In spite of the requisition of rural ovens and the mobilization of all the means of production, there were bread shortages in some quarters, and the streets were so crowded that traffic could no longer circulate. Food and everything else necessary to life reached fantastic prices, which were the palpable proof of an unprecedented commercial prosperity.
“This hasn’t been seen since the Empire!” proclaimed Monsieur Jadis at the podium of the Senate, proposing a vote of thanks from the Upper Assembly to President Petitpaon, to whom France owed that incomparable renewal.
In that plenary exaltation, Captain Sylphe was relegated to the background of public attention. Cabaret singers gradually began to disdain the provisional dead man. People got used to his dust-cover. In Biarritz, where he went to join Madame Coffre, installed for the summer season in a sumptuous villa, he experienced the humiliation of being asked for his name by the porter.
At the Casino, the employee in charge of the observance of the sumptuary regulations designed to safeguard the traditional elegance of the Establishment mistook him for one of the Englishmen who refresh themselves by means of the exhibition of picturesque costumes, the impeccability of which they make a strict law at home.
The inspector happened to be an old soldier, as testified by the ribbon of the military medal that he wore very apparently in the buttonhole of his frock-coat and his energetic and concise manner off speech. Confronted with the decline of Alexandre Sylphe’s civil estate, the inspector was gripped by a veritable crisis of despair, begging the Captain to excuse his error. The latter was obliged to speak in the name of the authority that his rank conferred upon him to calm an emotion that he feared to re-engender by a further appearance at the pleasure-palace.
Hermine de Foiraubilles did not renounce her fiancé, and even though, under various pretexts, he only put in the appearances at her home indispensable to prevent the lapse of his courtship, the young woman, fortified by the paternal support that declared itself capable of smashing all resistance, considered the day on which the arbitration tribunal would ender its definitive verdict as that of her marriage.
IX
In France the dog days are for politics a kind of Divine Truce. Acts of violence, the culminating points of human passion, melt away in the burning rays of the sun like the snow on the mountains.
In any case, the majority of those to whom the people confer a representative mandate are worthy fellows, almost always in a much more placid humor than one might be led to believe by the bellicose attitudes that they stroke during parliamentary discussions, either for the edification of their electors or simply for their own pleasure. The man who brandishes an incessant tone of threat and terror at the podium becomes, on quitting it, the mildest of sheep, whose fleece yields to all-comers.
The perspective appropriate to every environment is something so essentially human that the most intransigent committees will judge with severity those of their members who permit themselves to speak in excessive terms outside the sacred boundaries.
For those who exercise it conscientiously, the profession of député is very taxing, and annual rest-cures are indispensable to maintain the condition of the lungs, stomach and brain, the organs generally overworked by the life that touches everything without getting into the depths of anything.
Amenable to the same treatment, Abbé Mortol and Louis Méripal, met up at the same thermal baths in the heart of the Pyrenees, and were inseparable companions for the twenty reglementary days. The Abbé only disappeared for a few minutes every morning on the pretext of going to celebrate a mass, whose brevity won Méripal’s admiration.
“You can see that it’s not diabolical to accomplish one’s religious duties,” the Abbé observed, without attempting to catechize his colleague.
“If your Lord likes rapid work, you must have a keen odor of sanctity in his regard,” the hardened freethinker joked, without the slightest bitterness.
For both of them, the question of Faith was only skimmed in rare and light-hearted jokes; as for politics, they did not make the most distant allusion to it; it seemed that the two friends lost the very memory of the Palais Bourbon as they took the waters.
There were daily excursions into the mountains. One day, the Abbé slipped, and was beginning to slide down a slope toward a precipice when Méripal saved him from certain death by grabbing hold of the hem of his soutane.
“You ought to pray to God to watch over you more attentively,” Louis Méripal said. “But for me you’d undoubtedly have perished.”
“Don’t think, my dear friend,” César Mortol replied, with the unction, sharpened by a hint of irony, that is the characteristic of priests of good stock “that I want to diminish in any way your role as savior—I owe you my life, that’s certain—but in sum, if I hadn’t been dressed in the ample vestment of servants of Christ, you wouldn’t have been able to catch hold of me! You can see that, by looking hard, one can find the hand of God everywhere, my dear atheist!”
Under various pretexts, for more than two weeks, in order to enjoy the exquisite and frank intimacy for longer, the two députés kept putting off the date on which they had originally been supposed to quit the Pyrenees, the Abbé to undertake a voyage to Rome and Louis Méripal to devote himself to personal affairs in Paris.
On the platform of the railway station from which trains were to carry them away in different directions, they eventually made their farewells. Neither of them dared say: “see you next month!” because they both knew that reentry into the Chambre would be the recommencement of the battle, bitter and merciless.
Sadly, Louis Méripal thought that the Abbé was going to obtain new weapons from the Pope, and César Mortol could already see the reckless orator scaling the podium in order to thunder against God and insult religion.
