This magnificent speech was received with enthusiasm. Alexandre Bourdillat himself gave the signal for the applause, saying aloud with hands impulsively outstretched towards him:
“Bravo, Focart! Splendid!”
Then, with a changed expression, he leaned back in his armchair and whispered to the Mayor of Clochemerle, who was seated on his left:
“He’s a viper, a dirty viper, that Focart! He’s trying to do me in by every possible means in order to push himself. And it’s I who was the making of him, I who put him on my list three years ago, the little swine! That tongue of his’ll get him a long way. And the Republic—you take my word, he doesn’t care a damn about it!”
Barthélemy Piéchut felt no doubt that these words, rather than the mutual embraces of these two gentlemen and the compliments they had been showering upon each other, were an utterance of complete sincerity. On hearing them he awoke to the fact that, owing to lack of information, he had made a blunder in inviting Bourdillat and Focart together, though the latter was sometimes considered to be a disciple of the former. But he seized the opportunity of gaining information, and also of stirring up a little more mud for his own private ends.
“Has he any influence with the party, this Focart?” he asked.
“What influence do you suppose he could have? He makes a little noise, and he rakes in the people with grievances. But that doesn’t go far.”
“All that means that you can’t trust him when he makes promises?”
Anxiety and suspicion were written on Bourdillat’s face as he turned to Piéchut.
“Has he been making you promises? What about?”
“Oh, only trifles. It happened just by chance. So I’m to understand that I had better not count too much on him?”
“Certainly not, certainly not! When you want anything, Barthélemy, you must apply direct to me.”
“That is exactly what I supposed. But I was always afraid of bothering you. . . .”
“Nonsense, Barthélemy, nonsense! Two old friends like us! Good heavens, I knew your father, old Piéchut. Do you remember your father? You had better talk to me about your affairs. We’ll fix up something together.”
Having thus secured Bourdillat’s support, Piéchut’s only thought was to make equally certain of Focart, by dropping him a hint on the subject of Bourdillat’s promises, and asking him if the latter was a man of his word and of great influence with the party. Things were going well. He remembered this saying of old Piéchut, his father: “If you’re wanting a light van and you’re offered a wheelbarrow, make no bones about it. Take the wheelbarrow. When the van comes along you’ll have ’em both.” Van or barrow, Bourdillat or Focart, one couldn’t say. . . . Old people know what they are talking about, Piéchut said to himself. He was arriving at the age when, his own wisdom being brought in question by younger men, he was adopting policies which he himself had formerly questioned. He realized that wisdom is not a thing which varies from one generation to another, but from one period of a man’s life to another, in each generation.
The time had now arrived for Bourdillat himself to speak. He took out his glasses, and a few sheets of paper which he began to read with great concentration. To say that he was not an orator would hardly meet the case. He stumbled painfully over his own text. However, under the influence of the sun, and because they had seldom seen so many prophets making such emphatic predictions gathered together in the main square of the town, the people of Clochemerle were enraptured. Like the others, Bourdillat foretold a future of peace and prosperity, in vague but grandiloquent phrases which showed no appreciable difference from those employed by the gentlemen who had preceded him on the platform. A suitably devout silence was maintained by each and all, with the possible exception of the subprefect, who failed to conceal the fact that his apparent attention was a mere sham.
This young man, with a thoughtful air and distinguished appearance which were well set off by his black and silver uniform, looked like a diplomat who had strayed into a country fair in some barbarian land. Each time he ceased to control his features, they took on an expression which was an exact interpretation of the remark: “What a job they have given me!” He had listened to speeches of this brand by the hundred, made by the type of politician who is always ready to promise the moon. He was intensely bored.
All of a sudden, the end of a sentence made an extraordinary sensation. This was not due to the meaning, but to the manner in which it was expressed.
“All those what have been true Republicans!”
With a keen eye for effect, Bourdillat had followed up this cadence with a pause which allowed the unfortunate grammatical howler to produce its full effect on all those who knew better.
“Oh! splendid! Bourdillat is in great form,” the subprefect said to himself.
“Errare humanum est!” Tafardel said learnedly. “A lapse, a lapse, a mere lapse! And one which does not affect the beauty of the idea.”
“It’s astonishing,” Girodot whispered in his neighbor’s ear, “that they didn’t shove him into the Board of Education!”
Not far away Oscar de Saint-Choul was seated. His gaiters, his breeches, his gloves, and his hat combined to make a harmonious picture in materials of uncommon excellence. In his helpless amazement his eyeglass burst forth from its accustomed socket. As he replaced it, this young nobleman cried out in astonishment:
“By the shades of my great-grandfather who died in exile, this is strange rhetoric indeed!”
