The plan remained secret, because the generals feared a mutiny by the troops. As the advance guard approached Le Havre, however, it was necessary to make the embarkation order known. The officers took infinite precautions. They talked about the maternal solicitude of the Republic. They tried to demonstrate that it was a measure indispensable to halt the giant progress of the cholera that was threatening to make France into a desert.
A long murmur went up. Cries rang out: “Treason! Treason! The Government wants to throw us in the sea! To Paris! To Paris!”
In less than an hour, it was the entire army—the twelve hundred thousand survivors—that was repeating like maniacs: “To Paris! To Paris!”
No human force could have contained those men, convinced that their leaders were slyly sending them to their death. In a formidable surge, the cavalry at the head, the army marched on Paris, blindly driven toward the city where the masters of the Republic were—who, they believed, could save or doom them in accordance with their whim.
Populations fled before that whirlwind, which destroyed everything in its passage.
As soon as they became known in Paris, these events provoked a frightful panic. All those who could flee, abandoning the sick and the helpless, loaded up their most precious wealth and set off at hazard for the Midi.
Panicked, General Croppeton and his colleagues raced to the Élysée to beg Bernard Petitpaon to save the situation.
Violent recriminations were proffered against the malign destiny that had struck with sleeping sickness the thirty-four thousand well-armed men who would have been able, by a brutal and sudden intervention, strike a great blow against the enfevered imagination of the revenants of Waterloo, who were no more than three days’ march from Paris.
Bernard Petitpaon proposed to set himself at the head of the Ministers and go to meet the soldiers, who, in his opinion, were more to be pitied than blamed.
“That would be madness!” cried General Croppeton. “We’d be marching to certain death, and in the present circumstances, we don’t have the right to yield to the attractions of a beautiful gesture! To get ourselves massacred would be an unpardonable crime!”
“But we won’t be massacred!” Petitpaon protested. “Those unfortunates are worthy men driven astray by suffering! I’ll talk to them! I’ll explain to them that it isn’t the Government’s fault that cholera has tested them so cruelly and that they’ve died for the fatherland. I’ll tell them that France considers them the best of her children and will take such good care of them that they’ll soon forget their status as dead men!”
And Bernard Petitpaon, warming up, launched into an improvisation that underlined his unique qualities as a Statesman.
“We’ll create three hundred thousand new collection agencies; four hundred thousand tobacconists or subsidiary post offices; a million posts in the civil service, from which the heirs of the victims of the war will be able to choose. We’ll centuple the duties with which we complicate the tax system in order to ensure work for the assessors and collectors; we’ll improved administrative mechanisms vastly in order to provide a perfect justification for the humblest of posts—for what it’s necessary to avoid is that the State might be suspected of granting the slightest salary without demanding serious and assiduous work in return. Under the Republic, a citizen ought not to be one of those pensioners, whether rich or starving, that have been the shame of monarchies. The honor of all is the dignity of each. The wellbeing of the dead will be ensured by the labor of the living, and France will continue to march on the road of glorious liberty and beneficent progress!
“New needs require new institutions; we’ll found a Ministry that will supervise the dead in the slightest detail of their material and moral life. And Messieurs, why shouldn’t we authorize these victims of Petitpaon warfare to group together in a vast association, as ancient combatants once did? Do you think that if we go to announce to these soldiers, whose very names must leave no further official trace, that the Government of the Republic will grant them a civil personality, that they won’t cheer us, and that we won’t reenter Paris in triumph, carried on their shoulders?”
After having protested his personal bravery for a second time, General Croppeton persisted in believing that it would be the most elementary wisdom to barricade themselves in as solidly as possible and await events, of which he did not augur anything good.
Bernard Petitpaon still required to be persuaded, but he ended up yielding to Croppeton’s reasoning, while the latter repeated mechanically: “Oh, if the Africans would only wake up! If the Africans would only wake up!”
Everything that Paris possessed of police agents, municipal guards and men susceptible of being out in uniform was requisitioned and placed around the Élysée.
On the twenty-fifth of March several squadrons of cavalry entered Versailles. They called a halt there, firstly in order to rest and secondly to await the rest of the army, which had already been reduced to less than half a million men.
In all the quarters of Paris, fear gave rise to bloody disorder. In the same way that the vertigo of nothingness leads the sick to commit suicide, the fear of danger drives men to kill one another. With the imminent arrival of the army came the threat of cholera and in order to escape it, many people sought death in the battles they fought against one another night and day with ferocious savagery, turning the streets and squares into charnel houses.
The Chambres, fearful of popular fury, were no longer sitting; the majority of senators and députés were carefully concealing their identity. In the best-informed milieux it was said that Abbé Mortol was undertaking a retreat with the Archbishop whose exemplary piety ought to bring France back to divine compassion.
Only Louis Méripal continued to live in the open, without trying to hide his person or his ideas from anyone. He threw himself into the most violent riots, not to strike blows but to try to dissipate the delirium that was transforming men of the calmest and most placid humor into crazed brutes.
On the evening of the second of April, in the Grenelle quarter, he interposed himself between two bands of fanatics who were each accusing the other of wanting to provoke troubles with an inadmissible aim. Horribly mutilated bodies were trailing their debris along the roadway.