X
As they did every year, the Chambres reunited in mid-October in sessions qualified as extraordinary in order to distinguish themselves from the ordinary ones rightfully opened under the aegis of the Constitution on the first Tuesday of January. There was mild discussion of affairs described as “current,” which had been in suspense for years immemorial to the legislators, and which served the Assemblies to sate their hunger on the eve of grave events.
The Sylphe affair was, in fact, of great importance, firstly for France, whose honor was invested in having the last word in the eyes of the world, and then for the Cabinet, because Monsieur Coffre had confided to General Croppeton that he had promised personally to put an end to the ridiculous provisional status imposed on the Captain.
“I understand,” General Croppeton had agreed, “all the inconveniences of the situation. You’re no more interested in the unfortunate Captain than I am, my dear Coffre. He’s a military man in every sense of the word: noble heart, generous soul, tall stature, proud bearing, consummate cavalier, triumphant moustache! He’s due to marry the daughter of my excellent comrade Foiraubilles, also a soldier!”
Monsieur Coffre had interrupted that flood of praise descending upon the head of his wife’s lover: “Exactly! Captain Sylphe deserves to remain alive. I have made and will make any sacrifice necessary to have the tribunal rule in his favor; a verdict that condemns the Captain to definitive death will condemn you too. You know that I only have to make a sign to the Chambre and the Senate for my majority to bring you down.”
“I know!” Croppeton had acquiesced, in a melancholy fashion, before racing to his natural inspirer, President Petitpaon.
The latter, after having articulated a few obnoxious epithets in regard to Coffre, had opined that it was necessary at any price to save the life of Captain Sylphe.
The Council of Ministers was convened to examine the dossiers established on the basis of information furnished by the ladies in “political service” with regard to the members of the arbitration tribunal. All of them had done their duty valiantly and as they had been instructed to be precise, the majority had entered into a luxury of the most suggestive details.
“It was only after having accorded him three rounds of favors, just as he was going to sleep, that I was able to extract a promise from him,” informed the beauty to whom the representative of the Sublime Gate had fallen.
“The man is made of ice; I spent hours warming him up, and it was the same every time I wanted him to repeat his sworn promise to vote for the Captain,” said the Companion of the Swiss delegate.
All the narratives had a pronounced perfume of the alcove or the dressing-room; there were secret penchants and vices that compelled unforeseen complications, men being ever the same in all latitudes.
To Pierre Phosphène, who waxed indignant at the erotic fantasies attributed to the representative of a vague South American Republic, Bernard Petitpaon made the observation that, as the victim did not appear at all surprised, it was necessary to believe that the Parisians who had instructed her in the science of lust must have anticipated and practiced the incriminating exercises.
“Besides which, everyone takes his pleasure where he finds it,” concluded Petitpaon, philosophically. “Believe me, my dear Phosphène, let people love as seems good to them, and if the methods they employ don’t appeal to you, don’t adopt them, that’s all! Keep the habits that are dear to you and abstain from trying to disgust others with those that don’t impassion you. The essential thing in all of this is that the tribunal should proclaim the existence of Captain Sylphe. A contrary decision would be a disaster!”
“France can count on the unanimity of the diplomats,” Croppeton affirmed.
“The boat that is bringing back the delegate from Tierra de Fuego arrives at Le Havre tomorrow,” Henry Verbuis explained. “The tribunal will therefore be able to sit the day after tomorrow, the first of November, as was fixed. Two or three weeks will suffice, I’m certain, and nothing more will remain than to bring the diplomats together for a farewell banquet...”
“I’ll make an appearance there,” approved Petitpaon.
“We’ll invite the ladies who have shown such complete devotion in the circumstances,” said Charles Miraudel.
And, as the session ended, each of the ministers was already thinking about the toast he would propose to dazzle the diplomats and the quasi-widows that they were about to leave behind.
In the meantime, the diplomats were brushing their most severe frock-coats and rehearsing the principal poses of their employment before their bewildered companions.
It was with the expressions of sphinxes resuming the duty of guarding their secrets that they went, one by one, through the gates of the Palais des Affaires Étrangères, where the tribunal was sitting. All of them, having familiarized themselves with the French language during the year that had just gone by, decided that it would be the only one employed. It was a delicate tribute of gratitude to the country that had charmed them so amiably.
The representative of France thanked them in emotional terms, and only asked that they make an exception in favor or the Tierra-del-Fuegian, who was absolutely deaf to any language but his own. That eccentric individual required the complex intervention of interpreters.
A summary of the question was presented by the oldest of the members present, the Swedish delegate, a lushly-bearded old man of impressive bearing. As his delights had been poured out uninterruptedly from the mouth of a young Montmartrean very well-versed in argot, the worthy Scandinavian was very familiar with spicy language; for a septuagenarian novice, moreover, he handled it with a fine dexterity, enameling his discourse with exceedingly picturesque flourishes.
He recalled how, during the campaign in Cirajoum, Captain Sylphe has been killed, in the application of the official reckoning tables, in a recurring fraction of his person. He rendered homage to the prudent wisdom of the international arbiters who, faced with the unprecedented situation, had not hesitated to attribute to the captain the quality of provisional death while waiting for a conference to be convened to decide his case one way or the other.
