further read-
ing” list of books and articles impor­tant to the topic u
­ nder discussion. In a few cases,
such as quotations drawn from secondary sources, brief parenthetical references within
the entry point to their source.
Words marked with an asterisk (*) on first mention within an entry can be found in
the glossary, which defines terms used in specific ways within this book. Foreign words
appear in italics on their first mention within each entry. Foreign terms and titles of
books, newspapers, and the like have generally been translated if they are not explained.
Translations often appear in parentheses after the original name—for example, Tian-
gong Kaiwu (The exploitation of the works of nature) or Frankfurter Postzeitung (Frank-
furt postal newspaper).
A general index aids navigation across the multiple topics and issues that make up
the volume as a w ­ hole.
Fi­nally, an expanded bibliography offered by our contributors on their several topics
can be found through the book’s website, which ­will be linked from the Prince­ton Uni-
versity Press website and updated periodically.
Ann Blair, Paul Duguid, Anja-­Silvia Goeing, and Anthony Grafton
ALPHABETICAL LIST OF ENTRIES

accounting globalization
­albums governance
algorithms government documents
appraising
archaeological decipherment horoscopes
archivists
art of memory indexing
information, disinformation,
bells misinformation
bibliography information policy
books inscriptions
book sales cata­logs intellectual property
bureaucracy intelligence testing
inventories
cameras
cards journals
cases
censorship khipus
coins knowledge
commodification
computers landscapes and cities
cybernetics/feedback layout and script in letters
learning
data letterpress
databases letters
diagrams libraries and cata­logs
digitization lists
diplomats/spies lithography
documentary authority
manuals
encrypting/decrypting maps
error media
ethnography memory, art of: see art of memory
excerpting/commonplacing memos
merchants
files money
forecasting
forgery networks
newsletters
xiv alphabetical list of entries

newspapers recording
notebooks reference books
registers
observing
office practices sales cata­logs
scribes
petitions scrolls and rolls
photocopiers secretaries
plagiarizing sermons
platforms social media
po­liti­cal reporting ste­reo­type printing
postal customers storage and search
printed visuals surveilling
privacy surveys and censuses
professors
programming teaching
proofreaders telecommunications
public sphere translating
publicity/publication travel

quantification xylography

readers
reading against the grain
THEMATIC LIST OF ENTRIES

Concepts notebooks
Formats scrolls and rolls
Genres
Objects
GENRES
­People
Practices ­albums
Pro­cesses bibliography
Systems book sales cata­logs
Technologies cases
inventories
letters
CONCEPTS
lists
cybernetics/feedback manuals
data maps
documentary authority memos
error petitions
governance reference books
information, disinformation, registers
misinformation sales cata­logs
information policy sermons
intellectual property social media
knowledge
media
OBJECTS
networks
privacy bells
public sphere cards
publicity/publication coins
government documents
inscriptions
FORMATS
money
books
databases
­PEOPLE
diagrams
files archivists
horoscopes diplomats/spies
journals merchants
khipus postal customers
layout and script in letters professors
newsletters proofreaders
newspapers readers
xvi thematic list of entries

scribes PRO­CESSES
secretaries
commodification
digitization
PRACTICES globalization
quantification
accounting
storage and search
appraising
archaeological decipherment
art of memory SYSTEMS
censorship
bureaucracy
ethnography
landscapes and cities
excerpting/commonplacing
libraries and cata­logs
forecasting
platforms
forgery
telecommunications
indexing
intelligence testing
learning TECHNOLOGIES
observing
algorithms
office practices
cameras
plagiarizing
computers
po­liti­cal reporting
encrypting/decrypting
programming
letterpress
reading against the grain
lithography
recording
photocopiers
surveilling
printed visuals
teaching
ste­reo­type printing
translating
surveys and censuses
travel
xylography
CONTRIBUTORS

Jeremy Adelman, Prince­ton University Frederic Clark, University of Southern

10. Networking: Information Circles California
the Modern World readers
Monica Azzolini, University of Bologna Brian Cowan, McGill University
horoscopes public sphere
Melinda Baldwin, University of Peter Crooks, Trinity College Dublin
Maryland bureaucracy
journals Lorraine Daston, Max Planck Institute
Lionel Bently, University of Cambridge for the History of Science, Berlin
intellectual property observing
Susanna Berger, University of Southern Surekha Davies, Utrecht University
California maps
printed visuals Paul M. Dover, Kennesaw State
Ann Blair, Harvard University University
4. Information in Early Modern diplomats/spies
Eur­ ope; scribes; secretaries; Johanna Drucker, University of
sermons California, Los Angeles
Lina Bolzoni, Scuola Normale bibliography
Superiore, Pisa Paul Duguid, University of California,
art of memory Berkeley
Paul Botley, The University of Introduction; 12. Communication,
Warwick Computation, and Information
letters Dennis Duncan, University College
Dan Bouk, Colgate University London
quantification indexing
Arndt Brendecke, Ludwig-­Maximilians-­ Matthew Daniel Eddy, Durham
Universität, Munich University
governance (coauthor) diagrams
John Brewer, California Institute of Alexander J. Fisher, University of
Technology British Columbia
networks bells
Michael K. Buckland, University of Devin Fitzgerald, University of
California, Berkeley California, Los Angeles
photocopiers; storage and search 3. Information in Early Modern East
Peter Burke, University of Cambridge Asia (coauthor)
knowledge Christian Flow, University of Southern
John Carson, University of Michigan California
intelligence testing professors
Hwisang Cho, Emory University Markus Friedrich, Universität Hamburg
layout and script in letters archivists
xviii contributors

