The Petitpaon Era

by Henri Austruy

  Until dawn appeared they invoked all the horrors of the situation, with its frightful consequences: for Coffre, ruination; for the Abbé, the annihilation of religion.

  After one last exhortation from Coffre, the Abbé leaned over the General’s breast.

  “His heart’s beating!” Slowly, he repeated the hopeful words: “His heart’s beating!” Then, as if gripped by a sudden folly, he started shaking the inert body furiously and crying out: “Get up, General! Get up! God wills it! God wills it!”

  An enormous oath emerged from the general’s throat.

  Frightened by that resurrection, the two colleagues threw themselves off the stage.

  General Foiraubilles rolled his frightened eyes around him and, getting out of bed, shouted in a loud voice: “It’s getting light! On your feet, everyone! Bugles, sound the reveille!”

  Abbé Mortol and Hermann Coffre had fallen to their knees and were weeping frantically.

  A bugle sounded a vibrant appeal under the metallic vaults with panes of glass, instantly repeated by a hundred more.

  In a matter of minutes, in the midst of a gigantic hubbub punctuated by the whinnying of horses, which had also woken up, the regiments formed up in accordance with the order indicated by the processions of different weapons.

  Abbé Mortol took the bridle of the horse caparisoned in red and gold, respectfully held by a soldier of the logistics corps, and presented it to General Foiraubilles.

  The general, the priest and the banker undertook a brief and intimate conference, at the exit from which Narcisse de Foiraubilles set his foot in the stirrup held by Hermann Coffre and hoisted himself on to his horse.

  A brief command had made the heavy bronze battens pivot on their hinges, revealing the lamentable wreck of Louis Méripal’s body.

  The arrival at the Élysées was not at all tragic. Bernard Petitpaon having not yet got up, Abbé Mortol and Hermann Coffre penetrated into his bedroom, followed by a platoon of zouaves.

  Invited to resign his functions immediately, the President initially declared that he preferred immediate death.

  “You’ve chosen a bad time to steal liberty! This morning, in my person, the Republic has woken up with an intense thirst for martyrdom. Before your injunctions and your threats, this head, as you can see, will not bow! Cut it off! It will fall with an ineffable patriotic joy! Shed my blood! It will put on your hands the ineradicable stains of the most universal of deluges. Plunge into my breast, identified with that of the Republic, those bayonets drawn at the same time from their sheaths and the path of duty! Kill me! Kill me, then!”

  In response to a second demand made in a curt voice by Abbé Mortol, Bernard Petitpaon recalled grandiloquently the services that he had rendered to France.

  “I am the man who has put on the wound of war the dressing of my marvelous conception! Thanks to me, men can measure themselves against one another in total security! Ingratitude cannot be my recompense!”

  “All that’s theater!” put in Monsieur Coffre, shaking his head.

  After a third summons followed by a “Take aim!” that leveled a dozen rifles against him, Petitpaon had a complete change of mind; he quit his bed in the capacity of a simple citizen, entirely won over to the new states of affairs, by which General Marquis Narcisse de Foiraubilles became Emperor of the French, under the name of Narcisse I.

  The days that followed were devoted to a repression that was severe and bloody. Eight hundred thousand men, not counting women and children, were massacred in Paris and the great cities of France alone.

  The greater part of the army returned from Belgium had joined the African soldiers and all of them formed a guard around Narcisse I, of an incomparable devotion and heroism.

  God, as a humble servant of all financial and religious interests, lent a very visible hand to that imperial instauration by putting an abrupt end to the cholera epidemic.

  In response to his the plea of his daughter, whose heart had remained faithful to Alexandre Sylphe, the captain had been released from prison. Provided with the title of Prince, in the midst of the enthusiastic manifestations of a people glad to have found a brutal and magnificent master again, he led the heir to the throne of France to the altar of the metropolitan church of Notre-Dame.