Méripal pronounced words of peace and love: “Why not love one another, brothers whom terror has driven apart?”
Cries of “Kill him! Kill him!” replied
A young man clad in a smock and blue overalls launched himself forward to seize him by the throat. “You too are a traitor to the people’s cause! You too have deceived us, Citizen Méripal! It’s in order to drink our blood that you want to prevent us from shedding it as we like! Our blood belongs to us, Citizen Méripal! You shan’t drink it! No, you shan’t drink it, you miserable traitor!”
A fight began. Méripal attempted to escape from the grip of his attacker; he received a formidable blow from a club on the head and collapsed. A melee broke out between the men and the women who all wanted to strike him. A woman tried to put out his eyes with a crochet hook. She howled that Méripal was the cause of all the troubles that had occurred and that it was necessary to punish him for insulting God. Three times the iron stem was on the brink of plunging into his orbit; three times it was deflected by the jostling—and the woman, returning to the charge, vociferated further insults and further threats.
Finally, he fainted, and when he recovered consciousness he was alone in the darkness.
Instinctively, he stood up. Slowly, he wiped away the blood that was running down his forehead. He tried to walk; his legs could hardly carry him. Leaning on the walls of houses, staggering like a drunkard, he drew away without knowing where he was going.
XXI
Swollen by the bleaching dawn, the veils of night floated, refreshing the Earth.
In his agonized flesh, Méripal shivered. His breast rose slowly, very slowly, as if the morning air were penetrating into it without any summons issuing therefrom.
His crossed arms, trying to rejoin his body, trailed on the ground. His hands, with groping fingers, came to clutch at his throat, which they seized with a convulsive movement, as if to rip it and make the renascent breath of life enter more rapidly.
Abruptly, his eyelids opened, uncovering his eyes, which filled with light that was vanquishing, one by one, the fleecy clouds remaining on the horizon.
At each of the gasps that distended his jaws in long yawns, his breathing became deeper and more regular.
Forerunners of consciousness, which was returning as the daylight whitened, tremors ran over his body.
Suddenly, out of the cloud, like a cup overflowing, sunlight appeared in a pale gold foam, streaming over the face of the moribund.
His frightened eyes remained fixed momentarily, and then began blinking in a rapid flutter.
Instinctively, his hands rose up to protect them, but they fell back, inert, on his forehead, reopening the wound crusted with a black clot.
The blood began to flow again, reddening his hands, which, in an abrupt movement, extended forwards at the end of stiff arms.
The sun shone upon them, filtering in dark red darts between the bloody fingers.
Perhaps without seeing them, Méripal looked at them; they clapped together; a few drops of blood fell on his face, which contracted. His lips came together as if to attempt to articulate a few words, while his arms, vanquished in their effort, fell back alongside his body.
To flee the assaults of the sun, his head inclined on to his right arm, and suddenly, with a great surge, his left arm described the arc of a circle, dragging the body with it, which lay down on that side.
Méripal remained immobile for a long time. He seemed to be asleep when he folded up his elongated legs and, bracing himself on his elbows and knees, he made an effort to get up. His head fell back heavily. He began again, and then again, still in vain, but his obscure desire ended up triumphing over his weakness; he propped himself up in a sitting position, his arms extended backwards supporting his body, slightly inclined backwards.
Consciousness of life returned to him. Several times, he drew in large draughts of air, and gazed fixedly at the sun rising in a fiery flood over the horizon.
He leaned forward; he rested his hands on his knees; only then did he perceive the blood with which they were covered.
Suddenly, the memory of the atrocious scene surged forth: the savage aggression of the crowd whose fury he had tried to calm; and so much sadness penetrated him that he no longer thought about his wounds and forgot the dolors of his body, bruised all over.
He wept, and his tears, running down his cheeks, swept away the clots of blood stuck to his beard.
Words came to his lips, translating distant thoughts.
“The people didn’t hear my voice. They didn’t understand my words. They accused me of lying and imposture. I talked to them about love and generosity; they replied with hatred and ferocity. I told them that all men are brothers and that nothing ought to divide them; they rushed at me and struck me, uttering cries of rage.
“Why don’t they hear my voice? Why don’t they understand my words? Why do they accuse me of lying and imposture? But I haven’t lied! I’m not guilty of imposture, though!
“The imprecations of that woman are still resonating in my head. She tried to put my eyes out with a crochet-hook, howling that I’d offended God and was the cause of all the misfortunes. She struck my furiously in the name of that Jesus who also died for having said things that weren’t understood...
“Every new dawn is a shroud for the man who divines it and is the first to proclaim it: those who don’t see it treat as a criminal the prophet whose gaze is clearer and whose thought is freer...
“In the subsequent course of time, the chimera becomes a reality: the dawn illuminates the Earth with its full clarity; by then, forgetfulness has taken the name of the precursor of the radiant day. His memory, sometimes, doesn’t die entirely, and it’s as a god that people adore him…why doesn’t humankind have faith in itself? Why don’t people have confidence in people? Why must life always be soiled by hatred and lies? It would be so beautiful, in the splendor of the sunlight!”