John Frow, The University of Sydney Richard R. John, Columbia University

commodification 11. Publicity, Propaganda, and Public
John-­Paul A. Ghobrial, University of Opinion: From the Titanic Disaster to
Oxford the Hungarian Uprising (coauthor)
5. Networks and the Making of a Adrian Johns, University of Chicago
Connected World in the Sixteenth privacy
­Century Matthew L. Jones, Columbia University
Tarleton Gillespie, Microsoft Research programming
and Cornell University Lauren Kassell, University of Cambridge
platforms cases
Lisa Gitelman, New York University Vera Keller, University of Oregon
9. Nineteenth-­Century Media lists
Technologies (coauthor) Eric Ketelaar, University of Amsterdam
Anja-­Silvia Goeing, Harvard University/ government documents
University of Zu­rich Matthew Kirschenbaum, University of
appraising; learning; teaching Mary­land
Anthony Grafton, Prince­ton University computers
1. Premodern Regimes and Practices; Valerie Kivelson, University of Michigan
scrolls and rolls petitions
Sean Gurd, University of Missouri, Markus Krajewski, Universität Basel
Columbia cards
publicity/publication Josh Lauer, University of New
Earle Havens, Johns Hopkins University Hampshire
forgery; plagiarizing surveilling
Kenneth Haynes, Brown University Diana Lemberg, Lingnan University
error information policy
Randolph C. Head, University of Rebecca Lemov, Harvard University
California, Riverside cybernetics/feedback
6. Reco ­ rds, Secretaries, and the Erik Linstrum, University of V
­ irginia
Eur­ op
­ ean Information State, circa pol­ itic
­ al reporting
1400–1700; registers Pamela O. Long, In­de­pen­dent scholar
Daniel R. Headrick, Roo­se­velt University manuals
telecommunications Jack Lynch, Rutgers University
David M. Henkin, University of reference books
California, Berkeley Ian Maclean, Universities of Oxford and
postal customers St Andrews
Niv Horesh, Western Sydney University ­ ogs
book sales catal
money Hannah Marcus, Harvard University
Hansun Hsiung, Durham University censorship
lithography (coauthor) Erin McGuirl, The Bibliographical
Sabine Hyland, University of Society of Amer­i­ca
St Andrews office practices; sales cata­logs
khipus David McKitterick, University of
Sarah E. Igo, Vanderbilt University Cambridge
surveys and censuses letterpress
contributors
Emily Mokros, University of Kentucky
documentary authority
Elias Muhanna, Brown University
2. Information in the Medieval
Islamic World
Thomas S. Mullaney, Stanford
University
9. Nineteenth-­Century Media
Technologies (coauthor)
Leos Müller, Stockholm University
merchants
Carla Nappi, University of Pittsburgh
3. Information in Early Modern East
Asia (coauthor)
Paul Nelles, Carleton University
libraries and catal­ ogs
Geoffrey Nunberg (1945–2020),
University of California, Berkeley
information, disinformation,
misinformation
Elisa Oreglia, King’s College London
globalization
Andrew Pettegree, University of
St. Andrews
newspapers
Jamie L. Pietruska, Rutgers
University
forecasting
Andrew ­Piper, McGill University
digitization
Richard K. Popp, University of
Wisconsin–­Milwaukee
media
James Raven, University of Essex
books
Joad Raymond, Queen Mary University
of London
newsletters
Craig Robertson, Northeastern
University
8. Documents, Empire, and Capitalism
in the Nineteenth ­Century; files
Daniel Rosenberg, University of
Oregon
13. Search; data
xix
Joan-­Pau Rubiés, ICREA and Universitat
Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona
ethnography
Annie Rudd, University of Calgary
cameras
Bruce Rusk, The University of British
Columbia
xylography
Paolo Sachet, Université de Genève
proofreaders
Neil Safier, Brown University
translating
Haun Saussy, University of Chicago
archaeological decipherment
Kathryn A. Schwartz, University of
Mas­sa­chu­setts Amherst
lithography (coauthor)
David Sepkoski, University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign
databases
Zur Shalev, University of Haifa
travel
William H. Sherman, The Warburg
Institute, London
encrypting/decrypting
­Will Slauter, Sorbonne Université
7. Periodicals and the
Commercialization of Information in
the Early Modern Era
Daniel Lord Smail, Harvard University
inventories
Jacob Soll, University of Southern
California
accounting
Alan M. Stahl, Prince­ton University
coins
Benjamin Steiner, Ludwig-­Maximilians-­
Universität, Munich
governance (coauthor)
William Sten­house, Yeshiva
University
inscriptions
Ted Striphas, University of Colorado
Boulder
algorithms
xx
Emily Thompson, Prince­ton University
recording
Heidi J. S. Tworek, The University of
British Columbia
11. Publicity, Propaganda, and Public
Opinion: From the Titanic Disaster to
the Hungarian Uprising (coauthor)
Siva Vaidhyanathan, University of
­Virginia
social media
Alexandra Walsham, University of
Cambridge
landscapes and cities
Alexis Weedon, University of
Bedfordshire
ster­ eot­ ype printing
contributors
Kirsten Weld, Harvard University
reading against the grain
Elizabeth Yale, The University of Iowa
­albums
JoAnne Yates, Mas­sa­chu­setts Institute
of Technology
memos
Richard Yeo, Griffith University
notebooks
Helmut Zedelmaier, Ludwig-­
Maximilians-­Universität, Munich
excerpting/commonplacing
PART ONE
 1
PREMODERN REGIMES
AND PRACTICES

On the sixth of November 1492, Christopher Columbus was exploring Cuba. In his jour-
nal, he recorded what the native inhabitants told him: information that filled him with
excitement. They “said, by signs,” that he could find plenty of cinnamon and pepper—­
samples of which he had brought and showed them—­nearby. A c­ ouple of days before,
old men had reported that locals wore gold “on their necks, ears, arms, and legs, as
well as pearls.” True, he also learned that “far away, t­ here ­were men with one eye, and
­others with dogs’ noses who w ­ ere cannibals, and that when they captured an e­ nemy,
they beheaded him and drank his blood, and cut off his private parts.” Even this un-
promising report did not dismay Columbus. On the contrary, it confirmed what he had
believed and hoped since he reached land in October: that he had arrived, by traveling
west across the Atlantic, at the Indies, near China, “the land of the ­great Cham.”
Columbus knew where he was: at or near the eastern sources of the two g ­ reat sets of
trade routes that brought luxuries from the East to Latin Christendom and trade goods
and money from Latin Christendom to the East: the Silk Road and the Spice Route. Both
had functioned, more or less regularly, since the early centuries of the Common Era.
Both had generated wealth for ­those who created silk and harvested spices to sell and
for the numerous intermediaries who brought them to market. And both had been the
sources of information of many kinds, about every­thing from distant lands to the prop-
erties of foods and spices. But both routes had been disrupted, in the thirteenth c­ entury
and a­ fter, by the rise of Mongol power in the steppes of central Asia. In Columbus’s day,
both ­were dominated by Muslim merchants and powers, whom most Christians regarded
as enemies—­but from whom they bought, indirectly or directly, glossy consumer goods.
When he heard tales of gold, pearls, and monsters in his vicinity, he knew he had ar-
rived at the source of luxuries of many kinds. Immediately he inferred that he could en-
rich his masters, the Catholic Kings, both by eliminating middlemen and by domesticating
the natives and putting them to productive work.
Columbus was wrong, of course, about the geo­graph­i­cal facts. He was in the Ca­rib­
bean, not the Pacific, the very existence of which was unknown to him and all other
Eu­ro­pe­ans. And the local knowledge that he gleaned from the Cubans proved inaccu-
rate as well. Accounts of gold, pearls, and spices in Cuba turned out to be greatly exag-
gerated. Investigation—as Columbus l­ater informed the Catholic Kings—­turned up no
men of monstrous form. This comes as no g ­ reat surprise, since Columbus seems to have
extracted ­these reports from the signs made by Cubans with whom he shared no lan-
guage. Yet he had some reason to think as he did. An imaginary map of the world and
its resources had formed over the centuries, as sailors and travelers told, and ­later wrote,
4 chapter 1

tales. Monsters appeared on it, at the far end—­from a Eu­ro­pean perspective—of the
world, next to the lands from which silks and pepper ­were imported to Eu­rope. T ­ hese
ancient images hung before Columbus’s eyes and s­ haped and colored what he saw.
A fter Columbus, travel—­
­ a nd the collection of information about the world—­
underwent a transformation. The Catholic Kings established permanent colonies and
trade networks. They sponsored continuing, systematic collection of information, re-
corded and transmitted by pi­lots with formal training and credentials and military com-
manders with royal commissions. They and their rivals worked with sailors, merchants,
and soldiers to begin the pro­cess that historians refer to as globalization: the uniting of
the globe by institutions, sometimes paper thin but still constructed for the long term
(Ghobrial, chap. 5).
Information travels: it moves, often unpredictably, with the ­people or the mediums
that carry it. Information ­matters: states need reliable ways to collect, store, and access
information and to provide it to their subjects, and merchants and bankers need it to
serve their customers and outwit their rivals. Information abides: so long as its ­owners
also possess a medium that can store it. This chapter sketches three histories of infor-
mation. It follows the trading routes that brought luxuries from China and India across
the world. It re­-creates the information regimes that w ­ ere created to govern the Roman
Empire. And it examines the history of paper, a single medium for writing that had a
power­ful impact. The result w ­ ill not be a survey but a sketch map of some of the ways
in which information was collected and stored, transmitted and accessed, before the
full pro­cess of globalization began.

