As if Nature herself were preparing to listen via the ears of his new colleague, the orator scheduled to speak first in the debate went up to the podium sketching in the direction of Philémon Singeoreille the gesture of homage and sacrifice habitual to gladiators, toreadors and all those who make a profession of immolating themselves under the eyes of crowds.
The Deluge—an accident tainted with clericalism, and in consequence inapt to impress Republican minds—was passed over in silence, to the benefit of the strictly laic inundations that had desolated France in rationally historical times. In a sonorous evocation, in which his voice strove to attain the noise of devastating cataracts, the orator summoned to the vengeful bar of the representatives of the French people the authors responsible for the incriminated catastrophes:
“Advance, woodcutters with frenzied axes! Listen to me! From my mouth emerges the voice of humanity kneeling in the conscience of sincere repentance. Blind artisans of irreparable evils, return to us the legions of green trees that impose on aquatic life, outside of which everything is annihilation, a regular rhythm! Now, on the flanks of the denuded mountains, the snow no longer sleeps its provident slumber. The slightest wind chases it in avalanches toward the rivers, which howl outside their beds the submersion of plains that will be haunted thereafter by the specters of thirst.
“All of you, who weep for those dead of aridity or drowning, open your eyes. The assassinated flora demands your grief. Its mourning ought to be borne blacker than that of the dearest human beings. But there is still time to think of the salvation that is contained entire in the verb of hope and redemption: reforest! Let us apply that admirable verb to all times, to all fashions, to all persons! Men, women, children, rich, poor, strong and weak, let us conjugate it with the same ardor. Let us charge with high treason everyone who does not bring his tree to the Fatherland!”
The vehemence of the tirade rebounded from all the benches in vigorous echoes translated by the appeals of throats, the stamping of feet, the rattling of lecterns, the clapping of hands and the thousand other means by which the sovereign people simultaneously express their agreement or their anathema in the hectic microcosm of their representation.
Cries cut through the chaos of the tumult: “Vive la République! Vive la France! Long live the forests! Down with the axes!”
Several times, vibrant cries were heard of “Vive Singeoreille!”
The new occupant of the podium, who waited until the noise had calmed down somewhat before speaking, offered to cede his turn to his colleague, desired by the entire Chambre, but the President, invoking the hour, belated for an intervention as capital as that of the leader of the “laborers” could not fail to be, asked the orator to develop his amendment, proposing to the assembly to hear Philémon Singeoreille at the beginning of the next day’s session.
Unanimous applause approved the President’s decision.
The députés listened in relative silence to the speech, in the question was raised of climactic anarchy and the profligacy of the atmosphere. Demonstrations of joyous sympathy greeted the accusation of anonymous guilty parties of having trampled underfoot the rose of the winds and fomenting the saddening disappearance of the four seasons, now confused in an inconsistent sequence of months devoid of character and virtue.
The conclusion necessarily led to the remedy, already commended, of reforestation. He added to it a system of scaled subsidies—rather ingenious, according it its promoter—to bring the treetops into rapid conjunction with the sky.
The goal of eloquence is to force attention. Whoever consents to listen is ready to be conquered, especially in a political assembly in which opinions automatically polarize to the right or the left, according to whether they are emitted by a partisan or a adversary, and without giving the slightest weight to the arguments posed for or against the adoption of a thesis.
However, advanced minds and conservative minds found themselves entirely in agreement on the principle of reforestation; only its realization raised an infinite number of problems, opening innumerable divergences of view, which each of the députés reserved the privilege of exposing in the pell-mell of amendments and counter-proposals by which the Chambre tries honestly to take the place of the general interest by juxtaposing the eminently dissimilar elements of interests particular to each electoral circumscription.
In sober but energetic terms, the representative of an electorate whose territory was reputed to be the wettest on France demanded a text protective of official pluviometers, those modest but indefatigable auxiliaries of atmospheric science.
“Inscribe in the law an article punishing with severe penalties any person convicted of tampering with the free functioning of pluviometers! France has a right to know exactly how much water falls upon her, because, Messieurs, as water is the mother of humidity, humidity is the blood of the earth!”
The orator vituperated against the violators of pluviometers, which, in a bold move, he called the baptismal fonts of Agriculture. Opening a voluminous dossier relating the details of an investigation that he had made in numerous départements, he supported his accusations with evidence.
“In one town, which I shall not name, to protect its honor, do you know what I found in the bosom of the instrument reserved for the most noble and moist useful of sciences?”
“A goldfish!” replied a voice from the extreme right.
“Yes, my dear and esteemed colleague! Exactly! A goldfish! And you don’t find it fantastic that the sky should send goldfish to earth?”
“It proves that God is a Republican!” the right-winger retorted, gravely.27
“It proves, above all, that there are inferior consciences, corrupt minds for whom nothing is sacred!” riposted the man at the podium, hotly.
Ironic applause burst forth in a tempest. The députés, becoming once again the schoolboys that most of them had once been, uttered the various onomatopeias by means of which humans affirm their fraternity with a host of animals.
In the din, which the presidential hand-bell augmented instead of calming, the accusatory speech against the enemies of pluviometers continued, violent and picturesque, citing the fabulous errors of statistics.
