The Petitpaon Era

by Henri Austruy

  Bernard Petitpaon knew that the functions of director of the Lyrique Grand-Mondial did not consist solely of mounting, in the best possible frame, lyric productions of more or less appreciated vintage. He was aware of the tradition that made ballet the soul of the House, and he dreamed of fusing the soul in question with the soul of France.

  With that aim, while conserving for the subscribers a legitimate respect for their fortunes and titles, he opened wide the Eden of the wings to everyone connected with the public powers: ministers, senators, députés, functionaries and influential journalists, stars of all shades and all shapes, invited by him, came into conjunction with the variously colored stars of song and dance.

  With a satisfied Olympian eye, Petitpaon attentively followed the variations of curves of tenderness established between the members of his troupe and those of the governmental troupe. An ostentatious handshake, given at the right moment to a cavalier disdained by his lady, immediately re-heightened the fellow’s prestige, and Petitpaon, like a cockerel voluntarily descending from the breach, watched the joys of false marriages of which he was the parent blossoming gratefully around him.

  One evening, a young député from the Midi to whose heart he had rendered many services, confided in him, in a fit of sincere admiration: “What damage a man like you could do in politics!”

  “Yes, that’s true!” Petitpaon cried, without making any attempt to put the slightest hint of modest into his brazen voice. “The fact is that my thoughts have never settled upon a personal political view—but it’s an idea, my boy. Thank you! We’ll talk about it again.”

  Bernard Petitpaon did talk about it again, and waited impatiently for the general elections to take, from the young député who had shown him the road to Damascus, his own seat.

  Petitpaon entered parliament, the aureole with which the profane are pleased to ornament actors worn with swagger but without any arrogance, and the former director of the Lyrique Grand-Mondial was seen in the corridors of the Chambre, untiringly shaking the hands extended to him; his lowered voice, still thunderous, posed a question that always made the other blush slightly: “Still obliging, the girl?”

  The time that public affairs left him, he loved to consecrate to irregular hearths for which he had provided the first spark, and whose flickering flames he reanimated with a tutelary breath, like a vestal.

  The amicable frankness of his relations was soon translated, during a Cabinet reshuffle, into the portfolio of Agriculture, which a delegation of different groups in the two Assemblies begged him to accept.

  “Agriculture lacks arms? I shall put mine at its service! It’s quite natural,” Petitpaon had replied, without the slightest hesitation, adding: “Besides which, I once guided a plow! It was in Cincinnatus, the opera by Pistonnet.”3

  Never had France possessed a minister endowed with a similar vocal power. In the four corners of the land, great cities and small towns inconvenienced by inaugurations, agricultural shows and scholarly or patriotic fêtes competed for the sonorous Excellency.

  Bernard Petitpaon never declined an invitation; he spent his life under triumphal arches of cardboard and verdure, on stages embellished with tricolor flags and notable indigenes, in decorative corteges of gendarmes, soldiers and foremen; he presided over countless banquets, celebrating with ardor and conviction the benefits of peace, the grandeur of war, the pleasure of being young, the glory of being old and the joy of being French for everyone who is not a foreigner.

  Unfailingly, he declared the absolute superiority of the people, livestock and products of the region where he happened to be, and among the citizens there were surges of enthusiasm; as for the women, those of the people, who left to bluestockinged ladies the literature and perverse idea of Pasiphaean love, they compared his male organ to that of a bull.

  In the same way that he had resisted the intoxication of his artistic success, Bernard Petitpaon did not allow himself to get drunk on an enormous popularity of excellent quality.

  One day, in Perpignan, his cradle, between two members of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, his compatriots and friends, he was occupying the place of honor at a banquet organized to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the foundation of the Syndicate of Turnip Farmers when a coded telegram brought him the news that a coronary embolism had just abruptly robbed the Republic of its President.

