“The worst fault of the present régime is that it costs very dear. It makes no outward show: it is not ostentatious. It is gorgeous neither in its women nor its horses. But, with its humble appearance and neglected exterior, it is expensive. It has too many poor relations, too many friends to provide for. It is a spendthrift. The most grievous point is that it lives on an exhausted country whose powers are waning and which no longer thrives. And the administration has great need of money. It is aware that it is in difficulties. And its difficulties are greater than it fancies. They will increase still more. The evil is not new. It is the one which killed the old régime. I am going, monsieur l’abbé, to tell you a great truth: as long as the State contents itself with the revenues supplied by the poor, as long as it has enough from the subsidies which are assured to it with mechanical regularity by those who work with their hands, it lives happy, peaceful, and honoured. Economists and financiers are pleased to acknowledge its honesty. But as soon as this unhappy State driven by need, makes a show of asking for money from those who have it, and of levying some slight toll on the rich, it is made to feel that it is committing a horrible outrage, is violating all rights, is wanting in respect to a sacred thing, is destroying commerce and industry, and crushing the poor by touching the rich. No one hides his conviction that discredit is at hand. And it sinks beneath the genuine contempt of the good citizen. Yet ruin comes slowly and surely. The State touches capital: it is lost.
“Our ministers are jesting at us when they speak of the clerical or the socialist peril. There is but one peril, the financial peril. The Republic is beginning to recognise this. I pity her, I shall regret her. I was reared under the Empire, in love for the Republic. ‘She is justice,’ my father, professor of rhetoric at the college of Saint-Omer, used to say to me. He did not know her. She is not justice but she is ease. Monsieur l’abbé if you had a soul less exhalted, less serious, and more given to jesting thoughts, I should confide to you that the present Republic, the Republic of 1896, delights me and touches me by its modesty. She acquiesces in not being admired. She exacts but a trifling respect, and even renounces esteem. It is enough for her to live. That is her sole desire; it is a lawful one. The humblest beings cling to life. Like the wood-cutter of the fabulist, like the apothecary of Mantua, who so greatly astonished that young fool of a Romeo, she fears death, and it is her only fear. She mistrusts princes and soldiers. In danger of death she would be very ill to handle. Fear would make her ferocious. That would be a pity. But as long as they make no attempt on her life, and as long as they only attack her honour, she is good-natured. A government of this kind suits me and gives me confidence. So many others were merciless through self-esteem! So many others made sure of their rights, their grandeur and their prosperity by cruelties! So many others have poured out blood for their prerogative and their majesty! She has no selfesteem; she has no majesty. A fortunate lack which keeps her innocuous to us! Provided that she lives she is content. She rules laxly and I should be tempted to praise her for that more than for all the rest. And since she governs laxly I forgive her for governing badly. I suspect men at all times of having much exaggerated the necessity of government and the benefits of a strong administration. Certainly strong administrations make nations great and prosperous. But the nations have suffered so much all through the centuries for their grandeur and prosperity, that I fancy they would renounce it. Glory has cost them too dear for them to resent the fact that our present rulers have only procured for us the colonial variety of it. If the uselessness of all government should at last be discovered, the Republic of M. Carnot would have paved the way for this priceless discovery. And one ought to feel some gratitude towards it for that. Taking everything into consideration, I feel much attached to our institutions.” Thus spoke M. Bergeret, professor of literature at the University.
Abbé Lantaigne rose, drew out from his pocket his blue-checkered handkerchief, passed it over his lips, returned it to his pocket, smiled, contrary to his custom, secured his breviary under his arm, and said:
“You express yourself pleasantly, Monsieur Bergeret. Just so did the rhetors talk in Rome when Alaric entered it with his Visigoths. Yet under the terebinth trees of the Esquiline the rhetors of the fifth century let fall thoughts of less vanity. For then Rome was Christian. You are that no longer.”
“Monsieur l’abbé,” replied the professor, “be a bishop and not the head of the University.”
“It is true, Monsieur Bergeret,” said the priest with a loud laugh, “that if I were head of the University I should forbid you to be a teacher of youth.”