As for Focart, who had returned to his seat on Barthélemy’s left and was choking with fury, he made no secret to the mayor of what he thought:
“What a blockhead, isn’t he, my dear Piéchut? No, but what a blockhead, what a supreme blockhead! Do you know his history? Really? You don’t? But it’s all over Parliament, my dear friend. I shan’t be betraying any secrets if I tell you.”
He gave a sketch of the career of Alexandre Bourdillat, Clochemerle’s great man, the ex-Minister of Agriculture.
When quite a young man, Bourdillat came to Paris as a café waiter. He subsequently married the daughter of the proprietor of a café, and set up in that position himself at Aubervilliers. For the space of twenty years his establishment was a very active center of electoral propaganda, the meeting place of several political groups. When forty-five years of age, Bourdillat appeared one day at the house of an influential Member of the party. “Damn it all!” he cried, “considering the time I’ve been making Members by buying drinks, isn’t it about my own turn? I want to be a Member myself, by God, I do!” The logic of these arguments was held to be unassailable, particularly as the café proprietor had means which to a great extent would cover the expenses of his election. In 1904, at the age of forty-seven, he was elected for the first time. He employed the same methods in his rise to the Cabinet as those which had served him so well in his election to Parliament. For years he kept on repeating: “Damn it, am I to be left out? Why, I’ve got as much sense as any of ’em! And I’ve done more for the party with my drinks than any of those high and mighty gentlemen with their speeches!” At last, in 1917, his chance arrived. Clemenceau was forming his Ministry. In his flat in the rue Franklin he received the leader of the party. “What names do you want to put forward?” he asked. Bourdillat’s name was mentioned among others. “Is he an old fool, your Bourdillat?” Clemenceau asked. “Well, Monsieur le Président,” was the reply, “he’s not a particularly remarkable man, but as a politician he would be described as a good honest average.” “That is exactly what I meant!” the statesman answered promptly, with an emphatic gesture intended to rule out useless subcategories. He pondered for a moment. Then he said, abruptly: “Very well, I’ll take your Bourdillat. The more idiots I get around me, the more likely I am not to have the life worried out of me!”
“A good story, don’t you think?” Focart insisted. “And have you heard about the Toulouse speech, Bourdillat’s masterpiece? . . .”
Aristide Focart’s confidences continued
unbroken save by his occasional applause and other demonstrations of enthusiastic approval. In the meantime Bourdillat was dauntlessly forging ahead, uttering a string of formulas acquired during a forty years’ experience of political gatherings. Finally he arrived at the concluding lines of his script, and the frenzied enthusiasm of the inhabitants of Clochemerle reached its crowning point. The officials rose from their seats and proceeded to make their way through the main street towards the center of the town, with the crowd in their wake. The time had arrived for the jolly inauguration of the little edifice which the people of Clochemerle had already christened “Piéchut’s slate.”
The Clochemerle fire brigade had been requisitioned for the removal of the tarpaulin. The unassuming little monument was revealed in all its utility and all its charm. There was talk of christening it with Clochemerle wine by breaking the neck of a bottle over the sheet-iron wall. But for this solemn sacrifice a special priest must be found. As the event proved, it was a priestess.
At that moment the subprefect dived into the crowd and emerged with a woman whom he had been quick to notice and had been careful to keep in sight. It was Judith Toumignon. She advanced to occupy a place among the official dignitaries, swaying her glorious hips with a simple careless grace which called forth murmurs of admiration. She it was who baptized the urinal, laughing the while; and to thank her, old Bourdillat kissed her on both cheeks. Focart and several others wished to follow his example. But she freed herself, saying:
“It isn’t me they’re inaugurating, gentlemen!”
“Alas!” came in chorus from these same gallant gentlemen.
Suddenly a voice rang out:
“Come on, Bourdillat, show us that you’re a Clochemerle man! You go first, Bourdillat!”
And the entire crowd thereupon took up the cry:
“Yes, go on! Go on, Bourdillat!”
The ex-Minister was completely taken aback by this request; for several years past he had had serious trouble with a certain portion of his anatomy. But he acquiesced in what must be only a semblance of reality. As soon as he had reached the other side of the iron wall, a mighty cheer rent the Clochemerle sky, and the women broke into bursts of shrill laughter, as though they had been tickled; and this, likely enough, was at the thought of what Bourdillat, by way of symbol, held in his hand, which was in the minds of these buxom charmers more often than it would be seemly to admit.
It so happened that many of Clochemerle’s inhabitants there assembled were in dire need after a period of attention so long sustained. The waiting queue began in Monks’ Alley, headed by the local constable Beausoleil, a man of great initiative, whose impressions were thus expressed:
“All that water flowing, it makes you want to follow suit,” he said.
“It’s fine and slippery, Piéchut’s slate,” cried Tonin Machavoine, confirming the general impression.