SILK ROAD AND SPICE ROUTE

Exchange of goods and ideas is as old as ­human settlement. By 3000 BCE, caravans
connected cities and markets across the Fertile Crescent and beyond. But the forms of
trade that took shape early in the Common Era—­and that eventually connected two
­great but distant empires, China and Rome—­differed in scale, as well as distance covered,
from anything that had preceded them. In the third ­century BCE, the Qin dynasty, based
in the wealthy state of the same name, conquered the other six Warring States and cre-
ated a unified government with a power­ful military and civil ser­vice. It and its succes-
sor, the Han dynasty, ruled from 221 BCE to 220 CE. Always confronted by the neces-
sity of feeding their large population, China’s rulers had to encourage agriculture. To
do so it was necessary to protect their farmers from the Xiongnu, horse-­riding nomad
archers who lived on the steppes to their north and defeated them in 200 CE. Early
military expeditions w­ ere unsuccessful. Gradually, it became clear that the silk that the
Chinese had learned to produce, in the Yangtze valley and elsewhere, was unique and
desirable. The heavier and more complex brocades, produced by specialists for the im-
perial court, ­were reserved for the Chinese elite. But farming families also cultivated
mulberry trees, grew silkworms, and produced thin, s­ imple silks, with which they paid
their taxes to the state. T
­ hese silks, the Chinese found, could be traded to the nomads
of the steppes in return for ­horses, which they needed for agriculture. The Han extended
the walls that protected China from the nomads. But they also pierced them with gates,
which in turn became the centers of trading stations. From t­ hese sprang the im­mense
trade network conventionally called the Silk Road.
premodern regimes and practices 5

Across Eurasia, meanwhile, Rome developed ­great military power, which enabled it
to defeat the trading power Carthage in the third and second centuries BCE. In the next
­century, Rome conquered Gaul and Britain, establishing farms and founding new cities,
and took Egypt, which had been ruled since the time of Alexander by a Greek-­speaking
dynasty, the Ptolemies. Roman rule stretched from North Africa to Gaul and from Syria
to Britain. New cities w ­ ere founded, and older Greek cities prospered u ­ nder imperial
authority. As the elite of aristocrats and entrepreneurs who dominated Rome ­under the
emperors became wealthier and wealthier, new luxuries, arriving from China and else-
where in the East, found an ­eager market. Silk shocked Roman traditionalists, who com-
plained that dresses made from it ­were immodest. But it became fash­ion­able nonethe-
less. Roman merchants began to look for larger supplies. Fleets sailed from Alexandria
to the eastern Mediterranean. O ­ thers traveled down the Nile and across land to the Red
Sea coast, from where they could sail to India in search of silk and other goods.
Contacts between Rome and China ­were not direct. Intermediaries ruled the thou-
sands of miles of territory between them. Alexander the G ­ reat’s expedition from Persia
across Af­ghan­i­stan and the Hindu Kush in the fourth c­ entury BCE did not extend his
empire to the ends of the earth, as he may have hoped it would. But it transformed much
of the world nonetheless. Alexander’s conquest of Persia and looting of the im­mense
royal trea­sury spread precious materials through the known world, making pos­si­ble the
creation of more coined money than had ever existed before. His hard-­fought journey
to India and back proved in the most dramatic pos­si­ble way that large numbers of ­people
and animals could move from the Mediterranean to Asia. The Greek-­speaking cities that
he founded across central Asia and the spread of the Greek language and Greek styles
in art and religion, fi­nally, brought lands and ­peoples that had previously existed in
separation into contact with one another—­contact that became more intense and regu-
lar as his successors invested in massive port facilities that supported trade.
Other intermediaries, equally vital, worked on a more local level. In the first ­century
BCE the Yuezhi, another nation of steppe-­dwelling nomads, founded the Kushan Em-
pire in Bactria and India. They created cities modeled, in their layout and architecture,
on t­ hose of the Greek world. Trade generated new forms of settlement, and these, in turn,
perpetuated the trade. Caravan routes developed, which came to dominate central Asian
trade. They also sponsored the growth of what became a new brand of Buddhist reli-
gion: one centered on monasteries, gifts to which ­were strongly encouraged, and which
soon collected massive endowments. Further west, the Nabateans—an Arab ­people who
lived in northern Arabia and the Levant—­engineered ­water systems that enabled them
to ­settle in the desert. They built caravan cities, whose traders moved silk into Parthian
and Roman territory, and ports. Though the Nabateans w ­ ere conquered by the Romans,
the wealth that trade generated for them enabled the creation of Petra, a city cut from
the rocks of a gorge in Jordan. Sculpted façades deftly combined Greek and Roman
architectural forms with local ones. By the third ­century the Sogdians—an Ira­n ian
­people whose lands w ­ ere centered on Samarkand, in modern Uzbekistan—­were also
actively trading along the Silk Route. They set up trading zones everywhere from the
Byzantine Empire to China itself, where they settled in large numbers. T ­ hese and other
nations created the aggregate of trading routes that made up the Silk Road.
Meanwhile a second set of trade routes grew up—­one that intersected with the first
but involved maritime as well as overland trade. For centuries, the inhabitants of
6 chapter 1

southern Arabia—­Arabia Felix—­had tapped trees that flourished in their desert habitat
for aromatic resins like frankincense and myrrh—­the gifts that the Magi, wise men
from the East, bring to the baby Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. Employed in incense,
perfumes, and medicaments, the oil from t­ hese resins came to be valued from China to
Greece. Traders who used camels as their beasts of burden (since they could cross the
desert on their thickly padded feet and required far less w
­ ater than ­horses) formed cara-
vans to carry them to Parthia and Rome. The Nabateans and other intermediaries of-
fered vital help and shelter. As Roman sailors based in Egypt mastered the prevailing
winds of the Indian Ocean, they moved back and forth between East Africa and west-
ern India, where they could exchange t­ hese precious resins and other products for the
even more precious spices made in India and beyond: pepper above all.
The silk and spice trades linked China, Rome, and many lands between in a compli-
cated but effective system of exchanges, one that brought gold and silver, slaves, and
other products from the lands to the west and exchanged them for pepper and incense
as well as fine silks. ­These systems ­were supported more by self-­interest and curiosity
than government policy, more by traders cooperating than by formal institutions. Yet
they proved flexible and resilient. As the western Roman Empire weakened ­after the
fourth ­century, the new city founded by Constantine at the meeting point of Asia and
Eu­rope, New Rome (­later Constantinople), turned into one of the g ­ reat entrepôts for
trade in luxury goods between the edges of the world. Even the Mongol invasions of
the thirteenth ­century and ­after did not cut ­these trade routes, though they changed
them in impor­tant ways. While the techniques used by traders and the sailors who trans-
ported their goods changed over time, t­hese long-­distance trade routes proved strik-
ingly durable.
Information and its transmission ­were woven into ­these trade routes from the start.
The Han emperor Wudi (147–87 BCE) called for an official to undertake an embassy to
the Yuezhi, in the hope of allying with them against the Xiongnu. Only Zhang Qian, a
minor official, proved willing. His embassy turned into an epic. It lasted for thirteen
years, most of which he spent in captivity. He failed to make the treaty Wudi had sought.
But he succeeded in something of much greater import in the long run. His reports,
preserved in l­ater Chinese histories, show that he was a sharp observer with an eye
and ear for detail, who used his time in outside lands to learn an im­mense amount. He
drew up crisp ethnographies, informative about resources, crops, and potential trad-
ing conditions.

An-­si [Parthia] may be several thousand li west of the Ta-­yue-­chi. The p

­ eople live
in fixed abodes and are given to agriculture; their fields yield rice and wheat; and
they make wine of grapes. Their cities and towns are like ­those of Ta-­yuan. Sev-
eral hundred small and large cities belong to it. The territory is several thousand
li square; it is a very large country and is close to the K’ui-­shui [Oxus]. Their
market folk and merchants travel in carts and boats to the neighboring countries,
perhaps several thousand li distant. They make coins of silver; the coins resemble
their king’s face. Upon the death of a king the coins are changed for ­others on
which the new king’s face is represented. They paint [rows of characters] ­running
sideways on [stiff] leather, to serve as rec­ords. West of this country is T’iau-­chï;
north is An-­ts’ai.
premodern regimes and practices 7