“And you would do me a great service. For then I should write in the papers like M. Jules Lemaître, and who knows whether, like him...”
“Well! well! you would not be out of place among the wits. And the French Academy has a partiality for freethinkers.”
He spoke and walked away with a firm, straight, heavy tread. M. Bergeret remained alone in the middle of the bench, which was now three-parts covered by shade. The ladybird which had been fluttering its wing-cases on his shoulder for a moment flew away. He began to dream. He was not happy, for he had an acute mind whose points were not always turned outwards, and very often he pricked himself with the needle-points of his own criticism. Anaemic and bilious, he had a very weak digestion and enfeebled senses, which brought him more disgust and suffering than pleasure and happiness. He was reckless in speech, and in unerringness and precision his tactlessness attained the same results as the most practised skill. With cunning art he seized every opportunity of injuring himself. He inspired the majority of people with a natural aversion, and being sociable and inclined to fraternise with his fellows, he suffered from that fact. He had never succeeded in moulding his pupils, and he delivered his lectures on Latin literature in a gloomy, damp, deserted cellar, in which he was buried through the Dean’s burning hatred of him. The University buildings were, however, spacious. Built in 1894, “these new premises,” according to the words of M. Worms-Clavelin at the opening, “testified to the zeal of the government of the Republic for the diffusion of learning.” They boasted an amphitheatre, decorated by M. Léon Glaize with allegorical paintings representing Science and Literature, where M. Compagnon gave his much-belauded lectures on mathematics. The other gownsmen in their red or yellow taught different subjects in handsome, well-lighted rooms. M. Bergeret alone, under the bedel’s ironic glance, had to descend, followed by three students, into a dusky, subterranean hole. There in the heavy, noisome air, he expounded the Æneid with German scholarship and French subtlety; there, by his literary and moral pessimism, he afflicted M. Roux, of Bordeaux, his best pupil; there, he opened up new vistas, whose aspect was terrifying; there, one evening he pronounced those words now become famous, but which ought rather to have perished, stifled in the shadow of the vault:— “Fragments of differing origins, soldered clumsily on to each other, made up the Iliad and the Odyssey. Such are the models of composition that have been imitated by Virgil, by Fénelon, and in general, in classic literatures, by writers of narratives in verse or in prose.” M. Bergeret was not happy. He had received no honorary distinction. It is true that he despised honours. But he felt that it would have been much finer to despise them while accepting them. He was obscure and less well known in the town for works of talent than M. de Terremondre, author of a Tourist Guide; than General Milher, a distinguished miscellaneous writer of the department; less even than his pupil, M. Albert Roux, of Bordeaux, author of Nirée, a poem in vers libres.
Certainly he despised literary fame, knowing that that of Virgil in Europe rested on a double misconception, one absurd and the other fabulous. But he suffered at having no intercourse with writers who, like MM. Faguet, Doumic, or Pellissier, seemed akin to him in mind. He would have liked to know them, to live with them in Paris, like them to write in reviews, to contradict, to rival, perhaps to outstrip them. He recognised in himself a certain subtlety of intellect, and he had written pages which he knew to be pleasin
g.
He was not happy. He was poor, shut up with his wife and his three daughters in a little dwelling, where he tasted to the full the inconveniences of domestic life; and it harassed him to find hair-curlers on his writing-table, and to see the margins of his manuscripts singed by curling-tongs. The only secure and pleasant place of retreat that he had in the world was that bench on the Mall shaded by an ancient elm, and the old-book corner in Paillot’s shop.
He meditated for a moment on his sad condition; then he rose from his bench and took the road which leads to the bookseller’s.
XIV
WHEN M. Bergeret entered the shop, Paillot, the bookseller, with a pencil thrust behind his ear, was collecting his “returns.” He was stacking up the volumes whose yellow covers, after long exposure to the sunlight, had turned brown and become covered with fly-marks. These were the unsaleable copies which he was sending back to the publishers. M. Bergeret recognised among the “returns” several works that he liked. He felt no chagrin at this, having too much taste to hope to see his favourite authors winning the votes of the crowd.