  An instinctive sign of the cross escaped the right hand of the Minister of Agriculture, who rose to his feet in order to ask the official representatives of the cruciferous vegetable for permission to retire, as a sign of mourning. Forced to give further explanations, an immense clamor responded to him:

  “The President is dead! Long live the President!”

  Slightly pale for the first time in his life, Petitpaon was not sure that he understood. The chorus of turnip-merchants made it more precise with loud cries of: “Long live Petitpaon! Petitpaon for the Élysée.”

  The Grandmaster of Agriculture caused a few tears of emotion to roll down his cheeks, took out his watch and ran to leap on to a train departing for Paris.

  Mitrouffe, the President of the Council, who thought himself the natural designate of a vote of the National Assembly, summoned his colleagues in order to render his candidature official. Favored with a mediocre exterior and excellent health; full of illusions regarding his physique, he began by declaring that, in his opinion, France needed a decorative man.

  By means of a rapid glance in a mirror, Bernard Petitpaon assured himself that he was, in every respect, the man of that dream.

  Mitrouffe continued to enumerate the qualities indispensable to a good President of the Republic, and, throwing into the balance the renown of his invincible health, he desired above all that the man chosen to receive the grandees of this world should be endowed with a good constitution.

  “Like that of 1875!”4 approved the Minister of Agriculture, toward whom the Cabinet’s ten pairs of eyes turned.

  A few seconds of solemn silence went by—a silence that it was Bernard Petitpaon’s prerogative to break with the simple words: “I am the man that France needs.”

  Forty-eight hours later, Bernard Petitpaon returned from Versailles in the traditional landau hitched to four horses, two of them mounted by postillions, escorted by artillerymen.

  After having accompanied to the Panthéon the mortal remains of his predecessor, the President of the Republic devoted himself body and soul to his duties. He doubled his domestic staff, had the ceremonial carriages repainted, ordered the purchase of horses so large that it was necessary to raise the stable doors in order to let them through, recommended the Service du Protocole to mount guard with jealous care, and demanded that the courtyard of the Élysée be swept every day and washed in the summer.

  With a sumptuous ease, Bernard Petitpaon received kings, emperors, a shah, Indian princes and potentates of various colors and extractions, sometimes of vigorous strength, from distant islands and mysterious continents.

  However, a man of Petitpaon’s scope could not restrict his functions as the first magistrate of the Republic to foreign affairs alone. He had adopted as his motto: “I think, therefore I act!” and often, in the company of his intimates, he slapped his forehead, saying: “I feel that there’s something there!”

  The question of world peace came up, bristling with reefs, complicated by difficulties of every sort; diplomats and thinkers of all countries had lost therein the strength of the sturdiest legs, or what remained of their gray matter, when, a new Minerva of whom Petitpaon would have been the Jupiter, peace emerged fully formed from the presidential brain.

  Every profession exercised for some time leaves its indelible mark on the body and the mind; in the great circumstances of life, men often seek points of reference and analogical relations in their métier to judge all things. Bernard Petitpaon instinctively thought of what had come of peace and war in the theater. He remembered the evenings when, sword in hand, he had engaged in frantic battles; he recalled the boards of the stage
strewn with the dead and wounded; he added up the total of the Philistines that he had slain with the homicidal jawbone of an ass, at the rate of a thousand a time for more than three hundred performances.

  However, those horrible carnages had never shed veritable blood. The curtain had scarcely fallen than the dead rose up again, the best places in the distribution of roles responding with bows to the applause, the simple spear-carriers returning to their dressing-rooms to take off their costumes, ready to be killed again tomorrow of the script demanded it.

  The President asked himself why it was not the same in what is conventionally called “real life.” The response came so rapidly that he only just had time to convene the government.

  The Cabinet then had at its head General Croppeton, senator and Minister of War. He it was, therefore, in his double capacity as President of the Council and head of the department most directly interested in the question, that Petitpaon addressed.

  “My dear Croppeton, could you give us an exact definition of war?”