One observation in par­tic­u­lar reveals the quality of attention that Zhang Qian brought
to watching everyday life: “When I was in Ta-­hia [Bactria],” he told the king, “I saw ­there
a stick of bamboo of Kiung [Kiung-­chóu in Ssï-­ch’uan] and some cloth of Shu [Ssï-­ch’uan].
When I asked the inhabitants of Ta-­hia how they had obtained possession of t­ hese, they
replied: ‘The inhabitants of our country buy them in Shon-tu [India].’ ” Wudi, impressed
by the active trading systems and range of goods that Zhang Qian’s report described, tried
to follow his recommendation and forge routes to India and Bactria that did not pass through
the lands controlled by the steppe nomads. This enterprise failed, but Wudi extended the
northern wall far to the west and founded garrisons and trading posts. As trade expanded,
the Chinese obtained Indian spices and cloth, Roman glass, and other exotic trade goods—
as well as further knowledge about the kingdoms that produced them. Information made
the Silk Road.
It also traveled. Languages and knowledge of languages expanded. Chinese, for ex-
ample, rapidly became a language of world trade. Trading centers became zones where
several languages might be in use. Palmyra, for example, was a caravan oasis northeast
of Damascus. Once Petra was conquered by Rome, Palmyra became a dominant node
in the caravan routes that brought goods to and from the Persian Gulf. The city estab-
lished garrisons and trading sites in other cities. Many Palmyrenes spoke Aramaic, the
lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean, and wrote it in a distinctive alphabet. O ­ thers
used Arabic, and still ­others ­were conversant in Greek and the Ira­nian language of the
Parthians. In Dunhuang, a city of some thirty thousand inhabitants near the border with
Tibet, forty thousand surviving scrolls reveal that the languages used t­here included
Tibetan, Sanskrit, Chinese, Sogdian—­and, as attested by one scroll, Hebrew. In this small
but cosmopolitan community, as Jacob Mikanowski has written, “Buddhists rubbed
shoulders with Manicheans, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Jews, and Chinese scribes cop-
ied Tibetan prayers that had been translated from Sanskrit by Indian monks working
for Turkish khans.”
Cultural practices and styles moved as far—­and as erratically—as words, transmit-
ted by the artisans who made them, by the products that embodied them, and, above
all, by missionaries and other mi­grants. Palmyra was constructed as a magnificent Greek
city. Its main trading street ran between im­mense colonnades built in three stages, more
than a kilo­meter long, supported by several hundred Corinthian columns. At its core
­were an agora, a theater, and a senate h­ ouse. The reliefs on the sarcophagi of its wealthy
inhabitants showed them reclining, like Greeks, on couches and drinking from goblets.
They w ­ ere following the practices of the Greek symposium, a fundamental part of so-
cial life. Yet they dedicated their main t­emple to Bel, a Semitic god, and—­unlike the
cities of Hellenistic and Roman Egypt and Syria—­never developed a local culture based
on the Greek language; nor did they build the gymnasium that was as central to Greek
cities as the agora was. Chris­tian­ity was carried all the way to China by followers of
Nestorius, a fifth-­century theologian; fleeing condemnation by the church council of
Ephesus in 431, they established a separate church in Persia. In 781, Nestorians de-
scribed the history of their church in China in a long inscription on a stele in the inland
city of Xi’an, which was both the terminus of the silk route and the capital of the ruling
Tang dynasty. They told their story in Chinese and placed special emphasis on both the
imperial f­avor that had allowed them to proselytize and the pursuit of perfection and
purity, which they treated as the core of Chris­tian­ity. Yet even they w
­ ere no more skillful
8 chapter 1