“So, Messieurs, in my home town of Cancale, I wanted to keep watch on the national pluviometer personally. My surveillance was secret and precise. On the morning of my first inspection the pluviometer was full. That evening, at dusk, it was empty! The same thing happened for fourteen days running!”
“It’s the pluviometer of Tantale!” put in a piercing voice.28
“Of Cancale!” rectified a basso-profundo echo.
“The result, Messieurs, is that my arrondissement is, in the eyes of the administration, the least aqueous place in France, when in reality it rains there continually...”
“Make a motion for obligatory umbrellas!” suggested a facetious honorable gentleman.
Running out of wit, weary of laughter, the entire Chambre, turning toward Philémon Singeoreille, sang in formidable chorus: “Until tomorrow!”
The leader of the “Laborers” had shared very ostentatiously in his colleagues’ hilarity. The latter conceived a satisfaction therefrom that increased the sympathy they already experienced for his person.
Great legislative sessions do not lose out in any respect to artistic, theatrical, sportive or worldly solemnities. On certain days, the Palais Bourbon is the place where it is necessary to be seen, under pain of not being recognized as an active participant in Parisian Society, into which one enters either by the violence of a scandal or rights acquired by a slow and laborious incorporation, which anoints Parisiennes of the most varied personalities, over which a discreetly posed question mark suddenly become more precise in a summons to appear before an examining magistrate. Philémon Singeoreille’s debut, trumpeted by the newspapers as if it were a music hall attraction, had drawn to the Chambre, in addition to the regular clientele, a crowd in whom ancestral rustic tastes abolished by generations of strictly Parisian residen
ce had suddenly reawakened.
The regulation of the day’s schedule having been rapidly expedited, the President pronounced the sacramental phrase impatiently awaited: “Monsieur Philémon Singeoreille has the floor,” which he followed with a few kind words of welcome.
At the assured pace of a soldier marching to victory, Philémon Singeoreille traversed the hemicycle and climbed the steps of the podium with a measured agility.
He commenced by confessing the violence done to his timidity by the inconceivable audacity of speaking before the masters of French eloquence.
A stammer located in the center, sympathizing heartily with that oratory precaution, greeted it with a halting and mulish “He…he…he…,” which a colleague charitably completed as “Hear hear!”—approved by an “Exactly!” projected in a hazardous jet from the throat of the sufferer.
The orator entered into his subject like a hussar to a conquered town.
“The soul of Nature soars, immensely, over this assembly. Invisible to our eyes, she is present in our hearts! An august communion that raises us all to the height of those trees whose tops you were able to contemplate yesterday, so eloquently raised from the podium that I am occupying today with the unique and essential concern of simple words and sincere thoughts.”
Invocations of simplicity and sincerity are always much appreciated by people dedicated without weakness to emphasis and imposture; the députés applauded them in the person of Philémon Singeoreille, who continued in the same fashion.
“The evils of deforestation you know! I could revive, with an emotional scalpel, the horror of the mountain are the agony of the plain, both of which are dying, preceding us, perhaps not by very much, into extinction. I shall not do that. I shall go straight to the remedy. It resides in this single word: reforest. Infinitive of our dream, you are no chimera!
“Before me, I see a younger brother of Pegasus causing young shoots to spring from the earth with a luxuriant hoof, the younger sisters of clear springs. I see hectic branches hugging trunks with inextricable embraces. I see our forests becoming virgin again, as if they had never known the frightful kiss of the woodcutter’s ax. It is not an illusion cradled by the palpitations of the breeze, a false hope born of the greenery of foliage! It is a reality, which France has placed in the benevolent carpals of your hands.
“On your will depends the resurrection of the queen of waters, our ancestral sylvan. You want, I know, to be anointed as the legitimate fathers of our territorial renaissance. The greatest gestures are concretized in the briefest formulae. Who has not read on the edges of enclosures the inscriptions before which poachers sometimes pause: Beware of wolf traps. Well, Messieurs, in order for our work to be complete and fecund, it is sufficient to change that threat into a pact of alliance; it is sufficient that, henceforth, on the edges of forests devastated by the pitiless Attilas of commerce and industry, one reads: Beware of wolves.
“But what am I saying? Wolves? Obviously, Messieurs, wolves—but also lions, tigers, bears, snakes and elephants. All the representatives of an imprudently calumniated fauna must answer “Present!” to our appeal, which is the appeal of the Fatherland. France, Messieurs, is dying of the incomprehension of wild beasts. We have one foot in the grave because we have misunderstood their protective role.
“Oh, Messieurs, we believe too easily that Nature is impenetrable; her secrets have, however, been delivered. To the man who can see and comprehend, she sometimes reveals the most complex cogs of her infinite mechanism. Thanks to native dispositions and special circumstances, it has been given to me to see, and I have understood: in my sleep, haunted incessantly with thirst for the public good, the vast spaces of Africa, Asia, America and Oceania, as well as a few corners of Europe, have appeared to me.