  Abbé Mortol and Monsieur Coffre were witnesses to the marriage, in the company of representatives of the royal families of Europe.

  In the cortege, Madame Coffre appeared on the arm of an officer in the navy, from the bosom of which she was now recruiting her admirers.

  The celebrations lavished to solemnize these events terminated with a gala performance at the Lyrique Grand-Mondial, at the head of which, by express imperial command, Bernard Petitpaon had been placed again.

  In accordance with tradition, the director of the Lyrique Grand-Mondial had to receive the Head of State with his fists charged with two silver chandeliers with seven branches.

  Bernard Petitpaon did not fail in his duty, and the figure he cut as a porter of the symbolic flames, at the foot of the great staircase of marble and gold, must have satisfied the Emperor fully, for he immediately placed around his neck the sash of the Ordre du Narcisse, which he had just created.

  Thus the Petitpaon Era came to a close.

  As it was the first of September, its third year, to the day, had just come around. Like all failed trials, Bernard Petitpaon’s attempt had run into yet another complication in the difficult problem of world peace.

  MIELLUNE

  Enclosed today in a narrow circle of mountains, the small town of Miellune25 once rose up in the center of a plain that extended cultivated fields, meadows and woods around it, all the way to its horizons.

  In a remote epoch, abolished from human memory, in the middle of the night, a mighty clap of thunder disturbed the slumber of the inhabitants.

  In spite of the cold, windows were precipitately opened, and in their frames, filled with the hesitant gleam of night-lights, wan apparitions surged forth: the heads of men, wrapped in handkerchiefs knotted at the four corners, or coiffed in conical bonnets terminating in a tassel whose weight caused it to angle in front of frowning foreheads; the heads of women with bushy hair, which hands moved away from faces, or carefully braided into plaits wound around skulls in tight spirals.

  In the distance, at irregular but brief intervals, muffled detonations succeeded one another, and the houses shook on their foundations.

  Through the darkness of the streets, instant interrogations were launched, to which similar interrogations responded.

  The season did not permit the explanation of a storm. All the ridiculous human forms that had invaded the windows, attempting to take account of what was happening, were fixed in a tragic immobility.

  Suddenly, a sinister cry, emerging from the top of a tall house, denounced a conflagration. Immediately, the same cry emerged from every mouth, proclaiming the name of fire in tones of fear and resignation.

  The questions became more specific, rising from floor to floor all the way to the roofs, where, through narrow skylights, heads devoid of bodies seemed to emerge from walls. The names of all the neighboring towns were uttered successively by those whose elevated position invested them, in such circumstances, with the role of sentinels.

  Then the citizens, habituated to not missing any opportunity to give proof of courage and devotion, and the functionaries, professionally obliged to demonstrate their zeal, got dressed precipitately, lending a distracted ears to the exhortations to prudence lavished by their wives, frightened of being left alone but nevertheless flattered by the thought that, the following day, the newspapers would glorify the conduct of heroes whose names they had the honor of bearing.

  Soon, the “Saviors of Miellune,” obedient to an ancient command, found themselves gathered in the main square of the town. There they awaited the arrival of their leaders, delayed by the donning of regulation uniforms, accompanied by numerous complicated accessories.

  Exercising the authority conferred upon
them by a silver salamander embroidered on a dark cap, one of the latecomers proceeded with a roll call of the Saviors of Miellune, lined up in two rows. After having traced a few figures in a notebook, he went to join a small group formed of men similarly dressed in dark caps decorated with a silver salamander.

  An animated discussion began, which died away on the appearance, on the far side of the square, of a black horse, led on a bridle by a man carrying a smoky torch. It was the commandant’s mount.

  The latter did not take long to appear, his eyes full of sleep, widened in an expression of comical anger against the evil hazard that had constrained him to dress precipitately in the green dolman with the garish golden Brandenburg fasteners, which his numb fingers had not yet succeeded in doing up.