  Before replying, the general introduced into his mouth almost the entirety of his moustache and beard. A few minutes later, the attributes of his virility reemerged, mingled with fragments of phrases: “War is…is... War is a…a…a necessity. War is...”

  “The shame of humanity!” put in the curt and passionate voice of the Minister of Commerce, Pierre Phosphène, who represented the color red in the spectrum of the Council.

  “It seems to me that that affirmation, although it does you great honor to proclaim it, might perhaps be qualified as exaggerated,” conciliated Arthème Flopinte, the Garde des Sceaux and tutor of Themis.

  “It’s certainly exaggerated!” agreed Henri Verbuis, Minister of Foreign Affairs.

  “It is, however, sustainable,” hazarded Charles Mirandet, Minister of the Interior.

  “What do you think, Admiral Théhyx?” asked Bernard Petitpaon

  “Oh, me, I only think about water. I like that more than anything else, except above my head. I fight when I have to, but I don’t insist on doing any more than that.”

  “Of course—me neither!” added General Croppeton. “Do you think it’s agreeable to get yourself killed or crippled for reasons that, three-quarters of the time, no one knows? In spite of everything, though, soldiers ought to love war as children love their mother!”

  “She’s a fine one, your mother!” howled Pierre Phosphène.

  “In any case, I’ll ask you not to insult her, Monsieur Mercury!5 Do I call you a thief under the pretext, however plausible it might be, that you’re the Grandmaster of Commerce? It seems to me, however, that the difference between theft and commerce is merely one of terms!”

  “Messieurs, please!” Bernard intervened. “Neither wolves not ministers should devour one another!”

  “That’s fair,” opined the holder of the national scales.

  “So, it’s a matter of establishing a plan that permits, as the general so aptly puts it, soldiers to continue to love their mother, and which, at the same time, safeguards the most elementary rights of humanity, to borrow from our colleague Phosphène the key term from his own phrase.”

  “Choose between barbarity and civilization,” snapped the aggressive henchman of Mercury.

  “That intransigence is entirely to your glory,” said Petitpaon, soothingly, “but my dear minister, it’s necessary not to get hung up on words. What are barbarity and civilization if not two sisters—I don’t say twins, since their respective births were separated by an abysm of time, but two sisters—of whom, the elder, is brunette, tragic and strong, while the younger is blonde, delicate and frail. Let’s make a bouquet of them!”

  “A bouquet of women!” giggled Abbé Mortol, responsible for agricultural, postal, telegraphic and religious manifestation, hysterically.

  “And let’s present the world with a favor in the colors of France!” concluded President Petitpaon.

  “It would be a nice gesture!” the four individuals holding the portfolios of Education, Public Works, Finance and the Colonies sighed, admiringly.

  “Well, let’s make it! It’s as easy as convincing a egg to stand on end—which contributed as much to the glory of Christopher Columbus as the discovery of America. I declare first of all, that my plan will not involve the slightest prejudice to the soldiers of the armies of land and sea.”

  “On their behalf, we thank you,” said General Croppeton and Admiral Théhyx, in unison.

  “As for economic interests, collective and individual, they too will be scrupulously safeguarded.”

  “That’s admirable!” baaed the eleven voices of the ministerial chapter, simultaneously.

  “You’ve said it!” agreed Bernard Petitpaon. “Now listen.”

  And in his voice, marvelously adapted to all the degrees of the sonic scale, he read the revelatory monument, inscribed on the back of a visiting card with which he as playing negligently.

  “Article One. War is and will remain the argument that nations can and ought to invoke with respect to one another.

  “Article Two. Each of them will retain sovereign rule, in number and in specialties, of its manpower as well as the nature and quality of its armaments.

  “Article Three. The laws and regulations relative to the exercise of war, whether continental or maritime, will remain in force.

  “Article Four. With respect to everything concerning the persons of the belligerents, war will consist purely and simply of theoretical effects.”

  The Excellencies applauded, while darting anxious glances at Bernard Petitpaon, who concluded his reading with an “And that’s it!” proclaiming the great simplicity of the resolutions that he had just proposed.