“I have seen them populating themselves with that giant fauna—carnivorous or vegetarian, what does it matter?—as the same time as the trees that are also giants are born and grow, the paternal pillars throughout the centuries of those countries in whose bosom the attributes of virgin forests soon pullulate, barriers perpetually raised against the deforestation that causes the baldness of Nature as the loss of hair causes human baldness.
“I have seen and understood, Messieurs, that the ensemble of beings and things follows a rigorously mutual and essentially reciprocal process. Everything is in the one; the one is in everything. Thus, the animal is born and lives with the forest, as the forest is born and lives with the animal. I take as witnesses the dreaming lions seated at the feet of baobabs, the tigers swaying in flowery hammocks on elastic lianas.
“Let us ensure the existence of those inseparable twins, and we shall have accomplished the grandiose work that French soil awaits! The animals first! The vegetal will follow, in accordance with the mysterious and fatal law. Let us obey the primordial instincts. Let us contemplate the effects, still palpable on the soil of unexplored continents. Let us evoke those colossal forests that go in harness with the great fauna! Let us think of the relationship that links the splendor of woods o the quality of their residents. Let us not forget the magisterial formula: such animals, such trees! Let the scale of ferocity be the hierarchy of our appeal. Let us reconstitute the jungle in the service of the Republic!”
“Long live the Republican Jungle!” clamored the assembly triumphantly, transported by enthusiasm for an idea whose grandeur its members sensed.
“Let us repeat three times, like the sovereign words of antique theurgies, that cry of hope! Let is magnify its advent! Let us salute it as a definitive and unretractable step on the moving ground of progress! Souls of all ideals, hearts of all doctrines, voices of all parties, vibrate in that victorious unison of capital salvation!” Philémon Singeoreille concluded, in an inflamed peroration.
The Chambre took on the unaccustomed appearance of an assembly of the faithful gathered around their pontiff. Half a thousand mouths repeated the solemn words in the tone of a prayer, which does not count on violence in order to be heard. After a silence, a voice demanded immediate discussion of the proposal dignified with the name of “the Philémon Singeoreille law.” Five hundred hands were raised to approve the proposal.
A rapid colloquium was established between the President and the orator, who, before descending from the podium, handed the President a text, which the latter immediately read:
“Proposal of a law intended to restore virginity to the forests:
“Article One. The forests will be reintegrated in their estate and their destination.
“Article Two. From the date of the promulgation of the present law, the existing forests, and plantations in the locations of vanished forests, will have for residents ferocious or assimilated animals, the list of which will be fixed by decree.
“Article Three. The present law will entail the opening of a credit of a billion francs to the Ministry of Agriculture with a view to the acquisition of couples of animals in sufficient number to ensure the instantaneous increase of the selected species, the organization of services, and the execution of the works necessary for their immediate accommodation in the rigorously virgin forests and plantations envisaged in article one.
“Article Four. The present law is applicable to France and its colonies.”
The President concluded: “I invite the Chambre to appoint its committee.” His voice was drowned out by a frightful concert of reproach.
“No committee! A vote by raised hands! Immediate adoption by unanimity! Long live the Republican Jungle! Vive la France!”
Desirous of associating himself personally with that demonstration, the President agitated his hand-bell frantically, shouting at the top of his voice, with foam on his lips, impotently: “Silence, Messieurs!”—a cry reverberated in noble basso profundo echoes by the ushers.
Silence fell, as it sometimes does in the paroxysms of storms. The Minister of Agriculture, standing at the government bench, as finally able to get in a few words.
“The Government associates itself enthusiastically with the
prestigious proposal of Monsieur Philémon Singeoreille.”
Shouting, acclamations and various noises burst forth again. The voice of the President was scarcely audible in a brief calm, howling as he leaned over stenographers with haggard ears: “It is from similar minutes that Eternity is made!”
The reappearance of Philémon Singeoreille at the podium reestablished the silence that the Presidential objurgations had been unable to obtain.
“With a heart suspended by emotion, I thank the Chambre for carrying my brainchild so gloriously over the bulwark. I deem it to be healthy, well-conformed and called to the highest destiny, but permit me to oppose energetically its spontaneous adoption, flattering as it might be. My dear colleagues, takes as a model, if you will, the she-bear, who, with an indefatigable tongue, kneads in definitive relief the malleable forms of her cubs. Each of you is a torch which ought to shine its light upon the common endeavor. I insist on a discussion, point by point and in all its details, of the proposition that I have the honor of submitting to you.”
A brief ovation, as vibrant as a drum-roll, closed that declaration, which invited all the members of the Chambre to leave the imprint of their real presence on that session, henceforth and already historic.
“The Minister of Agriculture has the floor,” the President pronounced.
In order to give more solemnity to what he was about to say, the Minister climbed the steps of the podium. Head held high, his gestures broad and his voice assured, he commenced:
“Messieurs, the sun only rises rarely on a day comparable to the once that we have the signal honor of living today, thanks to the genius of one of our number. I shall, for posterity, name our colleague, the infinitely honorable Monsieur Philémon Singeoreille.”
The Minister allowed the salvo of applause earned by that perambulatory remark to pass.
The Petitpaon Era Page 27