He read the verdict rendered the previous year and which, based on the fact that in matters of human existence the part determines the whole, had decided the integral death of Alexandre Sylphe. He explained the reasons that had caused the postponement putting that verdict into effect, based on the fact that France had obtained from Haricot VII a declaration in which he confessed to having deceived the expert evaluators charged with determining the power of his engines of war.
The questions to be resolved were, therefore, as follows:
Firstly, does a victorious nation have the right to force a vanquished nation to admit an exaggeration committed in the evaluation of its armaments?
Secondly, should such an admission permit the victorious nation to obtain a retroactive diminution of its losses?
The Spanish delegate opened the debate by asking the representative of Haricot VII about the conditions in which his master had consented to adopt the coefficient of one thousandth for death instead of that of one nine-hundredth, which had been attributed to him.
The joyful black man set the broad keyboard of his teeth clocking. “The Master—may the god of the coconut trees watch over him and his wives—received gifts.”
The ambassadors feigned profound amazement. The representative of France lowered his head to hide his shame.
Summoned to give details, the son of Cirajoum related that his Master—on whose behalf, every time he mentioned him, he called upon the grace of the god of the coconut trees—had been given a gray top hat. In a spirit of obsequious admiration, the native had obtained a similar one for himself, and he rang for an usher to ask that it be brought to him. He showed it to his colleagues triumphantly, making the observation that only the ribbon was different.
With forceful gesticulations, he evoked the shoulder-sash, the épée and the thigh-boots. “The Master—many the god of the coconut tress watch over him and his wives—is completely dressed with that!” said the negro, warmly wrapped in an ample mastic ulster, from which he was never separated. He also mentioned the tins of human flesh that the Master, under the eye of the god of the coconut trees, benevolent to him and his wives, had eaten with great pleasure.
“That means of corruption is unworthy of a civilized country!” put in the acolyte of an American dictator.
Amid a murmur of general approval, the spokesman of France invoked the absolutely constant usage, in matters of international relations, of the giving of gifts. He pointed out the small value and puerility of the latter. He attacked governments that “do not hesitate to favor vice by importing alcohol, which reduces men to the level of beasts, or opium, which plunges consciousness into a torpor akin to oblivion.”
The desired riposte did not take long to arrive, launched by the German delegate, who, rightly or wrongly, felt that his country was being particularly targeted: “And you offer cannibals tins of human flesh!”
“France is ready to prove that the incriminated tins contained nothing other than tuna!” declared the diplomat by whom France was skillfully represented, solemnly. “They come from the Épicerie Potin. There were a gross of them. It will be easy to produce the invoice for the order!”
“I believe that we can accept an explanation as frank as it is clear,” proposed the Russian plenipotentiary.
“I request the floor for a prejudicial motion,” said the German, who did not want to admit defeat. “My august Master is moved by the fate that, in a moment of negligence, we reserved for the dead warriors of His Majesty Haricot VII. By forcing them to coat themselves with ceruse, we are condemning them infallibly to the grave, in a fashion as rapid as it is painful.”
Explanations on that subject were sought from the subject of Haricot VII, who was smoothing the fur of his top hat one hair at a time.
“Yes, the demons of the coconut trees are twisting the entrails of the soldiers until they die! Nothing can be done against it!” the philosophical African concluded, laughing broadly, without ceasing to caress his hat.
“It’s evidently deplorable to let those poor people die of sa
turnine intoxication,” the old Scandinavian put in, “but we don’t have to occupy ourselves with that matter.”
“I agree,” opined the German. “It was out of pure humanity that I raised the matter—but I won’t insist.”
“In that case, we can pass on to a vote on the articles,” the Swede went on, getting bogged down in a subsequent sequence of argot terms.
“France has abused her victory,” stated the pacific and pot-bellied Swiss.
“Without having any particular grievance against France, I deem it impossible to admit the possibility of a victor extracting from the vanquished a kind of retroactive withdrawal concerning all of part of its power,” advanced the Russian.
“The reckoning tables established by universal agreement cannot be subject to retrospective modification by the simple whim of one of the parties,” said the Italian.
Petitpaon warfare would no longer be possible if the results of a campaign were at the discretion of the belligerents,” emitted the placid Belgian.
The representative of France rose to his feet. “Messieurs, it is not merely on the basis of a testimony, albeit obtained without the slightest constraint, that France asks you to pronounce. There are other arguments to weigh up. You will permit me to present them to you.
“When the arbiter-evaluators fixed at one nine-hundredth of a death the destructive force of each of His Majesty Haricot VII’s soldiers, they based their calculations on the toxic energy of the poisons employed for the spears and arrows. Now, it is not the word of Haricot VII alone on which we intend to rely to prove that the poisons in question are quite harmless. We request the nomination of experts who will examine in their soul and conscience the murderous virtue of these supposedly toxic substances. It will not be difficult to demonstrate that the spears and arrows of which the soldiers of Haricot VII made use are simple pointed weapons, and can only occasion vulgar wounds. You should not refuse us the lowering of the coefficient that we are requesting!”
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