“The zeal for justice.”
M. Bergeret pulled the bell.
“Good-bye, Mazure,” said he; “don’t be just, and do be merciful. I wish you a very happy New Year.”
M. Bergeret looked through the dirty window of the hall to see if there were any letter or paper in the box; he still took an interest in letters from a distance or in literary reviews. But to-day there were only visiting-cards, which suggested to him nothing more interesting than personalities as shadowy and pale as the cards themselves, and a bill from Mademoiselle Rose, the modiste of the Tintelleries. As his eyes fell on this, the thought suddenly occurred to him that Madame Bergeret was becoming extravagant and that the house was stuffy. He could feel the weight of it on his shoulders, and as he stood in the hall, he seemed to be bearing on his back the whole flooring of his flat, in addition to the drawing-room piano and that terrible wardrobe that swallowed up his little store of money and yet was always empty. Thus weighted with domestic troubles, M. Bergeret grasped the iron handrail with its ample curves of florid metal-work, and began, with bent head and short breath, to climb the stone steps. These were now blackened, worn, cracked, patched, and ornamented with worn bricks and squalid paving-stones, but once, in the bygone days of their early youth, they had known the tread of fine gentlemen and pretty girls, hurrying to pay rival court to Pauquet, the revenue-tax farmer who had enriched himself by the spoils of a whole province. For it was in the mansion of Pauquet de Sainte-Croix that M. Bergeret lived, now fallen from its glory, despoiled of its splendour and degraded by a plaster top-storey which had taken the place of its graceful gable and majestic roof. Now the building was darkened by tall houses built all round it, on ground where once there were gardens with a thousand statues, ornamental waters and a park, and even on the main courtyard where Pauquet had erected an allegorical monument to his king, who was in the habit of making him disgorge his booty every five or six years, after which he was left for another term to stuff himself again with gold.
This courtyard, which was flanked by a splendid Tuscan portico, had vanished in 1857 when the Rue des Tintelleries was widened. Now Pauquet de Sainte-Croix’s mansion was nothing but an ugly tenement-house badly neglected by two old caretakers, Gaubert by name, who despised M. Bergeret for his quietness and had no sense of his true generosity, because it was that of a man of moderate means. Yet whatever M. Raynaud gave they regarded with respect, although he gave little when he was well able to give much: to the Gauberts, his hundred-sou piece was valuable because it came from great wealth.
M. Raynaud, who owned the land near the new railway station, lived on the first storey. Over the doorway of this there was a bas-relief which, as usual, caught M. Bergeret’s eye as he passed. It depicted old Silenus on his ass surrounded by a group of nymphs. This was all that remained of the interior decoration of the mansion which, belonging to the reign of Louis XV, had been built at a period when the French style was aiming at the classic, but, lucky in missing its aim, had acquired that note of chastity, stability and noble elegance which one associates more especially with Gabriel’s designs. As a matter of fact Pauquet de Sainte-Croix’s mansion had actually been designed by a pupil of that great architect. Since then it had been systematically disfigured. Although, for economy’s sake and just to save a little trouble and expense, they had not torn down the little bas-relief of Silenus and the nymphs, they had at any rate painted it, like the rest of the staircase, with a sham decoration of red granite. The tradition of the place would have it that in this Silenus one might see a portrait of Pauquet himself, who was reputed to have been the ugliest man of his time, as well as the most popular with women. M. Bergeret, although no great connoisseur in art, made no such mistake as this, for in the grotesque, yet sublime, figure of the old god he recognised a type well known in the Renaissance, and transmitted from the Greeks and Romans. Yet, whenever he saw this Silenus and his nymphs, his thoughts naturally turned to Pauquet, who had enjoyed all the good things of this world in the very house where he himself lived a life that was not only toilsome, but thankless.