He sank down, as he was accustomed to do, in the old-book corner, and through mere habit took up the thirty-eighth volume of l’Histoire Générale des Voyages. The book, bound in green leather, opened of its own accord at p. 212, and M. Bergeret once more read these fatal lines:
“a passage to the North. ‘It is to this check,’ said he, ‘that we owe the opportunity of being able to visit the Sandwich Isles again...’”
And M. Bergeret sank into melancholy.
M. Mazure, the archivist of the department, and M. de Terremondre, president of the Society of Agriculture and Archæology, who both had their rush-bottomed chairs in the old-book corner, came in opportunely to join the professor. M. Mazure was a paleographer of great merit. But his manners were not elegant. He had married the servant of the archivist, his predecessor, and appeared in the town in a straw hat with battered crown. He was a radical, and published documents concerning the history of the county town during the Revolution. He enjoyed inveighing against the royalists of the department; but having applied for academic honours without having received them, he began invectives against his political friends, and particularly against M. Worms-Clavelin, the préfet.
Being insulted by nature, his professional practice of discovering secrets disposed him to slander and calumny. Nevertheless he was good company, especially at table, where he used to sing drinking songs.
“You know,” said he to M. de Terremondre and M. Bergeret, “that the préfet uses the house of Rodonneau junior for assignations with women. He has been caught there. Abbé Guitrel also haunts the place. And, appropriately enough, the house is called, in a land-survey of 1783, the House of the Two Satyrs.”
“But,” said M. de Terremondre, “there are no women of loose life in the house of Rondonneau junior.”
“They are taken there,” answered Mazure, the archivist.
“Talking of that,” said M. de Terremondre, “I have heard, my dear Monsieur Bergeret, that you have been shocking my old friend Lantaigne, on the Mall, by a cynical confession of your political and social immorality. They say that you know neither law nor curb...”
“They are mistaken,” replied M. Bergeret.
“... that you are indifferent in the matter of government.”
“Not at all! But, to tell the truth, I do not attach any special importance to the form of the State. Changes of government make little change in the condition of individuals. We do not depend on constitutions or on charters, but on instincts and morals. It serves no purpose at all to change the names of public necessities. And it is only the crazy and the ambitious who make revolutions.”
“It is not above ten years ago,” replied M. Mazure, “that I would have risked a broken head for the Republic. To-day I could see her turn a somersault, and only laugh and cross my arms. The old republicans are despised. Favour is only granted to the turncoats. I am not referring to you, Monsieur de Terremondre. But I am disgusted. I have come to think with M. Bergeret. All governments are ungrateful.”
“They are all powerless,” said M. Bergeret; “and I have here in my pocket a little tale which I should very much like to read to you. I have founded it on an anecdote which my father often related to me. It proves that absolute power is powerlessness itself. I should like to have your opinion on this trifle. If you do not disapprove of it, I shall send it to the Revue de Paris.”
M. de Terremondre and M. Mazure drew their chairs up to that of M. Bergeret, who pulled a notebook from his pocket and began to read in a weak, but clear voice:
A DEPUTY MAGISTRATE
In a salon of the Tuileries the ministers had assembled...
“Allow me to listen,” said M. Paillot, the bookseller. “I am waiting for Léon, who is not back yet. When he is out, he never comes back. I am obliged to tend the shop and serve the customers. But I shall hear at least a part of the reading. I like to improve my mind.”
“Very well, Paillot,” said M. Bergeret, and he resumed:
A DEPUTY MAGISTRATE
In a salon of the Tuileries the ministers had assembled in council, under the presidency of the Emperor. Napoleon III. was silently making marks with a pencil on a plan of an industrial town. His long, sallow face, with its melancholy sweetness, had a strange appearance amid the square heads of the men of affairs and the bronzed faces of the men of toil. He half raised his eyelids, glanced with his gentle, vague look round the oval table, and asked:
“Gentlemen, is there any other matter to be discussed?”
His voice issued from his thick moustaches a little muffled and hollow, and seemed to come from very far off.
