Moral is impotence in action . Every time it fights a vice it is defeated. And Rudolph does not even rise to the standpoint of independent morality, which is based at least on the consciousness of human dignity. His morality, on the contrary, is based on the consciousness of human weakness. His is the theological morality. We have investigated in detail the heroic feats that he accomplished with his fixed, Christian ideas, by which he measures the world, with his charit , d vouement , abn gation , repentir , bons and m chants , r compense and punition , ch timents terribles , isolement , salut de l' me [charity, devotion, self-denial, repentance , the good and the wicked people, reward and punishment, terrible chastisements, isolation, salvation of the soul] etc. We have proved that they are mere Eulenspiegel tricks. All that we still have to deal with here is the personal character of Rudolph, the revealed mystery of all mysteries or the revealed mystery of pure Criticism . The antithesis of good and evil confronts the Critical Hercules when he is still a youth in two personifications, Murph and Polidori, both of them Rudolph s teachers. The former educates him in good and is the Good One . The latter educates him in evil and is the Evil One . So that this conception should by no means be inferior in triviality to similar conceptions in other novels, Murph, the personification of the good , cannot be savant or particularly endowed intellectually . But he is honest, simple, and laconic; he feels himself great when he applies to evil such monosyllabic words as foul or vile , and he has a horreur of anything which is base. To use Hegel s expression, he honestly sets the melody of the good and the true in an equality of tones, i.e., on one note. Polidori, on the contrary, is a prodigy of cleverness, knowledge and education, and at the same time of the most dangerous immorality , having, in particular, what Eug ne Sue, as a member of the young pious French bourgeoisie, could not forget Le plus effrayant scepticisme [the most frightful scepticism]. We can judge the spiritual energy and education of Eug ne Sue and his hero by their panic fear of scepticism. Herr Rudolph indulges in charity and extravagance like the Caliph of Baghdad in the Arabian Nights. He cannot possibly lead that kind of life without sucking the blood out of his little principality in Germany to the last drop like a vampire. As Monsieur Sue tells us, he would have been among the German princes who were victims of mediation had he not been saved from involuntary abdication by the protection of a French marquis. This gives us an idea of the size of his territory. We can form a further idea of how Critically Rudolph appraises his own situation by the fact that he, a minor German Serenissimus, thinks it necessary to live semi-incognito in Paris in order not to attract attention. He specially takes with him one of his chancellors for the Critical purpose of the latter representing for him le c t th tral et pu ril du pouvoir souverain [the theatrical and childish side of sovereign power], as though a minor German Serenissimus needed another representative of the theatrical and childish side of sovereign power besides himself and his mirror. Rudolph has succeeded in imposing on his suite the same Critical self-delusion. Thus his servant Murph and his envoy Graun do not notice that the Parisian homme d'affaires [household manager], Monsieur Badinot, makes fun of them when he pretends to take their private instructions as matters of state and sarcastically chatters about Let us first recall a scene from Rudolph s domestic life. Rudolph tells Murph he was having moments of pride and bliss . Immediately afterwards he becomes furious because Murph will not answer a question of his. Je vous ordonne de parier. [I order you to speak] Murph will not let himself be ordered. Rudolph says: Je n'aime pas les r ticences [I do not like reticences] He forgets himself so far as to be base enough to remind Murph that he pays him for all his services. He will not be calmed until Murph reminds him of January 13. Murph s servile nature reasserts itself after its momentary abeyance. He tears out his hair , which he luckily has not got, and is desperate at having been somewhat rude to his exalted master who calls him a model servant , his good old faithful Murph . After these samples of evil in him, Rudolph repeats his fixed ideas on good and evil and reports the progress he is making in regard to the good. He calls alms and compassion the chaste and pious consolers of his wounded soul. It would be horrible, impious, a sacrilege, to prostitute them to abject, unworthy beings. Of course alms and compassion are the consolers of his soul. That is why it would be a sacrilege to desecrate them. It would be to inspire doubt in God, and he who gives must make people believe in Him . To give alms to one abject is unthinkable! Rudolph considers every motion of his soul as infinitely important. That is why he constantly observes and appraises them. Thus the simpleton consoles himself as far as his outburst against Murph is concerned by the fact that he was moved by Fleur de Marie. I was moved to tears, and I am accused of being blas , hard and inflexible! After thus proving his own goodness, he waxes furious over evil , over the wickedness of Marie s unknown mother, and says with the greatest possible solemnity to Murph: The explanation of the adventures and situations in which Rudolph finds himself involved is to be found above all in Rudolph s adventurous disposition. He loves the piquancy of novels, distractions, adventures, disguise ., his curiosity is insatiable , he feels a need for vigorous, stimulating sensations , he is eager for violent nervous excitement . This disposition of Rudolph is reinforced by his craze for playing the role of Providence and arranging the world according to his fixed ideas. His attitude to other persons is determined either by an abstract fixed idea or by quite personal, fortuitous motives. He frees the Negro doctor David