  “You must be content, Monsieur Phosphène,” General Croppeton said, going on the attack.

  “I don’t know!” confessed the Minister of Commerce, scratching his head in order to launch his riposte. “And you?”

  “Me, I find the ideas ripened in the wise and profound brain of our dear and esteemed President are a trifle green for us.”

  “Who are blues!” concluded the black-clad man of Agriculture, Posts, Telegraphs and Religion.6

  “The first three articles are very clear, but the fourth seems to me to be a trifle obscure,” General Croppeton added.

  “It is, however, light itself!” said Petitpaon, with a smile.

  “I confess that I don’t understand.”

  “The most elementary politeness would force me to say I’m astonished by that, if I were convinced that there really were grounds for astonishment. It’s my duty to give you a few clarifications. Thus, as all of you have so admirably understood, I am changing absolutely nothing in what is the very essence of war. As in the heroic centuries, the most glorious epics will unroll their sublime pages; the fields of battle will still...”

  “Be fields of carnage—abattoirs!” interjected the brilliant Phosphène

  Bernard Petitpaon winked maliciously. “That’s where my article four comes in. I have said that was will be restricted to theoretical effects. Thus, not a drop of blood should redden the international arenas. Let’s take an example. Two very extensive enemy armies confront one another, animated by the most ardent patriotic zeal, amply provided with the most improved accessories of combat. Men and horses are ready to rush upon one another at a signal from their leaders, the cannon to roar, scattering amid the crackle of rifle fire and the clash of steel flesh torn from human bodies...”

  “I’ve seen that,” General Croppeton testified, courageously.

  “The soldiers deploy their standards, utter their rallying cries, and would fight like lions if their officers were not there to demand respect for a discipline that is strictly necessary to arrive at the result that I hope to attain, of supposed steel.”

  “You talk like a soldier!” sanctioned the Ministers of War and Marine, in chorus.

  “I hope so!” Petitpaon granted. “However, I intend to remain a civilian, just as I emerged from my mother’s womb. But I shal
l close this parenthesis...”

  “We’ll open our ears!” affirmed the scene-setter of Justice.

  “Thank you. So, on either side, the belligerents maneuver in accordance with the norms of the strategy most appropriate to the circumstances; all ruses are permissible; brilliant actions retain their place; the field of honor is open!”

  “Glory to those who, falling as heroes, die for their fatherland!” cried General Croppeton.

  “Exactly!” approved Petitpaon. “But henceforth, the heroes will be content to fall; they will no longer die.”

  “That won’t change them!” Pierre Phosphène groaned.

  “Possibly! But at any rate, they’ll no longer die,” the Head of State went on. “Steel is free to clash, throwing off sparks, but as soon as it encounters a breast it must stop its homicidal momentum dead; the human target will merely be brushed by the tip of the bayonet or the cutting edge of the blade. The dead will be conserved alive, thanks to my system, and the wounded perfectly intact.

  “And what of the rifles? And the cannon?” Phosphène shot, aggressively.

  “They will fulfill their function!” Petitpaon declared.

  “But then…?” said Croppeton and Théhyx, anxiously.

  “Then?” the Head of State continued. “Listen: I’ve told you that it’s necessary for my war to conform rigorously to ordinary warfare. Thus, it will have the virtue of international conventions; the engines will be carefully cataloged according to their exact power of destruction. The munitions of all sorts that accompany them will be submitted to very rigorous expertise, as well as a severe accountancy immediately after each war. You understand that it’s necessary to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to conserve for the soldiers of all nations their true value.”

  “They’ll fire in the air?” suggested Phosphène.

  “So that the shells, bullets and machine-gun fire fall back on your heads?” mocked Bernard Petitpaon. “You can’t think so, my dear Minister.”

  “Every instrument of ballistics, like its steel sisters, will only make a mark on its victims?” asked Admiral Théhyx.