in portraying themselves in the languages of distinct cultures than the Sogdian offi-
cials in sixth-­century Xi’an, whose families commemorated them with monuments in
both Sogdian and Chinese, which emphasized completely dif­fer­ent traits and accom-
plishments. It is often hard to know what a par­tic­u­lar style of building or sculpture,
hair or clothing, or a par­tic­u­lar turn of phrase in a second or third language, meant to
­those who enthusiastically ­adopted them.
Technical information—­especially about the goods traded on the silk and spice
routes—­traveled ­these roads as well. Surviving letters written by Sogdian traders in
the fourth c­ entury offer ­little information about markets beyond brief lists of goods on
sale in a par­tic­u­lar locality. It seems that trade on the Asian silk routes was often rela-
tively modest in scale, carried on by peddlers. But monks also traveled t­ hese routes, as
we have seen, bringing elaborate scriptures and complex doctrines with them. Some-
times their packs may have included much more. In the m ­ iddle of the sixth ­century,
according to the Byzantine historian Procopius, “­there came from India certain monks;
and when they had satisfied Justinian Augustus that the Romans no longer should buy
silk from the Persians, they promised the emperor in an interview that they would pro-
vide the materials for making silk so that never should the Romans seek business of
this kind from their ­enemy the Persians, or from any other ­people whatsoever” (His-
tory of the Wars VIII.xvii.1–2). Justinian had long planned to cultivate silk, and ar-
chaeological evidence suggests that sericulture, like the fashion for silk garments, had
spread from China over the centuries. Once the monks—or someone else—­provided the
silkworm eggs, the emperors made Byzantium a western center of silk manufacture,
which remained an imperial mono­poly. Brilliantly colored silks, stitched with gold
designs, served for centuries to come as material for court garments and as gifts to
foreign powers. Like the transfer of religions, the transfer of technologies was often
encouraged by royal authority.
The trade routes that carried spices—­and, eventually, silks—­across the Indian Ocean
and up the Red Sea w ­ ere also polyglot and cosmopolitan. They carried the spices that
gave food in Rome and medieval and *early modern Eu­rope its sharp, varied flavors. At
first, spices came without much cultural framework. The Roman natu­ral historian Pliny,
writing in the first ­century CE, complained that “pepper has nothing in it that can plead
as a recommendation to e­ ither fruit or berry, its only desirable quality being a certain
pungency; and yet it is for this that we import it all the way from India” (Natu­ral His-
tory XII.xiv.29)—­though even Pliny recommended it for many medicinal uses. Over time,
spices developed multiple preferred functions, as Greek and Arabic medical writers ob-
served their effects and analyzed their working. By the eleventh ­century, Constantine
the African—­a Muslim physician from Tunisia, steeped in the traditions of Arabic med-
icine, who ended his life as a Benedictine monk at Monte Cassino in Italy—­revealed to
readers in the Latin world that cloves, ginger, cinnamon, anise, and several other spices
could remedy sexual impotence.
­Those who traveled the long distances of the spice trade collected technical informa-
tion, to an extent not documented for their counter­parts in central Asian caravans. In
the ­middle of the first ­century CE, a Greek-­speaking merchant captain based in Egypt
took the time to write down, in spoken rather than literary Greek, a rec­ord of the use-
ful knowledge he had accumulated in his time as a trader. The Periplus [Coasting Voy-
age] of the Erythraean Sea is, first and foremost, a practical guide to navigation and trade.
Another random document with
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would altogether go from us. It is through you that we are still
favoured with his countenance occasionally.”
Alice’s tearful eyes had besought mercy for her parent long before
the queen seemed disposed to yield it. While the adherence of the
noblesse to the royal cause was regarded as a matter of course, and
therefore not rewarded with extraordinary gratitude, all symptoms of
halting or defection were observed with scorn, and commented on
without reserve by the haughty woman who regarded her rank and
empire as natural, instead of conventional, and would as soon have
dreamed of being denied the use of her limbs and senses as the
privileges of royalty.
It was through her influence that the king refused to sign the
declaration till the last moment,—when he was compelled to do so at
a tremendous sacrifice of regal dignity;—at the bidding, namely, of
twelve poissardes who forced their way into the presence with the
deputies from the Assembly, and under the compulsion of threats of
what might be expected from the army of eighteen thousand men
who had marched from Paris during the afternoon, under the
enforced command of Lafayette.
Never was anything beheld more dreary than the aspect, more
disgusting than the incidents of this day and night. The skies frowned
upon the scene, and wind and rain added to the difficulty of what
was achieved, and the horror of what was witnessed. The deputies
and their attendants, the poissardes, appeared in the king’s
presence, covered with mud and drenched with rain; the House of
Assembly was crowded with women, who came in for shelter, taking
their seats among the members, now eating and drinking, and now
lifting up an outcry to drown the voice of an unpopular deputy; the
fires of the bivouacs in the streets were quenched with torrents of
rain, again and again, and the peaceable inhabitants were in fear of
being compelled at length to throw open their gates to the rabble.
The leading figure of the mob, however, had a peculiar reason for
disliking the weather, as he took care to show everybody. He was a
gaunt-looking ruffian, with a high pointed cap, and grotesque garb,
well armed, but especially proud of an axe which he carried, ready
for immediate use at the slightest hint from the leaders of the mob.
With all his fear,—the only fear he seemed capable of,—that it
should be rusted with the wet, and he thus delayed in his vocation,
he could not refrain from brandishing it over his head, and displaying
it in sight of the sentinels, and such of the body-guards as looked out
now and then from the palace. This ruffian took his stand
immediately under the king’s window, prepared a cannon as a
convenient block, and waited impatiently for victims. He could not be
persuaded to quit his post for shelter; but he did once step aside for
brandy. On his return, he found two poissardes sitting astride on his
cannon, face to face, tossing off their drams, and devouring the
rations which their prompting demon had taken care to provide. The
executioner warned them off, and prevailed by the offer of a better
seat within five minutes. A hint was enough to show them his
meaning. He just pointed towards an approaching group, consisting
of an unfortunate soldier with whom some of the mob had picked a
quarrel as he was going to his post for the night,—and his captors.
The victim looked dogged. He saw the cold metal block on which the
axe was presently to ring his death-stroke: he saw the fidgetty
executioner, and the fierce women, gathering round, munching their
suppers as if his life-blood was the draught they looked for to wash
down the last mouthful: he saw that no help was within reach or call.
He saw all this, and seemed disposed to take quietly, though
sullenly, what was inevitable. He stood firm while they pulled off his
stock; he moved forwards when they pushed him; he kneeled when
they pressed upon his shoulders; but some impatience in their
manner of doing so excited his passions in a moment to their utmost
strength. Before they could keep him down, he was not only on his
feet again, but bounding high in the air, grappling with the
executioner for the axe, kicking, trampling, buffeting all who laid
hands on him, and creating a hubbub which brought the king to the
window above, and conveyed to the senses of the ladies a
knowledge of what was passing. It was a short struggle; but a
struggle it was to the last, and force alone could subdue the victim.
One virago clutched the hair of his head, and others held down his
feet. When his blood flowed on the ground, and mixed with the
puddles of rain, one or two stooped down to see how the eyes rolled
and the nostrils yet quivered, while, on the other side the block, the
executioner, mindful of his promise, tossed the headless body to a
little distance, so that his friends might sit on it to finish their meal.
What are the invisible issues of life there was no one present to
think, during the whole scene, unless the victim himself might have
been conscious of his thoughts darting that way; but such was the
visible issue of a life which a stupendous and delicate natural
apparatus had been appointed to create, sustain, and develop. It had
originated in the deepest passions of human nature; been
maintained by appliances, both natural and moral, which the keenest
powers can barely recognize, and not estimate; and developed for
objects of which man has only the remotest ken. Such was the
visible issue of this mighty series of operations. That the handy work
of Providence should ever have been thus crushed, and its
mysteries thus boldly made sport of, may in time appear as
incredible as it would now seem that children had ever been
encouraged to pull planets from their spheres in mockery, and
quench the milky way,—supposing such power to have been left in
their hands. In the latter case, who would be answerable for the
profanation? Surely those who taught mockery in the place of
reverence. Who then was answerable in the former case? Those
who made the perpetrators ignorant through oppression, and savage
by misrule. The responsibilities of a certain order through many
centuries were called to judgment during the brief period before us;