This rural merrymaking did not cease until it was time for feasting. At the Torbayon Inn a banquet of eighty covers was served. With Gargantuan mounds of trout, legs of mutton, chickens, and game, old bottles of the local wine, toasts, and speeches, it lasted for five hours on end. Then Bourdillat, Focart, the subprefect, and a few other people of note were shown into their cars, their time being limited, seeing that their pockets were already filled with other speeches, other promises, and plans made a month in advance relating to inaugurations and banquets at which the presence of these faithful servants of their country was required.
From every point of view this was a red-letter day for the inhabitants of Clochemerle. But for one of them it had no parallel. This was Ernest Tafardel, to whom, with the Minister’s permission, Bourdillat had awarded the academic palms. This emblem of his signal merit renewed the schoolmaster’s youth, so that this middle-aged man could be seen frisking about like a schoolboy, and also drinking far more than usual, until the shutters were put up at the last café to close for the night. Then, having overwhelmed his fellow citizens with a flood of words which were evidently the outcome of an exalted plane of thought—unhappily ruined, from nine o’clock onwards, by references of an obscure nature—Tafardel, monarch of all he surveyed, relieved himself majestically in the center of the main street, simultaneously uttering with a loud voice the following strange profession of faith: “The Superintendent of the Academy,—him! Yes, I say,—him! And I’ll say it to his face, the blackguard! I’ll say to him, ‘Mr. Superintendent, your humble servant,—you! You quite understand? Get out, you silly dunce, you vulgar swine! Get out, you clown, you miserable ninny! And hats off to the famous Tafardel!’” Having thus spoken, with an upward glance at the stars which shone from a friendly sky, the schoolmaster burst into a spicy refrain; then, having taken careful bearings of the direction to be followed along the main street, he began the task of the ascent to the town hall. This expedition took him a long time and resulted in the loss of one of the glasses of his spectacles, which was broken after a series of distressing falls. He succeeded, nevertheless, in reaching the school once more, and fell asleep on his bed fully clothed and in a state of complete intoxication.
CHAPTER SIX
THE HALLUCINATIONS
of Justine Putet
IN THIS AFFAIR of the urinal barthélemy piéchut had staked his reputation. He was aware of this, and it made him rather anxious. If the townspeople should take it into their heads to scorn his little edifice, his scheme would have failed in its object of furthering his political ambitions. But the gods of the countryside smiled favorably on his cunning devices; and chief among them was Bacchus, who for some centuries past had sought refuge in Beaujolais, Mâconnais, and Burgundy.
The spring of that year was remarkably early, notably mild, and rich with flowers. It was not long before shirts began to be damp from good honest perspiration on chests and backs. As soon as the month of May arrived, men began drinking in the rhythm of summertime, and that, at Clochemerle, is in right liberal measure, and quite beyond the conception of feeble bloodless drinkers in cities and towns. The result of this great overmastering impulse, in the male organisms, was a very sustained renal activity, which demanded a hearty joyous overflow at somewhat frequent intervals. Its proximity to the Torbayon Inn brought the urinal into high favor. Doubtless the drinkers’ needs could have found satisfaction in the courtyard of the inn, but it was a gloomy spot of unpleasing odor and badly kept, a cheerless place. It was like a penitence; you had to grope your way, and your footwear was apt to suffer. But crossing the street was the matter of a moment, and the new procedure offered several advantages. There was the novelty of it; you could take a little stroll, and there was the opportunity, as one passed, of a glance at Judith Toumignon, who was always something of a feast to the eye and whose faultless outlines were a stimulus to the imagination.
Finally, the urinal having two compartments, one usually went there in company; and this procured the pleasure of a little conversation as one proceeded with the business of the moment, which made both the business and the conversation still more agreeable than they would otherwise have been; because one was enjoying two pleasures at the same time. Men who drank with extreme courage and competence, with results to correspond, could but feel happy, one alongside the other, in the enjoyment of two great and inevitably consecutive pleasures—to drink good wine without stint and then seek relief to its utmost possibility, without haste or hurry, in a fresh well-ventilated place, flushed day and night with a plentiful supply of water. Simple pleasures are these, which the town-bred man, ruthlessly jostled and hurried along on such occasions, can no longer enjoy. At Clochemerle they continued to be fully appreciated. So great was the value placed upon them, so highly were they esteemed, that each time Piéchut passed by his little edifice—as he often did to assure himself that it was not standing idle—if the occupants were men of his own generation they never failed to give him evidence of their satisfaction and content.
The urinal had met with equal favor among the young people, but for very different reasons. Situated i
n the center of Clochemerle, it marked the point of union between the upper and lower portions of the town, in close proximity to the church, the inn, and the Beaujolais Stores, all three of which were important places constantly in the public eye. It was an obvious meeting place. It was also a considerable source of attraction to the lads and younger men, in this way. Monks’ Alley was the only available means of access to the vestry for the Children of Mary, and during the month of May they were to be seen there every evening.
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