At this moment the Keeper of the Seals made a sign to his colleague of the Home Department which the latter did not seem to notice. — At that time the Keeper of the Seals was M. Delarbre, a magistrate in virtue of his birth, who had displayed in his high judicial functions a becoming pliability, abruptly laid aside now and then for the rigidity of a professional dignity that nothing could bend. It was said that, after having become an ultramontane and a member of the Empress’s party, the jansenism of those great lawyers, his ancestors, sometimes bubbled up in his nature. But those who had access to him considered him to be merely punctilious, a trifle fanciful, indifferent to the great questions which his mind did not grasp, and obstinate about the trifles which suited the pettiness of his intriguing character.
The Emperor was preparing to rise, with his two hands on the gilt arms of his chair. Delarbre, seeing that the Home Secretary, his nose in his papers, was avoiding his look, took it upon himself to challenge him.
“Pardon me, my dear colleague, for raising a question which, although it started in your department, none the less concerns mine. But you have yourself declared to me your intention of apprising the Council of the extremely delicate situation in which a magistrate has been placed by the préfet of a department in the West.”
The Home Secretary shrugged his broad shoulders slightly and looked at Delarbre with some impatience. He had the air, at once jovial and choleric, which belongs to great demagogues.
“Oh,” said he, “that was gossip, ridiculous tittle-tattle, a rumour which I should be ashamed to bring to the notice of the Emperor, were it not that my colleague, the Minister of Justice, seems to attach an importance to it which, for my part, I have not succeeded in discovering.”
Napoleon began sketching once more. “It has to do with the préfet of Loire-Inférieure,” continued the minister. “This official is reputed, in his department, to be a gallant squire of dames, and the reputation for gallantry which has become attached to his name, combined with his well-known courtesy and his devotion to the government, has contributed not a little to the popularity which he enjoys in the country. His attentions to Madame Méreau, the wife of the procureur-général, have been noticed and commented on. I grant that M. Pélisson, the préfet, has given occasion for scandalous gossip in Nantes, and that severe cha
rges have been laid to his account in the bourgeois circles of the county town, especially in the drawing-rooms frequented by the magistracy. Assuredly M. Pélisson’s attitude towards Madame Méreau, whose position ought to have protected her from any such equivocal attentions, would be regrettable, if it were continued. But the information I have received enables me to state that Madame Méreau has not been actually compromised and that no scandal is to be anticipated. A little prudence and circumspection will suffice to prevent this affair having any annoying consequences.”
Having spoken in these terms, the Home Secretary closed his portfolio and leant back in his chair.
The Emperor said nothing.
“Excuse me, my dear colleague!” said the Keeper of the Seals drily, “the wife of the procureur-général of the court of Nantes is the mistress of the préfet of Loire-Inférieure; this connection, known throughout the whole district, is calculated to injure the prestige of the magistracy. It is important to call the attention of His Majesty to this state of things.”
“Doubtless,” replied the Home Secretary, his gaze turned towards the allegories on the ceiling, “doubtless, such facts are to be regretted; yet one must in no way exaggerate; it is possible that the préfet of Loire-Inférieure may have been a little imprudent and Madame Méreau a little giddy, but...”
The minister wafted the rest of his ideas towards the mythological figures which floated across the painted sky. There was a moment’s silence, during which one could hear the impudent chirping of the sparrows perched on the trees in the garden and on the eaves of the château.
M. Delarbre bit his thin lips and pulled his austere but coquettish moustaches. He replied:
“Excuse my persistence; the secret reports which I have received leave no doubt as to the nature of the relationship between M. Pélisson and Madame Méreau. These relations were already established two years ago. In fact, in the month of September 18 — the préfet of Loire-Inférieure got the procureur-général an invitation to hunt with the Comte de Morainville, deputy for the third division in the department, and during the magistrate’s absence he entered Madame Méreau’s room. He got in by way of the kitchen-garden. The next day the gardener saw traces that the wall had been scaled and informed the police. Inquiry was made; they even arrested a tramp, who, not being able to prove his innocence, endured several months of precautionary imprisonment. He had, it is true, a very bad record and no special points of interest about him. Still to this day the procureur-général persists, supported by a very small proportion of the public, in believing him to be guilty of housebreaking. The position, I repeat, is rendered by this fact no less annoying and prejudicial to the prestige of the magistracy.”
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 123