and the sentence of condemnation not only went forth on the four
winds to the farthest corners of the globe, but shall be repeated
down to those remote ages when it shall be forgotten on earth,
though recorded in heaven, that man ever shed the blood of man.
One or two more such murders on the cannon and at the palace
gates had not the effect of alarming the court or the really patriotic
leaders of the people so far as to keep them on the watch through
the night. The king believed that all was safe when he had given the
signature which it was the professed object of the expedition to
obtain. The queen was assured by Lafayette that the people were
wearied, and that nothing was to be apprehended till morning; and
the general himself reposed in his hotel in full confidence of the
security of all parties. All were not, however, thus satisfied. Some of
the deputies refused to withdraw from their chamber; and while all
was sleep and silence in the palace, except where some watchful
ear caught the soft tread of the sentinels in the corridors, and the
pattering of the rain without, and at intervals, some tidings from the
passing gust, of revelry in the streets,—while armed ruffians sang
their songs, or snored in their dreams round the watch-fires where
the shrill-voiced poissardes were broiling their rations, or heating
their strong liquors,—a few of the wiser deputies sat, each in his
place, with folded arms, and in perfect silence, while the light of a
single lamp fell on their uncovered heads and thoughtful
countenances, and foresight was invisibly presenting to each
pictures of that which was about to befall their monarchy and
themselves. Revellers, legislators, and sentinels were not the only
ones who watched. One or two, who did not partake the general’s
confidence in the people thus strangely congregated, wandered from
watch-fire to watch-fire, and about the precincts of the palace, to be
in readiness to warn Lafayette of the first symptoms of movement.
Among these was Charles, whose anxiety had been awakened by
the aspect of Paris after the departure of the army for Versailles. It
was well known that Lafayette’s generalship on this occasion was
enforced; and not all the apparatus of triumph amidst which the
troops marched out,—not all the drumming, and military music, and
display of flags amidst the rain, and echo of shouting heard above
the strong winds, could remove the impression of the hollowness of
all this rejoicing,—the desperation of this defiance. When the sights
and sounds were gone, a deep gloom settled down upon Paris. The
shops were shut, the streets were silent, except where the waggons,
laden with meat, bread, and brandy, converged towards the
Versailles road, or where groups of two or three observers whispered
their anticipations to each other, mindful of none but political storms,
and questioning only whether the sun of royalty would not this night
have a crimson setting, to rise upon their state no more.
Charles had been among these observers, and the tidings he
brought home made his wife anxious to depart from this
revolutionary city, and take refuge in their country possessions. She
would be ready to go at any moment, she declared, and when would
there be so favourable a time as when the place was half emptied of
its inhabitants, the police otherwise engaged than in watching the
proceedings of private individuals, and all fear at an end of any
attack upon the wine-stores? Charles was half disposed to listen to
the scheme, though his views of what was likely to happen differed
as widely from his wife’s as the prevailing tone of mind by which they
were influenced. Marguerite feared the worst: her husband hoped all
might yet be well, and thought it, at all events, a good thing that
something decided must arise out of the present crisis. He
determined to follow the march to Versailles, and to return as soon
as he could anticipate the event, to bid Marguerite stay and make
herself easy, or to carry her, her father and children into Guienne.
While she was packing up the few necessaries she meant to take
with her, and persuading all the household but herself to go early to
rest, Charles was reconnoitring the proceedings of such as were
preparing a terrible retribution for those under whose tyranny they
had suffered.
He was no spy; being devoted to no party, and acting for his own
honest purposes; and he therefore used no concealment. He
conversed with the riotous poissardes on public injuries, conferred
with the deputies on public order, and exchanged a few words with
the sentinels on the probability of an attack on the palace in the
morning. The horrible threats breathed over the fires against the
queen, the brutal exultation which appeared through mysterious and
slang expressions respecting the royal household, made him wonder
at the apparent defencelessness of the palace. He was by no means
satisfied that all was safe till morning, and said so to a little muffled
up man whom he found standing in the shadow, close by the great
iron gates. He could not make out whether this man was a mere
looker on, like himself, or a watch appointed by either party.
“Is it your own choice to be out to-night, sir; or are you occupying a
post? Because, in the first case I would direct you where you might
see more of the state of things than here; and, in the other, I would
strongly recommend your appealing to the general for support.”
“Alas! yes. I am sent hither,” replied the quavering voice of the
muffled up person. “None would willingly be abroad this night, and all
my desire is to be left unobserved in this shadow at present;—
unless, indeed, some friend should pass who might protect me, and
from whom I might learn that which I am sent to ascertain.—You
seem, sir, to be an orderly, honest man. Can you tell me whether the
duke,—whether Orleans is at hand?”
“Orleans being the most honest and orderly of men, hey,
marquis?” said Charles, laughing. “So you are sent out by lady Alice
for tidings, and you wait here for them till Orleans passes by—Is it
not so?”
“Ah! what can I do? These canaille will smother me again with
flour, or drag me to the cold cannon;” and here the little man
shivered, and his teeth chattered. “Do but bring me to Orleans, my
good sir, or get me a re-entrance into the palace, and I will——I will
——This morning air is so raw! and I am——I am——not fit for
enterprise.”
Charles fully agreed with him; but having no interest to get a royal
spy housed before his errand was done, he could only tell him that,
to the best of his belief, Orleans was lingering about the road
between Versailles and Paris, or hanging somewhere on the
outskirts of the encampment to witness the issue, without being
implicated.
“Ah! how he is happy in comparison with me!” cried the poor
marquis. “I have never, sir, meddled with politics——”
“Further than as all the noblesse have operated,” interrupted
Charles. “I mean in stimulating the people to meddle with politics.
You have wrought at second hand, marquis, hitherto. Now is your
time for taking your part finally, and acting in it.”
“Alas! what evils come of any one interfering in such affairs but
ministers and deputies! Let them act, and let us be neutral. This is all
I ask.”
“Aye, but, marquis, it is too late to ask this; because there has
been great mistake about what is, and what is not, being neutral. I
dare say you believed yourself neutral when you lay sleeping in bed,
while your peasantry were keeping the frogs quiet in your ponds. I
dare say you had no thought of politics in your boar hunts, or when
three fathers of families were sent to the galleys for alarming the lady
Alice’s brooding doves. Yet you were all the while——”
The marquis’s light blue eyes were now seen by the lamp light to
be opened upon Charles with such an expression of vacant
wonderment that it was plain there was no use in proceeding. He
evidently had yet to learn the true province of politics; and, for his
part, he thought the merchant must have drunk a little too deep in his
own wine, to be talking of peasants and pigeons in connexion with
an insurrection in Paris.—He would never have had courage to leave
his nook by himself; but now that he had met a face that he knew, it
required more courage to remain there by himself, and he therefore
hooked Charles by the arm, and said he would be wholly guided by
him. Charles would rather have dispensed with his attachment, but
could not shake off the old man into darkness and helplessness, if
he himself preferred venturing into the light of the watch-fires, and
upon the threshold of Lafayette’s lodging, whither he was warned he
would be conveyed.
If the marquis had carried a bold front, nothing would have
happened to him, any more than to his companion; but his slouched
hat, halting gait, and shrinking deportment at once drew attention
upon him. The consequence was that he heard double the number
of threats, and imprecations ten times more horrid than had met
Charles’s ears before. If he had now regained entrance into the
palace, he could have told that which would have made even the
queen’s fiery blood run cold, and have given the whole household a
foretaste of worse horrors than even those of the ensuing day.
When they had arrived at the last of the line of fires, the marquis
believed his purgatory to be nearly over, and indulged himself in a
few ejaculations of thankfulness on the occasion. He was overheard,
seized, dragged to the light, his coat torn open, and his hat pushed
back. The queue looked suspicious; the manner of speech, mixed
up, as even these people could perceive, of high breeding and
imbecility, gave assurance that he was a court adherent; to which
there was to be opposed only his own and Charles’s assurance that
he was a companion and friend of Orleans. The knot of drinkers
hesitated whether to cut off his head or let him go, and the marquis
stood panting with open lips and closed teeth, when an amiable
creature, partly masculine in her attire, and wholly so in her address,
proposed a half measure.
“If he is one of them,” she observed, “we shall find him again in the