  At his approach, all hands, with an automatic rigid movement, bore their thumbs directly to the salamanders of the caps. The commandant suspended the battle of his fingers against the fastenings of his dolman momentarily and returned the salute of his men, whose hands immediately fell back into the row.

  Taking turns, descending through the ranks, each of the officers rendered an account of the mission incumbent on him by virtue of the laws and regulations in vigor. The chief approved with a nod of the head or uttered a kind of grunt that seemed to cover the officer’s obsequiousness with confusion.

  These explanations furnished, the commandant let slip an oath directed at his Brandenburgs, obstinate in not hooking on to the metal clips, and ordered a maneuver. Twenty men went into the house in front of which they were arrayed, and soon emerged again, having opened a large coaching entrance, dragging and pushing a large coat laden with ropes, hoses and engines of various kinds, all useful in conflagrations.

  A stool was brought forward with great precaution. The commandant was hoisted up on to his horse, still held by the man with the smoky torch.

  After having imposed silence on an officer who seemed to want to inform him as to the probable location of the fire, with a grand gesture of his right arm, prolonged by a light sword, the commandant indicated the direction to take. The troop of Saviors of Miellune moved off, escorted at a respectful distance by a variegated troop. Poor wretches barely covered in thin garments surged like phantoms out of the shadows where the police had forced them to hide; merrymakers enveloped in furs came out of establishments consecrated to nocturnal pleasures, streaming with light.

  The gates of the town were soon crossed, revealing a terrifying spectacle: on the horizon, in broad sheets, flamboyant clouds were rising, aspired by the darkness in which they were lost, clearing the way for new clouds, which launched forth in their wake in a vertiginous whirlwind.

  The detonations redoubled in violence; as his horse was showing increasingly frequent signs of agitation, the commandant of the Saviors of Miellune, judging it unnecessary to risk a fall in such critical circumstances, dismounted.

  He was giving orders for a detachment of men to depart on reconnaissance when the appeals of voices arrived, borne by distant echoes.

  The commandant, his two arms extended, instructed everyone to maintain the strictest silence, and while the simple Saviors in the ranks held their breath, the officers tormented their ears with their gloved hands, directing them in the direction from which the sounds seemed to be coming.

  A young lieutenant leaned toward his chief, murmuring a few words in a very low voice, accompanied by an indication given by his extended arm. The old man made a gesture of incredulous astonishment; then, as if enlightened by a sudden vision, extending his own arm in the direction determined by his subaltern, he said: “You can never tell where a sound is coming from. It’s quite simple, though. A noise always follows a parabola from the place where it is emitted to the place where it is perceived. You’re at one of the two points; it isn’t difficult to find the other. Lieutenant!” With severity, he addressed a young officer whose cap was ornamented by the silver salamander. “…Assuming that the cries you perceive emerge from human throats at a velocity of four hundred meters a second, which is the scientifically established mean, how far away are the people uttering those desperate appeals in our direction?”

  The lieutenant lowered his head to reflect and took out his chronometer. Then, timidly, in order not to allow by lack of a response a new and brutal interrogation, he said: “Three kilometers, Commandant.”

  “With lungs like yours, that’s possible. When I was your age, I had a voice that could be heard distinctly five kilometers away.”

  “But that voice has never cried ‘Help!’” the lieutenant replies, respectfully.

  “Who, me? Cry ‘Help!’ You haven’t looked at me, then, Lieutenant? Know that...”

  But a lamentable fit of coughing shook the larynx from which formidable sounds had once emerged. The commandant tried several times to inform the lieutenant of what his excessive youth did not know, but before the flamboyant gusts that were unfurling a wall of fire on the horizon in gigantic bounds, he interrupted himself in order to observe: “But that’s not a fire!”

  And as if his words were an expected signal, the cries, now very close, launched distinct exclamations: “Hell is overflowing! Flee! Flee! The Earth is burning! Flee! Flee!”

  An entire cohort of men and women came to collide with the Saviors of Miellune.