“This financier,” he thought as he stood on the landing, “merely sucked money from a king who in turn sucked it from him. This made them quits. It is unwise to brag about the finances of the monarchy, since, in the end, it was the financial deficit that brought about the downfall of the system. But this point is noteworthy, that the king was then the sole owner of all property, both real and personal, throughout the kingdom. Every house belonged to the king, and in proof of this, the subject who actually enjoyed the possession of it had to place the royal arms on the slab at the back of the hearth. It was therefore as owner, and not in pursuance of his right of taxation, that Louis XIV sent his subjects’ plate to the Mint in order to defray the expenses of his wars. He even had the treasures of the churches melted down, and I read lately that he carried off the votive-offerings of Notre-Dame de Liesse in Picardy, among which was found the breast that the Queen of Poland had deposited there in gratitude for her miraculous recovery. Everything then belonged to the king, that is to say, to the state. And yet neither the Socialists, who to-day demand the nationalisation of private property, nor the owners who intend to hold fast their possessions, pay any heed to the fact that this nationalisation would be, in some respects, a return to the ancient custom. It gives one a philosophic pleasure to reflect that the Revolution really was for the benefit of those who had acquired private ownership of national possessions and that the Declaration of the Rights of Man has become the landlords’ charter.
“This Pauquet, who used to bring here the prettiest girls from the opera, was no knight of Saint-Louis. To-day he would be commander of the Legion of Honour and to him the finance ministers would come for their instructions. Then it was money he enjoyed; now it would be honours. For money has become honourable. It is, — in fact, the only nobility we possess. We have destroyed all the others to put in their place the most oppressive, the most insolent, and the most powerful of all orders of nobility.”
M. Bergeret’s reflections were distracted at this point by the sight of a group of men, women, and children coming out of M. Raynaud’s flat. He saw that it was a band of poor relations who had come to wish the old man a happy New Year: he fancied he could see them smelling about, under their new hats, for some profit to themselves. He went on up the stairs, for he lived on the third floor, which he delighted to call the third “room,” using the seventeenth-century phrase for it. — And to explain this ancient term he loved to quote La Fontaine’s lines:
Where is the good of life to men of make like you,
To live and read for ever in a poor third room?
Chill winter always finds you in the dress of June,
With for lackey but the shadow that is each man’s due.
Possibly the use he made of this quotation and of this kind of talk was unwise, for it exasperated Madame Bergeret, who was proud of living in a flat in the middle of the town, in a house that was inhabited by people of good position.
“Now for the third ‘room,’” said M. Bergeret to himself. Drawing out his watch, he saw that it was eleven o’clock. He had told them not to expect him before noon, as he had intended to spend an hour in Paillot’s shop. But there he had found the shutters up: holidays and Sundays were days of misery to him, simply because the bookseller’s was closed on those days. To-day he had a feeling of annoyance, because he had not been able to pay his usual call on Paillot.
On reaching the third storey he turned his key noiselessly in the lock and entered the diningroom with his cautious footstep. It was a dismal room, concerning which M. Bergeret had formed no particular opinion, although in Madame Bergeret’s eyes it was quite artistic, on account of the brass chandelier which hung above the table, the chairs and sideboard of carved oak with which it was furnished, the mahogany whatnot loaded with little cups, and especially on account of the painted china plates that adorned the wall. On entering this room from the dimly lit hall one had the doo
r of the study on the left, and on the right the drawing-room door. Whenever M. Bergeret entered the flat he was in the habit of turning to the left into his study, where solitude, books and slippers awaited him. This time, however, for no particular motive or reason, without thinking what he was doing, he went to the right. He turned the handle, opened the door, took one step and found himself in the drawingroom.
He then saw on the sofa two figures linked together in a violent attitude that suggested either endearment or strife, but which was, as a matter of fact, very compromising. Madame Bergeret’s head was turned away and could not be seen, but her feelings were plainly expressed in the generous display of her red stockings. M. Roux’s face wore that strained, solemn, set, distracted look that cannot be mistaken, although one seldom sees it; it agreed with his disordered array. Then, the appearance of everything changed in less than a second, and now M. Bergeret saw before him two quite different persons from those whom he had surprised; two persons who were much embarrassed and whose looks were strange and even rather comical. He would have fancied himself mistaken had not the first picture engraved itself on his sight with a strength that was only equalled by its suddenness.