palace presently; so let us mark him.”
 With the word, she seized the poor man’s nose with the left hand,
a burning stick with the right, and branded his forehead with a cross;
then pushed him away, and turned to Charles, offering to drink to
him in his own liquor, the choicest in Paris, if Orleans said true. She
pointed at the same time to a waggon near, on which, to his
amazement, Charles saw piled wine-casks with his own mark, and
brandy-bottles sealed with his own seal.
Perceiving at a glance that his cellars must have been forced
since he left home, and that all further resistance would be useless,
he determined to yield to his wife’s desire to quit Paris; and he
hastened to discharge his duty of rousing and warning the general,
before turning his back on this scene of disorder.
Lafayette was up in a moment, and, though still trusting in the
peaceable disposition of the people, dressed himself hastily, that he
might be among them by daybreak. Before he could leave his hotel,
however, warning sounds came from the direction of the palace, and
messengers succeeded one another rapidly, stating that an attack
was being made on the great iron gates, that blood had already been
shed, and that the lives of the whole royal family seemed to be at the
people’s mercy. The general threw himself upon a horse which
happened to be standing saddled below, and galloped off, before
Charles could recommend the marquis de Thou to his protection,
should he happen to find him in the hands of the populace. His own
anxiety to get home was such as ill to brook any delay, and to admit
little other interest of any kind; but chance threw him once more in
the path of the old man.
As he was making the best of his way towards the Paris road,
stemming the tide of people that was rushing towards the palace, he
was suddenly jostled and thrown down by an impulse in the contrary
direction. Nor was he the only one. Many were bruised, some
trampled, while a fugitive burst through the throng, followed by a knot
of pursuers, who overthrew all that came in their way, while their
mingled curses and laughter contrasted strangely with the panting
cry of the pursued. Some cried out that it was the king; others
uttered imprecations against him as one of the hated guards; while
Charles saw, amidst his tattered, scared, and helpless condition, that
it was no other than the poor marquis. His desperation gave the
hunted man strength to clear the mob, and to fly some way beyond,
till he reached the trees of the avenue, where there was an end of
his safety unless some better aid was brought him than his own
failing strength. His enemies dogged him, surrounded him;—some
brandishing pitchforks, others large knives, and not a few firing off
their muskets to give a new impulse to his terror. This sight was
intolerable to Charles, who saw in such cruelty none of the
palliations which he had admitted in the case of some former acts of
violence. Forgetting all but what was before his eyes, he snatched a
pike, threw himself in front of the pursuit, reached the victim just as
he fell exhausted at the foot of a tree, and stood astride over him,
with one hand in an attitude of defence, while the other beckoned to
the people to listen. He shouted amid the din, and the few words
which were heard by those nearest to him served his purpose of
diverting their thoughts from immediate murder. He told them that, in
the name of the marquis’s tenantry, he demanded that the marquis
should be placed in the custody of the Assembly of deputies, to
answer for an infringement of the new laws by which the property of
the peasantry was protected. He told them that the general was
gone to the palace, to mediate between the queen and the
poissardes, and as it would be a pity that those who heard him
should be absent from so interesting a spectacle, he and one or two
more would take charge of the criminal, and convey him before the
sitting deputies. A well-timed roll of the drums and discharge of
musketry confirmed his appeal, and drew away his auditors, so that
in a few moments, when the last lingerers had gratified themselves
with pricking their victim a little with the points of their various
weapons, Charles found himself alone with the almost lifeless old
man.
On hearing that his further existence probably depended on his
reaching the assembly while the mob was engaged elsewhere, the
marquis made an effort to rise and walk, and found himself so much
less hurt than frightened that he accomplished the transit with small
difficulty. Such a deplorable object was never before presented to
the Assembly, at least under the title of a marquis. He had scarcely a
shred of clothing under the soldier’s cloak which Charles had
borrowed from a sentinel at the door. His powdered hair was dripping
with rain, and his face smeared with blood. He wept bitterly;
murmuring, in the tones of a woman, his wonder as to what he could
have ever done to offend the people, and how the world could have
grown so cruel and ungrateful. The Assembly had little leisure at this
time, and were glad to accept Charles’s offer of conveying the
prisoner away, and his guarantee that the marquis should set out for
his estate in the provinces without delay, and not return till the
troubles of the capital were at an end. The marquis was little
disposed to make opposition.
“Take me away,” he said, “though I only fly from one doom to
another. You say my tenants are enraged against me; and I say that
they will drink my blood. The vile are sovereigns in these days, and
the noble have the knife at their throats from day to day. O, if they
had killed me under the tree, it would have been over; but now it is
still to come. O save me! Do not leave me! Make me your servant.
Employ me as you will; but do not let them kill me!”
Charles recommended that the old man should in fact travel into
Guienne as his servant, and take possession of his chateau or not,
according to the apparent disposition of the peasantry when they
should arrive.—Not a moment was to be lost in proceeding to Paris,
if the departure of the family was to take place while the populace
and the troops were engaged at Versailles, and the whole attention
of the magistracy was directed upon what was passing there.
An empty cart was found in which to stow the marquis, while his
protector walked by its side. They left behind them the most fearful
spectacles of that day,—the murder of some of the guards, the
narrow escape of the queen, the brutal joy of the mob at the
enforced consent of the royal family to be conveyed to Paris, and the
beginning of that dreadful march itself, as anomalous, as disgusting,
as any spectacle that was ever presented as a pageant. But, one
circumstance which signalized that march, they were also witnesses
to. Half-way between Versailles and Paris, on a mound planted with
trees, a figure was seen, moving behind the stems, and peeping
forth at every sound of wheels or footsteps. It was Orleans, who had
stationed himself here to watch the issue of his plot,—the return of
the expedition, with the bodies of his royal cousins, dead or alive.
 With some difficulty, he was persuaded to come down and speak
to his humble servant the marquis; and when he did greet him, it was
with something very like a smile at his crest-fallen appearance, and
querulous complainings.
“My good friend, these are strange times,” he observed. “I should
think your valet has hardly had time to attend to you this morning.
However, you will find plenty unoccupied at Paris to renew your
powder.—O, you wish to go at once, and shoot on your own territory.
Well; perhaps you are wise, since our kind of shooting here is not
exactly to your taste. You must take care, however; for I hear that
more bullets fly from behind the hedges there than in the open fields.
Farewell, my dear sir, for I see your companion is impatient. He
wants to be keeping guard over his wine-cellars. I wish him an ample
fortune out of the wines therein contained at this moment.”
Charles’s impatience was not only on account of his own affairs.
He distrusted Orleans so far as to be vexed that the marquis
whispered to him their plan of escape. There was no particular sign
of interest in the duke’s countenance at the relation; and it only
remained to be hoped that no harm would come of this unnecessary
confidence. The marquis was far from thinking it unnecessary, as a
word from the duke would procure passports for the whole family.
This word Orleans was prevailed upon to write, and furnished with it,
the marquis poured out his gratitude more vehemently than, but a
few months before, he would have supposed possible; and then
bade his vehicle proceed, watching from a distance how the duke
once more passed the enclosure, and took his station among the
trees as before.
The cellars were found to be indeed more than half emptied; and
of the casks that remained, one or two were staved, to drown the
gunpowder and other combustibles. No attack had been made upon
the house, and Marguerite had sufficiently got the better of her
terrors, to be ready for immediate departure. No obstacle arose, and
Steele, with Pierre under him, consented to remain in charge of the
property till Charles could return, after having deposited his family in
security.
The marquis made a rather singular-looking valet, with a manner
alternating between superciliousness and awkward deference,—a
strutting gait when he forgot what he was about, and a cringing one
when he happened to cast a glance upon his dress. He passed
muster very well, however, as a battered old soldier turned valet; his
strut passing for regimental paces, and his cringe being ascribed to
the honourable wounds he was supposed to bear. M. Raucourt took
off the attention of all who might be disposed to make remarks, by
telling everybody that he was going to see his olive groves. The
party travelled with more speed than the dismal procession from
Versailles; so that before the royal family was mournfully ushered
into the Hotel de Ville at dusk, Charles and his household were some
leagues on their journey southwards.
 Chapter VIII.