  Those poor creatures, crazed, with incomprehensible words punctuated with gasps that shook their throats, contracted by terror, implored aid and assistance. To the questions that were addressed to them they replied which strident cries of fright, extending their arms behind their heads, which they dared not turn for fear of being further assailed by the nightmare they were fleeing.

  Eventually, the commandant, using all his authority, succeeded in extracting a few explanations from the unfortunate fugitives. He learned that a catastrophe had just reduced Fleursat, the charming neighbor of Miellune, to a mass of ruins. The Earth had risen up in the midst of a formidable din and flames had sprung forth from gaping crevices, reducing anything that came into contact with them to ash.

  The commandant, understanding the gravity of the situation and judging an intervention on his part futile, gave the order to return to Miellune in order to put himself at the disposal of the governor.

  The latter, in full uniform, was waiting in the main square for the return of scouts that he had sent forth in all directions.

  He listened to the story of the swallowing of Fleursat from the commandant’s mouth.

  One by one, the scouts returned; each of them, at a similar distance from the gates, had seen a wall of flame looming up ahead of him.

  The governor, in whom the responsibility of the situation and the measures to be taken was incumbent, slowly turned around several times as if in search of inspiration from the ruddy circle of clouds.

  A long time of immobile reflection having passed, with a grand gesture, he made the heroic decision to return to his palace.

  Surrounded by his principal functionaries, he made his way through the crowd, whose members were shouting naïve supplications in his direction, so powerful, in times of danger, is the prestige of the great men whose role, it seems, is to protect from the elements themselves the humble folk bound defenselessly to the yoke of passive obedience.

  Men and women rubbing shoulders in the square, at the hazard of the only veritably spontaneous fraternal equality devoid of any hidden agenda, which is the consciousness of common peril, kept their eyes fixed invincibly on the windows of the Council Chamber, as if the bright patches with which the black façade of the monument was holed had the power to calm their anxiety.

  Out of respect for their masters, whose will was the only thing that could ensure their salvation, the inhabitants of Miellune were waiting in bleak silence when the sky suddenly brightened, invaded by floods of molten metal.

  Livid beneath these incandescent reflections, faces contracted into frightful grimaces; from all throats, gripped by a similar peril, the same cry escaped, inarticulate in its sinister tone.

  Traverse
d by a sudden subconscious thought, those people, calm and confident until then, rushed to assault the broad marble perron that led to the palace.

  Bodies were crushed against the bronze doors, immutable under the furious pressure.

  Among heart-rending appeal from the wounded, there were invectives of revolt and hatred against those behind the walls, who had abandoned the people to their misery.

  Stones were thrown angrily at the windows, the broken glass of which fell on skulls from which blood flowed.

  The unfortunates, not knowing who to blame for the frightful destiny, began fighting one another, striking mortal blows.

  A window opened on a first floor balcony. Its frame of light filed with a tall silhouette. Immediately, the crowd became still and silent.

  The nearest had recognized the governor; an acclamation saluted him. All arms were extended toward him.

  In a slow and forceful voice, he spoke.

  “Inhabitants of Miellune, you whose name has become a synonym for courage and steadfastness, will you fail your blood? The combined forces of the entire universe, raised against you, would be powerless to move you, but you are going to tremble before events that are still inexplicable? It is not death that you fear, I know; it is the mystery that troubles you—the mystery that the night will hide for a few more hours. Have patience; the day will come...”

  “And what if the day doesn’t come?” shouted a shrill voice from the crowd.

  “If they day doesn’t come?” the governor repeated, uncomprehendingly.

  “Yes! What if we perish in darkness, without ever seeing the sun again?” the voice went on.

  “But that’s impossible! That cannot be! I swear to you that it’s impossible,” the governor affirmed.

  “Why is it impossible?” questioned the obstinate challenger.

  Not wanting to compromise his authority in perilous arguments, the Statesman vehemently denounced the criminal behavior of the prophet of doom.