VI
M. BERGERET’S first impulse at this shameful sight was to act violently, like a plain man, even with the ferocity of an animal. Born as he was of a long line of unknown ancestors, amongst whom there were, of course, many cruel and savage souls, heir as he was of those innumerable generations of men, apes, and savage beasts from whom we are all descended, the professor had been endowed, along with the germ of life, with the destructive instinct of the older races. Under this shock these instincts awoke. He thirsted for slaughter and burned to kill M. Roux and Madame Bergeret. But his desire was feeble and evanescent. With the four canine teeth which he carried in his mouth and the nails of the carnivorous beast which armed his fingers, M. Bergeret had inherited the ferocity of the beast, but the original force of this instinct had largely disappeared. He did, it is true, feel a desire to kill M. Roux and Madame Bergeret, but it was a very feeble one. He felt fierce and cruel, but the sensation was so short-lived and so weak that no act was born of the thought, and even the expression of the idea was so swift that it entirely escaped the notice of the two witnesses who were most concerned in its manifestation. In less than a second M. Bergeret had ceased to be purely instinctive, primitive, and destructive, without, however, ceasing at the same time to be jealous and irritated. On the contrary, his indignation went on increasing. In this new frame of mind his thoughts were no longer simple; they began to centre round the social problem; confusedly there seethed in his mind fragments of ancient theologies, bits of the Decalogue, shreds of ethics, Greek, Scotch, German and French maxims, scattered portions of the moral code which, by striking his brain like so many flint stones, set him on fire. He felt patriarchal, the father of a family after the Roman style, an overlord and justiciar. He had the virtuous idea of punishing the guilty. After having wanted to kill Madame Bergeret and M. Roux by mere bloodthirsty instinct, he now wanted to kill them out of regard for justice. He mentally sentenced them to terrible and ignominious punishments. He lavished upon them every ignominy of mediaeval custom. This journey across the ages of civilisation was longer than the first. It lasted for two whole seconds, and during that time the two culprits so discreetly changed their attitude that these changes, though imperceptible, were fundamental, and completely altered the character of their relationship.
Finally, religious and moral ideas becoming completely confounded with one another in his mind, M. Bergeret felt nothing but a sense of misery, while disgust, like a vast wave of dirty water, poured across the flame of his wrath. Three full seconds passed; he was plunged in the depths of irresolution and did nothing. By an obscure, confused instinct which was characteristic of his temperament, from the first moment he had turned his eyes away from the sofa and fixed them on the round table near the door. This was covered with a table-cloth of olive-green cotton on which were printed coloured figures of mediaeval knights in imitation of ancient tapestry. During these three interminable seconds M. Bergeret clearly made out a little page-boy who held the helmet of one of the tapestry knights. Suddenly he noticed on the table, among the gilt-edged, red-bound books that Madame Bergeret had placed there as handsome ornaments, the yellow cover of the University Bulletin which he had left there the night before. The sight of this magazine instantly suggested to him the act most characteristic of his turn of mind: putting out his hand, he took up the Bulletin and left the drawing-room, which a most unlucky instinct had led him to enter.
Once alone in the dining-room a flood of misery overwhelmed him. He longed for the relief of tears, and was obliged to hold on by the chairs in order to prevent himself from falling. Yet with his pain was mingled a certain bitterness that acted like a caustic and burnt up the tears in his eyes. Only a few seconds ago he had crossed this little dining-room, yet now it seemed that, if ever he had set eyes on it before, it must have been in another life. It must surely have been in some far-off stage of existence, in some earlier incarnation, that he had lived in intimate relations with the small sideboard of carved oak, the mahogany shelves loaded with painted cups, the china plates on the wall, that he had sat at this round table between his wife and daughters. It was not his happiness that was dead, for he had never been happy; it was his poor little home life, his domestic relations that were gone. These had always been chilly and unpleasant, but now they were degraded and destroyed; they no longer even existed.