Louis Méripal, his face raised in the flood of light, remained in ecstasy.
Suddenly, he looked around fearfully, as if he were searching for something. He put himself on his knees and, turning round, placed his ear against a bronze door.
He listened, trying to define the sounds that he could hear.
The heavy panels drew apart.
In order not to fall into the gap that opened before him, Méripal placed both his hands on the ground with the fingers splayed.
An extraordinary spectacle appeared to him. Against a background of helmets and breastplates, gold and steel, which the sun lit up with a great flamboyance, stood a jet black horse mounted by a general in full dress uniform. Two men, a priest in a soutane and an old man with long white side-whiskers, were holding the bridle of the horse to either side
Louis Méripal uttered a cry. It was General Foiraubilles, framed by Abbé Mortol and the banker Hermann Coffre.
The three individuals exchanged a few words.
The Abbé let go of the bridle of the horse and, brandishing the heavy iron cross he was holding in his right hand, said: “Ride over the body of this wretch! It’s Méripal! Louis Méripal, the murderer, the revolutionary, the atheist! Forward, General! Crush him! Crush him! The blood of the enemies of religion is agreeable to God!”
Hermann Coffre, his hat in his hand, had stood aside in order to put himself out of range of the kicks of the horse, unnerved by the sound of bugles.
General Foiraubilles, his sword naked, high in his right fist, spurred his horse violently, which bounded sideways. With thrusts of his spurs he drove it forward.
In vain, Lois Méripal had tried to get up; on his knees, he had instinctively extended his arms forwards. The horse came right up to the man and abruptly, ears pricked and limbs stiff, stopped in order to sniff the obstacle; its quivering nostrils shot warm breath into Méripal’s face.
General Foiraubilles made an appeal with energetic legs. The beast reared up, and, as if it were afraid of falling on the man kneeling on the ground directly under its fetlocks, it recoiled, insensible to the spurs that were streaming with blood.
The horse’s defenses triumphed over the brutal will of the rider, who was nearly thrown out of the red velvet saddle several times. Pale and panting, he stiffened his legs convulsively against the foam-flecked flanks.
Doubtless to exteriorize and intimate prayer, Abbé Mortol made the sign of the cross and approached Méripal, gripping the heavy crucifix by its extremity.
His eyes staring, widened by the horror of his impotent weakness, Louis Méripal begged: “Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!”
The grim voice of Abbé Mortol proffered, three times: “God wills it! God wills it! God wills it!”
The heavy cross fell with a dull thud on Méripal’s skull. He fell backwards.
Abbé Mortol went back to General Foiraubilles, seized the bridle of the horse and brought it back to Méripal’s cadaver, which Herman Coffre was trampling furiously. The general’s horse cleared the inert body of Louis Méripal in a single bound.
The trumpets and bugles burst forth loudly.
On that radiant spring morning, the African army, miraculously extracted from its slumber, emerged from the Grand Palais under the guidance of Abbé Mortol and Hermann Coffre in order to reestablish order in Paris and put an end to the regime that had permitted itself to raise its voice, in the name of wicked liberty, and that of Louis Méripal, of whom it would have been impossible to rediscover the slightest trace after his corpse had been trampled by the feet of thirty-four thousand soldiers.
XXII
Between soldiers, as between the remainder of men, dangers run in company create tight and powerful bonds. The individuals who have simultaneously seen the mask of an identical death are mutually smitten by
a fraternal amity.
Thus, the African army, woken up at the same moment from the same sleep, which might have been the last for them, formed a kind of great family united by a blind affection, external to any idea of discipline.
No one was able to say exactly what had happened.
All the efforts of the physicians had failed; the most bizarre cares had been lavished, but the terrible trypanosome of the mtoga, or sleeping sickness, had done its work. It had penetrated into the cerebrospinal fluid of the unfortunates, who had nothing left to do but die, science being only able, at the most, to soften their agony.
Abbé Mortol had convinced Hermann Coffre to accompany him to the Grand Palais to attempt a supreme maneuver: divine intervention.
The banker only had a very relative confidence in God, but Abbé Mortol had given proof of sovereign skill so many times that Monsieur Coffre allowed himself to believe that he might achieve the awakening of the African army so ardently desired by the partisans of public order.
Very advantageously known to the guards and the men of the rescue services on duty at the Grand Palais, Abbé Mortol and Herman Coffre had installed themselves alone at General Foiraubilles’ bedside on the evening of the first of April. Until midnight, the Abbé had remained at prayer, the collar of his overcoat raised against the chill, for the moon’s rays, on limpid nights like the one on which the scene unfolded, illuminate but do not warm. Herman Coffre privately offered God the sacrifice of a certain number of his millions if he would deign to render life to the brave men of whom there was such an urgent need.
The fervor of the prayer and the sincere promise of the handsome sum remained vain. The General did not budge.
Discouraged, the two men began talking in whispers, Coffre begging the Abbé to find a means, to try again, making the firm offer of a hundred million francs to subsidize the work of piety.
The Petitpaon Era Page 20