UPSHOT OF FEUDALISM.

The hopeful disposition of both Charles and Antoine was remarkable

at all times, and in whatever society they were. When they were
together, it became well nigh excessive, and occasioned no little
amusement to their friends in happy times, and much sighing from
the apprehensive Marguerite in such evil days as they were now
fallen upon. Each excited the other to perceive bright specks on the
dark horizon, and neither would lag behind the other in discerning
cause for encouragement, and in pointing out that, as good had
issued from apparent evil in some former analogous instance, it
would be a sin to doubt that the same thing might happen again.
Marguerite was almost offended that, while she looked tremblingly
around as the dancing waters of the Garonne first flashed upon their
sight under the gleam of an October sun, her husband encouraged
the joyous gestures of the children standing on his knee, and burst
out singing one of the popular provincial airs to which the banks of
that river so often echo. But when Antoine came forth to meet them
as they alighted, in high spirits, though he had actually nothing good
to tell them, however disposed to hope for everything blissful,
Marguerite turned from him to her father, as the most reasonable
personage of the two.
Antoine was beginning a laugh at his brother’s first choice of the
luxury of a valet, but checked himself instantly on hearing who it
was, and wherefore.
“Do you suppose he may safely dress himself, and appear to
arrive at his chateau to-morrow?”
“Why, scarcely yet, perhaps,” replied Antoine, gravely. “The
peasantry are in an uncomfortable, irascible state, and the poor man
would hardly have fair play among them; but it cannot last long, and
then we shall have him trampling our crops again as solemnly as
ever; perched, like a wax figure, on horseback, and utterly unable to
comprehend such a thing as a curse against himself; or to bestow a
thought as to whose ground he is trespassing upon.”
“Let us hope he has learned more consideration by his
misfortunes,” said Charles. “At any rate, he may yet learn it by using
his eyes and ears in the interval between this hour and his
restoration to his honours and privileges,—which I suppose will
happen by the time he has learned to tie his own queue according to
his own fancy. Meanwhile, how is Favorite?”
“O, our beauty! She has rather languished this season; but she will
be all the more brilliant next year; for two bad seasons give a pretty
fair security that the third will be good. It is as if the steam of blood
had come from your city, Charles, like a blight, and shrivelled her
swelling fruit. The crisis is come, you say. There will soon be no
more blood, and wine will gush instead. Yes, yes, next season all will
be well.”
“But our peasant neighbours, Antoine. Has their condition
improved as you were confident it would?”
“How should it yet? The time is not come. They have not yet got
over the scarcity of last year. But the woodcocks will soon be here;
and the lady Alice’s doves multiply all the faster now they are left to
themselves; and in the spring, there will be a greater resource of
cattle, and of their milk; and the bad seasons have not destroyed our
fish. We are planning to get larger and larger supplies from
Bordeaux, as well as to send out more boats upon the river.”
“Corn is too dear, at present, I suppose, for the poor, if indeed you
have enough for the rich?”
“We are all somewhat better off in that respect than we were; but a
great part of the discontent arises from the incessant changes in the
value of whatever we get to eat, as long as the supply is turned out
of its usual course. When we can no longer depend on an article
whose supply is usually pretty regular, and its price not very variable,
we are subject to a perpetual rise and fall which we cannot calculate,
and which brings disappointments to the people which they are ill
able to bear.”
“How do you mean? I thought our poor helped out their
subsistence by nettle broth and frog stew; and for these, I suppose,
they pay neither labour nor money?”
 “No; but they must have something in addition. Presently it will be
woodcocks—the most uncertain article of food that can be. If there
should be a fine flight of them to be had for the killing, labour will
become cheaper to us capitalists, while the labourers will be better
rewarded: that is, it will cost us less to feed our labourers, while they
will get more food for an equal quantity of labour. This, while it lasts,
lessens the cost of production, and if it went on a whole year, would
cheapen our corn considerably next harvest. But the resource lasts a
very short time, and the reduction of the price of corn, therefore, is
only of that temporary kind which proceeds from a relaxation of
demand. Before the people well understand how this is, the cattle
begin to come in from the woods,—more numerous than ever, from
so much arable land having, since the storm, yielded a kind of rude
pasture. This is a somewhat less uncertain resource than the
woodcocks, and lowers the value of corn for a longer period. What I
want, to fill up the intervals of these uncertain supplies, is a
permanent provision of fish.”
“How strangely the values of things are turned topsy-turvy!”
exclaimed Charles. “Time was when our peasantry would no more
have thought of dining off woodcocks than I of giving my servants a
daily dessert of pine-apples. Dainty game of that sort is commonly
thought to rise in value with the progress of improvement.”
“And so it does; and that it now exchanges for less either of money
or bread, than the commonest sorts of meat did three years ago, is a
proof that our condition has gone back instead of improving. It is a
proof that the produce of our toil is scantier than it was; that the
produce which we cannot command—that which comes and goes
without our will and pleasure—exchanges for less when there are
more to demand it.”
“We may say the same of cattle.”
“Just at present; because our cattle is for the most part wild,
having got abroad into the woods at the time of the hurricane. But
when we have collected our flocks and herds again, and can attend
to their breeding, so as to proportion the supply to the demand, we
shall find their value permanently depend, like that of the crops with
which they will then be fed, on the cost of production.”
 “Of course, if they feed on crops grown for their use. At present,
when they pasture themselves on land which would otherwise lie
waste, they are cheap when there happens to be, a sufficient supply
of fish and woodcocks, because there is little cost of production;—no
rent, little capital, and less labour. Any sudden rise of value proceeds
from a temporary increase of demand. It is to equalize the demand
for butcher’s meat, that I and some of my neighbours want to
procure a regular supply of fish.”
“Yet fish is an article whose value rises with the progress of
improvement. It must do so in proportion as more labour is required
to procure an equal supply for an extended market. As years pass
on, Antoine, we shall have to fit out more boats for the river, and to
build them larger, and man them better, as we have to send them out
farther. But then there will be more of other things to give in
exchange for fish.”
“True; but at present we cannot give our fishermen what they think
a fair premium upon their cost of production, because our cost of
production, the cost of the labour we give in exchange, is
extraordinarily high.”
“Do they complain of the price you give?”
“Very much, but that cannot be helped. We complained of their
social price in old days,—of having to pay, not only the profits and
wages necessary to procure the article, but the market dues, which
were very oppressive. They answered that they did not pocket the
dues, and could not help the high price. Now they complain that (the
dues being lately remitted) they cannot even secure their natural
price,—that is, a reasonable profit in addition to the cost of the
labour.”
“If they cannot do this, why do they supply you? They will not
surely go on furnishing the market with fish at prime cost.”
“Certainly not, for any length of time; but, till the woodcocks come,
they must submit to wear out their boats a little, without an
equivalent, looking forward to the time when we may again afford
them a fair market price,—which will, by that time, be a money price;
for then we shall be able to get out of our present inconvenient state
of barter, and the coin which has disappeared will have found its way
back.”
 “Meanwhile, the people, you say, are discontented as much at the
fluctuations in their affairs as at their absolute want of many
comforts.”
“Yes; we hear perpetual complaints that no man can now calculate
how much his labour is worth. So many hours’ work will one week
bring him two good meals, and at another, not half an one. If they go
into the woods for game, so many head may to-day exchange for a
coat,—to-morrow for a house.”
“Much of this hap-hazard must also be owing to the uncertainty of
public affairs. If we could but foresee whether we really have arrived
at the crisis,—whether trade will probably flow into its natural
channels again after a certain fixed period, our condition would
immediately improve. There is no other such effectual regulator of
price as clear anticipation, because it enables us to calculate the
ultimate cost of production, on which exchangeable value finally
depends.”
Antoine observed, in a low voice, that the most suffering of his
poor neighbours had lately begun to indulge in a new sort of
anticipation. They had been told,—and nobody was aware whence
the report arose, that there was a room full of coin in the chateau of
the marquis de Thou. Their own coin had somehow gone away from
them, and they fancied that, if they could but get any instead of it, all
their woes would immediately cease. Antoine had reason to believe
that the chateau would soon be attacked, unless some means of
undeceiving the poor creatures could be discovered.
The brothers comforted themselves, according to their wont, that
such means could not fail soon to present themselves. It was
impossible that so gross an error could long subsist. Their
confidence did not make them the less watchful to aid the
enlightenment of the people around them; for their hopefulness was
of that kind which stimulates instead of superseding exertion. La
Favorite experienced this; for, amidst all their hopes of what her
beauty would be next year, they toiled to repair her losses and
renovate her vegetative forces. Charles could not have brought
himself to return to Paris till this was done, even if he had been
satisfied to leave Marguerite in charge of the marquis.
 This gentleman chose soon to free the family from his presence,
against their advice; even in the face of their strong remonstrances.
Like many who are deficient in physical courage and mental
strength, he was rash and obstinate. As soon as he had recovered
from his astonishment at not being killed on the day of his arrival, he
began to be certain that there was no further danger, and, blind to
the manifold tokens of his extreme unpopularity, which might have
greeted his senses and understanding at any hour of any day, he
determined on secretly quitting his disguise, without troubling his
kind friends to reason any further with him. One morning,
accordingly, his valet’s dress was found on the floor of his chamber,
and on his table, a note of ample, though haughty thanks to his
preservers; and by noon, the marquis’s old steed, bearing a rider
whose skirts, blue eyes, and entire deportment could not be
mistaken, was seen to trample new ploughed fields, and give
promise of riding over heedless children, as before.
The last thing that entered the old man’s head was altering his
modes of procedure in any one respect. He could not escort lady
Alice, because she was not there; but he paced the terrace, in an
afternoon, with his head half turned, as if he saw her ghost beside
him. He could not lead a long train of hunters, because some of
them were in Austria, some in England, and one or two already laid
headless in a bloody grave; but he galloped forth on the same
routes, making the most of the two or three servants who followed
him still, and returning in state to sit solitary at the head of a long
table, and toast his own loyal sentiments. What was worse,—he
trampled his poor neighbours when they came in his way, and
overlooked them when they did not, as if he had never been branded
by a poissarde, or hunted in the avenue at Versailles.
All this, it may be supposed, soon came to an end,—and by
means which proved the error of the popular belief about the
chamber full of gold at the chateau. Out of pure humanity, Charles
repeatedly vanquished his resentment at the marquis’s supercilious
treatment of him, and offered warnings of the blackening gloom
which settled in the faces of the peasantry when the little great man
came in sight; but the marquis had got it into his head that Charles
had an interest in frightening him. He thought he had been more
frightened than most men already, and wisely determined to be so
no more. He bowed, laid his hand on his heart, disengaged his rein
from the friendly grasp, and passed on.
“My hopefulness is nothing to his, Marguerite, after all,” observed
Charles. “You say I hope against hope. He hopes against reason.
The difference is that the one hope will vanish when most wanted,
and the other, I trust, never wear out.”
One night, when there was no moon,—one of the longest winter
nights,—no moon was wanted for a space of some miles on the
banks of the Garonne. Instead of the boats sailing black in the silver
beam, they passed crimson in the fiery glare. The sheeted snow
glittered and sparkled as if it had been noon instead of midnight: the
groves dropped their melted burden, and stood stiff and stark in
wintry bareness, stripped of the feathery lightness in which they had
risen against the evening sky. Cries which ill beseem the hour of
sleep roused the night-birds, and volumes of red smoke spread
themselves abroad to eclipse the stars. Charles’s steps were
directed towards the chateau before he had received any notice, but
from his own apprehensions, whence the fire proceeded which had
scared his children from their beds. He arrived in the court-yard,—
not in time to save the marquis, but to speak with him once more.
The old man was bound to the balustrade of his own terrace; and
an executioner stood beside him with an upraised and gleaming
sword. His appearance was much what it had been on a nearly
similar occasion before. He attempted to spring forward, and a
gleam of hope shot across his countenance when the brothers
appeared: but there was a something in their faces which checked
the emotion, and his jaw dropped once more.
All efforts, all stratagems were vain. The people declared
themselves unpitying to tyrants, and resolved to do away with
despotism in their quarter of the land, in like manner with their
brethren in Paris. Five minutes for preparation was all they would
allow, and even Charles at length despaired of further favour. He
approached the victim with a calm and serious countenance. The old
man looked up.
“Is there no hope?”