and his beloved, for example, not because of the direct human sympathy which they inspire, not to free them, but to play Providence to the slave-owner Willis and to punish him for not believing in God. In the same way the ma tre d' cole seems to him a god-sent opportunity for applying the penal theory that he invented so long ago. Murph s conversation with the envoy Graun enables us from another aspect to see deeply into the purely personal motives that determine Rudolph s noble acts. The prince s interest in Fleur de Marie is based, as Murph says, apart from the pity which the poor girl inspires, on the fact that the daughter whose loss caused him such bitter grief would now be of the same age. Rudolph s sympathy for the Marquise d'Harville has, apart from his philanthropic idiosyncrasies, the personal ground that without the old Marquise d'Harville and his friendship with the Emperor Alexander, Rudolph s father would have been deleted from the line of German sovereigns. The whole of Rudolph s character is finally summed up in the pure hypocrisy by which he manages to see and make others see the outbursts of his evil passions as outbursts against the passions of the wicked, in a way similar to that in which Critical Criticism represents its own stupidities as the stupidities of the Mass, its spiteful rancour at the progress of the world outside itself as the rancour of the world outside itself at progress, and finally its egoism, which thinks it has absorbed all Spirit in itself, as the egoistic opposition of the Mass to the Spirit. We shall prove Rudolph s pure hypocrisy in his attitude to the ma tre d' cole, to Countess Sarah MacGregor and to the notary Jacques Ferrand. In order to lure the ma tre d' cole into a trap and seize him, Rudolph persuades him to break into his apartment. The interest he has in this is a purely personal one, not a general human one. The fact is that the ma tre d' cole has a portfolio belonging to Countess MacGregor, and Rudolph is greatly interested in gaining possession of it. Speaking of Rudolph s t te- -t te with the ma tre d' cole, the author says explicitly: With the ma tre d' cole, Rudolph obtains possession of Countess MacGregor s portfolio; he seizes the ma tre d' cole out of purely personal interest; he has him blinded out of personal passion. When Chourineur tells Rudolph of the struggle of the ma tre d' cole with Murph and gives as the reason for his resistance the fact that he knew what was in store for him, Rudolph replies: He did not know , and he says with a sombre mien, his features contracted by the almost ferocious expression of which we have spoken. The thought of vengeance flashes across his mind, he anticipates the savage pleasure that the barbarous punishment of the ma tre d' cole will afford him. On the entrance of the Negro doctor David, whom he intends to make the instrument of his revenge, Rudolph cries out: A cold and concentrated fury is seething in him. Then he whispers his plan in the doctor s ear, and when the latter recoils at it, he immediately finds a pure theoretical motive to substitute for personal vengeance. It is only a case, he says, of applying an idea that has often flashed across his noble mind, and he does not forget to add unctuously: He will still have before him the boundless horizon of atonement. He follows the example of the Spanish Inquisition which, when handing over to civil justice the victim condemned to be burnt at the stake, added a hypocritical request for mercy for the repentant sinner. Of course, when the interrogation and sentencing of the ma tre d' cole is to take place, His Highness is seated in a most comfortable study in a long, deep black dressing-gown, his features impressively pale, and in order to copy the court of justice more faithfully, he is sitting at a long table on which are the exhibits of the case. He must now discard the expression of rage and revenge with which he told Chourineur and the doctor of his plan for blinding the ma tre d' cole. He must show himself calm, sad and composed , and display the extremely comic, solemn attitude of a self-styled world judge. In order to leave no doubt as to the pure motive of the blinding, the silly Murph admits to the envoy Graun: At the same time, however, he betrays that this growth of moral hatred is nothing but a hypocritical justification to excuse the growth of his personal aversion for Sarah. The vague moral idea of his increasing hatred of the wicked is only a mask for the definite immoral fact of his increased aversion for Sarah. This aversion has a very natural and a very personal basis, his personal grief, which is also the measure of his aversion. Sans doute! [doubtless] Still more repugnant is the hypocrisy to be seen in Rudolph s meeting with the dying Countess MacGregor. In the end, Rudolph himself discards his Catholic penal theory. He wanted to abolish capital punishment, to change punishment into penance, but only as long as the murderer murdered strangers and spared members of Rudolph s family. He adopts the death penalty as soon as one of his kin is murdered; he needs a double set of laws, one for his own person and one for ordinary persons. The good Rudolph! Burning with desire for revenge, thirsting for blood, with calm, deliberate rage, with a hypocrisy which excuses every evil impulse with its casuistry, he has all the evil passions for which he gouges out the eyes of others. Only accidental strokes of luck, money and rank in society save this good man from the penitentiary. The power of Criticism , to compensate for the otherwise complete nullity of this Don Quixote, makes him bon locataire , bon voisin , bon ami , bon p re , bon bourgeois , bon citoyen , bon prince , [A good tenant , a good neighbour , a good friend , a good father , a good bourgeois , a good citizen , a good prince"] and so on, according to Herr Szeliga s gamut of eulogy. That is more than all the results that mankind in its entire history has achieved. That is enough for Rudolph to save the world twice from downfall"!
The Holy Family Chapter VIII