When Euphémie came in to lay the cloth he trembled at the sight of her; she seemed one of the ghosts of the vanished world in which he had once lived.
Shutting himself up in his study, he sat down at his table, and opening the University Bulletin quite at random, leant his head deliberately between his hands and, through sheer force of habit, began to read.
He read:
“Notes on the purity of language. — Languages are like nothing so much as ancient forests in which words have pushed a way for themselves, as chance or opportunity has willed. Among them we find some weird and even monstrous forms, yet, when linked together in speech, they compose into splendid harmonies, and it would be a barbarous act to prune them as one trims the lime-trees on the public roads. One must tread with reverence on what, in the grand style, is termed the boundless peaks...
“And my daughters!” thought M. Bergeret. “She ought to have thought of them. She ought to have thought of our daughters...
He went on reading without comprehending a word:
“Of course, such a word as this is a mere abortion. We say le lendemain, that is to say, le le en demain, when, evidently, what we ought to say is l’en demain; we say le lierre for Pierre, which alone is correct. The foundations of language were laid by the people. Everywhere in it we find ignorance, error, whim; in its simplicity lies its greatest beauty. It is the work of ignorant minds, to whom everything save nature is a sealed book. It comes to us from afar, and those who have handed it down to us were by no means grammarians after the style of Noël and Chapsal.”
Then he thought:
“At her age, in her humble, struggling position.... I can understand that a beautiful, idle, much idolised woman... but she!”
Yet, as he was a reader by instinct, he still went on reading:
“Let us treat it as a precious inheritance, but, at the same time, let us never look too closely into it. In speaking, and even in writing, it is a mistake to trouble too much about etymology....”
“And he, my favourite pupil, whom I have invited to my house... ought he not?..
“Etymology teaches us that God is He Who shines, and that the soul is a breathy but into these old words men have read meanings which they did not at first possess.”
“Adultery!”
This word came to his lips with such force that he seemed to feel it in his mouth like a coin, like a thin medal. Adultery!...
Suddenly he saw a picture of all that this wor
d implied, its associations — commonplace, domestic, absurd, clumsily tragic, sordidly comic, ridiculous, uncouth; even in his misery he chuckled.
Being well read in Rabelais, La Fontaine, and Molière, he called himself by the downright, outspoken name that he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt was fitted to his case. But that stopped his laugh, if it could be truthfully said that he had laughed.
“Of course,” said he to himself, “it is a petty, commonplace incident in reality. But I am myself suitably proportioned to it, being but an unimportant item in the social structure. It seems, therefore, an important thing to me, and I ought to feel no shame at the misery it brings me.”
Following up this thought, he drew his grief round him like a cloak, and wrapped himself in it. Like a sick man full of pity for himself, he pursued the painful visions and the haunting ideas which swarmed endlessly in his burning head. What he had seen caused him physical pain; noticing this fact, he instantly set himself to find the cause of it, for he was always ruled by the philosophical bent of his temperament.
“The objects,” thought he, “which are associdate with the most powerful desires of the flesh cannot be regarded with indifference, for when they do not give delight, they cause disgust. It is not in herself that Madame Bergeret possesses the power of putting me between these two alternatives; it is as a symbol of that Venus who is the joy of gods and men. For to me, although she may indeed be one of the least lovable and least mysterious of these symbols of Venus, yet at the same time she must needs be one of the most characteristic and vivid. And the sight of her linked in community of act and feeling with my pupil, M. Roux, reduced her instantly to that elementary type-form which, as I said, must either inspire attraction or repulsion. Thus we may see that every sexual symbol either satisfies or disappoints desire, and for that reason attracts or repels our gaze with equal force, according to the physiological condition of the spectators, and sometimes even according to the successive moods of the same witness.
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 133